Hire someone, or else...

I recently received a comment on my blog from Trenton Powers.   Naturally, when people comment on my blog and leave a backlink, I will go check out their blog.  Two posts on his blog are certainly worth discussing.

In one post he says this:

As a runner-up to the Milford Regional Chamber of Commerce Businessperson of The Year in 2007 I know a thing or two about business and economics. For instance I know that this purported letter from a conspicuously anonymous, alleged reader of the reactionary conservative rag, the National Review is hogwash:

Small business will start to hire when one big thing happens.Sales Growth. End of story.

This goes beyond simple intellectual dishonesty and charges head-first to the realm of deliberate misrepresentation.  There is no correlation between small business’ hiring practice and sales growth. Only the presence of robust regulation can create an environment conducive to increased employment opportunity in the private sector. By extension, government expansion is a necessity if one wishes to create a job-friendly atmosphere.

In another post he says this:

Just to take the previous post a step further, wouldn’t it fix a whole butt load of problems if government were to mandate that small business hire people if they earn profits above an arbitrary threshold?

For instance, its really not unreasonable for a family owned polymer-injection business, or a start-up pinking enterprise to be required to bring on another worker if that business makes more than $20,000 in profits, or they could be required to take on a migrant worker if they pass a $10,000 profit threshold.

This is not a bad idea.

You can see from the comments that I made, that I think that this is a bad idea.  Trenton defends this idea as outside the box thinking.  However, in the Age of Obama, I can’t think of a clearer example of knee-jerk, inside-the-box thinking than to conclude that the best way to solve a problem is government intervention.  I am curious what the readers of the Independent Bloghorn think of Trenton’s idea.

Finally, we also investigated the structural properties of malware distribution sites. Some malware distribution sites had as many as 21,000 regular web sites pointing to them. We also found that the majority of malware was hosted on web servers located in China. Interestingly, Chinese malware distribution sites are mostly pointed to by Chinese web servers.

-Google Online Security Blog

Anyone who visited the Independent Bloghorn, on the night of February 3, would have briefly seen my post, Gambler in Chief, then they would have been promptly redirected to a site full of Chinese crap.  Luckily I back up my blog, so most of my content was saved.  Recent comments from some of my latest posts were lost, so sorry to those who commented, but other than that, I am back up and running.

It is pretty big news lately that the Chinese government sponsored a hack job on Google’s servers, and Google is threatening to pull out of China.  In addition to this, Google hacked China back and discovered that this cyber attack targeted many major American corporations.  I see the Independent Bloghorn hack as a small attack in a larger war.  In this war, I am on Team Google, and at this point I say screw China.  It wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all to see the following actions take place.

1.  To see Google, Adobe, Yahoo, Symantec, and the other companies that were hacked boycott China completely.

2.  To see individual American consumers boycott Chinese goods.  This probably sounds hypocritical, given my typical attitudes toward free markets.  However, I think that getting to participate in free markets is a privilege that China isn’t worthy of.  It will probably be impossible to do this completely, but from now on, “Made in China” doesn’t make it to my house.

3.  To see the Federal Government turn over its land holdings in the West back to the states.  This will open them for a boom in energy exploration.  We will use the money from this effort to pay off the debt to China (only $800 billion at this piont), and reduce our trade deficit.  That is the only leverage they have, so let’s get rid of it.

4.  To see the capital gains tax lowered to zero.  I would like to see as much of the investment capital in the global financial system absorbed as quickly as possible into the American economy.

5.  Place tariffs on Chinese imports, and use the money to pay off our debt to them.  That’s what they get for borrowing against the future value of their currency to create false economic growth.

6.  Dramatically lower tariffs for goods from other Asian countries, South American countries, and India.

Yeah right, like any of that will happen.  I’m just venting, cause I’m mad they hacked my blog.  Hopefully Google takes them out.

Probably the last thing Harry Reid needs right now is for Barack Obama to keep telling Americans not to go to Las Vegas.  He made a comment this week where he says something like, “during these difficult times, blah, blah, blah, we need to tighten our belts, blah, blah, blah, and if we need to save for college we shouldn’t go gambling in Vegas.”

Given the fact that Las Vegas is getting completely screwed by the recession, the last thing the city needs is for the president to be using his bully pulpit to discourage tourism.  I can’t say I disagree with Obama’s statement, but I can understand why Las Vegas and the state of Nevada would be upset.

My problem, is where does Barack Obama get off lecturing anyone about gambling.  If times are so tough, Mr. President, why are you so insistent on gambling the future solvency of the country on failed car companies, green jobs, failed banks, and the federal government’s ability to do anything in a way that yields a higher output of value than was put in (e.g. health care).

Every year I get my Social Security newsletter, and it tells me that for every dollar I put into Social Security, I will get $.78 back.  Slot machines in Vegas at least pay out $.96 on the dollar.  If the president were smart he would be encouraging citizens to stop paying taxes and go gamble their money away, but unfortunately gambling away Americans’ money is an activity that he has reserved for himself.  Sorry Vegas!

Regulating is hard work!

I really used to like Thomas Friedman.  I thought The World is Flat was one of the best non-fiction books of the last decade.  However, like most people who have become zealously converted to the cult of envirostatism, he has completely lost touch with reason and reality.  In his Sunday column today, “Who’s Sleeping Now,” Thomas Friedman engages in yet another Sinophiliac rant about how China is leading the charge towards a clean, green future.  He then claims that in order for us to catch up, “We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it”

Did you catch that, just like China, we are going to place a price on carbon and use regulatory incentives …oh wait, China is the one leading any resistance to taxing carbon.  So I guess you have to ask, if China isn’t interested in putting a price on carbon, what regulatory incentives are they using to encourage such a nourishing environment for the E.T. revolution that Friedman longs for?

He unwittingly answers this question:

Here’s e-mail from Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever. It’s a 2 gigawatt, $5 billion deal to build plants in China using our California-based technology. China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”

So, Mr. Friedman, I am confused.  Will having an expensive tax on carbon somehow speed up the bureaucratic process for getting solar power plants approved?

Friedman then revels in the recent announcement of China’s new super-fast bullet train, then he compares this accomplishment to the dismal failure, Amtrak.  I guess we can assume that an expensive new tax on carbon will also fix Amtrak.

Just in case you missed it, he closes with this statement:

It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation. We can’t afford to be asleep with an invigorated China wide awake.

I am going to have to conclude that Friedman is a complete idiot.  The problem that he correctly identifies, the impotent and massive regulatory bureaucracies of the federal government, will not be solved by increased taxes that will only augment the regulatory burden of this apparatus.  The problem isn’t that we need to be taxed more, Mr. Friedman.  The problem is that the regulatory regime that Friedman thinks will fix this problem won’t wake up.

Please keep burning the fossilized remains of my distant ancestors!

This week, parts of the Midwest reached a balmy -52 degrees.  Snow and Ice are plentiful.  Municipalities have already burned through their snow removal budget.  Traffic accidents are resulting in millions of dollars in property damage.  But, perhaps the most troubling development of all in all of this changin’ climate is what is happening to the poor iguanas in Florida.

Freeze warnings covered nearly all of Florida with temperatures expected to drop into the 20s. Iguanas were seen falling out of trees; experts say the cold-blooded reptiles become immobilized and lose their grip when the temperature falls into the 40s or below.

Last year I wrote a post called Darwinists vs. Global Warmingists which featured a propaganda video from the global warming alarmists of animals commiting suicide.  I have also been monitoring how GWAs have been using animals to advance their cause.  I think we need to mobilize an extensive effort to save Florida’s iguanas.

Unfortunately the post, Ecoporn: The Movie, was lost when the Independent Bloghorn was hacked.  I decided to republish a post here, so I don’t have 404 errors in my sitemap.

About 4 years ago, I bought stock in a company called XTO.  At the time they were seen as a great long term play in the alternate energy field.  They are one of the leading companies in extracting natural gas with non-traditional methods.  Recently, XTO announced that we were being purchased by Exxon Mobil.  Experts quickly concluded that this was a smart move by Exxon to diversify their business into future energy sources, like natural gas.  I bought XTO because I liked how the company was run, and I decided to sell this investment because that is my typical reaction when companies I own get bought out.  If I wanted to own Exxon Mobil, I would have bought their shares 4  years ago.

Don't Drink the Water

Since I was following this development, I came across this story.  The premise here is that because XTO was purchased by Exxon, that this will attract environmental consciousness to the practice of how they extract natural gas, because we all know that Exxon Mobil is the corporate embodiment of pure evil.  XTO injects chemical-laced water 1,000s of feet below the surface of the earth, this fractures the shale deposits, and the gas comes out.  Radical environmentalist, in their relentless quest to ensure that no resource is ever consumed, are worried that putting chemicals thousands of feet below the surface of the earth could contaminate the water tables that lie thousands of feet above the gas deposits.

Stories like this reaffirm my tendency to never take environmentalists seriously.  We are told by the climate doom-mongers that we need to stop emitting carbon into the atmosphere, but when a company comes up with a viable alternative these environmentalists’ comrades in arms find some other ecopalypse for us to worry about.

A while back, my friend asked me if I thought global warming was just a big liberal conspiracy.  I think our rigourous scientists at the prestigious climatology department of East Anglia University have settled this matter.  However, my response to this question would be to look at the liberal solutions to any environmental “problem.”  For the average soft green, liberal, leftist, democrat environmentalist there is one obscenely predictable solution for preventing environmental doom: Exerting government power through regulation and taxation.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times regularly claims that clean-tech is the next big thing, and divorcing our economy from oil is this generation’s moonshot.  Then, rather than propose moonshot ideas, he usually comes to the conclusion that we need to start taxing carbon.

I have recently been reading Superfreakonomics, and the authors suggest that we can cool the planet by pumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere from hoses suspended by balloons.  This would cost a couple hundred million dollars as opposed to cap and trade which would cost trillions.  This is a moonshot idea.  Of course to really come up with and execute a moonshot idea like this, we would actually need some scientists.

Just as the Cash for Clunkers program spurred false demand for new car purchases that later resulted in months of poor performance for those in auto industry, we are starting to see a similar pattern emerge where other stimulus dollars spent.  The most recent culprit: the public education system.  As many states faced massive budget shortfalls, they decided to use stimulus money to avoid having to layoff workers in the public education system.  Now that these Recovery Act funds have been exhausted, the budget shortfalls will now be more substantial.  What would have been a controlled and steady stream of layoffs will now most likely be a tsunami.  Alas, the Recovery Act would be more aptly named the Prolonging the Inevitable Act.

Inevitably, schools will be facing deep cuts as they run out of stimulus money.  The stimulus money has also been sheltering schools from the economic reality that property tax collections are also dropping quickly as real estate values drop.  The shortfalls that schools will be facing will be steep, and those who thought their jobs were saved by the stimulus will soon be unemployed.

If you get really good at math, maybe one day you can run for Congress

I know a lot of school administrators, and they pretty much lose sleep over this.  They are doing everything they can think of to try to not layoff their staff.  Where the loyalty here is admirable, the excessive inefficiency characteristic of the public education system is a disgusting waste.  If a for-profit private school was facing the same budget problems that face most American schools, they would probably take the necessary action of laying off staff they could no longer afford.  Affordability is a word that most government agencies seem to completely ignore.

Ultimately, what I think about this is pretty irrelevant.  I feel bad for the many education workers who are going to lose their jobs.  I wonder what criteria school administrators will use to determine who gets fired.  Since the NEA resists any movement towards tying teacher’s pay to performance, so if performance is irrelevant how do you determine who to let go?  This is where economics will finally kick in.  Schools will get rid of the most expensive employees, this will typically mean those with Master’s degrees and PhDs.

In the movie, Shooter, there is a scene where some bad guys have created a contraption that forces one’s arm to point a gun at their head and pull a trigger.  The following article about the coming debt panic discusses what needs to be done:

The fiscal situation was serious before the recession. It is now dire. An important proposal being released Monday by the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reformurges Congress and the White House to commit immediately to stabilizing the debt at 60 percent of GDP by 2018; come up with a credible plan for getting there; and begin phasing in the necessary policy changes in 2012, once the recovery is fully underway. Warnings about fiscal danger may sound familiar, but one reflection of the current circumstances comes in the composition of the group that signed on to this report and agreed that both tax increases and spending cuts would be required. They range from a liberal former chair of the House Budget Committee,  William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania, to a conservative former chair, Jim Nussle of Iowa. The recommendations envision annual benchmarks, enforceable by a debt trigger that would impose spending cuts and a surtax if the specified reductions were not achieved. Once the debt is stabilized in 2018, the goal would be to set it on a glide path to further reduction, closer to the historical average of below 40 percent. (emphasis added)

I don’t think the Peterson-Pew suggestion goes far enough.  Some triggers are more effective than others, and I have little faith in a debt trigger that would supposedly force Congress to cut spending and increase taxes.  It is also interesting the same group that insists that we can reduce CO2 emissions to ridiculous levels, despite the fact that our control over the natural world is limited, shows no ability to control spending.  Unlike natural elements, money, and our current systems of currency and credit are entirely man-made, and therefore entirely subject to our manipulation.  If we can’t control something as simple as our debt, by what line of thinking do we think that we can control something as complicated as the climate of our planet?