Opportunity Cost and streaming video...dang.

Even the Internet itself is limited and scarce.  Bandwidth is finite.  Broadband video streaming is increasing exponentially.  So...do we get all Malthusian here and demand government intervention, or should we let the marketplace figure it out?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/netflix-biggest-driver-of-us-internet-traffic-puts-spotlight-on-broadband-pricing/2011/05/16/AFg3yg5G_blog.html

GREEN, going or coming?

How very true and part of the many aches and pains we now endure.  Those were the good old days for sure. 


How Wasteful the Older Generation Was...


In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."


The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment."


He was right, that generation didn't have the green thing in its day.


Back then, they returned their milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.


But they didn't have the green thing back in that customer's day.


In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks.


But she was right. They didn't have the green thing in her day.


Back then, they washed the baby's diapers because they didn't have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts - wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.


But that old lady is right, they didn't have the green thing back in her day.


Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house - not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn't have electric machines to do everything for you. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.


Back then, they didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.


But she's right, they didn't have the green thing back then.


They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.


But they didn't have the green thing back then.


Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

I didn't but some did...so...pick your poison.

WHY I VOTED DEMOCRATIC

  Top 12 Reasons....A List That Explains Most Everything

 

  *When your friends cannot explain why they voted for Democrats, give them this list.  They can then pick their reasons from this "TOP 12"...*

 

   1. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

 

   2. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

 

   3. I voted Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

 

   4. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

 

   5. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I  don't start driving a Prius.

 

   6. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

 

   7. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

 

   8. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

 

   9. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never

get their agendas past the voters.

 

   10. I voted Democrat because I think that it's better to pay billions to people who hate us for their oil, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle or gopher.

 

   11. I voted Democrat because while we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, I  was promised "HOPE AND CHANGE".

 

   12. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my @$$, it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

--------------------

Now the problem is trying to refute the above points for those who think the points are all good things...   Maybe just give them more LSD or whatever recreational drug they're acquiring on the street corner...

Hayek v Keynes, Fight of the Century II

A very, very VERY good video one must view several times...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc

The Government Shut-Down, Vol. II

Just when you thought it was over, that the almighty national gov't would close up shop (in all the ambiguity of that concept), a guy from Ohio of all places, goes all in and wins the poker match.  Politics, truly.  (Poly=many; tics=blood sucking insects)  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/09/did-keys-boehners-budget-victory/

Government Shutdown hyperbole Vol. I

The national government will 'shut down' this weekend.  Listen to all the prognostications of doom and gloom spouting from most every font of 'news' out there...  Article I, Section 9, clause 7 requires any money drawn from the Treasury (spent) can only be appropriated by law.  This means it must be authorized by an act of Congress signed by the President.  Most are lead to believe that the appropriations for this fiscal year (FY 2011) finish up when this most recent "Continuing Resolution" expires.  The media calls a Continuing Resolution a 'stop gap spending bill'.  It is needed as the official 'budget' for this fiscal year was not passed in Congress last year (amazingly so, given that one political party had a majority, a substantial one at that, in BOTH houses of Congress AND the President, yet they deigned not to provide the country with a budget) so they reverted to a measure/method typically only used in October (the beginning of the Fiscal Year is October 1st), for portions of the budget that still needs to be signed by the President.  HOWEVER, the Congress in its infinite wisdom has taken the 'budget' and broken it up into over a dozen major components, each of which must be passed as separate 'laws'.  So, if even only one of those major components is not passed, it can be said that the budget has not passed, so a shutdown can occur.  However, the average citizen will not notice a single disruption in his/her life.  In fact, the economy may pick up in activity due to fewer regulators and inspectors interrupting economic activity, more 'laissez-faire'.

SO...now the political shenanigans ramp up, with a biased media on one side, and a grassroots 'organization' on the other (that term 'organization' is very loosely applied to the Tea Party which by definition is not a political party, but a mass movement incorporating independents, republicans and democrats).

NOTE: The President decides who in the Federal Gov't is essential (still going to do the jobs after the 'shut down') and non-essential (stay at home with no pay but will be 're-imbursed' when gov't 'opens' again) so guess who dictates the impact of a shutdown?  AND guess who will be castigated and impugned unceasingly by the media?  Your choices are Republicans and Democrats.  Please vote below with a comment.

NO BLOOD FOR OIL!!!!! Unless it's Obama....

Hmmm...hard to argue our actions are not 'blood for oil' again...but this time, it is European oil concerns.  Guess THAT'S OK with the 'watch dog' media this time.  Can't forget that the US was late to the fracas, and guess who was FIRST?  Yup.  France.  Even though it was an Italian colony...

Michigan Education Association to seek strike authorization

Wow...where to start in refutation?  So many options...

Amazing.  Middle class under assault, eh?  If so, it is in part by the MEA advocating for higher taxes.

So, a strike by a public school teacher is illegal.  Who would have guessed?  And here the kids thought they would just get a few days off of school.

Sum total eval...best part is the warning to stock up two months worth of pay.  To build one's savings...wow.  I'd have NEVER thought of that even in good times.

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

Once Upon A Time it was said that "Man Bites Dog" was news.  In the same vein, is the story linked and headlined above truly news (implying unusual or new) when such activities have been happening for some time now?  In fact, don't we all know (and love?) someone who is doing this RIGHT NOW?!?  I mean, come on!  Seriously?  Really?  (And the other 'current' terms used by people in society to express incredulity and sarcasm...)  Here's the link if you either don't like to click hyperlinked headlines or it is a borken lnik.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks/print

Japan may have a real China-Syndrome.  And a real China syndrome.  Who else has money to help?  We don't.  And Japan's gov't has also spent to the hilt and has no money.  Who is left?  China.  No divine wind will help this situation.  "That's what I call ironic!" ~Ragetti on "Pirates of the Caribbean"

Wusses in Wisconsin, or are they?

I remember a bumper sticker issued by the Wisconsin tourism bureau or some-such back in the early 80's, "Escape to Wisconsin".  I always liked to get my hands on them and cut out the 'to' part.  Apparently, the democrat state senators took that to heart, and escaped, or as the bad guy played by Gary Oldman in "Air Force One" says, "He fled like a whipped dog".  The link provides (rather well I might add) the reasoning behind the efforts to curtail the abilities (NOT 'rights') of AFSCME and others (PUBLIC tax-paid for employees) to negotiate in collective bargaining.  Don't forget, I'm a public employee in a union.  Excuse me, we cannot officially call our union a union, but rather an 'association'...right.    Just remember, democracy is not what we have nor have we ever had.  We are a constitutional republic.  The people made their voices heard in the election last November.  As Obama liked to point out after the '08 election, "Elections mean things."  http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/02/the-case-against-public-sector-unionism.html

Economics Saved My Marriage - Newsweek

It really is that simple. Supply, Demand, and the magical X marks the spot. Psychologists are getting upset about the 'incursion' economics is making into 'their territory'. BUT, economic principles are ubiquitous! Here's another installment demonstrating that point...

Economics Saved My Marriage - Newsweek

Supply, Demand and Entropy

Six Flags over New Orleans.   Gotta wonder about the effects of the hurricane, and the effects of looting.  Supply and Demand at its finest?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcja8UBtXdk&feature=player_embedded

Opportunity Cost and The Super Bowl!!!!!

President Barry Soetoro says he'll be attending the Super Bowl in Dallas if the Bears win on Sunday against the Packers.  Barry would become the first sitting President to do so, ever.  So what, right?  Problem, due to the incredibly sophisticated security protocols surrounding the movements of the President of the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service) e.g. shutting down airports when Air Force One is on site, shutting down expressways/interstates for his motorcade, etc. would cause an exponential impact upon the citizens and fans who are traveling to the game, attending the game, and leaving the game.  Even if he were to take Marine One (from Love Field?  Don't go there...) and land on the fifty yard line and walk to his luxury sky box, any and all individuals entering the parking lot, let alone the stadium, would be frisked and wanded.  I mean come ON!  That's why George W., Slick Willie and others watched it in HD at the 'House' with invited 'friends' and choked on a pretzel...nearly dying...  But perhaps Barry isn't the NFL and Bears fan he may now appear to be...given his current political crisis of popularity and upcoming billion dollar re-election campaign donors are shunning...  If he were 'attending' the Super Bowl, he would get the equivalent of millions of dollars of publicity and positive P.R. as the cameras would be obliged to show his reactions to various plays on the field.  So, Barry Soetoro's attendance at the Super Bowl would devolve that most watched on TV spectacle to a simple political gambit that would cost tens of thousands of others at minimum an inconvenience let alone an enjoyable time, and the rest of us the perverse close-ups of a 'leader' we'd rather not have to look at during our own revelry while participating in whatever Super Bowl party/event we may find ourselves.  Just put the shoe on the other foot.  What if George W. Bush did this very same thing for Super Bowl XLII?  Right.

What the Internet killed

A pretty good summary of recent changes in 'the way we do things'.

Didn't see buggy-whips, glass bottled milk deliveries daily, nor hitching posts...

Imagine to soon see newspaper deliveries, and... on this list of victims of the internet.

Can you imagine what would be 'soon to go'?

TVKim- Watching: Kim on Komand- What the Internet killed

Caleeforneeah.

This is an article from Victor Davis Hansen, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University:
     The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California.  I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an over regulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

    During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County.  I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh.  And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton,Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma.  My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.

    Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South).  First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration.  There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to 100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

    On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed.  Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border.  Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed.  So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

    Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World.  There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards.  The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.

    It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate.  Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant.  But in the regulators' defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

    Many of the rented-out rural shacks and stationary Winnebagos are on former small farms — the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow.  I pass on the cultural consequences to communities from the loss of thousands of small farming families.  I don't think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard. What an anomaly — with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world's richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse.  Is credit frozen?  Are there simply no more farmers?  Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs?  Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future?

    California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento-San JoaquinRiver Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughoutCalifornia 's rural hinterland.  Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road.  I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road.  But there were three of them, and one of me.  So I was lucky to be sworn at only.  I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexicoand, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.

    In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children's plastic toys to diapers and moldy food.  I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands.  So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta.  Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities.

    We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week.  But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a "counter business."  I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants.  There are no "facilities" such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils.  Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

    At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything.  Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps.  The merchandise was all new.  I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

    In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I was the only one in line who did not pay with a social-service plastic card (gone are the days when "food stamps" were embarrassing bulky coupons).  But I did not see any relationship between the use of the card and poverty as we once knew it:  The electrical appurtenances owned by the user and the car into which the groceries were loaded were indistinguishable from those of the upper middle class.

    By that I mean that most consumers drove late-model Camrys, Accords, or Tauruses, had iPhones, Bluetooths, or BlackBerries, and bought everything in the store with public-assistance credit.  This seemed a world apart from the trailers I had just ridden by the day before.  I don't editorialize here on the logic or morality of any of this, but I note only that there are vast numbers of people who apparently are not working, are on public food assistance, and enjoy the technological veneer of the middle class.  California has a consumer market surely, but often no apparent source of income.  Does the $40 million a day supplement to unemployment benefits from Washingtonexplain some of this?

    Do diversity concerns, as in lack of diversity, work both ways?  Over a hundred-mile stretch, when I stopped in San Joaquin for a bottled water, or drove through Orange Cove, or got gas in Parlier, or went to a corner market in southwestern Selma, my home town, I was the only non-Hispanic — there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites.  We may speak of the richness of "diversity," but those who cherish that ideal simply have no idea that there are now countless inland communities that have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income — whether through emergency rooms, rural health clinics, public schools, or social-service offices. An observer from Mars might conclude that our elites and masses have given up on the ideal of integration and assimilation, perhaps in the wake of the arrival of 11 to 15 million illegal aliens.

    Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico, a vast expansion of California's entitlements and taxes, the flight of the upper middle class out of state, the deliberate effort not to tap natural resources, the downsizing in manufacturing and agriculture, and the departure of whites, blacks, and Asians from many of these small towns to more racially diverse and upscale areas of California.

    Fresno 's California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president's announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act.  I won't comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years.  I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program's sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability.  By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins ofAmerica more often than its attractions.  In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

    I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico.  I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States.  But here is what still confuses me:  If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

    So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, "Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate."  I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay.  What it is about Americathat makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?

    I think I know the answer to this paradox.  Missing entirely in the above description is the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed "indifferent."  California does not care whether one broke the law to arrive here or continues to break it by staying.  It asks nothing of the illegal immigrant — no proficiency in English, no acquaintance with American history and values, no proof of income, no record of education or skills.  It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California 's burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out.  How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps.  How odd — to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta — that California is at once both the nation's most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.

    Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California — and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

Is it Constitutional for Congress to print money?

I'd like to point out (in addition to the information on the link that follows) that a great majority of our money today in circulation (M2) is not 'paper' money at all, but rather data in digital form in computers in the banking system. I like to play a video game a few times a month. I call it 'paying bills'. I make the numbers in my bank account go down, and the numbers in the businesses and gov'ts go up so I can eat, live in a warm home, have a car, provide education to my children, etc.

Constitutional FAQ Answer #154 - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net

Europe starts confiscating private pension funds | Washington Examiner

My father-in-law praised my wife and I for our sound choice of acquiring careers in fields with great pensions. I am a public school teacher in Michigan, my wife works at a regional hospital. I was amazed that he still believes that money will be there, both Social Security and my teacher pension in a few decades. Personally, I plan on working until I drop.

Talk about positive externalities...

World of Warcraft sucks...as much as real life due to economic realities existing EVERYWHERE!

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2009/06/fall-of-goblinism-2.html  

Vikings...not friendly people.

Poverty, Christians and Capitalism

Please read the article "Free Market Generosity" starting on page 24.  The one consistent factor in eliminating poverty is the individual's private property rights.  Let's not forget that John Locke and Thomas Jefferson both claimed that God gave us unalienable rights, and among them is the right to property (the Declaration of Independence had that instead of 'happiness' until the final draft).  Even Milton Friedman made the point that capitalism (individual/private property rights) is a necessary (but not sufficient) factor to have a free society where people are free to choose for themselves.

http://www.cedarville.edu/~/media/Files/PDF/Publications/Torch/torch_f2010.pdf

Public school performance...

If public high schools were to charge a modest tuition (please, don't get hung up on what that might be), what would the impact be on the quality of education?