Could there be a greater waste of money than having a military or law enforcement and refusing to use them. The lawlessness in Baltimore is a case in point. Looting and attacks on police were allowed to proceed without much opposition on the mistaken idea that we have to let people let off steam before it escalates even further. How many times does this thinking have to backfire before we wake up and remember why we have law enforcement to maintain public order? Unless especially built as a political capitols such as Washington D.C. or Brasília, cities and towns exist to serve an economic purpose. This means you have to try to maintain your current businesses while attracting new ones to replace those that are lost or your town will die. This takes money and money goes where it is treated well. If you let people steal from your business community without consequence or worse letting them loot and then burn down a business, you’re not treating money with respect. Why would any person invest in expansion or start a new business under those conditions? More likely, if you own a business there you’d be looking to relocate where you’re treated better. Where these riots have taken place, they either slow to or never recover. Baltimore has been in decline ever since the MLK assassination riots. Knowing this history, how could a civic leader not protect their city’s lifeblood? Yet Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appears to have given stand down orders to the police in the face of rioting, looting and destruction. She claims to have taken numerous economic courses but seems to be unaware of the enormous harm this would do to the very people she claims to help. Makes you wonder what they are teaching at her Alma Mater Oberlin these days. Continue reading
ALL IN THE PLAN?
Hillary Clinton is under fire over a book about the Clinton Foundation donors and the Clintons speaking fees that hasn’t even come out yet. The author appears to be right of center and we see unfavorable things about the Clintons all the time. What’s different in this case is the play the book’s allegations are getting in the liberal press. The New York Times and the Washington Post among others have run highly damaging pieces on the money trail covered by the book and posing difficult questions for her campaign. These outlets would normally ignore or underplay a “conservative” authored book damaging to Democratic Party icons. What gives? Just good and fair journalism? Maybe, but what if this is part of a well thought out plan. We can almost see eyes rolling, another conspiracy theory. We normally would be right with you, but bear with us. Something else may be going on here.
We’re Confused about Indiana
We have to admit, we didn’t really follow all this photographers and bakers and gay wedding controversies as closely as we maybe should’ve. Silly us, we thought this was a personal service case or by extension personal servitude problem, but this somehow is bound up in religion and gay rights. When you get into an argument it may go off the rails if the wrong principles in invoked. A photographer refuses to render his personal photography service to a Gay wedding on religious grounds and loses under a state anti discrimination law. Take Gay and religious freedom out of the case entirely. A asks B to provide a good or service which requires a future meeting of the minds. B refuses by saying they are not a good fit. End of story. Professionals have done this forever. For whatever reason your heart isn’t in it and you can’t provide your best product or service you bow out. That protects both A & B from shoddy or worse outcome. Professionals have always had the right to not take on a client without providing any reason. “Just not a good fit” suffices. Judges most of whom were in private practice know this and should extend this logical choice to everyone.
About those DOJ Ferguson Reports…..
Like most people, we took the News of the Justice Dept. on Ferguson Mo. to have two findings: I. The officer involved in the shooting that originally brought the Justice Dept.(DOJ) to town was totally exonerated and 2. The Town was a cesspool of racism. We took solace in some justice for the officer even as we realize his life is probably ruined and people in power were shown to be the owrst kind of raciists. After all even people on the right expressed their disapproval of the City Government and police Dept. We probably wouldn’t have ever questioned the second finding if we hadn’t finally read a Washington Post article we had saved, “The 12 Key Highlights from the DOJ’s Scathing Ferguson Report ” by Mark Berman and Wesley Lowery March 4. As we read, it became apparent that the key point of the Report,was that even though the Blacks made up only 67% of the town’s population they accounted for 93% of arrests makes an open and shut case of racism. It’s been a long time since any of us took statistics but the idea that you should always compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges and and you have to account for variables has stuck with us. The 67.4% figure came from the 2010 census but the crime figures are from 2012-14. You might think wouldn’t make a big difference but you would be wrong.
THE SIMPLICITY OF DAVE’S PLAN
A common reaction we’ve received to Dave’s Plan to reform the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that it’s just too complicated. Why mix retirement and other savings plans in with medical care reform? Actually the point was to simplify both by reestablishing the link between savings and expenditures. In the U.S. as with many other countries we don’t save as much as we should. This leads to problems as populations age. In the not too distant future entitlements for the retirees will crowd out most other Government spending. That of course will prove to be impossible. For instance, we just might need a national defense. Australia looking at a similar future has already opted for a mandatory 10% savings plan. It isn’t that we don’t have people participating in retirement plans. According to the American Benefits Council, defined contribution plans such as 401ks had 74 million active participants and that was in 2010. In that year total employment was 138,641,000. Employer health plans cover the majority of Americans. Obviously, we have a good base. All we are proposing is the accounts be held by Individuals with employers and the self-employed making the payments directly into Personal Benefits Accounts (PBA). Add a Catastrophic Health Policy to the PBA and everybody having one and we have the basics. We kept the ACA’s popular features of making the policies non-cancel able and children being able to stay on their family policy till 26. The ACA Subsidies and Medicaid payments based on age group experience would be deposited directly into qualifying PBAs by the IRS when their tax forms are processed, just as we do the Earned Income Tax Credit. With the PBA’s constant inflow of funds and growth, adding a Medical Credit Card completes the package. Continue reading
Detour on the Road 