THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR WANTS TO CONTROL YOUR STOCK BROKER

The Department of Labor wants to force stock brokers to meet the same fiduciary requirements as investment advisers according to an article in The Wall Street Journal of August 10th.
This means that your stock broker cannot advise you to buy or sell any particular stock because his brokerage firm may have a position in that stock. Since brokerage firms usually have positions in a large number of stocks and bonds, they will probably not be able to say yes or no on any buy or sell order you ask them for advice on.
The larger firms may not want to handle your small accounts anymore especially if they are managing your accounts.
So you might have to liquidate your IRA and move the money elsewhere.
By the way as soon as you liquidate your IRA into cash, you better be careful or the IRS will take a big tax bite out of your retirement funds.
Contact your Congressmen and make it known that you don't want the DOL to mess with your broker or your accounts!
Why the hell is the DOL getting involved with stock brokers anyway? That should be the SEC's business.
Please spread the word about this headache.

THE POLITICS OF OBSTRUCTION

The Congress is not getting America's problems solved. Why? Because the present political scene in Washington D.C. is a continuous partisan battle. The Republicans try to stop any legislation submitted by the Democrats and the Democrats do the same to the Republicans.
Now if everything was fine in America and Americans had plenty of jobs, maybe a "do-nothing" Congress would be all right.
But America has problems that need attention. The budget needs to be balanced. The National Debt needs to be reduced. American infrastructure is decaying. Entire industries have been lost to foreign manufacturers. Unemployment is too high. Companies are using part-time help to avoid paying benefits and medical insurance. Immigration problems persist. The list goes on and on.
I think that present Congressmen are going to find out that citizens are very upset with them in the next election, and the feelings will be to "turn the bums out." I hope that happens and we get some new people in Congress, representatives and senators, who are willing to work together to find solutions to our problems.
Perhaps we need moderate independents in Congress that can get necessary work done, instead of the fighting and bickering politics of the partisan, extreme right, or extreme left people we have in Congress now.
All you have to do is to listen to some of the speeches that Republicans and Democrats in Congress make and you will hear that virtually every speech they make has a partisan slant to it, if not blatantly and obviously obstructive to the party opposite to the one they represent.
So voters, get ready. Let's "turn the bums out"! 

FREE TRADE VS. FAIR TRADE

What does "free trade" do to the USA?
Here is the way it works in the USA :  The USA allows virtually anything to be imported without any tariffs which means that foreign suppliers can ship in any kind of goods at much lower prices than suppliers in the USA can ever hope to match. While goods made in the USA are usually too expensive to have any hope of selling overseas, or at least not in large quantities.
So the USA has lost entire industries such as textiles, consumer electronics, tools, household goods, and miscellaneous gadgets, etc.
Other USA industries have been hit hard with heavy competition and loss of sales to foreign companies.
So what is the solution?
The solution is to scrap free trade and start doing fair trade. What I mean by fair trade is that goods shipped into the USA either must be priced at a level that USA industries can compete on an equal basis, or import duties (tariffs or taxes) will be imposed on the foreign supplier's goods until their equivalent cost per unit is adjusted to the point where USA industries have a fair chance to compete and produce equivalent merchandise.
Why should we have fair trade?
Because, our first priority should be to help our own manufacturing base grow to provide more jobs for people. With our present very slow recovery and 7.4% unemployment, we need this boost.
It should no longer be our business to sacrifice ourselves to assist third world countries. We have plenty of our own problems with decaying infrastructure and lost manufacturing capability.
Another factor to consider is that when our manufacturing base is weak, we lose technology and the ability to respond to emergencies, military or otherwise.
So tell me if I am wrong. Should we have free trade or fair trade?

HOW CAN THE US RAISE REVENUE WITHOUT NEW TAXES

What are some of the things the US government could do to increase revenue without increasing income taxes? Here is a seven point plan that may be part of the answer. If you agree, write and call your congressman and the President:
1) The US Fed should buy bonds and other foreign securities, that pay dividends or interest, from friendly nations and allies. This will help our friends and allies finance their needs while sending income back to the US. Nations that are our enemies would see that they are losing out on capital that they could get from the US if they were friendly.
2) Raise tariffs on any imports that are priced too low to allow US manufacturers to compete. Level the playing field on imports to allow US manufacturers to continue and bring back industries that we have lost to un-fair competition.
3) Encourage foreign friendly nations to build manufacturing plants in the US with US labor. This is good for the US because it creates US jobs and increases the taxable industrial base. It is also good for foreign businesses because they don't have to pay overseas shipping costs.
4) Sell lumber from public lands with proceeds to the Treasury.
5) Sell more oil and gas leases on public lands, in off-shore areas, and Arctic regions. This is good for the US in two ways: Increase jobs which increases tax revenue. Help to reduce the US dependence on foreign oil.
6) Sell more military equipment to friendly nations and allies. This helps to keep people working in defense plants and brings both tax and sales income to the Treasury.
7) Using the revenue proceeds from steps 1 -6 above, invest in infrastructure that aids in business development and the shipment of US goods to the point of sale. Some examples are, new railroads, interstate highways, US cargo ships leased to shipping companies. Just those three things will also create many jobs and re-vitalize our construction, railroads, and ship-building industries.
There are no doubt many more ways that revenue can be increased without raising taxes. I leave that to the readers to provide their ideas also. I am only trying to light the way forward.

NRC KNOWS THERE IS A PROBLEM BUT WHAT TO DO?

Today in the Wall Street Journal of May 16, 2011, there were two articles relating to nuclear plant safety. The fiirst titled "Safety Gaps found at Nuclear Plants" I quote as saying "Federal Inspections ordered after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan found many U.S. commercial nuclear reactors vulnerable to severe earthquakes, floods or fires, particularly in combination." Yes I agree. But what is going to be done about it? That is the important question. As long as nuclear engineers keep thinking about "containment", they will not solve the problem. They should be thinking DISPERSEMENT of core materials before a full scale melt- down develops. Once a melt- down starts there is no stopping the radiation and the problems that follow. To back up my assertion, I cite another article in the same WSJ edition of the same date on the present situation of the heavily damaged reactors in Japan from the article titled "Cores Damaged At Three Reactors." I need only to quote a small portion of this article: "...containment vessel is damaged and leaking highly radioactive water." This statement was relative to reactor no. 1. What is the solution? Just read my previous article in this blog, and then if you are concerned, do something about it and call/write your Congressmen.

WHAT IS THE MAIN SAFETY PROBLEM WITH NUCLEAR REACTORS?

This article is to warn of a basic safety problem with virtually all nuclear power reactors all over the world. We are currently witnessing the terrible results of nuclear a plant disaster now taking place in Japan with  even more dangerous results possible from the same reactors in the near future. Why did the Japanese reactor(s) fail? Or course there was first a very large quake which caused physical damage to some of the plants and this was quickly followed by the tsunami that stopped the cooling pumps and back-up pump power generators. Now two problems developed. First, the main reactor core begin to heat out-of-control because of the loss of cooling. Second, the spent fuel storage tank located above and to the side of the main reactor also lost its cooling system. The spent fuel tank also contained new fuel rods in a reactor that was "shut down" for maintenance. So now the real disaster to come was beginning. There was now no good way to cool the nuclear fuel, and it continued to heat-up becasuse of the loss of active cooling. If these older plants had the so-called "passive" water cooling system they would supposedly have been safe. But I submit to you that no cooling system, active or passive, that depends on water will be safe if there is a large enough earthquake, Why? Because the struture of any cooling system is subject to physical damage and loss of cooling fluid. There is no physical system that cannot be damaged by a quake or its aftermath especially plants that are located in coastal areas. Another danger to the older reactors that do not have passive cooling, is the extended loss of electrical power and fuel to power the back-up generators. What could possibly cause this? Well in the first place, all electrical systems and fuel delivery systems in the world depend on a fragile technical net of computers and other complex machinery that is now critical to our civililzation. What if a large meteor hits our planet causing widespread destruction? There are probably a lot of things that can happen to a civilization that is built like a house of cards ready to collapse with the slightest disturbance. But I am digressing. The main point I am trying to make is that there is only one real way to stop the chain reaction that takes place in a fission ractor core to stop a meltdown: You have to have a means, automatic or manual, of rapidly dispersing the fuel rods from each other so that they are no longer close enough to each other to be critical or even sub-critical in nuclear reactor engineering terms. So what is this way to stop the nuclear reaction permanently? It is actually a very simple solution. It is to simply to blow the reactor apart with a large high explosive charge that is activated either automatically or manually if (1) the reactor is over-heating, (2) the reactor cooling system has failed, and (3) there is no human over-ride signal received or possible. Yes this is an extreme measure, but it will be effective and used only as the last resort. Everyone thinks in terms of "core containment" when at the last resort they should be thinking in terms of "core dispersal".  One thing that would make the explosive method more palatable perhaps is to make the final external continment structure large enough and srong enough to also contain the core dispersal explosion. Then you would have the more desirable situation of totally stoping the nuclear chain reaction but also containment of all of the remnants of the exploded core. So you people that believe that I am a "waco" or a deranged scientist, think about it and see if you have a better solution! Good luck!

WHAT TO DO TO MAKE NUKE PLANTS SAFER

In the early days of nuclear power, the nuclear cores were supposed to be designed so that if they expanded due to excessive heating (if the cooling system failed, for example) that the core would expand enough to cause fission activity to reduce so that a stable condition would occur even without cooling. Also, there were supposed to be enough boron control rods to slam home into the core to dampen the core below criticality and stop significant neutron density to cool the reactor in case of a cooling system failure or some other condition that might result in an out-of-control situation. But for economic reasons, corners were cut so that it became necessary to maintain cooling system operation no matter what happens. But as we have seen, things can go wrong with the cooling system and then the core is in major danger of a total out-of-control heating that could result in what is referred to as a "meltdown". We are now seeing this possibility in Japan with already serious consequences. Another error is to store fuel rods in water pools long term right adjacent to or above the core of the reactor so if the pool is dried up by an overheating reactor core and not refilled we have another meltdown possibility for the stored fuel rods. There are a lot of possibilities for improvements at nuke plants. For one thing they should not be sited on earthquake fault lands. One thing I think would help is to place self-destruct high explosive charges below the nuclear core and even the storage pools, that would automatically detonate in the event of the detection of over-heating of the core or the pool and failure of the cooling systems. This is of course an extreme thing happen as the last ditch defense, but it would disperse the fuel elements quickly and definitely stop the fission reactions and the possiblity of a meltdown, protecting the environment from radioactive cesium and iodine contamination. The only problems left would be to clean up fuel materials and debri and of course close the plant. I have proposed this solution to the Whitehouse and a noted scientist who I will not name, but I received no reply and of course there has been no suggestions of action in this direction or any other action, just talk, to improve the safety of nuclear power plants.