More money for Bailout???

When is this going to end? Is anyone else concerned that the Federal government is proposing more and more money to rescue...everyone? How much is the incoming president going to add to taxpayer debt? And how is it going to get PAID BACK?

I have another question. Why could the big 3 auto makers figure out a plan to help bring their companies to solvency now, rather than, say, a year ago? Or even three or four months ago? Why are they just now figuring out that it costs a lot of money to keep and fly multiple corporate jets? How did one of them come up with the brilliant idea to pay himself $1 a year? I can't wait to hear what other money saving ideas they come up with. Again, what took them so long? Didn't they see this coming? And if not then why are they getting paid? Hasn't it been obvious to many people--especially those who work in financials? As head of my household, I know what debt we have, I know what money is coming in, and I know that it needs to get paid on time. Why don't the heads of these corporate "households" know this information and act on it?

Do you have questions, too?

The UAW and bailout money for "The Big Three"

I was listening to the news this morning and the host was speaking to a leader of a certain local UAWU. The host was asking the leader why the American taxpayers should, as part of the bailout, pay for the retirement and healthcare of retired UAWs. He was trying to justify the money from taxpayers by saying that the company would go under and that that would affect the entire nation and the economy and the workers and retirees themselves. The host pointed out that because of the UAWU, the car companies were going to go out of business. She pointed to the cost per automobile sale that went toward paying for healthcare. The cost for GM is $1600 per car. The cost for Ford is $1500 per car. The cost for Toyota is $300 per car. The demands of the UAWU are not only crushing to the companies that they strong-arm, but they also screw over the consumers.

The host also pointed out to the leader of the local UAWU to whom she was speaking that Toyota workers cost their company $47 and hour, whereas GM and Ford workers cost their company $71 per hour. Guess which car company isn't going under right now? I want to know: if we bail out the auto makers, does that mean that we are paying for the autos from those companies twice? (Once through the bail out and a second time when we purchase them?) No one has put forth a plan for the automotive industry to implement that would even justify the giving of money to any of the companies. One e-mailer suggested that giving money to the big three is akin to giving a homeless heroin addict money. Is that addict going to do anything besides blow throught the money by buying more heroin? NO!

Mr. Stuart Varney from Fox News stated that Detroit is bleeding $2-3 billion a week and that there is no plan out there for what the money from a bail out package will be used for. He also states that $25-50 billion will not solve Detroit's problems. And yet at this very moment, the Democrats are meeting to decide how to bail out the auto industry. Oh, I'm sorry, I mean the big three, not the entire auto industry, because Toyota, VW, BMW and others are doing just fine.

Please vote on November 4th. It will affect our lives every day.

Prop 8 - Say Yes

I am so concerned about marriage being defined as between something other than being between a man and a woman. I am very upset that judges in California are illegally casting aside the voice of the people who already declared through a valid vote that they wanted marriage to be defined as being between a man and a woman. Judges cannot cast aside the voice of the people and legislate from the bench. It is constitutionally forbidden. Who is taking these judges to task for their criminal behavior? I am appalled by the consequences happening in Massachusetts as they have recognized gay marriage under the state constitution. The Court of Appeals ruled that parents cannot prohibit schools from promoting homosexuality - or opt their children out of such instruction. Parents can't even be notified ahead of time that the instruction will take place. Some activists are petitioning judges to force schools to teach children about gay marriage. What this comes down to in the end is that we will not be able to speak of gay marriage in any derogotory way without it being seen (and sometimes prosecuted) as discrimination. Please see uppermost quote on the right.

Barack's Socialism

If I am a thief, and I take money from you because you have money and I don't have any, is that justified? Apparently Barack Obama thinks it is justification because he plans to take from the rich and give to the poor. He told us on national TV that he wants to "spread the wealth around." I am having a hard time containing myself. I want to yell "SOCIALISM" from every street corner. Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as: "a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done." Isn't socialism something this country has fought against time and time again? Yes, it has. Our forefathers did not want government to interfere in our lives. As I think of the people who are willing to elect Obama and let this flagrant theft take place, I am reminded of this quote by Samual Adams:

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." ~ Samuel Adams

Is Obama one of those "false and designing men"? I fear so. Let me reiterate a quote I used earlier.

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. "
~ Thomas Jefferson

Why Hate Palin?

I was watching Fox news this morning. They were speaking to two people about the amount of money the two presidential campaigns had to spend. One of the people they spoke to is named Matt Littman. His title is Obama Supporter. He stated several unfounded assertions during the course of the interview. One thing he said was that the McCain campaign had $400+ million to spend over the last two months on the campaign. He surmised that some may get spent on this or that, but the one thing he said was that some may get spent on Sarah Palin's clothes. EXCUSE ME? Since when were the spending of money on candidates clothing ever previously brought up until we have a woman in the running? Do we know how much is spent on Michelle Obama's clothing? Does her clothing expenditure come from the political campaign? She isn't even running. But I bet her clothes are paid for from the campaign because she speaks in Barack's behalf. No one is bringing up the issue concerning her. Still, why is this an issue at all? Do the democratic supporters have nothing better to bring up? Are they THAT worried about Palin? People who harp on this issue are either uninformed about the truth (that she doesn't keep the clothes) or are small minded.

My husband gave me an article to read from the Wall Street Journal called Hatin' Palin. Author Daniel Henninger begins the article by saying that "The abuse being heaped on Sarah Palin is such a cheap shot." He continues, "The complaint against the Alaska governor, at its most basic, is that she doesn't qualify for admission to the national political fraternity. Boy, that's rich. Behold the shabby frat house that says it's above her pay grade.

"Congress has the lowest approval rating ever registered in the history of polling (12%!)."

"The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve." (For the full text, look on the Wall Street Journal's web site. The article is from October 23, 2008 in the Opinion section)

I love this summary. Sarah Palin reaches out to and connects with ordinary individuals like ourselves. She buys diapers. I'll bet she changes diapers too. She does things that ordinary individuals do, while thinking intelligently. That is why people like her. And that is why Obama and supporters fear her. I look forward to Sarah Palin in the White House.

Pundits on the cause of the financial crisis.

I am reading an article in the Wall Street Journal today by Charles W. Calomiris. The point of his article is to explore the reasons for and solutions for the financial crisis. He rebuts pundits arguments that deregulation and small government are the reasons for our current financial crisis. He asserts that federal and state tax revenues have been growing faster than home prices during the past eight years. He wonders if the problem hasn't been the enormous growth in spending and entitlements over the past eight years "not seen since the days of LBJ. Congressional Democrats--along with a surprising number of pork-barrel Republicans--demanded nonwar spending on a Great Society scale and the president gave in to buy their votes for the war."

Mr. Calomiris explains that financial deregulation has existed for the past three decades. The deregulation removed the ceiling on deposit interest-rates, relaxed branching powers, and allowed commercial banks to begin underwriting and insurance and other financial activities. The ability of J.P. Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch was due to the new abilities of commercial banks. And they were a financial stabilizer in the recent crisis. The deregulation also allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to add banks to their offerings. This gave them the money and stability to not go under when the stock market declined.

The ability for financial institutions to engage in subprime lending, securitization and dealing in swaps are all things that were available to these institutions all along because of the deregulation that already existed. The problem seems to be the rules that these instutions were under. The rules were and are called the Basel Rules. These rules set the standards for measuring bank risk and allocating capital to absorb that risk. Mr. Calomiris states that these rules are what failed miserably. The rating agencies and modelers were given the job of measuring risk, but some of them were the banks themselves. You don't have much incentive to mandate low risk when you are trying to get the most return on your investment. For these several reasons, Mr. Calomiris rebuts the pundits for blaming the financial crisis on deregulation and small government.

In his article, Calomiris quotes Gustav Jahoda (a social psychologist) in saying that "unreasonable beliefs often arise in circumstances where people lack control and need to believe in something to get them through a highly stressful situation." Calomiris reflects that these unusual events (financial crises) come about from a variety of circumstances that come together at once. They are not usually the result of a single, foreseeable fault in the system.

So my response is: why don't the politicians believe that we are smart enough to understand a reasonable explanation of problems and a reasonable, thoughful, wise plan for dealing with current issues? We are. What did I want from the debates? Factual, distinct responses for problems facing this nation marked by keen discernment. I did NOT want finger pointing, blaming of the current administration as a reason not to vote for the other, and generalizations on how they will solve problems. Give me something solid to go on. I don't feel that I have a very good basis from which to judge either candidate based on the debates and commercials. I don't need to know your stand on every topic that will face you as president. But I do need a feel for your style of responding and I need to know how you will work to solve the problems that affect Americans directly, because that is one thing we understand. I need to know HOW, not if, you will balance the federal budget and pay off debt. It is not an option not to balance the budget and pay off debt. No more spending can or should be done until this one issue is solved. Debt is what has gotten every single person in trouble in this current financial crisis. Those without debt are not suffering. They may feel imposed on, but are not suffering. I am a person with as much knowledge and understanding as any news reporter, pundit, campaign manager, or analyst. I can understand complex concepts. So cut the crap and lets hear something real: how about the orderly arrangement of a program of action, or a plan with sensibility and good judgment, a speech bereft of labeling and abstracts but with calm, speaking of observable and defined solutions to the issues facing us the next four years.

Barack on taxes

I am appalled that Barack doesn't realize that his ideas on increasing capital gains taxes will actually reduce that amount of taxes being brought in. Anyone who has a pension or a 401K will be affected by this. I saw a nice little quote in a video from a blog called copious dissent. "When you raise capital gains tax, nobody invests money. And nobody sells stock that they have been holding, because you are going to take their gains from them if they sell it. So the government takes in less revenue." History has shown that decreasing the capital gains tax increases revenue. http://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=po7J0f5TMrQ

In the most recent debate, Barack stated that he would give 95% of Americans an income tax cut. That is impossible since the bottom 40% of Americans don't pay taxes. However he is willing to increase the taxes on the wealthiest people, calling this "fair." I have news - the top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of the taxes while the bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 3%. How is that fair?


"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. " ~ Thomas Jefferson

Quotes

I like the wisdom of our founding fathers because I believe that they were led by God. That is why I use their wisdom and logic as a basis for many of my arguments. I am including a nice link to a youtube video that includes pictures of our founding fathers and some quotes from them. The link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osFKsmjwe6g

Welcome

Hi, welcome to my political blog. I was posting on my family post, but I decided to get a blog all on its own for my political views. I will be posting some of my posts from my other blog.

Founding Fathers On Finance

Don’t bail out debt with more debt.
George Washington wrote in 1799 to James Welch, “To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”
Thomas Jefferson similarly admonished Samuel Kercheval in 1816, “To preserve [the] independence [of the people], we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

I am listening to the financial news again this morning with chagrin. I am concerned that the federal government is interfering too much in the current economic crisis. So I went online to find some guidance from our Founding Fathers. I found an article that expresses some of what I feel. I am linking it to the title of this post. I am also including some of the article here in my post. It is too long to include the full article. The article is written by Chuck Norris, World Net Daily. Some of the article follows here in excerpt.

"Yes, it’s official and public news for the whole world to see: Government is the worst run business on the face of the planet. We’ve known it for a long time – we’re just now facing the monetary music. We’re going under, fast. And the government’s remedy is to return to its cycle of treasury vomit – spending money it doesn’t have by borrowing money it can’t pay back. But the cat’s costs are out of the bailout bag, too. Fannie May, Freddie Mac, AIG insurance, etc., are all birth pains of greater taxpayer burdens to come. The Fed’s rescue plan will cost Americans another $1 trillion dollars – for those doing the math, that’s roughly $3,600 each in taxes.

But most Americans’ pocketbooks are barren wastelands – with maxed payments, mortgages and consumer credit. So where will the Fed get another trillion dollars when it already holds a $9 trillion dollar deficit? From the same black hole it got the preceding $9 trillion. We make more money and lessen the value of the dollar; we borrow more money and lose our grip on our nation. America is up for sale. And foreign entities and powers are buying up our debt to own a large piece of the pie called America. We are literally mortgaging our land and liberties – and our children’s future. And our government is not only doing nothing to stop it – it is the bureaucratic broker arranging the deal!

1. Keep spending within constitutional limits. The Tenth Amendment restricts the size of government, and that should always bear out in the federal budget and spending. That means understanding income and export taxes were unconstitutional to our founders, which if applied today would be two of the greatest economic stimulus packages.
2. Don’t bail out debt with more debt. George Washington wrote in 1799 to James Welch, “To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.” Thomas Jefferson similarly admonished Samuel Kercheval in 1816, “To preserve [the] independence [of the people], we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
3. Return to a pay-as-you-go government. If we don’t have the money, we don’t spend it. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Fulwar Skipwith in 1787, “[T]he maxim of buying nothing but what we had money in our pockets to pay for …[is] a maxim, which, of all others, lays the broadest foundation for happiness.”
4. Tax for imports, not exports or anything else. Our earliest government’s primary tool to raise revenue was from tariffs. Obviously, we can’t raise all the monies our government now needs by imports alone (because of its excessive taxation dependence through the decades), but we need to return to our founders’ simple taxation system. Early Americans did not pay income taxes, export taxes, capital gains taxes, estate and property taxes, corporate taxes, social security taxes, gas taxes or any of the rest of them we pay. However, our founders did build revenue by requiring import taxes from those who wanted to sell us their goods. The fact is, most of our taxes are unconstitutional and would therefore be illegal to our founders. As James Madison said in his “Address to the States” in 1783: “Taxes on consumption are always least burdensome, because they are least felt, and are borne too by those who are both willing and able to pay them; that of all taxes on consumption, those on foreign commerce are most compatible with the genius and policy of free States.”
5. Get over the greed. We’re in this financial mess because of greed. Why is government spending out of control? Greed. Why do we as individuals and as a nation keep falling deeper into a pit of debt? Greed. We need, we want and we have to have it. We can’t afford it, but we can’t say no. So we charge it, deferring the penalty. Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, believed a government that could use greed to motivate its people would become powerful and wealthy. Unfortunately, he was correct. We’ve become a nation that confuses our needs and greeds – and we’ve got to get back to the basics if we’re ever to understand and overcome the heart of this financial crisis.

Many of the founders warned about America’s potential fiscal woes under the power of a central bank. Thomas Jefferson was one of Hamilton’s biggest opponents, almost prophesying as president in 1803 to Albert Gallatin, “This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. … I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this Bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war? It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile? … Now, while we are strong, it is the greatest debt we owe to the safety of our Constitution, to bring its powerful enemy to a perfect subordination under its authorities.”

What we need today is far more men and women in government with our founders’ financial forethought and cautiousness."

I hope I haven't bored you to death, but I believe that each of us need to be aware of the ramifications of the steps that the government is taking to bail out the economy. For this nation to go further in to debt is going to come back to haunt us. Each of us must understand the consequences and vote wisely. I believe that our founding fathers were led by God-and they so acknowledged. We would do well to look to them now in our time of crisis. There is a lot more to this article that I have cited. If you are interested in the full text, here is the URL. It will take you to the complete article. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75867

Patrick Henry

The constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

~ Patrick Henry

I am watching Glenn Beck tonight. His first topic concerned the economy. I like the comparison he made that our economy is like a coming hurricane. He said that we cannot stop this crisis any more than we can stop a hurricane, and yet the government is still continuing to throw money at the problem, the disease, as he calls it. I agree. I am worried about the government-not just spending money- but the power they have when the treasury secretary is one of few who have the pin number for the bank account.

This bailout bill is scary. The treasury has the power to do anything they want to with the money, including buying up mortgages, and selling more debt to deal with rising borrowing needs, and guaranteeing them. And by the way, this can be done without our consent because it is now law. Remind me who is watching the treasury sec?

Glenn Beck's suggestion is to let nature take its course and fail and rebuild naturally. I have felt this way for a long time. When I watched the Dow Industrial climb and climb over the last several years (decade) I said to myself that this can't possibly be good and it can't possibly last without some correction. I have been waiting for this for a long time. I thought it was coming sooner when we went through several different individual days of the stock market falling at an unprecedented one day decrease, over the past few years. I think we have a long time to wait until the pendulum swings back the other way.

As we are in this financial crisis, I hate to think of what might happen if we have crises around the world that might garner our attention. What money are we going to use? Will we go further into debt? We are already at, what, 10 trillion? What might happen if we have another 9/11? Our country needs to balance the budget and stop spending money that we don't have. Because of the financial crisis, will we be able to do something in case of, or even see, outside threats? Can others take our country away from us because things are in such turmoil?

Peggy Noonan was a guest and I liked a suggestion she had: doing politics equal to the moment we are in. She and Glenn were talking about two political parties and the fact that political parties don't matter right now. I believe we should be focusing on the things this country needs to do to spend less money while still protecting our interests. I am sick of entitlement programs. Neither should we be turning to socialized medicine. People in this country are SMART! We CAN figure this out.

I hope my ramblings don't make anyone stop reading our blog. We will still be posting normal things. Oh and by clicking on the title to this post you can link to Glenn Beck's site. - Jen