Do-It-Yourself Idea

Fortune on CNN.Money reports:

Bill Gates' Dad: Raise Taxes On My Son!

Tell you what, Bill Sr., get off your duff, load your own gun, trot over to your son's house, and empty his pockets yourself.

Economics of Freedom Conference February 28

Minnesota Campaign for Liberty

Presents

Economics of Freedom

A conference to be held

February 28
12:30 – 5 PM

At the
Minnetonka Marriott
5801 Opus Parkway
Minnetonka, Minnesota 55343

Featuring

Thomas E Woods,
a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and prolific author
“Free Market Economics 101”

Terry McCall
“Freedom Sells”

And breakout sessions:

(1) Professor Butler Shaffer, author of In Restraint of Trade, on the Great Depression;
(2) Bill Butler on Monetary Policy and the Bailouts; and
(3) Parliamentary Procedure: How to Be Effective at Meetings and Conventions.

~ ~ ~ ~

To reserve your seat, send payment of $20 per person to Minnesota Campaign for Liberty, PO Box 64, Excelsior MN 55331 by February 21, and include the names of all attendees and which breakout session is preferred. Payment of $25 may be made at the door if seats are still available.

Credit card payments may be made at www.MNC4L.org for $20 through February 21 or $25 through February 26. Specify attendee(s) name(s) and breakout session preference with your PayPal payment.

Congress Throws Out Baby (Clothes) with the Bathwater

Congress, in its impeccable wisdom, effectively voted last year to shut down the children's resale clothing business via the "Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008." Not a soul in the House dared to vote against "children's safety," proving many in the Congressional cesspool of counter-productivity neglect to read legislation before voting. (I'll cut a break for the 25 who abstained, as they potentially didn't vote because they hadn't an opportunity to read the bill.)

The act requires lead testing of all products sold for children aged twelve and under, including but not limited to clothing and toys, regardless of the date of manufacturing and the high improbability of lead in the clothing, particularly that manufactured domestically. Goodwill, other thrift stores, and one-person shops reselling new and used children's clothing, making a couple dollars per item, would have to forgo a year's worth of profit to fund third-party testing services, essentially putting most out of business. Further, as I understand it, the testing requires the destruction of an individual unit out of a batch, and would therefore not work for unique items.

Taking effect February 10, 2009, this ex post facto regulatory taking comes precisely at a time when lower-income and newly unemployed parents most need inexpensive children's clothing and the dollars they receive from selling or consigning their children's briefly used items.

While clothing is one of the few areas in which the market demands recycling, stores with existing, untested merchandise will have to opt for sending truckloads of perfectly good clothes to the landfill. And parents who purchased that expensive special occasion dress with plans to resell it after one wear are simply out the money. Not even Goodwill can take it now.

After months of planning my own recession-proof business, a children's resale shop, where one was lacking in my neighborhood, I'm lucky to have found this news story yesterday, and not after signing a lease. Although I am out some minor capital expenses and inventory costs, the regulatory taking could have had a worse toll.

(Cross-posted on MN C4L blog -- and filed under "Congressional Stupidity" -- at http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=7321)

Royal Bank of Scotland will get 'billions' in US bail-out of economy

The Sunday Herald reports today:

THE ROYAL Bank of Scotland is to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the planned $700 billion bail-out that comes courtesy of the American tax-payer if the US Congress gives the financial rescue package the go-ahead this weekend.

The bank's share of the bail-out will enable RBS to offload billions of dollars of questionable assets.

The bank's shares closed last Friday at 205p, a 71% fall from their pre-credit-crunch peak. However, analysts and investors predict that the shares will rebound sharply when markets open on Monday morning if the bail-out is approved over the weekend.

The Edinburgh-based bank will be able to write off a significant portion of its dodgy assets thanks to the bail-out, also known as into Tarp, the Troubled Asset Relief Programme as a result of the bank's significant presence in the US.

Oh, the expensive irony . . .

For reasons I won't go into, I receive, almost daily, McCain snail spam. Sometimes I open it for kicks.

The most recent plea is for contributions to the "John McCain General Election Compliance Fund" to, in part, pay for "federal election law legal and accounting activities."

Rock Star

Like a rock. Solid.