Racists of the World, Unite

The left has us pegged. They have identified all the secret racists on our side. They know how to call a spade a spade.
If you call a black man "angry," you are a racist.
If you call a black man "arrogant," you are a racist.
If you say that a black president plays too much golf, you are a racist.
If you ever say that welfare should include work requirements, as in the law that Bill Clinton signed and spent years (falsely) taking credit for, you are a racist.
If you complain, along with the experts who helped write and pass a welfare reform law, that the law's work requirements are being gutted by an (illegal) executive waiver of, yes, the work requirement, you are a racist.
If you talk about border security, you are a racist.
If you say that a president does not harbor the traditional views about what makes America great, you are a racist.
If you note that the president often wrote and spoke movingly about the great influence that a particular preacher had on him, and that the preacher is a white-hating, America-bashing radical, then you are a racist.

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/31/racists-of-the-world-unite

The liberal media brings out the hockey pucks

In 2004, Arnold Schwarzenegger — then a popular figure in the Republican party — gave an exciting, upbeat, and surprisingly funny speech at the GOP convention. He covered a lot of territory: how he came to America, how he became a Republican after listening to Richard Nixon, and other highlights of his life story.

Afterwards, then–CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported that Schwarzenegger “slapped John Kerry around like a hockey puck.”
The only problem: Schwarzenegger never mentioned John Kerry, not even once.
I bring it up because it’s hardly news that much of the press likes to report the convention as they want it to be rather than as it is.
It’s also somewhat less than a thunderclap revelation that the press and the Democratic party tend to see things the same way. Which is why it’s unremarkable that the “fact-checkers” and Democratic-party press-release writers are on the same page.
Hence the relentless coverage of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s “lies” during his convention speech. His story about a Janesville, Wis., GM plant, in particular, has stirred up a journalistic fuss:

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you . . . this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315558/correcting-reality-jonah-goldberg

An Infantilizing Speech

Maybe I am getting older and crankier, but that struck me as an exceptionally infantilizing speech that Mitt Romney just gave, politically speaking.
There were good bits in it, particularly in the soft-focus autobiographical stuff. He actually sounded like he choked up talking about missing the days when they’d wake up to find a pile of kids in their bedroom. He got a genuine laugh from a genuine joke. I’ve never cared much whether Romney seems “authentic” or “genuine” because those qualities in a politician are faked – what you’re seeing is the ability to seem genuine, seem authentic. If Romney lacks those qualities, they have practical consequences – people will be less-likely to believe him when he speaks in public – but they aren’t indications of character. But nonetheless, it’s nice to see that he can play this game a little, since he’d be expected to play it if he became President.
But the rest of the speech was pretty dreadful, and particularly this section:

Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team. Every new college graduate thought they’d have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future. This is when our nation was supposed to start paying down the national debt and rolling back those massive deficits. This was the hope and change America voted for.

Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/an-infantilizing-speech/

U.S. Senator Reid, son combine for China firm's desert plant

U.S. Senator Harry Reid recognized nine years ago that connections between his official duties and the lobbying activities of his relatives could lead to ethical questions.
In 2003, the Nevada Democrat publicly banned relatives from lobbying him or his staff after newspaper reports showed that Nevada industries and institutions routinely turned to Reid's sons or son-in-law for representation.
Now, questions surrounding family ties are flaring again in Nevada around the Senate majority leader. He and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert.
Reid has been one of the project's most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the non-partisan advocacy group Public Citizen, said the senator is dealing with "an iffy ethical landscape" because of the family connections and should recuse himself from the project. "Is this just happening because ... it benefits the Reid family, or did Harry Reid actually believe in this?" Holman said.
The senator has supported numerous clean energy projects in Nevada. Rory Reid cites energy as one of his specialty areas at the law firm.
The two Reids deny discussing the ENN project.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-usa-china-reid-solar-idUSBRE87U06D20120831

The Obama administration: Saving jobs, 20 electoral votes at a time

Mitt Romney may have just lost his rationale for the presidency. In recent weeks, the Obama administration has been slashing environmental regulations, coddling “Big Oil,” circumnavigating the stickiest of environmental bureaucracies, and sucking up to private equity.
If you had trouble just now stifling an “Amen!” or a “Right on!” or some other more salty and enthusiastic exclamation, then there’s a good chance you aren’t a member of Obama’s usual demographic.
There’s an equally good chance that until this moment you were unaware that the Obama administration had played a central role in saving the largest oil refinery on the East Coast — and with it, 850 union jobs and a chance at winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.
If you subject yourself only to the standard pop-culture fare of TV “news,” you definitely missed it. Absent my online subscription to the Wall Street Journal, I may have missed it too.
Here is the Wall Street Journal piece, and here are the highlights from it:
After losing more than $1 billion over three years on its two oil refineries, Sunoco announced last year that it was getting out of the refining business, selling its operations in Philadelphia and Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania.
Apparently, this surprised no one in the industry, as evidenced by the March 2012 congressional testimony of Charlie Drevna, the president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM).

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/obama-administration-saving-jobs-20-electoral-votes-at-a-time/#ixzz257TopGaF

The High Cost of College: An Economic Explanation

Many news articles are starting to note that middle and upper-middle class parents are having trouble paying for their children’s college educations. Most of these articles see this as a new development. But the story is actually more than 50 years old.
Throughout the 1950s, and with the best of motives, Americans gradually adopted a policy of allowing—even encouraging—colleges to use what economists call first degree price discrimination. Here’s how this price discrimination works:
1.    Every good or service offered for sale has a different value for each of the various people who will choose to buy it. That is, some people will be willing and able to pay much more for any good or service than other people will be able or willing to pay for the same good or service.
2.    Normal market pricing consists of the producer of a good or service choosing the price that allows the producer to make a reasonable profit after production costs. When the prices posted by all producers are added together, they comprise the supply curve. When the prices that all the potential consumers are willing to pay are added together, they comprise the demand curve. Competition among producers forces market prices into a narrow range. Those who are only willing to pay a lower price than that range buy none of that good or service. Those consumers who are willing and able to pay a price higher than the range—sometimes a much higher price—get a break and buy the good or service at a lower price than they are willing to pay.
3.    First degree price discrimination occurs when normal markets are interfered with and producers are allowed to learn exactly what each consumer is willing and able to pay for the good or service. Using this data, all the producers set individual prices for each consumer, eliminating competition and forcing the consumers that are willing and able to pay a higher price to pay it. In this pricing scheme, those who are willing and able to pay only a lower price get a break.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/august/the-high-cost-of-college-an-economic-explanation

JPMorgan faces sea of trouble resolving "Whale" probe

The fallout from a nearly $6 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co looks like it will haunt the big U.S. bank and its high-profile chief executive, Jamie Dimon, for months to come.
U.S. authorities are interviewing witnesses in both the United States and Europe to determine if three former London-based traders and others who worked with them at JPMorgan tried to hide some of the mounting losses during the first quarter of this year, said people familiar with the situation.
The situation presents several challenges to U.S. authorities: the potentially irregular trading occurred in London; and it was carried out by non-U.S. citizens, such as French national Bruno Iksil, who became known in the market as the "London Whale" for the size of his positions.
That translates into different rules for different jurisdictions and could raise extradition issues if any individuals are charged.
Meanwhile, the bank's own internal investigation, which first uncovered evidence in July that the London traders may have deliberately understated the first-quarter loss, is far from finished. A person familiar with the internal probe, but who is not authorized to speak publicly about it, said "there is a lot more work to do" for the team, which has numbered more than 100 lawyers.
Dimon initially referred to what has become a scandal as a "tempest in a teapot". He later tried to portray it as an isolated risk management problem that the bank has corrected.
Lawyers say because JPMorgan is the biggest bank in the United States and Dimon is one of Wall Street's most visible chief executives, U.S. criminal investigators are not going to simply accept the findings of the bank's internal investigation - no matter how thorough they may be.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-jpmorgan-loss-transatlantic-idUSBRE87U06420120831