Retro 5: President Obama's Checklist of Accomplishments To Date - Making Jimmy Carter Proud

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012

President Obama's Checklist Of Accomplishments To Date - Making Jimmy Carter Proud

About a week ago, a Facebook friend posted a short Facebook blurb that listed out the accomplishments of the Obama administration. It was meant to be complimentary of the administration but it had two major faults. First, it was not a very long list, comprising only about a half dozen points or accomplishments. Second, while this Facebook friend listed some of this administration's actions as successes, many Americans would consider these same activities as failures.

For example, this short list of successes included the passage of Obama Care. However, we would view this is an abject failure rather than a success to be proud of since:

1. Obama Care will likely cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their company health care insurance coverage since the legislation was written so poorly that it made it less expensive for companies to pay a relatively small Obama Care fine than continue health care insurance for their employees and retirees, the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do.
2. Obama Care will add numerous new taxes to the economy, further depressing the economic recovery from the Great Recession.
3. Obama Care will implement almost 2,000 new Federal government guidelines and restrictions on Americans, further reducing our already shrinking freedoms and liberty.
4. The head actuary for Medicare and Medicaid has recently estimated that Obama Care will add over $300 billion to our already disgusting national debt over the next ten years, the exact opposite it was supposed to do.
5. The legislation will never solve the problem of ever escalating health care costs because it never took the time to understand the root causes of the increasing costs.
6. The legislation will have major, difficult, and unnecessary impacts on Americans' life choices including retirement, marriage, and careers.

One person's perception of accomplishment is another's perception of complete failure. Interesting political times we live in. 

Thus, as a rebuttal to my friend's meager six or so Obama administration accomplishments, and to expand on the above list of six Obama Care failures, allow me to present a much longer checklist of administration failures, a list so long it evokes the sour and failure memories of the Carter administration:

• Implement the largest failed economic stimulus program in the history of the country, costing over $800 billion and delivering very little economic growth. Check.
• Implement a series of failed economic tactics including Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, and Cash for Caulkers. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo and then fail to actually close the facility. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to not place former lobbyists in high positions in this administration and then proceed to install former lobbyists in high level positions in this administration. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to significantly reduce the number of earmarks in the Federal government and then proceed to allow billions of dollars a year to be diverted into political earmarks. Check.
• Randomly blame bush. Check.
• Promise to quickly extract U.S. troops out of Iraq and then proceed to use the extended Bush exit plan. Check.
• Renew the freedom destroying Patriot Act with virtually no changes from the Bush administration version and continue not to staff the civil liberty oversight panel required by the law. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush. Check.
• Oversee an incredibly botched and illegal gun running sting operation called Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of military grade weapons to fall into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels, weapons that have led to the death of an American immigration agent and dozens of innocent Mexicans, weapons that have further destabilized the central Mexican government, and weapons whose sale violated both U.S. law and international treaties. Check.
• Fail to have an effective contingency plan and operations plan in place, reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, when the Gulf of Mexico oil rig accident happened, resulting in widespread ecological damage and economic damage. Check.
• While oil leaked into the Gulf waters from the leaking oil rig, embark on at least two vacations, take two cross country trips for political fund raising, and play numerous rounds of golf. Check.
• Oversee the average cost of a gallon of gasoline go from $1.79 at inauguration to $3.40 in January, a 90% increase (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). Check.
• Establish a record for average February gasoline prices at $3.53 a gallon. Experts quoted in an Associated Press article forecast the average price will hit $4.50 by April. Check. 
• Oversee the average price of a gallon of fuel oil go from $2.51 a gallon at inauguration to $3.70 in January, a 47% increase. Check.
• Oversee the cost of a pound of ground beef go from $2.97 at inauguration to $3.29 in January, an 11% increase. Check.
• Preside over the first ever downgrade of the United States government credit rating. Check.
• Add TRILLIONS of dollars to the national debt, more than every other President from Washington through Clinton added COMBINED. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush. Check.
• Give out hundreds of millions of dollars to political friends' alternative energy endeavors (Solyndra, Ener1, Beacon, Evergreen, Spectra) and watch them all go bankrupt, taking taxpayer wealth down the drain with them. Check.
• Set records for the most Americans ever on food stamp rolls. Check.
• Endorse and sign legislation to reform the financial services industry, legislation that promptly fell on its face by not foreseeing the 8th largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the collapse of financial services firm MF Global and the possible criminal destruction of over $1 billion in client assets, the exact type of behavior the legislation was supposed to prevent. Check.
• Break the oath of the Presidency taken at inauguration by not enforcing the laws of the land such as DOMA. Check.
• Break the oath of the Presidency taken at inauguration by blatantly ignoring judicial rulings such as the Gulf oil moratorium judicial ruling. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush.
• Break a campaign oath by trampling on the checks and balances tenets of the Constitution by making high level government appointments without Congressional oversight and approval. Check.
• Trample on freedom of speech and freedom of religion rights by forcing religious organizations to forego their religious beliefs in light of secular government mandates. Check.
• Support the repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy only after a national Republican organization successfully fought for the repeal through the court system. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush.
• Preside over the worse economic recovery from a recession since the Depression. Check.
• Allow Iran to get three years closer to having nuclear weapons. Check.
• Allow North Korea to get three years closer to having nuclear weapons. Check.
• Fail to foresee or be prepared for the Arab spring and the opportunities and risks inherent in the movement for freedom in the Middle East. Check.
• Trample on the Constitution and the War Powers Act by illegally  involving the U.S. in military in significant military action in Libya without Congressional approval. Check.
• Hold dozens of photo ops with professional and amateur athletic teams, including the Texas Christian University rifle team, but hold few, if any photo ops with inspirational teachers, brave policemen and women, or heroic war veterans. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and coherent national energy policy and strategy that helps the economy and reduces our dependence on foreign energy sources. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and coherent education reform strategy and policy so that we can start educating our kids as well as the rest of the world educates theirs. Check.
• Do not develop a workable, coherent, and compassionate illegal immigration policy that protects and seals our borders and fairly  leverages the contributions of existing illegal immigrants within the country. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and compassionate alternative to our lost war on drugs, threatening to shut down existing marijuana clinics that provide pain relief to untold number of Americans suffering from highly painful diseases and maladies. Check.
• Remain silent and do not try to unite a divided country when political allies slander ordinary Americans having a difference of opinion, allowing these American citizens to be called racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, a__h___s, terrorists, barbarians, gerbils, and un-American. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a host of other factors for many of the above failures. Check.
• Manipulate the calculation of the unemployment rate to falsely make it look like the unemployment situation is improving. Check.
• Allow over $500 billion of taxpayer wealth a year to continue to be lost annually to waste, inefficiencies ands criminal activity in major and minor government programs including, but not limited to, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance. Check.
• Wage class warfare of rich Americans against poorer Americans by falsely implying that Warren Buffet's Federal income tax rate is typical of those Americans earning over $100,000 a year. Check.
• Ignore the pending financial meltdown of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to not alienate a few voters in November. Check.
• Fail to write the regulations and guidelines needed to implement legislation that was passed in 2008 that cracked down on food stamp fraud.
• Fail to come up with a reorganization plan or termination plan for the dysfunctional and expensive Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA entities. Check.
• Approve the first ever, government sanctioned assassination of an American citizen without due process and institute an official government committee to review and recommend subsequent assassinations of Americans without due process.

I may be wrong but I do not remember Carter coming anywhere close to this number of failures during his entire four years as President. I do not think he set anywhere near the number of records that the Obama administration has set as far as the weakest economic recovery ever, the most failed economic programs, the most Americans ever on food stamps, etc. 

I do not think Carter had nearly as many firsts as Obama such as the first government sanctioned American citizen assassination, the first ever U.S. credit downgrade, the first ever TRILLION dollar annual government deficit, etc.

I do not think Carter had nearly as much disdain for individual Constitutional rights, Constitutional tenets. or the rule of law. 

So, no disrespect to my Facebook friend who thinks that her list of a half dozen Obama accomplishments is noteworthy. My above list of over four dozen reasons why the Obama accomplishment checklist of failure trumps that list in my mind. When a President's accomplishment checklist falls below the accomplishment checklist of Jimmy Carter, it is about time to try another President.

***********************

Post note: This list was put together two years ago. Unfortunately, things have not gotten any better under this administration. Unemployment and under employment, while somewhat better, are still bad, 45 million American STILL need government food assistance, ISIS is running amok in the Middle Wast with no plan in place to contain them, overall economic growth is still tepid, Obama Care nightmares are worse than expected, Guantanamo is still open, Americans' electronic communications are still being intercepted by the Federal government without warrants, politicians still hold regular Americans in contempt, the plans to contain Ebola seemed to change daily, this administration and Congress continue to shred the Constitution, our borders still leak, ........

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 4: Who Really Caused The Great Recession? Part 1 - "Duped America" Highlights

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."

MONDAY, MAY 14, 2012

Who Really Caused The Great Recession? Part 1 - "Duped America" Highlights

One character flaw about President Obama that constantly bugs me and which we have discussed many times before in this blog (see:http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2009/08/blame-game-part-2.html), is his refusal to accept any responsibility for the failures of his administration. In his mind, the mostly non-existent accomplishments of his Presidency are due to a variety of external forces including:

- His favorite whipping boy excuse, the Bush administration. Never mind that the country's economy really started to come apart (soaring unemployment and soaring national debt and budget deficits when the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid took over Congress in 2007 after the 2006 midterm elections), as the following graphs illustrate (double click on the graphs to get a bigger picture): 

- The Japanese tsunami.
- ATM machines.
- Europe's financial woes.
- The Arab spring, which increased oil prices.
- Wall Street
- Banks
- Congress.
- Republicans, even though from 2007 through the end of 2011 the Democrats controlled 80% of the Federal government:

There is any old saying that goes as follows: "Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring the darn ship in." Obama has never understood this concept. No one forced him to be President. Any good manager coming into a new job should assess what the situation is and then try to progress from that point. 

That is what leaders do, they look forward. Obama continues to look back to blame anyone or any organization for the failures and inadequacies of his administration. Rather than focus on the future and how to get there, he wastes time and energy to cover his own shortcomings. Blaming others in the past does not calm the seas he inherited and does not bring in the darn ship. 

But if he honestly did look into the past, which I doubt he is capable of doing, he would not like what he sees. In the next two days we will present an argument that says the Great Recession was not caused by the following factors:

• The Bush administration
• The Japanese tsunami
• ATM Machines
• Europe's financial woes
• The Arab Spring
• Republicans in Congress
• Republicans in general
• Wall Street
• Banks

What really caused the Great Recession and the destruction of wealth, high unemployment, and general economic malaise that still haunts us today, were Washington Democrats. It was not Wall Street, it was not greedy banks, it was not Bush, it was not Republicans, etc. 

It was purely and simply the insistence of Democrats in Washington that home ownership in predominantly Democratic voting areas be made easier to accommodate. That was the single root cause of all of our current economic troubles. Sure, Wall Street banks took advantage of the situation for a while to make big profits. Sure, mortgage lenders made shady deals to close mortgages and make their money upfront. 

But as we will try to prove over the next two days, based on experts in the industry, none of this happens without the aiding and abetting by Obama's fellow Democrats and Obama himself. His career profited politically by allowing the malfeasance to continue until the crash, an economic crash that wiped out banks, mortgage dealers, construction jobs, home building companies, housing equity wealth, stock market wealth, job growth, etc.

Today we will review the work of Richard Bernstein who has written a book called "Duped America." According to his bio on his website:


Author Richard Bernstein, a former lifelong Democrat, has organized this masterpiece into 31 short easy-to-read chapters. In each and every chapter Bernstein explains how the Democrat Party and their allies in the Mainstream Media have repeatedly attempted to dupe Americans. Each chapter is filled with enough facts to allow you to become more than just knowledgeable about each subject. Duped America is so thoroughly researched it has almost 1,000 footnotes.

Included below is a chapter from the book that he allows anyone to download from his website and thus, I am pretty sure he would not have a problem with me including it here. I am referencing his work since many of the statistics and historical facts he refers to I have already confirmed in previous posts in this blog, making me feel comfortable enough that he has his sources and statistics correct.

The chapter he allows people to download concerns the decades of housing policy abuses by Democrats in Washington that eventually led to the Great Recession. Let me list a few highlights/excerpts from the chapter before you read it in total and let me know what common thread Mr. Obama would realize if he read the chapter himself (the link to Mr. Berstein's website can be accessed viahttp://www.dupedamerica.com/):

• Democrats created the lax mortgage policies that precipitated the crisis while simultaneously stifling Republican efforts to prevent it.
• The history of the crisis started with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law by Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
• When Democrat Bill Clinton became President in 1992, he broadened the Community Reinvestment Act in ways Congress had never intended.
• When the Republicans attempted to restore fiscal sanity by paring back the CRA, they were stymied by Democrats.
• Democrats such as Barney Frank (D-MA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of these risky mortgage loans.
• In 1995, an unrestrained Clinton Democratic administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push home ownership in America to new heights – regardless of the compromise in credit standards that this would require.
• Democrat Clinton legalized the securitization of these mortgages, which allowed Fannie and Freddie to finance everything by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were big campaign donors, with the bulk of their money going to Democrats.
• Between 1989 and 2008, the leading recipient of Fannie/Freddie campaign money was Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee Chairman, who collected more than $165,000. In second place was then-Democrat Senator Barack Obama, who, in just three years in the U.S. Senate, took in $126,000. Third, was MassachusettsDemocrat John Kerry, who received $110,000.
• Since the 1990s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been run by Democrat appointees.
• From 1991 to 1998, Fannie Mae was led by James Johnson, a long-time aide to formerDemocrat Vice President Walter Mondale.
• Johnson’s successor as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, had previously served as a budget director to Democrat President Bill Clinton.
• In July 2003, Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and John Sununu (R-NH) introduced legislation to address regulation of them [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. The bill was blocked by theDemocrats.
• But the legislation [which was reintroduced in 2005] didn’t become law for a single reason:Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the Senate Banking Committee.
• Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) now admitsDemocrats were in error.

Obviously, the common theme is that the seeds for the destruction of the housing market which led to the destruction in the banking industry which led to high unemployment was planted long ago and tended to fruition by Democratic Presidents, Congressmen, and bureaucrats.

But these are just the headlines. If you really want to be depressed, please read the following downloaded chapter from Mr. Bernstein. The details are far worst according to his research and writings. The political class selfishness, personal enrichment, and abuses of power make their duping of us even more egregious.

****************************
MORTGAGE CRISIS…

Americans wondering who was responsible for the mortgage crisis should ask themselves a question: is owning a home a privilege or a right? Despite the meltdown in 2008, the seeds for the mortgage crisis were sown much earlier by a Democrat Party long convinced home ownership was an entitlement.

As this chapter shows, once that basic premise became conventional wisdom, it was all downhill from there. If one listens to the mainstream media and many Democrats, the blame for the mortgage crisis rests with the Republicans and the Bush administration. They’ve convinced the public that Democrats had nothing whatsoever to do with our current financial woes.

Precisely the opposite is true: Democrats created the lax mortgage policies that precipitated the crisis while simultaneously stifling Republican efforts to prevent it. The history of the crisis started with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law by Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1977.

The law was designed to foster home ownership in low-income communities by pushing banks to aggressively lend to low and moderate income people. At first, it was easy to comply with the CRA. Banks merely had to demonstrate that they did not discriminate in making loans in poor and black neighborhoods.

When Democrat Bill Clinton became President in 1992, he broadened the Community Reinvestment Act in ways Congress had never intended. In 1995, rather than submit legislation that the Republican-led Congress was certain to reject, Clinton bypassed Congress entirely, ordering the TreasuryDepartment to rewrite the CRA rules.

 As a result, banks were forced to fulfill loan “quotas” in low income neighborhoods. That wasn’t the only problem. CRA also allowed community activist groups such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), for whom Barack Obama once worked in Chicago, and NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) to file complaints that could affect a bank’s CRA rating.

Failure to comply with CRA or a bad rating meant a bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks with poor CRA ratings were also hit with stiff fines. This rewrite of CRA gave activist groups like ACORN and NACA unprecedented power. Protests often held in bank lobbies or in front of the homes of bank officials, coupled with threats of litigation, allowed these groups to extort huge sums of money from financial institutions.

In response, financial institutions began allocating more funds to low-income, high risk borrowers.Loans started being funded on the basis of race and often little else. CRA became an excuse for lowering credit standards.

Many Democrats have claimed that banks subject to the CRA represented few of the mortgages that led to our current problems. Not true. Nearly 4 in 10 subprime loans made between 2004 and 2007 were funded by CRA-covered banks such as Washington Mutual and Indy Mac. Many other subprime lenders not covered by the Act were, in effect, beholden to CRA mandates because they were owned by banks that were subject to it.

Since CRA only covered banks, the Clinton administration created a separate department at Housing and Urban Development to police “fair lending” policies at other institutions such as Countrywide and lending behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The result? Countrywide made more loans to minorities than any other lender, and not surprisingly, was one of the first lenders overwhelmed by loan defaults. As groups like ACORN ran their intimidation campaigns against local banks, they eventually hit a roadblock. Banks told them they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little – since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refused to buy up these risky loans for resale on the secondary market.

ACORN realized that unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks wouldn’t make enough loans to individuals with bad credit histories or with very little money for a down payment. Democrats such as Barney Frank (D-MA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of these risky mortgage loans. When the Republicansattempted to restore fiscal sanity by paring back the CRA, they were stymied by Democrats — and by ACORN.

In 1995, an unrestrained Clinton administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push home ownership in America to new heights – regardless of the compromise in credit standards that this would require. Fannie and Freddie were given massive subprime lending quotas, which would increase to about half of their total business by the end of the decade.

Then came the single most catastrophic decision leading to the housing crisis: Clinton legalized the securitization of these mortgages, which allowedFannie and Freddie to finance everything by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.

Thus, began the meltdown. In 1997, Bear Stearns handled the first securitization of CRA loans — $385 million worth — all guaranteed by Freddie Mac. Subsequently, a subprime market that had been a relatively modest part of the mortgage business with $35 billion in loans in 1994 soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Regrettably, this massive bundling of subprime mortgages wound up poisoning the entire mortgage industry. Fannie and Freddie used their “affordable housing mission” to avoid restrictions on their accumulation of mortgage portfolios. They arguedthat if they were constrained, they wouldn’t be able to adequately subsidize affordable housing. As a result, by 1997, Fannie was offering mortgages witha down payment of only 3 percent. By 2001, it was purchasing mortgages with “no down payment at all.”

 By 2007, Fannie and Freddie were required by Housing and Urban
Development to show that 55 percent of their mortgage purchases were to low and moderate income borrowers, and, within that goal, 38 percent of all purchases were to come from underserved areas (usually inner cities).

Meeting these goals almost certainly required them to purchase loans with low down payments and other deficiencies that would characterize them assubprime or Alt-A. The decline in lending standards was also facilitated by competition. Fannie and Freddie were now competing with private-label mortgage lenders such as investment and commercial banks to fulfill the affordable housing requirements imposed by Congress.

The inevitable result? Everyone was scraping the bottom of the mortgage barrel in search of new borrowers. Once the looser lending standards were offered to low and middle income buyers, it was naïve to believe that they wouldn’t lead to more relaxed standards for higher-income and prime borrowers as well. This spreading of looserstandards to the prime market greatly increased the availability of credit for mortgages, and ultimately led to the bubble in housing prices.

Unsurprisingly, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were huge campaign
contributors to Congress, spending millions to ensure no reform would be implemented to restrict them. In all, 354 members of Congress receivedfunds. The bulk of the money went to Democrats.

Between 1989 and 2008, the leading recipient of Fannie/Freddie campaign money was ConnecticutDemocrat Chris Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee Chairman, who collected more than $165,000. Dodd opposed restrictions on Fannie and Freddie and pushed hard for the continuance of subprime loans. In second place was then-Senator Barack Obama, who, in just three years in the U.S. Senate, took in $126,000. Third, was Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, who received $110,000.

Since the 1990s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been run by Democrats. From 1991 to 1998, Fannie Mae was led by James Johnson, a long-time aide to former Democrat Vice President Walter Mondale. Johnson made headlines in 2008 when Barack Obama picked him to chair his vice presidential selection committee. He had to resign in disgrace when it was revealed he had taken out at least five below-market real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corporation.

Johnson’s successor as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, had previously served as a budget director to President Bill Clinton. From 1995 to 2005, Raines pocketed nearly $100 million in compensation before leaving because of a scandal involving profit and loss reports manipulated to increase his annual bonuses.

Another well-known Democrat, Jamie Gorelick, served as vice chair of Fannie from 1998 to 2003. Prior to that, she was Janet Reno’s Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton years, when the Clinton Justice Department was aggressively compelling banks to make subprime loans to unworthy borrowers.

And Rahm Emanuel, current White House Chief of Staff, also served as a director at Freddie Mac. Most Americans are not aware that Fannie and Freddie, while lining the pockets of politicians, also funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of leftist groups and causes promoting the Democrat agenda.

The grantmaking arms of Fannie and Freddie – specifically the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Freddie Mac Foundation – gives tens of millions of dollars each year to predominantly left-wing organizations such as the American Civil LibertiesUnion; the NAACP and National Urban League;pro-illegal immigration groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Council of La Raza; pro-Democrat community activist groups like ACORN; and former president Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center.

The Republicans were not oblivious to Fannie and Freddie’s problems. Bush’s 2001 budget called runaway subprime lending a “potential problem”and warned of “strong repercussions in financial markets.” In July 2003, Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and John Sununu (R-NH) introduced legislation to address regulation of them.

The bill was blocked by the Democrats. 30 In September 2003 Bush’s Treasury Secretary, John Snow, proposed what The New York Times called “the most significant regulatory overhaul (of Fannie and Freddie) in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.”

Did the Democrats in Congress welcome reform? Here’s how Barney Frank (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee,responded:

“I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored entities we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in crisis…. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury…. I believe that we, as the FederalGovernment, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals.”

In 2005, Republican Senators Hagel, Sununu, Dole, and later John McCain reintroduced legislation to once again address regulation of Fannie and Freddie. In essence, the bill would have required Fannie and Freddie to eliminate their investments in risky subprime loans. According to Kevin Hassett, writing in Bloomberg.com, “if that bill had become law, then the world today would be different.”

But the legislation didn’t become law for a single reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the Senate Banking Committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democrat opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the bill.

Had the bill passed in 2005, the mortgage meltdown would have been far less intense. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, approximately $1 trillion of these terrible mortgage loans were funded by Fannie and Freddie at a time when housing prices were at their highest. When housing prices fell dramatically, losses from those mortgages turned out to be tremendous.

Bottom line: if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren’t buying these subprime loans, the market for them would likely not have existed. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) now admits Democrats were in error:

“Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourageaffordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by the regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democraticcolleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”

**********************************
Edward R, Murrow once eloquently stated: "Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions." I do not intend to tell anyone who to vote for in November. However, I do ask that any voter fulfill their major obligation to be as informed as possible and not be easily swayed by shallow slogans like Hope, Change, Winning The Future, Forward, etc.

Understand the root causes of our problems like Mr. Bernstein does above relative to the current economic situation we are stuck in. It takes some work but both our personal and national futures depend on understanding the motives of our usually selfish politicians and how their actions have caused so much pain and agony. Unless you understand the root causes and causers of our problems, we will never find the solutions to resolve them.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro Thanksgiving Day Post From 2012

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2012

A Thanksgiving Wish: Helping Each Other and Undoing The Damage and Hatred That Washington Politicians Have Wrought

I hope that today finds you, your family and your friends healthy and well and hopefully together, sharing this Thanksgiving with each other in the way you see fit. I hope that there is good cheer around your dinner table, lots of laughs, and plenty of food.

However, if you are fortunate enough to be in such a situation, may I suggest that you take a minute out of your Thanksgiving day to think about others that may not be so fortunate as yourselves. As you may or may not know, there are about 12 million Americans who are currently unable to find work and may not be having as wonderful a Thanksgiving as you. 

There are about 23 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed, including many young Americans who are struggling to find a job and establishing a career for themselves.

Every week, hundreds of thousands of Americans find the need to apply for first time unemployment benefits as the economy continues to struggle and economic growth is not enough to provide employment to all those who need it.

News stories have been circulating the past few days on how these hard economic times and high travel costs are keeping families apart this holiday season, something that should never happen in America. 

As you sit down to eat, remember that almost 50 million Americans are eating today, through no fault of their own, only because they are receiving food aid from the Federal government.

May I suggest that as a result of the above economic hardships that you take a little time or a little money, only what you can afford, and make the upcoming Christmas holidays a little easier, a little brighter for these million of fellow citizens. 

Throw some change into the Salvation Army bell ringer on the street corner. Next time you go shopping, buy a few extra things for the local food bank. Or better yet, volunteer your time in whatever way possible. 

Write a check to your favorite charity or buy that gift for the child that may not get one this holiday season. If you see a member of our armed forces waiting in line for a coffee or a lunch, step up up and treat him or her, thanking them for their sacrifices and service.

You see, unless we help each other, it is unlikely the political class will help them. Many of the economic hardships these folks are going through are a direct result of the inability or unwillingness of our Washington politicians to do the right thing. If they were willing or had the ability to do the right thing, 23 million Americans would not be hurting for employment this Thanksgiving day. 

Thus, we need to each individually step forward and help our neighbors, waiting for Washington to do the right thing is a no win proposition. These overpaid, under performing politicians have left us and our neighbors with the following dire economic situation today (data and commentary courtesy of the Bankrupting America website):

This season, we are thankful for our friends, and family, and that we live in a nation that can endure a contentious election and still have peace. (Even if the discussion around your Thanksgiving table is not always so serene.) While we are grateful for the things we have, we are mindful of the work we – especially our federal government – has ahead, especially when it comes to repairing the nation’s balance sheet and economy. To that end, here are the five budget- and economic-related events that we are not thankful for this year:

1) No Budget. Congress failed to pass a budget once again this year. The House passed an outline, but the Senate did not. It looks like this trend could continue: according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is likely to take over the Senate Budget Committee, her panel may not even consider one for next year. Disgraceful.

2) $1 Trillion Deficit. For the fourth year in a row the federal government spent $1 trillion more than it took in. Deficits over the last four years totaled nearly $5.1 trillion.

3) Nearly $16.3 Trillion Debt. As of Nov. 15, the national debt totaled $16.278 trillion, about $142,300 for every household in the country. That figure is nearly triple the average household income in 2011 ($50,054).

4) Overspending, High Unemployment, Low Growth. On average since World War II, federal government spending has totaled 19.8 percent of the economy. In FY 2011, it was 24.1 percent and for FY 2012 it was estimated to come in at 24.3 percent. What have been the results? An unemployment rate of 7.9 percent (average since 1948: 5.8 percent) and a two percent economic growth rate in the third quarter(quarterly average since World War II: 3.1 percent).

5) Coming Fiscal Cliff. After last year’s debt supercommittee failed to agree on a long-term plan to tackle the nation’s persistent deficits, billions of dollars of spending cuts kicked in. Congress is now trying to undo many of these cuts and figure out how to deal with trillions of coming tax increases. Together these policies have led to great uncertainty. 

A Reuters survey found 42 of 50 economists believe there is a significant chance fiscal cliff negotiations would reduce consumer and investor confidence. Additionally, The Wall Street Journal revealed at least 40 of the nation’s top companies are planning to cut capital spending because of fiscal uncertainty. Reduced spending by the private sector, combined with lower confidence from consumers and investors, will eventually result in even higher unemployment and worsening growth.

So yes, be thankful for what you have today, whether it is a job, a healthy family, good friends, the ability to come together, and have enough to eat. But also be thankful if you can help others also get through these tough economic times. Our politicians, the ones who created these tough economic times, are seemingly incapable of doing such a noble deed.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 3: The American Freedom Pyramid: Where It Should Be Vs. Where It Is Today

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."


Thursday, November 18, 2010

The American Freedom Pyramid: Where It Should Be Vs. Where It Is Today 

 
An important part of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," is the understanding of what I call the Freedom Pyramid. The Freedom Pyramid tries to imagine what our founders had in mind when the put the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and a government based on individual freedom together. The ideal American Freedom Pyramid fits together as follows:

• The base and foundation of the pyramid is the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
• Sitting on top of this base level is the government structure that the founders defined to implement the liberty principles and concepts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in a limited government manner.
• This government structure serves all of the country's citizens equally in guaranteeing each person's rights and freedoms as defined by the base level documents.
• And finally, the pinnacle of the Freedom Pyramid is our own individual rights, freedom, and liberties. 

These concepts are graphically illustrated below:
 

 There are a few important characteristics of this pyramid. The power in the pyramid flows up from the Bill of Rights and U.S. Constitution to our individual freedoms which is the pinnacle of our country. Government exists to serve the citizens and the country and is just the mechanics for implementing the tenets in the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Finally, the political class appears nowhere in the Freedom Pyramid structure.

This structure has served the country and its citizens quite well over the past two centuries. Americans were usually the freest people in world, which allowed the country to grow into the most prosperous ever. The Freedom Pyramid concept placed individual freedom above all else, including the government and the political class, whose sole purpose should be implementing the concepts and principles of the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.

However, over time, we have allowed the American political class to pervert this original Freedom Pyramid concept:

• Today, individual citizens and their freedom and liberties are no longer at the pinnacle of the pyramid, having been replaced by a self serving political class.
• This political class uses government functions and institutions to enlarge, entrench, and enrich itself. Examples at this level abound and include earmark abuse, favorable campaign finance laws, Congressional voting district gerrymandering, excessive Congressional benefits and perks, confiscating large amounts of citizens wealth and income via taxes, and a general low priority for the needs and desires of the country's citizens.
• The political class uses their increased power to divide the country into various and competing tribes and voting blocks of citizens, "energizing their bases" as needed and demonizing those not in their bases or tribes.
• This increased power of the political class and their abuses of power results in diminished individual rights and freedoms.

 These concepts are illustrated in the current day, perverted Freedom Pyramid below, where the only Americans with the freedom and power tend to be our politicians:
 

 As you can see in this pyramid, the Bill of Rights and Constitution are no longer vital to this pyramid's structure since the often act as an obstruction to the needs and desires of the political class rather than their original intent, the foundation of the country. Also, the power is driven down from the political class and is imposed on American citizens and their freedom.

We need to recognize how far we have deviated from the concept of the first Freedom Pyramid. The reality of America today is that we no longer live in a free country. We do not get true freedom in our election processes since the political class has rigged the voting process to favor existing officeholders and existing political parties. 

We do not get true freedom while under our excessive tax burden. When an individual is forced to pay more than 30% of their annual income to all levels of government, that individual's freedom to send his or her kids to a better school or to start a business or to save for retirement or to go on a vacation is severely limited: you cannot have political freedom without financial freedom. We do not get true freedom when politicians call individual citizens racists, Neanderthals, un-American, smelly, and other derogatory names just because they dare to disagree with a politician's programs.

If we ever want to get back to the right Freedom Pyramid, where individual citizens are in charge and the political class and the government the run are subservient, we need to implement most, if not all, of the steps laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Some of the most important steps include:

1. Step 1 - reduce the size and budget of the Federal government by 10% a year for five years.
2. Step 6 - allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns, forbidding unions, corporations, PACs and other organizations from flooding the election process with money. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech to individual Americans, not organizations.
3. Step 7 - allow only citizens that are affected by an election to contribute to election campaigns within that election. For example, political parties would not be allowed to accept campaign contributions from someone in Kansas and send/funnel that money to be used in an election campaign in New Jersey. 
4. Step 14 - stop gerrymandering Congressional voting districts to almost guarantee the re-election of incumbents.
5. Step 17 - eliminate the Democratic Party's "Super Delegate" process which has the potential of voiding the votes of all voters who voted in Democratic Party Presidential primaries.
6. Sep 34 - hold politicians sitting on Congressional committees accountable for their respective government areas of oversight and remove them from their committee positions if that committee falls short of serving the country, e.g. all members of Congressional Intelligence committees should have been removed from those committee posts on September 12, 2001 for their inability to foresee the 9-11 terror attacks. 
7. Step 39 - institute term limits for all Federal political seats.

 Many of the other 50 steps are also important but implementing these listed above would go a long way to getting us back to the true and rightful Freedom Pyramid concept for this country.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

Retro 2: Wasteful Government Spending Week: Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."

Monday, May 21, 2012

Wasteful Government Spending Week: Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2

Many Americans probably do not realize that a lot of their tax dollars are used to provide free car leases and free gasoline for those car leases for use by their Congressmen and Congresswomen. We had covered this spending atrocity previously in this blog, back in August, 2009,

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2009/08/pimp-my-ride-taxpayers.html

but thought it was worthwhile to cover again, Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2, since nothing has been done to terminate this obvious example of wasteful government spending by the political class in the House Of Representatives.

While the amount of money wasted is relatively small compared to the bloated overall bloated Federal budget, as former Senator Everett Dirksen once said: "A billion dollars here, a billions dollars there, and pretty soon you are talking about some real money."

In order to save trillions of dollars of unnecessary spending by the political class, you first have to start saving thousands which eventually becomes saving millions which eventually becomes saving some real money, billions, which eventually becomes saving trillions.

This is especially true when you consider how useless these Congressional expenses are in light of the following numbers and facts, brought to you by a recent investigation done by Inside Edition (http://www.insideedition.com/news/8119/inside-edition-investigates-congressional-cars.aspx):

• The typical Congressman in the House Of Representatives earns about $170,000 a year in salary, placing every one of them well within the upper 5% of wage earners in the country. Bottom line: they can afford to lease their own vehicles with their own money.
• The Senate does not have a similar program of taxpayers subsidizing autos for their members, Senators use their own funds and own vehicles. Bottom line: if Senators do not get free transportation from the taxpayer and seem to do okay without such a program, even though they have to cover the geography of a whole state, not the much smaller geography of a Congressional district, members in the House certainly do not need a free car program.
• Consider Gregory Meeks a Democratic Congressman from New York. He drives a luxury Lexus 450 Hybrid, a taxpayer funded lease that goes for $1,289.40 a month. This results in the taxpayer shelling out $15,374 a year. Bottom line: according to ecent United States Census data, (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0690.pdf), the taxpayer funded lease for this one car is greater than the household income of 13% of American households, about 15 million households. Talk about bad priorities, one unnecessary luxury car lease with more value than a year's earnings of so many American households.
• The really sad thing about this program is that Meeks is not the only Congressional driver whose annual lease cost is greater than the annual income of so many Americans. Bottom line: even if the program was essential, which it is not, for Congressional people to get around their districts, good sense should dictate that driving around in Lexus, Lincoln, and other high cost autos is totally unnecessary from a basic transportation perspective and blatantly egotistical on behalf of these supposed public servants.
• If you add up the monthly lease costs of 82 examples of taxpayer leased cars identified by the Inside Edition report, you find that the American taxpayer is on the hook for almost $700,000 a year for this unnecessary program. If you throw in the down payments of some of the leases and the taxpayer-funded gasoline that goes into these autos every year, it is probably a very safe bet that more than $832,000 a year is incurred each year by this program. Bottom line: when the GSA wastes $832,000 ONCE on a Las Vegas party, Congress goes into a rage even though it wastes at least $832,000 every YEAR on auto leases.

It never ends. Bad priorities, wasteful spending, over inflated egos of self importance, and never, ever the solution of any major problem facing most Americans. Since Congress cannot clean up its act, it falls back on us to do it ourselves. This involves the short term fix of dumping out all incumbents in the November elections since it is obvious that the current sitting Congressional people have not learned their lessons of leadership and thrift.

The longer term solution is the implementation of Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." This step would install term limits on all Federal politicians, "one and done." Current Washington politicians continue to prove that they are out of touch with reality, budget constraints, and struggling Americans. If you car lease is greater than the household income of 13% of America, you are out of touch. You are also expendable.

The following data comes from the Inside Edition website (http://www.insideedition.com/news/8119/inside-edition-investigates-congressional-cars.aspx) which recently did an investigative journalism piece on this wasteful government program.

Members of the House Of Representatives who lease tax payer-funded vehicles.

Source: Statement of Disbursements – House of Representatives – 4th Quarter 2011

44 Democrats and 38 Republicans.

Representative State Monthly Payment Additional information

1. Dan Burton – Rep. (two leases) Indiana $600 + $684.78 Leases two vehicles
2. Mary Bono Mack – Rep. California $682.94
3. Rodney Alexander – Rep. Louisiana $167.99 Includes a $20,000 down payment
4. Xavier Becerra – Dem. California $271.80
5. Adam Schiff – Dem. California $489.24
6. Adrian Smith – Rep. Nebraska $692.52 Includes a $7,554.24 down payment
7. Al Green – Dem. Texas $436.89
8. André Carson – Dem. Indiana ***payment amount varies from $657.99 to $748.65 per month
9. Anna Eshoo – Dem. California $389.60
10. Barbara Lee – Dem. California $898.55
11. Bill Flores – Rep. Texas $455.55
12. Bill Johnson – Rep. Ohio $370.13
13. Bill Shuster – Rep. Pennsylvania $392.00
14. Bobby Rush – Dem. Illinois $1,027.53
15. Brad Miller – Dem. North Carolina $431.87
16. Chip Cravaack – Rep. Minnesota $1,008.22
17. Cliff Stearns – Rep. Florida $789.25
18. Collin Peterson – Dem. Minnesota $362 + $290.00 Leases two vehicles
19. Cory Gardner – Rep. Colorado $910.80
20. Dana Rohrabacher – Rep. California $918.63
21. David Dreier – Rep. California $598.92
22. David Scott – Dem. Georgia $519.40
23. Dennis Rehberg – Rep. Montana $499 + $799.00 Leases two vehicles
24. Don Young – Rep. Alaska $748.73
25. Donald Manzullo – Rep. Illinois $619.19
26. Ed Pastor – Dem. Arizona $294.33
27. Edolphus Towns – Dem. New York $1,285.06
28. Edward Royce – Rep. California $509.98
29. Eleanor Holmes Norton – Dem. D.C. $807.55
30. Emanuel Cleaver – Dem. Missouri $1,900.00 Lease is for mobile office used in district
31. George Miller – Dem. California $520.10
32. Gregory Meeks – Dem. New York $1,289.40
33. Gus Bilirakis – Rep. Florida $449.60
34. Heath Shuler – Dem. North Carolina $485.31
35. Hank Johnson Jr. – Dem. Georgia $725.79
36. Henry Cuellar – Dem. Texas $594.28
37. Howard Berman – Dem. California $382.78
38. Howard “Buck” McKeon – Rep. California $662.83
39. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – Rep. California $479.86
40. James Clyburn – Dem. South Carolina $1,139.26
41. Jim McDermott – Dem. Washington $346.46
42. Joe Baca – Dem. California $732.86
43. Joe Barton – Rep. Texas $998.89
44. Joe Donnelly – Dem. Indiana $450.00
45. John Abney Culberson – Rep. Texas $880.00
46. John Conyers Jr. – Dem. Michigan $1,251.66
47. John Garamendi – Dem. California $910.82
48. John Lewis – Dem. Georgia $578.21
49. John Carter – Rep. Texas $880.96
50. John Sullivan – Rep. Oklahoma $258.30
51. José Serrano – Dem. New York $485.31
52. Kenny Marchant – Rep. Texas $899.67
53. Kevin McCarthy – Rep. California $716.25
54. Laura Richardson – Dem. California $852.96
55. Linda Sanchez – Dem. California $861.87
56. Louie Gohmert – Rep. Texas $466.40
57. Lynn Woolsey – Dem. California $647.97
58. Mario Diaz-Balart – Rep. Florida $722.02
59. Melvin Watt – Dem. North Carolina $431.81
60. Michael Simpson – Rep. Idaho $698.13
61. Michael Michaud – Dem. Maine $795.00
62. Mike Coffman – Rep. Colorado $671.51
63. Mike McIntyre – Dem. North Carolina $430.82
64. Mike Pence – Rep. Indiana $282.68
65. Mike Pompeo – Rep. Kansas $486.00
66. Mike Ross – Dem. Arkansas $851.28
67. Nick Rahall – Dem. West Virginia $671.41
68. Pedro Pierluisi – Dem. Puerto Rico $1,400.00
69. Peter Welch – Dem. Vermont $425.68
70. Phil Gingrey – Rep. Georgia $470.88
71. Randy Neugebauer – Rep. Texas $333.33
72. Raul Grijalva – Dem. Arizona $709.28
73. Sam Johnson – Rep. Texas $758.65
74. Sean Duffy – Rep. Wisconsin $1,350.00 Lease is for mobile office used in district
75. Sheila Jackson Lee – Dem. Texas $751.99
76. Silvestre Reyes – Dem. Texas $655.46
77. Steve Womack – Rep. Arkansas $565.61
78. Steven LaTourette – Rep. Ohio $502.24
79. Theodore “Ted” Deutch – Dem. Florida $301.17
80. Wally Herger – Rep. California $650.00
81. William “Lacy” Clay Jr. – Dem. Missouri $779.08
82. William Keating – Dem. Massachusetts $968.85

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w