by Joseph J Kusnell published in BoomerYearbook.com

Obama has done it again. I hear today how the new law which went into effect today curtailing the credit card company’s treatment of users is a great boon to the American consumer. lol. But is it really? Or just another underhanded way of redistributing America’s wealth. I wrote this to Fox News today following a spot they aired:

BoomerYearbook.com

AN AMERICAN TALE – “ALICE IN OBAMA-LAND”.
by Joseph J Kusnell published in BoomerYearbook.com

Once upon a time, there was a land of make believe called “Obama-land”. In “Obama-Land” up was down and down was up and nothing existed unless it existed left of center.

One day there developed in “Alice in Obama-Land”, a practice known as “Enjoy Today and Pay Tomorrow” the accepted vehicle for which was the credit card. For people that had no job or could not pay their bills, the credit card was like a ticket to Candyland. They helped people make ends meet. And so, Alice along with many of the residents of “Obama-Land” became enamored of the practice and began to live “Enjoy today and Pay tomorrow”.

But over time, something happened. This practice of living on borrowed money became malevolent and soon, many “Obama-Land” residents found themselves in dire financial straits with still no money but big credit card balances at high interest rates. And slowly and inexorably they began to fall behind.

Enter the Master of Obama-Land, Barako-Bama. Master Bama determined that what had to be done was that the purveyors of the credit cards had to be prevented from charging so much interest to those who already had balances which they could not pay. Charging these people higher interest rates, reasoned Master Bama, when they had no money to pay was cruel and inhuman since the people living off their credit cards couldn’t pay their loans back so how in the world could they pay higher interest rates too? They couldn’t.

And so, the Master decreed that these higher interest rates would be lowered to a more reasonable rate, say that of people who did make their payments on time.

But this new law led to consternation on the part of the credit card industry because the very people who were running the biggest unpaid balances and getting the furthest behind were now protected from being charged the high-risk interest rates that were mandated by their financial condition. It was a lot like what happened with Fannie Mae which almost dissolved the world’s credit markets.

This change of affairs put the credit card companies in the trying circumstance of having to accept less interest revenue from the very people that were their biggest risks – an unsustainable method of running a financial loan business which could only lead to the credit card companies themselves eventually defaulting.

After all, how could you not charge the highest interest to the people carrying the highest unpaid balances over the longest time? But you couldn’t. It seemed things were backward in the Magic Mirror.

And then someone close to Master Bama suggested an answer. Find the persons with low balances, people who DID pay on time every month, people who are NO problem and raise the interest rates on them to pay for the loss of interest on those who are always behind.

Brilliant but what, the Master was asked, if those people are not running big enough balances month to month from which interest can be earned sufficient enough to offset what is being lost on the delinquent accounts?

But the Master smiled knowingly. “Then charge them a fee for using your credit cards in the first place,” he said.

“Can we also charge a fee to those who are delinquent”, asked the stunned officials of the credit card companies?

“No, they have enough to deal with.”

The owners of the credit card companies looked at one another. “You mean,” they said to the Master, “we lowered the interest rates on the people who run delinquent high balances and then to recoup our losses, we raise the interest rates on those that do not?”

“Exactly. And you can also charge them a fee to offset your losses. After all, which money is more likely to be paid?”

“The interest and fees from those who pay their bills on time, certainly.”

“Exactly. And which are less likely to be paid?”

“The fees, interest and balances from those who do not pay their bills on time.”

“So there you go. Raise the fees on those that pay and pay on time to cover the losses from the new lower interest rates on the delinquent accounts. It seems clear to me.”

“Really? I find that a most amazing concept.”

“Exactly but what do you expect. You are now in, “Alice In Obama-Land”.

Have a nice day, Alice.

Joey

Where people come to exercise their minds:
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By Joseph J Kusnell for Boomeryearbook.com

A bad idea: This economy has lots of very serious problems that may never be resolved. But the idea that a business is going to go hire someone for $104,000.00 who has been unemployed for 60 days all so they can get a $5,000 credit from the government is asinine. They simply will not spend $104,000 to get $5,000.00. If their business warrants adding someone at the high rate, they will do so with or without a tax credit. If it does not, they will not. Someone in Washington isn’t too bright.

Our problems seem to be magnifying daily. It’s now beyond special interest payoffs. It’s beyond politics. It’s beyond taking care of your support base or even your campaign contributors. It’s now about our future as a nation and the future of our children. In all my 80 years, this is the worst mess I have ever seen. And it’s not over yet, not even close. Soon, another explosion in real estate will hit us, this time commercial real estate like shopping malls. Their ARM’s are coming due. When that hits us this Spring, it will cause still another blow to our ailing economy.

We have a lot of problems. Nevertheless, here are a few ideas which might help.

1. Continue unemployment compensation until the unemployment rate gets down to 6.5% but introduce legislation to allow individuals to take jobs for less money and then if their new wage produces less income than what they were getting in their workman’s comp check, issue them a check for the difference. This would go on for three years to give workers a chance to adjust to lower paying jobs and perhaps earn an increase. It will also reduce government payments by up to 75% for each worker affected and that is a tremendous saving.

2. Re-introduce the old “Schedule-G” type IRS allowance for income averaging going back three calendar years for businesses and the last three years of employment for individuals. For individuals, if their average income for the last three years of employment is greater than the current year, the difference will be subtracted from the current year’s AGI. This is directed at those who have lost their jobs and had to take new jobs for less money. It will help them over the adjustment period.

3. Establish a 4.5% national cap rate on mortgages immediately. This cap on mortgage interest rates will remain in effect for five years and will be for all mortgages whether new purchases or refinanced mortgages. This will help the real estate market for home sales while helping to prevent more foreclosures by lowing carrying charges. It will also have the effect of revitalizing the economy permanently because refinancing puts more money into the economy on a monthly recurring basis unlike one time spending from a stimulus check.

4. Speaking of a stimulus, let’s have one more for $600.00 per family. BUT – and this is a big but – it will not be cash. This will be in the form of a purchase VOUCHER. The voucher will have a 120 day expiration date and will be transferable (we don’t care). However, the vouchers can only be used for the purchase of LOCAL services and/or the purchase of durable goods that are manufactured in the United States. (Not “Made in America” because that includes Canada and Mexico.)

5. GAMBLING. Hundreds of billions of dollars are now being spent in Casinos around the country and that money is ruining local businesses everywhere. They say “oh yes, but look at all the people we employ”. That’s true but it would be well to remember taking billions out of local economies and from small businesses causes lost jobs in those businesses. Usually a lot more than are hired by Casinos. Here is an example. Philadelphia Park has renovated its Casino and is now taking in millions a DAY. At five million a day, they will take in 1.8 billion dollars a year. Yes the Casino hires 600 people a good part of that money is coming from local communities. If you spread that 1.8 billion over a thousand local businesses, each one would get 1.8 million and with that increase in business they would hired in the aggregate far more than 600 people. Plus the businesses would then have to restock what they sold and that generates orders, and that in turn generates more employment by their suppliers. So the Casinos hurt not just the local community but the extended local community creating blighted areas wherever they show up. So it’s time to ask ourselves what kind of society we want to be. Once we limited Casinos to remote locales where people vacationed. That was much better than what our shortsighted states are doing now in their misdirected quest for tax money. You see folks, no matter where that 1.8 billion was spent, it would generate tax money one way or the other. This was a mistake. You can’t build a healthy society with Casinos on damn near every street corner (and yes, I do gamble).

6. Online Shopping: This is another attack on our society. With no need to maintain fancy stores in local neighborhoods, online marketers can offer products cheaper. We buy them and local businesses have to shut down for lack of business. Jobs are lost locally and society suffers. Our downtown areas become more and more blighted. You know, angry people with too much time on their hands are dangerous. Keeping people working in their localities is a sure way to keep the peace. Having an orderly society is equally important. Making money should not always be government’s number one priority. So what do we do. It’s like competing with cheap foreign labor only the competition is right here in our own country – usually. I say increase the tax on profits from online marketers to level the playing field. We need to reinforce our communities. When communities collapse, nations collapse. Online businesses take money and jobs from the local communities leaving us with empty deserted blighted downtown areas. If we are a society and not just a bunch of moneymakers, we need our local communities and we need our local businesses and we should take care of those who run businesses in our local communities and not be so generous with out-of-town online marketers.

7. The world is shrinking. We can’t stop that. But it is also causing us a giant problem: we have to compete with cheap foreign labor and nations that have no environmental laws, no health insurance mandates, no unemployment insurances and no labor laws. All these regulations tend to increase business costs so the lack of them decreases costs and that allows them to lower their prices and undercut our businesses that are faced with all those costs. So what do we do? About all we can do is find ways to help our companies out. So here are some ideas that might be of help.

8. Reduce corporation taxes based on the number of workers employed in the United States as a
percentage of this company’s worldwide employment. The more Americans you employ here, the less tax you pay.

9. Immediately transfer 3 billion dollars from the unspent stimulus money to the SBA for DIRECT loans to small businesses for startup or expansion. This is NOT to be a minority welfare handout, this is to be a sound business program lending money to entrepreneurs with going businesses or business experience married to a sound business proposal. I repeat: this is not to be another welfare program handout.

10. Encourage Americans to buy products manufactured in America wherever possible. Public service ads
explaining why they should might help.

11. Increase the minimum wage by $1.25 / hour.

11. Barring a major change in health care costs, grant a $1.50 deduction to companies for each $1.00 in health care costs paid for their employees.

ABORTION:

Abortion divides Americans. So here’s an idea. Let us take the profit out of abortions by making abortions unprofitable. Just set a price for abortions to cover all COSTS but nothing else. Make abortion clinics all non-profit. After all, why should anyone make money out of destroying the unborn? Making abortions a “product’ simply encourages more “sales” [sic: more abortions]. So, let’s take the profit out of abortions and then we’ll see whether this fuss is truly about a woman’s right to choose or simply about making money.

ENERGY: This is as dumb a policy as we have had for years. We send money to places near and far to buy their oil even though we have lots of our own oil including off shore and shale. But because of some convoluted reasoning, we would rather buy it from others who drill for it wherever the can find it without any regard to so called environmental problems rather than drill for our own WITH said safeguards. Then we turn around and lend them billions of dollars to help them drill for oil offshore (PETROBRAS, a Brazilian Company that drills OFFSHORE down there got two billion. I think Soros had a lot of shares in that company and that might explain it). Anyway, it seems we only care about the environment in our own country and not in other countries. Somehow I get the feeling it’s another scam. So let’s drill for our own oil wherever we find it. And develop our clean coal resources and our natural gas resources. The C02 scam is about over and these resources are plentiful in the United States. The fact is we haven’t even explored for 30 years so newly developed technology might uncover even more oil reserves that we thought we had. And there is always shale oil. We should have started this yesterday.

GOVERNMENT vs THE PRIVATE SECTOR: The workers doing the best these days are government workers. They make twice as much money on average as the people who pay them – the taxpayers – and they have better health insurance and better pensions. Plus they actually produce 1.8 hours less a day than their civilian counterparts.

There is a reason that of the 10% of American workers that are unionized, 70% work for non-profits (that’s a joke) or for the Government. Can you tell me who represents we taxpayers in wage negotiations between government Managers and government workers? Both are using OUR money so where is our seat at the table and where is the incentive to increase productivity or lower payroll and install cost cutting measures on the part of all these government workers?

The more people that we put to work in government in America, the more certain we are of failure. The sector that pays the bills should be the biggest by far and the sector that spends the money that creates the bills, needs to be as small as possible. So why are you all so hell bent to increase the size of the spenders (government) at the expense of those that produce (private sector). Can you show me any country in the world that ever prospered with that philosophy?

It is past time to stop spending money like drunken sailors. We need to cut the size of government not expand it. We need to reduce payrolls in government. We need to cut back down time and increase productivity. And we need to bring their benefits into line with what workers get in the private sector doing the same kind of work. Government is not SUPERIOR to the private sector it is INFERIOR. That’s why the private sector far out produces the public.

Working for the government is a great job. My friend has been working for a State government for 22 years now. He makes $100,000.00 doing a job that would get him about half that much in the private sector. He has a great pension plan and wonderful health insurance. All paid for by taxpayers who are not nearly so well off as he is. And do you know what he says to me? He says, “anyone who doesn’t work for the government is a sucker!” He’s obviously right. It is time to reign in the government. We need to cut government budgets by reducing both staff and expenses by 5% a year for the next three years for starters.

We are in a real mess and it’s just getting worse. Confidence is the basic motor for an economy and that’s what we don’t have today. Our people rightfully have no confidence in the future and that’s sad. Well, other than people working for the government. They are so isolated from reality it’s not even funny. That’s because they really don’t have to worry about losing their job as the rest of us do. Sometimes I get so confused: who works for whom again?

I care about Americans and about America and I am prepared to throw anyone – ANYONE – out of office that doesn’t have the same priority that I have. Mine is SAVE AMERICA. It’s far and away the best country this world has ever seen even if half the Obama appointees don’t seem to know that.

But that doesn’t matter because they aren’t going to be around much longer anyway.

Joey

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Want to buy a vote or two? Want to buy a Senator, Congressman or President? They are all for sale in America.
_________________________________

UPDATE: January 8, 2007: It is estimated this coming year’s presidential elections will cost nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS for the two sides! Taking care of the campaign contributors after the election is going to end up costing you and me and the other taxpayers a whole lot of money. Count on it.

You see, as long as we have a system wherein people can BUY votes with their campaign contributions, your government doesn’t really work for you; it works for the people with the biggest checkbooks. You don’t think rich people donate all those millions out of the goodness of their hearts, do you? If so, the joke is on you. Read on:

UPDATE: December 3, 2009: In the 2008 elections, Obama raised over 600 million dollars to McCain’s 300 million. Obama told the public this money came from individual small donations but that was an out and out lie. Less than 15% came from small donors; the rest came from very rich individuals, very rich corporations and very rich foreign donors, some of whom were illegal. Most of the billionaires in this country actually supported Barack Obama and their support contributed mightily to his winning. He now supports legislation that will repay those supporters for their generosity. After all, what goes around -
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That’s why I am titling this article:

America Is For Sale to the Highest Bidder

Because it is and it has been for a very long time. But we CAN stop it if we have the will.
Most rich and powerful people are betting you don’t.

A CALL TO GRASSROOTS AMERICA

Money buys votes.

Don’t fool yourself; politics is all about the money needed to run for office. That’s what runs our government and that’s what undermines our government, the need for huge amounts of campaign contributions!

But we can stop it. How, you ask? Well, it’s really rather simple: let’s fund all our national elections with public money! Tightly controlled, fair rules and binding regulations along with taxpayer funding will kick the money changers out of the temple. And we all will be better off for it.

You’ve heard it before: money talks and bullshit walks! Sorry about that, but it’s the most graphic way to make the point. Our politicians are bought and paid for every single day starting the day they take office. And if we don’t wake up and stop it soon, it will be too late if it isn’t already.

You can see it happening right now [2008]. A presidential election is coming up. Lots of people want to run for the nominations from our two parties but it takes millions to run an effective campaign. So where do they get it? They get it from people that support them?
Fine but let me ask you this:

Question: Why would an individual or an organization donate tons of money to a political candidate so that HE can get himself elected to a very nice job? No matter what his political likes and dislikes are.

Answer: Because they love their country and think this guy would be swell in the job?

No? You think that’s a bad answer? Okay, how about this one:

Answer: Because they expect a quid pro quo arrangement in return.

And what exactly is a quid pro quo arrangement? That’s a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” arrangement.

Aha! You agree! You get the picture. They donate that money to gain influence with the newly elected candidate. And why do they want that influence? Oh that’s real easy: they want to use their new found evidence to make more money for themselves – more even than they donated. That’s the rule. After all, as we all know, there is no free lunch.

And it’s the same for all parties and in all elections. They are all expensive and if you want to have a chance to win anything anywhere, you need to find the money to run. And what do you – the candidate – have to offer for this money? You offer the only thing you have – your vote.

You offer FAVORS in return for that money.

And that’s what’s wrong with our system of government. It’s bought and paid for and because of that, once the election is over you will be forgotten and those who contributed will be remembered. The more they gave, the more they will be remembered.

At this point, let me explain to you that I am not here solely to blame the politicians. I think most of them really hate having to beg for money. But they have no choice. They have no choice because the system is set up this way – money talks. For that reason, I say it’s the system that has to be changed even more than the players. Why today, one half of every congressman’s day is spent soliciting money for his or her NEXT election. Did you know that? Well, now you do.
Instead of doing the job for which you pay him (or her), your congressman is entertaining special interest groups every day of the week in order to solicit money from them so he can pay for his next political campaign. Whether that election is next month, next year, or five years from now, he is raising money for it, today.

Which is why I opened this article with the words: “America is for sale to the highest bidder”.

But before you head to Washington to do in your congressman – or worse yet, your President – please remember what I told you, it’s really not their fault – it’s the system that is at fault.
If they don’t want to retire young – and few do – they have to do what everyone else is doing.

So that’s our problem. The current system encourages corruption and dishonesty and no one gets to escape. If you want to run for national office, you need money. To get the money you need to sell something. What you have to sell is your vote. So learn to deal with it or find another line of work.

Okay, so that’s our problem, how do we fix it?

Well right now it’s February of 2010 and I am going to announce today that in the 2010 elections, we are going to vote out of office everyone who is in office. They all are on the take. I for one am sick of slick lawyers in our government. They are too slick and too dishonest for me. I want to take a shot with regular Americans in our Congress and see how we do with them. I will therefore vote against all incumbents running this fall. They are all history. I want this message loud and clear.

Then I will try to get Washington to change the rules.

One thing I know is, it won’t be easy. It will in fact be very, very difficult. You see, tons of wealthy people like the system just the way it is and they will fight like hell to keep it this way.

Who are these people? Who do you think they are? The people who control your government by donating big money to political campaigns, that’s who they are. Americans and foreigners alike, internationalists, corporate CEO’s with dollars for souls – big time labor leaders – all of them.

Remember the Chinese money in the Clinton elections? Why do you think they were shoveling money to an American for an American election? I’ll tell you, they were buying influence. I call it buying America. Notice what China has gotten in return? It’s sickening. The Chinese are now making billions out of trade with America. It turns out to have been a good investment for them but a bad one for us.

Obama is another one who got big money from foreign governments. And once again, they benefited while we lost.

Look, I am not going to belabor the point. I am sure by now you understand what is going on and how dangerous it is. So you must be asking what can I do about it? The answer is work for controlled national elections paid for by the taxpayer with no outside money whatsoever, neither hard nor soft.

Can we do it? Can we actually change the system? I don’t know. Every special interest group in America will be united against us? Broadcasters and telecasters and maybe some of the talk show hosts and the print media people will scream out against it. They are all part of the current dirty system. They will call us names, say we are stupid, say that we are flirting with national economic suicide. Whatever it takes. They may even call us racists and say that somehow this is an attack on minorities. How? Who knows?

But they won’t care. They will say anything to stop us from changing the system. But we can do it. We can win despite them.

How? By banning together to demand change. Demand (1) Federal funding for all national elections and (2) that in the last 30 days of a campaign, the only one that can speak for a candidate is the candidate.

The people – you and I – have to come together and bring pressure on our congressmen to pass this legislation. No democrats, no republicans, no liberals, no conservatives – just Americans trying to take back their government from the greedy, vicious, money-grabbing thieves who now control it. (This would be the folks with the money, not the ones taking it.)

Once your congressmen and even your president is no longer dependent on these people for campaign money, everything will change and for the better. Useless ‘payback’ fat-cat legislation will be eliminated forever. So will self-sustaining subsidies and pork barrel ‘earmark’ legislation. Congress can stop begging for money and go back to working full time for the people who elected them, instead of the people who bought them.

And the cost of government will go down, not up. Once they are sure it will get done, the politicians will welcome the change with open arms. No one likes to beg for money least of all the people that work their way to Washington. After all, they do have their pride.

But the sad truth is that most of the people in Washington believe the American people are too dysfunctional, too apathetic, too wildly diversified politically, too DUMB to ever come together for any one single purpose including this one. They count on that. In fact, they depend on it.

And they’re probably right. Special interest groups will stay in the fight as long as it takes while “We the People”, with so many other things to do, often tire and quit under pressure. That’s why nothing ever changes.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. All of you start calling or mailing your congressmen and women to vote for taxpayer funding of national elections with appropriate controls. Then, if they refuse, tell them you’ll vote them out of office.

If they believe you they will listen. But will they believe you? Probably not, not yet anyway. So we need to wake them up. And the way to do that is to vote every incumbent out of office in the 2010 fall elections. That will most definitely get their attention.

We don’t need a bunch of lawyers or Ivy School left-leaning, reluctant-Americans in our halls of Congress. We’ve had that for years. Let’s try it this time with the local folks. I think we’ll be better off.

Then, let’s throw the moneychangers out of the temple and start over again. This time we should know better what to avoid. It can be done.

Elect regular folks and then chance the rules of the game. It may help and it sure as hell can’t hurt.

JOEY
Welcome to Joey’s Newspage, where people come to exercise their minds
http://www.blogger.com/profile/00659050837324784709