Am  I reading that right?  $2B for two companies to create ~4000 jobs?  Can’t wait to find out how much those two companies have donated to the Democratic party…

Always good to see our tax dollars at work…

Aw, it’s so nice that Fidel cares so deeply about us.   I love when tiny, little countries deride us for not doing X.  As if delivering health care on a tiny little island made up of a few million people compares at all to delivering health care to 300+ million spread out across 50 states and millions of square miles, not to mention an ocean (Hawaii), densely populated cities and sprawling countryside.

Oh, by the way, Fidel, how goes that part where you actually feed your citizens?  Or you actually let your citizens have a say in their government?

• What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

via John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare – WSJ.com.

I think there are a quite a few:  car, house, vacations, etc.  You may have an idea of the up front cost, but you never know the ongoing cost.   That being said, more transparency in pricing would be a great thing for the health care system.

Yes!  More debt!  Awesome!  Can’t wait until the bill comes due for all of this stuff.   Say it together with me now kids:  tax hike!

Hey, at least we are all stimulated, right?  Never mind the landfills full up with perfectly good, operating cars nor the long list of people now in deeper debt because they shouldn’t have bought a new car anyway (just like they shouldn’t have bought a house they couldn’t afford either.)  Finally, I can’t wait to read in six months to a year all about the waste and corruption involved with the program due to lack of oversight.

“Obama administration officials have determined they can avoid asking Congress for more bank bailout funds…”

via U.S. may convert bank bailout to equity share: report.

Don’t you just love reading about how the various branches of the government work to subvert the checks and balances put in place by the Constitution?  And don’t you just love how the Executive branch (note, I didn’t say just Obama, Bush was no better) doesn’t seem to much care about the Constitution at all?

Even all these months later, I still fail to see how going deeper into debt is the solution for a problem caused by too much debt.

Finally, I know it seems weird to say and I know people are suffering, but I cringe when I hear all these leaders pronounce how they want our economy to be “stable” all the time.  Unfortunately, “stable” to me means status quo and status quo means lack of opportunity.  Think about it, if everything is stable and legislated to stay “stable”, how does an entrepreneur make in-roads?  How do the poor who are dreaming big ever get ahead?  How do economies shift to embrace new ideas?  How do those who are “too rich” ever come back down to earth?   I hate to say it, but when I hear these leaders speak of “stability”, all I hear is “How can I rig the laws/economy such that I can maintain my power.”  I think the better solution is to figure out to encourage people to be better prepared for both the upsides and downsides.  Fundamentally, it means encouraging saving along with some measured amount of frugality (note, I didn’t say people should be frugal all the time) even in good times.

Obama may delay tax-cut rollback for wealthy – Yahoo! News
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who is part of the majority leadership team in the Senate, told ABC’s “This Week” that an economic recovery package between $500 billion and $700 billion is needed and could be ready by the time Obama takes office on January 20.

Can someone please explain to my simple mind where this money comes from?  Isn’t highly leveraged borrowing with no collateral what got us into the mess in the first place?  I know these plays are coming straight from Keynesian economics and FDR’s playbook from the Great Depression, but I think there is a really big difference this time around.  Namely, back then the government wasn’t massively in debt to begin with so it could afford to borrow from the future to get by in the present.  That’s just not the case this time around.  Coming up with $2-3 trillion dollars is not child’s play (and trust me, when this is all said and done the total bailout package will be well north of $2 trillion.)   And what’s it all for?  It’s just going to bail out companies who are now calling in their favors for the bribes, (oops, I mean campaign donations,) they’ve made over the years to the two parties.

Gee, pretty soon the U.S. government will have nationalized all of our major industries, and all at the bequest of the actual industries, as opposed to places like Venezuela where the government proactively nationalized the major industries.  If I seem to recall Marx’s predictions, he said that communism would come out of a highly industrialized country, not a third world country like Russia (at the time), right?

So, what’s the count right now?  We are in the process of nationalizing: (I know, it isn’t really that, right?)

1. The banking industry
2. The Auto industry (if this goes through)
3. The power/energy industry is pretty much already that since it is so heavily regulated and allows for little real competition.  Just look at how hard it is to bring alternative energies to market

After that, you gotta figure the airlines are next.

I don’t know, something just doesn’t strike me as correct when we talk about the government owning vast quantities of stock in our major industries.  I’ve even seen pundits say things like “Maybe we’ll even, eventually, make a profit on these ‘investments’”.  Sorry, I just don’t think it’s the government’s business to be in the business of business ownership.  Should the government regulate business?  Yes, of course.  But owning a stake in the business is a whole different thing.  It’s picking sides.  It’s giving that company an unfair advantage.  With all due respect to GM/Chrsyler, maybe it’s time they fail.  Maybe it’s time to get some startups in to the automotive industry who are willing to take some chances and produce an automobile that is revolutionary instead of the status quo.  Or maybe it’s time they start asking themselves why companies like Toyota and Honda can make profits, yet they can’t?  Someone once said “necessity is the mother of invention”.  Maybe if GM/Chrsyler “needed” it a little more, they could figure something out.  Instead, of thinking creatively and making some hard decisions, they figure they better get in line at the Taxpayer’s teat.

If only it were that easy…

Sure, my vote counts “extra”, because the state is contested and I’m still on the fence, so these guys definitely want to sway me one way or the other…

However, the constant robo-calls and incessant ads are driving me nuts…  In fact, they have the opposite effect on me, I think.  Something to the effect that I know think the number of ads I get from a candidate is inversely related to the likelihood that I will vote for them…  See, elections are all about math…  Same goes for the negativity of the ad.  That is, the more negative the ad, the less likely I’m to vote for the candidate sponsoring the ad.  I abhor the politics of fear, and that goes for both parties.

Sigh.

Two other observations:

1. From what I can tell, the McCain camp sure doesn’t know how to use email effectively.  I get maybe one email a month from them and they still think I live in NY.  Not that I want more email, but, boy, I do almost all of my communication via email, as I suspect, do a lot of Americans in the under 40 age group, such that you’d think they would take advantage of the ease/cost of email more.

2. As for the Obama camp, I asked them a question via email and all I ever get from them is constant, uh, “spam” telling me why Barack is so great.  When I sent the question, I didn’t think it meant I was signing up to receive 2-3 emails a day.  I legitimately wanted my question answered.  There has to be some lackey staffer somewhere who answers the emails, right?  Don’t you think $150M/month in cash could buy some college staffers to answer emails?  Sure, I know they get thousands of emails a day, but you would think they would carve out resources to answer questions from people who are on the fence.   Maybe they should even let people check a box that says, “I’m on the fence, please answer this so I can make a more informed decision”.  Of course, everyone would check it…

At the end of the day, what do other fence-sitters do in order to come to a decision?  Flip a coin?  Ron Paul?  Ralph Nader?  Write-in?  Not vote?