Economic Update - Part 2: An Imploding Euro, Nancy Pelosi School Of Economics, And More

Yesterday, we started our periodic review on the state of the economy. Unfortunately, bad news and expected economic downturns, based on various experts' opinions, seems to be the prevailing trend. Even more unfortunate, we could not finish reviewing all of the bad news yesterday and needed another day for the other dire economic news in today's post.

- Relative to the housing industry, as measured by the Case-Shiller housing price index, even though 12 of 20 metro areas showed housing price gains in March, a good sign for the housing industry, the pricing trends in the other eight metro areas were so bad the overall price index edged down to its lowest level since the housing bubble burst four years ago. Thus, while the housing market might be starting to bottom out, the industry is probably very far away from really contributing to a growing economy.

- According to a report from Bloomberg News on May 23, 2012, Hewlett-Packard recently announced that it will reduce its workforce by 27,000 positions over the next year or so. Not a good sign for the economy when a large U.S. company is reducing its workforce by 8%.

- Economist and fund manager John Hussman says we are entering a recession now, according to an interview he gave to Moneynews on May 14, 2012: "The joint deterioration in the growth of real personal income, real personal consumption, real final sales, and employment, coupled with our inference of leading economic pressures from 'unobserved components' methods, creates not only the concern but the expectation that the U.S. economy is entering a recession — not a quarter or two from today, but most likely at present. Indeed, Europe already appears to be in a broadening recession, which the U.K. has now joined, and the confluence of economic weakness and already strained government debt conditions in Europe is likely to produce disruptive outcomes in the coming quarters."

- In a May 21, 2012 CNBC sponsored article in USA Today, New York University economist Nouriel Roubini stated that the U.S. economy is not growing close to what it should be in a healthy environment, barely hitting the 2% level: "We have positive economic growth, but it's below trend — barely 2 percent."

- We have already covered the following economic story under our recent Political Class Insanity posts but it is worthwhile going through it again. White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett recently spoke at the Student Summit at North Carolina Central University where she hilariously claimed unemployment benefits stimulate the economy: "Let's face it, even though we had a terrible economic crisis three years ago, throughout our country many people were suffering before the last three years, particularly in the black community. And so we need to make sure that we continue to support that important safety net. It not only is good for the family, but it's good for the economy. People who receive that unemployment check go out and spend it and help stimulate the economy, so that's healthy as well."

Valarie Jarrett is one of President Obama's closest and most trusted advisor. Given that, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of his economic policies and programs have failed if they are based on this type of inane economic theory. If Ms. Jarrett's theory is correct, then we should strive to ensure that every American DOES NOT have a job and is collecting unemployment checks, which they can then spend to create jobs. Stupid logic and theory.

Since we have been sending out record setting numbers of unemployment checks over the past four years, and there are still about 14 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed, this does not look like a good stimulus program if after four years we are in this type of dire situation. Obviously Ms. Jarrett a graduate of the Nancy Pelosi School Of Economics.

- One of the biggest economic time bombs waiting to go off is the mess in Europe and the Euro currency. This should be one of the biggest economic disasters we will see in our lifetime unless someone over there comes up with a plan, the likes of which no one has come close to formulating so far.

For those of you that are not too familiar of what is about to happen, I recommend you read the handful of lead articles in the most recent issue of Business Week for the week of May 28, 2012. The articles go into enough detail of what is pending, from various perspectives, without overwhelming the reader with financial minutiae.

The following facts will give you an idea of what the black clouds in Europe are all about, black clouds that will eventually rain some bad news on our economy:

• UBS has told it customers that the chance of Greece leaving or being kicked out of the Euro currency is about 20% within the next six months while Citigroup has stated their opinion that the likelihood of this happening within the next 18 months is between 50 and 75%.
• If Greece does go back to its drachma and gets out of the Euro, UBS predicts that the new drachma would devalue to about 25% of the Euro's value, making every Greek citizen and business about 75% poorer. Greek citizens have already started to take money out of Greece banks, in case they should fail, with Greek banks showing that their deposits are down about 33% since 2009.
• The bigger concern is that investors might start to believe that Greece is just the first domino and make a rush to withdrawal money from the banks of the other weak economies, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy. These banks have seen their deposits shrink by 3.2% over the past 15 months.
• France's Societe' Generale forecasts that a Greek exit from the Euro could result in about $1.1 TRILLION worth of currency and loan losses in the U.S. and Europe.
• The value of the Euro vs. the dollar is at it slowest level since five months ago. This means that the hundreds of billions of Euros support the rest of Europe has put forth in the past six months to prop up the Greek economy is not building up investor confidence in the value of the Euro.
• Spain is already in a recession, with unemployment at 24% and the number of bad loans currently on the books in Spain standing at 8.4%, the highest level in eighteen years. Thus, at least in Spain, there is not a dynamic and growing economy that might be able to lift that country out of its economic abyss.
• In Greece, the unemployment rate is about 20% and the unemployment rate for young adults is about 50%. Both figures are causing young Greeks to leave their country for a better life and better chance for employment elsewhere in the world, further weakening the chances for a Greece economic revival anytime soon.

Not a pretty sight. If the dominoes do fall, then even Germany might fall into recession since a lot of the exports their companies ship out end up in Spain, Greece, Italy, and Ireland. If those countries continue with their recessions and high unemployment, they will not be buying as many products from German businesses and factories. Remember, England is already officially in a recession.

If Germany goes into a recession, the whole Euro zone will fall into a recession and a major market for U.S. imports will dry up, probably forcing the U.S. economy into a recession, if we are not already in one. And if the entire Euro currency should collapse, I do not think anyone has a clue how bad the economic damage would be throughout the world, just not Europe. And history teaches us that when the economic damage is that bad, the political consequences can be bad and lengthy, e.g. the hyperinflation and German economic malaise that led to Hitler and the Nazis.

That is more than enough economic news, views, opinions, and statistics for one month. An imploding currency, ignorant economic advisers, 27,000 more Americans about to lose their jobs in one fell swoop, low economic growth, an impending return to recession, almost $16 TRILLION in debt, and a housing market that is getting worse at a slower pace. Have a good day!

Oh, by the way, Monday I promise we will be done with the bad economic news since a whole raft of new bad news showed up yesterday!


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/

The National Bounty System - Fixing The Washington Waste, Corruption and Criminal Fraud Once And For All

Before we introduce the National Bounty System, NBS, a process and approach that will finally do what the political class has never done and clean up the Federal government's wasteful spending, we have to review four areas of background information:

1. How much taxpayer wealth does the Federal government waste every year in just a handful of its programs?
2. Real life examples of waste and fraud.
3. A unique approach to eliminating waste and tax avoidance in Italy.
4. Why the NBS is dangerous from a liberty perspective but necessary from a financial crisis perspective and political class inaction perspective.

1. Annual Taxpayer Wealth Waste

We have discussed the following numbers previously, all of which can be documented from reliable, nonpartisan sources and analyses. However, it is important to understand the magnitude of the waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud that is rampant throughout the Federal government which occurs on an annual basis, regardless of which party controls the White House and Congress:

• Estimated amount of taxpayer wealth lost every year through waste and fraud via the Medicare system: $60 - $90 billion.
• Estimated amount of taxpayer wealth lost every year through waste and fraud via the Medicaid system: $40 - $60 billion.
• Estimated amount of taxpayer wealth lost every year through waste and fraud via the Social Security system: over $100 billion.
• Estimated amount of taxpayer wealth lost every year through waste and fraud via just one of the Federal government's unemployment programs: $19 billion.
• Estimated amount of taxpayer wealth lost every year through waste and fraud via just one of the Federal government's food stamp programs: $2-$3 billion.
• Estimated amount of taxes that are legally due but not paid every year by American tax evaders: $385 billion.
• Total amount of taxpayer wealth wasted every year from just the above programs: $606 - $657 billion.
• Total amount of taxpayer wealth wasted every year from just the above programs per U.S. household: $5300 - $5700

2. Real life examples of waste and fraud

An Associated Press article late last year reported on a Seattle area married couple that had been having a grand time defrauding the Federal government, and the American taxpayer, over the past few years. (details of this waste and other examples can be found at: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-congressional-super-committee-and.html) The article reported that:

• The married couple lived in a 2,300 square foot, $1.2 million house in the Seattle area.
• The article cites the probability that the couple also owned an expensive Jaguar automobile since investigators found it constantly parked in their driveway.
• Over the past eight years the couple had taken vacation trips to Moscow, Paris, Israel, Turkey, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
• During this same time period, the couple had collected over $100,000 in Federal welfare payments.
• Finally, after eight years, the local U.S. Attorney General's office is going after the couple in an attempt to recover $135,000 in Federal housing assistance and additional fines and penalties.
• Apparently, the wife applied for the government assistance by claiming that she was a single mother with two kids and assets worth less than $5,000 even though she was still married, according to the information and proof cited in the article and was living in the $1.2 million home with her successful, chiropractic practicing husband.

Just one example of the types of fraud that is used against the Federal government everyday. But this couple were small time fraudsters compared to the following doctor:

• Fred Dweck, a surgeon in two Broward County, Florida worked at two hospitals and also ran his own health care business in Miami.
• Last year, Mr. Dweck pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud since for four years before he was arrested, he cheated Medicare out of at least $24 million or about $6 million a year, an amazing $500,000 a month, on average.
• He put in claims for prescription drugs, insulin injections, in-home visits by nurses, and many other treatments for 1,279 patients, none of whom actually needed any of these treatments that the good doctor was reimbursed for.
• He had five nurses conspire with him to create fake patient records and payment forms.
• One would have hoped that someone in the Medicare organization would have grown suspicious of this one doctor generating so much work over the years or the $500,000 a month he was billing. Unfortunately, it took many years to figure out this one scam, too many years.

As these two examples show, fraud exists in a variety of wasteful schemes and at various levels of dollar values.

3. A unique approach to eliminating waste and tax avoidance in Italy.

The February 13, 2012 issue of Business Week contained an interesting article concerning what the Italian government is doing to track down tax evaders, "Nice Car, May I See Your Tax Records?" The concept is quite simple: if you own a high end auto or own an expensive yacht, it may be time to check your tax returns to make sure that your reported income is consistent with your high end, expensive lifestyle, as measured by the car your drive or the yacht you sail.

The article reports on one sweep through a posh ski resort last December where officials stopped 251 high end, expensive cars and asked for the identification information of the driver. That information was examined by the Italian government tax authorities, who found that 42 of the 251 cars, about 17%, were owned by people who reported to the Italian government that had declared income of less than 30,000 Euros (about $39,000) for 2010 and 2009.

This was just one of at least five sweeps Italian authorities have done in the past six months, targeting high end car owners and yacht owners. It provides a targeting tool to narrow down the most likely and most blatant tax evaders in this country of many tax evaders. The article estimates that the Italian government misses out on about $157 billion a year in legally owed taxes.

This strategy of matching lifestyles with likely tax liabilities was summed up by a top authority in the Italian tax authority, Carmelo Piancaldini: "The ownership of a luxury car highlights a level of spending and a standard of living that are often not reconcilable with the income declared by the owner." In other words, there is probably a very high correlation between how you spend your money and how much you should have legally paid in taxes.

4. Why the NBS is dangerous from a liberty perspective but necessary from a financial crisis perspective and political class inaction perspective.



What I am about to propose, the National Bounty System (NBS), is not something I do willingly or easily. I am a great believer in individual freedom and minimal government interference in our lives and families. Usually, the more a government intercedes in one's life the lower the freedom one has to live their lives as they please. George Orwell's novel, 1984, was the blueprint for increasing government's power and surveillance over our lives, the turning of one citizen against another for the "common good."

Given the danger of what is proposed below, I would demand that the NBS have a definitive starting point and end point and all records of the program be destroyed once the objectives are attained. The only reason the NBS is needed is because the political class has proven that they do not have the desire, the ability, the knowledge, or drive to clean up the waste and fraud that is robbing Americans of hundred's of billions of dollars every year.

Both Republicans and Democrats have had their chances to clean up the waste. They have all failed miserably. That is why we, as a nation, need a strong but temporary dose of NBS to fix the problems and then get back to living in a free, fair, and efficient country.

The National Bounty System (NBS)

The National Bounty System would be a temporary Federal program whose sole purpose would be to ferret out criminal fraud in many of the government's largest programs and crack down on tax evaders. It would clean up the mess that our political class has been unable to do.


Rather than rely on only hundreds of government employees to ferret out crime and tax evasion, it would rely on tens of millions of Americans to identify the fraud within their midst and pay them a bounty for their efforts, if those efforts were instrumental in prosecuting the criminals and recovering the wealth that was stolen or the taxes that were not paid.

The program would have many of the following components:

• A independent process would be established to gather, sort, prioritize, and track tips on fraud and tax evaders by a task force established within the Justice Department, with representatives from the IRS, Medicare, Social Security, Congress, the FBI, HHS, and others.
• Citizens could report their tips via email or snail mail, with the earliest date of receipt being given the bounty opportunity to collect a reward if the tip results in the retrieval of ill gotten fraudulent gains or the collection of unpaid taxes.
• The amount of the bounty would be 10% of the money recovered.
• Following the lead of the Italians, the task force would correlate new car and boat/yacht registrations with income tax returns to identify those people that reported low income but had high value purchases.
• The same correlation analyses would be done by crossing high end home purchases with tax returns.
• The program would be tested in one or two states in order to work out the bugs in the processes before a nation wide rollout.
• In advance of actually cracking down on felons and tax evaders, a well publicized amnesty period would be extended to all who would be likely targets of the task force. The amnesty period would allow anyone to come forward and confess their wrong doings and avoid jail time.
• However, they would still have to repay what they stole and owed in full.
• Those caught after the amnesty period ended would not only face jail time, if appropriate, they would have to pay back what they stole and the appropriate fines, penalties, and interest.
• The amnesty period would not only be in the one or two trial states, it would be nationwide. The trick is to make sure that those who are guilty know that their neighbors, their customers, and their work associates might be tempted to turn them in for the bounty and make them think twice of doing the right thing, turning themselves in, before the task force reaches their states.
• From an accounting perspective, half of the recovered money from the program would be used to pay down our national debt and the other half would be returned to taxpayers in the following year when they filed their own taxes. Under no circumstances would the recovered wealth be put under the control of the political class and likely wasted again.
• A similar process would be established for Federal employees, as outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," to identify fraud and waste within the Federal bureaucracy. The Las Vegas GSA disaster that has unfolded over the past few weeks might not have occurred if Federal employees had been properly incented to point out waste within their own realms of responsibility, especially if there was a bounty reward possibility.

Think about the possibilities this process could open up:

• Would a neighbor or office worker of the Seattle chiropractor discussed above have come forward sooner if they could have received 10% of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that couple embezzled from the government?
• Would a nurse or patient in the office of Dr. Dweck have come forward sooner if the opportunity to receive 10% of up to $24 million, assuming that all of the ill gotten gains were recovered, and possibly receive a hundreds of  thousand dollars or more?
• Would someone now be tempted to turn in an obnoxious neighbor who continually brags how they are receiving government unemployment checks while getting paid under the table for work the neighbor is actually doing if they could get rewarded for doing so?
• Would a Federal worker be more likely to turn in coworkers who are illegally selling food stamp benefits if they could partake in the reward of a prosecution?
• Would a Medicare patient turn on a crooked doctor who was using their Medicare number to rip off the system if that patient got paid for their trouble?

Although the concept of turning in one's neighbor, doctor, or co-worker is a dangerous precedent, I do not know of any other way to clean up the mess. Our politicians have not done it. The waste has reached epidemic proportions and burns through a large chunk of taxpayer wealth every year. I would be more than willing to present another approach in this blog that would be more effective and less dangerous to freedom but I do not see it today.

There is more than enough wealth in this country to take care of the less fortunate citizens among us if only the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year did not go to crooked doctors, organized crime, tax evaders, etc. This is a drain on the economy and an insult to all of us that play by the rules and the laws. I see no other way to stop the madness except to take the temporary but dangerous step of putting a bounty system out into the market and let the rewards of such a system potentially deputize every American in the country.

Once we have cleaned up the mess, the NBS would be shut down before it also became a threat to our freedom. In the meantime, we need to dump all incumbents out of office in November and replace them with some real leaders who would have the leadership, analysis skills, and courage to actually address and resolve the situation of fraud and tax evasion. Heaven knows the current crop of incumbents have not done anything about these two conditions, requiring the necessary but dangerous implementation of the NBS.

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/

It Is Not Just American Politicians That Are Corruptable And Contemptible

We have reviewed many, many contemptible acts and actions that our political class has perpetrated on us and the nation over the past few years. Just a few of their antics include the following:

• When national unemployment was soaring over 10% and major issues facing Americans were going on unsolved, the politicians in Washington worked at getting legislation passed that allowed the Federal government to control the sound volume on television commercials, displaying a very bad sense of screwed up priorities.
• When the Gulf oil spill was it its sickening height and people were losing their jobs and livelihoods and the environment was taking a beating, President Obama was taking multiple vacations, enjoying multiple rounds of golf and made at least two cross country trips to raise campaign money for fellow Democrats.
• With most Americans no longer able to get a traditional defined benefits pension from where they work, members of Congress get a generous pay check, a generous defined benefits pension, a generous 401k-like retirement account, and participate in Social Security.
• With the Federal government spending 70% more money than it was collecting in taxes and fees in 2011, running up well over a TRILLION dollars in additional debt and endangering the financial viability of the nation Congress decided to take a five week vacation, with pay, last August.
• The political class has slandered and demeaned tens of millions of Americans for simply expressing a difference of opinion with the politicians by calling them racists, smelly, un-American, terrorists, barbarians and a host of other slurs instead of celebrating the nation's diversity of opinion and the freedom that should come with it.
• Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sent to jail for felonies while former Congressman Anthony Weiner went into retirement for pompous, sexist stupidity.
• This administration and the Federal government ran a ridiculously inept gun running sting operation called "Fast and Furious" that resulted in military grade weapons ending up in the hands of the violent Mexican drug cartels and which have been used to kill a U.S. government agent and many Mexican citizens.
• Congress has rigged the process of Congressional salary increases so that they happen automatically and with little fanfare every year, regardless of how incompetently members of Congress performed during the year.

You get the idea. I could go on for a very long while to further verify that our politicians, for the most part, are contemptible. They waste taxpayer money, they focus on very minor issues and never resolve any major issues facing the country, they care more about their vacations and political careers while citizens suffer, and generally do a lousy job of governing the nation, solving problems, and protecting our democracy.

But, misery loves company. Consider how contemptible politicians around the world can also be, as documented in two articles in the January 20, 2012 of The Week magazine:

• Although the Italian federal government has driven the country's financial status to the brink of national bankruptcy, the average legislator in the Italian government earns $20,700 per month. This comes out to almost a quarter million dollars a year. Imagine how much money they would have gotten if they had actually done a good job managing the Italian economy.
• Italian politicians also get free travel anywhere they want within Italy, they get tax free housing allowances, $5,000 a month allowance for secretaries even if they do not have any, and subsidized gourmet dining.
• But the French politicians are not too far behind, on average, making about $217,000 a year.
• If these legislators made the same salaries in the U.S. they would be in the top 1-2% of earners in the country. Imagine how far up the income chain they are in their home countries.
• The Chinese government spends millions and millions of dollars every year by providing luxury cars for thousands of government officials.
• According to the article, Communist Party officials drive $100,000 Audis, police drive Porsche SUVs, and military officials drive half million dollar Bentleys.
• This auto and spending extravagance for the Chinese political ruling class is contrasted with a recent tragic accident where a bus that was supposed carry only nine people crashed with 62 kindergarten-aged children on board because the school could not afford to buy regular school buses. 21 kids died in the accident.

And finally, an article in the January 23, 2012 issue of Business Week that described the basket case that is Iraq, we find that a central government politician can earn up to $22,000 a month while in office. The typical Iraqi is lucky to earn a couple of hundred dollars a month, assuming they can get a job in their wreck of an economy.

An old saying that goes, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." However, I think a better old saying is "power attracts the corruptible." And the contemptible. Seems no matter where you are in the world, it is probably a safe bet that the political class will be more concerned with their personal enrichment and perpetuating their time in office than serving their country's people.

But at one point in our history's past we probably believed, falsely or truly, that our political system, our political class, and our politicians were better, more virtuous than the typical corrupt banana republic. But it is probably a good assumption that this belief is not valid today.

We have allowed our political processes to be hijacked by the political class for their own benefit and not the good of our democracy. Thus, the only way to return to a place where citizens run for office to serve the country and not themselves is to implement some of the steps put forth in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government,"

1. Step 6 - allow only citizens to contribute to election campaigns, banning donations from unions, corporations, PACs, lobbyists' groups, etc.
2. Step 7 - allow citizens to contribute only to election campaigns that affect them, e.g. people in Kansas cannot direct campaign contributions to New Jersey political candidates.
3. Step 8 -  strengthen FEC enforcement capabilities so that politicians finally obey all campaign finance laws.
4. Step 14- stop gerrymandering Congressional districts that greatly benefit incumbent politicians.
5. Step 37 - base annual Congressional raises on an annual customer satisfaction rating given by American citizens.
6. Step 38 - require every sitting Federal politicians to sign off on a annual shared values pledge that would hopefully guide politicians' behavior and would include such traits as integrity, trust, respect, commitment, and teamwork.
7. Step 39 - implement firm term limits for all politicians, "one and done."

Just because our politicians are like the rest of the world's, generally corruptible and contemptible, does not mean we cannot change it. Wouldn't it be nice to finally respect those that are in office rather than tolerating them because they were the lesser of two evils?



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 our 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