Well This is Reassuring

... Chrysler in the hands of Mussolini Obama?

Creditors to Chrysler describe negotiations with the company and the Obama administration as "a farce," saying the administration was bent on forcing their hands using hardball tactics and threats ...

One participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the President is someone to be feared because he was willing to do anything to get his way. The person said this threat was taken very seriously by his firm.

He didn't want to run an auto company.

On Westerns and Health Care Reform

As I listen to the conversations on the radio and read the blogs about how we need to give full health insurance to everyone - that is, give more people more things they haven't earned, I think of the old-style Western where the proud rancher refuses help because it would make him less of a man. No wonder those kinds of movies aren't made any more. Those concepts are alien to us.

Well, Jed, I think it's fine thing that you applied for that armadillo subsidy. And now that the government has paid for your sex change operation, I reckon you can finally put on the performance art piece you've had a hankerin' to do.

Introducing Bodie the Wonder Dog!

Administrative note: This weekend I fell and jammed my right wrist. It's still killing me. Blogging will be light until I have more use of my opposable thumbs and all tools in their bodily vicinity.

Now on with the post!

Yesterday we added a new member of the family, a male, 6-month-old spaniel mix named Bodie. Here he is in all his glory.


The whole family fell in love with him when we met him at the shelter yesterday and he quickly found himself in one of our cars, travelling back to my fiancee's house. He's cheerful and pleasant and seems to be pretty smart.

I have some crazy ideas about how we can still keep our Maximum Leader, but I need to flesh them out a bit more and consider all of their implications. More on that later.

Bodie will eventually need a blogging handle here at The Post. I'm not sure what he'll cover, but that will sort itself out in time.

A Link for Tim

... and anyone else who likes to read about bugs and science and odd stuff.

Dig this. Incredible, no?

The Prudes Pay The Bills, Part II

Hypothesis: Church-going Christians pay the bills when it comes to taxation. The very people scorned by the popular culture are forking over the most money for all the social programs desired by that same popular culture. I haven't had the time to completely work out the math, but it seems right to me. Rather than wait to get it all together, I'm going to develop it in stages. Here's Part I. Now on to Part II.

This update is quite simple. Married people pay the bills. The IRS keeps statistics on this sort of thing and you can browse through them all you like right here. The data shown below comes from 2006, the latest year available on their site.

# of returns with taxable income over $200,000 by filing status:
Married - 3,437,970
Head of household (single parents) - 88,408
Single - 490,631

# of returns with taxable income over $100,000 by filing status:
Married - 13,611,336
Head of household (single parents) - 422,245
Single - 1,977,401

Married people file 85% of all returns with more than $100K of taxable income and 86% of all returns over $200K.

Married people pay the bills.

Aside: The next time you hear a politican rant on and on about how the rich need to pay more, substitute "the prudes" for "the rich." It might be instructive to find one of Obama's speeches and do that substitution ...

Why the Secular Apostate Should Still be Blogging

... because he leaves comments like this one on my post on health care.

You blame the insurance company, but you should blame the law.

First, rather than have a national risk pool, the 50 state insurance commissioners control the health insurance vendors in each state. If your state demands you, as an individual, comprise a "pool" of 1, then the companies cannot spread the risk and they will not insure your health. They cannot, because they cannot estimate the risk for an individual. That's just basic math. The same would be true for your car or your house, were auto or homeowner's insurance treated the same way.

Second, again depending on your state, you may be forced to buy a lot of insurance you don't want. For example, as a single man, you probably did not need maternity coverage. Maternity coverage is expensive. But virtually all states mandate that every policy include it. When I lived in Illinois, all insurers were required to cover acupuncture and chiropracty. I don't have a problem with acupuncturists, chiropractors, or their patients, but I just don't buy into it, and I certainly don't want to pay for it as a part of my insurance bill. But the coverage was a political decision made by the legislature and forced on the companies.

Third, all insurance companies - or the government - must decide what procedures they will cover. In a private market (which, in the US, is restricted to HSAs), coverage is decided by the marketplace. If company X won't cover MRIs and there is a market for insurance that does, it will get covered. In government-run health care, political clout drives coverage. That's why Canadians can be denied treatment for advanced colorectal cancer, but can get sex-change operations. The transsexual community is well-organized and generally supported by the Left, and late-stage colorectal cancer victims simply don't have much political clout. They don't even make giant papier-mache puppet heads for G-20 protests.

So be careful what you wish for. As long as you don't get very sick, national health care works like a charm. It's at the treatment margins where the problems crop up. That's also where the vast majority of the money is spent, which is why the US has the most expensive health care and the highest cancer survival rates (c.f., Coleman, et. al, Lancet - Oncology, V. 9, #8, 2008) in the world (including Australia). It's a redux of the old saw, "Your money or your life!"

They can have my money. YMMV.

Alternately, I can just pirate his comments and put them up here.

:-)

Environmentally Friendly Lawnmowers

Google is now using goats to mow part of their propery. Check it out here.

Are these Briggs & Stratton goats?
H/T: Infectious Greed

Links of the Day

This one from George Will talks about California as the testbed for economic progressives.

If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit, which is larger than the budgets of all but 10 states.

This one from Sherman Frederick deals with that horror from DetroitDC, Zombie Chrysler.

President Barack Obama would do well to remember the simple lessons of this novel (Steven King's Pet Cemetary) as he proceeds to bury the nation's auto industry into the rocky soil of socialism. Dead companies that re-emerge zombies of the state won't behave quite right. They will be new creatures propped up by taxpayer cash, stumbling around in an American consumer system with no fear of the normal consequences of failure. Absent free-market pressures, Obama Motors will produce cars born by congressional fiat (pardon the pun).

On Chrysler and Fascism

First off, I have just about come full-circle on my thinking regarding Obama. Originally, I compared (implicitly) him to Mussolini. Recently, I decided that such comparisons were nonsense. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Obama really is an economic fascist.

Thanks to an outstanding series of podcasts from the von Mises Institute on the economics of fascism, I have a greater appreciation for what this administration is doing. Economic fascism is where you get to keep your private property so long as you do what is in the best interests of the State. In the case of Obama, those best interests include wealth redistribution and stopping what they see as global warming. That Obama is not interested in lebensraum is immaterial. His aims are just as State-centric as those of previous fascists.

First off, it is placing itself above the law. Legally, Chrysler's bondholders should be the first to be paid in any bankruptcy proceedings. By US law, the bondholders should be paid out of Chrysler's assets until they've received 100% of their investment back or the money runs out. The Obama Administration's bankruptcy plans for Chrysler do not accept this law and the bondholders, those not being directly intimidated by the Obama Administration, are suing the government over their illegal takeover and bankruptcy proceedings. Here is an excerpt of an interview with their lawyer, linked above.

Lauria: Let me tell you it’s no fun standing on this side of the fence opposing the President of the United States. In fact, let me just say, people have asked me who I represent. That’s a moving target. I can tell you for sure that I represent one less investor today than I represented yesterday. One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That’s how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence.

Beckman: Was that Perella Weinberg?

Lauria: That was Perella Weinberg.

Instead, Chrysler is being handed over to the president's political supporters, the UAW as well as the government itself who is taking about 10% interest. That 10% interest may not seem like much, but as Wells Fargo has found out and the Italian companies living under Mussolini found out decades earlier, it's all that's needed for the State to control you. Chrysler's bondholders are being offered pennies on the dollar. By US law, they are entitled to 100% of their money back.

When Obama tells you that he doesn't want to be running an auto company, he may or may not be telling the truth. After all, he's also said he will cut the deficit in half, which is nonsense, and that the days of borrow and spend are over, which is also nonsense. It doesn't really matter what Obama says, anyway. His actions are as clear as those of any fascist. While he doesn't want to control your private property, if you refuse to do what he wants, he will control your property until you do.

That is the very definition of economic fascism.

Update: Eva Rodriguez lays out the facts, but doesn't get to the conclusion.

Great New Video for Jon Stewart Fans!

Check this out! It's the best video I have ever linked to, bar none.

Clouds Over the Midwest

I had great window seats on my eastbound flights for my business trip this week. Since I was only going for one night, I opted to not take my Nikon artillery piece and instead brought my daughter's little Canon point-and-shoot camera which almost immediately ran out of batteries because I had neglected to charge the thing.

I got a few photos with the Canon, but this one I took from my Blackberry Curve. I thought it came out quite nicely. The Curve's camera is only 2 megapixels. I'm looking forward to the day when 5 megapixel cameras are standard.

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

How do you Extrude a Cat?

Our Missionary to the Frozen, Northern Wastelands has the answer here.

Blackberry Blogging

I'm at Regan Airport seeing if I can blog from my Blackberry. The browser is pretty serviceable, but I don't know if I can insert an image.

Hmm. What to choose. How about a cloud photo from the flight out here?

Dang. I can't see the upload photo link. I'll have to keep trying that ...

Why Isn't Robert Gibbs Constantly Drunk?

If it's not Obama claimin he's cutting the deficit in half by bloating it up by a factor of four first, it's Joey Biden opining that we should all avoid airplanes, subways and, for all I know, submarines and elevators. Meanwhile, poor Gibbsy has to explain all this claptrap to Jake Tapper*.

Full story here.

* - He'd have to explain it to more people, but the other members of the press are still hoping for a date with Obama.

The Prudes Pay The Bills, Part I

Hypothesis: Church-going Christians pay the bills when it comes to taxation. The very people scorned by the popular culture are forking over the most money for all the social programs desired by that same popular culture. I haven't had the time to completely work out the math, but it seems right to me. Rather than wait to get it all together, I'm going to develop it in stages. Here's Part I.

Dig this.

The mean net worth of married-couple households ($187,102) was substantially higher than that of cohabitant households ($77,093), male-headed households ($92,045) and female-headed households ($48,726), which was the lowest of all family structures.

All those dorks and Melvins who live their lives like it was the Donna Reed show have lots of money. Given our progressive tax code wherein the top 10% pay 65% of the taxes, it's a good bet that those squares are footing the bill for all of our public spending.

Even worse, it's the Christian, weekly church-goers that are probably paying the most. Check out chart of divorce rate vs. church attendance.

Since broken homes correlate strongly with social pathologies, those same creepy Christians are probably using a lower portion of the social services they're paying for.

How hideous. Let's not tell anyone. I mean, what would happen if Rob Zombie or 50 Cent found out about this? It could set our popular culture back 50 years!

How to Make the Poor Poorer

... give them things and expect nothing.

I was listening to the Dennis Prager radio show the other day when he came up with this gem of a concept. As parents, we reward our children, to a great extent, based on performance. A child who gets A's and does their chores is treated differently than a child who gets F's and refuses to help. As a society, our social programs do not make such a distinction. We all know what the results would be if we failed to differentiate between behaviors in our kids, but we don't use that wisdom in policy.

Over at the UK Housing Bubble blog, they've posted a video wherein a British government official has just toured some blighted town and, while shocked at the terrible things she's seen, goes on to discuss how the residents will be further rewarded by the British taxpayer.

If this is anything like one of our own blighted areas such as Oakland, East St. Louis or New Orleans' 9th Ward, the residents have paid for nothing. The rest of society has provided them with housing, food, clothing, transportation, police and fire services, hospitals, a postal service and on and on and on. In exchange for those rewards from us, they've wrecked the place.

This is exactly what you'd get if you did this in your own family. In a hypothetical family situation: If I rewarded my son's A's the same as my daughter's D's, I would end up with a lot more D's. If I rewarded my daughter's cheerful help the same as my son's laziness, I'd get more laziness. In the end, I'd have kids that laid around all day eating junk food, watching TV and not studying.

Whoa! Did that just describe the British and American underclasses or what? Let's see if the statistics agree. The Gini Index is a measure of income inequality. If you've got a big difference between rich and poor (an unjust society!), the Gini Index will be larger ...

Bingo!
As the Great Society programs gave more and more rewards to the poor without regard for performance, income inequality got worse. As the sexual revolution progressed and no expectations were made of parents to get or stay married, income inequality got worse. It's exactly what you would see in your family.

There was greater income equality in the bad old days when people were prudes and dorks and fascist warmongering red-baiting chauvinist tightwad capitalist pig-dogs.

So where do we go from here? What's the solution? Why, national health care, of course! More rewards regardless of performance! How will we pay for it? By taxing the productive! If we keep trying it hard enough, it's bound to work.

Just like it would in your family.

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Hurrah for the WatchMinder!

My daughter has ADD. She is a Russian orphan who spent the first 15 months of her life with very little human interaction until I went over and adopted her. During those first months, the two hemispheres of your brain are making connections and without stimuli, the connections aren't nearly as numerous. This is probably the cause of the ADD, but that's just my theory.

In any case, she and I have spent the last several years tracking down all of her mechanisms of failure at school and stamping them out one by one. For her, it has come down to a combination of a poor vocabulary and a failure to write down her test schedules. Up to now, most of her tests have seemed like pop quizzes as she's forgotten to write down the test schedule the teachers put up on the board. When she takes the tests, many of the questions are gibberish to her because she doesn't understand the words and hasn't studied.

We're working the vocab issue with 3x5 cards and she's nearly got that one licked. The WatchMinder and a written end-of-the-day list is solving the test problem. Here's the blurb from their website:

The WatchMinder2 is a programmable vibrating reminder watch that looks like a standard sports wristwatch - the watch vibrates and a reminder message discreetly appears!

Here's what the thing looks like.


It's wonderful. We created a little message that just says "LIST" and she came up with a list of things she needs to do at the end of each school day. The WatchMinder buzzes her arm about 10 minutes before the end of school and she knows to go through her list. Since the list includes "write down upcoming tests," there will be no more pop quizzes!

Hurray for the WatchMinder!

I had begun to despair of finding a solution to this problem. In the past, I had sworn off vacations for myself and spent all of my annual leave in dribs and drabs picking her up right as school let out to help her write this stuff down. It got harder and harder to do this, so we really needed to find a solution that she could do on her own. This looks like just the thing.

We're both very excited about her future in school now. Her grades have always fluctuated wildly - some tests were As and Bs, some tests were Fs. It all depended on whether or not she studied for them. She wants to do well and never complains about the extra work. She's taken to reading in a big way and has finally caught up with her peers there. This last step has just been killing us and we may have finally solved it.

Thanks, WatchMinder!

Sorry About the Tone of the Blog

Every day I want to change the tone of this blog. I'm getting tired of these endless "Holy @%#^*&, did you see this? This is insane! We're all screwed!" posts. But then I come downstairs, get my cup of coffee and sit down and find out that we've just taken over GM and handed it over to the UAW or we're $2T in debt or we're starting some new game show program where thousands of dollars will be given away to every contestant (person making under some nominal income). I then proceed to beat my head against the keyboard and the typical post comes out.

Sorry about that.