Dan Scott

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When the cure is worse than the disease

April 30, 2008 by 3 Comments

-By Dan Scott

In my last article I ended with mentioning that there will be increased Ethanol mandates on top of the absurdity of the failed government policy on electric generation. The current run up in food prices is devastating to the world’s poor. How else does one explain the food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Bangladesh? Are they so far away that it is easy for us to ignore, play ignorant or the part we played in it? We are looking at the beginning of a huge humanitarian crisis of epic proportions if ethanol mandates and subsidies are not immediately suspended.

Low global wheat stocks, coupled with the emergence of a virulent crop disease, are threatening the world’s food supply, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer told food aid groups Wednesday.

“We have never been less secure about the near-term future of wheat,” he said. “Here in the United States it is our most basic crop with a farm gate value of $16 billion (€10 billion). Global wheat stocks are at an unprecedented historic 30-year low, and U.S. wheat stocks are at unprecedented 60-year low.”
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AGW insanity has reached new heights of absurdity

April 26, 2008 by

-By Dan Scott

Recently, President Bush has seemly signed onto the AGW bandwagon by giving it legitimacy. While his approach in elevating nuclear power as the solution to this non problem is rational from the energy independence, national security, foreign policy and balance of trade perspectives, no AGW promoter will sign on to such a solution. Not Al Gore, not Nancy Pelosi, not Harry Reid. There is a reason why no nuclear power plant has been built in the US since the Three Mile Island incident, which by the way no one was killed. The idea of nuclear power generation is dead in the US, even if the NRC grants the permits to build the power plants, the environmental lobby supported by their allies in the Democrat Party will tie up such permits with ceaseless litigation as they tried with the border fence. Department of Homeland Security played it’s trump card of the national security waiver to stop the environmental excuses. The result will be a minimum of 10 years (2018) before the first power plant comes on line if the power companies have deep enough pockets to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation costs.

Given the recent actions of State Power Commissions blocking numerous coal fired electric plants, the country will be faced with the harsh reality of soaring electric rates and soaring natural gas prices. Why soaring natural gas prices? The only alternative to nuclear and coal is the natural gas. Electrical power generation by natural gas is in direct competition with residential use for cooking, laundry and heating (space & water) in addition to general industry. The competition for this limited resource will spark price hikes just as in the 1970s since we are importing natural gas. This one – two punch on the consumer will condemn the economy to anemic growth rates indefinitely. The cost of electricity under this scenario will go up 5 fold by 2025. Take your current electric bill and multiply by 5, can you afford AGW?
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AGW insanity has reached new heights of absurdity

April 24, 2008 by 6 Comments

-By Dan Scott

Recently, President Bush has seemly signed onto the AGW bandwagon by giving it legitimacy. While his approach in elevating nuclear power as the solution to this non problem is rational from the energy independence, national security, foreign policy and balance of trade perspectives, no AGW promoter will sign on to such a solution. Not Al Gore, not Nancy Pelosi, not Harry Reid. There is a reason why no nuclear power plant has been built in the US since the Three Mile Island incident, which by the way no one was killed. The idea of nuclear power generation is dead in the US, even if the NRC grants the permits to build the power plants, the environmental lobby supported by their allies in the Democrat Party will tie up such permits with ceaseless litigation as they tried with the border fence. Department of Homeland Security played its trump card of the national security waiver to stop the environmental excuses. The result will be a minimum of 10 years (2018) before the first power plant comes on line if the power companies have deep enough pockets to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation costs.

Given the recent actions of State Power Commissions blocking numerous coal fired electric plants, the country will be faced with the harsh reality of soaring electric rates and soaring natural gas prices. Why soaring natural gas prices? The only alternative to nuclear and coal is the natural gas. Electrical power generation by natural gas is in direct competition with residential use for cooking, laundry and heating (space & water) in addition to general industry. The competition for this limited resource will spark price hikes just as in the 1970s since we are importing natural gas. This one – two punch on the consumer will condemn the economy to anemic growth rates indefinitely. The cost of electricity under this scenario will go up 5 fold by 2025. Take your current electric bill and multiply by 5, can you afford AGW?
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Preventing the Next Housing Bubble

April 5, 2008 by

-By Dan Scott

This is the second time since 1987 that the country faced the consequences of a housing bubble. Both times, home builders, local governments, speculators, lending institutions, and home owners were at the center of the problem. It seems like the Bush Administration’s response to is a bureaucratic fix to systemic problem leaving us with uncertain outcomes the next time around. Trust me, there will be a third housing bubble in the future as long as all the actors in this drama are not held accountable for their part. The failure to hold people accountable means a guarantee that they will act in the same way again given the opportunity in the future.

So who are the actors in this drama and what part did they play? Home builders, local government, speculators, mortgage lenders and home owners. Let’s examine each actor starting with home builders. The home builders naturally wanting to turn a profit by building homes in the most efficient and profitable means use economies of scale and thus propose developments or tracts of houses to ensure a steady stream of income. The benefits of a planned community certainly are good for the consumer in that groups of new houses support each other’s value and bring the overall housing stock more into line with the current building codes, safety and energy efficiency. The problem occurs when builders ignore the housing market trends and flood the market with so many new homes that sales of existing and new homes suffer. The first response of a builder to a softening housing market is not to build less houses but give larger discounts in order to keep up the sales volume. They engage in price cutting since the time horizon they are looking at discounts the long term housing inventory because they are so invested in the fallacy that extrapolation is prediction. The extrapolation fallacy always occurs when someone refuses to consider that factors outside of their control will change and that all things are not equal forever. How do you tell the operator of a well oiled machine they are doing everything right but their efforts are becoming self defeating? The market forces act to curb this fallacy with the cold dose of dropping sales. However, the home builder is not alone in this extrapolation fallacy, others willingly participate to maintain the inertia of growth to create a bubble.
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John McCain and the GOP

March 6, 2008 by

John McCain and the GOP
-By Dan Scott

As usual, we have heard far more about the rhetoric of Clinton and Obama than anything being said by the McCain or Huckabee. The MSM news blackout continues on what if anything the GOP is for or against. Nor have we heard anything from the House of Representatives all of whom come up for election every two years or from one third of the Senate that is also up for re-election. It seems the entire MSM attention is on Clinton and Obama as if that’s really all there is for the voters to consider. Sounds like some very long coattails to me.

After a review of McCain’s website and another issues oriented website called On the Issues, I have come to the firm conclusion that maybe the MSM is right to ignore the GOP entirely. They haven’t said anything compelling that hasn’t been said before nor is there any hint of leadership on where he intends to take the country. Yes, they say all the appropriate things about this and that, but leadership and vision is missing. Of course I got my GOP questionnaire asking me if I wanted Clinton as the next president and if I didn’t I needed to send them $80, 120 or $200 to defeat her. The gist of the entire GOP campaign strategy is vote for us if you don’t want Clinton. I don’t know about you but in my opinion, that’s more pathetic than the Democrat’s campaign slogan of “Change.”
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Taxation without Representation

March 1, 2008 by

-By Dan Scott

Before the founding of the Republic, the colonies were a source of income to the British Empire. Besides the profitable trade made by the various investment houses of England, the Empire shared in that trade via taxation. The principle interest of the colonies to the Empire was pure and simple how much money could be heaped into the Treasury. Nationalism had little to do with the expansion of the British Empire, this was the day of Mercantilism where wealth was gained in a zero sum game by one party at the expense of another. Nationalism was merely an excuse to get the peons to go along with the game. The practice of Mercantilism is where Colonialism got it’s bad name. As in all things, the point of amassing great wealth was not just for creature comforts but also for status. The Rulers of the Empire wore their wealth in their jewelry and crowns, the multiple castles and palaces and the size of their military to establish their status in the world. With status comes power, the point of power is the exercise thereof.

The Empire taxed all trade to and from the colonies to fill their coffers. When the Royalty of Europe were fighting amongst themselves, those coffers needed substantial sums and the colonies were forced to pay ever higher taxes to accommodate that need. Thus set the stage for the Boston Tea Party. The colonists had this notion that the point of taxation was for local use on things such as building roads, bridges, townhalls, schools, to employ the sheriffs and judges to keep order, etc. The colonists weren’t interested in funding some war 3000 miles away, they weren’t interested in status, theirs was a parochial view of government. In a live and let live atmosphere, raising taxes for things that didn’t concern them was an abuse as they didn’t have a say in those decisions leading to all the spending from the Treasury. It’s one thing to pay a tax when you may derive some benefit down the road, it is quite another thing to pay ever higher taxes because someone else is making the spending decision relegating you to being the piggybank with no say in the matter. The cry from the colonists was Taxation without Representation! If they were to pay taxes, they believed they had at least a right to participate in the decisions on why and how that money was to be spent. When the Empire refused to have colonial representation in Parliament, they paved the way to the US Revolution.
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A Failure of Leadership

February 24, 2008 by

-By Dan Scott

Now that we are fully into the election season, we hear again the Democrat Party mantra, Change. Change here euphemistically means a change in leadership in the Whitehouse from a Republican to a Democrat. So let’s recap Democrat leadership since November 2006 when they took over the Senate and House of Representatives.

The response from Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the liberal Democrat Party was opposition to any change in tactics in Iraq, in short, the status quo. The whole of the Democrat and MSM response has been their claims we must negotiate and pull out, let the UN handle foreign affairs. Negotiate with whom? Terrorists? Iran and Syria who supply the terrorists? Off went Nancy Pelosi to Syria. Now we hear both Democrat candidates sent off people to Syria again. If we and the Europeans can’t even get the Iranians to back off on reprocessing uranium for bomb making what makes anyone think they or their ally Syria will back off on terrorism? Who supplied Hezbollah with rockets and weapons to attack Israel and who resupplied them? That would be Iran via Syria.

Iran has a vested interest in the failure of Iraq as a Democracy. Success in Iraq both politically and economically highlights the failures of the Iranian government’s own domestic policies. What the Mullahs fear most is what happened in East Germany, you remember, the West Germans prospered under freedom, the East Germans stayed poor and got to watch it all through the fence. Most Iranians are poorer under the Mullahs than when the Shah was running Iran. Such a failure is truly staggering when you consider the Shah was deposed in 1979, almost 30 years ago. If Democrats were actually paying attention to the issues of the Middle East, they would clearly see the peril of the position they are advocating. Leadership after all involves educating oneself on the underlying facts of the situation to resolve a problem.
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IF I DID IT

February 14, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Dan Scott

I have touched upon a number of times ( Dan Scott Archives ) the issue of the de-selection process used by the Main Stream Media (MSM) in steering the public away from candidates they don’t want running for president against their preferred candidate. While many people would dismiss such views as conspiratorial or whining about their candidate not cutting the grade, we have a confirmation that this process does occur in the form of a Projection. For those unfamiliar with the psychological term – Projection, it is a behavior described as:

a. The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others b. The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/projection

people of what you did, wanted to do, thought of doing or are planning to do in order to misdirect that guilt from yourself.

Bill Press recently made an admission of how the steering process works as though this were a mea culpa from the MSM itself that everyone does it and it was done to all. However, sometimes a mea culpa is a clever form of Projection and if you are too clever you end up getting caught admitting to your behavior. Such was the case with Bill Press who was found to be associated with the Center for American Progress, a Clinton think tank! The fact that a Clinton gets more media exposure than other candidates has been documented by The Project for Excellence in Journalism as mentioned here.
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Sock Puppet for President

February 7, 2008 by 2 Comments

-By Dan Scott

Many of us feel disenfranchised by the clever manner in which the political process was manipulated for the 2008 presidential season. This was due to the front loading of states with liberal demographics and the MSM deselecting conservative candidates they didn’t like by not giving press coverage of the same quantity and quality as they did with very liberal candidates. A choice is not a choice when someone else makes the choices. Politicians and the liberal MSM engaged in deselecting viable candidates denying the public a real choice in whom they want to be President. This de-selection brings us full circle back to the days of the closed door brokering sessions of the power elites. The point of self governance is for the people to decide, not a small clique whose interests and agendas are better served by steering our choices. The first words of the Constitution says, “We the People”, not “We the elites know better, now shut up and do as we say.”

As dissatisfied as we are with the current selection, many of the more disgruntled among us who want to boycott the election are overlooking something very important. On occasion, politicians bend to the will of the People when they become very engaged on a specific issue. Politicians deign to the public in these matters since throwing a bone to them now and then keeps them thinking the politicians have finally got it and won’t pull another stunt. The problem is, the politicians do get it, that’s why they throw the bone, they are testing to see how engaged the public is on the issue. It seems that we have to be constantly on guard against politicians with agendas. You see, in order for politicians to advance their agendas they require our silence, our condoning of their actions. This is representation turned upside down in a Republic, the politician is supposed to represent the thinking of those who elected them. Gone are the days when we can complacently go about our business while expecting our public servants to do our bidding. Unfortunately, as long as they incrementally make changes (laws), the public doesn’t notice or doesn’t see the agenda for what it is until it’s too late. It’s only after the law is made, some people notice but not enough or all at once to make a difference. Arbitrarily not enforcing laws to advance an agenda also works the same way, illegal immigration is the example of this. This is how self governance is corrupted giving way to special interest groups backing politicians with their own agendas.
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Outing the MSM

February 3, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Dan Scott

For months now we watched and read stories from the Main Stream Media (MSM) the economy was in the tank, the wheels had or were coming off the economy and somehow to set this straight we needed the Democrats to take the Whitehouse and raise taxes. Today with the new preliminary release of the fourth quarter GDP (Gross Domestic Product) number for 2007 at 0.6%, we see no recession, but an indication of economic slowdown. Recession is defined as two consecutive negative GDP quarters. Here is the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report for the fourth quarter and 2007. http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2008/pdf/gdp407a.pdf The GDP increases have been positive for years. Is 0.6% a sign of the end of the world? What has record told us? Hint, look at the second quarter of 2007, page 6 Table 1. (If you want to see past years http://bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=1&FirstYear=2006&LastYear=2007&Freq=Qtr ) The GDP for the year 2007 is 2.2% is that bad? I don’t know about you but a $700 billion increase in GDP for all of 2007 is not bad since it is similar to 2006 in dollar terms. But that should be the point, isn’t it? The percentages don’t necessarily reflect the actual growth because percentages are relative to something. (http://bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&FirstYear=2006&LastYear=2007&Freq=Qtr )

Real GDP increased 2.2 percent in 2007 (that is, from the 2006 annual level to the 2007 annual level), compared with an increase of 2.9 percent in 2006.

The major contributors to the increase in real GDP in 2007 were personal consumption
expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential structures, and state and local government spending. These positive contributions were partly offset by decreases in residential fixed investment and in inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The deceleration in real GDP primarily reflected a larger decrease in residential fixed investment, a downturn in private inventory investment, and a deceleration in equipment and software that were partly offset by a deceleration in imports.

The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.7 percent in 2007, compared with an increase of 3.3 percent in 2006.
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Breast beating by the Conservatives

January 27, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Dan Scott

I hear a lot of breast beating by my fellow conservatives that with the last nationally recognized truly conservative candidate bowing out of the race that now we as a movement and a nation face rueful choices and consequences. With Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson bowing out this leaves only Alan Keyes as the lone conservative among the current candidates running for the Republican nomination for President. Unfortunately and it pains me to say it, Alan doesn’t have the executive experience or the national recognition needed to take up that banner. If Tom, Duncan and Fred represented the stalwart national face of conservatism, Alan represents the soul.

So where do we go from here, what are our choices? On one hand we see the Main Stream Media (MSM) has been successful at hoodwinking the electorate yet again by deselecting candidates they don’t want through negative or no press coverage. None of the four conservative candidates ever received the quantity and quality of press coverage collectively that Obama and Clinton have received individually let alone the other more liberal Republican candidates. We clearly under estimated the residual strength of the MSM, dying as they are in the ratings themselves. They may yet be successful in influencing the 2008 general election for the Dems but in doing so will equally share in the blame when failure occurs. However, we should not discount the positive effect of the alternative media, both radio and internet, in that had it not been for them, we would never have even heard of Tom, Duncan, Fred or Alan but for scant mention of their existence. What this tells us is the glass is neither half full or half empty, it means that the glass is currently too big! We need to continue with the successful strategy of outing the MSM every time they engage in propagandizing. Our efforts thus far have reduced the trust they usurpt through presumption and consequently the ratings they enjoyed at the expense of the public trust. A few more years of consistent chopping will fell this tree that has cast a shadow over the political arena in the debate of ideas. Remember it was the alternative media starting with Radio that gave the conservative cause a voice where none before existed due to the intolerance of the liberally controlled MSM.
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Me thinks there is a method to his madness

January 20, 2008 by

-By Dan Scott

It is hard to view world events, specifically the actions of Iran, and not conclude the leaders of Iran are insane. Why would they deliberately provoke potential military action by the US in view of what happened to Saddam in Iraq? Why are they still busily enriching uranium? Surely they recognize if the US decided to take military action, the outcome would not be in doubt. So why is Iran playing this game of brinksmanship?

Why take 15 British military personnel hostage, thus inviting a military response? Is it because they think nothing will come of it? Why is Iran engaging in provocative behavior with their speed boats near US Naval Ships in the Straights of Hormuz? Why is Iran ramping up supply of IEDs again in Iraq?

This is not the first time the Iranians have done this either. Given the British weak or less than robust response, one comes to the conclusion that the Iranians knew this would be result. Watching the Iranian’s actions toward, the British, the US or the UN reminds me of a dithering parent not able to maintain their parental authority or in this case respect of an unruly child. As any seasoned parent of children realizes, the child is testing the borders of how far they can go. A child’s internal personal self worth and security is determined by the firm boundaries a parent sets. In fact, when a child can not find the boundaries of parental authority, the child goes completely wild to their own detriment. One only needs to look to juvenile delinquency to see this. In Iran’s case, just as Saddam’s Iraq before them, they are testing the boundaries of international resolve. Saddam became wild and unruly precisely because he was allowed to misbehave too long.
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Do we really understand Democrats?

January 7, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Dan Scott

For all the troubles that are going on in the world today, does it not strike you as odd that the Democrat Party borders on isolationism to the point of being obtuse to world affairs? What do the Democrat candidates for president say regarding foreign policy? They say we need to talk to our enemies to achieve world peace, in other words, “Let the UN handle it.” They object to the use of the US military for operations such as Iraq, Iran and to some extent Afghanistan, yet not for Darfur. In the eight years of the Clinton co-presidency, military action was limited to a brief flirtation with Somalia in which we ran away at the first sign of trouble instead of a forceful response, Kosovo where we maintained a peace keeping operation, and launched a few missiles into the desert in retaliation for terrorist attacks to placate the public. Why this withdrawal from world affairs when it comes to confronting enemies who literally and repeatedly killed Americans?

During the eight years of the Clinton co-presidency, the military budget did not keep pace with inflation and was repeatedly raided with hidden social programs diverting spending from readiness. Additionally, we were treated to Welfare Reform that supposedly reduced the rolls of people deriving their income from the Federal Treasury, yet all the while they were touting the reduced Welfare rolls, social spending continued to increase and the people dependent on them increased, not decreased!

Here are some links to social programs from the EIC to Food Stamps showing the ever increasing cost to the Federal Treasury, i.e. your pocket book.
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