Gee, Do You Think the Congressional Dems Ever Thought of This?

As time goes on we see more and more of the frailties and neglect of the contents of the Obamacare bill.  For over a year the debate went on and the Liberals never considered any of the bad effects of this legislation.  This behavior is atrocious and the absolute party line voting to save Zero's "legacy" is unconscionable.

A4 Driver

Health overhaul likely to strain doctor shortage

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP
9 hours ago
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WASHINGTON — Better beat the crowd and find a doctor.

Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the landmark health overhaul that will bring them millions more newly insured patients in the next few years promises extra strain.

The new law goes beyond offering coverage to the uninsured, with steps to improve the quality of care for the average person and help keep us well instead of today's seek-care-after-you're-sick culture. To benefit, you'll need a regular health provider.

Yet recently published reports predict a shortfall of roughly 40,000 primary care doctors over the next decade, a field losing out to the better pay, better hours and higher profile of many other specialties. Provisions in the new law aim to start reversing that tide, from bonus payments for certain physicians to expanded community health centers that will pick up some of the slack.

A growing movement to change how primary care is practiced may do more to help with the influx. Instead of the traditional 10-minutes-with-the-doc-style office, a "medical home" would enhance access with a doctor-led team of nurses, physician assistants and disease educators working together; these teams could see more people while giving extra attention to those who need it most.

"A lot of things can be done in the team fashion where you don't need the patient to see the physician every three months," says Dr. Sam Jones of Fairfax Family Practice Centers, a large Virginia group of 10 primary care offices outside the nation's capital that is morphing into this medical home model.

"We think it's the right thing to do. We were going to do this regardless of what happens with health care reform," adds Jones. His office, in affiliation with Virginia Commonwealth University, also provides hands-on residency training to beginning doctors in this kind of care.

Only 30 percent of U.S. doctors practice primary care. The government says 65 million people live in areas designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians, places already in need of more than 16,600 additional providers to fill the gaps. Among other steps, the new law provides a 10 percent bonus from Medicare for primary care doctors serving in those areas.

Massachusetts offers a snapshot of how giving more people insurance naturally drives demand. The Massachusetts Medical Society last fall reported just over half of internists and 40 percent of family and general practitioners weren't accepting new patients, an increase in recent years as the state implemented nearly universal coverage.

Nationally, the big surge for primary care won't start until 2014, when the bulk of the 32 million uninsured starts coming online.

Sooner will come some catch-up demand, as group health plans and Medicare end co-payments for important preventive care measures such as colon cancer screenings or cholesterol checks. Even the insured increasingly put off such steps as the economy worsened, meaning doctors may see a blip in diagnoses as those people return, says Dr. Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

That's one of the first steps in the new law's emphasis on wellness care over sickness care, with policies that encourage trying programs like the "patient-centered medical home" that Jones' practice is putting in place in suburban Virginia.

It's not easy to switch from the reactive — "George, it's your first visit to check your diabetes in two years!" — to the proactive approach of getting George in on time.

First Jones' practice adopted an electronic medical record, to keep patients' information up to date and help them coordinate necessary specialist visits while decreasing redundancies.

Then came a patient registry so the team can start tracking who needs what testing or follow-up and make sure patients get it on time.

Rolling out next is a custom Web-based service named My Preventive Care that lets the practice's patients link to their electronic medical record, answer some lifestyle and risk questions, and receive an individually tailored list of wellness steps to consider.

Say Don's cholesterol test, scheduled after his yearly checkup, came back borderline high. That new lab result will show up, with discussion of diet, exercise and medication options to lower it in light of his other risk factors. He might try some on his own, or call up the doctor — who also gets an electronic copy — for a more in-depth discussion.

"It prevents things from falling through the cracks," says Dr. Alex Krist, a Fairfax Family Practice physician and VCU associate professor who designed and tested the computer program with a $1.2 million federal grant. In a small study of test-users, preventive services such as cancer screenings and cholesterol checks increased between 3 percent and 12 percent.

Pilot tests of medical homes, through the American Academy of Family Physicians and Medicare, are under way around the country. Initial results suggest they can improve quality, but it's not clear if they save money.
Primary care can't do it alone. Broader changes are needed to decrease the financial incentives that spur too much specialist-driven care, says Dr. David Goodman of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

"What we need is not just a medical home, but a medical neighborhood."

States May Go Bust So They Sue

At Least the State AGs have the guts to challenge the legality of this mess.  From Bloomberg.com.

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States Sue Over Overhaul That Will Bust State Budgets (Update2)

By Pat Wechsler

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama faces a fight over the health-care overhaul from states that sued today because the legislation’s expansion of Medicaid imposes a fiscal strain on their cash-strapped budgets.

Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania are among 14 states that filed suit after the president signed the bill over the constitutionality of the burden imposed by the legislation. The health-care overhaul will make as many as 15 million more Americans eligible for Medicaid nationwide starting in 2014 and will cost the states billions to administer.

States faced with unprecedented declines in tax collections are cutting benefits and payments to hospitals and doctors in Medicaid, the health program for the poor paid jointly by state and U.S. governments. The costs to hire staff and plan for the average 25 percent increase in Medicaid rolls may swamp budgets, said Toby Douglas, who manages the Medicaid program for California, which hasn’t joined the lawsuits.

“The states are coming through the worst fiscal period in the history of record keeping,” said Vernon Smith, a former Medicaid director for Michigan and now a principal at the research and consulting firm Health Management Associates in Lansing, Michigan. “Medicaid is the most significant, most visible and most costly part of this expansion and states fully expect to see increases in their spending.”

California’s Deficit

For California, with a $20 billion budget deficit, the extra load will cost at least an additional $2 billion to $3 billion annually, said Douglas, chief deputy director for California’s health care programs. He said the overhaul is currently projected to add 1.6 million people to the 7 million enrolled in his state’s program.

“We face enormous challenges just sustaining our existing program,” said Douglas in a March 18 telephone interview. “I just don’t see states having the capacity to move forward on these changes in this environment.”
The numbers of new enrollees because of the overhaul are based on current estimates and may be low, he said in an e-mail. The estimate doesn’t incorporate the growth that the program, known in California as Medi-Cal, may experience even without the new federal legislation, he said.

Medi-Cal recipients are projected to increase 4.3 percent to 7.3 million in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, spokesman Norman Williams said.

Court Challenge

Douglas’s state is battling in court over Medicaid spending cuts it tried to make this fiscal year. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 3 barred California from reducing payments to doctors and hospitals, saying federal law required states to maintain “equal access to basic health care” for the poor. California is appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The federal government mandates that states provide health coverage under Medicaid to children, pregnant women, and the elderly and disabled poor. States set the rules on eligibility and decide which benefits to provide, making for a complex hodge-podge of coverage standards across the nation. The health- care overhaul simplifies the system by setting a minimum national floor and requires that all states cover childless adults, who will make up almost all of the expansion enrollees.

Medicaid Spending

Medicaid spent more than $344 billion in 2008, about 15 percent of total national health-care expenditures that year, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers the program. It currently covers 60 million, about the same as Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California. The U.S. government covered about 57 percent of Medicaid’s cost in 2008, the foundation said.

Florida will have to spend an additional $1.6 billion for Medicaid and hire 1,000 new workers to accommodate the overhaul, the state’s Attorney General Bill McCollum said yesterday in Orlando, Florida.
“This is a bad bill,” he said. “That’s a political determination and a practical one.”

The states that sued are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington, McCollum said in a statement on his office’s Web site.

The complaint posted on the Florida attorney general’s Web site called the legislation an “encroachment on the sovereignty of states,” and said Florida will be asked to “broaden its Medicaid eligibility standards to accommodate upwards of 50 percent more enrollees.”

Insurance Mandate

Besides the added Medicaid costs, the states are also challenging the right of the federal government to impose a mandate requiring individuals to buy health insurance. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whose state filed a separate lawsuit today challenging the law, called the health legislation an “unconstitutional overreach” of the federal government’s authority.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said the president isn’t “concerned” about the potential legal challenges. Congress has the “inherent authority” to mandate coverage under the commerce clause that allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, she told Bloomberg Television yesterday.

The historic health-care bill, which the House passed March 21 after 13 months of debate and discord, marks the biggest expansion of health coverage since enactment of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. Obama signed it into law today.

Legislation Amendments

The House on March 21 also passed legislation amending the overhaul, expanding the number of those who will be covered by insurance and raising the total cost to $940 billion. The Senate is scheduled to take up these amendments this week. The package of bills would increase the number of Americans insured by 32 million, raising the portion of people under the age of 64 with insurance to about 94 percent.

The bills raise the threshold for people to qualify for Medicaid to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which was $22,050 for a family of four and $10,830 for an individual for the 48 contiguous states in 2009, according to guidelines set by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The biggest challenge states face is dealing with a program where the growth in annual spending regularly exceeds the growth in state revenue, said Smith of Health Management Associates.

“It has been a very, very difficult period for the states,” Smith said. “They had to cut spending at a time when significantly more people needed it.”

Falling State Revenue

Most states have confronted drops in revenue since the beginning of the recession in late 2007 as tax collections fell for an unprecedented fifth straight quarter by the end of December last year, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York. In the first nine months of 2009, states suffered the biggest decline in revenue ever recorded.

In fiscal 2009, Medicaid enrollment increased a record 3.29 million nationally, with another rise of 1.29 million the year before, based on reports compiled for the Kaiser foundation.

Medicaid spending accounts for about 22 percent of state spending, according to the National Governors Association, which said it doesn’t expect revenue to return to pre-recession levels until at least 2014. Budget directors estimate the fiscal 2011 budget gap could expand to $102 billion and may even reach $180 billion, the Kaiser study said. States by law, unlike Washington, must balance their budgets.

“In the past, Medicaid was only as strong as its weakest link,” said Stephen Somers, president of the health-policy nonprofit Center for Health Care Strategies Inc. in Hamilton, New Jersey. “ Now, there is the first universal floor and it will form the foundation for universal coverage.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Pat Wechsler in New York at pwechsler@bloomberg.net

Narcissista Are Alive and Well in D.C. and Hollywood

This is an article by Andrew Klavan from the City Journal.


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Andrew Klavan

 

A Tale of Two Cities

 

Washington and Hollywood, both tone-deaf to American attitudes

 

23 March 2010

Washington, D.C. and Hollywood are two cities suffering from the same condition: they’ve not only become completely alienated from the people they’re meant to serve, they’re bizarrely blind to the fact of that alienation. Like deranged narcissists in a hall of mirrors, both our lawmakers and our culture-makers blow kisses at their own reflections, see a million kisses coming back their way, and think, “Oh, look, they love me—love me!”

For glaring proof in Washington, we have the passage of the health-care bill. Recently the Washington Post ran an op-ed by former Carter pollster Pat Caddell and former Clinton pollster Douglas E. Schoen expressing their amazement that Obama and the Democrats would go forward with this bill in the face of overwhelming evidence that the public doesn’t want it. Caddell—a moderate Democrat who sometimes sports a T-shirt reading I’M GRUMPY BECAUSE YOU’RE DOPEY—and Schoen are baffled that the Democrats continue to grow and grow and grow the government despite polls that show Americans feel the federal apparatus is now an immediate threat to their civil rights and is no longer operating with the consent of the governed.

And yet, even after losing a Senate seat in blue-on-blue Massachusetts almost entirely because of the health care and big government issues, the Democrats plunged forward, certain that we’re going to like what they’re forcing us to eat.

To get a sense of the psychology behind this self-destructive self-deception, let’s take a look at a similar act in D.C.’s ideological sister city, some 3,000 miles away. Here, Universal studios recently released Green Zone, a $100 million anti–Iraq War movie, despite the box-office failures of over a dozen similarly themed films. Matt Damon stars as the soldier who discovers—though in reality, this is provably untrue—that the Bush administration lied about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in order to drag us into war. Operation Shock and Awe was nothing compared with the way this picture bombed. HBO’s World War II series, The Pacific, also did only modest business, its chances possibly poisoned by executive producer Tom Hanks’ idiotic remarks that America had “wanted to annihilate [the Japanese] because they were different,” and that this made the war in the Pacific similar to today’s wars against Islamic terror.

As a result of these two failures, showbiz trade magazine Variety ran an almost hilariously purblind article saying that Hollywood was calling a “truce” on making war films because “with U.S. troops embroiled in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, American audiences continue to suffer from war fatigue.”

Yeah, that must be it. It couldn’t be that we’re nauseated by a bunch of showbiz yahoos depicting our troops and leaders as evil while they’re in the field defending us. Or wait, maybe it is: the one film—the single film—that, while taking no political position on these wars, nonetheless treated our military with deep honor, respect, and patriotism—HBO’s brilliant Taking Chance—was one of the network’s signal successes despite the mainstream media’s blithering negative reviews.

Here’s the thing. The American people want government that acts in keeping with our principles of free markets, self-reliance, and individual liberty. The people want culture that depicts the moral order as we know it is, not as sequestered elites dream it should be. But in Hollywood and in Washington, they can’t hear the people because they’re making too much noise talking to themselves, confirming themselves, and loving themselves.

They say that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people. But as long as our leaders and artists are displaying such blindness, arrogance, and narcissism, they’re all ugly.

Andrew Klavan is a City Journal contributing editor and the author of such best-selling novels as Don’t Say a Word and Empire of Lies. His new thriller for young adults, The Long Way Home, is out now.

Is He the Most Dangerous Man in Washington?

I was always wondering about the bogus statistic "jobs saved".  This article is from Andrew Breitbart Presents Big Government.

A4 Driver

 

Deceiver in Chief: Peter Orszag

by Lurita Doan An unlikely power figure has emerged in the Obama Administration. He’s not a great orator, nor trendy, nor well-known.  But, if the ability to influence national leaders, shape a national agenda and influence public opinion are indicators, then, Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is, arguably, the most powerful and,  potentially, most dangerous, man in Washington, DC.

As Director of OMB, Peter Orszag is the arbiter of all financial information shared with Congress.  A series of little-known, OMB “circulars”, such as A-11, have established the rules, and repercussions if violated, by which Executive branch agencies communicate with Congress, especially regarding budgets, funding and agency priorities.
OMB, the President’s gatekeeper for budget matters, executes a complicated juggling act, balancing Obama Administration priorities and budgetary spin, against agency needs.   Frequently, to secure a critical vote, an elected member may be rewarded with a pork project for the folks back home, and, often, it’s the OMB director that has to figure out how to avoid the appearance of a bald-faced bribe, while manipulating CBO scoring on infrastructure projects.  Orszag, as the former head of CBO, understands exactly how this game is played.  Thus, most of the project and budget information that Congress reviews have been shaped by OMB’s preferences.
Peter Orszag controls much of the content and quantity of the data flow to Congress, to the President and to American citizens.  Orszag has oversight over most of the federal government’s critical data reporting structures.  Apart from the ineffective and error-prone Stimulus reporting sites (data.gov, recovery.gov),, OMB oversees federal contract opportunities and federal grants.

Perhaps even less well known, OMB reviews and edits most of the testimony submitted to Congress, and edits most of the responses that Cabinet members and federal agencies submit in response to Congressional queries.   Hence, Mr. Orszag is able to not only manipulate the numbers, but is simultaneously able to insure that there is discipline throughout the Administration regarding talking points.
The great concern is that Mr. Orszag, by all accounts a bright fellow, seems to demonstrate an ability to misrepresent facts and figures to further the confusion.  Put bluntly, Mr. Orszag does not seem to be a truthful man.  Moreover, he seems unusually good at deception.   From the deceptions and messiness of his personal life, where salacious stories, recently publicized about his personal life, of two girlfriends and an illegitimate child, generated a media frenzy, we learn that Peter Orszag  seems especially adept at  deceiving those closest to him, people that know him best.   In his official capacity, Mr. Orszag seems to have been especially deceptive, able and willing to misrepresent facts.
This past year, to advance the myth of “jobs created/jobs saved”, Orszag seems to have used his power to fudge the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment numbers (dropping millions of unemployed Americans off the reports, thereby enhancing the monthly unemployment statistics) and he has enhanced the “jobs created” numbers, by issuing a memo, directing Agency heads to claim that all existing federal government jobs, where work is performed administering Stimulus funds, should count as “jobs saved”.
Nowhere will this willingness to deceive be more keenly felt than in the follow-up to the recent Healthcare Reform legislation signed into law by President Obama.  Congress has trusted a CBO scoring that requires over $500Billion in cuts to various government programs and entitlements.  OMB is the office that will ultimately have the responsibility for identifying, tracking and reporting on these cuts, since expenditures for Health and Human Services (HHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) report to OMB.  What OMB decides to show Congress is what Congress is going to see.
The Administration will, understandably, be eager to claim that cuts were made, but if the past year’s accounting by OMB is any indication, the cuts are unlikely to occur, though the data may be manipulated to imply that the cuts occurred.  This kind of obfuscation is bad for Congress, which will be trying to measure whether the Healthcare Reform program is working as advertised, and bad for American taxpayers, who are getting stuck with the bill.
Americans might expect that others , wise to these sorts of shenanigans, might blow the whistle, but that’s not likely to happen since for the OMB Deputy Director chairs the (President’s) Committee for Integrity  and Efficiency (PCIE) which oversees  the federal government’s Inspectors General.  Indeed, when one IG at OPM recently tried to go around OMB, an OMB staffer bluntly asserted that “we will make your life miserable”.
Peter Orszag is responsible for implementing   President Obama’s  campaign promise of a line-by-line review of the federal budget to eliminate any non-performing federal programs , exposing federal programs that are non-performing and wasting taxpayer money.
Mr. Orszag’s most publicized, cost-cutting effort was the SAVE competition, designed to encourage federal employees to identify waste and propose solutions to trim the ever-growing $1,300,000,000,000 deficit.  The winning idea recommended that patients at Veteran Hospitals take home unused eye drops and other over-the-counter medication when discharged.   Not a bad idea, but it is becoming clear that the SAVE program, like so many of Mr. Orszag’s other efforts, was primarily a PR gimmick that helped deflect criticism about the Administration’s out-of-control spending.
When all the man hours, and effort, that was poured into implementing the SAVE program at OMB are considered, Americans will likely find that the costs of running the SAVE program far exceeds any gains or savings that the program may achieve.
Mr. Orszag has been especially active in government contracting, (the head of federal procurement – the Office of Federal Procurement Policy [OFPP] is part of OMB) and Orszag has boasted of improvements.  But, the results flowing from his decisions are making existing procurement problems worse, crushing small business opportunities and exacerbating the very problem he hopes to solve.   Indeed, the health of the once-vibrant, small business, government contracting community has  probably never been so dire, and is likely to get much worse as a result of Mr. Orszag’s ham-handed efforts to improve the federal acquisition system.
What makes Peter Orszag so dangerous is his access to more information, at a granular level, than any federal employee.  Information is power, and the ability to sculpt information with impunity makes Orszag dangerous.  Information withheld can cause as many problems as information that has been doctored, and whether intentional, or not, inaccurate information, disseminated by OMB, presented as fact to Congress and the American people, is what has often occurred.
So, at a time when our nation needs to confront our budgetary problems with honesty and determination, Americans should be asking themselves: are Orszag’s skills at deception what we really want to see in our OMB director?

Ever Heard of the Battle of the "Youth" Bulge?

Every day I come across something else that makes me think my grandkids will be facing some real-world wide problems.  I had never considered this aspect of the story.  I knew that the Muslims in the western European countries were quite prolific and had large families and I suppose I should have presumed the same for the rest of the Muslim world; however, the fact that Yemeni women alone average 6.5 children is really scary.  3/20/2010 Agora Financial's Daily Reckoning.


A4 Driver


Battle of the Youth Bulge
By Addison Wiggin
Baltimore, Maryland

How certain large populations of idle young men will likely change the world... for the worse

"Between 1970 and 1999, 80% of civil conflicts occurred in countries where 60% of the population or more were under the age of thirty... Today there are sixty-seven counties with youth bulges, of which sixty of them are experiencing social unrest and violence." - Council on Foreign Relations

A surge in youth population leads most nations in one of two directions: Economic boom or social bust. While much of the world is currently focused on the aging populations of powerhouse nations like the US and Japan, certain regions of the world are growing startlingly younger. Social scientists call these phenomena "youth bulges." By necessity, they take time to play out. But even in these early stages, it's easy to see what's coming...and a lot of it is pretty unsettling.

Yemen has captured American attention just a few times in the last decade. The assailants of the USS Cole were from there, and the infamous "underwear bomber" - who was trained in Yemen - tried to spoil Christmas Day 2009. In both cases, we as a nation spent the proceeding weeks tripping over ourselves...searching for answers as to how this came to be, who to blame, and how to stop it from happening again.

But, as usual, few ask "why?" That's a more stinging question, of course. One of the few easy answers is this: Yemen is overflowing with disaffected kids. An amazing 46% of the Yemeni population is under 16 years old. That's the highest youth ratio for any nation in the world outside of Africa. By comparison, only 20% of Americans occupy this demographic.

Recipe for Disaster

If there's a better model out there for youth bulges at risk, we can't find it. Yemen has been plagued with civil war for most of the last century. 45% of the population lives in poverty. Social mobility is a rarity. Barley half the population can read. Life expectancy is relatively low (60 years old for men). Only 3% of the land is arable and most of the nation suffers a constant shortage of potable water.

What little land and water is available for agriculture is mostly used for growing khat - the same amphetamine-like narcotic that helped turn Americas' brief occupation of Mogadishu into "Black Hawk Down." The drug is hugely popular in Yemen, where as much as 90% of men chew it everyday. A headline of a recent TIME article gives the addiction credence - "Is Yemen Chewing Itself to Death?"

The icing on Yemen's sheet cake of problems: The nation's one great source of income - oil, which accounts for 75% of government revenue - will likely run dry by 2020. In other words, the country has less than ten years to completely reinvent its economy.

Yet despite it all, the Yemeni population has doubled since 1975 to 22 million, now the second most populous nation in the Arab peninsula. Today, the average woman in Yemen has 6.5 children.

Why the West Should Listen Up

Does Yemen's "youth bulge" matter to the Western world? Ask the passengers of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, or seamen of the USS Cole, or all the travelers, soldiers and businesses that will be affected by subsequent policies.

Yemen's porous borders, lack of police force, predominantly Muslim population and disaffected youth are ideal breading grounds for Islamic radicalism. Yemen was second only to Saudi Arabia in the number of soldiers sourced to fight the USSR in Afghanistan in the '80s...the very group of soldiers that would one day form a group called "Al Qaeda."

Any government or business that plans on sailing through the Red Sea should take notice. Other than sailing around Africa, there is simply no way to connect the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea without brushing up against Yemen. Its narrow Mandab Strait is the only way into the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Over 3.3 million barrels of oil pass through this strait every day, roughly 7% of daily global tanker loads.

Worse yet, what can be said for Yemen is hardly dissimilar from many of its Middle Eastern neighbors. At least 40% of the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Oman are under 14 years old. In the whole Middle Eastern region, 65% of the population is under 30. Suffice to say many are struggling with plights themselves...food and water scarcity, peak oil, Jihadism, political instability, etc. The same goes for most of Africa, too - though few nations there wield the same kind of petrol- power or propensity for global terrorism as the Middle East.

"The 'War on Terrorism' promises to be expensive," Bill Bonner and I observed in Financial Reckoning Day seven years ago, "simply because there are so many potential terrorists to fight. Westerners constitute a decreasing minority of the global population: In 1990, they amounted to 30% of humanity; in 1993 that number had dropped to 13% and by 2025, following current trends, the percentage will fall to 10%. At the same time, the Muslim world is growing younger and increasing in numbers.

"In fact, Muslims' market share of the global population has increased dramatically throughout the twentieth century and will continue to do so until the proportion of Westerners to Muslims is inverse that of the 1900 ratio. By 1980, Muslims constituted 18% of the world's population and, in 2000, more than 20%. By 2025, they are expected to account for 30% of world population."

Thus, like the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution or even the "free love" '60s here in the US - a very large, disaffected population in the Middle East is coming of age. If social and political conditions there remain the same - and we see little reason why they wouldn't - the worst from the region is likely yet to come. And if the social and political scene there deteriorates - with the help of peak oil, religious wars and constant Western intervention - darker times are practically guaranteed.

"Bilk America Bonds"

This is why I receive many investment newsletters; I never would have heard about this garb of state's sovereignty without having read this article.  A little lenghthy but worth the read.  Just one more straw to break our backs.


A4 Driver

Taipan Daily: Why "Bilk America Bonds" Are a Threat to Your Wallet
   
by Joseph McBrennan, Editor, Wealth Legacy Advisory

I just finished an article in The Wall Street Journal discussing what its writers considered "excessive" fees on municipal bond underwritings. I followed along with their train of thought until something dawned on me. Worrying over a very insignificant amount of money, even as states continue to plunder their citizens, is a little like worrying about the cost of the rope around your neck... just prior to the trap door in the floor falling out from beneath you.

The discussion that spurred these morbid thoughts was based around a specific type of bond, called Build America Bonds. I prefer to call them "Bilk" America Bonds. Currently, Bilk America Bonds are being touted by the Obama administration as one of the major successes of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (otherwise known as ARRA, which I pronounce as "Error").

Inflated Profits, Inflated Debts

And while the BABs, as they have been coined, have been wildly accepted by the investment community and the issuers (municipalities) from coast to coast, the reason has NOTHING to do with some master stimulus plan and everything to do with alert bankers identifying profit opportunities and municipalities with an insatiable appetite for debt.

And as evil as these bankers have been portrayed in the media, their actions are driven 100% by our federal government's massive attempt to inflate anything and everything. This time they're inflating the already bloated municipal government's debt burden. (A municipality, in the broadest definition, is any political governing entity that isn't the federal government. In other words, it can be cities, counties, school districts, utility districts, agricultural districts and so on.)

In this two-part report, I'm writing to expose this "ARRA" success story, to identify this obscenity of our federal government power grab and, hopefully, to alert you to what may be yet another encroachment on your state's sovereignty, and, ultimately, your liberty.

Anyone who knows me (as Taipan readers will soon discover) understands that I believe that, in every disaster (which this does qualify as), there is an equal if not greater opportunity. While I do hate these debt instruments – hence the name Bilk America Bonds – there is an opportunity with them that I will highlight in the second half of this report.

BABs Defined

I am intimately aware of these securities because I help communities use them to borrow. In fact, I created one of the first! In other words, I'm an insider blowing the whistle.

For the record, I will alert readers to these BABs, point out the flaws and the problems, and encourage you to fight against them. I will be doing the same. However, I will also continue to use the tool created by the Obama administration in certain ways as long as it favors my clients.

So what exactly is a BAB, you ask? In some ways it is just a municipal bond like any other. The majority of municipal bonds are issued with interest being paid semi-annually to investors that is tax-exempt. In other words, all of the income off the investment is delivered to you without Uncle Sam taking a cut. That is why municipal bonds can be GREAT investments overall, and have proven themselves safe since before the Depression. In fact, they may be the only true "buy and hold" investment available!

So BABs are issued like other bonds, but they are NOT TAX-EXEMPT, which results in substantially higher interest rates paid by the municipality.

However, to help defray the higher cost, guess who has promised to send them a 35% subsidy check every half-year? You guessed it: Our friend President Obama.

With that little 35% kicker, stolen from us taxpayers, the issuer (borrower) of BABs gets a slightly lower interest rate than what it would have cost them had they sold regular municipal bonds.

BABs, like municipal bonds, are used to build public projects. Anything from a new city hall or bridge, to a new sewerage treatment facility or public pool, can be financed with bonds (BABs or normal municipal bonds). With the subsidy, the issuer gets about a one-half of one percent lower interest cost than they would have received borrowing with tax-exempt bonds.

Yet Another Hidden Bailout

Unfortunately, what's being sold to the American public is the notion that "BABs are great for everyone." Once again, this is why I call them BILK America Bonds.

The first problem is that, ultimately, BABs cost far more than regular tax-exempt borrowing. They feed us a line of bull that because the government gets the taxes on these, the subsidy paid is really a break-even proposition for the taxpayer.

In reality, a great many BABs have gone into retirement accounts, insurance accounts and other tax-deferred entities, and so the federals are collecting little of the tax sought from the annual interest paid. Adding insult to injury, at least one in 10 BAB purchases go outside the United States – and with it, so do our tax dollars (by way of the built-in subsidy).

And, as crummy as it is to pay too much for a project, it gets worse when you realize that YOU ARE AGAIN BAILING OUT SOMETHING. I'm getting pretty tired of cutting a check for one failed program after another. First the auto industry, then the banks followed next, than the unions... and now we are footing the bill for 35% of the interest cost for municipalities that, instead of cutting back, are simply borrowing more!

A Tax-and-Spend Power Grab

It probably won't surprise you to hear that California has been the largest borrower using BABs. You may recall that, in early ‘09, in an attempt to pay for the already bloated government, the state went to the voters, who rejected every tax increase on the ballot (bravo California).

So what did Arnold do to make an end run around ordinary Californians? He borrowed using BABs. Literally $6.86 billion in BABs. Now remember, he'll get 35% of his interest cost paid to him by the Feds (i.e. via taxpayer dollars, supplied by you and me).

What NO ONE is aware of is that there is no rule that says the 35% interest subsidy must go to reduce the interest cost. So the governor can take what could amount to hundreds of millions in subsidies and use them to pay for expenditures Californians refused to approve!

The very nature of the type of BAB issued, what's known as a General Obligation of CA, requires that taxes be raised, without limit, to cover the principal and interest (with or without subsidy).

In effect, if the governor diverts the interest subsidy, all his state will get is an unapproved tax increase. It's pretty neat trick, in a sick sort of way.

No Representation for Your Taxation

If the backdoor tax increase isn't bad enough, then how do you feel about paying for new municipal projects – through the taxpayer-funded subsidy – where you had no say in how the money was to be spent? No representation for your taxation.

In other words, how would you feel if, say, San Francisco decided to build abortion clinics and you're a pro-lifer... in Florida. Or, how about New York using BABs to build a church community center and you're an atheist... in Texas. It's not too hard to think of hundreds of examples of projects I want no part of, in states I've never lived in!

BABs have turned out to be exceptionally popular with investors and borrowers. They provide higher-than-normal returns and have nice flexibility for the issuing municipality. Unfortunately, the taxpayers, as usual, are the ones taking it on the chin.

There is one more piece of worrisome news. The government's true goal, I suspect, is the complete elimination of tax-exempt bonds and, along with that, the ability of local municipalities to control their own finances. It is another power grab by the feds that could end local and state sovereignty – at least with finances – for good.

Regards,

Joseph McBrennan, Editor, Wealth Legacy Advisory

Newt Speaks About Yesterday

From Newt Gingrich's web site on 3/22/2010.  I couldn't have expressed it better myself.


A4 Driver

This Will Not Stand: Newt on the passage of Obamacare
by Newt Gingrich This will not stand. No one should be confused about the outcome of Sunday's vote This is not the end of the fight it is the beginning of the fight. The American people spoke decisively against a big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity Speaker Pelosi knew the country was against the bill. That is why she kept her members trapped in Washington and forced a vote on Sunday. She knew if she let the members go home their constituents would convince them to vote no. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine combined the radicalism of Alinsky, the corruption of Springfield and the machine power politics of Chicago. Sunday was a pressured, bought, intimidated vote worthy of Hugo Chavez but unworthy of the United States of America. It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak. The real principles of the machine were articulated by Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings who was impeached and removed from the bench as a federal judge, before being elected to the House when he said ""There ain't no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something. . . .All this talk about rules. . . .When the deal goes down . . . we make 'em up as we go along." It is hard for the American people to believe their leaders on the left are this bad. They are. The American people will not allow a corrupt machine to dictate their future. Together we will pledge to repeal this bill and start over Together we will prove that this will not stand 2010 and 2012 will be among the most important elections in American history These elections will allow us to save America from a leftwing machine of unparalleled corruption arrogance and cynicism Sunday was one more step in the fight against a "Washington knows best" and "Washington should run everything" attitude. Let us turn now to the Senate to continue this fight for real reform, for real self government, and for policies that create jobs, improve health outcomes, and increase freedom.

So Much For Transparency and No More Business As Usual

I sure hope that the people who voted for this liar are content with their actions.  This is about as blatant an example of the height of political corruptness----and he's not even trying to hide it!


A4 Driver

Dick Morris: Obama Selling Out Voters on Healthcare

Friday, 19 Mar 2010 06:45 PM

By: David A. Patten

So many backroom deals are being cut to get healthcare reform passed that "Obama is selling the government," bestselling author and Fox News commentator Dick Morris charges.

As Sunday's dramatic vote on healthcare reform draws near, reports and rumors of special arrangements and understandings have been blasted across the Internet. President Obama and Democratic leaders insist they aren't striking side deals to grease the wheels for ObamaCare. But in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Morris says otherwise.

"This is one of those things we won't really know what the deals were for a month or two, when you see the appointments and the patronage and all kinds of other stuff that goes on," Morris says. "Bill Clinton, who I used to work, for was accused of selling the Lincoln bedroom. Obama is selling the government. I mean the amount of stuff that's going on now, the amount of horse trading…."

Examples that Morris provided: "There were two congressmen from California who got a multi-, multi-million dollar water project for their district. … The whole student loan program is being closed down, it's going to be run out of the government now. Except for one bank in North Dakota, which got carved out as an exemption because the head of the budget committee is from North Dakota."

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee is Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Of course, patronage is as familiar to Beltway life as cherry blossoms in springtime. But Morris describes the last-minute deals now taking place as "absolutely obscene."

Indeed, reports emerged Thursday that the $100 million designated for a hospital in Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd's state of Connecticut will remain in the bill.

On Thursday, Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush said he would vote against the bill due to its impact on hospitals in poor neighborhoods. But Rush later was seen conferring on the House floor with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and by that evening he'd changed his position, telling reporters he was no longer necessarily opposed the Obamacare.

Rush told the Hill "there's been significant movement over the last few weeks, last few minutes," adding that Democratic leaders now understood his position and "We're working something out."

Morris expects Democrats to lose control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections whether healthcare reform passes or not. But politically, he predicts the push to pass healthcare reform would prove politically suicidal.

"As an American citizen I do not want this bill to pass," he tells Newsmax. "But when I look at the November elections, it would be suicide for the Democrats to pass this bill. In October of this year, a month before the election, cuts to Medicare go into effect. Physicians' fees get cut by 21 percent under Medicare, hospital reimbursements by over a billion dollars. And what's going to happen is that doctors and hospitals all over the country will follow what the Mayo Clinic has already done, and say, 'We are not going to treat Medicare patients.'
"And the result," he says, "is that Medicare patients will find it almost impossible to find an ob-gyn, a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist to see, because none of them is going to take Medicare. They're not going to see a patient for $50, after they have $300,000 in [education] debt.

"They might or might not be able to see a family medicine general practitioner, but even those will begin to become scarce."

Morris predicts Obamacare will lead to a new form of comprehensive insurance for seniors which will replace Medicare.

"Think public housing, think public schools as opposed to private schools," he tells Newsmax. "Medicare is going to become, if this bill passes, the downscale service for people who won't be able to afford anything else. It's a disgrace."

Morris says Obama's primary motivation in continuing to push for reform is his administration's need to score a success.

"But if it passes what he might just do is run the whole plate with 51 votes," Morris says. "He might just run the whole table. He might take immigration reform, and cap and trade, and financial regulation, and all of his bills, and just jam them through with 51 votes, changing the system fundamentally."

Other highlights from Morris' interview:

• He predicts the bill will face massive legal challenges, because it will drastically increase states' costs of Medicare, which could drive up their tax assessments. "I think the states are going to use the 10th Amendment to go into the court, and say, 'Hey, this is an unfunded federal mandate. It takes away our ability to decide what the tax levels of our state ought to be,' and I think it'll pose a fundamental constitutional challenge," he says. He also predicts courts will overturn the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance as unconstitutional.
• Morris says the bill gives "outrageous" power to the IRS. "And the consequence of that is to criminalize it," he says. "…The jailhouse of the future will feature three inmates walking around: 'What are you in here for?' 'Murder' How about you? 'Kidnapping' And you? "I didn't have health insurance.'
• The CBO numbers that state the bill will add over 30 million people to the insurance roles while reducing the budget deficit are " totally phony," Morris says. He notes they collect 10 years of revenue to pay for six years of service under the plan.
• The year-long fight over healthcare reform has distorted the political process to the point that it's more partisan than ever, Morris says. "It used to be that intelligent people would say, 'I don't vote for the party, I vote for the person.' Now people who say that are stupid," Morris tells Newsmax. "Because it makes clear that the only thing that's important is the party. Because ultimately they all fall in line. And ultimately a Democrat is a Democrat is a Democrat is a Democrat. And it will leave in this country a lasting lesson for 2010: Vote Republican."

Morris says Democrats appear to still need more votes to pass their legislation.

"Right now if you forced me to predict I'd say it is more likely to pass than not, but it is not a done deal," he says. "And the public pressure on these legislators is escalating. It's really a question of the pressure -- the bribes from within, and the pressure from without."


newsmax.com 3/20/2010

What Part of Illegal Don't They Understand?

This whole "illegal" immigrants thing just rubs me wrong.  How in the world can something that is illegal be deemed legal?  I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

A4 Driver

Obama Backs Plan to Legalize Illegals

Friday, 19 Mar 2010 08:21 AM

By: Stephen Dinan

President Obama gave a thumbs up Thursday to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is "promising."

In their broad blueprint, Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, call for illegal immigrants to be put on a path to citizenship, offer green cards to keep high-skilled foreign university graduates and would create a temporary program for low-skilled workers, with some also getting the chance to become citizens.

The senators also proposed to turn all Social Security cards into tamper-proof IDs to be checked by employers when they are about to hire a worker. The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting -- but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database.

"I congratulate Senators Schumer and Graham for their leadership, and pledge to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus this year on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform," Mr. Obama said in a statement soon after the two senators published their blueprint in a column submitted to The Washington Post.

The carefully orchestrated rollout came just three days before immigrant-rights advocates expect at least 50,000 supporters to rally and march in Washington, D.C., calling for Congress to act. The organizers of the rally had met with Mr. Obama last week and told him he needed to embrace a bill or else the thousands of marchers would be told that he had failed to live up to his promises on this issue.

But the outline is just a first step in what's still a very rocky legislative path.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said flatly that it can't pass.

"The bill doesn't have a prayer, because the American people oppose rewarding lawbreakers, which then encourages illegal immigration," he said. "Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens is like giving a burglar a key to the house. Illegal immigrants should return home and play by the rules like millions of legal immigrants."

And adding to the bill's troubles, Mr. Graham has warned Democrats and Mr. Obama that if they use the budget process to push health care through Congress -- known as reconciliation -- that could poison any chance for bipartisan cooperation on immigration.

Also, the blueprint is broad, and doesn't delve into many key details that could still split the coalition of labor, business, religious and ethnic groups that have joined together to try to pass a bill.

Still, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said backers have now checked off the first several steps on their to-do list: The senators have published their outline, Mr. Obama endorsed it, and earlier this week Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said he was looking forward to moving a bill through his committee.

Mr. Noorani said the next challenges are to see if more Republicans will jump onboard the effort, and to get commitments from House Democrats to move legislation through their chamber.

"We have a bipartisan framework that is going to define a piece of legislation. From here onward, it's a political and legislative battle to get the 60 votes we need [to pass the Senate] and the 218 in the House," Mr. Noorani said.

Congress last took up immigration in 2007, when President George W. Bush joined with Democratic leaders to write a bill. But a bipartisan majority of senators joined a filibuster to block the bill.

The supporters of the 2007 effort concluded that Americans didn't trust the government to secure the borders and enforce the laws, even as they were offering legalization, particularly since illegal immigration has only grown since a 1986 amnesty.

To combat that impression, Mr. Graham and Mr. Schumer said they'll include new enforcement at both the border and in the country's interior.

"Once it is clear that in 20 years our nation will not again confront the specter of another 11 million people coming here illegally, Americans will embrace more welcoming immigration policies," they wrote.

They have been working on the proposal for months, sorting out competing interests from business groups, labor unions and immigration advocates. They said their plan has four key components: a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a program to let in future workers, the improvements in enforcement and the biometric Social Security cards to help employers weed out illegal workers.

The senators said their legalization would be a "tough but fair" program that would require illegal immigrants to admit they broke the law and make them perform community service and pay a fine.

Illegal immigrants would also have to demonstrate they are proficient at English and pass background checks to gain citizenship.

The plan would offer permanent legal status to foreign students who earn a post-graduate degree from an American university, and creates a future program for low-skilled workers. Businesses could only hire them if no American worker is available, and the number allowed would fluctuate depending on the U.S. economy's needs. Workers who have kept jobs for a long time and have proved valuable members of their community could earn permanent legal status.


© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC

The Doctors Have It Figured Out

An undiscussed side effect of this abominable legislation.  BTW---where are the doctors who will cater to the additional 36,000,000 patients who are now uninsured?  It certainly would have been nice for Liberals to figure some of these things in before ramming the 2300 page piece of garbage down our throats.


A4 Driver

4. Thousands of Doctors May Quit Medicine Over Obamacare

Nearly one-third of physicians in the U.S. could leave the medical profession after Obama’s healthcare reform plan becomes law, according to a survey published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In the survey, 29.2 percent of practicing physicians said they would quit practicing medicine or retire early if faced with the healthcare reform.

“What many people may not realize is that health reform could impact physician supply in such a way that the quality of healthcare could suffer,” said Jim Stone, a managing partner with The Medicus Firm, a national physician search company that conducted the survey.

But just 3.6 percent of those polled said they prefer the status quo and feel the healthcare system does not need an overhaul.

“Allow me to emphasize that 96 percent of the physicians surveyed in our report are in favor of health reform, in some form or fashion,” Andrea Santiago, a spokeswomen for The Medicus Firm, told CNSNews. “To me, the fact that so many physicians surveyed want health reform, but relatively few are in favor of the current legislation, was one of the most significant, telling results.”

Other findings of the survey include:

• 28.7 percent of physicians favor a public option.
• 46.3 percent of primary care physicians — family medicine and internal medicine — feel that health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.
• 36 percent of physicians would not recommend medicine as a career.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 661,400 physicians and surgeons in the U.S. in 2008.

Oil Independence----Why Are We Not Going After This Oil?

Recently received this from a friend who is one of my investment compadres.  Check out the link at the end to verify.  This is why I have the following sticker on my car----YOUR WALLET--The Only Place the Democrats Want to DRILL.

A4 Driver

.About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest.. The host said to Forbes, "I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer;  how much oil does the  U.S.  have in the ground?"  Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "more than all the  Middle East  put together."  Please read below.

 

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big.  It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:

 

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since  Alaska 's  Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5..3 trillion..

  

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

 

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  It's a formation known as the  Williston   Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.'  It stretches from Northern Montana, through  North Dakota and into  Canada .  For years,  U. S.  oil exploration has been considered a dead end.  Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves..... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.  And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
 

 

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.  And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!
 

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World

 

Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 

 

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the  Rocky Mountains  lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels.  On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

 

They reported this stunning news:  We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates:

   

- 8-times as much oil as  Saudi Arabia

 

- 18-times as much oil as  Iraq

 

 -21-times as much oil as   Kuwait

- 22-times as much oil as  Iran

 

- 500-times as much oil as  Yemen

 

- and it's all right here in the  Western United States  .

 

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help  America  become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

  

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped.  That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude 

oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find?  Think again!  It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

 

By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!!

GOOGLE it, or follow this link.  It will blow your mind.

 http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

Explanation of Derivative Markets For Dummies

This is a primer on the whole Derivative Markets sham.  I doubt if PRO or Barney and Chris even get this.


A4 Driver

Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets

 Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers' loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in  Detroit.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets.

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar.

 
Now do you understand?