Response to the President's address to congress part 2

Well, Mr. President, I’ll continue discussing your speech today. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out exactly what you were saying if I try really hard.

I wanted to ask you what exactly you meant when you were talking about the credit crunch, you said, “First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.” You’re creating a fund? Is this a government fund? Is the federal government now going to operate as a bank, loaning money to people? Where is the money coming from to do that? Or are you just talking about the government controlling the private banks?

You said, “Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages.” Hmmm… who decides who is responsible or not? Oh right, Joe Biden… “It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford…” Hmmm… are you going to have someone look at each individual case and decide who can afford what? Oh yeah… Joe Biden… “but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values…” Declining home values??? Everybody that owns a house is seeing their home value decline. Are you going to help everybody? When can I expect a check? “– Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about.” Wow, you mean we had a huge interest rate drop last week I didn’t hear about? I didn’t realize mortgage rate control was written into the bill and worked that fast. Or are you just taking credit for the interest rate reductions that happened before your spending bill ever saw the light of day?

Then you said something a little scary, “…we will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times.” Hmmm… the full force of the federal government… ensure that they have enough money… How exactly does the government do that??? “And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.” That actually sounds quite ominous to me. It sounds like you are saying that the federal government is going to exert complete control over the banking system in this country. Those are pretty strong words, “the full force of the federal government”, “hold accountable those responsible” and “force the necessary adjustments” I’m not a political expert, but that sounds like a socialist or even a fascist ideology there…

You went on to say that you’re going to hold banks fully accountable and they “won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.” I agree, they should be more responsible and far less greedy, especially when taxpayer money is being used to bail them out. By the way, do any members of congress fly around on private jets or military jets at taxpayer expense? Just asking, because I heard Nancy Pelosi flies home every weekend in a private military plane at taxpayer expense. Is that true? Also, was there any reason you had to fly across the country at taxpayer expense just to sign this spending bill? You couldn’t just sign it in your office? Or you just felt like taking a little jaunt in Air Force One? Just asking, because it just sort of seems like you’re talking the talk but not really walking the walk, you know?

I also caught that other little dig against the Bush administration when you said that “this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending…” right before you said you were going to give them another load of money over and above the spending bill. “This time”, meaning that Bush did it all wrong giving money to the banks but “this time” it’s ok that you’re giving money to the banks because you’re going to do it right. Ok…Joe Biden will oversee it… right, ok…

You went on to say, “…to ensure that a crisis” (there’s your favorite word again) “of this magnitude never happens again, I ask congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system.” Would that be anything like the reform recommended by the Bush administration and proposed by Republicans like John McCain and that got shot down by your fellow Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who insisted there was no need for controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Is that the kind of reform you're talking about? Don’t even go there if you’re going to blame it on the Republicans when the Democrats were just as much, if not more at fault for the whole housing and banking collapse. There’s plenty of blame to go around and mistakes were made by both parties and frankly, I’m getting a little tired of you blaming the Republicans for everything every chance you get. It's getting a little tiresome. For someone that pays a lot of lip service to being bi-partisan, you’re one of the most partisan sounding people I’ve ever heard. You wouldn’t be lying about that too would you Mr. President?

The next thing you said was that we need to make “long term investments” and “The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.”

I think I’ll wait to respond to all these issues but I will say one thing about that statement. It’s interesting that you mention the mountain of debt our children stand to inherit. It IS our responsibility and now it’s largely your responsibility since you just DOUBLED it and you’re getting ready to spend a lot more.

Stay tuned...

Are you lying Mr. President? Response to the President's address to congress - part 1

I was going to write a blog about President Obama’s speech to congress on Feb. 24th but I decided there is so much in it I take issue with, one blog wouldn’t be enough so this is installment #1. I’m also going to write it as a personal reply to the President and pose questions that I would really like answers to. I don't think I'll really get answers but I'd like to ask anyway...

The first thing I noticed while listening to you speak Mr. President is that you still seem to take every opportunity to blame Republicans and the Bush administration for everything. You stated again more than once that you “inherited” the economic “crisis.” You used the term “crisis” twice in the first minute or so of your speech so you’re still using fear as a motivating factor to get people to follow you. No surprise there…

You did make a few factual errors during the speech but nothing of much importance. While making a statement about knowing for years that we should reduce our dependence on imported oil, you stated that we are importing more than ever before which isn’t true. Oil imports have actually fallen over the last couple of years. Not by enough, but they have still fallen. Maybe someone in your staff didn’t check the facts on that one.

When you were talking about the auto companies, you stated that America invented the automobile. Well, that’s not exactly true either but there’s no doubt that America is big in the car industry and our manufacturing capability is unmatched so that statement is fairly trivial. The issue of the auto companies is actually one thing that I happen to agree with you on since you indicated that we should not let the car companies fail and I think that’s a very intelligent view. It’s not just the companies themselves but we don’t want to lose the very manufacturing capability I mentioned earlier. Congress doesn’t seem to agree with you though. They only want to give money to the bankers, you know, those guys that they get all the campaign contributions from.

There are however a good number of things that you said that I did take serious issue with Mr. President, mainly because you seem to be lying through your teeth. Maybe that’s not true so let’s take a look at some of them and maybe you can clarify.

The first thing that I couldn’t believe was that you actually said, while talking about the “recovery plan”, that you had asked congress to come up with a bill that would “put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t." Really… You could have fooled me since you are growing government bigger than it has ever been in its history. You went on to say, “In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. That’s why I pushed for quick action” Well, there are a lot of prominent economists and Nobel laureates that disagree with you Mr. President, but maybe you’re smarter than all those guys. What do they know, right? You certainly did push for quick action though, that’s for sure. It was passed so fast, nobody even had a chance to read it. Nobody in congress or you yourself actually read the thing before it was signed into law. Personally, I don’t think that’s very responsible or prudent. Actually, I think it’s pretty stupid, but then what do I know, right? You told us all that we couldn’t wait, we had to act now, we had to get this bill passed or the market may spiral down and be unrecoverable. Well, Mr. President, you got the bill passed, so what exactly is happening right now to save our economy? What is working to bring our economy up right now, this week? What was so important to get working that it couldn’t wait for a week or two for the biggest spending spree in history to at least be read before it was passed? Is our economy being stimulated yet? I don’t see anything…

You made the statement that, “Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.” I had to laugh when you said that because it’s pure politician-speak. It will “save or create” jobs. Nice wording since if it doesn’t create jobs, you can say well, it saved jobs. Of course there’s absolutely no way you can measure how many jobs it saved because jobs not lost might not have been lost even without the bill so by using that wording, you can take credit later even if the bill actually slows the growth of jobs. Nice touch, Mr. Politician.

You said, “Because of this plan, 95% or the working households in America will receive a tax cut – a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1st.” I can’t thank you enough for that Mr. President. That extra $13 a week will help so much, I’ll be able to buy a couple extra hamburgers at McDonalds or maybe even a medium pizza. I feel better already…

You tried to get another dig in against Bush and Republicans when you said, “Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending.” You’re absolutely right about that. We have seen that in the past and we are seeing it again right now at your hand. If you had actually read the bill you signed, you would see that over half of it is wasteful spending. I’m being kind there; some estimates are as high as 80% wasteful spending.

And speaking of "broken promises", did you forget your campaign promise that you would put every bill up on the internet for all of the American people to read before you signed it? I believe you said at least 48 hours, though that wouldn’t have been nearly enough time to read this turkey…

You said, “with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right. That is why I have asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort…” Gee, Mr. President, I feel so reassured with Joe Biden keeping track of all that spending. I’m sure he’ll keep us all informed by putting information up on the website, if only he could remember the “number” of the website…

Well, I think that’s enough for everyone to think about today. I’ll bring up some more issues tomorrow.

Is he kidding???

Ok, I’m confused… Wasn’t it just a week or two ago that we were being told that the only answer to our financial “crisis”, that our president “inherited”? (Two terms that Mr. President seems to adore since he uses them in every speech he makes lately…) Wasn’t he just telling us that the only way out of this crisis was to spend, spend, spend to the tune of over a trillion dollars? Didn’t we get the spendulous bill rammed down our throat by Mr. Obama and his liberal Democrat cronies in congress? A bill that was passed so fast that none of the members of congress or the President himself actually got a chance to read it before it was passed. It was so important to get all this money spent that we couldn’t wait another second, right?

Now, this week our supreme leader comes out and says that we have to get spending under control. With all due respect Mr. President I just have to say, HELLOOOOOO! Are you for real??? You just passed the largest spending bill in the history of our country and now you say you’re going to get spending under control? Go talk to all your financial expert buddies, the ones that can’t figure out how to pay their taxes, then put your heads together and see if you can find a CLUE!

I cannot believe this guy. I’m starting to think that everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He says he is going to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first (and what is going to be his ONLY) term. He says he is going to do it by getting the troops out of Iraq. Right… He’s going to get them out of Iraq and send them right into Afghanistan. So how’s that going to save anything? It’s not.

He’s going to let the Bush tax cuts expire which will raise the capital gains tax and increase taxes on the “wealthy”. Right… That will make people run from investing in stocks (the stock market fell more than 250 points just today on his announcement) and taxing the “wealthy” (you know those people that run businesses and create jobs) will just stifle growth and increase unemployment. Increasing taxes while the economy is declining will cause it to decline even further. This is a basic economic principal and he knows it. He just can’t help himself. Liberal Democrats have to raise taxes. It’s a sickness…

Make no mistake about it folks; this plan is not going to work. He will NOT be able to pay for all this spending AND cut the deficit in half without raising your taxes. Not just on the wealthy but YOUR taxes, MY taxes, EVERYONE'S taxes. We will not get to the end of 2009 without our taxes going up. You might as well get prepared for it.

While you’re at it, you might as well get ready for runaway inflation and a continued fall of the stock market. I hope you weren’t planning on your 401K or IRA actually being worth anything…

Gas Prices Again...

Well, it seems the rich and powerful are busy ripping off the American consumer again. I guess they figure that there is so much attention being paid to the Obama administration and what they are doing, nobody will notice that we are being ripped off by the oil companies/speculators/refiners/wall street/gas stations, we don’t even know who all is involved in it.

I’m talking about the rising price of gasoline at the pump. There is no natural market activity that can account for this increase because the barrel price of oil has dropped and except for a couple of temporary hiccups in the market, has stayed low.

The last time we were in the neighborhood of the barrel price of oil being at $40 per barrel was back in late 2004. At that time the barrel price was climbing drastically toward $40 per barrel and the worry at the time was that gas would top $2 per gallon at the pump. Unlike today, demand was rising and surpluses were low so the fact that the barrel price being pushed OVER $40 caused pump prices to hit $2 per gallon was understandable.

Today however, demand is low and falling, surpluses are high, storage is maxed out and there is in effect a glut of oil, but the pump prices are rising. This is just the opposite that it should be doing if it was controlled simply by supply and demand like it should be.

The only logical conclusion then, is that the market is being artificially manipulated. The general consensus is that the oil refineries in this country are cutting back their production to limit the supply and drive up the price. But who is controlling all of the refineries? Who is making these decisions and why are they all complying? Are they in collusion to control the market? Are the oil companies still raking in record profits? Yes they are.

It’s not only the refineries that are affecting the price though. With the current oil surpluses, cutting back refining wouldn’t have an immediate effect on the pump price. There would be a time lag that we’re not seeing. So what do we conclude? Maybe Wall Street and the speculators are at it again, controlling the market to drive up the price and line their pockets at the expense of the American consumer? They wouldn’t do that would they?

And don’t forget about our “friends” in OPEC. They are doing their part by intentionally cutting production to try and drive the price up by affecting the current record crude oil stockpiles that have soared due to falling demand.

The station I usually fuel up at has raised the price from a recent low of $1.69 up to $2.09 last week. The fact is that the current price of crude is around $38 and if it stays below $40, we should not be paying over $2 per gallon at the pump. Supply is up and demand is down so the pump price should be stable or falling, NOT rising.

What can we do? Well, one thing we can do is keep demand low. Keep using less, keep conserving, limit your driving and do everything you can to use less gas. It’s the only weapon we have. If we do that and they keep raising the price and manipulating the market, it will become readily apparent to everyone.

Then we can watch and see what the economic “savior” and his administration will do about it…

Character building

I remember back when I was young (yes a long time ago...) I was taught that team sports builds character and teaches life lessons that will stick with you forever.

I always thought it was true but in this and age of such fierce rivalries with coaches and players going all out to win at any cost, the bench clearing brawls and assaults that happen on the court or field, I have wondered if it is true anymore. I see the steroids and cheating in professional and college sports and I wonder what has happened to sportsmanship.

But then once in a while there comes a story of what team sport is all about. Once in a while we see the true character, courage and honor that young people and indeed all of us should aspire to. It may come from a backwater corner of America, from a team that nobody has ever heard from, but it shows that there's still hope.

Read this story http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=914609 and you will know what I'm talking about. You'll know that there are people and places in America where humanities’ best qualities are still taught and practiced.

Maybe these young men will be the future of America. We hope that men of this character will be the leaders that guide our great country.

It's a shame that such men are not leading us now...

More on the Porky Plan

I saw our illustrious president again today out on the stump pushing the pork-fest spending bill he insists is the only way to save our country. I don’t know why everyone thinks he is so “charismatic” as the media keeps reporting. He just annoys me. I’ve seen three speeches in as many days and he comes across as arrogant and condescending. He speaks as if he’s talking to his kids after they’ve been naughty.

He seems intent on getting his digs in against the former administration and Republicans in general, insinuating that they are the reason the economy is in the shape it’s in even though his own party played a MAJOR role in the housing market crash. He ignores or denies that fact while he sarcastically says he received the present economy tied up with a big red bow when he took office. Very professional… Just what we need, a president who’s a smart ass…

He also said that now is not the time for congress to be delayed from acting by the same old Washington partisan politics and they need to come together to pass this bill. He says this out of one side of his mouth while the other side refers to the old failed policies of the last eight years, blaming the Republicans for everything. Here’s a clue Mr. President, if you want to end partisanship, stop speaking in such a partisan manner.

So I guess his idea of “bi-partisan” means that the Republicans should not question anything, they should just lie down and agree with a bill that has no compromise whatsoever. It was crafted by Democrats from their own wish list, with nothing but Democrat spending projects. It was by them and for them.

The Republicans shouldn't want accountability. They shouldn't care about fiscal responsibility. They shouldn't complain about wasteful spending. They shouldn’t insist on tax cuts, which if you remember was one of the main promises of Obama’s campaign, lower and middle class tax cuts, right? Now he says tax cuts aren’t the answer. Giving people more of their own money to spend isn’t a good way to stimulate the economy. He says only the government can fix this problem. Gee, that sounds like something a Socialist would say…

Can anybody remember when the government ran anything well? The post office is a model of efficiency, right? Can you tell me when they have ever run the government within their own budget? Maybe they can do as good a job running the economy as they do managing the Social Security System, right? They have been TOTALLY fiscally irresponsible, overspending for YEARS, increasing the national debt exponentially and now they think that spending even more and going even farther in debt is the answer? Is our government being run by a pack of idiots and morons? It sure looks that way to me.

Now, this is the second post I've written about this issue and you may ask yourself, "Who the heck is this guy? He's no economist." Well, you'd be right, I'm not, but coincidentally enough, a lot of people that ARE economists and other learned people happen to agree with my point of view.

As a matter of fact several hundred prominent economists including several Nobel laureates and other scholars signed a statement disagreeing with the President and the massive spending bill he touts as the only solution to our problems. They took out full page ads in major newspapers across the nation to show their disapproval. Take a look on the Cato Institute's Website.

Well, guess what, even the Congressional Budget Office, which is non-partisan by the way, says the spending bill will actually lower the GDP by .1 - .3 percentage points and that doing NOTHING would help the economy more than this irresponsible spending plan. Read the story.

The porkulus package passed in the Senate today and now is in committee to reach a compromise between the House version and the Senate version. Now, normally when you talk about compromise, you think there’s a high and a low and they meet somewhere in between. Well, just watch and see what happens here. The House version, I think, was around $825 billion. The Senate version is around $837 billion. Their “compromise” will be bigger than both. I predict at least $850 billion. That’s how congress compromises when it comes to spending. When in doubt spend even more…

I’m tellin’ ya… idiots and morons…

The Spendulous Bill

I just can’t hold back anymore. I was waiting to see just how bloated and pork laden the “stimulus bill” was going to get. I wanted to see the final version of it before I blogged about it, but I know it’s going to be crap so I may as well start now.

Obama and the democrats want you to believe this is a bipartisan effort. It is nothing of the sort. The Republicans were entirely shut out and none of the proposals they had for the bill were even considered by the Democratic majority in the house. Not one single house Republican voted for this pork fest.

They want you to believe that this bill is what will get the country going again. That also couldn’t be further from the truth. It is partisan Democrat pork barrel, wasteful spending from the top down. There is actually very little in this spend-fest that will actually do anything to help. Most of it does nothing and will most likely work to slow economic growth even further in the long run.

It manages to spend money on every pent up Democrat’s desires for the last 40 years and there isn’t much in there that will actually stimulate anything other than the ire of the American public. It’s just spending, pure and simple and wasteful spending at that.

Tell me, why do we need 650 million additional dollars spent on the digital TV changeover coupons? Why is the government paying for this? Why is the government involved at all? It’s TV… If the TV networks want this, why aren’t they paying for it? My TV that’s not hooked up to cable works just fine. If I wanted digital TV on it, I would hook it up to my cable.

Tell me how $50 million to the National Endowment to the Arts is going to stimulate the economy? Are we going to make a bunch of unemployed people artists and put them to work?

Why do we need to spend $400 million for global warming research? I thought Al Gore already had that all figured out. How much more research do we need to tell there’s global warming? How is it going to stimulate the economy? How is it going to create jobs?

Oh and here’s a good one, $1 BILLION for AmTrack. Yea, we need to spend a billion dollars on an entity that has been losing money for the last 40 years. That’s right friends and neighbors, AmTrack runs it’s business in the red just like the Federal Government. They want to hand over a billion dollars to them, but they didn’t want to help out the auto companies. Ya, that makes sense… Again, how is this going to stimulate the economy? By pouring more money into a proven loser?

This SPENDING package, yes I’m calling it what it IS, wasn’t even crafted by the President. It was put together by the most wasteful spenders on the planet, the Democrats in congress. As Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did… and now they are going to try and get everything that’s ever been on the liberal Democrat’s Christmas list all in one nice, big, fat spend fest. It’s absolutely disgusting.

What really grinds me is that Obama ran on the premise of “change”. I took that to mean change in Washington. Change in the way our government works. Change it into what it’s supposed to be. Eliminate waste, eliminate earmarks and pork and eliminate congress working for its own self interest and not for ours.

I think Obama is demonstrating what he actually meant by change. I guess it means change for the worse. I guess it means we get even more waste and even more inefficiency in our government. I guess it means more federal deficit and a greater national debt. I guess it means letting the pigs in congress continue to feed at the public trough and try and spend our government into bankruptcy.

Just so you all know, this will mean we are all going to get hit with huge tax increases down the road. He’s not telling you that part right now but sooner or later he’s going to say, “Well, we did what we had to do and now everybody needs to bite the bullet and do their fair share to pay for it and give 40% (or more) of their pay to the Federal Government.” Get ready for that…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for stimulating the economy. I just want to see the money actually spent for that. I don’t want to see it spent on pet projects and entitlement programs. I only want them to spend money that will actually do some good. Wouldn’t you agree?

Just FYI, an unscientific poll on the CNN website asked this question, “Should the economic stimulus bill contain items not directly related to strengthening the economy or creating jobs?”

The results: Yes – 10% No – 90%

Gee, you think the American public “gets it”? I just wish the idiots in Washington did…


Oh gee, as I was writing this, our President came on TV to hold a press conference to try and sell his Spendulous package to us people who pay his salary. I guess I’ll have to make a few comments about that…

Obama said that tax cuts don’t work. He said in his new conference that we’ve seen this time and time again. I’d sure like to know what times he is talking about because every time I’ve seen tax cuts, they sure do work and it absolutely does stimulate the economy.

He said that this type of policy is what got the economy to where it is now. Tax cuts had NOTHING to do with the economy getting to where it is now. The housing and mortgage market was the biggest contributor to the economy crashing, thank you Barney Frank and Chris Dodd…

He also says there are no earmarks in this bill. Right… I believe that one.

He says we are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression. I guess he forgot about the Jimmy Carter years of mortgage interest rates over 15%, double digit inflation and higher unemployment than we have now. By the way, the Reagan tax cuts brought the economy back after this but our illustrious president insists tax cuts don’t work…

The fact is, we are not as bad off now as we were back then but he’s trying his best to scare the American public into getting behind his Spendulous package so he can get it pushed through.

Don’t believe him! He’s lying! You know how I can tell? His lips are moving…

Let's Help Our Economy

Well, according to all reports, Americans are doing something they should have been doing for many years and weren’t, actually saving money. Imagine that. It took the economy crashing and burning to make people realize that it’s a good idea to have some reserve cash on hand and not run your budget like the government does, by continuously running itself into debt. (Now if we could only get the idiots running the government to realize that basic fact…)

While it’s a laudable tenet, it couldn’t happen at a worse time for our economy. As people hoard money and pay off debt, they quit spending on anything other than necessities. This hurts companies that thrive on people buying their goods and services, which causes them to lay people off, or worse, go out of business altogether. This gets reported in the news in the form of statistics and polls and brought to us as a daily dose of bad news for our economy. People hoard even more because of all that bad news and it ends up being a downward spiral.

You know what our economy needs? People spending money! Yes, the banks need to open up the credit market and start lending money for car and home purchases (to qualified buyers of course) but the American people could do more for the economy than any government bailout just by opening up the purse strings a little. Then maybe the daily reports wouldn’t be so bad and people would feel a little better and spend even more and pretty soon companies would start rehiring and guess what, our economy is growing again.

It would be a slow process and so it should be. Quick, forced, artificial economic fixes only serve to do more harm than good in the long run. Another fact our “brilliant” leaders don’t seem to grasp. They seem to think the best thing to do is tinker with a free economy. Well, that’s what screwed it up in the first place!

We, the American people can fix this problem. Just open up that wallet now and then and buy something. That would do more than you realize. I intend to. I’m going to start buying, not going in debt, but buying things I need with cash I have on hand, otherwise known as discretionary income. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll buy a new laser printer today. I’ve been wanting one of those for a while now. Time to buy it. Might even buy a new TV to take care of that pesky switchover to digital TV… and I’ve been looking at those new Chevy hybrid pickups too… hmmm….