Only Conservatives Could Get Excited Over This Guy
9/07/2007
Q: What Is The Fastest Growing Wisconsin County?
A: St. Croix County
Jobs in the Twin Cities have made a west central Wisconsin county remain as the fastest growing.
Department of Administration figures show St. Croix County has grown by about 25 percent since 2000.
The population of St. Croix County now tops 79,000 and about 25,000 of them commute to jobs in the Twin Cities.
The department's population estimates are used to determine how much state money to distribute, how many district attorneys are needed and to calculate voter turnout, among other things.
The community of Hudson, the St. Croix County seat, has grown by 43 percent since 2000.
Of course, a couple of bloggers from www.ontheborderline.net moved out of Hudson and left the county, but people still keep coming...
Read more @Minneapolis StarTribune.
9/06/2007
9/05/2007
Could Uncle Milty Be Wrong?
Click here to read about "Chinese capitalism."
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman
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For the first time, the Chinese government has admitted selling the organs of executed prisoners for profit, a gruesome business it had denied for years.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton Friedman
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Unless of course you happen to be a slave laborer in China...
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.
Milton Friedman
---
Obviously, political freedom isn't required to have capitalism...at least in China.
9/04/2007
2007: The Year of Republican Hypocrisy
January 23, 2007: Republican radio personality Scott Eller Cortelyou of
Denver arrested on suspicion of using the Internet to lure a child into a
sexual relationship
January 29, 2007: Republican former Jefferson County, Colorado, Treasurer
Mark Paschall indicted on two felony charges "in connection with an
allegation that Paschall solicited a kickback from a bonus he awarded one of his employees"
January 31, 2007: Republican Congressman Gary Miller is named by
Republicans as ranking member of oversight subcommittee of House Financial Services Committee despite the FBI's investigation into his land deals
February 14, 2007: Major Republican fundraiser Brent Wilkes and former CIA
executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo are indicted by a grandy jury for corrupting CIA contracts
February 16, 2007: Major Republican donor Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari,
aka Michael Mixon, is indicted in federal court on charges of providing material support to terrorists
But wait, there's more...
9/03/2007
Wisconsin workers try to keep up as economy stagnates
by Mike Ivey
Feeling a little less wealthy this Labor Day than last?
You're not alone.
A combination of stagnant wages, soaring health care costs, the housing slump and a gyrating stock market have many Americans fretting over their pocketbooks amid the backyard barbecues and union hall picnics.
And the usual flurry of reports pegged to today's celebration of the nation's working people paints a rather dreary picture across most of the economic spectrum.
In the six years since the 2000 recession, middle-class workers have seen their inflation-adjusted wages rise just 3 percent. Much of that growth has come via catch-up wages for women, as wages for men-only have increased just 1 percent, according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
The rich have done better, however, with the top 5 percent of Americans enjoying a 9 percent wage increase since 2000.
Read more @ The Capital Times.
9/02/2007
Labor Day: What's In Your Wallet?
1880s:
"Land of opportunity, you say! You know damn well my children will be where I am -- that is, if I can keep them out of the gutter."
Chicago worker
"For most industrial workers of the Eighties, real wages were rising with aggravating slowness, and each year extremes of wealth jutted out more irritatingly. A titan like Marshall Field made $500 to $700 an hour; his non-executive employees were paid $12 a week or less for 59 hour weeks. Quickly made fortunes were lavished with infuriating conspicuousness -- on a mansion in red, yellow and black bricks, the purchase of a titled husband for the daughter, banquets where the cigarettes were wrapped in $100 bills, or a poodle was draped with a $1,500 collar. Just around the corner, slums were sprawling out, filthy, heatless, so dark their corners could not be photographed until flashlight photography was invented in 1887."
Eric F. Goldman
Rendezvous with Destiny (1955)
Today
US fund managers earn 22,255 times average wage
WASHINGTON: Top private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid US workers earned all of last year, according to a new study from two research groups.
The 20 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $657.5 million, or 22,255 times the US average annual salary of $29,500, said the study, released on Wednesday by Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The study cited data from the US Labor Department and Forbes magazine.
“The fact that these pay levels for fund managers are so out-of-sight is going to drive up pay at publicly traded companies,” said Sarah Anderson, director of the global economy program at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the study. “There are people out there with a straight face claiming that public company executives are underpaid.”
The private equity boom in the past year has pushed the pay ceiling for fund managers “further into the economic stratosphere,”...
Read more...
9/01/2007
Big Blue Marble
By: jesse winchester (1975)
I live on a big round ball
I never do dream I may fall
And even one day if I do
Well Ill jump up and smile back at you
I dont even know where we are
They tell me were circlin a star
Well Ill take their word I dont know
But Im dizzy so it may be so
Im riding a big round ball
I never do dream I may fall
And even the high must lay low (even the high must lay low)
But when I do fall I will be glad to go
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