Thursday, 22 May 2008

Lunsford Fails Economics 101

Let's say you are the owner of a company that makes widgets. You have determined that people are willing to pay $10 for each of these widgets. After materials, labor, marketing, transportation, and other costs of doing business you are able to make $1 in profit off each widget. Now let's say you are able to sell 1 million of these widgets in a year. That means you made 1 million dollars in profit from all of your hard work.

The government looks at your business and says your price is ridiculously high and your profits are "obscene". They decide to soak you for gouging people. They are going to tax you 50 cents on each dollar of profit. I don't know about you, but I would be pissed off that the government is penalizing me for making money off of my hard work. Instead of taking the financial hit you decided to build the cost of taxation into the costs. So now you sell the widgets for $10.50. The following year you are able to sell another million widgets. Who are the winners and losers in this transaction? The clear winner is government. They make $500,000. You come out even. Your customers who end up paying the extra 50 cents and are now $500,000 in the whole.

The moral of the story is that whenever you hear government wants to soak any company for obscene profits what they are really saying is they want to soak the consumer. Which is exactly what will happen if government goes after big oil. The losers will be the consumers of oil. That would be all of us.

Now let's say the government is going to give your customers a rebate of 40 cents for each widget they buy. Wow how magnanimous the government is! Or are they? In this new scenario. Consumers save 40 cents on each widget they buy but the cost has increased to $10.50 when it was previously $10.00. So your customer is still paying 10 cents more for each widget and the government is profiting off the transaction. Of course this is the same argument that Hillary Clinton is making when she claims she wants a gas holiday and wants to pay for it by taxing "Big Oil's obscene profits". What she really wants is to soak the taxpayers while pretending to help ease their pain. It is a complete shell game.

Guess who else is on board with this stupidity? If you said Bruce Lunsford then you guessed right. Yesterday in attacking McConnel he said he favored placing a wind-fall profits tax on oil companies and approving a federal gas tax holiday to pay for it. It always amazes me that Democrats like Lunsford can't understand simple economic principles. No wonder Lunsford's company went bankrupt.

Posted by brians at 10:21 PM in Kentucky Politics
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Painting Kentucky Racists

The Courier Journal today had an article on how Kentucky's racism accounted for Obama's beatdown in Kentucky. They used Oregon as a counterpoint.

In Kentucky and Oregon, nearly nine of every 10 voters Tuesday were white.

But the results in the two states' presidential primaries were very different.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois got 30 percent of the vote in Kentucky; in Oregon he received nearly 60 percent....

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that Kentucky's racial attitudes played a significant role in the outcome of Tuesday's primary.

"This was so overwhelming of a win, and partly it was an endorsement of (Sen. Hillary) Clinton. But partially it was a rejection of Obama," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "And I think race is part of it."

It is has to be racism which is the difference. Or it could be that Oregon is far to the left of the center politically while Kentucky is right of center politically. I think this plays out by the fact that Clinton beat Obama in a group he usually carried.

In Kentucky, however, she also won a majority of voters with college degrees, a demographic group that has generally appealed to Obama in other states.

Stir into the equation the fact that Hillary has consistently done well with Kentucky's largest demographic, blue collar workers without an education, and you have the makings of a blow out of large proportions. Which is exactly what we saw unfold on Tuesday.

Many of Hillary's core voters are "Reagan Democrats" so don't be surprised if many of them move to McCain this fall. They more naturally align themselves politically with McCain than the elitist liberal, Obama. I expect the "racism" meme will be the excuse the liberal media use when Obama gets trounced in November. And not the fact that he is just another McGovern/Carter replay.

Posted by brians at 9:51 AM in Kentucky Politics
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People Upset Over Lack Of Cross Party Voting

The biggest complaint on election day was the ban on cross party voting.

Perhaps the most complaints in Jefferson County came from people who had registered for one party but wanted to vote in the other party's primary, said Nore Ghibaudy, a spokesman for the county Board of Elections.

Why are people upset? If you want to vote in a primary join the party for which you want to vote. It is that simple. I never understood the concept of open primaries. A primary is for a party to select their nominee and not for the world to select the nominee. If you want to select party A's nominee and you are part of party B or an "Independent" then join party A if you want to vote for who is nominated from party A. Its not that complicated. I am just glad that Kentucky does it right.

Posted by brians at 9:29 AM in Political Issues
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Bias In The Media - The On Going Saga

Recently we have had a number of stories about Democrats who have said repulsive things that were never apologized for and were never dwelt upon by the main stream media. Just a couple of days ago there was a story about the candidates for the Republican 4th District Congressional Race. The story itself was unremarkable, but It contained this tid bit on Rep Davis.

He also took some heat last month after calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama a "boy" while discussing national security at a GOP dinner. Davis said he quickly wrote Obama an apology.

It has been over a MONTH ago and he is still being associated with this story. Heck he even apologized for the remarks. (Something the Democrats haven't done) Yet it is still magically part of the story about him. I am waiting for the media to have a story about Beshear that begins with:

Beshear, who recently was heard calling for Cheney to shoot Bush and who still hasn't apologized for the remarks, said today that ....

For some reason, I don't think that is going to happen. Oh well, just another case of media injecting biased editorial into a story.

Posted by brians at 9:13 AM in Political Issues
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