Silicon Investor - American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

[Thehammer] Galaxies are being killed off and scientists don't know why https://www.msn.com/...

Thehammer — 9/23/2019 7:33:46 PM

Galaxies are being killed off and scientists don't know why
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/science/galaxies-are-being-killed-off-and-scientists-dont-know-why/vi-AAHJgpe

Most likely they will blame it on white men and global warming.

[FJB] Is Voter Fraud Real? A look at California’s illegal voter registration problem....

FJB — 11/1/2018 3:54:00 PM

Is Voter Fraud Real? A look at California’s illegal voter registration problem. - OF COURSE IT'S REAL, AND IT'S A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

October 31, 2018 by Jeff Carlson, CFA
themarketswork.com

Ever since the 2016 presidential elections, the topic of voter fraud has gained more attention.

This was especially so following President Donald Trump’s statement that if it were not for illegal voting he would have won, in addition to the electoral vote, the popular vote as well.

Trump won the election with 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227. Clinton won the popular vote, however, by 2.8 million votes–or 65,853,516 votes to 62,984,825 votes for Trump.

If we look closer at the numbers, though, some interesting information emerges.

Clinton’s margin of victory in California was 4.3 million votes, or 61.7 percent. This number dramatically exceeded the 53.5 percent margin in her other winning states.

She received a total of 8,753,788 votes from California—nearly double the total of Trump’s 4,483,810 votes.

To illustrate how much California’s numbers count, if one looks just at the popular vote in the rest of nation, Trump would have won the popular vote by 1.4 million votes. Outside of California, Trump received 58,501,015 votes to Clinton’s 57,099,728 votes.

Following the elections, President Trump called for an investigation of voter fraud. His call was met with massive resistance, typified in a New York Times editorial board response headlined “The Voter Fraud Fantasy”:

“There are varying degrees of absurdity in the fallacies President Trump peddled during his first week in the Oval Office. Perhaps the most damaging was his insistence that millions of Americans voted illegally in the election he narrowly won.”

In January 2018, after Trump shut down the Election Commission he had appointed to investigate fraud, citing“endless legal battles at taxpayer expense,” the president called for voter I.D. laws. The New York Times claimed victory, noting that “no state has uncovered significant evidence to support the president’s claim, and election officials, including many Republicans, have strongly rejected it.”

In reality, many states had refused to hand over data to the Election Commission.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find good information on voter roll registration. One of the most widely cited sources is a 2012 PEW study which found the following problems with America’s voter rolls:

Approximately 24 million–one out of every eight–voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate
More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters
Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state

Despite its age, the Pew Study is still cited by sources like the National Conference of State Legislatures precisely because very few quantifiable newer studies seem to exist.

The numbers are concerning, as currently, only seven states have strict photo ID requirements to vote.

The breakdown of states and their requirements, as detailed by the National Conference of State Legislatures:

Strict photo ID required: Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Strict non-photo ID required: Arizona, North Dakota, and Ohio.
Non-strict photo ID required: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Texas.
Non-strict non-photo ID required: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia.
No ID required to vote at the ballot box: California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch is currently engaging in an Election Integrity Project. It has estimated that 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote.

“When you look at those registered to vote, and you compare and contrast those numbers with people actually eligible to vote, you come up with the 3.5 million individuals spread out across the fifty states,” Judicial Watch says in a statement on its website.

According to the group’s numbers, California holds approximately half of the additional voters with an estimated 1.7 million ghost voters.

California Voter Registration

On Jan. 1, 2015, California Assembly Bill 60 ( AB-60) became law. AB-60 allows illegal immigrants in the United States to apply for a California driver’s license with the CA Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). An estimated 605,000 undocumented residents received California driver’s licenses under AB-60 in the first year alone. The California DMV recently issued a press release stating that over one million licenses had been issued under AB-60 as of April 4, 2018.

State officials chose not to make non-citizen license holders searchable in the DMV database. This specific provision, by itself, opens the doors to illegal voter registration as the driver’s license becomes indistinguishable online.

On Oct. 10, 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Motor Voter Act that automatically registers to vote every eligible California citizen who goes to a DMV office to get a driver’s license or renew one.

California is one of 13 states, along with the District of Columbia, that have passed Automatic Voter Registration: Alaska, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

Automatic Voter Registration makes voter registration “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”—eligible citizens who interact with government agencies, such as the DMV, are registered to vote or have their existing registration information updated, unless they affirmatively decline.

Legislation specifically exempts ineligible voters who end up being registered from any penalty.

Now, let’s examine the language contained in the California NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) Manual found on page 42:

VI. Voter Registration Cards where the voter indicates he or she is not a U.S. Citizen:

The VRC asks the applicant if he or she is a United States citizen. The voter may check either “Yes”, “No”, or not check either box.

If the voter indicates, by checking the “yes” box, that he or she is a U.S. citizen, the registration should be processed normally.

In other words, as stated by Charles Bell, Jr., a partner with California-based Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP, a law firm that specializes in election law, “applicants can check a box affirming they are citizens, and this is not checked against any other government database such as federal immigration records.”

But the process doesn’t end there:

If the voter indicates, by checking the “No” box, that he or she is not a U.S. citizen, the registration may not be entered on the voter rolls. The elections official should send the voter a returnable card or letter requesting clarification as to whether or not the voter is a U.S. citizen. If the voter returns the card indicating that he or she is a U.S. citizen, the VRC should be entered on the voter rolls. If the card is returned and the voter indicates he or she is not a citizen, or if no response is received from the voter, then the voter shall not be registered.

If the voter does not check either the “Yes” or “No” box do not process the registration.

A prior version of the document was even more lenient, stating that:

If the voter does not check either the “Yes” or “No” box, and the registration is otherwise complete, the registration should be processed normally and entered on the voter rolls.

Number of Illegal Aliens

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the most recent data provided, “12.1 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in January 2014…California remained the leading state of residence of the unauthorized immigrant population in 2014, with 2.9 million, nearly 25 percent of the total number.”

Interestingly, the numbers from the DHS had changed little from their prior 2012 study, when they provided an estimate of 2,830,000 illegal immigrants residing in California. In a further note of question, the DHS cited a figure of 2,840,000 illegal immigrants in 2007—10,000 higher than in 2012 and virtually identical to 2014 levels.

According to a September 2018 study published in the journal PLOS ONE, there are roughly 22.1 million illegal immigrants in the United States. As the authors note “even using extremely conservative model parameters, we estimate a population of 16.7 million undocumented immigrants.” - MORE LIKE 30-45 MILLION

Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, President Barack Obama said in a Nov. 4, 2016, video interview with mitú (at the 3:22 mark) that election records are not cross-checked against immigration databases, noting that “when you vote, you are a citizen yourself, and there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, et cetera. The sanctity of the vote is strictly confidential.”

This let non-citizens know that they stood little chance of being caught if they voted.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), however, has recently increased prosecutions of those caught voting illegally. In August, nineteen foreign nationals, including those from Mexico, Nigeria, and the Philippines, were indicted.

Ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, President Donald Trump has warned against voter fraud.

“All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Oct. 20. “Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!”

This article is part of my ongoing series at The Epoch Times.

[FJB] [X] My man, @exjon, tells the truth about the left/Big Tech #netneutrality scam...

FJB — 11/1/2018 3:51:29 PM

[X]

My man, @exjon, tells the truth about the left/Big Tech #netneutrality scam via @prageru vid: "The only companies that have been censoring content are many of the same ones that want Net Neutrality." Right on! This is a vital issue. https://t.co/KZWQr6GyA8 pic.twitter.com/werMAaNInm
— Jim Lakely (@jlakely) November 1, 2018

[/X]

[Thehammer] lol You mean the guy who was shooting at them? They were the anti garbage men

Thehammer — 10/30/2018 10:47:26 AM

[Thehammer] good idea

Thehammer — 10/30/2018 10:46:07 AM

[FJB] Why don't our current border fences, and the land behind them have razor wire. ...

FJB — 10/30/2018 10:44:57 AM

Why don't our current border fences, and the land behind them have razor wire. That would be super cheap...

[FJB] They were just trying to help that man with his garbage, but aren't really clear...

FJB — 10/30/2018 10:43:34 AM

They were just trying to help that man with his garbage, but aren't really clear on the concept of where it goes...

[Thehammer] I'd electrify that gate

Thehammer — 10/30/2018 10:42:45 AM

[Thehammer] It must be Halloween

Thehammer — 10/30/2018 10:41:12 AM

[FJB] [X] "Undocumented" means magically 16 years old when they assume a new identity...

FJB — 10/30/2018 8:44:40 AM

[X]

"Undocumented" means magically 16 years old when they assume a new identity in US..sitting next to your daughter in highschool pic.twitter.com/UYQAxV71Oi
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) October 30, 2018

[/X]

[FJB] SOUTH AFRICA [X] Meanwhile in South Africa.. pic.twitter.com/vCA61O7ydI— Voice ...

FJB — 10/30/2018 8:31:35 AM

SOUTH AFRICA
[X]

Meanwhile in South Africa.. pic.twitter.com/vCA61O7ydI
— Voice of Europe 🌐 (@V_of_Europe) October 30, 2018

[/X]

[FJB] CHANGE: Trump to terminate birthright citizenship. President Trump plans to si...

FJB — 10/30/2018 8:29:47 AM

CHANGE: Trump to terminate birthright citizenship.

President Trump plans to sign an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on U.S. soil, he said yesterday in an exclusive interview for “Axios on HBO,” a new four-part documentary news series debuting on HBO this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Why it matters: This would be the most dramatic move yet in Trump’s hardline immigration campaign, this time targeting “anchor babies” and “chain migration.” And it will set off another stand-off with the courts, as Trump’s power to do this through executive action is debatable to say the least.

He certainly isn’t afraid of a fight.

[Brumar89] It's not just his style that is bad. Still a conservative.

Brumar89 — 10/27/2018 11:19:12 AM

[Thehammer] I think that all the repubs in the senate need armed guards. I think that is the...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 8:03:36 PM

I think that all the repubs in the senate need armed guards. I think that is the last step for them, to get one of their ranks to commit murder.

[TimF] I'm not sure its the last straw, I would not be at all surprised that the Dems t...

TimF — 9/28/2018 8:00:35 PM

I'm not sure its the last straw, I would not be at all surprised that the Dems try some other delaying tactic, I just don't think any other delaying tactic is going to work at this point.

[Thehammer] I think the libs are delaying. Wouldn't be surprised if they have something on F...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 7:46:47 PM

I think the libs are delaying. Wouldn't be surprised if they have something on Flake. Obama probably perfected the Clintons ruse of reviewing FBI files. If this was the last straw, that would make it worthwhile. However, the whole lib strategy has been to delay and and sling FUD.

While the FBI is at it, they need to investigate the leak of the letter and ford's lawyers need to be investigated for ethics violations.

[TimF] It won't be the end of people trying to make it an issue or of the left claiming...

TimF — 9/28/2018 7:35:54 PM

It won't be the end of people trying to make it an issue or of the left claiming Kavenaugh is a horrible person, a rapist etc.

But it will probably be enough to get a vote that he can win. Its the last i to dot or t to cross in order to get the Republican waverers in line for the vote.

Assuming that is that nothing new that hurts Kavenaugh comes out (which is unlikely, in fact even if you assume he's guilt (and I don't) I'd still think it would be unlikely).

[Thehammer] I see extremely little chance that any such investigation will actually come up ...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 7:33:04 PM

I see extremely little chance that any such investigation will actually come up with any real evidence or new information of any kind.

I agree with that. In order to investigate though, they have to interrogate fords family and friends from then. She doesn't recall anything but some of them might. I wonder how she would do in a full FBI background check.

The FBI investigation won't be the end.

[Thehammer] I see extremely little chance that any such investigation will actually come up ...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 7:32:47 PM

I see extremely little chance that any such investigation will actually come up with any real evidence or new information of any kind.

I agree with that. In order to investigate though, they have to interrogate fords family and friends from then. She doesn't recall anything but some of them might. Iwonder how she would do in a full FBI background check.

The FBI investigation won't be the end.

[TimF] Unless something unexpected shakes lose their isn't a lot for the FBI to probe. ...

TimF — 9/28/2018 7:02:10 PM

Unless something unexpected shakes lose their isn't a lot for the FBI to probe.

The accuser has no specific date or place so they can't look in to what happened at a specific date or place (which would be hard after this many years but at least they could try)

She names very few people that would have been there. They all get interviewed or interviewed again (including both accuser and accused). If no one changes their story then there isn't anyone else to even interview. You interview the handful of people if no stories change and no obvious inconsistencies come up, your done. You could do it in a day if everyone is available right away.

I see extremely little chance that any such investigation will actually come up with any real evidence or new information of any kind.

Allowing the delay for it in a sense is just caving to the Democrats, but as long as the week is it I can't think of any other delay they could make that would seem reasonable to anyone who hasn't already determined they believe that Kavenaugh is guilty.

Unless perhaps they have another accuser (and not one that will recant right away, who has incredible years of gang rapes stories, or who had told people she doesn't know who was involved and then just now says it was Kavenaugh)

[Thehammer] Anyone recall when the clintons had all those fbi folders on their enemies in th...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 4:15:15 PM

Anyone recall when the clintons had all those fbi folders on their enemies in the wh?

[Thehammer] Nobody is saying it but an FBI probe likely will have a lot of focus on Ford her...

Thehammer — 9/28/2018 4:14:27 PM

Nobody is saying it but an FBI probe likely will have a lot of focus on Ford her motives and background. They have done Kavanaugh 6 times so time to see what is lurking in her past

[TimF] Bringing Transparency to Union Subsidies Tyler Kovacs • July 8, 2016 Rep. Denni...

TimF — 7/17/2016 9:44:14 AM

Bringing Transparency to Union Subsidies
Tyler Kovacs • July 8, 2016

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) and Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) have co-sponsored legislation this session to ensure reporting of federal employees using “official time,” the practice of the government paying federal employees who are serving as union representatives instead of performing their official, federal duties.

As Rep. Ross put it, “This bill will require the Office of Personnel Management to submit an annual, detailed report to Congress on the use of ‘official time’ by federal employees, outlining specific types of activities or purposes for which this time was granted.”

“Ross’ bill was brought into the ‘Government Reform and Improvement Act’ which passed on a party lines vote early Thursday morning,” reported the Sunshine State News.

Currently, the latest report on official time produced by OPM is from fiscal year 2012. Since the reports are years behind, Rep. Ross and Hice are proposing their bill to make official time use more transparent and demand annual reporting of the union subsidy. Costs of official time in fiscal year 2012 were over $ 157 million.

But it is not just the delayed reporting of official time that make better transparency necessary. The Government Accountability Office questions the accuracy of the OPM’s estimates of official time costs. GAO estimates certain agencies underestimated costs by 9-15%. Other analysis shows OPM’s official time reporting is inaccurate.

This data can be broken down by department, as outlined in a previous post, but those figure only capture the amount of money spent on federal employees who spend 100% of their time working for their union rather than the public. This amounts to hundreds of federal employees taking time off to preform union, not civic, duties. Criminal misconduct by federal employees on official time, has also been found.

Outside of Ross’ bill to improve annual reporting of official time, other legislation, like that sponsored by Rep. Hice, seeks to curb the practice. Official time is not just a problem at the federal level, but also something that impacts state budgets as well. CEI’s Trey Kovacs has been delving into the issue with official time studies published by the Capital Research Center and the Yankee Institute.

More work on the subject can be found here, here, here, and here.

cei.org

[TimF] ...When will folks realize that such speech limitations are crafted by politici...

TimF — 7/4/2016 8:54:02 PM

...When will folks realize that such speech limitations are crafted by politicians to cravenly protect themselves from criticism. Take that Citizens United decision. Hillary Clinton has perhaps been most vociferous in her opposition to it, saying that if President she will appoint Supreme Court judges that will overturn it. But note the specific Citizens United case was about whether a documentary critical of .... Hillary Clinton could be aired. So Clinton is campaigning that when she takes power, she will change the Constitution so that she personally cannot be criticized. And the sheeple on the Left nod and cheer as if shielding politicians from accountability is somehow "progressive."
coyoteblog.com

[TimF] Krugman vs. Hamilton/Cole/Ohanian on FDR’s high wage policy There’s been a lot...

TimF — 4/27/2016 10:58:56 AM

Krugman vs. Hamilton/Cole/Ohanian on FDR’s high wage policy

There’s been a lot of recent debate about Cole and Ohanian’s claim that FDR’s New Deal slowed the recovery. Here I’ll focus on his high wage policies, which Krugman argues could have actually increased output (as the AD curve may slope upward in a liquidity trap.) While there are lots of sophisticated econometric studies (often using highly misleading annual data), I don’t know of anyone else who has simply looked at the monthly industrial production data around each wage shock.

There were actually five wage shocks, four of which are easily dated. As part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, FDR ordered an across the board 20% hourly wage increase in late July 1933, and then further increases in the spring of 1934. At the same time the workweek was reduced about 20%. The NIRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935, but a minimum wage was instituted in November 1938, and raised a year later. To say the IP data is bad for the Krugman interpretation would be an understatement. These numbers are horrendous:

Table 12.2: Four month (nonannualized!) growth rates for industrial production

Before After
July 1933 wage shock +57.4% -18.8%
May 1934 wage shock +11.9% -15.0%
Nov. 1938 wage shock +15.8% +2.5%
Nov. 1939 wage shock +16.0% -6.5%

You’ll notice that I left out the fifth wage shock, but its no better for Krugman’s view, just messier. Historians argue that the huge union drives of late 1936 and 1937 were due to both the Wagner Act and FDR’s massive election victory. Whatever the cause of the union gains, they led to rapid wage increases in late 1936 and much of 1937. This time, monthly industrial production did not fall immediately, as prices were also rising fast in late 1936 and early 1937. But when prices stopped rising, industrial production began falling sharply under the burden of high wages.

Progressives like to portray opponents of the New Deal as reactionaries. Parts of the New Deal (such as dollar devaluation) were very helpful. But FDR’s high wage policy was a disaster. As James Hamilton said (in defending his criticism of programs like the NIRA and the AAA):

I openly confess to believing that government policies that were explicitly designed to limit manufacturing, agricultural, and mining output may indeed have had the effect of limiting manufacturing, agricultural, and mining output.

themoneyillusion.com

[MCHVE] As predicted and stated here: finance.yahoo.com Yep... clueless morons!!

MCHVE — 2/9/2016 10:03:08 PM

[TimF] Okun’s leaky-bucket experiment March 3, 2011 at 10:00 am Austin Frakt Okun off...

TimF — 12/1/2015 1:17:24 PM

Okun’s leaky-bucket experiment
March 3, 2011 at 10:00 am
Austin Frakt

Okun offers a neat hypothetical to help locate one’s equity-efficiency boundary. He wrote this in 1975, so all dollar amounts are far below what would make sense today. They’re 1974 dollars. In brackets, I’ve inflated them to 2009 dollars (a dollar in 1974 is worth $4.30 today). This is not the same things as recomputing the boundaries and average incomes of the bottom 20 percent and top 5 percent of the income distribution. Still, I think the exercise is worth considering.

[C]onsider the American families who make up the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution. Their after-tax incomes in 1974 were less than $7,000 [$30,100], averaging about $5,000 [$21,500]. Now consider the top 5 percent of families in the income pyramid; they had after-tax incomes ranging upward from about $28,000 [$120,400], and averaging about $45,000 [$193,500]. A proposal is made to levy an added tax averaging $4,000 [$17,200] (about 9 percent) on the income of the affluent families in an effort to aid the low-income families. Since the low-income group I selected has four times as many families as the affluent group, that should, in principle, finance a $1,000 [$4,300] grant for the average low-income family. However, the program has an unsolved technological problem: the money must be carried from the rich to the poor in a leaky bucket. Some of it will simply disappear in transit, so the poor will not receive all the money that is taken from the rich. The average poor family will get less than $1,000 [$4,300], while the average rich family gives up $4,000 [$17,200]. […]

I want you to decide how much leakage you would accept and still support [this plan]. Suppose 10 percent leaks out; that would leave $900 [$3,870] for the average poor family instead of the potential $1,000 [$4,300]. Should society still make the switch? If 50 percent leaks out? 75 percent? […] Where would you draw the line? Your answer cannot be right or wrong. […]

Of course, the leak represents an inefficiency. The inefficiencies of real-world redistribution include the adverse effects on the economic incentives of the rich and the poor, and the administrative costs of tax-collection and transfer programs.

A more stark thought experiment trading equity and efficiency is hard to imagine. Think about it. (Okun says he’d accept up to 60 percent leakage.)

theincidentaleconomist.com

[TimF] Flattery is Death for an Organization November 4, 2015, 9:39 am The WSJ wrote t...

TimF — 11/4/2015 5:17:12 PM

Flattery is Death for an Organization
November 4, 2015, 9:39 am
The WSJ wrote the other day about Hillary Clinton's emails:

A common thread running through the tens of thousands of emails that landed in Hillary Clinton’s in-box in her time as secretary of state is that aides and assorted advisers believe she is, well, awesome.

With a few exclamation points tacked on.

In notes sent to the private email account Mrs. Clinton used, various advisers routinely heap praise on the person who gave them their jobs or elevated them to her inner circle. Email flattery of this sort is a common tactic in the everyday workplace, but the Clinton emails show how it comes into play at the highest levels of government.

Employees tell Mrs. Clinton she is doing a “spectacular job,” that she has many admirers and that her remarks were “pitch perfect.” They assure her she looks “gorgeous” in photos and commend her clothing choices.

Look, I guess everyone has their own leadership style but from my experience it is a terrible idea to promote this kind of thing in one's organization.

Why? Well, my organization has 350 people in it. We can either think with just one person (me), working to improve our operations, or we can think with 350. Those 349 other people know many of the ways in which we are screwing up and can improve -- the problem is getting them to come forward with those ideas. And getting them to do so is far less likely if we are maintaining some sort of North Korean style personality cult of the CEO.

I have written about this before, but it's why I consider my Ivy League degrees to be a negative in running the company. Many of my employees have only a high school education (at best) and are intimidated in bringing up an idea or telling me I am screwing up because they assume since I have these Ivy League degrees I must be smarter than they are and know what I am doing. But in their particular job, in terms of my knowledge of what they see every day from customers and operationally, I am dumb as a post and completely ignorant.

Anyone who has worked for me for more than a few months can likely quote my favorite line which I use in most of my employee talks -- "If you see something that seems screwed up, don't assume Warren is smarter than you and wants it that way, assume that Warren is screwing up and needs to be told."

Postscript: This sort of flattery also makes me deeply uncomfortable on a personal level, so much so I have a hard time understanding people who revel in it. I once had an employee that could not stop with this sort of personal flattery, and eventually we ended up terminating them. We terminated them for other good reasons, but I must admit to being relieved when they left.

coyoteblog.com

[TimF] Productivity fell at a 3.1 percent annual rate instead of the previously repor...

TimF — 10/15/2015 7:47:37 PM

Productivity fell at a 3.1 percent annual rate instead of the previously reported 1.9 percent pace, the Labor Department said. That was the first back-to-back fall in productivity since 2006.

. . .

The productivity decline mirrors the economy’s dismal performance in the first quarter, when output contracted at a 0.7 percent rate.

Given that temporary factors contributed to the decline in output, the drop in productivity could be overstated and a rebound is likely in the second half of the year.

Still, weak productivity suggests that the economy’s potential growth could be lower than the 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent pace economists currently estimate.

“economists currently estimate”?!?!? Not me.

Over the past 5 years, productivity has risen by less than 3%. That might not seem so bad, except I’m referring to the total increase, not the annual increase.
themoneyillusion.com

[TimF] Candidates AWOL on Plans to Cut Spending Lowering taxes is only the first step, ...

TimF — 10/15/2015 5:04:51 PM

Candidates AWOL on Plans to Cut Spending
Lowering taxes is only the first step, Mr. Trump.
Veronique de Rugy
Oct. 1, 2015

Donald Trump is the most recent Republican presidential candidate to release a plan to reform our burdensome tax code. Though all the proposals are different, they share common characteristics. They would cut income tax rates on households, lower the tax code's bias against savings and investment, close some loopholes, and reform America's anti-competitive corporate income tax system. Now all they need to be politically credible are sister plans to produce concomitant levels of spending restraint.

According to the Tax Foundation, none of these plans would be revenue-neutral. Contrary to what you hear, that's a good thing, because it means they would reduce the amount of money the government collects from us. Using a static model that assumes people do not change their behavior much, over 10 years government revenues would shrink by $2.97 trillion under Rand Paul's plan, by $4 trillion under Marco Rubio and Mike Lee's plan, by $3.6 trillion under Jeb Bush's plan, and by $11.98 trillion under Trump's plan.

In contrast to the figures produced with a static model, a dynamic scoring of the plans reveals that Paul's plan would most likely cut taxes by $960 billion, Bush's by $1.6 trillion, Rubio-Lee's by $1.7 trillion and Trump's by $10.14 trillion.

Starving the government beast may sound great, but enacting a very large tax cut in a fiscal environment of large deficits would be politically problematic. According to the Congressional Budget Office's most realistic scenario, under the current tax-and-spending plan, spending as a share of the economy would jump from 20.5 percent this year to a whopping 30.4 percent in 2040. Revenue as a share of the gross domestic product would slightly increase, from 17.7 percent today to 18.1 percent in 2040. The gap between revenues and spending is worsening, and it would be even larger with the candidates' tax plans.

Moreover, the true size of government is measured by how much it spends, not by how much it collects. Hence, to truly starve the beast, the only sensible approach—both politically and economically—is to also propose serious spending restraint. To be sure, Sens. Rubio and Paul, as well as Bush, are on the record saying they favor spending cuts and genuine entitlement reform. Also, according to estimates, each of their tax bills would boost growth and produce some degree of revenue feedback (at least in the future).

However, if history is our guide, these candidates are not representative of the Republican Party as a whole. Cutting taxes is great, but as I said, it must be done alongside genuine spending restraint—meaning serious changes to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are consuming an ever-growing share of the budget. Doing one without the other would just kick the can farther down the road, an exercise that politicians are very good at.

The good news for the candidates is that a plan to cut spending isn't that hard—on paper, at least. The Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell calculated that we could balance the budget by 2021 by capping spending growth at 2 percent annually. Allowing spending to grow by 3 percent annually would balance the budget by 2024.

Now, those numbers are based on current tax policy. If lawmakers want big tax cuts, there will need to be commensurately greater levels of spending restraint.

The difficulty, of course, is to persuade politicians to implement such spending constraints and actually stick to them in the long run. That's made harder by the fact that the only realistic way to limit spending growth to 2 or 3 percent per year is to reform the fastest-growing programs in our budget, or the so-called entitlements. That would require standing up against the politically powerful special interests that benefit from these programs.

Candidates looking for reasons to take that courageous step may find comfort in the fact that we have no choice. By introducing plans now, candidates would show how serious they are about controlling deficits and the driver of our future debt—and they would make their tax plans much more politically credible.

reason.com

[MCHVE] LOL.... nothing to do with my assertion... but funny to see you have the compuls...

MCHVE — 9/23/2015 11:24:31 PM

LOL.... nothing to do with my assertion... but funny to see you have the compulsion to address it.

Go pound sand little pussy!!! And enjoy the ride down!

davidstockmanscontracorner.com

[MCHVE] davidstockmanscontracorner.com

MCHVE — 9/23/2015 6:49:42 PM

[TimF] Don't Fear Stock Buybacks, Celebrate Them Tim Worstall, Given that it’s electi...

TimF — 9/15/2015 3:01:16 PM

Don't Fear Stock Buybacks, Celebrate Them
Tim Worstall,

Given that it’s election season there’s much economic illiteracy upon the prowl. Some part of which is this worrying over the way that publicly traded corporations spend a lot of their profits on stock buybacks and dividends. Apparently this means that they don’t invest and by golly gosh, we’ve got to do something about this. The problem for this is that returning money to shareholders is what a publicly traded corporation is for. Complaining that they’re doing what they’re designed to do seem a little odd really.

But there’s another level to this argument as well. I’m broadly in agreement with Matt Levine here:

My naive optimistic model of buybacks is that big public companies did their innovating in the past, and that public capital markets are largely about returning money to shareholders, but that those shareholders can then take that money and reallocate it to smaller private companies whose innovation is in the future, or at least the present.

I would add something more to it though. The general movement away from conglomerates to single purpose companies has been driven by the increasing efficiency of the finance sector. Efficiency in the financial sense, in that it’s just cheaper to raise money now than it used to be, not the economic sense. For 50 years ago, if you made a profit then it was generally assumed to be a good idea to keep it in that company. So that you could plan a move into a new business area perhaps. These days we’re not so keen on that happening. If there’s a new business opportunity then a new business which raises money on its own is the preferred solution. Simply because it’s now a great deal cheaper to raise money for such a new business in a new opportunity.

Levine then leads into JW Mason who says this:

Anyway, it seems unlikely that the behavior of privately held corporations is radically different from publicly traded one; I have a hard time imagining a set of institutions that reliably channel funds to smaller, newer firms but stop working entirely as soon as they are listed on a stock market.

Not really sure about that. I rather think we’ve a whole sector which does nothing but that, we call them Venture Capitalists. But the error in the argument is I think here:

In the simplest version of the capital-reallocation story, payouts from old, declining industries are, thanks to the magic of the capital markets, used to fund investment in new, technology-intensive industries. So the obvious question is, has there in fact been a shift in investment from the old smokestack industries to the newer high-tech ones?

And he then goes on to show:

As you can see, the decline in high-tech investment is consistent across the high-tech sectors. While the exact timing varies, in the 1980s and 1990s all of these sectors saw a rising share of investment; in the past 15 years, none have. [3] So we can safely say: In the universe of publicly traded corporations, the sectors we think would benefit from reallocation of capital were indeed investing heavily in the decades before 2000; but since then, they have not been. The decline in investment spending in the pharmaceutical industry — which, again, includes R&D spending on new drugs — is especially striking.

Where has investment been growing, then?

The red lines show broad and narrow investment for oil and gas and related industries — SICs 101-138, 291-299, and 492. Either way you measure investment, the increase over the past 15 years has dwarfed that in any other industry. Note that oil and gas, unlike the high-tech industries, is less R&D-intensive than the corporate sector as a whole. Looking only at plant and equipment, fossil fuels account for 40 percent of total corporate investment; by this measure, in some recent years, investment here has exceeded that of all manufacturing together.

Ah. What I think has been missed here is fracking. That technological revolution of the past decade or so which has entirely upended the global oil market, and before that the natural gas market in the US. And while things like smartphones are great I think I’d probably try to argue that fracking for tight oil has had greater macroeconomic effect just recently than anything coming out of Silicon Valley.

In more detail what has been done is that certain sectors have been counted as being the sort of high tech stuff where we’d like more investment to be going and certain others have been marked off as being not quite the high tech sectors where we’d like the extra investment to be going.

But it’s not actually true that we want investment to go into a, the or some high tech sectors. What we want investment to be going into is sectors more productive than the ones we’re currently in. And working out how to get tight oil out of the ground has shown itself to be a remarkably productive manner of employing capital. Thus we’re just absolutely delighted that investors have thrown money at it.

In fact, that the fracking revolution has been able to attract great gobs of funding from the capital markets is actually the proof that we’re looking for to show that the capital markets are funding new technologies. Rather than the disproof of the contention which is the way that Mason is using it.

Thus the problem in the argument is the way in which desired or beneficial investment has been defined. Far from capital flowing into unconventional oil showing that we’ve not been investing in higher productivity processes, it’s the evidence we need to show that we have been.

forbes.com

[MCHVE] youtube.com

MCHVE — 9/12/2015 12:00:40 AM

[MCHVE] davidstockmanscontracorner.com

MCHVE — 9/9/2015 12:02:35 PM

[TimF] You rarely make a coherent point, let alone simple and direct.

TimF — 9/6/2015 11:17:09 PM

[MCHVE] No idiot, I didn't change anything.... nor back off.... are you stupid? Can you...

MCHVE — 9/6/2015 3:39:05 PM

No idiot, I didn't change anything.... nor back off.... are you stupid? Can you read... the big looter enabled the little looters!! The rest of your sophistry is simply babble obfuscating simple and direct points.

Grow up loser...

[TimF] Now your changing things around. Its not "stock buybacks are looting", its the ...

TimF — 9/6/2015 2:49:59 PM

Now your changing things around. Its not "stock buybacks are looting", its the fed is a looter. The reality is a bit more complex then your will to present, but you have a better argument here.

In a sense the Fed is a counterfeiter. Not really since its "prints" (really creates electronically) legal money. But the effect is the same as the counterfeiter, it dilutes the currency the same as a countterfeiter's efforts do (but to a much larger extent).

The feds trying to appropriately manager the money supply, but to the extent it makes a mistake (which isn't rare) its causing pain. Even when it gets it right, it will harm some with tight or loose money even if that's what's called for at the time.

[MCHVE] Then let's use it some more!! Besides, compared to your average CEO looter, th...

MCHVE — 9/6/2015 9:06:08 AM

Then let's use it some more!! Besides, compared to your average CEO looter, the FED dwarfs those piker, 2-bit looters! The FED has single handedly stole untold Billions from savers and given it to banks, wall street gamblers, and other 1% folks who want to take a punt on whatever idea popped into their heads. They also, of course, enabled and promoted the corporate looting we earlier spoke of earlier by allowing those looters to borrow at falsely low prices.

Sadly, after stealing Billions over the years, they've also slowly chased most those same savers into stocks as they gave up and finally took the advice from the wall streeters to "pile into equities or you'll never be able to retire." First they take away the interest on your savings... now their savings is going to disappear.... what a great system we have! After the final financial looting I'm sure we'll see much more of the "looting" that you are thinking of, and probably sustained over a long period of time.

[TimF] Looting may or may not be a favorite word here, but it hasn't been used much lat...

TimF — 9/4/2015 11:08:57 AM

Looting may or may not be a favorite word here, but it hasn't been used much lately except by you. More to the point your mostly using it to describe things that are silly to call looting.

[MCHVE] "could make", "possibly makes".... LOL, go read your book again and learn the w...

MCHVE — 9/4/2015 11:07:12 AM

"could make", "possibly makes"....

LOL, go read your book again and learn the word "DOES".... and stop pontificating to try and make yourself look smart...

again, when in Rome... speak like a Roman. Looting is a favorite word here, if you'd don't like it...pound sand!

[TimF] Leveraging the company could make the options more valuable by increasing the th...

TimF — 9/4/2015 10:12:02 AM

Leveraging the company could make the options more valuable by increasing the theoretical maximum move on the underlying stock. If things go very well, each share could be worth a lot more, and that possibility makes an option on the stock worth more. It increases the chance of a big downside as well but the downside is limited to the option going to zero.

Still the most reliable way to improve the value of the option is to have the stock move up.

Also even if the option goes up without the underlying stock going up, it would be at best a stretch to call that looting. It would be even more of a stretch to call the stock buyback looting. It doesn't take from anyone it just divides the company in fewer pieces. With the extra debt the company isn't worth quite as much, but existing stockholders hold a larger share of a smaller pie.

Granting too many options might be seen as looting, as might an aggressive option reprising scheme when the company does poorly after very large stock grants justified by tying compensation to corporate performance. I wouldn't call those things looting, but I wouldn't object so much as I would to call buybacks "looting".

<That wasn't the context of this conversation.>

Yes it is...

No it wasn't. Again now one here has called welfare recipients looters here in over a year. It wasn't esp. common even more than a year ago.

Yes this conversation started in response to your link to a piece by Stockman about "looters", but it didn't call welfare recipients looters, nor did it defend against such a charge, it didn't mention welfare recipients at all.

[MCHVE] Naw... I work when I want... although I've been having a good time with some ext...

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 6:06:50 PM

Naw... I work when I want... although I've been having a good time with some extra punts here and there now that this ridiculously overvalued market is rolling over :-))) As for your rants about weather... did you actually finally get your facts straight? And Pitch forks?? LOL, my hood is already integrated, not too worried, but thanks for your concern :-))

[MCHVE] Ummm dummy!!! you're not up on things... she's ALREADY GUILTY HERE!! Silly goo...

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 6:04:04 PM

Ummm dummy!!! you're not up on things... she's ALREADY GUILTY HERE!! Silly goose... stay caught up... and learn the local language!!

[MCHVE] Opti...

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 6:02:17 PM

<The options are made more valuable by the stock becoming more valuable. >

Options are also made more valuable by leveraging the company expanding their expected value even if the stock didn't move... better get the 101 options book :-)

So yes, they are looters.

<That wasn't the context of this conversation.>

Yes it is... you answered my post about "looters"... which, if you hadn't noticed is a pet phrase here on the thread for anyone who is liberal... sorry you're not up to date with the local jargon!!

Until you DO get caught up: go pound sand.

[TimF] Scouring for evidence isn't a claim of guilt.

TimF — 9/3/2015 5:37:20 PM

[TimF] The options are made more valuable by the stock becoming more valuable. The s...

TimF — 9/3/2015 5:36:28 PM

The options are made more valuable by the stock becoming more valuable.

The stock generally shouldn't become more valuable if the company is borrowing massively (compared to its revenue and assets) in order to do the buying. Even if you are asserting this does work (which I find questionable, at least as something that would regularly and predictably work), your now conflating borrowing too much with stock buybacks. My comments where about stock buy backs, not borrowing, and not option grants.

..Maybe you've missed the context of this thread... people on welfare are considered "looters" here

That wasn't the context of this conversation. Search this thread for looters. You'll find no comments in the past year here calling welfare recipients looters.

Also if that what the context it wouldn't really be relevant to your responses to my point. Whether or not welfare recipients are, or are considered to be, looters, isn't relevant to the fact that stock buy backs are not looting.

[MCHVE] [graphic]

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 4:29:08 PM

[MCHVE] OH! Silly me... the crap that gets linked in on these RWNut boards claim she's ...

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 4:25:03 PM

OH! Silly me... the crap that gets linked in on these RWNut boards claim she's already guilty.... huh!?

[MCHVE] Ummmm..... maybe you aren't aware... levering up a company makes options more va...

MCHVE — 9/3/2015 4:23:05 PM

Ummmm..... maybe you aren't aware... levering up a company makes options more valuable.... shareholders don't get options, managements DO! Live and learn... looting.

Low rates by FED loot savers accounts to give to banks... looting... you really are clueless.

OH... I GET IT....Maybe you've missed the context of this thread... people on welfare are considered "looters" here.... wake up.