Sometimes people tell me that at times I am too gruff and not polite enough to others. In that spirit, I want to thank two strangers I saw yesterday in Austin, TX.

Thanks to the person driving by the Palmer Events Center yesterday in a Volvo SUV with a bumper sticker saying, Buy Local.

Thanks also to the woman being interviewed by a local cable news channel at the Texas Capital who was wearing the Stop the War on Women T-shirt, and whom I overheard telling the interviewer that, We will take back Texas in November!

You both made me laugh.

200 years ago on this date in 1812, Louisiana became the 18th state in the Union.

April 30 ...

In 1789 George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States. In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 60 million francs, the equivalent of about $15 million. In 1812 Louisiana became the 18th state in the Union. In 1900 engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a wreck near Vaughan, MS, after staying at the controls in an effort to save the passengers of the Cannonball Express. In 1933 singer/songwriter Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas. In 1945 as Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun; also on that day, Arthur Godfrey Time made its debut on the CBS radio network. In 1970 President Nixon announced the United States was sending troops into Cambodia. In 1973 President Nixon announced the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean. In 1975 the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces; the Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh. In 1983 blues legend Muddy Waters died in Westmont, IL, at age 68.

15 years ago on this date in 1997, columnist Mike Royko died in Chicago.

April 29 ...

In 1429 Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English. In 1861 the Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union. In 1862 New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War. In 1863 newspaper magnate and one of the originators of 'yellow journalism' William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco, CA. In 1899 jazz great Duke Ellington was born in Washington, DC. In 1945 American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp; the same day, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun and designated Adm. Karl Doenitz his successor. In 1946 former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders were indicted as war criminals. In 1974 President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape recordings related to Watergate. In 1980 director Alfred Hitchcock died in Los Angeles, CA, at age 80. In 1983 Harold Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago. In 1992 deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley, CA, acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. In 1996 former CIA Director William Colby was presumed drowned by authorities in Maryland after an apparent boating accident; his body was later recovered. In 1997 columnist Mike Royko died in Chicago.

April 28 ...

In 1758 fifth president of the United States James Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, VA. In 1788 Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1789 there was a mutiny on HMS Bounty as the crew of the British ship set Capt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific. In 1877 Oscar-winning actor Lionel Barrymore was born in Philadelphia, PA; he is perhaps best known for his role as Mr. Potter, in the Frank Capra movie, It's a Wonderful Life. In 1937 Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, outside of Tikrit, in Iraq. In 1945 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country. In 1947 a six-man expedition led by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. In 1958 Vice President Nixon and his wife, Pat, began a goodwill tour of Latin America that was marred by hostile mobs in Lima, Peru, and Caracas, Venezuela. In 1967 heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army. In 1974 a federal jury in New York acquitted former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans of charges in connection with a secret $200,000 contribution to the re-election campaign of President Nixon from financier Robert Vesco. In 1980 President Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran. In 1994 former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had given US secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, plead guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Mark Hendrickson has a good piece on the economic rhetoric of the Obama Administration in Forbes magazine.

April 27 ...

In 1509 Pope Julius II excommunicated the Italian state of Venice. (The pope lifted the ban in February 1510.) In 1521 Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines. In 1737 historian Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, England. In 1791 inventor and painter Samuel F.B. Morse was born in Charlestown, MA. In 1805 during the First Barbary War, an American-led force of Marines and mercenaries captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli. In 1822 Civil War general and 18th president of the US Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, OH. In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland and parts of Midwestern states, including southern Indiana. In 1865 the steamer Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, TN, killing more than 1,400 Union prisoners of war. In 1896 baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby was born in Winters, TX. In 1937 the first Social Security checks were distributed. In 1965 broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow died in Pawling, NY, at age 57. In 1973 during the Watergate scandal, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned. In 1994 former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, CA. In 1999 jazz great Al Hirt died in New Orleans, LA, at age 76. In 2002 the last successful reception of telemetry from NASA space probe Pioneer 10 was reported; Pioneer 10 was the first man-made object to leave the solar system. In 2005 President George W. Bush called for construction of more nuclear power plants and urged Congress to give tax breaks for fuel-efficient hybrid and clean-diesel cars.

George Will, on the importance of federalism, and its upcoming test in Illinois:

After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says "our rendezvous with reality has arrived."

Actually, Illinois is still reality-averse, so Americans may soon learn the importance of the freedom to fail in a system of competitive federalism.
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Constitutional jurisprudence affirms that states exercising substantial autonomous powers thereby assume concomitant risks. Federal loans or other bailouts of misgoverned states would remove bond market discipline, the only inhibition on the alliance between the Democratic portion of the political class and unionized public employees.

April 26 ...

In 1711 philosopher David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1785 American naturalist and artist John James Audubon was born in Haiti. In 1865 John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was surrounded and killed by federal troops near Bowling Green, VA. In 1933 the Gestapo was established in Nazi Germany. In 1937 planes from Nazi Germany raided the Basque town of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. In 1941 an organ was played at a baseball game for the first time, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, IL. In 1945 Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France's Vichy government during World War II, was arrested. In 1962 NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashed into the Moon as planned, but a malfunctioning onboard computer did not allow the spacecraft to transmit any data back to Earth. In 1964 the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania. In 1986 the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire killed at least 31 people and sent radioactivity into the atmosphere. In 1994 voting began in South Africa's first all-race elections. In 2001 Ukraine's communist-dominated parliament dismissed reform-oriented Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and his government, plunging the nation into political chaos.

Joel Kotkin, Mark Schill, and Ryan Streeter write in The American:

So why might the Midwest be something of a microcosm for how growth and opportunity look in America as a whole, given its idiosyncratic reliance on manufacturing not shared by other regions? The main reason is that middle America is a clear picture of how much the basics matter: Cost of living, job quality, schools, and opportunities to develop the right skills for the best jobs. The areas within the Midwest that have gotten the basics right are poaching people and companies from the areas that haven't. Any economic development strategy that ignores the basics in favor of a more stylized theory of growth will usually run off the rails before too long. Americans, at the end of the day, want the places they live to get the basics right so they themselves can build their lives, start their businesses, and raise their children as they wish.

April 25 ...

In 1599 Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England. In 1792 highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine. In 1859 ground was broken for the Suez Canal. In 1898 the US formally declared war on Spain. In 1874 "Father of Radio" Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy. In 1915 Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of the war. In 1945 US and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River; also on this day, delegates from some 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations. In 1953 Dr. James D. Watson and Dr. Francis H.C. Crick suggested the double helix structure of DNA in an article published in the journal Nature. In 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping. In 1961 Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit. Noyce co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. In 1976 Chicago Cubs center fielder Rick Monday snatched an American flag away from two men who were going to burn it in protest on the field during a game in Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium. In 1983 American schoolgirl Samantha Smith was invited to visit the Soviet Union by Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war; also on this day, NASA's Pioneer 10 traveled beyond Pluto's orbit. In 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery.

Michael Barone:

I don't know how many times I've seen liberal commentators look back with nostalgia to the days when a young man fresh out of high school or military service could get a well-paying job on an assembly line at a unionized auto factory that could carry him through to a comfortable retirement.

As it happens, I grew up in Detroit and for a time lived next door to factory workers. And I know something that has eluded the liberal nostalgiacs. Which is that people hated those jobs.

... information technology provides the iPod/Facebook generation with the means to find work and create careers that build on their own personal talents and interests.

As Walter Russell Mead writes in his brilliant the-american-interest.com blog, "The career paths that (young people) have been trained for are narrowing, and they are going to have to launch out in directions they and their teachers didn't expect. They were bred and groomed to live as house pets; they are going to have to learn to thrive in the wild."

But, as Mead continues, "The future is filled with enterprises not yet born, jobs that don't yet exist, wealth that hasn't been created, wonderful products and life-altering service not yet given form."

As Jim Manzi argues in his new book "Uncontrolled," we can't predict what this new work world will look like. It will be invented through trial and error.

What we can be sure of is that creating your own career will produce a stronger sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Young people who do so won't hate their work the way those autoworkers hated those assembly line jobs.

Mortimer Zuckerman:

For the 80 percent of Americans born after World War II, this is their Depression. They have 5.5 million fewer jobs than at the recession's start in 2008, despite the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policy in our history. Employment has been below the pre-recession peak for over 50 months. It's the longest time since the Great Depression that payrolls have not made a new high. The 120,000 new jobs for March make no dent (and adjusted for the peculiarity of warm weather, the number of real net jobs created was 76,000); we need at least 125,000 jobs each month just to provide for new entrants in a rising population.
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America's great job creation machine is sputtering badly. It is now estimated that structural unemployment has risen from 5 percent before the crisis to close to 7 percent today. This means that one third of the rise in American joblessness may be impervious to the business cycle; it represents lost jobs that cannot be restored by boosting demand.

The problem now is not that people are being laid off by the millions. When an economy has reached bottom, as it did, it has already shed much of its labor, and layoffs slow. But the anemic recovery has not yielded job vacancies. Hiring today is at about 70 percent of the 2006 level. Given the increase in unemployed totals, job seekers are only about one third as likely to find work as in 2006.
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The private sector workweek has stagnated at about 34.5 hours, and wage growth has been tepid at best with average hourly earnings eking out a 0.1 percent monthly increase for the last five months. Over the last nine months, overall consumer spending was up just 0.6 percent, adjusted for inflation.

There is no doubt that the next presidential term will start with a rate of unemployment that is far higher than what President Obama inherited when he took office. The programs that he has put in place have failed. The U.S. economic recovery is like a person who promises much and doesn't deliver. There are not many months left for Obama to persuade the nation to measure his performance by a different mark.

Read the whole piece.

April 23 ...

In 1348 King Edward III of England established the Order of the Garter. In 1564 William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (though this is far from certain); he died 52 years later, also on April 23. In 1616 Miguel Cerventes and William Shakespeare both died; Cerventes in Madrid, Spain, and Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. In 1789 President-elect Washington and his wife Martha moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York City. In 1791 15th president of the US James Buchanan was born in Franklin County, PA. In 1940 about 200 people died in a dance hall fire in Natchez, MS. In 1964 Ken Johnson of the Houston Colt .45s (they became the Astros the next year) became the first pitcher to lose a complete game no-hitter in nine innings, falling 1-0 to the Cincinnati Reds. In 1969 Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.) In 1985 the Coca-Cola Co. announced it was changing the secret flavor formula for Coke (negative public reaction forced the company to resume selling the original version). In 1993 labor leader Cesar Chavez died in San Luis, AZ, at age 66. In 1998 James Earl Ray, who'd assassinated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, died at age 70.