Class Warfare Misdirection & Rooting for the Commi's

I talk a lot about class warfare on this blog and would like to expound on that subject.

I have a family member who’s a doctor with a healthy six figure plus salary. He does not consider himself “rich”. Yet he travels worldwide, eats out whenever he feels like it, and pretty much does what ever he feels like doing.

Of course everything is relative and this could quickly devolve into a semantic discussion of exactly how much money does one need to be considered “rich”. Well, in a dialogue on this subject I informed my cousin that he was in fact “rich”.

No, no he self-assuredly told me, you need to be making $200,000 per year to be considered rich.

Where did the 200k number come from? Well, of course he read it in the Boston Globe.

Socialists studied the income charts and came up with that round number as the “rich” threshold. If you remember, a recent Presidential candidate said that he was opposed to income tax cuts for those making over 200k.

So that cutoff has apparently become an arbitrary talking point. One has to admit, we live in a great country if six-figure earning doctors aren’t considered rich and the poor and homeless are obese.

Why do people who are well off feel otherwise?

Part of it this pervasive sense of entitlement (blame the Baby Boomers and Big Government). How often have you heard anyone say,

“You know what, I am overpaid….I am lucky to have this job...”?

Never, right? Me neither.

Probably nine out of ten people earnestly feel the complete opposite...that they are overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Of course if they truly were “underpaid”, they’d likely have left for a job that met their “deserved” income demands. Anyone who spurns better available jobs to stay put in their “underpaid” one is an Automatic Moron who likely deserves underpayment.

Besides the fashionable entitlement mentality, class envy also drives many people to underestimate their true economic standing. If my cousin really thought he was rich, he would have a hard time blaming the rich for his gripes, both personal and global. A not so insignificant number of people really do need scapegoats, bogeymen, and punching bags to vet their frustrations on. I firmly believe that Red Sox are a therapeutic punching bag for millions of bitter New Englanders.

Devil’s Advocate: Isn’t this inability to see himself as rich just pure ignorance?

Yes, it is. But the class envy angle is important in that it’s the weak-minded substitute for knowledge. Class warfare is nothing more than LCD Propaganda (lowest common denominator) artfully constructed to stoke the flames of jealousy, inadequacy, and ignorance. My cousin was simply regurgitating propaganda with his 200k cutoff number. I told him such but there is nary a chance that he even processed what I said.

Sometimes the rigidity of the nuanced crowd can be mind boggling. They seemingly paint every issue under the sun a deep grey, yet when it comes to economics,

1) $5.15 per hour is an inhumane wage,
2) The entire workforce can be dichotomized into the proletariat and capitalist pigs,
3) A $200,000 salary arbitrarily makes someone rich.



Essentially, class warfare provides the foundation of socialism and an opiate for complainers, but it also serves as an instrument of misdirection.

You’d think with all the taxpayers’ money the government wastes, Big Media would occasionally do some stories on it. But they never do. Remember, the stories they don’t report are in fact more telling than what they print. They hide the inefficiency of the government like it's the secret recipe of Coca-Cola.

If they ever shed some sunlight on government profligacy, people might get pissed about taxation levels. Instead, they intentionally ignore the subject, so they can get their readers focused instead on who is actually paying more (which they lie about as well). But they have made the calculation that it’s easier to conduct class warfare this way. Many socialists know that lower tax rates have always increased tax revenue AND increased the proportion paid by the "rich", but this reality retards class warfare arguments. Like I said, it's pure calculated misdirection to gain 51% of the vote.

Big Media types incessantly claim that they have to stand up to powerful interests and that justifies their Perma-Negative bias. But why won’t they check Big Government spending?

(They don't exactly stand up to "powerful interests" like dictators or terrorist either now, do they?)

If I ran a news organization, I would have articles on government waste almost every single day.

Consequently, most people just accept government waste as a fact of life and that is just what the socialists want. In fact, a Big Government apologist recently told me that 50% efficiency is what government programs should strive for. I am not even going to guess what “50% efficiency” is supposed to mean, but I do remember that 50% is a failing grade, even at government schools.

The people that confiscate your money through taxation don’t want any accountability and Big Media aids and abets by whitewashing the waste.



Speaking of socialists. Here in the land of Enviro-Commi Groupthink, also known as Boston, Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy recently penned this gem about the World Baseball Championship game,

You can have the rest of the world. I'm going with the communists.

I'm rooting for the guys who put team above self. I'm rooting for the guys who make $20 a month to play baseball and cling to a free sweat suit like it's gold, guys who play the game the way it's supposed to be played.

I'm rooting for Fidel Castro's team tonight in the World Baseball Classic championship game featuring Cuba vs. Japan.

Except for Ichiro Suzuki of Japan, all of the major league millionaires have gone back to their teams in Florida and Arizona.

That is right, he is rooting for the Commi’s!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, I am shocked. A Boston Globe writer finally admitted his belief system. Of course he does it under a veneer of sarcasm. But make no mistake about it, old men in New England blame money for the supposed decay in sports. As Commi-Shaughnessy points out, all of the depraved “millionaires” have lost and gone home.

Is there ever a context where one can morally say “I am rooting for the communists”?

What if al Qaeda had a good baseball team that hit-and-ran and hustled to first base, would he then root for the terrorists? How about the Nazi’s?

What is it something like 50 million people have been murdered or starved to death under communism?

Does Dan really want the Cubans to win and provide a talking point for communists worldwide?

The sad thing is, this article will resonate with a huge chunk of New England. First of all, despite being the most “educated” state in the nation, people up here don’t know the history of communism. Second, as I stated earlier, sports is a therapeutic punching bag up here that often cloaks ignorance as sports fanaticism.

My grandparents inveigh against how much the Red Sox players make almost on a daily basis, yet they haven't missed so much as a pitch in the last forty years. It is sheer econo-illiteracy to complain about how much the players earn while not understanding how you contribute to their wealth.

Economic illiteracy really explains so much stupidity there should be a whole field of psychology devoted to it.

It is amazing how the old, "rich" people of Boston cling to bankrupt ideas by sheer dint of inertia and newspaper propaganda.

Desultory Profundity

Nice sign.

"Bush don't..."?

But what about illiterate whites who struggle with subject/verb agreement?

Obviously I haven’t been posting much these days. Quite frankly I have just been too busy with the stock market and with family stuff. But my indefatigable brain is still chugging, reading some good books, and plotting global Marginalization strategies.

Google is presently 135 points off its high and I bought some more. It just ran up too much over the winter and the bandwagon got crowded. Seemingly every other day there has been a negative Google story circling around Big Media outlets. None of this changes the fact that probably only 1 in 20 people use Google regularly right now. I reiterate my belief that the growth ahead is still almost unfathomable. People still don’t have good broadband connections (DSL blows, as does much of cable broadband). Morons still buy cheap computers and bury them in a non-central locations of the house (and leave them off to save electricity). Also, Blackberries and other mobile surfing devices are still not widely used. Again, it is still very early in the game for Google. BUY. BUY. BUY.



Those loud creeks you hear at night are the sounds of an impending real estate collapse. I have put a lot thought and research into this subject and I find myself more and more bearish. I now firmly believe that there will be a Category 5 housing crash. I will give more insight into this on a later post. I just wanted to get my Category 5 prediction on the record.

Another thing, there are very few ways to make money off my prediction. One can’t short housing stocks like Toll Brothers, Pulte, and Lennar because

1) they are very cheap
2) are leveraged to more than just rising home prices.

Let me explain 2). The big builders like Toll have been stealing market share from the smaller builders for years. Just think of them as homebuilding Wal-Marts who have the economies of scale to outflank the so-called “mom and pop” builders.

One probably can’t short Home Depot or Lowes either and hope to profit from a housing bust. Lowes has climbed nicely during the past years, but remember that Home Depot has not gone up at all during the last 7 years. That’s right, this housing bubble didn’t move HD’s stock one iota. So there’s certainly no guarantee of any one-to-one correlation on the way down.

If you are a homeowner (or more aptly a home mortgager) right now, there is also very little that you could do to hedge or profit from real estate’s impending decline. Pretty much all you can do is delay purchasing “extra” real estate, like a Floridian condo or a beach house.

On of the Chicago exchanges is coming out with a real estate future designed to provide this erstwhile elusive hedging vehicle. We’ll see what it looks like in a couple of months.

The only really good hedge I can think of is shorting the stock market. But again, this could be a completely stupid bet to place. Just think of the guy in 2003 who thought oil would skyrocket and it would cripple our economy? He was half-right and half totally wrong.

The LESSON is, don’t out-think yourself

IF YOU THINK SOMETHING IS GOING UP OR DOWN, TRY TO PLACE YOUR BET ON THAT, NOT SOME THEORETICAL DERIVATIVE THEREOF.

I couldn’t count how many times (or how many dollars lost) I have seen gold go one way and the stocks of gold mining companies go the other. The same goes for crude oil and oil companies and numerous other theoretically linked pairs.

The same goes for real estate. Even assuming my Category Five real estate implosion, the billion dollar question remains:

How will a fall in real estate affect the overall economy and financial markets?

We may soon find out.

At the risk of provoking Mother Nature, I hereby declare winter over. (Knock on wood.)

What I really mean is that the winter heating season is effectively over.

My heating bills for the last three months were all around $120.

I bring this up because remember CNBC and the rest of the Perma-Negative media went bananas all fall about the impending cost of heat this winter.

I chided Blockhead Steve Liesman over this,

Just yesterday, while inveighing broadly against energy companies, perma-Commi Steve Liesman said people are freezing to death over heating costs. Liesman must be counting fictional people - I guess.

Hey Stevie, why don't you wait for the actual winter before you unleash your agitprop?

Nobody froze to death this year or any other for that matter. “Freezing to death” is just a ruse to bash dreaded Big Oil and solicit the affection of the “little guy”.

Devil’s Advocate: But C-Nut, people would have froze if it weren’t for a global warming induced mild winter…

Yeah, DA, oil companies are responsible for the global warming which is heating the earth and lowering the demand for heating oil and natural gas. It is one giant conspiracy to kill their own business.

One hallmark of conspiracy theories is that they have to keep changing to reconcile new evidence. At first it was,

EVIL OIL COMPANIES CONSPIRED TO RAISE ENERGY PRICES AND FREEZE THE “LITTLE GUY” TO DEATH.

And then it morphed to.

EVIL OIL COMPANIES ARE CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING AND BURNING THE LITTLE GUY UP.

But my favorite ridiculous oil canard is,

BIG OIL COMPANIES ARE SUPPRESSING ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES.

Yeah, Exxon has 16 MIT geeks locked up in a basement somewhere...

Devil’s Advocate: But didn’t you also predict 50% higher home heating bills this winter.

Yes I did. More accurately I extrapolated it from the $15 price of natural gas in the fall which has cratered to $7 today. I certainly didn’t predict anyone freezing to death. And I mentioned it in the context of real estate prices – how a sharp rise in the costs of homeownership (be it heat, taxes, hurricane insurance, etc.) could imperil the housing market.

But I also took precautions. I sealed up all of the windows in my house very thoroughly. I bought those bean bags to place beneath all of my doors. I closed the shades at night and had them all open when the sun was out.

Devil’s Advocate: That stuff doesn’t matter that much...

Bullsh*t it doesn’t. My neighbor above me who has the identical living space has been paying $400 a month to heat her house this winter. And she,

1) keeps the thermostat at 62 degrees while mine is at 67.
2) didn’t seal her windows at all (they are forty years old – the same as mine)
3) doesn’t open her shades when sunny (we have a tremendous southern exposure).

So DA, it does matter you dope. You can’t get a much better control than that. Furthermore, according to my gas company, the bills from my unit were over twice as high last year.

I also have a friend who lives in a similar sized unit, about 1500 square feet, who keeps her thermostat on 55 degrees and also paid about $400 a month this year. It’s one thing to stay warm and get nailed with a high heating bill but she freezes as well – pouring salt on the wound.

Why does she freeze?

Old inefficient radiators, old windows, no sunlight at all, etc.

And this leads me to another of my lucid assertions,

NEW ENGLANDERS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING.

1) First of all they should live in the south where no heating oil is needed. There is plenty of space down there and culture to boot!!!
2) Hidebound anti-development laws up north consign residents to drafty old homes with outdated insulation and heating systems. All of this is self-imposed. New homes are simply so much more energy efficient.

Running central air conditioning at my relatively new condo in Charlotte, 24 hours a day, in a place twice as big, and much hotter, was cheaper than occasionally running a window unit in my century-old Brooklyn apartment.

New Englanders simply consume more than their fair share of fossil fuels. Since the Global Warming Gestapo wants to tax SUVs, shouldn’t they also indict New Englanders who disproportionately heat the earth?

This kind of reminds me of a conversation I once had with an urban planner.

A tenet of so-called urban studies is that cities are good and suburbs with their resultant sprawl, highways, cars, and gated communities, are evil. One of the justifying canards is that cities are ostensibly more efficient. People living vertically save land, can walk places, and the population density allows for more efficient allocation of resources: food, energy, services, government, etc.

There is a serious problem with this theory.

EVERYTHING IS MORE EXPENSIVE IN CITIES.

The urban planner TRIED to disagree with me, so I went down the list.

Taxes, food, and energy are all more expensive in cities like Boston, New York, Washington, than they are down South.

Apparently he thought about it for a second, realizing that food and taxes are certainly more expensive in the cities but still tried to attack what he thought was my weakest argument – energy.

He said,

“there is no way it is cheaper to get utilities, like electricity, to fewer people who are further spread out as there are down South.”

Now this is a case in point of what happens when people substitute theory for hard evidence.

First of all, look at the utility bills. Look at the rates for New England.

How did I know more about this subject than the alleged expert?

Well, for one thing I have lived in several states. Also, I don’t just regurgitate the pabulum of communist professors. Lastly, I happened to know a bit about power generation. Most electricity is generated in the South and the Midwest and it rises steeply in price as it flows up to the Northeast, because it obviously costs more money to transmit it there.

So why do we have Urban Planning departments at all of these schools when one of its central tenets is a complete sham?

And shouldn’t there at least be Suburban Planning fields of study too?



Amazingly, during my recent trip to Florida, I almost spent as much money on cabs as I did on airfare.

I live only 11 miles from Boston's Logan Airport. A cab ride there is $50, and that is if you are lucky enough to have no traffic issues.

I was very close to paying a friend $30 to drive me. It was the same thing down in Fort Lauderdale, though not quite as expensive on a per mile basis. But they make up for it by charging "per person" on the airport limos. Four cab rides ended up costing me $223, while my flight was only $250.

Here is the thing with Boston, the people here may be very stupid, but they are also cheap. Nobody takes cabs to the airport - they have friends or family take them. Bostonians are stupid for innumerable reasons, but in this case they are dumb because they merely accept the high taxi price reality and adapt to it. You can't find anyone that is trying to politically address the issue. In fact, the politicians have created problem.

Let me tell you something about CaptiousNut. When he meets a plumber, he asks him about plumbing. When he meets a teacher, he asks them about classroom antics and whatnot. And when in a cab, he invariably will pick the cabby's brain about all sorts of stuff. Of course the topics and intensity of these discussions are directly proportional to how "overserved" C-Nut is that night.

Anyway, a Fort Lauderdale cabbie responded to an innocent info request and told me that he averages 8 airport trips a day. His car held four people and was filled up on each trip for $96. So the guy is making close to $800 a day, even if he only took home half of that, say $400, multiplying by 250 work days lands him $100,000 per year.

Remember the guy drives a cab. He didn't spend 100k on college or 250k on medical school. That is a lot of damn money for an unskilled laborer. In other words, there surely are plenty of people that would drive a cab for considerably less, providing quite a cost savings for travelers.

Why do cabs cost so much?

Government intervention. End of story.

They limit the number of taxi medallions and set the meter rates. And in Boston they even inject other costs such as the $4.50 toll only for cabs leaving the airport (other cars pay $1.50).

For a city that acts obsessed with reducing road traffic (when it suits them, i.e. shooting down every attempt at new construction with "we have to do a traffic study.."), Boston's taxi management confounds the mind. They have made it so expensive to take a cab, that instead of one cab driving 15 people to the airport a day, they have 15 cars on the road making that family/friend airport dropoff.

Don't forget the Bostonians think they are the smartest people in the country too.

If you don't believe me that cabs are a racket, try to digest this. Boston taxi medallions are currently $320,000. In the last five years they have more than doubled. If cab drivers were just "scraping by", medallions would not be appreciating like this, especially in light of gasoline doubling in price and higher insurance rates.

And remember from a prior post that the Boston Globe thinks "fare relief" is when the cabbies get rate increases approved.



If you are not watching American Idol you are really doing yourself a disservice. It is not a fad like Survivor where the ratings nosedive each year. Idol is more popular than ever. It is entertaining, dramatic, and hilarious. Typically, Morons who don't watch the show respond to my advocacy with,

"I don't watch reality tv..."

They don't even realize how dumb that sounds and I have to prod them with, "What do you only watch fantasy television"?

They remind me of all of these people that pooh-pooh golf as "not a sport" or "seems like a stupid waste of time" for their entire lives. But then they retire, fall in love with the game, and lament over and over again how they should have played when they were younger. Well maybe if they weren't such close-minded meatheads...

When I hear of something that is gaining popularity I make a concerted effort to check it out. What is that old perverted axiom? Something like don't knock it until you have tried it. I can't stand these Morons who bash stuff of which they are completely ignorant.

In the end, they are only depriving themselves and corroborating my definition of a Moron as one who repeatedly acts against their own self-interest.

Delray Beach Restaurant Incident

My wife and I just got back from a four day retreat in Delray Beach, Florida.

The first day there we strolled Atlantic Avenue and perused the menus of most of the restaurants. We narrowed it down to two Italian places and chose Bice over its cross-street rival Tramonti, simply because its entree descriptions sounded better.

So later that night we returned for dinner and Bice was dead but Tramonti was slammed. Clearly we picked the wrong one. Anyway, the food at Bice turned out great and well-worth the steep prices.

The next day, a local yokel confirmed for us that Tramonti was very popular, so we ended up making a Saturday reservation.

So here is what happened when we finally made it there.

We had barely sat down on an extremely crowded night, when one of the cooks came flying out of the kitchen.

He went running up to a woman seated right in front of us. He was screaming in a grandfatherly, yet Soprano-esque Italian accent,

"YOU ARE A PIECE OF SH*T....YOU ARE A TOTAL PIECE OF SH*T....DON'T EVER F*CKING COME BACK TO MY RESTAURANT....YOU PIECE OF SH*T!!!!!!!!!!!"

Then he ran back to the kitchen.

Now the entire restaurant was taken aback, with everyone wondering what had just happened.

So I asked the woman, who didn't react to the nutjob at all, and all she did was point to her head and repeatedly say that "The man is sick in the head..."

Now she was, to me, a typical Floridian woman, well dressed, extremely, if not overly tanned and at least 65 years old. Amazingly her husband did nothing as well. He just summoned the waiter and paid the bill as fast as he could and left.

Regardless of what happened, at a minimum I would never have paid the bill - especially considering that I have refused to pay bills for much less than that - but at a maximum I would have inflicted some serious bodily harm on any guy that cursed like that in my wife's face.

So what did happen?

I finally got the story from their waiter, who happened to be ours as well. Apparently the woman complained that,

"...only half of the mussel shells had mussels in them..."

The waiter claimed that they had fallen into the broth and thus she was in no way shortchanged. Furthermore, the waiter even admitted that he had provoked the chef by passing on some incendiary comments from the woman.

The whole incident came off as good theatre to most of the other customers. Like I said above, this place was hopping and really a scene. It reminded me of South Philly with its noticeable preponderance of Italian-Americans, unbuttoned shirts, gold chains, and whatnot.



Obviously the place does so well that good customer service is less consistent than the food. In that vein I am reminded of the Soup Nazi, Pat's Steaks, Katz Delicatessen, etc.

Tramonti's is actually owned by the same people that own Angelo's in Little Italy.

It's pretty bad to have chefs running out and cursing at customers on busy Saturday nights, but I think the waiter provoking it ("...because seeing it was worth losing a $10 tip.") and giggling afterwards was equally indefensible.

How did the waiter know that he was throwing gasoline on a fire? Well he boastfully told me another story from the week before.

Some woman ordered a salad but requested "No nuts". The salad arrived with nuts anyway and she started complaining, "I am allergic....I could die...."

Well, word got back to the kitchen and that same chef came running out screaming to the woman,

"YOU NO LIKE NUTS....HERE, SUCK ON THESE NUTS....SUCK ON MY NUTS YOU B*TCH..."

You'd think the owner of this place would frown upon this crap.

Think again. The chef is the owner (or the son of the original owner).

The food wasn't even that good. Why go to Tramonti when there is superior food AND SERVICE at Bice across the street?

Deranged Morons and Their Food

How nuts are people with their food?

They are just as deranged with their food as they are with their dogs.

Here's my anecdotal rundown.

My wife and I eat two separate meals, hers is of the uber healthy variety, crap like steamed vegetables and cous cous or bulgar. In contradistinction to her, I opt for anything and everything more flavorful than that (since I am normal). But this is a horrible ordeal – twice the pots and pans, twice the food prep, twice the cleanup, etc.

Now with our infant son, we now eat three different meals at each sitting.

But growing up, I realize now how deprived I was. There were no separate meals, we ate the same stuff all of the time: horrible concoctions of pot roast, beef stew, and chicken complemented by canned vegetables like lima beans and creamed corn. Does anyone actually still buy that canned crap?

My grandparents lived next door and would often cook for us. Their version of bland food was a notch above my parents', but let’s just say that my lovely grandmother is English. Brits can’t cook, and if you don’t believe me, go out and count the number of English restaurants in your neighborhood (or any other for that matter).

My grandfather eats meat and potatoes, EVERY SINGLE DAY. No pasta, Mexican, Indian food, and definitely no Chinese food.

On a side note, while down in Charlotte we noticed most people calling Chinese food, “oriental food”, which we found humorous. Not so funny however, was recently getting Chinese takeout here in Chestnut Hill, Mass and getting home and realizing that they didn’t give us any rice. It was no oversight; apparently here you have to order rice on the side. So I had to drive back and pay $4+ for two small orders of rice.

As a kid, I had no idea what a “filet mignon” was. No one in my family did. My cousin once said that she didn’t want to try filet mignon because she didn’t like seafood. McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish, was the only filet in her (and my) lexicon.

In fact I probably didn’t have a filet mignon until I was in my early twenties, probably at Bookbinder's in Philadelphia.

My son however, before he was even a year old, was eating porterhouse steaks, and this leads me to my food-obsessed mother-in-law.

First of all, the entire grandmother generation is pathological about food, but I will stack my mother-in-law against most others. Now aside from sending us a dozen porterhouses for my son’s first solid food meals, it is not just the grandkids, her kids, and son-in-laws that she feeds, but almost everyone.

She cooks for her neighbors. She cooks for her contractors (and their kids) and I also suspect she feeds her local garbage collectors. She has sneaked pancetta and prosciutto through customs on her way back from Italy (spraying the sniffing dogs with perfume to mask her smuggling). She has toted chicken soup as a carry-on halfway across the country to bring to her sick daughter. I maintain that she would feed Bin Laden if she showed up at her house hungry.

Every meal at her house is a grand procession that will surely include discussion about what was eaten last night, for breakfast, and of course what will be eaten for the next meal. I know she is by no means unique. Once she had a few friends over and they all took turns on-upping each other on personal crazed food stories. I have to switch to someone else even though I could fill up an entire post on my wonderful mother-in-law.

What about these people that can’t cook?

Once we were at a friend’s fancy pad on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, my wife opened the oven and found the broiler still latched to the oven rack. Our friend had been there a full year without once using the brand new oven. She simply does not cook. Her poor husband...poor kids...

This same domestic diva recently moved to the burbs and spent 200k on a new kitchen. I recently told her that I was expecting a five course meal from her state-of-the-art kitchen on my next visit. She unabashedly told me,

“...you are getting Easy Mac like everyone else.”

Devil's Advocate: Is she a... ?

No DA, she is not a JAP, you bigot.



A neighbor of ours in Brooklyn moved out after living there for two years. In her empty apartment, I noticed the pilot light on her stove was out. It apparently never bothered her because in two years, SHE NEVER ONCE USED THE STOVE.

I had a friend/roommate in college who took a hankering to cooking hot dogs in the toaster oven. The problem was, he ate them almost every single day for years. I saw him down in Florida recently and he proudly told me that a decade hence, he still eats hot dogs all of the time.

This genius friend of mine has a PhD and he personally explains much of my bias against degreed people. He is another guy that I could fill up a blog on but will resist the urge and offer just this one example. When applying to grad schools, my buddy actually filled out an application for a program at Bryn Mawr. For those of you that don’t know, Bryn Mawr is an all girls school. Months later, he wondered aloud why he never heard from them. Of course CaptiousNut had to fill in the large blank for him.

(Coincidentally, I had a high school friend (male) who also applied to Bryn Mawr.)

I have previously asserted that the purest definition of a Moron is one who continually acts against their own self-interest.

If someone doesn’t think they have a vested interest in what they put in their mouth, I flat out don’t know what to do with them. I mean learn to cook already – it is not rocket science and they’ll be sure to reap the benefits.

I have already gone after the organic food nuts to an extent. Yeah, food is the cheapest it has ever been (6% of income) and people have plenty of room to pay up for “certified organic” crap BUT that doesn’t mean it isn’t a stupid waste of money. A family of four could end up spending $700-$1,000 per year more just on organic milk. Then you have organic fruit, meat, laundry detergent ($16 for a small bottle), etc.

My wife just had a pair of pants dry cleaned at one of these "environmentally safe" cleaners. One pair of pants cost $7 to get cleaned. Where is the uproar over price gouging like this?

Every time I see a shopping carriage loaded up with organic food, I just want to tattoo IDIOT on someone’s forehead.

Some quasi-friend was shocked to find out that I don’t give my son organic milk. Humoring the retard I asked why and got the standard, “human growth hormones in cows” response. Unimpressed with that talking point (because that is what it is), I asked what is wrong with that.

I got no further elaboration unless you count a nasty face scowling at apparently my ignorance.

I hollered back,

My kid is in the lowest 10% height bracket, he needs the human growth hormone!!!

Organics is another example of untrammeled groupthink. Do your own little bit of research and you will see the organic crowd not only shops in concert, they all read newspapers, aren’t religious, and probably have “global warming” nightmares. They likely watch a lot of CNN too.

Are organics healthier and therefore worth the premium?

Well first, one must ignore the organic industry’s marketing crap.

Life expectancies have been constantly rising. I have three 90 year old grandparents who ate bacon and eggs every other day of their lives. They have likely never eaten anything organic and if they did I am sure they drowned it in butter. The notion that food today is categorically unhealthier than 20, 40, or 60 years ago simply defies logic.

Right now, thousands of my organic consuming blog readers are shaking their head, saying that it is better to be “safe than sorry” or “Why take the risk of eating human growth hormone enhanced food?”.

Go ahead waste your money on that crap, but believe me, you are being sold a bill of goods that’s exploiting your own irrational fears and ignorance. You are wasting money on a theory that defies empiricism.

Another canard is the notion that organics are grown and harvested in ways friendlier to the “environment”.

To address this talking point I will first take a step back.

At the core of environmentalism is at the misbegotten belief that farmers, foresters, et al are indifferent to the contamination and ruination of their own land. But think about that for a second.

Lumber companies do not chop beautiful forests down to barren wasteland and then flee the scene. On the contrary, they reforest the land and scrupulously guard its viability. How can you be assured of this?

Because it is their land, their asset. 99% of asset owners generally choose not to devastate their property. But this empirical reality is completely ignored by evangelical environmentalism. Instead they choose to assume that man generally plunders his own land, in stark opposition to all logic.

Devil’s Advocate: What about the farmers that contaminate the waterways and other land adjacent to their property?

They get sued by other landowners so they don't often do it. You idiot.

Enough on the enviro-Idiots – they are just ignorant of history. Private property is the best friend of Mother Earth. The worst pollution is in places like the Soviet Union and China, where the enlightened and noble government owns the forests, waterways, and land.

Back to food whackos.

I have a nephew who has convinced his mother that he is allergic to an extensive litany of foodstuffs that he simply doesn’t like, e.g. many green vegetables. The list is so long that before sending him to camp one summer, his mother mailed in a list of foods that he was allegedly allergic too. The camp responded with,

“I am sorry, we can’t accommodate your son here.”

Now this was in stark contrast to how I was raised. Remember, I had to eat those canned lima beans and whatnot. Once we had squash and I wouldn’t eat it because it literally made me gag. My mother demanded that I eat it, to which I tearfully proclaimed,

“If I eat it I will throw up!!!”

Evil Mom: If you throw up, I will make you eat your throw up too!!!



I have an Indian friend who I have many times asked to make me some authentic Indian food (or at least have his mother make me some). Leaving his place one day, he handed me a jar of curry. I reflexively said thanks and took it home.

But subsequently I noticed that this commercially packaged curry was available at my local supermarket. In fact I think every store I have been too since has had it in stock. So I called my friend to complain and I told him,

“Next time you are at my house for dinner, I will have my Italian wife serve you Spaghetti-O’s.”

It almost reminded me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry went up to a mailman and asked him the whereabouts of a nearby Chinese restaurant. The mailman, who happened to be Asian (a detail presently unbeknownst to Jerry), turned around and fired back,

MAILMAN: Why must I know? Because I'm Chinese? You think I know where all the Chinese restaurants are? (adopts hackneyed Chinese accent) Oh, ask honolable Chinaman for rocation of lestaulant.

JERRY: I asked because you were the mailman, you would know the neighborhood.

MAILMAN: Oh, hello American Joe. Which way to hamburger, hotdog stand? (storms away)




Now let’s play “Who am I?” Who says,

“I’ll have a porterhouse steak, well-done…..crispy. Burn it.”

If you guessed, “old to semi-old guy”, you are right.

I went to Myrtle Beach on a golf trip with a bunch of “old guys”. The sixteen of us went to a nice steakhouse and collectively ordered 15 “burnt” steaks, and 1 filet, medium rare (mine).

My unscientific theory is that 30-50 years ago, meat was generally of poorer quality and people cooked it well-done for health reasons, i.e. to kill it. The older set just wants steaks cooked how they grew up on them.



I have an aunt who, by virtue of her central location and larger house, graciously hosts just about every family function at her place. One problem however is that she serves the same lasagna at every single occasion. This is no small streak, I am talking Cal Ripken-esque. My family has been eating her lasagna at every birthday, Easter, Christmas, anniversary, etc. for at least 25 years.

It is not that bad, but holy sh*t already, make something else once in a while. Turkey on Thanksgiving doesn’t really count.

Last one before I get on a plane to Florida.

Nassau County, Long Island may be the richest county in America. It is definitely near the top. Anyway I went to my nephew's First Communion down there a couple of years ago. Again, it is a very affluent area with many homemakers more likely to use a phone preparing dinner rather than a spatula.

During the homily, the priest walked down the aisle and engaged all of the young kids, asking them questions and whatnot.

Priest: So why do we love our parents?

Brat-1: Because they take care of us.

Priest: Good. How so?

Brat-2: They teach us stuff.

Brat-3: They cook for us.

Priest: Good. Who does the cooking in your family? Mom or Dad?

Brat-3: The restaurant does.

At this point, the Mass took at 30 second break while the entire church laughed its collective ass off.

Dumb Kids

Click here to watch Dumb Kids enthusiastically embarass themselves, their parents, and their school, all before an international televison audience.

Video is five minutes long but very funny and a powerful argument for reforming the government educational system.

Sex Offender Website

Here is a sex offender website that actually works.

www.familywatchdog.us

Just enter your address and little squares will indicate the how close the perverts live to you, their exact addresses, and the site also provides pictures.

The above pic is a pervert that lives about a mile from my son's grandparents.

Obviously it is a good idea to check the addresses of everywhere your kids may be.

Health Savings Accounts – Different Subject, Same Moronic Agitprop

HSA - a tax advantaged savings plan available to taxpayers in the United States to deposit money to pay for current and future medical expenses. Money can be deposited to a special savings account before tax is paid on it (or deducted later from one's gross income when income taxes are filed). The money can be used tax-free for medical expenses, chiefly one's medical insurance deductible and co-insurance (the amount after which the insurance begins to pay, but less than the amount at which they pay 100% of expenses.) It is unique in the tax code as both income tax deductible on deposit and tax-free on withdrawal (for medical expense).

Okay, in layman’s terms. Instead of having blanket coverage for as much medical care as somebody wants, they are basically put on a debit system. When I was at UPenn, my meal plan was effectively an all-you-can-eat system analogous to today's HMO's. Whereas my wife had a debit plan at Boston College. She actually paid for every hamburger and salad separately, with the bonus that she could keep any unspent balance.

It works for food and everything else in life, and it will thrive in healthcare. (I will get to the Moronic Naysayers soon enough.)

Remember in my previous blog I listed the 4 major reasons why healthcare is expensive:

1) Medicare
2) Third Party Payer system
3) Medical innovation aimed at marginal rather than substantial cost savings.
4) Malpractice costs from trial lawyers.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that 1) and 2) are far and away the biggest problems. Now, does Medicare dwarf the Third Party Payer Issue?

In other words, does rapidly growing Medicare enrollment (from Baby Boomers) introduce so much dumb money and inefficiency that it supersedes the waste from the Third Party Payer problem?

Who knows? But what I do know is that Health Savings accounts can really put a dent into the main, if not only, issue of healthcare – COST.

It is a very simple fact that the main problem with healthcare is COST but all too often Morons get sidetracked into derivative or even peripheral issues.

Socialists want nationalized healthcare because they want everything nationalized.

Class warfare advocates relentlessly try to make healthcare into a poverty issue. They cite the number of uninsured constantly but never link that to COST and definitely don’t want to examine the roots of said COST.

These same two groups like to wield healthcare as a business-bashing talking point.

The Obesity-Police pile on the healthcare issue to indict the fast food industry.

Perma-Naysayers in Big Media use the rising cost of care to impugn the gamut of its own preferred enemies – which these days constitute large corporations (besides themselves), drug companies, and personal political foes like President Bush.

I want to expand on this concept of MISFRAMING and even IGNORING the pertinent issues of healthcare.

Consider my recent conversation with a Stanford PhD scientist and an Ivy League educated teacher. The first part is slightly off-topic but has its own inherent entertainment value.

CaptiousNut – What do you think is wrong with public school education?

Ivy Leaguer – People need to recognize the social problems.

CaptiousNut – Like what?

Ivy Leaguer – A hungry kid at school can’t concentrate in class…

CaptiousNut – Well, what about the free lunches? Millions of kids get them.

Ivy Leaguer – It’s not enough.

CaptiousNut – There are also millions of kids that get free breakfast? What are you talking about? No one is starving in school.

Ivy Leaguer – (no answer)

CaptiousNut – I thought poor kids are “obese” these days?

Ivy Leaguer – THEY ARE.

CaptiousNut – How can they be starving 5 days a week in school yet end up obese? I have no idea what you are talking about.

(Enter self-evident Moron #2)

PhD Scientist – It’s about healthcare. No one can afford healthcare. Parents are working so much JUST to afford healthcare that they can’t be home to help their kids with school work?

CaptiousNut – Are you kidding me? (He was dead serious. At this point I knew I had some blog material.)

PhD Scientist – If we had socialized medicine...then education would improve drastically.

These two Morons provide a powerful reminder that Stanford PhD’s and Ivy Leaguers aren’t necessarily all very intelligent. I never assumed they were but too many other people reflexively think that “Dr.” or “Harvard” next to someone’s name automatically implies superior mental competence.

So this PhD Moron thinks public education blows because of some convoluted connection to healthcare. Remember healthcare costs 73% more now than it did in 2000. So would the PhD Moron claim that public education was substantially better 5 year ago when healthcare was cheaper?

I doubt it. Five years ago he was probably blaming a different scapegoat du jour. Next year he will blame oil companies and $3 gasoline for failing government schools.

But this guy illustrates my point that intelligent healthcare dialogue is hampered by all sorts of Moronic misdirection. Just like economic reality, Morons think healthcare is a subjective issue they can contort to suit any overriding agendas.

Devil’s Advocate: Maybe the “Morons” just don’t understand much about healthcare?

That is definitely true, but they compound their ignorance by propagating healthcare canards and contaminating the public dialogue. For that, they need to be Marginalized.



President Bush was expected to tout Health Savings Accounts in his State of the Union Address and the Perma-Commi Naysayers predictably disseminated their spin beforehand.

On the Monday before the speech, CNBC reminded me again why I barely watch it anymore. One of their reporters blathered,

“HSA's will shift more of the burden on to the consumer and off the employer...”

“Some companies will try to force these on their employees...”

Then they had some professor weigh in with his “expert” Naysaying opinion. The Moron said,

“ (HSA’s) won’t reduce medical costs because most of medical spending is on the sickest and would be past the deductible amount... it won’t reduce the number of un-insured.”

Okay, one canard at a time. The “burden” of healthcare falls on both the worker and the employer yet Commi-NBC just doesn’t get it. When healthcare costs rise, both worker and employer suffer. A company that spends less on healthcare can increase wages, hire more people, and presumably insure them. It is astoundingly ignorant for CNBC to keep framing the healthcare issue as simply a one-sided burden.

“Some companies will force these on their employees…..”

First of all, my wife’s company was supposed to offer an HSA to us this year but for some reason held back. I am exceedingly pissed about that. I will explain later on in more detail, but employees will be lucky to get HSA's “forced” on them.

But again, CNBC clangs the bell of socialist class warfare. In their paradigm, workers are constantly exploited, impotent to do anything about it, and the chronic victims of evil management.

Then, true to their template methodology, they bring in an “expert” to claim that Health Savings Accounts won’t be effective at reducing the number of uninsured. I will debunk this later on.

The New York Times, robot propagandist that it is, also had to weigh in on HSA's before the State of the Union address. I guess it was their attempt at a preemptive rebuttal.

Excerpts reprinted with neither permission nor expressed written consent of the NY Times. Red denotes my emphasis. Blue denotes my commentary. (If link doesn't work, try this.)



Savings Accounts for Health Costs Attract Wall Street

By ERIC DASH
Published: January 27, 2006

Banks, credit unions and money management firms are now quietly positioning themselves to become central players in the business of health care, offering 401(k)-type accounts to cover future medical expenses.

Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Fidelity Investments and hundreds of others are hoping to capitalize on the latest wrinkle in medical care paid by consumers: health savings accounts, which have been around since 2003 but are moving to the fore of the national agenda in anticipation of the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

They are the centerpiece of President Bush's plans on health care, just as private accounts were offered as a Social Security fix.

Banks and others are drawn by the promise of lucrative fees they can generate by offering consumers mutual funds and other investment vehicles as their account balances grow. Most also charge $50 to $75 to set up a health savings account, and they collect perhaps $40 or more each year in maintenance charges and service fees.

($40- $75 is lucrative? I guess the NYT thinks there are no administrative costs to setting up an account.)

To be sure, health savings accounts will make up only a small fraction of earnings at a financial giant like Citigroup. But at a time when deposit growth has slowed and higher interest rates have hurt profits, they represent a steady stream of new income that is increasingly hard to find. Banks are betting that what the administration calls consumer-directed health care catches on.

Supporters say that the discipline and marketing might of financial services giants could spur the adoption of consumer-directed care. Critics argue that the banking industry's involvement only bolsters their case: the accounts are more about wealth than health.

"We already have a large number of retirement savings vehicles in the United States," said Jonathan Gruber, an economist and Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. "It is not clear why we need yet another tax break for savings for rich guys."

(Don't the non-rich benefit from HSA's as well?)

Corporations, of course, want relief from soaring health care costs, and have been steadily shifting more of the burden to their employees. Small businesses were among the first to offer health savings accounts to their employees. But over the last year or so, a number of big companies — from Guidant to Wal-Mart Stores — have started signing up.

(The Times will slam Wal-Mart any chance it gets.)

Health savings accounts are akin to the private accounts that were proposed to help overhaul Social Security. Much of Wall Street liked private retirement accounts, but their support was guarded because they feared a potential negative reaction.

(Sneaky, conniving Wall Street - afraid to admit what they like.)

Banking lobbyists have met with White House officials at least three times over the last year to discuss the rules governing health savings vehicles. But until recently, most have been shy about their interest in such plans. Now, they have established a lobbying group, the H.S.A. Council, and are spending millions of dollars to roll the plans out.

(What, the NYT isn’t a multi-million dollar lobbying group? Actually they do over $3 billion in annual revenue.)

For wealthier people, the tax break could provide a generous incentive to build a nest egg for future health care; poorer people with smaller annual contributions could wind up spending all the money they put away during the year.

The savings accounts, in effect, give financial institutions a vital, but behind-the-scenes role in shaping the nation's health care system.

Banks hope to use their close ties with their customers to enter the health insurance market. For now, they collaborate with insurance providers as much as they compete. Health savings accounts must be opened in conjunction with a high-deductible health insurance plan. After choosing an insurance policy, the consumer must pick a bank.

Even though the health plan and savings account are separate products, big banks and insurance companies pitch them together as an "integrated solution" and split the fees. Health insurers keep the premiums; banks retain the investment management fees and the debit card transaction fees.

Even without the lucrative investment management fees, bank executives like Daniel Kelly, manager of H.S.A. services at U.S. Bancorp, say health savings accounts are attractive. Banks make money each time a customer swipes his debit card at a doctor's office. Payment processing alone could generate some $2.3 billion over the next five years, the DiamondCluster study estimates.

($2.3 billion over five years? That is not a lot of money considering the size of the banking industry, but earning any amount of money is incriminating in the NYT's estimation.)

"This has nothing to do with an assets-under-management play," said John M. Prince, chief executive of Exante Financial Services. "There will be huge falloff in people who are trying to play that role. Eighty percent of the money are assets [sic] that go right in and go right out."

Just a few years ago, the idea that the titans of health care and banking would be battling for business would have been nearly impossible to imagine.

Industry lobbyists viewed the idea as a health care issue; they raised questions about its prospects of passing as the 2004 presidential race heated up. Banking executives did not see the profit potential after an experiment with Medical Savings Accounts, aimed at small businesses, failed.

"Put it this way, the impact of this law did not really become clear to them until after it passed," said Mr. Perrin, the H.S.A. Coalition director. Once they understood how the accounts worked, however, the big banks realized the next I.R.A. had landed at their feet.

Now, some financial institutions are urging the Bush administration and Congress to raise the tax-deductible contribution limit to encourage consumers to put more money in their accounts — a proposal that President Bush is expected to endorse in his State of the Union speech.

Banks are already champing at the bit. "We happen to be in the camp that the H.S.A. is a second retirement account to be used for medical expenses," said Nancy Todor, an executive who will oversee health savings accounts when Citigroup introduces them this year.

All things considered this was a pretty tame article from the Times. It was a more subtle hit piece than some of the others I have fisked. Consider the substance of the article again by noting the following buzzwords, aptly in Commi red font:

quietly positioning
capitalize
lucrative fees
banking industry's involvement is more about wealth than health
rich guys
Corporations
want relief from soaring health care costs
shifting more of the burden to their employees
Wal-Mart Stores
Wall Street liked private retirement accounts
lobbyists
lobbying group
spending millions of dollars
wealthier people
poorer people wind up spending all the money
behind-the-scenes role
collaborate
split the fees
lucrative investment management fees
make money
titans
profit potential
Banks are champing at the bit

The Times wants to drill home the idea that Health Savings Accounts are a devious plot to enrich Wall Street and its incestuous cousin Corporate America. They completely illustrate my point that Big Media treats Americans' healthcare as a purely subjective issue.

This article brings no substantive discussion to the healthcare dialogue whatsoever. It is just more anti-business propaganda and cynicism. To Sulzberger and his acolytes, banks are simply evil. Never mind that they facilitate mortgages, business loans, school loans, and in general lubricate the economy, if they are making or conspiring to make money, there must be something underhanded about them.

Again, any worthwhile healthcare discussion should be focused on COST, of which there is clearly no mention. The Times won't even get its hands dirty with any specific analysis of HSA's. No, the Times instead opts to stir a pot of innuendo portraying HSA's as just another vehicle that enriches corporate America and impoverishes the "little guy".

While on this Commi agenda junket, they miss the point completely.

HSA's ARE EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL FOR EVERYONE - ESPECIALLY THE IMPOVERISHED "LITTLE GUY".

I mentioned above that I was eager to switch from an HMO to an HSA - let me explain why.

First of all, I haven't been to a doctor in 4.5 years. That would be great if I could have the eight or nine thousand bucks I spent on premiums back. It would probably be more than that, given some interest and appreciation. Now on to the mechanics of HSA's.

Assume that I do have an HSA and have to go see a doctor tomorrow for a routine checkup. Say he charges me $125 that I pay out of pocket. Now I have two choices,

1) Go grab $125 out of my HSA to reimburse myself immediately.

or

2) Save the receipt and for HSA reimbursement later on.

I WOULD EXERCISE OPTION 2) EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Here is the key with HSA's - there is no time limit on reimbursements. So I could let the money grow tax-free for 30 years before reimbursing myself.

In thirty years, $125 compounded tax-free at a conservative 5% ends up being $540.

So here I am at 65 years old and I start writing myself reimbursement checks from my HSA. I match them up with receipts and I have now got some tax-free income.

IN FACT, IF POSSIBLE I WOULD NEVER TAKE A NICKEL OUT OF MY HSA.

Devil's Advocate: So the NY Times was right, this is more about wealth than health...

Didn't I rename you Simpleton's Advocate?

A person needs wealth to pay for their health, numbnuts. This is what you socialists don't understand. If you care about the poor, you should be obsessed with giving people the tools to create wealth.

People need a lot of money to live on from age 65 to death. They won't be working, will need more medical care and likely even money for a nursing home or other long term care facility.

In a world with millions of HSA holders, the elderly will be able to pay for much of this themselves.

In a world devoid of such a vehicle, who is going to pay for this care? The government? The only way they can pay it is by taxing younger productive people who need to be saving that money for own their retirement and healthcare needs.

DA, if you are a straight up Communist who thinks that those who work and save should simply hand their money over to those who don't or didn't, please say so. Otherwise you're sentencing the "poor" to government dependency for their last three decades of life. How is it compassionate to deny anyone the means to create wealth and their own financial dependency?

Of course the New York Times uses "wealth" as if it was a four-lettered word and econo-illiterates across the country all sheepishly nod their empty heads. In fact, all the Times thinks it needs to do is say that dirty word, list the evil banks poised to benefit, and then bask in the contentment of a sufficient rebuttal.

Now this is a rather muted article for the Times and that is mostly because the HSA law is already a fait accompli. Ergo, there aren't a bunch of invertebrate pols reading the Times with their fingers in the air - at least on this issue.

Now back to a substantive discussion of the HSA.

So how exactly does the HSA help the "little guy"?

As I already said, it gives him a tax advantaged way to save money for his lifetime of healthcare needs. This alone suffices to do more for the "little guy" than snarky Big Media HSA bashing but it has even more benefits than that.

In a world of HSA's, consumers realize they will keep every penny they don't spend and there will be a huge drop-off in the demand for many components of medical care.

Hmmm...Let's see, it costs me $150 to go for a regular checkup, get my heart listened to, stand in my boxers, and get weighed?

I think I, and many others, will start skipping that.



And people (like one of my friends) will stop going to the emergency room for migraine headaches. Pharmaceutical consumption will take a dive when people start weighing the money against the perceived benefits for many of these ineffective drugs.

Devil's Advocate: What do you mean "ineffective" drugs?

Something like 40% of drugs don't work. Let me explain before you pill poppers blow a gasket. Prozac has lost tests against sugar pills. I've been prescribed Vioxx, Celebrex, Neurontin, and other crap for my bad back and none of them worked. Sure they may work for others, but there are hundreds of thousands of people taking medication that simply does not improve their health.

Then there are the people that think they can eat that pepperoni pizza because they are now on Lipitor. What the heck, it is much easier to take a pill than adjust your diet and/or hit the treadmill.

And fueling this over-indulgent pharma-dependency is a system where neither the doctor nor the patient pays the full cost of usage. Again, HSA's will make the pill popper think long and hard about the cost-effectiveness of prescribed drugs.

HSA proliferation will take a big bite out of drug spending because people will start to realize that a "diet rich in fiber and soy protein" is just as efficacious as Lipitor. And that realization will really boost their HSA account.

Needless trips to the doctor, less spending on drugs and treatment... all lead to a lower demand for medical care.

Lower demand leads to lower prices.

Lower prices mean that more people can afford healthcare - (i.e. fewer un-insured for you Morons).

Lower prices mean that evil corporations can hire more people and expand their business.

More business profits mean more tax revenue that the pols can squander on different programs.

EVERYBODY WINS.

Devil's Advocate: Okay, but why not make HSA's available to only poor people?

First of all, that is class warfare kind of talk. Who is going to determine who is rich and who isn't? What if someone grows up poor and then later becomes rich? There will likely be bunch of Commi's trying to penalize this person in their golden years. You hear it now with people clamoring to deny Social Security checks to the so-called "rich". By the same token, what about a person who is rich but becomes impoverished as they age? Under your plan, they would be denied the means to save their entire life and be left with little money to pay for healthcare in their later years.

Still if class warfare is your unshakeable religion, I will provide the purely economic argument against denying the "rich" HSA accounts.

When the dreaded "rich" people use HSA's, they will cut back on their unnecessary and ineffective care as I described above. Their reduction in demand contributes to the lower price of healthcare for everyone (i.e. the "poor" too). Taking away the HSA option from the "rich" effectively raises the price for the "poor". This is why only econo-illiterates can eat up this class warfare crap. They mistakenly assume that any perceived benefit for the "rich" automatically worsens the plight of the "poor".

They couldn't be more wrong.



Need less theoretical argumentation?

Consider plasma televisions. If the dreaded "rich" weren't buying them at $15-$20,000 a few years ago, technology companies would never have gotten the money to invest, streamline, and innovate that drove plasmas down to the more affordable prices of $2000-$3000 where they are today for the "little" people.

This is called CAPITALISM. Perhaps you may have heard of it. It should be taught next to reading, writing, and arithmetic but unfortunately is not.

Now, on to CNBC's "expert" academic who said that,

“ (HSA’s) won’t reduce medical costs because most of medical spending is on the sickest and would be past the deductible amount... it won’t reduce the number of un-insured.”

First off, this is a classic Perma-Naysaying sound-byte polemic. You can see how long this post on HSA's is. They are not a simple thing that can be debunked so glibly.

It is kind of like saying that high end homes won't depreciate because there will always be rich people to buy them. Obviously this is pure nonsense.

HSA's are dynamic vehicles that will effect far-reaching changes on consumer behavior. This Naysaying "expert" is ignoring more than a few things. First, he is ignoring the huge contribution of blockbuster drugs to the cost of healthcare. I read something like 50% of the past five years healthcare inflation is due entirely to about a dozen new drugs. Included in them are the aforementioned Lipitor (which can be replaced by soy diets) and Prozac (that loses tests against sugar pill placebos).

This huge amount of spending just on new drugs seems at odds with the "expert's" assertion that "most of medical spending is on the sickest". Also remember what I have said in past blogs about these demand parsers - that 9 times of 10, they are econo-illiterates trying to promulgate political propaganda.

Devil's Advocate: You are busted C-Nut. You just tried to call the "expert" a demand parser but that is exactly what you just did when you skipped from the total cost of healthcare to the recent healthcare inflation rate.

Knucklehead, I didn't demand parse, I changed to the more appropriate metric. It is the escalating inflation in healthcare costs that needs to be addressed. The more expensive medical care gets, the fewer that can afford it, etc.

The "expert" is the one that wants to misdirect the debate and I am just taking the dialogue back on track. Saying that we spend the most money on the sickest is tautological bovine excrement. Of course we do. This "sickest" are the ones that need the care. Should we spend the most money on the healthiest instead?

It's like when these Morons say stuff like,

"...the poor have no money..." or "...the poor can't afford..."

Who could possibly disagree that the poor lack money? It is a debating ruse to get the listener in a state of initial agreement and then pull them further into whatever BS the Moron is peddling.

Now I mentioned above that HSA's are dynamic in the sense that they alter consumptive behavior. Here another blogger eloquently lands the crippling blow on CNBC's "expert".

Even really sick people can have choices. Very heroic (and expensive) measures are taken in end of life care. Pretending that everyone were responsible for their own health costs for a moment, if I had a terminal condition, and had a choice between spending the last month in the ICU or not bankrupting my family, I know which I would choose. Now if someone else is picking up that tab... As a society, we have no problem bankrupting the healthcare system with these kinds of choices when we have no direct responsibility.

Amen, fellow blogger.

CNBC, the New York Times, and their comrades in Big Media are incapable of objectively discussing almost anything, never mind a free market concept like Health Savings Accounts. Lucky for everyone that today the anti-agitprop is available on the web.



Right now a family of four can put $5,450 into an HSA each year. Assume that the maximum contribution amount grows 1% per year. Now remember, I am going to put the money in and never take a nickel out. I will invest it in stocks and bonds. After 30 years of growth:

A 5% annual return would yield a balance of $405,220.

A 7% annual return would yield a balance of $569,016.

A 9% annual return would yield a balance of $812,038.

Remember those annual contributions were tax-deductible, they grew and compounded tax-free, and you should have a bunch of receipts saved up that you can reimburse yourself with, also tax-free.

Furthermore, I am pretty sure you can bequeath it.

Big Media may have stalled Social Security reform, but they completely missed this one.

New Parent Empiricism

My first child is now 14 months old and I wish to share some of my insights and lessons from first year parenthood.

My son was born last November at the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte.

Lesson One:

DO NOT WATCH A C-SECTION.

My cousin, a doctor himself, warned me that the procedure is almost straight out of a Jaws movie. I mostly averted my eyes but the couple of glimpses that I caught were most retching. There were two student nurses in there observing and one of them actually feinted. Good luck to her in her medical career. It was also most discomfiting to hear the doctors and nurses so glibly discuss their Thanksgiving plans while they had my wife’s belly wide open. Anyway, fortunately the whole process went smoothly and we were extremely happy with the maternity ward there.

So the first night that the baby slept in our room, knowing that we had to feed the baby in about 3 hours, we openly wondered how we would know when to get up and do so. Did we need to set an alarm for 3 hours or what? The nurse heard our discussion and apparently contained all of her laughter.

We soon figured it out that the baby WAS THE ALARM. Screaming his head off was plenty sufficient to both wake us up and alert us to his hunger. In fact, 14 months later my son still role plays as the family/neighborhood alarm clock.

This reminds me a bit of the so-called baby monitor. What rookie parent wouldn’t possibly think about not “monitoring” their child? Every Mom-to-be gets it but it may be the most unnecessary baby appliance. It is almost one of these pure marketing products.



Lesson Two:

YOU DON’T NEED A BABY MONITOR.

You’ll be sure to hear the kid scream from very, very far away. If anything you may need a high end set of earplugs, something I am probably still going to buy.

We have been blessed with a beautiful, yet too often, mostly AWAKE son. Let’s take a step back to pregnancy.

When someone tells you they are pregnant, please DO NOT ASK IF THEY “WERE TRYING”.

First of all, to me, “trying” evokes images more associated with opening a tightly sealed jar or even a constipation battle.

Secondly, what if they tell you “No...it was an accident”? How are you going to digest that info? Twice I have had people voluntarily tell me they were “accidentally” pregnant and I have fired back at them,

“What happened? Was your husband naked and he tripped onto you or something?”

Most times, just maybe say “congratulations” when you find out someone is pregnant and please don't brand your kid with the "accident" label. Most of you know darn well what causes conception.

Okay, names.

If you have friends who are pregnant, I would advise you tell them all of your name ideas as soon as possible. Too often what happens is you like a name but your friend claims it first publicly. (I know a group of non-communicating friends who consequently all have a daughter named Sophia.) Even if you were reserving a name for years, you will look like you stole from or copied your friend or relative.

Also, if you want to use very STUPID NAMES for your kids, be aware that your family and friends will properly think you (and spouse) are a Moron and they will be making fun of you behind your back for a very long time. And don't forget the burden you'll be putting on that innocent baby. That is just how it goes. I wish I could divulge all of my own personal examples but...

Okay, this one guy I know named his kids:

Tripper, Trina, Tucker, Trevor, and I can’t remember the other one but it also started with the letter “T”.

Personally I wouldn't name a kid something that could be both a girl's and a boy's name like Sidney or Corey. And I don't think that Christians should be naming their kid Abdul nor should a Chinese couple name their kid Rocco.

Consider this couple's naming boner from a prior post,

Mr. Lover, 42, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, and his wife, Kristina Rinaldi, 41, an interior decorator, decided to give up their one-bedroom rental on West 55th Street when they had a daughter, Tallulah.

Tallulah? What the heck is that?

But consider the circumstantial evidence. Miss Rinaldi did not take her husband's last name and they are featured Morons in that bigoted NYT article. It is very true that kids, starting with their names, reflect their parents - hence the popular proverb about the tree and the nearby fallen apple.



Of course the celebrities rank very high on the STUPID NAMERS list. There wasn't an exhaustive site that I could find but there are plenty of examples out there on the web.

Rachel Griffiths has named her baby (boy or girl?), Banjo Griffiths-Taylor.

Jermaine Jackson has a baby (boy or girl?) named Jermajesty Jackson.

George Foreman named all four of his sons “George”.

Asked what gave him the idea to name all his boys after himself, Foreman offers an elaborate explanation that seems as novel as the idea itself. "I wanted my boys to have something that nobody could ever take from them," he says, "and I figured, give them a name that they could run into whenever they had problems or if they ever got lost, their children's children's children could always run back to that name and have something to fall back on so that they wouldn't get lost.

"I didn't find out who my real father was and didn't even know it until 1976," he continues. "After I lost the title to muhammad, I found out I had another father other than the one that I thought was my father. I looked him up and was friends with him until he died in 1978. So I made sure that my boys were going to have something to know one another."


Lesson 3:

PEE AND POOP ARE EXTREMELY OVERRATED (no doubt because of incessant MSM bias).

Of all the lifestyle changes and new parental responsibilities, diaper changing is really one of, it not the easiest new thing to acclimate yourself to.

And you will be sure to get a kick out of the in-laws changing the baby's diapers as well (remember, your parents are in-laws too).

For one thing, they think they have just time-warped back 30 years and are still experts at the whole gamut of childcare. Granted they are inherently a few notches ahead of the baby's parents in terms of knowledge but they have also aged considerably too - no doubt seemingly more from raising the thankless, snot-nosed newbie parents.

The in-laws may have changed a few thousand diapers in their day but now they are prone to putting the diaper on upside down, not fastening it properly, and doing some pretty piss poor wiping jobs (pardon the pun). Not only that, but to see if the kid needs to be changed, invariably the old folk actually stick their finger down a diaper and then smell it!!!

That's right. Those are the hands that cooked us thousands of meals!!!

So fear not, changing diapers is a breeze. The only gross part is perhaps watching the grandparents do it.



Lesson four:

DON'T BE ONE OF THESE NEW PARENT GERMAPHOBES.

You don't have to use a clean bottle every single time, don't have to sterilize everything that goes near the kid, or make everyone that touches your child go wash their hands. But germaphobia and its big brother hypochondria are not usually rational things so I doubt that anything I could say would influence the pertinent Morons.

Also take the baby out to restaurants almost right away. The kid will sleep and get used to some ambient noise. The kids whose parents shelter them usually become the most hypersensitive and fussy. We had our kid out when he was 3 weeks old and of course some old guy at the restaurant gratuitously scolded us for having our baby outside in the cold weather.

So if you take your newborn out and some elder person asks how old the baby is....you may want to lie if you are too polite to tell a fossil to mind their own business.

Final Lesson:

BE PREPARED FOR SLEEP DEPRIVATION:

All of these Morons assume that dirty diapers and less time at the bar are the bane of parenthood but they are dead wrong. It is the body blow to your personal sleep-time that is THE BIGGEST SACRIFICE on the altar of parenthood.

It's especially tough when you are in your late 20s or early 30s, because you have been probably on you own personal life schedule for a decade now. When you come home with a newborn, your sleep life is over as you know it. You feed the kid and put him to bed but in three hours you have to get up again. Now who can fall asleep on a dime? I certainly can't. So maybe it takes me 2 hours to fall asleep. There is nothing worse in life than being woken up 30 minutes or an hour into your sleep. This is why it is part of the torture portfolio at Guantanamo Bay.

Personally, I will never forget the euphoria from when my son first started sleeping through the night. Even though both my wife and I were reflexively wide awake at 6 AM anyway.



The most life-saving product we got was the Miracle Blanket. It is kind of like a little strait-jacket for the baby, locking his arms down and whatnot. Some people have told me they can replicate this with normal blankets but I could not.

When the first kid comes, the "life-saving" metric effectively depreciates to anything that will get you 10 more minutes of sleep or silence.

2005 In Review

I predicted that Desperate Housewives would lose viewership this year. I couldn't find out whether or not I was correct on this. And who really cares anyway?

CaptiousNut has been right about a sliding housing market. Click here, here, here, and here for refreshers.

Right about shares of Google. $451 per share as I type this, it was around $300 at my last post and $228 at my first post on the subject.

Right about George Allen. In a prior post I predicted he would be the Republican 2008 nominee for president. Okay, I am not technically right yet, but Rush Limbaugh, subsequent to my post, threw Allen’s name out as the lead candidate. Perhaps Rush is a Marginalizing Morons blog reader?

CaptiousNut was wrong about Google being added to the S&P 500 by January. Wall Street remains befuddled as to why Standard and Poor’s keeps passing them over. By not adding Google, they have cost many investors billions because index-tracking fund managers’ Google entry point seemingly goes up every week.

(weekly sugar chart: click to enlarge)

Jim Rogers hit the homerun on my blog with his call to buy oil, lead, sugar, and coffee.

Obviously oil is roaring, sugar is at 24 year highs, and coffee has been percolating as has lead.

I said that I was waiting for an Asian economic blip to give me a good entry point into the commodities market and unfortunately I haven't gotten one.

Gold is also at multi-year highs. I didn’t predict it was going up officially, but I did mention a purchase of options in the sector that have appreciated nicely.

I predicted the January effect would not come and was wrong. The stock market did rally in November, but also spiked during the first two weeks of January. Incidentally, I was shorting into that rally and was short the market last Friday when the market got obliterated. Unfortunately for me, I covered it a little too early. I also doubled up my Google position at $397, yet I also wimped out and dumped it for a very small profit as it bounced considerably. As much as I love Google, I have been burned enough over the years to learn the wisdom of keeping my eggs in separate baskets. I would rather try to find the next Google then get overly invested in the present one.

I was wrong shorting Apple (but did a good job covering around $70. It went up to $86).

On the subject of Apple, a lot of iPod geeks were high-fiving recently when the stock hit $85 and its market capitalization momentarily passed that of Dell Computer’s.

Jeff Jarvis was delighted as was Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Before the geek celebration even got started however, Apple shares got smacked down to $74. They have still had quite the remarkable run, but the episode reminds me of some of my own gloating stories.



In the summer of 1999, I was on fire with my trading. My account had climbed to a few hundred thousand dollars and I decided to “brag” or at least tell a couple of friends. Well, that was it. From there my account plunged to negative a couple of hundred thousand bucks. And I will never forget the high correlation between my gloating and that particular peak in my profits.

Once I got into a heated altercation on the trading floor with another trader. We were arguing over a trade, of course I was right and he was dead wrong. Four lettered words were flying and we had to be separated. My opponent had that lethal jerk/Moron combo going on and amidst about 50 people standing around he screamed at me,

“...F*ck you….I paid more in taxes last month than you make in an entire year...”

Though he was dead wrong in the original argument, he apparently thought his tax bracket gave him special dispensation. Needless to say, nobody on the trading floor really knows exactly how much others are earning.

How did this Moron end up?

Well two days later, he lost all of his money and got fired. He tried but couldn’t get another job with any other firm. Mind you, this was during the bull market and firms were throwing stupid 22 year old college grads into trading pits.

"I pay more in taxes...." became an oft repeated punchline for the guys down there, even years after the Moron was gone.

I could probably make a list of 50 or so similar traders I knew who suffered similar demises from my six years on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.

“Pride cometh before a fall…” was also the theme of Johnny Tremain, an American literary classic I had to read in middle school and definitely didn’t learn from. I am not sure but "Pride cometh..." that may actually be from the Bible. Anyway life in the real world is unlike school because the tests come first and the lessons later on.

Definitely click on this Jeff Jarvis link and read the comments under his post. CapitousNut makes a few good pointed comments in the thread.

The difference between me and most opinion-heads is that I tend to put my money where my mouth is. I don't just THINK that the iPod is a fad, I have been shorting the stock and putting my money where my mouth is. Don't think for a second that Steve Jobs was buying Apple stock at $85 per share when he gloated (Apple insiders are actually ONLY SELLING). Nor were many of these college geeks, struggling artists, or cheerleading bloggers buying shares of Apple at any point.

But all in all, I try to stay focused more on analysis and sound financial planning rather than forecasting punditry.

Whether it is buying Google, renting instead of buying a house, or shorting Apple or stem cell research companies, etc., taking money from Morons may be the optimal way to Marginalize them.

Heck, you can even make money off "global warming" Morons by shorting stocks like ENER as I did today.

Maybe I will short the whole basket: Whole Foods, Starbucks, Apple Computer, Alternative Energy companies....


But that would be categorically foolish because,

...selling stuff to Morons is no small industry.