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Rantings Even More Rambling Than Usual
by Randy
Barker
For some reason, it's easy to lose one's focus around the holidays.
Maybe it was the break in global warming that brought the recent festive
ice age conditions that we were being warned about back in the l970's.
It's just difficult to get in gear and be single-minded. The rants below
will prove it.
The Liberal Press, flacking for the Democrats as usual, have condemned
Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut as outrageously huge. Truth is, it's
outrageously small. When looked at as a percentage of GDP, it's
comparatively puny. According to the National Taxpayers Union, President
Reagan's tax cut was 3.3 % of GDP, President Kennedy's tax cut was 2 %
of GDP and Bush's proposal is 0.9 % of GDP. We are paying the highest
taxes since 1944, when we were trying to pay for a world war. We deserve
relief. The economy needs it. And the cuts should be front-loaded rather
than back-loaded as Bush has them now. Greenspan might have another
attack of stupidity and refuse to reduce rates to correct his 1.75 %
mistake. He's only done 0.50 % so far.
Tree-hugging liberals have created a mess in California that could
effect the national economy, of which California is a huge chunk. In
l996, California supposedly deregulated electric power, but added rules
that, in effect, have come to mean that utilities can't charge as much
as they are forced to pay for wholesale electricity. They are also
forced into using only natural gas, which is in short supply, to meet an
electrical demand that is 50% higher in the last 5 years. Yet, no
additional power plants have been built in California in the last 10
years because of environmental stonewalling. Clinton will conduct a
summit on the crisis this Tuesday after having made the problem worse by
signing executive orders banning access to trillions of cubic feet of
natural gas on federal land next door to California. Meanwhile,
California utilities have asked for a $10 billion bailout to keep them
out of bankruptcy. Why should I care? Not enough electricity to run
Silicon Valley is not a good thing. Although, my solar stock, AstroPower
(APWR-$38.88) going up 24% last week was a good thing. Maybe it will
have another +125 % year. Other utility stocks took the California news
hard. Duke Power was up 70% last year, but down 14 % last week.
Bill Clinton claimed that his first cabinet looked "more like
America". Bush has gone him one better. With all the Blacks,
Orientals, Hispanics, Women, and even an Arab Christian, Bush has a
cabinet that looks more like the United Nations.
Plus, there's one other difference. Bush's people are qualified.
Both Republican Senators from Mississippi went nuts last week.
Thad Cochran announced support for John McCain's unconstitutional
campaign finance "reform" that allows unions to contribute
their Republican members' dues to Democrat candidates without their
permission. And gives the Leftist Media even more power. The
ego-tripping McCain now has more help in trying to make amends for his
scandalous "Keating Five" past, and more help in sabotaging
George Bush's agenda.{ Being shot down both by friendly fire sitting on
your own aircraft carrier, and over Hanoi merely makes you unlucky, not
necessarily heroic}
But the biggest idiot of the week was Senator Trent Lott, who made a
deal with the Devil Democrats to share power in the Senate, even though
he didn't have to. Thinking that Democrats in the Congress are honorable
people who keep their word has never proven true in the past. Both
Presidents Reagan and Bush got screwed big-time when trusting Dems. All
this bipartisanship will go bye-bye during confirmation of Bush's
nominees. Every Democrat senator wanting to run for President in 2004
will oppose anyone the unions and the NAACP demands they do. Lott may
have been afraid 98-year-old Strom Thurmond will die in the next two
years, creating a Democrat majority anyway. But this could be easily
remedied. Didn't Lott ever see "Weekend At Bernie's" ?
At Least, Phones Rang In The New Year!
While a ½ % cut in interest rates powered the Nasdaq to its highest
one-day gain ever last Wednesday, the euphoria did not last. There was
some joy left by Friday, though. Notably, the long-suffering telephone
stocks in the portfolio. WorldCom (WCOM-$18.44) went up 31%, AT&T
(T-$20.19) went up 17%, Broadwing (BRW-$24.88) went up 9 %, Cable &
Wireless (CWP-$43.38) up 8.7% and Qwest (Q-$43.56) up 6.6 %. Other nice
moves, besides AstroPower's 24 %, were Targeted Genetics ($8.38) up 20%
and Scientific Atlanta (SFA-$37.94) up 16.5%.
Portfolio Performance: Down - 0 .04 % in 2001.
By comparison, the Nasdaq was down - 2.54 %, the S&P 500 was down -
1.66 %, and The Dow 30 was down - 1.16 %. The Nasdaq 100 ,which is full
of large tech stocks, went down - 3.15 %, the worst of all. For the
record, the portfolio loss was actually 14.898% last year, bringing the
11 ½ year average annual return down to 25.2 %
Have A Profitable Week !
randybarker@aol.com
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