Two things really tick me off - energy related

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

"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

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

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

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

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)

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