Just One Little Question

Sheriff Douchebag in Tucson said,

“I think the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business and what (we) see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised, that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in.”

Isn't blaming the actions of a paranoid schizophrenic on the whole "right" vitriolic rhetoric itself?  Isn't he doing exactly what he's complaining about?

Pot, meet kettle.  Kettle, pot. 

Listen, sheriff Douchebag, er, Douchepin, um Dupnik: you're an embarrassment.  This has nothing to do with rhetoric and nothing to do with left vs. right.  It has to do with mental illness.  And if early reports are true, you should resign.  If this were Japan, seppuku might be a good alternative. 

Range Time

Today is the kind of day we Florida natives call "Chamber of Commerce" weather.  Days like these are the reason people from the north come down here this time of year, the reason our company executives always happen to decide to visit in January or February, the reason we get visits from salesmen we see once a year around this time.  In short, fantastic.  Daybreak was about 42, but that only lasted until the sun got above the horizon; by 9 it was almost 60, and the high was around 70.  A bit breezy, but blue skies, low humidity, simply beautiful.  That can only mean one thing:

Time to go to the range. 

We arrived around 11 AM and stayed till 2 PM.  Shot ARs, and dialed in the Nikon on my project rifle.  I had zero set at 25 yards, then decided the scope was too far back, so I pulled it and moved it forward to the end of the picatinny rail.  Which pretty much meant I had to zero it again, and I did so at 100 yards this time. Wasted a bit of ammo doing so, but it's hard to call anything on a day like this a waste. 

I'll be the first to admit I'm not as good as I'd like to be, and I suppose few people are as good as they'd like to be.  On the other hand, I remember last April when I first tried to shoot 200 yards spending a magazine (30 rounder, yet) trying to find if I could even see an impact on a 12" diameter target.  Today, I shot a single (20 round) magazine at an 8" target and every shot was on the paper.  At least the trend is moving in the right direction.  Mrs. Graybeard joined in for her first time shooting at 200 yards, and put (guessing) 20 out of 30 on the target.  We're signed up for an Appleseed weekend next month. 

As I mentioned, it was pretty windy.  Quartering wind coming from behind my right shoulder that varied from about 10 to 20. Obviously not competition grade shooting, but that's a standard letter-sized piece of paper.  At least I'm getting better. 

ASM826 over at Random Acts of Patriotism has been running a series on reloading the last few days, and was nice enough to swap some emails with me.  I'm trying to decide if reloading is really for me.  It seems the single best reason to load is to improve your ammo accuracy which sounds nice.  This ammo was "vanilla" Remington UMC .223 in 55 gr. FMJ (I saved all my brass from today).  I guess I see the advantage of slow, one-round-at-a-time loading in a single stage press, but my geek side says that I'd like a progressive press that chunks out a round with every throw of the handle, and is working on four or five at a time.  More suited to pistol ammo, I suppose.  I don't shoot any "official" competitions like IDPA, IPSC or rifle; just compete with myself trying to get better. 

Reloading, though, is not for days like today.  Days like today are for getting out and staying out.

The Conflict of Visions Extends To Your Wallet

I hammer on Ben Bernanke and the Fed as much as anyone, I think. Well, maybe not as much as JDA ((if the new career doesn't work out) “I'll be foaming your latte by day and still up Bernanke's ass by night.”). In my view, the Fed is running the country's economy into the ground, and the fact that they are doing it deliberately gives me a lot of problems. There are really two alternatives. They honestly believe that the things they are doing are right, and they will fix things. Or they are deliberately lying, trying to rape the economy, screw the people, steal the money, and don't care how much destruction they wreak. And it gets worse. It's not just Zimbabwe Ben and the Fed; the central bankers in every country around the world are doing the same basic things.

My inner voices don't like this. I can envision a few really evil people (because only truly evil people do things they know are wrong for long periods of time) in the central banks, but imagining that every banker in the world is evil is a stretch for me. That implies that the central bankers are well-meaning idiots. To put it more kindly, they are following a flawed theory that is leading them to flawed conclusions. Also, never forget that they can be both insane and stupid, like a Bill Ayres.

Call me Pollyanna.

Professor Thomas Sowell, a man who truly needs no introduction, wrote a masterpiece called “A Conflict of Visions”  and which Kevin at the The Smallest Minority had an excellent uberpost on, "What We Got Here is Failure to Communicate”. The thesis is that statists (“progressives”) and individual liberty advocates (“libertarians”) have completely different visions of the world. In the context of government, progressives believe that mankind is inherently perfectible, and with the right smart guy to run any system, no matter how complex it might be, things will be fine. The government can be infinite in size because these wise bureaucrats will administer your lives better than you can. In contrast libertarians believe that man will always be flawed and corruptible; therefore, government needs to have as little power as possible, so that power can't be used against people. Dr. Sowell uses the term unconstrained and constrained visions, respectively.

It seems that the same sort of conflict of visions has extended to economics, where most schools seem to teach Keynesian economics, or something based on it (do I need to point out colleges have been essentially taken over by progressives for a century?). In contrast, Austrian economics is not studied nearly as much. Central bankers all over the world are following Keynesian theory. Not having a fixed monetary standard is ideal for governments: they have always wanted to spread more money around than they really have, be it domestic political favors or foreign adventures. Having this progressive system where a dollar is worth whatever you think it's worth is like opium to government spenders. Are there any countries in the world still on a gold standard? None that I know of.

A little musical interlude might help.  

A perfect example of the difference in philosophy is going on right now – QE2, the second round of quantitative easing by the Fed. Followers of one system believe that buying our own debt with money we digitize out of nothing is inherently inflationary. Followers of the other say it isn't. After that 60 Minutes interview, it bothered me that Bernanke could sit there and say those things, and I needed to try to understand why he thinks as he does. I think I've found the answer. He believes that because of the theory of velocity of money.  This is "hold your hand over your hearts" stuff in economics classes - considered fundamental to their subject.  

 

The velocity of money - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money reduces to a simple algebraic equation. If you've taken Chemistry, you might note the extreme similarity to the ideal gas law, which makes sense in a way.

Vt*M=nT

where

Vt   is the velocity of money for all transactions.

nT  is the nominal value of aggregate transactions. 

M   is the total amount of money in circulation on average in the economy (see “Money supply” for details). 

The idea here is that if you printed a quadrillion dollars, but then put them in a safe, they would not be inflationary because their velocity is zero. The problem is that this theoretical boundary case tells us nothing.  The assumption is impossible and is just the sort of academic simplification that causes trouble. It's fine if the Fed issues these made up dollars to someone who puts them in a safe; the question is, “what happens when they really, really need those dollars?” I say they spend them.  When V>0, printing that quadrillion dollars is inflationary.

What Bernanke was saying in that 60 Minutes interview is that they have such tight control over the velocity of money that monetizing our debt can't cause inflation. Try as I might, I can't believe that. The amount of information they have is never going to be adequate to control as well as the automatic feedback systems of the open market. Bernanke is claiming the most complete command system there could possibly be (i.e., totalitarian central government control). We are not completely fascist.  Yet. 

If they had perfect control, why would the buying power of a dollar today be only a few percent of its value in 1913 when the Fed was given control of our economy? We remained on a gold standard until 1934. Gold was re-valued then and we spent almost the next 60 years loosely tied to it, until the Nixon administration unilaterally de-coupled the dollar from gold at the Bretton Woods II conference in 1971, where the dollar became the reserve currency of the world. This chart shows the value of the dollar measured against the standard of the 1913 dollar. If you want to consider the ratio in gold, remember the dollar was pegged to gold at $35/oz in 1934. Today's price is around $1400. The dollar is 2.5% of it's 1934 value in terms of gold.

 

 

This sort of devaluation of the dollar, inflation, is deliberate. When the government sells bonds to cover deficit spending, they promise to pay back a certain number of dollars. By inflating the currency, they can pay back the debt with dollars that are worth less than when they were loaned. It is nothing less than the deliberate screwing of the bond holders. Inflation is taxation on the productive people, and especially hard on the savers.

(warning sign from Zimbabwe, asking you not to use Zim dollars in place of toilet paper - from The Economist)

The central issue (to me) in these systems is “what's a dollar worth?”. In a Keynesian system, dollars float with respect to all the currencies in the world. In an Austrian system, there is some sort of commodity based standard: as I've said before, it doesn't have to be gold or silver, but can't be paper money which can be printed in essentially unlimited amounts. Over two centuries ago, Voltaire noted that, "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero." Do we need to be on a gold standard? You may be surprised to see I say “no”. Not having a standard doesn't require you to be an undisciplined idiot with money.  It really could work in theory - if people were perfect.  Practically, though, we really should be on a gold standard because a limited commodity enforces discipline onto politicians, who otherwise show worse discipline than drunken sailors (who, after all, stop spending when they're out of money). That's a statement of the constrained vision. There's no reason for the debt we run up other than to give money as favors to buy votes.

Austrian economics requires one to be “grown up” and live within your means. It enforces fiscal discipline, so you can see why politicians would hate it. They can't print money out of thin air. They can borrow money, if they can find someone to buy the bonds, but they're obligated to pay bonds back with money that's worth what it was when it was borrowed. The only way to expand the monetary supply is to get more of the commodity the system is based on, be it gold, silver or the large stone rings used on Yap.

I believe it is no small coincidence that the main advocates of the Austrian economics are libertarians, while the main advocates of Keynesian economics are progressives. We have no less a conflict of visions in our economics than in everything else. The essence of the progressive view appears to be that there are no rules and no limits, and we can make a perfect world system for our perfect new men. The contrasting view is that there is a real world out there, and it imposes real restrictions on us. Contrary to the car commercials, you can't break the laws of physics – or they wouldn't be laws. One of those restrictions the world imposes is that if something is to be valued, that is, something others want to accept in trade, the quantity of it has to be limited. It's why a synthetic ruby, say, chemically identical to the natural item, but producible in any quantity, is valued less than the real item.

Edit: 1/8/11 2340 The typo monster added one in my equation.  

Are We Six Months Behind Europe? A Year?

Because you may want to start emptying out your 401k and stuffing your mattress.  The "European nations begin seizing private pensions"  (h/t to Junior Deputy Accountant).

The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.

And I'll mercilessly rip off JDA for the QoTD:

Good thing we live in America where our government doesn't do things like that. Instead, they keep interest rates artificially low so the bankers can eat gold-plated turkey sandwiches while Grandma is eating Alpo. God bless America!!

Remember, this is going on all over the world.  It has happened in Argentina already.  If we're six months to a year behind Europe, that's how long you have to empty out your 401k and put it someplace where the grabbers can't get it.

How Do You Know What You Think You Know?

People operate in life from things that they believe are true.  But how do you know what's true?  Can you demonstrate it?  Prove it?  Believe it?  Personally, I have a hierarchy of certainty.  At the top would be mathematics and mathematical physics, which are the epitome of hard science.  I can prove a theorem (or understand someone else's proof) and know for sure if it's right.  Every child should know how to check subtraction by adding and vice versa, for example.

Below that are things that I can demonstrate but that aren't physical law.  For example, I can demonstrate some engineering principles that are derived from physics, but themselves don't rise to the level of law.  How about medical questions, like whether dietary salt is related to blood pressure, or dietary fat is related to heart disease?  Questions like these are typically answered by statistical studies of various types, using the crudely-stated criterion ("assumption") that if the effect correlates 95% of the time, it's close enough to use.  Moving down the list, eventually one has to confront things that they believe to be true, but can't prove in any rigorous sense.   

Where I'm going with this is Kondratiev cycle theory and theories like Howe and Strauss' generational theories that I spoke about here.  Of course, there are other cycles, like Elliott Waves, that analysts talk about.  There are many people who call these crackpot junk theories, like Murray Rothbard at Lew Rockwell.  On the other hand, Ian Gordon in that first link has had spectacular investment returns - 70% per year - by following Kondratiev principles in the last decade.  Dude, if I had 70% per year since Y2K, I'd be retired and playing a whole lot more.

Here's my point: what if these observations correlate with reality not at the certainty of mathematical proof or even at the 95% correlation rate, but correlate at 60 or 70%?  By analogy, if you had a coin that gave you heads 60 or 70% of the time vs. statistical 50%, it's a safe bet.  If you get someone to bet against you often enough, you'll make money.  There's a famous old engineer joke about the engineering geek guy and the hot actress of the day, that ends with him saying, "I'll get close enough".  What if these wave theories aren't really provable and aren't really "science", but get you "close enough"?

A Collection of Short Stories

Wherein we get more of what we need less of:  Government regulation.

Industry insider Louis Frenzel of Electronic Design Magazine comments on the "net takeover" by the FCC.  Note the roughly 4:1 socialist tenor of the comments, from my fellow engineers (embarrassingly enough).


The bigger problem may be that the UN is trying to take over the Internet.  That will be the end of the 'net as we know it.  To quote from Obi-Wan, "there is no bigger hive of scum and villainy" than the UN. 

The EPA went ahead and instituted new rules on CO2 as a hazardous gas, effective over the holidays.  All unpopular regulations go into effect, and unpopular laws are passed over the holidays. 

(from Townhall.com )  This sets up a legal fight between Texas and the Fed.gov.  Texas got a quick court ruling stopping Fed.gov for the moment.   Governor Rick Perry figures to get big-time political mileage out of this.  The big question here is: if Texas looses, does "The Republic of Texas" secede from the Republic?

Congress can de-fund the EPA and the FCC, but they've shown themselves to be pretty toothless.  

The Food Safety Modernization Act (also known as the American Forced Genocide by Starvation Act) was signed into law.  It will cost approximately $1 million per case of food poisoning prevented as a completely optimistic guess. 

And, of course you saw that your executioner, the economically illiterate Dr. David Berwick, instituted the much-derided "death panels" by executive fiat on Christmas eve (again, because no one was watching). 

All of this is to be expected.  We've been saying for some time that congress has almost made themselves irrelevant, with the large number of czars and "special advisers" the executive branch has.  If you don't have congress under your control, you get to rule by executive fiat.  You get to make it law, "Because I said so". 

What a great bunch of people!  What fine, honest, upstanding leaders our insect overlords are! 

"Fight Organized Crime - Abolish the IRS"

Remember those bumper stickers?  I think I've seen them in every decade of my life.  The IRS uses fear as their most important collection tool, as a matter of agency policy.  Just enter "IRS Horror stories" in your favorite search engine and you'll find plenty.  Just as the mafia is known for targeted beatings or killings to instill fear, the IRS is known for using targeted audits, subpoenas and legal instruments.  To those who don't live in the legal system; to those who fear the courts; to those who fear legal proceedings, a subpoena or other legal document from the IRS can be as intimidating as watching the mafia goon beat up a friend. 

But the IRS is the mouth of the beast; the leviathan feeds this way.  And by leviathan I mean the whole nexus of big government and big banking from AIG to "The Goldman Sachs" to the Federal Reserve.  How do we get rid of it?  How can we not be devoured? 

References to economic resistance are everywhere.  Baugh's "Starving The Monkeys" is the first one I heard of, and the idea has grown legs - spreading around to various places.  Gardenserf has an excellent article on "Asymmetric Economic Warfare" this week.   

As for me, I'm completely in agreement with the strategy, just not completely there on the tactics.  To borrow a bit from various places, my plan is:

1. Reduce your debt.  Note that I didn't say "never have a penny's worth of debt", so I don't mean to burn your credit cards.  Borrowing has a cost, and you should always include that in your plans.  If that item you want is on sale at 30% off, and your payments will last a year at 15% interest, you're still getting it 15% off.  If the currency is worth less in a year, you're paying it off with worthless dollars, too. Um - I mean - you're paying it off with dollars that are worth less, too. 
2. Debt is slavery.  Don't get careless with it.  I paid off my mortgage almost 10 years early by paying extra principal as soon as I could.  If nothing else, having no payments is enormously liberating.
3. Look into reducing your withholding.  The taxes withheld from your pay all year is the cash drug in the veins of the addict (Fed.gov).  Look into this: I believe if you underpay your taxes by too much, you get penalized.  Ideally, you'd like to pay a little on tax day, not get money back.  
4. Support your local retailers, the mom and pop shops.  They're your neighbors, and could be in your tribes.  
5. Always try to barter.  If you are having some work done on your car, or your home, try barter.  This includes using silver coins or other items of value.  If your mechanic fixes your car while you fix his computer, that works for everyone.  Baugh's book, from what I've seen (and I haven't read it) advocates getting unplugged from "the system": don't work for a company, be a business of one. 
6. Make what you can.  Maybe it's a bit strict to live as my friend said: "Make it, make do or do without".  Plus, it's more rewarding.
7. If you're getting tools of any kind get the best tools you can afford.  I firmly believe I can't afford cheap tools.  They're too expensive.  I know you'll hear old sayings like, "it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools", but get real.  A smart, old jeweler told me that, and it's a lesson I've learned the hard way.   

I'm Not Big On New Years' Resolutions, But...

I think I can get down with this one:  Annoy the left every chance you get, all year long.

Q.  Why was Obama so disappointed when he went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats?

A.  Being a Muslim, he thought there would be more romance

From 

(And if you're new here, I don't make a penny off this blog in any way shape or form.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but as long as I have my day job, there will be no ads or pay-links here.)

Happy F Day

It's 1-1-11 and 1111 is "F" in hexadecimal.  Today's fun fact. 

Yesterday's post, the last of 2010, ended on a fairly pessimistic note.  I made note of only the bad news of 2010.  There really were things to be more optimistic about last year, or, at least, things that weren't completely bad, so let's talk about those. 

There is a large scale awakening of the "sleeping giant" or the "silent majority".  Evidence is everywhere: the 9-12 projects, the TEA parties, the 8/28 Rally, the Restore the Constitution rallies, and the wide scale defeat of incumbents - especially big-government types.  Of course, the success wasn't 100%, but it was the largest swing in a congress in over 50 years, so that ain't bad.  Yeah, I know that elections won't fix everything (and have said so here many times), but it's a start.

There is a widespread awakening of the vast 2 sigma middle of the American people.  Discussion of the deficit, over-reaching of the fed.gov leviathan and oppressive police state tactics is becoming common. 

There is a large scale acceptance of the RKBA.  It's still a struggle, and that will continue as long as we have dishonest, corrupt autocrats, but the tide is certainly moving our way.  The latest numbers I could find report gun sales around a million a month.  Our deer hunters represent the largest army in the world.  It's often stated (and denied) that Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said, "You could never invade the United States.  There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass".  Maybe not, but in just three months in 2009, we bought enough guns to supply both the Chinese and Indian armies.  Along with a billion and a half rounds of new ammunition.   

So as we lurch forward into the new year, be aware of the troubles that lurk, but work on establishing ties with your community - your tribe - and keep family ties close.  Hold the ones you love close.  Yeah, train, and prepare in case things go south, but don't let negativity be the focus of your life. 

Mrs. Graybeard had cancer 13 years ago, so we know that even in relatively good times, life can beat the crap out of you.  You owe it to yourself to have as much fun as you possibly can as long as we're on the right side of the dirt nap.   

Saying Goodbye or Hello to The Good Old Days

Janus, of course, was the Roman god with two faces, one to always look backward and one to look forward.  The name was chosen for this month for good reason and I'll do the same.

At the end of 2010, American freedom is - at best - on the ropes. No matter where you look, you see the appearance of an emerging police state: from the TSA "molocaust" (H/T - Cliffs of Insanity) to neighbors being urged to snitch on neighbors to vindictive, overzealous prosecutors seemingly abusing the laws they're supposed to be protecting.  Big Brother shows no signs of wanting to let up, but rather is acting to spread the insult to malls, stadiums, stores - anywhere people gather.  It's only going to get more widespread and more intrusive.  If you're new here, you may be interested in a column I wrote on Labor Day about the emergent police state.

These are direct assaults on the 4th amendment to constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

They are direct assaults on freedom of movement.  How long until any attempt to move between cities or states brings the "show me your papers" order from deep in our collective nightmares? 

Government corruption is widespread.  A list of government "ruling class elites" who get away with things that you and I would be rotting in jail for is trivially easy to put together: Timothy Geithner, Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank, Tom Daschle, ...

Those whose names don't return pages of "corruption" links in Google say the stupidest things you can imagine.  Our executioner in chief, Dr. Donald Berwick believes having a shortage of health options keeps costs down, apparently the only instance in the known universe where the law of supply and demand doesn't work.  Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, says insurance companies competing against each other in a free market constitute a monopoly.  Julius "Seizure" Genachowski, head of the FCC and trouser mouse to self-described communist Robert McChesney wants to take over the internet and hired a guy who wants to destroy broadcasting to be in charge of it.  Let's stop there.  It's making me kinda sick.

I decided to join the "blogosphere" last February with the intent of writing on the techno-geeky things I love.  The top of the page describes it pretty well. Instead, I seem to write the most on the economic mess we are in because I feel I need to spread the word.  I would not take a bet that by this time next year, things will be better.

What's ahead?  We can be sure the current trends will continue.  Inflation will get ugly.  Remember, the official government inflation numbers don't include energy and food, so the numbers they report don't show how badly your budget is hurting as the costs of gasoline, and heating oil, as well as all food items go up.  Clothing costs will go up as well.  As the effects of the quantitative easing work through the market, all tangible items will get more expensive.  I would not be surprised for food costs to be up around 25% this year.  I expect gold to go over $1500/oz - really a modest increase - and silver to go up more percentage wise.  $50/oz would not surprise me.  At around $31 (today) you should still consider it.  Silver is notoriously more volatile than gold, so you need to have a strong stomach.  On the other hand, I have silver I bought at $5/oz - a 6-fold increase in value.

My most widely linked and read post was On Germs, Weeds, Companies, Governments and Skunks - a long post that ended with this observation:

We are strangling in a bureaucracy with a Code of Federal Regulations that has grown like a bacterial culture.  A nation that was founded by a constitution that fills about 14 printed pages in today's technologies, passes financial reform bills that go over 2000 pages, health care bills that go almost 3000 pages, and more.   Each bill creates hundreds of new regulations, which are so poorly written they have to be refined by hundreds of court cases.  The court cases effectively create new law and new regulations.  Since congress is in session every year and passes at least one new law every year, the total number of laws and regulations increases without limit and everything eventually becomes illegal. 

In my mind, the central problem we face in the struggle for personal liberty is how the web of regulations is tightening around us more every day, regulating the most minute aspects of life; how this "sand in the gears of life" is choking off businesses, moving jobs overseas, and grinding this country away.  We absolutely have to pare down the amount of regulations.  Instead, we have an administration that regulates by fiat what it can't get passed as law. 

Is 2011 the year the western economy collapse?  Could be.  Is 2011 the year the open shooting starts?  Same answer.  I wouldn't take the bet it doesn't. 

Waiting to Get Your Street Snow Plowed?

Listening to the commotion about "the government isn't plowing the streets in NYC" brought this to the mind of the lovely and fiercely independent Mrs. Graybeard.  I have to agree. 



{obligatory small print} While this is called "Democrats on an Escalator" and that's the way we first heard of it, we find it's actually a commercial for a heart health clinic that will help you get in shape in case you have to walk those few steps.  And don't have a government to come carry you. 

The 800 Pound Gorilla In The Room

The Federal Deficit.

I've written before that we don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.  With federal debt virtually at 100% of GDP, not even counting the major entitlements of medicare, social security, and the new Obamacare, we simply have to cut our spending.  In a few years, sooner if inflation causes interest rates to rise, all of our tax revenues will have to go simply to cover the cost of the interest on our debt; then there will be no spending on anything else.  No defense budget, no entitlements, nothing will be left. 

Simply put, to reverse the course toward destruction that we are on, spending must be cut drastically.  Everything must be cut.  As soon as someone says, "that's not on the table" about anything, they've proven themselves useless.  Everything must be on the table.  

It would be handy if there was a budget for 2011 to talk about, but our despicable congress refused to put a budget together, instead "deeming" it passed - avoiding their main constitutional responsibility.  Without a budget, the government is funded by continuing resolutions, such as the omnibus spending bill that was subject of flaming rhetoric just 10 days ago.  Not having a budget makes it harder to see how bad things really are.  I'm sure that was one reason they use this method.

In 2010, we borrowed around 40cents of every dollar we spent.  We can't go on that way.  Clearly, we need to cut spending by at least 40% to balance the budget.  We also need to count the real expenses, including those "off-budget" items like Medicare and social security.

One other thing: you hear a lot about earmarks.  I'm not saying it's not a good thing, but cutting earmarks is doesn't get you there; they're simply not big enough to get us out of this mess.  For example, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, in that 1.1 Trillion dollar omnibus spending bill, the earmarks totaled $8.3 billion, or 0.75 %.  When the spending needs to be cut by up to 40%, cutting earmarks doesn't get you anywhere.  Besides, congress is 99% corrupt lawyers: if you make "earmarks" illegal, they'll find ways around.

I've said that I find day-to-day politics pretty disgusting and this is a pretty good example why.  Still, we should contact our congress-critters and let them know we mean business.  I've heard dozens of pundits say that "those people" (that is, those opposed to this madness) want spending cuts but don't want it on their pet projects.  Our representatives probably believe that.  We need to convince them we're willing to see massive cuts to many government agencies, including closing some and sending people home.  Want to shutter NASA?  So long, it's been nice.  Want to shut down the national parks?  Just leave the gates open.  Want to call home our troops from overseas?  I'm sure the towns near bases would like having a few thousand more customers.  Get the picture? 

The alternative really is collapse, and if that happens, the parks will close, the agencies will close and the troops will come home.  It would be better to have some orderliness to all this. 

Entering the Sea of Doom

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, assuming you observe it, and a wonderful day no matter what you observe.  I purposely avoided news yesterday, just to have at least one day of without the nonstop bad news we are barraged with.  As the joke goes, "Break is over.  Back on your heads".

Frequent visitor and fellow electrical engineer-geek, LeverAction, posts on something I saw the other day that made shivers run down my spine.  In "Just How Bad Is It?" he points out:

Our national debt has risen by $2,000,000,000,000 to the level of $13,473,000,000,000.

The last figures I have for US GDP are from 2009, $14.1 Trillion.  I don't know what this year's figures are, but using the 2009 GDP (which will be close) and 2010 debt, that's a debt ratio of 95.5% of GDP.  It probably goes without saying that I'm skeptical of government numbers for growth in the economy and most generally reported statistics.  There's ample evidence that the Fed.gov leviathan changes the way they report such things all the time, in whatever way makes those in power look good.  John Williams at Shadowstats has made a nice little career of keeping track of these lies changes so that businesses and others can keep track of the stats they need without having to constantly fight them. 

How bad is 95.5% of GDP?  It makes us one of the worst in the world.  It's difficult for me to tell you exactly where we rank compared to other nations because the latest statistics I can find seem to be from various different years.  This graph (from here) is closest, and it's from 2009. 

The source here is ranking the countries by both the government and private debt as percent of GDP.  If you ignore the private debt side, you see that we're around third worst in the world.  I'm not sure why Japan isn't in this chart; it's possible the bank (Credit Suisse) that generated this didn't consider Japan. I think no matter who you count we're in the five worst government debt to GDP ratios. 

Conclusion?  The US is in really bad shape.  No surprise.  What really concerns me is that I'm not familiar with any country with debt to GDP ratios like ours ever becoming prosperous again.  They all fade to gray.  Or worse.  Or even worse.  What do you think?

It Came Without Ribbons. It Came Without Tags.

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."
-- Dr. Seuss

(from)
It's a time for family and for holding close the ones who mean the most to you.  Yesterday, Mrs. Graybeard and I drove to the southern end of the state to visit my mom and brother, along with my niece and nephew.  Both of my in-laws passed away long ago, and my own dad preceded them by many years.  I have one brother; both my wife's older sister and younger brother have passed on.  The number of family members is dwindling.  My own kids are a thousand miles away, and won't be visiting.  No grandkids.  For the first time in our lives, Mrs. Graybeard and I won't put gifts for each other under the tree.  It has been a good year for us, and we've been blessed to be able to pick up toys as we wanted along the way.  Neither of us could put together a little list of things we'd like.

Things are not important.  Family is.  People are. 

Hold close the ones you love.  If we're very lucky, this will be the worst Christmas of our lives.  If we're not that lucky, these will be the good old days.  Either way, hold tight.  "Before you dot another 'i' or cross another 't', Bob Cratchit!"

It's one my of my blessings that a small group of really high quality folks stop by here to share my blather.  Thanks. 

ASM826 at Random Acts of Patriotism has a nice posting on the nativity that's really worth reading. 

Merry Christmas, "and may God bless us - every one" 

Net Neutrality - A Solution In Search of a Problem

So Chairman Julius "Seizure" Genachowski staked a claim on the Internet, despite being told by both Congress and the Courts not to.  This is the Executive branch declaring that the rest of the Government is meaningless.   Balance of power?  "I got your balance right here".  If you've been here for a while, you know I've been on this topic since last summer. 

A quick summary for the new readers, from June 19,

Julius Genachowski is a pawn of Marxist Robert McChesney. (did you ever notice how the Marxist groups always name themselves misleadingly?  Like McChesney's group Free Press, which is dedicated to the destruction of a free press).   They appointed the total tool Mark Lloyd (who vociferously praised Hugo Chavez) as Chief Diversity Officer.  Doesn't this guy realize Chavez arrests people like him?  Guess not.  He figures he'll do the arresting.  Tyrannies are cool if you get to run the gulag, right Mark? 

The left has been drooling over this idea for at least 10 years - I think I remember reading about this in the 90's.  But there's no need for it; ISPs aren't blocking services from any site, it would be economic suicide.  The 'net is the wonderful place it is specifically because the Fed.gov has kept its fat, ugly hands off it and private business developed it.  I'm sure commies like Genachowski, Michael Copps (FCC Commissioner) and Robert McChesney honestly think the ISPs want to make customers mad, just like they think most food companies want to kill off their customers (S510), and that oil company executives want to kill their own children.

McChesney said in 2008 that net neutrality is just a part of his plan to destroy the capitalist system in the US

"McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist.""

So since Net Neutality says that the ISPs may not discriminate against any legal 'net traffic (leaving the door open to shutting down any dissenting voices) here's a thought for the ISPs: 

Right now, around 2/3 of the Internet traffic is Unsolicited Commercial Email: spam (this article measured 90.4%!).  The way I read that statement, all of the filtering and fighting the ISPs are doing to keep spam under control will be illegal.  Doesn't that say they have to let the spam flood the world?  It's giving the leftists what they want: all legal traffic treated equally.  Perhaps an ISP that's connected to the Fed.Gov buildings in the District of Criminals might let them drown in spam.  Flood the congressional offices until the aides are demanding they do something.  Maybe the congress will get rid of the stupid FCC takeover of the 'net and put the filters back in place. 

As much as I hate spam (in my world, spammers should get the death penalty) maybe it would work.  I hate spam as much as anyone.  I had a web page 20 years ago, when you could put your email address on it and nothing happened.  Then I started getting 50 spams a day, then 100, then 150... had to dump that address.  But I could put up with it for a while to shut down the FCC. 

A Short Course on Why The Economy Was Going To Crap Anyway

The first thing to bear in mind is that the Ben Bernank and the other financial experts don't know what they're talking about - or are profligate liars (or both).  Do you remember Alan Greenspan, or the previous secretaries of the treasury in, say, 2006 saying that really bad times were coming?  You don't remember it because they didn't.  Therefore, either they didn't know bad times were coming, or they were lying to serve the "greater good" (making themselves and their friends safe from what they saw coming).

Ergo, why should you believe them now? 

There are some very simple reasons why the economy was essentially destined to start slowing down in the early 21st century.  A recession was inevitable.  Let me outline some reasons:

• The biggest demographic group in the country, the boomers, are entering retirement.  As adults age, their spending slows for a couple of reasons: first, they tend to have a lot of stuff and don't need as much as twenty-somethings, and second, they look at their retirement preparations and start to save a lot more, crimping spending even more. 
• The housing bubble was destined to pop.  The stupid and corrupt practices that led to unqualified people getting loans have been well documented (for example).  The essential thing to remember is that the historical requirements for a mortgage (that your payment was about 1/4 of your gross pay) were there for a reason: when it was followed, mortgages didn't default at a high rate.  This, in turn, says that the price of an average house can't grow faster than an average salary grows, and the housing price was growing much faster.  When that happens, people can't afford houses anymore.
• Generational cycles - sort of an extension of the first bullet point.  In addition to simple curtailing of expenditures of the older generations, the students of this cycle assign a set of characteristics that describe the various living generations.  While I'm not sure I like it as a general rule, it's predictive ability seems decent.   A good summary from a financial planning firm is here.  My version of the short summary goes like this: each generation differs from their parents and strives to not repeat their mistakes.  Boomers were raised by "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Leave it to Beaver" parents ("Greatest Generation" WWII vets).  The boomers became "both parents working" families with latchkey or daycare center kids.  They did this to "get ahead" in a society where there was a lot of competition for every job.  Their kids, Gen-X, are more likely to home school, have one parent at home more often, and are less likely to try to turn themselves inside out to "get ahead" than their parents.   While boomers were the arch-type of the birth control generation, their kids are more likely to have more than just one or more than two kids than their parents.  Because of this, they will have less to spend.  Because they saw the excesses of their parents, they probably want to spend less.  
• The incredibly profligate government spending was going to have to stop.  Not stopping it 10 years ago has only made the need to stop it more dire.  

When you combine all of these aspects, the economy was destined to at least go into a slowdown (a.k.a - recession) as we got past Y2K and into the 21st century.  Winter was already coming.  The actions of the detestable Federal Reserve to keep the "good times rolling" undoubtedly contributed to, helped inflate the bubble, and worsened what we're going through now.  If they had stayed out of it, we would have had, I believe, a more bearable slowdown, rather than the collapse that is upon us.  A Florida winter, rather than a Montana winter.

What Would You Do If You Had A Year Left? Two Years?

Because you do.  This post is almost a year old and most of it is happening already, to some degree:

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

Sometime in the next two years, it's almost certain that the final collapse of the western economies will happen. At that point, it's hard to know what will be left of society and what we will turn into.  One thing I'm sure of is that it won't be the end of the world, just the end of the world as we know it. 

A couple of years ago, Tim McGraw had a monster hit song in the Country music world, "Live Like You Were Dying".  The basic story is conversation with a guy who in his early 40s discovers he has a terrible disease.  His answer is:

I went sky divin'
I went Rocky Mountain climbin'
I went 2.7 seconds
on a bull named "Blue Manchu"

This all sounds terribly self-centered, although maybe some would say self-actualizing.  It's the kind of thing you do if you have problems, but your children and family will just have to muddle on without you.  What we're looking at is a situation where everyone in the family, the extended family - your tribe - has problems.  Will you be a leader?  Will you be protector?  A guardian?  Will you be useful when there are problems?

Useful is the best thing you can be.  School started a while back, and while we don't know the exact date for the final exam, we know there will be one.  Doing any training?  Are you putting a few cans aside? 

(image from Kellene at PreparednessPro)

Word

(from the wonderful XKCD - my M/W/F morning opener)

I haven't written anything on the whole Wikileaks affair here, other than a comment last weekend.  Basically, I've said,

"... my view of the whole Wikileaks thing is not positive toward Assange. ... In a nutshell, I am extremely skeptical that their motives are good. That, in turn, probably makes me see people attacking the world in their defense as not working from good motives as well. The tactic of leaking classified documents that make an opponent look bad, after all, is straight from Alinsky ("4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. 5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.")

I have not tried to wade through the leaked documents; I just don't have the time. I've only come across the occasional reference to an item that is not at its core anti-US, though, and it could simply be accident that they let out something that isn't anti-US. "

It's a crude statement, but you can consider things that happen less than 5% of the time to be random events.  It looks to me like Assange and his group is virulently anti-American, and they simply let out some items that aren't anti-American every now and then - either by accident, incompetence, or (possibly) to make it appear they're not just anti-American.  Probably random events. Add to that the fact that organizations supporting Julian Assange are supported by George Soros, and it just smells too much like yesterday's fish. 

I know a lot of (small "L") libertarians have no problem with what Assange has done, and believe there's no need for secrets in the world.  While the general answer to all political questions is more individual liberty, no matter how much I think about this it, I also know that wanting a world with no secrets and complete openness is a "skittles crapping unicorns" mindset: idealistic to a fault.  Sun Tzu said, "all war is based on deception" and it's absolutely imperative for nations to have secrets. 

No surprise: there are some really heinous governments in this world.  You don't have to look farther than Cuba or Venezuela - and from where I'm sitting, Cuba is closer than Washington DC.  Seen any really close looks at what goes on in Venezuela coming out of Wikileaks?  Cuba?  Read Babalu any day and you'll find stories leaking out of the Castro regime daily.  What about truly secretive governments like Myanmar (Burma) or North Korea.  The NorKs regime is horrific.   China routinely violates human rights. Seen any Wikileaks out of Burma?  How about China?  Any mention of any of these I've seen relates to things the US is saying about them. 

I'm not saying the US is perfect.  If you've spent any time here at all, you know that I'm not a fan of much of what's going on in the US.  But trying to make us look like the source of all evil in the world makes the person doing so appear not to have a tremendous attraction to truth and openness at all.  It makes them look like just another anti-US operative trying to destroy us.

How Come Nobody Told Me...

that there's a whole genre on YouTube of people making Laurel and Hardy dance to music recorded years and years after their movies were filmed?  I feel like I live such a sheltered life!



Hey - it's Friday.  It's a week until Christmas.  The universe will keep unfolding as it will, whether we fret about or not. 

Go to the YouTube page and check out the different songs people put this scene to.

I Think I'm On The Wrong Planet

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get a "WTF???" reaction when I read the news.  This isn't where I grew up.  This isn't the country I knew as a kid.  This isn't even the planet I grew up on.

Did I fall into some sort of wormhole, and I'm really on some obscure planet around Tau Ceti or Wolf 359?  I keep expecting to look up and see Worf, or Quark, or a shape shifter from the Delta quadrant like Odo.  There ought to be a babe with a funny looking nose any second now... 

Where I grew up, the garbage cans didn't spy on you.

Where I grew up, we put mufflers on cars to make them quieter, we didn't try to make them noisier.  (Confidential to the morons in Congress: did you know that the noise from an internal combustion engines is one of its inefficiencies?  If it was perfectly efficient, there would be no noise, and the exhaust would come out colder than liquid nitrogen).

I remember, in the 1980s, when liberals were making fun of Reagan and his folks for saying nuclear war was survivable.  They wanted to die in neat little piles.  Now the democrats are talking about how survivable nuclear war is. Did that happen recently?  This fall?  Huh. 

When did the world turn upside down?  As Instapundit says (as if he needs a link from me!)

They told me if I voted Republican, we’d be plunged deep into a scary 1950s-style pre-nuclear-war “duck and cover” posture. And they were right!

One thing that is constant is that we did do duck and cover drills under our school desks.  So maybe this is home....

but, no, where I grew up, we didn't think we could cure bankruptcy by borrowing more money.  No, people started businesses and worked hard to provide for themselves and their families, not expecting handouts. 

When did they start making laws so complicated and so big that congress not only can't read them, but thinks it's a waste of time to read them?  Why is an obscure weapons treaty so incredibly important that it has to be rushed through a lame duck, over the Holiday session, and signed without reading it, either? Are they trying to weaken the US?

Gort, are you out there?  Gort?  Klaatu barada nikto.