And still others, like Senator Inhofe, have gone in the complete opposite direction:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.), named by the National Journal as the senator with the most conservative voting record in 2009 and rated by the National Taxpayers Union as having the Senate’s fifth-best voting record on bills affecting taxing and spending, told CNSNews.com that he intends to lead a new effort to protect and defend the right of members of Congress to “earmark” appropriations and authorization bills.

Interesting.  Let’s see what his argument is…

Inhofe said it is important to preserve earmarking not only to protect the constitutional prerogative of Congress to control where and how the federal government spends the taxpayers’ money, but also that it is particularly important for Congress to protect its authority in this area against encroachment by the Obama administration.

If Congress bans earmarks and thus restricts its own authority to direct federal programs, Inhofe said, “we would be delegating that back from Congress to President Obama to make those decisions. And I look at him, I look at his social engineering, I see the destructive forces in his administration that are tearing down every institution that has made America great, and I don’t want to put all this power in his hands.”

I find this argument wholly unconvincing.  Earmarks are not the sole means by which Congress allocates funds.  Senator Inhofe is confusing process for outcomes.  Refusing to use the corrupt and unaccountable earmark process to disperse funds does not amount to a delegation of authority for spending from the legislative to the executive.  It simply means that individual members of Congress cannot sneak in special carve out for district interests as a needle in the haystack that is legislation.  They will have to actually make the case for their spending, and Congress will have to use a more transparent approach to funding.

I think Senator Inhofe will find that, in the end, a less corrupt process will provide Congress with more authority, as it will help restore public faith in what is now one of, if not the single, most unpopular institution in America.

The U.N. frets:

The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

In the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were reportedly women; in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women.

And following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women, who were the poorest population in some of the affected States in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, faced the greatest obstacles to survival, according to the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO).

The 2007 Human Development Report, issued by the U.N. Development Programme, points out that women are particularly affected by climate change because they are the largest percentage – accounting for about 70 percent – of the poor population.

The mock-worthy “women hardest hit” ploy almost obscures the more disgusting attempt to tie these disasters to “fallout from climate change.”

The warm-mongers just won’t give up.

…We now think it’s normal behaviour to take off our clothes at an airport. But it isn’t. Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette or to do 30mph on a dual carriageway when it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is in bed. It’s stupid.

And last week the stupidity made yet another lunge into the fabric of society with the news that government ministers were considering new laws that would force everyone to take a test before they were allowed to keep a dog.

No, really. Because one dog once ate one child, some hopeless little twerp from the department of dogs had to think of something sincere to say on the steps of the coroner’s court. Inevitably, they will have argued that the current law is “not fit for purpose”, whatever that means, and that “steps must be taken to ensure this never happens again”.

The steps being considered mean that every dog owner in the land will have to fit their pet with a microchip so that its whereabouts can be determined from dog-spotting spy-in-the-sky drones, and that before being allowed to take delivery of a puppy, people will have to sit an exam similar to the driving theory test. The cost could reach £60, and on top of this you will need compulsory third-party insurance in case your spaniel eats the milkman.

…

Read the whole thing.

Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggest that too many Americans—maybe even President Barack Obama—are being overtreated.

Is it doctors practicing defensive medicine? Or are patients so accustomed to a culture of medical technology that they insist on extensive tests and treatments?

A combination of both is at work, but now new evidence and guidelines are recommending a step back and more thorough doctor-patient conversations about risks and benefits.

Defensive medicine, which is a response to so many frivolous lawsuits, is no doubt part of it.  But the problems are deeper and systemic.

The third-party payer system is the biggest contributor.  When patients are insulated from the costs of treatments, they have less incentive to ensure their necessity. Overconsumption is guaranteed under such a setup.

Some will use this and put forth the wrong solution.  “We need greater government involvement,” they’ll say, “to set guidelines and provide information on what treatments are really needed.”  This approach is destined to fail.  Government processes are necessarily political, and any attempt by government to create such guidelines will only encourage the stakeholders – manufacturers of medical equipment, drug companies and doctors – to spend more time lobbying government to ensure the guidelines benefit them.  Who will lobby for patients?

The better solution is to bring the patient back into the equation.  Phase out the third-party payer system by reforming Medicare, eliminating tax distortions that give employer provided insurance an advantage of individual coverage, and remove the onerous regulations that prevent more innovative care models from emerging.

We also have to realize that there will always be a certain percentage of treatments that are not strictly necessary.  It is the nature of the industry that it’s not always clear what works and what does not.  The important thing is to have a system where each agent – patient, doctor and insurance – has appropriate incentive to examine the suitability of both the quality and quantity of care provided.

House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks.

The Republicans’ moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee’s ban in that it applies to all earmarks for all members of the caucus.

The moratorium was passed via a “strong” voice vote, according to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who participated in the nearly two-hour-long conference meeting.

Republicans had discussed enacting a ban in the last Congress, but a vote never materialized.

Does this mean that Republicans, after years of profligate spending, have suddenly realized fiscal principles?  Probably not.

The beauty of a competitive political system is that the public, by hounding politicians long enough, can eventually force them to make the right choice for the wrong reasons.  Sure, some of the people involved have taken principled stands against earmarks consistently, but by and large Republicans just want back in power, and they’re doing what they have to do to court voters.

Just remember, they’ll betray these same principles the minute they get back into power if you let them.  That’s why the public has to stay informed, engaged and outspoken.

In Louisiana, you don’t need a license to peddle pets, paintings or cars — but sell no flowers.

A 7-decades-old state law requires florists to pass a test and get a license to arrange and sell flowers, making Louisiana the only state in the USA with such a requirement. Supporters of the law say it ensures florists know what they’re doing and deliver quality products.

You know what really ensures that florists know what they doing? Customers.  Asking government to enforce competence is like asking an alcoholic to enforce sobriety.

The Institute for Justice is challenging the requirement:

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court here last week is challenging the law’s constitutionality, claiming it infringes on a resident’s right to earn a living. The suit, filed by the Institute of Justice, a libertarian non-profit law firm based in Washington, D.C., lists as plaintiffs four local florists who have either failed the test or refuse to take it.

…Attorneys hope the lawsuit reaches the Supreme Court, said Tim Keller, lead counsel in the case.

…Keller is with the Institute for Justice, which has taken the case pro bono. The licensing law “is blooming nonsense,” the institute says on its website.

“This case is about more than just licensing florists,” he said. “It can set a precedent that restores economic liberty to its rightful place as a fundamental American right.”

That would be something to see.  It’s been a long time since economic liberty has mattered in the U.S.

Licensing laws are contrary to everything America stands for.  The idea that someone first needs government permission before offering a voluntary service is as contemptible as it is tyrannical.

Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll’s white counterpart at one store and possibly others.

…”To prepare for (s)pring inventory, a number of items are marked for clearance, ” spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said in an e-mail. “… Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers.”

“Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing,” O’Brien said.

But critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice.

“The implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll,” said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

This is so dumb.  Goods are priced based on sales.  The price of the doll with the lower number of sales was cut so that sales would pick up.

ABC is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  It isn’t necessarily surprising that they were able to find so many race-obsessed “critics” to spout such nonsense.  The race mongering industry is thriving, after all.

But this is a clear case of starting from a conclusion (raaaaaacism), and finding a story to fit it.  Just imagine, for instance, if the price differential had been reversed.  What is black barbie cost more?

Why, that would be racist against black barbie, too.  Rather than being “devauled,” ABC would find “critics” to argue that Walmart was trying to hurt sales of black barbie and keep it out of the hands of poorer black customers.

This is agenda journalism, plain and simple.

Hat-tip: Right Wing News

The Congress Elementary School District claims that past efforts by these residents to obtain documents such as minutes of board meetings and spending reports amount to harassment that should not have to be tolerated.

But Jean Warren, one of the four defendants named in the lawsuit filed January 28, 2010, said the complaint is an illegal attempt to silence citizens who have questioned the district’s policies and spending practices.

The lawsuit says the defendants filed over 100 public records requests since 2002.  That’s barely 10 a year.  It then hyperventilates that it is contrary to the “public interest” to comply with the requests “filed by the Defendants on an almost daily basis.”

One hundred requests since 2002 is an almost daily basis?  No wonder kids can’t count.  They are being taught by morons – thuggish, tyrannical morons who think they have a right to lord it over children and parents alike without ever being questioned.

President Barack Obama has “responded positively” to calls to clamp down on market speculators, the Greek PM said after talks in Washington.

…Greece has blamed market speculators for worsening its current economic troubles.

European politicians have already expressed their concern over the issue.

“We ourselves were in the last few months the victims of speculators,” Mr Papandreou said, after meeting Mr Obama.

They are victims!  And how, exactly, have they been victimized?

They say speculators, such as hedge funds, are unfairly betting that Greece will default on its loans.

Such moves are making it more expensive for Greece to borrow funds.

The speculators are typically betting against Greece defaulting on its government bond payments – or having its credit rating lowered – by buying large quantities of a complex financial insurance instrument called a Credit Default Swap (CDS).

It unfortunately does not occur to them that speculators are “betting against Greeze defaulting on its government bond payments” because the policies of the Greek government have made it more likely that they will default on their bond payments.

This is what is supposed to happen.  Good policies get rewarded; bad policies get punished.

Speculators gain nothing by being wrong.  So often it is insinuated that they deliberately drive this or that down, that it’s bad to “bet against” some thing, and that the only reason it happens is because speculators are greedy.  Unless it’s oil, then they greedily bet it up.

There’s the rub.  It makes no difference to speculators which way anything moves, only that they guess right.  And because they have strong financial incentive to do so, they usually do.  This means their bets are a useful signal to the market.

Imagine if more evil, greedy speculators had bet against the U.S. financial markets in the mid 2000’s like Warren Buffet did.  Maybe there would have been a strong enough signal to correct the course before it was too late.

Obama’s siding with Greece against speculators is not surprising.  Not only does he harbor a fundamental antipathy to all things free market, but he understands that when the U.S. faces higher interest rates for borrowing in response to his irresponsible policies, he’ll be in a similar position of needing a scape goat.

The 22-year-old was not given vital medication after an operation at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, according to his mother.

A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police who are investigating Mr Gorny’s care.

…His mother, Rita Cronin, says he needed drugs three times a day to regulate his hormones, but he was not given them by hospital staff.

She said he became very dehydrated but his requests for water were refused and nurses called in security guards to restrain him when he became angry.

He became so frustrated that he rang the police from his bed to demand their help but officers were assured Mr Gorny was fine.

She said nurses assumed he was just badly behaved.

Mr Gorny’s cause of death was determined to be dehydration.

But don’t you Britons worry, because “new procedures [have been] introduced to ensure that such a case cannot happen in future.”

The only procedure capable of ensuring government competence is…woops, sorry, there is no such procedure.

The manner in which that patient was treated is only possible in a system where the patient is not the customer. Keep that in mind as the left argues that we need even more regulators and insurance agents in between you and your  doctor, rather than fewer.