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Rambling thoughts on who knows what... Because not everything is as the conventional wisdom would have it... BLOGS I SORT OF LIKE... Volokh Conspiracy ProfessorBainbridge MarginalRevolution Patterico Powerline Ace Wizbang JustOneMinute XRLQ Betsy's Page HE WHO USED TO LINK ME EVERY NOW AND THEN InstaPundit Email Steve
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Here's an idea that you can use to help some nice conservative bloggers make some money...
Google has a program where they place ads on different websites (saving the website owner the hassle of running their own ad placement program) and pay the website owner some amount of money when visitors click on the links. It's usually not a lot of money per click, but paraphrasing the expression, a few million clicks here, a few million clicks there and pretty soon we're talking really money. Now, for some strange reason, part of which I'll explain in a bit, Google's computing wizardry has decided to place ads from liberal outfits on conservative and conservative leaning websites. For example, I've seen ads for Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren on, if I remember correctly, National Review Online. I've seen ads for anti-(Wisconsin Republican Governor) Scott Walker ads on others. And so on. Now you might think that a conservative leaning visitor to a conservative leaning website would have no interest in clicking on an ad promoting some liberal politician or liberal cause, right? That placing the ad on these sites is a waste, right? Wrong. Google pays a bit of money to the web owner for each of those clicks. A conservative clicking on those ads helps take money out of the pocket of the liberal advertiser and helps put it into the pocket of the conservative who runs the site. It's a win-win. We win with every dime and quarter and dollar that the liberals have to cough up to Google... and we win with every dime and quarter and dollar that Google pays to the conservative site owners. While Google's exact methodology for placing ads is top secret and known only to a handful of geeks with multiple doctorates, what is known is that Google takes 'clicks' into account. The more clicks an ad receives, the more likely it will get additional exposure (not only on that site but on others that Google deems similar'). And the beauty is that Google really doesn't know (or cares) who is doing the clicking. To Google, a click is a click is a click, whether it is coming from a Newt Gingrich fan or someone who for some unfathomable reason actually buys into the liberal schtick. While Google does provide some tracking for what they call conversions (which is people doing more than just clicking, for example, providing an email address to the advertiser), a lot of advertisers don't utilize this tool effectively if at all... they look at clicks. So click away fellow conservatives. You're doing good. Sunday, January 15, 2012
It's probably good that I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek somewhere near 10 years ago... saves me the trouble of cancelling it this week.
And I guess this proves that Newsweek figures nobody on the right reads the magazine... you're not insulting your readers if you have no readers among those you've insulted. Thursday, January 12, 2012
I'm not generally in favor of government social programs, even those that purport to help people find jobs, but if we're going to spend money in this way, shouldn't we first try to help find jobs for those who haven't broken the law? Every twenty million dollars spent helping a felon find work is twenty million dollars that aren't available to help those who have played by the rules.
Monday, January 09, 2012
ALL of the discussion that is going on regarding Romney's time at Bain is irrelevant.
The question is NOT whether Bain was a net creator of jobs... or whether he made a bunch of money while some people lost their jobs. I'm not looking, nor should any other self-respecting conservative, for the President to 'create' jobs. For one thing, this plays into the myth of government as a creator of jobs. Second, it is used to justify the President playing favorites in doling out tax money to his cronies and contributors. Rather, I'm looking for a President who will create an environment in which businesses and entrepreneurs are willing and able to hire and expand their businesses. A President who understands the negative effects taxe hikes and regulations have on job creators and job creation. A President who knows that criticizing businesses isn't condusive to those businesses going out and increasing their work force. A President who understands that positions in his Administration shouldn't go to people who have a gutteral reaction to business and who seek to cripple the very businesses under their review. Granted, as someone who actually worked for a living, Romney is in a better position to understand that than our current President... but that isn't the discussion we're having. Romney needs to shift the focus from the specifics of his time at Bain to how he would use his experiences at Bain to help create a better environment for businesses... as opposed to Obama's demonizing of businesses to the point where we're sitting on our cash. With a notable exception, I don't believe Obama can point to a single instance of his Administration improving the business climate (the exception being his funnelling billions of dollars to the ill-fated green initiatives). Not only that, an aggressive challenger could point to instance after instance where Obama has made it tougher on busineses. Of course, Obama tries to paint this as a positive, that his regulations are there to protect the little guy from the big evil corporations. And maybe they have benefitted some number of people... but in doing so, they have hurt everybody else. That is the debate to have... and with its typical shortsightedness, the GOP isn't having it. Sunday, January 08, 2012
Today's winners of 'The Business Article Written By Someone Who Doesn't Understand The Subject' goes to Elisa Martinuzzi and Vernon Silver of their Washington Post for their badly written article about how the big bad banks are screwing small towns...
The subject is interest rate swaps a number of municipalities bought to (in these cases) change their fixed rate debt to a variable debt. And now that interest rates have supposedly skyrocketed, these towns are paying huge amounts of extra interest, so much so that it is wreaking havoc with the budgets of these fine towns. In response, while the reporters fail to make clear, interest rate swaps are gambling and anyone who has had a basic finance course know that. Since all but the teeniest municipalities have professional managers, presumably someone in the town management would not only have known that swaps are gambling but also the consequences of making a bad bet on the direction the markets would take. And yet the writers put all the blame on the banks and none on the towns who freely made these bets. Now, one might ask, why did they make these bets? For the same reason someone with a fixed rate loan might switch to a variable rate. You pay less (at least upfront) with a variable rate loan than with a fixed. Making such a decision isn't inherently stupid. Lots of people do it, and for any number of reasons. In the town featured in the story, the town trade the security of a fixed rate interest payment for the potential upside of a variable rate. As interest rates were lower at the time, that allowed the town to pay less in interest payments. The town administrators likely saw this as a way of boosting the town's bottom line without having to raise taxes or cut services. The downside is that if you bet wrong, you start paying more than you otherwise would have paid. The amount depends on when the interest rates move and the extent to which they move. Per the numbers in the article, the town was paying 4.7 percent on its fixed rate debts.... and what are rates now? Less than 4.7% percent. These towns are paying less money in interest now than they would have had they stood pat. So how does that cause these towns to have such problems? The answer: it doesn't. Even in the short period in which rates were higher than 4.7%, they only moved to 5.7%. A whopping 1 extra percent. On 22 million euros in debt, that 1 extra percent would have cost the town another 220,000 euros a year.... far from the huge amount the writers imply is responsible for all of the troubles that town is having. Since the extra interest doesn't seem to be high enough to cause such problem, my guess (and I have to guess because these crack reporters don't tell us) is that these towns were operating too close to the margin and had nothing to cushion a fall off in tax revenue when the recession hit. If true, that's the bank's fault? A minor aspect, but one the writers choose to emphasize is the bonuses paid to the salesmen. But while that (as would any incentive compensation system) might encourage them to be a big pushy, the amount of the bonus would have been a miniscule part of the overall payment these towns were making. Of course, if you're set on writing a piece to demonize the banks, go ahead and include these nuggets. And finally, the writers don't write about the towns who have used interest rate swaps to their advantage (such as locking in a fixed rate to guard against rate swings). But where's the fun in that, as it doesn't push the narrative, does it? You can't. Wednesday, January 04, 2012
I have two questions about Obama abusing the recess appointment power to appoint new members at the NLRB and CFPB...
1) How will the Senate Democrats react? Will they choose to act as Senators, concerned with protecting the power of their chamber, and join in protest (and possible litigation) against Obama's action? Even if they approve of the appointees themselves, they ought to be upset at the way Obama has proceeded. Or will they choose to be Democrats, concerned only with what helps Obama? UPDATE: It didn't take long, Reid has no problem with Obama's actions. 2) How will the Republicans in Congress react? Will they (as they've done so many times before) simply resort to complaining about Obama? Will they sit and stew, hoping that whomever the GOP nominee is wins in November? Or will they finally deal with Obama as he needs to be dealt with? Will they respond with a power move of their own, for example, withholding funding from both of these agencies in upcoming appropriations battles? And will they hold in the face of Democratic complaining? Like Iran and countless other despots, Obama is doing what he does because he knows the opposition doesn't have the stomach for really taking him on. He knows (from the oh-so-many times it has happened before) that the GOP won't do anything of substance. Given this, why should we expect anything else from Obama? Just as Iran won't give up its quest for nuclear weapons until it gets its nose bloodied, Obama won't stop until the GOP rises up in solid opposition to make him pay the price for his aggression. Bullies are bullies. They keep going until someone rises up to (figuratively) smack them in the face. Monday, January 02, 2012
With the EEOC wanting to declare that an employer can't require job applicants to have even a high school diploma*, would anyone dispute labeling the Obama Administration as one of the most hostile anti-business Adminstrations ever?
Technically, the EEOC is only warning employers against not hiring an applicant whose lack of a high school diploma is the result of the applicant being disabled... but how many employers, when scanning the applications, bother to ask the reason why an applicant doesn't have a high school diploma? Does an employer now have to ask why someone doesn't have a high school diploma - and ensure that it is for the 'right' reason - before the employer can reject the applicant for not having a high school diploma? And if an employer can't require applicants to have high school diplomas, how can employers insist applicants have college degrees? After all, one never knows if the reason someone didn't graduate from college was because they had a disability of some kind, right? Sunday, January 01, 2012
In case the Romney campaign needs any help, their response to Obama's expected attack on the layoffs that took place while Romney ran Bain Capital should be to point out that far, far, far more people have lost their jobs while Obama has been President.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Former Congressman Artur Davis laments the growing polarization of the two political parties and claims that supposedly conservative Democrats such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas should get credit for keeping Obamacare from being even crazier than it is.
But if Nelson and Lincoln weren't in office their seats would more than likely have been held by Republicans (as Arkansas is now and Nebraska is soon to be). And I dare say that two additional Republicans in Senate would have been enough to keep Obamacare from passing in any form. From a conservative perspective, having some less than liberal Democrats in Congress is nice... but not as nice as if those seats were held by Republicans... even Republicans of a more liberal bent (for example, Scott Brown of Massachusetts). Friday, December 23, 2011
Just as a tree falling in a forest makes no noise, a 'victory' that is unnoticed by anyone who matters is not a victory that is going to count for much when it matters...
Obama may have won a 'tactical victory' in the kerfuffle over the extension of the payroll tax cut, but so what? The only people paying attention right now are inside-Beltway types and political partisans, all of whom have already made up their mind on who they're going to vote for next November. The mushy middle isn't paying attention, they're busy working and buying presents for Christmas and looking forward to this weekend's football games. All of the Washington back and forth was (and remains) background static to them. None of their taxes went up, none of their paychecks went down. To these people, this whole thing has just been more of the same... Democrats and Republicans arguing about something that they aren't following. None of these less-engaged voters are going to make up their minds on who to vote for based on this. Nor are any of them going to change their minds about how they view the respective parties. Second, as much as he might like to, Obama isn't running against the House Republicans. He will be running against a GOP candidate (probably Romney) who isn't in the House and is free to disassociate himself from any truly unpopular positions taken by the more conservative House GOP. Obama is going to have to sell the public on why he is better than the GOP candidate and I'm sure the GOP candidate will keep the focus where it should be. Third, any victory is going to be short lived. What does Obama think is going to happen in two months when the tax cut comes up for expiration again? There's no way it won't get renewed again. Thus, Obama is going to be in the position of arguing for the very same thing that the House GOP is arguing for now. How is Obama going to separate himself from that? By arguing that it was wrong to extent the cut for a full year now, but that circumstances have changed in the two months, thus necessitating a full year extension? So my advice to anyone who is discouraged about how things have turned out is to lighten up. Sure, the GOP misplayed their hand, but they did so in what is effectively a pre-season scrimmage that nobody watched and in which their star player wasn't even on the field. It will have far less impact that Obama's cheerleaders would like. Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Not only is sitting next to Al Gore "taxing" and "unpleasant", it turns out that we can blame our current economic problems on Gore.
For those slow on the upload, remember it was Gore who invented the Internet. Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Someone who claims to have been molested by former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky is suing Sandusky and claims he is doing so, according to the article, "because he doesn't want other kids to be abused".
An admirable thought, indeed. But... this particular string of abuse ended way back in 1996.... FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! If he didn't want other kids to be molested by Sandusky, one might think that he could have called the police... sometime during the past FIFTEEN YEARS! If he didn't want other kids to be molested and thought suing Sandusky was the way to keep him from doing so, then one might think that he would have sued Sandusky... sometime during the past FIFTEEN YEARS! What a crock. Suing Sandusky now does nothing to keep Sandusky from molesting any other kids... it was pretty much a given that once Sandusky was arrrested he wasn't going to be molesting anybody else. And suing Sandusky does absolutely nothing to keep any other kids from being molested by any of the other creeps still out there. These a******s don't worry about getting sued. Jeez, they probably don't worry enough about being caught and prosecuted... so why would they worry about getting sued? Can you imagine any of them thinking to themselves 'hey, I better stop molesting little boys because I don't want to get sued'? Me neither. This.... in my humble opinion... is nothing more than an attempt to cash in. Even stipulating that the plaintiff was in fact molested, he had years and years in which to do something. Waiting 15 years is too long. Monday, November 21, 2011
While nobody can ever say for sure why the stock market goes up or down on a particular day, I am very, very, very skeptical of claims that the market drop today is because of the collapse of the so-called 'supercommittee'...
It's been apparent for a while now that the supercommittee wasn't going to come up with some universally accepted solution to the country's spending problems. In fact, there were some pretty smart people who on Day One claimed that this was all a waste of time, that there was no way the partisans on the supercommittee was going to come up with anything meaningful. But... according to the wonderful MSM, we're supposed to believe that it was only today that traders and investors woke up to the reality of supercommittee failure and decided to dump their holdings? Nah. Tuesday, November 15, 2011
I have long argued that only military action will keep Iran from developing and using nuclear weapons... and I realize that any attack on Iran won't be completely clean and free of negative aftershocks... but I totally am not worried that Iran would even try to shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf if attacked by Israel, as this article claims is the case.
Doing so would shift the conflict from a limited engagement between Iran and Israel to one in which Iran was taking on the United States as well (as much as Obama wouldn't want to respond militarily against Iran, he would have no choice but to do so if Iran tried shutting down the flow of oil out of the Middle East). While the damage from an Israeli attack would likely be limited to Iran's nuclear facilities and a handful of ground to air defense positions (those in position to interfere with the Israeli attack), a conflict with the United States would result in the US taking out much of Iran's military capabilities and command-control infrastructure. And while the Israelis are pretty much limited to one shot, which limits the damage Israel can do to Iran, the United States can pretty much attack Iran around the clock and wherever in Iran it wanted. Even if it were the United States attacking Iran's nuclear facilities (which it won't be, see my above point regarding Obama's unwillingness to use military force against Iran), Iran would be stupid - and for many of the same reasons - to elevate the confrontation. If America were to attack, it wouldn't need to wipe out Iran's military, like Israel, it would limit its attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and some nearby air defense installations. The damage would be limited. But if Iran tried to respond by closing down the Gulf, or perhaps even by attacking the United States elsewhere, it would be inviting the United States to elevate its attack. Iran's crazies may be crazy, but they're not stupid. They know that provoking a fight with the United States would result in their nose getting much more bloodied than needed. Thursday, October 27, 2011
Every day I think that I ought to write something witty and insightful about the silliness of the Occupy Wall Street movement(s)... and yet I don't, as these protestors have so little going on upstairs that mocking them would be quite unsporting.
It seems like I'm watching a twist of 'This is Spinal Tap' or an episode of South Park, in which the screenwriters do a masterful job of depicting just how utterly clueless the central characters are. Freeloaders complaining about other freeloaders eating the good food. Protesters who don't like private property rights complaining when someone steals their stuff. Complaining about the police yet complaining when there is a breakdown of order. Anti-corporatists taking handouts from corporations, handouts made possible only because those corporations make profits. Kids who majored in subjects that have no place in the real world finding out that the real world doesn't feel like employing them. Aging hippies calling for communism, yet complaining when they think others aren't putting in the same effort. How can anyone who has more than empty air between their ears not laugh at these people? They're textboook examples of people who know everything and yet nothing. They spout their various slogans without having the slightest bit of comprehension what it is that they're chanting about. And yet as much as I chuckle at them, what I really do is feel sorry for them. Sorry that they're so pathetic. Sorry that their parents indulged them as they did, not clueing them in to the realities of life. Sorry that their teachers let them proceed through years of school without insisting that they learn something that is of use to the real world. Sorry that the schools they went to took their tens of thousands of tuition dollars and didn't give them anything of value in return. Sorry that (liberal) politicians sold them a bill of goods, the line that prosperity is possible if only they could just extract their fair share from the 1%. It's sad. Monday, October 24, 2011
If Obama's goal is to appear as if he's 'doing something' about problems in the housing market, then he'll probably suceed, as there are more than a handful of voters who mistakenly think it is good to 'do something'... even if they have no clue as to what is supposed to be accomplished.
If, however, he hopes to actually accomplish anything substantive, then his reported plan to allow underwater mortgage holders to refinance their mortgages will fall short. Here's why: According to what I've read from the so-called mortgage experts, it is the underwater nature of the mortgage that is creating the problems... and not that these homeowners are paying more than they otherwise would if they were allowed to refinance. According to what I've read, people who have no equity in their homes (and being underwater certainly qualifies as having no equity) are more likely to walk away from their mortgages and to take worse care of their homes while they are in their homes. Lowering their mortgage payments does nothing to change the value/debt ratio... someone who is $100,000 underwater will still be underwater by that amount, it isn't as if the value of the house is going to go up because the underwater homeowner gets to pay somewhat less a month. Perhaps there will be some small number of homeowners who would have walked away but with a smaller payment will decide to stick it out... but this group would be such a small portion of the underwater crowd that any impact on the overall housing market would be tiny. Another claim of the plan's defenders is that homeowners will spend the savings, boosting the economy. But according to Keynesian theory, which these people sure subscribe to, it is the overall amount of spending that is relvant, and these people won't be spending any more money than they are now, they'll just be spending it on different things. So where's the benefit? Nor, as I mentioned above, will it benefit other homeowners. It won't drive home values up. A neighborhood that is under pricing pressure because X% of the homes in that neighborhood are underwater will still have the same percentage of homes underwater. This won't make new buyers any more likely to buy into a neighborhood. As I have said before, the best thing for the housing market would be to acclerate the foreclosure of homes whose homeowners are delinguent. Get the people out who aren't making the payments and sell the houses to people who will put up some serious equity and make the payments. Let the people who lose their houses go buy or rent something they can afford. Once this happens, there won't be an uncertainty discount in housing prices, where buyers refuse to act because of fear that prices in a particular area will drop due to future foreclosures. While one can have sympathy for those who would lose their homes, there are two things to remember: One, they brought this on themselves, buying more home than they could afford (and even if they had 'help' from the local mortgage lender, nobody forced them to accept that help). Two, misguided attempts to help these people has kept the housing problems going on longer than they needed to have been (it's a typical Democratic/liberal approach to problems brought out by individual misbehavior... make the law-abiding, play the rules majority suffer to absolve these people of the problems they brought on themselves). Friday, October 21, 2011
In the category of 'just because you can sing doesn't mean you're smart'...
Singer Jon Bonjovi is opening a restaurant in which patrons will only pay if they want to pay... and only what they want to pay. I'm sure there will be those who for some reason will pay more than what would be deemed a 'fair price' for the meal. But I reckon there will be far more people who pay far less. It's human nature. People flock to things that are free. And any restaurant that gives away a good chunk of their meals is very unlikely to make up the shortfall from the paying patrons. I put the over/under of the restaurant surviving at less than 1 year... and that long only because its owner has deep pockets. Wednesday, October 12, 2011
While a $70,000 federal grant to market syrup is relatively small change compared to Solyndra, conservatives should oppose it for some of the same reasons: if it made economic sense, someone in the private sector would have stepped up to do it themselves.
At best (or worst?), this repays Vermont businesses for an expenditure that they should have been glad to make on their own. Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Why I'm not impressed with or worried about the Occupy Wall Street crowd, even if their numbers are growing...
It takes a critical mass of people to effect change in America... and there's nothing to suggest that, despite their claim to speak for the 99%, they represent anything more than a odd fringe. (Unlike the Tea Party, which had support far beyond the relative few who attended a protest, there's not a lot of support for these protests beyond the people who are already protesting). Nor are these protests going to attract others to their cause... no one who isn't already a member of or supportive of the odd fringe is going to become a supporter. Nor are these protests creating such havoc that they can force the public to cave in to their demands. Sure, some workers can't eat lunch in the park that has been taken over, but other than that, these protests have absolutely no impact on just about anybody else. Tuesday, October 04, 2011
NYT columnist Joe Nocera seems puzzled as to why alternative energy companies can get private financing at the 'good idea' stage but not for the far more expensive process of commercializing the innovation.
Allow me to clear it up for poor Joe. Like the cliche, there are two kinds of innovation, those that work and are profitable and those that don't and aren't... but it isn't always apparent at the very beginning of the process which will work and which won't. There are ideas that are flawed, and so much so that the flaws are visible (to everyone but the guy with the idea) at the very beginning of the process. And there are ideas that don't work out, but the flaws are only discovered once the process gets started. There are ideas that are successful, and so much so that there never was any question that it would be. Interestingly, there aren't ideas that succeed where no one thought they would as, without an advocate, these ideas never get off the ground. As there are - so far - no alternative energy innovations that have been proven to be successful, these innovations fall into one of the first two categories - the losers. There are those that are widely recognized as defective and never attract any investment capital. Nothing gets lost but the inventor's time, ego and reputation. And there are those that appeared to have some commercial potential and thus attract investment capital at the early stages only to have had that funding dry up when the investors learned of the flaws. The latter is what happened with Solyndra. The company had an interesting idea. They attracted some initial funding. But at some point, the private investors soured on what the company was doing. Not because they lost interest in alternative energy, but because they finally figured out that the company couldn't make a profit on its innovation. And that is precisely when the federal government stepped in with a half billion dollars. Nocera claims that private investors won't finance the commercialization of the idea. This is, to put it plainly, a stupid claim. Why would anyone put money into a project without an exit strategy, a way of getting a return on their investment? Nobody invests in the better mousetrap if they don't see a path to selling that mousetrap. It isn't that private investors won't finance the latter stages, it is that haven't yet found one that is worth the money... because every single one so far as been shown to have some fatal flaw. Addressing some other points Nocera tries to make: He argues that banks don't understand the economics of solar power. What a crock. Economics of power are economics of power, it doesn't matter what the source is. Projects make sense when the revenues charged exceed the cost. If the solar facilities Nocera mentions do in fact have the locked in contracts he says they do, a bank would be stupid to not loan money to the project. Since they didn't, my guess is that the contracts aren't as ironclad as Nocera wants to believe. Or perhaps the contracts are solid, but the banks don't believe the company can build the plants as cheaply as they claim they can. Whatever the case, someone whose business it is to make loans looked at this and decided that it was too risky. He also cites Andy Grove in claiming that a great many American innovations get manufactured in China because the Chinese government is financing the commericializaton process. But if that were the driving force, then how does Nocera explain all the other non-alternative energy stuff that gets manufactured in China? Could it be that it costs a whole lot less to build and staff a factory in China than it does in the United States? It doesn't surprise me that Nocera puts out the thin drivel that he does. Maybe once upon a time business journalists adhered to the how, what, when, where and why of a story... but now, they're driven by ideology as their fellow journalists. Nocera believes it is the role of government to spend taxpayer money on things we wouldn't spend money on ourselves... and that comes out in his writing.... even if he has to twist things to make it seem logical. Monday, October 03, 2011
If the GOP had a brain...
They'd have someone following Obama on his visits to GOP swing districts to tout his so-called 'jobs bill'. There's no good reason the GOP should let Obama have the local stage to himself, to let monopolize the local newspapers and evening news programs. They should have someone - anyone - showing up at the same time offering up their rebuttal not only to Obama's bill but also to his tired class warfare rhetoric. Of course, being the GOP, they would rather fire at each other than at the one person they can all agree doesn't belong in the White House.
According to Howard Kurtz, Obama 'tested' with reporters his attacks on the so-called 'corporate high fliers and hedge-fund managers'.
Funny, I thought the job of a reporter was to report on what was happening, not to serve as a sounding board for a particular candidate's campaign strategy. Thursday, September 29, 2011
It is neither surprising nor a scandal that loan guarantees are going to solar firms that are connected in one way or another to the Democrats...
After all, given that the entire industry is built on the liberal delusion that alternatives to dirty energy are just around the corner and there is not now and likely never will be a business model that has these alternative energy firms making a profit, is it any surprise that conservatives - and their money - would be avoiding this industry like the plague? For all the liberal talk about their being the 'reality based community', it is the conservatives who recognize the reality is that there is no there there when it comes to alternative energy companies. So... if government liberals who control the purse strings are going to be giving money to companies in this sector, just as night follows day, the recipients of this money are going to be companies whose founders and executives have the same faith in alternative energy as do the Democrats... and these people are going to be among those contributing to Democratic candidates. Not because they're looking for handouts, per se, but because liberals with money contribute to liberals running for office. That's not a scandal... just a fact of life. Wednesday, September 21, 2011
How much more were patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center charged for their care in order for UCMC to cover the $670,833 it paid to Eric Whitaker, an Obama crony who fills the incredibly important (/sarcasm) positions of 'executive vice president for strategic affiliations' and 'associate dean for community-based research'?
And presuming that Whitaker isn't the exception at UCMC, how much less would patients have to pay for medical care if UCMC got rid of the other padded positions? And, presuming UCMC isn't the exception, how many millions upon millions of dollars could patients be saving on their health care bills if hospitals nationwide simply got rid of these payoffs to the friends (and spouses) of politically influencial legislators? Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Warren Buffett's complaint that his secretary pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he does has (justifiably) received a lot of criticism (sample), most of which focusing on the fact that his income is in the form of capital gains and dividends, both of which are taxed at a lower rate than is ordinary income.
I have another complaint: why hasn't Buffett allowed his secretary to do the same thing? If he can set his compensation plan to minimize ordinary income, he could have done the same for her. Why hasn't he set her up so that she gets the majority of her pay in the form of dividends? If Buffett, as he claims, is so interested in the 'little guy', why does he force his secretary to pay out so much of her compensation in taxes? Assuming she makes somewhere in the ballpark of $75,000 a year, just a 10% cut in her effective tax rate would put some $7,500 more dollars in her pocket each and every year. How many people making 'just' $75,000 a year do you know who wouldn't dance with joy at getting another $7,500 a year to do with as they wish? Isn't she one of the middle class that Buffett (and Obama) profess to care so much about? If so, where's the love? Where's the consistency? Where are the deeds that back up the words? Or is this a case of the big powerful CEO using his position to take what he can and to h**l with everybody else? Or is it a case of him screwing her by leaving her to pay higher taxes than she needs to so that he can get his so-called talking point for raising taxes?
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