Everyone Should Be Very Worried About the Interest Rate Drop

 I have long complained that CPI is not a real measure of inflation. About 15 years or so ago, I looked into what was in the actual "market basket" when it was first invented and researched--back in the 1950s--and then went to the store and priced it. If I just did math and relied on the CPI as adjusted by the FED, that market basket should have cost around $250. It actually would have cost $400. 

This should be no surprise for people living in the USA today. In 2019, we could go to McDonalds and get a chicken sandwich for $1. Now it is $2.59. That is 259% inflation. However, the cumulative rate of inflation according to the FED is about 25%. 

If you are wondering how I can price the exact same things the FED says it's pricing and come up with a much larger inflation rate, that's because I am really reporting the price changes. After the FED prices things, it frequently decides they are too expensive and instead of simply reporting the new cost of say a car, it decides to fudge its numbers. It makes a subjective but "research based" estimate of how much more value a car today is than a car from ten years ago. There is a good breakdown of this here. 

Cars supposedly last longer these days, but the average car on the road today is 12.5 years old with 169,000 miles according to the Department of Transportation. The average car on the road in the 1970s based on what the online consensus seems to be is that they lasted 10 years and 100,000 miles. Now, I had a 1981 Honda Civic with over 200,000 miles, and it was still running when I got rid of it in 2000. There are tons of problems with the logic that modern cars are more technologically advanced so they last longer. In 1950, the average new car cost about $1,600. Now, $48,000 is the average price--for 2.5 more years of life. That's a straight CPI of 3000% but after the FED adjusts their CPI, its only 1206%. Since cars make up a decent amount of the overall percentage of CPI, "adjusting" or as I like to say "fudging" the numbers is not good. This is not a real "cost of living." And of course this is only one of many ways the CPI is "adjusted."

All poverty levels and state programs including disability and social security are based on these numbers. So, a person living on social security in 1950 might have been able to afford a new car, but they could not today. This also means that poverty is a lot worse in the US than what is reported, which is 12.5% or about 1:10. However, 36% of people are skipping meals because they cannot afford to eat or 1:3 people. Not being able to buy food because you can no longer afford it is, to me, living in poverty. 

Ironically, inflation isn't really going down even with the interest rate increases. So why is it going down? I bet you can figure that out--the FED changed how they were calculating CPI and did one of their subjective "adjustments." Everyone rejoiced and the stock market was confused why they didn't immediately cut the rates again. Well, the FED obviously knew its new numbers were fudged. Now inflation numbers are down where "normal" is supposed to be. With all these investors and politicians complaining--because in America we hire the dumbest of the dumb to represent us in Washington (i.e. they can't do basic math and will just give themselves a pay raise if they start to struggle with groceries), the FED just slashed our interest rates. 

The problem here is obvious. Inflation didn't stop when they raised interest rates. Inflation is higher than what the numbers say. A large portion of Americans can't afford food, and our idiot government keeps printing money to send to Ukraine and Israel so they can massacre people we don't like and to pay our overpaid weapons dealers and banknote holders. Our GDP gets fudged--I mean "adjusted"--for inflation based on the inflation numbers that were fudg--I mean "adjusted." That means our GDP looks a whole lot bigger than what it actually is because our inflation adjustment is not as big as what it should be. Our current GDP is probably overinflated by more than 200%. With a national debt of 28 trillion and growing astronomically by the minute, the fudged GDP, which is ironically called "real GDP" has us at about 23 trillion right now. 

Japan has been able to maintain a much higher debt ratio, but their people have large savings accounts that the government can borrow from cheaply. We do not. If we are fudging our inflation, we are spending as much as we need to be spending on our people, and we are not giving accurate information to our creditors. Further, our inflation is still raging out of control and our government has not done much to reign it in. The only real thing it did was increase interest rates and now we are lowering them. I don't think this will last long. Inflation is not just a result of interest rates. It is a result of debt and money printing. As long as we keep doing that, more and more Americans will go hungry. With the government fixing the books, fewer and fewer of them will be able to get any aid. 

Snopes: Forgetting How to Fact-Check Again

 Oh, Snopes, what a tangled web of lies you weave sometimes. You admit Hunter Biden was "dismissed" as an officer, but then say that is "most likely" a "general discharge."  False. Hunter Biden stated he had an administrative discharge, but he also seems to have lost everything as if he had been court martialed and dismissed. The "dismissal" of an officer is the equivalent to a dishonorable discharge. Officers cannot be dishonorably discharged--only "dismissed." "If an officer is convicted by a General Court-Martial, then that officer's sentence can include a "dismissal." This is considered to be the same as a dishonorable discharge." Further, if Hunter Biden resigned before his court martial, he would have been given an administrative discharge that was Other Than Honorable (which is similar to a dishonorable discharge but not as severe). If he received a "general" administrative discharge, this would draw some scrutiny, especially since others in the military have served 19 years honorably, tested positive for cocaine once and were not only dishonorably discharged, but also jailed. But with the military sealing the records, we will probably never know if Joe asked former President Obama (as head of the military) to pull a few strings for his son. That's right: the military has not released any details about the discharge Hunter received. Ironically, if Hunter had been court martialed, President Obama could have been the judge, sealed the records, and Hunter could have said anything he wanted about his discharge. President Trump, however, does have access to those records, so it blows my mind Snopes would feel they can fact-check his statement accurately. Fact checking requires finding original documents to support or disavow the claim. Snopes did not have access to any documents and merely gave their opinion on the matter based on Hunter Biden's own claims.

If Joe wouldn't have found a job in Ukraine for Hunter, his boy probably wouldn't have been able to afford any more cocaine since his discharge had civilian effects apparently similar to the dishonorable or "other than honorable" discharge. Granted, Hunter Biden managed to jump through many walls that normal people could not have just to join the military the way he did. At the time, I wanted an investigation into whether the whole war in Ukraine was because Hunter needed a job after his "dismissal. It was all too convenient in my opinion especially with documented inappropriate US interference. Why don't people care that while making $80,000+ per MONTH in Ukraine that Hunter stated he couldn't afford to pay child support to an out-of-wedlock kid he had in court? Please Democrats, you love to jump on everything the President does wrong, why don't you let Joe's faults come out, too... oh, I forgot. You don't support free speech. I don't understand how you are okay with Joe getting a job for his son numerous times but you are also okay with Joe locking down the country again and putting millions of hard-working Americans out of work--perhaps permanently.

33.5 Million on Unemployment and People Are Whining About Sweet Tomatoes Closing Permanently

I truly don't understand America. The disconnect between reality and the fantasy they seem to live in is vast. COVID-19 wasn't deadly. My husband tested positive, and the rest of my family, including me, probably have it, too. We are fine. It is somewhere between a bad cold and a mild flu. For me, it is more like a bad sinus infection, and I have heart problems, so based on all the hype I am still expecting to end up in the hospital. But we put people out of work. 33.5 million people have lost their jobs... for this. Did we stop the spread? No. Millions of people have had it in NY and LA without any or very mild symptoms. Or, they thought they had a sinus infection and pushed through it. People who stayed inside and isolated themselves as told were more likely to end up hospitalized in NY. Not the people who went about their business as best they could. It's over. The military is packing up and heading home without treating one patient in their makeshift hospitals. Trillions of dollars have been spent-- not on improving healthcare or access to health care for the poor, but on buying unused ventilators and paying unemployment benefits for people who had jobs. Still, people following the doom and gloom of the news ignore Georgia's real numbers that have drastically decreased since they fully opened, and cry about the second wave. These are the people who have been getting paychecks--the ones that find it easy to ignore the fact 15 million people still haven't received unemployment benefits after 2 months and some people are not getting anything or only fractions of what they were once getting. People are facing foreclosure and financial doom because the government forbid them to work. Worse yet, many of these people are still so terrified about COVID-19 that they will never come out of their homes and do not care that they are not buying food or meds they need because to them, dying of hunger and their current diseases is better than a small chance of dying from COVID-19. Our economy contracted by 4% in the first quarter, and people are brushing that aside as insignificant--despite the fact we were only closed 2 weeks in the first quarter and we are going to have been closed almost 2 months or more in the second quarter. They ignore that our ability to spend all those trillions on useless things is dependent on our GDP.

But, Sweet Tomatoes, the rich person's buffet, is closing. For that, they are all sad. Not one tear was shed when food bank lines extended down the street as far as could be seen. Not one "Wow, we will miss them" for the 7 million mom and pop businesses that may never reopen. No, a rich person's buffet is the only thing to get sad sentiments. We are sick, America, and it isn't with COVID-19. It is with apathy toward our fellow man.

Trump: The First President with the Audacity to Decrease Tax on the Rich While Increasing Tax on Poor with No Added Benefits for the Poor and then puts the Poor out of Business

So Donald Trump has big cojones. First, he decided to decrease the tax on the rich while increasing the tax on the poor. Had the poor people gotten expanded Medicaid or had HSAs (a rich person's extra retirement fund parading as health insurance) been made illegal or had mental healthcare been improved, I wouldn't be complaining. However, poor people don't even get relief from the nasty school lunches Michelle Obama felt were necessary to implement. Many of our children get to starve throughout the school day and come home to binge on unhealthy foods because of it, which is probably why obesity took a sharper climb upward after her "healthy" measures. Where our kids might have once eaten broccoli covered in cheese, they now toss their plain broccoli in the trash. But I digress.

After raising our taxes, the coronavirus hit. Now, for those of you who are hyped out on media, the facts are this: (1) Neil Ferguson should have his college degrees removed and his job at the Imperial College taken away. He created a model that did not use COVID-19 data, but that he recycled from his swine flu predictions. This was the model they are relying on when they say quarantine will help us. You remember the hundreds of millions that died during the swine flu epidemic? He predicted that. He also predicted tens of thousands would die from mad cow... So, he's an idiot, and all the governments of the world went with it. (2) Coronaviruses are NOT new. We have been dealing with them for about 50 years. (3) COVID-19 cannot be spread by asymptomatic carriers-- really. Look up scientific research on it in peer reviewed journals (not pre-publish sites). Hint: to officially declare a disease capable of infecting others, you need to do animal experiments to see if they can contract the disease from people who test positive but have no symptoms. One or two "case" or "observational" studies have been published with a handful of participants, but these amount to poor circumstantial evidence and many of them admit the "asymptomatic" carriers had symptoms. (4) Household transmission is the number one way coronavirus spreads. It is also the number one way ANY infectious disease spreads. AND THE GOVERNMENT LOCKED YOU IN YOUR HOMES. Understand now why numbers go up drastically and never go back down once a country locks down? (5) Quarantining healthy people was developed in the 1300s to combat diseases. It is the only preventative health care measure that we still use. (Didn't see anyone burning massive bonfires in the streets now, did you?) Because of this, there is much research behind it. Guess what? It has never worked. Think about it. Bubonic plague spread across Europe. Didn't matter what they did. Yellow Fever-same. Cholera--same. Doesn't "flatten the curve" either. There is absolutely NO scientific evidence for that. It is just one of those cutesy catch phrases to psychologically manipulate you.

So, the short is, you are not sacrificing yourself for your neighbor. True sacrifice would be overcoming your fear and allowing the 1/3 of the workforce that was laid off without ANY income for more than 6 weeks now, to go back to work. But everyone seems to want 60 million people and their families to die. I don't get that. Why would anyone be okay with that?

The big thing is that those 60 million people are the ones President Trump was taxing more by fiddling with personal exemptions. That's right: He increased our taxes and then put us out of work an decreased our income. Rest assured, the rich still got their paychecks through investments while the rest of us were laid off. He also reduced corporate taxes, causing more than 60 large businesses like Amazon to get tax credits!!! That's right, these rich companies actually get money back and end up with a zero tax bill regardless of how many billions of dollars in profit they make each year. This should be a further sore spot for all those small businesses that were forced to permanently close.

For kicks and giggles, you can check out some of these to see just what the government is spending money on while it ignores the fact poor people need useful programs to keep them from becoming destitute:
https://www.forbes.com/pictures/ejde45i/in-pictures-15-silliest-uses-of-taxpayer-money/#8c515f5374f2
https://reason.com/2019/04/15/happy-tax-day-here-are-6-infuriating-ways-the-government-spends-your-money/
https://www.rd.com/funny-stuff/wasteful-government-spending/
https://moneyminiblog.com/lists/stupidest-things-u-s-government-spends-money-on/
https://americansforprosperity.org/5-outrageous-ways-the-federal-government-has-wasted-your-money-part-iv/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/12/top-10-wasteful-government-expenses/

Our country was founded on capitalism--a capitalism where the best companies survive. However, we have become more of a socialist hybrid where the rich and the big companies get government handouts and the government makes more laws, like the executive orders that closed down small business during COVID-19, to force small companies to close. We complain about the high cost of healthcare, but then the government looks the other way when healthcare becomes a business so large it is traded on the stock market. Capitalist societies can only survive when they don't abuse their citizens and selectively favor those big businesses who need financial help the least. And if those businesses do need financial help to stay afloat, well, true capitalism lets them fall because we all know the small guy doesn't get a handout when he or she struggles.

The Bad State of NY Healthcare Revealed with COVID-19

People are trying to make excuses for New York: It's a big city... It got COVID-19 from Europe, not China...

But the fact is, that NY just has lousy healthcare. I feel sorry for the people who live there. For comparison, California has 39.5 millionish people in the state and only 28,899 cases of COVID-19. 1021 people have died there from the virus. California was one the the first states to lockdown their entire state on March 20, 2020, and right after that, like every other place that has gone on lockdown, their new case numbers began a much steeper climb to the top. Testing was increased back around March 1, so that was not a good reason for rates to skyrocket, in my opinion, but it is what it is. We will never accurately see what COVID-19 is doing until we stop putting money into quarantine and start putting money into testing and improving healthcare access among the poor, especially those making 135%-180% federal poverty income levels, which basically screws them out of any state healthcare aid (even something like HIP-2.0, where they pay small premiums for Medicaid.)

But at least California, skyrocketing as it is, is not NY. NY has a population of only 19.5 million. A little less than half the population of CA. New York's numbers are disgusting, though: 126,383 as of the same day I took CA's stats. New York also has 8448 deaths. In one instance, it was reported they stored at least 10 COVID-19 dead bodies in a nursing home. Is it any wonder they have so many cases? Apparently, they are truly trying to re-enact the 1300s. They also have been blowing up the lungs of COVID-19 patients and increasing their chances of bacterial pneumonia by putting them on ventilators when all they need is an Oxygen mask. This is something the Chinese tried to explain to us in February in a published paper, but we didn't listen.

And now people are protesting these lockdowns and the governor of MI actually said they were blocking ambulances. Really? All the hospitals I have seen on a map of Lansing were outside the protest area. An ambulance driver would need to deliberately reroute through the area (out of the way) to get to them. Not surprisingly, I saw no ambulances blocked in any news footage. I also saw a news agency claim the protesters were racist and carrying Confederate flags... so I looked. The only thing I saw was blue President Trump flags, Don't Tread on Me Flags, and USA flags from 2020. Sorry. Neither of those resemble the Confederate flag. I did see a lot of camo... but really? Its Michigan. Do they have anything else to wear up there? Especially since the Governor probably has deemed clothing "non-essential."

Hey, here's an idea: If you don't want people to protest, why don't you give them something else to do, like, I don't know... WORK! I mean really, saying that people who choose to go out are going to get everyone who is huddled in their homes sick, is like saying a person without a vaccine can get a person with a (WORKING) vaccine sick. Apparently, most Americans have thrown logic out the door.

Why Italy and the USA have failed the Covid-19 test (part 2)

The USA has also failed. Our CDC did not enact early testing. Testing from case 1 has taken a minimum of 3 days, unless you are rich. For some reason, rich people can still go on vacation and travel throughout the country, they can get tests even when they are not sick or seriously sick (which increases the chances of a false negative), and they can get the best healthcare if they do fall ill.

However, the fact is that the average American and his or her doctors must wait up to two weeks for test results. Covid-19 usually lasts 12-15 days. People are forced out of their jobs simply because they have been "exposed." It is a bit late for this. If you have mild symptoms, you are refused a test and told you "probably have it." This is a "precaution" but illogical. If, for example, almost 12,000 people in the state of Indiana have been tested because they had serious symptoms of the illness, and only about 2000 of them ACTUALLY HAVE IT, then our prediction rates are estimating 6x more cases than what we really have.

This is why we have run out of medical supplies. The lack of testing kits and testing ability has made it so that doctors err on the side of caution and wear protective gear 6x more often than necessary. It is still forcing doctors and nurses to use gear more than needed.

Now, we have rapid tests. This means that the number of cases will drastically increase, but we are still 1-2 months out before we will be able to test anywhere near the number of people we need to test each day (at this point). The WHO has stated repeatedly that the way to contain this disease is early detection--not mass quarantine, not more ventilators. The USA created an "emergency" situation by not testing and now is continuing to play on that emergency by enacting everything they can for "support" without actually doing what is really necessary: increase testing. The state of Indiana released information that one of its many universities was going to begin testing and expected to soon be testing up to 2,500 patients each day. Two weeks later we are testing less than 2,000 statewide. If students were back at their colleges instead of holed up at home, perhaps more universities could test. Although anyone can get Covid-19, I have found no reports of anyone under the age of 30 dying in the United States, yet, so this would be a wiser use of our resources.

On top of mass shelter-in-home orders and poor testing, the US has been putting out conflicting orders and statements that do not help calm the public. In some cases it is better to say "We don't really know yet, but we are working on it" instead of saying "We know this..." and then later saying "Wait, that wasn't right." A few states have responded well to calming the panic, for example, Georgia's Covid-19 website clearly shows that about 80% of the people who have died had pre-existing conditions. In another 15%, the status of preexisting conditions is unknown. Out of the current 102 deaths that are recorded, only 4 did not have a pre-existing conditions and all of these were over the age of 55. This isn't reassuring for the sick population over 55, but for the rest of us it should be. They also report the number of cases that are hospitalized, letting people know that everyone does not end up in the hospital. The neutral, calming, blacks, blues, and grays, make it more a page for statistics than sensation. The only thing I could complain about is that there could be a few more pie graphs.

On the other hand, you have Indiana, which gets an F in webpage design. At this time, they have the number of deaths in bigger font that is blood red. The yellow and blue fonts for number of tested and number of confirmed cases fade into the background. They do not report whether the people who have died had pre-existing conditions, and they break down newly confirmed cases by age, without any reference to whether the cases are mild, moderate, or severe. Instead of the light blue Georgia used in reporting the counties with only a few cases, which puts them in the background. Indiana again has opted for a light, reddish-brown that makes counties with even 1 case stand out on the map. How much did they pay for this fear inducing visual? Probably a lot more than Georgia's basic display. Of course the governor himself says the numbers should "put the fear of God in you." As someone who has studied pandemics, they don't. Nor should they make anyone afraid if they are looked at objectively in terms of other more deadly illnesses.

Increasing fear and panic across the USA instead of quieting it means that more people are going to commit abuse, more people are going to commit suicide, and more people are going to be casualties of Covid-19 than just those who contract and die from the disease. Issuing "emergency stay-at-home" orders instead of closing state and locality borders to prevent the spread, failing to test people quickly who go to the doctor with symptoms will increase spread and continue the lack of medical supplies, and failing to diagnose and treat people early will increase the deaths. If this virus were truly a threat, the USA would be in trouble.

We should be thanking China, not pointing fingers at them.

Misinformation across the web about coronavirus is rampant. Even things on the CDC webpage have been generalized and not helpful for this outbreak. But some things are clear and deserve to be posted:
(1) This is not a biological weapon. No country--China, the USA, or E-Swatini created this virus. As of yet, none of the coronaviruses found in any animal match this one with 99% of a DNA match, so we don't even know where the transition occurred from. Covid-19 could have even already existed in our population and just happened to be identified this year. We only know that several people who came down with the virus all worked at or visited a seafood market in China, Wuhan province. These are the first identified cases.
(2) Many Chinese people died from this virus, but their deaths have helped the rest of the world deal with it better. The death rate in China was elevated, but the overall death rate is now only 2.4%-3.9% depending on the source (and probably the country). In South Korea, the death rate is only 0.77%, less than the flu most years.
(3) American leaders are botching things, which is increasing the spread across the USA. --The CDC developed its own test, but it could not effectively process the test fast enough. Hospitals who tested sick people sent them home, only to call them back into quarantine 2-3 days later when they received the results of those tests. Everyone in the US is now entitled to a free coronavirus test, but some states, such as Oregon can only process about 45 tests a day--for the entire state! To make matters worse, this test only applies to people who can afford to see a doctor in the first place. With all the stupid HSAs in place the government is asking poor people to cough up the cash to pay for a visit to the doctor when many of them will only ever experience a low-grade fever and mild cough. The well-off will of course rush to their doctors in droves and pressure them to order the test. And, now China is so mad at us for blaming them for the outbreak (even though it was just a few stupid media outlets), that they are not going to help supply the chemicals needed for the kits, and these are running low.
(4) Even the CDC has admitted that closing schools at this point will not stop the spread of the virus and will increase the risk of older/at-risk individuals developing it since 40% of all children live with grandparents. Despite this, schools in many states, even those with as few as 10 infected individuals, have closed.
(5)Everyone is acting like this is the end of the world. Many people cleaning out stores are not doing it from their own fear, but instead they are doing it from greed--they want to make a buck selling the stuff online. Thankfully, at least some stores, are putting limits on the number of items you can buy.
(6) Cronavirus is subsiding in China, and WHO has produced a report that all policy makers should read to see how it happened there.
(7) According to WHO raw data, this is what the coronavirus looks like as of today. The red line is number of deaths per day (new) and the blue is newly reported cases each day:

Based on this, we should expect another slight jump in number of deaths per day in a couple days or so of this post. The only reason for the jump is that the number of people officially diagnosed has jumped drastically (probably due to improved global testing measures). However, many of these newly diagnosed people are probably mild in the symptom range (based on China's experience). If the spike on the left is not simply mild cases, than we will see a spike in about 8 days on the death chart.

(8) In the new coronavirus stimulus bill, there is evidence that Congress is planning to allow states to quarantine us 12 weeks without pay--since that number seems to be prominent. If it passes in the Senate, there will be no reason for states to not do this because our jobs cannot fire us during this absence. However, after 12 weeks of being closed, there is no guarantee that our jobs will still exist. 

(9) The current restrictions on the size of public assemblies that can meet are illegal based on past Supreme court rulings. Should people who are at greater risk attend public gatherings or go out frequently in public places--no. But government implemented restrictions on this are in violation of 1st and 14th amendment rights. In addition, if the government tried to implement a quarantine at this point, it would be difficult to prove the benefit (since quarantines increase the chance of transmission among families), and it would also be difficult to prove that a disease with a less than 0.77% fatality rate when handled correctly and when accurately monitored (ie both mild and severe cases are recorded instead of only the most severe), is severe enough risk for any quarantine. Note: the President and Congress cannot enact quarantines according to past Supreme Court cases, only states can do that, but they can only do it in times of extreme necessity--i.e. during illness with high mortality rates. .77% or even 3.9% is not a high mortality rate.

(10) Since 99% of all the deaths occur in people over the age of 50, the "at-risk" groups are people over 50 with those ailments (at least 99% of the time). I have not seen a break down anywhere on age and pre-existing conditions, but it would be interesting to see this kind of graphic to get a real idea of how a pre-existing condition combined with age affects the outcome of the disease. For example, of the ten people who died in the UK during this report, 8 were not only men (one risk factor) over the age of 80 (another high risk factor) but also had pre-existing diseases that increased their risk. In addition, the UK is no longer monitoring mild cases. They are letting the virus take its course. 

(11) There have been reports that coronavirus has a higher mortality rate and is more easily transmitted than influenza. This is simply not true, according to everything WHO has published. At the beginning of March, the mortality rate was estimated at between 3-4% (most papers misprinted this as 3.4%) They have stated as more mild cases (which usually go undiagnosed) are confirmed, this number will become lower. In places like South Korea, where they have been monitoring everyone at the rate of 10,000 tests per day, the mortality rate is 0.77%. I have also seen the news reporting that the mortality rate of flu is "only 1-3%" (at the beginning of the coronavirus scare) to now reporting the mortality rate is only 0.1%. The problem is that we can go back and look at the 2017-2018 report on the flu season by the CDC here. Although coronavirus does not really affect children, 20% of the children who had been vaccinated that year died from the flu. The overall mortality rate for the flu for that season was 10% (ten percent). It was the 8th biggest killer of people in the US and killed 55,627 people. In fact, if we take the worldwide numbers of 3-5 million cases of flu each year and a death rate of 290,000-650,000 deaths and do the math we get 6-21% (six to twenty-one percent) mortality rate. 

Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws

I am so glad Illinois has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Consider this article: What It Takes to Obtain a Gun License in Illinois.

As you can see from this article: Chicago Appeals for Help After Dozens Shot Over the Weekend. Tough gun laws really have helped Chicago, Illinois gun violence issues... <sarcasm>

My solution:

1. Get rid of violent video games and movies- require an ID to purchase and if the content is shared with children under 18, enforce the same legal penalties as if the adult shared alcohol with children.
2. Get rid of violent television shows (and news) viewed on public stations between 7 AM and 10 PM.
3. Create a government regulated "KinderNet" that parents can set up as the sole source of Internet for their children with no PG-13 or higher content. 
4. Encourage monogamous relationships where raising children is the most important thing and encourage one parent to stay home with children while raising them.
5. Offer more government aid,including healthcare, to families with at least one working parent. 

• Numerous studies have shown that children who are raised in preschools are more violent than those raised by their parents. It is impossible for a child to develop a long term relationship with an adult when that adult is constantly changing from year-to-year or month-to-month as they do in preschool environments.
• Numerous studies have shown that children who view violent or sexually explicit material at young ages (under 13) are more violent. 
• Numerous studies have shown that money is one of the major things couples argue about. Take away that stress and provide better access to healthcare so parents can seek therapy and improve communication without having to find thousands of dollars to do so.

I recognize that single parenting is sometimes necessary. There are also people out there who should NOT be parents. But for the most part, making it easier for families to raise children and making it more difficult for children to view violent explicit content will lower gun violence. That is what the research shows- the problem is, media is a big lobbyist. People who hate "welfare" and "government handouts" don't seem to recognize that the people who truly need it are not jobless scam artists. People with low paying jobs need government help for their families and the government should encourage people to work instead of cutting off all services once families do work. Still the government takes their payoffs from big Media and makes promises about squelching "free-handouts" while in actuality they cut-off working families from needed aid. Restricting guns does nothing to reduce gun violence as anyone in Chicago should know. It is time for America to wake up and address the real problem instead of trying to stick a cheap bandage over it.

Keystone Pipeline safe for a little while

This morning, the Senate voted not to do the Keystone Pipeline.

Remarkably, President Obama seems to have switched party sides (Kerry is the one who is pushing for the pipeline) and the president hints that he would have vetoed it. He also said earlier that if it wouldn't significantly impact the environment, the he would approve it. Well, although the State Department investigation was performed by people employed by the oil company in charge of the pipeline, it did find that there would be no significant impact. Of course, then they removed the bios of the people involved in the investigation from their website "for privacy reasons."

Why should we see this as good news on two fronts? First, lets talk about all the jobs this would supposedly create. Right now, oil prices are low. OPEC refuses to stop pumping, and we in the West are only increasing our production. Adding more oil into the mix will make prices them lower. Already, some oil companies have been taking losses. How long before they begin cutting jobs? In addition, the part of the Keystone that is already in place will get less oil to process as its redirected to Louisiana. That means jobs will be lost in the MidWest (Illinois unemployment rate 6.6%) and gained in Louisiana (unemployment 6.0%).

Then there is the environmental impact. Now, I don't think carbon emissions cause global warming. But, I do see the dangers of an oil pipeline that runs across a fault line, one of the world's largest natural aquifers, and several large rivers. Not to mention the national parks and wildlife preserves. I also respect the rights of states to forbid the pipeline from crossing their boarders.

192,000 Jobs Added!

Sorry, not impressed. At the beginning of the week they were predicting 200,000 - maybe even 210,000. Now that it turns out to be only 192,000 - that's close enough? Yeah, I don't need unemployment statistics or economic analysts to tell me the economy is not peaches and roses.

Finding a job is difficult if you are employed and near impossible if you aren't. 

P.S. I am also not impressed with the way the government is trying to add new Medicaid signups into its wimpy 7 million insured through ACA. Plus 3 million for Medicaid, that makes 10 million. Even with that boost it's nowhere close to the 15 million they wanted at the beginning. I want to know how it compares to the number of people who have lost their insurance because of the ACA, but I don't see the news reporting that because everything is peaches and roses.