Calling John Galt

Boston citizens have experienced a massive increase in the time it takes to visit the doctor. It now takes 50 days to get in to the see the doctor for a general visit.

Thankfully for Bostonians, Urgent Care is still available and much more quickly than 1.25 months away.

The Government simply isn’t capable of running these types of programs.

Quick tally:
Massive Deficits ($2 trillion this year alone)
Undermining the CIA
Closing Guantanamo / Opening it back up again
No fiscal restraint
A stimulus bill that didn’t stimulate anything
Unemployment continuing to go up
Undermining contract law
Leading by example (Geithner, others)
Doubling down on Iraq and Afghanistan

Hmmm, where does Obama’s base stand with all of this?

President Obama came out today saying that high deficits were unsustainable and that they could cause skyrocketing interest rates and inflation.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Unfortunately, I think these are more empty promises.  President Obama’s words have no meaning as he continues to do the opposite.

So glad the stimulus passed

It turns out that the unemployment rate is much worse than predicted, even worse than “what would have been” without the recovery plan.

Now we are out all this money, and unemployement is still bad.

The Washington Examiner points out what the term “Structural Imbalance” as written by the AP means.  As the AP reported:

“The unprecedented red ink flows from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill, as well as a structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.”

The Washington Examiner responded:

In sports journalism, such a sentence is called covering for the home team, which in this case includes the present and previous White House occupants and the present majority in Congress.

This is a powerful scene that was cut from the original release of Star Wars. It’s worth the time if you want to watch it, but if not, skip ahead to 2:28:

“What good’s all your uncle’s work if the Empire takes it over? You know they’ve already started to nationalize commerce in the central systems? It won’t be long before your uncle is just a tenant, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire.”

China has slowed its purchase of US debt in a very clear vote of no confidence in the US spending.

President Obama opted for a photo op with Biden to show that Biden is still the guy for VP…  Even after a number of notorious flubs; advising people to avoid planes and mass-transit to keep from getting the flu and making fun of Chief Justice Roberts for messing up the Presidential Oath of Office, among others.

Way to go Joe.  By the way, how is overseeing the Stimulus Package going?  Not so well?

How is the stimulus package working out?

Not very well

What a surprise.

So far, only about 10 percent of the stimulus money has been doled out and it’s not having much effect in counteracting this deflationary spiral. How so? First quarter GDP plunged 6.1 percent — compared to a 6.3 percent decline in 2008’s fourth quarter — and the preliminary numbers are usually adjusted downward. The unemployment rate is expected to hit 8.9 percent in April from 8.5 percent in March.

Certain drugs/behaviors are seen as ‘gateways’ to stronger ills.

Like smoking.

Then, there are those bits and pieces of economic wisdom that are more folly than fact; once started, they lead you to powerful and more addictive fallacies.

The immutable truth of government power is that any government that has the power to outlaw a particular activity also retains the power to make that activity mandatory.

One Chinese province is putting this notion to use, by making cigarette smoking mandatory in an effort to keep tax revenues high, and to protect local tobacco companies from losing market share to imports.

You heard right — the Chinese are being undercut in price for cigarettes.