Code of Wicked Ethics

A code of bad ethics taken from Eric Lightborn's blog

1. If you are poor, it is always your fault.
2. Asking for and receiving help is always wrong and a weakness.
3. Drive all compassion out of yourself.
4. You and your view are perfect, and cannot be wrong about anything.
5. Greed is holy.

Reasonable people would reject this as a disgraceful and utterly selfish code of ethics. Certainly the bible has a lot to say on the subject.

Just look at the Tea Party's stand on healthcare, workers' rights and the environment and compare them against those ethics. How on earth could they think that God is on their side?

Jeff Korson's Economy

Jeff Korson's latest epic is in the Tifton Gazette.

Jeff says that the Federal Government is making money worthless by printing money and driving inflation up. Also you should keep your money in coins, because the metal will soon be worth more than the face value.

Lets analyse his article.
The concept of "fractional banking" which is trading on the expectation that most of the time people won't need their deposited money. The bank is trading with money it doesn't have. This works as long as people don't take their money out at the same time. A run on the bank will cause it to collapse. The debt/limit was mostly 12 to 1.

Who thought that fractional banking was a good idea? The banks thought so. In fact an exemption given by the SEC to a few firms during Bush administration allowed leveraging up to 30 or 40 to 1.

Jeff thinks that this is a bad idea and for once I'm in complete agreement with him. When everybody leverages their money by 12 times the risk is multiplied. Inevitably several of these companies collapsed in a domino effect.

Jeff would have the whole system collapse and everybody would lose all their money. That is except of course those prudent people who buried hoards of gold and silver. What actually happened is that the government had to step in to save what was left and took on massive debts. The Government ensured that people don't need hoards of gold any more as they can guarantee against bank failure. Jeff would rather not spend tax dollars on saving banks and rely instead on his hoard of nickel rolls.

So why is the Federal Reserve printing money like it is going out of fashion? This is because of the spectre of deflation. Inflation is very low at the moment so it shouldn't be worrying the Tea Party. But when inflation goes negative prices start to go down.
Sounds like a great thing?

What is wrong with deflation? As prices go down people will put off buying things because they know the price will come down soon. As people stop buying things the price goes down faster. Soon the economy comes to a standstill. As they found out in the Great Depression. Didn't think of that, did you Jeff? Quantitive easing devalues our money, but it is better than having our money worth nothing at all.

Metaphor fail

This is my latest letter to The Tifton Gazette. If it gets published I'll put a link in here. I wrote the last letter because I saw deliberate distortion of the facts designed to spread fear in the extreme right of the USA. JeffK was indeed bold enough to spin the problem around and blame the Democrats. The evidence that JeffK supplied only showed that he failed to understand metaphors and that his entire argument fell down. What he wanted was to scaremonger the extreme right into thinking that armed conflict was just around the corner. And I thought that this was dangerous and that it should get stopped before somebody gets hurt. As it turns out it was too late for Gabrielle Giffords.

Letter to Tifton Gazette 08 January 2011:
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[Opinion] Its Only a Metaphor part 2

In the opinion piece of December 22 we read, “For almost the last two years, we have heard accusations of how dangerous the Tea Party groups are, how they incite violence and are haters of groups of people.”. Now we find out just how dangerous. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a marked woman. A rifle sight marked her location on a USA map among with nineteen other Democrat congressmen. This map was published on Sarah Palin's website. Obviously this was a metaphor as a reasonable person would have understood that debate and lawful democratic process should be followed and not assassination. Unfortunately there are a few followers of Sarah Palin, possibly also autistic who don't understand metaphors and pursued a sustained hate campaign that ended in tragedy. I would advise all people of the USA to stop using metaphors immediately or at the very least, flag them so there can be no misunderstanding. Some people take things too literally.

The law of Holes

The Tifton Gazette is a good place to see what the Tea Party is doing and the opinions page is good practise for picking holes in their arguments. If I can summarise what Randy Thompson of Sycamore says in this link here.
He says that the Federal Government has reached beyond the remit of the constitution. It is time to remove the departments that are not a part of the constitution and by doing so save enormous amounts of money. Many of these departments create regulations that restrict businesses' production and raise costs.
All of this is true. But what are these departments? Things like the Food and Drug Administration. Without these costly regulations manufacturers would be able to make much more profit by selling unfit food, adulterating food and drugs and snake oil merchants would prosper selling their cures for AIDS and cancer.
Transportation too. If the hours that truckers worked weren't regulated then they could continue driving all day and night and save their bosses a lot of money. And there would be none of those vehicle recalls so saving the car companies a lot of money not having to put things right.
The Department of Agriculture does a lot of research into plant health and pest control. They try to prevent diseases from entering the country. They also maintain food standards. It would save the farmers a lot if their mouldy meat could go into burgers uninspected.
It would be much cheaper to extract coal and minerals without environmental controls. Just strip the soil, dig out the stuff and leave the waste in a big heap. Drain the toxic water from the workings into the nearest river and forget about it.
And let the banks and car industries look after themselves. Billions of tax payers' money spent on propping up the banks could have been saved by letting the banks collapse. Millions of people would have lost everything but it would be constitutional. Ironically, it was the lax regulations that Randy wants that lead directly to the banking meltdown so better regulation would have saved billions.

To summarise, many of these departments are there to ensure that the people get a fair deal where it comes to goods, services, prices and standards and protection against hazards like pollution.

If you really want to save money look at the enormous military budget. Not going to war would save a lot. Also look at the aid to Israel. The USA supports Israel regardless of Israel's actions and then Americans wonder why arabs don't like them any more. The USA should put much more pressure on Israel to behave and improve conditions for the Palestinians. If Israel wants to continue building on occupied land then I'd suggest removing the billions of aid that they get each year.