THE WASHINGTON OKLAHOMAS...THERE'S A DIFFERENCE ?

Hey Harry Reid – Want to see what pure socialism and government dependency looks like? Visit any of the poorest counties in America; they are all on Indian reservations. America’s poorest 1% live mainly on actual Government reservations, (as opposed to the Democrat party’s main constituency who live on the Government plantation). Schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs have a dropout rate over 50%. The Federal government does not allow private ownership of property on Indian reservations, (pure empirical evidence for Marxist theories). Free markets are not allowed to operate, and vast resources of coal, energy, and mineral resources go untapped that could easily enrich the tribe members.

Harry Reid show boats and raves about some artificial wrong about a sports team; while 80% of tribes living under the Bureau of Indian Affairs are unemployed, and in desperate poverty under Harry Reid’s government boot.

WHO'S THE SCATTERBRAIN NOW.....

Before we keep thinking that Sarah Palin was a bit ditsy for hollering " death panels " be very afraid of the following Son of a Bitch. If I were 45 years of age in these times I would be going to the gym every day.  


April 1, 2014

Ezekiel Emmanuel's Reaper Curve

By Fred N. Sauer

Ezekiel Emanuel has written extensively, before and after he helped draft ObamaCare, about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

True reform, Emanuel argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

In numerous writings, Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007).

Of course, patients hope their doctors will have that singleminded devotion. But Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care." One sign of progress he sees: "the progression in end-of-life care mentality from 'do everything' to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible." (JAMA, June 18, 2008)

In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and coauthors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others.

"One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.”

"However, other things are rarely equal -- whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each -- is unclear…When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated...”

Zeke has summarized his thinking in a very curious graph published in The Lancet on January 31, 2009. The Y-axis is labeled “probability of receiving an intervention” (medical treatment), and the X-axis is labeled “Age in years.”

                         

         “Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions” The Lancet, January 31, 2009

If you are lucky enough to be born, you had better be very healthy, for it looks like you have to be alive for about 2 years before you have an even 25% chance of getting needed medical care. By the time you are 10 years old you just have a 50% chance for critical care. Too bad for you if you have an early or complicated birth. And you’d better live a pretty protected childhood.

Don’t get into too much trouble before you are about 18. This is coincidently when you can start to vote, and therefore when you begin to arrive in the zone of maximum probability of an intervention (i.e. getting some health care). But maximum probability does not mean a certainty of intervention at any time.

The period of maximum probability continues until you are about 33 years old. By 50 you are down to only a 75% chance of receiving a needed intervention. By your late 50s you are down to only a 50% chance of getting what you need. And just about the time you turn 65, the very time you would have expected to begin to be eligible for Medicare after having paid payroll taxes for years, you will only have a 25% chance (or less) of getting a needed intervention.

This is worthy of being repeated. You have paid your payroll taxes for 40 years or so in the expectation that you will receive full Medicare benefits for your health care needs. Then you discover that under Emanuel’s “Reaper Curve,” you will only have a 25% chance or less of receiving medical intervention when you reach a health crisis

The truth of Emanuel’s Reaper Curve and his writings are playing out now in ObamaCare’s implementation.  As more and more Americans are dropped from their healthcare plans and are forced to switch to an ObamaCare plan, as more people sign up for Medicaid and President Obama pushes more cuts in Medicare, American’s are faced with the reality of less choice in picking their doctors and health care plans and less health care for them in times of need as government bureaucrats look for ways to cut health care costs.

But, as Ezekiel Emanuel points out in this graph, at the very age that you are most likely to need medical intervention, his “complete lives system,” will increasingly not provide it to you.  The older you are the more likely you will die from not receiving medical care.  Isn’t that comforting?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/ezekiel_emmanuels_reaper_curve.html

WALL ST. STILL STANDS..

   Back in 2011 I wrote something in an older blog entitled the " The Left, The Right, and The Screwed "  I happened to revisit there and found this post that seemed to keep up with times,at least to this date. I was just wondering if some of us feel the same way today ? The post was about the Occupy Wall St. protest.

Sunday, October 09, 2011

OVERCROWDING WALL STREET

Protesting in the streets brings back the fond memories of the 1968 riots in Chicago. As it turns out it was merely the confused academic masses and some peasant followers suffering from the same inane leftist philosophy, gathering to wait for their real estate license test results.

So now, in 2011 we have the low bourgeois and indoctrinated academic unemployed,with their $50 back packs and $90 dollar cell phone bills, and probably a host of paid union help, storming the money citadel ,Wall Street, railing for the redistribution of the belongings of others who attained success through ambition or hard work, to a section of the society that has been relegated to poverty and second class citizenship by a progressive philosophy of welfare that has destroyed the will to work and instilled in them, to an injurious degree, that the value of an education is a worthless endeavor . The real goal is specific to the progressive, wealthy, ruling elite.

Once they succeed in nullifying the values of the middle class, namely ambition and the value of an education, those same wealthy and political elite, along with the academics , will then have the road to utopia well paved . I believe that the cooperation of the wealthy, hand in hand with a progressive, if not a some what socialist level of government, will turn this country into a second class nation that will effect the future of the whole world. The ascension of China and Russia, and those with rising economy's, will assure the secular progressive political structure of this country.

With only 19 percent of the world's population, China consumes 53 percent of the world's cement, 48 percent of the world's iron ore, 47 percent of the world's coal, as well as a majority of almost every major commodity. In 2010 China produced 11 times more steel than the United States. They are the beneficiary of our employment problems.

The multitudes that gathered in Wall Street would have been better served if the government had let the inefficient banks fail. The demonstrators could then direct their ire where it belongs. In front of the White House. How absurd is it to shout down Wall Street and the wealthy when the government is hand in hand with them.

At my age it makes little difference. My time is manageable. It’s our grandchildren that have to deal with the consequences of a government that cannot make the tough calls .

Posted by TedS at 11:14 AM No comments:

LEFTISM IS A DISEASE TO THE VERY END .

On Wednesday, Governor Pat Quinn dressed up the demands of a hostage-taker into a state budget address—again.

In advance of the permanently temporary personal and corporate income tax increases he imposed on Illinois in 2011, Quinn argued that without the tax increases, social service providers would suffer.

In fact, he would see to it that they did.

Quinn’s less than subtle message to the human services community was that if they wanted to avoid seeing the invoices they submitted to the state for services rendered put into the permanently permanent pay-no-mind bin in the Governor’s office they best fall in line.

Quinn did not conjure up a darling cartoon character to deliver that message. He did it himself.

This is the same Pat Quinn who sanctioned an effort by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to insert themselves between parents and their developmentally disabled children.

Adding more dues-paying beings to SEIU’s rolls was more important to Quinn than protecting as inviolate the bond between a developmentally disabled child and the primary caregivers upon whom he relies—his mom and dad. This matter is now pending before the United States Supreme Court (Harris v. Quinn).

Pat Quinn enjoys a public perception generated by the state-run media that while he is perhaps not the gold standard in competence, Quinn is generally honest and kind-hearted.

As is so often the case in Illinois politics, it is the converse that turns out to be true. The avuncular Quinn is not nearly the Chauncey Gardiner character he appears to be. His regular guy shtick and affable demeanor belies a cold, calculating propensity to exploit vulnerable people as the means to his political ends.

After publicly declaring that his word means nothing by codifying that in Illinois, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, nothing is so permanent as a temporary tax increase, Quinn has quickly moved into the enforcement phase.

Quinn communicated to hospice providers, for example, that he will eliminate the hospice benefit provided by Illinois’ Medicaid program if the temporary personal and corporate income taxes are not made permanent.

The hospice benefit in question provides for palliative care for the terminally ill. That care most often occurs in the home as opposed to an institutional setting so as to improve a person’s quality of life before he or she dies.

In effect—and this is not my opinion but rather the opinion of hospice care providers I contacted—Quinn is threatening the end-of-life care for dying children and adults.

Quinn is seizing a political opportunity to bully individuals and their loved ones when they are at their most vulnerable to satisfy his public sector union financiers who want a permanent tax increase (and more still) and thus advance his electoral interests.

In the classic movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” which tells the story of Michelangelo’s commission from Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, there is a running exchange between the impatient Pope Julius (Rex Harrison) and the perfectionist Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) wherein Pope Julius routinely asks Michelangelo, “When will you make an end?” Michelangelo’s reply is always, “When I am finished!”

In the black art of Illinois politics, I am left to wonder, when we will make an end of Pat Quinn and his thuggery?

And I am left to hope that the Illinois electorate decides to do so in November before we are finished.

SO WE REALLY THINK WE ARE TOTALLY FREE ?

Senate Document No. 43, 73rd Congress, 1st Session, which states: “The ownership of all property is in the state; individual so-called ‘ownership’ is only by virtue of the government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the state.”
http://usa-the-republic.com/revenue/true_history/Chap8.html

Congressional Record, March 9, 1933 on HR 1491 p. 83. "Under the new law the money is issued to the banks in return for government obligations, bills of exchange, drafts, notes, trade acceptances, and bankers acceptances. The money will be worth 100 cents on the dollar, because it is backed by the credit of the nation. It will represent a mortgage on all the homes, and other property of all the people of the nation."

When your birth certificate was recorded with the Department of Commerce, a U.S. citizen, corporate entity was created, so he could be taxed and regulated in commerce. This was the property of the federal government by usurpation. Therefore all the property of the U.S. citizen was now the property of the government! You are just the mere user of the property, by virtue of the government. The U.S. citizen was created to generate revenue. Your government is usurping your property, so it can generate revenue to pay its bankruptcy debts!

That is why you don't get a 'title' for your vehicle. You get a 'certificate' of title. That just certifies that there is a title held in the government's name, and you have permission to use this government property via the certificate of title. You must also pay a registration fee and get license plates for their property. Don't pay it and they will deny you the use of this property. When you record your real estate in the county, you are recording your turn to use the property in the corporation records. If you don't pay your usage (rental) fees (property taxes) they will take their property back via a tax sale, and sell the privilege to someone else. The value of the property is irrelevant. They are just concerned with the rent (tax) due. Your property has been usurped by the government. The same with zoning laws. If you want to build a garage on your property, you can do so only after you get permission via a building permit (another tax). If you don't get permission, they will make you tear it down.

This usurpation of your property could only be accomplished by the creation of the U.S. citizen, via your birth certificate. And now, all property is recorded in the name of the U.S. citizen, in all caps! Your sovereignty was usurped and converted to a commercial privilege. You became the co-signer for every commercial transaction the federal government became involved in, all to generate revenue. The big question is: How do you get your sovereignty back? You must reclaim your inalienable rights.

THE STAMP OF APPROVAL ?

MARCH 14, 2014

An Unnecessary Overtime Reform 

By The Editors

Last month it was the minimum wage, today it is overtime: The regulatory state is the gift that keeps on giving Barack Obama the opportunity to indulge his meddlesome tendencies. Tens of millions remain out of work, economic growth is anemic, his signature health-care law is such a dog’s breakfast of policy contradictions and wishful thinking that even he himself refuses to enforce it, and, though he has a sort of reverse Midas touch on matters economic, his adventures in micromanagement continue — this time as he seeks to overhaul overtime rules that are all of ten years past their last major overhaul.

The changes would make certain overtime-exempt employees, such as lower-level restaurant managers, eligible for overtime. Whether they would actually collect any overtime or be sent home at 39:59 each week is unknowable.

What is knowable is that there are two fundamental economic lessons that Barack Obama cannot seem to learn: One is that the federal government cannot command productive private-sector jobs into existence; the second is that the federal government cannot command higher total wages in private-sector jobs. As with the proposed minimum-wage hike — which would cost the economy 500,000 or more jobs — overtime rules beget economic tradeoffs. As the price of labor goes up, some businesses will simply hire fewer people or lay off current employees, seek ways to pass costs along to consumers or suppliers, or even eliminate certain business activities entirely if they become cost-prohibitive. The end result may or may not be higher total wages; it is as likely to be higher wages for some and unemployment for others. The president, a longtime practitioner of free-lunch economics in which the benefits are advertised and the costs ignored, has a moral duty to consider both sides of the equation. It may be that he simply cannot, but it is in any case clear that he will not.

With real economic growth under 2 percent, growth in employment and wages is difficult to achieve. In response, the president proposes to revise regulations issued under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to make more workers eligible for overtime, apparently still operating under the Keynesian-lite hypothesis that giving a policy goose to wages will increase consumption and consequently growth. He might have consulted his own Bureau of Economic Analysis, which identifies as prominent among the causes of our slower economic growth “a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment,” meaning that investors are not putting their money into factories, equipment, and other productive assets — a critical source of economic growth and those good-paying middle-class jobs that Washington is always going on about.

Here, the president’s proposal is doubly destructive: Factories need people to run them, and the president’s overtime rules will, if they work out the way he desires, make those workers more expensive. Perhaps more significant, the lack of a stable regulatory environment discourages investment — it is difficult to forecast costs if labor regulations are going to change every time President Obama sees a discouraging poll from Gallup.

Implicit in the president’s reasoning here is his familiar zero-sum class-warfare analysis. The financial markets have been doing well, and corporate profits are very strong, but employment and wages are stagnant or declining. If your thinking is sufficiently shallow, then using overtime rules to move a little bit out of the profits column and into the wages column seems like a practical solution, and possibly a moral one. But it ignores important economic realities: The people who are doing the worst and placing the largest drag on total wages are not full-time workers exempt from overtime rules — a relatively small population — but people who have no jobs or only part-time jobs. The president’s proposed overtime changes would probably make that situation worse rather than better, adding another disincentive to full-time employment on top of the very strong one created by his health-care law.

Regulations beget regulatory disputes, and there has been substantial litigation over the rules as they stand, fighting out such questions as who counts as a manager and what counts as work. The fear of being sued for back wages has caused employers to impose highly regimented and occasionally draconian rules on their workers, for instance by making it a mandatory firing offense to work on one’s lunchtime or another scheduled break. It should go without saying that a regulatory innovation that makes employer-employee relationships less flexible rather than more flexible is undesirable from both parties’ points of view. President Obama proposes to raise the bar of inflexibility, which means that prospective employees will have to prove to their employers that they are worth not only the wage but the hassle — and the latter is becoming a more important consideration every year. 

President Obama’s overtime proposal will almost certainly raise the wages of some of his law-school buddies, but to the typical worker it offers a coin-toss between a possible pay bump and possible unemployment.

THE LEFT VERSUS MINORITIES

By: Thomas Sowell

3/11/2014 06:00 AM

If anyone wanted to pick a time and place where the political left’s avowed concern for minorities was definitively exposed as a fraud, it would be now — and the place would be New York City, where far left Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched an attack on charter schools, cutting their funding, among other things.

These schools have given thousands of low income minority children their only shot at a decent education, which often means their only shot at a decent life. Last year 82 percent of the students at a charter school called Success Academy passed city-wide mathematics exams, compared to 30 percent of the students in the city as a whole.

Why would anybody who has any concern at all about minority young people — or even common decency — want to destroy what progress has already been made?

One big reason, of course, is the teachers’ union, one of Mayor de Blasio’s biggest supporters. But it may be more than that. For many of the true believers on the left, their ideology overrides any concern about the actual fate of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Something similar happened on the west coast last year. The American Indian Model Schools in Oakland have been ranked among the top schools in the nation, based on their students’ test scores. This is, again, a special achievement for minority students who need all the help they can get.

But, last spring, the California State Board of Education announced plans to shut this school down!

Why? The excuse given was that there had been suspicious financial dealings by the former — repeat, former — head of the institution. If this was the real reason, then all they had to do was indict the former head and let a court decide if he was guilty or innocent.

There was no reason to make anyone else suffer, much less the students. But the education establishment’s decision was to refuse to let the school open last fall. Fortunately a court stopped this hasty shut-down.

These are not just isolated local incidents. The Obama administration has cut spending for charter schools in the District of Columbia and its Justice Department has intervened to try to stop the state of Louisiana from expanding its charter schools.

Why such hostility to schools that have succeeded in educating minority students, where so many others have failed?

Some of the opposition to charter schools has been sheer crass politics. The teachers’ unions see charter schools as a threat to their members’ jobs, and politicians respond to the money and the votes that teachers’ unions can provide.

The net result is that public schools are often run as if their main function is to provide jobs to teachers. Whether the children get a decent education is secondary, at best.

In various parts of the country, educators who have succeeded in raising the educational level of minority children to the national average — or above — have faced hostility, harassment or have even been driven out of their schools.

Not all charter schools are successful, of course, but the ones that are completely undermine the excuses for failure in the public school system as a whole. That is why teachers’ unions hate them, as a threat not only to their members’ jobs but a threat to the whole range of frauds and fetishes in the educational system.

The autonomy of charter schools is also a threat to the powers that be, who want to impose their own vision on the schools, regardless of what the parents want. Attorney General Eric Holder wants to impose his own notion of racial balance in the schools, while many black parents want their children to learn, regardless of whether they are seated next to a white child or a black child. There have been all-black schools whose students met or exceeded national norms in education, whether in Louisiana, California or other places around the country. But Eric Holder, like Bill de Blasio, put his ideology above the education — and the future life — of minority students.

Charter schools take power from politicians and bureaucrats, letting parents decide where their children will go to school. That is obviously offensive to those on the left, who think that our betters should be making our decisions for us.

A MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF MUSCLE

After going through the earnings of the top 50 golfers ( 100 make at least a million ) I thought it's amazing how much one can earn as an athlete. I was wondering how much basketball players made a while back and discovered that in the NBA every player on a team makes at least $1,000,000 ( exception: two At $450,000 ) and the top player can make 20 times that. With at least 12 men on a roster that makes 360 ball players making $1,000,000 and mostly more. I didn't even get to MLB, NHL or NFL much less tennis or other professional sports.

Now it has occurred to me that there must be thousands of professional athletes of one type or another that make a million and more. So the question arises....

Give me the name of 1500 greedy CEO's that leftists talk about and want taxed to the bone for God knows what. I think maybe these athletes should get their hackles up, the body language of dogs, so to speak.

Golf Digest Top 50 Earners Of 2013 Full Player Money List

8th January 2014

Rank 1: Tiger Woods     On Course: $12,091,508        Off Course: $71,000,000     Total: $83,091,508  

Rank 2: Phil Mickelson   On course $7,009,156          Off course $45,000,000      Total: $52,009,156

Rank: 3: Arnold Palmer  On Course: —                      Off Course: $40,000,000     Total: $40,000,000

Rank 4: Jack Nicklaus    On Course: $9,625               Off Course: $26,000,000     Total: $26,009,625

Rank 5: Henrik Stenson  On Course: $18,594,670       Off Course: $2,850,000       Total: $21,444,670

Rank 6: Rory McIlroy      On Course: $2,608,789         Off Course: $18,000,000     Total: $20,608,789

Rank 7: Gary Player       On Course: $9,625               Off Course: $16,000,000     Total: $16,009,625

Rank 8: Adam Scott       On Course: $8,048,068         Off Course: $7,600,000       Total: $15,648,068

Rank 9: Ernie Els           On Course: $2,189,536         Off Course: $12,500,000     Total: $14,689,536

Rank 10: Greg Norman   On Course: —                      Off Course: $14,000,000     Total: $14,000,000

Rank 11: Sergio Garcia   On Course: $3,411,237         Off Course: $8,500,000       Total: $11,911,237

Rank 12: Justin Rose      On Course: $6,253,672         Off Course: $5,500,000       Total: $11,753,672

Rank 13: Matt Kuchar     On Course: $7,053,225         Off Course: $3,750,000       Total: $10,803,225

Rank 14: Luke Donald     On Course: $2,926,655         Off Course: $7,000,00         Total: $9,926,655

Rank 15: Steve Stricker   On Course: $6,590,532        Off Course: $3,000,000        Total: $9,590,532

Rank 16: Graeme McDowellOn Course: $4,515,205     Off Course: $5,000,000        Total: $9,515,205

Rank 17: Lee Westwood  On Course: $2,889,087        Off Course: $6,500,000        Total: $9,389,087

Rank 18: Jordan Spieth    On Course: $4,669,820        Off Course: $4,500,000        Total: $9,169,820

Rank 19: Dustin Johnson  On Course: $4,643,214       Off Course: $4,500,000         Total: $9,143,214

Rank 20: Jim Furyk          On Course: $3,474,779       Off Course: $5,250,000         Total: $8,724,779

21. Keegan Bradley

2013 RANK: 23 | ON COURSE: $4,177,480 | OFF COURSE: $4,500,000 | TOTAL: $8,677,480

22. Fred Couples

2013 RANK: 28 | ON COURSE: $2,312,710 | OFF COURSE: $6,000,000 | TOTAL: $8,312,710

23. Ian Poulter

2013 RANK: 26 | ON COURSE: $4,183,433 | OFF COURSE: $4,000,000 | TOTAL: $8,183,433

24. Zach Johnson

2013 RANK: 27 | ON COURSE: $5,154,359 | OFF COURSE: $3,000,000 | TOTAL: $8,154,359

25. Brandt Snedeker

2013 RANK: 7 | ON COURSE: $5,654,337 | OFF COURSE: $2,500,000 | TOTAL: $8,154,337

26. Ryo Ishikawa

2013 RANK: 15 | ON COURSE: $1,483,146 | OFF COURSE: $6,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,983,146

27. Padraig Harrington

2013 RANK: 21 | ON COURSE: $1,333,819 | OFF COURSE: $6,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,833,819

28. K.J. Choi

2013 RANK: 32 | ON COURSE: $1,283,251 | OFF COURSE: $6,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,783,251

29. Jason Day

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $5,211,697 | OFF COURSE: $2,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,711,697

30. Webb Simpson

2013 RANK: 33 | ON COURSE: $4,683,999 | OFF COURSE: $3,000,000 | TOTAL: $7,683,999

31. Nick Faldo

2013 RANK: 31 | ON COURSE: — | OFF COURSE: $7,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,500,000

32. Jason Dufner

2013 RANK: 30 | ON COURSE: $3,676,268 | OFF COURSE: $3,500,000 | TOTAL: $7,176,268

33. Hunter Mahan

2013 RANK: 24 | ON COURSE: $3,261,164 | OFF COURSE: $3,750,000 | TOTAL: $7,011,164

34. Davis Love III

2013 RANK: 22 | ON COURSE: $352,643 | OFF COURSE: $6,500,000 | TOTAL: $6,852,643

35. Rickie Fowler

2013 RANK: 38 | ON COURSE: $2,206,892 | OFF COURSE: $4,500,000 | TOTAL: $6,706,892

36. Bernhard Langer

2013 RANK: 45 | ON COURSE: $3,094,468 | OFF COURSE: $3,500,000 | TOTAL: $6,594,468

37. Bubba Watson

2013 RANK: 18 | ON COURSE: $2,234,703 | OFF COURSE: $4,200,000 | TOTAL: $6,434,703

38. Charl Schwartzel

2013 RANK: 39 | ON COURSE: $3,658,889 | OFF COURSE: $2,750,000 | TOTAL: $6,408,889

39. Miguel A. Jimenez

2013 RANK: 49 | ON COURSE: $1,605,007 | OFF COURSE: $4,750,000 | TOTAL: $6,355,007

40. Tom Watson

2013 RANK: 35 | ON COURSE: $287,849 | OFF COURSE: $6,000,000 | TOTAL: $6,287,849

41. Camilo Villegas

2013 RANK: 40 | ON COURSE: $888,900 | OFF COURSE: $5,000,000 | TOTAL: $5,888,900

42. Colin Montgomerie

2013 RANK: 36 | ON COURSE: $322,945 | OFF COURSE: $5,500,000 | TOTAL: $5,822,945

43. Harris English

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $3,727,984 | OFF COURSE: $2,000,000 | TOTAL: $5,727,984

44. Bill Haas

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $4,042,663 | OFF COURSE: $1,500,000 | TOTAL: $5,542,663

45. Kenny Perry

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $3,383,804 | OFF COURSE: $2,000,000 | TOTAL: $5,383,804

46. Billy Horschel

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $4,098,370 | OFF COURSE: $1,250,000 | TOTAL: $5,348,370

47. Nick Watney

2013 RANK: 29 | ON COURSE: $2,845,413 | OFF COURSE: $2,500,000 | TOTAL: $5,345,413

48. Paula Creamer

2013 RANK: 44 | ON COURSE: $831,918 | OFF COURSE: $4,500,000 | TOTAL: $5,331,918

49. Darren Clarke

2013 RANK: 46 | ON COURSE: $281,550 | OFF COURSE: $5,000,000 | TOTAL: $5,281,550

50. Matteo Manassero

2013 RANK: NR | ON COURSE: $1,940,584 | OFF COURSE: $3,000,000 | TOTAL: $4,940,584

OLD DECISIONS MADE. WILL NEW ONES BE MADE THE SAME WAY ?

It strikes me that in today's world we have reverted to the same place we were in the late '30's and now we have to cope with world events and the decisions to be made about them. ......Will we wait too long once again ?

World War I reminds us that even amid the worst carnage imaginable there will likely be a victor and a loser, even if both sides would usually have been far better off negotiating rather than destroying their youth over sometimes solvable differences. That sophisticated Westerners deny this fact does not make it go away, much less convince their adversaries of the futility of ideas like victory and defeat.

We can still learn lots from World War I, if only in the sense of how to avoid disasters of this nature — especially given the present age of gathering war clouds not unlike those in 1914 and 1939.

China, like the Westernized Japan of the 1930s, wants influence and power commensurate with its economic clout, and perhaps believes its growing military can obtain both at the expense of its democratic neighbors without starting a wider war. North Korea is not convinced that demanding concessions from South Korea — or simply humiliating it and the U.S. — by threats of war would not work. Iran trusts that the age of the U.S. mare nostrum in the Mediterranean is over, that the Sunni Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms are spent, that once-unquestioned Western guarantees to Israel are now negotiable, that nuclear acquisition is an agreed wink-and-nod obtainable enterprise, and that terrorist appendages can achieve political objectives in the Middle East just as effectively as carrier groups.

Putin dreams that the Russian imperial world of the 1950s can live again, through coercion, Machiavellian diplomacy, and the combined lethargy of the EU and the U.S. — and he often is willing to take some risks to refashion current realities. Failed socialist and Communist states in Latin America nonetheless believe that a distracted or uninterested U.S. no longer cares to make the argument that transparent democratic capitalism is the region’s only hope for the future. The miseries of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are apparently no reason for them to feel that they should not extend them to other countries.

Amid all that, a minor bow and apology here, or an inadvertent pink line and empty deadline there, matters. Gratuitous talk of “reset” and “lead from behind,” coupled with serial scapegoating of past U.S. policies and presidents, massive new debt and vast cuts in defense, also sends a message to our rivals and enemies that occasional gambles and aggressive moves that would usually be seen as stupid and suicidal may not be any more.

We are reverting to our posture of 1938–40, when the United States talked very loudly of what it might do and what the Axis should not do, but had no intention of backing up such sanctimoniousness with force and was more likely to cut than augment its defenses.

War is the messy arbiter of peacetime false perceptions about relative power. Peace returns when all the nations involved have learned, after great agony, what they really could and could not do. Or as Thucydides sighed, war is “a harsh schoolmaster.”

Given that reality, the U.S. should start quieting down and stepping up, rather than stepping back while sounding off — before others come to believe that their own wild fantasies are reality, and the harsh schoolmaster of war intercedes to correct everyone’s shared false perceptions.


— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

AT 82 AND RETIRED I'M NOT SURE I LIKE THIS......

February 17, 2014

Putting Social Security on Solid Footing

By Jon N. Hall

 If you lend yourself money, should you charge interest on the loan?  It would depend on how badly you need the interest income, wouldn't it?  If you were desperate for cash, you'd pay yourself a hefty interest rate.  After all, you need the money, right?

What may be even more absurd than those questions is federal finance.  You see, the federal government "lends" itself money and pays interest on those "loans."  The prime example of this practice is the surpluses generated by the Social Security portion of the payroll tax that have been "lent" to the general fund.  But what does the government pay itself in interest rates on those loans?

In 2013, the federal government paid an average rate of 1.875 percent on the "special issue securities" held by the Social Security Administration (SSA).  How does that rate compare with other interest rates?  The FDIC lists the national average one-year CD rate for jumbos ($100,000 or more) as 0.21 percent, while Bankrate reported an average rate of 0.24 percent for such CDs.  So the feds are paying themselves close to nine times the interest that commercial banks are paying depositors.  For January 2014, the feds paid a 2.5 percent interest rate on securities held by the SSA.  According to the FDIC, that's more than three times higher than even 5-year CDs are currently paying.

But the rates paid by commercial banks are excellent compared to what the feds are currently paying on 1-year T-bills.  Recently, that rate has been below 0.10 percent.  The feds pay lousy interest rates to those buying America's debt, but they pay themselves comparatively handsome rates that are well above market rates.

Also, the interest the feds "pay" on the "special issue securities" held by the SSA differs from the interest paid on regular treasuries in that it accumulates.  With regular treasuries, interest is paid out periodically, it doesn't accumulate.  T-bond owners, for example, get an interest check every six months.  But the interest in the SSA's "trust fund" has been accumulating since 1937.

Democrats are forever alleging that the Social Security "trust fund" has, as Senator Liz Warren puts it, a "$2.7-trillion surplus," and that that, along with payroll tax revenue, is enough to pay benefits in full until 2033.  As comforting as that might be to some folks, Social Security has never really been "solvent."

 Regardless of whether there's a "trust fund" or not, Social Security, just like the rest of the federal government, operates on cash flow.  Federal bills are paid out of tax revenue that is continually coming in, and out of the sale of treasuries.  The government operates "hand to mouth"; what money comes in goes right back out.  There's no "money in the bank," the federal government has no mechanism to save money, and if there is money left over at the end of the year, it is used to retire public debt, and the feds then start the new fiscal year from zero.  Add to that the federal government's ability to "print" money and the term "insolvency" has little meaning in federal financing.

The big problem with Social Security is that it is not subject to a budget process; in fact, the program is classified as "off-budget."  Whether payroll tax surpluses are flowing into the general fund, or income tax revenues in the general fund are flowing back to the SSA, no budgeting decision is required of Congress.  It's all automatic.

If Congress is ever to get control over the federal deficit, its members must address automatic "mandatory spending."  In a December article, I urged that Congress change Social Security to require the system to operate entirely out of revenue from its dedicated tax, the payroll tax.

That requirement alone would bring an end to the "autopilot" nature of the program, and would force Congress to deal with their fiscal problem immediately.  Rather than being "off-budget," Social Security would be on its own budget.  Social Security would be a totally separate system and totally self-funding.

That would require Congress to create a mechanism to actually save payroll tax surpluses so that Congress couldn't spend them.  It's a pity that in 1953, when the GOP controlled Congress and the presidency, they didn't create such a mechanism.  Such a change would have altered the history of federal finance from that point forward.

The payroll tax should never have been so high as to produce $1T of surplus, as it did in the 25 years after 1984.  Ideally, the payroll tax would produce only a tiny surplus -- just a bit of a cushion.  The proper repository for payroll tax surpluses should never have been government securities of any kind.  (Personally, I think the surpluses should have been deposited in very conservative commercial banks, or have been used to buy income-producing commercial real estate.  Perhaps the SSA could have used the surpluses to buy Rockefeller Center; instead, a Japanese concern bought it.)

Congress should summarily scrap the "unified budget."  Congress should also declare that the SSA's "trust funds" are defunct, and that all past payroll tax surpluses were income taxes, which they effectively were.

The reason for the "autopilot" structure of Social Security is that Democrats want the income tax to fund social programs.  The reason the feds pay interest on inter-agency loans is that that's how the Democrats insure that income tax revenue is used to fund social programs long after the "principle" has been paid back.  This scheme allows the feds to not have to adjust the system and to continue paying benefits at the same level without raising the payroll tax.  And it masks the financial unsustainability of Social Security.

During the aforementioned quarter-century following 1984, the interest credited to the "trust fund" was actually more than the payroll tax surpluses.  But how "righteous" is it that the feds pay any interest on inter-agency "loans"?  Paying Social Security benefits with "trust fund" interest is triple-taxation.
"trust fund" could be attributed to payroll tax surplus, while the remainder of it was mainly interest.  The "trust fund" contains about $1.6 trillion of interest, an "asset" created out of thin air that will be paid for by your income taxes.

Democrats hate the idea of adjusting their sacred system in any way whatsoever other than expanding it, despite the highest deficits in history.  Democrats fervently insist that the "trust fund" is good until 2033, and that Social Security spending "doesn't add a dime to the deficit."  Americans who believe that have simply been duped.  Social Security has been adding to the deficit since 2010 and will continue to do so unless fundamental change is made.

Hey, "fundamental change."  Democrats ought to be up for that.

I LOVE COMMENTS.

As I read through articles every day I find that the comments made at the end of each one sometimes more revealing on the subject of the piece than the piece itself.

Below are some comments I found interesting and not too hard to guess the subject of the article.

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The Obama administration's spokesmen and loyal media sycophants are spinning it as a positive sign, a portent of the new utopia in which people find fulfillment in less work and more government subsidies. This is elitist clap-trap which appeals to the kind of people who take a sabbatical, but which angers all of those people who struggle to make their car payments, keep MasterCard off their backs, and pay for braces for little Suzie and Johnny.

Jason Furman, Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, embarrassed himself yesterday explaining why it is a good thing that 2.5 million people will leave the workforce thanks to Obamacare, with a performance Brit Hume described as "pathetic."

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When we are given the opportunity to help our neighbors, we invariably first choose to help ourselves. The proof? Eric Hobsbawm, avowed socialist and defender of Communism died with an Estate of $1.8 million dollars. Pete Seeger? His estate is estimated at $4.2 million. Russell Brand, who recently called for global socialism is worth an estimated $15 million. There is no indication that any of them are or were particularly interested in the redistribution of their own wealth; there have been no redistribution checks forthcoming from them or their estates.

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Marxism criticizes the achievements of all those who think otherwise by representing them as the venal servants of the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person......... von Mises

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The Atlantic takes a novel approach, declaring "So what?" if Americans are a bit lazier due to ObamaCare. No big deal that, "More adults will simply decide to take it easy." Goods will be produced and services provided all by themselves if workers stay home and take it easy. Tax revenues will magically appear in the Treasury if fewer Americans are working, earning an income, and paying income tax. And everyone will be paying his or her mortgage, student loans, and credit cards by taking it easy. Never mind that average household credit card debt is over $15 thousand. The only ones who can "Take it Easy" and still pay their bills are The Eagles, earning royalties on their hit song.

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And perhaps there is value in reflecting upon and lamenting the intense irony derived from thousands of privileged Americans, supported by prominent Democrats, outspokenly begging for the application of Marxist principles -- while on the other side of the Earth, muted masses are suffering and dying under the weight of that very yoke.

The above is in page One , paragraph One of the Marxist Creed. At first glance, it sounds pretty reasonable; but there is a problem.... It means, invariably, that Someone Else is going to be deciding what it is you need. That Someone Else, doing the deciding, will always hasten to assure you they are better qualified to decide what it is you need than you are. If you don't agree with them, there will be places where you can be "re-educated" to a better appreciation of their wisdom. This is  how Marxism is practiced, how it is lived, in the real world.

One would think that anyone that would want to live in such a world is either deluded or insane. The question is raised of why, after  nearly a century of  theft, rapine, repression, torture and murder, on an unprecedented global scale, Marxism still retains, overtly or otherwise, as many adherents as it does. The answer is simple: those that push the idea of Marxism or Marxist agendas the hardest are convinced that, they, once Marxism is established, will be among those doing the deciding. Thus are their true motives revealed: a lust for power over the lives, the livelihoods, and, ultimately, the minds , of people they regard as their moral and intellectual inferiors.

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Detroit, Cleveland, Dayton, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and more. Once vibrant cities, with successful, happy hard working people at all levels of the economic spectrum. Then came the government, to fix the lives of these people. Now, their grandchildren live lives of unknown parentage, with no jobs, no need for a job, no morality except their own survival, no education. This is the result of liberal compassion. Each inner city is a testimony to what happens when a liberal insists on spreading the wealth around because of their superior moral vision. They leave behind a wasteland. And the wasteland now moves to the suburbs where people attempted, futilely, to escape the reach of good hearted liberals and their deadly compassion. 

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A fundamental problem with progressiveness is that it is not interested in creating wealth; but redistributing wealth instead. The old line, "Give a man a fish and he will have dinner tonight; teach him how to fish and he will have dinner every night" is a conundrum to the progressive. He doesn't know how to fish, let alone teach another how to fish.

 Therefore his response is to run up and down the river bank stealing fish from all those who are fishing and giving it away to those who are not, telling them the fish comes from him.

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