Swarms of Officers

First, we have The Onion Facebook-CIA faux-expose.

Now this:

In February 2011, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the agency planned to implement a program that would monitor media content, including social media data. The proposed initiatives would gather information from "online forums, blogs, public websites, and messages boards" and disseminate information to "federal, state, local, and foreign government and private sector partners." The program would be executed, in part, by individuals who established fictitious usernames and passwords to create covert social media profiles to spy on other users. The agency stated it would store personal information for up to five years.
[...]
The records reveal that the DHS is paying General Dynamics to monitor the news. The agency instructed the company to monitor for "[media] reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities."
[...]
The DHS instructed the company to "Monitor public social communications on the Internet." The records list the websites that will be monitored, including the comments sections of [The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, Wired, and ABC News.]"

Source: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring via British Tourists Arrested in the U.S. for Tweeting (Bruce Schneier)

All I can say is... what did you expect?

Politicians love to talk about creating jobs.

They love to tell you how they will create jobs. They love to tell you their opponents didn't do it. They love to make you think that job creation is their responsibility. They love to think that they are creating jobs by legislation or executive fiat.

You know what? They aren't really creating valuable jobs. The economic benefits are dubious at best. In fact, politicians most often destroy jobs and wealth. Which is kind of what you'd expect from a bunch of people who regularly threaten, cajole and browbeat businesspeople.

The best thing we can hope for is that politicians don't damage the economy. That they don't discourage job creation in the free market.

And politicians invite criticism by claiming to be able to create jobs: when jobs are lost, or the economy is slow, naturally blame falls on them, probably far more so than is reasonable. But remember: they asked for it.

You'd think they'd learn. You'd think they'd want to stop pushing that line of B.S.

So: Here's the best way for politicians to create jobs.

Are you ready? (Drum roll, please...)

Politicians: If you want to create jobs, here's how you do it. It's so simple, you won't even need a teleprompter. Just follow these easy-peasy steps:

1. Resign from public office.
2. Start a business.
3. Hire people and pay them fair market value for their work.
4. Turn a profit.
5. Avoid running afoul of tax, environmental, labor, and myriad other regulations.
6. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You think you're good at what you do? You think you have what it takes? You think you're a great leader? Let's see what happens when people can choose whether they follow you or not. Whether they will obey your command, or not.

Let's see what happens when people are free to choose whether to buy what you're selling, or not.

Go on, then, prove it. Get out of public life. Join the producers. Compete for customers.

Go out and try navigating the maze of licensing and regulation by which you and your cohorts have shackled free enterprise and productive people.

Just be careful you don't import the wrong kind of wood or sell too many rabbits. It might ruin your day. Or your life.

Go ahead and create some jobs. Some of us may even thank you for it, despite all that divisive anti-capitalistic rhetoric you or your colleagues may have used over the years.

You'll sleep better at night, too.

Go on. Please.

Stop talking about creating jobs, and just go do it.

Link Love-In

Linked at davidmcelroy.org - Thanks!
Linked at Doug Ross @ Journal - Muchas gracias!

The Silicon Graybeard describes the high crimes of the Gibson Guitar co:

Wherein tonight's installment can be entitled, "Where were you when owning wood became a felony?"

I noticed on the news today that the offices and factories of Gibson Guitars in Nashville and Memphis Tennessee were both raided yesterday (8/24) by armed federal agents, forcing a shutdown of operations, and sending employees home. Since I remembered hearing about Gibson being raided in 2009, this caught my attention.

What's going on here? Why is a company best known for producing electric guitars being raided by armed feds? Is it labor? Illegal aliens? Are they selling raw milk on the side? No, it's about wood. Wood?

In the last year of the W, the 2008 Farm Bill passed after his veto of it was over-ridden. Buried deep in this 663 page bill - that now seems tiny compared to the multi-thousand page engorged-tick monstrosity bills of the Obama administration - there was a provision nobody mentioned, nobody talked about, and nobody outside of a few activists even knew about until after the law was enacted. It was an amendment to the Lacey Act, a law passed in 1900, that "...prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, transported or sold" to quote the Wiki. I remember reading this summary in 2009, from the excellent piece on Classical Values, whose name I modified for this posting, and which you simply must read. Read this paragraph carefully:

This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country...

More Tales From the Over Regulated State - A Series

The Interstate Commerce Clause has been transmogrified into a massive threat to our lives, liberties, and property. It has been used to sweep away any and all practical limitations on the powers executed by the federal national government. Only recently has the Supreme Court moved to reign in Interstate Commerce Clause abuse, and those decisions have been tame at best.

Time and selective enforcement are the only things keeping you from feeling the hot breath of federal law enforcement down your neck.

What 'laws' did you break today? Dozens, I'll bet.

Then they came for the guitar manufacturers, and I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a guitar manufacturer...

President Obama today announced the next phase in the Administration’s program to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks sold in the United States. These new standards will cover cars and light trucks for Model Years 2017-2025, requiring performance equivalent to 54.5 mpg in 2025 while reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 163 grams per mile.

If mandating 54 MPG by 2025 is good, why not double it? C'mon, let's get serious about saving American drivers some real change.