November 19, 2008 at 11:41 am Filed under General
This was in my inbox from Newt:
There’s a term that’s commonly applied to the economic systems of some Asian and Latin American countries. It’s “crony capitalism.”
Crony capitalism is when government controls significant parts of the economy. Under this kind of bureaucratic micromanagement, politicians - not the free market - call the shots. And that means that the decisions that control the economy are of necessity political decisions, not economic ones.
Crony capitalism is bad for government. Economic power in the hands of politicians breeds corruption.
Crony capitalism is bad for democracy. Individuals and businesses outside favored industries have an unequal voice in self-government.
Crony capitalism is bad for business. Politicians wedded to the status quo stifle growth and innovation.
And there’s one more thing about crony capitalism: It’s come to America.
It’s the nature of crony capitalism to expand; for government to acquire more and more of the economy.
The agents of this expansion are elected officials. Call them “predatory politicians.”
Crony capitalism practiced by predatory politicians is at the root of the current financial meltdown.
In exchange for campaign cash and support for favored constituents, predatory politicians aided and abetted the government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they created and fed the subprime mortgage market.
And to fix the mess they created, what have predatory politicians turned to? Why, more crony capitalism of course.
First, they designed Wall Street bailouts in which a former chairman of Goldman Sachs got a blank check to disburse hundreds of billions of dollars to his former colleagues on Wall Street.
Then they took over an insurance company at a hugely inflated cost.
Now predatory politicians want taxpayers to fund a bailout of three bloated, stagnant companies that have been losing money for years, one of which is currently hemorrhaging over $1 billion a month.
To reward the unions that helped produce its electoral victory, the newly empowered Democratic Congress is proposing that American taxpayers pony up $25 billion to bail out the Detroit Three automakers, Ford, GM and Chrysler.
Democrats are using the current financial crisis as their excuse to bailout the autos. But in fact, the Detroit three were unprofitable long before the current crisis hit.
According to one economist, GM and Ford made more money-losing investments in the 1980s than any other U.S. companies. And the Detroit money pit only got deeper in the ensuing two decades. Since 1998, GM has been losing an astonishing $1.5 billion a month.
That’s an investment only a predatory politician would propose.
One of the things that makes crony capitalism so profitable for politicians is that Washington exempts itself from the economic and financial rules it imposes on private industry.
For example, in 2003, federal regulators discovered that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had engaged in Enron-style accounting fraud. But while executives at private companies who engaged in similar fraud went to prison — and Congress responded by imposing the draconian and business-killing Sarbanes-Oxley bill on private businesses — Fannie and Freddie executives barely received a slap on the wrist.
One of the reasons was House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Frank fought tenaciously against the regulation that would have held Fannie and Freddie executives accountable and might have averted the financial crisis.
Now Chairman Frank wants to bring his particular style of crony capitalism to the auto industry.
On “Face the Nation” this Sunday, Chairman Frank announced that not only would he push for a taxpayer bailout of the Detroit Three during the special session of Congress this week, but he would also create a government oversight board for the three companies — in effect, a board of directors made up of predatory politicians.
I believe that it would be a mistake for the taxpayers to be forced to bail out Detroit. Companies at which union workers make $71 an hour in wages and benefits — compared to just $47 an hour at Toyota’s U.S. plants — are not going to be saved by a $25 billion government check.
But if Democrats do find the votes to bring crony capitalism to Detroit, Americans should at the very least insist that any government board of directors created for the auto industry be subject to the criminal penalties and lengthy prison sentences in Sarbanes-Oxley.
What’s fair for the rest of us is fair for predatory politicians.
A Chance For President-Elect Obama to Deliver Real Change
The solution to our economic problems, be they in Detroit or on Wall Street, isn’t more crony capitalism; it’s economic growth.
While politicians in Washington are constantly calling on taxpayers to put up more and more money to bail out flagging businesses, there are practical things that wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a penny that we could do to make America a better place to create jobs.
One of these things is to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. As my wife Callista and I outline in more detail in this video, Sarbanes-Oxley has had the unintended consequences of stifling innovation, killing new business start-ups and driving listings overseas.
President-elect Obama won an historic victory two weeks ago on the promise of delivering change to the American people. Bailing out the Detroit auto dinosaurs is not change. It is crony capitalism in service of a failed status quo.
President-elect Obama should stand up to congressional Democrats and say “no” — “no” to saddling future generations of Americans with the bill for today’s crony capitalism.
That would be change we could believe in.
November 10, 2008 at 10:22 pm Filed under General
Health has been a big issue in the family for the past few weeks or so.
So I decided to look up some quotes on the subject…
The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are we. ~Author unknown, as quoted in Mimi Guarneri, The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. ~G.K. Chesterton
There’s lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven’t the time to enjoy it. ~Josh Billings
The greatest wealth is health. ~Virgil
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. ~Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. ~Doug Larson
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ~World Health Organization, 1948
The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around…. Throughout history, “tender loving care” has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing. ~Larry Dossey
Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway. ~Author Unknown
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. ~Redd Foxx
As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body. ~Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979
In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired. ~Author Unknown
The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they’ll ease
Your will they’ll mend
And charge you not a shilling.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990
He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors. ~Chinese Proverb
If I’d known I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself. ~Leon Eldred
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain
Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you! ~Tommy Smothers
They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger. ~Chi Chi Rodriguez
Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something. ~Lord Chesterfield
If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
The… patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don’t take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. ~Quentin Regestein
Joy and Temperance and Repose
Slam the door on the doctor’s nose.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If I had my way I’d make health catching instead of disease. ~Robert Ingersoll
Sickness comes on horseback but departs on foot. ~Dutch Proverb, sometimes attributed to William C. Hazlitt
Like everybody else, when I don’t know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds. ~George Jean Nathan
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body. ~Cicero
If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want. ~Elbert Hubbard
People who are always taking care of their health are like misers who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy. ~Laurence Sterne
To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness. ~Henri Frederic Amiel
The longer I live the less confidence I have in drugs and the greater is my confidence in the regulation and administration of diet and regimen. ~John Redman Coxe, 1800
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book. ~Irish Proverb
Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb
There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache. ~Henry Lytton Bulwer
Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia. ~Napoleon I
In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else. ~Alison Rose Levy, “An Ancient Cure for Modern Life,” Yoga Journal, Jan/Feb 2002
Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once. ~Thomas Browne
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease. ~George Dennison Prentice, Prenticeana, 1860
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust
When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no “I’ll start tomorrow.” Tomorrow is disease. ~V.L. Allineare
My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass. ~Leslie Grimutter
We drink one another’s health and spoil our own. ~Jerome K. Jerome
In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible. ~Cicero
I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open. ~B.K.S. Iyengar
Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws. ~Charles Simmons
The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread. ~Chinese Proverb
Nature does require
Her time of preservation, which perforce
I her frail son amongst my brethren mortal
Must give my attendance to.
~William Shakespeare
A healthy body and soul come from an unencumbered mind and body. ~Ymber Delecto
Adam and Eve ate the first vitamins, including the package. ~E.R. Squibb
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies. ~Leo Tolstoy
Gold that buys health can never be ill spent. ~Thomas Dekker, Westward Ho, 1604
Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic. ~Martin H. Fischer
Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it. ~John Henry Cardinal Newman
Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies. ~Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Sometimes I get the feeling the aspirin companies are sponsoring my headaches. ~V.L. Allineare
A healthy body is the guest-chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison. ~Francis Bacon
An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease. ~Yiddish Proverb
Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;… and not today’s pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man. ~James H. West
Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady. ~François Duc de la Rochefoucauld
From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health. ~Catalan Proverb
If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician. ~Meryl Streep
An illness of the mind is an illness of the body, and vice versa. ~Madrianne Arvore
Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy. ~Author Unknown
Every man’s disease is his personal property. ~Alonzo Clark
Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene
Supports the mind supports the body too.
~John Armstrong
If you don’t take care of yourself, the undertaker will overtake that responsibility for you. ~Carrie Latet
The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart. ~Nikolai Lenin
The scientific truth may be put quite briefly; eat moderately, having an ordinary mixed diet, and don’t worry. ~Robert Hutchison, 1932
If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands. ~John Locke
To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less. ~Chu Hui Weng
When the head aches, all the body is the worse. ~English Proverb
Healthy people are invalids who don’t know it. ~Jules Romains, Dr. Knock, 1923
After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health. ~James Howell
The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of disease. ~Edward Jenner
There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood. ~Charles Dickens
Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there. ~Martin H. Fischer
Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other. ~Joseph Addison
It is a lot harder to keep people well than it is to just get them over a sickness. ~DeForest Clinton Jarvis
Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well. ~Marcus Valerius Martial
Without health, there is no point. To anything. ~Everett Mámor
Confidence and hope do more good than physic. ~Galen
Live in rooms full of light
Avoid heavy food
Be moderate in the drinking of wine
Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water
Change surroundings and take long journeys
Strictly avoid frightening ideas
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements
Listen to music.
~A. Cornelius Celsus
My inner advisor is dying to heal me. ~Astrid Alauda
Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. ~Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977
Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them. ~Martin H. Fischer
How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia
Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful. ~Denis Diderot
Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men’s necessities. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Over the Teacups, 1891
First need in the reform of hospital management? That’s easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef. ~Martin H. Fischer
In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities hypochondria has always seems to me to be the only rational position to take on life. ~John Diamond
He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything. ~Arabic Proverb
A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Happiness lies, first of all, in health. ~George William Curtis, Lotus-Eating
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer. ~Clement Freud, The Observer, 27 December 1964
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose
If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise. ~Logain Clendening
It’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of finding a sickness you like. ~Jackie Mason
May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after! ~Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1749
What linguistic genius
set up the sneeze and wheeze
To rhyme so very perfectly
with the word for allergies?
~Charlie N. Abbers
I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward. ~John Mortimer
So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health. ~A.J. Reb Materi, Our Family
Nothing is more fatal to Health, than an over Care of it. ~Benjamin Franklin
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not. ~Mark Twain
November 6, 2008 at 9:34 pm Filed under News Items
Lifted from a very funny blogger, HockeyDino
Obama just spent $650,000,000 to get a job that pays $400,000. Yes we want him to fix the economy!
CAPITAL GAINS TAX
MCCAIN
0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.
OBAMA
28% on profit from ALL home sales. (How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.)
DIVIDEND TAX
MCCAIN
15% (no change)
OBAMA
39.6% - (How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts predict that ‘Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.’)
INCOME TAX
MCCAIN
(no changes)
Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $31,250
OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750
Under Obama, your taxes could almost double
INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN
- 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)
OBAMA
Restore the inheritance tax
Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will only lose them to these taxes.
NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA
New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet.
New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren’t high enough already)
New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity)
New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least….
New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries
This appeared today on the news and my daughter’s reaction was very interesting. She said, “I guess they DO give Santa god-like qualities, I mean, think of the words, ‘he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.’ ”
