Weee! Free Lunch for ME!!

"I never thought this day would happen. I won’t have to work on puttin’ gas in my car. I won’t have to work at payin’ my mortgage.

You know. If I help him [Obama], he’s gonna help me."

So says another over entitled Obamoron who thinks her Sugar Daddy will rain money on her in exchange for her vote. Where will it come from? She doesn't know or care that it will come from her fellow citizens through legalized robbery. Obviously she also (unsurprisingly) doesn't know that The One's numbers don't even come close to adding up and that he would have to impose massive tax increases on everyone in order to pay for even half of his promises.

If Obama is elected how will her life change? Well it wont. She might get a pittance more in handouts designed to be just enough to keep her poor. Just enough to sap her and her child of ambition and opportunity. And there will be plenty enough new taxes to drive capital, investments and jobs elsewhere.

We've seen this movie and the remakes many times in many places. The ending is always the same.

"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head." Eric Hoffer

The Price Gouging Myth

Boortz has a good column that describes the destructiveness of emotionally appealing but woefully ignorant price gouging laws:

"...nearly 200 gas stations in Atlanta are being investigated
for price gouging. Don’t investigate them! Reward them!
Price gouging is exactly what we need! It should be encouraged, not
investigated. "

The Laws of Supply and Demand are just that, laws. Not theories or suggestions, but laws. Like the Laws of Gravity, they apply in every situation, not just when it's convenient or only to those things people don't "need".

The Left's Housing Dreams

Another Institution that receives a lot of contempt from the Left is the middle class suburb. It really bothers them that the bourgeoisie continues to escape dysfunctional cities for a better quality of life and a piece of American land. They also get tired of paying big tax bill and high prices to support bloated governments and parasites.

Here's an example of some dishonest wishful thinking on that score:

CBS correspondent Ben Tracy said. “But now the triple threat of falling
home values, empty nesters returning to the city and sky-high gas prices is
driving suburbia to the brink. Some developments are left half-built, while
other homes look abandoned. Demand for suburban housing is dropping so fast that
a recent study predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million
large-lot homes in suburban areas.”

But
according to the Orlando Sentinel, the man who made that prediction – Arthur C.
Nelson of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute – says the surplus could range from 3 million homes to 22 million home. The
“Evening News” didn’t mention the low end of Nelson’s prediction...

...Tracy based his assertions on the writings of James Howard Kunstler, an
author who told “Evening News” that he thinks “the project of suburbia is over.”
However, Kunstler also has peddled other doom-and-gloom scenarios that didn’t
come true, including cataclysmic failures surrounding Y2K and the Dow Jones
Industrial Index (DJIA) crashing to
4,000 by the end of 2005.

“Author
James Howard Kunstler has been predicting the decline of the suburbs for more
than 15 years,” Tracy said. “He says housing far away from job centers
won’t survive.”

That assumes incorrectly that the job centers will remain in the cities. They're not. Modern technology freed many people and businesses from the need to be on top of one another and suburbs are still growing as a result. Obviously these geniuses haven't travelled the Rte. 128 and 495 corridors in Massachusetts, Silicon Valley, Plano, Tyson's Corner or any of the dozens of major suburban business centers throughout the country.

“We’ve put so much of our national wealth and even our identity into the idea
of suburbia that we can’t imagine having to let go of it or substantially change
it,” Kunstler said.'

That could only happen through government force. Since World War II, Americans have voted with their feet in huge numbers, despite an all out assault on development by Eco-Marxists with "smart growth" policies, planning commissions and other economic anchors.

No blatant media bias would complete without the obligatory over the top predictions:

“It sounds hard to believe, but some experts are now predicting that this could
be the beginning of the end of suburbia – that far-flung neighborhoods like this
one could be tomorrow’s slums,” Tracy said...“A dream abandoned miles away now
beginning to fade,” Tracy concluded.

Another economic ignoramus heard from. No one's going to abandon an attractive housing option just because there's a current excess supply. Prices drop, pent up demand grows and whatever is available will be absorbed. And a lot faster than many would have you believe.

Congress Moves to Do Nothing on Oil

First it was the Oil company profits, then it was OPEC. Speculators are the latest scapegoat offered to the ignorant masses in order to cover up congress' incompetence and cowardice.

On Tuesday, Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, called that "excessive, relentless speculation."
In 2000, 37 percent of the people in the oil futures market were speculators, Dorgan said. Now, speculators make up 71 percent of the market.
"They've broken the market," Dorgan said.

The fact that more investors are participating in the market has nothing to do with the current price spike. If anything, it reflects increasing investor recognition of underlying supply and demand issues economic idiots like Dorgan continue to ignore. Futures speculators can make just as much money betting the market will go down as up. Additionally, the purchase of a contract requires a seller. That seller is obviously standing pat on the current price. Further, the fact that most of the new money in oil futures is coming from pension funds and other large investment pools is obviously lost on congressional demagogues.

Harry Reid complains about Republicans coming to their senses:

"Forty-seven different Republican senators have spoken at one time or another on the need to do something about speculation," Reid said. "That was before they heard from the oil companies, and I guess some people on Wall Street.
"Now, suddenly, they don't think speculation's a big deal."


The Horror! You mean Republicans listened to the people who actually do this for a living? How dare they? Don't they understand that facts get in the way of Democrats no growth Euro-Socialist agenda?

One of things Republicans heard was this:

"Yes, speculation is a big deal, said Sen. John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, but he warned that curbing speculation in the United States could mean that foreign markets will take over."

That's right. Democrats either don't understand or don't care that oil is traded on futures markets throughout the world and that hamstringing American trading will just chase capital to friendlier places.

Then we have the venal T. Boone Pickens mucking up the conversation with his dishonest promotion of wind power that is really designed to protect and expand the publicly funded subsidies and tax breaks for his huge investment in that technology.

Another Senate panel heard Tuesday from Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens. He warned lawmakers that the smart response to the oil price shock is not to drill more, but to expand solar and wind power.

And when congress listens to a real expert and economist like Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, they just stick their fingers in their ears and shout "la la la":

Bernanke: Another concern that has been raised is that financial speculation has added markedly to upward pressures on oil prices. Certainly, investor interest in oil and other commodities has increased substantially of late. However, if financial speculation were pushing oil prices above the levels consistent with the fundamentals of supply and demand, we would expect inventories of crude oil and petroleum products to increase as supply rose and demand fell. But in fact, available data on oil inventories show notable declines over the past year.

Then a Democrat asks for advice he can ignore:

Question from Senator Tom Carper (D-DE): "The third factor that we keep coming back to is the role that speculation is playing. We've touched on this at least indirectly here today. Just give us some advice. I think we're going to debate -- seriously debate, probably before the beginning of next month, legislation dealing with speculation to try to curb the excesses that may be occurring there. If you could give us some advice, it would be timely and much appreciated."

Bernanke:

Well, I think, as I said, based on the evidence that's available, I would not estimate that speculation or particularly manipulation is a significant part of the rise in oil prices. That said, the CFTC and others are looking at the data and trying to evaluate that. These are very difficult matters. We don't want to do anything that will stop the futures markets from having their legitimate functions, serving their legitimate functions of providing liquidity and hedging.
So, you know, my advice would be to go slow and carefully and to take the insights that you get from the CFTC and others who are directly -- associated directly overseeing these activities. I would -- despite the concerns -- and I fully understand the concerns about high gas prices -- I don't think it's likely that you can have a big effect on gas prices with short-term moves in the futures markets. And I would urge careful and deliberate action in this area.

Mel Martinez, the feckless and pusillanimous GOP Senator from my state obviously doesn't like what he's hearing. So he'll rephrase the question, hoping for a different answer:

And a question from Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL): "I wonder if you might dwell just for a moment on the speculation side as to why you don't see that as a fundamental part of the problem, but then also what we could do to be more helpful in the area of transparency and oversight."

Bernanke:
Well, there would be -- there are a number of pieces of evidence against the view that speculation is a primary force. I mention in my testimony the absence of hoarding or inventories that you would expect to see if speculation was driving prices above the supply/demand equilibrium. There are a number of studies which show that there is little or no connection between the open interest taken by noncommercial traders in futures markets and the movement -- subsequent movements in prices. It's also interesting to note that there are many commodities, or at least some commodities, that are not even traded on futures markets, like iron ore, for example, which have had very large increases in prices. So I think the evidence is terribly weak.

In short, we have a corrupt, incompetent and craven congress holding the future of our economy and national security in their hands, doing everything in their power to stand in the way of the people's economic and political needs and desires. They can try to place blame wherever they want, but they and the thinking American public know exactly where it belongs.