Chicago Tribune calls for Obamacare delay

Chicago Tribune  Basically, Obama is delusional and his executive changes Obamacare are counter productive.

Transit and multipliers less than one

In a presentation this week to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, representatives from the California Department of Transportation and Sacramento Regional Transit District said state money for transportation projects is almost gone, and federal money for such infrastructure is getting harder to come by. Sacramento Business Journal

This is Steinberg's district. Note all of these California transport systems are looking for subsidy dollars, they are inefficient and cannot be funded on their own. These boneheads need to subsidize their current light rail systems and will be looking for other sources of money. But who is going to subsidize them when we are cutting back on money losing government projects?

Says Law is back!

Say:

     In short, Say’s Law is this:  The supply (sale) of X creates the demand for (purchase of) Y.

In other words, specialization of production. From the article by jpatton:

Say has a point. According to business-cycle statistics, when a downturn starts, production is the first to decline, ahead of consumption. And when the economy begins to recover, it’s because production starts up, followed by consumption. Economic growth begins with an increase in productivity, new products, and new markets. Hence, production spending is always ahead of consumption spending.

Gee, I didn't know that I had used Say's Law when I noticed that a production collapse, not a consumption collapse caused the crash. But the data is clear when one examines the consumer price index and the producer price index. The two behaviors clearly indicate a rapid, and large series of exits of producers as the PPI suddenly collapsed. So, very interesting after all, this crash proved Say and disproved Keynes. Even the GD is explainable as a shortage, a shortage of roads, to be exact.

Why I like Jerry Brown

He is a level headed pragmatist swimming in a sea of legislative nitwits. God help us if Gavin Newsome ever got near the governorship.

NCLB and the continuing multipliers less than one

When I talk about multipliers less than one concerning NCLB. I mean the students are worse off when the DC gets involved in California education. This has been the pattern of No Child Left Behind for ten years, simply a series of very expensive disruptions in our school system. Here is the umpteenth example of that: From LA Times:

Think back to the dark days of 2009, when school districts in California and across the nation faced dire budget shortfalls. States would have done almost anything for extra money, and when the Obama administration dangled Race to the Top grants in front of them, many of them did indeed race to adopt the policies that would win federal approval — such as including student test scores in teachers' performance rankings and adopting common curriculum standards.

Because public education falls almost entirely under state authority, this sort of arm-twisting was the only way the administration could persuade states to do its bidding. The No Child Left Behind Act, the school accountability law adopted during the George W. Bush administration, also used money — federal Title 1 funding for disadvantaged students — to press its rigid standards on states. Race to the Top pressured financially strapped states to adopt education policies that varied widely in their value. Many of the policies, such as the push to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores, were not backed by any sort of evidence. Yet they were adopted quickly because of application deadlines, and there was little time for thoughtful crafting of new rules. EDUCATION: California Schools Guide Yet for all the excitement, Race to the Top provided little actual cash. California would have received a one-time award of $700 million — less than 2% of what it spends on education every year. It failed to win a grant, but nonetheless had committed itself, as most states did, to the Common Core curriculum standards that the Obama administration supported. Implementing the standards, which are set to take effect in a year, will cost the state well over $1 billion.

This has been the pattern for 10 years, DC makes a change, the children are abandoned to substitute teachers, and the real teachers go to school.
Take this problem and multiply it by 100 and you get 20 years of DC sponsored light rail losers, soon another 10 years of volatility as we adapt to Obamacare.  Then federal judicial interference with prisons. Add to that the racial pandering of the Democratic party in California.

California is a huge state, comprising 54 Congressional districts for which we are short the requisite number of ten Senators.  As a result of the Senate void, California is never a party to the debate, is always reacting, and always suffering losses as we adapt huge government systems to far fetched ideas thought up by small states. California almost went broke, main cause? Multipliers less than one from DC.  In the face of the problem, California is still expected to pay a 25% tax premium to stay in the union.

California is suffering a mild down turn in the economy. Because California cannot adapt in time to the avalanche of multipliers less than one coming down the pike from DC, it is likely this mild downturn will result in a second dip for the entire US economy. Yes it is that serious. Multipliers in California now run about .5, meaning every dollar in taxes spent, we lose about 50 cents of the economy. But California is 20% of the US economy and DC spending is about 5% of that. So given multipliers less than one, California alone is dropping about 3% growth from GDP.

Now its getting personal

FRESNO — Angelo's Drive-In didn't change, even when its slice of the city — by the train tracks and the highway — turned gritty. Customers moved to nicer neighborhoods. But they still flocked to the 1950s burger joint because of all the things that stayed the same: the chili, the Thousand Island dressing, the red-vinyl booths faded to orange. Angelo didn't own it anymore, of course. He'd sold it to his nephew Jim Karos, a Greek immigrant who ran it with his son Junior. In 2004, Junior sold it to Kay Lim and Ken Chea, Cambodian immigrants. PHOTOS: Driven out by high-speed rail That meant there were still owners who worked six days a week. The few customers the couple didn't know by name, they knew by their orders: more onions, burn hamburger, triple cheese. Then, this month, a woman from the California High Speed Rail Authority came with a big stack of papers. "So sorry … just doing my job … here's a number to call," she said. Lim and Chea are supposed to be out by Sept. 15. Angelo's, born of car culture, is giving way to California's long-awaited bullet train. The state's acquisition offer is $100,000 for the building and land, and $20,000 for the business. If the family wants to take the big neon hamburger, it will cost them $1,000. LA Times

I wasn't too bothered by the California Choo Choo fiasco, after all the California legislature is a dim bulb. But given that the Choo Choo is politically dead, why hassle my favorite restaurant. The Choo Choo nuts will shut down the restaurant, but are not likely getting the funds to put in the tracks. So, in a feat of multiplier less than one, Fresno loses the best place in town for French Dip sandwiches, and gets nothing in return.

Why is Oregon corrupt?

Parking meter kickbacks, stealing money from water and sewage payments, perverted sex scandals, corruption in transportation projects. The FBI is concerned enough tout up a tip line. This level of corruption rivals even Steinberg's Sacramento. Corruption, state governments, the topic for a while.

Update: This site keeps a report card on state corruption. In it Oregon places 14th as a good state, better than the scandals indicate. California place fourth, of all miracles.

Clinton, Obama the better liar?

Here's what Obama said:

they're going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. And if even with lower premiums they still can't afford it, we're going to be able to provide them with a tax credit to help them buy it.

President Clinton, addressing Congress in 1993, talked about the trade-offs openly:

If you're a young, single person in your twenties and you're already insured, your rates may go up somewhat because you're going to go into a big pool with middle-aged people and older people, and we want to enable people to keep their insurance even when someone in their family gets sick. But I think that's fair because when the young get older they will benefit from it, first, and secondly, even those who pay a little more today will benefit 4, 5, 6, 7 years from now by our bringing health care costs closer to inflation.

From New Republic

Who is the less delusional?

Tablets still suck

Impossible to get a hand near the thing without the screen going wild with all the hidden buttons. But, only with a tablet can I lie on my back and post. Editing is impossible. I have to shake and twirl the thing to make my datay in the edit window. The typical reaction: I tap the edit box and the text goes away!

The linux learning curve, never ending

I switch operating systems, to and from linux and windows. I never have to relearn windows, that is why Bill Gates is a gazzilionare. Linux is always a crawl, the thing has to be relearned every time. Why would a normal person remember all the 1960s style command terminal commands on linux? They do not, it is a waste of brainpower. Yet, here I am installing software repository software. First task, where does unbutu hide the terminal window. Then what kind of terminal do I need, then where did the software I loaded end up, then does the stated command line understand I have a zipped file. etc etc. That is a result of open source vs closed source, in Windows it will always work for 80% of the actions with no learning. Here is what I mean:

$ yum install curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel \ openssl-devel zlib-devel $ apt-get install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev gettext \ libz-dev libssl-dev

Actual humans are required to type in these hieroglyphics. These are not memorable codes, these are codes only a computer could remember. Linux will never be easy until google makes android popular on the desktop.