Ken Nelson

In modern life, those with the most knowledge usually win.  So, for instance, if you buy insurance, you should only buy it for what you need but can’t afford to replace, OR if you know something the insurance company doesn’t.

In car finance the same applies.  For instance, lease deals can seem attractive. $199 a month to drive some fancy car you never thought you could afford.  The problem lies in the fine print:

Here’s one such complicated arrangement. Mini-USA is offering a $199/month deal on its 2011 Cooper 2-door hatchback. Sounds good.  But buyers must show up with $2,727 as a down payment. And they must drive the small car small distances — no more than 833 miles per month. The punishment for excessive mileage? A not mini 20 cents per mile. Someone who drives the normal 36,000 during that three-year Cooper lease ends up with a $1,200 bill at the end. Drive 15,000 miles per year, and the bill is a whopping $3,000.

So, if you KNOW for sure that you will be using the car for occasional trips. And you will be well under the mileage. And you understand and won’t test the other conditions, maybe the lease is right for you.

Lacking that… pay cash, or finance a used car, on the best terms you can.  You need wheels, not fun. Buy the least you can, and that includes money – which is really what you are buying with a car lease or loan.

Wish denied.

If I could snap my finger and get rid of all firearms in the U.S., would I snap?  

It’s a bit of a silly question, since it isn’t feasible.  But the “snap” does pose an interesting thought problem.

People hurt others with guns. People save others with guns. Guns help gain freedom. Guns help take it away.

I suppose the answer depends on what you value.   I value, very heavily, political freedom, economic freedom, and self-reliance. 

I don’t like, nor trust, the idea of relying on police to protect me, largely because they can’t, and also because they are very likely, in time, to oppress me rather than protect.  We see early trends of this now, as a result of “over protection” from drug wars, terrorism, and the inability of politicians to resist force based “solutions” to whatever bugs them.

We have too many police now, enforcing too many laws. I’d prefer less of them, focusing on far less laws that are of critical importance.

As horrible as recent events have been, I believe, firmly, that many many millions of people benefit from firearms ownership acting as a backstop for freedom and security.   In fact, I’d rather see MORE people own, train, and use them, than less. 

When I lived in D.C., I was forced to live without firearms.  I sat helpless as rioters over turning buses, police cars, and burning buildings approached my home. I watched helpless as thugs shot at a man beside me on the sidewalk. And I watched, helpless, as a one criminal shot another my home’s window in a “great NW DC neighborhood”.

So, no I wouldn’t “snap”. The calculus comes out wrong in my book.

I’d rather focus, instead, on proper prioritization of enforcement resources so that instead of arresting people for doing something millions do (drugs for example), they would instead have time, interest and inclination to check out reports of a psycho scaring students and faculty at a junior college.

Apparently, more effective than local NY region governmental plows

An emailer sent me a story about citizens bitching about New York roads being unplowed.  His subject “Citizens Demand More Government”.

I wouldn’t put it that way, nor do I see it that way.

There are things government can and should do. Like roads. Like defense. Like things specified for it in the Constitution.

What I take away from stories like what is coming out of New York’s snow is that if the government can’t keep the roads going, which is one of the few things it actually should be doing, why is it DOING ANYTHING ELSE?

BTW: Those of you familiar with the joy of local public unions won’t be surprised that much of the problem turns out to have been a ham-fisted union protest.  I have this mental picture of fat kielbasa eating mustached fools with that irritating New York suburb accent saying “that’ll teach the f****ers”.

Bad idea dudes. We “learned” but not the lesson you intended.

The basic problem with snow plowing is that it COULD be done privately, but is done by government. We don’t have any choice.  When I had a plow guy that didn’t show up at my place in Vermont, I fired him.  So can we fire these union morons?  No. And that is why their service sucks.

Democratic thugs: How I view government

The debate rages in the post I put up about NASA’s propulsion strategy. Commenter Carl, true to roots, asked me to give up some other federal function to pay for my preferred strategy.  He knows I could easily cut 2/3rds of the government and not blink. So I didn’t treat his question as serious.  I joked “your pension”.  Anyway, after a bit of discussion we seemed to have arrived at this…

They think pension promises are sacrosanct.  But not promises to me about Social Security. I’m supposed to honor pensions of government employees, while that same government rips me off about $1500month in FICA payments supposedly in my “trust fund” but long gone before they even take it.

This is the type of argument that makes me think, actually, know, that our end will be sooner than we think and violent. 

I mean, how can you resolve this?  They want my money, I want my money. They want my time. I want my time.

You can’t sort this type of thing out. The guy with the biggest stick wins. Our true protections from the Constitution died in 1913, we now near the end game.

Commenter Carl seems to think this is Democracy. It is thuggery. I may put up with it. Just one life to live after all, and I’d like it to be a long one.  But the problem with thugs is they don’t know their limits.  They will take, push, take until it breaks.

Update: The pushing continues. Can’t touch those pensions, but stealing social security trust funds is cool, and now that they have run out, how about Ken’s 401K.

Working the inside game

I’m fundamentally a libertarian.  And I believe that many of the founders were as well. Can there be a more fundamentally libertarian document than our original Constitution, with the basics of organizing the government spelled out, immediately followed by 10 rules outlining what that Government cannot do and then saying, specifically, that anything else the government may want to do is not allowed unless specifically allowed in the Constitution?   Amazing. I wish we still had it.

Alas, the libertarian nature of the Constitution died long ago, in 1913 to be precise, and the question now becomes – how best can we return to the brilliance of what the founders originally offered us?

To some that means a vibrant Libertarian Party, eventually supplanting one of the existing major political parties as half of the binary calculus a winner take all electoral system eventually leads too.  I’m running into those folks as I stump for a Republican candidate I believe holds quite closely to the original intent of the Constitution – and one that wants to get rid of the monstrous amendments of 1913 that led us so astray.

I, frankly, view the Libertarian Party as interesting but a dead end.   They have no coherence.  Some join it because they want to smoke dope.  Others because they want no foreign military actions.Others because they don’t like the cultural limitations placed into law by the major parties.  Others join out of intellectual consistency as libertarian thinkers.

Instead, I believe, the path forward for libertarians is to co-opt one of the major parties.  I believe that to be Republicans because, while some (very few) Democratic policies are libertarian in nature, the Democrats are already being co-opted by the Socialists, and I doubt one party can host two symbiants.

Take, for example, a leading libertarian of our day…. REPUBLICAN Ron Paul.  He is busy co-opting the Republican Party.  I’d rather have 60 Ron’ Paul’s in the Congress, than one Libertarian state Legislator – which is what a typical electoral season will bring the Libertarian party.

Socialist may be wrong about their politics, but the know how to run a revolution. And they are 95% of the way to taking over the Democratic Party.  They will probably kill their host. And that smacks of opportunity.

The right way forward is for libertarians to fight for the elected positions as Republicans and to change that party, and the nation, from the inside.

My candidate focuses on the original intent of the Constitution. That is plenty libertarian for me.

Caveat: I didn’t support Ron Paul in the Republican primary. I felt his foreign policy positions were intellectually consistent but naive. As I look back at what he said, I do think maybe he was certainly prescient about our economy.   It would be nice to have Ron Paul as President, backing away from naive campaign promises, but fiscally rock solid, than the current idiot we have backing away from naive campaign promises while also killing us economically.

A WordPress update failed, trashing my blog. I had a very recent backup, so I restored it, but you will notice odd symbols in the words where you would normally see ‘,”)(:{}\ and other non character ASCII symbols. I’m trying to sort out now how to return them to normal.

Update: This should be fixed now.  A WordPress plugin named “UTF-8 Sanitize” did the trick.  Many thanks to the author of that plugin, Kaloyan Tsvetkov, for saving my bacon!

 
I wish it weren’t coming, but it is

I’m a numbers guy. Sure I have principles that guide my thought on many issues, but I firmly believe that numbers don’t lie. And the numbers bode ill for us in the next few years.

The subprime mortgages that hosed our economy last year come in 1, 3 and 5 year variants.   Most 3 year versions had their loans adjusted last year. Adjusting means that negative interest, interest only, balloons and other wild ways to get into a bigger house than you really can afford all come due.

So we get 2009 to “rest” a bit. Not “rest” really, but to have the folks who can’t afford their houses bail on them. In Washington County that means about 200 homes foreclosed on each month.

And then the 5 year loans hit in 2010.  The bad news is that because they were so attractive in terms of house buying leverage, and because they are coming due in a down market, many, many MORE people as a percentage of the loans sold will have negative equity in their homes (be upside down).

What does it mean?  We ain’t out of the woods yet.

My sense is that this will be worse that 2008 because the bottom feeders (guilty!) out buying houses in this reduced market will be tapped out.  That plus high unemployment and a continuing aging population put the demand side of the housing market way out of kilter with the supply side.

What does it mean?  Declining house values. Continued slumps in big manufactured goods. California, New York and New Jersey will finally be forced to massively cut their government’s size and actually shrink, not grow slower.  And expect continuing weakness in all sectors of the economy (except the Federal government).

Hey.. what about the rapid devaluation of the dollar?   Exactly – just try and sell a house while competing with 1000’s of foreclosures and 13% interest rates.

Politically… this means Barack Obama is a one term President with his effectiveness ended with his defeat at the Health Care Waterloo.  It also means massive turnover in the Congress in 2010.

I’m in Phoenix on business. It is hot here!  113 in St. George when I left and 114 in Phoenix when I arrived.

Slow or no blogging til Friday.

This makes me happy though.

 
It’s hard to invest in pie when this is all you get

That is the question isn’t it…. how low can the DOW go, how high can unemployment get, how bad can this get?

My view on the stock market is that it isn’t anywhere near the bottom. Why? Well, because Obama and the Democrats promise to screw with the only performing sectors of the market, take more of the gains via income and capital gain taxes, spend more and more, force union labor in new sectors of the economy, and put a general brake on the economy via newly created carbon offset taxes.

One of the few performing sectors,  healthcare and drug companies, still profitable, face a cloudy future of government confiscation of their businesses. Why invest in that?

So let’s say you find a sector of the economy that still performs, perhaps makers of food stamps and the people that make the ink in newly printed money. You make your play.

Well, along comes Uncle Obama saying… um, yeah, we want to raise the capital gains tax from 15% to 39%.  So your big play just got worth 24% less.

The government takes most of your gains plus a general “what the hell else will they think of”, means why invest?  That is the fundamental problem facing the market right now. 

The underlying problem, they are human, and behave as such.

Right now, people with money just want to hide it. The looters are running amok.

Hey Ken, you sure do bitch about what <insert politician> does. But what would you do?

Good question!

Economy

I view government as the major problem here. They distorted markets, created bubbles, warp incentives and generally make a hash of things.  I would:

• let banks that loan stupidly fail
• get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• let people lose their homes and enjoy others getting into homes cheaper
• eliminate any kind of requirement on banks to loan money
• cut taxes dramatically and permanently
• ensure anybody who earns money pays some tax
• switch to a flat tax

Social Security

• I care if you can’t eat, shelter or clothe yourself. Not if you can’t golf everyday.
  Put another way, just cause you are old doesn’t entitle you to other’s money
• Eliminate FICA taxes entirely
• Continue paying back money owed from trust funds and from general revenues
• If you are poor (of any age), go to the welfare line

Defense

• Stay in Iraq
• Kill leaders of other countries that threaten us (NK, Iran, Syria, so forth)
• Scale back in Afghanistan, ensure they don’t have training camps, not much else
• Continue strong investment in defense R&D. I want new weapons that safe lives and give us an edge
• Grow the size of the military to offset stress on our current forces

Healthcare

• Require all Americans to have Catastrophic health care
• Make employer provided health insurance taxable as income
• Move to self-payer
• Help states with long term invalids and those with chronic, uninsurable, issues.
• Eliminate Medicaid aid to states.  They can decide for themselves what they want to do.

Education

• Eliminate Education Department. Move some education research into NIST & DoD.
• Eliminate all Pre-K – 12 federal education funding.
• Make private school tuition deductible
• Strengthen Hatch act to weaken public sector unions political clout

Foreign Policy

• See Defense section
• Cut back State Department role in just about every facet

Immigration

• Stiff and strictly enforced employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens.
• No Muslim immigration except for special cases approved at Cabinet level
• Student visas monitored more stringently
• Reduction, overall, in immigration levels til we assimilate those we have already

Crime

• I’m dubious of the War on Drugs. But if you, the public, insist, then I will fight it right, by going after users to cut demand.  White collar coke users – welcome to Sheriff Joe’s (my new AG) federal tent jail.

  We can talk about the war on drugs after you get a taste of fighting it right.  Maybe you like it, maybe not. I’m happy to legalize them.

• I would eliminate any federal laws regarding machine guns, silencers, assault weapons and dramatically re-direct the purpose of the BAFT. 
• I would make unfettered concealed carry contingent on a state or city receiving any federal funds.

Government

• I’ll use the Presidential Pulpit to lobby for an amendment adding a new branch of government called the “Random House”. It has randomly selected people from each state that can line item veto bills that have been passed by the Congress.

Energy

• Switch most electrical generation to nuclear power
• Eliminate the gasoline tax. Pay for federal part of highways from general revenues.
• Drill for oil pretty much wherever it is
• Support R&D into alternatives but not roll them out early due to false fears of global warming

There, that ought to be good for my first week in office.

A few people have forwarded me this article detailing that, after recent layoffs of mostly men, woman now outnumber men in the workplace.

“Given how stark and concentrated the job losses are among men, and that women represented a high proportion of the labor force in the beginning of this recession, women are now bearing the burden — or the opportunity, one could say — of being breadwinners,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress.

You might think I’d write about the hypocrisy of the article not caring that men are being unduly effected. But that isn’t my take on it at all.

I’m worried for women. My thoughts are… you’ll be sorry.  I had no choice but to be a breadwinner.   I’ve had to stress myself out, travel all over the place fighting for sales, burn the midnight oil getting projects for customers done and be “responsible” for dozens of other families financial well being.  And, unsurprisingly, it ages you fast.

Men don’t have a choice.  We can’t bear children, we aren’t down 4 or 5 months for child birth. Hence, we have to provide and work.  Woman do have a choice.  And I don’t see how a “career” is better than raising a family.  It is, of course, their choice, but it seems to me an easy one to make (if I could make it).

Well good luck with it. I suspect bread winning won’t be a satisfying as you think, especially when, after becoming productive and “winning”, you see all the hands out to “rightfully” share in what resulted from your sweat, ulcers and 10 years less average life expectancy.