Telemachus

Contraception, Health Care Plans and The Constitution

2012-02-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Why has the contraception edict by the Obama White House caused so much trouble?

It drives Catholics and other church-goers bonkers.

For good reason. It goes against the very essence of who we are as Americans as you will soon see.

The Catholics were understandably upset over the forced mandate of contraceptives being included on any health care plan offered by the Catholic Church to any of its millions of people across the nation or group plans offered through any of its entities. That goes against their religious belief that contraceptives are not acceptable to use as for family-planning purposes.

But Protestant religious groups across the nation were irate as well, even though their denominations accept the use of contraceptives for family-planning.

What gives? What was at the heart of this enervated opposition to President Obama's health care policy?

We think this edict bore right through the mantle of the often-shallow American political game and went right through to the magma of what it means to be an American. It is worth examining just so everyone understands where it came from.

What people with religious faith vehemently disagree with is the heavy-handed intrusion of the power of the federal government into matters of their faith. If there is anything that is a core American principle, it is the protection of everyone's right to believe, or not believe for that matter, in any particular religion.

It is a clearly enunciated right in the US Constitution. The Constitution speaks of religion in two phrases: The first is the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;'.

The second is Article VI: '...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.' Go tell that to Mitt Romney.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about it for the Constitutional language on religion and religious freedom.

There are 3 other 'foundational' documents, however, that you need to be aware of and understand whenever it comes to religious freedom issues in America, even though they are not in the US Constitution.

The Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1779.
The Danbury Baptists Letter to President Thomas Jefferson in October, 1801.
President Thomas Jefferson's Response to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802.

Click on the links above and take a look at these important American documents. It is simply impossible to come away with any other conclusion than the fact that Thomas Jefferson, speaking on the behalf of many of the Revolutionaries and Patriots of the day, wanted to make painfully clear that one of the prime motivations for fighting the War for Independence and establishing the new Republic was to guarantee the free exercise of religion without ANY interference or hindrance or mandate from the federal government. Whatsoever. Ever.

Jefferson's language in the Virginia Statute is rife with 'liberty' and 'freedom' words and themes written in only a way that he seemed able to and catch the spirit of the human need to be able to worship freely without any interference from anyone or any state-sponsored government.

The point to keep in mind as you read these documents is that paramount in their minds was the experience of the state-sponsored Anglican Church of England as well as the state-sponsored Anglican Church of Virginia in colonial and post-revolutionary war days.

Did you know that you could not hold office in the Commonwealth of Virginia unless you were a solid Anglican or Episcopalian in good standing? Not only that, taxes were collected from the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Virginia to support, you guessed it, The Anglican Church of Virginia! The word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' comes from the political battles in England and Virginia over the 'disestablishment' of the Church 'from' the state.

Can you imagine that? Collecting taxes today to support any church in your state, be it Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim or Rastafarian?

Jefferson and his founding brothers rejected that notion for the new Republic in 1789. His response to the Danbury Baptists was written to assure them that he had no interest or desire as President to do anything that would be construed or mis-construed as recognizing or establishing any particular religion as the 'state-sponsored' religion of the new federal government.

The Danbury Baptists were aggrieved just like the Virginia Baptists or Methodists must have been in the sense that they were not allowed to hold public office and participate fully in the new republic's business.

Jefferson's letter back to them sought to assure them of his independence in this issue and he included this phrase: '...thus building a wall of separation between Church & State' to emphasize his understanding that the state should not impose a state-sponsored religion on anyone anywhere in this nation.

That phrase has been noodled, dissected, mis-represented and mis-handled ever since then by parties on all sides of various issues, depending on whether it suited their political purposes or not.

This is the landmine that the Obama Administration stepped on which has blown up in their face. It flies in the face of the American experience that any President or Congress can tell any religious group what to do and that includes whether the Catholic Church has to offer coverage for contraceptives or not in their offering of insurance plans.

Reading some of the foundational documents might actually be helpful to everyone involved, wouldn't you agree?

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'Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's'

2012-02-03T04:54:00.000-08:00

From Politico:

'President Barack Obama on Thursday tied his proposal to raise taxes on wealthy Americans to his faith, telling leaders gathered for the National Prayer Breakfast that Jesus’s teachings have shaped that conclusion.

The rich should pay more not only because “I actually think that is going to make economic sense, but for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said at the Washington Hilton, delivering remarks at an annual event that every president has attended since Dwight D. Eisenhower.'

Well, this brings up a lot of other verses to consider, doesn't it?

Jesus Himself Paid Taxes! (Matthew 17:24-27)
'Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's' (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26)
Submit Yourself To The Governing Authorities (Romans 13:1)
Pay Taxes Because The 'Governing Authorities' Are God's Servants (Romans 13:5-7)

Now, politicians always have to be very careful when they are mixing Scripture with advocating public policy. What about the confusion between 'church and state' here? Didn't President Obama just step over the line by 'invoking' the Holy Lord by intimating that He thinks higher taxes on rich Americans is a 'good thing' to cure our budget deficits as if Jesus is some sort of OMB Director?

But more to the point, what do these verses actually tell us about the American Experience as a nation over these past 223 years?

That we are a nation of 'rebels' who don't look kindly on despotic leaders and rulers, that is what it says.

Here's what we mean:

Apparently, none of the Revolutionary Founders of this nation paid too much attention to the admonition to 'submit to the governing authorities' very well, did they? What did they do?

They stuck more than their finger into the chest and then the eyes of King George III and told him through a bloody war (which anytime really is 'politics by other means) to go stuff it somewhere and don't ever bother us again.

And then, they did something truly amazing.

They wrote a Constitution of self-rule that completely eliminated any vestige of single person rule in America.

No, not the one we live under now. The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781. The 'first' Constitution and the one that coined the phrase 'The United States of America' for the first time.

There was no President. There was no Supreme Court. There was no bicameral legislature. Just one unicameral legislative body where 13 representatives of the 13 states would meet and have to arrive at a unanimous vote to get anything done.

So, in God's eyes, who then became the 'governing authority' under which to submit and pay taxes and do other things the 'government' ('of the people, by the people, for the people'...you know, what Lincoln said at Gettysburg) told them to do? Who is the 'Caesar' now?

You see the difference? It is one thing to have a single person make decisions for the rest of us all based on his/her personal feelings and predilections.

It is an entirely other thing to have a group of people hammer out a deal under which they know themselves that they are going to have to live under the rules they hammer out and then return home to face the approbation or the disgust of their many neighbors and friends who live near them, not across the ocean or in Washington, DC far removed from the 'real world'.

We think President Obama has made the mistake in assuming that we live in an America under the rule of a 'Caesar' or at least a very powerful President during his term in the White House.

To some extent and to be fair about it all, the power assumed by the President has been steadily escalating over the past 80 years since FDR took the reins of the White House during the last (but far more severe) Great Depression in 1933. Ronald Reagan consolidated power during his term in the White House through his charm and personality and George W. Bush did some things that still give us heartburn to be honest about it.

But we really don't live under a Caesar and never have. We don't live in a nation ruled by a King, a czar, a potentate or even a Grand Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes like in the Flintstones cartoons.

We live in a democratic republic where we are supposedly ruled by fellow citizens who are supposed to argue, debate, scream if they have to over policy differences in Congress and our state legislatures....and then come to some reasonable compromises and conclusions and go home.

The problem is that Americans seem to have become inured to the idea that The President and the Executive Branch of our government is far more important and powerful than the Congress (of the People) is. Take a look at this chart and see what we mean.

Maybe this 2012 presidential election cycle is a good time to discuss, maybe at least for 10 minutes in one of these interminable debates, the proper role and perspectives on self-governance nowadays.

The Founders spent 13 years in, first, a bloody, protracted war on the battlefields and then heated debates in the councils and pubs over what to do next between 1776 and 1789 to set up what they thought was the 'ideal' structure for people to govern themselves in a free society.

We think now that the 'governing authorities' are ourselves, and not a Caesar, that it is time we start acting like we care about what is happening to our nation and get involved in some tangible worthwhile manner this election cycle.

Like maybe you running for some elective office for example or at least coughing up some significant dough for candidates who do have the courage to run for something.

'Rendering Unto Caesar' when you are actually the 'governing authority' takes on a completely different light, doesn't it?

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The Gordian Knot of Medicare

2012-01-31T03:39:00.000-08:00

We saw an interesting article asking what would happen if a person wanted to leave Medicare and got to wondering:

'Is it 'constitutional' to force everyone who is aged 65 or older into and then stay on Medicare even if they don't want to or can afford their own non-government-run and paid-for health care coverage?'

(You can choose to dis-enroll from Medicare Part B whenever you want to but you are automatically enrolled in Medicare Part A and B when you turn 65. You can not dis-enroll from Part A, and for reasons cited below, you may never want to either)

We think any time you can get 50%+1 of both the House and the Senate to agree on a package that the President doesn't veto is pretty much as 'constitutional' as you will ever get.

If you really want to get picky about it, add in the 27 Amendments to the US Constitution we have passed over these last 223 years that all passed Congress by 2/3rd's majority and were sent to the states where 3/4's of them had to ratify it as well in their state legislatures (except for the 21st Amendment that was ratified by 3/4's of the state conventions)

Those are the two 'constitutional ways' to change things in America. It is a slow, very deliberate and difficult process. Just like Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson wanted it to be.

The 'constitutional' way to overturn Obama Care is through the same process: Congress and the White House. Elect enough new people to overturn Obama Care if you don't like it, that is the way to do it. It requires gutsy candidates and lots of money but that is the way to do it, not wait on the decision of 9 people on the high court.

For that reason, we don't put too much stock in the argument that the Supreme Court will overturn Obama Care because of the individual mandate issue. It passed Congress with the requisite number of votes and was signed into law by the President.

What can be more 'constitutional' than that?

But getting back to the question at hand: Should a senior be able to leave Medicare if he/she wanted to and had their own private health insurance or were 'self-insured', in effect, because they were super-duper wealthy like Warren Buffett, let's say, or Bill Gates?

Take a very close look at the chart below:

Medicare (A+B) Sources of Income as Percentage of Total Income

Part B
Year Payroll Taxes Tax on Benefits Premiums State Transfers General Revenue
2010 38.9% 2.9% 13.2% 0.9 % 44%

What this chart is screaming out to the American public, even though most people don't want to see it, hear it or believe it, is this: 'Medicare is one of the largest 'welfare' programs now run in America'.

(Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of 'welfare':

aid in the form of money or necessities for those 'in need'
an agency or program through which such aid is distributed

If you have a problem with the definition of 'welfare', take it up with the intellectual descendants of Noah Webster who developed this line of dictionaries in America. But Medicare qualifies on every word in this definition except for these two: 'in need')

Medicare is not targeted towards just to those 'in need'; the poverty-stricken; the poor or even the-close-to-being-near-poor! There are millions and millions of upper-income and very wealthy people now on Medicare simply because they know they have one of the best deals in the history of mankind!

Having Warren Buffett and Bill Gates on any sort of federal subsidy program is just plain wrong, wouldn't you have to agree?

Let's think on this for a second:

Out of all of the $520 billion spent by the federal government on all Medicare services in 2010, all but $68 billion or so of the funds to pay for it all came from other people than the senior retirees. Seniors on Medicare Part B pay roughly $320+/month through premiums for physician services but virtually zero for the Part A hospital costs which account for about 50% of Medicare expenditures annually.

13.2% of the total was paid by roughly 44 million seniors currently on Medicare. 13.2%.

Who pays for the 'rest' of Medicare?

You do, silly.

In the form of FICA payroll taxes from your work (38.9% of the total). Or in the form of general revenue taxes you pay (or what the government obligates your children to pay through more debt to the Chinese, that is, or 44%)

Taxes on wealthy seniors accounts for 2.9% of the total and .9% is a transfer from the states for some reason which hardly seems worth the effort, does it?

So, where does that leave us?

Since Medicare is almost all paid for (84%) by the general taxpayer anyways today, why don't we just go ahead and make it all 'free' to every senior citizen?

That is right. FREE. As in a 'Free Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cone' or 'Free Lunch at the Snappy Lunch in Mayberry, NC!'

With the following compromise, that is. (There is always a deal to be made in Washington if you listen closely enough)

In return for making Medicare 'free' for eligible seniors, the following changes/reforms will be made to Medicare this year:

1. The Medicare eligibility age will start to rise at the end of 2012 in annual 4-month increments from age 65 to age 70 over the next 15 years. After all, if you reach age 65 in the year 2020, you can expect to live another 15 years if you are a man and perhaps 18 if you are a woman.

In many ways (besides eating too many Twinkies), we are the 'healthiest' generation of Americans who have ever lived. And unless you have been doing manual labor all your life instead of flying a desk or driving a computer mouse all day, you are probably in pretty good health relative to our parents and grandparents who worked and sweated their way through the Great Depression AND then were 'rewarded' with the 'booby prize' behind Door #3, World War II.

2. Every senior citizen who is either very wealthy or ridiculously wealthy will no longer be eligible for Medicare (or SS for that matter).

They have done exceptionally well in life and the payroll taxes they did pay over their lifetimes went to the retirees who were living then, not into a trust fund or ERISA-protected benefits plan where those contributions could have then built wealth over time.

And they don't 'need' or even 'want' 'welfare' from the other American people. Do they?

Some estimates run as high as $70 billion per year that could be saved (or debt averted) annually from here on out if entitlement programs were truly 'means-tested'. That would be over $1 trillion between today and 2022 alone.

It would 'cost' the taxpayer 'only' the $68 billion or so per year in lost Part B premium payments, probably starting in the year 2020, adjusting for inflation and phasing up as the current senior generation expires.

But the 'means-testing' (it is not a bad word in this deal, is it?) would yield close to $70 billion in savings from both Medicare and Social Security. PLUS the structural budget trend-lines in future Medicare costs would start to crumble somewhat as the age eligibility component is factored into projections.

People who are currently on Medicare would continue in the current system until they die which would keep the $68 billion+/year coming in for at least a little while as the age cohort ages.

On a very simple marginal cost/benefit analysis, we would save multiples of whatever amount of revenues we would lose in the 'lost' Part B premiums that would no longer be paid once the current senior generation expires. Maybe on the order of 10-1 over the long-term.

The people who need federal help the most would be protected and then we could focus on the other factors that are still driving up health care costs such as defensive medicine, liability insurance, tort law, third-party payors and the granddaddy of them all...getting people to take care of themselves and stop eating so many Twinkies, smoking and drinking excessively and generally being a couch potato the size of the couch.

What do you think? Would you take this 'deal' if you thought it would help get us out of this budget and economic ditch in which we seem mired?

Maybe you should talk with your kids or grandkids about it as well before you answer that question.

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If You Want 'Smaller Government', Use The Threat of Higher Taxes on Everyone To Get There

2012-01-26T04:05:00.000-08:00

It is a truism in business, conservative circles and general human common knowledge that if you want more of something to be used, give it away 'for free' and voila!....more of it will in fact be consumed.

How 'self-evident' is that? We are surprised that was not put in the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution.

Many conservatives won't go to Ben & Jerry's any longer because of their liberal views and donations to liberal causes.

Except when they give away free ice cream cones all day long in April each year, that is. Then they line up like every other person who wants what? A great ice cream cone that tastes even better when it is given away for 'free'.

So why don't conservative small government advocates use the same logic when it comes to trying to reduce the size of government they say they want to do so badly?

'If you want more government, we are going to support raising taxes on everyone, not just a select few such as the rich or the importers or the consumers of carbon, etc. etc. etc.'

The converse would be true as well: 'If you want less government, we will tax everyone less by a proportionate amount.

Right? Isn't that what is supposed to be done in a society where everyone has an equal vote in the matter? Shouldn't everyone also have an equal amount of 'skin in the game' in terms of exposure to paying for all the services government provides, including when these programs are increased in cost?

We think that over the past 50 years in America, the inherent tension between paying for the government we all seem to want has been completely decoupled and broken. The more that politicians such as President Obama seek to play the 'class warfare' card in this high-stakes game of poker, the more dissolved we become as a nation in terms of having a collective stake in the game, i.e. paying taxes for our collective good.

As a result, we seem to believe as a society that all we have to do is pass new laws which increase the cost of our government and 'someone else will pay for it'.

Who the hell is that supposed to be?

Does 1 person get more protection from our wonderful national defense military and homeland security teams than any other person? Nope.

Does one class of citizens, such as the top 1% of income-earners, get more than 1% of the total protection offered by the same defense teams? Nope. Rich people and poor people were slaughtered on an equal opportunity basis when those planes slammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.

We are either all protected or not protected at all. That is the way it goes in a democratic republic supposedly.

For just one example of what happens when 'someone else pays for it', consider the current 'third party payor' system in the otherwise truly wondrous health care system in America.

Medicare is at least 50% paid for by 'other' younger taxpayers; Medicaid is totally supported by other people who pay taxes; and employer-paid health care plans are paid 'by my boss and company who pay 50-75% of my health care premium each month'.

We will all go get multiple opinions from different doctors if we don't like the first one we get when we are feeling bad and want to feel better, won't we? As long as we don't have to pay for the full cost of any of the visits or procedures or drugs, we will get as much of it as we possibly can even if the malady is minor or not life-threatening.

That is just standard human nature, isn't it? Nothing insidious about that fact. It is just the plain honest truth.

In ancient Greece, the Athenians did not have the benefit of a beneficent Federal Reserve to print up money or just 'make it up out of thin air' whenever they had to raise an army and navy and pay soldiers and hoplites to go to war to protect their freedom and interests around the known world at the time as they did in the 30-year Peloponnesian War from 431-403 BC.

Guess what they had to do? They had to raise money the old-fashioned way: from their own pockets, in chunks of gold, silver or talents and put it in the hands of the Athenian treasury so the state could pay the costs of war.

How did they do that? They held humongous town meetings out in the open square to discuss the advantages of going to war versus not going to war. As in 'becoming slaves' to the Spartans or Persians or suffering outright annihilation.

Once they decided to go to war, they had to decide how to pay for the soldiers, hoplites, boats and armaments to win the war. So they assessed 'taxes' on every citizen in some fashion or another.

They also usually voted to conscript every able-bodied man to go to war as well. Not many draft-dodgers back then we don't think. It was a total battle for survival and every person knew it.

Talk about a 'participatory democracy'!

But think of how difficult it must have been to make these collective decisions. If you had to pay higher taxes immediately to support a war, hypothetically speaking, of course, in Iraq, let's say, in 2003 AND you had to go to battle as long as you were an able-bodied man, would we have taken that momentous step as a nation?

No, of course not! But as long as 'someone else' was paying for it and 'I' didn't have to actually join the military and go fight the Iraqis for real, then 'that is OK by us!'

The Greeks 'participated' in every major decision by voting for services to be rendered by the government (entitlements, defense, road construction); they 'participated' by paying for those services with their taxes and the men were told to take up arms and go to war to defend their freedom.

We have lost sight of that direct connection between taxation and spending in America. Completely.

Returning to the tension between taxes and spending at the federal government level just might be the constraining factor that Alexander Hamilton referred to when he said that a consumption tax contains within itself a self-limiting limit on the size of government. (see Hamiltonian Federalists)*

So why not bring back that aspect of the Greek system to the modern American democratic republic in the 21st century to a new political party should it ever emerge?

It would look something like this: 'If Congress votes for more government spending, taxes will rise on EVERY US taxpayer in order to pay for it, not just the rich. That would include prescription drug benefits; going to war, homeland security, and building a 'Bridge to Somewhere' in Moosehide, Montana.'

Right now, 50% of the American taxpaying public have zero threat of their federal income taxes ever going up to pay for any increase in federal government spending for any purpose. Both political parties never tell any of these citizens to pay even $1 in federal income taxes to pay for anything above what they pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits in payroll taxes.

Most people don't even think of SS and Medicare FICA taxes as being 'taxes' anyway. They think they are actually making 'defined contributions' to their own private retirement and health savings plan in some way that 'just has to be' like what they do in the private sector.

They are sadly 'mistaken' and deliberately misled on that score.

So what do they care about how Congress spends money on anything outside of SS and Medicare? They could care less if Congress wants to build a 'Bridge to Nowhere' or a 'Tunnel to Somewhere' or go to war in Zimbabwe or put money into a Solyndra-like green energy project that goes under.

We think the moment every US citizen feels they have a stake in paying for any new federal program as in new taxes to be imposed on them, the historic political tension between taxes and spending will return to the process and once again put a damper on rampant, unchecked spending.

Even the threat of a $1 tax hike per head on everyone would reintroduce the balance between taxation and the size and scope of our federal government. And the harder it is for a politician to raise taxes on everyone to pay for more government, the harder it will be for them to keep increasing the size and cost of government at warp speed like we have been doing for the past decade or more.

*'It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue.'- Alexander Hamilton

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What is True 'Tax Fairness' Anyway, Mr. Obama?

2012-01-25T04:40:00.000-08:00

Don't you just love the theatre of politics?

President Obama gave a great speech last night for the State of the Union. He's a great speaker, what can anyone say about that?

But the backdrop of the SOTU speech was clearly outlined by the release of Mitt Romney's tax returns the previous day which showed that he paid 'only' an effective tax rate of 15%, 'lower than the tax rate of Warren Buffett's secretary yada, yada, yada'.

One of President Obama's campaign tactics will clearly be 'class warfare'. Call it whatever you want but his political handlers obviously see trends in national polling that tell them that 'running against the rich' and talking about disparity in income might help him win re-election in November.

The sleight-of-hand in his delivery is what bothers us more than anything. Sure there are different tax 'rates' in the tax code but those were passed by Congress over the years for different reasons. Long-term invested capital has been determined by Congress (which is the constitutional way to do it) to be 'more valuable' since it helps create jobs in the long-run and if you tax less of it, the natural human tendency is to do more of it.

That just stands to reason, doesn't it?

But to even come close to asserting that Mitt Romney paid 'less' taxes in any way, shape, form or fashion than Warren Buffett's secretary is mental gymnastics on LSD, crack cocaine and crystal meth to the nth degree. No national figure should be able to make such an absurd assertion without full disclosure. Which is why President Obama deserves to be chastised for doing so last night.

Mitt Romney pays about $3 million in taxes each year. That is one single American taxpayer among 140 million households who wrote a check to Uncle Sam at the US Department of Treasury for 3 million smackers. 3 million of legal US tender greenbacks.

Have we gotten your attention yet, class? $3 million is $3 million from 1 single person!

All we would need is 866,667 other taxpayers just like Mitt Romney paying $3 million per year...and then no one else, including Warren Buffett's secretary, would have to pay one thin dime in income or payroll taxes or corporate income taxes or excise taxes or estate taxes next year!

Now we have your attention, don't we class? Not a single other solitary person in the entire country! Wouldn't you like to not have to write any more checks to the IRS or have that niggling 'FICA' tax deducted from your paycheck every other week?

Heck! President Obama has got it all wrong! Why not try to find a way to get 866,666 other Americans out of 140 million taxpaying households to make so much money that they just fund our entire government for the rest of us?

Of course, we are being facetious...up to a point.

Our main fear has long been that as we seek to drop more and more people off of the tax rolls, our democracy gets 'weaker' as the tension between 'paying taxes' and 'receiving the benefits' of what those said-same taxes provide for you (defense, education, roads) diminishes.

We know enough about history to fear when a very concentrated few very wealthy people or single individual controls the purse-strings to any country. (See the Oligarchs in ancient Athens)

We also think it is very healthy for EVERYONE to contribute something to the national treasury in the form of taxes because that makes their vote really 'count' each and every time they cast it during an election cycle. (more on that in the next posting)

So take this 'the rich don't pay their fair share' malarkey with a huge block of salt. It is just pure political posturing and gamesmenship played by professional consultants who have one goal and one goal only: 'Get my man re-elected in November.'

These guys would tell the President to promise each one of you a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich every day for the rest of your lives if their polling told them that it would work and you would vote for Obama based on that delicious promise.

So be careful what you tell any pollster when they call your home. You might just get it.

We will explain further in our next post why we think the trick to getting smaller, more efficiently-spending and spendthrift government is to threaten to raise taxes on everyone if we want more government.

It is just common-sensical human nature at work as well.

'So, Mr. Lincoln, Will You Show Us Your Tax Returns And Did You Ever Sleep With Barnyard Animals'?

2012-01-24T03:11:00.000-08:00

'Umm, the primary issue in this campaign of 1860 is whether the Union will survive or not, Brian with all due respect.'

Don't you just wish the media would actually ask questions of these presidential candidates that are important to us as a nation?

Honestly, what net effect does the release of Mitt Romney's tax returns for the past decade have on whether you will ever get a job again or your business will succeed?

And, (pardon the French), who the hell really cares whether Newt Gingrich ever 'consulted' or 'lobbied' for Freddie Mac? (Answer: Companies don't hire people with legislative experience to teach them history about the Crimean War or the impact of the Whiskey Rebellion on the young United States.)

We have much bigger problems than either of those two questions, Brian Williams and John King, with all due respect.

We decided to go back in the Wayback Machine to see just how ridiculous most of modern-day journalism has gotten with these seemingly interminable debates, especially when we are confronted with the greatest economic challenges since: 1) The Great Depression and 2) any of the economic depressions that followed the Civil War, in that order.

John King, American Telegraph: 'Mr. Lincoln, did you actually get paid by Illinois Central Railroad for the legal work you did for them when they were becoming a big bad giant railroad company?'

Honest Abe: 'Well, why yes I did, Mr. King. I am a lawyer. And a darned good one at that I might add'.

Brian Williams, News Courier Services: 'Mr. Lincoln, is it true that you have actually slept in the same bed with other men during your travels about the Midwest?

Lincoln: 'Mr. Williams, there are many times when there is only one straw bed in the hotel and 5 men will sleep in the same bed after a long journey on horseback. It is 1860, you ninny! Now can we get back to what the real problems are in this country, namely keeping this Union together and what to do about the issue of slavery and state's rights?

Now, of course, the press was just as mean and insolent back in antebellum days as they are today in 21st century America. Abraham Lincoln was routinely called a 'baboon' and a big dumb backwoodsman from Illinois by his opponents and columnists alike.

But don't you wish that for just once, we could have a debate with these following questions, mainly because they get at the root of what our problems are as a nation today?

Would you veto every spending bill that comes to your desk in the Oval Office regardless of whether it comes from a GOP or Democrat-controlled Congress unless it actually reduced spending each year?
Would you sign a bill to repeal Obama Care, assuming it was passed by Congress?
If you repealed Obama Care, what would you propose to Congress to take its place so that everyone could have access to affordable health care insurance? (trick question..'insurance' is different from having access to 'health care'. see 'Do You Have Gutter Insurance?')
Would you respect the Constitution and defer to the wishes of the majority of Congress or do things by executive order?
Do you presume you and you alone can 'create' millions of new jobs in America or do the American people do that with their own ingenuity and sweat and investment given the right conditions to do so?
Will you lead the charge to help reform Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the Triple Towers of our problems in the federal budget?
Will you propose a consumption tax in lieu of every existing federal tax to get rid of all the loopholes, deductions and exemptions that make the current tax code a complete farce?
Do you think we should keep cutting taxes regardless of the debt and deficit outlook as some advocate to stimulate the economy?
Will you support a strong and vigorous national defense program and does that include keeping a naval fleet in the Straits of Hormuz to insure safe shipping lanes so we can keep importing more oil from the Middle East?
How do you plan to defeat President Obama in November? Please be specific.
Do you actually still believe there is intelligent life on this planet?

(We threw that last one in to see if you were paying attention. We wonder sometimes if all intelligent life has not just vanished from the modern media and modern political scene, though)

Let's hope future reporters will actually get their heads screwed on straight before asking any more questions to these candidates, one of whom will be trying to unseat President Barack Obama in November.

The list of questions we want answered are above and very simple to ask. Send them along to John King and Brian Williams, et. al. if you know them. They will be doing the American Republic a great favor if they will focus on questions that actually mean something to our future.

What Do James Madison's Views On Constitutional 'Checks and Balances' Have To Do With The South Carolina Primary Today?

2012-01-21T05:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the quaint little diagram most textbooks have taught American schoolchildren over the last century about the so-called 'checks and balances' in the American democratic republic system.

Looks simple, right? It almost looks like a 'peace-and-love' symbol from the early 1970's.

It is also vastly 'wrong' when considering just exactly what sort of government James Madison and his good friend, Thomas Jefferson, were trying to establish in 1787, even though Mr. Jefferson was in Paris, France busy trying to establish trade treaties and beg for money to help pay the debts of the newly-minted young American Republic.

France and Holland were the Chinese money-lenders of the time. America hasn't learned much about borrowing in 223 years, have we?

Here's why these simplified school charts are so 'wrong': James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and even Alexander Hamilton for the most part had zero intention of creating any system where the legislative branch did not reign supreme. As in having every single last card to play whenever it came to making public policy changes in America.

A better way to consider what our Founders really wanted in the new democratic republic would be to consider the words to one of The Rolling Stones' greatest hits, 'Under My Thumb' in 1966 and think of them in terms of what the Founders were trying to do back then:

'The squirmin' dog who's just had her day...The way she does just what she's told. Down to me, the change has come. She's under my thumb.'

The 'squirming dog' back then was the King of England who had just lost his total monarchical power over the former colonies. For good reason. He was too oppressive, too capricious and too over-bearing in his demands of the American taxpayers.

Who would be the 'squirming dog' today in modern-day America should Messrs. Madison and Jefferson come back from the dead to lead us again? Or better yet, some modern-day Madisons and Jeffersons with a pretty solid understanding of their constitutional genius and ability to lead our nation again?

The omnipotent and over-reaching President of the United States and the Executive Branch of our government. All of which have been fed and fueled by the sometimes coherent (but mostly not) decisions of our elective representatives for the past 80 years but for the most part, the past 20 and certainly the past 10 years with almost a childlike reckless abandon.

This is not a direct slam at President Barack Obama, although we believe he has taken the control of the executive branch and taken it to the extreme in off-the-constitutional-backroad-driving contest. This is a direct slam at the proclivity of the once-free nation of the United States of America that seemingly has defaulted its right to be a self-governing nation where 50%+1 of their number in Congress got to choose how we were run as a nation. Not the President and his minions.

Take a look at this 'revised' chart of Constitutional checks-and-balances that we think more realistically reflects the intent of the framers of the Constitution in 1787: (You may have to click on the chart to open it in a more clear and easier to read new window)

We think Mr. Madison and the other Founders 'stacked the deck', deservedly so, in Philadelphia in 1787 so that Congress, not the President, and certainly not the Supreme Court, would be the ultimate arbiter in all things relating to the conduct of the affairs of this nation.

Sure, they wanted a 'single voice' to speak for the nation when it came to foreign affairs and being the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. But they also reserved the right to 'declare' war to Congress so that we didn't have some modern-day Alexander The Great gallivanting all over the globe extending his imperialistic dreams everywhere with the blood of American citizen-soldiers instead of just focusing on defending our borders and interests around the world when necessary. (as in World War II as a prime example)

The 1787 Constitutional Convention was so vague about the scope and range of the Supreme Court and the judicial branch that the words 'judicial review' never even show up in the vaunted language of the US Constitution.

The power to overrule another branch of government did not occur for the Supreme Court until the 1803 Marbury vs. Madison ruling, 14 years after the founding of the Republic. And in another strange twist, President Jefferson sent a budget to the US Congress asking for $0 to fund the entire judicial branch around about the same time 'because the courts had gotten too political'.

Imagine that.

Why does any of this matter today, of all days?

The South Carolina primary takes place today and with it goes the next step in determining who the nominee will be for the Republicans to challenge the incumbency of President Barack Obama who wants to serve another 4 years as our Chief Executive of this great nation of ours.

With the fall presidential elections coming up, we also get one more quadrennial chance to decide what sort of Republic we want to have: Do we want to continue building an ever-expanding and expansive government built on executive privilege and prerogative?

Or do we really and truly want to progress to a day when a normally-functioning, sentient and coherent Congress will meet to discuss our problems in a sane and rational manner and actually come to some reasoned conclusions based on compromise where at least 50%+1 of the Members of Congress and Senate vote 'Aye' to save the Republic?

You know, like the Founders really wanted us to do. Forever.

'You Might Be A Small Government Conservative If You....

2012-01-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

...are for Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security!' as described in a recent CBO blog by the Director of the CBO.

We have always enjoyed the comedy of Jeff Foxworthy of 'You Might Be A Redneck' fame. (You know who you are. We went to school with you when you bragged about being a redneck!)

But what we are really having difficulty figuring out is who is really and truly for 'less government'. The book would be pretty small if it was called 'You Might Be A Small Government Conservative If....'

Would it be the GOP? 'You might be a small government conservative if you cut spending and balanced the budgets every now and then!'

Raucous laughter in the audience.

Is it the Tea Party? If so, perhaps they will adopt the age 70 retirement age as a solid plank in their platform going forward. Has anyone seen any Tea Party advocate do this? If so, please steer them our way.

Is it President Obama and the current Democratic Party? (Sorry. In the interests of fairness we just had to ask full well knowing the answer is a resounding 'No!')

Raising the retirement ages almost immediately to 70 (the Early Retirement Age would have to be raised precipitously as well) would flush out the 'true conservatives' from all the pretenders it seems to us.

Reason #1 is the fact that 'true conservatives' supposedly don't want government programs and certainly not 'welfare'. (SS and Medicare are not trust funds or any sort of 'actual' investments when funds are invested to grow and be taken out later for each individual)

Every SS $ received by you will be just a dollar taken out of your children's tax payment to Washington every other week; a dollar taken from another trillion or so borrowed from the Chinese in more debt or from money just 'made up out of thin air' by the Fed if the dollar is still in currency in 2025 or so.

#2 is the fact that 'true conservatives' want smaller government and balanced budgets. Right? Is that still correct? We are asking.

Raising the retirement age is a triple, if not a home run, for 'true conservatives' then!

Raise your hand if you are willing to adopt that as a critical plank in the new political majority that is budding out there.

Implementing the higher age thresholds for both Medicare and Social Security on a phased-in basis will solve close to a minimum of 16% of the long-term budget deficit problem just by doing those two things alone by 2035. Accelerating the hike to age 70 in both Medicare and SS in the next 10 years may solve close to 50% of our structural deficit problems.

People will say: 'You can't make everyone wait til 70 to retire!'

Ok, you are right. Offer exemptions due to physical and mental health conditions. You are most likely going to have to work to age 70 anyway due to the financial losses incurred over the past 4 years in your retirement plans.

Honestly, who in the later Baby Boom Generation and younger has ever really believed Social Security was going to be there for them anyway when they retired? Many people have long planned for zero Social Security benefits in retirement.

Take a look at what the CBO Director has to say about this important issue. We have reprinted it below to make it extremely easy for you to read and not ignore. It is a big deal.

'Raising the ages at which people can begin to collect Medicare and Social Security benefits would be one way to lower federal outlays, raise revenues, and reduce long-term fiscal imbalances. A CBO issue brief released today reviews how ages of eligibility affect beneficiaries under current law and how delaying eligibility would affect beneficiaries, the federal budget, and the economy. (CBO has explored this issue in other publications, most recently in March 2011 in Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options.)

Policy Option	Long-Term Budget Impact	Implications for Beneficiaries
Raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67	Medicare spending declines by about 5 percent	Access to Medicare would be delayed for most people; many of the affected people would pay more for health care
Raise the full retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70	Social Security spending declines by about 13 percent	People would face reduced benefits over a lifetime
Raise the early eligibility age for Social Security from 62 to 64	Social Security spending changes little	Access to Social Security benefits would be delayed for many people, but their monthly benefit amounts would increase

Raising any of the ages of eligibility would cause some people to work longer, thereby increasing the size of the workforce and the economy. Although the magnitude of those effects is difficult to predict, CBO estimates that:

Raising Social Security’s early eligibility age to 64 or the full retirement age to 70 would, in the long term, boost the size of the workforce and the economy by slightly more than 1 percent.

Raising Medicare’s eligibility age to 67 would also boost the size of the workforce and the economy, but by a much smaller amount.

Effects of Raising the Medicare Eligibility Age (MEA) from 65 to 67

Medicare provides health insurance to almost everyone who is 65 or older. If the eligibility age was raised above 65, fewer people would be eligible for Medicare, and outlays for the program would decline relative to those projected under current law. CBO expects that most people affected by the change would obtain health insurance from other sources, primarily employers or other government programs, although some would have no health insurance. Federal spending on those other programs would increase, partially offsetting the Medicare savings. Many of the people who would otherwise have enrolled in Medicare would face higher premiums for health insurance, higher out-of-pocket costs for health care, or both.

CBO estimates that raising the MEA would reduce Medicare outlays, net of premiums and other offsetting receipts, by $148 billion from 2012 through 2021. By 2035, Medicare’s net spending would be about 5 percent below what it otherwise would be—4.7 percent of GDP rather than 5.0 percent under current law. A rise in the MEA would cut by a larger percentage the number of years during which the average person would receive Medicare benefits, but the percentage reduction in outlays would be smaller because the people affected would be the youngest beneficiaries, who tend to be the healthiest and thus to require the least costly health care.

Effects of Raising the Full Retirement Age (FRA) for Social Security from 67 to 70

The FRA under Social Security—the age at which participants are eligible to receive full benefits—is currently 66 but is scheduled to increase to 67 for people who were born after 1959. Beneficiaries may choose to begin collecting benefits before the FRA, but then they receive less per month. Therefore, raising the FRA would result in a reduction in lifetime benefits relative to what people would receive otherwise.

On average, raising the FRA would induce people to work longer to offset the lost income. Moreover, the amount of additional work would probably be greater than would occur if an equivalent benefit reduction was implemented without changing the FRA because more people would be inclined to claim benefits later.

The reduction in monthly benefits for some beneficiaries would lower average income and increase poverty rates in the future among the elderly. The increase in the FRA would be particularly burdensome for people with low income, who tend to rely heavily on Social Security benefits, and especially for those who could neither qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance nor adjust their work patterns.

CBO has estimated the effects of one option for gradually increasing the FRA to age 70 by two months per year. The result would be to shrink federal outlays by $120 billion through 2021. By 2035, the option would reduce Social Security outlays by about 4 percent relative to what would occur under current law. The effect of the changes would continue to grow; by 2060, outlays would be reduced by about 13 percent.

Effects of Raising the Early Eligibility Age (EEA) for Social Security from 62 to 64

Currently, more than half of nondisabled beneficiaries who receive Social Security benefits based on their own work history claim benefits at 62, and almost 60 percent claim before 64. Therefore, if the EEA for Social Security was increased from age 62 to age 64, many people would be forced to claim benefits later than they otherwise would. They would receive larger benefits each month for fewer months overall, but currently those factors would approximately balance and an average beneficiary would receive roughly the same total benefits over a lifetime.

However, people with lower earnings would tend to experience a greater percentage reduction in living standards than would people with higher earnings. That difference would arise in part because people with lower earnings tend to have fewer assets, to have shorter lifespans, to have less in retirement savings and private pension benefits, and to be less likely to have health insurance through former employers.

Federal outlays would decline in the short term—by $144 billion through 2021, slightly more than 1 percent of projected Social Security spending—because people would have to wait until they were older to apply for Social Security benefits. Outlays would continue to be slightly lower than under current law until about 2035 and would be slightly higher thereafter, as higher subsequent monthly benefits would offset an increasing share of the savings from delayed eligibility.

Effects on Labor Supply and the Economy

Because the experience of changes in the eligibility ages is limited, CBO’s estimates of the effects of such changes on work decisions are highly uncertain. CBO estimates that increasing the EEA by two years would induce people who would have claimed benefits at age 62 or 63 to work an additional 11 months, on average. Once the new EEA or FRA applied to all people close to retirement, the policy change would increase the size of the labor force by slightly more than 1 percent and increase GDP by slightly more than 1 percent. Raising the MEA to 67 would result in an additional month of work per worker, on average, and would increase the size of the labor force and GDP by about 0.1 percent.

Effects of Simultaneously Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security

In the absence of evidence on how to project behavioral responses to simultaneous increases in all three eligibility ages, CBO assumes that the effects of simultaneous increases in the eligibility ages would equal the sum of the effects of increasing each age separately. CBO estimates that by 2035, the set of increases just described would cause outlays for Social Security and Medicare to fall by 0.4 percent of GDP and federal revenues to rise by around a half percent of GDP—leading to a reduction in the budget deficit of nearly 1 percent of GDP, not including the effects of lower interest outlays. Altogether, by 2060, the federal budget deficit would be reduced by about 1¾ percent of GDP.'

Why Are There No 'True' Hamiltonian/Federalists Any Longer?

2012-01-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

We had such fun and a good response with our last posting about what a 'true' conservative is nowadays that we thought we would try to figure out what a true 'Hamiltonian Federalist Concentrated Government Power' advocate would be like in the 21st century.

We hasten to guess they would be as rare to find as a 'true conservative' along the Jeffersonian-Madisonian lines we discussed previously.

Both species have become virtually extinct just like the dodo birds, the carrier pigeon and the Carolina parakeet (which was beautiful by the way). It is like the DNA of both has been lost in the wild somehow, the Hamiltonian Federalist chromosomes lost to the modern-day Democratic Party and the Jeffersonian/Madisonian chromosomes to the Republican Party.

First of all, Alexander Hamilton probably could not process in his mind the extent to which his goal of concentrated government power has become in modern-day 21st century America.

Any of these Founders might come back from the Great Beyond and just shake their head and say: 'Is this what has happened to our American Republic that we founded on the bedrock principles of liberty and freedom 223 years ago?'

Let's take a look at a few of Mr. Hamilton's words regarding debt and government:*

'The creation of debt should always be accompanied with the means of extinguishment.'

Apparently, even though Mr. Hamilton wanted the federal government to pay off all the debts incurred to win the Revolution, he also thought that any debt assumed should also have a set schedule under which it would be paid off with revenues collected by the government. In 1789, that would have been predominately the imposition of import taxes on all products shipped into the new United States of America.

He would have a field day today trying to figure out how we are going to pay off this massive $10 trillion of 'real' debt now owed to private investors and foreign sovereign nations who now own this debt. (the intragovernmental debt allegedly 'owed' to the Social Security Trust is ephemeral and chimerical. The CBO has determined that such 'trust fund debt' has no intrinsic value and is merely an accounting entry on paper alone that serves to highlight just how much financial malfeasance has actually gone on in Washington over the years)

Let's see...if we just took every single dollar of current federal income, corporate, payroll, excise and estate taxes to the tune of about $2.4 trillion that comes into the federal treasury each year, it would 'only' take 4 years to pay off this 'real' debt. Mr. Hamilton's keen sense of debt retirement would be pleased.

But we would not be able to pay one thin dime for anything else. Defense, education, homeland security, nothing. Without starting all over again and borrowing it all from the Chinese, the Saudis and anyone else crazy enough to keep lending to us.

'It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, that is, an extension of the revenue.'

Mr. Hamilton probably would agree with a move back towards replacing the cumbersome corporate and individual tax system with a consumption tax. After all, the Founders could have made income taxes the very fount of the revenue stream for the new Republic way back in 1789...but they didn't. They had just fought a war against capricious taxation without representation under King George III and they sure as heck didn't want to give the new Congress the ability to tax income which always leads to class warfare and more factionalism.

Now all we have is 'taxation with representation'!

But Mr. Hamilton certainly understood that a consumption tax would proscribe the amount of taxes that could be collected and hence, the size of the government that could or should be funded. We really should be funding a government that is paid for by current revenues collected and not passing on the costs, both explicit and implicit, in the debt we are accumulating to our children and grandchildren.

It is just plain immoral and blatantly unfair to them.

Mr. Hamilton, of all people, understood that perhaps the only time to borrow massive amounts of money was when the nation was at war. Certainly not when we have been at relative peace for the past 60 years relative to the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI and certainly WWII, the granddaddy of all world wars in history.

'If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.'

Mr. Hamilton would recoil at the current antics of everyone in Washington today from President Obama to Members of the House and Senate from both political parties where neither side can come to any suitable compromise on anything. He would recoil in shock and horror just like Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison would as well.

They all realized, along with the other Founders that the foundation of our democratic republic was the ability to think together, reason together and then 'compromise' or cut a deal for the good of the nation, not to save their political lives or careers. They would either 'hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately' as Benjamin Franklin intoned at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which certainly forced a great deal of compromising among themselves in order to survive those early days fighting together.

Our conclusion, based on this posting and the previous one on Jeffersonian/Madisonian limited government, is that there are virtually no Hamiltonian Federalists left in our society just like there are hardly any true Jeffersonian/Madisonian 'small government' people left around either.

Hamiltonian Federalists would at least have the guts to raise the taxes needed to pay for any new debt incurred by the federal government and not rely on ever-increasing amounts of debt to pay off old debt and never retire it ever. They would also recognize that taxes should be broad-based (consumption tax) because if everyone does not have to bear a share of the burden, they will never fully care about or appreciate the cost of providing for things such as our collective national defense, maintenance of the interstate road system or a common shared public education system.

In short, both Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian/Madisonian Democratic Republicans would realize that balancing the budget is paramount; debt should be paid off by the same generation that incurs it and extended periods of excessive debt and ever-escalating interest payments can have long-term deleterious effects on the soundness of the currency and economic health of our nation.

All the things that modern-day Democrats and Republicans have failed to do or even fully understand and appreciate.

So maybe all the officially registered Independents and Unaffiliateds are looking for a new political party banner to unite under.

How about the 'Federalist Democratic Republican Party' for a start?

*From David Frum's 'Frum Forum' post by Ben Silber on April 19, 2011.

Just ‘Who’ Is a ‘True’ Conservative Anyways Any More?

2012-01-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

The GOP debate in New Hampshire, which might have been one of the best educational lessons on political philosophy and constitutional interpretation you may see this year, repeatedly brought up the question of: ‘Who is the TRUE conservative?’ in this bunch.

To answer that question, we think you have to go back to the Founders. Again. Of course.

Who were the ‘true’ conservatives back in 1787 when they sat down in Philadelphia to write the hallowed US Constitution that even George Stephanopoulus seemed to have trouble understanding and articulating in his cumbersome question to Mitt Romney about banning contraception in any state or something like that?

First, all the Founders were united in their opposition to the King of England, George III and the concentration of power embodied in him and his office of authority over the colonies. We think they would be horrified at the concentration of power in the Executive Branch today when they drew up our US Congress as being the epitome of self-governance.

Thomas Jefferson also wrote about how he opposed the concentration of power in the hands of few leaders in the House and the development of ‘factions’ because they tend to thwart the ‘good of all the nation’ when issues of importance are considered.

And then Mr. Jefferson founded the second ‘factional’ political party in American history, the Democratic-Republican Party in the early 1790’s to counteract the ‘factional’ Federalist Party founded by Alexander Hamilton. So go figure how a people can stage a bloody, costly revolution for 5 years, (1776-1781); hammer out a Constitution (1787); take 2 years to ratify it (by 1789)…and then less than 5 years later start bickering again amongst themselves.

Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison argued for ‘limited’ government with power to be disbursed throughout the nation down to the lowest level possible, mainly the states and localities where people knew where their legislators lived, and could get to their home whenever they wanted.

Mr. Hamilton did not. He argued for a strong central government located in Washington, DC with powers to regulate and maintain a central banking system and provide a working relationship with their former rulers, the British.

Based on the way America has developed over the past 80 years, and especially over the last 50 and really in the last 10 years, it is fair to say that Mr. Hamilton has ‘won’ that debate. Hands-down.

Guess what level of federal spending relative to GDP was in America for the vast majority of our history?

1% or less from 1789 to about 1920 or so. That is 130 years out of our 222-year history or about 60% of our nation’s history.

Federal spending was only about 3% of GDP when the ‘First Big Bang’ of economic calamities really hit the US in the Great Depression (GD). This Big Bad Economic Retrenchment we are still working our way through is chicken feed compared to that economic conflagration.

Go ahead. Ask any of your grandparents or parents who lived through the GD and see what they have to say about their struggles growing up.

You’ll be glad we are going through this one instead by comparison.

FDR came along with his New Deal and by 1940, guess what his ‘massive’ expansion of federal spending had taken us to relative to GDP?

10%. By comparison to current levels of government involvement in our economy, that looks like a veritable steal if you are a 'small government conservative' of today.

Federal government spending is close to 25% of GDP today. (although it is a little bit distorted because of the lack of economic growth since 2007. See 'Lies')

So which of the GOP candidates last night really and truly are in the mold of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison by being the ‘true’ small government conservative in the strictest sense of their definition circa 1787?

None really except perhaps Ron Paul who has been willing to show his cards and propose massive spending cuts to the tune of $1 trillion in his first year as President.

His foreign policy isolationism, however, would throw him right in the face of Thomas Jefferson himself who sent the US ‘Navy’ such as it was in 1801 without an official declaration of war against the Barbary Pirates operating out of Tripoli. Which is really the reason why so many Reagan-era ‘conservatives’ and people who grew up and cut their teeth on his brand of conservatism are not supporting Mr. Paul. The world is a mean place and the US President has to be realistic and practical to defend our ‘national strategic interests’ (whenever you see this phrase, translate it to ‘oil’) whenever the need arises.

Most modern-day ‘conservatives’ are really the ‘Charles Barkley’ version of Big Government, you know, since he claims to have lost 50 pounds on Weight-Watchers. He is still ‘huge'; he is just not as ‘huge’ as he used to be.

Same with many modern-day ‘conservatives’. 'We are for (slightly) less government than those guys....and they are Beezelbub and Satan's Spawn to boot!'

Here are the questions to ask yourself to see if you qualify to be a ‘true’ Jeffersonian/Madisonian ‘small government conservative’ nowadays: (we'll have to have a 'true' Hamiltonian/FDR/LBJ/Obama 'large government quiz one day as well)

Will you take a Social Security check paid mostly by your children and their co-workers when you turn 66?
Will you demand Medicare benefits to the tune of at least a 50% federal taxpayer subsidy when you retire at age 65?
Will you support an increase in the retirement age to age 70 to be more in line with the actuarial tables of life expectancy on an adjusted basis from age 65 that was decided as the ‘official’ retirement age in 1935?
Will you support a complete elimination of special tax breaks for US corporations AND individuals including the mortgage interest deduction, charitable donations and employer-paid health insurance premiums in return for lower marginal tax rates?
Will you support the elimination of any special federal spending program or tax break that does not benefit the entire nation as a whole such as certain critical defense programs (there’s waste there too by the bushel load); transportation, bridges and canals and airports and certain education programs? (Jefferson said we needed a public education system because an uneducated electorate will not support democracy for too long so let's not find out if he is proven right)
Or are you mainly a ‘social conservative’, more concerned about the lack of moral, ethical and religious principles in America and want to limit abortion, gay rights?
Maybe you want to send all of the 3-10 million (the number varies depending on which report you read) illegal immigrants back to Latin America in which case you better get used to not having your landscaping done, your kids nannied, your house cleaned or your addition being built for about 50% of what it would cost with legal labor.

This is the state of American conservatism right now which is why you see so many people saying that ‘Mitt Romney is not a ‘true’ conservative!’ or ‘Rick Santorum/Newt Gingrich is a big government conservative!’

It might also help explain why close to 35% of the people in two of the largest counties in North Carolina are now officially registering as Independents/Unaffiliateds. We don’t know if they are all Jeffersonian/Madisonian small government conservatives. We have run into tons of them who are self-described social libertarians/fiscal conservatives though and they are fed up with the current system and demanding change in 2012.

Who is going to give this new 'change' to them? And does America even want 'small government' which means more 'freedom' (risk) any longer?

Mitt Romney said this 2012 election is going to be about the 'soul' for America. He will be channeling the Jeffersonian/Madisonian DNA for the rest of this campaign as the presumptive nominee after Saturday night's debates in New Hampshire.

Federalist/New Deal/Great Society President Obama has no intention of slowing down his drive for more government and higher taxes; he has said as much recently.

Where will you line up on this debate this year?

'Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics'

2012-01-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

Mark Twain gets attributed this great quote although he tried to say he got it from Benjamin Disraeli, the great British Prime Minister and statesman of the middle 19th century.

But no one can find that quote for sure in any of Disraeli's writings so so much for attribution and and chalk up another one for literacy license.

Heading into a new year is always a good time to reset your attitudes and perspectives on life so we thought we would try to reset our brain and yours on the harsh budget realities that now face us in America.

We acknowledge that much of what we have published here has not been 'great' news'. There has not been a lot of it, we grant you on that score over these past 2.9 years and counting.

We have always tried to provide you with the hardcore, base, raw data and information you need to know about directly from the readily-available-but-never-read-or-published-without-distortion from resources such as the CBO or OMB or any one of the hundreds of other budget related blogs or archives we have brought to your attention over this time.

We hope it has been helpful and informative and at times, perhaps even a bit interesting and amusing.

We are actually more optimistic now than at any time since 2007 for many reasons, most of which is the upsurge in the number of good people we know who are running for public office or planning to do so in a very short time. That is the only way our democratically-elected republic is going to 'cleanse' itself: by replacing virtually every single incumbent now in public office across this great land with men and women of higher intelligence, experience and reasoning capacity.

You know, like the Founders Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington, Franklin and the others who sacrificed so much to give us a chance to live in the greatest and most free nation ever.

So here's some more information to throw into your brain this morning and let ferment some, just to get your mind around the immense scope of not only our federal government's size but the dynamism of the American economy that when unleashed, can help solve a lot of ills that currently infect us:

Take a look at this startling CBO projection as of FY 2005, as in January, 2005 when they do these types of things in Washington. (You may have to click directly on the chart below to get a more easily-readable, clear image to study to your heart's content)

(Click here to see the current FY 2011 projections)

You will see that current FY 2011 federal spending ($3.6 Trillion) is about $455 B per year MORE in 2011 than what CBO and most economists assumed it would be way back in 2005 ($3.142 Trillion).

That is not ideal and reflects a 14% hike over projections from 7 years ago. It is still 'way too high' for the very few true Jeffersonian/Madisonian small government conservatives that still exist in this nation (they are far fewer than you really think)...but it is not apocalyptical in and of itself.

The difference between the income coming in from federal tax revenues and the spending outlays that go out every day, week, month and year CAN become apocalyptical if we don't rebalance the two very soon. The 2005 projections expected us to be in a $71 Billion SURPLUS!! by 2012 and start paying down our enormous projected debt then of $6.012 trillion in debt held by the public (not the $10+ Trillion and rapidly growing debt that now actually exists)

See? We just can not be completely Pollyanna-ish running around with rose-colored glasses with Dr. Pangloss, now can we?

You will also see that the CBO 2005 projections of current nominal GDP in 2012 would be about $17.250 Trillion. It is now hovering just around $15 trillion and still holding where it has been for the past 3 years now and running.

So despite ALL the handwringing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan AND the W Tax Cuts AND the entitlement spending that is out-of-hand (which is still true!)....given any normal sense of economic health over the past 5 years that would have us anywhere near the projected $17.25 Trillion hoped for and expected in 2005, we would would be in pretty darned decent shape.

Even at Obama-inflated levels of government spending, the level of guvmint spending to a GDP of $17.25T would be 'only' 20.8%. Most Republicans and fiscal conservatives would gator in the streets as long as they thought federal government spending was heading anywhere near the historical average of 18.5% of GDP.

At the 2005 projected level of spending of $3.3 trillion in 2012 in an economy at $17.25 trillion in size, the level of federal guvmint spending would be 'only' 19.1% or something like that which even a hardcore troglodyte small government conservative could swallow...for a little while at least.

The bottom-line in this little saga? The complete corporate and financial malfeasance and wreckage brought upon by the gross negligence of our leaders on Wall Street; in the banking and financial services system; in the speculative real estate markets in mostly Florida, California and Las Vegas and fueled by lax oversight by those who have served in Congress over the past ten years has led not only to a federal fiscal budget disaster of biblical proportions but it has also led to a shaving off potential GDP in America by over 13%.

That is over $2.25 trillion in lost economic capacity which translates directly into millions of lost jobs, destroyed plants and equipment, empty homes and commercial real estate and diminution of retirement plans and 401k plans.

So whenever someone tells you that 'all we gotta do is raise taxes on the rich so they will pay their 'fair share', or 'all we gotta do is bring back all the troops from overseas and we will balance the budget!' or 'all we gotta do is stop paying any more 'feriegn aid' to anyone overseas!', just show them these charts and tell them to go read more of Disraeli or Twain or even the comic books.

L'il Abner will make more economic and fiscal budget sense than they will.

Wall Street, Financial Meltdown, TARP, American Free Enterprise and Haman in the Book of Esther

2011-12-26T05:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a personal story that should really capture your full attention and brand the whole sordid episode of the financial meltdown in 2008 deep into your brain so you can fully understand just how much you have been bamboozled by the financial 'wizards' and 'warlocks' on Wall Street and Main Street:

A friend of ours was at a party in New York City just over 3 years ago now in late 2008 on the weekend when all of the final negotiations were taking place about which investment banks to save and who to let die on Wall Street.

The New York investment banker, of course, had let it be known that he was 'worth in the vicinity of $100 million' prior to October, 2008. In pure money terms. Not personal integrity or valor, that is for sure.

Heading into that weekend, the deal to save AIG had been floated which was necessary since Goldman and other large investment banks had a lot of their capital tied up in the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other guaranteed payments between all the large international investment banks.

If the deal was not completed that weekend, as it appeared on Friday evening, the debt liabilities of AIG would overcome all of the net assets of the large investment banks. By Monday morning at the opening of the day's markets, every one of them would be not only technically 'bankrupt' but officially bankrupt and unable to conduct any further transactions around the world.

'Joe' (names changed to protect the innocent) he said: 'Come with me out on the terrace and take a good look around!'

Our friend was more than a little nervous to accompany him for fear of watching him jump off the ledge as so many did during the Great Depression. The investment banker had been drinking heavily, and why not? Our friend was probably more than a little afraid that the investment banker would actually jump and possibly take him with him.

'Take a look around, {Joe}. All of this, all of my life's work is now gone. Kaput, P-tooey! Nothing is left. We are going to watch AIG take down the whole banking system on Monday morning and with it will go all of this, my wealth and my world!'

We think our friend may have shown some compassion for this so-called 'gentlemen'. Maybe. He probably poured himself and his Wall Street buddy another stiff drink to ease both of their collective pain.

Well, to make a long story short, the AIG deal was cut over the weekend and the financial system of America was put on the life-support system known as the first tranche of the Banking Bailout Plan Part I.

And guess what? This 'so-called gentleman' has now had ALL of his wealth restored through the recovery of the Goldman stock! His net worth probably has topped $150 million this year as a result of your generosity and largesse.

Gives you sort of a 'tingly feeling' all up and down your leg like Chris Matthews, right?

We all know that the financial system of America was about to blow sky-high by the fall of 2008.

Years of extraordinary excess in the form of debt, speculation, greed, contempt and deceipt by the investment bankers on Wall Street and the regular bankers and mortgage bankers on Main Street, along with the usual suspects of real estate speculators, financiers and manipulators set the table for such a magnificent meltdown in October of 2008. (it happens every single time there is a financial panic on America...or anywhere else in the last 800 years. See 'American Financial Panics' and read Kenneth Rogoff's book, 'This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly')

Couple this with extremely lax regulation, supervision and oversight by Capitol Hill and the White House from 2001-on (yes, that includes the W White House and the GOP-controlled Congress in both the House and Senate) and the stage was set for the American financial system being one short weekend away from completely melting down like Chernobyl or Three-Mile Island or the Fukushima Nuclear Reactors in Japan.

Perhaps less than 24 hours according to some accounts.

Read 'On the Brink' by Hank Paulson; 'The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine' by Michael Lewis; and 'Too Big To Fail' by Andrew Ross Sorkin if you haven't done so already. A small budget B-level movie producer truly could make a great slasher horror movie series based on these 3 accounts of those dark days in late 2008 which would rival any trilogy of Freddy Krueger, Leatherface and Michael Myers. Combined.

Why does any of this matter to us in 2011?

Well, because many, perhaps a majority of the Wall Street financiers and big-bank presidents profiled in these horror stories are still working in their chosen fields of 'mismanagement', er, 'malfeasance', er... 'work'!

And guess what? They have had almost all of their wealth regenerated and restored to them by the good folks of the United States of America. Namely you. The American Taxpayer. In the form of the TARP bailouts among other machinations of the federal government and the Federal Reserve over the past 3 years.

If it wasn't 100% solely the gift of you, the Great American Taxpayer, then the balance of the funds used to restore the wealth of Croesus to King Croesus himself came from the unknowing and/or unwitting government of Red China who provided funds in the form of more lending to our profligate ways of governance in America again.

Ultimately, how these things always have ended in history, the inflation that inevitably occurs following such financial debacles will provide the ultimate 'way out' for the federal government to get out of paying off these massive debts dollar-for-dollar. Inflation is not going to be friendly to your standard of living, or your children's future, nor to your savings which will be eroded downward in a commensurate manner.

These guys might just be the 'Hamans' of the 21st century. Haman the Agagite was the manipulative Prince under King Xerxes who not only wanted to kill Mordecai in the Book of (Queen) Esther for failing to kneel before him but to destroy the entire Jewish people to boot. Haman plotted and connived and schemed to get poor innocent Mordecai to step up on the gallows and have that noose slipped around his neck but in the end,Haman got his just due comeuppance on the very same gallows he built to hang Mordecai.

Our modern-day financial manipulators just have not been called to account yet for their actions in the worldly sense.

Maybe they will in the spiritual, moral and justice realms one day.

We are assuming there must be some honest, God-fearing people on Wall Street and in the Main Street banking system somewhere in this great land of ours. Someone who actually has taken their responsibility to manage depositors money seriously and at least tried to do the right thing when making money the easy way seemed to take precedence over doing it the right way.

But These Wall Street Bankers and Financial Services Execs. They plotted and schemed and connived their way into protecting their wealth and way of life instead of doing 'the right thing' and just declaring bankruptcy in 2008.

Which would would have wiped out their personal wealth but it would have also allowed a planned reorganization of the assets of Goldman Sachs et.al. to continue doing business so the rest of the financial system would not have completely collapsed around us all.

It would have been the right thing to do. For them and for our country.

Congressional Salaries: Too High? Or Too Low?

2011-12-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

LegisStorm has just announced the first successful electronic publication of all Congressional staff salaries for the past 10 years.

Go ahead. Click on the link and type in a few names of people you have known who worked on Capitol Hill since 2000. LegisStorm seems to think they have uncovered the Holy Grail lost since antiquity.

Big deal. Congressional staff salaries and office expenses have been public knowledge ever since the first Congress sat in 1789.

Did you know that 2/3's of the 14th Congress were voted out of office in 1816? 'Why?' you might ask.

Because the 14th Congress voted themselves a hefty pay raise to the lofty sum of $1500 per year. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, got the gargantuan (for then) salary of $3000.

Mr. Clay almost was defeated himself in 1816 in which case, the nation may never have come to know just how brilliant he was as a legislator and the 'Uncompromising Compromiser' as the authors of the great book, 'Henry Clay: The Essential American', Daniel and Jeanne Heidler, chose to characterize him. Read it over these holidays and learn more about how our government matured into the form it is today under his leadership in the early days of the Republic.

Here's the problem with the reporting of congressional salaries nowadays: There is never any context in any reporting about them to provide the public any idea of what our elected representatives, senators and staff do on a regular day in Congress.

I have always challenged people who harrumph 'congressional pay was too high!' or staffers 'get paid too much' to either run for office or apply for a job on Capitol Hill and see what they think then.

Not one person has ever taken me up on my challenge. Not a single solitary person.

Why is that? Let's go to the video tape.

Let's set the record clear from the get-go. Every Member of Congress and US Senator is paid the same base salary. This year it is $174,000. Majority Leaders and Speakers get paid additional amounts to account for their leadership responsibilities.

Which is more than a little 'weird' since a US Senator covers an entire state and a US Congressman 'only' represents the 690,000 or so constituents in one congressional district in the same state. Maybe Senators should be paid at least double for their work or maybe 10 times as much in a large state such as California or Texas. After all, when a state such as California has 37 million people living there as opposed to 563,000 people living in Wyoming, the 2 California Senators have about 74 times as much work to do representing them, correct?

There is no 'magic' pension plan or medical benefit package available 'only' to Members of Congress and US Senators as one particularly idiotic email about the '28th Amendment That Should Be Passed!' which seems to have circled the globe in cyberspace at least 100 times asserts that 'they do!'

They don't. And here's the place for you to go to find out more: The Congressional Institute's great website called 'Mythbusters'.

Prepare to have all your preconceived notions about Congressional benefits popped like a balloon.

But getting back to Congressional and Senate salaries, everyone of them have to use those funds to:

pay for their expenses to maintain their home in their home district;
pay for a place to live in the very expensive Washington market;
put their kids through school and college like other people in our country;
raise their families during the time they leave their other line of work in the 'real world' to enter politics and help try to save this republic of ours.

So it is more like they get paid $87,000 per year to maintain a home and support a family in their home district or state and $87,000 per year to pay for a home in Washington, DC.

Those are big numbers for millions of people struggling in this extended recession that just will not go away. But if you think you have the experience, background and training to go to Washington and solve the complex immense problems of the budget, financial reform and foreign affairs, try working out a household budget sometime based on the numbers above.

Bet you come to the conclusion you won't do it in about 15 seconds.

I took a job as chief of staff to a congressman from North Carolina in 1985 (which I was thrilled and honored to do); took a 40% pay cut from the job I had in North Carolina to move to Washington, DC in less than 2 weeks time and eventually bought a townhouse in Arlington, Virginia that had less than half the space of the home I had in Durham, North Carolina...and which cost 3 times as much to boot.

There is a cost associated with working as a public servant, especially a young person working on Capitol Hill.

Which brings us to the congressional salaries LegisStorm has now announced the electronic publication thereof.

We would have ZERO need to pay ANY staffer if all of the following were not asked of them to do:
(By the way, most of the congressional staffers are fresh out of college. The average age of congressional staff people is around 23 today and perhaps 25 in the Senate. So how does that make you feel today when you are concerned about having experienced people on Capitol Hill help balance the budget?)

Get a lost Social Security check for your grandma
Get a visa and passport overnight for you since you 'forgot' to get one for your next trip to China or the Maldives
Write legislation on any issue of concern to you
Answer ANY of the 10,000 pieces of mail that come into a US Senate office each week or the 5,000 emails that come in each night or the 3000 automated faxes or answer any of the 1000 phone calls per day, multiplied times 10 when an issue is on the floor for a vote
Help you get tours set up for your family when you visit Washington
Take you on a personal tour of the US Capitol during said-same trip
Help get information from the Pentagon on a relative who might be wounded in Iraq
Balance the budget
Push for the passage of the Greyhound Racing Act that you are so concerned about
Argue with you about whether or not a bazooka or a Stinger missile should be re-categorized as a 'firearm' so you can own 1 or 2 of them in your local hometown under the freedoms guaranteed you in the Second Amendment. (Don't laugh. It happened. On more than one occasion)

So, any takers yet to go up on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer? If I was still a chief of staff, I might could offer you today a starting salary of perhaps $25,000 right out of graduating from Duke University or Harvard, maybe $30,000.

If you had any relevant extensive experience in the field of interest my boss had interest in, such as banking since he was on the banking committee, I might be able to offer you $45,000 to start as his banking legislative assistant so you could spend hundreds of hours going to committee briefings and hearings to hear more testimony about Dodd-Frank, Glass-Steagall and God-Knows-What-Else.

Any takers? Send me your resume through the comment section below and I will forward it to anyone I know in Congress. I promise.

Congressional member and staff pay is one of the easiest things to focus on and 'hate' about our wonderful democratic republican form of government. Sure, there are some excesses in the legislative branch that could and should be culled back just like in every other part of the US budget today.

But it is not the boogeyman many try to make it out to be. 95% of the people on Capitol Hill, members and staffers alike, are well-meaning, serious, principled, motivated people trying to do what they think is right for the nation.

Just because Congress has failed to balance the budget, for example, is not reason to get mad at them and hurl insults their way over their pay. Just vote their bosses out of office in 2012 and then see if you can help find better people to take their places and try it your way.

If anyone still wants to do any of those jobs for those salaries we have just now highlighted and given you some insight into the work you will be doing for the public interest, that is.

Let me know if you apply to take a job in Washington after learning these facts. It is either that or stop complaining about how much they are being paid. They are doing us all a big favor by offering to work as a public servant even for a short while.

'The 'New Majority' Among Us' By Lee Atwater

2011-12-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

Lee Atwater, love him or hate him, was a unique piece of work in American political history.

He was a South Carolina-born, guitar-playing rhythm-and-blues politico who helped start dozens of Red, Hot and Blue Barbecue restaurants around the South. He also happened to help, in his spare time, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush 41 get elected President of the United States along with hundreds of other US Senators, congressmen and governors.

There have been many imitators of the inimitable and sometimes harsh scorched-earth politics of Mr. Atwater but none have come close to commanding the political field like he did in his short 40 years of life on earth. Not Karl Rove. Not James Carville. And certainly not Dick Morris.

In 1986, Lee Atwater was the campaign consultant to former US Congressman Alex McMillan of North Carolina for whom I served as chief of staff for a decade. NC-9 was the #1 targeted congressional race in the nation as designated by the NRCC and the DCCC, the respective national political organizations dedicated to electing a majority of their candidates to the US House of Representatives.

We needed him and the very best campaign talent in the nation to help hold that seat since Mr. McMillan won his first race against formidable foe, D.G. Martin, in 1984 by a mere 321 votes. He won re-election with 4221 votes, a virtual landslide in a terrible year for Republicans nationwide.

We are not going to rehash that long-ago battle here today. It was 'intense', let's just leave it at that.

We do want to point out a very prescient statement Mr. Atwater made back in 1986 while we were walking around the entire circumference of the City of Alexandria one day, mostly because Lee had so much energy coursing through his body that he could not sit still for more than like 5 minutes at a time.

'In 25 years, the predominant majority in American politics will be 'socially libertarian and fiscally conservative'. And neither the Democratic Party or the Republican Party will be able to get in front of that massive parade.'

Let's get the obvious math out of the way for effect: 1986+25=2011. So whatever Lee said in 1986 is supposed to be happening right now, correct?

He went on to describe how the political parties were going to be taking increasingly strident positions and tones over the ensuing quarter decade: the Democrats on expanding and maintaining the social welfare state while 'soaking the rich' to pay for it all; the Republicans on cutting taxes, maintaining a strong national defense and ending abortion, just to name one of many social issues that the religious right was just then getting into politics to solve in the 1984/86/88 elections.

Sound familiar?

The reason why we are bringing all this up today is that we have been struck recently by just how many people are clearly identifying themselves as 'not Republican' and 'not a Democrat' but as an 'Independent' or 'Unaffiliated' for voting registration purposes.

In two of the largest counties in North Carolina alone, the officially registered-to-vote rolls show that 30% or so of the officially registered voters are now registered as 'Independent' or 'Unaffiliated'. Registered Democrats hover around 41% or so and Republican registration ranges between 24-28%. A smattering of Libertarians and Whigs fill out the remainder of the officially registered voters.

We are not sure what the breakdown of the 'unofficial registered voters' in North Carolina are but we heard that 2200 deceased people voted in the 2010 election along party lines as well. Voting illegally is not as hard as you might think it should be.

Here's the real reason why we wanted to bring this to your attention as we come to the close of 2011 and head into what is sure to be one of the most expensive, nasty and yes, vicious, presidential campaigns in American history:

'Where are you on the move to Independent voting status and political affiliation?'

We lost count about 1 year ago as we were talking with people about what party they were a member of anymore. Hundreds of former Republicans we know pretty well long ago went down to the local board of elections and changed their registration from R to I. Dozens of Democrats have done the same thing.

We hear from virtually every person that we speak with that: 1) they are dissatisfied with both political parties (hence, the ridiculously low 8% Congressional approval ratings today); 2) they just want Congress and the President to 'get something done!' on this budget impasse before it swamps us all, rich and poor alike and 3) 'there has to be a better way!'

Almost every single time we speak with a person or group of people nowadays, we hear the following words come out of their mouth, almost eerily as if they were channeling Lee Atwater's predictions of 25 years ago:

'I don't really care so much about whether two men or women are sleeping together as I am about the inability of Congress to balance this budget and end this humongous $14.7 trillion national debt!

'I am for protecting America and defending our borders but we have spent way too much time and money in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time we have been wrecking our nation's economy!'

'If Congress and the President would focus more on cutting out wasteful spending and reforming entitlements like by raising the retirement age, I would support higher taxes in some form or another like the elimination of special tax loopholes for everyone just so we can finally say we have 'fixed' the budget and move on to fixing our economy.'

Sounds like a lot of people are now more socially libertarian in their outlook towards social issues than in the 1980's and '90s when the Christian right joined with traditional small government, low tax, strong national defense hawks like Ronald Reagan to form massive winning majorities at the presidential level. Even President Bill Clinton himself was able to connect with many Bible-believers in the South mainly because of his Southern charm and experience as an Arkansas Governor for 2 terms.

But guess what? This budding majority, if that is what is going on here, has nowhere to go politically in America in 2011. Nowhere. Nada. Zippo.

If you are 'socially libertarian', you are labeled a 'RINO' by many in the Republican Party and the Tea Party. Whatever that means. Ronald Reagan was a 'RINO' by the same definition: he signed bills that contained tax hikes, 2 of them massive tax hikes, 11 times between 1981-1988.

And if you are fiscally conservative, there is no room for you at the inn near the Democrat Party manger either. The last time they proposed any substantial cuts to anything other than defense was, well, never! And to see them fight vehemently against even the most sensible of all spending cuts and entitlement reforms in the recently discarded-to-the-trash-heap-of-history recommendation of the Bowles/Simpson Commission was truly a sickening moment in American political history.

There will be no one from the first decade of the 21st century to write about in a future edition of 'Profiles in Courage', will there?

So, maybe Lee Atwater was a prophet, a soothsayer and a crystal ball gazer to boot. If the officially registered percentage of Independents is 32% today, (it was 4% in 1992 when Ross Perot won 19% of the general election vote but no electoral votes), it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to imagine 10% of now-Democrats and 8.5% of now-Republicans voting for great Independent candidates across this land, if there were any running, now would it?

Successful people like the George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons and James Madisons of our day (they didn't 'have to run' back then either you know, but aren't you glad they had the guts to do so for our sakes today?).

You know who they are. They are all around you. The ones with the courage and guts to say:

'I am willing to run for public office and do the right thing and stop signing pledges and listening to unelected people who do not have the guts or kahunas to run for public office themselves!

The only oath I am ever going to sign is the one I will take when I get sworn in as your next Congressman or US Senator:

'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.'

There is nothing in here about never considering any new taxes. Nothing about protecting SS and Medicare 'or else some burly senior citizen is going to come to your office and kick your butt!'

Isn't that the sort of representative you want to send to Congress to solve all these problems these current incumbents have completed swung and whiffed at for these past 10 years? It sorta looks like Romper Room up there nowadays, doesn't it?

It is time to send 536 new people to Washington in 2012. Maybe they will all be part of the 'Lee Atwater Revolution' he predicted in 1986. It can't come a moment too soon.

'Suppose You Were An Idiot....

2011-12-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.' (Mark Twain-'Biography')

We Americans often make fun of our elected officials, sometimes too much. It is part of the our collective American heritage and DNA to not take any centralized concentration of power in any elected official 'too seriously.'

After all, the very best and smartest leaders we had in 1776-- Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Adams all agreed that the young American colony should rise up and revolt against the capricious behavior of King George III and the British Empire to declare independence for our new nation.

After that, there was no way in Hades the citizens of the United States of America were ever going to bend over backwards and just give any President, or any Congress or elected Senate 100% obeisance and dutiful homage without reservation, directly or humorously.

If you have been following the news lately about the inability of Congress and the President to come to any sort of an agreement on the budget, however, you may come to the same conclusion as Mr. Twain himself. And mean it this time.

Especially if you are a conservative, low-tax, strong national defense true blue believer.

Because the 'conservatives' of this Congress have painted themselves not only into the 'proverbial corner', but into the 'actual outhouse' of budget negotiations.

Here are two hard-rock certain realities in American public policy today that will directly affect you, the American citizen and taxpayer in 2013 absent any legislative changes between now and January 1 of the same year:

Your taxes will go up effective December 31, 2012 at midnight. Happy New Year!
The budget sequester will cut major portions out of the existing defense and domestic budgets but more out of defense due to the way it is structured.

If you want lower taxes and a full defense budget, guess what? As of January 1, 2013, as a result of these last several 'major' budget negotiations and deals in Washington, DC, absent any legislative changes, you. will. lose.

President Obama didn't veto the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts in December of 2012. He ALLOWED them to be extended for every millionaire and billionaire in this country, completely contrary to his promise to 'raise the taxes of the wealthy and make them pay their 'fair share' (whatever that is).

Not only are these lower tax rates scheduled to expire on everyone, rich and medium-income, 24 million more Americans will be socked with the dreaded AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) absent any further legislative action in the next 12 months. Read about it and weep.

If you are an Obama supporter, you have to be cackling like a happy hen nowadays.

If (when) President Obama wins re-election in November, 2012, you get to see all of your dreams, beyond the national health care plan that is now law called 'Obama Care', go into full fruition: 1) higher tax revenues coming in to the tune of $4 trillion over the next 10 years and 2) the defense budget being gutted far above what is going to be a lower baseline simply due to the phase-down of troops in Afghanistan. Full withdrawal is expected to be completed by the end of 2014.

Why in the world would President Obama want to negotiate against himself and his party's stated principles in 2012 heading into a presidential election and do anything with the Republicans in the upcoming year? He has already 'won' on everything he wanted, hasn't he?

If he just lets the Bush Tax Cuts expire on 12/31/12 after his re-election, our projected budget deficits will plummet to about 2% of GDP, down from 8.5% of GDP this year in 2011. See it for yourself at CBO Projections. (Remember, the 'baseline' already includes higher revenues from the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts because that is 'current law')

President Obama could then take credit for being one of the greatest deficit-cutters in American history. And he would not even need the acquiescence of the US Congress....all he would have to do is veto any extension by December 31, 2012.

His only Achilles' Heel is the fact that the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts will really sock it to the middle-class with higher taxes that he has also 'promised' he would never raise on them.

But so what? He is our duly-elected leader. He has also 'promised' to bring our deficits down to less than half of what they were before he took office, especially since that dastardly old President Bush and a GOP Congress had raised deficits to about 3% of GDP in 2008 when he left office.

The ONLY way we see ANYTHING happening in 2012 is if President Obama's 'Chicago Guys' get a strong whiff of the swamp gas called 'Taxpayer Anger' in 2012 when everyone starts to figure out that their taxes are indeed going to skyrocket at the end of the year if nothing is done in Congress.

Then you will see the GOP work out a more favorable defense budget (meaning more spending and less cuts) with President Obama because they also want to extend ALL the Bush Tax cuts again and Obama wants everyone to keep their tax cuts...except the wealthy, yada-yada-yada.

In the end, we see the tax cuts being extended for the less-than-wealthy, the defense budgets being fully restored and some of the very-high end tax breaks for the wealthy being curtailed on a single-shot basis.

The budget deficits, however, will remain in the 5%+ of GDP range for the rest of this decade. Alas.

What did you think would happen? President Obama, the GOP House and the Democrat Senate all of sudden become President George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay all at the same time and do something heroic for our nation?

Even Mark Twain knew better than to expect such a ridiculous outcome.

The Pyrrhic 'Victory' (sic) of the Tea Party...and Progressives and President Obama

2011-11-27T09:07:00.000-08:00

Nobody ever won a war with a string of Pyrrhic victories. You remember King Pyrrhus, he who 'won' two major battles with the Romans only to 'lose' in the long run because he ran out of men?

Just like no football team ever won the national championship with a string of 'moral victories' (meaning 'close losses'. see Duke University, circa 2011).

We try to give you as much information, some off-the-wall admittedly, but important nonetheless, so you can make your own decisions about political goings-on in Washington.

Or plan to hunker down in a bunker somewhere with a hoard of gold, food and water and wait til this 'madness' is all over and done with.

Unfortunately, it is not 'over-and-done' with. Not by a long shot.

Did the Tea Party 'win' by the lack of an agreement by the now disgraced 'Super' Committee? How about the Progressive Liberals...did they 'win' anything due to the lack of any agreement? How about the GOP in the House and President Obama...do they now look like heroes or chumps in the eyes of the vast majority of the American populace, those who can still think and see things clearly and are not totally blinded by the poison of partisan politics on every single issue?

Let's look at this objectively as if you just landed on earth in a space ship:

The over-riding #1 Problem We Americans Face Today? The Profound Budget Deficits And Debt.

Did anything that happened, or failed to happen, over the past 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 3 years do one darned thing to stop this problem or even arrest its acceleration any at all?

If the question is posed as this: 'Are we any closer to solving the debt explosion now than we were in the past 3 years?', the answer is a resounding 'NO!', isn't it?

The Tea Party has 'failed' in this regard. The GOP has 'failed' in this regard. President Obama most certainly has 'failed' in this regard. The Progressive Liberals who are the majority party in the Senate have 'failed' in this regard as well.

We are being run as a nation by 536 collective 'failures' right now to address the biggest threat to our economic and national security we have seen since the Great Depression and WWII.

Our father and grandpas 'saved' the world from the Nazis and Imperial Japan in 4 years. Their generation of 'real' leaders made a lot of very difficult, tough decisions very quickly and they all made a huge sacrifice for the good of the nation. Many chose to enlist in the armed services when they knew they might not be coming back to their homes and family.

We, our current generation, have been running our great nation into the turf for the past 10 years now by not being smart about our fiscal decisions in Washington.

How does that make you feel when you read this blatant fact?

We need people to represent us in Washington who will 'solve the problem' and not worry so much about whether they are going to be re-elected or not.

Memo to All Current Incumbents in the White House, the US Senate and the US Congress: 'You are not that important! Especially not when you fail to solve our most pressing issues.'

You can be replaced. And you should. In 2012. In the primary or the general election by someone who can and will cut the deals necessary to solve our fiscal problems.

Take a look at the following chart based on most recent CBO projections of our debt with and without the sequester. This is the 'actual' debt outstanding to the public that has to be paid each month with 'real' interest payments, not the 'fake' intragovernmental debt like the so-called Social Security 'Trust Fund' that is never really going to ever be paid by with real money:

Despite the hand-wringing you are going to hear from all sides about the draconian cuts to their favorite part of the federal budget, the outstanding federal debt is expected to go up by close to 30% over the next 10 years.

So it is a little hard to believe that the cuts are going to be so terrible when the debt is still going up 30%, isn't it?

How can anyone in the Tea Party, the GOP, the White House or in the Democratic-controlled Senate claim 'victory' in the aftermath of the Super Committee and Congressional 'Failure' recently?

People in the Tea Party and the GOP will claim that 'Well, we prevented taxes from going up!' That you did.

People on the progressive liberal side of things, including President Obama will shout at the top of the rooftops: 'We saved Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and every single domestic discretionary program we all love to grow and expand!' That you did as well.

But claiming 'victory' on such matters when our nation is at total risk of becoming the next Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy or Zimbabwe due to excessive debt and possible hyperinflation (it can happen you know, and when inflation does rear its ugly head out of that snakehole, there is zero legislation that can be passed to arrest it), then that is truly a Pyrrhic 'victory' (sic) by anyone in Washington now associated with the Tea Party, the GOP, the Democrat Party and the White House.

We have a US Congress, Senate and White House now made of up of people who apparently do not understand: 1) how to win 'The Big One!' or 2) The immense gravity of our current situation.

The main question you have to ask each incumbent when you see them on the campaign trail is this:
'Have you done anything that will reduce the future deficits and accumulation of debt by 1 penny?'

And since the answer so far is 'NO!', you can shake their hands and say: 'So long. It has been so nice to know you.'

As we said at the outset, it is up to you to decide what to do with the information we give you. Like run for office yourself and/or vote for a solid reasonable candidate opposing these 'failures' in the primaries and general election of 2012.

It is up to you. We don't have time for any more 'Pyrrhic victories' by any side of the political spectrum.

Is Anyone Surprised By The Failure of the So-Called 'Super Committee'?

2011-11-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

Well, the Super Committee has failed to do its job.

Is anyone really that surprised? It is such a sad commentary on the lack of real statesmen and women in our federal government today from the White House to the US Senate to Congress.

They have folded their tent due to 'irreconcilable differences' between the 3 Republicans and the 3 Democrats on the committee. Sounds like a bad marriage, doesn't it?

Why didn't these leaders in Congress, which now 'enjoys' (sic?) an 8% approval rating in the American public eye, come to some agreement at the very minimum to save some face and prove that American representative democracy still offers the last great hope for mankind on earth?

We think there are a few basic reasons:

1) There was no immediate 'pain' associated with failure. The automatic 'sequesters' or spending cuts, where 50% will come from the defense department are not scheduled to take place until FY 2013, almost a year from now.

A year is a very long time in politics and government. Waiting that long gives Congress and the President every chance possible to rewrite the law; try to figure out a way to neuter the sequester and find yet another way to avoid making the tough decisions we elect them to do. They are good at that, aren't they?

We wonder what would have happened if Father Abraham (not Lincoln) had given the Hebrew men a full year to think about whether they would accept the terms of God's Covenant with them.

'Ummm, Abe, that is a mighty big sacrifice you and Jehovah are asking of us here. I mean, can't He come up with a better way of us showing our faith in Him like wearing a badge or painting something on our foreheads instead of, well, using a sharp rock or shell to circumcise us? Can you give us a full year to think about it first?

(Abraham would have never become the Father of Anything under those circumstances)

2) President Obama completely abdicated his responsibility as Chief Executive Officer of this nation to work with Congress and provide leadership for this Super Committee process. He started the process when he set up the Bowles-Simpson Commission in 2010 but failed to follow through and ask his fellow Democrats to introduce the Bowles-Simpson recommendations in legislative form earlier this year.

Apparently, he completely washed his hands of this process and did not participate in any of the negotiations this summer and fall. According to Keith Hennessey, President Obama and his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spent more time negotiating with the European governments about reducing their budget deficits than he did with his own American government!

What is the deal, Mr. President? Is the fate of Europe more important than the fate of The United States of America, the country you took an oath to lead and protect against all danger?

3) There is not enough of a groundswell politically to rid ourselves of people now sitting in Congress who do not grasp the enormity or gravity of the fiscal and economic dilemma we now find ourselves deeply mired in.

When was the last time you got a solicitation to support a group called 'Get Rid of The Deficit, Now!'? You surely have seen commercials from the AARP growling that 'if anyone touches our Social Security or Medicare benefits, we will kill you!' or something to that effect.

You surely have seen news stories or read about Grover Norquist's 'Tax Pledge' (which makes us laugh every time we hear it as we remember Douglas C. Niedermeyer's famous words to Flounder in 'Animal House': 'A pledge pin! On your uniform? Just tell me, mister, what fraternity would pledge a man like you?')

We often wonder what would happen if a duly-elected sitting incumbent US Senator or Congressman just said: 'You know what? In the best interests of this nation that I love and have the honor or representing, I am going to vote for this package of $10 trillion in spending cuts in return for a $1 tax hike on the head of every single taxpayer in this country'.

Would Mr. Norquist be duly chastened and embarrassed? Such a simple trade-off exposes the weakness of the tax pledge; anyone who would reject such a deal would be lucky to even qualify to get into an insane asylum because people would think they were too nuts in the first place.

Or would Mr. Norquist go after said Senator or Congressman with tooth and nail like some crazed bully after he had been punched in the mouth?

No one looks good in this. Not President Obama. Not the Democrats who control the Senate. Not the GOP which controls the House. No one 'wins' when every part of our elective government looks like spoiled (and not very smart) school children hurling sand at each other in the sandbox at recess time.

We think the time has come to just unlock the floodgates to the dam that has been holding back many people from going down to their local Board of Elections today and change their registration to Independent. That way, neither the Democrats nor the AARP on the left or the Republicans and the Tax Pledgers on the right can hold you captive from supporting smart, reasonable people who can see this economic conflagration for what it truly is, which is a direct threat to the future economic health and prosperity of this nation.

And stop sending money to any organization like the AARP or Grover Norquist. Send your money only to people you think are sentient, coherent people with experience in the private sector with integrity who decide to run for public office against the seemingly brain dead people who are now representing you in Congress.

Like in 2 months. Next year is the year. Maybe, just maybe, the good people of this nation will run against every incumbent in every congressional primary and general election, maybe dozens at a time and finally get rid of the people who have gotten us into this mess and who now are not doing a darned thing to get us out of it.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Not very inspirational, is it?

Thanks, President Obama and the US Senate and Congress. For showing us how brave people in the past had to have been to make the sacrifices they did to get us to the 21st century.

Because you guys are not up to the job.

‘The Chicago Guys Would Not Let Me Do It’

2011-11-19T09:08:00.000-08:00

A very high-level and important person that you may know personally or have heard of said that this is the answer President Obama gave when he was asked why he did not introduce the Bowles-Simpson (let’s call it ‘BS’ for brevity’s sake) recommendations as a bill in the US Congress.

'The Chicago Guys would not let me do it'.

Just who is the President here and who are the minions serving whom?

President Obama might have had the best of intentions when he officially signed the document creating the BS Commission by Executive Order 13531. We’ll give him credit for that at least, although at the time, we speculated on January 29, 2010 that this commission would fail just like the other 18 before it. (see 'Graveyard')

But when the BS Commission failed to pass the recommendations by the required 14 votes out of the 18 members present in late 2010, President Obama still had it within his power to be the Chief Executive of this great nation of ours and ask the Democrat Majority in the Senate to introduce the BS recommendations and force a vote on the floor of the US Senate and then the US House.

It could have been one of the great debates of our time. A full-blown debate on what the proper size of our federal government should be; arguments about who should pay more taxes and who should not and an exposition of the grave dangers we are now facing should we fail to arrest the debt accumulation monster that is still multiplying and helps make this period of time one of the top 5 ‘financial follies’ of the past 800 years according to Harvard Professor of economic history, Kenneth Rogoff. (you need to read his book: ‘This Time Is Different’. Right. Now.)

Alas, President Obama blinked. And blinked again and again and again over this past year. He has blinked so many times at taking real action to reduce this deficit that you really have to wonder if he is up to it at all.

The so-called ‘Gang of Six’ in the US Senate tried to take basic elements of the BS Bill and get them passed to no avail in 2011 as well.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner deserves special commendation for his courage to advance this approach. We wonder if it is because he is a businessman that he actually ‘understands’ the gravity of our current debt situation and trend lines whereas perhaps the other incumbents who are trial lawyers or not business-oriented simply can not fathom or grasp anything it seems.

But we now have it on good sources and corroborated by two people we respect and trust that President Barack Obama actually said the following words, in some fashion or another, when asked why he didn’t just get someone to introduce the BS Bill regardless of whether the Commission passed it or not with the requisite number of votes:

‘The Chicago guys (meaning his political advisor David Axelrod, among others) told me that if I did that (introduced the BS Bill), I would not win re-election in 2012.’

Honest to God Above. Our current sitting US President, the highest office and honor in the land, admitted that he lacked the courage to help save our Republic because his ‘Chicago guys’ told him not to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: That is exactly what we elect our Presidents to do! And if they don’t lead, why keep them in the office? Why is he listening more to David Axelrod and David Plouffe than to what he must know is the 'right thing' to do in his heart which is to reduce these enormous deficits?

Ronald Reagan came into office as a ‘small government, lower tax, strong national defense’ President. He achieved 2 out of 3. (Guess which one he fell short on)

But when he was forced to make a decision, he ‘led’. He got bills introduced. He negotiated with Congress. He sent his congressional liaison teams to Capitol Hill to lobby for his position. He called reluctant Congressmen and Senators to urge them to 'do the right thing for the country'. He signed bills that raised taxes 11 different times over his two terms in the Oval Office. Each time, he told Senate Majority Leader or Republican Leader Bob Michel in the House to ‘get 75-80% of what we want, maybe 65%, and then I’ll sign the bill and we will come back next year to get more of what we want.’

That is the way our democratic republic is supposed to work. A President and Congress can raise taxes….and then come back to repeal them the next year. They can raise spending…and then come back to repeal and reduce that spending the next session of Congress.

It is a fluid process. But it needs a strong President in the White House working with all sides in both the House and the Senate who is actually taking risks to ‘lead’ the entire nation to economic health, prosperity and freedom.

Today, in the news, we learned that President Obama has basically taken a complete 'hands-off' approach and said: 'This is Congress' problem. Call me when you get something done...but not when I am on vacation or playing golf somewhere nice and sunny'.

By openly admitting that he failed to do so because his ‘Chicago Guys’ told him not to, President Barack Obama has demonstrated he is unfit to run this great nation of ours, in our humble opinion.

Nothing personal. He actually seems like a nice guy to have a beer with or shoot some hoops with and we hope his daughters grow up to be wonderful mature women who do honor to their examples as young women growing up in the public glare.

But this is the tough job we elected him to in 2008. He has succumbed to political advisor pressure when all he had to do was look at the portraits of Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson around him in the White House and realize that he had a chance to do something important and wonderful and marvelous to help save this great Republic of ours.

He blinked. And now, we need to find someone else to take his place who will not ‘blink’ and who will take action.

Erskine Bowles ran for the US Senate twice and lost from the Great State of North Carolina. But he, as well as Alan Simpson have shown tremendous courage and stamina in this whole BS process.

How about this: ‘Erskine Bowles. For President. Of The United States of America. 2012.’

Democrats: There is your man to run against the Republican candidate whoever he might be. At least we will know that 2 people running for President in 2012 will be serious about solving our deficit/debt dilemma.

Instead of only 1.

When Football Stars Become Real American Heroes

2011-11-10T04:01:00.000-08:00

My father, Dan Hill, Jr., was also known as 'Tiger'. For his fiery play on the football field back in 1936-1938 when he played center and middle linebacker (they played 60 minutes back then) for the undefeated, untied and unscored-upon Duke University 'Iron Duke' Blue Devils.

Imagine that. Back then, Duke University was associated more with prominence in college football than in basketball, by a long shot. The young school, started only 12 years earlier in 1924 in Durham, North Carolina, was coached by the legendary Wallace Wade and was regularly in the top 10 along with other prominent names such as Pittsburgh, Alabama, Southern Cal and Notre Dame under Knute Rockne.

He was an All-American and is now enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in recognition of being the real football star that he was.

His generation, our fathers and grandfathers, did not lead the life of leisure that many, or even most of us, have. Even this desultory recession that just seems to want to linger on doesn't even come remotely close in orbit to the Great Economic Depression those guys and our moms and grandmoms suffered through for 10 long years before they were plunged into the largest and most terrible and horrific world war the world has ever known.

With this year's Veterans Day upon us, we thought we would try to fathom the sacrifice men like my father and millions of others made to insure our freedoms in this great democratic republic called America. We many times take America for granted that it will 'always be here' doing what it always has done: allow a prosperous free people to pursue their hopes and dreams in life as they choose.

Dad served on the USS Lexington, the massive aircraft carrier as a lieutenant commander in the artillery division. Just to show you how little Dad ever talked about his war experience, which was never, consider this:

It took a meeting with John Hanford of Charlotte in 2002 for me to have ever known the circumstances and even the place where dad was burned over 70% of his body when the Lexington was hit by a Japanese plane.

In 2002, I was helping then-US Senate Candidate Elizabeth Dole on her election campaign against Erskine Bowles, specifically on policy papers and debate preparation.

One day, we met in Charlotte at the home of her older brother, John Hanford and his wife, Bunny. John had been at Duke when Dad was playing on the football team and knew him socially as well from the on-campus and fraternity scene.

As we were speaking, Mr. Hanford said: ‘You know, I was on the Lexington when your dad was evacuated after we were hit.’

‘I did not know that’, I said, mainly because no one ever told us the details of what happened, when and why especially since Dad had never done so.

All we had ever seen in our den closet was a small case where Dad had his 2 Purple Hearts stored. They are quite the sight to see and very striking when you first open the case. But as a kid, you just can never grasp the context or the enormity of what you might be holding in your hands unless someone stops and tells you point-blank.

John went into some room of his house and brought out a scrapbook of sorts and pulled out a map of the Coral Sea in the western Pacific where The Battle of Coral Sea was fought out over four days from May 4-8, 1942.

‘Right there, where that X is, you see it? That is where we were when your dad was hit by flaming oil from a Japanese plane that hit the tower in which he was directing artillery fire.’

Now first of all, a lot of this did not quite compute very easily since #1) We all knew that dad had just been at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina up until at least January 2, 1942 where we suppose he had been working feverishly on getting the Rose Bowl completed for the first and only time away from Pasadena, California and #2) We thought he had played at least a season for the Carolina Pre-Flight football team that was quite the collection of talent at the time.

Inside of my head I was thinking to myself: ‘On top of all that, Mr. Hanford, are you telling me that my father who had been a college football star less than 2 years previous to this incident and an assistant AD and chief football recruiter at Duke University less than 4 months previous to this, was trained; shipped out; placed in command of the artillery unit on the largest carrier the United States had left at the time and was in active combat in less than 4 months time?

We just can’t hardly grasp the magnitude of the challenges our parents faced in the immediate moments, days and months following Pearl Harbor. How did anything get done right?

‘Yes, Frank, right there where the X is. We were attacked by many Japanese fighters and bombers and one struck the tower where your dad was and he was severely burned over most of his body from the flaming oil from the Japanese plane that we had hit but that steered his plane right into the tower before it exploded.’

Now Dad had told us a few times that he had seen a Japanese plane that his artillery team had shot and hit almost go down near the Lexington only to turn up at the last moment and come close to the edge of the Lexington…and he had seen the edge of the wing cut off the heads of perhaps 100’s of sailors who were leaning over the side of the ship to see what was going on.

That was about as far as he would go with that story. Ever.

But apparently, it must have been the same one that hit his tower and burned him over 70% of his body.

John Hanford went on to say: ‘Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday. I knew your dad at Duke and we were good friends. He, of course, was the big football star and everyone knew him.

But I remember the day after the Battle of Coral Sea was over and seeing them pulley your dad over the open seas on a gurney from the Lexington to the medical rescue ship that had come alongside to take the most critically wounded off the ship first.

He was wrapped in white gauze from head to toe and the big thick wire cable between the much larger carrier and the tiny medical ship looked thin as a hair from where I was standing. The big ship went up and the little ship went down as the waves filled and lowered beneath us. All I can remember is thinking how small Dan looked wrapped white in that gurney and how all of us hoped he would make it across to the hospital ship without the cable breaking somehow and him being dumped into shark-infested waters out there.

When he made it across safely, me and most of the men on the ship cheered, just as we cheered every other wounded sailor who made it across that day.’

The USS Lexington was damaged beyond repair this time, far worse than it had been at Pearl Harbor so it was scuttled and sunk to the bottom of the Pacific soon thereafter.

Odd name for an ocean that saw so much terror and bloodshed over the ages and especially during the Second World War.

But that day in the home of John and Bunny Hanford in 2002 was the first time I knew for sure what had happened to my Dad in World War II, how and why.

He spent the next year or so in Navy hospitals on the west coast recovering from his wounds. He had suffered 3rd degree burns over much of the 70% of his skin that had been burned and he had very translucent light Irish skin to begin with. You can almost see the blue veins through the skin of many Irish guys, especially as they age.

Dad would cover up in a white sheet and cover his head with a hard African safari hat and spread zinc oxide over his gnarled nose and much of his face when we went to the beach and stay under a pitched tent of some sort. It looked like he was enjoying it about as much as being in an outdoor torture chamber, truth be told.

After learning the extent of the pain and suffering he went through on the USS Lexington on or around May 5, 1942, I wish we had never bugged him about going to the beach or laughed at him when he came out of the cottage looking like a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia.

He was a real American Hero. And not because of his football exploits this time around.

'OCCUPY AARP!

2011-11-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

We believe that the OWS crowd has a legitimate beef with the Wall Street Barons who:
-Made all the financial/investment mistakes imaginable leading up to the Crash of 2008 that is still lingering with us;
-Ran to Washington to get bailed out; and
-Now have had all of their wealth restored and kept their jobs with the help of the US Taxpayer and the seemingly-oblivious Chinese and foreign sovereign lenders who keep shoveling money to the US absent any substantive reform at any level of business or government.

Here is something that the OWS crowd is finally getting around to that will really and truly make a difference though. We suggest you consider seriously doing the same if you are 'mad' about anything and everything.

Apparently, the OWS crowd is suggesting that everyone transfer their checking and savings and business accounts away from the banks that made such disastrous decisions in the first place and then put them all in smaller community banks that did not engage in such idiotic behavior.

We. Salute. That. Approach!

Seriously. It is called 'market pressure'. The only way anyone in the world of business ever really 'gets' the message is when sales drop and revenues dry up and profits evaporate and their pay is threatened and reduced.

It is the only way.

For banks, it is also called 'disintermediation'. Meaning deposits dry up faster than dew on a desert flower in the morning. But it gets the attention of their senior executives fast and then they start doing anything they can to make you happy so you will keep your money with them and not with someone else.

Which brings us back to the AARP.

We think it is time everyone knew the real truth about the AARP.

They may not know it but their 'Burly-Man' ad we spoke of in the prior posting pretty much rubbed a lot of people wrong. Including several seniors we have spoken with over the last couple of days.

Besides being just basically 'offensive' in tone and manner, these responsible seniors said the ad also completely reflected a total lack of concern about the United States of America as a whole.

'They apparently don't care if we fall into another major economic/financial collapse or if we have hyperinflation or a weaker economy as a result of these devastating debts we owe as a nation' they said.

Why is that? Why would the executives of the AARP be so diffident about the future prospects of the United States of America?

The AARP started out as a noble mission: help poor seniors survive end of life circumstances with dignity.

We get that. We support that. Everyone does. Liberal, Conservative, Independent, the Martian who just landed on Planet Earth.

But what has the AARP become over the past 30 years of its existence?

A monolithic, monstrous health care insurance, car insurance, life insurance behemoth! $1.4 billion in annual revenues! What kind of benevolent charitable organization lobbying for the interests of Ma and Pa Kettle racks up $1.4 billion in annual revenues from any source?

Check out the compensation for their chief executive. 'Thomas C. Nelson, Past Ex-Officio/Past COO AARP Foundation; AARP, respectively $1,176,614. Includes a separation payment of $682,285. The full amount of Thomas Nelson's compensation was paid by AARP, not AARP Foundation.'

Wow! That sure is a lot of $10 annual memberships if that is all they are doing at the AARP. 117,661 seniors would have had to have paid the $10 annual membership fee just to pay one person at AARP, Mr. Thomas Nelson.

Sounds like Wall Street overcompensation to us.

We never thought of the AARP as a benign, saintly, Mother Teresa-type organization in Washington seeking to bring solace and hope for the downtrodden seniors of this nation. They are a bare-knuckled, hardcore political machine that seeks to destroy any politician who dares speak the truth about our out-of-control entitlement spending programs. We have seen them do it time and time again in this nation supposedly that worships 'free and open speech'.

They have protected Social Security and Medicare benefits for the less-fortunate, we grant them that.

But they have assiduously expanded the scope of both programs under the guise of 'protecting the elderly' when many seniors are now living much higher standards of living than their children who are struggling to keep up with paying for their highly-subsidized SS and Medicare benefits!

Again, why in heaven's name are we still paying for over half of Warren Buffett's Medicare benefits from the general taxpayer revenue and loans from China? He and millions of other well-off senior citizens 'don't need SS or Medicare and can take care of themselves!'

Do we have pass an Emancipation Proclamation for Seniors to free them to do so?

Here's what let's do today:

Everyone who reads this article, and agrees with it, please tear up your AARP card if you have one.

Send a note to the AARP in Washington that you will not re-join until they get serious about rectifying the out-of-whack budgets for SS and Medicare in the federal budget.

In addition, send this article to everyone you know on your email lists; Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and let's call this the virtual 'OCCUPY AARP' movement in cyberspace.

We don't want you to go camp out in the cold, sleep in dirty clothes or starve to death on hunger strike or anything hard like that.

We just want you to sit at your computer in the warmth and security of your home today and help 'starve' the beast called the AARP until their senior executives 'get with the program' and start supporting even some of the President's own Bowles-Simpson recommendations on entitlements that he has never properly introduced in legislative form for some odd reason.

If the AARP starts seeing the 'disintermediation' of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of sub-60 year old people (and above 60-year old people who agree with us), they will change their tune and they will change it fast.

They are just like the bankers on Wall Street. Send them a message. And keep it going til they change their ways.

When You See That Macho 'Burly-Man' Senior On The AARP Commercials Threatening The Super Committee From Discussing Any Reductions to SS/Medicare.....

2011-10-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Show him this chart.

Chart C—Medicare Cost and Non-Interest Income by Source as a Percentage of GDP

You know the ad we are talking about. The one where the burly-looking senior looks in the camera like John Wayne and intones something to this effect:

'You mess with our Social Security and Medicare benefits...and we are gonna kick your butt!'

How is that for 'thoughtful, rational civil discourse' in America today, huh?

See it for yourself here: 'Burly-Man Senior Threatens Congress!'

We wouldn't want to face that guy in a showdown death match on the golf course or the shuffleboard court.

But here is the problem, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Medicare never has and never will be 100% 'paid for' completely individually by any senior citizen for his/her coverage. Not during his or her working career. And most assuredly not from the monthly premiums they pay for the right to have Medicare Part B physician services.

Take a magnifying glass out and take a good long solid look at the chart above. In it, you will notice that, lo and behold!, in 1970, a mere 5 years after Medicare was passed, the program cost was virtually all covered by payroll taxes on then-working Americans (not the retirees themselves) and premiums imposed on the retirees themselves.

So far, so good as of 1970, right? Almost all paid for by the smaller payroll taxes on workers back then plus premiums paid for by the seniors who were on Medicare at the time.

But look at what happened to those two trend lines over the past 41 years since then. The payroll taxes on current workers, (again, not the retirees because they have already 'retired') has grown to account for about 1.25% of GDP. That is 'GDP' as in 'the size of our national economy'. Not percentage of overall health care costs or something 'small' like that.

Premiums on retired seniors have also grown, to an astounding 0.5%+ of GDP as well.

Since inception, Congress has added on taxation of retirement entitlement benefits on more wealthy seniors plus added certain state transfer funds and associated drug fees.

Add up all of those fees coming from payroll taxes paid by workers and premiums paid by seniors and they account for around 1.75% of GDP.

In a national economy that is still over $14 trillion despite this ridiculously long, lingering 'Second Contraction' as Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff calls it, 1.75% of GDP is a lot of money. $245 billion per year right now to be more exact.

Wouldn't you think that would be more than enough to pay for the medical needs of our less able and unhealthy senior citizens of America?

Not by a long shot. You, the American taxpayer, plus the still-willing (for some reason) lenders from China and other sovereign nations such as Saudi Arabia, foot the bill for over 50% of the cost of Medicare each year. The taxpayer subsidy part of Medicare is almost 1.5% of GDP today or another $210 billion per year.

Those are simply astounding numbers, aren't they?

And guess what? The Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance (HI) program is fundamentally broke today (that is what the {HI Deficit} brackets mean at the top of the chart)

This means that payroll taxes imposed on current workers are not even covering the cost of taking care of the elderly who need hospital care today much less setting aside anything for when the Boomers start to retire in full force this year and next.

And that all means that absent any substantive reform in Medicare this year beginning with the Super Committee's recommendations in November, your payroll taxes plus those of your children now entering the workforce are probably going to go way up to cover the shortfall.

Can you afford it? Can your sons or daughters readily find work in this troubled economy and then be able to pay a much higher payroll tax to support this already crumbling system?

Our suggestion to the 'Burly Man' in the AARP commercial is to send someone from the AARP with some diplomatic skills and appreciation for the dire straits our nation is now in financially to Congress and sit down with both sides and admit the following:

The system is broke.
We can't afford this system any more.
Fundamental reform must take place now.
Change Medicare so that it is 100% available for those seniors who can not afford health care at all on their own.
Scale down any subsidy from the taxpayer to wealthier seniors as you go up the income scale.
Warren Buffett and his mega-billionaire friends do not need Medicare and probably don't use it anyway since it limits their choice of finding the very best doctors and surgeons in the world to treat them when they fall ill. So cut them off of the entitlement rolls. We can't afford to subsidize poor people AND the super wealthy any more.
Start a transition period whereby over the next 20 years, Medicare will become an income-support program based on income and household wealth when seniors will be able to use taxpayer subsidized funds to buy their own health insurance.

There are probably another 1000 things that can be done to fundamentally reform Medicare, much of which we have written about before but don't have room to do so today.

But this 'Burly-Man' AARP ad. It makes us want to burn up our AARP card because of the damage the AARP is costing our children and our children's children in terms of kicking the can down the road once again. Just like they have always advocated.

If we had an AARP card to begin with. Which we don't. You should burn yours up today as well. In silent but peaceful protest of their intransigence and inability to the see the forest fire out there for the trees.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan: Digging Down A Little Deeper

2011-10-26T03:45:00.000-07:00

What is the MAIN reason why Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan has resonated so soundly with the Republicans lately?

And it has absolutely nothing to do with his race in case you haven't noticed that already.

How can there be so many 'white racist rich Republican people' in the nation and at all the country clubs around the country when Herman Cain is now leading white-as-Sunshine Bread Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential race?

Here's the answer: 'The 9-9-9 Plan is NOT the current convoluted and corrupt US income, payroll, excise, estate (death), corporate tax system!'

'There just has to be a better way!' the primary voters on the Republican side are screaming at the top of their lungs.

Truth be told, this is at the heart of the Tea Party movement, the huge increase in registered and actual Independent voters across the nation and many Democrats as well.

The only people who seem to 'love' the existing tax code are the people who have learned to game the system and make full use of all the exemptions, loopholes and tax favoritism; the labor unions and guys like Chris Matthews of 'Hardball' and George Soros.

Wouldn't you love to see their tax returns to see if they are paying their 'fair share' according to the tax rules and not sheltering one thin dime anywhere!

Here's what the 9-9-9 Plan appears to do, although more details are 'forthcoming' which should have been prior to its publication:

1) Establishes a 9% flat rate income tax on all taxpayers.
2) Establishes a 9% national sales tax on all transactions, not just at final consumer purchase level but at every transaction in-process.
3) Establishes a 9% corporate income tax rate on all US corporations.

Embedded within this new regimen are the following assumptions of which you need to be apprised:

1) No deductions (except for charitable deductions) at the individual level. Including home mortgage interest deduction. Including mortgage interest for your second, third and fourth homes.
2) No deductions at the US corporate level rate. Including health insurance premium deduction; oil and gas depletion allowances; and ...oh goodness gracious! There are close to 10 million words in the US Tax Code right now detailing hundreds of thousands of special tax breaks and favors that would be
repealed.

K Street lobbyists in Washington, DC will be joining the 'Occupy Wall Street' crowds in tents. Not by choice but because they will be unemployed and their PACs will be dissolved. No corporate tax code to find loopholes in/No lobbyists needed/No PACs to pay for incumbent-protection programs.

3) All current federal payroll, excise, estate (death), sales, gas taxes would be repealed. You would have zero $ taken out of your paycheck ever again for FICA, UI, and presumably, for your share of the health care premiums provided by your employer because they most likely would stop paying for your insurance once this huge deduction is wiped out.

You would be on your own to find the best insurance plan you could on the open market. Or you could join the purchasing co-ops supposedly being set-up by Obama Care....unless it is not funded by Congress, which doesn't appear likely at the point.

4) No taxes on capital gains, investment or dividend income or other personal savings accounts. You will be free to invest in whatever business, stock, real estate or gold program you want without ANY concern or regard for possible taxation down the line.

5) What happens to the employer matching share of the FICA payroll taxes and the health care premiums they no longer will have to pay? Well, it being the free enterprise system and all that, presumably the corporations and company owners could try to just keep all of that sudden-found windfall for themselves in terms of retained earnings and profits.

As long as every competitor does the same, there will be spectacular profits on the order of which American business may not have seen for a century.

But what happens the day one competitor cuts his price to gain market share? Everyone else will follow suit in short order. Revenues and profits will start to compress down to some new 'normal' level similar to what they were before this new tax reform tsunami hit.

What happens the day one of your competitors decides to use some of that new-found wealth to pay one of your workers more money to come work for him/her? You either match it or lose a great employee. And if the others see that you are unwilling to pay more money to keep them, they will start to leave in dribbles and then in droves.

In short, no one really knows for sure what will happen when and if a seismic change in tax policy hits America after the Inauguration of our 45th President, Herman Cain in 2013. The preliminary very negative projections have been done by the self-professed and designated 'non-partisan' Tax Policy Center which is hardly such a creature. It is comprised of tax policy wonks from the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, neither of which has ever been very kind to radical tax reform ideas mainly because they like the current one just the way it is.

Most economic and econometric forecasts used in Washington are not 'dynamic' but 'static' meaning they can only focus on changing one variable at a time and can't predict very well what changes in human behavior will be to different incentives and policy changes. There is no way to accurately forecast what businesses will do with their extra cash. There is no way to really know exactly what someone will do with the extra cash in their pocket after these changes are made.

Our gut tells us that this 9-9-9 Plan has all the markings of setting up a titanic national debate in 2012 that we desperately need to have out in the public. On the one hand, you will have President Obama defending the old and archaic and sclerotic current tax system, when you would think he, as a young, energetic President would be for something 'different' since this one doesn't work very well.

On the other, you may have another African-American, Herman Cain, promoting the most drastic and dramatic tax reform effort in America since the Kemp-Roth tax cuts advocated by President Reagan in the early 1980's.

Let the games begin.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan: 'Is It 'Wacky' or 'Constitutional'?

2011-10-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

We have heard some pundits say that Herman Cain's '9-9-9' plan is a 'bad idea'.

'Compared to 'what'?', you have to ask yourself.

And you have to ask the brain surgeons such as Chris Matthews of 'Hardball' who deify themselves as the arbiters of all that is good about this great nation of ours.

(Why do the images of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to mind on the rare occasions we happen to catch Mr. Matthews harrumphing on a channel hardly anyone watches anymore?)

'Just how flipping 'great' is the current US progressive income tax system working out for ya, Chris? With all the loopholes and exemptions, it looks like a case of moldy swiss cheese that is crippling the ingenuity and vigor of the American economy, especially now when we need clarity and certainty to get our economy going again'.

We heard Mr. Matthews sniff and snuffle and look down his nose at those who 'dare disagree' with him about how the 'grand tradition' of American public policy has 'long been the progressive tax system where people who earn more pay more of their income in taxes for the privilege of living in this great country of ours.' (paraphrased)

Oh, really?

Where in the US Constitution does it say anything about the vaunted 'progressive income tax system'?

Nowhere.

Where does the 'progressive income tax system' come into play in the Declaration of Independence, The Emancipation Proclamation or maybe even going back to the Magna Carta, all of which are 'freedom' documents of the nth degree?

Let's take a step back into time and think about what the early settlers of America and the Founding Fathers were thinking when they were forming this new great land that we have inherited from them and their sacrifice and labor:

'Well, after we pioneer our way from the East Coast into the Midwest and fight all the Indians and the French soldiers and conquer this land, let's make sure we institute the 'progressive income tax system' so all of the people who took those risks pay more of their income for the things the rest of us all want.'

(Overheard at the crossing of the Delaware on a freezing cold Christmas night in 1776)

'You know, George (Washington), after we surprise the British here on Christmas day, we think the best thing we can do for this new republic we are fighting to start is to institute the 'progressive income tax system' so primarily only the rich people will pay for most of the huge public sector we are sure we are going to need down the road.'

Nothing could be further from the truth. They were fighting for freedom, plain and simple.

Much of that freedom was tied into being freed from the capricious taxation decision-making of King George III who seemingly popped out new taxes on the colonists like popcorn from a Jiffy Pop Popcorn aluminum bubble.

You know what the very first order of business was in the very first Congress in 1789?

Finding a way to pay for the new Republic.

You can look it up in the Congressional Record in the Archives in the basement of the Senate Dirksen Building. Page 1 of Volume 1 starts out with the call to order and then dives right into the issue of instituting and raising revenues to pay for the new country through import taxes.

What are 'import taxes', class?

Right. 'Consumption taxes' based on the importation of goods from overseas.

And who would be more likely to buy expensive perfumes from France and fine linens from England in 1789 America?

Correct. The rich people. The more they bought, the more taxes that were collected for the young republic.

Talk about 'progressive'! We have a feeling that the wealthy back then paid perhaps 75-90% of all import taxes whether they were consuming the goods or importing them and then re-selling them to the general public.

Here's an interesting 'fact' that many people, including the savant Mr. Matthews, don't know:

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson reported to Congress that revenues from import taxes in 1804 totaled $11.8 million for the past fiscal year. Expenses totaled $8.7 million for the young nation.

The surplus in 1804 was $3.1 million. Which is about $80 billion in 2012 terms.

All of the revenue back then came from import taxes. It stayed mostly that way in America up until the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln instituted an income tax to help pay for the Union side of the things in that bloody war.

Which was summarily repealed in 1872 after years of heated debate. Income taxes were revived in 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the income tax to be unconstitutional in 1895.

Congress proposed the 16th Amendment in 1909 to make the income tax constitutional and it was ratified in 1913.

Here is the entire text of the 16th Amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It says absolutely nothing about the 'progressive' income tax system. It could be a flat tax. In fact, the first income tax system under Lincoln was a 'flat tax' of 3% on any income above $800 earned in a year so there is some precedent for the flat tax from one of our 3 greatest Presidents, yes?

So for over half of our nation's history, import 'consumption' taxes were the way we funded virtually all of our federal government's activities. 'Consumption taxes' have always been a part of the US landscape ranging from import taxes to excise taxes to sales taxes.

They all work the same. And guess what? They all produce far more income from people who buy more goods and purchase large consumer goods such as Bentleys than from people who purchase 30 year-old used Gremlins. If they were applied to new mansions as a true consumption tax would work if truly universal, a person buying a $10 million home might pay 9% in a consumption tax to the federal government at closing.

Today, he/she pays zero to the federal government for a purchase of a new home. Or a Bentley.

More later on the details of the 9-9-9 plan as we get the chance to study it in more detail.

But the operative question we want to leave you with today is this:

'Are you willing to keep putting up with a bankrupt and corrupt current federal income tax system? Or are you willing to try something simpler and more transparent and direct?

If you answer affirmatively to the second question, you need to take a deeper look at Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

'Occupy Chapel Hill: Be Part of Something Too Big To Fail'

2011-10-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

We saw this sign in front of the US Post Office this past weekend on an absolutely glorious 'If God is Not a Tar Heel, then why is the Sky Carolina Blue' weekend.

And right off the bat, we wondered: 'What will happen when the skies turn gray and the temperature drops to 20 degrees? (for about the 3 days per year it does get cold in Chapel Hill)

But this sign does evoke a lot of emotions and thoughts so we thought we would share them with you:

First of all, we agree with them 100% about the Wall Street and Detroit bailouts.
But we also extend that sentiment to the state bailouts in the first stimulus package, the 'cash for clunkers' program, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac whitewashes and any other attempt by the Obama Administration.
'Where do these people think the money comes from to pay for all these bailouts and the social programs they want more of in the first place?'
'Be part of something too big to fail' indeed. Like the United States of America, the free enterprise system and the democratic republic that allows it all to happen.

Let's take these in order:

Wall Street/Detroit et.al: We can, and should, all agree that any executive on Wall Street, in Detroit or in any management level decision that led to these egregious bailouts in the first place should have been fired, thrown into prison or hung in stocks on the Washington Mall like they did in colonial days to shame malefactors and criminals.

And none of them should have been offered any golden parachute, retirement package or any benefits after the companies they led essentially became bankrupt.

'Why? you ask. 'They had a contract.'

Their businesses went bankrupt! Have American free enterprise mavens and hawkers forgotten what capitalism is all about in the first place? You make reasoned risks so you and your company can make profits so the company can grow and prosper.

You make the wrong guess or bet? You lose. You lose it all; you file Chapter 13 bankruptcy and try to reorganize and start all over again.

That is the 'real' American Way that Ronald Reagan and other conservatives such as Barry Goldwater talked about and extolled. Not this 'run to the government for help' mindset that most of Wall Street and much of America corporate business has adopted over the past 25 years.

'Privatize the upside and socialize the downside' is the mantra for current business leaders in America.

Or more aptly put when speaking in private:

'Allow us (me) to take full advantage of the private enterprise system when things are going great so we (I) can get rich beyond the wildest dreams of Kings Croesus and Midas of yesteryear lore. When things go bad, we (I) will run to Washington to ask the government and the Federal Reserve and any other sucker to pay for our (my) mistakes. Oh, and pay ME a multi-million bailout parachute package with taxpayer support worthy of any parting gift from 'Wheel of Fortune'

One well-respected CFO and CEO we know well had this to say when asked if he would have ever gone to Washington hat-in-hand if his business had 'failed' in the 70's/80's:

'I would have rather had a hot poker from the fireplace stuck into both eyes!'

That must have been when men were men and business people of all genders recognized the ups and the downs of the free enterprise system. And respected them. Like the rules of golf.

You never see a professional golfer go whining to the PGA Commissioner appealing some ruling, do you? Golfers call penalties....ON THEMSELVES!

Wouldn't that be wonderful to see in the business world of today?

'Members of the Board, shareholders and Members of Congress and President Obama, I screwed up. I made bets on the subprime mortgage markets with checks I could not cash and which went south pretty damned quickly in 2008. I hereby resign my lucrative position and will work for the rest of my life to try to repay every cent I lost...unless I go to prison first.'

Second, a bailout is a bailout, no matter how you slice it or what the government spends TARP money on. States across the nation have spent money like drunken sailors (which Ronald Reagan said was an 'insult to drunken sailors!) over the past decade and they were completely unprepared to handle the downturn in loss of tax revenues when the recession hit in 2008.

At least 50% of the Obama stimulus package was not designed to stimulate new investment and private sector job creation. It was designed to satisfy the teacher unions and other public sector unions across the nation and keep them at work when the states could no longer pay their salaries. It is about to expire at the end of this year...and then what? In the absence of a healthy growing private sector, these jobs can not be sustained and will be cut back again next year at the state level.

Which gets us to our third point: 'Where do these Occupiers think all the money comes from to pay for their IPhones on which they Twitter their 'Glorious Revolution'? (Google the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and see what that was all about)

Computer says: 'The private enterprise system!'

That is where all the money comes from to support the social safety net, the defense budget and Medicare and SS, NOT the government! American free enterprise capitalists and conservatives in general have done a spectacularly terrible job of teaching the next generation of the virtues of the free enterprise system. Mostly because all they have seen in their formative years for these past 15-20 years has been year after year after year of corporate giants taking advantage of every loophole in the law they can find and then paying their executives enormous sums of tribute in the form of compensation even after they fail miserably.

Companies need to closely tie compensation to job performance and success. Period. Stock goes down. Mr. CEO gets wiped out. Just like his shareholders. And then fired. That is fair and that is justice. And it will also help teach the next generation that life in the free enterprise system is not just a bed of roses designed for a select few elites.

But here is what we really agree with the Occupiers of Chapel Hill: 'Be Part of Something Too Big To Fail.'

It is called 'The United States of America'. Be a part of it. Don't run from your civic duties and obligations. Run TO them. As fast as you can. Run for office. Contribute lots of money to those souls who are braver than you who do decide to run for public office. Vote. Volunteer to help your cause or side of the argument.

And if you are a businessman, please. Please don't run to the government and ask for a bailout no matter how stupid your decisions have been. One analyst has said that if either of the two large banks in Charlotte had not bought either of the two major subprime mortgage companies, Countrywide or Golden West, their stock price would now be $500/share instead of in the low single digits or gone.

Completely.

We, the American taxpayer, would have preferred that both had not made the same wrong fateful decision. Be a man, Mr. American Business Person, and do it on your own from now on, why doncha?

Stay away from Washington bailout money. Show some self-respect and respect for the free enterprise system you say you 'love' and which has been very, very good to you and yours.

Is It OK To Vote For A Mormon For President?

2011-10-12T03:52:00.000-07:00

Well, since Pastor Robert Jeffress has opened this can of worms, we might as well put in our two cents about it.

So should you.Especially if you are a serious bonafide Bible-believing Christian.

Here's what Jeffress said when introducing Rick Perry at the recent Family Values conference:

'Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person? Or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ? (applause)
Rick Perry is a proven leader. He is a true conservative, and he is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. Would you join me in welcoming the governor of the great state of Texas, Rick Perry?'

What is it about voting for a 'genuine' 'born-again' 'follower of Jesus Christ' that makes anyone more special to be President of the United States of America?

How about voting for a Jew for President? He/she would be part of the Judeo-Christian heritage we all say we share.

A Hindu? A Rastafarian? A Muslim?

Was Jefferson a Deist or closet atheist? Was Catholic President John F. Kennedy going to take his marching orders from the Pope? Is Rick Perry going to become Elmer Gantry if elected to the White House? Does Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith somehow ‘disqualify’ him from running for President?

What a president thinks about creationism versus evolution is almost immaterial to his or her conduct as Chief Executive Officer of this great land. Is a 'President Rick Perry' all of a sudden going to be able to snap his fingers and mandate that every public school in this country drop any mention of Darwin or evolution and focus solely on the Biblical accounts of creationism?

Heck no! Why do you think every state has its own legislature and each community has its own elected officers? They get to make local decisions on things like public education, not the President of the United States.

We think a man or woman’s personal faith is important if they decide to get into the public arena. We think it is helpful to know if someone running for the elective office in our great land thinks ‘they’ are the source of all knowledge and reason on earth or if they are accountable to a ‘Higher Order’.

But we also think the Constitution is pretty clear on this subject. The First Amendment guarantees every person the freedom of religious expression as they see fit to choose. They can howl at the moon and worship the dung beetle in Africa if they so choose. (don't laugh, there are people who do)

Article VI clearly states '...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.'

We should fear the state-imposed religion more than whether a non-Christian gets elected to be the Chief Executive of our nation. He is not elected to be a 'king', no matter how much they want you to think they are the next incarnation of the Sun-King or a descendant of Zeus.

The Founders saw the President as the tool to implement the policies they germinated and passed. Not the other way around.

The Founders treasured religious freedom to the nth degree. And why shouldn’t they? Many of them were descendants of people who fled English and European persecution of them solely for their deeply-held religious beliefs.

Thomas Jefferson has 3 things inscribed on his tombstone:

‘Author of the

Declaration of American Independence

of the

Statute of Virginia

for

Religious Freedom

and Father of the

The University of Virginia’

In that order.

It strikes us as overkill the amount of time and attention we collectively spend on examining any candidate’s religious beliefs or lack thereof.

Here's one area where someone's religious beliefs have not mattered very much when it comes to 'solving it', has it?

Balancing the Federal Budget.

As hard as it is to believe, just because someone is a person of faith is no indicator of whether they know how to vote to balance the federal budget, or any other budget for that matter.

We do have a very serious problem with is the misguided notion that just because someone is a person of faith (take your pick), they also know how to balance the budget.

How do we know this to be true?

‘As evidence, we present Exhibit A-1, Your Honor….the last 10 years of financial imprudence in the US Congress and around the state legislatures in the United States of America.’

It is sinful, truth be told and admitted and confessed to the Lord. A great paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer might indicate our current attitude towards debt, both federal and personal:

'Forgive us our national debt, Lord! But Not Just Yet!' (with apologies to St. Augustine)

99% of all elected officials in Congress declare themselves to be Christian, Catholic or Jewish of some denomination, sect or order. The sole Muslim in Congress has only been there for 2.5 terms....and he has not done much better in terms of voting for fiscally sane positions either!

As long as each representative brings some real-world expertise education and experience to the table, we do not care if all of the Christians, Jews and the sole Muslim now serving in Congress hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the Capitol flagpole every day at high noon as long as they can solve the very pressing public policy questions before them.

Such as balancing the federal budget and reducing the $14.7 trillion national debt before it explodes to $25 trillion. Just to name two.

Just because there is the Book of Numbers in the Bible does not mean that Christian and Jewish politicians know how to balance the budget. They obviously have no clue today, do they? The results speak for themselves.

Remember that as you evaluate the presidential candidates for the Republicans and the congressional candidates for 2012.

Mitt Romney might be the greatest president we could ever elect to help get us out of this economic and fiscal mess in which we are now mired neck-deep. He has all the business background to do the job.

And if you know nothing about Mormonism, think on this: The unemployment rate amongst Mormons is probably close to zero.

Maybe we Christians. Jews, Muslims and Rastafarians can learn something from them.