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.

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?

In the movie, Far and Away, there is a scene where Tom Cruise (Joseph Donnelly) tells Nicole Kidman (Shannon Something) in a perfectly articulated Irish accent, “America has got so much land they’re givin’ it away for free.”  Her response is to express incredulity.  To which Joseph replies with something like, “You’re a corker, Shannon.”  The movie then proceeds to a climax where they race to claim their free land in a post-Louisiana-Purchase land grab.  Ahhh! the good ole days when the federal government had so much land they were giving it away for free.

About 524 million acres

The size of the Louisiana Purchase was 524 million acres.  Most of this land is now privately owned.  It would be hard to argue that America would be as prosperous and powerful today, if this “Breadbasket of the world” was managed by federal bureaucrats.  Because this land is managed by private owners and corporate interests, America has been a significant exporter of food and has been able to feed its people with abundance with few minor exceptions.  When you have a country that is geographically capital rich in its ability to feed its people, this frees its population to engage in other industrious activities like building microchips, aircraft carriers, and entitlement programs.  You would think that with such a clear historical example of the virtues of private ownership of land, that the federal government would have continued this trend during the rest of the Westward expansion.  With the exception of Texas, this hasn’t been the case for the rest of the West.

Go West, Paradise is there...

The Louisiana Purchase was a massive acquisition for the United States Government.  However, the federal government’s current land holdings, mostly in the West, dwarf the Louisiana Purchase in size.  The federal government currently controls 623 million acres.  In Martin L. Gross’ book, National Suicide: How Washington is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z, he discusses the negative impact that the federal mismanagement of these lands has on the respective states.  He mentions a current real estate boom in Arizona, California, and Nevada, where solar energy companies are trying to develop solar energy plants as a response to generous subsidies from Washington.  The Bureau of Land Management, however, halted this development to wait for environmental impact studies.  We can only hope that these environmental impact studies are conducted with the same scientific rigor and discipline as the University of East Anglia’s climatology department.  Needless to say, what this travesty reveals is that the reason our country isn’t energy dependent isn’t because we don’t have the technology and resources to make it happen.  We are dependent on foreign oil imports because our lands with the most energy resources are located in the West on lands owned by the federal government.  One of the primary reasons we are dependent on foreign debt imports, is because our capital rich and resource rich geography is being severely mismanaged.  Anyone with basic knowledge of finance knows that if your overextended with your credit, then it is time to start liquidating assets.  It would be a great idea for the U.S. to sell its massive holdings of Western land to private American enterprises, individuals and State Governments as a means of reducing our national debt.  However, in order for a change of this magnitude to happen, we need leaders who recognize this opportunity.  My friend, Michael S. Lee, is considering running for the Senate in Utah to replace Bob Bennett.  He has this to say about the constitutionality of the federal government holding such a large portion of western land:

In light of the text and history of Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, there is a valid basis for questioning whether federal land should be exempt from taxation by the host State where, as is often the case, the host State’s legislature has not given Congress exclusive legislative jurisdiction over that land. While a broader power could be (and has been) inferred from Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2—which authorizes Congress to “dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States”—that provision says nothing about exclusive legislative jurisdiction. For that reason, in order to read Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 as giving Congress boundless discretion over federal land (i.e., as authorizing Congress to act as a sovereign with respect to land acquired by the federal government within a State, but without the consent of that State’s legislature), one must essentially ignore the “legislative consent” language of Article I, Section 8, Clause 17. The best way to reconcile Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 with Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 is to conclude that (1) the former authorizes Congress to control federal land as a sovereign—such that Congress may dictate that federal land is exempt from all taxation and regulation by the host State—but only if the host State’s legislature has consented to such an arrangement, while (2) the latter authorizes Congress to control federal land to the extent permitted by the generally applicable laws of the host State—such that Congress may not prohibit the host State from taxing and regulating federal land to the same degree that it taxes and regulates private property—but does not require Congress to obtain the consent of the host State’s legislature.

In many instances, the host State would gladly give the consent described in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, authorizing Congress to exercise exclusive legislative jurisdiction over certain federal lands. In Utah, for example, I suspect that the legislature might freely give such consent with respect to the land comprising Hill Air Force Base, the Utah Testing and Training Range, and Zion’s National Park. But in other instances, Utah’s legislature would be reluctant to give such consent, recognizing that—because the federal government owns nearly 70% of the land in the State—the State would suffer (as it does now) if all federal lands were exempt from taxation. There are a number of factors that the legislature would want them to consider in deciding whether to relinquish control over the various parcels of federal land. But the important point is that this decision would belong—and consistent with the text and history of the Constitution, should belong—to the legislature of the host State, and not to Congress.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion in Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. 529 (1976), essentially ignoring (and effectively obliterating) the important textual distinction between the power granted by Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, and that granted by Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2. That decision needs to be revisited, given how severely it undermines the legitimate, sovereign, and constitutionally protected interests of States—especially those in which the federal government owns a significant amount of land. It may well be that Congress (rather than the Supreme Court) is in the best position to undo the injustice brought about by Kleppe v. New Mexico. Congress could do so by enacting a law providing that, absent the consent of the host State’s legislature, the federal government owns land within a State on the same footing as any other property owner within that State, and not as a sovereign exempt from taxation and regulation.

I know that it is a radical idea to be electing people to Congress that have knowledge of the Constitution.  I will close by quoting what Martin Gross thinks we should do:

Because Washington has shown that it cannot manage these lands in the best interests of either the states or the nation, citizens should demand the return of all mineral rights, including oil and gas, back from Washington to the states.  They can then develop them properly by calling on commercial leaseholds, which will bring the states enormous royalties.

This is only fair because the rights were taken away from the former territories years ago, when they were too weak to fight Washington.

As a result of such arrogant federal mismanagement, debate should start on the final objective.  We should return all federal land – except for national parks – to the states so that they, and the American people can reap the harvest of our own good earth.

In Barack Obama’s brave new caste system, profiteers have quickly become the untouchables.  Much of the debate over healthcare can be reductively boiled down to the fact that those who are more liberal think that it is immoral for a company to profit off of the health of another person.  Most conservatives don’t care about this, and tend to think it is more immoral for the government to even hint at taking an even larger role in the health care system when its financial track record in the health care systems that it already runs are so dismal.  Since liberals are currently running the government and a large portion of the media, it hasn’t taken long for a climate to develop in the country where making a profit is seen as a grievous sin and recklessly spending public finances through record deficit spending is seen as a virtuous act.

It’s nice to see that this new change in attitude hasn’t been lost on the treasury department.  Earlier this week, there were several news stories about certain institutions paying back their TARP money.  They were even going to pay back the money with some interest, hence the taxpayers were making a profit.  However, yesterday we learned that the wise stewards of TARP haven’t been the great investors the original stories made them out to be.  According to this story, a recent audit shows that taxpayers are showing a loss of $61 billion dollars on just the AIG and auto company bailouts.  This loss wipes out the $19.5 billion profit reported earlier this week.

TARP

If a publicly traded private company engaged in this kind of behavior, it would be investigated for securities fraud.  If the public company of our government, whose stock is privately traded among various special interest groups, engages in this kind of financial reporting, nobody cares.  Also, if a company with a $700 billion market cap reported a $40 billion loss in one year, the market’s reaction would be swift and painful.  If Obama & Bush inc. loses this much money, there’s not much that can be done.  After all, there was so much resounding shareholder…I mean taxpayer support for Obama to buy off his supporters in the UAW with the auto bailout, that this is a bad investment that we are all going to have to live with.

Most presidents get out of office and build a library or something.  Obama should start an investment bank.

I am going to have to cut Barack Obama some slack for the unemployment rate being so high.  After all, it isn’t the job of the President of the United States to make sure that Americans are working.  It also isn’t the job of University professors, and even though they might think they are helping to employ people, job creation isn’t something that labor unions have much prowess for.  So I guess, the American public should be a little bewildered that the aforementioned groups of people convened this week to discuss how to create jobs.  Ultimately, what this little conference proves is that Obama doesn’t have a clue how to create jobs.  Or, to be fair, he doesn’t know how to advance his agenda and create jobs, since his policy agenda and job creation are fixed in diametric opposition.  Therefore, he is creating the illusion that he cares about creating jobs, but he has no real intentions to enact policies that will actually result in jobs being created.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney, published ten things that should be done to start creating jobs now in an article in the USA Today.  Of course, he is just advancing the same tired ideas that got us into this mess.  He and all of his rich corporate buddies.  What do they know about creating jobs?  For what it’s worth, here is the list:

• Repair the stimulus. Freeze the funds that haven’t yet been spent and redirect them to immediate, private sector job-creation priorities.

• Create tax incentives that promote business expansion and hiring. For example, install a robust investment tax credit, permit businesses to expense capital purchases made in 2010, and reduce payroll taxes. These will reignite construction, technology and a wide array of capital goods industries, and lead to expanded employment.

• Prove to the global investors that finance America’s debt that we are serious about reining in spending and becoming fiscally prudent by adopting limits on non-military discretionary spending and reforming our unsustainable, unfunded entitlements. These are key to strengthening the dollar, reducing the threat of rampant inflation and holding down interest rates.

• Close down any talk of carbon cap-and-trade. It will burden consumers and employers with billions in new costs. Instead, greatly expand our commitment to natural gas and nuclear, boosting jobs now and reducing the export of energy jobs and dollars later.

• Tell the unions that job-stifling “card check” legislation is off the table. Laying new burdens on small business will kill entrepreneurship and job creation.

• Don’t allow a massive tax increase to go into effect in 2011 with the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The specter of more tax-fueled government spending and the reduction of capital available for small business will hinder investment and business expansion.

• New spending should be strictly limited to items that are critically needed and that we would have acquired in the future, such as new military equipment to support our troops abroad and essential infrastructure at home.

• Install dynamic regulations for the financial sector — rules that are up to date, efficient and not excessively burdensome. But do not so tie up the financial sector with red tape that we lose a vital component of our economic system.

• Open the doors to trade. Give important friends like Colombia favored trade status rather than bow to protectionist demands. Now is the time for aggressive pursuit of opportunities for new markets for American goods, not insular retrenchment.

• Stop frightening the private sector by continuing to hold GM stock, by imposing tighter and tighter controls on compensation, and by pursuing a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Government encroachment on free enterprise is depressing investment and job creation.