November, 2013 I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science Update, Part 4: Where Are We Today?

We have spent the past few days discussing how it is perfectly logical and reasonable to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. We have shown numerous examples of scientific research, analysis, and findings that show the potential for a high likelihood that global warming, or the rebranded “climate change“ concept, effort is either a hoax, a mistake, or non-existent.

Now, we have made the statement throughout our exploration of those scientific efforts refuting global warming that maybe there actually is global warming or climate change occurring as a result of humanity’s actions. There is so much analysis and research supporting both sides of the equation that if you take a step back, it is difficult to truly believe what is going on. 

We did vehemently and often object to the Al Gores of the world who rant at and insult those of us who are global warming doubters but believers in science. Calling people ignorant, environmental Nazis, homophobes, racists, and a whole slew of other insults does nothing to get folks to come together for an adult conversation on the potential issue. 

These people have slung around the insults without considering facts and realities. First, the vast, vast majority of global warming forecast models over the years have grossly overestimated the likely impact of global warming. Thus, if your models are wrong, then the underlining assumptions supporting those models must be wrong. And if those assumptions are based on the thesis that global warming truly exists, then your thesis is wrong.

Second, the earth’s overall temperature has stopped warming and has been remarkably stable and unchanged over the past 15 years or so. Global warming advocates and models would have not believed this reality 15 years ago. In fact, as we have reported, ice expanses at both poles have started expanding again, hardly compatible with a warming earth.

Third, respected scientists, including many at the top research center in the world, the CERN Institute, have proven via their methods that global warming, if it is occurring, is part of natural cycle and mankind’s activities have nothing to do with. 

But rather than considering ALL aspects of global warming science, all that the name calling from the advocates of global warming has accomplished is to harden each side’s positions and opinions of the other side, leaving no room for discussion and compromise to mutual understanding. And without mutual understanding, no action is taken and the potential for problems gets larger and larger. 

But let the name calling stop today, Today and tomorrow we will set up a process to address both sides and come out for the better regardless of whether global warming is a reality or not. Today, we will look at the energy landscape and the reality of energy and carbon footprints going forward in time. Unless we understand the reality of where we are, we cannot develop a plan of where we want to go.

Tomorrow, we will lay out specific steps, processes, and challenges that need to be overcome on the scientific, research, and political fronts, starting with the reality of where we end up today. If those steps are successfully implemented, we will clean up our air and environment, reduce energy costs, and reduce our carbon footprint independent of whether global warming is fact or fiction. 

We would want to these things even if global warming was never dreamed up. If global warming is indeed a reality, than our plan would be the proper way to attack it.

So, let’s start with the reality of today when it comes to fossil fuels and carbon footprints, things that a global warming advocate hates:

1) The fastest growing economy in the world over the past decade has probably been China’s. It’s economy has grown at some of the highest year over year rates in the history of the world. It has helped create a growing Chinese middle class and upper class who want the latest in technology whether it be in electricity using home products, automobiles, and other energy hungry endeavors.

As a result, China has needed to greatly increase its ability to produce energy for its growing consumer and business demand. And the quickest and easiest way to do that was to start burning a lot more coal and a lot more petroleum products. 

It has started to develop massive coal fields in its western regions to feed the growing demand for electricity in its large eastern cities. It is cutting deals with countries all over the world to get access to local fossil fuel natural resources. It now burns about the 60% of all coal in the world (source: Business Week).

Thus, any global warming plan has to include China’s cooperation. Without it, anything any other nation does, including the United States, will be overwhelmed by the growing carbon footprint of the Chinese economy.

2) I am sure Al Gore and his ilk would love to have every human getting their energy needs fulfilled by clean, renewable energy sources, particularly those new technologies that he has invested in. But according to an article in the November, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, that is not going to happen anytime soon:

• The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released its analysis and forecast on what the global energy footprint is likely to look like in the future. 
• Their forecast predicts that by 2041, mankind will be using 56% more energy annually than it does today. 
• A whopping 80% of it will come from burning fossil fuels. Yes, almost three decades from now, oil, coal, etc. will still be the dominate fuel sources for humanity, a global warming advocate’s worst nightmare. 
• The use of petroleum and liquid fuels will increase 32%. 
• The use of natural gas will increase 64%. 
• The use of coal will increase 44%. 
• Total energy use from renewables will increase from 11% to 15%. 
• Energy created carbon dioxide emissions will rise 46%. 

Thus, there is probably no end in sight for the use of high carbon laden fuels. This is the likely reality based on expert opinions.

3) This future reality does not mean we should give up trying to reduce our carbon footprint and cleaning up the air. We have reported in the past few posts how the U.S. has greatly reduced its carbon footprint over the past few years, attaining double digit reductions in carbon emission. A more recent update of this success comes from a September 6, 2013 Business Week article that reported the U.S. has reduced its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 12% in just the past five years.

4) The Week magazine’s November 14, 2013 issue ran an article that showed the horrible levels of urban air pollution in large Chinese cities and the fact that seven out of the top ten most polluted cities in the world are in China. These pollution conditions are obviously harmful and often fatal for the citizens of those cities. How bad is it, according to the article:

• China depends on high carbon footprint coal for 70% of its power needs. 
• Chinese government decrees to reduce pollution call for only a 2% reduction in coal usage. 
• While very few Chinese citizens owned a motorized vehicle twenty years ago, today there are 120 million cars and 120 million other motor vehicles on the road. 
• Air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature Chinese citizen deaths in 2010. 
• Chinese lung cancer rates are up 465% in the past thirty years. 
• In some cities, Chinese scientists estimate that the average citizen will see their life span reduced by 5.5 years on average. 

Regardless of whether or not global warming exists, people should not have to live like this. Taking action to reduce carbon pollution makes for a healthier humanity and if global warming is a true issue, these actions will also be address global warming by cleaning up the air.

5) But consider the potential positive economic upside for the U.S. from a carbon perspective, from an analysis in the September 6, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, keeping in mind that our domestic economy has stunk for at least the past six years and shows no sign of getting better:

• New technology has allowed the United States to greatly increase the amount of crude oil that can be obtained within our own borders. 
• This technology usage has resulted in high paying new jobs, substantially reducing the unemployment rate in several now oil rich states, e.g. 3% in North Dakota and 5% in Oklahoma. 
• While the U.S. imported upwards of 60% of its oil in 2005, it now only imports 40% of its needs. 
• It is estimated that at the current rate, by 2035, the U.S. might be energy independent of the rest of the world. 
• This would greatly reduce the need for us to butt into the affairs of other countries, militarily and diplomatically, particularly those in the Middle East. 
• The energy technology boom as it relates to natural gas and oil could result in one million new manufacturing jobs in the next ten years. 

Okay, before getting to a solution tomorrow, what do we know about today in the world:

• China’s economy is growing rapidly and will require larger and larger amounts of energy sources, amounts that will require the use of carbon intensive energy sources, including coal, for years to come. 
• China is choking on the pollution that its economic growth and energy usage growth has caused. 
• The U.S. has already substantially reduced its carbon footprint over the past five years without government mandates or bureaucracies. 
• Energy industry experts predict that carbon based energy sources will still constitute the majority of raw material used to generate energy in the next several decades, renewables not withstanding. 
• New energy technology usage in the U.S. is one of the very few industries segments that have shown positive economic and employment growth over the past few years. 

From these five realities, we will propose a simple yet elegant solution to the energy, pollution, and…global warming issue regardless of whether or not global warming is fact or fiction.

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

October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: An Underpaid/Delusional Congressman, Banks Still Rule, and More

Please note: Nancy Pelosi recently made the outrageous comment that there was no waste to be cut in the Federal govnerment, i.e. EVERY dollar the Washington political class spends is essential to our country. Keep this insanity in mind as we go through this month's polticial class insanity, you will quickly see that she is very much out of touch with the reality of today's wasteful federal government.

This is the third in a series to review the latest insanity, lunacy and antics from the American political class. The first two posts were quite depressing. We saw politicians getting richer, fraudsters getting richer, bridges ready to collapse around the country, and more. As a warning, the insanity today and in subsequent days will be as bad, as wasteful, and as depressing as the insanity we have covered this month and in the years leading up to this month. The number of politicians stays the same but the idiocy they come up with, the ineptness they exhibit, continues to grow exponentially.

1) Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. The average/median household annual income in this country has dropped substantially since AFTER the recession ended and is now about $50,000. The price of gas is up about 80% since Obama took office. Food stamp recipients now total over 47 million Americans, an all time record by far.

And what does a current member of Congress think about his salary, currently about $172,000 a year with outstanding benefits to boot? According to  recent Politico article, one lawmaker, Congressman Phil Gingrey,  said he’s “stuck” making $172,000 a year, while Congressional aides will go on to make in big bucks lobbying on K Street, according to a National Review report. Staffers “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street…and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said, according to the National Review.

He is “stuck making $172,000” while tens of millions of Americans cannot even find a job or need help putting food on the table. He is “stuck” making three times more in salary than what the typical American family makes. And it is not like the Congressman is poor. According to Politico, quoting the National Review reports, his net worth is about $3 million. 

We are truly living in a “Hunger Games” country when the country is suffering dire economic stress and a Washington politician complains about only making $172,000.

2) The U.S. healthcare industry can make you shudder. According to Aetna, in the United States, we spend over $2.3 TRILLION a year on health care. No other country in the world spends more but 32 other countries in the world have higher average life expectancies. 

This comes out to over $10,000 a year for every single American citizen but we still rank 33rd in the world. And Obama Care is likely to make us spend more and fall further down the rankings since the legislation never looked at the root causes of the $2.3 TRILLON expense.

3) According to a recent article from the New York Post, that was reviewed in the September 30, 3012 issue of The Week magazine, in just 2001 alone former Congressman Robert Kennedy, Jr. had sexual trysts with 37 different women. He tracked and categorized these trysts, along with annotations, in a diary that the Post had obtained.

Kennedy, whose wife committed suicide last year, is just another politician whose respect for his spouse, his word of honor, his constituents, and his public office is no better than the politicians who came before him, e.g. Weiner, Spitzer, Edwards, MacGreevey, Sanford, Ensign, his uncle JFK, etc. If you are having affairs with 37 different women, it is a lot tougher focusing on the government work of the people.

4) An article in the December, 2012 issue of Reason magazine gave a stunning example of how government spending and mismanagement of taxpayer wealth is so out of control, using the Chicago city government as an example:

• While trying to get its out-of-control budget tamed, between 2003 and 2012 the city of Chicago eliminated more than 8,000 city jobs, about 20% of its workforce.
• However, according to a recent analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, the cost of health care for the remaining employees’ jumped 29% in 2012.
• Additionally, from 2003 to 2012 the annual cost of a city employee on the city payroll jumped from $58,299 per employee to $96,082.
• Thus, with 20% fewer employees compared to 2003, the city is paying out $700 million more a year for 20% fewer employees vs. 2003. 
• Far fewer employees and far more costs, you cannot make this stuff up.
• But it gets worse since on the current budget trend, the city must find a way to increase its annual contributions to the employee pensions fund by almost three fold, from $476 million a year to $1.2 billion a year by 2015.

Needless to say, unless some drastic cuts are taking soon, the city is going pull a “Detroit” in the next few years despite cutting a fifth of its workforce. This is the poster child for out-of-control government spending when you slash staff but increase your staffing budget.

5) I get a little sense of relief when I find out that at least our politicians are no different when it comes to politicians around the world in wasting taxpayer money. The latest issue of Business Week has some information on how the Chinese government has gone overboard building infrastructure in China and has allowed loose credit policies (are you listening, Federal Reserve board) to result in the building of new towns and special zones that have gone unused and unoccupied because while the government said to build and encouraged building. The immutable forces of the market said there was no need or demand for the build outs.

 One of the most glaring examples of taxpayer wealth wasted  is the building of a new airport in a far flung city in the western Chinese hinterlands in the Xinjiang province. The new airport has four check-in counters and handles a grand total of two flights a DAY. Thus, wasting taxpayer money does not appear to be a uniquely American political talent.

6) On January 21, 2010, President Obama stated: “I’m proposing a simple and common sense [financial] reform, which we’re calling the Volcker Rule, after this tall guy behind me.” The Volcker rule that he proposed was to ensure that banks could not make investment bets and investments that would stick American taxpayers with the bill if the banks ended up failing, much like what happened in the Great Recession. 

Simple enough. When the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was passed, the Volcker rule encompassed 12 pages of the final bill. Three years later, the rule has still not been written into formal, enforceable regulations. The unfinal, unapproved regulations now run 530 pages long and we still do not have an answer of how to do this simple thing.

Deadlines for enforcement continue to be missed and you can be sure that many lawsuits will ensue since translating 12 pages of law into well over 500 pages of regulations is going to tick off some people regarding the intent of the original 12 pages and the effect of over 500 pages.

Whenever something can be done simply, you can be sure that our political class will make longer, more difficult and less effective.

7) Speaking of financial matters and the Great Recession, a graphic from a recent issue of Business Week showed how much taxpayer money that the Federal government gave to bail out the firm AIG actually passed through AIG and directly into the hands of foreign banks:

• Canadian banks got $1.4 billion of American taxpayer wealth
• French banks got $20.8 billion
• British banks got $2.6 billion
• German banks got $10.8 billion
• Swiss banks got $3.8 billion
• Netherlands banks got $.6 billion
• Total = $40 billion of American taxpayer wealth ended in the vaults of foreign banks.

Which obviously raises the question of why were foreign banks relieved of the responsibility for their stupid decisions in the marketplace? And why were American taxpayers forced to pay for their stupid decisions?

That $40 billion could have been used to:

• Give every American household a $350 tax rebate.
• Could have kept the White House tours operating for 40,000 years.
• Could have put a trained, armed police professional in every U.S. school for about five years to prevent future Newtown like shootings.

Never underestimate the ability of the American political class to take care of bankers and itself from a financial backer and donor perspective. And now they have expanded to take care of overseas bankers also.

Enough insanity for today but tomorrow brings another day and another batch of lunacy from our politicians.

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

Will The Economic Plight and Suffering Of Young Greek Adults Become the Same Plight For Young American Adults?

As most informed people know, Greece has been a fiscal basket case for the past several years. Corruption, mismanagement of the economy, and political economic ignorance has driven the country into defacto, if not official, bankruptcy. Sky high national debt, sky high and chronic unemployment, and no viable economic or financial plan to turn the country around has created hardships for just about every Greek citizen.

But it seems that young adults in Greece, those that should be embarking on their careers and building their futures today, seem to be getting hit especially hard. Consider some of the findings from a recent Businessweek article about the young adults in Greece:

• While overall unemployment in Greece is about 27%, for young Greek adults that unemployment figure is about twice as high.
• In 2013 and 2014 it is estimated that about 40,000 government employees will lose their government funded jobs, making a horrible unemployment situation even worse.
• Over 100,000 young Greek adults have left the country to find better paying employment overseas.
• The Businessweek article discusses the plight of a young Greek woman who applies for one of 21 social worker jobs that are being interviewed for. She is one of about 2,000 people trying to land on of those 21 jobs.
• Many young Greeks have been forced to move back in with their parents and families or need financial support from their families to get by.

Heart breaking that people have to leave their country to have any chance of a good life and good paying job and career.

But, the situation in Greece is not that different than the heartbreaking challenges and frustration of young adults in this country. Consider some facts and realities, as pointed out in a recent article from the Independent Journal Review website (“8 Signs You're a Young Adult During the Obama Administration“)
from August 6, 2013:

• Since young American adults struggle to find a decent-paying job these days after graduating from high school or college, they are often left with no other financial option than to return home to live with their parents and families. According to a recent Pew Research poll, a record 36% of young adults (that's over 21 million) live with their parents. 
• This fact has consequences all throughout the economy. Since fewer households are formed, the housing market does not grow as fast to accommodate the lower number of new households formed, less furniture and appliances are sold since there are fewer new households, etc., all of which depress economic growth beyond the fact that young adults cannot find decent employment.
• As proof of this previous point, the article points at some research from Pew which found that while 40% of young adults owned their homes in 2007, the number dropped to 34% in 2011 in just four short years, and in a few of those years we were supposedly in an “economic recovery“ mode.
• The Independent Journal article cites another article, this one from Soopermexican, that pointed out 7 out of every 8 jobs added by the Obama administration have been part-time employment. Given that 2 million American young adults graduate college every year, this administration and its economic policies are turning most of those graduates into part time workers.
• While part time work for a college graduate can be frustrating, consider a recent assertion from NPR. NPR claimed as many as one-third of internships in this country are unpaid, and an even higher percentage pay less than minimum wage. Thus, it may be a better option, from a financial perspective, to flip hamburgers at minimum wage than to work for nothing or near nothing as an intern with only a faint promise of moving into full time work out of the internship.
• No job means no money which probably means no new set of wheels. According to CNW Research, while young adults account for 27% of new car sales, that is down significantly from 38% in 1985. Thus, not only does the housing industry suffer from the economy’s inability to create worthwhile employment for young Americans, the auto industry suffers also.
• Not only can’t young Americans look forward to that first big, full time, good paying job, they are already looking at how hard it is going to be to pay off their college loans. The Project on Student Debt estimates that in the past 25 years, the cost of college has risen by 900%. The Wall Street Journal estimates that two-thirds of college graduates have mounting student debt. Thus, young Americans might almost immediately take a hit on their credit scores since they cannot pay off their college loans because their college loans did not pay off in a good job. Thus, bad credit leads to the future inability or lessened ability to get a home mortgage or car loan, further depressing those two industries.
• As a direct consequence of delayed financial, career, and housing stability, young adults in America are waiting until they're older to get married. A Pew Research analysis estimates that the median age at first marriage is higher than ever in America, 26.5 years old for brides and 28.7 years old for grooms.
• Given the fact that young Americans are finding it difficult to find a good paying, full time job, they are saddled with debt , and raising kids is an expensive proposition, the Population Reference Bureau estimates that the U.S. fertility rate (# of children per woman) is now 1.9. How bad is that? 1.9 is lower than the fertility rate during the Great Depression, another bad economic time when kids were viewed as an expensive like to have, not have to have. Only this time, it is worse than the Great Depression.

Let’s go beyond these global trends and look at the latest Federal government jobs report as reported in Yahoo Finance on August 3, 2013 (“We Have Become a Nation of Hamburger Flippers”): 

• Only 162,000 jobs were created in the month of July, a month that most economists expected to see at least 200,000 jobs created.
• Even worse, updated job creation estimates for May and June were revised downward from their current estimates.
• 69% of the jobs created in the second quarter  and 57% created in the first half of 2013 – were in the three lowest-paying sectors of the economy: retail trade, administrative services, and leisure and hospitality. 
• These positions, which account for 33% of all private sector jobs, pay an average of $15.80 per hour.
• “What you’re seeing is now the spreading of low wage growth,” says Dan Alpert of Westwood Capital, “Really, we have become a nation of hamburger flippers, Wal-Mart sales associates, barmaids, checkout people and other people working at very low wages. The fact is that the U.S. employment situation is more of a wounded beast than a bull.” 

Consider more, yet similar, details from an Associated Press report from August 3, 2013:

• The 162,000 jobs the economy added in July were a disappointment as were the poor quality, pay wise and career wise, of those 162,000 positions.  Low-paying retailers, restaurants and bars supplied more than half of July's job gain.
• "You're getting jobs added, but they might not be the best-quality job," said John Canally, an economist with LPL Financial in Boston.
• Year-to-date in 2013, low-paying industries have provided 61% of the nation's job growth, even though these traditionally low paying industries represent just 39% of all U.S. jobs, Mid-paying industries have contributed just 22% of this year's job gain.

This is the so-called economic recovery that the Washington politicians have created for us, the weakest and lamest economic recovery in a long, long time in this country. We have over 20 million Americans either unemployed or under employed. We have the record for longest number of consecutive months with the official unemployment rate over 7%. We have a sky high national debt of almost $17 TRILLION that every American will have to pay off. 

And we have a train wreck (Senator Max Baucus’s words) called Obama Care about to hit young adults in America where they will become criminals in the eyes of Obama Care and Washington if they do not sign up for compulsory health care insurance, an added expense that many just cannot afford. Yes, from a young American adult’s perspective, the Washington political class has made their world and their future look a lot like Greece.

What can be done to change the situation before we actually become Greece? Albert Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Four years after the Great Recession ended we obviously have to do some things differently. What Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Boehner, McConnell, et al have been doing for the past four years has not worked, especially for young adults in this country.

Here’s a couple of potential solutions, based on Einstein’s observation:

1. Kill Obama Care altogether and start over in addressing our health care cost crisis.  This act that would terminate the asinine requirement that anyone working over 30 hours a week  is “full time.” This insanity is causing/forcing businesses across the country to change their personnel profile from full time employment to part time employment, all because of Obama Care. Killing this law would free up time for business people to focus on growing their business, with both full time and part time employees, and growing the economy and not on what Obama Care’s 2,500 pages mean for their business.
2. Dramatically reduce the thousands and thousands of  useless Federal government regulations on the books that cause business owners to waste time, energy, and money complying with many regulations that are useless from an environmental and safety perspective. 
3. Create a one time tax holiday that would amnesty the over one trillion dollars of cash that American businesses have stashed overseas in order to avoid paying high Federal taxes on. Put in some restrictions that prevent those funds from being used for executive compensation, stock buybacks, etc. and allow only employment creating expenses to be incurred with these funds (e.g. building factories, hiring more shifts, providing job training, etc.)
4. We need to overhaul our entire education system so that it is more focused on efficiently spending the way too much money the country already spends on education for far too poor results. Find out what other countries do to educate their kids far better than how we educate ours and then steal their good ideas. Make a case that becoming a welder, plumber, etc. is not a bad thing to pursue, that college is NOT for everybody.
5. Rewrite the tax code so that it fosters economic growth rather than foster revenue growth for the Federal government and for the Washington politicians to waste.
6. Allow only individual citizens to contribute to politicians’ campaign funds, not corporations, unions, PACs, and super PACs. I recent read an article that touched home in this area. The article made a data, fact based case that it is now a better business decision to spend a million dollars on Washington incumbent politicians and lobbyists to get a sweetheart deal from the government than it is to invest that million dollars in new plant and facilities, an option that would generate jobs in the process. Currently, that million dollars only creates a handful of high powered lobbyist jobs while corrupting the democratic and governmental processes in this country.

Unfortunately, according to Einstein, the odds of the current set of politicians doing something different, something effective is pretty small. They thrive and advance their political careers by maintaining the status quo. They keep their full time jobs, the fates of the careers of young American adults be damned. Even if it does turn the country into Greece.

But there is a way to take Einstein’s advice before it is too late. Visit the following website and join the cause to impose term limits on all Federal politicians. The current set of politicians are part of the problem, join the term limits drive and you can be part of the solution that results in Greece becoming a nice vacation and not becoming the financial reality for our kids and family members:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Doing things differently to help the young adults in America: sounds like a good idea and besides, how much worse could it get?

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

Obama Care - Still Constitutional And Still A Major Disaster: Part 2 - IRS Misadventures, Unemployment Impacts and More

Yesterday we reviewed some major and distressing new news about Obama Care. The latest unbiased and nonpartisan experts, including the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare's head actuary, etc., continue to prove our theory that Obama Care is an unfolding disaster for the nation. It will not solve the underlying causes of our high health care costs, it will gut Medicare funding and support over the next ten years, it will leave tens of millions of Americans without health care insurance coverage, and it will add to our skyrocketing national debt.

Unfortunately, we could not fit the latest bad news into one post and needed today's space to continue:

- A New York Times article that was summarized in the August 10, 2012 issue of The Week magazine stated that, partly as a result of Obama Care, the U.S. will be over 60,000 doctors short of what it will need by 2015 as a result of  millions of more Americans receiving health care insurance under the legislation. The shortfall will be more than twice as big by 2025, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Now, to be clear, I would never want to deny health care to another human being. However, this is obviously another big shortcoming of Obama Care. Somehow, the writers of the legislation never understood that if more and more people can get easier access to health care, they will exercise that option.

Thus, the Obama Care writers never made any contingency plans on how to handle increased demand with no increase in suppliers. Simple supply and demand economic theory that is lost on on our politicians, a theory that will lead to increase costs and lower care (more demand, no increase in supply, has to lead to higher prices and costs: Economics 101).

- A CNNMoney.com article that was summarized in the July 27, 2012 issue of The Week magazine confirmed our assumption yesterday that companies will hire fewer workers and change full time workers to part time workers. They cannot afford the increased Obama Care costs and taxes that will be imposed on companies with more than 50 full time employees who do not provide full health care insurance.

It cites small business owner David Barr who successfully owns and operates two dozen fast food franchises: "[Barr] says he'd rather do that [change his full time workers to part time workers] than pay the $546,000 he says it will cost him to cover all 425 of his current employees."

Why would he downgrade over 400 employees to part time?  According to the article, "His business model isn't meant to support these costs." 

Consider the decisions of business owner Randall Tabor, who owns two Quiznos sandwich restaurants with 36 workers in Virginia Beach, Va., in a Wall Street Journal interview that was cited in the August 2, 2012 issue of Moneynews. He has rolled back earlier plans he had to triple the number of his outlets since Obamacare was passed in 2010.


Horrid legislation, make hundreds of Americans just in these two examples take a downgrade in employment or not get hired at all. As this is repeated thousands and thousands of times across the country, disposable income will also drop as will economic growth, all for a government program that will never work.

- One of the biggest issues of Obama Care is that it forces Americans to buy a service, in this case, health insurance. That was the main reason behind the Supreme Court challenge that the Court somehow viewed as legal. Obviously, many Americans found this government imposition of forcing a purchase in a supposedly free country as counter liberty.

However, according to an article in the July 20, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, despite Obama Care, the government cannot actually force a citizen to buy health insurance, contrary to what most people think. The article lays out the situation:

• The Obama Care health care purchase mandate/tax cannot truly compel an American to buy health insurance. While it levies a tax on those who do not buy insurance, unbelievably, there is no legal mechanism to enforce the mandate.
• The article supposes that millions of people may decide to forego paying for health insurance and save paying the health care premiums since the Federal government cannot not affect them except under one specific condition.
• That condition is that, if in the future, the IRS owes a non-purchaser a tax refund, it can withhold the tax refund to pay the penalty for not buying health care insurance.
• The CBO estimates that 4 million Americans will bypass the mandate to purchase insurance and save the monthly premiums because of this lack of enforcement.
• One reason for bypassing is that even with an Obama Care subsidy, as an example, a family of four earning about $45,000 a year will find it cheaper to pay the Obama Care penalty, IF and WHEN it should ever happen, than purchasing the cheapest insurance option offered in the Obama Care insurance exchanges.
• This will put more people back into emergency rooms for sickness and illness treatment, the exact opposite of what Obama Care is supposed to do.
• The article illustrates this likelihood by quoting the opinions of a Texas mother who stated in the article that she would rather risk a low, potential $250 government fine sometime in the future than pay $1,800 a year for insurance today: "I could much more easily afford a dadgum penalty than be saddled month after month after month than be saddled with this kind of premium." She stated she will continue to take her family illnesses and sicknesses to an emergency room. And there is virtually nothing Obama Care can do about her attitude and actions.
• Despite not being able to collect mandated penalties, the Obama administration recently allocated about half a billion dollars to the IRS for enforcement of this mandate that it cannot enforce. Insanity.
• As we have observed previously, wouldn't these government resources be better spent on reducing the over $100 billion that the Federal government loses every year to criminal fraud, waste, and inefficiencies in existing Medicare and Medicaid programs? Wouldn't  that be a better option than wasting time hassling honest American citizens who are just trying to optimize their lives vs. organized crime and other criminal elements who are only trying to rob the American taxpayer?

- Lets go to an article from the July 9, 2012 issue of Business Week. The article reviews many of the same facts that were covered in The Week article cited above, including the fact that Congress prohibited the IRS from placing liens on property and assets or garnishing wages for those that do not purchase health care insurance.

However, it adds two additional pieces of information. First, the IRS will somehow have to enforce 47 additional tax provisions as a result of Obama Care. As the article points out, and we have pointed out numerous times, the IRS cannot currently collect about $385 billion that is owed to the Federal government from tax evaders every year. If it cannot enforce the current tax laws, it is difficult to believe it will
be able to efficiently and effectively enforce 47 more tax requirements.   

Second, while the IRS commissioner needs an 11% increase in the IRS budget to handle Obama Care, it has seen Congress reduce its budget in each of the past two years, shrinking its enforcement staff by 3,000. It is highly unlikely Congress will restore those cuts AND increase the IRS budget in the future, meaning that the IRS component of Obama Care is also going to be a failure and disaster.

Failure and disaster, hassling of honest Ameircans while dishonest theives steal from Medicare and Mediciad, more and more Americans lsing their current health insurance plans, doctor shortages, less employment, reduction in disposable income. Yes, Obama Care is Constitutional. However, that still does not make it a good idea.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

High Pay, Low Workload, No Performance Reviews - The Life Of A Washington Politician

Many times we have reviewed the major, unresolved issues Americans have struggled with and against over the past few decades including a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, crumbling infrastructure, escalating health care costs, leaky borders, the lack of a national energy strategy and program, skyrocketing national debt, a mismanaged economy, government corruption and cronyism, etc. These problems go unresolved even though the Washington political class confiscates over $2 TRILLION a year in taxpayer wealth. 

Many times we have also reviewed the large amount of waste, hundreds of billions of dollars a year, that large and small Federal government programs lose every year to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud. Just three of them, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security waste over $200 billion a year.

In our November 7, 2011 post we reported that, according to CBS News, as reported in the November 11, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, members of the House of Representatives earn over $170,000 a year, more than three times the average household income of the typical American household. However, those Congressional members will be in Congressional session only 109 workdays in 2012 while in recess for 151 weekdays, primarily to be able to focus more on their re-election than the business of the country. In January, August, and October of 2012, they are scheduled to work six days, three days, and five days, respectively.

This lackadaisical attitude is not just in Congress. We currently have a President and Vice President who have attended well over 100 campaign fundraising events this year alone, have taken numerous vacations, have held numerous athletic team photo ops, and have played many, many rounds of golf while the nation suffers through a horrendous economic reality.

We have a Senate majority leader in Harry Reid who has not allowed the Senate to develop a detailed national budget for over three years, one of his primary responsibilities. However, Mr. Reid recently introduced legislation that will establish Federal government over the boxing industry and actually held a news conference to protest the fact that U.S. Olympic uniforms were made in China. But he still has not developed a Federal budget for over 1,100 days.

Many times we have reviewed how the political class has hijacked our political processes for their own good. How they gerrymander Congressional districts to ensure their reelection, how they accept all kinds of campaign donations from outside entities in exchange for doing the bidding of these outside entities, how they use taxpayer money in the thinly disguised ruse of earmarks to receive more reelection campaign cash.

Thus, is it any wonder why no issue ever gets resolved in this country? Is it any wonder why taxes are never well spent and never go down? Is it any wonder why we are heading for a national fiscal disaster and national economic collapse in this country?

As the old saying goes, "its good work if you can get it." High pay,outstanding benefits, low performance, and no performance reviews since they corrupt the current performance review process (i.e. control the election processes). There is no accountability for what does or does not get done, what does get spent and how.

The point of all this was driven home by a short article in the July 23, 2012 issue of Business Week magazine. The article, "The Doing A-Lot-of-Nothing Congress," listed out all of the 54 bills that this sitting of Congress has passed. The highlights, or lowlights, of the article include the following:

• First of all, the number 54 is pretty atrocious. I do not want Congress passing bad legislation or passing legislation for the sake of just passing something, but from a pure number perspective, according to the article, the low number of 54 is one of the least productive sessions of Congress in our history, especially in light of all the problems we face.
• Of the 54 bills passed, the article considers only five of them were big, important pieces of legislation.
• Three of the other bills were only temporary, stop gap bills that led to the final passage of one of the five important bills.
• Three of the bills were nothing more than a rubber stamp approval of existing laws that needed to be renewed.
• Nine of the bills were no more than bills to approve trivial real estate transactions including transferring land beneath offices in Alta, Utah to the town itself, giving Federal property to the city of Tracy, California and the city of Pascagoula, Mississippi, giving Federal property in western Alaska to a company owned by Alaskan natives, a law to promote the development of some waterfront in D.C. and a law to protect the Maine Lobster Memorial statue.
• There were sixteen bills passed that the authors of the article classified as miscellaneous and included such trivial undertakings as directing the U.S.Mint to print coins in honor of the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Marshall Service, granting more law enforcement power to prosecute smugglers who build or finance tunnels into the U.S., and clearing the way for a new bridge crossing the St.Croix river between Minnesota and Wisconsin.
• There were sixteen bills that renamed post office buildings.
• There were three laws that renamed other Federal buildings such as a courthouse, a wildlife refuge, and a border patrol station.
• And finally, to add insult to injury, there was one bill passed that fixed the address of a renamed post office building.

That is all this Congressional session accomplished. If you add up all of the red, bold faced numbers listed above you should come up with 54, with about a third of them involving nothing more than changing the name on a building. Pathetic and dysfunctional.

For this they earn more in salary than probably 95% of the rest of America's citizens. They get health care and other benefits that are probably better than every other Americans'. They get these full time benefits and full time pay for working part time hours. They get to indulge in insider IPOs to enhance their earnings and probably use their government positions to forge post political office jobs that pay even more. And when you really come down to it, they get all this for approving the names of post office buildings.

A couple of suggestions on how to remedy the situation:

1. Most Americans have to work about 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to earn their annual salary. This comes out to about 2080 hours a year. I propose that the annual salary of these Washington politicians be reduced on a percentage basis for every hour below 2080 hours that they do not work. For example, if Congress is only going to be in session for five days this October and October has 23 work days for most other Americans, than Congressional member pay would only be 5/23rds in October. Thus, rather than receiving about $14,200 in their October pay check ($170,000 annual pay evenly spread across 12 months), each member of Congress would only get paid about $3,100 for their only five days of work.
2. Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would impose term limits on all Federal political offices. Maybe if a sitting politician knew that they only had a predefined, limited time to make a worthwhile contribution to the country and their legacy, they would take more initiative beyond renaming post office buildings.
3. Step 37 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" proposes a process where American citizens would get to grade all Washington politicians, President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries and members of Congress, on their performance and withhold payment of salary and benefits if those grades to not meet minimal thresholds. This might encourage members of the political class to cooperate more, to respect each other more, to compromise for the good of the country more since their paychecks would hang in the balance if they did not.

I am reminded of the words from the movie, "The American President," as presented by actor Michael Douglas: "America is not easy. You gotta want it badly because it's going to put up a fight." Based on the lazy behavior, extensive vacation time, golfing time, and campaigning time, and the bad priorities of the current Washington political class along with the many unresolved issues of our times, I am quite sure that our current set of politicians do not want it bad enough.


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

March, 2012 Political Insanity, Part 2 - The Regular Insanity

Yesterday, we covered a special "numbers only" edition of our monthly political class insanity where we focused on the quantitative craziness and insanity that the political class continually inflict on all of us, "by the numbers." Today, we will look at the more qualitative aspect of the lunacy that the politicians constantly inflict on all of us.

As usual, we start with some of the insanity that is documented every month in Reason magazine:

- In the April, 2012 issue of Reason magazine why find out that folk singer Vance Gilbert was pulled off a flight in Boston by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials and Massachusetts State Police for suspicious behavior. What was he doing to warrant both the long arm of the state and the Federal authorities? They apparently found it suspicious that he was reading a book about vintage airplanes.

This is the same TSA that we previously reported on that had allowed seven real security breaches everyday, on average, for the past ten years. Now we know why, many of their resources are diverted into the investigation of reading habits of the traveling public. How far down the silly rabbit hole have we fallen?

- Political class insanity is not restricted to the United States. Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau recently ruled, making it official, that the red M&M is not a bully. Yes, Australia taxpayers pay for some crazy wastes of efforts just like taxpayers in this country.

The Australiain government agency was concerned that the red M&M's treatment of other colored M&Ms in TV commercials was encouraging children to bully each other. The study took two months work of time, resources and bureaucracy to reach this startling conclusion.

- Our lost, but wide ranging, war on drugs constantly takes innocent citizens as its victims. Janet Goodin is one such victim. She was recently traveling back to her home in Minnesota from Manitoba, Canada when she was stopped at the U.S. border by custom agents. They searched her minivan and found a jar of black liquid, of which field tests indicated it was heroin.

She was handcuffed and thrown in jail under suspicion of possessing, importing, and trafficking heroin. After twelve days she was released when further tests proved that the black liquid was not heroin, it was ordinary motor oil. This provides a little insight as to why we are losing the war on drugs - the government and the political class that operate it cannot easily tell the difference between heroin and motor oil, either by touch, smell, or more advanced tests.

Remember, taxpayer money paid for the border agents, the field test, the arresting officers, the operating of the jail, the housing and feeding of Ms. Goodin, and the final, more accurate tests.

- Up until recently, a bartender working in California could not legally serve a liquor that was "food infused," e.g. a cocktail featuring rosemary gin, a lemongrass-saffron vodka or other juicy or foody drink. The law against such mixology had been on the books for decades but only recently had the California Beverage Control organization of the state government threatened to enforce this idiotic law.

Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing and a bill was passed recently that eliminated the ban. State Senator Mark Leno decided to sponsor the repeal since relative to this mixology problem, for "government to be interfering make no sense whatsoever." Good for him but think about how much time, resources, and taxpayer wealth was wasted by the effort to pass this silly law, to enforce this silly law, and to repeal this same silly law.

- The Federal telephone Universal Service tax has been around for a long, long time. It is a tax placed on all users of telephone lines in this country and the taxes it collects are used to subsidize the market for telephone service for rural markets that are underserved or overpriced by existing telephone providers.

In other words, the Feds decided that every American should have access to a phone line, even if it meant taxing those with phone lines to pay for phone lines for others living in the boondocks. This may have been a sound, social idea way back when the phone lines we were talking about were all hard, land line phones into people's homes and businesses.

However, over time, more and more people communicate only with cell phones, causing the Federal government to continually rise the tax rate on a dwindling number of land line phones across the nation. According to Reason, these funds are still needed since it can cost as much as $11,000 to add a single landline to a new rural customer. $11,000 is a lot of money, just for one household or one business.

Wouldn't it be a better deal to get just to get these rural people a cell phone capability? Put in a couple of towers, hand out some basic cellular phones and call it a day rather than investing $11,000 per customer in a rapidly dying, obsolete technology?

- An article form the January, 2012  of Reason magazine reviewed a major screw up and subsequent arrogant response by the FBI. Apparently, a citizen had had his Ferrari stolen but, fortunately, it was recovered by law enforcement.

Unfortunately, the Ferrari was wrecked in an auto accident when an FBI agent was moving it. The arrogance comes into play in that the FBI refuses to pay for the loss of the $750,000 car and is also refusing to release records related to the accident. Talk about abusing a citizen's property rights.

But Reason magazine is not the only source of political class insanity:

- A February 15, 2012 Associated Press article reported that an Arizona state legislator had introduced a bill that would punish public school teachers if they use profanity in the classroom. State Sen. Lori Klein introduced the measure because a parent in her district complained about a high school teacher using foul language.

Unemployment is high, schools, towns and cities across the country, probably including those in Arizona, are facing budget cuts and tax revenue shortfalls, and we know from the hubbub a few years ago that Arizona is wrestling with the front lines of illegal immigration. All important issues that touch the lives of most state citizens and this state politician is trying to regulate what a teacher might say in her classroom.

This is not to say that a teacher should be using profane language in the teaching of students. I doubt many do and if they do, it was probably an accident or the kid it was directed at had it coming for bad behavior. But do we really need a law to intrude into the teaching process? What would this law do, send in a SWAT team to arrest the offending teacher?

Teachers have enough to worry about. Trust that the school's principal can control the situation, don't waste government time because a single parent wigged out on a single teacher, focus on more important issues.

- According to The Hill in an article from late January, 2012, another Obama alternative energy "bet" had gone belly up. The Indiana-based energy-storage company, Ener1, whose subsidiary received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department, had filed for bankruptcy. Ener1 is asking a Federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in new equity funding.

Want to bet the taxpayers never see a penny from their $118.5 million investment, much like they will never see a penny from the bad $530 million investment Obama made in Solyndra or the numerous other multi-million dollar bad investments Obama made in other alternative energy companies?

- An article written for the American Spectator by Kevin Glass in October, 29122 was titled: "Intended or Unintended Consequence? Obamacare Disincentivizes Marriage." We have written about many examples of how poorly written and thought out Obama Care was. However, Mr. Glass does it much better regarding how this disastrous legislation is anti-woman and anti-marriage:

"The major part of President Barack Obama's health care law that would expand coverage involves subsidizing households looking to obtain health insurance up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line.


And it turns out that there's a problem there. Whereas many welfare and government programs take into account the number of people involved in a household, Obamacare does not. Analysts testifying before Congress yesterday discussed the disincentives:


"The way this bill is structured, there are disincentives for women to marry and disincentives for women to work," said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.


"Two singles would each be able to earn $43,000 and still receive help to purchase health insurance, but if they got married and combined their earnings to $86,000, they would be far above the limit," Furchtgott-Roth explained. So those with that much income as a couple would lose the government subsidies and be on their own for thousands of dollars in health coverage.


The subsidies disappear at 400 percent of the poverty line and it's the poor structure of the program that creates work disincentives. Economics 21 reports, "Once that threshold is crossed, the subsidy immediately drops to zero. So for a family of four in that income range, a raise in wages would actually result in a significant reduction in take-home pay."

Mr. Glass summarizes by correctly observing and concluding: "We know that Obamacare was questionably-designed and rushed through Congress. It might be true that we had to pass it to find out just how big of a mess it's put us in."

- Business Week reported in its February 13, 2012 issue that in 2011, only 80 of the 5,929 bills introduced in Congress actually became law. This is a meager success rate of 1.3%. I do not know any human organization that can legitimately claim it is a worthwhile endeavor when its success rate is 1.3%.

With all of the troubles facing this nation, a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, two wars, the lack of a national energy strategy, escalating health care costs, leaky borders, skyrocketing national debt, etc., I doubt a 1.3% success rate is going to cut it as far as alleviating these onerous issues.

My suspicion is that if you looked into what the 80 successful bills that were enacted actually covered, I would bet the majority of them did not seriously address any of the above major issues. Typically, many of the efforts that get approved by Congress are to rename post office buildings or to honor a local hero such as a fireman, policeman, or member of our armed forces, or to celebrate a local event or anniversary.

Looked at from a different perspective, in 2011, according to the article, the American taxpayer paid $94,280,500 for just the salaries of the 535 politicians in Congress. That means if you just look at the salaries paid to our sitting politicians and divide that number by just the 80 bills they actually enacted, it cost the American taxpayer almost $1.2 million, on average, to get something through Congress.

If you make an educated guess an assume that there is ten times as much spent in Congressional staffs; salaries and supplies, and other costs, you could easily make a case that sometime last year we  spent over $11 million to rename a Post office somewhere in the country. It may have cost more to name the building than to build it.

I am not saying that Congress needs to pass more bills to bring down these per bill costs. However, we are never going to solve the major issues of our times with such feeble output from Congress and the politicians sitting in Congress.

- It has been over a thousand days, coming up on three years, that the U.S. Senate has failed to come up with a formal budget, they continue to keep the government operating with gross, high level budget extensions. Is it any surprise, then, that our national debt is rising far above $15 TRILLION?

As any household or business knows, you cannot control your costs and expenses if you do not develop, hone, and operate within detailed budget plans. To do without a budget invites abuse and inefficiencies. And you cannot be any more inefficient than $15 TRILLION.

All in all, another pretty pathetic month of performance out of the American political class, wasting taxpayer wealth in a variety of ways including bad alternative energy "bets," the continuing unfolding of the Obamacare horror show, nonperformance of political class duties, shoddy performance of government duties, bad priorities, major issues still unresolved.

However, there was one very small bright ray of sanity that showed up among the misery listed above. According to the Business Week article cited above, Congressman Thomas Latham has introduced a bill in Congress called the "Do Your Job Act." This legislation would put Congressional salaries into escrow if Congress does not pass a real budget every year by May 15. A lone piece of sanity in a sea of political class idiocy, insanity, incompetence, and lunacy.





We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

A Nation Should Have A Tax System That Looks Like Someone Designed It On Purpose

The title for today's post comes from William Simon who long ago served as the U.S. Treasury Secretary, from 1974 to 1977 under both Nixon and Ford. He was being sarcastic when he coined the phrase, realizing that even decades ago, the United States did not have a tax system that looked like an intelligent being designed it on purpose. Such a system would be easy to comply with, easy to understand, and not a burden on the economy.

Over time, the political class has continuously used the tax system to reward both constituents and reelection campaign donors and tried to manage social and political changes by manipulating the tax code to advantage those changes. As a result, we have ended up with a tax system that is anything but fair, easy to understand, efficient, and easy to comply with.

Consider the following factoids about our nation's tax system:

- I first started out trying to find out a basic fact: how many pages are in the Title 26 Federal Tax Code? The answers I found were never exactly the same but were pretty consistent, most around 70,000 pages. However, most of the estimates were prior to 2011, they probably did not take into account the additional Federal tax changes that Obama Care seeks to put into place so at least 70,000 pages seems like a solid number

How long is 70,000 pages? If you were reading my three volume edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" tome, which measure about 5 inches across, you would have to read it about 70 times. If you bought the King James version of the Bible that is currently available on Amazon, you would have to read it about 46 times. And both of these examples are probably much easier reads than 70,000 pages of tax code.

- An online article from U.S. News and World Report in April, 2010 also estimated 70,000 pages but provided some additional, fascinating, and depressing statistics:

• Americans spend about 7.6 billion hours a year just preparing their tax returns.
• This is the equivalent of placing 3.8 million Americans into full time jobs.
• Using this criteria, the tax preparation effort in this country is six times larger than the auto making industry in this country.
• The original Federal tax code published in 1913 was 400 pages long, making it about .6% the size of what we deal with today.

- According to a Business Week article from its Insider report for Spring, 2011, there is a $345 billion gap between what U.S. taxpayers are supposed to pay in Federal taxes and what they actually pay. This gap theoretically places an additional tax burden of about $3,000 on each U.S. household, all because the political class and the government it runs does not know how operate an efficient tax collection system. The size and complexity of our 70,000 page tax code probably has a lot do to with tax evaders being so proficient at hiding the taxes the owe.

- According to a short article in the December 12, 2011 issue of Business Week, 51 Federal tax breaks were expected to expire at the end of 2010. A sampling of these 51 tax breaks give a good indication of how convoluted and needlessly complex our tax system has become (remember these are the tax components that went away, there are probably thousands and thousands of other similar ones that did not go away and which take up the 70,000 pages):

1. Special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.
2. Mine rescue team training credit.
3. Temporary increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax revenues to Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands.
4. Credit for electric-drive motorcycles, three-wheeled vehicles, and low speed vehicles.
5. Seven year recovery period for motor-sports entertainment complexes.
6. Look through treatment of payments between related controlled foreign corporations under the foreign personal holding company rules.
7. American Samoa economic development credit.
8. Tax credit for first time DC home buyers.

These were some of the 51 tax components that I understood. Many of the other ones are complicated and apparently narrowly focused. Few, if any of these 51, apply to the vast number of ordinary Americans. They were likely developed and inserted into the tax code at the behest of  Washington politicians to support a narrow geographic, personal, or business interest.

Did any politicians personally make use of that tax credit to buy DC home and real estate? Did Hollywood interests kick in some political campaign donations for those special expensing rules? How many Americans qualify for the mine training credit? Special rules for special political people all of which add to the complexity of our tax code, favor special interests, and cost ordinary Americans more in their own tax bill.

- A March 21, 2011 article in Business Week magazine reported how American corporations are holding $1 TRILLION worth of profits and cash overseas since it is a better business, financial, and economic decision to do so than to bring that wealth back to the United States and have it heavily taxed.

$1 TRILLION is about 25% more than what the Obama administration spent on its economic stimulus program. Dumping $1 TRILLION back into the U.S. economy, would have to have a positive economic on our unemployment situation. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a tax code that encouraged American companies to bring money and wealth back into America for investment in America which would generate jobs for Amercians?

- A recent Wall Street Journal article, that was summarized in the April 29, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, estimated that U.S. taxpayers expend about $431 billion a year to comply with the complexity of the U.S. tax code. This money could be so much better spent on productive expansion of the economy and employment rather than tax paperwork.

- Another Busines Week article in the Spring, 2011 issue had some interesting facts regarding corporate tax realities. According to the article, although the top U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, that rate is applied haphazardly and grossly unfairly against different companies and different industries:

• For the business quarter that ended on December 31, 2010, Proctor and Gamble had an effective tax rate of 17.9%.
• Other the past three years, Walmart has had an effective tax rate of 33.6%, about twice the tax rate of Proctor and Gamble.
• But wait! Over that same time frame, General Electric had an effective U.S. tax rate of 3.6% even though it had billions in revenue and profits, about one ninth the rate of poor Walmart.

Looks like Walmart needs to significantly improve its Washington lobbying effort, given how poorly the tax code treats it vs. how well the same tax code treats General Electric. You cannot say you have a fair and balanced tax code when different sections of the economy are treated radically different from each other.

- Let's stay with General Electric for a while to show how ridiculous our 70,000 page tax code is. According to November news reports, the latest General Federal tax filing, if it had been printed out rather than submitted electronically, would have been about 57,000 pages in length.

In other words, just one company's one year tax filing would have been about 80% the length of the entire tax code. To make it more tangible, these 57,000 pages, if stacked one on top of another, would be about 19 feet tall.

Think about how many GE resources went into compiling a 57,000 page, one year tax return. Think about how much more productively GE could have used those resources to create new products and expand the economy.

Think about how many government resources will have to be expended to go through one 57,000 page tax return. Think about how easy it is for GE to cheat on its 57,000 page tax return, which I am definitely not saying it did,  since I doubt even the Federal government has the resources to thoroughly go through all 57,000 pages to determine if the filing was accurate.

Think about how much better those government resources could be used if we had a simpler tax system, possibly diverting those resources to go  after the criminals and fraudsters that rip off Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid of hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

Details of the GE 57,000 page, 19 feet tax filing can be found at http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ge-filed-57000-page-tax-return-paid-no-taxes-14-billion-profits_609137.html

The details of how unproductive a 70,000 page tax code be is now pretty obvious. It creates an incredibly complex process that makes tax cheating and tax evasion so easy. It allows politicians to use the tax code to reward their financial backers or to personally enrich themselves.

It wastes time, resources, and wealth, all of which could be used for far more productive purposes, either reducing government fraud and waste or allowing individuals and companies to focus on expanding their businesses and lives. Replacing non-productive tax activities with productive economic activities would certainly go a long way to reducing unemployment in this country.

How do we get to this new view that taxes should be simple, fair, compassionate and not a drain on the economy? Believe it or not, the first step has to be installing term limits (Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government) into our political processes. Our current set of politicians, in both parties, are not interested in simplifying the tax code. If they did, they would lose a primary source of political and financial power. They need to be replaced and the only way to do that is via a Constitutional amendment that imposes a "one and done" term limit restriction on all Federal politicians.

In the mean time, we will propose a simplified tax code approach within the next week that is fair, easy, effective, and efficient. It is not hard to do if you use reason, logic, and a little math, three attributes that constantly appear to elude most of Washington's political class. Until then, consider two paragraphs about GE that we reported on in our July 6, 2011 post:

"Let's look at General Electric for a business example. They recently announced they had 2010 profits of $5.1 billion on their U.S. operations. [Note: GE also had about $9 billion worth of overseas earnings] Very impressive. However, more impressive is that they paid no Federal income tax on those profits. Even more impressive, they were able to legally work the complexity of the tax code so that they actually received a $3.2 billion tax credit from the United States government.


This is really nice work if you can get it. Earn billions of dollars, pay no taxes on those billions, and the government will give you billions more."

If this is not the poster child for fair and efficient tax reform, I do not know what is. More on our plan next week.



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.


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http://www.repealamendment/