The Bipartisan Directive

"What makes men think they can justify death? Is it arrogance?"
- Mel Gibson, The Patriot

While watching The Patriot this weekend that quote really hit me. With the events of the past weeks I have been disgusted at the acts of violence around our country and the world. Almost as disgusting as the violence is the ignorance about current events. It surprised me how many people had no idea about the police killings in Oakland and Pittsburgh, the shooting sprees and people killing their own families in New York, Alabama, and even my home state of Washington. The "justification," excuses, or even blame accross conservative and liberal lines for these events given by the shooters and the media has been the stagnant economy or job loss or any number of reasons. I am not a pacifist by any means, but when innocent people die for any reason is terrible, be it "justifiable" or not. In my last post I had said to read a paper, watch the news, surf news stations on the web, or listen to news radio for just an hour and you will be more informed about the world you live in. I am sticking by that because it astonishes me when people in the most powerful country in the world have no idea what is going on it. We are world leaders, yet we know nothing of the world. President Obama told Europeans in a speech there that Americans were, "arrogant," and though I find that completely offensive I find it hard to disagree with him. Arrogance may not be the correct word but ignorance fits it perfectly. So many people had no idea North Korea was preparing to launch a "test" rocket that it was honestly scary. The news started covering it adequately AFTER it had already been launched, and North Korea is a country with a viable nuclear program. If there is a type of "justifiable" violence it would be to protect innocent people from a dictator like Kim Jong Il, but instead most of us only justify our own ignorance and arrogance. Arrogance that we believe our government should give us everything and make sure none of us fail, arrogance that we are leaders of the free world and must be treated as such, and arrogance that we have some right to the wealth and prosperity we so easily take for granted. We DO have the right and the opportunity to work for that prosperity, we DO have the right and opportunity to lead the world and protect freedom and innocence, and we DO have the right, the opportunity, and the duty to be informed and make this world a better place. Maybe eventually we can lead the world by showing it that violence is not only unjustifiable, but unnecissary, and by eliminating not only ignorance, but arrogance as well.

Now I will move on to the news I wanted to cover, and live up to the expectations I have made for myself of being fair and honest.

I may seem harsh in most of my posts against Democrats, President Obama, and I hope Republicans and our government as a whole, but I found something positive I want to share to balance out my own negativity (believe it or not it depresses me too). I originally heard about this on Fox News and then took time over the weekend to research it more. It is called the, "Payroll Tax Holiday Act of 2009," and it was proposed by Democratic Congressman Walt Minnick of Idaho and Republican Aaron Schock from Illinois. This Bipartisan idea put forward by two former businessmen would help small businesses, of which there are about 5 million in the United States. They believe that small businesses will lead the way out of this recession and get our economy growing again because 70% of Americans are employed by small businesses. What the bill proposes is any business that has less than 50 employees can "take a holiday" on paying their payroll taxes, which they say comes out to about $120 per employee per pay period and that money would be required to be reinvested in the company by the employer, and would also put the employees portion into their pockets giving them more to spend in the economy. In essence this bill puts money back into the system, and not only into the hands of the producers but the consumers also. I also think this bill is a great idea, not only a great idea but a great bipartisan idea! It gives employers a chance to grow and hire more employees, and gives 70% of Americans more money to save, invest, or spend. If there is a better way to jumpstart lending, spending, and our economy I don't see it. There was a study done that said just a 40% decrease in this tax could add 2-4 million jobs and INCREASE tax revenue (as reducing taxes in the past has almost always done). Both Congressmen are new this year, freshmen in a government of career politicians that have come up with one of the best ideas I have heard in years. It allows not only the creation of new jobs, but for employers to keep current employees that they may not have been on the verge of being forced to let go.
Here are the places I got my information, so you can make your own decision and hopefully we as Americans can make ourselves heard and help these Congressmen pass their great bill.

http://minnick.house.gov/2009/04/bipartisan-proposal-calls-for-payroll-tax-holiday-for-small-businesses.shtml
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1836
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512433,00.html

Beyond Politics

I am sorry it has been so long since my last post. I wanna focus on this that have gone on the last few days and weeks that I haven't been able to cover that I think have been attributing to our situation here in America and also around the world. The call for a world currency to replace the dollar as the stable median for trade is as much our fault as any other countries and is a big cause of the uncertainty that is keeping us in a recession and our stock market in a rut. While everyone was focused on the AIG bonuses and taking sides there was much bigger things going on, and we were being "cleverly" distracted. If you dont know what I'm talking about with AIG bonuses then I implore you to just watch an hour of news a day and become a little more informed. They are the bonuses that the government wanted to tax 90%, which is using taxation as a political weapon against a certain people, which is... quick test,
A - illegal
B - unconstitutional,
C - retroactive
D - All of the above
If you answered "D" then you are correct, and if you answered, "D for Dumb," then you get a bonus point. (Note: Bonus points as well as the quiz are like points on Who's Line, and you can take that to the bank, because soon they will have as much value as the dollar) Take for instance the fed printing a trillion dollars to give to ourselves to finance our own debt, but they didn't want us to know about that because we all know that printing money causes inflation, and printing alot of money will cause our dollar to be worthless. We also borrowed another two trillion dollars, the the Congressional Budget Office's previous projections for the budget deficit was about a trillion dollars off and they now believe it will top $1.8 trillion just this year. This is a terrible cycle in which the dollar is worth less and then on top of that to borrow money we will have to pay higher interest rates to other countries and on our own loans. Those things don't work very well together especially when the government is trying to get, "the credit flowing again." The new bank plan to share bad morgages from the banks between the public and private investment and buy ups is actually not a half bad plan. The problem is that it hinges on the banks selling the assets for $0.50 on the dollar when at the least they are going to want $0.80 on the dollar but no one is going to want to buy something that risky for that high of a price, and the banks aren't going to budge on the prices. Then the government called for more oversight and the power to take over and control any company that has a significant influence on our economy. After that, President Obama fired the CEO of GM, how he has the power to do such a thing I'm not completely sure. I thought that was something for the board of directors of a company to do, but I guess maybe I was wrong. Or maybe I am correct and the government is overstepping their bounds like the continue to do, and stepping all over the constitution. Do not think I am only picking on liberals, democrats, or Obama, because this all began with the Bush administration though it was not this full scale and I believe he still did many good things, and the current republicans aren't helping at all either. The government plans to bailout newspapers, why and how those are helpful to our economy I am also not sure, and for some reason I think that is directly against the first amendment of the constitution. The second amendment and others are all on the chopping block it seems, more and more every day with the new judicial appointees and court rulings along with government policy. I feel for the ex-CEO of GM because at 54 he had worked for GM for 31 years and had a large retirement built up, but cannot collect it until he is 60. Everything he worked to build and now his retirement is hanging in the balance and now he has no say in what happens to the company. The people want what GM built, they wanted the trucks, they did not want the economy cars and hybrids. That is not GM, that is what you can get from Japanese automakers. It is called a niche in a market, but the government stepped in and told them they needed to diversify, like they told the banks to take risky mortgages, and now all these companies and financial institutions are failing. Ford is still a very sound company, has not gotten any government money, and is doing fine which is something I attribute to them not listening or depending on the government. Companies know what to do in their sector and designing what people want, the government clearly does not, especially the elected and appointed officials in our government who have had NO experience in the private sector whatsoever. The government cannot even see the logic in its own programs. They say people cannot afford health care and that they want to get credit flowing, but they tax us to death. If they simply lowered taxes we COULD afford health care and the government would not need the money to provide it. Less taxes would also give us more money to invest to get credit flowing like they want.
The Constitution is the supreme law of America, and I do not want a world government, world currency, world law, or any higher law here in America than the Constitution. Everywhere in the world is different, different cultures, and thus different laws. I do not understand why there is even a debate about our constitution, what is says, or whether we should adopt foriegn laws. Our government does not understand our own laws or what we stand for as Americans, in fact, Daniel Hannan, a member of the British Parliament seems to understand our economy and political system better than anyone here. If you don't believe me just watch some of his videos on youtube, he is truely a brilliant man and I can only hope his view is shared in Europe and he is elected there. Before the government starts to take over the media, deciding what we want as consumers, and attempts to take away our second amendment rights one way or another is when we need to act and let THEM know what WE want, not when it happens, before. We need to go beyond politics, unite like we did after Pearl Harbor and September Eleventh, and become Americans again.

The Proverbial Parachute

Over this last week this administration, the rest of our government, and most of the media have utterly failed at their jobs. Not only did President Obama show is inexperience with foreign policy by disrespecting the entire country of Britain but Hillary Clinton managed to give the Russians an un-spellchecked gift of goodwill. Britain, our closest ally, found it fitting to send us a gift of a statue of Winston Churchill after 9/11and on their most recent visit brought us even more priceless and symbolic gifts. In return President Obama gave them 25 classic American DVDs, that can’t even be played in England because of compatibility issues, and found it fitting to send back the statue of Winston Churchill as well even though they told us to keep it. Needless to say the media in England has been all over that story, and the people there are very frustrated. Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard about it though, because most of our media hasn’t really covered the story at all, along with the “reset” button we gave to Russia as a sign of resetting the relations between our two countries. Instead of reset however, the button said “overload” in Russian which is a pretty big typo considering it is the exact opposite thing. Now you have the right to disagree with me on this, but if President Bush had done either of those things don’t you think the main stream media, side stream media, and satirical stream media would have been ALL over it.

Now I want to be more middle of the road by complaining and praising members of both parties on my main subject. The economy. Unlike President Obama who talks towards the center and walks to the left, I will keep my word and stay towards the center, albeit to the right of the line, of the road (hey at least I don’t lie right?). I for one think there are some pretty smart people on Wall Street, and when Warren Buffet says our economy is going, “off the cliff,” I have a tendency to be a little worried. Every time President Obama talks our stock market nose dives, every time a new policy, a new budget, or a new spending plan comes out the people on Wall Street take a glance and stock prices plunge. Those things have attributed to about a 20% drop in the value of our stock market since Obama took office. That is an immense chunk of many people’s retirements and savings, not to mention the loss in value of homes. The stock market is a very good judge of our economy as a whole and the consumer confidence is a big factor into that, and the policies our current government is pushing forward are doing nothing to help either one. By our current government I don’t just mean democrats either, I mean everyone, but lead by a democratic President and majority. A President who is surrounded by politicians, secretaries, and advisors who can’t pay their taxes or who veto bills in their states to create cheap energy like coal plants that would have provided 2,500 jobs. Our current situation is better than Asia or Europe so I don’t understand why we are so worried. On the other hand the fact that this is a global matter has the potential to be our prevalent problem. If the world leaders who can’t even fix their own countries decide to adopt a global plan to combat this worldwide recession we could be in big trouble. Let’s take a look at President Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget plan that Wall Street has used as a handle to flush more of our invested money down the drain. The budget that doesn’t fix programs that don’t work like we were promised, it just throws money at them. The budget that pays $12,000 per student for terrible education and powerful teachers unions. The budget that doesn’t make green energy cheaper, but makes fossil fuels more expensive. This would give $634 billion for a down payment on universal health care. I understand why Wall Street would be excited about that much money for a system that has no plan or outline for how to spend the money at all. It also includes $750 billion for the Treasury Department to purchase struggling assets from banks and $52 billion for other countries. Those things also have no use in getting our economy back on track and Wall Street knows it. We have now found two things this inexperienced President doesn’t know (or care?) anything about, the economy, and foreign relations. He is very adept in his use of teleprompters and socialism however. Oh and did I mention he is reaching out to “moderate” Taliban? Other policies in the budget include raising the taxes and lowering deductions for the rich. Those people that save and invest in our economy and keep the flow of capital going through banks to stimulate things and create jobs. He will also increase the capital gains tax, not that there are any in this economy, and reduce the amount of deduction people can get by giving to charity. So instead of you getting to decide which charities are worthy of your money, the government will. This also sounds like his executive order to federally fund stem cell research. It is a common misconception that President Bush banned it, but instead he just decided that it was an ethical decision and should be decided on by the American people. He cut off federal funding but private funding was allowed, and as an American I would like to know that I have a choice in funding what I believe it and so should you. With this huge budget comes a HUGE deficit, the largest ever in fact by far, twice as large as any previous and even if halved would be more than President Bush’s.

I’ve already talked about the ridiculous of a notion it is that the deficit will be reduced at this point, let alone halved, and about the redistribution of wealth that is destroying the success of our people and our country. We cannot afford this, this is not sustainable, and with the stock market poised on the edge of a cliff, just waiting for us to push it into a freefall for the rest of the 6,500 points, it needs to stop. We need to remind the stock market that we are Americans, capitalists, and that it has a parachute in the form of us that will pull it back out of this recession without any help from the government. We don’t need big government or spending, let the banks fail, don’t give Fannie Mae the more money it wants, let the other companies fail, let capitalism and the hard work of Americans pull the stock market back up and save everyone’s equity and retirements. Well, everyone besides the people who didn’t have any to start with and our now living off the government, if you can even call them true Americans, or that attitude American in any way. If you don’t believe me, go read a history book.

Time to pull the cord on that 'chute..
and maybe the plug on some other things.

What Government Intervention is Doing Wrong

Its been a while since my last post but after reading some of what is developing today I felt it was prudent to comment on it. First if you read the papers at all and read the business section you might notice that more companies are asking for bailout money. Not only that but many of these companies have already received money such as GM. AIG is another curious case, they were one of the first companies to have money thrown at them. They have already received 150 billion in bailout money, 60 billion in a loan 40 billion for 79.9 percent equity stake, and 50 billion for housing AIG's bad assests. Not only that but it looks like they won't even be able to pay back the 60 billion dollar loan that it said it would by selling off assests. The problem with this is that in todays economy it is to difficult to sell them and they aren't getting the price they want for them. As of right now they have only sold 2.2 billion dollars worth. Add into the fact that the 40 billion that the taxpayers paid for for equity is now worth 6 billion. So as of right now at the very best a quarter of the money given won't be paid back so AIG has sucked up 37.5 billion of taxpayers dollars with a high probablity of more to come. Another big company that needs more money is GM they are asking for an additional 16.6 billion more to stay afloat along with the 13.2 that they have already been awarded. This doesn't seem like the most sensible thing that the government can be doing right now from my point of view for a couple of reasons. First if they fail then we will have lost that money flat out so there goes another 40 billion. Second if we continue to supply GM and Chrysler then we aren't going to let them fail which could be even worse because the price would just keep on going up. You might ask well if we help them then they will recover and it will all be good. The problem is that they aren't going to recover very fast, they are burning through cash and losing money at a staggering rate. So when will it stop the giving of free money to GM because I feel like they are going to be asking for more money before the year is out. Those are just some things I have noticed while reading the newspaper the past couple days.
Now for why the government could be making a huge mistake having this bailout of over 1.5 trillion dollars. I'm not going to go into to much detail here because this post is already long but essentially it had been widely believed that America was pulled out of the Great Depression by FDR's new deal programs. In reality they prolonged the Depression longer then it would have been. The main reason for this is the fact that they threw money at the problem. The monetary base increased by 100% between 1933 and 1939. The problem with this is that that was the exact problem. The depression was triggered by all the malinvestment in the 1920's and all the easy money available. In essence FDR should have just allowed the liquidation of the overcapitalized companies. I feel like our government is doing the same thing now throwing money at a problem when the money might not even work and it is basically screwing over our later generations by casting us into a deep hole of debt. Now this problem isn't Republican or Democrat based I believe that the problem is our government as a whole and has gotten to the point that they just love spending to much money because its not theirs.

How far is too far?

I apologize that it has taken so long to continue with my ranting, it is sickness and midterm season, but now I’m back at it and I will try and cover all I missed in a condensed way. Don’t worry, even though I haven’t been writing I’ve been paying attention. Congress just passed a bill to expand the budgets of different federal agencies by about an average of 80%. At the time while it seems everyone in America is tightening their belt, the government is expanding their budget, borrowing, and spending. Some Republican state governors are going to refuse to take the money, most Democratic governors agree that the huge stimulus bill isn’t perfect but they need it because their people are suffering. Here is some advice for the suffering, stop electing governors or representatives who run deficits and destroy your state. People in states like Texas and Alaska, who run balanced budgets and have surpluses, are going to fix and finance the other states problems, how is that right? The President has promised to cut the budget deficit in half by 2013 but I, and a lot of other people, are wondering how he is going to go about doing that? Reduce the programs that we just increased the benchmark for? Probably not, instead we will tax the wealthy and businesses. Yes that’s right, tax the people that create jobs, have jobs, and use it to provide for the poor. To me that sounds like redistribution of wealth, aka socialism. Plans to pay unemployment, welfare, bad mortgages, and individual people’s debt. Taking money from responsible people and giving it to irresponsible people, from hard working people to lazy or less qualified people. You don’t get out of debt as an individual or a country by borrowing and spending, but by saving and living within your means. This shouldn’t surprise anyone though because when the government gets in trouble what do they do? Well, California has a plan in the works to legalize marijuana, then regulate and tax it to make money. It is illegal for people those unemployed people to sell it now, but if the government gets in trouble they can change laws and do as they like. Most people would say getting an education is a better way to go, so maybe this is what our government should do, get an education.
This revolving door of spending is irresponsible and stealing from future generations. Obama didn’t inherit anything from Bush, originally his tax cuts were cutting down the deficit even with the war until Pelosi (who is in charge of the budget) came in and started incredible spending again. He didn’t inherit anything in fact, because she is still there to run it up even more and I wish it was Obama’s and not hers. We are stuck with her for much longer probably. The government’s plan to nationalize banks, some of whom didn’t even want the money but were forced to take it, and the auto industry by putting government committees in charge of them is wrong. What happens when they want to oversee or nationalize the media? When has it gone too far? As far as I am concerned it stops when they try to take my rights, my life, my liberty, my property, or when they go directly against the Constitution. None of the stimulus packages have worked, and they are planning more. Let capitalism run its course. Stop spending on pork projects like the new $20 million for tattoo removal, stop paying for things that the government is not supposed to provide like universal health care, and get back to the principals America was founded on, hard work and small government. If we could spend money and create jobs to end unemployment, why are there always people that are unemployed? Why does the government say they can do things that they have no control or that experts in the field say is impossible? I am tired of being lied to and so should you, the government works for us, and we should demand more from them. Not more in the sense of free handouts, but more in the sense of honesty and accountability.

The Tree of Liberty...

After I spent so much time ranting about how the new "stimulus" bill had been pushed through Congress in less than 24 hours, it proceeded to loiter on President Obama's desk for two more days doing nothing but collecting dust. For those two days all the major news channels constantly had experts, politicians, economists, and seemingly whoever wanted to talk about the bill on air debating, nitpicking, praising, or complaining about it. This would have been great and informative if we would have gotten all the information BEFORE the bill was passed by our legislative branch, but instead it happened afterwards. Why? Because there was no time to read the bill before it was passed, let alone discuss or debate it, so they had to do it after the fact. Again, after the bill was passed so swiftly, why did it wait so long to be signed into law? I have three reasons, and they are purely opinion, but there are many who share my sentiment on the subject and I implore you to decide for yourself. Reason one, Obama wanted to sign it on a day where he would have good press. He wouldn’t want to sign it on a three day weekend with slow press and people on vacation. No, he wanted to sign it on Tuesday when everyone went back to work (well, those who were still employed) and was actually paying attention to the news. Then the American people would see his vision of, “change.” Reason two, Nancy Pelosi wanted to get to Italy. Yup, right after the bill was signed she took off (on her private jet) for an eleven day trip to Italy, and she couldn’t miss that now could she. On a side note the largest owner of private jets in the world is the US government. Reason three, democrats Congress didn’t actually want anyone to read what the bill actually contained. Since they pushed their message of bipartisanship and working together to fix this, and then they didn’t include any republican ideas in the bill. I believe that even they think this huge spending bill is as pointless as the preceding “stimulus” packages, but they all saw it as a huge opportunity to get money for their pork projects. I think this because they continually say obvious things about this package and the American economy to cover all their bases. First they said this would create millions or jobs, now it will create or save millions of jobs, and probably not until 2010. Things like, “it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” or, “this is not an instant fix, it will take time.” It is the American economy, it won’t fail, and of course it is going to get better with time! It is that way because there are still people out there that believe in hard work. Those people are the small business owners of America, and they employ over three quarters of the American workforce, but somehow they barely got any tax breaks or anything for that matter in this stimulus. Business tax provisions were cut from $67 billion to $4 billion. Who is getting the tax breaks and the bailout? The unemployed and the automakers. The automakers like GM who just keep asking for more, but even after the billions we have given them, their restructure plan they came out with today still calls for them to close five plants and cut 47,000 jobs. About 15,000 of which will be white collar jobs, but those white collar workers aren’t part of the Autoworkers Union and won’t get all the benefits the blue collar workers get under their agreement with GM which is what put them in this huge hole in the first place. Once times got bad the big automakers couldn’t keep up with all their retirement payments and benefits packages. The bailout is so bad, even the American Socialist (two words that should NEVER go together) Party doesn’t support it! California could restructure its budget, or get rid of its teachers unions or build new prisons with their bailout money instead of just letting prisoners go, but instead they will just release convicts, continue to run a deficit, and have a poor education system. All so they can build a train from Disneyland to Las Vegas, save a field mouse species, and keep their borders open so they can waste 5-10 billion dollars a year on illegal immigrants. It is like the lawmakers all played rock paper scissors to decide which projects would go into this bill, and everyone with the good ideas lost. California also sent out IOU’s today instead of tax refunds that everyone was expecting back. You give the government an interest free loan, and they send you back an IOU. If you did this with your taxes they would hit you with late fees or interest, so shouldn’t these people getting IOU’s get interest from the government? That is assuming they get paid at all and in these economic times it is like adding insult to injury. This situation is the same in Kansas and other states will surely follow. This is just foreshadowing of the, “generational theft,” that is occurring right now. That term, so eloquently stated by Sen. John McCain, refers to the borrowed money and interest that my generation and most likely my children’s generation will have to pay, and that is just not acceptable to me. We get $8 more a week now, they get trillions of dollars worth of debt later. The inept government shows itself in many ways, a treasury secretary that can’t pay his taxes, a head of the Department of Education who used to be the chief of education in Chicago (by far the worst education system and schools in the country), and the continual neglect of promises to the American people. After this particularly long rant I will leave you with a few quotes to hopefully provoke your thoughts.

*I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
*The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
*A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson

*Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them
*Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
*Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
- Ronald Reagan

and last but certainly not least.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson

Reasons Why the Bailout Could Do Nothing

Since the 2nd bailout has been passed that is supposed to stimulate our economy, I have a couple of questions. First of all where did our first bailout go? Henry Paulson told the American taxpayers that if we quickly handed him 750 billion dollars we would be able to fix the economy. Of course that hasn't worked and now we are planning on giving another 825 billion? That doesn't seem like the best idea to me. There are a couple similarities to both of these bailouts. First they were both rushed through the house without being thoroughly planned out. The excuses that the lawmakers are giving for doing this is the economic situation that ruined Japan during the 1990's and the fact that Japan didn't act fast enough to help the economy. Of course that doesn't mean moving so fast that stuff isn't actually planned out. There is the same effect essentially as moving to slow and rushing a bill through so fast that plans aren't ironned out. Money was given out with no oversight as was shown in the case of AIG when after the bailout top executives and employees went on a couple hundred thousand dollar spa retreat. This was after the bailout mind you when AIG should have been cutting costs instead of relying on taxpayers dollars. When there is no oversight there is no incentive to actually do what your supposed to so to speak. So here is a couple questions to end this post on that I will begin to answer on the next post. What was the economic situation in Japan in the 1990's and how is it similar to us? Why will this bailout not help? And what exactly is the cost to the American taxpayer?