Qτ

Can everyone who wants a good job find one?

2012-02-15T11:19:00.001-05:00

We've got a long way to go before everybody who wants a good job can find one;

Yeah, like, forever.

This statement illustrates an interesting ignorance.

There is a difference between jobs and, say, cars.

It is perfectly OK to say we want to reach a level where everyone who wants a good car can buy one.

What, then, is the difference between a car and a job? Simple: No one wants a job for the pleasure of it. If that were the case, then people would be working for free left and right.

No, you want a job, correction, you offer your services, your human capital, to do work for someone else so that you can earn the money with which you can buy the things you want.

There is no way to ensure that everyone who wants a good job can fine one. First, a good job is one that pays gobs of money in return for very little effort. Secondly, and more importantly, whether someone is willing to hire you depends on whether they can sell the stuff they make using your services at a profit.

Jobs are not things made in the Star Trek replicator, shrink-wrapped, and sent to your local welfare office for you to pick up.

You can be the most skilled person with a great work ethic, but you are not going to get paid to do stuff unless there is someone out there who can expect to turn a profit employing your services to produce something that others will pay for.

The president is right. We are not at a point where a lot of people can see with some degree of confidence that they can make a profit producing stuff. The reasons are varied. First, there is the huge amount of debt that has been created by this president. It seems that the administrations is dead set against pro-growth policies and is planning to both tax and inflate its way out of it. Would you risk your resources if you expect either the returns to be eroded by inflation or grabbed by the government?

Second, the Federal government is currently taking money from people who produce things people want and giving it to people who produce things people do not want (e.g. Solyndra and Chevy Volt are prime examples) in addition to mucking up the health care market and contributing to stagnation in the housing market.

Third, the Fed is giving money away to the banks with its super low interest policy. The people who manage the free money they get are not stupid. If they expect inflation, there is no point in tying up that money in longer term, productive but risky projects. No, it is much better to make loads of money in short term speculation.

All this without even going into the global risks that we are facing. But, even without them, conditions at home are not conducive to people parting with their money to employ others.

It is as simple as that.

Demand curves are downward sloping

2012-02-14T18:14:00.000-05:00

The debate over the Obama administration's mandate that all insurance plans make contraceptive available for free is not just an affront to the First Amendment, it is also a perfect example of the kind of waste generated by government mandates that things of all sorts be made available for free when they require real resources to produce them … read full article

Rest in peace, Roxy

2012-02-10T16:05:00.003-05:00

A wonderful horse left us a couple of days ago.

I feel truly blessed to have had the chance to see her in action. She lived a good life among people who loved her and I hope she enjoys the big pasture in the sky.

Holy Insurance

2012-02-09T11:08:00.002-05:00

So, apparently, the administration wants all employers, including, say, Catholic charity hospitals, to cover the cost of contraceptives, birth control devices etc for their employees.

In the process of searching for a public statement on this issue, I was able to find a video of Mr. President shooting marshmallows. Awwww! He's so cute when that expression of wonder and amazement takes over his face!

So, I read a statement posted on the White House blog by the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Ms. Muñoz writes:

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance plans will cover women’s preventive services, including contraception, without charging a co-pay or deductible beginning in August, 2012. This new law will save money for millions of Americans. But more importantly, it will ensure Americans nationwide get the high-quality care they need to stay healthy. Under this policy, women who want contraception will have access to it through their insurance without paying a co-pay or deductible. But no one will be forced to buy or use contraception.

Oh, boy! Am I glad … no one will be forced to buy or use contraception. Like, seriously, dude?!

If you are one of the seemingly dwindling number of those of us who knows anything at all about insurance and are not scared of basic arithmetic you are already shocked. See, you don't need to bring in any appeal to anything holy to understand why such a mandate imposed by government is incompatible with the idea of insurance.

What is insurance?

Insurance is about large losses that occur with some probability that can at least be inferred. Let's say, every year, 100 out of a million people in a country are diagnosed with a disease that costs $1,000,000 to cure. So, we can say the probability that a randomly picked person is going to be diagnosed in a particular year is 100 / 1,000,000 = 0.01%. The expected cost of treating all of them is $100,000,000. The financial burden of being diagnosed by this illness might be devastating to a given individual.

Given the choice, between paying, say, $500 annually for an insurance policy covering all the costs of treatment if one is diagnosed during the year versus having a 99.99% chance of not having to shell out any money and a 0.01% chance of financial disaster, most people would choose to incur the $500 cost of the policy. (To be sure, that kind of premium would indeed enable the insurance company to cover the payout in almost all states of the world, and, more often than not, they would make out like bandits.)

That's what insurance is: You give up a small amount with certainty in return for the assurance that the big loss with small probability hits, someone else foots the bill.

Now, the administration already is hacking away at the insurance market with the whole preexisting conditions dogma: It only makes sense to sell insurance to someone before that person is hit with a loss. Why would anyone give someone $1,000,000 in return for $500?! But, that was one of the first steps the Shoveler and his pals took to destroy the health insurance market.

Coming back to our contraceptives … First, note that contraceptive use is not a random event.

It's a choice.

When an insurance plan is required to cover contraceptive use, that means paying for something which some people use with 100% probability on a continuous basis due to their choices.

When someone else pays for something that you choose to buy for certain, that is not insurance.

This is just as stupid as requiring auto insurance to pay for the gas people put in their cars. The only effect of that would be to force people who use less than average amount of gas to pay for those who use more than the average amount.

That's a subsidy, not insurance.

Religious Freedom

Here is where the founding principles of the United States of America come in.

The per person cost of such "coverage" will be the average amount spent on contraceptives by the plan enrollees plus a portion of the administrative costs of the plan.

People who do not use contraceptives will pay for the contraceptive use of others who do.

OK, this is no different than the gas case, you might say, what makes this about religious freedom, any more than the government requiring me to pay for someone else's gas consumption.

A lot of people of a variety of religions believe some or all forms of birth control are against their fundamental values. Under the administration's rules, all people who obtain health care insurance coverage through their employers are going to be forced to subsidize the contraceptive use of others. That is, people will be forced to pay for others to be able to do something against their religious beliefs.

While right now, most of the reaction is coming from Catholic organizations, make no mistake about it, if such a policy is allowed to stand, even with an itty-bitty exemption for religious organizations, the rights of everyone will have been violently violated.

What’s true about them is NOT true about all of us

2012-02-07T12:47:00.001-05:00

I was probably the last one to have heard about Chrysler's self-serving Super Bowl Ad. Not because I did not watch the game, but because I did watch the game and paid scant attention to the ads themselves.

Here's what the ad says:

Detroit's showing us it can be done. And, what's true about them is true about all of us.

It is impossible for what's true about GM and Chrysler to be true about the rest of us.

For the rest of us have to make sound decisions and generate wealth to pay for the mistakes of the executives and unions of GM and Chrysler.

For the rest of us cannot get "lifelines" worth tens and tens of billions of dollars when we make unprofitable decisions.

No sir, what is true of you is definitely not true of the rest of us.

And, that's the problem.

Not just a matter of counting

2012-02-03T12:45:00.001-05:00

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is out with the January 2012 Employment Situation Summary. The report is chipper with good news. Haven't you heard? The unemployment rate is down to 8.3%!

The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of people who are willing to work in current market conditions but can't find employment by the number of people available to work.

It is not, as some people instinctively think, the number of non-working people divided by the working age population.

This has implications for what we'd expect to see if things really were getting better and people were feeling it.

According to BLS data (series CEU0000000001), 137 million people were employed in October 2008. This number, in October 2011, was 133 million.

Similarly, in January 2008, before the dynamic Bernanke-Paulson chicken-dance-duo kicked into high gear, 136 million people had jobs. In January 2012, this number was 130 million.

In January 2009, right before the Shoveler in Chief took office, 132 million people were employed. A year after he rolled into town with his expert Keynesian economists and grand plans for all of us, in January 2010, employment was down to 127 million people.

Make no mistake about it, 130 million is more than 127.

Now, according to the Census Bureau, the population of the U.S. in January 2009 was 306 million. That is, about 43% of the country was employed. In other words, for every 10 employed people, there were 13 people not gainfully employed.

Fast forward to today, where the population of the country was apparently somewhere around 313 million, and we have about 42% of the country employed.

That is, for every 10 employed people, there are now about 14 people not working.

After all, this is the number that matters. For the working people produce stuff to meet the needs and wants of the entire population.

In addition, the per capita real GDP fell by about 1.2% between the end of 2008 and the end of 2011.

So, a smaller proportion of the population is working and they are producing less stuff.

We'll see where we go from here.

The home owner deception

2012-02-01T14:07:00.001-05:00

You are not a homeowner until you've paid off your mortgage in full.

So, you decided to take out a loan to buy a property at the height of the housing bubble. It wasn't like the housing bubble was a well kept secret. The popular press regularly ran articles about the housing bubble for at least the 3-4 years leading up to the crash of 2008.

Still, everyone occasionally makes financial decisions which, in hindsight, turn out not to have been the right ones.

For example, back in the 90s, I bought some stock in a regional Internet access provider. They seemed poised for explosive growth. They had been in the market since way before anybody had heard of AOL. The stock price started to fall almost as soon as I purchased my shares. Before long, the company had been delisted and had declared bankruptcy. All I could do was to re-learn the fact that picking individual stocks was a fool's errand and people like me were much better off buying broad based index funds. Did I have a right to expect to have the loss in my stock portfolio be made up by the contributions of the rest of the country?

So, some of you bought a property and now you find out you can't afford to pay back the money you borrowed to do it. The reasons don't matter. You might be the most responsible, kind-hearted person. But, you can't pay back the money you borrowed. There is only one thing to do: Return the collateral to the lender and find some other living arrangement.

Oh, I am sorry, I forgot. Mr. Shoveler is here to help you stay in your homes.

This is a sure fire recipe for continued lackluster demand for real estate and a housing market in the funk.

See, there are people who might be interested in buying properties. The problem is, they know there are a bunch of people who are not going to be able to pay off their mortgages. That means, they expect more property to be offered for sale in the future and at lower prices by banks and institutions trying to recover whatever they can.

Simply put, most housing markets around the country have not found their bottoms yet.

Crutches offered by the Shoveler in Chief and other politicians only serve to bolster the gut feeling that prices will remain stagnant in the face of inflation or even fall even further in the near future.

Keep that in mind when you hear things like:

Pass this plan. Help more families keep their homes. Help more neighborhoods remain vibrant. Help keep more dreams defended and alive. And I promise you that I’ll keep doing everything I can to make the future brighter for this community, for this commonwealth, for this country.

Hey, while those responsible(!) homeowners were pushing property prices up to nutty levels, some decided not to get into mortgages that made no sense. They are now being punished with still non-realistic property prices in addition to continuing to pay for the mortgage interest deductions of homeowners(!).

Give me a break! Stop trying to plug the hole in the hull by piling sand onto the ship.

A column by someone called Lili Gil shows the author is confused

2012-01-24T11:05:00.000-05:00

Someone called Lili Gil writes Romneys 'Self-Deportation' Solution at GOP Debate Shows a Candidate Out of Touch.

Reading the article shows that Ms. Gill is confused:

After a basic requirement of being over 18 years of age, the U.S. government requires you to be a green card holder for five years! So, how do you get a green card if you want to get in the line? Three or four clicks later and the USCIS website then takes you to a long list of green-card application forms that basically can be summarized as the following: A. be the child of a U.S. citizen, B. marry a citizen, C. be a refuge and/or D. qualify for the limited and convoluted job, entrepreneur or investor options.

Did you know that someone who comes into this country legally with a student visa has virtually no clear path or option to become legal after graduating from his college, masters or PhD? Note, these are not DREAMers (DREAMAct candidates), but legal immigrants who are stuck in limbo …

This is non-sense on many levels.

First someone who comes to the U.S. as a student is not an immigrant. In fact, a precondition to being able to get a student visa is not to have immigration intent.

Second, students who graduate from U.S. institutions are not in legal limbo. If they want to stay in the U.S. while looking for a job, students in F-1 status can apply for a practical training work permit. If they line up an employer ahead of graduation, they can be sponsored for an H1B visa. The nice thing about the H1B is that it does not preclude immigration intent which means, if your employer is willing, one's green card application can be sponsored by his/her employer during the six year H1B period.

So, clearly a graduate of an undergrad or grad program is not without options if she decides she would like to become a permanent U.S. resident and eventually a citizen.

Now, the system is convoluted, difficult to navigate at times. You deal with a lot of U.S. citizens who have no clue what it takes to keep one's status. You watch people with no skills live in sanctuary cities, get rent subsidies, health subsidies, education subsidies, cheap mortgages, and keep juggling piles and piles of paperwork to comply with the laws designed to protect protectionist white-collar workers, but there clearly is a path for those graduates Ms. Gil seems to be so worried about.

Indeed, enforcement of laws and thereby providing an incentive to those who break laws to leave on their own accord is a solution to the illegal immigration problem.

Once that is under way, one must recognize that the world is full of people who would love the chance to make it in the United States of America and have not already broken our laws. To make sure we attract the best and the brightest in everything from rocket science to lettuce picking, we need real immigration reform now.

There is no reason to appease people who flaunted the laws and regulations of the United States while everyone else spent time and treasure and had to forgo a lot to stay in compliance.

You can't afford to ignore arithmetic

2011-12-22T16:15:00.000-05:00

An earlier version of this post contained a rant by me based likely on my confusion between per paycheck versus per week. I have since edited that part out and updated the post in light of the fact that a deal was passed.

The regular so-called "payroll tax" for individuals used to be 6.2%. It was temporarily reduced by two points to 4.2%. The question facing the congress and the President was whether to extend the lower tax rate for two more months (as the President and the Democrats wanted) or one more year (as the Republicans wanted).

I was and still am against both, but more on that later.

If the 6.2% tax rate is applied to an annual amount of $50,000, your tax is $3,100. If the 4.2% tax rate is applied to $50,000, your tax is $2,100. The difference is $1,000 which amounts to about nineteen dollars and twenty-three cents per week.

However, Mr. President and the Democrats wanted this reduced tax rate to be extended only for two more months. There are eight weeks in two months. Now that the Republicans agreed to this means that Mr. President and his Democrats reduced your payroll tax by a measly one hundred and fifty-three dollars and 85 cents. If the Republican plan had been accepted, the reduced rate would have been in effect for not just 8 weeks but for 52 weeks. You'd indeed have paid $1,000 less in payroll taxes in 2012.

A one year extension is less bad also because it means smaller adjustment cost than a two year one.

Why am I against these so-called "tax-cuts"?

Imagine you need to make a $1,200 purchase at the end of the year. To that end, you decide you're going to put aside $100 every month, starting in January. You buy an extra hardcover book to read on the beach every month for the summer, so you save only $80/month in June, July and August. If you don't change anything else, you'll end up with $1,140 at the end of the year, and will be short of the $1,200 you needed to make the purchase. You can make up for the shortfall by saving $115 in September through December. You consume more today, you consume less tomorrow.

Social Security is similar to that. The government has made promises to many people that they will get a certain amount every month for the rest of their lives. This promise is funded by taking the money from today's workers and giving it to today's old. That's the payroll tax. That's what pays Social Security benefits. Those benefits have already been promised to today's old and we know roughly what amount is needed to cover those promises. If today's workers pay less in payroll tax than today's old get in Social Security, the government must either make that up with increased taxation tomorrow or by printing money tomorrow.

Besides, the requisite change to make the extension effective for an extra period would be just one line. The actual bill that was passed took 14 pages and it contains such gems as:

(g) RECAPTURE OF EXCESS BENEFIT.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—There is hereby imposed on the income
of every individual a tax equal to 2 percent of the sum of
wages (within the meaning of section 3121(a)(1) of the Internal
Revenue Code of 1986) and compensation (to which section
3201(a) of such Code applies) received during the period beginning
January 1, 2012, and ending February 29, 2012, to the
extent the amount of such sum exceeds $18,350.

I have no idea what that really means but I think it means anyone who makes over $18,350 during January and February will have to pay an additional 2% in tax (clarifications and explanations welcome). If so, there is no reason to expect this extension to have any stimulating effect at all, even in the form of moving future consumption to the present, because anyone who has the ability to change the timing of their income to avoid the extra two percentage points of tax will do so.

Social security has been in need of real reform for at least two decades. Let's not allow politicians to defund it. Let's not allow politicians to create extra borrowing requirements for the near future.

Let's have a real conversation about how to reform Social Security instead.

Would you consider smuggling bubble gum?

2011-12-21T10:21:00.001-05:00

I recently was asked to comment about the situation in Turkey. While thinking about that, I could not help but remember my childhood in Turkey in the 70s.

In the late 70s, the centrally planned Turkish economy resembled a Trabant. Bombs were exploding left and right daily, cities were divided into influence zones of various groups engaging regularly in gunfights, carrying out political assassinations, and my family was receiving death threats daily from the Grey Wolves. Later a member of that organization rose to fame by attempting to take the life of Pope John Paul II. He had first made a name for himself by killing the Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi and walking out of prison.

I still remember the day I found out why there was a policeman posted outside our door. I used to like to rifle through my father's stuffed briefcases which used as an unfiling system. There were so many interesting things in those cases. The checkbooks from his time in the U.S. in the early seventies when he worked for the Voice of America for a couple of years, mementos from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, photos from various Apollo launches, worn out Pan Am playing cards … The works!

One day, I found a bundle of irregularly shaped papers. Some were about letter sized, some were obviously torn from notepads. I read them. They described in detail how we and my father were going to be tortured and killed for some perceived transgressions of my father, mostly because he was a fan of Ecevit.

The messages contained various details of our daily lives and told my father in no uncertain terms that his family was a target. I was scared. But, then I knew why there was a policeman posted at our door. My father had asked for protection, and the state had sent a cop who carried a gun with no clip in it, who liked to play soccer with the neighborhood kids, and who referred to a couple of armed Grey Wolves who showed up at our door to deliver four white orchids for our future funerals as ağabey.

Those were the heady(!) days of my childhood.

It was during this period that I had my first personal encounter with communism and learned that some people had it even worse than the Turks.

A couple of family friends, Tekin Özertem and Canan Arısoy (née Meray), were organizing the first ever children's festival in Turkey which involved children from various countries staying in Ankara with host families for two weeks in April, as part of the April 23rd Children's Day activities. My family took in a girl from Romania.

We had a fun couple of weeks, going from activity to activity. Towards the end, it was time to buy some gifts for her family. There was a serious language barrier. No matter which store we took her to, she kept trying to tell us she wanted something else. She did not want her group leader to translate (years later, it dawned on me that she was probably scared of being discovered).

I don't know how, but eventually, through trial and error, we discovered that she wanted bubble gum.

Not just one piece. Not just one pack. But loads and loads of bubble gum.

Her suitcases had secret compartments. We bought as many packs of bubble gum of as many varieties as we could find and stuffed those compartments full.

Apparently, under Ceaușescu, bubble gum had become a hot commodity. Her family could sell or trade the bubble gum for other things on the black market. We understood, because, in centrally planned Turkey at the time, you could trade coffee or Corn Flakes for sugar and butter.

We still had it better. At least, bubble gum was plentiful in Turkey.

That is where restrictions on free trade lead. Eventually, they make smugglers out of 10 year old kids.

You don't have to live under full-blown communism to have central planning play cruel games on you.

Markets solve an incredible problem: What is needed where and when?

To allocate the right amount and variety of bubble gum across time and space, a central planner needs to know not just everyone's taste for bubble gum and how much they are willing to spend. The planners also need to know everyone's tastes for everything, every manufacturer's technology and costs, and every single person's income.

Individuals operating in a free market need to know only whether they are willing to pay the price the seller is asking for a pack of gum of a given variety. The sellers only need to know if they are selling the amount of bubble gum they'd like at the prevailing price. They have no trouble dealing with new varieties of bubble gum.

Central planners cannot. If someone tries to sell a new variety of bubble gum, central planners would have to change all their calculations, because every small change ripples through the entire system.

Central planners deal with this by artificially limiting variety, choice and initiative. And, they cannot even solve that problem because neither tastes nor technologies remain the same.

If you have not had a personal encounter with the evils of communism and central planning, you owe it to yourself to watch Moscow on the Hudson. The first 30 minutes of that movie are better than any documentary.

Have you ever said to yourself things would be just fine if some authority told everyone how much of everything they could have? If that thought ever crossed your mind, now ask Am I willing to make my child smuggle bubble gum so I can put food on the table?

Are we better off with Iraq in turmoil?

2011-12-19T20:28:00.002-05:00

With the U.S. troops gone, the power struggle in Iraq is reaching new levels. Various sources are reporting that The Shi'ite-led government in Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi.

If you need a reminder, the Shia are aligned with Iran.

For the record, the Iraq war was the right war at the right time. I know, these days it's fashionable to think of it as a waste, so let's briefly review why it was imperative that Saddam Hussein was removed from power in the aftermath of 9/11.

9/11 was the final attack in a series of escalating attacks on U.S. interests around the world by al-Qaeda. It put an end to the illusion that the U.S. homeland was safe from major destructive attacks. It had the potential of creating a world wide economic and security crisis. Great leadership in New York City by Giuliani prevented the city from falling apart at the seams (compare that to what happened last year with when a blizzard hit New York City with Bloomberg at the helm). And, swift reaction by President Bush in Afghanistan was the first step in showing the world that people who intend to do the U.S. harm and who harbor them had no safe haven.

A lot of people, mostly Democrat politicians and members of the liberal media wanted to turn the reaction in to a simple police investigation to track down Osama bin Laden. That would have been a risky enterprise, fraught with the danger of making the U.S. look impotent. The longer it took for the U.S. to capture bin Laden, the stronger would be his reputation. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear people say Osama is a great leader. Look, the U.S. with all its might cannot capture him. He would have attained the status of legend. Instead, he had to run and hide. His eventual capture revealed how much he had been marginalized in the intervening years.

After the victory in Afghanistan, it was important to send a credible message to various tyrannical regimes in the world that they were personally in danger if they gave safe haven to, organized or sponsored any organizations that intended the U.S. harm. Surely, there was no shortage of people who'd been oppressing and torturing their people while thumbing their noses at the U.S. for decades. There was, however, one dictator, who had credibly built a reputation for having weapons of mass destruction, who had been flaunting U.N. resolution after U.N. resolution that he had to allow inspectors free access to suspected sites.

Once the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland was exposed, it would have been suicidal to allow Saddam to keep his status as a tyrant who had access to corrupt financial networks and diplomatic channels which could have been used to organize further attacks. Regime change in Iraq, which had been the stated goal of U.S. policy during the Clinton Administration had to be realized. Eliminating Saddam would have sent (and did send) a clear signal to all other tyrannical regimes that they were going to be personally targeted if they threatened the U.S.

Such tyrants do not waste a second thinking about the well being of anyone but themselves. Years of suffering of Iraqi people could not convince Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. sanctions. In fact, the sanctions themselves had provided further avenues for his personal enrichment. Changing the regime in Iraq was essential to removing a major threat against the U.S. and stability in the Middle East.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was successful in achieving this goal.

Major errors, stemming sometimes from good intentions, were made in handling the aftermath. Anyone familiar with the Middle East would have appreciated the value of the immediate establishment of martial law across the country and strict enforcement of curfews. Instead, a period of confusion reigned for a while following the fall of Baghdad.

Things got worse when the U.S. media and Democrat politicians started undermining the administration. By declaring the war lost, they signaled to Iran and Syria and anyone else who cared to listen that the U.S. could not handle a tough struggle and that they would back away from a fight. To his credit, President Bush refused to cut and run, and went ahead with the surge. Tellingly, the current president was one of the people who stood firmly against the surge. Liberal organizations published ads and stories intended to undermine the administration's war effort.

Finally, at a time the U.S. needed to signal continued resolve, a chicken was elected president.

People will point out that Osama bin Laden was killed under President Obama and that proves that he is strong. But the real and present danger of the day is not posed by Osama bin Laden. It is posed by Iran, whose rulers, just like Saddam Hussein did, seek to possess weapons of mass destruction to project power well beyond the actual strength of their regime. They needed to see a United States of America with resolve, the kind of resolve that kept Western Europe safe from the Soviet Union since 1946—make no mistake, the spirit of the USSR is still alive and well even if the name is not.

What they have seen is a President who prefers to lead from behind. What they have seen is a president who's willing to abandon Iraq and cede it to Iran.

That's why the Shia in Iraq are now going after the Sunni vice president.

Granted, I do not think the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a nice guy. But, it is unlikely that there are any nice guys in power in Iraq. However, Shia domination in Iraq by way of elimination of opponents by force is not an outcome that is good for the people of Iraq, the people of Iran, the people of the Middle East, the people of Europe, and America.

U.S. interests lie in free and open trade in oil which is a precious commodity not just for Americans but for everyone in the world. The Iranian strategy is to threaten crucial sources not just in Iran and Iraq but also in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region. So far, the mullahs are succeeding in placing their pieces in key locations on the board.

The day they credibly demonstrate a nuclear capability will be the beginning of the end.

Is this open season on bloggers?

2011-12-19T18:59:00.000-05:00

As more and more details of fishy goings on in the Climate business via a series of ClimateGate releases, it seems the bloggers who publicized the information are being subjected to intimidation tactics.

Just today, we learn through Maxim Lott's reporting on the emails released by an unknown person that the U.S. government may have helped researchers avoid making data public.

These are important issues. We are bombarded every day with claims that making everything we use more expensive is somehow going to save the world, but somehow the people who benefit from the climate business are exempt from basic requirements of openness.

After the first ClimateGate release, the Guardian wrote:

The university called in police last November, insisting they were victims of a criminal "theft" of data. Under Superintendent Julian Gregory, a group was pulled together from the counter-terrorism squad and Scotland Yard's electronic crimes unit, which also included two officers from the national domestic extremism team who have expertise in pursuing "climate extremists".

So far, the police investigation has got nowhere. It is not even clear whether the crime of computer data interception has actually occurred. What if the hacker was given a legitimate password? What if the data was accidentally open to public access?

Why exactly are bloggers being targeted by law enforcement?

Herman Cain was a disappointment

2011-12-08T13:59:00.001-05:00

Plain and simple: Herman Cain was a disappointment.

Not because of the allegations against him. Not (solely) because he was seemingly having an ongoing relationship with a woman who regularly received financial support from men.

Countless politicians, including Kennedy and Clinton have done worse by actually carrying those "relationships" into office.

But because, by the very act of quitting the race, he signaled that there was likely much more to come.

He left the race in a way that precluded from being considered as a running-mate. He left the race in a way that might discredit the good ideas he proposed and defended.

It was sad to see so much promise evaporate so quickly.

Piling on Cain

2011-12-01T11:34:00.001-05:00

I like Herman Cain and I think he has good instincts.

I once had a chance to tell one of John McCain's security advisers that the two smartest things his candidate had said during the 2008 presidential election campaign were Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran and We can stay in Iraq for 100 years.

All I got back was a blank stare.

John McCain had good instincts in those instances. He grasped the importance of dealing with Iran before the Mullahs had a couple of nuclear weapons with which to threaten not only Israel but also the global oil trade routes, and the importance of conveying the signal that the U.S. was not going to cut and run from Iraq.

After all, the U.S. has had a significant military presence in Germany for the last 66 years. Of course, they have not been fighting for that time: They have been serving a deterrent role. And, guess what, if the U.S. had brought to bear on Iraq the kind of force it applied to Nazi Germany, fighting would probably have been limited to all of two hours or so.

Where am I going with this? Oh, yes, Cain has good instincts.

He does not have good encyclopaedic knowledge the way the teacher's pet security advisers and snotty media personalities may want, but he has good instincts. I would feel safer with him at the helm than with any other Republican candidate right now. Of course, I would feel safer with John Bolton at the helm, but he is not running.

At the same time I like Herman Cain, I am worried that I am going to be disappointed.

Even though his sexual harassment accusers (where are they now?) and this new person claiming she has been having an affair for more than a dozen years have serious credibility issues, I am afraid they may turn out to be the tip of the iceberg and there might be something really wrong with his character.

My current pet theory is that the Democrats and their friends in the media are trying to create an atmosphere where not only does Herman Cain have no chance of becoming the Republican candidate for president but also there is no chance of him being on the ticket at all due to the aura of suspicion surrounding him.

I hope he does not quit right now, without having participated in any primaries.

If he did send text messages to Ginger White, he should make their contents public (as Ms. White gingerly only showed a phone bill as she did her media tour). If there is anything there, and if his wife allows him, I wish he would just let the public decide whether it matters.

Amnesty for illegals is not compassion

2011-11-26T07:43:00.001-05:00

I run into enough real people who are completely oblivious to what it takes to be a legal alien in the U.S.

I am told illegals are great for the economy because they pay all sorts of taxes, including payroll taxes.

What is the one thing you need to be able to pay, say, payroll taxes? You guessed right: A valid social security number, which, for an alien must be tied to an alien identification number that is authorized to work.

If you've just walked across the border, do you have such a thing?

Most likely, you don't. What do you do? You either buy one that "works" or work for employers who do not file an I-9 and also forget to submit payroll taxes for you. Either way, you are either part of an identity fraud scheme or a tax fraud scheme.

Apparently, requiring that people not engage in identity theft is a huge burden.

Many of the crimes committed by illegals may sound small. However, if a legal alien is caught or suspected of having engaged in such activity, s/he might not be able to become a citizen or be deported for not having "good moral character" which means not only do you have to pay your parking tickets on time, but you are not allowed to forget them in your adjustment of status application.

Most Americans, apparently including the compassionate duo Newt & Rick, seem never to have heard of Form I-693: How many illegals you meet on the street have ever had to be tested for syphilis as a condition of their residence in the U.S.?

There are many reasons for which individuals can be denied entry into the U.S. For example:

In general.-Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.

Now ask: If you expect to be able to get subsidized college tuition for your child, are you not likely to become a public charge?

How many illegals have submitted Form I-134?

I said before, the U.S. does need real immigration reform, but that cannot happen until real enforcement is in place.

Just for the record, real enforcement does not mean rounding up millions of people and tossing them out.

You do not get caught every time you go three miles above the speed limit, or park too long at a meter.

It is impossible to catch everyone who is in violations of immigration regulations.

That, however, does not mean the law should not be enforced to the fullest extent against those whom you are able to catch, thereby reducing the incentive to flaunt the laws of the U.S. while getting getting free food on the American taxpayers' dime.

Pandering to people who came or stayed illegally in the U.S. is an affront to those of us who tried to comply with every regulation (believe me, there are many) at great economic and psychic cost.

It makes a mockery of the millions of people who would run here at the drop of a hat, work hard, not take welfare, and integrate.

Even if you are a cynical, pandering, lying politician, you should be for real immigration reform: The more people of all skill levels come to the U.S. freely and legally, the more they integrate, the smaller will the influence of one particular group who seems to have created a parallel society in the U.S. to the detriment of all other recent arrivals.

There is no practical or moral obligation to accommodate people whose very first act and many subsequent acts were to break U.S. law. Is it acceptable for a street vendor to set up shop in the middle of a traffic intersection just because he is trying to feed his family? If not, why is it acceptable for him to have walked across the border in violation of U.S. law in the first place?

Why is a turkey called turkey in English?

2011-11-25T09:11:00.001-05:00

Given that I am originally from Turkey, one of my least favorite questions I get is why a turkey is called turkey.

If the person asking the question has enjoyed a sufficient quantity of adult beverages beforehand, the question is followed by the punchline 'cause bird that dumb could only have been from Turkey or some such nonsense.

First, let me point the simple fact that the reason European traders were trying to go West and find India was because, to their east, the Ottoman Empire (founded by a Turkish tribe in 1299 and dissolved in 1923), had made it impossible for them to safely travel in the Mediterranean and use the land routes. So, there you go: Native Americans died because of Turkish domination in the Balkans, North Africa and Asia Minor.

Aaaanyyywaaayyy, I digress. Of course, I had no idea why a turkey was called turkey in English whereas the same bird was called hindi (meaning of Indian origin) in Turkish. Very often, when I tried to explain this curiosity, the person asking the question would get all confused, and I would give up.

A few years back, I came across Why A Turkey Is Called A Turkey on NPR. Both theories they present make sense to me. In the final analysis, who knows, and who really cares? Well, apart from the fact that, nowadays, if the question is raised, I can tell a coherent story.

And just to keep this ball rolling…all over the world, people now can eat American Turkeys, but they don't call them Turkeys.

Across Arabia, they call our bird "diiq Hindi," or the "Indian rooster."

In Russia, it's "Indjushka," bird of India.

In Poland, "Inyczka"— again "bird from India."

And what, we wondered, do the Turks call our turkey?

Well, they call it "Hindi," again, short for India.

So in 1492, because Columbus wanted to be in the "Indies," our North American bird got robbed of its American-ness, which is why tonight, when you look down at your turkey, don't call it "sahib."

Call it "dude."

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays: Despite all the shopping silliness that goes on, it is important to be thankful for what we have while we work to improve ourselves.

A weird terrorism arrest in New York City

2011-11-21T09:05:00.001-05:00

The announcement of the arrest of Jose Pimentel created more questions than it answered.

The most of which significant seem to be:

It looks like the Mayor knew for at least a day about the cases. Why did he show up with a color blindness inducing orange shirt/green sweater (or, was it the other way around) as if he had been just plucked from a field where he was pretending to be a pumpkin?
It looks like the NYPD and the City emphasized that Pimentel is one of the many poo-kickers that inhabit NYC and dream of bringing down the Man. I believe he was making the bombs and intended to use them, but why the fanfare?

Did the mayor and his people think they needed to make up for blaming the Tea Partiers for the Times Square bomb plot?

Or, do they (probably correctly) believe that there are possibly scores more Pimentels roaming around, building bombs in their mothers' basements waiting for the day they can join their makers?

Whatever the reasons for the bizarre demos, the news conference and subsequent coverage left me the distinct impression that what was said at the announcement was much less significant than what was left unsaid.

Seriously, why could they not wait for the mayor to put on a suit?

A few snapshots from Zuccotti park

2011-11-17T09:24:00.001-05:00

I finally got a chance to upload some of my photos from Zucotti Park, before the occupiers were removed, along with a few observations:

The difference between the occupy shanty towns and Tea Party rallies was simple: Whereas the people attending the Tea Parties, showed up in large groups, expressed their opinions and left to go on with their lives, the occupiers chose to be penned in a tiny area, mostly away from the people they wanted to bother, and settled in comfortably. They did not lose when they were removed from the park: They had lost the moment they chose to be penned in and become a tourist attraction.

The only question now is how long is it going to take them to become the violent, foaming in the mouth caricatures of Tea Partiers the media were so happy to draw for us?

Isn't there a Democratic Party Convention coming up? Oh, too bad, it looks like this time, it's going to be in Charlotte.

The problems with Republican candidates

2011-11-10T10:46:00.001-05:00

Last night's debate crystallized some of the problems with the people running to become the Republican candidate for the President of the United States.

It is important to keep in mind the fact that the number of Republican debates being televised is an indicator of how desperately we are seeking for solutions and how strongly we believe solutions will come from the Republican field, not the Democrats who are busy shoveling our money into the fire pit as fast as they can. These are commercial enterprises. The reason they keep putting Republicans on TV is because that is a guaranteed way to get them viewers.

That's positive.

It is up to the Republicans to live up to the responsibility they face during this time of crisis induced and sustained by government actions. Had Bernanke and Paulson been level-headed in their handling of a financial crisis by letting Bear Stearns and whoever else was at risk crash and burn, and helped us pick up the pieces afterwards, had there been no TARP, no Stimulus Sr., Stimulus Jr., Son of Stimulus, Bride of Stimulus, had the housing market been allowed to clear, had highway bandit auto companies been allowed to go through regular bankruptcies rather than being "saved" and owned by the government and unions, in short, had markets been allowed to operate, we would not be in this funk right now. We would not be facing increasing threat of all out war & destruction throughout the world. That latter is important: There are a lot of dangerous people in this world, and they tend to do things when they believe we are too weak to respond.

I feel real admiration, respect, gratitude for W, but we ended up in this situation because he did not have the right instincts to be able to stop Bernanke & Paulson from creating an army of chickens with their heads cut off the way he was able to stop the cut'n'run strategy then Senator Obama and his bosses wanted to put in place in Iraq.

In this process, it is important to keep in mind Adam Smith's timeless observation:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Standard economic theory of regulation tells us very clearly that politicians will be all too willing to take from many and give it to the few. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to be resistant to government efforts to support one industry over another or even one firm over another. We must insist that the role of government is to provide a safe and secure environment where free people can trade with each other in peace, even when asking the government to bail out the industry in which we work seems to be in our short term benefit. That is the surest path to a speedy destruction of our economy.

With that in mind, here are some of the problems with Republican candidates.

Cain

I do not know how we would face the world we live in. Where is his foreign policy advice going to come from? What does he think about when and how to project U.S. military power?

Will he be able to shake off a continuous assault on his character in late night show after late night show? Did he really do anything that is worthy of the insults and character assassination attempts he is dealing with right now?

I really liked his response on the China question frankly. Paraphrasing, he pointed out that what is ailing the U.S. economy is what the U.S. government is doing to it.

Just like buying Toyota was not an act of treason, neither is buying Lenovo. In fact, I am typing this on a Lenovo laptop I bought back in 2004 which has served me reliably. God does not have a specific plan for which people will produce which goods and at what price they will trade.

We need someone who understands these basic facts and is willing to explain them.

I have placed a lot of trust in him, and I am afraid of being disappointed.

Romney

I thought Romney would have been a better candidate against Obama than McCain. However, by failing to win against McCain, he proved that he might not have what it takes to win against Obama.

That aside, his China rhetoric is stupid and dangerous. For someone who supposedly understands economics, he seems to completely ignore the fact that Americans cannot be harmed by the Chinese giving them free stuff. We already went through this in the late 70s and the early 80s. Here is Milton Friedman explaining the simple reason we have known to be true for hundreds of years:

Romney is dangerous when he starts talking about intellectual property theft. I get the inkling that he wants to do the bidding of the entertainment industry in the U.S. which has destroyed so much wealth by preventing modern digital industries from flourishing. SOPA is dangerous (note that it means "stick" in Turkish ;-), both to our freedom and our economy.

Perry

I did not know of him before he joined. I feel badly for him every time he speaks. On his worst day, he makes more sense than Obama, but then, that is not hard to do.

Pandering to people who came or stayed illegally in the U.S. is an affront to those of us who tried to comply with every regulation (believe me, there are many) at great economic and psychic cost.

It makes a mockery of the millions of people who would run here at the drop of a hat, work hard, not take welfare, and integrate.

The U.S. does need real immigration reform, but that cannot happen until real enforcement is in place. And, just for the record, real enforcement does not mean rounding up millions of people and tossing them out. Just like you do not get caught every time you go three miles above the speed limit, or park too long at a meter, it would be impossible to catch everyone who is in violations of immigration regulations. That, however, does not mean the law should not be enforced to the fullest extent against those whom you are able to catch, thereby reducing the incentive to flaunt the laws of the U.S. while getting getting free food on the American taxpayers' dime.

Gingrich

Talks about job training programs etc. which sours his otherwise intelligent defense of freedom and markets: Get government out of all education, please. If you are unemployed, and if new training in something else will get you a new job and income, you'll do it. The problem is, so long as you get free money coming for 99 weeks, you don't have any real incentive to try to change anything. Then, you go to a training program for three months, and get another 99 weeks of unemployment "benefits".

Supporting Cast

Bachmann has promise, I do not know why she seems to be stuck. Of course, we don't know what might happen in Iowa.

Johnson and Paul: Please, start living in the world we live in. You can't just shut your years and scream as loudly as you can to ignore that the U.S. is the strongest and wealthiest country in a world inhabited by dangerous people. On the other hand, if you guys want to facilitate a U.S. exit from the U.N., and help the U.N. headquarters move to Kinshasa, I am all for it.

Santorum seems to be angling for a "family values" vice presidential spot to Romney, but I might be wrong.

Did I forget anyone? If I did, it must mean he was forgettable ;-)

How would you feel if someone jumped in front of your car?

2011-11-07T08:56:00.000-05:00

Suppose you are driving at 30 mph.

At that speed, if everything else in the universe is properly aligned, you'll be able to stop your car within about 110 ft.

Now, imagine it is night time.

There are a bunch of demonstrators around you, waving sticks, screaming obscenities.

They seem to have focused on you because the car you are driving is not one of the people's car brands (extra bonus karma to you if you can figure that one out.)

You are nervous. There are distractions all around you.

All of a sudden, you see that the light ahead is green, and there is an opening in the sea of people around you.

You try to navigate your way out of there.

The people have not extracted their revenge yet. How dare you?

They jump 10ft in front of you to stop you from leaving.

They have been edumacated in people's schools where their understanding of Newtonian mechanics is all about how it makes them feel to hear this man tell them how the world around them works. How dare he have thought about these things?! It is the imperialism of equations keeping them down.

After all, a rich guy is driving the car.

A car must be able to stop the moment the driver realizes you just jumped right in front of his car. If not, he should have to pay for your decision.

Now, think about how you'd have felt, if you had been driving that night.

Update: I find this quotation by one of the people hit to be priceless: We weren't trying to get in front of the cars. We would have very happily, given the opportunity, stepped out of the way and let him pass by.

Well, she was given the opportunity: The car was on the roadway, not the sidewalk. She had the opportunity to stay on the sidewalk, and not jump in front of a moving car.

Occupiers speak for themselves

2011-11-07T08:28:00.001-05:00

Occupiers

Hope they are not coming to your neighborhood ;-)

Does Herman Cain deserve this?

2011-11-02T08:18:00.000-04:00

Here is what is actually reported in the Politico story:

The sources … describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship. (emphasis mine)

There are two major incidents in recent memory that gives me pause when I think about the implications of accusations of sexual harassment reported by Politico against Herman Cain.

First, there was the case of the Duke Lacrosse Team. Ultimately, the accusations of rape were found to have been false, but not before the lives of many had been irreversibly altered (and not for the better). During the ordeal, the protestations of innocence by team members were ignored by the prosecutor and a large swath of the media. The second case was even higher profile where Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested to face rape charges. We do not know at this point if Nafissatou Diallo had indeed been raped, but the initially prevailing assumption that this was an open-and-shut case proved not to have been correct.

Both high profile cases illustrate how hard it can be to fight accusations of sexual misconduct because the instinct most of us have is to assume the worst.

Both cases, however, took place in the context of other highly shady behavior: The Duke players had hired strippers for a rowdy party. It was not unimaginable that a bunch of drunk athletes got out of control and did something and assumed that the authorities would take their word over some stripper. In the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the alternative explanation seemed to be that he had procured a quickie from a hotel maid. Again, it was not unimaginable that what might have started as a consensual transaction may have turned into assault (and, to be honest, we can't know what really happened).

OK, back to Herman Cain: We do not know what happened.

The sources told Politico There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship. (emphasis mine).

In the face of this description, I choose to reserve judgement on what happened.

Now, some commentators have said that it is Mr. Cain's handling of the current Politico story was sub-par. They brought up the fact that he did not immediately hold a press conference with his wife on his side, emphatically denying or presenting explanations of what remains vague accusations.

For that, I remind them of some other politicians who did parade their wives in front of the press in response to allegations of sexual misbehavior: Bill Clinton, Jim McGreevy, and Eliot Spitzer come to mind.

The employment shortfall

2011-10-19T13:48:00.000-04:00

So, for a quick, back-of-the-envolope calculation, I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and checked out the Employment-to-population ratio series.

In September 2008, before the chickens cut their own heads off and started running around, 61.9% of the U.S. population was employed.

In September 2011, 58.3% of the U.S. population was employed.

The difference is 3.6 percentage points.

3.6% of the U.S. population is roughly 11.1 million people.

That is, if employment is to be able to reach the September 2008 ratio to the population, 11.1 million more people would need to find jobs than are currently working.

Ponder that for a minute.

"Occupy Wall Street" raises $300,000

2011-10-16T23:02:00.000-04:00

According to CBS, Occupy Wall Street has raised $300,000.

So, at most there were 300,000 out of about 225,000,000 U.S. residents over 18 that were willing to donate $1 to the "cause".

I guess that's a Good Thing™.

Democracy versus tyranny of the majority

2011-10-16T08:19:00.000-04:00

Are you part of the 1%?

The 1% who's willing to abide by the principle that just because the members of a group have the numbers on their side, they do not have rights to the life and property of another group of people?

I am.

I know full well that none of the goodies that you see around you were produced by the people who burn cars, destroy others' property, and kill them for their money.

There is a reason I kicked out the moneylenders! reads one sign held by a protester pretending to be Jesus.

Not even a century, and we've come full circle.