Ken's Comments

I think Amazon going to NY is a good thing for a couple of reasons.  It should be good for NY and it should be good for America if elected officials recognize just what happened here.  Ironically, Jeff Bezos may end up the loser here. Amazon going to NY city is good for the city because it creates jobs.  Before there are the jobs with Amazon, there will be construction jobs building the Amazon location.  Then you can bet there will be other growth around that area creating more construction work.  There will be jobs for people to clean and maintain Amazon's building and any new surrounding buildings.  There will need to be jobs for people filling the vending machines in the Amazon building.  When the Amazon employees get tired of eating out of the machines, they will need restaurants and delis and pizza places.  The jobs story doesn't stop there.  Amazon ships stuff - a lot of stuff.  That means trucks and cars and planes and train...

It really grits my buns when people are intellectually dishonest when arguing an issue.  Take for example the Opinion piece in the NY Times titled "Trump Takes Away Fundamental Health Care for Women" written by the Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood, Raegan McDonald-Mosley.  Ms. McDonald-Mosley* starts her article with an insult, saying the "Trump Administration revealed its disdain for women," with the Administration's decision to modify the rules adopted to implement the Affordable Care Act's provision to cover birth control.  Really?  So that is the only possible reason for what the Trump Administration did?  The fact that the original rule was overturned by the Supreme Court and further Court cases are pending has nothing to do with it? Next we move to the real whopper - Ms. McDonald-Mosley claims "Birth control is not controversial."  Really?  Are you kidding me?  Contraceptives are highly controversial in many respects.  M...

When health care reform started, a key goal was to lower the cost of coverage. Here is the Democrats idea of how to lower health care coverage costs. First the "facts" (the text below is taken from the NY Times): "Before taking account of federal subsidies to help people buy insurance on their own, the [Congressional Budget Office or C.B.O.] said the [Senate health care reform] bill would tend to drive up premiums. But as a result of the subsidies, it said, most people in the individual insurance market would see their costs decline, compared with the costs expected under current law. The subsidies, a main feature of the bill, would cost the government nearly $450 billion in the next 10 years and would cover nearly two-thirds of premiums for people who receive them. "For most people who get health insurance through employers — five-sixths of the total market — the budget office concluded that there would be little change in their premiums relative to the amounts pr...

A very interesting story from the NY Times about the crisis looming ahead thanks to the Bush / Obama economic recovery plan. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?th&emc=th Essentially, the Bush / Obama economic recovery plan is a lot like taking out an adjustable rate mortgage with really low teaser interest rates. When interest rates go up, the Federal government is going to be slammed. The NY Times - not what I'd call a conservative news outlet - article has a quote estimating that interest payments on the money we've borrowed will be as much as $700 billion per year in the future. That is as much as we spent this year on the economic stimulus bill and we will be paying that each year. Now, just to review, what is Bush / Obama economic recovery plan? It involves spending lots and lots of money that the Government does not have including: Economic stimulus - $400 billion under President Bush if I recall correctly, repeated by President Obama at a higher ...

The common result of a government spending more money than it earns is devaluation of its currency. The US government's deficit increased during the Bush Administration. The Democrats and the Obama Admiminstration lifted that deficit to an enormous new level. A common effect of currency devaluation is inflation. In a bad economy, that is going to be a real problem - just ask people who lived through the Jimmy Carter Administration. First of all, let's spread this blame in a non-partisan fashion. Republicans during the Bush Adminstration years controlled Congress and the White House and they showed no fiscal discipline. The Bush Administration capped this by spending a ton of money in 2008 to try to prevent or curtail the recession - first having a stimulus tax cut at the beginning of the year and then approving the TARP bailout funds - easily a trillion dollars spent last year to prevent the recession. Now, we have the Obama Administration spending another trillion dollars for ...