MOBILE COMPUTER WITH HORSEPOWER

Inventors, listen up. I am describing the next generation in mobile computing (Forget tiny cellphones.) A small wireless computer in your pocket or purse. It interfaces with the Internet. You have a nice wireless display built into special glasses or a monocle (Yes, you might look like a Borg out of Star Trek (c).) The display is like a heads up display that you can see through but it appears to you like a big screen TV in HD and just as fast. You have a small wireless headset with mic and earphone for your sound interface. You activate the speech recognition program stored on the wireless network so you can write a book by just talking into your mic, and save it in the cloud. You also have a wireless roller ball mouse that allows you to point and select anything you see on your display. No more wearing out your thumb or poking your finger at tiny little images on a cell phone. You store and retrieve data in the Internet cloud so you don't need a lot of computer power in your pocket. Call or receive calls, text messages, or pictures from your wireless network computer.
Any questions, comments, or suggestions? Please post a comment below.

STOCKHOLDERS ALLOWED TO ELECT BOARD?

The new financial regulation bill may have a provision that allows stockholders who own 1% to 5% of the company or more, will be allowed to nominate persons to be on the board of directors and such nominations would be included in the proxy for shareholders to vote on. The process is called "proxy access". Businesses are going to lobby against this because they don't like small shareholders to have this power. If you vote on stock be sure to vote against all executives of companies if they are against proxy access.

Generally, legitimate long term stockholders should have more say in who the people are that run the company and the selection of the board of directors as, even if you are a small stockholder of only a few shares! After all stockholders are OWNERS of the company.

Call your congressman and make sure how you feel about this if you are affected.

I CAN'T BUY A DROID OR BLACKBERRY!

I can't get a DROID or a Blackberry cell phone without signing up for an expensive Internet plan on my cell phone, according to a major wireless phone company that I have been dealing with. I don't like this because I want the features of the better phones but I don't need the Internet on my phone because I prefer to use my laptop for that. I have talked to other people that don't like this rule either. This rule is also killing sales of Blackberry and DROID phones to a great extent I believe.

Phone manufacturers and users, let's protest this rule! Call your provider and tell them you don't like this rule and that you will switch carriers if you find someone that does sell the phones without the Internet service purchase requirement.

Also, I believe that the Internet rule may violate FCC, SEC, and FTC rules on illegal trust activities. Any lawyers out there who would like to comment or start a class action lawsuit?

INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF GPS?

The White House apparently plans to allow international control of the Global Positioning Satellite System. Can this really be true? Why should we cede our technical knowledge to other nations, especially nations like China that do not share our core democratic principles? Doesn't this also open up the system to possible sabotage occurring at critical times when our military or civilian authorities need the system? The system is currently administered by the US Air Force and is relatively resistant to outside interference. It is true that the US military will soon have a separate system that it will depend on, but the question still remains: Why should we allow other nations to learn our technology? Why do we always give away our technical knowledge? We lose enough by means of espionage and foreign nations reverse engineering our products, so we should not voluntarily give up any technical knowledge of a strategic nature that we don't have to! To remain free we must maintain our technical knowledge edge, or face the prospect of enemy foreign nations catching up to us and maybe even exceeding us in technical capability. Write your congressman and protest this gross idiotic plan by our government!

WH POLITICS INTERFERES WITH EXPORTS

According to the Wall Street Journal of June 30, the White House politics is interfering with the export of ordinary mining equipment to India based on a theory (erroneous) that mining equipment is not good for the environment. Does this make any sense? Of course not. Here are the facts. Bucyrus International Inc. had a deal to sell $600 million worth of mining equipment to a company in India, Reliance Power. But the US Export-Import Bank would not help Reliance Power with a loan to help finance the transaction. The decision of the bank is believed to be based on the politics of carbon emission, not on business aspects. This means a large loss of business to Bucyrus and many US jobs may be lost as a result. This result is at odds with the WH promise to increase jobs. I am definitely for protection of the environment but I am not in favor of interfering with lawful normal export business or any business transaction on the basis of some supposed environmental impact. If we are to live on this planet as any society other than foraging savages, we need to conduct normal industrial and other business that support the life of our civilization. If the WH can interfere with this normal mining equipment transaction, what will they interfere with next? Your job?

THE FINANCIAL PROBLEMS IN EU COUNTRIES

Why are countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, and others having financial problems due to excessive public debt? The main reason that EU countries are having problems is due to their liberal socialist forms of government. These governments try to provide cradle-to-grave security and medical care for all citizens, as well as other benefits. The people in these countries come to expect all of these benefits that run up the public debt. When hard times come, tax revenues drop. Also, in some of these countries, unions have gained great political power and can mobilize large groups of protesters against any government attempt to cut benefits or pay. As the public debt grows, the government sells more bonds to cover outlays. Then the interest tab on the bonds adds to the government's periodic outlays required, further adding to financial difficulties. Finally, these governments are forced to apply so-called "austerity measures". This causes even more problems and can cause a severe deflationary process in motion which is very difficult to stop. What can we learn from this? We need to resist liberal socialistic policies and try as Americans to be as self-sufficient as possible. Lets get our public debt paid down!

EASY MORTGAGES FROM FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC

What's wrong with getting a mortgage guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? Nothing if you are really able to make the mortgage payments over the full term. Was it too easy to get a mortgage because of the backing available from these government supported agencies? Was this part of the sub-prime mortgage crisis? Yes, I think it was as too many people got mortgages that they were not really qualified to get. Ultimately this led to foreclosures and the value of the sub-prime mortgages became of questionable value further fueling the financial crisis. We are still suffering from this problem with homes still going into foreclosures. Fannie and Freddie are now holding about a trillion dollars in these questionable mortgages and Congress is still not dealing with this problem. How did this happen? I believe it was mainly due to erroneous liberal thinking which is that all poor people should have the right to own their own home. Good, they should have this right if they are really financially qualified to handle their mortgage and able to make the payments consistently. Another part of this problem was caused by crooked mortgage brokers who signed up people based on false or incomplete information, knowing that the person applying was not really qualified. The government still has not taken action to correct this situation to the extent that is needed.

CLEAN ENERGY, PRACTICAL OR NOT?

Clean energy is definitely possible but there are a number of obstacles in the way to name a few: Millions of gasoline and diesel fuel vehicles already on the road now which will last for years, and hundreds of thousands of new gasoline and diesel vehicles are still being sold. Hybrid vehicles also require gasoline, unless they are full electric plug-in vehicles. What about wind energy? It works but it does not produce much power for the land space it requires and it is unsightly for some people. What about solar power? This is only practical in sunny climates, is very expensive, requires a lot of space, and some designs require a lot of water to operate. Hydrogen gas power? It requires energy to separate hydrogen from water and there is an infrastructure problem to have hydrogen gas stations built around the country. A fuel cell vehicle? It still requires some kind of fuel to function. OK, so what are practical alternatives? Natural gas is one of the cleanest practical fuels available now. Full electric vehicles would be practical for short run trips, e.g., city driving, if we could upgrade our electric generating plants to nuclear energy or a combination of nuclear, solar, wind energy, and hydroelectric power. My vote is to go with a proven technology now: Nuclear energy.

US GOVERNMENT UN-PREPARED FOR OIL SPILL

One thing that is evident from the oil spill event in the Gulf is that our government was un-prepared for this disaster. What if BP had just walked away from it and said its your problem, US? Our government should have a plan to handle this kind of event. If the government does not have the equipment or expertise to handle an oil spill (it doesn't) then it should at least have a group of oil companies that will be ready, under contract, to work with the US to handle the problem. One thing that the government should have been able to do is quickly organize a group of people to help prevent the oil from hitting our Gulf shores. Of course it did not, and look at the devastation of our marshlands and beaches, as well as the destruction of fishing grounds, and the livelihoods of Gulf fisherman! But all the government seemed to be able to do was build a few berms and rant and rave at BP. It did finally get a trust fund set up for affected people. The fund should have been set up right away so that thousands of people did not have to go without an income all this time. Another pathetic aspect is that we are losing a lot of oil that could have been saved and used, if the MMS regulators had acted properly to enforce safety rules and regulations. Hopefully this spill will be corrected someday soon and the government will be ready if such a disaster should happen again--hopefully it will not. In the meantime we need to quickly correct and implement the required safety regulation, as needed, that will protect us from another spill, and then resume deep water drilling as quickly as possible!

THE SPACE PROGRAM SETBACK

The Augustine Commission has in my opinion delivered a blow to the US space program. The new plan adopted by Obama based on the commission's report (but not yet approved by Congress) cut the Constellation Program. The Constellation Program would have allowed manned spaceflight returning to the moon and eventually to Mars and allowed the exploration of other parts of the solar system. Many people were employed on this program at NASA. Most of them are highly skilled technicians and engineers. Most of them will now lose their jobs and become part of our jobless community. The new "Augustine Program" sets us back to smaller rockets made by small companies that will not have the capability to build heavy lift rockets for many years, if ever, thus causing a delay in our earlier manned space flight schedule. Meanwhile, our NASA experts will lose their jobs. NASA remnant managers will have to spend many hours, days, and even years teaching commercial rocket companies the space flight trade. There may be poor results and possibly unintended consequences, such as safety problems, financial problems, and incompatible goals of commercial companies with our national goals. Also we will have to depend on Russia to get us to the ISS (International Space Station.) Expect other countries such as China and Japan to pass us in space flight capability while we struggle with small contractors to build something that is usable for space flight. By the way the ISS is now only of scientific use as its original purpose of helping to launch large rockets into space has been dropped. The ISS itself will be abandoned in another 5 to 10 years and become just another piece of space junk floating in orbit.

AMERICAS BIGGEST ECONOMIC PROBLEM

What is the biggest economic problem the US faces? It is cheap imports that are made in countries that have very low labor rates that we cannot compete with in this country. One example, Vietnam's labor rate is $0.49 USD per hour. How can we compete with that? We have already lost many industries to cheap imports from countries such as China, and others. Examples of US industries nearly wiped out: textiles, shoes, automobiles, steel, tools, and most small hardware items such as flashlights, knives, camping gear, kitchen utensils, dishes, silverware, etc., etc. Can you think of any small item that you could make in the US that can't be obtained more cheaply at a store that sells cheap imports? Even a can opener would be hard to make here at a profit. Our current trading system is called "free trade" both Democrats and Republicans have been pushing it for years. It has almost caused the US to lose its industrial base while we essentially tool up and build up countries like China by buying their imports. People say, "Yes, but we are a service oriented country now." Baloney, have these people checked out the services available from India? Everything from computer programming to catalog ordering and much more at cheap prices. Is there a solution. I think so. I call it FAIR TRADE. In this system an importer would have to pay a tax or tariff to equalize the import price of his goods to be reasonably equal to what the price of the goods would be in the US with our normal labor rates. In order not to start a trade war, the tariffs would be set so that some profit could be made by the importer while at the same time US manufacturers could compete with the imports using advanced manufacturing techniques and greater efficiencies of production. Lets re-build our industries. We cannot create wealth for the country if we do not manufacture products. We need more jobs in this country. New manufacturing jobs would be a big help. Whether you are Democrat or Republican, please consider this and write or call your representative to make sure he or she understands this problem.

THE TRIPLE HEDGED STOCK PORTFOLIO

A man who we will call Sam who is middle aged wants to earn dividend income form stocks but he needs also to preserve capital due to the limited funds he has for retirement. But he is also willing to accept a fair amount of risk. He does not know much about bonds so he does not want to buy bonds directly. He does not want to own physical gold as he has no place to keep it safe. So he decides to invest primarily in stocks and closed-end funds that pay high dividends, e.g., 5% or higher, on the open market. The high dividends also tend to stabilize the price of the stock. He buys only stocks that are profitable and can sustain their dividend. Example stocks are MLP's (Master Limited Partnerships, e.g., oil and gas stocks), REIT's (Real Estate Trusts), and closed-end high income bond funds. He invests 70% in these stocks. He wants protection from deflation so he keeps 10% in cash (a hedge in deflationary periods, e.g., the Great Depression.) He puts 20% in gold mining stocks or gold stock funds, or other non-perishable commodity stocks, to protect against decline in the value of the dollar (inflation hedge.) He sells call options (covered calls) on his commodity stocks to hedge against a decline in gold or commodity prices. Now he is triple-hedged but still has dividends with some potential for capital gain. So we have the triple-hedged stock portfolio!

FINANCIAL REG BILL NEARS FINAL VERSION

After more than 20 hours of overnight negotiations, Senate Democrats reached a compromise set of rules that will more tightly regulate banks and financial markets as well as transactions such as derivatives. The bill is over 2000 pages long and it will take some time for its full implications to be known and adjusted to. The effects will last for years and some of the regulations will be draconian and far-reaching even for the average person. Look for credit to be tightened by banks. Investors in real estate will find it harder to find mortgage money. Financial businesses will find it harder to operate their business. Ordinary business hedging will become harder to do. For example, a farmer may find it harder to sell corn futures to protect from a drop in price for his corn crop. Larger banks will have to divest most of their proprietary trading departments, especially derivative trading, because of the new regulations. This new law will create a new and giant government agency that is not really needed. We already have the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Between them they should be able to handle enforcement.

OBAMA TO CREATE NEW AGENCY FOR FINREG

The Presisdent has announced that he will create a new agency to administer the new financial regulation law. Why do we need a new agency? What's wrong with assigning the work to the Federal Reserve? This is where the experts are and we they already understand our financial system!

This is another example of government waste, spending, and inefficiency. When does it stop?