Why don’t liberals seem to notice the catastrophic consequences of their policies, and why to they imagine imminent horrors where none exist? If you corner a liberal and point to a disaster that followed upon his policy, at very most he will say–with a tear in the eye and a quivering upper lip–”We did the right thing.” -David P. Goldman 
Progressive redistribution makes black people poorer. Government programs for blacks make black people poorer. Leftist social polices make black people poorer. Leftism is the quintessential good intention that paves the road to hell while making you feel oh-so-good about yourself. -Andrew Klavan
“It is hard to overstate the damage done in the recent past by people who thought they knew more about the world than they really did.” – British Economist John Kay in “Obliquity”, 2010
Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Oops, Regulation
Children are creating their own black markets to trade and sell salt due to First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules. During a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, chaired by Rep. Todd Rokita (R., Ind.), a school administrator told Congress of the “unintended consequences” of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Racism, Oops
A new poll released Monday indicated that Americans believe race relations are at their worst in more than two decades. The CBS News/New York Times poll said 61 percent of Americans characterize race relations in the U.S. as “bad,” including a majority of white and black respondents.
Crime, Incompetence, Oops, Drugs
The opening months of Colorado's first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana industry have seen a rise in fiery explosions and injuries as pot users try to make the drug's intoxicating oil in crude home-based laboratories. Since Jan. 1, when sales began, the state's only certified adult burn center has treated 10 people with serious injuries they suffered while making hash oil, compared with 11 in 2013 and one in 2012.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting. The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.
"The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category."-PBS's Tavis Smiley
Environmentalist, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Metaphor
A vehicle emissions reduction device, which is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency, forced an ambulance to shut down while carrying a suspect who was shot by Washington, D.C., police. The EPA mandated device is meant to reduce diesel emissions and is required to be placed on all newer model diesel vehicles. The device can burn off diesel toxins automatically or manually, but if neither of those happen during the “re-generating cycle,” warning lights pop on and the vehicle is eventually forced to shut down.
Liberal, Crime, Incompetence, Character, Degeneracy, Narrative, Abortion, Assault, Murder
A medical school graduate has given a graphic account of working at a Philadelphia abortion clinic and how he routinely saw babies born alive and then killed with scissors. Stephen Massof, 50, of Pittsburgh, was giving evidence at the trial of his former boss Kermit Gosnell on Thursday. Gosnell, 72, is accused of killing seven live babies at the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society clinic and a woman who was administered too much anesthesia. Massof, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the murder of two newborns at the clinic, revealed Thursday that he witnessed an abortion at 26 weeks - two weeks beyond the 24-week limit in the state. He also claimed he saw about 100 babies born alive and then 'snipped' with surgical scissors in the back of the neck, to ensure their 'demise'.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Brilliance, Oops, Waste, Healthcare, Regulation, Pc
A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls' soccer team in October, Oregon researchers reported Wednesday. The outbreak also affected many family members after the team returned home. Norovirus is a common, easily spread virus that causes various forms of gastric distress. It is "the perfect human pathogen" because it is highly contagious, rapidly and prolifically spread, produces limited immunity and is only moderately virulent, which allows it to continue spreading, said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an editorial accompanying the report in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Much as many liberals like to put guilt trips on other people, they seldom seek out, much less acknowledge and take responsibility for, the bad consequences of their own actions.
The Liberal Narrative And The Minimum Wage
"You've got to watch out because at some point you run the risk of harming the people you set out to help."
Environmentalist, Liberal, Financial, Fraud, Oops
Rampant fraud within California's recycling redemption program is costing the state millions of dollars, as scammers drive trucks full of cans across the border from Nevada and Arizona to collect nickels on deposits that were never paid. California recyclers also are claiming redemptions for the same containers several times, or for containers that never existed, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times.
Every Moral Grievance Must Be Immediately Extinguished...
... Haidt’s research echoes arguments made by Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions and Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate. Both Sowell and Pinker contend that conservatives see an unfortunate world of moral trade-offs in which every moral judgment comes with costs that must be properly balanced.
Progressives, on the other hand, seem to be blind to, or in denial about, these trade-offs, whether economic and social; theirs is a utopian or unconstrained vision, in which every moral grievance must be immediately extinguished until we have perfected society.
This is why conservatives don’t tend to express the same emotional hostility as the Left; a deeper grasp of the world’s complexity has the effect of encouraging intellectual humility.
In the academic world, mealy-mouthed delivery of even powerful conclusions is the norm, so it's refreshing to see authors Sumit Agarwal, Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Amit Seru answer the title's question, "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?," with the clear, "Yes, it did. ... We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks." -J.D. Tuccille, Reason Magazine
Environmentalist, Liberal, Funny, Brilliance, Oops
Published this week in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, the "comparative environmental life cycle assessment of conventional and electric vehicles" begins by stating that "it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting". By this, the authors mean that by solving one problem, do electric cars create another? And, if so, does this environmental harm then outweigh any advantages? The study highlights in particular the "toxicity" of the electric car's manufacturing process compared to conventional petrol/diesel cars. It concludes that the "global warming potential" of the process used to make electric cars is twice that of conventional cars.
Liberal, Hate, Violence, Character, Threats, Protest
A local non-profit food cart in Southwest Portland say they have been forced to close due to alleged harassment and threats coming from protesters across the street at Occupy ICE. The Happy Camper is run by Scott and Julie Hakes. They use the food cart to raise money for their non-profit organization, Operation Off The Grid, which helps the homeless around Portland...
“If they catch her outside the cart they are going to hurt her. They are constantly saying they are going to hurt her. They're constantly cussing at her and screaming at her,” said Hakes. “She finally had enough. She called me up on the phone, crying. I said ‘Breanna, shut the doors, we're done.’”
Liberal, Character, Oops, Smears, Lie, Jobs
In a May 11 post on The Times' OpinionLA blog, Ted Rall — a freelance cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Times — described an incident in which he was stopped for jaywalking on Melrose Avenue in 2001. Rall said he was thrown up against a wall, handcuffed and roughed up by an LAPD motorcycle policeman who also threw his driver's license into the sewer
However, the recording and other evidence provided by the LAPD raise serious questions about the accuracy of Rall's blog post. Based on this, the piece should not have been published.
Rall's future work will not appear in The Times.
Long have liberals vowed to make higher education more affordable by offering ever more generous loan subsidies, and long have conservatives and libertarians argued that federal aid merely gives colleges license to drive up the price. A study by the New York Federal Reserve offers some new evidence that the latter group is correct.
According to the study’s authors: We find that institutions more exposed to changes in the subsidized federal loan program increased their tuition disproportionately around these policy changes, with a sizable pass-through effect on tuition of about 65 percent.
The idea that something as fundamental as the distribution of wealth can be radically altered in a democracy without disastrous side effects is an intellectual fantasy.
Prohibition, a far simpler social engineering project than fundamentally redistributing wealth, didn’t get rid of demon rum, it gave us Al Capone. And the people who wanted to drink kept right on doing so. Intellectuals, especially in the social sciences, have a nasty habit of thinking that, “This is the way the world should be, therefore this is the way the world can be.”
This is what leads them to come up with so many ideas that are, in George Orwell’s phrase, “so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
-John Steele Gordon, The American