Obamas Healthcare

I glanced briefly at Obamas plan for healthcare tonight. Here are some of the highlights of the plan followed by my thoughts.

1. Invest in IT: Wow invest 10 billion and save 77 billion. I'm sure that hospitals have never thought of that or done a cost benefit analysis. But I'm sure Obama's people know more than the hospital administrators about how to run a hospital.
2. A. Support Disease Management program, B. Ensure Quality Care: A. Wait you mean that I am going to have to pay for some fat dudes gym membership? B. I'm sure the constant threat of litigation and ridiculous legal awards are not incentive enough for doctors and hospitals to do everything in their power to ensure quality.
   
3. Lower costs by taking on anti competitive action in the drug industry: Do you mean ignore their patents? By all means get us lower prices now at the cost of future advances. Brilliant. Also he wants to increase competition. If your ultimate goal is a single payer system where is the competition.
   
4. Reduce cost of catastrophic illness for employees and employers: His plan is to pay employers who have an employee with a catastrophic illness. And this money is going to come from...?
5. Lastly, affordable and accessible health care for all: And you wonder why I think he's a communist.

Lastly if you want to know why health care is so expensive it is pretty simple, it is the best in the world. I know, I know. You thought Cuba had a better health care system. Well try this little test. You are seriously ill and need an operation. You can go anywhere in the world, even Cuba, and money is not an option. Where do you go?
It reminds me of a sign I saw in a barber shop once. You can get a hair cut: Fast, Good, Cheap. Pick two.

The Law

I just finished reading The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Its pretty dang good. It clearly illustrates what the limits of government should be.
I was pretty intrigued with his idea of false philanthropy. This false philanthropy is essentially forced charity where one group is forced to provide for another group. I have always thought it would be far better to replace things like Social Security, Medicaid, and other welfare type programs with churches and other charitable organizations. I imagine that if I received a 15.4% raise, by eliminating just social security and medicare taxes, I could contribute far more to my church. They then could use this money to help the poor and the needy. I would also argue that they could operate it far more efficiently and with far less waste then the current bureaucracy operates.

Happy Holidays Fred Thompson Style

Farm Subsidies in Your Area

This website is pretty interesting. Its kind of like the opensecrets.org of farm subsidies.

Keynesianism Stinks

A 7 minute video on why government spending doesn't help the economy.

Green Jobs a Benefit?

Hussein Obama wants to create 5 million green collar jobs. If this sounds like a win win to you you should read about the broken window fallacy.

Better Late Than Never?

Proposition 8 in California has been causing quite a ruckus lately. Many people are surprised that with all my other libertarian ideas that I would be in favor of banning gay marriage so this will be my effort to try and explain it coherently. First and foremost my church is strongly opposed to it and I learned long ago that our Heavenly Father is smarter than me and not to question him.
From a more libertarian perspective I look back to the history of marriage. For thousands of years churches were the ones who kept records of births, marriages, etc. States really didn't care all that much whether a person was married or not. People were married by their church in order to avoid the sin of fornication. Now I think you would have a hard time arguing that gay people are trying to avoid the sin of fornication when they really don't give a crap about the sin of homosexuality. Therefore I think marriage is a religious thing and that the government has no business in even issuing licenses. That is a right of churches that has been taken away to a large degree. Remember we have the freedom of religion not from religion.
The second reason gays would want to be married is to be entitled to the benefits that the government gives to married couples. Libertarians generally view any special interest treatment as bad so this doesn't really apply. Besides they can already get most of the benefits just by becoming a domestic partnership in California I believe.
The third reason gays would want to get married is to make homosexuality more main stream. This is simply an advertising campaign and has nothing to do with their rights (unless they believe they have the right to not be offended like so many others).
I hope this explains it better. If you have any questions or comments or think I am psycho please leave me a comment and I will try to explain it better.

Foreigners Hate Bush

I was noticing after Hussein Obama was elected that they had a fair amount of coverage about how happy people in other countries were that Hussein Obama was replacing President Bush. So I did a little digging to see how people were voting with their feet. This chart is the number of petitions for citizenship filed from DHS. Apparently even Bush's America is better than where they are from.

Senators Post Higher Returns

This story makes me want to invest in companies that sell rope and street light poles. They sick the SEC on Martha Stewart when they are doing the exact same thing. (Martha was convicted of lying). Perhaps government officials and employees should be scrutinized for their investments even more so than CEO's and CFO's. At least management can only inside trade on their own company. Government regulators can inside trade on every company they regulate.

Healthcare Costs

Coyote has a good chart today for those who want to blame healthcare costs on insurance companies.

Because everyone knows that most of the costs of healthcare reform can be paid for by ripping the excess profits out of the health insurance business like a liver from a fish. Just to remind everyone, these are net profit margins reported by Google Finance for 3Q2008 of the largest health care providers and insurers:

Cigna: 3.50%
United Health Group: 4.56%
Aetna: 3.64%
WellCare: 4.08%
Amerigroup: 3.51%
Humana 2.56%
WellPoint: 5.49%

Those margins are seriously pitiful. In my opinion if we have the best healthcare in the world then we should expect it to cost a lot. Its not convenient for most of us and I am not saying that their isn't waste in the system. However, the costs of letting the government run the program are worse than I want to think about and it would come with crappy service.
If you really want cheaper medical care we should outlaw all very high deductible health insurance. Because after all when was the last time you called around for quotes on a doctor visit.

Watch Your Kids

Don't you hate when people just let their kids wander all over.

You Know You Want to Try This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYhDu1UzLSs

Another Way to Save

I've talked before about how allowing more immigration could help save social security. The basic premise being that there are not enough payers projected to be in the system. I would think that the same type of argument could be made against gay marriage. One day these people will begin receiving payments from Social Security without any children paying in. Or in other words my children will have to pay for both my and their social security.

Financial Help

Having trouble paying your bills. You could try this.

Social Security

One of the key reasons for the projected shortfall in Social Security is that as a large portion of the population retire there will not be enough payers paying into the system. Here is my solution. Instead of basing social security benefits on your earnings over your life it should be based on the number of children you have had. This would create an incentive for people to have more kids i.e. create more payers into the system. It would also give some economic benefit to the stay at home moms with a pack of kids that I talked about in my last post.

CNBC #2

The second article on CNBC I read this morning is also horrible. Of course I should have known that when I saw the title "Obama's Tax Hike For Wealthy—Why Young Should Embrace It". First off when is a tax hike good. Pretty much never. The idea of the article is that rich people are generally older and if we tax them they will get out of the workforce giving opportunities to the young. Ya thats probably true but is this one benefit worth losing their experience. What some people don't understand is that you are generally paid equal to whatever value you create. This is the benefit of capitalism. So if an older person creates $500,000 in value each year and a younger person creates $50,000 wouldn't take 10 young people to equal one old. If that old person stayed working wouldn't it free up ten young to get further education or come up with some crazy idea like oh I don't know a search engine called google.

And before you comment I say people are generally paid equal to the value they create. There are some glaring exceptions to this. The biggest in my mind is being a stay at home mom. They invest HUGE amounts of time and money into the future labor force and future stay at home moms for no immediate economic gain.

CNBC

Reading CNBC this morning is depressing. First you have Cramer, who I always thought was at least kind of a capitalist. If you don't want to read the article hear are the cliff notes. The article is his plan for Obama.
1. Make Cramer the head of the SEC, Fed, and Treasury Secretary. Ummm...OK why?
2. Fix the auto industry AIG style, by buying large stakes in the company. I thought we already found out that communism was a bad idea.
3. Force oil companies to sell natural gas at their filling stations. Great another regulation because government is so much smarter than we are. Seriously, if natural gas vehicles are so much better and cheaper wouldn't we all have them converted already.
4. Stop deporting illegals. This one I agree with but not for the same reasons he cites. I see immigrants legal or not as another set of hands and another set of brains. He sees them as home buyers.

Seriously when has increased regulation ever benefited the market. The most depressing thing is that Cramer should know better.
And actual government ownership of large companies, they already have a 35% interest in profits errr get 35% in taxes. Why give them a stake in the equity. Well once again more than their 15% share of capital gains.

A Democrats Version of Voluntary

What a buffoon.

Where Have All the Capitalists Gone

I thought big Ben Bernanke was a capitalist but it appears I may have been wrong.

"Government likely has a role to play in supporting mortgage securitization, at least during periods of high financial stress"

Why? Since when did our entire economy become dependent on securitized mortgages. In my opinion never.

"From a public policy perspective, a greater concern with fully privatized [firms] is whether mortgage securitization would continue under highly stressed financial conditions," he said. "As I have noted, almost no mortgage securitization is occurring today in the absence of a government guarantee."

Wait, so in a situation like this banks would actually have to hold the loans that they made? Oh no!!! Then they might even have to make sure the borrower was credit worthy.

"As the Federal Reserve has argued for many years, the enormous [Fannie and Freddie] portfolios pose risks to financial stability," he warned.

Let me get this straight, you want a massive government agency to oversee and back all trillions of dollars of mortgages but the size of the current government agencies doing just that is a threat to stability.
Perhaps if the government had kept its nose out of the mortgage business all along several private smaller versions of Fannie and Freddie would have cropped up to fill that need in the economy. Politicians must think that because they cant see the "invisible hand" it must not exist.

Bumper Stickers

Lately I've been seeing some Bush is a dictator bumper stickers. That can hardly be true because in a real socialist or communist dictatorship the people and their cars would have disappeared from this planet long ago. As I remember 20 million people in Stalin's Russia for example. I'd bet a burrito that the people driving those cars would have no problem telling me what doctor I would see and what quality of health care I could have. Now that a dictatorship.

Regulation

Many people believe that increased regulation is needed in response to the current credit crisis. As Coyote points out the question should be asked if government could do any better. After all the OFHEO, whose only job is to monitor Fannie and Fredie, reported to congress in April that they had more than sufficient capital even under current circumstances. Oops. Oh ya, and their 68 million dollar budget, of which at least 80% must be used for auditing and monitoring, and staff of over 200 people seemed to drop the ball. I'm not totally certain but I kind of doubt that Fannies audit by Delloite and Touche cost 60 million.

Overstepping Bounds

I almost always side with the police on issues but this from the Maryland State Police is to much. If you don't want to read it it essentially says that 53 peaceful activists were put on the terrorist watch list. Why? Well according to their fearless leader:

"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government,"

I hate to be the bearer of bad news for him but that is exactly what the First Amendment is there to guarantee.

HT: Coyote Blog

Goose You Have to Punch Us Out

I thought this was worth quoting in whole

From Mike Munger, a Duke University professor of economics and political science, and the Libertarian candidate for governor.

“The state is the great fiction by which each of us seeks to live at the expense of all of us.” The 19th French economist Frederic Bastiat recognized something that seems to be eluding our wise men in Washington, and Wall Street.

If Bastiat were alive, I can guess his reaction to the bailout: First, we don't know what we are doing, and we are as likely to do harm as help. The desperate hurry comes from electoral politics, and not from any real economic necessity.

Second, we aren't creating value. Government can't create value in financial markets. All we are doing is shifting costs from one group (Wall Street bankers, and mortgage sellers who took enormous and unsupportable risks) and transferring them to another group (taxpayers, who don't know any better).

When you hear someone say “The government bailout of Wall Street,” make a mental substitution: “The taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street.” And then remember that we have a federal debt bigger than Jupiter.

Deficits are future taxes. The bailout is simply a way of allowing irresponsible lenders to escape unharmed. If you have a mortgage, and can't pay, then you are responsible. If AIG has debts and can't pay, our leaders want to soak taxpayers for the bill.

The point is that you can't take money away from taxpayers who earned it, give it to the financiers who squandered it, and call that a good policy. There is no danger of another Depression, which was caused by a deflationary monetary policy. We are facing a temporary credit crunch, and it will sort itself out if we leave it alone. Things aren't so bad that a panicked bunch of politicians can't make it much, much worse.

Each can't live at the expense of all. Not even if you are a rich banker.

I especially liked his point about transferring the costs from the people who made poor choices to the taxpayers in general.

What he said

From TJIC:

It’s long pants weather!

Which means it’s belt weather!

Which means it’s inside-the-waist-band-holster weather!

Political Spin

Cafe Hayek brought this little gem of a story to my attention,

Obama vows deep cuts in spending
Email this Story

Sep 22, 2:53 PM (ET)

By MIKE GLOVER
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama moved to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility in a roiling economy, vowing on Monday to slash federal spending on contractors by 10 percent and saving $40 billion.

Wow 40 billion is a lot of money you may be thinking, but you would be wrong. To put this in perspective the federal governments total projected outlays for 2009 are 3.107 trillion. So this 40 billion slash will make just over a 1% difference. A real blue light special. Don't worry I'm sure Obama has a hug your neighbor initiative to spend the savings on.

Certain Death

Do you remember that line from Naked Gun "he has a 50-50 chance of living but only a ten percent chance of that"? I think this announcement from the weather service about huricane Ike falls in the same category.

Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family, one- or two-story homes may face certain death.

I mean what does it mean that someone "may face certain death". I may face certain death driving to work, getting a haircut, or skydiving. Some are riskier than others but I may face certain death in any right?

Californians Defy Laws of Physics

I found this article strange until I saw where it was from. Apparently in California air/oxygen isn't one of the key components for combustion.

Degererate = Democrats

I am not really a huge fan of any political party most of the time but I think democrats are the biggest bunch of pampered, bed wetting, disrespectful, whiners. This is an extract of a report from CNBC:

Outside the convention hall, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 anti-war protesters smashed windows, punctured tires and threw bottles as they marched through nearby streets. Police used pepper spray on the demonstrators and made at least five arrests.

Once again they showed that they have no respect for other people. The police officers should have found a short rope and a tall tree.

Mini Series

So if someday you get bored and want to understand why capitalism works best Milton Freidman put together a sweet mini series back in the 80's in which he explains capitalism in pretty simple terms. I like it even more than 24 so you know its good.

Shanghaied in Bejing

I've gotten a little tired of people at work talking about the olympics. I haven't been able to put my finger on why I get irritated but maybe this article explains why. If nothing else its pretty dang funny.

53.2 Billion Miles

CNBC has an interesting article about the reduced gasoline consumption in the US. According to it in the last 9 months Americans drove about 53.2 billion miles less than the previous year. Its a good statistic for those who believe that gas prices and consumption are totally inelastic. It also brought up that companies like Amtrak and Amazon.com are doing well as expected and Circuit City isn't. I think that brick mortar stores are going to continue to get hit as more and more people get comfortable buying things online. Lets face it, its hard to beat shopping for stuff sitting on your couch in your underwear.

Border Fence?

Heres a quote by General George Patton:

“Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity.”

I would include a border fence in this category.

Farmers Can't Keep up with Energy Costs

KSL has a story about how farmers are dealing with higher energy prices. Maybe by getting higher prices for their products.
From the article:

Leland Hogan, president of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, said, "We can't keep up with the dollars that are necessary to pay the bills."

Really, when you are getting record prices for your corn is not the correct time to pander for even more subsidies.

How 'bout a cold one

What's weird about this picture? If you said the blue cooler on the turret I think you would be right. In any event its a pretty awesome picture.
via

Airline Speculators

Today the airlines are calling for increased regulation of the futures markets especially in oil and gas by asking their customers to mail some canned letter to their congressman. The letter says something about how speculation is whats causing high prices yada yada yada. This is ironic because they themselves speculate all the time. Southwest was one of the most referred to examples of a company that hedges itself well from oil prices.
Besides that people tend to forget that if I'm a speculator I have to re-sale my futures contract. Why? Because an oil futures contract is a contract with an oil supplier to receive oil produced in the future at an agreed price today. That means that by the time a contract comes due an end user has to buy it, otherwise Mr. Speculator would have to take delivery for his oil.
It really is a great tool for airlines and such to reduce the volatility in their earnings and make long term budget decisions but to blame higher prices on speculators and not increased world demand is a pretty blind view.
Lastly I was pretty surprised to see pretty much all of the major airlines on the list. I would have expected a few who were better hedged than their peers to be pushing for higher oil costs. They then could have enjoyed their oil they hedged cheap while their competitors went out of business.

Obama's Experience

I'm sure you all have heard about General Wesley Clark saying that McCain being shot down didn't provide him any real experience. I don't buy that in the first place, but then how about his 20 something years in the senate.
Now lets compare that to Obama: community organizer f0r about 20 years (what does that mean and is that a really a job, how do I apply) and the last four years in the senate. Ya I would say that Obama has WAY more experience.
Seriously though, community organizer. It sounds like a mafia position. Kind of like on that movie Four Brothers. Was that Chicago or Detroit?

DC vs Heller

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about the second amendment Ive noticed with all this publicity about DC v Heller. While I am glad the supreme court struck down DC's absolutely idiotic law I don't think the second amendment means what they think it means.
When the constitution was written men were stilling dueling to defend their honer i.e. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Certainly in this environment the idea of anyone telling you that you could not defend yourself in your own home was absurd.
I am not a historian but from my own perspective the 2nd amendment means exactly what it says. It grants states the right to raise armed militias. These were militias after the manner of the minutemen. What did the minutemen do? They kicked a repressive government out of their colonies.
I think this because at the time the idea of the constitution was hotly debated idea (see federalists v antifederalists). That is why they worked on it over two months in a room closed to the public. One of the biggest concerns was that of the central/federal governments power versus those retained by states. In order to alleviate these concerns (and get the needed 3/4ths majority of colonies to sign) the drafters of the constitution added the bill of rights. When you look at the list of the 10 amendments as a whole I think you can see the fear of another repressive government shining though.
One must also remember that the government cannot grant rights. It only has the power to restrict them. I believe that regardless of which century you live in the right to defend your family and your home by the most efficient means possible is not only a right but a duty.

TJIC

Just in case you haven't checked out the link to TJIC here is a quote from his "about TJICistan"

TJICistan is an autonomous anarchic zone landlocked inside Arlington, MA, USA.

TJICistan covers approximately 7,000 square feet of space.

TJICistan has a permanent population of one humans and two dogs.

TJICistan seceeded from Arlington, Massachusetts, and the United States on 26 December, 1995.

After extensive utility computations, the non-government of TJICistan has chosen to pay taxes foreign aid, to all three levels of government in the adjacent territories, as the alternative of armed confrontation, while certainly exciting and entertaining, sums to a lower total level of utility over time.

TJICistan is heavilly armed, with approximately 10 firearms for every adult citizen.

Awesome.

Peculiar Markets

Today an interesting thing happened. It seems that because the Fed did not raise rates yesterday the dollar slid. Then because the dollar slid the price of oil jumped. Next because of oils jump the stock market slid. Or at least this is what is seems to me. Could the answer be for the fed to raise rates which would increase the dollar, which would push down oil, which would push the stock market up?
Craziness. Its kind of like Dr. Egon Spengler telling us to "cross the streams" after the don't cross the streams because, "Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light" speech.

Tulips or Oil

Coyote blog has a great explanation of why oil isn't being driven up by speculators here. Its definitely worth the time reading.
A couple of my own thoughts: Obama doesn't support off shore drilling because it will have no immediate effect. This is ironic for a couple of reasons. First isn't he touting himself as the long range visionary. Second if the democrats had been allowing us to drill off shore and in the arctic we wouldn't be in this bad of a predicament. Lastly their is nothing that will provide immediate relief. It takes time for consumption to come down or production to go up. These off shore well do take a few years to find and develop.
Next thought. People are changing the cars they purchase to more fuel efficient models. However with the average age of registered cars in America being 8 or 9 years the US auto fleet is going to take at least that much time to turn over into more efficient models.
Lastly for our own national security we ought to be increasing our domestic oil production capacity. That to me seems like a no brainer.

La Migra

Yes the title is probably spelled incorrectly. But the real purpose of this post is a question I have. Many people are suprised by my stance on immigration. It seems most Republicans think that illegal immigration is bad and when questioned on it they say "because its illegal". So my question is what gives our federal government the right to restrict immigration to our country. The easy answer is national security. But if you look closely that is not my question. The question is why does the government have the power to make immigration illegal. For example why are their quotas on the number of immigration visas allowed.
Another question is if capitalism makes the US so great why is it illegal for me to contract with someone from another country for his labor. Assume that we are both adults and consent and actually see mutual benefit from our contract. How, in a capitalist society, can this contract be illegal.
Just to put it out there if I had any say I would have no quotas and allow anyone who wanted to work to come. I suppose to appease the masses I would have some kind of background check in place to ensure they weren't criminals. This then would stem the flow of "illegals" to an amount that the border patrol could actually manage. Also this would only leave criminals trying to come in illegally. That means instead of a border fence, which would be totally ineffective - see Maginot Line, we could use predator drones with hellfire missiles or gatlin cannons to patrol the border. And you cant tell me that that wouldn't be cool.

Wally World

I have never really understood so many peoples hatred of Wal Mart. Their basic business plan is to undercut the competion. Sure this is bad for a few small merchants but for the rest of us it means we can buy all sorts of garbage for cheap.
This last week I was searching for a previous version of Command and Conquer for my computer. It had to be the older version because its what the rest of my family uses. I searched several so called game stores but couldn't find it. One of these stores was close to a Wal Mart so I decided to give it a last ditch try. To my pleasant surprise I found a DVD with not only the version I was looking for but several prior to it with expansion packs for $30. This experience once again affirmed that as much as I hate shopping Wal Mart makes it a little easier.

"Easy" Majors

As many of my nieces and nephews are approaching college age I thought this graph may be helpful for them in choosing a major or perhaps helpful for their parents in forbidding a particular major.

Hat tip Adventures in Capitalism

Windfall Profit Tax

So I hear this morning that Hillary wont put her lot in with economists. This ironic on so many levels. First she's purporting that her intuition about the economy is better than those who actually study it. Second it shows how socialists err democrats really feel about economics.
She made these remarks in regards to her stance that we should have a windfall profit tax on oil companies. Who would be the losers of this tax. Its not Exxon. Exxon doesn't have feelings. It doesn't care what you, I, or Hillary thinks. The real losers are Exxons shareholders many of which I assume are large mutual funds of which hold millions of people retirement accounts.
The shareholders will be the losers because share prices are largely based on expected future cash flow. This cash flow is obviously largely affected by tax rates (in the US corporations are already taxed at 35 of net income plus the 15% capital gain that investors pay when they sale their stock). So if we increase the tax rate Exxon has less money to pay out to investors decreasing what the stock should be worth. But heh thats all economic jargon that Hillary doesn't believe.
This also assumes that the money is better in the hands of the government rather than wise investors that invested in Exxon.

Climate and Jobs

It drives me crazy hearing the candidates talk about "green" jobs as such a wonderful thing. The fact is there are some jobs that are only necessary because of the government. These jobs don't actually produce anything. In this category is an IRS auditor. They are necessary to make sure that people are compliant with the governments various tax laws but they don't actually produce anything in a sense that they create wealth. Green jobs would be very similar. Most of them would probably be cushy government jobs where when they get bored they go out and hassle someone who is creating wealth because in the process of creating that wealth they didn't completely separate their garbage into the appropriate bins.

Climate Change: The Path to Socialism

Here is an excerpt from a site called socialist unity. Ive added my own interpretations.

While it may be urgent that we create a red green alliance to strengthen radical social action to stop climate change, our collective problem is how are we going to do that?

The Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney Australia during April tried to tackle that challenge.This was a bold attempt to bring together left and green activists in order to locate a shared perspective around which we could begin more consciously organize. While this was an Australian event organised by the newspaper, Green Left Weekly, the conference also heard from the Cuban permaculturalist Roberto Perez; the editor of Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster (author of Marx’s Ecology); and Patrick Bond director of the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; editor of Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society.

According to dictionary.com a permaculturist is:

per·ma·cul·ture /ˈpɜrməˌkʌltʃər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pur-muh-kuhl-cher] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem.

Also note the author of Marx's Ecology how exciting!

Foster and Perez urged the conference’s participants to consider socialism as the only viable solution to the climate emergency. This was a persistent theme discussed throughout the three day event as speakers were drawn from a range of environment movements and organisations (such as the Australian Greens and Friends of the Earth) as well as academic specialists — who preferred solution packages which were not consciously committed to a socialist transformation of society.

Hmm, so socialism is the only way to stop climate change. Kind of like a gateway drug.

Nonetheless, the plenaries and workshops teased out a lot of agreement over what can concretely be done today.

The final Conference statement tried to articulate that shared perspective. It argued that climate sustainability can be built on five basic elements:

1. properly resourced public agencies to drive the sustainability effort,
2. an international framework where the First World pays the vast bulk of the price of reversing global warming,
3. an end to rampant consumerism,
4. vastly strengthened campaigns for climate sustainability, and
5. building a powerful political alliance for climate sustainability with social justice.

Or we could say:

1. Give the government more police power
2. Transfer the wealth of America and Western Europe to China so they can have clean air and water.
3. Poverty is better than consuming too much. By the way who decides how much is too much.
4. Four and five are mostly the same thing. It means these climate alarmist groups will take contributions and instead of doing something productive they will lobby the government to tax the rest of us and in turn use these tax dollars to do what they want.
5. See #4 for the first half. For the second half, social justice. How does that factor in to this? I really don't think anyone knows but it sure does sound catchy doesn't it.
   

To summarize their hopes. Socialism causes poverty, poverty makes less pollution. Brilliant we have all found the answer to global warming.

Hat tip coyote blog.

A Qwest Not a Sprint

My contract finally ran out with Qwest so I have been switching my phone and internet to other providers. This is because a long time ago I was charged roaming for making a call from SLC to SLC and had a little disagreement with the phone rep. Now I get my last bill for a whole $2 and it wont let me pay it online because it is to small. I called support but, of course, their office hours are from 8 to 6. Who actually has time between 8 and 6 to call, work their way though the idiot robot, and argue with a live rep about how to pay their $2 bill. Reason 1,001 why I have switched.

Speculation

I cant remember where I was reading, I think it was over at TJIC but they had an interesting point. All members of congress and the senate make sure that they want to help homeowners but NOT speculators. So essentially if you live in your speculative investment that makes it ok. Seriously both the banks and the home buyers were willing participants in the initial deal. No one forced prospective home buyers to buy a home that they couldnt afford and no one forced the bank to make a loan with little more than a cup of coffee and a hand shake.
Also I am sick of hearing about these homeowners didn't understand that their rates might change. ARM stands for ADJUSTABLE RATE MORTGAGE. Besides that didn't they have to initial and sign the million and one truth in lending pages when they closed?

Boring Accountant

I was reading something that I think explains why I like accounting. "money makes boring problems interesting".

Too Funny Not to Steal

This comes from TJIC.

The house where Adam Smith lived for many years with his mother and which more recently was used as a home for troubled youth has been put up for sale by the Edinburgh Council for £700,000. Sir Alan Peacock says “It’s a disgrace that the council has agreed to dispose of a building as significant as this. It should be saved for the nation.”

I think it would be a disgrace if the house went to anyone but the highest bidder.

Nicely said.

How to save medicare

I am taking a governmental accounting class this semester. Our first project was to come up with a solution for Social Security and Medicare. My first instinct was to make them go extinct. However that was a bit to simple for the required six page paper. After some research I discovered that the biggest problem was we are going to have less and less payers per beneficiary of the system. This leaves two possible solutions. Cut down beneficiaries or increase payers. The first option wont happen because the old farts that vote would never vote to increase the age at which they get benefits. That leaves the second option. The obvious answer to that is to increase the birthrate. The problem with that is that it will take 20 to 30 years for that solution to help. But alas I have the answer. Increase immigration. This way we can import payers to help fund the system. Best of all we don't even have to wait the 30 years for them to be productive.
Now I know someone out there is thinking but what about all the illegals drawing on the health care system etc. Let me explain what really happens. Immigrants with out Uncle Sams permission get a fake social security card and ID when they apply for jobs. Then the employer with holds the same 15.3% that you and I pay. Then occasionally when they are really sick yes they do go to the emergency room for care. Still I've got to believe even then they are net payers into the system.

Camrade Obama

From TJIC

Whats wrong with these pictures from Obama's Houston office? Hmm. Could it be the Cuban flags with the murdering communist Che on them? Maybe Hilary is the more moderate one of the two. Scary.

The Right to Healthcare

I was eating lunch today when I saw Hillbillery Clinton telling her hordes that health care was a human right. Right, like speech and assembly huh. What a freaking idiot. As Coyote says a right is anything you can have on a deserted island. I'm pretty sure a doctor is not on that list. And just to clarify by guaranteeing everyone health care you are saying that you're ok getting marginal quality health care, waiting lines and all.
There is a certain supply of doctors. A government mandate socializing health care will not magically increase that supply. Why do doctors charge so much? Because they can. If we didn't get sick as often they would have less demand and would necessarily decrease their rates.
If you really want to cut down health care costs the best thing the government could do is make low deductible health insurance plans illegal. When was the last time you asked how much a doctor visit would cost? I can answer that for you. Never. You only ask what your copay or deductible will be. If people had to pay the first 5 or 10 thousand out of pocket they would think twice before going in every time they had a cold. Therefore less demand on doctors leads to reduced rates.

Go Big Oil

I read today that Exxon won an order freezing 36 billion dollars worth of Venezuela's state oil assets. To put that in perspective Exxon's annual net income for last year was 40 billion. Maybe after they get their money back Exxon can bring criminal charges in a Venezuelan court against Hugo for grand theft? That would be awesome. Stick it to the commies Exxon!

Tax Cuts

I have a couple of thoughts on the tax cut proposals being made by the presidential candidates. First is if you want to do any major tax cuts they have to reduce taxes on the "rich". Why is that? Because they are the ones that pay the most taxes. When you think of all the phased out credits and deductions and the "progressive" tax rates they pay way more than the middle class.
My second thought is that if you want to put in place any permanent tax cut you must also cut spending. Contrary to Congess' belief you cant consistently spend more than you make. Novel concept I know. I would try to explain if further but if you cant grasp that concept perhaps you should run for congress.

Sub Prime Predictions

With all of these write down by banks for their "subprime" loans I thought I would make a prediction. My prediction is that over the next few quarters banks earnings will do pretty well. Think of it this way. You're a new CEO taking over for a previous CEO who has just stepped down for failing to recognize the risks of sub prime loans. The smart play if you are the new CEO is to write down as much as you can this quarter because all of the bad performance will be blamed on your predecessor. That way over the next couple of quarters you can bring in some of the excess write offs into income. Now I'm sure there are write downs that need to occur but the new CEO's definitely have motivation to be as "conservative" as possible.

Food for Thought

I found this via http://tjic.com.

"The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil. Gandhi's non-violent resistance against the British occupiers had some effect because Britain was wrong, but not Evil. The same is true of the success of non-violent civil rights resistance against de jure racism. Most people, including those in power, knew that what was being done was wrong. But Evil is an entirely different beast. Gandhi would have gone to the ovens had he attempted non-violent resistance against the Nazis. When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened. That's all Evil understands."
-- Robert Bruce Thompson

Lame Elections and Immigration

Is anyone else out there having a hard time being excited about the presidential election? I just cant seem to find any candidate who I really want to get behind. I like some of Ron Paul's economic ideas but cant stand his immigration policy. ALL candidates pretend to be pro market. "Get government out of business" they say. Well according to my memory of economics there are three main factors of production; land, LABOR, and capital. If you are really in favor of a free market you believe in the free flow of labor and that the "invisible hand" will allocate it efficiently. Guess what, if you put up restrictions on immigration you are restricting labor. Therefore if you are anti immigration you are not "pro market" or what ever other buzz word you want to use. So Mitt Ron Rudy quit saying you are what you are not. I'll let John off the hook on this one but just barely.

Stimulating

I've been reading a lot lately about this great new stimulus package the government wants to do. You know the one. Thousands of dollars to everyone to go out and blow on a new big screen thereby stimulating the economy. Doesn't anyone realize that it is in reality a loan. Government does not create wealth. This money they are giving us will have to be paid back at some point in the form of higher taxes. I have a plan how about we actually exercise some fiscal restraint and not spend our government into the poor house. At some point foreign countries will decide that we aren't a good credit risk ie "subprime" and quit lending us money. At that point we will have to face the music and probably experience some severe inflation. Just a thought.

Quotable Quotes

I found these today. I haven't checked the authorship but lets face it their pretty dang funny.

It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
-T. S. Eliot

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
- Frederic Bastiat

Communism - You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you spoiled milk.
Capitalism - You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
- Anonymous