Scam Within a Scam

That would've been a perfect title for this ABC News Article. Alas, the reporters missed their opportunity. Now, those who are unafraid of statistics admit that the stimulus was a scam on the taxpayers. So it makes sense that non-governmental swindlers would create small scams that feed off the government's large 'stimulus' scam:

The Federal Trade Commission is warning Americans to beware of scams offering to get them some of the federal government's $787 billion stimulus. The scams will likely cost you money instead of getting you money....the Federal Trade Commission revealed bogus Web sites, hoaxes and other scams that promise to help consumers tap into a chunk of the money.

To me, they're just small time scammers who don't have the political clout to legislate their scams.

Hillary's plane taking up the runway: an allegory

Truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes the real world provides deft allegories. Case-in-point: Hillary Clinton flies her enormous jet which is packed with her many entourage members to make a speech in Haiti. Ironically, her great fleet allegedly obstructed rescue planes from landing on the runway. This is a great allegory for nearly every backfiring scheme Democrats have come up with in the past century or so.

Thomas Sowell writes that the number of blacks living below the poverty line stopped decreasing after the institution of the Great Society. The Great Society was supposed to benefit blacks, not create among them a culture of dependence on Big Brother, one which may have locked many blacks in an 'easy poverty.' Even if moral hazzard associated with handouts did not harm blacks economically, the Great Society still seems to have failed ceteris paribus because it has not decreased the number of blacks living in poverty.

Individual savings have decreased since the Social Security scheme of FDR. Why save money for yourself when the government can do it for you and in a more complicated way?

What about Fannie & Freddie? Two GSEs meant to keep housing prices low end up directing funds into a housing bubble, thus enslaving new home-buyers to now-unaffordable homes. Strangely enough, now policy makers are propping up housing prices.

But perhaps what is most disturbing about Clinton's exploits is that she is obviously on a PR mission. "Look how sypathetic I look toward the masses, (although I'm really just getting in their way)." Such is the destiny of the ambitious Left-wing politician trying to save the world.

Visible Mic, figurative pacifier

Have you noticed lately that rap/pop music is becoming increasingly child-like? For instance, the unfortunately popular "Do yo' chain hang low" is set to the same tune as "Do your ears hang low"--a child's nursery rhyme.

Not only are the lyrics and tone juvenile, but the messages aren't very cerebral. "I'm horny, I'm angry, I'm the best, I'm rich, I'm miserable, I'm entitled, I'm accomplished." These are sentiments even animals express. A male koloa howls at the top of a tree after he successfully mates with a female. This act, it could be argued, encompasses all the aforementioned sentiments in rap music.

The Next Biggest Thing to Hit the Rap Scene?
But rap artists aren't just child-like: they embrace all the depravities and hostilities of which only an adult mind could conceive. But why are they this way?

Let me offer a little conjecture. Many rap star men come from underprivileged, inner-city homes with no resident father. Eminem, for instance, grew up with no father and a drug-addict mother. With adult male role models absent, youth often turn to older youth, often to teenagers. In a sense, the blind are now leading the blind. As scientific research points out, the part of the brain that judges risk taking is not yet fully developed in a teen. Although many teens are done growing, they may still be immature mentally, and thus have less scruples and be somewhat mentally neanderthalic.

Nonetheless such openness to risk does not absolve a teen from blame because the teen is still very conscious. Moreover, such risk-taking can actually be a good thing in a teen. However, it would help if teen-would-be rap stars had decent father figures to tell them which risks to take. It would also help if teens had responsible working men to emulate in addition to their carefree, impulsive peers. Finally, sometimes the commanding presence of a man can calm the stirrings of a teenagers better than the sometimes hysterical reactions of a mother.

How do these rap stars grow up? By embracing all the perversions learned from their daring peers, not by learning integrity or a code of honor from their fathers. Hence rap music.

Communist Party USA donates collection to NYU

Why am I not surprised by this connection?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/arts/20nyu.html