While There is Still Hope for America, Part 3...Despite The Political Class: Cutting Unnecessary Defense Spending, Cutting Unnecessary Government Reports, and More

Unfortunately, when discussing the political class in America it usually gets pretty depressing. Runaway national debt, leaky borders, escalating healthcare costs, a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, selfish politicians whose only priority in life is their own personal enrichment and egos, a government bureaucracy that fails at everything it does, etc. It can get pretty depressing with all of the bad news that originates with a petty and inept political class. 

This situation led us to write the book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a fifty step plan to fix what ails the country. Sadly, since the book was published in 2009, the politicians in this country have followed absolutely none of the common sense steps that were proposed. Doing so would have put the country in a much better position today vs. what we are currently living through.

So rather than dwell on the continuing bad news that is spawned by today’s political class, lets take a couple of days to talk about some good things that are going on that should give us all some hope that eventually we can actually fix what the political class has broken and finally actually resolve some major issues of our times.

1) We have often discussed the reality that the American taxpayer wastes at least tens of billions of dollars every year by garrisoning military troops around the world. Step 30 from “Love my Country, Loathe My Government,” strongly suggested that such massive deployment of military personnel around the world was useless and wasteful. 

In fact, like most Washington efforts and strategies, a strong case can be made that these deployments made our international situation and homeland security worse. Every year or so it seems there is another rape case on Okinawa involving a local Japanese woman and U.S. military personnel.

Even though the Korean War ended six decades ago, we still have kept tens of thousands of American troops stationed in South Korea, possibly making North Korean leaders even more paranoid and dangerous if we did not have troops massed on their borders.

And though the Cold War ended about three decades ago, why we have continued to station tens of thousands of troops there to fight a non-existent enemy is beyond logic and certainly wasteful.

Thus, it was encouraging to find out recently that the Pentagon was going to close down 15 U.S.military bases in Europe. The closures are expected to save $500 million a year and be completed by the early 2020s. That’s the good news, a real good first step.

The bad news has several components. These positive steps will not be completed for a decade or so, requiring billions of dollars to still be spent on obsolete military bases. The process should be done much quicker. Second, while a couple of thousand U.S. troops in Great Britain will no longer be needed, there will still be tens of thousands of U.S. troops still on the continent costing tens of billions of dollars a year.

But it is a start and that is the good news. To the tune of half a billion dollars a year.

2) Congress also deserves some credit for starting to cut down on Federal government bureaucracy if only a little bit. They voted to eliminate 48 useless annual government reports that probably very few people ever read and which almost definitely never was worth the effort to compile. Hopefully, the President will sign the bill terminating these reports.

To show you how inane these reports are, consider just a few of the more outlandish ones:

• One report dated back to 1930 and was related to dog and cat fur imports. Yes, in 2014, someone, somewhere in th Federal government was compiling the amount of dog and cat fur imports, all paid for by the American taxpayer.
• Another report tracked how many acres of farmland was devoted to raising peanuts.
• Another report reconciled all of the reports related to the Corporation for National And Community Service.

The good news is that this is a small but positive step at cutting down unnecessary Federal bureaucracies and it will save the American taxpayer about $1 million a year. The bad news is that the Federal government will still be compiling another 4,921 annual reports every year, most of which are probably just as useless as the ones that have been discontinued.

If we could somehow terminate half of those $4,921 annual reports and save at the same rate, we could reduce unnecessary government report expenses by about $50 million a year. $50 million a year could shelter a lot of homeless, feed a lot of hungry, treat a lot of the addicted and do a lot lot more good than being used to create reports that no one ever uses.

3) The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that a statewide grand jury has recommended criminal charges be filed against Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen Kane. The charge include perjury and contempt of court related to the leaking of secret grand jury information. Let me say up front that these are only charges and that she is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

However, the good news is that someone in the state government of Pennsylvania is actually looking out for the integrity of the law in the state regardless of political position held or political power. The fact that charges were brought is a sign of hope that all are treated the same under the law, at least in Pennsylvania.

The background of the case is centered around a local grand jury that handed down indictments of two Democratic state legislators for taking bribes in exchange for their votes on a bill.Although the grand jury came back with criminal indictments, Attorney General Kane refused to prosecute the case involving two members of her same political party.

As a result, a judge convened a state grand jury with a special prosecutor to follow up on the whole situation which ended up indictments of Kane. Again, innocent until proven guilty but the good news is that the process worked and even the top law enforcement agent in the state is not above the law and scrutiny for integrity.

4) And last piece of good news: the price of oil continues to drop with the resultant price of gas at the pump continues to drop also. Now some politicians are licking their jobs at this good news and thinking that raising the gas tax at this time is a good thing to do. God forbid the American consumer get a break. 

However, I am more hopeful than ever that the American consumer will not stand for more taxation at a time when government wasteful spending is at an all time high. Just in case, may I suggest you give your Washington representatives a call and tell them no to more taxes, in any form.

That will do it for the three days of good news we have reviewed.Today we learned that small but positive steps have been taken to cut down unnecessary military base expenses and government report expenses. We have learned that at least in Pennsylvania, no politician is above the law. And gas prices continue to sink despite the best efforts of Washington politicians to make it more expensive to gas up. 

I hope you enjoyed this brief review of hope and good news because tomorrow we dive right back into the insanity, incompetence, wasteful spending, and dangers of the American political class.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

March, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Defense Budgets Out of Control, Government Real Estate Out of Control and Government Partying Out Of Control

It’s the beginning of the month which means it is time for another dose of political class insanity, idiocy, screw ups, and wasteful spending. Every month we need to take a week or so of posts to cover all of the many inane acts that politicians all over the country impose on ordinary Americans, acts that almost always cost us money or freedom. Previous discussions of political class insanity can be accessed by looking at the early posts of previous months from the list of dates on the right side of this screen.

Unfortunately, when we started doing this feature four years ago, we could usually cover a month’s worth of insanity in a day or so. Over the years, we have needed more and more time each month to get our insanity reviews done, indicating that our political class decision making and actions are getting worse over time. There is little doubt that the trend will continue this month also.

1) We have often discussed the reality that the U.S. continues to needlessly deploy over a hundred thousand troops just in South Korea, Japan, Europe, and other parts of the world, at a cost of billions and billions of dollars a year. These deployments may have served a purpose at one point in our history but now are unnecessary relics from our military past. 

More recently, the current Presidential administration has involved U.S. military resources in an illegal and ill fated military conflict in Libya, has stationed 2,500 U.S. Marines in Australia, and now has placed U.S. troops, or “advisors,” in upwards of a half dozen African nations. In addition, in the past six months, the President has threatened to militarily intervene in Syria and his Secretary of State has floated the idea of having U.S. troops serve as peacekeepers in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

All of this costs money, as the following chart shows, U.S. military spending vs. major all countries around the world (double click on graph for a larger view):



As you see:

• The U.S. spends almost $600 billion a year on defense, a cost that is equivalent to well over $5,000 a year per U.S. household.
• This is four times more than what China spends on defense despite China having orders of magnitude more people than us.
• This is about eight times what Russia spends on defense.
• In fact, the U.S. probably spends more than most of the nations on this chart COMBINED.

This chart proves that we really need to find a way to rein in the insane defense spending by substantially cutting the deployment of U.S. military resources around the world along with reducing other other excessive and wasteful defense spending. We simply cannot afford the cost of what the political class is spending in this budget item, getting very little in return. 

2) Let’s look at another chart, a chart which partly explains why the military industrial complex in this country spends almost $600 billion dollars a year:

This chart comes from a recent Cato analysis and report which counted up the number of physical buildings that the Federal government currently owns. Cato and the chart point out:

• The top three occupants of Federal buildings are the Army, Air Force, and Navy who in total occupy at least a whopping 180,000 buildings.
• This comes out to an almost incomprehensible 3,600 defense related buildings in every state on average. Another possible reason for an annual defense budget of almost $600 billion a year?
• In total, the Feds own over 300,000 buildings.
• But it gets worse. The government also leases 55,000 buildings, for a total of 361,000 buildings.
• But there is still more insanity. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of buildings that it owns AND leases, the Federal government owns and leases another remarkable 486,00 pieces of real estate such as parking lots. 
• The General Services Administration reports that the annual operating costs for all the buildings and structures is $33 billion. 
• Although the current market value of the buildings is unknown, a government report estimated the replacement value in 2007 at $1.5 trillion.
• The Federal government even admits that at least 77,000 of the assets are under used or unneeded.
• Some of them have been ignored for so long that they are in what Cato calls an “alarming state of deterioration.”

Obviously the Federal government needs to do a good spring cleaning of its real estate holdings. Selling these assets to private investors would 1) put them to better use than the non use they are receiving today, 2) would save American taxpayers billions of dollars a year in annual maintenance, administrative, security, and repair costs, 3) would reduce Federal government energy costs in keeping these facilities with power, and 4) would not contribute to our already outlandish national debt in the long run.

One problem is that the government does not know exactly what it owns, what condition those assets are in, and what real estate assets are excessive or unused. The GAO says that the government has a “lack of accurate and useful data to support decision making” on its vast property holdings. 

How insane is that, the Federal government has gotten so large and unwieldy that it does not even know what it owns? If a private business ran itself like that, not knowing what assets it owned or where those assets were located, it would soon be out of business. When government does it, the problem goes unattended for decades and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill for the political and bureaucratic incompetence.

Nevertheless, it is time for Washington to clean up this mess that it has been causing for decades, spring clean and bank the savings regardless of how unglamorous the clean up is. Anything else is just plain insane.

3) The political class spends and wastes our money is so many ways, not the least of which is how politicians and government bureaucrats party. Consider some of the party expenditures the Washington political class has treated themselves to over the past few years using our tax money:

• The White House staff currently has five chefs on staff at a cost of over $550,000 a year. Why five chefs, do they all prepare one part of every meal? Too excessive even for the President, especially when over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed, almost fifty million Americans receive food assistance, and our national debt is now over $17 TRILLION. Cut it down to two chefs and show at least a little empathy for the rest of America.
• In 2013, Joe Biden went to Europe for just two days where he and his staff rang up two nights of hotel expenses that exceeded $1 million. $1 million just in hotel expenses. I would not expect the Vice President to stay in a Motel 6 but I also do not think that $1 million for just two nights of lodging is respectful of taxpayers either.
• In the past few years the IRS has spent about $50 million on its conferences, often held in very nice surroundings outside of DC. A 2013 conference in Anaheim, California cost the American taxpayer $4 million and included some hotel rooms that went for $1,500 a night. Expenses also included $17,000 just for conference speakers one of which spoke about “Leadership In Art,” a topic that has nothing to do with tax collection and tax law.

Other such nonsense and cases of taxpayer wealth can be seen at:

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/02/22/video-party-time-on-the-taxpayer-dime/

That will do it for today, just day one of this month’s political class insanity. A defense budget out of control, government real estate out of control, and politicians and bureaucrats partying out of control. All paid for by the American taxpayer who gets virtually nothing in return for these expenditures.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

April, 2013 Global Warming Update Part 2: Cap and Fail, China's Appetitie For Coal and More

Yesterday was part one of our updated global warming discussion. During that discussion, we learned that a number of global warming advocates were having second thoughts on the subject since the forecasted results of global warming were not matching up to what their models predicted.

We also learned that China is making its large presence known in Ecuador where it is doing extensive work to develop oil fields which, according to global warming theorists, would increase the global warming threat. This effort underlined our assertion that unless China, and other developing economies, get their global warming acts together, anything the U.S. does, e.g. cap and trade, would be meaningless.

Let’s continue our discussion today, where I continue to be a believer in science but a global warming doubter:

1) On February 18, 2013, the Space and Science Research Center (SSCR), located in Orlando, Florida, issued is annual Global Climate Status Report for 2013. According to this organization’s website, the Mission of the SSRC is “to provide an independent un-biased resource for governments, media, corporations, and the people on important areas of scientific research, in particular the cause and effects of climate change, and to serve as an objective resource for the planning and analysis of the next climate change - predicted to be one of decades of record cold weather.”

What? A climate research group of scientists is predicting a coming a global COOLING period ahead, not global warming???? How can that be, Al Gore said that ALL climate scientists agreed that global warming was an oncoming issue? How dare the SSCR differ from Al!

I do not know anything about the SSRC. For all I know, they could be a front for the oil and coal industries and their research is pure propaganda. However, they apparently do deserve a hearing, a peer review of their findings to either verify or refute their findings and conclusions. That is what science is all about.

Because, if they are right, and a global cooling/ice age is about to hit us, that is a whole different set of problems and agendas vs. global warming. Remember, just two generations ago, in the mid-1970s, the mainstream media and climate scientists were predicting a new ice age, a prediction that never came about. In light of that missed forecast, who is to say whether cooling or warming is in our future, especially in light of this research and the suppressed EPA report that the Obama administration never let get published.

The SSRC website and scientific credentials can be found at:

http://www.spaceandscience.net/index.html

2) The International Herald Tribune reported on March 2, 2013, that citizen level concerns about global warming and major environmental issues are at all time lows and trending downward. These are the results from a huge international study involving thousands of people across almost two dozen nations:

“Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever — but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out,” said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan, the company that carried out the study.

The study shows that survey respondents clearly still had serious environmental concerns but fewer people were “very concerned” about various environmental issues than at any point in the last 20 years. The sharpest decrease in global concern occurred over the last two years. Thus, maybe the citizens of the world are also becoming skeptical about global warming claims that never come true.

3) A February 20, 2013 article in Forbes magazine:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/20/as-the-consensus-among-scientists-crumbles-global-warming-alarmists-attack-their-integrity/

reported on a recent survey of over 1,000 geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. The survey was done by peer-reviewed Organization Studies.

The bottom line results found that only 36% of those surveyed agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claim that human activity is causing a serious global warming problem. A majority of scientists in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The article goes into detail defending the results and comparing the findings to assertions of global warming advocates who, rather debunking these findings with science, seem more content to attack the integrity of the survey and those who participated in it.

Again, I do not have the answers but at least in this group of scientists, far from 100%, sorry Al Gore, disagree with the theory of man made global warming.

4) One of the supposed ways to save the climate and mankind from the dangers of global warming is through massive, and massively complex, so-called cap and trade programs. As I understand cap and trade, these programs set up a process where companies pay extra when they create certain types of global warming gases using credits as payment.

Companies that are energy efficient and do things that allow them to not use their allotted cap and trade credits, can then sell those credits to companies that need them because of their climate impacting activities. I assume that the basis of this system is to have the cost causer, those companies that contribute to global warming, to be the cost payer for those activities.

The value of those credits, once they are issued, is to be determined by the free market so that the prices charged between credit buyers and credit sellers can vary over time. The trick of such a convoluted process, is to have the exact right amount of credits in the market. If there are too few credits, economic activity is stifled since companies cannot expand.

If there are too many credits available, the economic laws of supply and demand take over, driving down the cost of the credits. Low credit costs results in low costs to doing activities that theoretically contribute to global warming, defeating the whole purpose of the credits to begin with. I am sure there are more elegant, more correct ways of describing the process but you get the idea.

According to an article from the April 1, 2013 issue of Business Week, the cap and trade effort in Europe is about to collapse. Highlights of the article, “Europe’s Carbon Market Is Crashing,” include:

• Slower economic growth in Europe is stifling business growth, resulting in less expansions and need for the credits, reducing the value of the credits.
• The lower prices is not spurring industries to make the necessary investments in clean energy to offset global warming.
• Earlier this year in Europe, it was possible to offset 581 TONS of emissions, about what one average European citizen generates during an 80 year lifetime, for about $30.
• At such a cheap cost, it does not pay for an industry or company to do the “right” thing for global warming since the cost to do so is much higher than the cost of the credits to offset their behavior.
• When the program started, central planners expected the final price of credits to settle between 25 and 30 euros per ton. However, in January, the cost to offset the aforementioned 581 tons was just over 23 Euros, total.
• Thus, according to the director of ClimateCare in Oxford, England: “It’s (cap and trade) is not spurring large emitters to make investments in reducing emissions.”
• The European Union is scheduled to take up the issue by considering a number of remedies but many members are opposed to these remedies, making a solution doubtful.

A massive bureaucracy that is failing massively. Elsewhere, Japan has already killed its cap and trade program, in 2010, and Canada and Russia have refused to take part in the second round of global warming restrictions, quotas, and rules as outlined in the second Kyoto agreement. As a result, industries and companies in these three major industrial nations are not bound to offset their behavior with the expense of credits.

In light of all this cap and trade failure, President Obama wants the U.S. to implement a cap and trade process. Europe is proving such a process cannot be managed to the desired results but Obama still wants it.

Three international economic competitors will not hamstring their industries and economies but Obama will hamstring ours.

China is doing nothing in this area, especially considering the following point, but Obama wants only the U.S. to do something.

And while there is now so much doubt about global warming, Obama is willing to ignore that side of the argument to screw the American economy with little to no effect on the environment, given what the rest of the world is doing. This is not leadership, this is economic suicide.

5) Speaking of China, consider an article from the March 25, 2013 issue of Business Week. According to the article, China has a bunch of large, energy hungry cities in the eastern part of the country and a western region where most of the natural resources, particularly coal, are located. The challenge has been how to best get the energy and value locked up these western natural resources to the benefit of the large eastern metro areas.

Their approach will be as follows to solve this energy problem:

• The government plans to build 14 massive energy bases in the western part of the country by 2015.
• These hubs will combine coal mining operations with energy power plants.
• Note: the article points out that China generates about 80% of its energy needs via burning coal, a no-no when it comes to global warming advocates.
• These hubs will create energy onsite that will then be sent over a series of transmission wires and facilities to the east for use in the metro areas.
• The Chinese view this as a better approach to energy management then shipping coal a long ways over land despite the fact that some electric energy will be lost along the transmission grids.

In other words, China could not really care less about global warming. They are making massive investments in their coal based energy economy with new coal power plants, coal generated electricity transmission lines, and expanding their coal mining.

If Obama really wanted to make a dent in global warming, he should be in the Chinese leaders faces before they expend so much wealth into this plan. Because once they do, one has to assume they would not abandon their investment for an iffy global warming theory. For Obama to insist that U.S. industry get hamstrung with a cap and trade program while China continues to build out its coal infrastructure would be a disaster for our economy and our country.

6) One last set of stats on why a cap and trade program for us is a silly, unmanageable, and economic disaster along every dimension:

• According to the previously cited Business Week article, the world’s use of coal, outside of China, has stayed about the same since the mid-1980s, around four billion tons a year. In that same time frame, China’s use of coal has about quadrupled, from less than one billion tons a year to close to four billion tons a year, with a strong upward trend. This makes China the consumer of almost the same amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. They must be severely changed out of their coal mentality for any cap and trade program anywhere in the world to have any impact at all.
• According to an article in Salon.com that was summarized in the September 28, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, carbon dioxide global warming gases in the U.S. are at their lowest point in 20 years, down 14% from their peak in 2007 as a result of fracking and the expanded use of natural gas, which is less damaging to the environment than coal and oil. This reduction is resulting in 500 megatons worth of emissions not going into the air, which is twice the amount of positive impact than what the original Kyoto agreement had on every other country in the world.
• An article from the Washington Post that was summarized in the March 1, 2013 issue of The Week reported similar numbers when it claimed that U.S. carbon emissions had fallen 13% relative to 2005 levels with a large part of that due to the increase use of natural gas and wind power.
• A Reason magazine article that was summarized in the January 18, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that U.S. power plant emissions were down 12% from their peak in 2007 even though the economy is larger than it was six years ago, mainly due to the wider use of natural gas.
• And finally, a Business Week graph in the January 7, 2013 issue of Business Week claimed that the demand and use of coal is up in every region of the world except the United States, with coal energy production almost catching up to oil energy production, not a good thing if you believe in global warming.

Thus, apparently we have not been doing to badly when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint. That is the reality that Obama should be taking to the rest of the world, not trying to further inhibit our country and its economy with a nonsensical cap and trade program.

So, that’s the update from a believer in science but a global warming doubter. What have we learned over the past two days:

• There is a lot of doubt, which seems to be growing, that global warming actually exists or is caused by mankind. In fact, we are now seeing some scientists predicting a global cooling threat.
• Forcing the U.S. to hamstring its industries and companies with taxes and cap and trade programs that are unlikely to work without getting the rest of the world on board to do the same is economic suicide.
• If Obama was truly a world leader, he would be in China’s face about their severe global warming activities.
• The U.S. has been doing pretty good getting its carbon emissions under control, without cumbersome and ineffective government intervention, over the past few years with substantial declines in its carbon emissions.

And this last point is the key, without government intervention. The best advice out of all of these news sources comes from the Salon article: “To combat climate change, our best bet is energy innovation that will create new sources of energy - not artificial caps on emissions that haven’t worked anyway.”

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Retro 26 - "We Have Less and Less Say About The Shape Of Events Which Shape Our Future"

The following post was originally posted about a year and a half ago. However, all of a sudden, it has rocketed up our tracking processes to become the most popular post over the past month or so. I really do not know why but can hypothesize why it has found a new popularity: as we get further and further into this vicious, never ending, lie-infested political cycle, we realize that as people who are supposedly living in a free country, we have less and less control over our personal destinies.

Corporate, union, PAC, and lobbyist money overwhelms our political processes. Those in positions of power turn out to not be leaders but simply greedy, selfish, small individuals who happened into politics as a career rather than a calling. Adulterers, liars, incompetents, and non-problem solvers seem to be their profile rather than integrity, leaders, and problem solvers. In the entire process, we are treated not as individuals, appreciated for our diversity, but merely voters to be cajoled or destroyed, depending on our political ideas and positions.

As a result, we seem to have less and less say about our futures and our destinies, as we reviewed about 18 months ago.

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

Monday, February 14, 2011

"We Have Less and Less Say About the Shape Of Events Which Shape Our Future."

The title of this post comes from a longer quote that reads as follows:

"Every year, whether the Republican or Democratic Party is in office, more and more power drains away from the individual to feed vast reservoirs in far off places; and we have less and less say about the shape of events which shape our future."

Fascinating observation and how appropriate for life in America today. Many of us have an uneasy, gnawing feeling that we are no longer the land of the free, free to do as we please and to shape our future and the future of our families as we see fit. For a nation built on the principles of freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility, this is not a healthy condition.

Many times we have pointed out the numbing fact that American government, at all levels, confiscates over 40% of our earnings every year through taxes and fees, a confiscation level that:

1.Restricts our ability to seek out and pay for the best education for our kids.

2.Restricts our ability to expand or start our own business.

3.Restricts our ability to contribute to our favorite charities.

4.Restricts our ability to live and work where we would like.

5.Restricts our ability to spend our hard earned wealth any way we would like.

6.Restricts our freedom to live our lives as we see fit, not as some politician sees fit.

You cannot have personal freedom without economic freedom. Any type of restriction is a hit to our freedom and by taking so much or our spending power in the form of taxes and fees, liberty is restricted to unheard of levels. And what do we get for these restrictions, what "vast reservoirs in faraway places" are the beneficiaries of our restricted freedom? These reservoirs are now deep, diverse, wide spread, and largely ineffective:

•Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe, over twenty years since the Iron Curtain fell?

•Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Japan, sixty six years after Japan surrendered in World War II and who has been a solid democratic country, a friendly ally, with a strong economy for decades?

•Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison tens of thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea, a country with one of the strongest economies in the world and which requires mandatory military duty, thus, having more than enough assets to protect itself from North Korea?

•Why do we still spend billions of dollars a year to garrison troops in Iraq, especially since our current President promised, but failed, during his campaign to wind down our military presence in that country?

•Why do we still give away billions of dollars every year to the agriculture industry in this country, the vast majority of which does not go to "family farmers" but ends up in the coffers of the major agricultural corporations, most of which are now enjoying recording breaking profits as world wide demand for American food products increases?

•Why did we spend billions of dollars to bailout auto companies and financial institutions whose sloppy, stupid, short sighted management was punished by the market forces and who deserved the same fate as ill performing companies received in the past: termination.

•Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year for various "corporate welfare" political cronyism initiatives, initiatives that are little more than a re-election campaign donation source for incumbent politicians?

•Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year for a mammoth government bureaucracy that is redundant, wasteful, inefficient, and largely ineffective?

•Why have we allowed so much of our wealth and freedom to migrate to far away Washington D.C., a metro area that is now home to seven of the wealthiest counties in the country?

•Why do we continue to spend billions of dollars a year to support dictatorial regimes in faraway places who are faithful to us for as long as we pay for their loyalty, at the expense of freedom and liberty within their own borders?

Why, why, why? In total, the average American receives absolutely no benefit from sending their wealth to "feed vast reservoirs in far off places," whether these places are in the Far East, the Middle East, Europe, corporate and union boardrooms, or wherever. The only Americans who benefit are the politicians that control how and how much these reservoirs receive, usually in return for some help in funding their perpetual re-election campaigns.

Thus, our freedom gets a double hit when you think about it. By using our tax dollars to feed these reservoirs, we are less able to live our lives as we see fit to to our reduced economic independence.

Second, we are usually stuck with the same, non-performing politicians since they always have a head start on campaign funding, given their reciprocal arrangements with unions, auto companies, financial institutions, agricultural corporations, etc.: they pay out taxpayer money via budget processes and earmarks to the reservoirs and the reservoir recipients are more than willing, as proven by campaign fund raising tracking, to return the favor in the form of campaign donations. This reduces our freedom of choice when it comes to our elected representatives.

That is why the fifty steps to freedom outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important if we are to drain these vast reservoirs of waste and start to shape events so that we can shape our own futures as we see fit, not as the political class sees fit. This is totally consistent with the insights embedded in the above quote.

By the way, who actually penned the quote above? Was it a member of the Tea Party who realized that government was draining our wealth and our liberty at the same time? Was it a contemporary journalist who recognized what is happening in this country today? Was it a courageous and current politician who understands first hand how wasteful government is today? No, the quote actually comes from William F. Buckley, Jr., and appeared in the November 21, 2010 issue of the Washington Post, but was written ALMOST FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Even back then, the political class and the government it runs was already creating vast reservoirs and diverting our wealth and freedom to those reservoirs. Let us hope that their fifty year head start can still be overcome. If the Egyptian people, with no tradition or history of freedom, can overcome thirty years of oppression where their freedom was diverted into a vast reservoirs of a secret police state, I am sure that with our over two hundred year tradition of freedom we can eliminate our reservoirs that Buckley writes so elegantly about.

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.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

Ancient, Current, and Illegal U.S. Military Wasteful Spending

Please note: the following post is not meant in any way to be a criticism of our armed forces men and women bravely serving to defend our country today, I have the utmost respect for their dedication, courage, and sense of duty. I thank them for all of the sacrifices they make on a daily basis.

Several news articles caught my eye lately which reminded me  how out of control our military spending has become. Depending on how you count, we spend anywhere from $600 billion to $700 billion a year on our military infrastructure. This comes out to more than a quarter  of what the Federal government brings in via taxes and fees every year. It will account for nearly half of the Federal government's 2011 budget deficit. We are spending a lot of money on our military and Defense Department but are we getting at least equal value in return?

Highly doubtful if you look at how out of control this spending is. The waste really falls into three categories:

- Ancient Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we have long been spending in military areas that do not to be maintained any more, such as ancient and now unnecessary foreign deployments of U.S troops.
- Current Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we spend today in non-essential military operations and Defense Department bureaucracy.
- Illegal Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we spend on illegal military operations today.

Ancient Wasteful Spending

Maybe at some time, decades ago, during the Cold War it made sense to station over 80,000 U.S. troops in Europe to support our western Europe allies and guard against Communist forces coming across the Iron Curtain. However, the Iron Curtain came down twenty years ago, Communism no longer exists as a threat to Europe, and many of the nations where we stationed troops to guard against their invading armies are now our allies and are actually part of NATO, our European military alliance.

There is no longer a need to station more than a bare skeleton crew of military liaison people in Europe, no fighting personnel at all should continue to be deployed. Bring them home, reduce the military recruiting expense, and save the deployment cost.

The same goes for troops we have stationed in the Far East. South Korean has one of the strongest economies in the world. They have mandatory military service requirements for all of its citizens. They are strong enough to fight off any North Korean military moves whether or not we continue to station 30,000 or so troops in South Korea. If North Korean comes over the border, 30,000 U.S. troops are not going to make much of a difference in the fighting so why put them in danger? Bring them home and tell South Korea that they need to assume full accountability and responsibility for their defense, using their economic resources, not the economic resources of the United States taxpayer.

Same argument goes for Japan. The 25,000 or so troops we have there will make no difference in any future China military activity.  Japan is unlikely to attack the United States and has the third largest economy in the world. As with South Korea, let the Japanese deal with any military matters using their own economic resources.

These three examples are typical government bureaucracy fallacies. At one point in time they may have made some logical sense, (i.e. protecting against Communist aggression, protecting a weak South Korean democracy, etc.) but those are ancient needs that no longer exist. Unfortunately, like many ancient government bureaucracies, they have taken on a life of their own and continue to annually drain taxpayer resources for no reason.

Bring the troops home, reduce your military recruiting expense, given the influx of newly available military resources, and save the deployment costs. We can no longer garrison the world with U.S. troops that no longer serve any purpose. Imagine how much money we could save if we no longer had to support the foreign deployment of 130,000 or so of these U.S. troops overseas. It easily could be in the tens of billions of dollars every year.

Current Wasteful Spending

Current military costs appear seemingly easy to reduce if you think logically and with a little common sense. For example, according to a joint study from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the National Taxpayers Union that was released earlier this year, the Defense Department could greatly reduce its expenditures for useless military equipment in the following areas:

• According to the GAO, the Pentagon could save $184.5 billion by 2015 if they stopped buying military parts and equipment that are never used or are obsolete if they made some simple enhancements to their purchasing processes.
• The V-22 Osprey aircraft is way over budget, way behind schedule, and falling way short of the benefits it was supposed to deliver. Cancelling it and stopping the wasteful money drain would save over $6 billion by 2015.
• The Space Tracking Surveillance System satellite system has failed to deliver on its promises, is behind schedule, and suffers significant cost overruns. More importantly, its job can be handled by much less expensive, proven technology, according to an internal Defense Department analysis. Canceling this program would save about $5 billion by 2015.
• The same logic applies to the Expeditionary Force Fighting Vehicle which is 14 YEARS behind schedule and is viewed in its current state as "highly unreliable." Cancel this program and save over $16 billion by 2015.

The study goes on and on with other outdated, unreliable, over cost, behind schedule, unneeded military programs that could be cancelled without harming our military's ability to protect the country. All told, the study meticulously documents almost $300 billion of unnecessary military expenditures that could be saved by 2015.

However, as stated above, these are common sense and logical cuts to be made. However, common sense goes out the window when any government bureaucracy gets bloated and out of control. The more bloat there is the more embedded interests fight to protect their turf and bloat, no matter how insane or wasteful that turf is. Consider a report from Fareed Zakaria, who described this bloated bureaucracy known as the Defense Department about a year ago in a Newsweek article:

• While the private sector of the economy has stripped away levels of management to become more efficient and responsive, the Pentagon management levels have grown considerably, from seventeen layers a decade ago to about thirty levels of redundant management today.
• We now have almost 1,000 general and admirals in our armed forces, up 13% in the past 15 years, even though the number of people in our armed forces has shrunk over the time period.
• Every management layer at the Pentagon is larger than it was during the height of the Cold War. As an example, the article cites a study from Professor Paul Light of NYU where he estimated that there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense in 1960 and there are 530 today.
• There are more military musicians in the military's marching bands than there are members in the State Department's Foreign Service.
• The Pentagon has ten times as many accountants than the State Department has Foreign Service officers.
• Defense Department Secretary Gates has publicly questioned whether or not we need to spend the money for an additional 100 fighter jets when we already have over three thousand such aircraft. Do we really need to build more multi-billion dollar Navy ships when we already have a navy that is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which are navies of our allies, and do we need to build more billion dollar stealth fighters when by 2020 we will still have 20 times as many such fighters as China.

Now consider an article by Boston Globe writer Peter Canellos, that was summarized in The Week magazine in the August 27, 2010 edition:

• Our current defense budget of $700 billion is six times larger than our nearest competitor.
• Our current defense budget is more than the next 18 largest defense budgets of other nations.
• More than $130 million of lobbyist money is spent ever year in an attempt to maintain and grow the country's spending on military hardware and other expenses, much of it unnecessary.

Much of this excess bureaucracy is unneeded to keep us safe but remains in place to only self sustain itself, wasting untold billions of dollars in the process. Why does a failed military program like the Expeditionary Force Fighting Vehicle hang around for 14 years despite its horrendous track record? Somebody in the bloated bureaucracy needs it to stay alive to sustain their job.

Thus, common sense makes no sense if you are defending your job. Until we streamline and shrink the military bureaucracy, the silly and wasteful military programs will continue.

Another current military waste that exists outside of the above discussion is the continued deployment of military personnel in Iraq. President Obama campaigned on the promise that he would get our forces out of Iraq quickly. He has failed miserably on that promise, with almost 50,000 troops still in country with discussions underway with the Iraqi government to extend their deployment. Not good, not good. Bring them home and save the tens of billions of dollars it costs us to deploy them in Iraq.

Which brings us to the first news article I recently came across. According to a CBSnews.com report that was summarized in the July 15, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the final taxpayer bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Brown University study, will come out to between $3.7 and $4.4 TRILLION. This estimate takes into account the so-called nation building efforts, ongoing medical care and benefits for our veterans and interest on what the U.S. borrowed to fund the warfare. To make that number real, that estimated cost of $3.7 TRILLION comes out to over $32,000 for every American household. Disgraceful expense for virtually nothing in return.

Illegal Wasteful Spending

For the life of me, I still do not understand how the military operations going on in the Mediterranean against Libya are not illegal, both from a Constitution perspective and a War Powers Act perspective. The Obama administration tries to spin this illegality as a non-war since we are only, theoretically, "supporting" the actual fighting NATO forces.

But we reported on news reports back in the spring that at that time the U.S. had already expended about $700 million in military costs on that operation. A recent article in the July 15, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that the Air Force Times estimates that the U.S. role in the conflict is not minimal, as Obama would have us believe. The U.S. military itself has flown nearly Air Force 3,500 missions over Libya since March 19 and over 800 of them were strike sorties, which I assume to be actual live firing missions.

So, how can this not be a war if we are flying thousands of Air Force sorties and being involved in live firing? Libya holds no strategic interest for us, we get very little, if any of our oil from it, and up until the spring, Libya was not viewed as a terrorist threat to us. Seems like not only a wasteful and unnecessary war, with probably over a billion dollars having been spent by this time by the American taxpayer, but also an illegal war.

Let's see: ancient, current, and illegal warfare that gets us nothing in return but wastes unholy amounts of taxpayer money every year. Does not sound like a good deal. But it illustrates how large and wasteful our government has become. Cutting Defense Department spending can be be done judiciously, safely, and quickly. The three categories of waste cited above would save hundreds of billions of dollars in just the next few years. 

Rather than cutting a measly $400 billion over the next 14 years like the Obama administration has proposed, cuts can be made that could save many multiples of that. $400 billion over 14 years comes out to less than $30 billion a year, less than 5% of the current military budget. That will not cut it. We can no longer deploy in Europe, Iraq, South Korea, and Japan, we can no longer support a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, we can no longer fiddle around with doomed military hardware processes and programs, and we can no longer allow the political class to arbitrarily involve us in wars.

But most importantly, we need to force the political class to look beyond their own self interest, and the companies and lobbyists that feed politicians re-election campaign coffers, and make the right strategic cuts that are necessary to make our military more efficient and effective. Hitting the panic button at the mere mention of cutting our military budget is not a mature, intelligent, and effective way to cut unnecessary government costs.

We can no longer afford the bloat and the historical waste. The military industrial complex in this nation is not so efficient that a mature discussion and coherent plan to cut out the inefficiencies cannot and should not occur.



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 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

It Does Not Have To Be All Gloom And Doom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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