Who's The Biggest Insider Traders In The Country?

How well do you know the stock market? I'll bet you don't know it as well as your Congressman or Senators do. Rare indeed is the politician who leaves Washington poorer than when he got there. One of the reasons is that they're allowed to buy and sell stocks in companies who have legislation that they will vote on in committee and on the floor that will affect the company's bottom lines. See if company 'A' wants more leniency in regulations, as an example, and your Congressman sits on the committee that will decide on that issue, why, Mr Congressman can buy a bunch of stock if he thinks his vote will help the company make more profit. That or sell stock if his vote will hurt. It's what we call a stacked deck in the parlance of a gambler. Now, not long ago, Congress passed laws stopping administration officials from taking advantage of this type of insider trading. But somehow it just slipped their minds to stop themselves from this kind of stock transaction. See Congress called it insider information trading and barred it. But they don't consider it insider trading when it comes down to themselves. For themselves and their families, it's more a case of informed investing. Like any good and smart investor who researches a company before investing. Congress doesn't research a company. They research what companies they will be voting on. How come they can get away with this kind of stuff? They can get away with it because they voted to allow themselves to do it. Or rather they didn't vote on it at all thereby allowing them to continue the practice. It's all very legal. It's all on the up and up, so long as it's legal. And it's legal until Congress makes it illegal. Any guess on when that'll be?

What's Wrong With Us?

The question remains, do tax cuts equate to improved jobs pictures or higher earnings or debt reduction? Well, not according to IRS figures as well as other reports. If you take 2001as a base, because it was a recession year and the first year of the Bush tax cuts, and compare it with 2011, a decade later, you find there are fewer jobs, substantially lower income per capita and far higher debt. Of course we need to remember in the intervening years we've fought two wars on credit and we've gone through an expansion of shifting jobs overseas. Unfortunately it hasn't been just the low skill jobs that left. Many if not most jobs that left were higher skilled. What it all boils down to is that we've been trying the Trickle Down Theory off and on  for thirty to forty years. It hasn't worked. We've tried lower taxes and lower interest rates for a decade. They haven't worked. We need to try something different. It's time to start looking at a trickle up theory. Let's give some breaks to the poor and middle class for a change and let the rich pick up the tab. If the interest rates go up, it'll help savings. If taxes go up for the rich, maybe they'll finally understand what it's like to be forced to do without. If job creators ship jobs overseas, let's tax the products when they come back. Lets not make it so easy to ship those jobs out. If the job creators decide to move their families and wealth overseas, let's confiscate everything they left behind and confiscate anything they ever send back. I think we could develop a whole new generation of job creators right here, without those that left. When times are hard, like now, ya gotta get tough with them. And anyway, it's not the job creators so much as it is the politicians  that caused these problems. Maybe an alternative solution would be to ship the politicians overseas.

A Tax Nobody Has To Pay.

Wow! Now there's a really novel idea. Pay for a war with cash. Why, we haven't ever done anything like that for over 11 years and two wars. But here we are, with Senator Patrick Leahy making a suggestion that we pay for any military action we might take in the future. Nothing on the past 11 years. Like providing air support for Syria's freedom fighters. So if we decide to send fighter bombers and all the rest that goes with them over there, we gotta pay for it? Either that or send a bill to the folks we're supporting. With the expectation of having the bill get paid. If not, then we gotta pay for it. In cash! No more wars on credit? No more gold card? No more frequent flier miles for the war effort? How in the world would we pay for something as expensive as a war, or conflict or action? Taxes. Wantta keep us out of all wars? Make it automatic that taxes go up with no relief from it by congressional or presidential action. Can you imagine Grover Norquist allowing even a single engine Piper Cub to fly over a neighborhood argument? I mention him because without his express permission, nobody raises any taxes. But see, this should be acceptable to him because no taxes are actually being levied. Just a promise that if we don't behave, we'll be taxed. If he got worried about any conflict anywhere in the world, he might call for disbanding our Air Force. That would stop us from joining in on the fun of a war. And if things really got going hot and heavy somewhere, he might call for disbanding the Navy. Maybe even the Army and Marines. Just expand the Coast Guard. But no taxes. Yes, I can see definite advantages in a law like this. No more lost lives of young Americans. I think it would be worth a try. How about you?

Is The Answer The Truth?

Have ya ever listened to politician's answers to questions they would rather not answer. That's exactly right. They don't answer the question. It takes a real politician to talk for fifteen minutes without answering the question. Now if you were to ask me what the price of gas is today and I told you to go down three blocks, turn left, go two blocks and turn right, it's the second house on the left, you'd probably get the idea that I didn't want to give you a straight answer. Either that or I didn't understand the question. But we all know that politicians fully understand the question. We're just all surprised that they just don't lie about it. I mean, let's face it, they're more than willing to lie about their opponent. Or at least they're more than willing to have their SuperPac lie about the opponent. Why is it that real, honest, truthful, answers are so hard to come by. You'd think that a person who wants you to vote for him or her, would want to be square with you. If I wanted you to join my club, it just wouldn't be smart of me to tell you the club was exclusively for golfers. Especially if it was a church prayer circle. It wouldn't take long for you to get the idea that I might have misrepresented the club's goals. Just a tad, mind you, but misrepresented just the same. But why do politicians stumble over the truth? Do you suppose it's in their genes to lie? Or are they waiting for that SuperPac to pick up the ball and score one. What if it was the law that politicians had to tell the truth? What if they had to produce the proof of the truth before they could state it? Oh, I suppose we'd never find enough people to run for all the offices.

How To Understand Our Constitution.

Here's to the Constitution nobody believes in. Ya think I'm wrong? Well how come both the left and the right love to quote the Constitution and call upon the Constitution in order to prove and defend their competing ideologies. See if you read only those sections of the Constitution that agree with you're own ideas of how to run a country and ignore anything that disagrees with you, then you don't understand the concept. The founding fathers we so proudly hold up as being perfect, were actually closer to perfection than we'd like. By that I mean they were able to see the good in both sides of many issues. They decided to be fair to everyone. Not just to you're way of thinking, but to many ways of thinking. See, you're way of looking at an issue only represents about a third of the people and their way of thinking. In other words, you're in the minority. And in a fair and honest process, you lose. Or you would except the other two groups are about evenly divided. What you need to do is get one of the other groups to agree with you. Either that or you need to agree with one of the other groups. That or, perish the thought, compromise. See that's the beauty of our Constitution. It makes it easy to compromise to get things done. There is another way, that's to try to force a group to agree with you, but that's not allowed in our Constitution. So if you think the Constitution was written by someone exactly like you, you don't understand the Constitution. That puts you in an alien group of misfits.

Who's Keeping My Brother?

Hey! How's your neighbor doin? Got enough to eat lately, has he? Come to think of it, just how many neighbors do you have anyway? They tell me there are seven billion people on earth these days and that figure is growing by 77 million a year. So let me ask again, How's your neighbor doin? See, they claim that 850 million of your neighbors go to bed hungry. Every night. Of the year. Now if that ain't bad enough, another billion don't get sufficient nutrition. Some other problems they're facing are enough potable water to go around for drinking. Then there's the shortage of water for agriculture in large areas of the world. Of course that only means a shortage of food. Which accounts for the 850 million hungry people. And the one billion under-nourished too, come to think of it. Then again, in some parts of the world, we throw out food that's nearing an expiration date. Here's another thing to consider; by 2050, there'll be nine billion people on earth. Now, it's not that the earth can't provide for that many people, it's just that there aren't enough people on earth concerned enough to do what needs to be done to accomplish it. Ya see, it's that old game of "I've got mine, that's all I care about" attitude. Seriously, why should I care about the other guy. He means nothing to me, right? They claim that wars, in the not too distant future, will be fought over water and arable land. Land that can grow food. So while a population twice the size of America goes hungry every night, here in America, we can't even agree on what's good for our planet. Which is better for the people, clean water and air or more products and more pollution? You could argue that more products means more jobs. But then more pollution means more premature deaths. Maybe that's the hope. Ya gotta love em.

Hey! I Know That Gun!

Did you know there is a way to identify a firearm that's used in the commission of a crime? Did you know that the technology for it has been around since the 90s? Now the next question's a little trickier. Do you know who's against using this technology? Well yes, of course, the people who commit those crimes are against using that technology, but do you know who else? Gun makers are against it. Them and of course the NRA. Gun makers claim it would be very expensive to do what is necessary. Basically what happens is the guns would have micro engraving on the firing pin. A number code. A different one for each gun. Now it's such an expensive deal that the government has been stamping sequential numbers on paper money for decades, probably more than a century. That part of the technology is somewhat understood. Making it small enough is the newer technique. So now do you wonder why the NRA is against the idea? I mean I understand why the gun manufacturers don't like it. There are some costs involved and no manufacturer likes increased costs. But why the NRA? Well it's not so hard to understand if you stop to realize that the major portion of the NRA's income comes from gun manufacturers. So if Remington, a major gun manufacturer, says they don't like this idea, which they have said to the point of threatening New York of quiting the state if it passed such legislation, why then, if companies like Remington and others don't like it, then the NRA doesn't like it. Never mind that the NRA, National Rifle Association, is an organization which claims to be the supporter of sportsmen. It is in effect a lobbying arm of the firearms industry, not at all interested in the best interests of sportsmen, except as the two interests intersect. Hey, they publish a sportsman's magazine, isn't that enough? Of course there's lots of gun makers ads in it.