Monday 10 February 2014

Long and Complex, but worth it. Another peek under the circus tent from Extreme Central Texas

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We are going to suggest that the OROG read this article, found at this linkage. This is an examination of the recent fall in the price of gold. It represents a school of thought that has yet to be effectively refuted. The analysis is expert. The author of the article has written a book which references the idea that there is a failure of the Laissez Faire Capitalist system. He points out that that system allowed the rise of banks that are too big to fail.

The very slight reservation that El Gringo Viejo has with his premise is that if the central government and the Federal Reserve somehow control the events that allowed some banks to become too big to fail, then the system was not a true Laissez Faire Capitalist or Free Enterprise system. It was a national socialist system. However, Dr. Craig Roberts is a cat lover and a brilliant analyst with whom this blog finds about a 96% concurrence and/or agreement.

The article is about a 6 to 8 minute read. There are some interesting graphics that will really make the reader scratch his chin stubble and nod.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/01/17/hows-whys-gold-price-manipulation/

Do read this. It is not like medicine that tastes bad or a trip to the dentist in the least.

El Gringo Viejo

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More News from "Extreme Central Texas" (our spies see everyting)

Update: The map above and the table below have been slightly revised so that both the GDP of US states and the GDP of foreign countries are in descending order in the table below.

The map above is an updated version of a similar map from 2007 here.

The map was created by matching economic output in US states in 2012 to foreign countries with comparable GDPs, using BEA data for GDP by state here and GDP by country from the United Nations, via Wikipedia here. For each US state (and the District of Columbia), I tried to find the country closest in economic size in 2012 (measured by GDP), and for each state there was a country with a pretty close match – those countries are displayed in the map above and in the table below. Obviously, in some cases the closest match was a country that produced slightly more, or slightly less economic output in 2012 than a given US state.

It’s pretty amazing how ridiculously large the US economy is, and the map above helps put America’s GDP of $16.2 trillion in 2012 (and more than $17 trillion in Q4 2013) into perspective by comparing the GDP of US states to other country’s entire national GDP. For example:

1. America’s largest state economy is California, which produced $2.003 trillion of economic output in 2012, just slightly below Italy’s GDP in the same year of $2.013 trillion. In 2012, California would have been tied with Italy as the 9th largest economy in the world. And California’s population is only 38 million compared to Italy’s population of 61 million, which means California produces the same economic output as Italy with 37% fewer people. That’s a testament to the superior, world-class productivity of the American worker.

2. America’s second largest state economy – Texas – produced $1.4 trillion of economic output in 2012, placing it just slightly behind the world’s 13th largest country by GDP – Australia – with $1.56 trillion of economic output.

3. Even with all of its oil wealth, Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2012 at $711 billion was less than GDP in Florida ($777 billion) and just slightly more than the GDP in Illinois ($695 billion).

4. New York’s GDP in 2012 of $1.205 trillion was slightly more than Mexico’s GDP of $1.18 trillion, even though Mexico’s population of 120.8 million people is 6.2 times larger than the number of people living in New York (19.6 million). Another example of the world-class productivity of the American workforce.

5. Washington state produces almost as much economic output ($375.7 billion) as Venezuela ($382 billion), even though Venezuela’s population (30 million) is more than four times larger than Washington’s (6.9 million).

6. Likewise, capitalist West Virginia produces about the same GDP as communist Cuba, even though Cuba’s population is more than six times larger than West Virginia’s.

MP: Overall, the US produced 22.3% of world GDP in 2012, with only 4.4% of the world’s population. Three of America’s states (California, Texas and New York) – as separate countries – would rank in the world’s top 15 largest economies. And one of those states – California – produced more than $2 trillion in economic output in 2012 – and the other two (Texas and New York) produced more than $1 trillion of GDP in 2012. The map and these statistics help remind us of the enormity of the economic powerhouse we live in. So let’s not lose sight of how ridiculously large and powerful the US economy is, and how much wealth and prosperity is being created all the time in the world’s largest economic engine.

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These figures are very interesting and largely accurate. There is data that indicates that both Texas and Mexico have crossed the two trillion dollar GNP level about 18 months ago. There are other analysts and bean counter people who disagree. Brazil and Argentina consistently have been over-rated in terms of GNP, and all of this may be because of a bias to the left by analysts. Many leftist economists, for instance, hate Mexico because Mexico, as the leftist say, keeps "going Freedman".

We are fascinated by these charts and interpretations. We keep trying to point out how, in per capita terms, Red China is a demographic basket case. Texas, Mexico, and Canada with fewer than 200 million people has a combined GNP equivalent to Red China with 1.3 billion people.

We like demographic and geographical information, especially as it relates to Texas, the United States, Mexico, and North America in general. Maps are also fun.

El Gringo Viejo

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Although we are miffed at the WSJ....they are family, and here are their good works.

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As the Obamatrons sally forth to explain that unemployment compensation payments are the one sure way to end a depression, and shovel ready projects are the one sure way to end the recession left to me by the Bush people, and that the only way to solve the employment and economic softness problem is to invest in Solyndra and Fisker. Of course, the only way to implement free health care for everyone is to charge everyone three to ten times more than they were paying before, and tolerate the fact that there will still be 30,000,000 of the poor unfortunates that we were told we were going to finally get involved the health care (they all already were, through Medicaid).

This article was forwarded by our informants who live in "extreme Central Texas" near Later, Texas. It is called Later because when the railway was built through, the administrators told the workers, "We'll come back and name this town Later".
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THE NOT-SO-AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

All credit for this article is attributed to:

By Joseph Rago

In September, two weeks before the Affordable Care Act was due to launch, President Obama declared that "there's no serious evidence that the law . . . is holding back economic growth." As for repealing ObamaCare, he added, "That's not an agenda for economic growth. You're not going to meet an economist who says that that's a number-one priority in terms of boosting growth and jobs in this country—at least not a serious economist."

Casey Mulligan Ken Fallin

In a way, Mr. Obama had a point: "Never met him," says economist Casey Mulligan. If the unfamiliarity is mutual, the confusion is all presidential. Mr. Mulligan studies how government choices influence the incentives and rewards for work—and many more people may recognize the University of Chicago professor as a serious economist after this week. That's because, more than anyone, Mr. Mulligan is responsible for the still-raging furor over the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that ObamaCare will, in fact, harm growth and jobs.

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Rarely are political tempers so raw over an 11-page appendix to a dense budget projection for the next decade. But then the CBO—Congress's official fiscal scorekeeper, widely revered by Democrats and Republicans alike as the gold standard of economic analysis—reported that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million Americans who were otherwise willing and able to work before ObamaCare will work less or not at all as a result of ObamaCare.

As the CBO admits, that's a "substantially larger" and "considerably higher" subtraction to the labor force than the mere 800,000 the budget office estimated in 2010. The overall level of labor will fall by 1.5% to 2% over the decade, the CBO figures.

Mr. Mulligan's empirical research puts the best estimate of the contraction at 3%. The CBO still has some of the economics wrong, he said in a phone interview Thursday, "but, boy, it's a lot better to be off by a factor of two than a factor of six."

The CBO's intellectual conversion is all the more notable for accepting Mr. Mulligan's premise, which is that what economists call "implicit marginal tax rates" in ObamaCare make work less financially valuable for lower-income Americans. Because the insurance subsidies are tied to income and phase out as cash wages rise, some people will have the incentive to remain poorer in order to continue capturing higher benefits. Another way of putting it is that taking away benefits has the same effect as a direct tax, so lower-income workers are discouraged from climbing the income ladder by working harder, logging extra hours, taking a promotion or investing in their future earnings through job training or education.

The CBO works in mysterious ways, but its commentary and a footnote suggest that two National Bureau of Economic Research papers Mr. Mulligan published last August were "roughly" the most important drivers of this revision to its model. In short, the CBO has pulled this economist's arguments and analysis from the fringes to center of the health-care debate.

For his part, Mr. Mulligan declines to take too much credit. "I'm not an expert in that town, Washington," he says, "but I showed them my work and I know they listened, carefully."

At a February 2013 hearing he pointed out several discrepancies between the CBO's marginal-tax-rate work and its health-care work, and, he says, "That couldn't persist forever. There would have to be a time where they would reconcile those two approaches somehow." More to the point, "I knew eventually it would be acknowledged that when you pay people for being low income you are going to have more low-income people."

Mr. Mulligan thinks the CBO deserves particular credit for learning and then revising the old 800,000 number, not least because so many liberals cited it to dispute the claims of ObamaCare's critics. The new finding might have prompted a debate about the marginal tax rates confronting the poor, but—well, it didn't.

Instead, liberals have turned to claiming that ObamaCare's missing workers will be a gift to society. Since employers aren't cutting jobs per se through layoffs or hourly take-backs, people are merely choosing rationally to supply less labor. Thanks to ObamaCare, we're told, Americans can finally quit the salt mines and blacking factories and retire early, or spend more time with the children, or become artists.

Mr. Mulligan reserves particular scorn for the economists making this "eliminated from the drudgery of labor market" argument, which he views as a form of trahison des clercs. "I don't know what their intentions are," he says, choosing his words carefully, "but it looks like they're trying to leverage the lack of economic education in their audience by making these sorts of points."

A job, Mr. Mulligan explains, "is a transaction between buyers and sellers. When a transaction doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. We know that it doesn't matter on which side of the market you put the disincentives, the results are the same. . . . In this case you're putting an implicit tax on work for households, and employers aren't willing to compensate the households enough so they'll still work." Jobs can be destroyed by sellers (workers) as much as buyers (businesses).

He adds: "I can understand something like cigarettes and people believe that there's too much smoking, so we put a tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that's a good thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We've been complaining for six years now that there's not enough work being done. . . . Even before the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a sudden we wake up and say we're glad that people are working less? We're pursuing our dreams?"

The larger betrayal, Mr. Mulligan argues, is that the same economists now praising the great shrinking workforce used to claim that ObamaCare would expand the labor market.

He points to a 2011 letter organized by Harvard's David Cutler and the University of Chicago's Harold Pollack, signed by dozens of left-leaning economists including Nobel laureates, stating "our strong conclusion" that ObamaCare will strengthen the economy and create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually. (Mr. Cutler has since qualified and walked back some of his claims.)

"Why didn't they say, no, we didn't mean the labor market's going to get bigger. We mean it's going to get smaller in a good way," Mr. Mulligan wonders. "I'm unhappy with that, to be honest, as an American, as an economist. Those kind of conclusions are tarnishing the field of economics, which is a great, maybe the greatest, field. They're sure not making it look good by doing stuff like that."

Mr. Mulligan's investigation into the Affordable Care Act builds on his earlier work studying the 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the stimulus.

The Keynesian economists who dominate Mr. Obama's Washington are preoccupied by demand, and their explanation for persistently high post-recession unemployment is weak demand for goods and thus demand for labor. Mr. Mulligan, by contrast, studies the supply of labor and attributes the state of the economy in large part to the expansion of the entitlement and welfare state, such as the surge in food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid and other safety-net programs. As these benefits were enriched and extended to more people by the stimulus, he argues in his 2012 book "The Redistribution Recession," they were responsible for about half the drop in work hours since 2007, and possibly more.

The nearby chart tracks marginal tax rates over time for nonelderly household heads and spouses with median earnings. This index is a population-weighted average over various ages, jobs, employment decisions like full-time versus part-time. Basically, the chart shows the extra taxes paid and government benefits foregone as a result of earning an extra dollar of income.

The stimulus caused a spike in marginal rates, but at least it was temporary. ObamaCare will bring them permanently into the 47% range, or seven percentage points higher than in early 2007. Mr. Mulligan says the main response to his calculations is that people "didn't realize the cumulative effect of these things together as a package to discourage work."

Mr. Mulligan is uncomfortable speculating about whether the benefits of this shift outweigh the costs. Perhaps the public was willing to trade market efficiency for more income security after the 2008 crisis. "As an economist I can't argue with that," he says. "The thing that I argue with is the denial that there is a trade-off. I argue with the denial that if you pay unemployed people you're going to get more unemployed people. There are consequences of that. That doesn't mean the consequences aren't worth paying. But you can't deny the consequences for the labor market."

One major risk is slower economic growth over time as people leave the workforce and contribute less to national prosperity. Another is that social programs with high marginal rates end up perpetuating the problems they're supposed to be alleviating.

So amid the current wave of liberal ObamaCare denial about these realities, how did Mr. Mulligan end up conducting such "unconventional" research?

"Unconventional?" he asks with more than a little disbelief. "It's not unconventional at all. The critique I get is that it's not complicated enough."

Well, then how come the CBO's adoption of his insights is causing such a ruckus?

"I would phrase the question a little differently," Mr. Mulligan responds, "which is: Why didn't conventional economic analysis make its way to Washington? Why was I the only delivery boy? Why wasn't there a laundry list?" The charitable explanation, he says, is that there was "a general lack of awareness" and economists simply didn't realize everything that government was doing to undermine incentives for work. "You have to dig into it and see it," he explains. "The Affordable Care Act's not going to come and shake you out of your bed and say, 'Look what's in me.' "

Judging by their reaction to the CBO report, the less charitable explanation is that liberals would have preferred that the public never found out.

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It is open and shut. The purpose for the establishment of the Obama Socialised Medical Initiative (OSMI) was, is, and forever shall be the absolute abolition of the lowest range of the wealthy class, or people with between 100,000 and 10,000,000 USD of net worth. The mega-wealthy do not want to share their yacht slips with the hoi polloi who are only running 59 feet or less. They certainly do not want to be in the same hospital with people who work with their hands, or who have not graduated from the A-list of private, Ivy League, AlGore-approved universities.

If there is any deviation from the objective to totally rescind and repeal the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative, the American Republic will be lost. It is the most hideous form of Trojan Horse that can possibly exist.

Thank you all for your kind attention. More later.

El Gringo Viejo

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We shall beat this drum until all in the jungle hear.

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The events surrounding the "Fast and Furious" (FaF), gun-walking programme operated by Barak Hussein Obama and Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States of America serve to qualify as grounds for the impeachment, conviction, and imprisonment of both of these marxist cads. It is axiomatic that FaF was designed and placed into operation to establish a deadly scenario.

The deadly scenario was used earlier, in 1993 when the Clinton anti-gun cabal, directed by Janet Reno and Hillary Rodham Clinton asked for a demonstration of force against unnecessary private gun ownership in the United States. The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms department complied with marking out a lackey, Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh) who had a religious compound with too many guns inside. They were known to buy and sell guns in parking lots and gun shows. They were lower class, intellectually slow, little people who were also religious kooks. They were the perfect targets to use to make a strong point about the need to disarm Americans of their previously legally held weapons.

A botched raid resulted in a stand-off. Agents of the government, who attacked the compound with guns blazing, had been killed in what became essentially close combat. Later, the compound was stormed with flammable gas delivered by a battering tank into the flimsy construction. A helicopter with a mounted machine gun, loaned by General Wesley Clark to the FBI and ATF fired several hundred rounds into the compound during the final assault. There were 42 children inside, along with various women. They along with Vernon Howell and several adult males were killed. Many of the adults were foreigners and converts to Howell's particular un-recognised brand of Seventh Day Adventism.

Bill Clinton said it was Janet Reno's doing. Nobody ever asked the Brady Gun Control People, and the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton was never, never, never, mentioned in relation to the assault, save for once during first couple of days when everybody knew that something horrid had occurred. It turned out that the compound had no automatic weaponry. It also turned out that the compound had fewer weapons per adult than the normal Texas household.

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We now fast forward to the first term of Barack Hussein Obama. The Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agency, at the behest of Obama operatives and under the command, and with the full knowledge of, Eric Holder design a new programme to forward the effort of disarming the private American population, leaving firearms only in the hands of police who have no restraints and criminals who also have no restraints.

The plan was to suggest off the record to legally established gun dealers that they sell rifles that can be readily converted to automatic fire capability. The ATF and E desired that these "gun stores" sell these firearms to known drug trafficking cartel members who operated on both sides of the Arizona - Sonora international border.

To make a very long story as short as possible, the guns were sold to the traffickers. The guns and ammunition were not chipped or made "pre-forensic" in any way. NOR WERE THE MEXICAN MILITARY CONTACTS THAT HAD SERVED WELL DURING THE BUSH YEARS ADVISED. That is key. The entire project was to be "off-screen". No Mexican Army, no Mexican Naval Infantry, nor any of their moles and contacts. Those of us who live in Mexico know that there is only one reason to avoid the two Mexican military organisations named above. THE FULL AND ONLY INTENT OF THIS PROGRAMME WAS FOR THE PURPOSE OF HAVING CIVILIAN AND CONSTABULARY AND FEDERAL AGENT PERSONNEL WOUNDED OR KILLED BY GUNS THAT HAD BEEN SOLD BY AN AMERICAN GUN STORE SO AS TO BEGIN AN HYSTERICAL, EMPHATIC PUSH, ONCE AND FOR ALL, TO CLOSE DOWN THE SALE OF FIREARMS AND AMMUNITION TO PRIVATE AMERICAN CITIZENS. THE NEXT MEASURE WAS TO BE THE DOOR TO DOOR CONFISCATION OF FIREARMS AND AMMUNITION.

"No longer will American children have to face the almost certain probability that that he or she would be killed, sooner or later, by a white racist anti-government radical with a SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE," would have been the cheering announcement by the president. Stroke of the pen, law of the land. "I did it. I made America safe for children and minorities and women! No more guns in the hands of those who didn't need them anyway!" would be Barack Hussein Obama's shouted spiking of the ball for months.

But it did not work out that way. At this point, and completely disregarded by the Obsolete Press, around 1,000 men, women, and children caught in crossfires, semi-honest cops and honest cops, Mexican soldiers, and Mexican naval infantry have been killed or wounded with these weapons that were walked into Mexico under the supposed premise of tracking their path into the bowels of the cartels. What puts the lie to that is that the guns were not chipped. They were never intended to be used in any tracking....only the final tracing back to gun-stores in Phoenix or Tucson or elsewhere. The ATF and E went ahead and began to shut down some stores anyway, even if they had no record of such dealings. They thought they could get away with their deception, and they still might, at least to the degree of escaping punishment.

The hoped-for killing of a badge-wearing American or American civilians did finally occur. It was a Border Patrolman, shot down in all but cold blood. He was killed by a narco-trafficker who was known on a personal basis by at least one female ATF and E investigator, who had released him one time at the place and time of that particular arrest....just released from the scene of an on-going crime on American soil, some months before the killing of the Border Patrolman. To-day marks the day of that murderer's sentencing in Federal Court. As in all cases involving Obama and the degenerate, anti-America litter that he has dragged into the White House's service, there is no effort to come clean or inform in any thorough way about the nature and characteristics of the FaF programme.

For a president who is so, so very concerned about amnesty, immigration rights, and minorities, and "Hispanics" it is patently obvious that Obama, Holder, and the ATF and E do not give a bucket of warm camel slobber about anything beyond fooling the people and disarming the Jethroes and Bubbas who look like the Duck Dynasty people. They, the latter day Bolsheviks, control the Attorney General's office.

Finally, I absolutely think that Obama can be charged in this matter for depraved indifference resulting in multiple killings of innocent people. He knew about the programme, he was informed repeatedly by his homologue, the President of Mexico and his ambassador in Washington D.C. and by his own staff. Then, during the campaing in 2012, he was being interviewed by Jorge Ramos and a female anchor as part of a formal campaign appearance on Univision. He was asked by Ramos about the FaF, and Obama responded with the biggest lie of his entire presidency. Obama declared that he had been unaware of the programme when he assumed the presidency, but that when he found out about it, he immediately cancelled it. He made it plain that it had been a programme initiated under the previous president.

The lie was so profound El Gringo Viejo was certain that Ramos could not pass up the chance to essentially commit political regicide. Everybody who had studied the issue knew that the Bush Administration's Wide Receiver Programme had been cancelled long before Obama had darkened the doors of the White House. It had been cancelled because the Mexican Army, who had worked very closely with the Bush Administration's version of the AT and F gun walking effort learned that the chipping process had been discovered. The Army and the AT and F decided mutually and instantly to throw the ball into the stands, and huddle up for another play. In the meantime informants were moved out for their own protection, and the issue ceased to have a life. All of this 19 months before Obama arrived into the Rose Garden.

Therefore, complicity in an illegal act that resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, and the further aggravating factor that by essentially testifying, on a national television network, that he had closed the programme that had been established by his predecessor....he was committing a form of non-judicial perjury... all lies....damned lies...fully rising to the level of a misdemeanour of the highest order, and in the case of the deaths caused by his depraved indifference....the highest of crimes. And in this cause we include not only the totally morally corrupt Eric Holder, but also the Secretary of State at that time, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has done so much for women and girls, minus the ones who were gunned down by Obama's plan to disarm Americans. Gunned down, legs blown off with a 50 calibre Barret rifle And also minus the millions who have been enslaved by her progressive cabal's pro-active comprehensive welfare slavery.

It is time that this issue be moved forward, along with the Benghazi disgrace. The Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI) is something that speaks for itself in terms of purposeful mendacity and purposeful mis-administration.

We shall stand by and see if the Lion roars to-night.

El Gringo Viejo

Sunday 9 February 2014

And this really gets my goat....!

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Maureen Dowd is a smart girl, but never does quite arrive at a conclusion supported by critical thought processes. In her rantish column to-day, she points out how Paddy Chayefsky would be very distressed if he were alive to-day because of many shortcomings in the Greater Scheme. To wit:

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd

SundayReview|Op-Ed Columnist

Still Mad as Hell

FEB. 8, 2014

Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — I OFTEN wonder what Paddy would think.

I wish I could have a pastrami on wry with the late writer and satirist at the Carnegie Deli and get an exhilarating blast of truth about “the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today.”

What would Paddy Chayefsky make of Kim Kardashian?

What would he think of Diane Sawyer showing cat videos on the ABC evening news?

What would he say about Brian Williams broadcasting on the Huntley-Brinkley network a video of a pig saving a baby goat while admitting he had no idea if it was phony? (It was.)

What would Paddy rant about the viral, often venomous world of the Internet, Twitter and cable news, where fake rage is all the rage all the time, bleeding over into a Congress that chooses antagonism over accomplishment, no over yes?

What would he think of ominous corporate “synergy” run amok, where “news” seamlessly blends into promotion, where it’s frighteningly easy for corporate commercial interests to dictate editorial content?

What would Paddy say about the Murdochization of the news, where a network slants its perspective because it sells and sells big?

What would he make of former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine returning in a new position as Time Inc.’s chief content officer, breaking the firewall between editorial and business as he works “with business and edit teams to drive the development of new content experiences and products throughout our portfolio that will fuel future revenue growth,” as C.E.O. Joe Ripp put it?

What would Paddy think of American corporations skipping out on taxes by earning nearly half of their profits in tax-haven countries?

What would he think of the unholy alliance between Internet giants like Google and Facebook and the U.S. national security apparatus?

Chayefsky’s dazzling satire “Network,” with its unforgettable mad prophet of the airwaves, Howard Beale, blossomed from the writer’s curdled feelings about TV. What wouldn’t the network suits do for ratings, he would ask lunch companions like Mel Brooks and Bob Fosse at the Carnegie Deli.

But now America runs on clicks. Chayefsky’s nightmare has been multiplied many times over, with the total media-ization and monetization of everything, the supremacy of ratings and market share, the commercialization of all editorial decisions.

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All of these 'what woulds?' are fairly innocuous and somewhat depressing, but the one that pins El Gringo Viejo to the mat for the count of two-and-a-half is the question asked to the Cosmos, "What would Paddy think of American corporations skipping out on taxes by earning nearly half their profits in tax haven countries?"

    We see the question as a fine representation of a smart woman being stupid, of failing to question immediately to the profundity of the questions and the range of possible answers. Fools invent many answers based on all kinds of formulas that invoke fairness, balance, retribution, and considerations.
    We simply have to consider, for instance, that lady welder in fabrication-line 8 with the Siamese cat who needed an operation.   The lady had to fork over half of her savings for the cat's medical needs.   If the corporation for whom she worked had only paid its fair share of taxes instead of hiding the money in northern East South Lower Angina then the lady welder would have had an easier time of it with the cat's life-saving operation. Right?
     No, the government would have spent the money on a Solyndra project to buy votes for the next round of elections.

Maureen, just think. What if the Corporation was not required to pay any income taxes? What business is it of the central government's what the corporation makes or loses in terms of its profits? Are you afraid that the Board of Directors would do like government workers and have a seminar in Hawai'i and drink billions and billions of dollars worth of 400 year old Scotch and 500 years old French brandy and fly around in private jets playing Snoopy and the Red Baron Dogfight games at 100,000 gallons of fuel per minute, while having manicures and massages from servants being paid less than some dreamed-up minimum wage?

Do you think that they are not qualified to spend money to the benefit of the corporation, thus to the benefit of the sharefholder and the employees of the corporation better than can the government? The government, after all Maureen, collects money it does not earn and spends it in the ever-on-going task of buying votes (or favour) with other peoples' money. The money, Maureen, would obviously be best left with management, shareholders, and employees of the corporation, not being taxed by slugs, dregs, crooks, thugs, and demagogues.

In the Republic of Texas, once re-established, there will be no income tax. Not personal, not corporate, not DBA, not partnership, nothing. No Income Tax.

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The Episcopal Progress into the Fog, the Abyss, and the Canyon of Secular Uselessness from which there is no return:

This morning, at Mass in our little Episcopal Church on the border, an unusually large number of communicants listens to the dull, fairly lifeless, but "relevant" words of the "new book" that has now totally displaced the "old book" and its out-of-date language. By new book, it is meant the new Book of Common Prayer that replaced the old book that traced its lineage from the 1556 period when the Church of England decided once and for all to adapt the liturgy to...."a tongue understanded by all"....but would keep the Church of England an..." Holy, Catholick, and Apostolick Church" with a book of common prayer of use to both Prince and pauper, high born and common.

The Elites of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America decided during the late 1960s that several things had to be done to update the Episcopal Church. Ordination of women to the priesthood....or priestesshood, as the case presents, was one such necessary update. Then, acceptance of homosexuality as a higher form of humanity and as and end unto itself was to be tackled. And certainly, unshackling the hopelessly outdated Church from its 'old timey' prayer book with its ancient, archaic, and embarrassingly out of date English language would have to be a major objective of the secular humanists who were gradually, but ever more quickly, taking control of the Episcopal Church, its properties, assets, and mind-set. The overall objective, of course, was to establish the Episcopal Church not as a rock against the assaults of the Devil, but as a battering ram to destroy traditional culture and to disconnect the religious language of America from the children and young people.

The "Old" Book of Common Prayer, along with the King James Bible (unabridged) had the literary style that said the words that needed to be said at certain critical times in the passage of a life. Influenced greatly by the Latin and the liturgy of the Roman Church and with substantial inclusions of Judaic influences, and with considerable inclusion and deference to the Christian Calendar of the fixed and moveable fasts and feasts, each communicant of the Church of England, of the Episcopal Church, and the entire Anglican Communion knew and trusted the "Old" Book of Common Prayer would provide eloquent guidance through the murky mists of sadness and mirth of joy.

Now we have the "new" book of common prayer. It has no majestic eloquence. Sometimes its message is skewered. At times changes were made simply to make changes. And it reads like those things you have to read when you are putting a new application into your computer, and you have to check that you have read and understand the ''terms and conditions''.

But we had to up-date in order to keep the young people in and the young marrieds and the newcomers, etc. Of course, such remonstrance was poppycock. The changes were made to drive out the geezers, and to kill the concept of..."May the circle, remain unbroken". But there is one last little bit of the ancient language....not much, mind you....but enough to cause a little candle in a forgotten room to continue to try to cast its light of inspiration and eloquence. The Lord's Prayer.

And what brings all this on? In the prelude to the administration of the Eucharist by the officiate, the priest (or priestess, as the case may be) says "....and as our Saviour Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our Trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen

The funny and sad part? A man had his 5 year old daughter and 7'ish son in the pew to our front and right. As the congregation prayed aloud and confidently, two voices rose to prominence, clearly audible, enunciating clearly, and boldly stating their petition to the Great Yahweh even over the combined voices of scores of adults. They clearly said what they had to say and they knew what they were saying. In the ancient English word and construct. They relished the moment. The other communicants were amused and proud of them and their completely unabashed rendering of the fundamental Catholic approach to addressing the Cosmic Force.

And they told us we had to "update" the Book of Common Prayer in order to make it relevant to us, instead of continuing to teach what we had to do to be relevant to the instructions in the "old" Book of Common Prayer. Out of the mouths of babes.

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And finally, if the Republicans can only understand that the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI) is the dead chicken hung on the dog's neck. Wherever the dog goes, he will have to smell the stinking dead chicken that is rotting underneath his nose. The Republicans need to stop and take a deep breath and realise that not only is it wise to defer action due to the fact that there is no reasonable assurance that the president will abide by any legislation even if he signs it....but it is also an argument understood by the reasonable voter. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement to-day, for instance, that the central government is going to proceed as though all homosexual marriages are valid in terms of their treatment and consideration by the central government is a direct contradiction to present established law. The Obamatrons love to bring up 'established law' when they talk about the Bill that had to be passed in order to find out what was in it. But when they don't want to deal with established law....'stroke of a pen, law of the land'. Welcome to Venezuela. Tomorrow, the embargo of all 401K and IRA accounts, because, after all, it's just money sitting around doing nothing. Could such a thing be in the offing?

Thanks for your time, as usual.

El Gringo Viejo

Lest we forget....Wars and Battles we have won, and that Democrats have squandered...echoes from El Zorro

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The brief film depicts a lot of realities. My opinions are very strong about the issue. But, to-day is not the day to re-fight that war. It is a good time to remember. As Lent approaches, instead of giving up something, El Gringo Viejo would like for all OROGs to take up something instead. Not smoking again, or drinking 10 beers instead of 6 beers, but something that takes absolutely no effort.

    Just think about Ton Set Nuht Air Base outside of Saigon, or over on the Coast at Da Nang....at night...and hearing the "thunk" of a mortar being fired, and taking the standard precautions, and waiting for the results. Think about those things that were encountered by fellows who won a war that Sen. Frank Church (D - Idaho), in co-ordination with the North Vietnamese Government, helped squander away.

     Just consider for a few seconds through the entirety of the coming Lenten season, those events from 1959 through 1973 when so many American boys did what they could, and received the maligning and defamation of the likes of people such as Walter Cronkite and Jane Fonda.    Like Harry Reid said one time on the floor of the United States Senate, not so long ago, "This war is lost," when in fact Iraq was a war won twice and lost once.   The person who lost it once was Barack Hussein Obama and his posse of anti-American, Jew-hating ghouls in high places in his government.

    Will the Saints bother to protect us?

El Gringo Viejo

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Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

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What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.