Interestingly, the U.S. Supreme Court today found in favor of the white firefighters that filed suit when they were denied promotions because no African Americans did well enough on tae exam to earn a promotion to lieutenant or captain. Current Supreme Court Justice Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor was a member of the original appeal court to hear the case. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the firefighters in a way that many justices and legal professionals claimed ignored the important and complicated issues of the case.
The decision by the Supreme Court was split 5-4 and with this decision. Justice Souter, the judge that Justice Sotomayor may be replacing, ruled in the minority signing the statement written by Justice Ginsburg. All that said, the split on this issue was unsurprising and it reinforces the fact that Justice Sotomayors appointment will have little impact on the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The cap and trade energy bill just passed the House with only 3 hours of debate. This wonderful bill will get rid of millions of American jobs while increasing the cost of living for everyone in America. What a wonderful idea in the middle of a recession. The bill will tax businesses for carbon emmissions produced from operating their business. This means they will have to do 1 of 2 things. Either they raise prices, which hurts everyone. Or they will move their business to China, which also hurts everyone. That doesn’t help the environment, and it hurts the economy.
The cap and tax bill calls for a 17% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 and 80% by 2050. It is estimated that it will cost Americans $4600 a year by 2035. I have talked about the unintended consequences that this will have before, but they are pretty obvious here. It will cost American jobs and it will raise the price of energy for everybody.
In other news, the transparency offered by the Democrats is nearly unparalleled. They added 341 pages to the bill at 3 A.M. and then brought the bill up for a vote later in the afternoon. Is this the hope and change you were looking for?
You think health care is expensive now? Just wait until it’s free. This wonderful bit from yahoo gives you an idea of what is on the way:
Across the Capitol, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee privately circulated a list of possible tax increases to pay for expanded health care.
They ranged from raising the Medicare tax, slapping a 10-cents-per-can increase on sweetened drinks, raising the alcohol tax, imposing a new payroll tax on employers equal to 3 percent of their health care expenditures and taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels.
Also under consideration was a value added tax, a sort of national sales tax, of up to 1.5 percent or more, with housing, education, financial services and medical care potentially exempt.
House Democrats were expected to unveil an outline of their own to expand health coverage on Friday, although several officials said they did not plan to include mention of the tax increases under consideration.
So, what happened to not raising any taxes on 95% of Americans? I don’t really have much to say that I haven’t already said, so I’ll leave you with a few past articles and let you add your thoughts on this scary proposition that is coming at us fast.
Cash for clunkers is a plan by Congress to give you 3500 - 4500 dollars in hopes that you will make a bad decision with your money to help out the Detroit automakers.
This table from USAToday.com gives a good summary of the program.
So, if you have a large truck that gets 13 miles to the gallon and you trade it in for one that gets 15, the government will give you 4500 to destroy it. Tell me again what this accomplishes? Let’s see, it puts more Americans further in debt by enticing them to pay more than they can afford for a new car. I can’t remember, was it this crisis that started by people buying things they couldn’t afford with money they didn’t have with help from the government? Oh yeah, and that car will devalue by more than the 4500 they get from the government the moment they drive it off the lot. And by government I mean you and me, the American taxpayer. This does not help the consumer, it is just a round-about way of writing a 3.5 to 4.5 billion dollar check to the car makers. (There is a limit of 1 million vouchers.)
We are once again messing with the free-market, and that always works out so well for us. Currently, the idea is hurting sales because people are waiting to see if they can get free money from the government. So, people who were already planning on buying a new car are going to now get 4500 off because the government wants to help sales. Great idea. I’m sure nobody will try to take advantage of Universal Health Care either. Right.
Millions and millions of people drive cars to work every day. Few people have to opportunity to be without a vehicle. If these companies can’t find a way to make money in this environment, they really deserve to fail. We have already given them billions and billions of dollars, why do we need to continue to give them money? What makes them so special. I’m sure my company could sell more software if the government gave everyone $4500 to buy it. Why aren’t they doing that? I guess it is because we aren’t “too big to fail” yet. Maybe someday we will get billions of dollars because we are too big to fail. Of course, by that time billions of dollars is what it will take to buy a loaf of bread due to the currency being worthless. Cash for clunkers is yet another poorly thought out bill by our Congress.
For some reason the email subscriptions recently stopped working. I think that I fixed it, and this is going to be a test of that. If you haven’t received any emails lately, you may want to take a look at what you missed. I apologize for the mishap. If you aren’t a subscriber yet and you would like to be, enter your email in the box below, or get our RSS feed.
An abortion clinic in Philly decided to give free abortions in memory of Dr. Tiller, the abortion doctor who was recently murdered. I am very sorry that he was killed, not just for his family, but because this in no way helps the pro-life cause. When we have important things like the Freedom of Choice Act and sending foriegn aid to pay for abortions in other countries to worry about, killing an abortion doctor only makes us look like idiots. Anyways, back to the free abortions. As Tabitha from Pink Elephant Pundit said, “What better way to commemorate someone’s death than with some more death!”
To be honest, I don’t really know why GM and Chrysler are closing dealerships. They have taken Billions of dollars from the government in bailouts, and as part of the restructuring they are closing thousands of dealerships. I’ve talked to several people and read several articles, and nobody really seems to have a good answer.
The most I’ve managed to come up with so far is that GM says its dealers have to compete with each other giving the consumers too much leverage. They say this could hurt future sales, but I just don’t see it. GM has a price that it sells cars to its dealers. After that point, why would they care how low the dealer sells it for?
The thing is, many of these dealers aren’t going to go quietly. GM doesn’t own the dealerships, they just sell the cars to them. Many of these dealerships will stay open, selling used cars and running their service shops. They make more money on these than selling new cars anyways. Guess what, they will also probably go to another brand and offer their services to them. Now Toyota and Honda and Nissan and Ford will be the companies they are competing with instead of themselves. How is this a good thing?
For the sake of all the money I’ve given this company as a taxpayer, I hope I am wrong. I hope they succeed, I just don’t see it happening. I said it in December before we gave them all this money, they were just prolonging the bankruptcy. I said that life will go on, and a bankruptcy wouldn’t be the end of the world as we know it. Things are going to be fine. Chrysler is close to coming out of bankruptcy after only a month. However, as a majority shareholder in the company, I would like to know why they think this is a good idea. It hurts consumers, it costs jobs, and it will increase their competition from the other automakers. If I’m missing something, which I actually hope I am, please let me know.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) [Video]
P.S. Work has been crazy busy recently and my laptop broke which is why I have had a lack of posts recently. I promise I’ll write more as soon as work slows down and I get a new laptop.
