Author Archives: steve

Aging & slowing population growth mean fewer jobs needed to prevent rising unemployment rate

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These people will stoop to any depth to prop up Dear Leader…

It’s impossible to predict much about the future rate of job creation. But careful analysis of demographic trends can give us some clues about the size of the employment gap. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently published a research note that does exactly this, arguing that aging and slowing population growth mean fewer jobs need to be added to prevent the unemployment rate from rising.

So, buck up! As our population shrinks, it will get easier to keep the unemployment rate under 8%…. Unreal.

Reminds me of the old John Lovitz SNL skit…

“Lower your standards”

Democrat Leadership: It took fifteen years to construct grocery store in Detroit

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51 years after the defeat of Louis Miriani (Detroit’s last Republican mayor) and an unbroken chain of liberal Democrat mayors (and city council members) since, it takes 15 years to clear a piece of real estate in Detroit to construct a grocery store.

He doesn’t own Whole Foods. He’s not stocking the shelves of the upscale grocery chain with boxes of muesli, he’s not a Detroiter excited to find a nearby place to buy said cereal and it wasn’t his hands that constructed the building over the last year.

But on the eve of the opening of Detroit’s first Whole Foods Wednesday, Peter Cummings, chairman of development company Ram, is as proud as the parent of an honor roll high school student. It’s fitting, because he’s been nurturing this development for the last 15 years.

Ram purchased the four acres of property at Mack and Woodward Avenue in the Midtown neighborhood in 1998 for approximately $3 million. At the time, it was vacant except for a shuttered Chase bank branch, but Cummings said he saw potential in Midtown.

15 years to build a grocery store. Not only 15 years, it also took a whole lot of corporate welfare as well:

Despite the store’s prominent neighbors, it took a lot of heavy lifting to complete the deal. The $12.9 million Whole Foods store was financed with $6.1 million in equity from Ram and Whole Foods. Ram contributed 1.9 acres of land for the store valued at about $1 million, said Peter Cummings, chairman of Ram. The remaining $5.8 million came from state and local grants and the sale of tax credits tied to the project. 

Whole Foods should send Michigan taxpayers a big thank-you note.

A lesson in Irony: Rising CO2 levels aren’t making planet warmer, but it is making it greener

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This is too funny:

Carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere recently hit the 400 parts-per-million mark. So is all that CO2 scorching the planet? No. But it does seem to be making our deserts greener.
Listening to the global warming alarmists, one would think that man-made CO2 emissions are threatening the globe. But that’s speculation. Let’s deal in reality. And the reality, according to Australian research, is that in this era of higher carbon concentrations, plant life in dry regions has grown lush.
The greening of the deserts is due to the “fertilization effect” — the impact carbon dioxide has on plant life.

As pointed out here at MCT many, many times before. CO2 is food for plants:

Obama is beholden to the hard-core environmentalists and can’t get the Senate to push through new regulations limiting the gas, CO2, that we all exhale and plant life uses for photosynthesis. Therefore, he will regulate CO2 through the EPA and they will deploy regulations and measure more draconian than anything the legislature would dream of voting for.

You would think environmentalists would be trumpeting this finding, but they aren’t. Because the environmentalist movement has very little to do with the actual environment and is much more concerned with restricting economic growth.

Ted Cruz Proposes Flat Tax And, Right On Cue, The Nuanced Left Attacks

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Finally, someone in Washington actually proposes something that will prevent the IRS from abusing power, the flat tax…

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And right on cue, the American left attacks the idea:

And Cruz’s flat tax is actually a bit more complicated than most. It includes deductions for mortgages and charitable contributions. What if everyone says they gave a million dollars to charity and own a huge home? Who’s going to check all that out? Well, some well-meaning flat-tax collection agents, I guess.
The people doing all this need to sit somewhere. The place they sit doesn’t need to be called “The Internal Revenue Service.” It can be called “The Agency of Tax Freedom.” But it is, in effect, the Internal Revenue Service.

The left always claim they are more nuanced and intellectually engaged, yet when confronted with an idea they don’t like (it eliminates the ability to pander to their voters) they turn into fifth graders.

EPA Hammers Wal-Mart With $110 Million In Fines For Various Environmental Regulations

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While the IRS targeted conservative groups for harassment through the tax code, the EPA was busy shaking down Walmart to the tune of $110 million in fines for violation of the Clean Water Act:

In federal courts in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the giant retailer admitted violations of the Clean Water Act by illegally handling and disposing of hazardous materials at its stores throughout the United States.

And the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act:

The Arkansas-based company admitted in federal court in Kansas City, Mo., violations of the Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act by failing to properly handle pesticides returned to its stores by customers.

Long time MCT readers might recall that the shoe manufacturer Crocs was nailed by the same regulation in 2011.

Reading the comments to the story I saw this gem:

$110 million sure seems like a small amount, if the idea is to deter Walmart from engaging in such practices in the future.

I’m not a wild eyed Walmart hater, but it sure seems to me that when you are going to punish an entity for dong something this lousy, you should really make them feel it.

Of course, no one (including the environment) was harmed by Wal-Mart’s action with regard to any of the violations. The only people who are going to ‘really feel it’ are consumers who shop at Wal-Mart who, in reality, are the people who are going to pay this fine.

Sunday Morning Links: The 1969 “Astrovette”

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This is such a cool story, combining several of my favorite things (history, the space program, classic cars & Corvettes) into a single story… The Astrovette:

Gentlemen, let’s just get this depressing truth out of the way: For the male of the human species, life reached apogee for those lucky few rocket-riding, Corvette-driving, moon-venturing NASA astronauts in the space-smitten Go-Go that was 1960s America. Theirs was a perfect storm of timing (the dawn of space-capable engineering), almost unlimited government funding (beat those Russkies!), a Holy Grail forged by a martyred president (JFK’s “before this decade is out”), delicious extras (free Corvettes were just the beginning), and star-struck coverage from three TV networks and Life magazine (ticker-tape parade, anyone?). In contrast, what’s a boy of today supposed to want to be when he grows up?

…….

Alan Bean wasn’t a Corvette man when he joined NASA’s third astronaut group in 1963. “I couldn’t afford to be a car aficionado,” he says. “I was an airplane aficionado. All I did was concentrate on flying planes for the Navy.” But Corvette fever was hard to fight off. Like such Original Seven astros as Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and Gordo Cooper, Bean qualified for that most prized of star-voyager perquisites: access to a new Chevy every year for the princely sum of $1. (The deal had been arranged by local Florida dealer and former Indy 500 winner Jim Rathmann; see sidebar.) “So naturally I got Corvettes,” Bean says. “I had red ones, black ones. Every year they’d take our orders and give us new cars.”

When NASA assigned Bean to his first space flight, Apollo 12, the second lunar landing, he and his crewmates got creative. Theirs was an all-Navy crew: Pete Conrad (mission commander and Bean’s former test-pilot instructor), Dick Gordon (command module pilot), and Bean (lunar module pilot). When it came time to choose their new ’69 Corvettes, Bean remembers, “We said, ‘Let’s get ‘em all the same!’” The trio played around with a few ideas, ultimately settling on gold with black trim. “I don’t know why, being Navy guys, we didn’t pick blue and gold,” Bean says. “But we were busy with Apollo 12, so we didn’t have time to think about it too much.”

Be sure to read the rest of the story, it is very interesting, even if you aren’t that into history, the space program, classic cars or Corvettes.

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Now, on to the links…

ChrisWy: In White House meetings Obama’s campaign chief gave IRS commissioner his marching orders
WWTFT: The Blood of Tyrants
TheCL: The Electronic Concentration Camp
WixomWeb: Detroit Citizens Protect Themselves After Police Force Decimated…
CH2.0: Your Obama Scandal Template

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SJ:  Why the left demonizes our Founding Fathers
Bunker: IRS Shulman’s wife works for a ‘Progressive Organization’
Asylum Watch: Sue and Settle and Retard Economic Growth
TMGGB: Career Bureaucrats Are Far Worse Than Our Elected Politicians
The Eye: Uncivil War Birds
CC: Visa Overstays and DACA Applicants Get Lucky

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Spellchek: Age old agendas guide geo-political events
FCBZ:  Recall Efforts Against AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio Fail, “Respect Arizona” Violated State Law & Lawsuit Filed Against Group
MTTM: AFFT Calls on Congress to Eliminate IRS Targeting by Enacting the FairTax
Gator: Why can’t Democrats just compete?
Jen: Lawbreakers in a Lawless Society
Tom: SOME POUR THEMSELVES OUT SO THAT OTHERS MIGHT NOT BE SPILLED OUT
LaS: How To Handle a Petty, Petulant, Thin-Skinned, Despotic Demagogue

1969-Chevrolet-Astrovette-Apollo-12-autographsThe TCN: GovernorPerry Needs Your Input on Budget, CSCOPE
The NC: Ted Cruz- Obama Does Not Respect First, Second, Fourth, or Fifth Amendments
Teresa: Constitution vs Constitution?
Hogewash:  Nixon’s Third Term?
PR: Is The IRS Accountable Or Not?

Video: Shelby GT500 Mustang literally destroys a dyno

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Via (appropriately) Torque News:

[T]he portable dyno under the back end of this Shelby GT500 literally explodes with a shower of sparks flying from the right of the screen. This is where you would find all of the bearings and internal workings of this type of dyno so it has been widely speculated that the supercharged Shelby Mustang just pumped too much power into the dyno and the bearings of the rollers which absorb the force from the tires just could not keep up. When the bearings failed, the shower of sparks was caused by the rollers under the wheels locking up and when that happened, the supercharged muscle car literally tossed the dyno out from under itself. From the look of things, there was very significant damage to both the dyno (which was likely scrap after this was all said and done) as well as the high priced Shelby Mustang.

And here is the video in question:

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And another angle:

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Later that day, I’m sure the Mustang owner had an interesting conversation with his insurance agent…

Michigan is asking for more taxes to repair the roads they were supposed to maintain in the first place

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Michigan has awful roads. They have been awful for a very long time and now, our Nerd Governor, Rick Snyder (R) is pushing hard for a tax increase to fix the roads:

State legislative leaders and Gov. Rick Snyder met here Wednesday in an effort to kickstart stalled talks on the governor’s desire to spend more than $1 billion extra annually to fix roads and bridges.

There was no breakthrough during the talks Wednesday, said House Minority Leader Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills, but the conversation was positive and another meeting is scheduled for next week.

“There was some movement,” Greimel said Thursday, but Democratic and Republican elected officials remain a long way from reaching a comprehensive road funding solution.

There is a 50-50 chance a deal will be reached, Greimel said.

Let’s get this straight. The State of Michigan as an institution has historically failed to maintain our state’s roads and bridges. Today, the same institutions are coming after Michigan taxpayers trying to shake us down.for an additional $1 Billion a year to do the job they were supposed to do in the first place.

This is ridiculous.

Michigan drivers already fork over a lot of money in taxes to maintain roads. When gasoline is @ $4.00 / gal, Michigan drivers fork over $0.59 / gal in Federal, State Gas Taxes & Michigan Sales taxes. The math is simple; put 10 gallons of gas in your tank and The Nerd and Obama peel of $5.90 for themselves in taxes receipts ostensibly tagged for road maintenance.

Plus, the State of Michigan has made out with the 6% sales tax on the very expensive gasoline over the last decade.Retail Gasoline Prices

Everyone else in the private sector has tightened and re-tightened their belts. Time has come for Lansing (and Washington) to do the same.