President Barack Obama said,
[I]f there is even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.
Having the firearm and magazine of my choice in a successful defense of my family or myself will save at least one life.
By golly, Obama is right.
When the financial markets aren’t allowed to influence interest rates in accordance with market forces, there are wide-ranging consequences. Here‘s one.
Ford Motor Co expects to spend $5 billion this year shoring up its pension funds, almost as much as the auto maker spent last year building plants, buying equipment and developing new cars.
The nation’s second-largest auto maker is one of a who’s who of US companies pouring cash into pension plans now being battered by record low interest rates. Verizon Communications Inc contributed $1.7 billion to its pension plan in the fourth quarter and—highlighting companies’ sensitivity to this issue—Boeing Co now reports “core earnings” to separate out pension expenses.
Leaving aside the wisdom of defined benefit plans like pensions vs defined contribution plans like 401(k)s, and even assuming that interest rate assumptions underlying pension contributions in normal times are reasonable, this is money that would be better spent on capital plant, product development (both existing and new), hiring more workers, and so on.
Sort of like Ford did last year, but cannot use for this year’s priorities.
Q: Why didn’t the bartender serve the snake?
A: Because he couldn’t hold his beer.
A chicken walks into a bar. The bartender says, “We don’t serve poultry.”
The chicken says, “That’s OK I just want a drink.”
A rabbi, a priest, and a Lutheran minister walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Is this some kind of joke?”
A cowboy walked into a bar and ordered a whiskey. When the bartender delivered the drink, the cowboy asked, “Where is everybody?”
The bartender replied, “They’ve gone to the hanging.”
“Hanging? Who are they hanging?”
“Brown Paper Pete,” the bartender replied.
“What kind of a name is that?” the cowboy asked.
“Well,” said the bartender, “he wears a brown paper hat, brown paper shirt, brown paper trousers, and brown paper shoes.”
“Weird guy,” said the cowboy. “What are they hanging him for?”
“Rustling,” said the bartender.
Q: Why did the elephant cross the road?
A: Chicken’s day off.
Q: How do you get an elephant out of the water?
A: Wet.
Q: How do you get two elephants out of the water?
A: One by one.
Q: What does Tarzan say when he sees a herd of elephants in the distance?
A: “Look, a herd of elephants in the distance.”
Q: What does Tarzan say when he sees a herd of elephants with sunglasses?
A: Nothing. He doesn’t recognize them.
Q: What’s the difference between an elephant and a plum?
A: An elephant is grey.
Q: What does Jane say when she sees a herd of elephants in the distance?
A: “Look! A herd of plums in the distance”—Jane is color blind.
With the effective date of the Obama sequester, with its defense cuts, approaching, Republicans are starting to waver. Congressman Tom Rooney (R, FL) of the House Armed Services Committee, for instance, now is saying he would rather compromise on taxes than allow the cuts to take effect.
If you were going to hold a gun to my head and say you had to pick one…my constituents would expect us to keep them safe. If it takes closing [tax] loopholes to get there, I would be willing to do that.
A carefully anonymous “senior GOP aide” confirms the growing softness of the Republicans. He’s saying that, with the cuts, Rooney’s position will gain support as more Republicans fold.
Republicans have already foldedcompromised on tax increases in the fiscal cliff negotiations just concluded. More “compromise” means more tax increases.
How, exactly, are Americans kept safe when ever more of their money is taken by the government as taxes, Congressman Rooney?
I also have to ask: has the Republican Party become the RINO Party?
With apologies to William Shakespeare, who knew more about politics and economics than generally is appreciated, here is a possible eulogy if we’re not very careful.
Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury liberty, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with individual liberty. The noble Obama
Hath told you it was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath it answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Obama and the rest—
For Obama is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in liberty’s funeral.
It was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Obama says liberty is ambitious;
And Obama is an honourable man.
It hath brought morality home to America
Whose prosperity did the general coffers fill:
Did this in liberty seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, liberty wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Obama says it was ambitious;
And Obama is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the taxing
Men thrice reduced them,
Whence men did thrice prosper: was this ambition?
Yet Obama says “investment” is less ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Obama spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love liberty once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for it?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with liberty,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
…
But yesterday the word of liberty might
Have stood against the world; now lies it there.
And none so poor to do it reverence.
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Obama wrong, and Reid wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here’s a parchment with the seal of liberty;
I found it in its closet, ’tis its will:
Let but the commons hear this testament—
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—
And they would go and kiss dead liberty’s wounds
And dip their napkins in its sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of it for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.