The Stiletto

License to kill (jobs)

2012-05-17T22:03:14Z

THE DAILY BLADE: Dick Carpenter and Lisa Knepper, directors of strategic research at the Institute for Justice, authored a report, "License to Work," that explains how occupational licences and licensing boards are creating “barriers make it harder for people – particularly minorities and those of lesser means and with less education – to find jobs and build new businesses that create jobs.” They discuss the implications of their findings in this Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Since the 1950s, the number of U.S. workers needing an occupational license – effectively a government permission slip to work – has grown from one in 20 to nearly one in three, according to a 2010 study by Morris Kleiner (University of Minnesota) and Alan Krueger (Princeton). … "License to Work" collected licensure requirements for 102 low- and middle-income occupations – barber, massage therapist, auctioneer and interior designer, for instance –in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

All 102 occupations are licensed in at least one state. These licenses force aspiring workers to spend an average of nine months in education or training, pass one exam, and pay more than $200 in fees. One third of the licenses take more than a year to get. …

License requirements often vary greatly. In five states, aspiring auctioneers must complete about a year or more of training – but only about nine days in Vermont and four days in Pennsylvania.

Is it plausible that cosmetologists need, on average, 10 times as many days to fulfill their educational and training requirements (372) than emergency medical technicians (33), who literally hold lives in their hands? That is the reality in most states. In fact, 66 occupations face greater average licensing burdens than EMTs.

But it’s not just those at the bottom of the economic ladder whose ambitions get crushed by burdensome licensing and regulatory requirements that stifle experimentation and strangle fledgling start-ups. A recent New York magazine article about earnest Brooklyn hipsters laboriously and lovingly producing artisanal foodstuffs, leathergoods and toiletries includes this cautionary tale about Maiden Preserves jam, made by hand in small batches using fresh organic fruit by Alison Roman and Eva Scofield, who both worked at the Williamsburg location of Momofuku Milk Bar:

[W]hen Milk Bar got its own table at the Brooklyn Flea, Kings County’s favorite artisanal trading post, in early 2011, chef Christina Tosi said that any employees with their own project could sell through the Milk Bar table. … Tosi let them use the Milk Bar kitchen during off-hours, and each of the women kicked in a couple of hundred dollars for ingredients and materials …

Roman had her heart set on using one particular jar, a sublime amalgam of glass, rubber, and steel made by a German company called Weck. They were expensive – $1.85 wholesale per jar, compared with others costing about 60 cents each – but Roman and Scofield figured the jars would differentiate their product. …

Williamsburg retailer Bedford Cheese Shop picked them up. The Vanderbilt, a fashionable bar and restaurant in Prospect Heights, started using their jam in a cocktail … West Elm wanted to carry them. Gilt Groupe asked for samples. The women were navigating a well-trod artisan path from hobbyist daydream to entrepreneurial venture, seeming to slalom effortlessly between Brooklyn’s small-is-good ideology and the growth imperative.

But there was a disconnect. The jam sold well at the Brooklyn Flea, but even there, they rarely did more than break even. There were unanticipated expenses – liability insurance, incorporation, various licenses and certifications, logistical snafus. After Milk Bar gave up its Flea table, Roman and Scofield had to rent their own, and after both women stopped working there, they had to rent commercial kitchen space. “People would say, ‘You guys are doing so well,’ ” Roman says. “I’d say, ‘No, we’re not.’ There’s this fantasy, but it’s not as simple as putting fruit in a jar and selling it.”

The two women didn’t realize that the simple act of putting fruit in a jar required incorporation, licensing and certification. These “unanticipated expenses” made it impossible to recover from a bad business decision made when Roman and Scofield were newbie entrepreneurs – and left the partners no leeway to find an alternative for the Weck jar or to tweak their production methods until they could make a go of it without unacceptably compromising their vision. Their business shuttered, and their friendship shattered.

Will Smith, meet Adam Smith

During an interview on French TV, Will Smith gets schooled on the implications on the Buffet rule, and why celebrities who claim they would be happy to “pay their fair share” in taxes should be careful what they wish for:

Smith: I have no issue with paying taxes and whatever needs to be done for my country to grow. I believe very firmly that my ability to sit here – I'm a black man who didn't go to college, yet I get to travel around the world and sell my movies, and I believe very firmly that America is the only place on Earth that I could exist. So I will pay anything that I need to pay to keep my country growing. …

Channel 2: Do you know how much in France you would have to pay on earnings above one million euros [as French President Francois Hollande has proposed]? Not 30%. 75%.

Smith: 75? Yeah, that's different, that's different. Yeah, 75. Well, you know, God bless America.

The palpable shock on Smith’s face as he calculates how little of his own earnings he would be left with, is priceless:

President Obama imitates The Stiletto Blog

[H]ere are all the presidents Barack H. Obama has been compared to during the campaign and after the election, or has something in common with. [The list included every president, except James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Warren G. Harding.]

- “Obama is just about every U.S. president all rolled into one!,” The Stiletto Blog, February 16, 2009

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. ... Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford).

- “Obama drops his name into the other presidential biographies,” Commentary, May 15, 2012

Occupy Wall Street imitates The Stiletto Blog

... a group of very hungry tourists who were unable to get into any restaurants in the area because of police barricades, offered the Little Red Hen $100 per loaf and quickly bought out her entire inventory. One of the tourists happened to own a restaurant and was looking for a bread supplier, and when he tasted the Little Red Hen’s handiwork he offered to go into business with her to start a bakery in Phoenix – where people have been known to line up around the block to buy real Italian bread from a real Italian who emigrated from Back East.

The Little Red Hen used the money she earned from her bread to buy an airline ticket, get an apartment and start a new life as a self-sufficient, productive adult who owned a profitable business that made homesick East Coast transplants in Phoenix very happy.
- The Little Red Hen occupies Wall Street, The Stiletto Blog, November 3, 2011

Tracy Postert, a former down-on-her-luck Occupy Wall Street protester, is now a capitalist running her own financial business. Postert got her big break when Wayne Kaufman, an executive at John Thomas Brokerage, befriended her at Zuccotti Park last October and helped her get a job at his company. Now she’s in business for herself, looking to sell investors comprehensive reports on biotech companies.

“Evidently she became a capitalist,’’ chuckled John Thomas CEO Thomas Belesis. “Our OWS girl has seen the light.”

- “OWSer now ‘capitalist’ businesswoman,” The New York Post, May 14, 2012

In Memoriam

Donna Summer, December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012

A current events round-up for conservatives

2012-05-16T03:10:29Z

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Dispatch From Bizzaroland: The MSM gives President Barack Hussein Obama credit for repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but Republican political strategist Matthew Gagnon, who worked for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), reveals how he once again ended up leading from behind her and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT):

Collins [and] Lieberman had presented Reid with a very reasonable and fair proposal to allow a limited number of Republican amendments on the Defense Authorization bill as a means to secure enough GOP support to invoke cloture on the bill, allowing debate and securing its eventual passage.

Immediately after that meeting (and without telling Collins), Reid marched onto the Senate floor and announced that he was scheduling a vote. Something very strange was happening, because Reid knew that without a deal to allow Republican amendments, the bill would fail. …

[A] report by Greg Sargent of the Washington Post hit, quoting anonymous aides to Reid, claiming that Collins was making unreasonable demands such as an insistence on unlimited debate, which were of course complete fabrications and never part of the proposal she had made. …

Reid and his allies in the White House were actively engaged in a coordinated attempt to torpedo the defense bill and blame Republican hyperpartisanship for its failure and for blocking repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell. …

But Reid got outflanked. Collins, together with Lieberman, unexpectedly introduced a standalone bill to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell, intended to go around Reid’s roadblocks. After a great deal of lobbying to rally a number of other Republicans to support the bill – a necessary step to prevent a filibuster – the Collins bill eventually passed 65-31.

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Obama fought “the good war” in Afghanistan (related article, second item on the page) but the Taliban is now stronger than ever, according to a report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), respectively the chairs of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Intelligence Committee. Their “pessimistic” conclusion, based on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan, “challenges Obama's own assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the ‘tide had turned’ and that ‘we broke the Taliban's momentum,’ ” The Associated Press reports.

For his part, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, characterizes the administration’s efforts to broker a deal to allow Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng to leave China to study in America as “halting, confused and so far inconclusive,” adding that as a result China is more determined to “exploit our perceived weaknesses across the broader relationship” because its leaders have concluded that “America is unwilling or unable to stand firm on its core values and interests.”

Finally, New York magazine political pundit Jonathan Chait writes that he is

not convinced that Obama was ever “in charge” during his presidency. This is what happens when you continually whine about “the mess” that you “inherited” from your predecessor instead of using political suasion and personal charm to get things done. You know, to govern.

† Prediction: Christians Will Be “Extinct” In The Holy Land Within 60 Years (related article, third item on the page): In an interview with The Washington Times Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the foreign minister of Cyprus, says she is concerned about “[t]he fate of the Christian communities in [post-Arab Spring] countries” and that “the principle of protecting and not excluding these communities from the political transformations that are taking place is a vital interest.”

Case in point: Since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011, Coptic Christians “have been the victims of threats and dramatic violence, and they fear the ascendance of political Islam,” The Washington Post reports:

With landmark elections set to begin May 23, many of the country’s Christians fear that the next president could turn Egypt into a conservative Islamic state that does not have room for their community of at least 8.5 million.

Under Mubarak, Christians complained they were treated like second-class citizens – forced to get special permission to build churches, and subjected to hate crimes that went unpunished.

But now, with the race shaping up as a choice between Islamists and former members of Mubarak’s government, most Christians are rallying behind the latter – despite past persecution.

Some are attracted to former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, a Mubarak-era minister who has advocated a separation of religion and state.

Other Christians are rallying behind Ahmed Shafiq, the last premier who served under Mubarak, even though he is derided by revolutionaries as a symbol of the corruption and oppression of the former regime.

In addition to the attacks on churches, Christians have been terrified by other acts of aggression. Ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafists are accused of slicing off a Christian man’s ear over accusations that he rented his apartment to prostitutes. Coptic families in Alexandria were displaced over a rumor that a Coptic man and a Muslim woman were romantically involved.

† College diploma not worth the paper it's written on (related article, sixth item on the page): Kelsey Griffith just graduated from Ohio Northern University with a degree in marketing and $120,000 in student debt. When she was a senior in high school the faculty and admissions staff urged her and her family of modest means – her father is a paramedic, mother teaches preschool and she has four sisters – to ignore the fact that tuition would cost nearly $50,000 a year. She is now looking at having to make $900 a month in loan payments, and feels blindsided. “Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education – up from 45 percent in 1993. This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives,” The New York Times reports:

For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports. …

Colleges are aggressively recruiting students, regardless of their financial circumstances. In admissions offices across the country, professional marketing companies and talented alumni are being enlisted to devise catchy slogans, build enticing Web sites — and essentially outpitch the competition. …

College marketing firms encourage school officials to focus on the value of the education rather than the cost. For example, an article on the cover of Enrollment Management, a newsletter aimed at college admissions officials, urged writers of admissions materials to “avoid bad words like ‘cost,’ ‘pay’ (try ‘and you get all this for...’), ‘contract’ and ‘buy’ in your piece and avoid the conflicting feelings they generate.”

“There are direct marketing ‘words’ that can make or break your piece,” the article, published in 2009, added.

The financial aid award letters to newly admitted students can also be a minefield for students and parents sorting through the true costs of a school. Some are written in a manner that suggests the student is getting a great deal, by blurring the line between grants and loans or not making clear how much the student may have to pay or borrow. …

Many students and parents don’t have a firm understanding of the cost of attending college, or the amount of debt they will incur. And most colleges aren’t much help. Student debt is not their primary concern in the end – the loan money usually gets deposited directly with the colleges, so they get paid either way – and the main job of the admissions staff, after all, is to admit students.

† Does The U.S. Need An Election Monitor? (related article, fifth item on the page): FL election officials updating the state’s voter rolls before the presidential election in November have found 180,000 registered voters who may be non-citizens – and a large number of them have cast ballots in past elections – including the 2000 presidential election, which was decided by just over 500 votes. RedStateNews reports:

Non-citizens are able to become registered voters in Florida because if a non-citizen checks the box on the voter registration form that says they are a citizen they are registered to vote, because the form is signed under oath.

Those registered who are identified as possible non-citizens are reported to the State Attorney’s office The States Attorney may charge anyone who unlawfully registered to vote with a felony.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky, Florida’s investigation is only looking at legal immigrants, not illegal aliens, who may have registered to vote even though they are not citizens. … Florida can’t check for illegal aliens who registered to vote because the Federal government is not giving Florida access to Immigration and Naturalization Service records which would help identify illegals who have registered to vote.

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: Although it’s sorta like teaching a bonobo how to have sex, the House Democratic Caucus and has been trained on how to play the race card. Why school them in doing what comes naturally? The Washington Examiner explains:

Democrats will seek to portray apparently neutral free-market rhetoric as being charged with racial bias, conscious or unconscious.

In her distributed remarks, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion criticized "conservative messages [that are] racially 'coded' and had images of people of color that we commonly see used" and proposed tactics for countering the Republicans' (presumably) racially-coded rhetoric.

According to Wiley's group's website, "right-wing rhetoric has dominated debates of racial justice – undermining efforts to create a more equal society, and tearing apart the social safety net in the process" for over 25 years. …

Wiley proposed the use of "race explicit" anecdotes to illustrate problems like the economic crisis. "Explain how each racial group is affected (recognize the unique pain of each group), but start with people who are White," she wrote in her distributed remarks. "Then raise racial disparities." For example, she offered the line: "Homeownership is the American Dream. It hurts the same to lose your home if you're White, Asian, Latino or Black."

† Obama’s Family Values: Part V: The Boston Herald's Howie Carr is incensed over a book written by President Barack Hussein Obama’s illegal alien Auntie Zeituni titled “Tears of Abuse,” in which she complains about how she has been “victimized” in the U.S. (related article, ninth item on the page):

I have the press release on “Tears of Abuse,” which describes Auntie Zeituni’s journey to the United States “where she faces the unthinkable; failing health and quarantined in a hospital while on vacation in a foreign country.”

Vacation? Surely she meant to say “welfare.”

“As her story unfolds she becomes a resident of (a) homeless shelter and a subject of deportation.”

How dare they! Just because she’s an illegal alien, they want to deport her. …

But Auntie Zeituni’s story has a happy ending.

“ ‘Tears of Abuse’ reveals how this remarkable woman turns the unfathomable into triumph.”

Public housing, on the dole – what else would you call it but a triumph? The inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty needs to be rewritten. Forget the huddled masses yearning to “breathe free.” Now the huddled masses demand to “live free.”

Carr forgets to mention that Auntie Zeituni also received free medical treatment for Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a neurological disorder while in this country illegally. Not that she was grateful for that, either.

† They’re Not Working On The (Long Island) Railroad All The Live- Long Day: A 2008 investigative series published by The New York Times triggered a federal investigation of a widespread scheme by Long Island Rail Road retirees to boost their pensions by falsely claiming disabling injuries (related article, penultimate item on the page). Now, 10 more people are expected to be charged in the case, which would bring the number to 21, The Times reports:

A federal prosecutor emphasized that the investigation was continuing and stressed that a large number of retired railroad workers were being investigated. …

The government has not said precisely how many retired workers were under scrutiny, but another prosecutor, Justin S. Weddle, said in court in March that the investigation covered about 1,500 retirees, although not all of them were under active investigation.

Why am I constipated?

2012-05-15T03:40:51Z

IF THE SHOE FITS: Why am I constipated?

- HealthDayNews, March 28, 2012

The Senate will survive without Lugar

2012-05-15T03:39:20Z

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: The Senate will survive without Lugar

- Commentary, May 7, 2012

Texas school’s name misspelled for 10 years before anyone noticed

2012-05-15T03:38:09Z

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: To honor it’s first teacher, Mrs. Mary McMillan, Sunrise Elementary School in Fort Worth added ‘McMillan’ to its name during the 2003-2004 school year. Somehow, her name was misspelled “McMillian” on the school building – now corrected – as well as on everything else, including awards, business cards, the school’s Facebook page and even the principal’s name badge. And for 10 years, nobody noticed, The Daily Mail of London reports:

McMillan’s relative recently contacted the Fort Worth Independent School District to let officials known about the extra vowel. It is not clear how the name became misspelled or why no one noticed it sooner. …

Principal Marion Mouton and his staff keep finding misspellings to correct.

'Just thinking, 'Wow, all the things we have to do now to fix one mistake,'' he told MyFox Forth Worth.

The Fort Worth Independent School District has not disclosed how much it will cost to fix all the mistakes, but did say it is exhausting all resources to try and keep costs down.

The Stiletto calculates the odds of a typo like this going undetected for so long as one in a “millian.”

Brooklyn man impersonates his dead mother to collect government benefits

2012-05-15T03:36:29Z

WHAT A HEEL: A jury convicted Paul MartinkaThomas Prusik-Parkin of of grand larceny, mortgage fraud and criminal possession of a forged instrument for stealing more than $100,000 in Social Security and other government benefits by donning a wig and pretending to be his mother, who died in 2003 at the age of 73, New York Post reports:

Two videos of Thomas Prusik-Parkin's wacky Norman Bates-like stunt - in which he wore a red dress and a platinum wig - were aired for jurors during the grand larceny trial.

But the admitted admirer of the murderous innkeeper from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic continued to insist he didn't play dress-up games to pull off the creepy con after his mom's 2003 death.

"He maintains it wasn't him in either video," defense lawyer Morris Shamuil said. "He never impersonated his mother, never wore her clothing.

Rejecting a deal from prosecutors that would have sentenced him to time served since his 2009 arrest in exchange for a guilty plea, Prusik-Parkin now faces up to 83 years in prison when he is sentenced on May 21^st.

Affirmative action ad absurdum

2012-05-15T02:47:09Z

GOODY TWO SHOES: In Liberaltopia, where everything’s topsy turvy, the half-Peruvian Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman is labeled a “white Hispanic” by the MSM and the self-proclaimed 1/32^nd (if that) Cherokee MA Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) is considered a minority hire by two prominent law schools.

Despite cheekily citing her family’s high cheekbones as proof of Native American ancestry and claiming that “[b]eing Native American has been a part of my story, I guess since the day I was born,” The Boston Globe reports that she didn’t tell that part of her story until she needed an edge:

[T]he Globe … obtained a portion of Warren’s 1973 application to Rutgers, where she attended law school. That document specifically asks: “Are you interested in applying for admission under the Program for Minority Group Students?” Warren answered “no.”

In addition, a newly unearthed University of Texas personnel document shows that Warren listed herself as “white” when she taught at the law school there from 1981 to 1991.

The undated document, obtained by the Globe through a public records request, supports Warren’s statement that she did not present herself as a Native American when hired for the job. But it leaves open the question of why she later listed herself as a minority in a legal directory that is often consulted by hiring deans.

Commentary accuses Warren of “gaming” the affirmative action system as she clambered up “the greasy pole of law-school professorships”:

From 1986 to 1995, while teaching at the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania, she was listed in the Association of American Law Schools’ annual directory of minority law professors. But once she went to work at Harvard, and could no longer benefit by being a minority, she dropped the minority shtick.

That high cheek-boned great-great-great grandmother of Warren’s is listed in the 1860 Census as “white.” In addition, no documentation exists to suggest that Warren has any Cherokee ancestry and none of her family members is listed on the Dawes Commission's rolls, which Cherokees use to determine tribal citizenship (related article, second item on the page). And as The Washington Times’ James Robbins notes, Warren “did not have any personal ties to the tribe” such as “knowing the Cherokee language, living in or among acknowledged members of the tribe or engaging in traditional rites or ceremonies that are meaningful in Cherokee culture.” As Ann Coulter puts it, Warren “has no more evidence that she's an Indian than that buffoon out of Colorado, Ward Churchill.”

And in a supremely ironic twist, genealogist Michael Patrick Leahy, who looked into Warren’s background, says that her great-great-great grandfather “was a member of a militia unit which participated in the round-up of the Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears … the forced relocation of Native Americans after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It led to the deaths of thousands of Indians, The Daily Caller reports.

Warren is not only a “liar,” writes Coulter, but she “stole the credit of someone else's suffering” and “cheated on affirmative action.”

Warren is as despicable as those two-bit chiselers who pretend to have served or been wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan to avail themselves of free meals, baseball tickets and other perks that patriotic Americans offer as tokens of their admiration and gratitude.

The life of Julia Buffett

2012-05-09T05:01:00Z

THE DAILY BLADE: Both National Review editor Rich Lowry and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) think the generic female Democrat featured in the Obama campaign’s “The Life of Julia” is “creepy.” Ryan thinks it’s “demeaning” for the Obama campaign to promote the idea that a woman should be so dependent on government programs that she needs the paternalistic hand of government to cushion the consequences of the slightest setback. “It doesn’t say much about his faith in Julia.” And as Lowry puts it:

[The government] is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

For his part, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler points out that where things get tricky for Julia – and for the Obama campaign (Three Pinocchios) – is when she is ready to retire and “After years of contributing to Social Security, she receives monthly benefits that help her retire comfortably, without worrying that she’ll run out of savings” (which would have been a concern, had Romney been allowed to cut her benefits by 40 percent):

The most recent Social Security trustees report says that, under intermediate assumptions, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, which would result in a 23 percent reduction in benefits if Congress and future administrations do not deal with the shortfall. …

According to an account in the New York Times magazine, the president offered to accept changes in the benefit formula for Social Security as part of a possible “grand bargain” on reducing the deficit. …

The article was not specific, but “less generous formula” probably refers to changing cost-of living adjustments in Social Security benefits from a wage-linked inflation index to a different, slower growing consumer price index. Generally, most people would perceive this as a benefit cut, which is certainly how liberal groups reacted when the possibility arose during the debt ceiling talks. …

Note how carefully the Obama campaign’s statement is worded. It says that, under Obama, Julia “receives monthly benefits that help her retire comfortably.” It does not promise that projected benefits will not be cut, but it certainly implies that. …

While Romney is proposing a cut in benefits for high-wage earners, candidate Obama in 2008 also targeted high wage earners as a way to extend Social Security’s solvency, proposing a payroll tax increase on people making more than $250,000.

What do the boldfaced bits have to do with Julia? Well, at age 42, when her son Zachary is 12, Julia makes the transition from being a web designer working for someone else to launching her own web business:

Here’s where – contrary to Lowry’s analysis – Julie suddenly finds herself on the wrong end of Obama’s cradle—to-grave government largesse. To put it in terms that Occupiers can understand, Julia becomes The Man.

Instead of being able to sue for wage parity under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, she is the one who will be sued. Julie cannot afford to provide her employees with a government-approved health insurance plan that includes mandates for everything from birth control to gender reassignment surgery, so she pays a $2,000 fine per year for each employee. Finally, under the The Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012 a Subchapter S corporation engaged in a professional service business like Julie’s is on the hook for “her fair share” of payroll taxes. Oh, and as an S-corp, her business earnings are taxed as ordinary income so once her business really took off she got hit by Obama’s Buffett Tax.

According to Kessler, no matter who is president in 2013, Julia will not be able to enroll in Medicare at age 65, or to retire at age 67 with full benefits. As a high-earner she will have to forego some of the government retirement benefits that would have otherwise been due to her. And thanks to ObamaCare, she cannot find a doctor or specialist who accepts Medicare patients.

Moreover, Julie’s business income was not considered a “salary,” so the last 25 years of her earnings were not counted toward her Social Security benefits. Fortunately, with President Romney having ushered in an economic expansion that continued through several back-to-back Republican administrations, Julie’s private retirement account grew steadily and allows her to live a healthy, happy, contented old age.

Get ready for your marathon

2012-05-08T05:04:00Z

IF THE SHOE FITS: Get ready for your marathon

- HealthDayNews, March 27, 2012

Obama launches campaign against Romney, but his real opponent is the economy

2012-05-08T05:03:00Z

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Obama launches campaign against Romney, but his real opponent is the economy

- The Washington Post, May 5, 2012

$80 million later, Obama administration abandons Afghan embassy because location is “too dangerous”

2012-05-08T05:02:00Z

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: In March 2009, the late Richard Holbrooke, then President Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, lobbied to establish a consulate in Mazar-e Sharif within 60 days, and the State Department – presumably with the approval of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and/or other senior officials – granted waivers of its own building rules and ignored the significant security problems at the site and serves as “a cautionary tale of wishful thinking [and] poor planning,” The Washington Post reports:

After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous. …

The problems included relying on local building techniques that made the compound vulnerable to a car bombing, according to an assessment by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that was obtained by The Washington Post. …

Among the corners cut in the interest of expediency, the memo says, was failing to assess how well the facility could withstand a car bombing, a task normally carried out by the department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. …

There were other reasons for concern. In August, according to the memo, Afghan security forces uncovered a “sophisticated surveillance operation against the consulate, including information about plans to breach the consulate site.” …

In December, embassy officials began exploring alternative short-term sites for their diplomatic staff in northern Afghanistan. A Western diplomat familiar with the situation said the United States has sought, so far in vain, to persuade the German and Swedish governments to sublet it. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said European diplomats have found the prospect laughable.

The entire ill-fated enterprise would be considered laughable, were it not yet another instance of the Obama administration’s propensity to spend tax dollars wastefully, if not fraudulently.

Woman solicits donations for a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction, but uses the money on a boob job

2012-05-08T05:01:00Z

WHAT A HEEL: Jami Toler, 27, appeared in a Maricopa County (AZ) Superior Court Thursday on felony fraud and theft charges for (allegedly) pretending to have breast cancer and accepting more than $8,000 from at least 17 well-wishers for a double mastectomy and breast reconstructive surgery. She really wanted the money to pay for a boob job, CBS Las Vegas reports:

Toler initially told people that she was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer last August and said she needed a mastectomy. Toler’s mom, Vickie Schirtzinger, even created a “Jami’s Hope” page on the Give Forward website to help raise money for her daughter’s medical expenses.

The jig was up after Toler – who had also claimed to be uninsured – refused a doctor’s offer to treat her cancer for free.

After a brief initial court appearance, the judge ordered Toler to be monitored with an electronic ankle bracelet and released her.

A current events round-up for conservatives

2012-05-07T16:26:48Z

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Multiculturalism: Jihad by other means: At Saturday’s arraignment for September 11 terror defendant Walid bin Attash, his counsel Cheryl Bormann – who is not herself a Muslim, but chose to wear a burqa out of “respect” for her client’s Muslim beliefs – complained to Judge James Pohl about the way the female prosecutors at the military tribunal are dressed, Lawfare blog reports:

I am not suggesting that all of the women wear what I am wearing, she concedes. But I am suggesting that the prosecution team should make decisions regarding the appropriateness of the dress of female members so that our clients are not afraid to look at prosecutors for fear of committing a sin under their faith. My client understands that this commission is in the form of a westernized court system, she says, but he and I are asking that the prosecution use some discretion in wearing clothing appropriate for courtroom procedure. …

None of the female prosecutors are wearing bikinis, but [prosecutor Mark Martins] does not respond directly to the suggestion that business suits and military uniforms are just too edgy for the delicate moral sensibilities of men accused of blowing up hundreds of people. Instead, he simply notes that all members of the prosecution team are qualified under the rules of military commissions. All are sworn. And no member of the prosecution has acted in any manner that might tend to disqualify him or her in this proceeding.

Bormann tacitly admits that according to the tenets of “the religion of peace,” it’s not a sin to have the blood of thousands of innocents (AKA “infidels”) on your hands, only to be unable to control your nether regions if you see a bit of ankle or the nape of a woman’s neck. FOX News reports that Bormann made an issue of what other women in the courtroom were wearing because, "When you're on trial for your life, you need to be focused":

"If because of someone's religious beliefs, they can't focus when somebody in the courtroom is dressed in a particular way, I feel it is incumbent upon myself [sic] as a counsel to point that out and ask for some consideration from the prosecution," she said. "Suffice to say it was distracting to members of the accused."

In fact, so much consideration was given Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants that a proceeding that “should have taken a couple of hours at most … lasted almost 13 hours, including meal and prayer breaks, as the men appeared to make a concerted effort to stall Saturday's hearing”:

The defendants' behavior outraged 9/11 family members watching on closed-circuit video feeds around the United States at East Coast military bases. One viewer shouted, "C'mon, are you kidding me?" at the Fort Hamilton base in Brooklyn.

A handful of people who lost family members in the attacks and were selected by a lottery to attend the proceedings watched in the courtroom.

"They're engaging in jihad in a courtroom," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. She watched the proceeding from Brooklyn.

Editorial Note: This Ain't Hell live blogged Saturday’s hearing from a CCTV broadcast from Gitmo and will continually provide updates as the trial gets under way.

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: President Barack Hussein Obama kicked off his re-election campaign on Saturday with is first “official” campaign speech at Ohio State University, the largest college in a crucial swing state – and almost nobody came, Brietbart site Big Government reports:

According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an "overflow" of people. Instead, the arena looked half-empty. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.

According to the Toledo Blade, the venue for Obama's rally seats 20,000 but "there were a lot of empty seats." Comparatively, Obama drew a crowd of 35,000 at Ohio State when he campaigned for former Governor Ted Strickland in 2010.

To be fair, though, the same thing happened to Obama’s presumptive challenger, Mitt Romney, back in February when he delivered an economic address to a largely empty Ford Field in Detroit.

Update: This video of the event shows Obama supporters yawning and picking their noses during his speech.

† What freedom of speech means to Muslims: A panel of five Tunisian judges convicted Nessma TV owner Nabil Karoui of “disturbing public order” and “threatening public morals” and levied a $1,600 fine. His offense? Broadcasting the Academy Award nominated animated French film “Persepolis,” which includes “a fleeting image of G-d,” The Washington Post reports:

Prosecutors and lawyers representing Islamist groups argued that [he] should be sentenced to prison for up to five years. At least two lawyers called for the death penalty.

In a verdict posted without explanation on a courtroom wall, the judges decided a case that had brought hundreds of Tunisian lawyers to argue over the limits of free speech in a fledgling democracy just 15 months after a revolution. …

One of Karoui’s attorneys, Abada Kefi, said he had “hoped that today would be a celebration of freedom of expression and media here in Tunisia, but this is rather an occasion for mourning. This decision is a strike against creativity and freedom of expression.” He said Karoui would appeal Chief Judge Faouzi Jebali’s ruling to a higher court.

The U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray, issued a statement condemning the decision. “I am concerned and disappointed by this conviction for Nessma television’s broadcast of an animated film previously approved for distribution by the Tunisian government,” Gray said. “His conviction raises serious concerns about tolerance and freedom of expression in the new Tunisia.”

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: “After a protracted political battle that spanned four administrations,” gun rights advocates are cheering a revision to a Department of Conservation and Recreation regulation to permit visitors to VA state parks to openly carry guns (related article, seventh item on the page), The Washington Times reports:

Republicans for a decade have sought to clarify whether the state has legal authority to enforce gun bans and were supported by opinions from two GOP attorneys general. …

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said changing the regulation carries more significance than a mere letter or directive because it will make it more difficult for future governors to undo. …

People 18 and older in Virginia who can legally own a gun can carry one openly in the state without a permit, as long as it's visible and holstered. But they were not allowed to bring a gun into a state park. Repealing that regulation affects a significantly larger swath of the gun-owning population because there are far more legal gun owners than concealed-carry permit holders. …

Since [Gov. Bob McDonnell] ordered the department to stop enforcing the gun-ban regulations [in January 2011], Virginia officials have not had any incidents directly related to the law no longer being enforced, according to regulatory documents.

"Additionally, some visitors may feel safer as a result of their ability to open carry firearms on the Department's properties," the documents state.

† When environmental values collide (related article, eighth item on the page): CBS San Francisco had previously learned that Solyndra was tossing millions of taxpayer dollars’ worth of parts, and now reports that the failed solar panel manufacturer left cadmium and other toxic heavy metal waste behind at its abandoned Milpitas plant:

[T]he cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay. CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled “hazardous waste.”

The building’s owner, a company called iStar, claimed in court documents, “there may be serious environmental, health and safety issues” at the premises. According to the documents, they include, “numerous containers of solvents and chemicals…and processing equipment contaminated with lead.”

“Essentially it looks like they left a pretty big mess behind,” San Jose State Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney told CBS 5. Mulvaney has written a white paper on solar industry waste for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. …

“Materials labeled hazardous waste require a lot more protocol, so its [sic] actually a lot more expensive to clean,” Mulvaney said. “It’s very sad looking at this facility taken apart like this, because a lot of money went into building this.”

† A to Z approach on illegal immigration in AZ: A Pew Hispanic Center report suggests that net migration from Mexico to the U.S. has “come to a standstill” as a result of factors that include the lingering recession, increased border enforcement and deportations, and a decline in the Mexican birth rate. The Washington Post offers another reason, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA):

Migration plummeted after 2005 because of reduced U.S. demand for labor and the slowing of Mexican population growth – but also because NAFTA started to pay off in the form of dynamic new export industries in Mexico such as automobile manufacturing. Analysts suggest the gap in wages between the United States and its southern neighbor, while still wide, has narrowed to the point where staying home is economically rational for a growing number of Mexican workers.

NAFTA encouraged both the United States and Mexico to make optimal use of their scarce resources. In the short run, this shifted jobs and income within each society and between them. This inherently disruptive process doubtless caused Mexicans who lost out to seek opportunity in the United States.

But over time, NAFTA helped make Mexico more efficient and, hence, wealthier. It formed part of a broader restructuring that has transformed Mexico from the underdeveloped, authoritarian country it was 30 years ago to the increasingly middle-class democracy it is now.

All of which leads Mark Krikorian of Center for Immigration Studies to note that “attrition works, so why do we need amnesty?” – a question that liberals turn on its ear by wondering why Republicans continue to press for secure borders and other anti-illegal immigration measures since “the crisis has, um, passed” as Timothy Noah put it.

The fact is, though there are fewer of them illegal immigrants from Mexico continue to cross into the U.S. – along with those from Central and South America who make the risky journey through Mexico to get here, The Washington Times reports (“[m]any fall prey to extortion, kidnapping, rape and killing by crooked police and criminal gangs”).

† Every bubble bursts eventually: Back in December 2009, The Stiletto observed, "President Barack Hussein Obama’s speeches are a lot like a Chinese dinner. Heaping helpings of impressive-sounding but empty phrases. An hour later, you’re wondering what, exactly, he said he would commit to (for critiques of his other major speeches click here and here and here). In a recent critique that brings to mind those offered by former Bush 43 speechwriter Michael Gerson (related article, third item on the page), The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan kvetches that Obama is “boring” because his speeches string together “[p]lonking platitude after plonking platitude”:

To see Mr. Obama on the stump is to see a man at the podium who's constantly dribbling away the punch line. He looks pleasant but lacks joy; he's cool but lacks vigor. A lot of what he says could have been said by a president 12 or 20 years ago, little is anchored to the moment. As he makes his points he often seems distracted, as if he's holding a private conversation in his head, noticing crowd size, for instance, and wishing the front row would start fainting again, like they used to.

I listen to him closely and find myself daydreaming: This is the best-tailored president since JFK. His suits, shirts and ties are beautifully cut from fine material. This is an elegant man. But I shouldn't be thinking about that, I should be thinking about what a powerful case he's making for his leadership. I'm not because he's not.

It is still so surprising that a person who seems bored by politicking has risen to the highest political office in the land. Politics is a fleshly profession, it's all hugging, kissing, arm twisting, shaking hands. It involves contact. When you see politicians on C-Span, in the well of the House or the Senate after a vote, they're always touching each other's arms and shoulders. They touch each other more than actors! Bill Clinton was fleshly, and LBJ. How odd to have a Democratic president who doesn't seem to like humans all that much.

It’s not just Obama’s talk Noonan finds wanting, but also his action (or inaction). She points to “a growing air of incompetence around Mr. Obama's White House,” citing the fumbling, amateurish performance of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in arguing the administrations positions on AZ’s anti-illegal immigration law SB1070 and challenges to the constitutionality of the healthcare “reform” law, the string of scandals from the Fast and Furious gunrunning operation to the fast and loose Secret Service agents, and the “incompetence and even cruelty” of the Transportation Security Administration. “[Y]ou get a growing sense that no one's in charge, that the administration is paying attention to politics but not day-to-day governance.”

† 10 reasons Michelle Obama should be proud – really proud – of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Marine Mark Dolfini, who presented a dying 12-year old boy

with Marine navigator wings and made him an honorary member of the United States Marine Corps, then stood guard outside his room at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis the entire night on Friday, April 27^th. Cody died the next day, The Daily Mail of London reports:

Throughout his short life, young Cody Green had admired the bravery of the U.S. Marines.

But after years spent battling leukaemia, it was the youngster's courage fighting cancer which inspired his heroes to honour his bravery.

The 12-year-old from Indiana had suffered from the disease throughout his life. First diagnosed just before his second birthday, he had beaten leukaemia three times - but the chemotherapy had reduced his immune system and, last weekend, he died from a fungus which attacked his brain. …

Cody's repeat cancer battle inspired the local Marines, who thought 'he’s fought as hard as any marine has and because of that we’re going to honour him'.

They planned to give him a complete colour guard spectacle, but because Cody's condition was less stable following a stem cell procedure on March 12, they had to suspend those plans for fear of infecting Cody's sensitive immune system.

Obama unveils innovative campaign tactic

2012-05-04T03:41:36Z

THE DAILY BLADE: President Barack Hussein Obama’s new campaign slogan, “Forward” has a proud totalitarian lineage: The Weekly Standard points out that the slogan brings to mind Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”; Gateway Pundit discerns echoes of a Hitler Youth marching song (“Vorwärts! Vorwärts!”); and The Washington Times explains that "Forward" is “a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.”

Given Obama’s upbringing as a Red Diaper baby, it’s entirely possible that he is telegraphing his socialist inclinations. But for the sake of argument, if one assumes Obama is unaware of the historical allusions raised by “Forward” – not impossible, considering his general ignorance about history – there are other explanations for choosing this campaign slogan.

Columnist David Harsanyi suggests that "Forward" makes perfect sense, given that “nearly the entire case for President Barack Obama's second term is based on not what has happened but what could, would or might under different circumstances”:

When the Obama campaign intimates that Mitt Romney would have been less decisive to knock off Osama bin Laden – "Which path would Romney have taken?" a campaign video pretends to ponder – we aren't seeing anything new. This is another Obama hypothetical. Libyan intervention without congressional approval? We averted a future atrocity. The passage of Obamacare? We avoided higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancy. The president has, by his own account, prevented countless disasters and tackled an incalculable number of problems that don't exist yet.

Without a hypothetical, after all, there is no room for the false choice. Do you want an apocalypse or Cash for Clunkers?

Proving his point, “The Obama campaign released an interactive chart … “The Life of Julia,” which, Commentary magazine reports, “purports to show “how President Obama’s policies help one woman over her lifetime – and how Mitt Romney would change her story”:

We first see the fictional cartoon Julia at age three, enjoying the Head Start program that Obama says he has “taken steps to improve.” Under Romney, we’re told, budget cuts to Head Start would result in 200,000 fewer slots per year for young children. Thanks to Obama’s birth control mandate, the 27-year-old Julia is able to “focus on her work rather than worry about her health.” Romney, on the other hand, supports legislation that would “place Julia’s health care decisions in the hands of her employer.”

Let’s leave aside that this is, as Harsanyi puts it, “one of the most brazenly statist pieces of campaign literature” – “Who the hell is "Julia," and why am I paying for her whole life?” – and focus on the Obama campaign’s assertion that Julia’s life will be pleasant under Obama’s beneficent governance vs. Dickensian under Romney’s tight-fisted rule. What does this tell us? Obama’s schtick of blaming Bush for his failures is no longer cutting it with voters, so he is trying a new tactic: Blaming it Forward. Obama plans to make his case for re-election by blaming Romney for things that haven’t even happened yet.

That’s the thinking behind the slogan “Forward.” Come to think of it, it also explains an alternative slogan Republicans are suggesting for the Obama campaign: “Hype and Blame.”

The Stiletto Scoops Best of the Web Today (Yet Again)

How does Obama cure a hangover? Hair of the dog.

- The Stiletto Blog and Facebook, April 19, 2012

Hair of the Dog, Obama Style
- BOTWT, April 30, 2012

Prosecutors call John Edwards manipulative, ambitious

2012-05-02T03:10:30Z

PENETRATING INSIGHTS: Prosecutors call John Edwards manipulative, ambitious

- Reuters, April 24, 2012

Keep toenails healthy

2012-05-02T03:09:27Z

IF THE SHOE FITS: Keep toenails healthy

- HealthDayNews, March 27, 2012

Good Samaritan armed with gun grabs man who robbed FL Dunkin Donuts, holds him until cops arrive

2012-05-02T03:07:50Z

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER: Dressed in a suit and tie, Ricardo Diaz entered an Orlando Dunkin Donuts and told the employees he was sent by corporate headquarters to conduct an audit. It was a not-so-clever ruse to get them to open the cash drawer, WFTV (Channel 9, Orlando) reports:

Investigators said the employees pulled the cash drawer and once the employees were in a back office, they said Diaz grabbed the money and ran.

But the employees went after him, and so did several customers, who eventually caught him 200 yards away, according to authorities.

A good Samaritan [legally] armed with a gun, grabbed the man by the tie and helped hold him until authorities arrived.

Diaz was arrested and booked into the Orange County jail on charges of robbery, petit theft and burglary.

By the way, WFTV checked, and the good Samaritan with the gun was licensed to carry.