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I usually do not post on the weekends, I need those two days to detox my attitude and feelings about the American political class. However, the travesty that is the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington and the disgust they generate for me personally are too much to ignore this weekend.
As most informed Americans know, we are now only a week away from a potential financial disaster. Theoretically, if the government does not raise the country's debt ceiling by August 2, the country could end up defaulting on its financial obligations. This has never happened before so the ramifications are unknown. However, nobody thinks they will be any good.
The most serious, likely outcome is that the government will run short of money which could impact all or some of its functions but is highly likely to result in the credit agencies' downgrading of the nation's credit worthiness and increase borrowing costs. Since the political class and the government it runs borrow $.40 for every $1.00 it brings in, those increased borrowing costs could be very, very large.
Given the dire consequences, one would think that every possible thing was being done to avoid this calamity. Far from it. The five main culprits in this game of politics, Obama, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, and Boehner, met this morning for less than hour. Less than an hour, unbelievable! The political class is proving again that they exist only for their own personal political careers and personal political agendas, the good of the of country be damned. They continue to prove they cannot solve any problem, no matter how small or large. Let me repeat, financial disaster ahead and they met for less than an hour.
Given their inabilities and immaturity, let me lay out four steps that need to be implemented immediately in order to have any chance for the country to survive these fools:
- Step 1 - Whenever a company and its union reach and impasse and the clock is ticking towards trouble, what do they usually do? Easy question, they lock themselves in a room, do not leak out any information, and FOCUS on solving the problems they jointly face. Food and beverages are slipped under the locked door and no one comes out until a deal is struck. They do not meet for less than an hour and then leave. Lock the door, throw away the key if necessary, and do not let them out until a deal is reached, regardless if they have to stay cooped up with each other for days with no press conferences, no leaks, no cell phones. That is how real people solve these types of problems in the real world.
Thus, I would consider two lock down scenarios. The first one would lock down the five people listed above in a room until a deal is done, written down, and agreed to. If that cannot happen, then Obama and the 535 members of Congress should be put in a room and they all get locked down until a deal is done. Same criteria: no leaks, no press conferences, no cell phones, nothing until a deal is done and the vote is taken. Anything less than these types of lockdowns is a betrayal of the country.
- Step 2 - in parallel, contingency plans need to be put into place in case a deal is not reached in time. Any such plan should contain a set of prioritized expenditures that would allocate funds to these priorities. Remember, the government is not necessarily going broke on August 3 if a debt ceiling deal is not reached. On a unit basis, while it may not be able to spend $1.40, it will still be receiving a $1.00 going forward. Thus, about 30% of the government's spending would be curtailed rather quickly. The other 70% would then have to be spent on only the essentials that I would list out as follows:
- Pay off Treasury debt as it comes due in order to protect the high credit rating of the country.
- Pay out Social Security checks.
- Pay out Medicare and Medicaid bills.
- Pay out the military's pay checks and expenses as needed.
These four expenses are essential to support the very basic, essential needs of the country. Any left over money would then be used to pay other government expenses. However, in order to start getting under that $1.00 revenue stream, the following steps would need to be taken immediately in order to protect the above four essential expense streams:
- The vast majority of Federal employees would be immediately put on non-paid furloughs. The only Federal employees that would stay on live payroll would be those that service the above four expense streams. Two winters ago, Washington D.C. was snowed in for a week and the government was shut down. We survived that government shutout in fine shape, another short one now would not be a problem for the country either.
- All national parks and national museums would be closed unless they could be staffed with nonpaid volunteers.
- All other government discretionary expenses would be halted immediately.
- All members of Congress and the President would have their pay checks suspended until the crisis was solved. California has a similar process where if the state government politicians cannot deliver a budget on time, the lawmakers lose their salary until the budget is in place. Same thing should apply to Congress and Obama. Screw up your job responsibilities as badly as you have on this issue and you should not be paid until you fix the issue.
The country will not go bankrupt if a deal is not reached, it will just have to go on a severe diet. The above priorities and expense reduction ideas are what is needed to make sure the diet does not turn into a fast. Unfortunately, do we really think these people are capable of thinking about contingency plans, never mind implementing them?
Step 3 - Nancy Peolis needs to just shut up. Her biting, sarcastic, and useless comments and insults, as always, in today's paper that Boehner needs to "have an adult moment" will do absolutely nothing to solve this crisis. I would counter her childish remarks by saying if the President had acted when he should have, years or months ago, and had one of his few adult moments, we would not be in this crisis mode today. Insults at this stage of the game do no good at all but this type of destructive behavior is to be expected by a pure politician like Pelosi.
Step 4 - All of these people need to just go away. They have long been a disgrace to the country and now they are a mortal danger to the country. They are not problem solvers, they are not leaders, they are not good for the nation, they are just useless political animals. In November, 2012, they all need to go away and be replaced by people that are civil, dedicated, smart Americans that can anticipate a crisis before it becomes a crisis, unlike what we are stuck with today.
Sorry for the rant today but come on, this whole issue and the juvenile behavior of everyone in Washington is a disgrace, pure and simple. Lock them all in a room until this deal is done, plan for contingencies, muzzle Pelosi, and start working for their political defeat in 2012. How much simpler could it be.
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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/ http://www.repealamendment.com/
Just when you think that you have identified the latest government waste of taxpayer money, some big new wastes jump into your face. Consider some recent news reports that reported on how the U.S. government was scrapping two of its Navy ships even though they had never seen one day of service. Details of the waste include:
- Two large Navy ships, that have never been used, are headed for the scrap yard even though they are almost completely finished and ready for duty.
- Work began on the USNS Benjamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Company and were intended to carry fuel to the Navy's ships around the world.
- When the company defaulted on their Navy contract in 1989, the 600 foot ships were sent to Florida for completion. At the length of two football fields, these were not insignificant ships.
- The ships were eventually moved to the James River Navy yard and have sat there at 95% and 84% complete the past 18 years.
- A British company considered buying the ships and completing their build out for sale to a NATO country.
- However, since the ships are single hulled and double hulls are required for today's fuel carriers, the British company decided not to complete the construction and instead, settled on a $10 million contract and taxpayer expense to scrap the ships altogether.
- This week the ships are being towed to Texas to be cut up for scrap iron and scrap steel for recycling.
Thus, after spending $300 million to begin building the ships, almost finishing their construction, getting absolutely no use out of them, and paying to tow the ships from port to port, the taxpayers will get hit with one last insult and be charged $10 million to destroy the never used ships.
Where to start on this insanity:
- Who is responsible for ordering the construction of these ships but never getting any use out of them? In the private market, if a business person was to incur that big of a screw up they would be out of a job.
- Was there nowhere in the world that these ships could have been sold in order for taxpayers to get some money back rather than incurring another $10 million cost to have them destroyed? Even though the could not be used to haul fuel, was there no company in the world who would not want a sturdy Navy ship to ship other goods in its hold that was not fuel related? There must be a Chinese shipping company who could use a new ship or two, especially since China's exports in the first half of 2011 was a record level of $874 billion, 20% higher than in 2010 (The Week, July 22, 2011). Thus, not only should the people responsible for building $300 million worth of ships be fired, the people who could not get anything in return by selling the ships should also be fired.
- This is a classic example of Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 34 would remove politicians from any Congressional committee that does not do its committee job to at least to minimum standards. Whatever Congressional committee or subcommittee members were responsible for flushing $310 million of taxpayer wealth down the drain need to be removed from their committee or subcommittee posts.
The article contains a quote from Joseph Keefe from www.maritimeprofessinal.com who stated that the scrapping the ships will "close one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding history and for that matter, Federal fiduciary folly." In other words, what a waste of taxpayer money. Very well said, Mr. Keefe.
Another scary aspect of this story is the thought that this may not be an isolated incident. What other $300 million wastes are hanging around the Pentagon closets? With Pentagon resources deployed in three war zones, dozens of foreign countries, and probably most of the fifty states, I find it hard to believe that this is the only wasted money in the Pentagon budget. Eliminating this type of despicable behavior would reduce the Pentagon budget without further endangering the defense of the United States.
While we are on the topic of waste, let's move out of the Defense Department domain and move to another area of gross government waste. According to USA Today article, that was highlighted in the July 7, 2011 issue of The Week, the Federal government wastes about $17 billion of taxpayer wealth every year in the operation of its unemployment benefits program. Almost 12% of the program's budget is paid out fraudulently to Americans who are either collecting benefits they are not entitled to or are those people that have gotten a job but are still accepting unemployment benefits.
Compare these figures to the politically motivated ramblings of President Obama over the past few weeks. He has made a big deal about closing tax loopholes for oil companies and corporate jet users. Now, while I agree these loopholes should be closed, they are a pittance compared to the unemployment fraud.
Over ten years, the oil company loopholes would amount to about $20 billion and the corporate jets loophole would amount to about $3 billion, a total of $23 billion or so over 10 years. Ten years worth of this type of unemployment benefits waste comes out to $170 billion, which is almost eight times more than the political gamesmanship loopholes of Obama.
It never ends. The government cannot plan its Navy needs, resulting in wasting over $300 million on just two of its ships. The government cannot efficiently run a simple unemployment benefits program, wasting 12% of its budget and $17 billion a year. The politicians worry about the smaller, trivial wastes of taxpayer money while the bigger wastes go on and on every year.
The worst part of all, there is no apparent accountability. No one ever seems to be held responsible for all of the waste. Politicians continually get re-elected in the face of the waste. Government bureaucrats never seem to lose their jobs despite inefficiency and waste.
You wonder what kind of world those in DC live in where how well or bad you perform your job has no ramifications on your monetary reward and career paths. Its the kind of world I would like to live in where performance is unrelated to reality. But first, I need to see if any of those ships are still available, they are too good a deal to pass up.
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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
Several news reports over the past year of so have shown how beautiful and effective human initiative and entrepreneurship can be when attacking a problem, specifically, how to create tangible and viable alternative energy processes for the world. The following examples are just a few that demonstrate how powerful human curiosity and imagination can be when the government and the political class do not get involved:
- An Associated Press report from July 8, 2010 reported on how a prototype solar powered plane stayed aloft for 24 hours using only the energy its solar cells had generated and stored during the day light portion of its flight. The plane has 12,000 solar cells and uses no other power source at all. And the plane did not just skim or glide along the ground. It reached heights of 28,000 feet and top speeds of 75 miles per hour.
The article reported that the entire effort was privately funded with a total budget of about $95 million. There was no government interference, no haggling for funding, no political class intrusion, just a thirst to innovate and succeed.
Which brings up an obvious question? If the technology exists to power a plane for 24 hours, thousands of feet in the air, uses only solar energy , and has a top speed of 75 MPH, why can't someone build a solar car that never leaves the ground, is used for at most a few hours at a time, and does not need to attain the speed of 75 MPH? More on this question later in the post.
- The June 6, 2011 issue of Business Week magazine contained a feature on entrepreneur Imad Mahawili. Drawing on the earthquake and tsunami tragedy of 2004 which killed over 200,000 people, Mr. Mahawili went about developing a small, inexpensive wind turbine that could provide electricity to rural communities and disaster struck areas around the world. He created a new company, WindTronics and developed a revolutionary product that converts wind into electricity.
The genius of his invention is that it is completely different from what one would expect from a windmill. Rather than having winds turn a three blade system that connects to an electrical generator, his product looks like a bicycle wheel with 20 nylon spokes, at the end of each is a magnet and stationary coil. His approach results in a more efficient capture of energy, estimated at two to three times as much as the traditional windmill design.
Each unit is small enough and light enough to be attached to a residential roof and five of them could fully power a typical home. He has cut a deal with Honeywell to start selling the units worldwide. Five units installed to make a home electrical company free would cost under $30,000.
While one University of California at Davis was quoted as saying he does not think the unit is as efficient as advertised, the beauty of this private effort vs. a government effort is that no taxpayer dollars are at risk. If the product is as good as it sounds, everyone wins, Mr. Mahawili, his company, the consumer, and the environment. If it is not as good as advertised, the only risk is on Mr. Mahawili and his company.
- Another energy article from Business Week, this one in the March 7, 2011 issue, reported on a portable energy source that was developed by a Michael Lefenfeld. In the course of trying to come up with a toilet bowl air freshener, he developed a revolutionary fuel pellet that is composed of a sodium silicide powder. When mixed with water, the hockey sized pellet releases hydrogen gas than many fuel cells use to create an electric charge. The powder is non-toxic and can be triggered by just about any kind of liquid.
While the technology will not be able to power a house or business, Mr. Lefenfeld is finding uses in powering electric bicycles via his association with Pedego, a California electric bicycle maker and with a Swiss company, myFC, which will use the technology to power its battery chargers that can be used to charge small electrical products such as smartphones. Likely future uses are for temporary power generation in disaster areas.
Will this solve the energy crisis we face everyday? No. But the creativity of the approach and the results certainly show it can be a part of the solution going forward, saving energy in different ways that have probably not even been thought of it. And the best thing of all, it apparently did not require any taxpayer money or government support or hassle.
- On a larger scale, consider some of the energy concepts that have been successfully implemented by Subaru in its Indiana factory. According to a June 6, 2011 Business week article, in 2002 the factory decided to set a five year goal of becoming the nation's first zero landfill car factory. Details include the following:
- Their plan required them to get to a 98% recycle rate of the factory's waste while taking the remaining 2% to a nearby waste-to-fuel operation which sells the created power back into the electrical grid.
- They established an on-site broker who takes bids for factory paper, plastic, glass, and metals.
- Within two short years they saw what a great deal this effort was turning into.
- Every box and container is used over and over again, as many times possible.
- Metal shavings are actually swept off the floor and saved for recycling.
- Organic material is composted onsite.
- They have an employee reward process in place that compensates workers who identify viable alternatives to be more energy and waste efficient.
- Paint solvents are not thrown out but are filtered and reused.
The effort has allowed the factory to save over $5.3 million in its operations. Which has created a number of perks for the factory's employees:
- The factory has given wage increases for 22 years in a row.
- It has saved an estimated $600,000 in health care costs from its ban on smokers on the work force, making its employees healthier human beings.
- It has one of the lowest OSHA incident rates in the industry.
- It has never laid off an employee.
- Employees get free, premium health care coverage.
- Employees get paid to volunteer in the community.
- Employees receive personal financial counseling and can get a college degree on site from a Purdue University program.
- There are ten applicants for every job that opens up.
What a great success story. Becoming waste free and energy efficient creates benefits for the community, the environment, the employees and the company. All done without government oversight, input, or intervention.
I guess you can see where this is going. All of these recent innovations and breakthroughs apparently happened in spite of the U.S. Department of Energy. It does not appear they had anything to do with these innovations and changes to energy processes. In fact, I challenge anyone to come up with any significant innovation, invention, or other initiative that the Department of Energy created that would help alleviate the nation's continual energy crisis.
The Department has certainly not come up with a strategic energy plan since we still do not have a plan, decades after the Department came into being. And for this non-performance, taxpayers pay out about $14 billion a year to support this government entity.
About the only effort that the Department has been involved in that has gotten any press was the legislation that was passed a few years ago which required the country to start using fluorescent light bulbs in our lives vs. incandescent light bulbs. The flawed logic in this legislation was that the American consumer had to be forced to act for their "own good" by outlawing a product that had worked well for over a hundred years.
The logic trail went like this: fluorescent bulbs may cost more but they use less energy and will last longer, both aspects of which will offset the higher initial costs. The political class ran with this logic trail and are now forcing Americans to buy the more expensive bulbs. However, the Republicans in the House Of Representatives has introduced legalisation to nullify this law and let Americans make their own choice.
Which led Department of Energy Secretary, Steven Chu to recently comment: "We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money." Two things wrong with this inane statement:
- First, if the fluorescent bulbs are that good, wouldn't smart Americans figure that out on their own and obsolete the incandescent bulbs anyway? Do we really need a government bureaucrat to tell us how to spend our money on light bulbs? Do we really need Mr.Chu to protect us and our money from ourselves?Plus, Americans should be able to waste their money, if they chose to, anyway they want.
And one man's waste is another man's need or desire. Many people would rather spend more of THEIR money for the incandescent bulbs, finding the older bulbs easier on the eyes. They may object to the potential for environmental danger since the fluorescent bulbs contain mercury and need to be specially recycled and not just dumped into landfills. Finally, they may have heard that the fluorescent bulbs do not last anywhere near as long as Secretary Chu and others have said they would, making the economic trade off argument far less dramatic.
- Second, and much more importantly, in the big energy picture, shouldn't this issue be way down the list of priorities? Shouldn't Chu and his leadership team be working on far more important and impactful issues than making sure Americans do not waste their money on a few light bulbs? All of the private market examples of energy innovation above have done for more with far less than Chu and the Department of Energy have done with their billions and billions of budget dollars over the decades.
Which brings us to the really big question: do we really need the Department of Energy anymore? Did we really ever need it to begin with? If the Department has not made any significant, new, or worthy contributions to alleviating our energy crisis over the past thirty years or so, what makes us think that track record will change in the next thirty years or so? Especially if babysitting Americans' light bulb purchases is a top priority of the Department.
Shouldn't the Department's leadership team and its multitude of research labs be more focused on converting that solar powered plane into a solar powered car? Shouldn't they be more focused on finding ways to put windmills on top of Americans' homes using breakthrough technology? Shouldn't they be more concerned with duplicating Subaru's energy success with every other U.S. factory? Apparently not, they want to talk light bulbs.
If I was king I would terminate this government organization tomorrow and save the taxpayers the billions of dollars we misspend on this inert organization every year. Again, the private market is moving boldly ahead with innovation, the Department of Energy has not and probably will not move ahead in the near future and it will continually cost us billions of dollars for that non progress.
Don't believe me? Consider some quotes from other, more informed people than me on their take on the Department of Energy's performance, mission, and research labs:
- From MIT investigators: "If a technology is viable, then government is not needed. If a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it viable"
- From a business/academic investigative team - "The (Department of Energy) labs are not now, nor will they become, cornucopias of relevant technology for a broad range of industries."
If the Department of Energy serves no viable role in technology and if their labs will never produce the breakthrough innovations we need to get out of this crisis (i.e. no "cornoucopias of relevant technology"), let's shut it down and use the money to start paying down our national debt. We need to do that whenever in order to keep the lights on, regardless of what kind of lights they are.
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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
Some of the most popular posts from this blog over the past few years have had to do with the Mexican drug cartels and the dangers and potential violence they hold for America. I have no concrete data or information that would tell me why these types of posts draw a significantly higher readership than other topics. It could be that American citizens realize how dangerous this Mexican drug cartel situation is becoming much more accurately than the political class in Washington, whose members more often than not seem to be oblivious to the world around them.
Nixon declared "war on drugs" in the late 1960s, taking the rather simpleton approach that the Federal government could stamp out the desires of millions of citizens to get high using a militarized, criminalized, and bureaucratic approach. Forty years later, that war has been lost, so much so that we are seeing that not only Mexico but many Central and South American governments are beginning to be threatened and overrun with drug cartel and drug gang money, weapons, violence, and threats.
We have not reviewed what is going on in this area for a little while so I thought it might be a good idea to check in, given the topic's popularity. Unfortunately, the latest news is not much better than the past news:
- The Week magazine reported in its July 1, 2011 issue that drug cartel gunmen executed a well know Mexican journalist, along with his wife and son, in Veracruz, Mexico. The gunmen brazenly broke into the journalist's home and gunned down his family on the spot. The journalist, Angel Lopez Velasco, wrote a regularly occurring newspaper column on drug trafficking and security issues. His son was a photographer at the same newspaper.
In the past month, a newspaper editor was kidnapped and believed to have been killed in Acapulco, a reporter was shot to death in Sonora, and another Veracruz reporter was kidnapped in March and his bullet riddled body was recently recovered.
- A July 13, 2011 Associated Press article reported that Mexican authorities had captured the top hitman for the Mexican drug cartel that goes by the name of the Knights Templar. The police believe that the captive oversaw murders for one of the top meth-trafficking gangs in Mexico.
However, the more distressing news in the article is the report that police recently seized 44 metric tons of chemicals that are used to produce illegal methamphetamine at a Mexican seaport. The 44 tons had been shipped to the seaport from Shanghai, China. I know nothing about making methamphetamine but I have to assume that 44 metric tons of chemicals would make a heck of a lot of illegal meth. 44 tons of anything would make a lot of something.
From the same article, police in the northern border town of Ciudad Juarez, which sits right on the border with the U.S., updated the kill totals from a gun fight last Tuesday. Apparently 21 people died from that one gun fight, not the 18 that had previously been reported. That made it the bloodiest drug cartel murder day in all of 2011, exceeding the 20 dead headcount from February 18, 2011.
Metric tons of illegal, drug related chemicals, and dozens of murders on a regular basis. Mexico and the American political class, we have a problem.
- An Associated Press article from July 15, 2011, summarized some of the latest drug cartel violence from Monterrey, Mexico, one of Mexico's most developed cities:
- The city's drug related murder rate is on a pace to double last year's murder pace.
- In recent weeks a teenager was hung until death over a bridge and two of the local governor's bodyguards were killed, dismembered, and dumped with messages that threatened their ex-boss, the governor.
- Last week, gunmen killed 20 people in a local bar.
- 22 more local people were killed in the two days leading up to the article's release.
- Local security officials admit that they do not know how much worse it will get but are openly not optimistic about the situation turning better anytime soon.
- The increase in violence and fear has resulted in fewer students coming to the Technology Institute of Monterrey, one of the nation's top universities.
- Local businesses secretly explained how some have to pay extortion money to the drug gangs.
Looks like the situation is not getting any better. That should not be unexpected since the American political class has done nothing to change the tide of violence and lawlessness that is sweeping across some countries that are obviously very close to the United States. This is the standard mode of operation for our politicians if you look at their history:
- Despite numerous threats and terror attacks in the 1990s on American interests, the political class did nothing until after the devastating 9-11 attacks.
- Despite the impending fiscal/debt ceiling crisis that has been brewing for well over a year, the political class has done nothing as the deadline for default draws nearer and nearer.
- Despite the oil embargo shocks of the 1970s, the political class has done nothing to give us a national, coherent energy strategy and plan.
- Despite over ten million illegal aliens in the country, the political class has done nothing to establish a sane, compassionate, and economically advantageous immigration strategy.
As you can see, we probably can expect no pre-emptive political class action on the drug cartel violence issue until it becomes either fatal or an emergency in some dramatic way. One of my new favorite sayings, from Andrew Glasow, goes as follows: "One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." Under this definition, it has been a long time since we have had any leaders in this country.
Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would be a good start in addressing this up and coming emergency. Step 26 provides a process to take a ground up look at the root causes of the drug cartel violence, namely the drug abuse and usage situation within the United States, and provide options of what should be done to attack those root causes.
However, until we implement the many steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that clean up our political processes to a point that these processes start generating real political leaders, the drug abuse and other major issues of our times will continue to be addressed only after they become emergencies.
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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
