The Rusted Musket

The awesome Tax Foundation recently published a “Facts & Figures Handbook” which I’ve attached below.

I highly encourage everyone to read it, or at least glance through it. Some things such as cigarette and “spirits” tax were very interesting. For example in Washington state there is a $26 tax per gallon of hard liquor, whereas Wyoming and New Hampshire have none. Its a lot cheaper to smoke in South Carolina than it is in Rhode Island as there is only $0.07 tax on the former and $3.46 on the latter (that is per 20 pack). Gas tax is highest in Cali and cheapest in Alaska. Contrary to what you may think Alaska has the highest Per Capita debt and Tennessee the lowest with California in the middle of the pack. Shows you what a better run government with less crappy programs can do…

Anywho, check out the file. It is well worth reading. Just make sure to look at the whole tax burden picture.

Facts and Figures

Suppose your job is student loans, you’re employed at a small fry lending institution, or perhaps a larger lender like Great Lakes. Either way, you’d better start looking for a new job because tucked into the Health care bill was another bill installing the Federal Government’s Department of Education as sole originator and collector of student loans; a 100 billion dollar business annually, making it one of our largest banks! Ironically, until last week the government run Direct Loan programs role, upon creation, was as a second fiddle of sorts to private lenders like the Federal Family Education Loan Program, or, FFELP, which had been in existence since 1966. Now, through legislative fiat, the second fiddle is big fiddle, just one more thing the private sector couldn’t be trusted with.

In all fairness, the Direct Loan people say we’ll be saving money by cutting out middle men, ie. the banks, and streamlining the whole receiving and paying affair, making the system more convenient. But does convenience make what was done here right? The way I’m seeing it, government now collects the interest monies private lenders used to. Even better, the Government can loan money at lower rates than the private sector but still choose to run their rates at private sector levels. Can you say profit margin! Can you say advantage! Those cheeky fellows!

Actually, that sounds like a pretty dirty trick played by the Gov on the private sector now doesn’t it?

Image Credit: whitehouse.gov

Last night, the largest legislative bill in my life was passed and I need to say something, anything. If I’m not mistaken, that’s also how we chased the need for health care reform this season; as something, anything. We’ve become the fools Plato refered to that prefer verbal diarrhea of the mouth and political diarrhea of the legislation. We prefer the fool who speaks because he has to say something over the wise man who speaks because he has something to say.

Sure, greater amounts of candy in the Easter basket, or a health care overhaul that gives the gift of health care to all feels great. I fear though it feels great the same way maxing out your credit card feels great.  In all seriousness, does anyone really think the same government who couldn’t keep Medicare financially afloat for more than forty years, with people who paid into it for decades and decades, is now going to not only keep Medicare afloat, but another, larger program, a program including thirty million people who haven’t paid into it?

I wonder what national health care bankruptcy will look like? Well, we’ve already got the example of Medicare, forty years, maybe less, and regrettably, we’ll probably know…

Photo Credit: AP

Would you ever buy a car without first knowing how much it was going to cost? Of course not, stupid question. Alas, we routinely walk into hospitals and partake of their procedures and products without having a clue as to how much their procedures and products cost. We’ll send you the bill, a bill which usually mimics the price of a new car, sometimes much more so.

This lack of common sense cost transparency reminds me of that parlor game where you have a peanut hidden under one of three cups; quickly move around the cups and guess where the peanut is. Guessing where the price will be after insurance and hospital finish manipulating their “cups” is no better. This situation, could in part, be remedied by a posted price index of services. I’d be totally okay with the folks in Washington forcing the hospital/insurers hand in this regard. Iron out the costs, put these online, empower the patient!

Once again, the car dealership scenario of buying a car, driving it home, then, for the first time, becoming aware if its cost! Nonsensical, preposterous, why do we the people tolerate this very same bewildering model in heath care?

Air America, Al Franken’s and Rachel Maddow’s alternative to Rush will be shutting down this next week Monday because really, the media was saturated enough with identical ideology easily found on MSNBC, CBS, and ABC. Ironically, this could hurt conservative talk radio in the long run as the polar opposite liberal viewpoint has disappeared, whereby making the possibility of tantalizing options such as “The Fairness Doctrine“, a counter weight. Because of this, I, along with other Conservatives lament the lose of this outlet for professional Liberals.

If only Air America had followed a format similar to NPR maybe they’d still be in business. The bottom line is this, despite its Liberal bent, NPR is so well produced that even me, a well versed Conservative, can still enjoy it…

Last week, a Professor of mine found himself in a situation that provoked an interesting rant, I think the irony of said rant is fantastic, so here’s the story. It was the beginning of class, and the Professor in question wanted to erase the dry erase board, a simple enough thing. But lo and behold, the classroom contained not a single ounce of spritz solution, a four dollar liquidy substance needed in order to easily clean the dry erase board. So, while he was in the middle of trying to eradicate last hours teaching points, he turns to the class, and in a serious/crotchety tone says, “This is what budget cuts do.” Here’s the irony; it just so happens, that immediately to the right of the Professor, and the budget cut induced hard to erase dry erase board, is a brand new, installed that semester, SMARTboard which cost between 3,000-5,000 buckeroos. Oh the irony…

Thumbnail Credit: worthingtondirect.com

So a US senator had a very interesting comment about government universal health care in this AP article:

Sanders, an independent and socialist, said his approach is the only one “which eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies.”

You see his comment is rather interesting because as I was reading it I could have swore he was talking about the federal government, specifically medicare and social security… Very interesting that he seems to think a government run option will be so efficient and waste-less, I mean just look at their excellent record deficit and astronomical debt, or the broken and nearly un-fixable social security debacle… Yep, lets let the government run our health care.

So if you’ve been following the news you’ve probably heard about the story about a leading global warming research unit’s data breach. Basically someone released a few thousand internal emails from the organization (its not clear whether it was a hacker or a internal person) and they have verified that these are legitimate emails. Funny thing is, all these emails discredit all their findings because it is hinted that they manipulated data to serve their uses…

Hopefully they will be brought under scrutiny from this and that people will take a hard look at the whole global warming debacle.

Here are two articles that explain more in depth:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/01/climategate-scandal-science-obama-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html

According to this article the University system of California is raising college rates by more than 30%, which means that college costs have more than doubled in the last decade. Really makes you wonder what happened and where all the money goes. One student had this to say: “I think it’s outrageous,” Moody said of the fee increase. “They’ve already cut out a lot of our majors and programs. I’d rather they cut some of their (administrator) salaries.”  and I totally agree. Why don’t they cut the excessive teacher benefits and pay? I’ve often thought of going to teach for a State University because they get it easy… TAs do a lot of the work and they get summers off, great benefits and a rather high wage to boot… Sound like a bum’s dream job (okay I’m being a little harsh, but teacher’s wages are never looked at and/or reduced instead they cut programs and raise costs).

Just when I thought the California government couldn’t get more stupid I read this… The gist of the story is that the divinely inspired CA government is dictating down to a T what people can and can’t do. Now you can’t buy “power hungry” TVs (well not effective till Jan 2011). Most TVs are actually under the 2011 limit, but wait it gets better, they have to be even more efficient by 2013, which means you can basically kiss Plasmas and many LCDs goodbye, hello LED TVs… This crap legislation is just that, crap, what the hell are these people thinking? Fix your economy and build more powerplants. Don’t force people to do things like this. This is setting a scary precedent, I mean what is next? Probably cars I’m guessing, you won’t be able to drive a car longer than 60 inches or something like that, or they will all have to use CLFs, or buy solar panels for your house.

I’m just speechless about this… Some of the comments on the article are very worth reading, like one person comparing this to the book 1984….