SODA JERK BLOOMBERG SWEETENS THE EFFORT FOR SODA-HATERS IN CALIFORNIA

Soda jerk billionaire Michael Bloomberg has pitched $200,000 to support advertising for a moronic ballot measure to be voted upon this November by residents of the City of San Francisco. Inveterate meddler Bloomberg wants residents to pay a 33.8¢ tax for each liter of soda because the idiot believes doing so shall dissuade parents of fatty kids from buying soda.



Why should everyone else who enjoys a soda now and then be held responsible for the irresponsibility of idiot parents?


Parents ought to be taxed directly for contributing to the fatness of their kids. Rather than a penny for each ounce of soda, how about taxing parents quarterly $10 a pound for every pound their kids weigh over a healthy weight?

Physical development scientists use the Body Mass Index (BMI), a calculation based on height to produce a normal weight range. It would be quite easy for parents to bring their kiddos to a weigh station every three months. Weigh stations could be put in every public school.

Using a BMI tax scheme, for a 4'2" child weighing 130 pounds, thus having a 36.6 BMI, parents would be forced to pay $415 every three months. That tallies to $1,660 a year.

That kind of outlay would smarten up parents quickly no doubt. In short order, Americans would have the fittest kids on earth.


Here is a big gulp of reality. Fatty kids come from irresponsible parents. Soda is not to blame.

Soda isn't alive. Blaming soda is like blaming a drug pusher for a druggy's willful heroin addiction or blaming a knife or a gun for a murderer's willful act of killing someone.

These days, a good number of American mommies and daddies rely upon the productive to pay for their food bills. Politicians give these mommies and daddies EBT cards. No one should expect mommies and daddies who buy soda for their fatty kids with EBT cards to care a whit about paying a tad higher price since everything is free to them already.

It shocks that someone can be as stupid as Bloomberg is at times and yet the guy has a net worth of $34 billion, making him the 16th richest man of the world. According to the Social Security Administration's life expectancy calculator, responsible, freedom-loving Americans must suffer with Bloomberg for at least 13.5 more long years of soda jerk meddling.

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DUELING OP-EDS OVER RACIST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN CALIFORNIA

In a L.A. Times op-ed piece, Yunlei Yang, a committee member of the Silicon Valley Chinese Association, answered another L.A. Times op-ed by Karthick Ramakrishnan, a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University who now works at UC Riverside. Yang takes offense against Ramakrishnan's claim that self-identifying Asians support unconstitutional Affirmative Action in California. Ramakrishnan makes his claim based on purported survey results from The National Asian American Survey, for which Ramakrishnan is the director.

Both in 2012 and in 2014, The National Asian American Survey had their survey contractor, Field, ask this:

"Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education?"

That question suffers intense question bias and thus cannot get used to project to a universe of respondents. Specifically, the question contains biasing words: help, blacks, women, minorities, better. In short, because of the biasing words, the results from that question are little more than opinions of respondents, opinions which cannot get used to predict what self-identifying Asians believe as a whole.

To be valid, the question should have been asked this way:

"Do you favor or oppose law, which gives some individuals advantages for admissions to college or university because of their race, ethnicity or sex?"

"Do you favor or oppose law, which gives some individuals advantages to be hired for work because of their race, ethnicity or sex?"

As well, half of the respondents should have been asked, "Do you oppose or favor" while the other half should have been asked, "Do you favor or oppose."



Many surveys, especially those related to politics suffer from questionnaire bias, sampling bias and other flaws. News media all too often publish results as gospel truth rather than examining questionnaires for flaws.

Misleading polling participants with biased question and then getting bogus findings published as pseudo-scientific fact so to shape public opinion through media is what push polling is all about. Those behind push polling suffer from moral bankruptcy.

Back in 2009, enlightened California voters passed California Proposition 209, which  amended the state constitution to prohibit state government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education.

Since the passage of Proposition 209, the African American graduation rate at the University of California, Berkeley increased by 6.5%. As well,  the African American graduation rate rose from 26% to 52% at the University of California, San Diego.

Regardless of rhetoric, race-based affirmative action is racism. Sex-based affirmative action is still racism.

Letting stupid people attend public colleges and universities at taxpayers' expense merely because they have African ancestors or have Central American ancestors who bred with Spanish speakers rather than letting those with Asian ancestors or Western European ancestors who earned their admissions on merit is, well, racist. As well, it is little more than sex racism to give preferential treatment to women for college admissions or public employment.

NAACP blacks, NOW feminists, Act UP! homosexists, La Raza Latinos — they are the racists. The rest of us are not.

Diversity is rhetorical code-speak for seeking racist advantage against a falsely perceived enemy — "white" males of primarily of Northern European ancestry and Anglo-Norman culture.

We're living in the 21st century. Isn't it time Americans call for an end to racism by putting an end to politicians who pander to people using rhetorical appeals and financial bribes merely because of their ancestry?

Disclosure: My career includes work as a director of public opinion polling and a director of marketing research. I completed graduate level coursework with distinction in Advertising Research and Public Opinion polling at the fabled S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communication.

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JERRY BROWN SIGNS BITCOIN LAW THAT FAILS TO LEGALIZE BITCOINS WHILE PROTECTING THE SECRETARY OF STATE FROM LAWSUITS.

So Bitcoiners are abuzz because Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB129, which repeals California Commercial Code 107.




Section 107 of the California Commercial Code read as follows:

107. No corporation, flexible purpose corporation, association or individual shall issue or put in circulation, as money, anything but the lawful money of the United States.

By "lawful money of the United States," long-ago California legislators decreed that only the U.S. Congress can decree what is money, whether coined precious metal by weight and fineness (the true definition of money) or legal tender.

AB 129 changes nothing. AB 129 does not legalize Bitcoins or any other digital copyright protected software whose holders pretend to be money.

AB 129 is declaration by legislators to say that anyone residing in the State of California mining Bitcoins is not running afoul of CCC 107, and little more. AB 129 also declares, in effect, that supermarkets, which print coupons, "do not violate the law when those methods are used for the purchase of goods and services or the transmission of payments."



In  effect, AB 129 removes liability of the state to be sued by anyone who might run afoul of 31 U.S. Code § 5103. For if the State of California would let incorporation of any involved in Bitcoin mining while CCC 107 remained on the books, then the State of California would be liable for lawsuits.

When Jerry Brown signed into law AB 129, in effect, his act did this and only this:

107. No corporation, flexible purpose corporation, association or individual shall issue or put in circulation, as money, anything but the lawful money of the United States.

In 31 U.S. Code § 5103, the Coinage Act of 1965, the sitting Congress decreed by bill and signed into law by President Johnson:

United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.

In so doing, that Congress decreed to which President Johnson signed into law, anyone would be required to accept Federal Reserve bank notes in lieu of gold or silver coin for the full settlement of contract, in which anyone would be henceforth discharged from debt obligation.

By federal law anyone must accept only Federal Reserve Notes in settlement of contract. No one can refuse accepting U.S. Treasury minted token coins or Federal reserve bank notes. They can however, specify denomination of those Federal Reserve bank notes.

For those suffering delusion that Bitcoin is money or currency, they should wait until someone in California refuses to pay debt except with Bitcoin and the creditor refuses to accept that Bitcoin in payment. When one party sues the other and the case hits a Federal court in California, the creditor shall prevail. End of story.

Bitcoins are worthless without cash of various banking systems. The few merchants who accept Bitcoins, sell those Bitcoins back for cash and checking account credits thus enabling themselves to buy what they want, truly.

As I wrote in BITCOIN IS SOFTWARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. BITCOIN IS NOT LEGAL TENDER CASH, Bitcoins are nothing but software with protected by a digital copy scheme mechanism. The block chain exists so individuals can prove title to coins before sending a copy over to another user and deleting the copy on their own storage media.

Thus, Bitcoin isn't currency. Currency means that which circulates goods by bearer negotiability. Bearer negotiability means the property (right of ownership) goes with possession in every honest deal. No one needs to prove she owns cash to a store clerk before she trades away cash for milk and cookies.

The other day, the U.S. Marshals Service auctioned to venture capitalist Tim Draper 30,000 Bitcoins seized from illegal drug dealing site, The Silk Road, operated by charged by not as-of-yet convicted, Ross Ulbricht.

Draper claimed that, "Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies." Tim Draper couldn't be more wrong, especially if means the U.S. dollar is among his "weak currencies."

U.S dollars (Federal Reserve bank notes) are accepted everywhere in America without question and almost by everyone of the world in their respective countries, eagerly. Clearly, the U.S. dollar has strong currency. It's the strongest of all.

Travel outside the USA with U.S. dollars. Almost everywhere you go, you can spend your dollars directly for products without converting those dollars to local bank cash with currency.

Almost no one on earth uses Bitcoins. Only a handful of people use Bitcoins to deal in contraband, mostly illegal drugs between junkies and dealers through sites alike to Silk Road.

Bitcoins are collectibles, like Beanie Babies and movies on DVDs. When people trade merchandise for Bitcoins, they engage in barter and not trade of purchases and sales. They swap one product, Bitcoins, for another product, which is whatever they are selling.

The Congress of 1912 brought forth the Federal Reserve through the Federal Reserve Act, enacted December 23, 1913.  By establishing the Federal Reserve, that Congress established Federal Reserve bank notes, which replaced all other bank notes of national banks of issue then in circulation.

The United States Congresses have a long history of coinage acts that led to the Coinage Act of 1965 ( see Coinage acts of 1792, 1834, 1849, 1857, 1864, 1873). The more notable ones are those of 1792, 1834, 1857, 1864, 1873

The Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and decreed the silver dollar as the unit of money in the United States, declared it to be lawful tender, and created a decimal system for U.S. currency

The Coinage Act of 1834 raised the silver-to-gold weight ratio from 15:1 to 16:1. The Congress reduced the fine content of a gold dollar from 24.75 grains to 23.2 grains.

The Coinage Act of 1857 forbade foreign coins as legal tender. For years, Americans traded with the Spanish dollar. This act stopped that practice.

The Coinage Act or 1873 decreed only gold as lawful money. In so doing the Congress demonetized silver.

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OH NOOOOO! MORE POLITICAL FEAR MONGERING OVER WATER AND CALIFORNIANS MEANWHILE BILLIONS OF WATER POUR INTO THE PACIFIC.

So today from Bloomberg, yet another fear mongering pitch gets thrown to shape public opinion about Californians and their supposed water shortage. The clever ones at Bloomberg titled their piece, California's Drinking Problem

Right in the opening paragraph — because they know most don't read beyond two paragraphs — the spin doctors mention that "farms use 80 percent of the state's water"  and that "cities and towns" must do their share. Notice how the Bloomberg deceivers never say what they should say, putting the onus on people — farmers and city residents.

It's all rather convenient. Later when higher food prices hit shelves owing to massive cash accretion from the policies of Ben Bernanke and his successor Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve, politicians can blame it on the weather.

But what about reality? Isn't that what all should strive to know?

Back in February of this year, in Monday, February 17, 2014 CALIFORNIANS TOLD THEY'RE SUFFERING AN EPIC DROUGHT, MEANWHILE 39 TRILLION GALLONS OF WATER GO UNTAPPED I revealed that Californians never need fear a shortage because of Lake Tahoe. Enough water evaporates from the surface of Lake Tahoe every day to meet the water needs of all 3.5 million people living in Los Angeles, every day!

Now, let's look at the rivers of California. Most think of Hollywood stars, beaches and sunsets when they think of California. However, California is a river state. 

The U.S. Geological Survey defines discharge as the volume of water passing through a point of measurement within a period of time. Discharge gets expressed as cubic feet per second (cfs), which is equal to a volume of water one foot high and one foot wide flowing a distance of one foot in one second.

The amount of water in discharge equals 7.48 gallons of water flowing each second,  448.8 gallons each minute, 646,272 gallons each day as well as 1.98 acre-feet each day.

Major river systems that water much of the San Joaquin Valley are the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River, the Kings River and the Kern River. Let's assume unionized government technocrats get right using those rivers to water the many farms of the SJ Valley.

Let's look at other rivers, the rivers in far north California. Using the average flows from the recording period for each river, let's see how much water Californians have in a few rivers.




From five rivers alone, Californian politicians let 6.6 billion gallons a day flow into the Pacific unused! Look at it! 276.6 million gallons an hour flow into the Pacific!

Where is the water shortage?

Rather than relying on vacuous-minded politicians whose sole purpose is to gain votes for re-election as well as theoretical modeling talking shop technocrats never who have proven to have gotten anything right, Californians should come to rely upon a futures market for property in water. The technocrats of California with their pseudo-science have failed to protect Californians from the vagaries of nature in a way that only futures markets can. 

A continuous, open market for water contracts would assure reasonable return to capital needed to create property in water. In so doing, prices would reflect the highest, best uses, and thus achieve among other things, conservation, without the need of a heavy-handed, inept, pseudo-scientific technocratic bureaucracy. 


It is for futures markets that Americans never run out of gasoline or food. Why should Californians as well as all Americans view water as different from these other things?


For those interested in current data: Current Conditions for California: Streamflow (494 sites)

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CALIFORNIANS TOLD THEY'RE SUFFERING AN EPIC DROUGHT, MEANWHILE 39 TRILLION GALLONS OF WATER GO UNTAPPED

"Fourteen months into a historic drought, with reservoirs running low and the Sierra snowpack 27 percent of normal, a growing number of Californians are wondering: Why isn't everyone being forced to ration?" ~ Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News

Not one to pass up a crisis, Obama has come to pitch yet another one of his schemes. Obama wants to stick future taxpayers for billions in outlays and interest for something his handlers have named a Climate Resilience Fund. 

Of course, because each year Congress runs a deficit, as all government spending is borrowed, the net result shall be cash accretion, which small make prices rise for items primarily paid by cash. So, facing the same output on offer, food bills shall rise. Gasoline shall rise. Movie ticket prices shall rise.

Californians never should fear being without water. Lake Tahoe holds a whopping 39 trillion gallons of water. That is enough water to flood California everywhere to a depth of 14.5 inches (36.83 cm)!

Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the U.S.A. (1,645 ft; 501 m),  the 16th deepest lake on earth and the fifth deepest by average depth. Sixty-three tributaries feed the lake. 

Lake Tahoe feeds the Truckee River, which flows into Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Only one third of the water that leaves the lake leaves via the Truckee. 

Two-thirds of the water that leaves the lake gets wasted, evaporating into the air from the surface. 1,400,000 tons of water (330 million gallons; 1,249,186 kiloliters) evaporate from the surface of Lake Tahoe every day, which is enough to meet the water needs of all 3.5 million people living in Los Angeles, every day!

Meanwhile, one storm over the weekend doubled the mountain snowpack, even being labeled as "a game-changer." According to KTVU:

The snowpack in the Truckee River Basin jumped from 16 percent of normal for the date last Friday to 35 percent on Monday. Lake Tahoe Basin's went from 26 percent to 53 percent, the Carson River Basin from 31 percent to 53 percent and the Walker River Basin from 27 percent to 38 percent of normal.

Unfortunately, long ago, a U.S. Congress laid claim to 75% of the watershed of Lake Tahoe. Since then other Congresses have given management of the lake to the United States Forest Service (Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit).

What makes Americans' food supply so resilient are futures markets for various foodstuffs. For the same, Californians should embrace a futures market for water. Having a futures market for water would keep prices steady and supply sufficient.

A continuous, open market for water contracts would assure reasonable return to capital needed to create property in water. In so doing, prices would reflect the highest, best uses, and thus achieve among other things, conservation, without the need of a heavy-handed, inept, pseudo-scientific technocratic bureaucracy. The technocrats of California with their pseudo-science have failed to protect Californians from the vagaries of nature in a way that only futures markets can. 

It is for futures markets that Americans never run out of gasoline or food. Why should Americans view water as different from these other things?

To discover a bit more about futures markets, read here: WHY FUTURES MARKETS SHOULD SET THE FEDS FUNDS RATE RATHER THAN THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD OF GOVERNORS

For more perpetual fear-mongering over California water, check out OH NOOOOO! MORE POLITICAL FEAR MONGERING OVER WATER AND CALIFORNIANS MEANWHILE BILLIONS OF WATER POUR INTO THE PACIFIC.

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GREEDY CAPITALIST COMPLAINS ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE EXPENSE AND QUITS HIS BUSINESS

So someone brought to me a story about a guy shuttering his business in Ventura County, California (see: A Milestone to Celebrate: I Have Closed All My Businesses in Ventura County, California)

What caught my eye is this complaint of his:

In most states we pay a percent or two of wages for unemployment insurance.  In California we pay almost 7%.  Our summer seasonal employees often take the winter off, working only in the summer, but claim unemployment insurance anyway.  They are supposed to be looking for work, but they seldom are and California refuses to police the matter.  Several couples spend the whole winter in Mexico, collecting unemployment all the while.  So I have to pay a fortune to support these folks' winter vacations.

While anyone can be sympathetic to this guy's sob story about suffering at the hands of Agent Smiths of the government matrix, some of which is true, the man himself fails to see reality.

The Coyote has been gaining unearned profits for all the years he operated his business, beggaring other businessmen as well as workers. In the absence of UI, the Coyote would have faced a lower profit margin on much higher expenses.

It is an unassailable fact of trade, that absent UI, wages would rise. No one would work at a loss (wages - living expenses). Market forces would force employers to pay more.

A wage is a price and conforms to the one, true, infrangible and only law of trade, the Law of Prices. The Law of Prices holds the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of what is on offer set the price.

All producers get constrained by the great Axiom of Profit. The Axiom of Profit holds the sum of sales must at least equal the cost of production or the producer goes to ruin.

All laborers also are capitalists as labor is the poor man's capital. Labor is the sale of work through time.

As the Coyote, his laborers must get a price (wage) so the sum of the sales (work) must at least equal their living expenses (cost of production) otherwise, there is no incentive to work.

The unemployment insurance program in California as in any state, lets any business operator engage in beggar-thy-neighbor action both upon all employees who have taxes levied against them for this program but never who collect benefits at least equal to taxes they have paid as well as all other business operators who have paid more in UI taxes than have accrued net terminated employees.

Absent unemployment insurance, even if hands would remain idle, employers would need to pay for idle hands in the form of higher wages to induce workers to at least break-even (wages equaling cost of living). It would matter not that higher paychecks would come during the work season with none coming off-season or if paychecks would be spread out over a 12-month period.

With the presence of UI, business operators pay less than full, free-market wages into a fund, as UI is a percentage levied against active payroll. UI compensation lets a seasonal, laid-off worker break-even because UI as welfare subsidizes the laborer revenue (wages) against living expenses to achieve break even.

Absent UI, it would have been the decision of the Coyote to deploy his efforts and capital elsewhere if not wanting to earn less.

So, too, then without the subsidy to the Coyote and his workers, perhaps his product never would have come to market, which is what should happen in a system where people's profits (excess earnings) let them hold referendums on what everyone else should make and thus inhibition of anything not brought to market owing to efficiency under the constraint of the Axiom of Profit in the face of the Law of Prices.

The true meaning of greed is wanting to get something without honest exchange. So wanting to gain property (right of ownership) in something (excess profits) without paying for it (higher wages absent external subsidy) is the picture perfect definition of greed.

The right move is the end UI and all political interference in commerce. That idea frightens more businessmen to a greater degree than it does the people as too many businessmen fear authentic, manly competition.

This is why Americans suffer from crony politics, crony governance and crony regulatory capture. UI is expression of that cronyism.

Beggaring-thy-neighbors is the same whether done by politicians on behalf of government bureaucrats as the means to maintain power or by self-deceived capitalist-entrepreneurs shafting everyone else for their inefficiency and greedy quest for unearned profits.

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