No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for February, 2009

February 20, 2009

Today’s statistic – $2.5 trillion

by @ 18:37. Filed under Politics - National.

Fox News has some disturbing numbers on the rate of deficit spending:

– The January 2009 deficit – $83.8 billion (compared to January 2008 surplus of $17.8 billion)
– The 4-month FY2009 deficit – somewhere over $454.8 billion (which was a full fiscal-year record, set in FY2008)
– The projected pre-Generational Theft Law FY2009 deficit (via the Congressional Budget Office) – $1.2 trillion
– Private economists’ estimate of the pre-Generational Theft Law FY2009 deficit – $1.6 trillion

Once last year’s deficit and the FY2009 portion of the $787 billion Generational Theft Law (for which $0 was budgeted) are added in, between November 1, 2007 and October 31, 2009, the federal government will have spent $2,500,000,000,000 more than it took in over that period. That is almost a quarter of the current national debt (the Fox News story goes further and says it is almost a quarter of the entire amount of debt ever taken on by the Feds).

For those of you who don’t remember Paul Ryan’s warnings before Bailoutpalooza hit (to the tune of roughly $1.6 trillion), it would take a doubling of the amount of taxes taken in to fund the government inside of 40 years to 40% of the GDP (for those of you in Rio Linda, that’s $4 out of every $10 produced by the economy). With Bailoutpalooza, it’s far closer to, and I’ll wager, beyond 50%.

Just Call Me “The Architect”

by @ 5:45. Filed under Politics - National.

I wrote two weeks ago about how President Obama seemed to be having a difficult time moving from Monday Morning Quarterback to that of the real thing.   Since that post and its list of fumbles, Obama has over promised and than hung Geithner out to dry on his attempt to roll out a bank plan.   He’s also tuned up his tin ear and rolled out a mortgage plan that looks eerily similar to one proposed by Congress last year and was summarily shouted down by the public because it appeared to reward reckless to stupid behavior on the behalf of too many of the home owners it claimed to help.

In today’s WSJ, Karl Rove notes the same inability for the Obama team to “get it right.”   Rove ascribes the problem to an inability to govern thus resulting in “winging it” on too many issues of substance.   Rove further states that this is out of character for the Obama who ran a tight, effective campaign:

Team Obama demonstrated remarkable discipline during the presidential campaign. From raising an unprecedented amount of money to milking every advantage from the Internet to grabbing lots of delegates from inexpensive caucus states, they left nothing to chance.

From my reading of his opinion piece, Rove sees the events and reasons for Obama’s foibles thus far similar to what I did with one exception:

The president, a bright and skilled politician, has plenty of time to recover. The danger is that what we have seen is not an aberration, but the early indications of his governing style. Barack Obama won the job he craved, now he must demonstrate that he and his team are up to its requirements. The signs are worrisome. The world is a dangerous place. The days of winging it need to end.

Rove seems to believe that Obama hasn’t yet reached the point of no return and that  Obama can change how he operates.   I agree with Rove that the point of no return hasn’t been reached.   However, I have a different perspective on Obama’s ability to change.

Over the years I’ve worked with several people who thought they were the smartest person around.   Along with a lack of humility, typical traits for these folks are thin skins and a dimissive, “you’re not smart enough to understand,” kind of response when they are asked to explain their logic.

Throughout the campaign, any time Obama was challenged directly he showed a tendency towards thin skin.   Even recently, as he saw the stimulus bill hit road blocks and he had to explain himself,  you could see his thin skinned responses towards any who questioned his analysis.   Dismissive, is there any other word for Obama’s “I won” response?

The other thing I’ve noted about folks who think they are smarter than anyone else is that it is very rare for them to change.   In fact, I can only think of one that I’ve known who has only did so after being dealt a serious personal blow.   My point is that unlike Rove, I don’t think Obama will change.   He’s found success with his current method and will stay with it for better or worse.   That makes me believe that while he hasn’t hit the point of no return, he’s careening down the path to the point and we can only hang on.

The Coming Housing Bubble?

by @ 5:13. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Yes, you read that correctly.   It’s entirely possible that there is another housing bubble coming.

Francis Cianfrocca tries to figure out what exactly the latest, no details included, proposal from President Obama means.

Yesterday, President Obama rolled out “a plan” to help homeowners who are behind on their payments.   Cianfrocca believes based on:

uniformly-enthusiastic reactions of banking-industry executives and spokesmen,

Cianfrocca believes that the $75 billion in Obama’s plan leads directly back to the banks/mortgage holders.

Cianfrocca believes the plan will work as such:

I think the proposal is intended to directly supplement mortgage payments for millions of people (using the 31%-of-pretax-income benchmark for mortgage affordability). There are reports that the plan will somehow facilitate refinancings at lower interest rates, which is somewhat similar in effect. If I’m right, this is effectively the same as reducing people’s mortgage payments (but not their mortgage principal amounts) to a level that reflects current market reality.

Great!   We’ve solved all the housing problems for the low, low price of $75 billion dollars!   Now that we’ve fixed it and we’ve learned from our past, all will be right as rain from here on out!

Um, no:

If the program proves popular, however, look for it to expand. And if that happens, look for the fortunes of the homebuilding industry to recover.

This sounds good, but it’s very evil. We have far too much housing already in this country, the residue of the last housing bubble. If we get another one now due to government deliberately overvaluing mortgages, we’ve set the stage for yet another nasty crash in some future year.

Just one more example where President Obama appears to “Hope” there will be “Change” that will be different than the most likely outcome of his plans.

February 19, 2009

Elections have consequences, Wisconsin edition, part 1

by @ 12:57. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

The following just came in from Rep. Rich Zipperer’s office:

It’s official. The first major piece of legislation approved by the new majority in the Assembly included $1.2 billion of job killing tax increases. And, after 50 separate suggestions to improve the bill were offered by Republicans and each were summarily rejected by Democrats, not a single Republican voted for the tax increases.

The 389 page bill, dubbed by Governor Doyle as his ‘stimulus’ plan, was fast-tracked through the entire legislative process this week in less than 36 hours – a process that normally takes months. Unfortunately, the ‘stimulus’ bill is actually a budget bailout bill necessary because of yet another failed budget that has harmed our economy and failed to meet revenue expectations.

It became clear to me during the floor debate last night why the Democrat leadership wanted to fast-track this bill and deny the public an opportunity to see, debate, and comment on the legislation. The bill does what politicians in Washington have thus far refused to do – raise taxes in the midst of a recession. The Governor’s bailout plan, disguised as economic stimulus, is more accurately a laundry list of tax hikes that will only serve to further damage our state’s financial security and drive thousands of jobs from our state.

In an attempt to turn this package into a catalyst for economic growth and prosperity, I, along with a number of my Assembly Republican colleagues, offered 50 amendments that put taxpayers first and would have actually put stimulus ideas into the bill. Our taxpayer-friendly amendments would have:

  • Halted the $925 million Sick Tax
  • Eliminated $70.7 million in new sales tax collections
  • Exempted over-the-counter drugs from state sales tax
  • Ensured oversight over the federal stimulus money that is coming to Wisconsin
  • Eliminated the iPod tax, a $10.9 million tax proposed by Governor Doyle on digital downloads
  • Turned $1.6 million of earmarks given by Governor Doyle to labor unions into competitive public grants
  • Created an August sales tax holiday for back-to-school clothing shopping
  • Protected segregated funds, such as the Transportation Fund and the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund, from future raids and abuse
  • Stopped a new $215 million job killing tax on businesses
  • Made certain that tax dollars aren’t used to perform abortions
  • Provided immediate incentives for job creators to spend capital on research and innovation
  • Provided immediate tax relief to start-up small businesses

The people and businesses of Wisconsin can and will compete with anyone in the world if just given the opportunity. We have the can-do spirit. Unfortunately, Assembly Democrats stood lock-step with the Governor tonight and refused to accept a single amendment from our side of the aisle.

In this time of job loss and economic uncertainty, we need to make efforts to create jobs and make government accountable to taxpayers our top priorities. We must end the tax and spend culture that has taken hold in Madison. The actions this week by the majority party, however, will only help to shrink our state’s economy, drive jobs from our state, and still leave us with a current budget deficit of $416.9 million – allowing the potential for yet another budget bailout before the fiscal year ends on June 30th.

And this is all before we even begin to debate the over $1.4 billion in additional tax increases sought by Governor Doyle as part of his 2009-2011 proposed state budget.

Slight correction – it’s $2.1 billion of additional tax increases in the Necro-Budget, not $1.4 billion.

Who Knew?

by @ 5:53. Filed under Politics - National.

Democrats like big spending and Socialism!

In the first poll since the signing of the largest, government expanding,  spending bill ever, from Rasmussen Reports:

Democrats grew more optimistic this week, while Republicans showed no change in opinion. More Democrats now say the country is heading in the right direction by a 48% to 41% margin, compared to last week when they believed the opposite was true,by a similar margin. Just 11% of Republicans hold this positive view while 84% say the country is heading down the wrong track.

Drive By Observation

by @ 5:27. Filed under Miscellaneous.

“American Pravda” reports on Nancy Pelosi’s meeting with the Pope.   According to sources at the Vatican the Pope told Speaker Pelosi that

all Catholics"”especially legislators, jurists and political leaders"”should work to create “a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Evidently, this is Vatican code language for an expression often used by the pope when expressing opposition to abortion.

I wonder if Nancy used the bipartisan, New Obama English and explained her position to the Pope by saying:

I won!

So Much For Economic Decoupling

by @ 5:15. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “When the US gets a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia.”   The adage comes from the fact that world economies intertwined and the US, being the largest, influences a lot of what happens in the rest of the world.   Early in this economic downturn several financial experts attempted to argue that there had been a significant decoupling of world economies.   They argued that while issues were deteriorating in the US, other countries, especially China, wouldn’t see the downturn because their economy was much more stand alone.   While the evidence is obvious that these folks were wrong, Marc Faber does a good job of reconstructing events and deconstructing the decoupling myth, in yesterday’s WSJ.

Admittedly, Faber is known as Dr. Doom.   He has had a perspective on US financial management that is less than complimentary.   That said, Faber’s analysis is still spot on.

Faber’s key descriptive paragraph of the events of this downturn is here:

In 2008, a collapse in all asset prices led to lower U.S. consumption, which caused plunging exports, lower industrial production, and less capital spending in China. This led to a collapse in commodity prices and in the demand for luxury goods and capital goods from Europe and Japan. The virtuous up-cycle turned into a vicious down-cycle with an intensity not witnessed since before World War II.

As important as the tear down of the decoupling theory is Faber’s take on what caused this bubble to burst and what is to be learned from our experience.   As to what was the cause, Faber says:

Sadly, government policy responses — not only in the U.S. — are plainly wrong. It is not that the free market failed. The mistake was constant interventions in the free market by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury that addressed symptoms and postponed problems instead of solving them.

Faber rightly identifies the Fed’s easy credit monetary policies following the Dotcom bust as the fuel for the next bust.   By keeping rates artificially low for too long, Faber argues:

The complete mispricing of money, combined with a cornucopia of financial innovations, led to the housing boom and allowed buyers to purchase homes with no down payments and homeowners to refinance their existing mortgages.

Read the whole article.   Faber is correct in his analysis and he is correct on what he sees from the folks who are attempting to “do something” to resolve this problem:

So what now? Unfortunately, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were, as Fed officials, among the chief architects of easy money and are therefore largely responsible for the credit bubble that got us here. Worse, their commitment to meddling in markets has only intensified with the adoption of near-zero interest rates and massive bank bailouts.

Faber’s suggestion for what should be done?

The best policy response would be to do nothing and let the free market correct the excesses brought about by unforgivable policy errors. Further interventions through ill-conceived bailouts and bulging fiscal deficits are bound to prolong the agony and lead to another slump — possibly an inflationary depression with dire social consequences.

All the Fed, Treasury and Congress have done in this downturn is to cause more fear and uncertainty.   They have done nothing to change the arc of the events that they all were a part of creating.   By implementing programs like today’s housing bailout, US financial institutions and businesses will be even less likely to put themselves out to take risk.   After all, who’s to say that tomorrow Congress won’t decide that their business needs to have contracts revoked, rewritten or renegotiated by force.   Until the Fed, Treasury, Congress and President Obama quit making “the rules of the day” don’t expect the US economy to improve or recurrent, wasteful spending to slow down.

February 18, 2009

Freezing Blog Drizzle Advisory expired

by @ 21:38. Filed under The Blog.

This is the Emergency Blogging System. The Freezing Blog Drizzle Advisory that had been in effect for No Runny Eggs has been allowed to expire. The steam that steveegg had has run out.

We now return you to your regularily scheduled schedule of posting.

$1,941 – CORRECTION – $194

by @ 19:06. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

That is the net per-capita annual tax increase in Jim Doyle’s Spendulus budget. Christian Schneider and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute broke down all the tax changes, though I believe they grossly understated the oil tax.

Bonus item – give or take a few million, the $2,185,639,000 represents essentially the entire “structural” deficit portion of the $5,700,000,000 hole Doyle created for himself at the beginning of the year, with the remainder being previously-planned increases in spending.

Revisions/extensions (7:20 pm 2/18/2009) – Somewhere in the bloated reader, I read that the Doyle Spendulus budget still has an over-$2 billion structural deficit pushed over to the middle of 2011. So much for limiting spending.

R&E part 2 (8:47 pm 2/18/2009) – I should have known better than to trust the Craps numbers. They screwed up.

R&E part 3 (6:52 am 2/19/2009 – Speaking of screw-ups, I stuck an additional zero somewhere. Sorry about that.

Is it time to liquidate GM?

by @ 18:04. Tags:
Filed under Business, Politics - National.

In case you haven’t heard, General Motors has requested another $16.6 billion in federal “loans” taxpayer subsidies after burning through its initial $13.4 billion in bailout money. My math says that is $30 billion, which doesn’t include all the billions that GM got for “clean car” research, or its share of $15 billion given by the feds taxpayers to it and the other members of the not-so-Big 3 for plant modernization.

Why is that $30 billion significant? Dave Schuler over at The Glittering Eye (H/T – Doug Mataconis) points out that the value of GM’s assets is roughly $30 billion. That’s right, sports fans. when GM gets its additional bailout money, it will owe the federal government its gross liquidation value. That does not account for GM’s liabilities or the fact that, in a liquidation, the liquidated company does not get its full value.

Given the speed with which GM burned through its initial $13.4 billion from the feds the taxpayers, they’ll be through the next $16.4 billion by summer. Then what? At that point, they’ll owe more to just the feds taxpayers than they can get by going through Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. Do we say at that time, “Okay, we’re in for a pound, we’re in for the ton?” GM won’t even begin to repay the loans until 2012.

Do we say at that time, “Enough! Sink or swim?” Since former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put the feds at the front of the line in the event of liquidation, and since I expect current Treasury Secretary and Paulson acolyte Timothy Geithner to do the same, that would mean none of GM’s other creditors would get paid. Care to guess what would happen to them?

As painful as it may seem, now is the perfect time to tell GM to sleep with the fishes. We don’t have the money to burn (thank you, Obama and the Spendocrats), and at least some of the GM liquidation would make it to its other creditors.

Life doesn’t hand out “A for effort”

by @ 16:06. Filed under Education.

(H/T – Slublog)

The New York Times reports on a bunch of college slackers who got introduced to a bit of grade reality. They seem to think that a failed effort is worth more than a “C”. They should be thankful that the lesson is gentle; once they hit the real world, a failed effort, regardless of the amount of effort poured in, is a failure.

Gassed by taxes

by @ 15:54. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle (D) unveiled his “Back To The ’70s” budget, which features a whole host of tax increases. The largest is a $540 million tax on oil companies. Despite a claim that they will be prohibited from passing it along, it will be passed along, with interest paid to the oil companies from the state once that provision is adjudicated as unconstitutional.

I hope you didn’t spend your $13/week from Obama. More than half of that will be going right to Uncle Craps so he can build roads continue to raid the transportation fund.

Revisions/extensions (8:50 pm 2/18/2009) – The Doyle administration halved the effects. Still, considering all the other taxes that are in the budget, I hope you haven’t spent that $13/week from Obama (assuming, of course, you qualify for it).

Hypocrisy, DNR-style

by @ 15:24. Filed under Envirowhackos, Politics - Wisconsin.

Dr. Emil Shuffhausen found some serious hypocrisy from the Wisconsin DNR (or as Dad29 calls them, Damn Near Russia). Even as they demand that those that own rental properties rip out their current lighting and install high-efficiency lighting, they continue to light up the unoccupied interior of their building like a Christmas tree.

Need to get back in the groove

by @ 15:19. Filed under The Blog.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been too silent lately. I’m still chewing over an epic topic or two, but while I’m chewing, I should fire off some quick hitters.

In that vein, the Emergency Blogging System has issued a Freezing Drizzle Advisory for No Runny Eggs, to be in effect until I’ve emptied out my feed reader.

February 17, 2009

The New Obama English

by @ 5:12. Filed under Politics - National.

During his January testimony to the Illinois House impeachment panel, Roland Burris provided the following:

Rep. Jim Durkin: Prior to his arrest, did you have any conversations with the governor about your desire to be appointed to the seat?

Roland Burris: No.

Durkin: OK. Did you talk to any members of the governor’s staff or anyone closely related to the governor, including with family members or any lobbyists connected with him, including oh, let me throw out some names: John Harris, Rob Blagojevich, Doug Scofield, Bob Greenlee, Lon Monk, John Wyma? Did you talk to anybody who was associated with the governor about your desire to seek the appointment prior to the governor’s arrest?

Burris: I talked to some friends about my desire to be appointed, yes.

Durkin: I guess the point is I was trying to ask: Did you speak to anybody who was on the governor’s staff prior to the governor’s arrest or anybody, any of those individuals or anybody who was closely related to the governor?

Burris: I recall having a meeting with Lon Monk about my partner and I trying to get continued business and I did bring it up, it must have been in September-maybe it was in July of ’08 and you know, ‘If your close to the governor, well let him know that I will feel certainly interested in the seat.'”

Durkin: OK.

(Later in the hearing)

Durkin: At any time were you directly or indirectly aware of a quid pro quo with the governor for the appointment of this vacant Senate seat?

Burris: No sir.

Durkin: Ok. If you were aware of a quid pro quo, what would you have done?

(Burris’s lawyer calls it a hypothetical question and inappropriate. Durkin calls it “highly relevant” and what his response would have been. Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) says his response to something that did not occur was “irrelevant” and “speculative.” Durkin says its “germane” to the hearing and a “reasonable request” of what he would have done. Burris’ lawyer says Burris will respond because he wants to be “clear and open.”)

Burris: Rep. Durkin, knowing my ethics, I would not participate in anybody’s quid pro quo. I’ve been in government for 20 years and never participated in anybody’s quid pro quo.

Durkin: I guess the point is, would you have gone to the federal authorities if you were aware of that?

Burris: I have no response to that.   emphasis mine

Today, in explaining why he felt it necessary to release a new affidavit that says he  had have conversations with Gov. Blag0jevich’s brother and that the brother requested “campaign fundraising help”, Burris stated:

“It was done because we promised the (impeachment) committee we would supplement information in case we missed anything,” Burris said Monday before embarking on trip to talk with constituents. “End of story.”

“There was no change of any of our testimony,” Burris, 71, said. “We followed up as we promised the impeachment committee. … The information that’s being reported in terms of that this was done because of a fed statement is absolutely, positively not true.” (again, emphasis mine)

Since the election of Barack Obama, the word “change” has well, undergone a change.

“Change” used to mean simply “different.”   While change ultimately could be good or bad, there was nothing inherent in the word itself that indicated which of those outcomes the “change” would be.   Since Barack Obama has come on the scene, the possibility that “change” could be anything but hopeful and positive, has been eliminated from the consciousness of the entire left side of the political spectrum.   “Change,” when used by the Left, now means positive, hopeful differences that further the power entrenchment of the particular Left organization or person using the word.

When Burris says “there was no change of any of our testimony,” he is using the New Obama English.   Using New Obama English, his statement does not indicate that his testimony is the same as it was previously, i.e. no different.   Rather, it is the equivalent of using the double negative indicating that his testimony has not gotten better than before.  

Finally, Burris is using “change” in Leftist code.   His use of the word in this context is warning others on the Left that they should not expand their investigation, call for his resignation or attempt to force him from office. Burris is after all, from Illinois and if anyone believes he would go quietly now that he’s reached a seat in the most exclusive club in the world,  without causing collateral damage, well, they’d be hoping for change that wasn’t good and that’s just not what a Leftist in good standing does!

When you really think about it, Burris has good reason to believe his position won’t be in jeopardy.   After all, if the Illinois Legislators accepted an indefinite answer to a specific question about political impropriety, what makes us think that any of the Legislators have gotten significantly smarter in the past six weeks?

“Shovel Ready,” “uniquely qualified” and “worst since the Great Depression” are already words and phrases that have lost their historical meanings with the New Obama English.   “Change,” if not already, will soon be added to the list.   By the end of Obama’s Presidency anyone using these words in other than a satirical manner, will be seen as caricatures of serious thinking individuals.   Come to think of it, that already describes most of the extreme left!

February 15, 2009

THIS is the way to start the season

by @ 18:07. Tags: ,
Filed under Sports.

There’s nothing like going from worst to first in a backup car that had to make an emergency trip back from the shop after being wrecked in last week’s Bud Shootout – Matt Kenseth won the Daytona 500, thanks to a couple wrecks, Kevin Harvick (who repaid the favor Matt gave him 2 years ago) and a rain dance.

Looks like I’ll be taking a road trip to Cambridge tomorrow.

February 14, 2009

Roll bloat – Latin edition

by @ 7:18. Filed under The Blog.

I guess that procrastination is a good thing sometimes. Warner Todd Huston moved Publius’ Forum from a Conservablogs host to his own host, so the time is definitely right to add him or correct your links if you haven’t.

February 13, 2009

Attention those with FeedBurner accounts

by @ 22:27. Filed under The Blog.

Google is finishing its absorbtion of FeedBurner at the end of the month, and as part of that, they are requiring those of us who use FeedBurner to tie it to a Google account. There is a poison-pill incentive at the end of the FAQ:

If you don’t tie FeedBurner to a Google account by the end of the month, you will lose your FeedBurner feed.

Besides the Google account tie-in, they’re stripping away Site Stats (because it competes with Google Analytics, which quite frankly sucks) and FeedBurner Network (because it’s too tied to FeedBurner Ad Network, which was dropped for AdSense).

Beyond that, there’s no changes that should be noticable. There are new addresses for feeds so that they’re on Google servers rather than FeedBurner ones, but the current addresses will redirect to the new ones.

Porkulus picture of the day

by @ 20:22. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

It is somehow fitting that the Generational Theft Act of 2009 will be passed on Friday the 13th. Seco Tributa and Americans for Tax Reform came up with a very fitting movie promo Photoshop.

friday_13th_stim-5_03
Click for the full-size pic

There’s shades of Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams in the credits. Note the transportation and gaffer.

Searchable version of the final Porkulus

by @ 18:01. Filed under Politics - National.

While there are copies of the final version of the Generational Theft Act of 2009 floating around (thanks, ReadTheStimulus.org), I haven’t seen a fully-searchable version of the final version of the Generational Theft Act of 2009 up yet. Specifically, there isn’t a searchable version of Division B, which deals with taxes, unemployment, health, the state bailouts, broadband bailouts, and limits on executive compensation. Since a friend of mine who works with the Senate Republicans, Sean Hackbarth, wanted a PDF copy of the entire bill, I decided to fire up something called PDF995 and create one from the “printer-friendly” version of the conference report on H.R. 1 from THOMAS.

Searchable version of the conference report on H.R. 1

It clocks in at 421 pages and 3.48 MB, so if you want to put it up on your own blog or website, by all means do so. I can’t guarantee that this place will survive any ‘lanches.

Revisions/extensions (6:12 pm 2/13/2009) – Would help if I actually put the pdf file up instead of the html one that I used for the conversion.

R&E part 2 (10:44 pm 2/13/2009) – Let the thieving begin – thanks to The Maine Blunder Twins and Scottish Law, and a taxpayer-financed charter flight that these same ‘Rats blast private enterprise for, the Generational Theft Act of 2009 is on its way to Obama’s desk.

Bumper sticker of the year

by @ 16:35. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

My blogfather Chris has the perfect sticker-sized answer to the Generational Theft Act of 2009, which is in the final stages of setting up for a sink of the fangs into the neck of the economy.

Obama Lied And The Economy Died!

The markets didn’t exactly like the House package, which happened despite bipartisan opposition.

One more tidbit – running with some numbers that Newsmax provided (H/T – Dad29), more than the entire reduction in the cost came from the elimination of tax breaks. They went down from $352 billion (42% of the original $838 billion) to $276 billion (35% of $789.5 billion). That’s a drop of $76 billion, $27.5 billion more than the $48.5 billion reduction in cost.

Comparative Effectiveness

by @ 5:56. Filed under Economy, Health, Politics - National.

Late last week a provision of the Stimulus bill managed to break through the dung and was finally seen in the sun light.   The provision calls for the establishment of a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.  

The Comparative Effectiveness Council is to be established to review medical treatments to ensure that the most effective treatment is being used for the ailment.   Those who support the Council make the argument that it can help eliminate unneccessary treatments for patients thus eliminating costs.   Those opposing it see the Council as being a care rationing group who would not allow life saving treatments for patients that they don’t see as having an economic benefit from the treatment, read that “the elderly.”   This is one of the rare situations where I think both of these arguments are accurate.   I base my conclusion on this article  from the UK Telegraph.

Two years ago, dentists received a new contract under the UK’s nationalized health care.   Prior to the new agreement, dentists were paid much like they are in the US.   They were paid different amounts depending upon the procedure performed.   Crowns and root canals, procedures that are more complex and require extra time, were paid at a higher rate than simpler procedures like standard fillings or simple tooth extractions.

The new contract changed how dentists were paid.   Now, dentists are paid a flat salary and are given targets, that they must achieve, for the number of patients they service.   The result is that there is incredible incentive for dentists to move as quickly as possible through their patient list while treating their ailments.  

The situation with UK dentists sounds an awful lot like the “efficiency” that the new Council is after right?   What could be wrong with that?   A Lot!

Turns out that the number of pulled teeth and dentures sets have risen significantly since the implementation of the new contract.   Why?   Simple!   Because the dentists  get paid no differently for a tooth extraction than they do for a crown, they get paid no differently for a denture than a root canal.   It takes far less time to do a tooth extraction or denture  than a crown or a root canal and, the dentists need to meet with a specific number of patients each day so the shorter the procedure, the more people they see.  

Sounds alot like the dentists are making decisions based on the economic benefit for both them and their patients.   They get paid the same and hey, you can still chew your government provided gruel so what should you as the patient, care whether you get a crown or have your tooth pulled!

I have no doubt that the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research can at the same time reduce costs and provide quality care.   That is, as long as like in the UK, you define “quality care” as being agnostic between a getting a crown and getting your tooth yanked!   That same definition of “quality” will likely not be able to tell the difference between an elderly patient with a heart condition getting a new heart valve or just “making do” because the doctor has other patients to see.

Oh, and for those who think that economic disincentives don’t drive health care rationing, the UK dentists have seen 1.1 Million fewer patients in the two years subsequent to the new contract than they did in the two years prior to the contract.   That looks like rationing to me.   Unless, of course, you think the Brits have suddenly developed a new found love for personal dental hygiene…NOT!

February 12, 2009

You’re Doin’ A Hecukuva Job There Timmy!

by @ 5:59. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

During his press conference Monday evening, Barack Obama was asked a couple of questions that involved the twice delayed announcement of how Treasury was going to work with the second half of the TARP funds.   Obama’s answer was that he didn’t want to steal Geithner’s thunder.   He should have.

Dow futures were down about 40 points at the beginning of Obama’s press conference.   By the end of his conference the Dow futures had dropped about 80 points.   The decline in the futures came immediately following Obama’s refusal to steal the thunder.

Tuesday  Geithner “let loose the thunder.”   Remember, this was a plan that was twice delayed because the Obama administration wanted to “get it right the first time.”   What Geithner layed out was little more than what could be generously called an outline.   There were no details, no time frame, no identification of cost.

Geithner’s “plan” was met with a resounding thud by Wallstreet.   What had started as a nervous day turned into a 400 point rout of the Dow.  

Politicians were equally nonplussed by Geithner’s testimony.   Senator John Kerry’ response:

"We need more details from Treasury on how exactly it plans to remove bad assets while protecting the taxpayer."

and Senator Bob Corker’s response:

“We’ve been here for three hours and 23 minutes and have no discernible idea as to how we’re gonna solve this problem.”

showed that there was disappointment with Geithner’s testimony across the political spectrum.

Corker went on to school Geithner on the   problem of over promising and under delivering:

“I would think that the White House and you all communicate and last night the president said you would be very clear and there would be specific plans.

And today we lost probably a trillion dollars in the market as people looked for those very clear and specific plans and instead heard guidelines and some platitudes. I mean, I haven’t heard today what your commitment is to solving the problem.”

Wednesday, Geithner was back providing more testimony about his plan.   Unfortunately, his testimony provided no more detail than the previous day:

"I completely understand the desire for details and commitments," Geithner told lawmakers today at the Senate Budget Committee in Washington.

In between the two Geithner appearances, President Obama realized he had a problem.   He had either over promised Geithner, didn’t know what Geithner was going to say or thought that his aura would extend to Geithner’s testimony and protect him from serious questions.   I suspect it was a combination of the three.   In any event, during an interview with ABC’s Nightline Obama attempted to paint this as the chattering class not being smart enough to understand what he sees:

Well, you know, Wall Street, I think, is hoping for an easy out on this thing and there is no easy out. Essentially, what you’ve got are a set a banks that have not been as transparent as we need to be in terms of what their books look like.

And we’re going to have to hold out the Band-Aid a little bit and go ahead and just be clear about some of the losses that have been made because until we do that, we’re not going to be able to attract private capital into the marketplace. And so, you know, I think that you have two choices in this situation: You can prolong the agony and shareholders will be happy until they’re not happy, and that could be a year from now or two years from now, or, in the case of Japan, eight years later.

Or you can just go ahead and acknowledge that, yeah, there’s a lot of work that has to be done to put these banks back on a firmer footing.

Yeah, that’s right.   After personally setting expectations for a detailed explanation, Obama is telling America that they shouldn’t have such high expectations, even if “The One” sets them.  

After his appearance on Nightline, it was reported that Obama called Geithner and told him:

Uh, Timmy, uh, I know, uh, I’ve made a uh, political career, uh of being a constant um, campaign speech, uh providing uh, no specifics and um, accomplishing nothing measurable.  

You’re uh, doin’ a heckuva job there, uh Timmy.   But, there’s uh only room uh, for one uh, President at a time.   Therefore uh, you’ll be uh, required to uh, provide details and specifics, uh, from here on out.

At least, that’s what I had heard.

Wow, That Didn’t Take Long

by @ 5:14. Filed under Politics - National.

Rasmussen Reports latest preference poll shows that the generic Congressional ballot is now an even choice between Republicans and Democrats.

On November 2nd, a couple of days before the election, the Democrats held a 6% advantage.

At the first of the year, the Democrats held a 6% advantage.

On January 18th, just prior to the inauguration, the Democrats held a 7% advantage.

In fact, as late as January 25th, the Democrats held a 7% advantage.

Now, in only two weeks  with Pelosi and Reid doing an “in your face” to the will of the American people and President Obama set a vision of the Socialization of vast sections of the US economy there is a large portion of the folks who only two weeks ago supported Democrats saying, “Whoa, not so fast there.”

With all the change that Obama talks about it’s nice to know there’s one thing that doesn’t; the inability for Democrats to keep from over reaching!

February 11, 2009

Oak Creek Mayoral forum

by @ 18:18. Filed under Politics - Oak Creek.

The three candidates for Oak Creek Mayor, Dick Bolender, Dimity Grabowski and Mark Verhalen, will appear at a joint forum between 6:30 and 9 tonight at the Oak Creek Community Center. Julie Becker of Oak Creek Now is running a liveblog, and I will be there with my voice recorder in hand to capture the whole thing.

Revisions/extensions (10:48 pm 2/11/2009) – The Community Center was rather packed, which was always good to see. Several other local candidates were there handing out literature.

The audio is now up. I’m still using the old Sony digital voice recorder, so the quality isn’t exactly broadcast quality.

The websites of the three candates are:
– Mark Verhalen
– Dimity Grabowski
– Dick Bolender

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