A great article by John Stossel:

When so many politicians speak with one voice in support of the biggest act of government intervention in the economy in generations, I cringe.

Everybody talked about the “freeze” in the credit markets, but why, I wonder, were the cable news programs that repeated the credit-freeze mantra, pausing for commercials from companies trying to lend me money? Ditech and LendingTree still hawk mortgages at under 6 percent. Some credit freeze.

Economist Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute looked at the credit numbers kept by the Federal Reserve. He writes: “Although certain financial institutions are undeniably in deep trouble — difficulties of their own making … — credit markets in general have not ceased to operate. Moreover, lenders are extending credit in historically great amounts.”

Maybe this is why CNN business reporter Ali Velshi broke ranks when reporting on “dried up” credit and said, “When I say ‘dried up,’ I don’t mean there’s no money. But you’d better have good collateral and good credit.”

What’s wrong with that?

To those who say that, without banks, nobody can borrow, economist Steven Landsburg offers this response: “Banks don’t lend their own money; they lend other people’s (their depositors’ and their stockholders’). Just because the banks disappear doesn’t mean the lenders will. Borrowers will still want to borrow, and lenders will still want to lend.

Read the full story.

WHAT’S THE ISSUE?

The U.S. electric industry is undergoing a sea change in the way it delivers electricity to millions of households and businesses nationwide. The $220 billion industry, which has been called the last great government-sanctioned monopoly, is slowly but surely being deregulated and opened to competition, giving consumers the power to choose their electricity provider in much the same way they choose telephone carriers.

Advocates of deregulation say reducing government control of the industry will benefit consumers – lowering prices while expanding services and giving the public a say in who supplies the power that runs their computers, toasters, lamps, and more. But among the 24 states that have enacted electricity deregulation plans, results are mixed. Rising prices, skyrocketing demand, and limited supply in some areas have raised questions about the viability of deregulation. At the same time, Congress has been unable to agree on a measure to introduce competition to the electricity market nationwide.

HOW IT MAY AFFECT YOU

Whether or not electricity deregulation delivers the benefits touted by its supporters – including lower prices and more services – is an open question. Pennsylvania’s deregulation experiment, enacted in 1998, has been a rousing success by most accounts. Nearly 500,000 consumers – more than 11 percent of ratepayers – had chosen to leave their utility company as of Oct. 1999, reports The Washington Post. In the Philadelphia area, residential customers who chose the least-expensive electricity supplier were saving about $10 per month.The story is much different in California, which in 1996 became one of the first states to enact an electricity restructuring plan. Not long after the plan went into effect, price increases began to whittle away public support for deregulation in the Golden State. Just two years after deregulation was enacted, California consumer groups succeeded in putting on the ballot an initiative that would have thrown out the state’s deregulation plan. The measure failed. Criticism of deregulation intensified in the summer of 2000, when limited power supplies and increasing demand caused the wholesale price of power to soar throughout the state. In San Diego, where the retail price of power fluctuates directly with the wholesale market, electric bills doubled. The problem grew markedly worse in the winter of 2000/01, as the state’s electric utilities faced a financial crisis and consumers were met with electricity shortages and skyrocketing prices.

HOW THE INTEREST GROUPS SEE IT

Virtually everyone involved with the issue seems to agree that electricity deregulation can work. The major question is how. The drive for electricity deregulation is being led by seven groups, each of which advocates changes to the current system that provide the greatest benefit to their members, reports Congressional Quarterly. The groups have spent a combined $50 million lobbying lawmakers, according to their own reports to Congress, which are believed to contain extremely conservative figures.

The groups vary in their approach to deregulation. The first point of contention is whether Congress should repeal the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), which gave big utilities a monopoly in their geographic area but prevented them from expanding their reach. The law was enacted to prevent national conglomerates from dominating the electricity industry, and some groups — namely large investor-owned power companies — contend that the law now stands in the way of increased competition that could lower prices and improve services. Other groups, including utilities owned by government agencies and municipalities, are concerned that repealing PUHCA would do away with important consumer protections.There are other ways the groups vary in their approach to deregulation. Some groups want to make sure they aren’t squashed by the large investor-owned electric companies in a deregulated system. The American Public Power Association, which represents utilities owned by municipalities or other government agencies, wants the ability to compete fairly with the large investor-owned electric companies. It also favors government monitoring of the electric market to ensure fair pricing and access.

Other groups want deregulation to come free of additional government oversight that would favor rural, independent, and government-owned utilities. Edison Electric Institute, the giant trade association of investor-owned electric companies and utility holding companies, opposes additional federal regulations on investor-owned electric companies that would curb the market power of those companies. It supports giving consumers a choice of electricity providers – including their present providers.

A third category of groups is concerned about deregulation’s overall effects on small electricity providers and consumers. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, a national service organization that represents consumer-owned cooperative electric utilities, is worried that electricity deregulation could have a negative impact on residential customers, small businesses, farmers and ranchers. It wants Congress to give regulatory authority to states, and to allow electricity cooperatives to regulate themselves.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The origins of the current system of energy production and delivery date back to the New Deal era, when Congress brought an end to the tight reign of large interstate holding companies that controlled more than 75 percent of the country’s electric generating capacity. The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA) forced the holding companies to break up, and gave utilities a government-sanctioned monopoly over a limited territory. In exchange, utilities agreed to provide reliable electric service to all customers at a regulated rate. The law resulted in the formation of nearly 300 power systems and 800 rural cooperatives, reports Congressional Quarterly.OPEC’s worldwide oil embargo in 1973 had a dramatic impact on the electric industry. Although the embargo was most famous for creating interminable lines at the gas pump, it also produced sharp increases in electric utilities’ costs. The result was a surge of interest in alternative forms of energy. In 1978, Congress passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) requiring utilities to use “renewable” energy, which is produced from wind, solar, and other sources. Both PUHCA and PURPA would later be viewed as impediments to workable national electricity deregulation.

By the 1990s, a growing chorus of voices within the electricity industry, Congress, and the federal government was pushing to bring competition to the industry. Congress opened the system to competition in 1992 with the National Energy Policy Act, which allowed power producers to compete for the sale of electricity to utilities. In 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued what would become one of its most famous orders. Order 888 required utilities to open their transmission lines to competitors. Soon thereafter, New Hampshire launched a pilot program allowing competition, as did Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. These actions at the state level fueled the fire for a national deregulation plan.

THE MONEY

As talk of national electricity deregulation intensified in the 1990s, electric utilities — not surprisingly — increased their political contributions to candidates and parties. In 1992, utilities contributed a total of $5.4 million in individual, PAC, and soft money contributions. That figure nearly doubled to $9.5 million in 1996. That figure could double again when the final statistics for the 2000 election cycle are known.The strongest area of growth in political giving from electric utilities has been in the form of soft money. In 1992, utilities contributed just $556,000 in unlimited, unregulated soft money to the Democratic and Republican parties. By 1996, soft money contributions increased by more than six times to $3.6 million. The industry’s soft money contributions more than doubled in the 2000 election cycle to approximately $8 million.

It seems that every major group within the electric industry is pouring money into political activities. In fact, there’s so much money being thrown around that some observers say Congress has little incentive to resolve the matter quickly. Lobbyists, too, are reaping the benefits of the issue. One lobbyist even called it the “two-Lexus bill,” reports CQ Weekly.

The undisputed lobbying leader in this issue is the Edison Electric Institute, which has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress on behalf of large investor-owned electric companies. Other types of electric companies are also in the game. Rural electric cooperatives are led by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which is consistently among the industry’s top 10 contributors to candidates and parties. Municipal and government utilities, represented by the American Public Power Association, are also active in lobbying elected officials, albeit to a much lesser degree than the wealthy investor-owned utilities.

And then there are the advertisers. As any Congressional staffer or lobbyist knows, publications aimed at Congress have been filled with ads from companies and groups staking out positions on the debate over electricity deregulation. These groups include Americans for Affordable Electricity, a coalition of large-scale business consumers of electricity; Citizens for State Power, a conservative coalition backed by investor-owned electric utilities; and the Electric Utility Shareholders’ Alliance, a coalition of cooperatives, investor-owned utilities and labor interests.

THE PARTY LINE

As late as 1994, electric utilities slightly favored Democrats over Republicans with their campaign contributions. But like many industries, electric utilities dramatically increased their preference for Republican candidates and committees following the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994. Between the 1994 and 1996 election cycles, the proportion of contributions from electric utilities going to Democrats dropped by nearly half, from 53 percent to 32 percent. During the same period, the proportion of contributions to Republicans leapt from 47 percent to 68 percent. Electric utilities continue to favor Republicans with their campaign contributions by more than 2 to 1.

THE ISSUE IN CONGRESS

Electricity deregulation has been the focus of pointed debate in Congress as far back as 1996, but the absence of consensus – among members of Congress and the various groups lobbying them – has resulted in little progress.The debate during 1999 and 2000 focused on whether the federal government (in other words, the FERC) or the states should be responsible for overseeing a deregulated system. Those who supported giving the FERC authority included Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.), the retiring chairman of the House Commerce Committee, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M), ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Favoring state control were Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Energy and Power Subcommittee, and Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Bliley and Murkowski each put forth deregulation proposals in the 106th Congress, but neither man got very far. In the House, Barton’s subcommittee approved a bill in Oct. 1999 that would grant states most of the power to oversee a deregulated system. The vote was 17-11. Bliley, wary of giving the states that much power, called the full committee together in the summer of 2000 to consider his bill, but adjourned the session without so much as a vote.

Murkowski tried unsuccessfully to move his deregulation proposal through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Instead, the panel approved a more limited measure that seeks to guarantee reliability of the nation’s power grid. The Senate passed the bill June 30, but the House did not act on it before the 106th Congress adjourned.

The prospects for passage of national electricity deregulation in the 107th Congress are unclear. The fallout from California’s failed deregulation experiment could dim the level of enthusiasm among deregulation proponents in Congress. Another question mark is how the issue will fare in the retooled House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.), the committee’s new chairman, has not taken a leading role in the deregulation issue thus far. But the electricity industry is very familiar with him — Tauzin is one of the top 10 House recipients of money from electric utilities.

Information was obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Great article from Neal Boortz this morning:

Well the “I want my mommy” election is finally over. The phrase really says it all. This is not an election where the American voters were looking for someone to protect their freedoms. Instead, it was an election where people were looking for someone to take care of them. Self-sufficiency seems a bit old-fashioned right now. Why work so hard to be self-sufficient when candidates are falling all over themselves to provide the American people with womb-to-tomb or, if you will, cradle-to-grave paternalism. The voters who put Barack Obama into office bear little resemblance to the people who fought for independence 224 years ago. Colonists fighting for our independence actually left their bloody footprints along the icy roads of New York and Pennsylvania while marching to engage the British troops. Today we can’t even drum of a decent plurality of voters who will vote for liberty, let alone fight for it

This has been a “what’s in it for me” vote. Are you going to give me health care? Are you going to make sure my job is guaranteed? Are you going to cover my child care costs? You aren’t going to make me pay taxes, are you? How about all those evil rich people? Aren’t you going to take some of their money away from them and give it to me? After all … I work for my money, they cheated and stole for theirs. Make them pay their fair share of taxes. Me? I’m tired of paying any share.

The big question for me today is whether or not freedom, economic liberty and self-sufficiency can make a comeback in America. Right now it seems that a dismaying number of Americans think that they are owed a living; that it is the government’s job to guarantee their economic security. Can we ever turn that around and return to a time when people accept the responsibility for their own lives and eschew the idea of using government as a tool of legalized plunder?

Here are some links I found to give you some more information about what is going on with the financial crisis.

An institution that got us in this mess:ACORN

More bailouts coming

Article on mortgage crisis

Environmentalists try to use 700B Bailout to their advantage

Taxpayers for Common Sense

How in the hell can you lose $1 billion? Oh yeah, I forgot this is the government we are dealing with.

The Postal Service had a net loss of more than a billion dollars in the third quarter of the fiscal year, the agency said Wednesday.

For the quarter ended June 30, the loss was $1.1 billion, which officials blamed on reduced mail volume in the slowed economy, coupled with rapidly rising transport costs because of high fuel prices.

There are two things that could easily fix those problems. Lower corporate tax rates to pick up the economy and how about drilling for our own oil and developing other alternative sources of energy to ease the cost of transportation! It’s not rocket science fools.

The post office is working to deal with its losses by cutting costs. The agency has reduced its staff by about 100,000 since 2000 and is offering early retirement to some clerks, mail handlers and supervisors.

Read the full story.

Did you know that every day, for the next 20 years 10,000 Americans will become eligible for Social Security benefits? And the question is: How will WE pay for this? I will try to refrain from the usage of “government pay” because it is the taxpayers that pay.

Recently Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, asked the Congressional Budget Office to determine by how much marginal tax rates would have to increase to pay for entitlement spending over the coming decades.

The CBO says marginal tax rates for every bracket, along with corporate tax rates, would have to more than double. In doing this, the CBO determined it “would significantly reduce economic activity and create serious problems with tax avoidance and tax evasion.” The CBO warned, such rates “would probably not be economically feasible.”

If our government tries to borrow money to pay for entitlements, the CBO says, we’ll run up unsustainable debt by 2050. In short, we would destroy our nation’s economy. Income would stop growing and, by the late 2040s, actually start to contract. Hell, I think we are already in the middle of destroying our economy right now. What I can’t believe is how ignorant Americans are. They are willing to destroy the economy of this country to support their own ass and to destroy the future of this country for their children and grand children. How pathetic. We have absolutely no common sense in this country.

Anyways, here are a couple of ideas on to fix this problem:

* It’s time to start raising the retirement age. Social Security started in 1935 and people that started receiving it were lucky enough to live to 65. But now, we are a lot healthier and living longer. We’ve made major medical advances to prolong life. And our population continues to grow. I on the other hand am actually “pro-death”. We need disease, the right to abortion and the right to euthanasia. Sounds a little rough, but I’m “dead” serious, no pun intended.

* We need to have personal retirement accounts. America, it’s time to start saving and stop spending. We need to become savers. The way that private Social Security would work is that the Government would force employers to offer basically almost a 401k type plan where you are forced to put a certain percentage of income into this retirement account, you pick what you want to invest in and that’s it, the money is YOURS! It doesn’t go into a big pot, where everyone is putting their grubby hands into. I have plenty of links for you to check out and they all have great information.

* The last thing that will help with our Social Security issue is passing the FairTax Act. Do you know what the FairTax Act is?

* Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
* Enables workers to keep their entire paychecks
* Enables retirees to keep their entire pensions
* Refunds in advance the tax on purchases of basic necessities
* Allows American products to compete fairly
* Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
* Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
* Abolishes the IRS

Visit www.fairtax.org to find out more.

Read the full Washington Times article on Social Security.

The history of Social Security. Link.

Get the facts on Social Security reform. Link.

In the 1980’s, Galveston County, Texas created a privatized Social Security through a loop hole before Congress blocked that hole. This is a must read! Link.

It’s an election year and our government is wasting no time pissing away taxpayer money:

This year’s defense authorization bills in the House contained earmarks worth $9.9 billion, an increase of 29 percent from last year. In the Senate version of the bills, the number of earmarks increased 40 percent from last year but the dollar amount fell slightly.

Earmarks in the House version of the labor, health and human services appropriations bills for the 2009 fiscal year soared to $618.8 million from $277.9 million in the 2008 bill.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, supported a $4 million appropriation for defense contractor Digital Fusion, the employees of which have donated $24,000 to the Congressman.

$400,000 for horseshoe crab research in Virginia- HUH!? Are they researching a new form of “THE CRABS”, because this could be helpful.

$870,000 to protect a red wolf breeding facility- And this helps us how?

$500,000 for methamphetamine prevention in the Mark Twain National Forest- Do you know what real methamphetamine prevention is? You let the stupid asses blow themselves up. The National Forest may get burnt down, but what the hell it will teach them a lesson.

$700,000 for beluga whale research at Alaska’s Cook Inlet- I’m guessing they think the beluga whale will prevent the polar ice caps from melting.

$115,000 to train “the next generation of weather forecasters” at San Jose State University- Well, we could always use better weather forecasters. Maybe these guys will predict a hurricane a month in advance.

$700,000 for atmospheric detection equipment for the sheriff in Jacksonville, Florida. What? The sheriff needs atmospheric detection equipment? Atmospheric detection is the study of the causes of lightning as well as analyzing a wide variety of atmospheric measurements related to thunderstorms. Okay then.

Well, you should be getting the picture, just read the full story.

Our presidential candidates are proposing different solutions to our health care problem in this country.

Obama is going with a plan similar to that of Massachusetts which I once supported but now see is having problems. That plan would make insurance move towards becoming public insurance.

McCain is a bit more radical by wanting to make a more drastic change to health care and have it become paid for more by individuals.

Under Mr Obama’s plan, Joseph Antos of the American Enterprise Institute says, “the health sector would gradually shift from private to public insurance”. Under Mr McCain’s, while it is expected that employers would still contribute, “the shift would be toward individually purchased coverage, more competition and a wider array of choice in the employer market”. What is missing from Mr McCain’s plan, he says, is detail about how people would gain access to insurance pools that do not penalise them for their state of health.

Read the full story

I was listening to Clark Howard yesterday and there is a big time scam that the Feds and the banks have put together to make you believe that they are really helping homeowners who are in trouble. This is a must read.

Read the full story.

“Nearly one third of Iowa is already under water and water levels continue to rise,” said U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

The National Weather Service called flooding in Cedar Rapids a “historic hydrologic event” as the river over-topped its banks at 500-year flood levels, forcing the evacuation of nearly 4,000 homes.

Somehow the people of Iowa have managed to get through this without all the bitching that came from and is still coming from the citizens of New Orleans after Katrina. I wonder why? Is it because most of the people in Iowa know how to take care of themselves unlike the government parasites of New Orleans? Story.