Tag: Money Management Mishaps

The Only Pain Incurred by the Shutdown is Intentional

As this “shutdown” continues we see more demonstrations of its arbitrary nature. First of all, this isn’t a shutdown. A shutdown would imply a complete end to all government provided services. Instead, what we have, is an inconvenience. The only things being shutdown are ones that cause direct harm or inconvenience to the general public. In fact, as demonstrated by the blockage of a World War II memorial, the government has actually invest time and resources into this inconvenience. Many parks and memorials that are unmanned or maintain a minimal staff are now surrounded by police officers who are tasked with keeping everybody out.

If that didn’t make it apparent that this shutdown is a direct swipe at the general population this should:

The IRS is still collecting taxes during the government shutdown, but it isn’t sending refunds — and it also has stopped complying with a subpoena to turn over documents to members of Congress who are investigating the agency’s targeting of tea party groups.

The government will still pay people to rob you at gunpoint but it won’t pay people to send you refunds or documents that have been subpoenaed, which should slap the bigwigs in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with contempt of Congress.

Instead of referring to this “shutdown” as a shutdown we should call it what it really is: a giant dick waving competition. Right now the Republicans and Democrats are pulling out tape measures and seeing who has the longer dick. Because both sides are coming up short they’ve decided to take their anger out on all of us. The only question we should be asking is, why the fuck do we take these children seriously and allow them to run our lives?

Empty Promises

One of the things that annoys me most about the state is its constant empty promises. It’s always promising us great things include free healthcare, protection from predatory businesses, and roads but never actually delivers. In keeping with this tradition the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has begun hinting at a possible 10 day shutdown due to sequestration:

FBI officials are hinting that the agency might furlough employees for more than 10 weekdays and shut down its offices on those dates if the government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester continue through the next fiscal year.

Such a plan would affect FBI personnel more than the agency’s current sequester measures, which do not involve unpaid leave. It would also impact investigations and intelligence gathering, as only essential employees would remain on the job during furlough days.

It sounds too good to be true. 10 days without the FBI manufacturing terrorists to stop? I’m disappointed that the FBI would offer us such hope only to dash it by not shutting down.

Another Reason Why the GOP is a Joke

There’s no two ways to put this, the Republican Party (GOP) is dying. Actually, the GOP is already dead, it’s advocates simply don’t know it yet. I think the major turning point for the GOP was when it began to embrace religious fanaticism. We live in a post-Enlightenment world, religion doesn’t count for what it once did, and anybody trying to implement religious laws in the Western world is in for a bad time. Not satisfied with merely adopting religious zealotry, the GOP has also gone out of its way to adopt some of the most ironic politicians. Take Tony Sutton, the former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. The GOP constantly advertises itself as the party of fiscal responsibility so one can only laugh when the chair of the Minnesota Party files for bankruptcy:

A hard-charging former state Republican Party chairman whose constant refrain to DFLers and even GOP lawmakers was “live within your means” has declared personal bankruptcy, the latest twist in one of the most dramatic political downfalls in recent state history.

At the height of his power, Tony Sutton demanded that Republican legislators oppose all tax increases and keep state spending strictly in line with revenue. Few realized it at the time, but the GOP’s finances under Sutton’s management were a shambles, and the same scenario was playing out in his personal life.

Sutton and his wife, Bridget Sutton, an Inver Grove Heights school board member and former Republican operative, say they owe $2.1 million, including $70,000 of credit card debt, $20,000 in federal student loans, unpaid state and federal taxes, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsecured personal loans to cover business expenses. At the time they filed, the Suttons had no life or health insurance.

If this was an isolated incident it wouldn’t be a big deal but it seems GOP politicians are constantly getting caught in situations where they practice what they preach against. There’s no hope for a party when it’s higher ups aren’t ideologically consistent. Any plan that involves the Republican Party should be abandoned and a plan B put into action.

The State’s “Black Budget”

When looking at the federal budget most self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives focus on money spent on the military, Medicare and Medicare, and Social Security. Those three items can give you an idea about the scale of government spending but it’s the specific items that can give you the juicy details. For example, thanks for Edward Snowden we know what the federal government’s “black budget” of $52.6 billion is being spent on:

The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.

The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees.

The Washington Post has censored the information they made available after consulting the government. That, in of itself, tells you a lot about the relationship media outlets have with the state. But the items made available are interesting. For example, a notable amount of money is being spent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) to break into the computer systems of foreign nations. I’m sure those dollars are generating all kinds of hatred towards this country.

I would advise reading the entire article if you’re interested in either government spending or government spying. Detailed budget items tell a far better story if you’re interested in fiscal matters and knowing how much the government spends on various spying operations gives you some kind of idea of how pervasive the overall operation is.

Markets, Chaos, and Jobs

You may want to drink a beer, take a puff from a joint, or consume a magic mushroom before reading this post. I say this because I am going to delve into the world of Disordianism, which is best traveled under the influence of mind altering substance.

Before we delve too deeply let me explain my interpretation of Discordianism so we’re all playing on the same field. Discordianism, as I interpret it, is the philosophical understanding that the natural state of the universe is pure chaos. The universe doesn’t like order and, as the Law of Eristic Escalation states, the imposition of order equates to the escalation of chaos. The more you try to impost order on the universe the more chaotic of a result will be.

Nowhere are Discordian principles more apparent than in markets. Markets, the ever changing result of constant human interaction, never remain constant. Peoples’ desires are in a constant state of flux. In fact each individual’s desires at one point in time were affected by their previous actions. My experience with one fulfilled desire can determine my future desires. For example, if I purchased the latest iPhone and had a negative experience I may swear off future Apple products or, potentially, mobile phones entirely. From there I my desires may swing towards a better vehicle so I can make more face-to-face interactions with my friends or something else entirely.

The state, being an agent of order, has a desire to curtail change. If statists had their way the human race will forever exist in a purgatory of sameness. No technological advances, fashion changes, or musical trends would occur. Why do you think states always move to regulate markets? Because markets are the most apparent source of change in our society. Markets bring chaos to order by allowing individuals to have their dreams fulfilled. The grand plans of statists cannot be realized when there is no stability. How can a statist’s plan for universal healthcare be successfully put into action if the grand central planner is unable to predict the healthcare needs of an entire society? A simple story about the undesirable side effects of a pill can lead to a great shift in a society away from pharmaceuticals and towards natural remedies. After such a shift an entire supply of medicines will suddenly be worthless, the resources invested in stockpiling them will have been wasted.

We’re told that the current crisis in our society revolves around the lack of jobs. Political candidates are being elected on their promises to deliver jobs. Everybody is screaming at the top of their lungs, “Who will build the jobs?!” The failure of the job market lies in the statist tendency towards imposed order. When we were attending the state’s indoctrination centers were we told that a college degree is critical to future success. It didn’t matter what degree we obtained, said our indoctrinators, it only mattered that we received a degree (fortunately my father didn’t tell me such lies and made sure I understood that some education pays money while other education costs money). College degrees may have been money makers at one point in time but that was back in the day when college degrees chiefly existed for marketable skills. Now that one can get a degree in everything from English to Women’s Studies the value of getting a degree has diminished. The market has spoken and it has said that it needs no more degree holding Starbucks baristas, fast food workers, or art critics. English, Art, and Contemporary Dance degree holders are unemployed because the statists attempted to impose order by forcing everybody to get a degree, telling them that all degrees were of equal value, and convincing students that they should peruse whatever they loved. As it turns out many students love things that nobody wants. I do believe Mike Rowe said it best:

Rowe added, “It’s not about this is bad or this is good. This is a skills gap. […] It’s another inconvenient piece of the narrative that nobody ever talks about. There are three million jobs available right now. Companies like Caterpillar are struggling to find, for instance, heavy equipment mechanics.”

The bottom line, Rowe said is that, “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.”

In other words our society is living in the past. The demands of yesterday aren’t the demands of today. Despite the best efforts of order worshipers the markets broke free from the plans that were being imposed on them. It’s not degrees in educational pursuits that are wanted, it’s training in skilled manual labor.

When you understand that markets, as part of the universe, are chaotic you will learn that the most marketable skill is adaptability. Your training at any single point in time may be worthless at a future point in time. If you can adapt to the new conditions you will be fine. Anybody who can go from research and development to heavy equipment mechanics will have little trouble finding work. A person who is unable to make such a transition will find themselves in a bad state unless the market returns to a state where their training is again in demand.

Markets are chaos and jobs exist in markets. Being adaptable, being able to channel the chaos to your advantage, will make you a happier person. Don’t fall for the statists’s lies. Instead, listen to the Discordians. Discordians will tell you the truth: chaos results form imposed order. If you try to follow the plans of those who attempt to impose order you will find yourself lost when the imminent chaos arises. On the other hand, if you adapt to the chaos, you will never be truly.

The Price of a Pervasive Surveillance State

In an unsurprising turn of events it appears as though the National Security Agency’s (NSA) pervasive surveillance operation is having some negative consequences (besides making the serfs all uppidy):

Two years ago, I was interviewing the CIO of a major Canadian healthcare organization for a story on cloud computing, and asked if he had considered using US cloud providers or software-as-a-service. He said that he couldn’t even begin to consider those because of concerns because of Canadian patient privacy laws—not just because of differences between US and Canadian laws, but because of the assumption that NSA would gain access to patient records as they crossed the border.

At the time, the concern might have sounded a bit paranoid. But now that those concerns have been validated by the details revealed by Snowden, US cloud providers are losing existing customers from outside the US, according to the CSA study. The survey of members of the organization found that 10 percent of non-US member companies had cancelled contracts with US providers as a result of revelations about PRISM.

The PRISM revelations are also making it harder for US companies to get new business abroad. Of the non-US respondents to the survey, 56 percent are now less likely to consider doing business with a US service provider. And 36 percent of respondents from US companies said that the Snowden “incident” was making it harder for them to do business overseas.

The serfs aren’t the only people upset by the NSA’s antics. Online service providers, who need to please the serfs enough to convince them to sign up for online services, aren’t very happy either. I’m sure the potential economic impact was one of the key reasons that the NSA kept its program so quiet (if people start making a mass exodus away from the services the NSA is using to spy on people then they won’t be able to spy on those people as effectively).

Bow Before the King

Last week the inevitable finally happened, Detroit finally filed for bankruptcy. Because reality is difficult to deal with a judge decided to block Detroit’s filing. That in of itself isn’t much of a news story but the judges justification for opposing the filing is:

Prior to her ruling on Friday, the judge criticized the Snyder administration and Schuette’s office over their hasty move.

“It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,” the judge told assistant state Attorney General Brian Devlin. “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”

I think somebody is jockeying for a Supreme Court nomination because that’s the only reason I can understand why a judge would bow down before a president and perform such thorough public fellatio.

Life is difficult for worshipers of the state. At some point economic realities always cause a state to crumble. When that happens the worshipers of the state resort to the only argumentative method they know, argumentum ad auctoritatem. As devout worshipers, these arguments begin to take on a religious quality. They say that the state can’t crumble because, their god or gods, who take form as the state’s rulers, said such a destiny was impossible.

Detroit is insolvent, there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. The judge, unable to come to terms with reality, has resorted to saying that Detroit can’t fall because her god, the president, wouldn’t be honored by such a fact. It’s no different than if she stuck her fingers in her ears and began to yell “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

Eventually bad economic decisions catch up with everybody. Detroit, after suffering decades of bad economic decisions, has taken its place as the largest city in the United States to file for bankruptcy:

Detroit has become the largest US city ever to file for bankruptcy, with debts of at least $18bn (£12bn).

The city, once a symbol of US industrial power, is seeking protection from creditors who include public-sector workers and their pension funds.

Unions described the bankruptcy filing as a power grab.

Detroit has faced decades of problems linked to declining industry. Public services are nearing collapse and about 70,000 properties lie abandoned.

Governments can only survive off of stolen money and Detroit has had less and less of a base of tax victims since the collapse of its automotive industry. As people fled the city or fell so far into poverty that they no longer had anything to take the state found itself with less and less plunder.

Now we just have to wait for Omni Consumer Products to buy the city up.

I Guess We’ll Need a New Tax in Minnesota

At the beginning of this month a new tax on cigarettes took effect here in Minnesota. While proponents of the new tax claim it will help fund education the tax is actually being used to bailout billionaire Zygi Wilf since the proceeds from gambling having met the levels projected by the politicians who decided to provide public funding for the new Vikings stadium. Unfortunately, the politicians may have to find something else to tax now that cigarette sales have dropped:

DULUTH – After the Minn. state tax increase on cigerettes on July 1., Duluth tobacco shops and gas stations said their sales have decreased.

Some gas stations said cigarette sales are down by thousands of dollars a week.

Meklye Wahedi, a cashier at “Cigs for Less” said carton sales are especially down.

“People were buying 3 or 4 at a time, they would come in the next week and but 3 or 4 again, and yeah, it increased a lot,” Wahedi said. “When July 1 first hit, that’s when it was really slow.”

We will have to wait and see if sales increase but if they don’t the Minnesota legislation will likely have to create a new tax on something else. This demonstrates the issue with taxes, as taxes are increased individuals begin to avoid those taxes. If a new tax on cigarettes raises the overall price of cigarettes sufficiently less people will buy them and the state will take in less tax money, leading to more taxes. It’s a never ending cycle.