Ken's Comments

During 2024, we saw a great example of the different philosophies of our political parties. Kamala Harris proposed $25,000 loans to small businesses and assistance to black men wanting to get into the marijuana business.  While running for President, Kamala Harris proposed increasing taxes on business and "the rich."  After the election, Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested a way to reduce the deficit is for rich people to return the money given to them by the Government with the Trump tax cuts.  To address housing issues, Kamala Harris proposed building 3 million new homes.  The Mayor of Denver put an initiative on the ballot to raise taxes to help people with rent assistance.   Donald Trump on the other hand proposed reducing regulations, reducing the tax burden on businesses, and eliminating taxes on hard work with his no tax on tips and no tax on overtime proposals.  To address housing issues, Montana's legislature in the last session provided a prop...

Read the headline and, if you wish, read the article.  Then I'll tell you why the Government is so wrong on this one. South Dakota Wrongly Puts Thousands in Nursing Homes, Government Says South Dakota Wrongly Puts Thousands in Nursing Homes, Government Says By Matt Apuzzo The Justice Department said Monday that with few alternatives available, thousands of people were held unnecessa... Oh the horror!  People in South Dakota are being imprisoned in nursing homes rather than being allowed to live out their golden years in the comfort of their homes surrounded by loved ones.  Something clearly must be done about this. Now let's talk about what's wrong with this story.  We have bureaucrats in Washington D.C. applying a national standard of care for senior citizens to a situation in South Dakota.  Make sure the rube doctors are giving the best care possible.  That sounds appropriate right? Except that it isn't a...

So I've listed what the problems are - cost, quality, extending coverage - and addressed each. There are still some random items I'd like to talk about and I'll do that here. Can the health care system handle 47 million new customers? The following story says no: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090807/hl_hsn/expandinghealthcoveragemaynotimproveaccess The story says that our health care infrastructure - the number of doctors and hospitals - would be swamped if 47 million new customers entered the market. The experience in Massachusetts, where the state made health care universal confirms this to be true. You cannot just walk into an office and see a doctor in Massachusetts, you have to schedule a visit far in advance. Traditional means by which Government controls costs will make this worse - Okay, Massachusetts has a shortage of physicians and rising costs. So what does Massachusetts do? They talk about lowering how much they will pay doctors. So if you are a doctor...

I am very concerned that the President's policies are going to lead this country into more serious economic problems than we have today. This is not to say that all aspects of the Obama Administration's policies are wrong. However, the fundamental premise of these policies is wrong. I have not heard anyone in the Obama Administration admit the difficult truth that the economy is changing nor does it seem that the goals they are pursuing reflect that. If the economy does not recover along the lines they project, then the massive expenditures being made will come home to roost in the former of significant inflation. The Obama Administration has called for spending massive amounts of money over the next few years. These amounts will raise the national debt to staggering new levels. Some of the things they are spending on are good ideas -- green technology, improving the environment, more mass transit, supporting Amtrak. All of these are good ideas. However these are merely...

If you're waiting for a miraculous economic recovery don't hold your breath. I think we are seeing the economy contract after 15 years of false prosperity. Spending next year could cause the economic downturn to level out and perhaps even put us on the road to positive growth. But things are not going to get back to where they were for a long time. In some ways, that is probably a good thing, too. Since the adoption of the laws in 1994 causing the lending industry to lower its stanards for issuing mortgages, I think the economy has grown at a rate faster than it should have grown. This has not entirely been due to the mortgage situation. Recall that we had the "Dot Com" bubble in the late '90s. We also had major companies falsifying their financial records - remember Enron, MCI, Adelphia Cable to name a few - to create significantly higher stock prices. All of this translated into higher salaries, bonuses, and wealth for many people. After the dot com bubble burst...