Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Morning tab dump
I am in San Francisco for the JP Morgan health care conference, and just wrapped up a long run over hill and dale along Taylor from Geary St to Fisherman's Wharf and then along the Embarcadero to Market and back. If I lived here I would have legs of steel. Since I don't, I expect to be just a little bit sore tomorrow.
In any case, I've accumulated a few tabs which I will dump before jumping in to the shower and running off for a day of meetings.
Sad Haiti must be the most cursed place on Earth.
The Democrats are talking about extending the Medicare tax from wages to investment income. Bad idea. Whether or not health care "reform" is a good idea in the abstract, the party in power is so intent on imposing all the burden on the "rich" that it is creating enormous incentives to alter investment and other business decisions in order to avoid tax. That is bad for the economy under virtually all circumstances.
The latest euphemism to safeguard the little psyches of the poor is a great chuckle, but why can't we just use the language we've all agreed on?
Is there anything more exciting than a big new oil discovery?
Good for the Jews!
Bad polling news for President Obama and his policies.
More later.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Jan 13, 12:18:00 PM:
Big Oil discovery? - The US uses 20m barrrels per day. 160m barrels will last just 8 days. There could be 10B barrels off the coast of California or in ANWR.Now that would be a discovery! If the environmentalists just let them be discovered.
By , at
Wed Jan 13, 12:33:00 PM:
The Democrats are talking about extending the Medicare tax from wages to investment income.
It seems that all the Democrats ever talk about is who they can tax, what they can tax, and how much the tax should be.
By Brian Schmidt, at
Wed Jan 13, 03:08:00 PM:
The euphemism was proposed for poor children, not the poor in general. It's my understanding that coming from a poor background does tend to stigmatize children, but if Dan Riehl at the link wishes to substitute contrary research to his snark, that would be welcome.
More broadly, changing the labels for stigmatized groups is a common strategy both domestically and in other countries (Gandhi did it for India's untouchable caste). It seems to have some value for a generation or so, and then becomes a stigmatized term itself, and creates incentive for a newer term.
I don't think this is the worst thing in the world.
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Wed Jan 13, 05:24:00 PM:
Reg: the oil thing. I think that the point is that's a large enough of an initial strike to justify deeper (i.e. more expensive) drilling which may strike much larger reserves.
Reg: 'At Hope.' From the same kind of people, and same party, who brought us 'overseas contingency operations,' 'redeployment to Okinawa,' and 'man-caused disasters.'
Feckless, stupid, and utterly ridiculous attempt at politically correct language engineering to make the enablers feel better about themselves. Like turning 'handi-capped' into 'handi-capable.' Worthless *and* wrong. If politicians don't have anything better to do than this, they should just go home. They sure as hell shouldn't be paid for it.
This is the same state legislature that considered taxing rain a few years ago.
By , at
Thu Jan 14, 03:15:00 AM:
The Democrats are talking about extending the Medicare tax from wages to investment income
I think "slam S-Corporations" is the real underlying motivation for this. I'd bet there are a lot more high-earning S-Corporation owners than there are people earning high dividend and interest income.
By , at
Thu Jan 14, 05:07:00 PM:
Here's what's exciting about the discovery: It's in the Wilcox sand that runs through onsore Texas/LA and apparently fairly far offshore.
It is beginning to look like it's contiguous except for faulting (there's been about a 70% success rate)...CVX thinks there could be up to 15 BBOE. BP and CVX have both made monster discoveries there.
The prospect name escapes me, but I think PEMEX has made a discovery in the same sand in the Gulf of Campeche that they were planning to replace Cantrell with.
By , at
Thu Jan 14, 05:11:00 PM:
Edited to add...the 160 MMBO discovery is just the start. The way the reserve rules work, they've drilled the well so it's a "PUD," "Proved Undeveloped." The neighboring well is a "Probable," two over is "Possible," and beyond that, it's not even considered. It remains to be seen whether they leapfrog over and drill up locations or develop and produce this well....as it's so expensive, they will probably develop it but will soon drill up other leases to "Hold" them by production.
