Archive for May, 2009

McChristianity and Obama

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

For a variety of reasons, starting in the 1960s, Christian churches began to hemorrhage young people.    As Government-run schools scrubbed all references to religion from history, young people  lost interest in the religion of their parents.  TV and Big Bird became the teachers of how to live your life.

Some think that humans are genetically programmed to have to believe in something, and incorporating a belief in a Supreme Being is key to human survival.   The general notion was popularized by the term the [God Gene]

The Christian Church and its insistence that its religion was actually based on the life and teachings of Jesus – and following the rules and teachings of the church – led to a mass exodus to what some call the McChurch – where you go on Sunday to get a dose of McChristianity.  No need for rules or restrictions on your behavior or respect for authority – just do focus group research and find out what people want their religion to teach them and then feed it back to them on Sunday and they’ll flock to your brand.

Somewhere else on the web site, I wrote a really quick description of Contemporary Christian Music is “Jesus Loves me, and I love Jesus”, and nothing more substantive.  So I sat down and forced myself to listen to K-Love (EMF’s Contemporary Christian music channel) for half an hour and wrote down the theme or message of each song and seeing if I was overly harsh.

God is beautiful
God is love
Surrender your heart to God
There will be place with no more suffering, pain or fears
You won’t be alone with Jesus
God will rescue me from a life of misery
I’m alive because Jesus loves me
Jesus is the giver of every perfect thing
All that I am is due to the power and majesty of Jesus
My love of Jesus is forever
Jesus is my Savior
Trust in the Lord
God’s glory will reign forever and ever
I hold out my hands to the One who is worthy
God makes everything glorious, and since I love God, what does that make me?

In summary, every bit of the music is incredibly narcissistic – about my feelings, what I want, my love for God/Jesus, my pain.

It isn’t about an actual Jewish man who lived 2000 years ago in the Middle East, it isn’t about the 10 commandments, it isn’t about love for your wife or your children or your parents, the people who are with you in church, the other people around you who need your help, the people who died to keep the religion alive, the importance of leading a moral life and treating others with mutual respect.   It’s about Me.  It’s about what I want.  I want to Feel Good.  Jesus is my Drug.

Now, take the above themes and replace God/Jesus/Lord with Obama, and you will quickly see exactly why we are where we are today.  It’s only one small step to then replace Obama with Mohamed.

Tags: ,
Posted in Politics | No Comments »

$582 Trillion

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

$582 Trillion.   That’s about $100,000 for every person on the planet.

That’s the amount of the leverage hanging over the heads of the world.   It is the face (notational) value of the sum of all of the unregulated derivatives.   Every radio company owner that I’ve looked at so far (those not privately owned) have used short term variable rate LIBOR credit facilities – with interest rate swaps derivatives to protect them from an increase in LIBOR.

One of the problems with things like Interest Rate swaps are today they are 1 on 1 contracts.  There are theories about how you figure out the value of an interest rate swap at a point n time, but there is no liquid market to prove what it is worth.   Typicaally you bought them as a condition of getting the credit facility, and you had to buy it from the same folks.  Interest rate swaps being 1 on 1 contracts have couterparty risk – if the bank (or insurance company) that sold you the interest rate swap goes under (AIG, for instance), you’re 100% screwed.

Tim Geithner is doing one thing right, but whether it works or will just speed the collapse is not known yet.   He wants a publicly traded liquid market in interest rate swaps and other derivative instruments.   (by proposing this as his project, he’s stepping all over the toes of the CFTC, and to a lesser degree the SEC).  It’s a pretty naked power grab.

If interest rate swaps become a standard commodity (I’ll trade you LIBOR vs 4% for 5 years), then it takes the guesswork out of how much leverage is out there and how much the contract is worth at any point in time.   A key part to a commoditized financial product is that you get rid of the counter party risk.  Instead of your contract depending on 1 company, all of the people involved in the marketplace pool their assets  to guarantee all trades.   You can’t play the game if you can’t prove you have the resources to back up your trades.  If one of the companies fail, all the other players agree to absorb their loss.

Either Geithner is a brilliant man who is going to save the world, or he is incredibly naive and leading us right off the cliff.   I think we’ll know shortly which he is.   I don’t see how you get past the fact that one party to the transaction introduces risk via their credit risk, but maybe I just don’t understand it yet.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Financial Collapse, Politics, Timothy Geithner Watch | No Comments »

Belling Geithner’s cat

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Perhaps it is better to not think you know what is coming.  Everyone who has had even a 1st year economics course knows you can’t monetize debt and not have consequences.  

The FDIC is out of money.  The banks (other than the “too big to fail” money center banks) are really pissed.  Geither has used the money they’ve been paying into FDIC for 50 years to bail out American Express and Goldman Sachs, who never paid a penny into the FDIC.  The FDIC wants to surcharge all of the country’s banks to build the fund back up.  The banks (via the ABA) are actively opposed to that plan.   Geithner’s plan B is to let the FDIC borrow $100 billion from the US treasury to keep destroying the banks he designates as the next target.  

Geithner has been threatening banks with seizure if they don’t cooperate with him.   Ben Bernanke does not run the Federal Reserve, the Board does.    The regional banks are controlled by their member banks.   People who run banks are smart and they are probably the only ones that have the power to “bell the cat”.

Tim Geithner has convinced current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to buy up  debt that Geithner needs to sell to finance the explosion of spending needed to fund the Geithner $700 billion fund to destroy all businesses.    If the Federal Reserve wasn’t cooperating, Secretary Geithner would have to sell US Treasury Bills (less than a year), Notes (1-10 years), and Bonds (10-30 years) .  For the government to acquire more power without the consent of the taxpayers, they have to borrow money from somewhere else.

In an unguarded moment (translation: no teleprompter), President Obama told the host on C-SPAN that the government is out of money.   [The dimwit host had reversed debt and deficit in his question, but at least he got a useful answer]. 

Well, we’ve reached the point that Geithner is losing control of the Bernie Madoff like game he has been playing.   People are not showing up to buy the instruments.  Bond Rating agencies are sending signals they may need to  downgrade US treasuries. 

Coercing the bond holders at Chrysler to surrender their “first in line” status in favor of the UAW will destroy the Bond market if this is allowed to stand.   Those bonds are held by folks like Pension Funds and Insurance companies that are holding annuity money.   If one person can wave his hand and make 400 years of commercial law “go away”, the entire system is doomed.   They cannot let his action stand.   It has turned into “it’s us or them”.   (Obama+Geithern vs capitalism).  Only one is going to survive.

This week’s competitive bid auctions are finding lenders wanting a higher interest rate from the US Treasury.    China seems to be looking to B razil as a place to start sending its investment money.  The market interventions of the past 8 months by the world’s central banks has been to try to force interest rates down to zero, because there is a huge consequence to interest rate swaps and LIBOR based credit facilities if the interest rates go up. 

All it’s going to take is one big event – like the government in Pakistan falling, Iran and Israel exchanging weapons fire, or South and North Korea turning into a hot war, and all bets are off.  The GM bankruptcy itself may be enough to start the chain reaction (since we’ve known it’s been coming for 6 months, proabably most people have already taken evasive action wtih GM).  The U.S. dollar has also been declining over the past few weeks – so be cautious about interpreting the stock market going up as meaning anything.    The two forces cancel out each other (for those people whose assets are not in U.S. dollars)

I wish I had a magic bag of pixie dust to spread around and make this all go away. 

Here is the [Bloomberg Story] today that provoked this rant.

[New York Times] is raising the alarm, too.

Posted in Financial Collapse, Politics, Timothy Geithner Watch | No Comments »

Judge Judy to join Supreme Court?

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Back in the early days of The People’s Court, Judge Wopner handled each case the way judges are supposed to work.

  • Read the complaint in chambers and identify the issue to be decided
  • Consult the relevant laws and relevant case law
  • Start the case
    • Make sure the plaintiff is sticking to the information in the complaint
    • See if the defendant will stipulate any of the facts in the complaint
    • ask probing questions where the answer could be relevant to the decision but wasn’t mentioned in the complaint
    • ask for documentation to support the assertions in the case or to defend against the charges
    • ask if there are any witnesses with relevant evidence (preferably one without a personal interest in the outcome)
    • If it’s he said/she said, ask a few questions to test for honesty and reliability
  • Make the decision
    • Review the law and case law again if the answer isn’t obvious
    • If there is some issue of fact still remaining, return to the room and ask that specific question
    • write down the ruling stating the legal basis of the ruling
  • Announce the decision
    • explain the relevant law and the decision
    • Ask the parties if they understand the decision  – but not open the discussion to start rearguing the case
  • Talk to Doug Lleyelyn  (that’s just for TV and the entertainment value)

Judge Judy and later “Judge” shows have increasingly strayed from the way the law is supposed to work.   Rather than dealing with the law, the judge would probe for people’s feelings and emotions, and ask irrelevant questions for their entertainment value.   The “decision” would only be “You Win”, and no reference all to the law – just the judge’s feelings about what was fair or based on judgement over which person they didn’t like.

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee appears to belong to the Judge Judy school of legal decision making.

Tags:
Posted in Politics | No Comments »

Right to own a car?

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

One of the polls has an unexpected result (to me), and I’m wondering if the question was worded poorly or if I’ve uncovered a belief that needs some attention.

The question was

Do you have an inalienable right to buy an American Car?”

The question was a few wrinkles to it, and was the setup for the next question of whether you have an inalienable right to buy a car that gets 15 mpg?…

The #1 answer coming back is
“Nobody has a right to own a car – it’s a privilege”

An “inalienable right” is a right given to you by God merely because you are alive.  Rights cannot be taken away by government, and you can’t trade away your inalienable rights in exchange for something else.

The right to own property is a very fundamental right in the United States.  Without that as a right, none of the other rights matter.  The 5th amendment is pretty clear (unless perhaps you’re a bright latina woman who grew up poor in the Bronx)

“no person […] shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The question did not ask “Do you have the right to drive a car?”  (which the courts have said is a privilege)

My father was legally blind, but he had a right to own a car.  His children had  a license that granted them the revocable privilege to drive the car.  You can have the right to own a car without having the privilege to drive a car. (which can thoroughly confuse the DMV and insurance agents).    There are blind people who hire someone to assist them and they own the car and give their helper permission to drive the car (to go to the store, for instance).

The question was also not asking if you had a right to buy a new American car – and there is no indication at this time that any of the big three car companies are going to stop making cars.

I was hoping? people would latch onto the idea that Right to Own Property is a fundamental right, and that Amendment #10 which says unless the Constitution specifcally grants a power to Congress (based on the consent of the governed) that Congress shall make no law that infringes on the right to own property.   Yes, I’m an extremist.   States do have the right to limit how you use property.   While you have a right to own and “bear” a gun, you don’t have a right to point it at someone’s head and demand their property, and you don’t have a right to discharge the gun recklessly. 

So what answer could I have put in to convey that you have a right to own any car you want (even if it gets 15 mpg and spews out co2)?   or are we at the point now that people believe we only have the rights that Congress says we have?

Anyone out there, or am I just talking to myself?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Politics | No Comments »

Who wants to kill your children now?

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

While researching one of the radio stations, I noticed that one of the state Teacher’s Retirement funds is a large holder in Phillip Morris – you know – the company behind Joe Camel – and at one time Kraft Cheese and Oreo Cookies.  Why would our teachers be wanting to kill our children with cigarettes and high fat and sugary foods?  And how widespread is this problem?

There are 1,962,000,000 shares of Philip Morris outstanding, making the company “worth”  $83 billion.   Some teachers and public employee pension funds hide behind private equity firms (wouldn’t you if your were a child killer?), but some are out in plain sight.  Let’s see who we can find.

Institutional holders of Philip Morris

#1)  Capital Research Global            115 million

#2) Barclays Global Investmors     80.8 million
   (The British are killing our children too!)

#3) State Street Corp              79.9 million
  PM is in the S&P 500 – if you buy a SPDR, you’re a child killer

#4) Capital World Investing    71.3 million
  (California State Teachers Retirement System has money with Capital Guardian)

#5) Vanguard                            68.4 milion
   (Mutual funds – probably S&P 500 index money)

#6) FMR  (Fidelity)                  46 .6 million

#7) AXA                                       41.2 million
   Very large insurance company in France

#8)  Bank of NY/Mellon          33 million
   Well, we already know about bankers

[…]

TIAA-CREF                             7.7 million
   Teachers 403(b) and annuities (and some public mutual funds)

NY State Retirement Fund      6.7 million

NY State Teacher’s Retirement System 6.7 million

Florida State Retirement System    4.9 million

Ohio Public Employees Retirement   4.6 million

Ohio State Teacher’s Retirement System   4.2 million

Texas Teacher’s Retirement System    4.0 million

State of Wisconsin Investment Board   2.8 million

Canada Pension Plan    2.7 million

Colorado Public Employees Retirement – 2.7 million

Kentucky Teacher’s Retirement System – 1.4 million

TX Employees Retirement System – 1.2 million

Teachers Advisors (NY)      1.0 million

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Politics | No Comments »

The LIBOR time bomb

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Tick…  Tick… Tick….

Tim Geithner has stated that the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates starting in 2003 (Geithner joined the NY Fed in 2003 – coincidence?) is the root cause of the current problem.

Having spent the last week devouring 10-K statement for all of the major radio companies (and it’s probably the case for most Amerian businesses), that definitely looks correct.

It goes something like this – back in the “good old days”, if you were a business and wanted to raise money to build a new factory, you had basically two options – sell more stock in your company, or borrow money by selling long term bonds.

Selling bonds meant a long term obligation to make cash profits from your new factory to pay back the loan.   Raising money by selling stock didn’t commit you as strongly to paying cash for the money on a regular basis, but if your earnings didn’t increase over time, the value of your stock would be diluted and the stock would perform worse than your competitors.

Enter the Federal Reserve flooding the credit markets with very low cost money.   This was George Bush’s doing in cooperation with Alan Greenspan.  Following 9/11, the Bush administration felt a need to use government money to prop up the economy.   (outside of New York City, 9/11 did not cause a big “hit” on the economy).

The consequence of this unneeded intervention in the economy was that given the choice of continuing to pay 13% on junk bonds or pay 2% to an investment bank (which was getting its money from the Fed), that’s a “no brainer”.   Companies could drastically reduce their interest expense by swapping out their long term fixed rate debt with floating rate cheap money.  Unforunately, people who don’t use their brain do stupid things.

The quick fix has a huge down side however (the same one hitting the residential mortgage market).  Even if you had to borrow expensive long term money, you could budget cash flow out 10 years (or whatever the term of the bond is) and make rational investment decisions.  Funding capital assets with short term variable rate money is very short term smart and long term stupid.

To try to mitigate that risk, companies (sometimes as a condition of the LIBOR credit facilities) purchased LIBOR/Fixed interest rate swaps.  The swaps protect the company from the probability that sometime in the next “x” years, that very cheap LIBOR money is going to get more expensive.

That’s exactly what happened in September 2008 – With the failure of Lehman Brothers, reality set in.  An Interest Rate swap carries the risk that the party that sold it to you could go out of business (as Lehman did) and leave you holding the bag.  Who insures the insurer?   There is no such thing in life as “no risk”.

Overnight, LIBOR shot up from like 1.2% to 4.5% in a single day.  Had that not been stopped in its tracks, everything based on LIBOR would suddenly become very expensive and anyone who had sold hedges (interest rate swaps) was going to quickly become insolvent causing other sellers of swaps and lenders with LIBOR based loans to fail.  

So the central banks of the world all turned on their fire hoses to flood the global economy with even more cheap money.  They’re trying to put out the fire by flooding it with gasoline.

This can’t last.  At some point, LIBOR is going to zoom back up to the real cost of money reflecting the actual risks of the borrowers.   When it does, companies that borrowed long term money from the short term market will fail.   Companies (or government agencies who didn’t know what they were doing)  that have sold interest rate swaps will fail.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Financial Collapse | No Comments »

Geithner and Rose – Part 2

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner – formerly the head of the powerful New York branch of the Federal Reserve – had another hour long interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose last week.

The Wall Street Journal offers their opinion [here].

Charlie asks Tim Geithner why things went so wrong and what mistakes were made along the way.

Geithner’s response is a bit muddled.   He blames it partially on lax regulation of banks that were taking on too much risk (note: AIG is not a bank).   While not letting the U.S. off the hook, he does suggest that low interest rates caused the global economy to chase and leverage risk because so much money was available at such a cheap rate.   [Most people agree on that]

Since money could not be parked in US Treasuries and earn reasonable rates, that caused the global investment community  to rush to invest its excess dollars (being generated by the Fed) in riskier and riskier  investments like mortgage backed securities and hedge funds that “invested” money with Bernie Madoff.  The easy availability of cheap mortgage money led to a building boom of housing that wasn’t needed, an influx of construction workers from Mexico to build them and a run-up in housing prices.

He gets specific at blaming that part of the problem in the Federal Reserve’s actions from 2003-2005.   Tim Geithner joined the Federal Reserve in 2003.   Alan Greenspan was the head of the Central Bank, of course.  Probably the unspoken subtext of that statement is something like “We spent a lot of money on the War in Iraq but George Bush didn’t want people to feel the pain of paying for it – so the Federal Reserve “cheap money” policy paid for the Iraq war”.  [Did George Bush ever fight a spending measure of any type in his 8 years in office?]

What is interesting (and alarming) about this revelation is not that he is “owning up” to the Federal Reserve’s role in creating this mess – but that while describing easy availability of credit and low interest rates at the Federal reserve as the problem, he and current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are advocating exactly the same thing as the solution!

To “liquefy” the credit markets, Ben Bernanke in cooperation with Tim Geithner at Treasury have “monetized” about $1 trillion (so far) by creating “fiat” money – the Federal Reserve just creates money and loaning it to the US Government, which is now going to turn around and spend it.

The reason creating fiat money was necessary is that the US Treasury can’t find people willing to buy US Treasury instruments at the extremely low (close to zero) interest rates.    The only way to keep attracting dollars to the US Treasury (if there are any) would be to raise the interest rates we pay.  A lot.

If the Federal Reserve slammed the money creation door on the US Treasury, it would be VERY ugly – but that’s the only thing that will turn this problem around.    If the Federal Reserve didn’t fund wasteful government operations with new dollars, here are few of the logical consequences:

  • Interest rates – short term and long term – would shoot up
  • With the US paying higher interest rates, the US dollar would strengthen against other currencies
  • With the dollar going up in value, the price of oil would drop
  • People with money to invest in Treasury Securities or things like CDs based on Fed interest rates would earn more return on their life savings now languishing in money market accounts
  • LIBOR – the interest rate behind most of the world’s investments would go up drastically.   Companies and individuals with borrowing tied to LIBOR would be in serious trouble (as they should be)
  • Entities that sold LIBOR interest rate swaps would be in very serious peril (as they should be)
  • If the LIBOR interest rate swap market falls apart (it will), entities that agreed to loan money because they were protected by an interest rate swap hedge will be in serious trouble (as they should be)
  • The higher value of the dollar would cause U.S. exports to become more difficult to sell, but lower the cost of imported goods and commodities.

Businesses that built their growth on easy credit will fail – those who built on earning money by creating a useful product and hoping for a reasonable rate of return would survive.  Those businesses would be the ones to pick up the pieces of the rubble and start over.  Hopefully there are a few of them left.

Someone HAS to say “No” to the Obama administration’s plan to spend its way out of this problem with fiat money.   Is Timothy Geithner man enough to “bell the cat”?

When a heroine addict stops putting a needle in their arm, there IS a risk that they will die.  It is guaranteed that things will be extremely unpleasant for a while – but it is the only solution to an addiction.    Back at the very beginning of this unwinding, Glenn Beck made the statement (which he hasn’t repeated that I’ve heard) that this problem is only going to be solved by an alcoholic – someone like him.    He sees a clear pattern of people rushing in and “enabling” the addiction to continue, thinking they are being compassionate – but all they are doing is deepening the addiction and the pain at the bottom.  It’s time to confront the truth.

Coming down off the “Easy money” high is the only way out of this problem, but nobody in government is prepared (yet) to risk the consequences.  (bankruptcy, mortgage foreclosures, high unemployment, financial collapse of state governments, massive layoffs of government employees, etc…  It could lead to a second Civil War and social unrest on a scale this country has not seen for 140 years.  A lot of people could die.   This scenario may  happen no matter what the Federal Reserve does.   The longer this charade continues, the more likely that becomes the outcome.

The first Charlie Rose hour long interview with Timothy Geithner is [here]

This current hour long interview is [here], or if you only have the time or patience for the edited version, a 6 minute highlight is available [here].  The highlight reel does not have the comments the WSJ is writing about.

The biggest disconnect I heard was when Charlie asked about the small banks who want to return their TARP funds and not have the Federal Government regulating what they pay their mangement.  Geithner said that he expected the SEC would handle that issue.  Note to Tim Geithner:  SEC has no regulatory role over corporations that are not publicly traded on a stock market.  The Federal Government has no say in how much a privately owned bank pays its executives.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Financial Collapse, Politics, Timothy Geithner Watch | No Comments »

Which is more dangerous – Swine Flu or Texting?

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Back in September 2008, the operator of a commuter train was preoccupied with texting to a railfan and missed seeing a Stop signal that was warning him that the track ahead was occupied by an oncoming freight train.  The result was 25 people killed.  [Story Here]

Well it’s happened again.  Fortunately, this time there were no deaths, but lots of injuries and you can bet many trolley chasing lawyers ready to sue the MBTA for millions of dollars. 

Up in Boston, the 24 year driver of a Green Line trolley has admitted he was texting his girlfriend while driving the trolley – and failed to notice another trolley stopped on the tracks in front of him until it was too late to stop.  The trolley was on the way to the Fenway park, and some of the passengers were children going to the baseball game. [News Account]

President Obama has made it clear he wants the public to make more use of trains and public transportation, and the people entrusted with the lives of our children cannot even follow basic public safety procedures. 

Why does President Obama hate our children and want them to die? 
</hyperbole>

*** Update ***

Not that it is of any significance, but the driver (“he”) referenced above previously was a  “she” and was hired for her/his “minority” status.  [Story]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Politics, State of Fear | No Comments »

KFC’s Oprah Blunder

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

There is an old saying in economics: “If you give something away for free, you will never have enough supply to meet demand”.   Apparently, nobody at KFC’s marketing department has heard that old saying.  

This saying was used to explain why food stores in the former Soviet Union always had long lines when in fact the stores were empty.  This also could be descriptive of the dangers posed by government funded health care. 

‘If you follow “to each according to his needs”, then let the individual decide their own needs – you generate infinite demand.  It is the fatal flaw of socialism/Marxism.  Without the market forces of production of supply  motivated by profit and demand limited by the ability to pay, socialism always will turn into rationing – and rationing turns into a system of secret black market deals that undercut the official government policy and reward the corrupt or the powerful.

Enter Oprah Winfrey.   Here’s the plan – have Oprah Winfrey announce “Free Chicken Meals!” to her audience, comprised mostly of women who are at home during the day watching TV – suggesting they are either mothers, retired or unemployed.  Tell them to go to a web site and print off a coupon  and rush to their nearest KFC to get up to 4 free 2 piece grilled chicken meals.  What could possibly go wrong with that idea?

Who could possibly have foreseen the unintended consequence that people might print off 100s of coupons each using fake information – and run to every KFC they could find and request free meal after free meal?  Who could possibly have anticipated that the stores would run out of chicken with lines of people waiting to get in for their free food – stretching for blocks and snarling up traffic?

KFC’s damage control “solution” to this problem is that the coupon will be replaced by a rain check, which can be mailed in to get a real coupon for a free meal (with a drink for your trouble).  By processing the requests in a central location, duplicate requests to the same address can be dropped, and just the difficulty of the process will cause many people to drop the idea.  Whether in the long run KFC’s grilled chicken is financially successful is yet to be seen.

The KFC logo of Colonel Sanders has been updated to make him look about 40 years younger than he really was when he founded the company.  Perhaps the current management believe that there is no value in the wisdom of the experiences of the older generation.

Remember the woman who declared now that Barack Obama was president, she wasn’t going to have to pay her mortgage, and would get a free car?  Welcome to the era of the Right to Free Stuff.

After writing the above, I found this thoughtful analysis which hit most of the above points, including using the phrase “unintended consequences”.  Go figure.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Politics | No Comments »