Fleeing to Canada?

Better read this first.

From The Manitoba Herald:

"Build a Damn Fence!"

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party are prompting an exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, to pray, and to agree with Bill O' Reilly and Glenn Beck.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left before I even got a chanceto show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through and Rush annoyed the cows so much that they wouldn't give any milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons and drive them across the border where they are simply left to fend for themselves." A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a single bottle of imported drinking water. They
did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumours have been circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.

In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching half a dozen young vegans in powdered wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the '50s. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age." an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and are renting all the Michael Moore movies. "I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them." an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

Social Security and Me

I got my Social Security statement today. Through 2008, I paid in $218,028 in FICA taxes (and $124,451 in Medicare taxes btw) over the last 40 years or so. In return, I am estimated (not promised mind you, ESTIMATED) to get $28,440/year if I "retire" at 66 and $38,412 if I wait until I am 70. At some really simplistic level this doesn't seem so bad. If I start collecting at 66, I will recoup my "investment" by the time I am 73, and if I wait until I am 70, I will do so by the time I am 75. Of course, as with any lifetime annuity, it pays to live forever, so if I live to be 100, I will collect 4.6 times what I paid in if I start collecting at 66 and 5.5 times what I paid in if I wait until 70 to start. But these calcs ignore a few things. Like the fact that the government is not compensating me for the use of my money for 40 years or so. Nor does it account for the fact that the government will treat their repayment of my loan to them not as a return of capital but as income subject to at 15% to 28% tax (depending on how successful I am at generating income after I retire and assuming taxes on people like me don't go up -- a tenuous assumption at best). Bottom line? SS is a SHITTY investment. It is, in large part, a transfer payment pure and simple, and it should be accepted as such. I'm actually OK with that. I just wish someone somewhere would say "thank you," rather than TAX THE RICH!!!

Retirement Plans

An approach to retiement I plan to emulate:

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days
interesting. Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and
went into a shop. We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out,
there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and said, 'Come
on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'

He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd.. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So my wife called him a shit-head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the
first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, we didn't care. We came into town by bus and saw the car had a Bush sticker.

We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age.

Starve the Beast and Stuff the Goose

I had a bit of an epiphany tonight. Remember "starve the beast," the Reaganite theory that the way to control the size of government was to keep cutting taxes until, finally, slashing of spending/programs becomes unavoidable? Well, the Dems have a mirror image of that: Call it "stuff the goose": create more and more entitlements without regard to costs until, finally, tax increases become unavoidable. The problem for those of us just trying to do the right thing is that when "starve the beast" collides with "stuff the goose," the outcome is simply ENORMOUS debt. I'm glad the health care bill passed. I really am. It's a start, I hope, on what is clearly the single most important and difficult domestic issue facing America. But to provide, at taxpayer expense, health care coverage for an additional 35 million people, and to thereby remove any incentive for these additional people to use health care resources responsibly, without doing anything meaningful about the costs and profoundly perverse incentives in the American health care system borders on the criminally irresponsible.

Talking About Health Care

I want to have a concersation about health care. In another context , I wrote the following today:

"If things don't change, medical care for the baby boomers will either break this country or lead to a political Armageddon, or perhaps both. We are living through a slow motion train wreck. And I have abandoned all hope that Washington is capable of dealing with it in any meaningful or responsible way."

As a first step, I'd just like to know if anyone agrees with me and if not why not.

Thinking About Obama

The other thing I've been pondering is how I feel about Barak Obama. I will admit to a good deal of disappointment, particularly with his unwillingness or inability to convince the wing nuts in his own party that politics is he art of the possible not the art of the "they got theirs now I'm gonna get mine." (As always, Democrats are their own worst enemies). I also don't like the occasional appeals to the know-nothings, as when he panders to those who see the money-center banks as the cause of all of America's ills. But in the end I guess I still like Barak. He's a model of reason and restraint compared to the Tea-Partyers, and he is actually trying to do something about stuff inside and outside America that is plainly broken. Moreover he is doing so for the most part with a degree of candor and class that is remarakable in 21st century American politics. The fact that he has so far not resolved any of those issues is nether surprising nor mostly his fault. America has become almost as ungovernable as California. I'll give him another year.

How Important Is The Citizens United Case

I’ve been thinking about the S Ct decision in the Citizens United case. I am a big fan of the 1st Amendment and also bit of a Hugo Blackian (i.e. when the drafters said "Congress shall make no law" they meant “no law”), so I tend to be gratified on that score. But like everything else (including the 2d Amendment, btw) nothing in the Constitution is or can be absolute. So, is the harm that will flow from allowing corporations and unions to make campaign contributions serious enough to warrant the restriction?For these purposes, let’s ignore the threshold question of whether corporations or unions should have any 1st amendment rights at all. I assume they do and should but agree that this is a debatable issue. What interests me right now are two more practical questions. First, how much difference will direct corporate and associational contributions make in our electoral processes? Second, if there will be a difference will it be baleful or beneficent. My sense is that allowing corporate and union contributions will make very little difference in the end. Money in politics has already passed the point of diminishing returns. There is already so much relentless advertising from so many different outlets that by the time an election actually happens, the electorate is enervated. As I wrote elsewhere, supposing that more campaign money will make a difference to the electoral process is like supposing that another few inches of rain would have made a difference to Noah. For the same reason, I question whether the ruling will actually have much impact on the amount of money invested in politics. The people who would be making these contributions got to be where they are by being good at deciding how to invest money to produce a return. I see no reason to believe they would be more profligate in their political cost-benefit analyses than they are in their business analyses. They too are going to recognize that the incremental utility of additional campaign contributions or advertisements is already near zero. The one difference I do think the decision might make is to improve the transparency of the contributions. Money always finds a way, and if we think McCain-Feingold or other campaign finance laws have kept corporations and unions out of the election business, I think we are kidding ourselves. Allowing contributions to be made directly might reduce the allure of such subterfuges and PACs, “issue ads,” “soft money,” and outright graft, and that in my mind is all to the good. So on balance, my prediction is that this will prove to be a moderately important 1st Amendment case but a tempest in a teapot when it comes to money in politics.