Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

“(SC Congressman Gresham) Barrett booed at Greenville Tea Party” (HT Hot Air). Wow. Lefties pretending that this is some kind of GOP/Fox News plot will be giving this the “la-la-la, I can’t hear anything” treatment.

Speaking of people who supported the original TARP bailout, I hope there are legitimate sensible constitutionalists (my term describing a person who is genuinely conservative) out there in each and every congressional district in Ohio ready to challenge each and every congressional incumbent who voted for TARP, the mislabeled “stimulus” package, or both. My review of the roll call votes (TARP; stimulus) indicates that these Ohio congressmen let us down once or twice: Driehaus (1st), Schmidt (2nd), Wilson (6th), Boehner (8th), Kaptur (9th), Kucinich (10th), Fudge (11th), Tiberi (12th), Sutton (13th), Kilroy (15th), Boccieri (16th), Ryan (17th), Space (18th). Yes, that includes ordinarily great American John Boehner, who blew it on TARP.

Speaking of the trap known as TARP, there’s this from the Financial Times — “Strong banks will be allowed to repay bail-out funds they received from the US government but only if such a move passes a test to determine whether it is in the national economic interest, a senior administration official has told the Financial Times.” Translation: “We’re still trying to think up ‘good’ (i.e., politically palatable) reasons not to accept repayments.”

Speaking again of the trap known as TARP, there’s this from the New York Times (“U.S. May Convert Banks’ Bailouts to Equity Share”) — “While the option appears to be a quick and easy way to avoid a confrontation with Congressional leaders wary of putting more money into the banks, some critics would consider it a back door to nationalization, since the government could become the largest shareholder in several banks.” It isn’t a “back door” to nationalization if Uncle Sam owns a majority share; it IS de facto nationalization.

Also, there’s this from the NYT — “The administration’s central revenue proposal — limiting the value of affluent Americans’ itemized deductions, including the one for charitable giving — fell flat in Congress, leaving the White House, at least for now, without $318 billion that it wants to set aside to help cover uninsured Americans.” Wait until they see now much more money they’re doing without thanks to administration’s determination to show us how supply-side econ works in reverse.

Even more refutation of globaloney (HT Benny Peiser’s daily e-mail) — “ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.”

Finally, a noteworthy anniversary — Did you know that it’s been two years since Harry Reid told us that the war in Iraq was lost? We’re still waiting for the “I was wrong, I am sorry,” Harry –

From Denver, Colorado:

Apr 4, 2009 / 01:38 pm (CNA)

“Come, be my light” was God’s call to Mother Teresa more than 50 years ago. Seventeen students and four adults from Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver felt the same call last week, to help those in need in Galveston, Texas. The island off the southwestern coast of the state was devastated by Hurricane Ike in mid-September 2008, causing massive destruction, unseen in the historic city since 1900.

The mission trip included a balance of work and prayer: each day students prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, went to Mass together and also spent around seven hours working on various sites. They moved from house to house throughout the week cleaning, removing trees and debris, rebuilding, restoring, and painting.

Br. Paul Kostka, Machebeuf teacher and head of campus ministry remarked that his favorite part of the trip “was being able to assist a young mother whose house had to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

Alex Gomez, a senior who also participated in the trip was impressed by the mind-set of the hurricane victims saying: “It was amazing that these people, who have suffered for so long and have lost so much, remain joyous, hospitable, and hopeful.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

On April 14, The Toledo Blade, apparently having temporarily misplaced the comma key, reported that “Longtime Lucas County Sheriff James Telb and a top commander and two former deputies were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges related to the 2004 death of an inmate at the jail” (HT to Maggie Thurber in an e-mail).

The Blade, which likes to brag about the over 1,000 articles (I’m not kidding) it carried about Republican Tom Noe’s coin-dealing losses and related matters several years ago, nearly all of which reminded readers of Noe’s GOP affiliation, “somehow” forgot to tell readers that Sheriff Telb is a Democrat (scroll down to list of “Uncontested Races” at link”).

The Blade’s blind spot on Sheriff Telb’s party has been on display frequently since then. Telb’s party affiliation is nowhere to be found in these other Blade reports:

• April 15 — “Lucas County Sheriff, 3 others accused of 2004 jail death cover-up”
• April 16 — “Lucas County Sheriff deputies beat inmate to death, witness says”
• April 15 — “Justice Department contradicts coroner’s ruling” (The Blade did not identify the party of Coroner James Patrick, who is also a Democrat).
• April 15 — “County lockup has experienced its share of problems”
• April 16 — “Prosecutor gave case to feds because probe named sheriff” (The Blade did not identify the party of Prosecutor Julia Bates, who is also a Democrat)
• April 17 — “Record says ex-officer faced choking, lying claims before”

The only recent Blade article I could find that mentioned Telb’s party is one from April 15 that chronicled his career. The misleadingly headlined “Few candidates ran against Telb after his original election” contains some items that, if Telb’s party membership was other than Democrat, would have led to a very different headline at the highly partisan Blade — something on the order of “Telb no stranger to controversy.” Some of the nuggets include a direct contradiction of the story’s headline, campaign dirty tricks, and double-dipping :

….. His most serious challenges came in a three-way 2004 race. He was taken on by two former proteges, Tom Gulch, the former Oregon police chief and Toledo police officer who ran as a Republican, and Dan Contreras, a former sheriff’s captain who ran as an independent.

His opponents alleged such problems in the sheriff’s office as poor record-keeping, security breaches, low employee morale, and lack of training. They highlighted an incident in 2003 in which a gun was smuggled into the jail.

….. Sheriff Telb was further criticized when an off-duty sheriff’s deputy was arrested by Toledo police, accused of stealing campaign signs belonging to Mr. Gulch and Mr. Contreras.

….. He retired in September, 2000, so he could claim an $80,000 annual pension from his service at UT (University of Toledo) and as sheriff. He was re-elected without opposition Nov. 7, 2000. Two days later, county commissioners reappointed him until his new term could begin Jan. 1.

There’s also a hint that Telb’s kid-glove treatment by the Blade is for reasons beyond what the holier-than-thou Blade will tell us (bold is mine):

In 1992, Toledo police investigated whether Sheriff Telb fired gunshots into the air after a motorist hit his car downtown as he was returning from The Blade’s postelection party.

Wow. Do winning candidates ordinarily visit the newspapers which endorsed them on election night? They’re not too worried about the appearance of impropriety in the Glass City, are they?

The party ID failure in coverage of Sheriff Telb’s troubles is also rampant at other news sources:

• Toledo’s Channel 24′s brief indictment story is party ID-free.
• So is a longer report in Saturday’s Columbus Dispatch (“Sheriff’s charge is latest jail problem; Alleged cover-up in death follows inmate beatings, shocking escapes”; HT to an e-mailer).
• Finally, as if there was a reason to even wonder about this, the Associated Press failed to identify Telb as a Democrat here, here, here, and here.

It also happens that the large majority of sheriffs in the Buckeye State are Republicans, and that many state residents tend to assume that even the sheriffs of heavily Democratic counties are GOP members. Such is in the case (correlating this list of November 2008 candidates with this list from the Buckeye Sheriffs Association) in Summit (Akron), Montgomery (Dayton), and going-blue Hamilton (Cincinnati) Counties. I would suggest that one reason Sheriff Telb’s Democratic identity has been almost completely muted might be that the reporters at the Blade and other Ohio establishment media outlets believe that most readers outside Lucas County will assume that he is a Republican.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From the Catholic News Agency, originally posted on March 31 (YouTube link):

…. on doctors (HT Instapundit).

Imagine that. More doctors are deciding that participating in the government-run system (i.e., Medicare) isn’t worth their time and trouble. So they’re opting out, i.e., providing fewer subsidized services to the government (compared to what the market will pay for their services. This is just one of very many available forms of, to use the current shorthand, “going Galt.”

In LibLand, this is all right-wing conspiratorial fiction and doesn’t “prove” anything — not until every doctor is interviewed and the exact number of doctors engaging in these subversive practices is identified. Uh-huh.

Gosh, I thought you could just throw up a few solar panels, plug into the grid, and our energy problems would be solved in an environmentally perfect way. (/sarc)

Of course not.

Early this morning, Rita Beamish of the Associated Press reported that solar panel projects are running into problems with water availability and efforts to protect endangered species. But, as usual for a report on energy production, she fails to tell us how much the energy produced from such installations, if they ever go active, would cost.

Here are a few selected paragraphs from Beamish’s report:

Solar finds it hard to squeeze water from desert

A westward dash to power electricity-hungry cities by cashing in on the desert’s most abundant resource – sunshine – is clashing with efforts to protect the tiny pupfish and desert tortoise and stinginess over the region’s rarest resource: water.

Water is the cooling agent for what traditionally has been the most cost-efficient type of large-scale solar plants. To some solar companies answering Washington’s push for renewable energy on vast government lands, it’s also an environmental thorn. The unusual collision pits natural resources protections against President Barack Obama’s plans to produce more environmentally friendly energy.

….. The solar hopefuls are encountering overtaxed aquifers and a legendary legacy of Western water wars and legal and regulatory scuffles. Some are moving to more costly air-cooled technology – which uses 90 percent less water – for solar plants that will employ miles of sun-reflecting mirrors across the Western deserts.

….. The National Park Service is worried about environmental consequences of solar proposals on government lands that are administered by the Bureau of Land Management. It says it supports the solar push but is warning against water drawdowns, especially in southern Nevada. In the Amargosa Valley, the endangered, electric-blue pupfish lives in a hot water, aquifer-fed limestone cavern called Devil’s Hole.

….. Companies are wrestling with routes for long-distance transmission lines and habitat for the threatened desert tortoise. They also are worried about a proposal being developed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for a Mojave national monument, which could put up to 600,000 acres off-limits alongside already protected park and military lands. It could affect at least 14 solar and five wind energy proposals.

Nowhere in any of this does Beamish give us information about how much energy installations such as these might produce, or what the cost of producing that energy would be.

Solar energy advocates tend to downplay, and the press tends to ignore, the massive amounts of land their facilities would demand, and the resources needed to keep solar panels operating efficiently.

Ultimately, these and other factors cause the cost of generating energy via solar to be far higher than that involving fossil fuels. One analysis (imperfect, to be sure; if anyone has a better one, let me know) shows that solar is “5-20 times more expensive than the cheapest source of conventional electricity generation, although …. (it) may only be 3-5 times the electricity tariff that utility customers pay.”

As to getting solar to be “economically viable,” the author of this post cuts to the chase in its final paragraph:

The bottom line is that despite the lower PV panel costs; we are still not at parity with hydrocarbon fuels such as coal and oil. Carbon based taxing or alternative energy stimulus and more investment into alternative energy is required to improve the economics of solar and wind.

So if the economics don’t work, governments are going to have to force them to work through taxation. At least the author is honest about it. It would be nice if the establishment press would shine a bit of light on comparative costs every once in a while.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Tennessee:

‘Miracle man’ finds new life
April 12, 2009

Joshua Castle clutched the metal walker and carefully, slowly walked into Advanced Prosthetic Systems for his appointment this week.

With each step, he concentrated on making his prosthetic knee bend. And with each stride, the 16-year-old amputee smiled confidently.

Joshua, one of the youngest patients at Advanced Prosthetic on Dover Road, was there Wednesday morning for his appointment with amputee specialist Jeremy Harris, who is also an amputee.

Harris watched as Joshua walked down the hallway of the clinic, and he gave advice on how to apply pressure to the prosthetic knee to make it bend and straighten for a natural-looking gait.

“Considering his injuries and where he started, he’s come a long way,” Harris said.

“He’s progressed faster than what I thought he would in the beginning.”

For the Northwest High School junior, learning to walk with the help of a prosthesis is the beginning of a future that many thought he would never have.

The accident

Just a year ago, his mother Laura Cutshaw stood at his bedside at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville terrified that her son wouldn’t survive the night.

On March 11, 2008, Joshua was walking to Northwest High School when he was hit by a car on Purple Heart Parkway and Evans Road.

Dozens of people fought to save his life, and Joshua remained in critical condition and in a coma for more than a week.

His injuries included multiple broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, punctured internal organs and a nearly severed left leg that had to be amputated above the knee. It took 14 surgeries to save his life, and even after all that, his mother wasn’t sure he would have much quality to that life.

Doctors told her he’d be in a vegetative state and never walk again. But a dog tag necklace Joshua wears around his neck tells his story in two words: “Miracle man.”

The brain damage he suffered didn’t affect his speech and isn’t apparent from talking to him. Cutshaw said he suffers some memory loss, but said his brain should be healed within two years.

“This is just amazing,” Cutshaw said, joyfully laughing. “It’s a miracle to me. … Every day I look at him and I can’t believe where he’s at.”

Joshua doesn’t remember the wreck but has moved past it and is looking to the future.

“I feel natural, like my old self,” Joshua said.

And his mother said his sense of humor, which some may find unusual, helps him get by.

Joshua said he plans to get a T-shirt with tire tracks printed on it that reads, “I played in traffic,” or possibly a Honda tattoo on his chest.

But while those ideas make him laugh, he wears several bracelets on his arm that hold serious meaning to him: A green Donate Life, a blue and white Miracle Maker, an Egyptian image that represents death and a multicolor WWJD his aunt made for him.

One step at a time

A lot of things have changed about Joshua since he returned from the hospital in June.

His hair — shaven for brain surgery — has grown back in, and he looks healthy. Best of all, he now has a strong determination to succeed at whatever he sets his mind to.

It’s been a long journey for Joshua. “He was very depressed and down at first,” said Joanna Penna, patient care director at Advanced Prosthetic. “His attitude has changed. He wanted to get a leg and walk. He was determined. Determination is key to a patient progressing.”

In December, Joshua was given his first prosthetic leg, and after many therapy sessions, he took the parallel bars and his first steps.

“I cried,” Cutshaw said. “When the doctors told me he’d be a vegetable, I thought I’d never see him walk again. I kept looking back at him, I was sitting there in that hospital saying, ‘Yeah he’s a vegetable,’ and now he’s walking.

“It’s like watching a little baby do all their firsts again.”

The carbon graphite prosthetic leg, which is estimated to cost between $12,000 and $15,000, allows Joshua to stand with the knee locked and walk with a natural stride due to the way the knee bends.

He also has a foot that aids with applying pressure to make the leg bend and lock.

Harris, Joshua’s consultant, said as an amputee himself he is able to understand what patients like Joshua go through.

“I listen to them,” Harris said. “Everybody is different. With Joshua, we knew we had our work cut out for us. … As much drive as he’s put into this, I expect him to achieve his goals. As long as he uses what they tell him in therapy at home, he’ll do fine.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media on Wednesday morning. The left just loooooooves it (/sarc). Truth hurts, guys. Also: See this BizzyBlog update.

_______________________________________________________

Why this year’s deficit will probably be even worse than predicted.

_______________________________________________________

On Good Friday, just ahead of Tea Party Wednesday, the Treasury Department delivered the latest news concerning Washington’s ongoing crucifixion of future generations’ financial well-being.

Straight from Uncle Sam’s March Monthly Treasury Statement, here is how the first six months of the federal government’s current fiscal year compares to last year:

If spending continues at the rate seen during this year’s first six months, the government will exceed last year’s outlays on July 6.

There’s little reason to believe the spending spree will slow down.

Even in supposedly routine areas, outlays have ballooned. Here is short list of how some departments have been hemorrhaging dollars in comparison to last year:

• The Department of Agriculture is up $9.9 billion, or 18%.
• Defense (which, despite its importance, is in need of serious cost control) is up $23.5 billion, or 8%.
• Health and Human Services is up $40.6 billion, or 12%.
• Labor Department spending has more than doubled to $52.7 billion from $25.1 billion, largely reflecting its open-wallet approach towards bailing out state unemployment insurance funds.
• The Social Security Administration is up $24.4 billion, or close to 8%.

Then there are the new spending monsters on the block. The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) has disbursed $293.5 billion out of the $700 billion Congress authorized in early October. Much of it was “given” to banks with a (figurative) gun pointed to CEOs’ heads. There is strong evidence that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Obama are refusing repayments from larger banks that want to get out from under the government’s current and imminent onerous terms. Does anyone want to bet against Geithner not forcing out the remaining $400 billion-plus to either the willing or unwilling?

Remember Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Those were the government-sponsored enterprises Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and other Democrats said were in ship shape not too long ago. Through March, Frank, Waters et al have “only” been wrong to the tune of almost $60 billion the Treasury has spent to shore up whatever remains of those two entities. This amount, by the way, roughly matches the worst estimates of the total losses from Enron, with one important difference: Investors and employees primarily ate Enron’s losses. Taxpayers are on the hook for Fan and Fred. Does anyone seriously think those two entities are done draining the treasury?

Oh, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better (if it ever does). Not only has spending rocketed, but as you can see above, receipts have also fallen precipitously.

Just think: It was a bit less than a year ago at this time that we were celebrating the “Supply-Side Stunner,” the fact that Uncle Sam’s April 2008 tax collections came in at an all-time one-month record of over $400 billion. Those collections not only included final payments of 2007 taxes due, but also first-quarter estimated tax payments from individuals, many of whom are small- and medium-sized business owners. As I wrote at the time, “The increase may not only reflect that entrepreneurs and the self-employed had pretty decent years in 2007, but that many of them are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable.”

At that point, there was every reason to believe that the economy, which had gone through a tough fourth quarter of 2007, was back on track towards resuming decent growth. Indeed, the first two quarters of 2008 had positive GDP growth, and the second quarter’s annualized 2.8% was far from tepid.

But then in mid- to late-June, along came the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy. The Democratic triumvirate’s intent to starve the nation of energy, regardless of the consequences, and newly-minted presidential nominee Barack Obama’s designs on punitively taxing 5% of the nation’s most productive in the name of redistributing money to everyone else, both became crystal clear. As a result, paraphrasing what I wrote at the time, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs responded to the trio’s total lack of seriousness by battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst.

They haven’t stopped, which is why the POR Economy is now the POR Recession as normal people define it. It is also why tax collections have taken a dive.

March is supposed to be a big month for tax receipts from regular corporations whose years end in December. In March 2008 (go to Table 3 on Page 2 at the link), $32.6 billion poured in. This year? I’m not kidding: $3.4 billion. For the fiscal year thus far, corporate income tax collections are down almost 57%.

Through March 31 of last year, according to Treasury’s Daily Statement, “Individual Income and Employment Taxes Not Withheld,” which are largely payments made by the self-employed, partners, and those in S corporations whose income flows through to individual tax returns, are down about 13%, or almost $15 billion, from a year ago. These not-withheld taxes are what drove last April’s all-time collections record, which is definitely not going to repeat itself.

It’s clear that quite a few ordinarily industrious people “went Galt” months before the Tea Party movement even came into existence. As a result, fiscal 2009′s deficit could come in closer to $2 trillion than to the Obama administration’s estimate of $1.75 trillion, or even the Congressional Budget Office’s $1.85 trillion.

Pelosi, Obama, Reid, and their party created the conditions that led to this, and are primarily responsible for how bad things are. After months of doing everything to tear down everyone’s confidence, they are the ones who are going to have to figure out how to restore it. If they can’t, it would seem that the Tea Partiers, aka the voters, will find others who can, as soon as they can.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

GM might be able to sell Saturn to one of those eeeeevil private-equity firms or a dealer group — If the government hadn’t intervened several months ago, this might have happened much sooner. Will Obama prevent this if he realizes how much small-car expertise might be leaving his Government Motors?

Carrying in something from a mini-dustup yesterday — The left fringe really doesn’t like your truly’s latest Pajamas Media column, even as it’s being proven correct. Specifically, as I wrote last night, “tax collections from individuals on April 15 in the ‘non-withheld’ and ‘individual income taxes’ line items amounted to $7.215 billion. Last year, same day (a Thursday instead of a Wednesday): $21.191 billion. That’s roughly a 66% drop. I wonder why? I would suggest that many of the most productive among us who pay their taxes directly have decided not to work so hard.” Further, last year’s collections from April 16-30 in those two lines were about $73 billion, while at the rate things are going, it will be a miracle if this year’s comparable figure is $50 billion (only $30 billion wouldn’t surprise me). I would say the arrows are pointing to me being right, and lefties being wrong.

They’re not going to like this Pajamas Media column by Raymond Ibrahim about the terrorists in training in Somalia — “What Piracy? This Is the Same Old Jihad.” On Sunday, while giving kudos to Obama for doing the right thing, I expressed the hope that Obama’s okay to take out the terrorists in training holding Richard Phillips hostage wasn’t “a one-trick testosterone display.” Well, the “pirates” have ramped up: “Wednesday, the gang that launched an abortive attack on a Long Island-owned ship loaded with food aid Tuesday said they were singling out American vessels and would kill their crews.” That’s a de facto declaration of war. The “four-point plan” of Hillary Clinton foolishly wants to use criminal law. Where’s Barry?

Further evidence of unseriousness — “I don’t believe Obama would intentionally endanger the nation, so it must be that he thinks either 1. the previous administration, including the CIA professionals who have defended this program, is lying about its importance and effectiveness, or 2. he believes we are no longer really at war and no longer face the kind of grave threat to our national security this program has protected against.” Read the whole thing.

The Department of Homeland Security issued its ‘extremism’ report despite civil liberties-based objections — “the department’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties raised objections about some of the language in the nine-page report before it was sent to law enforcement officials nationwide.” AP also has a story. Well of course they issued it. Civil liberties only matter to hard-leftists when they’re NOT in power. Janet Napolitano’s related “apology” to veterans is far from the unconditional “We were wrong, we are sorry” the situation demands — “”I know that some veterans groups were offended by the fact that veterans were mentioned in this assessment, so I apologize for that offense.” She’s essentially criticizing those she “apologized” to for being so thin-skinned. She also “stands behind the intent of the report,” which would appear to be part of a campaign to convince Americans that our real enemies aren’t those inside our country who celebrated the 9/11 attacks and are trying to perpetrate others. No-no-no, they’re prolifers, and people who want to control our borders, people who understand the original intent of the Constitution, and other “radicals.”

Mr. “Black by Popular Demand” makes some great points about built-in anti-mob rule features of the Constitution:

….. The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” John Adams predicted, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Our founders intended for us to have a republican form of limited government where the protection of individual God-given rights was the primary job of government.

Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the Constitution’s framers inserted several anti-majority rules. One such rule is that election of the president is not decided by a majority vote but instead by the Electoral College. Nine states have over 50 percent of the U.S. population. If a simple majority were the rule, conceivably these nine states could determine the presidency. Fortunately, they can’t because they have only 225 Electoral College votes when 270 of the 538 total are needed. Were it not for the Electoral College, that some politicians say is antiquated and would like to do away with, presidential candidates could safely ignore the less populous states.

Part of the reason our founders created two houses of Congress was to have another obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the designs of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The Constitution gives the president a veto to weaken the power of 535 members of both houses of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

To change the constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both Houses to propose an amendment, and to be enacted requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

From Mullen, Nebraska:

Published: Sunday, April 12, 2009 4:13 AM CDT
World-Herald News Service

MULLEN – Groceries that needed to be picked up caused one man to drive to town, which enabled him to become an “angel in the snow” and save the life of another man on the way during the blizzard that hit the Sandhills on Saturday, April 4.

Travis Warren, 27, of Mullen, said he wanted to get to town to pick up some groceries a friend had picked up for him before he headed back out to do more calving.

“With the sun still shining, it didn’t look that bad,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been out in it, but I didn’t know that when I started out.”

Warren now knows there was a reason he went out into that blizzard that was much more important than groceries.

“I headed into town before dark and I happened to notice a car in the ditch,” he said. “I saw the door was open, so I thought I had better stop and check it out.”

When Warren got to the car, he nearly tripped over something next to the car.

“I parked my pickup and walked over to the car and found a man lying in a snowdrift next to his car,” he said. ” I didn’t see him until I was almost on top of him.”

Warren said he called home to have his family call for help then returned to his vehicle for coats.

“I always have a heap of coats in the back,” he said. “I grabbed the coats, got the man sat up and wrapped the coats around him.”

He couldn’t get the man up and into his car, Warren said, so he stayed with him there in the snow.

“I couldn’t get him picked up,” he said. “So I kind of bear hugged him until they got there. I was there probably a half-hour before help arrived.”

Warren lives 4.5 miles east of Mullen and found the man approximately half a mile west of his turnoff. He had been busy doing night calving before he took the break to go after the groceries.

“We were right in the thick of it Saturday night,” he said. “We probably had 50 calves on the ground and eight more were born that night.”

Warren said he didn’t do anything special, that the credit for saving the man’s life goes to the Sheriff’s department, the EMTs and the Department of Roads.

….. Warren said he had heard only that the man, who he knows only as “Jed,” is from Seneca and is probably “in his 40s” is “going to live.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

Update, 10:30 p.m. — Well well, John Cole via Andrew Sullivan got it totally wrong, won’t recognize what has happened, and will be among those who will be quiet while the crickets chirp if, as I expect, receipts continue to tumble at a rate faster then the economy as a whole. But they will, of course, continue to claim that incentives and disincentives will have had nothing to do with it. And they will, of course, be wrong — strident as always, but wrong nonetheless.

It’s an honor for that PJM column to be considered dumb by the likes of Cole.

Getting a critique from Cole is as good an indication as any that the PJM piece, like the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy posts that observed what was really happening last summer, will be seen as accurate when the dust settles and the objective history is written.

But thanks for the traffic, ya clowns. :–>

(A bit ago, I missed that a piece elsewhere wasn’t written by him, and regret the error. Exposure to clownishness appears to be rubbing off.)

Update, 11:55 p.m. — Hey John and Andy, put this in your pipe and smoke it. There’s still plenty of time left in April, but tax collections from individuals on April 15 in the “non-withheld” and “individual income taxes” line items amounted to $7.215 billion. Last year, same day (a Thursday instead of a Wednesday): $21.191 billion. That’s roughly a 66% drop. I wonder why? I would suggest that many of the most productive among us who pay their taxes directly have decided not to work so hard. I would say the arrows are pointing to me being right, and you being wrong. See you on May 1.

__________________________________________________

(begin original post)

A few commenters at my PJM column are trying to claim that the “going Galt” phenomenon is fiction.

Part of the problem is the headline (beyond my ultimate control, though I could have influenced it and perhaps erroneously decided not to), which would seem to imply that Americans en masse are deliberately slacking off because the rewards for effort aren’t there.

That’s not what I’m claiming. I’m claiming that “quite a few ordinarily industrious people ‘went Galt‘ months before the tea party movement even came into existence.” If I had known what the headline would be, I would have suggested “most industrious” to be crystal clear.

It doesn’t take many among the most industrious to cause the government a significant money problem. For example, Mayor Bloomberg of New York has noted that about 50,000 people — in a city of maybe 4 million adults and probably a couple million more net incoming commuters — “pay so much in tax that they essentially support the city.” If even 5,000 or 10,000 of them decide to go fishing for the rest of their lives (and most can more than likely afford to), Gotham has a big problem.

Analogously, if no more than a million or so of the top taxpayers nationwide decided to do the same thing, the results would be fiscally disastrous for Uncle Sam.

The evidence that some of these key people are deciding to pull back on the intensity began to develop back in June of last year. As I observed at the time, entrepreneurs, investors, and businessmen began, as a result of the initiation of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, “battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst.” That’s a BizzyBlogese paraphrase for “going Galt” — not hiring, not expanding, letting people go and not replacing them, making worn-out equipment last longer instead of buying new, etc., etc.

A couple of commenters are taking me to task for citing corporate tax figures. Who do you think owns the hundreds of thousands of regular (as opposed to pass-through) corporations that aren’t publicly-held? Tooth fairies? Corporate receipts have dropped like a rock largely (not entirely, of course) because their owners started seeing less and less sense in investing in them, and have decided to hold the line at best, or scale back, or in some cases sell out.

This PJM commenter nailed it when he/she said that:

What I consider most significant about all the talk of “going Galt” is not the hesitant way most folks are going about it but that there are significant numbers of productive Americans who have begun to speak of such a thing at all. Never before has this happened in U.S. history.

That’s because never in U.S. history has a major political party either ignorantly taken political campaign positions (that’s the charitable version) or deliberately concocted a political strategy (not quite so charitable) designed to take down the economy and suck life and hope out of the citizenry in order to achieve electoral victory. When you say that you’re going to starve the economy of its energy — energy that’s sitting right there, begging to be used — regardless of the consequences, and regardless of whether there’s a viable alternative (which there certainly isn’t yet), you are, deliberately or not, taking down the economy. When you say you’re going to punitively tax the most productive, even with the economy in a relatively fragile situation (which of course has gotten much worse since), you are, deliberately or not, taking down the economy.

Even the most determined political oppositions in the past, at least since World War II, have recognized the potential consequences of their campaign statements and positions on the current economy, and have generally worked to avoid hurting it. That last vestige of statesmanship in the Democratic Party totally went out the window in June 2008. This is why the economy has since then been, and henceforth shall remain, the POR Economy — which has been followed by the POR Recession as Normal People Define It.

___________________________________________

UPDATE: As to how deep the “going Galt” phenomenon is, April will provide an important clue.

Recall that last April’s federal receipts of over $400 billion were an all-time record by far. That result reflected an economy that was in the midst of recovering nicely from a rough 4th quarter of 2007, and relatively decent though cautious outlooks of investors, entrepreneurs and businesspeople.

A stunning $236.5 billion of that $400-billion plus came from “individual income and employment taxes not withheld,” which are largely payments made by the self-employed, partners, and those in S corporations whose incomes flow through to individual tax returns. Many if not most of the top 5% that the Obama administration is targeting for it tax increases are in this contingent.

So far this April, the money Uncle Sam has collected in this category is within striking distance of last year ($23.5 billion through April 14 for the two related line items vs. $24.7 billion at the same time last year), but the next two-plus weeks, when 90% of the receipts will come in, will tell the tale. The fact that some of those affected may have accelerated income and pulled money out of their businesses in 2008 to keep it out of 2009 and 2010 (meaning they ultimately had to pay up yesterday if they did these things) may muddy things a bit, but I still expect a pretty significant, going-Galt drop.