Joke of the Day

Baltimore, Maryland--With the economy tanking and a record one in six Americans taking part in various government anti-poverty programs, the Six Flags amusement park announced the opening of it's latest roller coaster.

"It's called the Obamarator," said a park spokeswoman, who said it consists of a winding but ever low-spiraling ride in cars fitted with video screens showing the latest economic indicators.

"With the latest data showing Medicaid enrollment at record highs even before 16 million people are added by the ObamaCare law in 2014, a 50% rise in food stamp participants, a 400% increase in those receiving unemployment insurance, and an 18% increase in the welfare rolls," said the spokeswoman, "we didn't have to do much more to make this one of the most frightening Six Flags coasters ever."

One man who rode on the coaster's maiden run said "After the very first turn -- where you see that Medicaid costs have jumped 36% in two years to $273 billion, jobless benefits soared from $43 billion to $160 billion, and food stamp and welfare costs have risen 80% and 24% -- I almost lost my lunch."

http://optoons.blogspot.com/2010/12/six-flags-opens-new-obama-themed-roller.html

Oregon and Tax revenues

I was amused by the complaint from Oregonians about "Bush's tax break for the rich" (now to be known, I guess as "The Bush-Obama tax break for the rich"). Oregon had one of the least progressive "progressive" tax rates with individuals making $14,000 paying the same marginal rate as billionaires such as Phil Knight of Nike. Almost every other state had higher rates for wealthier individuals. But Oregon finally attempted to fix this.

"Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. The sun also rose in the east, and the Cubs didn't win the World Series.

In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City's rate is higher. Oregon's liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their "shared sacrifice."

Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised "income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial."

One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did. Funny how that always happens. These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704034804576026233823935442.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The most important part is the last paragraph. Although one could argue now that $130 million extra is better than nothing, what will happen over the next decade if this tax leads to 80,000 wealthy tax filers leaving the state?

The Public Pension mess

Private pension plans tend to be defined-contribution pensions -- in which the employer makes a fixed contribution to the employee's retirement account, rather than guaranteeing a fixed payout.

By contrast, nearly all of the more than 22 million federal, state and local public employees enjoy defined-benefit pensions -- with payouts fixed at some percentage of the individual's pay for the last year or two they worked (often including overtime and payments for unused sick or vacation days).

These public pension plans are a ticking time bomb, with an estimated $3.2 trillion in unfunded mandates, or $21,500 per household. (That is taxpayer household, not recipient household.)

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/facing_the_pension_mess_2x9CfnClQRu9usCxH5E1eO#ixzz18lqxkGci
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/facing_the_pension_mess_2x9CfnClQRu9usCxH5E1eO

State Budgets and Health Care

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS:
"If state Medicaid spending increases by 41 percent as projected by CMS, then by next year Medicaid could end up consuming nearly 30 percent of the average state budget. Medicaid would greatly exceed all other state priorities, including education, which tops state budgets at about 22 percent. In fact, state spending on education would experience certain cuts next year.

Presumably, the state spending increase is so high because the enhancement of the federal Medicaid match will expire at the end of 2010. CMS projects that federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will decrease 7.1 percent between 2010 and 2011. The loss of federal funds will drive most of the increase in state Medicaid obligations.

Unfortunately, states have lost considerable flexibility to reduce Medicaid’s burden on their budgets. As a condition for receiving the additional federal dollars, both the stimulus bill and PPACA contain maintenance-of-effort (MOE) provisions that prohibit states from changing eligibility levels. "

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/20/how-obamacare-is-hastening-the-day-of-reckoning/

One of the promises of the Health Care "reform" is that the reform would "bend the curve" of medical costs and the Federal Government could actually provide health care to 30 million people at less cost than current. That made no sense but people bought it. And maybe it was true-Federal costs go down but state costs go up.

Wikileaks

To save time, the following is basically what is in the quarter million Wikileak documents:

Berlusconi likes girls.
Sarkozy likes himself.
Angela Merkel is boring.
David Cameron is more boring.
Hillary thinks Cristina needs a shrink.
Benjamin Netanyahu can’t stand Ehud Olmert.
Al Qaeda hates America.
Yemen’s president hates Al Qaeda
Ahmadinejad is Hitler
North Korea likes Iran.
Saudi Arabia hates Iran
Julian Assange is Dennis Kucinich.
PFC Manning will never see the sun again.
America needs a new president.

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/11/30/wikileaks-as-seen-by-dolphins/

The lessons that I learned from this are:
1. We keep too many secrets
2. The is poor control over classified documents
3. Leaking this information is good-don't we want transparency?
4. People should be fired, for writing such stuff, for leaking such stuff, for managing such stuff, and for (not) controlling such stuff.

Palin and the Main Street Media (Part II)

Recently Sarah Palin made the mistake of saying "North Korea" when she meant to say "South Korea". She quickly corrected herself. As could be expected, many in the media jumped on this as another example of her ignorance. In response, Palin wrote the following (see the link to get the links in her post):

"My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that … "

http://bigjournalism.com/taylorking/2010/11/28/media-matters-lies-about-media-coverage-of-sarah-palin-north-korea-slip/

This was followed by the media response which basically said that Palin was overstating the case and that the Palin slip-up was barely covered by the media. Ironically, that very night, Jay Leno had the following dialogue:
"Palin said that we should stand by our friend North Korea. This was followed by her stating that she was never good at geography".

Yeah, right. The media barely covered the issue.

High Speed Rail

I like train travel as much as anyone and wish that we had better service in the US. However, we just seem incapable of constructing lines properly. One project is a high speed line from Tampa to Orlando. These cities are 85 miles apart and the car trip takes 1.5 hours, Interstate all the way. I guess that a "high-speed" train, if it could average 170 mph could make the trip in 45 minutes (but estimates are that the speed will end up being around 60 mph due to slowing in urban areas, stops, etc.).

However, Tampa and Orlando are both sprawling cities. My condo in Redington Shores is about 45 minutes away from the proposed Tampa train station. Once in Orlando, there will be a 10 mile or so trip to Disney World (which requires a little backtracking to Tampa). So, driving my car 45 minutes to Tampa (there is no public transportation for this), going into city traffic, paying for parking, paying for the train, riding to Orlando, renting a car or waiting for public transportation to Disney World, then either driving or waiting for the Disney buses to get around. And then plan my departure around the train schedule.

Seems a lot more convenient, and cheaper and quicker, to just drive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111605823.html