Patrick's Rants

Buz Mills is using his own money to pay for his campaign. Governor Brewer is using public funds – clean election funds to be exact. The law that covers the clean election funds allows for candidates to receive as much as their privately funded opponents. Buz’s commercial starts with the recently voter approved 1% state sales tax. The temporary 1% tax was overwhelmingly approved by Arizona voters as will go to fund schools, public safety and public health. Buz calls it the “Brewer tax” and then proceeds to say that Brewer is raiding public funds to run her campaign. Now, I’m no fan of Brewer, but let’s get this straight. Governor Brewer is using funds for her campaign that by law may only be used for elections. No the money didn’t come out the K-12 budget. It didn’t come from public safety. It comes from the clean elections budget. The money can only be spent on clean elections and no other money can go towards the clean elections fund.

“I’m no politician”, says Mills in his commercials but he sure lies like one.
Some more buzzed links
Arizona Star Net Clean Elections fund story
Buz likes the money the government pays him
Buz Mills makes a stupendous claim on statewide TV. Arizona schools have a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. Total bunk as the interview shows. Buz seems to think that there is no need for bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria workers, etc. There should only be teachers in education. No support staff, no school resource officers, no coaches. Go (away) Buz go!

Conservative Buz Mills is running for Governor of Arizona. He’s running a commercial that shows the front of a political paper with a headline blasting the state of the State. Buz tells us,

“this is shameful. If I ran my business like this I’d be out of business. I’ll make the hard choices and cut spending.”

Here’s a news flash, this is not a business. I repeat, this is not a business. It’s a state. You cannot run a state like you run your business. In business the idea is to make a profit. Every time the state has any “profit” “conservatives” give it away. Does no one remember the alternative fuels tax credit? When times are good, conservatives want to cut taxes and spending. When times are bad, conservatives want to cut taxes and spending.

Cut spending? Today Arizona is voting on a 1% sales tax increase to fund firefighters, police and schools. We are already 49th in per student funding. Why? We have a legal, moral and even a religious obligation to care for our young, our old, and our infirmed. How can you do that when you keep sending any surplus into the pockets of your cronies? Run your business that way. Every time you have a profit in your business let your friends walk up the cash register and pull out some cash. Every time you have some profit built up into the bank, lower your prices so your profit is 0%. See how long you stay in business with that kind of attitude. As governor, try increasing your pay when the state runs in surplus (profit) like you can do in business.

If you run the state the way you are talking about you will irreparably damage this state for at least a generation maybe more. Why is that “old white dudes” (and ladies, Brewer does not get a pass here) want to cut spending on the next generation? That is truly shameful.

Warrent Buffett has come out in full support of Goldman Sachs, defending their hedge fund sales. He argues that everyone was essentially a “big boy” and that no children were harmed in the creation of the fund that was designed to fail. I will concede that traders were on deals like piranha on a side of beef, that greed made traders, Wall Street, and Main Street blind. There is blame nearly everywhere you look when it comes to housing prices and the collapse of Wall Street firms. It comes down to pure and simple greed.

Now, to the deal that Goldman is facing SEC charges over. Goldman created and sold “synthetic collateralized debt obligations“. Synthetic means fake, made up. So they (the investment community, not Goldman) made up an investment based on nothing. Well not nothing really, but the only value a synthetic CDO has is what someone else is willing to pay based upon a different but sort of related investment. Think of it this way, you are driving down a road with no stop lights, traffic signals, road bumps, etc. You are unlimited in how fast you can drive. You decide that your speed and even the direction you drive should be based on the car next to you. There is no reason other than you want to. The synthetic CDO is designed so that if the car next to you slows down, you slow down, if it speeds up you speed up. If it runs into an elk, your bumper needs to be replaced. Sound crazy? It kind of is. It’s not buying insurance on your car, it’s buying insurance on the other car. In the insurance industry you have to have an interest in the insured item – you cannot buy homeowner’s insurance on your neighbor’s house, you cannot buy car insurance on his car, you cannot buy life insurance on his wife. But with Synthetic CDOs that’s exactly what has happened. Insurance on something you don’t own and, therefore, can’t lose.

The deal that Goldman was selling was designed to fail. Yes, it was homeowner’s insurance on the house with exposed wiring, a pan of hot oil on the stove, the clothes iron plugged in, and the drying Christmas tree decorated with open flame candles. And the inhabitants are out of town for a week. The bet is that this house will burn down. Buffet’s argument is that the insurance company should have known that this house was going to burn down – nay smoke was already coming out of the windows – and it’s their own fault for insuring it. They’re big boys, they knew what they were insuring. I say not so fast. In the real world (not the synthetic one) this would be insurance fraud, the claim would be denied and someone would be in jail.

Buffett is a pretty smart guy, I don’t dislike him. I agree with some of his arguments about more fair taxes. I applaud his frugal behavior, his modest income when other CEOs are raping their companies and shareholders blind. But I don’t stand on the same side of the street on this particular issue. I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on synthetic CDOs. Only time will tell which side is right, and whether the regulatory leash will be shortened.

I can hardly believe my ears and eyes. While oil is spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of five thousand barrels per day the right, in the form of Limpbaugh and laughingly Michael “heckuva job Brownie” Brown, are throwing accusations that the administration is “taking advantage” of the spill. Limpbaugh might as well have said that Obama blew up the rig for his own personal gain when he threw around the name Ayres and the term “blowing things up” in the same sentence. How far off the deep end are these nut jobs? I’ll tell you how far. This oil spill, which could go on and on destroying the fishing and tourism industries from Mexico and Texas to New England has the nut jobs rallying around the “Drill Baby Drill” flag. Really!? This shows that we need to drill more to make us safer against world wide terrorism!? And the White House along with those “lefties” need to stop picking on poor little British Petroleum and Haliburton.