Pot shocked by darkness of kettle

Picked this up from Rational Capitalist.



It is incredibly shocking that the agency charged with oversight of the Federal Reserve has no clue how it's spending the one trillion dollars it just added to its balance sheet. On the other hand, there's a bit of Pot v. Kettle about Congress chiding the Fed for spending money with reckless abandon. They wrote the president a blank check with the TARP funds, and have abdicated any responsibility for how that money is being spent. Who is going to investigate them for that, and when?

Tallahassee Tax Day Tea Party -- Report

Tallahassee's Tax Day Tea Party took place today at 5pm in front of the old capitol. I spent the early part of the day getting my sign ready. Not particularly clever or artistic, but it said what I wanted to say. (Clicking on the pictures will take you to my Webshots album where there are more pics.)



I got there about 4:30pm, and had some trouble finding a parking spot in Klemen Plaza. Most of that was probably due to the legislature being in session. There were a number of fellow protestors, though, who rode the elevator up with me. By the time I got up the hill to the front of the capitol, there was already a good sized crowd. I took a few pictures from the north end of the lawn, and then moved through the crowd getting video. I'm not an expert on these things, but I'm estimating the crowd at 1200-1500 people.









The views on display were mostly concerned with economic issues: the bailouts, government spending, debt, socialism. A few of the signs mentioned Obama by name indicating that some see the issue in partisan terms, even though the bailouts were already in place when Obama took office. True, he's trying to take government spending to a whole new level, but it's a difference of degree rather than kind. The advantage of having Obama as president is that so many conservatives have suddenly remembered that they are opposed to big government. It's like the past eight years were a wild Saturday night, but now it's Sunday and they're back in church.

Yet I digress. Some of the signs...

Basic common sense: "You can't borrow your way out of debt. You can't spend your way to wealth. So how do you figure government can do it?"




Anarchists: I didn't catch the significance of the 'A' when I first saw this sign.




A Culpeper Minutemen flag with the coiled rattlesnake. There were quite a few "Don't Tread on Me" flags, and one guy was handing out small rubber snakes to the kids.




View from the south end of the lawn:



More signage:

An exremist showed up. I spotted him easily by his sign.




This one was pretty clever, although I would say that Obama's policies, so far, have more in common with fascism.




Obamanomics: It's similar to compassionate conservatism only moreso.




I'm not greedy. I'd settle for a billion.




I like her stimulus plan: A hot cup of tea, a beautiful girl, and freedom!




A surprise appearance by Johnny Depp.




Uncle Sam was there.



Part of a speech by a local radio personality named Preston Scott. Sorry for the lousy color.



The crowd was enthusiastic and united in their opposition to government spending, but philosophically very mixed. Whether these protests can serve as a basis for reducing the size of government, or whether they can even slow it down, remains to be seen.

An Atlas Shrugging?

Jake DeSantis has resigned from AIG, publishing his resignation letter in the NYT. His statement is not as uncompromising as it might have been, but he does reject any notion that he should feel guilty for the money he earned at AIG. He is nonetheless donating all of the money he should have received under his contract to those who have been hurt by the economic downturn, and he is daring Congress to retroactively tax the money away from the the recipients of his charity. That may be a misguided attempt to protect his coworkers by making the taxation of those earnings politically impossible. I don't think it will help, though, because there's nothing to stop Congress from simply inserting a clause to exempt charitable donations from the tax. In fact, it would make it much easier on Congress if they could say that they forced the folks at AIG to donate their money to charity, rather than confiscating it for the government. I would rather have seen the managers band together and fight any attempt to strip them of their compensation, but given the mood of the nation I can't really blame them for keeping their heads down.

To be clear: AIG has no right to one dime of taxpayer money. Having given them the money, though, the government has no right to deny them the right to use it to meet a contractural obligation to pay their employees. Any voter who accepts the bailouts while getting livid over the bonuses has swallowed the elephant and choked on a gnat, and the politicians who are making an issue of the bonuses are trying to redirect taxpayer anger from its proper target (them) to a scapegoat (businessmen).