The American Political Class - Setting Records For Poor Performance and Poor Approval Ratings

This seems to be a week for lists. On Tuesday we listed out the numerous ways Obama Care is doomed to failure from so many different perspectives. Yesterday, we listed out the myriad of bad economic news that has recently come out along with lists of denial and apathy examples from this administration. Today, we will list out the incredibly poor approval ratings Americans have for the current set of politicians running the government, specifically the U.S. Congress.

The basis of these low approval scores comes from the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. The survey was conducted on May 19 and May 20, 2011 and included 1,000 likely American voters. The sampling error is plus or minus 3%. The results are not anything to be proud of:

• Only 9% of those surveyed think Congress is doing a good job. This ties the record for the lowest approval marks ever in the survey.
• A whopping 50% of those surveyed ranked Congressional performance as poor.
• This 50% poor rating performance is up from 42% in February, i.e. we think that Congress is doing a significantly worse job from just four months ago, which was not that great to begin with.
• 44% of those surveyed believe it's more important for Congress to pass good legislation, 44% believe it's more important for Congress to block bad legislation from becoming law. Usually, passing good legislation is ranked more important than blocking bad legislation. Could it be that we have lost so much faith in our politicians that we are beginning to feel that doing nothing is better than allowing the political class to do anything?
• Only 16% of those surveyed think that Congress has passed legislation over the past year that will significantly improve life in America, 60% think that Congress has not passed legislation that will significantly improve life in America.
• 80% of those surveyed believe that members of Congress are more interested in their own personal political careers than helping average Americans. This is close to the highest level recorded over the past five years.
• 42% of those surveyed believe that most members of Congress are corrupt while only 32% believe that most members are not corrupt.

Other recent Rasmussen polling results have uncovered the following opinions:

• 51% of American adults think that when a company offers a government regulator a job, it's a form of a bribe while just 22% think it is not a bribe.
• 64% of voters say politics will become more and more partisan in the next year. This result has climbed steadily since Obama was sworn into office, from a low of 40% to a high of 70% last August.
• Most voters still want to repeal Obama Care but are about evenly split in their opinions of whether it will  ever be repealed.

Combine these results with the continuing erosion in the approval ratings for the President and we have a country led by people who are not trusted by their constituents. We do not think the politicians are doing a good job, more of us than not think that most of them are corrupt, we would rather they do nothing than pass new laws, and very few of us think Congress and the politicians sitting in office it have done anything of positive consequence for us over the past year.

Given such abysmal results, why do we continue to elect the same people over and over? Why are we continually forced to put up with people that we think are corrupt and selfish, who only care about their own political careers? Why do seem to constantly have to deal with illegal or immoral behavior from these people (Foley, Clinton, Rangel, Weiner, etc.)? Why do we allow people to continue to be in office for 10, 20 30, or more years even though we think they do such a lousy job?

The only answer is one that has been explored in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," namely we have allowed the political class to take over our political process and control who gets elected and who stays elected. If you control the political processes of voting and campaign financing, it is no secret that the political class has deployed a monopoly stranglehold on the nation's political offices, allowing them to perform so horrendously without consequences.

As voters and Americans, we are stuck with candidates that are no different from any other candidates, candidates that are the choices of moneyed interests and political bosses, not of the average American. When that happens, voting becomes a sham as does freedom.

How do we restore confidence in our political institutions? Einstein provides a clue of how to do so with one of his insightful quotes: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." We cannot hope that our political institutions like Congress will get better by themselves. We have no control over who gets elected. Thus, we need to start implementing the following steps form "Love my Country, Loathe My Government," steps that fundamentally change most of our political processes and political way of thinking, changes that restore freedom to America:

1. Step 6 - Allow only individual Americans to contribute to election campaigns. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech to Americans, not to PACs, corporations, unions, etc. Americans should be the only entities that can contribute to election campaigns, it is the only way to take political bribery out of our election processes and legislative processes.
2. Step 7 - campaign contributions could only be made to campaigns that affect the individual American. For example, someone who is a resident of Kansas could no contribute money to a Congressional race in New Jersey. The affected people in that New Jersey Congressional district should have the only say and influence on who represents them.
3. Step 8 - strengthen the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) abilities to eliminate election fraud and corruption. Currently, the FEC is headed by appointees, much like allowing the wolves go guard the hen house. They are not much more than political  figureheads. The head of the FEC should be elected by the voters and should be a seasoned prosecutor who knows how to ferret white collar crime like campaign law breaking.
4. Step 14 - stop the illogical and self serving gerrymandering of Congressional districts which almost always allow the incumbent politician and party to retain the Congressional seat regardless of how poorly that Congress person performs. 
5. Step 17 - eliminate the Democratic party's "super delegates" since these politically connected people can override the will of the Democratic party voters in primaries and caucuses when the political bosses do not agree with the choices of the voters.
6. Step 34 - hold members of Congressional committees accountable for their committees' performance, removing them from their committee posts for failure to adequately execute the responsibilities of those committees. Proposals on how to accomplish a measurement of failure are included in the book.
7. Step 36 - require all members of Congress, and the administration, to take and pass a course on basic economic theory and practices so they at least have a basic understanding of how the world works and how their legislating, good or bad, might affect the economy and lives of Americans.
8. Step 37 - base annual pay raises of Congress on annual performance reviews by the voters by replacing the process today that grants Congressional members automatic pay increases regardless of how poorly the perform their jobs, individually and collectively.
9. Step 39 - institute term limits for all Federal politicians so that the term "career politician" disappears from our vocabulary and is replaced with a continually refreshed, new set of people, ideas, and leaders in Washington.
10. Step 45 - hold the political class to the same laws, regulations, and principles as the rest of the country as they apply to race/sex affirmative action quotas and behavior.

There, that was not so hard. Simple solutions for a very dangerous problem, the lose of freedom in the country. These changes would make the political class more accountable to the voters, remove the venomous effects of campaign financing from the processes, would ensure that we start getting new people into office who might actually care more about the good of the country than the future of their political career.

Then, and only then, might we start to see a level of confidence in those that lead us and a level of competence that is rewarded with more than a measly 9% approval rating.





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

Bad Economic Numbers Vs. Presidential Apathy, Which Is Worse?

Unfortunately, the economic numbers over the past few weeks have bad. In fact, that is probably an understatement, they are have been horrible:

• As with the past untold number of weeks, about 420,000 Americans filed first time unemployment benefits last week.
• The private sector of the economy produced only 54,000 jobs last week, a fraction of what had been created in previous months and weeks and about a third of what had been predicted.
• A Morgan Stanley report estimated that 30,000 or so of the 54,000 jobs were created by McDonalds.
• Unemployment popped up to 9.1% last week, continuing another long term trend, a trend that has had unemployment constantly around 9% for a very long time.
• This constant 9% unemployment rate translates to about 14 million Americans without a job.
• However, according to an article in the latest issue of AARP magazine, while unemployment is about 9%, underemployment is about 19%. In other words, about one in five U.S. workers cannot find a job even though they are looking for a job, have given up looking for a job, are working at a job that is inappropriate for their skill level or education level or are working in a part time job but want a full time job.
• The national debt continues to grow unabated ($14.3 TRILLION) with a Federal government default scheduled for early August and no political solution in sight (or being aggressively worked by the political class.)
• This $14.3 TRILLION debt comes out to well over $100,000 debt burden for every U.S. household.
• A recent CNN poll found that about 50% of those Americans surveyed feel that America will suffer another Great Depression within the year.
• Home prices dropped another 4% last month, indicating that the housing market will not start getting contributing to an economic turnaround any time soon.
• In the past two years or so, national debt is up 35%, gas up is 104%, and unemployment is up 25%.
• The Associated Press (AP) reported yesterday that retail sales dropped for the first time in eleven months including the largest drop in auto sales in 15 months. The biggest retail gains came from thrift stores and stores that sell used goods.
• An AP article on June 13, 2011 reported that some of the largest states are more than 20% short of the revenue they need to cover their current expenses and all 50 states have over $1 TRILLION worth of unfunded liabilities in state employee pension and health care obligations.
• A round table discussion of ten money manager and financial market experts, recently published by Barron's magazine, were unanimous in their conclusion that economic growth will slow down in the second half of 2011.
• Bill Gross, the head of Pimco, the largest bond trader company in the world, recently pronounced that the United States has over $50 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities and debt and that the country's financials are actually in worse shape than Greece's, the poster child for fiscal mismanagement.
• Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University, recently stated that a perfect storm of bad economic trends, fiscal/debt problems in the U.S., economic growth slowdown in China, serious European debt issues, and the stagnating economy in Japan will contribute to a serious slowdown in economic activity no later than 2013.
• USA Today recently reported that unfunded debt liabilities of the U.S. government is over $60 TRILLION, mostly due to escalating Social Security and medicare costs.

Wow, how depressing can you get. Various sources with different agendas and responsibilities all come to the same conclusion: we are in dire economic straits. One would have hope that the leaders of this country would be hard at work at mitigating the circumstances, trying to understand root causes of the multiple problems, and coming up with solutions.

Alas, that is a little too much to ask. First of all, some politicians do not think that there is much of a problem at all:

• On last Sunday's "Meet The Press" program, Democratic National Committee Chairperson, Debbie Wasserman, stated: "We were able to, under President Obama's leadership, turn this economy around." We may have turned it around but Ms. Wasserman does not say we turned it in the right direction, which is doubtful, given the points above.
• President Obama himself recently explained that he is not worried about a double dip recession although he has no idea of what to make of the recent downturn in job creation numbers but that the nation is on a path of solid recovery. 14 million Americans out of work, 400,000 or more filing for unemployment benefits every week, anemic job creation, funny definition of solid recovery.
• The buzz word from the administration over the past week is that the recovery has just "hit a bump in the road." Pretty big bump if you ask me.

This aura of denial is one thing to cope with. If you are in denial, you are unlikely to look for problem resolution as strongly and as aggressively as you would if you confronted the problems head on. But possibly worse than denial, is apathy, as illustrated by the following Presidential actions of recent days and weeks:

• Despite all of the economic woes, it seems the President is more concerned with running his 2012 Presidential campaign as his top priority with the inane trip to Ireland to prove he is part Irish, his recent trip to a political fund raiser in Puerto Rico, and his many stateside fund raisers that now seem more important than the economic problems most average Americans face.
• Rather than continue with his daily economic highlight briefings from his economic team, he has eliminated these daily meetings from his schedule, despite the economic horror story outlined above, and has replaced the face-to-face meetings with daily documents from his National Economics Council. One would have thought this is a good thing to do only if the economy was humming along without any problems, not something to do in this time of crisis.
• However, rather than get economic briefings from his Economic Council, he instead gets daily briefings from Vice President Joe Biden. This is the same Vice President who proclaimed six days before the 54,000 creation number came out that the economic recovery was working and "gaining traction." Enough said.
• However, the most blatant example of apathy occurred during his meeting this week with his Jobs and Competitiveness Council, a group of high ranking business people the President created to give him advice on he economy. In responding to a discussion that his stimulus package was supposed to pump money into "shovel ready jobs" and how, for many reasons, this shovel ready approach did not work, the President flippantly responded that "Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected." At that point those in the room broke into laughter. I doubt that the 14 million unemployed Americans broke into similar laughter or appreciated the President's flip, sarcastic answer.

Apathy and denial, a bad combination. A President more interested in his political career and re-election than the economic clouds gathering over the nation. A President who gets his economic updates from Joe Biden. A President whose chairman of his White House Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, is leaving his post at this critical time, joining just about every other original member of the Council who have also resigned.

Which is worse, the bad economic numbers of Presidential apathy? This is really a pick your poison question. However, good economic numbers are the result of sound economic policy, an engaged political class, and bold, unselfish leadership, attributes we have yet to see from this Presidential administration. The horrid numbers prove this point.

Thus, given that these attributes have not yet happened in the first two and half years of this administration and the four years that the Democrats from the political class have run the Congress and the country, it is doubtful we will see these qualities anytime soon.



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

Ignorance, Lying, and The Growing Nonsense Of Obama Care

Many times in this blog we have reviewed the many facets of Obama Care and always come up with the same conclusion: this is one of the worse pieces of legislation ever passed and signed into law. The creators of the legislation never understood the root causes of our ever skyrocketing health care costs. Without an understanding of the underlying problems, there is virtually no chance of developing and implementing a coherent and effective solution.

Before looking at the latest nonsense to come out about the law, let's reviews what some experts have said in the past:

- In a March 1, 2010 article in Fortune magazine, an interview of Dr. Delose Cosgrove, CEO of the renowned Cleveland Clinic, revealed the following knowledge, from a leading expert in healthcare:

• Obesity accounts for at least 10% of the health care costs in the United States.
• Smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise accounts for 40% of the premature deaths in this country.
• These same factors account for the 70% of the health care costs associated with chronic diseases such as heart disease in the United States.
• Smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise account for 75% of the nation's total health care costs.

Thus, according to an expert's view, the root causes driving our high health care costs are public health related questions: diet, exercise and smoking. Rather than attack these true causes of high costs with a public health care effort, Obama Care basically constructed a massive taxation process and bureaucracy that adds complexity and taxation without solving the underlying causes.

Need more, consider the findings from the National Academy of Sciences, an independent Federal agency:

• The United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world.
• Despite the high expenses, life expectancy in the U.S. is less than the life expectancies in many other developed countries.
• Smoking and obesity are the primary factors driving the lower life expectancy, and likely higher health care costs, in this country.

More of the same. Rather than address the cause, Obama Care tries to solve the problem administratively.

But the latest research paints an even worse picture. Remember, one of the primary avowed objectives of Obama Care was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans in the United States, estimated to be between 30 and 40 million Americans. However, if you consider the following expert analyses, the legislation will fall far short of this objective also. 

According to a recent study by the McKinsey Consulting Group, as published in their publication, McKinsey Quarterly, 30% of the American companies surveyed by McKinsey said they would drop their employee health care plans because under Obama Care, it is a better business decision to not carry a health care insurance program and pay the small fine than it is to continue operating a health care insurance program.

The companies in the McKinsey survey's 30% said that even if they raised wages to compensate for dropping their healthcare plan, it would still be less expensive for the companies under Obama Care.

Mr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin is an economist and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He is obviously someone with some valid credentials to examine Obama Care. He did so in a recent analysis and report that was published by the American Action Forum. His results and findings are damning to the legislation:

• According to his analysis, Obama Care "is fiscally dangerous, raising the risk of higher labor (and other) taxes at a time when the job market is struggling."
• The legislation's weak fine system provides a strong incentive for companies to stop offering their employees and retirees health care insurance coverage.
• This could result in 35 million Americans, who are covered by employer provided health care insurance, being left without health care insurance.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimated, badly, that only 3 million individuals who previously received coverage through their employers will get subsidized coverage through the Obama Care insurance exchanges. Thus, they are off a factor of twelve in their forecast.
• By tossing 35 million more Americans into the uninsured pool, Federal subsidies will increase by over a TRILLION dollars in ten years, wiping out any perceived or touted savings Obama Care was supposed to bring to the national debt.
• Obama Care will have the greatest impact from a marginal tax rate perspective on the lowest earning workers in the country.
• The analysis reviewed individual company feelings towards Obama Care, noting that Caterpillar is on record of saying that Obama Care would reduce their employee health care costs by 70% if they dropped their employee and retiree insurance programs. AT&T has said it's annual health care insurance costs would drop from $2.4 billion to only $600 million since it would be far less expensive to drop their insurance program and pay the fine for not having one.

Great, a piece of legislation that is supposed to reduce the number of Americans without health care insurance will likely increase the number of Americans without health care insurance by tens of millions of people. These analyses were not done by Republicans or Tea Party advocates. McKinsey is a highly respected corporate consulting firm with a long history of high powered analysis and Mr. Holtz-Eakin has the experience and education to back up his work.

Let's look at the numbers a slightly different way. Obama Care advocates claimed that upwards of 40 million Americans did not have health care insurance. But there are subsets within that 40 million. Some more affluent people could afford to buy insurance but decided not to since they feel they could cover health care costs with out of pocket cash as the need arose. Some of the 40 million were found  to be sons and daughters of the more affluent and knew that their parents could pay for their health care expenses. Some of the 40 million were older Americans who had not yet gotten around to signing up for Medicare.

Thus, even if you buy the 40 million number, the actual, truly needy Americans who did not have health care insurance, was substantially below 40 million, let's conservatively say it was 35 million. 35 million Americans out of a total population of of 311 million Americans is about 11%. Thus, in order to fix the problem for 11% of the population, we changed the world for upwards of 89% of Americans.

But wait! Out of the 89%, Obama Care is likely to result in another 35 million Americans losing their health care coverage. Ridiculous and nonsensical. How can anyone say this is good legislation?

Want more? According to the statistics in this past Sunday's St. Petersburg Times, there is another set of numbers out that show how stupid Obama Care is. The numbers were within a St. Petersburg Times article on how companies are trying to get their employees involved in exercise and other healthy activities. 

The statistics from the article claim that 15% of the population drives 85% of the nation's health care costs, 5% of the population drives 60% of the cost, and 25% of the population have no healthcare costs. Would it not have been a better strategy to focus on these small groups of Americans that cause the vast majority of health care costs and fix their problems rather than upsetting the entire health care system in the country? Nonsense again.

How simple could it be? Address the underlying drivers of high health care costs: obesity, bad diets, smoking, and lack of exercise. Understand who is the primary drivers of health care costs and resources and fix their problems. Instead, we get a cumbersome, complex, expensive, and incoherent 2,500 page piece of legislation that addresses none of the underlying problems  while destroying health care insurance for tens of millions.

Which brings us to the the other two topics in our title, ignorance and lying. President Obama stated over and over that Americans who currently had health care insurance through their company could keep it under  Obama Care. Was he that ignorant of reality to understand that if a company could save millions or billions of dollars by dropping health insurance that they would do so? Who came up with the measly fines that companies would pay if they dropped health care insurance? Could he and Pelsoi and Reid have been that ignorant of simple business principles?

Or was he lying? Did he actually understand that by passing Obama Care, tens of millions of Americans workers would lose health care insurance but lied about the likely outcome in order to get the legislation passed? Nonsense, lying or ignorant, hardly traits I would want in the President of the United States.

Much like the lost war on drugs, failing public education, the lack of an energy program, the lack of an immigration policy, and a myriad of other problems that have been unsolved for decades, the lack of problem solving skills of the American political class are on constant display. That is why the steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that address these very problems and provide processes to solve them, along with changes to our entire political process, need to be implemented as soon as possible.

Like the brilliant Dean Wormer quote from the movie Animal House, "Fat, drunk, and and stupid is no way to go through life," I am getting tired of living the political class equivalent: "Ignorant, lying, and nonsensical is no way to run a country."



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 Rube Goldberg Approach To Taxation In Illlinois

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor who lived in the second half of the 1800s and well into the 1900s. While he apparently had many talents, he is most famous for his cartoons that depicted very complex machines and gadgets which he had invented that would take the simplest tasks and make them into a very, very complicated and convoluted  process. For example, his machines would take the simple task of making tea and turn into a multi-step process involving gears and belts and other mechanical operations.

The problem with Rube Goldberg type machines is twofold. First, much energy, thought, and resources are wasted coming up with complicated solutions to simple problems. Those resources could theoretically be better spent more productively on other tasks. Second, the more complicated and convoluted you make a process, the easier it is for things to go wrong and it is more difficult to anticipate what might go wrong.

Mr. Goldberg came to mind recently when I revisited the tax and budget fiasco that is the Illinois state government. Earlier this year we discussed how the state government's expenses were so much higher than its revenue that the solvency of the state government was in question. However, rather than attack the root cause of their problem, out of control government spending, the political class in Illinois decided to raise taxes to cover the revenue to expense shortfall without fixing the underlying problem.

Their tax increases were not insignificant. Personal income tax rates rose 66%, from 3% to 5%. My research indicates that they also raised the business income tax from 4.8% to 7%, with some companies also being subjected to a 2.5% tax surcharge. These tax changes changed Illinois' status from being the 21st most heavily taxed state to one of the top five most heavily taxed states.

Well, guess what happened? According to the the Associated Press and its writer, David Mercer, who wrote on May 20, 2011:

• In 2010, Illinois' state government agreed to give $272.7 million in tax breaks to 67 Illinois companies who threatened to leave the state and move their company's jobs elsewhere.
• That is more than four times what the state promised 44 companies in 2006 and more than double what it promised companies in 2009.
• Since the state government has already promised $230 million in tax breaks in 2011, the 2010 level of $272.2 million is likely to be reached and exceeded long before the year is out.
• Most of the incentive packages given to companies threatening to leave Illinois end up being strictly job retention programs, in most cases they rarely require the companies to increase employment as a cost of getting the incentives.
• In 2010, the state paid about $17,000 for EACH job retained in the state of Illinois, a number that should be much higher in 2011.

So let's review this Rube Goldberg approach to running a state government and its current tax policy. Rather than fixing the spending problem (the easy, common sense, simple solution), we raised taxes to cover the revenue/tax shortfall which caused companies to blackmail us if we do  not give them tax breaks to offset the higher tax rates we just passed which reduces the amount of revenue we have to cover the revenue shortfall, leaving us with the same existing problem that we spend too much as a government which just placed a heavier burden on the households and made it more unattractive for out of state companies to move in state since our tax rates are so high except for existing companies who we get blackmailed by. That about sums it up. Rube would be so proud.

Let's do a little math and figure out how crazy and unproductive this Rube Goldberg approach is. If it costs $17,000 to keep a job in Illinois, at an individual state income tax rate of 5%, each job would have to earn $340,000 in wages just to break even from a personal income tax perspective. Highly unlikely.

This is obviously a worst case but it does not get much better if you assume that half of the $17,000 tax break is picked up by corporate income taxes. In this what-if scenario, $8,500 or half of the $17,000 cost of retention, each retained job would have to earn $170,000 to cover the $8,500 cost via personal income taxes. No matter how you cut it, this Rube Goldberg approach to taxation makes no sense.

All of this nonsense happens because the Illinois political class either did not know how to fix the root causes of their problem or did not want to address the root causes. The state government spends too much. Any other solution creates unforeseen consequences that require additional actions that make a bad situation worse.

What should they have done in Illinois? According to experts quoted in the article, the following might have been a better approach:

• These kinds of programs, that just retain existing jobs without having conditions for job growth, are rarely successful
• The state needs a stable tax environment so that companies can plan around this stability.
• Beyond a stable tax environment, the state government needs to provide a modern infrastructure, good schools, and effective, basic government services so that companies want to stay in a state for more than cold cash. 

Good, simple, common sense approaches to employment. No crazy tax schemes where you raises taxes in January and almost immediately begin giving back some of the fruits of the tax increase to companies who just had their taxes raised.

One of the problem of dealing with blackmail type environments is that until you fix the core problems, the blackmailing never stops. Although the state government has already paid "incentives" to Motorola (3,000 jobs), Chrysler (2,300 jobs), Navistar (2,200 jobs), and U.S. Cellular (1,075 jobs), it is not over. Sears Holdings Corp., which has 6,200 employees in the state and is already getting incentive packages from the state government, is more than likely to look to sweeten its package when the current incentive arrangement expires.

Thus, $17,000 per retained job, quarter of a billion of dollars a year in incentives, and the core problem not fixed may look like the good old days before Sears is done. Just like a Rube Goldberg process, it never seems to end.




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