Internet Scofflaw

Scott Sumner points out that Paul Krugman’s latest column makes a basic logical error. Krugman notes a study that finds that stimulus spending leads to more jobs where the money is spent, but then makes the logical leap to the proposition that it leads to more jobs overall. Since stimulus spending is highly uneven (indeed, it is allocated exclusively by political considerations), the one hardly implies the other.

Honest mistake? Well, Krugman is a smart guy, but somehow that hasn’t stopped him from a history of mistakes; mistakes that a smart guy like him should be incapable of. His notorious divide-by-ten error comes to mind. At the time he tried to defend himself:

No, I didn’t forget to divide by 10. (For God’s sake: whatever you think of my politics, I am a competent economist, and know how to use numbers.)

Indeed, Mr. Krugman. That’s one reason we don’t think it was an accident.

Democrats accuse Republicans of using violent rhetoric in politics. They say they want more civility. They don’t mean it:

Last Friday…. after the Assembly voted to engross the Budget Repair Bill, [Democratic State Representative Gordon] Hintz turned to a female colleague, [Republican] Rep. Michelle Litjens and said: “You are F***king dead!”

(Via Instapundit.)

When the left was trying to pin the Tucson shooting on Sarah Palin and other Republicans, they had to stretch to an absurd degree, since they had no real examples. On the other hand, on the Democratic side:

• Gordon Hintz (D) makes an explicit death threat on the floor of the Wisconsin Assembly.
• Michael Capuano (D-MA) calls for labor protests to “get a little bloody”.
• Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) calls for Rick Scott (R, now governor of Florida) to be put against a wall and shot.
• Rahm Emanuel (D, now mayor of Chicago) recites the names of his enemies, punctuated by plunging a knife into a table and yelling “dead!”.
• President Obama says “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”, and says that a GOP takeover of Congress would mean “hand-to-hand combat”.
• Alan Hevesi (D, then New York State Comptroller, who later resigned as part of a plea agreement in an unrelated corruption case) praises Charles Schumer as the sort of the man who would “put a bullet between [President Bush's] eyes”.

Keep in mind, that’s just from elected politicians. If I were to open it up to entertainers, journalists, bloggers, union thugs, and/or protesters, we would be here all day.

Am I going to let this go? Not bloody likely. Those jackasses started this thing when they tried to blame a mass murder on our free speech. Now they are going to hear about it every damn time they do they very things of which they falsely accused us.

UPDATE: George Noel (D, head of Massachusetts’s Department of Labor) attacked Wisconsin’s Governor Walker (R) saying, “Make no mistake about it. We are at war.”

How many reporters have been assaulted at Tea Party rallies? Zero. How many reporters have been assaulted at union rallies? Not zero.

The Wisconsin Democratic party is paying the expenses of Wisconsin’s AWOL state senators.

People are puzzled by President Obama’s decision not to continue enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act even though he has determined it is unconstitutional. As Glenn Reynolds puts it, “Yes, you take an oath to enforce the Constitution. This may give the President the authority to enforce the Constitution as he sees it, but it surely doesn’t give the President the authority to choose not to enforce the Constitution as he sees it.”

So what is Obama doing? I’m certain that any answer that doesn’t center on political considerations is well off the mark.

Wisconsin’s Governor Walker is a smart guy:

There’s been a lot of talk about whether, with the budget bill tied up, Republican senators could pull out the collective bargaining provisions and pass them as a standalone measure. The Senate’s rules require a quorum of 20 senators to pass any bill that involves spending but just 17 senators for nonfiscal bills. Therefore, some believe that Republicans, with 19 votes, could pass the collective bargaining measure on their own.

It won’t work. Walker put out a statement Monday strongly arguing that the collective bargaining provision is in the budget bill because it has a big fiscal impact and therefore would have to be passed by the higher vote standard.

I admit I thought the collective-bargaining-only maneuver sounded a good idea, but Walker is right; using it would undermine the justification for the measure. It might work to get the bill passed, but it would give Democrats a good political argument where they currently have none at all.

UPDATE (3/9): There was a loophole after all, but it wasn’t that one.

Pundit Press reports UW Health’s Department of Family Medicine seems to be scrubbing its website to remove doctors giving out bogus excuse notes to Wisconsin protesters.

I was able to confirm at least part of Pundit Press’s story. This page confirms that one doctor from the list is indeed a part of the Department of Family Medicine, despite not currently appearing on the DFM’s page. More tellingly, Pundit Press reported last night that one Dr. Hannah Keevil was still on the DFM’s page, but she isn’t any longer. Her page at fammed.wisc.edu is empty now but still appears in the Google cache, which proves that pages really are being removed.

What isn’t at all clear is what this means. I’d like to believe this means these doctors are being suspended, but it seems much too soon for that. So why do it?

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Unscrubbed.

UPDATE (3/8): The Univeristy of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine tells Pajamas Media that their investigation is still ongoing.

Ford Vox writes for the Atlantic about the doctors handing out bogus excuse notes to Wisconsin’s union protesters.

What I find particularly disgusting about the affair isn’t what they did, but how they defended their actions even when caught. Absolutely everyone knows these excuse notes are bogus, and it is ridiculous to suggest otherwise. When you say that your excuse notes, handed out en masse to protesters illegally skipping work, are just the same as any other medical excuse notes, all you are saying is that none of your excuse notes are worth anything. Is that true? Maybe it is.

Meanwhile, the State of Wisconsin has joined the University of Wisconsin Health System in investigating the affair.

Wisconsin state senators are now required to pick up their paychecks in person.

I didn’t hear about this when it happened last October: The SPEECH Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Obama. The act protects American’s free speech from libel tourism by making foreign libel judgements unenforceable in the United States unless they comport with the First Amendment (which they never do). Well done.

Congress could still do more. The SPEECH Act protects me perfectly well, because I have no assets abroad, but those who do have assets abroad can still be victims of libel tourism. Congress should extend the law so that those who lose money to libel tourism abroad can recover the damages from any assets the tourists have in America.

How do you know we’re winning the Wisconsin budget battle? Here’s how:

White House now disavowing involvement in Wisconsin protests

And can it be any surprise? You could hardly pick a less sympathetic side than the union staging an illegal strike to demand more of the taxpayers’ money during a financial crisis while Democratic legislators flee the state.

It’s crap, though. The president is involved up to his ears.

UPDATE: “White House denies assisting Wis. union, but ties run deep“.

Josie Dimon is the infamous paramedic who left a man to die when she refused to pick him up during Pittsburgh’s blizzard last year:

Beginning early Feb. 6, as the city all but ground to a halt under a crippling blizzard, Mr. Mitchell and his girlfriend repeatedly called 911 seeking help for his abdominal pain. At 5:50 a.m., an ambulance crew headed by Ms. Dimon reached Second Avenue and West Elizabeth Street in Hazelwood.

Citing the snow-covered Elizabeth Street Bridge, Ms. Dimon declined to go any farther and asked for Mr. Mitchell to walk to the ambulance. By 6:09 a.m., city officials said last year, Ms. Dimon had grown tired of waiting.

“He ain’t [expletive] comin’ down, and I ain’t waitin’ all day for him,” she said to a colleague on a call recorded at the dispatch center. “I mean, what the [expletive], this ain’t no cab service.”

Minutes later, Ms. Dimon said, “Is he on his way? Because we are not going to wait all day for him.” . . .

By the time another ambulance reached him Feb. 7, Mr. Mitchell had died.

She left a man to die, because the dying man couldn’t walk to her ambulance. She claims that the dispatcher never told her that this call was serious. I guess you’re under no obligation unless the dispatcher says “we really need you to do your job this time.”

Naturally she was fired, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that her firing was unjustified.

Except for her union, the Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics.

The union filed a grievance saying the Dimon was fired without “just cause”, which is prohibited under the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the City of Pittsburgh. An arbitrator, one James Duff, agreed with the union, and ordered that the city reinstate Dimon with full back pay. The city is appealing the decision.

In his decision, Duff said it was really the fault of the city, the mayor, and the director of public safety. No question, the mayor screwed up by the numbers. But one failing that cannot be blamed on Luke Ravenstahl is Josie Dimon’s unwillingness to get out of her ambulance and walk across a bridge to save a man’s life.

This is where our public-sector unions have taken us: a world in which you can’t even fire a paramedic for leaving a man to die.

(Via That’s Church.)

Actual political violence, as opposed to the bogus metaphorical kind being hyped by the legacy media, comes from the left, particularly from the unions. At a Tea Party rally in Madison, a thug tried to disable the sound system, and became violent when bystanders tried to stop him.

Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) says we need a watchdog group to grade politicians on their civility. Yeah, because nothing says civility like false accusations of racism.

Doctors (or people who claim to be) are giving out medical excuses to Wisconsin teachers who skipped work to protest. What’s even more disgusting than watching them do it (yes, there’s video), is watching them defend their actions. These quacks should be called before the medical licensing board.

Plus, Legal Insurrection makes the connection to nationalized health care:

We have seen the future of the health care system, and it is the doctors on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, handing out free sick notes to public sector union members so they can fraudulently collect their pay for missing work.

Boy, oh boy, I can’t wait for Obamacare. Politicized medicine, massive fraud in the name of progressive politics, and a callous disregard for the law free from fear of prosecution for those aligned with the Democrats.

UPDATE: The University of Wisconsin Health System is investigating.

Helen Thomas is a real piece of work. Now that she’s started spouting her hatred of Jews, she seems unable to stop. In a recent interview with Joy Behar (tough interviewer there!) she added to her already voluminous record:

• She does not regret her earlier pro-Holocaust comments. Since she already retracted her apology, this part isn’t really news.
• She said Jews didn’t need to leave Europe after World War 2, because they weren’t being persecuted any more. I guess they were supposed to stick around where they had been nearly exterminated, trusting that Europe had had its last pogrom ever.
• She defended her earlier remarks saying that Jews should return to Germany and Poland, adding ”I also said Russia.” Terrific, another country with a history of persecution against Jews.
• When Behar pointed out that Russia has a history of persecution against Jews, Thomas said “They also had 25 million who died in World War II”. It’s hard to see how that’s even relevant; does Russia’s fight against Nazi Germany somehow excuse its persecution of Jews? Moreover, we should remember that Russia opened World War 2 as Nazi Germany’s ally. The Holocaust was well under way when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.
• She defended herself against charges of anti-Semitism saying that she can’t be anti-Semitic when she is a Semite herself. Despite being the lamest defense ever, you hear this all the time from Jew-haters in certain ethnic groups.
• Finally, she blamed “the” Ari Fleischer and “the” Abraham Foxman for causing her troubles by “distorting everything”. No matter how many different people criticized her after she came out as an anti-Semite, I guess it’s always about the Jews in the end, isn’t it.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Corrected a typo that made point 2 confusing.

The Washington Post reports:

President Obama thrust himself and his political operation this week into Wisconsin’s broiling budget battle, mobilizing opposition Thursday to a Republican bill that would curb public-worker benefits and planning similar protests in other state capitals. . .

The president’s political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to get thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals.

This is the President Obama that we know and, well, don’t love. To win re-election, he doesn’t actually need to move to the center. The legacy media will say he is moving to the center, whether he is or not. All Obama has to do is not sabotage that narrative. And that is exactly what he is doing by siding with Wisconsin’s disgusting public sector unions. These guys illegally walk off their cushy taxpayer-funded jobs to demand more taxpayer money, and are rightfully reviled by just about everyone for it.

This is political malpractice, but it seems Obama just can’t help himself. In the next election, Republicans are going to be able to tie Obama to these jackals very effectively; not only has Obama expressed support for the unions, he has been instrumental in furthering their efforts. And the unions are going to look very bad on television.

More of the same union thuggery, this time from Idaho. (Via the Corner.)

The Obama administration has censored the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s report on the safety evaluation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. Presumably this means that it disagrees with administration policy, which is to stop the Yucca facility regardless of what the science says.

NOTE: I’m not being bombastic here. The administration’s policy is literally to ignore the science. Specifically, the NRC chairman gave orders last October to stop looking at the science.

(Via Instapundit.)

The battle going on in Madison, Wisconsin today is truly consequential. Schools are closed as Wisconsin teachers continue their illegal strike for a third day, protesting the budget being considered by the state legislature.

In the last election, voters turned control of the state House and Senate and the governorship over to the GOP. The GOP is keeping its promise to fix the state budget, and — as in most states — Wisconsin’s key problem is the public sector unions. The unions won’t accept the verdict of the voters, and are bringing pressure (ugly, ugly pressure) to defeat the budget.

Politicians across the country are paying close attention to Madison. If the unions succeed in scuttling this reform despite losing the election, that will be a signal to the rest of the country not to take on the unions. That will mean the fiscal ruin of the states, and probably an end to our federalist system. But a victory in Madison will encourage reformers around the country, in addition to saving the state of Wisconsin.

Once again, while the left always accuses the right of attacking their patriotism, it is the left that actually does it.

British homeowners can’t put wire mesh on their windows. It might hurt burglars.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: This might not be true.

While Wisconsin teachers were staging an illegal and very ugly strike to protest a bill the would cut the state budget, Wisconsin’s Democratic legislators skipped town to prevent a vote from taking place. The legislators were located at a resort in Rockford, Illinois. To get a sense of the nature of the resort, a picture is worth a thousand words.

UPDATE: More violent rhetoric, and still more. And more yet.

UPDATE: And more.