In discussing the proposed financial institution bailout in his column yesterday Dr Thomas Sowell said that “many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean.” To get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion he suggests thinking about it in terms of what was going on in the world a trillion seconds ago. The answer is not much. No one on the planet knew how to read. That could have been because no one knew how to write. It was over 31,709 years ago. I suspect there were no politicians around back then.

If you could earn a dollar a second (that’s $3,600 per hour) and worked 24/7 with no sleep or vacations it would take you over 31,709 years to earn a trillion dollars. You would be earning over $32 million per year but it would still take you more than 31,709 years to earn a trillion dollars. If you don’t think you can work that long and if you can recruit 31,708 people with the same earning ability to help out, you can earn the trillion dollars in about a year.

If the trillion dollar debt the government is about to incur is divided equally among 300 million Americans it will come to $3,333.33 per person. It seems to me that will drag down the economy as much or more than letting a few rogue companies go belly up.

My wife just returned from the supermarket “shocked” at having to pay $15 for a gallon of Mazola corn oil. This is a direct result of Congress’ decision to subsidize the diversion of corn to the production of ethanol for fuel. Thanks to those geniuses we now have high-priced fuel and cooking oil.

It’s kind of ironic that all those people I’ve heard about who have converted their cars to run on cooking oil may now have to convert them back because gasoline is now probably less expensive than used cooking oil.

This is one more piece of evidence that the government can’t run the economy. Every time it tries to fix one thing it breaks something else. Congress is now trying to throttle back the oil speculators. Who knows what kind of chaos that will cause? Gasoline prices may swing up and down by a dollar or more over the course of a few weeks, causing every vehicle operator to become a speculator. Do I fill up all my cans this week or wait one more? Do I start using my reserves now or fill up again from the pump?

If you don’t appreciate the complexity of our economy you should read this essay: I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read. After you’ve read it consider the likely outcome of 535 politicians trying to improve the process of manufacturing pencils.

It costs a lot to get reelected to Congress. So the incumbents are willing to take your money and my money to help ease their pain. Not directly, mind you. Devious politicians never do anything directly. After all, it wouldn’t be devious if it was direct. The AP reports:

A mortgage aid plan is on track for passage in the Senate as soon as today. The massive foreclosure rescue bill cleared a key Senate test yesterday by an overwhelming margin, with Democrats and Republicans both eager to claim election-year credit for helping hard-pressed homeowners.

The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

So all those people who have already demonstrated that they are poor risks for loans are going to get another loan backed by you and me. The Senate wants the loans to go as high as $625,000 and the House wants to up that to $730,000. Think about that. If someone with a bad credit rating wants to spend nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to buy a house, you and I are going to be forced to guarantee them a loan — if the House has its way. President Bush has said that he will veto the bill if it is passed, but that is because he doesn’t like some of its provisions.

Some of the lawmakers are pushing to make the bill revenue neutral. But who believes that will happen? If a lot of the “400,000 distressed borrowers” weren’t expected to default on their loans they wouldn’t need to have the tax-payers backing them.

What this bill is really about is a way for a bunch of well-connected builders to get rid of their over-built inventory of over-priced houses. What a stroke of political genius! Use tax-payer money to reward big reelection campaign donors and buy the votes of over-indulgent borrowers at the same time. I’m still looking for the day when such strategies backfire, but I’m afraid I’m looking in vain.

It looks as if Congress will approve rebates of several hundred dollars each for most all Americans — whether they paid any income tax or not. These rebates are supposed to stimulate the economy and prevent us from having to endure a recession. Congress is assuming that everyone will run right out and spend all that money. They’re probably right.

I already did my part. A couple of weeks ago I bought a luxury motorhome. Looks like I’ll continue to do my part because operating that thing costs about 45 cents per mile just for fuel. That is, I’ll be doing my part to stimulate the economy but not to help us become energy independent.

I would consider giving my rebate to someone who needs it more than I do, but they’re getting a rebate too — and they probably don’t have a luxury motorhome to maintain and operate. Anyway, it looks like I’ll have to spend my rebate on repairs needed by my luxury motorhome, because it was born as a luxury motorhome over ten years ago. The previous owner used up a lot of the luxury.

It’s probably going to take all of my rebate, and my brother’s too, to pay for all the needed repairs. But that’s okay because he owns half of the luxury motorhome. We haven’t worked out which half yet. I thought about foisting off on him the half that includes the fuel tank but then I realized that half also contains the bedroom and bathroom.

In case Congress is listening and another rebate is considered for next year, we need to have a satellite television antenna installed on the roof of our luxury motorhome.

Get ready for the next huge scam — like that of ethanol — to be perpetrated on the American people. Why do I know it’s a scam? Because it has to be forced on us by an Act of Congress. Congress forced ethanol on us and now they are about to force CFLs on us. If CFLs or ethanol are as great as they are claimed to be why wouldn’t the free market usher them into universal usage? The truth is that they aren’t as great as the claims.

USA Today reports on a bill now being pushed through the Senate that President Bush has said he will sign. It sets a timetable for phasing in energy savings in light bulbs. Comparing fluorescent and incandescent bulb energy costs, it says that a fluorescent bulb “saves about $5 a year in electricity costs, paying for itself in as little as four months.”

Although they don’t say so, apparently that claim is based on burning the bulbs constantly for a year. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. Its obvious that a bulb that’s only on for two hours a year is not going to save $5 a year in power costs. The lights in my boathouse are turned on about once a month and only stay on about 10 minutes each time. The lights in my detached garage aren’t on much longer. But Congress is going to force me to pay four times as much for these bulbs in order to save maybe about two cents a year in energy costs.

I tried CFLs and found two deficiencies so far. They don’t last as long as claimed and they don’t work too well outdoors on cold nights. And there’s the disposal issue. We aren’t supposed to just throw them in the trash because they contain mercury. Does this mean we have to get another recycle basket and have another big truck lumbering down our street each week?

How long before Congress tells us what color to paint our walls? After all, a room with white walls doesn’t need as much light wattage as the same room with darker walls.

Update: A commenter has pointed out that new problems with CFLs have surfaced. Some people with certain skin sensitivities have found that fluorescent light exacerbates the condition. And it has been found that the CFLs can cause migraines and increase the risk of seizures in people with epilepsy. See the comments for a link to a BBC article.

The liberals like to point to scandals like those of Representative Mark Foley and Senator Larry Craig — both caught falling short of the moral conduct they espouse politically — and ask if this is going to destroy the Republican Party. Perhaps the conservatives should find and expose a few liberal politicians whose moral values are clearly more Judeo-Christian than those they espouse politically, and then ask if this is going to destroy the Democrat Party. Both are instances of hypocritical behavior. In both cases one set of morals is being espoused politically and another set is being practiced personally.

I think it’s hilarious to hear members of Congress calling one another hypocrites — or challenging one another’s morals. How many politicians do you know who practice what they preach? Almost all of them say one thing publicly and do pretty much the opposite privately. It’s quite clear that they think most of us are stupid or just don’t care; sadly, they might be right.

Take the case of the US Attorney firings that the Democrats are so worked up about. The Bush Administration fired eight or nine Attorneys and the Democrats want Bush’s head on a platter (they already have Alberto Gonzales’ head). Never mind that the Clinton Administration fired about 90 US Attorneys. They apparently think that most of us don’t remember that or don’t care. They obviously don’t subscribe to the old maxim, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Here’s a message for most all of you politicians: I’m really not that impressed with you. I believe you to be one of the world’s biggest collections of pompous dipshits. I’m painfully aware that the future of our country is in your incompetent hands. But I also believe that we, the voters, will get rid of you before you can do irreparable harm. In the meantime I will continue to laugh at your phony displays of indignation over the missteps of the opposition.

If you haven’t seen the video of Senator Robert Byrd’s Barbaric speech on the Senate floor you need to watch it. If you have any doubt that the man is senile you won’t after viewing it. His speech is about the ’sport’ of dogfighting and was prompted by the recent arrest of Michael Vick, an NFL quarterback.

What is this man doing in the Senate? He will be 90 years old before the year is out. He has served in the House and Senate since 1953 — 54 years and counting. Why do the people of West Virginia keep electing him? Probably because they think he can bring home more pork than a new senator. Surely it’s not their idea of a cruel joke on the rest of us.

Sadly, this is not the most egregious case of voters sending a senile senator to Washington. South Carolina sent Strom Thurmond to the Senate for 48 consecutive years. He was 100 years old when he quit. If the man had decided to run again would they have re-elected him again at the age of 100? Probably; he had to have been at least 94 when they re-elected him the last time. I remember seeing him on C-SPAN sitting in a wheel chair and appearing to not know who or where he was.

Mississippi gave us John Stennis for 42 years and to the ripe old age of 88 (well, compared to Thurmond, Stennis was practically a spring chicken). He retired voluntarily too, so we don’t know what the Mississippi voters would have done either.

So what’s up with voters sending goofy old farts to the Senate? Are they so pessimistic in regard to politicians that they don’t think it matters if their senator doesn’t know what day it is — or nods off at the podium? A better question might be: If that many states are sending senile senators to Congress, how many are electing senators that are totally incompetent in less obvious ways? I’m afraid that a lot of them are.

Do these politicians not have close friends or relatives who can convince them that they’re too old to serve? They’re obviously past the point of being able to realize that themselves. A potential argument: Since you’re unable to dress yourself now, perhaps your effectiveness as a senator is also degraded. This gives us another argument for term limits: to prevent politicians from embarrassing themselves.

How long before a senator dies in his seat and no one notices? How long before some state unknowingly re-elects a dead senator?

(I decided to retire when I was 62 for several reasons, one of which was that I didn’t want my colleagues to remember me as a doddering old fool. I wanted you, the readers of this blog, to remember me as a doddering old fool. Now, five years later, I tend to forget what…)

The Associated Press reported last week that “Democrats celebrated a step toward reducing U.S. dependence on oil as the Senate approved a bill calling for more ethanol and the first boost in gas mileage in decades.” What the Democrats are really celebrating is their move to micromanage the energy market. They would like to micromanage all the markets. That way they can get more campaign contributions from all the industries that want to play in their markets.

We don’t need additional controls on the energy market, we need fewer. If the government would get out of the way private industry and a free market would eliminate any energy problems. The government is currently preventing the building of nuclear power plants, preventing the development of new domestic oil fields, and preventing the building of new oil refineries. Right here in my state Senator Mel Martinez boasts frequently about ‘protecting’ our gulf waters from becoming oil fields. There is no pressing need to reduce our dependence on oil in general; what we need is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

There is no real environmental gain from using ethanol instead of gasoline. The only benefit from ethanol is that it can be produced domestically and, therefore, reduces to some extent our dependence on foreign oil. We should welcome the development and production of alternative energy sources like ethanol, but leave them to the free market. If there is demand for ethanol someone will supply it. And there will be demand for it when oil prices get high enough. But ethanol is not the final answer.

The ultimate renewable energy source is the sun. When the sun stops shining we won’t need any more energy. If the government wants to sponsor some far-term basic research into new sources of energy it should put its money and effort into developing revolutionary ways of capturing solar energy. I’m not talking about capturing it through the production of corn and then extracting energy from the corn. I’m talking about more direct methods like the current use of solar cells to produce electricity. There has to be some breakthrough solution out there; we just need to get enough of the right people thinking about it.

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The Senate bill calls for price gouging provisions that make it unlawful to charge an “unconscionably excessive” price for oil products, including gasoline. Are they kidding? How do they expect to measure what is unconscionably excessive? Some court will throw that out the first time it is challenged. Perhaps they know that and are just trying to make some political mileage.

In a column decrying the weak work ethic of Congress, Dick Morris states that Congress took a whole day off work in January because of the championship college football game between Oklahoma State and Florida State. Apparently he only remembered that one team’s name starts with an ‘O’ and the other is from the state of Florida.  The actual participants were Ohio State and Florida. I just hope his collection of facts on the slothfulness of Congress is more reliable than his college football facts.

I’m not as concerned as Morris about members of Congress goofing off a lot. The shorter the time they’re in session the less damage they can do. And there’s not much point in complaining about their pay; they control that. Just vote against the incumbents when they are up for re-election.

Apparently the politicians in Washington think that we are all complete idiots or that we are just not paying attention. (Actually, they might be right, to some extent, on the latter). The Bush-Kennedy-Kyl Immigration Bill is an outright sham.

The proponents of the bill would have us believe that we need new laws in order to deal with the illegal immigration problem. This is clearly not true. Obviously we already have laws governing immigration or the immigrants we’re trying to deal with wouldn’t be ‘illegal.’ If the government had been enforcing existing laws there wouldn’t be an immigration problem today. The government hasn’t enforced existing laws, so why should we believe they will enforce new laws?

The proponents claim that it is impossible to round up and deport all the illegal immigrants. They seem to want us to believe that if they can’t deport them all there is no need to try to deport any of them. What if they felt the same way about capturing and punishing murderers?

They want us to believe that while it is impossible to round up and deport all the illegals it is possible to round up and guide all of them through a process that will give them citizenship, even though this process requires that they all go back to their home country for a period of time. So sending them home is both impossible and possible?

They claim that the illegals will voluntarily come forward to enter the citizenship process. But why would they? The process requires that they pay a fine, learn English, start paying taxes, and go back to their home country for a period of time. If they don’t come forward they can stay here indefinitely without having to do any of these things because … it’s impossible to round up and deport them.

They claim that the bill does not grant amnesty to the illegals because it has conditions and imposes a penalty. The only valid argument that the bill doesn’t reward the illegals for ignoring our immigration laws is that the bill’s citizenship process will be unattractive to the illegals and, therefore, ineffective — as I argued in the previous paragraph. In other words, it’s not amnesty only if it doesn’t work. If it is attractive to a large number of the illegals it obviously is amnesty.

The bill is a sham and it at least intends to grant amnesty to the immigration law breakers. That’s why it’s being called the Shamnesty Bill and that’s why it should not be passed.