I love a good riot. I think they make more compelling television than normal news. If this feed is still working, you can watch the live happenings on Sky News.
So what happened? What has caused the people to strike back at the police and now the media? Well, a young man was killed by the police earlier today. The Sun provides some nice background information:
Suspected gangster Mark Duggan, 29, fired a handgun at an armed cop, whose life was saved when the bullet hit his radio.
The officer returned fire with his Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun - blasting dad-of-five Duggan twice in the face before slumping to the ground.
There's more information about why he was being followed in that article.
"It wasn't like this before," said one woman standing close to one of the two burned-out police cars. "It started out as a peaceful demonstration. The police shot a guy here last week and they lied about what happened. They said he pulled a gun but he wouldn't have done that with armed police. They shot him so badly that his mother could not recognise him."
But has exploded into a full out riot. There's a double decker bus on fire. It's a quite unbelievable sight.
Hails of bottles and bricks were intermittently thrown at police from side streets as reinforcements arrived. Rioters also aimed fireworks at police. At one stage, four firework rockets were shot at a line of horses, prompting a charge and a nearby crowd to disperse in panic.
Needless to say, I'll be watching Sky News for the rest of the evening.
The WSJ had an interesting front page piece on Michelle Bachmann. For the most part, it focuses on her positives:
But here in Iowa, the tough rhetoric is sheathed in a soft presentation. Ms. Bachmann hugs, dances and offers girl talk on the campaign trail—"That's a rockin' shirt!"—as if baking her steely conservatism into a warm apple pie.
But it also, highlights some of her faults as well:
"I found out real fast that the Michele I knew publicly is not the behind-the-scenes Michele," said Ron Carey, who was hired as Ms. Bachmann's staff chief last year and says he quit less than six months later. Mr. Carey said that Ms. Bachmann was consumed with getting herself on television and seemed indifferent to the task of tending to her district, a view expressed by more than half a dozen other former aides.
While she may appeal to many socially conservatively individuals:
Ms. Bachmann's supporters say they are energized by her stances against abortion rights, gay marriage and government bailouts.
She clearly lacks the experience to be commander-in-chief.
Furthermore, her interests seem to be driven more by personal ambition than anything else. That's what bothers me with politicians more than anything else. I think this part is a good example:
For months, Mr. Carey said, the staff tried to get Ms. Bachmann to stop saying in speeches that Mr. Obama had added more to the federal debt load than all other presidents combined. "It was simply not true, and yet I could never get her to drop that line," he said.
You can't stretch the truth to win votes in my book. I understand speaking negatively about the opposing party's leader because it does help rally your constituency and supporters, but lying is simply not something I support at all.
I don't know how the Republican race is going to play out. I'm concerned that we will have another election where the best candidate to lead our country will not be in the race. No one in the race thus far has really inspired confidence in me.
Quite recently, in the eye of this debt deal, President Obama has been lambasting oil companies and other corporations for avoiding taxes through loop holes:
He also goes after corporate jet owners. It's been going on like a broken record. I get why he wants them to be burdened with more taxes, considering they can probably afford it, but I don't know if it's "fair" or "equitable."
Nobody wants to pay taxes because they have no say into what the way that government is going to spend it. Government is inefficient both with layers of bureaucracy and wasteful programs such as Medicare, Welfare, and now ObamaCare. I'm not saying these programs aren't necessary, but rather that these programs aren't efficient.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Republicans like Paul Ryan, who have consistently criticized the Democrats' irresponsible spending habits. Ryan was extremely pleased with the spending caps put on by the new debt deal:
But that did not stop him from writing a scathing op-ed in the WSJ regarding Obama's budget inadequacies:
Since then he has offered a lot of rhetoric but no real plan to avoid a spending-driven debt crisis. His speeches and press conferences are no substitutes for actual budgets with specific numbers and independently verified projections of future deficits and debt. Meanwhile, it has been over two years since the Democrat-controlled Senate passed any budget at all. This is a historic failure to fulfill one of the most basic responsibilities of governing.
The necessity of controlling federal spending is better illustrated by these graphs: Needless to say, this problem isn't going to go away. In fact, it's only going to get worse unless we find a solution to this problem. ObamaCare was unnecessary bloated program that compounds the already horrible spending practices of our government.
When you have government handouts with lax rules, people are going to take them. Why wouldn't you want free money? If you can get it, why not? It's costing governments millions of dollars as a result.
To illustrate this problem, I'll use the Michigan Bridge Card program as an example. This program had very lax rules, so many people, in particular, students took advantage of this program. Although their parents were paying for their school and housing, they used the fact that they had zero income to get these cards and to get free groceries. As a result, the state had to make tighter regulations (From MLive):
"We're ready to extend a helping hand to any citizen who is truly in need — including college students who care for young children and are taking the right steps toward becoming self-sufficient," said Maura D. Corrigan, Michigan Department of Human Services director. "Those who don't meet federal guidelines won't be able to take advantage of what is meant to be a temporary safety net program."
It turns out that certain government programs have the same type of loopholes as the corporate tax loopholes that Obama has so vehemently argued to close. The whole system is creating a sort of reverse incentivization to work less and get more for the government. That's not a driver for growth, that's not a driver for productivity, that's not a driver for innovation. You have to wonder whether part of the reason the unemployment rate is so high is because the benefits of being on unemployment is so good. Now Obama wants to lengthen unemployment benefits again:
A top goal for Obama and congressional Democrats is to extend both unemployment insurance and a payroll tax break. These measures were enacted at the beginning of the year. Obama could not achieve those extensions in the budget deal with Congress.
I understand why we have unemployment insurance, but at what point are we going to cut this off? If we keep extending these benefits, why should anyone try to get employment? Where is the incentive to work?
Right now, we have more benefits offered to people than ever before, yet we sit at 9.2% unemployment. It's hard to say the economy is struggling when companies' earnings are generally beating estimates. Part of this might be from job cuts, but even with these stronger earnings, companies like Cisco and Merck are still cutting jobs.
Closing corporate loopholes are just going to cut into these companies' profits. The time honored solution to increasing costs is job cuts. This will only serve to exacerbate the problem. I'm not saying that these loop holes should not be closed, but closing them now might not be the best solution.
The first response for these companies will be to protect their profits and margins in their shareholders' best interests. You have a difference between what Obama thinks sounds reasonable and what will actually happen. We are already in risk of another economic recession. It is important to wait until the economy shows real signs of health before taking constrictive measures like increased taxes.
In the meantime, you should incentivize people to get back in the work force. The extension of unemployment allows people to take their time getting back into the field and pick and choose jobs. Jobs should not be something that people should be picky about right now. The government is shouldering a burden of costs that it needs to pass on to the private sector. As a result, they need to push people to get jobs and remove the uncertainty of future taxes.
In doing so, the government will alleviate the pressure of future costs on companies, while providing a sense of urgency at the bottom of the work force to be more aggressive in the labor markets.
Whereas the threat of taxes casts uncertainties over the overall economy, incentivizing the job market has the opposite effect. With more people employed and less people claiming benefits, you're automatically going to see a shift in revenues and costs. If you tighten up the loopholes or the ease with which people can get other government benefits in order to reduce unnecessary government handouts, you will see savings there too.
The best way to economic recovery and solving this debt crisis is not through taxes, but the other side. We are spending way too much on all of these programs. We need tighten up the restrictions of these programs and provide incentives for growth. The government isn't going to spend its way out of this recession, but rather, they are going to stunt a potential recovery with these backwards measures.
I would urge President Obama to take measures that actually work rather than to get into the weary debate on revenues versus spending cuts. His best path to reelection in 2012 is not by playing party lines, but rather by making a strong effort to right this country's economy and to make positive strides on the issue of debt.
