Update

A couple of quick updates:

Since President Bush won re-election on Tuesday the NASDAQ Biotech I Share is up approximately 6% as investors shed pre-election fears that President Kerry would have initiated healthcare reforms that could have made medical innovation much less profitable.

On Friday morning UBS, home of the top rated global equity research department, released a research report suggesting that Google stock may be seriously overvalued. The second half of last week saw the price of Google stock drop 15% in three days, however the stock still sports a P/E ratio over 200 and rumors of large blocks of stock owned by insiders becoming available over the next couple of months. Many brokerages that participated in the Google IPO still won't allow their clients to short Google.

Also on Friday Merck stock also ended a tough week, driven down by concerns about VIOXX lawsuit liability. Numbers on lawsuit liability will no doubt be massive, but the estimates still vary wildly. However, the stock, still the stock of one of the largest Pharma companies in the world, which still has a pretty decent research department, has a P/E of just under 9. While P/E is not everything and liability risks may be huge, the stock is definitely worth looking into and researching.

There will clearly be bad news coming out of the KU College Republicans over the next few days, possibly threatening the reputation of one of the largest and most successful political organizations in Kansas.

Analysis of the Kobach loss pending...

Timothy Burger

Justin McFarland Resigns

KU College Republicans Chairman Justin McFarland has resigned his position, effective today. While Justin leaves the group in the able hands of Vice-Chairman Josh Steward, this is a loss for Republicans in Kansas.

For the past 18 month Justin has provided solid leadership and a stable hand for the KUCRs, by far the largest College Republicans group in Kansas. Political leadership, especially volunteer political leadership is always a tough road, but Justin has done a good job. Justin lead the KUCRs through a divisive primary election and through an impressive performance in the general election. Last weekend Justin lead a group of CRs to Iowa to help President Bush secure a narrow win in that state.

Justin has been an able leader and a good friend, I look forward to the day when he chooses to enter political leadership again.

Timothy Burger

Dynamic and Growing vs. Old and Bitter

"Non-farm payrolls grew by a robust 337,000 in last month, more than twice the increase recorded in September, the Labor Department said today. The department also revised its estimates of payrolls growth for September and August, saying employers added more jobs than previously thought. That brought the total of jobs created over the last 13 months to 2.2 million."

That is real validation that the economy is growing and that the Bush economic plan is working, we can only wonder what impact this news would have had if it came out a week ago.

However, readers of the New York Time will open their papers this morning to read a vitriolic diatribe from Paul Krugman. I am not going to re-print any of his column, you can click the link if you want to read it. It is classic angry liberal, name calling, baseless allegations, the whole boat. When I first read it, I was angry, I couldn't believe someone would say such nasty things about the voters and about the President. I was going to rebut his column point by point, but as I got started I realized that if I did that I was missing the point.

Paul Krugman and his leftist friends are mad for two reasons: first their policies have failed, and second, the voters reminded them of that on Tuesday.

Wherever the policies Paul Krugman has suggested have been tried, they have failed. He assails President Bush for job losses when our economy is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs every month and unemployment is just above 5%. In contrast the European economies he admires so much are in a perpetual quagmire, growing less than 2% if at all and with perpetual double digit unemployment.

He alleges that the only people who would vote for the President are wild eyed religious wakos, well Mr. Krugman, I doubt 51% of the nation would agree with that characterization. Americans voted on Tuesday, and people of all stripes chose to re-elect President Bush because they know he has done a great job of dealing with very difficult circumstances.

Mr. Krugman, the economy is growing, the world is becoming safer, your policies have failed, and your vision has been rejected, have a good day, I know I will and so will the millions of other Americans ready to move our nation forward into the future.

Timothy Burger

Sometimes the Good Guys Win

Tuesday night Frank Denning was elected to be Johnson County Sheriff. I met Frank about a year ago through my Uncle Dave Burger, who has worked in law enforcement for over 30 years. I could tell that Frank was a good guy, who would be a great Sheriff.

Frank's election is especially good because the incumbent Sheriff wasn't the best Sheriff, but he was a good politician. Initially I didn't know if Frank, who was not and will not be a politician, would be able to beat the Sheriff. Frank was clearly the better man for the job, but the sitting Sheriff was a heck of a politician. Seeing the people of Johnson County pick the better man for the job was a great thing.

Frank will take over a Sheriff's department in need of help, and I know he will do a great job in part because he is taking some great people to the Sheriff's office with him, including my Uncle. They will succeed because they are really interested in doing a great job at law enforcement, not on running for office. I wish them all the best, and I think this quote from today's Johnson County Sun sums up their attitude pretty well:

""Some people have commented that (after the campaign), now the really hard work begins," Burger said. "We disagree with that; now the work that we really know how to do begins.""

Timothy Burger

Victory!

"A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.

Let me close with a word for the people of the state of Texas. We have known each other the longest, and you started me on this journey. On the open plains of Texas, I first learned the character of our country: sturdy and honest, and as hopeful as the break of day. I will always be grateful to the good people of my state. And whatever the road that lies ahead, that road will take me home. The campaign has ended, and the United States of America goes forward with confidence and faith. I see a great day coming for our country and I am eager for the work ahead.

God bless you and may God bless America. "

-President George W. Bush, November 3, 2004


Timothy Burger

Ohio Votes

According the Ohio secretary of State's web page there were approximately 76,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio, nobody knows how many of them are valid, or who the votes will eventually go to (although provisional ballots rarely differ substantially from regular balloting). What we do know is that President Bush is ahead in Ohio, and if he wins Ohio, he probably wins the election. As I write this, Bush is ahead by 167,000 votes in Ohio, meaning that he would win regardless of if every provisional ballot were valid and went to Kerry.

The box above is directly from Ohio's Secretary of State's Office and updates automatically.


Timothy Burger

Polls Open

Polls Open at 6am in Kansas, so vote!

(if you are voting for Bush, if you are voting for Kerry, relax no rush, you have all day, sit down have a beer don't worry about it, isn't there something good on TV? your friends are going to vote so relax)

Vote, take a friend, I am taking my friend Chris, vote!

Timothy Burger

26 Hours Left (The Issues They Missed)

With 14 hours to go until the polls open, I thought I would throw out a few last thoughts about the 2004 election, most of which I hope will stimulate discussion even after the results are known.

For me the 2004 election started in the spring of 2003 with the beginning of primary season. Over the past 18 months I have met a lot of great people and even after a couple of nasty races and a disappointing primary election, this has still been a great election cycle. I look forward to watching the results tomorrow evening, cheering for President Bush and Republican victory.

However, there are three issues I think are vitally important that have gotten very little discussion:

Education Education is the key to a strong economy and will become even more important as time goes on and our economy becomes even more dominated by knowledge based industries. This election was a great time to discuss how we could solve the problems that exist with out educational system, but we dropped the ball.

In Kansas education funding has been used in attempts to raise taxes over the past few years. Our State Reps. talked about it a little in the primary and not at all in the general. Most campaigns stuck to the generic, "I am a product of Kansas schools, my kids go to Kansas schools, I know how important schools are to the economy" a line that means nothing. Education was not an issue and voters gave no mandate for higher taxes in Kansas, remember that when the legislature convenes in January.

In the third district congressional race, Moore voted for NCLB, but "has some concerns", it would have been nice for him to explain those concerns and how he would solve them, but he didn't, and Kobach's campaign didn't push him to. Kobach thinks we should take away the federal mandate to fund NCLB and special education, but keep funding both. Does that mean we take testing standards out of NCLB? Why are we going to fund something we have no mandate to fund? He does know that we need to get the undocumented immigrants out of our schools, especially our colleges, it's the common sense conservative thing to do.

At the national level Bush wants to extend No Child Left Behind to high schools a positive step towards bringing accountability to the most neglected high schools in our nation, Kerry wants to...Well Kerry wants to...well Kerry knows that this President has presided over the worst economy since Hoover and well...wrong school, wrong time, I mean...I have a plan to get this county back on track...I mean I have a four point plan, that's it Kerry has a real four point plan.

Social Security- The generation X and Y timebomb. This is probably the biggest fiscal problem our nation, indeed most industrialized nations, will ever face. The population is aging, not as fast as Japan or Europe, but aging quickly. With that aging comes tremendous new demands that our nation must deal with. The system we have in place right now will not be able to meet those demands, we have know that to be the case for thirty years and ignored it. Without serious changes baby boomer retirement will be a disaster. Real problems start in 2013, nine years from now.

The 2004 election would have been a fine time to discuss this, there was no discussion. We know many candidates, including John Kerry, have pledged not to reduce benefits or raise taxes, great on the campaign trail, disaster in policy. No changes now = massive debt and huge tax increases in the future. The simple truth is that the current system can't fulfill the promises it has made to our seniors, and will never be anything except a crushing burden for seniors in high school.

Debt- Skyrocketing national debt creates a lot of problems including higher tax burdens, higher interest rates and a weaker US dollar. The culprit is out of control government spending. The Bush tax cuts account for about a third, the war accounts for about a tenth, and rampant indulgent spending accounts for the rest. Balancing the budget in the late 1990s was one part fiscal restraint and about nine parts blind luck. As Social Security moves from a surplus to a deficit over the next decade or so balancing the budget will be more difficult every year.

The only way to balance the budget is serious fiscal restraint, that means making choices and telling some people no, you cannot have the money you want. Unfortunately the President has not done well on this count, although he has faced some remarkable circumstances that have made his job more difficult. Kerry wants to cut the deficit in half, right after he spends an extra $1.4 trillion or so and raises taxes by $400 billion or so, piling an additional $800 billion of debt to the $400 billion deficit we already have. For the record, at the writing of this article the US government owes approximately $7.4 trillion, a little more than $25,000 for every person in the US, and growing at a rate of just under $1.7 billion every day.






Timothy Burger