Contra Duopoly

No East Coast Bias Here

2010-02-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

Blasted on the front page of both the New York Times and Washington Post today is a news story about brake problems with the Toyota Prius, which Toyota sold about 140,000 of in the US last year. You'd think everyone in the country drove one.

In fact the Prius is a tiny percentage of the U.S. market. The Ford F-150, which has seen its sales fall by 50% in recent years STILL sold more than 400,000 last year alone.

Granted, Toyota is news these days, especially Toyotas with problems. And of course if you went to an Ivy League school, live among guilt ridden left-coast intellectuals and believe in global warming, you need to either drive one of these things or act like you want to own one. So the people who make news decisions actually think most of us envy Prius drivers or secretly wish we could drive one.

News Flash - most Americans snicker at Prius drivers. Why, we ask, would anyone pay 5 grand more for a smaller version of a Camry unless they were a posturing, annoying person? In fact some guy has made money with this awesome bumper sticker reminding us that you can't spell pretentious without "prius." The Times and Post reporting on this "story" so prominently is like doing a front page story on decline wine production in Zimbabwe or a bowling tournament in North Korea. It's not relevant to real people. Of course that describes a lot of what passes for "news" in the MSM these days.

Does Thou Protest Too Much?

2010-02-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Keith Hennessey is one of my favorite bloggers because he actually uses data and political economy approaches to his posts. Still, he worked in the Bush White House, so you have to take his work with a grain of salt. This passage from today's post just struck me:

Yes, President Obama faced some enormous economic challenges early in his term. His predecessor did as well, even before the crisis of 2008: a bursting tech bubble leading to a recession in 2001, an economic seizure caused by 9/11, corporate governance scandals in 2002, a recession in 2002-2003, the economic uncertainty triggered by invading Iraq (this one was a policy choice), and eventually oil spiking above $100 per barrel.

I think it’s OK for a President to talk about the challenges he and the Nation face. It helps to set reasonable expectations. I think a President should propose solutions to those challenges and describe a brighter future that he hopes to deliver. I think it’s tacky and tiresome for a President to keep bashing his predecessor, especially more than a year after taking office. I acknowledge that my perspective on this point is biased by my professional past.

I also think this refrain weakens President Obama. He is portraying himself as a victim of forces that are beyond his control. A President should want people to focus on him and what he’s going to do, not on a comparison of him with someone else (anyone else). President Obama should want people talking about the Obama Agenda rather than about what happened ten years ago. Ten years ago.

He then goes onto argue that Obama needs to establish some new set of policies to differeniate himself from Bush or at least work to rollback the stuff he's attacking, like the Medicare drug benefit of that stupid pair of wars that Obama promised he'd end.

My question is this - where are the positive policies in government these days? The Democrats, scarred after the health care debacle, aren't getting anywhere near new ideas. The Republicans just sit back and attack the Democrats on wasteful spending, but as even Keith acknowledges, the GOP is partially responsible for this mess and have zero track record for limiting government growth. There's a real opportunity for a policy entrepreneur in this political environment. I wonder who will seize this chance? Any candidates? Mike Pence? Scott Brown?

Use History Part 2

2009-12-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

Any Democrat who wonders why Joe Lieberman is holding the Obamacare bill hostage and maybe a little hacked off at Harry Reid might want to recall this statement that Reid and Chuck Schumer issued after Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in 2006 in Connecticut

The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken and chosen Ned Lamont as their nominee. Both we and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fully support Mr. Lamont’s candidacy. Congratulations to Ned on his victory and on a race well run.

Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic Senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the President more than anything else. The results bode well for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country in a new direction.

Well I'd say Joe is taking that health care bill in a new direction, yes siree...............

Quick prediction - a deal will be cut, but Lieberman won't be the last Democratic moderate to waver and maybe vote no. I'd still put the odds of passage of some kind of bill at 65%.

Someone is Hiring

2009-12-14T12:33:00.001-08:00

And that would be the Federal Government, and they are giving out sweet pay and perks! I've been blogging about the onerous burden that state and local government employees' pension and health care obligations will place on Fundbaby, but this is just another reminder of how the feds don't understand what real people suffer through and become increasingly disconnected from reality and the correcting forces of markets.

Representative Government Update

2009-12-14T06:43:00.000-08:00

This poll from CNN, not Fox, shows that around 60% of Americans now oppose the Senate health care bill. The key passage from the article:

According to the poll, a very large majority of Americans think that the health care bill that the U.S. Senate is considering would raise the federal deficit and raise their taxes, and while they think that the bill would help many families, only one in five think they would benefit personally if the bill becomes law.

"As a result, more than six in 10 say they oppose the Senate health care bill," Holland said. "Republicans obviously don't like the bill, but two-thirds of independents also say they are against it."

Hat tip to the Opinion Journal's Best of the Web.

UPDATE

Stumbled across this news bit from the Washington Post about the fourth Democratic House Member in a "swing district" who will retiring this year - coincidentally. Of course even if there's a seismic shift in the elections next year, we'll simply get more of the same from the other group of thieves.

A Scary Lesson in Government Financial Planning

2009-12-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

I handle the finances in Chateau Fundfamily, and Mrs. Fundman and I are in agreement that this is the best way to handle it. You see, I'm cheap, and Mrs. Fundman is not so much. I may not be as cheap as La Cheapa Chica, but I tend to view Dave Ramsey as a more appropriate role model than say, Nicholas Cage. So I turn down the thermostat in the winter, bring back little shampoo bottles from hotels, and buy meat when it's marked way, way down at the story. I don't dumpster dive, but hey, you never know.

In government, no one is Dave Ramsey, and everyone is Nick Cage, and lately, everyone has been like Nick Cage with a vengeance. Of course it's easy to be Nick Cage when you are spending other people's money, and that's what governments do. The only broad limits on insane government spending of OUR money has been a legal limit on the amount of debt the U.S. government can use to fund its activities - 12 trillion bucks.

You'd think that in addition to tax revenues, a 12 trillion dollar limit would be enough to run a country no? Well apparently it isn't because now they need more credit. And unlike normal people, the government doesn't need the approval of Visa or Amex to raise their credit card limit. Congress votes on it. So imagine if you could take out a credit card, and just keep raising the limit - awesome no? And the debt you put on the card was paid off with someone else's money in 30 years after you had retired and made a mint as a lobbyist and paid speaker.

Well yesterday the Democratic House leadership said they were going to have to raise the debt ceiling - by 1.8 TRILLION dollars (1,800,000,000,000). If that isn't nauseating enough, the Congress doesn't understand, at all, the ramifications of this. Take a look at this quote from David Obey, the Chairman of the House Appropriations committee:

“It is December. We don’t really have a choice,” Obey told POLITICO. “The bill’s already been run up; the credit card has already been used. When you get the bill in the mail you need to pay it.”

Now David Obey is head of the committee that appropriates all, ALL, of the expenditures for the House. This guy is the top shopper for all of the U.S. government along with his colleague in the Senate. Consider his quote about the credit card "has been used" and the bill needs to be paid.................

Dave, buddy, YOU ARE NOT PAYING FOR THE BILL BY RAISING THE DEBT CEILING. No, Dave you are ADDING TO THE BILL. Trust me; I handle the finances for my family, and I don't think a bill has been paid when I simply borrow money from someone to pay someone else. But this apparently is the way that the government thinks. You "pay" bills by borrowing money. And while most U.S. families are cutting their debt burden by not borrowing more money, the government is doing the opposite and apparently thinks that's fine.

If the government would like to actually "pay" it's bills I have some suggestions on that matter - spend less, and pay down the debt. In a regime that is supposed to have democratic tendencies, the Congress may want to look at the actions of their constituents and learn a thing or two. A novel idea in politics today.

Shedding a Little Light on Another Global Warming "Expert"

2009-12-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Fundman and I have become very disillusioned with former Governor "Hockey Mom" of Alaska. We don't dislike her nearly as much as the folks in the MSM or on the left, but she's just not that bright and really should just go away. Instead she writes stuff like this piece in the Washington Post on global warming that sort of takes a flimsy position on the science and politics surrounding it.

So now the next day in this response along comes Alan Leshner, who is the chief executive officer of the AAAS, which touts itself as the world's biggest general scientific community, that publishes the journal Science. So in a fight like this you'd assume that the Hockey Mom is wrong and Mr. Scientific Community guy is the expert.

But in many ways this exchange summarizes why I don't have any clue who to believe here. We know about Palin, and her intellectual "limits." But what you may not know about Mr. Science Guy is that he has no background AT ALL in climate change. He's a psychologist, a Ph.D. in it. Now that's more of a social science. And in fact, he's a former government bureaucrat who was head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is at the core of the Drug War, and later NIH. So first off, the guy's not a physician, but he's a brain psychology expert who focuses on addiction. He has no background in global warming other than having worked as a bureaucrat.

Secondly, it turns out that at least according to this guy who is a doctor, Mr. Science Guy may have influenced research that predisposed results to support his worldview. I'm not fucking kidding. Salon.com ran this nice little piece suggesting that Mr. Science Guy

has supported research that bolsters the administration's point of view, failed to fund projects that could undermine it, opposed research into medical marijuana and used images drawn from advanced medical technology to create misleading anti-drug campaigns.

This is EXACTLY the problem that the Climategate emails have raised - that a political agenda is pushing the research not honest debate. So this guy is part of the problem posing as an objective, all-knowing scientist.

So we are left wondering who the hell to believe? A probably ditzy, self-interested politician or a guy who has a history of engaging in questionable scientific activities? That's at the core of what's wrong with all of this public dialogue AND why people are starting to doubt the validity of this stuff. If the science is not scientific, and the opponents still look like wing-nuts we're left confused and cynical.

This is a Joke, Right?

2009-12-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

Headline from the NYTimes wire this morning:

Accepting Peace Prize, Obama Evokes ‘Just War’

I think we are going to find out at the end of his administration that Sasha Baron Cohen is playing Obama and filming the whole thing.

Climate Language - Watch your Wallet

2009-12-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

Investment - it's one of those words that sounds good. Evokes images of squirrels hiding nuts for the winter and saving for Fundbaby's college education. It sounds a helluva lot better than "huge tax increases giving elected politicians and government bureaucrats lots of money to pass around to campaign supporters and rent-seeking business people" which is what it usually means when people talk about government investments.

See governments don't make money and then invest it. They take our money and then spend it. Now one of the biggest debates in economics is whether or not the effect of government spending is good or bad for an economy depending on the context and way it's spent. Folks like Keynes and Paui Krugman think that's possible and support it. Conversely folks like FA Hayek say that such initiatives are a bad thing to be avoided because the government doesn't do a particularly good job of spending other people's money and typically just gives the money to special interests.

The Greenies have been the kings of language. They say things like "green jobs" and "investment" and "climate change" rather than "heavily subsidized jobs" or "wasteful government redistributive spanding" or "variations in dynamic systems that potentially show little causal effect." It's just like shopping at Whole Foods and paying 14 dollars for a 5 ounce bag of baked organic root vegetable chips, which makes you feel good about yourself, but makes little economic sense and even less environmental sense.

But I think that Climategate, which I've blogged about a little and the right wing blogosphere has been covering extensively, along with the economic downturn has had a pretty big impact on even MSM coverage of Copenhagen. Take for example this Time article examining the costs of a climate change deal. The author focuses on how expensive it's going to be, qualifies the apocalyptic predictions, and notes that carbon trading is going to be really, really expensive.

As long as folks like Fox News stop posting stupid survey data about opposition to global warming and de-legitimizing folks who have genuine concerns about the costs and benefits of this project I think we may, MAY be heading in the right direction.

This Should be a Huge Scandal

2009-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

I've been sort of shocked by the language, but unsurprised that folks at the East Anglia climate center who advocate AGW dismissed skepticism or criticism of their research in emails that were released in the MSM a few weeks ago. I used to be an academic, and I can tell you that this kind of stuff happens all the time in universities. People are people, and they tend to buy into a conclusion and overlook details that don't fit their world view, dressing up the results with fancy models and at times heroic assumptions. The research may or may not get it right, but too often people's careers and lives get intertwined with an investment in the work. ALL scientific and social scientific research should be submitted to public cross-checking by posting of all available data. See this quote from Declan McCullagh:

The irony of this situation is that most of us expect science to be conducted in the open, without unpublished secret data, hidden agendas, and computer programs of dubious reliability. East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way.

But now it's starting to look like there's a big reason why none of these folks disclosed the information: many of the conclusions that AGW are based on use data that now no longer exist, which is a huge, enormous, and really troubling problem. If the folks who advocate AGW are saying that the "science" is settled, but they no longer have the raw data that support the scientific findings, that's bad. And whether or not those emails show bias or lack of sensitivity or whatever, if the whole thing can't be re-examined because the data got thrown out, it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, bad.

The financial, economic, and political consequences of policies that limit carbon emissions will cost trillions of dollars - 1,000,000,000,000's. And all of this legislation may be based on temperature measurements that may be ALL WRONG? Even in my deeply cynical world view this is pretty depressing.

Happy Holidays!

Throwing Good Money After Bad Money After Stupid Money After Bubble Money

2009-11-30T08:34:00.001-08:00

Let me begin with a simple statement - most people facing or in foreclosure now probably had too much house to begin with. Anyone who cares to disagree is free to do so in the comments.

If you take that statement at face value, why do we continue to throw money at these folks for at least the third time?

Here is the key passage in my humble view:

Under the president's plan, delinquent borrowers are put into trial modifications for several months to make sure they can handle the new payments and to give them time to submit their financial paperwork.

Borrowers that qualify for a long-term modifications can keep making the lower payments for five years. At that point, the interest rate will be set at the rate at the time of the adjustment, or about 5% today.

Loan servicers, however, say they are having trouble getting the necessary documents from borrowers, while homeowners maintain that their financial institutions are repeatedly losing the paperwork.

And once homeowners send in their forms, servicers may find these borrowers don't have enough income or have too much equity or savings to qualify. Or it may just be more profitable for the bank to foreclose on the home than modify the mortgage.

So to summarize - most of the folks in this program either shouldn't be in these places or have plenty of money but are trying to steal from the government; the government can't get the paperwork right for either the lenders or borrowers who actually can benefit from this program. So it's a complete cluster-fuck.

So basically all we are doing is re-inflating an asset bubble, and pushing back the pain of the inevitable. Why? Well we aren't bailing out homeowners really. If you think about it logically, we are basically bailing-out lenders who don't have to take foreclosure, but instead get reduced payments through this program. The program should really be called "A Way to Make it Look Like We Care About Little People While Actually Giving Money to Big Banks and Rich People" but that's a tad long and unwieldy. So I'd settle for "Business as Usual."

A Class I Would Love to Take

2009-11-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times of all places, this video on a guy in Virginia who teaches people (it's all guys in the video) how to hunt, field dress and cook deer. I can only imagine how the comments section of the Times is full of angry vegans bemoaning the glorification of tasty Bambi being sauteed to perfection.............(this is what I'm doing thinking of tasty venison).

A Question About the French Health Care System

2009-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

Reading the stories today about the cervical cancer recommendations, I was struck by two things. First, the MSM like this New York Times piece is really on board with what is now being called "science based medicine." Between you and me I thought medicine these days was SUPPOSED TO BE BASED ON SCIENCE ALREADY since we'd stop the bleedings and such.

Secondly, I know this is going to sound catty, but wasn't one of the big things about why our system sucked was that we already weren't very good at preventable deaths? Don't the Europeans and French in particular score really well on those measures of preventable deaths? So do we square limiting screening with this goal? Or did I miss something?

Some Truth Behind the Rhetoric

2009-11-20T05:41:00.001-08:00

Living in Washington, DC is weird. I should know - I used to live there. The food scene is great, and there are a lot of young people who bring energy and relentlessly baseless optimism to the place. But everything closes early. Public transit is built around the needs of commuters and tourists. Almost no one, other than the city's African-American population, actually is born, lives, and dies in the area. And then there's the infestation of politicians.

Inevitably, it starts to influence people's minds, like Steve Pearlstein, who actually writes the occasionally smart business column in the Washington Post. However like most DC/NYC public intellectual types, hanging out in the halls of power clouds his perceptions, and it annoys me. Behold this quote from a column of his attacking Republicans for being "political terrorists" in the health care debate:

While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn't, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.

Now by and large I agree with him that Republicans are being fear mongers in this debate but he's not being honest when he says that our only choice is to "reduce the amount of health care people consume." He assumes, since he lives in DC, that the government must be more heavily involved in health care. Instead we could also use proper pricing to make people understand health care costs. But once he assumes that government is the answer, what he's saying, inevitably and unavoidably, is that some people who are "over-consuming" care will be limited in their access to care. If he admitted this, he'd understand that the reason why the Republicans "wacko-logic" is working with people is that the public rightly understands there's no such thing as a free lunch. The Democrats are soft-peddling the impact of their proposed changes and the impact of those changes.

Using very vague phrases like "better information on what works and what doesn't" is dancing around the fundamental issue. Note that Pearlstein doesn't say "perfect information." People facing life threatening situations don't want to hear about probabilities and costs. They don't want to hear that if something PROBABLY WON'T WORK that they can't have it because it's too expensive. And it's not easy for a bunch of experts to decide what "works" and what doesn't.

Imagine a 10 year old child who's life can be saved by a procedure with a high probability of success and very high cost. Now imagine a 75 year old columnist for the Washington Post who needs an expensive operation that might only extend life for a couple of years. In our screwed up system it is more likely that the old fart columnist would get the operation because of Medicare. That's wrong in my view. A panel of "experts" are more likely to do the opposite, but even they might discover that the child would die in a few years and the 75 year old might live another 25 or 30 years and add productively to society. And no matter what anyone on the left says, they will have to limit access to certain procedures based on "better" information. Overall society will save some money, but individual choice will be limited.

Which brings me to today's column by Pearlstein on the breast cancer recommendations. Much like many folks in the MSM, he's sort of surprised by the hoopla. After reviewing what the panel did, he says:

All that, of course, is exactly what the task force did, based on numerous studies done in different countries using different methodologies. In the end, it found that while some lives might be saved each year, the benefits of annual screening of women in their 40s were outweighed by the costs -- and that's without even getting into the financial costs, which run to several billion dollars a year.

That's the most honest statement I've seen yet about this entire debate. As I've noted here on a number of occasions, you CANNOT change this system without altering the winners and losers. If the reforms as currently written go through, more people who currently do not have health insurance and decent, not awesome, coverage will get it. In addition, people with awesome coverage (AARP and old farts I'm looking at you) will see an erosion in quality and access. Costs will increase. You can't get something for nothing.

Now if, IF we were going to have an honest discussion of these issues I'd start here. But since honesty has never been part of politics, I'd settle for compromise. Why not expand Medicaid for the poor and down-trodden. Push for cost controls in Medicare, and create a health system where people actually saw the costs of their procedures? That would, in my humble view, limit "over-consumption" or at least place those costs on those consuming. It's called personal choice and responsibility combined with broad public charity. It wouldn't kill us to start here.

No Such Thing as a Free Mammogram

2009-11-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Fundman and I "discussed" the new recommendations for mammograms last night after dinner and a few drinks. I say "discussed" because I hadn't read much about it and she was pretty wound up after a long day with FundInfant at the pediatricians. As a conservative who watches too much Glenn Beck/John Nash, she saw the specter a conspiratorial future of cost-cutting once Obamacare passed the Congress. I just suggested it might be related to the changes that doctors had recently recommended to prostate exams for men.

Well today I officially apologize to Mrs. Fundman, because the White House is apparently freaking out over the panel and its potential impact on the debate. The quote from the Post, not Fox or some right-wing blog, that got me was:

Under health-care reform legislation pending in Congress, the task force's recommendations would be used to help determine the basic coverage that insurance companies would need to offer for preventive services. But task force officials said that played no role in the panel's decision and costs were never considered.

Yeah, sure. That's why the White House has issued about 35 public statements saying that this had nothing to do with the reform.

Just as an fyi - this little piece was brought to my attention by a friend in the UK, which has socialized medicine. A panel there just decided not to give people with liver cancer a drug which is proven to extend life because it's too expensive. And the drug apparently has some positive effects on breast cancer as well - not that any Brit will ever enjoy those benefits.

Folks as I've noted before, there is NO WAY to increase access and decrease costs without limiting available treatments. Full stop. The question is which alternative is more just, and that's a discussion we don't want to have in this country.

Why I'm a Total Cynic about Greenies, Part 345

2009-11-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

Behold today's New York Times piece on the decline of carbon offsets. In it the reporter, Elisabeth Rosenthal, decides to interview the president of a non-profit in the UK, a guy named Paul Dickinson.

Paul, tells Times readers "that rather than buying offsets he had sharply scaled back on flying and was instead taking trains or conducting meetings by phone or teleconference."

Huh, funny, because as his bio says HE FOUNDED A TELECONFERENCING COMPANY.

Then there is another environmental expert quoted in the article, Anja Kollmuss. She claims to be a "scientist," but she's not. Her degree is in Urban and Environmental Planning. She tells the Times readers that "buying offsets won’t solve the problem because flying around the way we do is simply unsustainable." Well she should know. As her bio notes SHE'S BEEN WORKING ON A PROJECT IN RURAL INDIA FOR SEVEN YEARS. That means she's been flying a couple times a year back and forth to and from Europe to India. I mean, what's her carbon footprint like?

Does any reporter ever, EVER check their sources? Is anyone in the Green movement not a total hypocrite? It took me literally five minutes to find this information, and yet the Times parades these hypocrites around to make people feel badly about flying? Ms. Rosenthal appears to be the Times lead reporter on environmental issues, and she can't even check to see how unbiased her sources are? This is America's paper of record?

Flying is one of the greatest advances in human history. It has allowed people to live remarkably better lives. It allows medical patients to receive donor organs, transports goods all over the world, and sends Doctors Without Borders to rural areas. Ms.Rosenthal, please stop bashing modernity and making regular people who don't fly back and forth all over the world feel badly for hoping over to Iowa twice a year to visit Mom and Dad.

Apparently, the Fox News War is Over

2009-11-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

Remember when the President basically declared war on Fox News and tried to get the removed from the White House press pool?

Well apparently that was very twelve-minutes-ago because on Wednesday, one day after the off-year elections that had no broader implications for Democrats in which independent voters went fleeing to the GOP, David Axelrod, he who declared Fox non-news on October 18th, granted said agency this exclusive interview with Major Garrett.

Hell, the Argentine military did better in the Falklands than the administration did in that conflict. Talk about surrender. The next thing you know Anita Dunn will be interviewed by Glenn Beck with his insane collection of pictures, chalkboards and arrows pointing everywhere.

The internal polling at the White House must be fucking horrible among independents for them to cave this quickly. I generally don't put too much stock into off-years meaning a whole lot because one year is forever in politics, but the way the White House is acting they sure seem scared.

Here's an Idea, Use History

2009-11-06T06:42:00.001-08:00

Three days removed from the Democrats losing gubernatorial races in NJ and Virginia, I have been struck by the way that Democrats have downplayed the results saying the races were unrelated to national events while Republicans have hammered away at the national implications for themselves and Obama.

So I thought to myself, "Self, didn't the Dems win in Virginia in 2005 with Bush in the White House? How did each party spin the story four years ago?"

The answer my friends is here in this MSNBC piece analyzing the 2005 outcomes. Note the similarities. The Democrats crowed about the national implications (and they were right) while the Republicans suggested it was all about local issues.

In the meantime, sorry I've not been posting to my 4 longtime readers. You can all come in off the ledge as I'm going to try to be better about writing more regularly.

Klein Hearts Friedman?

2009-06-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

The most unpopular public intellectual in the world today appears to be Milton Friedman, although anyone Pro-Life is probably a close second. Friedman has been trashed by just about everyone on the left, including Naomi Klein who is a poster-girl for left wing, post modern anger at capitalism and all things "conservative."

But when I Googled Naomi recently to see what she has been saying these days, I found this amazing quote:

Larry Summers and Tim Geithner came up with a plan to bail out the banks that is actually a disguised bailout for the hedge funds — where the government is not bailing out the hedge funds directly because they can’t sell that, but hedging the hedge funds to buy the toxic assets of the banks — instead of nationalizing the banks and breaking them up, which is what needs to happen.

Here's the deal, what was Friedman's view of big government's judgment and benevolence? Check out this video of him and Phil Donahue going at it and tell me how far apart these two are on their skepticism of government power?

It seems to me that there may be a growing consensus about the limits of government benevolence in society today among people of very different ideological views. I'm not sure what this all means, but if both sides recognize the folly of the duopoly, that's progress.

The Joke of Impartiality

2009-05-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

My father is a lawyer. I have neighbors and friends who are lawyers and teach in law schools. My office "next door neighbor" is a lawyer. Some of my best friends........seriously, yes some of my best friends are lawyers. And if there's one thing I know from all of them, it's that they don't think, for one second, that any judge is "impartial" whatever that means.

Any good trial lawyer tries to get sympathetic judges and juries. Any good appellate lawyer tries to appeal to the predispositions of the appellate judges. And the reason the Founders set up a complicated selection process for the Supreme Court and judiciary wasn't, in my view, by accident. They understood that judges were never going to be "above the law" or "impartial."

The Founders had a very sophisticated understanding of law. Hell, read the damn Declaration of Independence. It reads like a legal brief. These guys weren't dumb or inexperienced in the law. John Adams cut his teeth as a lawyer, and they all had read Blackstone. They understood that "good" law should put some constraints on the arbitrary nature of power, but it wasn't perfect or sufficient to eliminate the risks to libery. They also understood that democratic politics had to be allowed to modify the course of government.

So it is with great pleasure that I tell the Left to seriously defend Sotomayor's argument that white judges reach "bad" decisions compared to Latinas. And to the Right I ask you how you can narrowly define "racism" as any generalization based on race when the term comes loaded with the experience of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, bigotry, and racial profiling? I ask the Left how its "post racial" President can play identity politics? I ask the Right why a bunch of white guys, fat white guys no less, are the ones crying foul here? If they are so racially progressive, where are the hordes of black and Latino Republicans defending limited views of the judiciary?

You can't separate law from politics. You also shouldn't equate the two. It seems to me she's an OK, not great judge, who fit a profile in a highly politicized decision. It also seems to me that using the "racism" card against her won't hurt the GOP in NASCAR country. For Obama, she's a bone to the Latino community, which both sides need to win this election. And it's not at all clear that most people even know who she is, let alone Latinos.

The problem is that there are no, universally agreed upon "GREAT" judges. They are not like baseball players or doctors. They are more like painters - you either like their work or you don't. You either agree with the outcomes and laud them, or you don't like the outcomes and call them "activists" or "closed minded" and you take you fight to other political arenas.

Mrs. Fundman and I got into a huge fight about her the other night, and that tells me something else - I'm going to be doing dishes for a while and agreeing with her more. That's probably the best thing that's come out of this.

In Case You Had Forgotten

2009-05-28T05:40:00.001-07:00

Because I certainly had, it's been 20 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacres in China. This piece in the UK's Prospect does a nice job reflecting on what's happened since.

How Much is Too Much

2009-05-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

I am old enough to remember the phrase "above the fold" which means the stuff in an old fashion print newspaper that was on top of the front page. Honestly I'm not sure if the same stuff holds for today's online media but this afternoon's New York Times webpage "above the median screen line?" is featuring a story about how, apparently, Bill Clinton has run out of interns to sleep with. The headline reads (I shit you not) "The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton." (You can do your own spit take at that title)

In the meantime well "below the fold/median line" on its webpage is a short piece sort of dismissing the reason why the Dow dumped about 173 points today -- concerns that the U.S. government's credit rating could tumble because we're borrowing too much damn money. In that piece the author claims that the Treasury's auction of 5 year notes was "better than analysts had expected."

Ummmm, look, I'm not some sophisticated business reporter with lots of experience at the New York Times, so maybe I'm slow, but when I glance at the bond market reports from basic economic data sites like CNNMoney today, I guess those analysts must have been predicting Jon and Kate winning "Parents of the Year" for things to be "better than analysts had expected."

I mean, the sales of 2 year notes were ok, and 5 year notes were "sluggish." Wanna know why? Because anybody with a basic understanding of what's going on understands that we are going to get a shitstorm of inflation - lots of it. And no reasonable bond holder is going to take notes from the U.S. government and hold them for 5 years and get paid like less than 3% unless they have to. When you consider that not many people have that much money to lend the government, and you have one conclusion -- the Feds will have to offer much higher rates of return to attract buyers.

Oh, and don't for one minute think this little report about how Moody's called the U.S.'s credit rating "stable." These were the same people who called subprime mortgages, and probably Edmund Andrew's wife for that matter, AAA rated.

I don't make predictions often (and don't ask Mrs. Fundman to confirm that), but I'm betting that the FreeCreditReport will begin running a bunch of ads with President Obama in them. He'll be living in his parent's basement complaining about how his credit score allowed the Chinese to foreclose on the White House. Or maybe he'll have to take a side job at a Renaissance Fair..........

Apologies, Excuses, Shameless Deflection of Blame

2009-05-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

No, I was not in jail. No, the former head of NOW did not try to hunt me down for my earlier post on her. I did not join either one of those odious two parties.

Simply put, I had a massive work deadline that ended about three weeks ago, and then the Fund family went on vacation............the rest was just me figuring out what to say and working on another writing project.

Many thanks to d.eris for kicking me over the weekend. In the end, nagging is probably the best medicine for lazy bloggers.

It's nice to be back.

Headline of the Day

2009-04-23T02:20:00.001-07:00

Below the fold from the Financial Times (am traveling for work in the UK this week, so that helps explain the lack of posts) from this piece by Gillian Tett:

Cadbury Schweppes is currently deemed a better credit bet than the British Treasury.

Would any of my readers (ok, there aren't they many of you) like to work on a list of U.S. companies that are better bets than the U.S. as credit risks? Oh, wait - the Treasury OWNS ever private company in the U.S. now anyway......

My initial list would include Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, and GE. And probably the UAW as long as Obama is in office and Lockheed Martin as long as the Republican Party still exists.

I Wish He Would Just Go Away

2009-04-17T07:28:00.001-07:00

Pat Buchanan..............I mean, why, oh why, does anyone take him seriously? In this thoughtful little illogical rant he claims that since Catholic universities are becoming more liberal and secular, that means America is going to hell.

First off, if his biography is any indication, the guy was nearly expelled from Georgetown for fighting in the 1960's - how Christian is that?

Secondly, Jesuit institutions like Georgetown have been struggling with their Catholic identity for a long time - well before Obama got elected. Georgetown survives because it compromises its identity for DC prestige at the drop of a hat - it's the Jesuit way. See for example this quote from Tim Healy, former president of Georgetown in the 1990's:

Father Buckley criticizes one contemporary expression of the dichotomy of secular purpose and religious inspiration of the Catholic university in his reflection on the philosophy of education of a famous president of Georgetown University, Timothy Healy. Father Healy had claimed that the Church and the university were essentially two radically distinct entities capable of coexisting in a mutually beneficial relationship but only if their mutual autonomy of mission was retained. In Fr. Healy's view, education at Georgetown was to remain "principally a secular business, and the university is a secular entity with a clear secular job to do. The Church can deeply influence how the secular job is done," (Buckley, 80),

Thirdly, would anyone remember this survey that CLEARLY SHOWED the U.S. is getting more Catholic Pat, not less.

But don't let a little data get in the way of a good cultural rant. The right never does.

If I Only Had a Train.....La, La, La, La

2009-04-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

This morning the front page of many newspapers in the Midwest contained something like this headline from the Chicago Tribune

High Speed Trains Could Ease Midwest Travel

Now on the face of it, all of this looks very promising. Speaking as someone who has languished on highways around cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Indianapolis, I for one would love to save time and money, and avoid the hassle of expressways with fast, convenient train service. But is that what the Feds are offering?

Let's begin by closing our eyes, and imagining. On the White House blog the President said:

What we're talking about is a vision for high-speed rail in America. Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. (Laughter.) Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.

Now setting aside any obvious John Lennon jokes, my imagination is more limited than his in the following ways.

First off, last time I checked, relying on Amtrak to do anything efficiently and cost-effectively is, well, delusional. As this piece points out, Amtrak has been operating with so much red-ink that it already gets billions in taxpayer subsidies and simply cannot compete either in economic or efficiency (read here, the trains don't run on time) terms with anybody. I mean it's one thing to imagine Swiss trains which arrive within minutes of their schedules. It's another thing to wait 8 hours for a train.

Secondly, 100 mph? That's it? Look, Mr. President, you're from Chicago, and I would have thought that maybe you've driven between Chicago and say Indy along I-65 where the posted speed limit is 75 mph. I have because my family is still in Chicago, and I like going to the Indy 500 and getting up at 10 am on Memorial Day Sunday and getting drunk with 350,000 of my closest friends. Mr. President, 85-90 is the "rate of travel" along those roads most days. Getting up to 100 so I can enjoy Amtrak's food and efficient service and late arrivals? No thanks.

Finally, note the second sentence in the President's speech "Imagine boarding a train in the center of the city." Hands up from anyone who lives in the center of a large city today? All assumptions about trains are based on the idea that we are all going to live in central city areas and take public transit. I don't predict the future, but I'm sorry that simply doesn't map anyone's empirical reality outside of say 2.5 cities (NYC, SF, and part of Chicago). No one, NOBODY in St. Louis, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. lives in central cities, and with the housing collapse, no one is moving into those areas either.

So I'm going to drive 30 minutes to downtown, park (which I suspect won't be free), wait 8 hours for the train to arrive, hop on, arrive 14 hours late, and miss my appointment, or my birthday party, or the game? And it's going to cost us billions more than the billions we already throw at Amtrak?

In the East Coast corridor - sure, ok. And in fact you'd think that Amtrak would be able to make money with it's Acela trains. And in the past they have managed to squeak out a profit. But this year, with the airlines losing money, now even that route is starting to lose money as they are engaged in fare wars.

It's green, you say, and I say, ok. But why not take the 8 billion and develop the infrastructure for hydrogen transportation when we make that switch to emissions free driving? Or build that new electricity grid you want? Or, hell, I don't know, buy some pandas for a zoo. I just don't see this working, not here, not in suburban, Amtrak cursed America. And certainly not in the Midwest where we don't need intercity trains because it will just mean more people try to run rail crossings and get turned into car pancakes (Yes, that link is as cool as you suspect it might be).

How Much Land?

2009-04-16T07:09:00.001-07:00

The Washington Post continues to impress me with its coverage of green issues that seem fair and interested in dealing with fact, not partisanship. Take for example today's piece on the unintended consequences of green energy production.

First off, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the reference to the potential "unintended effect" from an environment project by a journalist. It's about time that journalists realized that just because someone releases a report predicting what the impact of a sports stadium, stimulus program, or bio-diesel MAY be, it doesn't mean that things will turn out exactly, or at all, as the experts predict.

Secondly, check out the estimates from the Nature Conservancy, hardly a bastion of right-wing, global warming deniers, about how much land will have to be in the energy production business by 2030 as we move towards "greener" energy - 79,537 square miles of land. Folks, here's some perspective - the entire state of New York, not the city, the FRIGGING STATE is only 54,566 square miles.

That's right, green energy is going to consume a ton of land. So green means cutting down forests, plowing under wetlands, and building wind turbines and bio-diesel farms. Unless they plan on painting the turbines and solar panels green, I'm not understanding how this is so green.

Just So We're Clear

2009-04-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

I always thought that conservatives were deeply concerned about civil unrest and too much democracy, while liberals defended free speech - right?

Well yesterday officially marked the moment when either we entered some weird, Star Trek opposite universe or hypocrisy is so prevalent that no one - NO ONE - seems to notice it anymore.

Consider the father of conservatism - James Madison - here quoted on the American Conservative Union webpage bashing democracy along with mob rule. And yet we see conservative journalists of every shape and color lauding these protests. Ah folks, will you be cheering as they charge the Bastille?

Consider the liberal iconic days of the 1960's in which people protested for women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, gay-female-animal rights, about as frequently as people drink lattes today. And yet yesterday we saw Keith Olbermann and a ton of other liberal outlets ridiculing people for engaging in free speech. Next thing you know liberals will be idealizing George Wallace.

Yes folks, days like yesterday are why I could no longer, with a straight face, teach about politics anymore. Principles get thrown out the window in a heartbeat. It's about winning, power, access to resources to give to your friends, and then justifying it with broad platitudes. All the while the rest of us pay the bills and continue to struggle along.

In Case You Weren't Already Worried Enough

2009-04-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Megan McArdle has a nice post here about the looming disaster in public pensions. I hate to blow my own horn (ok, I love to blow my horn, that's why I friggin blog!) but I posted on this last year here. It's linked to the broader problem of state and local government deficits and spending which I've mentioned in a couple of posts here and here.

As she notes, these programs were underfunded and the politicians turned to a lot of exotic forms of investment in the past few years.............you guessed it, they were betting on interest rate swaps and other stuff that's now crashed and burned. At least, unlike private investors, they can start threatening people with criminal action like this piece about the state of Tennessee that allowed ONE FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRM to both advise towns on these investments and then sell them at the same time. That was smart. Unsurprisingly all these towns are now in trouble.

The latest example of this that I came across was this gem in Indiana where the water utility lost 100 million bucks on a variable rate financing deal.

If smart people on Wall Street did not understand these things, how in the hell can we expect policy folks and politicians, some of whom were part-time in places like Tennessee, understand interest rate swaps? This is going to be crazy expensive.

How Would Environmental Lobbyists Feel if THEIR JOBS Were Gone?

2009-04-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Fundman pointed me to this offensive and poorly thought-through piece in the USA Today on Friday. Once again we see that Greenies are toasting with Tofu-Sparkling Wine and Whole Grain Free-Range Pate to enjoy the suffering of the little people who have lost their jobs.

But thank goodness carbon emissions are down! Apparently the alternative is that the unemployed should grow vegetables in our yards and use solar heated out-houses while enjoying the frost covered sunsets and increased deaths that accompany subsistence agricultural lifestyles. It's much nicer than working at jobs in nasty carbon producing industries that allow them to feed their families, buy cars, send their kids to college and live and retire decent lives. However as long as we still have government subsidies for environmental lobbyists though we can rest easy.

What really galled me about this piece though was the amazingly bad final paragraph. The "reporter" decided to ask a LOBBYIST/RENT-SEEKER/LEECH ON THE TIT OF GOVERNMENT and call her an "expert" when it comes to the matter of whether or not the government should take more of our money and give it to HER. The answer to that question was an unsurprising "Well YES, the government should take more of your money and give it to me, regardless of whether or not you are unemployed or hungry."

Ms. Mazzacurati - screw off.

Read Carefully

2009-04-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

This NYT piece is so achingly close to being right that I felt a pang of hope this morning that it would end properly. Of course it didn't. The Times reporters naively place blame for this tragedy on China's "lack of a free press, independent trade unions, citizen watchdog groups and other checks on official power." Trust me folks, the problem is not having "checks" on official power. Y'all won't get anywhere until you have less official power - full stop. Remember when this guy had lots of official power and millions of people died in labor camps? Civil society organizations won't solve the problem of unlimited official power.

Read it carefully and you'll see the problem with all modern societies. It's not greedy businesspeople per se (although they exist). It's not malevolent government officials per se (although they also exist). It's that greedy, subhuman businesspeople bribe malevolent government officials. And together they exploit people horribly.

And then the left gets to call it capitalism and the right screams about government corruption. And poor Mrs. Yang Youbiao will never know whose ashes she has.

Who Are Washington Elites and Who are Real People?

2009-04-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

There's a really moving story in the Nation today by Kate Michelman who is a former president of NARAL, which is the nation's leading pro-choice organization - except, I'm not sure how much of it is true.

Read the piece, she tells us that her family faces a horrible health care crisis because her daughter, who was uninsured at the time, had an accident on a horse, and her husband's Parkinson's is bankrupting the family, despite the fact that:

He purchased quality health insurance, including long-term-care insurance, so he would not be a financial burden to others. He enjoyed a long and steady career at an institution that would pay healthcare costs and a modest pension for life. Between his salary and mine, we achieved a reasonable degree of economic comfort--never wealthy but independent, self-sufficient, responsible.

The problem is that later she claims that the long-term care insurance pays only a "fraction" of her care for her husband who has Parkinson's. She also says that she can't work taking care of him, and that she struggles to make ends meet. It's a tough story, and very tragic.

But something here just smells funny. I know I shouldn't feel this way, but OK, I had to do this. So I pulled the 990's from the NARAL Foundation, which is affiliated with NARAL USA (and full disclosure I'm not sure which one is the lobbying arm) and Ms. Michelman was making more than 200k per year from the lobbying and foundation end of NARAL in 2003 after her husband was diagnosed.. So she wasn't starving, at least not what most people would call starving. And I'd be shocked if NARAL didn't give it's president some pretty darn good health care benefits.

And what's stranger, she claims in the article that "she had already stopped working" when they "recently" decided to bring her husband home. But that doesn't seem to square with this 990 from 2007, that shows she still draws more than 100k per year from NARAL for "program services" (check out page 25) even after she stopped working there. Now I mean it could be that they are helping her out in a time of crisis, or maybe she's had to stop working just this year (more on that below), but program services means she was supposed to be working.

But her story now TOTALLY doesn't square with her other part-time work as she struggles along barely making ends meet. Well first off, she does speeches, for money, with this organization who, as you can see from their homepage, are the same people who represent, Bono, Dick Cheney, and Bill Clinton, and Al Gore. Wow, a bunch of down on their luck people if I've ever seen it.

And here's her vita/bio. So as you can see she's listed as important by all of these prominent places like Forbes. She's "close friends" with Bill Clinton. And she's been making 6 figure salaries, in addition to book sales and speaking fees for a long time.

And this is even weirder - according to her story in the Nation, her husband's horrible fall appears to have occurred in October of 2008, but just two years earlier, in 2006, as President of NARAL, and after the dianogsis in 2002 of her husband and her daughter's accident she was contemplating running for the Senate. I guess the health care benefits of being a Senator outweighed her concerns about spending time taking care of her family.

And one more thing - while caring for her husband at home and her daughter, and starving, she still had time last year to endorse Barack Obama, appear on Hardball, and write about the experience in Salon. She was also a senior adviser to John Edwards (and not as a volunteer) and attacked Hilary Clinton, reported here, on gender grounds and accused her of "playing the victim card." Victim card, ummmmmmm Kate, can you talk about that Nation piece?

So my question is this - is our health system really screwed up so badly that someone who played by the rules, makes a lot of money, and has powerful friends still has challenges? Or she is bullshitting all of us? I'm open on this point, and would like your thoughts and comments. Since she's got a picture of herself in front of the capital, has worked in lived in DC forever, and worked for a lobbying firm you can guess my predisposition.

If she's bullshitting us, and playing politics, and maybe lying, then she should really be ashamed of herself. It's one thing to make a policy point, it's another to lay it on thick with personal stories and duplicitous actions in public outlets. A lot of people, a lot of decent people without her resources, overcome challenges and obstacles everyday in terms of family care. Public therapy designed to manipulate is a favorite move of political types - even if it's more like borderline fiction.

The Right's Blame Game

2009-04-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

Much as I distrust all politicians, including our president, I find this piece by Stuart Varney particularly hypocritical. He claims, and might even be correct, that the Obama administration is refusing to take the TARP money back from some banks because they want to control them and drive the economy to the left.

Three quick thoughts. First, DUH! The shocking development that a left-wing Democratic president wants to pursue a left-wing agenda is hardly news. Second, BUSH MADE THEM TAKE THE MONEY. Third, who started this problem and came begging for government money? That would be the banks.

Now they don't like the predicament they are in. Cry me a river. They made their beds, and now they can sleep in them. As Goodfellas should have taught everyone by now, if you choose your business partners poorly, bad things happen.

Bankers and investment firms have no one to blame but themselves, and since the rest of us are already paying their tab I hardly think they also need my sympathy.

Messed Up Priorities

2009-04-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

I found out today that apparently it's your right as a state employees in Colorado, to be able to call 9-11 victims "Little Eichmanns." Ward Churchill, an insane "ethnic studies" professor at the University of Colorado wrote that 9-11 victims were "Little Eichmanns" and unsurprisingly got fired from his job. He filed a lawsuit and won his job back.

Even conservative academics, like these folks, seem to be defending him on the grounds of "academic freedom." Are they as loopy as he is? Taxpayer money is funding universities during hard economic times and giving away lifetime employees to nutjobs who should be living with the Taliban in the hills of Pakistan eating cockroaches and running for their lives from predator drones, not smoking pot in Boulder.

In the meantime we continue to give people who've made all sort of mistakes, like homeowners and bankers bailouts and bonuses.

Bill Clinton famously said that he wanted to reward people who "played by the rules." Well someone has either been changing the rules or those of us who have been playing by the rules need to reconsider our lives. I've never asked for a bailout, a lifetime job, a "do-over" on bad investments or special treatment in general. I'm just a Midwesterner with a mortgage, family, job (at least I hope so on Monday) and a support network of friends and neighbors. Stop distorting the incentives we all should be living by and maybe we wouldn't encourage people to do stupid things again and again.

This is Not the Great Depression Part 65

2009-04-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Would someone please tell Paul Krugman and his ilk, and anyone else who is going on about how we are on the verge of another Great Depression to get out of their university offices and look around at say, Yahoo or maybe home prices.

IF they did, they'd come across this piece on what the best things to buy during this downturn are BEFORE things get better. This suggests to me that a fair number of people are acting exactly as the neo-classical or Austrian model suggests - rationally.

Don't believe me? Google "foreclosures for sale" and you'll find a billion sites that tell you how to make money buying foreclosed homes.

Times are hard, there's no doubt. But to continue to compare this to the end of the world defies empirical reality and stinks of political fear mongering.

Be Very Afraid

2009-04-01T06:23:00.001-07:00

James Madison must be turning over in his grave. Madison was the short Founder seated in the middle of the famous Christy painting of the signing of the Constitution. He was trained at Princeton, which was weird for a Virginian. And he most famously married Dolly who will forever have a soft spot in my heart for all of the cavities I got from eating the Zingers and Twinkies.

I didn't read much about James until I got to grad school where I rediscovered him and his most famous work, Federalist #10. He, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, wrote a series of anonymous articles defending the newly written Constitution in newspapers and broad sheets in the U.S. They were instrumental in helping to get the Constitution ratified amid more opposition from the Anti-Federalists (yes, they lacked a good PR firm) than American historians tend to remember.

What did Madison say in Federalist #10? He said basically that any free system of government had to acknowledge that people were going to form groups that had competing interests. We could not, EVER hope on the goodwill of people to do the "right thing," because liberty meant people would have the right to organize and promote their ideas and interests.

Instead, we'd need to rely on having a large country with a lot of diverse interests that would check each other. Groups would battle it out in politics and hopefully we'd get a more limited government rather than one dominated by the interests of the few.

Well Madison would be very afraid of this description of the unholy alliance that's forming over the Cap and Spend/Trade bill that was introduced in the House yesterday. I think anyone would expect that environmentalists would support a limit on carbon emissions. That's obvious. But the Mother Jones piece notes that industrial and economic interests that pollute also like the bill.

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That's what you should be thinking first, but then you should be thinking the following:

WHERE'S MY WALLET?!

Whenever two opposing interests have united over a bill it is not NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER a good thing. What it means my friends is that a deal has been cut in which both of these interests are going to get something they want at our expense - the taxpayers. And in this case it's that we are going to have carbon limits legislated that we will have to pay for and we will have massive subsidies to polluting industries as well that we'll have to pay for.

In other words, Madison's system has failed to have the fight between two interests that produces a limited government. Both sides have gotten something from the state, and we are paying far more than we should for an imperfect outcome.

Signs of the Apocolypse

2009-03-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

I never in my adult life thought I would ever see this headline anywhere except possibly in the Onion:

Uncle Sam Wants to Warranty Your Car

Here is the article - seriously.

I'm not a huge believer in the idea that the Constitution should be taken literally because the Founders themselves tried to figure out ways around the limits. Jefferson bought Louisiana and Hamilton set up a national bank (neither of which were particularly "Constitutional") right after we ratified the thing for Pete's sake. But does this quote really reflect the spirit with which the Framers wrote the Constitution:

"Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty," President Obama said on Monday.

In my humble view, the fellows who met in Philadelphia in 1787 and ratified what, up till now, has been the most successful experiment in self-government in human history never in a MILLION YEARS wanted the U.S. government to do something like this.

And as I wrote about three months ago, enough with the plan a day strategy. It's not helping in case people hadn't noticed. What would help GM and just about every auto manufacturer, bank, financial institution, homeowner, and local government official would be doing nothing more. Enough with the programs and bailouts. If 2 trillion plus is not helping, another trillion won't make it any better.

Quote of the Morning

2009-03-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

For me anyway. From Freeman Dyson on the global warming debate:

Beyond the specific points of factual dispute, Dyson has said that it all boils down to “a deeper disagreement about values” between those who think “nature knows best” and that “any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil,” and “humanists,” like himself, who contend that protecting the existing biosphere is not as important as fighting more repugnant evils like war, poverty and unemployment.

It's from this piece in the NYT weekend section (why do they release it on Friday?) about one of the world's most prominent physicists, a liberal, who is a global warming skeptic.

No matter what your views are on global warming, and I happen to think something is going on, this piece is good biography, and a nice and fair review of the politics, science and morality behind this public debate.

It's Not My Fault You Chose to Live Near a River

2009-03-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

Normally I have tremendous sympathies for all of my brethren, and breth-women, in the Midwest. I have a slow cooker; I shovel snow and clear off my neighbor's sidewalk, hills scare me. But whenever spring rolls around there are always stories like this one where some Midwestern town, located along a river, faces destruction because there's a flood.

This year it's North Dakota, last year it was Iowa. In 2007, historic flooding hit Kansas. In 2006 it was Minnesota that had serious flooding. Every spring floods hit, every summer farmers complain about droughts, and every fall the world does not come to an end.

Now in case any of y'all in the South or West are wondering, rivers in the Midwest do not randomly start searching each spring for some unsuspecting town to attack and flood. No, people choose to live next to rivers, which is largely a function of history. Rivers USED TO provide a critical transportation link and promote economic growth. The carbonly evil automobile solved all that, but most of the towns along rivers never really shut-down.

Only problem with all of this is that the Federal Government is the nation's primary provider of flood insurance. I have only one question to ask here - ah, WHY?

Well because the Federal Government has externalized all of the risk that people who live in flood areas have on those of us who are smart enough to decide that we don't want to live near rivers, or oceans, or lakes, or even retention ponds. In the 1960's, as this John Tierney column points out, the Feds starting offering heavily subsidized insurance to people in flood areas, but only about 1/3 of eligible people bought it. The other 2/3 correctly guessed that FEMA would save them when disaster struck. They were right in the case of New Orleans, and the pictures of people being pulled out of flooded cars on the news usually precedes an announcement by the Feds of disaster areas and checks in the mail.

Now in Fargo we are getting a lot of very emotionally moving stories about folks who are fighting a rising river to save their homes. Look, I feel for them, but let's say that these folks lived next to an active volcano, and we were reading about attempts to build a lava levy or roofs to prevent ash from burying their homes. I suspect we'd all be thinking "Sorry I'm not them, but hey, what did they think was going to happen? It was sort of stupid deciding to live near a volcano and thinking it would not erupt." And I doubt we'd be happy that our tax dollars were going to pay to REBUILD their homes next to the volcano so it could happen again.

Now there is some good news on this front because one private insurer wants to get more actively involved in the business of flood insurance, so perhaps we can begin to push the Feds out of this horrible practice. But the way politics works I doubt that will happen soon.

Your tax dollars at work - abating other people's risky, and somewhat stupid behavior. We don't need to live next to rivers in the Midwest anymore, and we certainly don't need to subsidize people who want to live near them.

My Bold Prediction

2009-03-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Obama's gonna try to legalize pot. Seriously. And it's not because I've called for legalization last month.

For a while I've been kicking around in my head how he's going to pay for all of this. Cap and trade is looking waaaaay less likely to pass without a major downsizing, and that means less revenue. Health care reform is still going to cost a ton. The easiest, and most painless way, to raise money is through pot legalization.

Teddy and I were cruising through stylish French Lick, Indiana last weekend, and we popped into the casino located there. The clientele is utterly blue collar - they have 2 cent slot machines populated with old folks who smoke cigs and take hits from their oxygen masks all the while pulling the one-armed bandits. It's like watching a scary, geriatric Busby Berkeley number. However despite all this exploitation of the old, sick poor, it still raises enough revenue to quench the thirst of government spending in the Hoosier state.

Sin taxes are the only really new and potentially bountiful source of government revenue that remain untapped. And Obama can combine the legalization revenue with a reallocation of cops who now focus pot busts and call it an increase in police protection. It's a total win-win.

And what's more, Yahoo news is reporting today pot legalization received a ton of attention during his town hall session on-line. It will happen folks - bet on it.

I Hate Conservatives and Liberals This Morning

2009-03-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Despite great news on the home front - Fundbaby is sleeping in his crib, in his room, for fairly decent stretches - I cannot believe the hypocrisy of the right and the audacity of the left this morning.

Victor Davis Hanson, a cheerleader for the Iraq debacle during the Bush years, tells us here that we need a "Socrates" in Washington to tell us the truth about the impact that our government's spending is going to have our on financial futures. Problem is, his facts and logic are all screwed up. Note this quote:

During the Clinton years, we got higher taxes but eventually balanced budgets. During the Bush administration, we got lower taxes but spiraling deficits. But now during the era of Obama, we apparently will get the worst of both worlds - higher taxes than under Clinton and higher deficits than under Bush.

Vic, can I call you Vic? Vic my boy the key for the Clinton and Bush stories are simple. With Clinton you did get some higher taxes initially, but you also got spending curtailed by sleaziest divorcee in America - Newt Gingrich - who's GOP buddies blocked a bunch of Clinton programs. With Bush half of the reason we had spiraling deficits was this stupid Iraq War you love so much. By the way, all those "tax cuts" aren't real because we have to pay for them down the road without corresponding spending cuts. Bush, who never had a mortgage in his life, didn't understand that basic concept.

At least Obama's being honest about his deficits, although as I've noted here on a regularly basis, trillions are big numbers...........really big numbers. Which brings us to how the Democrats plan on paying for all this red ink.

Turns out the payment will come in the form of higher taxes. I'm shocked. What possible evidence do we have to suggest Democrats like raising taxes? Well this morning the Left is showing it's true colors - finally. EJ Dionne has stopped the charade and along with Alice Rivlin is simply asking that more people pay more taxes. The "rich" will now be the top 8% (note she doesn't give the income numbers of where that ax will fall). But my favorite part is the way Alice avoids the phrase "tax increase." Check out this quote, it's friggin New Speak:

Congress could increase funding for health-care reform by including part of employer-paid health benefits in taxable income. It could put the Social Security system on a sustainable long-term basis by making minor tweaks to benefits and revenue to take effect a decade or more hence.

"Tweaks", "including part of employer paid benefits in taxable income," and "to take effect a decade or more hence." Translation - "cut benefits and raise taxes," "raise taxes and discourage employers from providing benefits," "put off the impact of the taxes until a new (probably Republican) administration has to deal with them."

By the way, why is that all of the folks who want to fight wars are too old to be drafted and NEVER SERVED A SINGLE DAY IN THE MILITARY like Victor Davis Hanson? And why is it all the folks who want to raise taxes are rich elite talking head types like Alice Rivlin who serves on the Board of New York Stock Exchange or EJ Dionne who lives in snobbish Bethesda, Maryland and went to Harvard and Oxford? Just wondering?

The Wolf Howls Correctly

2009-03-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

Crazy meeting day and Mrs. Fundman and I have a "date" later, so not much posting today. However I couldn't resist a little something from the best column I've read critiquing the Bank Bailout Plan by Martin Wolf. The key quote:

the government has ruled out the only way of restructuring the banks’ finances that would not cost any extra government money: debt for equity swaps, or a true bankruptcy. Economists I respect – Willem Buiter, for example – condemn this reluctance out of hand. There is no doubt that the decision to make whole the creditors of all systemically significant financial institutions creates concerns for the future: something will have to be done about the “too important to fail” problem this creates. Against this, the Treasury insists that a wave of bankruptcies now would undermine trust in past government promises and generate huge new uncertainties. Alas, this view is not crazy.

If he's right, Obama is putting a HUGE bet on the "too big to fail" argument with a plan, heavily subsidized by the Feds with our money, that most serious people believe won't solve the underlying problem. He notes earlier in the column that IF this plan fails after hedge funds and bankers have made money from the government subsidizing the risk involved in buying these bad assets, the banks will still be screwed up. He worries that this situation "is going to convince ordinary Americans that their government is a racket run for the benefit of Wall Street."

Don't worry Martin, most Americans already know that. However in the past most of us were making money along the way, so we tolerated it like a successful business tolerates paying protection money. The real problem now is that we are transferring the funds to Wall Street while we're all getting killed in our investments. That's too much to bear. Let me provide an example from U.S. history to illustrate.

In Mike Royko's classic book Boss, there's a police scandal in Chicago in the 1960's, which sounds weird because the Chicago Police Department was one of the most corrupt in America in the 1960's. But this one was different. Officers were literally breaking into people's homes and businesses, not just shaking down criminals or taking bribes. As Royko put it:

The public was genuinely shocked. It's one thing to take a few bucks to overlook an illegal U-turn; but even Chicagoans could become indignant at the thought of policeman jimmying the locks of appliance stores and loading up their trunks, on city time yet.

We'll put up with Wall Street owning both sides of the Duopoly, as long as we are largely left alone, not unduly burdened with taxes, AND making a decent living. When it gets out of control all bets are off. Obama's from Chicago; he should pick up Daley's book and study it. Then he should tell the bankers, and their whiny powerful creditors, to sleep in the beds they both made and stop asking the rest of us to bailout out their audacity and stupidity.

The Socialists Continue to go Free Market

2009-03-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

I noted several weeks ago that in France of all places the housing market is largely shielded from the carnage that's occurred here. Why? Well they don't subsidize housing and they require people to have a pretty good sized chunk of change to buy a place. They also have lower household debt than we do. In short, despite their reputations they seem pretty sane when it comes to household finance.

Now today comes word that the American left's other favorite socialist paradise had decided to take a pass on nationalizing Saab, the Swedish automaker. Yes Sweden, the hammer that every good liberal in the U.S. uses when socialism gets critiqued, has decided to let the market kill off Saab unless some private investor steps-up to the plate.

In the meantime today we see that Timmy O'Toole, sorry, I mean Geitner, is planning on continuing to throw billions of OUR dollars at basically five large insolvent U.S. banks. This is a radical departure from the previous administration's plan to throw billions of dollars at every bank they ran into walking along the street.

How recycled is this plan from the Bush administration's plan? Well even Dr. Depression, Paul Krugman, calls it recycling. Paul doesn't understand the key problem. Read the piece - he honestly believes that simply by making reasonable arguments to the Obama folks they will see the light. The real problem is not about arguing policy - it's that both Democrats and Republicans owe their existence to the same rich interests. Those rich interests don't want to lose money with those large banks. The two parties are one and the same - no difference between the two gangs of thugs.

But back to our "socialist" Europe friends. I've always cringed when folks have blamed "capitalism" for this current crisis as much as I've twitched when they called European countries socialist. We aren't Hong Kong or some libertarian paradise. The Europeans do have markets, albeit typically ones that are more regulated than ours.

But the events of the past few months have really got me completely confused. I mean, am I going to start hearing Leftie Americans railing against the oppressive housing policies of the French and the failure of the Swedish government to acknowledge the suffering of workers? Will Ann Coulter buy a place in Stockholm? Is Fox News going to broadcast from Paris? Tune into the next episode of the Twilight Zone.

This Week's Nominee for "That's Journalism?"

2009-03-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

From the Washington Post today on the Obama administration's decision to reconsider giving "women" under the age of 18 the Morning After Pill. The reporter gets a quote from a pro-choice group, not a pro-life one, and the representative gives this gem of a comment:

The message is clear: The FDA has to put science first and leave politics at the door.

Yeah because pro-choice advocacy groups are not political - at all.

Geez.........from the Post? That's a new low no matter what your views on abortion and birth control are.

Where's Jonathan Swift When We Need HIm?

2009-03-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Remember Swift? He penned the "Modest Proposal," in which he satirically suggested that the way to deal with Irish poverty and overpopulation was to have the Irish sell their babies as meat for rich English customers. Trust me, you probably read it in high school.

Anyway, I'm waiting for the day when an environmentalist suggests a similar "solution" to deal with the impact of the world's poorer countries on global warming, ooooopppsss, climate change because they are already suggesting the best way for them to address global warming is to stay poor and be unemployed, and now not have the right to buy cars and get wealthy.

Now setting aside for a moment the fact that who the hell are we to tell another country that it can't produce and sell a car, has anyone of these enviro-reporters or activists actually stopped to think for a minute what wealth and progress mean for the environment? They all seem predisposed towards an idyllic vision of poverty in which "native peoples" "at one with the land" "only use what they need."

The problem with all of these preconceived notions about the world is that they are deeply political, as Matt Ridley correctly notes in this article. Folks in the environmental movement claim that progress has done more damage to the environment than subsistence living and native practices. The problem is that the fossil record doesn't bear it out.

And more bluntly, neither does any trip to the developing world. If you want to see trash thrown from buses and people destroying forests, go to Brazil, or Guatemala, or Kenya. If you want to see people picking up trash, planting trees, or worrying about cleaner air and water, go to the richer parts of Western Europe or America where wealthy people have the time to pursue those policy goals.

So while I have no doubt that Tata's new Nano will increase carbon emissions in the short run, I have little doubt that in 20 years a richer India will do much more to preserve the environment, not to mention that thousands, possibly millions of lives that will be saved and enriched if we let them grow economically.

Unless the real green agenda is an anti-human one - in which case I suggest the environmentalists sell their babies as meat to prevent environmental degradation, not the Indians.

Wow

2009-03-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

I mean I don't believe this article from the Los Angeles Times - not National Review, not the Wall Street Journal. Obama is comparing AIG to a suicide bomber at a time hall meeting............I mean, shouldn't someone be screaming about this? Like a lot?

Instead the friggin Washington Post reports, very apologetically, about Obama making an inappropriate joke about how is bowling game is like "the Special Olympics." Wonder if Cheney had made a joke like that........ah I don't even know why I'm going there.

Back in the real world, people want to kill AIG employees. God Bless America.

Hat tip to Jay Greene's awesome blog.

Dr. Keynes, Meet Dr. Friedman

2009-03-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Well so much for the New Deal analogies. Yesterday the Fed did exactly what Uncle Miltie would have done - dropped a trillion plus bucks from a helicopter onto the stock market. Combined with the fiscal stuff that Obama's been doing, we've entered into very new, and very weird territory. I largely agree with this guy who points out that we will eventually have some nasty inflation and some real "Third World" debt issues if things break a particular way.

My initial take on this, sitting in a hotel lobby, is that the Fed must have seen something in the data that scared them. I'm not sure why Bernanke was talking about the recession ending maybe later this year UNLESS he was counting on this working.

Folks, doing this fits with what the monetarists (read here, University of Chicago economists) say you should do. It's textbook. Only a small slice of economists have a strong critique to it - the so-called Austrian School. They argue you have to ride out the problems, make the structural adjustments, and that any government intervention simply makes it worse.

Alas now any arguments that Keynesian economics can finally be tested here are gone. This blurs the line between monetary and fiscal. We really won't be able to know which one of these, fucking gigantic, interventions has the biggest impact when, ok, IF, we get out of this mess.

The Fed yesterday basically instantly added a trillion, deep breath 1,000,000,000,000 DOLLARS into the money supply. This had better work or "Welcome to Zimbabwe!"

I'll Take a Beer and a Shot

2009-03-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

So as long as we're all pissed about hypocrisy, I give you this little gem and this other little gem.

If this blogging gets any easier I may have one of my cats do it.

Have yourself a wonderful night seething in continued anger at the bullshit theater that continues in DC.

Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain

2009-03-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

165 million dollars is enough for myself, Mrs. Fundman, Fundbaby, and most of our neighbors on our block to retire on comfortably. We could probably throw in our immediate families and a few friends. It's a lot of money for any normal sane person.

It is, however, much smaller than 300 billion dollars. Why compare it to 300 billion? Because two stories down on the front page of the Post this morning is this article, which will not receive 1/1000th of the attention that the AIG crap is getting, in which a budget expert says that the Pentagon has wasted about 300 billion dollars with the way it chooses and pays for its weapons systems.

Where do all of these Members of Congress, who have been irresponsibly and blatantly wasting our money like it grows on trees, get off crucifying this mope WHO THEY FRIGGIN HIRED over a lousy 165 million when just down the hall there's another guy WHO THEY HIRED telling them they've wasted 300 billion?

If the Wizard of Oz had managed to deflect attention this well Dorothy might still be in Oz, Judy Garland wouldn't have gotten hooked on drugs, and we wouldn't have to suffer through Liza Minelli concerts.

I'm Sure GM Will Spend it Better......and Citi too

2009-03-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Look, anyone who's not pissed off that Hammer Hank's monster, AIG, took our money and gave it to foreign banks and people in their financial services division that started this mess is probably working in AIG's financial services division.

That having been said WHAT IN GOD'S NAME DID THE GOVERNMENT THINK WOULD HAPPEN WHEN THEY GAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WITHOUT ANY APPARENT OVERSIGHT AT ALL TO A COMPANY THAT HAD SCREWED UP IT'S FINANCES????????????? Were they hoping for some sort of miraculous transformation of judgment, wisdom, and benevolence? That only happens in sitcoms and Disney movies.

Your neighbor has just destroyed all of his lawn equipment because he's just not very good with mechanical things. He appears at your frontdoor and says "hey, I need to borrow your chainsaw, cut down some trees in the neighborhood because if I don't my house will have a tree fall on it and ruin the value of all of the homes in the neighborhood." Your response is not "Sure, good ahead, cut away, bring it back whenever, I trust you." Your response is "Gee Bob, I'm out of chainsaw oil," or "Man, Bob, why don't you ask Phil," or "Bob, I'd be happy to, but let me do the cutting."

You see, you're not stupid. The government on the other hand is stupid, and irresponsible, and now trying to point fingers at AIG when they should have known better.............Jeez.

The 800 Pound, Obese, Gorilla in the Room

2009-03-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

In 2006 Massachusetts mandated that just about everyone in the state be offered health care that was going to be run through the state government paid for with taxes on businesses. It was a radical plan to increase coverage, and it was pretty widely hailed on the Left as a great idea and on the Right as something straight out of Revelations. Of course, neither event seems to have happened as this piece in today's Times shows.

Instead of a wonderful fairyland full of hospitals staffed with friendly doctors or a hellish wasteland created by some beast with 666 (or maybe 616 apparently) stamped on its head strolling around, it's expanded coverage, but at a substantially increased cost. And that's left the politicians wondering where to get more cash and where to save money.

And that brings me to the only thing I know about what will happen if the government "provides" health care. Here's the key quote from the Times piece:

Some health policy experts argue that changes in payment practices will not be enough to slow the growth in spending, even when combined with other cost-cutting strategies. To truly change course, they say, the state and federal governments may need to place actual limits on health spending, which could lead to rationing of care.

“Really controlling costs requires just stopping spending,” said Stuart H. Altman, a professor of health policy at Brandeis University.

No one on either side of this political fight wants to admit it, but here's the truth. Reform will mean changes. If you're uninsured or underinsured now, you'll be better off - full stop. If you are insured, paying a ton, and don't have any particularly exotic problems, you'll probably be better off in terms of costs, but you will have to wait longer to see doctors and specialists. If you have serious problems, or really like your coverage now, you are going to be worse off. You can't have it all. In short there will be trade-offs as the folks in Massachusetts are finally finding out.

Over 100

2009-03-13T06:41:00.001-07:00

I've been doing this for two months. I've posted more than 100 entries. Your thoughts, comments, critiques, tossed tomatoes, would be greatly appreciated......unless you have mean things to say, in which case you can keep your thoughts to yourself.

Fry Bernie Madoff

2009-03-13T06:28:00.001-07:00

I should begin by saying up front that I oppose the death penalty in all cases. It's a religious/moral thing that I won't bore you with. But since we live in a country that happens to still reserve the right to kill its citizens legally, I'd like to propose we impose the death sentence on the, now self-admittedly guilty, Bernie Madoff.

Punishment should be proportionate to crime. If we believe that an individual has done extremely destructive things that damage the fabric of society and harm the well-being and safety of lots of other citizens, we should have a punishment that fits the scope of the crime.

I can think of no other criminal in my lifetime who has done more widespread harm to public trust, capitalism, non-profits, universities, individuals, and the health of the U.S. economy than Bernie Madoff. He's stolen billions, ruined thousands of lives directly, further damaged what little trust existed for investment advisers and bankers, already cost tax payers millions and will cost perhaps billions more in investigations, tax research, law suits, and countersuits. And of course the blizzard of regulation that will occur in his wake will cost us even more. He's even prompted a couple of Wall Street folks to commit suicide, so you can put killing people on the list as well. He may be the most destructive individual force I've ever seen since Bin Laden.

As I noted in an earlier post, my Dad works in the criminal justice field. When he first started out he had to watch a couple of executions, which helped seal his opposition to the practice. They had a nickname for guys in death row back when they still used the electric chair - they called them "crispy." Let's turn the chair up to "11" and make Bernie "extra crispy."

Exactly What IS the Daily Show

2009-03-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

I'll admit I don't watch anymore primarily because it is on too late now that Fundbaby has arrived. But when people talk about it, and most of these folks are my left-wing friends, they always talk about how Jon Stewart is ridiculing Republicans and Wall Street. And when I ask them if it's a news show, they laugh and say no.

But my understanding is that A LOT of kids actually treat it as a news show. That opinions are formed. That information is transmitted. And last night's "interview" with Jim Cramer, in which two FRIGGIN MEDIA FIGURES, both of whom are basically entertainers, produces headlines all over the web, I guess I wonder exactly what's news, what's not news, and what's the Daily Show? Anyone who watches it regularly, help me out here.

Strangely I think the Daily Show, like a lot of comedy/news/current affairs outlets faces a real problem with Obama. First off, Bush was just plain easier to make fun of. The guy's a dufus. But there are other obvious problems with Obama, like the race thing. I wonder how they'll do in terms of evening out the bias that others have found (see the above link) and subjecting him to the ridicule he should get as president.

Karl, How Do You Sleep at Night?

2009-03-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

And frankly how does anyone who works in politics? Take a look at this completely disingenuous column in today's Journal from Karl Rove on how Obama is being deceptive in his projected budget spending.

Here's an example of the hypocrisy from KR:

Mr. Obama's budget downplays some programs' true cost. For example, his vaunted new college access program is funded for five years and then disappears (on paper); the children's health insurance program drops (on paper) from $12.4 billion in 2013 to $700 million the next year. Neither will happen; the costs of both will be much higher and so will the deficits.

Since when has anyone from the Bush White House given a damn about deficits? Deficits were like water boarding for you guys - necessary and certainly legal.

Well it certainly takes one to know one buddy, because my favorite hobbyhorse from the W years, the drug benefit for Medicare millionaires, was sold to the Congress BY THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE as being half as expensive as it turned out to really be.

I know this stuff sells print space for the Wall Street Journal and airtime for Fox, but Karl, dude, do you really believe it?

Like Mom Always Said About Carrots

2009-03-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

To this day, I hate carrots, especially raw. My Mom would make me eat them at least a couple times a week. She'd always say "eventually you'll learn to like them."

Which reminds me of this creepy headline from the New Republic this morning:

Americans Like Big Government:
They just don't really know it yet

Oh thanks - can you hold the carrots though?

Free Speech in Iraq Gets You Three Years in Jail

2009-03-12T06:41:00.001-07:00

Nice to see we've built a regime based on rule of law in Iraq. Imagine how many years he would have gotten if he'd actually hit W with the shoe.

Why We Need Walmart - Warts and All

2009-03-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

The Poet asked me to blog about WallyWorld a couple of weeks ago, when she forwarded me this undercover piece by a person who actually went to work at a Walmart. The article basically says that, despite what Walmart's opponents say online, working there sounds stunningly like working in just about any other retail place. It's dreary, dull, hardly inspiring and tough to make a living working there, but Walmart is not exactly like a labor camp.

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what I wanted to say more broadly when I came across this piece in the Times. Remember that during the White House's Health Care Fiesta they were claiming that tons of cost savings could come from electronic patient records? Well it looks like Walmart has beaten them to the punch, and in a fight between the Federal government and Walmart, we have plenty of evidence to suggest Walmart would wipe the floor with the Feds.

Mrs. Fundman and I shop at Wally World at least once every couple of weeks. The produce blows, and I'd sooner chew on shoe leather than purchase any fish from a Walmart. But if we are out of spaghetti sauce, canned tuna, dairy, pasta, or Mrs. Fundman's Soy Breakfast Hockey Pucks it's the only place to go. Packaged stuff is so much cheaper than any place else. How do I know this? Well partially through comparison shopping, but partially through simply observation. I just look at who is shopping there.

The store is full of immigrants (or my town has a miraculously successful Spanish program in its public schools), African Americans, and working Moms who benefit from the prices and the ability to make one trip to shop for everything. Anyone who's a parent understands how friggin important it is to be able to save time and not shop at three or four different places. When you drive a Lexus SUV, have "domestic employees" at home and send your kids to boarding school you may not understand the appeal of Walmart. When you work for a living and try to raise a family you do.

Oh I've heard the claims from the left that Walmart destroys local "Mom and Pop" businesses and hurts minorities by not offering health insurance and underpaying people and they don't do the union thing, and blah, blah, blah. Lower middle class folks, older people, poorer folks who cannot afford to eat tofu, organic beet chips, free range mushrooms, or buy hydroponic toilet paper, environmentally friendly free trade toilet cleaner, or enjoy Turkish llama cottage cheese need Wally World and the savagery that it inflicts upon other retailers to drive down prices. "Mom and Pop" usually means "Boutique" these days, and Walmart eats Boutique for lunch.

And THREE YEARS before President Greenie won office, lookie who was putting solar energy panels on their new stores to save money? That would be Walmart. And who sells tons of organic foods each year? Wallyworld.

But thinking more broadly, going to Wally World is like flying Southwest Airlines or seeing people at McDonald's order a Latte. It's about democratizing quality of life. You, as a lower middle class consumer, can do much better saving money at Wally World and do more with it. The same goes for Southwest Airlines. No more long bus trips and lost time. Both of them have improved the lives of a lot of people. And you don't have to look into a Starbucks and wonder what Cappuchino tastes like; you can afford one for a buck fifty at Mickey D's.

Which is not say they are a panacea. I wouldn't want to work at Wally World now even though they are now being called "innovators" in providing health care. McDonald's still grosses me out foodwise. But all of them, and Southwest too, provide opportunities for folks who aren't rich and affluent to enjoy more of the conveniences and luxuries of modern life. They do it by playing fairly through markets, not relying on government subsidies or handouts to fight the competition. So don't be surprised if Walmart and its ilk continue to be at the forefront of innovation and cost saving in a lot of surprising areas. Now if they could just sell a decent piece of Tilapia......

Environmentalists Celebrate Human Suffering

2009-03-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

In not one, but TWO articles in major news outlets this week. Don't worry about delaying your retirement, forcing your kids to take out more loans for their college education, or helping out your neighbors who are unemployed - carbon emissions have gone down! Thank God! So sayeth Newsweek in this thoughtless little piece on how the world's recession is good for the planet. How can anyone think that unemployment among the world's poor is somehow "good?" I mean where have sensibilities gone?

At least in the case of this piece from the Boston Globe they have some regional bias which explains the hypocrisy. I mean this is the same place where the liberals from New England are happy to have wind power, as long as it doesn't ruin the view from Cape Cod.

An Alternative Title

2009-03-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

Most of the major news outlets have been reporting on this study about the state of American religion by a couple of demographers funded by Lilly with headlines about the decline in Christianity in the U.S. No doubt their numbers reflect that, but in one area only - mainline Protestantism. Check out Table 3 on page 5. It's pretty amazing.

Alternative title - "Welcome to Catholic/Evangelical America" Now we know why Obama was trying to reach out to Evangelicals with the whole Rick Warren thing.

No Guns and No Strollers

2009-03-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

Those were the only two things you could not bring to the Golden Gloves matches held at the Armory in my hometown several years ago - I kid you not. Apparently some smart Army reservist had decided that preventing the widespread distribution of these two dangerous tools of destruction among the crowd would make us all safer. So can we ever know that by preventing strollers and firearms from entering in the Armory did save me from gunshot wounds and being beaten to death by a 1,200 dollar stroller?

Over the past few weeks a lot of folks in the blogosphere, media, and government have been debating the fate of Citibank since its share price is around a dollar and the government has become the largest shareholder at 36%. By the way, the government's other big "investment" AIG, has now turned completely sour and will almost certainly end up being a huge money loser after some people argued the deal might actually turnout profitable.

The gist of the Citi debate, on the surface, is the "too big to fail" vs. "markets must have failure to function" argument. Because Citi is much more than just a bank, because it has operations in more than 100 countries, and because a very rich Saudi prince happens to have invested billions, the government can't let it fail. After all when it let Lehman die, look what happened!

There are two folks, Megan McArdle and Kevin Drum, who I read, and they have both posted on this issue over the weekend. I think both make reasonable opposing arguments on the matter.

I'm not an economist, although as I've noted before even if I was it would hardly make me authoritative on the issue of how the macro economy functions, so I have no particularly strong view on how bad a Citi shutdown or nationalization would really be. But I do know this - from a political standpoint the actual issue of causality and credit-claiming is central here.

Folks on the left argue that while the government sat around and "did nothing" during the Bush years the economy collapsed. Folks on the right have argued that the market's decline since Obama became President is "caused" by his policies. Harry Reid says the Stimulus Package will "create" 3 million jobs, and Richard Shelby isn't worried about letting Citi fail and says it would fit into the model of how we deal with smaller banks.

So here's what it comes down to - the left uses something called the "precautionary principle" when it makes most of these arguments. Whether it's about the stimulus, bank bailouts, or safety regulation, they argue that 1) past failure to act has caused problems and 2) current actions will solve and prevent problems. Generally speaking conservatives and/or libertarians argue the opposite that 1) past problems are caused by government actions and 2) government actions just exacerbate current problems.

Who's right? Well who knows because determining "causality" in statistical terms what causes something to happen, is really, really, really, difficult to determine in complicated systems. Try to determine in the real world what causes things and it gets even harder.

My general rule is that the precautionary principle overstates risk, BUT, and this is a huge but, most people are very risk averse during crises and willing to "pay" for risk abatement through future taxes. In English, yes I will mortgage part of my children's future even if there's a small chance this policy will prevent a horrible Depression. Interest groups (read here bond holders in AIG and Citi) know this and play up the fear.

But the right has never, NEVER done a good job acknowledging the potential risks and real costs that markets incur on losers during crises. That's why they are losing now, and that's why the costs of all this government "risk prevention" are so much more costly than they have to be because they have not offered a comprehensively less costly alternative set of plans.

And in four years when Obama is running for president again and the economy has turned around, which it will probably do, the two parties will have to fight over whether his plans helped spur the turn around or simply burdened us with higher taxes and debt. Either way the key issue of what actually "caused" the recovery won't matter - what will matter is who can make the better case politically, and that will probably, again, be the Democrats.

As My Father Likes to Say

2009-03-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

About guys who go on a killing spree and THEN kill themselves, why do they always get the order wrong? Remember: First start with yourself.

UNFORTUNATE UPDATE

Two more idiots, one in Alabama and the other in Germany, also got the order wrong this week.

Angry White Men Won't Cut It

2009-03-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

As Wall Street tumbles, the government prints money like Mugabe, and the Bachelor apparently was lying, Republicans have had to spend the past week bowing down at the altar of Limbaugh. I honest to God never thought I would write a sentence like that in my life.

I mean this is the guy who made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease. The guy who was addicted to prescription pain killers and still wanted us to go after drug dealers. The guy who did the "magic Negro" parody on his show is that revered in the GOP? And a political party staffed, presumably by professionals, has allowed the White House to make HIM their spokesperson.

I'd like to recommend that the Republicans hold a special training seminar for their leadership in which they watch this film. Maybe they'll learn something about politics and how it's played.

Bailing Out Failed Entrepreneurs

2009-03-05T05:32:00.000-08:00

Remember when Obama first said that this bailout was not going to reward speculators? Check out this little quote from NPR's All Things Considered this morning:

Tucker Roberts, 31, of Crested Butte, Colo., purchased a townhouse for just under $500,000 two years ago. He was hoping to sell it for a profit soon, but instead prices have gone down.

"So now I own a house that's worth, probably, $150,000 to $200,000 less than my total mortgage is on the place," says Roberts.

His salesman salary ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 a year, so the $3,400 monthly mortgage is nearly impossible to afford. Until recently he had two roommates but now that they're gone he's burning through his savings and says he may have to liquidate other assets to keep current on the payments.

"By spring of next year if I can't get my house sold or I can't start making a lot more money, there'll be a three bedroom two-and-a-half bath house for sale really cheap through a bank," says Roberts.

Roberts is among those a new U.S. Treasury Department program is designed to help. The $75 billion foreclosure relief plan is for those facing imminent hardship. It offers cash incentives to lenders who modify mortgages on single-family houses up to $729,750.

With all due respect - are you kidding me? He bought a half a million dollar townhouse at the ripe old age of 29 making 50k a year. Put two roommates in the house to cover a 3400 dollar mortgage. Hell - how many people does anyone out there know with a THREE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED DOLLAR MORTGAGE?

Then he friggin admits he was flipping, but this new Treasury plan was DESIGNED TO HELP HIM??????

This entire plan has lost sight of its originally intended goal of helping people who were screwed into bad mortgages. The reason it has is simple - the vast majority of people who are "stuck" were speculating. We've seen the enemy and it is us. The only real victims here are those of us who did not speculate. We are going to bail out a bunch of folks who made bad bets and now want "the government" to bail them out. Of course "the government" will ask those of us "suckers" to pay for the entrepreneurs' failure. Since when was that the American way?

The banks, Countrywide, real estate agents cannot be solely blamed. You can't con an honest person, but you can sure as hell con a greedy one. We have to point the fingers of blame at ourselves when there were at least four television shows about house flipping on cable just last year. Two of the shows basically had the same name - one was called Flip that House, and the other was originally called Flip this House. They couldn't even come up with original names for it. Bravo had a show called Flipping Out which now seems prophetic. Now I wonder if they'll have shows called "Bail Me Out," or maybe "Up Side Down in Phoenix!" or possibly "Foreclose This!"

This has become total and utter risk abatement by the government. Young Tucker took a calculated risk in the marketplace. It did not work out for him. The asset lost value. It was never, NEVER in his mind supposed to be a home in the traditional sense. He might as well have been buying gold, or internet stocks, or tulip bulbs.

Now instead of putting him through the same entrepreneurial process that Henry Ford went through several times in his life, losing his shirt, before he made it big, Tucker will be "bailed out" by the Feds. To what end?

He's now trapped in a house he doesn't want. Some young couple that's saved diligently for this opportunity will be denied the chance to purchase that home. The rest of us will not benefit from this supposed price support because this will simply put off the inevitable - he'll have to sell the house at a loss eventually. And besides, we are also paying 75 billion dollars to put off this problem. Of course with the Feds throwing around trillions, 75 billion seems like pocket change doesn't it?

The lesson Tucker learns is that there really isn't any risk anymore. There was no downside. No one loses. Everybody gets participation ribbons, even the kids who finish last. No more jokes about France people. At least in France people still have to pay their debts. Check out this quote from a piece on the situation in the French debt and housing market from last year:

Only 57 percent of French people own their own home, around 10 points below the euro zone average and banks have generally required large deposits for home purchases, limiting the build up of large loans.

OECD data shows the debt of French households was only 89.1 percent of income in 2006. In Britain and the United States that ratio stands at 168.5 percent and 139.7 percent respectively.

France has not made the idea that everyone must own a home the national mantra. France, the land of markets and responsible government. How early to the bars open around here...............

UPDATE:

TIN CUP ALERT

Folks I'm going to be asking donations be sent to poor Chadi Moussa. Read about his horrible, heart-wrenching saga in this New York Times piece that has brought my frustration with this "bailout" to new heights. Mr. Moussa bought a 2.25 million dollar home that's lost half its value..................unfortunately, the piece seems to say, he doesn't qualify for a bailout. Sob, sob, sob.

I urge, nay, implore you, to send him whatever help you can to help him in this difficult circumstance..............when's the next flight to Paris?

The Philanthropy Wars

2009-03-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure - as I noted when I opened this blog, I work for a non-profit.

A lot has been made about Obama's proposal to limit the tax deductions that rich people get when they are contributing to charity. Folks who study philanthropy at Indiana argued that the plan would reduce charitable giving by "several billion dollars" a year with the implication that this is a bad thing.

Of course folks in the philanthropic world are just like any other organized interest that receives a government granted tax advantage. I see them as no different than farmers who get checks to not plant crops. They are going to produce reports that defend their positions. And like farmers they produce a "good" but it's less tangible than soy beans.

Then yesterday this piece in the WSJ's Opinion section argues that some "activists" are interested in forcing non-profits into giving to specific causes regardless of donor intent. So if donors gave money to an organization with the explicit purpose of promoting Beanie Baby appreciation, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy would like to see 50% of that money going to lower income and other "marginalized" groups. So what's more important, donor intent or broad social goals that have nothing to do with original donor intent? It's been a big question in philanthropic circles for a while.

But there's a political side to this stuff that has been simmering for a while as well. For a number of years these folks have been going after certain foundations based on their ideology. Originally it just looked like they wanted it known that some foundations were right-wing. Now it seems they want to redefine who ought to be allow to called a "charity" and receive the tax benefits that accompany that title.

Non-profits, like limited liability corporations, exist because the state has carved out a unique tax situation for them. In theory governments do that because they deem the work and "goods" produced by philanthropic organizations to be both important in a free society and somehow underprovided by both the government and for-profit sector.

Of course the state has the right to wonder if giving broad tax breaks to foundations, some of which will promote Beanie Babies and other malaria eradication, is worth it. The key point is that the existence of foundations rests on the whims of the government - and governments change hands.

It now seems that the worm has turned. Folks within the administration and in society at large are wondering what constructive role philanthropy, that doesn't fit certain ideological criteria, can play. Or they're just plain hostile to what they see as the unfair advantages given to rich donors to promote public policies free from having to pay taxes. Or they may simply believe that, as is the case in Europe for example, government should step in and play a much larger role in providing the "goods" that non-profits previously produced because government can do a better job of providing those goods.

In some ways a thorough re-examination of what a non-profit is, what it's tax status should be, and what activities they can engage in is a useful enterprise. Foundations last year gave more than 42 billion dollars in grants. That's a really big number, and Europeans now think that foundations are nothing more than intermediaries to dodge taxes. If that's true, and no "good" is provided, than the state has a right to re-think the tax benefit it provides.

But that tax advantage shouldn't be used to skew public debate. For example, labor unions now support a wide range of liberal think tanks (which are all non-profits) that have emerged in the past ten years. These guys are a good example who receive about 30% of their funding from unions. As lobbying groups, they are now engaged in a fight with conservative groups over the future direction of American society.

It's pluralism, and I think it's a fair fight that should be based on the merit of the ideas. The notion that one side should somehow be prohibited from benefiting from the tax code because you don't like their ideas strikes me as pretty ridiculous. I mean conservative groups aren't denying the Holocaust or arguing for a flat earth. They have legitimate positions that deserve a fair hearing in the public sphere, just as the left's positions do. Any attempt to legislate those views out of the debate is not only contrary to the values of any free and liberal society, it's also doomed to fail because a lot of folks believe in those positions rightly or wrongly.

And finally, as this article from the Washington Post shows, even conservative, stodgy, old non-profit institutions like the Roman Catholic Church can adapt to changing times and different incentives. Try to put them out of business by changing the tax code, and they will simply pursue their goals in other ways that the "smart people" cannot possibly imagine.

Jim Cramer He Isn't

2009-03-04T05:31:00.000-08:00

As I've said on a number of occasions here, I hate George Bush and blame him for a lot of our current problems, but today's flip piece in the NYT about comments from Obama about the stock market losses during an impromptu press event with Gordon Brown was either very poorly written or represents someone who doesn't get the pain people are going through.

The president did not offer any specific stock tips, but suggested that he believed the market might be close to its low point.

“Profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal,” Mr. Obama said, “if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.”

That first sentence better have been a lame, inappropriate joke from the Times reporter or else he really messed up. And if it was a joke, I personally don't think it's particularly funny that folks have lost more than 10.4 TRILLION DOLLARS in wealth in less than 2 years.

The second point I'm sure comes without the slightest bit of self-interest as is the case with most politicians because although he denies that he looks at "day to day gyrations" it sure must be unpleasant to be looking at "day to day massive losses in potential tax revenue" for any politician. He better hope it's near its low point or else we may make Iceland's financial implosion look pretty good before too long.

What may be much more troubling for Obama is that when folks like Paul Krugman constantly invoke the Great Depression, this current crisis is different in two ways. First, it's not nearly as horrible in terms of lost value. Second, the long bear market from the Great Crash of 1929 till 1932 ended in the summer of 1932 when it was clear the country was going to get a new president. Instead this bear market seems to be getting much worse as the macro situation worsens (which is not his fault) and responses to his plans fall flat (which, much as the Dems want to deny it, is now his responsibility). Someone in a national media outlet is going to figure this out and wonder about the Audacity of Markets. How Obama responds then will be interesting to see.

Headache Inducing

2009-03-03T10:37:00.001-08:00

The Czarina, as some of you know, is a philosopher. So I'd like to ask her what type of philosophical term is associated with the following stupid action:

1) You're in the middle of a major economic crisis that appears to have been caused, at least partially, by banks and government giving lots of credit to people who should not have had access to said credit.

2) You now propose a new plan to give those same unqualified people another 200 billion dollars (200,000,000,000) in credit for things like cars, boats, credit cards, monster trucks, and new RV's as a solution to the current problem.

I'm not sure what the philosophical term is, but I believe the plain old English phrase is Zimbabwenomics. Or maybe "are you fucking kidding me?"

Don't Get a Toothache in Fort Kent, Maine

2009-03-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an article about a shortage of dentists in Maine. It's weird because it reminds me very much of this hysterical little number they had last week about how instead of using Charmin we should all employ cardboard or reusable sponges in our restrooms. It made me want to check the quality of the TP in the Times public restrooms.

Like the toilet paper piece, it's not new. FoxNews covered the dentist shortage late last year for example. Also like the toilet paper piece it coincided with the announcement of an Obama initiative - health care reform.

Anyway the gist of the Maine dentist shortage piece appears to be that there aren't enough dentists, especially in rural areas. The author attributes this to the vague notion that "many young graduates do not want to work in rural areas." Now setting aside for a moment the fact that the author of this piece lives in Manhattan, which might bias her against the joys of rural life, that explanation seemed to me to be a bit vague.

So I actually did some RESEARCH (which I guess was left out of the history degree that Katie Zezima got at BU) because according to this little piece from an actual Maine newspaper the problem is very different. The reason dentists don't want to get a hobby farm and practice out in the middle of nowhere is that most folks in those areas get their dental work reimbursed by MaineCare which is state provided health insurance for poor people.

Now according to the advocates universal health care, programs like MaineCare are supposed to overcome the "market-based" problems that limit access to decent medical care for folks who don't have insurance in the middle of nowhere - and Maine has a lot of "nowhere" where kids are so bored they are popping Oxycotin and shooting up because there's nothing to do.

Anyway, why is there this shortage of dentists when MaineCare should be providing dentists to rural Maine? It terms out, market incentives are the problem, because despite the attraction of the annual moose hunts in rural Maine, dentists don't like getting paid 13 bucks to examine a kids mouth, which is all that MaineCare will pay.

So will Obama's universal healthcare create doctor and dentist shortages by "cutting costs?" Something to chew on for advocates of universal healthcare - or maybe gum on if things go like they do in rural Maine.

The Bloom is Coming Off of the Rose

2009-03-03T05:39:00.001-08:00

I, without much sleep or coffee to confirm this bold judgment, declare today the first day I have seen an article like this one in which implicitly, President Obama gets criticized for his economic policy on the frontpage of a major, mainstream newspaper. It doesn't mention Obama or his administration explicitly, but it does point out that markets have tanked and said "tanking" reflects skepticism about whether governments are "doing enough."

Of course in my view, they are doing more than enough. But from a political perspective, seeing something like this at the top of the Washington Post webpage the day after the markets hit their lowest level in 12 years says something - and it's not exactly "Good Morning Mr. President!"

The Politics of Doing Nothing

2009-03-02T06:34:00.000-08:00

Fundbaby was the big winner this past weekend - at least with my parents. We took the little bugger to visit Grandma J, Grandpa G, and Unkle Rorie and he pretty much never hit the ground. Of course when we got home last night he brazenly expected this situation to continue..........that was pretty inconvenient for us at 5 am this morning. But all in all it was a great time - until the discussion turned to politics.

My Dad and I have never agreed on much of anything politically - and it's gotten worse since the recession began. We could agree on how much we hated George Bush, but we've reacted pretty differently to just about everything Obama has done since he's been in office.

Maybe because my Dad does some work with a bank, he's not opposed to bailing out banks. Maybe because he has some stock in Citibank, he doesn't see any problems giving them money either. And perhaps some of the work he does with a parts supplier to GM has skewed his view of helping Detroit as well, or maybe it's his love of big American cars. Still one has to tread lightly about pointing out such conflicts of interest when someone is holding your son while you are sipping coffee and reading the morning paper.

When we did get around to arguing I felt pretty stupid all weekend because my canned response, that we let things work themselves out without massive spending programs, to all of his views about this blizzard of government action and activity sounded so hallow and callous. "We have to do something!" he'd declare, and if the first few things didn't work we'd try other things. Why didn't I want to help people in trouble with their mortgages? Rick Santelli was a dingbat......you get the idea.

Of course unlike many of the talking heads and academics spouting off about our current problems my Dad did live through the Great Depression and can remember bread lines and other such stuff. His family's business survived, but times were tough and the impact of the New Deal was pretty profound on him and his generation.

Setting aside the economics of the spending spree and all of the proposed bailouts, I have to say that politically those of us firmly planted in the skeptic camp about the morality, efficacy, efficiency, and wisdom of all this government largess look like country bumpkins arguing that we need to do less, not more.

When the levy is breaking, you don't sit around and watch the water rolling in and hope the levy will fix itself. When planes flip out of control pilots rarely cross their arms and wait for the aircraft to right itself. Patients who are sick want doctors to take action to help.

The problem is that those types of analogies just don't work when the system that's having problems is self-correcting, as markets often are, the "pain" from the problem is not evenly distributed, and most importantly POLITICIANS not engineers or doctors or pilots are the ones saving us. And let's not forget that economics is not as advanced as engineering or aerodynamics today. And in my view, economics looks a lot like medicine did in the 18th century when going to a doctor was likely to get you killed.

The economics of recession are bad, but they are not universally bad, and unless we are really sure about the effectiveness of a potential "cure" it sure doesn't hurt to look at the cost of the "cure." The equation gets scary bad when someone from Washington shows up to help. But even if politicians were not involved in politics, the really key issue is that I believe the "cure" might be way worse than the disease, more expensive in the long run and will definitely have all sorts of unintended effects than we cannot foresee.

But the politics of being principled and saying, "I'm skeptical that all of this government will make things better," is usually not popular and easily ridiculed during crises because no one gets elected by saying "Let's do nothing." Hence this column by Frank Rich on how Obama should "savior this moment" when some folks are pleading we do less rather than more. He savagely attacks folks like Bobby Jindal (in ways I doubt anyone on the right would be allowed to do to a person of color) and Mark Sanford for wanting to do less based on their long held principles that government doesn't help things.

By pointing out that both are from poorer states he managed to score points about how callous they look. When he describes both of them as outdated he seems to be saying how those policies of "getting government out of the way" have failed - miserably.

As I've regularly noted, Bush spent more than any president in U.S. history - until Obama, so it's not as if this crisis was preceded by limited government. We also have experienced an explosion of capitalism throughout the world that has benefited a lot of people in places like China and India - something the left likes to ignore.

If former communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe and Asia are sticking with relatively free markets, why are we running from those positions? Is it because capitalism failed or because the politics of an advanced democracy provide the opening for political entrepreneurs to dole out gifts to their allies and supporters at the expense of the rest of us, whether it Halliburton, or the SEIU?

I hope Obama and his people get this "cure" right, but I fear that all they are doing is making the patient sicker and granting gifts to their friends and allies. Either way those of us who are openly contemptuous of government in general are living in tough times when letting nature take its course is viewed with scorn.

Trade-Offs, TP, and Green Politics

2009-02-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

I have been putting off writing a longer post about green politics generally because frankly I'm afraid the thing might turn out to be about 6578 pages. But slowly it's becoming more difficult to avoid. First we get the "Tax and Trade" plan from yesterday. Then today the Times tells us we have to use sandpaper on our asses or we hate trees.

It seems that the manufacture of softer toilet paper requires the use of older trees rather than recycled material. This is not a new issue for the National Resources Defense Council, which first published this report in 2005 on the topic. What's changed is that Obama's call for Cap and Trade has sent the major papers scrambling to find stories like this one.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that the NRDC's main point person on this stuff has a Ph.D. in an unknown field that 10 minutes of Googleing cannot determine, I again return to the trade-off's theme I've been harping on lately. Check out this quote from an interview with him in 2003:

Looking for the "post-consumer" label helps support and reward the billions of dollars in infrastructure investments made by local governments to collect the paper that has been used by consumers and that would otherwise be sent to costly and dangerous landfills or incinerators. That's not the case with paper that's not marked "post-consumer." It takes a little more effort to look for that label, but the environment deserves as much.

The key part for me is the bit about "billions of dollars in infrastructure investments." As if simply paying for the "billions of dollars in investments" is not enough, this guy wants us to "reward" those investments? What the hell does that mean?

Roughly translated "investments" for these folks means about what it means when the agriculture industry talks about farm subsidies or the GM talks about bailouts. It means "billions of dollars in YOUR tax money to support MY GOALS AND INTERESTS that might be used more productively elsewhere in society." The idea that the goal of recycling should be compared to other goals, say sending money to eliminate malaria in Africa or buying everyone 143 hands of "Death's Icy Grip" shaped out of popcorn, is what needs to be discussed.

Billions of dollars in "investments" means billions diverted away from something else. It's not like it's a free lunch. And using coarser toilet paper versus softer is also a trade-off. Anyone who's traveled a lot knows that on long flights home in airline seats.

Even for the Times, this story is so unfair it's silly. Everyone, EVERY-FRIGGIN-ONE makes decisions about how to reconcile the broad goals they support and the lifestyles they lead. I know very few people who want to give us everything that has adverse environmental impact in order to save the planet, but apparently the folks at the NRDC would like us to think that this "sacrifice" is not a big deal:

All toilet paper should be made from recovered, second generation fibers. No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper. Toilet paper made from trees should be phased out in the same way we're phasing out the use of incandescent light bulbs starting with our schools, theaters, auditoriums, office buildings, and of course our homes. A little "sacrifice" on the "need" for three seconds of softness vs. a whole lot of healthy forests left standing, providing habitat, inspiration, clean water, and soaking up carbon would be a very good change for this New Year. Let's stop flushing our forests down the toilet.

What exactly are acceptable uses of forests? Can I hunt in them? Should we just "let them be" and not try to conserve them? Can we even hope to achieve that?

Tell me what it costs, provide me with alternatives, and explain to me your real agenda - full stop. If it's simply, "Hey, this is stupid; the trees are pretty, and the toilet paper won't chafe your butt too much" I might consider it. If it's more like "You should become a vegan, join PETA, live in a recycled packing peanut house and give up your car to walk to work through forests of old growth trees and pay through the noses in taxes to achieve all of these goals through `investment'" You can count me skeptical and count me out.

Democrat Proposes Tax and Spending Increase.........This is News?

2009-02-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Lots of freaking out on right wing blogs today over Obama's proposed tax and spending increases. I'm sorry, did I miss something during the campaign? Was there some speech I didn't hear in which he argued for cutting the size of government and reducing taxes? He was elected to do this; he said he was going to do this; now he's doing it. You don't have to like it, or the amounts, but this is hardly surprising.

And let's face it - it's not like Republicans have any leg to stand on after 8 years of the biggest spending president in history. So please, save me the histrionics.

In two related thoughts I have yet to see any constructive conservative/libertarian response to this health care stuff. There's lots of screaming about "big government" which I predicted. But I continue to search for the alternative right-wing plan on health care. I'd be grateful to any reader who can point me/us to that proposal.

Secondly, in the spirit of full disclosure, the Fundhousehold is not directly affected by the proposed increases, although we will of course be indirectly affected like everyone in ways we simply cannot predict.

Whole Lotta Huburis Going On

2009-02-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Uncle Ben Bernanke and Barney Frank are playing with fire. It's one thing to be a popular president who throws out a vague set of plans about bailing out people stuck in their homes and claiming you won't help the ones who acted in bad faith. It is a whole other animal to stand before Congress, dismiss the moral hazard concerns, and say we need to bailout those who did act in bad faith.

I'm not an economist, so my particular understanding of the economic arguments here are limited. But sites like this ought to make everybody on the Hill and in DC realize this issue is radioactive. Go into a bar (like this one). Ask some of the 92% of Americans who are not defaulting through tough economic times what they think about this plan, and they'll tell you - loudly - about how they did not choose teaser rates, saved enough for a down payment, and played by the rules. Remember when Democrats talked about helping people who played by the rules, not people who broke them?

In the 1950's and 60's large Northern cities were hit with a large migration of African-Americans from the South. The response of political machines throughout the Midwest and Northeast was to place those people in massive, isolated, stigmatized government public housing. That policy effectively created two Americas and produced a ton of racial tension that divided us. It said to most of America "these people are different - not equal."

In sort of the same way, giving subsidized loans and bailouts to people in some homes will divide us again. Everyday when people drive past the homes of folks they know who were bailed out their anger will simmer a little more until next November. Careful gentlemen..............we don't need more division based on perceived need. We need to discourage foolish behavior, level the playing field, and not create social tension. Isn't that what this whole "hope" thing is supposed to be about?

Cap, Trade, Bait, and Switch

2009-02-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Fundman and I bought a new car last year, and while we love it, I wish we had waited until the financial armagedon of the past year to get a really awesome deal.

We hit a couple of local dealerships including one in which the fastest talking, most unscrupulous, slimiest car sales manager I have ever encountered tried to talk us into leasing, not buying, our car. This despite the fact that on about 35 separate occasions I told him we weren't leasing.

He was trying to get us confused with the numbers. He kept pulling out alleged dealer cost sheets, depreciation charts, showing us different discount offers, all the time pushing the leases. I felt like Homer Simpson with Cowboy Bob selling me an RV. I started to find it really entertaining when he begin telling us how proudly his dealership supported NPR, which meant he read us as leftie greenies. Then he told us the lease would be really great when electric cars came out in a few years and we could give him back the leased one for a new plug-in.

I suspect his schtick has changed some since gas is now $1.68 a gallon. However, entertainment value aside, I think our President may have trained with this sales manager because last night he tried, and may have succeeded, in pulling off an awesome "bait and switch." Folks, if there was one thing to take away from that speech last night it was this - get ready for much higher utility bills, food prices, and prices on manufactured goods. Why? We are going to get a "cap and trade" scheme in this country.

You cannot pay for all of the goodies he wants, balance the budget, and give out ponies unless you are going to generate revenue. Raising taxes on the richest 2% of people, who are now not very rich, won't raise much cash. Electronic medical records is going to save billions and pay for this? If you believe that, buy yourself a beer tree and plant it in your back yard.

So then how is he going to pay for the Christmas list we got last night? Hell even the NYT called his plan to pay for health care reform "vague." The same way that state governments are coming up with increasingly "creative" ways, like casinos, to pay for things. Obama is going to give us all a hidden tax - cap and trade. In fact he's counting on 300 billion bucks in new revenue to come into federal coffers through this program.

So what exactly is "cap and trade?" As the Oracle of Internet information tells it, it's a way that polluters pay the government for permits that provide a "right to pollute." If the right number of permits are issued for the right price (and yes, the government is supposed to do that pricing) it should help to put a premium on pollution and limit emissions to the most valuable polluters. In theory it decreases marginal pollution and improves environmental quality. And it provides the government with a new source of cash.

BUT it also inevitably raises prices - that's a given because it imposes costs on businesses that they will pass onto consumers. So imagine inflation that's government mandated. And as the government tries to limit the issuance of more permits (to lower carbon emissions) the demand for permits raises the prices and increases costs even more.

In theory, the upward pressure on prices should promote innovation to develop new cleaner technologies. In practice when the Europeans did it, they issued too many permits and carbon output friggin increased in some countries. But, good news, the EU got a nice wad of cash from the companies for the permits and consumers paid higher prices.

Now we are being asked to pay what amounts to a tax during a bad recession, a banking crisis even the left sees as bad, with lots of future inflation coming from printing trillions in new money. All of this to save us from global warming, opps climate change, during one of the coldest winters in recent years.

Yipee.................

You can make a case that better health care coverage and lower costs would be beneficial to the economy. But as I noted earlier today, this is about trade-offs. Are 218,000 Iraqi widows worth a democratic system? Is a very costly cap and trade system with undetermined effects, worth increased accessibility to health care for people who are currently uninsured or under-insured?

I can't really answer that question because I'm neither a climate scientist nor a doctor. However it would really be decent of the President to be honest to people and pose the question, and the trade-off involved, properly. Otherwise he's no better than a car salesman pushing leases on people who want to buy.

If DC Were Republican........

2009-02-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

Would the Wall Street Journal have written this editorial opposing the creation of voting House seats for its residents? Probably not, but what's a little hypocrisy among partisan mouthpieces?

I mean it's not like, just friggin yesterday, the Journal attacked the NYT's coverage of civilian deaths in Iraq. The Journal seemed to argue that 218,000 widowed Iraqi women was an acceptable trade-off for the creation of a democracy rather than having Saddam Hussein in power. Now it's an interesting question if democracy is worth that cost of human life, but the Journal's position appears to be that democracy is worth a very high price.

IF the Journal is really willing to defend democracy to the tune of more than 200,000 killed in civil war, why not defend the right of people in DC to get representation even if it leads to more support for the opposition?

Michael Lewis has the Second Coolist Job

2009-02-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

I have the first. I actually had never had heard of Michael Lewis until I went to visit my late Uncle Lou who had played minor league baseball, very well, in the St. Louis organization in the 1940's and 50's. He led the Pacific Coast League in hitting for the Padres and was called by Ted Williams as one of the best right handed hitters he'd ever seen.

Anyway, he loved baseball and he loved the A's, so every once in a while we'd go to A's games especially since he could go for free with his Old Timers Card. We'd get horrible seats, and then move down to the Lower Deck. He's smoke cigars (because you could in public places in California then) and explain the game to me. Fun times.

So one time I'm stopping by to visit him and my Aunt, and I see this book sitting on the kitchen table called Moneyball which I'd heard of from some of my economist baseball friends. He told me how cool this book was and I had to read it..............and Uncle Lou was right.

Now I love reading just about everything Michael Lewis has written. His first famous book was about his time as an investment banker in the 80's and was widely hailed as excellent - because it is. After that success he's decided to focus on the intersection of statistical analysis, sports, and finance.

So here's this guy who gets to write stuff about the end of Wall Street, baseball in Cuba, NFL Left Tackles, and now the NBA. And he gets paid.

But do I let him blog here? Nope. Still not the coolest job in the world.

We Have Returned

2009-02-24T05:46:00.001-08:00

Loyal readers may have noticed a dearth of posts lately. Mrs. Fundman, Fundbaby and myself decided we needed to defrost in the midst of all of this global warming we've been getting in the Midwest lately and so we exited to warmer climates last week. Apologies as I had hoped to post a couple of things during the week, but golf and the hotel pool prevented any such actions. One is up this morning, and another will be up later today.

Also, as you can imagine, I have a lot of pent up "thoughts" I'll be sharing this week. I appreciate your patience and continued interest.

Many thanks to La Cheapa Chica for her outstanding recommendations for activities during the holiday. And kudos to my boss for not firing me while I was away.

The Cost of Outlawing Failure

2009-02-24T05:27:00.000-08:00

Blared across the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week was this headline that Ben Bernanke's boyhood home has been foreclosed and sold. I guess they are shooting for the focus on how this is illustrative of how this hits everyone, even the Fed chairman..........blah, blah, blah.

But note what the headline did not say. "Fed Chairman's House Destroyed" or "Fed Chairman's House Razed and Salt Sown in the Ground" Someone bought the house; someone will live in it again, someone will BENEFIT from the fact that they were able to pay less for it and now will use this house. I'm sort of surprised the Wall Street Journal, the supposedly free market paper, missed this point.

Of course the previous owners lost out - the house used to be theirs, and now it isn't. In this particular instance the market didn't work in a positive sum game (the way it usually does). Instead there was a winner and a loser, which is unfortunate for one side.

But one side is better off. One side is going to take that asset and use it productively. And it's happening throughout the economy. First home buyers (who are QUALIFIED) have one of the best environments in years.

Shoppers face all sorts of advantages be it either as innocent as taking advantage of sales throughout the economy or as unfortunate as picking over the retail remains of a bankrupt firm. Even in bankruptcy someone benefits if we let the market work.

I worry about all of these plans to "keep people in their homes" or "keep GM viable" because while the owners and investors in those firms are better off, the potential bargain hunters are not. That's something the smart guys ought to remember when they start talking about saving the buggy industry.

The Audacity of Markets, a Continuing Saga

2009-02-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

After today's rout Rich Karlgaard at Forbes notes that stocks are down more than 40% since Obama clinched the nomination in June. And today's debacle coincided with the "historic" signing of the Stimulation Package that was supposed to save us.

In the meantime Bob Herbert, the guy who just this year figured out that Zimbabwe was a tragedy, characterized Obama in this fawning interview as relaxed with a long term outlook. Of course in the long-term, as the left's hero likes to say, we're all dead.

Our Green President

2009-02-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

Remember when the President went to Elkhart, Indiana to sell the shopping spree? Well apparently Elkhart, other than having a sort of a weird name, is the RV capital of the world. So why is that important?

Global warming, glaciers melting, Cap and Trade..............and what does the Obama Shopping Spree include? A tax break for RV's! Yes, RV's. You know how many gallons to the mile, sorry, bad joke, miles to the gallon a house on wheels gets? That would be about 5 mpg..........

The Dems have gone from subsidizing big gas guzzling cars to RV's. That my friends is the audacity of hypocrisy, and that my friends is politics.

The U.S. Constitution of 2009 (Director's Cut)

2009-02-13T05:37:00.001-08:00

We the People, in order to avoid responsibility for any of the unfortunate missteps of the past few years, would like to make a couple of teeny, tiny little changes to our founding document. We therefore propose the following new Amendments to the Constitution. We're not going to bother having an actual, you know, amendment process, because we are apparently moments away from the end of the world according to our new national economist.

Amendment XXVIII - All Americans, as of this morning, are entitled to own a home even if they are unable to afford the mortgage payments or decide to simply stop paying them. All those who took out 30 fixed mortgages and bought homes they knew they could afford shall from now on be known as "suckers."

Amendment XXIX - The United States shall never enter into recession - ever. Congress and the President shall act accordingly, and in a bi-partisan manner, to outlaw recessions even if such actions cost so much they will probably lead to huge budget deficits and inflation down the road.

Amendment XXX - Market losses in pension plans shall also be illegal and gaps between investments and returns shall be paid for by the government.

Amendment XXXI - Large private banks will be outlawed.

Amendment XXXII - The government shall provide additional lines of credit to those who have been living beyond their means. Those who have not run up huge credit card debut, been responsible about paying off their credit cards, and will be paying for all of this will from now on be known as the Chinese.

Amendment XXXIII - All Americans shall be receiving ponies whether they want them or not. Oompa-Loompas will also be available upon request.

Additional suggestions for amendments are, as always, welcome and appreciated.

I Don't Understand Europeans

2009-02-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

I'm willing to bet the ranch that this type of story would never appear about a Midwestern town. Ever.

And while I'm at it, who at the New York Times saw this on the wire and said "Yes, that's important news that's fit to print!"

Beltway Blather About Stewie

2009-02-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Does Dana Milbank honestly think that Stew Parnell's "shaming" by Congress means a damn thing? Has living a long time in DC pickled his journalistic brain? Check out this bizarre quote:

But to deter others as brazen as Parnell, a searing public censure may be every bit as important as the criminal prosecution he probably will face. For once, lawmakers' grandstanding served a useful purpose.

WTF?????? Public censure = criminal prosecution? Stewie will "probably" face criminal charges? THE GUY IS ACCUSED OF BEING RESPONSIBLE, AT LEAST PARTIALLY, FOR KILLING 8 INNOCENT PEOPLE, and yet he writes in his column that we have to engage in "public censure" to make sure others don't follow his path.

Dana my boy, people like you and me may react to public censure because we have a sense of decency. We wouldn't knowingly endanger people's lives for profits. We are not socio-pathic scumbags like Stewie who don't care what other people think. That's why we have criminal codes and prisons dude.

No, no we do not have to censure him because it wouldn't do any good in his case. We need to simply send him to a maximum security prison for killing people. Full stop. I suspect for most people, morally good or morally bad, who have not been living inside the Beltway too long, the thought of being gang-raped in a shower while living in a tiny cell couped up with murders, drug dealers and violent offenders for many years is really quite sufficient to deter crimes. What exactly does a political show-trial accomplish?

Seriously, Dana, go easy on the gas huffing, it's starting to affect your judgment.

Would Someone Please Do the Math?

2009-02-12T05:55:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times had a sobering reminder of how infrequently the government gets it right when it tries to either predict future trends or change behaviors that run contrary to basic incentives. Here in the Midwest over the past couple of years you couldn't drive a mile without seeing some new ethanol or bio-diesel plant. All of them, ALL OF THEM were built for one reason only - heavy government subsidies. It appears that it hasn't worked as many are now in economic trouble even with all of this support.

Now we've just decided to spend 789,000,000,000 dollars of OUR MONEY, not the government's, in order to pursue a policy designed to inspire us to spend more money. Setting aside for a moment that it seems illogical to me that somehow spending more of our money will get us to spend more money, as I've noted before, these are the same people who just a year or so ago warned us about taking on debt and spending too much money.

Harry Reid this morning said, not predicted, that this plan will create more than 3 million jobs. For the sake of argument, let's assume this bill does create 3 million jobs (which I really doubt). Folks 789,000,000,000 divided by 3,000,000 equals (drumroll) $263,000 per job. We are going to spend $263,000 per job to create 3 million jobs. Is it just me, or does that seem like a lot of money per job?

I've got a better idea - let's give the 24,000,000 unemployed in this country checks for $32,875. It's the same amount, and it will get them through a couple of years of life. Also, it will give them a chance to start businesses and start spending or keep them in homes.

It won't go to banks, Wall Street, special interests, big businesses, unions, construction companies, state governments, or anybody with their head in the government's trough. If we are going to spend that much of our money, let's simply do a direct transfer to the folks who need it. How about that for a plan?

Put the Shrink in the Chair

2009-02-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

There's a common protocal among therapists of which most people probably are aware if they watch the Sopranos. Therapists are all strongly encouraged to have therapists themselves, much like Eliot Kupferberg is to Jennifer Melfi in the Sopranos. The reason? Well sitting around listening to other people's problems all the time sucks, and you need to let it out. Also, it provides the therapist a little bit of perspective and alternative viewpoints to deal with patient problems.

The U.S., indirectly through financial institutions we have dominated for years like the IMF, dished out tons of paternalistic advice to developing countries about how they needed to make tough choices and deal with financial crises. In many cases the advice was brutally honest and led to very painful consequences.

Now, unfortunately, the U.S. needs to get in the patient's chair, and listen to this guy's brutal advice about what Timmy G. should have told Congress yesterday. Let the big banks fail. That's what we told the Japanese in the 1990's. We were right then, and we should follow that same advice today.

Think the president of the IMF isn't persuasive enough? Try the best financial columnist in the world Martin Wolf - he thinks the same thing.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Don't get me wrong - this "solution" would suck in the short-term. A lot. But it's also, as far as I see it, the best and only way really to get out of this.

Your thoughts and comments would be welcome on this one.

The Audacity of Markets Continued

2009-02-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

It's been about a month since the inauguration, and the Dow is still down about 500 points. It's also interesting, at least to me, that the heaviest volume days have been selling days.

Oh, and today it increasingly looks like there is a deal emerging for the stimulus - so that's not helping either.

Hey Baby, Are You a Scorpio or a Macro-Economist?

2009-02-10T05:32:00.000-08:00

I was born in the 1960's at the beginning of Generation X, but I really remember the 1970's. I remember the first wave of couduroy, Three's Company, Bruce Jenner (not Brody, his worthless spawn), and of course astrology. Growing up a young lad I often watched television shows in which smooth talking dudes opened conversations with foxy ladies by asking them "Hey baby, what's your sign?"

Astrology, as the internet's font of complete wisdom notes, is mere superstition. The idea that the stars can actually influence our lives has been discredited and now merely takes up space in a newspaper that could probably be better spent on advertising. Instead people just use the impossibly vague "predictions" of astrology to confirm what you already think about the world. I now feel very much the same way about economics these days. Allow me to explain.

Economics is a social science, which purports to be able to accurately predict what political and social institutional arrangements will best produce economic growth and prosperity. It does this using assumptions about human behavior (we all have goals and pursue them) and the way that certain institutions (i.e. central banks, tariff laws, the government generally etc.) will help or hurt economic growth.

Here's the problem - they can't agree on ANYTHING. Let's begin at the top. You'd expect that any discipline that has a Nobel Prize awarded to its "top" researchers every year would provide some guidance about what to do during, oh I don't know, a major economic crisis. Well, here is a Nobel Prize winner saying that Obama's stimulus isn't very good. But wait, here's another Nobel Prize winner saying that the stimulus is great, and Obama should make it even bigger.

Ok, you might say, so suppose we go down a notch and look at prominent economists who might not have so much professional prestige tied up in a particular position or research agenda. Surely, they agree on this stimulus, bank bailout bill thingee? No, they don't - at all. These guys, think the stimulus is a bad idea, and they are prominent. This guy, thinks it's a great idea, and he's also prominent.

You might say, ok, the real problem is that politicians are involved, and all of this conflict is just about politics. Well, here you'd be partially right because the Dems are saying that just about any economist of merit supports the stimulus. The folks at Cato, a libertarian group, say no, look, we have a list of 200 economists who oppose the plan.

But that's not enough, in my view to overcome the fundamental problem here - a conflict of normative public policy questions. V.I. Lenin, who for younger readers might be a bit of a mystery, was the first "president" or "leader" of the Soviet Union. Much as Soviet style communism has been discredited, this passage from "The Crisis of Power" is really interesting. Russia in 1917 had a conservative political power base with socialists and communists in opposition. He notes that during a crisis there are basically three choices - the status quo, a blended compromise between the capitalists and their opponents, or a revolution. We know which alternative Russia chose.

While I doubt we are facing a crisis of the same magnitude, Lenin's analysis is about world views, not a scientifically agreed upon consensus of what WILL happen. Instead we are seeing shouting matches about what SHOULD be. That's why this stimulus bill includes the seeds of health care reform and expanding unemployment insurance. That's not stimulative - at all. Those policies represent departures from the years of Reagan and Bush where the supposition was that government didn't play as big a role in people's lives.

So in many ways asking economists about the stimulative impact of this bill misses the point. Democrats and Republicans should come out and simply say what they mean - this is not about a scientifically agreed upon view of economic theory that will help us out of this mess. There simply isn't one, agreed upon view among economists about how to solve this problem.

It's a proposed change, or maybe a revolution, in the role that government will play and it's based on a normative view of the way the world should be. Whether you agree with it or not, the Democrats seem to be promoting a wide expansion in state power, not some scientifically based stimulus. And in many ways it's a return to the 70's when government was bigger.

So we seem to be reliving some bad 1970's movie in which some right-wing Austrian economists wearing Corduroy like this swinging dude are competing with a bunch of hip, polyester wearing John Ritter type Keynesian economists for the attention and affection of the public and politicians. If we have to re-live the 70's, I just hope to God that we can avoid disco, Watergate, and another oil crisis this time around.

Enough Already, Legalize It

2009-02-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's lack of sleep from Fundbaby and travel. Maybe it was the conference I attended over the weekend where, at one point, Milton Friedman, Milton Friedman the world renowned defender of capitalism, was attacked as being a statist. Maybe it was all the cough syrup I drank this morning, but I think it's time, seriously, we talked about drug legalization in this country.

This morning one of Mexico's top retired generals was kidnapped, tortured, and killed in Cancun, not Juarez or Tijuana, CAN-FRIGGIN-CUN where kids go on spring break. This is the latest in a massive war between Mexican drug cartels and the part of the Mexican government that is not completely corrupt. The war claimed 5,300 lives last year.

Then last week Michael Phelps got caught taking a bong hit. He was then crucified by morons in the media who probably couldn't swim a lap in a kiddie pool. If anything doesn't this show that the guy is an even more amazing athlete? Imagine how good he'd be if he wasn't doing bong hits?

Finally A-Rod tests positive for steroids in 2003, and will now apparently be shot on sight by some Yankee pundits if he even tries to arrive in spring training. A-Rod, by the way, is far and away the best player in baseball.

Barack Obama's life story includes drug use, which he freely admitted. Now the guy is president. Why, why in God's name, does he get a pass when A-Rod and Phelps get tried and convicted by the media? Why did thousands of people die all over the world in drug related violence when most elites probably smoked some pot or snorted some coke at their Ivy League frat houses? Why don't these same elites figure out the astronomical cost of keeping drugs illegal here and in Latin America?

Don't we have better things to worry about, spend money on, and get people killed for than drugs? Let's save some lives in Latin and South America, let some people live peacefully in private here in the US, and stop throwing people in jail for satisfying a demand that seems impossible to control.

A Mere Coincidence, I'm Sure

2009-02-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Obama announces this executive pay cap on firms that receive government money. Shockingly, today, Goldman Sacks announced it would like to pay the government back - asap.

The only reason I used the word "shockingly" in that previous paragraph was because I was shocked it took them a whole day to decide this. I kind of figure the decision at Goldman took about a millisecond, if that long.

But this does raise an interesting question. How can they pay it back - I thought every bank on Wall Street was broke? Isn't that the reason we gave them 700 billion dollars in the first place? If Goldman can pay the government back this quickly, why did the government give them a huge chunk of our money, and no one seems to know what these friggin banks are doing with the money? I guess since no one bothered to follow-up on how the money was spent, there was no reason to see if Goldman needed the money in the first place - right?

How did Goldman get on this list for government money in the first place? Wait a minute, who did Hank Paulson work for while he was on Wall Street????? Oh yeah, GOLDMAN FRIGGIN SACHS.

And as if God himself wanted to give me a cherry to top this baby off right, the government's own Congressional oversight queen told the folks on the Hill that they probably overpaid for some of the bank assets they bought with the TARP. Gee, you think? Chris Dodd's quote that this finding will "raise some eyebrows" is so priceless I had to laugh. Not as many eyebrows as you getting sweetheart deals on mortgages from Countrywide Chris, but yeah, this should actually raise a few eyebrows and a couple of fists.

Sometimes this blog just writes itself.

Does It Come with Floormats?

2009-02-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

Good news if you are a member of the UAW or like those Howie Long truck ads that pollute NFL games on Sunday, the Senate, which is supposed to be the thoughtful side of the Congress, thoughtfully added an 11 billion dollar income tax write-off for the interest and sales tax for anyone who wants to buy a new car - seriously. When I read that I really thought that the ever foxy Senator Barbara Mikulski was kidding. By the way, check out her official Senate page where she has a tab that says "How Can I Help You?" Grrrrrooooowwwwllllll. Absolutely schedule a meeting Senator!

Let's do the math shall we? First, a Republican President decided to give the Big Three 17.4 billion dollars, and I know we are all a little numb from the numbers being kicked around lately, but visually that's $17,400,000,000. That was supposed to last a couple of months. I mean, Mrs. Fundman couldn't go through that much money in a couple of months.

Now they were supposed to come up with a plan to get out of this mess by this month, but they just had the worst January in decades and Chrysler is already saying they need another 3 billion bucks.

The government, the people who couldn't estimate how many fingers I have, are currently projecting that this auto sales perk would cost another 11 billion dollars. Let's say GM is gonna need another 7 billion or so. That puts us at almost 40 billion dollars - for three companies.

Now before I continue, let me remind you this plan is for ALL CARS over 25,000 dollars. So the government will not only be subsidizing buying a Malibu, it will also be subsidizing buying this, and this, and even this.

Moreover, this subsidy to go out and buy more cars comes from the same Barbara Mikulski who voted to increase CAFE standards just a year ago. Now she wants to subsidize rednecks and piston heads buying Hummers and Dodge Trucks with Viper engines.

Car dealers and politicians seem to think that this little plan will encourage "hesitant" buyers onto car lots. You wanna know why people are "hesitant" to buy American cars, aside from the fact that American cars are lousy? It's because they are too busy worrying about losing their jobs, homes, and health insurance. CONGRESS SHOULD NOT BE ENCOURAGING PEOPLE LIKE THAT TO TAKE ON YET MORE DEBT FOR A FIFTH CAR! I mean I thought everyone was in agreement that we had too much debt and that taking on FRIGGIN CAR LOANS when the entire county was tapped out was sort of like sending Keith Richards heroin while he's in re-hab.

Senator, and just about every other member of the Congress, if you want to spend lots of our money on wasteful government projects and Keynesian stimulus, ok. I don't like it, strongly suspect most of it will end up being wasted, and would much rather just be issued a check of my own money. But please, do not additionally encourage my fellow citizens to go out and take on even more debt. We're done; shut down the buffet; we all could use a little debt diet.

Loyalty vs. Practicality

2009-02-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

It's clear that Obama won't be emulating one part of the Bush administration and that's its famous loyalty that was written about in books like this one which characterized W's administration as giving blind, unquestioning loyalty to insiders in the face of adversity without a whiff of sensitivity to public opinion or alternative viewpoints.

Still who would have thought that less than one month into his presidency he would have thrown three cabinet level appointments under the bus all of whom were supposedly vetted by the "most rigid" process ever. And at least two more, Eric Holder and Timothy Geithner came under serious attacks for other "issues" in their backgrounds. Well apparently the Obama's people thought rigid meant something a little different than the OED's definition.

First there was Bill Richardson, who as I noted before at least publicly bitched about the back-stabbing. Then today a two-for, with Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer both getting this kind of treatment from the White House for some unpaid taxes. Hell Daschle even got the ole kiss of death, an "absolute" vote of confidence from Obama less than 24 hours ago.

I gotta admit, I'm surprised. Remember when everyone was talking about "the Chicago way" that Obama brought to the White House. Well Old Man Daley (the original Richard J.) would not have done this. In fact as Mike Royko's classic book Boss illustrates, the Chicago Machine was famously loyal to its own even facing far worse than either Daschle or Killefer were accused of.

Part of me kind of likes the fact that Obama rips the rug out from underneath people when they least expect it, but another part of me wonders who the hell was "vetting" these people and how in God's name he thinks he's going to get anyone's loyalty acting this way. Whatever the answer, at least Obama has made working for this administration more like the real world in one way - folks can sure lose their jobs in a hurry.

We All Get Ponies Too!

2009-02-02T12:28:00.001-08:00

Yahoo (that means AP) news is reporting that the Senate has added about 100 billion dollars to the spending spree. Republicans are now suggesting that the government provide 4% mortgages to people and $15,000 home buyer tax CREDITS to EVERYONE who buys a home. You read that correctly. The party that purportedly believes in smaller government is pushing for all of that.

Democrats reportedly said in response "Hell yes!"

In related news, beer is now free forever and the government is buying.

A Copycat League

2009-02-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

"We could feed a homeless person with all the food on the floor of our house" Mrs. Fundman declared this morning as she and I were surveying the destruction that our Second Annual Super Bowl Fiesta wrought upon our home, and frankly I could not disagree with her - a shocking first. Although to be honest our agreement this morning may also have been born from my hangover which sapped whatever energy I may have had to disagree with her. To her credit she saved me from a mammoth headache by shoving Advil in my hand late last night which I washed down with a big gulp of Malbec.

I vaguely recall watching the game, freaking-out when the UVerse stopped working in the 2nd quarter, watching the Czarina and La Cheapa Chica dance and sing their way through ABBA's Dancing Queen during the sound interruption just before the half, lecturing Fundbaby on the finer points of the Steeler's various blitz schemes, and eating a lot of Velvetta.

But I do recall the earlier parts of the day, and during one of the 769 pregame shows, some former football player was commenting on the league-wide revival of the 3-4 defense that the Steelers used this past season. This guy, along with mis-using the phrase ironic about 7 times, not very originally noted that the NFL was a "copycat league" and cited how the schemes of successful teams, such as the West Coast offense and Tampa-2 defense, become the models for others throughout the league.

Well Friday the Republicans continued that tradition by electing, of all things, a middle aged, good looking, African American lawyer, as the head of their party. Where could they possibly have gotten that idea from? If a Martian had been elected president would the GOP have chosen a Martian party chair?

Yes leave it to the GOP to make PT Barnum look relevant once again. I mean how friggin dumb do politicians think people are? So like 2 months after losing an election to a black man, the Republicans nominate a black man to be their party chair, and the guy has won exactly one election in his entire career, lost at least two other elections, including a Republican primary, and did a pretty lousy job as Maryland GOP chair.

The hilarious thing about this, is that when I did a Google search for Michael Steele in blogs I got this collection of hits. Now I didn't go past page three (hey, I do have a job), but none, NONE of the blogs mentioned the obvious reason the Republicans chose him - cause he's black. Folks on the left, like this guy, probably aren't sure if they can write about the hypocrisy of it because they are so afraid of sounding racist. And folks on the right are probably too embarrassed, and frankly unaccustomed, to discussing race, so all they are talking about are his views on guns and his stupid quote on stem cell research.

But if you listen to all the "mini" Limbaughs of the world like this guy, they are angry that he looks pretty unqualified without the race thing. I'd say it will take them about 4 days to start turning on Steele and his inclusiveness strategy.

I'm not saying the Republicans shouldn't try to do something different, and imitation is supposed to be the highest form of flattery. Losing elections forces parties to try attract more voters. And who knows, today's GOP may successfully reach out to blacks, tofu eating dupe smoking hippies, and radical feminists. Monkeys may also fly out of my ass later today.

To be fair there's been a lot of change in the composition of the duopoly in U.S. history. As much as we may forget it, Democrats used to be the party of farmers while Republicans were the party of urban dwellers. Democrats used to be a Southern party, and Republicans used to be moderates. And of course it was a Republican president who ended slavery, and a Democratic Congress that blocked Civil Rights Legislation for years.

But there's a big difference between trying something "new" and just "imitating" your successful opponents. Teams that copied the "West Coast" offense didn't do so well. The San Francisco 49ers who originated the "West Coast" offense won a ton of Super Bowls. Losers imitate winners. Winners innovate.

And frankly I think we need more differences between the Republicans and Democrats, not fewer differences.

All I Want For Christmas is...........

2009-01-30T08:03:00.001-08:00

Dear Mrs. Fundman

Your shopping search for my next Christmas gift has ended.

Sincerely,

Me

PS - Don't you think I'll look great holding Fundbaby while I'm using it?

Health Care Bable Meets "Universal Coverage"

2009-01-30T05:44:00.001-08:00

Rocky Top Boy wanted me to blog about healthcare the other day, but I wasn't moved to do so until I saw this column in the WSJ arguing that Barack and the Democrats are "stealthily" nationalizing health care. Just a couple of quick thoughts.

First off, if the Democrats have been the ones pushing for nationalizing health care, would at least one person at the WSJ explain to me why President W pushed through a new prescription drug benefit that represented a 1.3 trillion dollar increase in the cost of Medicare, which is GOVERNMENT PROVIDED, TAX PAYER FUNDED health insurance for the elderly, who are, by the way, the richest age-group in America. I guess that means that the biggest complaint that Republicans have (other than flat out hypocrisy) is that they expanded socialized medicine in the bold light of day, and threw the benefit at an electorally appealing group - old folks like Grandpa Simpson walking into the Social Security Office.

Secondly, would someone, SOMEONE on the right explain to me in less than 45,000 words what exactly your plan is for health care? I mean, the left at least has a catchy phrase "universal care," but you guys have about 46 different parts to a plan that is going to be "consumer directed", deregulatory, de-SCHIPified, or something or other. Take my word for it, y'all are getting killed by the Dems on this issue because no one on your side has figured out how to sell your ideas cleanly.

Hell even McCain got murdered for proposing the government "raise taxes" on people's health care benefits during the election, which was supposed to help be more "free market." Republicans claimed that was untrue, but folks who have jobs, lives, families, and such do not have time to work through all of the details of the 34 different market based solutions to health care the right is suggesting.

In 1993 the Republicans killed off health care reform by saying "OMG, spending hundreds of billion of dollars on health care will bankrupt us!" And "do you really want to give up the right to see your doctor?" That stuff just doesn't work anymore because we are going to spend like 2 trillion on banks, stimulation, and other questionable activities. At the same time more people are losing health care coverage and no longer can see their "family doctor." Proposing to spend a measly 200 billion and "give" people "free" health care sounds pretty good to many folks right now.

So while the right can't get its act together, the left continues to quietly trumpet a simple plan that won't be linked to your job. To middle class folks without health insurance it sure looks good. To the left-wing elites who went to Middlebury, Wellesley, Swathmore, or Bowdoin, did a year in France of foreign study, broke an arm while drunk one night in Paris, and spent a week in a French hospital "for free" with attractive young nurses, the idea of spreading this blessing of European style health care sounds great as well. Of course the fact that Europe will be broke in about eleven years paying for its universal health care, retirement at 50, and the other perks of living in Europe is beside the point.

Before you know it we'll be wearing berets, burning cars, and complaining about Americans right here, in America.

What Exactly is Bi-Partisanship

2009-01-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

In the classic baseball movie "Bull Durham," one of the key tasks that Kevin Costner's "Crash Davis" was supposed to accomplish with Tim Robbins' "Nuke" LaLoosh during their stay with the Durham Bulls was to teach him a series of inane quotes to tell sports reporters in order to sound committed to team values and hard work and other boring stuff

Crash Davis: It's time to work on your interviews.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash Davis: You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down: "We gotta play it one day at a time."
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play... it's pretty boring.
Crash Davis: 'Course it's boring, that's the point. Write it down.

Whenever I hear some athlete or coach talk about playing one game at a time, or just doing whatever the team needs to win it reminds of when politicians talk about bi-partisanship. It's inane, meaningless, supposed to sound appealing, and basically designed to tell the audience nothing. Yet every four years (and increasingly I can remember more and more of these new administrations) politicians talk about "reaching across the aisle" and "getting past partisan rancor" and "holding hands and singing Kumbya" with the other side. They point to the public's alleged "exhaustion with partisan fighting and bickering" and accuse their rivals of "simply being partisan."

Well if the public is so tired of partisanship, why do they keep electing only members of the Duopoly to the Congress? Last time I checked, all but two members of Congress, both of whom caucus with the Democrats, belong to one of the two parts of the Duopoly, so the notion that either Republicans or Democrats are being "partisan" is sort of like accusing a living person of breathing. I mean, what the hell are they supposed to do except be members of parties? And it's interesting that whenever the majority accuses the minority party of being partisan what they are usually saying is "stop being principled and asking for concessions on stuff to which you are vehemently opposed ideologically."

And then the minority, and it's public advocates like this pill popper, believe that bi-partisan means "give me nearly equal power over writing legislation and respect my opposition to anything I don't like even though I badly lost an election and have very little power to stop you from implementing your plans." And then Republicans whine and complain about how Democrats aren't respecting the wishes of the minority after the GOP ran rough-shod over Democrats for eight years.

For a fictional, and much more entertaining version of this silly game, check out a deeply mature, intellectual show like Gossip Girl to understand the depth of sincerity of the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to bi-partisanship, finger-pointing, and back-stabbing.

Most people elect members of parties because they believe, wrongly in my view, that the two brands represent something different. Republicans supposedly stand for limited government and a strong defense even if Bush presided over the biggest domestic spending increase since LBJ and people tend to vote for them because they suupport those general views. Democrats supposedly believe in helping out the little guys (and women) and getting out of people's personal lives even though they have supported giving gobs of money to banks and Wall Street firms and forced social conservatives to violate their personal principles and publicly accept things like gay marriage. Yet folks continue to believe these two brands are different.

So the problem with bi-partisanship, in my view, is that people either are just using the phrase as window-dressing, or they mean totally different things when they claim to want it. When voters vote for people they expect them to be ideological. Americans don't expect Barack Obama to cut taxes, decrease spending, and nationalize Christianity. Americans didn't expect John McCain to raise taxes, ban guns, or understand free-market economics (sorry, cheap shot). Obama should act like people expected him to act, and in four years the electorate can "judge" his actions, and we can hear lots more about "bi-partisanship" all over again.

Nancy Pelosi, the Jose Canseco of the Pro-Choice Movement

2009-01-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

The Speaker of the House, the right honorable Nancy Pelosi went to Catholic schools, was married in a Catholic church, and has five kids, and seven grandchildren. So you might think that she'd at least be somewhat sensitive to the idea that life has value, real value regardless of the wealth or status of any one individual. Isn't that what the Democrats say they do - value each person? She's from California, and she's also a favorite of the NARAL folks, so she's also pro-choice.

But this quote from her arguing that government spending that provides free contraception lowers other governmental spending by basically preventing poor people from getting pregnant is not merely the "party line" from pro-choice activists. This was blunt honesty, and I was pretty shocked that she actually said what I've always suspected a lot of elitists seem to be thinking on this issue.

Nancy Pelosi, the Jose Canseco of the pro-choice movement. Canseco's admission about steroids, which ruined a lot of people's careers, did help to clean up baseball (and expose him to some unpleasant cheap shots from his wife about his ball game). Of course Nancy won't get the money from a book deal that Jose got.

Nancy "Canseco" is admitting what a lot of other people are afraid to say, which is "Look, I'm smart enough, rich enough, and responsible enough to have a big family. Welfare mothers aren't, and rather than put them through the pain and suffering of trying to raise too many kids, I, an elite, will encourage you to stay `kid free.'" I've always thought that's what most rich, white women who are pro-choice have really thought, because whenever I talk to a upper-middle class pro-choice woman, the explanation I've always gotten for their position on abortion has been something like "well, I WOULD NEVER have an abortion, but I don't want to take that right away from someone else." Now I've always suspected that "someone else" was "poor stupid people," but now thanks to Nancy, I know it is that.

All of this is part of the new elite trend towards what Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler are calling "nudging" in which elites influence the "choice architecture" that people face to help them make "better decisions." Except they are now using the friendly power of the state to do the nudging. So if you give dumb poor people the proper incentives (birth control) to make better choices (not have so many kids that cost the government money) we'll all be better off. Sunstein, by the way, is head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which I believe was either headed by Harry Tuttle or Winston Smith during the Bush years.

Empirically, Nancy may be correct in the short-term that lower birth rates may indeed lower government expenditures for social services. And let's be honest, being an unwed mother remains a key indicator of poverty in the United States. However the Journal is also right that lower birth rates mean long-term losses in human capital. For example, Africa is suffering horribly from losses in human capital resulting from the AIDS epidemic. More specifically it strikes me that encouraging ever smaller populations in poorer states, like Michigan or Ohio, which are already losing population, may not be the best path to pursue, but that's the point of Obama's nudging strategy - trust the smart people to know what's best for society.

I guess for me, the admission by someone that the reason birth control is in the "state's interest" is to limit its costs is both revealing and more than a little creepy. "Nudging" people to think about the consequences of their actions seems laudable, but doing so while continuing to promote risky behavior (birth control pills don't prevent AIDS after all and neither do abortions) seems odd at best. Admitting the reason you want to prevent the process of reproduction because you don't think some people are responsible enough, nay good enough, to reproduce is a whole other matter. And it's one that I think we ought to leave to the Big Guy, not rich, Ivy League educated elites who want to run or nudge anyone's life. I thought being able to run your own life, and be responsible for it, was the whole point of this country anyway.

Apparently This is Serious

2009-01-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

I swear I thought this was from the Onion.............I anxiously await useful updates on how not one cent of two trillion dollars is going to go to waste.

For two trillion you think they could have hired a better web designer.......or maybe used a cooler font?

UPDATE

Ok, I'm probably not using my work time in a way my bosses would appreciate, but did you know that when you click on the U.S. Government web page that the most requested information on the Federal Employees page, I kid you not, is Federal Holidays. Check it out on the right hand side of the page, red box about 2/3's of the way down. Ah Club Fed......

Can You Vote on Your Raise?

2009-01-26T05:27:00.001-08:00

In Indianapolis, if you are a city employee and also serve on the city council apparently you can! Sweeeeeet work if you can get it!

This little piece in the Indy Star documents about five separate instances in which state and local employees, serving on town or city councils, voted themselves raises.

The single best example of this problem is the curious case of an Indianapolis Fire Fighter who cast the deciding vote on whether or not a friggin ETHICS PROBE OF HIMSELF would continue. I will let you guess how he voted in that particular instance.

But the best part of all this is the indignation that these "public servants" have been expressing recently in response to concerns that there might be a weeeee conflict of interest in this whole messy process. Well, don't be silly say the good members of the East Chicago city council, ALL of whom are government employees. Or the cop who pushed through new police cars and a raise for all police officers.

All of this is symptomatic of a much larger problem - government employees not only lobbying, but backing certain candidates who support more government spending. Take a look at this page from the American Federation of Government Employees, a step-child of the AFL-CIO. Is it right/ethical that a bunch of government workers can organize and contribute campaign contributions to their future bosses? Doesn't that cause, oh, I don't know, conflict of interest? I mean, ok, Sarah Palin is sort of flaky, and I'm not sure how much I wanted her in the White House either, but the president decides how many more government employees are going to be hired. How much government employees get paid. Stuff that seems, I don't know, unseemly.

I mean check out this anti-McCain ad from the same group. First off, they have to put this disclaimer in red letters about not viewing or downloading this page on any government computer. Does anyone seriously think that doesn't happen? And doesn't it seem a little weird that the union that represents every Federal government employee is actively campaigning against one candidate? Doesn't that seem weird for morale if that candidate were to win?

So I ask y'all - is it worse to be in bed with corporations, like Halliburton, or unions of government workers? Pick your poison, but prepare to pay through the nose when you live in Indiana.

And A Smarmy Cougar Victim Shall Lead Them

2009-01-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

The title pretty much says it all about my view of this vacuous piece of self-promotion that Ashton Kutcher has placed on the Huffington Post a few days ago trying, I think, to encourage some groundswell of volunteerism during this political transition.

Ok, you know what? I DO NOT CARE ONE IOTA WHAT A HOLLYWOOD STAR THINKS THAT I SHOULD DO TO AFFIRM MY VIEWS OF COMMUNITY, SACRIFICE, VOLUNTARISM, AND HOPE (in case you were wondering, that was me, after too many beers, and the bartender is looking at me thinking he may need to call my wife or throw me out, or both frankly. But I've been tipping him pretty well over the years, and the bar is fairly empty..........and it's not a hip bar either, so he let's it slide once I lower my voice).

But really, catch the stuff that "moved" Ashton to set-up a friggin MySpace page (yes, that is the extent of his "sacrifice") to encourage self-absorbed people to feel better about themselves:

Barack Obama stood in front of a room of Los Angeles liberals and told us that everyone could have the American dream... but we were going to have to work for it. He said that every kid will get assistance for college but they were going to have to work for it. He explained that our nation could become independent of foreign oil but that we were going to have to give up a bit of our current comfortable existence. Now, from the mouth of an average straight-shooting American that may not sound audacious at all, but for a politician seeking endorsements to tell people that they are going to have to make sacrifices for the greater good, that he is not going to wave his magic legislative wand and fix it, that's audacity. That audacity is what gave me hope.

Ashton, dude, I hate to break it to you, but politicians TALK about sacrifice all the time. What we hear is "ask someone else to sacrifice" not "I'm going to have to sacrifice." What you heard, my friend was "hey, I'm loaded, I'll buy a Prius to go with my Lambo and drive it like once a month to premires and such and send the right signal to the little people about saving gas." When a person has no idea what they spend in a given month on gasoline or shoes or sushi, how can they even begin to understand what the word sacrifice really means?

The magical message Obama gave the Hollywood folks of sacrifice, trade-offs, and working to get somewhere in life is pretty much what I hear at church every Sunday. It's what a lot of normal people here in the Midwest think every day when they face friends who've lost jobs, or sons and daughters who can't afford college, or family members who can't get healthcare. It's not sugarcoated with the protection of millions of dollars in wealth and a self-inflated sense of self-worth.

So what public expression of solidarity did Ashton and Le Cougar produce after this moving, life changing experience listening to Obama? Ashton and his Highlander of a wife/girlfriend went and produced one of the creepiest videos I have ever seen in my life in which a collection of hip, Hollywood types pledge allegiance NOT to the United States, NOT to the government, NOT to the "the President" but instead personally to Barack Obama. Skip to 3:54 of the video and gaze upon the creation of the latest American personality cult......oh great.

Ashton, if you think that after never finishing college and then going onto fame and fortune doing underwear ads and following a cult (which is Madonna's faith of choice) gives you some special insights or deep responsibility to be a role model and tell people to worship our new president, stop sniffing the glue. While we are all impressed with those four Kids Choice Awards you have won for your "artistry" we are doing fine without your help.