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Post by graybeard on Mar 31, 2010 22:03:19 GMT -6
I loved how NPR explained it yesterday. Roughly: "Consumers are optimistic to the point of drawing from their savings to spend more. This is a sign the economy is improving."
Yeh, right..
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 31, 2010 7:10:35 GMT -6
That crap should be outlawed.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 31, 2010 7:03:01 GMT -6
Great first post, Cheshire. Welcome and thank you.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 31, 2010 6:53:43 GMT -6
Local governments live by taxing real estate. How would decreased home ownership affect that? Would local govt then be even less responsive to constituents? This one has to be thought through.
Another tax fix that would bring in huge sums would be to tax Capital Gains at the same rate as labor. Why should you get a discounted tax rate if you're rich enough to make money investing your surplus?
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 29, 2010 20:20:08 GMT -6
Inspections are import restrictions with jobs at the cost of the importers, and safer products, and they probably are within present trade agreements.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 29, 2010 8:23:55 GMT -6
100% inspection of every truck and driver will slow them to a trickle, without any new law.
Oregon politicians are the best.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 26, 2010 22:15:46 GMT -6
Electricity at $.30 per kwh is about the most expensive heat you buy, and no lights are down low, from where natural circulation does the most good.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 26, 2010 16:47:49 GMT -6
Those danged Boomerangs...
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Post by graybeard on Mar 26, 2010 11:24:38 GMT -6
Congratulations.
What have you done to reduce consumption?
I've put cfl bulbs almost everywhere. Wife loves her lamps with 3-way bulbs, and I haven't found any of those in cfl. LED would be great with a dimmer in place of 3-way, but they're still not cost effective.
Low wattage bulbs can reduce the need for aircon, if you have it. We don't.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 25, 2010 8:06:24 GMT -6
RobertReich.orgThe Final Health Care Vote and What it Really MeansSunday, March 21, 2010 It’s not nearly as momentous as the passage of Medicare in 1965 and won’t fundamentally alter how Americans think about social safety nets. But the likely passage of Obama’s health care reform bill is the biggest thing Congress has done in decades, and has enormous political significance for the future. Medicare directly changed the life of every senior in America, giving them health security and dramatically reducing their rates of poverty. By contrast, most Americans won’t be affected by Obama’s health care legislation. Most of us will continue to receive health insurance through our employers. (Only a comparatively small minority will be required to buy insurance who don’t want it, or be subsidized in order to afford it. Only a relatively few companies will be required to provide it who don’t now.) Medicare built on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal notion of government as insurer, with citizens making payments to government, and government paying out benefits. That was the central idea of Social Security, and Medicare piggybacked on Social Security. Obama’s legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. Eisenhower locked in the tax break for employee health benefits; Nixon pushed prepaid, competing health plans, and urged a requirement that employers cover their employees. Obama applies Nixon’s idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it. So don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option. The significance of Obama’s health legislation is more political than substantive. For the first time since Ronald Reagan told America government is the problem, Obama’s health bill reasserts that government can provide a major solution. In political terms, that’s a very big deal. Most Americans continue to be suspicious of government. That distrust is deeply etched in our culture and traditions. Our system of government was devised by people who distrusted government and intentionally created checks and balances, three separate branches, and almost insuperable odds against getting big things done. The period extending from 1933 to 1965 — the New Deal and the Great Society — was an historical aberration from that long tradition, animated by the unique crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and the social cohesion that flowed from them for another generation. Ronald Reagan merely picked up where Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover left off. But Reagan’s view of government as the problem is increasingly at odds with a nation whose system of health care relies on large for-profit entities designed to make money rather than improve health; whose economy is dependent on global capital and on global corporations and financial institutions with no particular loyalty to America; and much of whose fuel comes from unstable and dangerous areas of the world. Under these conditions, government is the only entity that can look out for our interests. We will not return to the New Deal or the Great Society, but nor will we continue to wallow in the increasingly obsolete Reagan view that we don’t need a strong and competent government. Today’s vote confirms our hope that we can have both strength and competence in Washington. It is an audacious hope, but we have no choice. ------- For the most part, I really respect what this guy has to say, and I follow his blog. GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 24, 2010 23:14:42 GMT -6
Where were they when Bu$h invaded Iraq?
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Post by graybeard on Mar 24, 2010 23:11:04 GMT -6
This bill got a lot more open debate than the Congressional authorization to invade Iraq. And the cost is far, far lower. I said at the time that Saddam was the most valuable man in the world, as we were about to spend over $300 Billion just to get him. I understimated by a $Trillion or two.
What's to stop OBama from writing signing statements to modify the bill? Bu$h did it hundreds of times.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 24, 2010 23:06:22 GMT -6
I'm afraid it won't let up until some wacko really goes overboard with something dramatic enough to shock the rest of them, if that's possible.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 23, 2010 23:21:21 GMT -6
Sorry to hear that about Whole Foods. Trader Joe has been our regular food supplier for a dozen years, and I like to think they're better than that.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 23, 2010 23:19:20 GMT -6
At the hardwood lumber store today, I asked for half-inch prefinished plywood for kitchen cabinets I'm building. The Latino worker asked if I wanted birch for $36, or maple for $55. While I was trying to remember which I had bought before, he said the birch was from China and the maple from US.
"I'll take maple."
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Post by graybeard on Mar 23, 2010 7:46:27 GMT -6
Both parties are no blatantly beholden to the Corporates. The victory of Fascism is complete.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 21, 2010 10:06:57 GMT -6
"The case is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 09-04083, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York)."
Cases like this make me respect Bloomberg more all the time.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 21, 2010 9:59:53 GMT -6
The inspectors were the morticians who performed the autopsies.
When the Heparin story broke on this Forum, I asked my neighbor ICU nurse about it. She hadn't heard it yet, and commented they had seen more people with recovery problems lately. It was far more widespread than reported, as it's difficult to track who died or got sick of what.
Tariffs do not prohibit imports, nor do they assure a better product reaches the consumer.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 21, 2010 9:54:04 GMT -6
100% inspection of imports - paid by the importers - would kill the treasonous bastards.
"Always Low Prices" thanks to Communist slave labor.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 19, 2010 3:49:39 GMT -6
I don't understand hospitals being against more control of the insurance trust. It's the insurance cos. that beat down hospitalization charges by up to 80%. How much worse would public option be?
I'd bet that hospitals barely break even on stays paid by big insurance, and have to make their profit with inflated (undiscounted) charges to the uninsured. Hmm, maybe that's the key.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 18, 2010 21:28:23 GMT -6
My wife came within a few days of being exposed to poisoned heparin when the story broke.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 17, 2010 21:26:10 GMT -6
Inspection of imports - paid by the importers - is really the last stage of manufacturing, so it repatriates at least that many manufacturing jobs. Since it would be administered by the US govt, inspection inefficiencies would be reflected in the manufacturing cost of foreign goods. Right now we inspect less than 3% of imports. The lives we save could be in the thousands or more.
GB Fredorbob: "unproductive labor that benefits nobody"
You've obviously never had a pet or friend poisoned by crap from Communist China. Melamine in pet food, ethylene glycol in toothpaste, and poisoned Heparin all should have been stopped by incoming inspection. The bastards have even poisoned baby formula for their domestic consumption. Then there are the defective tires, etc. They are just as happy to see a lot of us die.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 16, 2010 23:09:45 GMT -6
Inspection of imports - paid by the importers - is really the last stage of manufacturing, so it repatriates at least that many manufacturing jobs. Since it would be administered by the US govt, inspection inefficiencies would be reflected in the manufacturing cost of foreign goods. Right now we inspect less than 3% of imports. The lives we save could be in the thousands or more.
GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 14, 2010 8:17:44 GMT -6
He's great. We need 400 more like him.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 13, 2010 9:42:26 GMT -6
Thanks. I've have robertreich.org/ on one tab come every time I initialize OE, so I don't miss one of his writings. GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 11, 2010 6:55:36 GMT -6
Agreed about Hartmann. I get an email from him every afternoon, covering what they were going to cover that morning. I haven't followed up with them on why on the delay, just delete it.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 11, 2010 6:50:23 GMT -6
I bet his answer to high cost structure is outsourcing.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 11, 2010 0:03:54 GMT -6
He was on I-8 east of San Diego. Those curves are comfortable at 75+. Satellite view on maps.google.com for Live Oak Springs, Calif, will show that stretch.
You can bet there will be some fakers out there trying to squeeze Toyota. This guy could be one of them. How does regenerative braking combined with a small engine and adequate disc brakes combine to cause a runaway?
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Post by graybeard on Mar 8, 2010 7:44:34 GMT -6
www.Bloomberg.comBrazil Raises Tariffs on 102 U.S. Goods in WTO FightBy Iuri Dantas March 8 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil will raise tariffs on 102 U.S.-made products, including cars, boats and chewing gum, for 365 days in retaliation for subsidies paid to U.S. cotton producers, Trade Minister Miguel Jorge said. Acting on authorization by the World Trade Organization, Brazil will raise levies to between 14 percent and 100 percent, according to a list published today in the government’s Official Gazette. The Geneva-based WTO in August ruled that Brazil may impose $294.7 million annually in sanctions on U.S. imports because the cotton subsidies violate trade regulations. The amount is the second-biggest ever authorized by the organization. Brazil may take additional measures, according to the Gazette. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government will also seek to impose as much as $270 million in intellectual property sanctions, Marcio Cozendey, head of economics department at the Foreign Ministry, said Feb. 9. The U.S. has 30 days to negotiate a bilateral agreement with Brazil and avoid higher levies, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said March 3 at a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brasilia. Goods now subject to higher tariffs include refrigerators, medicine, personal care products, methanol, raw cotton, auto parts, earphones, speakers, refrigerators, plastic furniture, some ovens and sunglasses. Agricultural goods sanctioned include pears, raisins and potatoes. -------- We're even subsidizing scarce California water to grow cotton. Since we no longer have a textile industry to support, our cotton subsidies are insane, if they ever did make sense. Countries in Africa and elsewhere will be able to export cotton for precious income if they don't have to compete with subsidized US cotton. Robert Reich brought that up about five years ago when aid to Africa was a big deal. GB
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Post by graybeard on Mar 8, 2010 5:25:48 GMT -6
Those are pretty small fees compared to what I'm sure will hit me in Surf City when I build my new garage tied to a small addition to my house. Then the taxes, which are forever, will be killer. It's made me hesitate for years now.
GB
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