Category Archives: Politics: International

Awesome

Posted on February 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

Some say Obama is a Socialist.  Some say he is a Communist.  Others even say he is a fascist.  What is harder to dispute is what Karl Marx was.

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Posted in Economics, Education, Energy, Liberty, Politics: International, Politics: National

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We'll Need Less Even as We Make More

Posted on February 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

You’ve heard it.  I’ve heard.  How could you NOT hear it?

We are gonna run out of oil!

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Posted in Economics, Energy, Politics: International

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Where Will They Go When We Become They

Posted on February 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

So, you can usually tell what someone’s priorities are by watching how they spend their “stuff”.  This could be money.  Watch how they spend their money and you’ll see where they put their priority.  It could be time.  Watch how they spend their time and you can tell what they think is important.  Further, it could be “fantasy points”.  Watch how someone allocates resources to win fantasy baseball and you’ll see what they feel is critical.

People tend to “spend” what they have, time or money, on things that they think are best for them.  This should neither be new or controversial.  In fact,, acknowledging this fact can help us to better build or economic models.

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Posted in Health Care, Politics: International, Politics: National

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Real Life Story

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m the first second to admit, my wife is the first, that I haven’t actually RUN anything either.  I don’t own my own business, I don’t have P&L responsibility in my current job.  And while I can interview and choose who I hire, the decision TO actually hire ain’t mine.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: International

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What It Means To Be Poor In America

Posted on January 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Mark Perry nudged me the other day.  We hear so much how bad it is in America.  That the middle class is “under attack” and only the Government can save them.  Further, the health care debate has pointed out that America spends more on health care than any other nation in the world.

Data from a report by two Swedish researches illuminates some very interesting facts:

  1. The ratio of people living in poverty is shrinking

 1959 1999
Whites 18 10
Blacks 55 24
Hispanics 23(1972) 23
Total 22 12

2.  Being poor does not mean living without

Home Ownership 45.9
Car 72.8
2 or more cars 30.2
Air conditioning 76.6
Refrigerator 96.9
Washing machine 64.7
Drying cabinet/tumbler drier 55.6
Dishwasher 33.9
Garbage disposal 29.7
Microwave 73.3
Colour TV 97.3
2 or more colour TV sets 55.3
Cable or satellite TV 62.6
Wide screen TV 26.3
Video or DV 78
2 or more video and DVD players 25.3
Stereo 58.6
Telephone answering machine 35.3
Mobile phone 26.6
PC 24.6
Internet access 18

Lastly

3.  Being poor in America is better than being average in the EU

People Sq Feet per person
Europe, average 2.5 976.5 395.7
USA, poor  1993 2.8 1228 438.6
USA, all  1993 2.6 1875 721.2

What does this tell us?  It tells us that being poor in America means that you have a bigger house than the average European.  It tells us that whatever we have been doing, we should do more of it.  And that any modeling on Europe would be a mistake.

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Posted in Economy, Politics: International

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Real World Classroom

Posted on January 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

Leftists, all ya’ll…come over here.  We have, in real time and in a real country, a case where a leader is trying to implement Socialism on his country.  It started out all right.  The people were very happy to hear that they would all get to go to the circus and have ice cream before bed.  Longer summer vacations and shorter schools years too.  The people were happy, the boss was givin’ away the joint and all the while  claiming the “rich” would just pay for it.  Balance it out, after all.  It’s only fair ya know.

Not really working out for him now.  But then again, he is inefficient and needs to bribe h is friends:

The state oil company, PDVSA, produced 3.2 million barrels per day in 1998, the year before Mr Chavez won the presidency. After a decade of rising corruption and inefficiency, daily output has now fallen to 2.4 million barrels, according to OPEC figures. About half of this oil is now delivered at a discount to Mr Chavez’s friends around Latin America. The 18 nations in his “Petrocaribe” club, founded in 2005, pay Venezuela only 30 per cent of the market price within 90 days, with rest in instalments spread over 25 years.

Not only has the company failed to keep up with technology and INCREASE its production, he has reduced it.  And on top of that, he is robbing his country of the money that he COULD be making by asinine payment terms.  But hey, the people are happy with this Socialism, right?

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans opposed to President Hugo Chavez took to the streets Saturday, blaming him for rolling blackouts, water rationing, widespread crime and other problems they say are making daily life increasingly difficult.

Ooops.  Not so much.

Viva la Venezuela.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: International

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We're Gonna Run Out of Pollution!!

Posted on January 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the biggest reasons that the Left feels we must get away from petroleum is that we have surpassed peak oil; we’re running out and we are in danger.  Couple things wrong with this:

  1. There is no alternative use for oil.  If we don’t burn it, what is it good for?
  2. We are no where NEAR peak oil.

When a thing becomes scarce, the price of that thing rises.  It has to.  And it can.  Fact is, oil isn’t scarce.  It’s plentiful and it’s competing for our purchase of it.

Consider this article:

Not many people think of the Netherlands as oil country, but a billion-barrel field lies under a nine-mile strip of grazing land along the Dutch-German border.  When oil prices cratered in the 1990s, Royal Dutch Shell shut the Schoonebeek field down.

…

Now higher prices and technological advances are spurring a new joint venture of Shell, Exxon, and the Dutch government to pump Schoonebeek’s reserves once more.

There is a bunch of oil that we know about in places that is just too hard to get at.  However, when the price of oil rises to the point that the cost of obtaining it can be offset by the price of selling it, we get more oil.  Further, technology is advancing as well:

New wells drilled horizontally are coming in contact with more of the oil. Steam injected into the rock loosens up its molasses-like crude so it can be brought to the surface more easily.

So, how much oil are we looking at?

Many analysts and industry executives have little doubt that there’s plenty of oil in the ground. “Only about 32% of the oil [in reserves] is produced,” says Val Brock, Shell’s head of business development for enhanced oil recovery. Shell estimates 300 billion barrels and maybe more might be squeezed out of existing fields, much of it once thought beyond retrieval. Peter Jackson, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ London-based senior director for oil industry activity, has reviewed data from the world’s biggest fields. His conclusion: 60% of their reserves remain available.

To translate into everyday terms:  That’s a lot.

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Posted in Economics, Politics: International

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That Didn't Work Out Exactly as Planned

Posted on January 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

So, the Obama administrations latest attempt to “Talk and Communicate” with the world’s bad guys closed another chapter:

Iranian lawmakers have rejected Sen. John Kerry’s request to visit their country, saying the United States needs to change its policies toward Iran before such talks can be effective, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.

I have always maintained that discussing things like health care, the economy and terrorism are subjects that lend themselves to public debate.  While there is some gamesmanship going on to be sure, there is no real “statecraft” going on.

When it comes to international diplomacy, there is a need to be purposefully subtle about our intentions.  At times, out right deceitful.  To that end, the government can not be expected to be completely transparent when it comes to things of this nature.

It’s why I have always suspected that we invaded Iraq for reasons that none of us have even debated.  I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with oil, WMD, terror or revenge.  Maybe it had something to do with Iran?

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Posted in Politics: International, War

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Profile: Who's In and Who's Out

Posted on January 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

We are spending a lot of time talking about profiling.  Who should be profiled and who shouldn’t.  There’s even talk about NOT profiling at all.

I have to wonder why.  Why would we NOT use all the information we have?

For example, without even talking about nationality, race, religion or sex we could profile on:

  1. One way ticket purchases bought day of.
  2. One way ticket purchases bought with cash.
  3. Passengers boarding without either checked or carry on luggage.
  4. People who are on ANY watch list.
  5. Passengers who board International flights WITHOUT passports.
  6. If the age of the passenger is between 17 and 40, bump up suspicion quotient.
  7. If the passenger is boarding without family, bump up suspicion quotient.

Then, after building a list of who we SHOULD profile, we could build a list of people we could rule OUT:

  1. Anyone aged 65 or more.
  2. Anyone aged 18 or less.
  3. Women traveling with children.

There is a LOT more that we can do.  There is more we SHOULD do.

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Posted in Politics: International, War

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Que Pasa

Posted on December 24, 2009 | 2 comments

It would appear that ruling is much much different than campaigning.  Mr. Obama has failed to deliver on many of the promises that he made while he was on the trail.  However, ones concerning International Diplomacy make me giggle the most.

See, things like the economy and health care, these are things that can be “seen”.  That is, they are not secret, kept under tabs or otherwise covered up.  But this diplomacy thing?  Please.  It’s ALL secret.  And he should have know that.  Which either make him naive or those who voted for him naive.  I mean, just look at Cuba:

Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest.

I mean, come on.  This man RAN on promises and hope.  What else Ought we expect.  He didn’t run on a body of work that he could call upon and say “I have done this and that, so therefore it is reasonable that you can count on me.”  No.  He ran on HOPE.  And it is becoming more and more clear that we can only hope.  Hope for change.  This guy is a disaster.

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Posted in Politics: International, Politics: National

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