Interesting piece by Joseph Curl at The Washington Times. I don’t always agree with curl, but this whole article is chock full of really great stuff. It’s worth a read. My favorite quote:
“When I said, ‘Change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say, ‘Change we can believe in tomorrow,’ ” [Obama] said in Chicago. “Not, ‘Change we can believe in next week.’ We knew this was going to take time, because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”
Wouldn’t a dictatorship be so much better?
Lewa Pardomuan at Reuters:
Bullion roared to record highs above $1,700 an ounce on Monday as an unprecedented downgrade to the U.S. credit rating sent investors scrambling out of riskier assets, hammering equity markets and the dollar.
The ask is $1705.25 at the time of writing. It was curious to see gold fall with the market on Thursday’s massive loss. My guess: lots of investors were subject to margin calls as a result of the drop and had to sell assets that were still worth something to cover them. It makes sense to see a rise in gold directly afterwards, because the margin-covering sales were suppressing the price. I don’t know this for a fact, but suspect there is a positive correlation between the VIX and the price of gold.
CBS Denver:
The Transportation Security Administration has apologized to an Aurora woman after taking her insulin before she boarded a flight. The incident happened at Denver International Airport on Thursday. The woman, who is six months pregnant, was getting ready to board a flight to Phoenix. She said she had traveled with her insulin before and never had a problem.
Shameful.
UPDATE: Just thought this was worth noting:
“Me and my husband traveled to Israel recently and I had double the amount and Israel gave us less of a hard time traveling than we had on American soil.”
Jacob Szeto at Oregon Capital News:
George Custer began seeking “investors” soon after the City acknowledged it would be laying off eight city employees, about one quarter of the staff, to fill the budget gap, saying it was a win-win for the City and the citizens.
So, the plan here is to get a loan from your citizens, then pay them off with their own tax money at some point in the future? Sounds like a win-win to me. It’s just too bad they don’t have any corporate jet owners in Oakridge,1 so they can pay their fair share.
One citizen, Eddie Roberts, was approached for a loan and hit it out of the ball-park:
Why would I loan them money if they can’t even balance their checkbook each month?
I’m wonder when our lenders at the national level will start asking themselves that question.
WGY.com:
A Colonie woman has been sentenced to 2-6 years in prison on welfare fraud and grand larceny charges. Angela Lopez must also pay over $65,000 in restitution to Social Services, almost $30,000 to Social Security, and close to $5,000 in fees to Albany County Probation. Albany County D.A. David Soares says between 2005 and 2009, Lopez received Medicaid assistance and food stamps, but didn’t report under the table income she got during that time. She also didn’t report that income or property owned by her family when applying for SSI benefits.
This, after Lopez pled guilty and then attempted to rescind the plea. Pro-tip Lopez: don’t bring a Louis Vuitton handbag to your court hearing when you are accused of defrauding the welfare system. You also may want to hide the boat in your driveway, and maybe two of your three vehicles.
I’d like to think this kind of thing is rare. However, looking at how much entitlement spending has exploded over the past several decades, common sense would seem to indicate that welfare fraud is rampant. I hope that the budget crises sweeping many states (particularly the more liberal ones, like mine) will result in more prosecutions for defrauding the taxpayers.