January 5, 2009 • 11:19 pm
December 15, 2008 • 7:37 am
Dad29 descibes the situation.
In the last 2 days, there have been six (SIX!!!) accidents in the two-block stretch between Menard’s and Janacek Road.
Filed under: Government inefficiency , Bluemound Road, Wisconsin roads
December 13, 2008 • 4:51 pm
From the Los Angeles Times
The 70-year-old Madoff was arrested Thursday on charges of running what amounted to an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme: reporting illusory profits and paying off one set of investors with cash raised from others. [Emphasis mine]
Remind you of some government program? I thought so.
I love it when the media use “Ponzi scheme” because it allows me to refer to Social Security. Maybe I should set up an alert on one of the search engines.
Filed under: Economics, Government inefficiency , Bernard Madoff, Ponzi scheme, Social Security
November 19, 2008 • 11:30 pm
October 20, 2008 • 3:14 pm
August 20, 2008 • 6:58 pm
From CNN.com. Here’s the money quote,
Gonzalez filed a lawsuit against Pimstein and his company, the Bottom Line of South Florida, claiming that the entire arrangement was “a classic ‘Ponzi scheme,’ a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying earlier investors from the principal of later investors, rather than from profits generated from real business.”
Doesn’t the federal government call that Social Security?
Filed under: Economics, Government inefficiency , Ponzi scheme, Social Security
Yes, another TIME magazine cover on ethanol.
But this time it’s a different tune.
Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.
This is what happens when you let politicians determine what happens in the market. We see it over and over again and yet we somehow believe that this time it will be different.
The small print you can’t read in the cover shot above reads,
Politicians and Big Business are pushing biofuels as alternatives to oil. All they’re really doing is driving up food prices and making global warming worse–and you’re paying for it.
As always, isn’t it?
The subtitle to the article, which is hard to find online says,
Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it?
Why indeed?
Next, and in fact already happening, environmentalists will bemoan increased mercury levels from broken and trashed energy saving bulbs. Recently mandated by our government.
Sound familiar?
Filed under: Environment, Government inefficiency , Environment, ethanol, global warming
January 15, 2008 • 12:50 pm
More mailings by the state of Wisconsin with Social Security numbers possibly visible.
The Department of Administration printed, folded and mailed the letters for the state Department of Revenue. The federal government requires that the Social Security numbers be printed on the forms.
Are you sure you want the government involved in your lives any more than they are now?
Filed under: Government inefficiency , Government inefficiency, Privacy issues, Wisconsin Department of Administration
November 9, 2007 • 8:58 pm
I’m sure by now, my readers have heard of either the case of Megan Coulter or Lea Muir’s daughter, both of whom were disciplined by their respective schools for hugging.
To many this is an overreaction. Punishment for hugging? As Ms. Muir said,
“What’s it going to come to next?,” she asked. “You can’t high five or touch anybody? You can’t brush by someone in the hallway?”
Megan Coulter’s mother Melissa said,
“It’s hilarious to the point of ridicule,” Coulter said. “I’m still dumbfounded that she’s having to do this.”
In defense of the school districts, the Supreme Court in a 1999 decision (See decision here, registration is required)
ruled schools could be held liable by ignoring claims of sexual harassment. Some say the ruling puts schools between a rock and a hard place. By not identifying all suspect behavior, they risk liability. But when they do, they often hear complaints from parents.
But really, government organizations, actually their employees, make “common sense” decisions?
You mean, like this one?
I think it would make the news if they actually did do something that made sense.
Filed under: Government inefficiency , Alabama, government, Illinois, Lea Muir, Mascoutah, Megan Coulter, Prattville
