harmonicminer

How Big Government Infrastructure Projects Go Wrong

[I]t’s important to remember that big government programs often have results that are very different than what was intended.

Say it isn’t so. But read the link first.

The “stimulus” looks more and more ominous.

So says Iowahawk. Read it all:

iowahawk: Memo to America’s Irresponsible Tea Party Whiners: STFU

For example, now that my mortgage worries are over, I was able to afford the down payment on a sweet new jet ski, directly creating jobs at Coralville Kawasaki. I also purchased a few items from my friend and local small business entrepreneur Randy Hansgard. Randy used that money to make high tech capital improvements in his business, like new grow-lights and an Ohaus 3-beam electronic scale. After I wrecked the jet ski, this created jobs at the Coralville Kawasaki service department. I also splurged by sending Linda a thoughtful Jenny Craig gift certificate with my partial January mortgage payment, because she’s really been packing on the pounds lately.

Obama wants to restrict the ability of medical personnel and pharmacists to refuse to provide abortion-related services for non-medical reasons, on the grounds of conscience.  This is one inevitable outcome of the Freedom of Choice Act he intends to pursue with the Congress, but in the short term, he intends to reverse a Bush administration ruling extending conscience protections for health-care workers to so called “emergency contraception.”

During the last months of the Bush administration, the feds adopted a new rule that could allow health-care workers to refuse to provide birth control on moral grounds. Now the Obama administration is moving to reverse that rule, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Existing federal law allows health-care workers to refuse on moral grounds to provide abortions. The new rule strengthened and extended those protections. While some groups, such as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, supported the move, many others, including several state attorneys general and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed the rule.

There have been recent reports of women being denied emergency contraception, which is federally approved for use within 72 hours of intercourse, the Trib says.

The Obama administration will start the process of reversing the rule today. Final action won’t be taken until after the public is allowed a 30-day comment period.

The problem with this, of course, is that it is simply a lie to call an early abortion (by drug) merely “contraception.”  Either way, it’s just a preview of worse things to come with the Freedom of Choice Act, which, among other things, will have the effect of voiding ALL conscience protections laws, state and federal, that now allow health-care workers to refuse to participate in non-medically necessary abortions….  meaning virtually all of them.

Do you have a bright child who is interested in medicine?  Better make sure you teach them that there’s nothing wrong with abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, because that will be the rule under the Freedom of Choice Act, when it reverses slowly achieved, hardwon gains in many states to put even minor restrictions on late-term abortion, institute parental notification and informed consent laws, etc.  Look your brilliant young child in the eye, and say, “Repeat after me.  It’s OK for women and their doctors to kill their unborn children for any reason whatsoever, at any point in the pregnancy, and I promise to always do that for women whenever they ask.”

Keep saying it to yourself.  Maybe you’ll even believe it some day.

And your child will simply not be allowed to be a physician in the USA unless they agree with this horror.

Put up a sign over the medical school entrance:  “Only conscienceless future physicians need apply.”

I know just how they feel. I attend faculty meetings.

It’s time to get serious about fighting terrorism, and also ending violence in our schools.

Nation of Cowards? by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal 19 February 2009

Nation of Cowards?
So says Eric Holder, but what’s really cowardly is racial dishonesty.

Read it all.

A cartoon in the New York Post that compared the people who wrote the stimulus bill to a crazy, violent monkey (who was shot by police) has been interpreted by the usual suspects as referring to Obama, despite the fact that he didn’t write the stimulus bill, Pelosi, Reid and company did. All Obama really did was sign it. But the victimology crowd is claiming the Post is advocating violence towards the president with comments like this:

NY Post apologizes, to some, over monkey cartoon

Some protesters said the cartoon not only underscored racist tropes but even suggested that Obama should be shot.

“Since when can you call for the killing of the president of the United States?” demanded City Councilman Charles Barron.

Obviously, this is ridiculous on its face.  The Post made no reference to Obama, who did not write the stimulus bill, and when African-American professional victims take umbrage at jokes involving a monkey, all they do is perpetuate a risible stereotype that dates from a bygone era (thankfully) and is simply no longer on anyone’s mind…  except theirs, it would seem.

Anyway, apparently Councilman Barron doesn’t know about this.

Or this.

Or this.

I didn’t bother to dig up all the links, but there have been books, plays, films and artwork about killing President Bush, both in the US and overseas.

And you’ll pardon my suspicion that even if Mr. Barron did know about them, he wouldn’t be too troubled by it.

Can crocodile tears be so huge that someone can drown in them?

Suspected US missile strike kills 27 in Pakistan

Intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the victims included about 15 ethnic Uzbek militants and several Afghans.

Ah, The AP “Islamist Front” news sees dead terrorists as “victims.” Interesting.

We need a stimulus package from congress.

We don’t have one. Instead, we have giant, steaming piece of pork, with payoffs for all the constituent groups that elect Democrats, including trial lawyers, unions (especially teachers unions and public employee unions, but plenty for others, too), eco-panic enviro-pagans, entitlements galore, payoffs to state governments that will allow them to continue to spend more than they take in (with no expectation that a condition of this bailout is that they’ll start spending less NOW), ACORN and related “community activist” groups, and assorted public works projects (but most of which don’t start even spending money to do anything until 2010 to 2012, which means that the “stimulus” effect of them, if any, won’t be felt until we’re likely to already be out of the recession).

The best assessment of the “stimulus” I’ve heard is that it’s about 10% actual stimulus, and the rest pork, this from Jack Welch, one of the most successful CEOs in American history.

90% of this bill is simple payola, not to mention shinola.

Cheer up… you may not have to pay that much for it, but your kids will.

And this is only the beginning.

So: for those of you who complained that Republicans spent too much money when they had Congress, and had too much pork in their budgets, and so didn’t vote for them this time, I can only say….

I told you so.

I’ll have LOTs and LOTs of opportunities to say that again, as the next years unfold.

Submission in the Netherlands by Bruce Bawer, City Journal 22 January 2009

“The Freedom Party (PVV),” read yesterday’s press release, “is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal’s decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.”

The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Party’s head and the Dutch Parliament’s only internationally famous member, for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam—and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics—on the part of the Dutch establishment.

Islam in Europe is determined to win culturally by simply suppressing any criticism, either legally, or with terror, as in murdering film makers and authors who tell the truth about it.

Keep your eye out for world-wide condemnation of Geert Wilders’ prosecution. Or not.