Confirmed: Bike Shares Are Quintessential Lefty Idiocy

I have long maintained that "bike share" programs are the apotheosis of leftyism, as they are:
1)  monstrously wasteful
2)  a meaningless, symbolic gesture, not anything close to a real solution
3)  aimed at a problem that doesn't exist

When I lived in NYC, the Citi Bike program was so clearly asinine (Citibank marketing people told me, the known losses we're considered "advertising spend").  Now, I've in a small city run be lefties who copycat every last dumb idea of bigger cities, and we have LimeBike.  It too is asinine.

So, I take this to be massive vindication.

Chelsea Clinton Makes Asinine Statement

Here.

The office of President should always be occupied by the person best suited to serve the nation's interests as chief executive and commander in chief.  There is no valid case, at any time, for criteria other than substantive qualities and capabilities.  Superficial characteristics, such as race, gender, or ethnic heritage are not rational basis for determining fitness for office.  Nor is there a valid case that a set of prevailing circumstances or exigencies - a "right time" - require the abandonment of substantive criteria in favor of superficial criteria. 

The young Clinton is simply appealing to tribal instincts to secure political success and, ultimately, power for her caste.

As I said, asinine.

Stress Test Mess

I said that the banks ought to sue over the stress tests if it looked like it was going to be ridiculous.  Turns out that it almost was and they almost did...

"At times, frustrations boiled over. Negotiations with Wells Fargo, where Chairman Richard Kovacevich had publicly derided the stress tests as "asinine," were particularly heated, according to people familiar with the matter. Government officials worried San Francisco-based Wells might file a lawsuit contesting the Fed's findings."

Yeah, I bet the Feds didn't like being called asinine so they were out for WFC.  The WSJ has the behind the scenes story.

Here's another lovely tidbit...

"SunTrust Banks Inc. also persuaded the Fed to significantly reduce the size of its estimated capital gap to $2.2 billion, after identifying mathematical errors in the Fed's earlier calculations, according to a person familiar with the matter."

Well, good thing that the Government did this and we all can have confidence now that the Feds have spoken.  Oh and by the way, the Obama administration figured out the budget wrong, they'll need another $60 billion to pay for their healthcare disaster.

Indeed, the country is in the very best of hands.

Ugh. Why Do Lefties Still Advocate Theft?

I thought I squashed this years ago, but the asinine notion will not go away...

RTWT but here is the beginning...

What exactly is "healthcare"? I will start with the simplest input. It is the knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals - doctors, nurses, EMT technicians, etc. Where does this knowledge come from? Schooling. Lots of very expensive schooling. Granted medical school students are readily financed, but the ultimate financial obligation rests with them, they have invested in ("bought") the intellectual capital of a medical education. It also comes from rigorous on the job training.

and ending...

How did we ever get to the point where we feel that the real cost of all of these inputs (education, land, labor, invention) must be ignored? We blithely bandy about the word "healthcare" with all of its connotations of life and the individual and we think nothing of advocating stealing what is somebody else's property, which is exactly what we do when we invoke the need for "healthcare" at anything less than the full market value of all that it takes to provide it?

Income Inequality...Again...Sigh

I told you in 2011 exactly how the Obamacrats were creating a more unequal society economically speaking.  It might have been by design and through malice or it might have been through well-intentioned ignorance.  I doubt we will ever know, but the recipe was easy to read, the outcome was never in doubt.

Now that Obama is decrying income inequality yet again, people are starting to put the blame where it ought to be.

Income inequality is a subject that is discussed without a shred of nuance and sophistication these days.  It is used to lend a nice-sounding quasi-philosophical veneer to the same old wealth redistribution policies of the left.  But just a quick few takeaways on income inequality that I have discussed at length here before...

- "Income Inequality" isn't good, but it is better than "poverty."  Relatively speaking we don't have poverty in this country to any meaningful extent.  So, income inequality is a high class problem.

- "Income inequality" is a political problem, not an economic one.  A thriving economy tends to reduce income inequality, but reducing income inequality does not spur the economy.  Leftward politicians tell us that it is an economic problem, but they tell us alot of asinine stuff.

- While "income inequality" is a political problem, it is not a political mandate.  "All men are created equal" does not mean that 'all men must earn the same.'  Equality of economic outcomes is not a founding principle of our republic.  We did not fight a civil war over salary gaps, and we have not asserted ourselves on the world stage over the Gini Coefficient.  American values do not dictate income leveling, they dictate opportunity leveling and liberty extension and preservation.

UPDATE:  Here is a riff on point number one above (and here was my previous take).  In America, most of our poor peoples' problems are that they are too fat and watch too much TV.  These are first world problems.

More Left Wing Penis Envy

Furthering my theory that crappy colleges disproportionately exhibit the asinine totalitarianism of the left more than, say, the Ivy League or other hallowed institutions (although they do it too).

I mean really...Dixie State?  Dixie State probably shouldn't exist, let alone be allowed to treat students this way.

Once Again...Early But Never Wrong...Venezuela Version

Well, I've been early on this call for awhile but it seems that Venezuela is finally, not just circling, but going down the drain.  I view Mary O'Grady at the WSJ as a suitable authority, and she says civil war is either here as we speak or inevitable now.  There's not much more to say at this point, except to take ongoing digs at all the useful idiots like Danny Glover and Sean Penn and Robert Kennedy Jr. who touted Chavismo with patently asinine assertions such as 'Venezuela has great healthcare.'  That and to watch the bodies pile up.  Such a tragedy.  Anybody with a cursory understanding the history of the 20th century could have seen this coming.  Worth reprising my view...

Where Venezuela is now is where ALL SOCIALISM ends.  Always.  Full stop.

And, frankly, the Venezuelans deserve their fate. They bought the bill of goods that Chavez and his criminal gang were selling for years.  Enthusiastically too.  They fell pathetically into a trance under the transparently cynical cult of personality that Chavez built around himself.  And they had the misery of nearby Cuba as well as the recent examples of the USSR and Argentina to learn from.  But learn they did not.  They were dupes of a world-historical magnitude...some of the greatest suckers ever to walk the planet.

P.S. Here is my next prediction, which may take years to prove true - the Obama administration clandestinely propped up the Chavez/Maduro regime

Rep. Tom Davis Has It Exactly Backwards

Tom Davis, apparently a very important Republican Sausage Factory Worker feels that Republicans must separate from George W. Bush, who he dubs as "radioactive." Davis is clueless. The Republican Party's basic problem is they have broadly abandoned their principles in a stunningly self-imposed destructive spiral downward. No one man could possibly achieve the level of cluelessness, denial, and cynicsm that has been the cause of Republican woes. It took a village...of idiots. Top of my list on this roster...Don Young. Young is the poster child for the unrepentant, entitlement-mentality that drives excessive, corrupt and rapacious raiding of taxpayer dollars for self-aggrandizement and personal incumbancy. Add to the list every member that defended and/or voted for any of Don Young's spending orgies (and given cover by asinine statements like Tom DeLay's declaration that all waste had been eliminated) and voted down Jeff Flake's courageous attempts to pull the party back from the ledge. Also, high on the list, squishy Senators like George "Cry Me A River" Voinovich, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Spector, and Lindsay Graham. Of course, there's the adolescent minds walking around in the bodies of putative adults, such as Mark Foley and Larry Craig. Oh, don't forget the outright crooks like Duke Cunningham.

Drilling in ANWR. The Republican dominated Sausage Factory couldn't push that through. Tax cuts. I've enjoyed them, but they're expiring thanks to their squishiness. Now they're scrambling to bail out people who made bad home-buying decisions. Still (still!) you want to spend billions on obnoxiously inefficient and distortionary farm and energy bills. All the while resisting any and every attempt to hold themselves to basic standards of accountability and transparency. Well, the ultimate accountability mechanism is in the offing - getting booted from office.

I, and many others like me, have been and would be 'money in the bank' votes for Republicans this November if it weren't for the embarrassing and frustrating Republican congress of the last 10 years. These Republicans have sawed off the small government leg of the stool that Reagan built. If I could "hit replay" and redo the last eight years with either George W. Bush or the Republican congress, I'd cashier the bozos in the Sausage Factory and keep GWB. Got that, Rep. Davis? Your buck passing and finger-pointing over your upcoming electoral prospects is perfectly apt for the cluelessness and detachment with which you have conducted yourselves over the years. I hope you lose. I hope many more Republicans lose. There is no resurrecting the small government, pro-growth, free-trade agenda with you and your ilk running the GOP.

UPDATE: If you want to know what I mean, check out this exchange. Larry Kudlow hits with some hard questions and just listen (read) to the meely-mouthed, weasel act that Rep. Eric Cantor puts out. Atrocious.

MORE: Here and , especially, here.

Note to Brilliant Politician, Pirates Don't Have Checking Accounts

If you'd asked me in the last few months or so to imagine what scenario might produce the most laughably asinine policy reaction, it would have been either "Barney Frank seeks to fix the banks once and for all" or "Hillary Clinton Tackles Scourage of Piracy." Well, obviously we have our winner. Instilling fear of visiting Davy Jones's Locker this is not.

Will China and the iPad Save Us?

Bob Samuelson is worried about another Depression. Readers of NBfPB know that I am deeply worried about it too. We have two factors in our favor now though that go under appreciated. One, China. China is a massive growth locomotive that we didn't have in decades past and they can't be bothered with all the growth stifling horsepucky that we are indulging in here in the West. They are full steam ahead with no apologies (because the leaders will all get lynched if they do otherwise- it is a good motivator). Two, communication technology. Today, we know just how bad our leaders are screwing up and just how venal, feckless, or out to lunch they are in nanoseconds, whereas it used to take a long time for people to internalize just what poor quality of leadership inhabits the halls of power. Just as one small example, it takes barely seconds after Mayor Bloomberg makes a giganticly asinine statement for it to be all over hundreds of media outlets that reach numerous types of devices used by all walks of society. That makes our democracy more responsive (which is probably why Obama doesn't like it). Of course, we could avoid making the bad policy choices in the first place and we wouldn't have to fall back on the speculative backstops of China and a more responsive political system made so through technology, but that would be too easy.

Asinine Notion Will Not Go Away

The idiocy that healthcare should be a human right continues to infect thinking and thus our policy debates. So, I have to go back to the archives to reprise an oldie but a goodie (that I am sure will attract the ire of those who got their triple bypasses for $500 and thinks we all, or at least most of us, so be so treated). So let's go back and review some fundamentals.

The Most Assinine Platitude in America Today

And there are all alot of them, but here it is:"People have a right to affordable healthcare."Let's examine. What exactly is "healthcare"? I will start with the simplest input. It is the knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals - doctors, nurses, EMT technicians, etc. Where does this knowledge come from? Schooling. Lots of very expensive schooling. Granted medical school students are readily financed, but the ultimate financial obligation rests with them, they have invested in ("bought") the intellectual capital of a medical education. It also comes from rigorous on the job training. Internships are brutally intense and pay very little, so again there is a big personal investment in the hands-on training required to provide "healthcare." Then there are intangible, yet important, aspects of "healthcare" like a doctor's bedside manner, for lack of a better term. This is essentially a doctor's interpersonal skills, communication ability and so on, all things that are valuable and obtainable at cost as well (granted, to some it comes naturally, but mostly this too is acquired at a real cost). All of this is bought and paid for, it someone's property. Why do I have a right to any of this? Do I have a right to the benefits of an electrical engineer's training, in the form of subsidized consumer electronics, at below market value? How about a lawyer's advice or financial planner's expertise? No, I have to pay the going rate for these things. Why is a doctor's bought-and-sweated-for knowledge and experience mine to have by rights at anything less than the going rate?

You can extend the analysis to medical equipment - ultrasound imagers, MRIs, blood analyzers, etc. Someone invents these things and someone has to build them, from raw materials, in a factory where workers are paid and electrical bills are incurred, etc. Do I have a special right to the use of such equipment at a special rate that is deemed to be "affordable" yet may not cover the input resources?

Hospitals too. A building of steel and concrete, built on somebody's land, by a construction crew...you get the point.

How did we ever get to the point where we feel that the real cost of all of these inputs (education, land, labor, invention) must be ignored? We blithely bandy about the word "healthcare" with all of its connotations of life and the individual and we think nothing of advocating stealing what is somebody else's property, which is exactly what we do when we invoke the need for "healthcare" at anything less than the full market value of all that it takes to provide it?

And this is not to even contemplate the variations in quality of "healthcare." What should be affordable? A John Hopkins-educated doctor? A Central State-educated doctor? A 2006 model MRI or a 2002 model? But that is another post.So there it is, in all its idiotic glory, the dumbest platitude in policy discussions today. Say it with gusto and look completely foolish.