Fiscal Insanity Continues

Washington Post article: CBO: Obama budget underestimates deficits by $2.3 trillion over upcoming decade

The Post writes:

"The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama’s February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years — an average of almost $1 trillion a year."

Tooles Cartoon below.

Disigenous Business Practices

In the scheme of things this is a really really small issue. But then this blog is about casual observations. In the scheme of things this is another example of disingenuous business practices used to make a sale. Basically, businesses seem to be under the assumption that it is acceptable to lie and cheat in order to make a sale. Ok, lets be a bit nicer and say "stretch the truth".

Of course, to toss in the so-called "intellectual property" angle, if you do something equally disingenuous, you are considered a criminal.  Logically, if a business feels they can mislead you, you should have an "equal' right to mislead them.  Anarchy will result.  If businesses want a business friendly environment that protects them with minimal regulation, they shouldn't do misleading actions.  Remember free-will.  They don't have to do it. There is something known as self-restraint. If they don't feel obligated to be responsible, they deserve the "oppressive business damaging" regulations that they so anguishly whine about.

What is particularly galling in this situation is that a University is sending you something on their letterhead that they present to you as an "official" communication that turns out to be nothing more than a sleazy sales pitch. Since we have had our kids in college for over the past six years we have received numerous such examples. 

Jack Daniels Explains The Deficit

A very appropriate and humorous analysis concerning our ever increasingly irresponsible spending. From Les Jones.  All the talk concerning "deficit reduction" is simply hot air based on psychedelic accounting. The deficit is continuing to increase.

Oppresive Evil Government Regulations

One of the outfalls of the populist Tea Party movement is the demand for smaller government, less taxes, the elimination of regulations, and that government stay out of our personal lives.  I'm not going to go into too much detail at this point, but the devastating earthquake in Japan points out one of the benefits of strong government regulations. Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives.

After  reviewing the New York Times article, I did some internet slumming to find out how Christchurch's  saved lives and I ran across this article: "Proper Building Codes Save Lives" that referred to an earlier (September 2010) earthquake in Christchurch. The article notes that: "The quake was about the same magnitude as the one in Haiti, yet they had a vastly different outcome – due to proper building codes."  Another article: "Building codes saves lives – main message on anniversary of Chile earthquake and lesson learned from NZ"

Compare that to China's 2008 Sichuan earthquake where (according to Wikipedia) 69,197 were confirmed dead, including 68,636 in Sichuan province, and 374,176 injured, with 18,222 listed as missing. Of particular concern was the substandard construction of schoolhouses that collapsed. The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless.  Of course the full extent of the devastation in Japan is unknown, so it is too early for a valid comparison with the current Japanese earthquake.

So before demanding the wholesale abolition of government in the name of promoting "liberty" and eliminating "oppression", be careful of what you ask for in terms of a small castrated government.

Mimi and Eunice Can't Buy Love

Great cartoon from Nina Paley illustrating what is wrong with copyright (and all so-called "intellectual property") today.