POLITICAL: THe new “inside trader”

Monday, June 22, 2009

http://www.suntimes.com/news/1620776,CST-NWS-durbin13.article

Durbin cashed out during big stock collapse
WASHINGTON | Asset sales came after meeting with Fed, Treasury chiefs
June 13, 2009

*** begin quote ***

As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks.

*** end quote ***

Of course, there was no connection between the meeting and his actions.

The fact that Paulson probably said “I wouldn’t be holding any equities” and Bernake “I’m printing money like there’s no tomorrow”, never entered into his thoughts.

Inside information. Insider trading.

Only applies to non “public servants”.

Yeah, right!

Poor Martha! I’m sure she did less than this fellow. She didn’t create the mess.

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POLITICAL: Healthcare debate

Monday, June 22, 2009

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2009/06/health-care-naysayers.html

Sunday, June 21, 2009
Health care naysayers

*** begin quote ***

Republicans were out in force, trying to kill the kind of healthcare reform that Americans — if opinion polling is any indication — desire and expect. All are claiming to support reform, but none seem to be listening to the majority, which repeatedly says it wants a public plan as an alternative to the current system — and that it trusts the government to manage health care coverage better than the insurance companies.

*** end quote ***

MY RESPONSE

(1) Put me down as a naysayer. And, I am not an R. Nor am I a D.

(2) Hope you’re not relying on that NY Times “poll”. Non-partisan stats lookers find that they polled 66% D’s versus 33% R’s. Polling partisans isn’t really polling.

(3) While the insurances companies may not be the ideal gatekeeper of health care, do you really want some version of Amtrak or the Post Office doing it?

(4) How about some “baby steps”, to make sure that we don’t kill what we got, disconnect employment from health insurance. Allow health care to be tax deductible to the individual and treat it like life insurance. (Note: see how cheap life insurance is and how expensive health insurance is. Why is that?)

(5) When Hillary tried to nationalize health care, everyone saw it as socialism. (Which works so well else where.) Her methods turned everyone off. Here is is again. Methods are slightly more “open”. BUT again, like the bailouts, we are being hustled and rushed. DO it now! Can’t wait. That’s the clear sign of a scam.

(6) The Government can not be both the participant in and the referee in this future fiasco. It will set the rules and then “compete” in the marketplace. Please lets not fool ourselves. EVERYONE knows that the Left’s objective is to takeover healthcare. It’s always been that. They have even said that in leaked audios and video. Sometimes they even say it in rare moments of honesty. So let’s not kid ourselves. It’s the Communist Manifesto playbook. This is all about ensure Democratic voters forever. This is all about control. This is a giant scam!

Government is the meme that kills and enslaves its citizens.

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Honeymoon used to expand the gooferment

Monday, June 22, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124407228244683091.html  

It’s the Economy, Stupid
The Obama presidency will rise or fall on results.
Karl Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

*** begin quote ***

Until now, the new president has benefited from public willingness to give him a honeymoon. He decided to use that grace period to push for the largest expansion of government in U.S. history and to reward political allies (see the sweetheart deals Big Labor received in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies). The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead — higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.

*** end quote ***

This pig is going in the WRONG direction.

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MONEY: Expect more intrusions and less roi

Sunday, June 21, 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5526129/Lloyds-Bank-hit-by-Obama-tax-purge.html

Lloyds Bank hit by Obama tax purge
Banking group drops American customers in UK ahead of costly proposals to stamp out tax evasion
By Louise Armitstead
Published: 9:39PM BST 13 Jun 2009

*** begin quote ***

This week American private client account-holders at Lloyds’s received letters informing them of an “important change in policy regarding clients who are resident, domiciled or linked to the United States by property or asset holdings”. They were told the bank had “no choice” but to “cease acting as your investment manager.”

*** end quote ***

Funny, here comes the unintended consequences!

It will be just the first.

More forms, more intrusive checking, more audits.

Argh!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Fixing health care

Sunday, June 21, 2009

http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=279

April 1993
Volume 11, Number 4
A Four-Step Health-Care Solution
by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

*** begin quote ***

It’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

*** end quote ***

Summary:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on pharmaceutical products and medical devices

3. Deregulate the health insurance industry

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy

Permit me to add a fifth!

5. Make the tax code neutral with respect to benefits. Emerging form the WW2 wage and price controls, the gooferment has distorted the “playing field”. “Benefits” are deductible to the corporation and not to the individual. That has set up the situation where an individual’s health insurance is tied to their job. No job; no insurance.

How much better would things be if it was like life insurance or automobile insurance. I can buy 20 year term life cheap and no one cares who my employer is. I am required by the gooferment to have auto insurance (an absurd concept), but it’s not tied to my employment.

This seems to be an easy one.

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TECHNOLOGY: How to get privacy?

Saturday, June 20, 2009

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/the_hidden_cost.html?nc=16#comment-378824

Bruce Schneier
A blog covering security and security technology.
June 15, 2009

The “Hidden Cost” of Privacy

*** begin quote ***

Forbes ran an article talking about the “hidden” cost of privacy. Basically, the point was that privacy regulations are expensive to comply with, and a lot of that expense gets eaten up by the mechanisms of compliance and doesn’t go toward improving anyone’s actual privacy.

*** end quote ***

I’m a fan of simple non-gooferment solutions. It would seem that “copyright” is an already existing “solution”. If your stuff (e.g., your NAME, your SSN, your PHONE NUMBER, and your EMAIL NAME) was “yours” (i.e., copyrighted), then each entity that wanted to “copy” it (i.e., save it in a database) should have to have your permission by some type of written agreement. Seems that would prevent Credit Reporting Agencies, Google, and such from being disinterested in our collective satisfaction. imho! Copyright metadata for privacy?

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MONEY: Commodity versus fiat money

Saturday, June 20, 2009

http://lewrockwell.com/orig10/hansen1.html

Will Radically Different Banking Plans Work?
Not until we abolish legal tender laws
by Betsy Hansen

*** begin quote ***

Because the fiat money system is both the strength and weakness of America’s tyrants. It bleeds the people’s wealth and labor, but it also threatens to collapse under its own weight – or whenever the scales fall off the people’s eyes. With its green engravings of famous Americans, electrons whirling around in bank computers, and loans created out of thin air, it is one vast confidence game.

*** end quote ***

The Federal Reserve Bank (which is none of those things) allows the congress critters, the Administration, politicians, bureaucrats, and their ilk to raise taxes without explicitly raising taxes.

The sheeple can’t even tell what they are paying in taxes. Inflation erodes their “savings” such that the gooferment can steal all their earnings in a given year. Even the worst tyrant of dictator of old used to have to leave the serfs enough to eat from year to year. And, the sheeple don’t even know they are being robbed.a

Imagine the uproar if a President said: “Sorry we have to take everything you earned this year for the good of everyone.” There would be riots in the streets. But the FED can inflate away. Since 1970, inflation has reduced the value of a dollar 97%!

Sheeple, how stupid can you be?

Independence Day? Don’t make me laff!

We’re not independent as long as the FED exists. Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, were right.

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WRITING: Sorry, it’s rationed (An Index Card Novel)

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The store had a color poster. A young blond Aryan-Looking woman in an apron raises her hand to take a pledge. “Food Fights for Freedom”. “Produce and Conserve” “Share and Play Square”. The older couple had survived the First World War with their victory garden. Now, with rationing, and their modest savings, it was hard to make end met. They were too old and too frail to put in a garden that they’d need to survive. Their Church provided some. Their family some. But eventually it was just too hard. They weren’t listed as casualties of war, but they were. The poverty of war. If all the young men weren’t off dying in some far flung part of the world, they’d have been to home and tending to the communities’ needs. The local guard. Contributing to churches, fraternities, and civil society in general. But, they were off dying. Just like the old couple, casualties of war.

+++++

The recently retired fat old white guy brought his equally old wife into the hospital’s emergency room. Heart failure was an easy diagnosis. Then the “fun” began. No more evil insurance companies to do battle with. No more hospital bills at all. Couldn’t pay if you wanted to. Couldn’t buy drugs anywhere at any price. Everything was “free”. Doctor Phil came into the old girl’s room. She wasn’t that old 60 something. But the “guidelines” were very clear. Palliative care. Hospice care. Informed of their “final options”. Those drugs were cheap! The “doctor” explained that they had nothing to offer them. The old gent was pretty funny. To the doc’s standard “just be a minute”, he’d replied “take two, we have lots”. The doc confided that there were drugs, operations, and therapies available “off-shore”. If she could survive the trip. If they could afford the trip. If they could keep it secret. (The Healthy Homeland Bureaucracy didn’t take kindly to their regulations being evaded.) In the end, there wasn’t much anyone could do. The old lady was a casualty of the war. Whatever the current war was that prevented society from treating its young and old humanely. Everyone was dying. Just like the old couple, casualties of war.

+++++

The hospital had a color poster. A multicultural group had their collective hands raised to take a pledge. “Health is a village responsibility” “One for all; all for the common good” “Play fair; do your part”

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INTERESTING: A health care plan alternative

Friday, June 19, 2009

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/a_real_free_market_health_care_1.html

A Real Free Market Health Care Solution
By Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D.

*** begin quote ***

Solution:

   * 1. Don’t pass any of the Democrat health care plans. Savings of at least $3 trillion over the next five years.

   * 2. Immediately do away with Medicare, Medicaid, and The Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. No other major industrialized nation has a separate system for the elderly, disabled and the poor. Scrap the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation. Savings of nearly $1 trillion in federal tax dollars yearly, $1 trillion in savings for states and billions in savings by dissolving the tyrannical Joint Commission.

   * 3. People should be responsible for purchasing their own health care, not the government or the employer, making health insurance completely portable. Scrap Hillary Clinton’s HIPAA act at a savings of billions yearly. Let’s make it HIPAA-posthumous.

   * 4. A Health Insurance Company must offer a good basic low-cost health care plan with expanded health savings accounts. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.

   * 5. No health exclusions for three years. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.

   * 6. Health plans should promote healthy practices and preventive health. Taxpayer cost zero.

   * 7. For the poor, government should subsidize the premiums, not be involved in paying providers. Taxpayer costs by my estimate around $600 billion per year.

   * 8. Retired people of lower means should be helped as above but should not have a separate insurance plan run by the government. Sorry, Medicare is dead. Promises were broken, but we are mature people and we need to get over it. Let’s not let it happen again! Taxpayer cost around $300 billion per year.

   * 9. End tax penalties for individuals purchasing individual health insurance. Taxpayer cost zero dollars as these penalties are merely punitive, designed to make people dependent.

   * 10. The health insurance companies in each state should have the option of creating a risk pool from some of their premium funds. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.

   * 11. Laws should be changed to allow for private health co-ops to be formed as an option for those so inclined. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.

   * 12. Patients should be free to change insurance plans at least twice yearly and since their insurance would not be controlled by their employer or the government no permission is needed from them. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.

   * 13. There should be no legal right for insurance plans to dismiss competent and qualified contracted physicians for “no cause”, when that no cause is really due to the physician acting as a patient advocate.

   * 14. Tort reform with penalties for frivolous lawsuits and the loser paying some of the costs.

Well, there you have it. The savings for taxpayers over three years: Nearly $5 trillion. Not requiring bills hundreds of pages long: Priceless! A few short regulations and we have a viable health care system for the future covering over 99% of the population, devoid of the treachery of Medicare and without dependence on the federal government. It’s very simple, very sensible, and so easy even a government official can understand it. It’s even short enough for Congress members to read fully, though some may require several days. Oh, yes, Mr. Obama, I want our $600 billion back.

*** end quote ***

Wow! What great ideas. Zero chance to kill Medicare. But, great ideas.

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FUN: Luddite sends me a joke

Friday, June 19, 2009

From:
Date: June 19, 2009 9:03:13 AM EDT
To:
Subject: Letter from the Boss

LETTER FROM THE BOSS:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%.

But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off 60 of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me; since I believe we are family here, and I didn’t know how to choose who would have to go.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found 60 ‘Obama’ bumper stickers on our employees’ cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem.

They voted for change; I gave it to them.

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

Signed,
The Boss

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ROFL

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