Kickstarter fraud
Let me start by saying I’ve had some excellent experiences with Kickstarter projects. The Traveller 5 project, Schlock Mercenary Challenge Coins,
The Chapin Sisters: A DATE WITH THE EVERLY BROTHERS, and the Tactical Pen, just to name a few.
There has been noticeable failure. The Founders Playing Cards project. A beautifully designed set of playing cards that use the images of historical American political figures. The project was created by one ‘John Slabyk.’ He claimed to have worked on the team that created the iconic Obama icon. Say what you want about Obama’s politics, but the branding is impressive.
One small flaw in the plan. After collecting over $37,000 from approximately 1,000 backers, ‘John Slabyk’ dropped out of sight. Just two posts, with no followups, no indication of the cards being manufactured, or any sign that ‘John Slabyk’ even plans on having them made. The backers are not happy. Legal action has been discussed.
If anybody knows this ‘John Slabyk’, ask him what he has done with the $37,000 of his backers’ money.
Update: Here is another article detailing John M (Markian) Slabyk‘s fraud: obama logo designer John Slabyk defrauds Kickstarter backers of over $37,000?
Update: Another references for Slabyk’s fraud.
Update: Yet another post of John Slabyk’s fraud. This one mentions that he claims to be the head of the Obama campaign art department and advises you to contact the NY State AG’s office concerning Internet fraud if you have been scammed by John Slabyk.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Django Unchained
Yet another tale of bloody revenge from Quentin Tarantino. He takes on the old American West this time. Django (the D is silent) is a slave rescued by a German bounty hunter, because he can identify three men worth a lot of money dead or alive. The Good Doctor (the German bounty hunter, played by the Oscar winning Christoph Waltz, is also a dentist), finds dead is easier to deal with. He and Django hit it off and become partners. Together they go off to free Django’s wife Brunhilda from the Candyland Plantation in the deep, deep South. Much death and destruction follows. Not much a spoiler, this is a Tarantino movie after all. I say check it out, and I’m pretty sure Joe-Bob Briggs would agree.
A tale of two recoveries
Filed under: American History, economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics, Taxes
First let us review some history and economic theory. Now you have heard often enough that the recent recession was the “worst since the Great Depression.” This bit of disinformation is repeated by those with a poor grasp or history and/or really don’t care if their information is accurate as long as it furthers their political agenda.
The worst recession “since the Great Depression” was clearly the recession American suffered through in the late 1970s. Double digit unemployment, double digit inflation and double digit interest rates! The prime rate actually hit 21%! So even if you had a job, the cost of living was rising faster and higher than you could possible get a raise and forget about buying a house with interest rates around 20%.
So we have that lie out of the way, let us get to some actual facts. The last recession end way back in mid 2009. That is when economy when from negative GDP growth to positive GDP growth. You may ask what growth? In most of America, there are still far too many empty store fronts as small business are shutting down faster than they are opening. What growth we have had has been anemic at best. GDP growth has not been over 2% in the three and half years since the last recession ended and employment has been over 7.5% and has even hit 10% during that time as well. What you are experiencing is clearly the worst recovery since the Great Depression.
Let’s review, worst recession followed by a roaring recovering in four years. Not the worst recession, worst recovery on record with no signs of getting better. Why such a glaring difference? Well the nice folks at Forbes covered this nicely. Let us review the facts about Reaganomics vs Obamanomics.
Reaganomics had four key points.
1. Cut tax rates to restore incentives for economic growth (just like JFK)
2. Real spending reductions, nearly 5% of the federal budget
3. Anti-inflation monetary policy
4. Deregulation, which saved American consumers an estimated $100 billion per year!
This simple plan resulted in the longest peacetime expansion in American history. The American standard of living increased by close to 20% and the poverty rate declined every year.
Now let’s look at Obama’s economic, and we are being generous here, plan. It is the exact opposite of President Reagan’s plan, which was clearly very successful. In addition to the new Obamacare taxes, he is calling for a sharp increase in the federal tax rate on the Americans who already pay the majority of the federal income tax. In additions, Obama is calling for increases in:
1. The capital gains tax
2. Corporate dividends tax
3. The Medicare tax
4. The death tax
Instead of spending cuts, Obama and the democrat controlled congress opened with nearly a trillion dollars in new federal spending, most of which was borrowed money, further increasing an already high federal debt.
Then we have the double-whammy of an inflationary monetary policy (the Quantative Easing non-stimulus acts) and massive re-regulation in health care, finance, energy and pretty much anything else Obama thinks he can get away with.
Mr. Ferrara sums up the results of the two policies nicely:
As a result, while the Reagan recovery averaged 7.1% economic growth over the first seven quarters, the Obama recovery has produced less than half that at 2.8%, with the last quarter at a dismal 1.8%. After seven quarters of the Reagan recovery, unemployment had fallen 3.3 percentage points from its peak to 7.5%, with only 18% unemployed long-term for 27 weeks or more. After seven quarters of the Obama recovery, unemployment has fallen only 1.3 percentage points from its peak, with a postwar record 45% long-term unemployed.
Previously the average recession since World War II lasted 10 months, with the longest at 16 months. Yet today, 40 months after the last recession started, unemployment is still 8.8%, with America suffering the longest period of unemployment that high since the Great Depression.
This is the Obama Economy. The worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. To make it worse, Obama’s policies are likely to cause that record to be broken, rather than produce real, sustainable economic growth.
Update: From Forbes: One Year Later, Another Look at Obamanomics vs. Reaganomics Here is the summary, it’s still Reagan for the win. Here are some of the highlights.
Let’s start with the GDP data. The comparison is striking. Under Reagan’s policies, the economy skyrocketed. Heck, the chart prepared by the Minneapolis Fed doesn’t even go high enough to show how well the economy performed during the 1980s.
Under Obama’s policies, by contrast, we’ve just barely gotten back to where we were when the recession began. Unlike past recessions, we haven’t enjoyed a strong bounce. And this means we haven’t recovered the output that was lost during the downturn.
This is a damning indictment of Obamanomics
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Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, former Senator Phil Gramm and budgetary expert Mike Solon compare the current recovery to the post-war average as well as to what happened under Reagan.
If in this “recovery” our economy had grown and generated jobs at the average rate achieved following the 10 previous postwar recessions, GDP per person would be $4,528 higher and 13.7 million more Americans would be working today. …President Ronald Reagan’s policies ignited a recovery so powerful that if it were being repeated today, real per capita GDP would be $5,694 higher than it is now—an extra $22,776 for a family of four. Some 16.9 million more Americans would have jobs.
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…As I’ve written before, Obama is not responsible for the current downturn. Yes, he was a Senator and he was part of the bipartisan consensus for easy money, Fannie/Freddie subsidies, bailout-fueled moral hazard, and a playing field tilted in favor of debt, but his share of the blame wouldn’t even merit an asterisk.
My problem with Obama is that he hasn’t fixed any of the problems. Instead, he has kept in place all of the bad policies – and in some cases made them worse.
This post requires basic math and reading comprehension skills
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The November 2012 unemployment numbers are out and, of course, the followers of the Cult of our Dear Leader are saying how wonderful those numbers are and those with basic math and reading comprehension skills are not so quick to jump in and join the cheering.
As in most cases, the truth lies between the two camps, but it’s closer to those with the basic math and reading comprehension skills.
According the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U3 unemployment rate (the so-called “official” rate) dropped from 7.9% in October to 7.7% in November. That is the official government number. No books were cooked to get there. It was calculated the same way the federal BLS calculated the U3 number for the past couple of administrations. Just how the feds calculate that number is important to know. I’ll get to that later.
For a more accurate look at the health of the US labor force, you need to look at the BLS’ U6 rate, which includes the underemployed. People who can’t find full time jobs and are working part time for example. That number has been in the low to mid teens for most of the Obama regime. That fell from 14.6% in October to 14.4% in November. Moving in the right direction, but still crazy high considering the U6 rate averaged 9.2% during the GW Bush administration. That was with the declining economy he inherited, the economic recession caused by the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, and the sub-prime housing bubble bursting! It’s even worse when you compare the Obama Economy to the Reagan Recovery, which at this point in President Reagan’s first term, the economy was producing over 800,000 new jobs a month.
The question the media should be asking is how those unemployment numbers are dropping. Yes, the economy is adding new jobs, but at a rate barely above the 125,000 new jobs a month needed to meet population growth. The numbers for October and September were revised downwards, so we should take the November number of 146,000 new jobs with more than just a few grains of salt. Even adjusting for the level of error seen in October and September, the number new jobs number is still probably over 125,000, but certainly not enough to lower the U3 and U6 numbers by two tenths of a percent in a single months time.
Now it is time to address how the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the various unemployment rates, including the U3 and U6 numbers. The key thing to know here is that this rate is based on the official federal workforce count. If you are collecting unemployment, and thus are officially looking for work, you are part of the official workforce that the federal government counts. If your benefits run out, you are no longer counted as part of that workforce, so you are not part of those BLS calculations. If you were on unemployment but start receiving other benefits, such as food stamps or welfare, you are removed from the official workforce count as well. So as the number of Americans on food stamps (which aren’t actual stamps anymore, but EBT cards) rises to record levels under the Food Stamp President, the size of the American workforce, as calculated by the federal BLS, shrinks in a corresponding fashion.
So while approximately 146,000 new jobs were added to the economy in November 2012, the size of workforce dropped by over a half million. To put it another way, the reduction in the workforce was well over three times the size of the increase in the workforce. Combine those two numbers and now that 0.2% drop in both the federal U3 and U6 rates make sense.
If the U3 rate was calculated using the same size workforce as existed when Barry Obama took office, the U3 rate would be 10.7%. Clearly, the primary goal of our Dear Leader and congressional democrats has not been job creation, but the illusion of job creation.
So what the November 2012 unemployment numbers really tell anyone willing to look past the smiling faces of the democrat operatives with press credentials, is that there are more people receiving money from the government (i.e. money obtained from tax revenues), than are people paying taxes than there were last month. That is the legacy of the Obama Economy.
Update: Since I posted this, the BLS “adjusted” the November 2012 unemployment rate upwards from 7.7% to 7.8%. Given the economic stewardship of the Obama regime, don’t expect that to get any better. The initial BLS U3 rate for December 2012 was 7.8%. I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets “adjusted” upwards as well.
Leftist talking points vs. Reality
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, economy, Obama Economy, Politics
The following has been passed around actively by leftist recently:
Basically, the Republican strategy for the past three years has been this:
1. Do everything humanly possible to prevent the economy from recovering.
2. Wait for 2012.
3. Run a campaign focused on the fact that the economy is lousy.
This post shows a high degree of partisanship, and an appalling low knowledge of how the federal government works and basic economic theory.
First off, for most of the past three years, the congressional Republicans haven’t been in a position to do much of anything. A position they primarily put themselves in. They didn’t control the White House, were the minority in the House of Representatives, and didn’t have enough seats in the Senate to even threaten a filibuster.
For the better part of two of those three years, the democrats ran the show. They set and implement policy, they decided where the money was coming from and how it was going to get spent. For the rest of the three years in question, they still controlled the White House and the Senate, which let them effectively block any changes the House Republicans might want to make.
The democrats, lead by Barack Obama own this economy, i.e. the most lackluster recovery on record. They are the ones who promised unemployment under 6% by now if they got enact their grand Keynesian economic plan, which they did. The results, unemployment at 8.2% (which be over 10% if the labor force participation was at the same level it was when Obama took office) and a real unemployment rate of 14.8% (according to the Dept. of Labor)
Faced with this record, the democrats want to double down of failure and continue the policies that have resulted in high unemployment and economic growth that in a good quarter breaks 2%.
There are a great deal of things you blame the congressional Republicans for. The current lack of significant growth in the economy isn’t one of them. Even Barack Obama has correctly stated that the economy was his issue and if he didn’t have it fixed in three years, he didn’t deserve a second term.
Round Up Post
Filed under: Environment, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Obama Promised To Cut The Deficit Six Times. Reality, deficit soaring to new record highs.
7 Times In 2008 Obama Promised To Create 7 Million New Jobs. Reality: Record high sustained unemployment with 23 million Americans unemployed, underemployed, or simply have left the workforce.
Leftist “environmentalists” admit that they kept quite during the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. “I guarantee you, if John McCain had been President, with that oil spill, or George Bush had been President with that oil spill, I’d have been out there with a sign protesting. I didn’t, because of who the President was.”
Obama awards Medal of Freedom to Democratic Socialists of America Chair.
Obama’s performance in Poland: “ignorance and incompetence”
Obama has a lot more crazy celebrities in his corner than Romney does.
It’s appalling and undemocratic to raise more money than the Obama campaign. The comments on this one are great. Here are some of my favorites:
Way back in 2008, Dems and their friends in the media were all bragging about how much money Obama raised. I guess it’s different now because shut up.
Because Obama believes in strict regulation of campaign money, it’s moral for him to take millions in unregulated money. But because Romney DOESN’T believe in strict regulation of campaign money, it’s immoral for him to take millions in unregulated money. Because stuff. Also, racism.
Oh by all means, let’s keep the election funding fair and equal. Donating Romney the use of a custom 747 to fly around the country campaigning (all expenses paid) should just about do it. And if it still isn’t balanced out, we can disable the security features for his credit card donations until we bring him up to parity with Obama.
Unemployment rises to 8.2% Instead of new jobs increasing last month by the the Obama administration’s prediction of 150,000, the actual number was 69,000.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Navy SEALs
This movie was made in 1990, back when Hollywood wasn’t afraid to have Muslim terrorists be the bad guys. Charlie Sheen pulled off what was a badly written character as well as it could be expected. It was Michael Biehn who really shined in this film though. This was the first of at least three times he play a Navy SEAL. A good action flick where the bad guys get shot, stabbed, drown and blown up. Think of it as low budget way to get ready for Act of Valor, which is current playing in theaters and has real Navy SEALs playing the Navy SEALs. It also has Muslim terrorists as bad guy, which bucks the trend Hollywood has been following. A trend that has resulted in movies that suck and don’t make much money.
Obama’s track record
Jeff Miller has made a list of some of our Dear Leader’s promises and how he has followed up on them.
1. He campaigned against an insurance mandate and then gave us one.
2. He promised he wouldn’t hire lobbyists, and then hired at least 40 of them.
3. He promised to release logs of meetings between his staff and lobbyists, and then his staff started meeting across the street with lobbyists so it wouldn’t be logged.
4. He promised not to raise any taxes on families that make under $250,000, and then raised several taxes that apply to them.
5. He promised to post all bills on the internet for five days before he would sign them, and he’s broken this promise with nearly every bill he’s signed.
6. He promised not to tax health care benefits, and then signed a law that taxes health care benefits.
7. He promised to get us out of Iraq; not happening.
8. He promised to close Guantanamo; not happening.
9. He lied about the cost of his health care plan.
10. He promised to televise the health care negotiations, and didn’t.
11. He promised to veto all legislation with earmarks; he hasn’t.
12. He has bragged about continuing the Bush treatment of detainees.
13. He promised transparency and then prosecuted leakers. (Plus, remember this?)
14. He lied about the public option. And about a ton of other stuff.
15. Remembering signing statements? Obama assumes you don’t.
16. Don’t ask, don’t tell? Still in place.
And then there’s the other stuff, the silly and the sad, like the commissions, embarrassing issues of foreign etiquette, lambasting tax breaks he voted for, bribing people with job offers, bemoaning the iPod that he himself uses, his habitual invocation of straw men, his destruction of jobs, wasted money, the cash-for-clunkers/housing-credit idiocy, the foreclosure plan folly, the fake fiscal restraint, unemployment and the stimulus bill, and the fact that Obama’s policies redistribute wealth from poor to rich.
President Obama is not just a mediocre president; he’s not just a bad president. President Obama is a terrible president. He is a terrible president by any standard, but certainly by his own. We were promised great things, and instead, we got just another lousy politician.
Interview Toni Weisskopf, publisher of Baen Books
Teleread has a very good interview with Toni Weisskopf, the publisher of Baen Books. Now, as those of you who have followed my ramblings for a while know, I’m a fan of Baen and their policies on e-books. Go read the whole article, but here are some of the “money quotes.”
TW: Well, part of the “secret” there is that we don’t pay for expensive DRM (“digital rights management”) schemes. I’ve never understood why we should add to our costs with the sole outcome that it’s harder for readers to buy and read the books we want to sell. On the contrary, I want to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find, purchase and read my books. That goal influences every publishing decision I make from our marketing to what typefaces we use.
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Specifically, I think ebooks will extend the market for books, not reduce it. But then what I am selling is good stories; I don’t care what medium I sell those stories in. If my readers tell me they want it chipped on stone, I will find some way to do that. If they want me to beam the story directly to a chip in the brain, I will do that.
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In a nutshell, the problem of the midlist author or publisher is not piracy, but lack of exposure.
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The other side of the coin is that Jim Baen didn’t believe our readers are thieves and neither do I. I believe they will buy the book when they have the money. And I don’t believe our readers are ignorant. The understand TANSTAAFL. Our readers understand that we can’t continue to find great books and the authors continue to write them if we don’t get paid. So we don’t treat our readers badly by trying to micromanage the use of the ebooks, and we have been amply rewarded for that trust.
Is Obama going Nuclear?
Filed under: economy, energy, Environment, Nuclear Power, Our Dear Leader, Politics
It seems that our Dear Leader may actually keep one of his promises. According to Townhall.com:
The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.
President Barack Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.
Obama in the coming week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.
Yup, safe, clean nuclear energy. Plentiful electrical energy completely free of greenhouse gases.
Also good for the economy, as Dr. Pournelle stated:
I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore also thinks it is the ecologically sound thing to do.
I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
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Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
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the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually — the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.