Economic Stimulus: Obama Vs. Bush

When Bush became president we were in the middle of a recession and the pressure was on him to do something about the lagging economy. Bush presented an economic stimulus plan that had a set of tax rate reductions. John McCain did not vote for this plan because it did not have associated spending cuts with the tax rate reductions. Many people on the Democratic side have derided Bush's Tax Cuts because he did not cut the budget to match his tax plans. I agree he should have also reduced the size of the federal gov't to reduce deficit spending.

Obama has presented us an economic stimulus plan as the first thing he is going to do as president just like Bush. His plan doesn't have tax rate reductions but tax rebates or just plain hand outs to those not paying taxes. But he doesn't cut the spending to pay for his taxes plan. No he has spending increases. Long term spending increases in the billions to 100s of billions that will take years before measurable impacts to our economy are felt. This increase will also bloat the already way too large budget of many useless Gov't agencies that should quite honestly be shut down forever. Once a Gov't agency has a certain size budget it is very difficult to reduce the budget measurably. And if you do then you are looking at layoffs. Try laying off a Gov't employee in the Gov't Union.

Don't even start me on why a Union is needed for Gov't employees in a Democracy. They have the damn vote if they don't like management.

hmmm.... So far I like Bush's actual actions but Obama does give better parties for TV.

Why I hate our congress and Senate

I really hate our congress and Senate. I hated them when they were led by Republicans and I hate them more now that they are led by Democrats. To do something important, like stimulate our economy, our great leaders put in multi million dollar projects that had nothing to do with the purpose of the bill. Maybe these projects have value and need to be done. But focus on stimulating the economy and building jobs.

The depths to how unbelievable corrupt this system is astounds me. At one of our countries worst economic moments in time, we have scum of the earth people pushing their own political agenda and calling it economic stimulus. That our "leaders" would use this emergency to spend multiple billions of dollars at a time when we have a trillion dollar budget shortfall that is not completely dedicated to stimulating our economy shows how badly our system is not working for the Good of the common man.

That we do not have the legislation still that gets us off of foreign oil and allows us to drill in the US blows me away. It's borderline criminal that we still do not have a meaningful plan to end our dependency on foreign oil.

Term limits, right now!!!! Term Limits, no more congressional pensions, no more lobbyists! Term limits!!!! term Limits!!!! Term Limits!!!!

Breaking up is good to do.

In software development we have a saying. Fail often and fail early. The idea is that failure is an eventual given. We are going to make mistakes. And the system you use to build your software should be designed to discover them quickly and correct quickly. This significantly reduces the cost of failure and the impact of failure.

In the Pulitzer prize winning Book, "Gun Germs and Steel" the author explores why Western Civilization had all the things it needed to become the dominant power of societies in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, North, Central and South America. Becoming the dominant culture. It came down to the two countries that had access to the grains needed to have large population centers. China and Europe. However, Europe was a set of smaller countries fighting amongst themselves for resources while China was a very large monopoly. At one time China was sailing to the Americas and had an overwhelming naval fleet. One day the emperor decided to burn this fleet and has never recovered from that mistake. If Spain had made that choice then England or France would have made them pay and Spain would have learned from their mistakes and corrected quickly. But it was hundreds of years before China learned from their mistakes.

Now lets look at our Secondary Mortgage industry. Because Fannie May and Freddie Mac were created by Gov't legislation and supported by Gov't legislation they held a monopoly on a $12 trillion dollar industry. Now all institutions, especially if they are large and a monopoly develop group think. This is where they don't have different voices telling them they are wrong. So they start making mistakes. The problem with group think is that you see the world in a very specific way so it is very hard to realize that you are making the mistake. Even when you begin suffering the results of the mistake it is hard to see the root cause. This condition is inevitable for monopolies. So when we set up our Secondary mortgage system we need to create a system that identifies errors quickly, course corrects quickly and when failure occurs it is not devastating. This is why I think we should break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into 20 to 50 smaller institutions. Reduce regulatory controls and let them compete. when one makes a mistake, let it go out of business. This failure is not devastating and others can learn from it. This is the way we avoid bailing them out in the future.

Build a system that fails early and often and significantly reduces the cost of failure. This is why Capitalism and competition is superior to Socialism and monopolies. Monopolies hold out the promise of control and central control. But it's a lie. Because failure will happen and failure in a central controlled system is devastating.

Sub Prime Mortgages, What are they good for.

One of the key things killing this economy is the sub prime mortgages put into securities that come out of our secondary mortgage industry. So what is a sub prime mortgage and why do people want them and why would a mortgage company deal with them.

A sub prime mortgage is a mortgage that has low payments in the first 3 to 5 year but over time the interest rate rises to much higher than the prime interest rate and the loan payments become much higher after 5 years. so why would a person commit to a 20 to 40 year loan knowing that payments will climb over time so that they can not afford it. They do that because their credit rating is bad and the mortgage rate they would normally get would keep them from getting the house they love. So they take this loan to build their credit rating and in 3 to 5 years they refinance their house with their brand new clean credit rating. The intent of sub prime mortgages is for people with low income and poor credit to prove them selves.

so if the loan is much more likely to become default why would a company give the mortgage. Because they believe the value of the house will definitely climb. So if the loan must be foreclosed on in 3 to 5 years then the house will have gone up and therefore they will get their money back and possibly more because the value of the house has gone up. That was certainly true during the housing bubble but now that the bubble has burst, those sub prime mortgages are very scary problems. And that is one of the contributing factors. we have no idea when the house situation will even out and people can figure out what the actual value of those sub prime mortgages are. because if they get foreclosed on, people could lose their shirts on those houses because a foreclosed house is difficult to sell for profit in a bad housing market.

Next time you see Bill Clinton and a Democratic member of the house or Senate be sure and thank them for the 1999 legislation and the 2004 legislation that allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to include sub prime mortgages in their quotas for low income housing mortgages purchased and for helping them put those mortgages in our securities.

The Forgotten Man

America met Joe the Plumber last week. But a pro-market economist writing over a hundred years ago was already familiar with Joe Wurzelbacher and Americans like him -- and understood how they are used and exploited by politicians.

"They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion -- that the state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man."

"He Works, He Votes, Generally He Prays - But He Always Pays"

Sumner wrote of the Forgotten Man: "He works, he votes, generally he prays -- but he always pays -- yes, above all, he pays."Joe the Plumber has struck a chord in the closing weeks of this election because he represents the Forgotten Man. When he confronted Sen. Barack Obama on the campaign trail with the question of what would happen to his taxes under an Obama Administration should he realize his dream of owning his own business, Joe cast the decision that faces us in this election in stark relief:

Which will be better for our economy: Politicians redistributing our wealth or growing more wealth?

Government, The problem or The Solution?

Ronald Reagen was elected because of a phrase "Government is the problem, not the solution". I believe that this is mostly the case. While the Government is the solution in some cases, Since the 1930s, our federal gov't has become more the problem and less the solution.

Is deregulation really the problem? Lets explore the issue. Our economy is like a human body. Money is the blood and banks are like a bunch of hearts pumping money in and out of the system. A significant amount of money banks take in comes from Securities founded on Mortgages. Banks leverage securities up to 40 times. For every security valued at $1 million they can loan up to $40 million dollars. This keeps the blood moving. Of course, 40 times is crazy. So if 5% of that $1 million is bad, then they should not have loaned out $1,000,000 *.05 * 40 = $2,000,000. Even though the security's value should only be reduced to $950,000, the money they have outstanding that shouldn't be out there is $2,000,000. And then other banks used that $2,000,000 to also create loans. House of cards!!

The 5% number comes from the Governments estimation to the loans in play in securities that they expect to fail. The $700 billion number for the bailout is 5% of the $12 trillion dollar mortgage market.

Where do these securities come from? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They were created to help loan company's have more liquidity so that more people who couldn't afford houses at that time, afford houses. So Fannie Mae buys up loans from loan company's and creates securities which other companies buy because mortgages are usually a very safe bet. The security's value is based on how much the market will pay for it. So it's value is not based on it's actual value just on it's perceived value. When the sub prime mess became public knowledge these securities perceived value went down far lower than 5%.

How did fannie mae come to exist and how does it do it's job --- Government Regulation dedicated to helping people get houses that couldn't afford it.

Wikipedia:
Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next thirty years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States. In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation.[6] Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that
responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae). In 1995, Fannie Mae began receiving affordable housing credit for buying subprime securities. In 1999, the Clinton administration and Fannie Mae shareholders encouraged the lender to increase the number of mortgage loans offered to those of low and moderate income, both to improve rates of home ownership among those groups and to increase profits.[7]
In 2000, due to a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.[8]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave money to many people in Congress. The person who received the second most money is Barack Obama.

So how did we get all these bad loans into securities. There were a lot of reasons but one of them was Government interference. First we have the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. This act was passed under Jimmy Carter and it said, if you are bank that receives deposits from low income areas, you must also provide housing loans to low income areas. This was the Government telling people who they could make loans to. Now this act is 31 years old and not enough to have created the amount of poison we have in our blood stream. Now we have a set of "Community Organizers" in organizations like ACORN. This is a Federally funded organization that uses the Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate banks along with other intimidation factors to force banks to give more loans to people who normally couldn't get it. There was an attempt in Congress to give money to ACORN in the recent bailout bill. Barack Obama was a Community Organizer for ACORN. ACORN has also been linked to a fair amount of voter fraud.

So is Gov't the problem or the solution? It's is certainly a contributor to the problem. Do we need more Gov't to solve a problem that they helped create? I don't think so!

To regulate or not to regulate

The financial crisis has created a lot of accusations about deregulation. I hear the word unbridled a lot. But lets review the facts. In 2004 and several time before that and after, the Republicans attempted to increase regulation on Fannie May and Freddie Mac and those regulations were defeated primarily by Democrats. In 2007 the democratic controlled congress saw that their support 30 year support of these monstrosities that were created by regulation was going to come around and hurt them so they ended up passing the similiar bills to what the republicans wanted in 2004. However, 2007 was too little too late.

The point here is regulation is neither good nor bad. It depends on the regulation. Republicans have been trying to get rid of bad regulation and bring in good regulation.

Feeling and Valuing

I want to provide some wonderful excerpts from one of my favorite books "The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden" by Robert Johnson

This Book is about our Wounded feeling function, probably the most common and painful wound which occurs in our Western world. It is very dangerous when a wound is so common in a culture that hardly anyone knows that there is a problem. There is general discontent with out way of life but almost no one knows specifically where to look for its origin.
Thinking is that cool faculty which brings clarity and objectivity - but provides no valuing; sensation describes the physical world - but provides no valuing; intuition suggests a wide range of possibilities - but provides no valuing. Only feeling brings a sense of value and worth; indeed, this is its chief function. Without feeling there is no value judgment. To lose one's feeling function is thus to lose one of the most precious human faculties, perhaps the one that makes us most human. We can understand the term feeling more accurately if we define it as the capacity to value or to give worth to something. People who have a finally differentiated feeling function bring grace and good feeling with them; one feels valuable in their presence.
The feeling function is a casualty of our modern way of life. To search out the loss or woundedness of this most valuable faculty is the task of our book.

...
The very term feeling is itself ambiguous, an orphan word. Its true meaning has not quite differentiated itself from its tactile origins. It derives from the verb to feel in its tactile sense. Our use of the word feeling is made to describe much more subtle realms. The act of valuing has no dignified term of its own and is still tied by an unseen umbilical cord to the realm of sensation. Little wonder that strong feeling is unconsciously tied to some physical act that we think should give expression to it. Of course, one may make sublime expression of feeling by a physical act, but feeling should not be unconsciously tied to the physical realm. Feeling is on of the wonderful, terrible, ambiguous words that contribute so much to our confusion.

karma schmarma

What the world is thinking

I found an article today at www.gallup.com that talks about a world poll. What is the world thinking. What does the world want. Well they want a "good job". For me that begins to describe victory in Iraq. When the vast majority of Iraqi people can provide a good life for themselves and their family, we will have won the war in Iraq.

Excerpt from article

What the whole world wants is a good job.

That is one of the single biggest discoveries Gallup has ever made. It is as simple and as straightforward an explanation of the data as we can give. If you and I were walking down the street in Khartoum, Tehran, Berlin, Lima, Los Angeles, Baghdad, Kolkata, or Istanbul, we would discover that on most days, the single most dominant thought carried around in the heads of most people you and I see is "I want a good job." It is the new current state of mind, and it establishes our relationship with our city, our country, and the whole world around us.

Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, and/or peace more than anything else. The last 25 years have changed us. Now we want to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders. Everything they do -- from waging war to building societies -- will need to be done within the new context of the human need for a "good job."

How does this change everything?

• The leaders of countries and cities must make creating good jobs their No. 1 mission and primary purpose because securing good jobs is becoming the new currency for leadership. Everything leaders do must consider this new global state of mind, lest they put their cities and countries at risk.
• Leaders in education will be forced to think beyond core curricula and graduation rates. If you are a school superintendent or a university president, you'll need to recognize that students don't want to merely graduate -- their education will need to result in a "good job."
• Lawmakers need to contemplate whether and how new laws attract or repel a wide range of individual value systems. If enough people are sufficiently repelled, then the new laws will effectively strangle job creation.
• Military leaders must consider it when waging war and planning for peace. They must ask themselves whether military strikes, occupations, or community policing will effectively build a growing economy with good jobs. The opportunity to have a good job is essential to changing a population's desperate, and violent, state of mind.
• The mayors and city fathers of every city, town, and village on Earth must realize that every decision they make should consider the impact, first and foremost, on good jobs.

How to know you are on the wrong side of an issue.

When they write a Country and Western Song about the issue. Today Newt Gingrich is promoting a country and western song about the fact that Congress is still blocking domestic drilling. The song sung by Aaron Tippin has the following phrase in it:

Drill Here, Drill now

Hello…..Is anybody out there listenin’ in Washington D.C.

This is the suffering voice of America crying out for relief

Now I don’t know what a gallon of gas costs up on Capitol Hill

But we sure know what it costs down here in Realityville

And the damage already done has been a mighty heavy toll

And if we’re gonna fix it we gotta start right here at home

CHORUS:

Drill here, drill now

How ‘bout some oil from our own soil that belongs to us anyhow

No more debatin’ we’re tired of waitin’ everybody shout out loud

Drill here, drill now

.
.
.

This is funny on so many levels!!!

The Meaning of Life

To me Life is a bootcamp for the next one to come. I found this quote on line and liked it a lot.

We are enrolled in a full time, informal school called, "Life." Each day of this school, we have the opportunity to learn lessons. We may like the lessons or hate them, but they are part of the curriculum. The greatest lessons we learn are about love and fear, that every action is either an expression of love, or a call for love. And the great blessing is that every lesson repeats itself until we learn it. ~Mary Manin Morrissey

big bounce

The RNC is looking at a big bounce in the daily tracking polls. Rasmussen has McCain up by 1 point and the Gallup poll has him up by 5. The interesting thing we see in the daily polls is the number of undecided begin to get smaller and so far they are breaking of McCain. In Rasmussen we see Obama staying at 46% while McCain steadily climbs to 47%. The Gallup polls shows Obama losing votes. So I'm not sure what is going on.

Rasmussen Synopsis

In the first national polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after the Republican National Convention, McCain attracts 47% of the vote while Obama earns 46%. When "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 47%. Tracking Poll results are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day and a FREE daily e-mail update is available.

The big question is: "can McCain win?". According to the electoral map Karl Rove puts out, I don't think so. However, this map is before the convention. Did the convention change the map? Before the RNC Obama looked like he had 260 electoral votes and you need 270 to win. So one or two of the swing stats goes his way and he has won it. How many has moved in McCains way????

Stop the Bird Porn

Finally someone fighting the good fight and trying to end all this elicit bird watching. Most people who report on this believe it is probably a joke but the protesters seem to take it seriously.

Dave Barry on Bird Porn Protesters at the DNC

Practice makes perfect

Ever try to do something very well and failed? Well here is the recipe for success. Do it over and over again until you get it right. Plan to throw away what you did at first. They do this in movies and TV with scene after scene. They do this in the Olympics with athletes practicing and practicing hours and hours.

Initial Article

Although I am not at all ready to call software development "art" -- perhaps "craft" would be more appropriate, or "engineering" if you're feeling generous -- the parallels between some of the advice offered here and my experience writing software are profound.


The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Where have I heard this before?

• Stop theorizing.
• Write lots of software.
• Learn from your mistakes.

Quantity always trumps quality. That's why the one bit of advice I always give aspiring bloggers is to pick a schedule and stick with it. It's the only advice that matters, because until you've mentally committed to doing it over and over, you will not improve. You can't.

When it comes to software, the same rule applies. If you aren't building, you aren't learning. Rather than agonizing over whether you're building the right thing, just build it. And if that one doesn't work, keep building until you get one that does.

The beginnings of a bounce.

Gallup has Obama up by 9 points and the Rassmussen poll has him up by 3 points. I suspect the Rassmussen poll bump has more to do with Bill and Biden. I don't think last nights speech has effected the rassmussen poll yet. I suspect rassmussen will widen more. I wasn't impressed last night but I suspect he did what he needed to lay out his agenda for the next couple of months.




McCain now needs to lay off the attacks during the convention and focus on his agenda. Give people a reason to vote for you beyond I'm a great guy with lot of experience and Obama is bad. If McCain wants to see his poll numbers go up, not just see Obama's go down, he has to lay out a positive agenda for the next 4 years. I will say this much. His VP pick shows off his maverick side and reaches out to the female voter. I think it is a good move.

She is kind of cute also. I wonder if she has a sister somewhere!!!

how to irritate an aethist

Dark Matter


Oh man you are going to love this one.

Or this one, My atheist Friends will hate this one

just a slip to whet your appetite. I can't stop smiling!!!

Astonishing discoveries have surfaced which point to the existence of a transcendent extra-dimensional Creator. Furthermore, numerous recent discoveries now confirm the incredible scientific and historical accuracy of the Bible, as well as the supernatural origin of its texts.
The entire Creator Series is now available in this one, self-contained CD-ROM. This CD-ROM includes all of these great studies:
The Creator Beyond Time and Space:
What are the implications of the current upheavals in traditional cosmology, astronomy, and physics? What is the significance of the recent discovery that the Universe is finite?
As scientists begin to understand the interactions of basic forces, they discover an unending series of incredible inter dependencies, delicately balanced.
As part of their recent series on the Creator Beyond Time and Space, Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark Eastman explore the recent scientific evidences revealing the Infinite Designer and a finite universe.

No bounce yet

maybe I don't know what I'm talking about but there is still no bounce yet from the DNC. According to the polls from Rasmussen and Gallup we are still locked in a virtual tie.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/general_election_match_up_history

How does this not scare the hell out of democrats is confusing. Maybe it does and they are hiding it. Or we all are waiting for the giant speach at invesco field with the 75,000 adoring fans and the stage from Greek Mythology. I wonder if the speech he has planned there will give him his bounce or will it be another failure like his speech to the 20,000 adoring Germans. I think the problems is the election cycle this year has been way too damn long, the fighting between Hillary and he went on forever and ate up news cycle after news cycle. Any chance to reintroduce him self to people through the convention is gone. We all know him, we've seen so much said about him already. 4 days of speeches by his fellow democrats are just not going to move people much.

Time will tell.

Funniest Passive Aggressive Note ever

Apparently 5 girls and 2 men moved in together. After a year the guys got tired of getting up at 3 in the morning to let in the drunken girls who didn't bring their keys.

Article

1. Maybe you shouldn't room with Amy Winehouse.
2. If a drunken girl is pounding on your door in the middle of the night do you
(a.) Get up happily and take care of business
(b.) Right a note telling them they are going to die crack whores if they don't stop.

Well you do (a) if you like girls and you do (b) if your controlling mother has led you to putting up brad pitt posters in your room.

Proof Positive that Texas Tech will beat OU at home and win the Big 12 to go on to win the national Title

http://raiderpower.blogspot.com/2008/07/texas-tech-vs-oklahoma-ncaa-09.html

article


If you read it, you know I'm dreaming. But if we didn't like to dream, no one would buy lottery tickets. I think I need to go to 7-11.