Thursday, December 10, 2009

Obama Looks at Change From Both Sides Now

Yahoo! carries this headline: "Obama defends US Wars as He Accepts Nobel". The Norwegians seem to have taken an interest in US Politics. They gave the once-prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to Democratic Party politician Al Gore, who has gone around the world preaching falsified research in order to encourage adoption of a pollution trading scheme that will benefit himself personally. Now they give it to another Democratic Party partisan, Barack Obama, who lied to his followers and told them that he opposed the wars, and now he defends them, preaching the classical Orwellian saws "war is peace" and "change is stability".

Last year no one would listen to me when I called Obama a cheap Chicago politician with extremist left wing views. Now, that he is president, I will refrain from name-calling. Rather, let us view the Nobel Peace prize as a dead letter, much like the socialism of its administrators.

AP on Yahoo! writes:

"And yet Obama was staying here only about 24 hours, skipping a slew of Nobel activities. This miffed some in Norway but reflects a White House that sees little value in extra pictures of the president, his poll numbers dropping at home, taking an overseas victory lap while thousands of U.S. troops prepare to go off to war and millions of Americans remain jobless.

"Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on the use and prevention of war. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks — at about 4,000 words — were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address."

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Town of Olive Bank Statements, 9-30-09

Through a freedom of information law request I obtained the Town of Olive's bank statements. I had written the request about six weeks before the election in early November and Sylvia Rozelle, the Town Clerk, handed me the statements about 10 days after the election.

Notice that taxes are collected in January, so about 9 of 12 months or 75% of the year had gone by when these balances occurred. With a quarter of the year left, the Town had the following balances:

$1,044,475.38
880,511.51
393,626.14
115,170.24
201,267.64
4,758.24
-----------
$2,441,541.51

The 2000 Census found that the Town of Olive had a population of 4,579, according to Wikipedia. Thus, the Town had about $533 for every man, woman and child. That's probably more than many could afford to save because of all the taxes that they're paying to the Town. Total spending is about $4.3 million, according to the Olive Press so the cash balance is 2.4/4.3 = 55.8% of spending when 25% of the year was left. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party chose to raise taxes by over 6%.













Bankruptcy Court Should Appoint Glenn Beck Editor of LA Times

PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
December 9, 2009

Honorable Kevin J. Carey, Chief Judge
c/o David D. Berg, Clerk of Court
United States Bankruptcy Court
824 North Market Street 3rd Floor
Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Dear Judge Carey:

I urge you to consider requiring a shift in the editorial policy of the Los Angeles Times and other of the Tribune Co. newspapers, which I understand are currently being reorganized under chapter 11 in your court. Part of the reason for the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy is the LA Times’s one-sided ideological approach. Although a significant percentage of the Los Angeles population is Republican, the LA Times is extremely biased in a left-wing way, far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This contributes to the circulation declines. To reverse that, a more even handed editorial policy is required. To accomplish the mainstream approach, Glenn Beck ought to be appointed editor-in-chief of the LA Times in place of Russ Stanton.

I took an interest in this subject this morning because I saw an article by one of the LA Times’s reporters, James Rainey. Mr. Rainey claims that a conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck, is unethical for advocating investment in gold while he owns gold. Yet, the LA Times may have advocated investment in stock, when its ill fated employee stock ownership plan held stock in trust for Mr. Rainey and the editorial staff. Likewise, an investigation may reveal that the LA Times has published columns recommending long term investment in stocks when its publisher, Sam Zell, owned stock. Thus, Mr. Rainey is so biased that he may have inadvertently accused his own firm and its former owner of unethical conduct.

Gaffes like this have become so common among the American newspapers that many conservatives, such as myself, have stopped reading them. Naturally, this contributes to their declining circulation and loss of advertising revenue. Perhaps if Mr. Rainey and his editor, Russ Stanton, acted as journalists rather than pamphleteers for the feudalistic left, the LA Times would have a circulation above one million.

I would suggest that to make the LA Times and the Tribune Company more competitive that you ask Glenn Beck to become editor in chief. You will notice that Fox News, which is not the New York Times in terms of content but is much fairer and does not aim to serve as pamphleteer for the left wing of the Democratic Party as do the LA Times and the New York Times, has been outselling the other networks and the entire newspaper industry. Why not call Mr. Beck and ask him to help?

Why allow badly educated reporters like Mr. Rainey to continue to abuse shareholders and investors?

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com

James Rainey and Glenn Beck

I just wrote this e-mail to Jim Rainey of the LA Times.

>Dear Mr. Rainey: I am curious if there has been a single conservative of whom you have had much that is positive to say? If so, please do tell who that person is. I will search your writing on him and post the history on my blog. Thanks, Mitchell Langbert.

Rainey accuses Glenn Beck of unethical conduct in advocating gold. This accusation misconstrues the reasoning behind prohibition of insider trading. Insider trading can exist only where there is a fiduciary duty to shareholders. It emanates from the duty insiders have to protect them. If insiders divulge information that artificially inflates the stock price temporarily, this can hurt the shareholders. Thus, insider trading is illegal.

But to say that an announcer should be prohibited from advocating an asset class, especially where he divulges publicly that he holds that asset, is ridiculous. This is what Mr. Rainey incompetently claims. There is no such thing as insider trading with respect to gold. There is no fiduciary duty to a metal.

The history of media attitudes toward gold has largely been one of lying and deception, in particular pandering to Wall Street, and Mr. Rainey appears to be no exception.

Wall Street dislikes gold for several reasons. First, Wall Street profits handily from the Federal Reserve paper money system. This is because the present value of expected dividends is increased by reductions in interest rates (increases in the money supply), a policy that the Fed has relentlessly pursued since the 1930s. Second, increases in the money supply are handed first to Wall Street via the money center banks. The subsequent circulation of money around the economy then increases prices. This transfers wealth from consumers to Wall Street, a policy that the New York Times has long advocated. Thus, academic and media sources, to include William Greider in his book Secrets of the Temple, advocate the central bank. But they do so by insisting that the paper money system helps the poor. As Karl Popper pointed out in Open Society and Its Enemies, lying about altruism has long been a tactic of collectivists. Thus, pro-Wall Street feudalistic "progressives" pretend to object to increases in income inequality and stagnant real wages, both of which are direct products of the monetary system that they advocate, including Mr. Rainey's LA Times.

Thus, in 1999 and 2000 Mr. Rainey's LA Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Television and other Wall Street/Democratic Party inflationists were touting Internet and technology stocks, right before they fell by 80%. Do you want to take Mr. Rainey's advice given that his employer has been wrong almost every time?

Now, Mr. Rainey and his socialist-for-the-rich comrades attack gold. Rainey's article is rife with the kind of lying and double talk that has always characterized the Wall Street/Democratic Party media: the claim that there is such a thing as an "expert" in investing, for instance. Did this expert tell Mr. Rainey to invest in gold in 2001 and make him rich? Or did Mr. Rainey follow the LA Times's own repeatedly incompetent advice and invest in stocks in 1999 and 2008?

Rainey writes:

"When first confronted with the suggestion he might have a conflict of interest last week, Beck responded in characteristic fashion."

I am curious what that conflict of interest would be. Mr. Beck appears to say that he favors buying gold, and he has bought gold. He has announced this to the public. There is no conflict. He is doing what he says. If he were selling gold and telling people to buy it I would have questions. But is every single announcer on television who says that they think the stock market will go up and holds stocks unethical? Or is Mr. Rainey a biased, incompetent clown?