Testy testy little ma'am

Can afford a Blackberry... but not food

This is crazy. A guy shows up for free soup served by volunteer Michelle Obama with a very expensive Blackberry. Priorities?? Choices??

If you read one magazine

The only magazine I read faithfully is Forbes. They get it. Smart, insightful and easy to read. Here are a few lines from the latest edition:
Steve Forbes on the new financial regulations – the blunt truth is that even if we had Obama’s regulatory reforms in place 4 years ago, we would still have experienced an economic disaster… regulations turned a serious flood into a tsunami... the thing about government is that the more it fails, the more power it accrues.
Steve Forbes on the new vehicle regulations - changes in efficiency standards will mean greater carnage on our highways… smaller cars will mean people will keep their clunkers longer… sky-high fuel prices, not innate environmental rules, is why Europeans drive small, high-mileage vehicles... but raising gas taxes in the US would be deeply unpopular, so Washington gave us CAFE.
David Malpass on the markets – the markets have rebounded from March lows… Washington will claim victory… but they shouldn’t…unemployment will climb to well over 10%... industrial production has fallen 13.5%... Washington’s plan is to hire workers to take the census, sign union construction contracts in compliant states and tax the shrinking private sector to pay unemployment benefits… economic problems are fixable, but not under current policies.
Rich Kilgaard on energy – Obama supports Iranian nuclear power, but not ours… France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power… the US gets 20%... there were no deaths or effect on cancer rates from the Three Mile Island accident in 1979… but after Hollywood’s The China Syndrome , logic didn’t matter.

Barack Obama is Tommy Flanagan

Every time I hear Barack Obama I think of the Jon Lovitz routine on SNL.

Obama dodges central health care question

Obama hems and haws, and gets long winded to avoid the key issues. The health care system is messed up, but government involvement will just make things worse. National health care is a huge power grab which we can't afford and don't need. Any solution must include individual responsibility for good lifestyle choices.

Impressions of Washington DC

On our annual trek north to see family, the kids and I stopped overnight in Washington to visit the monuments. Here are some impressions.
1. Washington is teeming with activity, especially overcrowded highways and subways. You can almost hear the giant sucking sound as money from all around the country pours into DC.
2. Virginia is booming as the bedroom community for DC. One of the reddest states in the country is steadily turning blue as federal payroll and special interest money oozes southward into the Commonwealth. Thomas Jefferson is crying in his grave at how the statists have ruined his vision for this country.
3. The morning traffic jam northbound on I-95 into DC from Virginia was several miles long, many lanes wide and lasts for hours. DC must have a size 17EEE carbon footprint.
4. The further north you drive from Georgia, the more self-centered people drive. Around Washington, the odds are good that the car cruising in the passing lane and not passing anyone has an Obama-Biden ‘08 bumper sticker.
5. Toll taxes are rising fast. The best stretches of I-95 are in the South and all free. As soon as you enter Baltimore the tolls begin – Baltimore tunnel $2, Maryland $4, Delaware $4… and that’s all within 40 minutes. The tolls get even worse as you continue north (see http://www.i95exitguide.com/tolls/index.php). Not only are these tolls a regional rip-off, but the waste of gas and time waiting in line is sinful. If that’s how they want to play it, Georgia needs to put a $10 toll on I-95 north of Savannah and on I-75 north of Macon and give all Southerners a free speed-pass.
6. DC’s weather in June has been unseasonably cool. Al Gore may not have been truthful about the weather, but his climate campaign has been quite convenient for his fame and fortune.
Washington is full of hope and change - for the Democrats who are seizing power and lining their pockets just as fast as you can say yes-we-can.

Cap compensation? Start with Oprah

Forbes just reported that Oprah Winfrey made $275 million last year.

I admire people that can command big bucks; I understand supply and demand. But the Democrats in Washington want to cap compensation. They want to cherry pick their targets and stand in judgment of how much they’re worth.

If they decide to go down this slipperiest of slopes, they ought to begin at the top. Cap Oprah at $2 million. But they won’t go after entertainers or media moguls - they’re Democrats. They’ll go after the evil titans of industry who the media has painted as greedy and whose jobs the politicians could not do or even understand.

I can just see some bureaucrat deciding that Steven Spielberg is worth $150 million/year, but the CEO of some business isn’t worth $1.5 million. It’s all bound to blowup in their faces because the politicians think win-lose: if you get a bigger slice of the pie, my piece will be smaller. They slept through ECON 101 when the professor explained the win-win of creating wealth – making a new pie or an existing pie bigger.

I personally don’t think Angelina Jolie is worth $27 million/year just because she was born pretty. Madonna ($110 million) is washed up, as is David Letterman ($45 million). Bruce Springsteen ($70 million) has always had more nerve than talent.

But they are worth what they get. Let the market judge what someone is worth, not some pinhead with a grudge in Washington.

Letterman is an idiot

I couldn’t wait to get DVR so I could watch Letterman shows. Now I’m down to watching his hour long show in about five minutes.
I used to like his monologues, but then they got political, in a stupid, mean way. Fast forward, at four arrow speed. No show has more commercials. Fast forward. Many of his guests are lame. FFWD. The musical acts at the end of the show are sometimes good, but more often not. Stop and erase.
His Sarah Palin cracks prove he’s the typical negative, elitist, two-faced Hollywood lib, so I’ll probably deprogram the show. But first I’ll watch the commercials to see who I should stop supporting.
Letterman is like the Telegraph. Used to be good, but now bias, thin and deformed. Hardly worth a look.

To the Germans: I'm ashamed

I’ve been asked to speak in July before the German Society of CPAs in Munich about accounting practices in the U.S. I’m a little nervous because it’s a big crowd and my words might lose something in translation. And they want me to use a teleprompter, which I’ve never used before.

I plan to tell them how Americans used to enjoy freedom and trust before the statists brought us Sarbanes Oxley and the steamy pile of other regulations that waste our time, cost us a fortune and no one understands. So far I’ve got: “We didn’t want these regulations, they’re silly and unnecessary, and we’re ashamed that Obama is the President of the United States.”

I know this has nothing to do with why they asked me to speak; I just thought I’d use this platform to try to influence people who don't think on their own. The media will make me an accounting rock star. They’ll say: Rick is a talented debit/credit guy and he’s easy on the eyes, so he must be right!

Okay, I haven’t been asked to speak in Munich. Just thought it would feel good to put the shoe on the other foot.

Kayaking down the Ocmulgee

Daughter Morgan and I took a kayak tour in the salt marshes in St. Simons during spring break. We enjoyed the experience so much that we bought a couple inexpensive kayaks for home. We’ve been getting comfortable with paddling our mighty vessels on a nearby lake.
Last Saturday we put in at the new canoe launch at Amerson Water Works Park and took out at Spring Street. What a terrific adventure! Fun, easy and good for the soul.
Next time, we’ll probably put in further north to catch some white water.
For more information and references to guided tours, see Jessica Walden’s blog at Up the River. For the new tour company in town, visit Ocmulgee Expeditions

Get out on the river and see why people have lived in Macon for 12,000 years!

Obama train wreck

The old adage tells how all democracies self destruct. Bondage leads to faith, faith to courage, courage to liberty, …to abundance, to complacency, to apathy, to dependence and back to bondage. I’ll buy that, just like I believe that the sun will eventually run out of fuel.
The big question is how long the cycle will take. A great country like America should lead the world for several centuries. But at the rate the Obama Administration is moving us from apathy to dependence, we may see bondage in our lifetime.
Fans of Obama say that he inherited a mess and he’s just doing what Clinton and Bush started. That’s naive. To use a driving analogy, Bush was traveling toward bondage at 60 MPH. Obama is traveling at 210 MPH. Thank goodness we have Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to provide a little pushback and resistance against the Obama machine.