The term that is getting the most usage these days is Revolution and this nation is inching closer to that eventuality by the day. People are getting smarter. The tireless efforts of such true patriots as Congressman Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Peter Schiff, and many others are bringing the truth to a wider cross section of the American people. But now we are seeing the government and its media toadies inadvertently aiding in the very process that will bring their criminal cabal crashing to the ground.
We are approaching the anniversary of our independence, the Fourth of July, and the hype is amping up to nauseating proportions. Gala celebrations are planned throughout the nation, but all the fireworks, bands playing patriotic music, and all the related hoopla, only amplify the garish irony surrounding the encroaching Socialism that threatens to steal more of our personal liberties and bankrupt the nation beyond redemption.
There are still 130,000 troops in Iraq, four more were killed during the pullout from Baghdad. The news carried the story but it was nothing like the media blitz that followed the death of Michael Jackson. "The whole world mourns the death of Michael Jackson," one headline bleated. Really? The whole world? I seriously doubt that anyone was really thinking about Jackson very much lately. He was famous for his odd tastes and the scandals that dogged him every bit as much as he was regaled for his music. His career was nowhere; a recluse, the London tour was intended as a comeback and he put a lot of work into it, to his credit. As with the untimely passing of any human being, Jackson's death was sad but was it a catastrophe of global proportions? Hardly. It may create jobs, though: Michael impersonators, like Elvis impersonators with fancy footwork.
Cigarette taxes tripled over the past thirty days or so as the government continues its fraudulent anti-smoking campaign. They claim its to pay the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses; but where does the money really go? It gets Pentagoned (a new term I just made up to describe the strange disappearance of tax dollars into thin air; Oops! It was here a minute ago!). It is taxation without representation, the issue that tipped the 13 colonies into revolution.
Then there's Crap and Trade (no typo) an innovative way to fuel inflation. The high costs of the meaningless target reductions in "greenhouse gases" will of course be passed onto the already overburdened taxpayers. Another log on the revolutionary fire, and it's coming! I could go on but it's time to get to the point. What kind of revolution am I talking about?
The revolution I am speaking of will not involve Minutemen, militias, or citizens carrying placards or firearms. But they will be armed - with facts and a huge resentment against the thieves and liars who have sold out to big corporations and big money. It's about the MONEY, stupid!
Write this down so you don't forget it: MONEY IS ANYTHING THAT HAS VALUE! Our economy is a barter economy and has never been anything else, and it will always be! Barter is, after all trading one good for another; we use pieces of paper bearing the portraits of dead presidents on one side of most personal transactions and we will continue to do so. These Federal Reserve Notes are worthless though, aren't they? Yes, and they always have been, but that didn't stop us from using them. The point here is simple: We the people have the sole power to decide the nature and value of money: we decide what money is. Like California. They can't agree on a budget; it's in the neighborhood of 24 billion dollars. Schwarzenegger said if the legislature can't submit a comprehensive budget for his approval, the state will have to issue IOUs to pay expenses. Guess what; these IOUs will be money every bit as much as the phony scrip the Fed has been turning out since 1913. Will they be accepted in trade? No reason why not; these Arnolds (we have to call these IOUs something) would be a supplementary currency, used to stretch the dollars supply and to pay state taxes. Remember Tally Sticks?
Some municipalities are already developing alternative currencies.A popular version of these is the Time Dollar. The way these work: I may offer to landscape a neighbor's yard. We agree on $15.00 an hour. The work takes eight hours and is worth $120.00. The customer may decide to pay with Time Dollars, wholly or in part. The person who did the work has $120.00 in Time Dollars that he can use to buy certain goods. The merchant who accepts these TDs in payment for good can use these to pay for goods and services that he needs. If he takes the whole amount in trade he can use the $120.00 worth of TDs to pay a clerk for twelve hours @ $10.00 an hour. This would be a closed loop economy limited to a community of people who agree to the strategy but it could spread as more people see the usefulness of the plan.
When the people get together behind a plan there's nothing that can stop them.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Silver Lining - Ones and Zeroes
The much talked about financial problems out government faces are largely imaginary. What that means is that money created out of thin air can just as easily vanish into thin air once we come to our senses. Where once a hundred-million dollars was considered a lot of money, now we are talking in the tens of trillions, 94% of this just digits stored in computers. Only three percent of the money supply is in the form of bills and coin, and these are in the hands of the people. And it will stay there as a guard against all the gloom and doom predictions of hyperinflation and economic meltdown. As long as we have a currency that represents value, the market forces (laissez faire) that operate on Main Street will see us through. People will sell for less and work for less until they come to their senses and start turning things around. And we will. We can begin by just saying, No.
The depth of the current financial crisis involves derivative financial instruments known as Debt for Credit Swaps. These CDS's are a form of insurance taken out by investors whose holdings appear in danger of losing value. Foremost among these were holders of Collateralized Debt Obligations, another derivative instrument cooked up by Wall Street when the Mortgage Backed Securities that started the whole mess started coming apart.
Banks had been solicited for mortgages by Lehman Brothers that the Wall Street firm packaged into huge concentrations. These enormous inventories and the checks pouring in each month were to be the basis for the Mortgage Backed Securities that Lehman sold to the world's central banks, insurance and retirement funds. The banks wrote mortgages on an ever descending scale of qualification, toward the end lending money to people with no income or assets. The banks did this because they could turn around and sell these mortgages to Lehman and get paid right away. No waiting twenty or thirty years. The further rationalized that the people who bought these mortgages without assets or income could resell their houses in another year, pay of their mortgages, and walk away with a few thousand in profits, as the housing bubble had not yet burst and home prices were rising.
The Mortgage Backed Securities started coming apart, so Wall Street dreamed up the Collateralized Debt Obligation. This piece of poor judgment was an investment on an investment that offered higher interest rates on mortgage packages that involved higher risk. The sole intent here was to raise money to plug the holes in the MBS program, sort of like digging a second hole to fill the first one, then a third to fill the second, and so on. Think musical chairs. Now to the point.
The holders of the Collateralized Debt Obligations began to worry that they would lose their investments when the music stopped, thus the purchases of the Debt for Credit Swaps. It's a sensible move and the cautious investors had been paying premiums to the houses issuing these instruments, most notably AIG. The problem mushroomed to astronomical proportions because the SEC had failed to specify ownership of the securities as a condition of purchase,thus anyone could purchase a DCS whether they owned the securities or not. It's like taking out collision insurance on an automobile; if taken out by the owner then in the event of an accident in which the car is totaled, the insurance company covers the loss; if a thousand people bought the same policy the insurance company would have to pay one-thousand claims on the same car. So the tax payers of this country should not have to be stuck with the bill for this fiasco: AIG should have known better, and the SEC should have plugged the loophole that made this disaster possible. So to the question; should we bail these bums out?
Just say,No.
The depth of the current financial crisis involves derivative financial instruments known as Debt for Credit Swaps. These CDS's are a form of insurance taken out by investors whose holdings appear in danger of losing value. Foremost among these were holders of Collateralized Debt Obligations, another derivative instrument cooked up by Wall Street when the Mortgage Backed Securities that started the whole mess started coming apart.
Banks had been solicited for mortgages by Lehman Brothers that the Wall Street firm packaged into huge concentrations. These enormous inventories and the checks pouring in each month were to be the basis for the Mortgage Backed Securities that Lehman sold to the world's central banks, insurance and retirement funds. The banks wrote mortgages on an ever descending scale of qualification, toward the end lending money to people with no income or assets. The banks did this because they could turn around and sell these mortgages to Lehman and get paid right away. No waiting twenty or thirty years. The further rationalized that the people who bought these mortgages without assets or income could resell their houses in another year, pay of their mortgages, and walk away with a few thousand in profits, as the housing bubble had not yet burst and home prices were rising.
The Mortgage Backed Securities started coming apart, so Wall Street dreamed up the Collateralized Debt Obligation. This piece of poor judgment was an investment on an investment that offered higher interest rates on mortgage packages that involved higher risk. The sole intent here was to raise money to plug the holes in the MBS program, sort of like digging a second hole to fill the first one, then a third to fill the second, and so on. Think musical chairs. Now to the point.
The holders of the Collateralized Debt Obligations began to worry that they would lose their investments when the music stopped, thus the purchases of the Debt for Credit Swaps. It's a sensible move and the cautious investors had been paying premiums to the houses issuing these instruments, most notably AIG. The problem mushroomed to astronomical proportions because the SEC had failed to specify ownership of the securities as a condition of purchase,thus anyone could purchase a DCS whether they owned the securities or not. It's like taking out collision insurance on an automobile; if taken out by the owner then in the event of an accident in which the car is totaled, the insurance company covers the loss; if a thousand people bought the same policy the insurance company would have to pay one-thousand claims on the same car. So the tax payers of this country should not have to be stuck with the bill for this fiasco: AIG should have known better, and the SEC should have plugged the loophole that made this disaster possible. So to the question; should we bail these bums out?
Just say,No.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Zua Buna!
The title of this post is "Good day" in Romanian. I have used this greeting often in the past as I am of Romanian extraction. My family emigrated to this country in 1912 to escape the political upheavals of the time. The nation has never been very stable; it was a kingdom under King Carol, a dictatorship under Chaucescu, and was on the wrong side in World War, Part Two, and took part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union at a heavy cost in lives and resources. In 1989 Romania revolted and broke away from the Soviet bloc. Some improvements have been realized in that troubled land but in some respects it still lives in the Dark Ages. This headline appeared on BBC just today;
A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.
Members of the convent in north-east Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual.
Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police.
A priest and four nuns were charged with imprisonment leading to death.
Orphan
Police say the 23-year-old nun, who was denied food and drink throughout her ordeal, had been tied and chained to the cross and a towel pushed into her mouth to smother any sounds.
A post-mortem is to be carried out, although initial reports say that Cornici died from asphyxiation.
"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this," said
Father Daniel
Local media reports that the young woman had arrived at the remote convent three months before, having initially gone there to visit a friend and opted to stay.
She grew up in an orphanage in Arad, in the west of Romania.
Mediafax news agency said Cornici suffered from schizophrenia and the symptoms of her condition caused the priest at the convent and other nuns to believe she was possessed by the devil.
"They all said she was possessed and they were trying to cast out the evil spirits," police spokeswoman Michaela Straub said.
Father Daniel who is accused of orchestrating the crime is said to be unrepentant.
"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," AFP quoted the priest as saying.
"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practice in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," Father Daniel added.
If found guilty of killing Cornici, Father Daniel and the accused nuns could face 20 years in jail.
Another disgusting example of the evil of organized religion.
A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.
Members of the convent in north-east Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual.
Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police.
A priest and four nuns were charged with imprisonment leading to death.
Orphan
Police say the 23-year-old nun, who was denied food and drink throughout her ordeal, had been tied and chained to the cross and a towel pushed into her mouth to smother any sounds.
A post-mortem is to be carried out, although initial reports say that Cornici died from asphyxiation.
"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this," said
Father Daniel
Local media reports that the young woman had arrived at the remote convent three months before, having initially gone there to visit a friend and opted to stay.
She grew up in an orphanage in Arad, in the west of Romania.
Mediafax news agency said Cornici suffered from schizophrenia and the symptoms of her condition caused the priest at the convent and other nuns to believe she was possessed by the devil.
"They all said she was possessed and they were trying to cast out the evil spirits," police spokeswoman Michaela Straub said.
Father Daniel who is accused of orchestrating the crime is said to be unrepentant.
"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," AFP quoted the priest as saying.
"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practice in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," Father Daniel added.
If found guilty of killing Cornici, Father Daniel and the accused nuns could face 20 years in jail.
Another disgusting example of the evil of organized religion.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
A Smoker's Rebuttal
It's happened again. The nation's smokers have been subject to more tax increases, causing already high prices to triple in some instances. A pound of tobacco that used to sell for $10.81 is now $36.95 and that should be enough to stir up the one-third of the people who enjoy smoking to taking action. It would be one thing if there were any evidence that smoking is harmful in any demonstrable way. There isn't. The Surgeon General's report that started this witch hunt is inconclusive on that score, based as it was on eleven equally inconclusive reports.
The first Surgeon General's report was published in 1964 and it was subsequently required that all cigarette packages carry a warning about the health hazards of smoking. That should have been enough, but then the lunatic fringe of the American population took over and escalated the hysteria to stratospheric heights. It proved to be another way for intrinsically unpleasant people to demonstrate their unpleasant natures. Well, I for one have had enough of this nonsense. Here are the facts about smoking for anyone not too stupid or bigoted to understand.
The United States leads the world in obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes; we are the world's sickest people. Our food is laced with chemicals too numerous to mention here, some guesses number into the thousands; our water is chemically treated with fluoride, a waste product from the manufacture of fertilizer; the air we breathe is polluted by automobile exhaust, coal fired power plants, and sulpherous smoke from various manufacturing plants. In view of all this, how can any data with respect to cigarette smoking be separated out from these other causes? The short answer is; they can't. The anti-smoking campaign is rife with unproven, general statements on the dangers of smoking when a rational assessment of the facts tells a different story.
Reader's Digest is one of the print media's most incessant and hypocritical advocates in the effort to get people to stop smoking. A few years ago they printed an article purportedly by a young woman whose father had died a smoking-related death. On the title page of the article was a photo of the complaining party, a pretty blond who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties. This innocent-looking girl's story was designed to elicit sympathy and outrage against the filthy habit that took this girl's father out of her life. Boo hoo. But wait! Further along in the body of the story was the information that the girl's father had quit smoking eighteen years before his death! Smell something? I do. It's the rank odor hypocrisy; a publication that has probably contributed to more health problems by marketing prescription drugs to their readers than any other source - they've been doing this for decades, no doubt being generously compensated by Big Pharma - bleating their crippled agenda in the name of "public service" when the only ones they truly serve are themselves. The outrage over marketing prescription drugs to the general public only took form when pharmaceutical companies started sponsoring television commercials, a relatively recent development compared to Reader's Digest's long standing practice.
Another result of the hysteria over smoking and the misleading propaganda against it is that many people believe that cigarette smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, and lung cancer. The fact is that cigarette smoking causes none of these afflictions or any other, for that matter. That is not to say that smoking cannot aggravate an existing condition: it most certainly can, and people with respiratory or cardio-vascular problems should definitely not smoke. Alcoholics should not drink alcoholic beverages but I don't see anyone militating against drinking. Yet drunk drivers are a much greater threat to public health than smoking could ever be. Here there is no doubt about the causal relationship to highway deaths and serious injury. Why aren't heavier taxes imposed on alcohol to the extent that they have been for cigarette smoking. Don't medical costs of alcohol consumption for both drinkers and victims of drunk driving incidents rival those falsely alleged for smokers?
Then there's the matter of "second hand smoke". I had close friend who quit smoking some twenty-five years ago. I haven't seen the man in almost eight years, and that was when I visited him in East Texas after a lengthy hiatus: before that it had been ten years since our last personal contact though we did speak on the telephone occasionally. During one of the conversation he got on a rant about smoking and at one point he shouted, "You're killing me with your second hand smoke!" Over the telephone? At that time I hadn't seen the man in three years.
The man is two years younger than I but on my last visit I didn't recognize him when he came to pick me up at the bus terminal. He looked ninety! Over the past twenty years he has had brain surgery, diabetes, suffers from manic depression, and a few months ago, the last time I spoke to him on the telephone it was clear that his mind was going. I smoke, he hasn't for twenty-five years; I am in peak health, often taken for fifteen or twenty years younger, have never been physically stronger (I work out at a gym) and still ride a bicycle 15 or 20 miles an outing.
I spend a lot of time outdoors even during the many "air pollution" days when people with respiratory problems are encouraged to remain indoors and people are urged to car pool. That leads to another argument that the anti-smoking fanatics don't like to think about. It's all in the numbers.
The normal breathing rate is fourteen breaths a minute, in an hour that's 840 breaths and the air in the lungs is complete;y changed every seven breaths. I smoke an average of thirty cigarettes a day; they are filterless, regular size cigarettes that I make myself using organically grown, additive-free tobacco. I average about two cigarettes an hour, sometimes more and sometimes I don't smoke for three hours at a stretch. At the rate of two cigarettes an hour, ten puffs each, that's twenty out of 840 respirations an hour; one out of 42 breaths. The rest of that hour I am taking in 820 breaths of something else, on "air pollution" days, especially during an inversion, I am breathing bad air. If I happen to be on foot with heavy traffic all around (seldom) I am breathing heavy doses of carbon monoxide with every breath, not just 1 in 42 but every breath - all 840 for every hour I am out there.
There was a time, fifty or sixty years ago, when folks were healthier. The air was cleaner, tap water fit to drink, and food was purer. Men worked in factories, machine shops, and construction, and were able to earn enough money that wives could stay at home, take care of the home, and raise the children. Oh, there were problems alright; alcoholism, some drug use, and crime, but not to the degree we experience today. And people smoked cigarettes without the social stigma that prevails today. There were people who didn't smoke and some of these had unpleasant effects, but they didn't organize into militant factions reminiscent of Medieval mobs; smokers then as now, if asked not to smoke, didn't smoke if it would cause potential harm to anyone. But in the main people just didn't mind much. In 1950 the chances of contracting cancer were 1 in 27; today they are 1 in 4. We are a sicker society today; did cigarette smoking contribute to this in any way?
Yes. But it wasn't the cigarettes themselves. In the early 1950's cigarette companies started producing filtered cigarettes and as these became more widespread public health started its long, gradual decline. The first popular cigarette brand to come out with filters was Kent; the filters were so dense that it was hard to draw on them and to make matters worse, asbestos was the filtering medium. Even without asbestos filters are harmful to smokers. When a smoker inhales smoke through a filter some tiny bits of the filter material also enters the lungs. Filters are made of silicates and this fine residue settles on the lungs - and stays there: the body cannot metabolize it, just as coal miners' lungs couldn't, and over time both groups developed silicosis, also known as "coal miners disease" or ""black lung". Filters, not tobacco or nicotine, are the problem with cigarettes.
I'll close with another example of the ignorance of the FDA when it pronounced nicotine as an addictive substance. There is no such thing; there are addictive personalities but not substances. People satisfy their cravings with many substances, including food. I am a recovering alcoholic with over 28 years of freedom from alcohol. Drugs didn't appeal to me; I took amphetamines to get through college while working full time and carrying a full load at school. When I started hallucinating I stopped taking them. I didn't have a drinking problem; I had a living problem and drinking was my solution to life's problems - until the problems mounted to near fatal proportions. Today I wouldn't trade my worst day sober for my best day drinking; my life works, I have many good, true friends, I am physically fit and mentally acute - and I smoke non-filtered cigarettes. So do me a favor.
Leave me the hell alone! Deal with your own personality problems and stop playing the Blame Game. I don't need you to tell me how to live when you obviously don't know how to live yourself: if you did then you wouldn't find it necessary to meddle in other peoples' business.
The first Surgeon General's report was published in 1964 and it was subsequently required that all cigarette packages carry a warning about the health hazards of smoking. That should have been enough, but then the lunatic fringe of the American population took over and escalated the hysteria to stratospheric heights. It proved to be another way for intrinsically unpleasant people to demonstrate their unpleasant natures. Well, I for one have had enough of this nonsense. Here are the facts about smoking for anyone not too stupid or bigoted to understand.
The United States leads the world in obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes; we are the world's sickest people. Our food is laced with chemicals too numerous to mention here, some guesses number into the thousands; our water is chemically treated with fluoride, a waste product from the manufacture of fertilizer; the air we breathe is polluted by automobile exhaust, coal fired power plants, and sulpherous smoke from various manufacturing plants. In view of all this, how can any data with respect to cigarette smoking be separated out from these other causes? The short answer is; they can't. The anti-smoking campaign is rife with unproven, general statements on the dangers of smoking when a rational assessment of the facts tells a different story.
Reader's Digest is one of the print media's most incessant and hypocritical advocates in the effort to get people to stop smoking. A few years ago they printed an article purportedly by a young woman whose father had died a smoking-related death. On the title page of the article was a photo of the complaining party, a pretty blond who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties. This innocent-looking girl's story was designed to elicit sympathy and outrage against the filthy habit that took this girl's father out of her life. Boo hoo. But wait! Further along in the body of the story was the information that the girl's father had quit smoking eighteen years before his death! Smell something? I do. It's the rank odor hypocrisy; a publication that has probably contributed to more health problems by marketing prescription drugs to their readers than any other source - they've been doing this for decades, no doubt being generously compensated by Big Pharma - bleating their crippled agenda in the name of "public service" when the only ones they truly serve are themselves. The outrage over marketing prescription drugs to the general public only took form when pharmaceutical companies started sponsoring television commercials, a relatively recent development compared to Reader's Digest's long standing practice.
Another result of the hysteria over smoking and the misleading propaganda against it is that many people believe that cigarette smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, and lung cancer. The fact is that cigarette smoking causes none of these afflictions or any other, for that matter. That is not to say that smoking cannot aggravate an existing condition: it most certainly can, and people with respiratory or cardio-vascular problems should definitely not smoke. Alcoholics should not drink alcoholic beverages but I don't see anyone militating against drinking. Yet drunk drivers are a much greater threat to public health than smoking could ever be. Here there is no doubt about the causal relationship to highway deaths and serious injury. Why aren't heavier taxes imposed on alcohol to the extent that they have been for cigarette smoking. Don't medical costs of alcohol consumption for both drinkers and victims of drunk driving incidents rival those falsely alleged for smokers?
Then there's the matter of "second hand smoke". I had close friend who quit smoking some twenty-five years ago. I haven't seen the man in almost eight years, and that was when I visited him in East Texas after a lengthy hiatus: before that it had been ten years since our last personal contact though we did speak on the telephone occasionally. During one of the conversation he got on a rant about smoking and at one point he shouted, "You're killing me with your second hand smoke!" Over the telephone? At that time I hadn't seen the man in three years.
The man is two years younger than I but on my last visit I didn't recognize him when he came to pick me up at the bus terminal. He looked ninety! Over the past twenty years he has had brain surgery, diabetes, suffers from manic depression, and a few months ago, the last time I spoke to him on the telephone it was clear that his mind was going. I smoke, he hasn't for twenty-five years; I am in peak health, often taken for fifteen or twenty years younger, have never been physically stronger (I work out at a gym) and still ride a bicycle 15 or 20 miles an outing.
I spend a lot of time outdoors even during the many "air pollution" days when people with respiratory problems are encouraged to remain indoors and people are urged to car pool. That leads to another argument that the anti-smoking fanatics don't like to think about. It's all in the numbers.
The normal breathing rate is fourteen breaths a minute, in an hour that's 840 breaths and the air in the lungs is complete;y changed every seven breaths. I smoke an average of thirty cigarettes a day; they are filterless, regular size cigarettes that I make myself using organically grown, additive-free tobacco. I average about two cigarettes an hour, sometimes more and sometimes I don't smoke for three hours at a stretch. At the rate of two cigarettes an hour, ten puffs each, that's twenty out of 840 respirations an hour; one out of 42 breaths. The rest of that hour I am taking in 820 breaths of something else, on "air pollution" days, especially during an inversion, I am breathing bad air. If I happen to be on foot with heavy traffic all around (seldom) I am breathing heavy doses of carbon monoxide with every breath, not just 1 in 42 but every breath - all 840 for every hour I am out there.
There was a time, fifty or sixty years ago, when folks were healthier. The air was cleaner, tap water fit to drink, and food was purer. Men worked in factories, machine shops, and construction, and were able to earn enough money that wives could stay at home, take care of the home, and raise the children. Oh, there were problems alright; alcoholism, some drug use, and crime, but not to the degree we experience today. And people smoked cigarettes without the social stigma that prevails today. There were people who didn't smoke and some of these had unpleasant effects, but they didn't organize into militant factions reminiscent of Medieval mobs; smokers then as now, if asked not to smoke, didn't smoke if it would cause potential harm to anyone. But in the main people just didn't mind much. In 1950 the chances of contracting cancer were 1 in 27; today they are 1 in 4. We are a sicker society today; did cigarette smoking contribute to this in any way?
Yes. But it wasn't the cigarettes themselves. In the early 1950's cigarette companies started producing filtered cigarettes and as these became more widespread public health started its long, gradual decline. The first popular cigarette brand to come out with filters was Kent; the filters were so dense that it was hard to draw on them and to make matters worse, asbestos was the filtering medium. Even without asbestos filters are harmful to smokers. When a smoker inhales smoke through a filter some tiny bits of the filter material also enters the lungs. Filters are made of silicates and this fine residue settles on the lungs - and stays there: the body cannot metabolize it, just as coal miners' lungs couldn't, and over time both groups developed silicosis, also known as "coal miners disease" or ""black lung". Filters, not tobacco or nicotine, are the problem with cigarettes.
I'll close with another example of the ignorance of the FDA when it pronounced nicotine as an addictive substance. There is no such thing; there are addictive personalities but not substances. People satisfy their cravings with many substances, including food. I am a recovering alcoholic with over 28 years of freedom from alcohol. Drugs didn't appeal to me; I took amphetamines to get through college while working full time and carrying a full load at school. When I started hallucinating I stopped taking them. I didn't have a drinking problem; I had a living problem and drinking was my solution to life's problems - until the problems mounted to near fatal proportions. Today I wouldn't trade my worst day sober for my best day drinking; my life works, I have many good, true friends, I am physically fit and mentally acute - and I smoke non-filtered cigarettes. So do me a favor.
Leave me the hell alone! Deal with your own personality problems and stop playing the Blame Game. I don't need you to tell me how to live when you obviously don't know how to live yourself: if you did then you wouldn't find it necessary to meddle in other peoples' business.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Idiots Never Give up!
This is just a short commentary on a news item that appeared on Yahoo! just this morning. This came from the world of "science", as this nonsense tries to pretend it is, while actually being a pathetic attempt to make Creationism look like science.
"2009: A space oddity; big blob in early universe" the headline declared referring to a huge light source estimated to be 12.9-billion light years away! The Big Bang theory is still kicking, it seems, and it is no small source of amazement that rational people still sit still and swallow this garbage by the trowel full.
The first clue came when the article went on to state that "scientists" were looking back to when the universe was only 800-million years old, an indirect reference to Big Bang. "The photo is beyond fuzzy," the article states without crediting the remark, but it couldn't be fuzzier than the thought processes of these "scientists".
Let's proceed rationally.
This "blob" of radiation-emitting light is 12.9-billion light years away; that is where t was 12.9-billion years ago. If the universe was only 800-million years old then that would be how long it had to take for the object to get that far out. As anyone familiar with scientific mathematics knows numbers quantify objects, and those objects are part of the value being expressed. They are called Units, and they either combine with other units (foot-pound) or cancel each other out. An example of the latter would be;
You traveled at 50 miles/hour for 3 hours. How far did you go? The answer of course is 150 miles. The hours canceled each other out, one being in the denominator of the first term, the other being in the numerator of the second term. Now for the problem at hand.
Dividing 12.9-billion light years by 800-million years will require a little substitution to overcome the limitations of the Blogger posting program. The solution to this problem relies on Scientific Notation, which this site lacks the capability to depict. To compensate I will use the form N E^x, where N is a number greater than zero and less than ten, E is 10 and x is the power to which E is raised.
Thus 2 E would be 20 (2 x 10), a thousand would be 1 E3 (1 x 10 x 10 x 10) and so on.
12.9-billion light years would be 12.9 E9 and 800-million would be 8 E8. We want to know how fast an object would have to travel to cover 12.9 light years in only 800-million years. It's a division problem; 12.9 E9/8 E8 = 1.512 E or 15.12 light, as the years would cancel each other out. So what does 15.12 light mean? As used in the expression it would refer to the speed of light, therefore to travel 12.9-billion light years in 800-million years an object would have to travel more than 15 times the speed of light!
Any questions?
"2009: A space oddity; big blob in early universe" the headline declared referring to a huge light source estimated to be 12.9-billion light years away! The Big Bang theory is still kicking, it seems, and it is no small source of amazement that rational people still sit still and swallow this garbage by the trowel full.
The first clue came when the article went on to state that "scientists" were looking back to when the universe was only 800-million years old, an indirect reference to Big Bang. "The photo is beyond fuzzy," the article states without crediting the remark, but it couldn't be fuzzier than the thought processes of these "scientists".
Let's proceed rationally.
This "blob" of radiation-emitting light is 12.9-billion light years away; that is where t was 12.9-billion years ago. If the universe was only 800-million years old then that would be how long it had to take for the object to get that far out. As anyone familiar with scientific mathematics knows numbers quantify objects, and those objects are part of the value being expressed. They are called Units, and they either combine with other units (foot-pound) or cancel each other out. An example of the latter would be;
You traveled at 50 miles/hour for 3 hours. How far did you go? The answer of course is 150 miles. The hours canceled each other out, one being in the denominator of the first term, the other being in the numerator of the second term. Now for the problem at hand.
Dividing 12.9-billion light years by 800-million years will require a little substitution to overcome the limitations of the Blogger posting program. The solution to this problem relies on Scientific Notation, which this site lacks the capability to depict. To compensate I will use the form N E^x, where N is a number greater than zero and less than ten, E is 10 and x is the power to which E is raised.
Thus 2 E would be 20 (2 x 10), a thousand would be 1 E3 (1 x 10 x 10 x 10) and so on.
12.9-billion light years would be 12.9 E9 and 800-million would be 8 E8. We want to know how fast an object would have to travel to cover 12.9 light years in only 800-million years. It's a division problem; 12.9 E9/8 E8 = 1.512 E or 15.12 light, as the years would cancel each other out. So what does 15.12 light mean? As used in the expression it would refer to the speed of light, therefore to travel 12.9-billion light years in 800-million years an object would have to travel more than 15 times the speed of light!
Any questions?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Silver Lining - The Two Economies
The "meltdown" that we are so eagerly awaiting will probably be just another "crisis", like the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980's, the Dot.com bubble of the 1990's, and the Housing Bubble of more recent vintage. Economists are predicting tough times ahead, but it is my opinion that these "experts" have no idea what they're talking about. They attend Ivy League universities and upon graduation go to work for major corporations, government agencies, or "think tanks" and never experience life on the street, where most of us live. Their cockamamie theories, like Arthur Laffer's "Supply Side" economics of the disastrous Reagan years, that only made the rich richer, are seriously flawed. George H. W.Bush only exacerbated the problem by ignoring the Savings and Loan disaster, and here we are. But where are we? Are things really as bad as they say? I don't think so. I'm going to ask you to think about something if you are among the many facing foreclosure of your home. If you know someone who's in that position, tell them what I am about to tell you.
Your mortgage is a fraudulent contract!
That's right. And if you're into foreclosure you can sue the bank that issued the mortgage, and get to keep the house. The explanation is based on Contract Law; ask any attorney who practices in this area of the law if what I say isn't true.
Any business transaction is an exchange of value. I pay my rent each month by check - just hand it to the apartment manager on the first of every month. In up to two weeks the check arrives at the bank and the owner of the property receives cash. The bank takes the money out of my account and puts it in his account, or just counts out the currency in that amount. In exchange I receive living a secured living space that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, keeps my hair dry when it's raining, and is my private little domain. I'm happy; I get what I need: the owner is happy; he gets his money, and all is right with the world.
What we have is a contract. even though there is nothing on paper. Even though there is no written agreement between the owner and me (I've lived here for twenty years) a contract still exists because the three conditions essential to any contract exist;
The offer. The owner has an apartment to rent, the salesman has a car to sell, etc.
The acceptance. I agree to rent the apartment, buy the car, or the latte, etc.
The consideration. I pay for what I get. Value changes hands.
Now, let's buy a house. You can't afford the whole nut so you go to the bank and they write a mortgage "contract" that you are obliged to pay over the course of twenty or thirty years. Most folks are honest and will pay the mortgage every month - if they can afford it. But in the Housing Bubble, with it's sub-prime loans, NINA (No Income, No Assets) mortgages, HELOCs (Home Equity Lines of Credit) a lot of people got suckered into buying homes they couldn't afford on the theory that these shacks would appreciate in value and could be resold in a year or two.
Did the banks care? Actually, no. The reason the banks wrote these mortgages is because they didn't keep them longer than a few weeks. They sold the paper to Wall Street (Lehman Brothers) who, in turn bundled them into packages of mortgages (tens of thousands) and sold them to the world's central banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. The bank gets paid, you get stuck! You're in a rough spot; right?
No. For two reasons; first, the bank has no legal right to foreclose: they don't own the mortgage. Only the owner of the mortgage can initiate legitimate foreclosure proceedings. These mortgage "tranches" have changed hands so many times that in many cases no one can tell who owns the mortgage on your house.
The second reason you're off the hook (though you'll have to go to court and sue) is that the mortgage is a fraudulent contract. The reason for this is simple: the bank didn't put up any money; they created it out of thin air thanks to fractional (fictional?) reserve banking. There was no consideration, ergo no contract. It would be the same as if I paid my rent with a check when there is no money in the account.
This is just one item of the law that most people are unaware of; there are many more. And economists are right up there with John Q. Citizen when it comes to knowing anything about real economics. Let's have a Quickie Quiz, OK?
How much is the Dollar worth to you?
Ask forty economists what the value of the dollar is and you will get forty different answers. Oh, they'll refer to their charts and tell you the exchange values against the Euro, Yen, Pound Sterling, Franc, Peso, or whatever. All wrong! The answer?
The Dollar is worth whatever it will buy. Simple. It's called the Exchange Value. Because I know this I bought an $85,000 bicycle for $13.00 ten years ago and spent about $100.00 a year on it. What made this bicycle worth so much? I didn't own a car all that time and rode the bike everywhere, or used Public Transportation (ride all over town for a month on $30.00 - a monthly pass). To run and maintain a car over that period was averaging about $8,500.00 per year. Ten years: $85,000.00 in savings.
And that's not mentioning the health benefits that allow me to approach the age of 71 without doctors, prescription drugs, or any health aids whatsoever. Most folks take me for early fifties. When I tell people my true age they ask me if I'm retired. My reply is, "I'm not old enough to retire."
Go to a men's store and buy a good suit off the rack. How much will you spend? Four or five hundred? More? I'll get a suit of the same quality for $70.00 - tailored! I get shirts that cost $30.00 to $50.00 retail for $3.69 apiece. I took out a small signature loan a week ago at 3½% interest. I am a smoker but unlike most people who are paying nearly $7.00 a pack with the latest tax hike, I get away for about $2.60, and the tobacco is organically grown and has no additives. I spent $50.00 for an injector machine two years ago: it has paid for itself many times over. I share some details of how I do these things on earlier blogs.
What I am practicing is laissez faire, economics, what Adam Smith wrote about in the eighteenth century. It's pretty simple, simple enough that most economists have some idea what it's all about. Then there's the economic theory introduced by John Maynard Keynes, about which most "Keynesian" economists don't have a clue. Another Quickie Quiz.
What is the economic theory that our economy is based on?
a) Adam Smith's laissez faire
b) Keynesian economics
c) Both
If you chose c go to the head of the class!
We all have heard, at one time or another, about the New Economy. Oh, it's called a Capitalist Economy, an Information Economy, a Consumer Economy, and there's a theory that supports every one of them touted by one of the Greats of Ivory Tower babble. The fact is an economy is an economy; if you earn more than you spend you are solvent, no matter if you're an individual, a mom-pop store, a major corporation, or a government. If you spend more than you take in, you're bankrupt. Period. End of discussion.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, at the time we were having our Revolution. In those times economies were all largely agrarian with some industry that by modern standards would be very primitive. Labor was mostly unskilled and semi-skilled and was thus highly mobile and easily transferable. Workers of average intelligence could be quickly trained in simple, usually repetitive tasks. Wages followed prices. Normal business cycles (not the boom and bust, roller coaster kind authored by the Fed)caused some minor dislocations; a company experienced a setback and laid off a portion of their work force. Since there was no unemployment insurance the laid off worker took whatever job he could find, usually willing to work for less. In this way laissez faire always tended toward full employment. In better times wages rose as there was competition for labor, and it was possible for a worker to advance himself according to his background and experience. In contrast with today's economy, background is not nearly as important as it was in Smith's time. Today it's all about education and ability.
John Maynard Keynes introduced his theory of economics in the 1930's and many modern economists seem to believe that this theory replaced Smithian Classical economics. It did no such thing, rather it brought that theory into modern times. Most economists and government officials seem to believe that Keynes endorsed government spending to stimulate the economy: to deal with depressions, boom and bust cycles, and inflation. It is quite clear that rampant government spending creates depressions, recessions, and those cataclysmic shifts in the markets that have plagued us so much over the past three or four decades.
The reason, and Keynes saw it, for these dramatic shifts in the economy is that with a growing technological base comes specialization in a given field. As specialization becomes more intrinsic to an economy the mobility of labor is severely restricted. The labor in not readily transferable, thus periods of unemployment are protracted and the unemployed person must wait out the slump, taking menial work in the interim, or seek training in another field. Out of all this came assistance programs and jobs sponsored by the government during the Great Depression the most productive of which was the Civilian Conservation Corps, a programs that put people to work building roads, dams; planting trees and building national parks, and other infrastructure projects. It worked!
I read Keynes many years ago and suspect that since then the basic texts have been "bible-ized": edited and altered to say what a small faction of power brokers wished it to say. My recollection are quite different from what I presume to be Keynes' true arguments.
For one thing there's the matter of government spending and the creation of wealth through debt. Keynes endorsed the exact, diametric opposite! Keynes saw the role of government as "lender of last resort" to areas of the economy needing financial support. These funds would come from the General Fund, money actually in existence, not cranked out of thin air as the Fed presently does. These loans would be paid back with a nominal low interest.
Also, Keynes held that the proportion of the total money supply as capital be around 10%. The rest out in the society to fuel commerce and create jobs. The so-called "capitalist' economy is exactly what Keynes did not propose as I recall from reading about the British economist's view. But in the intervening time this fact has been obscured by know-nothings who proclaim a "new" economy, implying that their ersatz "Keynesian" economics replaces that of Adam Smith. It does no such thing; rather, it expands and modifies Smithian doctrine. Adam Smith is alive and well on Main Street.
This brings us to the question of dollar value. The dollar is in a steep decline with respect to other currencies, the comparison that most pundits refer to. But what does that have to do with you and me? The value of a dollar to me is what it will purchase at any given time. I have a French ten-speed bicycle, a Gitane that I bought for $13.00 twelve years ago. It needed some work and I spent about $200.00 getting it restored: $213.00 for a bicycle that I probably couldn't sell for $50.00, but I didn't buy it to sell. I bought it to ride, and ride it I did; to work, shopping, for recreation - everywhere! For ten years I did not own a car and rode the bicycle and public transportation. Can you understand me when I say I that the value of that bicycle over the ten years was $85,000? A conservative estimate held that to operate and maintain an automobile averaged about $8,500.00 a year. Ten years? $85,000.00.
That's value.
I bought a car from a lawyer friend fifteen month ago; it was his late mother's car.
He wanted me to buy it and even gave it to me to drive for a month. He needed money and offered it to me for about $6,000.00 - Blue Book had it listed at $6,600.00 at the time. I made a firm counter offer of $5,000.00 and he took it. Today I still owe the credit union $3,000.00 but the book value is $6,000.00 - twice what I owe on the car. It is also one of the best cars made over the past twenty years; I have had no trouble with it, and a mechanic friend of mine remarked one time, "You'll never wear it out." Plus I can take it to the dealer and get it washed for free! That's value. Do I still have the bicycle? Sure, and I still have the vibrant good health that riding it for ten years helped me to attain. I still ride it, though not as much - still much farther than most people. That's value! The Gitane also has 24,000 miles on it and still gets compliments from tome to time. It's a cool bike.
What will you pay for a suit of clothes, even at a discount superstore? You can pay $600.000 to $800.000 for a suit of average quality; I can get a suit for less than $100.00, same quality, good label - and if anyone asks I can say, "My tailor." This technique is described in one of my earlier submissions; no need to go through it again.
There are many ways to cut corners and spend less, often far less than you otherwise would at straight market prices. What's the big deal about buying new stuff? Think about this: New goods are only new until you pay for them - after that they're second hand before you even leave the store or lot!
The message is simple: People need money even in good times. In hard times even more people need money, and a lot need more money. Save, eliminate credit, and pay only what bills are absolutely necessary. Then looks for bargains. They're out there!
Your mortgage is a fraudulent contract!
That's right. And if you're into foreclosure you can sue the bank that issued the mortgage, and get to keep the house. The explanation is based on Contract Law; ask any attorney who practices in this area of the law if what I say isn't true.
Any business transaction is an exchange of value. I pay my rent each month by check - just hand it to the apartment manager on the first of every month. In up to two weeks the check arrives at the bank and the owner of the property receives cash. The bank takes the money out of my account and puts it in his account, or just counts out the currency in that amount. In exchange I receive living a secured living space that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, keeps my hair dry when it's raining, and is my private little domain. I'm happy; I get what I need: the owner is happy; he gets his money, and all is right with the world.
What we have is a contract. even though there is nothing on paper. Even though there is no written agreement between the owner and me (I've lived here for twenty years) a contract still exists because the three conditions essential to any contract exist;
The offer. The owner has an apartment to rent, the salesman has a car to sell, etc.
The acceptance. I agree to rent the apartment, buy the car, or the latte, etc.
The consideration. I pay for what I get. Value changes hands.
Now, let's buy a house. You can't afford the whole nut so you go to the bank and they write a mortgage "contract" that you are obliged to pay over the course of twenty or thirty years. Most folks are honest and will pay the mortgage every month - if they can afford it. But in the Housing Bubble, with it's sub-prime loans, NINA (No Income, No Assets) mortgages, HELOCs (Home Equity Lines of Credit) a lot of people got suckered into buying homes they couldn't afford on the theory that these shacks would appreciate in value and could be resold in a year or two.
Did the banks care? Actually, no. The reason the banks wrote these mortgages is because they didn't keep them longer than a few weeks. They sold the paper to Wall Street (Lehman Brothers) who, in turn bundled them into packages of mortgages (tens of thousands) and sold them to the world's central banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. The bank gets paid, you get stuck! You're in a rough spot; right?
No. For two reasons; first, the bank has no legal right to foreclose: they don't own the mortgage. Only the owner of the mortgage can initiate legitimate foreclosure proceedings. These mortgage "tranches" have changed hands so many times that in many cases no one can tell who owns the mortgage on your house.
The second reason you're off the hook (though you'll have to go to court and sue) is that the mortgage is a fraudulent contract. The reason for this is simple: the bank didn't put up any money; they created it out of thin air thanks to fractional (fictional?) reserve banking. There was no consideration, ergo no contract. It would be the same as if I paid my rent with a check when there is no money in the account.
This is just one item of the law that most people are unaware of; there are many more. And economists are right up there with John Q. Citizen when it comes to knowing anything about real economics. Let's have a Quickie Quiz, OK?
How much is the Dollar worth to you?
Ask forty economists what the value of the dollar is and you will get forty different answers. Oh, they'll refer to their charts and tell you the exchange values against the Euro, Yen, Pound Sterling, Franc, Peso, or whatever. All wrong! The answer?
The Dollar is worth whatever it will buy. Simple. It's called the Exchange Value. Because I know this I bought an $85,000 bicycle for $13.00 ten years ago and spent about $100.00 a year on it. What made this bicycle worth so much? I didn't own a car all that time and rode the bike everywhere, or used Public Transportation (ride all over town for a month on $30.00 - a monthly pass). To run and maintain a car over that period was averaging about $8,500.00 per year. Ten years: $85,000.00 in savings.
And that's not mentioning the health benefits that allow me to approach the age of 71 without doctors, prescription drugs, or any health aids whatsoever. Most folks take me for early fifties. When I tell people my true age they ask me if I'm retired. My reply is, "I'm not old enough to retire."
Go to a men's store and buy a good suit off the rack. How much will you spend? Four or five hundred? More? I'll get a suit of the same quality for $70.00 - tailored! I get shirts that cost $30.00 to $50.00 retail for $3.69 apiece. I took out a small signature loan a week ago at 3½% interest. I am a smoker but unlike most people who are paying nearly $7.00 a pack with the latest tax hike, I get away for about $2.60, and the tobacco is organically grown and has no additives. I spent $50.00 for an injector machine two years ago: it has paid for itself many times over. I share some details of how I do these things on earlier blogs.
What I am practicing is laissez faire, economics, what Adam Smith wrote about in the eighteenth century. It's pretty simple, simple enough that most economists have some idea what it's all about. Then there's the economic theory introduced by John Maynard Keynes, about which most "Keynesian" economists don't have a clue. Another Quickie Quiz.
What is the economic theory that our economy is based on?
a) Adam Smith's laissez faire
b) Keynesian economics
c) Both
If you chose c go to the head of the class!
We all have heard, at one time or another, about the New Economy. Oh, it's called a Capitalist Economy, an Information Economy, a Consumer Economy, and there's a theory that supports every one of them touted by one of the Greats of Ivory Tower babble. The fact is an economy is an economy; if you earn more than you spend you are solvent, no matter if you're an individual, a mom-pop store, a major corporation, or a government. If you spend more than you take in, you're bankrupt. Period. End of discussion.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, at the time we were having our Revolution. In those times economies were all largely agrarian with some industry that by modern standards would be very primitive. Labor was mostly unskilled and semi-skilled and was thus highly mobile and easily transferable. Workers of average intelligence could be quickly trained in simple, usually repetitive tasks. Wages followed prices. Normal business cycles (not the boom and bust, roller coaster kind authored by the Fed)caused some minor dislocations; a company experienced a setback and laid off a portion of their work force. Since there was no unemployment insurance the laid off worker took whatever job he could find, usually willing to work for less. In this way laissez faire always tended toward full employment. In better times wages rose as there was competition for labor, and it was possible for a worker to advance himself according to his background and experience. In contrast with today's economy, background is not nearly as important as it was in Smith's time. Today it's all about education and ability.
John Maynard Keynes introduced his theory of economics in the 1930's and many modern economists seem to believe that this theory replaced Smithian Classical economics. It did no such thing, rather it brought that theory into modern times. Most economists and government officials seem to believe that Keynes endorsed government spending to stimulate the economy: to deal with depressions, boom and bust cycles, and inflation. It is quite clear that rampant government spending creates depressions, recessions, and those cataclysmic shifts in the markets that have plagued us so much over the past three or four decades.
The reason, and Keynes saw it, for these dramatic shifts in the economy is that with a growing technological base comes specialization in a given field. As specialization becomes more intrinsic to an economy the mobility of labor is severely restricted. The labor in not readily transferable, thus periods of unemployment are protracted and the unemployed person must wait out the slump, taking menial work in the interim, or seek training in another field. Out of all this came assistance programs and jobs sponsored by the government during the Great Depression the most productive of which was the Civilian Conservation Corps, a programs that put people to work building roads, dams; planting trees and building national parks, and other infrastructure projects. It worked!
I read Keynes many years ago and suspect that since then the basic texts have been "bible-ized": edited and altered to say what a small faction of power brokers wished it to say. My recollection are quite different from what I presume to be Keynes' true arguments.
For one thing there's the matter of government spending and the creation of wealth through debt. Keynes endorsed the exact, diametric opposite! Keynes saw the role of government as "lender of last resort" to areas of the economy needing financial support. These funds would come from the General Fund, money actually in existence, not cranked out of thin air as the Fed presently does. These loans would be paid back with a nominal low interest.
Also, Keynes held that the proportion of the total money supply as capital be around 10%. The rest out in the society to fuel commerce and create jobs. The so-called "capitalist' economy is exactly what Keynes did not propose as I recall from reading about the British economist's view. But in the intervening time this fact has been obscured by know-nothings who proclaim a "new" economy, implying that their ersatz "Keynesian" economics replaces that of Adam Smith. It does no such thing; rather, it expands and modifies Smithian doctrine. Adam Smith is alive and well on Main Street.
This brings us to the question of dollar value. The dollar is in a steep decline with respect to other currencies, the comparison that most pundits refer to. But what does that have to do with you and me? The value of a dollar to me is what it will purchase at any given time. I have a French ten-speed bicycle, a Gitane that I bought for $13.00 twelve years ago. It needed some work and I spent about $200.00 getting it restored: $213.00 for a bicycle that I probably couldn't sell for $50.00, but I didn't buy it to sell. I bought it to ride, and ride it I did; to work, shopping, for recreation - everywhere! For ten years I did not own a car and rode the bicycle and public transportation. Can you understand me when I say I that the value of that bicycle over the ten years was $85,000? A conservative estimate held that to operate and maintain an automobile averaged about $8,500.00 a year. Ten years? $85,000.00.
That's value.
I bought a car from a lawyer friend fifteen month ago; it was his late mother's car.
He wanted me to buy it and even gave it to me to drive for a month. He needed money and offered it to me for about $6,000.00 - Blue Book had it listed at $6,600.00 at the time. I made a firm counter offer of $5,000.00 and he took it. Today I still owe the credit union $3,000.00 but the book value is $6,000.00 - twice what I owe on the car. It is also one of the best cars made over the past twenty years; I have had no trouble with it, and a mechanic friend of mine remarked one time, "You'll never wear it out." Plus I can take it to the dealer and get it washed for free! That's value. Do I still have the bicycle? Sure, and I still have the vibrant good health that riding it for ten years helped me to attain. I still ride it, though not as much - still much farther than most people. That's value! The Gitane also has 24,000 miles on it and still gets compliments from tome to time. It's a cool bike.
What will you pay for a suit of clothes, even at a discount superstore? You can pay $600.000 to $800.000 for a suit of average quality; I can get a suit for less than $100.00, same quality, good label - and if anyone asks I can say, "My tailor." This technique is described in one of my earlier submissions; no need to go through it again.
There are many ways to cut corners and spend less, often far less than you otherwise would at straight market prices. What's the big deal about buying new stuff? Think about this: New goods are only new until you pay for them - after that they're second hand before you even leave the store or lot!
The message is simple: People need money even in good times. In hard times even more people need money, and a lot need more money. Save, eliminate credit, and pay only what bills are absolutely necessary. Then looks for bargains. They're out there!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Open Letter to the Republican Party
I am interrupting the series Silver Lining to write this open letter prompted by a headline on Yahoo!'s homepage this morning (March 9): Republicans See Their Party as Leaderless. The content of this article was just too much to pass up, so here goes.
Dear Members of the Republican National Committee,
So you think your party is leaderless? In my opinion you're being too modest. If you were only leaderless then that problem could be easily solved. But since you are also soulless and brainless, your lack of leadership is a minor point. What leadership have you had or shown over the past eight years? Starting from the top with George W. Bush, a brainless, gutless moron who lied us into two losing wars on false pretenses: let's call a spade a spade, Bush lied to the people and a lot of innocent people died. And you lied to us too; you tried to lead us to believe that this ol' cowhand from New Haven, Connecticut, was actually our president. No he wasn't, he relinquished any claim to that post when he called the US Constitution "just a goddamn piece of paper"; the same document that he swore to uphold, protect, and defend. He tried to shred it, all with your unswerving complicity. You are not only leaderless but rudderless as well.
You're the same slime balls that endorsed Dick Cheney as Vice President, the puppet master who led our "wartime president" (the one who didn't have the guts to face Cindy Sheehan)by the nose as he enriched himself and his old alma mater Halliburton at tax payers' expense. It won't be necessary to go into the full list of psychopaths who infested the highest offices in the land in the worst criminal conspiracy this nation has ever faced. The whole rotten bunch will be called to account; the American people are now wide awake and we don't like what you did to us. But I offer you hope, if you're not too stupid to understand.
You have a golden opportunity to redeem yourselves. You have in your midst the finest statesman, Dr. Ron Paul - and you're looking around for a leader? The article said that 5% favored John McCain as party leader - he's a nut job, and let's not forget his membership in the Keating Five.
Sarah Palin? Only one percent support her. I personally like her; think she's a sweet lady but clueless. Then you tell us that 2% support Rush Limbaugh? Your party has an unenviable record of transgressions that have inspired many to the idea that you are all crazy - name "Pills" Limbaugh party leader and remove all doubt.
Want to remake your image? Good. Here's how.
Name Ron Paul as party leader. Support him in the next presidential election.
Abolish the Federal Reserve and its fiat debt money and give us honest, debt free money. It's our money; stop giving it to the Rothschilds, Bilderburgs, Warburgs, Barclays, and Rockerfellers.
Dismantle the Military-Industrial Complex that the last real president, Eisenhower, warned us about.
Tell the people the truth about 911: that it was a false flag operation engineered and carried out by elements of our own criminal government: a Reichstag Fire!
Restore our Constitutional rights before we find it necessary to do so.
Restore habeas corpus and the rule of law - or we the people certainly will.
And as it is the duty of every American to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies foreign and domestic, you'll have to excuse us if we regard police and units of the military enemies of the people when they try to interfere with the people's First Amendment right to lawful assembly and the redress of wrongs. Don't worry, we know how to deal with enemies.
So there you have it.
Do what you will.
Dear Members of the Republican National Committee,
So you think your party is leaderless? In my opinion you're being too modest. If you were only leaderless then that problem could be easily solved. But since you are also soulless and brainless, your lack of leadership is a minor point. What leadership have you had or shown over the past eight years? Starting from the top with George W. Bush, a brainless, gutless moron who lied us into two losing wars on false pretenses: let's call a spade a spade, Bush lied to the people and a lot of innocent people died. And you lied to us too; you tried to lead us to believe that this ol' cowhand from New Haven, Connecticut, was actually our president. No he wasn't, he relinquished any claim to that post when he called the US Constitution "just a goddamn piece of paper"; the same document that he swore to uphold, protect, and defend. He tried to shred it, all with your unswerving complicity. You are not only leaderless but rudderless as well.
You're the same slime balls that endorsed Dick Cheney as Vice President, the puppet master who led our "wartime president" (the one who didn't have the guts to face Cindy Sheehan)by the nose as he enriched himself and his old alma mater Halliburton at tax payers' expense. It won't be necessary to go into the full list of psychopaths who infested the highest offices in the land in the worst criminal conspiracy this nation has ever faced. The whole rotten bunch will be called to account; the American people are now wide awake and we don't like what you did to us. But I offer you hope, if you're not too stupid to understand.
You have a golden opportunity to redeem yourselves. You have in your midst the finest statesman, Dr. Ron Paul - and you're looking around for a leader? The article said that 5% favored John McCain as party leader - he's a nut job, and let's not forget his membership in the Keating Five.
Sarah Palin? Only one percent support her. I personally like her; think she's a sweet lady but clueless. Then you tell us that 2% support Rush Limbaugh? Your party has an unenviable record of transgressions that have inspired many to the idea that you are all crazy - name "Pills" Limbaugh party leader and remove all doubt.
Want to remake your image? Good. Here's how.
Name Ron Paul as party leader. Support him in the next presidential election.
Abolish the Federal Reserve and its fiat debt money and give us honest, debt free money. It's our money; stop giving it to the Rothschilds, Bilderburgs, Warburgs, Barclays, and Rockerfellers.
Dismantle the Military-Industrial Complex that the last real president, Eisenhower, warned us about.
Tell the people the truth about 911: that it was a false flag operation engineered and carried out by elements of our own criminal government: a Reichstag Fire!
Restore our Constitutional rights before we find it necessary to do so.
Restore habeas corpus and the rule of law - or we the people certainly will.
And as it is the duty of every American to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies foreign and domestic, you'll have to excuse us if we regard police and units of the military enemies of the people when they try to interfere with the people's First Amendment right to lawful assembly and the redress of wrongs. Don't worry, we know how to deal with enemies.
So there you have it.
Do what you will.
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