Saturday, February 28. 2009
 Question re Cap & Trade: why would corporations mind paying a carbon surcharge? They will simply pass it on to consumers as a price increase and have a net cost of zero.
Answer: Passing the cost to consumers, which they must do, will make domestic American products more expensive in comparison to imports and will result in reduced sales.
Unintended consequences: 1. To the extent that production can be shifted to foreign companies or foreign plants of US companies, jobs will move overseas. 2. With respect to domestic production, the result will be wildly inflationary. 3. Because cap & trade fees allow pollution to continue, the environment will not benefit (but it is becoming clear that global warming climate change is not human-caused in any case so the only effect will be that production will shift to China and the world will see a net increase on pollution). 4. Cap & Trade is designed to motivate companies to spend money to reduce their pollution, but that will further increase their costs and further reduce their competitiveness – a lose-lose situation.
Photo: That's our Kondratiev
Ultra ETFs are double leveraged. Bullish? Ultra Long ETFs. Bearish? Ultra Short ETFs. They are trading tools: volatile and fun to play with.
Short-term winning strategy? Short the Dow before every Obama or admin. speech.
Friday, February 27. 2009
 How soon before China owns the USA? Mortgaging America. Geopolitically smart of China, because they already have us over a barrel.
Time to loosen up on Havana? I think so. Our approach to Cuba is a Cold War relic. The world is full of terrible governments.
Class warfare returns to Washington. Politico. Related: What's wrong with income inequality anyway?
The era of big government arrives. USA Today
Lib David Broder is worried about Obama
Old Europe finally getting involved in Iraq. For the oil!
Obama's war against coal
Phony Indian tribe's casino plan nixed by Supremes
Why does Obama keep arguing against straw men? Answer: Folks believe him. (H/T, NEONEO)
Krauthammer begins:
Not a great speech, but extremely consequential. If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic -- indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism. As it stands, it constitutes the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.
Read the whole thing.
Conservative strategies: Who needs Joe the Plumber? A quote:
Conservatives should not need Joe the Plumber to prove their middle class bona fides. We are naturally the party of the middle, and we don't need gimmicks to prove it. Demographically, Democrats rely on being the party of the upper sixth and the lower third, while Republicans tend to do better with everyone in between. When we start losing the middle class and the suburbs, we lose big like we did in 2008.
What Conservatives need are compelling candidates who can communicate.
 David Leonhardt explains in the NYT how Obama's budget sweeps away Reagan.
How nice. Back to the 1970s, or the 1930s. Reagan wanted everybody to get wealthy. The old way is to reduce prosperity. It's very easy to do: just take their money away from them, take the gummint cut, and hand it to somebody else.
The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second.
That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
She Who Must Be Obeyed has already warned me: If this goes through, I am working 4 days a week, not five. She would prefer my company to my working at 50 cents on the dollar (with CT income tax) for the government - and she mostly handles the financial affairs. Fortunately for me, I enjoy her company too. I can easily help to reduce income inequality by being less productive. I love to work, but I love to have fun too. And there is nothing I wish to buy...besides vacations and trips.
Chris thought you might get a kick out of this Madoff Map. Just move the cursor over the spots and get the names. I recognize some of those names, including some big-time divorce lawyers. I cannot account for those accounting firms on there. Sheesh.
This is going around. There will be lots of honking:
 "I dress for church." Englishman. So do I, most of the time.
Don't these bozos realize that trees are grown on tree farms?
The opening chord of "Hard Day's Night." It's sort of a "clang," isn't it?
Dems seek to kill DC school choice
The genetics of male superiority in chess and science.
A closer look at the Bombay slums. They are neighborhoods, really. As I recall, "urban renewal" didn't work too well in the US.
How the socialized medicine scheme will work. I don't think folks will go for it.
Welcome to anarchy. Hitchen's Battle of Beirut
OK, some links re the proposed Obama socialist, eat-the-rich budget:
I actually agree about eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. There is nothing fair or rational about it, and all it does is to drive up the price of housing. However, their just mentioning this will add to the slump in home prices. They will just tighten the deduction phase-out at the high end.
I do not particularly like the idea of eliminating charitable deductions, despite the arguments for it.
Marginal Rev had this:
Today President Obama proposed about $634 billion in new spending and taxes. But since we here at MR cover only the quantitatively significant policy initiatives, I have nothing to say about it.
Q&O:
The era of big deficit financed government isn’t just back, it’s back on steroids sitting in a rocket sled pointed at economic hell.
Insty:
BOB KRUMM: “Barack Obama’s plans to hyper-inflate the government bubble while he taxes the rich at confiscatory levels, is so certain to collapse the economy that I can only conclude that he is a brilliant Rovian plant whose purpose is to finally drive a stake into the heart of the era of big government.”
Henninger: This is a radical budget:
Barack Obama is proposing that the U.S. alter the relationship between the national government and private sector that was put in place by Ronald Reagan and largely continued by the presidencies of Bill Clinton and the Bushes. Then, the private sector led the economy. Now Washington will chart its course.
A Vermont Lib goes through the lies in Obama's speech. h/t, SDA
Cap and trade is a tax on everybody. Volokh:
The most dangerous proposal in the new budget is the institution of a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Indeed, the single largest source of new tax revenue in the budget going forward are these payments to be made by businesses for the right to emit excess carbon.
The goal is an 83% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.
That would bring US per capita emissions of CO2 down to a level below what we had in the 1700s.
The Audacity of Trope at Villainous. She quotes the NYT:
“To the extent that Mr. Obama has talked about raising taxes, he has focused on households that make at least $250,000 a year. . .But the problem can’t be solved just by taxing the rich. That top 1 percent pays only about one-quarter of federal taxes. Once the recession ends, taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise, too.”
From a piece on the budget at Politico:
For those who might feel assured that this sneaky tax increase – pretending for deductibility purposes that your tax rate is lower than it actually is -- is only hitting the multi-millionaires of Obama’s derision, think again: the vast majority of the resulting new tax revenue will be paid by the entrepreneurs, professionals and successful small businesses (the ones with actual employees) whose paychecks are only a tiny fraction of those dastardly bankers and CEOs. For a Subchapter S small business, where personal income tax rates apply, it takes only a handful of employees to generate the $150,000 or so in taxable income (for a single owner or a married owner filing separately) to get hit with this tax increase. Moreover, this is not simply money that would otherwise be pocketed by the owner; these retained earnings are usually the only source of equity capital for sustaining their payroll and growing their businesses. And with banks so reluctant to lend, this is the worst possible time to reduce their working capital.
And to sum it all up, Dick Morris:
Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring.
And then there is the matter of blame. The deeper the mess goes — and the further down his rhetoric drives it — the more imperative it becomes to lay off the blame on Bush. He must perpetually “discover” — to his shock — how deep the crisis that he inherited runs, stoking global fears in the process.
So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.
But the jig will be up soon. The crash of the stock market in the days since he took power (indeed, from the moment he won the election) can increasingly be attributed to his own failure to lead us in the right direction, his failed policies in addressing the recession and his own spreading of panic and fear. The market collapse makes it evident that it is Obama who is the problem, where he should, instead, be the solution.
Thursday, February 26. 2009
Big surprise. Pajamas. I do not think this is what America signed up for.
Obama's proposed cap and trade will cost business billions, for no purpose whatsoever. I think this is psychotic - unless the goal is to destroy American business. But then who will pay the taxes? (Meanwhile, scientist forces Al Gore to back down.)
I doubt that even Congress is this crazy.
Related: Obama proposes one trillion in new taxes. That's for "the rich," of course. Around here, that's a teacher married to a cop, or the guy who owns the dry-cleaner.
The fallacy of positive rights
Not satire: Dartmouth's Climate Justice Research Project. I demand a colder climate.
Thoreau: Anti-government free-marketer
When children roar. Thompson
Via Insty:
ERIC HOLDER: Gitmo is a “well-run, professional facility” that will be hard to close. Now they tell us.
Stocks are good buys now.
Steyn is back with Macleans, and urging folks to have kids
Packed with info and analysis: Rich States, Poor States - ALEC-Laffer State Competitiveness Index. h/t, Cafe Hayek
Are violent video games adequately preparing our kids for the future? Let's hope so.
Obama's balancing act: Scare them enough, but not too much. Related: Are we seeing a generational shift towards big, parental government?
Mr. Free Market has Slumdog fatigue:
If I want to watch a feel good film about India, I will watch North West Frontier again & fantasize about the redoubtable Captain Scott, played with perfect aplomb by Kenneth More, ordering his Havildar to turn a Maxim gun on the entire audience at the Academy Awards. Now that would be worth watching. The nobilty of the slums my a*se
Bobby Jindal does better without a teleprompter
Government and medical care in the US, via a piece at Willisms:
Wednesday, February 25. 2009
Came in today's email. Dont know who to give credit to. Whoever you are, you're a magnificent bastard.
(Update: Needs a soundtrack:)
 The pretty, well-endowed girl in the photo led to Obama's Presidency.
Pols now want to ban primates as house pets. Aren't children primate house pets?
Why your kids are less well-educated than Belgian kids
Cause of cancer finally found. It's the Jews.
Trying to keep Obama honest: His lies about regulations. His lies about medical bankruptcies. I know lying is their job, but I don't have to like it.
Quote at Patterico:
We hold this policy to be unfair and unjust as it rewards those who do not pay their mortgages, and punishes those who work each month to pay theirs.
How rich bastards like me rip off the taxpayers
Am Thinker: I will defend to the death their right to silence you
15 Dos and Don'ts of The New Progressive order
Is the excellent Bobby Jindal too dorky for prime time? Obama can make anybody seem dorky by comparison.
A new approach to the global warming scare: Maybe even a teensy change will be catstrophic. They are getting desperate to salvage this thing.
Beijing's Olympic center. Empty and abandoned.
Kill "mark to market." I agree. Investment is future-oriented, not present-oriented.
Greenies beginning to come around to nuclear
Memo to Eric Holder from Am Thinker:
...one of America's greatest and most precious dialogues between black and white took place in a sound studio in New York City back in 1959. That was when the immortal jazz great Miles Davis defied some serious criticism coming from the black community and chose the white Bill Evans to accompany the famed group on piano. Why, the black community wondered, when there were so many great black jazz pianists, did Davis pick Evans? The answer is quite simple: Bill Evans was the best (sorry Art Tatum fans). The result? The best selling and most beautiful jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue.
Funny how little we hear about Iraq these days. Quoted at Lib Leanings:
'Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: "I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.'
Politics in the guise of science. Tierney in the NYT
Jihadist recruitment tactics are changing. The UK seems to be their fertile soil now.
Bipartisanship debunked. We are in a phase of polarized parties.
The ten things you need to know about the Employee Free Choice Act
Don't you want to help this foreclosure "victim"? And these "victims"? Annie Liebovitz is a victim too! Housing prices in 2009. Supply and Demand Related: History of home values:
Too smart by half. How quant David X. Li created the formula that killed Wall St. h/t, Volokh
More on the topic at Marginal Rev.
Politico translates Obama's speech. I think they got it right.
 Dodd also has a place in Ireland. How do pols accumulate so much wealth?
How do photochromic eyeglass lenses work?
A fish with eyes in the back of his head - and all over.
Shea Stadium is gone
Stopping traffic for a Peregrine Falcon. Good on that cop. But I would have chased the falcon away. You don't want him to get the idea that the middle of the road is a good place to eat.
Andrew Breitbart wants a Hollywood revolution
Moderately alcoholic Irish Catholics victimized
A FIRE co-founder as candidate for the Harvard Board of Overseers. Good.
Ice Ages and Sea Levels. Watts
Save Auschwitz, but get rid of the EU
Hate it when this happens.
Are we back to Sept. 10th? Powerline
The Palestinian industry. Jules
Missouri Dem: Don't worry. Our kids and grandkids will pay these debts.
Pub surveillance in Britain. Insane.
Tuesday, February 24. 2009
Are these judges werewolves?  Via Althouse. Supremes to decide:
The American Civil Liberties Union objected to the cross and filed a suit on behalf of Frank Bruno, a Catholic and former Park Service employee. The suit noted that the government had denied a request to have a Buddhist shrine erected near the cross.
Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the ACLU and declared the cross an "impermissible governmental endorsement of religion."
Congress has intervened to try to save the cross by transferring a small parcel of land with the cross on it to a private group. However, the 9th circuit judges were unswayed. This "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.
The 9th said what? Article Vll: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
 Ecstasy is safer than peanuts?
Few American cars driven by the Admin
Men and women view art differently
The upside of the foreclosure mess
The War Against Drugs has failed.
With recession, carbon emitting has gotten cheaper h/t Insty
Is the world experiencing "Green fatique"?
The big picture: Obama wants to move the center to the left. No kidding. He is a Socialist, and he never had a real job.
Is letting kids excel racist?
Don't blame Obama. A Pres cannot take an economy out of recession
Economic indicators, early 80s vs. today, via Coyote:
Monday, February 23. 2009
 States' Rights! It's about freedom.
Easy to forget that America is a voluntary federation of states: it's in the Constitution - if that means anything any more. I am advised that that is ancient history, and irrelevant. Not to me.
Elected tyrannies are commonplace in history. The wise ancient Greeks warned us about that. Politics is about the accumulation of money and power. Period.
A Modest Proposal for CO2 emissions.
I noticed this too. Obama is running hard for reelection already. The family Bush was always above that sort of thing. Dems are "better" pols: They understand the power game better.
11 states skeptical about the Trojan Ponies in the stim bill. Bobby Jindal on accepting stimulus money:
...here's the problem. So many of these things that are called temporary programs end up being permanent government programs. But this one's crystal clear, black and white letter law. The federal stimulus bill says it has to be a permanent change in state law if you take this state money. And so within three years the federal money's gone, we've got now a permanent change in our laws, we have to pay for it, our businesses pay for it. I don't think it makes sense to be raising taxes on Louisiana businesses during these economically challenging times. And what it shows is what we're going to do in the stimulus is we're going to look at every program, every dollar. If it makes sense for Louisiana, makes sense for our taxpayers, we'll use those programs and dollars. If it doesn't, like on Friday we said, "This doesn't make sense for us. This is not a good deal for us." It makes--my job is to represent Louisiana's taxpayers. Makes no sense for us to take temporary federal dollars and create permanent state obligations.
Some states, like some businesses and individuals, can be blinded by greed. Bobby is the Not Obama.
It's not easy to demonize a tall skinny blond-with-a-brain who has a sense of humor, but the MSM has done it - and made her a "controversial" celeb in the process. Love her or hate her, Ann Coulter serves a useful purpose. From Klavan on the Culture:
Look, I don’t always agree with Coulter. She sometimes seems to scream black whenever the media screams white (a strategy that works only about 85 percent of the time). I’m pretty sure we really did evolve from apes—myself within living memory. And I enthusiastically endorse any and all non-bloodletting sex acts done in private between consenting adults—as long as you don’t then ask me to pay for the resulting child, abortion or course of medication.
But the whole way liberals work is to redefine manners and morals in such a fashion that conservative common sense automatically becomes hateful. If you note that women and men are different, you’re misogynistic. If you denounce the destruction of marriage in black communities, you’re racist or moralistic. If you call for the defense of America against the world-wide Islamist menace, you’re a bigoted warmonger. If we take this garbage seriously even for an instant, we spend our whole lives playing catch-up, saying sorry, going on defense.
Coulter’s answering strategy is to blow all that foolishness away. She says the unsayable thing, does it with intelligence, humor and style and gets the world exactly right far more often than not. And did I mention she’s disconcertingly adorable? There’s more good, honest material in a paragraph of her work than in any entire edition of the New York Times. She may be a loose cannon now and then, but somehow the barrel always ends up pointed in the right direction.
Ann loves to stir the pot, but most important is that she keeps things "sayable" that others are too timid to say. I always get a kick out of Ann.
 FYI: Van Morrison's live performance of Astral Weeks, recorded in Nov. 2008, is released this week.
Sunday, February 22. 2009
 I would break that surveillance camera if I were a Brit today. Government monitoring my wine? If I recall, that government was not at Cana.
American Idle. Money! The more irresponsible you are, the more the gummint works for you. Related: What Obama/Reid/Pelosi have planned for you next. This is overreaching, I think, but they are going to do it so fast that nobody can react.
However, the conservatives are coming back to life.
A good time to buy stuff. Everything good is cheap. Will Wilkinson bought a diamond ring. I am buying some stuff too.
Stop the presses. Global warming will create mental health problems in Tasmania.
Where is Octodad? And who needs Dads anyway? h/t, Dr. Helen. A quote:
Out-of-wedlock birth rates in the U.S. are now 38%; among African-Americans the figure is 70%. Fathers of children living with single mothers are far less involved with their children than are married fathers; about a third of all children in single-mother families have not seen their father in the previous year. Yet decades of social science have made it clear: Children who grow up without their fathers experience more poverty, have more problems at school, more trouble with the law -- and more single motherhood in the next generation.
In recent years, medical science has also raised doubts about our frequent desire to wish fathers away. Every week, it seems, science confirms just how much genes matter. Everything from eye color, to propensity to high cholesterol, to a rotten disposition, to talent at math or tennis is encoded, to some degree, in the genetic material passed on from our two biological parents.
Kaus:
...why should taxpayers fork over $30 billion so that UAW workers can continue to make $28 an hour as opposed to, say, $26 an hour or even $24 an hour, which would still be a reasonable wage these days? Or so that GM's bondholders don't have to take a bigger loss? It's not as if other workers--even at companies way more successful than GM broke--aren't taking big wage cuts. ...
"The world is nuts. The country is nuts. The government is nuts." Eat a Sea Kitten. Heck, eat two of 'em. Halibut is my choice.
Certification. It will replace much of "higher ed." Good idea. Plato, sad to say, is not for everybody. There is a natural aristocracy of mind - and I do not claim to be part of it.
The Tea Party is growing. Good fun. Why should moonbats be the only ones to protest? It's patriotic, right?
How Spring Break could pay off the entire US deficit
Oh no! Not a penny for Katrina! Never mind about that Katrina scam. Game over.
A VDH mini-rant. A quote:
Mr. Biden, there is no reason to set the reset button on foreign policy, as you promised all those Europeans. None at all. Tell that resetting stuff instead to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, that Korean nut, Putin, and all the other thugs who kill and cause misery, but not to our America that saves and feeds and helps. Mrs. Clinton, it’s now your turn. We are not impulsive as you told the world. So you can stop apologizing for America’s recent behavior—unless you think the world would be a better place with the Taliban, and Saddam and his two boys in power. Or maybe Europe should have Schroeder and Chirac back, or Libya with nuclear weapons, or Khalid Sheik Mohammed freed from Guantanamo. Or maybe America shouldn’t have given that $15 billion for AIDs relief in Africa, or helped with earthquakes in Pakistan and tsunamis in Indonesia. Now all that was sorta impulsive.”
As he thinks about this apology business, the battered American always gets a little angrier, “And another thing. Mr. Holder, I’ve never said or done a racist thing in my life, not one. Always supported equal opportunity, always will. So don’t call me a “coward” or my countrymen “cowards,” not when you’re my Attorney General. You are The Attorney General of the United States of America, so please, no more playing Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, leveling the latest shake-down charge on television.
AP analysis: Dems self-destructing over ethics
Courts full of junk science. Can that be fixed?
Is it the dawn of a Newt Age? I hope so.
It's only 5 states with foreclosures. h/t, Insty
Our Socialist friend Stumbling defends bonuses.
Who is to blame? Neither Dodd nor Frank. Course not.
Who was John January? Wow
ACORN breaking into homes, occupying them. Good grief. What are people thinking?
Dems keep trashing the past. It is unbecoming of them. Gentlefolk do not do things like that.
Even the horrible Soros agrees that letting Lehman fail was a big mistake. It was, but I also understand why it was done. I am in golf and cash. I meant gold and cash. And real estate, which changes in value but never disappears. that's why it is called "real."
The NYT omits one inconvenient truth. Yes, the world is getting colder. I can feel it every morning here.
When we release Gitmo creeps.
Jindal rejects gummint $. Good on him. Most state and local governments are acting like whores.
Has anyone seen Lie To Me? I wonder how it is.
As goes California, so goes the country?
California is in a French-like bind: unable to afford a welfare-type state, and unable to overhaul it. "The people say they want all these programs, then there's nothing they want to pay for," says Hector De La Torre, a Democratic assemblyman. "The schizophrenia in the legislature reflects the peoples'."
Train people to act like babies, and they will gladly do so. I have already been asked by many how to take advantage of the stimulus, and so we are working on it. Our clients pay taxes, and they want their piece of the action too. Why not? They will be paying for it, and they aren't stupid.
Saturday, February 21. 2009
Thus far, most corrupt White House ever. Nobody cares.
The Dow under Obama. Related, at Pajamas: Turn Back, Mr. President
Chicago wants surveillance cameras everywhere. Except in their pols' offices, no doubt.
Disagreement with stimulus is racist, claims Congressman
Can we stop talking about race? Mod. Voice
A "kick me" foreign policy. Krauthammer
No correct answers: A solution to the math and science gender gap
Jamie Dimon likes the Admin's mortgage relief plan (video). So does Baseline Scenario
"Let housing find its clearing price." Saft at Reuters. Don't worry - it will.
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