New Jersey Corruption

The charges just announced about the arrests of mayors and rabbis in New Jersey point out that the "Soprano State" appears to be the most corrupt in the nation. More than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.

I don't like big centralized federal government but if there was ever a role for the FBI - rooting out this corruption at the city, county and state level is an absolute necessity.

Good for Jimmy Carter

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/20/jimmy-carter-leaves-church-over-treatment-of-women/?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2009%2F07%2F20%2Fjimmy-carter-leaves-church-over-treatment-of-women%2F

Good for Jimmy Carter. Too many churches including the Roman Catholic and Muslim religions treat women as second class citizens.

I disagree with the former President on plenty of things but he is setting a great example on this one.

This Professor is a Genius

A friend sent this to me........

This Professor is a Genius

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

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

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.


The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".


All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.


After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.


As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.


When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.


All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.


Could not be any simpler than that.

Another egregious example of public pensions gone wrong.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/21/BUN618S39O.DTL&tsp=1

This article discusses the recently retired Moraga-Orinda fire chief who at 51 receives an annual pension of $241,000. The chief correctly points out that he did not negotiate or design the pension program – he simply took advantage of it. The formula was so poorly constructed that when he cashed in vacation and got some other pay in his last few years that it boosted his annual pension from a mere $185,000 to $241,000. And at the age of 51 his life expectancy has got to be another 40 years.

These deals were already made and I do not suggest changing deals already promised but is there any chance we can stop this stupidity going forward?

Let’s close down all public pensions now. Lock in the benefits already promised and replace them with defined contribution plans rather than these dinosaur pension programs! Stop paying our government employees so much more than the private sector!

New federal rules for home loans

http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-harney19-2009jul19,0,1179820.story an article about the new federal rules for home loans.

Government is almost always working like a committee designing a horse; it usually comes up with something resembling a camel.

For some reason our politicians are blaming the lack of disclosure for home loans on our mortgage mess. Are you kidding me? Have you bought a new home or taken out a mortgage lately? I would be surprised if there weren’t at least 80 pages of documents to be reviewed and disclosures to understand. Do we need more disclosures?

Do you think most people read and understand the information they already recieve? Not! So instead of trying to simplify the documents and disclosures for the important considerations, the new regulations that go into effect will probably add another 20 pages of disclosures all written in legalize and written in a way that many of us do not understand.

There are only two things that most people care about when they buy their new home:
1) What is the money down?
2) How much a month is it going to cost me?

Borrowers also need to understand if they can pay the loan off early without penalty, if the interest rate is variable and if so what the formula is and how high can it go? And what happens to the home if the borrower can no longer afford the payments and defaults on the loan? But very few borrowers get that far and another 20 pages of documents is not going to get them that understanding.

A big problem we had was that too many borrowers were lying to the banks about their income on their loan applications. But none of the politicians want to talk about this dishonesty. The politicians and media would rather bludgeon the banks and the mortgage companies (who also did plenty of damage) but were not the only culprits in this ongoing drama.

Let’s ask our politicians for more honesty, more simplicity and to get out of lives. And please why not simplify and clean up a few of our existing messes before they create more.

Rationing Health Care

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?pagewanted=1&em

Interesting column about rationing health care in the US. It presupposes that we will soon have our government playing a far bigger role in rationing our health care – not a bad assumption.

The trouble is turning over these life or death decisions to government. There are plenty of tradeoffs and the calculus is just too difficult for your average politician to manage in a reaonsable way.

Public employee pensions

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/matierandross/

This article talks about all the City of San Francisco retirees making more than $100,000 per year. A problem that is widespread throughout our country.

Pensions and social security promises at the city, county, state and federal governments are the silent killer of our future economy. Just like a family living the good life on their credit cards and home equity loans until the debt catches up with them.

Pensions and our Social Security system are a way that politicians avoid confronting costs today and push the problem onto future generations. Pensions are also a great way for the public sector to pay themselves substantially over market and hide it from the public for a decade or two.

The private sector (other than our foolish auto industry) has moved aggressively to replace defined-benefit pension programs with 401K and equivalent programs. By doing so the companies know today what their costs actually are and the responsibility for managing the investment going forward lies with the employee.

These public pension programs typically pay the retiree based on their last few years income. So given the formulas, the employees predictably “game” the system as you and I would do. They work extra overtime and they work hard to get promotions their last couple of years because they know that every dollar they earn in the last couple years pays back multiple times.

Is it any surprise that the average private employee in California today earns about $45,000 per year (including benefits) compared to the average public employee earning about $85,000?

Not only could this problem easily bankrupt many local governments, the US government (though the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) guarantees nearly 44 million Americans and 29,400 pension plans. What are the chances that our government is charging and setting aside enough to cover all the future problems? Somewhere between slim and none. Another unfunded liability for our Federal government.

Pension programs in the private sector used to be the rule. But they installed new 401k programs, froze the benefits and changed for the better. Do you hear any discussion of government at any level making this fundamental change?

New home construction starts increase

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/18/BU9L18QSTU.DTL&type=business

Most of the media broadcasts with optimism when new home contstruction increases like it just did (see link to article). But why? The US does not need more homes. Folks are forgetting simple supply and demand concepts. The more homes we build the less they are worth (all other things being equal).

As a country we need to find other things to build and create than new homes. Building homes today may create more contstruction jobs in the short-term but what do we have when the new homes are completed - an even greater surplus of homes than we have now.

When we find ourselfes in a hole, let's stop digging!

A Reckless Congress

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779717982855785.html

Excellent piece in the Opinion Section of the Wall Street Journal.

The liberals forget that small business owners and entrepreneurs can move from California to Nevada or Florida to reduce their state income tax burden. The combined State/Federal income tax rate if one lives in Oregon would go up to over 57% with only Denmark having a higher State/Federal tax burden.

And if one can move from California to Nevada one can also change countries from America to a place like St. Kitts and Nevis with a zero percent income tax. Most of our ancestors left their old countries for a better life but the liberals assume that the workers and taxpayers in this country would never leave America no matter how much the the rules change - a very simpleton view.

NYC's financial mess of the 70's compared to California today

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124701298016709067.html

Excellent article comparing NYC's financial problems of the 70's to California's financial mess.

A shortage of nurses

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-kirsten-gillibrand/new-yorks-nursing-shortag_b_227154.html

This article speaks to the shortage of nurses in the country (and I do not agree with much of it). Well if you think it's bad now wait until we socialize our health care system. At least now the hospitals and clinics have some latitude in how they hire, what they pay and how they recruit nurses.

But too many kids are going to four year colleges to get degrees in sociology, history, and Medieval German studies - and not enough are studying nursing and other practical subjects. Let's get rid of all the subsidies (like low interest loans) for liberal arts colleges and start a dialogue to encourage recent high school grads to study something that is in demand.

Did you know that YouTube is losing about $500 million per year?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=1

Malcolm Gladwell is a terrific writer from the New Yorker. He writes about the "new economy" and his book "Outliers" is terrific.

The government's role in the housing bubble

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124631486277570583.html

An excellent editorial about the government's role in the
housing bubble.

Congress meddling in College Football playoffs

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692993074303505.html

Do we really want congress meddling in the College Football playoff system. I want less government not more and this is a classic case of our government sticking their noses where they don't belong.

Unions in public eduction

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683510050697845.html

Read this article on the former union boss of the NYC school system.

Once government takes over an industry (like education) and it subsequently gets unionized it is hard to ever get the train back on track. In the competitive business world unions tend to simply kill their host companies - and the non-union companies take their places. But government-run businesses are much harder to kill - they simply get more and more bloated and continue to pass the increasing costs on to the taxpayer.

Let's pardon Jack Johnson

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/opinion/05sun4.html?ref=opinion

It is about time to pardon Jack Johnson.

Sarah's folly

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/opinion/05dowd.html?ref=opinion

She forgot the basic concept of get the job done and then let's talk....

Iranian revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?_r=1&hp
Even with MJ's death the Iranian revolution has got legs...

The Williams Sisters at Wimbledon

The Williams sisters have on four occasions now been one/two in the Ladies Championship at Wimbledon and also won the Women's Doubles event. This happened in 2000, 2002, 2008 & 2009. Anything comparable come to mind?

Get the government out of our lives!

I am a "get the government out of our hair" kind of guy. You might even call me "conservative".
But the problem is the "left" and the "right" want to get into our lives and control things that I don't want them to control.

When Sarah Palin resigned yesterday she talked about how she wants less government. But the state of Alaska spends over $13,000 per capita and about 3.5 times more per capita than the state of Texas. Is this less government? I think not!

I want government out of our lives, out of our bedrooms and out of running our businesses. They will always find a way to screw it up!