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Featured Panelists Include:
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Tidbits Quotations
on April 20, 2010
To Accompany the April 20, 2010 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/tidbits042010.htm
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Video on IOUSA Bipartisan Solutions to Saving the USA
If you missed Sunday
afternoon CNN’s two-hour IOUSA Solutions broadcast, you can watch a 30-minute
version at
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)
Note that great efforts were made to keep this a bipartisan panel along with the
occasional video clips of President Obama discussing the debt crisis. The
problem is a build up over spending for most of our nation’s history, It landed
at the feet of President Obama, but he’s certainly not the cause nor is his the
recent expansion of health care coverage the real cause.
One take home from
the CNN show was that over 60% of the booked National Debt increases are funded
off shore (largely in Asia and the Middle East).
This going to greatly constrain the global influence and economic choices of the
United States.
By 2016 the interest
payments on the National Debt will be the biggest single item in the Federal
Budget, more than national defense or social security. And an enormous portion
of this interest cash flow will be flowing to foreign nations that may begin to
put all sorts of strings on their decisions to roll over funding our National
Debt.
The unbooked entitlement obligations that are not part of the National Debt are
over $60 trillion and exploding exponentially. The Medicare D entitlements to
retirees like me added over $8 trillion of entitlements under the Bush
Presidency.
Most of the problems
are solvable except for the Number 1 entitlements problem --- Medicare.
Drastic measures must be taken to keep Medicare sustainable.
I thought the show was pretty balanced from a bipartisan standpoint and from the standpoint of possible solutions.
Many of the possible “solutions” are really too small to really make a dent in the problem. For example, medical costs can be reduced by one of my favorite solutions of limiting (like they do in Texas) punitive damage recoveries in malpractice lawsuits. However, the cost savings are a mere drop in the bucket. Another drop in the bucket will be the achievable increased savings from decreasing medical and disability-claim frauds. These are important solutions, but they are not solutions that will save the USA.
The big possible solutions to save the USA are as follows (you and I won’t particularly like these solutions):
Extend retirement age significantly
(75 years maybe?).
When Social Security was enacted, life expectancy was slightly over 65 years
of age.
Now it is well over 75 years of age.
Hit Medicare retirees like me with
higher fees for physicians, hospital services, and Medicare D drug payments.
Perhaps this should be on a scale based upon wealth/income levels such that
people, like me, who can afford to pay more must pay more.
Greatly curb the biggest cost of
Medicare --- keeping dying people alive in expensive hospitals for a few
weeks or maybe even a few months. Sometimes dying people must be kept alive
in ICU units costing over $10,000 per day when there is no hope of recovery.
There was not any hint of suggesting euthanasia as an alternative. But dying
people can be allowed to die more naturally and pain free.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737437n&tag=mncol;lst;3
(wait for the commercials to play out)
Limit the National Debt is some way. It’s now more common in Europe to limit national debt to 60% of GDP. Various other means of constraining our National Debt were discussed in the CNN longer version of the IOUSA Solutions video.
Watch for
the other possible solutions in the 30-minute summary video ---
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)
Here is the original (and somewhat dated video
that does not delve into solutions very much)
IOUSA (the most frightening movie in American history) ---
(see a 30-minute version of the documentary at
www.iousathemovie.com )
If you missed Sunday afternoon CNN’s two-hour IOUSA
Solutions broadcast, you can watch a 30-minute version at
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)
Note that great efforts were made to keep this a bipartisan panel along with the
occasional video clips of President Obama discussing the debt crisis. The
problem is a build up over spending for most of our nation’s history, It landed
at the feet of President Obama, but he’s certainly not the cause nor is his the
recent expansion of health care coverage the real cause.
Watch the World Premiere
of I.O.U.S.A.: Solutions on CNN
Saturday, April 10, 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST or Sunday, April 11, 3:00-5:00 p.m. EST
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Featured Panelists Include:
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Watch for
the other possible solutions in the 30-minute summary video ---
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)
CBS
Sixty minutes has a great video on the enormous cost of keeping dying people
artificially alive:
High Cost of Dying ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737437n&tag=mncol;lst;3
(wait for the commercials to play out)
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/
"The Looming Entitlement Fiscal Burden," by Gary Becker, The
Becker-Posner Blog, April 11, 2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/04/the-looming-entitlement-fiscal-burdenbecker.html
"The Entitlement Quandary," by Richard Posner, The Becker-Posner
Blog, April 11, 2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/04/the-entitlement-quandaryposner.html
David Walker --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
Niall Ferguson --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson
Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial
decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.
Niall Ferguson,
"An Empire at Risk: How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek Magazine
Cover Story, November 26, 2009 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Please note that this is NBC’s liberal Newsweek Magazine and not Fox News
or The Wall Street Journal.
. . .
In other words, there is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline projections. Nothing to worry about, retort -deficit-loving economists like Paul Krugman.
. . .
Another way of doing this kind of exercise is to calculate the net present value of the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems. One recent estimate puts them at about $104 trillion, 10 times the stated federal debt.
Continued in article --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University and the author of The Ascent of Money. In late 2009 he puts forth an unbooked discounted present value liability of $104 trillion for Social Security plus Medicare. In late 2008, the former Chief Accountant of the United States Government, placed this estimate at$43 trillion. We can hardly attribute the $104-$43=$61 trillion difference to President Obama's first year in office. We must accordingly attribute the $61 trillion to margin of error and most economists would probably put a present value of unbooked (off-balance-sheet) present value of Social Security and Medicare debt to be somewhere between $43 trillion and $107 trillion To this we must add other unbooked present value of entitlement debt estimates which range from $13 trillion to $40 trillion. If Obamacare passes it will add untold trillions to trillions more because our legislators are not looking at entitlements beyond 2019.
The Meaning of "Unbooked" versus "Booked" National Debt
By "unbooked" we mean that the debt is not included in the current "booked"
National Debt of $12 trillion. The booked debt is debt of the United States for
which interest is now being paid daily at slightly under a million
dollars a minute. Cash must be raised daily for interest payments. Cash is
raised from taxes, borrowing, and/or (shudder) the current Fed approach to
simply printing money. Interest is not yet being paid on the unbooked debt for
which retirement and medical bills have not yet arrived in Washington DC for
payment. The unbooked debt is by far the most frightening because our leaders
keep adding to this debt without realizing how it may bring down the entire
American Dream to say nothing of reducing the U.S. Military to almost nothing.
Niall Ferguson, "An Empire at Risk: How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek
Magazine Cover Story, November 26, 2009 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
This matters more for a superpower than for a small Atlantic island for one very simple reason. As interest payments eat into the budget, something has to give—and that something is nearly always defense expenditure. According to the CBO, a significant decline in the relative share of national security in the federal budget is already baked into the cake. On the Pentagon's present plan, defense spending is set to fall from above 4 percent now to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and to 2.6 percent of GDP by 2028.
Over the longer run, to my own estimated departure date of 2039, spending on health care rises from 16 percent to 33 percent of GDP (some of the money presumably is going to keep me from expiring even sooner). But spending on everything other than health, Social Security, and interest payments drops from 12 percent to 8.4 percent.
This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America's debt crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say that cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term should be the administration's most important task—significantly more than the 24 percent who see health-care reform as the No. 1 priority. But cutting the deficit in half is simply not enough. If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.
"Facing Up to a Pension Crisis," by George Will, Townhall,
April 11, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2010/04/11/facing_up_to_a_pension_crisis
A puzzle from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? A puzzle from the prairie: If an earthquake occurs in Illinois and no one notices, is it really a seismic event?
Gov. Pat Quinn called it a "political earthquake" when the state's Legislature recently voted -- by margins of 92-17 in the House and 48-6 in the Senate -- to reform pensions for state employees. There is now a cap on the amount of earnings that can be used as the basis for calculating benefits. In some states, employees game the system by "spiking" their last year's earnings by accumulating vast amounts of overtime pay.
An even more important change -- a harbinger of America's future -- is that most new Illinois state government employees must work until age 67 in order to be eligible for full retirement benefits. Those already on the state payroll can still retire at 55 with full benefits.
The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961. Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.
It also reflects the decadent dependence that the welfare state encourages: Because of the displacement of responsibility from the individual to government, 48 percent of workers over 55 have total savings and investments of less than $50,000.
Because most states' pension plans compute their present values -- and minimize required current contributions -- by assuming an unrealistic 8 percent annual return on investments, the cumulative funding gap of state pensions already may be $3 trillion, and certainly is rising. For example, last Wednesday's New York Times contained this attention-seizing bulletin: "An independent analysis of California's three big pension funds has found a hidden shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars, several times the amount reported by the funds and more than six times the value of the state's outstanding bonds." It is not news that California is America's home-grown Greece, but the condition of the three funds, which serve 2.6 million current and retired public employees, is going to exacerbate the state's decline by requiring significantly higher taxpayer contributions.
A recent debate on "Fox News Sunday" illustrated the differences between the few politicians who are, and the many who are not, willing to face facts. Marco Rubio, the former speaker of Florida's House of Representatives who is challenging Gov. Charles Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, made news by stating the obvious.
Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities.
Neither idea startles any serious person. But Crist, with the reflex of the unreflective, rejected both and said he would fix Social Security by eliminating "waste" and "fraud," of which there is little. The system's problems are the result not of incompetent administration but of improvident promises made by Congress.
Synthetic indignation being the first refuge of political featherweights, Crist's campaign announced that he believes Rubio's suggestions are "cruel, unusual and unfair to seniors living on a fixed income." They are indeed unusual, because flinching from the facts of the coming entitlements crisis is the default position of all but a responsible few, such as Wisconsin's Rep. Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Rubio. What is ultimately cruel is Crist's unserious pretense that America faces only palatable choices, and that improvident promises can be fully funded with money currently lost to waste and fraud.
By the time the baby boomers have retired in 2030, the median age of the American population will be close to that of today's population of Florida, the retirees' haven that is Heaven's antechamber. The 38-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity -- a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy.
'We have to have market-to-market accounting as a
theoretical purity.'"
"Incurious Inquiry Was there," by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., The Wall
Street Journal, April 14, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303695604575181882291373488.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
Those who say nothing useful came from last week's hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission exaggerate—by, say, one or two percent.
From Citigroup's Chuck Prince we learned that the bank felt it must continue to participate in some markets even when it thought pricing had become crazy, because otherwise it would lose the employees who specialized in that business.
. . .
Collateralized Debt Obligations, or CDOs, are not so hard to fathom. A company is formed to collect, for instance, the payment streams of mortgage bonds and pay them out to investors who buy new securities of different grades—the best, or "super senior," get every dime coming to them before holders of the lower grades get anything.
Citi held or committed itself to hold some $40 billion of these on its balance sheet of more than $2 trillion—commitments that senior management didn't even know existed until late in the game, because their underlings saw them as near-riskless, not least because they were backed by bond insurance.
What exactly was it about these securities that caused a global panic—that caused, in the words of Goldman Sachs, a situation in which "institutions were hoarding cash and were unwilling to transact with each other"?
Was it fear that banks wouldn't be able to sell these now-illiquid securities to meet their own obligations?
Was it fear that government would force banks to recognize accounting losses on them so great that the banks would be rendered insolvent?
The question is crucial because panic was the key actor in the drama—turning a severe housing correction in a handful of U.S. states into a global calamity.
The most interesting panel of witnesses consisted of several Citi executives who ran this business. A question the inquisitors failed to ask is how these supposedly super-safe securities are performing today. Have they been able to withstand the surge in mortgage defaults? Do they continue to pay? The question begged to be asked, but Mr. Thomas was too busy assuring the Citi executives that the commission's final report "won't contain one word of what you folks just told us" and then promptly berating them over whether they lost "one night of sleep over what happened."
Where curiosity might have been useful, the commissioners preferred to shower disdain on the Citi executives for failing to forecast a complex disaster practically no one forecasted—unprecedented downgrades to the CDOs by the rating agencies that previously had blessed them, as well as downgrades to the bond insurers, which together forced Citi to recognize huge accounting losses on its CDO holdings.
The closest we got to the important follow-up question came when Mr. Prince, unbidden, blurted out: "It's entirely possible that at some point in the future people will make a lot of money from these instruments because they will pay out. But, again, the debate now isn't about those kinds of issues. The debate is about, 'We have to have market-to-market accounting as a theoretical purity.'"
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on some of the theoretical impurities of
mark-to-market accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#FairValue
Robert Reich --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
"Break Up the Banks," by Robert Reich, Huffington Post, April
5, 2010 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/break-up-the-banks_b_526106.html
A fight is brewing in Washington -- or, at the least, it ought to be brewing -- over whether to put limits on the size of financial entities in order that none becomes "too big to fail" in a future financial crisis.
Some background: The big banks that got federal bailouts, as well as their supporters in the administration and on the Hill, repeatedly say much of the cost of the giant taxpayer-funded bailout has already been repaid to the federal government by the banks that were bailed out. Hence, the actual cost of the bailout, they argue, is a small fraction of the $700 billion Congress appropriated.
True, but the apologists for the bailout leave out one gargantuan cost -- the damage to the economy, which we're still living with (witness the latest unemployment figures). Leave it to the Brits to calculate this. Andrew Haldane, Bank of England's Financial Stability Director, figures the financial crisis brought on by irresponsible bankers and regulators has cost the world economy about $4 trillion so far.
So while the bailout itself is gradually being repaid (don't hold your breath until AIG and GM repay, by the way), the cost of the failures that made the bailout necessary totals vast multiples of that.
Needless to say, the danger of an even bigger cost in coming years continues to grow because we still don't have a new law to prevent what happened from happening again. In fact, now that they know for sure they'll be bailed out, Wall Street banks -- and those who lend to them or invest in them -- have every incentive to take even bigger risks. In effect, taxpayers are implicitly subsidizing them to do so. (Haldane figures the value of that implicit subsidy to be about $60 billion a year for each big bank.)
Congress and the White House tell us not to worry because financial reform legislation will contain what's called a "resolution" mechanism allowing regulators to wind down any big bank that gets into trouble. (Think bankruptcy with more safeguards against runs on bank by creditors wanting to get their money out right away.) By virtue of this resolution authority, they say, future bank creditors will have to price in the possibility of the bank being allowed to fail. Hence, the implicit subsidy for risk-taking will disappear. At least that's the theory.
But the theory isn't likely to work in practice. Do you really believe bank regulators will use the resolution authority -- especially if two or more giant banks are endangered at the same time? Multiple threats are almost certain because each big bank races to copy any gambling technique that pays off big for any other. The reality is, they'll get bailed out.
Even if the resolution authority were combined with an array of new regulations designed to cover all the "shadow banking" operations of the giant banks -- requiring that they put up more capital and thereby limit their leverage -- there's no way such regulations can succeed. The giant banks already hire fleets of lawyers, accountants, and financial entrepreneurs to find loopholes in every existing regulation.
Finally, consider the political power of the big Wall Street banks. They and their executives and employees are now among the biggest contributors to both parties. Wall Street lobbyists are crawling over Capitol Hill. The banks and their lobbyists will ensure that regulatory loopholes are built into regulations from the start. Remember: They dismembered Glass-Steagall (with the help of their friends in the Fed, on the Hill, and in the Clinton White House), and fought off derivative regulation (ditto).
As long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And as long as their political leverage remains big, the taxpayer and economic tab for the next mess they create will be big.
By all means, give regulators resolution authority and also impose the tightest regulations possible. But Congress and the White House shouldn't stop there. Limits should be placed on how big big banks can become.
How big? No one has been able to show significant efficiencies over $100 billion in assets. Make that the outside limit.
To be sure, smaller banks might still be subject to runs. That's why the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created in the 1930s - to ensure depositors in the event a bank gets into trouble, so they won't have to run to protect their savings. And why the Glass-Steagall Act was passed - to separate commercial banking (where depositors put their money) from investment banking (where betting is done). We could expand insurance to certain categories of bank creditor, and we should resurrect Glass-Steagall.
But the only way to make sure no bank it too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big. If Congress and the White House fail to do this, you have every reason to believe it's because Wall Street has paid them not to.
"Incentives Not to Work Larry Summers v. Senate Democrats on jobless
benefits," The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575180243952375172.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
"The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a 'reservation wage'—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer." Any guess who wrote that? Milton Friedman, perhaps. Simon Legree? Sorry.
Full credit goes to Lawrence H. Summers, the current White House economic adviser, who wrote those sensible words in his chapter on "Unemployment" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, first published in 1999.
Continued in article
Question
Why has the liberal press been so silent on mine safety in West Virginia?
Mining disasters when George W. Bush was president were his fault along with
greedy capitalists according to the liberal press. However, with the Democrats
in power, it is harder for the liberal press to point fingers of blame. This is
especially so in West Virginia ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia#Judicial_branch
At the state level, West Virginia's politics are largely dominated by the Democratic Party, with Democrats currently holding the governorship, both senate seats, two of three house seats and both houses of the state legislature. West Virginia also has a very strong tradition of union membership.
Huffington Post wants big government to take over (as long as its controlled
by the Democratic Party) ---
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/anthony-kang/2010/04/14/arianna-huffington-exploits-coal-mining-tragedy-cries-bigger-governmen
Since coal mining disasters probably cannot be completely avoided, will we still
blame George W. Bush?
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Federal regulations cost a whopping $1.187 trillion last year in compliance burdens on Americans. That’s the finding of a new report, Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute that examines the costs imposed by federal regulations.
“Trillion-dollar deficits and regulatory costs in the trillions are both unsettling new developments for America,” said report author, Clyde Wayne Crews, CEI Vice President for Policy. “It is sobering to note how both dwarf the initial $150 billion ‘stimulus package’ of early 2008.”
The costs of federal regulations often exceed the benefits, yet receive little official scrutiny from Congress. The report urges Congress to step up and take responsibility as lawmakers to review and roll back economically harmful regulations. “Rolling back regulations would constitute the deregulatory stimulus that the U.S. economy needs,” said Crews.
Among the report’s findings:
• 3,503 new regulations took effect last year. The burden of government is heavier than ever.
• How much does government cost? Government is spending $3.518 trillion of our money and imposing another $1.187 trillion dollars in the form of regulatory compliance costs.
• How much of our economic output should be eaten by regulatory costs? Regulatory costs now absorb 8.3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
• What's the federal government's total share of the economy? Regulations + spending combined puts the federal government's share of the economy at over 30 percent.
• Regulations cost more than the income tax.
• New rules that cost at least $100 million increased by 13 percent between 2007 and 2008.
The report urges reforms to make the regulatory costs more transparent and accountable to the people, including annual “report cards” on regulatory costs and benefits, and congressional votes on significant agency rules before they become binding.
Read the report: Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State
I just don't understand why we need sleeping medications when we've got
the tax code
The code is now 3,784,745 words long, not counting the
2009 and 2010 changes. It will get worse in the future.
John Stossel, "Lower and Simplify
Taxes!" Townhall, April 14, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/04/14/lower_and_simplify_taxes!
On my FBN show tomorrow, I'll show clips of the
pandering legislators applauding themselves for offering tax credits to special
interests. The favored groups cheer their tax breaks, but the result is that
everyone else pays more, and everyone must spend more time deciphering the
rules.
John Stossel, "Lower and Simplify
Taxes!" Townhall, April 14, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/04/14/lower_and_simplify_taxes!
Jensen Comment
Last week a great a great construction company put in new insulation on the
upper rim and parts of the walls (under the windows) of our cottage. They also
put in new roof vents for the kitchen stove and the four bathrooms. The total
bill was $5,244, but I only had to pay $1,244. New Hampshire Electric Power paid
$4,000 using laundered Federal money (thank you taxpayers). I paid $1,244, but
that's not the end of the story. I'll also get a tax break on my 2010
Federal Tax return for the $1,244 that I paid. But since New Hampshire does not
have an income tax I don't get any added state income tax break --- Darn!
I also got a terrific new clothes dryer vent to the outside (before the dryer only vented into the basement). Since more cold air can now come into the laundry room, I'm not certain how this is saving on my heating oil bill. But in any case I thank the taxpayers for saving me the trouble of having to empty a lint can in the basement.
This year on my 2009 return I got a tax break on the $2,419 dollars I spent for new windows on the north and west walls of our main bedroom. The energy experts that did my energy audit secretly revealed that new windows usually do not save a whole lot on oil bills (unless there's a severe need for new insulation around the edges of the windows). But our new flip-down Cadillac windows are a lot easier to clean. Thank you taxpayers!
April 15, 2010 reply from Daren Wendroff ---
Click Here
http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/04/15/john-stossel-is-an-idiot/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cpatrendlines%2FtPxN+%28CPA+Trendlines%29
John Stossel is an idiot… Using Stossel’s logic, why should we pay doctors to solve complicated health issues? Why didn’t God make our bodies easy enough to figure out for ourselves? Or for that matter, why do we pay mechanics to fix our complicated cars? Or contractors to build our complicated houses? Life is complicated, and when you live in a huge country like the United States, one does have to comply with some things that are difficult to support the greater infrastructure. I’m personally sick and tired of these arguments always attacking everything. I’m a veteran and a former Peace Corps volunteer, and now I own an accounting firm with my brother. We employ intelligent, hardworking people who have to put up with idiot articles like this attacking our profession, and that attack a good way life in a good country. I’m honestly not proud of the direction this country and the media are heading.
This is a political violence incident that will never be mentioned on
MSNBC
"Republican Officials Attacked and Injured in New Orleans," by Humberto
Fontova, Townhall, April 17, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/HumbertoFontova/2010/04/17/republican_officials_attacked_and_injured_in_new_orleans
On the night of Friday April 9th, a petite female political operative and her boyfriend were attacked and seriously injured in New Orleans by a vicious group of crazed cowards who shrieked political insults while pouncing. After the pummeling, the petite female and her boyfriend were left, collectively, with a compound leg fracture, a concussion, a broken nose and broken jaw. No robbery occurred.
But wait!....Don’t waste your time--if you’re Googling for this item on CNN, New York Times, Wa-Po, MSNBC, Huff-Po, ABC, Salon, CBS, etc. --that is.
. . .
Sure. But the beating victims in New Orleans (left with perhaps permanently disabling injuries) were Republicans, you see. They were emerging from a Republican fundraising dinner at a French Quarter restaurant shortly after attending the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Their attackers (as appears overwhelmingly probable given all evidence) waved signs saying “Republicans Geaux Home!” and had formed a gauntlet outside the restaurant shrieking anti-Republican insults at all who entered and exited its doors.
Continued in article
For more details see http://thehayride.com/2010/04/the-french-quarter-attack-was-political/?950b8d00
Five John Stossel Videos
John Stossel - What is a Libertarian? Part 1 of 5 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeGgV8Zj9LU
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Return to
the Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Bob Jensen's threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
