Category Archives: View

View 756 Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year

I don’t do topical news, and it’s just as well. After the President gave his smirking press conference to spike the ball on having forced a tax settlement without any spending reductions he then threw in more insults to Congress. If he intended to end negotiations he could not have done a better job. There are those who say this is exactly what he intended.

Of course there never was much chance of actual spending cuts: in Washington there is an automatic increase in spending unless some action is taken to “cut” the appropriation. Last February the House passed a bill to eliminate this feature, but it was never even voted on in the Senate, and would not have survived a veto from President Obama in any event. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/house-votes-eliminate-automatic-spending-increases-budget

In theory the sequestration will bring about an actual cut, but it’s not likely – mostly it’s a decrease in the increases that the different departments will get. But as I understand it, there may be some actual honest to God cuts in a few cases. One of those will be missile defenses, but there is considerable discretion in the military cuts of about $55 Billion in a base (note that the base has a built in rise) of about $550 Billion. This looks accomplishable: the US spends more on military power than the rest of the world combined, and I don’t see anyone planning an invasion of the United States. The military is not the first line of defense against another 9/11 style attack. It is in theory the first line of defense against activities like the Fort Hood massacre, but I don’t think military budget cuts or increases will have much effect there: what’s needed is a military attitude toward that threat, and that doesn’t cost much. Had all the officers and senior noncoms been armed, Major Nidal Hassan would have been shot down before he could kill and wound so many of his comrades. But the military apparently is being told to be more concerned about Hassan’s beard and with not offending the Muslim community.

We are going over the cliff, which means that each of us will owe about $2000 more in taxes than you planned to pay – assuming that you pay taxes, which I suspect that most non-student readers here do. Those who don’t wish they could. It is not clear whether we will have to actually pay that extra tax. The President keeps trooping up representatives of the middle class – I assume they are actually tax payers, although how he selects those who stand with him when he delivers his post campaign speeches is not known, and I haven’t been clever enough to find out through Google or Bing. Since there was cheering when he slammed the Republicans I presume this wasn’t an actual press conference with actual journalists, although there may have been bloggers. In any event I do not think that even those privileged to stand behind him as he read from the teleprompter would welcome the coming tax increases.

The cost of cutting back taxes to 2012 rates will be that there be no “tax cuts” for those making more than $200,000, and that the new higher rates on “the rich” will be permanent. This may bring in as much as $100 Billion over the next few years, although it’s unlikely – predictions of increased revenue do not take account of probable efforts to avoid those taxes through shifts on spending patterns. It may bring an increase in charitable donations. If your income is more than $200,000 this year this might be a good time to make charitable donations, particularly if there is any chance that the donation may influence school selection committees or have other such effects.

But the drama is not over.

I note that there is frantic last minute activity in Congress, but I also note that it is more devoted to “turning off the sequester” which is the only real spending cut in the future. No one is looking at fraud and waste, bunny inspectors, government activities we would be better off without. Soak the rich is now the goal for a lot of Democrats. By “the rich” is generally meant those whose income is salaries and bonuses, people paid through stock options for engaging in high risk enterprises, etc. People who move money around in circles generally find ways to defer income in ways that don’t get hit with “income” taxes. And of course there are many perks that come with wealth but which don’t look like income.

The President wants to pound the rich. He doesn’t care what that does to investment climates. And no one is going to make any cuts to entitlements.

At some point, one would suspect, the American people will have had enough; but that will take a while. And Congress gets a raise. Their staffers get a raise. Government employee pensions continue to rise, and the courts are now saying that cities can’t stop paying into pension funds even if they go bankrupt, and the idiots who bought city bonds have less claim on a bankrupt city’s money than the pensioned off employees. Salve Sclave.

Happy New Year

An example of modern political debate:

Demand a Plan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJjlPH1dqo&feature=player_embedded

View 755 Thursday, December 27, 2012

The media seem determined to mock the NRA for the view that “the main deterrent to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” but I see no error in the statement. As to the suggestion of having armed personnel at the schools, surely that is a local matter. In Los Angeles the immediate policy reaction of the Mayor and Chief of Police was to instruct patrol officers to once a day at some random time go to each school campus in their patrol area. I don’t know if we have enough resources to implement this, but we can hope so, and it certainly seems like a reasonable idea.

I also note that had the active duty officers at Fort Hood been wearing sidearms, far fewer people would have been harmed when Major Hassan smuggled in a pistol and began firing randomly at his comrades in what is officially described as a work place incident rather than a terrorist act. I recall that my youth, officers and senior non-commission officers were always armed when they went out in public: it was just part of the uniform. In England the Sam Brown belt and Webley revolver were a common sight in the World War II era. Given the size and weight of the Webley the Sam Brown belt was very nearly necessary. Now one might limit this to combat branch officers and sergeants, in which case the argument is that if you trust these people to lead your kids into harm’s way you have no business saying they are not trustworthy enough to be armed in public.

When I was a University of Washington campus policeman for a short time, that officially made me a Washington State Policeman, and it was understood that even off duty we were law enforcement officers. We were permitted to carry weapons off duty although I did not. I don’t recall any untoward consequences of this policy (nor any advantages either). It does seem reasonable to find ways to put good guys with guns in places that bad guys might bring guns.

Of course what most people want is another law. Once guns are banned, I presume we will have to worry about regulating hatchets and machetes.

We daily lurch toward the fiscal cliff, and no one makes any practical suggestions.

I know how we could save $12 Billion a year with a positive effect on the economy, without having to do a thing: let the subsidy to wind power generation expire. It was abolished ten years ago with 31 December 2012 as the expiration date. It costs $12 billion in direct subsidies. The amount of energy generated by wind is small, but letting the subsidy expire won’t cause any shut down of existing mills. Windmill operating costs are low enough that once built they can make some profit – but not enough to amortize the capital costs of building them in the first place. But the ones we have are already built. The end of the subsidy will actually bring about a drop in the costs of energy. Lower energy costs are always a better economic stimulus than any “stimulus program” ever has.

I have no predictions about what happens next. My guess is that Obama will allow us to go over the cliff, and thus expose every American family to a couple of thousand dollars tax hike; then he will come as the savior with the “Obama Tax Cut” which will be essentially the restoration of the expiring Bush Tax Cuts applied to 95% of the population. Everyone will cheer Obama and curse Bush.

I suspect though that we will get emergency legislation to restore the wind power subsidies as part of the Obama Tax Cut. I sure hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.

I have dental appointments. Managed to knock out a tooth when I fell and bashed myself a few days ago. All’s well, I am more embarrassed than hurt, and the swelling has gone away on my lip leaving me with no more than a magnificent black eye. And it’s lunch time.

For those interested in more information on wind energy subsidies, former Senator Gramm has a Wall Street Journal article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324481204578179373031924936.html?mod=googlenews_wsj including some specific numbers.

I have been looking for federal employees whose jobs should be redundant in that we don’t need done that which they are doing. Some are doubly redundant – we’d be better off if they weren’t doing it. One group are those who hounded Dr. Peter Gleason to his death over his peer-reviewed articles pointing out a useful off-label use for Xyrem, whose label use is for narcolepsy. The six federal agents who handcuffed him and the entire prosecutorial team involved might be better employed as bunny inspectors.

The government does a lot of expensive things that either don’t need doing or which actually cause more harm than good. It would make a certain amount of sense to identify these and leave them out of appropriation bills. The money saved might not be very great – although the wind energy subsidies certainly involve real money, a hundred billion here and a hundred billion there really does add up to real money – but even a few million saved is worth saving. Particularly if the effect is to stem the flow of information. As it happens I knew the Glendale dentist whose speculations about the effects of aspirin on his patients led to Big Medicine reconsidering aspirin’s use in heart cases; and I was witness to some of the humiliating treatment he received at medical conferences when he simply tried to get them to consider his theory.

In my judgment the FDA assumes that American citizens are dolts, not free citizens, and assumes powers it should not have. I can very well appreciate the usefulness of enforcing truth in labeling. I can defend the notion that the FDA can require drug dispensers to say “The use of this product for purposes other than those listed as approved is done at the risk of the patient, and we think this stuff is likely to kill you or do something awful to you. Just as I can accept that if a product advertises itself as genuine snake oil it ought to contain oil squeezed out of a snake. I have no objection to labels that say The FDA believes that if you take this stuff you are out of your ever-loving blue-eyed mind, and God have mercy on your soul. But to jail a doctor for telling a medical conference that he has evidence that the stuff is useful is a job not worth doing.

You can’t protect free people from everything. Attempts to do so can lead to bad results. But then science fiction readers have thought about this for a long time.

View 755 Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas.

For those who have asked, I’m all right. I did manage to bash myself a bit Friday which has slowed me down, but it’s nothing serious and I’m recovering nicely. We had a good Christmas, both by Skype and with Frank and his partner who drove in from Texas to spend the afternoon with us, and all’s well.

I found this amusing:

http://photos.msn.com/slideshow/photo/reindeer-herders-around-the-world/23l1slzq#1

I should be back in business tomorrow. Have a great week.

http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/images/carrier-row-12-2012.jpg

And for your contemplation:

TSA Agent Blows Whistle

It’s nothing that we — and millions of Americans and millions of foreigners — did not already know, but maybe having a TSA worker repeat it will clue in millions more. 

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A former TSA screener turned blogger who is now causing embarrassment for the federal agency has revealed that TSA officers routinely laugh at and make fun of passengers’ nude body scanner images in back rooms.

In a blog entitled Taking Sense Away, the anonymous ex-TSA worker reveals how he, “Witnessed light sexual play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images, dear passengers.”

The revelation was in response to a reader who asked, “Tell us, please, what really happens in that private room and why the TSA does not want it seen in public nor recorded.”

The ex-TSA screener also ridiculed the existence of I.O. rooms (image operator rooms) where naked images produced by body scanners are viewed by TSA agents.

“The most ridiculous thing is that these I.O. rooms even exist, to begin with. The backscatter machines are useless, as I and many, many others have previously pointed out. They should never have been put into use to begin with; TSA officers should never have been viewing nude, radiation-rendered images of passengers in those private rooms, period,” he writes.

“That’s why there are federal lawsuits pending against TSA (Ralph Nader, Bruce Schneier, et al) and why TSA is trying to backpedal and sweep the radiation scanners under the rug away from oversight committees and the public at large, as quickly as possible, right now. The entire thing was, as usual, a hare-brained, tax payer money-wasting, disaster of an idea.”

In a separate blog post, the whistleblower explains how TSA higher-ups are fully aware of the public’s disdain for the agency and that, the, “TSA is the laughing stock of America’s security apparatus,” with most employees desperate to transfer into a more respected government agency.

The whistleblower also highlights how TSA screeners would punish passengers who displayed a bad attitude by subjecting them to pointless bag searches with zero justification.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/ex-tsa-screener-officers-laughing-at-your-naked-image/

You can work with those harassment devices, however.  I won’t get into the details, but smart people will figure out ways to make the harasser wish that he’d never harassed you.  Many professional and bureaucratic remedies exist; you can apply the same for devastating effect. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Nothing unexpected, of course.

I have been talking to my son Frank who does various commercial advertising stuff. There is an interesting situation involving vaccinations and inoculations and compensation for those who ( several per million ) have really terrible reactions to them. Statistically if you give essentially any immunization whatsoever, a few people per million are going to have terrible reactions – possibly fatal. It’s not the “fault” of the drug company. It’s not incompetence or bad manufacturing practice. It’s just the way the world is.

The law that compensates these people is from about 1986 and is based on Reagan administration – actually more on Carter administration – data. I charge is made for every vaccination, and the funds go to compensate victims of vaccinations.  It is possible to refine this some and come up with some predictions about who will have a larger probability of something awful happening if they are immunized, and to tie those probabilities a little closer to the specific immunization. It’s tricky. It involves careful data collection and meticulous work. It doesn’t take brilliance – at least that won’t be necessary although brilliance might make it faster and cheaper – but it will take thorough and careful work, and a lot of careful record keeping, and supervision. All that costs money, but it’s research worth doing. Some of the money is available in the funds appropriated for compensation: the fund is financed by a flat fee on inoculations, and has grown faster than intended, so some of the money might be available to appropriate as research.

On the other hand, this is the kind of research project that can be done by existing grant supervision agencies: it just needs the money and some careful attention to the research grant terms and work statements. I suggest that there are plenty of US government activities that could be abolished and money saved by declaring those doing needless jobs as redundant. Bunny inspectors come to mind, but perhaps there wouldn’t be enough saved by sacking the lot of them. Couldn’t hurt to do it of course.

But given the above story and other materials we see in the news, may I suggest that the TSA could spare a lot of money for some needed research that might actually save lives? It’s not as if the TSA were so very good at what it does.

More another time, but it’s something to think about.

I have not time to write at length on this, but what I am doing here is making a case for some immunizations as a public good. I recall growing up with compulsory smallpox vaccinations; they killed a small number of children every year, but they had the desired effect of making smallpox rarer and rarer for the immunized and susceptible alike. In those days diphtheria was a dread disease that killed a lot of children every year. The immunizations essentially eliminated it as a conscious public threat, although it’s still out there ready to come back if there’s a large enough population of susceptible children – it’s a concentration thing. The Iditarod race came out of getting vaccines through the snow and ice in days before airplane deliveries.

I understand that requiring someone to be vaccinated is an encroachment on freedom. I know the arguments; but the issue was settled before any or us were born, and few of you grew up in a time when major epidemics were not only common but inevitable. By my time smallpox was no longer a danger because most of us were immunized but polio season came every year, and we were  all terrified when it came. Schools and summer camps closed, there were quarantines – almost every year in Shelby County Tennessee.

But any time you have mass immunizations some will die of allergies. Some will be badly injured. If you want freedom from smallpox and polio you cannot rely on suing the drug makers. The 1986 law approaches this by taking the compensation requirement away from the drug people and the Tort bar, and making government responsible. Even so some will be harmed; it seems an ethical obligation to minimize that number, and as our science gets better being able to predict those likely to be harmed by immunization gets better – but the research is expensive and isn’t particularly romantic, it just requires meticulous preservation and analysis of date, lots of patience, and money.

I think we would all be safer if we had research grants on finding ways to identify people likely to have a bad reaction to immunizations; and I suspect we’d save a lot more lives than the TSA inspectors are saving. Certainly per dollar spent.

More another time.

View 754 Friday, December 21, 2012

WINTERSET

I am pleased to tell you that we have passed both dawn and noon local time in the Mayan palaces, temples, and pyramids in Yucatan, and the world does not seem to have ended. Edgar Cayce predicted the rise of Atlantis with resulting tsunamis creating disasters on the Atlantic coast, and some time later – I’d have some warning – on the Pacific coast. I am pleased to say that so far there is no sign of that happening. Alas, Cayce wasn’t so exact as he might have been, and the rising of Atlantis may not happen until the opening of the New Cycle.

Tomorrow morning begins a new Long Count cycle under the Mayan Long Count calendar. Each cycle lasts 1,366,560 days. The Romans used to have the Secular Games (you see remnants of them in Catholic Jubilee years) which by law were “something no living man has seen, and no man living will see again.” I think a 1,366,560 day cycle qualifies.

The Republican Plan B which would halt the tax rise (average of $3500 annually per household) in 2013 for everyone making under $1,000,000 a year, but would allow the rate for those making a million a year to revert to the previous level before the Bush Tax Cuts could not get enough Republican votes to pass. It was doomed in the Senate and President Obama had said he would veto it, but the Speaker apparently thought he had enough votes to get it through the House.

The plan was to present the coming tax crisis as the Democrats’ fault for rejecting Plan B.

The Club for Growth, a tax cut advocacy group which preceded the Tea Party and is not a part of the Tea Party movement, had this to say:

“Like many of you, we at the Club have been watching the ongoing debate over the “fiscal cliff” closely. A brief reminder of how we got here: President Obama and Republicans in Congress agreed to a 2-year extension of the Bush tax rates two years ago, and then pushed through a deal to raise the federal debt limit last summer that created “sequestration” or automatic spending cuts if a so-called “super committee” couldn’t reach a deal on deficit reduction. The combination of tax increases and spending cuts set to happen at the beginning of January 2013 is a culmination of these two deals in what is now known as the “fiscal cliff.”

The Club opposed the August 2011 debt limit deal because it raised the debt ceiling without structural reform (like a Balanced Budget Amendment). We firmly believed that Congress would never allow sequestration to happen, and that all we’d be left with is trillions in new debt.

Earlier this week, after publicly putting tax increases and yet another increase in the debt limit on the table during negotiations with President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would put forward a proposal to raise marginal income tax rates, as well as rates on capital gains and dividends. He called this anti-growth tax increase “Plan B.”

Thanks to members of the House, elected with Club PAC support, the Plan B tax increase was defeated. Fiscal conservatives revolted, and Speaker Boehner was forced to pull the bill. The Speaker even tried to “buy” votes by including spending increases that broke the sequestration deal (just as we predicted).

Lawmakers now need to focus on the long term pro-growth solutions to grow our economy and reform entitlements instead of their myopic concerns of how polls will blame them tomorrow, next week, next month, or ahead of the next election. The standard by which we should measure legislation is not whether it generates revenue to the government. Instead, the paramount consideration should be whether it promotes growth and reduces the size of government.

The Club will continue to closely monitor the progress of Congress and urge Senators and Representatives to find a pro-growth solution to the fiscal cliff. Stay tuned.”

The Republicans now seem determined to allow the US to go over the financial cliff, since it is unlikely that any Republican Bill that has any chance of passage in the House will be acceptable to the Democrats. It is not clear whether the Democrats can concoct a bill that could attract enough Republican votes to pass, but it is not impossible.

The “financial cliff” that will take effect on January 1 is the reversion to the Clinton era tax rates before the Bush tax cuts, and the sequestration of funds that automatically takes place due to the Republican/Democrat compromise bill that raised the debt limit ceiling. The Act makes many drastic cuts in Federal spending – actual cuts, not merely reductions in planned increases – but does not affect Federal employee pay or pensions. It makes large cuts in military spending, but not in military pay. Medicaid, Social Security, and veteran benefits are not affected. There are those who say that blanket cuts in Federal spending would be a Good Thing.

Note that the Federal Zero Interest Rate policy is not affected; this policy has enormous effects on investment strategies. Do note that everyone who holds cash is subject to a 2.5% tax on total cash holdings (including money in checking accounts) and in general the return on savings accounts doesn’t cover inflation either.

The financial cliff includes taxes on medical devices; it is not clear why pacemakers, crutches, splints, ankle braces, replacement knees and hips, and so forth deserve a special tax and should be made more expensive. Since a great deal of the cost of such devices is borne by Medicare and Medicaid, and thus the tax is paid by the Federal Government, the effect is a rise in costs for those covered by private insurance or by their own bank accounts; which may in fact be the purpose of the tax, which seems to be inserted by those who favor increased government control of medical care.

Once we go over the cliff, the Democrats will propose “tax cuts for the middle class” and will probably gain a great deal of credit for having done so. They repeal the Bush tax cuts and later come up with Obama tax cuts. The Republicans do not seem to have made many political gains from being responsible for the Bush Tax Cuts (which the upcoming Obama Tax Cuts will probably not match – he wants more revenue, and it’s easier to get that from the middle class) but it is likely that Obama will get a lot of credit for his. So it goes.

Of course the Senate has not passed a budget for years. It will be interesting to see if it can do so.

Under the Constitution no money can be drawn from the public treasury except through a law that originates in the House of Representatives and which has been passed by the Senate.

The NRA position is that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

It hasn’t said much about who the bad guys and who the good guys are. King George and Lord Germain undoubtedly had different ideas from those of Samuel Adams and George Washington.

And when we disarmed they sold us
And delivered us bound to our foes…

It is evening and the world has not yet ended. I suspect most of us will still be here tomorrow. The days will begin to be longer, and another year begin. Or another Long Cycle if you are a Mayan astrologer. Happy New Year.

I continue to point out that if we took $10,000 from each of the 2% of Americans every year, that would amount to $62 Billion a year; about the amount the US borrows every month. Not insignificant, but also not likely we can get that much more from people already paying taxes at the current rate.