Judge Andrew Napolitano is famous for asking the question: Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? The truth is that most American taxpayers work a large part of their lives just to pay for government. Worse, however, is that often times your government works against you and sometimes they work against you illegally. When that happens, you have legal redress, right? You have rights protected by the constitution to due process and a speedy trial, right? Well, you can go bankrupt trying to get your rights enforced against a rogue bureaucrat that is breaking the law. Worse yet is that your Congress, those men and women with D’s and R’s after their names that you send to Washington to protect your rights, have actually written a law that makes it easy for unscrupulous bureaucrats to abuse your rights. You are going to want to read this American Thinker article to understand what I’m talking about. For now, let me share some excerpts.

Victims of bureaucratic lawbreaking are deprived of real due process of law.  Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), victims must exhaust “administrative remedies” before they can get before the courts.  But even when they do get to court, judges defer to the evidentiary findings of the bureaucratic agencies. _ (Emphasis added)

The costs to deal with government lawbreaking can bankrupt individuals and businesses even before they get their chance at due process through the courts.  Bureaucrats know this, which can make them contemptuous of following the law.

And

Government lawbreaking, you see, is treated differently than private sector lawbreaking.  Government protects its lawbreaking — because it can.

The IRS is this week’s widely publicized example of the biggest lawbreaker in America — government.  And, there’s no close second place.  If Republicans were serious about, and committed to, the principles of the rule of law and limited government, they’d ensure that victims of government lawbreaking at the IRS and beyond are entitled to full remedies, including legal fees.

The author gives examples; e.g., the tragedy of the  Sacketts and of the of Virginia farmer Martha Boneta. And, many of you Ii am sure remember the abuse of the Gibson Guitar Company. Sadly, there are thousands of cases citizens being abused by government bureaucrats. Most can not afford to fight for their rights and the bureaucrats know that. As the American Thinker article says:

They don’t merely think they are above the law; they believe they are the law.

Not all bureaucrats are abusing their power. But, it only takes a few to make life miserable for many Americans. And, it is not just the Administrative Procedure Act that allows some bureaucrats to abuse their power. It is also the mere size and partisanship of the bureaucracies. Politicians come and go but bureaucrats are there until they retire. Even when a given politician tries to clean up the mess, it like punching a sponge, no damage is ever done.

And yes, I do believe partisanship plays a big role. I apologize for not having a link to share with you, but I read recently that nearly 70% of bureaucrats are registered Democrats. A large percentage of them belong to public employee unions, which support the progressive policies of the Democratic Party. So, it’s not hard to imagine that some will use their positions to promote their political agenda. The current IRS scandal is a perfect example.

The American concept of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people was a nice idea. Too bad that most of We the People didn’t our responsibility to be vigilant of our governments seriously enough. Even if we could somehow elect 100% conservatives, I doubt they would be a match for the Leviathan that is today’s entrenched bureaucracy.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

Just after Midnight Tuesday night, seven people – five men and two women – were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.  The Quabbin is one of America’s largest man made water supplies, and delivers most of Boston’s drinking water.

So, no big deal, right?  It’s probably just some kids who decided to sneak in and have a few beers at the water’s edge.

Well, it turns out that they were all from either Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Singapore. They were all recent graduates in chemical engineering and they told authorities that their reason for being a the reservoir was due to “their education and career interests.”  That sounds reasonable, don’t you think? I mean they probably wanted to beef up their resume’s to show that they were knowledgeable about how big city water reservoirs worked. And, its possible that their English vocabulary was limited. I’m sure they were asking themselves what ” No trespassing” means. Being foreigners, they were probably a bit timid about asking permission to visit the reservoir during the day time so they came at midnight when they wouldn’t bother anybody. Wasn’t that considerate of them?

Atlas Shrugs reporting on the same story tell us:

State Police say there were no warrants or advisories on any of the individuals and “there was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing.”

All seven were allowed to leave and will be summoned to court for trespassing. The FBI is investigating and routine checks of public water supplies have been increased following the incident.

Government power is increasingly concentrated in Washington, Washington power is increasingly concentrated in the executive branch, and executive-branch power is increasingly concentrated in agencies that are unconstrained by legislative control. Debt and regulation are, DeMuth discerns, “political kin”: Both are legitimate government functions, but both are now perverted to evade democratic accountability, which is a nuisance, and transparent taxation, which is politically dangerous.

It’s true, isn’t it? The bureaucrats run this country more than the politicians do. This post is about the federal government; but the same could be said for state and local governments, couldn’t it?

Sure, Congress will have their staffs produce 2000 page new laws with the help of lobbyist, but the bureaucrats take those laws and write tens of thousands of new regulations (laws) that require no Congressional approval. The bureaucrats can write regulations (laws) that Congress can’t get passed; e.g., a carbon tax.

Later Mr. Will writes:

Legislative leaders — particularly, committee chairs — have lost power as Congress has become more porous and responsive to importuning factions using new media. Congress, responding to the increased difficulty of legislating, has delegated much lawmaking to specialized agencies that have fewer internal conflicts. Congress’s role has waned as that of autonomous executive agencies has waxed. The executive has driven the expansion of the consumption of benefits that are paid for by automatic entitlement transfer payments, by government-mandated private expenditures and by off-budget and non-transparent taxation imposed by executive agencies.

Think about it. Our current sorry excuse for a President has claimed he didn’t know about guns being walked into Mexico and he didn’t know that he embassy in Libya had made request for more security and he didn’t know that the IRS was harassing conservative groups and he didn’t know his Attorney General was eavesdropping on the Associated Press. He claims he learned about these things from watching the news on TV . We, of course don’t know how much of what he says is a lie, how much is due his inner circle filtering what he is told, and how much of it is because the bureaucracy is so big that it is impossible to be aware of all that is going on inside the government swamp.

It makes one wonder why we even bother going through the charade of elections anymore? The bureaucrats are the ones who run this country these days. Every government agency is in the hands of bureaucratic zealots with an agenda. They don’t care much if the person in the White House has a “D” or an “R” after their name. They will pretty much do things their way no matter who claims to be in charge of the Executive Branch. And, Congress? It is less and less relevant as each year goes by.

George Will ended his article as follows:

Government used to spend primarily on the production of things — roads, dams, bridges, military forces. There can be only so many of such goods. Now, DeMuth says, government spends primarily for consumption:

“The possibilities for increasing the kind, level, quality and availability of benefits are practically unlimited. This is the ultimate source of today’s debt predicament. More borrowing for more consumption has no natural stopping point short of imploding on itself.”

Funding the welfare state by vast borrowing and regulatory taxation hides the costs from the public. Hence its political potency. Until the implosion. (Emphasis added)

Your humble observer at Asylum Watch use to believe that an implosion was inevitable. I am no longer sure that is the case or, if an implosion does come, it will be many years down the road. In the mean time, it appears to me that the private sector middle-class will see its standard of living continually declining, while the government sector middle-class will see their standard of living improving. Unless we can find enough politicians willing to go to the District of Corruption with the sole purpose of draining the swamp, nothing is going to change. What’s the chance of that happening? Slim and none I would say.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

(CNSNews.com) — President Barack Obama told an audience of high school students in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that he was “not always the very best student” and that ethics “would not have made it on the list” of his favorite subjects.

“I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school,” Obama said, speaking at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School.

“I did not love every class I took. I wasn’t always paying attention the way I should have,” Obama said. “I remember when I was in 8th grade I had to take a class called ethics. Now, ethics is about right and wrong, but if you’d ask me what my favorite subject was back in 8th grade, it was basketball. I don’t think ethics would have made it on the list.”

Oops! You are a slow learner, aren’t you, Mr. President? You should know by now that every time you go off script, you reveal your true colors. That you didn’t like “ethics” when you were in the eighth grade doesn’t surprise any of us on the political right. Your opinion on ethics has never changed, has it Mr. President?

While a Community Organizer and working with Acorn, ethics wasn’t important to you then, was it, Mr. President?

Your books about your life and that of your father are full of lies and distortions. That’s not ethical, Mr. President. By the way, Mr. President, who did write those books you took credit for writing? Taking credit for other people’s work is not ethical, Mr. President.

To win your first election in Chicago politics, your staff manged to unseal the divorce papers of your opponent. That wasn’t ethical, Mr. President.

When Bill Ayers convinced you to run for President, you spent millions to have all your records sealed. You didn’t want Americans to know how unethical you were, right, Mr. President?

Heck, you even married a woman who was proud to be an American for the first time when her unethical husband was elected President. The joke is on us, right,  Michelle?

No, ethics has never been big on your list, has it, Mr. President? Your motto is: “Reward your friends and punish your enemies.” Who was your enemy in Benghazi, Mr. President? Who were you punishing or who were you rewarding? You were rewarding yourself, weren’t you, Mr. President? Four lives were nothing compared to your wish to be reelected, right, Mr. President? You are more than willing to have Hillary thrown under the bus. Better her than you, isn’t it,  Mr. President? The ends justify the means, right?

¡Es usted un pedazo de mierda, Sr. Presidente!

Well,   that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

**********

Catastrophic Coverage

Article link: Obamacare will improve… marriages?

 .

My wife revealed just yesterday

Proposals much like mine,

Had been by her received from men

Who ordered better wine.

 .

And not in wine alone was I

Below the standard mean,

But I was wanting in my choice

Of bistro and cuisine.

 .

My raiment had not measured up,

My tie was short of chic,

And further, to my lasting shame,

My prosody was weak.

.

So what possessed my lady love

To give her warm consent,

To stay with me in good or bad,

In joy or discontent?

 .

She acquiesced to be my wife,

And I to be her man,

To have and hold for all our years

For my insurance plan.

 .

But fate is like a fickle friend

Against our schemes deployed,

For since they passed Obamacare

I now am unemployed.

.

___________________________________________________________________________–

Profile

The Bard of Murdock

My goal is to produce poetical cartoons. I try to use metaphors and caricatures (or a politician’s own words) to address complex political and social situations. In this way, I sum up current events in humorous verse.

A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give.

By Dennis Prager.

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so.

There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that some ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity.

I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American.

This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans. If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity, race and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America , one of its three central values — epluribus Unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America ‘s values. This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism — an unhealthy preoccupation with the self — while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America ‘s citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here — it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English — but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor , everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property — whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the f -word, you can’t speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as “Nigger,” even when used by one black student to address another black, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way — the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago — by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue… There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately fortunate — to be alive and to be an American.

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

Can you imagine, as Findalis did, “If all schools nationwide adopted this ideology for their schools.” The way things are today that would require a pretty active  imagination, wouldn’t it? Where would we find such Principals? What teacher’s colleges  in American could produce such Principals?

It has taken the progressives fifty years to get our educations system to its present state, where it produces only zombies fit for minimum wage  jobs, at best. Only a small percentage of Americans are capable and/or have the mind-set to homeschool their children. The vast majority of Americans believe that the public school system is their only option. And, in a practical sense, it is the only option for most Americans. America still has some excellent colleges of engineering, sciences, and of business . But, you have to wonder how long it will be before the progressives infiltrate those schools, as well.

In my opinion, the future will belong to those nations that did not pollute their education systems.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

Proof That Bart Simpson Is Smarter Than Barack Obama

In March of this year, Bloomberg Busibessweek ask the question “Why Abt Oil Hasn’t Cut Gasoline Prices.  The article points out that although oil production is the US is at record levels and demand is down, government policies and regulations are having a negative effect on normal supply and demand relationships.

Remember the Keystone Pipeline project? It still hasn’t been approved, has it? That failure is affecting the price you pay at the pump.

Most of the surge in oil production has happened in places such as North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Oklahoma, far from refining hubs and big population centers. With competition fierce for limited pipeline capacity, producers have begun moving crude on barges and trains, adding as much as $17 a barrel to the price of domestic oil. That extra cost eventually makes its way to the price at the pump.

The article makes a big deal out of the fact that US refiners export around 3 million barrels per day of gasoline. There is an impressive graph of where all that gasoline is going. The tagline to the graph says: American refiners find it more profitable to sell gasoline, diesel, and other products abroad. Unfortunately, the authors fail to note the obvious, which is that US refiners produce much more than the US market demands. They do, however, note one bit of central planning that dates back to 1920 that adds to the price you pay for gasoline.

Complicating the equation is a 1920 law called the Jones Act, which requires any cargo shipped between U.S. ports to be carried by vessels that are based in the U.S., made in the U.S., and crewed mostly by U.S. citizens. The law was intended to protect U.S. shipping interests but has made it more costly to move fuel between U.S. ports. This in particular hurts the Northeast, which is struggling to meet its fuel needs after several refineries closed in the last two years. According to Ed Morse, chief commodity analyst at Citigroup (C), those constraints add between $6 and $8 a barrel to transport costs. As a result, it’s often cheaper for a Gulf Coast refiner to send gasoline to Brazil than to New York.

Central planning has been around a long time in America, hasn’t it?

Then, of course, our central planners blessed you with ethanol. Try as they may, the central planners can not predict markets any better than monkeys.

This year, the law requires U.S. refiners to blend 13.8 billion gallons of ethanol into the fuel they sell to domestic customers. In their calculations when crafting the bill in 2007, lawmakers assumed gasoline demand would continue to rise and that refiners would need all that ethanol to make up 10 percent of the fuel sold to motorists. The problem is that U.S. drivers are consuming less, not more, gasoline because they’re driving fewer miles in increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles. As a result, refiners don’t need all the ethanol the government forces them to buy. To make up the roughly 400 million gallon difference between the ethanol the industry needs and the amount the government mandates, refiners must buy credits called Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs. (emphasis added)

Isn’t that nice? Your paying for ethanol you don’t even use.

If you want to learn more on how your government’s ethanol mandates are hurting the economy, please read this article. And, if you’re wondering why beef prices are so high, take a gander at this article.

Yes, those central planners are so smart, they are going to plan you right into the poor house.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

Many times on this page I have talked about graph of workforce participation rate.

Since Obama took office, when the so-called recovery began, the workforce participation rate has fallen from 66.3% to 63.3%. That means, depending on which source you look at, that there are between five and six million fewer Americans working today than when the recovery supposedly began. Yet every month the media and the Obama administration tell us how many more private sector jobs have been created. The latest report was that 166.000 more jobs were created in April and the unemployment rate fell 0.1% to 7.5%. What they never want to tell us, however, is that the unemployment figure is improving because so many people have given up looking for work and so they are not counted as being unemployed. And, there is more bad news they are not telling us. They are not telling us that the well paid middle class jobs that were lost are being replaced by low paying part-time jobs.

Louis Woodhill, writing for Real Clear Markets, was not impressed with the latest jobs report, either. In fact he this latest jobs report is signalling that bad times are coming our way. He has been looking at other Bureau of Labor Statistics data from their Household Survey, which are not being touted by this administration or by the media. He found this disturbing bit of information:

Total employment rose by 293,000 during April, but part-time jobs increased by 441,000. As a result, full-time jobs declined by 148,000.

It’s not surprising the BLS Household Survey generates a different jobs number than what the BLS reported from their  Establishment Survey. The two surveys different methodology and each method has its pluses and minuses. What should disturb you is that all of the job gains in April appear to have come from part-time jobs and that we actually lost 148,000 full-time jobs.

Mr. Woodhill goes on to talk about a metric used by the BLS that I wasn’t aware of.  It’s called the Full Time Equivalent jobs (FTE). FTE is calculated as the number of full-time jobs plus fifty percent of part-time jobs. So, if an employer had 100 employees and 50 were working full-time and 50 were working part-time,that employer’s Full Time Equivalent (FTE) jobs would be 75. When the FTE for a nation gets smaller, it means there are fewer people working full-time and more people working part-time. According to Woodhill, the FTE for the US has fallen for each of the last five months, which he says has always meant that a recession is on the way. Are we heading for a bust without having had a boom? Maybe.

Although I find the FTE an interesting metric, I was disappointed that Mr. Woodhill didn’t elaborate on the actual percentage of our workforce that is employed part-time and what are the trends. So, your humble but trusty observer of the asylum went searching through the world-wide-web. I found what I was looking for in a New York Times article from March of last year. The title of the article is: The Rise of Part-Time Work it contains a couple of revealing graphics:

It should be alarming that when the recession began the percentage of part-time workers was 16.9% and by December of last year the percentage had climbed to 19.2 %.  And, if what Mr. Woodhill reported is correct, part-time workers are probably about 21% of the workforce today.

The other graph in the NYT articles tells us that many people are working part-time because they have no other option.

It appears from the above graph that we have about 7 million people working part-time that want to be working full-time.

So, while the Obama administration and the media are touting growth and an improving recovery, what we really have is fewer people participating in the workforce and growing percentage of those who are participating are only able to find part-time work.

Thanks, Mr. President!

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?