Taxes Shrugged

American Labor Unions Are Looking Weak...

Workers in Peru who turn up drunk in the morning cannot be fired, the country's top court has ruled.

The Constitutional Tribunal made the historic ruling in the case of a caretaker in the district of Chorrillos.

Pablo Cayo was given the sack for being intoxicated at work, but his employer has now been ordered to give him his job back.

Fernando Calle, one of the justices at the court, said that although Mr Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody.

The ruling has been attacked by the government for setting a dangerous precedent.

"It's not a good idea to relax rules at workplaces," said labour Minister Jorge Villasante.

Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, also denounced the ruling.

"We've fired four workers for showing up drunk, and two of them were drivers," he said.

"How can we allow a drunk to work who might run somebody over?"

However, Mr Calle said the court would not revise its decision.

By Andrew Roth From the Club for Growth DUMB LAWS blog

Required for TARP Reading

Testing

Testing the iPhone app

The Market Has Little Hope For Obama's Change

This was easy to predict.  Gosh- I did predict this.  The market will continue to drop as people and business liquidate assets and trim payrolls.  No one is going to wait around to see what this anti-market administration is going to do.  Which reminds me- has the sale of the Miami Dolphins been completed yet? 

Stocks Slide in Dow Average’s Worst Inauguration Day Drop

The S&P 500 plunged 5.3 percent to 805.22. The S&P 500 Financials Index fell 17 percent to below its lowest closing level since March 1995 as concern European banks need more capital also weighed on the group. The Dow average slid 332.13 points to 7,949.09. Both the Dow and S&P 500 retreated to two- month lows.

The S&P 500 is off to its worst start to a year, shattering the biggest rally since World War II, as analysts cut earnings estimates by a record 83 percentage points and companies signal worse to come.

The S&P 500 is down 11 percent in the first 12 trading days of 2009, exceeding last year’s 9.2 percent drop, according to data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1928. The decline helped erase more than two-thirds of a 24 percent rally since Nov. 20 as optimism that government spending would revive the economy evaporated.

Madoff Scandal Hits Liberal Sacred Cow

Planned Parenthood makes staff cuts

By Miriam Kreinin Souccar

Published: January 9, 2009 - 2:41 pm

Hit with declines in funding from the economic crisis and the Madoff scandal, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is laying off around 20% of its staff.

Obama Heralds Growth of Gov. and Increases in Agency Authority

Obama Wrote Federal Staffers About His Goals
Workers at Seven Agencies Got Detailed Letters Before Election

In wooing federal employee votes on the eve of the election, Barack Obama wrote a series of letters to workers that offer detailed descriptions of how he intends to add muscle to specific government programs, give new power to bureaucrats and roll back some Bush administration policies.

The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth

Couldn't have said it better myself.  I've yet to witness the famed oratory prowess of "the one" and got a very third-world feeling while observing the glazed-over looks of the stump speech attendees.  I am currently re-reading The True Believer by Eric Hoofer to better understand the ill mindset some are possessed by-

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.

Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.

If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves.  It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.

WaPo Says: Bailout Lacks Oversight Despite Billions Pledged- Really? Ya Think?

Watchdog Panel Is Empty; Report Is Unfinished

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008; A01

For their part, lawmakers have yet to nominate the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel, though leaders of both parties said they hoped they would be named by the end of the month and start work by December. People familiar with the matter said possible nominees included current and former government and industry officials, though some had to recuse themselves because of conflicts of interest.

The panel's mandate is to look at the use of Paulson's authority and the impact of the program on the financial markets and mortgage crisis.

This quote is beyond irksome.  Remember this is a man that didn't see the need for additional oversight at Fannie and Freddie when republicans were proposing a much needed overhaul.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said his concerns about oversight diminished after the Treasury program's focus shifted from purchases of financial firms' troubled assets to capital injections into companies. "The concern was they'd be buying assets and we wouldn't know the price," Frank said. The revised bailout program "doesn't have the conflicts of interest and the other things people were concerned about."

The delays in selecting both the special inspector general and the congressional oversight panel have prevented the release of a detailed oversight report required in the legislation. Under the law, the congressional panel was required to release a report 30 days after the bailout program began, a deadline that has passed. It is supposed to issue a more elaborate report on the financial regulatory process by Jan. 20, a deadline congressional aides said will be nearly impossible to make.

Please Don't Make the Generation Obama Choose Again

The New Economic Plight: Textbooks or Birth Control

By Ken Shepherd

The media finally have an excuse to put a more youthful spin on the classic food vs. prescription drugs meme. A changing media environment, after all, calls for new angles at the same old bias. Someone had to give it the old college try.

Somewhere out there some college co-ed is making an agonizing decision: textbooks or birth control.