Miscellany: 12/31/12

Quote of the Day
The Golden Rule of networking is simply this... 
All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to
those people they know, like and trust.
Bob Burg

Just Say 'No' to Tax and Spend Now,  Cuts Later

I have not seen even modest reforms like phasing in deferred eligibility for senior entitlements, user fee increases, cost of living adjustment reforms, means-testing of benefits, across-the-board spending cuts and hiring freezes I am appreciative of McConnell's attempts to shied as many as possible from the clutches of the Pickpocket-in-Chief, but the agreement is horribly counterproductive economics, irresponsible, a sellout of future generations, and full of moral hazard. I urge Congress to "spread the sacrifice around" and vote this deal down.

Guest Blogger Quote of the Day

(HT Mark Perry/Carpe Diem)

Debt becomes problematic, however, when the money borrowed is put to unproductive use, because that leaves the borrower without the resources to repay the loan, and that will eventually disappoint the lender. Most of the money that Uncle Sam has borrowed in recent years has not been put to productive use, and that is a big problem, because the economy has not grown sufficiently to pay back the debt. The federal government has borrowed trillions of dollars in order to 1) send out checks to individuals who are retired, unemployed, disabled, and/or earning less than some arbitrary amount; 2) pay salaries to millions of bureaucrats, 3) subsidize bloated state and local governments, and 4) subsidize corporations engaged in activities (e.g., wind farms, ethanol production) that would otherwise be unprofitable. The money was essentially wasted, since it wasn't used to create new sources of revenues with which to service the debt in the future. - Scott Grannis

Green-Eyed Presidents and Citizens

There is nothing more nauseating than for the worst, most incompetent President in American history spiking his football and doing a "tax-and-spend" touchdown dance in front of his cheering bottom feeding minions and in the face of fiscal hawk patriots:

Mr. Obama addressed the country from a room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Monday afternoon with cheering supporters behind him and in the audience in front of him. The supporters even applauded Mr. Obama's announcement that taxes would be going up.

I am already sick and tired of this political hack's amateurish handling of this and other crises, procrastinaton, passive, nonconstructive leadership, inflexibility, inability to negotiate in a win-win fashion. It takes chutzpah to co-opt the term "shared sacrifice" when he refuses to ask anything from his own supporter base or anyone except the economically successful whom already pay taxes above their share of national income, and nobody whom is on the morally hazardous government dole. It's bad enough Republicans are the only adults in the room. The Demagogue-in-Chief hypocritically accuses the GOP of playing politics: in fact, the GOP-controlled House is the only entity to propose and pass a budget. They are the only ones tackling unfunded entitlement liabilities, balanced budgets--the Democrats play games like treating nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan as an ongoing expense that will "count" as spending cuts in future years, trimming future program increases, cut already below-market provider payments, etc.

To rephrase a well-known saying: "They first came to tax the upper 2%, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't one of them. Then they came for me because nobody was left to speak for me."

Art Laffer and Fixing the People's Republic of California

This interview was before the fall election. Laffer had backed Jerry Brown during the 1992 race to the Presidency with flat income and consumption tax policies. Gov. Brown's third term includes an even higher tax rate on top earners, high-speed rail, and only modest pension reform that grandfathers existing workers and retirees and doesn't alleviate unrealistic, unsustainable obligations over the coming decades.



Benghazi Coverup and 
Attempts to Censor Politically Incorrect Speech



Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Celtic Woman: A Christmas Celebration

Miscellany: 12/30/12

Quote of the Day
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, 
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

Whose Birthday is Today? Not Just Sean Hannity's...





Big Dairy vs. the Free Market

The Agricultural Act of 1949 sets a minimum price for certain commodities (for purposes such as school lunch programs and veteran hospitals); this is based on parity with relevant (but obsoleted) prices approximately a century ago. Milk prices are indirectly supported through purchases of milk products, like dry milk, cheese and butter. Typically relevant support prices are set through multi-year farm bills; but they revert to the price supports in the permanent act if a farm bill expires like it may do later this week. The problem is the existing minimum price is about half of the perm support price. Government purchases will basically bid up the price of milk sold at retail.

This blog considers price-fixing by the government as a fundamentally unacceptable intervention. One objection to the farm bill is the Dairy Market Stabilization Program, which taxes over-quota production, i.e., penalizing efficient producers. This is in the context of the government protecting producer margins (given high feed prices) vs. prices.There are related issues at play: liberals reject attempts to reform the food stamp program, and conservatives/libertarians object to protectionist crop subsidies.

Any business faces uncertainty (including industry overcapacity). We don't have-or need-government meddlers setting minimum prices or production prices for widgets or barriers of entries to widget producers. Not only do I reject the farm bills: I would like to see the 1949 law repealed.

Crony Socialism?

Mark Perry cites a female Cuban blogger whom speculates on why only pricey foreign-produced foods (e.g., chickens from Canada, butter from New Zealand, beef from Argentina, or cheese from Germany). She mentions that an economist friend whom during her government service noticed high freight charges for basic foods, and the friend was warned against pursuing the matter, suggesting that powerful Cubans have ownership interests with foreign suppliers. I would simply describe these rumors as indicative of corruption.

I instinctively recoil from conspiracy theories. Consider the following discussion:

Just a few years ago, the state employed more than 85 per cent of Cuba’s labour force, but that is changing as the government battles heavy indebtedness, economic stagnation, poor retail services and pilfering. The number of private, or “non-state” workers as Cuba calls them, rose to 1.1 million jobs, double the number reported two years ago. The majority of the non-state workers, or about 610,000, were farmers, whose numbers have grown under Mr. Castro’s agricultural reforms, which include leasing state lands to individuals. The goal is to stimulate local food production and cut the need for budget-draining food imports.

High prices on foreign-produced foods should spur local production assuming this is not a law of comparative advantage issue and/or barriers to entry to markets. The law of supply and demand: high prices mean limited sales (say, to foreign visitors or privileged Cubans). I think Raul Castro's attempt to implement a Chinese-style fusion of political monopoly and private-market reforms will also fail in the long run.

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Casting Crowns, "Away in the Manger"

Miscellany: 12/29/12

Quote of the Day
The glory of great men should always be measured by
the means they have used to acquire it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

While the Private Sector Creates Lower-Price Goods,
Government Intervention Has Created a Healthcare Bubble

Mark Perry of Carpe Diem has recently posted a series of segments favorably comparing the number of man hours it takes for the average worker to acquire a higher quality counterpart today to consumer goods and services. in the 1950's. Chris Conover at Forbes extends the point to healthcare (my edits):

While time prices for other goods and services had shrunk to less than one quarter of their 1958 levels, time prices for health care had more than quadrupled! In 1958, per capita health expenditures were $134. This actually includes everything, inclusive of care paid for by government or private health insurers. A worker earning the average wage in 1958 ($1.98) would have had to work 118 hours—nearly 15 days–to cover this expense. By 2012, per capita health spending had climbed to $8,953. At the average wage, a typical worker would have to work 467 hours—about 58 days.

Granted, some of that is a quality trade-off and an older population, but a lot of it has to do megalomaniac public policy that has perverted the concept of insurance, where economics illiterate politicians/demagogues run on perverse, unsustainable, negligently, even intentionally underfunded  public policies: "free annual exams", "free birth control", filled doughnut holes, below-cost premiums, cost-shifting from the government to a shrinking private sector, subsidized "all-you-care-to-use" health services, convoluted cost accounting, and other socialized costs: special-interest benefit mandates (e.g., fertility treatments).

A Note on Taxes to the Economically Challenged 
(i.e., Progressives)

I guess I had an epic rant in yesterday's post on talk soup because it got 4 times the normal number of hits: either a lot of people agreed with me, or I managed to annoy progressives or both.

Just a side note: if ABC This Week's panel has anyone whom annoys me more than Keynesian economist Paul Krugman [I recently contacted a George Mason economics professor I've cited asking why he hadn't responded to an absurd Krugman column waxing enthusiasm over 90-odd percent tax brackets during the 1950's, the economist tersely replied that he was very busy and just tracking Krugman's nonsense is a full-time job in itself], it's another overrated progressive commentator, Katrina vanden Heuvel, whom repackages all the same predictable  tiresome polemical progressive spin she can deliver in one breath, sort of a pretentious Debbie Wasserman Schultz wannabe. Poor George Will is typically outnumbered; he likes to set up his point of view and has a less direct personal style. Quite often the round table is dominated by progressive groupthink; Stephanopoulos surprises me at times by keeping the discussion in check.

When I hear the progressives cheer Obama's "genius" in proposing a middle class only tax cut extension, they think he's boxed in the GOP, making the Dem the Party of Middle Class Cuts. No, I think Obama has proven his hypocrisy: his point is the cuts don't pay for themselves, but he offers no alternate spending cuts and/or revenues  to pay for the these cuts, three-quarters the amount of the Bush tax cuts.

Obama is totally ignorant of Hauser's law: tax receipts since the Depression have typically leveled off at about 20% of GDP (naturally less during recessionary periods) despite widely changing upper-income rates. But another disingenuous piece of political spin is that the top earners aren't paying their "fair share" (as if somehow nearly half of earners pay NO federal income tax and many are net beneficiaries are pulling their own weight!), but let's jog Mr. Obama's memory:

Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact  that needs to be built into fiscal  calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly marginal rate increases targeted at higher income taxpayers, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth. According to the Tax Foundation, the tax burden of the rich has been steadily growing. In 1987, the top 1 percent paid nearly 25 percent of the federal income tax burden; now they pay nearly 40 percent.   Thus incomes for the wealthy have grown, but so has their share of federal income taxes.  But suppose those earning $250,000 or more were taxed at a marginal rate of say, 80 percent.  This would still be not be enough to close the gap on the federal government’s runaway spending.

In fact, predicted revenues from class warfare tax hikes are typically overstated. Why?

The tax base is not something that the government can kick around at will. It represents a living economic system that makes its own collective choices. In a tax code of 70,000 pages there are innumerable ways for high-income earners to seek out and use ambiguities and loopholes. The more they are incentivized to make an effort to game the system, the less the federal government will collect. That would explain why, as Hauser has shown, conventional  methods of forecasting tax receipts from increases in future tax rates are prone to over-predict revenue

Why then keep tax bracket rates low? Because high taxes impair economic growth.

French Court Rules Hollande's 75% Top Rate Unconstitutional

The decision was based on the alternate household distributions yielded different tax obligations.

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Celtic Woman, "We Three Kings".The harmony is lustrous, and the bagpipes are awesome: my second favorite track to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".

Miscellany: 12/28/12

Quote of the Day
If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; 
if a servant, sometimes deaf.
Thomas Fuller

Sunday Talk Soup and the Fiscal Cliff

I cannot lapse in this blog into profanity, but I'm sorely tempted, particularly after listening to my podcast backlog of the ABC This Week and Fox News Sunday  (MTP recently revised its podcast schedule and I think it now only makes available the last show's podcast).

But one talking point has me seething:: the idea that the election has a mandate on discriminatory class warfare tax hikes. First of all, let me point out that since Obama took office, there are more Republicans in  each chamber of Congress--including the GOP holding the House in 2 consecutive elections. There was a strong rebuke to astronomically high federal spending, and what was the response of Senate Majority Leader Reid and Obama to the biggest House landslide turnover since the 1937 recession? Neither individual submitted and passed a viable budget  and with trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see: we didn't see even modest proposals like putting a freeze on spending and hiring. How dare these progressive hypocrites suggest that we give Obama a blank check in an election where he got millions fewer votes and the incumbent won  a number of battleground states by a mere 1-5 points?

Second, the hypocritical Dems have waxed enthusiasm for the Clinton tax regime--they claim we can't afford to maintain the tax rates on the 2% who pay, to use an Obama phrase, above their weight class of taxes (i.e., over their proportion of national income)--25% of the cost of tax extensions, less than 10% of the annual budget deficits. Never mind the fact that some states (e.g., HI, CA) tack on up to an additional 11%, not to mention the add-on of some local governments, we will have a counterproductive steep investment tax increase (especially dividend income). All of these things discourage the realization of investment and/or other income--which is especially incompetent and self-defeating in a sluggish growth economy.

Now I know that progressives are mathematically challenged, but even a kid in middle school math knows if we can't afford the 25% revenue loss to the upper 2%, we surely can't afford the 75% going to the middle class. If the middle class doesn't like having their taxes raised, they should vote out the party in power that created unsustainable government spending. But just because the middle class would hypocritically prefer to stick their fair share of the tax burden  on economically successful does not justify legal theft/plunder; I'm not, and never have been, part of the upper 2%; I don't think I personally know anyone in the upper 2%. I just know punishing economic success is a double-edged sword. The fairest tax rate is a flat rate ( like established in many countries in the former Soviet bloc). Everyone would have skin in the game of government financing. Also a VAT or consumption tax, which would balance the economic burden.

The reason the GOP is focusing on entitlements is because 60% of the budget is there. The programs have been underfunded from the get-go. For the third straight fiscal year the social security program ran a pay-as-you-go deficit; the government made up the difference by deducting it (tens of billions) from anemic interest payments on the captive social security reserve. And just like I predicted last year, politicians are trying to extend the 2% employee payroll tax cut (I don't mind that in theory if everybody agrees to a relevant reduction in benefits--but doing a cut without reforming an already chronically underfunded program? Financially irresponsible!)

I think the fix I mentioned in an earlier post is we need $7T a year in revenue just to sustain these programs. That's almost triple our federal revenue for the whole government. These are INDIVIDUAL BENEFIT programs--not the cost of "real government"--the court systems, common defense, etc. I think the fiction that the elderly have paid their "fair share" is absurd;  counting premiums and lifetime work contributions, and longer lifespans, Medicare benefits are more than 2-1, according to CATO.

With a growing, longer-living senior population this is quickly escalating out of control. It is morally unjust to transfer that burden to someone else's pockets. If  one of the Koch brothers frequented a restaurant, would it be right for me to insist that he picks up my check? Why is it any different for me to transfer my retirement expenses to him?

I think in the long run we need to demand that citizens take ownership of their own retirement, that federal healthcare spending focus on catastrophic expenses. So help me if I hear another disingenuous progressive like Sen. Stabenow (D-MI) engage in political spin  suggesting that Medicare Advantage is a wasteful giveaway to health insurers... A detailed refutation of this apples and oranges nonsense is beyond the scope of this post, but here's a salient response from a Heritage analysis:

In other words, instead of reducing waste, the MA cuts will simply cut health care services available to patients and transfer spending from Medicare Advantage to other federal programs and other payers (including patients), thus increasing federal and state spending on Medicaid and patient spending on Part D, supplemental care plans, and out-of-pocket costs.

I'he second talking point was this preposterous knee-jerk defense of Susan Rice whom had gone on several Sunday talk shows following the Benghazi consulate attack to advance the Youtube hypothesis. I don't get intelligence briefings but it was clear to me this was a terrorist attack before Rice went on the shows.  The liberals insist that she was simply parroting unclassified intelligence. (Now "national intelligence" is an oxymoron if there ever was one...)  I leave it to Congress to investigate how a completely fabricated, unsupported hypothesis appeared in an intelligence briefing, but we know this much:

Reuters and Fox News have obtained copies of an email sent about two hours after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the White House, Pentagon and other agencies are told that the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia had "claimed responsibility."

Petraeus has also testified that they knew from the start it was a terrorist act. Surely Rice was aware of salient facts of the attack.

Putin Signs Law Barring 
American Adoptions of Russian Orphans.. Thumbs DOWN!

There have been a few notorious cases of American adoptions of Russian youths not working out. Was this motivated by a recently passed law targeting alleged human rights violations in Russia? I don't think the Congress should pass laws tying the hands of diplomats. That being said, Mr. Putin should put the best interests of the child first. Surely loving American parents is a better option than growing up in a state system.

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Celtic Woman, What Child Is This?

Miscellany: 12/27/12

Quote of the Day
Tis the business of little minds to shrink, 
but he whose heart is firm, 
and whose conscience approves his conduct, 
will pursue his principles unto death.
Thomas Paine

God Bless Their Little Hearts

A couple of sweet NORAD  (the annual Santa-tracking operation at a Colorado Air Force Base on Christmas Eve) stories:

• A boy who called from Missouri asked when Santa would drop off toys in heaven.His mother got on the line and explained to Jennifer Eckels, who took the call, that the boy’s younger sister died this year.“He kept saying ‘in heaven,’” Eckels said. She told him, “I think Santa headed there first thing.”
• So [13-year-old] volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard Monday when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the Connecticut school shooting.“I’m from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was,” she remembers the child asking. “Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?

An Inconvenient Observation

According to Carol D. Leonnig of Washington Post

Just before leaving public office in 2001, Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million. Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama’s historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money.

Now, granted, Al Gore is a true believer in environmental alarmism, and he was awarded  the Nobel Prize before the 2008 election; I don't mind people putting money where their mouth is or their investment success although Gore certainly was in the right place at the right time to capitalize off Obama's ill-fated industrial policy. I have  a broader issue with crony capitalism and the idea of any industry, including green energy, socializing business risk is unconscionable. I particularly loathe Obama's nationalistic spin on the "green race" with China; Communists, not operating in a free market, often make bad, money-losing decisions. like producing steel without customers.

The second chart traces gas prices against counterproductive energy policies against gas prices during the Obama era.

Courtesy of Energy and Capital

Courtesy of Energy and Capital

Newsweek Publishes its Last Print Edition

I had one print subscription, US News and World Report which transformed into digital format some time back. Will we miss yet another progressive periodical going away? I don't think so...



Where Are the Hillary Haters?

I felt that the real "fairy tale" of the 2008 campaign was the perception that Clinton was more moderate than Obama. In fact, ACU evaluates their voting records as all but the same. As for polls showing cross-over support to Clinton, this blog is not swayed. It's far too soon to talk 2016, and it will be a traditional change election year.  Hillary lacks the likability and charisma of Bill or Obama and Bill's more pragmatic politics  (this "vast right wing conspiracy" nonsense signals a more strident, polarizing leadership style, and I suspect in 2016 we will look for a President who can bridge the gap). Hillary Clinton's  appeal has much to do with nostalgia for the good times under Bill Clinton and  not being Obama. However, she is vested in the Obama Presidency and a lot depends on what happens in Obama's second term; she'll no doubt have to defend the Benghazi attack aftermath and any perceived short shrift in diplomatic security under her leadership, the vacillating reactions to the Arab uprising and unintended consequences thereof.

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Enya, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

Miscellany: 12/26/12

Quote of the Day
You can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.
Robert J. Sawyer

Earlier One Off Post: Jackass of the Year  2012

Heartbreaking Facts of the Day

In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother.

 Nicholas D. Kristof, "Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy":
Thumbs UP!

A social liberal columnist finally understands the morally corruptible nature of certain social policies:

Parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way. Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Some young people here don’t join the military (a traditional escape route for poor, rural Americans) because it’s easier to rely on food stamps and disability payments.

A Prayer for GHW Bush

Courtesy of ABC

As I write, former President Bush 41 is reportedly in intensive care with a high fever, and his family is at the hospital. My thoughts and prayers  are with the President and his family.

Nanny of the Year

Expletive deleted.



1.8 Cents For Your Thoughts

And it costs only one penny more (a dime) to make a quarter than a nickel. Only the government could run an operation like this.



Political Humor

Don't tell me words don't matter. Quick, Mr. Obama: name 5 allies that aren't particularly close, strong or which fight below their weight class (like, say, the US and Grenada)



Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Vienna Boys Choir, Little Town of Bethlehem

Jackass of the year 2012

Barack Obama

Joe Biden

I have held my tongue far too long. This is the fourth "official" mock JOTY (a play on words: the donkey is the Dem mascot and it's meant to address egregious behavior).

What have Obama and Biden done to qualify? First, we had the 4 debates. Joe's laughing, smirking and interrupting were so blatant that even liberal SNL spoofed him. Obama wasn't much better: you could create a college drinking game with how many times he obnoxiously smirked. 

Then there's flat-out dishonesty where  moderator Candy Crowley threw a flag on Romney's criticism of the Administration's initial public response to the Benghazi consulate attack, falsely asserting (so much to Obama's delight that he asked her to repeat what she just said) Obama had called it an act of terrorism in a Rose Garden speech. I carefully parsed the speech and found clear reference to the Youtube video controversy (as Susan Rice continued to stress over the weekend). The "acts of terror" referred to 9/11/01, and the context was that just as we didn't let 9/11 go unanswered, we would work with the Libyan government to bring the killers, NOT the  terrorists, to justice, that the abhorrent video did not justify the use of deadly force. Obama's speechwriters, of course, don't meet the writing standards of this blog. Obama knew Crowley had misread his speech, but he was more interested in scoring political points than to standing up to Romney on his own. He utterly failed a test of integrity and character.

When Romney paid a courtesy post-election visit to the White House, the White House put out a curious release calling him a good businessman. It came across to me as odd  for a number of reasons: he hasn't worked in business since 1999; he won about half the states and is a former governor, and the Obama campaign spent all summer attacking him as an outsourcer, offshorer, tax evader, and predatory investor.

I viewed the reelection campaign as unworthy of the American people. He constantly promoted and claimed undue credit for the killing of UBL, he took credit for leaving Iraq {when in fact Bush negotiated the withdrawal schedule and Obama was trying to extend it, and failed to negotiate a residual force). As a Senator and Presidential candidate, he argued against a debt ceiling increase and vowed to cut Bush's deficits in half. He has promoted his job growth record. although he cherry-picks a starting point well into his term, he'll be lucky if we get to break-even for his term (and we need a net of over a million new jobs per year just to accommodate new workers), we have had one of the weakest jobless recoveries in American history, many of the new jobs are part-time and/or temporary, and dips in the unemployment rate have more to do with discouraged unemployed workers no longer counting in official statistics: the lowest labor force participation rates in decades.

Obama has utterly failed to fulfill his promises of a post-partisan Washington, having in fact attacked SCOTUS during a subsequent State of the Union address, he failed to embrace Simpson-Bowles, and he reportedly has threatened to attack Republicans in his inaugural address and State of the Union address if they don't capitulate to his demands over the fiscal cliff. Never mind a key stumbling block is a ideologically based refusal to extend already too high upper division rates, which not only would fail to make more than a  down payment on new deficits, it would take away resources to save, invest and consume in the real economy.

Obama is unduly defensive (I've seen spoof counts of Obama using "I" or "we" and George Will references it here) He sets up straw men of outright distortion (he called Bush an "ideological deregulator": regulations actually grew under Bush, and financial deregulation took place under Clinton); he  makes reference to the long discredited notion of social darwinism, he blames the economic tsumami on laissez-faire policies, when in fact Bush was hardly a free market guy (e.g., steel tariffs) and expanded entitlements. He also is inflexible in negotiations: he engaged in power politics in steamrolling the 2009 stimulus. ObamaCare and financial reform without any substantive attempts to compromise. He is also in a state of denial: after more than 30 speeches on ObamaCare, he attributed the bill/law's persistent unpopularity to his failure to find the right words, not that the people understood and rejected the policy. The "elections have consequences" rhetoric comes across like a schoolyard taunt and unworthy of a national leader; Obama lost over 20 states in both elections; there is a reason the GOP has won control of the House for 2 consecutive elections. I have seen absolutely no acknowledgment of Obama of this fact or a sincere attempt to seek accommodation in leading a divided government.

Obama has failed to show real leadership. we have. by some estimates, over $80T in actual debt and unfunded liabilities, and Obama has failed to propose a single substantive attempt  to control the 60% of the budget on entitlements. In fact, he has failed to submit a credible budget, he has procrastinated on expiring Bush tax cuts for the second time in 3 years and the debt limit crisis. For the most part, he has settled for cheer-leading from the sidelines during legislative sausage making versus proposing his own

Finally, there were a couple of relevant  incidents during the campaign that influenced my selection, both from Virginia campaign appearances. There was the Obama Roanoke "you didn't build that" moment, where Obama attempted to co-opt individual achievement. Then Biden said Romney 'will  put you all back in chains', a particularly incendiary message in a former Confederate state.

Miscellany: 12/25/12 Blessed Christmas!

Kissing the Face of God, Morgan Weistling
Prints available here
Inspired by a verse of "Mary, Did You Know?"

Quote of the Day
Listen to the passion of your soul, 
set the wings of your spirit free; 
and let not a single song go unsung.
Sylvana Rossetti

A Mini Rant

I wrote an earlier rant on Christmas with an ironic title. I was glancing through Google Images for more religious paintings but I ran into hundreds of images of winter themes, Santa Claus, family get-togethers, etc. I hardly encountered so much as a single Nativity scene along the way. Granted. it may have been an artifact of my search. I don't mind secular hits like "Sleigh Ride" and "White Christmas"; I just don't think finding a religious image for Christmas should be like panning for gold. My favorite card I purchased? I found a take on Michelangelos' The Creation of Adam with a mother's finger touching her baby's hand.

British Kids' Christmas Lists

#1. a new baby brother or sister
#10. Dad
#23. Mum

I hope their wishes come true.

The fact the Government Screws Up Emergencies

For real life-headlines worthy of The Onion, one needs look no further  than the doings of the U.S. government and its agencies. One week after Hurricane Sandy devastated the New York area, with a new storm on the way and almost 10,000 Staten Islanders still without power and scavenging for food, “FEMA Center Closed Due to Bad Weather” hung on the door of a newly-opened Staten Island FEMA office. Ten FEMA offices in the disaster-stricken area actually closed as the second storm hit.

What's that, you say? While the mainstream media was gushing over Barack "I've Got Other People's Money" Obama, posing days before the election for every photo opp he could find, including a faux "bipartisan" spot with Chris Christie, you didn't see a photo opp with Obama meeting and greeting FEMA employees in the empty Staten Island office? You would expect "fair and balanced" news coverage to at least cover government failure? Keep in mind this wasn't an unexpected earthquake or tornado: the Northeast knew for days they were going to get hit. And not to mention in the aftermath of Katrina, a monumental failure of city and state government (failing to evacuate citizens at risk), where suppliers trying to get into New Orleans were hobbled by law enforcement.

The idea that some central planners in Washington and impersonal, overpaid, tenured bureaucrats can improve over a community vested in its own  recovery and not tied to a slerotic bureaucracy is hubris. Just like senior citizens managed to live and get medical care before the government established and failed to fund unsustainable entitlements, earlier local disasters were handled without federal meddlers, without Brownie doing a heck of a good job. Earle in the above link runs the gamut of key pre-FEMA American disasters, when local and state  governments weren't trying to socialize losses through Uncle Sam.

Great Moments in Public Planning

In the past I've cited one of my favorite papal anecdotes:

 Pope John XXIII had a warm, down-to-earth sense of humour. One time a new building had to be constructed on Vatican grounds. The architect submitted the plans to His Holiness, who shortly afterward returned them with these Latin three Latin words written in the margin: "Non sumus angeli", that is to say "We are not angels." The architect and his staff were non-plussed as to what the Pope meant, until finally someone noticed the plans did not include bathrooms.

One of the problems of the DC Metro system is no public restrooms. I remember I went to see a niece in a college concert at night and almost everything was closed near the exit. I also am familiar with the BART system in the Bay Area. Oracle had leased some corporate apartments in Emeryville  while I was on an Oakland project back in 1998.

Public escalator problems are notorious.  I think I've embedded a relevant video or two from reason.com. But somehow I didn't catch the unique BART SF problem initially reported during the summer:

BART has 179 escalators in its 44 stations. In May, the escalator availability was just 78 percent for street and 91 percent for platform escalators. During the first week of June, a record 28 escalators were out of service. Age - many of BART's escalators are more than 40 years old - causes parts to deteriorate and fail more frequently. Most transit agencies, including BART, now buy heavy-duty escalators that cost about $1 million each

Five of the nine escalators that weren't working at BART stations on Wednesday were in downtown San Francisco. The bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves. The problem is tough to combat, especially with so few downtown public restrooms open late, BART authorities said. When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team.

Political Humor



Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

The Priests/Luciano Pavarotti/Celtic Woman, "Adeste Fideles".  I wanted to give different takes. including female voices. For me, Pavarotti will always be "The Voice". I initially intended to choose Bing Crosby's version but I wanted a version with harmony, and the Celtic Woman version was more of a very nice solo performance (not those exquisite harmonies on Hark the Herald), so I chose the Priests.

Miscellany: 12/24/12 Christmas Eve

Courtesy of the Cardinal Newman Society

Quote of the Day
Love conquers all.
Virgil

I'm Dreaming of Having a White Christmas

Of all ironies, I went to take out the trash while AMC was playing "White Christmas" and found myself pelted with big wet snowflakes....



Jack Klugman: RIP

I think the funniest sitcom episode I've ever seen was when Oscar came home to find neat freak roommate Felix has replaced all the old furniture and wall hangings for an edgy new clock (as i can recall, a jumble of dots) everybody else can read, and a chair like a hand.I think it's this third-season episode (I couldn't find a Youtube video):

Take My Furniture, Please has a terrific new "modern art" look for the apartment, circa 1973 (when Oscar sits in a chair shaped like a hand, he says, "I feel like an M&M.")

Of course, Jack did other film and series work (Quincy), but I thought He was brilliant in his signature role as Oscar Madison.





Natural Gas Protectionism

To be fair, it's not just Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden and Congressmen Ed Markey whom are economics illiterate. Populist conservative Bill O'Reilly has done the same in the attempt to suppress exports of oil products while he saw related retail prices going up. No doubt he thought exports were some sort of conspiracy to drive up prices through artificial domestic shortages. (Among other things, Americans already pay some of the lowest prices in the world, American refineries in a global shortage of refineries also process foreign-owned oil, and we still import half our supplies...)

The argument is familiar: we are now at the lowest prices of a decade (see below chart); you might be under the impression that energy companies must be minting a fortune--but you would be wrong. As of the date of this post, the ETN GAZ, unlike the rest of the market, has dropped 30% in value over the past year..

Courtesy of ChartProphet/Seeking Alpha

Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek  has written a very good commentary on the issue here. But let me rephrase it differently: why would/should we be willing to agree to natural gas exports? First, there is an economy of scale issue: I still recall paying over $1000 to buy one of the first VHS recorders on the market. Within 2-3 years, people were paying a mere fraction of my cost. I bought a copy of The Sound of Music for over $70, a multiple of what you would pay today for a special-edition DVD. I did not have buyer's remorse; with a large base for content, I got to buy other titles at low prices If you limit customers to a mere sliver of the world's population, what incentive do producers have to invest in new exploration and infrastructure? We will participate in lower costs from scale and deployment of newer, more efficient technology. Moreover, if Americans were paying world commodity prices, what incentives would producers have for exporting natural gas? Not to mention more exports drive up the demand for dollars, which  makes imports cheaper, benefiting consumers and producers using imported resources or components. (Boudreaux cites a report showing a negligible effect of natural gas exports on domestic prices.)

Judge Napolitano Interview: Taxes, Abortion and More

In this interview Napolitano makes reference to being a traditionalist Catholic; another Catholic libertarian I've embedded videos of, Tom Woods, is also a traditionalist.(Many Catholic scholars consider a libertarian perspective inconsistent with Catholic social teachings. See here for a bibliography of Woods and his critics.) I believe former GOP Presidential contender Rick Santorum is also a traditionalist.

I am sympathetic with traditionalist Catholics (I have a warm regard for the Latin Mass, various rites and rituals): I think the Church has been too accommodating to the culture, to be "relevant" and matters of faith and morals have been subordinated to secular humanism and the culture; one salient incident was at UH Newman: there is a part of the Nicene creed "for us men and for our salvation", The word "men" is generic: the Church has always recognized  female saints. But I remember at least one of the priests refused to say "men" during Mass, and one Sunday I picked up the missal to follow the Mass (mostly for the readings) when I noticed some ideological feminist decided to scribble out in ink all male generic references.  I thought it was pathetic, judgmental, petty, intellectually vapid, and reflective of presentist bias. For me, this subordinates the Church to the god of politically correct nonsense. This does not mean I don't have differences with the Church, which I consider incompetent on economic and political issues. I think the Church underestimates the moral corruption intrinsic to statist social legislation and confounds means with ends. Sermons generally failed to address a prayerful lifestyle, sin and personal accountability.

I have written in this blog I thought I had a vocation to the priesthood. But the final straw (beyond the fact I liked dating young women) was a Mass at UT I attended where the priest gave a sermon building on Olivia Newton John's hit "Have You Ever Been Mellow". (In contrast, my Uncle Roger is a real priest.)

I can't speak for the others, but the Church has lost something since Vatican II. It's like when Coke decided to pull traditional Coke in favor of new Coke, like it or not, one of the dumbest moves in the history of business (although Coke quickly worked itself back to the original formula). I was young during the years following Vatican II. I liked the Latin Mass which had been said all over the world for centuries. I liked the old disciplines. There are reasons that weekly Mass attendance has dropped to approximate figures among Protestants. New Mass/Church isn't working out too well. I find the principles of free market et al. totally consistent with Catholicism.



Brain Cancer Patient 7yo Connor Meets Wrestling Idol

Connor Michalek.cut a promo (first video) to meet favorite wrestler WWE tag team champion Daniel Bryan, including Bryan's "No! No! No!" gimmick





Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

The Priests, "Silent Night"

Miscellany: 12/23/12

Quote of the Day
Pray that you will never have to bear 
all that you are able to endure.
Jewish saying

Just a Reminder: 
I published my Man of the Year Post Yesterday

The Piece of Work in the Oval Office

I only rarely use profanity, which I won't do in this blog, but this hack doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Here's a clue, Obama : second-term midterms usually aren't good for incumbents. We cannot continue to spend 40 cents on the dollar we don't have; government spending money that is being taken away from the private sector. In the real economy companies can't run up tens of trillions of debt and unfunded liabilities, most companies would have gone to layoffs, put projects on hold, cut training and travel budgets, etc.

The Republicans have to be the grown-ups in the room--and politically it takes a lot more political courage to talk about cutting budgets (and taking on the wrath of those addicted to Uncle Sam's teats or conferred privileges). The Demagogue-in-Chief is already reverting to his "elections have consequences" crap, as if he refuses to acknowledge he barely beat a man whom is part of the fabled 1% and whom the majority of voters preferred on the economy. Here are relevant excerpts from the WSJ on the fiscal cliff negotiations:

Another factor was what Republicans saw as President Obama's unwillingness to bend when a deal was in sight, jamming the speaker with a deal his party couldn't swallow.

Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn't reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?"

"You get nothing," the president said. "I get that for free."

Brett Loper, the speaker's top policy aide, prodded White House officials to look for tax revenue elsewhere. In phone calls and meetings, he steered them to tax shelters and suggested limiting deductions for tax-exempt municipal bonds.

The president repeatedly reminded Mr. Boehner of the election results: "You're asking me to accept Mitt Romney's tax plan. Why would I do that?" 

The White House's first formal offer, presented Nov. 29 left Mr. Boehner incredulous. It included a request for $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenue over 10 years, a permanent increase in the debt ceiling and money for road projects and other year-end priorities. In return it offered spending cuts of $400 billion—25 cents for each dollar in new revenue.

Mr. Boehner said he wanted a deal along the lines of what the two men had negotiated in the summer of 2011 in a fight over raising the debt ceiling. "You missed your opportunity on that," the president told him.

On the call, Mr. Boehner restated he needed $1 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue raised. He dropped a prior demand to increase the Medicare eligibility age.

On Friday afternoon, the president spoke to both Mr. Boehner and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid in a bid to resurrect a deal. Soon afterward he left the White House for his annual family vacation in Hawaii.

Where to start; remember Sowell's quip it's like being a mosquito in a nudist colony? First of all, Mr. Obama:  the only way you get renewal of middle class tax cuts is through the GOP. Threaten to make inaugural or State of the Union address partisan events? Any hopes of bipartisan cooperation during a second term would be done. It would be a politically suicidal move on Obama's part.

Remember all the idiotic voices from the Obama campaign raising the point of Romney rejecting (in a GOP debate) even a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to each incremental new tax dollar? That was a variant of the question: how much would it take for you to agree to sleep with me. Romney would have loved to have had a 10:1 deal with the majority Democratic legislature in Massachusetts. During the campaign, I believed that Obama was talking a 2-3:1 deal--but here he offers a 25 cents to $1 deal? Is he out of his mind?

The bit about Boehner offering to streamline higher income deductions to get more taxes from higher income people?  Why would Obama take it given it was in Romney's plan? This was a CONCESSION from Romney to get more revenue from upper income taxpayers without the adverse effects of raising marginal rates? Why use this approach? Because when you  increase tax rates on income you get less income: supply and demand.

The bit about Obama deciding to pull the debt ceiling negotiation framework off the table and telling Boehner he gets no spending cut concessions for putting $800B in tax revenues on the table? Talk about bad faith negotiations on the part of Obama. I didn't see a single credible concession from Obama in the entire discussion. What I see is an immature jerk rubbing in his electoral victory which came with ZERO MANDATE

This is not a game, and Obama is playing dice with America's future. There aren't enough rich people to pay Obama's bills. Romney won nearly half the votes in the election--not just the upper 1%.  Obama needs to understand WHY he came close to losing this election. There is already talk of replacing the Speaker--one whom will not be inclined to give Boehner-like concessions. Obama needs to make this a win-win situation; his whole second term is at risk Polls are fickle. If the economy turns south, the people will blame Obama, not Boehner. He spent this term blaming Bush over his own performance failures and he's going to spend his second term blaming the House Speaker?

It's not about you, Mr. Obama; it's about the nation's business. Grow a pair, and show some constructive leadership for a real change.

Every Step You Take: I'll be Watching You

The creepy stalker is the public school bureaucrat. more worried  about getting moolah for the student going to classes versus the student getting lost in classes. Let's hope that the technology isn't hijacked to track potential victims.



Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Granted, the Fed is not the only party at fault for the economic tsunami. The Congress and Presidents put pressure on lenders to lend to low-collateral, higher-risk prospective homeowners, there were/are generous tax incentives, the GSE's were using federally guaranteed money to buy non-traditional loans,  etc.



Occasionally the Good Guys Win One



Follow-up to below story from Creative Loafing Atlanta (my edits):

In 2009, then-Mayor Shirley Franklin outsourced the city's public-vending program to UK-LaSalle, a subsidiary of General Growth Properties, one of the nation's largest mall operators. Under the deal, LaSalle would install and rent kiosks. In July 2011, Larry Miller and Stanley Hambrick, two vendors who sold t-shirts outside Turner Field, filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court with the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that's mounted a crusade to against unfair vending laws. The vendors' lawyers claimed that kiosk rental cost ranged between $500 to $1,600 each month - much higher than the $250 licensing fee that vendors paid under the old system.

In a four-page order issued [Dec 21], Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shawn LaGrua said the city "exceeded the powers granted to it" in its charter by "creating an unauthorized exclusive franchise." Therefore, the judge ruled, the law and contract with GGP is "void and without effect."

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Salvatore Adamo & Celine Dion, "O Holy Night". I think this is not an actual duet but probably a dream duet mix (sometimes mixes have a way of coming to life, like the DJ whom spliced together Streisand and Diamond on the latter's song, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers"). I'm not familiar with Adamo or other European singers whom haven't had cross-over success on the US charts. I was always confused why Celine, a French-Canadian whose first hit was in French, did an all-English version of a traditional French song. I'm a huge Celine fan, but for some reason Youtube won't allow some of her material (especially French) to be played in the States. I have featured Minuit, Chrétiens/Cantique de Noël in prior year selections (my mom loved the ones I found).

Miscellany: 12/22/12

Quote of the Day
It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes 
and to make amends for them.
John J. McCloy

Earlier One-Off Post: Man of the Year 2012

Religious Liberty and the American Principles Project

Last Wednesday, the DC Court of Appeals reinstated a dismissed case (thumbs UP!)  by two religious affiliated institutions, Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College,  against HHS on the controversial mandatory birth control benefit. (HHS has promised a rule with relevant exceptions but has procrastinated.)



On Dysfunctional Local Government

A Virginia tree farmer whose wife is a cancer survivor was trying to sell (for donations) Christmas trees in his front yard when the local zoning officials shut him down. (He was raising money for cancer patient wigs, e.g., during chemotherapy.) In the video below, LA law enforcement essentially hassled a long-time burger outlet out of existence.



Down that Slippery Slope....

A defense reconciliation bill  dropped a Feinstein amendment which rules out indefinite detention for American residents (thumbs DOWN!)

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Celtic Woman, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". Technically I think this is a new release. I sought it out because I heard a snippet of their  glorious chorus harmony on a late-night ad. Flat out, the best version of the song I've ever heard (I've had it on auto-repeat for the past hour--my latest digital purchase, highly rcommended). How do you make a familiar song your own? These ladies manage to do it--a distinctive  harmony  and, oh my God, that soaring soprano. The song itself (not this version) plays a major part in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

Man of the Year 2012

The Year of Monetary/Fiat Currency Meddlers

• Central Bankers

• Ben Bernanke, US Fed Chief

Courtesy of Google

• Mario Draghi, ECB Chief

Courtesy of Google

 National Leaders

• Shinzo Abe, incoming Japanese PM

Courtesy of Google

•   Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentinian President

Courtesy of Google

•  Hu Jintao, President, People's Republic of China

Courtesy of Google

While Time website voters chose the latest descendant of North Korea's fusion Communist monarchy and its insipid, self-deluding editorial board chose Barack Obama for the second time in 5 years, putting lipstick on a pig of his dismal record (skipping by his more than doubling the public-held debt, the first credit downgrade in US history, his failure to produce a viable budget or address out-of-control entitlement spending, his utter lack of proactive leadership (e.g., his procrastination on expiring tax cuts in 2010 and 2012 and on the debt ceiling last year), material policy failures (e.g., civil liberties, climate change and immigration), his expanding, unsustainable  house of cards of government meddling in health care, i.e., ObamaCare (disingenuously promoted as "deficit-reducing" using accounting gimmicks like cost-shifting and double counting), responsibility for the trillion dollar college student loan bubble, the lowest labor force participation rate (for which he has no response except excuses and finger-pointing), "financial reform" which implements a crowning jewel of crony capitalism, "too big to fail",  escalating drone attacks and meddling in the Middle East, more than doubling American casualties in Afghanistan, and much more).

Is the emperor wearing clothes? We now seem to be in the age of the printing press. This is NOT a turn for the better: fiat currency is faux wealth; it  is simply a medium for exchange--it doesn't create goods or services, the real economy. The absolutely last thing we need is a vicious cycle of "beggar thy neighbor", in a race to the bottom, to export a country back to prosperity on the backs of other countries' consumers. The same holds true of rigging interest rates; artificially low rates encourage malinvestments and punish saving and future consumption. But the real problem with government printing is the loss of purchasing power and/or ruinous inflation.

Being named in this post is no honor but it reflects power and influence over an economy;  that power is intrinsically illusory, wrong-headed, anti-consumer and disastrous in the long term. I believe in free markets and the free market, including floating currencies. Monetary policies create uncertainty and obfuscate business decision making. The above list is not intended to be exhaustive, but illustrative. I will briefly comment on each leader.

Ben Bernanke is listed for the this "honor" a second year in a row. Why? Among other things, Bernanke has been a beneficiary as foreign investors have looked for the safety of the world's reserve currency in the midst of the European crisis.  However, Bernanke has vowed to maintain quantitative easing (bond-buying) and indefinitely keep interest rates near zero for most of Obama's Presidency, well below the core rate of inflation, at least until official unemployment is 6.5%. (In part, Bernanke is hoping that the real interest rate below zero will get savers to spend or invest rather than risk further real erosion of their savings: he himself takes credit for stock market growth. In tact, bargain-basement mortgage rates have boosted the home builder sector. However, China and Japan, the largest foreign holders of US debt, have shown little appetite for buying new Treasury debt, leaving the Fed to pick up the slack, essentially monetizing the debt.

Draghi is extending some of the same Fed powers and policies in a European context. The ECB has gained supervisory oversight of European banks and  motivated by investor reluctance to buy Italian and Spanish government debt,

The ECB had long resisted using its most powerful tool—its printing press—to save struggling European governments from the debt crisis. The Bundesbank, Germany's influential central bank, warned of dark consequences if the ECB tried that. Now Mr. Draghi, the ECB's Italian chief, was signaling that it would defy its biggest shareholder .By agreeing to create money to purchase struggling countries' debt without limit, the ECB has ushered in the decisive phase of Europe's battle to save the euro. 

Shinzo Abe has vowed to weaken the yen to bolster Japanese exports and snap the Japanese economy out of its generation-long deflationary slump. (Of course, be careful of what you wish for: inflation hurts consumers, bondholders, and costs of doing business including imported commodities in a country with limited natural resources, especially energy, and other goods.)

I have criticized President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on multiple occasions. Persistent high double-digit inflation has resulted in major protests; the government has been publishing unrealistically high GDP numbers, low inflation numbers and criminalizing independent, higher numbers, exacerbating tensions with the IMF.

I'm not engaging in China bashing in the pegged currency manipulations. (In essence in a trade imbalance, the demand for yuan exceeds the supply .To satisfy the demand the Chinese central bank prints yuan and buys dollars; it has then used dollars to purchase interest-bearing US Treasury bonds (among other things). To control domestic inflation, it sells domestic bonds. See also here.  Peter Schiff has a very good relevant essay here.) But by manipulating the market the Chinese pay more than they should for imported resources and consumers are worse off. The Chinese economy succeeds despite of, not because of central planning and political monopoly.

Miscellany: 12/21/12

Quote of the Day
Courage does not always roar. 
Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 
"I will try again tomorrow".
Anonymous

We're Still Here...

I first saw this spoof in one of my emails and found a copy loaded on at least one website. Note there is no forecast for tomorrow. The History Channel was running related apocalyptic specials yesterday, and FX ran the movie "2012". There is a touch of an iconoclast in my character; I remember the Y2K fear-mongering  which I knew was overblown but even won then Fed Chief Greenspan's attention; a DBA I worked with was a survivalist; ;he's probably still eating from his food stockpile

No doubt all attention will now turn for the annual predictions of such worthy items as the gender of Prince William's unborn child. People believe in all sorts of nonsense, like Obama can stop the seas from rising and heal the earth--or that some career politician with no administrative experience or knowledge of business or economics--can "fix" the economy.

Courtesy of atheistnexus.org

NRA Chief Blames Culture, 
Wants Armed Security for Schools:
Thumbs DOWN!

Have we learned NOTHING from the massive, overly expensive overreaction from 9/11? We have lost more men in Afghanistan and Iraq than people lost on 9/11. Over a trillion of that $16T debt spent on nation building. We have seen individual rights trampled by the TSA and/or various government agencies.

No, there are diminishing returns, and manpower is very expensive. I don't want to convert schools into de facto prisons. There are ways to harden school access points just like cockpits, redundant/layered security layers, improved surveillance and alarms, screening employees, and improved profiling (e.g., loner young men).

Blaming the culture seems to suggest some sort of unconstitutional censorship and I don't believe there are credible studies establishing such a link. In the Newtown tragedy, we are dealing with a mentally ill young man, and I didn't see a takeaway addressing the point.

Former Presidential Nominee John Kerry 
Nominated for Secretary of State: Thumbs UP!

As a college student, Kerry had a keen interest in foreign policy and was skeptical of American empire-building. He has met with foreign leaders like Syria's Assad and currently serves as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.






Beating a Dead Horse

I have written several segments on the bogus claims that FDR's New Deal and/or WWII got us out of the Depression. (I have referenced and/or embedded relevant videos from Robert Higgs and Tom Woods on the topic. A 3-part Higgs lecture on the Great Depression and "Great Recession" is embedded below)   Why is this topic relevant? The short answer is  that Obama has plagiarized several pages from FDR's playbook: he has ludicrously blamed an unfettered free market for the "great recession", a laissez-faire predecessor, added entitlements, favored unions versus business owners, championed infrastructure spending, jawboned SCOTUS, etc. while ignoring easy money policies of the Fed (and in fact giving the Fed more responsibility in "financial reform").

 





Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Classic Christmas Hits: Dean Martin Let it Snow- Bing Crosby White Christmas- Frank Sinatra Have Yourself Merry Little Christmas Nat King Cole Silent Night-Andy Williams Holy Night

Miscellany: 12/20/12

Quote of the Day
The future may be made up of many factors 
but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. 
Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain,
but unleashes your passion for our beloved country 
as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.
Li Ka Shing, Chinese Businessman

Well, if the World is Intact Tomorrow, Another Post

Ah, yes, the fabled Mayan prophecy signifying the end of an era--or perhaps the end of the world. I  do realize reelection of an incompetent, ineffective, divisive, spendthrift  President is one of the signs of the approaching Apocalypse: 6-6-6 is Herman Cain's 9-9-9 on its head...We have already undergone great tribulations, i.e., Obama's first term.

"Government Motors" No More? Romney Wins a Point

Obama has finally given up on the idea of break-even on GM, just like Chrysler's final settlement left taxpayers left the taxpayers over $1B in the hole. GM and the Obama Administration agreed for the Feds to give up 40% of its shares at a premium to current prices at $5.5B by month end.  The Feds also agreed to divest themselves of remaining shares by early 2014. Obama, like the incompetent, naive investor he is, was holding onto shares long enough to break even. This deal will leave the taxpayers at minimum  billions in the red.

Romney wanted the federal government to divest its ownership. I am happy to see divestment as a matter of principle.

"The auto industry rescue helped save more than a million jobs during a severe economic crisis," said Timothy Massad, Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability. 

Disingenuous self-serving crap. First, the auto industry is more than GM and Chrysler. Second, an earlier bankruptcy would have limited taxpayer exposure, and GM would have recovered faster without government meddling and crony unionist stipulations. But even if we assume GM was liquidated, Ford and American plants of foreign  companies, using domestic suppliers, would have gained market share and expanded hiring.

As far as I'm concerned, any settlement where the taxpayers are not made whole, GM will be "Government Motors"; selling the ownership stake is a necessary but insufficient step.

From the "Get a Life" File

I do not own a pet, which profoundly disappointed my first niece; my family had a cat when we lived in Florida (until she got pregnant) and my folks finally gave in to my siblings' pleas for a dog while I was in college. (It reminds me of how Mom broke the news of our final sibling: she phrased it like: what would you rather have: a puppy or a baby brother or sister. For the record, I voted for the sibling.) I only saw the dog on visits, but she liked me right away. One endearing moment: I was sprawled out in front of the TV in the living room, and she came in and laid down beside me, resting her head on top of my derrière as if to say I was her human (or maybe she was just looking for a big pillow...) Why haven't I gotten a pet of my own? It's a hassle in finding an apartment or traveling, but mostly I do or have done road warrior work, occasionally having to arrange for same-day flights (leaving sometimes for weeks or even months at a time). Having to deal with a pet was just another hassle--if I had a family or a significant other, it may be a different story. My maternal uncle, a priest, has a cat.

I mentioned in the past when I came home to my former apartment at night I was startled on a number of consecutive nights by a gorgeous black lab brushing against my legs. The apartment building was secure;  when I opened the door the first time he/she rushed past me, scampered down the stairs right in front of my apartment door, looking back at me impatiently as if to say, "Well, what are you waiting for?" He actually tried to get into my apartment. It was the oddest experience. He finally stopped after a week; but it was odd, like he was waiting for me to come home, but I had never seen the dog before; I didn't know who he belonged to, why he was loose in my neighborhood.  But the experience was so endearing, I know what dog I want to get.

I'm sure that the city councilman has good intentions, but artificially limiting a consumer's choices doesn't work; it is laudable when others adopt hard-to-place animals. But maybe I prefer to buy a particular breed, raise a dog from a puppy and/or don't want to deal with issues of formerly abandoned pets; I don't have to justify myself to an idiotic city councilman any more than I should have to explain why I might prefer to date a younger, never-married woman. Why would a pet store owner stock animals that animal shelters can't give away at nominal costs?   I'm not going to buy an animal I don't want.; if I had to, I would work around the law, e.g., procure my preferred animal from outside Los Angeles. This policy puts relevant LA businesses at a competitive disadvantage.



Karl Rove, "Boehner Plays a Weak Hand Well": 
Thumbs UP!

On election night I watched in fascination as Karl Rove on FNC got into an argument with FNC's technical team that called Ohio for Obama. I'm a big fan of Rove,  in terms of political street smarts (not as a political operative). To be honest, all election night I kept looking at county votes in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio. I knew Ohio was lost long before the call: Romney was running out of favorable counties and precincts. Rove was in a state of denial. Romney never led outside a statistical tie in the state, and Obama had a better ground game. (Rove was arguing the timing of the call, not the likely outcome.)

As I write, the Plan B (basically splitting off a new bracket starting at a million) was pulled because of not enough votes. I understand why my fellow conservatives didn't want to vote for a counterproductive tax increase, instead of allowing people to more efficiently consume, save or invest, require them to pay for wasteful, noncompetitive government spending, but with the Senate and White House stonewalling fiscal responsibility,  Boehner is holding a weak hand (and I think the Dems would face a backlash for turning down a deal to keep rates the same for people under a million and letting middle class taxes go up instead):

Now, after winning a second term, Mr. Obama appears content to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire in 11 days, confident he can blame Republicans and spend the next two years attacking them for the tax hike (while happily spending the new revenue). During his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama had pledged "$2.50 in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue increases.  Mr. Obama won't agree even to $1 in cuts for every $1 of revenue. His latest offer calls for $1.3 trillion in new revenues paired with the vague promise of $930 billion in future budget cuts. Mr. Obama's offer also wipes out the $972 billion in cuts agreed to in the July 2011 debt-ceiling deal and adds at least $80 billion in new stimulus spending.

Here is the contemptible Gray Lady spin:

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

First of all, this is written incompetently; the expiring cuts also include millionaires--and you could argue that a vote by BOTH Dems and a section of Republicans voted de facto for maintaining the status quo expiration on all the cuts for everyone: the real problem is he couldn't get enough Dems to offset objecting Republicans.  Second, Obama's RCP average approval is 53.7, only a 3-point bounce over his election; in contrast he was at 63 four years ago (a 10-point bump)  Obama's victory was hardly "decisive": he won Florida, Virginia, and Ohio by an eyelash and won several others by less than 5. Moreover, Romney soundly defeated Obama in the first debate, on economic policy, and exit polls on Election Day showed they preferred Romney on the economy; Obama won for a number of OTHER reasons: a superior ground game, the power of incumbency and saturation negative ads--but NOT tax hikes (certainly the 20% or so of ideological progressives believe this economic nonsense). The idea that a majority of Americans want to stick it to someone else's pocket is not only morally outrageous and proof of economic illiteracy,  it's discriminatory theft,  unconstitutional at its core. If these hypocrites believe in Big Government, they should pay for it out of their own pockets, not out of others' with no control over how their confiscated income is spent.

Will they really blame Republicans when in fact the Dems voted in Bush's second term against making the tax cuts permanent? I don't think so; If the economy sinks into recession, it won't be the GOP voters blame--it will be Obama: trust me, recessions erode approval ratings. If Obama believes expiration of tax cuts may cause a problem, instead of playing a game of Russian roulette, he would stop playing games and accept Boehner's deal versus score ideological points. Obama is not seriously negotiating; he's demanding capitulation.

At this point, if I was Boehner, I would ask conservatives to pass the bill which puts Reid and Obama on the spot (granted, tax hikes are counterproductive: this has more to do with making the best of a weak hand); will Obama really veto a tax cut extension affecting most taxpaying  middle class people? I double-dog dare him. There's no way in hell I support what Rove outlined as Obama's offer, which is not serious.

Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective

Classic Christmas Hit Mix: Andy Williams It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Nat King Cole The Christmas Song - Bing Crosby Do You Hear What I Hear - Bing Crosby The Little Drummer Boy - Frank Sinatra I'll Be Home For Christmas