Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Looters

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I’ve mentioned in this space that We the Overtaxed People are on a financial path to adopting Greek as our national language.

The critters inside the Beltway have a new model now.

“Cyprus and the EU reached a new late-night bailout deal last night that will reduce the chance that Cyprus’s financial system and economy will completely implode.
“The 10 billion euro deal requires Cyprus to drastically shrink its banking sector, which has grown to eight times the size of the country’s economy, by unwinding Cyprus’ second largest bank, Laiki. In doing so, bondholders and depositors with more than 100,000 euros will take a hair cut.”

Read the rest here and come back. I’ll wait.

Broken Piggy Bank“If you think we can continue in America with the deficits we have been running, think HARD about the international precedents being set with the Cyprus fiasco. Here, I am thinking it would be your IRAs and 401Ks…” Rufus said.

He’s right.

The FDIC here covers all types of deposits received at an insured bank, including everything you have in a checking account, a NOW account, savings account, money market account, CD, or even cashier’s checks and money orders.

The standard deposit insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.

Investment or retirement accounts with a stock broker are not insured. That’s another pot of gold just waiting for the Liberal Leprechauns to loot.

When (not if) it happens here, famed liberal Bill “I’ve been overtaxed enough already” Maher may really abandon the Liberals. He’ll have to.

 

Thursday Thorn: Kin We Use the Dogs, too?

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Here’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) speaking at a Senate judiciary committee hearing on Thursday, March 7. These are the people who determine what color socks you wear:

“The time has come, America, to step up and ban these weapons. The other very important part of this bill is to ban large capacity ammunition feeding devices — those that hold more than ten rounds. We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines. Limiting magazine capacity is critical, because it is when a criminal, a drug dealer, a deranged individual has to pause to change magazines and reload that, the police or brave bystanders have the opportunity to take that individual down.”

It’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round,
30-round, even 150-round magazines.

Oh, goody.


 

You Can’t Fix Stupid

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You Can't Fix Stupid t-shirtI saw a t-shirt at the Seafood Festival yesterday.

The local rocket scientists have been busy.

One day last week was unusually pugilistic for two of the furrier cops on the Key West police force: a police dog and a horse got punched out. In two separate incidents.

Incident one: A 21-year-old man punched the K-9 in the head when the suspect was found inside the Compass Realty office where cops had found a busted-out window and a trail of blood. They released the hound who hightailed it to the second floor of the building. The human cops followed the dog upstairs to find the soon-to-be-bustee wearing only shoes and socks, punching the dog in the head. [Editor’s Note: Officer Cyress is a 4-year-old German shepherd but Release the Hounds sounds far better than Release the Shepherds!]

Incident two (later that same afternoon): A 28-year-old “farmer” from Ramrod Key interrupted an investigation into underage drinking, leaned on the KW police horse (Key West has a police horse?), and punched it for no apparent reason.

As far as I know, it’s not even the full moon.

That’s just misdemeanor stupid.

We have to go north for the real thing.

“I’m willing to reduce our government’s Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of healthcare in this country,” Mr. Obama said last year.

You Can't Fix Stupid But You Can Vote t-shirtThat was then.

Repuglicans and Demorats continue waging the soundbite fight over federal spending. One side claims that ObamaCare cuts Medicare by $716 billion, for example, mostly by squeezing providers. The other side claims that the “premium support” Medicare forces seniors to pay more out of pocket.

Both sides are right.

Both sides sing the constant chorus of “they’re cutting Medicare” to hammer the other guys and scare the seniors. Seniors vote, after all. Scared seniors vote early and often.

Seniors should be scared. Both sides think that the way to cut costs in any program is simple: just pay less. Both sides figure the way to fix government revenues equally simple: just pay more taxes.

Wow. Just pay less. I’ll do that at the grocery store today. “President Obama says I can pay you 2% less than the actual register tape. Cool.”

You Really Can’t Fix Stupid.

How hard is it to figure that cutting actual costs is better than raising actual prices?


Attorney Sues Self
Oh. Never mind.

 

Pants on Fire, Part Umpty-Seven point Three

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The Post Office is going to sue Lance Armstrong for running “the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping program” that the world has ever seen which apparently hurts postal customers’ essential concept of the Post Office.

Yeah, I’d hate ever to think the Post Office might have the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful program for anything. That would definitely give us the wrong idea about the Post Office.

The Postal’s Services own studies show that the service benefitted tremendously from its sponsorship — benefits totaling more than $100 million in sales.

Speaking of sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping programs: Sequestration? Budget cuts?

I’ve been looking for a straight answer on how much will be cut from actual Federal spending this week. Best I can tell, the boogeyman will slice about $85 billion from the federal budget. And also, best as I can tell, total Federal spending for fiscal year 2012 reached $3.6 trillion and is due to rise for fiscal 2013. What do you bet the increase will be more than $85 billion? For the record, fiscal year 2012 marked the fourth consecutive year of trillion dollar deficits.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: everyone is afraid that their personal ox will get gored.

Wow. That never happens in business.

Texas Instruments laid off 1,700 people. NBC dumped 500. Solel fired 140 of their remaining 430 workers. Xerox restructured 2,500 current employees into former employees. Stryker closed their facility in New York and plans to counter the medical device tax in Obamacare by slashing 1,170 jobs, some 5% of their global workforce. And those were just some of the announcements last November alone.

Nobody said boo when Citigroup slashed 11,000 jobs, when Dow “retired” Rufus, or when Motorola did the same for Liz Arden, but the Feds can’t handle a 2% cut in money they haven’t even spent yet?

Yesterday, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD) said, “We can’t cut our way to prosperity.” Perhaps not, but the stock market is up on news of the layoffs and faith in government is down on news of higher spending.

As Gail Collins wrote in the NYTimes, “Did you know one of the most popular TV shows in Norway was about firewood? Maybe you should have this discussion with a Norwegian.” Better yet, maybe we should have this discussion in Norwegian.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the certification of the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

From ourdocuments.gov: “In 1909 progressives in Congress again attached a provision for an income tax to a tariff bill. Conservatives, hoping to kill the idea for good, proposed a constitutional amendment enacting such a tax; they believed an amendment would never received ratification by three-fourths of the states. Much to their surprise, the amendment was ratified by one state legislature after another, and on February 25, 1913, with the certification by Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, the 16th amendment took effect. Yet in 1913, due to generous exemptions and deductions, less than 1 percent of the population paid income taxes at the rate of only 1 percent of net income.”

My, how things have changed.

It’s All Super

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CBS started its Super Bowl coverage this morning at 11 a.m. Eastern time. The game starts at 6:25 or 7 p.m. or so.

“We really hope for an overtime game,” one of the reporters said.

safety equipmentLike 111 million other red blooded Americans, I’ll tune in, although I almost never watch football and I still think the Baltimore team should be the Colts.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is addressing player safety including his plan to have an HGH testing program in place for the 2013 season, neurologists on the sidelines, and talks with NASCAR and others about equipment. From shoulder pads to the “Rooney Rule” to the low hit rule, football rules are ever evolving.

Racing Gets Safer
The Parisian magazine Le Petit Journal held the world’s first motoring competition in 1894; sixty-nine cars vied to start the 127 km course from Paris to Rouen but only 25 ran.

Attilio Caffaratti was the first reported fatality in racing. He crashed in the Brescia-Cremona-Mantova-Verona-Brescia in 1900. The French Gran Prix killed Antonio Ascari in 1925. Jim Clark died in a Formula 2 race in Hockenheimring in 1968 and Jerry Titus at Road America in 1970. Mark Donohue died practicing for the 1975 F1 race at Österreichring. The 2001 Daytona 500 claimed Dale Earnhardt. Dan Wheldon died in a 15-car IndyCar crash at Las Vegas in November. 56 drivers have died in major races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 48 at Nürburgring, 30 at Monza, and 24 each at Daytona and Le Mans.

State of the Art
Where better than auto racing to learn about safety equipment?

Racing safety equipment has mostly followed tragedy. Helmets, seatbelts, on-board fire extinguishers, fire proof driving suits, five-point safety harnesses, fuel cells, ever safer racing seats and HANS devices, “soft wall” technology, and more all came after head injuries, thrown drivers, fires, and crashes.

Safety didn’t come easily.

“Those early helmets were like wearing a flower pot on your head with leather straps,” NASCAR Champion driver Ned Jarrett said. “At the time, we felt like it was the state-of-the-art helmet because that was about all you could get.” Sort of like the helmets high school kids used for football when I was in school. It wasn’t until recently that oval track drivers were required to wear gloves.

The history of auto racing saw crash helmets arrive in the ’40s, roll bars in the ’50s, the roll cage in the ’60s. Sports Car Club of America recommended a roll cage (but required only a braced hoop toll bar) when I built my first A-Sedan Camaro in 1971; I installed a full cage similar to NASCAR’s full enclosure with door bars and a snoot hoop. That saved my bacon at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Rules Changes
“The NFL changes the rules every year,” Mr. Goodell said innocently.

So do most motorsports groups. Football players keep getting bigger and racecars keep getting faster.

Cool.

OK, now it’s time for the important part of the day.


super bowl commercials

There is still time to sign the Declare the Monday Following the Super Bowl a National Holiday petition at whitehouse.gov.

The 55th annual Daytona 500 will begin at 1 p.m. on Sunday, February 24. That’s the day after the petition drive ends.