Misery In America

*No wonder we’re miserable. Do you remember when the former peanut farmer from Georgia harped on the misery index? To get the misery index, add the inflation number to the unemployment number. In the mid-1970s, the misery index was bad enough to help Carter get elected president. Today, according to John Williams of ShadowStats.com, the true number (not the fabrications the government now promotes) is 25 percent. That’s consumer price inflation of 10 percent, plus unemployment of 15 percent. The total is the highest it’s ever been. No wonder Barack Obama makes us feel miserable.

*“Sheriff” Joe Biden is doing a terrible job. Do you remember when the President put the Vice President in charge of the stimulus program because “nobody messes with Joe?” Obama went on to say, “If you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.” It turns out that contractors who got $24 billion in stimulus money owed more than $750 million in back taxes. Where’s “the Sheriff” when you need him?

*A cheater gets cheated… and wants justice! This one is a hoot. A college senior in Colorado who ordered a custom-written term paper from a firm she found on the Internet felt cheated when it wasn’t delivered on time. When the company refused to give her a refund, she complained to the Better Business Bureau about its dishonest practices. I wonder what her professor said when he found out.

*If you own a cell phone, you must be… poor? Here’s a weird one. Relying on a cell phone is one metric government staticians use to decide whether someone fits the description of “poor.” I kid you not. The more people in a given area abandon land lines for cell phones, the “poorer” that area is considered. Leading the list of states in which citizens have done this are Arkansas and Mississippi, so obviously it must be true. What’s next, counting color TVs? (Come to think of it, that might be a pretty accurate indicator of someone’s ability to read and write.)

–Chip Wood