VAT, Inflation, and White Paint?

I’m going on very little sleep here, so I can’t say I will have the best tone today, just to warn you right off the bat.

As I look at the news the same question keeps coming to mind over and over :

What! Are they stupid?!

I know, a little juvenile at best, but… then again…

The first one that sticks out is our Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary; obviously a man of incredible mental acumen… until he opens his mouth. Secretary Chu claims that global warming has reached a “crisis situation”. Really? Are we looking at data here or does someone have Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth looping over and over again on his DVR. What is even more mind boggling is that not only do we have to do all of the already proposed insane ideas that would crush our economy and send us into the Greatest Depression, but we also need to go up on our roof with a five gallon bucket of white paint and cover the whole thing. That’s right! Our brilliant energy secretary claims that if we painted all of our roofs white it would effectively take all of the cars off the road for over a decade. I’m not sure how on earth he came UP with that number, but as long as he is pulling random numbers out of orifices, maybe he could give me the winning Powerball numbers for tonight.

The second one is a little more wide spread. Last week a handful of ballot measures in California went down in flames after people realized that the only solution that their law makers had come up with to solve their massive budget shortfall was to create new ways to tax them to death, all while they have been giving themselves pay raises and spending BILLIONS of dollars on state programs for illegal aliens. Unfortunately this particular stupidity isn’t limited to California, in fact it is rampant in Washington. Evidently the President and the Treasury Secretary (don’t get me started on THAT guy) are hearing from “tax experts” that we really need to have a Value Added Tax (VAT) to help make up for our SOARING deficits. If you aren’t familiar with the VAT let’s just say it is ONE more way for the government to take the money out of your wallet a little bit faster. It’s also known as a national sales tax. Now, I’m not opposed to a national sales tax… just get rid of the income tax first. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a “tax expert” but I’ve got an even better idea to make up for the massive deficit that we have… STOP SPENDING MONEY, MORONS!!!! Okay, I feel a little better now.

It’s one thing for the average Joe like me to get upset with my government and yell at them for doing stupid things, but you would think they would pay a little more attention to the people that are actually lending them money (they just TAKE mine). Evidently the Chinese aren’t really happy with our monetary policy lately. For a while now they have been yelling at us to cut off the bailouts and stop spending money, but they seem to be even less fond of the fact that the Federal Reserve is buying Treasury debt. That’s right, the Fed is buying debt (or lending money) to the Treasury.

Let that process for just a second.

Got it?

Yes, that’s called printing money out of thin air. We are loaning ourselves money and if I were the Chinese (who own a HUGE portion of our debt), I wouldn’t be talking with people about this problem I would be smacking them senseless. In fact, we should all be smacking them senseless! This is a recipe for DISASTER. Can anyone say inflation?

Okay, believe it or not, I haven’t had my coffee yet. I was afraid that if I drank that first I would just throw the computer off the desk and end up on some security video, spam email that you end up getting four dozen times.

Ugh… stupid people.

Sorry, I’ll try and make the next post a little more civil.