Music and topics from this week’s First Friday Podcast

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Obama “More hope-ier” ad
Natural One – Folk Implosion

Podcast Theme
Fearless – The Bravery

Welcome, tax day joy and how taxes suck, Obama’s “elitist” remarks on rural voters and the impact it will have, the “gun-totting, Bible-thumping, different people hating” voters of small towns across the country, how McCain and Clinton pounced on this, Clinton’s new ad on the subject, “Small-Town Hillary,” who is “America?” How this will play in the fall, how Phil is a pure-bred redneck.

Exit Music
Dancing with myself – Billy Idol

MoveOn ad about Petraeus hearing
Surrender – Cheap Trick

Bill Clinton ad for Hillary on the “race card”
Love me, I’m a liberal – Jello Biafra

Bumper music
Vertigo – U2

Unions protest at the DNC over Florida and Michigan lack of votes, how liberals are perfectly willing to accept anyone who thinks exactly the way they do, Jimmy Carter meets with Hamas, exchanges hugs, first former President in modern history to attempt to run foreign policy, what’s next for Carter? The Pope is coming, and traffic will be a nightmare in DC and New York, President Bush is going to pick him up at the airport.

Exit Music
I don’t wanna grow up – Tom Waits

Kennedy Ad for Obama
Jump in my car – David Hasslehoff

Hope Energy Drink
I’ll Buy – The Replacements

Bumper Music
Wastin’ Time – Kid Rock

News of the Weird, News of the World, News of…Whatever!

The most influential people in TV news and Keith Olbermann is number 6?

NYC man faces life in prison for rubbing up against women in subway, 53^rd arrest.

Homeless man faces retrial for holding up someone with plastic gun to get .50 for beer.

Travel writer admits making stuff up, writing about places he never went.

Two Italian women drive always to Munich before realizing they weren’t in Monaco.

Hospital apologizes to a woman who was forced to give birth in the hospital’s bathroom because on one helped her.

Man in Italy eats ballot to protest political corruption, arrested.

Tax preparer has office in bar, perfect because you need to be drunk when you realize what you pay in taxes.

Goodbyes

Exit Music

A Day in the Life – The Beatles

This is why unions suck

You have to love Cato…

Florid has a law that allows companies to donate to non-profit scholarship organizations; the company receives a tax return in exchange. This program is aimed at poor families. Companies donate money, get credit for it; and the poor kids have a chance at a private school education that they couldn’t otherwise afford. Everyone wins, everyone should be happy. A lot of people are happy enough, that Florida is considering raising the cap on the amount of money that companies can donate towards the program. Even more kids will have a shot at private schools, how can anyone see anything wrong with this? The more kids in private school, the less kids there are in public school; which means kids in public schools can get even more attention that they duly deserve. The teachers are not paid on a per-pupil basis, so they are not facing pay cuts. Private schools may need more teachers, which generates jobs. There may be no losing angle to view this problem from.

However, it has upset the Florida’s teacher’s union, the Florida Education Association. They have told the media that they plan to “kill” this program in court.

Perhaps the most evident fact that unions are headed by self interested, self loathing scumbags who have no desire for the true greater good of the people is the fact their largest concern is that the program might grow too large. What a crock. Their assertion that the program may grow too large only reflects previous evidence that there is no feasible downside to this program. If this program is one more step towards the downfall of such a wretched union, add one more benefit to it and tell the Florida legislature to remove the cap entirely. Crush that union.

As students of limited government can tell you, moving kids away from public school will shrink the size of the teacher’s union, which means they lose their clout. Unions create on more special interest to sway politicians. There are 4 million unionized teachers today as opposed to 900,000 back in 1961. If this number begins to dwindle, the teachers realize they will have a harder time getting pay raises, retirement benefits, bonuses for good test scores, etc…because if politicians aren’t listening to their union, the politician may just be listening to the people.

Congress for sale

Last week the Senate passed a tax subsidy of $25 billion for home builders and industry figures who have suffered economically during the housing crunch.

As the WSJ points out:

“This giveaway came only a few weeks after the National Association of Home Builders threatened to suspend their PAC contributions to Congress “until further notice” – meaning until they saw more return on their political investments. Congratulations. That gambit paid off big time….At least this exercise is making clear what Democrats really mean by tax “fairness.” It means raising tax rates so they can then sell tax breaks to the highest corporate bidder.”

Who would want these benefits?

Democrats, liberals, Hollywood, the media, and Warren Buffet (all see in the above picture with the gun), have all started singing in chorus that the reckless tax cuts have only benefitted the rich.  The crying begins all the way back to when Reagan started his wild and crazy idea of tax cuts.  Here’s a snapshot picture of the “benefits”:

In 1980, with Jimmy Carter still as president, the top 1 percent of filers, those who reported an adjusted growth income of $80,580 or more, paid 19 percent of all federal income taxes. A decade later, despite tax cuts in the 1980s that many critics claimed benefited the rich, our top 1 percent of filers were paying more of the total–25 percent of the country’s tax bill-than anyone else.  By 2005, the most recent year data are available, our top 1 percent of filers were paying nearly 40 percent of the federal income tax bill, while those in the 2nd to 5th percentile paid another 20 percent. Every other group saw its share of the tax bill decline, sometimes substantially.

From 19% to 40% in 25 years.  Yeah, great benefits.  And it’s still not enough for some people, mainly every Democrat running for any office anywhere.

Obama the hypocrite.

On his senatorial website he writes:

“Senator Obama is a strong proponent of tougher measures to fight crime and provide more resources to local law enforcement officers.”

It’s always nice to claim that one is tough on crime, until the real record comes out.  As John Fund points out, “In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a law that prohibited early prison release for sex offenders.”

Which Obama is the real Obama?