Sherrod Brown Takes Credit for Rewarding Failure

It is official Federal policy to reward failure and punish success. Here is the latest headline form Ohio:

Ohio gets $148 million to help unemployed keep their homes

Great. If your mortgage is in trouble and you want government assistance, get rid of your job. You have to fail to succeed in this environment.

As for Sherrod Brown, he wants some of the credit for reqarding failure:

Sen. Sherrod Brown said in a statement that "Ohio's cities have been on the frontline of the foreclosure crisis for over a decade and should have all the resources necessary to rebuild our communities.''

"These homeowners and communities deserve more assistance than they have been receiving (from the federal government) and today the federal government is giving it to them,'' Brown said.

"Deserve more assistance????" What have the done to "deserve" more assistance other than to fail? What a moron.

I believe in helping those in need. But not through government. Government can be counted on to do so stupidly (all the wrong incentives), wastefully (bus loads of bureaucrats), and with a large helping of fraud on the side.

Sherrod Brown's Evil Tax Bill

Cross-posted from dumpsherrodbrown.com:

Looney left Sherrod Brown is at it again. After the Democrats created massive opportunities for abuse of federal dollars, in part by bailing out AIG and others, Sherrod Brown wants to punish the giving of bonuses by bailed out institution, to the tune of a 56% tax rate. So he introduced a bill to tax after-the-fact bonuses given by AIG and other bailed out companies.

We all hate greed with federal dollars. The real solution is to be stingier with those dollars in the first place. Cut federal pork. The porkulus and other massive spending bills make waste and abuse inevitable.

It is horrible tax policy to pass a punitive tax after-the-fact on money previously paid. Tax policy should never be used for punitive purposes. Of course, horrible policy is Sherrod's middle name.

If the bill passes, you can be quite sure that innocent will be punished with the guilty.

If there is a problem (and it does sound pretty bad), ex post facto tax policy is a truly evil way of dealing with it.

Update: Full disclosure. I did not receive any bail out money. I did not receive any bonuses from TARP money. 'Nuff said.

Sherrod Brown Gets It Wrong; No Surprise There

Updated

Ohio's idiot Senator Sherrod Brown is at it again. This time he is complaining about President Obama's jobs proposals, including eliminating the capital gains tax.

While clearly the capital gains tax needs to go the way of the telegraph and buggy whip, I have to agree that the elimination of the capital gains tax is no quick fix. It will increase employment in the long run, but is not likely to have great effect in the short run. It will not immediately encourage new employment. It will end the penalty associated with cashing in investments, so the investment can be converted to new business. That will help employment, but again, over the long run.

Sherrod Brown's plan is, you guessed it, a new government program. He wants to tax (i.e., discourage) productivity and create a new government program to loan money to small businesses. He wants to do to business loans what last October banking disaster was for mortgage foreclosures.

Earth to Sherrod: We don't need MORE government programs. We need fewer government programs that stifle productivity and discourage entrepreneurs. Return to real Federalism, where the states regain sovereign powers under the United States Constitution.

Here are some ideas that are really radical.

1. Trim or eliminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is way past its prime. Money spent there generates diminishing returns. We are spending more and more to eliminate less and less contamination. If the states want such an agency, let the states do it. They already do, in fact. For interstate problems, they can do an interstate compact in appropriate cases.

2. Dump the entire Department of Labor. Get rid of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. If the states want it, let the states do it. We don't need a National Labor Relations Board. It kills jobs. If the states want such boards, let them enact them. We don't need anything that the Department of labor does on the national level. There is nothing that it does that, if desirable, could not be done by the states.

3. Eliminate or severely trim the Department of Transportation. Other than administering highway grants and maybe running the air traffic control system, there is little or nothing that could not be done better and cheaper by the states.

4. Eliminate the Department of Education. It educates nobody. To the extent that is has desirable programs, let the states do the necessary.

These are job killers. And the federal government has plenty more. Eliminate them.

I am not talking about unfunded mandates, either. Taxes should be cut to let the states take up the slack.

That would be a real jobs bill ... except for federal government workers. Most of them would migrate to state work, although probably taking pay cuts. But, my sympathy level is not great on their account.

Don't expect Sherrod to listen, though. More government program means more government and less liberty. That is just fine with him. He is simply a more and bigger government kind of guy.

Sherrod Brown is the worst thing to hit Ohio since Bob Taft.

Update: I can think of plenty more federal agencies who job-inhibiting functions would be severely curtailed if not eliminated: Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Department of Energy and on and on.

Once upon a time, the United States had the greatest innovation and growth in both technology and the economy in the entire world. We were a growing power. Now the United States appear to in in decline. Why? Government. Government is most efficient in only one thing: inhibiting innovation. One-size-fits-all regulation is really, really good at that. Domestically, government is all about a small (well, no longer small) group of people getting their jollies by telling the rest of us what we have to do. We have a government loaded with mini-despots. If you don't believe me, go the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get anything done beyond routine renewing tags or a driver's license.

Unethical Health Care Deals

Seven state attorneys general are now investigating Harry Reid's cash for cloture corruption.

The problem is that even if the deals are "legal" and do not violate written rules of ethics, they are still unethical and immoral from the good government sense.

Sherrod Brown remains silent on cash-for-cloture deals. Maybe he can't figure out what is going on. He really does not seem too swift.

For a recent column on the corrupt deals, read Michelle Malkin.

Update: There are eight attorneys general investigating the unethical deals.

Dump Sherrod Brown

Ohioans have a very poor Democratic Senator, Senator Sherrod Brown. As far as I have been able to tell, he has never had a real (i.e., non-government) job in his life. There is a Sherrod Brown FAQ at a blog called "Dump that Moron Sherrod Brown."

Let us hope he gets defeated at the next opportunity. He is so far left, that on all public policy issues, he is beyond reasoning with. He is a complete statist. He is bad news.

Frankly, I get the impression that he is not very bright, either.

Government Jobless Programs Kill Jobs

The Associated Press is reporting on the job losses being cause directly by increased unemployment taxes needed to pay jobless benefits.

It is an example of the rule: If you punish work (by taxing it) and reward non-work, what do you expect to get? IF you punish employers for having employees (by increased payroll taxes such as unemployment taxes), how do you expect employers to react?

If the cost of having employees exceeds the income generated, employers MUST get rid of employees.

As I see it, the heart of the problem is having full time legislator. These folks do not have to make a living in the real world. Those that have in the past (unlike that dunce, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio), seem to forget what it was like when they did.

(I throw in the gratuitous insult to Senator Brown, because this is a guy that as far as I have been able to determine, never had a job outside government, and consistently votes far left. His understanding of economics [based upon his public statements], has all the economic sophistication of a middle-school Marxist. A nice, sincere, but totally clueless guy. A dunce with advanced degrees. Bad for Ohio and the United States. He is as bad as Maxine Waters and Barbara Boxer. And that is really, really bad.)