It’s Monday, May 7th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, France just went to the head of the Euro-default line:

France’s Hollande: We’re Not Doomed To Austerity

When the going gets tough, the French surrender.

No….you’ll take ’em right past austerity straight into insolvency!  Seriously; the Left, whatever their race, creed, color or nationality, just doesn’t seem to get it.  Allahpundit offers this primer on Hollande’s policy priorities:

“Hollande intends to modify one of Sarkozy’s key reforms, over the retirement age, to allow some people to retire at 60 instead of 62. He also plans to increase spending in a range of sectors and wants to ease France off its dependence on nuclear energy. He favors legalizing euthanasia and gay marriage..”

After all, early retirement means companies will be free to hire more people, lowering the unemployment rate, particularly among young, unskilled Muslim immigrants!  And who wouldn’t want to ease off a dependence on nuclear energy….particularly when one’s nuclear plants account for over 75% of the nation’s electricity and have an impeccable safety record over decades of operations?

Is it any wonder The Obamao can’t wait to sit down with Hollande and compare notes?!?

And since we’re on the subject of popular Progressive prevarications, in the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment, James Bovard, writing in the WSJ, details Team Tick-Tock’s latest attempt to obfuscate reality:

Don’t Worry (About GDP), Be Happy

With the economy slow and joblessness high, the feds want a new way to measure well-being.

 

In recent years, numerous experts have declaimed that the gross domestic product is a flawed measure of whether citizens are truly thriving. President Obama’s designee for World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, for example, warned that “the quest for growth in GDP and corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of women and men.”

In light of this growing concern, the Obama administration is financing research to devise a new measure of happiness. A National Academy of Sciences panel is analyzing proposals for surveying Americans’ “subjective well-being” to guide federal policy making. But constructing a federal happiness index would be a tricky undertaking.

The Census Bureau is advising the happiness survey panel. Measuring moods is far more difficult than counting people, but Census doesn’t even do a good job of that—as I learned working for the bureau in southern Illinois in 1980. As long as census takers didn’t get arrested for drunkenness or public indecency and returned at the end of the day with a stack of filled-out forms, the bosses were satisfied.

There are other perils to be considered. Would the feds manipulate happiness statistics like they jigger the unemployment rate? If someone failed to actively seek joy during the previous six-month period, would they be formally excluded from the official count? Would government officials invent “seasonal adjustments” to disregard month-to-month swings in reported despondency?

Another question worth pondering: Is there any reason to expect a federal happiness index to be more credible than the inflation rate? Would official mood surveys disregard any unhappiness felt by middle-aged men losing their hair—the same way the Consumer Price Index often ignores jumps in housing and food prices?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics now reduces the official inflation rate by “hedonic adjustments” purportedly related to the rise in quality of consumer products. Perhaps the feds could then ratchet up the reported happiness rate by imputing the extra contentment that would exist if people actually recognized all the wonderful things government did for them.

At a Brookings Institution workshop last November, leading happiness-survey experts (including National Academy of Science panelists) suggested that “policy makers may want to educate the public and present metrics so that a growth in well-being from, say, 7.2 to 7.4 provides as much meaning as would a 2 percent growth in GDP.” Could the presentation of such metrics “educate” people to the point that it distracted them from the misery they suffered in recessions? Probably not, unless accompanied by massive doses of Prozac.

Anyone who still reveres federal statistics should remember the “multipliers” of the past few years. We were told that every dollar spent on the 2009 stimulus package would produce $1.57 in economic activity. That every dollar of food stamps “generates $1.84 in economic activity.” That every dollar of unemployment benefits begets a $2 increase in economic activity. According to those formulas, a robust recovery arrived two years ago.

With “subjective well-being” surveys to guide federal policy-making, might we be assured that deficit spending automatically has a “happiness multiplier” of 2.4? The proliferation of such multipliers would be limited only by the number of social scientists eager to receive federal grants to produce them.

Politicians will use happiness surveys as a trump card against any attempt to limit spending. Suppose an inspector general’s report obliterates any sober justification for a program’s existence. Congressmen can respond by invoking survey results showing that lofty rhetoric about the program’s noble intentions spurs a wave of mass contentment. Make-work boondoggles like AmeriCorps could be magically transformed into “make happiness” triumphs.

A common saying during the 1930s was that “we cannot squander our way to prosperity.” Similarly, we cannot statistically delude ourselves to national happiness.

Certainly not….but Team Tick-Tock’s sure as hell willing to try between now and November….using YOUR tax dollars, of course!

Speaking of utter nonsense, it’s the subject of the latest commentary by Andrew Biggs, courtesy of the AEI:

Public pension stimulus nonsense

 

Breaking windows will stimulate the economy, according to a leading public pension advocacy group. Skeptical? The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) has not literally endorsed breaking windows, but a report recently published by the organization relies on the same economic fallacy.

According to NIRS-whose membership consists principally of public employee unions, the pension plans in which they participate, and the actuarial and investment firms that serve them-the best economic stimulus is not tax cuts or unemployment checks, but increased pension benefits to public-sector retirees. Each dollar of pension benefits produces $2.37 in economic output, NIRS says, creating millions of new jobs and billions in additional labor income.

Put simply, this is nonsense.

Many people have heard of the “broken window” fallacy in economics. The argument is that breaking a window is actually good for the economy, since the window owner has to pay a glazier, who uses the money to pay a butcher, who uses the money to pay a cobbler, and so on. (A little bit like the old TV commercials for Faberge Organics shampoo: “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on….”) One doesn’t need to be an economist to see the problem: Had the window not been broken, the owner could have spent or invested the money elsewhere.

Broken Windows: If the theory worked in practice, Detroit would be the wealthiest city on the planet.

NIRS gives its own version of the broken windows story: “A retired firefighter uses his pension money to buy a new lawnmower. As a result that purchase, the owner of the hardware store, a lawnmower salesman, and each of the companies involved in the production of the lawnmower all see an increase in income, and spend that additional income. These companies hire additional employees as a result of this increased business, and those new employees spend their paychecks in the local economy.”

According to NIRS, each dollar of pension payments results in an additional $1.37 of income flowing to non-retirees. By this logic, states could spend themselves to prosperity by borrowing money to increase public sector pension benefits. And, some states appear to be giving this approach a try.

Of course, this reasoning is wrong because it ignores the cost to the economy of providing public pension benefits. Each taxpayer dollar flowing into public pensions is a dollar that cannot be spent or saved on something else. To the degree it is not spent, today’s economy is smaller as a result. To the degree it is not saved, tomorrow’s economy is smaller, since saving helps boost productivity. If the stimulus provided by pension benefits has a multiplier effect, the cost of funding pensions presumably has a divisor effect – and this effect is entirely unaccounted for by the NIRS study.

Indeed, NIRS acknowledges that its study measures only the “gross economic impact” of pension payments, not the net effect once taxpayer and employee contributions are accounted for. But leaving out half of the equation makes the entire exercise meaningless. Unless we assume that public pensions have a magic ability to create money, the net economic impact of pension benefits is roughly zero.

It’s even possible that defined-benefit pensions reduce economic output. After all, it is well-known that employees of DB pension leave the workforce earlier than workers with defined contribution 401(k) plans. Researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that workers “covered by a defined benefit plan will retire about one year earlier than those covered by a defined contribution plan.” If we assume that the average person works 35 years over their career, DB pensions would lower labor supply and economic output by roughly 3 percent.

Public-sector pensions are not economic stimulus. They are simply a transfer of money from taxpayers to public employees. To the degree that pensions are fair compensation for public service, these transfers are perfectly appropriate. But as my work with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation has shown, public-sector pensions are often several times more generous than the 401(k) plans enjoyed by private sector workers.

In fact, research on “fiscal consolidations” – attempts to balance government budgets and reduce public debt – shows that the most successful efforts in terms of cutting deficits and boosting growth include reductions in public sector compensation. Of which retirement benefits are by far the most generous component.

The faulty NIRS study illustrates a larger problem-namely, the willingness of those who run public pensions to jump into the political fray. Across the country, pension administrators are publishing their own localized versions of the NIRS fallacy, touting the supposed economic benefits of generous pension payments. Administrators also regularly exaggerate the transition costs of moving to a 401(k)-style system, and they insist to critics that even the most generous benefits are really quite modest.

Pension administrators should be apolitical public servants. Instead, too many fight tooth and nail to preserve the existing pension systems, advancing dubious arguments along the way. Since the managers of public retirement plans justify generous benefits with economic claims easily dismissed-not just by trained economists, but by the average person using his common sense-the only reasonable conclusion is that administrators have taken sides in the pension debate. And it’s not the taxpayers’ side.

This echoes the bullsh*t Bill Clinton laid down last week.

Here’s the juice: if the whole issue weren’t so deadly serious we’d find the Liberal logic literally laughable.  This goes to the core of the Leftist worldview: decreased government spending means increased unemployment; higher taxes translates into more jobs.

We’re to believe the federal government, that same federal government that brought you $600 toilet seats, Solyndra, $850,000 GSA conventions and a President flying his wife to New York for a date (to name but a VERY few!), somehow utilizes funds more efficiently than the private sector.

Yeah….

Or, put another way….

Then again, as this next item from Bill Meisen describes, in reality, all Dimocratic politicians REALLY care about is Numero Uno, amigo!

Smartest Guy in the Room

Five-terms in the Senate have made failed presidential candidate, Obama surrogate, and potential secretary of State John Kerry an amazingly prescient investor

 

Twins separated at birth.

Failed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) long history of ethically dubious investments could invite controversy as he takes on a new role as a “top surrogate” for President Obama’s reelection campaign.

Kerry’s net worth as listed on his 2011 financial disclosure form is at least $193 million and likely much higher, making him the wealthiest member of the Senate. He is also a prolific investor, maintaining an array of stocks and other holdings through a mix of family trusts, marital trusts, and commingled fund accounts with his wife, Big Ketchup baroness Teresa Heinz.

The five-term Senator has a well-documented history of investing in companies that would benefit from policies he supports, as well as making conveniently timed and highly profitable trades coinciding with the passage of major legislation and, in some cases, the dissemination of privileged information.

For years, Kerry has invested millions in a number of green energy companies that have benefitted from the president’s efforts to aggressively subsidize the industry with taxpayer dollars. These companies include Exelon, which received a $646 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan in 2011 to build a solar facility in California and created only 20 permanent jobs, as well as Fisker Automotive, the fledgling electric car company that offshored its manufacturing operation to Finland after receiving a $529 million federal loan guarantee in 2010.

The loan guarantees, approved by the Department of Energy, were made possible by funding allocated in the 2009 stimulus bill, which Kerry supported. According to Kerry’s own office, the Senator “played a key role” in crafting the portions of the legislation designed to offer federal support for green energy projects.

Additionally, Kerry co-authored the controversial cap-and-trade legislation that would have effectively imposed a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the bill ultimately failed, the New York Times noted that Exelon and companies like it “would emerge as financial winners” if the legislation was enacted….

….Kerry is one of several lawmakers prominently featured in Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer’s landmark book on how elected politicians exploit their privileged positions to enhance their personal wealth. The Massachusetts Senator’s most dubious trading activity coincided with two major political events—the financial crisis of late 2008 and the passage of President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul in March 2010.

http://freebeacon.com/smartest-guy-in-the-room/

The only “back” this con artist has is your back pocket….

….and his hand’s in it!

Moving to the Environmental Moment, as the New Media Journal details, Liberals aren’t looking to shut down just coal-fired power plants; they’re after the entire coal industry:

EPA, Eco-Zealots Block Energy Exporting,Affecting Trade, World Energy Needs

 

Global demand for American natural gas and coal is booming, but recent clashes on both US coasts underscore that getting American supplies to eager foreign buyers will be anything but easy.

Last week, the Sierra Club announced that it would use a unique 1970s environmental agreement to halt the construction of a natural gas liquefaction and export plant at Cove Point in Maryland. Energy giant Dominion, which hopes to build the first such plant on the East Coast, plans to move forward and could end up fighting environmentalists in court.

The coal industry also has proposed massive export facilities in the Pacific Northwest, where millions of tons of American coal would be prepped for shipment to burgeoning markets in Asia. But those projects have generated an intense backlash from environmentalists and their political allies, most notably Oregon Gov. John A. Kitzhaber, a Democrat who last week urged the federal government to quash the proposals in his state and in neighboring Washington.

His rationale, outlined in a letter to the Defense Department, the Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers, highlights an argument against the development and export of fossil fuels. The US, he said, should take global responsibility for carbon emissions, and any study of environmental effects should examine the worldwide ramifications of using coal and natural gas. “Developing, transporting and using [coal] for energy production in Asia will have significant implications for the trajectory of the world’s transition to cleaner sources of energy,” Mr. Kitzhaber said. “It is imperative that the federal government take seriously its responsibility to make informed decisions, and that there be a comprehensive look at the energy, environmental and public health impacts of these proposals before the nation commits itself to this path.”

Foreign markets, led by China, could soon become the most appealing options for American energy companies dealing in coal. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, chief among them an effective ban on new coal-fired power plants, are squeezing the US market and strangling the fuel that powered the Industrial Revolution.

“You can see it dwindling away,” said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito R-WV), co-chairwoman of the House of Representatives‘ Coal Caucus. “The regulations are made without regard. [Federal officials] don’t even ask what kind of impact they’ll have. The EPA has already put in place…rules and other impossible standards that are causing a giant shift of our natural resources to China.”

St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc., for example, said Tuesday that “severe weakness” in the US market for coal-generated electricity has had a dramatic effect on its bottom line. The company’s net income in the first quarter of 2012 totaled $1.2 million, compared with $55.6 million in the first quarter of 2011, the Associated Press reported. FirstEnergy Corp. announced this year that it would close six of its coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Similar plants across the nation, analysts say, likely will close in the next few years if EPA and other federal regulations are allowed to stand.

The downturn was compounded by an unusually warm winter, which slashed the use of coal for home heating. Overall domestic coal use fell by 18.8 percent in the final quarter of 2011, hitting its lowest level in more than 15 years, according to a recent report from the federal Energy Information Administration.

While the US coal market is in danger of drying up, nations such as China and India are using more than ever before, and they are looking to American companies to supply it.

West Virginians….Pennsylvanians….Buckeyes….wake up and smell the green energy propaganda!

In a related item….

U.S. to Set Rules for Fracking on Federal Land

 

What Liberals would be drinking were they required to consume their own vomitous environmental avowals.

The Obama administration will soon issue sweeping new environmental-safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural-gas wells on all lands eventually could follow.

The rules, which are likely to be unveiled by the Interior Department within days, are designed to address concerns that the method of extracting natural gas known as “fracking” can contaminate groundwater. Among other things, they create new guidelines for constructing wells and treating waste water, according to a draft of the proposed rules reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

What it basically amounts to is Dimocrats saying “Frack YOU!”….to American energy independence.

Meanwhile, as the WSJ reports, The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight continues to miss the target:

Windy Republicans

GOP Congressmen sign up for energy crony capitalism.

 

Steve King: sure I’m a Conservative….as long as it fits with my personal political career goals!

The GOP swept Congressional elections in 2010 promising to end President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus and stop industry bailouts. Too bad nobody told that to Iowa Republican Steve King and his colleague Dave Reichert of Washington.

The duo held a press conference last week singing the praises of wind power and urging an extension of the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) for renewable energy, which is scheduled to end in January. The green-energy lobby probably can’t believe its luck.

The $1.2 billion a year PTC was created as a temporary boost for green energy in 1992. It offers a 2.1 cent per kilowatt hour tax write-off for wind energy production that effectively exempts much of the industry from federal income tax. By contrast, the oil and gas companies whose tax rates Mr. Obama keeps complaining about pay some $26 billion a year in federal and state corporate income taxes.

Now the PTC is scheduled to expire, and the industry is launching a lobbying blitz to extend it for another four years. Several GOP Governors are already on board, including South Dakota’s Dennis Daugaard, who also wants an investment tax credit for wind.

Enter Congressmen Reichert and King. Mr. Reichert is co-sponsoring legislation to extend the PTC because the subsidies “reduce electricity costs and create jobs.” As for Mr. King, who likes to advertise himself as a principled conservative, his line is that “Iowa is a wind energy success story” that only needs the federal government to “provide stable, low tax rates.”

Where have we heard that one before? Every industry says it wants low, stable tax rates. But one reason tax rates are high and the tax code is such a mess is because of special-interest carve-outs, which allow politically connected industries to avoid the taxes that others pay.

The wind lobby is now predicting a catastrophic loss of jobs if the PTC expires, but that is because the tax subsidy has sustained the industry on a scale that wouldn’t have been possible if it had to follow the same rules as everyone else.

The lobby’s spin is that wind power needs one last push to become economically sustainable. They’ve been saying that since the Bee Gees were cool and Jimmy Carter was President. But it isn’t the 1970s any more, even if Messrs. Reichert and King want to stick the rest of us with a 1970s energy policy.

The vote on the PTC will be a big moment for the GOP. One reason the party lost its way in the Bush years is that it became a vehicle for special business pleading instead of free markets. If the party is serious about tax reform, deficit reduction and ending corporate welfare, then it will vote to take wind power off the taxpayer dole. Americans didn’t give Republicans control of the House so the spirit of Tom DeLay and Nancy Pelosi could ride again.

Tell us again why the Old Guard of the GOP doesn’t need to be put out to pasture?!?

On the Lighter Side….

And in the Medical Minute, a timely health tip from Speed Mach: anyone having an erection lasting more than four hours should seek immediate assistance….or click on the link below:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0dNI2Ge0slbxP/x610.jpg

Finally, we’ll wrap up the day with a new entry we’re calling the “What Do You Think?” segment.  We reproduce, YOU decide:

Why College Football Should Be Banned

The costs are high, the benefits to students are low, argues Buzz Bissinger. And academics pay the price

 

In more than 20 years I’ve spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics. That’s because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today’s times.

Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.

Who truly benefits from college football? Alumni who absurdly judge the quality of their alma mater based on the quality of the football team. Coaches such as Nick Saban of the University of Alabama and Bob Stoops of Oklahoma University who make obscene millions. The players themselves don’t benefit, exploited by a system in which they don’t receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn’t benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone.

If the vast majority of major college football programs made money, the argument to ban football might be a more precarious one. But too many of them don’t—to the detriment of academic budgets at all too many schools. According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs. This is the tier of schools that includes such examples as that great titan of football excellence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers, who went 3-and-9 last season. The athletic department in 2008-2009 took in over $13 million in university funds and student fees, largely because the football program cost so much, The Wall Street Journal reported. New Mexico State University’s athletic department needed a 70% subsidy in 2009-2010, largely because Aggie football hasn’t gotten to a bowl game in 51 years. Outside of Las Cruces, where New Mexico State is located, how many people even know that the school has a football program? None, except maybe for some savvy contestants on “Jeopardy.” What purpose does it serve on a university campus? None.

The most recent example is the University of Maryland. The president there, Wallace D. Loh, late last year announced that eight varsity programs would be cut in order to produce a leaner athletic budget, a kindly way of saying that the school would rather save struggling football and basketball programs than keep varsity sports such as track and swimming, in which the vast majority of participants graduate.

Part of the Maryland football problem: a $50.8 million modernization of its stadium in which too many luxury suites remain unsold. Another problem: The school reportedly paid $2 million to buy out head coach Ralph Friedgen at the end of the 2010 season, even though he led his team to a 9-and-4 season and was named Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year. Then, the school reportedly spent another $2 million to hire Randy Edsall from the University of Connecticut, who promptly produced a record of 2-and-10 last season.

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in March, Mr. Loh said that the athletic department was covering deficits, in large part caused by attendance drops in football and basketball, by drawing upon reserves that eventually dwindled to zero. Hence cutting the eight sports.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits. There is the false concept of the football student-athlete that the NCAA endlessly tries to sell, when any major college player will tell you that the demands of the game, a year-round commitment, makes the student half of the equation secondary and superfluous. There are the scandals that have beset programs in the desperate pursuit of winning—the University of Southern California, Ohio State University, University of Miami and Penn State University among others.

I can’t help but wonder how a student at the University of Oregon will cope when in-state tuition has recently gone up by 9% and the state legislature passed an 11% decrease in funding to the Oregon system overall for 2011 and 2012. Yet thanks to the largess of Nike founder Phil Knight, an academic center costing $41.7 million, twice as expensive in square footage as the toniest condos in Portland, has been built for the University of Oregon football team.

Always important to feed those Ducks.

I actually like football a great deal. I am not some anti-sports prude. It has a place in our society, but not on college campuses. If you want to establish a minor league system that the National Football League pays for—which they should, given that they are the greatest beneficiaries of college football—that is fine.

Call me the Grinch. But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.

So….what do you think?  Go to www.thedailygouge.com and vote in the online poll on the right side of our home page.  And feel free to leave any additional thoughts in the comments section.

Magoo