Only In America

In the early 1960s, a musical group called Jay and the Americans had a big hit song called "Only In America." It was an upbeat song that extolled the virtues of our country where only in America could a poor person grow up to be President, a pauper could become a millionaire, and everyone could attain their dreams, including their dream girl:

Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

Only in America
Can a kid who's washin' cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars
Only in America
Could a dream like this come true
Could a guy like me start with nothing and end up with you

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me


It was simpler time and probably a more hopeful time. Since then, the country has become nastily divided against itself as a result of self serving politicians and our freedoms and opportunities available back then seem to have become scarcer over time. More obvious, our political class has led the country down some pretty ludicrous, bewildering, wasteful, and noneffective alleys:

1. Only in America can politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $70,000-a-plate campaign fund raising event.


2. Only in America can politicians pour more taxpayer money into education per child than any other country in the world but still severely under educate U.S. kids relative to the rest of that world.

3. Only in America can politicians talk about reducing the nation's escalating health care costs while simultaneously implementing health care reform legislation that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the country's national debt.

4. Only in America could we have had  two of the people most responsible for our tax code — Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the House Ways and Means Committee — turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

5. Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally immediately become American citizens for free.

6. Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as “extremists.”

7. Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a check, buy alcohol, rent a car, or board an airplane but not to vote.

8. Only in America could politicians insist the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the financial return on equity of a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of what a company that manufactures sports shoes and apparel (Nike) makes.

9. Only in America could politicians demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when government taxes per gallon of gas are multiple times higher than the profit per gallon of gas for the oil companies.

10. Only in America can politicians tell you that they support freedom and liberty but then try tell you not to have an abortion, not to be gay, not to smoke dope, impose their will on your religious beliefs, not to call Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorists, force you to pay into a retirement system (Social Security) that is an absolute horror show of a retirement plan, force you to pay into a retirement medical plan that (Medicare) that is rapidly going bankrupt, control who gets a student loan, and wants to control your non-retirement health insurance and health care (Obama Care).

11. Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from its citizens than any nation in history of the world, still spend a trillion dollars more than it receives every year for total spending ($7 million PER MINUTE), and complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.

12. Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their “fair share” by 45% of the citizenry who don’t pay any income taxes at all.

13. Only in America can a supposedly free people not be free from paying all forms of government taxes until late April every year.

14. Only in America can the political class constantly try to dictate moral standards but itself be rife with adulterers, tax cheats, and liars.

15. Only in America can politicians spend trillions of dollars over the years without winning the war on drugs, without implementing a coherent national energy plan, without sealing our borders, and without repairing our crumbling infrastructure.

16. Only in America do you have to prove to the government that you have health insurance (under Obama Care rules) but not prove to that same government you are legally here in this country.

Only in American used to inspire hope, freedom, and the chance to attain a better life for ourselves and our family. Today, in America we are subjected to self serving, ill-equipped, and ill-performing politicians, that squash hope, restrict freedom, and who make it ever more difficult to attain a better life for ourselves and our family.

To get back to the Jay and the Americans sense of country, we need to start the process of implementing Step 39 from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government." Step 39 would implement term limits for every Federal politician so that they would be "one and done." The vast majority of current people in Congress have been there for ten, twenty, thirty or more years. Since they are obviously not part of the solution, they then must be part of the problem. Eliminate them, starting by signing the petition at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/united_states_of_purple_015.htm


and make America "the land of opportunity" again.


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/

What Is An American?

It has been very depressing times for ordinary Americans over the past few years. High and stubborn unemployment levels, incompetent and self serving politicians, a bloated and ineffective government bureaucracy, national problems that go unresolved for decades (lost war on drugs, failing public schools, the continued lack of a national energy strategy, escalating health care costs, just to name a few), a national debt that might crash our economy and our democracy, overwhelming tax burdens for underwhelming government services, and the steady deterioration in our freedoms and liberty. 

We are saddled with a set of politicians that divide us whenever possible only to further their political aims and gains. We are saddled with a set of politicians that have hijacked our election processes so that the voice of ordinary Americans is drowned out and washed away by big money from unions, corporations, lobbyists, and PACs.  We are saddled with a set of politicians that view our current laws, government processes, and the Constitution as merely a set of suggestions that can be followed or ignored at their whimsy.

However, I still maintain, as I did in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," that America is still the best country on earth with the best citizens, the best history of democracy, and the greatest guidelines for government every written, as laid out in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. Unfortunately, America cannot attain its optimal state of prosperity and liberty since it is currently served by an inferior political class that believe they are more important than these concepts of America.

This situation was graphically and effectively laid out in one of our most popular blog posts of all time from November 18, 2010, "The Freedom Pyramid: Where it Should Be Vs. Where It Is Today" (http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html). Although these graphics laid out the deterioration of our democracy vs. what our democracy should look like, I thought some words that I came across recently might do a better job of picking up our spirits today in the face of the the major problems we face. 

Please read the following observations from an Australian dentist. Hopefully these words will renew your faith that we can get through our problems together, with or without the help of our current set of politicians:

Written by an Australian Dentist

To Kill an American

You probably missed this in the rush of news, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper, an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is. So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)

An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan ...

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 1, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Great words and an inspiring tribute to America and Americans. Notice in the words above, there is no mention of politicians, Democrats, Republicans, government agencies, government bureaucracies, and government organizations. There is no mention because they are not what makes America great. They are supposed to support the concept and virtue of America but they have all done a very poor job of that over the past few decades.

In fact, these entities have done their darnest, especially the political class, to undermine the very concepts that make this country the best hope of humanity. Rather than lead and unite, our politicians divide and conquer.

Rather than support the concept of diversity and freedom of speech, our politicians demean and slander those with a different viewpoint of the world. American citizens have recently been labeled racists, un-American, Neanderthals, barbarians, terrorists, gerbils, Nazis, a__h___s, sluts, and Klan members by current politicians, simply for having a different viewpoint. That is not leadership, that is destructive and subhuman behavior.

So, heed the words from Australia. We are still a great people with a great country, and a great heritage of freedom... that are being poorly served by the politicians that are currently in charge. Rather than feel sorry for ourselves, may I suggest that each of us undertake the following steps in our lives to live up to the high expectations in Australia, around the world, and here in the United States:

1) Respect different opinions of others in our nation. Respect the diversity of experience, expertise, and viewpoints that they can bring to a problem's solution. No one has all of the answers to the great issues of our times. No one knows where an answer might come from. By disrespecting and shutting out the opinions and viewpoints of others, we dramatically reduce our chances of resolving an issue.

2) Be passionate about your viewpoints, not emotional.A passionate person will usually promote their positions and the reasons for their positions in a positive, coherent, and logical manner. An emotional person will usually negatively and loudly promote their positions not by stressing their views but by denigrating both the other person and the other person's contrary views.

Yelling at each other in a highly emotional state will never bring us together to solve the problems of our times. All that does is play into the selfish aims of the politicians, as they use our emotional outbursts against each other to "energize their base," not solve our problems.

3) Please join us to impose term limits on all Federal politicians, as proposed by Step 39 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." That effort has already started with an online petition effort at the following website page:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/united_states_of_purple_015.htm

4) Dante once said: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality." If you see another American being attacked for simply having an opinion, even if you disagree with their opinion, I believe it is your duty as an American to defend that person's right to have a contrary opinion.

It is a fundamental right of our democracy and if we allow personal attacks on other Americans for simply having an opinion, at some point in time those attacks will surely come around and be aimed at us. For example, even if you are a Democrat and a Democratic politician calls a Republican an a__h___, a slut, a Neanderthal, or other slur, it is your responsibility as an American to call that Democratic politician to task for the attack.

5) Finally, we ask that you consider helping to fix our broken political processes that we have allowed our political class to control and abuse. Many of these fixes were laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," and include such fixes as term limits, election campaign money restrictions, stopping the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, higher moral standards for elected officials, the strengthening of election campaign laws and enforcement, etc. By not getting involved in these fixes, we end up abdicating our citizen responbilities and the associated democracy and liberty that comes with these responsibilities.

What is an American? An American is generally a great person, a compassionate person, living in a great country with a great heritage of freedom that is so poorly served by its politicians and those that live off of those politicians. We can be great again but it requires us all to be more respectful, kinder, hard working and great listeners while being ever suspicious of anything a politician tells us, especially when that politician's message is one of hate and fear against those Americans with a different opinion.



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/
 

Warnings Unheeded, Disasters Incurred - A Warning From Omni Magazine, Circa 1989

In cleaning out a closet recently I came across and old issue of Omni magazine. Omni's writing and articles were a combination of scientific fact, technology and science fiction and it was in print from 1978 until 1995. An article from its January, 1989 issue caught my eye. It was entitled, "Near Future Potential For Massive Terrorism on U.S. Soil" and was written by G. Gordon Liddy, a character infamous for his Watergate shenanigans. The article is written as a memo to the President of the United States, summarizing the cause and impact of a multifaceted terror campaign on U.S. soil.

Given that the article was written about twelve years before the 9-11 attacks, I thought it might be interesting to see how Liddy saw the future unfolding. While he vastly overestimated the impact that the Soviet Union and South American influences would have in a terror filled future, he was pretty accurate in many respects:

- "As it is, we have had to ground the U.S. civil commercial aviation fleet for an indefinite time." Just as Bin Laden saw it, the country's aviation system could be used not only to kill Americans but also be used to disrupt the economy. Although it did not last as long as Liddy predicts, the entire U.S. aviation system was grounded for several days after the 9-11 attacks, inflicting further economic damage on the country beyond the actual attacks themselves.

- "Unfortunately, all major north-south railroad traffic in the United States funnels through two choke points: a single strategic railroad bridge over the Potomac River between Washington D.C. and Virginia and the rail complex at Cincinnati. On the night of August 2nd, terrorist-planted pressure mines took out the Potomac Bridge and the Cincinnati choke point was severed by the use of an expert combination of low order and high order explosives." Given some of the early information being learned form the computers and data taken in the Bin Laden raid, it is clear the Bin Laden also had the same thoughts as Liddy as far as terror attacks on the nation's rail systems.

- "While there are different estimates of the number of international terrorist groups, here we are including the PLO, the IRA, the Japanese Red Army, and French Action Directe, and Islamic Jihad."  Although 9-11 was still twelve years away, Liddy did correctly identify a type of Islamic jihad that carried out the attacks on 9-11.

- "The entire Louisiana attacking force (of terrorists) was recruited citizens of Communist African nations...and that groups of blacks could pass unnoticed in Louisiana. This led to the white commanding officers ignoring the input of competent black police in the South, who detected the presence  of black aliens immediately and submitted their field intelligence reports on this matter...but when they reported them to their white superiors  they were either ridiculed or ignored." 

Much like 9-11, in Liddy's view, FBI field law enforcement officers correctly recognized various threats and reported their findings and theories which were ignored by their superiors. If I recall properly, the Phoenix FBI office, among other offices, reported numerous accounts of suspicious activity by people that eventually ended up hijacking the planes on 9-11, accounts that were never acted on by their superiors.

"The how is relatively simple. The terrorists were outfitted with appropriate clothing, alias documentation, and pocket money and infiltrated into the nation with the most porous border on earth." Looks like our border security was just as bad back in 1989 as it is now.

"Even without resorting to such high tech weapons, it is relatively straightforward to get a standard-construction gun through the airport magnetometers and roentgen machines, which are a joke." Given that the 9-11 terrorists also used low tech weaponry (box cutters) and easily got them through airport security, it appears that Liddy foresaw this possibility also.

"The people expect their government to do something about it: to fix the problem and punish those responsible. And the American people are not patient. Their faith in what the Founding Fathers wrought is ebbing fast." Sounds like this applies today, not only to terror attacks but to the overall incompetency of government and the political class to fix any problem, not just terrorism. Another good prediction from Liddy.

"Gradually, over the past few administrations, as Congress passed law after law for the people and the executive branch to follow but excepted Congress itself (the civil rights acts, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum wage laws, etc.) and as Congress continued to act as if the rest of the laws of the land did not apply to them..." Sound familiar, 22 years after Liddy made his prediction?

I think Liddy got most of the general concepts right relative to terrorism and 9-11 even if he was a little off on some of the details. He also predicts terror attacks on the country's electrical power grid and the country's natural gas distribution network, all of which, when combined with a grounded aviation system and a crippled rail system, results in all types of other crises including food shortages and spoilage, sanitation problems, martial law, etc.

I would take a bet that says the political class has not made any of these other catastrophes less likely since 1989, that our power grid, transportation networks, our gas and oil pipelines , etc. are just as vulnerable today as when Liddy made these predictions.

A related side article by Peter Kornbluh also has some pretty accurate quotes and predictions:

• The enemy no longer wears a uniform, drives a tank, or man's a battleship.
• He is a terrorist who takes hostages in the Middle East and plots attacks inside the United States.
• The evolution from conventional to unconventional warfare does not mean that the world will be a safer place.
• "We can expect that CIA covert paramilitary and political operations...will continue in every country where U.S. policy makers arrogantly believe they can shape events.
• The proliferation of U.S. intervention in low-level conflicts  around the globe will not advance U.S. national interests in peace and security.

Looks like both Liddy and Kornbluh got the future right. Too bad that the political class and the government it runs did not get it right and make the proper anti-terror defensive plans,  based on their insights. Maybe if they had read the article, 3,000 Americans would not have died on 9-11. Maybe we would not find our selves having fought a useless war in Iraq and are fighting a probably losing war in Afghanistan.

But should we expect anything different from these career politicians? Michael Lewis, a typical Wall Street type, foresaw the coming Great Recession, driven by bad securities from the real estate industry, and made a lot of money off of his insights besides writing a successful book describing what he foresaw. However, no one in the political class or the agencies responsible for economic oversight  (e.g. SEC, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Congressional committees) saw the coming economic collapse.

In 1999, Wall Street trader Harry Markopolos wrote to the SEC and stated: "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi scheme." However, the scheme went on for many more years and robbed many more Americans of their life savings before the political class and the government ever got around to doing what Markopolos did many years before.

The list goes on and on. There are many smart Americans in this country but it seems like their input never gets appreciated and used. Whether it is preventing terror attacks or financial crises, the political class always seems to be late, always coming up with an ineffective, expensive solution. Heck, Liddy gave them the terror blueprint for 9-11 twelve years before it happened and they still could not get it right. Lewis and Markopolos gave them the financial scandal and economic collapse blueprint years before they actually appreciated what they were being told. Liddy told them in 1989 that our borders were insecure and 22 years later they are still unsecure. The list goes on and on.

That is why we need to make substantial changes to our political processes so that we finally get people into office that can anticipate crises and problems and then have the problem solving skills to attack would-be problems before they become crises. As proposed in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," whether it is campaign finance reform, term limits, Congressional committee accountability, primary election reforms, etc., the current way we do things politically in this country is not working. Even with ample warning, disasters still hit us constantly because of our politicians' incompetency.

We need to get to a point where warnings are heeded and disasters are averted. Until then, we will continue to be amazed that 22 year old magazines are more accurate and timely than today's politicians in Washington D.C.




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 http://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.com/

It Does Not Have To Be All Gloom And Doom

It can get pretty depressing writing about the American political class. Problems and issues rarely get seriously addressed, never mind resolved. The current set of politicians seem hell bent on driving the country's financial health off a cliff.  Civil discourse over political views and stands is evil and degrading, meant to hurt feelings, not just win a political argument. Our foreign affairs strategy and results seem meager, disjointed and late. Leadership at all levels of government is thin at best.

On top of all of this, there are some major factors going on in the world that sometimes make it seem that we are out of control of our own lives and unable to shape our futures, given the following global trends:

• The average age of many countries' populations is getting older, making it increasingly difficult for government and politicians to write the checks of entitlements that their brethren promised long ago. In the United States, more and more people will be collecting Social Security in the near future but there will be fewer and fewer people to fund the pot of money needed for payouts. The aging U.S. population will quickly collapse the Medicare program unless drastic changes are made soon. So it is in many other countries.
• While the average age of populations in many countries is getting older, throughout the world there are places with a growing class of young adults that cannot find enough quality work, or any kind of work, for themselves and their families, possibly leading to unforeseen societal problems arising from this chronic unemployment situation.
• What used to be slow moving, economically backwards countries are becoming fast moving, economic engines for growth. This growth, while good for those moving up the economic ladder, puts incredible strains on all kinds of resources including food, petroleum, energy sources, water, and ores and minerals. These pressures drive up the costs on all.
• As we see in the Middle East, the drive for freedom is upsetting long established international relationships, making international affairs and alliances much more difficult to predict and optimize. When previously the United States State Department could rely on certain despots for support ("he may be a bastard but he's our bastard" syndrome), those old rules are now gone, placing additional stress and uncertainty into the world around us.
• While some countries are struggling towards freedom, others are still under the thumb of tyrants, bent on their own self gratification at the expense and possibly the lives of anyone or any country that gets in their ways. North Korea and Iran being the two biggest culprits but there are others that would rather move ahead with negative action than positive.
• The world is moving faster via the Internet and wireless communications, making it crucial that decision making processes in government, business, and one's personal life be made quicker and with less confidence then previously, further injecting stress into our lives.
• As the world's population continues to grow, the ability to feed it and the ability to keep the environment in which we live clean becomes increasingly more difficult. More people means higher prices for just about everything as the immutable economic laws of supply and demand kick in.
• In the face of these trends, our political class has been especially inept and developing integrated, strategic and well thought out plans and programs to deal with these global changes and trends. For example, in a simplistic, linear approach to finding a way to address our energy needs, the U.S. government pays billions of dollars a year to American farmers in subsides for the development of ethanol, an alternative fuel source. Unfortunately, the spending of these billions of dollars has had a minimal effect on our energy situation while diverting enough corn volume (40% of U.S. corn productions goes into ethanol production every year) to feed 350 million people a year (Source: the Week magazine, march 4, 2011). Thus, our politicians waste money through subsidies, get no bang for their buck, and contribute heavily to the world food shortage problems.

Yes, the world is a far more complicated, dangerous and fast moving place then it used to be. However, all is  not lost from a United States perspective. Consider some problems in the rest of the world:

- Although China's economy has been growing quickly and strongly over the past few years, it is still not close to the size of the U.S. economy. Its rapid economic expansion has had a devastating effect on all facets of the environment throughout the country. It's fast growth has its leaders grappling with the fact that inflation threatens to derail its economic growth, with recent inflation rates of over 5% a year as measured in late 2010. Many economists see dangerous valuation bubbles in China's real estate, stocks, and commodities sectors.

From a societal perspective, a New York Times article from several months ago reported that while China is graduating more and more students from its universities, the economic need for these graduates' skills is not present in the economy, forcing these graduates to do work far below their education levels. This could lead to long term unrest within these underpaid but highly educated citizens.

With their long term restrictions on the size of families, China is beginning to enter a period where there are not enough young, working people to care for the growing number of older, retired people. Finally, The Week magazine reported in its February 25, 2011 issue that China is faced with an epidemic of lung cancer cases, with one million Chinese dying from the disease every year, putting strains on its medical and health care institutions..

- Japan faces many of the same issues that we and other nations face. The world's third largest economic engine has been in an economic funk for over ten years. Their population is also aging rapidly, placing strains on their retirement programs. They have a crazy nuclear armed neighbor in North Korea that has previously shot missiles over Japanese territory. Tragically, they have seen part of their country devastated today by an earthquake and resulting tsunami, putting further pressure on their country to move forward in the wake of this tragedy.

- Europe has not escaped these global trends either. By being tied to each other via the Euro currency, it has yet to be determined whether this tethering will help weaker European economies to survive or will lead to the drowning of all European economies. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are in the worst shape but they threaten to infect the healthier economies also.

All of the above is meant to show that while we have some very serious problems in this country, if we can fix what ails us as a nation, the opportunity to thrive again as a democracy and world economic power is possible, given the huge challenges facing many other nations. However, that is unlikely to happen as long as the same tired politicians with the same priorities, their own re-election vs. leading the nation, are sitting in Washington. I assume that if we had a leadership base that understood the global trends and could think strategically within those trends and the assets and attributes of the United States, we would not be in the position we are in today.

In order to change out the current leadership for new leadership that know how to put a strategic plan together, we need to change our political processes. We need some sort of term limit process so that politicians do not serve in office for thirty or forty years. Leadership needs to be refreshed periodically with new ideas.

We need to take the factor of money out of the political process so that politicians are free to lead based on a strategic plan and some sort of long term vision, not based on how much re-election campaign money a corporation, union, PAC, or other organization can throw their way to maintain the status quo. The staus quo of short term thinking got us into this jam in the first place. The world moved on, faster and faster, while our plans never kept up.

We need leaders that know how to leverage assets, trends, and opportunities. Consider Apple computer. Their iPods interact and leverage their iTunes library which is compatible with their iMacs which are compatible with their iPads which share apps with their iPhones which can play iTune selections. That is strategic planning and execution at its finest.

Conversely, our political class comes up with Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, First Time Home Buyers Rebate, the HAMP program to save mortgages, etc., all of which exist in a vacuum vs. other government programs, leveraging nothing. As a result of not being strategically tied together, they fail as individual efforts to attain their goals.

Edward R. Murrow once wrote:  "Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions."  We can get out of our current rut and funk as a nation and thrive again as a democracy and nation. However, we have to be more vigilent in identifying when the political class is pushing only slogans and demand that our election processes and the leaders that come out of it give us solutions. Apple can do it, they broke the code. We need to find a way for our political class it either break the analogous code for governing or step aside for those that can.





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 http://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

Budget Cutting For Dummies...And Washington Politicians - Part 1: A Typical American's View

This post kicks off a themed week called "Budget Cutting For Dummies...And Washington Politicians." The tentative schedule looks like the following:

• Monday, Part 1 - An ordinary American cuts the budget of unnecessary spending.
• Tuesday, Part 2 - A right leaning and a left leaning pair of think tanks develop a joint way to get government spending under control.
• Wednesday, Part 3 - The Cato Institute goes through the Federal budget line by line to cut unnecessary spending.
• Thursday, Part 4 - President Obama On The Budget - Lack Of Leadership and Lack of Courage
• Friday, Part 5 - Fixing Social Security (this is a tentative topic, it assumes I can gather the necessary data and crunch the numbers by then.)

Before we start budget cutting, let's review the facts of how deeply the political class has buried us under a sea of debt:

• The Federal government currently owes about $14 TRILLION worth of debt to various parties around the world, including China which is fast approaching the $1 TRILLION mark in U.S. government debt held.
• This $14 TRILLION is a per household burden of about $120,000 per household.
• Under Obama's current budget plans, that $14 TRILLION will grow by about $7 TRILLION over the next ten years, assuming that economic conditions improve and continue to be healthy, i.e. the best case scenario.
• This additional budget debt will increase the average American household's debt burden by about $60,000.
• If nothing is done soon, within a few years the American taxpayer will be spending more on debt interest than on most other discretionary government programs such as education, transportation, etc.
• Almost every state government in the country is fighting the same battle where the political class has allowed government expenses to far outstrip government revenue.

This is the reality today, I dare anyone to paint a much rosier picture than above. Into this fray march the Republicans and Democrats from the national political class, looking totally inept at finding a way to financial solvency. The Republicans are bragging about their aim of reducing annual Federal government spending by $100 billion. Certainly better than not cutting $100 billion but let's be honest, $100 billion is only about 2.6% of the total Federal budget in 2011. It is only about 9% of the Federal deficit. Thus, rather than over spend revenues by $1.1 TRILLION, they would over spend revenues by $1.0 TRILLION. Pathetic. Yes, a start. But a pathetic start.

The Democrats are far worse. When Bush was running up debt burdens in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the Democrats hollered about fiscal irresponsibility. When they took over Congress, their House leader Nancy Pelosi declared she would operate a pay-as-you-go House Of representatives, i.e. no new spending would occur unless spending cuts were done elsewhere in the budget. Since she and the other Democrats took over Congress, joined two years later by a Democrat in the White House, Federal government spending deficits and debt have skyrocketed, hitting never before seen, or dreamed of, levels. Trillions of additional debt in a few short years.

Now the Democrats are hollering that some of their favored political government programs are under pressure to have their funding cut. If they had been more fiscally prudent when the had control, this never would have happened. They have no one to blame but themselves. However, this does not prevent their typical hypocrisy from shining through. They had their chance and control and will now have to pay the price. Their proposed budget cuts are so feeble that they make the pathetic Republican cuts look draconian in comparison.

But wait. Maybe I am too hard on these poor folks. Maybe they do not know how to cut the budget. Think about it. They have never had to cut it in the past. They are a lot like the dictatorial regimes and monarchies in the Middle East. They always had enough wealth to spend, even if it placed undue burdens on their fellow citizens. They always got their way and the best of everything: automatic pay raises, lobbyist favors, the best health care, high wages, almost job security for life (at least until last November), etc. Seems like the Washington politicians are just like Mubarak or Qaddafi, or the monarchies in Bahrain and Jordon. Always taking what they wanted for themselves, never having to sacrifice, always living the good life at the expense of others. Maybe they are just too ignorant or inexperienced to manage a budget.

That is where this series of posts comes in. Today we will start with my simpleton view on life and how to get started on cutting the budget. The next few days we will then turn to the experts in the think tanks, both right leaning and left leaning, for further insights on how to get to a smaller but more manageable and more effective government.

If I was running the show, this is where I would start:

- Why do we still have over 50,000 U.S. troops in Germany? The Iron Curtain was destroyed over twenty years ago, maybe we should finally start getting some of that so-called "peace dividend" by bringing these troops home and reducing our military footprint abroad. The same argument could be made for the 30,000 or so troops we have in Japan and the same amount or so in South Korea. If it costs the Obama administration a million dollars a year to put a U.S. soldier into a war zone, then if we assume it costs half of that to maintain a U.S. soldier in a non-war zone, reducing the size of our military by the 110,000 needlessly deployed soldiers in these three countries, we could eventually save over $50 billion a year. Even if the cost of a non-war zone deployment is a quarter of a war zone deployment, the savings would still be about $25 billion a year.

- Even though the President campaigned to get us out of Iraq as soon as possible, we still have 50,000 troops there. Bring them home and eventually save at least $12.5 billion as year.

- Budget earmarks are really nothing more than a thinly disguised way for incumbent politicians to get re-election campaign donations using taxpayer money. It is really quite a simple process:

• Assume Congressman A puts a million dollars budget appropriation/earmark into a budget bill for Company X to do some government work that may or may not be needed. Company X then turns around and arranges to send Congressman A's campaign fund a check for some amount of money. Everybody wins but the taxpayer who foots the bill for the earmark, rarely sees the benefit, and helps ensure the continuation of the incumbent's career. Conservative estimates put the annual earmark cost at around $16 billion. Eliminate earmarks, bank the savings.

- An Associated Press report from February 17, 2011 discussed how the government had busted a Medicare scam ring and arrested 111 people. Great work since it is thought that these 111 had stolen $225 million from the American taxpayer through fraud. Details include the following:

• One Detroit doctor who charged for partial toenail removals bilked Medicare out of $700,000 which turned out to be little more than toe nail clippings.
• The same doctor billed Medicare for removing three toenails from the same toe of the same patient.
• A Brooklyn doctor billed Medicare $6.5 million for hemorrhoid removals, most of which were bogus. One patient was identified as having hemorrhoid removal done ten times, which the article claims is not possible (I would hope not.)
• Three physical therapy clinics in Brooklyn were also busted which involved an organized group of Russian immigrants who bilked Medicare out of $57 million for giving elderly patients nothing more than back rubs.

Good news, but also bad news. The $225 million is less than .4% (best case) of the annual fraud inflicted on Medicare. Rather than hire IRS agents to go after newly criminalized American citizens under Obama Care who freely decide not to purchase health insurance, why not hire a few more resources to after the remaining 99.6% of the Medicare fraud that has not yet been shut down? Conservatively if you can wipe out 10% of the Medicare fraud a year, government estimates would say you would be saving $6 billion to $9 billion a year in savings.

- The lead story in the February 21, 2011 issue of Business Week talked about global food crisis that is beginning to pick up steam around the world. Bad weather and bad government policies could result in global food shortages and food price inflation, especially in poorer nations. That is the bad news.

The good news is that, according to the article, this means good news for American farmers and the American farm industry. Record food prices and riots around the world "have led to the biggest-ever U.S. farm exports, sending Midwest cropland to record values and boosting profits for rural banks and equipment makers...Income for U.S. farmers is expected to jump 20% this year."

It has never been better to be in the U.S. farm industry. Thus, this would be a great time to start cutting back most farm subsidies, the majority of which do not go to family farmers but to large farm corporations. It believe that the Federal government subsidies are in the annual range of over $300 billion a year. If you took just 10% of that immediately, the taxpayer savings would be about $30 billion. If you took that 10% away only from the prospering agricultural corporations (corporate welfare), the family farmer would be largely unaffected.

- Staying on the farm, consider a February 21, 2011 Associated Press article on broccoli. The article reviewed how the Federal government was spending $3.2 million in research grants to help eastern U.S. farmers grow broccoli in a climate that is usually not favorable for broccoli growth. The majority of broccoli is grown on the west coast and then shipped around the country. A South Carolina farmer is quoted in the article: "We're not attempting to put California out of business. We just want a piece of the action."

Think about how stupid this expenditure of taxpayer money is. I would be really ticked off if I was a California broccoli grower. In theory, a part of his Federal taxes are going to subsidize his competitors or would be competitors. If growing broccoli on the east coast is such a good deal, then let east coast farmers subsidize the research work to make it a reality. Let the free market decide who wins and who loses the broccoli wars, the Federal government should not be taking sides and subsidizing one group of Americans with taxes taken from another group of Americans.

Now, we are only talking about a few million dollars. But I would imagine this type of cross purpose spending goes on thousands of times a year. If you could eliminate just a 100 cases of this type of stupidity, you would save about $300 million a year.

- One last example. I checked out official government sources to find out how many civilians work for the Federal government. Table 494 from the 2011 Statistical Abstract of The United States, an official Federal government publication, shows that civilian employment was about 2.7 million civilians employed by the Federal government in 2007 and about 2.8 million employed in 2009, the last year data was available. 

What if we reduced the number of Federal employees back to 2007 levels, a cut of about 100,000 jobs. We know from news reports that employees from at least three different Federal organizations, the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Interior Department, and the Pentagon have been busted over the past year for porn surfing on the Net during work hours. This is just one type of waste that could be eliminated, reducing the need for so many employees.

Now I know Pelosi and some Democrats would holler that this is adding to the nation's unemployment numbers. However, a cut of 100,000 public employees would amount to just about 2% of the annual rate of people losing their jobs in the private sector, hardly a hefty sacrifice by the government relative to the private sector. Given the advanced age of the Federal work force, you could probably attain this cut through attrition anyway.

Thus, if you conservatively estimate that each Federal employee, on average, is worth $100,000 a year in taxpayer costs when you consider wages, benefits, and an allocation of overhead, a cut of 100,000 positions would yield an annual savings of about $10 billion with little degradation in service.

So let's review:

• In about a half hour, a typical American such as myself, who has never been a politician and who has never worked for the government, identified anywhere from about $100 billion to $140 billion in unnecessary government spending.
• No animals were killed or harmed  in the development of the budget cut list.
• No Americans went hungrier, sicker, or poorer as a result of any of the identified cuts.
• Corporate welfare was cut back, personal welfare or aid to the poor was unaffected.
• Americans' freedom was unaffected but the freedom of politicians to use taxpayer money to fund their re-election campaigns via earmarks was negatively affected.

See, that was not hard. And imagine what the experts can do, who study the Federal budget in detail, tomorrow and on Wednesday. If you know how to frame a problem, analyze the root causes of that problem, not be selfish in developing answers to the problem, and have a little bit or creativity, any dummy can constructively cut the budget. Well, at least most dummies.




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 http://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

More Proof That Obama Care Is Fatally Flawed

Many times in this blog we have gone over the reasons why Obama Care is likely to fail and place an unbelievable financial and bureaucratic burden on the nation. Our theory is that Obama Care never attacked the underlying root causes of the nation's escalating health care costs, most of which should be addressed as a public health problem. Rather, the legislation went after the problem as a government regulation, taxing, and bureaucracy solution, mostly bypassing the underlying root causes and dooming it to an inglorious failure.

The underlying root causes for high health care costs in this country are relatively straightforward:

1. Americans smoke too much.
2. Americans eat too much.
3. Americans eat too much of the wrong types of food.
4. Americans do not exercise enough.
5. Americans' average age is getting older.

The first four likely root causes are public health issues and that is how they should be addressed. The fifth issue is a graying of the population issue and that should be attacked by a focused effort to minimize the effect of aging diseases, the top cancers, heart disease, and all forms of dementia. Even if Obama Care attained all of its taxing and bureaucratic goals, the bottom line is that the above five conditions would still be around and would still contribute to an ever escalating health care cost crisis.

Now, more and more evidence is starting to pile up, beyond what we have already presented, that further indicates that Obama Care is fatally flawed in so many different ways:

- In a February 15, 2011 article in USA Today, "Heart Disease Gets Real," author Mary Brophy Marcus reviewed the latest guidelines from the American Heart Association regarding ways to prevent cardiovascular disease in women. According to the article, every minute of every day a woman dies in this country from heart disease, making it the leading cause of death for women in this country, more than breast cancer. According to the American Heart Association, what should be done to reduce this pubic health and private health issue:

• Avoid smoking and exposure to environmental smoke
• Be physically active, getting 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise.
• Achieve a healthy body weight.
• Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, chose whole grain, high fiber foods, eat oil fish at least twice a week, limit saturated fat, cholesterol and sugar, avoid trans-fatty acids.

Sound familiar? Virtually the same list from above. The root causes of a deadly and widely suffered disease has its root causes in smoking, eating, and exercising. If all Americans did this, disease rates would go down and by reducing the number of times Americans get sick, the costs would go down. Simple, basic economics: reduce demand, keep supply the same and prices have to come down. This was the same advice we wrote about last year from the experts at the Cleveland Clinic, when they were interviewed by Fortune magazine, and other sources. It is not hard if you know how to solve a problem and identify the underlying root causes. Obama Care did none of this.

- One of the major selling and talking points about Obama Care was that needy Americans would rush to enroll in the new programs to get health care coverage. Not so fast, says Amy Goldstein in her Washington Post article from February 11, 2011. According to Ms. Goldstein:

• Although some Americans have signed up for special health plans for people that have been spurned by the insurance industry, signups are far below the levels expected by the Obama Administration.
• The number of people enrolled in these so-called high risk pools is only up to 12,500 across the entire nation, about 250 per state on average.
• Last spring, less than ten months ago, the government's chief actuary forecasted that 375,000 Americans would have signed up for the pools by the end of 2010.

Thus, the government's forecast was off by over 96%.

These are not numbers from Fox News. These are not numbers from the Tea Party. These are not numbers from Rush Limbaugh. These are Obama administration actuals vs. Obama administration forecasts. Missed it by 96%. Pitiful.

Some administration officials say the low numbers are because awareness is so low, which does not change the fact that the administration was so wrong in its forecast and expectations. However, other experts say the new Obama Care program is too expensive for people with existing medical problems. Thus, even when the political class designs a program specifically for certain Americans, by not understanding underlying root causes, they still cannot get the solution right.

- Another major selling point from the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Obama Care trifecta was that the legislation would actually end up being a job creation vehicle, as she stated just days before the final vote: "It's about jobs. In its life, (the legislation) will create four million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately."

How is that prediction coming along? According to an article in the National Review on February 10, 2011 by Yuval Levin, not so good. Mr. Levin was covering a House Budget Committee on that day when he heard Congressman John Campbell ask a question of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf:

Campbell: You just mentioned that you believe - or that in your estimate - that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about one half of one percent. Given that, I believe you say, there's 150 million full time people working in 2021, that means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in 2021. Is that correct?
Elmendorf: Yes. the way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that household employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade. Half a percent is 800,000.

Obama Care supporters do not dare challenge the credibility of the CBO on this issue since they used the CBO numbers to help pass the legislation. Thus, if anyone believes the CBO was right in their original estimates of how much this legislation would reduce the Federal deficit (which we have proven was based on faulty data and assumptions), you cannot now say the CBO is wrong in their estimates when the say that Obama Care will actually reduce U.S. employment by 800,000, not increase it by 4 million as Ms. Pelosi claimed. Another horrendous estimate.

- However, while I still firmly believe that the five reasons listed above are primary underlying root causes of our high health care costs, I recently came across a potential other reason, unrelated to the public health causes. In the March, 2011 issue of Life Extensions magazine, William Faloon had an interesting article entitled, "No Real Health Care Cost Crisis." (Note: there is a potential conflict of interest here since Life Extension the company is in the business of selling supplements whose sales are likely sometimes competitors with drug company products.)

Mr. Faloon's conclusion is that a leading cause of our high health care costs is the cozy arrangement the drug companies have with the Federal government. His theory goes as follows: the Federal government gives pharmaceutical companies a virtual monopoly over patented and generic drugs which result in outlandish profits earned from their protected drugs which are then used to use lobbyists who work on Congress to pass legislation that leaves the taxpayers on the hook for paying for these over priced medicines.

He gave several examples of this model and potential reality including the following:

• In July, 2009, the FDA officially announced something that those in the medical field knew for a long time: an old drug called colchicine was effective in treating acute cases of gouty arthritis.
• The drug had been around since the 19th century and has its original with the ancient Greeks.
• The FDA wanted the ancient drug officially tested for safety and efficacy and offered one company an exclusive three year protection plan, i.e. they would have no competitors in the sale of the drug for that time period even though the drug predated the FDA.
• In return the company conducted a ONE WEEK trial and proved the drug was all it was supposed to be and was safe.
• Before the Federal government via the FDA got involved, the drug sold for $.09 a pill.
• Once the government granted the monopoly, the price shot up by a factor of 50 to a cost of $5.00 a pill.
• Before the FDA got involved, the Federal government and the American taxpayer had paid out about $1 million a year through Medicare-Medicaid to supply colchicine for Americans who needed it.
• After the FDA intervention, the government and the American taxpayer will now pay about $50 million a year for the same drug that they used to pay $1 million for.

If you repeat this outrageous price mark up strategy across all drug categories, you can see why the nation is paying such high medical bills.

The article lays out another example for the drug Valtrex. According to Life Extension, the raw material to make a one month supply of Valtrex costs about $.60. Yes, $.60. The article estimates that the cost of production is about $1.50 so the total end product to the drug company is $2.10. However, given the government/drug industry connection, one month of Valtrex retails for $200, resulting in about $198 in gross margin for every month's worth of Valtrex sold.

Is Mr. Faloon wrong and biased? I do not know but I am sure most Americans have gagged many times when told what the actual costs of their drugs are. At least his line of reasoning is worth an unbiased, scientific  analysis to see if this is another root cause of our high health care costs.

- Our final example has not been written up in an unbiased, national publication. It is based on a sample size of one but much like high priced drugs, I would bet many people have experienced or heard of the following situation. A good friend of mine runs her own business. She is the only employee of the business. She had a health care plan but dropped it because of its expense and the fact that it never seemed to live up to the hype and coverage it received when she purchased the policy.

Thus, when she needed a relatively major operation, she knew that she would have to pay for it herself out of her funds. However, once her doctor realized she had no insurance, the costs of the operation dropped dramatically. This is a situation I have seen a number of times. There is often two price lists: one for those that have insurance (the higher price) and one for those that do not have insurance (a lower price).

Seems many doctors are artificially inflating their prices since they know the end customer, the sick American, will be getting help in payment via their insurance company. If the operation costs the uninsured $10,000, it might cost the insured $15,000. Since the insured person is getting help in payment from the insurance company, they are not as diligent as they might be if they were using their own money. Thus, another potential, underlying root cause.

In summary, now what do we know about Obama Care:

• The political class never understood the underlying root cuases of our high health costs, public health issues, and thus, Obama Care's heavy handed government bureaucracy approach is likely to fail.
• Americans currently with health care insurance coverage are likely to lose that coverage because their companies can save money by paying the fine for not having insurance under Obama Care rather than continuing to provide health care coverage.
• The numbers that Obama Care is based on, from a deficit reduction perspective, are flawed since the CBO estimates do not include all of the costs components that were in the final legislation.
• The law criminalize millions of honest Americans if they do not purchase mandatory health care insurance under Obama Care.
• Promised job creation under Obama Care is unlikely to materialize.
• Promised program enrollment under the early components of Obama Care are staggering short of expectations.
• The Federal government via the FDA and the drug companies may be in such a close relationship, along with the Congress and the drug company lobbyists, that the Federal government might actually be a major source of cost escalation.
• The "two price list" syndrome, not addressed under Obama Care, may actually be another major cost factor.

It appears that the major causes of escalating health costs in this country are the ones NOT covered by the burdensome Obama Care legislation. It is fatally flawed and needs to be repealed as soon as possible. In its place, Step 28 from "Love My Country. Loathe My Government" needs to be implemented. Step 28 would impanel a group of smart Americans, similar to the success we enjoyed using the same process for the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Space Program, the Military Base Closing Commission, the Grace Commission, etc. They would identify and quantify the underlying root causes and come up with proposed solutions, sans lobbyists and politicians. These alternative proposals would be voted on by the American voters and the winner would be implemented.

The political class has proven via Obama Care that they cannot solve a problem because they cannot understand the underlying root causes. Obama Care is fatally flawed, lets pull the plug and start over before it is too late and the nation, its citizens, and the country's financial health straight lines.


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 http://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

"Genuine Democracy" - What Would Obama Do If Tahrir Square Happened On The Mall In D.C.?

As I am typing this, word has come across the news lines that Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as the leader of Egypt and that a temporary, military-based government will step and rule in until democratic elections can be arranged. I offer my congratulations to the people of both Egypt and Tunisia who have stood up for the cause of freedom in their respective countries despite the high potential of harm to themselves and their families. They are to be applauded for their courage and I wish them the best of luck. May they find happiness and liberty the way eastern Europe did after the collapse of the Iron Curtain and avoid the fate of the Iranian people, who never got a chance at freedom after the Shah was toppled in Iran. Interesting times.

This whole episode in freedom got me thinking about a hypothetical situation: what if a similar uprising or outpouring of emotion in the pursuit of freedom happened in the United States and Americans gathered for days on end on the Mall in D.C., similar to what the brave souls did at Egypt's Tahrir Square? President Obama recently spoke to the issue saying that "the Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity." (note: this statement was put out before Mubarak stepped down).

But what if Americans decided they also wanted a "genuine democracy," that the form of government they were living under today was not a genuine democracy because:

1. The government and the political class controlled the major portion of each American's retirement funds via Social Security and the government and the political class controlled the major portion of each American's retirement medical care and fate via Medicare?
2. The government and the political class controlled the major portion of each American's pre-retirement medical care and fate via Obama Care?
3. The government and the political class confiscated over 40% of each American's earnings every year via taxes and fees, leaving each American far less flexibility and freedom to manage how their kids are educated, to start or expand a business, to save for retirement, to contribute to their favorite charity, or to just spend the fruits of their labor any way they wanted?
4. The government and the political class had absolutely no financial discipline when it came to managing the nation's finances, burdening each of today's Americans and future generations of Americans with tens of thousands of dollars of debt burden?
5. The government and political class has rigged nearly every election process, from gerrymandering Congressional districts to using taxpayer money on earmarks, that are only thinly disguised campaign fund raising vehicles for incumbents, to allowing unions, PACs, corporations and the such to overwhelm our election processes and the will of American citizens with billions of dollars, etc.
6. The government and the political class waged a highly expensive and highly ineffective "War on Drugs" campaign that failed to contain the flow of illegal drugs into and around the country, failed to provide an effective drug addiction treatment network, caused a violent, near narco state to develop just south of our borders , infringed on our freedom via illegal or semi-legal searches of our homes and cars, and infringed on the rights of Americans to do what they want to their own body?
7. The government and the political class spent far more money on education than any other country in the world but succeeded only in turning out mediocre students, when measured against the education quality of students from around the world, wasting generations of brain power that could have been developed in American kids.
8. The government and the political class has shown no ability to respond to natural and man made disasters despite incredible amounts of taxpayer dollars spent to run government departments and agencies, disasters that have ranged from Hurricane Katrina to the BP oil rig disaster.
9. The government and the political class have erected huge bureaucratic processes that discourage business formation and innovation and benefit no one but the bureaucrats in charge of the useless processes and red tape.
10. The government and the political class tried to control the press by either trying to control the message via the obnoxious and anti-liberty "Fairness Doctrine" principle or through the outright banning of media outlets holding contrarian views.
11. The government and the political class viewed American citizens as not free people whose contrary opinions were not to be belittled but respected and celebrated but as votes to be controlled, bargained for, and discarded once the election was over.
12. The government and the political class think that the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and holding people in custody forever without a trial are consistent with freedom.

Unfortunately, these "dirty dozen," anti-freedom behaviors are not theoretical today, they are the reality of America under the current political class. We ourselves do not live in a "genuine democracy" that President Obama desires for the Egyptians. I would make the case, as I do in the fifty steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," that we are not living in a genuine democracy in this country. Maybe the President should worry more about fixing our democracy than in telling others how to live freely.

However, the chances of that happening are slim relative to the dirty dozen items listed above:

1. Obama's rejection of the Social Security and Medicare recommendations from his own Debt Reduction Commission does nothing to prevent the coming insolvency of these two programs.
2. His health care overhaul legislation accounts for the control of Americans' pre-retirement medical care in negative ways that are just becoming apparent.
3. He fought the continuation of the Bush tax cuts and has shown no propensity to reduce taxes for ALL Americans or making government more efficient so that not as much taxes are needed to run it.
4. Government spending deficits have skyrocketed during his administration to terrifying heights, usually exceeding a TRILLION dollars a year.
5. Political campaign spending in the  recent midterm elections was in the billions of dollars, with no indication from Congress or the President that they have the will and desire to return voting power to the common, individual American and to take the power away from the moneyed interests.
6. The War on Drugs - over four decades after it started, still a lost cause.
7. Recent testing of high school students from all over the world showed that in reading science, and math, there were at least 17 nations in each category educating their kids better than our government  and political class were doing with public education in this country.
8. BP Oil Spill - has the government and political class learned nothing as it applies to contingency planning since Katrina?
9. The number of Federal employees has grown by untold thousands since President Obama was elected, worsening an already slow moving, immobile government structure.
10. Numerous members of the President's party and himself, have made accusations against Fox News and tried to isolate the news outlet in many different ways, all for having a difference of opinion with the administration, basically trying to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
11. Rather than respecting and celebrating diversity of opinion, and essential part of any genuine democracy, the President has remained silent while his henchmen have called those that oppose Obama's policies un-American (Nancy Pelosi), knuckle dragging Neanderthals (Alan Grayson), racists (Charles Rangel and Howard Dean), members of the Ku Klux Klan (Sheila Jordan Lee and Grayson), and gerbils (a Congressman whose name escapes now). Senate majority Leader Harry Reid actually stated in public that Americans visiting D.C. in the summer time physically smelled. When citizens are held in such contempt by the ruling class, you do not live in a free, genuine democracy. One of the few times the President spoke up when discussing those Americans who had an honest and rightful disagreement with his policies, he spoke of the need to "punish" his "enemies." How sad, a sitting President feeling that those citizens he is supposed to serve were his enemies and were in need of punishment. Hardly a democratic viewpoint.
12. Patriot Act and Gitmo - enough said.

It would certainly be interesting to transpose the Egyptians in Tahrir Square into Americans on the Mall in D.C.but keep the demands the same: free citizens living in an economically sound environment with a true voice in determining how they are governed. That is all the Egyptians want, that is all Americans want. Would President Obama be so supportive and forthright  in his praise and desire for "genuine democracy" in America as he is for "genuine democracy" in Egypt? Unfortunately, his actions in office so far indicate he would not.




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