8. June 2011 by Publius.

Much has been made about the divisions in the American polity. Pleas have been made, “Can’t we all just get along?” Yet on issue after issue, the American people split 50/50. It seems amazing - how can people be so different on every single issue?Well, it’s inevitable actually. If opinion isn’t split - it’s not an issue. 99% of the people agree that murder is a crime, so we don’t discuss it. 99% of people don’t care whether other people eat carrots, so we don’t discuss it.It is only those issues upon which we are divided that discussions take place. It is inevitable. It is a law of behavior that I am calling The Principle of Political Division. It states that only items not decided on will center political discussion. It is the principle that underlies the movement of the Overton Window.

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3. June 2011 by ropsnobi.

The definition of bankrupt is that you are unable to meet your legally derived financial obligations. The United States is one decision away from that condition.

We owe more than $14 trillion dollars. The government’s income from taxes is roughly $700 billion dollars. When the interest rate on U.S. Treasury bonds hits 5% we will be officially bankrupt.

The government is quite aware of this, which is why they have been printing money as fast as the presses will turn in order to inflate the currency. However, this has worried world governments about the stability of the dollar. This has already resulted in discussions about replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. As our government continues to inflate our currency, these worries will grow.

When the dollar is replaced (most likely by the yuan) we will lose the powers which result from being the reserve currency. This includes setting the interest rates for most of the world’s econonomies.

Once the government can no longer keep interest rates artificially low, expect them to immediately go to roughly 7%.

And then we’re bankrupt.

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1. October 2010 by Publius.

What is? Plastic, by boy, plastic! The question is, “Are reusable plastic grocery bags a good idea?”

First studies have shown that the sale of disposable plastic bags goes up by a factor of four in jurisdictions that require the use of reusable bags. Why is that? It’s because people are not stupid. They had all these bags they brought home from the grocery store and they used them. They used them for garbage bags, they used them for lunch bags, they used them to pick up dog poop. When they no longer had those bags available, they had to buy bags. The interesting point is that since the bags people buy are heavier than the bags the grocery stores gave away, there was a net increase in the amount (and quality) of plastic going into our landfills. And, oh yeah, paper bag usage also increases with the concomittant economic and environmental costs.

Now, it turns out that using reusable bags can make you sick unless you wipe it out with a chlorine containing wipe (and what is the economic and environmental cost of that?)

 http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/25181234/detail.html

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1. October 2010 by Publius.

One of the Democrats’ litanies is “Look - it’s not us - the Republicans spend money like crazy, too!”

Republican presidents have averaged a deficit of 1.19% of GDP.

Democrat presidents have averaged a deficit of 3.8% of GDP.

Years with Republican control of the House (where spending originates) averages 0.64% GDP.

Years with Democrat control of the House (where spending originates) averages 2.58% GDP.

Data is for the period 1900-2010. If we postulate that Republicans are not angels, where does that leave the Democrats? (Hint: you’re getting warmer…)

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1. October 2010 by Publius.

The rate of imprisonment in the United States is now four times the historic average, and seven times the average rate in Europe(amacad). About 20% of all Americans of African descent born since 1960 will spend some time in prison.

Why is this ignored? Is it because in polite society we just don’t talk about those people? Or is it more because we are too busy watching the other hand? I believe it is more the latter. The government keeps us so busy defending ourselves from its economic depredations that we don’t see it imprisoning us.

If the problem were that Americans were just too violent and had to be locked up for the good of society, you might be able to make a case for the status quo. But roughly 2/3 of our prison population is there because of what is called a non-violent offense. The cost of keeping these people there runs us about as much as we spend on education - and this is just the direct cost of incarceration.

Lets try to come up with some estimate of the indirect cost. There are 670,000 non-violent offenders. If 1/2 of them got a job, that would be 335,000 people working. (And don’t try to say there aren’t jobs for those people - if they were out in society they would be creating a demand for services that would create jobs - that’s how an economy works.) If their average salary was only $10,000. That would be $3.5 billion pumped into our economy instead of draining $50 billion out.

And this is just the economics. One out of 28 children in this country have at least one parent incarcerated. The cost of this to our future society is incalculable.

So… what to do? It’s simple. Eliminate victimless crimes. End the drug war - I don’t care whether you declare it won or lost. And eliminate public sector unions. Prison guards and teachers have the same agenda.

http://www.amacad.org/projects/incarceration.aspx

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2. September 2010 by Publius.

The Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C. on 8/28 has sparked quite a bit of rancor in the arguments on crowd size. I would like to supply a bit of math to just point out how much idiocy is out there. Forget about being angry on this - it’s just a difficult job.I estimate that the area covered by the crowd is 1928644 square feet, just shy of 50 acres. This is based on just the picture of the crowd around the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and 17th Street. There were people outside this area, but I have no way of including them as I can’t find any pictures. My estimate of the area is based on a few minutes work on google maps. It is a very rough estimate, but since 2 significant figures is adequate, this should suffice. By the way, I did subtract the area of the reflecting pool.So if you want to believe the CBS estimate 0f 87,000, it would mean that every person had an area of more than 22 square feet, or that people were standing nearly 5-1/2 feet apart. Not reasonable - look at the pictures.If there were 500,000 people, they would be standing just over 2 feet apart - not likely.250,000 people leaves them standing just over 3 feet apart.It is amazing, is it not, how slight differences in density create hugely different estimates of total numbers, is it not?So I think that anybody who claims to know anything about this is blowing smoke out of their ass.What you can say about the crowd that Glenn Beck drew to the Mall is that it has to be the cleanest, nicest bunch of people on the face of the planet. Did you see the pictures of all the trash left behind? No, you didn’t. It looked like the Mall was cleaner after they left than before they came.No matter how many, or how few, people were there, they obviously knew something about honor.

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7. June 2010 by Publius.

Who will watch the watchers themselves?

The sneaky bastards… I need to draw your attention to House Resolution 1416. Introduced by a Democrat from New York - Marcia Fudge (an eerily appropriate name), it seeks to remove many of the actions of the Office of Congressional Ethics from public scrutiny. If they dismiss an action taken against a member of congress (even by a tie vote) the records would be kept private. If an action is dismissed by  the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, the records would be sealed.

It also limits (as I read it) the ways that action can be taken. For example - no action can be taken within 60 days of an election in which the member is taking part. But if action is not taken within 7 days of receiving information, it cannot be taken at all. Hmmm. Can’t act too fast, can’t act too slow. Got to act just right.

Our government is not supposed to be a fairy tale. Maybe instead of the latin title, I should have used a reference to L. Frank Baum’s Oz series. Ignore the committee behind the curtain. Or perhaps even better: These are not the crooks you are looking for.

A word to Congress - If we could trust you in the first place, you wouldn’t need an Ethics Committee.

Please help defeat H. Res 1416.

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14. May 2010 by Publius.

Where did the blog name come from? That’s easy -from the 10^th amendment.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It is, without doubt, the most often violated amendment from the Bill of Rights. We have let it get to the point that when the Speaker of the House is asked by a reporter to point out the part of the U.S. Constitution that authorizes the Federal Government to do something, her answer is “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”

No, Ms Pelosi, he was not kidding. We are not kidding. We are sick and tired of you running roughshod over the Constitution. We are sick and tired of you and your cronies breaking the law at every turn. You deserve to be put in jail for the things you have done to our country. Unfortunately that will be impossible. Each and every one of you, however, should be removed from office by the electorate.

If there is any justice at all, this will be your last term in office.

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3. May 2010 by Publius.

Many people have been making that statement - often just out of frustration and anger at the attitude of our “helpful” government officials. But I want to specificly address the high-handed way Washington handled the Chrysler and GM seizures.

It certainly seemed wrong to a lot of people at the time. It was not only wrong - it was illegal.

The case that I believe governs is Denny v. Bennett, 128 U.S. 489 (1888). It dealt with exactly this situation - seizure of company assets after a default and the equitable distribution thereof. The court held that the conversion of property of the debtor could not dissolve the obligations of prior contracts.

Looks like the Chrysler bond holders and others should be able to sue Washington for wrongful conversion and win billions.

Go for it.

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1. May 2010 by Publius.

For the last 3 years I have been privately predicting that gasoline is going to hit $6.00. Today I finally heard somebody on TV say $5.00/gallon this summer. That’s not the magic number. It will go to $6 - our government will see to that.

They will use a mixture of incompetence and policy to accomplish that. Why? Well, the incompetence comes naturally to them. The policy derives from a spreadsheet I ran a couple of years ago that I think they have duplicated. I wanted to buy a new car, but I needed to justify it to myself (and my chief financial officer), so… a spreadsheet showing how much money we could save by purchasing a hybrid. A problem soon surfaced - hybrids don’t make sense if gas is less than $6.

There are techno-ideologues in Washington that are pushing the green agenda and are perfectly willing to sacrifice the economic health of our country on the altar of alternative (altar-native?) energy.

So a good stock tip would be to invest in the Cariola Wheelbarrow company. When fuel costs rise to ridiculous levels - we will be forced back to 19th century technology. Frankly, I don’t know whether Cariola is publicly traded, but even if you can’t buy stock, you can get a heavy duty wheelbarrow and be ready for the Fundamental Reformation of America.

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