Opher Banarie

What good does it do us to hate Scott Peterson?

2011-01-23T15:20:00.001-08:00

This may be the most difficult blog post I have ever written. Not for what it contains, but for what it implies.

I’m reading “The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life” by Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, more due to my respect for the authors than any specific interest in the topic. The fourth “wonder” in the book is Compassion, and Ablow shares this story:

You may remember the story of Scott Peterson, the Modesto, California, man who, on Christmas Eve of 2002, reported his pregnant wife, Laci, missing, then led the search for her. In fact, Peterson had killed Laci and disposed of her body in San Francisco Bay. He’d been having an affair at that time with a massage therapist...

What other explanation could there be for a man killing his pregnant wife on Christmas Eve other than being born with pure evil inside?

In my book Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, I think I provide a much more credible answer. Scott Peterson was taught that human life—including his own—had no value. Back in 1945, his maternal grandfather was murdered for about five hundred dollars by a disgruntled former employee. Peterson’s mother, Jackie, was only two years old at the time. Despite her own mother still being alive (though widowed), she was placed in an orphanage that has since been called a “cesspool of pedophilia.”

When she left that orphanage as a teenager she gave birth to two children out of wedlock and quickly put them up for adoption. She didn’t give it a lot of thought. She finally married Lee Peterson, a man who had divorced his wife partly because he didn’t like the kids they’d had together. Together, Lee and Jackie had a baby. They named him Scott.

There was just one small problem: they had a funny habit of leaving him behind in places like a neighborhood restaurant, where the manager would have to call out to them, “Jackie! Lee! You left Scott!”

That’s just one part of Scott Peterson’s ugly biography. Sound like the kind of life story that leads a person to value a mother? A baby? Or does it sound like the kind of life story that leads to the creation of a person who instinctively despises new life?

What good does it do us to hate Scott Peterson?

I hated Scott Peterson as the story of his crime played out in the media and courtroom in 2002-2004. I hated Scott Peterson for killing a beautiful woman who had agreed to be his wife “for better or worse”. I hated Scott Peterson for killing a baby he never met. I hated Scott Peterson for having an affair and using some warped logic to justify (if that’s the right word) murdering his wife and unborn son in order to be with the other woman.

But after reading the above background of Scott Peterson, what good does it do to hate him? The hatred yesterday was at a much lower level than it was when his picture was in the news every day, but it was there. Today, after reading the above, I cannot sense any hatred. I don’t what the emotion I now carry is. Pity? Fear? Anger?

Ablow continues, with an explanation:

None of our views on compassion should be taken to mean that we advocate forgiving people for harming others without them facing the consequences of their actions. Compassion does not mean that justice need not be served. We can be compassionate about the traumas suffered in childhood even by someone who, in part because of those traumas, grows up to become a murderer. But that does not mean the murderer goes free. Much to the contrary, once we look honestly at the horribly fractured psyche in that individual or someone who rapes or someone who abuses children or someone who blows up a building full of innocent people or someone who defrauds others of their life savings, we realize the very real danger such people represent in society and the very real need to contain them—sometimes forever. But when we do so, we must not hobble ourselves by hating them.

You can pity someone and still punish that person. You can forgive someone and still resolve to keep yourself safe from any further injury from that person’s pathology.

Yes, I now pity Scott Peterson. He was raised by people who didn’t teach him a value for life. He grew up without a sense of joy and love for others. He was narcissistic and interested only in his own good time. That doesn’t mean that society shouldn’t punish him for his crimes. But it makes me think of how many other people are out there, being raised by people titled “parents” but have no interest in doing that job? How many more crimes will be committed by these people over the years? What can society do to protect itself from these people and, more importantly, break the cycle that causes them to turn out this way in the first place?

Taxation: The People's Business by Andrew Mellon

2011-01-16T22:08:00.001-08:00

I recently read a reference to Andrew Mellon’s plan for tax reform of 1924, published as a book titled Taxation: The People’s Business.

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business.

If you’d like to buy a copy, I found one for sale on Amazon.com for $400. Wow!

$400 sounds like a collector's price for a museum quality edition...Would you prefer to get it for free? If so, go to Barnes and Noble and download their Nook ebook reading application for whatever device you own. Then, use the application to Shop for the book, and you'll find that it is FREE to download.

The ebook is obviously scanned (poorly) from a hardcopy that used fonts the OCR software was not properly correcting for. Sometimes you need to read a sentence over a few times to determine what one or two words are supposed to be. Also, the included charts and tables are so poorly formatted, they are useless.

That said, the text is fantastic, and should be required reading by every person involved in tax policy. As you can see from the quote above, Mellon latched onto the key concept behind the Laffer Curve almost 60 years before Arthur Laffer published that concept.

I will post some interesting quotes from the book over the next few days, but wanted to have this post available for anyone who wanted to get the book to read or reference.

Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China

2011-01-14T19:15:00.001-08:00

NYTimes.com has an amazingly candid look at a company moving to China…and leaving 800 unemployed in Massachusetts:

Beyond the issues of trade and jobs, solar power experts see broader implications. They say that after many years of relying on unstable governments in the Middle East for oil, the United States now looks likely to rely on China to tap energy from the sun.

Evergreen, in announcing its move to China, was unusually candid about its motives. Michael El-Hillow, the chief executive, said in a statement that his company had decided to close the Massachusetts factory in response to plunging prices for solar panels. World prices have fallen as much as two-thirds in the last three years — including a drop of 10 percent during last year’s fourth quarter alone.

So, $45 Million in “assistance” from the state of Massachusetts, and who know how much in Federal aid (tax breaks, “stimulus” dollars, etc.) has gone down the drain as another company moves out of the US.

Ever since Jimmy Carter started the flow of tax dollars to subsidize the development of “alternative energy” producers, the only reason these companies existed was to suck up those subsidies until something better came along. There is no economic reason for them to exist, so these companies float from one government subsidy to another, searching for better terms for land or taxes or their own energy needs at each location.

It makes sense for these jobs to go to China: The advantage China has over the US is a huge labor pool which is available for much lower costs than in the US. Labor intensive jobs will move there, or anywhere the costs of labor are lower, as long as the total costs of the final product are lower than they are if built in the US.

The lesson the US politicians must learn is that they cannot change the tide by passing a law – the Laws of Economics are much more powerful and they always win. We’re almost 40 years into the lesson plan for this industry, and Obama is still talking about “investing in green energy”. The professor has not learned this lesson.

75% Want Health Care Law Changed - Rasmussen Reports™

2011-01-14T09:50:00.001-08:00

The word from Rasmussen Reports is that the health care law as written is popular with only 18% of survey respondents.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters want to change the law, while only 18% want it left alone. Those figures include 20% who want the law repealed and nothing done to replace it, 28% who want it repealed and then have its most popular provisions put into a new law and 27% who say leave the law in place but get rid of the unpopular provisions.

It is worth noting that a majority (55%) take one of the middle ground approaches—repeal and replace or leave it and improve.

What concerns me is the fractured nature of the 75% who want it changed – how do we reach agreement on what needs to be changed, how to change it, and what to do first? While others have written about this already, I have a few ideas of my own….

I think there are several ‘clusters’ of repeal/replace options which should be debated independently of each other. This would allow creation of alliances of support for changes in one area that may not area on changes in another area. Separate bills for each change would enable legislators with different political philosophies to work together as needed to make the most change possible.

Here are some of the clusters I can envision:

Dropping elements of the current bill which are bad ideas in hind sight. This one should be an easy winner, since even Obama agrees that some requirements in the original legislation (like the small business 1099 reporting requirement) were bad ideas.
Eliminating much of the bureaucracy that current bills calls for. Everything from IRS reviews to HHS tribunals, there is too much in the law which is intrusive, unjustified and disruptive of the doctor-patient relationship. Not only that, the requirements for things like electronic record keeping and direct payments from checking accounts are unreasonable given that the government is unable to keep military or State Department secrets, and has utterly failed in restraining identity theft and use of forged Social Security numbers.
Adding things that Democrats generally don’t like. This would be difficult given the current make-up of the power arrangement in Washington (more on that later), but it should be part of the discussion. The two key elements here are tort reform and buying insurance across state lines, but the discussion should include other “competition” topics such as publishing prices for medical procedures, publishing data on hospital and doctor results for common procedures, etc.
Encourage intelligent planning and competition in the healthcare industry. In the past, the government has operated as an obstacle to competition, and this is one of the best examples: In the 1970s, as hospitals were looking at costly expansion to cover cardiac care, burn units, trauma units and more, the four major hospitals in Phoenix decided that rather than each adding all of these services, they would specialize and refer patients to the hospital capable of offering advanced services as needed. The Justice Department stepped in and threatened to sue them for restraint of trade, price fixing, etc. unless they dropped those plans and each developed all of the services. The result is that there is no way each hospital can cover the costs of all of these services, resulting in higher costs for all patients in order to make up the difference. Intelligent planning would allow for regional hospitals to specialize as long as the population base would have access to all required services.

I’m sure there are other clusters, these are just a few to start the dialog. As the Rasmussen Reports survey indicates, those under 30 want to leave the bill in place and modify it, while those over 50 want to repeal the bill and start from scratch. We need to find a middle path, and I’m hoping this post assists in clarifying what that path might look like.

Ending the War on Drugs Will Do More for Blacks Than Marching

2011-01-13T16:42:00.001-08:00

John McWhorter, Professor, The Languages of America, Columbia University, Contributing Editor, The New Republic and City Journal, has a proposal: End the War on Drugs so the black men will be required to seek legal employment. He rambles on over a variety of other topics, but this is the inner kernel of his argument:

The War on Drugs discourages young black men from seeking legal employment. Because the drugs' illegality keeps their price high, there are high salaries to be made in selling them…

You can find a podcast of him reading a longer article on the same topic at the CATO Institute website (search for January 11, 2011).

Regardless of the arguments he presents, I think that McWhorter is being too optimistic about what would happen if drugs – including cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. – were legal and cheap. He claims that, since the profit will be taken out of drug dealing, the gangs, the turf battles, the guns and violence that hangs over black communities around the country would end.

I’m not a social scientist (and I don’t believe McWhorter is, either) and I haven’t done much more than read the newspapers over the years to develop my sense of criminals in the US. But I’m thinking that the scenario he presents is unrealistic. If a gang hierarchy existed to distribute illegal drugs and that source of income disappeared, I suspect they will move on to another source of income. Just like the bootleggers of Prohibition moved on to bookmaking, illegal gambling, prostitution and other income sources once liquor became legal again.

What might these newly de-profited gangs move into? How about “protection rackets” – where a shopkeeper is threatened with arson or vandalism if he didn’t pay the gang? How about car theft and chop-shop operations? Why not counterfeiting tickets for sporting events? It would seem to me that the expected logical result of making drugs legal and cheap would be for those involved in the illegal side of the drug trade to move into other illegal operations. Why is that not reasonable to expect?

Maybe not. Maybe the dealer who was making $1,000 a day selling drugs wouldn’t be satisfied making $400 a day selling counterfeit tickets. OK, but McWhorter thinks he would be satisfied making $150 a day working at Wal-Mart! Really? Why does that make sense? Maybe I’m the one missing an obvious response to ending the war on drugs…help me find it by leaving your comments below.

Volt wins Car of the Year honors

2011-01-10T18:53:00.001-08:00

Will someone explain to me how Government Motors pulled this off?

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt got another marketing jolt Monday, when it was named the North American Car of the Year at the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall.

And it’s not just this show/award:

It's the latest in a string of accolades for the Volt, which went on sale in limited markets in December and costs $40,280. It was named the Green Car of the Year at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November and Motor Trend and Automobile Magazine named the Volt the 2011 car of the year the same month.

What was the criteria for these awards? The article says that “…Forty-nine auto journalists from the U.S. and Canada made the picks. The vehicles are judged on innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction and value.” Really? So let’s think about this. If the six categories are given equal weight, what is so unusual about the Chevy Volt?

Innovation? Hardly! I suspect you could have built a car capable of 40 miles on battery power and a gas engine backup about 40 years ago. Certainly 20 years ago.
Design? I don’t know…lots of other four-door compacts out there. It looks like a Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Volkswagen, all-alike. I see nothing noteworthy.
Safety? Sure, it’s safer than a car you would have built 40 years ago, but what makes it any better than any other compact being manufactured today?
Handling? It has a steering wheel, four tires and a rear-view mirror. How different/better than average is it? (Ah, and most American cars fail, Fail, FAIL in handling compared to imports, so maybe the Volt is “as good” as an import…)
Driver Satisfaction? They’ve delivered about 300 of them in the last six weeks, so how much satisfaction can the drivers have? Call me back when the average Volt has 50,000 miles on it and let me know.
Value?! VALUE?! Hell no! What “value” is there in an average car with 40-year old technology and sells for $40,280?? A brand new loaded Prius sells for $25,000 – and it really uses new technology!

So, PLEASE someone – anyone – tell me why this car wins any awards other than “Taxpayer Boondoggle of 2010”?

Update: Some want to know why I’m not recognizing that Government Motors has paid back (some) of the taxpayer money it received, and has re-issued stock to the public. OK, fair question: They haven’t paid back the taxpayers for the opportunity costs of the BILLION$ they were given. And they probably never will. Giving taxpayer money to any private company has a totally incalculable impact on the financial markets and economy of the country. But no one talks about those opportunity costs and the choices made by competitors, suppliers, dealers, customers, etc., etc., and the implications of those choices. So, no, the fact that they have repaid a tiny amount of what they were given (without anywhere near enough transparency, review, hearings or approvals) does not dissuade me from referring to them as Government Motors.

Obama to hand Commerce Dept. authority over cybersecurity ID

2011-01-08T18:35:00.001-08:00

CNET News is reporting that…

President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. [emphasis added]

Really? The same government that can’t be bothered with reports of people using Social Security numbers that belong to others is going to create Internet IDs for everyone?

And what is an Internet ID? Another email address? A logon and password to www.irs.gov? An entry in some government database…for…what…purpose?

I don’t know the details and it already seems like a bad idea. What are your thoughts on this?

California Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget: the pain for L.A. city and county

2011-01-04T21:47:00.001-08:00

Not thirty minutes after my prior post and the Los Angeles Times posts this new column:

Take, for example, just three of the proposals local officials confirm they expect to see in Brown's first budget: drastic cuts to Medi-Cal and the CalWORKS welfare-to-work program, and the diversion of so-called low-level offenders from the state prison system to local jails.

[Los Angeles] County Chief Executive William T. Fujioka told me this week that his office has been in talks with Sacramento for a couple of weeks on how to handle the staggering additional costs Los Angeles will be forced to assume. "They're just pushing these problems down to the local level with no real thought about the consequences, and I find that amazing," said Fujioka, who, at 60 and a veteran of both city and county politics, is no stranger to bitter budget warfare.

Fujioka expects Sacramento to pay 40 cents out of every dollar of additional costs the County will incur with regard to additional prisoners in County jails.

Local officials are also expecting Brown to eliminate Community Redevelopment Zones and Enterprise Zones. These are special tax districts that allow revenue generated to stay in the Zone rather than flowing to Sacramento. By eliminating them, Brown will have more money to spend while leaving less money for the cities that established those Zones.

[Los Angeles’] 32 districts pumped $178 million in direct investment into the city's economy. Although $100 million of that went to encouraging job-creating businesses, $50 million paid for more affordable housing across the city. Moreover, according to Essel, because every dollar spent by the CRA generates an additional $5 to $6 in private investment and payrolls, abolition of the CRA would take at least $890 million out of the city's economy in the new state budget's first year.

And so it starts. Sacramento will tell cities and counties to take on these services, but keep the money that local taxpayers assume will be used to pay for those services. The best part is how the column ends:

Both Essel and Fujioka, like other local officials with whom I spoke this week, believe that the brutal cuts Brown is proposing are meant to set up the anticipated spring election in which the governor will go to the people and ask them to approve the extension of existing tax surcharges. Playing chicken with voters whose own finances are, in many cases, stretched to the breaking point could be a dangerous proposition.

But that's what Governor Moonbeam is planning. Does he have a back-up plan? Heck, why should he? I doubt any of Jerry’s wealth is tied up in California investments!

Jerry Brown: California's new governor takes a hard look at Prop. 13

2011-01-04T21:12:00.001-08:00

If you live in California and are not paying attention to the rhetoric (as reported by the Los Angeles Times) of Jerry Brown, I hope your wallet is in Nevada:

Brown said implementation of the property-tax limits that Californians hold dear has contributed to the state's financial mess. The new governor said his budget proposal next week would include plans to return to cities and counties many government functions that Sacramento took over after Proposition 13 passed.

The measure "started the centralization of power," Brown told reporters before entering the closed-door meeting. Afterward, he expanded on that idea, saying Proposition 13 "took away the power of counties to tax, for the most part; it sent the decisions up to Sacramento. So we want to redistribute all that."

Now, I don’t claim to have perfect recall of the events of 1978, but notice how the Times words this sentence: “…government functions that Sacramento took over after Proposition 13 passed”. It’s not that Prop 13 put those functions in the control of Sacramento, it’s that the politicians took over those functions.

The power of politicians, in large part, is measured by their ability to send (taxpayer) money to their districts. So even if the money was in the district and stayed in the district, by being able to legislate that X dollars would go to their constituents allowed the politician to crow about the achievement come re-election time.

There are several things wrong with this political calculus: First, the original tax collection in the cities and counties allowed the revenue to be tagged for specific purposes, whether schools or fire department, libraries or parks, etc. When the money went to Sacramento those labels were wiped off and the money was re-distributed as block grants, that the local politicians were able to distribute as they saw best, not necessarily as the voters had intended. (This was recently demonstrated in Orange County when voters passed a special tax to fund police, fire and prosecutorial services. The politicians gave none to the fire department once the money started pouring in, and voters are still unclear about why.)

Second, the process of collecting money locally, sending it to Sacramento and then re-distributing to local districts costs money. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1%, 0.1% or 0.01% – the amount that the process costs means the taxpayers in the district are getting less than they paid for – because they didn’t plan to pay anyone in Sacramento for the handling of their tax dollars.

Also, what about the sticky fingers of the “senior” politicians in Sacramento? Certainly they have the clout to re-direct some money from several districts to aggregate a larger total for their own special projects. Or what if they felt that a comparatively prosperous school district, such as Beverly Hills, wouldn’t miss a few million dollars that would make a significant improvement in Downey or San Diego or Oakland? Who would argue that the rich “should pay their fair share” in making schools better elsewhere?

So why should taxpayers be concerned that Governor Brown wants to undo this power grab? Well, let me count the reasons:

There is no guarantee that programs re-authorized to the cities and counties will receive all the funding associated with those programs. In other words, the “overhead” applied in Sacramento might still be charged.
Who will decide which programs stay in Sacramento and which are “returned” to local control? In the same Times article, Brown admits will be a "complex reordering" of government that would address some of the problems the measure created. Why only some of the problems? Well, further in the article Brown explains that his proposal would meet stiff opposition. "It will be controversial, and it will be a struggle," he said. He said this before unveiling any of the details – what does he know that he won’t tell the public?
One of the key provisions of Prop 13 was the two-thirds legislative majority needed to increase tax rates, and this provision has been in the craw of Sacramento politicians for over 30 years. I have no doubt that Brown will want to gut this requirement, and if that happens no wallet in the state will be safe. The two-thirds requirement ensures that Republican legislators must be willing to agree with any tax plan the Democrats offer. Two years ago several Republicans who were not going to be re-elected because of term limits were bribed by Democrats to support their budget/tax plans. That was a rare occurrence, but removal of the two-thirds majority requirement will ensure that tax rates will be increased ceaselessly.
And, since when does a politician propose taking away the power of politicians? No, until I see the written plans and the analysis of the impact, I will not cheer anything that Moonbeam Brown proposes to “fix” the power grab in Sacramento.

In the next few weeks there should be a budget proposal from the Governor, and a statement about what his special election plans are. We should all read the fine print before applauding anything – because the details will mark the difference between recovery in California, or additional movement toward the cliff that looms ahead.

Headline From The Past: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

2010-12-28T21:09:00.001-08:00

On September 30, 1999, the New York Times sounded a (muted) alarm about a change in how Fannie Mae was going to treat the mortgage lending market:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

I found the link to this story in a comment on the Los Angeles Times story about the Gray Davis recall in California. I’m surprised others have not dug out this (in retrospect) very interesting story.

Reading it in the rear-view mirror of the past 20 months, it reads like a very cautionary report on a major shift in policy at Fannie Mae.

In July [1999], the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

I believe that by the time the roof caved in (pun intended), around 80% of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s mortgage portfolio was from “sub-prime” lenders. Much more about the post-mortem statistics on the housing bubble can be found in Thomas Sowell’s excellent book “The Housing Boom and Bust”, which is now only $9.98 in hardcover from Amazon.com.

I really can’t add any more – read the story and reach your own conclusion.

LA Times - We should have kept Davis

2010-12-28T20:49:00.001-08:00

For the first time in a long time, I agree with a column in the Los Angeles Times! Not because of their conclusion (which I disagree with) but because of the consequences.

One thing should now be evident as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger packs up his office: It was a mistake to recall Gray Davis.

Davis didn't deserve it. He had just been reelected the year before. He would have been out of office in three years anyway.

Schwarzenegger wasn't an improvement except for, briefly, providing entertainment. He didn't make the state's money mess any better. In fact, it has gotten worse.

I don’t think keeping Davis would have changed anything. In fact, I’m willing to concede that the state budget mess might be slightly improved because of the higher car registration tax that Davis signed into law. The majority of the Schwarzenegger term was probably not much different than a Davis term would have been.

But the consequences I see are that a governor who labeled himself a Republican and crowed about his achievements as “bipartisan” (even if he was the only GOP representative to agree with them) may have created a popular impression of what a Republican governor is like. In other words, “Ahnold” may have sunk the opportunities for a real Republican to be elected.

I don’t say that casually – I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Schwarzenegger had no political credibility, no track record as an elected politician, no collection of published position papers on how to lead a state (country would be more correct, since California is the world’s 8th largest economy). He won because he had the money and the face time in the media to get people’s attention. He spoke tough, and people wanted a governor who would be tough on the entrenched powers in Sacramento – politicians, unions, bureaucrats, etc.

So what are the consequences? Well, Meg Whitman was another political unknown, with no track record, etc. In fact, wow, Carly Fiorina fits the bill, too. Both Republican candidates for state-wide office. Both lost.

Did they lose because of the Schwarzenegger precedent? I don’t know. However, I wouldn’t be surprised.

So, back to the original LA Times column…Yes, it may have been a bad idea to recall Gray Davis. But only time will tell if it was the short-term loss of Davis or a long-term loss of GOP opportunities that was the real error of the electorate.

‘Twas the Day After Christmas

2010-12-26T16:56:00.001-08:00

No, this isn’t a poem of the season, but an early New Year’s collection of hopes for the future. As we end the season of extravagant spending and approach the receiving of credit card bills and W-2 forms, we should take a long look at our government, our society, and some impending decisions.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.

-- Thomas Jefferson

The US government hasn’t been frugal for over sixty years. How can this country continue along the path it has been on for over sixty years? Ever since the programs of the New Deal began to be implemented, the government has grown, both in power and in scope. And it continues to grow into the future, with programs like Obamacare and Cap-and-Trade yet to start.

Why are these government programs bad? Don’t they fill a need – didn’t someone make a case for each of them?

These questions don’t get discussed in the nightly news, or even in Congress, as often as they should. And there is almost never a review of a program to determine if it should continue, just another appropriation year after year.

Government was created to provide a collection of services that a society needs to operate smoothly, and cannot be provided by individuals or independent groups. For example, printing money. Before the American Revolution and the establishment of the Constitution, each colony printed it’s own currency. So if you were a farmer in Pennsylvania and you sold produce in New York, you were paid in New York “dollars”. How would you convert them to Pennsylvania currency? At what exchange rate? How would you plan your income and expenses in that environment? In fact, would you know enough about New York currency to recognize counterfeit bills?

So the document that defined the structure of the US government also defined the services and powers that government would be expected to provide. The Preamble to the Constitution summarizes the goals as being

…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

In the body of the Constitution, the government is given a list of powers for running the country. Article I Section 8 defines the powers of Congress. Some of these, such as coining money or operating the postal service, are predictable. Others, such as “…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…” by establishing copyright laws, are not so obvious.

Nowhere is there a power to create a Social Security program, a Welfare program, farm subsidies, Medicare, the FCC, the FAA or most of the other alphabet soup of agencies and commissions now part of the Federal bureaucracy. Where did all that come from?

Two sentences in the Constitution have been interpreted very broadly by politicians and the courts to grant added power to the government. “To regulate Commerce…among the several States"…” (commonly referred to as the Commerce Clause) and “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers” (the Necessary and Proper Clause) are these two sentences. During the Great Depression, FDR argued that creating the various programs would either aid in regulating commerce or that they were necessary and proper. The courts agreed (eventually) and the race for power was on.

While a comprehensive review of the legal issues, decisions and dissents is well beyond the scope of this blog, one case can be used to illustrate how power began accruing to the Federal government.

In Wickard v. Filburn, the US Supreme Court expanded the power of the Commerce clause to limiting what a farmer could grow on his farm for personal use. This decision was leveraged as precedent for other cases and different causes, along with dozens of others over the years, led to the mass of agricultural subsidies, incentives, price controls and import duties of today’s marketplace.

Here are a couple of examples of the consequences:

The American public pays twice the world price for sugar because of a sugar subsidy program that benefits a wealthy sugar barons. The program adds about $2 Billion to the price of food annually. As a result, most soft drinks have switched to corn syrup or artificial sweeteners, which some people blame for declining health and obesity.
The peanut subsidy program not only establishes price supports and import quotas, it even limits production to individuals who have an approved production quota. While the current program was created in the 1990s, the peanut subsidy program has it’s history in the days of World War I, when the army wanted a portable source of high protein for soldiers in the field. The result is that parents pay triple the world price for peanut butter while the ‘licensed’ growers become multi-millionaires.

Why are these bad programs? Individually they might sound like a good idea: The wealth of the general public is used to provide a source of stabilized income and prices to farmers. If this was a good idea when 80% of private sector employment was tied to farming, why is it still a good idea when less than 10% is? Keep in mind that these are not the only two programs the government operates – there are over 10,000 such programs! From dairy prices to research funding, from Social Security to Welfare and Food Stamps, from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio, to billions of dollars of tax incentives for clean energy, and mandates for ethanol use.

The government has no money of it’s own – there is no great savings fund earning interest or a factory producing a product that everyone buys out of economic need and provides the government with a profit margin. The funds the government spends is taken from people: The form might be income taxes, “payroll taxes”, import duties, excise taxes and a variety of other taxes and fees. (Recently the new highlighted one such fee: The FAA charges airplane owners to register their planes. The fee is $5 per plane, and hasn’t increased in almost 50 years. Think about the hundreds of dollars that are paid to register an automobile every year, and you’ll realize that federal fees are far below the value delivered.)

It’s the funding of these government programs that the public needs to learn more about. For every dollar the government delivers to recipients of a subsidy or incentive, that dollar (and more) must be taken from someone else. No analysis is done on what purposes that dollar would have been put to had it not been taken from the earner…and if such an analysis had been done at the beginning of every program, it’s certainly not updated to determine if the original justification still exits.

Before going any further, why the “and more” in the prior paragraph? Because the dollars don’t just move magically from one bank account to another. Each program generates a small army (sometimes a large army!) of bureaucrats, analysts, experts and administrators. This army in turn establishes the rules for qualifying for each program – income levels, geographic restrictions, ethnic or racial preferences, etc. These civil servants are paid, also out of taxpayer funds, more than comparable private sector jobs. They have practically guaranteed employment, and generous benefits (paid for by taxpayers as well). I have seen reports that the larger social programs cost twice as much as the services/benefits they deliver: Food Stamps delivers $2 Billion in services, but costs the government (ah, the taxpayers) $6 Billion to operate. We don’t have to worry about fraud and waste – the program’s built-in overhead ensures that taxpayer funds are used inefficiently.

Additionally, the Federal government spends more than it receives in taxes and fees, resulting in debt which must be repaid with interest. There was a time when a majority of the debt was owed to American citizens and corporations, and the common philosophy then was that the amount of debt was irrelevant because paying the interest back to Americans would be another economic stimulus. That is no longer true, and debt repayments are a major outflow of tax revenue to foreign entities. Currently, interest on the national debt averages more than $30 Billion per month.

And over time, a complimentary army of lobbyists, funded by the various groups interested in each program, to tweak future legislation and rules to benefit their supporters. The lobbyists spend money on supporting single-issue votes in Congress. There is even a warped vocabulary surrounding these programs, which the bureaucrats and the lobbyists created: The “cutless spending cut” is a reduction in the increase of a programs funding. So program is scheduled to increase from $100 Billion to $110 Billion and the news reports that “funding was cut to $105 Billion”. More than simply shades of Newspeak.

Politicians love to label this mix of lobbyists, career bureaucrats, administrators, unions and interested others as “Special Interests” if they don’t agree with the goals of a particular program, and as “entitled” or “needy” if they do agree. From the perspective of the general public, these are all the same – people representing a claim on government money, which comes from the pockets of that same general public.

There is another dimension to all of these programs, and it is more insidious than the others: Federal spending comes “with strings attached”, and it is these strings which make the states and the public dance to the tune from Washington, DC. For example, the Federal government does not have the power to dictate what food is sold in school cafeterias or bake sales in the public schools around the country. But when legislation that does just that was passed, it wasn’t an outright ban on “junk food” or “non-nutritious” snacks. It was a string on existing federal school funds: You want to get these BILLIONS of dollars, then you must follow these “guidelines”. Once a program gets its hooks into the operation of an organization, Congress and the bureaucracy is free to add such strings at any time. This is how state speed limits were tied to federal highway funding, and welfare block grants to state medical programs.

The conversation the public must enter into with their representatives is not whether a given program should have funding increased or decreased – but should the program exist at all. Not a vague “this program intends to deliver X” but a proven track record of delivering, or an end to the program entirely.

The government established in the United States was designed to deliver a limited number of services, and to wield a certain amount of power. It was not intended to ensure an income or a job or a home for every citizen, but that is the direction it has been going for sixty years. It cannot continue without bringing ruin to the country. Finally, people are talking about the current situation not being “sustainable”, but there is still no wide discussion on how we make a significant change.

President Obama was elected on a promise of hope and change, with very little in the way of details. So far all he has done is moved the country closer to catastrophe than anything else. Even members of Congress who voted for his various programs did not advertise that fact when they ran for re-election this year. The public has begun to notice that change of a different kind is needed: Not the Democrat/Republican kind of rearranging spending priorities, but the difficult – and necessary – kind of reducing spending, ending programs, and reining in the growth of government.

Brown tells educators budget woes worse than he thought

2010-12-20T00:18:00.001-08:00

Maybe Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown is wondering why he wanted to be governor again….

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown warned educational leaders today to "fasten your seat belts" when he unveils his 2011-12 state budget proposal next month.

"It's worse than I thought," Brown said of the state's fiscal crisis during an education briefing at UCLA, one of a series of such sessions he's holding around the state. "It'll be a very tough budget."

San Jose Mercury News

He has not yet disclosed any specifics, but everyone is expecting Brown to cut education spending, since it’s already 40% of the state budget and grows every year. Most of what he will need to do in order to get the budget under control will require voter approvals to change laws that were passed by initiative. How these new measures will be worded, and how Brown gets support for their passage will be a test of his political acumen. Most reports indicate he will release a budget plan “in the spring” and have a special election in the summer to pass the changes needed.

Will he try to end Proposition 13’s mandate of a two-thirds vote to raise taxes? Will he try to end the various laws that make most of the state budget off-limits to politicians? Will he try to get a Federal bailout…and will he succeed if he does? How willing are other states to use their taxpayer dollars to ‘save’ California?

Only time will tell. One thing is certain – if California is to recover economically, something must be done during Brown’s term because nothing has been done for far too long.

Oh, yeah, one more little item to be aware of, and this is as reported in the Los Angeles Times but I added the emphasis:

California's fund for paying unemployment insurance is broke.

With one in every eight workers out of a job, the state is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay benefits at the rate of $40 million a day.

The debt, now at $8.6 billion, is expected to reach $10.3 billion for the year, two-thirds greater than last year. Worse, the deficit is projected to hit $13.4 billion by the end of next year and $16 billion in 2012, according to the California Employment Development Department, which runs the program.

“Friends of the Earth” Now Against Biofuels!

2010-12-19T23:35:00.001-08:00

It’s not common to find environmental activists switching sides and admitting it openly, but Friends of the Earth have:

[The] drive to substitute fossil fuels with biofuels is driven in large part by an assumption that bio-based energy is sustainable for the planet. However, biofuels can create significant environmental harm. Large-scale agricultural production of corn and other crops used for biofuels often involves massive fertilizer inputs, use of large quantities of water, and soil erosion. Also, rather than helping prevent global warming, biofuels can actually cause global warming as a result of deforestation and the destruction of other natural ecosystems.

The real challenge now is to find a way to end a Federal Agriculture Subsidy program. As far as I can determine, none have ever been ended. Every subsidy program has people who benefit from it. Those people take a percentage of the money they get (from taxpayers via the IRS) and hire lobbyists to ensure that programs don’t get cut, let alone ended.

Friends of the Earth go on to ask…

…our activists to spread the word and educate their friends, family and neighbors about how biofuels are a false solution to our climate and energy woes. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, tell your representatives not to buy the biofuels lie, read factsheets and watch movies here!

They go on to suggest that conservation and “greening” the grid are better choices. Well, sure, but you can’t conserve your way to energy independence. For a well-thought out plan to wean us off petroleum products, read the position papers of the Set American Free Coalition.

In his excellent book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Dr. Robert Zubrin explains why we need biofuels to fill the gap in liquid automotive fuels until we can build a sufficiently powerful nuclear energy pipeline for the next generation of cars.

The problem with the current emphasis on corn-based ethanol is not the issues discussed by Friends of the Earth, but that Congress chose corn for political reasons rather than allowing the free market to decide how best to develop a sufficient supply of ethanol. Since Congress chose the technological ‘winner’, inventors and investors will not put competing options into the marketplace to determine what is really wanted. THAT is the real problem with the corn ethanol ‘solution’.

Missouri's Mover Monopoly

2010-12-19T22:58:00.001-08:00

The Cato Institute reports that:

Starting your own business isn't for the faint of heart — you have to arrange financing, hire staff, advertise, and a thousand other complicated details. So imagine putting in all that hard work, only to learn that the government won't let you open your doors unless you first get permission from all your existing competitors.

In Missouri, the Department of Transportation is required to notify existing moving companies if a new company applies for a license. If the existing companies object (really?) the application is denied.

Who had this brilliant idea? The law has been on the books for 70 years and is still enforced. A person trying to start a new moving service has filed a lawsuit to repeal the law. But that’s not guaranteed, since many courts will not interfere with the internal operations of a state. The assumption is that the voters of the state will change a law they don’t approve of.

How many other abuses like this are out there? I remember that in California people who wanted to braid hair had to get a cosmetology license, which required all kinds of coursework that had nothing to do with hair braiding.

I hope this law is struck down and that this is used as a precedent for dropping other idiotic restrictions on competition in other states.

State Budgets In Jeopardy Due to Obamacare Mandated Priorities

2010-12-19T22:34:00.001-08:00

Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, points out that Obamacare requires state spending to increase on health services, regardless of other spending priorities:

Arizona's AHCCCS program cannot possibly grow at the pace Obamacare is now requiring.

It impacts our state budget by roughly $1 billion and continues to impact it at a growing rate every year.

So, if the federal government does not repeal the Obamacare legislation, all other programs in state government are subsequently threatened.

This can’t just be in Arizona – where are the other governors in stating the obvious: There are many states, from New Jersey to Texas to California that are facing deficits and budget cuts. Why aren’t their governors pointing out that things will only get worse as the required spending on medical programs ramps up?

TSA: What Have They Accomplished?

2010-12-18T09:33:00.001-08:00

Recently Larry Elder had a discussion about the Transportation Security Agency with Robert Poole. Mr. Poole is Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation. The audio of their conversation is available at KABC Radio.

Some interesting facts about TSA performance came out that have not been prominently discussed in the media. For example:

At least 23 TSA agents have been fired since 2007 for various reasons, including playing jokes on passengers, drug use, stealing from passengers, and falling asleep on the job.
A new TSA program places Behavior Detection Officers (BDO) at checkpoints to watch people looking for certain suspicious behavior. The GAO reported that at least a dozen known terrorists have passed through checkpoints where BDOs were stationed and none were stopped.
The TSA has not arrested a single terrorist.

So, what is the purpose of keeping the TSA and putting up with the feel-ups, the shoe removals and the rest of it? Why are US government agents molesting American citizens while illegals pour drugs and weapons into the country without detection? Doesn’t it seem that the better use of those resources would be to have them on the border?

US senator calls for hearings on plane registry

2010-12-10T20:09:00.001-08:00

Today the FAA disclosed that they may not have current owner information on 119,000 planes. Well, that’s bad, and now there are calls for Congress to hold hearings about the situation.

But there is something else to this story: News reports indicate that the cost for registering a plane has not changed FOR FORTY YEARS. How much does it cost to register a plane?
FIVE DOLLARS ($5.00)!!

OK, Congress, you want to collect more from “millionaires and billionaires”? Here’s your opportunity: Effective January 1, 2011 make it 1% of the value of the plane to register.

It is totally unbelievable with all the calls for limiting spending and closing the budget deficit, that this federal service has been underpriced for decades. And meanwhile the FAA doesn’t have funds to upgrade air traffic control systems and other infrastructure.

Come on, Congress, step up and charge for these services!

Jewish Federal General Assembly | New Orleans 2010

2010-11-07T15:56:00.001-08:00

While listening to Vice-President Biden address the NOLAGA session, I was taken by some of the topics discussed and the need to add my own comments.

First, Biden was introduced as being “Israel’s best friend”, and that with him in the White House, Jews and Israel have nothing to worry about. Really? This is the same Joe Biden who voted against BOTH Gulf Wars (you know, ‘W’s “fake” one AND the earlier one that the UN and 152 other countries fought to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait)? You mean Biden is a better friend than oh, Joe Lieberman? Not likely.

Biden opens with a thinly veiled attempt to “prove” his credentials by relating to a meeting he had with Golda Meir. Oh….Joe’s old, and he met Golda, so he’s a good guy? Is that the point?

He’s also busy listing a series of things the current Administration has done to “protect” Israel in international organizations. Like blocking anti-Israeli resolutions of the UN Human Rights Commission. Oh, the same commission that has Libya and Saudi Arabia (those standard bearers of human rights) as members? Why is it that the Obama Administration is the first even to ALLOW attendance of this commission?

Biden says the only way to have peace in the region is by having a secure agreement for peace with Israel’s neighbors. Wow! Really, Joe? Why are you saying this to American Jews rather than Syrian Arabs? Why not to Lebanese Hezbollah militia? Why not to the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the thugs running Iran?

Speaking of Iran now, Biden says that the years of no contact with Iran the international community allowed Iran to expand it’s nuclear program. As if the Bush Administration did nothing to try to block the program. And now the US Administration has placed the most comprehensive sanctions on Iran. Oh, yes Joe! We hear Iran crying for these sanctions to be removed. NOT!

Yes, some players are leaving the Iranian economy (such as Obama’s pals at General Electric), but their nuclear program moves forward, Joe, don’t you understand that THAT is the only tally which counts? No matter how many partners leave Iran, as long as the program to develop nuclear weapons continues to make progress the sanctions are meaningless.

Biden says the US is committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. At what cost, Joey, at what cost? Will the American public and politicians authorize military actions against Iran? Doubtful. What does this commitment mean? It is meaningless, and everyone outside of Joe Biden’s head knows this.

In fact, Obama showed his true view of Israel by the way he dealt with Israel’s prime minister: By having him enter the White House through the side door; by not having a photo taken with him during their first meeting; by lecturing Israel and Bibi on camera when the press was allowed into their meeting; and by denying that this is anything different than prior administrations had done.

It was only after public pressure and feedback from the large Democratic majority in Congress that Obama had a “normal” second visit with the Israeli PM.

Biden appears to be wrapping up now, making jokes that Chanukah is only three weeks away. Haha. And that “we” have a shared commitment to keeping the world a safe place.

He’s off the stage. At last. Call the air freshener crew….

No mention was made of Obama’s pressure on Israel to have an agreement with the Palestinians in one year. I wonder why Joe didn’t find that to be something to be proud of…

Link to Livestream and Blog of the conference

Nancy Pelosi Was Right!

2010-10-15T21:05:00.001-07:00

Nancy Pelosi was right when she said that Congress needed to pass Obamacare so that we would find out what’s in it. So, here’s more “content”:

FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS Because of the new health care law, you may need to rethink how much money you put into flexible spending accounts.

These accounts allow you to save money tax-free for eligible health care expenses, such as deductibles, co-pays, prescription drugs and even supplies like bandages. Under the new law, however, over-the-counter medications such as aspirin, allergy medicine and cough syrup are no longer allowed as eligible expenses. (Italics added.)

- NYTimes.com

What does this mean for the plan that promised to lower health care costs? Nothing! Well, at least no reductions in health care costs.

See, rather than using OTC aspirin, people will go to the doctor (office visit cost) and get a prescription for a more expensive drug so they would be reimbursed by the FSA with pre-tax dollars.

Oh, and there will be a firm cap on how much individuals can put into FSA plans. The cap ($2,500 now, likely to be reduced over time) is intended to leave more income outside of the tax-sheltered account to be taxed, in order to pay for Obamacare!

See, this is how government programs get paid for (if they ever do get paid for) by taxpayers: Someone has to have his/her money taken away by the IRS in order to give it to someone else.

That’s what Obama meant when he said he wanted to “…spread the wealth around”. The problem is that the government can’t make prioritizing decisions that work for everyone all the time. Instead they have to create huge policies and volumes of rules that create “unintended consequences” like this.

And in addition to the program itself, the government has to pay the rule-makers, and the rule-checkers, and the taxpayers hire rule-auditors to help them understand what the rules are and how to live within the rules…and all of THAT costs money, too.

So, even if health care costs came down (which they won’t) the system is imposing all those new costs on government and taxpayers, which should be included in the calculation before anyone claims that costs will come down. But no one will.

The Art of the Steal (film)

2010-10-12T17:59:00.001-07:00

Just watched "The Art of the Steal" on Showtime. I highly recommend seeing it, especially if you are a lover of fine art, are concerned about family values, or believe government agencies should not try to force open family estates and change the legal organizations that are intended to protect them.

The Art of the Steal is a 2009 documentary film about efforts to break Albert C. Barnes's will and relocate the Barnes art collection from its longtime home in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia. The collection of late-19th- and early-20th-century art includes 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 60 Matisses 44 Picassos and 14 Modiglianis. The 9,000 piece collection is valued at over $25 billion.
--- Wikipedia

Dr. Albert C. Barnes established a foundation in 1923 to protect and preserve his private art collection. With the help of the best legal minds of his time, he established a trust to prevent outside forces from getting control of the collection. He wanted the works to be kept in the art school he designed and built for them.

But after his untimely death in 1951, politicians from Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania joined with art and culture entities to modify the trust, eventually going to court to order the works be moved and placed in the care of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

I was vaguely aware of the Barnes Foundation story about ten years ago. I recall NPR doing a story about an ‘eccentric’ art collector who wanted the public to be kept away from his property, but that the works were going to Philadelphia to be open to the public.

This film, however, makes it very clear that forces conspired over many years to violate the terms and clear wishes of Dr. Barnes, his will and the trust he established to maintain control. It is hard not to walk away from the film without feeling that a great disservice has been done.

As GOP civil war rages, Democrats look to benefit - msnbc.com

2010-10-10T15:29:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON — A Republican civil war is raging, with righter-than-thou conservatives dominating more and more primaries in a fight for the party's soul. And the Democrats hope to benefit.

So now MSNBC is the arbiter of what goes on in the GOP? Really?

Let’s not allow such ridiculous commentary either pass as ‘news’ or ignore it. We should point out what has happened over the past few decades:

It appears to me that many Democrats who were more conservative than Jimmy or Billy moved to the GOP, looking for more reasonable limits on government spending and intrusion into the private sector. These ‘Republicans’ often were conservative on social issues, but still had many liberal leanings. (Examples are Arlene Specter and Olympia Snowe.) Specter finally came clean last year and moved back to the Democratic side of the aisle.

And as true Republicans came to be disillusioned by George W. Bush’s outlandish spending and deficit programs, the GOP moved further to the right.

Now some in the middle of the GOP are being pulled to choose – either more conservative or less – that is not a civil war at all: It’s a large tent party finding a new center of gravity.

Returning After An Unexpected Absence

2010-10-09T20:13:00.001-07:00

For over a year now I have been posting my comments and observations on Facebook. While there is a certain enjoyment from having comments and threaded dialog with people I know, I fear that Facebook has not always played by the rules the public in general expects.

The common concerns about security and keeping personal data private are only part of the story. More important to me is the fact that some posts just “magically” disappear from Facebook. Most commonly, posts about how to leave Facebook and delete all your content seem to vanish.

Do I expect to offend the powers of Facebook? No. But better safe than sorry. By having my blog posts on a separate site (blogger.com for now, but that might change) and having the RSS feed post to Facebook, I hope to find a happy balance between my concerns and my time.

Time? Oh, yes, it takes time to write, edit, post, moderate comments, etc. So, I hope to keep active, but not impact more of my time.

Will I still ‘be’ on Facebook? Yes. You’ll still see me commenting on others’ posts (and photos!), and my Mafia Wars adventures will still pollute my wall and those of my Mafia Wars family. But my personal posts will come from my blogger.com blog, by way of RSS Graffiti. (I’ll review RSS Graffiti at a later date.)

For now, I hope nothing changes, other than the posts appear with links to the full stories. If you have any comments on how the change looks to you, you know how to reach me.

Cool Tools: TUSA Hyperdry Snorkel

2009-08-14T13:22:00.001-07:00

I've been following the Cool Tools blog for years. I highly recommend adding it to your blog-following list. This is the first time they have published a review I have written:

the TUSA [has a] Comfort Swivel, which not only allows me to change the angle of the snorkel without messing with the mask strap, it’s also in two parts that can disconnect as a quick-release to get the snorkel off the mask quickly.

Arlen Specter on Angry Crowds

2009-08-11T15:34:00.001-07:00

The news is now overflowing with stories about members of Congress being shouted down during discussion of Obamacare. Here is an excerpt from a recent AP story:

The bitter sessions underscored the challenge for the administration as it tries to win over an increasingly skeptical public on the costly and far-reaching task of revamping the nation's health care system. Desperate to stop a hardening opposition, the White House created a Web site to dispel what it says are smears and House Democrats set up a health care "war room" out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office to help lawmakers answer questions.

At a crowded community college in Pennsylvania, Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter heard from speaker after speaker who accused him of trampling on their constitutional rights, adding to the federal deficit or allowing government bureaucrats to take over health care.

There is an interesting quote of Senator Specter at the end of the story: "There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember." Well, Senator, thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess that means there wasn't so much anger when President Bush called for the Patriot Act and similar legislation to thwart terrorism attacks on the US and our foreign interests, was there?