Arkady's Thoughts

In case you have not heard, Eric Cantor and his Whip staff designed an interesting concept called YouCut .  You log in and then cast votes on what you want to cut from the Federal budget.  Each week several options are presented.  Descriptions are provided and the estimated savings amount is presented.   While some of the issues are minor and have no apparent effect on the 13.7 Trillion dollar deficit, some issues carry a moral message.  For instance in one week, Republicans proposed to freeze pay of all federal salaries.  Will this save a ton of money?  Probably not, but it is an outreach by our representatives and a symbolic gesture that we are going through the financial crisis together. In the third week, a far more fascinating and potentially fiscally instrumental change was proposed.  The possibility to reform Fannie/Freddie and stem the bleeding.  Ideally we would see the completely dissolution of these organizations and ...

Everyone who has followed the housing collapse and ever heard Barney insult his constituents is watching this race very intently, perhaps too intently.  This smacks a bit of the frenzy and frothing we felt in January when Scott Brown pulled the upset, but Brown's election was supposed to stop ObamaCare and had deep symbolic meaning as it was Teddy's old seat.  This time, we have a general election with hundreds of interesting Senate and House races going around the country, yet several premier conservative websites (HotAir.com, RedState) have already run multiple unique posts covering this race. Three of the posts specifically encouraged readers to send donations to Bielat.  There are two possible explanations.  One is that Sean Bielat is a fantastic candidate and supporting him takes precedence over other equally worthy candidates.  Even though Hudak challenging Tierney and Lamb challenging McGovern is just as important as their votes and socialis...

Below is a video that I have created to spread the word about Question 3.  Specifically, as my previous articles, the idea is to look behind the knee-jerk reaction and the feel-good rhetoric.  From a truly mathematical perspective, we can truly cut our sales tax and experience no cuts in services.  Both sides are engaged in propaganda, but the opposition is especially damaging.  The opposition insists on skewing the numbers and manipulating the data in order to scare and intimidate - this is not a right way to run the campaign.  While the pro-Question 3 crowd's biggest offense is a possible error in how many jobs would be created. More importantly the opposition, something exposed in the video, particularly which organizations comprise the opposition should be enough to anger any tax paying citizen.  It is frustrating beyond belief to see public unions run roughshod all over us with piles and piles of money.  Anyway, enjoy and share with others. ...

In the midst of discussing Question 3 , Beacon Hill demonstrated this week that all claims of revenue shortfalls and fiscal hardship amounts to nothing more than cheap propaganda and political posturing.  With Massachusetts citizens occupied in the midst of a contentious election season, Beacon Hill passed another massive spending bill during an informal session.   A 443 million dollar spending bill to be exact and under the most dubious of circumstances . Last week in so-called "informal sessions" the Massachusetts House of Representatives met with just THREE members and the Senate met with just TWO members and passed a huge controversial $443 million spending bill. This week both house houses met again in informal sessions -- also each with only a tiny group of members -- and passed a final consolidated version of the bill. Five elected officials passed hundreds of millions acting like a dictatorial regime and violating it's own rules that explicitly call for a quo...

In the midst of the Question 3 debate , many reluctant citizens demand to see fraud and waste so they can feel comfortable about cutting the sales tax.    As if this fraud and waste is neatly spelled out on page 666 in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report or cataloged by the Department of Fraud and Waste.  Perhaps we should just called Deval and ask him how many billions we are wasting and whether he can point us to the right department. What you are asking for IS NOT VISIBLE!! The best we can do, for those willing to take the time and energy is to piece together the available data and make a reasonable conclusion on what is happening.  So far, in our previous look at the spending levels of MA from 2002-2009 we have concluded the following: Chart showing spending and incomes . From 2002 to 2009, spending jumped from 34.3 Billion to 49.4 Billion.  This represents a 44% increase. Using a rudimentary inflation calculator, we can deter...

Time to get down and look at the details of the most important ballot question this November.  Let us see why the Boston Herald endorsed this ballot initiative and why the National Taxpayer Union is featuring Question 3 on their 2010 ballot guide . Background  Deval Patrick and Beacon Hill realized that they were looking at critical budget shortfalls and responded by raising several taxes upon the citizens of Massachusetts.  One of which was to raise the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.   This move was especially hurtful in light of the failed Question 1 ballot initiative from 2008 which proposed to cut the MA Income Tax from 5.3% to 0.   With power of 7 million dollars from the Teacher Unions the Question 1 initiative lost badly.  Not only was the Obama wave a bad time for such a question, but the Center for Small Government was outspent by a magnitude of 35 to 1.  An opportunity for MA citizens to have their taxes reduced outside of Beacon...

Paying attention to the employment condition of America is critical in understanding the direction of recovery.  Today's report leaves a very bitter taste in one's mouth and confirms the notion that America is actually within a depression and/or heading towards one.  Our path is only slowed down by an over zealous federal government and a central bank that is determined in repeating the follies and errors of the FDR administration. The full report can be found here , but for brevity there is just one piece of data that you should care about.  The main headline will probably read that the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.6%, which is the U-3 number and regrettably the number used by the main stream media. The U-6 is a much more accurate representation of where people find themselves in terms of employment.  A quick glance here and you quickly realize that we are probably at our worst as the greatest number of people have lost their jobs and given up looki...