Quotes of the day

Whenever there’s a corporate scandal, it’s typically blamed on an increase in greed, but when there’s a sex scandal, it’s never blamed on an increase in lust.--Paul Rubin

While taxpayers (and unemployed former taxpayers) no doubt were hoping that Washington would focus on economic growth, much of the Obama administration's "stimulus" spending was directed toward ensuring that state and local government workers don't lose their jobs, while the normal appropriations process has been increasing spending for practically every department and agency of government. This situation bears an eerie resemblance to the employment situation during the Great Depression, when private nonfarm hours worked fell steeply from 1929 to 1932 and did not return to 1929 levels until 1941, while millions were added to government payrolls during the New Deal. In both cases, the possibility that government employment crowds out private employment, rather than stimulating it, should not be dismissed. Keynesians like to suppose that whenever the government undertakes new spending to augment the ranks of its employees a multiplier effect will result, causing private economic activity and employment to follow the same upward course. The jobs data tell a different story.--Robert Higgs

To wit, you said this of Joseph Isidore Lieberman, Democrat, Connecticut: ‘A senatorial prostitute’; of Roger Ailes, ‘fat ass’; Chris Wallace, ‘a monkey posing as a newscaster’; Rush Limbaugh, ‘a big bag of mashed-up jackass.’ (All right - I’ll give you that one.) And of Michelle Malkin, you said ‘A mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,’ end quote. That, my fine-feathered friend, sounds a lot more like violence against women than anything Scott Brown ever said. You can’t resort to childish attacks that are as hominem as they are nauseum. You’ve ceded the high ground and now you wallow in the fetid swamp of baseless name-calling, and as you know, sir, that’s my thing ...--Jon Stewart, to Keith Olbermann

These [intelligent, well-educated] people don’t understand or accept that the sales director has certain highly developed skills and can probably operate under pressure far more effectively than they can. This is when performance differences usually emerge. And what is really frustrating, is that the skill that the sales director has, he developed because he was the social director of his fraternity, learned to win at drinking games and was actually able to pass his courses with a perpetual hangover. This is highly critical to his job performance and success. The last point is that they don’t value experience and the judgment that comes with it. So, who would you follow into battle, the 30 year veteran or the smartest guy who just graduated from West Point? Where’s the test in that? I would say survival, but they prefer SAT scores.--Tom

When my wife started her position at a humanitarian organization, she and the other new execs were told that maternity leave could be taken… out of their accumulated sick days. Her fellow new colleague, from Ireland, leaned across the desk to the HR person: “Pregnancy,” she said “is not a sickness.”--Chris Blattman