Here in my car, I feel safest of all

I was watching C-SPAN this morning. I like to tune in at least a few hours every week, and almost every morning after something goes down.

Mona Charen was a guest on Today from Washington. I hear makes a lot of appearances for parenting and motherhood, so I hate to dis her on this of all days. She's an empty head. She represents herself as a syndicated columnist for the National Review. That's not exactly true, even less so if you listen to her. If it was true, her job would be to present rigorous debate in the forum of political punditry. She didn't deserve the blanket attack against Jews from a fellow Republican call-in, but she's nearly as vile in her dismissals of Democratic and Obama actions of the past 110 days. Basically, she is boring. Check her out and vilify her on her sites and to the editors of papers she's syndicated to if the feeling strikes you. I'm sure it will. And she just does not justify our aggravation.

Now what I really want to talk about.

Stress tests seem to be an exercise of Government control over financiers. Banks are mandated to reduce costs by these stress tests. Essentially, they are told they must generate liquid assets in about a month. This should allow Geithner's team to understand how banks have previously hidden bad assets, and simultaneously help the banks to reduce operating costs.

I can understand how there appears a disconnect between my previous post and this one. Banks are local and must survive. The Difference is that auto companies can try to survive no matter what country they are in. They've informed the Treasury they will not survive unless they cut their costs, cutting jobs, and manufacture offshore. However, factory towns are decimated in the process. Here is a point where I disagree with Geithner's plan. Do we really need auto companies to survive? Banks are integral to the fabric of even neighborhoods, but wouldn't we just buy a better car if American companies could no longer produce them?

Bailing out banks helps wealthy financiers as well as middle income mortgage payers and lowest bracket survivors. Bailing out auto companies when they are doing little to nothing to protect American infrastructure, consumers, or their employees makes little if any sense. SO should the taxpayer save them?

I will continue to investigate this further, but my gut feeling is 'No.' This is meant to appease voters in Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois who thought Obama was going to swoop in and save their jobs. Unfortunately, auto companies are worried primarily about their bottom lines. Their profits should not be a government concern.

To hammer this home, I stated in my last post that Socialism has some very pertinent and useful applications in the automarket. Innovate! should be the bumper sticker that carries this point across. If American car companies don't want to share its breakthroughs (and we cannot really afford to as yet) with foreign companies, we should develop a new engine or fuel delivery or core technology that is patented on these shores, uniquely American, and marketable to the globe. This is a place where Big Government can do the job that much power is warranted for. They should mandate that these American car companies monthly or quarterly think tank their ideas until they revolutionize the personal vehicle. Treasury, Commerce, Ways and Means, Republicans and Democrats together should be force the R&D of American auto industry to meet and share this information with each other until someone breaks the riddle and gives us something both economically and practically solvent.

Maybe then we can stop with Green energy lip service and tackle the Power Grid next.

And don't forget the assuredly fatal problems of Social Security and Medicare if nothing drastically wise gets done.

Now a gay woman killing the Liberty Tree of America.
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Naw, just kidding, It's Wanda Sykes being funny at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.


Happy Mother's Day.

Deprivational Therapy

Obama's economic plan is a gamble, and if the well-to-do are going to scream "Holy Bloody Murder!, Obama is destroying the American way of Life!" we are going to have to stop them.

Figure out what the most is you can spend this year on buttressing the economy. Now cut that in half. Cut that in thirds if you are truly a conservative economist. (You still have the second and third budget to 'correct' the course.)The goal of reintroducing confidence in the economy seems a little far-fetched. Even more so since the only way companies dig so far out of the holes they've dug is to innovate, drastically improve their costs, or miraculously improve their market share. The biggest concern that Treasury Secretary Geithner has is on the innovation front.

Even when companies are able to have a breakthrough technology, it is not always accepted on the domestic much less the global market. Take a look at Dean Kamen's company DEKA. He's responsible for the gyroscopic motors of the iBot/Segway, and the self-contained water purification system that could wipe out 1.8 million deaths from waterborne illnesses each year. The top brass in the US and at WHO may not want to save that many people's lives in Third World countries, but this is not moral absolute yet.

We can only be good people if most of us are good people, and that ain't the case.

Auto companies are cutting their costs, discontinuing some brands, spending less on advertisement. They are highly exposed, however, as they are half-heart pursuing the oil companies and old ways of doing business(cynical and easier route) and only quarter-heart pursuing new technologies. They would really like to, so they imagine, but their reluctance only aids the improbability of their company striking it rich with the breakthrough. Here is a place where Socialism or the evolved and untested principals of Parecon (Participational economy) could manifest. International car companies are present in the United States, but anyone in the world would love it if they could solve the Chinese and American consumer problem. GM and Ford are experiencing from revenue influx from the novelty and status their cars bring them from foreign markets, but that will be short-lived. What we need are separate corporations working independently but then clearing all of the paths to corporate espionage by sharing designs and blueprints directly. I don't mean by giving GM the plans for Volvo, but by deciding together that an New Engine must be made. People from Suzuki and Honda and Ford and GM will all work separately, but at least once every quarter until this Engine is built and marketable, they will come together to share designs. The 2-day showcase for the public after the week long collective. After the design is made and we find something to replace the combustion engine, then they can go their separate ways back to trying to destroy each other. Right now they are all playing a public face of Green Innovation, but little is being done, and significantly less is being spent on R&D. Some companies seem to just be spending the money for the news coverage.

Give oil producers a price floor. Give Americans a price ceiling. Tell the oil manufacturers to get their costs down, and we're happy doing business. Work with OPEC but see if they want something other than defense dollars.

Banks. Just as they over-speculated, you have taught Americans to over-speculate. Just like in politics, sometimes you lose. Hard. Bush exemplifies two things you should not be tired of hearing now or EVER. They need to be ground into your brain-dome so you never forget it. If you want to elect an idiot-King, make them Vice-President. I think that Biden is actually effective as a VP for bringing the plaintive comments and old granpa austerity to the Executive. Don't you assholes make the comparison to Sarah Palin. She would have made an excellent Vice President, but I am convinced that under that strain of all the 100 days, McCain would be very sick or dead, and we would be far worse off. Palin as President would probably lead to pandemic Murder-suicides and the first murder-suicide to touch the White House. Sarah Palin knows some weirdos, so if it wasn't immediate, it was gonna be the in-laws. The Most Important and Second Success the Bush Legacy left (that you should always remember) is that he represented the elite notions big business has that they are entitled to their money.

(I cannot, as yet, comment on the stress tests.)

Capitalism: supplying the best products/services at the best price to serve the needs of the consumer

Corporate, legal-purchased definition of Capitalism: supplying demand enough to keep consumers buying things they don't need and if we're really good, things they don't even want. We could sell them a product, but they pay more for a dream.

Capitalist Pig: Them with enough money already they feel forever entitled to their current level and that they and their children deserve more. "Somebody's gonna get rich and somebody's gonna have to pay" is a mantra well-known in these circles. They makes decisions that effect thousands of people and do not always care how those people are effected; the bottom line is all they care for.

And I know how mentioning the name Bush sparks ire in your some of your eyes so that you cannot maintain focus on the important argument, but Bush was responsible for the 3 and 4th highest budgets in the history of the country. Most of that money apparently vanished. It is because he is a capitalist pig, and he believes that any of his deficiencies should be paid for by regular people.

There is less of the crony-minded commercialism coming out the Obama White House, so maybe this deviant, criminally negligent behavior will come to more of an end. I am very sure that Madoff is not the only person running a scheme like this. Understand that Obama is in a very difficult place. We have institutionalized injutice, a pay-to-play legal system, corruption with proper protocols. He loves America and understands that not all of this came about because of evil malingerers. Many of the safeguards in society that keep evil men in business are twisted from the good these safeguards meant to protect. You should check the AP wire stuff that doesn't get printed.

Obama is trying to account for all of the dollars spent. And he is thinking like a poor man (there is the gamble.) The good thing is that he also looking out for the poor men and women in the US. The maxim goes, If you are going to spend your hard-earned dollars, you better have something to show for it.
So I am glad that most of what he is spending will go into tangible improvements in the American way of life. Money is being spent, but that's money that should have been invested for the past 20 years. He is President. He is only guaranteed 4 years. If the American people are steered by their fears and not their heads and not their hearts, he's got to make the biggest dents in Americans' foreheads before he's out.

Homeowners have to take a hit here. Cities and Munis are going to have to take a smaller cut on property taxes. That will help. City planners cannot simply appraise homes at increasingly higher values according to real estate prices and re-zoning adjustments. That has been the Space Dollars episode of South Park, and it will lead to a future bubble burst/economic downturn. They have done this for decades in El Paso, and they are trying it in more and more places to try and boost State and Local revenue. There need to be methods of turning vacated buildings and offices productive by unconventional methods. Houses need to be revalued and in a way that perhaps re-values all mortgages and house payments to less than what they currently are. The banks should do this themselves but, with benchmarks. Regulation is going to need to take place in a variety of business sectors, particularly the ones that provide generic help to any member of any state. Too much regulation by way of standards still has the possibility of hurting smaller franchises, and they need protectionist policies. Small farmers to medium agricultural operations really need to be protected. Monsanto should be put out of motherfucking business. They are killing small farmers and poisoning you.

I've meant to start posting again the day of his 100 days. I should be back relatively regularly now. Next time with links and pics like normal.