Sunday, November 14, 2010

Reply to Adrian Vance

A response to Adrian Vance's blog.

You are more generous to the state than I. My inflation estimate was ten times from 1964 to 2000 alone.
A Coca-cola was a nickel at work and a dime at the gas station in 1964. Fifty cents and a dollar in 2000.
A loaf of bread 18¢ to $1.80. A gallon of milk 32¢ to $3.20. In 1965 had a lucky Summer job, a union job that paid more than my minimum wage cohort. Grown men were buying homes and raising families on it ... $2.25 an hour. The equivalent paid $22.50 in 2000. That top of the line Ford Mustang I bought for $3200 in 1969? My son bought the equivalent for $32,000. There are others, but it general I find a ten-fold increase from 1964 to the year 2000.

There were, of course, exceptions: medicine, taxes, and gasoline.
1) Medicine was much cheaper in 1965 when I spent a week in the hospital, but it consisted of penicillin, aspirin, measuring temperature and blood pressure, and sleeping pills. Had I had my throat cancer then rather than in 2005, I would have had no radiotherapy, no micro surgery, no chemotherapy. In other words, I would be long dead.

2) My taxes went to 40 times the amount I paid back then but allowing for 10x inflation (in amount, not the damage done by inflation) that is only 4 times. Four times? That's still a lot.

3) And finally gasoline: Remember two Summers ago? When gas was 4 dollars plus a gallon? When everyone was told to blame those evil oil companies? I thought it was cheap. In 1964 one dollar would buy four 25¢ gallons of gasoline. In 2008 one dollar would buy four gallons of gasoline - one SILVER dollar. It wasn't the gasoline that changed. It wasn't the silver dollar that changed. It was that paper thing, the FRN, the only bill of all the different kinds ever printed¹ in this country that actually purports itself to be the dollar and not redeemable with a dollar. That was the one that changed. But we were told to damn the oil companies, not the government and dutifully we did. But for the longest time, our gasoline has been incredibly cheap compared to 1964. It is just the numbers that look bigger.

You appear old enough in your avatar to have been around in the Spring of 1964. I was awaiting graduation and had college, girls and other things on my mind and did not notice the world around me. The media was concerned with the grassy knoll and ignored all else. The most important thing in my lifetime occurred. It was one of Lyndon Baines Johnsons' very first official acts, something he had been wanting to do since 1932 when he was a Representative from Texas and a protégé of Senator Sam Rayburn, and instrumental in removing private ownership of gold - He demonetized silver. Then can blame the Nixon shock, stiffing de Gaulle's run on our under-priced gold, thus breaking Bretton Woods, but the truth is the tie to silver is more responsible for our inflation that lack of gold is. The tie to silver was the tie to limited dollar printing.

Thank you for you patience, and I have enjoyed what I have read and will go read some more.

¹ http://luxomni.blogspot.com/2008/08/as-constant-as-dollar.html

Thursday, November 11, 2010

We resemble that remark

The continued health of a democratic state requires the interplay of three factors: [1] the covert processes of realpolitik wherein the electorate is consigned the role of rubber-stamping either of two fungible candidates offered up by the owners of the system; [2] reinforcement of the fantasy that voters have some real-world influence over the selection of their political rulers; and [3] the illusion that the winning candidate is the one who is really running the government.
- Butler Shaffer

Friday, November 5, 2010

Bridgeport, Connecticut Found a Bag of Uncounted Ballots!

In an election related development, it is reported that election officials have found a bag of "uncounted ballots" under a bridge in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Previously there was a problem with insufficient preprinted ballots, so the State of Connecticut officials had to Xerox sufficient ballots for the number of people voting. Now a bag has been found that was previously uncounted that changed the State Governor's race from Republican to Democrat. This raises several interesting questions:

1) Why is it that these "mistakes" always seem to favor the Democrat candidate?

2) Were just enough found to get the job done?

3a) Did they even bother to make some Republican fraudulent ballots to look like an honest mistake?
3b) Or did the not even have to worry about that kind of scrutiny?

4) Were the ballots Xeroxed with the candidates already selected so that it would be less work filling them in?

Just like Florida, the press will ignore the fact that the cheating occurs at the county level; and all the state does is total the results from each county. They never even see the ballots. (Or didn't back when there was visible evidence.) If only our news reporters had taken basic civics.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Fair and Balanced.

Fair and balanced is not just an expression, some one nicknamed jayzz posted it best over on Real Clear Politics:

The difference between MSNBC's coverage, and Fox News coverage of the election results is that Fox News is not ridiculing any of the democratic winners. Fox News is showing the speeches of the winners, and treating them with respect. MSNBC is laughing at republican winners, and ridiculing them. The liberal media is disgusting.

This is what the Liberals do not get. This is why CNN is losing ratings to Fox. Civility. The Progressive movement is about [perceived] superiority. They believe themselves to be the elite ... the intellectual elite. And they have teamed up with the financial elite to put the rest of us "great unwashed", "rubes", "hicks", "country class" out here in "flyover country" in "our place".

Well, Chris Matthews, Luxomni wouldn't even swap his mean little country home for your Park Avenue Apartment. I have seen (and lived) in a few of the blue areas¹ of your map. Not a life a sane person should want.

¹ You guys controlled the media. Any particular reason you kept blue and gave us red? Like maybe red was too closely associated with who you are pretending not to be?