Working for the Government

This is a short video by the Taxpayers Alliance in the UK, and its a pretty keen look at how the typical Englishman will pay for his taxes during the course of the day.

Mournfully, the US is none to far from this scenario, and will be rapidly approaching Eurozone tax levels in the coming years.

...That, or we just print our way into a lower deficit, with the devastating inflation that follows as a hidden tax.

GDP to US Debt Parity

The Internet Makes Us Smarter

WSJ.com: "To take a famous example, the essential insight of the scientific revolution was peer review, the idea that science was a collaborative effort that included the feedback and participation of others. Peer review was a cultural institution that took the printing press for granted as a means of distributing research quickly and widely, but added the kind of cultural constraints that made it valuable.

We are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, where digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.

Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads. It only takes a fractional shift in the direction of participation to create remarkable new educational resources."

Individuals working together on an individual level without the constraints of distance and travel time is a revolution in human history.
Like the automobile, the telephone and the printing press, the Internet has empowered the individual to maximize his or her abilities.
When the power of individuals in unleashed, each and every one of us benefits. Not just because we are more free then before, but because we reap the splendid harvest of human actions by those around us.

The future is still bright, not because of any hope offered government, but because people are more capable then ever before of using their God-Given abilities to the greatest extent possible.

95% of New Employment from Census

American Thinker: "Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month. That may sound good on the surface, but is far less than the median forecast of 536,000 jobs. But it gets worse: of the 431,000 jobs, 411,000 of them were census workers. Those are government jobs, not private sector jobs -- and are temporary. That means the private sector hired a mere 41,000 more workers in the past month.
...
Of course, this figure again illustrates (as all unemployment figures have over the last 16 months) that the drop in unemployment we were promised by Barack Obama and the Democrats (to 8%) when TARP was rushed into being has been a broken promise. "

Just another cheerful bit of news.

This is what happens when a government no longer rules by the people, it distorts truth and fakes reality to substantiate its own existence.

DHS Security Checkpoint

Video recorded on November 28th in Arizona on a East-West highway, located 40 miles north of the Mexican-American Border, on a highway that never intersects with the border.

So while the driver is not being detained, he is also not free to continue his travel along the highway. Thank you Bush for setting up this wonderful department.

1984 Consumer Protection

So, curious why the banking colusses, the Fed and the Party Lines all pushed the 'Consumer Protection' legislation this week?

CNS News: "The bill, if it becomes law, would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account.

The new bureaucracy is then allowed to “use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts … for any purpose” and may keep all records on file for at least three years and these can be made publicly available upon request."

Ah. In staggering Orwellian fashion, Newspeak and the eyes of Big Brother rear their ugly heads yet again.

So long Privacy, hello IRS audits to pay for Obamacare.

In Case You Needed Confirmation

The United States of America is in financial trouble.

Rueters: "The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.

Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.

The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record."

Here's what this really means:
To operate an increasingly hostile Federal Government, the nation is borrowing approximately $80,00,000,000.

This is more money every month then the entire Annual Nominal Gross Domestic Product of Iraq.

Unsustainable:
–adjective
not sustainable; not to be supported, maintained, upheld, or corroborated.

Solar Power: A Bright Idea. Later.

Graph of the Day for May 8, 2010

Personally, I believe solar power will be the power source for the generations to follow mine. Sunlight is nearly unlimited, free, and world wide, and the only thing required for its commercial success is making it an efficient producer of electricity.

That day will come, but only in the years to come. History shows an accelerating pace of development. Some guys like Ray Kurzweil are predicting solar dominance of the market within 20 years, and that seems reasonable for a few reasons. More people then ever before are entering the world market place, and more minds working on more problems with the aim of creating a profit can only mean good things for the consumers.

Even better, those minds will not be working solely on energy developments, but a vast array of advancements in the all encompassing marketplace, each with spin off benefits to industries and inventions along side it.

So if/when solar power becomes efficient enough to compete with the traditional sources of energy production, there will be a revolution nearly unfathomable throughout the world. Automobiles, telecommunication nodes, household production, aviation, and basketball manufacturing, all radically changed.

I don't say it enough, but the future is awesome.
But today, can we stop shoveling my heisted tax dollars into this?

Times Square: Questions that Need Answers

J.C. Arenes has a great column on the Times Square bomber in New York City, giving his top 10 questions on the current story line.

Seeing as he puts it far better then I can in my limited time, here's a preview and the link:

American Thinker: "...Now that we have established the timeline of these events, let's ask some questions that the media should have.

Question #1: How did he get back to Connecticut after leaving the Isuzu he used to get into the city on the 30^th?

Questions #2, #3, and #4 : Where did he leave the car? It couldn't have just been abandoned on the street for more than 24 hours, it would have been towed. Was it parked at a lot? If so, where is the lot's record of the car being parked there? ..."

Cameras Destroy Property

Steve Chapman at Reason: "Which raises the question: What good are cameras? The debate over them is often framed as hardheaded law enforcement types versus wimpy civil libertarians. Whether the cameras actually work in practice to help solve and prevent crime generally gets ignored.

It shouldn't. Leave aside those airy privacy concerns for the moment. Installing, maintaining, and monitoring thousands of these devices, as in New York and Chicago, costs millions of dollars. Absent cameras, that money could be spent on beat cops, patrol cars, forensic equipment, jail cells, you name it.
...
But if cameras generally don't do much to prevent crime, surely they help collar the criminals they fail to deter? Not very often. A review by the London police department calculated, "For every 1,000 cameras in London, less than one crime is solved per year." Average cost for cracking a case: $30,000.

Chicago police say the cameras have produced 4,000 arrests since 2006. That sounds like a lot, but it works out to only about 1 in 200 arrests. And for 10,000 cameras, 4,000 arrests is not really a spectacular haul.

In San Francisco, the results have been even less impressive. In the first three years after the city installed cameras, they helped police charge suspects in a grand total of six cases."

A quick review:
Funding for cameras come from taxes.
Taxes are the price citizens pay for living in a governed society.
When the government wastes money, it squanders property.

Therefore, public cameras used by police departments are the following:
A. Largely useless in solving crimes.
B. Largely useless in preventing crimes.
C. Squandering tax dollars

D. Hampering real crime prevention by sidelining limited resources.

Podcast Smörgåsbord 2: NFL Rants and Raves

After presenting This Week in Tech as the first item on the menu, I've got another one to offer.

NFL Rants & Raves: Bringing American Football to the World. Crafted with love by two brother-in-laws in Pasadena California, its the NFL from a fans perspective.

Steven is a die hard cowboys fan, Jeff picks a team at the start of every season, and that usually seals their fate for the year.

While most of their work goes entirely unpaid, this duo routinely picks over 70% correct over the course of the season, besting most paid analysts.If you're a British reader, you may have seen them in a guest spot on Sky Sports from time to time, or waltzing around the NFL games in London.

During the off-season, Steven and Jeff will put together about a show every week. The Draft, the training camps, division previews and the preseason are all covered, in anticipation of the season. But once the regular season is under way, it is without fail two shows a week, and almost without exception over two hours a show. It is entertaining while informing, rife logical and emotional opinions, bursting with a passion and a dash of sound effects.

As Jeff says, 'This is Edutainment people!'

If this isn't a word in the English language, perhaps it should be, because this show is routinely a highlight of my week. If you have even a sliver of interest in the NFL, this is well worth some time to try. It's free, after all.

Timing

April 22, Earth day!

The story I heard most on the radio today?

Oil rig exploding offshore Louisiana on Tuesday, and the Federal response to the 11 missing crew, and the 'potential environmental hazard' posed by it.

The timing is curious, because its a good story to run when trying to push an environmental agenda through a news cycle.

The blast also has interesting timing, because I would not be at all surprised if the causation of this blast was man made, and not a accident of neglect.

Coincidence's this good are always suspicious in my book.

National Sales Tax Looms Large

AP: 'After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."
For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT.
"I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn't something that the president had under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs"

Yep. It'll happen.

For the record, a Value Added Tax is nothing more then a tax on the individual, as the added cost and overhead of producing, transporting and retailing end-user products are only passed on to customers.

EU Flight Ban Results from Flawed Computer Models

FT.com: "The acknowledgement that the computer models were flawed is likely to provide ammunition for critics who believe that authorities have shown excessive caution. The closure of much of the airspace over Europe over the past five days is estimated to have cost airlines a total of $200m a day in lost revenue.
...
“It is a black box in certain areas,” Matthias Ruete, the EU’s director-general for mobility and transport, said on Monday, noting that many of the assumptions in the computer models were not backed by scientific evidence.
...
The acknowledgement that the computer models were flawed is likely to provide ammunition for critics who believe that authorities have shown excessive caution. The closure of much of the airspace over Europe over the past five days is estimated to have cost airlines a total of $200m a day in lost revenue."

To quote a man from the past, "Government is not a solution to the problem, Government is the problem". This would be comparable to my neighbors slashing my back tire every week day morning 5 minutes before I go to work, to keep my from getting in a car wreck on the way to work.
Am I safe from a wreck? Yes, yes I am.
Am I benefiting and happy due to this unasked for salvation offered by my neighbor?
NO! I cannot reach work!

Who votes this style of government into office?

Voters. Us.

Fortunately, the US side of the aviation system is a bit more free then the EU, for now anyways.

"“If you take the situation across the Atlantic, there the advice would probably be: don’t fly over the volcano. Otherwise, it is up to you to take the precautions necessary,” Mr Ruete said.

While the US system leaves air carriers with the responsibility to determine whether or not it is safe to fly “the American model is not a model of less safety”, he said. “You just need to look at the statistics to see that.”"

Side note: Wasn't it the computer models based on flawed data that were pointing us to make solutions to global warming?

Relentless Incompetence Scattered Across EU

FT.com: "Lufthansa, which says it is losing €25m ($34m, £22m) a day from the crisis, said it was “scandalous” for authorities to have imposed the ban on what appeared to be limited data from computer images, rather than flights testing safety.

Dubai’s Emirates airline said it was losing $10m a day, in part because of the accommodation and meals it is providing for about 6,000 stranded passengers.

“If this continues, then there won’t be any airliners left in Europe apart from Aeroflot,” said Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, which is less affected by the disruption.

Only 4,000 of the 24,000 flights that would normally operate on a Sunday across Europe were made, said Eurocontrol, the air-safety agency, which estimated that by Sunday night, more than 63,000 flights would have been cancelled.

“With 313 airports paralysed at the moment, the impact is already worse than 9/11,” said Olivier Jankovec, director-general of the airport group, ACI Europe. “More than 6.8m passengers have been affected so far and European airports have lost close to €136m."

And from Reuters:
"The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates airlines are losing $200 million a day from the shutdown, which has caused chaos well beyond the immediate European airspace closed. Most airlines will be uninsured for this loss, although insurer Munich Re said on Friday it would consider offering cancellation insurance in future should the crisis produce demand."

This humble blogger asks; Why is this ban in place?

Here's how this scenario should work:
Let them fly.

If the skies are to dangerous and clogged with the Ash of Eyjafjallajokull, then the Airlines will not fly. The risk of loosing a plane in a cloud of smoke far outweighs the benefits of making just another flight.
However, if the skies are clear enough to fly in, then there is business to do and money to make, and the flights will take place when and where they are needed.

This is not an overly complicated situation, until the government muddles in. After the government takes command of the situation, there is suddenly an expectation of safety at the hands of an agency, and the bureaucracy begins to play a game of C.Y.A. as the days grind on.

With no loss of revenue, and the only risk to the agency being flights leaving too early, with an unreasonable expectation of safety, Because the airlines liability has been removed, with the responsibility for safety falling upon the shoulders of an agency, the delay for returning to flights will be longer then necessary. As a result, millions lost.

But this money is not lost by the hands of the EU, it is losses born by the airlines themselves, wallowing in the mandates of a government that has no monetary liability at stake.

With such a set up, nothing but bureaucratic inefficient incompetence can be expected.

There is no end in sight for this kind of unmitigated inefficiency and market intervention, and only further economic harm can result. Don't be fooled by believing this is limited only to Europe, such actions as this harm the developing nations the most. Agriculture is the most time sensitive product shipped globally, As the bountiful harvest of Africa, Asia and South America rots upon the loading ramps, the fascist of Europe dither onward into statism.

I take no pleasure in saying this, but the incompetence of man governing each other is a universal feature of society, and limited to no single society.

Tax Day

Our Government, Pushing Grants

Hat Tip to an excellent post at Grumpy Old Men by W. B. Picklesworth for an excellent post.

A preview:

"Just like with credit card companies, the federal government is trying to create dependency. Actually, there is another group of people that operates like this,... drug dealers. "Here, try this. You'll like it. It's free." The thing is, it isn't free. It's very, very expensive. Notice the pretty people pictures? 'Going to the government for a handout is sexy!' This is troubling."

Podcast Smorgasbord 1: This Week in Tech

The thought occurred to me while I was listening to a podcast on my recent overland journey through the heart of Texas, that the shows I listen to can have a profound affect on what I produce for this blog. The ideas, concepts, discussions, news and chatter that I crave in podcasts all carry into my every day life. As such, I'm going to start a run linking to and showcasing the podcasts I enjoy.

To built a framework of understanding for ya'll, here's what podcasts do for me. I listen to about 10-14 hours of podcasts a week, along with 3 to 4 hours a week of whatever audible.com audiobook I'm churning though.

Driving, working out at the gym, mowing the yard, relaxing, playing a video games and cooking are all actions that use my hands, but largely leave my mind open and able to think, and I like to take advantage of that by listening to audio programming. Its both relaxing and stimulating, and largely commercial free, and is a wonderful medium.

I'm starting with TWiT, This Week in Tech. It is the longest running podcast on my computer, and has had staying power over the years. TWiT is a once weekly panel show hosted by Leo Laporte, a computer guy with personality and an unyielding excitement for the next stage in technology. Joining him for about 2 hours to discuss the tech news of the week is a rotating cast of technology journalists, columnists, and technology pioneers.

The show is focused primarily on developments on the Internet, but subjects range far and wide from cars to cell phones, batteries to Jupiter, HD Video to Intel processors. Its an eccentric and entertaining ensemble, and keeps me coming back week after week. I may not listen to every show in a year, but TWiT is the show I eagerly reach for to stay current with the big news in the tech world.

While its political leanings are generally left leaning, it remains remarkably a-poltical, and I recommend it without hesitation.

The Brilliance of Georgia's 4th

If you haven't seen this clip of Congressman Hank Johnson's stellar performance in a House hearing on stationing an additional 8,000 US military personal in Guam, let this piece of action thrill your hair follicles.



Ladies and Gentlemen, Hank Johnson of Georgia's 4th District.
This year, the American people will pay $169,300 to Mr. Johnson for his upstanding efforts at upholding the constitution.

If this stellar district sounds familiar, it should. The voters there are responsible for electing one particular Congresswoman of note, not for her unrivaled legislative prowess, nor for her supreme acts of statesmanship, but for vastly different reasons.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Cynthia McKinney.
2008 Green Party Presidential Nominee, US Congresswoman for 8 years, and one noted moment of assault on a police officer while serving in office.

People of Georgia's 4th District, what's wrong with you?

Petraeus for President?

There's a column in the Telegraph, a newspaper hailing from across the pond calling for US General David Petraeus to run for President.

It's actually a pretty thoughtful piece, and made me start to ponder, could Petraeus be a new Ike?

Then do a quick image search for the two, and the results made me cringe.

Whats going on with all the brass on Petraeus? It looks like a bad movie prop for a banana republic dictator.

David, while I believe you have no ambition to run, please, change the way you're wearing the uniform.

Side Note: Palin/Petraeus could be a disaster waiting in the wings for the right.