A couple of friends have begun to complain that this whole TSA thing is not a big deal and ask why people are complaining. I remember a time when getting to first base was a big deal. Now the TSA can take first base from me, but if I were to this to a woman she could file for assault. I also think it is pretty easy for them to say since they don't fly weekly. I, on the other hand, do fly weekly and this change sucks. This isn't becasue of some sort of fear of displaying my junk, because I would gladly show everyone my stuff if there weren't laws prohibiting it.  The other side of this is that I don't believe they have a right to take it. BTW, If you want to do a Brett Favre style picture trade you go first.

Besides, that machine is crap. I have been held up because that stupid machine got hung up on a label I have sewn into my pants pocket.

"Sir give me the paper in your pocket"
"I don't have any paper in my pocket"
"Sir come with me."

What I don't get is why do they need to take more freedoms now? There have only been a few attempts since 9/11, and there are new strategies to handle them, so what does this achieve? Secondly, why not dogs? They work more reliably at detecting explosives and are less invasive. Couple them with existing technologies and you get the added bonus of stopping drug trafficing on commercial flights. Dogs can detect the traces of explosives contained internally as well, which would be my next guess at an attack. Then what MRI to fly?

This is another power grab, and you lose freedoms and gain very little if anything. Luckily I enjoy havin my junk touched by overweight underqualified government employees. At least I could get lunch for it. The best advice I have heard all week is to "Fly Naked". Too bad we don't have the freedom to do that.

So there is a protest at work today and I can't help think to myself, don't they have anything better to do? I guess not.

If you haven't ever been protested by environmentalists, I recommend it. There is nothing quite so liberating as walking past a crowd who detests you for going to work. Most of the bigger companies will send out notifications on how to handle the protestors, and which entrances to use. Here in Houston we have a tunnel system so only those people who didn’t check their email don’t know how to come to work. The smart protestors wrap it up before lunch otherwise, employees tend to go outside and watch them while they eat. This can be demoralizing for those who have been out in the sun for several hours yelling and working up an appetite. Sometimes they even join in with signs like, “I am here for the chicks.”

One of the first times I was protested, I decided to go mingle and ask what they are so mad about. I was talking to a guy in the back, and he fed me some line about oil companies and the environment. I asked why is he so mad that he had to come down and yell chants. He told me that he wasn’t mad and that he was paid to be here. Hello, come again? Yeah, he does a few protests a month for drinking money. Basically the true crazies call him and others as filler. They give him slogans to use on the signs, and if they are really well financially backed they get t-shirts.

I started to see these demonstrations a little differently that day. For one, you start to wonder how they got to the protest. There aren’t any bikes lying around. So they all drove to downtown Houston, in rush hour, expending fuel to protest the oil companies. Maybe they all sent emails on their MacBook to coordinate a ride in one Prius (both of which are made of plastic derived from petroleum), but I have asked this point and alas they don’t. Evidently they don’t validate parking either.

Another thing, you notice is how really small they are. There are rarely more than 50 people, but in the news it always looks like so many more. Today, there are more cops than protestors. Cops from the city to keep order and sheriffs rented by the company to guard entrances are all over the place. You would think with a horrible disaster in the gulf they might be able to garner a larger crowd. You would be wrong, most likely because if you really gave a crap (and had free time) you would be 3 hours to our East in Louisiana volunteering right now. That is where I wish I was, doing something rather than bitching about it.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20091118union_blocks_teacher_bonuses/srvc=home&position=0

I have a special place in my heart for my teachers. They work in a tough job with very little respect and even less pay.  My mother is one of the best teachers I have ever known, in fact she is one of the best teachers Arizona has ever known. With all this in mind, I have started to wonder recently if they are truly martyrs or actually sadomasochists.

I think unions have outlived their usefulness, and the teacher's union personifies this. Why would you choose an organization to represent you who doesn't want you to get bonuses? The complaint I always hear is that teachers don't get paid enough. Well you know what, here was your chance. These teachers were offered $100 for every student that passes the AP exam. It also offers the students themselves $100 which will motivate them to do well also. $100 per student. Even the worst AP teacher will get 2 or 3 students to pass. At Ft. Bend ISD, where I live, teachers make 41K and they work 187 days a year which is roughly $219 a day. If you were to get 10 students to pass you would make 5 days worth of pay.

The other day, I had made the joke that President Obama had promised to roll back the President Bush's years but unfortunately he had started with the Dow Jones. In case you were asleep last week, the Dow fell to its lowest point since 1997. A friend of mine commented, "Obama doesn't have any control over the stock market, ". When questioned further he told me that the stock market was like "gambling".

My friend is an educated gentleman who has read books on how to invest and still doesn't get the fundamental links between economic policies and the stock market. If an educated person doesn't get it, I must assume there are many more people who don't get it either. While the intricacies of the market are too much for a single blog entry, I am going to speak to it in a more general sense. Hopefully you and maybe even the President will have a better understanding of his affect on the market and thus the economy.

Literally, President Obama has very little control over the direct value of stock. Although, he does have the ability to control public policies that affect the environment in which a company does business. So while you could say he didn't break the china, he did let the bear into the china shop.

The stock market is a barometer of investors’ opinion about what the economy is going to do. Let's say that you are going to do things that don't favor growth, the market will rise slowly. If you in turn say you are going to do things that hurt growth that will make the market decline. This happens because companies will not make money so there will not be profits paid to shareholders and other benefits of growth.

Before he was in office, President-elect Obama had said that he was going to raise the capital gains tax even though it would decrease the amount of tax revenue generated. This affects the market because those people who have invested in stock pay capital gains when they sell that stock. If is beneficial for someone who was thinking of selling to sell before those tax hikes go into effect, so investors begin selling when they think he is going to get into office before he does. Selling of stock makes the market go down.

Another example is the continuing nationalization of companies. A company's sole objective is to make money. The government is terrible at making money, because the motivations are not there. Government organizations make political decisions instead financial ones, like Freddie and Fannie and Andrew Cuomo's decision to give away high risk home loans. So as the government gets its hands into more and more businesses, and they impose more mandates, those companies become worth less and less to investors. As long as the government owns part of AIG, the likelihood they are going to pay dividends is very slim. If we look at an example to the contrary, Ben Bernanke announced on Tuesday (2/24) that there would not be a further nationalization of banks. That day stocks began to rise. That night President Obama reiterated many of the same threats and the market began to tumble again the next day.

He is also increasing government spending by more than threefold and that is only in extra spending. He hasn't even declared the budget yet. I saw a poll the other day that said 53% of Americans believe the Stimulus package will fail or do nothing. The only slice of the population that believes that it will work is government workers, by a margin of 1%. Each dollar spent by the government is taken from someone else. These are no growth jobs, and therefore do nothing for the economy at large. The government hiring someone to build a road does nothing to help grow our GDP. A company hiring someone to build a car does.

Hopefully you have learned something. If you still disagree you will at least understand why everyone else is selling their stock. I have yet to see an economist debate these issues, but if you look hard enough I am sure you can find one, probably in the cabinet. My observation is that it seems like he is doing it on purpose. If he is as smart as people say he is, then surely he understands what he is doing. So why does he keep doing it? Well the answer to that is beyond this post and range from "he is sinister"(Marx's plan to fleece the bourgeoisie) to "he is an elitist"(Eliminate the middle class from investing) and everything in between. I am not going to debate any of those without a beer in my hand.