Month: June 2013

@SenWhitehouse must think “meretricious” means “proof my staff can’t do research.”

This is what we call an unforced error.

Executive summary: Heritage scholar Dr. Salim Furth was testifying to the Senate Budget Committees about European austerity programs, and how “to date, ‘austerity’ in Europe has consisted mainly of tax increases.” This apparently upset Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat from Rhode Island, and don’t worry if you don’t recognize the name: he’s usually a complete nonentity, frankly)…

So when Whitehouse got his turn to ask the witnesses questions, he lit into the Heritage expert. “Dr. Furth, I am very concerned about your testimony,” Whitehouse began, “I am concerned that your testimony to this committee has been meretricious.”

Whitehouse then produced a chart showing that, among other things, not only had France cut spending, which was the opposite of what Furth testified, but that France had cut spending far more than they raised taxes.

Continue reading @SenWhitehouse must think “meretricious” means “proof my staff can’t do research.”

Eric Holder’s permanent seat in the barrel.

This is going to be Eric Holder’s life, now.

Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to meet with House Republicans as part of their probe into whether he misled Congress or acted inappropriately in the Justice Department’s investigation of two separate leaks to media outlets.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) made the announcement late Friday after exchanging several weeks worth of testy letters with the nation’s top cop.

In agreeing to meet with the lawmakers, Holder staved off the threat of a subpoena from Goodlatte for a second time in as many weeks.

Continue reading Eric Holder’s permanent seat in the barrel.

Connecticut stops offering Hollywood a luxurious tax break.

It kind of helps if you think of a state as a business enterprise in these cases.

More than 80 movies featuring stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins and Michael Douglas have been filmed in Connecticut over the past seven years, thanks largely to $137.4 million in tax credits to film production companies.

But the parade of stars may stop: Connecticut, confronting budget difficulties and competition from other states—including New York—is putting the tax-credit program on a two-year hiatus.

The move comes as the state recommits to luring television-production enterprises, which it says offer the type of permanent jobs and investments that film outfits can’t.

Continue reading Connecticut stops offering Hollywood a luxurious tax break.

Book of the Week: The Drawing of the Dark.

This pick was inspired by various beer-related comments here: The Drawing of the Dark is a Secret Magical History (involving the Siege of Vienna, Western chivalric mythology, and beer) which first demonstrated that Tim Powers is really, really good at creating esoteric and mystical explanations for historical events that make perfect sense at the time; disbelief is not so much suspended in one of Powers’ works as it is chained to the floor to keep it from smashing through the ceiling and out of one’s life completely.

[pause]

Basically, it’s just that it’s never a bad idea to go read a Tim Powers novel. Continue reading Book of the Week: The Drawing of the Dark.

QotD, I Would Pay Twenty Dollars To See Darth Cheney Do This Edition.

Charity of Cheney’s choice. To riff off of Allahpundit’s style:  Make this happen.

Suspense this morning on “Fox News Sunday”: Will Dick Cheney seize the opportunity to pull off one of the great trollings in modern political history by claiming that even he thinks Obama’s NSA surveillance has gone too far? I’m praying the answer is yes, simply for the comic agony it would induce in O-bots, but it’s almost certainly no.

But it would be so. Totally. Worth. It. Continue reading QotD, I Would Pay Twenty Dollars To See Darth Cheney Do This Edition.

#DNC flirting with insurance fraud?

Really now.

Organizers of the Charlotte, N.C., [2012 Democratic National] convention have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics, some of which they appear to have valued at as much as 62 times the listed market prices.

A reportedly stolen 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop? $75,537. The price listed on the Apple website is $1,199. A lost iPhone? $30,503. A lost Blackberry? $54,250.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment.

Well, what can you say?

Gee, I wonder how many people who hate GMOs also drink beer?

Which is pretty much equivalent to asking I wonder how many people who hate GMOs are pig-ignorant idiots [that not even beer-drinking can cure**]*?  Admittedly, this question is only tangential to these allegations that – shock, surprise! – some strains of perfectly safe genetically modified wheat were likely introduced into an Oregon crop by the very junk science yahoos that think that we’re living in the middle of an Atomic Horror movie.  It’s still a fun question to ask.

What’s that?  Why do I think that the bio-Luddites did this, too? Well, it’s not like the darn stuff moved on its own, and… oh, let the actual scientists have their moment of scorn: Continue reading Gee, I wonder how many people who hate GMOs also drink beer?

Obamacare is a tax on employment.

Here, let me help wreck your weekend for you.

Postulated: If you wish to see more of something, you subsidize it; if you wish to see less of something, you tax it. I assume that we are all on board with this, yes? – After all, this has been a major point used to justify sin taxes for, well, my entire life. In other words… “tax it out of existence” is a sentiment that is not exactly unique to this post.

Which leads to this observation from Andy Puzder, head of the company that operates Hardees and Carl’s, Jr:

About 40% of [CKE Restaurants CEO Andy] Puzder’s employees are part-time and therefore exempt from ObamaCare’s coverage mandates. “That percentage of employees will probably go up. Everybody is hiring more part-time employees,” he says, though he is quick to add that “we’re not firing anyone to hire” part-time workers. “Through attrition, three full-time employees go away and you hire four part-time employees who basically have the same hours.”

Mr. Puzder also expects fast-food restaurants to deal with ObamaCare by replacing workers with kiosks. “You’re going to go into a fast-food restaurant and order on an iPad or tablet instead of talking to a person because we don’t have to pay benefits for any of those things.”

Continue reading Obamacare is a tax on employment.

The war for “Happy Birthday.”

Interesting:

A new lawsuit being filed today aims to have “Happy Birthday” declared as belonging to the public domain. The proposed class action is brought by a film company that is working on a documentary about the “Happy Birthday” song. During the making, the producers were informed that they would need to pay a $1,500 synchronization license fee to use the song in the documentary. The producers paid for fear of being liable for up to $150,000 in penalties for copyright infringement.

But now, Good Morning to You Productions Corp. has filed a lawsuit on behalf of all those in film, television and elsewhere who are paying for rights to “Happy Birthday.” The plaintiff aims to force Warner/Chappell Music to return millions of dollars collected over the years for what the lawsuit calls “the world’s most popular song.”

Continue reading The war for “Happy Birthday.”