Amazon announced today that it is pulling out of South Carolina

A frustrated South Carolina could not be reached for comment. [SNL joke here.]

Seems that SC decided to NOT give Amazon a sales tax break on its new distribution center in Columbia. Those jobs will go somewhere else.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, honestly. Should businesses get SPECIAL tax breaks for bringing jobs?

More later.

It's nice to be recognized: Police raid wrong home, recognize judge.

There's a story out of (where else) Florida about police responding to a POSSIBLE burglar by pulling folks out of their house and threatening them. And thankfully someone recognized the judge who happened to be there for Easter.

I wonder if that kind of thing happens in Texas.

The Aspen Institute Prize - Mediocrity in Action

Higher Ed yesterday reports about the Aspen Institute prize for excellence that was announced last year by the White House.

The important thing is not who's on the list of the most excellent 120 community colleges. The CRITERIA for being on that list, and winning recognition, is given at the top. What should give everyone with good sense a reason to pause is the set of criteria, especially the last one. Here they are

"In a comprehensive review of publicly available data, these 120 two-year institutions—from 32 states—have demonstrated strong outcomes considering three areas of student success:

• student success in persistence and completion,
• consistent improvement in outcomes over time, and
• equity in outcomes for students of all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds."

The troubling part is the "equity in outcomes" mess. There has never been, in any society documented by history, equity in outcomes. This country is unique in the history of mankind in the way it grants equity in opportunity, but equity in outcomes is impossible to achieve.

Equity in outcomes presumes that we all have the same abilities and preferences, and that we're all motivated the same way. Last I checked that isn't the case. We all have talents and other things that we aren't talented with - hard work is the great equalizer. We all have our personal goals and motivations that drive us.

Can we all expect to achieve the same results in our lives? Clearly not. Look at how many people fall into the "wasted potential" category - we all know folks like this I'm sure. They can't keep a job for whatever reason, or pick a career or major, or they've squandered their opportunities in life. Hard work pays off, and free riding doesn't, whether we talking about social systems or elementary school.

Think about public schools, for example. Does everyone finish at the top of their high school class? No? Then there isn't equity of outcomes.

From the standpoint of financial economics, promising an "equality of outcomes" tends to 1) be a lie, and 2) stifle incentives to achievement. If you know that you'll at least get a C in the class, in the name of outcome equity, then why bother studying?

I'll propose an experiment in "equity of outcomes" for my undergrad students. The next time we have an exam, I'll set the median at 80, and then take points from those folks ABOVE 80 and redistribute them to the folks BELOW 80 to get everyone closer to the median. That's equity, right? I bet that won't go over too well with all those A and B students - surprising, since I bet a few of them buy into the idea that the rich are getting richer. Isn't that what getting an A means? You're a "richer" student, right? Isn't it greedy to keep all those points for yourself?

What America has demonstrated, at least until the last few years, is that it's possible to provide people with the opportunities they need to survive. How many times have we seen immigrants come here with nothing (legally) and leave a successful business empire to their children? If we look at the makeup of the top 25% of income earners in this country, it changes constantly. We have no "classes" here like other cultures have, traditionally; but it may be in the interest of politicians to change that, or at least to make us feel that we're in some downtrodden "class" group or another. Beware elected officials promoting "outcomes" - that sounds like "a chicken in every pot."

Treasury Secretary Geithner defends strong dollar policy

Here.

I really have nothing to say about this headline. It is its own punchline.

Treasury Secretary Geithner defends strong dollar policy

Here.

I really have nothing to say about this headline. It is its own punchline.

Where did all the anti-war protesters go? John Stossel again.

John Stossel has a piece today discussing a research report about anti-war protests. It seems that maybe these folks weren't really protesting wars as much as they were protesting Mr. Bush.

Alternatively, they may have just gotten jobs in the interim and now they don't have time to protest, much like the rest of us out here.

A theory: their moms threw them out of her basement and MADE THEM go get jobs. Once they saw their first paycheck they realized that Marxism wasn't really for them, and dropped out of the protest movement. Just a theory.

Treasury in a rush to sell Uncle Sam's GM stake

I guess this was inevitable, but the administration will do everything it can to distance itself from "Government Motors" and that company's new stock, according to a WSJ report yesterday.

Can you blame them? I wish, though, that some government types had had a little more spine when the time came to bail them out to start with, but I think most of that was about protecting the unions from losing money. Shareholders lost money, bondholders lost money, and I'm sure the unions lost a little bit, but the unions ended up with a huge chunk of the new company.

Hey, just like in places like Germany and France. Thank goodness we have THEIR examples to follow.

Lucky Chucky Schumer slams Houston over shuttle snub

New Yawk's senior senator Chuck Schumer had some comments about the shuttle decision.

"When people from Paris, Beijing, Tokyo and Amsterdam start saying they want to go to Houston, maybe then they'll get a shuttle," Schumer told the Daily News. "I'd say to Texas, don't mess with New York."

Wow, such hostility. How about that vitriolic rhetoric there?

My only retort: Once people from Paris, Beijing, Tokyo and Amsterdam actually GO to New York, they'll probably wish they'd gone to Houston instead.

What better time for a gold standard? State recognizes gold & silver currency, first time since 1933

Wow, looks like it's time to accept gold and silver currency as "legal tender" again.

I don't see why this should be listed under "Politics" though. Isn't this economics?

What better time for an Ayn Rand movie?

TRANSLATION SERVICE OF THE DAY: Who is John Galt? = Whatever

Atlas Shrugged hits the screens! Please, please, make sure you've read it FIRST, though.

Atlas Shrugged is all about how productive people are enslaved by the unproductive and political classes, and how government redistributes to create power, and how government is used to punish innovation and ability. How "need" is used to allocate, with disastrous results?

This book also tells how the legend of Robin Hood corrupted all of Western Civilization. No kidding. Or how the idea of Santa Claus corrupts our children at an early age (OK, I made that one up.)

Pure fantasy, right? It's just a book about railroads.

Atlas Shrugged has been on my recommended reading list for many years. It's a tough read, but the lessons there are as relevant as they were in 1957, maybe more so. It's still a big seller.

Even if you think Ayn Rand was a kook, this book should hit home for you.

UPDATE: A reader writes that they thought "The Fountainhead" was a better book, but one of the most horrible movies of all time. I'm not sure HOW you make either book into a movie, and I'll agree that "Fountainhead" was a great book.

It just didn't have fun train stuff in it. It was all about (blah) architecture. And self-determination, and the nanny state. Sounds like a theme, huh?

Operation Fast & Furious

More about the botched Justice Dept. plan to let guns cross the border into Mexico in an effort to bring down a cartel (like we need gun busts to do that).

Again, where is the major US media on this? Crickets. Here's the BBC, though, with some numbers.

For those of us who live and work in border states, or who have relatives across the border, this is a pretty big deal. The idea that DC can just do something like this is insane, but the idea that they THEN would try to blame gun owners for selling guns to Mexican drug gangs is even worse.

Space 4.0

Another great opinion piece from Creators Syndicate. This one discusses the future of space exploration, or Space 4.0 as he calls it.

Here in NASA-Land, Space 4.0 will be something for us to embrace. More entrepreneurship, more innovation, more unique solutions to insoluble problems.

Let's hope that goes smoothly. Without question, there is so much talent here in Clear Lake that we should be the "next big thing" in space development. But perhaps people are tired of that and ready to move on.

The problem with the space program, as I've written here before, is that every generation or so it flushes out all of the talent, and we have to start over again from (nearly) scratch. Will that happen this time, or will folks from ex-NASA programs take that knowledge and move it to the private sector, as Lockheed-Martin and others have already tried to do? Does it take big businesses, with access to money capital, or small businesses with access to specialized brainpower?

I'd like to look at all of that as it unfolds over the next few years. UH-Clear Lake might be able to have a unique role in helping entrepreneurs get through this.

Lists of gun owners? This gets in the way of economics

Here's another Stossel piece I found from last week. Seems that there's an effort underway in several places to have states or cities (such as NYC) disclose their registry of gun owners.

First, this is a big "told you so," because as long as I can remember, that was a fear. Lists were used to round up guns in occupied Europe, Nazi Germany, Britain and Australia (most recently) and Soviet Russia. Why would it be different here - the state will use those lists as it sees fit, and citizens can have no expectation of privacy.

So now crooks can know who HAS guns (to make it easier to steal guns) and who DOESN'T have guns (to make it less risky to break into THOSE houses). Nice, huh?

Stalkers can find out if their prey has a CCL and be "prepared."

This circumvents basic economics because we know that crooks put guns in their decision process. If they don't know who has a gun, they are less likely to break into houses, mug people, carjack, etc. Don't believe me? Look at the rate of those things in Texas versus other states. Sure, other states use guns too, but here we make it a spectator sport.

So, if people KNEW that their personal info would be released when they got their carry license, many of them wouldn't have gotten the license to start with.

If we have privacy requirements for everything else (HIV status, for instance, and welfare recipients, medical information) why don't these get enforced for gun owners? Sounds like a political agenda to me. Unfortunate.

Stossel, as usual, has it right on the money here. I'll add one thing: as long as government has a list of who has what, there will be the risk of political manipulation like this.

On another note, Chuck Norris has an editorial discussing the admin's game with "Mexican" guns. You know, the one where ATF sent guns across the border so they could talk about how many guns were going across the border. When it was revealed that the government was playing a game with this, did we see it in the media? Houston Chronicle? Nope. He also talks some about the assault on gun rights and the 2012 election. Do.not.mess.with.Chuck.Norris.

Weatherizing? Another stunning waste of taxpayer dollars.

As school districts around us erupt in discord, I saw this today on Fox News (so it just might be true).

Seems that the Energy Dept. program that got $5 BILLION dollars to help po' folks weatherize their homes has been plagued by contractor fraud and abuse.

I bet nobody saw THAT coming.

Next, I wonder if these weatherizing jobs were for union members (just another angle to it). In Northern states, I'd bet that's a certainty.

We have to be ever vigilant against lies and corruption in government, no matter which party is in power. This is just the latest example.

"spending reductions in the tax code" = LeftSpeak for "tax increases"

Huxley and Orwell would be proud. Sorry folks, but yesterday's speech by our president is rife with doublespeak, if not outright dishonesty. In an attempt to frame the argument, our president's speechwriters have removed "tax increases" from the vocabulary and substituted "spending reductions in the tax code."

Pucker up, buttercup.

The president's presumption, obviously, is that all of your money belongs to the government first, and that when you get a deduction for medical expenses or mortgage interest, it's really because the government "spent" that money on those deductions.

Unfortunately, that's not how things work. My money is still, at the end of the day, my money.

He gave examples such as the mortgage deduction and other "itemized" deductions that most "middle-class" Americans don't participate in.

On a related note, we get nowhere with class warfare. I know the president is speaking to a constituency when he talks about "the wealthiest Americans," but the fact is that the top 1% of wage earners pay something like 40 percent of all tax revenues. Oddly, those same folks still get 1 vote each. The president's assertion that the poorest in America have no voice in Washington is ludicrous - of course they do, but their voices in Washington are the lobbyists from non-profit groups like United Way and others.

Update: Turns out that most of the people in each income group turn over frequently - the top income folks weren't necessarily there when things were measured 10 years ago. Check out this blog.

We've got to reign in spending, that's the only way to fix things. And not by pushing it all down to the states, either (Medicaid). If we don't reduce the size of state, local and federal governments, we stand to end up like Greece, Portugal or, gasp, even maybe Wisconsin.

Notes from the Nanny State, Part 1

A public school in Chicago has banned food from home, saying it's about healthy food for kids.

After all, it's for the children, right?

Judge Richard Goldstone slams the Goldstone Report

The South African judge behind the UN's Goldstone Report that shows equal criminal behavior between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza episode has now decided that the report is misleading.

His critics welcome him to the party. The best line in this mea culpa piece is where he says

"That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets."

Duh.

Hamas hasn't wasted any resources following up on the Report's allegations, whereas Israel has run 400+ investigations. Again, duh.

I'm glad he had the cojones to step up on this, but it's too late. History will be written with the Goldstone Report as fact, and Israel will have to deal with the aftermath.

Coping Skills Exercises for Today's Yoot

Not surprising, but scientists have found evidence that young people suffer withdrawal effects when their cellphones are taken away.

Ya think?

In other news, scientists have found evidence that heroin users react when their heroin is taken away.

The Politics of Fear & Division, Part 12

Nothing new, but I thought that the current budget battle would be a good background for pointing out the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) sown by "progressive" politicians. It's just louder and more rhetorical now.

Speaker Reid reminds us that the Tea Party is driving the Republicans to cut the budget, causing them to be "extreme" and "radical."

Jesse Jackson weighed in on how budget cuts are like the Civil War.

Eleanor Holmes Norton says it's the same as "bombing innocent civilians" to shut down the government.

We've already heard how 70,000 children will die if we cut offshore aid funding, so none of this should be surprising I guess.

The best one so far: families won't get their $100,000 death benefit from fallen soldiers if the government closes. Wow, just wow.

Science will have to shut down. "Time sensitive clinical research" translates to who knows what.

A shutdown will keep the shuttle Endeavor grounded.

Jerry Brown reiterates that we're in a Civil War. I guess they didn't teach history when he was in school, either.

UPDATE: Thank goodness for Customs agents. Without them we might have more exotic insects from other countries. What would we DO without Customs Agents? Hey, let's get some more! I wish they were more concerned about ALL of the parasites out there.

The politics of fear and the politics of division are alive and well, and being fed by the media in this country. Please, please consider this when you decide which group of political types represent you best.

The nature of regulatory law

Reports that 6 pages of the new health care law ends up generating over 400 pages of HHS regulations. That's not uncommon - the Federal Reserve has ended up with similar in the past. But it shows the difference between legislation and regulation, and that's an important thing to understand in banking.

Private money is illegal. In other words, no competition.

I've been following with interest the case of a guy who looks to be one of those scary militia types. He tried to get away with minting his own dollars. Feds say he tried to pass them off as US coins, they call him a "domestic terrorist."

I don't know the background of this guy, but the fact that the coins came from Coeur D'Alene Idaho sounds fishy. Lots of Nazis and bad white guys up there.

However, there shouldn't be anything wrong with printing an alternative money. ESPECIALLY if people could find out the silver or gold content of that money easily. It really makes the government look paranoid to spend so much time and money prosecuting someone for making barter currency.

GM wasn't really a success

The Washington Times today details the totality of losses that happened across the General Motors bailout-bankruptcy-rebirth episode starting in 2008.

As I've said here before, losing $84 Billion isn't "winning." Cheating bondholders out of their money can't be "winning."

Freddie, Fannie bosses got big bonuses, taxpayers sucked wind

You know I'm all about paying someone what they're worth. Labor should be allocated through markets, at market prices.

I'm not so sure, though, that we've heard enough from politicians and mainstream media about executive compensation at Freddie and Fannie. Turns out that even in the midst of a government bailout, these folks were taking bonuses for performance. What performance?

They deserved those bonuses, folks. Really. Because their job, as given to them by HUD and Congress, was to lend to subprime borrowers. And they did so. Wonderfully.

I'm going to stop short of saying that their job was to bankrupt the American economy in favor of wealth redistribution. That would be too cynical.

Most Fed loans during crisis went to foreign banks: Bloomberg

It's hard to believe, but the Federal Reserve's special loan programs were heavily trafficked by foreign banks during the recent crisis. Who knew?

Well, as I've posted before, nobody knew b/c the Fed doesn't release records of which banks it helps. Which is done to prevent the market from collapsing those banks during a liquidity crisis.

I guess that rules got to change now too. Some reforms have already been made, but you can bet that Congress will be looking to change some parts of DIDMCA to make that nearly impossible in the future.