Friday, March 06, 2009

Cap and Trade Is a Tax

WSJ reported "The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It's opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate."
Precisely. It is about wealth transfer, and making everyone dependant on Big Government.
Truth is, any cap-and-trade system is a tax, even if Mr. Obama's plan has only started to force business proponents to admit it. The government sets a cap on how much greenhouse gas can be emitted annually. Companies buy and sell permits that allow them to emit. Customers bear the price of those permits.

But the political question was always how that first batch of permits would end up with companies. Corporate support rested on the belief they'd be "allocated," for free.
Nothing is free.
This would allow them to delay the day when they'd have to pass costs on to consumers, and ignore, for now, the "tax" question. It didn't take long for the pols to figure out they could auction off permits and spend the loot.
Tax and Spend.
President Obama's auction bonanza would earn the feds $650 billion in 10 years, according to the administration's budget estimate -- and that's a low, low, low estimate.

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AIG "Was Going to Bring Down Europe"

CNBC reported The U.S. government rescued giant insurer American International Group in part because its collapse would dramatically hurt European banks,
Then why should we bail it out. Why didn't the EU do it?
a senior Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday. The U.S. government has bailed out AIG three times since Sept. 16 and committed about $180 billion to keep the insurer alive and doing business.
If it is in that bad a sape it needs bankruptcy, just like GM
"One of the reasons we had to rescue AIG was the fact that it was going to bring down Europe," Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski told reporters after his subcommittee held a hearing on systemic risk.

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$4 trillion poker game

Times Online reported In his first month in office he has pushed through an unprecedented $787 billion economic stimulus package,
Not to stimulate the economy, but the Democratic Party's sources for campaign donations.
announced plans to save the car industry,
By preventing the one thing that could save it: the clensing fire of Chapter 11 bankrupcy
stabilize the stricken banking sector
And give the criminals bonuses rather than sending them to prison.
and stem the flood of home repossessions.
Making people who bought houses they can afford also pay for the houses of people that bought houses they knew they could not afford.
Then came his near-$4-trillion budget last week. It is a manifesto to usher in a new age of government activism that involves levels of borrowing and spending never before seen in the US
As the Democrats seek to make everyone dependent on the government.
and is a document of such staggering ambition and risk that even some of Mr Obama's Democratic supporters are suddenly beginning to feel a little queasy.
They did not realize what he really intended.
A keen poker player, Mr Obama is gambling not only his own presidency, but the future wellbeing of the country. If he pulls it off, they might find room for him on Mount Rushmore.
I doubt they would throw him off there. Maybe just some time in prison.
If he fails, he could bankrupt the world's largest economy.
Which is exactly what he wants.
.... What was most striking about the budget - including that it will explode the federal deficit to $1.75trillion this year, its highest since the Second World War - was that it was a ruthless declaration of how Mr Obama intends fundamentally to change the American social contract, from Right to Left.
Like any coup leader.
Its goal is not just to rescue the economy. It is to crush conservatism,
And anyone else that opposes him.
end the age of anti-tax, anti-regulation policies that have been the guiding philosophies of US governance for a generation,
And that made us the world's only super power.
and usher in a fresh “epoch”, as his aides call it, of New Deal-Great Society wealth redistribution and central intervention
And make everyone dependent on the government for everything.
that were repudiated by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.

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Rev. Wright Cautions: Obama 'Ain't Jesus'

FOXNews reported President Barack Obama's longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, gave an assessment Thursday of his former congregant's short time in the White House: Obama is just like any other president.
Name any other President that has spent so much of our children and grandchildren's money in the first 40 days of his administration that they may never pay it off. And all to make sure the Democrats never lose power.
.... "He's like any other president," Wright said. "He's a politician and he's got to do what politicians do."
Get reelected.
During his address, Wright cautioned against putting too much faith in Obama.
My faith is in God, and in His son Jesus Christ.
"Barack's name ain't Jesus.
Was there any question about that? Satan, possibly. The AntiChrist, possibly. But most likely just another corrupt politician that has too many people fooled.
Barack ain't gonna improve your child's reading score.
He is going to make it worse, because of his support for the Teacher's Unions.
There are things we've got to do on our own," he said.

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"Carbon Cap-And-Trade" a double tax on consumers

Tulsa Today reported An unnamed industry group and Chicago market-trader friends of President Obama are reportedly encouraging Congress to impose a “carbon cap-and-tax-and-tax” plan on its own customers, a plan that would dramatically raise energy prices in the midst of an economic recession, the Congress of Racial Equality charged in a national speech.
And all because of the fake "Global Warming" (when the globe has experienced level or lowering temperatures for the past 10 years).
“Our sources on Capitol Hill tell me that a small handful of energy industry insiders
Who want to profiteer off of the suffering of Americans.
are working with a small handful in Congress to push policies that are extraordinarily anti-consumer and anti-affordable energy,” said Niger Innis, National Spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, in a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee recently.

“This group is reportedly trying to cut a backroom deal with Democratic leaders to force on consumers not only a carbon cap-and-tax scheme,
Unneeded
but a carbon tax on top of that,” Innis said. “Now, let me repeat this so you all understand: this industry association is asking Democratic leaders to impost a ‘carbon cap-and-tax-and-tax’ on its own customers.”
And it may do it, so that it can get control of more of our economy.
"This is an outrage on so many levels it makes your head spin,” Innis said. “This comes from an industry sector that has a reputation for providing some of the lowest cost power in America. This comes at a time when this group’s customers can barely afford their current utility bills.”

“Proposals like this threaten to light the fires of a consumer revolt aimed at industry – instead of a revolt that should be aimed at those extremists who want to see energy prices go up,”
And particularly at Congress that might let them do it.
Innis warned.

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Thursday, March 05, 2009

Folder Marker

I discovered a very useful program. I got Version 2.1 free from Giveaway of the Day, but Folder Marker only costs Price: $19.95, and I feel it is well worth the price. Version 3 looks like it has some useful additional features (many publishers give away the old version of their product on GotD to introduce people to the new one), and I may well buy the new one.
I have a number of folders on my hard drive under "don", but I use three of them a lot more than the other ones: _Tulsa_High_Tech (which I have an underscore as the first character, to put it at the top), apcug, and cartoons. I used Folder Marker to color them, and they stand out from the rest.

Under _Tulsa_High_Tech the current and next month folders for TulsaHighTech are the most important.

Here you see another trick I used to use before discovering Folder Marker. The most important folder is 200904, since the March issue has already been published, and I am working on the April issue, and I have dummy (empty) folders 200903_____ and 200904_____, so 200904 stands out. Next month I will rename 200903_____ to 200905_____, so that 200905 will stand out between 200904_____ and 200905_____.
In APCUG the things I am currently working on the most are

_presentation (working on my presentation for the APCUG/FACUG Spring Conference March 13, 14 & 15), backend (processing the Asentus reports for that conference, and Live Meeting (I am presenting weekly Live Meeting Training sessions and working on processing the recordings of Live Meetings).

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Sunday, March 01, 2009

TulsaHighTech

A year ago we tried to get a tabloid newspaper called TulsaHighTech going, to support all user groups in the area, but we could not find enough people willing to help us distribute it. We have been persuaded to convert it to a Web-Only publication, and we did so in February.

The March issue of TulsaHighTech has been posted at http://tulsahightech.com, which will redirect you to the proper URL for your screen resolution. There is a PDF which you can download, or you can read individual articles on line.

The articles are listed by category: Beginner (8 articles), Education (6 articles), Community Service (3 articles), and Advanced (7 articles).

The purpose of Tulsa High Tech is to provide a clearing house for what is happening in the area of High Technology in the Tulsa Area, including education, seminars and workshops, blogging, exhibits, manufacturing, and anything else we can think of. In addition to providing access to class schedules, listings of various groups, and product reviews we intend to cover the human interest side of IT. We will feature profiles of instructors, community service projects, etc.

If you would like to have your user group included on a list of area User Groups, please send me the name of your group, web address, meeting time and location, and email addresses for officers.

If you would like to have news of your group included each month, send me what you did last month, and what you plan to do next month. I need to have this by the 15th of each month (absolutely no later than the 20th of each month.)

And if any of your members would like to write technical articles on some aspect of your subject, please send them to me.

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