Obama is blaming gasoline prices on "speculators" and wants to "invest" $52 million of our tax money in fighting them. Wow.
It used to be, in the United States of America, that buying stuff and selling stuff was legal. We have commodity exchanges to facilitate buying and selling of pork bellies, wheat, gold, oil, and a bunch of other stuff. Anyone can see that oil is getting scarce, and Obama is working to make it even scarcer. If you took a course in real economics in college, you know that when things get scarce, the price goes up. This ain't rocket science.
So plenty of people are buying oil , expecting the price to rise, and they to make money. That used to be legal. Still is legal far as I know. Ought to legal even if Obama doesn't like it. Freedom we call it, freedom to buy and sell as we please. Should not need a government OK to buy and sell anything, anytime.
This is also called speculation (boo hiss).
Druther have a few speculators make some money than not be able to buy any gasoline at all.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
"End Cheap Oil" says a Kennedy
The Daily Caller quotes an email from Joe Kennedy III saying “The cycle that allows cheap oil to trump tough choices has to stop.”
Wow. Talk about a brain made from solid reinforced concrete. Does Kennedy think that oil is cheap, or has been cheap anytime since 1973? When is the last time young Joe paid for a tank of gas? And expensive oil is good? For anybody?
Kennedy is running for Barney Frank's old congressional seat down in Massachusetts. Maybe he can lose to a Republican?
Wow. Talk about a brain made from solid reinforced concrete. Does Kennedy think that oil is cheap, or has been cheap anytime since 1973? When is the last time young Joe paid for a tank of gas? And expensive oil is good? For anybody?
Kennedy is running for Barney Frank's old congressional seat down in Massachusetts. Maybe he can lose to a Republican?
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Bondholders get special bankruptcy deal
Jefferson County Alabama declared bankruptcy last year. Wall Street was left holding $3.14 billion of country bonds to finance the sewer system. And now Wall St is whining (and suing) because the bankrupt county wants to stop paying the bondholders.
Why do Wall St banks think they are entitled to payment when others go unpaid? What makes bondholders more important than anyone else? Why should not bondholders take a haircut after lending ridiculous amounts of money to a borrower that clearly cannot repay it. The bond sales amount to about $5000 for each resident, man, woman and child, in the county. No way they are ever going to pay that off. Should not the banks take a haircut for stupid lending?
Why do Wall St banks think they are entitled to payment when others go unpaid? What makes bondholders more important than anyone else? Why should not bondholders take a haircut after lending ridiculous amounts of money to a borrower that clearly cannot repay it. The bond sales amount to about $5000 for each resident, man, woman and child, in the county. No way they are ever going to pay that off. Should not the banks take a haircut for stupid lending?
Monday, April 16, 2012
How can you tell when a politician is lying?
Simple. Whenever they make ten year forecasts of anything, but especially tax revenues and government spending. Nobody knows what things will look like ten years from now. But they stick with the 10 year forecasts because ten years from now, nobody will remember how ridiculous their forecasts were. Make a one year forecast, and even the newsies will remember what it was, and dump on you if the forecast was wrong.
Nobody knows what medical care costs.
So I'm doing the bills. Arrgh. I open an envelope from Humana health insurance. Recent doctor's visit, just routine, blood pressure, some stethoscopy, some lab work. According to the insurance company the doctor billed $399 and insurance only paid $135. The insurance company didn't say that I owned a further $264.
Then further down the stack of bills I get to the doctor's bill. It agrees with the insurance company about the $399 billed. but the doctor shows the insurance paying more and I only own $26. Which is all right with me, $26 is a whole lot better than $264.
But somehow after all the insurance claims forms unwind, and the paper pushers are finished mucking around, $238 has just gone away. Bank error your favor. OK by me.
Only thing is, it makes forecasting things like Obamacare costs kinda worthless.
Then further down the stack of bills I get to the doctor's bill. It agrees with the insurance company about the $399 billed. but the doctor shows the insurance paying more and I only own $26. Which is all right with me, $26 is a whole lot better than $264.
But somehow after all the insurance claims forms unwind, and the paper pushers are finished mucking around, $238 has just gone away. Bank error your favor. OK by me.
Only thing is, it makes forecasting things like Obamacare costs kinda worthless.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
To set the record straight, I'm with Ann Romney
Raising children is very important work. The future of everything rests upon the next generation, and nuture is a least as important as nature. Good child raising creates good future adults. When Ann Romney says she raised five boys, I have a lot of respect for that. That's harder to do, and more important than doing paper work in some one's office building.
The Obama people's recent slam on child raising by mothers is a not-so-subtle slam at the importance and dignity that out to be attached to child rearing. Support motherhood, it's truly important.
The Obama people's recent slam on child raising by mothers is a not-so-subtle slam at the importance and dignity that out to be attached to child rearing. Support motherhood, it's truly important.
I did my Civic Duty, all day yesterday.
I was a delegate to the NH Republican yearly meeting (not the convention, this just elects party officers, not candidates. I set the alarm clock for 6 AM, and got the Mercury on the road heading south by 7:30. The meeting was in Meredith, scenic little town in the Squam Lakes (On Golden Pond) country. Mid April is before the season, so no boats, tourists, or summer people. The leaves are just beginning to open down south of the Notch, so it was a pretty drive.
The event was held in a school auditorium, a small one. According to the signs the place was only good for 420 people. It was pretty full, and into this small room we had the political leadership of the entire state. State Reps, State Senators, three of our four Congresspeople, town and area chairmen, it was the leadership of the dominant state party.
It's the north country so it was a kinda shaggy bunch. The older guys, yours truly included, wore dark suits and ties. Lot of guys did the coat bit but omitted the tie. Then we had guys show up in jeans, T-shirts, shooting vests, full beards, pony tails, blue blazers with khaki slacks. Colorful but not very fashion conscious. As usual the girls dressed better than the boys.
The program opened with good old fashioned get-out-the-vote stemwinders from our Congressmen, our legislative leaders, and our candidates for guv'nor. Bill O'Brian, speaker of the house, got the most applause. This took us up to noon, and a break for pizza.
After lunch we settled down to some serious wrangling over bylaw revisions. After the revolt against Jack Kimball last year, they wanted to tighten up procedures for succession and removal of officers. Apparently the Kimball affair got pretty messy, all though the mess was fairly well contained, and all the survivors wanted some new tight bylaws to back them up should anything like that ever happen again.
Then we proceeded to the only contested election of party officers. The office was national committeeperson, a person to go to the national committee and lobby to retain our first-in-the-nation primary. For candidates we had Juliana Bergeron, and Pam Tucker. Both had declared weeks before and snowed me under with emails urging their election. Pam even bothered to call me on the phone. Juliana has been around for a while and has a lot of support from party people. Pam is a newer face, newly elected state rep, who is close to Bill O'Brian. Bill made her nomination speech, which carried a good deal of weight with everyone. Then we had two last minute nominations from the floor, Joe Dupre (sp?) and Skip somebody-or-other, the quy who does the GraniteGrok website. So we voted, on printed ballots, and it then being 3 PM on a lovely day, I left, before the votes were counted, figuring that I could find out who won from the papers. Stupid Beast was overjoyed to have her human return to pet her.
Not so much luck on papers. Nothing on the Union Leader website, nothing on Granite Grok, yet.
The event was held in a school auditorium, a small one. According to the signs the place was only good for 420 people. It was pretty full, and into this small room we had the political leadership of the entire state. State Reps, State Senators, three of our four Congresspeople, town and area chairmen, it was the leadership of the dominant state party.
It's the north country so it was a kinda shaggy bunch. The older guys, yours truly included, wore dark suits and ties. Lot of guys did the coat bit but omitted the tie. Then we had guys show up in jeans, T-shirts, shooting vests, full beards, pony tails, blue blazers with khaki slacks. Colorful but not very fashion conscious. As usual the girls dressed better than the boys.
The program opened with good old fashioned get-out-the-vote stemwinders from our Congressmen, our legislative leaders, and our candidates for guv'nor. Bill O'Brian, speaker of the house, got the most applause. This took us up to noon, and a break for pizza.
After lunch we settled down to some serious wrangling over bylaw revisions. After the revolt against Jack Kimball last year, they wanted to tighten up procedures for succession and removal of officers. Apparently the Kimball affair got pretty messy, all though the mess was fairly well contained, and all the survivors wanted some new tight bylaws to back them up should anything like that ever happen again.
Then we proceeded to the only contested election of party officers. The office was national committeeperson, a person to go to the national committee and lobby to retain our first-in-the-nation primary. For candidates we had Juliana Bergeron, and Pam Tucker. Both had declared weeks before and snowed me under with emails urging their election. Pam even bothered to call me on the phone. Juliana has been around for a while and has a lot of support from party people. Pam is a newer face, newly elected state rep, who is close to Bill O'Brian. Bill made her nomination speech, which carried a good deal of weight with everyone. Then we had two last minute nominations from the floor, Joe Dupre (sp?) and Skip somebody-or-other, the quy who does the GraniteGrok website. So we voted, on printed ballots, and it then being 3 PM on a lovely day, I left, before the votes were counted, figuring that I could find out who won from the papers. Stupid Beast was overjoyed to have her human return to pet her.
Not so much luck on papers. Nothing on the Union Leader website, nothing on Granite Grok, yet.
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