We have gathered here today to make our voices heard by all our politicians, especially those in Washington, but what is it we are saying?   240 years ago our countrymen dumped the king’s tea into Boston Harbor. Why? Because the king and parliament had adopted policies and imposed taxes that were destroying their ability to pursue their economic happiness. They understood, as we are beginning to understand, that economic freedom is the foundation from which our liberty flows. If the government has the right to our income before we do, we are merely slaves given an allowance. If the government has the right to determine how we utilize and dispose of our property, we are merely caretakers. If the government thinks that it, rather than our Creator, endow us with our rights, then we are mere subjects, dependent upon the whims of those in power. This nation was conceived to remove man from the arbitrary power of kings and despots and allow him to shape his own destiny apart from the dictates of a distant government that knows nothing of his needs and desires.

     This nation was founded by men who were subjects of a king and who rose up to remove the shackles of tyranny to embrace the privileges and responsibilities of liberty. They believed that it was the individual, not the government, who knew how best to order his affairs for the preservation of his God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For almost one hundred years we have allowed a government conceived for the preservation of those rights to mutate into a state that has reduced us to subjects once again. We have traded the privileges and responsibilities of individual liberty for the promise of physical and economic security, promises the majority are finally beginning to find empty. We are finally waking up to the fact that the siren song of a state run utopia is merely the prelude to our enslavement. The declaration states that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while the evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” This has been true for decades but we are finally seeing the writing on the wall and now we realize that our silence will result in the final destruction of the vision of the founders and the nation itself. We find the evils sufferable no longer!

    For too long we have allowed our government to make war on our faith, our values and our liberty. And we have been complicit, allowing them to tax and regulate ever larger portions of our lives in the hope that we will be more secure. We can shout, we can complain but we must also pull ourselves off the government teat and take responsibility for ourselves. If we are going to raise our voices and say that we want our liberty back, we must once again take responsibility for ourselves. It is we who must provide for our retirement, save for a rainy day, take responsibility for our health care and the education of our children. It may seem a sacrifice to us but it was everyday life for our grandparents and great-grandparents.

     We stand on the edge of the abyss. If we allow the final nails to be driven into the coffin that was the founder’s vision, there will be no return. But we cannot merely shout “stop here” for the statist will merely pause until we become accustomed to our new bonds and then move ahead once again to add anew. We must put men and women in office who will dismantle the fascist power that has evolved over the last hundred years and return to us the constitutional republic we were created to be. We are not powerless yet but it is we who must take up the banner once held by Washington and Jefferson and Adams and Madison, the banner of Liberty, not for a moment, but for the duration of the struggle. The fate of our great country rests upon our shoulders. May we not shrink under the burden but stand boldly in the face of tyranny and in so doing, make our selves worthy heirs of the American Revolution.

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     During his much heralded trip to Europe, our “rock star” president said that America had been “arrogant” in the past but that we were changing. There is no question that we are changing, we are becoming more like European socialists all the time. But it was President Obama’s intent to mean that we were becoming more humble as a nation, another attack on American exceptionalism. During the campaign, candidate Obama said that we must repair our tarnished image in the world, that we must make people like us again.   President Obama and the state department led by “the smartest woman in the world” Hillary Clinton, seem to have made it their mission to change our image in the world as rapidly as possible.

     Unfortunately, instead of changing our image from “arrogant cowboy” to “gentle giant”, they have changed our image from “tough customer” to “class clown”. It would appear that the Obama/Clinton strategy for making people think we are less arrogant it to make us look foolish. Not foolish in the self-depreciating way that some may find endearing, but foolish in the way of an ignorant country bumpkin in the big city. Every time there is a foray into the foreign arena by this administration, it is a disaster. Hillary Clinton telling North Korea to call her on a late night talk show or giving the Russian President a button with the wrong word on it. President Obama himself insulting our staunch allies the British with lame gifts and returning a gift of theirs. He doesn’t kiss the French First lady but gives a deep bow to the Saudis. He gives the Queen an I-Pod and the first lady touches her. In eight years of President Bush, except for a little dancing, I don’t remember any of these kinds of blunders. Now, it is one after the other.

         Now I know there are people in the state department whose sole job it is to make sure the president and his diplomats operate with the greatest cultural discretion. Either those people have all been fired and replaced by people who don’t know what they are doing or President Obama and Secretary Clinton are ignoring their advice. Perhaps it is some of both. The point is that the result of all these blunders in etiquette either make us look amateurish in the world, or supremely arrogant. Why arrogant? Because if we are not ignorant of the customs, and I find it difficult to believe we are, that means we are purposely ignoring the cultures and customs of those we interact with, putting little or no thought into the gifts we give and the words we say. President Obama’s cure for American arrogance just makes us look worse. The real cure for it is to act in the world according to principle and not in ways that are designed just to get the approval of people who are lukewarm to us, or who are our enemies. We may not be adored but we will be respected again. Sometimes that is the best one can hope for and is should be enough. 

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     In our current era of “globalization”, the current administration's inclination to give the United Nations more say-so in our affairs, Treasury secretary Geithner’s flip flopping on the idea of a global currency and Harold Koh’s desire to see the constitution and our very sovereignty made subservient to a higher, international authority, perhaps we should pause and think about this idea.   As President Obama and other G20 leaders looked for further cooperation and some members pushed for an international financial institution to deal with the economic mess, we should consider what caused this mess in the first place and whether more globalization is the answer.

     It is often said that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Our economic problems become a problem for the rest of the industrialized world. This is a result of our place in the world as the largest economy and the globalization of commerce that has been shrinking the globe for the last hundred years or more.   Trade is important and I am not going to complain about free trade because that is market capitalism at work. The problems result when everyone becomes so interdependent that foolish decisions and policies by one business or nation impact the others catastrophically.

     We have become so enamored of the idea of “community” that we have forgotten how to be individuals. Consider several facets of the crisis that is upon us. As an individual, was it a smart idea to put all your financial eggs in Bernie Madoff’s basket? Of course not, but some people did. Was it a good idea to borrow 110% against the value of your house? No, but some people did. Was it a good idea to run up all your credit cards and put nothing in the savings account? No, but few of us have any savings at all. Regardless of what our exalted president says, spending less and saving more would have spared many the trauma of this downturn because no matter what President Obama says, there will always be ups and downs, there is no way to keep that from happening unless we destroy the economy completely through his freespending socialist policies. Then there will only be down, and no up. Anyway, if people have a years worth of salary saved in case they lose their job, did not have all their money in one type of investment and were not burdened with debt, a downturn is much less traumatic. Few people live that way in America and that is why so many are clamoring for the government to cover their stupidity and excess. Now our government is spending more than it ever has to meet that demand and both the short and long term results of such activity will be negative for all of us. The horrible results of too much government dependency have been covered in other blogs. A well prepared individual is always going to be better off than a dependent slave.

     Now move it up a level. Look at the car industry, “too big to fail”. Don’t look at GM however, look at GM’s suppliers. Some of these businesses have one product and that product is sold to GM. If GM has trouble, those businesses are in real trouble. If my company only makes widgets for Hummer, and Hummers are discontinued under President Obama’s plan, I’m in real trouble. If I did not put some money aside for the costs of retooling and adapting another product line, I’m out of business. Businesses need diversified and adaptable business plans which is why having the government run them is such a bad idea. Government bureaucracy is anything but adaptable.

     Move up one more level. California is on the brink of bankruptcy and failure. New York is going to tax it’s remaining productive citizens to death. Michigan has been in a recession for years. If I am a resident of those states, what can I do? I can move to a state where the business climate is better, the unemployment rate is lower and the politicians aren’t so stupid. If President Obama forces the country farther into a fascist “soft tyranny”, we could leave for places that still respect the natural rights of citizens and the capitalist economic system, if any still exist. If we go for the transnational idea, however, there will be no where to go.   If you think that Washington is “out of touch”, wait until decisions are made by transnational organizations. If those decisions are bad economically, everyone will be affected, there will be no low tax states or nation, no places free from regulation, carbon taxes or any other bad idea dreamed up by such a body. If decisions are made that are soft on crime or terrorists, there will be no where to hide, no justice, no states with concealed carry laws. We will have all our eggs in one basket, the transnational one, and we will have no recourse if that basket is rotten. There will be no containment of economic downturns. Now any nation that “sneezes” will result in all of us catching a cold.

     Think of our lives and our personal, economic and political connections within two analogies. The first is a web. Everything is connected to everything else, there are lots of options, plenty of connecting points. If one option or route around the web is taken away, there will be another. If one support, or even several are removed, the web may sag but it doesn’t fall. There are options in a web, things are decentralized. That is the way this country was set up, decentralized. The individual, not the collective, was emphasized, and that individual had plenty of options concerning how he was going to build his web and what attachment points he would choose. If he chose a few unwisely, it was not the end.

    The statists and the transnationalists want centralized power, analogous to a mobile. In case you don’t remember, a mobile is one of those artistic creations you made in school with string and cut out animals that you hung from the ceiling and it rotated in the breeze. The point is, a mobile has only one attachment point and you, as an individual, cannot go anywhere else on the mobile without first going through that central point.   The whole thing has to balance around that one point. If the powers that be decide that your part of the mobile is unbalanced, it can weigh you down (taxes, regulation) and you will have no recourse because you are on a fixed point. That point of attachment is not determined by you but by the people in charge.   The more severe problem is that in order to keep things balanced, the people in charge need to keep adding more weight here and there to keep balance and sooner or later, the inevitable happens, that one attachment point fails and the whole thing comes crashing down. I say it is inevitable because, as a rule, politicians do more harm than good, that is why our founders limited their power. The more power they have, the more harm they do. Put them in charge of the economy and they will do a lot of harm and it will have a great impact on you and I.

     This economic crisis has demonstrated the perils of being too economically dependent on others and has revealed weaknesses in businesses and individuals that do not plan and are too consumed with greed. It is a correction and this correction is good because the market works and the principles of thrift and forethought need to be reestablished in the business community and among us as individuals. If, however, we force even more dependency by creating new transnational political and economic institutions that reduce our sovereignty as a nation and liberty as individuals and prop up failure, prohibiting the correction, the next crisis will be much worse. There will be no isolating the sick patient, there will be no safe haven, there will be no choice but for all of us to go down collectively with the ship.

www.patricksamuels.com.   

     The AIG mess was big news over the last week, made so by a government that quietly monetized our debt to the tune of trillions of dollars (is anything done with less than a trillion anymore?). Forget for a moment that this government is making our country’s untenable financial position much worse. What happened between our government and the employees of AIG over the last two weeks is inexcusable.

     As the government appointed head of AIG sat before a congress that has made a habit of browbeating the leading businessmen of the country, Barny Frank demanded the names of the people who had received bonuses, bonuses that were paid under contract and approved under the stimulus bill (that no one read), bonuses that were to be paid under the AIG reorganization developed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.   When CEO Edward Liddy was reluctant to release those names because he said his employees had been receiving death threats, Barny Frank just shrugged it off. He didn’t care that the class warfare that has been a staple of his party and liberals everywhere was now resulting in death threats against the “wealthy”.   Mr. Cuomo wants the names as well and threatened to publish the names of those who did not return the bonuses. A senator called on the executives to kill themselves in their shame. The House of representatives actually voted to target these specific citizens, an official legislative action! ACORN then rented a bus to take protestors to the homes of these executives. Our government is using its power to shame and threaten (that would be extortion for us) law abiding citizens who were guilty of no crime into giving up property they received under legitimate contracts, contracts approved of by the very government perpetrating this outrage!

     It is time to turn the tables. It is time the fear was felt by those who supposedly work for us. It is time that we stopped being pushed around by our government and started pushing back.   If Barny Frank thinks it is funny that executives get death threats and have their homes picketed and are fearful for their children, perhaps it is time the executives we have elected to run our country had their feet held to the fire for screwing it up far worse that any executive at AIG. What if a mob showed up outside Barny Frank’s expensive home, or Nancy Pelosi’s, or Chris Dodd’s, or Harry Reid’s? What if we showed up as they did in the old days, with pitchforks and tar and feathers? What if we hung them in effigy?  What if we showed them we were not going to put up with their stupidity and incompetence any more? What if we insinuated, as Frank did, that we were not particularly interested in their personal safety? The arrogance of these second rate minds in our government will only grow if they continue to get away with it. They are just playground bullies grew up. Do you think Barny Frank was picked on in school? Do you think the pudgy little effeminate boy with the slobbering lisp got beat up as few times? How the people of Massachusetts ever looked at someone like him and said “you know, I think we should have someone like him representing us in congress”. Are you kidding? The same goes for half the dim bulbs up on the hill. Now the taunted ones are getting back at all the people they perceive as more powerful or successful than they are or could be, given their limited intellectual talents. If these people are going to engage in Mafia tactics and turn our great country into a banana republic, it is time we exercised the rights endowed by our Creator, recognized by our Founders and enshrined in our Constitution.

....whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and happiness.                 Declaration of Independence

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Why Socialism is Bad for YOU

     It is hard to get people to understand the inherent dangers of socialism when all they see are the benefits. President Obama promises to help people with their mortgages and provide their health care, we have relied of Social Security for our retirement, subsidized loans and grants for education, corporate and individual welfare, bailouts and stimulus checks. But as even President Obama admits, there is no free lunch. What is the real danger of a socialist relationship between the citizen and his government?

     To illustrate this, consider this analogy. America and its citizens are an army, organized into privates, officers and generals. The generals are our leaders in Washington. The officers are business owners, be they lieutenants or colonels. The rest of us are privates. When the army was assembled everyone provided their own equipment and carried their own supplies. The generals gave general directives to the officers who used their own intelligence and initiative to carry them out (every analogy has its limits and this is one. Under the constitution Washington does not direct business leaders or private citizens but bear with me, this is not the point of the analogy). The privates were well trained, in good shape, knew how to live off the land and knew their duty. The army marched forward, every step brining them closer to a glorious future. If a platoon or even a division got into trouble, the rest of the army could move in to help. Incompetent officers or individuals were removed or killed in battle. The American army was a lean, effective force for over one hundred years.

    At the turn of the twentieth century, however, the lean mean fighting force that had been so successful and prosperous started to change. First, some of the strongest officers and privates were forced to carry the packs and equipment of some of the others (Graduated Income Tax). Although inconvenient for a few, it didn’t slow the army very much. Twenty five years later, however, a big change came to the army. A lot more of the officers and privates were being forced to carry the equipment of others and a new concept was introduced. Wagons were built to carry some of the privates who were not as fit as some of the others and in addition to carrying the equipment, the stronger officers and privates were now forced to pull the wagons (the New Deal). This slowed the army considerably and because the people in the wagons were not contributing to the provision and success of the army, everyone else had to take up the slack. Even the generals started to pull the wagons and since they were concerned with this, they spent less time planning strategy and overseeing the health and welfare of the whole army.

     Thirty years later, the generals decided to put even more people in the wagons and as a result, even more wagons were built. Now there were a whole new crop of privates who never even went through basic training, had no idea how to contribute to the army and no motivation to do so (The Great Society). They just rode in the wagons and often derided the officers and privates who were pulling the wagons, officers who were becoming fewer and fewer. This slowed the army even more and made it very difficult for it to maneuver effectively to meet any new challenges.  

     Over the next forty years, more wagons were added, more people climbed on and fewer people were left to pull them. Now we come to the age of General Obama who has invited everyone to climb on the wagons in the belief that a few officers, privates and generals like himself can pull wagons full of untrained, lazy troops wherever they are needed and then deploy them effectively. The generals berated and beat the few officers and privates who remained to pull the wagons until they gave up and either deserted or climbed in the wagons as well. Soon the whole army is in the wagons and the only ones pulling it are the generals. The people in the wagons, if they had any training to begin with, have lost it. They are relying of the generals to do everything. The generals feed them, carry their supplies and transport them where they need to go. With a fat, lazy untrained army being pulled by generals who spend all their time on the details and none on strategy. The army cannot be deployed with any effectiveness and with no coherent strategy, they end up going in circles.

     The army was never designed to operate this way and the generals cannot pull all the weight indefinitely. One of three things will happen to the generals. Enemy snipers will take them out, they will drop dead from exertion or they will turn on each other. Either way, when the generals are gone, panic will follow among the troops. Suddenly they are no longer being fed and cared for, they find they have to carry their own equipment in their poor physical condition and it is equipment they have no idea how to use, and they have no direction. If the enemy attacks or the elements turn against them, most of them will die. 

     The point is this. People who put all their money in Lehman Brothers or gave it to Bernie Madoff found out the hard way that when you put all your money in one basket, the risks are very great. That is why diversification is recommended when investing. America is doing the same thing with the Federal Government. When the country was founded the federal government had a minimal role in our everyday lives and power was shared with the states and the people. The American people were tough and self reliant. Today, we rely on the Federal Government for so much. Our “Safety Net” has become an integrated support system that we all partake of. We depend of the Federal Government for our retirement, unemployment, health care, subsidies, insurance and a myriad of other things. What happens when the federal Government no longer has the money for these things? What if we can no longer sell our debt to the Chinese, when we have taxed the “rich” into giving up, when the interest on our huge debt crowds out most other expenditures or when we have printed so much money it becomes worthless? What happens when the Social Security and welfare checks stop coming or are paid in worthless dollars? What happens when doctors no longer receive payments or the next hurricane comes through and there is no federal aid? What happens when all the federal regulatory agencies can no longer be funded? We have turned over so much power and responsibility to Washington for so long that too many Americans no longer have the common sense and initiative to fend for themselves. It is bad for the country and it is dangerous for you and I.   The question you need to ask yourself now is “Am I in the wagon?” and “What am I going to do when the general stops taking care of me?” For too many Americans the answer to the first question is “Yes” and to the second is “I have no idea”.

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The Real Revolution-Sweden or Stalin

     In case you haven’t noticed, there is a real revolution happening in the US of A.   No, I’m not talking about a revolution led by NRA types or the many disgruntled conservatives and libertarians who are unhappy with the course of this nation. Yes, there are a lot of angry people out there and there are talk radio hosts and political commentators who reflect, and at times, encourage, that anger but there is no revolution brewing there. Revolutions require political power and leadership and right now conservatives and libertarians have none and as cowardly and spineless as Republicans have shown themselves, they are unlikely to recapture it anytime soon.

     No, the revolution I am talking about is happening in Washington DC as you read this.   The United States has been the victim of a bloodless coup whose aim is no less than the replacement of the constitutionally limited government on which our nation was founded and replacing it with a one party socialist, or dare I say, communist, political system. I know that is a loaded statement but after observing President Obama and the other Democrat leaders for the last six weeks and considering their proposals, I have come to believe it’s true. After observing their words and actions since the first of the year there are two possible conclusions. First, these people are really stupid and totally incompetent and their first few weeks in office have demonstrated an ignorant disregard of the history of this country and basic common sense. Although my opinion of politicians in general is very low, I don’t think any group can be that stupid. The second possibility is that they are choosing to set common sense and this nation’s history aside because they are pursuing a malevolent agenda in which they desire to replace that which has gone before with a system that will ensure their own power. I have come to accept this as the truth based on the following evidence.

     Exhibit A is the fact that everything they are doing is aimed at destroying the personal wealth of the citizens of this country.   Economic freedom is the basis for all freedom. The founders understood this.   It was economic freedom over which they rebelled and it was to ensure the greatest personal freedom in economic spheres and all others that they formulates a constitutionally limited government. Look at the first two amendments to the Constitution. Without the wealth that results from economic freedom, your freedom to speak will mean little. It takes money to make yourself heard beyond the sound of your natural voice. Without wealth there will be no exercise of your right to keep and bear arms for the poor cannot afford such things. Then there are our everyday choices. Economic freedom allows us to choose which businesses we support and which charities we give to. This creates an efficient and compassionate society, two things that have made this country great and two words that are never applied to government.

     All socialist/communist governments limit or eliminate the economic freedom of their citizens. Some will confiscate it, literally stealing their citizens money and throwing them out of their homes. We are not there...yet. This revolution is content to literally destroy our wealth, hoping that we will not blame them but look to them as our savior when we have nothing left. Sound too harsh? I don’t think it’s harsh enough. Consider this, where do most Americans have their wealth? Two places, their homes and their retirement-the stock market. The destruction of the housing market can be tied directly to Barny Frank and Chris Dodd and their coddling of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack and their desire to encourage, and at times, threaten, banks to give loans to people that shouldn’t have qualified. That wealth is disappearing and what is left is very difficult to tap with credit markets being tight. To make recovery difficult, the administration is removing the incentive to buy by removing some of the mortgage deduction. Only someone stupid or malevolent would look at the present housing market and increase costs on people who may be in a position to buy.   Only someone stupid or malevolent would attempt to empower judges or force banks to throw out signed contracts and reduce actual principle amounts on loans which will only raise interest rates for all and make home buying more difficult.   

     What about the stock market? The majority of Americans that have money have money there, mostly in retirement savings. Certainly the bursting housing bubble contributed to the market’s decline but that is not the whole story. Larry Kudlow rightly describes President Obama’s policies as a “war on investors”.   Just as the way to turn the housing market around is to let it finds its bottom and encourage people to buy, so it is with the stock market. But President Obama’s statements scare people. Nobody wants to buy stock when the president tells them the crisis will be getting a lot worse. Then there is all the tax hikes on investors, dividend tax increases, capital gain increases, income tax increases, the double taxation of corporations. Who wants to invest when the government has its hand in your pocket before you do? Then there are the policies of running the printing presses full time and begging unfriendly foreign governments to continue to fund our enormous debt. Haven’t these people heard of Argentina or any number of other governments that have tried to spend and borrow their way to prosperity? It doesn’t work and Wall Street knows it.   But the Democrats don’t want the market to recover. They are at war with the successful people in this country because wealth is power and they want it all. I personally predict the Dow will drop to triple digits before it is all over and all the retirement and pension wealth of this country will be wiped out. The the government security net will be all that’s left for everyone.  Everyone equally dependent and equally miserable.    

     That is not all. Not only does the government now want to destroy wealth, it wants to make sure no new wealth is created. It would appear that they are doing everything they can to make sure the economy never again becomes the wealth creation engine for the world. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush “inherited” recessions but they didn’t go to these depths. History can be a good teacher but the Obama administration is ignoring it in favor of a course of action that most economists (and the administration!) agree is the opposite of what should be done during an economic downturn. Exhibit B. It is a very bad idea to raise taxes during a recession, particularly on those who are the engine of the economy. Just when we need people to spend money, the government is going to take more of it. But this is just the “down payment” on the administrations war on the “rich” which includes many more of us that we realize. There are a lot of taxes that the other “95%” of us are going to pay. If cap and trade passes, energy costs will go up over 50%. The 634 billion dollars that comprise the “down payment” on a universal health care program we haven’t seen yet will cost trillions of dollars that we will all have to pay.    As spending goes up, interest payments skyrocket, entitlement spending increases exponentially, the money will have to come from somewhere. We can only borrow and print so much, eventually, it will have to come from all of us. Soon, those high rates on “the rich” will affect all of us and we will be left with a small allowance while the great bulk of our income is confiscated to pay for all these “free” government services.

      Exhibit C.   The federal government is working hard to eliminate competition to its power and doing its best to make sure that everyone looks to it for their needs. C1. The debate among some governors as to whether to take the stimulus money because they rightly understand that taking the money now will make them dependent in the future and federal money always comes with strings attached. By making the states beholden to federal money they can be brought under federal control and will bend to federal will when necessary even though the constitution reserves most power for the states and the people. C2. The reduction of the tax deduction for charitable giving. Just when the economy is in a downturn and charities are seeing a drop in contributions and a rise in demand, the government wants to reduce the incentive to give by those who have the money to give. Sure, the budget includes a small percentage of the projected loss but make no mistake. If a lot of charities fold, the government is more than willing to take up the slack. Those that don’t fold and find it necessary to take federal money will find themselves effectively regulated and run by the government. Its all about control and concentrating it in Washington.

     Exhibit D. Control of the economy. The nationalization of several banks and the money we continue to pour into AIG and Detroit are the early stages of this. The fact that lawmakers have shamed and scolded the leaders of whole industries by dragging them before congress is easily compared to the attitude communists havealways had toward capitalists. The fact that there are already a myriad of regulatory agencies and complicated tax law that give Washington control over business will pale in comparison to what is coming. If no one is allowed to fail and our money is used to prop up businesses that made bad decisions, our whole economy will suffer. Innovation is a result of competition and risk. If risk of failure is removed competition becomes meaningless, innovation goes out the window and corporations, particularly large corporations, will become...just like government. The consumer suffers because prices will rise and quality will go down. What did the Soviet Union ever produce that the world wanted? Do we really want to follow that model?

     Some of these things have been described as “temporary”, that these measures are necessary now and will be removed when the economy recovers or the businesses involved can stand on their own two feet. If anyone believes that I’ve got some foolproof investments to sell you that are guaranteed to return 200% per year for ten years.   Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life we know is a government program.   There are government programs that have long outlived their usefulness, government programs that have demonstrated themselves to be detrimental and still go on. Government never relinquishes control once it has it. What about welfare reform, you say? A rare reduction which is about to be reversed in a big way. This is perhaps the scariest part of all of this. Once these things are implemented, putting Republicans back in power isn’t going to change it. They have shown themselves inept and spineless and will not rescind these programs. Do you really think that once people have “free” health care, the Republicans are going to take it away? I don’t think so.

      The question is, will there be a change in party again or are we becoming, effectively, a one party country? Exhibit E. There is a two pronged approach to securing power among the Democrats. The first is to silence the opposition. This will be done through some form of the “Fairness Doctrine”, even if it is called something else. Most of the media is already in Lord Obama’s pocket, no better than the Pravda of the old Soviet Union. The media makes the party look good whenever possible and will defend or minimize mistakes. Talk radio, unfriendly media outlets and the Internet must be controlled or silenced. The Democrats and liberal Republicans will then be able to get their message out and count on a friendly media to destroy their opponents. The second prong is to expand their voter base. Both parties have been fighting for the illegal immigrant vote but with more goodies to hand out, the Democrats will win this one. This can be the only reason both parties have refused to control illegal immigration even though it has proven destructive to the economy, violent and divisive. If twenty million illegal are given amnesty under the Democrats, there is no doubt those that aren’t already registered will do so as Democrats, many in Texas, Arizona and other “red” states.   Then there is the expansion of unions under the so called “Freedom of Choice Act” which is just the “Freedom to Bully People into Joining a Union Act”. If this passes, unions will muscle there way into a myriad of other businesses, prices will go up and competitiveness will go down. Just compare domestic car plants run under the UAW and those that aren't. Which are competitive and which are not? Add all those union workers to all the federal union workers that will be added to run all these new programs and the voter base for the Democrats and the amount of money they receive will increase exponentially. 

     In our march towards European style socialism, it seems that everyone in Washington, Democrat and Republican, believes that the nationalization of the banks is not only inevitable but to many, desirable. Many Americans seem to accept the idea that because of the economic mess in which we find ourselves, it is alright for the government to take actions that are not only contrary to the constitutional republic the founders envisioned but would have been unthinkable not to many years ago.   The problem is as the Obama administration rushes to, as Mr. Emmanuel said, not waste this crisis, few are looking at all the implications of the nationalization of industries, banks in particular.

     The first and most obvious is that fact that the government will have access to all our financial records. Now you may say that they do already and to some degree that is true but currently there are limits. If the government wants your records they need a good reason and to get them it usually involves law enforcement, a judge or the IRS. If the banks are nationalized government employees will have access to our financial records as a matter of course. There are two critical areas of privacy we once took for granted. One was doctor-patient confidentiality and the privacy of our medical records. That is disappearing under provisions found in the stimulus bill. The second is the privacy of our finances. The erosion of that sphere of privacy has been disappearing since the adoption of the income tax. Now any vestiges of our financial privacy will disappear. If our finances and records are under the control of the government, we lose a very important safeguard of our freedom.   The day when our taxes are taken directly from our bank accounts cannot be far away. If we criticize the government, could we find our accounts frozen or subject to convenient bureaucratic error? The IRS has already been used thus, will the banks be next? Finally, think of this. For seventy years we have dutifully sent in payments to the government for our retirement, known as Social Security. Where is all that money? It is gone. If the government is in charge of our bank accounts, money markets and even investment accounts, do you think for a moment that replacing all our real assets with IOUs will not be a real temptation? History does not inspire confidence.

     Now consider the fact that if the government owns the business, in this case the banks, the rules, regulations and policies of the business will no longer consider market forces or reflect common sense but will be driven by ideology. It is the desire to survive and make a profit in the cutthroat world of business competition that makes businesses innovative and efficient. Remove competition and the need for profit and you get...government.   That is why all these bailouts are a horrible idea. They subsidize failure by replacing losses due to poor business practices with taxpayer money.   It removes the incentive for business to make the hard decisions necessary to turn themselves around and become profitable again. It is just like welfare. Give a person enough money to live “comfortably” without working or subsidize destructive behavior and there is no incentive to improve or work.

     If business decisions are made based on ideology as opposed to market forces and profits, the business can engage in practices that would be destructive to a for profit entity. For example, if the government decided that every person should own a car and it controls the banks, it will choose to make loans to people that are high risk in addition to normally qualifying people. What happenes when people who cannot afford a new car get a loan for one and can’t pay? The bank, in this case, the taxpayer, is on the hook for it. Soon there is a glut of late model used cars that have been repossessed but because the government desires people to own cars, they will subsidize the people who have failed to keep up payments or couldn’t really afford them to begin with. Now the taxpayer is not only on the hook for the bad loans but is forced to bail out the delinquent car owners. Hmm, sound familiar? That is how we got into the housing mess and how we are dealing with it.

    Now, besides the policies and rules these government run entities will be guided by, consider how they will be run and by whom. Certainly, those who run the banks will no longer be receiving million dollar bonuses or flying on corporate jets to fancy retreats. Perhaps all banks will have executive pay limited to half a million dollars or less. The thing is this, and this is basic human nature, which socialism of all stripes tries to ignore. People who have talent, people who are innovate and motivated, people who are successful for these reasons and others expect to compensated for their efforts. If you put a ceiling on that success one of two things will happen-they will stop working as hard or they will move to a field where their potential remains unlimited. That means the people running the banks will do so with all the efficiency and innovation of every other government bureaucracy. In the middle and lower levels, the banks will be staffed by employees that belong to a government union which means they will be sympathetic to the progressive politicians to whom they owe their employment. Could that color their handling of accounts, doing favors for politically like minded and connected people and making it hard for people labeled as part of the opposition? Don’t think so? Consider how the IRS handles cases like the current treasury secretary, Charlie Rangel and Tom Daschle and how they would handle your “mistake”. Now put that culture in charge of your bank account, loan approval process or even easy access to your money.

     Finally, consider how well the government accounts for its own money. Enough said. The market works because every business and individual in it needs to deal with the consequences of their actions as it utilizes limited time and resources. Wrong choices lead to loss, good choices and innovation lead to the creation of wealth. If the banks were left on their own, they would find a way to reverse their losses and those that didn’t would go under. At the other end of a difficult transition, the banks that survived would be stronger and better.   Government, because of its size, its ability to coerce consumers to support it, and its ability to create money, can ignore the basic rules of economics longer than an individual or a business.   Longer, but not forever. In this case the old saying is true. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. We have used the power of government to keep large entities from falling, merely delaying the inevitable. If the government continues to gobble up sick entities, it will only lead to a more severe illness and the government is sick enough as it is. We cannot continue to ignore common sense, human nature and basic economic reality and with the speed with which we are running away from all three, a very bad fall is coming more quickly than we realize.

www.patricksamuels.com

     The people of the Enlightenment understood that the dissemination of information was not only necessary for progress but a critical component for man’s political freedom.   As products of the Enlightenment, the founders of our nation appreciated this and made sure the free dissemination of information was included in the Constitution. As we have seen, the founders were correct when they believed that even though the Constitution specifically limited the power of the government, if certain things weren’t spelled out (and even when they were), the government would expand its reach and ignore the rights of the governed. The first amendment to the constitution guaranteed the free dissemination of information. It promises freedom of conscience first for without the freedom for innovative thinking, there will be no information to disseminate. It protects freedom of speech and of the press, the two ways of presenting information in the eighteenth century. It insured the freedom of assembly so people could receive the information and process it freely among themselves. Finally, it recognized the right of the people to petition the government for a “redress of grievances” which means the aforementioned rights were specifically concerned with political speech. Just in case the government forgot this, the second amendment was added to guarantee the first.

     Today, our access to information is unprecedented and comes to us in a myriad of ways. The spoken and printed word have been joined by radio, television and the Internet, satellite communication and cell phones. With all these options and the great variety not only of the information itself but commentary on its importance and meaning, we must rely as never before on our wisdom and values to properly evaluate all that bombards us. That is why John Adams stated that our form of government was for a moral and religious people and was inadequate for any other. If we do not have a template by which we evaluate information and commentary, we will not be able to properly utilize or even understand it.

     Those who seek power understand this.   Most obviously, those who seek absolute power seek to control the dissemination of information. They seize the press, restrict speech and free assembly. These are the first signs of a coup. But such an abrupt change is often met with resistance, something progressives and communists understand. If the government can control education in such a way that the populace accepts an aggressive government role, destroy the moral intuition of the people by marginalizing religion, and keep people too busy scraping by through burdensome taxes to pay close attention, that government can set itself up as the primary or sole arbiter of valuable information.   For one hundred years, the United States Government has been implementing just such a plan..

     Until the time of Reagan, the “plan” had been going well. Journalism, and by extension, the news, was controlled primarily by progressives who believed in big government, social welfare and the wisdom of the state, as long as it was controlled by like minded progressives. Then the talk radio format took off followed by the Internet explosion.   The progressive stranglehold on the dissemination of information was broken.   This, of course, was unacceptable because unfiltered information and opposition commentary were not conducive to the expansion of government power. The Republicans, who benefited more from this than the Democrats, had power in either the executive or legislative branch for all but two of the last twenty eight years and were not about to do anything to hinder this development even if it occasionally bit them as well.

    After twenty years of constant abuse over the radio waves, and more recently Fox News and bloggers, the progressives have taken control of the machinery of government once again. They have only been in power for a month and they are already clamoring for a reinstatement of the “fairness doctrine” or some effective substitute. It is not enough that the major newspapers and broadcast networks support them. Like any good dictator, the progressives want to silence opposition. They couch it in the language of fairness, concern for the needs of the “local” audience and the desire for “balance”.   What progressives don’t understand is that media is a market driven phenomenon. People choose what newspapers to read, what newscasts to watch and what to listen to on the radio. Talk radio is successful because people want to listen to it, liberal radio does not have an audience and therefore does not make money. People making choices is not something progressives approve of however, because in their minds they often choose incorrectly, particularly at the ballot box. Only so many votes can be bought through welfare and pork, the rest have to be coerced through the control of information.

     If we let this happen, if we let Nancy Pelosi and President Obama reinstate some form of the fairness doctrine and restrict or silence talk radio and other outlets for the opposition, including the Internet, their power will be secure for the near and distant future. Consider what has happened just over the last month. Several cabinet appointments have been withdrawn because, in plain language, they were crooks, tax cheats. Without the opposition media, there is no doubt in my mind they would have sailed through the confirmation process.    Look at the way the “stimulus bill” was handled. The opposition party was shut out, the bill was crafted behind closed doors and voted on before anyone had read it. If this is the way things are handled in Washington with a loud opposition media, what will they try to put over on us without such scrutiny? Perhaps the fact that we have a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary and they pass bills without concern for the opposition (or common sense) demonstrates that a majority of Americans accept it or don’t care. But shouldn’t we have the option of choosing to care or not?   Without scrutiny, what will they do next? Once the first amendment is legislated away, what about the second? Will we know the many examples of abusing the power of government to intimidate the opposition? Would the death of Randy Weaver’s family or the intimidation of Joe the Plumber by Ohio bureaucrats make the news under the new rules? The power of the media is not just what they print but what they don’t. If they ignore corruption and abuses of power, how can the people become outraged? If all the stories remain local, a national movement to hold the government accountable will be impossible. The ultimate “Check and Balance” in our republic is “We the People” but we are only as effective as the information we have. Whether you agree with the opposition or not, its very existence is crucial in providing us the information necessary to guard our freedom. It would be a sad historical twist to see freedom loving people in America forced to listen to offshore radio broadcasts or risk visiting banned websites to get around the state run media.   We are only as smart as the information we receive and if the fairness doctrine is reinstated, we all may end up Obama sycophants with heart palpitations and tingling sensations at the very mention of his name.

www.patricksamuels.com

Read “Memoirs of a Former American”

     This may seem like an odd thing. Amidst all the talk of creating jobs and getting us out of the economic mess we’re in, why wouldn’t the Democrats want us to recover from our economic slump.   First, let’s determine the fact that they don’t, irregardless of their rhetoric. Washington and its spending and regulatory habits are in most ways responsible for this mess.   More of the same is not going to improve things. Spending trillions of dollars, putting us further into debt and temporarily putting a few hundred dollars in out pockets is not the way to recovery. Government taking more money out of the economy now and for the forseeable future is not the way to increase GDP. Demonizing businesspeople, the very ones who are going to create the jobs to get us out of the recession, is counterproductive. Businesses need to be encouraged with tax cuts and incentives, not blamed and regulated further. Common sense says this stimulus bill, the grilling businesspeople are taking on the Hill and the very arrogant attitude the Democrats have taken are the complete opposite of what is needed for recovery.

     But why? Why would the Democrats want the recession to continue? In short, because it sends more power permanently to Washington, to them. Power at the expense of our liberty and freedom. It took me a little while to understand this but the people in Washington, and politicians in general, are all about power, nothing less and nothing more. “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” is a myth. A person who seeks elected office seeks power over other people, it is just a fact. The people who enjoy the exercise of power gravitate to government, it is human nature and has been from the beginning. The founders recognized this fact and wrote the constitution to limit the ambitions of men to lord it over their fellows. That only works, however, when the people in power respect the constitution and the people themselves hold the politicians accountable. Neither is the case today.

     So the Democrats want power. How does keeping us in recession increase their power? Let me give you two important examples. The first is the stock market. It is obvious that the market has not been thrilled with the Obama administration so far which is why the Dow continues to hover around 8000. The market looks to the future and people that know money know that everything the Democrats are doing is bad for the economy, especially in the long run. Keeping the market stagnant, however, is good for Democrat power. Why?   When was the last time you heard anyone mention the privatization of Social Security? People are clamoring for Washington to insure their investments. The FDIC now insures money markets in addition to having raised the limit on other insured deposits. The banks have been effectively nationalized. As President Obama’s chief of staff said, you can’t let a good crisis go to waste.   The crisis on Wall Street has lowered many American’s expectations of a good retirement through their own investments. 401ks and IRAs were all the rage since Reagan, now they look like a fools errand. And to whom will we turn? Washington. Give us more Social Security, insure our retirement investments. By demonizing Wall Street and keeping the market stagnant, the politicians hope to set themselves up as the ones who will take care of our money.

     The second big example is Heath Care. We already know there are some disturbing heath care provisions in the stimulus bill. After all, Tom Daschle recommended that heath care provisions be put into budget bills to speed them along under the radar of the American people.   But why does economic recession help advance the Democrat goal of universal health care? Because most people don’t pay for their own health care, they get it through their employer. The more people who are unemployed, the more people there are without health insurance. So the Democrats have a vested interest in keeping unemployment up. All those unemployed people want health insurance and if the people want it....well we’ll give it to them.   The whole idea here is that the more severe the economic slump, the more Democrats have reason to expand the welfare state, and by extension, their own power. They get to tax and regulate the lives of all those who take government benefits. They also increase their voter base by making more people dependant on their handouts.

      How do they get away with it so easily? Simple, the American people are ignorant of basic economics and the founding principles of this nation. Government schools have taught generations of Americans that government is the answer to all problems, that FDR and Johnson were heroes and Reagan was the devil. Most Americans don’t know the first thing about money management. If they did they wouldn’t have spent more than they earned for all these years and wouldn’t allow Washington to get away with it either. And the title notwithstanding, the Republicans don’t get a pass either. President Bush started this ball rolling and the current crop, for all their bellyaching, aren't doing anything substantial to stop this monstrosity. They know their turn will come in the future and the power they let the Democrats get today will be theirs tomorrow.

     There is only one way to stop it and that is for the American people to stop allowing their votes to be bought with gifts from the treasury. We have to “just say no” to the welfare state. We have to accept responsibility for our own lives and look to ourselves, our families and our local communities for help during tough times. We need to buy our own insurance, we need to invest our own money, we need to create our own jobs and we need to demand Washington get out of the way.   Is it going to happen? Unfortunately, I doubt it. But those who take responsibility for themselves now will weather the catastrophe in the making much better than those who look to Washington and the messiah Obama to meet their every need.

www.patricksamuels.com

    Last night President Obama held a press conference to attempt to convince all of us that this stimulus plan was the best thing for the country. Here are a few memorable quotes from that event....

“The Federal Government is the only entity left that has the resources to solve the problem”

     This is just not true. He seems to forget, or refuses to admit, that it was government policy, specifically Barney Frank and his cronies making mortgages available to people that shouldn't have had them and artificially low interest rates offered by the Federal Reserve that caused the bubble in the first place. As much as he wants to think that a hundred Bernie Matoffs, fat cats on corporate jets and retreats to posh hotels caused this problem, he is wrong. Government caused it because lawmakers are, for the most part, ignorant of business and capitalism. The “entity” that will get us out of this is the American people. If the government would stop confiscating our resources and regulating what we do with them, we would be out of this slump rather quickly. It happened in 1920 and 1987, it would happen today. Finally, I would remind President Obama that the federal Government doesn’t have resources, it’s broke and only by bankrupting the next generation or two is he coming up with these “resources”.

“No pork, No earmarks”

     That is all this bill is. It is a Democrat wish list of pork. He can call is anything he wants but the American people aren’t that stupid, they know pork when they see it.

“We inherited a trillion dollar deficit”

     I’m never sure where he’s going with this. I think he’s saying its a bad thing but yet he wants to quadruple it. “They spent too much so I’m going to spend more.” Does this make any sense? Doesn’t he see the burden this puts on all of us and our children? It is worth it to put the next two or three generations in bondage to correct a temporary downturn in the business cycle aggravated by Washington policy? This spending cannot go on indefinitely. We may think we are indestructible but what happened to Japan, Argentina and Zimbabwe will surely happen to us. When our credit score drops and we’ve printed way too much money, everything will come crashing down in poverty and hyperinflation.

“The winter of our hardship”

     Only a coddled American could look at our situation today and say this about it. No one born after the Great Depression has any inkling what hardship is in this country. The “poor” here, with their homes, cars, televisions and mobile phones, live better than a lot of the middle class in Europe. Yes, people have lost jobs and some have lost their homes but even if the Wall Street exec ends up moving from his mcmansion to public housing and lives on food stamps, it hardly qualifies as “the winter of our hardship”.   Hardship once meant the sacrifices people made to come to this country. The Pilgrims, half of whom died the first winter. Immigrants who arrived with nothing and worked in sweatshops for a pittance for years to save enough to have a chance at the American dream. Men who suffered and died on the beaches of Normandy or Iwo Jima, that’s hardship. What is hardship today? Not having cell service, not having a digital conversion box for TV, having to move from a 5000 sq. ft. house to a 2000 sq. ft. house. Most Americans have no idea what real hardship is and that is a testament to our system. However, if we continue down this path, we may very well find out soon enough.

“I inherited the deficit and this economic situation”

     What a whiner! Apparently the culture of victimhood in America has now reached the highest office in the land. If this bill passes and a year from now things are worse, what is he going to say? “George Bush screwed this up worse than I thought.”? Presidents are not elected to play the blame game, they are elected to lead.

“Philosophically, some people don’t think the government should be involved in the marketplace”

     I would like to remind President Obama that he lives in the United States of America and this country was founded by men who believed “philosophically”, and practically, that the government should not be involved in the marketplace. It was the meddling of the British government, through taxes and regulation, that caused their rebellion in the first place. The Constitution was adopted for the express purpose of keeping the government out of our economic affairs. The market, as defined by the individual choices of millions of Americans, works. It is self sustaining and self correcting and should be left alone. 

“Government doing nothing is not an option from my perspective”

     This dovetails with his statement the previous day that if the stimulus package didn’t pass that the effects on the economy would be “irreversible”. Fearmongering aside, his idea that the government has to do something all the time is also contrary to our founding principles. He made this statement after saying that is was right for government to be involved in Energy, Health Care and Education.   Hmmmm....let’s see. Government regulations keep us from using our own energy resources and gave us $4 gasoline last year. Government regulations and insurance have crippled the health care industry and government schools are a dismal failure. Sounds like it would be better if the government did nothing because their something is usually a disaster.

“There is no such thing as a free lunch”

     Ah, truer words have never been spoken. Unfortunately, when it comes to government spending, Washington seems to forget this. They think they can put off the day of reckoning forever, or at least until they’re dead (I was going to say out of office but it would seem most of them want to stay there until they die).   Just like the housing bubble and the stock market bubble, the bubble of deficit spending cannot last forever and it will fall with a crash larger than any we’ve ever seen. If Washington falls, there is no “entity left that has the resources to solve the problem.”

“The Federal Government doesn’t have complete control over that”

    Yet. This statement was made regarding housing. I ask you, what control should government have over housing? I don’t think it should have any. Housing prices should be set by the market and individuals should enter into private contracts for the sale or rental of such property. Where in that formula does the Federal Government belong? Of course, that goes for most economic and social issues in our country.

“The national government is detached from what is going on in the surrounding community”

     President Obama said this about Afganistan. Perhaps he should look at his own house before he throws stones at theirs.

“Not everything we do is going to work out as we want it to”

    No, really? This boondoggle put together by short sighted politicians who have no concept of economics in an attempt to further their own power and ensure a dependent and hopefully grateful electorate couldn’t possibly have unforeseen negative consequences, could it? Perhaps a reminder that the Great Society destroyed the black family and gave us a permanent underclass might make the point. That Social Security is going to bankrupt the country if all this stimulus doesn’t do it first.   That Ted Kennedy’s HMO’s created a whole new set of problems in the heath care industry. Just a few reminders of how brilliant Washington solutions to whatever ails us usually turn out.

“Nobody is above the law”

     Except your treasury secretary, the previous nominee for Heath and Human Services and a few others in your cabinet. We are very close to becoming a “banana republic” where the powerful do as they please and give favors to their supporters, print money like toilet paper and expect the support of an adoring populace.

Now, a note from the peanut gallery..

“The so called terrorists”

    This was in Helen Thomas’ question about the “real” terrorist hiding in Pakistan. I can only credit President Obama for calling them what they are, terrorists, and not following her lead. What she would like to call them, I don’t know. Freedom fighters? Boy Scouts? They kill innocent men, women and children Helen! They are bad people and there is never an excuse for such actions!

     In conclusion, this massive government intervention is very bad for the country. If it, and the ones that will follow don’t break the bank, they will hasten the day when it will break. The founders had it right. If government just gets out of the way, the capitalist system will work and work well. There will be ups and downs but the wisdom of the people and our ability to learn from our mistakes will keep the system running. All this bill will do is trip us up. If we allow it to go through, if we really buy into Newsweek's contention that we are all socialists now, then our fall will be permanent and the government will keep the market down just like it does in France and other European socialist countries. We will no longer be the “Land of Opportunity” because all the opportunities will be managed by government bureaucrats. I don’t want to go there, do you?

Patrick Samuels

Author of “Memoirs of a Former American”

www.patricksamuels.com

     In our fine state of Maryland, the governor, like many others around the country, is anxiously awaiting the first checks to arrive from the Federal Government. Like most states, Maryland is experiencing a budget shortfall due to the contracting economy leading to less revenue just as expenses are going up. For those states that do not have a “rainy day fund”, this poses a severe problem. Unlike the Federal Government, the states cannot just print money when they run out, they are supposed to balance their budgets. Politicians, however, are the same everywhere. If there is a dollar in tax revenue, it must be spent on something because that spending will create goodwill`among the electorate, which is good for reelection. So states all over the union, beginning with the billions and billions California is in the hole, are in dire straits.

     As we know, there are two choices for government when ends don’t meet. They can raise taxes or cut services. They prefer not to do either. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has two other options. It can print money or borrow it. It has been doing a lot of both lately. That is getting us in enough trouble as it is and the repercussions of our profligate spending will be with us for decades to come. If, however, the state budgets are supplemented by the Federal Government, that is a whole new can of worms. The states can go on new spending sprees just like the Federal Government because their budgets will no longer have to reflect fiscal reality. Congressmen will love it because they can point out how much federal money they brought home to supplement their state budgets. The Federal Government will love it because it will give them control over the states, because no money comes from the government without strings attached. The budget for the federal Government will mushroom even more but they will just continue to print and borrow. Everyone will be happy.

     That is until the whole house of cards comes crashing down. If history has taught us anything it is that one cannot deny common sense forever and irresponsible behavior will have consequences, usually in direct proportion to how long and how vehemently such behavior has been engaged in. We have been building up debt and obligation at a steadily increasing rate and with all this stimulus, our level of irresponsibility has gone through the roof.   One cannot print and borrow money indefinitely. Printing will eventually lead to hyperinflation and the devaluing of the currency. Excessive borrowing leads to bad credit and eventually the pool of lenders dries up. When that happens, it all comes crashing down. If we thought the banking and mortgage collapse was bad, just think what will happen when the Federal Government collapses. So many people are intimately dependent on it and such dependency will have disastrous consequences and may literally lead to the death of thousands of Americans. By bringing the states into this insanity, we are just hastening the collapse and ensuring that state and local government fail as well. We have got to say no to this level of spending. You can’t get something for nothing and sooner or later the gravy train will come to an end.

    A few days ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempted to justify putting abortion funding in the Stimulus Package. For Nancy, killing babies would relieve the strain on our educational and health care systems. Fewer people, fewer expenses, or perhaps better benefits for those who actually survive birth and infancy. She specifically referred to using billions of our dollars overseas to support these policies because since socialism, corrupt dictatorships and our money and technology has not relieved world poverty, we’ll simply reduce the number of people in poverty by reducing the number of people. Absolutely brilliant.

      The question may be raised, why are we responsible for the poverty of....name poor country run by corrupt and brutal dictator? Because in Nancy’s world, we, as the “rich” of the world, need to “give back”. What we were ever given in the first place by all these other countries, I don’t know. But President Obama and his Democrat cohorts want to make us responsible for the rest of the world, their health care and now, their reproductive lives.   They don’t seem to understand that in the vast majority of cases, our aid simply helps to prop up these brutal dictators and warlords. Another question. If we are in such difficult straits right now, why are we not focusing on our own house? How can we afford to start sending billions more dollars overseas for abortions? Is this really a priority?

     I have a suggestion for Mrs. Pelosi, however. If she really wants this money she needs a new angle.   In my humble opinion, she should sell it as part of the war on terror. She should direct the monies specifically at Muslim countries in the Middle east. After all, if we can reduce poverty by reducing the number of poor people, could we not reduce terrorism by reducing the number of Muslims?

     During our family’s recent vacation to sunny Florida, my wife and I had the opportunity to enjoy the magic of Disney’s Epcot park without our children. We enjoyed the rides and shows and the variety of cultural experiences to be found there. There was one show, however, that irritated me not a little. It was a movie billed as the “Circle of Life-an Environmental Tale” and was hosted by those lovable characters from the Lion King, Simba, Pumba and Timor. Al Gore himself might have nominated it for his Oscar.

     The film begins with our three heroes enjoying their little piece of paradise on the African plain. Pumba and Timor, however, have dammed up the stream to create a lake. When Simba asks why, Timor unrolls the plan for the “Akuna-Matada Super Resort” the two friends were going to create around their new lake. They were going to make boatloads of money. Simba shakes his head and tells them a story about another species that wanted to follow the same path of money grubbing progress.

     The tale begins with pictures of man in his hunter-gatherer state where he was one with nature and only took what he needed from the earth. Then they settled down and built cities and soon multiplied like locusts and spread across the plant like a plague, destroying the earth as they went. Of course there were the obligatory pictures of smokestacks, burning oil wells, traffic jams, sewage and oils spills with shiny, black birds. Timor and Pumba are horrified and swear they will never be like that. They knock down the dam, which was causing an environmental catastrophe downstream, and vow to help the poor stupid humans clean up their act.

     Does anyone other than me see the problem here? We were watching this environmental lecture in one of several resorts run by Disney. Resorts that created the scar in central Florida that is Orlando. Timor and Pumba dammed a stream, Disney dammed up the Everglades. How much water and energy does Disney and the the surrounding resorts use in their pursuits? And the bit about the oil companies-if it wasn’t for the oil companies making gas to put in all the cars that clog up Interstate 4 and bring tourists to fill up parking lots, Disney wouldn’t be able to charge each of those cars twelve dollars to park and seventy five for the privileged of being lectured.   We constantly hear about the environmental impact of “Big Oil” but what about “Big Amusement Park and Resort”? Central Florida would be nothing without Disney and the environmental impact of all those parks, resorts and the surrounding communities is arguably larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Has not their success resulted in just as much environmental damage as the poor farmers in Brazil who are cutting down the rain forest?

     I’m not opposed to entertainment. I love a good show and a fast roller coaster as much as the next guy. And yes. we need to be good stewards of the environment and man’s greed and waste has done a lot of damage and we should do better. But listening to Disney lecture me about environmental responsibility is like listing to a prostitute lecture about safe sex.

Inauguration Speech

    My fellow Americans. It is truly a great privilege to have been chosen to fill this hallowed office and I am humbled by the faith you have placed in me to lead our wonderful country for the next four years. We are living is an amazing time where technology is advancing at a phenomenal rate and knowledge is expanding exponentially. Advances in medical science have made our lives not only longer but more fulfilling. I take great pride, as you do, that America has been in the forefront of so many of these advances and has done so much to share our bounty with the rest of the world.   It is our freedom and the resulting creativity and entrepreneurship that have given us these great blessings. God has not only blessed us with a bountiful land but imparted wisdom to the men who founded this great nation, men who recognized that freedom is the natural state of man and when government recognizes its limitations and protects the rights that are endowed to us by God, a happy and prosperous people will be the result.

     It would seem that that happiness and prosperity has been under assault during what can only be describe as a trying time.   The stock market has tumbled, putting many of our retirement savings in jeopardy. Housing prices are down, unemployment is up and the recession is getting deeper. Over the past year your federal government has tried a variety of things to get us out of this economic slump. Stimulus packages, bailouts, rescue packages, and nothing has worked up until this time. I propose to you that there is a good reason why nothing has worked. The government itself has been a major contributing factor to our economic woes. It is government manipulation of the free market systems that contributed to the housing crash and government ineptitude that led to last year’s skyrocketing energy prices. As the great Ronald Reagan once said, government is the problem, not the solution.

     Government cannot spend our way out of these difficult times by borrowing horrendous amounts of money from our children and grandchildren. We should not be burdening future generations with our mistakes.   It is time that we removed the problem and unleashed the power and ingenuity of the American people for it is you, not we who are in government, that is the true and lasting solution. We have strayed far from the founding principles of this nation and its Constitution for it has been the principles of liberty and limited government that made us a great and unique nation we are.   A return to those principles will ensure that America’s best days are still to come.

     To implement these ideals I will work with the congress on the following proposals. First, we will suspend all current bailout payments. We need to stop this horrible bleeding from the treasury that will only lead to a crushing burden on our children. Businesses will succeed or fail on their own, not because of any favoritism or lack thereof shown by the federal government. We will not leave businesses out in the cold, however. For businesses to have a fighting chance, we must remove the tax and regulatory burden from them so they will have a free hand to pursue the most profitable course. I am therefore proposing an elimination of the corporate income tax and an elimination of the following federal departments as a start, OSHA and the EPA, and a suspension of all regulations pertaining to them. Such oversight will be returned to the state and local governments where it belongs. I propose eliminating all subsidies of any kind for any business, including agriculture. Government should not be in the business of showing favoritism or propping up failing or obsolete enterprises.

     It is time that we turned our back on the idea that a one size fits all approach implemented by your federal government and returned power and control over your life to you and your local and state representatives. I propose abolishing the Department of Education that has shown itself to be completely inept at improving education.   Based on last year’s energy crisis, the Department of Energy has shown itself equally incompetent and should be eliminated. The government should get out of the energy business and let the companies that provide it do so free and unencumbered in the marketplace.   The federal government should get out of the mortgage and insurance business, the transportation business and the delivery business. These are just a few examples of government getting involved in areas in which it does not belong and creating bureaucracies and programs that just waste money and create problems and dependencies. Those programs and and their budgets should be eliminated as quickly as possible so they are no longer a burden on the American people or our economy.

     Thomas Jefferson once said that Government should not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. Philosophically and practically, the federal income tax is just wrong as a way to support the functions of government. Your wages should be your own, they do not belong to the government first. I would ask the congress to consider a repeal of the sixteenth amendment and the adoption of a consumption tax that will not exceed fifteen percent.

     It is a domestic policy that supports freedom and capitalism with low taxes and minimal regulation, adhering the principle of equality under the law that will draw us out of this ditch and set us high on the hill once again.

      Our interaction with the rest of the world needs to undergo some profound changes as well. We can no longer afford, fiscally or militarily, to be the world’s policeman. It is time we brought our troops homes from places where they are no longer needed. Europe is certainly able to take care of itself and it is time they started paying for their own defense. Do we need troops in Japan or even Korea a half century or more after the fact? We need to support our democratic allies but we do not have to replace their defense budget with our own.

     To our enemies, a warning. We will defend ourselves, our allies and our interests with all the means at our disposal.   It is our responsibility, however, to ensure our freedom of action when necessary. Two situations hinder our ability to act freely in our self interest when necessary. The first is our debt. The fact that adversaries like China hold so much of our debt ties our hands in economic negotiations and our ability to take a stronger stance on behalf of human rights and other important issues. Debt is a burden on our economy and a national security issue and it is time not only to eliminate the deficit but begin to pay that debt down to a level where it does not hang over our head. The second is our dependence on foreign oil, particularly oil from the middle east. There is no question that the greatest threat to our security comes from radical Islam and terrorists are supported in a large part by countries that sell us a lot of oil. It is very hard to tell a county like Iran or even Saudi Arabia to crack down of terrorists when they know they literally have us over a barrel. It is time we opened up our great reserves of energy, oil, coal, alternatives, and nuclear and weaned ourselves off of middle eastern oil at least. Neither Macmuhd Amidinijad or Hugo Chavez should dictate our foreign policy because of our dependence on their resources.

     My administration will be marked by the following. Domestically, we will dramatically reduce the size and influence of the federal government allowing the free market to operate at it most efficient, unencumbered by burdensome taxes and regulations. Our foreign policy will be characterized by our support for governments around the globe who respect and support the natural rights of man, a comprehensive war on terrorism, and a strong stance against those who adopt an adversarial relationship with us, economically or militarily. For over fifty years we have walked the road to socialism and it has not worked. We have given up freedom and huge sums of money by slowly relegating the Constitution and the founding principles of our nation to irrelevancy and we have nothing of value to show for it. I will not fulfill the role of a properly elected despot who may do as he pleases with the government and its power. I have taken the oath of office and have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution placed severe limits on the power of the federal Government and I see it as my duty to uphold those laws and principles. That means returning freedom and responsibility to you, the American people and by placing liberty and duty upon you I have complete faith that we will quickly emerge from these difficult times and become the shining city on a hill that the founders and all the great men who have led this country envisioned. God Bless America.

Holidays are a time of family friends and....high rates of suicide. At some point during the holiday season, someone comes out with the statistic that suicides are up around this time of year because many people feel an acute sense of loneliness or detachment holidays. They see others celebrating with their loved ones and feel left out. The fact that while we may be more aware of it at the moment, our culture has produced an interesting paradox. With cell phones and Internet we have the ability to communicate with each other like never before yet never before have we, as individuals, been so isolated and detached from one another. Families no longer stay close and even the ones that live in the same house barely see one another. We find it difficult to see friends or even our significant other more than a few times a month because everyone is so busy. We may text or even call but a few moments on the phone are no substitute for a few hours in the living room.

In my previous entry I discussed our vanishing privacy. The paradox of our culture is that although very little we do is outside the public domain, we are more isolated than ever. We are rarely alone yet so many people feel an acute loneliness. We have a lot of acquaintances yet few, if any, friends. I referenced George Orwell’s 1984 in my last entry and will do so here because it is relevant for Winston felt this paradox as well. In London he was rarely alone nor did the party desire for people to be alone. After all, everyone is part of the collective. Yet he had no friends and the system made is nearly impossible to have any for there was no one he could trust. In fact, the party discouraged intimate relationships because it viewed them as competition. We have a similar situation today. We once relied on family, community and charity for needs that were beyond our ability to meet as individuals. When a society consists of assertive and capable individuals who meet their own needs and voluntary associations to meet any others, there is little need for the state. The objective of the state, then, is to replace self reliance with reliance on the state and voluntary associations with party and government bureaucracy. The state needs to make the individual helpless and dependant and replace the voluntary associations of community and family with itself. It is the state that provides sustenance, not the individual. It is the state that provides direction and meaning, not religion and it’s attendant associations. It is the state that provides education and guidance for the next generation, not the family. All our meaningful interactions are with the state and not with each other. The dislocation people felt during the industrial revolution provided the perfect opportunity for the state to step in and it was precisely in the mid to late nineteenth century when collectivism and totalitarianism first became valued ideals.

Today, paradoxically, the technological and communication revolution have made total isolation possible. Certainly a cell phone with unlimited minutes is a teen-ager’s dream but by making us accessible 24/7 and thinking we need to be so has helped eliminate our privacy and isolated us from one another. If ninety percent of communication is non verbal, by relying on cell phones we have eliminated true, intimate contact. Take it a step further to e-mail and we have eliminated real contact entirely. We no longer communicate through the intimacy that results from proximity but through digital reproductions of ourselves. The world comes to us through a satellite feed and too often we interact with it as though it’s reality. Is it any wonder that we can sit in our sterile, artificial environments and interact with a world that only comes at us through the manipulated filter of digital reproduction every waking moment and yet feel empty and alone? Deep within every human heart is the desire for meaning and intimacy. If we allow ourselves to be isolated and emasculated by our own technology the state will find it very easy to step in and provide those things for us.

What is missing is this. Within each of us is a spark of the Divine and there are two major components of that spark-creativity and relationship. In order for us to feel fulfilled we need to create and accomplish and we need to cultivate intimate relationships. Most of us work in jobs that are not creative in the least and then we come home and immerse ourselves in the artificial realty sent to us by Hollywood. We all want to do meaningful things yet our culture begs us to work hard to have things and then substitutes television so we can live vicariously through the staged adventures reproduced on our expensive plasma screens. We have little time to go and see our friends and families so we send digital reproductions of ourselves and those that sell us the means to send these reproductions try to convince us that they are worthy substitutes for face to face intimacy. We need more houses with guest rooms and people willing to make the time to use them. We need fewer things and more living. We need to downsize our lifestyle to raise our standard of living. As the new year approaches, perhaps this is a resolution we can make. It may not be great for the economy but in the long run it will be wonderful for us.