Finally, an honest politician

Obama declares war on the productive class – “if you have it, you didn’t earn it”. Had a good teacher in grade school? Then according to Obummer, all your bases are belong to us. This blog’s resident imbecile 3 Dollar Bill espouses this theory but until now I can’t remember a politician actually coming right out and saying it.

Nice to have the battle lines so clearly drawn.

What, suddenly we’re going to impose standards on politicians?

(What do you want I should put in the window?)

The wiener Weiner, he of the snap shots, is mulling running for Mayor of New York City, but experts suggest he first run for office of Public Advocate.

“The general feeling is that you can’t text pictures of your penis to a girl, then lie about it, then get kicked out of the House and then run for mayor right after,” said a political consultant. “But people believe there is a way for him to run for a lesser office.”

 

Follow the money

One down …

Well Obummer has: he’s sent his minions to Switzerland to milk Denise Rich again. Rich, you will recall, recently abandoned her American citizenship and fled to Switzerland to enjoy her billions. Don’t know what former citizens our Democrat has targeted in France, Red China and other foreign locales but if his fund-raising staff is there, we can be sure the money is too. Some are denouncing this as “outsourcing” which I suppose it is, but we can take some comfort in the thought that the only people left for Obama to put the touch on are all expatriates hiding off shore. Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money, and all that.

Some people are upset that Obama is again overriding federal law

Lazy loafer

Bi-partisan outrage over Obummer’s executive order that eliminates the work-fare provisions of Clinton’s welfare reform act.  It’s of one with his same lawlessness on the Defense of Marriage Act, immigration laws,voting laws, and anti-terror laws, but I’m personally more outraged by what passed for “work” under the law he just reversed:

“In 2005, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported that several states listed as part of their definition of a “federal work activity” under TANF the following:

1. Bed rest

2. Personal care activities

3. Massage

4. Exercise

5. Journaling

6. Motivational reading

7. Smoking cessation

8. Weight loss promotion

9. Participating in parent teacher meetings

10. Helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands”

Interesting that Obama thinks he has to fire up his base by angering working Americans who have repeatedly expressed strong support for requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to do something of value. I thought “working Americans” were his base. I guess he’s down now to illegals, welfare queens (NTTAWWT!), Hollywood millionaires and NY leftists. I don’t think that will be enough.

Well it helps when you don’t have to slow down to think

Paul Krugman: “I’m the fastest damn writer in economics”.

Friends of Barry

 

So after you take your cut, we put what’s left into this black hole, and poof!

Venture Capitalist Joel Kotkin denounces “venture porkulists”.

It’s hard enough being a member of a demonized class without watching your colleagues go rogue. As a venture capitalist, I have never been comfortable being lumped in with leveraged buyout shops, hedge fund moguls, and, God forbid, investment bankers.

Although we take crazy risks in search of outsized rewards, we rarely use debt. And while our exuberance fueled bubbles that sometimes popped, deflating overvalued stock markets, we never crashed the economy. We were proud that we kept our distance from Washington. And when our businesses failed, which happens a lot, we never took the taxpayers down with us.

Until now.

A new breed of venture capitalist has blossomed during the Obama administration, like mushrooms after a rainstorm. I call them venture porkulists.

The scale at which these people have feasted on your money as they hosed it down rat holes like Solyndra, Beacon Power, Ener1, and others is unprecedented. The leverage they’ve obtained through political connections – risking pennies against your tax dollars – to ramp up manufacturing of immature and economically unsustainable technologies boggles the mind.

The wreckage that awaits as this cycle of malinvestment runs its course will distort the economy for years, not only because of the money vaporized but because public policy aggressively tilted the playing field, harming real, value-creating businesses. Reversing these policies will take time, during which even more damage will be done. And it’s all in the name of saving the world from the dire predictions of climate models increasingly shown to be suspect.

I used to admire a guy named John Doerr, a rock star in our business. Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems – all of these and more were financed by John and his colleagues at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. I remember when John started to change,writing about it back in 1997 after he founded a liberal Silicon Valley lobbying outfit called TechNet.

TechNet’s mission was to attract federal government involvement in technology businesses that had previously thrived without Washington’s “help.” Along with it came a cycle of campaign donations, policy initiatives, and regulatory arbitrage that continues to this day.

The cleantech/renewable energy/green investment boom was on. Al Gore became a partner at Kleiner Perkins on his way to becoming the first carbon billionaire, as The New York Times put it, “profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.”

The companies spawned during this frenzy managed to pry some money out of George W. Bush’s administration. But the spigots didn’t really start gushing until after Obama was inaugurated, his presidential campaign generously financed by the cleantech crowd, his administration peppered with their people.

Kleiner Perkins is not alone. Vantage Point Venture Partners is the venture porkulist poster boy of the week. The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration funneled $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies financed by Vantage Point after one of the firm’s partners joined the Obama Energy Department.

Ever see a frog jump backwards?

 

The Germans are coming! French backwards race

Bastille Day celebrated on Lewis (Louis?) Street.

 

 

Entertainment by Jacques Chirac

Sounds like a problem that will solve itself

 

Sniffing Bush?

Thieves stripping freon from a/c units to get high.

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Police say thieves climbed up a ladder of a local business and ransacked the three air conditioning units on the roof for scrap and the very dangerous gas Freon, which can cause a person to be high and kill them in the same breath.