License Plate Readers

Pretty cool device, but apparently there are some serious privacy concerns regarding the saving of information. In Maryland in particular they are showing up all over the place, and causing a debate in the process over whether the information should be stored, and if so for how long.

Personally I think the devices have a very specific use, so I have no issues with them. However, storing the information is another matter entirely. For the use they were designed for, law enforcement, there is absolutely no reason to store the information except in the case of tracking a vehicle that has been listed as stolen, or tagged as possibly involved in a crime. Store it long enough to find the vehicle, pull them over, arrest the suspect. Possibly keep it around long enough for the court case; though I can't see any use for doing so myself since the purpose is to find the individual responsible and at that point you no longer need the information in your system, they already have the number and vehicle on file and proof it was involved in a crime.

I'll say it again: There is absolutely no reason to store and track the information for the millions of cars that get scanned if the vehicle is not involved in a crime. Storing it is just another excuse for the government to track the movements of citizens, an act it has no reason to be involved in in the first place.

Unemployment Idea

So this idea came to me a few days ago, and it strikes me as odd that this hasn't been tried.

It's very simple, and I can't help but thinking that it will be very cheap AND increase employment in Temp Agencies, even ignoring the companies that contract with them. Here is the idea...

Every time someone applies for unemployment the unemployment office for that state takes down all of the person's work experience and refers that person's name and job experience straight to a list of approved Temp Agencies. By approved agencies I mean they do not have a significant number of negative charges such as harrassment, embezzlement etc. against them (yes I actually know of an agency with some of those problems).

The Temp Agencies then have an increased number of names going to them to fill with their contracted companies, and will most likely also need to hire more people themselves to deal with the massive increase in referrals. Since I know of quite a few companies that use temp personnel as a way of selecting qualified people for full-time positions this then helps unemployed people get a foot in the door.

Of course, if the person turns down a Temp job they are qualified for, and was within a reasonable travel distance, they would then no long qualify for unemployment. If the Temp job pays less than what they would be receiving in unemployment (for whatever reason) the state government could then make up the rest of the tab until that person finds a permanent position at the company (and/or until they would no longer qualify for unemployment due to time), or is referred to a higher paying Temp position.

Would have to come up with some way of tracking those who are abusers of the system currently, but I think the Temp Agencies would be a lot better at that than the government. I'm pretty sure they already keep track of that kind of information regarding reasons people quit or are fired anyway.

Curious what other people think, and how well you think it might work.

America, Going Forward

You would think that people would be smart enough to notice which countries in the world are actually recovering. Canada and Switzerland. What's their corporate tax rate again? Oh yea, 16%. Meanwhile our political "leaders" here keep wanting to raise ours to over 40%. Even China's corporate tax is only 25%.

We're not trying to survive 8 years of Obama, we're trying to survive 16 years of socialist policies (I'm looking at you GW, and the Republicans that supported that crud) destroying our national economy. A nation does not survive $1 trillion/year deficits for very long. Has nobody been paying attention to countries like Greece where they have all these same programs our politicians have been trying to implement for the last 20 years? CALIFORNIA ALONE has more debt than Greece does.

If Obama had the guts to return to the Clinton tax rates and budget I would be cheering for him myself, but he doesn't, and neither does the rest of the Democrat party. Everybody forgets that Clinton got lucky with the technology boom during his term, but they also forget that it was the Republicans that wrote "his" surplus budget. At least Clinton had the guts to work with the other side rather than demonizing them for disagreeing with him.

Obama will not work with Republicans, and neither will Harry Reid, who straight told the world that he would never work with Romney if Romney had won.

History's Relevance To Today's Election

"The media misconception today is that what we need to speed up economic recovery is to end gridlock in Washington and have bipartisan intervention in the economy. However plausible that may sound, it is contradicted repeatedly by history.

Unemployment was never in double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929. Only after politicians started intervening did unemployment reach double digits -- and stay in double digits throughout the 1930s.

There is nothing mysterious about an economy recovering on its own. Employers usually have incentives to employ and workers have incentives to look for jobs. Lenders have incentives to lend and borrowers have incentives to borrow -- if politicians do not create needless complications and uncertainties."

Thomas Sowell


History, I've noticed, is an annoying thing to some people. It presents facts that cannot be argued against, when it's actually presented truthfully in the first place. People constantly attribute the post-Depression recovery to FDR, yet they always ignore the fact that it carried on even through a major World War because of his policies (and his constant fighting to ignore the Constitution by the way). What ended the Depression in reality was actually the massive number of people returning from war, combined with the influx of immigrants from wartorn Europe and one other major item... The fact that after WWII we were the only industrialized nation in the world to survive unscathed. We had all of our factories, nearly all of our international shipping, and everyone with real skills was coming to us because we allowed financial advancement for those who were not part of the European "in" crowd.

Our current president is claiming his policies have created 5+ million jobs, while ignoring the jobs destroyed because of his war on coal, or the ones not created because of his policies such as numerous small business owners (and even large corporations) who will not add jobs because nobody knows exactly what he will do in the future to tear away the wealth they have earned through hard work (nevermind the Keystone pipeline's 10,000 or so permanent jobs because he wanted to make his buddy Warren Buffet a bit more cash).

If President Obama's policies were so great with those millions of created jobs then we would not be seeing HIGHER unemployment today than when he went into office. If the increased oil production we see today (all from private lands, just so you know) were having such a huge effect then we would not be seeing gas at an average of $1.50 higher nationally than when he was sworn into office (national average at the time was $1.84/gallon). We would not be seeing national employment numbers down at 67% (this number includes people retired as well as those no longer looking for work) because so many people have stopped looking for work. We would not see 47 MILLION people on food stamps. We would not see 18.1 million people (~5.8% of the total population) applying for disability because they have no other way of getting income.

Amusingly we have former President Clinton reminding us we wouldn't want a liar in the Office of the President, mere weeks after the Bhengazi cover-up boondoggle where people all up and down the current administration have been lying over who knew what and when, slowly releasing information hoping people won't piece it together or ask any more questions (Sandy helped distract people from that). Heck, if President Obama is such a great leader then why is his direct intervention in the Sandy cleanup producing results similar to what Bush got blamed for during Sandy when he didn't get in the way? Nevermind his buddy Bloomberg turning the New York National Guard away from helping in NYC because he doesn't want anyone by NYPD to have guns in his city.

Military Support Versus Its Lack

I think this picture about says it all when it comes to military support.

Meanwhile in New York state we see how the local Democrat run government views National Guardsmen trying to help with disaster relief vs their dog and pony shows. They kicked them out of the armory to hold a bloody Victoria's Secret show...

Good job Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, good job.

Prediction Models

So, for my usual pre-election amusement I was perusing various prediction models and ran across this one after a friend pointed me to this article talking about having it updated with current data (rather than data from back in May/Jun). What surprises me about it is that after looking through the other models presented this year the two professors (Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry of the University of Colorado) actually did what should have been done with every model. Instead of using polls (which are volatile and varied depending on how skewed they are toward one side or the other) they used a number of economic issues and looked at each state individually along with a number of historical data points.

I won't bother explaining the entire thing, they did an excellent job without me butchering their work. The end result after the recent updates however has Romney winning in a landslide 330 to 208 in the electoral college, and their model even predicted the Al Gore popular vote vs GW electoral vote win (well, showed the same results using data from that election). They've gone all the way back to 1980 and been correct, so I'd say even with their admitted +/- scale of 28 electoral votes that still puts Romney WAY ahead of President Obama.

It's a good read, and they explain how their system works, I recommend it.