• Bill Clinton thinks the UK’s government is the “envy” of the US.
• Al Gore, in an e-mail registration-required co-written article at OpinionJournal.com, says that companies need to “account for environmental costs.” I’m not sure what HE means, but there are plenty of items in financial statements that reflect enviromental costs. Just a few include capital expenditures for pollution control equipment and related depreciation; expenses for more costly materials that are supposedly more environmentally friendly but often really aren’t; and wages, salaries, benefits, and consulting fees relating to employees and consultants who spend their entire working days making sure companies stay in compliance with federal, and local laws, many of which either conflict and/or don’t make sense. What more Mr. Gore wants beyond that is indeterminable from his and his co-author’s rambling prose.
• Meanwhile, in what must certainly be a “totally unrelated story” (yeah, right):
  

  A strike by local authority workers has closed thousands of schools, libraries and leisure centres, crippled council services across the UK and led to travel chaos for motorists.

  Unions said the walkout, in a bitter row over pensions, had been solidly supported by more than a million workers in the biggest bout of industrial action since the 1926 General Strike.

As hard as I try, I can’t seem to be able to work up a lot of envy at the moment.

Free Links:

• Consumer Confidence Shoots Up — Despite the best efforts of the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media) to talk down the economy, The Conference Board’s index of consumer sentiment shot up 4.5 points in March to its highest level (107.2) in almost four years (and February was revised upward a point). A Bloomberg report earlier in the morning said a consensus of economists “expected” it to only go up about 0.3 points, and talked of a “slowing economy.” These guys wouldn’t even make it as TV weathermen.
• The Smoking Gun, which has tirelessly chronicled the travel and hotel demands of touring rock stars and entertainers, has branched out into politics, getting a hold of the hotel-suite “demands” of Vice President Dick Cheney and 2004 Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry. Do you really have to ask whose list is four times longer? S.O.B. Alliance member Lincoln Logs “catches up” to the story.
• Earth to Polticians — The public is seriously concerned about immigration (with the focus on the ILLEGAL part).
• Unofficial Hillary Clinton campaign advisers Madonna and Sharon Stone share their, uh, wisdom.
• Tolerance, Schmolerance — The City by the Bay tolerates everything, except rallying Christian youths in their midst. The City’s Board of Supervisors even passed a resolution condemning it. S.O.B. Alliance members Conservative Culture and Conservatorium have pertinent observations.

From the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

Per capita personal income grew 4.6 percent in 2005, slightly less than the 5.0 percent growth in 2004 according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Growth rates in most states were tightly clustered about the national average; however, Louisiana’s 9.1 percent decline was notably slower while Wyoming’s 7.3 percent increase was notably higher.

The best info I could quickly find indicates that inflation was 3.4% last year (1st paragraph after first table).

In other words, the average person was better off by 1.2% at the end of 2005 than they were in 2004, not by as much as the previous year (where I believe the difference was a bit over 2%), but still better off.

Free Links:

• Feeling, Very, Old — Apple Computer will celebrate its 30th anniversary on April 1. Hold the April Fool’s jokes.
• Marriage Is For White People (HT S.O.B. Alliance member Weapons of Mass Discussion) — I’m not saying it; black kids do. A horrid (and predicted) side-effect of the so-called War on Poverty, awful schools, and crime-ridden neighborhoods. People vote with their feet to get away from these conditions, and these “thought processes.”
• The Federal Elections Commission recognizes that The First Amendment applies to blogs — The shame is, there was some doubt about that.
• A Real World Business Lesson Learned , in Business School:
  

  A business professor at the University of Southern California was arrested on Friday by the FBI on charges of swindling students and others in a real estate fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

  Barry Landreth, who had taught real estate finance and development at the university, stole at least $1.5 million in the first 10 months of 2005, telling students and other investors he would buy land in Chicago and Las Vegas and then sell it for large profits, an FBI affidavit said.

  Instead, he transferred all the money into his personal account without buying the land, the FBI said.

  Lesson (ahem): Do your homework.

The “biggest child recovery operation in US history” has ended with a 99.8% success rate:

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