Drain Clogs – 06-29-2010

Idaho GOP joins Texas and Montana in being crazy:

The convention’s platform calls for a radical overhaul of the federal government. One proposal is a Tea Party favorite, calling for the repeal the 17th Amendment, which provides for the direct election of Senators instead of the original system of them being selected by state legislatures. The platform also calls for the state legislature and governor to “nullify any and all existing and future unconstitutional Federal mandates and laws, funded or unfunded, that infringe on Idaho’s Tenth Amendment sovereignty.” In addition, the GOP calls for the state of Idaho to take back federally controlled lands.

Then there is the hard-money plank, which might have come right out of a Goldline ad on talk radio: “We believe Idahoans need to protect their savings from the ravages of inflation, which is hidden taxation, and encourage citizens to participate in a systematic acquisition of precious metals which represent real value as opposed to paper currencies.

One resolution went even further: “Let free Idahoans pay taxes, and other fees due to the State, County and City in silver and or gold in any form. Payments to City, County, or State employees requested to be paid in silver and or gold, Will be complied with.”

Which will be the next state GOP to try to out-crazy the rest? Utah, I’m looking at you!

Republicans hate Thurgood Marshall, don’t know why (gee, I wonder why…)

Instead of raising taxes on the rich, Republican Senate Minority Leader John Boehner has called for raising the retirement age to 70. Suck it, old people, rich people gotta be richer!

Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

Cartoon of the Day:

Glenn Beck ‘GoldGate’ gaining gratuitious gravity

Investing your hard earned money in pure gold nugget with a company like GoldLine, safe, reliable, a decision worthy of prayer. Because of gold’s historic perceived value, the metal of choice for ballin’ players through out history from the ancient Aztecs to Henry VIII and now Chamillionaire, having your money staked in owning a lot of the physical element gold, keeping doubloons, ingots, used Rolexes, and dental fillings you’ve stolen from dead people in the fireproof safe under the stairs in the basement, would be a wise investment decision. Right?

At least Glenn Beck thinks so. Sure gold is a really well known precious metal that’s used in many of the things rich people can afford to buy (jewelry, Monster cables, exotic food and alcohol, Bentleys) and it sure as hell is pretty to look at, but did you know that the human body can’t properly process or digest gold, not even during times of economic hardship? Gold also has been observed to flat-out lose its market value when the world gets plunged into fiery Armageddon and the first things to get burned down are the banks and stock exchanges. Certainly not “Rapture-proof”.

You cannot play videos or listen to music or surf the web or be entertained in any way by gold, and unlike a good deal of the marketing presentations from GoldLine, investing in physical gold has never earned any significant amount of money over the course of the investment for the buyer, rendering it a pretty useless strategy to diversify your wealth with.

Good investments, like real estate or stock dividends or bonds or equities or selling people a totally useless investment, help the buyer generate steady income for their portfolio and “put the money to work” for them, hopefully leaving you with a significant return that you can laugh all the way to the bank with. Gold doesn’t do any of these “wealth building” things, and in very troubled times there are better metal-based items that you could have spent your money on to ensure your survival.

Gold just kind of sits there.

Continue reading