Month: June 2014

Today is the release date for The Weed Agency.

The Weed Agency: A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits is Jim Geraghty’s… comic tale of federal bureaucracy without limits, actually.  The subtitle is a pretty accurate description, all things considered.  You may remember that I interviewed Jim about the book; it’s formally out today, so go buy it.

Moe Lane

PS: Nah, Jim isn’t paying me to shill the book, more’s the pity. But if you buy it via the link I get a little bit of Amazon money, so there you go: that’s where I’m selling out, for a given value of ‘selling out.’

@_FloridaMan versus Judge Throw-Down!

This Florida Man tweet does not oversell.

…it truly does not. You can’t see it – it happened behind closed doors – but you can hear it.

That Twitter account is almost a national goram resource.

More taxpayers voting with their feet.

John Fund of NRO:

The numbers are clear. Between 1995 and 2010 over $2 trillion in adjusted gross income moved between the states. That’s the equivalent of the GDP of California, the ninth largest GDP in the world. Some of the movement might be due to weather — that helps to explain some of Florida’s $86.4 billion gain and New York’s $58.6 billion loss. But we can attribute a great deal to the fact that capital flows to where it is best treated. Travis Brown, author of the new book How Money Walks, reports that the nine states without a personal income tax gained $146 billion in new wealth while the nine states with the highest income tax rates lost $107 billion.

This is the point where people in the states getting the influx start muttering that the people fleeing from high-tax states often bring bad fiscal habits and ways of thinking with them, and that’s a legitimate point. On the other hand, at least some of those people are moving precisely because they want to get away from the aforementioned bad habits; besides, this isn’t Soviet Russia. People are allowed to move: actually, they can just move, and there’s nothing ‘allowed’ about it. So I suggest a careful program of acquainting new residents in the joys of a relatively smaller-government way of life…
Continue reading More taxpayers voting with their feet.

RGA slams Hawaii’s state #obamacare exchange, Neil Abercrombie.

Mind you, both the state Obamacare exchange AND the governor deserve it.

The state Obamacare exchange for not working, and the governor for contributing to the general lack of function. For those who missed the original story: Hawaii, like many other Democratic controlled states*, produced its own state exchange.  And, like many other Democratic-controlled states, the exchange has crashed, burned, exploded, sunk below the waves, and then exploded again.  Just in time, I might add, for the 2014 election cycle, which amusingly enough is a midterm – which means that most of the governors’ races are taking place this November. Continue reading RGA slams Hawaii’s state #obamacare exchange, Neil Abercrombie.

The UMWA discovers that supporting Democrats got them two things.

Jack, and… well, this is a family website.

Some labor unions, groups generally considered loyally Democratic, rebelled on Monday after the EPA released its new regulations, which studies have suggested will carry hefty economic costs.

United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) president Cecil Roberts blasted the proposal, saying it would leave tens of thousands of the union’s members unemployed.

“The proposed rule … will lead to long-term and irreversible job losses for thousands of coal miners, electrical workers, utility workers, boilermakers, railroad workers and others without achieving any significant reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Roberts said in a statement.

According to a UMWA analysis, Roberts said, the rule will cause 75,000 job losses in the coal sector by 2020, rising to 152,000 by 2035.

Continue reading The UMWA discovers that supporting Democrats got them two things.

Quote of the Day, Me Too, @Instapundit edition.

Apparently the did a study that showed that being bullied was better than being ignored, which led Glenn Reynolds to reply “I dunno, I never minded being ignored, but I have a rich inner life.”  Which was close to my own personal goal, growing up – I pretty much wanted to be left alone, and I was willing to do quite a bit that was odd, unusual, or even downright disconcerting in order to achieve that blessed state. Well, at least I thought that it was blessed at the time.  Looking back, I could have made an effort toward sociability.

Mind you: people should not bully other people. As long as it’s understood that if you decide to mess with the bull, you should expect the horns.  I’ve seen people start claiming ‘bullying’ when they really meant ‘Wow, I really underestimated how tough that guy was!”

Tweet of the Day, Boehner Is Absolutely Right On This EPA Regulation Nonsense edition.

Sometimes you just simply have to spell it out in words with as few syllables as possible:

Continue reading Tweet of the Day, Boehner Is Absolutely Right On This EPA Regulation Nonsense edition.