Ken's Comments

Recently, a question was asked on Yahoo Answers about whether the Republicans are ignoring the fact that there are significantly more African Americans registered as voters than ever before. Here is my answer: The mere fact that someone raises the question indicates that whatever the Republicans are doing, it's not effective. The fact is, the Republicans are not ignoring the fact that there are more black voters than before. However, as the question indicates, the efforts being made by the Republicans to address this are not working. Furthermore, the Republicans are somewhat hindered in those efforts by the vitriolic conservative talk show hosts. The result is that unless something dramatic happens we will probably see minorities like the Hispanics community and the African American community continuing to support President Obama in large numbers in the next election. Fact - the Republican Party has tried to address the issue of race with the voters. After the last election, th...

Rush Limbaugh got fooled by an internet scam but his handling of the matter afterwards concerns me. Rush was fooled into thinking that a phony document on the internet was President Obama's college thesis. What concerns me is how Rush handled the matter after learning the truth. For someone who was badly treated due to internet lies, Rush apparently did not do unto others as he wanted done unto him. Apparently Rush Limbaugh got hold of a document that was on the internet which supposedly was President Obama's college thesis. The President's College thesis was never released by the Obama campaign and seems to have disappeared. The paper and the mysterious circumstances around it were things many conservative talk show people spent a lot of time discussing. After receiving the document alleging to be the President's thesis, Rush Limbaugh read the document on the air and spent time analyzing it. Later Rush Limbaugh found out that the documents were fakes. Hey that h...

Conservative talk show hosts usually raise good points but occasionally they raise issues that just make me say "So What." This includes Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and others. The issues to which I refer are things that make them sound like whiners or like goofy people. They really need to get a grip on reality and not try to criticize everything President Obama does. Example #1 - Lou Dobbs raising the issue of whether President Obama is an American citizen. Lou said he has no doubt the President is but asked why doesn't the President just release his Birth Certificate and put all this to rest. This is an issue raised by some people who are just looney so why give it any credence. Example #2 - The President goes to Denmark to try to help Chicago win the Olympic games and some conservative commentators go bonkers. My answer - so what! Chicago is an American city - it is also the President's home town. Winning the Olympics would have been a big deal ...

I saw a question on Yahoo Answers about Insurance companies benefitting from being exempt from anti-trust laws. Until I saw that question and some of the subsequent discussion, I was not aware that this was an issue in the health care debate. Actually, the anti-trust exemption has little or no impact on health care, so I did some research and provided an answer. I am reprinting that below. I also debunked comments suggesting Republicans are against capitalism - presumably because Republicans are in favor of the anti-trust exemption. Here is a shortened version of my answer: A summary of my answer is 1) insurance companies are exempt from anti-trust for valid reasons; 2) the exemption is not relevant to health insurance because coverage is not always been written by insurance companies; 3) historical facts say Republicans were the "good guys" and the Democrats were the "bad guys." 1. History of the Exemption In 1869, the US Supreme Court ruled that insurance was...

First it was the federal take over of private industries, now it will be the federal takeover of our schools. President Bush started it - working with Congress to have Federal intervention into banks, financial institutions, AIG, and auto manufacturers. President Obama has taken those programs to a new level and wants to usurp state authority over health insurance. Now President Obama is targeting our schools. Has no one read the United States Constitution? Isn't there some point at which President Obama feels the Federal Government does not have authority over us? President Bush and Congress adopted laws and regulations, and provided funding, to begin a massive federal intervention into a variety of private industries - banks and financial institutions, automakers, and AIG - to name a few. Some banks were told they could not refuse to accept TARP funds. Other organizations were told they'd get no help, like Lehman, and they went bankrupt, leaving Goldman Sachs, who had ...

I've been good at criticizing what is wrong with the economy, let me take a moment and say what I would have done differently to try to prevent us from getting to where we are right now. The answer starts in the approach - I would have attacked the problem from the bottom up, not the top down. There are a number of steps that could have been taken back when all this started to isolate the economic harm and create a gradual downturn instead of what did happen, which resulted in the economy falling off a cliff. This would not have been without pain, but a lot of the pain would have been absorbed by the lender, borrowers, and investors who took agreed to the risk of pain in the hope of financial reward. However, I think the result would have been fewer foreclosures and less people out of work. Ironically, both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have talked about trying to reduce foreclosures, but neither has any significant accomplishments. That's because th...

If it was not so tragic, I'd have to laugh at the people who are talking about a "jobless recovery" like it is a good thing. I've only seen one mainstream commentator - a former Clinton Administration official - come close to calling out the Obama Administration on the current economy. Instead you've got papers like the New York Times running articles saying that because there were not as many new people unemployed in the last reporting it is a sign of an improving economy. Why can't we call it like it is - all of the money the Government has spent over the last two years, under both President Bush and President Obama is only making the rich richer and it is not helping the little guys. Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Goldman Sachs pay out big bonuses to employees. Warren Buffet makes a mint off of investments he made into companies that got government support. People who can afford to invest a lot of money in the stock market are doing very well again. Chrysler...