Fortunately I keep my sylabi pretty clean and innocuous.  But here's what the IRS was looking for as reported by CNN:

Among the criteria used by IRS officials to flag applications was a "Be On the Look Out" list, or a BOLO, which was discontinued in 2012, according to the report. The criteria on the BOLO included:

• Whether "Tea Party," "Patriots" or "9/12 Project" was referenced in the case file.

• Whether the issues outlined in the application included government spending, government debt or taxes. (yup, cover that about once every 3-5 days)
  

• Whether there was advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live." (can't have people advocating THAT, now CAN we?)
  

• Whether a statement in the case file criticized how the country is being run.  (including, apparently, complaining about this very IRS document!)

• Whether it advocated education about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (because they less they know the easier it is for the administration)

Several years ago I was attending one of those well-mannered Oscar parties.  A teritiary award was given to some lefties who had made a little featurette about the banking scandles.  Their acceptance speech concluded by imploring the assembled masses to press the administration (Obamas) to put the offenders in jail.  Cheers and huzzahs from the assembled masses. I then observed that it would never happen since such a large percentage of the so-called offenders were actually serving IN the administration.

Well!

Can't have people like ME at a nice party - telling the truth and all.

Which brings us to one ofthis week's fiascoes.  In a "normal" Washington week this would have gotten a ton of attention, but what with Obama's prom pictures going public it was pushed to the back burner.

I'm referring of course to Penny Pritzker: Obama's Worst Insult to His Left-Wing Base

How bad is Pritzker? So bad that she withdrew her nomination the first time around, in 2008, just as the New York Times began asking questions. 

So bad that the president of the Chicago Teachers Union recently warned: "I think the country will learn who she is."

So bad that while a few conservatives have weighed in, Obama's left-wing supporters are the ones leading the charge against her. 

Here is a sampling of what they are saying.

D. S. Wright of the Firedoglake blog wrote in February:

Not surprisingly the idea of Obama stacking his economic team with yet more 1%ers is leading to opposition. Ms. Pritzker’s case being exceptionally problematic given her massive and diverse fortune inevitably leading to conflicts of interest as Commerce Secretary.The rich are already well represented in Obama’s administration.

And now a petition has been launched claiming Prtizker engaged in anti-worker practices as a Hyatt Board member and member of the Chicago School’s Board of Education...

Will President Obama listen to the workers or pay a big fundraiser back?

Susie Madrak of the "Crooks and Liars" blog, reacting to Pritzker's nomination in a piece entitled, "Obama Nominates Sleazy Subprime Banker As Commerce Secretary," wrote:

Time for a little stroll down memory lane. This is what I wrote about Penny Pritzer, Obama's just-announced appointee as Commerce Secretary, back in February:

Penny Pritzker, union buster.

Penny Pritzker, sub-prime lender who drove Superior Bank into the ground.

Penny Pritzker, Chicago Board of Ed members who thinks your children only deserve enough education to make them a member of the workforce.

Penny Pritzker, billionaire tax dodger.

Penny Pritzker, potential Secretary of Commerce nominee? Is this a joke?

No, it was not. Okay, just kidding. Yes, it was. The joke's on us. Ha, ha!

Here's David Moberg of In These Times, in a post, "3 Troubling Things To Know About Billionaire Penny Pritzker, that was circulated on the left-wing Democratic Underground message board:

Despite her business-friendly history, billionaire heir Penny Pritzker, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, will likely face standard Republican flak in her Senate confirmation hearings.

But progressive Democrats are the ones with real reasons to be upset with her record and that of her family, which is among the wealthiest in America. Here are just a few:

1) Union-busting. Pritzker’s family businesses have often engaged in anti-union practices. She is a director of the Hyatt Hotels, which fired and then replaced long-time room cleaners in its Boston hotels with non-union subcontracted workers. Hyatt has refused to settle several contract disputes with UNITE HERE, some lasting nearly four years, on terms similar to those accepted by other big hoteliers.

2) Conflicts of interest. The family’s $20 billion empire was built on a diverse base of businesses, including Hyatt, Marmon (an industrial conglomerate), the TransUnion credit rating agency, and many others in industries such as container leasing, insurance and travel.

The family has long had a reputation for not only accumulating its wealth through elaborate schemes of tax evasion, including offshore accounts, but also for using its political clout to win favored treatment....

3) Shady business dealings. The Pritzkers have a long history of business malfeasance at the expense of people of modest means. In one notable case, Congress passed legislation in 2003 to address issues raised by widespread charges that the Pritzker’s credit rating agency, TransUnion, had made serious flaws in its credit reports on individuals—and then failed to correct them upon discovery.

But perhaps the most infamous and pernicious Pritzker abuse of power was the Superior Bank scandal, a predatory subprime mortgage securitization racket that led to the failure of Superior Bank in 2001 and prefigured the 2008 crash.

Robert Scheer, writing at the Huffington Post, says that Democrats are prepared to abandon their principles to support her, while Republicans dare not tackle her Wall Street woes:

It is deeply revealing that in the midst of the continuing cycle of misery brought on by the chicanery of the financial community two key Cabinet positions dealing with business practices will likely be occupied by people who specialized in those financial rip-offs.

For Pritzker, as with the confirmation of [Treasury Secretary Jack] Lew, the fix is in. The Republicans don't dare push back too hard on shady business practices that their deregulation legislation endorsed, and Democrats will go along with anything the president wants.

The same restraint will be exhibited in exploring the offshore tax havens that have protected the Pritzker family's immense wealth....

Wonder what the SIC will think of this.

We Midwesterners have all seen the movies and TV shows with folks on the beach in the evening, cuddling around a bonfire.  No more!  Here’s a story in the Wall Street Journal about a plan being considered to ban the use of fire pits on beaches in Southern California.  Naturally, a killjoy commission has been established to examine the environmental effects of the area’s 857 beach-fire pits. It’s called the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Last week, the air-quality board released preliminary findings of a study on the fires, which found that in one evening a pit emits as much fine-particulate pollution as "one heavy-duty diesel truck driving 564 miles."

I'm no math whiz but the folks at Ricochet are!

If every one of those fire pits was working at full capacity every night of the year (857 X 564 X 365) that would be the equivalent of about 176.5 million diesel truck miles worth of fine-particulate pollution annually. So, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District report, the fire pits of Southern California are capable of belching into the air every year roughly the same amount of pollution that you’d expect from a heavy-duty diesel truck making 36,526 round trips between Huntington Beach, California and Jacksonville, Florida.

...

The Native American population north of the Rio Grande at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas was—at a minimum—10 million. Who knows how many tribes, families, and discreet social units were to be found in a population of 10 million? But for the sake of argument, let’s make a very conservative guess that this 10 million was broken up into 1 million families of 10 people each.

Can we agree that semi-nomadic, pre-modern peoples—especially hunter-gatherers—built fires for cooking and such? Can we agree further that they probably did so every night? So, let’s estimate that 1 million families north of the Rio Grande built an open-pit, wood fire every night during the pre-Colombian era.

Using the South Coast Air Quality Management District report figures, that’s 564 million miles worth of diesel-truck pollution in the United States and Canada every night in a time when not a single car, truck, airplane, or factory was anywhere to be found. It’s almost 206 billion miles worth of diesel-truck pollution in the atmosphere annually—the equivalent of about 43 million round trips between California and Florida.

Of course, once the Europeans got here, the number of fires built every evening in North America expanded alongside the rapidly multiplying population. Cough cough.

There are three possible conclusions as I see it. Either:

1. The South Coast Air Quality Management District report is really over-estimating the amount of smoke these fires throw off;
2. The North American atmosphere in the pre-Colombian era was a lot more polluted than has been previously appreciated; or
3. The hysteria about global warming has reached an absolute fever-pitch of insanity.

What do you think?

Had several quesries lately about the contents of my I-pod - my little 16gigs of joy.  I've mentioned the podcasts I listen to (currently 4g, 5 1/2 days worth on there!) but somebody asked about music.

I LOVE me some playlists.  Sol here's my setup.  I have two dozen smart playlists and another  two dozen regular playlists.  My mainstay is my"driving" list.  It includes my commute music and also rotates in "unheard favorites (4 and 5 star songs I haven't heard in 37 days) plus various other playlists as described below.

January is pretty straightforward.

February sees my "Valentines" playlist added in - songs with love, heart or valentine in the title.

March and April get the Spring playlist (spring, flowers, shower, rain) and the birthday playlist.

May is back to mundane.

June sees an increas from the "summer camp" playlist, which builds through June, holds steady through July, then declines through August.

July hits the "summer" playlist - summer, heat, hot.

August sees the aforementioned  decline of summer camp music and the gradual increase of my "reunion" list - music from ca 1968 through '76.

September sees the rolling in of my "football" playlist.

October is dominated, of course, by my Halloween tracks.

November is back to football.

December is Christmas/NYE music.  

Then back to normal for January.  

Like I said, I do loves me some playlists.

Solution to the IRS Mess: Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax

I have a standing offer to every student who finishes any of my classes.  $100 if they can show me any instance of a corporation paying a tax.  

Was watching a movie earlier this week (Find Me Guilty - not a bad flick).  It's about a NY RICO trial - the longest such trial in the country.  At one point the Prosecutor realizes he might lose the case and is lamenting the ignorance of the jury.  He observes that everything they buy is more expensive bacuse of "the Mob."  Everything that comes into this city on a truck or a ship or a plane costs more BECAUSE OF THEM.  They're in the juries pocket!  And the jury is too stupid to realize it.

Same could be said for the government.

Just sayin'.

"Nice representative republic ya got there, Bub.  Be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

Why wait for next year's March Madness when you can start May Madness today? Introducing the Obama Scandal Bracket! Click here for a full-size version and vote for the scandal you think will bring down the president.

Voter Fraud Changed the Outcome of a Missouri Election

Since it was Don on Donk crime it didn't get much play.  

On Monday, John C. Moretina pleaded guilty to a federal felony count of voter fraud. In the August 2010 Democratic primary, Moretina falsely claimed he was living in Missouri’s 40th legislative district just so he could vote in the primary there. 

This is a Democratic district so the winner of the primary, John J. Rizzo, was highly likely to (and, in fact, did) win the general election for district representative. Why is this particular voter-fraud case so important? Because Rizzo defeated his Democratic opponent, Will Royster, by only one vote, 664 to 663.

 

He's today's Thurber and Rodgers rolled into one.  And his QOTD may be the QOTS (season):

 "Second terms are the price a man pays for the hubris of thinking he deserves one."

My friends on both the Left and the Right often redicule my Libertarian faith in Spontaneous Order.  Sadly we don't usually have the ability to conduct lab experiments in social science and need to rely instead on thought experiments which are quite unfulfilling regardless of the outcome.

Sadly, again, there have been two "social science labs" operating here in the Western Hemisphere which actually SHOW the development of SO.  The first is low level and minor, but there nonetheless:

Spontaneous Order Experiments Take Hold in Detroit

The other is a little farther away but is quite a bit more in depth.  El Alto: Where Leftism Meets Laissez Faire

Bolivia.  Home to about 220,000 residents in 1985, the city swelled as poor farmers and out-of-work miners poured in from the countryside. It is now bigger than La Paz, with an estimated size of well over one million. The population is overwhelmingly Aymara, one of the country’s main indigenous groups, and the immigrants have brought with them a fierce work ethic and a laissez-faire zest for business.

The most prominent feature of El Alto is its vast open-air market, which fills mile upon mile of city streets every Sunday and Thursday. Here vendors by the thousands offer a huge array of goods: piles of used T-shirts and other clothing that arrive in bales from the United States; cars, new or used (and sometimes stolen); neatly arranged arms, legs and heads from broken Barbie dolls; electric guitars; mummified baby llamas; pickax handles; and myriad other items. Each week, millions of dollars pour through the market, which operates in an almost total vacuum of government intervention, taxes or regulations.