Retro 19: United States of Purple - A Plan To Resolve Our National Debt Problem

Due to family visits and obligations, for the next couple of days we will be reposting some previous posts. These will include some of the major issue positions we had written about in February. These positions laid out how the United States of Purple Presidency would finally get around to resolving some of the major issues facing the country, issues that the exisitng political class has never had the nerve, the intelligence, the means, or desire to resolve.

You can learn more about our movement and how to get involved, including the intitiative to install term limits on all Federal politicians, at:

www.unitedstatesofpurple.comWednesday, February 8, 2012




 The political class has driven the financial viability of the nation's economy, democracy, and future to the edge of collapse by running up over $15 TRILLION in Federal government debt. This is the equivalent of saddling every American household with over $130,000 of debt.

The Obama administration would like us to think that it can solve this atrocious debt situation by taxing the wealthy more. But how viable is that? Let's look at some different scenarios, using the IRS tax data we used yesterday to see if his idea of taxing the rich is even viable.

- Let's assume that Obama put a 10% surtax on every dollar any American earning over $1,000,000. Using the 2009 tax return data, this would generate about $727 billion over ten years, assuming that these Americans were still motivated enough to continue earning this much money every year. This tactic would result in paying off less than less than 5% of the $15 TRILLION national debt.

- Let's get really crazy and assume that Obama confiscated every dollar those million dollar earners earned in 2009. This would give the Federal government about $549 billion to pay down the national debt (assuming that they actually did use this windfall to pay down debt). This would pay off less than 4% of the national debt.

Unfortunately, you could not replicate this tactic for ten years because no sane person would continue to earn over a million dollars a year through hard work if the government was only going to confiscate all of it.

- Let's next assume that the whole country kicked in extra taxes to pay off the national debt. What if every American tax filer, regardless of earnings, paid an extra 3% in Federal income taxes? Over ten years this would generate about $2.5 TRILLION which would only pay off about 17% of the $15 TRILLION national debt.

- If we jumped that extra tax percentage up to 10%, it would come up with about $8.5 TRILLION and cover just over 50% of the national debt. However, it is doubtful the economy would stay healthy if a full 10% the nation's wealth was annually diverted to the Federal government to pay down debt. This would cause major problems elsewhere in the economy.

And all this assumes the national debt stays at $15 TRILLION. Given the budget plans that have come out of the Obama administration over the past year or so, if nothing changes, the Federal government is likely to add more than $9 TRILLION to the $15 TRILLION current national debt in the next ten years. Thus, you cannot increase taxes fast enough, on any or all Americans, to keep with the excessive spending of the political class, regardless of what Obama says.

But what if we could take more than $9 TRILLION out of the national debt without confiscating any more of Americans' personal wealth? What if you could take out $9 TRILLION without significant adverse effects on most Americans' lives?

The data below comes from a wide range of government and non-government sources, representing some heavy analytical work and research into how to make our Federal government more efficient and effective without causing unnecessary harm or hardship on most American citizens. Sources for the following government budget cuts include:

•U.S. Public Interest Group

•The National Taxpayer Union

•General Accountability Office

•Congressional Budget Office

•Associated Press

•Senate Reports

•The Cato Institute

•Housing And Urban Development

1) Annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud in the following Federal programs:

•Medicare: $60 - $90 billion

•Medicaid: $30 - $40 billion

•Social Security: $70 billion

•One Federal Unemployment Program: $19 billion

•One Federal Food Stamp Program: $2 - $3 billion

•Total: $172 - $222 billion, midpoint = $197 billion

•Savings over ten years if you just eliminated the waste, inefficiencies and fraud - $1,970,000,000,000 ($1.97 TRILLION)

2) Annual uncollected taxes due to the Federal government but not collected from tax evaders: $325 billion.

•Savings over ten years if you just reduce the illegal tax evasion by 50% - $1,625,000,000,000 ($1.625 TRILLION)

3) The U.S. has about 84,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Europe, about 30,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in South Korea, and about 25,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Japan, serving defense purposes that were obsoleted decades ago. The Obama administration is about to unnecessarily deploy about 2,500 troops in Australia. If 75% of these troops were brought home, the country would save about about $212,000,000,000 over ten years.

4) If we cancel the production of the V-22 Osprey aircraft because it is over budget, likely to under perform, and has been designated as not critical by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, we would save $6.2 billion over the next five years.

5) If we cancel the production of the F-35 jet fighter which, according to the Sustainable Defense Task Force, "may represent all that is wrong with our acquisition process" and "would provide a capability that is not warranted considering emerging threats," we would save $22.5 billion over the next five years.

6) If we cancel the military Space Tracking and Surveillance System, which can be replaced with lower cost and more reliable options, we would save the Pentagon $5 billion over the next five years.

7) If we cancel the outdated, unreliable, and unneeded Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, because the General Accountability Office has cited the program's history of cost growth, schedule misses (14 years late), and performance failures as reasons for terminating the program, we would save $16.3 billion over the next five years.

8) The General Accountability Office found that the Army, Navy and Air Force are wasting billions of dollars a year by purchasing items that were either never used or were never required. The GAO identified purchasing reform processes that could save $36.9 billion a year or about $369 billion over ten years.

9) Terminating various unneeded corporate welfare programs would produce substantial savings. These programs include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Market Access Program, trade association subsidies for foreign marketing, subsidies to large agriculture business and wealthy farmers, tax credits for the blending of ethanol, the ultra-deepwater natural gas and petroleum research program, public timber sales subsidies, and Southeastern Power Administration. Just ending these corporate welfare programs would save about $12 billion a year or about $120 billion over ten years.

10) The Federal government owns more than 55,500 buildings that are either not used or are underused. A detailed analysis suggests that if 50% of these buildings were eliminated over the next five years, not an unrealistic target, savings in the area of $48 billion would be realized.

11) According to government audits of Housing and Urban development, the Federal government wastes about $4.5 billion a year due to bad accounting and billing processes. Fix this problem and save about $45 billion over twelve years.

12) Using conservative estimates, annual earmarks, which are usually nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to fund their re-election campaign with taxpayer money, cost the Federal government about $16 billion a year in unneeded expenses. Eliminating earmarks would save $160 billion over ten years.

13) According to the General Accountability Office:

•The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws.

•It has more than 20 programs helping the homeless.

•It has 80 programs to help economic development.

•It has 82 agencies working on improving teacher quality, few of which are working if you see how poorly American kids are being educated vs. the rest of the world.

•It has 47 agencies working on job training.

•It has 18 programs working on food and nutrition assistance.

This type of redundancy results in tremendous waste and unneeded overhead, duplicate responsibilities, and inefficient service. A formal Senate report and analysis of the situation, estimates that between $100 billion and $200 billion a year could be saved by consolidating and downsizing these functions. If we take the midrange of the estimates, we end up with $1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 TRILLION) in savings over ten years.

14) A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report identified savings in the area of government spending on Science, Space and Technology - savings over ten years - $25.26 billion

15) The CBO found Agriculture savings over ten years - $3.87 billion. This does not include the termination of unneeded ethanol subsidies and other farm support programs that are no longer needed, given how well the American farming industry is dong today.

16) CBO - Natural Resources and Environment savings over ten years - $32.23 billion. These savings are mostly concentrated in programs that support corporations, not endangering basic government environmental programs.

17) CBO -Commerce and Housing savings over ten years - $5.42 billion. This does not include the savings that could be found by cutting back on the widespread fraud and mismanagement in government housing programs.

18) CBO - Transportation savings over ten years - $141.64 billion

19) CBO - Community and Regional Development savings over ten years - $21.94 billion

20) CBO - Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services savings over ten years - $45.42 billion

21) CBO - Income Security savings over ten years - $68.83 billion

22) CBO - Veterans Benefits and Services savings over ten years - $21.50 billion

23) CBO - Allowances savings over ten years - $2.54 billion

24) CBO - Administrative of Justice savings over ten years - $10.26 billion

25) CBO - Social Security savings over ten years - $388.52 billion. Part of these savings are compatible with the recommendation from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" which was to raise the retirement age to 70.

Not included the $388 billion is another step from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," which was to uncap the total amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax. The CBO estimates that raising the cap amount the way they want to would provide an additional revenue of $503.4 billion to the Social Security finances over ten years.

This estimate also does not include the final "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" Social Security recommendation which was to terminate Social Security payments to anyone whose net worth is over $3 million in assets, i.e. people like Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates who do not need the checks to live comfortably will not get them.

27) CBO - General Government expense savings over ten years - $5.21 billion

28) Since Obama came into office, the Federal payroll has grown by 231,000 civilian employees despite reduced tax receipts, the lingering impacts of the Great Recession, and the overall dire employment situation throughout the country. Since most of us would agree that we have not seen a corresponding rise in the quality of government service since these people have been hired. Getting rid of them, like most efficient businesses would do, would not result in a degradation in Federal government services.

If we conservatively estimate that the weighted taxpayer cost (wages, benefits, and retirement costs) for these newly hired employees is $80,000 a year, than letting them go would result in annual savings of about $18.48 billion a year or $184.8 billion over ten years.

29) In any measure of education attainment, U.S. kids usually fare very poorly when compared to the education received by kids in other countries. Usually the U.S. is bested by a dozen or more countries when it comes to comparing standardized test results. The Department of Education has been around for about thirty years and has done nothing to change this low performance.

Thus, given its nonperformance, the entire department should be eliminated. Cato suggests that this ill performing government entity be terminated at once, its responsibilities becoming the responsibility of the states to educate their own kids and the American taxpayer can save the annual $107 billion cost of the department. I would put a twist to this termination recommendation.

I would phase out the department over a four year period but would send the department's budget as block grants to the states during that four year phase out. The states could use the block grants to improve the teaching ability of their own state's teachers, improve their technology infrastructure, improve their curriculums, and improve their universities' teacher education curriculum.

At the end of four years, the states would be in a much better position to educate our kids, heaven knows the Federal Department of Education has not done anything worthwhile. 10 year savings - $909.5 billion.

30) Much like the Department of Education, the Federal government's Department of Energy has done nothing to get us to a coherent national energy strategy and policy and has not funded any breakthrough energy technologies. Terminate the entity and let the private market research and development new energy technologies. 10 year savings according to Cato - $382.8 billion.

31) Cato has done similar analyses on just about every other Federal organization, some of which we have already touched on. In order to avoid double counting, I will not go into their agriculture subsidy reductions and military spending reductions, given what we have already identified some of them above.

However, they have identified 10 year savings of $21.2 billion from the Commerce Department and if you conservatively accept only half of their Department of Transportation cuts, you get another 10 year savings of $424.4 billion.

These cuts alone would save the Federal government over $9 TRILLION in expenses and costs over the next ten years with minimal impacts on needy Americans and ordinary American citizens. The $9 TRILLION+ does not include additional savings that would come from the following areas:

•More military cuts not listed above.

•Reining in Medicare and Medicaid costs beyond the fraud and waste savings listed above.

•Deny Social Security payments in retirement to any American who had a net wealth of over $3 million.

•Savings from interest payments not paid because the Federal government took $9 TRILLION of debt out of play.

•The repeal of Obama Care which would save the country from expending an additional $300 billion over the next ten years, if you believe the recent analysis from the head actuary of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

•The termination of the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government agencies and the associated hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies they are likely to consume in the next ten years.

•Elegantly privatize some government functions such as what Canada and other European countries have successfully done with their national air traffic control processes and postal systems and allow private contractors do the TSA screening function at all U.S. airports since we know from experience that they can do a far better job for less budget money than government employed TSA screeners.

People far smarter than me can determine the value of these additional efficiencies in government operations. In fact, Cato has already done all of this work and summarized it at their fabulous website, http://www.downsizinggovernment.com/. Their comprehensive analysis found a way to reduce annual Federal government spending over time by about $1.16 TRILLION a year, creating a ten year debt reduction of $11.6 TRILLION.

This is in the same ball park of our $9 TRILLION in identified savings and the additional unquantified savings in the list above. Two separate analyses, about the same results, indicating that this is doable without raising taxes on any American, rich or poor.

The above cuts are a great start. However, one of the first acts as President in the United States of Purple would be to convene a commission of smart Americans that have already analyzed the need for drastically reduced government spending, put them in a room, and have them work together to overlay their plans together to come out with one overall plan, based on their expertise and past experiences in this area.

Members of this commission would be drawn from at least the following organizations:

1.President Obama's defunct and severely underutilized Deficit Reduction Commission

2.The Cato Institute

3.The Concord Coalition

4.The General Accountability Office

5.The Congressional Budget Office

6.The Urban Institute

7.The National Taxpayer Union

8.The U.S. Public Interest Group

9.Bipartisan Policy Center

10.Others TBD

Most of these cost cuts would have minimal impact on the average American. More importantly, it would reduce government expenses, allowing more Americans to keep more of their personal wealth, it would increase our personal freedom, it would unmuddy the uncertainty that the Obama administration has injected into the economy, and it would keep the social programs that many Americans rely on (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, etc.) viable and fiscally solvent.

That is how life would be in a Purple Presidency. Given the history of the Obama administration and the rest of the political class, this solution is beyond their capabilities and comprehension. Otherwise, they would have done these things already.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein


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/

So, What Kind Of (Tax) Money Are We Talking About?

As we discussed yesterday, the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling are basically bogged down because the Democrats and Obama want to raise taxes and reduce government spending while the Republicans only want to reduce government spending. This difference could cause the United States government to default on its debt obligations, triggering a default and who knows what kind of economic chaos and destruction since we have never gone down this road before.


President Obama has been preaching, empty posturing, and politicking around three main tax raising issues:

• He wants to close some tax loopholes that oil companies currently enjoy.
• He wants to close a tax loophole for corporate jet owners.
• He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Yesterday we laid out some of Obama's bigger hypocrisies he has incurred while in office. The above list of tax issues also speaks to some further hypocrisies:

• Let us not forget that BP's biggest campaign contribution in the 2008 elections went to the Obama campaign. His outrage against BP and other oil companies would be a little more genuine if he had not taken large sums of money from them for his election.
• The corporate jet owner loophole he wants to close is actually one he supported and was included in his economic stimulus program. If it was a good idea to give this loophole in 2009 to stimulate a down industry in a down economy, why is it a bad idea now when we are still the same down economic condition?
• If he thinks it is such a good idea for the wealthy to pay more in taxes, why didn't he take the lead and do that when he filed his personal Federal income taxes in April? He has recently admitted that he is doing well financially. Would have been a nice gesture of leadership if he had walked the talk and paid extra in taxes. By not doing so, I believe he is being hypocritical in insisting that others pay more.

Okay, these are just opinions, let's look at  the numbers to see what we are arguing about and what we are about to default the country over. Let's start with the oil company loop tax loopholes. There are varying forecasts, all from reputable sources on the web, that say this loophole is worth anywhere from $20 billion to $40 billion over a ten year period. Let's split the difference and say that if Obama and the Democrats actually got the Republicans to agree to closing these loopholes, it would return $3 billion a year to the Treasury on average.

How much of a difference will $3 billion make against the towering national debt numbers we know about:

• The 2011 Federal government expenditures are expected to be about $3.9 TRILLION - The annual $3 billion oil company loophole closure of $3 billion is .08% of the total 2011 expenditures.
• The 2011 Federal government deficit is expected to be about $1.65 TRILLION - The $3 billion oil company loop hole closure of $3 billion is .2% of the 2011 deficit.
• Obama's original Federal budget plan from back in the spring would have added another $9 TRILLION to the current debt levels of over $14 TRILLION - the ten year, $30 billion savings of closing the oil company tax loophole is .1% of the long term national debt.

The closing of the corporate jet tax loophole, the one he helped open up two years ago, would come out to about $3 billion over ten years or $300 million per year:

• $300 million is about .008% of the Federal government's 2011 expenditures.
• $300 million is about .02% of the Federal government's 2011 deficit.
• $3 billion over ten years is about .01% of the Federal government's long term national debt.

Between the two tax loopholes we are talking almost infinitesimally small impacts on our Federal government debt crisis. Should these loopholes be closed? Absolutely, we need to start the larger, overall process of weening every business off of corporate welfare from the Federal government.

This process should have been in place prior to the hundreds of billions of dollars that the political class showered and wasted on the reckless bailouts of Wall Street and auto industry businesses. Those taxpayer benefits would have added up to some real taxpayer savings rather than some relatively small corporate jet and oil company loopholes.

But when Medicare and Medicaid are sucking up about 13% of your budget and the Pentagon is sucking up about 16% of your budget, worrying about nits like corporate jets and small oil company tax loopholes is a rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic charade. There are so many ways to effectively cut government spending and waste in a big way that to nitpick these trivial ones is insane. And to have the fiscal integrity of the United States fall and live on these trivial issues is even more insane.

Let's move on to the infamous Bush tax cuts. Although Obama did not lead on this issue when he filed his taxes back in April and pay extra in his own tax bill, let's explore what impact would have happened if the "rich" in this country, those earning over $250,000 a year had their upper tax bracket raised from 35% to 39%. I have done the estimates and they are in line with other sources, the general consensus is that this action would increase taxes paid to the government by about $70 billion a year:

• $70 billion a year is about 1.8% of the Federal government's 2011 expenditures.
• $70 billion a year is about 4.2% of the Federal government's 2011 deficit.
• $700 billion over ten years is about 3% of the long term national debt.

Bigger numbers but still pathetically small when compared to the out-of-control political class spending. Thus, even if Obama got his way on these three tax issues, he would reduce spending and the debt by less than a measly 5% no matter how you cut the data.

Let's go even further. Last year we did a post on how wealthy the richest 400 Americans are from a total wealth perspective. The most comprehensive source of those estimates comes from Forbes magazine's  annual wealth survey. Last year the magazine estimated that the richest 400 Americans had a total wealth of about $2.5 TRILLION. Even if we confiscated the total wealth of these Americans, seized their homes, their cars, their boats, their financial assets, $2.5 TRILLION is less than 11% of the long term national debt.

The remaining 89% would have to be paid by the rest of the 112 million U.S. households, or about $180,000 per household. This does not include the annual tax increases each household would have to pay since once you wipe out the top 400 Americans, they would no longer be paying any taxes to the Federal government which is a very hefty sum.

Thus, even if you get crazy and start talking about government confiscation of private property, you cannot close the spending gap without involving the entire country. Corporate jets and oil company loophole closings are a travesty and only a distraction in this debt ceiling discussion and crisis. A long term, integrated, effective, coherent plan is needed to dig us out of this giant deficit spending hole the political class has gotten us into. It cannot be done in a matter of weeks like the political class is trying to do, it should have been started at least a year ago, using the President's own deficit reduction commission as a serious starting point.

But what am I thinking? Long term? Coherent? Integrated? Effective? When would we ever use these adjectives to describe the political class? Long term to them is next election or campaign fundraiser. Coherent to them is what ever they want their voters to believe. Integrated to them is how does any piece of legislation integrate into their re-election fund raising. Effective to them is any action that gets them through the next election.

Both parties are playing childish and selfish politics over trivial, unimportant financial travesties. And somehow we are going to pay big time when they finally decide that short term political survival trumps long term national financial survival.

Tomorrow we will look at some other tax scenarios of rich vs. poor to further confirm that Washington either does not understand simple math concepts or purposefully clouds simple math concepts to get votes.





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/

The Country Is Anxious, Pessismistic, Ashamed, Helpless, and Defensive.

The title words today were printed in the May 6, 2011 issue of The Week magazine and were attributed to David Brooks, a New York Times columnist. His entire quote was the following:

Over the past months, we've seen a fascinating phenomenon. The public mood has detached form the economic cycle. In normal times, economic recoveries produce psychological recoveries. At least at the moment, that seems not to be happening. There are structural problems in the economy as growth slows and middle-class incomes stagnate. There are structural problems in the welfare state as baby boomers spend lavishly on themselves and impose horrendous costs on future generations. As these problems have gone unaddressed, Americans have lost faith in the credibility of their political system. This loss of faith has contributed to a complex but dark national mood. The country is anxious, pessimistic, ashamed, helpless, and defensive.

Great writing but a very scary conclusion. If any organization or human endeavor loses faith, then getting out of the gutter becomes an almost impossible task. Faith feeds hope and hope feeds hard work and innovation since there is a belief that there can be a better way, regardless of what human endeavor we are discussing. A current example here in the Tampa Bay area is our NHL team, the Lightning.

The Lightning have been less than stellar over the past few years, playing mostly drab, uninspired hockey. However, last night, they just won their second playoff series of this hockey season, sweeping the Washington Capitals, four games to none. The Capitals were the number one seed coming into the series while the Lightning was the fifth seed. The Capitals had been in the playoffs the past several seasons while the Lightning had not. The Capitals have one of the most elite players in the Game while the Lightning have only very good players.

Nonetheless, with faith that they could overcome the higher seeded, more star studded team, that faith led to hope which led to hard work and innovation which led to a series sweep. Without faith in themselves and their leaders, this does not happen.

Unfortunately, but probably accurately, Mr. Brooks is not finding a lot of faith around the country today. Why not? Consider just some random things that are currently going on:

- The first time unemployment claims jumped significantly today, an unexpected event. Every week, we still have over 400,000 Americans who have lost their jobs and have to apply for unemployment benefits. Tough to have faith when you do not have a job.

- The nation's Federal government debt situation is currently out of control. The Federal government, and by proxy, all Americans, are now well over $14 TRILLION in debt. It was announced today that Joe Biden had the first meeting of his deficit reduction effort today.

This is about six months after the President's year long Debt reduction Commission published their extensive findings which were immediately ignored by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. Now all of a sudden, we are expecting six people in Washington, meeting for the first time today and led by someone who slept through part of the President's recent speech on the debt problem, to fix a problem in a few weeks that has been decades in the making. Tough to have faith in this chaotic and simplistic approach to problem solving.

- An April 27, 2011 article from the Associated Press talked about how there are more than 100 levees across the country that the Federal government has classified as unfit for use. These levees, while most were originally constructed to protect farmland, over time now protect towns and communities. For example, one such dangerous levee in Missouri protects the town of Poplar Bluff,  home to 17,000 people.

If the government is right, than there are over a hundred communities and areas that are in a dangerous predicament, existing below substandard levees holding back tons of water. Makes you wonder: given the trillions of dollars we have paid to all levels of government over the years, wouldn't you think that some of that tax money could have been used to fix about 100 levees? Tough to have faith when you have a leaky levee over your head.

- An Associated Press article from March 17, 2011 discussed how many states  are facing such dire economic conditions that they are thinking of canceling political primary elections in the future. Now, I applaud state government for trying to be efficient with limited tax dollars and looking to run an efficient budget. However, it is a little disheartening when the political class and the various levels of government that the politicians run cannot execute a traditional and vital part of democracy, primary elections. Tough to have faith when your voting right is possibly endangered by budget cuts.

- Even when an event happens far away, it adds to the lost of faith. Consider Detroit, a metro area that used to be the nation's fourth largest city. A metro area that at one point in time was the home of over two million people. A metro area whose population has plunged to only about 700,000 people, the same amount of people that lived there in 1910 or so, a time when there were for fewer people in the country as a whole. A metro area that is now smaller than the cities of Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana. A metro area that has such widespread desolation that some are talking about turning it back into a farming community.

No one wants to see something like that happen anywhere in the country for fear that it could happen to their community. Tough to have faith in the face of such despair and when a mayor of another major metro area, NYC Mayor M. Bloomberg has the hairbrained scheme of forcing immigrants to live and work their as a solution to the population loss.

- An article in the May, 2011 issue of the AARP magazine profiled the town of Vallejo, California. Vallejo has the distinction of being the largest city in the state of California to file for bankruptcy, indicating that the Detroit situation is not contained in Detroit.  Vallejo was the first state capital, is only 25 miles from San Francisco, and for 150 years was the location for one of the Navy's most important shipyards.

However, now, it has had to reduce city employees including police and fire, and many city services as the multiple factors of ever increasing pension and health care costs (unfunded liabilities of $195 million) collide with the decreasing property and sales tax revenue (down over 20% since 2008). Tough to have faith when an established, once thriving community such as Vallejo is driven into the ground as a result of the political class not being able to plan, manage and execute a budget process.

- Many years sooner than expected, the Social Security has run a cash deficit this year, sending out more money than it collected in payroll taxes. Tough to have faith when a large portion of your retirement revenue is running short of funds.

- While we have all applauded and been thrilled by the Bin Laden situation, I was struck by the President's words that night when he addressed the nation for the first time after the operation was successfully completed. Within a six sentence sequence in his speech, the President stated the following phrases:

• "I directed."
• "I was briefed."
• "I met repeatedly."
• "I determined"
• "At my direction."

There is an old wise saying that goes something like: "True leaders give credit and take blame." Tough to have faith when the leading political figure in the country does not abide by this simple leadership credo, putting his own personal and political needs ahead of others.

Random events and circumstances, all contributing to the the feeling of pessimism, helplessness, and lack of faith that Mr. Brooks talks about. Defective infrastructure, lack of leadership, faulty budgeting, too much debt, the coming insolvency of government programs such as Social Security, etc., the list of unaddressed problems is wide and diverse.

However, all is not lost, if you use the Lightning as a ray of hope. The Lightning this season had a new owner, a new general manager, and a new coach. In other words, they changed out their leadership structure for a new set of leaders that re-instilled those faith, hope, hard work, and innovation traits back into the team. They could not change out the players so they changed out the leaders.

The same cleaning process needs to happen within our political processes. As laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," such steps as instituting term limits, holding Congressional committee members accountable for their committees' responsibilities, instituting various ethics steps to ensure high leadership standards, and removing the cancer of campaign donations from the election process would allow us to change out our sitting politicians.

We can not change out our citizens (the players), although I would bet some politicians would like to, so let's change out our leaders like the Lightning did. If we have lost faith in our current management team, what do we have to lose by changing the processes that put them into their seats originally. Time to stop feeling anxious, pessimistic, anxious, helpless, and defensive, time to have faith and hope.






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/

The New CBO Budget Numbers Are In And The New CBO Budget Numbers Are Not Good

From a historical point of view, we are in the  midst of three history making upheavals that will have long term impacts throughout the world, certainly interesting times. The first upheaval is the earthquake disaster in Japan and what the recovery time and costs will do to the world economy. Second, the quest for freedom in the Middle East and how this quest is likely to have both good and bad consequences for various parts of the world including the U.S. And finally, the financial integrity disintegration of the United States economy through the mismanagement of the country's financial health by the political class.

Today's post concerns the last history making event, the financial destruction of the United States. The Associated Press reported on March 19, 2011 that a new evaluation of the Obama administration's long term budget by the Congressional Budget office (CBO) revealed that we are much closer to our financial collapse than even the most pessimistic among us could have thought. Before going into the details of the article, let's review where we know our national financial health is today:

• The Federal government national debt is around $14 TRILLION and climbing rapidly.
• This debt places an average debt burden on each U.S. household of about $122,000.
• The February, 2011 monthly incremental debt was about $225 billion or about $2,000 per household. In other words, in February, each American household was responsible for $2,000 that the Federal government spent that it did not have the tax revenue to cover.
• In the past four years that the Democrats controlled Congress, the national debt rose over $4 TRILLION.

Nasty, nasty stuff. However, now the CBO has released its latest estimates and they are not good:

• Obama's original budget estimate called for an additional $7.2 TRILLION worth of debt over the next ten years or about $63,000 per U.S.household.
• However, the CBO estimates that this is a very, very optimistic number based on some faulty assumptions and that the increase in the national debt is likely to be $2.3 TRILLION higher or $9.5 TRILLION.
• Thus, between the existing $14 TRILLION and the additional $9.5 TRILLION debt that the Obama budget will incur, every U.S. household will be on the hook for about $204,000 of the national debt within ten years.
• This debt will be more than one and half times the size of one year's gross domestic product. In other words, the country would have to work more than 18 months to pay off the debt and not spend any money on anything else including food, products, services, etc.
• The new CBO numbers estimate the Obama Care will also be $90 billion more expensive than previously hyped by the administration, substantially reducing any positive budget effects from the legislation, one of its main selling points originally.
• The Obama administration estimates that the deficit will eventually be reduced to about 3% of the GDP number but the CBO disagrees, estimating that the deficit will never get below 4% of the GDP which would still make it unacceptably high.
• The difference in estimates between the CBO and the administration is that the CBO does not believe in the "rosy" assumptions in the President's budget, it does not believe that the government will collect all of the increased tax dollars it assumed, it does not believe that the political class has the will power to reduce Medicare payments (which it has never had int he past), and there is no substantiation for "unspecified bipartisan financing," all very legitimate disagreements to have with Obama's budget.
• The White House does not dare disagree with the CBO estimates or methodology since it used the CBO estimates to sell in its own health care reform legislation. Thus, if they vilify these CBO budget numbers they nullify the Obama Care numbers.
• The situation has gotten so bad that 64 Senators, 32 from each political party, recently signed a bipartisan letter to Obama that called on him to take the lead in developing a strategic and comprehensive budget reduction plan along the lines of Obama's own deficit reduction commission's findings, the very commission that Obama commissioned and then almost completely ignored.

We are witnessing historical financial distress and the administration does not even acknowledge how bad the situation is by developing outrageous spending plans that add TRILLIONS to the deficit while ignoring its own commission that would help fix the problem. Both political parties, as witnessed by the Senators' letters, realize that the problem needs urgent attention. Only the White House and the current resident seem to see no urgency in this area.

If they do not reverse their attitudes, take the lead, and make some bold and courageous moves, we are likely to end up like the economy of Ireland, whose status was reviewed in the March 11, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine. According to an article by Colin Barr of Fortune that was summarized in that issue of The Week:

• Ireland has imposed two years of painful austerity on its citizens for its mismanagement of the economy.
• As a result, wages are falling, unemployment has tripled to 13%, and younger Irish citizens are leaving the country in larger and larger numbers.
• Investors who are buying Irish government bonds are insisting on a return of at least 8%.

This is what has happened in Greece, has happened in Ireland and other European countries who let their government spending get out of control. Economic hardship, as the interest on the piles of debt get higher and higher and standards of living get lower and lower. It is a fate that we face unless the President somehow does a turnaround and starts leading for once and stops touring other countries, stops playing golf so often, and stops being just a typical Chicago politician.

And it is not as if most of the heavy lifting has not already been done for him. His deficit reduction commission appears to have done a fine job and detailed analysis of how to get spending under control. The Cato Institute has gone through the current Federal government budget line by line and has identified hundreds of billions of dollars that could be pared from the Federal government without undue harm to ordinary Americans. Think tanks, both convervative and liberal, have done the same. Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" lays out a straightforward approach to systematically cut government down to size over a five year time frame so that the pain is equally shared across everyone. All that is needed is a leader, not a politician, to lead the way.

A famous Chinese saying goes as follows: "May you live in interesting times." On the surface this looks like a positive thought and intent, may you have an interesting journey through life. However, if you do a little research on the saying, it really is meant to be a curse and to be read as follows: "May you experience much upheaval and trouble in your life." From Japan to the Middle East to the precarious financial situation our politicians have put us into, we are expereincing much upheaval and trouble, neither of which will enhance our individual freedom and liberty in the long run.

For as the government's financial situation collapses, it will draw down/confiscate more and more wealth from its citizens in a desperate last attempt to prop up the financial system of the country which is buckling under over $20 TRILLION worth of debt. When government gets into the confiscation game to cover its own incompetent bungling, you are no longer living in a free country. Interesting, and troubling, and sad, and as the CBO numbers illustrate, not good.





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

Wisconsin, Simple Math, Simpleton Politicians

As most of you probably know by now, there have been some rather large demonstrations going on in Madison, Wisconsin by public employee union members who are upset that the new Republican governor and legislature are about to pass a bill that would eliminate collective bargaining for certain public employee unions and require union members to contribute to their pension and medical benefit costs. The reason for this legislative action is that the state is faced with a looming budget deficit of $3.6 billion and the Republican lawmakers believe that this is only way to effectively close that deficit.

Now, I was struck by the idiocy of a lawmaker who was supporting the protesters on the news by saying that that wealthy in Wisconsin should be taxed more and that the unions should not be required to do any givebacks to save the financial solvency of the state. That got me to doing a little math to see if the math was simple in this case or the politician was simple:

• To support a previous post in this blog I went and found out how many Americans earn how much money as reported to the IRS. Thus, these are official Federal government numbers, they are not Fox News numbers, Tea Party numbers, Republican numbers. These are 2008 final, official IRS numbers, the last year which this data was available to this detail
• I also checked out the results of the 2010 Census which showed that Wisconsin was home to 1.82% of the nation's population.
• For 2008 IRS filings, 321,294 households nationwide earned over as million dollars. If you assume that the number of millionaires are spread throughout the country in the same proportion as the population, then we would expect Wisconsin to have about 5,847 millionaire earners in the state, 1.82% of 321,294.
• If this lawmaker wanted the "rich' to pick up the state budget shortfall, then each of those 5,847 state residents would have to pay a whopping $615,700 to eliminate the shortfall ($3.6 billion divided by 5,847 people).
• I would venture a guess that there are even fewer millionaire earners in Wisconsin than the 5,847 estimate above, making the budget reduction burden for Wisconsin millionaire earners even greater. Other, richer  states (New York, California, Texas, New Jersey) probably have more millionaire earners relative to their population than Wisconsin.
• If you ever did such an insane move you can be sure that shortly afterward there would be no millionaires living in Wisconsin.
• Since we know that the average American household spends almost 30% of its annual income on income taxes, sales taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes, etc., and Wisconsin is already one of the most heavily taxed states, many of these Wisconsin millionaires would not be able to pay their $615,700 share since after taking more than 30% of their earnings via other taxes and paying for food and other basic necessities, they would not have enough left over to cover their $615,700.

Simple math, simpleton politicians. The government debt burden has gotten so high in this country that even if you confiscate all of the earnings from the richer Wisconsin families, you still might not be able to cover the budget shortfall. Does not the political class understand this simple math fact of reality? You can no longer tax the rich to pay off the bad financial management of the simpleton politicians.

Last year we did a similar analysis for the national debt. Fortune magazine annually publishes its list of the richest Americans along with an estimate of their worth. If you added up the richest 400 Americans from their last analysis, you found that their total net worth was about $2.7 TRILLION. Thus, if you confiscated all that these richest Americans owned, (bonds, cash, boats, houses, cars, furs, property), you would not come close to paying down just the deficit that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi rang up over the past four years. You cannot tax the rich enough, even if you take all that they own, to cover the shortfall. Simple math, simpleton politicians.

Want more examples? Last year, my home state of New Jersey was looking at a state government expense stream of about $30 billion and a revenue stream of about $20 billion, leaving a budget shortfall of about $10 billion. What were half of the New Jersey political class worried about? Was it the $10 billion? No, it was the fact that the governor refused to raise the income tax on the highest earners in the state by 2%.

By the outcries from the state employee unions and the state Democrats, you would have thought that this single action was responsible for the $10 billion shortfall. However, if you did the math, you would have found that raising the income tax 2% for that small percentage of earners would have raised far less than $1 billion, still leaving the state more than NINE billion dollars short. Rather than attack the underlying root causes of the problem, the politicians were intent on arguing and politicking over a nit that would not have made any significant difference in the overall crisis. Simple math, simpleton politicians.

That is what is so disconcerting about the Federal government's skyrocketing national debt. It seems most of the political class do not understand simple, logical math and the simple reality that goes along with it. And even the small percentage of politicians that might get the simple math, they are too busy continually running for office to make a stand for sanity. Let's review the looming financial crisis at the Federal level once again for the simpletons in D.C., I will try to speak s...l...o...w...l...y:

1. We are about to hit a national debt level of $14 TRILLION.
2. With about 115 million households in the country, that comes out to a debt burden of about $122,000 per household.
3. In the best of all economic worlds, if Obama has his way, his budgets will add another $7 TRILLION to the national debt in the next ten years, making the household burden in excess of $182,000. This debt will eventually have to be paid off by us and FUTURE generations of Americans, our kids and our grandkids.
4. Very soon, within the next few years, American taxpayers will pay more on interest on the Federal debt than they do on all other discretionary areas of the Federal budget combined, meaning less money for transportation, education, etc.
5. By paying so much to cover the national debt, Americans will be less free to spend their earnings on things they want such as charities, better schooling for their kids, their own businesses, and their own lives, resulting in a sustained and deep loss of freedom.
6. Speaking of freedom, the Chinese now own almost $1 TRILLION worth of our debt, restricting our freedom in the international arena, i.e. do not tick off one of your largest bond holders regardless of what compromises you have to make on human rights.
7. Smart Americans from across the political spectrum recognize and understand the problem and most have come up with ways to eliminate the problem, with the one exception being the American political class. These partisan and bipartisan Americans include, but are not limited to, the Cato Institute, Obama's own debt reduction comimission, the Concord Coalition, the National Taxpayers Union and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Simple math, simpleton politicians. Simply a travesty. 




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

Shaky Economic Times Ahead, Lessons Learned From the Past

A bunch of economic news has occurred recently so I thought it might be a good idea to take a look ahead into 2011 and try to predict how well the year might shape up from an economic perspective. You might question my ability to do that since I have very little economic training. However, given that the best economic and political minds in the world did not foresee the coming of the Great Recession, the biggest economic downturn in about eighty years, I would humbly state that I cannot do any worse then the experts in predicting what will happen in 2011.

At the same time, we will try and take away some lessons from what is happening in the economy in order to not repeat the major missteps that the political class has done over the past few years. A person should always look at their own errors in order to not repeat those errors in the future, a life lesson that always seems to get lost on our politicians.

The basic prediction I would make for 2011 is that it is going to be a very rocky and difficult year for American households in 2011, worse than in 2010. Yes, the stock market has improved considerably over the past year or so. Yes, holiday spending was up considerably on a year over year basis. Ford said it would hire up to 7,000 more workers. Many in the political class are already trumpeting the coming good times. I would say not so fast, considering:

- Yesterday's unemployment report on initial unemployment claims was not good, rising 35,000 to 445,000 people compared to the previous week. Thus, for a very long time, we have seen almost half a million Americans a week file for first time unemployment benefits. The job market cannot be strong if that many Americans continue to seek relief from the loss of their jobs.

And although the unemployment rate recently dropped to 9.4%, that was due to the many Americans in despair who have actively stopped looking for work rather than growth in the available number of jobs. With many Americans losing their jobs every week and many others stopping their job searches out of frustration, tight consumer spending will result in low economic growth and continue to depress sales tax and income tax revenue streams for government operations, resulting in even more government budget tightening.

- The Associated Press reported on January 13, 2011 that 2011 will be the peak in home foreclosures for American families struggling with unemployment and plummeting housing prices coupled with weak housing demand. The foreclosure tracker Realty Trac Inc. predicts that 1.2 million American homes will be repossessed in 2011, up from one million homes in 2010. One out of every 45 homes in the country, more than 2%, received a foreclosure notice just in 2010. Thus, one of the previous drivers of economic growth, the housing industry, is unlikely to help the economy or homeowners that owe more to the bank than what their home is worth.

- An Associated Press article from January 14, 2011 reported that consumer prices rose in December by the largest amount since June, 2009. The primary cause for the jump was the continuing rise in gasoline prices. For some perverted twist of logic, many economists think this is a good thing since there was only one driver of the higher prices, gasoline. What I never understood is who cares what drove the higher prices, everyone needs to drive, that is the basis for much of our economy and country, so excluding the price of gasoline from the inflation measure and being happy never made any sense. In the real world, we cannot take gasoline out of the equation and look at "core inflation," we still have to drive and driving got more expensive.

- Unhappy about rising gas prices? Well, get ready for rising food prices also. According to a Wall Street Journal report from January 13, 2011, prices of all types of food are likely to continue going higher in 2011. After jumps in farm staple products this week, corn future contracts are up 94% from June, soybeans are up 51%, and wheat is up 80%. Three factors are driving the rising prices, according to the United States Agriculture Department:

1. Dry weather and floods in various countries around the world have suppressed world wide crop production.
2. There is basic rising demand for food around the world.
3. Corn and other crops are being diverted for ethanol production.

The situation has gotten so bad that many are starting to worry that food supplies might be a source of "social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environment damage," according to the World Economic Forum.

 On expert cited in the article expects commodity food prices to rise between 3.5% and 4.5% in the United States this year compared to only 1.5% in 2010. Even worse, the same expert said that beef and pork could rise as much as 10% in 2011. All good news for America's farmers as China and other emerging markets buy up American farm output, bad news for American consumers who, in addition to higher gas prices, are likely to be paying more for higher food prices.

- More proof that the economy is in for a rough ride in 2011? The Associated Press reported yesterday that the price of gold surged above $1,400 an ounce this past Tuesday as a result of a weaker dollar. In times of economic stability, the price of gold usually goes down significantly as other investment options provide a better potential for investment returns. As long as gold stays high I always assume that some very smart people are out there with serious and probably accurate doubts about whether the world's economies are really that strong and growing.



The panel also concluded that while the company is on the path to stability, its future plans "raise concerns" due to a lackluster product array, a faltering restructuring in Europe and increased competition around the world. Looks like $53 a share is not going to arrive anytime soon.

- Remember all those dire bank failure stories and hysteria from just a couple of years ago? How the American taxpayer had to step in and prevent all of these banks from collapsing and taking the entire world economy with them? Well, according to an Associated Press report this week, it does not look like that fate awaits JP Morgan. They announced this week that their fourth quarter profit jumped a whopping 47% over the same quarter the year before. The bank earned $4.83 billion in one quarter.

So while many Americans struggle with long hours, no jobs, higher gas prices, and potentially higher food prices, JP Morgan, and I would bet most other banks, are getting along quite comfortably, in part due to the bank bailout debacle that cost the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars for no reason whatsoever.

- Staying in the bank bailout arena, a report issued this week by the office of Neil Barofsky,who is the special inspector general for the entire bank bailout TARP fund, found that the decisions to save Citi Bank "wasn't made coherently, and seemed to be based on "gut instinct" and "fear of the unknown" rather than objective criteria.  In other realms of life, this kind of decision making is called Amateur Hour. How can a politician or government official give out tens of billions of taxpayer dollars based on nothing but gut and fear?

The fact that the Treasury Department claims to have made money on the Citi Bank bailout does not erase the fact that they got lucky. You cannot expect to do much in life as clueless as Mr. Barofsky claims the Treasury department and the government was and always be so plain lucky. Especially when billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money are involved.

And the worst part of the whole deal, worse than the basic roulette bet that was made with billions of dollars? The article raises new concerns that despite all of the posturing of the political class, many U.S. banks are bigger than the were just a few years ago, making them still "too big to fail." Barofsky claims Treasury secretary Geithner stated that "while the government now has better tools to cope with future financial crises, in the future, we may have to do exceptional things again." This is basically code words for some of these banks, like Citi, are still too big to fail and we will have to bet huge amounts of taxpayer money again to save them from themselves. Thus, we have risked hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, for no reason, under no logical processes and we are likely right back where we started prior to the Great Recession.

Thus, from all of this current and somewhat pessimistic news what should we have learned:

• We should have learned that government does not create jobs, the private sector creates jobs. After hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in so-called stimulus programs, unemployment is still very strong and very vibrant, not a good thing. All of the failed government-centric economic policies, Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, etc. have been utter failures except for their success in spending taxpayer dollars. In the future, find ways to let the market cure itself, not the government and the political class. These last two entities have proven beyond a doubt that they are useless in this area.
• We should have learned that the economy is always stronger than any government incentive program, it has to work its way back to health, the best thing that the government can do is let nature take its course and get out of the way. All of the government programs to help the housing market, foreclosure relief, first time home buyer rebate program, low interest rates, etc., have been total failures and have just wasted more taxpayer dollars while delaying the eventual cleansing of the market of excess inventory and bad credit risks.
• We should have learned, something our politicians never learn, that just about everything in the world is connected to everything else. Thus, by trying to fix the energy problem with a poorly thought out and failing corn ethanol program we not only fail to fix that energy program but we also cause economic troubles in food market. To solve any problem in life, one must understand the root causes and the interconnections within each problem. Our politicians have a very difficult time with that concept.
• We should have learned that it is never a good idea to step into the private sector to protect stupid executives and failing companies from themselves. General Motors never should have received any bailout money. They could have gone through bankruptcy proceedings like most other companies without government help, they would have emerged from bankruptcy and still have been a viable business without taxpayer help. Now, the American taxpayer will never see a positive return on that money, the Chinese government now owns more than 10% of the company as a result of how well the American taxpayer backed the company, and the company itself is on the verge of making more cars outside of the United States than within the country so we do not even get the benefit of more U.S. jobs for out taxpayer dollars. No company should ever be too big to fail. Let them fail, its called the free enterprise system.
• We should have learned, based on the GM example and the bank bailouts, that government should end all corporate welfare practices. GM's focus will not be on the American taxpayer in the future, it will be on the Chinese consumer. The major banks focus will not be on customer service and making loans to grow the economy, it will be on how to leverage interest rates and other exotic financial arrangements to make profits. American farms are swimming in profit potential, given tight world food supplies, wouldn't this be a good time to cut government farm subsidies to the large farm conglomerates in the country? Cut the corporate welfare practice, it perverts the true marketplace while it perverts the election process via campaign fund donations from corporate welfare recipients.

Some steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would help to implement these lessons:

• Step 6 would allow only individual citizens to contribute to election campaigns, eliminating the incentive for corporate welfare since the ability to reward welfare with campaign donations goes away.
• Step 23 provides a process to finally solve our energy crisis without screwing up the environment or food prices in the process.
• Step 34 provides a process to replace members of Congressional committees when the fail to perform to satisfactory levels, hopefully replacing them with people that can solve the problems facing the committees.
• Step 36 would require all elected officials to take and pass a course on basic economic theory so that they can understand how to solve some basic economic problems without making them worse, hopefully preventing us from reliving the nightmares of Cash For Clunkers, First Time Home Buyer Rebates, etc. in the future.
• Step 47 would eliminate farm subsidies, just one form of corporate welfare.

In summary, I predict we will pay more for gas in 2011 (given current gas rends), we will pay more for food in 2011 (given the three factors listed above), we will not see much price appreciation of our homes in 2011 (with all of these foreclosed coming on the market, the glut will suppress prices), we will not see a burst of job growth (not at the current high level of initial unemployment claims every week), we will not see any more tax breaks in 2011 (given the poor financial conditions of the Federal government and the states), we will not see any reduction in our national debt in 2011 (given that Pelosi, Reid, and Obama have already torpedoed the Deficit Reduction Commission without debate), we will not see GM repay its debt to the American taxpayer while it focuses overseas, and the banks are still too big to fail, probably taking too many risks but confident their friends in Washington will bail them out. Have a nice day! 



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