Keep the Change

What Were They Thinking?!?

2012-01-29T15:40:00.001-05:00

You just have to wonder. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), is a mandate that requires a certain amount of ethanol be blended into gasoline every year at increasingly greater amounts.

Under the RFS, 15.2 billion gallons of renewable fuel must be blended into transportation fuel in 2012, eventually ramping up to 36 billion gallons in 2022. Of that 36 billion number, the United States must produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol, 15 billion gallons of traditional corn-based ethanol, 4 billion gallons of advanced biofuels and 1 billion gallons of biodiesel.

You first have to wonder about those product-specific targets. The EPA doesn't just want ethanol, they want cellulosic ethanol. The idea behind cellulosic ethanol is to turn municipal and farm waste into fuel. I certainly am no proponent of corn-based ethanol. It is really one of the dumbest ideas we've cooked up since it takes as much (or more) energy to produce as it provides, and from all the wrong sources (e.g., coal). But where does the cellulosic ethanol come from? The target for 2010 was 5 million gallons. The amount actually made was less than 1 million. The target for 2011 was 6.6 million and that was significantly lowered by EPA below the law's requirements. How many commercial sources for the product? Zero.

How they are going to get from 1 million gallons to 36 BILLION gallons, an increase of 36,000%, is unknown. DoE and EPA just figure if they say so, you will build it. While I think manufacturing (e.g., value added activity) is the way out of the economic mess we are in, I am certainly not convinced that we can ramp up for this requirement, and besides, the product isn't for export anyway. We just become our own energy hostages.

Next you have to wonder what happens if the fuel blenders cannot meet the targets? The are required to purchase cellulosic biofuel waiver credits. Ummmhumm, a tax or penalty for not buying what doesn't exist. So much for turning shit to shinola. Let me flog your wallet for failing to buy enough of my non-existent crap-carbs.

NY Times

Renewable Fuel Standard: Potential Economic and Environmental Effects of U.S. Biofuel Policy (2011)

BioEnergy Wiki

And for my next example of "what were they thinking," I offer California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which has been enjoined by the U.S. District Court in Fresno. This collection of CARB rules establishes a cap and trade policy, establishes fuel economy standards and renewable energy requirements. The rules are based on life-cycle analysis, which considers factors such as land use, transportation and manufacturing costs and the carbon contribution of the energy used to create the renewable energy. These are summed to come up with a carbon intensity score. Which is pretty much why the judge threw it out - it treats electricity produced in the mid-west differently than electricity produced in California and penalizes producers based on their distance from the consumer, which of course discriminates against interstate commerce. So, chemically identical biofuel from Iowa has a carbon index higher than biofuel from Fresno. What is a biofuel manufacturer to do in order to have a competitive CI? Well of course, buy surplus low-carbon fuel credits.

What about that life-cycle formula for arriving and a carbon index? Sounds reasonable on the face of it, but when you dig into the life cycle factors and how they are weighted, you find many opportunities for political and economic corruption. CARB’s life-cycle analysis “calibrates CI scores so that they regulate, among other things, deforestation in South America, how Midwest farmers use their land, and how ethanol plants in the Midwest produce animal nutrients.” For example, CARB “imposes a substantial penalty — more than 30% of the CI score for corn ethanol — for ‘indirect land use.’ That penalty is used to discourage farmers around the world from converting nonagricultural land into farmland to enter the corn market.”

You can see how this "model" can be arbitrarily used to discriminate against any particular source, government, economic factor or simply to collect money for carbon credits where a target is impossible to achieve. One can only hope that the result would be manufacturers outside of CA would simply sell their products elsewhere and leave CA to its own resources. Of course, CA has neither the agriculturally viable land, surplus electricity nor water to fend for itself. You can also see how trying this on a state-by-state or regional basis is just going to create a carbon credit bubble much like playing commodity futures, default credit swaps and all the other ways that government can force money to exchage hands with no value added.

Global Warming Org article
I am providing both the current like to Gary Harwick's presentation on this and the cache version since I keep getting a 504.
Low Carbon Fuels Policy
Low Carbon Fuels Policy - cached

WSJ Editorial

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.

16 international scientists who dare to show their skepticism publicly.
Amen.

I always think I can just write a short blurb and then end up with an essay. If you made it this far, thanks for listening.

Republican presidential candidates

2012-01-25T16:49:00.002-05:00

From Captain and Commander:

Dr. Stephen Maturin:...I would choose the right hand weevil; it has... significant advantage in both length and breadth.
[the captain thumps his fist in the table]
Capt. Jack Aubrey:There, I have you! You're completely dished! Do you not know that in the service...
[pauses]
Capt. Jack Aubrey:...one must always choose the lesser of two weevils.

I've been in Washington a looong time. According to Emmett Tyrrell Newt has more skeletons than a body snatcher. I don't know how many that is, but I'm sure they won't all fit in his closets.

Huckster, shill, scheister, carney, do these sound any better than what they call Romney?
So, if those two aren't workin for ya, you are left with Santorum and Paul. How terribly pathetic.

And just to complement how tacky I think Newt is, let me add this:

and and

What are my cats thinking?

2011-12-22T12:25:00.000-05:00

I have spent way too much time at The Oatmeal

Find out more at cats who throw up grass

Federal budget illustration

2011-12-04T21:22:00.001-05:00

. U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

. Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000

. New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

. National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

. Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Now, remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget.

. Annual family income: $21,700

. Money the family spent: $38,200

. New debt on the credit card: $16,500

. Outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710.

. Total budget cuts: $385

Sort of brings the issue "home" doesn't it?

Yahyah, I hear it. "You can't compare the national budget to a family budget. Unexpected things come up and the country has to invest in the things that will drive the economy in the future (like broadband)." So, when is enough enough? Eventually we will be one disaster over the amount some far east country is willing to lend. Maybe it's time to start charging premiums for disaster relief, since everyone seems to think it means "just like it never happened." Since when did we start expecting the government to kiss the calamity booboo and make it all better?

H/T DougH

History Repeats Itself, example 14,954,769,152.76

2011-11-30T21:48:00.001-05:00

H/T Doug

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

2011-10-29T15:13:00.002-04:00

OMG! Did you hear? The top 20% have more money than the bottom 20%!!!
Well, duh. And if the top 20% had the same amount of money as the bottom 20%, they wouldn't be on top, would they?
Let's say you have $100 and you are in the bottom 1/5.
Let's say the next 1/5 has 20% (1/5) more and so on.
Top 1/5   $207
2nd 1/5   $173
3rd 1/5   $144
4th 1/5   $120
You       $100
That top bastich has twice as much as you!
Remember, the top 1% already pay 36% of the tax burden.
And nearly 50% don't pay income tax at all.

Bad banks, or bad attitude?

2011-10-29T13:49:00.001-04:00

I remain astounded that a groundswell of public angst would arise because BoA decided to add a $5 fee for using your debit card. I mean, you DO use it, and it is a cost to the bank, duh. Every transaction requires a series of actions from crediting the merchant to debiting your account and all of the banks changing money in between. You don't work for free, why should they? So, why do people think that it should be free? It wasn't free before, someone else was paying for it -- merchants.
This is the essential problem with entitlement society. It isn't what people do or don't do that leads them to some expectation. It is what everyone else does or doesn't do that is viewed through the lens of personal desire. I want it, you aren't giving it to me, therefore you are a bad actor.
When did this change-up occur? More importantly, how do we undo it?

Take the bank situation again. People have choices, they don't need to use BoA. It isn't particularly convenient to change banks, but the banks have no obligation to provide you the same service (or more service) at the same cost for your lifetime. If you don't like it, act like a capitalist, like a free American and take your business somewhere else!

We removed a primary source of compensation for the use of those debit cards through a stupid law designed to protect the interests (pocketbooks) of business. Not like 20 cents a swipe is going to lead to any employment. Congress was just mad (because you are mad) and took it out on banks. Is a predictable consequence and unintended consequence? Or just stupid behavior? What on earth did congress think banks were going to do, operate at a loss??? I actually don't have a problem with it because it puts the cost burden back on the party that is causing it in the first place.

Now, if you want to get mad, get mad about this: credit card interest rates. The government interest rate on bank borrowing is virtually zero, meaning that as long as a bank has sufficient capital, they can borrow from the fed for zero and loan it to you for -- 30%!?!??!!!???? And if you act like a responsible person and pay off the bill every month, then they are going to charge you a monthly fee of -- $12??!!???? And you are still bitching about $5 for a debit card? OMG, be glad you have money in the bank.

I don't have a fundamental problem with people protesting or with people being mad about the way the money institutions have treated American citizens throughout this crisis. I just have a problem that people are complaining about something so stupid that they look like petty whiners and like they are too dumb to see the real problems. I mean, if you happen to be living hand to mouth, with a $10K credit card balance as a result of increased gas, energy and food prices over the last 30 months and then the bank decides to jack up your interest rate by 10%, really where are you going to take that business? Most people do not have credit card companies begging for their business anymore. (Why should they with that kind of interest rate and a captive consumer?)

Seems to me it comes down to this: irresponsible government encouraged/allowed irresponsible citizens to rack up irresponsible debt based on home equity. Equity is not real money. Then irresponsible government looked the other way while banks covered their butts with credit swaps. When the housing market crashed (which I still say is a direct consequence of increased energy costs that jacked up the price of everything else but housing), the banks lost. So, they can only loose so much and then they are out of business -- failed banks which the government then has to cover for personal assets -- the money you have in your account that you withdraw with that debit card. The banks have to make up the losses somehow and obviously the somehow is on the backs of the remaining customers, whether they are individuals or businesses. But any way you cut it, as a taxpayer with a bank service, you are going to lose, too. If the bank stays in business, you lose. If the bank goes out of business, you lose. The banks are just playing by the rules government writes.

Maybe it's just me, but is there a family resemblance?

2011-10-19T23:42:00.001-04:00

2011-10-16T17:21:00.000-04:00

There has been discussion about entitlement society and how government leads to dependence - that individuals learn to rely on government to solve their personal problems. Personal benefits such as food stamps, seemingly endless unemployment insurance, healthcare and retirement income actually do allow (in some cases enforce) dependence on state and federal government on a month to month basis. It's like you can't get away from it, and many/most people can't afford to pay for both the entitlement and an alternative that doesn't manage and control their day-to-day lives.

But wait, there's more. States are in the same pickle. The stimulus gave states untold billions to shore up unemployment, supposedly. And like others, I asked what happens when this faucet/firehose of funds get's shut off?

Well the answer is that states cry woe, we will have to lay off teachers, police and emergency responders because the mean old government didn't send us their paychecks. Forget we spent all our money on their benefits. And not like states are hiring most of these people anyway, local government is.

But why is local government relying on the federal government to cough up the money for their employees? Isn't that kind of careless? Did they really think the gravy train has no caboose? Look people, as long as the teachers and the county sheriffs are working for federal programs, they aren't working for you. Do you really want to give up control like that? Because the federal government will come calling with those "conditions." The money is never free.

Putting the National Debt in Perspective - another analogy

2011-09-12T22:11:00.000-04:00

These numbers change pretty quickly, but they are close enough for government work, anyway.

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
.............
Now, remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget.
• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385

Sorta brings the issue "home" doesn't it ?

Let's talk energy

2011-09-01T22:24:00.000-04:00

Climate change is a close relative, I don't want to go there. I just want to lay out some thoughts on energy.

According to Pickens, in 2009, the US imported 63% of our oil at a cost of $265 billion. And that was fairly cheap oil. Let's assume in 5 years, we could decrease our imported oil costs by 20%. That is a potential value of $53 billion, assuming oil in constant dollars. That is $53 billion more circulating in our own economy. Over 10 years, we should be able to bring nuclear power stations online, reducing dependence on oil and natural gas for electricity. Is another 30% reduction in oil imports reasonable in a second five year period? That's another $80 billion for a total of $186 billion over 10 years. That's money circulating in our economy instead of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.

If I am missing something please correct me.
We have a lot of natural gas reserves - 100 years if you believe Pickens.
Compressed natural gas vehicles have been around for years. I have seen them in Wash DC for at least the last 6 years, passenger cars, taxis and buses.
Many people have natural gas to their house.
Delivering CNG to main highways wouldn't be any more costly than replacing all the existing gas storage tanks (that has been going on for years because the tanks leak).

We should be able to turn over 20% of the passenger vehicles, municipal buses, taxis and light delivery trucks in 5-7 years, about the time we will need to ramp up CNG delivery infrastructure.

It seems like a reasonable goal then to reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports by both increasing our own output, converting to CNG and at least in the short term rely on coal.

How many jobs would that $186 billion create?

Selling your foot to spite your nose.

2011-08-28T16:59:00.000-04:00

OK, that is such a mixed metaphor it is non-sense.
But then so is this: USA companies are selling refineries???
Global oil companies are building them elsewhere? And then what, ship it to the US?
OMG, please, someone stop the madness!
If some other country is out there buying refinery products, should we not be all about selling it to them?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/02/news/companies/oil_refinery_gas_prices.fortune/index.htm

Forget race, sex, religion and disability as reasons for bigotry

2011-08-25T11:32:00.000-04:00

We have a new (yet old) act in town this year (2011).

Economic Inequality
Somehow, the prosperous seem to be the root of all evil. And all along, I thought it was envy. Oh wait, it's still envy.

The dialog this year has been ever-more frequently decrying the disparity between them that have and those who have not. Define that however you like; and that is the problem - any definition seems to work in this scheme. This is more than class warfare. Frankly, I find the concept a pointless waste of emotional energy, but that has yet to stop a progressive from bleating in the dark of economic night.

Look, if you are going to beat this sorry drum from centuries past, try pointing out the disparity between oil-rich middle east theocratic oligarchies and just about everyone else in the world. We give them our money because we want their product. It's that simple.

The fact that some people in this country are well-off and some aren't is just a fact of life. The price of stuff is set by the amount of money people who want the stuff are willing to pay. What have our efforts to increase access to home ownership, education and health care by lower income citizens accomplished? Raised the price of homes, education and health care to even higher absurd levels. Taking money away from those with more and giving it to people with less does increase demand - but it also increases cost and results in the same net effect -- the same people are at the bottom. You would think that the number of people with the wealth would decrease, and perhaps it has. But also note that the people with the wealth now have more of the wealth. Conclusion: wealth redistribution has the effect of trickling up, not down. So theoretically, we can perpetuate hate for this minority (the top 1, 2, 5 percent) as long as we like.

If this country wishes to make demons of the well-to-do and rob the rich to pay the poor, it will find the rich departing to more welcoming countries. This applies to corporations as well as individuals. Face it, one doesn't need America to be rich, one needs product. One doesn't need money to develop product, one needs energy and a tolerant environment. Given the means and the venue, the money will follow.

This zero-sum game of wealth-envy and piss on the prosperous is being played out every where from the environmentalists (we'll save the planet when YOU buy/use less) to a spiritual message.

Links to a sample the progressive poor me messages du jour:
Eliminating Inequality is Good for the Soul (or you have lies, damn lies and then there are statistics)
The Upward Mobility Gap Bipartisanship in 2011? No Chance

A paradigm shift in commodity prices

2011-08-25T11:23:00.000-04:00

That means energy, food, minerals and therefore all the stuff that is thereby derived
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/28/the-coming-commodity-price-nightmare/

What the price of gas is doing to American consumers and therefore to the economy
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/05/news/economy/gas_prices_income_spending/index.htm?section=money_topstories

Suddenly economics is entertainment

2011-08-24T13:39:00.000-04:00

This is well produced and entertaining video. Which should start a whole new discussion about education, but I'm not going there.
Fight of the Century at econstories

Can we solve this problem with more taxes?

2011-08-20T14:43:00.000-04:00

Um. NO.
You would have to confiscate every dollar from every person who earns $200,000 or more. Imagine what that would do for the economy? But in any event, what would you do next year? Because obviously, those people would not be working those jobs and making those investments anymore. Let's see, work at 7-11 for $30K or work at Goldman-Sachs for nuthin. No brainer.
Tax Foundation

IT'S NOT A TAX PROBLEM, IT'S A SPENDING PROBLEM!
Fix the spending problem first. Then use additional revenue to PAY DOWN THE DEBT!

Maybe we should have a tax revolt instead of a tea party. Reduce your withholding as much as you can without incurring a penalty. Send the IRS a notice that you are taking the additional amount you owe off of the nation's tab. Too bad we can't send money to the treasury earmarked for debt reduction (not deficit reduction, the debt we already owe). No, you can't keep it, you would have to put it in an escrow account. But hey, interest rates are going up so at least you will be earning some money for the government, right?

Why worry about the debt? Because we are paying interest on it. And the interest, if we keep spending like drunken sailors, will consume the entire annual federal revenue in just a few short years, not decades (somewhere between 2021 and 2041 depending on interest rates).

In 2010, we spent more in interest than we did on Health and Human Services (medicare/medicaid) More than Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, HUD, Justice, DHS, Commerce, Labor, Small Business Admin, Treasury. Combined. In the last 20 years, we have spent $8 trillion just on interest - nice income for other countries.

If Congress stopped all spending today and paid $100 million per day, it would take 389 years to pay off the national debt. And that was in 2010, so it is closer to 500 years now.
Government Gone Wild

A debt analogy

2011-08-03T00:40:00.001-04:00

So, instead of amassing another $10 trillion in debt over the next decade, we will amass only $7.5 trillion more? As Ron Paul said, whoopee.
My son's analogy: So instead of crashing the plane into the tarmac at a 90 degree angle, we will just crash it at a 70 degree angle instead.

And instead of addressing the spending problem that adds another $trillion to the debt every year, we will whine and threaten and demagogue to no end tax cuts for the wealthy and tax breaks for the richest corporations (picking winners and losers again) which, if we went ahead and did what is suggested, would result in only several billion more in revenue. Why? Because the really wealthy people that are constantly being demonized don't earn the money from income. Therefore income tax increases don't increase affect them. And most people who would be affected aren't pulling wages in the $200,000+ brackets, they are business owners. If the government isn't taking their income (not wages), then it is available to reinvest in the business, thereby improving the economy, increasing the number of wage-earners and therefore income tax revenue. The millionaires and billionaires are not going to be paying any more in income tax - it isn't earned income to begin with. So much for fair share, so much for the "protecting the wealthy" argument, they are all protecting the wealthy by keeping capital gains taxes low and keeping capital expensing and amortization periods favorable. No one pays attention to how the rich are taxed except for the rich, so no one knows it is a completely different system.

Loved these articles from Reason spending-cuts, taxes and revenue
Page 2, taxes and spending
Percent of taxes by income share

A debt analogy

2011-08-02T23:59:00.001-04:00

The gap between wealthy and everyone else

2011-07-26T09:14:00.000-04:00

Here's a thought:

Find out how the rich guy made the money. And do the same. Study the wealthy for how they got there, not because they have things you don't. We don't get anywhere by blaming the wealthy for what we don't have.

Honestly, I am not disparaging those who have less than the average bear. And I'm not saying that no one needs a helping hand - for all those people who are out of a job and lost their wealth when the value of their house was cut in half - you really are at a disadvantage. A family can probably lose their equity, a job or their health, but losing more than one is darned difficult to get through and the older you are, the more difficult to overcome. Still, it is not the wealthy person's job to take care of you. There is a difference between a charitable obligation and government confiscation.

I'm just saying that what made America in the past were people who said "I want that and I'm going to find out how to get it," and not "I deserve that and I'm going to find out how to take it."

It used to be that wealth was accumulated through wages, savings, home equity and retirement investments. Not great wealth but comfortable wealth. No more. I don't have the answers, I just can plainly see that what worked in the past is not part of the paradigm we live in now.

The other half...

2011-07-24T23:44:00.000-04:00

I was going to post something about this class warfare demagoguery, but then I received this. Which gets to the point so well.

First, we can't go back to those happy days

2011-07-13T19:36:00.000-04:00

1. Things change. Adaptation is necessary. Pretending that doing the same things will produce the same results doesn't change reality. It wastes time and that limits the options. The population is getting older and sicker and is unemployed for longer. The first two facts are obvious and aren't changing. The last one may change, but not any time soon. Not unless/until we start producing things in this country and stop sending more money overseas than we bring in.
2. It doesn't matter how high we increase taxes. If we take all the money from people making more than $250,000 per year, it still won't be enough. So the middle/working class is going to pay too, directly and indirectly. The idea that we can close loopholes for corporate jets to pay for college scholarships is ludicrous.
3. It doesn't matter how much we cut discretionary spending. Not far short of simply closing the federal government (meaning the good and the bad - cancer research, national parks, border patrol, too), cutting the budget still won't be enough.
4. If we do nothing, medicare will run out of money and everyone loses benefits. The longer we wait to fix it, the more people will be affected. We can preserve benefits as they are for people 55 and older including those who are already getting benefits - if we act now. If we wait for a new congress, it will be people 60 and over. So whether you are over 55 or under, you have no incentive to put this off. The status quo is not an option.
5. If we do nothing, social security payouts will exceed its income - and benefits will be reduced for everyone. The extra money doesn't come out of the general fund that pays for everything else. While the program is required to be self-sustaining, the benefits that are owed in the future are still obligations that the federal government owns. Increasing income taxes and closing loopholes has no impact on this - it is just changing the subject. Changing payroll SS taxes and retirement ages are required. (There is an issue in that the government has to borrow money to pay back the iou's to the SS program, but no one is proposing not paying them back. One does want to keep the interest as low as possible.)
6. Arguing over things like tax breaks for corporate jets take up more oxygen than the loopholes are worth. $300 million is a joke when we are talking about $trillions we don't have. But singling them out is just mean-spirited. Middle class workers are building those jets after all. Without buyers... does the government take over that industry, too? There are consequences. Take gas/oil taxes. Tax increases result in price increases so the tax ends up being paid by the middle class anyway.
7. The biggest budget killer is interest and the more we borrow, the more of the available budget pie gets eaten by interest. The most important thing is to quit borrowing. The second most important thing is to keep interest rates down. Making investors worried is counter-productive.
8. Reducing the amount the federal budget increases from one year to the next is not a cut, sorry. Borrowing doesn't go down until spending goes down. Don't be fooled by those smoke and mirrors.
9. Taxes are going to increase anyway. The Bush tax cuts expire in 2013 and the 2% cut in payroll taxes expire in 2012. In this environment, there is no way either of those are going to be removed by this congress.
10. It doesn't matter what actually happens on August 3, perception rules. The markets are driven by what the marketeers think will happen. The damage will be done 7-10 days before that. And those damages are not "undone" by taking action on the borrowing ceiling on August 1. The real damage will be the increase in interest rates for everyone - take credit cards for example. When businesses are paying more in interest, then the price of goods goes up as well.

All this has impact in various ways on jobs - sometimes in unexpected ways.

There is a smidgen of good news. If you move your 401K to treasuries, those bonds are going to be paying out more interest. If you can take a lump sum and retire to South Vietnam before the Treasury has to pay out, you might just make out. If you can survive inflation until then.

medicare: Is doing nothing an option?

2011-06-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

So, according to the 2011 Social Security and Medicare Trustees annual report, medicare is projected to pay out more than it collects in every future year (including 2011 and since 2008). But there is a reserve (read IOUs) in the fund cover the difference. The reserve is projected to be exhausted in 2024 (despite that currently, the reserves are being used up at better than 10% each year, which means more like 2019). Where does the money come from to pay out on those IOUs? The general fund, meaning the bank account that pays for everything from corn subsidies to military pay. Currently, the general fund pays about 45% of all medicare expenditures, which triggers a warning, which the President is required by law to address within 15 days.

That's all the background. When the reserve runs out, the program must reduce expenditures, meaning that the benefits will be cut. And if you look at how much it can't pay for out of revenue now, we are talking about a cut of around 50%.

Therefore, doing nothing will result in serious reductions in medicare benefits for everyone. As more people become eligible and also claim benefits, the benefits will be reduced even more. So much for keeping the promise. Look at it this way: The government has $100. It has to pass out the benefits equally to everyone who shows up. If 10 people show up, they get 10%. If 100 people show up they each get 1%. Regardless how many people are eligible for the benefits, once the reserves run out, the program can only pay out as much as it brings in. And that is only about 50% of what it pays out now.

Here are the options:
Do nothing, which will cut benefits by 50% for everyone including people in the program and even more for people entering the program in the future.

Change the program so that current beneficiaries can continue to rely on the program - because they do not have any alternatives. They don't, there just isn't medical insurance for retired people over 60. But the more benefits you give people now, the less you have available later. Who is in a better position to adjust their retirement plans around these realities, people retired now or people retiring in 10 years?

Stop the program. I don't think you can cancel it for people who are already using it. And even if you cancel it for future beneficiaries, you still need to tax them in order to cover the current costs.

Take the revenue and give it to beneficiaries so they can get their own program (insurance, HMO, PPO) hopefully from an exchange of some sort. People will have to pay the difference, but they are going to have to pay the difference in costs anyway. At least if they have to budget for premiums, that is more predictable. You would know that you have to budget $500 a month for your medical care, instead of guessing where between $10 and $1 million you will have to pay any given month.

Some combination.

The law says the President must propose something besides do nothing and congress must act on that recommendation with some haste.

Here is the trustee's report. Read it and weep.

Sure people have been paying into this program all their working lives. You paid for a benefit that isn't going to be there. Sorry about that. Sure, it isn't their fault at least individually. If blissful ignorance is a valid excuse, neither is anyone at fault for Bernie Maddolf. But as a nation, we are responsible for our debts and this just happens to be a really really big one. We could have addressed the issue years ago. No, the (un)affordable health care act doesn't offer any help or relief. All it does is take $500 billion out of the program every year and give it to other people for their healthcare. And then they call it a savings. Yeah, right.

All I can say is cowboy up and deal with it. Whining about how much we paid, and how awful it is to get screwed is just wasting oxygen.

Gross domestic Product or gross domestic Spending?

2011-05-06T16:54:00.001-04:00

There a few other interesting items this week and I hope I can get this all captured.
First, this is an interesting analysis of our economy over the last 13 years. As the author points out, we tend to think that the nineties were good and then 2001 and then we got good again, then 2008. Starting with the premise that GPD is actually a measure of spending more than making, and pointing out that real GDP growth has been at a lame 2.2% since 1998, whereas public and private debt has risen by over 3 times that rate. Meaning that the illusionary GDP growth above 2.2 percent is just us spending borrowed money. And Rob Arnott of Research Associates of California states: "GDP that stems from new debt — mainly deficit spending — is phony: it is debt-financed consumption, not prosperity," Take the debt part out and our prosperity is nearly unchanged from 1998.
GDP is our estimator of wealth. In other words, we produce more, we exchange more, therefore we make more and we increase our assets. This faux wealth was spent, not invested. Had we successfully invested it, there would be better returns than 2.2%
This like is borrowing the assets in your retirement account and then expecting the money to be in there later when you retire. Not! If you have $100,000 in your 401K but you borrow $350,000 and go buy stuff, your 401K isn't worth more because of that big IOU to yourself. The money in your pocket isn't earning anything. Spending it isn't earning anything, either. Instead, when you square up accounts, you are in the hole, massively. The $350,000 you borrowed wasn't working for you and neither was any return on that investment likewise increasing your wealth. And the amount your $100,000 earned you isn't going to make the monthly payments, let alone pay it off.
You can't unring the bell and you can't unspend the buck. And if the last 13 years are any indication, we can't grow out of this, either. Instead, we need to turn our attention to how we build real wealth. Not how we transfer it from high income earners to the government, or from Exxon to the government. Because really, after this payment comes due (the space between the blue line and the red line below), there isn't enough to go around anymore. Thoughts on how to do that later.
Ack! forgot the reference: CNN

More news to brighten April

2011-04-25T13:49:00.000-04:00

I love spring. It's a season of renewal, awakening (allergies). But this spring is feeling more and more ominous. I expect thunderstorms in spring. I wish I wasn't expecting the coming economic storm.
So, here's part 1: The IMF has declared that the "Age of America" will end in approximately 2016, when the economy of China surpasses us.

This assessment is based on "purchasing power parities," not exchange rates (which as we can see, are gross indicators affected by numerous factors, speculation not being the least). This actually compares what people can earn and spend. China has a prospering middle class, while the US has a dwindling one - and not because our population is getting richer. The age of Chinese hegemony will be quite different. One reason not cited in the source article is this contrast. Our national wealth is tied up in raw resources (property and the rights to exploit them), multinational corporations (GE) and a few very wealthy individuals who have "capitalized" on the world market changes of the last 40 years or so. Chinese wealth is in their manufacturing capabilities, equity markets to an extent and mostly in their sovereign funds. Meaning China itself can pretty much buy whatever it wants to accomplish whatever purposes it wants. And it has the capacity to make and sell things the world needs to maintain this path.
Source: Marketwatch
The second item of bad news is that China looks like it will be "diversifying" about $2 trillion in sovereign wealth it currently has wrapped up in US treasuries. That is a whopping 2/3 of their dollar reserves which they propose to use to invest in their own industries and markets, strategic resources (to feed those), and (other) foreign investments. Well, duh, why would they want to keep holding those $turkeys? It's not like they are earning much interest.
Source: Xinhuanet but this news has been on any number of sources during 2011.
No, it probably won't happen next month or even be completed this year. But if China decides to just quit adding dollars to the reserve (+$197 billion in Q1 2011), we will need to find other buyers and that means we will need to pay more interest. And there you have the wicked combination of rising interest and rising inflation (leading to rising interest and more inflation).
Which brings me back to the weak dollar. According to this article on CNBC. "If things were to somehow go into freefall (see below) or there were disorderly markets (see above), or if it is associated with a rise in interest rates (necessitated by above), there could be some concerns there," said Josh Feinman, chief global economist at Deutsche Bank Advisors. "But that's not happening at all. Rates in the US are still very, very low. At the margin, (a weak dollar) is a slight easing in financial conditions." Meanwhile, "Panic dollar selling is setting in," according to Dennis Gartman, a hedge fund manager and author of "The Gartman Letter."
How low can it go? Well if a 2/3 divestiture of dollar reserves by China and no market for US debt because of the free-falling dollar, and the kinds of inflation and interest we have not seen in decades is not cause for concern, I don't know what is. With just exactly what are we going to grow this economy back into some sort of stability, let alone hegemony? Selling off our assets is about all we have left.

Energy as a factor in recession

2011-04-22T12:24:00.001-04:00

I offer this interesting chart to back up my assertion that the last crash and therefore the next crash are driven by the cost of energy.

Perhaps historically, the price of food contributed. Today, the price of food is inexorably connected to the price of energy. Beyond getting food to market, agribusiness relies heavily on energy for current productivity levels. Energy is the force magnifier. The difference between an ox-driven plow and John Deer-driven plow - the power of the internal combustion engine. They both do the same thing. Food prices have increased 6.5% since January, which if you do the math, is over 25% a year.
So why is the price of gas going up? According to a SME on C-SPAN (sorry, don't have that reference it was morning edition either Monday or Tuesday), American refineries (or I should say refineries located in the U.S.) purchase oil on the spot market, not the futures market, so WTF.
April is the month that refineries change from the winter formula to the boutique summer formulas (driven by state regulation). So, refining capacity is down and the supply of gasoline is broken up into smaller "buckets." None-the-less, sooner or later the spot market catches up with futures (like in the inevitable future). Therefore, don't expect that May or June are going to provide any relief. These are two components driving the supply and demand side of the equation.
The other component that is driving both futures and spot markets is the value of the dollar. Today (April 22) it hit a 15 month low. Last time we saw this was (no surprise) Q2 2008. If the dollar is worth less, then it requires more of them to buy a barrel. Doesn't matter which market.

And the value of the dollar affects the cost of other goods imported by this country. On the other hand, it makes goods that we export more affordable in those markets. Which brings more valuable currency here. From those countries that we export to. Which are..... ummmmm.... what exactly are we making anymore?

CNBC source for chart 1
FX Street source for chart 2
IC Mark source for 2008

Update: Another source to back up my analysis - Financial Times which claims we are at a 2.5 year low against the dollar index - lowest since (drum roll please) August 2008.

Our deficits are a spending problem

2011-04-11T22:04:00.000-04:00

Of course the debt (14 trillion), is everyone's problem.

Deficits by President

$38 billion - A pathetic pittance

2011-04-09T14:27:00.000-04:00

$38 billion is like sending a $1 check for a $200 payment. Not even worth cashing, let alone arguing about.
The post-game show talks about the beneficiaries of brinkmanship. How getting a cut to this and that program is a major concession. How nearly $40 billion is 60% of the way between one arbitrary number and another. That somehow, Boehner won something by losing the majority of cuts republicans wanted. That somehow Obama lost by staving off cuts to NPR, PBS and Planned Parenthood. With all of the chest beating about these wastes of precious revenue, you have to figure they are permanently off the table. Well that was easy, how many other wasteful programs can they take of the table next time?

I don't really care where the $100 billion comes from. The programs that get a pass this time have to be back on the table next time. Instead of arguing over it, the house leadership should have just said, "OK, we will set those aside for next time. Now find something else to cut that equals $40 billion."

Eventually we will get down to reality. The target for cuts is $1.65 trillion. Savings do not exist until you get to zero deficit. And then you have to balance savings against debt payment. Talk about reductions in unfunded programs, not cuts to a budget like there is actually any money to pay for it. Talk about savings next year, not next decade. Be honest, you have no idea what will happen between now and 2012. Budget outyears = smoke and mirrors.

We can afford to pay for about 5 things and everything else is an expendable expense. Interest on the debt, social security (in some revised form), medicare (because there is no way seniors are going to get health insurance once they aren't working), border protection and military defense. And the trust funds need to go back to being separate accounts used for the intended purpose or for paying off debt (which is basically deferring interest to a loan later, still saves money).

It isn't a matter of picking and choosing winners anymore. It isn't picking NPR over planned parenthood. Instead of talking about an orderly shutdown of government during a lapse in spending authority, we should be talking about an orderly shutdown of government programs forever.

Likewise with the tax code. It isn't a debate about deductions vs allowances vs credits. Stop fiddling with income tax to impose a social agenda. Quit wasting time about marriage penalty and alternative minimum tax. Value added tax and only value added tax, computed on sales (wholesale and resale), surrendered at the time of sale to the treasury. See how much eliminating the IRS will do for the budget... that's a $12 billion dollar savings right there.

I am starting to think that the solution may be the number of people in Congress. Maybe we need to limit each elected representative to three staff, limit the number of committees to ten, and limit the committee staff to 5 per. I think that is actually very generous even if 2320 employees is about a quarter of the current number estimated at 7000-8000. There is only so much a person can do, and then the rest just has to be ignored. Hard to get into the details, think up all the tangential arguments, write all the emotional speeches, plot all the political angles with 75% less "time" to do it. The legislative branch actually employees something like 33,000 people, but most are taking care of other things like security, facilities management, information technology, visitor services, etc.

Gas per Gallon

2011-03-11T01:38:00.000-05:00

One third of salaries and wages come from the government

2011-03-08T20:42:00.001-05:00

Notice it does not say earnings.
So, between social security, medicare and unemployment, 35% of income (I'm thinking not reimbursements) is actually being paid by the other 65% of actual workers. One person is supported by 2 other people actually out earning it. Take 1/3 of your gross income and just stand on the corner and hand it out to your neighbors. You will get a lot more satisfaction and help a lot more people along the way. And another million or so government workers will have to go out and earn their own instead of earning part of your share or the American pie.
This is really sad. What a pathetic entitlement society.
Social welfare benefits have increased over $500 billion just in the last 2 years! That money is already spent. Too late for any savings there. Want to keep doing this year after year? How do you think you will afford your own retirement?
CNBC

Lack of tough decisions

2011-03-06T16:53:00.001-05:00

First, I am insulted by a proposed $6 billion cut in a budget of 3,552 billion (as approved).
The 2010 budget deficit was $1.3 trillion. That is 1300 billions. 13 hundred billion.
So, based on the 2010 budget, the proposed cut is less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the deficit. A whopping 50 cents out of $100 that we are borrowing.

The 2010 budget was 20% more than the 2009 budget. from $3,736 billion in 2009 to $4,472 billion.
Note that revenue was up also -- by a minuscule 1%. But the money coming in is not going down, as many would have you believe. Another indicator that the problem is spending.
But here's what is really stunning to think about. The 2009 budget included the cost of TARP ($154 billion in 2009),^[9] the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ($202 billion in 2009, $353 billion in 2010, and $232 billion in 2011 forward^[10]), and the 2009 Omnibus spending bill ($410 billion). And that wasn't enough spending????? We need to spend 20% more??? We can only afford to take $6 billion out???

Second, I am insulted that anyone would count the additional $40 billion in the 2011 budget as a savings. That's like saying "I'm saving 50 cents out of $100 but it would be 40.50 out of $140.00 Yeah, and it would be $100.50 out of $200. Point is, we don't have more than $60 to begin with, so the whole argument is preposterous.edit to add nice explanation from Keith Hennessey
I propose we talk about cuts in terms of the deficit, $1.3 trillion. That has to be the target. Even the $60 billion republican proposed cuts, is just 4.6%. That's less than sales tax in many states. It should be easy-peazy.

What are these people going to do when they need to find the other $1240 billion? These are not hard choices and making them so is an insult to our intelligence.

Maybe they need to think about programs in terms of buyers remorse - "if we hadn't blown all that money on (fill in the blank) think how much better off we'd be now?" Sure, children aren't going to get so many free books, and National Public Radio is going to have to increase their fund raising another 20%. More viewer support weeks. Cry me a river. Move on and make some real decisions.

Two things really tick me off - energy related

2011-02-24T21:06:00.000-05:00

So, Obama's ethically squeaky clean "Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy," Cathy Zoi has been hired by none other than George Soros to run his new investment fund. The fund? To "leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications."
Of course, the green energy boom is totally subsidized by government spending. And if that doesn't make you stand up and take notice, guess what the ethically unconflicted Ms. Zoi's husband does? He's an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a "poster child of green industry."
The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota put it this way: ... "now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms."
Ummm, yeah. Honest. *sigh* source: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/new-soros-hedge-fun-profiting-obamas-green-energy-push-hires-top-

Item Two:

I still maintain that fuel prices actually led to the mortgage crisis as people were unable to afford their energy (heat, air, transportation, and consequent 20%+ increase in food prices). So, with crude pushing $119 today because of the uproar in the middle east, combined with the demonstrable utter absurdity of using corn for fuel (takes more energy to make it into ethanol than you get out of it in a combustion engine, not enough farm land to replace oil with corn anyway), you would think the US might rethink this dumb requirement (min 10% ethanol in auto fuel).

This is another example of picking winners and losers. With an election in 2012, and Iowa being one of the first primaries, you can't expect the best interests of the many will prevail over the interests of a few industrial corn farmers. Not from either party.

So, don't count on any corn chips for your salsa next super bowl. Tea party? Maybe a tortilla revolution?

US warns extreme food prices will stay

...food inflation would surge in the second half of this year as wholesale prices filtered through the supply chain, affecting consumers.

Mr Glauber [USDA chief economist] forecast that the heavily subsidised US ethanol industry’s demand for corn would continue to grow in spite of higher input costs, consuming about 36 per cent of the domestic crop.
[emphasis mine]
The ethanol industry has been criticised for driving food prices higher. But Tom Vilsack, US secretary of agriculture, ruled out any change in US ethanol policy. “There is no reason for us to take the foot off the gas,” said Mr Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, a state in the US corn belt.
Analysts said the USDA forecasts for production, demand and stocks for the 2011-12 season and Mr Vilsack’s affirmative comments about ethanol meant agricultural commodities prices could surge even higher this year. “No pullback for agricultural commodities,” said Richard Feltes, a respected grain analyst with RJ O’Brien brokers in Chicago. “The speech [of Mr Vilsack] should be alarming to any corn consumer.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f4189e60-404a-11e0-9140-00144feabdc0.html

Another tale of Walmart oppression

2011-02-14T16:36:00.000-05:00

"Brenda Speaks, a Ward 4 ANC commissioner, actually urged blocking construction of the planned store in her ward at Georgia and Missouri avenues NW... Addressing a small, anti-Wal-Mart rally at City Hall on Monday, Speaks said young people would get criminal records when they couldn't resist the temptation to steal."

You can't make this stuff up. Of course, they might get jobs, too. But then they wouldn't be dependent on the District for every damn thing.

But if that isn't reason enough, "would a new Wal-Mart there really stock the same quality of food and products as its stores do in better-off, suburban communities?"

Yeah, upscale Walmart. But it is better to do without products at all than to take that risk. Like I said, you can't make this stuff up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/09/AR2011020906783.html

Applying Obama's Budget Cuts

2011-02-04T22:42:00.001-05:00

Thanks to DH for this email:
The President ordered the cabinet to cut a whopping $100 million from the $3.5 trillion federal budget!

I'm so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to do the same thing with my personal budget. I spend about $2000 a month on groceries, gas, credit cards, medicine, bills, etc, but it's time to get out my own personal budget cutting ax.

Inspired by the courage of President Obama to face the massive deficit, I'm going to cut my spending at exactly the same ratio -1/35,000 of my total budget. After doing the math, it looks like instead of spending $2000 a month; I'm going to have to cut that number by six cents!

Yes, I am going to make my own personal major sacrifice. I'm going to have to get by with $1999.94, but that's what sacrifice is all about. I'll just have to do without some things, that are, frankly, luxuries.

John P. Taxpayer

Oh it's even better than that. The Republican house is cutting $32 billion for the rest of the fiscal year. And somehow, $32 billion over 6 months is comparable to $100 billion over 12 months (half the fiscal year will be over in March when the current non-budget continuing resolution expires). Furthermore, they are arguing that it is really $74 billion compared with Obama's budget (I am assuming before the $100 billion he wants to cut).

So, our most exalted leadership is arguing over the meaning of 6 cents versus 2 cents. And we pay them for this.
NY Times

I'm not talking about Egypt

2011-02-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

I found there were some very interesting thoughts in this article about what must be done about the federal budget. Foundation for Economic Education
Take-aways:
The "hard choices" are really the easy ones. Hard choices are the ones our government refuses to consider (which is why they are always taken off the table). Quit moaning about how hard it is and just do it.
Prolonging this agony by nibbling around the edges just causes endless whining and more battles. Eliminate on the large scale. Stop the activities the government should not be performing - like education, mortgages, loans, energy, manufacturing. (Read I, Pencil)
Quit selling of our future, our children's future, our grandchildren's future by paying for unaffordable programs to appease some constituents' short-term gratification.
"Remember that every time you spend more, you don’t get the money by selling cookies like the Girl Scouts do. You deploy force against your fellow citizens. That raises moral issues and is something which you must stop doing in such a cavalier fashion."
And finally, we must call them what they are: cowards, hypocrites, sell-outs, irresponsible, shameful, anti-social shirkers. Stewards, they are not. Thieves is more accurate.

Forget race, sex, religion and disability as reasons for bigotry

2011-01-02T16:52:00.000-05:00

We have a new (yet old) act in town this year (2011).

Economic Inequality

My perusal of today's political feast for the first Sunday in the new year includes numerous articles decrying the disparity between them that have and those who have not. Define that however you like; and that is the problem - any definition seems to work in this scheme. This is more than class warfare. Frankly, I find the concept a pointless waste of emotional energy, but that has yet to stop a progressive from bleating in the dark of economic night.

Look, if you are going to beat this sorry drum from centuries past, try pointing out the disparity between oil-rich middle east theocratic oligarchies and just about everyone else in the world. We give them our money because we want their product. It's that simple.

The fact that some people in this country are well-off and some aren't is just a fact of life. The price of stuff is set by the amount of money people who want the stuff are willing to pay. What have our efforts to increase access to home ownership, education and health care by lower income citizens accomplished? Raised the price of homes, education and health care to even higher absurd levels. Taking money away from those with more and giving it to people with less does increase demand - but it also increases cost and results in the same net effect -- the same people are at the bottom. What changes are the owners of the wealth, but not the number of people with the wealth. (This is what I maintain is the true fight going on. Our politicians are fighting over who in the top 5% get the goodies, not who in the bottom 95%.)

If this country wishes to make demons of the well-to-do and rob the rich to pay the poor, it will find the rich departing to more welcoming countries. This applies to corporations as well as individuals. Face it, one doesn't need America to be rich, one needs product. One doesn't need money to develop product, one needs energy and a tolerant environment. Given the means and the venue, the money will follow.

This zero-sum game of wealth-envy and piss on the prosperous is being played out every where from the environmentalists (we'll save the planet when YOU buy/use less) to -- well almost every political discussion it seems. Is hate contagious?

Links to the progressive poor me messages du jour:
Eliminating Inequality is Good for the Soul
The Upward Mobility Gap
Bipartisanship in 2011? No Chance

Regulating the free speech marketplace, the internet

2010-12-20T11:43:00.000-05:00

And on the heels of how the government and Walmart monitor you, let us review how the FCC plans to regulate the internet. They do not have the authority (according to Congress and the courts) and they do not have a public or business consensus. But that doesn't stop progress (er, regress?) Do not be fooled by the stated objectives. This is not about preserving, innovating, investing or competition. And it is certainly not about free expression.

Just an example

You know you are in trouble when Al Frankin says it's a bad idea.

Are you suspicious why the FCC chair would chose December 21 for this vote? Maybe hoping that no one is looking?

This is the commission agenda item:

SUMMARY: The Commission will consider a Report and Order adopting basic rules of the road to preserve the open Internet as a platform for innovation, investment, competition, and free expression.

Sorry I can't give you anyone to contact about this because the FCC isn't listening.

Wallstreet Journal op

Monitoring America(ns)

2010-12-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

This is a Washpo series on homeland security. More specifically, how homeland security (DHS, state and local) collect and maintain information on Americans.

Your privacy is essentially meaningless. Not only does the federal government collect and maintain information on citizens who have done nothing illegal, it encourages the collection and submission on such data. This is DHS and the FBI constructing the haystack in which they hope someday to find a needle. But they haven't so far, unsurprisingly.

Read the article, browse the website. Now it is easy to understand why DHS has branded tea party groups as potential terrorist threats - they have all the data they need to support a preconceived notion, any preconceived notion. Antiwar protesters and environmentalist demonstrations are in the same bucket. This type of self-imposed paranoia has no party affliction other than the label on the current regime.

Be afraid, very afraid.

Monitoring America

The omnibus spending bill

2010-12-18T11:05:00.001-05:00

What a turkey that was. Sure, it was crafted by both democrats and republicans largely behind doors over the course of a year. With a lot of "I'll give you this if you give me that." All of that horse trading was to decide how to spend $1.1 trillion.
The problem really isn't 6000 thousand earmarks that micromanage how to divvy up the goodies. That process is symptomatic of a more-or-less pragmatic process otherwise known as making sausage. They have to get to the end game somehow.

The real problem is $1.1 trillion. Or how much sausage this country really needs.

Mitch Mc. said that republicans are now realizing there is something wrong with the process. Maybe. But what about tackling the budget in exactly the opposite way? Instead of saying (Mitch) let's start with $1.1 trillion and figure out how to spend it, what about let's start with 20% less and figure out what to cut?

A great learning experience would be to start with Congress' own budget, $5.42 billion. That's an 89% increase since 2000. OK, security does cost more, but hey - there are 535 senators and representatives. That is over 10 million for each one of them. Per year.

Sorry, was in a hurry to complete Christmas shopping and forgot to list citations.

Congressional operating costs: Congressional News Connection
Decent summary of what I heard myself on C-Span: Politico

13% of Americans approve of the job Congress does

2010-12-16T20:49:00.000-05:00

Gallup poll
What do you call that, the margin for error?
(snort)

We interrupt this budget rant for something really awful

2010-12-15T10:01:00.000-05:00

This company was created by a couple of homeland security insiders (see about us).
They have a mobile app called the Patriot app. The gist is you can use a smartphone camera and text message features to rat out suspicious behavior - you know the "If you see something, say something" DHS method of security the homeland.
Or maybe you want to rat out your fellow employees for taking an extra couple of minutes coffee break, or tattle on government waste, or company littering. Whatever.
Kind of like a speed camera on steroids.

Here's a quote - one of their corporate goals:

Provide instruction and increase consistency in actions while decreasing variance in human behavior to mitigate risk and error

Why wait for China to foreclose on the US when we can act just like them now?

Citizen Concepts - ewwww! Patriot my patoottie!

Oh well, I guess in a free market economy, you get all kinds. I can't wait for this to show up at a Walmart near me. (By the way, if you don't know Walmart culture, this is just so apropos)

GOP is stupid

2010-12-07T22:11:00.000-05:00

Libs are freakin because Obama is giving in, caving, yadeya.
GOP is so focused on personal taxes, they can't see the tree for the leaves, let alone the forest.

Obama wins, here's why:
1) If the economy gets better in 2 years, then we will be able to afford a tax increase - and we certainly could use the money to reduce the deficit.
2) If the economy doesn't get better, then obviously the tax rate extension didn't work, and raise taxes to reduce the deficit. 2012 motto: I won. Again.
3) We just spent another near $trillion we don't have. So regardless what happens, repubs are responsible for even more deficit. How's that for performance and they aren't even sworn in yet. That will be another fine campaign issue.
4) No one is talking about cutting spending, which is the real problem. So he gets to keep his outrageous budget which is 20% over fy2008.

All the "I'm not happy and there is plenty in here to dislike" is just covering up a smirk.

Being without internet for 3 weeks....

2010-12-07T20:52:00.003-05:00

Changes your perspective on things.

RIP Domino 5-5-1991 11-12-2010

2010-11-12T23:22:00.002-05:00

He lived a long life and patiently raised many cats along the way. Always a gentleman and never swatted a soul. He was loud and verbose. It is very quiet around here now. The dog will miss his bed buddy.

I am sad to see you go, old man. I am relieved that you are now at rest.

Rainbow Bridge, the poem
Rainbow Bridge, the memorial site

Budget is about choices

2010-11-11T00:14:00.000-05:00

Why not just cut all the budgets by 20%? Because it means you do all that you do less effectively. Rather than do a mediocre job of everything, how about doing what you do well and quit doing the things that don't make as much difference?
Besides, what is fair about cutting medicare and social security by 20% while we continue to fund frog sex and send bazillions to Pakistan which has no income tax?
Congress needs to make choices. Not between across the board cuts of 15% or 20%; not between tax increases for 5% or 15% of the tax paying population. Congress needs to decide that we are going to stop doing a lot of things because they are less important than other things - and we can't just do 20 or 30% less of the important things (like border protection, security and veterans benefits). But we may need to do things like:

Cut the Congressional budget - especially staffing - by 25%. If we are going to shrink government, we don't need as many people on the hill working on all the assorted committees.
Stop subsidizing things like oil, farm products and recycling programs. Let the market do what the market does best. Instead of increasing the gas tax, cut the energy subsidies. If you want to ensure more stability, think about managing short term speculative investments, especially for commodities.
Get real about the cost of security vis-a-vis the benefits. Don't intelligence and identity matching make a lot more sense than random (strip) searches at the airport?
Encourage the activities that "produce" and cut off the activities that don't. If oil drilling results in revenue, then do more of it, not less of it. Parks are nice. But solvency is more important. Doing is productive. Not doing (like not planting corn, or not drilling, or not fishing) is simply wasting resources.
Quit spending the money overseas that is subsidizing corrupt and two-faced governments.
Quite spending money domestically that is subsidizing corrupt and irresponsible state governments.
In addition to cutting budgets, cut the regulatory burden on business - especially small business - by 20%
Similarly, get out of state government business. Define the desired results, but not the methods.
Look at more than just medical malpractice as part of tort reform. The lawsuit lottery has to end.
Consider this: if there isn't a reasonable expectation of reward, people are not likely to take risks. That includes the risk to begin businesses, invest in the market, make career decisions.
Quit creating and expanding all these agencies to collect data - it is incredibly expensive to collect and maintain data when you consider the privacy and security requirements as well as the "rent." For example, why is OMB collecting information on individual medical insurance claims? That cannot be a productive use of funds. I'm sure BC/BS is going to be a lot more resourceful managing fraud in their policies.

Just some ideas, I'm sure if you started a discussion with voting options for budget ideas, you could come up with a lot more.

One liner on hope and change

2010-10-30T16:02:00.002-04:00

We were hoping he would change Washington, not America.

DOJ - Did I hear that right?

2010-10-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

So, regardless what California might do about it's laws concerning marijuana (quit enforcing them, decriminalize possession or just make it legal) the feds are going to enforce the law - I guess put pot heads in federal prison.
WSJ
But they won't enforce immigration laws because they are too busy with other stuff????? They let illegal aliens out of jail because they don't have enough beds?
Wash Times
Intellectual Conservative

You have to say DOJ has priorities, it's just that they are all screwed up. Go figure.

And DHS/ICE is just as -- irresponsible.
Canada Free Press

High tech - more trouble than it's worth

2010-10-16T21:53:00.000-04:00

So, I have this really expensive embroidery/sewing machine. Two names, initials H and V. I never use it for embroidery - it's a lot of trouble to set up and I'm not very inspired by the results.

Anyway, it has a lot of handy utility stitches and every once in a while, I pull it out to sew something. Like a hem in a knit fabric. Or overcast a seam. This happens maybe once a year.

And every *&^ time, it sews about 15 feet, snarls the thread, flips some kind of bar in the bobbin assembly and absolutely will not work after that. It doesn't look like it would be very hard to fix myself if I only knew how, but apparently it is something only the HV mechanic can do. Of course, it only happens on Saturday (because that's when I'm home to do this stuff of course) and the dealer is closed on Sunday. Note to file, any project will take a minimum of 9 days.

I think I am just going to go get some simple machine that has half decent utility stitches and tell the dealer they can have this piece of high tech poo. If they can get it running.

Why can't the government do a cash for clunkers program that lets people s-can their junk for some functioning tools? Somehow, I think that would be more stimulative. I am definitely shovel ready with this.

Libertarian vs Cynical

2010-10-10T21:22:00.000-04:00

Some interesting discussion going on at a Stossel article:

Congress Can't Repeal Economics

Obama is neither clueless nor evil. By removing a viable marketplace for private insurers, you gain more customers for the public option, which is what Obama and Pelosi wanted in the first place. Likewise, by taking free market out of medical care, you by definition change the type of people who gravitate there as employees. Free market tends to make individuals accountable. Darwinian capitalism. Government market tends to make nothing an independent decision. Medical treatment will be determined by a book and a committee of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Not that there is anything wrong with either. It's just that overall, the quality of medical care has to deteriorate just because of the lack of education and practice in a variety of care environments. Fewer experts will result in more mistakes and fewer people practicing will result in more overlooked symptoms. But more inadequate government employees will review and revise the treatment plans until they pass the sniff test. Just like getting specialized treatment now in a PPO - you have to jump through the bureaucratic hoops. Just look at how government (e.g., public schools, the motor vehicle dept.) work now.

That's all part of the plan, too. It is medical Darwinism. Not only will fewer people survive medical care, but the attention will turn to ostracizing people who are not viewed as having an appropriately healthy lifestyle. Smoking, obesity, high triglycerides, failure to exercise, too much fat, salt and sugar, not enough fruit and vegetables, drinking caffeinated and sugary drinks will not only cost more at the retail counter, but it will cost more for your insurance and care. And you will get in the back of the line for care over and over, while someone who has a higher "health index" gets the priority. Technically, people who don't do everything perfectly cannot be penalized, but people who do can be incentivized, and what is the difference? Just that the government will be able to say they don't charge the poor sick people more for being sick. They will get free care, when the governments gets around to it.

If you think I am crazy, consider this: they are monitoring garbage with microchips to make sure you recycle. So, very easy to monitor what food you buy with RFIDs, and then penalize (tax) accordingly. Kind of like paying tax by the mile instead of tax by the gallon. (Tax by the mile is what state governments are coming up with since gas tax revenues are down due to increased mileage and reduced driving.)

Just making people wait longer before they get a diagnosis (let alone treatment) will shorten the amount of time that people are in the program, yes? True it is cheaper to treat healthy people than sick people, but once they are sick, you really want to get them out of the program as soon as possible.

What about young independent voters?

2010-10-09T18:41:00.000-04:00

I think we're a dying breed.

Source: Pollster

You would have to say that the GOP truly ruined the brand for the long run if that many young people switched from R to D between 2004 and 2008. Same kind of thing happened in 1996, just not nearly so dramatic. The tracks for independent and republican all demographic certainly seem to reflect inverse trends. Democrats seem to run a fairly constant trend from 1976 to 2004, when it dips - odd. But young people seem to be polarizing - and swinging too and fro. It would be interesting to do some digging and try to figure out what their unique burning issues were in 1996, 2000 and 2008. Makes you wonder... and it doesn't exactly seem like anyone (including Rock the Vote) really has a handle on this.

What is it about independent voters?

2010-10-03T23:51:00.001-04:00

I caught a few interviews last week that just show me they don't get it.

One was a discussion among representatives of young republicans and young democrats. Another was with a lady who works for rock the vote. Another was a pol-dit who was commenting on independent voters and what they want.

The young democratic view seems to be be something along the lines that young people are looking for a leader who will articulate a way forward. No one now has a plan. The guy talking about independents wanted to paint with a broad brush in tea party terms.

My y-gen kids are thoughtful, politically informed and astute on the issues. Yet they are not represented by either of the young groups that were talking - not even close. And they say that their friends ranging from late 20s to 40 are of similar views, if not as well as informed. But they would be the first people to tell you (to paraphrase the Cheshire cat) if you don't know where you are going, any path will do. They aren't looking for some path.

I personally took umbrage at the guy who thought he knew what independent voters are all about. First of all, I don't believe they like to be painted by anyone's brush. Let me explain like our president - if I just say it slower and louder: in-de-pen-dent. Meaning I don't ascribe to the political ideology of any group. People have different priorities and different visions on a variety of issues. You can't put everyone in the same bucket and start making assumptions on what motivates them. Unless of course, ideology is what motivates them, whether political, cultural, familial or (egad) facebook. Lack of ideology seems to be perplexing to these nanos. We don't need someone to tell us how to think.

The other strawman that was set up is that independents are just mad about liberals, progressives and democrats who are in power. That whatever the democrats want or do is somehow the issue. Nope, missed the point, we don't like what the republicans want or do either. That's why we threw them out in - get this - 2006. That was two years before Obama.

And I don't think people are looking for a way forward. I think they see very clearly where the current path is leading and this is a categorical rejection of the destination. Hope and change isn't a way forward, it isn't a goal, it isn't even a measurable objective along the way. Change is not progress if it is just motion. If you take bit broader perspective and remember that people weren't happy in 2004 either, picked a different crew in 2006 and kept "throwing the bums out" in 2008, then you can't simply say that it is about the current administration or agenda. What I see as consistent across the half-decade is a dissatisfaction with having a more and more intrusive government that appears to be more and more incompetent and disconnected from the people they work for. My small group of boomers have been talking 3rd party for 6 years. And the heat went up a lot as soon as Bush was re-elected. We didn't want Kerry, what an elitist, lying fool. But we didn't like Bush and especially pork ear marking Congress.

We don't like the prices we are paying for healthcare. But we know that requiring even more be spent isn't an improvement. We didn't like medicare part d, either, remember? We like choices and medicare advantage offered options that fit our locations, our lifestyles and our medical needs. Taking away advantage to pay for someone else's free health insurance wasn't a good idea. The people on medicare have been paying for the plan for years and years. It was a stupid idea and it is an insult to make it law and then exempt the state of Florida.

We are really, really pissed that wall street, banks and market traders were rescued when it was our money that they bet and lost in the first place. If anyone needed to be restored, it was the people who got ripped off. We don't believe Goldman, Citibank and the like needed taxpayer money. We really don't like screwing us by giving our GM stock to the unions and giving Chrysler to the Italians. And then tell us that we have to give more while congress keeps adding more and more to their pockets and budgets and giving more and more to their friends.

At this point, we really just want the federal government to leave us alone. What has government done right?

Let's see, they promised us social security and then stole the money and pissed it away on things like "511," pointless "scientific" studies and memorials to elected officials, living and dead.
When they ran out of $ocial $ecurity, they promised us affordable medical care in our senior years, and then stole that money. And then stole some more and plan to give it to people who aren't frankly productive.
They promised us energy independence and then stopped us from actually increasing any access to energy. Now they are closing down the oil wells we have, and subsidizing Mexico and Brazil to drill in the very same places. On the grounds that the environment is going to be destroyed unless we start living like the Taliban.
But wait, didn't they tell us if we just gave EPA more money than transportation, made cars more fuel efficient, spent a bunch on solar, wind and dams, taxed the hell out of everyone associated with energy or chemicals that they would fix pollution and restore our environment? And before that, if we just created the dept of energy, we would have endless clean nuclear? How many bazillions have we wasted and EPA and DOE? And now the sky is indeed falling and we are going to kill the earth unless we pass a carbon trading scheme? Yeah, that worked out really well, too.
Education - we need a better educated populace in order to compete with the rest of the world (which is where the jobs went when we priced ourselves out the manufacturing business with health care and retirement benefits). So we'll just create the Dept. of Education. And 30 years later, our youth score well worse than their peers in most other modern countries or even developing nations like India and China. Our local schools are powerless to define a locally relevant curriculum, and we are forced into having the federal government define all "social norms" from this point forward. It's all relative, after all.
The only way government can figure out how to keep terrorists off of airlines is to strip search the passengers? But you can't ask someone in Arizona to produce a drivers license if they are driving??? Screw it, just give them a ticket to somewhere and lock them up at airport security.

Now do you understand what it is all about? The stewardship of the US Government is a total failure. Democratic capitalism doesn't work when only a few unelected people are in charge of all the capital and the executive branch makes all the rules. Our Congress is so freaking incompetent that they write things into laws that prevent Congress from changing those laws in the future. And they give all authority over to agencies that are not accountable to Congress, the President or the people they are supposed to be protecting - from whom? You yourself, evidently because the consumer protection agency that is supposed to protect you from evil bankers will have access to your bank accounts, credit transactions, loans and mortgages, but for what, how and why Congress won't say. The agency gets to figure it out themselves. I have a sneaky suspicion it could well decide when you have reached your credit card limit, or how much at any given moment you need to reserve in your bank account for --- mmmm lets say the next medical copay you might have.

Did you know you will be able to get a mammogram and colonoscopy without having a copay under the new health insurance requirements? I guess that's to make sure you get your share of the squeeze and... OK, I'm going to leave the other end up to you to envision. Hope you enjoy them.

Here are a few thoughts to ponder
RCP Connected by Disconnect
RCP Taming the Tea Party
Friedman on Third Party Rising
Reynolds: Tea Party Dominance was Inevitable
PittsReport: America on the brink of a second revolution

Tax symantics more complex than tax code?

2010-09-16T23:44:00.000-04:00

If you give someone a tax cut, they will pay less in taxes, right? So how is it a tax cut if you will be paying the same amount in taxes (or more)?
If you are not going to give someone a tax cut, then they will be paying the same taxes, right? So if you are paying a lot more in taxes, isn't it really a tax increase? I don't understand the idea of a non-tax cut or tax non-cut, it smells like Washington mumbo jumbo to me. They are not giving money back as tax cuts because they aren't collecting the money in the first place! You can't give what you ain't got.
How can you put more money into the economy by asking people to not pay more in taxes? They have the same money today as they did yesterday. If I am still spending $100 at the grocery store this week just like I did last week, instead of spending $110, I don't have an extra $10 to go blow at Best Buy.
Let's be honest, what we are talking about here is a tax increase. It is a big increase for everyone making more than $250K per year. Half of the income generated by small business is also in this category. If you take revenue out of the hands of those businesses, they won't be hiring and they won't be making the capital investments which create jobs in other businesses. Probably the best thing successful businesses could do at this point is incorporate and quit getting penalized like some rich slacker.These folks get to pay twice the social security a working stiff does, get to pay all their insurance premiums and can't itemize them as deductions, in addition to assuming all the risk if their particular market segment tanks any given year. Obviously, they aren't paying their fair share so they should be paying your fair share as well (sarc/off).

The small business loan program and some targeted tax cuts - which are supposed to create more jobs - is the latest guilt trip/extortion attempt. So, the government proposes to take a big chunk of income from successful small businesses in order to pay for a loan program for less than successful small businesses - run by the government of course. Besides sounding like another business bail-out, why:

would we trust the government to run another loan program? Might as well just throw the money out the window if their home loan programs and mortgage salvation programs are any indication.
would we assume that the money borrowed from the government and spent by small business is more stimulative than money spent by small business without the government's interference? Do you think maybe the government is just grabbing some more of your tax dollars to - oh I don't even know what anymore, none of it goes where they are telling us anyway.
would we not use the revenue to pay for some of the things this government has already bought? Like the $800+ billion stimulus program. Or the loss we are taking when the government gives --er sells at a significant discount -- GM stock to auto unions? Or the endless hundreds of $billions we keep giving to fannie and freddie so banks can continue to make a damn killing repossessing houses and taking a tax deduction for the original market value instead of the actual amount of the loan?

The president and congress are telling us that we can't afford to continue the current tax rates because they need the $700 billion they will get if they increase taxes. Need it for what? How many times are we going to spend this money?
Furthermore, wasn't the idea to put money into the economy to get us out of the recession? How can they say on the one hand that those tax non-cuts are stimulative and don't cost much, but these tax non-cuts cost too much? If it doesn't produce much revenue, then it doesn't benefit the economy much either. And if the government takes an additional amount of money (in the form of tax increases) out of the economy, it is going to be the antithesis of stimulative (what is that recessive? Retarded?). They cannot say that all the money the government spent up to this point has done anything for the economy, or even saved the state and local jobs they claim. Pretty much it all just went to pay the bills, just like you and I would do.
And on a similar note, how can the president tell us with a straight face that some new spending program is paid for by not spending money we don't have on something else? I'm going to run down to the car dealer and buy a new Chevy and claim it's paid for because I'm not going to buy a new house I don't have the money for anyway? Never mind I have already signed a contract for that new house. Look, if my family has $50,000 per year and annual bills of $75K, we can't buy that $25K car and claim we are paying for it by not buying something else for $25K. We don't have $25K for anything, we don't even have $25K to cover the shortfall between income and bills.

How stupid do they think we are?

Climategate stories

2010-08-18T20:17:00.000-04:00

This is a history of climate wars, with some deserved humor and a bit of tongue-in-cheek.
Climate wars... ending?

And this is a summary of all the various "gates" (falsehoods, exaggerations, unsupported speculation, propaganda) in the IPPC reports. Skeptical Swedish Scientists

Both are worth the read, IMNSHO
Certainly an impressive weight of evidence.

Picking losers

2010-08-17T19:17:00.000-04:00

I think I have figured out why the whole mosque thing is bigger than maybe it warrants.

Clearly, our culture is still very raw about what Islam and a few dozen muslims carried out on 9/11. And what is wrong with that? You can't call people religious bigots because they are still emotional (angry, sad, offended, fearful) - that was a big deal. To the extent that muslims around the world are still celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center, we are still entitled to our emotions about it, are we not?

That is a point of discussion regarding my opinion about the proposed mosque. I have an opinion and so do a lot of people. There are no right or wrong feelings. There is, however, gracious and civilized behavior, which means you consider another person's feelings about a matter before you decide to do something that impacts them.

Here's what the prez said. America's feelings aside, they have a right to religious freedom (true) including building a mosque at ground zero minus 2 blocks (false, property rights are different than religious rights - dummass). And I am picking the winner here - it's the muslims. Everyone else, tough noogies. Then on Saturday, he said he didn't have an opinion about whether they should build the mosque, just that they had the right.

It's picking winners and losers again. We don't want one person at the head of the executive branch picking winners and losers. Furthermore, this isn't a debate that concerns the presidency, so why would he be picking in the first place? The rest of the message seems to be that if we don't agree with his choice, then there must be something wrong with us. We are too stupid to understand, or we are racists or bigots or trying to make it political. Wrong. We are offended that you are making this decision; that you are once again picking the losers and the losers are us.

How far, freedom of religion

2010-08-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

This is not about Islam, it is about the extent that religious rights extend. Maybe I'm wrong, after all I am not a constitutional scholar (unlike Barry, after teaching a class, but not as a professor). My take on religious rights in this country is that we have the right to believe and worship whatever we wish, or nothing if we wish that. Where does this include real estate? Seems to me that a local government can decide whatever it wants regarding the use of property, and your religious rights or my religious rights don't have a thing to do with it. What does imminent domain mean? The government can claim property from private ownership for whatever purpose it deems worthy. I don't think religious rights trump that... So what the heck does religious freedom have to do with how this piece of property is used? Governments decide all the time that some activity is inappropriate for a particular place. Might be because of traffic, noise, inconsistent with other land use.... sorry it's not that you can't do that, you just can't do that there. Sorry.

I like this soundbite: The right to do something doesn't make it right to do. By the same token, the right to one thing (religious rights) don't have to extend to some other right (property). I think the whole argument is a strawman. I don't hear anyone discussing this piece, they are just all wrapped around the axle about how they feel. Meh.

Of course, New York doesn't have a monopoly on bad taste, distasteful policy and poor use of resources. Seems the State Dept. has decided that this Imam is just the person so send on a diplomatic mission to the mid-east. Yeah, he seems like just the person to hold a discussion about religious tolerance and respect. Right.

I really don't like stepping into this mess but since I haven't heard anyone discuss the difference between one right and another instead of subsuming one right to another, I had to toss the idea out there and see what comes of it.

Oh, my comment on constitutional law qualifications? Barry wasn't a constitutional law professor. He wasn't a professor at all. He was a part time lecturer, and while he was hired to discuss constitutional law, that isn't what he "taught" at all. Why do we keep perpetuating this resume embellishment? It isn't OK to embellish a military career. But how is it fair to skewer one person for that while another person parades around as an academic when they weren't even close?
NY Times
conservative blog take on it
second hand testimony

2010-08-13T23:57:00.001-04:00

Market Compass Goes Awry When Governments Steal

Bloomberg Opinion by Mark Gilbert

In my not so humble opinion, there are three core issues which make investment risk unmanageable.
1) Governments decide who wins and who loses in the marketplace
2) Governments confiscate and redistribute core assets
3) As citizens, we allow government to keep doing it.

The first is as citizens of any developed country, our willingness to look aside as our corrupt governments choose the winners and losers in business, finance, asset owners and services - from borrowing/credit to insurance to investment markets to manufacturing to health care. The winners and losers are not determined by investments and market, they are determined by policy wonks in government. I can't even say that they are determined by your elected representatives since they don't seem to have a freakin clue what is written in the bills they pass. Only the policy wonks who wrote the bills are really making any of these decisions. Success is not determined by investor trust and understanding of risks, it is determined by whether the government will allow a business to function in a profitable manner. The government intervenes in numerous ways, but these are certainly significant:

extorting profits (taxes, fees, ceilings) that are redirected to non-market social programs. Maybe not the best example, but take the tax on cigarettes. The completely unrealistic tax based on product value drives an entire secondary public market of social programs. The people who manage those programs are completely unmotivated by and totally insulated from a non-government valuation of the programs. In other words, the government collects money and does things that people find little value in, yet there is nothing to stop those programs in perpetuity as long as the unrelated revenue is there. This is important because it is a big factor in problem number 2.
subsidizing certain industries at the expense of others - this is directly picking winners and losers. For example, lets take from durable medical goods in the form of more taxes and give to the pharmaceuticals in the form of prescription subsidies. Or lets take from coal and give to wind. Or take from farm and give to ranch or take from wheat and give to corn or take from insurance and give to mortgage lending... the list goes on an on and the methods are often difficult to discover, being well hidden in programs supposedly benefiting certain groups of citizens in one way or another.
benefiting certain groups over other groups. We sort of expect that the government will support poor people at the expense of rich ones, although often that seems to be the sole objective, not a genuine attempt to alter the ability of poor people to compete more fairly in the economy. Benefiting teachers at the expense of business owners, benefiting farmers at the expense of miners; in fact we don't even have to identify a particular group who are expended. The fact that the government chooses certain groups from among the various producers in the economy and favors them with benefits that other groups don't get is the point. Favoring homeowners, single people (yes, there is no marriage benefit, only a penalty), people with children, nurses, indebted college graduates does make a difference in decisions people make, however it also makes a big difference in the opinions of the people who aren't favored. Sure we all want to have our children taught by happy, competent teachers, and make sure there is a nurse available when we park our parents in the nursing home. But where does that leave the waitress, construction worker and taxi driver? Government has no place in making these value judgments.

The people who buy the products, do the work, finance the risk and use the services should make these decisions in the marketplace. Otherwise government is owned by special interests, which is what we see happening now. This leads to class warfare and ultimately, when enough people feel the corrupt and capricious decisions of government have a greater risk of harm to them personally than benefit, it leads to revolution.

The second core problem is redirecting resources necessary to generate wealth. This comes in two forms, confiscation and redistribution of a country's assets such as land, timber, water, energy; fungible things such as money, oil, pseudo-products such as futures and carbon credits; and permissions to do certain things (everything from build a hospital to make a mess). When government redirects its income to do certain agreed-upon things like national defense, social programs such as medicare and retirement into other things like banking and automobile manufacturing, it is taking the risk of failure from the private market and putting it on the taxpayer directly. If you want to take a chance on GM or Citibank, you should do that through your own capital investments.

The government should not be creating a funds pool out of your tax dollars and then choosing which stupid business decisions your are going to pay for. This is particularly troublesome because as an individual, you can choose not to take the risk and keep your money for some other purpose you determine is more worthy. When government is allowed to do this, you have no decision about whether a particular risk is worthy of your earnings. Who says GM and Citibank are too big to fail? Moreover, when you decide to take a risk on GM or Citibank, you should feel reasonably certain that your investment will bear fruit based on the performance of the company and the agreed-upon rules of the market. You should not fear that the government is going to confiscate your personal ownership and turn it over to some favored class --- say retired union workers for example.

This is exactly what happened with GM. People who invested in stock, who put their money into divested retirement accounts, who relied on investment managers to return an averaged pools of assets had those chits and their associated GM obligations voided by a bankruptcy court. The assets were not distributed fairly to those who had standing in a divestiture decision. They were given - literally - to the government who in turn gave a portion to unions for the funding of retirement benefits including medical care. From the hands of private investors into the hands of special interests, courtesy of the government. Yes, GM has an obligation to its retirees, but not at your personal expense without your consent. You did not decide to invest your tax money in GM, or pay dues to the union. But you are paying none-the-less by having your investment assets stolen and by having your tax dollars used to shore up the now union owned auto companies (Chrysler is the other entity and the situation there is only worse - your tax dollars are shoring up Fiat, who has no skin in the game having received 20% ownership in Chrysler for exactly $0). Ditto Citibank, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and so-on. Goldman Sachs = winners; Lehman Brothers = losers. Except for the unions, Chrysler would have been a loser, too -- as they should be based on their performance.

Perhaps you feel that this is history and it's behind us now. Think again. When the government is deciding that using clean, efficient, reliable, available and predictable natural gas for electricity production is a bad thing and instead using environmentally damaging, inefficient, unreliable, only partially available and completely unpredictable wind shall be done instead, we are facing intended and unintended consequences far into the future. Why? Because we are making huge capital investments in very high-risk ventures that cannot be undone -- at the expense of low-risk ventures which then will not exist when high-risk fails. Wind and nuclear energy do not have private market investment support to speak of because no one is stupid enough to put their money there. So the government is putting your money there instead.

Because it is just way too costly to fund on the pubic dime, the government is expecting to pay for it through a non-existent asset called carbon credits. There is no such thing. It is another form of money and it is designed to work like a futures market, except there is no future product being traded. The money for these carbon chits come from the industries that the government has decided will be losers - coal, oil and natural gas. They are collected by the government and given to the losers - wind, solar and nuclear. This is how the government makes winners when the private markets won't have anything to do with it. And you, the taxpayer are not only shouldering the risk, but you are also entirely funding the cost through increases in your energy costs - in whatever form they take. Since it isn't tax revenue, the government will not hold itself accountable for those costs. Rather, it assumes you will shoulder this additional burden silently because you can't elect someone else to be your electric company and you don't have a choice. Here, the government has created an entire new market by taking money out of the economy as we understand it and putting it into a new economy that is managed by government without your market input, just your cash input. The same thing is happening with health care. Remember we have already passed that turkey; carbon credits isn't a federal program yet. It is a regional one. However, when you consider the level of debt the government has incurred, one can only expect that carbon credits under some other name (probably the energy preservation or electrical costs reduction - something opposite of the truth) will have to pass.

My conclusion therefore is that putting your money into precious metals and hiding it in your mattress is a much better risk posture than putting your money in equity markets. You may not be a winner, but at least you won't lose twice, only once as a taxpayer. Even if you did win in the market, the government is destined to confiscate 50% of your winnings, so really what is the point in taking the risk in the first place? Unfortunately, I cannot recommend you go build a carbon futures trading market infrastructure anticipating that skimming the transactions will make for a comfortable retirement. Why? Because Al Gore already has a (government subsidized) monopoly.

If we continue to allow government to keep changing the rules, taking from one to give to another, skimming the transactions and putting the cash in the control of congress, we will continue to reap what we deserve -- more debt, less credit and diminished wealth. Government never grows wealth or increases production.

The Federal Budget in Pictures

2010-08-06T17:42:00.000-04:00

I think this is a very informative web site and recommend a visit...
Fed Budget Chart Book
Federal spending per household = $31,088


Debt as pct of GDP

I'm working on a chart that shows interest relative to other discretionary spending. No love for MS today.

Constitutional ammendment? We don't need no stinkin ammendment!

2010-07-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

The state of Mass approved a new law that awards all 12 of their electoral votes to the prez candidate that wins the most votes nationally. Not that gets the most votes in Mass., the most nationally. Here's what they say:

"What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America," Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said before the Senate voted to enact the bill.
Under the new bill, he said, "Every vote will be of the same weight across the country."

Boston Globe

Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Well, to hell with the constitution, I guess Mass, Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington can make all our decisions for us.

Who wants to lay odds DOJ doesn't sue any of them...

DOJ decides to sue Arizona for enforcing a law that says the same thing federal law says. Oh sorry, states can't do that, it is an activity reserved to the federal government. (I understand that the suit did not address their major complaint - that AZ would overload their system. I guess enforcing federal law regarding our borders interferes too much with the other important things they do.)

Yeah, OK. I guess it makes sense to someone.

What a breath of fresh air

2010-07-23T21:14:00.000-04:00

Writing in the summer issue of the magazine The American Scholar, Prof. Laughlin offers a profoundly different perspective on climate change. “Common sense tells us that damaging a thing as old as [Earth] is somewhat easier to imagine than it is to accomplish...

The real extinction problem, he says, is human population pressure: habitat destruction, pesticide abuse, over-harvesting, species invasion. This is a distinction of great importance because it might help direct environmental concern to goals that people can actually achieve: Forget Gaia, save a marsh; forget the planet, save a frog.

I can't wait to read the whole essay.
Source: The Globe and Mail

Climate questions I found answers for

2010-07-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

It wasn't hard, really since I watch this blog regularly. I thought these were straightforward answers without a lot of prevarication.Thank you.
Roy Spencer, Ph.D.
A sampling of the questions he answers:
1) Are Global Temperatures Rising Now?
2) Why Do Some Scientists Say It’s Cooling, while Others Say that Warming is Even Accelerating?
3) Haven’t Global Temperatures Risen Before?
7) Is Increasing CO2 Even Capable of Causing Warming?
11) Is Rising CO2 the Cause of Recent Warming?
17) How Important Is “Scientific Consensus” in Climate Research?

Energy questions I can't find answers for

2010-07-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

1) Why not natural gas?
Rather than using tax payer money

to replace everyone's electric meters,
to deploy a bunch of wind turbines that will never return on the investment,
to buy a bunch of solar panels when this country doesn't have enough real estate for solar (as we know it now) to ever make a dent in other generation methods,
to continue promoting ethanol when it is obvious it takes more energy to make it than we get back, not to mention the conversion of land from better agricultural uses,
to build a lot of electric distribution for wind and solar,
to fund a few more commissions and panels to mull over the same information we've been mulling for several decades, and
to jump start the manufacture of electric vehicles which will never replace a substantial number of passenger cars let alone truck

Why are we not building distribution for natural gas for vehicle use? It is easy to convert gasoline engines to natural gas, it is much cleaner, and we have a whole lot of it! Seems to me that would be one of the most beneficial ways to use those stimulus dollars - building an infrastructure that would actually transform us away from the oil economy. Why is no one talking about this, what am I missing?

2) If I understand the laws of nature correctly, it takes the same unit of energy to move a unit of mass or to change the temperature of mass, regardless how that unit of energy is produced. In other words, it takes energy to do work and the work doesn't care how you get it. The work could be moving goods from one place to another or it could be changing water to steam. However the work is accomplished, the energy required to do that work is the same. The difference between one method and another will have a lot to do with how much energy is expended outside of the objective. For example, it takes x BTUs to change y liters of water from ice to steam. But applying the BTUs to the water will also increase the temperature of the container, the stuff that is producing the heat (engine, fireplace bricks) and the rest of the local environment (air, ground).

It doesn't matter whether one is using oil, wood or wind-generated electricity, it takes the same amount of energy to produce the same effect. It just comes down to how much is wasted along the way that makes one method more efficient than another.

There are really inefficient ways to produce energy just like there are really inefficient ways to use it. If I need to use as much energy to create a gallon of ethanol as it produces when I burn it (which is still creating the same amount of CO2 duh), then I'm not saving any energy, I'm consuming twice as much. However we decide to replace carbon-based energy with something else, one has to consider the whole formula. How much real estate is used to host those solar cells? What is lost getting the electricity from the solar cell to the house? How many trees (or how much prairie grass) aren't consuming CO2 because those solar cells are using their space? And how much will all those solar cells heat the air around them - those big black heat sinks that will continue heating the air after the sun goes down and they are no longer producing a single watt?

My not-so silly question, doesn't it produce as much CO2 more or less to plow the field with a diesel tractor as it does with a team of oxen?

My serious question about what happens to the energy, doesn't doing the work transfer a lot of heat to the atmosphere apart from whatever CO2 might be produced? How much in total?

My last question, what can we really hope to save through this adventure in massive wealth conversion to wind and sun considering not only the manufacturing but the transmission, storage (!), inefficiency, heat loss, and real estate requirements?

3) We have a *lot* of energy stored in the form of carbon-rich oil and coal. That stuff used to be something else - plants and animals. Before it was oil, what was composition and temperature of the atmosphere? What were the sea levels (like it's even comparable)? It seems to me that oil and coal are about the most efficient and stable ways to sequester CO2 that we could hope for. And before it was oil and coal, it was something else "in the wild." As far as I can tell, when all that carbon and oxygen was in the wild, the world did not end. But it couldn't have been "as we know it" so what was it instead?

4) This is not one of those big picture questions, but I can't confirm the answer. Plants convert CO2 to oxygen, but they also produce CO2 - they "respire." I want to know what the net oxygen production is. And is there a mechanism where O3 is created instead? I found one source that indicates the net is something like this: plants produce oxygen at a rate about twice what they produce in CO2.

I wish I understood this better.

5) Why do people think that CO2 is bad (it is plant food - the sun converting CO2 to carbon and oxygen) and oxygen is good (it is toxic, actually, in concentrations much higher than found naturally and it is the key element in combustion represented not just by fire, but by oxidation - rust, and aging)? Seems to me that CO2 is actually a pretty good way to sequester oxygen, which if we had too much of would destroy the world as we know it.

I can't believe these

2010-07-16T18:43:00.000-04:00

Obamaisms

Obama on Immigration, July 1, 2010

'The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years.'

Sure bud, what country were you in then?

also

“Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith,”

Uh, WTF? Read the constitution, the US constitution.

Said too many times:

"I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes, not one dime."

Hahahahaha!

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. (here)

Yah, that's what I always say about the Taliban: Justice, progress, tolerance and dignity

A 1.6 billion dollar tax break for lawyers -

2010-07-16T00:13:00.000-04:00

And Congress doesn't even need to deem, let alone vote
I don't have any confirmation on this, but if true, it sure takes the cake. And eats it, too.

American Thinker

I'm speechless.

Greece on the Great Lakes

2010-07-03T11:23:00.000-04:00

Illinois is so far in the hole.... $12 billion!

Items of note:

“Their pension is the most underfunded in the nation,” said Karen S. Krop, a senior director at Fitch Ratings. “They have not made significant cuts or raised revenues. There’s no state out there like this. They can’t grow their way out of this.”

The state’s income tax burden is not terribly high — Illinois ranks in the bottom half of states — and its government is not terribly large. (The budgets in New York and California, per capita, are much larger). Even if the state cut out all family and human services spending, more than half of the budget deficit would remain.

“We are a fiscal poster child for what not to do,” said Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a liberal-leaning policy group in Illinois. “We make California look as if it’s run by penurious accountants who sit in rooms trying to put together an honest budget all day.”

Illinois reports that it has $62.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, although many experts place that liability tens of billions of dollars higher.

So what do they do? Raise retirement age and slash benefits - for future workers.

NY Times, July 2, 2010

Wonder what Michigan, Ohio and New York look like?

This cannot continue. People, agencies and businesses will be literally bankrupt because the state cannot make payroll and won't even give letters of credit so agencies can borrow against future payments (not that more borrowing is a solution). Those people, businesses and agencies will in turn default on their obligations, causing a cascade of pain that will spread to other states.

And the rest of us (states and citizens alike) will be expected to pick up the tab. Look, I don't have a problem taking care of people who are victims of circumstances. But you can't claim victimhood when you keep electing irresponsible idiots to run your affairs. You can't cannot hold these pensions as untouchable while everyone else loses their job. And you can't keep funding all the things like mental health, after-school programs, and subsidized transportation. You need to eliminate half the things you do if you are buying twice what you can afford. Given the interest due on the Illinois loans, its citizens cannot afford to cross the street right now. More borrowing is not the solution as you won't make interest payments on your loans as it is. The time for tough choices and a change in stewardship is at hand.

If everything is important, nothing is important.

Citizens must hold their elected officials to account and force them to cut up the credit cards. You cannot continue to throw up your hands and claim it wasn't you, it was someone else that brought this on. If you don't, why should the more responsible (or perhaps luckier) people in other states come to your rescue?

This is a recipe for financial disaster and in the case of Illinois, the oven timer is beeping because the goose is cooked.

This is a microcosm of the US in general. Unfunded pensions (social security), unfunded benefits (medicare and veterans) and debt obligations are looming ahead like Jaws, and will consume better than half the federal budget in the near future. Military costs look small by comparison. The taxes you pay now for benefits you think you will get in the future are really taxes for benefits that were given in the past. There is no money set aside for those future benefits and we don't even count them as liabilities in the federal budget. We long ago spent the so-called social security and medicare trust funds. We are simply borrowing more and more money that is not even planned for the government's revenue stream. Healthcare is no different, it is another ponzi scheme that will suck the revenue out of our economy like a large leech, leaving the middle class not only without medical care, but without the infrastructure to restore privately funded services.

Is the answer to grow the economy out of this? Here's the problem with that idea: interest payments are non-productive. They do not build infrastructure, provide any services, create any industries, improve education, save for the future or pay for expenses. Think of it like money thrown in the fire. Interest payments do not build the economy. It enriches the financial industry and is used to lend more to -- whom? To the "little people," the small businesses and the local governments who will be broke because of taxes (to pay the interest). On the other hand, if we refuse to pay the interest, then we destroy the very financial institutions that we borrowed to the hilt to save just last year. The ones we say we need so we can borrow just to survive. They provide the mortgages, car loans, even the infrastructure we use now to pay "cash" for everything from gas and groceries to cable and phone bills.

It is a vicious cycle. It destroys your standard of living, therefore quality of life. It consumes your freedoms as the government makes your choices and you can't afford any alternatives. The more you make, the more you are taxed. It makes you a slave to the bank. And now we are doing it on a national scale. So, even if you are debt free with 6 months of food in your basement, your neighbors are not, your government is not, and both will be at your doorstep to take what you have.

Stop the madness, stop the spending!

Do you need more reasons to fire Congress?

2010-07-02T19:14:00.000-04:00

Reason 1
Besides the fact that they are not doing the job they swore to do?
One job that Congress is constitutionally charged to perform (as there is no other entity in the government that can do it) is pass a federal government budget. The senate can't, the president can't, the office of management and budget can't, the congressional budget office can't. Only the house of representatives can do this.

For the first time in history, the House has failed to pass a budget. Even more absurd, they "deemed" a fictitious $1.12 trillion budget as passed (well beyond what the government plans to bring in - deficit). That means the government can spend money starting October 1, just like the government has been doing this year.

From Human Events
Last night, as part of a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill, House Democrats attached a document that "deemed as passed" a non-existent $1.12 trillion budget. The execution of the "deeming" document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget.

The procedural vote passed 215-210 with no Republicans voting in favor and 38 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against deeming the faux budget resolution passed.

Never before -- since the creation of the Congressional budget process -- has the House failed to pass a budget, failed to propose a budget then deemed the non-existent budget as passed as a means to avoid a direct, recorded vote on a budget, but still allow Congress to spend taxpayer money.

Reason 2
Largest tax hikes in history
From Americans for Tax Reform
Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Obama Care. There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax” This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.

So how's that hope and change thing working out for YOU?
Get your Obama Tax Exemption Card here

Expert credibility in climate change, as told by expert snarks

2010-06-28T23:07:00.001-04:00

Expert credibility in climate change
an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Just to make sure I have this correctly:

People who study climate like to have an income.
The income comes mostly from the government.
The government "grants" income if the answer is what they want (not being scientists, facts and evidence are not an issue of consequence to politics and revenue).
If you don't have the right answer, you don't get grants (economic forcing?).
If you don't get grants, you don't get published.
Leading to fewer grants, thereby having negative feedback on "prominence," reputation and credibility.
Or you go study something else because food and shelter are good things.
Therefore, you aren't qualified to debate the matter, having failed to develop relevant expertise, like railroad engineering for example.

Do I have this right? Just checking.

Also, just to point out, the authors:

"Expert credibility in climate change"

   1. William R. L. Anderegga,1,
   2. James W. Prallb,
   3. Jacob Haroldc, and
   4. Stephen H. Schneidera,d,1

   1.
      aDepartment of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
   2.
      bElectrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G4;
   3.
      c William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Palo Alto, CA 94025; and
   4.
      dWoods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

With respect to 3 and 4, given the forcing and feedback discussed above:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Uh, riiiiiight...
I'd like to see where the advertising dollars for PNAS come from, as well...

But if you don't hold the proper credentials necessary to avoid the client denier tag or climate worshiper for that matter, have no fear. You can always publish some trivial self serving article in PNAS heaping scorn on your scientific colleagues. I'm sure that will take you far in the cocktail party circuit.

Look, I'm not a scientist, I'm a policy wonk. But if I were, I would be irate that my profession was being drug into some sort of "scientifically credible" game of mud-slinging. Quite frankly, you are eating your young. No matter which side you are on, I would think that ostracizing this particular crowd of propagandists from your halls and labs would be the first order to re-establishing your credibility as independent observers of the world around you. I might call them scientist deniers. This is pure snark parading around behind the appearance of analysis. For shame.

Political Theater Where the Findings are Preordained

2010-06-20T22:07:00.000-04:00

Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute described the investigation as "an exercise in political theater where the findings are preordained by the people put on the commission."

This should not surprise anyone. A commission appointed by OB doesn't seem to have much technical expertise. Rather, it seems to have a lot of policy wonks who have already have the answers.
Like I said, those of you in Gulf states, I hope you like your commission. After all, the prez knows best.

Obama spill panel big on policy, not engineering

About energy policy: get government out of the business.

2010-06-19T13:55:00.000-04:00

Going (way) back to my issue about having government choose the winners and losers (especially when it is apparent the motives are anything but transparent, possibly criminal, and benefit the companies who are not in energy businesses to begin with). What BO has stated for years is that the path to alternative energy and a cleaner environment is to make carbon-based energy so expensive and/or scarce that you don't have an alternative (choice) except for what the government has developed for you (with your tax dollars, but without input from the very industry it destroys).

When was the last time government developed a successful product? Atom bomb (wait, that was technically "successful," just not an allowable source of energy)? Cure for cancer? Even decoding the human genome has produced nothing life changing for the billions we spent. The moon program produced a lot of valuable engineering, but it was private industry that produced products. Take the core research and patents behind Kevin Costner's oil separation centrifuges, one he bought from the Dept. of Energy after Valdez. My point is not about the effectiveness of his product, it is that DOE and the other government agencies failed to do anything with it (or anything else) where there was a clear need, and compelling government interest. An actor and dreamer built it instead. So why do we expect the government to produce any effective carbon energy alternatives?

What started this rant? Two articles from the same blog, Master Resource.

One is an excellent explanation about effective grass roots activism that goes contrary to what we usually expect from the green side. This approach addresses how to deal with the emotional blackmail like save the polar bears. The subject in this case is wind energy. The writer is equally passionate on the subject of why not wind turbines. Grass roots strategy: go for the juggler.

The other is an article that explains just how losers become winners by applying political influence they obtain, not by being knowledgeable about energy or alternative energy, rather by using credibility from being perceived as successful doing something else. Do they have energy solutions? No, they are spouting off the same drivel we have been getting for years: more committees, more theoretical speculators -- people who have your skin in the game not theirs, and who benefit from that whole process, not from the results. These people are always around to make sure their interests and friends are first in line at the government trough. It has nothing to do with party.

This regime is a poster child for "the ends justifies the means" (classic Alinsky), with the post-modern twist of the means is the end. In other words, keep spending your tax dollars and never get anywhere, just drive around for a few decades. Let the good times roll on. And if having committees who borrow the credibility of scientists to promote their political agenda doesn't scare you, you haven't read my post here.

What are the priorities again?

2010-06-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

Make BP pay.
Have the government give people BPs money.
Make BP capture the oil in a few weeks.
Watch what amounts to 10,000 people per state pick up tar balls.
Make BP pay.
Stop drilling.
Have BP give money to people that the government layed off by putting a moratorium on offshore drilling for 6 months (huh?!?).
Have people study the accident.
Have people study the gulf coast other crises and problems (hey Gulf Coast, hope you enjoy DC studying you and deciding what you need, like they did with Katrina).
Reorganize minerals management - whip those slackers into shape (butts to kick).
More regulations, standards and enforcement.
End our oil addiction (because we have run out of safe places to drill?!? NOT)
Embrace clean energy (go ahead, give it a big hug and a kiss).
Spend another $80 billion we don't have. Tax oil so we can pay for more unemployment benefits and medicare and tax benefits and...
Legislate more efficient buildings, make power companies use solar and wind (which not only costs more but is less efficient and has a bigger carbon footprint) and conduct R&D (if you know carbon or hydraulic operations, how are you qualified to do something unknown? It's like having your drug store perform cancer research.)
Pray for courage.

Yup, just read that over and I don't see anything about plugging the damn hole. Or saving the wildlife and wetlands. Or protecting the coasts. Or get the oil out of the water. Nope, don't see any of that.

This presidency: Reasons why what seemed like a great idea isn't working

2010-06-16T21:25:00.001-04:00

An interesting article in American Thinker. HT to Doug
Selected text from the article:

How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans.

Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal points out: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them.

... he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job.

If this much intrigues you, please click over to AT and read the rest.

Well, duh. He was born in Hawaii (maybe). Not exactly mainstream, not even mainland. Not to dis Hawaii, but it was a state for a scant 2 years before he was born. Before that, it was annexed occupied territory, some consider military occupation.
From the age of 3, maybe younger, the father-figure was Indonesian. From age 6-10, he lived in Indonesia, a Muslim country, with a Muslim step-father and attended a Muslim school. His father was also Muslim, but since Mom left him when Barack was 6 months old, and he only saw his son once more when Barack returned to Hawaii at the age of 10, I don't think he really counts. Dreams of his father are probably just that, dreams with no real memories to base them on.
From age 10 to 18, he lived again in Hawaii. Note that he says he was raised by his grandparents, but his mother was in Hawaii from 72 to 77, when BO was 11 through 16, so one can't really think she was not an influence. If nothing else than culturally, Indonesia had to be a factor in shaping BO's world view.
The family is remarkably well educated, given the grandparents were not college graduates. Mom, dad, and half-sister all held PhD's while step-dad had a Masters. All educated at UHI, a certified bastion of conservative values.
One of the consistent threads throughout the personal histories of Barack's family is rebelliousness and free-thinking. One imagines a beatnik family sipping espresso in a poetry bar. His mother was particularly "outside-the-box." You can find all this stuff in Wikipedia.
One of the lesser known aspects of Hawaii - racism against whites. Apparently, a lot of Hawaiians feel justified and entitled to be hostile towards whites. And whites are a minority in the state (~25% of the population). Here's a sample:

A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, in her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."

In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."

How aloha. There is a pretty strong group/movement for sovereignty. No really, Hawaii wants to secede from the US. Check this out:

Dr. Sai has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawai`i at Manoa specializing in international relations and public law, with particular emphasis on the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation is titled "The American Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom: Beginning the Transition from Occupied to Restored State." Dr. Sai also served as lead agent in international arbitration proceedings (Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom) at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands (1999-2001); filed a Complaint with the United Nations Security Council on July 5, 2001; and has numerous articles on the legal status of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign and independent State.

And filed a complaint against OB, et al on June 1 2010 in Federal Court for violation of an 1893 Executive Agreement between the United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom. The executive agreements say that Hawaiian executive power was temporarily and conditionally assigned to the President to administer Hawaiian Kingdom law throughout the Hawaiian Islands. This executive agreement, known as the Lili`uokalani assignment (January 17, 1893), was signed under threat of war, and binds President Cleveland's successors in office in the administration of Hawaiian Kingdom law until such time as the Hawaiian Kingdom government has been restored in accordance with a second executive agreement between the Queen and President, known as the Agreement of restoration (December 18, 1893), whereupon the executive power would be returned and the Hawaiian Kingdom would grant amnesty to those individuals who participated or supported the 1893 insurrection.

Well, there is a lot more to the complaint, but if the US is violating the agreements by not restoring power to the Kingdom, those haolos should be arrested and prosecuted in the Hague. Doesn't this sound a lot like Mexico and the Southwest?

You won't find the racism stuff in the wiki, but you can certainly google it.

One of my observations from Alaska is that partly due to the time difference (decades ago probably because of the time to get mail), what happens on the mainland seems irrelevant and far away. There is a sort of mutual "who cares." Hawaii is further away, and not even connected. I'm out in the middle of the vast Pacific, you can't touch me. By the time you get to Indonesia, I'm thinking the US doesn't come up in polite conversation. Just not relevant, certainly strange and occasionally offensive.

To summarize, there isn't any love lost between Indonesia and the US, there is substantial resentment between Hawaiians and the US (occupiers), and this is the backdrop that BO grew up in until he was 18. At which point, he attended 3 uber-liberal bastions of national self-hate, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard. His mother had a reputation for rejecting whatever her American norms were, seemingly as a matter of pride. Oh, on a side note, Hawaiians generally don't have a lot of respect for the people who go to the private, very expensive Punahou school (tuition $17,300/year), which is considered elitist, stuck-up, snobbish. That may have been the worst prejudice that BO experienced. Go figure.

If you have a hard time trying to relate to the world BO grew up in, don't know anything about SE Asian, pacific and native Hawaiian culture, can't quite figure out where he's coming from, then consider this: he doesn't have any better understanding of how you grew up and how your values and world view might differ. Furthermore, it appears that he doesn't care. Instead, you would be much better off seeing the world the way he does because, after all (in case you forgot), he's the president.

This is open transparent government?!? Despicable!

2010-06-12T23:46:00.000-04:00

Claiming “scientific consensus” and “peer reveiw” for findings that have neither

The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium — something they actually oppose.
The experts, recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar modified their report last month, after they signed it, to include two paragraphs calling for the moratorium on existing drilling and new permits.
Salazar’s report to Obama said a panel of seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs and an immediate halt to drilling operations.
“None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report,” oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. “What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation.”
Salazar apologized to those experts Thursday.

Gosh, sorry to put words in your mouth. But don't expect us to change the policy.

Ack! Stop the breathing!

2010-06-02T01:44:00.000-04:00

“CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving ‘pollutant’ and ‘poison’ of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4 percent CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth.” – William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, May 20, 2010.

HT Climate Change Fraud

How many is 1 billion?

2010-06-01T17:07:00.000-04:00

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age..

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently askingCongress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS
to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number... what does it mean?

A. Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

B. Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or... if you are a family of four... your family gets$2,066,012.

I wonder how much Mary Landrieu got?

Our Leader, This Sums it up...

2010-05-30T14:05:00.000-04:00

Does Climate Change Matter?

2010-05-29T11:37:00.001-04:00

In response to an interview between Climate Skeptic and Esquire Middle East, which is the subject of Reader Opinion Day at the Air Vent. The questions posed by Esquire Middle East are so blatantly biased that disingenuous doesn't begin to cover it.

My frustration with the whole issue is that the first assumption seems to be it is the only issue. And everything else gets spun according to the requirements of the one issue. For example, deforestation and pollution - it isn't the same problem. Lumping pollution in with the global warming agenda is validation that the warmists don't feel it is a problem worthy of its own analysis. There are far more effective ways to reverse the accumulation of plastic trash in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre that attempting to outlaw oil.

My issue isn't with whether global warming exists or doesn't exist. My issue is that in context, relative to other issues, it does not warrant the level of economic commitment and human suffering that the proposed solutions will entail. The purveyors of the issue wail that if we don't have an earth to live on, then everything else doesn't matter. That is a hysterical argument. If one is willing to accept a qualify of life accorded to the population of say, Afghanistan, then sure, the price can be paid. Energy has consequences, good and bad. Eliminating energy or satisfying ourselves with what can be produced through wind, solar and hydroelectric are unlikely outcomes. Since we simply are not going to find enough members of the global population to willingly go there, taking the argument to its emotional extremes is a waste of time.

In the scheme of things, where does this problem fall on the list of priorities including:

Pollution, environmental destruction, amelioration and reversal of the current state;
Disease and health care, and better delivery systems to populations lacking basic care and prevention;
Food, clean water, population health and nutrition (which is related to disease prevention, and axis of health care);
Human rights - everything from genocide to female excoriation;
Affordable and available energy, since it is the foundation of productivity (without means of economic productivity, how will populations ever achieve self determination)?

I toss these out as examples, not as a comprehensive list. The bottom line is, there are many problems.

Really global warming is only one of many quality-of-life issues, and given the relative return on investment, a pretty poor expenditure of resources in my opinion. Of course, these other issues are not so well packaged into a scientific formula, holy computer models with 4 color charts, or movies and books with emotionally compelling titles. Which is perhaps why this group continues to be so short-sighted. We find the packaging of global warming/cooling/climate change to be attractive so we buy that to the exclusion of other, more beneficial products. It's the American way.

An energy idea at least worth civilized discussion

2010-05-22T12:17:00.001-04:00

This comes from a Scientific Alliance newsletter. Hats off to Prof Phillip Stott for sharing. Get it from the professor, it is a lot easier to read. The newsletter title is What priority for climate change at a time of European crisis?
The proposition is basically this: Give electricity to the people who don't have it. Tax it.

(So, we aren't really giving it, they are going to pay for it. Somehow). This actually makes some sense because energy is the "master resource" upon which wealth is built. In other words, without energy (electricity), plowing fields, carrying coal out of mines, hauling goods to market with your ox cart, just isn't going to make you competitive. Energy is a multiplier of work. The more work, the more the economic rewards, and the better those markets are for buying products and services from other markets.

Along the way, because more energy is being made, the unit price of energy will go down.

I'm not actually convinced this will happen. Electricity doesn't flow out of the ground. Behind it is oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear, the first three being highly volatile to supply and demand issues. Can't argue that expanding electricity into new markets isn't going to have major impact on that. And Solar and wind are not economically viable, they require too much government subsidy to even exist in the market place, let alone compete. They are just too inefficient and unreliable to represent a primary resource now or in the future. Kind of like corn-gas, it doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out the numbers don't add up.

But the idea is that with the expansion in electricity "manufacture," the unit price goes down, making a tax bearable.

Even if it is not bearable, using government subsidies to bring energy where it isn't is a lot more efficient use of that resource than pouring it into the endless hole of subsidies for nonviable energy solutions at home.

Use the tax revenue to fund energy research.

Yes, but the government can't be picking and choosing the winners. Otherwise, we will keep getting stupid ideas like corn-gas because someone's uncle has a farm that loses money making wheat futures. As much as I would hate to have such a beast, an independent board would have to review proposals, provide the funding and assess the results. Given how East Anglia worked, one would have to say perhaps three boards with mutual oversight might be necessary. Kind of like three credit reporting agencies. Or three branches of government. And obviously, the UN is not eligible because with their history, none of the money will ever get to the researchers. (When are we going to fire the UN for malfeasance and incompetence, anyway? Keep the security council, just get rid of the pathological waste fraud and abuse departments, like ICCC.)

And use the tax revenue as a safety net for countries that are not prepared to cope with disaster such as floods, drought and weather.

You mean like property and flood insurance? Sure, but there has to be some payment in for the value received. With improving economies due to new electricity resources, payment into should increase and reliance upon should decrease. But having people continue to build houses below sea level is not an option. That is not an insurable risk. Except in the Netherlands, where they have the economic resources to protect themselves. We need to stop protecting people from their own stupidity.

Whatever my opinions, I have to give them credit for a revolutionary idea that rather turns the arguments on their heads, while still trying to achieve the same objectives, just in a more palatable way.

And England's idea is that since they aren't going to make a 20% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, they need to increase the goal to 30%. I cannot fathom how stupid government policy makers can actually be. I think their logic is that because of their economic downturn, they will not be using as much energy, therefore will not have the same absolute number of carbon units reduced as if they keep the fires burning so to speak. This is what happens when you put a value on a non-thing like a carbon unit. Forget that there is an increased reduction in carbon unit creation because people aren't using the same amount of energy. Those units apparently don't count. Oh wait, that's because they aren't taxed. This would be like penalizing someone because they put less trash out to the curb. I think we should turn out the policy makers' lights. How much carbon would that save? It's not like there is productive use going on.

Way to go Germany/Merkel

2010-05-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

Chancellor Merkel basically unilaterally outlawed naked trading. While simplifying the description is always risky, it basically amounts to this: Trading in shares that you don't own. It gets more twisted, but the scenario that she wants to eliminate is where traders bet that the price of a stock will go down based on short-selling shares that they don't have. It has made markets furious. And there is a lot of sturm and drang about how this will have serious down side consequences. And the Chancellor is not garnering any applause in Germany.
But she has my applause and here is why: At the base of the practice, there is an economic/financial gain to be had based on -- nothing. The trader has not increased some net worth because he didn't have any worth to begin with. The transaction garners income with no equity or assets. The trader has no skin in the game, so to speak.
Imagine going to the casino and placing bets with money you don't have. And betting that the bet will lose. And making money off that transaction.

In my opinion, the world cannot build wealth without some core essential asset being traded and increased in the process. In this case, the trade is only for money that is being literally created out of nothing. Money is a representative value, it doesn't have value in and of itself. Trading dollars for euros, for example, is a pointless activity unless there is a fee. And the fee by its nature devalues the currency. On the other hand, economic markets that are driven by trade of goods and services have at least the opportunity to yield a genuine increase in value as represented by an increase in money.
Think about it. You go to market with a truck full of eggs. The value of your effort in producing them is $1000. You come home with $1500 (and the truck). The people in the market do the same, creating wholesale, trade and retail markets along the way. Each transaction yields income because the value of the eggs increases. In the end, a chef delivers to market a truck full of quiche and comes home with $10,000. The eggs obviously have served to increase his wealth. The chef paid $5000 for his eggs not $1500. But it doesn't matter. The point is that each time the eggs change hands, some value has been added, whether it is transportation, convenience, preservation, packaging, etc.
OK, now take traders who never actually own the eggs. Nor do they own the money that has exchanged hands. What they are doing is betting that the price of eggs will fall between point b and the chef, thereby erasing the money making in the transaction. The chef doesn't care because his eggs are cheaper. It is you, who still pays $1000 to produce a truck full of eggs, but is now only getting $1100 or worse $500 back. And someone with no financial interest in the eggs made money off that deal. Isn't that your money, in essence? Did they not take the value from your eggs and transfer them into their pocket?
Merkel doesn't like this kind of trading because the traders can actually manipulate the market so the prices go down, then reap the rewards without ever owning the equities. Sweet deal for them. The money still represents the value of something that now has less value, and that money is coming out of someone's pocket. And the traders had influence on that happening, so basically are dipping into some other persons equity.
Money really doesn't fall out of the sky, folks.

Earthday - is this the day the sky will fall?

2010-04-20T21:32:00.000-04:00

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner for the Earth Day issue of “Environment,” a scientific journal.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Ehrlich said.
“The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Denis Hayes, said an aide to Nelson, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day.
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: In five years, widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread within 15 years to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa.
“In 30 years, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions . . . the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

ARE YOU SCARED YET?

These are statements from 1970, altered ever so slightly to conceal their dates.

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner for a 1970 Earth Day issue of “Environment,” a scientific journal.
He did not put an end date to his prediction. But Ehrlich did.
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Ehrlich said in 1970.
“The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Ehrlich was an optimist compared to Denis Hayes, an aide to Nelson, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day.
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Hayes said.
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa.
“By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions . . . By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Same old, same old. A theoretically respectable group (demographers, climate researchers) are unanimous in agreement that the world is about to end. When can we make it politically incorrect to be so gullible and ignorant of history?

Buyers remorse

2010-04-18T21:57:00.000-04:00

Or maybe voters remorse. Like that horrible hang-over feeling followed by the gut-wrenching realization that you've awaken to find a coyote sleeping next to you. You didn't drink too much, you spent too much and now your options for the future are dramatically changed.

Here is the reality of the spending orgy we've been on. Barack says that we can't get over deficit spending soon, but under his plan, we will never get back to where we were in 05-07, even with fighting two wars, medicare part D, Katrina and assorted other off-budget items.

citation: Washington Post

Those red lines add up, year after year, each becoming part of the national debt.

Citation: CBO Director's Blog
There is no do-over (except doing health care right instead of doubling the cost) and there is no easy fix. We cannot sustain entitlements, even if we quit spending on all the other stuff (agriculture, transportation, research) and quit fighting wars. Just social security, medicare and medicaid will consume the income in the not distant future.

This is an interesting article on the situation and what we can do to reverse the trend, or "bend the curve" as the Obaminator likes to say.

There is no easy fix to the budget mess

The truth is whatever he wants it to be today

2010-04-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

This is Bill Clinton:

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike," he said.

My recollection is that Oklahoma City was about Clinton's attorney general Janet Reno burned the Branch Davidian compound to the ground resulting in the deaths of 76 men, women and children exactly 2 years earlier. At least that's what the perpetrator (who's name shall never be spoken or written by me) claimed was his motivation. I don't think there was any political movement there at all.

The bomber was hoping to incite revolt against the government. I haven't seen any of the tea party people committing violence - just some democrats who apparently don't feel people with different opinions should be allowed to voice them.

So, if one wants to claim that the perpetrator was unhinged, perhaps there is some common element in OK City and Bill's statement. Everything else is just completely manipulative and pejorative deceit. But what else might we expect from Clinton?

What Bill's statement says to me is: "My government is responsible for the OK City bombing because we should have known by burning down the Waco compound, we would incite some nut job to blow up a government facility."

Or perhaps I am misreading this and he is actually advising the deeply, deeply troubled democrat haters to head a conservative principle and take responsibility for their actions. Meh, somehow I doubt it.

Way to go Bill. I am perfectly happy holding the bomber and his accomplii accountable for their actions, but if you and Janet want to join them in hell, go right ahead.

Clinton statement
OK City bomber summary

The Climate Thought Police Are Watching You!

2010-04-14T20:50:00.000-04:00

This is very disturbing, yet somehow not surprising. I really wish this was conspiracy theory and paranoia (along the lines of 9/11 and JFK conspiracies). However, there seems to be something more than what appears on the surface of climate religion, and perhaps this really is it. God save us.

The British lawyer who last week called for introducing international laws through the United Nations which would make it a crime against humanity to question the reality of man-made global warming has close ties with the Club of Rome – the ultra elitist organization which openly bragged of how it invented the climate change scare as a means of manipulating the global population to accept world government.

Source (you may wish to skip the juvenile comments)
The Lazy Environmentalist (Polly Higgins)
The Guardian article
The ecocide website

I really hate to give this famewhore more clicks, but you should understand the mindset out there.

That was then, this is now

2010-04-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel " Pick up your shovel, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the promised land".
75 years ago, Roosevelt said, " Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a camel, this is the promised land".

Now Obama has stolen your shovel , taxed your asses, raised the price of camels, and mortgaged the promised land. How's that "Change" workin' for you ?

Could you borrow 90% of your income?

2010-03-26T13:38:00.001-04:00

When could you ever pay that back, even if you lived forever? You couldn't even make the minimum payments.

That is the core issue with government spending beyond its means. Even if they say it is just for a little while because the economy is bad, the consequences go on for decades. There is no "little while" borrowing because there isn't any income to pay it back - not next year, not next decade. The money coming in is just going back out to pay for current obligations (social security, medicare) plus last century's debt -- for the Iraq war, for Katrina, for all the stuff we did without bothering to budget for it. On top of that, add all the new spending, up 20% from 2008 levels for non-military programs. Well, those chickens are coming back to roost already. Yet we are going to keep spending beyond our means, ignoring the tsunami headed toward us while the harbor is draining as we speak.

Here are two articles for your consideration:

The debt tsunami:

The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it's headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO's deficit estimates. That figure would equal 90 percent of the estimated gross domestic product in 2020, up from 40 percent at the end of fiscal 2008. By comparison, America's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 109 percent at the end of World War II, while the ratio for economically troubled Greece hit 115 percent last year.

The bond harbor draining:
The recent rise in Treasury yields (interest) represents a “canary in the mine” that may signal further gains in interest rates. Higher yields (interest) reflect investor concerns over “this huge overhang of federal debt which we have never seen before,” Greenspan said.

Not that I am a fan of Greenspan, but he makes several compelling points:

Increased interest rates on bonds will increase mortgage interest rates, making a housing recovery even more difficult.
Increased interest rates also dampen capital investment, which affects the ability of industry to increase output - thereby increasing GDP.
Historically, there has been “a large buffer between the level of our federal debt and our capacity to borrow, that’s narrowing.”

Analysis:
Meaning what we owe is increasing, and what we can borrow is decreasing. When the two intersect, we are insolvent. We're already bankrupt.

Greenspan said in an interview last year that a consumption tax was a likely response to a widening budget deficit. That may not be sufficient when the gap is caused by a failure to cut spending, he said today.

If you take a share of the money spend out of circulation and transfer it to the government (who transfers it overseas as interest payments) guess what - less to spend here, less demand, less productivity, fewer jobs, lower personal income, less spent, more percentage removed in taxes, less to spend here, less demand, less productivity, fewer jobs, lower personal income, less spent, more percentage removed in taxes, less to spend here, Get the picture? All because we borrowed more than we can pay back.

It works the same in your household. If you increase the amount you have to pay for your mortgage and credit cards (and I bet your credit card interest already went waaay up), you have less to spend at Safeway, Target, your local Ford dealer, dry cleaner, etc. The businesses represent a lot of people who are working for your money. When your money isn't coming in, they won't have jobs.

Maybe this is what happens when we elect lawyers to run the business of government.

Doesn't sound like freedom to me....

2010-03-25T18:01:00.001-04:00

The legislation allocates $10 billion to pay for 16,500 IRS agents who will collect and enforce mandatory "premiums." Does that sound like the private sector at work to you?

The reality of Obamacare

Change!
01-20-2013

Beam me up, Scotty

2010-03-19T15:48:00.004-04:00

This rant isn't really about health care, so bear with me.

The official democratic talking points now are:
1) How many Americans are covered (another 31 million or about 10%)
2) The reduction in the deficit

Except statement 2 is a downright lie. Here's why.
Nearly half the reduction in the deficit is coming from reductions in medicare that they are turning around and spending on those 31 16 million people - robbing seniors to pay slackers.

Most of the rest of the reduction is coming from fancy accounting related to federalizing the student loan program (thereby putting a few ~~hundred~~ thousand insured tax-paying Americans out of work). It has nothing to do with health care, but they need to apply the savings to the health care bill. The savings is bogus anyway. They are hoping no one will notice. Update: This is not confirmed. US Gov't will be the lender. US Gov't (treasury) will loan itself the funds at 2.25% interest. US Gov't will charge students 6.5%. Net income 4.24% of loaned amount per year. Minus expenses, of course. This is on their website. Current federal student loans from Sallie Mae (Stafford loans) range from 2.48 - 6.8% depending on a variety of factors. Sallie Mae

The bill that came from the Senate includes somewhere between 5-10% cut in reimbursements to physicians (robbing premium-paying producers to pay more slackers). The house has no intention of letting that happen, so that money is going to get voted back into medicare this spring. Why not now? Because if you include it, there ain't no deficit reduction!

Liars, liars, pants on fire!

Why do I say slackers? Well, besides making a good soundbite, you have to remember that people near or below the poverty level are already covered by medicaid, as are people who are disabled and cannot work. This is covering not even 31 million more people because a lot of those people will have to get and pay for their own insurance or their employers will have to. So, it is spending a trillion or so to cover ~~some subset of 31~~ 16 million (unconfirmed, the only # I found) people, and in the process screw most everyone else with less coverage and more taxes. Sounds like redistribution to me. (Correct my math if I'm wrong, but that looks like $58,750 per uninsured person. Gosh, will they have to pay the Cadillac tax, too?)

But you won't hear that from the democrats. Because? They Lie!!!!

Change!
01-20-2013

Why are we still talking about health care?

2010-03-17T00:02:00.001-04:00

In my not so humble opinion, this is a done deal. My score is 100% chance health care passes. Because it already has. The House passed a bill. The Senate passed a bill. Reconciliation only involves spending and paying for it. Obama decided after the new year, that the dems only have more to lose by doing nothing, so it doesn't matter how they do it, just do it. If Congress is going to lose either majority, it isn't going to happen just because they pass health care - both houses already voted yes on it anyway. And if they don't pass health care, Obama is going to be a lame duck after his first year.

The Alinsky precept that the ends justify the means and the spin that says it is the ethical thing to do.

Very clever, these folks. Last week, the message changed from "we want an up or down vote" to "it's the right thing, it's the ethical thing to do." This is to make our elected officials feel better about what they have already done. The hell with what people want. As long as they don't have to vote again. We were all talking about reconciliation instead, never seeing what was coming. They were crafting the discussion for this week - how to vote on something without having to talk about the Senate bill by itself. And lo, this week we are talking about the Slaughter plan - to deem the Senate bill as passed without having to actually have an up or down vote.

But that decision was over with by the middle of last week if not earlier. The House has not been talking about what version of the health care bill they are going to vote on - we have. The talking (behind closed doors) is what other unrelated goodies representatives need to vote yes on a package. Outside, they will talk a lot about what the House wants changed in the Senate bill but that is really irrelevant. It is a distraction - to keep the discussion and the attention on something else. The package includes the Senate bill as is, but they don't want to talk about it.

Reconciliation deals with budget issues -- how much spending is authorized and how it is going to be paid for. The issues such as a public plan, single payer plan, abortion funding and the Senate goodies like the Louisiana purchase and the Florida exemption cannot be resolved in reconciliation.

So, what is going on in the House now is horse trading on other stuff like making student loan programs publicly financed (which is basically subsidizing the program with tax payer funds that will cover the administrative costs as well as the loan losses). That gives reps cover when they go home and say, "well, yes, I voted for the whole package which has these good things in addition to health care." This is what we will be talking about next week - how sausage got made.

The health care thing is done. It is just a matter of time not votes. Two things need to happen. 1) The Senate bill plus the legitimate reconciliation amendments need to be published for 72 hours before any vote. 2) The CBO score needs to be posted. We are just waiting for the CBO score. The last 5 days have been about trying to figure out how to get the CBO score they need and still be able to take out the Cadillac plan tax, include the rest of the states in the Florida exemption and give credit to states that already have public plans. It's the CBO score that matters now, everything else is done. So, Wed the CBO score comes out, the bill gets posted, 72 hours go by and they vote on something Friday night or Saturday. It is that 72 hour schedule and 2 publications that became the issue and reason Obummer postponed his trip. But we never talked about that. Again, distract people from the real deal.

Meanwhile the House will come up with a list of other goodies they like that will get them 216 votes. That package will include the "deemed as passed" language and the reconiliation items.

They want us to keep talking about the Slaughter plan, the Stupack amendment and Hyde Act, how awful cutting Medicare by 10% a year, and anything else BUT the reality of the schedule and a new batch of pork.

The cake is baked folks, the icing is on, the seats are assigned. And we're all arguing about who got an invitation instead.

The news people and talking heads have to know this or they are really stupid. Why are we not hearing about this? Because if it is a done deal, a baked cake, why talk about it at all? None of them want to bury the bone until it is thoroughly chewed.

It's one of those weeks where every day, I wake up with a worse stomach ache. It just totally tics me off - Congress, news, political analysis, and people who don't see how easily we are manipulated.

It's 11 o'clock, do you know where your representative is?

2010-03-15T22:50:00.000-04:00

C-SPAN has a page that shows the number of days on the floor for each senator and representative. You can sort by name, state or attendance. How many representatives have shown up on the floor less than 3 days? Ten!!!! Some of the people listed are in other positions now, such as Clinton and Ted Kennedy. But last I checked Kirsten Gillibrand isn't one of those.

Check it out

It's the message, stupid!

2010-03-09T22:56:00.002-05:00

I hate to just link to another blog to make a point, but this one is just too emblematic. So, this is what prompts my rant today: Jackson says EPA is losing a public relations war over climate regulations
Subtitle: It's all Bart Simpson's Fault.
This is the problem: This admin seems to think that if only they could be more articulate (or perhaps less articulate), or better at marketing, or had a good facebook page, or if voters weren't so stupid...
Never a problem with the message itself. Never that the policy is being rejected. If the idea doesn't fly, the problem is never the idea, it just hasn't been presented effectively.
So, what part of "NO!" do they not understand? Well, all of it actually. If you say no, then obviously you have missed their point.
It's a bad idea! Actually, "bad" is a qualitative judgment that is not substantiated by the facts we have selected that fully support the policy adopted by (fill in the blank agency). It is an idea, it is our idea, and therefore it will be done regardless of public opinion. Good or bad is not relevant.
We don't want it! Clearly, you have not listened. Because if you had, you would know what is good for you. If you now what's good for you, you would agree, nay, you would be out there demonstrating for us! Or at least tweeting for us.

Reality is a sideshow in this burg. What counts is volume. Next time you find yourself shaking your head in dismay, consider this: If you make up a sign, stand in front of the news cameras and barf your opinion of the policy or law of your angst upon the sidewalk, you are actually adding to the debate. Discussing why the idea won't work or suggesting other ideas that will does not count.

If we agree, the debate is over. If you agree, it is a conspiracy. Or organized opposition (which is different because?). Or you are all tea-bagging nutters. Something nefarious anyway.

I honestly think that many people who have been living and working inside the beltway do not get this strategy at all. It isn't familiar or logical nor does it follow the rules of debate. Be afraid, be very afraid.

The web behind the teensie spider

2010-03-02T22:34:00.002-05:00

OK, lame title. But hang with me here. This is about why the healthcare package doesn't break down into little pieces and parts so well.

Start with "No pre-existing conditions." If that is the rule, then people won't get insurance until they need it. Kind of a no-brainer. Insurance companies don't like it because it presents a risk - a really large risk - that anyone applying for health insurance is actually sick to begin with. That isn't insurance folks, that's having someone else pay your bills. Insurance is for the unexpected.

Then there is removing the caps or ceilings on how much an insurance company is going to pay for someone's health care over a lifetime. Not that the ceilings are a problem for a lot of people, but for insurance companies, it means there is no limit to the amount they have to pay, and that is simply an incalculable risk.

If insurance companies have to insure these two risks, the premiums are going to increase like you cannot imagine. They can't just say "let's see what happens" as the government requires them to carry cash reserves sufficient to cover the people they are underwriting and to reasonably measure their risks (including their investment risks). They are audited according to government standards.

But the insurance companies are going along if (big if) a lot more people, presumably young healthy people pay monthly insurance premiums. Makes sense. If they can't control the risk coming into the pool, then they want to make the pool wider and deeper - dilute it so to speak. Forget for the moment that sooner or later those young healthy people aren't going to be young and healthy anymore.

So, in order to get rid of the pre-existing condition rule, Congress has to give insurance companies a lot more paying policy holders.

But, not everyone can afford health insurance, so some people are going to require government subsidies. There is a lot of back and forth about what sort of stick goes with what sort of carrot, but bottom line, government is going to pay a big chunk of the cost for eliminating pre-existing conditions and upper limits. It's not cheap - where will the money come from? Well, it is coming in large part from medicare. Seniors on medicare will have to pay more (premiums, copays, uncovered costs) and medicare physicians are going to lose some of their medicare revenue. And that money will go to subsidize the premiums for the new (poor) people that the insurance companies need to make the numbers work. As much as people like to demonize insurance companies, the reality is that their income from premiums must be larger than their outgo in claims. If you don't get premiums from more people, then you will have to get more premiums from the people you have.

Two things are wrong with this picture.
1) What does this have to do with reducing the cost of medical care????? What exactly are we doing to solve that problem????? Nothing.
2) Why on earth would we think it is fair to take money from seniors and from their physicians and give it to insurance companies to cover other people? This is robin hood government.

Taking away money from medicare and giving it to someone else is NOT the same as reducing medicare costs. If someone steals your wallet, they aren't reducing your monthly bills any. Which shell is the pea under here? What a joke. Except it isn't funny.

One more thing is really troubling. Why are we looking at solving these coverage limit problems (pre-existing conditions and no upper limits) with the same policies and companies? Why not just issue rider policies from the government (if you accept that only the government can really guarantee this risk)? Think AFLAC. I was going to say think AIG, but never mind, we don't want to go there. That truly makes me wonder that Congress isn't really in the bag for the insurance companies (and maybe the unions) and you feeling good about your insurance policy has not a darn thing to do with it.

Is government looking out for you? I don't think so.

Will this help keep physicians in economically viable practices? No.
Will this help seniors pay for ever increasing health care costs? No.
Will this help government reduce the cost of senior and subsidized health care? No
Will this lower your health insurance premiums? Hell no.
Will this increase your taxes in order to make up the difference? You have to ask?
Will this help to reduce the cost of health care? No, it has nothing to do with reducing costs.

Who are the winners here? Insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, low income individuals who do not have insurance, unions who get a by on the taxes but reap the benefits, government bureaucrats.

Who are the losers? Physicians, seniors, working middle class, upper income tax payers (who will never see any sort of benefit comparable to their tax contributions), states because of the unfunded increases in medicaid costs, medical device manufacturers (more taxes, less revenue), employers (and by extenion their employees), and ultimately the economy as more and more money is sucked up into no-value-added activities (unproductive costs).

It is really sad that the debate has come down to heart strings about people who didn't get insurance before they were sick, or exceeded their ceiling. It isn't a lot of people, but the stories make for good politics. This was supposed to be about reducing the cost of health care and it has become the opposite.

TARP and the deficit

2010-02-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was designed to infuse money onto bank balance sheets, replacing the assets that fell through the bottom due to the mortgage crisis. Alternatives could have been to change the way that those assets are valued (smoke and mirrors accounting), lower the standards we hold banks to for having "cash on hand," outright buying the junk, seizing the banks (bankrupt - LOL) and probably some others, but TARP is what we did. If we didn't do anything, we still would have spent that money ($700 billion or so) and maybe more to people who lost their deposits when the banks went bust.

TARP was a very substantial outlay of taxpayer money. The idea was it would be paid back. And quite a bit of it has been paid back. Because of the way the government does their budget, they can't keep TARP funds on the books as a taxpayer asset. In other words, the budget doesn't treat the money we gave to banks as a loan. If we did, then the money coming back would be applied to the line where the money went out in the first place. And, TARP would not look like another $700 billion added to the deficit. So, what to do with the money when it comes back?

TARP is NOT the recovery act, that was another $800+ BILLION on top of TARP. We don't get the recovery act money back. It's just money down the drain so to speak.

Congress and Obama want to redirect the money to other programs (what we might call pork or earmarks or whatever, some ideas might even be reasonable). The thing is, Congress did not authorize any other expenditure with that money. That is what the recovery act was all about. And given that the deficit is freakin scary right now ($1.75 Trillion in 2010 alone), you might think it would be a program worthy of the money. What to do with TARP? Pay down the deficit, duh!!!! No act of Congress required, best as I can figure.

Instead, Obama and congress want to treat it like an unappropriated slush fund for whatever voter group is unhappy (or not so unhappy) at the moment. Unappropriated, as in no act of congress, no vote you can hold your representative accountable for, is ever taken. Is this how you want the government to think of your money??? It's YOUR money! This is a bunch of Washington politicians that want you to think like they do. "Hey look here, I just found $1.5 billion on the sidewalk that fell out of the TARP bucket on the way back from the bank. Free money, whoopie!!!"

But what if there are programs that are more important than the deficit (hard for me to imagine)? Well, I believe that Congress would have to approve it just like any other expenditure. I guess our democratic leadership figures once it is out of your pocket, you shouldn't have a say in what happens.

Let me put this in some kind of personal perspective. Obama wants to take $1.5 billion and add it to the hundreds of millions set aside to help homeowners struggling with their mortgages. Forget that they can't spend the money they already have because no one likes the terms. Let's say there are 175,000,000 people employed right now. That comes down to $857 per worker. You were supposed to be giddy about the $200 that the government sent you early last year (even though it was a loan on your income tax). But you aren't supposed to be upset about $857 you now owe, plus interest? Or put another way, whatever your personal problems might be, can you see yourself asking each one of your working friends and neighbors for $857 to help you out (they have problems too, you know)?

This is the "it's not my money" problem with having the federal government running your life. It IS your money. It is inherently unfair. People who do the right things to take care of themselves are punished and the people who do dumb things are rescued from their own stupidity.

Someone called it privatizing the profits and socializing the losses, as it applies to business, like the banks with the bogus assets on their books. When federal, state and local governments are taking a third to a half of your income, I don't think you can say any profits are being privatized.

This is a new kind of "share the wealth" concept. The government is going to take $857 out of your pocket and give it to another person (not some public asset like a road). The beneficiary hasn't been asked to pay into the program in order to get the benefit (like social security, medicare/aid or unemployment). It's just free money. It goes (back) to the bank, by the way, but hey it's money the home borrower doesn't have to pay. And what a sweet program for the banks. The government loans them money, they pay it back. Then the government gives them back the money, no strings attached. Why not? Not my money.

If people had to write a check for what they are paying in taxes, I think it would be much clearer.
It comes out of our paychecks before we even touch it.
The bank pays it as part of our mortgage.
It is just another item on your cash register receipt at the grocery store.
It is on the bill of sale at the dealer (hey, it's cheaper than a sunroof, right?).
So we don't think about it and we never add it all up. Hey, it's not like our money where you need to make a conscious decision to spend or not spend. When did you ever total all of these little invasions of your wallet over the course of a year? If you had to actually open your wallet and use your ATM, debit or cash to pay each and every one of those little tax bills, would you feel any different?

Take the idea a step further. Let's say that instead of paying those taxes, they are just going to go on a credit card. You can pay a little each month. The balance on the credit card will keep going up, but your payments will increase by a smaller amount. The monthly payment isn't so painful. Or maybe it is, but the alternative, sell everything and pay off the credit card is more painful. Sooner or later, that monthly payment is going to be painful. Right now, your balance, whether you are working or not, is $40,000. Who do you think is going to pay that bill? Money from heaven? In 20 years it will be more like $100,000. And eventually, your credit is going to get cut off and you will not only have the monthly bill, but you will need to pay cash for those little tax bills you are happy ignoring today. That is the national debt. One huge balance on a credit card that will soak up all of your money just to pay the interest. Monthly bill? Try about $700 for at least 10 years. Yup, interest does that to you - doubles the payment, doubles the pain.

So... which would you prefer, a substantial payment against your credit card bill, or maybe just give it to the guy next door who signed an ARM mortgage thinking he was going to flip the house and make a cool $500K? I know my answer.

Drowning in Debt, what it means to you.

In case you still thought climate change was about science

2010-02-16T23:38:00.021-05:00

This discussion on how science has been co-opted for a political agenda (an agenda that may have little concern with climate change), is enlightening and depressing at the same time.

Buy the Truth

Harmonic Oscillator

WUWT

I found a few more interesting links:
Skepticblog
Yale forum Note I believe they failed to make their point. First, the missing stations had more lower points on the graph than not, although it followed the same path. Second, it doesn't matter that the path is similar, what matters is the result, which isn't measured on this graph at all. The result being the line that included both sets compared with these independent lines. Third, and this is addressed by the author in the comments, there aren't enough reporting stations to offer much statistical certainty.

TED This does a good job of getting to the irrelevance of the whole debate

The resilient earth Wow, real science stuff

Trackforum This discussion goes on for 8 pages. There is a lot of data here. For a long rainy weekend.

Jerome Ravitz who is a philosopher of science (and some people think the father of the problem, not the solution). I think he lays out the credibility issue and its consequences very well.

On the irrelevance of the climate change debate

2010-02-16T12:08:00.002-05:00

This is something of a thought experiment. There is a life analogy that says if you hold on to something so tightly you can't let go, you will not be able to grasp the next marvelous thing that comes along. Hold things loosely lest you lose out. In other words, don't let your dogma run over your karma either.

If, for a moment, the AGW proponents allowed that climate change is NOT a result of human activity and not changeable through any adjustment in human activity... Just take the human component out of the equation and consider the situation as it is.

And if the skeptics allowed that with or without an anthropogenic component, climate --or weather-- change is negatively impacting developing nations for a variety of reasons... (Simply because the populations are living much closer to the edge of starvation and disease with little resource to do anything about it.)

Then what is the rest of the world's obligation to offer assistance? Whether by confiscation or charity, some wealth will need to change hands in order to improve the lives of millions above an unreliable subsistence level. We offer such generosity in times of other natural disasters such as the earthquakes and tsunamis in Southeast Asia and Haiti. Are not some of the outcomes of climate/weather change the same, they just take longer to materialize? Tsunami/sea level rise/floods; destruction of economic means by earthquake, desert, drought or deforestation. What I am suggesting is that whether by natural disaster, natural cycles or even anthropogenic causes/poor choices (like building a city below sea level),
some people at various times will be facing likely devastation or destruction.

I actually think maybe it is time to stop arguing about the motives and failures of various institutions and individuals. It is much energy expended without serving to change the situation as it is today. Too much time spent on whose fault and not enough time spent on whether and how to improve outcomes. You don't need billions spent on climate research to see people starving because their crops fail year after year and their livestock cannot be sustained. You don't need billions spent to see people dieing from preventable disease. Quite frankly, I don't see that containment of bovine flatulence is a particularly effective way to address these problems.

Obviously, the world cannot offer all nations a middle class lifestyle such as enjoyed by North America, the EU and the oil rich Middle East. There actually isn't enough wealth to go around. None the less, is there not some obligation to help a brother in need? Maybe the problem isn't our will. Maybe if we remove the process from governments and empower NGOs to manage regional (not just single country) intervention programs, something can be achieved. No, I'm not talking about the UN as it has become as corrupt (or worse) than many of its member states.

Haitians were desperately poor before an earthquake (once again) devastated their homeland. Haitians will be desperately poor later after the current flood of charity dries up. If one house collapses, then the occupants have choices. If every house collapses, then choices are much more limited. The Haitian economy collapsed years ago and there simply aren't resources there to deal with many day to day problems, let alone a disaster. We can "fix" the disaster but the other problems remain. Don't we have the same obligation to people who are living hand to mouth when the TV images aren't so compelling?

PS: Sorry I haven't posted since Feb 5, I've been digging out from under two blizzards. A mile of private road and a flat tire on the tractor. That's what I mean by limited options. *irony button off*

Energy Myths versus Reality

2010-02-05T20:42:00.000-05:00

This article by a guest writer is very thought-provoking. Here are the 5 myths Tom Tanton explains.
Myth: Foreign Oil Provides Most of Our Energy
(You probably knew that, but read why, because you may be surprised at all the reasons.)
Myth: Renewables Will Replace Conventional Energy Sources
(He doesn't mention biofuels which is another part of this myth.) Myth: The U.S. Is a Disproportionately Large Polluter
(You may find these statistics amazing.)
Myth: Energy Efficiency Cuts Energy Use
(This is basically due to affordability, and I have written about the "oil bubble" previously.)
Myth: Increased Oil Production Can’t Be “Green”

So there you go, some really interesting information from someone who looks pretty credentialed to me. At least he isn't a railroad engineer.

Thought about science and the IPCC (climate, again, sorry)

2010-01-31T10:16:00.002-05:00

From New Scientist
The IPCC was tasked by the governments of the world to deliver an encyclopedic consensus on the state of knowledge about one of the most far-reaching yet divisive questions of our time.

This is the issue with IPCC in a nutshell. Science is not about consensus. I commend New Scientist for recognizing it, although I am not sure it was their intent. The charter of the IPCC has nothing to do with science and everything to do with delivering the necessary propaganda for government policy. The IPCC charter was to arrive at the opinion that the UN wanted, not to formulate UN opinion. The IPCC strategy is to continue collecting opinions supporting a single viewpoint until the avalanche of paper smothers scientific debate.

Consensus science is an oxymoron. Instead of killing more trees, IPCC and the UN need to stand down. I am not so naive to think that governments will quit pushing the agenda. But scientists need to leave the building on this or lose not only credibility but their pulpit and probably their estate as well. People do not want to give their hard earned tax dollars to something they no longer believe in.

Vested Interest Scary Anne Hailes, Irish News
Beddington Calls for Engagement with Climate Sceptics Ben Webster, The Australian
Dr. Petr Chylek
Dr. Bill Gray

I'm just sayin' (political strategy)

2010-01-27T19:46:00.002-05:00

A sequence of "ifs." I'm not sayin' this is what happened, but it is as good a fairy tale as "not spending more on 17% of the budget will save us $25 billion a year." Right. After increasing the budget by 27% in 2009. You have to love the pure flights of fancy in this 'burg. Spinning like a top.

After looking at the situation on the "ground" (meaning floors), I imagine a conversation something like this:
"A geez, Harry, is this the best you can do? This is poo!"
"Nancy, look what I had to do to get the votes. Heck, Nebraskans can't even stand the smell of their pork, and they raise hogs there. Hopefully, they will forgetr that deal, and he doesn't loose re-election."
"Harry, there is no way this pig is going to fly in the house. Even asking is going to cost me cred."
"Nancy, look, I may not get re-elected, this thing stinks so bad. What do expect me to do? You're just going to have to go build some consensus because it's all your getting. There is no way the house bill is even going to get 50, let alone 60."
Then some discussion of options a, b and c and some talking at the WH.

Option a is to try and pass the really bad house pieces in reconciliation, option b is to vote out of the Senate what the house can tolerate and put the rest in appropriations and omnibus bills, option c is, well, there isn't an option c.

Finally, this discussion
"OK, Harry look, I can't bring back a functioning majority if we pass this poo, I'm not sure our own bill would survive another vote."
"I have the same problem except I may not get re-elected myself. It doesn't matter that I have 60 dems because it's just too hot to handle again."
"So what do we do? This thing is radioactive and we need to get it off the table and move on to something else people care about."
"OK, so if I don't have 60 votes, we can just let it die, right?"
"No! You have 60 dems, you'll look like an idiot if you can't get it passed."
"Well, what if I didn't have 60 votes? Wait a min, I know, what if Coakley lost?"
"Are you nuts, Harry? She can't loose, not possible, not in Mass."
"Well, I don't know, if we don't give her any more money, maybe Scott can just out do her running ads. She gives him lots of ammunition every time she opens her mouth."
"Yes, I can see that is a possibility. At least it is more likely than getting this thing signed."
"She spent all the money on the primary, my sources say she only had less that a half-million coming in"
"You know, Harry, it just might work. You shrug you don't have the majority, I shrug I can't pass that disaster in the House."
"Yeah, just don't tell the Whitehouse."

And then:
[clipped from blogs]
-- Coakley campaign noted concerns about "apathy" and failure of national Democrats to contribute early in December. Coakley campaign noted fundraising concerns throughout December and requested national Democratic help.
-- DNC and other Dem organizations did not engage until the week before the election, much too late to aid Coakley operation
-- Because of the failure of national Democrats to support Coakley, she was forced to devote significant time to fundraising in December.
-- Coakley's failure to release television advertisments until 12 days before the election was the result of a fundraising problem that national Democrats failed to resolve.
From Politico

[Celinda] Lake argued that the underfunded campaign didn't have money for tracking polls, and so didn't see Republican Scott Brown's comeback until it was well underway. The campaign also didn't have money, she said, for television ads that could have shaped a populist message and defined her opponent as a friend of Wall Street. The party establishment didn't back the campaign with significant resources until the closing days of the campaign.
"I think [the criticism from Emanuel] ignores -- there were a lot of mistakes made all the way around, but number one, we had no tracking data. Number two, we said to the campaign, we have to get up [with ads on TV] earlier. Number three, in the primary, when we had money, we ran a populist economic message," she said. "And number four, we had no money and there may be lots of critiques about that, but we should remember that there were [Democratic] institutions" that could have kicked in campaign cash.
From Huffpost

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to a source familiar with their financial standing, will report that it ended 2009 with $16.7 million in the bank after raising nearly $56 million in the last year including $3.8 million in the month of December.
From WashPost

Many people had expected the four-way primary to be tougher than the general election against Mr. Brown, a little-known Republican state senator. So the Coakley campaign, which spent roughly $5 million to win the Democratic nomination, entered the general election with only about $450,000 left and plans to spend only about $1.8 million against Mr. Brown in the final stretch, which was less than two months long.
At first things looked like they were conforming to plan. A poll the campaign conducted just before Christmas showed Martha Coakley, the Democratic attorney general, with a 19-point lead over Mr. Brown, said Dennis Newman, the Coakley campaign’s chief strategist. Ms. Coakley took some time off the trail to celebrate Christmas, prepare for the debate, film ads and try to raise money.
From NYTimes blogs

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,” that he has “no doubt” the race for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat was winnable by Democrat Martha Coakley, but the White House was informed of her political peril too late.
From Politico

Oh no! Boo Boo Two! Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

2010-01-24T18:54:00.002-05:00

Catastrophic losses aren't increasing due to global warming? Damn, and it sounded so good, too...
Examiner article
Pielke article
Telegraph article

Will someone please explain to IPCC how to check assertions with Wikipedia? This mistake and the glacier mistake both might have been avoided that way.

A quick article regarding the Glacier mistake

What I want in health care reform

2010-01-23T01:00:00.001-05:00

1) Medical malpractice - which I call the malpractice lottery. Put a lid on it. Cut the lawyer compensation, not the providers.

2) Consumer involvement in comparing cost and value of specific services, not just insurance policies. Until consumers are active participants in questioning the cost and necessity of medical care through incentives such as tax free medical savings accounts, this is just more gaming between the government, insurance companies and big providers like Humana.

3) Transparency in the way that medical insurance plans are funded and details on where the money goes. If charities can reveal their administrative and lobbying costs versus direct benefits, we can require the same for hospitals, pharmacies, mega corps like Kaiser and Humana and for insurance companies as well. Insurance companies should publish their claims denial rates, time to pay, and average out-of-pocket costs per year.

4) Middlemen, like unions and AARP, need to be cut out of the cash flow. No more brokers and speculators.

5) Allow drug reimportation. Stop subsidizing all the other countries. Pharm. industry has been on a free ride way too long. It's not like the drugs they sell here are safe.

6) Make insurance companies accept people, but put a 5 year waiting period in there for most expensive treatments. We do it for long term care and life insurance. That is a motivator. $500 penalty is not. Make insurance portable beyond just one employer to another. Why can't I keep the policy I have and use a new employer's and my contribution to pay for it? Why does the price change for COBRA?

7) Set up bigger risk pools.

8) Allow interstate business.

9) You pay for insurance on your car in case of a collision. You don't expect your auto insurance to pay for your maintenance and mechanical repairs. Insurance should be for the unexpected. Instead, use savings accounts paid into monthly, and what's left over at the end of the year is added to a long term reserve account that can be used for copays for hospitalization and surgery or to pay premiums for medicare supplemental insurance or Advantage. Physician visits, routine lab tests, maintenance Rx bills are paid out of the account like FSA. But you don't loose it all at the end of the year. Employers can contribute to the savings account and get the same tax benefits as they do from providing insurance. Self-employed get the same tax benefits as those working for someone else. Make all this pre-tax payroll deduction for at least 5 years. This is a hybrid high deductible policy, short term prepayment account and long term savings account.

10) Since the idea is to broaden and flatten the risk pool, quit trying to create different risk pools for behavior management. Charging more for smoking, swimming, sitting, eating, etc., is just a gimmick to reduce costs for certain people, and discriminates against people who are poor and disabled. It's just wrong to be that intrusive and manipulative in people's lives. Don't let the insurance companies even think of going there.

11) Quit trying to manage health by the percentages. Health care is a matter between one person and their provider. If I want a mammogram every year starting when I am 40, it's none of your damn business. What works for 80% of people may not work for me. Would you say that 80% of abortions are ineffective so you won't allow them? Of course not. You can't have it both ways.

12) People should have the option to increase their lifetime cap (with a waiting period), if they choose to. Just like limits with auto insurance, you should be able to pick what you want to pay for.

13) Go learn a lot from veterinary medicine.

14) Incentivize a standardized claims process. Since you have about 50% of the population under medicare and medicaid, you can define that process. Make insurance companies reimburse physicians if they require using their proprietary processes and systems. Make insurance companies pay interest when they delay payment.

15) Keep any and all information about my medical treatment and condition out of government's grubby hands. Even anonymously. You do not need to know any individual's anything except to investigate illegal activities like fraudulent billing or fake prescriptions.

16) You took people's money (took it, didn't ask for it) to pay for medicare for them when they reached 62 (or whatever). That's a promise and a commitment. Do not break that promise and take the money back to pay for someone else's insurance. In the private sector, that would land you in jail. Be honorable. Do not expect people who are paying for private insurance or paying out of pocket to cover your shortfalls and gaps. It's "hide the weenie" and it's dishonest.

17) Insurance for people who aren't supposed to be here - not gonna happen. Send their medical bills back to the country they came from. If Mexico and Canada have "free" medical care, let them pay for their own. Take it off their aid, import tax bills, border entry fees, whatever. Don't make me pay either by subsidizing premiums or by paying more for services.

18) Maybe if you didn't tax all the pieces and parts, the overall cost would be less? Think of that? Why does taxing insurance policies make insurance less expensive? Since people just won't buy those now unaffordable policies, where do you get the idea that there will be any revenue? Duh?

19) If you can manage bank salaries, you can manage health care executive salaries, too. How is it they are making salaries in the top 1% range you are always demonizing?

20) If it is good enough for us, it's good enough for you. Play by the same rules, no congressional exemptions.

After Tuesday, what next?

2010-01-22T23:59:00.006-05:00

The challenge:
Real solutions for real problems.
It's about jobs, the economy, security.
Stop spending like it's not your money.

Works for me.

Lessons learned:
People have no more patience. Don't screw around. Don't waste CO2 gloating or projecting what it means for one party or another. We could not care less. It is really annoying.

Be positive. people are not embracing the vitriol anymore. It is what you have to offer, not what you don't like about the other guy. Martha went negative and blew her last chance. Fight for me? I am sick of the fighting. If you're here to fight, go get another job.
Don't diddle, twiddle, and fritter. What's the plan, the strategy and the milestones? We want progress, not progressives.
What does success look like because your competition will run very well on your failure.
Be realistic, nobody is buying the waste, fraud and abuse nonsense or funding from "other sources."
You work for us not the other way around. Act like it.
The earmarks, pork, bribes and backroom deals, the lobby and industry payoffs - stop it!
Govern where the rubber meets the road, not where the ideology meets the sky.
Be open, honest and prepared to adapt and change. Cooperate, collaborate, find what you agree on, what we (your voters) agree on, and start from there.
Be original, sound bites and talking points aren't selling. Know where you are coming from and be able to explain it clearly in a conversation as well as an op ed.
Listen. Hear. It's more work than bloviating, blathering and prevaricating.

Back on the debt, stupid.

2010-01-21T14:34:00.001-05:00

Congress is faced with raising the debt ceiling again. This is the total amount that the federal government is in the hole, but it reflects what is happening right now. The proposed increase is $1.9trillion, which they are hoping will tide them over through the November elections. Because they don't want to talk about it, or course. (This time last year, Obama said the deficit would decline in 2010 to $1.17trillion, so this is off the mark by - eh 50%. I guess the optimism about the return on TARP just wasn't justified.)

First, what's going on:
Revenue is down. If people aren't working and companies aren't selling, their isn't as much tax revenue coming in. In 2009, revenue was down by $400billion from 2008. Obama optimistically estimates revenue down even more - another 11% from 2009, which was a pretty bad year to begin with.

Budgets are up. Maybe your budget isn't up, but that doesn't mean that federal agencies need to tighten their belts any. For example, Transportation goes from $17billion to $70billion (including stimulus money). Do what???? an increase of more than 400%???
Specifically, mandatory costs (entitlements and interest mostly) are up 15%. Discretionary costs are up 13%. I don't know about you, but if I am broke and I have a choice, I don't spend money I don't have.

And off-budget expenditures are up as TARP continues to suck the contents out of your grandchildren's retirement funds. Yes, we spend money from our budget, and we spend more money we don't even budget for and never seem to account for until -- dang we need to raise the limit on the credit card again. After all, it's an emergency, right?

Next, why this is important:
The estimates are so far off, it is laughable. If your government has no clue what it makes, then it has no business guessing how much new programs and entitlements are going to cost. Like health care or cap and trade. It is beyond irresponsible to put out a number and then be 50% short. It is incompetent or deceitful, you decide. Either way, fire the bums.

What we can't pay for now, we are going to pay for later. We can't pretend we didn't spend it. We can't spend social security revenue when we collect it and then spend it again when the bill comes due. We don't even count the future costs of those entitlements. So, this debt is more than just piling on to the debts from previous years. When you count in the debt for future years, the numbers are just incomprehensible.

We are spending more and making less. And we are pretending that this is our economic salvation. It isn't. What this does is devalue the dollar. Venezuela just devalued theirs by 50% and look at the revenue stream they have from oil.

If we are borrowing more and more and more, guess what, we are going to have to pay increased rates of interest. Not only is the interest going to increase because the amount we owe increases, but it is going to increase because we are on an ARM, not a fixed rate mortgage. You know what ARMs did for homeowners last year. China will be coming to collect the bill or the assets. Full faith and credit of the US Government is being treated like a bottomless piggy bank. Eventually, faith retreats to zero and we go bankrupt. What looks like a ripple now is a tidal wave in 10-15 years. You just can't run a country on a two year budget cycle.

Now Congress is outsourcing its job.

2010-01-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

Following are some extracts from an oped by Mark Warner, VA Senator.

"[T]he inability of the regular congressional process to act to put our nation's fiscal house in order couldn't be clearer. ...the longer Congress and the administration wait to act, the harder the choices become.
"We are calling for creation of a bipartisan task force that will make sweeping budget and revenue recommendations to be presented to Congress, with no amendments allowed, for a simple up-or-down vote.
"Everything would be on the table, including spending and revenues. We can't solve this challenge by looking at only one side of the ledger. The task force recommendations would be considered by Congress under expedited procedures with a "yes" or "no" vote required."
-------- end quotes

So, if Congress is going to farm out the hard work to a bipartisan (not non-partisan) commission, what the heck are we paying Congress to do? Let's just pay them the one day that they come in and vote on the bill. The other 364 days they can go work at Starbucks, or Bullfeathers, if they are lucky.

I know it's broke folks. But y'all broke it and if you can't fix it, then the least you could do is quit! Hiring more pols to do your work is a waste (although it probably will cut down on fraud and abuse).

You were elected to do a job. We could just elect the commission instead, who needs you?

NOAA and NASA = Unethical, unscientific -- and illegal, too?

2010-01-19T23:42:00.025-05:00

The current brouhaha which is also being referred to as climategate II concerns data collected and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin.(NOAA), part of the Dept. of Commerce and by NASA. Seems that there are various unadjusted versions of temperature data (there should only be 1), missing or hidden original data, and many disappearing measurement stations. Furthermore, the rationale and methodology for adjusting it should be available, and probably opened to public comment in advance. (Check "watts up with that" and chiefio)

How can these agencies be held accountable? This is a public trust issue, not just a matter of professional integrity. Turns out that Congress passed a law that addresses this:

Information Quality Act, Pub. L. No. 106-554, section 515;
see also, “Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies” (67 FR 8452) and your agency’s Information Quality Act guidelines. 4
The Federal Government has defined quality and objectivity in, “Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies” (67 FR 8452). Quality is “…the encompassing term, of which ‘utility,’ ‘objectivity,’ and ‘integrity’ are the constituents.” “‘Objectivity’ focuses on whether the disseminated information is being presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner, and as a matter of substance, is accurate, reliable, and unbiased.”
(From a December 8, 2009 OMB memo regarding open government directive)

There are also federal laws concerning official records. Ask Sandy Berger about this one:

Concealment, Removal, or Mutilation of Records

(18 U.S.C. § 2071)
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

So, who's going to file a complaint? I would have to change my employment and maybe career, which I'm not in a good position to do at the moment.

Link list:
D'Aleo on NOAA Sea Surface temperature change claims
Andrew Watts, "Is the US Surface Temperature Record Reliable?" pdf available at surfacestations.org
Newsmax discussion with Dr. Gray - It's all about the money
American Thinker article including links to KUSI interview, summary of issues with missing and "corrected" NOAA data, plus explanations of the NASA GISTemp data massaging. (Massaging is as kind as I can be; made it up is more like it.)
John Coleman's corner
WSJ "The Tip of the Climategate Iceberg" article discussing efforts to get NOAA and NASA to release data and records of adjustments, codes, etc.
NOAA Climate Change page censored?
The Dog Ate Global Warming