It’s Monday, October 10th, 2011….and here’s the Gouge!

First up, Mark Steyn’s comments on the hypocrisy of the OWS crowd in National Review Online, courtesy of Speed Mach:

American Autumn

The zombie youth “occupying” Wall Street are contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts.

Michael Oher, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, was online on Wednesday night when his Twitter feed started filling up with tributes to Steve Jobs. A bewildered Oher tweeted: “Can somebody help me out? Who was Steve Jobs!” He was on his iPhone at the time.

Who was Steve Jobs? Well, he was a guy who founded a corporation and spent his life as a corporate executive manufacturing corporate products. So he wouldn’t have endeared himself to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, even though, underneath the patchouli and lentils, most of them are abundantly accessorized with iPhones and iPads and iPods loaded with iTunes, if only for when the drum circlegoes for a bathroom break.

The above is a somewhat obvious point, although the fact that it’s not obvious even to protesters with an industrial-strength lack of self-awareness is a big part of the problem. But it goes beyond that: If you don’t like to think of Jobs as a corporate exec (and a famously demanding one at that), think of him as a guy who went to work, and worked hard. There’s no appetite for that among those “occupying” Zuccotti Park. In the old days, the tribunes of the masses demanded an honest wage for honest work. Today, the tribunes of America’s leisured varsity class demand a world that puts “people before profits.” If the specifics of their “program” are somewhat contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world, they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes due.

So they are in favor of open borders, presumably so that exotic Third World peasants can perform the labor to which they are noticeably averse. Of the 13 items on that “proposed list of demands,” Demand Four calls for “free college education,” and Demand Eleven returns to the theme, demanding debt forgiveness for all existing student loans. I yield to no one in my general antipathy to the racket that is American college education, but it’s difficult to see why this is the fault of the mustache-twirling robber barons who head up Global MegaCorp, Inc. One sympathizes, of course. It can’t be easy finding yourself saddled with a six-figure debt and nothing to show for it but some watery bromides from the “Transgender and Colonialism” class. Americans collectively have north of a trillion dollars in personal college debt. Say what you like about Enron and, er, Solyndra and all those other evil corporations, but they didn’t relieve you of a quarter-mil in exchange for a master’s in Maya Angelou. So why not try occupying the dean’s office at Shakedown U?

Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at. At Liberty Square, one of the signs reads: “F**k your unpaid internship!” Fair enough. But, to a casual observer of the massed ranks of Big Sloth, it’s not entirely clear what precisely anyone would ever pay them to do.

Do you remember Van Jones? He was Obama’s “green jobs” czar back before “green jobs” had been exposed as a gazillion-dollar sinkhole for sluicing taxpayer monies to the president’s corporate cronies. Oh, don’t worry. These cronies aren’t “corporate” in the sense of Steve Jobs. The corporations they run put “people before profits”: That’s to say, they’ve figured out it’s easier to take government money from you people than create a business that makes a profit. In an amusing inversion of the Russian model, Van Jones became a czar after he’d been a Communist. He became a Commie in the mid-Nineties — i.e., after even the Soviet Union had given up on it. Needless to say, a man who never saw a cobwebbed collectivist nostrum he didn’t like no matter how long past its sell-by date is hot for “Occupy Wall Street.” Indeed, Van Jones thinks that the protests are the start of an “American Autumn.”

In case you don’t get it, that’s the American version of the “Arab Spring.” Steve Jobs might have advised Van Jones he has a branding problem. Spring is the season of new life, young buds and so forth. Autumn is leaves turning brown and fluttering to the ground in a big dead heap. Even in my great state of New Hampshire, where autumn is pretty darn impressive, we understand what that blaze of red and orange leaves means: They burn brightest before they fall and die, and the world turns chill and bare and hard.

So Van Jones may be on to something! American Autumn. The days dwindle down to a precious few, like in whatever that old book was called, The Summer and Fall of the Roman Empire.

And it’s only appropriate the Progressive version of Rome has as its emperor….

The only difference?  The original Nero was rumored to have fiddled while his capitol burned!

In a related item from FOXNews….

Wall Street Protesters Want World to Know They’re Just Like Us

Mr. Pollard’s in luck; there are non-stops leaving from Kennedy to Trinidad….daily!

Next up, Larry Kudlow details….

Obama’s Populist Shift

Team Obama is out and about mourning a “double-dip recession,” while Fed head Ben Bernanke is warning of a faltering economy. I have described the current economic environment as the front end of a recession.

But Obama’s populist, class-warfare attack on millionaires and billionaires, his new war on bank profits, his linking arms with the protesters occupying Wall Street, and his big-government stimulus plan will surely not solve this crisis.

The September jobs report underscores the economic alarm. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent. But the rate of marginally unemployed (U6) jumped from 16.2 percent to 16.5 percent. Non-farm payrolls rose by 103,000 while private payrolls gained by 137,000, small-enough increases to dodge a recession bullet right now. But nearly half those job gains came from the return of 45,000 striking Verizon workers.

And while the small-business household survey showed an encouraging jump of 398,000, it turns out that an even larger 444,000 are only working part-time. So household employment — excluding the part timers — actually fell by 46,000. That’s a discouraging sign. At the same time, worker earnings are rising less than the inflation rate. That’s a consumer drag on the economy.

Were it not for the business investment of highly profitable companies, we’d be in the recession soup right now. But that doesn’t stop President Obama from attacking these corporations, especially the oil and gas firms that if left alone could save the entire economy.

When their first stimulus bill passed in 2009, the White House projected the jobless rate would be close to 6 percent today, not 9.1 percent. But that’s not the main reason for Team Obama’s double-dip economic panic. They’re trying to sell their faux jobs package, with its $200 billion in higher spending and $250 billion in temporary tax cuts.

People are not stupid. They know the spending won’t work. And they also know they cannot spend or invest a temporary tax cut, which goes away in a year. President Bush tried this rebate idea and it failed. President Obama has already tried it once, and it failed too.

Here’s the real silliness of all this. The Obama plan would permanently raise tax rates in order to pay for a temporary tax cut. In other words, taxes are going up, not down, as far as the eye can see under Obama’s program.

And here’s more silliness. The White House and Senate Democrats want a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires, which is supposed to pay for the entire stimulus package. And don’t forget: The Obama budget would raise the Bush tax rates for people making over $200,000, while the Obamacare budget would substantially increase payroll taxes that apply to investors. On top of that, the Obama budget would lower the value of numerous personal deductions.

So the top personal tax rate would move to nearly 50 percent under the Obama plan. Now do the incentive math. At a 50 percent tax rate, successful earners, investors, and small-business owners would keep only 50 cents on the extra dollar earned. Under current law, however, at the 35 percent top income-tax rate, they would keep 65 cents. So if the plan goes through, it would mean a 23 percent reduction in marginal incentives. This in a stalled economy where job creation doesn’t keep up with a rising population and is less than half the necessary level to shrink the unemployment rate.

Of course, the individuals and families who would suffer the greatest tax-penalty increases are the ones who are most likely to invest and run small businesses. In fact, Treasury data show that over 80 percent of millionaire tax filers reflect small-business income. Why demonize them? This is what Gov. Chris Christie meant when he said President Obama is sending a “demoralizing” message.

This tax attack is the latest assault from a White House that is making a sharp populist shift to the left. It coincides with a president who trashed the Bank of America for raising debit-card fees in response to a Dodd-Frank price-control edict, and who suggests that banks do not have an inherent right to profit. It’s in league with a president who is throwing in with the Wall Street protesters. And it’s a sorry sign that the White House doesn’t understand that anti-capitalist nostrums will not solve our economic problems.

How about unleashing a wave of free-market capitalism, which has proven to be the best path to prosperity? Unfortunately, Team Obama will have none of it.

Meanwhile, in Political Diary, The Obamao’s blatant disregard of the facts behind the nation’s unemployment numbers leads Allysia Finley to question….

Obama’s Selective Memory

The president has cherry-picked his jobs statistics. Here’s a more complete picture.

“The biggest problem that we’ve had in terms of unemployment over the last several months has not been in the private sector,” said President Obama at a press conference yesterday. “It’s actually been layoffs of teachers and cops and firefighters. We created over two million jobs in the private sector — a million jobs this year alone in the private sector, but in the public sector, we keep on seeing these layoffs having an adverse effect on economies in states all across the country.” Yes, but the president has cherry-picked his statistics. Here’s a more complete picture.

During the recession, which lasted from December 2007 through June 2009, the private sector shed 6.3 million jobs even as governments added 600,000 jobs. In fact, governments increase their payrolls even as their tax revenues shrunk. Thirty states raised fees and taxes between 2007 and 2009. And almost all of them used gimmicks to kick their budget problems into the future. Several skipped pension payments, accelerated revenue collections (e.g. using 13 months of revenue to fund 12 months of spending),and shifted earmarked fees to their general funds. Don’t forget that the stimulus act provided $140 billion in aid for states to cover their budget deficits.

Most businesses (aside from the big banks, GM and Chrysler) didn’t have a federal government backstop. They also couldn’t raise their prices as easily as governments could increase taxes or fees. Nor could they use suspect accounting maneuvers to cover their shortfalls without running afoul of federal regulators. Thus most private employers had no choice but to cut their costs by laying off workers. Between the start of the recession and December 2009, businesses cut 8.3 million jobs — 8% of the private workforce. Governments have shed 1.1 million jobs in the last two years, but that’s still just 5% of the public workforce.

The public sector’s situation is worse than the private sector’s only insofar as government pension and health liabilities are larger. For years, governments inflated and underfunded benefits and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Governments are finally coming to terms with these liabilities by asking their workers for concessions. Mr. Obama’s jobs bill, which proposes $130 billion of aid for state and local governments, would obviate these reforms and take lawmakers off the hook for goosing workers’ pensions in return for their political support. Paying governments to keep teachers and firemen on the rolls may sound good, but it actually creates a moral hazard.

And in the “If At First You Don’t Succeed, No Need To Try Any Harder….’Cuz We’ll Pass You Anyway!” segment, here’s this week’s winner of the Albert Shanker Memorial Award for purposeful underachievement in public education:

New York School’s Rules Give Failing Kids Credits Toward Graduation

A low-performing Manhattan high school that was granted up to $6 million in extra funds to undergo a “transformation” has found the secret formula for success: Dumb down the requirements for studentsto pass. At Washington Irving HS, near Union Square, administrators have approved new grading policies that give failing kids credits toward graduation.

The policies — which one expert blasted as “approved cheating” — are spelled out in documents obtained by The Post, including the 2011-12 staff handbook and minutes of a meeting last October between Principal Bernardo Ascona and assistant principals who make up the school’s Panel for Academic Success. (Why does this remind us of every youth-sports team receiving a trophy, regardless of achievement?) Under the rules:

* Students who get failing scores of 50 to 55 in class will “automatically” get 15 points for a passing 65 to 70 grade if they pass a Regents exam. Kids who score a minimum 65 on the Regents “should receive a passing grade” in the class. The same practice forced a Bronx principal to resign.

* A final grade of 60 to 64 “will be changed automatically” to a passing 65.

* Students who fail a class “will be assigned … a work product not to exceed five pages” or “alternative project.” Livid teachers say pupils who cut class or blew off studying get a “packet” of work or take an online multiple-choice “credit recovery” program.

“The message is loud and clear: Don’t worry if you don’t attend school — we’ll just give you an easy way to make up the credit,” a staffer said. “What does that say to the kids who actually do the class work, tests, projects and homework?”

David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College, said such policies make a mockery of “real learning and subject mastery.” “This is simply a phony process for getting kids undeserved credits,” he said.

[Prinicipal] Ascona would not answer questions about the policies.

Now THERE‘s a surprise!  Maryland Governor Martin O’Money, who first pioneered this particular method of “improving” public education while mayor of Baltimore, must be soooo proud!

Turning to the Environmental Moment, the WSJ offers its view of the latest on Solargate:

The Solyndra Economy

Administration emails reveal the reality of politicized investing.

The more we learn about the Solyndra solar-company debacle, the more the Obama Administration leaps to defend the $535 million loan guarantee. “There were going to be some companies that did not work out; Solyndra was one of them,” President Obama told reporters Thursday. Earlier in the week he told ABC News “if we want to compete with China, which is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into this space . . . we’ve got to make sure that our guys here in the United States of America at least have a shot.”

And there you have America’s Solyndra economy, as the White House understands it: Washington allocates capital, and taxpayers pick up the tab if those choices go bust. Through this political lens, the August bankruptcy of the Fremont, Calif. company was a necessary casualty in the greater campaign to steer the U.S. economy toward Mr. Obama’s noble goals. Private competition that winnows out losers is so yesterday.

As it happens, we’re getting a look at what this world of political investment entails thanks to Administration emails released last week by House Democrats on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the White House. Democrats say the emails reveal a “vigorous internal debate” about the Solyndra deal and dispel accusations of crony capitalism.

The opposite is closer to reality. Solyndra received federal help in 2009 and never turned a profit. In March 2010, PriceWaterhouseCoopers raised questions about the company’s solvency. The next month, a White House Office of Management and Budget staffer worried that the Department of Energy “has one loan to monitor and they seem completely oblivious.” Another said it was “terrifying” to consider that some of DOE’s next projects would make Solyndra look “better.”

Insiders raised alarms, too. Obama donor and venture capitalist Steve Westly wrote to senior White House aide Valerie Jarrett in May and said “many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term.” Ms. Jarrett wrote to Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, who contacted the Department of Energy. But DOE expressed confidence in Solyndra, with one official noting that “we believe the company is okay in the medium term, but will need some help of one kind or another down the road.”

Instead of launching a more serious inquiry, Mr. Klain supported a pending Presidential visit to Solyndra’s factory, advising Ms. Jarrett of “risk factors” but adding that “it looks like it is OK to me, but if you feel otherwise, let me know.” Ms. Jarrett replied “I’m comfortable if you’re comfortable,” and Mr. Klain responded, “The reality is that if POTUS visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few will be belly-up by election day 2012—but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries.”

Here’s more “reality.” On August 20, 2009, a DOE staffer asked “how can we advance a project . . . that generates a working capital shortfall of $50 [million] when working capital assumptions are entered into the model?,” adding “it also simply won’t stand up to review by oversight bodies.” Solyndra’s federal loan guarantee closed the following month.

Then there are the still-hazy insider dealings, another inevitable feature of government-led investment. An Obama fundraiser, Steven Spinner, took an advisory role at DOE and pushed for the loan to proceed, even as his wife’s law firm advised on the same deal. (DOE and the couple deny any undue influence.) Earlier this year, DOE reworked the Solyndra loan guarantee as the company floundered and put private creditors ahead of taxpayers. This newspaper reported Friday that Treasury raised alarms about the legality of such a move, although it’s unclear when that happened.

Brad Jones of Redpoint Ventures got to the heart of the Solyndra economy in a December 2009 email to then-National Economic Council director Larry Summers: “The allocation of spending to clean energy is haphazard; the government is just not well equipped to decide which companies should get the money and how much . . . One of our solar companies with revenues of less than $100 million (and not yet profitable) received a government loan of $580 million; while that is good for us, I can’t imagine it’s a good way for the government to use taxpayer money.”

Which is precisely the point. The emerging sophisticated defense of Solyndra is Mr. Obama’s suggestion that if China subsidizes its industries “of the future,” then we must too. But in a free-market economy, which America used to be, private investors decide which industries will succeed in the future, and bet their own money on it. The proper role for government is to support basic research, not commercial ventures that become exercises in taxpayer risk but private reward.

When government takes $535 million and invests in a loser, it not only wastes taxpayer money but it also denies that capital to some other project in the private economy that might have succeeded. The Solyndra emails show how ill-equipped government is to predict the industries of the present, much less the future.

A concept Liberals, who are so much smarter than everyone else, simply cannot grasp.

Here’s the juice: even were Liberals twice as smart as they are, they’d only half as smart as they consider themselves to be.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this photo of The Obamao addressing the last segment of society still open to his Missianic missives:

Hey….I know; let’s talk about ME!

 Finally, in the Wide, Wild World of Sports, what if they played a league “championship”….and nobody knew about it?

Lynx bring Minnesota first pro title in 20 years

Finally, the title drought is over for Minnesota’s professional sports teams. With a 73-67 win Friday in Atlanta, the Minnesota Lynx swept the Dream in three games in the WNBA Finals. Not only was it the first championship for the Lynx, but it was the first professional sports title for a Minnesota team since the Twins won the World Series in 1991 — which, coincidentally, was also against Atlanta.

Yeah….this should certainly serve to soothe the spirits of sports fanatics throughout the Land of 10,000 Lakes!  Seriously, is this truly how bad have things gotten in the Great White North?!?  We’d like to hear from anyone, ANYbody, outside of Minnesota who knew:

(a).  There was a professional sports team named the Lynx

(b).  They were the Minnesota franchise of the WNBA, and;

(c).  The WNBA was still in existence, let alone playing games in October.

Can you spell “political correctness”?  We KNEW you could!

Magoo