Want to know why unemployment appears to have dropped recently?

Unemployment is the percentage of workers who don't have a job and who are looking for a job. Quit looking and you are considered to have left the labor force.

From the Senate Budget Committee via Powerline Blog.

Freedom Manifesto

New book from Steve Forbes.  Basic premise, the free market acts efficiently.  Do a good job, you get rewarded.  Government promotes favoritism. Invest most effectively in lobbying efforts and you get rewarded.  Not a new concept but presumably Forbes feels he either has new insights or can explain it better than past efforts.

I'm going to check it out and will report back later but if you want your own copy now you can get it from Amazon.

Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets are Moral and Government Isn't

The Rule of Law, not just for me but also for thee

If you lived in one state continuously from 1960 til today,except for a few years in another state in the middle, but gave a lecture in a third state, would you reasonably claim that you are a resident of the third state?  That is the case with Peter Diamond.  He has lived in Massachusetts since 1960 except for a few years that he lived in Berkeley, CA while he attended UCB.  Over the past few years he has given a few lectures at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.  The Obama Administration is claiming that he is being nominated to represent the Chicago Federal Reserve District based on those lectures.  This is not a minor point or "Republican obstructionism", this is the law.  He is ineligible to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, by law.  Does anyone care?  Probably not. Should they?  I think so. At a minimum, shouldn't the law apply equally to the President?

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12581

(Is this an isolated incident? Google "Recess Appointments" to find out how, in Obama's world, he can make recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess.)  Or here, Let Me Google That For You.

Freedom of the Internet?

You know the drill.  The usual suspects are gathering to protest something the federal government is doing.  In this case "SOPA", a law that will supposedly prevent online piracy by restricting the internet.  In this case, I happen to be a part of the usual suspects.  Not only is there little evidence that online piracy has much economic impact, there's even less evidence that the government's crackdown will do much more than shift the burden to the taxpayers.  Imagine a situation where large retailers such as Sears, Walmart, and Home Depot asked the federal government for a $50 billion program to crack down on shoplifting.  Shoplifting is arguably more damaging to our economy than online piracy, but they'd rightfully be laughed out of Congress.  Laws already exist to prosecute piracy, it just isn't worth the time and effort of the companies affected to deal with them so they are asking Congress to step in. 

Well, as we know, the law of unintended consequences is alive and well in everything government does and this one will be no exception.  SOPA will allow the government to shut down domain name addresses for violations of the law, regardless of how it affects legitimate users, but will do nothing to stop the actual IP address from continuing to operate, just making it harder for users to find the website.  How many of you know the IP address of your personal or business website?

I am not condoning piracy but many of the arguments in the articles below ring true and many bands are starting to release a certain amount of their content on the internet to help build a fan base or to excite their current fan base about new content.  There is a way to deal with internet piracy and it isn't another huge and intrusive federal program.

Here are some links that detail the issues surrounding SOPA.


http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/internet-regulation-the-economics-of-piracy/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-internet-is-not-govs-to-regulate/

On a related note, there has been an issue in the news about something called Net Neutrality.  Net Neutrality would require all providers of internet services to allow free access to any service or website without blocking, slowing, or any other interference.  The government has debated and argued a variety of methods, but most of them seem to fall under stringent regulations promulgated and enforced by the FCC. Basically, Net Neutrality would throw private property rights out and give the FCC full control over high speed internet providers. So who is supporting FCC enforcement of Net Neutrality?  Well, many of the people who are up in arms over SOPA.

Here are some Network Neutrality links.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9775
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/more-net-neutrality-violations-that-arent/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-phantom-menaces-in-the-aclus-case-for-net-neutrality/

Come on guys, let's have some consistency.  If government regulation to enforce copyright law is destructive, why is government regulation to prevent internet service providers from acting in their own best interests not equally destructive.  The market will resolve both issues.  Copyright holders will figure out ways to benefit from readily available downloads (point of interest, illegal downloads have dropped dramatically since the advent of online movie services such as Netflix, suggesting that many pirates of movies did it because there was no readily available legal alternative), and consumers will gravitate towards service providers who provide the best service in the manner that the consumer wants.  No government need apply to fix these particular problems.

Maybe They Should Have Used the Nook

Apparently using the Kindle at college is a violation of the civil rights of blind people. Who'd a thunk it? When did we get to the point where letting people who didn't have a disability access technology meant that we were automatically discriminating against people who did have the disability? Was the plan to eliminate textbooks written in Braille? Is there some arcane rule that all books published in e-book format are automatically prohibited from the ranks of all other formats? Pretty sure there isn't but hey, I was wrong once so I suppose there's a possibility, however remote, that it could happen again.

Washington Examiner

"a sugar-coated Satan sandwich"

Yes. It was said. How delicious is that?

Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)

www.rollcall.com

Why We Need the Federal Government

Apparently it is because we are too stupid to figure out how to allow people to install solar panels without help from the Federal Government.

10 Million Solar Roofs Act of 2011 . Apparently local communities need help in figuring out how to make solar permitting more efficient to encourage people to install more solar roofs. Really? People are so stupid that they can't figure out how to make the permitting process easier? Here's one for you. Eliminate the need for a permit to install a solar roof. Done. Here's another. File a one sentence application that says "I want to install a solar roof on my house at 111 Solar Street, Anywheresville, USA". Get the signature at the bottom that says "OK". What the heck is so difficult about simplifying any permitting process that we need the federal government involved? This just stinks of job justification by these perpetual politicians desperate to keep their cushy, overpaid, overcompensated jobs.

How are we not extinct?

Turns out children's books have lead in them, according to the Consumer Safety Product Commission, yet another out of control, left wing, nanny state bureaucracy. Apparently the CPSC may rule that children's books printed before 1985 have enough lead in them that they violate safety rules and can not be sold or kept in libraries. So how much lead do they actually have? Well, dirt has more. Anyone know a kid who has eaten dirt?

Overlawyered

And in related news, a book for parents called If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be OK, completely unrelated to the amount of lead in the book, but a wonderful title.