Yearly Archives: 2011

The Cato Institute on the Federal Reserve

September 22, 2011 – 1:00 pm

Time to End the Fed? The Origin of Central Banking and Possible Alternatives

Uploaded by on Mar 21, 2011

The Federal Reserve has existed for almost 100 years and it has created depressions, recessions, inflation, and bubbles. This CF&P Foundation video explains the origin of central banking and mentions possible alternatives that will be discussed in subsequent mini-documentaries.

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I have wondered who gave the Fed money to buy anything? There is no money in the federal budget for them. It seems to me that all they are doing is causing inflation. Here is a view from Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute.

The Federal Reserve, the ‘Twist,’ Inflation, QE3, and Pushing on a String

Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell

In a move that some are calling QE3, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will engage in a policy called “the twist” — selling short-term bonds and buying long-term bonds in hopes of artificially reducing long-term interest rates. If successful, this policy (we are told) will incentivize more borrowing and stimulate growth.

I’ve freely admitted before that it is difficult to identify the right monetary policy, but it certainly seems like this policy is — at best — an ineffective gesture. This is why the Fed’s various efforts to goose the economy with easy money have been described as “pushing on a string.”

Here are two related questions that need to be answered.

1. Is the economy’s performance being undermined by high long-term rates?

Considering that interest rates are at very low levels already, it seems rather odd to claim that the economy will suddenly rebound if they get pushed down a bit further. Japan has had very low interest rates (both short-run and long-run) for a couple of decades, yet the economy has remained stagnant.

Perhaps the problem is bad policy in other areas. After all, who wants to borrow money, expand business, create jobs, and boost output if Washington is pursuing a toxic combination of excessive spending and regulation, augmented by the threat of higher taxes.

2. Is the economy hampered by lack of credit?

Low interest rates, some argue, may not help the economy if banks don’t have any money to lend. Yet I’ve already pointed out that banks have more than $1 trillion of excess reserves deposited at the Fed.

Perhaps the problem is that banks don’t want to lend money because they don’t see profitable opportunities. After all, it’s better to sit on money than to lend it to people who won’t pay it back because of an economy weakened by too much government.

The Wall Street Journal makes all the relevant points in its editorial.

The Fed announced that through June 2012 it will buy $400 billion in Treasury bonds at the long end of the market—with six- to 30-year maturities—and sell an equal amount of securities of three years’ duration or less. The point, said the FOMC statement, is to put further “downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help make broader financial conditions more accommodative.” It’s hard to see how this will make much difference to economic growth. Long rates are already at historic lows, and even a move of 10 or 20 basis points isn’t likely to affect many investment decisions at the margin. The Fed isn’t acting in a vacuum, and any move in bond prices could well be swamped by other economic news. Europe’s woes are accelerating, and every CEO in America these days is worried more about what the National Labor Relations Board is doing to Boeing than he is about the 30-year bond rate. The Fed will also reinvest the principal payments it receives on its asset holdings into mortgage-backed securities, rather than in U.S. Treasurys. The goal here is to further reduce mortgage costs and thus help the housing market. But home borrowing costs are also at historic lows, and the housing market suffers far more from the foreclosure overhang and uncertainty encouraged by government policy than it does from the price of money. The Fed’s announcement thus had the feel of an attempt to show it is doing something to help the economy, even if it can’t do much. …the economy’s problems aren’t rooted in the supply and price of money. They result from the damage done to business confidence and investment by fiscal and regulatory policy, and that’s where the solutions must come. Investors on Wall Street and politicians in Washington want to believe that the Fed can make up for years of policy mistakes. The sooner they realize it can’t, the sooner they’ll have no choice but to correct the mistakes. 

Let’s also take this issue to the next level. Some people are explicitly arguing in favor of more “quantitative easing” because they want some inflation. They argue that “moderate” inflation will help the economy by indirectly wiping out some existing debt.

This is a very dangerous gambit. Letting the inflation genie out of the bottle could trigger 1970s-style stagflation. Paul Volcker fires a warning shot against this risky approach in a New York Times column. Here are the key passages.

…we are beginning to hear murmurings about the possible invigorating effects of “just a little inflation.” Perhaps 4 or 5 percent a year would be just the thing to deal with the overhang of debt and encourage the “animal spirits” of business, or so the argument goes. The siren song is both alluring and predictable. …After all, if 1 or 2 percent inflation is O.K. and has not raised inflationary expectations — as the Fed and most central banks believe — why not 3 or 4 or even more? …all of our economic history says it won’t work that way. I thought we learned that lesson in the 1970s. That’s when the word stagflation was invented to describe a truly ugly combination of rising inflation and stunted growth. …What we know, or should know, from the past is that once inflation becomes anticipated and ingrained — as it eventually would — then the stimulating effects are lost. Once an independent central bank does not simply tolerate a low level of inflation as consistent with “stability,” but invokes inflation as a policy, it becomes very difficult to eliminate. …At a time when foreign countries own trillions of our dollars, when we are dependent on borrowing still more abroad, and when the whole world counts on the dollar’s maintaining its purchasing power, taking on the risks of deliberately promoting inflation would be simply irresponsible.

Last but not least, here is my video on the origin of central banking, which starts with an explanation of how currency evolved in the private sector, then describes how governments then seized that role by creating monopoly central banks, and closes with a list of options to promote good monetary policy.

And I can’t resist including a link to the famous “Ben Bernank” QE2 video that was a viral smash.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Obama’s funny math: Saving money that never was going to be spent

September 22, 2011 – 12:36 pm

Addington, McConaghy Debate Obama’s Jobs Plan

Published on Sep 9, 2011 by

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) — David Addington, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, and Ryan McConaghy, economic director at Third Way, discuss President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan. They speak with Deirdre Bolton and Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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We have been hearing about how the stimulus saved jobs that would have been losted even though unemployment went up after the stimulus was passed. Now we are hearing about the money Obama’s plan will save.

Still Spreading the Wealth

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.

Added to cato.org on September 21, 2011

This article appeared on National Review (Online on September 21, 2011.

Back when Barack Obama was running for president, he famously told Joe the Plumber that his goal was to “spread the wealth around.” Judging from the deficit-reduction plan that the president introduced on Monday, he really meant it.

The president’s plan barely makes a pretense of reducing spending. The Obama administration claims that its proposal would reduce future budget deficits by roughly $4.4 trillion. But that includes $1.1 trillion in savings from troop draw-downs in Afghanistan and Iraq that were already going to occur. This is an old trick by which the president gets to “save” money that was never going to be spent. The president also reaches back to include $1.2 trillion in savings from the debt-ceiling deal that was signed into law last month. And, he includes $430 billion in savings from lower interest payments as a result of the reduced debt.

The president’s actual cuts total less than $580 billion over the next ten years. That amounts to less than 1.3 percent of expected total federal spending over that period. It barely offsets the cost of the new stimulus bill he announced last week.

The American welfare state is alive and well.

Entitlement reform, once the supposed basis for a grand compromise, is now off the table. Social Security is running a deficit and facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities, but the president makes no changes to the program. Medicaid would be cut by roughly $72 billion over ten years, barely more than $7 billion per year in a program that today costs $276 billion annually. The president would trim Medicare by $248 billion over ten years. Depending on which accounting measure you use, that program is facing unfunded liabilities of $30–90 trillion, meaning that under the best-case scenario, the president is proposing a reduction of less than 1 percent. And none of the president’s proposed Medicare savings amounts to structural change in the program, which is what is needed. Instead, the president falls back on the usual grab-bag of cuts in provider reimbursements. Those cuts are likely to drive providers out of the program, making it harder for seniors to see a doctor, while doing nothing to change the program’s path towards insolvency.

The American welfare state is alive and well.

On the other hand, the president throws his weight fully behind tax hikes. His plan would increase taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. That’s on top of $450 billion in tax hikes that the president proposed last week to pay for the stimulus package. In total, the president is seeking nearly $2 trillion in higher taxes, compared to $580 billion in spending cuts. That amounts to nearly $4 in taxes for every $1 in cuts.

And, let’s look at those taxes. The president continues to focus his rhetoric on millionaires and billionaires, but his proposal includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for people earning as little as $200,000 per year. That tax hike would also fall heavily on small businesses and almost certainly would slow job creation.

The president’s other big tax initiative is, of course, the new “Buffet rule,” a new alternative-minimum tax designed to ensure that “millionaires and billionaires” pay the same effective tax rate as middle-income workers. While that populist pitch may well prove politically popular, numerous studies have shown that it is highly misleading. Few millionaires and billionaires actually pay taxes at such low effective tax rates. Those that do are receiving the majority of their income from capital gains, income that has already been taxed multiple times before it is subject to the capital-gains tax.

Besides, we should never forget that investment is both risky and necessary for job creation. It is exactly the sort of thing we should be encouraging.

But in the end, economic growth and job creation is secondary to the president. So is deficit reduction. This proposal is about the president’s idea of “fairness,” as he has said over and over. The president sees the wealthy as achieving their success not through hard work and initiative but by exploiting the less well-off or through pure luck. They are the winners of life’s lottery, in his view. It is his job, therefore, to remedy this injustice. That means taking money from some and giving it to others.

It’s about “spreading the wealth around.”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, spending out of control | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Hillary popular, Obama is not. Will Hillary Run?

September 22, 2011 – 10:47 am

Here are what the numbers look like.

Yahoo reported:

One third of Americans believe Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Barack Obama, and two-thirds view her favorably, according to a new Bloomberg News poll.

 

“The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” Bloomberg News’  John McCormick wrote on the poll’s findings, which were released Friday.

While 34 percent of those polled believe “things would be better under a Clinton administration,” McCormick wrote, “almost half–47 percent–say things would be about the same, and 13 percent say worse.”

By contrast, “35 percent of those polled believe the country would be worse off if John McCain had been elected president,” Holly Bailey reported at The Ticket.

“Clinton remains the most popular political figure on the national scene, with 64 percent of those polled saying they have a ‘favorable’ view of the Secretary of State, Bailey wrote.

“Obama’s favorable rating is at 50 percent—even though 49 percent of those polled disapprove of the job he’s doing as president. A majority of Democrats say Obama is their best candidate in 2012, though just under a third—30 percent—say they’d prefer to have someone else on the ticket.”

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I really think that Hillary will come to the Democrats’ aid. I wrote in August the following:

Run, Hillary, run!

It is my view that if the economy keeps stinking that Republicans will have a field day  in November of 2012. However, the same principle holds true that challengers to Democrats will be  very successful in Democratic primaries.

In Arkansas many have longed for another Clinton in the White House. Could it happen? It is my view that it is a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are heavy favorites to take the Senate back and win the presidency in 2012. Nevertheless, it would not surprise me if there are some big surprises in the Democratic primaries. Matthew Dickinson wrote a fine article, “Run Hillary, Run,” Salon, August 4, 2011 and in that article he makes three points:

1. “To begin, her stint as secretary of state has done wonders for her approval rating, as indicated by Gallup poll surveys dating back to her time in the White House.”

2.  “Her second advantage relates to the first: She’s not part of the mess at home. She didn’t weigh in on the stimulus bill, or healthcare, or the banking overhaul, and she certainly bears no responsibility for the state of the economy.”

3. “This leads to a third point: buyer’s remorse. It’s not one she can directly bring up (after all, she’s above politics), but others will certainly remind voters that she did warn you. Remember that 3 a.m. phone call?”

Senator Mark Pryor is part of the establishment too and will face the same problems that President Obama faces in 2012, but that could not be said about Mike Beebe. Beebe is  very popular and won with overwhelming numbers in Arkansas when many other big names in the Democratic party went down like Broadway and Lincoln.

In April of 2011 polls numbers came out and Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog in his post, “Poll: Beebe, yes!; Pryor,eh.,” commented, “Gov. Mike Beebe’s approval is bipartisan and huge. U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor’s numbers are tepid.”

John Brummett goes on record today saying that Beebe will be playing golf mostly after he leaves office. Time will tell, but I am betting there will be some big upsets in Democratic primaries in the next few years. .

Announcement Hillary was running for president in 2008:

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Hillary Clinton, President Obama | Comments (0)

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (Part 4)

September 22, 2011 – 6:22 am

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (Part 4)

Governor Rick Perry got in trouble for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and I totally agree with that. This is a series of articles that look at this issue.

Trains, Pensions, and Economic Freedom

by Timothy B. Lee

This article appeared on Forbes.com on August 17, 2011.

recently had the pleasure of reading The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America. The authors are Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, the former and current editors (respectively) of Reason magazine. They follow in the footsteps of Brink “liberaltarian” Lindsey, whose 2007 book The Age of Abundance portrayed libertarianism as the ideology of the sensible center in American politics, equally immune to the left’s enthusiasm for big government and the right’s enthusiasm for theocracy. The basic thrust of the Reasoneditors’ book is that the growing fraction of American voters who identify themselves as independents are really libertarians—at least in temperament if not explicit self-identification—and that what they want first and foremost is for the government to leave them alone.

This is the kind of book you’d expect the editors of a libertarian magazine to write, and they do a good job. The book has three sections. The middle section is the longest, and also the best. It tells some fun stories about ways the world has gotten freer over the last few decades. It tells how Czechoslovakia’s underground (and illegal) music scene inspired dissident Vaclav Havel and hastened the fall of communism. It explains how cartel-busting deregulation in the Carter era made air travel more affordable and beer more delicious. And it tells how the Internet is knocking traditional media off its pedestal.

The final third of the book, called “operationalize it, baby!” (yes, with an exclamation point), takes a curious turn. The opening chapter, called “we are so out of money,” makes two major points: government spends a lot of money on trains, and government spends a lot of money on benefits for public employees.

Timothy B. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He covers tech policy for Ars Technica and blogs at Forbes.com.

More by Timothy B. Lee

At this point, a lot of readers must be scratching their heads. Aside from that section on airline deregulation, the first two-thirds of the book doesn’t say anything about transportation policy. Nor is the book a treatise on public pensions. So in what sense do these complaints about government spending “operationalize” the book’s previous arguments about the value of individual liberty?

Of course, I’m playing dumb here. I’m familiar enough with libertarian theory to know what the connection is supposed to be: the government spending more money on transportation infrastructure and the government telling you what kind of beer you can drink are both infringements of economic freedom. This line of reasoning is rooted in the work of hard-core libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, for whom all taxation was theft. (Rothbard was an anarchist, Rand had some confused ideas about financing government non-coercively)

If all taxation is theft, then the government subsidizing trains is as much an infringement on your freedom as the government banning small breweries. The problem is that Gillespie and Welch insist they’re not that kind of libertarians. In their epilogue, they write that they “went to public schools for all or part of our educations (as do/will our kids), walked without a second’s hesitation on public sidewalks, and are still not averse to calling tax-funded fire departments.” Evidently, they believe there are at least some kinds of public services that should be provided with tax revenues.

But if the government is going to provide fire departments and public sidewalks, then presumably it’s going to have to hire some employees. And those employees will probably expect some health care and retirement benefits. To be sure, there’s a need to reform public pensions, but this is a basically technocratic question that has little to do with economic freedom as such.

As for trains, not only does the subject have no obvious connection to economic freedom, but Gillespie and Welch don’t make a very compelling case that trains are particularly prone to mismanagement and boondoggles. To be sure, there have been a lot of wasteful train projects, but it’s easy to find examples of mismanaged projects involving other modes of transportation, all of which are also heavily regulated and subsidized by the government. The problem is that large bureaucracies are inefficient, not that there’s something uniquely bad about rail transportation.

More to the point, one of the big reasons train-based transit tends to perform poorly is that the government systematically discourages the kind of high-density development patterns that make trains economically viable. Trains are an efficient and popular mode of transportation in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and DC because there’s a critical mass of people within walking distance of each stop. But today, rules about minimum parking, setbacks, maximum building heights, and so forth effectively make it illegal to build neighborhoods like the high-density parts of Northeastern cities. Repeal those rules and wait a couple of decades, and some of these train boondoggles might start to make more sense.

In any event, the perennial argument between people who like trains and people who like cars has about as much to do with individual liberty as the Yankees-vs-Red Socks feud. Decisions about which modes of transportation the government should subsidize, and how, involve boring trade-offs between costs and benefits. There’s no reason libertarians, as such, should have a dog in the fight.

This isn’t really Gillespie and Welch’s fault. There are lots of libertarians who (like Friedman and Hayek) support more government than the night-watchman state, but who haven’t given a ton of thought to what that actually entails. The result tends to be haphazard advocacy of cutting whatever government spending is most visible at any particular point in time. This approach often has unintended consequences. For example, Matt Yglesias points out that efforts to reduce the federal government’s headcount has led to huge windfall profits for federal contractors. Good fiscal policy requires not only cutting wasteful spending (and to be sure there’s a lot to cut) but also making sure that those cuts don’t hinder the performance of the worthwhile government activities that remain. Thinking about government spending as a question of economic liberty can be more a hindrance than a help to that effort.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Social Security | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Dear Senator Pryor, why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? (Part 8 Thirsty Thursday, Open letter to Senator Pryor)

September 22, 2011 – 12:23 am

Dear Senator Pryor,

Why not pass the Balanced  Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).

On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.

The Case for a Balanced Budget

By Bruce Bialosky

12/20/2010

 

No objective is more important for the new Congress than putting America on course toward a balanced federal budget. We used to balance our budget regularly but, except for a short period during the late 1990’s, Congress has been unable to accomplish what should be a clear-cut mission. Americans understand that deficit spending may be unavoidable in wartime or in a Katrina-like emergency, but we also believe that in the absence of these events, there is no excuse for irresponsibly increasing our national debt.

Unfortunately, our national agenda no longer seems to include a balanced budget. President Obama established a national debt commission (whose report I will address in a future column), but that was only after cranking up federal expenditures and deficits to previously unseen levels.

We all know that the big enchiladas in the Federal budget are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and national defense. That still leaves a lot of money to be saved elsewhere, yet even these opportunities are far too often belittled by elitists. For example, Jackie Calmes, a New York Times reporter, wrote that while there is general agreement on an earmark ban, “… [it] would hardly dent the projected annual deficits.” Paul Krugman, her colleague at the Times and the current economic guru of the left, routinely dismisses any savings at all, his most recent tantrum being Obama’s proposal for a two-year freeze on pay raises. He states “The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.” These are two examples that occurred within days – and I could probably cite hundreds more, from both sides of the aisle.

The United States has a budget crisis that should be met by expenditure reductions, but our government has acted only with foolishness and cowardice. Let’s say your employer came to you and said “Look, the company is struggling, but I can keep you on if we reduce your annual salary from $80,000 to $70,000.” You would go home, sit down with your spouse, and figure out where you can start saving money. You could skip the Saturday night movies and join Netflix. You could learn to live without HBO. You could stop getting water delivered to the house. The bottom line is that you would adjust your expenditures because you have no choice; after all, you can’t print money or sell bonds to your neighbors. Not even to China.

What our government is doing has been going on for hundreds of years, ever since the Rothschilds made their fortune lending monies to the monarchies of Europe, and it has become an international problem of gargantuan proportions. Political leaders all over the world are making fiscal promises that they cannot keep, and this irresponsible practice has exploded in the past seventy-five years with the advent of left-wing, socialist governments. Overspending has become so pervasive that our society makes fun of it. In his recent HBO special, Dennis Miller spoke about not understanding the deficit. Miller said that he asked his son if he was upset that his generation would be saddled with the national debt. His son replied “Christ no Dad, I’m just going to saddle my kids with it.” It was good for a laugh – but Miller would never force his own kids to pay his credit card bills.

Virtually every parent I have ever met worries about what will be left for their children or grandchildren when they die. These people understand that it is immoral and sinful to leave their kids a pile of debt. Yet when it comes to the government – for which we are all responsible – people perceive it as some amorphous entity that can merrily spend more each year than it takes in without any consequences. They believe government, apparently, can pay for everything.

And unfortunately we do. Prodded by spineless and corrupt politicians who consider power far more important than responsibility, government has become the fixer of all our problems. People can live in a flood plain without insurance and then get paid by the government to rebuild in that same flood plain only to be wiped out again in the next flood. Every challenge that we have in this country is being discussed by a commission that lasts forever without ever solving the problem. Responsible Americans put their hand out when they hear of a government program because they rationalize they want their share, and if they don’t get it now someone else will. The sense of communal cost has disappeared.

The numbers are staggering. If the U.S. government had to employ the same accounting standards used by major corporations, it would report an annual deficit between $4 and $5 trillion. 41% of our current federal expenditures are paid for by borrowing money, and by 2015, America will be about $20 trillion in debt.

Our elected officials must face these facts, along with the immoral and pathetic aspects of their reckless behavior. Polls that say that taxpayers demand certain things need to be disregarded, and responsible leaders with some backbone must instead broadcast the simple truth: The jig is up and we need to reverse course. You cannot have everything you want. You can have Social Security, but you should expect less and start saving for yourself more. Medicare will help with your retirement healthcare, but you should have something saved for that as well. If you have a catastrophe, you’d better have an insurance policy because we cannot guarantee every one of your risks. And if your parents get ill in their old age, you’d better be prepared to take care of them just as they took care of you.

Saddling our kids with more and more debt is just plain wrong. The debt is bad enough now and we need to stop it from getting worse. The time is now and this Congress was elected to do just that thing.

Bruce Bialosky

Bruce Bialosky is the founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition of California and a former Presidential appointee.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Comments (0)

Beckham buying wife some Liz Taylor jewels? (several video clips of Beckham goals)

September 21, 2011 – 2:10 pm

My son Wilson got to see Beckham play this summer for the LA Galaxy and he has been featured several times on our “Soccer Saturday” posts.

September 21, 2011 11:24 AM

David Beckham to buy Liz Taylor jewels for wife?

English soccer player David Beckham arrives with his wife Victoria Beckham for the wedding service of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, London, April 29, 2011.(Credit: Pool,AP Photo/Jasper Juinen)

NEW YORK – (CBS) If the British tabloids are right, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham is about to get some major bling.

Pictures: Taylor’s jewels
Pictures: The Beckhams
Special Section: Remembering Elizabeth Taylor

Published reports say that her husband, soccer star David Beckham, is prepared to spend up to 2.9 million pounds on jewelry for his wife from the collection of the late film legend Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor, known for her fabulous jewels, died in March at age 79. Her jewelry, art, designer clothing and other memorabilia will sold at auction Dec. 13-16 at Christie’s in New York. It will tour the country for two months before the auction.

A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition admissions and publications related to the sales will be donated to The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Beckham and the singer known as “Posh” Spice have been married since 1999. They have four children, including daughter Harper Seven, who was born in July. Harper Seven has three brothers.

The 36-year-old Beckham, who models as well as plays soccer for the L.A. Galaxy, told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres last week that he would welcome a fifth child.

‘Bend It’ Like Beckham (CBS News)

David Beckham 70 yard goal (un-edited version)

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Why no further updates available on investigation of Dexter Williams’ death?

September 21, 2011 – 12:22 pm

I have been asked and I don’t have an answer for why there has been no updates whatsoever since September 9th on the investigation concerning Dexter Williams death.

KATV had a story dated Sept 9th and updated the 15th.

Here is the last story from KTHV channel 11:

Dexter Williams (Photo from family)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for an Arkansas meteorologist says his client has resigned.

Little Rock-based lawyer Mark Hampton says TV weatherman Brett Cummins resigned from his job with KARK on Friday.

The TV station’s general manager, Mike Vaughn, confirmed that Cummins no longer worked at the station, but he would not say whether he resigned.

Both Hampton and Vaughn declined to comment further. The TV station has removed Cummins’ biography and photo from its website.

Authorities say Cummins and the body of 24-year-old Dexter Williams were found in a jacuzzi at a Maumelle home on Monday.

Cummins has not been charged in the incident and his attorney says he is innocent.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.

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Brett Cummins resigns

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Pictures of Dexter Williams

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Petrino versus Saban, it doesn’t get any better than that

September 21, 2011 – 10:25 am

Both Arkansas and Alabama have the very best coaches in the SEC in my view. I look for future SEC Championships from both of these guys. Of course, when I say SEC Championships then you know it is a small jump and hop to national championship too.

 

Harry King makes some good points about last week and looks forward to the Arkansas at Alabama game this week:

Forget about 38-28

Posted on 21 September 2011

By Harry King

LITTLE ROCK — Don’t let the final 22:28 of the Troy game color your opinion of Arkansas.

If you thought the Razorbacks would give the Crimson Tide fits, zero in on 31-7, and dismiss the 38-28 final. If you thought Arkansas would win the Western Division of the Southeastern Conference, continue to believe.

Negative reverberations to Troy’s point total are over the top.

Do not turn on defensive coordinator Willy Robinson after heaping praise on him and his group for holding the first two opponents to a total of 10 points.

One Troy touchdown came after Zach Hocker’s errant kickoff provided the Trojans with a short field, one was courtesy of Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson, and the third came in the final seconds when there was confusion in the secondary.

Bobby Petrino has addressed those points.

The essentials for beating Alabama are unchanged. The Razorbacks must tackle the Crimson Tide running backs and force A.J. McCarron to beat them. On the other side, Arkansas must protect Wilson. All the playmakers in the world are not worth a first down if the quarterback can’t get them the ball.

Despite the 102,000 fans in Tuscaloosa, Arkansas can prevail. The easiest way to win on the road is to be superior. In Arkansas’ case, that does not apply.

The No. 2 choice is to play superb defense. For example:

—Concentrating on quarterback Chris Relf, LSU held Mississippi State to 52 yards rushing and 193 total in a 19-6 victory in Starkville where Dan Mullen has revitalized the fan base.

—Oklahoma limited Florida State to 27 yards rushing in a 10-point victory at Tallahassee in front of almost 85,000.

One given is that Petrino’s play-calling will be flexible. So far this year, he has been adamant about throwing on first down.

In fact, Nick Saban’s minion who broke down film on Arkansas’ play selection probably double-checked his findings before presenting them to his boss.

The Alabama coach will accept the skewed numbers, digest them, and concoct some counter moves. Getting an opponent into third-and-long is the rallying cry of defensive coaches and that often begins with digging in against a first-down run.

A financial analyst based in Nashville, Tenn., called attention to Petrino’s propensity for throwing on first down in the season opener and that trend has continued. Against Missouri State, Arkansas called 17 passes and two runs on first down in the first half.

A week later, a couple of trick running plays led to a quick touchdown and Marquel Wade’s 85-yard kickoff return was worth another six points so the Razorbacks only snapped the ball 13 times in the first period. In the second quarter, Arkansas called 15 passes and four runs on first down.

Arkansas’ first three plays against Troy were passes, two of them good for first downs on the way to a touchdown. On the second possession, the Razorbacks called a pass each of the first five times they had a first down and scored another TD. In the second quarter, Arkansas was seven pass, two run on first down.

Saban once said his philosophy on first and second down is to stop the run and play good zone pass defense. Occasionally, he said, his team will play man to man against the pass and blitz.

Both Petrino and Saban will win a fair share of the guessing game; equally important is ability of the players.

——-
Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Obama’s tax plan would not work even if tried

September 21, 2011 – 8:09 am

The Flat Tax: How it Works and Why it is Good for America

Uploaded by on Mar 29, 2010

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video shows how the flat tax would benefit families and businesses, and also explains how this simple and fair system would boost economic growth and eliminate the special-interest corruption of the internal revenue code. www.freedomandprosperity.org

______________________

President Obama is just trying to mislead people when he says that raising taxes on the rich is the answer to America’s problems.

One Simple Reason (and Two Easy Steps) to Show Why Obama’s Soak-the-Rich Tax Hikes Won’t Work

Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell

It’s hard to keep track of all the tax hikes that President Obama is proposing, but it’s very simple to recognize his main target — the evil, nasty, awful people known as the rich.

Or, as Obama identifies them, the “millionaires and billionaires” who happen to have yearly incomes of more than $200,000.

Whether the President is talking about higher income tax rates, higher payroll tax rates, an expanded alternative minimum tax, a renewed death tax, a higher capital gains tax, more double taxation of dividends, or some other way of extracting money, the goal is to have these people foot the bill for a never-ending expansion of the welfare state.

This sounds like a pretty good scam, at least if you’re a vote-buying politician, but there is one little detail that sometimes gets forgotten. Raising the tax burden is not the same as raising revenue.

That may not matter if you’re trying to win an election by stoking resentment with the politics of hate and envy. But it is a problem if you actually want to collect more money to finance a growing welfare state.

Unfortunately (at least from the perspective of the class-warfare crowd), the rich are not some sort of helpless pinata that can be pilfered at will.

The most important thing to understand is that the rich are different from the rest of us (or at least they’re unlike me, but feel free to send me a check if you’re in that category).

Ordinary slobs like me get the overwhelming share of our income from wages and salaries. The means we are somewhat easy victims when the politicians feel like raping and plundering. If my tax rate goes up, I don’t really have much opportunity to protect myself by altering my income.

Sure, I can choose not to give a speech in the middle of nowhere for $500 because the after-tax benefit shrinks. Or I can decide not to write an article for some magazine because the $300 payment shrinks to less than $200 after tax. But my “supply-side” responses don’t have much of an effect.

For rich people, however, the world is vastly different. As the chart shows, people with more than $1 million of adjusted gross income get only 33 percent of their income from wages and salaries. And the same IRS data shows that the super-rich, those with income above $10 million, rely on wages and salaries for only 19 percent of their income.

This means that they — unlike me and (presumably) you — have tremendous ability to control the timing, level, and composition of their income.

Indeed, here are two completely legal and very easy things that rich people already do to minimize their taxes – but will do much more frequently if they are targeted for more punitive tax treatment.

  1. They will shift their investments to stocks that are perceived to appreciate in value. This means they can reduce their exposure to the double tax on dividends and postpone indefinitely taxes on capital gains.  They get wealthier and the IRS collects less revenue.
  2. They will shift their investments to municipal bonds, which are exempt from federal tax. They probably won’t risk their money on debt from basket-case states such as California and Illinois (the Greece and Portugal of America), but there are many well-run states that issue bonds. The rich will get steady income and, while the return won’t be very high, they don’t have to give one penny of their interest payments to the IRS.

For every simple idea I can envision, it goes without saying that clever lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and financial planners can probably think of 100 ways to utilize deductions, credits, preferences, exemptions, shelters, exclusions, and loopholes. This is why class-warfare tax policy is so self-defeating.

And all of this analysis doesn’t even touch upon the other sure-fire way to escape high taxes – and that’s to simply decide to be less productive. Most high-income people are hard-charging types who are investing money, building businesses, and otherwise engaging in behavior that is very good for them – but also very good for the economy.

But you don’t have to be an Ayn Rand devotee to realize that many people, to varying degrees, choose to “go Galt” when they feel that the government has excessively undermined the critical link between effort and reward.

Indeed, if Obama really wants to “soak the rich,” he might want to abandon his current approach and endorse a simple and fair flat tax. As explained in this video, this pro-growth reform does lead to substantial “Laffer Curve” effects.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, Taxes | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Video of Van Buren, Arkansas Courthouse shooting

September 21, 2011 – 7:57 am

I will be attending the Van Buren at LR Central game this week and I have been visiting Van Buren on several occasions the last few years and I fell in love with their beautiful downtown area. I have been meaning to go on one of those train rides from Van Buren to Springdale that everyone has gone on.

Evidently Van Buren fell asleep at the wheel when it came to the security at the courthouse. I bet that doesn’t happen again.

test4Courthouse Shooting

Corey S. Krasko • Times Record

The Arkansas Times Blog posted this link to the S.W.Times:

Posted: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 6:19 pm | Updated: 6:26 pm, Tue Sep 20, 2011.

Prosecutor Releases Courthouse Shooting Video By Jeff Arnold
TIMES RECORD • JARNOLD@SWTIMES.COM The Times Record | 0 comments

Crawford County Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune on Tuesday released video of James Ray Palmer’s rampage at the county courthouse that ended when law enforcement shot Palmer on the courthouse lawn.

Palmer, 48, of Kibler, armed with an assault rifle equipped with a laser sight and two handguns, walked into the Van Buren courthouse Sept. 13 looking for Circuit Court Judge Gary Cottrell.

Palmer shot Cottrell’s secretary, Vickie Jones, in the leg as he entered the judge’s office before walking back out in the hall once he learned the judge wasn’t there.

In the video, it appears that Palmer attempts to shoot a second employee fleeing the judge’s office as he walks in the hall, but his rifle jams and Palmer struggles with it as he moves to the ground floor of the courthouse.

McCune said an investigator believes it’s possible faulty springs in the clips prevented rounds from being forced into the chamber, causing the gun to malfunction.

Although a dirty weapon also could cause the rifle to malfunction, McCune said, law enforcement found an open gun-cleaning kit at Palmer’s home, although no one could say it specifically was used to clean the rifle.

After reaching the ground floor, Palmer continued to fire shots before exiting the courthouse through the north entrance. There, he engaged in a gun battle with law enforcement.

Palmer was shot once in the right leg and once in the head. He later died at St. Edward Mercy Medical Center in Fort Smith.

McCune said it appears Palmer was shot in the leg before he discarded his assault rifle near the northeast corner of the building and began walking up an embankment on the lawn, where he was shot a second time and fell to the ground.

McCune said investigators found blood drops near the discarded assault rifle.

On Monday, McCune ruled that Lt. Stephen Staggs, detective Randy Allen and officer David Passen, all with the Van Buren Police Department, and Chief Deputy Jimmy Damante and Capt. Shawn Firestine, both with the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, were justified in using deadly force when confronted by Palmer.

McCune said it is unknown who fired the fatal shot.

Although video provided by the prosecutor’s office captured images of Palmer firing at Jones and striking her and Palmer collapsing on the lawn after being shot by law enforcement, the Times Record did not include those shootings in excerpts posted online.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)