This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Economy

  • Warren Buffet; liar

    I’ve always admired Warren Buffet – he built an investment empire and became the third richest man in America from a paper route -but I believe he’s fallen off the deep end of liberal guilt. Speaking at a fund raiser for one of those Clintons – who knows which one – Buffet tried to attack the Bush tax cuts by lying;

     Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.

    First of all, Buffet probably (and I say probably because I don’t have access to his tax return) is counting the increase in his net worth by the increase in the value of the stock he owns – that’s not taxed until he cashes the stock out. A better explanation of Buffet’s low income tax rate at Greg Mankiw’s Blog – an economist who understands wealth and taxation better than I do, apparently.

    Buffet’s secretary, if she made $60k was taxed at 25% – that’s the marginal tax rate for a single person earning $60,000 – however, just by claiming herself as an exemption, she’d drive that down to 15.39%. If she contributed to a retirement plan it’d go down even more. The only way she’d be taxed at a 30% marginal tax rate is if her income was over $160,000 as a single filer, or $270,000 married filing jointly.

    Buffet went on to say even more stupid stuff;

    Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.

    He said: “You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?”

    Hey, Warren, I know that you’ve got yours, I appreciate that you built your fortune with hard work and perserverance, how about letting the rest of us get ours now. How about we let those 12,000 estates keep that $30 billion and use it to hire people and instead of giving them a one time wad of $1000, we let them earn $1000/month for the rest of their lives. How about that?

    If he feels so guilty about his billions, he can just give it all away – but engaging in class envy and class warfare just makes him look like one of the stupidest men in America. Maybe he thinks whichever Clinton he was campaigning for would give him a fat, wet kiss. And, if the media would get off their lazy asses and do a minute’s worth of research on everything these bozos say, I wouldn’t have to do it for them.

  • Chavez’ brain-drain (Updated)

    Yesterday I posted this article from CNN Money that Chavez decided to let some oil companies leave Venezuela since they weren’t interested renegotiating with the Chavez government for the operation of their oilfields. At the time no one was sure which companies planned on leaving. Today we find out that it was Exxon and ConocoPhillips;

    Two US oil companies have moved a step closer to pulling out of Venezuela. Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips are both reported to have rejected an offer from the government of President Hugo Chavez to continue their operations in the OPEC-member nation’s most promising oil reserve. Venezuela has set a deadline for foreign companies to accept its terms for keeping them in the massive Orinoco reserve projects as it moves to nationalise the country’s oil industry. Observers say another American company, Chevron, as well as Norway’s Statoil, Britain’s BP and France’s Total are expected to sign a deal.

    An article from the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) tells about the deal that the oil companies were forced to walk away from;

    Earlier this year, Venezuela said the companies had until June 26 to turn over at least 60% ownership of the projects, including four large heavy-oil fields with a combined output of nearly 600,000 barrels a day. The projects’ estimated value is some $31 billion.

    Attempts to meet the Venezuelan government halfway were unsuccessful, said the person familiar with the matter, so ConocoPhillips decided to end talks and preserve its right to seek international arbitration. Venezuela has assets in the U.S., including refineries owned by PDVSA’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. Western oil companies have discussed swapping stakes in Venezuelan oil fields for Citgo refineries in Illinois, Louisiana and Texas. A Citgo spokesman declined to comment.

    Another interesting story from the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) tells about Venezuelan oilfield workers who are moving to Alberta, Canada to find work – away from Chavez (and explains my traffic from Alberta);

    Frigid, remote Alberta has become one of the world’s fastest growing enclaves of Venezuelans, rivaling such warm-weather spots as Weston, Fla., outside Miami; and Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. There are now 3,000 Venezuelan-Albertan families, up from 800 or so last year. Some Albertans now call Evergreen, a Calgary housing development, “Vene-green” because of the 100 families who have bought split-level homes there, and dangle Venezuelan flags from car rearview mirrors.

    The loss of so many skilled oil workers has hit PdVSA hard. Since Mr. Chávez took power in 1999, Venezuela’s oil production — according to U.S. government statistics — is down to 2.4 million barrels a day, from 3.1 million barrels a day, despite high prices. (Venezuela has consistently accused the U.S. of undercounting PdVSA’s production in recent years.)

    So already Chavez is in trouble. I feel sorry for the people who believed that Chavez was the answer to their poverty.

    UPDATED: Conoco, according to a new story from the Wall Street Journal, may cost Venezuela some money in the short-term;

    Conoco isn’t washing its hands of its assets in Venezuela, though it says it will take a $4.5 billion impairment charge in its second-quarter earnings. The company’s assets there represent about 5% of its oil-and-gas equivalent production last year. Exxon’s Venezuelan assets are about 1% of its overall output for 2006.

    […]

    However, even if a Conoco arbitration claim is successful, it could be years before the company gets any money. Still, Venezuela has considerable international assets that Conoco could attach. These include PdVSA’s ownership of Citgo Petroleum Corp. — which has several valuable refineries in the U.S. — and of tankers full of crude oil landing in ports along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere. A Citgo spokesman declined to comment.

    […]

    BP won an arbitration case against Libya in the 1970s after the North African nation nationalized, and chased tankers of Libyan crude around the world to seize them as payment. Within the past year, Western companies that purchased debt for unpaid for construction work in the Congo have tried to seize tankers of Congolese oil to satisfy arbitration awards.

    Of course, this won’t hurt Chavez, only the Venezuelan people. And Chavez can blame the big oil companies – or it’ll serve as his excuse to seize more private assets.

  • Chavez warns of US guerilla war (Updated)

     

    (Photo from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)

    Well, Chavez is acting like he plans on blaming the student protests against his dictatorship on the US. According to the AP;

    President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

    Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

    “We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

    Como no? The US is the boogeyman that hides in every dictator’s closet – especially in Latin America. No matter who is President, he is evil incarnate to those who rape and pillage their own communities for personal gain.

    I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with Chavez tossing out oil companies this weekend could it? I linked to this earlier from Reuters (by way of CNNMoney):

    Some major oil companies have rejected Venezuela’s terms for the takeover of their multi-billion dollar projects and can leave the OPEC nation, President Hugo Chavez said Friday, days before a deadline for them to strike nationalization deals.

    Exxon Mobil , ConocoPhillips , Chevron Corp . , Norway’s Statoil , Britain’s BP Plc and France’s Total are the targeted companies in projects valued above $30 billion and capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day.

    “It seems there are some transnational companies that do not want to accept (the terms),” said Chavez, who met his energy minister to review the progress in negotiations earlier Friday.

    “Well if they do not want (to accept the terms), I told the minister to tell them they can go, that they should leave, that we, in truth, do not need them,” he added during a political speech to swear in the government’s new “central planning committee.”

    Chavez, who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor and is on a drive to nationalize swathes of the economy this year, did not say which companies rejected the government’s terms.

    Or it couldn’t have anything to do with his anticipated purchase of Russian Subs, which I also mentioned earlier from Bloomberg;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government may buy a fleet of Russian-made submarines when he visits Moscow next week, continuing an arms buildup that has cost his nation more than $4.3 billion since 2005.

    “The only way Venezuela could totally discard the idea of not buying submarines is if we didn’t have a sea,” Chavez told cabinet members at a televised ceremony tonight in Caracas. “We have to protect that sea.”

    Chavez said he also is looking to strengthen the nation’s short-range air-defense system to counter supersonic and “invisible” radar-evading aircraft he claimed Venezuela would face in the event of a U.S. invasion. Most U.S. analysts deem such an offensive unlikely.

    And the LATimes is, of course, impressed with Chavez’ socialist tendencies;

    Last year, public spending leapt to one-third of Venezuela’s economic output of about $180 billion, up from the average of one-quarter of output in the 1990s, said Jose Manuel Puente, an economist with the Institute for Advanced Administrative Studies in Caracas.

    Chavez’s social engineering has taken his predecessors’ plans a step further in giving worker groups a piece of the enterprises and letting them manage the businesses in concert with networks of “community councils” that are local governing modules.

    But, the thing is; it all depends on the world maintaining the status quo. When Chavez’ business sense finally shows no result, the world finds its oil elsewhere  – or finds it doesn’t need his oil at all, Venezuela collapses and Chavez needs to blame someone – of course the best people to blame are Americans. 

    Afterall, we’re the ones that caused Cuba’s economy to collapse, right? Even though Cuba trades with the 160+ other countries in the world, because we refuse to trade with them, they’re destitute – according to the Left. And everything bad that happens in Cuba is blamed either on our policies or the Cuban “ex-patriots”.

    So that’s really all Chavez is doing – setting us up to take the blame for his anticipated failures. from the AP article;

    “It’s not just armed warfare,” said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. “I’m also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare.”

    Yeah, we’re going to be attacking them, but no one can tell because we’re so sneaky. Typical Latin American paranoia. probably more disturbing is;

    Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

    All the stuff needed to quell his own rebellions and control the inevitable “counter-revolution”. Bloomberg reports that Chavez is also aware of the fact that the military is the final arbiter in Latin American politics. He urged his troops to support his socialism;

    “The armed forces are an institution of the people, meant to promote our constitutionally mandated national project, and the national project we have is socialism,” Chavez told 3,000 troops gathered at a military ceremony in Caracas. “You can’t separate military thinking from political thinking.”

    “When a soldier says `Country, Socialism or Death,’ he’s giving the essence of the project we’re now involved in, and don’t be fooled, socialism is the road to nationhood,” he said at the event….

    It’s a pretty well known fact that if a Latin American leader can’t convince the military that what he’s doing is in the best interest of the country, they’re doomed. The military acts in the interests of the country and the people, not an ideology – that’s why there have already been attempts at a military coup against Chavez. His slogan “Fatherland (the article says ‘country’, but I know he used ‘patria‘ – which means ‘Fatherland’), Socialism or Death” doesn’t mention the pueblo – that means that Chavez wants his soldiers to defend socialism against their own people if they must.

    Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters writes that Chavez is building his military might to use against US interests, but I think it’s to use against his own people when war with the US doesn’t overtly materialize in the form of a shooting war. Then he can blame the Compania and start shooting his own folks as agents of the imperialist US. That seems more plausible. The chavistas appear willing to swallow any red meat Hugo throws them-kind of like Noreiga’s Dignity Battalions.

    Meanwhile, as I also mentioned earlier this weekend, Evo Morales, Chavez’ “Mini-Me” is having his own problems with a few thousand protesters according to The Lima Bean (by way of Gateway Pundit);

    Locals of an ecological reserve in Bolivia have held protests demanding that they be annexed by Peru. Waving Peruvian flags, as many as 4,000 people filled the local square and called on the mayor to extend an invitation to Peru to occupy the region.

    The small town of Apolo, located just 6 hours’ walk from the Peruvian border, marks the entrance to the Madidi National Park, an Amazon wildlife refuge that includes around 1.8 million hectares (4.5 million acres) of pristine rainforest.

    Officials opposing the protest claimed that the people were angered that the protected nature of the area prevents them from being legally allowed to log the forest or take advantage of oil reserves thought to exist in the region.

    Speaking from La Paz 200km away, Bolivian President Evo Morales referred to the protesters as “drug traffickers and wood smugglers”.

    Well, at least it’s only wood smugglers. A couple thousand of them.

    Oddly enough, the protest happened just after the documentary “Cocalero”, Morales’ political biography opened at the Sundance Film Festival according to Bloomberg;

    “Cocalero,” the directorial debut of 26-year-old Alejandro Landes, chronicles Morales’s rise to power with the backing of the coca growers, or cocaleros, who fought U.S.- supported efforts to cut Bolivian drug production. Coca leaves, chewed for religious and cultural purposes across the Andes, are the main ingredient in cocaine.

    “The cocaleros are the sons and daughters of the U.S. war on drugs,” the Brazilian-born Landes said. “Their defense of the coca leaf detonated a nationalist wave that drove Evo to power.”

    The evil US makes such a convenient foil for Latin American dictators. Because we’re interested in criminals who poison our people in our own country, somehow we’re responsible for the rise of socialist governments. Suddenly, “defense of the coca leaf” is noble. 

    If you want to read about what’s happening inside Venezuela, on recommendation of my new friend Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective, I’ve been rereading much of the posts by Julia at The end of Venezuela as I know it – an English language blog written by a student in the middle of the White Hands movement. Last week, she wrote about the class-struggle inuendos that being flung at the students from Chavistas as if “rich kids are not people“ 

    I’ve noticed an increase in my traffic from Venezuela, Chile and Peru everytime I type Chavez’ name, so I have to guess that the internet is becoming an important information pipeline in that direction. So if I repeat myself and links, I apologize. 

    UPDATE: Apparently there was more to this speech to the army than was reported by the press (unsurprisingly) and the truth about what the event was supposed to represent and how it was staged from Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

    Yesterday was yet another anniversary of the battle of Carabobo, our Yorktown (our Austerlitz?, our Waterloo?), that battle that made the independence of Venezuela irreversible.

    Usually at that date the armed forces hold a nice rally on the Carabobo field, in all regalia. The background is not bad, graced with the famous Carabobo arch, with lots of space for crowds to attend the festivities, a large tribune for officials, speeches and what not.

    Well, under Chavez things have started to change. First the governor of Carabobo was barred to attend the festivities…

    […]

    This year, Chavez is hurt by the student dissenting protest, a general animosity as per the closing of RCTV, and duly scalded by the failure of the intended pump and circumstances of the bridge reopening when crowds of neighboring shantytowns crashed the party. Thus Chavez did not take chances: Carabobo now was held in Caracas, as a private ceremony between Chavez and HIS army, the one he will use to stop the invasion of the Empire.

    There is much more at Daniel’s blog including screenshots Daniel took from his television. It appears that Chavez is getting a bit paranoid and not the guy he used to be among his “pueblo“. It appears more and more that yesterday’s speech was a plea to the military that they not toss his butt out of Venezuela.

    Daniel also tells of food and fuel shortages here.

  • The Hugo Chavez method comes to the US

    I wrote yesterday about Think Progress’ new report on the Right’s domination of the airwaves, at the same time Michele Malkin was writing about the Center for American Progress’ report that came out on the same day – oddly enough. Now the news services are announcing that Hillary and gal pal Barbara Boxer were overheard trying to strategize to legislate the Right’s dominance on radio away. 

    I’ve always wondered why the Left, who claim to be “liberal” and “progressive” “human rights” and “defenders of the First Amendment” weren’t more vocal about what Chavez, Correa and Moreno were doing down in Latin America – and now I know. In fact, there was even a piece on the DailyKos defending Chavez’ shut down of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) – all because that’s what the Left here in the US intend to accomplish as well.

    From CNSNews;

    Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, said “the potential one-sidedness on the radio dial in terms of political programming is strongly and directly related to ownership and market structure.”

    Turner argued that “increasing diversity and localism in ownership will produce more diverse speech [and] more choice for listeners.”

    Mark Lloyd, another CAP senior fellow, attributed the “imbalance” to “the breakdown in the Federal Communications Commission regulatory system during the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the elimination of caps on ownership in telecommunications during the 1990s.”

    It’s a “structural imbalance” – see a structural imbalance means that it can corrected – if it were a market imbalance, no amount of legislation could MAKE people listen to Moonbattery. The imbalance can’t be because of market forces, it’s because the evil Republican white guys have been plotting nearly thirty years to take over AM radio. Nevermind that AM radio was almost dead before Rush Limbaugh came along. But that doesn’t matter – the Republicans have an advantage, so to “level the playing field” Democrats want to legislate away that advantage. The solution to fairness and equality, you see, is legislation – not hardwork.

    Blake Dvorak of RealClearPolitics quotes an American Spectator interview with a Pelosi aide last month;

    The report would be easy to dismiss if not for the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will “aggressively pursue” reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, according to two House Democrats who spoke to the American Spectator last month.

    A senior adviser to Pelosi explained the Speaker’s reasons to the Spectator:

    First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen … Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.

    Again, it’s blind adherence to what the nutroots want (whenever the media says “Democrat base” – they mean that Leftist vocal minority that spends every minute of every day on the internet).

    So now we know why there was hardly a peep from the Congressional Democrats when Chavez started censoring his opposition - Venezuela was a guinea pig test case to see if Americans were paying attention. They weren’t, with the exception of a few, so now the Clinton/Boxer team figures it’s time to strike.

    Monica Crowley calls Clinton “Putin in Drag“;

    The former head of the KGB and current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, recently made it illegal to engage in so-called “extremist” talk and activity.  In Russia today, you can get arrested and silenced—and often, killed—for publicly criticizing the government.  Over 1000 Russian journalists have been murdered since last year—all for speaking out against the corruption, cronyism, and tyrannical oppression of the Putin regime.

    I’m reminded that Brigette Bardot was arrested and fined in France for “hate speech” – hate speech that warned about Arab/Muslim immigration diluting the french culture in her book. So can ridiculous laws like that be far behind this latest Orwellian plot to silence conservatism?

    What’s next? Blogs?

    Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perpective provides a lot of Spanish language press on goings-on in Latin America in reference to Chavez and our policy towards him. Apparently the Senate Foreign Relations Committe is finally discussing Chavez’ authoritarian tendencies and the House has authorized more radio frequencies to be directed at Venezuela.  But that doesn’t solve our own problems with Chavez-wannabes, the fugly girls of the Senate.

    Kara Rowland in today’s Washington Times talks to local DC radio programming directors about the Center for American Progress report;

    “Nothing in this report addresses the tremendous impact that public radio has,” said Chris Berry, general manager of D.C. conservative talk station WMAL-AM (630). “The fact is, many people, even NPR listeners, consider public radio if not liberal, then certainly in the category of ‘progressive.’ “

    In the Arbitron winter ratings, D.C. public radio outlet WETA-FM (90.9) scored a 4.9 share — although it changed to classical music in the middle of the ratings period — and WAMU-FM (88.5) had a 4.3 share. Together, the public stations top the most-listened-to commercial station, urban WHUR-FM (96.3), which had a 6.9 share.

    Moreover, Mr. Berry noted, the report does not include morning FM radio shows that are topical or cover political issues, especially programs targeted at black listeners.

    WMAL is owned by Citadel Broadcasting, one of the five major broadcasters examined in the Center for Progress study, whose results argue that Clear Channel Communications has the most liberal talk content in absolute terms — 229 hours a week, or 14 percent of its programming. As a percentage, CBS devotes the most time to liberal talk at 26 percent; followed by Clear Channel at 14 percent and Citadel, Cumulus and Salem all at zero percent liberal (and 100 percent conservative).

    “I think that it basically is saying that conservative talk radio is dominated by conservatives,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine. “I don’t know what it means. If it’s an attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, that’s unconstitutional. If it’s to try to end consolidation, it’ll create a bunch of independent radio stations that will go out of business because of the economics of 2007.”

    Which is exactly what the Left wants – no private broadcasts. In the Chavez model, they want everyone listening to the Democrat-approved drivel on NPR. They want radio stations that plug I-Pods into their transmitter and hit “shuffle” – all music, no comments. That’s basically what would result from a new Fairness Doctrine.

    In typical, Democrat hypocrit-fashion the sponsor of the new legislation says there’s not enough “choices”;

    “The American people should have a wide array of news sources available to them. The more opinions they can hear, the more news sources they can learn from, the better able they will be to make decisions,” said Jeff Lieberson, spokesman for Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Democrat.

    Mr. Hinchey is preparing to reintroduce his Media Ownership Reform Act, which among other proposals calls for a return to the “Fairness Doctrine,” a long-held requirement that broadcasters give equal time to opposing views when covering political issues. The doctrine was repealed in 1987 because it violated the First Amendment.

    “…a wide array of news sources…”, huh? I wonder what Hinchey thought of Fox News being frozen out of Democrat Presidential debates.

    Update: Hillary and Boxer claim Inhofe didn’t hear them saying what he said they said;

    Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer say Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe “needs to have his hearing checked” if he thinks he heard them talking about a “legislative fix” to curb conservative talk radio.

    I tend to believe the worst.

    And, almost completely unnoticed is Amanda of Think Progress explaining how they don’t advocate bringing back the Fairness Doctrine – just take private property away from people to redistribute it;

    The report argues instead that we should address the more significant problem of concentrated ownership and ineffective regulation in order to push the market structure to better meet local needs. As report co-author John Halpin stated, “If we break up concentrated ownership, and encourage greater local accountability over radio licensing, and still end up with lots of conservative talk, then so be it. We don’t think this will happen but at least the playing field would have been made more level.”

    The CAP/Free Press report argues for more speech, not less. Conservatives should get their facts straight before blindly attacking others.

    Yeah, we should have noticed that their intentions were much more socialistic. A report entitled “Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It” should have been more readily accepted by the Right. The basis of the Right’s argument remains that the Left is looking for ways to get and keep their people on the air on talk radio even though no one is listening. That’s even closer to Hugo Chavez’ method than we originally thought.

    It all boils down the fact that they want a new fairness doctrine enforced by the FCC or the SEC or some government agency who will seize private property and redistribute it to the Left.

    I wonder if they feel just as strongly about breaking up concentrated union power in our schools and encouraging local accountability in the education system.

  • That terrible talk radio again

    Remember the “Progressive” think tank Think Progress where Harry Reid went to complain about Joe Lieberman’s opinion that we should strike Iran? Now this “think tank” is advocating reintroduction of the “Fairness Doctrine” – the unfair practice of government regulating free speech on the broadcast industry. According to Think Progress;

    Two common myths are frequently offered to explain the imbalance of talk radio: 1) the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to devote airtime to contrasting views), and 2) simple consumer demand. Each of these fails to adequately explain the root cause of the problem. The report explains:

    Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.

    […]

    Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.

    See? The problem is “ownership diversity” – those rich, white Republicans own too much stuff while us hippies can barely scratch together enough money to buy used roaches for our morning doobie.

    Then how do they explain that Air America, the Left’s answer to the EIB network, filed for bankruptcy just two years and a half after it was founded by Democrat deep pockets. Is it because the hippies don’t have enough money to buy the stuff that’s advertised on Air America? I doubt it.

    “Fairness” is one of those words the Left likes to use like “equality”. It only applies to stuff they want. I had an emailer tell me that it was “unfair” that the Gathering of Eagles held a counter-protest at “their” protest. But I guess they thought it was “fair” that a small band of moonbats tried to crash the “Veterans Against Kerry” rally in September, 2004.

    Let me explain to these folks what fairness and equality are in this country. We are all born equal – we all have the equal opportunity to succeed. It’s what you do with that opportunity that defines you as a person. Everybody, E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y, came to America with nothing except what was carried on our antecedents’ back – so we all come from the same background. You make your own fairness with the sweat off of your own brow, not with the stroke of a judge’s pen.

    You are NOT guarenteed mulligan’s – if you make bad choices, live with your mistakes, but don’t make your neighbors pay for you own stupid mistakes. You are not guarenteed to live equally with your neighbors if they work while you sit on the front porch whittlin’ your life away.

    We are all individuals – we all do different stuff – that’s why life is not fair. The guy who designs and builds medical equipment in his basement is going to be better off than the guy who designs and builds dreamcatchers. That’s just life. The playing field starts off level, what you do in those first couple of steps determines how well you do when the field isn’t in your favor any longer.

    You can’t make us equal, you can’t make life fair by forcing everyone to be miserable. When the Left understands that, then they’ll truly live up their self-proclaimed label “Progressive”.

    Michele Malkin characteristically does a much better job on the Fairness Doctrine and calls it a “Hugo Chavez approach to the radio airwaves”.

  • Democrats; the party of car salesmen

    Yesterday’s Democrat radio address told us that Republicans don’t care about our gas mileage, according to the Washington Examiner;

    In their weekly radio address, Democrats on Saturday called for a new direction in energy policy, away from gas-guzzling automobiles and reliance on foreign oil.

    “America deserves more fuel efficient cars,” Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said. But she added “the only way consumers are going to get more out of a tank of gas is if the president and his party help deliver votes in a narrowly divided Congress.”

    It’s widely expected the Senate will approve some sort of increase in auto fuel economy as part of an energy bill it hopes to finish in the coming weeks.

    The Senate bill would require automakers to increase the fuel economy of new cars, SUVs and pickups beginning in 2020 to a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon. It currently is 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and small trucks.

    Cantwell claimed that we need to head in a new direction. This is the same direction that Democrats have been harping about since the last time Rosie O’Donnell shaved her legs. A new direction for our indepedence from foreign oil would be drilling our own available reserves and increasing refinery capacity – like Jimmy Carter promised that Democrats would do in his “Malaise Speech“;

    …when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    That was in 1979 – we haven’t built a new refinery since 1977 mainly because Democrats have stood in the way of new refineries and new drilling operations. So, in the meantime, Cuba, with China’s help, is exploring the Gulf of Mexico’s waters between Cuba and the US. Have the Democrats done anything about that? Nope – they think that somehow blocking drilling while demanding better CAFE standards from automakers (who are already struggling in the marketing) makes more sense and can be called a “solution” to our energy woes. DO they think that back-ass-wards Cuba and China will care much about the environment off of our own coast?

    Cantwell said;

    “America’s strength lies in our ability to invent new and better ways of doing things,” she said. “The challenge we face now is transforming America’s energy policy – one that is well over 50 years old and too reliant of fossil fuels – to one that will make America a global leader again in energy technology and get us off our over-dependence on foreign oil.”

    So Democrats think they can mandate science. Just by making government standards, business will automatically develop solutions in response.  Are we being governed by kindergarten students?

    They also think that Americans won’t mind being told that we have to drive under-powered crap-boxes like the Japanese inflict on our national sensibilities these days. Real Americans love their cars and I don’t think the Democrats are going to get much mileage out of telling Americans what cars they should drive. 

  • Speculation is speculation

    I don’t give investment advice anymore since everyone stopped paying me for my advice. But I used to give advice to people for a living, it was a tough living, though. Many people thought they knew more than I knew because of the popular culture of investing. In fact, I spent my evenings and weekends reading and watching the garbage on magazine racks and on the pop-culture CNBC to be able to counter prospective clients’ know-it-all-isms. Many (many, many, many) never became my clients because it’s nearly impossible to overcome the twaddle that passes as investment advice, especially in the 90s when the Democrat Administration announced that they’d done away with down strokes in the business cycle.

    The know-it-alls were buying stocks on their margin accounts, paying 9-13% in interest in hopes of turning a huge profit in stocks that were selling at 85 times earnings – the same stocks everyone else was buying. It was a fine strategy for a while, but then when stocks melted down in the Spring of 2000 and margin accounts came due, investors had to pay the accounts by cashing out stocks for which they had paid a lot more – which drove stock prices down even further.

    One of the first things I read about the history of investing was a story about how Joe Kennedy knew there was an impending stock market correction in 1929 because he listened to his shoe-shine guy running down the list of stocks the bootblack owned and many matched Kennedy’s portfolio. I guess the lesson is that you shouldn’t be investing with the crowd.

    For about four years now, I’ve heard about the “housing boom”. It became the barometer of the economy on pop-culture CNBC (yes I still watch it – for reasons that will become apparent, if they haven’t already) – the welfare of companies building multi-million dollar houses drove the excitement on those ridiculous programs. Ray Charles could’ve seen this one coming. When housing starts and existing home sales dipped last year, CNBC and $400 haircut guys warned that a new recession was coming. A few years before that, it was the consumer confidence reports that rocked the market (while we were inundated with reports from retailers) after years of pinning the hopes for the market to B2P (business to people sales) while the tech-boom had been tied to B2B sales.

    But this year, it’s the mortgage/housing market that is causing fear among investors. Bond yields have been fairly depressed the past several years and it was inevitable that yields would begin to rise pretty soon, especially since all of those “savvy” investors who listened to CNBC and used their homes like ATMs while they refinanced for lower variable rate mortgages – but what goes down (interest rates) must go up and the interest rate chickens are home to roost. Everyone was doing it, new mortgage companies sprang up overnight to handle the business. Didn’t they see it coming?

    No, they pooh-poohed the doomsayers in favor of the blatherskites who promised instant cash at low interest rates – especially the jabberwocky that CNBC was pushing on people daily.  

    The Wall Street Journal reports what happened in case you missed it last week;

    The drop in U.S. government bond prices this past week is expected to cause pain for some homeowners and mortgage shoppers, and bring fresh opportunities to income investors.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction to the price, jumped above the psychologically significant 5% threshold, ending Friday at 5.119%, up from 4.955% a week earlier. The 10-year’s yield is now at its highest level since July 2006.

    In fact, when the 10-year note jumped above 5.2% early Thursday morning, I actually heard Michele Caruso Cabrera squeal with delight on CNBC’s pre-7 am international market program (whatever clever moniker it has been christened this week).

    Well, anyway, it’s affected all of those savvy investors who re-fi’d their homes and spent the cash on remodeling their homes to improve the value – so they improved the value of a home that they can’t sell. Like owning millions of dollars of Confederate money or Enron stock. One mortgage company, Counrywide, had a default rate near 20% in April mainly from people who refi’d to varibale rate mortgages who’s payments creeped higher with interest rates.

    So here comes the Democrats. Hillary came out in March and called for a revision of government programs to bail out these “savvy” investors;

    The presidential candidate also said she will soon reintroduce legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Clinton said she also favors raising FHA loan limits for high-income areas to help more low-income home buyers.

    “I also propose a stop to prepayment penalties designed to trap borrowers,” Clinton said in a speech to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

    But the Bush Administration was already on the job;

    Federal banking regulators are negotiating with lenders to restructure high-interest rate mortgages given to home buyers with poor credit.

    The effort by the Office of Thrift Supervision is aimed at softening the impact of the housing market’s slowdown and bolsters the argument of lawmakers who say mortgage reforms may not be needed.

    While it may also result in accounting charges on quarterly earnings reports of public companies with mortgage lending units later this year, it could limit any broad economic damage from the risky mortgage practices of the past few years.

    So, homeowners might get a break from the government for being so damn stupid that they they listen to the morons on CNBC. They don’t deserve it. Easy money is never easy forever.

    Not that he gave any advice to invest in mortgages, but why anyone listens to that Jim Cramer, I’ll never know. He had as much to do as anyone to do with the losses from Enron’s collapse. Still thousands invest using his one-size-fits-all prattle everyday.

    But, here’s the only investment advice I’m ever going to give you. Print it out if you need to remember it; there’s no easy way to make millions, unless you’re a crook (ex. Hillary Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Kenneth Lay). Invest only that which you can afford from your earnings  (notice I didn’t say savings) and don’t chase returns. Slow and steady wins the race; develop an investment strategy (with a professional if you need one) and stick to it – avoid investing in trendy investments. With a proper diversification of your portfolio, you’ll be in the “trendy markets” before everyone else. Keep your savings separate from your investments – that’ll keep you from dipping into your investments at inopportune times.

    And most importantly; borrowing money is never any part of sound investment strategy.

  • Cities want to lead global warming fight

    Today, the Washington Post’s front page story is about “Cities Take Lead On Environment…” as if that’s a bad thing that the Bush Administration hasn’t done enough to curb “global warming” Now I’m not going to discuss whether or not global warming is real – I’m not a scientist, but I have my own opinions on it. What I’d rather point out is that this should be local issue and not a job of the federal government. It’s the essence of what separates the Left and the Right.

    The WaPo piece, excerpted;

    To the long list of evils being blamed on global warming — hurricanes, heat waves, melting ice caps — tack on the smaller interior of Steve Benesoczky’s cab. Inside, his passengers can already feel the squeeze of climate change in their knees.

    “Of course it’s less comfortable. Look, there’s less leg room,” said Benesoczky, 55, as he pointed to the back of his new taxi — a hybrid Ford Escape.

    The company Benesoczky works for has started complying with a new directive ordering New York’s entire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs to go green over the next five years — part of an effort by the nation’s largest city to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.

    Most taxis here are now roomy-if-gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victorias. But hundreds of boxy hybrid cabs have already hit the roads, gradually altering the autoscape of Manhattan’s glittering byways.

    “Some people are complaining — especially the tall ones — but most are saying, ‘Finally, you’re doing something for the environment,’ ” said Benesoczky, a Hungarian émigré and New York City cabbie of two-and-a-half decades. “Look, people will make a little sacrifice if they have to. They already are.”

    New York is among a faction of U.S. cities from Boston to Portland, Ore., that are racing ahead of the federal government in setting carbon emission targets and developing concrete strategies to deal with climate change. Their solutions are already beginning to alter the fabric of life for millions of urban dwellers.

    It is a direct consequence, municipal officials and analysts say, of the growing perception inside city halls that the Bush administration has largely ignored an issue that has reached a tipping point in American culture.

    Well, that’s the way it should be – if local government doesn’t think the Feds are doing enough for their communities, they absolutely should take the lead. The same with unemployment and welfare and the whole myriad of issues facing individual communities. Why should they sit around and wait for some fat bureuocrat to make a sweeping decision that should only be applied to a small area instead of the whole country?

    Why should a family in Arkansas pay for the environmental cleanup of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY? Why can’t the Feds push responsibility down to the people who have the greatest stake in their local environment? And it gives locals a greater say, and more political control, in what the priorities should be on local problems instead of waiting for a years-long administrative process waiting for the feds to make decisions?

    How realistic is it for the Feds to declare that taxis should all be hybrid cars when it doesn’t make sense for a guy driving a country hack in Backwoods, Idaho or Turkeyfoot Hollow, West Virginia? If these local governments want to regulate their citizens, they don’t need the feds’ blessings. That’s what this government is all about, any-damn-way.

    What does the Labor Department in Washington, DC know about training unemployed workers in Eugene, Oregon? Why does it make sense for Congress to mandate a minimum wage that’s applied nationally, despite the varied cost-of-living across the country? A business trying to pay the minimum wage in DC wouldn’t have any employees since even McDonald’s starts workers a few bucks-an-hour over minimum wage.

    A national environmental policy is just as useless. It’s about time States and municipal governments did their job instead of passing stupid no-smoking bans and cell-phone-usage-while-driving laws. The Code of Federal Regulations’ biggest titles are the Environmental Protection and Public Health series – maybe we could cut Federal taxes if more local governments took up leadership on these two problems that aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution as Federal government responsibilities.

    Oh, and if global warming is such a serious problem, why is the Federal government still working under the same regulations as the Clinton-GORE administration? Did it just become a problem when this administration moved to Washington?

    And if people are so ready to make sacrifices, why haven’t they? Governments wouldn’t have to regulate if that statement were true. Where are the hybrid cars on the road?

    And it’s a little bit funny that almost the whole country mandates recycling, except the residents of Washington, DC don’t. I haven’t seen fewer cars on DC streets or an increase in public transportation use here.

    I guess it’s the responsibility of the rest of the country to make sacrifices for the denizens of DC. That would explain the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude here.