Democrat Economic Policies Doomed to Failure

This is an article by Brian Riedl (National Review), it was so good I had to post it.

"Conservatives have correctly declared [the economic stimulus policy of the democrats and President Obama] a flop. [...] Yet few have explained correctly why the stimulus failed. By blaming the slow pace of stimulus spending, many conservatives have accepted the premise that government spending stimulates the economy. [...]"

"In 1939, after a doubling of federal spending failed to relieve the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau said that 'we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work...After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...and an enourmous debt to boot.' Japan made the same mistake in the 1990's (building the largest government debt in the industrial world), and the USA is making it today."

"This repeated failure has nothing to do with the pace or type of spending. Rather, the problem is found in the oft-repeated Keynesian myth that deficit spending injects new dollars into the economy, thereby increasing demand and spurring economic growth. According to this theory, government spending adds money to the economy, taxes remove money, and the budget deficit represents net new dollars injected. Therefore, it scarecely matters how the dollars are spent. John Maynard Keynes famously asserted that a government program paying people to dig and then refill ditches would provide new income for those workers to spend and circulate through the economy, creating even more jobs and income. Today, lawmakers cling to estimates by Mark Zandi of Economy.com that on average $1 in new deficit spending expands the economy by roughly $1.50. If that were true, the record $1,600,000,000,000 deficit spending over the past fiscal year would have already overheated the economy. Yet despite this spending, which is equal to fully 9% of GDP, the economy is expected to shrink by at least 3% this fiscal year. If the spending constitutes an injection of 'new money' into the economy, we may conclude that, without it, the economy would contract 12%, hardly a plausible claim.

If $1,600,000,000,000 in deficit spending failed to slow the economy's slide, there is no reason to believe that adding $185,000,000,000 - the 2009 portion of the stimulus bill - will suddenly do the trick. But if budget deficits of nearly $2 trillion are insufficient stimulus, how much would be enough? $3 trillion? $4 trillion?

This is no longer a theoretical exercise. The idea that increased deficit spending can cure recessions has been tested, and it has failed. If growing the economy were as simple as expanding government spending and deficits, then Italy, France, and Germany would be the global economic kings. And there would be no reason to stop at $787 billion: Congress could guarantee unlimited prosperity by endlessly borrowing and spending trillions of dollars.

The simple reason government spending fails to end recessions is that Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress 'injects' into the economy must first be borrowed or taxed out of the economy. No new income, and therefore no new demand, is created. They are merely redistributed from one group of people to another. Congress cannot create new purchasing power out of thin air.

This is intuitively clear in the case of funding new spending with new taxes. Yet funding new spending with new borrowing is also pure redistribution, since the investors who lend Washington the money will have that much less to invest in the economy. The fact that borrowed funds (unlike taxes) must later be repaid by the government makes them no less of a zero-sum transfer today.

Even during recessions, when total production falls, leaving people with less income to spend, Congress cannot create new demand and income. Any government spending that increases production at factories and puts unemployed individuals to work will be financed by removing funds (and thus idling resources) elsewhere in the economy. This is true whether the unemployment rate is 5% or 50%.

For example, many lawmakers claim that every $1 billion in highway stimulus will create 47,576 new construction jobs. But Congress must first borrow that $1 billion out of the private economy, which will then lose a roughly equivalent number of jobs. As transportation-policy expert Ronald Utt has explained, 'the only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jos is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven.' Removing water from one end of a swimming pool and dumping it in the other end will not raise the overall water level. Similarly, moving dollars from one part of the economy to the other will not expand the economy. Not even in the short run.

Consider a simpler example. Under normal circumstances, a family might put its $1000 savings in a CD at the local bank. The bank would then lend that $1000 to the local hardware store. This would have the effect of recycling that spending around the town, supporting local jobs. Now suppose that, induced by an offer of higher interest rates, the family instead buys a $1000 government bond that funds the stimulus bill. Washington spends that $1000 in a different town, creating jobs there instead. The stimulus bill has changed only the location of the spending.

The mistaken view of fiscal stimulus persists because we can easily see the people put to work with government funds. We don't see the jobs that would have been created elsewhere in the economy with those same dollars had they not been lent to Washington.

In his 1848 essay 'What is Seen and What is Not Seen', French economist Frederic Bastiat termed this the 'broken window' fallacy, in reference to a local myth that breaking windows would stimulate the economy by creating window repair jobs. Today, the broken window fallacy explains why thousands of new stimulus jobs are not improving the total employment picture.

Keynesian economists counter that redistribution can increase demand if the money is transferred from savers to spenders. Yet this 'idle savings' theory assumes that savings fall out of the economy, which clearly is not the case. Nearly all individuals and businesses invest their savings or put it in banks (which in turn invest it or lend it out), so the money is still being spent somewhere in the economy. Even in this recession, with tightened lending standards, banks are performing their traditional role of intermediating between those who have savings and those who need to borrow. They are not building extensive basement vaults to hoard cash.

Since the financial system transfers savings into investment spending, the only savings that drop out of the economy are those dollars literally hoarded in matresses and safes - and there is no evidence that this is occurring en masse. And even if individuals, businesses, and banks did distrust the financial system enough to hoard their dollars, why would they suddenly lend them to the government to finance a stimulus bill?

Once the idle-savings theory collapses, so does all the intellectual support for government spending as stimulus. If there are no idle savings to acquire, then the government is merely borrowing purchasing power from one part of the economy and moving it into another part of the economy. Washington becomes nothing more than a pricey middleman, redistributing existing demand.

Even foreign borrowing is no free lunch. Before China can lend us dollars, it must acquire them from us. This requires either attracting American investment or raising the Chinese trade surplus (and the American trade deficit). The balance of payments between America and other nations must eventually net out to zero, which means government spending funded from foreign borrowing is zero-sum.

I've purposely ignored the Federal Reserve, which actually can inject cash into the economy, but not in a way that constitutes stimulus. Congress can deficit-spend, Treasury can finance the deficit spending by issuing bonds, and the Federal Reserve can buy those bonds by printing money. Any economic boost is then due to the Federal Reserve's actions, not the deficit spending - and of course the Federal Reserve will have to raise interest rates, slowing the economy again, to bring the resulting inflation under control.

If government spending doesn't cause economic growth, what does? Growth happens when more goods and services are produced, and the only true source of this is an expanding labor force combined with high productivity. High productivity in turn requires educated and motivated workers, advanced technology, adequate infrastructure, physical capital such as factories and tools, and the rule of law.

Government spending could boost long-run produtivity through investments in education and infrastructure - but only if politicians could target those investments better than the private sector would. And it turns out that politicians cannot outsmart the marketplace. Mountains of academic studies show that government spending generally reduces long term productivity.

The only policy proven to increase productivity in the short term is to lower tax rates and reduce regulation. Businesses can grow only through consistent investment and an expanding, skilled workforce. Cutting marginal tax rates promotes these conditions, by creating incentives to work, save, and invest.

It's happened before. In 1981, President Reagan inherited an economy stagnating under the weight of 70% marginal income-tax rates. Under Reagan, the top rate fell to 28%, and the subsequent surge in investment and labor supply created the strongest 25-year economic boom in American history.

Such tax-rate reductions are superior to tax rebates designed to 'put money in people's pockets'. Rebates - like government spending - simply redistribute existing dollars. They don't increase productivity because they don't change incentives: no one has to work, save, or invest more to get a tax rebate. The 2001 and 2008 rebates failed because Congress borrowed money from investors and foreigners and redistributed it to families. Not surprisingly, any new personal consumption spending was matched by corresponding declines in investment spending and net exports, and the economy was stagnant.

Congress can only redistribute exisitng demand, it cannot create new demand. [...] The more serious, long-term danger is that President Obama's Europeanization of the economy will bring the same slow growth, stagnant wages, job losses, high taxes, and lack of competitiveness that have plagued Western Europe, leaving the USA at an ever-growing disadvantage with Asian countries not so afflicted.

[Conservatives and free-market supporters - Republicans - must be elected into Congress to put the brakes on the deficit spending and high taxation, and return the money to the private sector where it can grow the economy and improve our standard of living.]

Joe Wilson said "You Lie", and he was right.

This is an excerpt from Ralph Reed's commentary on Sept. 13, 2009. Although shouting out in the middle of a speech is poor manners, our Congress is still fantastically proper relative to legislatures such as those in South Korea or Great Britain. Joe Wilson did, however, make a correct statement.

"[...] Consider just a few of the dishonest statements in Obama's speech:

First: He said "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future." If so, then the President should have announced his public opposition to the Senate leadership bill and HB3200 months ago [the democrat health care plan]. In June the Congressional Budget Office found that the legislation would increase the budget deficit by $240,000,000,000 over the next 10 years. That's just the beginning. A new study by the Lewin Group finds that in the second 10 years, it will increase the deficit by $1,000,000,000,000. The White House has publicly praised and supported both [democrat] bills. So Obama stated a whopping $1,240,000,000,000 falsehood.

Second: [President] Obama said he would not cut Medicare and affect basic care for seniors. But the Obama plan includes $600,000,000,000 in UNSPECIFIED Medicare cuts. It destroys Medicare Advantage with $250,000,000,000 in cuts, decimating a pro-consumer option that 25% of seniors [use] and allows them to choose the best insurance and doctor for them. Even the Associated Press [dominated by democrat reporters] has called Obama on this lie. AP reported that "although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That's particularly true for the 25% of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.

Third: [President] Obama said that Sarah Palin and others have claimed that "we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens." [...] What critics have pointed out is that seniors will be required to submit regularly to "end of life" counseling sessions (page 425 of HB3200) that, combined with cost controls and rationing of care, could lead to them being denied life-saving treatment. As healthcare expert Betsy McCaughy, chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, has pointed out, the bill includes "substantial funding for "comparative effectiveness research" which is generally code for limiting care based on a patient's age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of treatment is divided by the number of years (called QUALYs, or quality adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit.

Fourth: [President] Obama claimed that the bill does not use taxpayer funds for abortion. This is also false. The Democrats rejected amendments in the House committee that would have specifically excluded abortion from coverage under the so-called government option. In its place, Democrats took the private portion of the premium (not the public subsidy) and specified that only those funds could be used for abortion services. This is an accounting gimmick. The fact is that abortion will be massively subsidized with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds for the first time in US history.

Fifth: [President] Obama claimed that his plan did not provide care for illegal immigrants. Here again, false. By rejecting a Republican amendment requiring proof of legal residence prior to receiving care under the government-run plan, the Democrats have opened the door for non-citizens and non-legal residents to receive care for which they have not paid into the system. If one refuses to require proof of citizenship or legal residence, one cannot claim to limit benefits to only USA citizens. [wait times and costs increase with increses in demand from illegals].

Healthcare services and industries should not be managed by the federal government. This is a mistake that our kids and grandkids will pay for if this democrat plan goes through and is not sunset by the next republican Congress.

Canadian Healthcare: Free but Slow (see investigative video)

This is a 20 minute video but it is worth watching if you want to see what government managed healthcare is like. This is what will happen to us in the USA if we allow Democrats to pass federal government managed healthcare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2jijuj1ysw&feature=related

The feds need to stay out of the healthcare industry except for regulation to prevent fraud and unreasonable litigation.

Stossel also put together a shorter piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJgkvF19QA&feature=related

Quote of the Day: Governor Rick Perry

"There are certain truths that have to be agreed to. One is that economies grow when they are free from over-taxation, over-regulation, over-litigation, and they have a skilled workforce. Government is not difficult in theory, don't spend all the money, keep taxes low, have a fair and predictable regulatory climate, keep frivolous lawsuits to a minimum, and fund an accountable education system so that you have a skilled workforce available. Then get the hell out of the way and let the private sector do what the private sector does best. It's simple in theory, but it's difficult to accomplish. In Texas, we've implemented that theory, and it's produced an economy that has no match in America."
--- Texas Governor Rick Perry, Republican

This quote was published in the National Review article "Going Alamo" by Kevin D. Williamson, which talked about why so many people are moving to the republican controlled state of Texas: great economy because of great republican economic policies and limited government interference. Texas has a divided executive branch (Lt Governor and Governor have distinct powers)and a weak legislature because of strict constitutional limits, preventing government from causing too much harm :)

"The Texas experience suggests that the more government you say no to, the more investment you say yes to."
--- Kevin Williamson

Wind Farms: All hype and ill effects

The public or media enthusiams for wind farms (large tracts of land taken up by huge wind turbine towers, some 400 feet tall) needs to come to an end. Consider the following:

1. Property values in areas where wind turbines are visible decrease, negatively impacting everyone who lives within the line of sight of these ugly turbine towers.



2. Tourism in areas where their originally pristine natural views are changed by the installation of wind farms goes down. See study done in Scotland www.viewsofscotland.org/library/tourism.php



3. The air pressure difference in front of and behind a turbine blade are strong enough to cause lung blood vessel bursting in bats. Wind turbines are responsible for the killing of thousands of bats every year. A Tennessee windfarm study found an annual bat kill rate of 64 bats per turbine.



4. A study of Denmark windfarm industry found that the large wind turbines had serious negative environmental impacts, insufficient production reliability, and high production costs. Conventional power plants (ie coal powered) cannot be simply turned on and off as the wind comes and goes, so the wind farms have not led to any notable decrease in coal powered energy consumption.



5. Infra-sound emitted by turbines can pose a hazard to human health. I didnt believe this either until a european doctor started collecting data on cases of health problems for residents near turbines.



6. Lights on the turbine towers ruin night sky visibility for star gazers and astronomers.



7. Deforestation and/or the large footprint taken up by large numbers of wind turbine towers create terrible negative environmental impacts on local wildlife and recreational land users.



8. CO2 emission savings is only equal to one 18-wheeler truck PER TURBINE, that is it. Canadian study discovered this fact which all but makes wind farms appear to be a waste of time and money and land: www.aandc.org/research/wind_pec_present.html

Cartoon of the day

Obama apologizes for America's history

More evidence republican governance is better than democrat

The chart plots the average unemployment rate in April 2009 for different categories of democrat (blue) and republican (red) controlled states defined as having voted for the democrat or republican presidential candidate. States where a democrat or republican candidate win reliably are good correlators to same party governor and legislature control. The first column for example consists of states where the democrat candidate won the vote ever since the 1980's.

States that are traditionally republican controlled (governor, legislature) do better economically than democrat controlled states. This is simply because republicans provide a pro-business environment while democrats produce oppressive enviroments for business to operate, whether it has to do with lack of lawsuit tort reform, oppressive taxation, excessive regulation, etc. Republican economic policies have been beneficial to the economic condition of their states, while democrat policies have been poison. Facts dont lie, only politicians and their PACs do. Vote smart, vote republican.

Booker T. Washington: First Black Republican

Excepts from David Beito and Jonathan Bean's article in National Review (March 2009).

"In 1899, as Americans looked forward to a new century of progress, Booker T. Washington published 'The Future of the American Negro'. A reporter asked him whether that future would include a black man as president. 'I should hope so' Washington responded. He did not expect to see it in his lifetime: Black [Americans] could not vote in the South, Jim Crow laws enforced rigid segregation, and lynching was rampant. Even so, Washington envisioned a day when black Americans would achieve political equality - and he believed he had a role to play in making it come about. 'One generation lays the foundation for succeeding generations' he wrote. By laying that foundation, Booker T. Washington helped make the election of Barak Obama possible.

That is not to say he would have entirely approved. Washington was a rock-ribbed Republican, and arguably America's first black conservative. Obama's brand of politics would have disappointed him deeply. On Election Night last November [2008] it was John McCain - not Obama - who invoked Washington's name. Liberals, it turns out, don't have much use for Washington. Yet he has much to teach, especially as we enter the Age of Obama.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) possesses one of the best-known names in the history of black America. He was president of the renowned Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an influential advocate for civil rights, and the most admired black man of his generation. For most of the 20th century, however, certain black leaders and academic liberals rejected his vision of racial advancement. Its emphasis on self-help, faith in entrepreneurship, and abject refusal to embrance victimhood seemed to demand as much from blacks as from whites. For these later figures, Washington was simply too conservative [...].

For years [...] the standard view was that white racism was the primary reason for black misfortune. That is an increasingly difficult case to make now, when the main afflictions of black America [and any poor community regardless of race] are the breakdown of 2 parent families, crime, drugs, lousy public schools, and unprecedented dependency on [government]. The time may have come to revive Booker T. Washington as an inspirational figure.

He was born a slave in Virginia [...]. Shortly after the Civil War, he went to work as a child laborer in a salt works. His sharp mind greatly impressed the wife of his employer, who taught him to read and opened the door to what would become his first great opportunity. Washington's hunger for learning led him on a 500 mile trek to the Hampton Institute, a school that allowed black [Americans] to to work for their education. There, he came under the influence of the school's founder, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, a former Union officer who had commanded black troops at Petersburg during the Civil War. Armstrong tried to instill the habits of hard work and good character in his students and admonished them to "live down prejudice". Under his mentorship, Washington excelled in school. In 1881 when Armstrong received an inquiry from a white man founding a school for black [Americans] in Alabama, he recommended his star pupil.

Washington became the first president of Tuskegee Normal & Industrial Institute, orginally founded as a teachers' college. Under Washington, the school trained students in the liberal arts and industrial labor. They learned to respect knowledge and hard work as requirements for becoming good teachers, craftsmen, and civic leaders. [...] [the] school was grounded in a philosophy of self improvement. [...] By the turn of the century, Tuskegee was enrolling 1,000 students, all of them black. Tuskegee has more students than the two leading white institutions in the state - the Univ. of Alabama and Auburn - combined.

When Frederick Douglas died in 1895, Washington immediately succeeded him as black America's most prominent figure - a role in which he would continue until his own death two decades later. [...] Tuskegee's requirement that students learn highly paid industrial skills fostered [...] goals of self-help and capitalist uplift.

Booker T. Washington authored 'Up From Slavery' in 1901, a book that inspired generations of black Americans with his personal account of success. [...]

One of the most important contributions of [Robert J. Norrell, Univ. of Tennessee]'s book is to show how the leading racists of the day, such as Rep. J. Thomas Heflin (Democrat, Alabama) and Sen. Benjamin 'Pitchfork' Tillman (Democrat, South Carolina) feared and denounced Washington's strategy to educate blacks and equip them with economic skills. In 1901 [...] democrats raged when Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington, the leading black republican, to dinner at the White House. [...]

In a hostile environment [of the early 1900's] Washington repeatedly spoke out against lynching, disfranchisement, and segregation. [...] Economic hisorians have documented the progress of black farmers, workers, and business owners - progress made possible because conservative courts (republican appointees) upheld the right to work against the lily white unionism of the time. In his 1977 book Competition and Coercion, Robert Higgs showed that the % of black farmers in the South who were landowners increased from virtually zero in 1865 to 25% by 1910. [...] Nationwide, the number of black businesses skyrocketed from 4,000 to 50,000. Washington played a key role in nurturing these enterprises by creating the National Negro Business League in 1900. [...]

As Norrell describes, gains in education provide perhaps the clearest vindication of Washington's efforts. He had no small role in the spectacular increase in the literacy rate for blacks in the South from 5% in 1865 to 70% in 1910. Although white politicians [...] shunted blacks into inferior schools, Washington was instrumental in providing them with alternatives in the private sector. It was largely because of his influence, for example, that Julius Rosenwald financed the building of 5,500 black schools throughout the South (known as the Rosenwald schools.)

[...]

Obama's worldview is profoundly different from that of Washington. Washington repeatedly emphasized that thrift was the basis of advancement. [...] The secret of success was to shun excessive debt, delay gratification, and 'learn the saving habit, until we learn to save every nickel.' Washington rejected the philosophy that people could spend their way to success. While Obama believes that government can create jobs simply through spending, Washington put his trust in the resourcefulness of individuals to accomplish this goal. He had, he said, 'little patience with any man, white or black, with education, who goes through the country whining and crying because nobody will give him a job of work. A man with education should be able to create a job for himself, but in doing so he may have to begin at the very bottom.' Progress ultimately rested on a solid foundation of hard work, thrift, and production. Excessive debt, especially without the means to repay it, only created a trap leading to more debt and regress. It is doubtful that Washington could have imagined the endless bailouts of our own day. They certainly would have appalled him.

Why we must reduce illegal and legal immigration

The laws of economics cannot be violated:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6633620258136248169

Abraham Lincoln and Republican Ideology

President Obama has likened himself to Lincoln, but apparently Mr. Obama cannot read...

Poly tennis strings do break

Although "poly" tennis strings are very durable, you can still break them by "shear" force applied when you hit an off-center shot along the edge of the frame. The edge of the frame at the grommett is very rigid, so the potential shear force is high if you hit the string hard right near that point.

If you are a "string breaker" you have to use either a hybrid stringjob with poly on the mains and something softer on the crosses, or even consider Kevlar for the mains, or poly on the whole stringbed. But a poly can still break via this shear mechanism so do not be surprised if you break a poly string after 1 match when you thought the string would last several months.

George W. Bush Foreign Policy Triumph

I just read a great article by Duncan Currie of National Review magazine, I thought I'd pass along some of the highlights.....I wont get into details about U.S.-India relations in 2000-2008 but you can do the research yourself if you are interested.

"Shortly before George W. Bush left office, Harvard historian Sugata Bose told me that strengthening U.S. relations with India 'may turn out to be the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration.' It is an achievement that Indians greatly appreciate: in mid February [2009], a spokesman for the ruling Congress party said that Bush deserves India's top civilian award, the Bharat Ratna ("Jewel of India"), an honor rarely conferred on non-indians."

"The most historic element of Bush's India policy was a bilateral civilian nuclear agreement, which received final approval from U.S. lawmakers in the fall of 2008."

"The U.S. and India share a host of values and interests. Both are wary of [communist] China, and both are fighting Islamist terrorism that emanates from Pakistan. The Indian diaspora has bolstered cultural linkages, and in recent years bilateral economic cooperation has flourished. Stephen Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institute, reckons that U.S.-India economic connections are 'so strong that they stabilize the overall relationship.'

"In June 2005 [under the Bush administration] U.S. and Indian officials signed a joint defense framework that stated 'as the world's two largest democracies, the U.S. and India agree on the vital importance of political and economic freedom, democracy, the rule of law, security, and opportunity around the world."

"Bush's India outreach was part of a broader Asia strategy that involved engaging China while boosting relations with democracy powers such as India, Japan, and Australia. These countries conducted a joint relief mission with the U.S. following the 2004 Asian tsunami. In 2007 these 4 democracies along with Singapore held [joint] naval excercises."

"In his 2008 book Rivals, former Economist editor [...] Bill Emmott writes that Bush's 'bold initiative' to enhance U.S.-India relations 'may eventually be judged by historians as a move of great strategic importance and imagination.'

Milton Friedman on the old Donahue Show

Milton Friedman on the Donahue Show, just a small segment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p31-xQ2Rrz4&feature=player_embedded

Tennis racquet frame selection

Tennis racquets are made in many different models and come in different specifications. Finding out which specs best suit your swing style and swing speed is something only you can ultimately determine. Learn about specs and demo (test out) different frames. Always keep track of the specs of the frames you use (i switch frames every 3 years or so). To learn more about specs, learn about racquet tables such as those at http://www.nothingbuttennis.com/ (see links at bottom of their homepage).

Will renewable energy save us?

You may have heard over the past few years the term "smart grid" used by pundits on TV. The term typically refers to installing small computer-thermostats in every home to measure electricity use remotely (as opposed to a meter reader having to visit every property to record meter readings). Access to immediate electrical use information will allow utility companies or government controlled utility entities to alter rates hour by hour, charging higher rates at peak times and lower rates at low demand times to encourage a more distributed use of electricity. The hope is that people will postpone chores like running dishwashers until off-peak hours like the evening. The "smart grid" centralized data program, however, will not solve the supply-and-demand problem, it just tries to encourage spreading out the demand over the 24-hour day.

To increase power supply, you need new power plants. With Democrats in power, power plants such as coal, natural gas (fossil fuel), and nuclear are off the table because they believe in utopian concepts of energy use and consumption. So what does that leave us? Wind and solar and thermal. Thermal is expensive to setup so i wont go into that here, maybe in another post. But the concept is interesting and involves heating water down in the earth to generate steam that can power turbines at the surface to produce electricity. I will comment on solar and wind only for now.

The first problem with trying to develop renewable energy sources is the electrical grid system. You have to be able to transport electricity from the power plant to the consumer, and electricity has to be used as it is produced. If electricity supply drops by more than 5%, blackouts or brownouts can occur. If it goes up by 5%, it can damage electrical equipment. Power plants produce finite electricity but do not produce it like a manufacturing plant. Wind and solar energy is intermittent, the wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine all the time (night and overcast conditions). The huge mismatch between supply and demand during certain conditions is the big problem. Estimates are that the typical electric grid cannot have more than 20% coming from a wind power plant because it cannot handle the fluctuations in supply.

Wind and solar power plants have to be built in remote areas where there is lots of raw land and no neighbors or environmental groups to complain. But alas solar arrays or wind turbine towers are all ugly (poor aesthetics) and destroy quite a bit of real-estate, so therein lies a perennial battle.

There is currently one practical technology for storing electricity called "pumped storage". It uses hydrodynamics by pumping water uphill during low demand periods, then when demand is high the water flows down and drives hydroelectric turbines to produce electricity to meet peak demand levels. There are limited sites where this can be done however so this is not widescale product that can solve our problem.

Transporting electricity from solar or wind power plants to the urban grids is a problem. After 300 miles transmission lines start exhibiting serious losses, so the voltage of the lines would have to be increased by 2 (demolish existing lines and build new ones, talk about an expensive undertaking). The cost on a nationwide scale would be in the trillions of $.

In 2008, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA, estimated that even with smart grid leveling of demand and even with a potential reduction of current and voltage (from 120V to 114V), electricity use by 2030 would only be 7% less than currently projected. Compared with the cost to install household monitoring, the savings just do not appear to come close to matching the cost.

One possible solution is developing a combination of new nuclear power plants and new solar arrays. Nuclear power can handle the base load, while peak demand is met with the help of solar power during the hot summer days when ACs are running. This solution would not require a costly new grid or costly home monitoring systems. Small solar arrays can be built near urban centers, and today's technology can install a nuclear reactor the size of a garage into a small power plant facility.

The current hype is to "go green" and be energy independent by using solar and wind sources. Nice thought, but we live in the real world, not la-la land, and have to obey the laws of physics and economics. Solar and wind can provide us with at most 30% of what we need, the rest will have to come from somewhere else unless you want to live with daily power outages (no AC, no computers, no internet access, no lights) and high electric bills. Natural gas and oil are still available in abundance here in the USA, clean coal concepts are being developed (still need work), and new nuclear power plants should be considered. When someone invents solar panels that are affordable enough to put on everyone's roof, durable enough to resist hail damage, and with durable batteries in the home, then the equation might change, but by how much, and until then?

Traiger and Hinckley Study: Smoke and Mirrors

Some of you may have seen reference to a study by Traiger & Hinckley by liberals-democrats trying to deflect attention away from the fact that the liberal affordable housing laws were the catalyst to the recession of 2008-2009 (+?). Some go so far as to say the study proves that the affordable housing laws had nothing to do with the economic downturn. Unfortunately these same people appear to just be "grasping" to engage in a debate to defend liberal government intrusion and only give the report a cursory review and do not research more explicit facts, such as:

(1)The "study" has not been published by any economics/financial journal, so without peer review one must read such "white papers" with an open mind concerning its reliability.

(2)Traiger & Hinckley is a law firm, what exactly are their economics credentials? This law firm works for banks by providing them counceling on "fair lending" to obey the affordable housing laws and anti-discrimination laws. This is a conflict of interest: write a paper saying the CRA is just fine and dandy, and get paid by clients who must meet CRA laws that provide the client base to the legal firm.

(3)The study does not indicate if "CRA banks" have a higher foreclosure rate than banks that did not have branches in CRA "assessment areas". I wonder why?

(4)The study talks about "high cost loans". But a high-cost-loan is not the same thing as a subprime loan. A high-cost-loan as defined in the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 is only a small fraction of total subprime loans. Why did the legal firm only focus on high-cost-loans and not all subprime loans? The answer appears obvious, the results would have negated the biased conclusion of the study.

(5)The study focuses on things as obscure as a relationship between foreclosure rates on high-cost-loans with concentration of bank branches. This is a subtle sign of "grasping" for ways to deflect the attention away from the damning facts.

The Traiger & Hinckley study does not relieve the democrats of the blame for creating the catalysts for this recession: the affordable housing laws, the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the resistance to regulating Fannie and Freddie.

Liberals Caused the Recession of 2008-2009

Great video on the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxgSubmiGt8


Timeline of the Economic Meltdown of 2008-2009:

1977: Democrat Congress enacts the Community Reinvestment Act, signed into law by Democrat President Jimmy Carter. The law "encourages" banks to "help meet the credit needs of local communities". The Act mandates banks invest in poor urban areas, regardless of credit-worthiness, beginning the decline of the quality of bank loans.

1991: The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 that forces banks to disclose lending records is expanded to allow for comparisons of rejection rates by race.

1995: The administration of Democrat President Bill Clinton makes changes to the Community Reinvestment Act. The changes required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to poor communities in the area of the bank. The changes also let community activists like ACORN intervene at yearly bank reviews where they intimidated the banks by threatening bad publicity. The high-risk subprime mortgage loan market is created by these policies. Lenders are forced (by facing costly government penalites) into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making.

1998: Democrat Attorney General Janet Reno encourages enforcement of ambiguous discrimination lawsuits against lenders, stating "I discovered in talking to bankers, that it is better to educate first and then litigate later only if necessary. But you got to be prepared to litigate, and I am prepared to litigate when it's going to be necessary [...]. Since the inception of our fair lending initiative in 1992, the Department has filed and settled 13 major fair lending lawsuits [...]." Lenders become ever more fearful of government lawsuits based on games played by the democrats with lending statistics.

2001: The 4-month old administration of President George Bush produces its 2002 budget, and declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem" because " financial trouble of a large GSE [Government Sponsored Enterprise] could cause strong repercussions in financial markets."

January 2003: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years due to earnings manipulations [cheating on accounting reports].

June 2003: Freddie Mac is the subject of criminal federal securities investigations.

Sept. 2003: The Bush administration recommends the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan scandal, only to be thwarted by democrats in Congress, in particular representative Barney Frank. Mr. Frank stated "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do very good work, and they are not endangering the fiscal health of this country [...] I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness that in fact exists."

As reported in the NY Times: "The Bush Administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings-and-loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Dept to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their balloning portfolios. [...] A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates."

The NY Times continued: "Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and the congressional Democrats who fear the tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. 'These two entitites, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis' said representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking democrat on the Financial Services Committee. 'The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'

Oct. 2003: Fannie and Freddie control 50% of the mortgage market in the USA (quasi socialism now truly in effect since Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored entities).

June 2004: Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Bodman repeats the Bush administration call for "a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System."

October 2004: Democrat Franklin Raines, CEO of Fannie Mae, testifies before Congress' House Financial Services Committee that his company's assets are so risk free that the capital for holding them should be under 2% (commercial banks ususally have 4% to 8%). This reduction entices large banks to buy up trillions of dollars worth of Fannie Mae sub-prime mortgages.

2004: The US Dept of Housing and Urban Dev (HUD) requires Fannie and Freddie to increase their purchase by tenfold (x10) - hundreds of billions ($434 billion in 2004-2006) - in securities backed by SUBPRIME LOANS. This decision was later determined to be an abject failure to regulate their actions. Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale indicates higher goals by HUD "forced" Freddie to go into the subprime market to levels never seen before.

April 2006: Freddie Mac pays $3,800,000 in fines to the Federal Election Commission for violating political campaign laws. Freddie Mac executives used corporate resources to facilitate political contributions, a no-no. They were trying to influence politicians on the House Financial Services Committee.

May 2006: A federal regulator of Fannie Mae reports that Fannie overstated income and capital by a whopping $10,600,000,000. Senator John McCain (republican) calls for GSE regulations, warning "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." Too bad Mr. McCain did not brag about this enough in 2008, i dont think middle of the road voters had any idea?

November 2006: Democrats win majorities in both the federal House and Senate. At that moment, the US economy is growing at almost 3%, unemployment is at 4.5%, and inflation is under 2%. Now watch what happens.

June 2007: Two Bear Sterns hedge funds go kaput due to their mortgage investments, and the liberals-inspired sub-prime mortgage assets turn cancerous due to many defaults.

August 2007: President Bush asks Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but is ignored by the democrat-controlled chambers. President Bush warns Congress publicly again in December to reform the GSEs. And again in March 2008 at the Economic Club of New York meeting. And again in April, May, and June, President Bush issues pleas to Congress to reform Freddie and Fannie.

July 2008: Democrat Senator Chris Dodd states "There's sort of a panic going on today, and that's not what ought to be. The facts don't warrant that reaction, in my opinion [...] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were never bottom-feeders in the residential mortgage market. People ought to feel comfortable about that." If sub-prime loans and lax credit standards are not bottom-feeding, than what is?

July 2008: Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson (a Goldman Sachs guy) asks Congress to grant him authority to TAKE OVER Fannie and Freddie because of their imminent collapse. Why did President Bush appoint this guy, Goldman execs tend to be democrats. Paulson (the Treasury Dept) give Fannie and Freddie $25,000,000,000 to prop them up and keep them operating. [author's note: we should dissolve Fannie and Freddie and the affordable housing laws as soon as the economy recovers].

Sept. 2008: Investment Bank Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt. Senate majority leader Democrat Harry Reid acknowledges that the democrat Congress does not know the solution, stating "no one knows what to do". The stock market tumbles and many citizens and foreign investors draw down their money market accounts as well. Paulson and Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke outline the $700,000,000,000 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out the financial system. Passed in October by the democrats and unfortunately some republican senators, along with $112,000,000,000 in unrelated pork spending.

Nov. 2008: Federal Government Secretary of the Treasury Paulson changes the TARP rules and instead of purchasing bad assets, buys shares of troubled banks to spur lending (true socialism now taking hold). $308,000,000,000 of taxpayer money is poured into Citibank.

December 2008: Democrat Congress agrees to "bail out" US auto companies.

February 2009: President Obama's new US Federal Treasury Dept Secretary Tim "the tax cheat" Geithner unveils the administration's $2,000,000,000,000 (that is right, trillion) TARP 2 idea, and the investor class responds by dropping the Dow Jones I.A. 382 points. President Obama signs the $787,000,000,000 stimulus bill, aka "Porkulus bill".

March 2009: Dow Jones I.A. hits bottom at 6500. 7000 points lower than when the democrats took over Congress in February 2007. Some small recovery is expected from federally funded construction projects and "green" development projects, but higher energy costs from anticipated cap-and-trade laws and restrictions to domestic development of oil and gas resources, and higher interest rates from trying to sell bonds to foreign investors to finance the massive deficit spending are expected to perpetuate the recession until the republican party's fiscal conservatives are put in control (possibly elected in 2010 and 2012?)

Did you know the "greed" on Wall Street comes from Democrats?

I didnt realize it either until i read this article by Kevin Williamson (published in March 2009 in National Review magazine) titled "Losing Gordon Gecko." Remember Gecko from the movie "Wall Street"? Excellent article. The following are the key excerpts:

"The Democrats - the party of George Soros and dodgy cattle futures - have long profited by denouncing Republicans as the party of Wall Street, a raggedy front for a gang of amoral money-runners pulling the strings of their puppets in Washington. It's a useful narrative for Democrats, but it isn't true. [...] Goldman Sachs is one firm that's learned that politics matters: The sinking investment bank received some $12,000,000,000 in bailout funds while its competitor, Lehman Brothers, was allowed to go bankrupt. Goldman operatives move easily between government and the private sector and have played key roles in both Democrat and Republican administrations. But like the rest of Wall Street, they have tilted heavily democrat of late. Goldman Sachs was the biggest donor to Democrats in 2008 according to a Center for Responsive Politics report. Some 73% of Goldman Sachs' millions in 2006-2008 donations went to Democrats, [...] The banking bailout [...] was marketed by Goldman Sachs alumnus Hank Paulson, who literally begged, on bended knee, for the money. It was managed by Assist. Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs foot soldier Neel Kashkari and was politically nudged along by [President] Bush's Chief of Staff Josh Bolton, another Goldman veteran."

"With Democrats now controlling the elected branches in Washington, Goldman has an even stronger hand: Former chairman Robert Rubin is the dean of the Goldman Sachs Democrats, the group that ran economic policy under the Clinton administration and is doing the same under [President] Obama. [...]."

"Other major nodes on the Goldman-Democratic nexus include Al Gore's London-based private-equity firm, Generation Investment Management, which was founded with assistance from former Goldman boss Paulson and includes in its ranks a half dozen prominent Goldman veterans. Former Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood is its CEO, earning the firm its nickname, 'Blood for Gore.' Goldman Sachs is a significant investor in E+Co, Blue Source, and APX, all firms positioned to profit from the cap-and-trade schemes that are at the heart of Gore's global warming crusade."

"[...] Senator Schumer, the New York grandee who sits on the Senate finance and banking committees, and who is infamous for his aggressive methods of shaking campaign contributions out of the money movers, raised $6 million from Wall Street for his last race - a pro forma campaign against an obscure Republican with one-tenth the cash. Schumer's tactics for extracting campaign money from Wall Street when he was head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee were so aggressive that Senator Arlen Specter accused him of using congressional inquiries in part as a fundraising tool. But it's hard to weep for Wall Street when it is getting such a rich return on its political investments: Schumer drove a stake through the heart of tax-code changes that would have treated 'carried interest' - the source of many private equity fortunes - as regular income for tax purposes, instead of taxing it as a capital gain. As it stands, a private-equity manager who makes a billion dollars pays 15% in taxes on carried interest, while a guy earning a salary of $34,000 is in the 25% tax bracket."

"In 2006 to 2008 Wall Street poured money on Democrats. Big Wall Street firms that made major political contributions - including Citi Group, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Lehman - gave the majority of their contributions to Democrats. The hedge funds followed suit [...]."

"The Democrats have figured out that they can keep Wall Street in their coalition by offering them easygoing social liberalism, a few sweet tax breaks, and good access to government revenue streams. [...] The Republicans' philosophy is informed by free-market idealists who celebrate the wonders of Schumpeterian 'creative destruction', but the guys flying business class would much rather sink into a nice warm bailout and let capitalism creatively destroy somebody else's money - the tax payers' money for instance. The bankers are the last guys who want free markets right now, and so it's no surprise to find them writing big checks to the Democrats. But against all evidence, Republicans remain the party of Wall Street in the public imagination. 'That's the irony of it all' says David Smick, a financial market adviser, 'but really, isn't that the job of a CEO, in addition to managing, to get a special deal? To get yourself protection? That's what you do, whether it's a monopoly, or the ultimate backstop, the ultimate hedge: the taxpayer.' Welcome to the hedge-fund racket America." Welcome to politics and greed as usual, this time from the Congressional Democrats.

Vote the bums out 2010.

Peter Schiff predicted this whole economic mess...

If i ever get elected to congress i am inviting this gentleman to be my primary economic advisor ! He understands economics, and predicted the current recession of 2008-2009 back in November 2006 when he gave this speech ! (6 parts but worth listening to if you want to be educated). Brilliant understanding of the market and effects of government intrusion.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADVEiTo7tDE

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZheV24ofw8

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmx1usUWZ3E

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o5dCkYfdM4

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcH3Ok2hRas

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OmLk-woFY


Yes Peter, "governments destroy countries", very well said (Part 6). Harvard gets it wrong in their forecast if you listen to the end of Part 6; so much for the superiority of ivy league.

Obama arrives in Arizona...

President Obama visited Arizona on Feb. 18, and when he visited a local school he was greeted by 300 protestors kept 200+ feet away.....this sign was one of the best, the girl on the right has it correct, and the girl on the left wants some freebies too so we can all share in the bankrupting of our economy.....Great job democrats, spend like there is no tomorrow, this is 10 times worse then the spending under Bush.

Keynesian theory does not work

Why democrats continue to believe in Keynesian theory is beyond comprehension when you consider historical empirical evidence.

Government spending does not produce long term economic growth. When government spends more, it purchases real resources and absorbs labor, land, equipment, and materials out of the market, therby raising the cost of production for private sector businesses, reducing the profitability or margin of a business. When businesses can no longer make a positive margin much less a profit, then they go bankrupt or cut costs (cut jobs).

Alberto Alesina of Harvard published a major long term study of fiscal policy changes in 18 countries (18 economies) in the Sept 2002 "The American Economic Review". They found that "fiscal stabilizations that have led to an increase in growth consist mainly of [governmentt] spending cuts, particularly in government wages and transfers, while those associated with a downturn in the economy are characterized by tax increases."

Ireland is an example. In the late 1980's they cut government spending by 7% of GDP, slashed the tax rates on capital gains and on business profit, and experienced excellent economic growth. By contrast, Japan ran budget deficits from 1993 to 2005 and accomplished nothing in terms of improving economic conditions (stagnant) and their standard of living.

Some of this discussion is from Alan Reynolds' acticle in the February 2009 issue of National Review.

And remember these famous and true quotes:

"Never base policy on a forecast."
- John Kenneth Galbraith

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
- Ronald Reagan

And have a good laugh at this one (or cringe in fear):

"It is only government that can break the vicious cycle [...]"
- Barak Obama 2009

If you think electing Mr. Obama was a mistake....

http://www.cafepress.com/ObamaMistake2

Rick Santelli, i love him !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA

Jim Cramer not a genius

Ok, i like Jim Cramer, but no one can predict the future, you should ignore anyone who acts like they can without caviat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGkrNJ19DSU&feature=related

Democrats caused the recession of 2008-2009

As anyone who follows economics and economic policy in detail will tell you, the catalyst of the recession of 2008-2009 was the burst of the housing bubble created by affordable housing laws (by democrats) and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government institutions (created by democrats). Here are the dems incriminating themselves is preventing republicans from fixing the problem back around 2004:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqpTKFQI1nY

Keep Healthcare in the Private Sector

This is a good editorial by Newt Gingrich, I just had to pass this along. From US News and World Report February 2009:

"Is there anything in your life you think would be better if it were run by government bureaucrats? For most of us, the answer is a laughable "no" !

Yet oddly, there is sympathy for turning over our most private, personal decisions, not to mention one sixth of our economy, to the same unresponsive, anti-entrepreneurial culture that gave us the response to Hurricane Katrina. Our two largest government-run healthcare programs - Medicare and Medicaid - are on fiscal crash courses that make Social Security seem like a model of solvency. Steep benefit cuts or much higher taxes will be required to sustain them anywhere near their current form.

The dwindling number of doctors who accept Medicare patients resent politicians and government bureaucrats threatening their fees and medling with their judgment. This has aided the rapid expansion of private "concierge" medicine for seniors who can afford it and for physicians who demand more than what Medicaid offers. In the mid 1990s, Tennessee's Medicaid program went further than any other state toward the 1993 Hillary Clinton model of government-run healthcare. It proved so catastrophic that only the capable leadership of Governor Phil Bredesen - who profoundly scaled back the experiment - saved the state.

More government bureaucrats involved in your healtcare would be destructive. Other countries with similar systems face lengthly and often deadly waiting lists. That is the only way to ration unlimited demand in the face of static supply. Go to YouTube and view the short films of Stuart Browning for a flavor of the Canadian system.

Ask government-run healthcare advocates if they would ban all private contracting, which would make it illegal for you to purchase any healthcare service also covered by the government. Instead, you would have to wait in line for care - the length of that line and quality of that care notwithstanding. Horrifying, yes. But that was Canadian law until a 2005 decision by even its left-wing Supreme Court found that "access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare." If those advocates answer no, then they are allowing for what they claim to oppose - two tiered healthcare where the rich use their money and connections to access one system, leaving everyone else to use the lower-quality government system.

Proponents of government run healthcare gain traction exploiting legitimate frustrations with our system, but opponents do not deserve a place in the debate if our only answer is no. We must offer a positive alternative where healthcare becomes more accessible and of higher quality at lower cost. That is what normal markets produce. Think computers and cellphones, where government bureaucrats have zero involvement in design and pricing.

A truly modernized, intelligent health system would focus on measurably improving health outcomes for all Americans. It would be ideologically agnostic about public or private initiatives and instead seek to scale up successful programs and discard those not producing results. A delivery system that allows private and public programs to flourish concurrently is more likely to yield new and better best practices to emulate elsewhere. Many best new practices offer specific financial rewards and incentives to individuals who achieve measurable progress in weight loss, lowering blood pressure, and eliminating tobacco use. Much of your health status is determined by choices you make. Smart health plans incentivize better choices so you are healthier and then share the savings with you. A modern system also will have 100% E-prescribing and electronic health records by a date certain. This will lead to better, more coordinated care with far fewer medical errors, thereby saving lives and money."

Change we can believe in?

Chicago and Illinois....

Who Ran it?

Senators: Barack Obama & Dick Durbin
Representative: Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Illinois Governor: Rod Blogojevich (impeached)
Illinois House leader: Mike Madigan
Attorney General: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike)
Chicago Mayor: Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley)
The leadership in Illinois? All Democrats.

Body count in Chicago the last six months: 292 killed -- more killed in Chicago than US troops in Iraq in same period.

State pension fund - $44 Billion in debt, worst in the country.

Cook County (Chicago ) sales tax - 10.25% highest in country (Look it up).

Chicago school system - rated one of the worst in the country and Obama just named the Arne Duncan, Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools as his Secretary of Education. Only 17% of 8th graders under his command read at grade level. That means 83% of Chicago aged students are reading below grade level. Over 60% are reading four or more grade levels below.

Illinois democrats cannot blame Republicans because there aren't any there in power !

Obama professes "Change!", i sure hope he does not mean change to how democrats have ruined a state like Illinois, not to mention Michigan, New Jersey, and California (even the Terminator could not save that place, he is handcuffed by the legislature). Funny how all the democrat governors are asking for federal "bail-out" money but generally not republicans. Republicans understand economics, democrats do not, that is the rule-of-thumb and it proves itself true over and over.

Remember, the recession of 2008-2009 was not caused by "failed policies by George Bush", the favorite talking point expression of the democrats, unless you are referring to the inept SEC, there i will agree the Bush gang should have been more involved in cleaning that place out, but that had nothing to do with the recession. The recession was caused by the affordable housing laws (created by democrats awhile back) and the democrat created (and run) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac quasi-government institutions. Remember the CEOs (democrats by the way) who gave themselves huge bonuses while cooking the books? They created the housing bubble that burst that then caused the credit meltdown and all the dominoes after that. You want to blame someone, look in the mirror democrats, this was mostly your fault. Your democrat media outlets do a good job of hiding this fact, but not from those of us who educate ourselves.

Habicrap for Humanity

The intentions of Habitat for Humanity are admirable, but like any feel-good endeavor, the actions sometimes produce unintended consequences. Here is an excerpt from the February 2009 issue of The Limbaugh Letter that i found interesting. 

 "Eight years ago, Jimmy Carter and a crew of 10,000 volunteers bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities like Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt went on a 17-day building blitz, erecting a model housing complex in northern Florida for Habitat for Humanity. Feeling good about themselves and their ability to remake America and bind us together, the do-gooders went home. Now many of the 85 homeowners in the Fairway Oaks development complain their houses are falling apart. Turns out, according to The Sunday Times (of UK), Fairway Oaks was apparently built on a dump. One occupant says he pulled up his kitchen floorboards only to discover garbage five feet deep. Other residents report that rats and ants are pouring through cracked walls and rotten doorframes. The signature Jimmy Carter structures are now recognizable to homeowners by their cochroaches, mold, and mildew. 

"The intentions are good, but when the politicians and big-shot stars have left, we're stuck with the consequences," says another Fairway Oaks resident, who says her children suffer from mysterious skin rashes. "This house looks pretty but inside it either stinks or sweats." 

Attorney April Charney is representing the Fairway Oaks victims in an upcoming legal battle - though she knows Carter's Habitat for Humanity is a 'darling of liberal social activists.' Lesson 1 of infrastructure building: liberal good intentions cannot cover up a foundation of garbage.

As a professional Civil Engineer, I know home construction requires proper engineering and design by professionals for the foundation and framing, and construction by professional contractors, so I am not surprised one of these do-good activities failed miserably. Those rich actors would have done better to donate money to build quality apartments than trying to build half-ass homes for people who cant afford one anyway. Or use their time to repair homes of poor people, not build new ones when they are not qualified to do so. I volunteered once in college on a Habitat for Humanity outing and appreciated the individual efforts, but an effort should be made for quality in design and construction, not just building low quality homes.

Arab Palestinians Breeding Hatred

I read a good article by Harold Evans of U.S. News and World Report, titled "Poisoning Minds in Bethlehem". Here are the most important quotes:



Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, "is also the center of Palestinian culture and the headquarters of the Governorate of the Palestinian Authority. The Bush administration believed and hoped that the PA chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, cared enough about his people to make a decent peace with Israel, leading to a new, independent state of Palestine. Abbas has shattered those hopes. Worse, he and his associates are ensuring that the next generation of Palestinians will be incapable of making peace. They will be paralyzed by the hate and fear that they have been taught in their schoolrooms and by the national television controlled by the PA."

"The extent of this corruption of children's minds was vividly exposed last week by the investigative journalist Gerald Posner, who produced a web documentary (hosted by thedailybeast.com) based on videos culled from TV by Palestinian Media Watch. It is deeply shocking to observe children being programmed for terrorism through the exhaltation of suicide [homocide] bombers as heroes. "Martyrdom is bliss", a child hostess says, referring to a 14-yr old suicide killer. The clips show incessant indoctrination that Islam wants the death of adults and children for Allah and will reward those who achieve Shahada [...]."

"Children being taught murder by rote is child abuse, [...] more damaging than physical injury."

"This endlessly fraudulent education has had devastating effects on the prospect for peace. The world may have been appalled this year when students studying in a Jerusalem library were shot to death by a Palestinian terrorist, but the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reports that 84% of Palestinians approved."

"Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is well aware of the PA's insidious lies. Last year she called for them to stop: "These children deserve an education that instills a respect for life and peace instead of glorifying death and violence. It is disturbing to me as a mother [...] because it basically profoundly poisons the minds of these children." Now she is in a position to do more. She can tell Abbas that the U.S. government will no longer give millions of dollars to a PA that actively pollutes the minds of the innocents. And the Europeans should follow suit."

On a side note, check out Newt Gingrich's speech at the National Press Club in 2007 concerning terrorism by violent islamic fundamentalists:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/08/gingrich/index.html#cnnSTCVideo