Many of my friends are currently unemployed or underemployed. They graduated from Claremont McKenna, one of the finest colleges in America, but have found it tough to get jobs.

But one alum from our college, Jordan Barab, CMC ‘75, is making it tougher still in his capacity as acting head of the Office Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

But with Barab, we have the opportunity to not only examine the implication of his appointment but also surmise what he will do and what he has already one in office by carefully considering his and OSHA’s history.

During the past eight years, Barab spent his time excoriating the Bush administration’s laissez faire labor policies from his blog, Confined Space. Left unexamined, of course, is whether those same labor policies account for us having one of the lowest unemployment levels in U.S. history during the Bush years.

Among other things, Barab argued that the Bush administration was refusing to enforce OSHA regulations and statutes that allegedly would have helped workplace safety. He published scary (and utterly unfounded) statistics pushed by organized labor:

More than 15 workers are killed every day on the job in this country and a worker becomes injured or ill on the job every 2.5 seconds. The overwhelming majority of deaths, injuries and illnesses could have been easily prevented had the employers simply provided a safe workplace and complied with well-recognized OSHA regulations or other safe practices.

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“I don’t like regulations,” says Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist who blogs daily at AdviceGoddess.com. “I like to shame people into behaving better.”

Reason.tv’s Ted Balaker sat down with Alkon to discuss her new book, I See Rude People: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society. Alkon explains how she and others mix chutzpah with technology to fight back against the insane drivers, coffee-house yackers, and subway perverts who make our lives miserable.

Interview by Ted Balaker. Shot by Alex Manning and Paul Detrick. Edited by Alex Manning. Music: “I Think I Started a Trend,” by Brad Sucks (Magnatune Records).

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“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

—Henry David Thoreau

God, I love fishing. I dig fishing almost as much as hunting (almost). I love it so much that I moved to a place that is one of the top angling spots in the world: Miami, Florida. And you know what? I milk these waters as much as a working man can.

My fishing roots extend back to Texas and my rowdy childhood when my dad used to take me and my brother fishing on the many lakes, ponds and rivers the Lone Star state has to offer.

Our stringer was typical of a freshwater 60s and 70s Texas catch: perch, crappie, black bass, white bass, channel cats, carp and gar. It was way cool for this little redneck. Yes indeed, Bob-Dawg, I dug it all.

For example, as a young punk I took insane pleasure in:

• Buying fishing gear. Very cool.
• Practicing my casting accuracy in my backyard (which still serves me well to this day)
• Reading Outdoor Life and getting pumped on its fishing lies … I mean … stories
• Experiencing the inability to sleep the night before getting up and declaring war on the fish
• Buying bait at freaky bait shops run by guys I swear worked as extras on the movie Deliverance
• Arriving at our strategic and wild location and having the privilege of watching and listening to that which is untamed waking up and beginning its tooth, fang and claw survival of the fittest exchange with Mother Nature. Life and death in its purest form, Nancy boys.
• Taking a crash course from my dad and other gents regarding different lures and the various ways to present them
• And then, of course, the entre, actually catching a fish and grappling with my gigantic aquatic monster which was, in all reality, a pound-and-a-half bass. (I didn’t care, though, because as far as I was concerned, I was Ernest-Frickin’-Hemingway’s character Santiago, and that little bass was my Marlin.)
• And lastly, basking in the great satisfaction later that evening of watching adults eat what this rugrat provided. I am iron man. Dun, dun. Dun na dun dunna dunna dunna dun dunna dun.

As a young squab, the whole fishing enchilada, from soup to nuts, represented what Bryan Adams called, “The best days of my life.”

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The Debt Sea, that ocean of red ink that threatens to overflow its banks and inundate every nook and cranny in America from Main Street to Wall street, is bordered on the south by the Potomac River, to the east-southeast by the Anacostia River, to the north-northeast by Prince Georges County, Maryland, to the north-northwest by Montgomery County, Maryland and to the immediate west by Georgetown and the historic 175-year-old Chesapeake-and-Ohio Canal.

The Debt-Sea Scrolls tell a story of evolving fiscal folly that could represent one of the greatest man-made disasters ever — the destruction of mankind’s most successful experiment in governance and the crippling of an economic system that produced the greatest sustained prosperity the world has ever known.  The first of the Debt-Sea Scrolls was written around 80-years ago when the government believed it could spend its way out of the Great Depression with money it didn’t have…with money it didn’t even almost have.  The programs (known as the “New Deal”) described in the first of the Debt-Sea Scrolls didn’t succeed in revitalizing American industry.  It was The Second World War and the massive Lend-Lease program with which we became the “Arsenal for Democracy” that finally succeeded in revitalizing American Industry. By the time the war was over, so was the Great Depression. Unemployment had plummeted to below 2.0% by the time the war ended in 1945 from 14.6% in 1940, which was essentially the rate of unemployment during the early years of the depression and seven years of New Deal Keynesian prime-the-pump policies.  Following the war, American industry converted from wartime to peacetime production and the rate of unemployment remained below 6.0% for over a decade and for most of the half century that followed.

We learn from the Debt-Sea Scrolls that unsustainable national debt, fueled by easy credit that required borrowers to have very little skin in the game (sound familiar?) was, more than any other factor, generally credited with igniting the economic conflagration we now know as the Great Depression.  Ironically we are now, seventy years later, adding unsustainable debt (to already unsustainable debt) at a level many economists believe will seriously impede our recovery and may end any hope of returning to robust prosperity.  We are, systematically, mortgaging the future of our children, their children and their children’s children as well.

Let us pause to consider the debt-spawning spending spree on which the government has embarked and proposes further to accelerate.

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As it becomes more difficult to round up Congressman willing to end their political careers by voting for ObamaCare, House Democrat Leadership is actually considering a “rule” that will allow the health care bill to pass without being voted on. Putting a positive spin on such a desperate and unconstitutional act defies the laws of physics. Michael Ramirez at Investors Business Daily perfectly captures the “through the looking glass” world we now inhabit:

When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to to the state of Keynesian economics. It does not matter that Keynesianism isn’t working for Obama. It does not matter that it didn’t work for Bush, or for Japan in the 1990s, or for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s.

In the ultimate triumph of theory over reality, the Keynesians say all that matters is the macroeconomic model behind the curtain showing that more government spending leads to more jobs and growth. Consider the recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which claimed that Obama’s stimulus created at least one million jobs. As Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation noted:

CBO’s calculations are not based on actually observing the economy’s recent performance. Rather, they used an economic model that was programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs — thus guaranteeing their result. …The problem here is obvious. Once CBO decided to assume that every dollar of government spending increased GDP…, its conclusion that the stimulus saved jobs was pre-ordained.

But surely this can’t be true, you may be thinking. Our public servants in Washington would not make important policy decisions based on a model that automatically produces a certain result, would they? Peter Suderman of Reason pulls aside the curtain:

…those reports rely on assumption-packed models that effectively predetermine their outcomes; what they say, in essence, is that the stimulus worked because we assume it did. …That’s especially true when estimating government spending’s productive effects, which is accomplished by plugging numbers into a formula that assumes that government spending produces a multiplier—an increased return for every government dollar spent. In other words, it extrapolates from how much money is put in rather than from what has actually come out. And it does so using a formula that dictates that if money is put in, even more money will come out. According to the CBO’s estimates, depending on how the money is spent, one dollar of government spending can produce total economic activity of up to $2.50. What a deal! …for all practical purposes, the same multipliers that were used to predict how many jobs would be created are being used to estimate how many jobs have been created.

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Why are Barack Obama and other Democrat leaders so intent on passing a government takeover of healthcare now…Now…NOW?

They must know that costs will rise and the quality of care will fall, right?   They must know that Obamacare would destroy the economy, right?   Of course they do.  But, they also know that the federal government would tighten its grip on the nation.   They know that Obama’s czars and other appointees would be authorized to bypass Congress in enacting sweeping regulations on nearly every aspect of a person’s life.   And, they know that these new powers of the federal government would be concentrated in the hands of the Democratic Party and the President.

Here’s what else they know.   History affords many examples of regimes whose motto was “Never let a crisis go to waste.”   In 1933, having campaigned for “hope” and “change,” the National Socialist Worker’s Party forced through the German parliament a Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation, also known as the Enabling Act.

This new law enabled the German chancellor and his appointees to bypass parliament in imposing sweeping regulations on the people:

“In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich [i.e., the Cabinet].”

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Today, at the California Republican Party Convention in Santa Clara, California, Carly Fiorina is debuting yet another outrageous web video—this time slamming Sen. Barbara Boxer, who Fiorina seeks to replace this November. The web video—actually a lengthier “movie”—is featured at a new microsite, www.failedsenator.com.

Fiorina grabbed headlines—good, bad and ugly—with her infamous “Demon Sheep” video earlier this year. Following the release of that video, her campaign pledged that more would be on the way. This latest offering, which is already being dubbed the “Boxer Blimp,” takes Boxer to task for her record in the Senate. California Republicans say that is something that has been little examined in the course of previous campaigns, but which is essential to highlight in a year where the three-term Senator’s approval ratings are lagging while California’s economy remains on proverbial life support.

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Sometimes the GOP Hits the Mark. Today It Was a Bull’s-Eye….

Senator Scott Brown delivered the GOP Weekly Address today.

The freshman Republican Senator from Massachusetts scored a direct hit on Barack Obama and fellow Democrats for their “bitter, destructive and endless drive to pass health care.”

Choosing Brown to deliver this week’s address was a great move. It was a timely reminder to democrats on how Americans feel about their drive to nationalize the nation’s health care system. Brown currently holds a 70% approval rating… in Massachusetts.

This was devastating:

Terrific… Nothing like a little reminder to democrats on the mood of the nation a week before they plan to ram Obamacare down our throats.

Here’s the transcript:

Hello, I’m United States Senator Scott Brown from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“When the people of my state elected me in January, they sent more than a senator to Washington – they sent a message. Across party lines, the voters told politicians in Washington to get its priorities right.

“And from my travels and conversation with people throughout this country, they told me that they want their President and Congress to focus on creating jobs and reviving America’s economy. Instead, for more than a year now, we have seen a bitter, destructive, and endless drive to completely transform America’s health care system.

“In January of last year, unemployment hit 7.2 percent and our economy was hurting badly. But, early in President Obama’s term, he and the Democratic leadership of Congress made takeover of health care their first priority.

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As any exasperated advocate of commonsense education reform can tell you, liberals and their allies in the teachers unions will, like drunken spammers, never cease to declaim on how “PUBLIC EDUCATION NEEDS MORE MONEYS LOL.” Yet, as highlighted in the video above, a recent study by the CATO Institute has found that public educators routinely lie about the exorbitant costs of education so as to keep parents from realizing just how little the vaunted Leftist sacred cow of public education actually provides for their child. Yes, you read right. When it comes to public education costs, some of the biggest liars are people who our tax dollars pay to teach the truth.

Just as an example, the CATO study found that, while Washington DC public schools claim to spend about $17,000/student, the actual price tag is closer to $28,000. Just to put this in perspective, this is a higher price than the private Potomac School, Georgetown Preparatory School, Stone Ridge School and Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In fact, it’s only $2,000 less than Sidwell Friends, the ultra-exclusive private academy where President Obama’s own daughters attend.

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The Shorebank story is quite complicated and filled with literally hundreds – if not thousands — of individuals who have been in some way involved in the unfolding of an intriguing saga. It has been difficult to narrow down the field of characters in order to focus on just a few. Some of the names are familiar, and some are relatively unknown (except, perhaps, within the context of their own circles of influence).

The original founders of Shorebank probably didn’t dream that this bank would have the worldwide influence that it now has. They were all very active in their communities and had a desire to see the South Shore neighborhood re-built to its former state of safety and community life. The neighborhood had suffered economically and was becoming run-down and plagued by crime. Their hope was to re-invest and re-enliven this neighborhood of Chicago. They made loans towards the renovation of many of the buildings which were deteriorating and in disrepair. They also invested in new building projects to benefit the residents of South Shore.

For 30-plus years Shorebank has seen its founders’ dreams realized; and beyond those dreams, Shorebank has become the catalyst for international financing — especially that directed toward low-income people in many countries of the world. The Community Reinvestment Act, passed into law in 1977 during President Jimmy Carter’s term of office, encouraged financial institutions to make loans to low-income borrowers. Ron Grzywinski (one of the original founders of Shorebank) was the only banker to testify before Congress in support of the Community Reinvestment Act. Its passage was instrumental in paving the way for Shorebank’s success. The bank steadily grew financially and facilitated the renewal of poverty stricken areas through the rest of the 1970’s and early 80’s, catching the attention of then-Governor Bill and Hillary Clinton of Arkansas (in fact, according to the IFA, Bill is still advocating on behalf of ShoreBank).

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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.

Authored with Bruce McElvein

Recently Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the AFL-CIO executive council in Florida. As Ricky Ricardo used to tell Lucy, Labor thinks the Vice President’s “got some ’splainin’ to do.”

The Vice President was defensive saying “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’ve come a long way in 12 months … In terms of the NLRB, we’re going to get it done. In the fight for EFCA, we’ve got to sit down and figure out where we go from here…. I think we’re going to get it done.”

The Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have fallen far short of the promises they made to Big Labor during the 2008 campaign. Unions have not seen any significant legislative victories despite Democrats holding the White House and large majorities in both houses of Congress.

Labor’s top priority, the Employee Free Choice Act, is on life support and both labor leaders and Democrats have acknowledged it will likely not pass it its current form. Other versions have been proposed but none have been introduced.

EFCA, in its current form, would effectively eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections. This process is known as card check. The bill would also allow mandatory binding arbitration by government bureaucrats if a contract was not agreed to within 120 days of a union being formed and one side demanded the process.

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Northrop Grumman has announced it will not compete for the contract to build the U.S. Air Force’s new refueling tanker, stating that the specifications of the RFP were unfair. Northrop’s partners in Europe are lashing out at the United States. One French official said this week, “I can assure you that there will be consequences” for the United States. The Euros were planning on using Northrop as the American face of their plane, but the fact remained that most of it would have been built in France and to many observers that seemed like a bad deal for out of work Americans. In fact, EADS/Airbus, who would have actually built the plane Northrop was proposing, was counting on the American taxpayer-funded refueling tanker to help its financial situation.

Meanwhile, an advocacy organization called Build Them Both is urging President Obama to step in “fix” it all. “Build Them Both urges President Obama to step in and – with the stroke of a pen – hire each company to build its proposed new tanker. This will put 100,000 Americans to work, provide the Air Force more tankers more quickly and offer massive taxpayer savings over building only one,” says the group’s spokesperson Carrie Giddins, who is also a Democratic political operative.

Build Them Both, which does not disclose its funders, further argues that the United States should yield to French threats and “European outrage.”

But the “build them both” solution would actually be the worst of all possible ideas. It would, in fact, be a terrible deal for taxpayers. The costs of building two tankers would be astronomical, costing taxpayers more upfront and long term. Designing and building two separate refueling tankers would require two separate sets of specifications. It would also require training two separate groups of pilots and maintenance crews and developing and maintaining distinct resupply networks. Its important to note that Northrop’s partner EADS/Airbus was proposing to build a completely different plane; which would require its own hangars, air base taxiways and landing strips. All of these considerations carry enormous costs.

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On Wednesday, we brought you the story of a little report from the Boston Fed and its role in creating the housing bubble. In that piece, we mentioned an organization you probably hadn’t heard of before, the Center for Responsible Lending. It is one of the more influential–in a bad way–organizations you don’t know. Over the coming weeks, we’ll lift the veil on this organization. Consider today’s installment a primer.

The Center for Responsible Lending is the most influential liberal advocacy group dealing with the financial services industry in the nation’s capital. It is the policy arm of credit unions based in North Carolina and California. Yes, its parent organization has a vested interest in the outcome of CRL’s advocacy.

The Center performs both public policy research and lobbying. (Lots of lobbying, but that is for another day.) Despite its well known left wing prejudices, the media uncritically accepts the Center’s published papers, giving the group extra heft on Capitol Hill.

The Center aggressively criticizes lending discrimination and pushes lenders to increase their underwriting to poor neighborhood where borrowers are less likely to be able to pay back mortgages. The Center is keenly interested in the redistribution of wealth and cares little about the financial safety and soundness of the banks it targets.

Lenders who fail to cooperate with the Center are accused of “redlining,” i.e. illegally discriminating against borrowers in low-income neighborhoods.

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Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed another Democratic multi-billion dollar legislative handout designed to temporarily alleviate the continuous financial burden hanging over the nation’s unemployed and fiscally irresponsible states.

Democrats—with six Republicans tagging along for the spending spree—swiped the nation’s Centurion Card to the tune of $140 billion, and went home with bags overflowing with goodies: subsides for health insurance, funds to prevent states from laying off public service employees, extensions of unemployment benefits, etc.

Senator Chuck Schumer—apparently now worried about the chattering class—patted himself on the back for a day’s work and proclaimed, “While our Republican colleagues on healthcare have been stonewall[ing], on jobs they know that they block us at their own political peril … and substantive peril as well.”

New York’s senior senator is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

This initiative can’t possibly be touted as a jobs bill when nearly 90% of the funds appropriated are unrelated to job-creation. Moreover, the Republicans who did cross party lines to support this measure, supported—what amounted to—another spending bill, and they might be doing that at their own political peril.

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With the resignation of hyper-partisan progressive Robert Wexler from Congress last October, a Special Election for the vacated congressional seat in FL-19 was set by Governor Crist for this coming April 13^th.   There’s a good chance you haven’t yet heard anything about this race, but ours is the next federal election that will be held in the country.  And with the House Democratic Caucus now deciding the fate of Obamacare behind closed doors, it goes without saying  that our Special Election takes on newfound importance, as every last vote in the House of Representatives can be the decisive one.

For those of you unfamiliar with our congressional district, the FL-19 district encompasses Broward and Palm Beach counties, from West Palm Beach up north to Tamarac down south.  FL-19 has one of the highest concentrations of senior citizens in the country, and it’s a district where Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans.  The voter registration stats in the District are 50% Democrat, 25% Republican, and the remaining 25% are registered Independent.

But several major factors can negate Democrats’ structural advantages in this race.  The first is the fact that special elections almost always have substantially lower turnout— approximately 15% of your typical Presidential election, making success in this race heavily dependent upon whose side is most engaged and enthusiastic.  Second, more than any demographic, seniors are opposed to Obamacare by nearly a 2-1 margin by virtue of the fact that their access to our health care system is directly jeopardized by the proposed $500 billion cuts to Medicare over the next 10 years.  But the most important factor is obvious- with the outcome of President Obama’s government takeover of the health care system potentially at stake, and with the increased significance of every House vote, our race should now attract increased attention from concerned citizen activists across the country.  While we don’t know exactly when the House vote on Obamacare will commence, it is entirely possible that a vote could take place after April 13th, and my vote is an affirmative “NAY” vote against Obamacare.

In addition to the prevailing political currents in our favor, there are 110,000 registered Republicans in District 19.

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The wounded ACORN snake continues writhing.  This time, the group has been barred from the entire state of Ohio, a swing state where the organization was very active in the last presidential election.

So active, in fact, it received an “Unsung Hero” award from the Communist Party USA for its “critical but  generally unrecognized role of organized labor and grassroots voter registration efforts in winning Ohio for Barack Obama,” according to a document on ACORNcracked.com.

But now, ACORN has reached a settlement under the Ohio Corrupt Activities Act, similar to the federal RICO Act  –  the same law that’s used to prosecute mobsters and drug kingpins.  Under the settlement, ACORN,  along with Project Vote, agreed “to file a certificate permanently surrendering its business license in Ohio by June 1,” according to The Columbus Dispatch.

The next part of the settlement was critical: it bars ACORN from simply changing its name and moving back into the state. From the Dispatch:

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