Notes to Leicester

Catholic Institutions and Contraception Coverage

2012-01-30T19:02:00.006-05:00

The Obama Administration ruled last week that under health insurance reform that Catholic institutions that supply health insurance had to cover contraception. Of course the religious folks are up in arms. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones has a response that I think is very right on the money:

I'm just a big ol' secular lefty, so I guess it's natural that I'd disagree. And I do. I guess I'm tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars — and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy. Contra Dionne, it's precisely religious pluralism that makes this impractical. There are simply too many religions with too many religious beliefs to make this a reasonable approach. If we'd been talking about, say, an Islamic hospital insisting that its employees bind themselves to sharia law, I imagine the "religious community" in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.

That pretty much sums it up for me. If you want an exemption based on religious grounds for a policy that every secular institution must follow, then that's fine. Just becaome a fully religious instution. Stop accepting government money. Stop hiring those of other faiths. Stop opening your doors to the general public. Focus on being 100% religious and then you can have your exemption. But you can't have it both ways.

And for those trying to make a moralistic argument please stop. Providing contraceptive coverage on an insurance policy doesn't mean people have to use it. If you're hiring good moral Catholics then they should be against using contraceptives anyway since that's a teaching of the Church. It's a benefit that will never get used. That is if you assume that the Easter and Christmas bunch are actually following doctrine.

Civil Rights Are Fundamental

2012-01-28T14:46:00.005-05:00

This week Governor Christie of New Jersey said that he thought gay marriage should be put up to a vote. Mayor Booker of Newark responded to a question from a reporter on the subject and his response is on You Tube and embedded below.

I can't agree with Mayor Booker's sentiments more. Rights for the minority should never be up to a popular vote of the majority. There are many things in which a vote is perfectly legitimate and welcome and Mayor Booker gives some fine examples that I would support. Civil rights are fundamental and should never be subject to a vote of the majority. Would the Civil Rights Act of 1964 be the law of the land if white Southerners could have voted against it? Absolutely not.

Masonic Open House February 2012

2012-01-25T20:39:00.005-05:00

The Masonic Lodges of Massachusetts will be conducting a Spring Open House on February 25th from 9:00am to 3:00pm as indicated on the Grand Lodge website. If you are curious about Freemasonry that would be a good day to drop by and learn more. The officers of each Lodge will be available to answer questions about the Fraternity and how men can become members.

Joel H Prouty Lodge on Southbridge St in Auburn, MA will have open doors like all the other Lodges in Massachusetts.

Is the Telegram Really Anti-Democratic?

2012-01-22T08:26:00.004-05:00

I don't mean against the Democratic Party since they've proven time and again to be a Republican rag, but I mean anti-democratic with a small d. This is in response to the latest horrible editorial in today's Sunday Telegram.

The editorial indicates that the growth in mandated sections of the state budget is bankrupting the state. That's normal Republican elephant dung. It's right off the talking points. What they blame as the cause there are the politicians and the voters who elect them. Let me get this straight. The politicians and the voters that elect them? The politicians are elected by a majority of voters. That's how democracy works. You have an election and the politicians elected are those that get a majority of the votes. So attacking the politicians and the voters that elect them is a basic attack on democracy. The only cure for the voters who elect the politicians is to not allow the voters to elect the politicians.

Their basic complaint is that the voters don't elect enough Republicans. So what's their solution? They don't offer one. They complain about the voters electing politicians they don't like and then say that the problem might be fixed if the voters elected politicians the Telegram Editors do like. They just don't explain how you get there. From a democratic system that elects politicians they don't like to a system with more Republicans that they do like. All I know is that the Telegram is coming off as dismissive of democracy because they don't like the results. I suppose a system where someone they agree with appoints politicians they like might work. Unfortunately that's not democracy.

Governor Announces School and Local Aid

2012-01-21T08:41:00.007-05:00

The Governor announced his budget proposal for next year. It includes a modest increase in Chapter 70 school aid and level funded municipal aid. The State Government is projecting 4% growth in revenues for FY13. An additional $65 million in municipal aid would be contingent on ending this year with a surplus. The Metrowest Daily News has an article with further details. I don't really know the full details like how aid to highways might change. Last year they added money late in the season for highway.

Now to focus on Leicester. I said I would focus on Leicester when budget season came along.

We have the Governor's numbers. It is very likely the Senate and House are going to follow suit. I believe it's safe to build budgets off the Governor's numbers. Town politics not withstanding. Basically what we're looking at is a potential modest increase for schools and level funding for municipal government. We also have the 2.5% increase from local taxes. Chapter 70 increases are direct aid to schools and must go to the schools. They don't get to be funneled to municipal activities. The growth in local taxes is free to be used wherever. My suggestion is that the town uses the tax growth on municipal financing and the Chapter 70 aid goes where it legally must.

So the schools are looking at a modest increase. Based on the teacher's contract we (I say we because I was the School Committee member on the negotiation committee) negotiated last year the salary increase in teacher salaries should be supportable on a modest increase of Chapter 70 aid. I'm not that familiar with salary structure on the municipal side so I don't know if the tax growth is sufficient there. I do know that free cash was used to balance the town budget last year, but we (I was on the School Committee) agreed to a late cut in the school budget to help balance the budget this year. I don't know what the free cash situation is and will have to do some analysis.

My first instinct is that the town should be able to go with a level budget this year. Anyone making pronouncements of fiscal disaster this year is likely playing a game. I'll do some analysis and also keep track of what the town politicians are saying. But from where I sit without doing any real analysis the town is not going over a cliff this year. Those who make dire pronouncement are playing disaster politics. This is manageable.

Republicans and the News

2012-01-20T05:54:00.007-05:00

Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones posts an interesting chart. This charts results from a poll on news source trust. In particular this is what news sources Republicans trust and it's only one.

The chart is based off data in the 3rd Annual TV News Trust Poll.

Kevin Drum has a breakdown and some commentary on his post: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/chart-day-republicans-dont-trust-anyone-except-fox-news.

Online SOPA Protest

2012-01-17T16:26:00.011-05:00

In case you live under a rock SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill is ostensibly about stopping the pirating of copyrighted material on the Internet. Under the terms of the bill a media company that suspects a site of even linking to stolen copyrighted material could require the site with the link to close it and potentially result in fines to the company with the link. They could also get the site blocked by search engines and have it's DNS blocked. Basically shutting it off in the US. Right now the bill is on hold. The tech companies have rallied against it and the rally is paying off. What the tech companies know and the politicians don't care about is that the terms of SOPA would pretty much kill the Internet. Seriously. How many of your favorite sites link to content on other sites? Well under SOPA you couldn't link to content somewhere else unless you were sure it didn't contain or link to copy written material. Anyone care to guess how many links you have to follow to make sure a site doesn't point to any copy written material? Hundreds or thousands. And every site would have to do it.

The thing that makes the Internet what it is is the ability to link between sites (that's what the Inter in Internet means: between networks/sites). So SOPA really seeks to end what makes the Internet what it is. It would really turn it into something more like your cable box. Every cable box has a scrolling guide that shows programs and allows you to jump to a station that you like. That's basically what the Internet will become. Actually probably less than that. One thing that would die pretty quickly would be this thing called satire. Satire takes something and makes a joke either out of it or pointing to it. Satire is protected free speech, but think it could survive in a medium where everyone is afraid to link to what might possibly be copy written material? Not a chance.

Right now the bill is stalled in Congress. January 18th a handful of prominent websites will go dark for the day in protest: Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and the Cheezeburger network (as reported by CNNMOney).

That link, by the way, might be a violation of SOPA if it passes.

An Open Letter to WHDH Channel 7 in Boston

2012-01-16T07:37:00.004-05:00

Or more precisely your parent company Sunbeam.

First some background for those who aren't DirecTV subscribers. WHDH Channel 7 and WLVI are currently blacked out on DirecTV because of a failure by Sunbeam, their owner, and DirecTV to come to an agreement on terms for renewal of their broadcast deal. I'm guessing the negotiations are stuck on money. Everything always comes down to money. Sunbeam is currently telling people who bother to look that they can get both channels over the open air waves or by switching to a cable company. DirecTV has a splash page that simply says that they expect to resolve the issue in a few days. Reuters has a brief write up.

Here's the deal Sunbeam. You hit the nail on the head. WHDH and WLVI are both available over the air waves at no additional cost to me. I know you see cable and sattelite subscribers as a cash cow. Why should I pay additional charges to receive your product that you give away by broadcasting over the air? I'm paying for your product by watching ads when I watch over the air. I'm paying for it twice when I watch it on DirecTV by watching ads and by the increased subscription prices I have to pay DirecTV. Now you want to increase my subscription price so that I have the option of viewing your product. Here's the further deal there are other stations in Boston that I can watch while you deal with your desire to milk the cable cow and its subscribers. I don't even watch NBC and whatever network WLVI is attached. I just don't watch your channels, so why should I pay for the ability to not watch your channels? Get over yourselves.

To DirecTV. I'm just in the Boston market for television, so my next statement is focused on Boston but I'm sure it applies to your other markets. I get plenty of Boston stations right now. I don't really need channel 7. Having access to NBC is a nice option to have even if I don't currently watch their programming. So tell Sunbeam to take a hike and start broadcasting NBC from another market. I wouln't mind having a New York station or maybe Chicago. As for WLVI how about replacing it with WPIX out of New York. When I was a kid our local cable system had WPIX as an option and I watched that a lot of times over the local Boston station. I think WPIX and WLVI are even affiliates of the same network.

So DirecTV there's the solution to your problem. Replace both with channels you already have agreements with. WPIX and whatever you want would work for me.

Another Horrible Nemeth Column

2012-01-15T07:28:00.010-05:00

Subscribing to the Telegram was a serious mistake. Now I'm exposed to Robert Nemeth's nonsense again. This week he goes off on President Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans didn't like the law under which the Bureau was created and fought hard to derail the law. They fought tooth and nail and lost and the law was passed and signed. Since they lost that battle they decided that they could get what they wanted and derail implementation of the law by refusing to allow anyone the President tried to appoint to the position to be confirmed by the Senate. They have been abusing the filibuster rules to prevent all sorts of nominations from going forward. The Dodd Frank Act which established the Consumer Financial Protection Board requires a director to be in place for it to become fully effective. Block the director from being confirmed and you handicap the board. The Republicans couldn't win fair and square in the Congress and stop the law before passage, so they've chosen to use unethical measures in order to nullify it.

As the time for Congressional recess came up this year the Republicans came up with a scheme to circumvent the Constitution. They came up with a scheme to have two Republicans sit in a conference room and "open" the Senate through unanimous consent thus "preventing" the Senate from going to recess. This is how bad they want to take care of Wall Street over Main Street. The Justice Department issued a ruling prior to President Obama making the appointment stating it was legal. The gist of the Justice Department argument is that the Senate didn't have sufficient membership to do business. They didn't have a quorum and couldn't vote on anything. The process of unanimous consent can be summed up that "if no one objects, then it passes." It boggles the imagination that anyone, even Robert Nemeth, could consider that Constitutional. The Senate was unable to engage in its Constitutional duties and if any business came before it they could not act. They were in de facto recess. The Justice Department even cites a decision made in 2004 under President Bush's Justice Department. So both Democratic and Republican Justice Departments have agreed on this point. This is non-partisan and purely legal.

The Republican Party has been engaged in warfare against President Obama since day one. As stated many times, Senator McConnell has stated, "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." That's his number one priority.

To Robert Nemeth and Senator McConnell if you don't like the law, then seek to change it in the legislature. That's how our system works. The Republicans failed to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when the law was being created. If they don't like it now they can try to repeal it. All they need is to cobble together enough votes in the Senate to do so. Acting in an extra-Constitutional manner in order to destroy a legally crafted and passed law. What would Robert Nemeth say if the Democrats were doing this to a law passed by Republicans? The problem with Robert Nemeth and the editors of the Telegram is that they use a double standard. Anything that people they agree with is fine and dandy, but if the other side were to do the same exact thing they would cry treason. How about we use the same standard for everyone? Maybe the Telegram wouldn't be bleeding advertising dollars and having to move it's printing to Boston to save money.

Worcester Telegram Editors and the Latest O'Keefe Affair

2012-01-13T20:55:00.010-05:00

I read the editorial in the Worcester Telegram concerning James O'Keefe's latest political stunt. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has a brief write up on it. Basically O'Keefe went into polling places in New Hampshire and requested ballots by possing as recently deceased people. The Telegram editors seem to think he was fine in doing that because in the past his antics have brought down people in some progressive organizations. The Telegram feels that his illegal action should be excused.

Here's the deal. I'm a law and order guy. If the law doesn't say it's illegal then you're fine. In this case simply requesting a ballot as someone else is illegal even if you don't cast a vote. You are engaging in voter fraud. It's black and white. There is no excuse for political allegiance or purpose. O'Keefe filmed himself engaging in voter fraud by requesting ballots posing as someone else. It's illegal plain and simple. Shame on the editors of the Telegram for excusing illegal actions because they support the politics of the person who engaged in them.

Bradley Manning is the soldier who gave Wikileaks the US State Department wires that it published. I support Wikileaks in regards to their mission of open information regarding government. Bradley Manning is being brought up on Court Martial charges. Do I think Bradley Manning should be excused? No. Bradley Manning broke the law and he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He also broke his oath as a soldier in the United States military. He was given access to privileged information as part of his military job. He broke his oath and the law in providing Wikileaks that privileged information. He should be prosecuted. No excuse. It's black and white. Law and order.

I'm sure the Telegram would agree with me that Bradley Manning broke the law and should be prosecuted. The Telegram should also agree with me that James O'Keefe broke the law and should also be prosecuted, but the Telegram doesn't. They feel that the law should only apply to people they disagree with. Shame on the Telegram.

Romney About to Roll Over South Carolina Tea Parties

2012-01-13T06:17:00.006-05:00

New York Times report about the South Carolina Tea Parties. Basically they're extremely fractured and supporting several different candidates, so they won't present any obstacle to Romney winning the primary. The Tea Party was always going to become a non-entity in the Republican Party. They provided motivated feet on the ground in 2010 and hopefully they'll do it when Romney is nominated, but they are not going to choose the Republican candidate. I keep pounding on this. Romney is going to win the Republican nomination. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Wrap those up and the rest should fall into place. The money flows to the front runners. Sure a couple rich guys can donate money to a single Super PAC and keep someone like Gingrich going for a while, but the money from the Republican elite will flow to the front runner. It just happens that the front runner is their boy.

This should serve as a wake up call to the Tea Party people, but I don't know that they'll get the point. My expectation is that the Tea Party will double down on ideological purity and possibly sulk. What they should be doing is trying to figure out how to replace the elites in the Republican Party. A hard job for a bunch aging baby boomers with no real money.

New Hampshire Primary

2012-01-12T06:28:00.005-05:00

What does the New Hampshire Primary results tell us about the Republican primary race? Not much. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. He's the chosen of the Republican elite. He will win. The rest is just a matter of everyone else falling in line. New Hampshire is just another small step on path to inevitability. Just sit down, be quiet, and listen to the people who are really in charge of the Republican Party.

But there's South Carolina in a few days. There is and all sorts of unholiness is opening up down there as the unregulated money from the Super PACs floods the airways with negative ads. Newt Gingrich's Super PAC is flush with cash, but so isn't Mitt Romney's Super PAC. Technically there's supposed to be a division between the candidate and their Super PAC, but let's face it if you believe there is you are ~~probably stupid~~ naive. So they'll cancel each other out in a wave of negativity that will send ripples through the entire country. So they'll cancel each other out, but there will be a lot of side damage that occurs. End result will be a Romney victory.

Romney has better financial backing and more money flowing into his Super PAC. Romney is the chosen one of the elites. There are a few rich people who don't like him, but they're out numbered. We don't even have to pretend anymore that the party nominees aren't chosen by the rich and corporations. In the era of Post-Citizens United the US system is laid bare. The wealthy and the corporations will choose our nominees and they'll fund them generously. Romney will win the nomination because that's what the people with the money want. And in America the people with the money always get what they want.

Rick Santorum on Contraception

2012-01-10T05:55:00.008-05:00

Everyone knows that Rick Santorum is extremely anti-abortion. I don't really have an issue with someone who is anti-abortion. I'm not a big fan myself. I am a huge fan of contraception.

I'm linking to Salon magazine for this one, but Salon isn't the only place I've come across Santorum's anti-contraception views. Salon quotes Santorum as saying, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Basically Santorum is saying that sex is only about procreation. Salon writes, "Santorum recently reaffirmed his opposition to Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on discussing or providing contraception to married couples, and established a right to privacy..."

What you have is a presidential candidate who is totally against the use of contraception. He's totally against the idea of sex for anything but procreation. It's estimated that 99% of women have used contraception. 99%. I do understand that where Santorum is going is that he feels that people should abstain from sex unless their looking to have a kid. I have no issue with Rick Santorum choosing to not have sex for recreational purposes. I have no issue with Rick Santorum advocating for people to choose abstinence. I have no issue with the Santorums choosing not to have abortions. I do have an issue with Rick Santorum trying to take away the ability of other people to choose.

What Rick Santorum and Republicans like him want to do is to remove individual rights. They want to take away the individual's right to make important life decisions for themselves. They want to strip those rights from the individual and hand them over to the state. That's what it's about. It's about stripping individual choice and giving it to the state and having the state tell individuals how they should live their lives. So really that's what a vote for Rick Santorum is about. It's also what a vote for anyone in the Republican race except Ron Paul is about. It's about limiting individual rights and surrendering your freedom of choice to the state. Modern Republicanism is about authoritarianism and surrendering your rights to the state.

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt...

2012-01-09T21:08:00.004-05:00

Over the weekend The Boston Globe ran a post with some Mitt Romney quotes from up in New Hampshire. I'm going to cherry pick a couple here.

“There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip," said Mitt Romney.

Seriously? The word bullshit comes to mind pretty quickly. The closest Mitt Romney has come to a pink slip was handing them out at companies that Bain Capital bought and looted for assets. When Mitt took the job to lead Bain Capital he got a special agreement that if the venture failed that he would get his old job back.

“Our office, we were in the back of an old, empty shopping mall,...And our chairs were Naugahyde chairs with, with an old table that we used as the board table…It was the private sector and we were pulling ourselves up in some respects by our boot straps, we were careful," Mitt said.

Okay. Maybe the office at the first Staples had furniture like this, but I can guarantee that when he went back to the offices of Bain it was all leather chairs and mahogany tables.

“I have to tell you: This chance to run for President of the United States, I never imagined I’d do it,” Romney said. “Somehow I backed into the chance to do this,” added Romney.

Now I'm rolling on the floor laughing. The man has wanted to be President his entire adult life. Every step he's made since graduated college has been part of a calculation to one day run for President. This isn't a man who fell into the opportunity to run. This is a man who has been running every days for twenty years. He chose not to run for a second term as governor in 2006 so that he could run for President in 2008. Since 2008 he has been in continuous campaign mode.

I really don't know how Mitt Romney lives with his conscience.

Jefferson Bible on Display at Smithsonian

2012-01-08T16:18:00.004-05:00

The Smithsonian Museum has put the Jeffeson Bible on display. Thomas Jefferson took the New Testament and removed all the miraculous aspects and left only the life of Jesus and his philosophical teachings. The LA Times has an excellent article about the Jefferson Bible and his religious views.

There's a nice quote that the LA Times puts forward from Jefferson, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." That's a powerful statement on religious freedom from the author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote that in the book he authored "Notes on the State of Virginia."

The Smithsonian has a scanned copy available that you can review at http://americanhistory.si.edu/JeffersonBible/the-book/. There's also a PDF version that been posted which is much easier to read at http://www.pattonhq.com/links/uccministry/jeffbible.pdf.

For additional reading on the religious views of Thomas Jefferson I highly recommend "Founding Faith" by Steven Waldman. Waldman's book is really about the birth of religiuos freedom in the United States and he uses the religious views and experiences of four of the Founding Fathers: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The first part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," is the where freedom of religion is enshrined. It means Congress can't deem the United States to be a nation of any particular religion and that anyone can practice any religion they choose and the government can't stop them: Muslim, Christian, Jew or even atheist. The Fourteenth Amendment extended the prohibition to the states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." So Congress nor any state can make no law establishing religion or depriving the people of freedom of religion.

Newt Gingrich Calls Mitt Romney a Liar

2012-01-06T06:03:00.004-05:00

I know I'm a bit late coming to this. So Newt Gingrich called Mitt Romney a liar on a morning news talk show and the host was taken aback. Newt then reiterated what he said. So is Mitt Romney a liar? Yes he most certainly is. He panders to the base in the worst way and just plain makes stuff up in his speeches and no one calls him on it. Does this change my opinion that he'll win the Republican nomination? No. He's still going to win the nomination because telling the truth is not a virtue that the Republican Party esteems.

On a side note The Boston Globe has announced its endorsement of Jon Huntsman for the nomination. Not a surprise that they wouldn't endorse Romney. They know the true Mitt Romney who will say anything to get elected President. I'm not suprised they went with Jon Huntsman. He's actually the most moderate of the Republicans. By the way Jon Huntsman is the guy in the Republican race that I like the best. So I'm glad to see him getting an endorsement though I don't believe there's any chance he can win the nomination. Too bad for the Republican Party because I think he would be really good leading them this election.

Paul Krugman

2012-01-04T20:39:00.004-05:00

Paul Krugman has been on a tear the last couple days concerning attacks on his that he hasn't been playing nice in his debates and responses. Basically the conservative hate machine has been focused on Professor Krugman for several years. He just won't stop talking. He won't allow himself to be drowned out by the echo machine. Worst of all he's a liberal and fighting back. Liberals aren't supposed to fight back when conservative bullies push them down. Liberals are supposed to be meek little wimps who let the conservative bullies kick sand in their face and steal the girl off the beach. Professor Krugman is not only willing to speak up for what he believes, but is willing to push back when the bully comes calling. He's an inspiration to a new generation of liberal and progressive activists and commentators who are quite literally fed up with nonesense elephant crap of the last thirty years and he's showing the way. Bravo Professor Krugman, bravo.

Romney Wins Iowa and McCain's Endorsement

2012-01-04T06:05:00.004-05:00

Mitt won Iowa. It's still a side show and doesn't much mean anything, but it set the stage going forward. He's a solid poll winner in New Hampshire and should take the primary easily. News reports this morning indicate that Senator John McCain will endorse Mitt Romney today. So there you have it. Yesterday's analysis stands. Pulling ahead and supported by the elites. The next thing we'll see is the flailing of the remaining candidates as they struggle to avoid being drowned in the tide. This should be over by May.

The Latest Not-Romney

2012-01-03T05:34:00.003-05:00

The latest Not-Romney to experience a surge in Iowa is Rick Santorum. Yes, that Rick Santorum. Personally I'm not a fan of Santorum (hence the link), but the fact of the matter is that I've been pretty steadfast in my belief that Romney is going to win the Republican nomination. The Iowa Caucus is a side show that gets way too much press coverage. The thing with the Iowa Caucus is that polls don't much matter. The point of a caucus is to get physical bodies into the caucus site and get them to stay there. The person with the most bodies present to cast a vote wins. A caucus is about having an organized physical presence in a state. Sure Santorum might have that in Iowa since he's practically lived there since August and he or Ron Paul might win in Iowa, but they can't win in the primary states. In the primary you need deep pockets and a state by state network. So Iowa is a side show. You get some press, but you can't count on any of it to win primaries in another state. In other states you have different issues and need a network and advertising to attract voters.

Right now the Republican Party is pretty much fractured. The coalition that was cobbled together to elect Reagan is falling apart. The Tea Party did that. I know a lot of people look at the Tea Party like it's a separate entity, but it never was. It was always the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party. They did a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2010. Our current Do Nothing Congress is the result. The Republican elite is behind Romney and will provide resources to push his candidacy. He's the most electable. The religious conservatives have rallied around their own set of candidates. The religious conservatives have rallied to, in order, Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry and now Rick Santorum. The Tea Party has been bouncing around Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. No way, no how is the Republican elite going to let the Tea Party choose the nominee. The Tea Party choice is a guaranteed loser. The religious conservative choice is a guaranteed loser. Want to lose moderate voters in mass? Choose someone who the Tea Party or religious conservatives drool over.

Over the years the Republican Party has become increasingly more conservative. When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House in the 1990s he was seen at that time as a conservative radical, but viewed in today's lens he's not all that radical. John Boehner when he was elected to Congress was seen as a conservative extremist beyond Newt Gingrich. Boehner was an outlier, but now he's considered moderate by Republican measures. Most of the Republican candidates have to jog to be "more conservative than thou." They have to move so far down the conservative spectrum to appeal to primary voters that they could never successfully job to the moderate middle in order to pick up moderate voters to clinch a victory. The Republican elite are cold and calculating and know this and they won't let an extremist win the primary.

The Tea Party was a useful tool to the Republican Party in 2010. It helped elect Republicans. The fact of the matter is that the elite in the Republican Party needed those foot soldiers and were happy to have them at the time. There remains a power struggle to be dealt with in the Republican Party between the Tea Party and the elites. The Tea Party represents the rank and file foot soldier, but the elite represents the money and hence real power. I expect that the elite will retain control over their party and when that happens I'm interested to see what the Tea Party's next move will be. I'm expecting them to be appropriate submissive to the authority figures of the party.

So Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. The rest is just a side show. Mitt has a steady 24% base to build on as the months roll onward. He has every advantage: a solid base, money, a national organization, and support from the monied elite. Top that off with nice hair and you have the Republican nominee. Just accept it.

US Fuel Exports and the Cost of Gas

2011-12-31T17:27:00.005-05:00

It was reported today that US fuel exports are the biggest export item in America. The article correctly makes the point that increased fuel exports are also causing the cost of gas in the US to be higher. Why's that? Because American consumers have to compete against foreign consumers to purchase the fuel. This is the free market after all. So if foreign entities want to pay more for gasoline, then the producers will export it to where they can make the best profit. Capitalism 101. That means that in order to purchase gasoline the US price needs to be at least as high as the price that the foreign entities are willing to pay.

The same thing occurs with oil drilled in the US. If it's drilled on the coasts then it automatically competes in the world market for price. The oil is going to go where the profits are best. Doesn't necessarily mean here in the US. Currently the shale oil drilled in Canada and the middle of the US is trapped in the center of the company. It's expensive to get it to the coast where it can be exported to the highest bidder. Currently, believe it or not, oil in the center of the country sells cheaper than on the global market. But if you can get the oil from the center of the country to the coast and anyone buying it needs to compete for price against the global market. The key is that the transport costs need to be cheap enough to make it cost effective. The solution to that problem would be a pipeline that reaches from Canada to the refineries along the Gulf Coast. Such a pipeline is already planned and the Republican party has been trying to force President Obama and the EPA to approve it quickly. Ostensibly this is to "create jobs", but really the point is to get it to export points to compete in the global oil market.

If you think the point of "drill, baby, drill" and building pipelines is to help the nation become energy independent you are a very naive individual. This is capitalism and capitalism isn't patriotic. Capitalism is about turning a profit. The point here is to make the oil accessible to the global markets where you can get the best price. Capitalism 101.

The Big Lies

2011-12-30T07:49:00.003-05:00

Joe Nocera writing an opinion piece for The New York Times entitled "The Big Lie" writes about the lie currently being spread by people from the American Enterprise Institute and echoed back by the conservative sound machine about the cause of the spread of risky mortgages. To cut to the chase Fannie and Freddie Mac were not responsible for the mortgage meltdown nor was the government. The cause was Wall Street and private bankers getting into risky mortgages to increase bonuses and raise stock prices. The article is interesting not only interesting in taking down the Fannie and Freddie Mac lie, but also in detailing how such a lie can take root. It's a nefarious approach that the conservative echo machine has mastered.

Joe Nocera, "The Big Lie": http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/opinion/nocera-the-big-lie.html?_r=2&hp

Making It Official

2011-12-28T06:20:00.003-05:00

Just to make it official I won't be running for any town offices this year or for the next few years. I've decided to focus on other volunteer activities. That's really the reason I've not written much about town activities lately. I'm willing to be an active volunteer for candidates that I like, but I have no interest in running for town office again and no time to serve on a board.

Robert Nemeth's Opinion Column in the Telegram

2011-12-26T09:37:00.006-05:00

I read Robert Nemeth's Christmas Day column in the Telegram. Well, actually skimmed it because I find it difficult to actually read Nemeth's entire column. Yesterday's column was more or less about the secularization of Christmas and the failure to treat Sunday as a special day. Both are subjects I agree more or less with him on, but from a different perspective. I'm not interested in sharing my religious beliefs here. What I believe or don't believe is between me and God. I disagree with Mr Nemeth concerning the wearing of the Sunday best on Sundays because that pre-supposes going to Sunday Christian services and, well, there are a lot of non-Christians living in the United States and minority religious groups have a right not to be forced to practice the religious activities of the majority. According to the US Census 76% of Americans profess to be a member of one of the many Christian sects. That's a huge majority. But I digress since I actually agree with Mr Nemeth's underlying concept.

I remember being a kid and Sunday really was a day of rest and relaxation. There were no shops open and no one worked on Sundays. The only stores that were open in Worcester in those days were the ones on Water Street that were Jewish owned and the few Muslim owned shops that were popping up in the late seventies and early eighties. Back when I was a kid we still had the Blue Laws in effect. The Blue Laws prevented most forms of commerce on Sundays and it forced businesses to remain closed. I don't know what Mr Nemeth's opinion is on the repealing of the Blue Laws, but basically things changed when the state chose to repeal those laws. Stores could be open on Sundays for reduced hours by special permit. Then they extended those hours so that stores could be open for their entire business day. Then they allowed alcohol sales on Sunday. The state law makers rolled back all the Blue Laws and with them all the things that made Sunday different than Saturday. Really when Mr Nemeth decries the secularization of Sunday he's talking about the repeal of the Blue Laws. It has nothing to do with protecting minority religious views or even America becoming less religious. I've already stated 76% of Americans profess to be Christian. 96% of Americans profess a belief in God. So seriously if you want to know why Sunday isn't as special as it was twenty years ago just remember that twenty years ago we had the Blue Laws and today we don't.

The cries of concerning the commercialization and secularization of Christmas aren't new. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" debuted in 1965 with it's message about the commercialization of Christmas. This television special has been shown every year for the last forty-six years. People have been decrying the commercialization of Christmas for longer than I've been alive. I'm sure they've been decrying it even longer than that. One of the gripes of the Puritans in England was that the English celebrated Christmas. There were complaints when Queen Victoria introduced Christmas trees into England in the 19th Century. So complaints about the commercialization of Christmas are nothing new. Christmas remains special to the children who practice it. For some of those children it is a purely secular activity. For others it's also a religious activity. Adults tend to be the complainers. I don't know if it's because they are nostalgic for the Christmas of their youth or if they are simply trying to get people to comply to their particular religious views. All I know is that my religious views are between me and God and only God knows what's truly in your heart in regards to your own religious views. Professing in public your piety isn't going to change what's in your heart. What's in your heart is between you and God. Again I digress. Protecting minority religious rights is a big issue for me. All philosophies should compete in the free marketplace of ideas with those that appeal the best to the consumers of ideas floating to the top.

To Mr Nemeth and anyone who decries the fact that Sunday no longer holds a special place in the lives of the people of Massachusetts just remember the Blue Laws. The thin blue line that held back the forces of commerce on Sunday. The thin blue line that didn't survive the Eighties. The thin blue line that didn't survive the rationalization that the people should have the freedom to engage in commerce on Sunday if they should so choose. This is the law of unintended consequence. The Blue Laws were repealed and the people provided the choice to shop on Sundays. The people have chosen.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

2011-12-24T09:53:00.004-05:00

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

An Important Message Just in Time for Christmas

2011-12-23T06:05:00.003-05:00

Paying for the Commons

2011-12-22T06:12:00.003-05:00

The term The Commons refers to resources owned in common by a community. This would be things like parks and the municipal hall and the schools. There is an excellent post over at The Fiscal Times about the economic effects of paying for the commons. The author uses the example of people wanting to buy a swingset to put the concept into human terms. I'm not going to add commentary or quote the article here. Go read it: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/12/20/The-Great-Economic-Divide-Makes-Everyone-Poorer.aspx#page1.

Happy Hanukkah!

2011-12-21T05:58:00.004-05:00

Republicans Blow Up Another Negotiated Agreement

2011-12-19T06:20:00.004-05:00

The Republican Party is unfit to govern. It has consistently shown that it is unable and unwilling to compromise in the pursuit of government. By it's unwillingness to compromise it has proven itself incapable of negotiation in good faith. There is effectively no way for the Democratic members of Congress to negotiate a compromise with the Republicans. No matter how far the Democrats are willing to go the Republicans are simply incapable of reaching a compromise and thus are unable to engage in the basic functions of governing in a democratic society.

The latest example is the recent attempt to reach a compromise on the extension of the payroll tax cut. Over the weekend a compromise was negotiated. It has now been reported that John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is saying the Republican House members can not support it. The measure passed the Senate with 89 yes votes. It's also been reported that Boehner had left it to the Senate to negotiate a deal. It was a negotiated agreement which the Republicans now have dropped their end of the bargain. This has been the Republican approach since they took control of the House after the 2009 election. They negotiate in bad faith and then at the last minute they pull out of agreements. They are simply incapable of the basic compromise that is required for negotiation and incapable of maintaining agreements. In short they are incapable of the basic requirements of governing. Our entire political process is based upon the concept of compromise. If one party refuses to compromise or even to negotiate in good faith, then the political process is broken. The Republicans refuse to participate in the very foundational process of the American democratic process.

Polls show that the American people have a low opinion of Congress and this is exactly why that is. The Congress is incapable of action because the Republican Party can not negotiate in good faith. And the media is so beholden to the Cult of Impartiality that they refuse to hold the Republican Party accountable for its failure to live to agreements. The media has failed in its duty to tell the truth and the Republicans have failed in their duty to govern in good faith. The nation is completely incapable of action while the Republican Party plays games in hoping of winning the next election. The country can no longer afford the incompetence of the Republican Congress.

Senator McConnell Blocking Appointments

2011-12-18T18:26:00.005-05:00

Senator McConnell who is famous in my book for saying that the number one priority of the Republicans in Congress was ensuring that President Obama would be a one term President is now blocking year end appointments in the Senate. According to democrats.senate.gov Majority Leader "Senator Reid asked unanimous consent that the Senate take up and confirm the following nominations on the Executive Calendar and Senator McConnell objected to the request." Unanimous consent would have meant passage unless someone objected. Senator McConnell objected which means the appointments need to be brought up in the Senate and thus can be filibustered and blocked. In essence it's blocking the appointments. The list is fairly mundane and you can see it here. None of these people or positions are controversial. What I do find interesting is that Senator McConnell is blocking the promotions of many officers in the Air Force and Army. But what the heck, the United States military is not Senator McConnell's number one priority. Senator McConnell's number one priority is ensuring that President Obama is a one term President and if the military needs to be a tool to ensure such a thing then they will be.

Language of Reform

2011-12-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

Reform

Here's a couple definitions of reform from Merriam Webster dictionary:

1. to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses
2. to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action.

When someone writes or says that they seek to "reform" whatever-it-is there is an implicit assumption that whatever-it-is is broken. Reforming something that works doesn't make sense to most people. Conservative political writers understand this. It's known as framing your argument through the use of language. Use reform and you put an implicit definition in the receivers mind that whatever-it-is is broken or just plain wrong and then you build up on that.

One of my gripes with people who try to take the contrary view is that they always start their argument by accepting the conservative frame of reference. They argue against the position by starting off with "whatever-it-is reform proposed by Republicans." So they then try to explain why the Republican approach is wrong, but they've already implicitly accepted that whatever-it-is is broken. It's pretty much impossible to build an argument against a position when you've implicitly accepted the validity of the underlying premise. This is the lazy approach to writing an argument. They don't think through their use of language in their argument and they inherently undermine themselves. If you are going to build an argument you need to take the time to review the language you use in order to ensure that you are building an internally consistent argument and one that isn't framed using language that undermines itself. Otherwise you are simply being intellectually lazy and in all honest most political writers are intellectually lazy.

Rick Perry Collecting State Pension

2011-12-17T08:21:00.003-05:00

News out of Texas is that Rick Perry has retired as a state employee in Texas so that he can begin collecting a state pension. He continues as Texas governor. This reported by the Texas Tribune. So he collects yearly salary of $150,000 per year as governor. And now tacks on another $90,000 a year in pension benefits. Rick Perry's rationale is that he earned the pension benefit and would be foolish not to take it. This is the guy who wrote a book calling for the privatization of Social Security and referring it to an entitlement even though every working American pays into the system through a tax deduction for their entire working career. Just another politician who claims conservative principles and doesn't live by them.

Fact vs Belief

2011-12-16T06:07:00.003-05:00

It is indeed true that if you honestly believe an incorrect statement that you make that you are not lying. If you make an incorrect statement that you believe to be true you are wrong. There is indeed a difference in being wrong and lying. Fact has a bias. Fact is biased in the truth. 1+1=2. 2-1=1. That will always be true. That will always be fact. There are facts and they can't be changed no matter how hard anyone tries. 2-1=1. There is no way to have 2-1=3 no matter how much you try. It's a basic fact of life and it has a bias in the truth. No matter how much someone tells you 2-1=3 they are wrong or lying. If they are over the age of ten and don't have a learning disability, then they are lying since this is one of the first math facts anyone learns. Fact will have a bias against their statement. So there you have it. 1+1=2 and 2-1=1. Next time someone tells you 2-1=3 you know they are lying.

Rethinking Debt

2011-12-15T05:52:00.005-05:00

Jared Bernstein has a really good article about the differences in types of debt entitled "Rethinking Debt". It is well worth reading, because quite frankly most people don't actually understand debt or how it works. The basic premise of the article can be summed up as return on investment. If you are borrowing to produce a return on investment which is better than your borrowing cost, then that is generally good debt. Bad debt is when you're borrowing just to fund your cost of living. It's a good article and well written.

Wall Street Speculation in Food and Energy

2011-12-13T05:43:00.004-05:00

Robert Reich has an opinion piece entitled "Remarkable Political Stupidity of Wall Street". The piece includes information on the lawsuit that Wall Street bankers have launched to prevent the US Government Commodities Futures Trading Commission "seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading."

Wall Street for years has speculated in the commodities market for food and energy. It's a great place to turn a profit. It's not like demand for food goes down. People have to eat. People also need electricity for their homes and oil for heat and travel. These are high demand items that seldom see price declines. It's a great place to swoop in and make some money. The problem is that when Wall Street moves into food to make a profit they're increasing the cost of food for people. Their profit in the commodities market gets added to the cost of your breakfast cereal. Their profit is pure speculation. They don't need to own the food to use it as an ingredient in a product and they don't produce it. They just buy it and hold it a short while to sell it at a profit which increases the price at the dinner table.

The commodities futures markets were created so producers of raw materials and the users of those materials could work out long range deals to provide stability to the commodities markets. Airlines and home heating oil companies use it to control the cost of fuel they need. Cereal companies use it to know how much money they'll need to spend to buy corn to produce breakfast and control pricing. Farmers use it so they know how much money they expect to make at harvest time which allows them to know how much money they should spend or borrow until then. Wall Street uses it to make money and increase costs to consumers. All Wall Street is doing is adding a Wall Street tax to everything and increasing inflation.

Speculating on food futures is perfectly legal. It's also pretty evil. After all people have to eat right? They'll pay whatever price is necessary to fill their kids little bellies. Great place to make some extra money. People will complain, but what are they going to do? Let their kids go hungry? What's even more evil than driving up food prices simply to turn a profit? Fighting attempts by the government to regulate that activity. Wall Street wants a completely free hand to do whatever it wants to the price of food and energy. After all people have to eat and will pay whatever they have to pay to do so. It's pure evil.

Congress and the 1%

2011-12-12T05:39:00.009-05:00

I came across this table of US income distribution which shows the dollar value of each percentile break point at the Tax Policy Center website. To qualify for the 1% Club you need to be a single earner making $193,000 per year or a married filing jointly couple earning $761,900 per year. To get into the more exclusive 0.5% Club you need to be a single earner making $309,000 per year or a married filing jointly couple earning $1,096,000 per year. To get into the super exclusive 0.1% Club you need to be a single earner making $756,000 per year or a married filing jointly couple earning $2,998,000 per year.

According to TheCapitol.net a member of the US House of Representatives or US Senate earns a salary of $174,000 per year. That puts them right between 98% and 99% on the distribution table.

You have two things going on here with Congress insisting on protecting the 1%ers from having their taxes increased. One thing is that you also have Congress protecting themselves. The base salary of $174k is augmented by the fact that most Congresspeople are making money on the side and many are pushed squarely into the 1% Club. The second is that many members of Congress will leave elected office and land themselves in very cushy jobs with offerred by the 1%ers they protected as Congressmen. They'll land front office jobs at major Wall Street firms or corporations. They salaries they offer will put them firmly in the 1% Club and in many cases into the 0.5% Club. So Congress is also protecting their future.

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours is a strong incentive for Congress. Members of both parties enjoy this revolving door out of Congress and into the executive suite. Members of the Republican Party tend to do better off than Democrats. Take current Republican Presidential Nominee Candidate Newt Gingrich who earned over $1.5 million from Freddie Mac for consulting services. Did Freddie Mac need a historian? No, they needed a guy who knew the ins and outs of Congress and the disposition of legislation effecting their interests. They also needed a guy who was friends with the Congresspeople who were debating that legislation. A guy who could pick up the phone and talk directly to the members of Congress with out a staffer getting in the way. Former Senator Phil Gramm is another example. When Phil Gramm left the Senate he went to work for UBS (the investment bank) and lobbied Congress on behalf of UBS for weaker banking laws. One of my favorites was Phil Gramm proposing to Rick Perry of Texas that UBS be allowed to invest in life insurance policies for retired Texas teachers with Texas and UBS reaping the rewards of those insurance policies when said retired teachers died for which the teachers would receive. For these services Phil Gramm is safely in the 1% Club.

I pick on Republicans here because it's easy. They're more naked about their activities. It's really an open level of cynicism and not really caring about the opinions of the general public. Democrats tend to show a bit of shame about it, but it doesn't really stop them from doing the same thing.

There's nothing illegal about either refusing to raise taxes on upper income earners to protect yourself or your future prospects. There's nothing illegal about leaving Congress and cashing in on connections to earn a big pay day. It's not illegal, but it's also not ethical.

Occupy Wall Street Evictions

2011-12-11T10:38:00.006-05:00

The remaining cities that have Occupy encampments really need to get along with clearing them out. The encampments probably aren't going to go on their own and as a tactic they've out lived their usefulness. Occupy Wall Street itself was a political action and not so much a movement. The 99% Movement is really what the whole thing is about. Occupying Wall Street and setting up tents and camps was a political action and not a movement. When OWS started referring to themselves as the 99% they started to gel around a movement. So the encampments have outlived their usefulness. The municipalities that have used police action to clear the camps have done the 99% Movement a favor.

When the Boston group decided to bring in an industrial sink and the Washington group built a wooden structure it was pretty much all over. This ceases to be a political action and becomes a shanty town. The concept jumped the shark. Menino breaking up the Boston encampment is a good thing. It keeps the people involved from doing something stupid and losing public support. It's one thing to protest the finance industry and to support the have-nots and another thing to build a shanty town in a public park.

So Occupy Wall Street as a political action is pretty much played out. The 99% Movement is really just getting started. Occupy Wall Street needed a transformational catalyst to move from the political action fully to the movement stage. Getting rid of the encampments in LA, Oakland and New York was a big step. Boston and Washing have needed to go. As long as people are fixated on the encampments the movement can't fully develop into its full potential.

Karl Rove Attacking Elizabeth Warren Again

2011-12-09T05:55:00.006-05:00

Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group put out an attack ad that paired Elizabeth Warren with Occupy Wall Street. Turns out that's not a great idea since OWS has really favorable polling results among the American people. You aren't going to get much traction comparing a candidate with favorable polls to a movement with favorable polls. So now Rove is out with another attack ad. This time trying to pair Elizabeth Warren with, wait for it, Wall Street. I've seen the ad and it's ridiculously absurd. The only part of the ad that's true is that Elizabeth Warren was appointed to oversee the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) program. The program that the Bush Administration requested. This is the job in which she roasted Wall Street bankers over an open fire and made an enemy out of Tim Geithner.

The best part is that Karl Rove's group is mainly funded by, wait for it, Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers. They've poured literally millions of dollars into Rove's group so that Rove could run ads for them.

I've written before about Wall Street getting ready to pour a ton of money into this race. They are going to support Scott Brown big time. You also have the indirect support by Wall Street funding Karl Rove to run attack ads. Wall Street doesn't want Elizabeth Warren in the Senate. If Elizabeth Warren is an elected official accountable to only the people of Massachusetts then she is free to hold them accountable. Wall Street doesn't want that. This is going to be Wall Street versus Elizabeth Brown and Scott Brown is going to be a Wall Street's proxy.

Wall Street wants to buy this election for Scott Brown and there is no low so low that they won't stoop.

Job Creators

2011-12-07T20:30:00.007-05:00

Nick Hanauer wrote an Op-Ed piece for Bloomberg. Mr Hanauer is the founder of Second Avenue Partners out of Seattle. Mr Hanauer takes on the "job creator" myth that is currently being bandied about by the Republicans. "Job creators" is a currently talking point by the Republican Party. It's one of those phrases that tests well and is endorsed by the marketers. So it's getting heavy air time.

Mr Hanauer wrote:

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

I've written about job creators before. Businesses and business people don't create jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. Jobs are expenses. It is the role of a good business person to minimize expenses. They don't hire people simply to have them on staff. More people mean more expenses. Let's take the phrase "job creator" and substitute expense. "Expense creator." Does that make sense? No. You can allow for higher expenses if you have have high demand for your goods or services. If you are making money you can add expenses. If you are making money you can hire additional staff. On the flip side if you can do without additional employees, then you do. You're purpose as a business person is to minimize expenses and maximize profits. If you can do a job and hire two people then you might, but if you can do the same job with one person equally well and pocket the extra cash then you do. I'm sorry, but the concept of job creator is elephant crap. You create jobs when you have demand for goods or services. You don't create jobs just to create jobs. That's how you wind up in bankruptcy.

Ideology Over Fact and Reason

2011-12-06T05:46:00.005-05:00

One thing that gets my goat are people who put ideology over fact and reason. It's fine to have a certain political belief that fits your moral code. Conservative, moderate or progressive. I don't really care. But if all you can do is to repeat talking points expressed in the media and you can't support those talking points with facts, then you are a hollow vessel of ideology. You need to look at the facts and if the facts say you are wrong, then you know what? You are wrong. So many times people fall back on ideology and refuse to accept reality.

God gave us free will and reason for a purpose. Humanity above all other animals has the capacity for reason. We have the capacity to review the facts and make decisions. When people put ideology ahead of fact they are dismissing reason and free will. They are accepting the will of some one else and replacing their own.

The typical path is that someone is frustrated and they start listening to some media source of some sort. It strikes a cord. They listen and simply buy in to whatever is being broadcast. They stop thinking and they simply absorb. They take in a little bit of toxicity at a time and then soon they are frothing and refusing to even consider the facts. They get angry and they strike out with anger at "them." Whoever that "them" may be.

God gave humanity reason and free will and yet so many surrender both to the voice from the radio or the television. They surrender their free will to the ideology that someone else has presented them.

Political philosophy needs to be supported with morality, fact and reason. Simply being a bobble head for some voice on the radio is a waste. Someone who can't support the ideas they present with hard facts and numbers is just an empty bobble headed vessel. I've seen so many people repeat what they hear on the media as true, but are completely unable to present the facts to back it up. In some ways I feel sorry for them. They're being used.

It doesn't have to be this way. The first step is to turn off the television and turn off the radio. Sit down and have a conversation with someone and actually listen to what they say. Ask questions and provide responses. The big thing about the radio or the television is that neither are looking for a response. All they are looking for is an empty vessel to fill with their nonsense. Learn to think for yourself and stop putting ideology ahead of fact. Search out facts and use them to support your positions. Basically. Start thinking and stop using talking points.

The Cult of Impartiality

2011-12-05T06:12:00.005-05:00

Paul Krugman has an excellent post about the fact that the news media absolutely refuses to hold anyone responsible for their statements. My favorite quote is, "that’s when I formulated my doctrine that if Bush said the earth was flat, headlines would read Views Differ on Shape of Planet."

He's absolutely right. The news media is so afraid to be called bias that it absolutely refuses to do it's job by stating when politicians are lying. They refer to it as a difference of opinion. And broadcast media, except Fox, always needs have a conservative and a progressive commentator so that the media can prove it's impartiality.

I'm sorry, but when the Republicans unveiled their desire to replace Medicare with vouchers the Democrats were right to say it would be the "end of Medicare as we know it." The media took the approach that it was just a different view point. I'm sorry, but if you take the single payer system that is Medicare and turn it into a voucher system that is run through private insurance companies, then it's the end of Medicare as we know it. Matter of fact it's the privatization of Medicare and a complete replacement of the current system.

Additionally it's perfectly fine for the media to hold someone accountable for putting ideology ahead of facts. When a politician says that tax cuts pay for themselves and the news media doesn't challenge there is a problem. If tax cuts pay for themselves please do the math and show it. Prove it. Making such an absurd statement is ridiculous especially given the historical evidence to the contrary. Bush cut the tax rates in 2003 and the deficit spiked and then five years later we were in the biggest recession since the Great Depression. Yes, there were other causes behind the recession, but don't tell me tax cuts pay for themselves. That's elephant dung. And it's putting ideology ahead of facts.

The news media's role in the public discourse is not only to report what politicians say, but also to contrast that to reality. Here's the deal. The facts have a bias. They have a bias against bullshit and in favor of the truth. The current garbage flowing out of the majority of the news media is doing more damage to the public discourse than just about anything. The refusal to hold politicians accountable for their statements is a crime and shows an inherent bias to the cult of impartiality.

Mitt Romney Will Be The Republican Nominiee

2011-12-04T08:21:00.006-05:00

I've written this before. Mitt Romney is going to win the Republican Primary.

What I find interesting are the candidates that the Republican voters seem to support in the bid for "anyone but Mitt" campaign. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and now Newt Gingrich. This is supposed to be the party of family values. I can't think of a Republican who extols family values more than Mitt Romney. In his adult life he has only been with one woman. He has had no drama around his personal life. He's professionally very successful. He has for all appearances the nuclear family. Heck the guy even has nice hair. So for many people in the values party Mitt isn't the right guy. So who do they turn to?

First you had Rick Perry who was the fantasy candidate. From the beginning it's been pretty obvious that Rick Perry was using the religious conservatives to get a bump. He courted them heavily. There have been many rumours down in Texas of extra-marital affairs. And let's not get into the corruption down in Texas. The place is a cesspit of backroom deals and sweetheart deals for cronies. It's old fashioned political corruption at it's best. So that was the first Not-Mitt. He imploded pretty quickly. Really as soon as he spoke and exposed himself as a vacant vessel devoid of anything, but ambition. When he leaves office in Texas he will become very rich as the people who he took care of as Governor reward him for making them a lot of money.

Then you had Herman Cain. Herman Cain as we all know imploded in a way that astounds anyone following modern politics. He went into the campaign knowing he had sexual harassment settlements and complaints in his past. And this week a woman came out and claimed a thirteen year affair. I believe Mr Cain referred to it as "consensual." So that would be the second Non-Mitt for the party of values.

Now you have Newt Gingrich. Seriously? Newt Gingrich has been married three times. He has had two affairs during those marriages which is how he's had two divorces. Newt is the guy who was having an affair with an office staffer while persecuting Bill Clinton for having an affair with an office staffer. The man is a hypocrite. The man received over $1.5 million in payments from Freddie Mac for ~~lobbying~~ consulting services before the big meltdown. This is the third Non-Mitt. Newt Gingrich is the candidate of the value's party?

Mitt Romney is the only candidate in the Republican field except Jon Huntsman who is a values candidate. Jon Huntsman won't win the nomination. He simply doesn't have the base support. Mitt Romney is going to win the nomination. The Republican Party just needs to come to grips with it and stop searching around in it's pile of candidates displaying poor ethics and settle down on the guy who has a lot of Republican support and actual moral values.

Wall Street for US Senator from Massachusetts

2011-12-02T21:13:00.004-05:00

Greg Sargent of The Plum Line over at the Washington Post writes that apparantly Wall Street wants Scott Brown re-elected badly. According to Sargent Wall Street is firing up the plans to bombard Massachusetts with ads in favor of it's pet candidate Scott Brown.

So this could come down to a race that simply puts Scott Brown as a proxy for Wall Street. A vote for Scott Brown is a vote for Wall Street.

A recent poll has Elizabeth Warren at 43% versus ~~Wall Street~~ Scott Brown with 39%. The poll has a margin of error of 4% which means they are statistically equal.

Wall Street doesn't want Elizabeth Brown elected to the US Senate. She will hold Wall Street and the bankers accountable and that scares them. What scares them more is that if she's an elected official only beholden to the people of Massachusetts then she's free to hold them accountable without repercussion. Because that's what she'll be elected to do. She'll be elected to support the people of Massachusetts. She won't be elected to do the bidding of Wall Street. Wall Street is getting ready to pump a lot of money into Scott Brown. Why? Because they figure Scott Brown is their boy and will do what they want.

So this race is going to come down to Elizabeth Warren versus Wall Street. My money is on Elizabeth Warren.

The Corruption Runs Deep

2011-12-01T06:08:00.009-05:00

Making the rounds right now on the internet are discussions about former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson providing inside information to Goldman Sachs and hedge funds prior to the financial meltdown in 2008. Given that Hank Paulson was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and got his job because Goldman Sachs made a lot of campaign contributions is it really that surprising? The US Treasury is a branch of Goldman Sachs. The current US Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is a Goldman Sachs alumn. Of course Hank Paulson took care of Goldman Sachs prior to the meltdown. He knew who was really in charge. What's surprising is that anyone would be surprised that Treasury is corrupt and Goldman Sachs is in command.

Over at Counterpunch Paul Craig Roberts has an interesting post. At the end of November Germany had a bond sale. They cancelled the sale after there were few takers. Germany is considered the benchmark nation of Europe, but it had a problem with it's debt issuance? Weird. Then not long after Italy had a debt issuance and that sold. Very weird. Italian debt is in higher demand than German? Mr Roberts is asserting that Goldman Sachs is ultimately responsible. The Germans have pushed a plan that calls for banks to write down Greek debt. Mr Roberts opinion is that the US financial industry is moving to back the European banks. American companies have credit default swaps that they sold to European banks to cover the risk of European bond failure. The US financial companies don't have the money to cover the swaps. So if the debt in Europe is written down the CDOs kick in and wipe out Wall Street which would require another bailout of the banking system.

Mr Roberts points out that we have US Treasury Secretary Geithner who is a Goldman alumn. In Europe we have Mario Draghi who is now President of the European Central Bank, but was Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International. In Italy you have the newly appointed Prime Minister Mario Monti who was a member of Goldman Sachs Board of International Advisers.

So Mr Robert's theory is that Goldman Sachs organized a blockade of German debt to make a point. The point being that Goldman Sachs and Wall Street don't like the idea of a write off of sovereign debt and that they really want Germany to bail out those nations. They want a bail out of those nations because they will in effect be a bailout of Wall Street. If Wall Street has to make good on those credit default swaps, well, they can't make good on those credit default swaps. They would be bankrupt and have to get a US Government bail out.

There are parts of Mr Robert's piece that I disagree with, but the basic analysis is thought provoking and sounds plausible and reasonable.

Either the Germans bail out Europe and save Wall Street or they don't and the US Government has to bail out Wall Street. With the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street what are the chances that the US Government can bail out Wall Street? Pretty poor, so Goldman Sachs should be crapping bricks right now. Incidentally yesterday we had the Federal Reserve and six other central banks issue an open credit line to Europe's banks because Europe is in the process of having a credit crunch as investors flee the Euro and refuse to lend to European institutions. Even the Chinese have loosened banking requirements to allow Chinese banks to help. We never fixed the problems behind the financial industry collapse in 2011. Wall Street still has credit default swaps covering bonds of dubious stability. Wall Street doesn't have the money to cover the losses. Wall Street will need a bail out. Luckily Goldman Sachs owns the US Treasury and can organize a favorable response for Wall Street. This time however they will do it in a way that makes it difficult for the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street to be properly offended.

Truly the corruption runs deep.

Felix Salmon: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/29/hank-paulsons-inside-jobs/

Paul Craig Roberts: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/28/just-another-goldman-sachs-take-over/

Closing Down the Occupy Camps

2011-11-30T05:59:00.002-05:00

The government is doing the Occupy Movement a big favor right now. By using the police to close down the camps it means that they go out with a bang instead of a whimper. The camps out served their usefulness. They can be a symbol going forward as the movement transforms itself; because it is transforming itself. The symbol and the narrative of the symbol will be strengthened by the current police action.

What does Occupy Wall Street want?

2011-11-28T06:34:00.003-05:00

Naomi Wolf has a thought provoking opinion piece over on The Guardian. There is certainly some aspect of a conspiracy theory in there.

Wolf's piece can be pretty much summed up as "OWS wants to stop the political corruption in America and over influence of money in politics." I believe that if you step back from OWS and apply some reasoning that ultimately that's the point. Rich people elect the politicians, the politicians enable the rich people to make huge sums of money by removing regulation, and the politicians make a lot of money riding the coattails of their wealthy benefactors. We're not talking rocket science here. It's a self propelled system of corruption. And to assume that the police wouldn't be used by an oligarchy to suppress dissent is naive. Very naive considering the historical record.

SMOC at Anna Maria Protesters

2011-11-27T09:46:00.007-05:00

SMOC (South Middlesex Opportunity Council) is looking at moving temporarily into the Anna Maria facility at Main and Goddard in Worcester. About a half mile from residential Leicester. What their moving is their triage center. The triage center has the distinction of processing and temporarily housing a number of people on the sexual offenders list.

Saturday, November 26th, the residents of the Grand View neighborhood which is across Main Street from the Anna Maria facility protested. There were maybe a dozen protesters at the corner of Goddard and Main. They had a considerable number of signs including one that suggested Bill Eddy should resign. I think it had written on it, "Bill Eddy Resign, You Knew."

I lived in that neighborhood for about ten years before moving to Cherry Valley. I remember when the city was interested in putting in an access road to the airport and had it running right through that neighborhood. The neighbors organized quickly and protested hard under the acronym ROAR. Maybe I just have a long memory (I do actually), but it would seem that the city would have learned a lesson there. It would seem that they would have learned that this neighborhood needs to be engaged early and often to build support and understanding. But that wouldn't really be Worcester. So now Worcester is once again faced with trying to bully an unwanted project into that neighborhood and faced with protest. I'm sure the residents feel that the City Council fully represents them. Hence the sign that Bill Eddy should resign.

So there was a protest yesterday against moving the SMOC triage center to the Anna Maria facility. There were about a dozen protesters that I could see. There were a good number of signs and many of the residents have signs on their lawns right now. I was half hoping to see something in the Telegram today, but I didn't see anything.

Sorry I don't have any pictures.

Worcester Telegram

2011-11-26T08:35:00.003-05:00

A few years ago I let my subscription to the Telegram expire. I only ever received the Sunday edition. The writing was poor and the paper itself wasn't particularly informative. Recently I decided that I wasn't informed well enough about local news so I subscribed to the paper again. Just the weekend edition. I don't need seven day delivery. I didn't have high expectations that the Telegram had improved. My low expectations have been met. The Telegram is actually worse than I remembered. I don't feel any more informed than I did before. And their national and international and business coverage is sparse and truly horrible. Anyone reading the Telegram and thinking they are even remotely aware of current events has been completely flim-flamed. I realize the subscription price is ridiculously low, but they should be giving this tripe away.

We're more alike than you think

2011-11-25T16:11:00.003-05:00

We are all born of mothers. We all grow older. We all become sick. We all die.

Along that path we all have the opportunity to practice empathy and compassion. You can't have one without the other. But the first step is to understand that we are more alike than you think.

Facebook

2011-11-24T09:17:00.007-05:00

I used to be a pretty heavy Facebook user, but my usage has dropped considerably since the last batch of changes and announced changes. My original reaction was really over reaction to just how much Facebook is tracking web usage. Facebook's business model has been to track all your activity and then sell that information to advertisers and also create targeted ads back to you which they present to you when you log on. In my researches after the announced changes I learned that they also add a persistent cookie to your computer to track any pages that you visit even when not logged onto Facebook. Visit a site with a like button on it and it reports back to the home office. Most people don't know and don't care, but quite honestly I don't need Mark Zuckerberg knowing everything I do on the web. Facebook claims to be about the social nature of the process, but it's just a marketing tool that violates privacy of the unwary. My favorite is the Facebook smartphone application which is always on and always tracking your movements. It's one thing for Verizon to be able to triangulate my position. It's another thing for Facebook to do it.

Coincidentally I'm fine with Google because Google is honest about what it's doing. Google wants all the information. That's their mission. They are honest that they gather it and produce marketing based on it. But I still wouldn't load a Google app on my phone.

So I dropped my Facebook usage for over a month to zero. A total Facebook detoxification. I now use it to maintain a couple groups I administrate. And when I do use it I clear all my internet files before and after using it. And you know what? I don't miss it. I'm mainly back to pre-Facebook levels of interaction. If I give a rat's ass about your life I probably have your email address or phone number or see you on a regular basis. If I don't, then I don't need to know what you had for dinner.

With the latest direction for Facebook I'm going to miss it even less. This whole thing about posting what your doing on various sites in real time or creating a timeline of your Facebook activity. "Use our music partner which will report all your music usage to Facebook where we'll use it to build more ads for you and we'll share all the music you listen to with your "friends."" It's a bit over the top for me. I actually do like privacy. I also only share certain things with certain people. One of the things that Facebook is failing to remember is exactly what most of the relationships on Facebook are about. Facebook utilizes weak relationships. Weak relationships are those similar to the people you knew in high school and haven't seen in fifteen years. Or the friend of a friend. They aren't the people you see regularly and have coffee with. They are the people you haven't seen in twenty years and would spend five minutes getting caught up with before going on your own way. So Facebook wants me to share every little piece of my life with these folks. Well it isn't going to happen. I'm not interested in sharing every piece of music or every article I read with everyone I've ever met.

There are articles I share with everyone. Mainly they get posted here where the world can see them. What I use for a replacement is Google+. Google started using the slogan "how sharing works in the real world." Google+ isn't posting everything you do to your connections. Google is still doing the tracking behind the scenes but they aren't exposing it to everyone. I read a lot. More than most people would even consider. I read varying view points and varying analysis. I share those things that I consider worth sharing. I read a fair amount of crap and maybe 5% of what I read is a worthy gem. And then maybe half a dozen people might be interested in that one subject. My former friends from high school are probably not that interested in a detailed analysis of the Eurozone crisis, but my friends in Europe are. So I don't need everyone to know I've read a Eurozone article and I might want a few people in Europe to see it and have discussion. Same goes with a lot I read about religion and philosophy. This is real world sharing and where Facebook totally fails it. I share with people I want. Not everyone.

So the new business model for Facebook is to expose you naked to your acquaintances and use you directly to market their business partners. The best way to opt out of that is to opt out of Facebook.

When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

2011-11-23T06:03:00.003-05:00

David Frum wrote the piece entitled "When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?" in New York Magazine. David Frum is a conservative pundit and I'll quote what he wrote about his conservative chops:

I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration.

The article is well worth reading: http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/.

Congressional Super Farce Meets Expectations

2011-11-22T06:01:00.010-05:00

The Congressional Super ~~Committee~~ Farce has met expectations. They have failed to reach agreement on their mandate and thus have failed. This was expected at least by me all along. The Democrats said all along that they wanted to raise taxes on the high income earners. The Republicans said all along they refuse to raise taxes on the high income earners. The Democrats have said all along that they were willing to discuss cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for higher taxes on the high income earners. The Republicans have refused all along to consider higher taxes on the high income earners. Where's the middle ground? The Democrats are willing to concede their most cherished programs and the Republicans are willing to concede nothing.

The next chapter in the Super Farce is for the Republicans (and probably a large number of Democrats) to attempt to modify the original deal in which the Department of Defense would get hit with a large cut if the Super ~~Committee~~ Farce failed. So that's the closing act really in this play. The first act was the laughable Debt Ceiling ruckus over the summer that nearly left the United States in default. The second act was this Super ~~Committee~~ Farce. The third act is an attempt to remove the penalty for failure. It's a farce in three acts.

In 2000, at the end of the Clinton Administration, the United States had a budget surplus. We had a booming economy. Then in 2001 a Republican entered the White House. The Republican controlled the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. They could pass any bill they wanted. They could have slashed government to bare bones. What did they do? They cut taxes which resulted in a drop of revenue of $4 trillion over ten years and which returned the country to deficits. They then passed the Medicare drug coverage plan which added to the deficit. The US then engaged in two unfunded wars also increasing the deficit. All under the Republican watch. This all happened when Republicans controlled all of government. They could have put the country on sound fiscal footing, but they didn't. They squandered the Clinton surplus on tax cuts, programs, and unfunded wars.

Since then we've had the economy collapse. Just before the collapse of the economy the Democrats took the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans still held the White House. The White House pushed for a bail out of the banks because the economy was quite frankly on the verge of total collapse. Then the Democrats took the White House. With the economy in a total route the Democrats passed a modest economic stimulus package of about a $1 trillion spread over two years. The Democrats also bailed out the US auto industry. These added to the deficit. The auto industry bail out has pretty much paid for itself already. The economic stimulus helped stabilize the economy though it obviously hasn't brought things back to normal.

So over the last ten years you have two stories. The Republicans control the House, Senate and White House and they run up the deficit. The Democrats control the House, Senate and White House and they work to prevent the economy from total collapse. The Democrats are rewarded by losing the majority in the House of Representatives to the Republicans. The same people who ran up the deficit after cutting taxes. Apparently they ran partly on a platform of deficit reduction. Obviously based on their track record.

So now we have the Republicans in control of Congress. The Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House. The Republicans absolutely refuse to raise taxes to lower the deficit. The Republicans are willing to cut spending on social programs, but not defense. The Democrats are willing to cut spending on social programs, defense and willing to raise taxes. But no deal can be reached because the Republicans, who created this blasted deficit in the first place, refuse to raise taxes. By the way, even if you cut all the discretionary spending in the US budget you still couldn't balance the damn thing. You have to have tax increases. But the Republicans refuse. They claim to be about deficit control, but they created the deficit. They claim to be about deficit reduction, but they refuse to consider higher taxes to increase revenue.

I'm left with one conclusion the Republicans don't really give a damn about the deficit. It's a useful political tool. The Democrats are willing to fix the deficit, but the Republicans just aren't all that interested. Oh the Republicans say they are, but they aren't.

If you exercise your rights you will be pepper sprayed.

2011-11-19T16:04:00.003-05:00

The above image is taken from http://i.imgur.com/J3AE5.jpg.

Just to make the point a bit more there's video:

My understanding is that during the peaceful Occupy protest at UC Davis the police came to tear down tents and the campus police decided that the easiest way to clear a path was to pepper spray students who were sitting in their way.

The Nazis were Christians

2011-11-18T20:05:00.004-05:00

Interesting historical analysis about Nazism and religion. They were also anti-Darwinism. Basically they believed that the Aryans were direct descendants of Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. I've come across a lot of analysis and historical writing on World War II and pre-WWII Europe. I don't remember coming across analysis that focused on the Nazi beliefs in religion vs Darwinism. Very interesting read.

http://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/nazi-racial-ideology-was-religious-creationist-and-opposed-to-darwinism/

Do you really want deficit reduction?

2011-11-17T18:53:00.005-05:00

I can get you $4 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years and you don't have to do anything. That's right $4 trillion over ten years. Let the Bush Tax Cuts expire. Not just the ones on the rich, but all of them. That's right. The Bush Tax Cuts will cost $4 trillion over the next ten years and they're set to expire on their own at the end of 2012. All you have to do is let them expire and most of the deficit will disappear.

Occupy Wall Street Eviction

2011-11-16T05:56:00.003-05:00

Matt Yglesias has an interesting take on the eviction of OWS from Zucotti Park.

Mr Yglesias writes:

...there are only a few possible ways for a protest to end. One is something like this — the cops come in and get rid of people. A second is something like the Powers That Be sit down to negotiate an end to the standoff in a way that involves giving in to some or all of the protesters demands. The third is for the protests to simply fizzle out as people lose interest.

He concludes:

The worst possible outcome is for the movement to just kind of fade away, and by trying to forcibly clear the park with the NYPD, Bloomberg has guaranteed that won’t happen.

I have to agree with his take. If the OWS protest had broken up because it got cold and snowy and people chose to go home where it was warm and dry the movement would have fizzled out. But because a billionaire politician who made his money on Wall Street decided to use force to push them out they remain relevant. Matter of fact Mayor Bloomberg made their point. Wall Street owns the politicians and Wall Street will be taken care of. The other 99% of society only matters in that we keep the toilets clean and water running, oh and we continue to consume products to ensure that the 1% continues to accumulate massive wealth. Oh yeah, and we'll throw in that the 99% better do this quietly otherwise Wall Street will have their purchased politicians bust your ass.

Congressional Super Farce

2011-11-15T06:17:00.006-05:00

The Congressional Super ~~Committee~~Farce is now a little more than a week away from having to deliver. Their mandate is to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over ten years. The latest information floating out is that they would come out with spending cuts and unspecified revenues. The revenues would then be decided in committee. This is what they'll say fulfills their mandate and they will declare success.

The Super Committee has always been a Super Farce and this sort of thing just adds further proof. This isn't fulfillment of the mandate. This is kicking the can down the road. Remember that the rating agencies have already spoken about this process. They have already said that failure by the Super Farce to come up with a proposal that cuts spending and increases revenue will result in a downgrade to the national credit rating.

The Republicans, as previously noted, have already suggested that they would change the law that created the Super Farce which would force automatic spending cuts to defense and social programs so that no impact to defense would occur. So the Republicans would have nothing in the line of fire when the Super Farce fails.

So here we have it. A week to go and the Super Farce is almost certain to fail in it's duty. The Republicans are already preparing for failure by removing the penalty that they would pay when it fails. And the credit rating agencies have already telegraphed their next move. Further downgrade. None of this is surprising. The Republicans have never been honest traders in this process. The deficit is not their top priority. Remember that Senator Mitch McConnell expressed their number one priority which is to ensure President Obama is a one term president.

Meeting of the Boards

2011-11-14T06:04:00.004-05:00

Leicester is holding a meeting of the boards on Tuesday November 15th at Town Hall. The meeting starts at 7:00pm. This will be a joint meeting of the School Committee, Board of Selectmen, and Finance Advisory Board. The Town Moderator will also be in attendence.

This meeting is to start discussion of the FY2013 town budget. In June, when I was still a School Committee member, we had a similar meeting which was the first time in a couple years we had done one. If I had won re-election I would have been School Committee Chair this year and at the June meeting I had committed that if re-elected I would have committed the School Committee to attend. I'm glad the current Chair, Mark Armington, has gone ahead with that. I'm also glad that the Town Moderator is involved early in the process this year.

When we left things in the Spring the School Committee agreed to two percent cut to the school budget and the Board of Selectmen agreed to the School Committee using prepays on the FY2012 budget. We used a sizable amount of stabilization and free cash to balance the budget. The two percent cut was supposed to carry the town through the next couple years, so now with the start of the FY2013 budget season we can see where all that fell. Also there's the question of how much free cash was certified by the state. I really need to email someone to get the free cash number.

I will not be in attendence at Tuesday's meeting. I have prior obligations on Tuesdays and there's no way I can attend a Tuesday meeting.

Meeting Notice: Leicester Convention of Boards, November 15th, 2011 at 7:00pm.

Recall Petition Fraud in Wisconsin

2011-11-12T21:50:00.004-05:00

Mother Jones has a post about a plot to perpetrate fraud in the recall petition drive in Wisconsin that is about to kick off. The interesting thing here is that the plotters of said fraud are purportedly conservative activists. According to Mother Jones the site PolitiScoop first posted this. It's a series of screenshots of Facebook posts by the plotters.

I do hope they used their real names and the their friends and co-workers get to see what scumbags these people are. It's one thing to disagree politically with someone, but to plot fraud with a legal democratic process is morally reprehensible.

According to Mother Jones a spokesperson with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board has stated that tampering with petitions is a felony punishable by a fine of $10,000 and a prison term up to three-and-a-half years.

Elizabeth Warren Volunteer Event in Worcester

2011-11-11T08:27:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Warren has an event scheduled tomorrow in Worcester for volunteers. You can sign up at Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts. You'll get an email with the specifics.

Rick Perry Goes Kaboom.

2011-11-10T06:04:00.004-05:00

Not much more to add to this:

Here's a link to my last Rick Perry post: Rick Perry is Flailing.

Old and Poor in America

2011-11-09T06:01:00.004-05:00

Reuters has an interesting article about Baby Boomers reaching what should be retirement age and discovering that they can't afford to retire.

One woman is quoted as saying, "to me it would almost be a welcome blessing to know that I would die rather than to be old and have to live in poverty."

According to the article it's likely that most middle-class workers will live in or near the poverty level when they're older. The average yearly payout from Social Secutiy is about $14,200. The poverty level for a single person over 65 is $10,458 per year. $14,200 per year.

There's one guy who is reported as getting $1,261 per month in Social Secutiy benefits. He pays $980 per month in rent, utilities and car insurance. That comes up to $11,760 per year and leaves $3,372 for everything else. Everything else includes food. $50 per week for food costs $2,600 per year. Leaving $772 per year for everything else. The funny thing is that he considers himself middle class. I'm sorry sir, you aren't middle class.

I often hear Social Security referred to as a entitlement. I'm sorry. Social Security is not an entitlement. Retirees paid into Social Security with direct taxes and decreased compensation in the form of the employer paid portion. Referring to Social Security as an entitlement is insulting to the hard working people who paid into a government pension system in hopes of one day retiring. Older people in America do not have an easy time.

The Baby Boomers are the first group in America since 1930 who will have a worse time in old age than the previous group. America's progress for the retired in 80 years is to back step and lose ground. It's a disgrace and if it's left to the Republicans (and some Democrats) in Washington it's agoing to get worse since they're already sharpening their knives to cut into those lush benefits that seniors receive. All so that they can refuse to increase taxes on people who can afford it. It is a serious disgrace.

Liquidity Trap

2011-11-06T15:23:00.005-05:00

Brad DeLong has a really good post on his site explaining the liquidity trap in economics. The liquidity trap is an intermediate economic theory, but a cornerstone of depression economics. It also happens to be what we are living in right now.

DeLong writes:

Hicks, one of the clever young Brits dotting i’s and crossing t’s in the writings of John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, was responsible for the workhorse formulation of Keynesian economics -- the IS-LM model -- that has been the bane of many an intermediate macroeconomics student. It was his version of the IS-LM model that formalized and elevated a key insight: that interest rates paid by creditworthy governments would remain low after a financial crisis. This formulation holds even in the face of enormous budget deficits that greatly expand the supply of government bonds.

A financial crisis initiates a sudden flight to safety among bondholders -- widening interest-rate spreads, diminishing the private sector’s desire to sell bonds to raise capital and encouraging individuals to save more and consume less as they, too, hunker down. Thus bond prices rise, and interest rates drop. As rates fall, firms see that they can get capital on attractive terms and so issue more bonds; households see the low interest rate earned on their savings and lose some of their desire to save. The market heads toward equilibrium.

Safeguarding Wealth

But something else happens on the path to equilibrium. The decline in interest rates and the rise in savings are accompanied by an increased desire among businesses and households to safeguard more of their wealth in cash. As a result, the speed with which cash turns over in the economy, the velocity of money, falls. And as the velocity of money falls, total spending falls, workers are fired, and their savings evaporate with their incomes.

Thus the equilibrium turns negative, with high unemployment and low capacity utilization.

In responding to a small financial disruption, the Federal Reserve can inject more money into the economy by buying bonds for cash, increasing the amount of cash so that even at the lower velocity of money we retain the same volume of spending. This eases the decline in interest rates, spending, employment and production into a decline in interest rates alone.

Little Difference

But when rates become so low that there’s little difference between cash and short-term government bonds, open-market operations cease having an effect; they simply swap one zero- yielding government asset for another, with their hunger to hold more safe, liquid assets unsatisfied.

This is the liquidity trap.

How do you get out of the liquidity trap? Well, read DeLong's article.

There are a lot of people out there who have been talking and talking and basically don't understand basic macroeconomics. Most of them appear to be very sensible on the surface. They speak in what appears to be common sense. The only problem really is that they don't understand macroeconomics at all. What is common sense in dealing with your household economics is not common sense in dealing with macroeconomics. That's why we have two economic fields of study: microeconomics and macroeconomics. It's also why people who have sound economic advice for the household and business have really poor advice for nations. The CEO of GE may know what economics make sense for GE, but he has no clue what makes sense for the US. People don't understand macroeconomics and they listen to people making statements that make sense in their limited household economics viewpoints and make the huge mistake of assuming that what makes sense in their kitchen makes sense on the national level. It's a huge mistake and it's cost this nation dearly over the last four years.

Over the last few years there has been a witch hunt in this country. Educated people are vilified as elitist. This at a time when we keep hearing politicians tell us that people in the US need better education. We call for better education even while vilifying the educated.

Leicester Fall Town Meeting, November 8th

2011-11-05T09:31:00.006-04:00

Leicester Fall Town Meeting is Tuesday November 8th at 7:00pm at town hall.

There are really two reasons for fall town meeting. The first is to balance out the previous fiscal year's accounts. This is a standard thing and should include the announcement of the certified free cash amount. I'm interested in the free cash amount given the rancor over last year's budget negotiations. I haven't heard what the amount is and the state won't post it until late December or early January. I know what I thought it would be based off my budget analysis last year, which if you discount some hyperbole was pretty close to right. It could have been announced, but I don't have Charter cable and I don't read the Telegram, so my information on what happens at the Board of Selectman meetings is limited to the Spencer New Leader and The Daily Leicester.

The other reason for the fall town meeting is to vote on the solar array bylaw drafted by the Planning Board. The Planning Board has taken the approach of measured deliberation which I completely support. I have a big criticism of the town leaders of Leicester in that they don't think in the long term. Decisions are made out of immediate need and with limited consideration of how things will be in twenty, thirty or a hundred years. At the end of the 19th century the leaders of Leicester sold a big chunk of the town including most of the water resources to Worcester. Now all we have to show for it is a lot of land that can't be taxed. Decisions need to be made with the long term in mind. When I took wood shop in high school one lesson stuck in my mind, "measure twice, cut once." If you cut a piece of wood short you can't make it longer. Zoning is like that. If you allow something today, then you set a precedent for tomorrow. Government policy in general is like that. If you screw up a policy by not planning the long term then you've set a precedent that is hard at best to break in the future.

So I support the Planning Board's approach. As for the financial articles they're mainly housekeeping and I've never disagreed with those and don't see a reason to disagree now.

The warrant is available on the town website: http://www.leicesterma.org/STMNOV/Warrent%20-%20ADV%20BRD%20recommendations.pdf

1 in 15 Americans Living in Extreme Poverty

2011-11-03T20:01:00.002-04:00

There are 46.2 million people living in poverty in the United States. There are 20.5 million Americans living in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as a single individual with an income of $5,570 per year or a family of four with an income of $11,157 per year. 20.5 million Americans is 6.7% of the US population. This from a report in The Guardian.

Coincidentally Reuters today had a report about the Republicans blocking a $60 billion bill to repair bridges, highways and other transportation systems that was part of President Obama's job bill. It would have put construction workers back to work and the unemployment rate among construction workers is 13.3%. Why did the Republicans block this? Because it was paid for by a 0.7% (zero point seven percent), seven tenths of a percent, tax increase on those making more than $1,000,0000per year.

So there are 20.5 million Americans living on incomes less than $11,157 per year, but the Republicans will not raise taxes on those making $1 million per year by seven tenths of one percent.

In October Republicans rejected a bill that would have provided $35 billion to keep 400,000 teachers, fire fighters and cops on the job.

Protecting the 1% in America is far more important to the Republicans than anything else with the possible exception of, as Mitch McConnell put it, ensuring President Obama is a one term President.

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/us-poverty-data-poorest-poor

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/usa-congress-jobs-idUSN1E7A22A920111103

School Dontations

2011-11-01T06:14:00.003-04:00

Occassionally I take a look at the keywords on Google that direct traffic to this site. Occassionally I feel like I need to post specifically to a keyword search I see that I know I haven't answered. This one was "Leicester MA school donations." Here's the deal on school donations. I spent four years on the Leicester School Committee and we never refused a donation. The School Committee needs to vote to accept a donation.

Where things get a little uneasy are donations dictated to support a particular program. Especially a program that the School Committee has cut to support other programs unless the donation is sufficient to fully support that program. Say you wanted to donate $500 for Middle School foreign language. Well, $500 won't hire a teacher and Leicester cut Middle School foreign language, so it would be a donation that wouldn't be particularly helpful. Sorry to say it, but it's true.

Donations to support an existing program or sufficiently generic donations are always good and always accepted. A donation for "Primary School art supplies" is sufficiently generic and targeted to existing programs. Same goes for "Middle School athletics."

If you're interested in donating to the Leicester Public Schools the process is simple. Send your donation to the school or to the central office. If you have a particular existing program that you want to support then just attach a letter. The check should be made out to the Town of Leicester (all LPS money goes through the town accountant and is deposited in town controlled accounts) and stipulate on the memo for Leicester Public Schools. In the letter indicate what program you are donating the money to support. It's pretty simple. The School Committee will then vote on accepting your donation for the purpose stipulated.

Super Committee? Super Farce.

2011-10-29T09:34:00.005-04:00

It was reported this week that Senator John McCain has indicated that if the Super Committee fails and the fallback of defense cuts plus government program cuts are enacted that he will push to change things so the military cuts don't happen. McCain is quoted as saying, "If there is a failure on the part of the super committee, we will be amongst the first on the floor to nullify that provision. Congress is not bound by this. It’s something we passed. We can reverse it." So the Republicans are already talking about removing the one part of this that is a penalty to things they want if this fails. That's negotiating in bad faith.

Why would anyone expect anything different from the Republicans. They have negotiated in bad faith since the beginning of President Obama's term. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, summed it up, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." The deficit? The military? The economy? Veterans affairs? Not the top priority. It's all about ensuring President Obama fails. Once upon a time we would have considered that treasonous. Now it's just politics.

So to no one's surprise the Republicans have engaged in bad faith negotiations. This Super Committee was created with consequences for failure. The Democrats would see hits to the programs they protect. The Republicans would see hits to their pet programs. But now the Republicans are talking about changing the law that created the Super Committee to remove their negative consequence. And they're talking about it while the negotiations are underway. This undermines the negotiations at best and destroys them at worse. Which might be the goals. After all the Republicans have already vowed that increased taxes can't be on the table. Oh, they'll increase fees and Medicare co-pays, but not a single dollar in taxes.

Well kids the only way to balance the budget is with a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. Anything else is failure. And waiting in the wings are the rating agencies who have already signaled that they'll be ready to downgrade US national debt when, not if, this process fails. This super farce is going to fail because the Republicans don't want any success. They would rather blow it up than take it off the table for the 2012 elections. Because ensuring the ~~country fails~~ President fails is their top priority.

Income Disparity 1979 and 2007 or The 1% Scores Big

2011-10-27T06:05:00.007-04:00

The Congressional Budget Office has a study about income trends between 1979 and 2007.

There's a pretty cool graph:

This is after transfers, which would be things like the earned income credit and food stamps, and Federal taxes. The CBO indicates that there are two primary impacts on this distribution. One is that transfer payments to the lower incomes fell during this period. The other is that Federal taxes also fell during this period.

As the chart indicates, between 1979 and 2007 total after tax and transfer income for the bottom 80% of society fell. For the group between 81% and 99% it was essentially flat. For the the top 1% it rose considerably. Basically what you see is a shift of income distribution from the bottom 80% of American society to the top 1%. The only group getting ahead in American society right now is the top 1%. That's really all you need to know to understand Occupy Wall Street.

Here's an important thing to remember. Between 1979 and 2007, a period of twenty-nine years, we had Republican Presidents for twenty of those years: Ronald Reagan 1981-1989, George Bush I 1990-1993, George Bush II 2001-2009 (terms begin and end in January).

Rick Perry is Flailing

2011-10-26T06:09:00.004-04:00

The fact is that the more that Republican voters hear of Rick Perry the less they find to like. Rick Perry has always been the candidate of the religious conservatives. Michele Bachmann is the candidate of the Tea Party. Strike that. Herman Cain is now the candidate of the Tea Party. Mitt Romney is the candidate of the Republican establishment. Everyone else is an "also ran". Sorry Ron Paul, but the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party isn't enough of a base to be considered a contender.

Back to my point. Rick Perry is flailing. The religious conservatives are not going to get a candidate elected. The secret of the matter is that though Christians outnumber everyone else in this country there really aren't many that are religious conservatives. There are millions, but millions in a nation of 300 million people really aren't enough. Otherwise Rick Perry doesn't have much but a nice suit and a good haircut. Mitt has a nice suit and a good haircut and he's educated and articulate to boot.

Rick Perry's latest thing is to come out with a flat tax. That was exciting when Ross Perot supported it in 1992. And when Steve Forbes supported it in 2000. What this really comes down to is Rick Perry grabbing for a floatation device. Herman Cain has gained traction with his 9-9-9 scheme. Cain rose in the polls. So here we have Perry yelling, "me too." "Hey, look at me, I have an even simpler approach. Flat tax." Seriously. Flailing. There's just not much there. Perry's campaign reminds me a lot of Fred Thompson in 2008. Come in late, get a lot of press, then collapse.

Here's the deal kids. The Republican nominee is going to be Mitt Romney. The Republican Party hasn't come to grips with this, but they will.

The 1% or Better Yet the 0.5%

2011-10-25T05:44:00.005-04:00

I'm a regular reader of Charlie Stross' blog. Charlie Stross is a science fiction author and explores interesting topics on not only science fiction, but technology, politics, and general futurism. A favorite topic in science fiction is space colonization. In the most recent entry to the blog, A cultural thought experiment, Charlie discusses what type of society might be able to produce the technology and provide the types of capital (money) for colonization of space. It's a very interesting read and I encourage you to peruse it. Charlie has one of the coolest blogs on the interwebs.

Out of this current post I'm going to cherry pick some items because he sums up the 1%, er, 0.5% of American society based on what they can afford.

Charlie writes:

The top 0.5% have a minimum income of $0.5M/year if they're working, and assets close to $2M if retired. Mostly they ~~make~~ earn over a million a year: strikethrough deliberately added, because they are typically workers in the financial sector, CEOs in public corporations, or the odd lottery-winning anomaly (one of the first hundred hires at a successful IT company like Microsoft or Google or Apple).

He continues:

Examine the world around us from the point of view of someone with a net income of $5M/year ...

Food is essentially free; you can afford to spend $1000 per meal, three meals a day, in the most expensive restaurants in London or Tokyo or Manhattan, and not make a dent in your income. (Oddly, even the hyper-rich don't typically spend $1000 on lunch every day: a more realistic expectation might be to dine out expensively twice a week, for $100K/year, and have the best of everything in-house the rest of the time, with a live-in chef, for another $100K/year.)

Clothing is essentially free; want a different $5000 suit for every day of the week? That's going to set you back only $35K! Spouse wants a dozen designer evening gowns a year? That's still going to be on the low side of $200K.

Housing is essentially free; $1000/day will rent you a penthouse suite in a five star hotel in Manhattan, while your mortgageable income will let you buy a palace in the $5-20M range. (There are places where you may need to spend more than $20M to buy a house; but not many of them.)

You don't have to do housework, interior decorating, cooking, driving, DIY home improvements, flight booking, or shopping (unless you want to). People can be hired to do any of the above for rates ranging from $15K to $100K per year, depending on the complexity of the job. And you earn $100K per week.

Travel: you have a car, or cars. Any cars you like. And a driver and a mechanic, either full-time employees or time-shared via an agency or a very exclusive garage. When you fly, you either go first class via the express security lane, or (airports are tedious) your driver takes you straight to the steps of the biz jet you hired. You are probably not rich enough to own a jet of your own, without making sacrifices elsewhere, but you can certainly afford to hire one once or twice a week.

Education: you, and/or your children, can afford any education you like, without having to go into debt to fund it. Even if the kids aren't that bright, you can afford to hire tutors to push them in just the right direction. And the high end universities where the children of the rich go to learn how their social class networks usually look kindly on a donation in six digits to their trust.

Law: you can afford the best defense lawyers, period, and meet any reasonable bail conditions. There's no guarantee that you can't be prosecuted and imprisoned if you break the law — especially if you commit high crimes against the 0.5% (Bernie Madoff springs to mind) — but the system can be bent, if not broken, on your behalf.

Now remember, Charlie isn't writing about income disparity in the United States. What he's writing about is what kind of society could afford space colonization. The 1%, or the 0.5%, can afford space travel today. Virgin Galactic is offerring a flight into space for $250k when they start launching. A whole world of 1%ers (rich people, not motorcycle gangs) can afford space colonization. They have the resources that a planet such as we live on today simply lacks.

My point in referencing Charlie's blog is different. My point is simply to focus on how different the 0.5% live compared to the other 99.5% of society. According to the US Census Bureau the median household income in the United States in 2009 was $50,221. Household income is all wage earners in a household and is pretax. Median is to indicate that this is the point at which half the households fall below that number and half above it. It's literally the median (middle) point. The top 1% has little in common with the bottom 50% or really the bottom 99%. The top 0.5% has even less in common with the 99% and not much in common with the other half of the 0.5%.

Here's an better comparison. The US poverty level for a family of four is $22,350 per year in household income. In 2011 approximately 15.1% of the US population lives in poverty according to US standards.

Climate Skeptic Validates the Math

2011-10-22T16:35:00.003-04:00

A big story making the rounds this week is about a climate change skeptic who set about with money funded by the Koch brothers to disprove the math behind reports showing increases in global temperature over the last fifty years. I'm linking to an article posted at Mother Jones by Kevin Drum, Climate Skeptics Take Another Hit.

Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, started a study of global temperatures over the last century. The Koch Foundation gave him $150,000. They studied land temperatures in the first part of the study. The conclusion is that land temperatures have risen over the last hundered years and that the rise has increased dramatically over the last thirty years. This pretty much matches what other studies have shown. A study of water temperatures will follow. The study does not attempt to point to a cause. It simply studies the effect.

So here you have it. A Koch funded study that agrees with the previous studies that global temperatures are increasing. Global temperatures are rising. The fact that they are rising in lock step with human activity should be a really good clue as to the cause. It doesn't take a rocket science or a physicist to put one and one together to make two. Now is the time to act. The world is going to start using more green solutions for energy and technology uses. Energy efficiency, green technology, and green power sources are going to be a growth industry. There's a lot of money to be made here over the next fifty years. A lot of money.

Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It

2011-10-19T19:01:00.001-04:00

Linking to emptyage.com and Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It.

http://www.emptyage.com/post/11591863916/generation-x-doesnt-want-to-hear-it

Suze Orman on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-16T20:13:00.005-04:00

Suze Orman posted her endorsement of Occupy Wall Street:

I want to publicly say thank you to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thank you for not accepting the status quo. Thank you for not assuming there is nothing to be done. Thank you for rattling the cages. Much coverage of Occupy Wall Street has cast this as the beginning of something new. That’s only partly true. What I find so encouraging is that Occupy Wall Street’s more important message is that this marks an end point. An end to just shrugging and putting up with the inequity. An end to patiently waiting for government to get its act together and take steps to reduce the pain felt by millions of Americans who are unemployed, the millions more who are underemployed, and the millions more again who worry that if we indeed slip into a double dip recession they will soon become unemployed. An end to letting Washington just continue further down its dysfunctional dark hole without being called out.

Yeah, I stole this post from Paul Krugman.

If you read Suze Orman's post that's linked above you can read her thoughts, but I'm adding mine which in some ways coincide with her's.

One criticism that a bunch of assholes levy against the Occupy Wall Street people is that they aren't offerring solutions. Well, then don't have to offer solutions. They are pointing out the problem. The politicians and the big brains that the politicians have access to need to come up with the solution. They need to be held accountable and they need to be pushed. This draws attention to a lot of problems with the biggest being economic inequality. The "haves" have a lot and the "have notes", well, there are just a hell of a lot of them.

One of my professor's in college used to say that the most dangerous thing in the world is a kid with a bachelor's degree and no job. To paraphrase the most dangerous thing in the world is an educated kid with no prospects for the future. The kids graduating college right now are coming out into a world with no prospects and a hell of a lot of student loans. That's an awful lot of dangerous people. The politicians and people in power, the 1%, have been served notice. There's an awful lot of discontent. The Tea Party aren't the only ones with a problem. The Occupy Wall Street folks are going to be an awful lot harder to co-opt by the oligarchs than the Tea Party was. The Tea Party was conservative and accustomed to authoritarian direction. Occupy Wall Street is far from accepting of authoritarian leadership from the oligarchs in America.

It is now 2011. The GDP of the United States has not risen back to the level of 2007. This remains a depressed economy and we have the Republican Party refusing to pass any legislation through the Senate. They've effectively turned the Senate from a majority rule to a 60 vote rule body. They block everything. Most of the President's nominees haven't been confirmed because the Republicans have blocked them from coming to a vote in the Senate. Remember it was Mitch McConnell who said after the last Congressional elections that the number one job of the Republican Legislators was to prevent President Obama from getting a second term. Their number one priority was not fixing the economy. It was making sure President Obama failed. When the President fails the country fails. The plan for the Republican Party is for the failure of the United States so that President Obama doesn't get re-elected.

Occupy Wall Street doesn't have one or two points or a clear list of demands because there's so much broken and wrong. All you can do is rally and protest and point out that all of this stuff is broken and someone has to fix it. The politicians and their lust for re-election have broken the system completely. The Republicans Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the Democrats have been having a fire sale for twenty years. To expect protestors to have the answers is bullshit and only an asshole would think that way.

Job Creators and Job Creation

2011-10-15T21:01:00.009-04:00

In business any money leaving the company is an expense and you increase profits by managing expenses. Expenses need to be minimized and controlled. Some expenses are justifiable to create sales. You have to buy raw materials to create goods to sell. It's important to control the costs on those raw materials to ensure profits are generated. You can't sell goods at a loss for very long. You'll go out of business. Salaries are expenses to the company. Salaries are what you pay employees. Guess what folks. Employees are expense centers. Mr Employee you are an expense to your employer. And expenses need to be minimized.

Here's the deal. Is it the role of companies to create jobs? Replace the word jobs with expenses. Is it the role of companies to create expenses? No, it's not. When do companies create or increase expenses? To increase purchases of raw materials to make additional product. When do companies make additional product? When there's demand for their product. When do companies increase expenses? When there's demand for their products that exceeds current supply. When will companies add more workers to their payrolls (expense structure)? When there is sufficient demand for their products to require the additional head count to produce or sell those products.

GDP is currently below the level that it was in 2007. That means not much demand for goods and services. Until demand for goods and services reaches the level it was in 2007 don't expect companies to add staff. They have too much capacity and adding to the expense side of the equation only makes business sense when it's offset on the income side. Until companies see sales increase (which is the same thing as improved demand) they don't have the income generation that would require or justify an increase in expenses.

There will be additional jobs added to company payrolls when sales increase. When will sales increase? When there's demand for goods and services. Consumers account for a huge piece of the pie in the United States. Consumers are tapped out and either lacking money or focusing on paying down debt. There's not much increase in demand coming from consumers right now. Companies aren't buying much right now either. They're sitting on an estimate $2 trillion in cash, but they don't have the sales demand to justify investment in capacity to increase production. Companies are focused on expense minimization. Government is in the process of cutting budgets with the Republicans in Congress focused entirely on reducing government spending. So that's three sources of demand (actually the only three sources of demand in our economy) that are not increasing demand for goods and services.

Companies increase capacity when there's demand for their product in excess of the current supply. Demand is not increasing and as it stands is likely to decrease. Of course if demand for goods and services were to increase and sales were to increase then there would be a reason to increase expenses. There would be a reason to hire additional staff. So there's how you add more jobs. You increase demand for goods and services.

Masonic Open House 2011

2011-10-14T05:59:00.003-04:00

As previously posted Saturday October 15th, 2011 is open house day at Massachusetts Masonic Lodges, also known as Square and Compasses Day. Every Lodge building will be open in the state from 9:00am to 3:00pm. This also extends to all the other New England states for the first time. If you're curious about Freemasonry, what the interior of a Lodge looks like, or interested in learning what it takes to become a Mason just drop by.

Here's the website for Joel H Prouty Lodge in Auburn: http://www.joelhproutylodge.org/.

Elizabeth Warren

2011-10-12T05:57:00.003-04:00

Vanity Fair has an excellent article about Elizabeth Warren. Professor Warren, if you aren't aware, is running for US Senate here in Massachusetts. Professor Warren's father was a janitor and her mother worked in the catalog order department at Sears. She was the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college and earned a legal degree. During her work she did a lot of research into bankruptcy and then banking. That research led her to become an advocate of the middle class. During the course of her career she went into teaching at colleges. She's currently a professor at Harvard. Not bad for the kid of a janitor.

Read the Vanity Fair article: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/11/elizabeth-warren-201111. It seriously good stuff and gives not only a primer on Professor Warren, but also a really good narrative on the financial crisis in 2008.

A lot of people feel that Wall Street and the banks got off scott free after the financial crisis. They got bailed out and didn't have to pay for what was essentially a complete collapse and bankruptcy of the banking and finance system. Well, Professor Warren is trying to hold them accountable and to prevent a repeat. And she's running for US Senate. I'm voting for her. No question about it. I'm supporting her and will campaign for her. No question about it. I'll donate money to her. No question about it.

"We cannot run our country without a strong middle class. We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class,” she said, her voice quavering slightly. “If we hollow out the middle class,” she said, “then the country we know is gone.”

Elizabeth Warren for US Senate

Masonic Open House 2011

2011-10-05T06:16:00.003-04:00

Every year the Masonic Lodges of Massachusetts are opened to the public for a day. On October 15th from 9:00am to 3:00pm the Lodges of Massachusetts will have the annual open house. If you are curious about Freemasonry in general or interested in learning how to become a Freemason you can drop by a any Lodge in the state and learn more. Additionally it is my understanding that all the Masonic Lodges in New England will be open that day for the first time.

The website for the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts has more information and a directory of Massachusetts Lodges at http://www.massfreemasonry.org/.

I'll directly plug Joel H Prouty Lodge in Auburn. If you've ever driven by and were curious about the Lodge come on in. http://www.joelhproutylodge.org/

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-01T13:07:00.002-04:00

Occupy Wall Street is now in its third week of protest. This is a group of protestors in New York City protesting against corporate excess and the financial industry. There are hundreds of protestors involved, but for some reason it doesn't get much press. If there were six people and one had a tri-corner hat and a musket CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC and ABC would be covering it on the evening news as a big Tea Party demonstration. The fact that there are hundreds of people protesting Wall Street and it's on its third week barely gets any mention.

Yahoo has an article posted, http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/photos-occupy-wall-street-protests-enter-third-week-203202652.html.

https://occupywallst.org/.

Solar Energy Farm

2011-09-30T06:15:00.006-04:00

The Daily Leicester reported on a proposed solar energy farm in Leicester. According to the article the company approached the Economic Development Committee which endorsed the concept and passed it to the Board of Selectmen who also endorsed the project. Both are requesting fast tracking by the Planning Board.

I haven't leafed through the Zoning Bylaws but I don't recall anything in there about solar farms. Typically the Leicester Planning Board uses a conservative approach with taking the time to figure out how a project applies to the various zoning laws and bylaws and sometimes drafting a new bylaw prior to endorsing something new. My thought here is that it's a good approach to use in general. Move slowly so that you don't build in problems. My suggestion in this case would be to move the planning of the project ahead in concert with reviewing the zoning laws and crafting a zoning bylaw. That way your using this particular project as a model for the future. At some point you'll have crafted the plan for this particular project and also a draft zoning bylaw. There's no reason it can't be fast tracked and closely monitored by the planning board.

Leicester currently has the solar energy project on the school buildings and police station. Building a solar energy farm in Leicester is a smart project. Leicester is a solar friendly town and can be further solar friendly. The financial arrangement is very similar to the current plan with the school buildings which I supported as a School Committee Member. So I have no issue with the arrangement here. I assume the Board of Selectmen have run the financial numbers to ensure that it's in the best financial interest of the town. Cheap power is an attraction, but what I don't know is if this increases the tax base or if this is a similar project to the municipal building solar arrays which does not increase the tax base. Additionally a solar farm that is only visited a couple times a year by company employees seems like it might be attractive for vandals or party people looking for a secluded spot to have a good time. I have to imagine the police or highway would have to frequent the area to ensure it's safe and secure. All of that needs to be part of the financial analysis.

So that's where my thinking is on the project. Planning Board should fast track and create a new bylaw in tandem with the project planning. Board of Selectmen need to do actual financial analysis with an actual cost benefit analysis. I don't know if there is a requirement that this go before Town Meeting, but I think so since it's a multi-year contract, but even if it doesn't have to it should go before Town Meeting before commitment. I've often found that when someone says we need to move fast or we'll lose out that there's a catch they don't want to talk about. When I hear it from a sales person I think twice; when I hear it from a politician I think thrice.

Facebook

2011-09-26T20:19:00.003-04:00

Facebook is one of the scariest sites on the internet.

In case you haven't heard. Facebook tracks your internet activities even when you aren't logged onto Facebook. Nik Cubrilovic provides the details on his site. Basically when you log off Facebook it sets cookies on your computer to track you on the internet and when you interact with websites with a like button in it then the information gets tracked.

Most people are aware that Facebook isn't free. You pay for it every time you use it in the form of giving away your personal data. That personal data is pretty valuable. The personal data tied directly to your web activities is immensely valuable. It's worth a lot more than $5 or $10 a month in user fees.

Beer and Wine Tasting Fundraiser for the Library

2011-09-26T05:59:00.002-04:00

The Daily Leicester has an article about a beer and wine tasting fundraiser for the Leicester Public Library:

The Wine and Beer Tasting will be held from 1:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct 16 at Castle Restaurant at 1230 Main St. in Leicester. Tickets are available at Leicester Public Library at 1136 Main St. or by contacting Teena Cherry - 508-892-3056 or Liz Brown at 508-753-5345

The cost of the event is a donation of $30 (before event) or $35 (at door).

Class War? Part Two

2011-09-25T09:44:00.005-04:00

Truth Out has an excellent commentary on the Republican claims of class war. One point that's made which doesn't necessarily have to do with class war is that, "last Friday, the US Federal Reserve reported a record quantity of cash on the books of US businesses (hoarding over $2 trillion)." $2 trillion in cash, but the Republicans claim that they need more tax cuts to start creating jobs. Seriously. They want to cut business and corporate taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare to give corporations sitting on $2 trillion in cash more cash to sit on. All that coming from support for the poor and middle class. Tell me that's not class warfare already occurring. The Republican party has been waging class war for a generation and they've been kicking the asses of the middle class and poor to funnel ever greater sums of wealth to the rich.

Dailyfinance.com had a nice write up of the class war claims by the Republican Party. They point to Replican Representative John Flemming of Louisianna commenting that, "that he only netted $600,000 in 2010, and just couldn't afford to pay higher taxes. Asked if his position might seem unsympathetic to workers who make $40,000 a year, Fleming responded: 'Class warfare never created a job.'" The article then goes on to quote Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's August comment about the social contract, "You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

The Republican Party has spent a generation waging class war against the poor and middle class and have completely broken the social contract in America. They've destroyed our ability to fix even our most basis infrastructure. They took a budget surplus under President Clinton and turned it into a massive deficit under President Bush to provide huge tax cuts to the rich. They pound the drum on the issue of the deficit that they created and don't really give a damn about and then refuse to ask the rich and wealthy to contribute more to reduce that deficit, but they'll ask the poor to shoulder it through cuts to Social Security and Medicare cuts. All of this to ensure that the oligarchs of America amass more and more wealth.

There is class war in America. The Republican Party is waging on behalf of the wealthy. And they've been winning.

------------------------

Truth Out, "The Truth About 'Class War' in America": http://www.truth-out.org/class-war-issue/1316617081

Dailyfinance.com, "Elizabeth Warren Shoots Back on GOP's 'Class Warefare' Charge": http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/22/elizabeth-warren-shoots-back-on-gops-class-warfare-charge/

Class War?

2011-09-23T21:47:00.006-04:00

"Yes, there is a class war. And my side is winning," Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett for anyone who isn't aware is a multi-billionaire (he's rich).

A couple charts. I know I stole one from Jared Bernstein's site and I think I stole them both from there.

OccupyWallSt.org

2011-09-21T06:20:00.003-04:00

There's a group of protesters on Wall St that have occupied a spot of land and are planning on sticking around for a while. They're posting at a blog at https://occupywallst.org/.

Interesting additional piece is that Yahoo was apparently blocking emails that included a link to the protest site. Yahoo says it was a spam filter setting, but spam filters don't usually work that way.

From Senator Bernie Sanders

2011-09-20T06:27:00.003-04:00

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont posted this on Facebook:

The US has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country in the industrialized world. During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion and are collectively worth over $1.3 trillion. Today, the top one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90% and earns more income than the bottom 50%. Meanwhile, a record-breaking 50 million Americans have no health insurance and nearly 44 million Americans live below the poverty line.

Buffet Tax

2011-09-19T06:15:00.003-04:00

The "Buffet Tax" is basically an alternative minimum tax on millionaires. The President is expected to announce today in a presentation on his deficit reduction plan to the deficit reduction committee in the Legislature just such a measure. Reuters has a report on what's known so far. The idea here is that millionaires would be required to pay at least the same rate as the middle class.

Naturally the Republicans are already coming out against it. That's normal for Republicans. They talk tough about deficits, but at the end of the day they really don't give a damn about the deficit. What they care about is protecting the wealthy and especially the oligarchs. That's really it. That's what the Republican Party has been about for a generation. Protect the wealthy and increase their share of the wealth. So the Republicans will always come out against anything that would impact the ability of the wealthy and the oligarchs to continue to amass huge wealth and power.

So the Republicans will claim they care about the deficit, but when it comes down to a choice between cutting the deficit or protecting the rich they will always side with the rich. They know who will take care of them when they leave office with nice six figure jobs and stock options.

Leicester Mother's Club Applefest

2011-09-18T10:56:00.002-04:00

The yearly Leicester Mother's Club Applefest will be held on October 15th from 10:00am to 3:00pm at the High School. The Memorial School kids have tickets for purchasing of bags of apples, so if you know a Memorial School kid please offer to buy a ticket for Applefest.

Couple Financial Articles on the Internet

2011-09-17T08:59:00.004-04:00

Just came across an article on The Atlantic website entitled "The Quiet Coup" which was written in 2009 concerning the US financial industry. There's really nothing new in the article. It's supported by an awful lot I read over the last few years elsewhere. Some of the forward facing statements have proved slightly off, but not entirely incorrect. It's really an excellent piece of analysis and worth reading today.

The other article was written by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. This is an op-ed that is on The Washington Post site titled "What Wall Street doesn't want us to know about oil prices". Again this is one that shouldn't be news to a lot of people. I applaud Senator Sanders for his courage to take on Wall Street. In the article Senator Sanders details the speculation by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs in particular in the oil market and the amount it's increased the price of a barrel of oil. This is another one that's supported by a lot I've read the last couple years and also some stuff I've read recently.

What both of these have in common is pointing to how thoroughly corrupted our political and financial system has become over the years by Wall Street oligarchs. Oligarch isn't something that is typically used as a word of description in the US, but it's well past time that it becomes a standard part of our political discourse. We have oligarchs and they've completely corrupted the political system. We will not have meaningful change in America until the corruption is ended.

"The Quiet Coup" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/

"What Wall Street doesn't want us to know about oil prices" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-wall-street-doesnt-want-us-to-know-about-oil-prices/2011/09/14/gIQAiOodVK_story.html

Unemployment Insurance and Job Seekers

2011-09-16T05:49:00.002-04:00

Something I see out and about, especially with conservative writers, is that unemployment insurance discourages job seekers from taking jobs which keeps unemployment from going down. Elephant dung. Here's the deal. Unemployment insurance will help an unemployed person from taking the first crap job that comes along. An unemployed CPA would traditionally stay away from a job as a McDonald's restaurant worker. Nothing against the McDonald's restaurant worker, but the CPA has a skillset that would lend itself to higher wage scale work. Now unemployment insurance means that the CPA can say no and wait for a better fit. That occurs.

Sometimes you will get some lazy ass son of a bitch who views unemployment as a vacation, but those are really exceptions to the rule. A normal statistical sampling of any group would produce a bell graph with outliers at either end. Some folks would refuse unemployment insurance at one end and some view it as a vacation at the other. That doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bath water.

What I see a lot is the elephant dung being spread that states that unemployment creates a moral hazard for job seekers. Serious elephant dung. It does not. It prevents families from slipping into poverty. That's the purpose and that's what it does.

More people taking lower wage and lower skilled jobs will not create more jobs. What's preventing businesses from creating more jobs is lack of demand for goods and services. It is not, I repeat it is not lack of workers in the labor market. Corporations are sitting on over $1 trillion in cold hard cash and not investing it. They aren't lacking the money to move on hiring. They are lacking demand for goods and services. There are millions of people across the country currently unemployed. Hiring is not occurring because of lack of demand for products, not because we need extra millions looking for jobs.

So lets get this load of elephant dung shoveled up and put in the trash where it belongs.

Leicester Harvest Fair 2011

2011-09-10T13:47:00.001-04:00

The Leicester Harvest Fair will be held September 17th, 2011 starting at 10:00am on the Common at Washburn Square.

How to become better informed on the issues

2011-09-05T10:21:00.005-04:00

Stop watching daily news. Stop listening to daily news radio. Don't consume broadcast opinion shows on radio or television. Stop reading the daily newsppaer.

Seems kind of weird that my advice on how to become better informed would be to stop consuming media, but my suggestion is that you stop consuming daily media.

What I do suggest is that you start consuming monthly sources and perhaps professional journals.

Why monthly over daily? Because the monthly sources take time to do indepth analysis and research. The dailies don't. They're just trying to scoop each other and build ratings. The monthlies aren't trying to do that. They're trying to inform and sometimes educate.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in there you need to have an open mind. Be prepared to learn things that don't conform to your preconceived notions. Learning is easy if you are willing to learn. If all you want is confirmation of your own opinions then don't bother with my advice.

Town Politics

2011-09-03T11:18:00.002-04:00

Still taking a vacation from town politics. Pretty much just waiting for the free cash certification to be announced and fall town meeting. Then I'll wade back into the fray. I've been enjoying my break.

Leicester Drive-in End of Season

2011-09-01T06:13:00.003-04:00

The Leicester Drive-in closes out it's 2011 season this weekend. According to their website the last night for the Leicester Drive-in is September 4th. If you haven't been, then this is your last chance to get out before the end of the season. If you have been out there this year this is your last chance to go again. The Leicester Drive-in is family and locally owned. The owners have been fantastic to Leicester.

Supply Side and Employment

2011-08-27T08:00:00.003-04:00

There's been a zombie argument out of the supply side economics ranks that's been floating around for months. The argument goes that forcing people into the job market and increasing the supply of labor will ... lead to more jobs being created. It fails common sense never mind actual economics or even simple business logic. The last two years with 9% national unemployment should prove that simply because people are looking for work doesn't cause job creation. Businesses hire based on their productivity needs. If they need to increase supply of their goods or services, then they hire to increase productivity. They don't hire just because there's an additional supply of labor. What they might do is decrease wages because, well, the supply of labor exceeds the demand for labor. When supply exceeds demand you see a decrease in the going price for whatever is being supplied. That decrease tends to accelerate as the supply increases. I have no clue where the supply side argument on job creation came from, probably just applying the original supply side arguments to the labor market. Basically if your going to accept a fallacy as true, then it's not a big stretch to apply that fallacy in other areas. The idea that an increase in unemployment could spur job creation just completely fails the test of common sense.

WSJ Editorial is a Heaping Load of Dung

2011-08-20T09:09:00.001-04:00

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial yesterday that is quite frankly one of the biggest pieces of crap I've ever seen, "Why Americans Hate Economics" by Stephen Moore. The logical fallacies that pervade this load of dung are amazing. The fact that it appears in the Wall Street Journal is impressive. The author of this is either a troll or a moron. I'm not sure which. Probably both. I'm not going to pick it apart since I would be here all day.

Truly a big steaming heaping pile of crap that came out the back end of an elephant.

Republican Field of Presidential Candidates

2011-08-14T09:44:00.003-04:00

Scanning the field of candidates out there for the Republican Party I would say only one has a chance of beating President Obama in the general election. Huntsman is the man, but I don't believe he can win the primary. He's too moderate for the Republican Party and he's refused to sign onto the list of pledges which would handicap his decision making ability. The rest can win the base and hence the primary, but they won't attract sufficient moderates to unseat President Obama. Neither of the two parties represent a majority of Americans. Candidates have to attract independent voters who are in the main moderate voters who vote for candidates and not party affiliation. Many times the vote for the lesser of two evils. Compared to Obama all the Republican candidates, except Huntsman, would be the greater of the two evils. In Obama vs Huntsman I would give the contest to Huntsman. In Obama vs any other Republican currently in the race I give the contest to Obama.

Who Sets the US Budget?

2011-08-06T12:21:00.010-04:00

There's been a lot of chatter over the last couple weeks from the Republicans about "not giving President Obama a blank check." Since yesterday the same Republicans have been calling for the Secretary of the Treasury resigning. Okay, so this debt cieling debacle is owned by the Republicans in Congress. The debt reduction bill that was passed this week is their creation. The refusal by the Tea Party to compromise is all Republican. The Democrats gave the Republicans and the Tea Party everything they wanted. What got passed is a Republican bill. They need to accept ownership. Secondly they need to accept ownership for the budget. Why do they need to accept ownership? Because Congress authorizes appropriations and deficits. When Congress passes a budget they know if it will require borrowing to support. The budget they passed requiring a deficit to support. Approptiation bills start in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives has a majority Republican and Tea Party coalition in charge. That means the budget that required a deficit to support started in the Republican controlled House and they knew a deficit was needed to support it. So they need to suck it up and own. Trying to shift blame to the President and Secretary of the Treasury is pure bullshit now matter how they want to plate it.

At the beginning of this session of Congress the US Constitution was read. Apparantly no one was paying attention. Here's are some quotes from the US Constitution:

Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"
Article I, Section 8: "To borrow money on the credit of the United States"
Article I, Section 9: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

Those three quotes mean that Congress sets the tax rate, approves borrowing, and sets the budget. Congress. Not the President. Not the Secretary of State. Congress. Congress is responsible for the size of the budget and Congress is responsible for the deficit. Congress is responsible for the current debacle over US finances. And the majority in the House of Representatives where all spending bills have to originate is Republican. The Repubican Party is currently in the drivers seat of the budget situation and no matter how many times they try to push responsiblity to someone else they legal responsiblity falls back on them. Maybe next time they read the Constitution at the beginning of Congress the Congress should pay attention. This is stuff I learned in 10th grade.

The S&P downgraded the US credit rating agency yesterday. They didn't do it when the Democrats held Congress. They did when the Republicans nearly caused a default due to a refusal to compromise. I don't give a damn how someone wants to spin it the fact of the matter is that the US Congress is responsible and the Republican Party is the majority in the House of Representatives. This is the responsibility of the Republican Party and they need to take ownership. And no I'm not willing to forget about the balanced budget under President Clinton that turned into a deficit under President George W Bush and the Republican controlled House of Represenatives and US Senate.

Republican Deficit Reduction Plan

2011-08-04T17:49:00.002-04:00

The Republican Party got their way and their deficit reduction plan was passed into law.

Currently we're in a depressed economy since our GDP has not returned to pre-recession (2007) levels. Even though we aren't technically in a recession we are in a depressed economy. The main reason for this is lack of demand. Now in order for suppliers of products to increase production they need demand. It's a simply fact of business. No demand, no increased production since you can't sell your product without demand. You can continue producing, but you'll over fill the market and cause price deflation which won't help you at all since you'll be selling below the cost to produce. No one wants to sell below the cost to produce. So we're in a demand depressed economy.

Economics 101 tells us what composes demand in a market. There's three sections to demand: business, consumer and government. Consumers are tapped out and working to reduce their debt load and increase their savings rate. They're concerned about losing their jobs so they aren't spending. The savings rate is something like 5.4%which is quite high for Americans these days. Businesses aren't investing. There's not enough demand too invest and get any sensible return on investment. That means they aren't hiring which causes consumers to worry more and spend less. Consumers spending less causes business to avoid investment. So business and consumer are not buying and not creating demand. Government has been holding up most of the demand, but the Republicans just rammed through deficit reduction legislation which will require cuts in government spending. Cuts in government spending mean reduced demand. See where I'm going?

We're in a depressed economy caused by a lack of demand for goods and services. The Republican Party just pushed through legislation to reduce government demand. That's going to further erode the depressed economy as the government spending that businesses have enjoyed dries up. The likelihood of a renewed recession has gone up considerably. Matter of fact from many of the indicators that I pay attention to I would think it highly likely we'll be in recession before the end of the year. And yes, the fact that a lot of people are catching onto this will speed up the drying up of demand as consumers and businesses buckle down. Please remember to write a thank you note to the GOP.

Raise the Debt Cieling

2011-07-31T09:56:00.002-04:00

The US Government had $36 billion on hand at close of business Friday. That amount of cash won't be sufficient to carry it through Wednesday. Wednesday's Social Security payments would put the government in negative balance. Without raising the debt ceiling and allowing borrowing there is no way for those payments to be made.

That's just Social Security.

Speaker Boehner has had his fun kowtowing to the Tea Party and protecting his job as Speaker by creating legislation that the Democratic Senators and Representatives can't accept. Now is the last chance to pass something that a majority of Representatives and Senators can accept. A majority. Not the vocal and unruly minority that is the Tea Party. That means Democrats and Republicans not just the Tea Party. This is about doing what's right for the country, not what's right for his re-election or his Speakership.

Simple Solution for John Boehner

2011-07-29T06:15:00.003-04:00

The Speaker has an unruly caucus within his party in the House. They seem to be really hard to work with and overly demanding. They're causing him nothing but pain. So the solution is simple. Give up on appeasing the Tea Party and start working with the Democrats in Congress. If he worked with the Democrats and stopped the personal attacks on Nancy Pelosi, President Obama and Senator Reed then perhaps he could attract enough Democratic votes in the House to pass a bipartisan piece of legislation on the debt cieling. Yes, it could cost him the Speakership unless he could convince the Democrats to support him for another term, but right now he's being held hostage by a minority in his own Caucus. Serious simple solution. Try bipartisanship and let the Tea Party know that they aren't the only game in town. Heck he might even get something to pass in the Senate if it's has Democratic support in the House.

Leicester Political Activism

2011-07-22T18:50:00.002-04:00

Over the last year or so I've gotten interested in groups like the No Labels. Groups which are focused on trying to bring honest and educated discussion to the issues of the day. Discussion focused not on parties and winning the next election. The organizations spring up in the wake of the over polarization of society and the need to forge policies that reflect values and rational thinking.

I've also been reading The O'Zone blog out of Southbridge which is admittedly not a nonpartisan thing. It's a well written blog and the author's writing on the Southbridge political scene is something. Not something I have any intention of emulating. Just something I find worth reading. The O'Zone had a post recently about a group that was formed to discuss Southbridge politics and issues, a town activist group, and it got me thinking.

Here's where my thinking has gone. Leicester has many fine groups that are devoted to advocating for special interests and devoted to promoting party politics. There's also town focused charitable groups. What's missing is a group of activitists engaged on the issues impacting the town. A group of people learning about the issues and engaging with the politicians to enact policies which better the town. It would focus on Leicester issues and bringing an educated and informed discussion to those issues. It would be there to ask the questions the elected officials might not want asked. It would be there to call them to task when they pander, respond with half answers, or try to shift the focus. And maybe it will be there to support them or challengers to their position in elections. But it will be there to focus on Leicester.

I know there are a lot of people who talk about improving things. They talk in small groups, but they're out there. I want them to come together and start talking together. Here's what I don't want. I don't want people who are just looking to grind an axe. I don't want people who feel they already know the answers. I don't want people who going to come into this with opinions set in stone. What I want are people ready to openly discuss the issues and who are open minded enough to put all the options on the table. If you have an ideology set in stone then this isn't going to work for you.

Maybe this idea will float like a lead balloon, but it's time for the people who want long term solutions for what have been long term problems to come together and define those solutions. It's time for those solutions to have advocates and it's time for those advocates to come together.