Nuclear Energy : Why Not?

It sure makes sense that to diversify our resources for electrical energy is a good idea. It is also a good idea to make coal part of the mix as more then 40% of all of our energy is from coal generation.

Then to approving the XL Pipeline from Canada will give a huge boost to job creation and expand fossil fuel exports as well lower our domestic gas prices. As this has been on Mr Obama desk for several years now and sill he finds more reason to not sign even though all departments have approved the pipeline.

The question then is why won't Mr Obama sign off on this project?

United States Needs More Nuclear Power
Source: Mark J. Perry, "To Balance Energy Demand, We Need Nuclear Power," Investor's Business Daily, January 16, 2014.
January 23, 2014

America is becoming too reliant on natural gas, says Mark Perry, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Overdependence on natural gas could expose Americans to soaring electricity prices, as natural gas has a history of price volatility. Becoming dependent on natural gas rather than coal or nuclear power -- both of which have price stability and are a solid hedge against fluctuations in gas prices -- could be dangerous.

• For example, in a recent cold snap, the drop in temperatures sent electric power prices skyrocketing in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, from the usual $40 or $50 per megawatt-hour to $1,500.
• Texas, a state that uses natural gas for more than 50 percent of its electricity production, also saw wholesale power prices reach above $5,000.
• And Florida relies on natural gas for 70 percent of its electricity supply today.

The United States needs a mix of energy sources to keep the country from relying too much on a single power source. Expanding nuclear power would provide stability in the long-term.

• Nuclear plants are safe and reliable and can provide carbon-free energy 24 hours a day, free of price volatility.
• Natural gas is not a substitute for all other forms of power, and it accounts for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Nuclear power, on the other hand, does not pollute the air and provides stability that solar and wind power cannot.

America needs to develop policies that encourage private investment in nuclear plants.
 

Retirement : A Job With You in Charge

The problem is the expectations of the retirees is not realistic - they have no idea what retirement is all about. The reality is it's another job, only this time they are in charge. Truly it's amazing how many seniors are not ready to be self employed, not mentally or economically.

How Are Seniors Spending Their Money?
Source: Pamela Villarreal, "How Are Seniors Spending Their Money?" National Center for Policy Analysis, January 2014.

January 22, 2014

Just 20 years ago, most seniors entered retirement debt-free. Now, experts wonder if retirees will able to make ends meet throughout the rest of their lives, much less not outlive their money, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

How have spending patterns changed for today's seniors compared to years past? Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, one can compare the spending habits of today's seniors with the spending habits of those who retired 20 or more years ago.

• More seniors carry mortgages and spend a greater share on interest payments.
• The Survey of Consumer Finances shows that since 1989, the percentage of 65 to 74 year olds reporting a mortgage or home equity loan holders increased from 21 percent to nearly 37 percent in 2010.
• For seniors 75 years old and older, the percent of mortgage or home equity loan payments increased from just 6 percent to 21 percent during the same time.

Moreover, a greater share of seniors' total expenditures are for mortgage or home equity loan interest. Health care expenditures are substantial, but not one of the fastest-growing expenditure shares.
Seniors expenditures increasingly reflect their hobbies. For 65 to 74 year olds, for instance, two of the top five fastest-growing expenditure categories are:

• Miscellaneous entertainment, which has grown an average of 9.8 percent annually since 1990. This category includes exercise equipment, photography equipment, campers, boats and other motorized recreational vehicles, and electronic video games.
• Pets and hobbies, which has averaged 5.8 percent growth annually since 1990. This category not only includes expenses for pets and pet supplies, but also toys, games, tricycles and playground equipment.

Seniors are also spending more on cars and education. In addition, seniors have more credit card debt than before. The Survey of Consumer Finances reports:

• The average credit card balance for 65 to 74 year olds in 2010 was $6,000, compared to just $2,100 in 1989.
• For those 75 years old or more, the average balance was not even measurable in 1989 but had ballooned to $4,600 by 2010.

But in terms of amount of net worth and the distribution of wealth, seniors do well compared to other age groups.
 

Decision Making Charted : Men Verses Women

This chart is interesting in that it defines how men and women make decisions or at least the author believe they have a clue.

I for one do not believe what women use for rational in decisions making is this simple. I believe it is far more complicated.

Men on the other hand, for the most part, are not burdened by a sense of responsibility to other men and therefore their decision making is simplified.

It's really about priorities. Understanding the priorities is the first step in the simplification of decision making.

Now the question that remains is do I have a clue about what women do or want? heh

Medicare Headed for Future Revenue Slow Down

To think that costs will go down on any program that incentivizes 30 million people to join, that have not been part of this program in any way in the past,  is a certified lunatic. But no wonder the democrats are front and center pulling out their collective hair proclaiming success on how all things will be coming up roses now that the progressive socialists have their special program to save the American health care system, ObamaCare

But wait, the system is so good that those that designed it and voted for it opted out of it. Why would the party leaders have the option to not join while the general public, the collective, has no choice? If the progressive socialist program is so good, why the option for the designers and party?

Did you ever wonder who's in charge of the asylum?

Medicare's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook Not Good
Source: Charles Blahous, "Why Slower Health Care Cost Inflation Isn't Fixing Medicare Finances," Economic Policies for the 21st Century, January 14, 2014.

January 21, 2014

Medicare's long-term fiscal outlook is unlikely to improve, even with the recent slowdown in health care costs, says Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, a research fellow for the Hoover Institution, and a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare.

The Affordable Care Act's supporters are claiming that the law has slowed the growth of health care costs. There is little if any basis for that claim, as the cost slowdown began prior to the Affordable Care Act and because the law appears to be increasing health spending, not decreasing it.

Putting that aside, there have been questions as to whether the slowdown in health care costs will do something to improve Medicare's financial health in the long term. Unfortunately, Medicare's financing problem is likely to get worse, not better, and the program needs a complete change in policy before it can get its financial problems in order.

• Over the next 20 years, growth in Medicare costs will be driven by the population aging. Even eliminating health cost inflation, Medicare costs will rise faster than national economic growth solely due to America's aging population.
• And while Medicare's costs have slowed, its revenue growth has slowed even more, putting it in a weaker financial position than pre-Recession analyses expected.
• Medicare's long-term costs are likely to be higher than currently projected, not lower. Current projections of Medicare costs operate under the assumption that Medicare spending will shrink relative to gross domestic product perpetually, which has not been the case historically.

While a slowdown in health cost inflation is a good thing, the slowdown has actually led to a weakening of Medicare's finances because its revenues have dropped more than its costs. The program's finances need reform before it can have a positive long-term fiscal outlook.
 

Privatizing Public Land & Property : Trillions in Revenue

The question that remains, why would the government do the right thing? Worse, how would the government go about selling off so much property when they can even decide that the people should be able,  have the right to chose what light bulbs they want?

Government is the very definition of dysfunction, waste and fraud.

Governments Should Privatize Property
Source: "The $9 Trillion Sale," The Economist, January 11, 2014.
January 21, 2014

Governments should look at selling their non-financial assets, says The Economist.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries hold $35 trillion worth of non-financial assets, such as land, buildings and underground resources.

• A 2011 audit found that the United States' federal government owns nearly 1,000,000 buildings, 45,000 of which were underused or not needed at all.
• Greece has 80,000 non-heritage buildings and land plots with unrealized value.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that Sweden has state-owned property worth about $100 billion to $120 billion.

Despite this potential for an inflow of cash, governments have been reluctant to raise revenue this way.

• When Ronald Reagan attempted to sell parts of the American West, he faced opposition from green interest groups and ranchers. Similarly, Britain was foiled by environmentalists in 2010 when the country tried to sell some of its land.
• Italy currently has a public-debt burden worth 132 percent of gross domestic product, but it has not embarked upon a bold course of privatization, even though the state has corporate stakes worth $225 billion and $1.6 trillion in non-financial assets.

Privatization allows governments to boost their credit ratings and cut their debts while improving the economy's efficiency. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan used privatization and transformed a number of industries such as telecom and transportation; in the 21st century, leaders should look to doing the same for buildings, land and resources.
 

British Health Care Systme Questioned : ObamaCare Full Speed Ahead

That the British health system is totally broken, and the Brits have known this for decades is of little use to us. No matter what happens to the British and their National Health Service (NHS), we will continue head first down the hill of ignorance and ideology, learning nothing from the British experience.

Again, and how many times do we have to repeat this, the Affordable Care Act is not about health care, it's about control of the population by a few elites. It's called tyranny, soft bigotry of the progressive socialist liberal left democrats.

To believe otherwise is folly. To accept the ideology of progressivism as the new norm is self destruction. 

British Experience Shows Problems with Government-Run Health Care
Source: Cal Thomas, "British Experience with NHS Reveals Ills of Government Health Care Programs Like ObamaCare," Washington Examiner, January 15, 2014.
January 20, 2014

Many in Britain are beginning to question whether the country should continue its National Health Service (NHS), says Cal Thomas, columnist for the Washington Examiner.

Under the NHS, Britons have suffered for decades.

• Already, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence determines whether new medicines can be approved in Britain, but most recently, the agency has sparked concern with its plan to license new drugs only if judged by NHS to "be a benefit to wider society."
• A recent European Commission report found that Britain has fewer doctors per person than nearly every other European country (that's only 2.71 doctors for every 1,000 people).
• In fact, the United Kingdom ranks behind even Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia in the European Commission's rankings.

And while the NHS was intended to reduce the number of people who seek emergency room (ER) treatment, emergency room visits are actually up.

• Some patients actually visit the ER up to four times per week, with the BBC reporting that "nearly 12,000 people made more than 10 visits to the same unit in 2012-13. A small number of those -- just over 150 -- attended more than 50 times."
• Meanwhile, President Obama said that the Affordable Care Act would lower ER visits in the United States, but studies already indicate that newly insured are visiting emergency rooms at more frequent rates.

Chairman of the council at the British Medical Association, Dr. Mark Porter, described NHS's problems this way: "A growing and aging population, public health problems like obesity, and constant advances in treatment and technology are all contributing to push NHS costs well above general inflation."

Thomas warns that the United States could learn something from Britain's experience with a nationalized system of health care.
 

Putin Describes Mr Obama as A Pigeon? Say It Ain't So

Here again, no proof that Putin actually said this but it still has a nice ring to it - and I believe it works as well. 

 

 

"Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon.  The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game."

   …Vladimir Putin-2013

 

Wage Inequality A Tool for Class Warfare : Tax Dollars Establishing Voter Base

I wonder what the reason is for the young having problems moving up on the economic scale like most of us did just a few decades ago? Could it be that many of today's youth have no desire to be 'mobile', that they find living the simple life on welfare and food stamps good enough?

Millions are doing this very thing right now as there are no good paying low skilled jobs anyway, so why live in poverty when one can accept government assistance that will pay as much as low skilled jobs pay that are available, if not more, without having to take any responsibility for life it self. The government is paying these tens of millions to sit back and ride the wave of free stuff.

But one has to wonder how long these millions will be satisfied with a life fed by sloth, riff with mental deterioration? I wonder also what the result will be when the millions sitting home decide  they want more assistance as their tastes have changed from just getting by to living the good life like those that are working 60 hours a week?

The campaign that Mr Obama is on right now supports this very attitude that our current economic atmosphere isn't fair, the working class has all of the perks while those that are sitting home that won't or can't work have to live a life of subsistence. No new car or vacations in Europe. It just isn't fair.

Ever wonder why the push is on for the minimum wage to go up to $15 dollar an hour? It's the same work, same responsibility, just more money. But you have to know it won't end here, once these people get use to having the extra cash and buying more and better things, they have to have more money to move ahead. Do you see the inequality? Know, they will be back for more money. The war on inequality will never end. It never fails.

It just isn't fair that low skilled workers shouldn't have the same privileges as those that worked their way up for years to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Mobility, moving up through the economic classes is pride of personal accomplishment. But the progressive socialists see this as unacceptable as the people will not have to rely on government to find a future. As more and more individuals find personal fulfillment in a job well done, progressive socialism will die.

And the fact that's lost on many among us, it's Mr Obama that sat these millions down at home because he has done nothing to create an atmosphere of economic expansion so good jobs have a chance of being made available through the prosperity of small businesses. Yet Mr Obama rails against the very programs that he instituted baying he will do everything in his power to correct these inequalities. More government assistance, larger voting base.

Go figure!

Why We Should Wage a War on Economic Immobility Instead of Inequality
Source: Scott Winship, "Why We Should Wage a War on Immobility Instead of Inequality," Economic Policies for the 21st Century, January 16, 2014.

January 20, 2014

With long-term unemployment historically high and still-pervasive economic insecurity in the wake of the Great Recession, it is understandable that many Americans have grown more concerned about the nation's levels of inequality, says Scott Winship, the Walter B. Wriston Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

In long-run perspective, living standards have improved for the poor and middle class even as income inequality has grown. And contrary to claims that rising income inequality has hurt inequality of opportunity, the evidence of a link between the two is weak.

• Income inequality within the bottom 80 percent of households has grown only modestly, primarily during the 1980s, and hardly at all since then.
• Indeed, a wealth of research, including by the Congressional Budget Office, indicates that earnings and income inequality between the middle class and poor have not risen since the mid-to-late 1980s.

Not only has income inequality not grown as much as many suggest, but intergenerational mobility has probably not declined much -- if at all -- in the past three decades. To be clear, no research shows a sizable increase in mobility since the mid-20th century, but the most common finding is a change so modest as to be statistically indistinguishable from no change at all. In his own forthcoming research, Winship finds that today's 30 year olds have experienced no less mobility than did 30 year olds in the mid-1970s.

While upward mobility has not diminished over time, and while it has not been hurt by rising income inequality, it has nevertheless been stuck at unacceptably low levels for decades.

• If past patterns hold, 70 percent of poor children today will fail to make it to the middle class as adults.
• Four in 10 will be mired in poverty themselves in midlife.

The challenge, thus, is to identify real solutions to the problem of limited upward mobility.
 

Health Care System in Peril : ObamaCare Decades In Design

If there is anyone left that believes ObamaCare was ever designed to actually help the poor to get health care, or for that matter, anyone else. How can anyone believe after see how bad ObamaCare really is after all the failings, that those that designed this can be this incompetent? Is it possible these people are just stupid or are driven strictly by an ideology of total control?

ObamaCare was in the works for decades, and was rolled out many times in different administration to see how it would fly, remember Hillary Care? It failed, but the progressive learned many lessons on how to make it work. They knew it would take a leader that really believed in socialized medicine, single payer, as the best way to infest our country for ever with the tyranny of the progressive ideology of controlling the population by controlling their health care.

ObamaCare will fail the poor as it will fail the American health care system. It is working as designed. peril

Can the Poor Afford ObamaCare?
Source: Michael Ollove, "Affording the Affordable Care Act," Stateline, January 14, 2014.
January 20, 2014

Antipoverty agencies across the United States are concerned that the poor will not be able to afford ObamaCare's health insurance, says Stateline.

While the Affordable Care Act was presented to the public as being just that -- affordable -- many are finding that they cannot afford to pay the cost of health insurance, even with federal subsidies providing assistance for individuals making up to 400 percent of the poverty line.

The amount of available subsidies is also confusing and varies depending upon the type of plan at issue:

• For Americans earning between 133 and 250 percent of the poverty level, some out-of-pocket costs can also be covered if they purchase a Silver plan rather than a Bronze plan.
• With a Silver plan, those earning over 250 percent of the poverty level will contribute around 30 percent toward their medical costs, while the insurance company must cover the rest.
• But for Silver plan holders below 250 percent of the poverty level, federal aid is available for out-of-pocket expenses. In fact, an individual at 133 percent of the poverty level could pay as little as 6 percent of the costs of his medical bills, forcing the insurance company and the federal government to cover the rest.

Sireesha Manne, an attorney for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, says that even with subsidies, insurance is going to remain unaffordable to swaths of Americans under the Affordable Care Act.
 

Commander and Chief Clueless? : America Defenseless Is Good

I don't know if this is true or not that Mr Obama ordered these five nuclear carriers into port at the same time or that maybe this routine procedure, but given how his ideology driven mind works, it is entirely possible. Anything that Mr Obama can do that will show the world we are not going to defend freedom and Democracy where it is being denied works for the progressive socialists that control our government.

One thing is a sure thing, the progressives believe America is a bad place and needs to reigned in. America needs to punished.

Allowing these five carriers to be in the same place at the same time would give our enemies an opportunity to render our navy toothless with one small nuclear device. Not a good thing for our national security, but similar to Mr Obama's deal with Iran.

But is it just cluelessness or is it more in line with Mr Obama ideology? Total disengagement as a foreign policy while "fundamentally" changing America into a socialist democracy? Many talking heads believe Mr Obama has no ideology, Lou Dobbs on Fox Business channel for one. Dobbs believes he is just incompetent, clueless and or just ignorant of life it self. Dobbs finds Mr Obama laughable but not dangerous. Really? On Fox?

The job of the American people now must be to get our country back from the socialists by deciding our fate in November when we all vote. This will one of the last chances to rescue our country and start the healing, and the last chance will come in 2016.

Failing this will, I guarantee this will seal our fate to a socialist nightmare and that of much of the free world. It's past time for us to understand the power to change the world is actually in our hands and minds. We the people make the ultimate decisions when we vote of who will actually lives or dies, whether in war or in domestic policy like ObamaCare death panels.

Please make the right decision this November and vote for freedom. It's shouldn't be that difficult when you consider the alternative.