Doubling Down For Disaster with Stimulus II

The US Congress, along with President, Barak Obama, and their counterparts in the Federal Reserve are doubling down in their gamble on government spending. 

Despite the quantitative failed results of trying to stimulate job recovery through government spending and expansive monetary policies by central banks our government is insisting that we take the same old tried and failed....

Global Warming Meltdown

The Climate Research Unit [CRU], which has been very instrumental in climate melt down research, confirmed that the very embarrassing emails published on the World Wide Web were authentic.  These notes back and forth between academics at Colorado University Climate Institute and others around the world, reveal scientists discarding, deliberately misinterpreting, and then finally altering data from lab and instrument reports.  They did so because the data did not support their preconceived conclusions.  This is not the "Scientific Method".  It follows almost a year to the day the revelation that Dr. Hanson of NASA had been caught doing the exact same thing.

Hanson was caught publishing temp data for October, 2008 that was unartfully created or copied from the September data.  That is, Hanson published the warmer temps recorded in September as October data.  When the real October data was published it was discovered that October temps in North America were record lows.  Hanson who is a political scientist put in place by the NASA oversight committee of Congress was caught trying to make a case for global warming despite the data that showed cooling.

Rene Descartes is rolling in his grave.  Decartes was the scientific philosopher who admonished the world to question everything.  "Methodic Doubt" was the name he gave to his philosophy of doubt.  Poor Descartes was murdered by poison by his hosts in Stockholm because of his adamant belief in the method.

In a fit of irony some of those who are now accused of cooking the global warming data are from...Stockholm.  This news is getting little play in the US press.  It is believed that this is partly due to the fact that very few Americans really trust the "global warming" scientists anyway.  So, many journalists are not "wasting" space with a" ho hum" 'dog bites man' story.  The other reason is that most journalists do not understand math, statistics and how they are manipulated by scientists with a socio economic agenda.  So when raw data from scientists are posted they need to have other scientists explain what the big words mean to them.

What do you read Katy Couric?

The real question is not what do you read the question is do you understand it?

Here are some interesting links if you want more:
Herald Sun
Hot Air
Global Warming hoax
Climate Research Unit
Still Waiting for the Greenhouse to appear by John L. Daly

These disturbing data sources were published by Russian hackers who gained entry when an alleged insider gave them key codes for access.  However, given the recent hack into the FAA computers by assailants unknown to disrupt air traffic during President Obama's trip home from Asia and hacks into Pentagon computers by China that disabled parts of our defense system,  we may also have real problems with our security that are far more dangerous then the temperature on the White House veranda on a balmy August night.  Our security has never been more insecure and it is frightening.

How Much Does Medicare Cost?

     No one really knows how much the new health care measure will cost but one clue is to look at the past. 

Both political parties agree that Medicare is a model of success for millons of senior citizens, all of whom have no choice in health care.  Our Federal Government allows no private alternative to this socialized form of health care.  But how much does it actually cost each subscriber?  We went to the Kaiser Institute to extrapolate and compile the numbers from several statistical abstacts from the government itself.  The findings are stunning...

Obama wants Fair Elections

     President Barak Obama is delaying his decision on continuing support for the Afghanistan government.  His plan is to wait until after a legitimate election so they can demonstrate that the government has broad regional support from the population.  Obama wisely notes that the government needs to have popular support in order to implement change and craft new programs.

   Can we expect the same consideration here in the United States?

     In recent years we have had ACORN and affliated organizations charged with employees criminally violating election laws.  We have been entertained by reports of votes from Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Jack in the Box, and several ACORN workers who admitted to voting multiple times using real and fictional names via absentee ballots and bogus voter registrations.

     Once again, today, we have an election that should belong to the Democratic candidate based on past voting patterns, overwhelming numbers of registered party members, and campaign spending [50+ million by the incumbent to less than 12 million by the challenger].  But despite these advantages the candidate of the little people, Billionaire former Investment Banker, Jon Corzine, is in a statistical dead heat in the opinion polls.  Yet it may come down to the same tactics used in Afghanistan for Corzine to retain his office. That is illegal voting and fraudulent counting processes.  Given the proclivity of the use of voter intimidation [the new black panther party incidents in 2008 in Philadelphia] and other such tacics used in 3rd world elections, will President Obama think twice before he tries to implement his new programs here?

      Or has democracy been replaced by power politics?  Is this the beginning of the rule of the power of the Federal Government over the ordinary citizen? 

medical economics

How much do they make?

 Versus how much they owe in loans for education!

The typical physician can count on a bill of nearly 400,000 for post secondary High School education costs.  While some educators may feel that this figure is high, many Physicians might argue that this is low because it does not factor in the costs of living during Internship and Residency.  Whichever, the true costs this is a high no matter which esoteric manipulation lowers or raises this number.

So what can a physician expect to make in the marketplace after the education requirements have been met?

Acording to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services the typical Family Practicioner can expect to make $138,000.00 in 2003 dollars [there are several studies which suggest that while physician billings have grown since that time real income has either remained stagnant or decreased slightly since 2003].

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians study on practice management the typical practice bills for 5720 total unique visits per year.  These visits generate average total billings of $483,500.00 [This represents billing of about $85.00 per visit].

But  the Physician only makes about $25.00 per visit in take home pay. Staff costs about the same amount [typically about 4 full time employees costing the practice with benefits about $33,000.00].  This leaves the overhead costs at about $35.00 per visit.

CME and CMS surveys and reimbursements confirm these figures.  Overhead costs include insurance, billing, collections, bad debt, reimbursement write-downs, rent, office supplies and equipment. 

But the real question is this?  Does a $400,000.00 dollar education investment for a $138,000 dollar job make economic sense?  How many patients will Doctors see per day after health care reform? 

Bill Carroll

Organized Crime?

Tim Allen of the online slightly Liberal opinion provider politico.com has written an article When the Exception Swallows the Rule  about the failures of the Campaign Finance law to regulate the fund raising behavior of elected officials in Washington.  

Then the Washington Post admitted that it has been selling access to Washington Lobbyists and their Union, Non profit, Special Interest and Corporate clients.  Access cost $250,000.00 per attendee at special off the books and record Salons which were held at the publishers home.  The "fee" provided the lobbyists clients access to White House top staffers along with law makers and staff from the hill.

How the fees were then distributed and "shared" is unclear and still developing.  But it is increasingly clear that as our system is returning to the ancient system of centrally controlled economic and political domination of individual activity with government power, our politicians use the power they have for their own financial gain.

One only has to consider two such politicians [one from each party] who started their political careers poor and worked exclusively in public office but then retired as multi millionaires.  Where did they get the money?

Consider the two Presidential nominees of the 1996 presidential election.  Bill Clinton, taught in law school served as the Attorney General of Arkansas, then was the Governor of the State, and ran for Federal Office as a multi millionaire.  Robert Dole was so poor that his family lived in the basement of a rural home in Russell, Kansas  After his education was completed Dole served in state and county office until he was elected to Congress in 1960. 

How did these two become millionaires?

No one really knows.  The Clintons expalined it by referring to Hilary's investment activity but almost all of the Clinton investments were losers.  One possible explanation is the above referenced news about selling access and politicians accessing their excess campaign cash for personal use.

Political campaigns are big business and those who are involved in them make millions in conducting them and in raising the campaign funds.  We all know that both Pat Buchanon and Ralph Nader have been perennial independent candidates for President.  Casual observers ask why?  But the news media with the Washington post being one of the longest lasting leaders have never dealt with the reasons.  Why?

If the candidate gets access to his funds and if a Presidential candidate gets access to Federal Funds as some have in recent years.  That is one explanation that has never before been probed.  Maybe the Washington Post will tell us what the politicians did with the unreported cash they raised in their Salons.

Olympics economics

Going For Broke

Why Politicians go for Olympic “Gold”

In 1976 the city of Montreal went broke sponsoring the Olympic Games. The event was such a disaster that the city ran out of funds to build the Olympic Stadium and it was never completed. The final debts were settled after 30 years of payments in 2006.

Athens, 2004 was even more disastrous. According to Money Week the total debt from the Olympic expenses that year equaled 4% of the total Greek GDP but that the Olympic debt equals 100% of the countries total GDP. As a result Greece was placed on economic probation and all lending to the government was suspended by the European Union.

The next Olympiad is scheduled for London in 2012 and indications are that there is a disaster looming there as well.

While we all are sorry that Chicago failed in its bid and we want to congratulate the citizens of Brazil some of us are privately saying its better to visit Rio in 2016 than to see our children burdened with more of this type of debt.

Why do political leaders place so much hope in these events? Why do they fail so spectacularly? And what turns the perfect plans into debacle?

One simple answer is the nature of planned economies. As the USA turns to a centrally planned economy we can look to the Olympic failures as one more reason that there are skeptics about the future. All of the cities and countries viewed the Olympic experience as a way to infuse capital into their systems. Then when they attracted the capital they diverted it to social spending and lost sight of the fact that the capital had to be paid back from revenue.

In effect the government planners spend the revenues twice. First they spend it on social engineering projects then they need even more cash to pay back the banks and other governments that made the original capital loans available. Many times the projected costs of construction triple as local governments struggled to comply with their own regulation on construction and private developers.

Finally tourism dollars actually go down during the event as the athletes and the teams crowd out the normal tourists. Thus the businesses in the host city actually lose money during the event.

Looking at London you can see the train heading for the wreck as many projects are well behind schedule and the London Development Agency is spending its capital on the development of “Green Jobs”. Their goal is to use the site after the Olympics leave to help replace the estimated one million industrial jobs London has lost since 1973. So far, the committee has developed a tourism project which provides tours of the area to London area Elementary school children. They must be tired of the same old “Tower of London” and all of the other British Museums. Now they are going to have a tour of the old Industry “thing?

It begs the question ...why not invest capital into new industrial jobs? Is hard work for the semi-skilled a “thing” of the past for London?

The other reason governments want Olympics is quite frankly it is a rich source of political pay offs for cronies. Dr. Frank Zarnowski, political economist has noted that even the so called “best run” Olympics”, The 1984 LA Games, was riddled with 73% of the overall costs going to nebulous “administrative” costs.

The Olympics are fun to watch but no one wants to pay the ticket price for them. If you want to see them live have a good time in London or Rio.

Breaking All of the Rules

As a follow up to my blog about the development of sulfa drugs I offer the equally compelling story of the next wonder drug Penicillin.

While it is generally accepted that Alexander Fleming was the modern scientist who brought attention to the drug penicillin, it is noted in every history of the drug that it had been used since the beginning of time by ancient societies upwards of 3,000 years ago to treat wounds and other bacterial infections of the skin. Fleming described his accidental rediscovery of the drug in 1928 at St Mary's Hospital.

At that time nearly all workers in Great Britian were covered for medical care by the passage of the National Insurance Act of 1911. Whether this first socialized medicine scheme was the reason we will never know for sure but for one reason or another the discovery of penicillin was then shelved for nearly three decades.

Then it was taken off the shelf by the need to treat wounded soldiers in WWII whose bacterial wounds were not responding to the "Red" pill described in my last post. First, however, the private labs in the United States had to "break all the rules" to develop the wonder drug.

The USDA established a lab in Peoria, IL in 1941 for the speedy development of the newly rediscovered miracle drug but could not develop a method to produce enough of the highly unstable chemical to fill the estimated need for a million doses by D-Day in 1944.

The project was languishing in Peoria until the "Drug Cartel" got together and broke all of the rules. Merck and Company, Charles Pfizer and Company, E. R. Squibb and Sons, and Abbott Laboratories were the industry giants trying to help government scientists but they were prohibited from working independently or collaboratively outside of government supervision by the Sherman Anti-trust laws in effect at the time.

Then John Wyeth and Brother, labs of PA broke the rules and hired a tinkerer from the American Home Products Company in Chester, PA named Raymond Rettew. Using an abandoned gas station garage Rettew used mushroom technology to create enough penicillin to supply the lab in Peoria. Then E. B. Badger Company broke the rules and hired a woman chemical engineer [the very first one from MIT] named Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau.

Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau was awarded a degree from Rice University in 1932. She then earned an advanced degree in chemical engineering in 1937 from MIT in Cambridge, MA. Badger's gamble on an untried woman chemist and mother of one young son paid off. she had previously developed a method to make high octane jet fuel. Using the same technology she then developed a procedure of aerating the penicillin to stablize the mixture and seperate the drug from the mushroom base.

As a result the engineers at Wyeth were able to ship 1 billion doses of penicillin to the US Army by June of 1944 and thousands of lives were saved that month and millions more in the years that followed.

But penicillin, the drug that was put on the shelf in government run hospitals in the social medical environment of Great Britain from 1928 until 1944 became a reality when US Capitalists broke the rules to develop the second wonder drug in medical history.

What would have happened if there were no private developers of new drugs in the US 1941? We know what happened when there were none in Great Britain.

Obama's pills

PINK PILL vs BLUE PILL

It is interesting that President Obama implied in his national media address on health care that the only difference between a costlier pill and a less expensive one is color. Why take a blue pill when a pink might be less costly? The White House is now proposing that one factor in keeping drug costs too high is the patent laws.

In making these arguments it is shocking for me to see these politicians who have degrees in History ignoring the historic role that color and patent law had in saving the life of FDR,Jr in 1936 and then in turn creating the public clamor in favor of the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. In one of the most compelling cases in patent law history it turned out that it was the color red that saved the life of the son of the President and millions of other people world wide to this day.

In 1932 the German Pharma giant Bayer concluded a five year research project on a red colored pill they named, Prontosil. The researchers noted that lab mice had been cured of bacterial infections when treated by the new drug. Prontosil was the first antibiotic and by showing the scientific community that bacterial infections could be treated it helped save many millions of lives throughout the world. Its developers received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

But now the TWIST comes. It turns out that the color made all of difference in the effectiveness of the drug. And it was the patent for the medicines that helped scientists discover the true value of the color of the pill.

In 1936, the French Pharma group at the Louis Pasteur Institute realized that they could not compete with Bayer and other companies spending the equivalent of billions of dollars in today's economy on drug and patent development. So they took to researching how to create new drugs that were patent knock offs. That is, drugs that performed the same but were different enough to get around the patent laws.

The husband and wife research team, Jacques and Therese Trefouel, discovered that the red dye used by the Germans had a drying agent that made the color consistent. The drying agent's patent was old and in the public domain. But the real discovery was that the drying agent, SULFA, was the real antibacterial in the pill.

So color and patent law teamed up to create the world's first miracle drug. It is a twist that we should all be made aware of when looking to radically overhaul our pharmaceutical system.

The final twist in this story is the role SULFA then played in helping to form the FDA. Because the drug was off patent it was being manufactured by anyone who could mix the chemicals together to make the color red. There were no dosing regulations and no controls over the process. Eventually a small manufacturer unknowingly produced a sulfa drug with a mixture that was deadly for young children. The resulting outcry by the public helped in the creation of the FDA to regulate the manufacture and sale of medicines here in the USA.

It should be noted that the US is now the home to almost all of the top developers of new drugs and treatments. If we change our system how is it going to change the development of medicine? Or, is the White House simply saying that there is nothing new to be developed...especially if it costs too much.

Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite [November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009],

He was the first TV News Anchorman for CBS and led them to the #1 rating over NBC in the early 1960's. But the joke among some young people, by the 1970's, went like this:

Walter Cronkite told me that if I voted with the GOP my vote would destroy social security, result in race riots on the streets of America, and involve the USA in a massive war in Asia.

I should have listened to Uncle Walter...I voted GOP and sure enough Lyndon Johnson did all of those things.

Those who have taken the time to read Walter Cronkite's written words since he was replaced at CBS now realize that he was indeed just a talking head [empty?] reading lines written by anonymous others.

Cronkite began his career as a disc jockey on WKY radio after being forced to withdraw from The University of Texas after four semesters of study. He traveled to several other AM radio stations as a sports reporter. He finally became a TV reporter in Washington, DC with WTOP in 1950 and because of his booming, officious voice and College Professor like looks was able to work his way up the TV glamour ladder.

But in later years he revealed that he had little insight into the events which swirled around him. He obviously supported Lyndon Johnson for President in 1964 and had no problem with Johnson's lies about Vietnam or other subjects. But Johnson lost Cronkite's support when he announced in 1968 that, unlike Harry Truman in 1952, he would seek a second full term. Evidently Cronkite felt as though Johnson had broken a deal in which Johnson would be a caretaker President until Robert Kennedy was ready to run for the office.

Cronkite then staged a mock visit to Vietnam during which he expressed shock at the lies he had been reporting all the years he supported Johnson. Cronkite blamed Johnson. But because Cronkite was seen by millions every night he assumed that he understood the American people. He never guessed that by derailing Johnson he had set the stage for a man he truly hated, Richard Nixon.

In later years Cronkite noted that the smartest man he ever met was Jimmy Carter. He noted that communism was a good system and he upraided John Kerry for not being Liberal enough. The saddest thing is that because he performed in front of millions he thought he knew the heart and soul of the American people. In reality we knew him but he never knew us.

Bailout Boondoggle Part II

The Face of the 2008 economic bailout belongs to Henry Paulson. He singlehandedly informed the world that the mortgage crisis in US publicly created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Corporations threatened the entire worldwide banking system.

Last week in testimony before the House Government Oversight Committee [chaired by the prominent NY member of the Black Caucus, Edolphus Towns], Paulson revealed that he had pressured Bank of America into its merger with Merrill Lynch. Mr. Paulson went on to defend the fact that he had secretly broken the intent of the TARP emergency legislation ten days after it was signed into law by George Bush... because he had to.

So it may be timely to look at the bio of Henry Paulson. A former Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Paulson joined a trio of former Sachs CEOs who became prominent politicians [Stephen Friedman was Chief Economic advisor to George Bush, Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton, Jon Corzine used his millions to become US Senator and then Governor of New Jersey].

Paulson was reportedly an English Literature major at Dartmouth College. After College he joined the Nixon Administration and served as asisstant to John Ehrlichman during the Watergate investigation. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974 shortly before his mentor was convicted and imprisoned for perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Ehrlichman and Paulson were both Eagle Scouts and members of the Christian Scientist Church.

After joining Goldman Sachs, Paulson worked his way through several administrative posts until he finally rose to the position of CEO. It is noteworthy that the two previous CEOs at Sachs were Democrats during Democratic Party control of the Senate, House, and White House. Then when the GOP controlled the legislative and executive banches, Sachs elevated their Republican staffers to the CEO position.

Cynics who have watched several of Paulson's public appearances note that he is not a dynamic speaker and that he punctuates his congressional testimony with blustery self aggrandizement. He rationalizes his seemingly illegal actions as necessary to save the monetary system. But others wonder if he was saving the investments of friends...especially those in the foreign community.

By forcing AIG to honor the fraudulent insurance claims of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and doing the same with Bank of America and Merril Lynch some observers believe that Paulson was saving the investments of Chinese banking interests. It is suspected that Paulson has undisclosed investments in China as observers note that it has been reported that Paulson has visited China over seventy times in recent years.

If Paulson is guilty of what Conservative Congressman are suggesting he may well follow in the foot steps of his first political mentor, John Ehrlichman. It might be unlikely, though, since chairman Towns seems more interested in getting to the truth than in prosecution of members of the other party. But if the truth leads to criminality by Paulson, then he may yet be prosecuted.

Conservative Radio host and Fox News analyst Glen Beck has described Paulson's actions as similar to a liquor store heist of the US Treasury.

AIG Bailout Boondoggle

The term "Bondoggle" was first coined in the 1930's to describe government projects that had no real purpose other than spending money.


Today's definition is as follows:

a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation.
–verb (used with object)
4. to deceive or attempt to deceive: to boondoggle investors....



The term"Bailout" was originally coined to describe the proces of escaping a plane crash in the 1950's.



Today's definition has evolved to the following:



an instance of coming to the rescue, esp. financially: a government bailout of a large company. [Dictionary.com]



But the AIG "Bailout Boondoggle" is developing into something of a novelists dream. As of today both the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department along with the Federally appointed oversight Board of Directors of AIG, collectively refuse to give precise details regarding the bailout.



Then AIG in congressional testimony revealed that they were not insolvent at the time of the bailout and did not need a bailout. AIG revealed that they took the position that traditional insurance policy clauses in their policies buffered them from fraudulent acts by the lenders and borrowers of the failed mortgages.



That is, the loans that went bad from FREDDIE MAC, FANNIE MAE, Citigroup, Merril Lynch among dozens of others were given insurance by the giant insurer as a result of fraudulent misrepresentations made by the lenders and/or were given as a result of statements by the borrowers that the lenders knew or should have known were fraudulent.



However, Federal Treasury authorities along with members of the New York Federal Reserve Bank alledgedly told AIG that if the giant insurer did not assert its rights to relief due to fraud the FEDS would bail them out financially.



Now an unusual coalition of Congressional Conservative Republicans and prominent members of the Black Congressional Caucus are committed to forcing the bipartisan group of financial managers to reveal all of the AIG financial figures.



Recently the Wall Street Journal reported that from a leaked document they learned that US Funds funneled through AIG went to a list of prominent US and International Financial Institutions including the following:



Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group. [Reuters]



Senator Christopher Dodd, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee said, "The lack of transparency and accountability in this process has been rather stunning." [Reuters]



In my opinion it appears as though a cabal of financial players have grabbed control of large portions of the countries money and banking system. It appears as though they are both Republican and Democrat in political orientation. They are cloaking their actions as necessary to "save the system". But so far they are refusing to name which of their friends benefited from the "bailout" funds given to AIG and it looks very fishy.



It certainly would have been more transparent if the Fed had simply allowed AIG to assert its right to refuse to honor fraudulent insurance claims and save the individual banks from the fraudulent claims made by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.



But that may be the exact reason they did it this way...as a means of hiding what really happened and who is actually being saved.