Podcast 367

UK Election Crushes Pundits. Most important story going into the new week is the British Election, and the chief casualties appear to be political pundits. The ‘experts’ predicted a victory for the left, and in fact the left in British Politics was handed its hat and shown the door. Political scientists and pollsters are becoming too famous, and becoming part of the story, rather than doing their job. Its one of the reasons we love it so much when they’re wrong. Next, the same bunch in the US will be telling us what’s going to happen in 2016, based on the experience of the British election. What they won’t tell you is how the two systems are different, and why. That’s where this podcast comes in. Dissimilarities aside, UK conservatives will move quickly to cut government costs and size and adjust the UK’s relationship in the EU. The most significant thing to come out of the British election is the fact that people told pollsters one thing, and voted an entirely different way. It’s become socially unacceptable to disagree with an overbearing and arrogant left, so people just keep their opinions to themselves and take their revenge at the polls. Could that happen in the US? As people bear up under a no growth economy, disorder at the breaking points, and constant denial from the left that their policies just aren’t working, the pundits ignore the fact that there is political rage just below the surface. Woe to the politician that ignores this, or doesn’t understand it. Will the polls pick it up? Not if the pollsters and political scientists keep thinking about politics in the old right/left paradigm. Things are changing. Fast. Meanwhile, candidates in the US keep doing the same things and expecting different results. At a cattle call for republicans in the Carolinas, Jeb Bush talks about Christianity (just to make you think he’s a conservative) and Scott Walker wants to send troops to Iraq to fight ISIS. A recent podcast included a discussion of the nature of work in Los Angeles, with freelancers working on projects ad hoc, as the model for work in the future for all of us. Some subscribers didn’t like it, suggesting ‘Hollywood’ is responsible for the decline of social morals in this country. In this podcast, a new article suggests an Uber style company that connects professionals and semi professionals with small businesses and individuals is already taking off, and will change the nature of work in this country. Finally, for people interested in political organization, or just being good neighbors and citizens, there are a plethora of local issues, from Common Core, the Tyranny of the Met Council, and out-of-control spending by city councils. While these are local Minnesota issues, every town  in every state and territory of the United States has similar issues. They allow people to work together to solve problems without having R’s or D’s carved into their foreheads. When people work together and solve problems together, they’re more likely to listen to each other, as opposed to sitting in their chair watching Fox News or MSNBC and railing against those (fill in the blank). Sponsored by X Government Cars. (Image from telegraph.co.uk) 

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Podcast 366

Build The Pipeline! As another oil train owned by Warren Buffett derails and sends flames into the air, Minneapolis and Saint Paul media can’t bring itself to mention this would not be necessary if President Obama had followed bipartisan legislation, and built the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Star Tribune licks its chops whenever there is a chance to print a story which shows North Dakota in a negative light, and nothing says passive-aggressive like a burning oil train. Just another reason why Minnesotans are so ill served by this parochial and paranoid newspaper’s editorial staff. Wasn’t a new owner supposed to fix that? Along the same lines we are told a ‘new study’ shows traffic congestion in the Twin Cities is getting worse! The cities now ranks 35th in traffic congestion nationwide. Forget there are 50 states, and that Minneapolis and Saint Paul is generally considered the 15th or 16th largest market, looks like it is punching below its weight, traffic congestion wise. Oh yeah, the studies were done by MNDOT, and by the Met Council, two agencies with a big stake in whether the draconian increase in the state gas tax passes. Meanwhile, MNDOT seems to be causing most of the congestion by insisting on doing things like changing signs on the Mendota bridge in the middle of rush hour, which recently caused a massive traffic jam, or taking out the bridge over highway 100 on Minnetonka, turning traffic in the west metro into a parking lot. What causes congestion? Incompetence and idiocy in our much vaunted state government agencies, and the politicians responsible for them. God Help Us! The worst days? Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon, as state workers put in their usual 3 day work weeks and head to the lake. Meanwhile the LRT boosters are at it again. Forget about the fact that the Southwest Light Rail Project engineering work was bungled, that it is hundreds of millions over budget, we need it because suddenly the jobs are in Eden Prairie and people from downtown have to get there to work. The nature of work is changing. After a Bob Davis podcast about freelance work in LA, the New York Times published a piece on whether freelance work LA style is going to be the future model for how work gets done. Emphatically yes! Meanwhile, at nearly 2 decades into the 21st century, these fools in government keep insisting on rebuilding the early 20th century city. Is America moving left? Polls say it is. But, what influences polls? Events. And events can change politics. Still, we don’t hear Republicans saying much these days about what they would actually do, to get people to vote for them. One thing they could do is something about a government that no longer protects our rights but tramples them. Over a thousand IRS employees were apparently promoted for cheating on their taxes. The Federal government says New York City has to take the lighted signs down from Times Square (New York says No Friggin Way!). And ‘Draw Muhammed’ event creator Pamela Gellar hasn’t heard from homeland security despite the fact that her life has been threatened by ISIS. Did we forget the DEA agent orgies paid for by the drug cartels, and the fact that the agents who admitted attending can’t be fired because of government regulations? Sponsored by Baklund R&D. (Photo from BNSF.com) 

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The Bob Davis Podcast

Podcast 365

Protecting Your Rights. One example of how the government protects your rights (which is what it is supposed to do) and one example of how government tramples your rights. Ok, maybe more than one example of government trampling your rights. In Garland, Texas, extra security and police at a ‘Draw Muhammed’ contest protected the rights of Americans to think and express what they feel so well, two knuckleheads who called themselves ‘terrorists’  and warriors’ are dead. The mother of one of the dead ‘terrorists’ said, “He wasn’t violent” and, “He wasn’t a terrorist”. Unfortunately mom, he was. Good riddance. God’s work. The officer who took on the two ‘terrorists’ with rifles, with his pistol has not been identified. The Islamic State has ‘claimed’ the bungled attempt at a mass shooting. Beware though, these kinds of attacks may become common. IS claims to have 71 ‘warriors’ ready to go in the US. All the more reason businesses in Minnesota should remove those stupid, so and so “bans guns in these premises” signs. They should say, “Carry Permit holders welcome”. In the case of Garland, Texas … the government protected our rights. The Trans Pacific Fast Track Trade authority republicans want to grant the President is another thing entirely. It is reported that only members of Congress can read the trade agreement, and at that a page or two at a time, in the basement of the Capitol and that it is being considered in secret. No republican or democrat should support anything congress is asked to pass without the American people being able to see and read what it is beforehand. Mitch McConnell should be ashamed. No one likes the IRS these days, but we can all stop beating this dead horse, or so the alternatively whiny and arrogant IRS Head John Koskinen says. Nothing to see here, people. New measures have been put in place to see to it that the agency will not be used as a political cudgel against groups, um, someone we will not name, doesn’t like. This is not an admission we did such things before, you understand. Or is it? Is it a coincidence they found a bunch more emails from Lois Lerner? Why weren’t these kinds of controls put in place decades ago? The answer is, the IRS has been used as a kind of political praetorian guard for the White House since God was a boy. It’s time for a simple, flat tax with no loopholes for individuals and corporations, so simple that John Koskinen and a coffee maker can collect taxes and that’s all they do. Finally, do you like Christmas? Apparently the federal government is very concerned that your crazy uncle, who puts Santa and the Reindeer up on the roof of the house in Saint Louis Park every December could hurt himself and we wouldn’t want that would we? Well, now Christmas decorations will be regulated by the Consumer Protection Agency, since there have been two hundred some deaths from such things since 1980. What about Roller Coasters and Power Drills, or for that matter, treadmills? Yet another example of how the government does not protect our rights. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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