Category Archives: Opinion

KRUGMAN’S KIND OF KOMMON SENSE

Paul Krugman, Laureate of the Sveriges Riksban...

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Justice Samuel Alito is a Princeton graduate and very proud of it. Nevertheless, if memory serves me right, he said he heard more common sense when talking to one man in the street than he heard from all the Princeton elites. Personally, I suspect the judge must have been thinking of Joe the Plumber and Paul Krugman at the time.

In a recent column in the New York Times, Krugman writes that we are seeing “what happens when influential people exploit a crisis rather than try to solve it.” Shades of Rahm Emmanuel and his “We must not let this crisis go to waste”? Not at all. That would be common sense. In Krugman’s Princetonian mind, unemployment is the crisis, more debt is the solution and opposing debt is exploitation. If you find that confusing, it’s because you have common sense.

Standard & Poor warned that if something wasn’t done to curb the federal debt it could lead to a reduction of the credit rating. When an agreement was reached that prompted an immediate increase in debt with no more than promises to reduce spending the stock market took a plunge. Every householder knows that a credit rating is based on a combination payment history and outstanding debt. But as Krugman sees it, when the markets tanked, they “were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem.” In other words, to improve your credit rating you must increase your debt.

The elite economist closes with “The usual suspects will, of course, denounce such ideas as irresponsible.” No, Paul, such ideas are not irresponsible, they’re just plain stupid. Have you no common sense?

WARREN BUFFET IS AT IT AGAIN

C’mon Warren, tell the whole story. The only reason your net tax rate is so low is because most of your income is from stock dividends. Your salary puts you in the top tax bracket which is 28% and that is what you are paying on your wages. Tell it like it is.

TWO CORPORATE JET MAGNATES

The money that’s paid to you in dividends is taxed at 35% before you even get it. Then you are taxed another 15% on the same money. The government is getting half of the profit the business makes. Isn’t that enough? It’s in the same ballpark as many other countries although they collect it differently. Some tax all 50% at the corporate level and take none from the investor. Others take all 50% from the investor and nothing from the corporation on money they pay out in dividends. In the latter case your bottom line taxes would be nearly 50%. In either case the money collected by the government is the same.

Quit your squawking and do more of what your buddy Bill Gates does. Give more of your embarrassment of riches directly to good causes like hospitals, schools and centers for medical research. By-pass the middle man. Your money will go farther. None of it will be siphoned off for political corruption and you can choose what you want to support. If Obama loses the next election your tax money will be managed by Republicans. Is that really what you want?

WHITE HOUSE REMOVES JERUSALEM FROM ISRAEL

Supreme Court of Israel, Jerusalem. Taken from...

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By now, any knowledgeable person knows that the Obama White House is no friend of Israel. Jerusalem is a holy city to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. Wkikpedia states that Jerusalem is the largest city in Israel. There is no reason to doubt the Obama administration acknowledges its size. But they don’t seem to know where it is.

THE FRUITS OF LIBERALISM – LONDON BRIDGES FALLING DOWN

Burning busses, overturned cars, smashed windows and spoiled upper class youths joining in with grown up feral children gone wild. Jolly Old England may still be old but the Brits have lost their jollies. Socrates would have you answer the question, why? The UK Daily Mail responds:

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters.

And that’s just the headline. If I were still a headline editor, I would have changed brutalized to brutalizing. The paper went on to suggest:

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies. Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.

A wee bit of translation is in order for American readers. Brummies are people from the city of Brumfield or its environs. The definition of a Scouser is less obvious. A Scouser is someone from Liverpool; from either side of the river Mersey qualifies. These are middle class areas known for the fierce pride of their citizens.

People who are proud of their accomplishments do not seek to destroy the source of their pride. Youths who are proud of their nation and neighborhood are not given to trashing them. Liberal dogma in Britain has created a welfare state and a world without these prides.

How many of the rioters vote is an open question. But there can be little question about which party they would support.

DON’T BUY GOLD

Now is the time to buy ____________ (fill in the blank). Everyone is buying it. Big profits are being made. The prices just keep rising. It’s a hard asset, not a paper security. There is a limited supply.

Four years ago you would have filled in the blank with real estate. Today the word is gold. If you want to gamble, go ahead. Gold is a better bet than Las Vegas. In the casinos, mathematical geniuses design the game so that you will lose. It’s called a “handle” and the handle is limited by law. There is no such machination in the gold market. But there is a broadly overlooked cost. It’s called the spread. Before you buy, ask the dealer how much he will pay to buy the gold you already have. Only then, ask the price you will be required to pay if you buy.

Now you know the spread – for today, — and provided the dealer gave an honest quote. When the market gets weak, the spread widens. When the market gets really bad the gap becomes a chasm.

There are just two reasons for investing in anything, current income or price increase. In the stock market, company shares pay dividends. In real estate there is rent to collect. These are sources of current income. How much income does a coin or bar of gold pay? None. With gold there is no current income. That leaves only price increase. The price of gold is set by fear. How do you predict if fear will be higher or lower when it’s time to sell? The amount of gold that goes into jewelry and industrial use is but a pitiful pittance of the total ounces of gold that trade every day. Gold is strictly a speculator’s commodity.

DEMOCRAT’S REMORSE

Garden variety Democrats are beginning to say in public what they have privately felt for quite some time. Barack Obama is failing as president. The thought that Hillary would have been a better choice is widespread. I wonder.

Hillary certainly outshines Obama on foreign policy matters but the plummeting of Obama’s star is tied to issues here at home. His bumbling abroad was of concern to conservatives but mostly taken in stride by Democrats. The two candidate’s agendas at home were much the same – government run health care, Cap & Trade, Card Check, more industry regulation and enhanced “entitlements”.

Nancy Pelosi would still have been running the house and Harry Reid would still be running the Senate. Instead of a president experienced in the application of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, we would have a president who wrote her doctoral thesis on the author and the teachings outlined in his book. There is a difference, but does it matter? The 60’s radicals would still be in control of all three of the branches of government that run the show.

And then there is the big question; would Hillary have been elected? Obama won handily and always held the lead, but a month or so before election day, the pollsters reported the race was getting close. It’s a safe assumption to say there was greater passion to elect the first black man to the presidency than the first woman. And Hillary didn’t have the slogan Hope and Change. The power of that theme cannot be underestimated. Intentionally vague, it was a blank check for fulfillment of your hopes and dreams whatever they may be.

Blaming the leader and not the system is as routine an act for the Left as breakfast in the morning. Eventually a point is reached where blaming the opposition is just not credible. The only reason Communism didn’t work in Russia was that Lenin and Stalin were corrupt and ineffective. Socialism works. It just has to be done right. That’s the unshakable belief.

Barack Obama did not initiate the decline of America that is taking place. But he is presiding over the culmination. Sometimes a disease has to get really serious before we will submit to the cure. In that sense, Obama may have done the country a service.

DOWN WITH TESTING IN SCHOOLS

Arne Duncan during Chicago Public Schools.

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No Child Left Behind was designed to improve the quality of education by allocating greater funds to schools that teach than to those that do not.  That statement is not as much of an over characterization of failing schools as one might think.

Giving support to schools that teach successfully enables the better schools to maintain and enhance standards and systems that are working.  Substandard schools are incented to improve.  Pouring more money into schools that are failing to educate their students benefits no one other than the incompetent school administrations.

To know where the money should go you need to know which schools are graduating educated students and which ones are just passing children through the system.  This is not a difficult assignment.  Test the students.

However:

(AP) – State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn’t answered the call.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.

Set a standard for improvement – then waive it.  Welcome to your government at work.  Secretary Duncan says the waivers will be granted to all 50 states.  No Child Left Behind is a program that was set up by the Bush administration and is now being undermined by the Obama administration.  Remember that the next time you hear a Democrat say the program is not working.

THERE IS A GOOD REASON WHY THE DEBT CEILING FIGHT WAS SO FIERCE

It was a bitter fight.  Thank God for the fight!  For without it the Democrats would have ratcheted the national debt even higher.

The reason the nation’s credit rating was reduced is because the federal government overspends and is deeply, very deeply,  in debt.  In defiance of all reason, the Democrats fought hard to increase spending and increase the level of debt.  Rick Santelli got it right when he said if it had not been for the Tea Party the nation’s credit rating would be BBB.  Thank God for the Tea Party!

Santelli may have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but then he may not.  What rating would you give to a family with an 80,000 annual income that is 501,000 dollars in debt?  Would you trust them more if they promised to cut a little spending, perhaps to 124,000  sometime in the near future,  but only if you agree to increase their line of credit immediately so they can spend more now?

The numbers in the table below are real. They were not pulled out of a hat.   See this prior post for an explanation of the family equivalent table.  Click on the table to enlarge it.


As long as Democrats control the Senate and the presidency the choice will be bitter word fights in Washington or deadly riots elsewhere as the money for “entitlements” runs out.  Thank God for the word fights.

P.S.
We are back.  The vacation was great.  Look for new posts.

SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND HAS NO RESERVES

W.C. Fields was on a long train ride one day and found himself sitting in the smoking car at the losing end of a few hands of poker. His chips had run out. His credit had reached the limit of trust his new found debtors were willing to extend. W.C. leaned back in the plush velvet parlor car chair and said, “I am going to do for you something I rarely do for a stranger. I am going to give you my IOU.”

In the case of Social Security the government takes your money, takes an equal amount from your employer and puts the sum of them both in a cookie jar called “The Trust Fund”. Then they take all the money out of the cookie  and spend it on such things as they see fit. Some of it is paid out to those already in retirement, some of it goes to building needed highways, some of it goes for earmarks that buy votes for favored politicians or as barter for the passage of bills. None of it stays in the cookie jar.

But the powers that be, lean back in their plush leather chairs and tell us not to worry. They have given us their IOU. They tell you it’s in a Trust Fund and invested in safe government securities. Imagine for a moment that you are concerned about the financial stability of a bank that was holding the assets upon which you are relying for retirement. Now I ask this question. What would be your reaction be if the bank president wrote a letter to you – not to worry, the bank has used the money to expand its business but your account is safely protected by IOUs from the bank? That is Social Security.

RAMBLINGS ON LAWYERS AND POLITICIANS

Two lawyers walk into a courtroom with their respective clients. The case is a bitterly contested civil lawsuit. The argument in court is vicious. It turns personal when the two advocates lambaste each others positions before the judge. Animosity runs high.

The trial ends. The verdict is rendered. A few days later the attorneys join each other for lunch. The atmosphere is friendly. Here they are friends. In the courtroom each played a role, each fulfilling his duty to his client. In the restaurant they are brothers in a profession.

There is an aspect of gamesmanship in the legal process that attorneys understand but their respective clients do not. And so it is in politics. Bush (the senior) and Clinton (the one named Bill) were fierce opponents in the court of politics and before the jury of voters. With the campaigns over and the terms in office concluded, they are but brothers in a profession.

Democracy is the courtroom. The press is the medium. We are the jury. Each side comes before us to plead their case. It can be vicious at times. But the players keep a healthy bit of detachment unseen by the public. For sanity’s sake, we all need to do the same, (once in a while).

Warning! Strong language.