–Better arguments for Professor Dove’s article, “Buy Ameri-mexi-nadian”–

1. The best thing to do for the economy is to buy what you think is the best value. If an American company isn’t building the car you want, or if the American car of your type – say a Focus – costs $50 more a month than its foreign competition, what else will you do? Lower your personal standard of living in an effort to ‘patriotically’ support a corporation? Ford doesn’t do that. Neither does GM or Chrysler. They buy their shit where ever it’s cheapest – usually foreign. And they move production to where ever it’s cheapest whenever they have the chance. Do you think a new factory will ever be built in UAW territory again???

2. Foreign companies have low labor costs, resulting in higher value cars. American companies have some of the highest labor costs. Although the American workers are more productive than their foreign competition – those gains are nullified by their incredibly high – low skill wage. Unions in the US have functioned like a power syndicate taxing the auto companies – resulting in far-above market wages for their members. An auto worker is doing basic manual labor for what is equivalent to $50 an hour while his non-union neighbor is willing to do the job for $15 or $20, even less in this economy. If the auto companies can get a reasonable hold on their labor costs – they’ll add more value tot heir cars and be more competitive.

3. Besides the history of bad quality, US car companies also have a history of bad service – and that’s a recent history. It’s been over a decade since most foreign car companies have offered the 100,000 mile power train warranty.  Domestic manufacturers still only offer the 30,000 mile with an expensive extension – and often don’t cover problems when they do occur during the 30k miles. That kind of thing really sticks in a person’s craw.

4. US companies have unappealing entry-level options - still. Each US manufacturer has it’s small economy car, the type first-time car buyers often get. But they don’t offer the value of other models – like the Honda Civic. And how could they offer value? US auto companies loose money on the little cars, and only keep them so they can compete in the first-time buyer market. That reason for having a first-rate high-value first-time-buyer car is to start a tradition with young people. If a person buys a Honda and has a great experience, they are likely to buy a Honda the next time around. And foreign manufacturers like Honda excel in this market because all they make are small cars and they do it profitably – that’s where their energy is focused.

5. We no longer need large scale manufacturing for national security. The Great War was certainly the war to end all wars. Who, after enduring the destruction and loss of life of that great global conflict, could ever wage large-scale war again? Our modern weapons simply make it too horrific.

[edit: 1948] Now that we have the bomb, large scale war is something we’ll only experience in history books. No one will wage large scale war because it would eventually end in nuclear warfare, which would be catastrophic and in no one’s interest.

[edit: 1953] Oh shit, we might need that heavy production, or some counter to the Soviet mechanized forces, which are growing at a rate that will soon threaten all of Western Europe with an unstoppable swooping invasion.

[edit: 2003] Large scale warfare is a thing of the past. Modern wars are small, requiring light and fast military forces and air power. Heavy equipment is obsolete when a hand full of Ranger teams with eye’s in the sky and bombs from heaven can do in a month what the Soviet Army couldn’t accomplish in 7 years – or when such a modest force can topple a military regime over night, such as Sadam’s.

[edit: 2009] Modern wars require many troops, but only a fraction of them are combat focused, because the main goal is protecting and appeasing the civilians of the area. Domestic production of military equipment can be small because we don’t loose it – we just wear it out. Sudden large-scale war production is as unnecessary as fighter planes and manned air power.:-)

Growing up in Dearborn, MI, aka Ford Country, and having had family, friends, and friends’ family that worked for Ford, Chrysler, and GM, I may be a little biased when it comes to buying and owning American-made vehicles. But I am quite tired of the lousy reasons people give me to justify their purchase of a foreign-made car.
So occasionally, to give people a hard time, or to be serious, depending on who it is, I ask “why did you buy a Toyota/Honda/Hyundaii/Kia/BMW/VW/etc.?” I typically get one to three of the same answers every time.
“They are better quality cars.”
This is the most popular response for Japanese and Korean car owners. Especially in the DC area, there seems to be this unsupported belief that American cars are low quality and that Toyota is far superior to any Ford. Now if this were the 1990′s, or even the early 2000′s, the data show this is probably true. But if you have looked at a Car and Driver Report over the last 5 years or more, you will see that American cars are equal or greater to Japanese-made cars in nearly every category of quality and safety. So whatever 20th century misconception you are still carrying about a Ford car, do some research.
“They get better gas mileage.”
In most cases, especially for cars more than 5 years old, foreign cars were smaller and of course, got better gas mileage. Thankfully Detroit (what!) has stepped up to the fuel efficiency challenge and matches or exceeds that of foreign cars in many vehicle categories (here’s looking at you, Fusion Hybrid).
“This car was made in the US, right in Kentucky and most American cars aren’t even made in the US. Their made in Mexico.”
Wow, aren’t you a smart one. On the surface this sounds like a great argument and could justify buying that Corolla for years to come. However, the argument is garbage when you ask some questions. If factory workers in Kentucky or Ohio were not building a Honda or Toyota, what would they be doing? It is tough to say what they would be doing exactly, because who knows what else they can choose from. But if people aren’t buying foreign cars, what are they buying? American cars. So someone would be building those cars. Maybe in Kentucky, maybe in Michigan, or even Alabama. But American workers would be assembling these cars in some form or another. Most car parts for a Toyota are still built in Japan, even if they are assembled here. And yes, many things such as engines for Fords and GMs are built somewhere else, but this leads to the main point on this topic. Where do the profits go?
The answer is easy. If it is a Toyota, the profits go to Japan. If it is a Ford, profits go to Dearborn. Profits are taxed, which help build and support the local and federal government (and trust me, Michigan needs company profits). Profits support business expansion and growth, which creates more jobs. Would you like to create more jobs in Flint, MI or Seoul?
So tell me the US doesn’t have a roadster like the Z4 or Audi TT. Tell me that you like the look of the Cooper Mini. Tell me Toyota makes cloth seats that don’t give you a rash. Tell me you hate America and want all of its factories capable of full-scale war production to close down and be disassembled (and get a swift kick in the junk from me). But stop feeding me the BS you have convinced yourself is sufficient reason not to support an American company and the strength of the United States economy.

I just need this quick rant. Diane Reims read a letter a moment ago. It went something like this, in regard to the new Afghan offensive: I think Obama is taking big gamble. Success is fleeting. The solution is not guns and rockets. I think we should buy the opium harvest outright.

I’d like everyone to tell me their two favorite reasons this idea is Sofa King stupid? And let’s focus away from the “gun’s and rockets” argument, since Liberals will never succumb to the idea that there exists a thing called aggressor for whom only force is understood.

It’s simple. An attempt to “buy the opium harvest outright” would essentially double the demand for opium in Afghanistan, driving the price up. Of course, if would be more than double. There isn’t a co-op or central distribution center to go and right-out buy the whole lot. You’d have to artificially increase the demand several fold – increasing the price several fold.

If you look at any supply/demand curve, you’ll see the left side levels out at some point while the right side slopes up increasingly into a near vertical.

Think of it in these terms: Bananas are about $.50 a pound. They’re this cheep because that is the market price. If Kroger has bananas at $.75 a pound, I’ll wait until I’m at Meijer to get some. If Meijer put bananas on sale, say $.40 a pound, I might grab an extra one. If something happens and bananas drop to $.20 a pound, it probably won’t matter – I won’t buy more than maybe one extra. I’m already buying the maximum number of banana’s I care to eat. So you see the left side of the graph levels out.

Now look at the right side of the graph. Let’s say the demand doubles. What will this do to the banana price? It means there won’t be enough bananas to go around, so the price will double, triple, and keep growing until the market find its price – all depending on how much people want a banana.

This is the same thing that will happen in Afghanistan with opium. The price will – certainly – more than double. And what happens to either opium or bananas when the price rises, or when the demand goes up? Farmers struggle to fill the demand. Just like when we started funding ethanol fuel, there were food shortages in south America because farmers were switching from the local staple food – corn – to growing corn for fuel. Likewise, Afghan farmers will switch from rice and other staples to opium. And thus the price for staple foods will go up pricing more Afghans out of the market.

Will this take opium from the Taliban and make them unable to sell it and finance their guns and rockets? No, it will just make opium cost more at first, until the farmers catch up. Opium cost to the drug trade at the farmer-buyer lever is like water costs to a tire factory. All the drug trader’s costs are in smuggling and enforcing – and Taliban are probably considered something of both.

And if the US wanted to keep the price up, they’d have to dump more and more money into the drug market every year to compensate for the increased growing, continuing the cycle of skyrocketing food costs. So – it would just be stupid.

This might lead one to image a different market solution. It might seem a good idea to start buying up another crop. If you could raise the price of something besides opium, farmers would grow that instead of opium. There one problem with this – actually two. There’s of course the problem that Afghans already pay most their income for food and are easily priced out. But the fundamental problem is in HOW the crops are priced. Rice or fruit have price curves that are low, because the demand is dependent on people already at max output – they really can’t spend more on food. And if they could, they wouldn’t buy a whole lot more of it. You only need so much food regardless.

Opium is different. The price curve can rise very high. Opium demand depends on world demand for opioids, efforts governments make at regulating opioids, number of suppliers fighting over the market, trends in opioid use, and all the other regular world trade variables. In other words, even if you multiplied the price for a non-opium Afghan crop by 10, opium would still price its way into holding the amount of crop land it needs to fill the demand – because the actual opium cost in the final illegal opioid drug in pennies on the dollar – if that.

It’s better use guns and missiles to damage the Taliban’s ability to buy and ship opium and what they buy with the opium. Cutting off a smuggling routs and otherwise making the opium business an extremely deadly one drives the price up quite a bit!

So we got about 24 inches of snow Friday and Saturday.  It was something I dreamed of when I was younger.  I think we got that kind of snowfall once when I was in school.  We had two days off and I spent two days shoveling.  I never got to enjoy it fully.

We just got a new tv.  We were borrowing a television.  It was a 26″ CRT tv.  Last summer it started giving us trouble.  We would turn it on and get just a horizontal line.  Hititng the side of the tv did the trick.  But as time went on, we had to hit it harder and more often.  Eventually, I had to open up the back of the tv to look inside.  When I pulled out the circuit board a half an inch, the picture came up.  So, for a few months, we watched tv with the back half on, moving the cover front and back a little to get a picture.  It just got worse and worse.  It may only need a vertical deflector unit, but decided I had had enough.  So we ordered a new flat screen tv from amazon for a great price, no tax, and no shipping.

So now I want a blu-ray player to take full advantage of the 1080p.  I found one online (amazon again) for $76 off retail, the cheapest price by far of any other retailer.  It upconverts regular dvds to 1080p, and plays CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-R, and DVD-RW in addition to blu-ray discs.  Well, if you know me, you know I’m cheap and frugal.  I could not just purchase this player because of numerous budgetary reasons.  So, I got creative.  I sold a juicer I had bought back in college on craigslist last week - 25% closer to the blu-ray player.  Then the mid-Atlantic storm was forecasted.  So I borrowed a shovel from a friend and waited for the storm to hit.  Saturday morning I went out, triple layered as the snow continued to fall (only 2 more inches would end up falling on Saturday after I went out), and went door-to-door in the nearby neighborhood asking if people wanted their snow shoveled.  3 houses and $85 dollars later, I went home exhausted and happy.  I got a great workout in, and made money.  I then ordered the blu-ray player with no bad feelings or regrets, but a sense of encouragment.

One guy actually told me to come back the next day and he would have more work for me to do.  He must have thought I was poor.  I had wind pants on over my jeans and the wind pants had holes in them.  My cap was wet, old, and holey. And my jacket was soaking wet, which made it look even older than the 11 years it already is.  I looked the part of the guys that hang out at certain areas around here, especially Home Depot, looking for work.  The lesson from this experience is if my company continues to lose business and I get let go, I will have no problem finding some work to do around here.  No matter how humbling it may be, I really get joy from hard physical labor.

Overall economic growth doesn’t translate to a better world. We all still need art and music – or so I’ve heard. But – can we all agree that overall economic shrinkage does equate to a worse world – since people will be starving to death and without homes and stuff?

Homeless rates in America haven’t been high since the 30’s. And the increase in homelessness around Reagan’s time was due to the recession he inherited from Carter. I think this is the source of all these false-phrases about Reagan. Reagan didn’t continue Carter’s style of pandering to the poor so he was vilified by the hippies. His was more of a – we’re going to take our lumps and fix it.

As I stated in chapter 3, Reagan raised the interest rates to curb the inflation that was making everyone bitch-broke. (that’s what we’ll have to do when the Obama inflation hits) According to the United States Conference of Mayors, the main cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing. So, the policy of raising interest rates might be called a cause of homelessness – since it does increase housing cost.

• United States Conference of Mayors, “A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America’s Cities: a 27-city survey”, December 2001.

Of course, this same policy helped – along with tax cuts – to jerk the country out of a bad recession, the worst one since the Great Depression. So I say that’s a bad argument. Yeah, high interest rates make housing go up. But high inflation makes everyone’s nest egg disappear, which means a layoff can mean a foreclosure – not to mention everything becomes more expensive.

Besides that I don’t know what Reagan did that wasn’t good for homeless rates – specifically the huge amount of job growth and increased standard of living. Maybe you could make arguments about specific cuts, or Democrat policies he wouldn’t employ. I seem to remember some stories about homeless shelters being closed – or something along those lines. That might have been around Reagan’s term and you know the Liberals would have vilified his entire administration over that or anything else. But overall more entitlements were going out – as my last message showed.

I finally found Obama’s graph. The Whitehouse took it down I guess – so I had to find it somewhere else. It was figure 9 on page 11 of Obama’s budget at the start of the year. Also, look at the source. Thomas Piketty is a French socialist economist. LOL

See? Share of total income, as if wealth were a constant. But wealth is not a constant. It’s not something you can simply divvy-up. People make it out of labor and resources. The fact that the top 1% has doubled their % of total income earned doesn’t mean they’re taking it from anyone. It just means they are increasing their own faster than others.

If we go picking mushrooms, and I run around the whole time in my own area picking hand over fist, while you four pick leisurely, when we get back home I might have picked 100, while each of you each picked 25. Statistically I have 50% of the mushrooms. Does that mean I have a greater share of the total mushrooms picked? Of course not. I have 100% of the mushrooms I picked and 0% of the mushrooms you picked. There are still more mushrooms out there and I didn’t push any of you out of my way to pick them – I just picked faster. Maybe I hired someone to help me? Maybe I developed a new technique? Maybe I developed a mushroom detector?

That’s why this dishonest use of the “income gap” is false. In Obama’s budget it was used as proof of disparity, the rich cheating and getting rich off the backs of the regular people following rules. It’s just pandering to popular anger… And why the hell did they need to turn to a French Socialist economist’s graph – ffs?

As for trickle-down and poverty due to Reagan policies, your assertion is false. Poverty rates have come down since Reagan took office. It has cycled, but I don’t see how any of Reagan’s policies could have contributed to poverty. It’s not like he raised anyone’s taxes. And just from looking at the graph it looks to me like recessions cause the up-ticks in poverty – and whatever Reagan did after taking office decreased poverty pretty well and fast.

Poverty decreased from 93 to 89. That’s basically all of Reagan’s term but the first year or so he spent setting up his policies. The rate increased from 89 to 93, which was Bush Sr.’s term. But blaming him would be foolish since the economic policies didn’t change. From there they have trended generally down – the whole time using Reagan’s tax cut small spending philosophy. That’s changing now for the first time since Carter (77-81).

Just a note: careful when looking at Number in Poverty. This rate goes up with increase in population.

Trickle-up is the idea that cutting taxes on the rich will result in more investment – hence more hiring, buying and selling.

Here is a graph of unemployment from 50 to 05. Unemployment went down during Reagan’s term – didn’t go up until the 90’s recession, right along with poverty.

Education, GDP, and standard of living have all come up since the 50’s, dramatically starting in the 80’s, like everything else that positive. So I can’t find any proof for this idea that Reagan was hard on the poor and homeless or that trickle-down doesn’t work. He most certainly wasn’t and it most certainly does.

If you want more proof, listen to some 80’s music or watch a couple 80’s movies. Times were great back then. Everything was an inspiration to do better, the underdog sticking to his values, and so on. I mean, Karate Kid. That’s all I’ve got to say.

Try to be best
’cause you’re only a man
and a man’s gotto learn to take it
try to believe
when the going gets rough (When the things get
difficult)
that you gotta hang tough to make it (to be strong)

History repeats itself
try and you’ll succeed
never doubt that you’re the one
and you can have your dream

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

Fight till the end
‘Cause your life will depend
On the strength that you have inside you
Gotta be proud
standing out in the crowd
when they odds of the game defy you (When most of the
things in the game are against you)

try your best to win them all
and one day time will tell
when you’re the one that’s standing there
you’ve reached the final bell

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

(instrumental)

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

you’re the best around
nothing is gonna ever keep you down

Fight till you drop
Never stop
You can’t give up until you win sometime
(Fight!)
You’re the best in town
(Fight!)
Listen to that sound
A little bit of all you’ve got
never bring you down!
Chorus

By the Constitution, Congress is given the power to collect taxes and is required to regulate commerce andprovide for the welfare of the people. So regulating health care is certainly an obligation, whether you call it commerce or providing for the welfare of the people. So most of the stuff people have been proposing I don’t see constitutional problems with. Most of the proposals are similar regulations as there are for food safety – like meat inspection.

The 10^th amendment specifies that any powers not delegated to Congress and not prohibited from the states are granted to the states or to the people. Health care isn’t mentioned specifically anywhere in the Constitution of course. But reasonable laws, or even a universal government run system sounds to me like it could fit – with some rationalization – easily under the powers of Congress to collect taxes, make laws, and regulate commerce.

One of the crucial parts of healthcare reform is keeping insurers from discriminating against sick people –

preexisting conditions. But to make such discrimination illegal would allow everyone to simply rotate on and off of health coverage as they needed it – which would bankrupt the system immediately – so a mandate to have coverage is necessary.

I don’t know of any law that has ever existed that simply requires each and every citizen to buy something, especially not something that usually functions as insurance. States do something similar with cars.  You usuallyhave to own some kind of insurance to operate on public roads, but that’s contingent on owning and operating a car on public roads – not just being alive – and it’s the State doing it, not the Federal government.

There are federal laws that require you to purchase things but those again are only in order to make use of privileges or responsibilities – like if you have a baby you have to use a car-seat if you take them in a car. States also have helmet laws. I guess that’s requiring you to buy something too but only to take part in a privilege – and again that’s the state’s regulation.

So, since the Constitution doesn’t specifically give Congress the right to require by law that all citizens ownanything else in particular, unless it’s in order to participate in something, and no similar laws have been passed – it seems to me one could make a strong argument that such a law would be unconstitutional, an the basis that Congress doesn’t have that specific authority.

Congress can make laws setting up a meat inspection system, but requiring all Americans to buy meat every month by fining those who don’t – I think is questionable.

I’m just kidding. Of course I see a solution. It’s the common government solution. The way they will make a combination of reform ideas work is with hundreds and hundreds of pages of complicated exceptions, concessions, fancy rules, and arbitrary sums – like the cap n/ trade bill. This will result in a thick inefficient bureaucracy, a new area of specialty law, and all kinds of forms and long waits. In other words, the fixes that make reform possible could easily suck up any gains the reform its self made.

We already see this style of problem solving in the Baucus bill. It’s a 10 year $829 billion bill. It “pays for its self” with tax increases summing up to $500 billion and Medicare cuts summing up to $400 billion. That sounds sound until you realize the programs and reforms are not fully implemented until 7 years into that 10 years – but the tax increases start right away. And – the bill suffers from the age old Democrat problem of ignoring economic principles. In particular it expects tax revenue to grow. Specifically, one of these taxes is a 40% tax on “Cadillac” private healthcare plans (the kind union members get*). The revenue from this tax is supposed to GROW something like 10%+ each year. Seriously?

Seriously! These guys need to take an economics or a business class or something. You can take them online now. I bet they could get their homework done during their weekly commutes. Or they could at least open a lemon aid stand one weekend so they can get some vague idea about how business works. Hell, consumers don’t just stand there while you pitch rocks at their heads. Believe me. I worked my way through school as a sales person, and I’ve pegged a few right off. But those were rare. I usually had to chase them.

What I mean is, consumers look for good deals. Stuff you slap a 40% increase on rots in the show room. As soon as such legislation passed, every health insurance company would have a team of people (who all spent 6 years taking economics and business) studying the documents like they’re solving a big puzzle. You see, such tax legislation would immediately create demand for a “Town Car” system – a system that functions pretty much like the “Cadillac” plan, but isn’t. Sort of like if you promised not to add taxes, but instead added penalties and fees.

But regardless, even if the private insurance companies didn’t create a “Town Car” plan, the 40% increase in cost would change the cost/benefit equation and make a lot of people leave the “Cadillac” plans because the extra cost is not worth it to them. It’s like those draw-string garbage bags. They cost like $8 for 40. The regular bags are around $6 for 40. I’m happy paying the extra $2 for the convenience. But if they went up to $11 for 40, I’d see the regular bags as a great deal – and deal with them instead, and feel good about it.

I was just listening to BBC. It’s a good thing to do every other day or so. You get a clean outside perspective. They were describing the Cash for Clunkers program. LOL Just the way they dryly described it made it sound so totally stupid. The British accent “Cash for Clunkers,” then talking about the $4500 subsidy for buying a new car, how the dealers didn’t get the money up front so are crippled cash flow wise, how the program is so backed up, how it was so popular the whole 2 billion – or whatever – was used up in the first 48 hours, and how it effectively is causing people to “reschedule” their purchases. And the best part was summarizing the story by calling the Cash for Clunkers an indicator of how effective Obama’s philosophy of buying one’s self into prosperity will be.

 I just imagine some English guys sitting in front of their pints listening to this. “Bloody hell, Cash for Clunkers is it? The dog’s bollox, that one. I’ll give you this clunker right here – gestures to his mate – for $4500. Thought they was broke – they was? Like to be that bloke on a good day – Father Christmas and all that.”

 Senator Ryan was just saying that the opposition to the health reform bill isn’t because people are reading the bill – because there isn’t a bill yet to read. He wants people to wait until the bill actually gets written before they start getting upset about it. Yeah right buddy. Why don’t you guys write the bill before you send the President out selling it for three months? Or maybe coach Obama on a general approach so he stops grossly contradicting himself in the same paragraph. I agree with John Stewart on this one: The Dems couldn’t sell Eskimos shit they actually need.

 And what is this I keep hearing about a survey of Americans showing a majority not thinking the war in Afghanistan is worth “it”? Are people bag-of-door-knobs stupid?

Well let’s start with the actual reasons for the planes. They are for high level Air Force and Washington officials. Three of them are replacements for three retired planes and the forth one, well, someone less than politically savvy decided we needed to add it (probably for the furiously growing number of officials in Washington).

What’s wrong with commercial? Well, as those hapless auto company CEOs tried to explain to congress when congress reamed them out for flying theirs – it saves money. When you have to travel all the time, with heavy security and staff, and often at short notice – private aircraft pay for themselves, and are simply more secure in almost every way in comparison to commercial flights.

From here it looks like the Republicans will have more ammo than a carrier group. It’s difficult to say how hard they’ll have to work though. It’s only been seven months. The Democrats have certainly pulled a lot in that seven months, but who knows what big issue will be at the forefront in three years. Maybe heath care reform will fail and Obama will lose power to get anything more passed and simply sails into obscurity after 2012. Maybe the economy will turn around thanks to clunkers and energy taxes thrusting Obama into a second term, then a third, and then into a socialist dictatorship?

Or maybe all this crap they are pulling in Washington will continue to keep businesses scared out of their minds and the new taxes will keep them crippled – causing the economy to continued to spiral down. The big stimulus and other abuses of the dollar eventually kill it. A terror attack occurs. An Iranian or N. Korean nuclear weapon undocumentedly migrates to one of our cities and melts it. And Obama is chased out of office by a very small group of vocal Republicans with pitch forks.

It’s really hard to tell. According to Obama’s book, he should know what the Democrats are causing. He talks about how Bush and the Republican majority cost themselves a lot of political capital by belligerently forcing legislation through – which is just what we’re seeing now. That’s why I used to think Obama wasn’t worried about getting elected in 2012. I thought he was going to just try pushing through all the social change he possibly could.

Now I think he was just naïve and is learning lessons – because he’s now compromising the crap out of health care reform with the conservative Democrats. He dropped from government run health care to government run health insurance to single payer options and now even that is being debated.

Oh yeah – talk about transparency. Buying those jets was considered the continuation of a previous program. That’s why they tried to keep it quiet and didn’t post it on Obama’s transparency website. Lol