Warren Buffett, sleep easy

"(G.M.) is again losing market share, and its stock, of which taxpayers own 26 percent, was trading Thursday morning at $21, below the $33 price our investor in chief paid for it and below the $53 price it would have to reach to enable taxpayers to recover the entire $49.5 billion bailout."  - George Will

Simply allowing G.M. and Chrysler to declare bankruptcy would've allowed them to restructure their truly godawful union arrangments, rework their deals with suppliers, and would've let them make the multitudes of changes necessary to compete in a world that's changing every day. 

That was politically impossible. 

But somehow, some way, our investor in chief likes to declare that G.M. is "roaring back". 

Incredible. 

Heh....

What is the economic system in the United States?

I'll admit it.  I'm confused. 
I don't think we can claim to live in a "free market capitalist" system any more.  Benevolent Fascism?  Randomly Occurring Acts Of Socialism?  Crony Marxism?  Vegas Paternalism?  Insider Protectionism?  Teleprompter-Driven Panic? 

I don't know if I could answer this Citizenship Test question correctly.  Lordy, who knows what the answer is going to be in a few weeks? 

Here's a definition that I've enjoyed posting every couple of months.  (If I'm not mistaken, the entry was written sometime during Bush's last year.)

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.


Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace.

Let's see....we've got a Department Of Energy jacking around with fuel prices.  Jeff Immelt of G.E. is whispering sweet nothings into Obama's ear while he outlaws bulbs he doesn't like and mandates the ones G.E. can make overseas.  Washington will soon be in charge of healthcare.  It appears that Monsanto has written more laws than any senator who ever lived, trying to control the freakin' food supply.  And on and on and on.....

I'm glad that Obama hasn't noticed my employer's fruitstand industry and its risky, unfettered, unregulated, free-wheeling....oh, wait.....now I'm hearing rumors that our Lords And Masters might declare that all produce has to be refrigerated. 

Never mind. 

We better get on board. 

Gary Johnson on the State Of The Union speech

Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate for president, sent this email about Obama's State Of The Election Union speech to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit:

“If the idea tonight was that the President would fulfill his constitutional duty to give us ‘information of the State of the Union’, we should be able to expect some truth. I didn’t hear much truth. Truth is that the real unemployment rate is probably still above 10%. Truth is that after all the hand-wringing and deals of the past couple of years, instead of cutting spending, the President and Congress are going back to the well for another $1.2 Trillion debt limit increase. And the truth is we are seeing nothing from either the President or the Republicans that will really change any of those unacceptable realities.

“Only in the twilight zone that is Washington could a President who has bailed out and stimulated our economy to death stand in the Capitol and declare there should be ‘no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs’. Can anyone spell GM or TARP or Solyndra?

“The President said we deserve a government that plays by the same rules as millions of hard-working Americans. Perhaps that should begin with the government not borrowing and printing 43 cents of every dollar it spends – something hard-working Americans can’t and don’t do.

“Until we see a real plan – not a Washington smoke and mirrors plan – that puts a stop to deficit spending and really puts America back to work, all of this rhetoric is just wasted breath.”

I didn't watch the speech last night (had to wash my hair instead), but I read a few excerpts.  The business about ‘no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs’ probably was the best laugh line. 

Anachronistic protesters

From Samizdata, on the Occupy Wall Street movement:

This isn't so much a political movement as a form of historical reenactment. That's why the OWS protesters are so vague about what they want - because what they want is to be camping out at a mass 1968-style protest. There's little difference between them and Civil War reenactors, except that the Civil War guys understand that it's not real and the outcome of their mock battles won't have any effect. The 1968 reenactors down on Wall Street have the quaint belief that what they're doing is real.

And from the comments:

They know so little (most of them) that they don't know the difference between reality and fiction. Which, by the way, is an indictment of our education system.

Moreover, they don't care about the difference.
I went to a university in California in the 1980s. We had the same phenomena then. People would protest for causes they knew nothing about. I'd talk to them and after establishing they knew nothing about apartheid in South Africa or whatever the cause du jour, they said that they were pursuing their business or law degrees so they could live the conspicuously consumptive young urban lifestyle; condo by the beach, a nice BMW convertible, etc.
They were protesting whatever, it didn't matter to them, so they could feel good about themselves. Sort of a variation of "I gave at the office." They gave to "the cause" while in college so they could be selfish the rest of their lives.
Of course, these people may be protesting the fact that they went deeply into debt making bad life decisions no one forced them to make, such as getting worthless degrees, expecting they'd just be handed a high-paying job requiring just as little effort as their lazy tenured professor asked of them, and now they're finding out they aren't going to live that easy, conspicuously consumptive lifestyle they imagined was theirs by right.

Now they're throwing a tantrum. But I see the selfishness part hasn't changed. They aren't protesting bailouts; they're demanding more for themselves. They want someone else to work to pay for their college loans, their credit card debt, the mortgages they want to get, ad infinitum.
In other words, they want to live like ante bellum plantation owners while someone else works to support them.

I take issue with that last sentence.  They don't want to live like plantation owners.  Many of them want to live like plantation slaves - with a "guaranteed" job that also includes 3 hots and a cot and some kind of healthcare.

The picture of the anachronistic OWS protesters came from here.  The picture of the anachronistic Civil War Reeanactors with a tank came from here. 

Borders Books - Burleson Texas, R.I.P. We'll miss you, but don't ask for a bailout

Dang it, dang it, dang it. 
Border's Books has declared bankruptcy. 

They're closing 200 stores, one of which is their Burleson/I-35 store where I've spent many a lunch break.  I got to hear one of my alt-country heroes, Deryl Dodd, play an acoustic show in their coffee bar during the store's grand opening.  (I'm typing this in that same Border's coffee bar, BTW.) 

They're also closing their 30,000 square foot monster store on Preston Road in Dallas.  I used to run stores for Bookstop/Barnes and Noble, and that Border's store kicked my Preston/Forest Bookstop's rear end.  Hard.  Bookstop couldn't compete on selection or service, and couldn't beat them by very much on price.  It was ugly.   

(Full Disclosure:  I left Bookstop because of illness and fatigue.  They got sick and tired of me.)

The Preston Road Border's has great sales but is probably burdened with rent from hell.  Oh well.  They're closing it.   

The Fort Worth Hulen/I-30 store looks safe for now (congratulations, Jackie G.!) as does the south Arlington location. 

Gary Hoover founded Bookstop, sold it to Barnes and Noble, and went on to create business data provider Hoovers.com. 
Gary (once my boss's boss's boss) also doubts that Border's will survive:

Now, the survival of Borders depends on the financial stability of the company, the ability to secure interim funding (GE Capital has promised $505 million in financing) and the willingness of publishers to supply books, Hoover said. But in retailing, unlike the airline industry, it’s uncommon for a company to emerge from bankruptcy, he said.


“If the same management team who has been running it the last several months stays in place, it is only a matter of time until they close up completely. But whether that is six months or six years depends on many variables,”

That's not a vote of confidence. 

I  love books.  I keep them stacked in dangerous piles on my bedside table, I keep them in unlikely piles on my truck seat, and I have various books "started" at my mother's house, my sister's house, a church library, and in two different vehicles.  Until my eyes went bad, I had books beside the bathtub.  (Reading glasses fog up in hot water.) 

I'm sure that I'll eventually get a Kindle or a Nook, but I'm fighting it. 

I'm the same way with CD's.  They're all over the bedroom, leaking by the dozens out of a bookcase across from the bed.  I can't quite go digital.  I don't trust any electronic device with my stuff.  Do a Google search on "symptoms of old age" for more details. 

The Aggie hasn't bought a CD in 6 years.  The main draw at Border's Preston used to be the massive CD selection.  It's now dwindled to a few lonely rows. 

So....

Name an industry worthy of a bailout.  Explain why. 

Did you pick Border's?  Would you be willing to prop up a failing business model and product line with your own money?  Would you take that risk? 
Did you pick Chrysler?  Would you be willing to prop up a failing business model and product line with your own money?  Would you take that risk? 
Did you pick a bank or a Wall Street firm?  Blah? Blah? Blah? Blah?  Would you encourage them to carry on as usual with your money? 

If Texas Governor Rick Perry were to intervene and throw a hundred million taxpayer dollars to the Texas Border's stores because they were "too big too fail", would it give you a warm and runny feeling?  What if he did it to "save and create jobs"?  Would that work for you? 

I didn't think so. 



The marketplace has spoken, which is another way of saying that YOU have spoken.  Rick Perry doesn't know any more about Bookselling than John Boehlout Boehner knew about Wall Street or banks.  There is no difference.  For capitalism to work, government can't support any form of screw-uppery. 
 
There came a time when the last American Buggy Whip manufacturer had to close its doors.
Ditto for Betamaxes, Edsels, the TRS-80 computers, the Commodore 360's and my beloved Sour Lemon "Now and Laters" candy. 
Within 5 years you won't be able to purchase a new car with a CD player in the dashboard. 

I'm betting that within 10 years, you'll be able to approach some sort of device in any public place and access all of your "stuff" - work, health, movies, music, books, email, pictures, and things we can't even imagine.  Maybe the device will even be portable.
Oh, wait a minute....that has already happened.  I'm typing this on a contraption called a "laptop".  You may have heard of them.  And they've almost killed the filing cabinet industry, the movie rental industry, Virgin Music Megastores, Border's Books, the U.S. Mail, and Eastman/Kodak, and the IBM Selectric typewriter, and World Book Encyclopedias, and the career of Dan Rather.

I used to think that one day I would write a book.  And if it was really good, maybe 3 or 4 thousand people would read it.  I called it my dream.  Now, because of this website, that's not called a dream, it's called.... "Friday".  Or "Monday".  I now reach more people every day than my hometown Sunflower County News used to reach in a week.  The dinosaurs have died out, but the possums lived on....

But I'll miss the Border's in Burleson.  (At the risk of sounding totally contrived and corny, they've already closed the cafe at the Border's Burleson, where I'm typing this, but the Wi-Fi has still been working.  The staff just came by, thanked us for our support, and told us that they're about to turn off the wireless internet.  For good.  I'm switching over to a Sprint/Nextel aircard....speaking of devices that need to be replaced QUICKLY with something better.) 

Heck, you're reading the words of somebody who violently resisted the switch from 8-tracks to cassettes. 

This is what has to happen in order for things to improve.  Dammit. 

The picture of the Debt Star came from here. 

Don't bother reading this. It's just a series of funny pictures to make a very small point

From John Merline, on AOL News:

(Oct. 25) -- Throughout his presidential campaign and into his first two years in the White House, President Barack Obama portrayed himself as a champion of the middle class, ready to wage battle with big business and Wall Street fat cats to make sure the wealth got "spread around."

Back in March 2008, at a speech given on Wall Street, for example, he said that in the past, "we let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result," he said, is "a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street."

In September of that year, he argued that "for too long, [the Bush] administration has been wiling to hit the fast-forward button" to help Wall Street firms, "while pressing pause when it comes to saving jobs or keeping people in their homes."

The next month, Obama said the country can't afford "four more years of the economic theory that says we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It's time to turn the page."

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Realtor.com, Dow Jones industrial average.

This chart shows the changes in employment, earnings, home prices, disposable income, the Dow and corporate profits since President Obama took office.

And he said had a plan to do just that. "I've put forward a series of proposals," he said during the campaign, "that will foster economic growth from the bottom up."

But whatever his intentions, Obama's policies so far haven't exactly produced the results he promised.

In fact, the opposite has occurred.

As the nearby chart shows, by almost every measure, the middle class hasn't benefited much at all over the past two years – the number of employed has fallen while wages, disposable income and home prices have pretty much flatlined.

At the same time, Wall Street and big business have made out like bandits. The Dow is up 30 percent since Obama took office, and corporate profits have shot up 42 percent.

Meantime, companies are sitting on so much cash -- nearly $2 trillion worth -- they don't know what to do with it all. The non-financial companies in the S&P 500 index have seen their cash stockpile climb 26 percent over the previous year. Apple alone has amassed almost $26 billion in cash.

Obama may be right, as he said in August, that "on issue after issue, the Republicans in Congress have sided with corporate special interests over middle-class families."

But when it comes to actual results, Obama might want to take a good long look in the mirror.

The mirror pics came from here.  Let's throw in some Michael Jackson for your Monday.  

The "Green At All Costs" Chevy Volt

Go here for a brilliant analysis of Government Motors' new Chevy Volt.  In the words of the email that brought this to my attention,  This was printed in the New York Times!  How bad have things gotten when Bammy can't even trust Pravda on the Hudson to shill for him anymore?

GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.


For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,” it didn’t cancel the project.

You know, somebody should have known this would happen before we put all this money into it.

Oh wait, we did.

Say No To Government Motors

Parodies like this one have been around since the early days of the bailouts.



But I always wondered when legit marketing efforts would appear.
Go here for details.

Bad Carma

Barack Obama is trying to assure consumers that if the government takes over GM and Chrysler, everyone's automobile warranties will be maintained.
From Bob Krumm comes the idea of FUBAR. That's the Federal Unionized Bureau of Auto Repair, in stead of the more familiar acronym.

And from the geniuses at Reason magazine comes this:



If you even think about buying a GM or Chrysler, you are out of your mind.

Take what you produce in a year, and bet it on a coin flip

Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion


(If you're an Obama fan, "GDP" refers to the amount the rest of us produce in a year.)


By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.


Well, they have other motives besides stemming the recession. Rewarding donors, remaking the economy, and taking advantage of the crisis to move more slop from the private to the public trough.



New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.


The $42,105.00 amount doesn't include the amount you owe from previous government adventures in helpfulness.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

Does anyone with enough breath to fog up a mirror doubt that these clowns will want to do more? Anyone disagree? Have they not telegraphed their next moves clearly enough?

Commitments include a $500 billion line of credit to the FDIC from the government’s coffers that will enable the agency to guarantee as much as $2 trillion worth of debt for participants in the Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility and the Public-Private Investment Program. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair warned that the insurance fund to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up because of bank failures.

‘Within an Eyelash’

The combined commitment has increased by 73 percent since November, when Bloomberg first estimated the funding, loans and guarantees at $7.4 trillion.

“The comparison to GDP serves the useful purpose of underscoring how extraordinary the efforts have been to stabilize the credit markets,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Dallas.


Yes. Extraordinary. Truly Extraordinary. They're working haaaaard for you. Rolling up their sleeves while they print more and more money, and rake it in with both hands.

“Everything the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury do doesn’t always work out right but back in October we came within an eyelash of having a truly horrible collapse of our financial system, said Johnson, a former Fed senior economist. “They used their creativity to help the worst-case scenario from unfolding and I’m awfully glad they did it.”


There are worse things than this ?????

Federal Reserve officials project the economy will keep shrinking until at least mid-year, which would mark the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression.

The following table details how the Fed and the government have committed the money on behalf of American taxpayers over the past 20 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.


The amount on the left is how much spending is approved, or "pledged" (another way of saying "how much they're going to spend....") The amount on the right represents the first shovels full of slop going into the trough. Remember, these numbers are billions.

===========================================================
--- Amounts (Billions)---
Limit Current
===========================================================
Total $12,798.14 $4,169.71
-----------------------------------------------------------
Federal Reserve Total $7,765.64 $1,678.71
Primary Credit Discount $110.74 $61.31
Secondary Credit $0.19 $1.00
Primary dealer and others $147.00 $20.18
ABCP Liquidity $152.11 $6.85
AIG Credit $60.00 $43.19
Net Portfolio CP Funding $1,800.00 $241.31
Maiden Lane (Bear Stearns) $29.50 $28.82
Maiden Lane II (AIG) $22.50 $18.54
Maiden Lane III (AIG) $30.00 $24.04
Term Securities Lending $250.00 $88.55
Term Auction Facility $900.00 $468.59
Securities lending overnight $10.00 $4.41
Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility $900.00 $4.71
Currency Swaps/Other Assets $606.00 $377.87
MMIFF $540.00 $0.00
GSE Debt Purchases $600.00 $50.39
GSE Mortgage-Backed Securities $1,000.00 $236.16
Citigroup Bailout Fed Portion $220.40 $0.00
Bank of America Bailout $87.20 $0.00
Commitment to Buy Treasuries $300.00 $7.50
-----------------------------------------------------------
FDIC Total $2,038.50 $357.50
Public-Private Investment* $500.00 0.00
FDIC Liquidity Guarantees $1,400.00 $316.50
GE $126.00 $41.00
Citigroup Bailout FDIC $10.00 $0.00
Bank of America Bailout FDIC $2.50 $0.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
Treasury Total $2,694.00 $1,833.50
TARP $700.00 $599.50
Tax Break for Banks $29.00 $29.00
Stimulus Package (Bush) $168.00 $168.00
Stimulus II (Obama) $787.00 $787.00
Treasury Exchange Stabilization $50.00 $50.00
Student Loan Purchases $60.00 $0.00
Support for Fannie/Freddie $400.00 $200.00
Line of Credit for FDIC* $500.00 $0.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
HUD Total $300.00 $300.00
Hope for Homeowners FHA $300.00 $300.00
-----------------------------------------------------------
the FDIC’s commitment to guarantee lending under the
Legacy Loan Program and the Legacy Asset Program includes a $500
billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.

A Subtle Suggestion For Senator Charles Grassley

Senator Charles Grassley (Republican - Iowa) is not happy with the AIG executives who got $165,000,000.00 in bailout money bonuses. Here's Chuck:

"I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."

Those money-grubbing Wall Street guys need to commit suicide ! ! ! Charles is ready to grab his torch and pitchfork and exploit some populist outrage. Here are Senator Grassley's comments from a few days later:

Grassley continued to express his displeasure with the company that is distributing $165 million in bonuses over lawmakers' objections. He said executives should not be rewarded for running their corporation into the ground.....
"From my standpoint, it's irresponsible for corporations to give bonuses at this time when they're sucking the tit of the taxpayer...."

The "tit of the taxpayer" ! ! ! You tell 'em, Charles.
There's one problem.
Senator Charles Grassley is a whore for the ethanol industry. He will do things for Iowa corn and ethanol producers that Shanghai harbor prostitutes would politely decline.


If AIG execs are gently "sucking the tit of the taxpayer", then Charles Grassley's state of Iowa is a massive veal calf feedlot, chewing on Lady Liberty's nipples with enough pressure to suck-start an airliner. Hear that incessant slurping sound coming from the midwest? That's Iowa, inhaling the subsidy money.

From 1995 to 2006, Iowa received $16,000,000,000.00 in farm subsidies. (Those are billions, not to be confused with the measley AIG bonus millions.) They can thank Grassley for most of it.
Friends of AIG, like Senator Chris Dodd, wrote loopholes into the stimulus package. These loopholes allowed AIG execs to walk away with millions in taxpayer money.
Friends of ethanol, like Senator Charles Grassley, have been responsible for Iowa farmers and ethanol producers walking away with billions (with a "b") in taxpayer money.

In one instance, a relatively small amount of your money was given to a small group of Dodd/Obama supporters at AIG.
In another, a huge amount of your money was given to a larger group of Charles Grassley supporters.

There is absolutely no difference. Money was taken from taxpayers and given to campaign donors. Both examples are obscene.

So here's a suggestion for Senator Charles Grassley. Be sure that your personal finances are in order, and that your Last Will And Testament is legally binding. Get your rifle out of the gun cabinet, and take it to the middle of a remote Iowa cornfield. You'll figure out what to do.

Here are the Manic Street Preachers performing the theme from M.A.S.H. - "Suicide Is Painless"



Picture of overpriced biofuel came from Moonbattery.

An Awkward Conversation With The National Maitre D'

Excuse me, sir.... May I have a word with you in private? This will only take a moment.
Did you enjoy your Sesame-crusted Tarp? Truly an excellent choice, and one of my favorites.

I apologize for taking you away from your guests. They seem to be having a grand time.

Shortly after some members of your party, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney I believe, ordered the first round of blackened stimuli garnished with hand-foraged collards for $152 billion, I took the liberty of running your card through our system, strictly as a matter of policy.
Your card was declined, but you've been such a good customer for so many years, I assumed that our computer was at fault.

So when your guests ordered the bottomless housing appetizer package of possum medallions with juice au jus drizzled over pulverized McCain nuts for $345 billion, the card was once again declined.
I'm told that you are over your limit.

In the meantime, to avoid any embarrassment, the staff agreed to bring Mr. Paulson his Wall Street bailout of dehydrated mineral water de Pelosi (with a bearish overtone and a hint of knotty pine) at $700 billion. We ran your credit card through our system once again, and I apologize for mentioning this, but I must now ask if you have any other means of payment.

You see, Mr. Geithner just ordered a newly-minted Federal Reserve guarantee d'fault (from Peking) for $4 trillion and, to be frank, Mr. Geithner is well known for avoiding his share of payments. May I be so bold as to suggest a separate check for Mr. Geithner?

Mr. Obama's behavior has been puzzling. On Thursday night he called in his order for a pork-stuffed stimulus with 8,600 sesame infused earmarks and insisted on a small partial delivery to your table by Friday.

He insisted that no one be allowed to read his order prior to delivery.

We don't understand the need for such haste when the majority of his entree won't be delivered until 2010 and 2011. Pork-stuffed stimulus often goes bad between election cycles, and our menu clearly states that we cannot be responsible for the appearance of this entree in the cold, harsh, light of day.



Is it possible for you to pay cash? Or should I bring everyone an individual check?

The New York Times Is Decadent And Depraved

A friend of mine sent me this chart from the February 27 New York Times. It shows the gap between federal spending and federal receipts.
At first glance, the projected deficit doesn't look that bad, does it? We've been through worse, haven't we?



But after I looked at it for a few seconds longer, I saw what was wrong. Where is the Reagan revenue boom (and the Clinton/NAFTA) echo?
The chart shows the federal receipts, spending, and deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product. Hit the link above if you can't read the fine print.

We mustn't scare the New Yorkers, but....there are more honest ways to present that information, especially if you are going to display it beside a document entitled "A New Era Of Responsibility".

Here's what those numbers really look like in millions of dollars, instead of as a percentage of another number. Can you imagine the NYT printing this chart alongside the "New Era Of Responsibility" payoff pamphlet ?

The first question you should ask is "What the hell is happening to the value of the dollar?" (Answer: They're printing them as they go.)

The second question is "Why did the NYT go out of their way to make the latest giveaway/bailout numbers look less threatening?" (Answer: The hope and change thing.)

The third question is "What is the total of all this deficit spending?"
(Answer: Here's the national debt as of last year. I don't have an update for all the latest ladles of slop and neither does anyone else, but you get the idea.)


And people wonder why newspaper readership is declining.

From Marktaw.com

The Texas Tea Party, Cowtown Bar and Grill, Fort Worth Texas, February 27, 2009

Yesterday I was able to spend a couple of hours at the Texas Tea Party, the anti-stimulus, anti-bailout, anti-campaign donor refund, and anti-bank recovery protest. It was held at one of my regular hangouts, Fort Worth's Cowtown Bar and Grill.
Having this event spontaneously erupt at my favorite watering hole is like a dream. One of those What-If-I-Ran-The-World dreams. I halfway expected to go to the Camp Bowie Starbucks this morning and have the barrista give me Anti-Al Gore literature.

The crowd was about 75% Republican, 10% Libertarian, 5% Undercover Democrats who wanted to infiltrate the opposition, and 10% bewildered regulars who were wondering what had happened to their favorite bar and why it was so hard to find parking.

My biggest regret is not getting there before the event started. (Work, work, work....) There was a long line of people along Camp Bowie holding up signs and waving flags. Most of the speechmaking and politicking was already over. I set up shop in back, and started handing out Nolan charts and doing my best to explain what the Libertarians are all about. The wind was blowing too hard to set up any kind of a backdrop, but it was time well spent.

It was my first time to represent the Libertarians at any public event, and it was enlightening. (For me. I don't know what it was for my victims.)

The Nolan chart/quiz is a set of 10 questions that does a reasonably ok job of defining your political beliefs. One of the questions is whether or not you favor drug legalization for adults.

People were stymied by this question, and agonized over it more than any other. The reason why? They know that if marijuana is legalized, the government will be able to tax it. They don't want to give anything else to the government ! ! !

These are MY people, and I love them.


If someone's survey defined them as "Conservative", I tried to steer the conversation to the part of the stimulus package that is 40% Republican pork. Then I typically veered off into the conservative opposition to drug law reform and gay marriage as a red herring.

I ran into several Democrats (including one co-worker). I usually told them to put all their drinks on my bar tab, since that's what their lords and masters in Washington were doing to us already. A couple of hundred dollars more shouldn't matter. Only two of them got the joke.

A few people didn't even bother taking the test. Based on previous experience, they just took a sticker and placed it on the very top of the Libertarian portion of the chart.

It looked like 300 people attended. No one threw anything at me. None of the (few) Democrats I spoke with had any rational way of justifying the recent spending abortions. None of the (many) Republicans could justify their continued support of the party of Snowe, Collins and Spector, or the Bush/Reagan/Bush budget busting.

The libertarians all had a fanatical gleam in their eyes. Our day is coming. I loved every minute of it. I want to do this again.

Pics came from here.

"Tea Party" protest at the Cowtown Bar And Grill in Fort Worth ! ! !

To: Fort Worth residents who have been paying attention
From: Me


Tired of giving your money to people who couldn't pay an $800,000 mortgage on a $25,000 salary?
Tired of watching your dollars buy less and less because The Fed is printing too many of them?
Tired of the current Billions For Bankers Bailout?
Boy, do I have the event for you ! ! !


This is from Craigslist.


"TEA PARTY '09."


Let "the man" know that you're mad, and you're not going to take it anymore!! Bring your protest signs and indignant taxpayer attitude with you to the rally at the outside stage at The Cowtown Bar & Grill on Friday, the 27th of February, from 3pm to 7pm, located at 7108 Camp Bowie Blvd, Fort Worth, TX 76116 (817) 570-7910

We hope to have a guest speaker there from KLIF radio. The "Desert Son Band" will be performing on the outside stage with their original music and some covers appropriate for the rally. Food and drink will be available for purchase.

This bar is right around the corner from my job. It's not quite a home away from home, but it's at least in 3rd or 4th place. A fun time WILL be had.


This is how they did it in Boston in 1773.




This is how they're doing it in Fort Worth in 2009.

If I can get finished at work by 6:00, I'm going to buy a bottle of alcohol-free beer and pour it out on Camp Bowie. (Wouldn't want to waste anything good on a protest.)

Here are a few more links with info about the event, including one where some idjit writes in to Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show", suggesting they show up with a camera crew to film "the rednecks" for the comedy potential. As if there could be anything dumber than the blatant giveaways we Texas rednecks are protesting against.

Hope to see you there !

************************

In the previous post I featured some student activists who were, to put it gently, not quite competent.

They could take a few lessons from these kids. This is brilliant. Enjoy !

My Economic Crisis Story (as requested by Governor Tim Kaine)

I'm still getting emails from Barack Obama. (I sent him $12.50 to help him defeat She Whose Name Is Not Spoken, and that got me on his mailing list.)

The man is still in campaign mode. They've sent out a video of Governor Tim Kaine explaining the Donor Compensation And Mommy Party Long Time Wish List Plan Economic Stimulus Plan.

Here's the Governor's request:

It's up to you to share and collect the real stories of this economic crisis. America needs to hear how this crisis is affecting your life and why the economic recovery plan is important to you and your community.You can record your story in the form below, on video, upload photos, or call a special toll free number to tell your story in your own way.
Once you submit your stories, they'll be made available to the public to show how critical it is to support the economic recovery plan.

Well, let me tell you about my day and my story, you rent-seeking bastards.

While you were trying to push through a "stimulus" plan that includes $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction, some co-workers of mine were laying off 80 great employees.

While you were advocating a freakin' joke of an "economic" plan that includes $75 million dollars for anti-smoking programs, and $400 million for STD and HIV prevention, I was cutting some 40-hour a week employees back to 32 hours.

When you were pushing a $400 million dollar subsidy for Global Warming Research, a great lady lost her sales job, and sent me an email asking that I keep her in my thoughts and prayers.

I don't pray much any more. But I do have thoughts.

I think you con artists should do us all a favor. Call in sick tomorrow. And the next day and the next. Stay home through the end of the year, and work on not paying your taxes. Stop muddying the waters. Come back to what we laughingly call your "work" when the recession is over.
We'll all get back to work a lot faster if we can keep you out of our pockets.

Submitted to Obama's "Share Your Economic Crisis" page on 2-9-09 at 8:50 p.m.

An apology and a retraction

I made a major error a couple of months ago, and would like to apologize. I made the following statement:


So here's my prediction. We don't learn from the past. We're throwing huge amounts of our kids and grandkids' money at this problem. (The problem: investors have lost money at the Wall Street Blackjack table, and wish to be made whole again.) So far, that hasn't worked. The next thing we're going to do is shut down NAFTA and other Free Trade agreements. Then we're going to put prohibitive tariffs into place.


I was wrong, wrong, wrong. And I deeply regret what I wrote.



The freakin' idiots are going to put prohibitive tariffs into place FIRST. Then they'll screw up NAFTA. I got it backwards.

I can't believe I didn't catch that, and I deeply regret the error.


Seriously, here's the problem.....


1) The stimulus package has a provision which states that no foreign steel can be used in the upcoming infrastructure projects.
2) We've been buying a lot of steel from people who can produce it for less than we can.
3) If we make it illegal for American road contractors to purchase American steel, our former trading partners WILL make it illegal to purchase various items from us. Count on it.
4) The last time this happened was the result of something called the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, and it gave us the joyous decade called The Great Depression. It's hard to get an economy going when its illegal to trade with the other 95% of the world.
5) This doesn't even rise to the level of Economics 101.
6) They really are that freakin' dense. (The politicians, not the steel.)


photo of regret and remorse from here.

Trying To Drink Ourselves Sober

A 40 Year Wish List, from the Wall Street Journal

You won't believe what's in that stimulus bill.
Oh? Try me.

....We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years;
But think of all the Americans who just might use Amtrak one day. Maybe. Perhaps.

$2 billion for child-care subsidies;
In other words, a breeding incentive....

$50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts;
Hello, Doctor Ralph ! Tell all the BoHo's to break out their paintbrushes !

$400 million for global-warming research....
Hmmmm.....I wonder what conclusions they'll reach? Is there any doubt? Should they even bother with buying thermometers?

and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects.
That's $2.4 billion just to DEMONSTRATE carbon-capture. They're not yet paying for it to be done in the real world. But you soon will be.

There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
That's paying a lot of bread for people to watch the circus. Didn't Juvenal have something to say about that?

....Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on investment. Most urban transit systems are so badly managed that their fares cover less than half of their costs. However, the people who operate these systems belong to public-employee unions that are campaign contributors to . . . guess which party?
The Greens? Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat Party? The Constitution Party? The Surprise Party? I give up. Tell us, Oh Wall Street Journal, tell us.
Naw. Let's delete that part.

.....Here's another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles.
Well, how are they going to demonstrate Carbon Capture unless they have Carbon Emitting Cars to capture the carbon from? Doh !

....As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits. These include the Economic Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 federal job training programs, and many more.
Those people vote too, you know. Don't they deserve something for Christmas?

Oh, and don't forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That's more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that "No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools." Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.
I'll let that one stand on its own.

The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending bonanza will become part of the annual "budget baseline" that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and into the future.
No, that's not an issue. Don't act like they're even arguing the point. This is going to become a permanent part of the budget. Nothing is more permanent than temporary government spending.

This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead -- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.
I'm really tired of people talking about bipartisanship as if it were a good thing. Republicans worked hand in hand with Democrats to run up our current bar tab of $10,800,000,000,000.00
And now the Republicans want to run for the parking lot without paying? Just because the bar tab is about to double? Now that we're teetering on the edge of a spending disaster, they don't even want to argue about who ordered the last Margarita or the three JaegerBombs or the extra-spicy buffalo wings with Ranch dip?
Freakin' cowards, all of you.
Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison ! ! ! I'm calling you out on this one ! ! ! Get your wrinkled butts back in there and help the Democrats blow some money.

John Cornyn - Damaged ! Defective ! On Sale While Supplies Last !

Texas Republicans are attacking Obama's Stimulus plan, or so says the Houston Chronicle.

Big, Fat, Hairy Deal. It doesn't matter. These are symbolic little protests, meaning nothing.

The fix is in. They've already thrown the fight. Senator John Cornyn (Daddy Party, Texas) voted in favor of the Timothy Geithner confirmation. If you can vote to confirm Tim "The Tax Dodger" Geithner as Chief Tax Collector/Big Brother Of The Bailout , is there anything you won't do?

Here's the frustrating thing.... John Cornyn is great on Free Trade and 2nd Amendment rights. He's consistently voted anti-mafia anti labor union.

But he believes that Social Security benefits are sacred, that we need a constitutional amendment against flag desecration, and that we need a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. When George W. Bush did the right thing and vetoed the latest obscene Farm Bill, John Cornyn voted to overide the veto. Cornyn is also for teacher-led prayer in the public schools.

In short, John Cornyn is a typical Daddy Party politician. (All of the above info comes from a site called On The Issues. Long-time libertarians will be interested in the chart at the bottom of the page....)

Our current party system has an infuriating division with The Daddy Party advocating economic freedom and an insane amount of government interference in what should be private matters, while The Mommy Party fully embraces economic insanity, but has an ok record on social freedom (after the mid-1970's, anyway).

Having to vote between The Daddy Party and The Mommy Party is like shopping in a massive warehouse full of Factory Seconds, Damaged & Defective Product, and goods that couldn't pass the final Quality Control Inspection. Every now and then a Jeff Flake or a Ron Paul appears on the warehouse shelf by mistake, but those guys are like diamonds in a dungheap.

In the meantime, $1,000,000,000,000.00 gets taken from your pocket and given to the Daddy/Mommy Party supporters because you don't think you have any other choice.

Just a reminder....there are other warehouses where you can shop.