http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/04/20/2011-04-20_sharpton_calls_for_coalition_rev_al_joins_immig_effort.html

My first thought when I saw that headline was “Obama has subscribed to the theory that if you put a bunch of monkeys in a room with a piano, they will eventually create a symphony.”

Now I’ve decided that is probably the way he has operated from Day 1.

The media is in a frenzy in their reporting of commercial airplanes landing while the airport traffic controllers were asleep.  As is usually the case, they are only reporting the most sensational aspect of the story.

In every case of which I am aware, the controllers were asleep at airports which experience only a few landings per hour during the period when the sleeping occurred.   I have a private pilot’s license and like most private pilots, would feel entirely comfortable flying into any airport where there was fewer than one landing every five minutes, regardless of time of day without an operating airport tower .  I doubt that commercial pilots, i.e. a pilot and a copilot on a commercial flight, would really find that situation uncomfortable, despite their having to mingle with slower flying small planes.

The government, media and FAA are trumpeting that more controllers are needed (to keep each other awake?).  Not really.  Ask the airlines if they are willing to pay for that shift.

Your turn.

Hertfordkc

Or preventing market meltdowns?  Or undoing years of feel-good programs which are strategically wrong?

My point is that government lacks the insight to anticipate disaster, and the imagination or will to implement any but the most ambiguous of programs.   In the ’60s, the growing importation of foreign oil was the expected result of our economic growth.  Fifty years later, nothing effective has been done about it.  Instead of incrementing the tax on gasoline and getting rid of the monstrosity of IRS and its regulations, Congress mandated changes to cars and added untold pages to the tax code.  Are those really market driven ways to achieve results?  Have they worked?

Cut to the end: There are very few things which we should expect or allow the government to do.  Let’s get people elected who will cut out layers upon layers of waste and wrong-headed programs.

Edmund Conway, Economics Editor of the Telegraph, discusses the IMF report showing that the US faces one of the biggest budget crunches in the world.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100005702/us-faces-one-of-biggest-budget-crunches-in-western-world-imf/

The article is valuable as a marker against the political diatribe in our country.  That is, the article and the underlying statistics were created by those with little or no political interest in the discussion.   While interpretation of some of the statistics may be ambiguous, the overall message is that we are riding very close to the precipice.  For example, our debt as a percent of GDP was higher at the end of WWII than it is now.  So we should be able to overcome the mountain of debt again…right?  Let’s see: Since 1950, we’ve outsourced a huge manufacturing base, we have become heavily dependent on foreign oil, we have developed an enormous entitlement culture, and few, if any, of our politicians seem to see these as subjects of serious concern.

There is much more to be gleaned from the article, but the problems mentioned above should be sufficient to form a coalition of people who see a problem and a few who are willing to take on the DC mindset, and try to preserve some hope for our grandchildren.  Unfortunately, it will probably be our children who will suffer most if there is to be a transition away from big government pouring money on everything in sight.

MSM is frothing over the discovery of emails revealing that Goldman Sachs thought that the housing bubble was about to burst and acted on it.   Would one of my fellow RedStaters who has contacts with MSM please enlighten them about selling high and buying low?

I’d like to insert a rant on  MSM not having a clue about economics, finance, ….  Feel free to help me out.

I’ve avoided worrying about Obama’s being a natural born citizen by thinking that surely election officials would have called foul before the election.  Now I see this in Google news:

”

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Here is the link to the entire article:  http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/22221

If this is for real, he ought to be left in Asheville.

Last night, one of the major networks reported that the financil reform currently being proposed does not include bailouts.  The report went on to say that companies in difficulty would go out of business by a “resolution” process.  Apparently the lenders/creditors would be “protected”.

This would be another distortion of the credit market.

Just as I was emailing squawk@cnbc.com this morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisc) appeared on Squawkbox and delivered rational comments on financial reform and why the “resolution” provision was yet another bit of liberal foolishness.  I’m off to see if I can find a transcript.  Suggest you do the same.

Kent