DAVID BOAZ: Axelrod Is Shocked, Shocked to Find Corporate Money in Elections. “Someone should ask Obama and Axelrod whether they accepted corporate contributions in Illinois, whether they fought to end that system, and whether they think democracy still exists in Illinois. But as far as I can tell, no one has, including ABC, NBC, and CNN, all of whom interviewed Axelrod this morning.”
CALIFORNIA UPDATE: California unemployment and Oklahoma’s growth – it’s the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ in reverse.
UPDATE: Reader Clifford Grout writes: “Wouldn’t that be the ‘Arugula of Wrath’?”
STILL GOING AFTER THOSE GITMO LAWYERS. Not sure what to make of this — but if John Ashcroft had staffed the Civil Rights Division with a lot of folks who had represented white supremacists, I know what the narrative would be.
THE OBVIOUS SOLUTION IS UNARMED COPS. You know, like in Britain. AP: Memphis police at fault in Pentagon shooting. Disarm the police now! If it saves just one life, it’s worth it . . . .
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Pull the plug, Barack: It’s a mistake to try to ram through health care reform.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG follows my example.
EUROPE TRASHES ACTA as Obama praises it. It sounds like my infallible Bush predictor from the very first week of InstaPundit works for Obama, too . . . .
TOYOTA UPDATE: Investigation Questions Prius Driver’s Story. “A federal investigation of the Toyota Prius involved in a dramatic incident on a California highway last week found a pattern of wear on the car’s brakes that raises questions about the driver’s account of the event.”
A HAPPY PI DAY BLOGGIVERSARY to Ginny Ray. Like the cookies.
UPDATE: Speaking of Pi Day: MIT Announced Its Admissions Decisions Today (3.14) at 1:59 — 3.14159.
AUGH! MY EYES! Is this picture real? Please tell me it’s a photoshop . . . .
COMMERCIAL SPACE UPDATE: SpaceX says Falcon 9 rocket test fire is a success.
AN INTERVIEW WITH LYNNE OLSON, author of Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour.
ANDREW IAN DODGE: Reaction to the Inaugural British Tea Party Event. “It might be a tea party with a British twist, but the attendees’ basic concerns are the same as those of any tea party protester across the U.S.”
DR. HELEN: A YEAR OF GOING GALT, a discussion with Ed Hudgins of The Atlas Society. (Bumped).
2,000 TURN OUT FOR WISCONSIN TEA PARTY CONVENTION. (Via Ben Cunningham).
Meanwhile, also in Wisconsin, a much smaller and racially monochromatic “coffee party” event:
The tea party movement has been criticized for being “racist” because of the alleged lack of minority participation. The Milwaukee coffee party that I attended did not have a single member of any minority group, although I strongly suspect that the alternative lifestyles community was well represented.
Read the whole thing.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Two IRS Agents Demand Past-Due Taxes From Car Wash Owner: 4 Cents (Plus $202.31 Interest and Penalties).
Zeff, who also owns local parking lots and is the president of the Midtown Business Association, finds the situation a bit comical. “It’s hilarious,” he says, “that two people hopped in a car and came down here for just 4 cents. I think (the IRS) may have a problem with priorities.”
They were reportedly “very aggressive, very condescending,” too. I think they deserve some condescension themselves. The agents’ names aren’t given, which is too bad. But if IRS folks are asking “why do they hate us?” stories like this might be a good place to start . . .
UPDATE: A longstanding IRS reader emails with a contrary take:
Let’s say I’m an employer, I have employees that I pay as employees, iow I withhold federal, state, local and payroll taxes. The money that I withhold I deposit on some recurring schedule, it varies, but at the end of each quarter I file a quarterly return that reports the deposits I’ve made in the quarter possibly with a payment and at the end of the return there should be nothing owed. If you file a return late, there’s a penalty. If there’s a balance due there’s a penalty. Gee, we punish activity that we want to see less of, wotta concept.
We consider the deposits to be trust fund monies as the money is actually the employees’ that the business is paying in for them. We take a dim view of playing fast and loose with your employees’ money. If you owe delinquent taxes any money we receive is applied against the actual tax debt and is not applied against penalties and interest until the actual tax is paid. If the dude owed us 202 or 3 dollars and change with a remaining tax debt of $0.04, well, that wasn’t accrued on four cents. That’s just what’s left of the tax that he hasn’t paid up on yet.
If we’ve gotten to the point of sending out revenue officers/agents, it’s because telephone calls and communicating by mail have failed. It’s 2010 and we’re just now visiting in person over 2006 taxes? I’d say he’s been bs’ing us for quite some time and we didn’t go tearing out the driveway looking for scalps. We have a taxpayer assistance office in Sacramento, at least one, and if he’d seen fit to haul is oh so smart self on over when he got the first, second, third, nth notice this would’ve gone away.
The old boy is obviously grandstanding here because we wouldn’t have gone public with the media over this. I see folk every day that are po’d at us because we hold them accountable for their actions. I could be called very aggressive and condescending too as I have a low tolerance for BS. Blame being a retired cavalryman for that.
Well, stay tuned. If there’s more to this story, we’ll probably hear it.
Plus, from the comments in the post above, this: “Refresh my memory–what penalties and interest were assessed on Geithner again?”
Also this: “Just wait until the healthcare police get up and running, won’t that be fun. All else aside, this is an example of the biggest reason for being against government run healthcare.”
DEFENDING THE AMERICAN DREAM with a Flip videocam.
TOXIC. And not in that fun, Britney-Spears way, either.
THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: Prelude to The Pacific. “What better way to prepare for a miniseries about the Pacific theater in World War II than watching an original propaganda film used to inform the troops and the American public on the real thing?” By Frank Capra.
THE CROSS OF OBAMA. The New York Times editors are reminding me of this from Mike Huckabee.
UPDATE: Andrew Morriss writes:
Since I suspect the NYT editors are not familiar with Christian imagery, they might not realize that this is not the best time of year to associate Obama with a cross – we’re in the midst of Lent and still have the passion to come. The whole “suffers, dies and descends to hell” part might be a bit of the Easter story they’d rather not associate with Obama right now. Plus he’s sort of in the Caesar/Pilate/Herod role right now as president (depending on how powerful one thinks the president is). Maybe Easter bunnies and chocolate would be a better theme – I’d rather think of the health care plan as a free basket of chocolate brought by a magical animal than as something on which I am going to suffer and die to redeem the sins of others, even if the latter is a more accurate description.
Indeed.
MONEY QUOTE: “We’re Democrats. We won’t even buy him a toy gun.” (Thanks to reader G.L. Carlson for noticing this).
WELL, THIS IS COMFORTING: Terror Suspects Had Jobs at British Airways and … U.S. Nuclear Facilities.
ANOTHER COFFEE PARTY ORGANIZER COINCIDENCE: “And here’s some more background on Coffee Party organizer Baxter Swilley. He was John Edward’s MO political director at the time. . . . Oh, then he was spokesperson for the Illinois Lt. Gov, who threatened his girlfriend with a knife.” Just another ordinary American fed up with the sewer that modern politics has become. More here. Including identical press releases for Coffee Party events in different states.
BRAVERY: Obama takes on the teachers’ unions.
THIS IS NOT EXCITING ME AS MUCH AS THE IPAD RELEASE: the new lawnmowers are out.
JEREMY LOTT: Do Washington State Democrats Have A Death Wish? “That’s the question many locals must be asking after the Democrat-controlled Senate held hearings last Thursday, with little notice, packed with supporters for a new bill that would impose a statewide income tax.” I wonder if it’ll create the kind of reaction we saw in Tennessee?
TIM CAVANAUGH: How bad is the Lehman bankruptcy report for Geithner?
IF YOU MISSED IT ON SIRIUS/XM SATELLITE RADIO YESTERDAY, the latest PJM Political is now online.
COFFEE PARTY ASTROTURFING? Nonsense. If that were happening, CNN and MNSBC would have told us. . . .
VIDEO: Ed Morrissey at Minnesota’s “Kill the Bill” Rally.
MICHAEL BARONE: Tea party brings energy, change and tumult to GOP. “The Republicans for the last two decades have been a party whose litmus tests have been cultural issues, especially abortion. The tea partiers have helped to change their focus to issues of government overreach and spending. That may be a helpful pivot, given the emergence of a millennial generation uncomfortable with crusading cultural conservatism.”
MAIMON SCHWARZSCHILD: “The economics of legal education today seem unsustainable to me. . . . Then again, unsustainability seems to be a theme in much of the country’s – and not only this country’s – economics and politics today.”
TROUBLE FOR RUSS FEINGOLD? “A new Wisconsin Policy Research Institute poll shows Tommy Thompson (R) leading Sen. Russ Feingold (D) in a possible U.S. Senate match up, 51% to 39%.” State polls are iffy, but this is a big margin. (Via NewsAlert.)
COFFEE PARTY boycotting Fox News? “They did not accept the interview invitation because it would be ‘focused on fostering ongoing political divisions…’”
HOPE AND CHANGE: Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest. They told me if I voted for John McCain we’d see a burgeoning Police State — and they were right!
DOMINO’S PIZZA TRACKER: Not what it’s cracked up to be?
MICHAEL BARONE: The Coffee Party Miniphenomenon.
On Wednesday, the day of Barack Obama’s appearance in St. Louis, 2,225 showed up for a tea party rally in St. Charles County and 2,300 participated in a protest outside a Democratic fundraiser in downtown St. Louis. In contrast, 30 people attended a coffee party gathering in St. Louis on Saturday.
The numbers tell you something. Something that the CNN producers might want to take note of.
Actually, I think it’s something they’re trying very hard to ignore . . . .
SARAH PALIN IS Obama By Proxy. “I used to dismiss these contradictions as simply hypocrisy, but perhaps these people are angry at Palin because of her perceived similarities to Barack Obama, not in spite of them. They need someplace to ground the lightning of their frustration and disappointment, and they’re not allowed to be angry at Obama. . . . Sarah Palin is a convenient hate fetish for increasingly nervous and confused Left, because she embodies the qualities of the red-state America they loathe… and serves as a voodoo doll for uncomfortable criticisms of Obama, which they project onto her.”
UPDATE: Reader Steve Hendren writes: “I thought the same thing about Tiger Woods during his recent spate of personal problems. Can’t bring yourself to criticize The One? Have a go at Tiger, instead….” Yeah. I think Tiger’s public persona did a lot to help Obama early on — I heard plenty of explicit comparisons, in fact — so the connection’s even more close.
RETRO-FUN: Remembering Operation.
IN KNOXVILLE, black pastors complain about abortions. You don’t see this kind of thing much.
IS IT WES CRAVEN, OR MONTY PYTHON? The Hill: Do Dems have to finish healthcare by Easter?
THOSE BIGOTED NORWEGIANS: Noted Homophobe Named Norway’s “Role Model of the Year.”
ARE SOME RACES MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS? “How will the Obama administration respond to a formal complaint in the wake of serious black-on-Asian violence at South Philadelphia High School? . . . According to Asian advocates, the whole Philadelphia district has been plagued by harassment and violence towards Asian students for many years. At SPHS, the assaults have occurred in the cafeteria line, in bathrooms, in stairwells, on school buses, and elsewhere. The incidents ran the gamut from verbal abuse, physical intimidation, blocking doorways, cutting in line ahead of Asian students in the cafeteria, use of anti-Asian racial epithets, and more serious physical abuse including shoving, kicking, and punching—sometimes at the hands of more than one assailant. Advocates have accused school officials, including school Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and Principal LaGreta Brown (both black) of indifference to the plight of Asian students in their charge.”
I’m sure Eric Holder will be right on this.
DAN MITCHELL: Keynesian Economics and the Wizard Of Oz.
LONDON TIMES: Does Barack Obama give a damn about us?
Rubes! “The paradox is Europeans think Obama is one of them, that he ran [for office] on repairing American relations with them — damaged by Bush and the war in Iraq — and now feel he doesn’t care about them.” He cares. Hating is a form of caring.
NOAH POLLAK ON the Obama-Israel crisis.
MAKING POVERTY PERMANENT.
SPRING FORWARD: Daylight Savings Time starts today.
ANOTHER “RUBE” SELF-IDENTIFIES: “We are shocked and stunned at the Administration’s tone and public dressing down of Israel,” Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman said in a statement.
UPDATE: Reader Anne Butzen writes:
Had to chuckle when I saw that quote from Mr. Foxman. I receive fundraising letters from the ADL now and then, and always marvel at his harangues – to read him, you’d think that Evangelical Christians were the greatest threat to world Jewry today. So this must have come as a terrible shock to him. If it actually causes him to wake up to the real world, though, then it may be a blessing in disguise.
I’d be surprised, but we’ll see.
“MY INVESTIGATION REVEALS THAT WE’RE KINDA UNPOPULAR:” The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is investigating more than 70 threatening jokes or inappropriate statements made to IRS agents about the Feb. 18 attack on an IRS building in Austin, Texas.
My feeling is that if the President can “joke” about illegal audits, then IRS folks should have to put up with “inappropriate” humor too.
IN SEARCH OF the perfect doughnut.
BOX OFFICE FLOP? Matt Damon’s ‘Green Zone’ Could Open to Less Than $15 Million. “The moral of the story? If you’re going to trash America and the troops, use Smurfs.”
UPDATE: A real Green Zone film would look more like this report from Toby Harnden. How likely is that to be made . . . .
PHYLLIS CHESLER: Norway, Italy, Iran: The Islamist Takeover, The Push Back.
STEPHEN GREEN: The Week In Blogs.
DAN RIEHL: If You Prick Them, They Will Bleed. “Show up and be heard, or be herded. There are no other choices. This is the time.”
ANOTHER REPORT from the St. Paul “Kill The Bill” rally.
REGULATORS ARE FROM MARS, investors are from Venus?
GIVE CREDIT TO THE JAWA REPORT. I wrote about Army-of-Davids-style antiterrorism in, er, An Army of Davids. And it’s working.
BOINGBOING: Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking UK copyright. “He cites an expert on legislation as saying that the bill will likely die if MPs insist on their right and responsibility to examine this legislation in detail before voting on it.”
No sweat. Just do things the Pelosi Way and “deem” it passed without even voting! It’s the new approach to 21st Century Democracy!
KILL THE BILL: Thousands rally against ObamaCare in St. Paul. Some brought pitchforks.
INSTAVISION: I talk with pollster Scott Rasmussen about the Political Class, the consent of the governed, and his new book, In Search of Self Governance. (Bumped.) By the way, we talk about Rasmussen’s book a lot, and I highly recommend it. It’s short, clear, and very, very insightful.
DONALD SENSING: Government’s New Motto: It’s Good To Be King.
GREECE: The Coming Greek Debt Bubble.
DAVE KOPEL: Is the “Slaughter Solution” Constitutional?
GOOD GRIEF: Pelosi: Health-Care Reform Will Finally Allow Artists to Focus on Being Unemployed, Comfortably. Translation: They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.
SO MUCH FOR NUKING ASTEROIDS: “Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico simulated blowing up asteroids 1 kilometre across. When the speed of dispersal was relatively low, it took only hours for the fragments to coalesce into a new rock.”
AT AMAZON, markdowns at the Automotive Outlet.
2300 SHOW UP FOR ST. LOUIS TEA PARTY, only 30 show up for St. Louis “Coffee Party.” And that 30 includes the “tea party infiltrators.”
IT’S ABOUT TIME: Boosting economic competitiveness in the states.
FAILING UPWARD: Sulzberger’s Pay Doubles.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s overall compensation as chairman of the New York Times Company “more than doubled to $6 million in 2009,” reports Dow Jones Newswires. That during a year during which many Times reporters and editors, who make about $100,000 a year, were subjected to a 5% pay cut, and reporters at the Globe, who make less than those at the Times, took a 5.9% pay cut. Something to remember the next time you read one of those New York Times editorials piously denouncing income inequality.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Maybe he just had a good diversity year. Oops — nope!
MEGAN MCARDLE: How Real Are The Defects In Toyota’s Cars? “Several things are striking. First, the age distribution [of drivers] really is extremely skewed. The overwhelming majority are over 55. . . . At any rate, when you look at these incidents all together, it’s pretty clear why Toyota didn’t investigate this ‘overwhelming evidence’ of a problem: they look a lot like typical cases of driver error. I don’t know that all of them are. But I do know that however advanced Toyota’s electronics are, they’re not yet clever enough to be able to pick on senior citizens.”
Note this Michael Fumento piece, too.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ BLOGS on Muslim conversions to Christianity in the Third World. “One factor driving Islamic militancy in many nations is the sense that Christianity is growing. Outside of the West, evangelism and conversion are two of the most sensitive issues in the modern world.”
DAVID BROOKS flunks political history.
IN THE MAIL: Disaster Law And Policy.
ADVICE TO POLITICAL SCIENTISTS, from Walter Russell Mead: “Rule to live by, folks: when your theory of how the world works starts sounding like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it’s time to recheck those assumptions.”
LET’S HOPE NOT: “Today, in 2008, the price of 1 oz. of gold hit $1,000 for the first time. In future years, this may seem like the floor price.”
Plus, Uh oh. I’m not much of a fan of gold as an investment, though I bought a little bit a couple of years ago, and it’s done better than my stocks. But there’s no escaping regime uncertainty, even with gold.
DAILY MAIL: Congress should listen to states on the EPA. “THE governors of 18 states and two territories – including Democrats Joe Manchin and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear – have called on Congress to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency. The governors, in a letter to congressional leaders, cited the failure of the administration to weigh the economic fallout of EPA’s intention to regulate greenhouse gases.”
ALL THAT PRESIDENTIAL JAWBONING DIDN’T HELP: Las Vegas jobless rate hits all-time high of 13.1 percent.
UPDATE: More recent story here. “Men, minorities hit particularly hard.”
MICHAEL FUMENTO: Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax.
VERONIQUE DE RUGY: Is Foreign Ownership Of Our Debt A Threat To The United States? Plus this useful graphic.
PETER BERKOWITZ: Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen.
What does this scandal say generally about the intellectual habits and norms at our universities?
This is a legitimate question, because our universities, which above all should be cultivating intellectual virtue, are in their day-to-day operations fostering the opposite. Fashionable ideas, the convenience of professors, and the bureaucratic structures of academic life combine to encourage students and faculty alike to defend arguments for which they lack vital information. They pretend to knowledge they don’t possess and invoke the authority of rank and status instead of reasoned debate.
Read the whole thing.
THE PRESIDENT IS NOT A BRAND.
From the comments: “President Edsel.”
MARCH 16TH: The People Surging Against ObamaCare. Marching on Washington Tuesday. I’m told PJTV will be covering it live.
FORCE OF NATURE? I think Sissy Willis kind of has a thing for Dan Riehl. At least a blog-crush, anyway . . . .
AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.
