SOME ECONOMICS

The U.S. economy grew at 3.7% p.a. in the most recent quarter. Compared to the near-zero growth in Europe and most of the rest of the world, that is an outstanding performance that any government would be pleased about. The USA is already much richer than any other large country and is continuing to pull further ahead! Cause to congratulate both the businesspeople and technologists of America whose innovations made it happen and a President whose policies gave them an encouraging framework for it.

How the media spins the economy. It depends on who's President: "Summer was proclaimed a time of 'strong economic growth and low unemployment' by Jerry King of ABC's World News Tonight. King was right. Declining unemployment, low inflation and landmark homeownership all point to great news for the economy. There's just one problem: King wasn't talking about this summer. That story aired on Aug. 4, 1996. ... Business Week chief economist Michael J. Mandel made an excellent case that 'today's economic environment looks positively rosy' in the magazine's Sept. 6 issue. Mandel argued that there are strong similarities between the summer of 1996 and 2004. Both had incumbent presidents running for election. Both saw declining unemployment, an increase in jobs, and strong economic growth. Some of the numbers are so similar it's eerie. Yet the major media covered those two time periods as differently as night and day."

Sounds good to me: "With all the hoopla over the presidential election, gone almost unnoticed are measures that will be on ballots all over America next Tuesday to limit or roll back property taxes. It's the biggest tax revolt since the 1970s. No wonder. Property taxes across America have been soaring -- according to Deloitte and Touche, by an average of more than 10 percent between 2001 and 2003 alone. They're rising mainly because more and more responsibility has been heaped on towns and cities -- which rely on property taxes to pay for a lot of things that states and the federal government used to help pay for. Call it trickle-down taxes. The federal tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 left a big hole in the federal budget, meaning that the feds can't or won't fully fund programs like No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to take sometimes expensive steps to improve themselves. Federal support for states has also dropped, so there's less state aid to towns and cities. Well, someone's got to pay for schools and roads and parks and public safety. So by default, the tax burden has fallen to the bottom of the food chain. Local property taxes have borne a lot of the brunt."

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ELSEWHERE

Steve Sailer has an extensive article which punctures pretty well the Democrat claim that their Presidents are bright and GOP Presidents are dumb. Looks like it is the other way around. So we have another example of that pervasive Leftist "projection".

Will Wilkinson summarizes the voter fraud situation. GOP hyper-vigilance is made necessary by deliberate Democrat attempts to rig the results. You have to do something to stop all those dead people voting: "Lindsay bitches about GOP voter suppression in Ohio. I don't believe I remember her complaining (correct me if I'm wrong) about DNC voter suppression (successful or not) in every state in which they tried to cripple democracy by sueing Nader off the ballot. (If I ever hear high-toned democracy rhetoric from Larry Tribe, I'll throw up a little in my mouth.) Second, Lindsay simply assumes that stationing people in polling places to challenge fraudulent voters from voting is an ploy to suppress Democratic votes. But why not assume instead, or in addition, that the huge Democratic voter-registration drives really were riddled with malfeasance. Indeed, I assume both. The Democrats have been signing up dead people, felons and non-citizens in an attempt to steal the vote. The Republicans want to stop Democrats from stealing the vote, and so want to guard against dead and illegal voters, and, as a bonus, to suppress the legitimate Democratic vote--in an attempt to steal the vote. Now, I want to emphasize that I don't think any of these shenanigans even approaches the seriousness of the DNC's effort to make it impossible for American citizens to vote for a candidate who represents their views".

Kerry's Tax hypocrisy: "Sen. John Kerry keeps telling us that 'the rich' need to pay more in taxes. The senator and his wife are among the 400 richest Americans. He says that he has 'a plan to tax the rich.' Under the senator's tax plan, what percentage of the Kerrys' income do you think they would pay the IRS? (a) 50 percent, (b) 40 percent, (c) 30 percent, (d)15 percent. The correct answer is (d) 15 percent. According to an analysis by the Argus Group, a well respected tax law and economics firm, the Kerrys' average tax rate would only increase by 1.8 percentage points to 15.2 percent under the senator's plan, while many small business people would see their average rate rise by 4.0 percentage points, resulting in effective rates as high as 35 to 40 percent, including certain deduction phase-outs."

There is a new blog which has up a comprehensive account of the New Age nuttiness preached by Mrs Heinz-Kerry. Apparently "alternative" health fads will solves all our problems: "If you have a child who eats the wrong things, is denied adequate health care and is deprived of a stimulating environment, it follows of necessity that he will turn out to be a criminal or other form of psychopath, sociopath or mental defective, Teresa teaches. From this she believes it follows naturally that if society seriously intends to prevent criminality and all other forms of social pathology, then all we have to do is provide our children with the right nourishment and sunlight and stimulation-and, poof!, instantly you have healthy and well-adjusted children who grow into intelligent, law-abiding and well-adjusted adults".

The Yes Bush Can site and its accompanying mailouts would seem to be the latest bit of Democrat play-acting. It may now have been taken down. It was allegedly by a group of Bush supporters who had switched to Kerry. It might fool some people, I guess. But after the biggest bit of play-acting of all -- "John Kerry as war-hero" -- it is pretty last-ditch.

Chez Joel has a very amusing post about how to talk to terrorists. He's not being sarcastic or anything!

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its big range of select reading.

Wicked Thoughts has put up a very wicked post about Yasser Arafat

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS some excerpts from a good article by V.D. Hanson which says which says that elitism is now the main thing that undergirds Leftism. A post on the megalomaniac Soros too.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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