T.E.A. Parties

It’s tax day. Hopefully you aren’t going to be up at midnight dropping your taxes off at the post office or trying to work through the electronic traffic jam submitting them on-line. Personally, I am very proud of myself, I am expecting my refund any day now. This is a personal best for me having done all of my information gathering in March!

And there was much rejoicing… yeah.

In any case, if you have all of your papers in order and have already completed your filing, you may be free for a party, a T.E.A. party that is (Taxed Enough Already). During the height of the stimulus nonsense, Rich Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago exchange and worked the traders in the vicinity into a frenzy over the government using tax money to bail out banks and bad mortgages. As part of the rant he called for another Boston Tea Party. Some people thought that was a good idea. Today, all around the country there will be hundreds (estimates go as high as 2000) of TEA Parties in different locations, usually staged near state capitols, city halls, or other prominent government buildings.

If you would like to participate at a rally near you, there are several places that you can go. Freedom Works has a good map of them, although no site is going to have a exhaustive list, since there really isn’t any central organizing behind this. It’s just more of a grassroots movement that caught on. If you are already planning on going and want to take your digital camera with you, maybe your Blackberry or I Phone and do some Twittering from the rally, PJTV.com is signing up “citizen journalists” to help cover the different events. PJTV.com (Pajamas Media) is also a good place to get the real and latest story on all of the protests since they will be covering it extensively today.

Some have been skeptical that the main stream press is going to cover these events. I would disagree entirely. I think they will be well covered. Not to get the message out that people are upset about the government spending 90% over budget, but as a follow up to a story that ran yesterday. The Dept. of Homeland Security released a report discussing how the recession and the fact that we have our first black president, were fueling “right wing radicals”. Kind of odd to me that this report would come out right before protests that have been planned for weeks.

The sad thing is that the ‘report’ is not based on any facts. Where are the attacks by “right wing radicals”? What groups specifically are growing during this turbulent time? There are no specifics about any groups. No numbers. Nothing to back up the claims. They also single out returning military veterans as possible targets for these right wing militia types, after all, everyone in the military is a stupid hick anyway, right? Bunch of violent, uneducated, racists. That’s why they got “stuck in Iraq”(to quote former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry) in the first place.

This report is ridiculous and shameful; evidenced by the fact that the White House dodged questions about it and reasserted their claims of supporting veterans.

The report also claimed that single, hot button issues would be used for recruitment, things like border security and gun rights. Good. As if these two things weren’t legitimate issues? As if someone who thinks our border should be secured and protected is some type of racist zealot, or that someone who believes that the founding fathers knew what they were talking about when they wrote the Second Amendment is some type of crazed gun freak.

The protests will continue anyway. They will get slanted coverage that will minimize their numbers. The smaller protests will get coverage, while the larger protests will be ignored or downplayed, all while small numbers of “anti-protestors” or President Obama supporters will get all of the coverage. Guaranteed. Sad to see what our media has come to.

Check out PJTV.com, the Drudgereport.com, Townhall.com, Freedomworks.org, or any other crazed, right wing, radical news site. They will be giving more realistic reporting of what happened. It’s one of those far right, conservative, fundamentalist issues that we believe in… it’s called honesty.

Missed Opportunity

President Obama missed a golden opportunity yesterday. In a closed door signing the President approved the $410 BILLION budget extension.

The president could have used this as a perfect moment to show his commitment to fiscal responsibility, struggling minority school children, and a renewed opposition to earmarks… but he didn’t. Instead he claimed that this was just last years mess that needed to be taken care of and then he could move on with his own rules and his own budget.

The problem is that the $410 BILLION check has his name on it.

Opinion polls would have risen across the board if President Obama would have rejected the 8% increase built into the budget extension. At a time when taxpayers are hurting and watching their savings accounts dwindle under job losses or pay cuts, it would have been a morale boost to see the federal government take a 5-10% cut in their normal operating budget. An 8% increase is just a slap in the face and a very clear message that Washington is out of touch with what is going on in the country.

President Obama recently talked about education and claimed that he wants all children to have the same opportunities that he had. Unfortunately Democrats slipped a bone to the teachers unions into the monster spending bill and killed a highly successful voucher/scholarship program that had allowed 1700 poor Washington DC kids to attend private schools. The program allowed for 1700 ‘scholarships’ of $7800 to be given to children at public schools, who could turn around and take that money to a private school to help pay their tuition. DC schools are notoriously bad and many of the children and parents who participated in the program did so not only to improve their child’s education but because they feared for their child’s safety at the public school. $7800 may seem like a lot of money to be spending on one child, but it is about HALF what the DC public schools spend per child. President Obama could have not only been a savior to these 1700 children, but could have increased his own position as an education reformer by rejecting this bill because of this amendment.

Anyone who pays any attention knows that Washington is broken. President Obama could have made a strong statement to the nation that he is serious about fixing it by vetoing the over 8000 earmarks that are included in this bill that added over $7 BILLION to the cost. It would have sent a message to the American people that he actually cares about their concerns and that it is not going to be “business as usual” in Washington.

Unfortunately for him, and for us, President Obama did not veto this horrible budget extension. Instead he tried to limit his personal responsibility in the matter and claim that this is just an extension of what happened last year. With opinion polls still hovering around 60% (though falling) the president could have used his position to pressure congressional leaders of his own party to make the obviously needed changes to this bill, but he didn’t. The funny thing is that it would have stopped the slide in his polls and probably sent them slightly in the other direction.

This was a missed opportunity.

By any measure it was a mistake.

"Fiscal Responsibility"

I’m inspired! In honor of President Obama’s new budget proposal, I think that we should all go out and practice his personal brand of “fiscal responsibility”.

Step number one is to go to the bank and find out what is the biggest loan that you can get. Take a second or third on your house if they will let you, throw in the cars, the dog, maybe even the kids as collateral and see how much you can get it up to. If they have the nerve to ask what the loan is for, just tell them that you are in a personal financial crisis and you are convinced that the best way to recover is to spend your way out of it.

Let me know how that works out.

I’m not sure what Keynesian planet our President and his advisors reside on, but I’m afraid they are about to coming crashing back down to earth, bringing the global economy down with them.

His current budget proposal reflects a $1.7 TRILLION deficit. Can you even conceive of how much money that is? Think of it this way, the population of the U.S. is about 300 million people. A $1.7 TRILLION deficit means that we have to take out a LOAN of over $5600 for every man, woman, and child in this country. Our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is on a world tour right now, which included talks with the Chinese where she had to beg them to purchase more American debt. I am sure that the Chinese will comply and purchase more debt, but as they do they will want more return, especially as our credit rating starts to dip. That’s what happens when you have a ton of debt, out of control spending obligations, and sinking revenues; your credit rating falls. As it does you become higher risk and the lenders demander higher interest to purchase the debt. What you will soon see, and we are getting a glimpse, is a sharp uptick in inflation as the global economy has been flooded with the US dollar. Along with that we will see rising interest rates, as our lenders demand more return on their ‘risky’ investment. Rising inflation and rising interest rates. Sound familiar to anyone?

Throw into the mix a TRILLION dollar tax increase on businesses and individuals.

Let’s address the issue of “fairness” for a second (one of our President’s favorite words when he talks about tax increases). The upper 1% of income earners in this country bring in about 22% of all of the personal income. That’s a big chunk. They currently pay 40% of the total personal income tax that the federal government collects. 22% vs. 40%. Are we still talking about “fairness”?

Now lets talk about potential. President Obama proposes raising income tax on people making over $250K/year. That’s a good chunk of change and just to add a disclaimer, does not include myself. Who are these people? For the most part they are business owners. Small business owners to be more precise. They are individuals with the means and desire to create jobs for other people. When you raise their taxes, it decreases their potential to hire new employees, in fact it may even cause them to have to get rid of current employees. It is clearly and ANTI-stimulus to our economy. Is that what we need?

Businesses. Well, if you look at the tax increases on businesses, a good portion of them fall on oil companies. That’s an easy target, they are everyone’s favorite villain right? Do you like paying more at the pump? Oil companies are like all companies. They don’t pay taxes, their customers do. When you see increases on taxes for oil companies you need to understand that YOU are the one who is going to pay that tax. You will pay it on every single item you purchase, as well as when you fill up your car. Things don’t appear in stores magically, they are driven there in trucks and trucks use… gas!

So, when you hear our president get up at the State of the Union and say that if you make less than $250K a year you will not pay one dime more in taxes, he is doing two things. Number one he is lying to you. YOU are going to pay the taxes, because YOU are the consumer. Number two he is fueling the fire of petty class warfare. Not for your benefit, but for his personal purposes to try and enact his personal agenda. This is a tactic that he adopted and was taught to do as a community organizer. It is dishonest and it is divisive and takes into account the desires of the few to the detriment and demise of the whole.

Finally the biggest losers in all of this are the poor. “But wait, “ you say, “I thought we were doing more to help poor people?” Unfortunately that is not the case. Charitable donations have already decreased with the sinking economy. Add to that President Obama’s plan to rescind tax benefits for wealthy individuals making charitable donations, along with repealing certain provisions for itemization and you have people seeing less benefit in giving to charity. Instead of rewarding good and generous behavior, the President’s plan will punish hard work and discourage charitable giving. In the end the poor will suffer.

When you hear the President mention “fiscal responsibility” you need to look beyond the words and pay attention to the actions. If this course continues you will see rising inflation, rising unemployment, rising interest rates, rising gas prices, and increased poverty. These are not the hallmarks of “fiscal responsibility” but rather the effects of reckless fiscal mismanagement.

The Other 85%

The "other" part of the State of the Union.

I thought I would start this post by saying a few bad words, that’s right, I’m laying them all out on the table.

“big business”
“CEO”
“profit”
“oil”

If you listen to President Obama or any of the Congressional leadership recently, you would think I was some type of charlatan, throwing around words like that.

The question is, when did running a big company become bad? Why is it suddenly equivalent to selling your soul to the devil to become successful in corporate America? Don’t we WANT businesses to be successful? Don’t we want them to have money to pay workers salaries and maybe even a dividend on their stock?

If you listened to the State of the Union, you heard quite a bit of CEO, bank, and business bashing. Isn’t some of this deserved? Absolutely. However, having Democratic law makers (of which our president WAS one recently) bashing banks and CEOs for mismanagement and wasting tax payer dollars is kind of like a drug dealer ratting out one of his customers to the police. President Obama threw out a lot of blame in his State of the Union address, but it wasn’t directed at all of the right people. There seems to be a prevailing opinion among liberals that the ONLY honest people in the world are liberal politicians and really, really poor people.

Of course they must be pretending that we haven’t been paying attention to the President’s cabinet appointments.

President Obama never acknowledged the fact that GOVERNMENT should bare the bulk of the blame for this whole economic disaster, starting with the Clinton administration. He also said that de-regulation is to blame and called for “legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system”. How about law makers that will actually LISTEN to federal regulators? It is absolutely DISHONEST to stand there and point the finger at the banks and say that “everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions” and not even MENTION the politicians who ignored corruption at Fannie and Freddie and even berated regulators who came and testified to it!

The blame game wasn’t the only subject of the night. Big tax increases came up on multiple occasions. They weren’t introduced that way of course. Obama pressed hard for a cap and trade system to “save our planet from the ravages of climate change”. Not mentioning the fact that a) climate change is not controlled nor can it be managed by human factors and b) this is actually a TRILLION dollar tax increase in disguise. Of course he re-iterated that “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.” Obviously he means direct taxes. Indirectly your taxes will go up in direct proportion to the cap and trade system, because after all, businesses don’t pay taxes; their customers do. Who is going to pay for the TRILLION dollar cap and trade? You. On every purchase of every product.

But my favorite totally off the wall statement of the night was that Universal Heath Care will help us bring down the deficit. Did you miss it? Here is it in its entirety.

“This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.”

What? That makes no sense. Ask the UK how much their National Health System has helped their budget? It definitely would affect the deficit, but not in the direction that the President was alluding to.

Last but not least, there were several, shall we say 'disingenuous remarks', but considering he is discussing massive new regulations, a government cap and trade system, and a plan to nationalize healthcare, I would consider the following statement an out right lie:
“Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t.”

Pa-lease.

The speech would have been a lot shorter if he would have just said, “Big business, big medicine, big oil, and rich people. That is the problem. A massive, all encompassing government is the only solution.”

My T.O. list... rapid fire!

Oh my, where to begin with all of the stuff going on. I was stumped, so I decided I would make a list of the stuff this week that was just outrageous to me (politically) and give you a quick hits list.

- Our newly appointed Attorney General, who had issues during confirmation because of his involvement in the Clinton pardon scandals, said that we are a "nation of COWARDS" when it comes to race. Hello? I thought the election of Barack Obama was deemed as the beginning of post-racial America. This irritates me to know end! Personally I don’t care if a person it black, white, Hispanic, oriental, Asian, or anything else; if the person is fun to hang out with and can have a decent conversation then we’re cool. It seems to me that 90% of the country is OVER race. They just don’t care! The other 10% is racist, not because they despise or prefer any certain race, but because they CAN’T STOP OBSESSING ABOUT IT!!

- President Obama talking DOWN our economy. This is not the Great Depression! 8% unemployment is nothing like 30%. This is not the worst economy since the 1930s, although if you keep beating it down it WILL BE. I thought America voted for HOPE over FEAR? There is only ONE reason I can think of that a leader would use the bully pulpit to BEAT THE HOPE out of our economy and that is to advance his own agenda. That is pathetic and it makes me mad.

- The non-stimulating stimulus. Just a mental check here. If legislation passes that is going to help our economy, what happens? The indicators for the future of our economy suddenly go up, right? What is the greatest indicator/predictor of where our economy is going? THE STOCK MARKET. Investors not only PREDICT what will happen with our economy, they actually BET on it. They put their MONEY where their HOPE is and guess what? They have no hope in the future off our economy right now because the course our government is on has been historically proven to be WRONG for the economy.

- Inflation. I’ve mentioned it before and here it comes, you keep interest rates too low for too long and throw money into the system like it’s a bottomless pit, and in an economy where we import most things, you are going to have inflation. So now it’s coming. Add onto that the recent implementation of the new anti-lead bill that just took effect on kids’ toys and the budget for a family with four kids just took a kick in the groin. By the way, this same legislation just killed a whole industry that produced dirt bikes for kids… because the MOTORS have lead in them! WHAT?! And every toy that is made for kids will soon have to have EVERY COMPONENT of the toy tested for lead by an independent company. Just think of how expensive NEXT Christmas is going to be! Hope the circuit board in your Xbox didn’t contain tin-lead solder. That’s dangerous, because after all a kid could open that up and LICK the printed circuit boards. COME ON PEOPLE!!!

- Our freedoms eroding. The EPA is now actually considering a 2 year old court ruling that says it should evaluate whether or not CO2 should be regulated. Hmm… I wonder how the Lib’s investigation of that will go? Soon they will be regulating how much you can drive, how many kids you can have, how much you can exercise, and whether or not you can even go to a certain city, because after all there are too many CO2 producing people there already. You might have to get on a waiting list. They have already talked about new taxes on COWS, taxing you for every MILE you drive, regulating how often you can take an airplane… at this point we should all go out and buy horses… but they would probably slap a tax on that too.

- Members of Congress and leadership that don’t follow the STINKING TAX LAWS THAT THEY WROTE AND ARE IN CHARGE OF ADMINISTERING!!! Hello? If President Obama really wanted to boost the revenues to the Treasury and make a move that would send his popularity through the roof, he would request that the IRS perform an audit of all members of Congress. Just in appointing cabinet members he was able to collect on almost a quarter of a million in back taxes. Just think how much we could get auditing all 535 members of Congress?

I feel better now… okay not really, because all of these things have the potential to get worse before they get better. Buckle your seatbelts people, this could be a rough four years. Let just hope we can get some real conservatives (not R.I.N.O.s but CONSERVATIVES) in the Congress in 2010.

Stimulus Passes the House

Not surprisingly the stimulus bill passed the House by a vote of 244 - 188. NO Republicans voted for the bill, while 11 Democrats voted against it.

Now it's on to the Senate, where the bill will get more pork, more pages, and we will get more debt, more government, and more wasteful spending by our elected officials.

Pres. Obama held a cocktail party after the vote and invited Dem and Rep leaders. They served drinks and wagyu (kind of like Kobe... yeah, almost as expensive) steak appetizers. I'm not sure what that is all about.

I have a stimulus headache!

When I first started looking at this entirely unmanageable stimulus bill it was over 300 pages, which approaches unreasonable.

As H.R. 1 now stands it is 1588 pages. There are only a couple of reasons a single bill would ever be that big. The first is that the desire was to make it so complex and obtuse that no one would be able to read, understand, and keep track of every part of it. This coincides with the amount of money (nearly a TRILLION DOLLARS!) associated with it. Quite frankly, with that much money and a bill this large and complicated, you would need an extra BILLION dollars just to set up an agency to monitor the corruption being proliferated in the name of this bill. The second reason you would make a bill this big is to make sure that you had enough pork in it to offend every Jew, Muslim, and vegetarian on the planet. This bill is nothing more than a 'pat on the back' pay back to the groups that propelled the Democrats into power. I'm disgusted and overwhelmed at the stupidity of this whole thing.

I know the economic situation is tough, I see it every day (more layoffs in my company coming today), but this doesn't even approach being a responsible or EFFECTIVE approach. This is a power grab! This is outrageous! I'm nauseous...

Big Oil and Big Government... who makes more off the deal?

The next time you hear someone in the media condemning “Big Oil” and the “obscene profits” that they are making, just think of these numbers that came up during Charlie Gibson’s interview with the CEO of ExxonMobil.

The following are stats for ExxonMobil broken out on a per SECOND basis.
- $1400 per second in Profit (not bad, eh?)
- $4000 per second in TAXES (why isn’t this all over the media?)
- $15000 per second in cost

Basically they spend $19000 a second to run their business and pay their taxes and make $1400. Kind of puts it in perspective. Although I think it’s ridiculous that you have this kind of outrageous taxation going on throughout the process to get gas from oil and the government (Fed) still takes an additional 12% at the pump.

Now THAT is obscene!

Now how fair does a ‘Windfall Profit Tax’ sound now?

$4 dollar gas stinks

Of course it's better than $5 gas, but I really don't even want to talk about that. What you can see in Washington right now is very important. We have a major problem right now. Gas prices have DOUBLED in a year (and they really weren't very good a year ago). This has put an enormous strain on the budgets of almost every American family. Personally, I drive 30 miles each way to work. My kids go to a very good charter school that is 15 miles from my house. That's a lot of driving. That's a lot of gas.

The Democrats want to act like they care about this issue and try to show that they are looking out for the little guy, especially in an election year, so they have introduced several new taxes. The first was the CO2 cap-and-trade fiasco, which was a multi-trillion dollar tax grab on corporations, especially those that produce energy. Even the EPA (not exactly a fiscally conservative bastion) said that this would increase the gallon of gas by $1.50. More realistic estimates had it as a $4-$5 increase PER GALLON. What a mess!? Fortunately they pulled it back, not because they realized it was a bad idea but they think (and they are probably right) that either Obama or McCain would sign the bill (Bush said he would veto it). So keep paying attention next year, because we will need to SHUT DOWN the Washington switchboards with phone calls on this one. Anyway, after that failed, they tried to push through a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. Huh? How is this going to help? Are we forgetting here that oil is a commodity, therefore the price is not controlled by these companies? If they sold it cheaper it would only be gobbled up FASTER by China and India who are increasing their demand for oil by double digits each year! Plus, these companies are corporations, that are held by 401K management companies and their stock holders EXPECT them to turn a profit. So if their taxes went up (currently around 40% anyway) they would have to... cut costs to increase profit. This would mean less domestic oil (taxed at a higher rate, thanks to lawmakers) and more foreign oil, leaning more on OPEC. None of these "solutions" make any sense and they all tell you what the Libs are all about. The solution is always higher taxes and more government regulation, which is contrary to a free market system or as I like to call it, a healthy economy.

Check out the solution that the Republicans are FINALLY putting out there. Hello! Increase production! Invest more in clean energy (like NUCLEAR). Give tax incentives to business and individuals to improve their efficiency... DUH! FINALLY PEOPLE!!! This actually makes SENSE and it will work. Finally someone has brains AND a back bone.

Now the Libs will pull out their favorite old trick. Even if we open up ANWR and the gulf to drilling, that oil won't hit the market for 5 years! Which is true. But it will affect oil prices NOW because a big part of this run up is futures contracts. If the market knows that supply is going to increase... prices will come down. And... in five years they will be right.

The only way to fix this problem is to increase supply. Trust me, this whole $4 gas fiasco has increased demand for a better solution. It's out there. I know it. Companies are coming up with good solutions all the time and they are going to start coming to market even when gas prices come down. People will remember this and will want to be immune to it. I personally like this solution that has been used on trains for years now. Diesel-electric... 150 miles per gallon. Nice.

Cap and Trade

You are going to hear something over the next couple of weeks about a Warner-Lieberman bill called "America's Climate Security Act of 2007". Yes, I know it is 2008, but the bill was proposed last year and what is being considered now is an amendment to that bill. What you will hear about is that this is a cap-and-trade system set up to help reduce green house gases. What this means is that they are going to put limits on industry and how much CO2 an industry can emit. This includes the power companies. Currently 50% of the country's electricity comes from clean coal sources. These would be virtually outlawed in the next few years.

Anybody see a problem with that?

In addition to killing every town that exists due to coal mining it would require the construction of "clean" power plants. The only real option for that right now, other than hydro-electric plants, is new nuclear plants. Dozens of them. While I don't think that in itself is a bad thing, the problem is that trying to build so many of them, so fast will require LOTS of money, which means... you pay more for your electricity... as does the factory down the street that is also trying to deal with producing all that it can while still being under their CO2 limit. Long story short, the supply of everything goes down, inflation goes up and energy costs go up.

Do we really need this right now?

Now the politicians will tell you that they are doing this because they love the environment and Al Gore has sold them on the idea that we are causing global warming, which is a farce to begin with, but that's a different story. But, would you like to know the REAL reason behind this bill?

I hope so.

$$$$$$$

That's right, it's all about the money and how your elected politicians can get their hands on more of it. But don't worry they are just taking it from the Big Bad Companies... who will of course have to raise their prices, while laying off workers, and/or move operations offshore where they don't have a cap-and-trade system... I think you get the idea.

So what does the Congressional Budget Office say about this bill? How much money will the government bring in due to this bill to save the environment?

CBO estimates that enacting S. 2191, as amended, would increase revenues by about $1.21 trillion over the 2009-2018 period, net of income and payroll tax offsets.

So, what do you think? Do you want your senator voting for this? Do you think businesses are going to eat 1.21 TRILLION DOLLARS worth of extra taxes?

This is what happens when we let people sell us the LIE of global warming.

This is what happens when we let politicians tell US what the right thing to do is.

OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!