TexasTruBlu's Blog

We've already seen a rise in armed robbery and ATM heists. Bad economic times historically produce their share of criminals.  But now we are also beginning to see situations where individuals impersonate police officers and where organized crime is virtually controlling areas of our region. There's no question that many of the drug deaths, random shootings and other acts of violence are centered around organized crime groups who intimidate the people in their area in order to avoid accusations and prosecution. This is a page out of Al Capone's handbook. And because of the folks who insist that we do not need to enforce our immigration laws or strengthen our borders, active cartel raids have been staged across international borders against legal residents of the United States. Granted, many of the victims have crossed the cartels, but innocent people can and will get hurt in the crossfire. Our border cities have been claiming for awhile now that the cartels have established agents in their areas. Likewise, violent gangs have been active in our region. While it's nice to pose the immigration problems as one of saving families, are we inviting vipers into our homes?
Excerpt:
"...We anticipate that as the Mexican cartels begin to go after more targets inside the United States, the spread of cartel violence and these dangerous tactics beyond the border region will catch some law enforcement officers by surprise. A patrol officer conducting a traffic stop on a group of cartel members who are preparing to conduct an assassination in, say, Los Angeles, Chicago or northern Virginia could quickly find himself heavily outgunned and under fire. With that said, cops in the United States are far more capable than their Mexican counterparts of dealing with this threat..."
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For a long time it's been the norm to blame Big OIl for rising gas prices. But Congress has created much of the problem with their incessant pandering to special interest groups. The Democrats have the Environmental Lobby, that blocks nuclear use, coal use and off shoring or ANWR drilling for domestic crude. The Republicans aren't willing to set meaningful limits on fuel consumption or to subsidize individual access to alternative power. So here's why I think they all need to go!

Story here

Excerpt:

"...The Democrats have an obvious motive for their denial of Econ 101 reality: They are so beholden to the environmental lobby that they can't advocate increased domestic oil and natural gas production.

To save the planet from global warming, the greens want to end mankind's use of fossil fuels, so they oppose drilling for natural gas offshore, for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and exploiting America's vast coal reserves. And Democrats obey, as do some Republicans, recently including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

The greens for years have also blocked new nuclear plants, although some have changed their tune because nuclear is carbon-free. Most Democrats remain opposed, while Obama is wishy-washy on the subject. McCain, to his credit, favors nuclear and always has...."

A while back, I stated that if Obama won the nomination and then the election, but failed to deliver in lockstep manner to the Ultimate DNC Platform, he would be crucified in the press. Well, the liberals jumped the gun (assuming that they have a gun since they don't like guns....) they have started to smear and complain about their own candidate based on his current attempt to do the predictable thing and move to the center. First it was Faith Based Initiatives-which by the way only insures that the religious favoritism will be in play for only those churches that follow all the national hiring, firing and other guidelines. (That means that all those fundamentalist churches that don't hire people they view as sinful will be out of the running.) Now it seems that tapping into the angst over child rape, Obama has, rightfully, sided with the state of Louisiana that child rape is cause for capital punishment. It seems that blogs such as The Daily Kos are much alarmed that they aren't controlling the candidate's message. And in fact, it seems like they think he should be a virtual puppet to the blogs and polls. I think it's interesting that he's veering away, but this could be a problem down the road.
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Now that a judge has ruled against filming at the county jail, Sheriff Lupe Valdez has decided that this was a "political" agenda and called out Ken Mayfield specifically. This wasn't a monolithic action on his part and last I heard he was just one of the county commissioners which also included John Wylie Price-a long time liberal and Democrat who supported the action of the commission. Indeed, the only public official that supported this grab for the spotlight was the District Attorney. I will admit, he's done a wonderful job in freeing wrongly accused people from prison, but he also was part of the landslide of Democrats that were put in office because Dallas County Republicans turned up their noses at the candidates on their side or suffered from a serious case of complacency. This is the type of government you will get on a local, state and national level if you don't vote in November. It will be a government full of political agendas over actual programs. So when you start listening to candidates, don't just vote the party, find out what they are doing. Be part of the solution.

Yes, that's what the Democrats in Congress want us to use for power. Harry Reid seems to think that The Jetsons were real and that we can snap our fingers and force people into new ways of using energy. Note to scoffers: Why else do you think that the Democrat controlled Congress hasn't done ANYTHING in regards to helping consumers with energy problems? They could you know, but they haven't and they probably won't because most of the things that we can and should do immediately tread heavily on the toes of Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio

According to them we cannot:
Use coal, our most abundant fuel source, in any form, even with scrubbers. Furthermore, we can't even research uses for coal that might be feasible and within carbon emission standards.
Use hydroelectric plants. In fact there's discussion about removing Glen Canyon Dam. Here's the absolute cleanest way to produce power, and nope, we can't do it.
Wind power-first of all, the yield of power is so low in relation to the acreage required that it's laughable. Secondly, PETA thinks the wind turbines kill birds and people in scenic areas, such as Kennedys Massachusetts compound, don't like their scenery interrupted.
Use gas-although we have huge finds here in Texas and their may be larger finds in Arkansas and Colorado
Mine OIl Shale-although we currently buy oil from Canada from this source
Drill off shore California and Florida. I guess it's okay to drill off of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, but heaven forbid the HUGE oil pond off of Florida be tapped by Americans. On the other hand, it's okay for Cubans and the Chinese to drill the same pool.
Drill in ANWR, even though it is a frozen wasteland and not the ecological wonderland the media likes to portray in documentaries.

What is funny is that people keep saying "oh we can use wind" or "we can use solar". The most efficient solar array system in the world, which supplies energy to 10,000 homes, is in Germany and takes up 37 ACRES of land for the array.

The bottom line  is that the liberals are not basing their decisions in fact. Instead they are basing them on political agendas, appearance and what will get them positive air time.  Mr. Obama posed the supposition that even if we drilled today, the oil wouldn't help us for five years. The real time line from pump to consumer is actually more like three years, but none of this matters if they continue to keep us subservient to foreign politics by putting off those actions which will give us domestic energy independence.

While campaigning, she was less than forthcoming with thing such as her background, her lifestyle and her party affiliation. First, she didn't even have the required state licensing for the position, but after repeatedly taking the test, Lupe Valdez finally was a legal sheriff. Then she fudged on the management of the county jail resulting in a very expensive and protracted upgrade. And now she breeches chain of command by signing a contract for a Discovery channel documentary supposedly showing off the many improvements in the jail. Is this self-promotion or sheer stupidity? And I find it amusing that John Wiley Price was on the forefront denouncing her actions. It's also troublesome that the DA chose to side with a sheriff on a questionable contract for publicity, when it goes against city codes. Who is running this place anyway? I hope all you folks who chose to dump the Republicans and simply vote for the party without looking at credentials are happy happy happy with the very expensive tenure of Sheriff Loopy Lupe Valdez.

Early in the campaign season, the Obama group predicted that the smears would come from the Republican side of the aisle. So how come it seems that liberal Democrats are using John McCain's military record as a point at which to smear the man's reputation. I will admit that McCain wasn't my first pick, but when you have a high profile candidate who appears to have the media enraptured, does he really have to go the route of creating websites to stop smears that haven't emanated from the Republican camp? I think that the Clintons' silence on the matter speaks volumes as to where the control of the media is coming from. I guess that's what you get when you sign on with Soros-the man who wants to control the White House.
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I posted something on here earlier today. It showed up and I went on. Now it's gone. What gives?

One of our basic freedoms is that of free speech. While I may not like what you say, and you may not like what I say, we are entitled to state our relative opinions publicly. So imagine this, it seems that Google has decided to weigh in by allowing an organized effort to shut down websites that oppose Barak Obama. Now granted, I don't think websites that slander or spread spam should be allowed to function, but there are people out here, like ME, who don't think this man is ready for the White House and I will continue to bring up the various doubts about his qualifications along with some of the other questionable candidates we are offered this year. People, you should be VERY ALARMED about this because this means that you are getting filtered news. And filtered news could be arranged to make sure you only see one point of view.
Anti-Obama Blogsites Shut Down

While there's been a great deal of waffling and backpedaling, there are also some serious questions as to where Mr. Obama is getting the idea for his new world order.  Look NORTH-Canada-a beautiful, nice and polite nation which is saddled with a ponderous taxation level for it's citizens.

"...Mr. Obama is also proposing a host of government programs. He is suggesting increased spending for health insurance, homeowners who might default on their mortgage, the nation's infrastructure, and college tuition in exchange for public service, among others. As a result, he will render America less the land of the brave and the home of the free — and more the land of those who depend on the state. In Canada, government intervention and regulation is rife. This has led to large and unaccountable bureaucracies — and crippling taxation. The Fraser Institute conducted a study in 2001 that demonstrated that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family increased by 1,351 percent since 1961. The report revealed that in 2000, for example, the average Canadian family paid 47.5 percent of their income in federal, provincial and municipal direct and hidden taxes: "The tax bill accounted for more of the average Canadian's budget than shelter, food and clothing combined."

Mr. Obama wants the U.S. government to make health care affordable for every American. He says he opposes mandates, but he nonetheless favors universal health care. Canadians have universal health care; their system is inefficient. The wealthiest Canadians travel to the United States for medical care to avoid long waiting periods for tests and operations. In 2005, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that patients must be allowed the possibility of receiving alternative health care if they are forced to wait so long that they are in fact denied treatment: Hence, a private parallel health care system is now emerging.."

Full Column Here

So once again the news is full of irate parents and "community leaders" trying to tag teachers and administrators with blame for their kids failing TAKS tests for the fourth year in a row. Now that the tests are over and the harm is done, all these kids and parents and such show up and pitch hissy fits because the school will basically be restructured as prescribed under state law. It's not like they didn't know. This isn't the first time a school in this area has gone under. Did they listen to the stories when Wilmer Hutchins bit the dust? This isn't simply a random punitive action, this is something that officials at the local, district and state level have been warning of for years.

• Did these parents make sure their kids went to class EVERY DAY?
• Did these parents make sure their kids did their homework?
• Did these parents make sure of their students' grades and push them to attend tutoring if their were in danger of failing?
• Did parents monitor their children's work on a daily basis?
• Were the parents involved with the school programs to cut down on drug use, gang behavior and teen pregnancy?
• Were parents available for teacher conferences or did they blow them off?
• Did parents attend ARDs?
• Did parents reinforce behavioral goals when their students were sent to alternative school or in-school suspension by removing them from outside activities until their behavior came in line?

If these parents can't answer YES to every single question, then they were clueless and their kids probably treated the opportunity to attend high school as a big joke. Well, I guess the joke is on them. Good luck next year.

One of the main planks of the DNC platform is "free" healthcare. But there is no guarantee  that the cost will be low or that everyone will be covered in a TIMELY manner. In fact, the inclusion of undocumented workers-a key issue to persuade Hispanic voters-will drive up the cost beyond what many of us are paying now for company offered care. The Canadian system is held up as the shining example of single payer care, but  below are some serious concerns regarding Canada's system by the man who designed it. As for "free"healthcare-you get what you pay for.

Full Column Here

"But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades.

Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country.

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the U.S. Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care.

Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies — defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain." Other provinces have followed Ontario's example.

Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures.

The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can't centrally plan their way to better health care.

A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards.(so folks, try not to panic with that appendix or gall bladder or heart......)

Declarations can't solve staffing shortages and the other rationing of care that occurs in government-run systems.

Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense."

As for the Republicans, simply criticizing Democratic health care proposals will not suffice — it's not 1994 anymore. And, while McCain's health care proposals hold promise of putting families in charge of their health care and perhaps even taming costs, McCain, at least so far, doesn't seem terribly interested in discussing health care on the campaign trail.

However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada's government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?"

Here’s a story from the past, but it bears some eerie similarities with what we are seeing in today’s market. Replace the word “silver” with “oil futures” and you have a very close twin to what happened over thirty years ago. Two lessons to take away from this-people who have money are allowing the market to drop so that they can buy more shares in stocks of American companies and in commodities futures AND eventually the prices will drop leaving someone’s economic situation in disarray. If you know traders that are playing fast and loose buying Light Sweet Texas Crude at high market prices, you would be better off in for the short haul rather than the long haul if history is any guide. I wonder why the FTC isn't seriously and rigorously seeking to find out what groups or shell corporations are setting us up for what amounts to an economic takeover. Anyone who has a 401K should be asking some serious questions. And everyone should be emailing, phoning and faxing their Congressional reps to see if they are holding the FTC's feet to the fire.

 

“In 1971, the US completely abandoned the gold standard. The US defaulted on its promise to foreign central banks that paper dollars could be redeemed in gold. The original default on the dollar really occurred in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created, allowing the Federal Reserve to print more Federal Reserve Notes than physical gold was in the US Treasury. Alternatively, the default occurred in 1933 when President Roosevelt said that US citizens could no longer redeem their paper dollars for gold and that US citizens were not allowed to own gold.

The Hunt brothers were the sons of a wealthy oil billionaire. They started investing in silver as a hedge against inflation. When they started buying silver, it was still illegal to own gold. They chose silver as their inflation hedge.

The Hunt brothers realized that the dollar was now worthless unbacked paper. They famously said "Any fool can run a printing press!" They decided to convert their paper wealth to physical silver. When they first started buying silver, the price was under $2/ounce. Recently, silver was quoted at $18/ounce. Over 30 years, a gain of 9x is equivalent to an annualized return of 7.6%. If the Hunt brothers were able to buy-and-hold their silver, they would have made a respectable rate of return….

 
If the Hunt brothers merely invested a bunch of their own money in silver, they would have profited immensely. However, they got greedy *AND* they got screwed over by the Federal Reserve and the rules of the commodities exchange (CFTC).

After investing their own money in silver, driving up the price, the Hunt brothers started seeking other people to invest in silver with them. They convinced some Arabs to invest oil money in silver along with them. You're a fool to invest in an asset *AFTER* someone else has made a huge purchase, driving up the price. The Hunt brothers were seeking other silver investors to drive up the silver price even more. This made the Hunt brothers' initial silver investment even more profitable.

The Hunt brothers took physical delivery of their silver. They hired sharpshooters to protect them as they transported their silver to their warehouse.

The Hunt brothers said repeatedly, "Our goal is not to corner the silver market. Our goal is to be long-term buy-and-hold investors in silver." The problem is that the Hunt brothers were using extensive leverage. Whenever you have a leveraged investment, you risk being bankrupted during the next bust phase of the business cycle. Unfortunately for the Hunt brothers, they were *NOT* financial industry insiders. The financial industry insiders changed the rules of the game after the Hunt brothers had bought a large amount of silver.

Even though the Hunt brothers said "We are not trying to corner silver.", their actions were the same as someone attempting a corner. In a commodity market, cornering the market means buying so much of the commodity that you have a virtual monopoly. Monopolizing the supply, you can set the price at which you sell.

As you begin to corner the market in a commodity, the price naturally skyrockets. Suppose the price of silver is $18/ounce. You decide to invest $1 billion in silver, maximizing your leverage. You use 20x leverage, so you actually can buy $20 billion in silver. You have $20 billion in silver and a debt of $19 billion. HOWEVER, your purchase of silver has driven up the price. Suppose you were able to drive up the price 3x to $54/ounce. Now, you have $60 billion in silver and a debt of $19 billion. If you tried selling your silver, you would drive the price back down to $18. However, that's not the way margin rules work. Margin rules value your silver at the CURRENT PRICE. You only invested $1 billion, but your account now has $41 billion in equity ON PAPER. According to margin rules, you can use this equity to borrow more and buy even more silver! Anybody who tries to corner a commodity is taking advantage of this positive feedback cycle.

Real interest rates are negative, so this is a great deal! Your profits aren't free; they're paid by everyone else as inflation. Suppose inflation is 10% but the Fed Funds Rate is 5%. As you hold onto this position, you will benefit IMMENSELY from inflation.

That is the real reason "cornering the market" in a commodity is considered illegal/immoral. The real culprit is Federal Reserve negative real interest rates, combined with margin usage. As your attempted corner drives up the price, the margin rules mean that you can borrow more and buy more! Negative real interest rates mean that you profit immensely from using leverage. Money supply inflation is greater than the interest rate you are charged, and you will profit if you can hold onto your position long enough.

The Hunt brothers were exploiting the defect of negative real interest rates combined with margin rules. If real interest rates were not negative, but instead market-determined, this would not have been a profitable trade. If margin rules were based on liquidation price instead of current price, they would not have been able to drive up the price of silver so much.

At one point, the Hunt brothers had 77% of the world silver supply, either physically held or in the form of futures contracts. The Hunt brothers had substantially driven up the silver price.

The Hunt brothers were making a HUGE bet that the price of silver would continue to rise. At the same time, financial industry insiders started making a HUGE bet that the price of silver would crash. Guess who won the conflict?

The Hunt brothers were buying all the silver futures contracts they could, using leverage. Financial industry insiders were naked short selling all the silver futures contracts they could. There was no way all this silver could be physically delivered. There was a real risk that there would be a default on the silver futures contract.

Suppose you owned futures contracts for 1 billion ounces of silver while the world silver supply was only 200 million ounces. The futures exchange would be forced to default on its promise to deliver silver. As a commodity exchange, a failure to deliver is the most serious disaster you can have. The commodity exchange would collapse in default/bankruptcy. Large financial companies assume liability for the trades. They would be also forced into bankruptcy, because they would also be responsible for the commodity clearing default. …

It was important to bankrupt the Hunt brothers. People who speculate in gold or silver are betting against fiat money. Bankrupting the Hunt brothers made the dollar look strong in comparison. When the price of silver crashed, it created the false impression that the dollar had appreciated in value….

The bottom line is that if you aren't a financial industry insider, you aren't going to profit borrowing to buy assets. If the Hunt brothers had taken an unleveraged long position in silver, they would have made a nice profit, and there's nothing the financial industry could have done to screw them over. Without using leverage, the Hunt brothers wouldn't have been able to push up the silver price that much, and they wouldn't be exploiting negative real interest rates and defects in the margin rules. The financial industry insiders will *ALWAYS* be bailed out by regulatory changes or by the Federal Reserve. In this case, the financial industry insiders had huge short positions. The insiders were bailed out regulatory changes and by the Federal Reserve jacking up interest rates, causing a temporary money supply crash.”

http://fskrealityguide.blogspot.com/2008/02/hunt-broth
ers-silver-corner.html

The common excuse for allowing illegal immigrants to come here and work without documentation, or using someone else's, was that nobody would fill the jobs. Well folks, unemployment is rising, especially among young people. How are they supposed to get jobs to move up in the world, if someone here illegally is holding that job? How are they supposed to pay for tuition for college if they can't find work. So I think that all those who came here for work, can go home now. Reform your own nation.

I finally read a column that pinpoints what bugs me about Obama and his campaign. Believe it or not, it has to do with an ad that I especially despise. There is the image thing  going on and surrounding Candidate Obama with all the bright and shiny special people. Where are the old people-not the vibrant old like aging Hollywood starlets-but the really old? Where are the guys in white tee shirts who have beer ads or NASCAR drivers on their shirts? Where are the girls who wait tables, chew gum and wisecrack with the construction guys on the street? Where are these people in Candidate Obama's ads? While the common themes are
"change" and The Big Umbrella, we still don't know what we are changing from to or into and it seems that while there is a vast and varied array of bright, shiny and affluent people under the Big Umbrella, there are many more who are not welcome, if not included.
The story is here

PS. By the way, my son, who works in fast food, noted that the kitchen staff was complaining about how they were understaffed. He took the time to point out that the higher minimum wage meant that an additional person could not be hired to help out during rush hours. I wonder how many other small businesses are doing the same? Yes, it's YOUR CONGRESS, run by Democrats, working to keep small businesses small.