WA Post figures out the education revolution

Steven Pearlstein: Mark them tardy to the revolution

Basically the basic pitch I have given for years.

Good idea

More than fifteen leading technology companies — including some of the largest semiconductor companies — have joined forces to speed the adoption of computer vision capabilities in electronic products. The ability of machines to see and understand their environments — what we call “embedded vision” — promises to transform the electronics industry with products that are more intelligent and aware of their environments, and to create significant new markets for electronic equipment and components. A new consortium, called the Embedded Vision Alliance (www.embedded-vision.com), will enable the proliferation of embedded vision technology by providing design engineers with information, practical know-how, and industry standards.Vision Central

I actually started a newsletter a few years back, pushing this idea. I am still on most of the mailing lists for embedded computer vision as a result. The main result will be an object protocol that smart cameras can use to communicate partial and complete visual field analysis.

Total government spending and receipts

Ratio of receipts and spending to GDP.  For total government 

Bruce Bartlett wants to talk on the topic.  The chart, I think, is for total government, state, local and federal. (FRED hides their definitions pretty well, so I could have an error)

The chart tells me the Reagan is a big government welfarist, Bubba  Clinton a small government libertarian.  And Obama is so far out that he doesn't fit anywhere, he is clueless. The gap we now face is unsustainable, meaning that no amount of fake Keynesian theory is going to prevent a big battle in Congress.

Hillary, clueless delusional

Limousines, the very symbol of wealth and excess, are usually the domain of corporate executives and the rich. But the number of limos owned by Uncle Sam increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of records by iWatch News.

Most of the increase was recorded in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

She has been running up the state department budget ever since she took office. This is what I mean by entanglement. On the web, we watched this for two years, Hillary running up the budget for state department goodies. On the web we say, "See Hillary run up the budget for state department goodies." She is completely unaware that we watch her and criticize her.

Going to DC makes one an impossible idiot, operating in a 1940s environment while the world watches on Internet.  Information technology makes much of DC useless, and will cause a restructuring.

Illinois debt per household

Rutherford [Illinois Treasurer]  first calculated that the pols who run Illinois have amassed nearly $200 billion in debt. That includes some $45 billion in bond debt, $8 billion in unpaid bills and $140 billion in unfunded pension and health care benefits for public employees. Every household in Illinois owes $42,000. Don't get us started on your share of the debts run up by your profligate local and federal governments. Chicago Tribune

I can add in the share of federal debt owed by Illinois households. Depending on the household size, the average is probably close to $160,000; making each Illinois household owe, directly, some $200,000 in debt for government goods promised from their paychecks. With current interest rates, that is about $8,000-12,000 per year in debt service per household each year. 

Simple minded economists

Given that fact the long-term rate has to be above the short term rate, short term rates may move up, but they can’t go down. A similar situation was witnessed in Japan with their zero interest rate policy, where they maintained a positive yield curve through the decade.  The Denouement

Short term rates are not stuck at bottom, the Fed could simply disappear which it has done off and on in our history. Or the Fed could become a useless relic while we move on to a restructured banking system.

Economists often think that an equation defines history, not the other way around.

Jerry Brown hoisted on his own petard

In the latest setback to Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to close one-quarter of California's state park system to save money, 16 of the parks he is proposing to shutter cannot legally be closed, federal officials said Friday, because they have received federal money that requires parks to remain open. Mercury News

Anybody notice that government responsibility gets shifted from the level of government where is should be to the higher Great Exogenous? Every time voters try to fix something at one level of government, the Keynesians have some fix in at higher level.

I guess Jerry and Babs didn't get permission from Chuck Schumer in Washington DC. When Chuck is done investigating the car rental companies, he might turn his attention to California predicament. I will ask my 1/5 of a Senator Babs to go begging to that guy Reid from Nevada for permission.

Merkel won't survive this

BERLIN—Germany is considering dropping its push for an early rescheduling of Greek bonds in order to facilitate a new package of aid loans for Greece, according to people familiar with the matter.

Berlin's concession that it must lend Greece more money, even without burden-sharing by bondholders in the short term, would help Europe overcome its impasse over Greece's funding needs before the indebted country runs out of cash in mid-July.WSJ

Keynesians may think that continual subsidies from one nation to another is fine and dandy, but the subsidizers in this case work hard through cold winters and garner a surplus. The subsidizers also vote, and generally vote not to send their paychecks down south.

Florida is short two Senators and should join the rebellion

27 Congressional districts and only two senators. They have a Facebook page:

South Florida should secede & become the 51st state.

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida voters, Rick Scott is now one of the country’s most unpopular governors, a dubious feat after only four months in office.

Also I added a Facebook page for the California break up

Jerry Brown did not find an extra $9 billion

Calwatch and growth in California jobs:

JOB HIRES AND SEPARATIONS IN WESTERN U.S. (BLS, April 2011)

JOB HIRES (numbers in thousands 1,000’s)
3/2010	10/2010	11/2010	12/2010	1/2011	2/1011	3/2011	TOTAL
913	839	883	806	939	862	830	6,072
Rate	2.9%	3.1%	2.8%	3.3%	3.3%	3.0%
JOB SEPARATIONS (numbers in thousands – 1,000’s)
924	782	829	759	817	857	866	5,834
3.2%	2.7%	2.9%	2.7%	2.9%	2.9%	3.0%

Jerry is simply using the old smoke and mirrors.  California has been driven into the ditch, mainly by Brown himself and his allies in DC.  The bond market is laughing at his latest attempt at sorcery.

Bitcoins still rising

Bitcoins, Notice a difference? We invest billions on elitists to spend our money, but in the end some guy from Japan beats them all with a few hundred lines of code.

Belt Bombing is the Pakistani National sport

Anti-Christian violence continues in Pakistan and police are not pursuing the perpetrators, according to news reports. CSN

Not just anti-Christian. Pakistani's belt bomb Sunnis, Shia, Mothers, family members, our military, their military, and pet dogs. They just like belt bombing, their children even practice the sport.

Jared Bernstein, Keynesian, give passing reference to democracy

 I totally agree that we mustn’t let “political realism” shut down our thinking on the best way out of this mess. Nutcase Blog

No, Jared must find a way to get around the pesky idea that we might like democracy more than we like elitism. I don't get why some idiot like Bernstein should have elite powers the voters do not have. I will look up his bio and see what his claim to elite status is based upon. Maybe, like Brad, he has a government job guaranteed by the Marin County Mafia.

Here is is:

Jared Bernstein is an American economist who previously serving as Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden in the Obama Administration.[1] Wiki

So that's it! We should give up democracy and acept elitism because this guy served for some guy from Rhode Island in Washington DC! How does that help California? California needs fewer economists like Brad and Jared demanding that money be sent to Washington.  We have enough fascist elitism as it is.

Unions claim we voluntarily gave up our right to vote

“As we have said since the very beginning, the city [Costa Mesa]did not have legal authority to take this action. The council majority has had a series of opportunities to avoid litigation, but they ignored repeated public and private warnings and instead irresponsibly chose to send layoff notices unlawfully to half of the city's workers." CalCity

Public Sector Unions claim that the Dills Act removes the necessity of voters rights. This is what Jerry Brown and the Marin Country mafia have brought to California.

Why are we an optimum currency zone?

What's called a "debt crisis" is increasingly a political and social crisis. Already, unemployment is 14.1 percent in Greece, 14.7 percent in Ireland, 11.1 percent in Portugal and 20.7 percent in Spain. Europe at the Abyss

California has that level of unemployment. Europe has demonstrations and riots? We have riots that put Europe to shame. European wars?  We have civil wars.

America is no more the optimum currency zone than is Europe. Not political union but political delusion in DC.

America's socialist banking network

Henderson follows Mankiw on an NPR about our Congress offering unlimited insurance and subsidies via the federal government.

This is the reason that Texas and California need autonomy, our taxpayers cannot be responsible for shenanigans by the Delusional DC crew.  Texas and California need a federal tax revolt, a rebellion against DC.

Santa Clarita Signal speaks for California

A little town in the mountains north of LA has a paper, the Santa Clarita Signal:

But government employee unions are not so high on our list. They are primarily functions of political processes, not economic ones.

Public-employee unions do not compete with anyone in the marketplace. Their value and cost cannot be measured as a function of the marketplace.

Unlike private-sector unions, which negotiate with business men and women invested in their companies’ futures, public-employee unions’ “adversaries” on the other side of the table are elected officials, who have no hesitation giving the people’s money away in exchange for votes and contributions.

Hence it is no surprise that the strongest lobbies today in Sacramento are public-employee unions.

To see what’s going on here, we don’t need to go to taxpayers associations and other related groups who rant about these things. A visit to the correctional officers association’s own website offers open evidence of the influence they have with the people they are negotiating with.

“Of the 107 candidates endorsed by CCPOA this (past) election, 104 were victorious.” Or as union president Mike Jimenez says, “We’ve had a long-term relationship with (Gov.) Jerry Brown.”

What does that mean? For one thing, it means that of the $7 million that CCPOA contributed in last fall’s election, $2 million went to Jerry Brown.

Pretty nice pay off, big return for a lifetime of anti-democratic activity from the Dills Act. Jerry Browns entire career built around the principle of extracting political cash from taxpayers behind closed doors. I do not see how taxpayers can morally be expected to pay for this.

Vegas Autbot Convention month

We will need a whole month, each year in Vegas, for trials, products shows, and standards meetings.  What goes on in July?  I like July, starting this year.  Let's have the autobot convention on the same month as the great oil crash, July, each year for a month in Vegas.  This year, we open up streets for Johnny Cab trials. Lane guided and higher speed buses, that kind of stuff.

With the new law, the convention bureau could schedule autobot street trials. Deliverbots, trailerbots, tethering technology, comm protocols, vision, especially pedestrian detect.  We could see actual street runs through town.

Which government multipliers are greater than one?

Claimants claim a constant, the constant of Great Exogeneosity, though when pressed concede a time varying neutral.

In California, county governments dare not hire, each new hire adds a shocking increase in long term liability. Sounds like a consensus multiplier of less than one.  The regional variation in the Ceridian convinces me that the more DC spends, the poorer is Pacifica.

Government is whacked, it is government structure itself, DC to the county street sweeper. It itself must time vary, and time vary it won't. Not whacked enough for revolution and overthrow, but whacked enough for a serious, non constitutional change, a rebellion of the west. A call to reapportionment, a call for government, actually, regional autonomy via the Senate fix.  With the powers left unto us, and a break up of large states, we get a fair Senate and regional governments. 

If I could buy some lane space for a month

I would buy 10 miles of I-15, just outside of Vegas, then have mass mover trials. Which manufacturer can move 200 people, 10 miles at 140 MPH.  Offer a $5 million dollar first place prize.

Project construction costs are 10 miles of curbing, to keep out human drivers.  At most, 12 feet of lane space is all that is needed. DOT of both states could set it up and make a profit on media rights to the trials.  With the gasoline shortage, we should have underutilized lane space.  Look at the people boom in Vegas for the week of the trials.

This is what moves Nevada, mainly Vegas and Reno.  The idea of being the Jetson playground, and getting mass transportation much faster and cheaper. LA is a huge market, and the autobots can suddenly shorten the transaction time between LA and Vegas, a dream come true.  For California, it is a big boost to the value of desert sprawl, adding price to all the desert housing developments when very high speed people movers cruise around.

Let the human drive the robot

Reading the latest comments on the driverless car issue.  People want to drive their cars.

Great, let them drive their car!  They can drive it from the web, they can get inside and drive it from their tablet.  We can have optional steering heels.  They can blindfold themselves, drop their pants and drive it with their butt.

Give the car owner what he wants, more control over the robotics.  Our, the autobot industry, main advantage is that robots are safe all the time, no matter what. So expand the methods by which the car owner can direct his bot.

More corruption in Fresno County

The Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission finds itself in hot water with the state of California and the city of Fresno for, among other things, apparently double-billing taxpayers at least $778,000 for a recreation center that still isn't finished. Fresno Bee

The story is complicated because so many political crooks stole money too many times along the path between state, city and independent commissions. Readers should just accept that California under the Brown political organization has been and always will be a corrupt snake pit.

Elmendorf, liar and deceit

The United States faces a fundamental disconnect between the services that people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.Doug vie Reinhardt

Doug is either a deceptive liar or unable to count. Once again, we do not have a democracy in the Senate. That is the core cause of the disconnect. The proper response is for voters to push for default, restructure central government and run the anti-democrats, like Doug, out of DC. Only then will California be free of tyranny.

Romney, Republican Communist

Romney in Iowa: "I Support the Subsidy of Ethanol"
HT Mish

Looking for sticky wages?

Those pushing the Keynesian narrative need to provide us with some more explicit evidence about wage and price stickiness as it relates to recent events.New Monetariasm

Look no further than public sector unions, its the thing we are dealing with at the moment.

Simple minded economists

Stephanie Kelton PHD victim of this equation:

[1] Y = C + I + G, where:


Y = GDP = National Income
C = Aggregate Consumption Expenditure
I = Aggregate Investment Expenditure
G = Aggregate Government Expenditure

If you want a smooth G then economists are going to need an army to keep California, Illinois, NY and Texas in check. These are the major funding states for Washington DC, and the people in these states do not go around with one G in their head.

Orange County Register: Jerry Brown adds uncertainty

Editorial: Brown's budget fraught with uncertainty
Bloated expectations about sound budgeting:

Another of Mr. Brown's budgetary accomplishments, if it can be called that, is that he has managed to increase spending beyond even what he intended to spend, despite the 2011-12 fiscal year budget remaining $9 billion in the red, even as he simultaneously laments the necessity of paying down $34 billion of the state's outstanding bonded debt.

Leads to uncertainty in local governmet:

The state's independent Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor says that because Mr. Brown's budget "is based on the approval of voters for key provisions [it] can create huge uncertainty at the state and local government levels."

So what? Who cares?
Seriously, this is not rocket science and we are capable of going without new debt for a while.

Photos from home

A slide show of Fresno California poor people.

How much future do we put in government

In America a family of three has $120,000 invested in government

Debt Defying Senate to work through the holiday

WASHINGTON) Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, has threatened to block the Memorial Day recess for lack of a budget.

 Sessions said in a Politico report in Washington Thursday he would block the holiday adjournment "as long as the Democrat majority refused to produce a public budget and refused to allow the Budget Committee to work on one." KWTX

When the debt crisis hits,the legislature has to budget week by week.

A little too much democracy

The bill was authored by Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) and would mandate that cities incur the costs of holding elections to authorize the contracting out of library services to an outside party. CalCityNews

Public sector union pulling stunts to stop outsourcing of libraries. Libraries are a lost cause, they are being replaced by little windows on our smart phones.

Update:

The orgiastic hatred against Israeli intellectualism has recently raised its ugly head in the placid Scotland, in the form of banning Israeli books from public libraries. A provincial council near Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire, where the trade union has already pursued a policy of boycotting Israel, will ban Israeli books from local libraries.Opinion

The actions of public sector unions are fascist.

English Debt Disaster

Over the past decade, the British economy has been critically dependent on private borrowing and public spending. Now that these drivers have disappeared – private borrowing has evaporated, and the era of massive public spending expansion is over – the outlook for growth is exceptionally bleak.

Sectors which depend upon either private borrowing or public spending now account for at least 58% of economic output. These sectors are now set to contract rather than expand, which renders aggregate economic growth implausible. And, without growth, there may be no way of avoiding a debt disaster. Financial Times

Minnesota, America's median state

5 million people, eight Congressional districts.  And its cold country.  Minnesota is a perfect place to pick a presidential nominee. Franken? Bachmann?

Do you know the mayor of my town?

Well, my mayor has governed larger jurisdictions than Sarah Palin, candidate nominee for president. Yes, Fresno has 900,000 people, Alaska 700,000.

It takes two full time Senators for Alaska and its one Congressional district to obtain all that federal pork.

Yummy

Will a Tea Party Congress bail out California?

Greece is unique in one sense, it caused its own problem.  Californian's problem, the 10% and above unemployment rate is caused much by Washington DC, and the debt cycle.  This much will come out of the regional Ceridian analysis.  Fiscal stimulus skews to the eastern seaboard, and appears in California and Nevada as an inverse, multiplier less than one.  The crowding out channel is the overlap between California and DC income taxes, California gets systematically drained.

So, then there really is no Federal bailout for California that makes thing better.

Bitcoins higher

And good for them.

How's that other mediterranean state doing

Califo..Greece

Martin says it is defaulting.
Felix says no.

The Greek bond yield curve has a two year peak.  The bond market wants reserves increased for government goods by 25% over the next two years.  That is a restructuring of the government economy, a combination of revenue increase and budget cut.

It does sound like California.

Facebook for data

I think that is the holy grail. Just like facebook, but linking data graphs and their friends instead. Sounds like a groundbreaking open software idea if I ever had one.

I can click into a databook page and see it in various poses. But it would list its friends and family, by name and thumbnail. Each databook page would be a DOM tree, complete with links to other DOM tree pages. Then I use my patented nested tree DOM structure for local database storage, all the code needed is somewhere on this site. Like Wikisoft, pages can be edited to provide different sources and views of the same data.

I will have the team at Imagisoft get right on it.

EMRATIO

Get it from FRED, the government bank

Why do many economists panic when they see fewer people per household working? I like it, means more family time; less time at work.

I Pencil

Economists have the I Pencil game, in which they describe the variety of transactions needed to get from wood and rock to pencil on paper.  I could do this with quantization theory, in which I show how minimizing steps results in integer solutions to inventory matching, the sparse solution set.
But I am too lazy.

Another Cal City goes into crisis

An independent auditing firm has concluded that Compton's budget crisis is so dire that it's an open question whether the city can remain solvent.

 The auditor's report was made public as the Compton City Council struggles to deal with a fiscal crisis, voting this week to lay off employees. Though city officials did not say how many layoffs would occur, union representatives said they had heard estimates of between 97 and 120. The city budgeted for 575 employees in the current year. LA Times

Gains with robotic traffic lanes

Protected lanes, only robots can drive.

Human drivers are the impediment to extreme gains in efficiency. Under robot only rules we can quadruple the load efficiency and triple the speed. The return should yield a fivefold increase in toll charges. This nation will see a boom in highway right of way assets. 

Police Union overrules Government

Acting at the request of the Seattle police union, a labor arbitrator has ordered the city to stop releasing the names of Seattle police officers found to have engaged in misconduct.

The ruling comes at a time when the city, under U.S. Justice Department investigation over its use of force and treatment of minorities, has begun publicly to provide more information about internal investigations of officers to promote openness and accountability.Seattle Times

We have another name for this, Fascism

Oil shortage effects home buying

Gas 2.0 quoting a Coldwell Banker study:

 77% of the real estate professionals polled said that the recent surge in US gas prices has already begun to influence their clients’ choices home-buying decisions, with up to 45% of their clients moving into homes that are closer to shops and services specifically because of rising fuel costs.

HT Instapundit

Socialist Astronauts speak

President Obama's proposed 2011 budget did not include funds for Constellation, therefore essentially canceling the program. It sent shock waves throughout NASA, the Congress and the American people. Nearly $10 billion had been invested in design and development of the program.USA Today

Welfare for NASA always includes a remembrance of philandering, drunken Irishman politics.

California has power, California cares

Brad DeLong points us to Macro Advisers, which has now downgraded its estimates for second-quarter growth. As Brad says, these estimates now suggest that we have now gone through a year and a half of “recovery” that has failed to make any progress toward closing the gap between what the economy should be producing and what it’s actually producing.

And nobody in power cares!Krugman

One government action we can take to solve our economic problems would be to default and dismember the California state government. Break the state up into four mini-states and get a fair democracy.  That is fiscal stimulus, and if my 1/5 a Senator Babs wants fiscal stimulus, then have her speak out on under-representation.

Did Joe Biden mis-speak?

Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that new revenues need to be part of any agreement with Republicans on legislation to raise the limit on how much money the government can borrow to continue to meet its obligations.

The vice president also said talks were on pace to produce deficit cuts exceeding $1 trillion and that the talks would extend to procedural mechanisms known as "triggers" to force further automatic deficit cuts to bring the total to $4 trillion if lawmakers were unable to come up with the savings in future legislation. AP

"I am confident that we can achieve over a trillion dollars in savings at this point, and hopefully more," Cantor said.

Billion Prices Index

HT Thoma
The Billion Prces project measures on line prices. New Yorker has a write up.

A new venture called the Billion Prices Project may help change that. The B.P.P., which was designed by the M.I.T. economists Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon, gathers price data not via survey but, rather, by continuously scouring the Web for prices of online goods around the world.

What other web project works with on line prices? Bitcoins. These two projects will talk to each other, and soon on line prices in Bitcoins will be he gold standard for the on line economy. That makes yield curves, denominated in bicoins, valuable as a monetary standard.

What else uses digital money? Smartphones and smart retailers.

Web bots, search engines, facebooks, all these things work much better when they share protocols. Bitcoins will drive much of this bot to bot communication.

Kansas City and Dallas want separate monetary zones

Most Federal Reserve regional banks, cautious about the economic outlook amid rising commodity prices, last month voted to hold steady the low discount rate.

Ten of the Fed’s 12 district banks voted to keep the discount rate unchanged at 0.75%, according to minutes released Tuesday. Directors from the Kansas City and Dallas Fed called for an increase in the rate to 1%.WSJ

Their economies are not based on large federal bureaucracies, so why should they be tied to the DC yield curve?

California renewable energy bill

This bill establishes California as the national leader in the use and development of renewable energy," said Simitian in a press release. "The new law will stimulate the economy and improve the environment, while protecting ratepayers from excessive costs."

S.B.2X applies to all electricity retailers in the state: investor-owned utilities (IOUs), municipal utilities and independent sellers. All load-serving entities must meet a 20% target by Dec. 31, 2013, and a 25% target by the end of 2016, before hitting the 33% benchmark by the end of 2020.

The current 20% standard applies only to IOUs and independent sellers. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) expects that IOUs will provide 21% of their electricity from renewables this year.

Marc Ulrich, Southern California Edison’s vice president of renewable and alternative power, expressed support for the bill.

"We look forward to working together with the California Public Utility Commission, policymakers and independent power producers to further our state’s clean energy future," he stated in a press release.

The CPUC must approve renewable energy contracts, and utilities may be granted exemptions if the price of energy, or the difficulty of moving it into the state’s grid, make the cost excessive.Abender

I italicized the problem, when the price rises, exemptions will be made. This is the same recipe for disaster that Pete Wilson and Gray Davis created. A recipe for the state to intervene and spend billions buying electricity at exorbitant prices using taxpayer funds and sidelining the conservation efforts of end users.

Jerry Brown is not a stupid as he acts, I know some human person stood in front of the bozo and pointed this out; evidence backed by $40 billion in losses, the total cost for Gray Davis to learn about the light switch.

Jerry Brown's version of pension reform

Gov. Brown is proposing that the state give CalPERS $1.5 million to identify and study alternatives for a “hybrid” retirement plan, a cost-cutting combination of pensions and 401(k)-style individual investment plans.Calpensions

Otherwise known as sweeping the problem under the rug

Nevada has been there on the autonomous vehicle thing

WesTrack refers to an experimental road test facility constructed in Nevada under a contract awarded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The project, entitled "Accelerated Field Test of Performance-Related Specifications for Hot-Mix Asphalt Construction" (Contract No. DTFH61-94-C-00004), has two primary objectives:
To continue the development of performance-related specifications (PRS) for hot-mix asphalt construction by evaluating the impact on performance of deviations in materials and construction properties (e.g., asphalt content, air void content, and aggregate gradation) from design values in a large scale, accelerated field test.
To provide early field verification of the SHRP SUPERPAVE(TM) Level III mix design procedures. Westcom.com

Nevada has two main freeways that connect to Utah, and Utah is a hotbed for this technology, with government support. West Trac technology has been around, the idea is to pull longer loads and get efficiency. The automation speed long haul cargo by by 2 or 3 times. The measure to look at is joules/$gdp, what is the gain by speeding up larger loads?

But Las Vegas, and Reno even, have another idea, moving lots of people at higher speeds. And the Disneyland effect of Johnny Cabs along the strip.

Fresno Melons

Really good!

Public finance for $200

Answer: California, Argentina and Greece.

Cold nations keep higher inventories

Daniel Gros VOX.

Cold nations have severe weather extremes. They squirrel stuff away. Then the rabbits down south over multiply, and cold weather folks have to bail them from inventory.

The Autonomous Flatbed

One of my favorite bots. It comes in different sizes, but it is just that, a flat carrier, no crew compartment. It roams the construction site and can wander through the streets when needed. Great for building towers in NYC.

Exchange rates are good measures

A currency is what it trades for

Regional Governments

Pacific, Mountain, South West , South Central, South Atlantic, Mid Atlantic, and New England.
The regional nations of the USA, with a fair senate distribution. Why not? No one is seceding, powers not named reserved for the states. California and Texas could independently agree to break themselves up and apply for senate distribution. There is a lot to trade, including handing down some debt.

HT Ceridian and its regional database.

Yes I heard

The Tea Party Welfare States are going after defense goodies.

Delusional Industrial Policy

According to calculations of the Treasury Department that are hidden deep in the government’s annual budget, there are hundreds of billions of dollars of spending every year that are recorded as tax reductions. The biggest of these “tax expenditures,” as they are called, is the exclusion of employer health insurance premiums from the taxable income of employees. That exclusion resulted in a tax reduction of $160 billion in 2010 and is projected to be $1.4 trillion between 2010 and 2016. That’s a $1.4 trillion subsidy to health insurance that is disguised as a tax reduction. Weekly Standard

Illinois treasurer downgrades Illinois

Treasurer says he would call bond houses, warn against lending to Illinois

The backlog of unpaid bills will reach $8 billion by July, Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka recently estimated.

Rutherford says the debt from past borrowing has soared to $45 billion in recent years, which amounts to $10,000 for every household in the state. As a result, Illinois has the second-worst credit rating in the nation, above only California, he added.

Maniacal liar politicians cause these problems.

Waiting for gains to scale

In 20 years historians will be interviewing the then-aged monetary, banking, and fiscal policy makers of the 2000s. They will will ask them why they did not take more aggressive steps to return nominal incomes and demand to trend levels when they were sitting in the hot seats.Brad wants to know

NYC is predicting a Manhattan boom in tower construction, based on the return to scale.  Whether is pans out or not, we will see.  But the construction boom starts when there is consensus demand to restart the logistics on a wide scale.  Construction is quantized  neighborhood by neighborhood .

Losing bandwidth

That drop occurs when there is no solution to a retail distribution problem, no solution nearby. In our case, a realization that the local strip mall must be requantized for the information age. Higher value goods are coming mail order via web. Local stores are left with lower value goods.

Robots beget egalitarianism

Mobile bots, web bots, all bots; they attack bottlenecks and open up avenues for newer transactions, done in smaller, specialized batches. Especially true for local transport bots, that can move about a square mile very cheap. The lower transaction cost always opens up opportunity for a local skilled artisan to outperform a wider monopoly.

The robots themselves are very socialist among each other, rarely voting and highly regulated. These bots are almost always open sourced, or built on standards with open source solutions. So, even their ownership and manufacture is subject to local artisan competition. Once a bot is released on a mission, it leaves owner control anyway, now subject to system traffic control.

Another smart phone political movement

Spain's Socialists Trounced Amid Economic Turmoil

Pakistan and China?

Pakistan turns to China for naval base

The suicide bombers are gonna have a field day.

Insurance rates and the autobots

Been covering this for three years. Insurance rates go down as you put more, good software into cars. The latest study from the UK, somewhere, lookitup. The result that something like 15-20% accident rate reduction if cars had autonomous emergency breaking.

Point is, insurance rate savings cover the cost of robotics, easily, within six months.

National Review Online

Charles Krauthammer, talking about the American trillion dollar insurance program for Middle East democracy:

Herewith President Obama’s May 19 Middle East speech, annotated:

It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.

With this Barack Obama openly, unreservedly, and without a trace of irony or self-reflection adopts the Bush Doctrine, which made the spread of democracy the key U.S. objective in the Middle East.

Good idea? Whenever the conservative crowd says yes, then ask then for higher marginal tax rates.

We have a problem

Even deeper than cost over runs.

Robot pilots, they will always beat the human.  So the empire devoted to feats of human  daring-do pays a huge penalty in supporting pilots.

Taking a closer look:
Consider how much cheaper the testing costs with robot pilots. Let the old software version die and update to a new version, no funeral costs for a crash.

Castration anxiety

Swear, this man fears he might be a girl.

New York real estate

A Felix Salmon post:
I summarize the price history of the property described:

penthouse apartment at 115 Allen St, on a dingy corner of
New York’s Lower East Side
June 2004,$2.85 million
Sept 2004 $4.5 million
Today seller bid 5.5 million

NYC property recovers second from the crash. DC is first. If we avoid another dip, the boomlet should swing back to Boston, Philadelphia, jump to Virginia again, then maybe Chicago. It is gonna be a while before Texas or California see any result from fiscal expansion and central bank inflation attempts. But when it hits California, it comes in a big chunk.

Berkeley

Just as the University of California, Berkeley, drank the bitter medicine of $500 million in proposed cuts for the U.C. system in Gov. Jerry Brown’s first budget proposal, it now faces the possibility of $1 billion in cuts, plus likely reductions in federal funding, on which it has come to depend.

Those $500 million in cuts would amount to about $70 million to $80 million in cuts from U.C. Berkeley’s annual budget, said John Wilton, Cal’s vice chancellor for administration and finance. Combined with about $40 million in “unavoidable cost increases” from benefits payments and utility bills, Wilton said, the university has had to find a way to cut its budget by $110 million to $120 million. BizJournal

An example of monetary stimulus

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Utah legislators want to see the dollar regain its former glory, back to the days when one could literally bank on it being "as good as gold."

To make that point, they've turned it around, and made gold as good as cash. Utah became the first state in the country this month to legalize gold and silver coins as currency. The law also will exempt the sale of the coins from state capital gains taxes. AP

By stabilizing taxes in terms of precious metals, the Utah Legislature gets its own regional bank.  I am waiting for Scott Sumners to celebrate.

Brad has trouble with democracy

Given that the fear is based on a belief that some future congress will bust the budget, it is hard to see how we can address this fear through any possible piece of legislation today--for no congress can bind its successors.Andrew Samwick quoting DeLong

Brad is wrong, or more likely unable to step out of the box. By fixing Senate representation to be proportional, then we can insure the Senate has no few distortions in its representation. Doing so will force future congresses to match government programs to voter transactions. An accurate democracy is a bound on future government catastrophes, it forces the elites out of government and stops the Senate production of mis-matched government goods.

Fixing the Senate is easy, getting the Keynesian elites in Marin County and Berkeley to favor democracy is difficult.

Housing out of balance?

Yglesias thinks so, looking at the chart. But the opinion of the economy is what counts, not what Yglesias says.

The charts says that housing was out of balance between 2003 and 2009. But the economy is still undecided from mid-2009 until today.  The trend is down, but close to equilibrium.  Let the economy determine housing needs, not Yglesias.

When McConnel speaks, I look up Kentucky stats

"You cannot get anywhere if you start raising tax rates," the Kentucky senator said in discussing negotiations with President Barack Obama and Democrats on a deficit reduction plan.

Previously, McConnell and other conservative Republicans have railed against higher taxes in any form, and McConnell's use of the term "tax rates" indicated a shift in the mainstream GOP position.

Chris Wallace of Fox caught the distinction and asked McConnell if his language indicated he was open to collecting more tax revenue by ending some subsidies and loopholes. McConnell deflected the question, saying he wouldn't negotiate a deal on the program.

Another conservative Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, has previously stated a willingness to accept more tax revenue in an overall reform of the tax code that would lower tax rates while eliminating many loopholes and subsidies.

Hard-line conservatives who seek smaller government immediately criticized Coburn for what they called an enabling attitude that would hinder efforts to slash spending. WHIOTV

Hardline Conservatives are comprised of Corporate elites on federal welfare and small red states on federal welfare. This is all about getting the most federal welfare as can possibly be obtained, for their side. Using middle class dollars to fight oil wars, using American foreign aid to open up global trade, funding the over represented red states, taking advantage of the less educated Keynesian fools.

Welfare queens, the whole right wing bunch, no different than the Obama crowd.

Why does Brad point the red arrow up?

We are short oil and until we are no longer short oil, the red arrow will not converge with long term trends, it will diverge. The real trick is to get oil efficiency, not invest in oil inefficient government programs.

This sounds familiar

The combination of tight energy markets and high unemployment poses a dilemma for monetary policy. If policy is kept easy to boost growth, unemployment will decline but the oil market is at risk of overheating. But if policy is tightened to confront the pressure from higher oil prices on (headline) inflation, unemployment is likely to remain far above desirable levels for a long time to come. Zero Hedge quoting the economic team at Goldman Sachs

How long have they known about this, the oil shortage? Probably three years, that is ever since the oil crash of July 2008. Most of the last three years has been about government and their corporate shills hiding this fact. That is why economists, especially the keyensian variety cannot be trusted. Moody's is still in denial, claiming an ever growing federal spending will cure our problems.

Methamphetamine does this

A new and more detailed account, however, comes from a top federal police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because of security reasons. The official said investigations indicate the grave holds rivals of the Sinaloa cartel, and that the once orderly and brutally efficient gang is undergoing a bloody internal power struggle in Durango.

The Sinaloa cartel had seemed immune to the kind of missteps, mindless violence and internal power struggles that have plagued other drug gangs, to the extent that most Mexicans believed the Sinaloa cartel was either exceedingly sophisticated or in cahoots with the government.

But the portrait now emerging from the 219 corpses is of a cartel that is riven by internal cracks, according to the official. AP

With the meth trade, I am guessing that 60-80% of the drug cartel employees are meth addicted. That means they have a walnut size hole in their brain where emotional intelligence is mediated.

Democracy fails in LA

Los Angeles residents are up in arms over the existence of the "Gold Card," a plastic parking bureau card distributed to city offices that includes a special phone number.

The obscure Gold Card Services Desk allowed the mayor and other elected officials to expedite citation reviews.

On the back, the card notes that the holder may have an "urgent need to resolve any parking citation matter which requires special attention." It promises "you will be immediately connected to our Gold Card Specialist."LA Times

Regular citizens get the shaft, city officials get special treatment.

I knew it! He is white

Ever since the American president announced on St. Patrick's Day he would visit his ancestral Irish home, the village of Moneygall has been suffering an incurable case of Obamamania.

This roadside hamlet of two pubs, three shops and barely 350 residents has repainted every house, festooned every lamppost and seemingly rebranded every product in preparation for Monday's visit by President Barack Obama. Locals have stood in line for hours to receive one of 3,000 tickets that will let them meet Moneygall's most famous son.AP

Not only white, but an Irish socialist

The Ceridian and the Stimulus II

How would I measure the regional stimulus multiplier using old fashioned least squares. Take the aggregate Ceridian index as a lagged model and decompose it into the regional modules. Who has the highest correlation coefficient before and after the rise in Federal spending.

At Imagisoft, however, our technique is simpler. We sit back and hope a kid with Internet technology does the work.

Not without automated transportation

Manhattan Builders Plan Big Decade for Towers

They intend to rebuild the 60% of buildings a half century old. The streets can't handle it without automation.

Also this boom will drive the tablet based engineering apps.

Limited to one soldier of fortune from Arizona

White House on War Powers Deadline: 'Limited' US Role in Libya Means No Need to Get Congressional Authorization

Along with the South Carolina port dredger and an accountant from Connecticut. And a bunch of robots. The carrier just happened to be hanging around.

The Verdict: Fresno County Debt is unsustainable

Findings

The Fresno County Retirement Review Task Force was convened and tasked with examining the current county pension system, evaluating its viability and making recommendations for potential reforms. It has done so in full awareness of the backdrop of the nationwide municipal government pension crisis and the recent recommendations of the State of California, Little Hoover Commission’s, Public Pensions for Retirement Security Report. 

After careful examination of the current retirement plan and the study of actuarial reports, we find it is beyond the capacity of the plan to collect contributions and generate adequate investment returns to meet promised pension benefits. Between 2001 and 2010, the county’s annual pension cost has increased from $20,333,732 to 1$148,756,103, an annual growth rate of over 22%. During the same time period, overall county revenues rose from $1,055,784,614 in 2001 to $1,384,446,596, as reported by the Auditor Controller Treasurer Tax Collector, an annual growth rate of only 2.75%. Of the increased revenue during this time, over 25% was used to absorb higher retirement costs.

The country and in particular Fresno County is feeling the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression, leading to the layoff of county employees and a reduction in county services. Available sources of revenue have declined and are projected to be flat while pension costs continue to rise. The cost of the Fresno County retirement system is unsustainable in its current form. Review Task Force

We canot fix the problem because the crooks who did this to us are hiding in the County Supervisors office!

Mug Shots of the Criminals

The one on the left is the guy who engineered the Choo Choo scam with Ray LaHood, to get Jim Costa elected to Congress.

This is the crap that Jerry Brown and the Marin County Mafia created. The Grand Jury damn near indicted these bozos, but they were saved by the Dills Act. 

Jerry Brown, liar

Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat who won office with the help of public employee unions, has said he supports efforts to curb pension spiking by requiring all newly hired state and local government workers to base their pensions on an average of their base pay for the final three years and prohibit unused vacation or sick leave in that calculation.Bloomberg

He just gave a pension spiking bonus to prison guards as part of his election payola.

Killing the Oakland Airport Connector

BART has already spent $64 million on the controversial Oakland Airport connector.


But Robert Raburn, a member of the BART Board of Directors, thinks he can derail the roughly $500 million project, which he’s nicknamed the “gold-plated” connector, before any more money is spent.Bay Citizen

The whole thing was corruption from beginning to its current state. Except:

Is the Oakland Airport Connector "too costly to stop," as Matier & Ross wrote at the Chronicle? BART director Robert Raburn, who was elected in part on an anti-OAC campaign in the very same district hosting the OAC, at least made an inquiry and tried to do something to stop it -- but then immediately retreated upon discovering $95 million had already been spent, and that an estimated $30-150 million more would have to be spent to pay off contractors if the project were halted. Transbay Blog

The two elected proponents of the mess were voted out of office, now no one wants the thing. Looks like a train wreck on the horizon.

Economies of scale models

Annoyingly, economies of scale are analytically inconvenient – if you want to build a textbook model of an industry with scale economies, the mathematics are messy  Hartford

Not anymore, not since economists have discovered maximum entropy channel math.

Should the central bank push a rebance of trade?

First, what’s driving the turnaround in our manufacturing trade? The main answer is that the U.S. dollar has fallen against other currencies, helping give U.S.-based manufacturing a cost advantage. Krugman

Normally the central bank follows the economy closely, but here Krugman claims and approves that the central bank is leading a dollar fall. My problem with the theory is that the central bank was behind the curve leading up to the crash, the real economy started the rebalance.

My second objection to the idea is why do we want the central bank pushing rebalance when the alternative is to let the real economy go ahead and rebalance at its own rate.

We start with the idea that the socialist banker can push us forward, but when the crunch time comes, when is it time to switch gears, the banker chickens out.  We end up in a worse mess. 

Use the regional Ceridian Index to study the stimulus

Download their data, then look at regional variations in the index for pre and post 2009.  (The spurt in federal spending occurred in the first half of 2009).

What regional variations would we expect?
Well, entropy theory says that the effect should be seen approximately the same across all regions.  Differential effects would indicate that the economy shifted to a more contracted condition.  In particular, if we see that the regional effect was more pronounced over the Washington/NY corridor, which it is, then we can hypothesize that Washington saved itself, at the expense of outlying regions, a stimulus fail.

My eyeball says the Texas region lost out, NY/Washington were the big gainers, Pacific hardly noticed the thing one way or the other, and the middle part of the country got the average effect.  New England is from Mars, North Central got a small bounce.

The Ceridian does a good job in isolating regions, in fact I would use their boundaries as a starting point when we break up the USA. 

Eric Schmidt wants to fix the Post Office

Why would a search engine exec care?

Because the Post Office is broken, nearly worthless and someone needs to push Congress over the edge on this.  Eric Schmidt really wants to do the following:
1) Limit mail delivery to once per week
2) Replace the mail box with a standard cargo box that works with Deliverbot.

Simple really, the question is, Why does Eric Schmidt want to fly people around to a conference to reach this simple conclusion?  Has anybody noticed how often Internet conferences are held by flying people around?  We know the plan, just write a blog post, Eric, and save everyone the hassle and suspense.

Kent Conrad, Senator for half a Congressional District

He is 104 times the representative for his voters than Babs Boxer in California. So the half district he represents decided the other 299,900,000 Americans should not be allowed to see the Senate budget:

Senate Democrats decided Thursday not to release their spending plan to counter the budget blueprint approved last month by House Republicans, saying they will wait to see whether talks at the White House produce a compromise plan for reining in the national debt.WA Post

This is not even close to democracy, North Dakata should not even be a state. North Dakota charges California and New York tax payers a 68 cent bonus for each tax dollar, just to cooperate in governance.  California and New York taxpayers should refuse all federal taxes until we get fair representation.

Why I don't buy Apple products

Apple is seeking a court order to prevent Amazon from using “App Store” to sell software applications for mobile devices, according to a March 18 complaint. Amazon countered in an April 26 court filing that the words together are a generic term that Cupertino, California-based Apple doesn’t have exclusive rights to use. Bloomberg

Do we really want Steve Jobs defining language through the courts?

What else is driving lower employment for recent college graduates?

Tyler Cowen wants to know.

Internet self-education allows job seekers to educate themselves rapidly for a particular job. Hence the Internet educated are often better prepared than college grads when colleges are still stuck in the classroom.

It is money speculation

Here's what's credible: Some 70 percent of contracts for future oil delivery are now bought by financial speculators - largely big investment banks and hedge funds - who never take control of the oil. They just flip the contract for a quick profit.

Only about 30 percent of oil contracts are bought by a purchaser that actually intends to use the oil, such as an airline. That's according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates trade in those contracts.Twin Cities

The speculation is on the future direction of money, oil is simply the medium of exchange rate stabilization. So big finance needs to hedge the future exchange rates, and what better way to do it then bet on the thing most in demand, and most traded globally.

Good Grief

“It’s basic human dignity,” said Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, during floor debate today in the Assembly. CalWatch

Tis Long Beach nutcase wants government in charge of mourning. So she mandates four days of mourning, by law, for the death of a family member.

Us Mexifornians had better learn English and find out exactly who these idiots are we vote for, it is embarrassing to be a California voter.

A two month debt extension

A bipartisan group of six Senate and House lawmakers, led by Vice President Joe Biden, has found common ground on at least $200 billion in cuts by focusing on mandatory federal spending, such as agriculture subsidies, outside of politically sensitive entitlement programs like Medicare, according to people close to the negotiations.Bloomberg

According to the speaker of the house, the Senate has earned two months. If the House approves,  the Tea party will give the Senate a week off, with pay and benefits.  Then the Tea party should keep the Senate nose to the grindstone.

Marin Mafia choice for the Supremes blocked

Liu was as good a target as any for the GOP. A legal scholar who has never been a judge and has little experience practicing law, Liu occupies a place on the far left side of the legal spectrum. To take just one example, Republicans are fond of repeating Liu's assertion that the Constitution guarantees the right to "expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit." Washington Examiner

This guy was supposed to be a Supreme Court judge, but the Republicans blocked. The way it works is Obama calls up the Marin County Mafia and let's them choose the nominee.  Republicans are onto the scam.

Why does the Marin Mafia get away with this shit? They are willing to lie to us dumb Mexicans for votes, like the Choo Choo scam which we fell for in Fresno County, or the Desert Express scam that got Reid past a very stupid opponent. They wave the flag of the Great Exogenous, and us dumb Mexicans who have never seen these political scams get suckered.

Pompous Elitism

Key points in Mr Obama's speech:
In the months ahead the US must use all its resources to encourage reform in North Africa and the Middle East
Will cut $1bn of debt for a democratic Egypt and work to create Enterprise Funds to invest in Tunisia and Egypt
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must lead a political transition or "get out of the way"
US will continue to insist the Iranian people deserve their universal rights, and a government that does not smother their aspirations
Mass arrests and brute force in Bahrain are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain's citizens.
The borders of Israel and a Palestinian state should be based on pre-1967 borders with agreed swaps

Linkedln now sending spam to my family members, and they are getting pissed.

I have to unenroll, is their an undo button? I sent a message to un enroll me.

I dunno, this company sounds more like a Nigerian outfit.

An uneven source of revenue

While working Californians will earn an average of $4,000 more over the next two years, those earning over $200,000 a year, and/or selling a bunch of stock, will account for most of the $6.6 billion increase in tax revenue, according to new budget estimates.SF Gate

We are really talking about volatile assets generating these taxes. It is not $6 billion in real money, that is projected money. The problem here is certainly that budget estimators are measuring volatility based on smooth times, they will be shocked next year when that money dries up.

West Virginia with 3 congressional districts

Has a social security scam they run on DC:

As we’ve noted here before, the federal disability program cost about $190 billion last year, in payments to disabled workers and health care for them. That’s the equivalent of roughly $1,500 in taxes for every American household.

Many are these workers are truly disabled. For others, though, disability has become a shadow program of long-term unemployment benefits, providing modest payments to people who probably can work and would do so if they could find a job with decent pay.

In The Wall Street Journal today, Damian Paletta has an article about a West Virginia administrative law judge who may provide the single best example of the system’s problems. Since the start of last year, the judge, David B. Daugherty, has heard more than 2,000 disability cases. He has awarded benefits in all but four of those cases, an approval rate of 99.8 percent. NYT

This is more likely a concerted effort by a very over represented state, a coordinated political scam to rob California and New York taxpayers. I cannot complain to my 1/5 of a Senator, she has no time for the small stuff. But the $1500 it costs Fresno County home owners would go a long way toward paying back property taxes, and possibly keep the county off the bankruptcy rolls. Does the Marin County Mafia care? No, they are elites.

Traffic jams in China

The key economic indicator.  Here is a texas expert:

Another critical difference between China and the U.S is the maturity of our highway systems. While China’s relatively young highway system resembles the U.S Interstate network, the country lacks the smaller state and county roads that offer U.S drivers alternative routes when they are slowed by traffic congestion. Taking the back roads just isn’t an option in many cases.

“There isn’t the redundancy we take for granted here,” says Turner, adding that statistics indicate the traffic situation around Beijing is still getting worse. It could take years to get traffic under control as about 1,900 vehicles are added to Beijing’s street each day according to Texas Transportation Institute estimates. WSJ

Harry Reid, your state is on foreclosure fire!

Calculated Risk has the data. Nevada holds second place in the foreclosure competition.

As a side note, one third of the federal debt owed by Nevadans was run up by their own Senator. He is too busy being the big shot to pay attention to his measly four congressional districts.

Ford on the move

Farid Ahmed-Zaid, an intelligence vehicles technical expert working for Ford Motors, has stated earlier about the automobile maker's plans to develop "intelligent cars". Primarily geared toward road safety, these cars are also aimed to enhance driving experience and to minimize traffic obstruction. Through this technology, vehicles can communicate with another to avoid accidents or improve traffic flow.Auto Types

Working with Google traffic information format, I hear.

Even the UN and ITU are in on the game:

Today’s communications capabilities give the potential for vehicles to foresee and avoid collisions, navigate the quickest route to their destination, make use of up-to-the-minute traffic reports, identify the nearest available parking slot, minimize their carbon emissions and provide multimedia communications UK Register

High speed Trambots are the key, when we start taliing about 200 people moving 140 MPH on the asphalt road,then you know we have arrived at a singularity.

Will Autonomous Solutions get the key patent?

The Guideline™ system works by attaching a tether cord from the follower vehicle to any lead vehicle. No modifications are required to the lead vehicle whatsoever. The follower vehicle is driven by an installed vehicle automation system taking data from the Guideline™ sensor mounted on the front of the vehicle.

The GuideLine™ sensor delivers angle and length data and generates a planned “path” for the follower vehicle based on the path taken by the lead vehicle. There are no complicated sensors to tune or maintain. The system works in all light and weather conditions. It does not depend on RF or GPS data. The system works equally well in reverse, responding the same way that a long trailer would respond.

The simple elegance of the solution means less complex equipment to maintain, simplified operator training, and the potential for significant manpower reductions for safety or cost reasons.Utah Company

If they get this patent then they claim a key technology for very high speed Trambots. Should we care? Only if the patent office is stupid enough to grant them a wide claim on wireline communications between moving vehicles. So, yes indeedy, the patent office of the good old USA could indeed deliver a blow to future economic growth.

Cullen Roche, victim of Political Delusion

As a currency issuer, it must spend before it can tax or sell bonds. This is a matter of simple logic. If the USA does not name and issue the thing with which taxes are payable then the private sector can never obtain that thing and utilize it for extinguishing taxes. Pragmatic Capitalism

Nonsense. Bondholders know the game and hedge. The end result is the USA has to borrow wisely just like any household.

The delusion here is that along the 3,000 mile stretch from DC to the Pacific, taxpayers will be meek and humble. Taxpayers could give a fig about paying taxes when the going gets rough. Cullen may have his paper insured, but it will be worthless in California when most of the economy is underground.

Ms Bachmann still sends me love letters

Our conservative message and values have hit a nerve. The "intelligentsia," left-wing radicals, mainstream media, and yes -- even some of my so-called friends on the right -- have flipped the switch on their attack machine in an effort to silence my voice and derail our conservative movement.

Some of their tactics and comments are so vile, and disturbing, that I refuse to repeat them. One of the most recent attacks comes from a supposedly right-leaning media outlet, and misrepresents the work I have done at the state and local level for Minnesota - and suggesting that my husband and I have profited from a business when we absolutely have not! In fact, the attacks have become so pervasive, Rush Limbaugh addressed them Monday on his radio show. In a show of dedicated friendship, he defended my conservative credentials to his listeners. InBox

But as soon as she gets the Linkedln spam she is going to dump me!

Should I throw my neice down the well?

A 20-year-old Palestinian woman who was thrown into a well and left to die in the name of "family honor" has not become just another statistic in one of the Middle East's most shameful practices.AP

Not for honor, but because she is using Netflix and stealing my paid for bandwidth. (I live just up the street).

Linkedln, an e mail spam generator

Out of curiosity, I signed up for linkedln, and they promptly sent spam to the sqlite e mail list, which I read regularly. So sqlite bumped me. Should I sue Linkedln? Someone got a billion dollars for e mail spam generation?

Vernon CA, private sector government

California City News has the story.

Vernon has less than a hundred residents, but a lot of industry.  It is a city government that caters to industry, within commuting distance of Los Angeles.  Anything wrong? Well industry like Vernon because business taxes are low.  Los Angeles does not like Vernon because Los Angeles takes business taxes and converts them to public employee pensions.  Vernon also engages in a bit of corruption now and then.

So we have a battle, and Assembly Speaker John Perez wants to dis-incorporate Vernon and try to nab some business taxes for Los Angeles.   My opinion is simple, Los Angeles politicians will bankrupt Los Angeles, whether they nab Vernon or not. One side note, Rick Perry of Texas is inviting all of Vernon businesses to move to Texas.

DeMint speaks up for democracy

DeMint remains infuriated with the National Labor Relations Board for bullying Boeing. “This situation borders on tyranny,” he says. “If an unelected, unaccountable, unconfirmed bureaucrat can threaten thousands of jobs and a billion-dollar investment, after the facility is virtually complete, it smacks of a Third World–type dictatorship.”

His state, South Carolina and its 7 districts barely meets democracy standards for elected Senators.  Babs Boxer is 1/5 of the Senator he is.

When We and They get mixed up

Here are the details:

That 0.4 percent overall increase in April included a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent jump in the price of gasoline. But before that adjustment, the CPI really showed gasoline inflation more than twice as bad with an increase of 7.5 percent.

The same thing happened in March. The government seasonally adjusted the increase in gasoline down to 5.6 percent when, unadjusted, it was really 11.7 percent.

Now, don't go getting all conspiratorial on me. This is just the government's seasonal adjustment statistics going haywire because of the odd nature of this economic downturn. Nobody is making these numbers look better on purpose.NY Post

The weightings change on the CPI index as 'They' become more adapted to energy shortages. The 'We' in this case, Bureau of Labor Statistics which, being the aggregate 'We' , takes a long time to collect aggregate data and change the weightings.

Another form of Political Delusion.

Fairness in taxation

The Economist Deals with it.

Perhaps fairness also requires that the tax code account for the higher cost of living in some areas. The income cut-off for tax increases floated by President Obama is $250,000. That sum buys you a lot more in Fargo than it does in Manhattan. Most high earners live in expensive areas. They command such high salaries, in part, to offset their high cost of living. So if by fairness we mean targeting a certain benefit from consumption, it seems federal taxes need to account for geographic disparities. University of Michigan economist David Albouy found that workers in high-cost cities pay up to 27% more in federal taxes than workers with similar skills in low tax cities. Is that fair?

The system is completely unfair, an abomination and a disgrace to economists like Delong, who suffers political delusion and support it Shannon theory gives us the optimum government structure. Government at one level handles voter transactions that cannot be handled minimally at another level of aggregation.

Problems arise, like the Marin County Brown Shirt mafia, who impose nationwide solutions that better fit regional solutions. This mafia, composed of Brown, Newsome, Pelosi, Boxer and Feinstein has no concept of government efficiency and economies of scale. They believe in the forces of anti-democracy, elites should rule because voters are imperfectly represented.

The pro-democracy solution is not to impose elitism and get elite economists to lie. The pro-democracy solution is to speak out about the mal-representation in the Senate. I am still waiting for the Marin County Mafia to address the issue, so far not a peep from my 1/5 of Senator Babs.

Political Delusion

Political Delusion is the idea that distribution of wealth over regions only counts if they are separate nations. Otherwise, who cares. Scott Sumner suffers the problem, and here Karl Smith demonstrates it:

This is why having your own currency is a really big deal. You can sell Greek bonds for Euros and then use those Euros to buy German output. Its entirely possible for Euros to be drained out of the Greek economy by a Sovereign Debt Crisis. This means that a crisis of confidence in Greece could create a monetary shock to the Greek economy and a monetary boom to Germany at the same time. They use the same money.

For the US this is not really possible. You could sell out of Treasuries and into Dollars and then hold the dollars. However, its not really clear what that gives you. Moreover, by pulling dollars out of the US economy and holding them, it gives the Fed room to print more dollars and buy up the US debt.

In other words, if California is drained of dollars that go back to the Eastern Coast, then it doesn't matter, because California is not a national boundary.

This problem is deep. For example, economic studies of mal-distribution in the USA should be based on the Congressional district, that is the closest match we have to a fair sampling. But economists cannot get that data because state governments aggregate it.

In California we four Greeces with no sampling boundaries, we have zero data, except anecdotal, to measure comparative distributions. Even the Tax Foundations 2005 data on the relative return to states for each federal tax dollar is a skewed result because sample sizes are so variable.

Think of DC as Germany, and Los Angeles as Greece. Los Angeles is forced to purchase 40% of its government services from a nation 3,000 miles distance. Los Angeles is so seriously underrepresented in DC that they are almost assured that dollars are drained continually back to the Eastern Seaboard.

Brown and S&P

California Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to pay down years of accumulated loans used to paper over past deficits may represent a “crossroad” for the state’s credit rating, the lowest in the U.S., Standard & Poor’s said......

The state won’t be able to issue short-term notes for cash flow in July or August with that validation vote pending unless Brown and lawmakers agree on spending cuts that would be activated if voters turn down the tax plan, Treasurer Bill Lockyer has said.Bloomberg

Does this mean the Lockyer Money is about to flow from the Laser Printer? I am waiting for hear from Moody's and Mark Zandi.

Controlling the Malthusian impulse in Africa

Facing pressure from key allies to act more decisively on several volatile issues, the president says the future of the U.S. is bound to the region in a number of ways. WA Post

Israel is really the scapegoat, this is all about stopping the gazillions of Africans who plan a move to Europe.

What does LinkedIn do?

I was interested, so I looked at their site.  They wanted me to give them my email password! So I did (I will change it later).  Then they took me through an infinite menu system.

Somebody got $8 billion for that? I can do that for you at a mere cost of $1 million, send me a check.

Bay Area California

Let us start the ball rolling with a split of the Bay Area from the rest of California.  Why should Baja Arizona have all the fun.  I doubt we would get Congress to approve Baja Arizona, with 9 Congressional district, it has a median number of Senators.  California should get ready approval for a split of its liberal region. Once we start that, then separating the LA basin is next, and one other California split gets us close to a median and fair representation.

Some guy from Oklahoma vs some guy from Nevada

As the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid bears special responsibility for failing to direct attention to the central challenges of our time. His floor strategy seems to be focused on saving Democrats more than democracy. I would relish a debate on tax earmarks, spending cuts and competing budgets (if there were competing budgets), yet the votes he seems most interested in scheduling — such as tax breaks for big oil companies — are designed for short-term political gain rather than long-term deficit reduction. Coburn speaking in an op ed

Lemme see. Oklahoma with 5 Congressional districts and Nevada with 4. The 5 districts in Oklahoma might want to understand that the 4 districts in Nevada give orders to the 53 districts in California. Maybe the 30 million of us in California don't give a damn it it means taking orders from some guy in Nevada.

And the winner is....

James Hunderfund, who earns at least $225,000 a year as a school superintendent on Long Island, is also entitled to a $316,245 annual pension from a previous administrative post, according to a compilation of pension data by the Empire Center for New York State Policy. Bloomberg

12 business groups walked into a bar...

The group's so-called "workout plan" involves Republicans swallowing potential tax extensions that they have adamantly opposed, and Democrats getting on board for pension reform and spending controls. CS Monitor

Think the Union Brownshirts will disband voluntarily?

Dollar hit bottom?

Caplan and technology

Firms are figuring out ways for small numbers of workers to create tons of value - then give it away to consumers for pennies or less. And as far as I can tell, the CPI totally ignores these benefits. Econlog

Software is self automating, it has been designed for self-reconfiguration. What gives us the huge leverage are software bots talking to each other, which they due with extreme efficiency.

Caplan is right on the effect, but this has little to do with start ups and a whole lot to do with the simplified, automated world that robots live in on the web.

What multiplier?

Advocates of more Congressional spending claim a GDP multiplier effect. So lets look, on the right we have growth rate of GDP. On the left we have congressional spending as a percent of GDP. Can we find a multiplier greater than one?

I am still looking, but one thing I do notice, a downward trend on GDP growth rates. I see Reagan the Communist and his finger prints., he participated in the first growth slowdown.  I see government spending down, relatively, under the Clinton administration, below 19% just prior to the dot com bust. Then I see the next Republican Communist participating in another permanent slowdown.

I suspect we are living in a constrained global economy with hysterical politicians who create Congressional spending volatility, bailouts and war.   Our economy is dominated by growing input shortages and lunatic government elites.  In that morass we are not likely to get any sensible multiplier.

Compared to the names I have given him?

Shortly after Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan announced on Tuesday he was turning down the opportunity to run for retiring Democratic senator Herb Kohl’s seat, Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) spokesman Graeme Zielinskitweeted that Ryan was a “coward” for deciding to remain as chair of the House Budget Committee.NRO Corner

He is a deficit loving Reagan Republican Communist.