Taxation Without Representation

Well, Obama has certainly stepped into it now. The latest buzz is all about a VAT (Value Added Tax) to raise enough revenue to pay for his pie in the sky dream of universal health care. But excuse me Mr. Obama, you may remember that the straw that broke the camels back was taxation without representation. That act ignited the American Revolution in the 13 colonies and eventually lead to the war for independence that gave birth to our glorious nation. A value added tax is a hidden tax. A hidden tax is taxation without representation. Do we really want to go full circle here? Or should the administration just give up on the ludicrous notion of universal health care because we cannot afford it.


The federal government under Obama seems hell bent on transforming itself into a national government. This has got to stop. He has to be stopped. He must be stopped if our country is to survive. The hubris of this administration is simply astounding to me. They willingly trash this country, its constitution, and blatantly disregard the laws that are duly enacted by congress. They trample on the rights of the individual States.


What I have a really hard time with is the fact that most people still actually like this guy. It is like they expect you to want him to take the knife that he put into their chest out and simply stand there and smile as he thrusts it into your chest! How much more of our country are we going to allow this clown to destroy before we rebel against this. He is a one man wrecking ball.

We cannot afford what they are proposing. Every single household in America is now in debt for an astounding figure of over $585,450! How many centuries will it take our descendants to pay off this outrageous sum with interest? It is simply an untenable position to be in. Wake up people!

Obama is a Domestic Terrorist

Today here in Michigan it was reported that the latest figures for the unemployment rate ticked up to 11.5 percent! which means that if you put 100 Michigan residents in a room, 11 have no job and 1 is going to be fired tomorrow.

Every time that Obama or anyone else in his administration opens their mouth, the market tanks. Why? Because of fear and uncertainty at just what the administration will do next! President "Doom and Gloom" is really good at fear mongering. He was termed as a "one man wrecking machine" in regards to the economy by one Democrat in the house!

I recently had to make a run to Brampton Ontario with parts for the automotive parts supplier Benteler Automotive. While I was there I spoke to two different Canadian workers who had health issues. One had sciatica that made him limp badly. I asked him what he did to his foot, and he told me his sciatica was acting up again. The other fellow had torn a ligament in his shoulder while on the job three years ago. He was on lite duty, and was in constant pain. His range of motion was limited for his left arm. His story was nightmarish. He waited for a year to get an MRI, then another year for it to be interpreted, only to be told that he needed to have another MRI done! All the while he suffered with excruciating pain. He had been given 30 days worth of Oxycontin and when it was gone his doctor told him that he was unable to prescribe any more for him because the government says that it was potentially addicting!

So three years later he is still in severe pain, and the doctors cant do anything for him. He just received a letter that states that the range of motion in his left arm was only 50 percent and the prognosis was that he would not get any better. There was no hope of scheduling a surgery to reattach the torn ligament in his shoulder (because the government deems that to be too costly a surgery)! This type of horrific situation is exactly what Obama wants to do for us! What a compassionate man he is.

Obama supporters say that "a little socialism is a good thing". This clown Obama is a socialist Marxist who must be stopped. The Obama supporters say, "give him a chance, he has only been in office for one month." and I say to that "just how much more damage are you willing to endure to our society before you wake up and see that this Marxist should never have been elected to office as President? Are you willing to wait until your retirement savings is completely wiped out? Are you willing to wait until you need a lifesaving surgery and the doctors tell you that the government says you can't have it because it costs too much? Are you willing to live in constant pain because the government deems pain medication is too addictive or not cost effective? Are you willing to endure all of this "hope and change" for the sake of advancing Obama's radical socialist, Marxist agenda?

He wants to "soak the rich" and give everyone a tax break at the same time. Good luck with that objective. He plans to raise everyone's' taxes by taxing the hell out of you at the gas pump, and for all energy you use. How the hell does that translate into a "tax break for 95% of all Americans"? It should be painfully obvious to everyone by now that he does not know what in the hell he is doing. And his gross ineptitude is destroying our society from the inside out! Watch out people, YOU are in his cross hairs!

Niether Obama nor Unions are Right for Economy.

Union politics in the workplace is a strange animal. It feeds on power culled from the mass of labor, but it doesn't necessarily represent them. It represents its own interests, which is self preservation by any means it feels that it can get away with. There was a time long, long ago when unions actually aspired to a higher ideal, which was to champion the rights of every one of its members.

Now unions revel in the political power that they wield. They use union dues to purchase favor from politicians directly, or they pay professional lobbyists to curry favor for them. Either way, unions are no longer about their membership, they are all about power.

They certainly are not about unity within corporate structures. They foster an "us verses them" mentality within its ranks. They create a rift between management and labor rather than building a bridge between the two. Any corporate entity can only function at peak performance when a healthy symbiosis exists between management and labor. As long as unions are fomenting an adversarial relationship with management, then corporate efficiency and productivity are less than optimal.

And what is needed now more than ever due to the crumbling economy, is unity of purpose, efficiency of resources, and maximized productivity; every non-monetary thing that the unions use as leverage to gain the power that they desire stands squarely in the way of true progress against alleviating the casualties of our souring economy.

True harmony of purpose is mired in the morass of union politics as the victims are felled by pink slips every day. And yet Barack Obama has used the powers of executive order four times in just 17 days as homage to unions even though I have just proven why unions are not helping our economy!

Is it just me, or does it seem that he is a walking contradiction? The conundrum of a brilliant orator that can articulate a plan, but cannot execute it. His own party has been hijacked by the Queen, Nancy Pelosi who has authored the massive stimulus package that is filled with 88% of all the democrats pet pork projects that they have been waiting for the right moment to foist on an unwitting population.

She got the mandate from the President to author the bill and she went right down the aisle of the house and asked every liberal democrat what they would like to put into this farcical bill for their district. And even Obama knows that this is what is happening here, but now that the conservative talk radio show hosts are informing everyone just what is in this bill and the backlash from angered taxpayers is starting to build to a crescendo, all that he can do is keep stammering about passing this bill quickly. Get it done quickly, before the population becomes fully aware of just what they will be paying for. It is an outrage to be sure.

Why It Will Get Worse, Not Better.

The newest round of public money bound to be given to banks has stipulations attached that would require that the banks loan it out to consumers. The problem with that is that it will worsen the situation by creating more bad assets. How you might ask? Well, because banks will once again be forced to make loans to people who cannot afford them. Or are they going to legislate that consumers that can afford to repay loans be forced to borrow the money as well? could it be possible that our leaders are really just that stupid? The people who could afford to repay new loans do not want or need them now. They are savvy in uncertain times, tightening budgets instead of increasing them. Why would any sane person want to borrow now and increase their debt?

Government first needs to repeal the bad legislation that forced the banks to make bad loans in the first place. Secondly, remove the bad assets from the market. Thirdly, stimulate the economy. And it needs to be done in that order to gain any traction against the rising tide of bad economic news.

FDR's policies lengthened and worsened the pain of the Great Depression (recovery from it) precisely because of the same reasons mentioned above. FDR's polices were not effective then and will not be effective now either.

Free Market Economics and Capitalism

Since the free market system is driven by consumerism, the worst situation that can occur is for consumers to lose confidence. There are several ways that they can lose confidence. Fear that they will lose their job is a major one. Fear that they will not be able to find gainful employment if they do lose their job is another. That our government can't seem to address the appropriate problem doesn't help either. And then seeing our government throw taxpayer money away again and again and again to no avail adds a deeper level of despair. Make no mistake, this is not an economic or financial crisis that we are in, it is a crisis of confidence. It isn't just our economy that is flailing, our government is swatting blindly and hoping to hit a home run.

The government has reacted way to slowly to a problem that they played a significant part in creating. Since they have waited far too long to address the problem, they must do much more to fix it. There are five key areas that they must address and they are:

1. Bolster public confidence in the Free Market System.
2. Stabilize the Financial Markets.
3. Stabilize the Housing Market.
4. Improve oversight, regulation, and transparency of markets.
5. Stimulate economic growth.

I will list some concrete ideas for each of these 5 key areas next. First to bolster public confidence in the Free Market System of Capitalism we can:

• Overhaul the IRS (streamline it and simplify the tax code).
• Eliminate the Death Tax.
• Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax.
• Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax.
• Close overseas tax loopholes for big business.
• Lower tax rates for everybody.
• Spend on infrastructure improvements.

To stabilize the financial markets we could:

• Establish an entity like the Resolution Trust Corporation to buy up all the toxic assets and hold them to maturity so that banks and corporations can remove them from their books and get a fresh start.
• Institute a complete ban on all credit based derivatives (as this totally unregulated market segment has fueled the corporate greed fire for the past two decades).
• Overhaul the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

To stabilize the housing market:

• Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act.
• Eliminate the Death Tax.
• Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax.
• Reduce the Estate Tax.
• Toughen the training and licensing requirements for mortgage loan originators and brokers.
• Eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• Stop nationalizing banks.

To improve oversight, regulation and transparency of markets.

• Overhaul the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
• Strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by increasing funding, manpower, and scope of authority.
• Increase transparency at the SEC.

To spur economic growth:

• Institute permanent and substantial tax breaks for business.
• Give business refundable tax credits that are retroactive for all of 2008.
• Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax.
• Eliminate Inventory Taxes on businesses.
• Eliminate the Sarbanes Oxley Act (regards accounting standards for business)
• Increase funding for the Small Business Administration (SBA).

You will notice that a few of the same suggestions appear in different categories, that is because there is a little bit of overlap between these areas as they are so closely related to each other. Noticeably absent is any idea of simply tossing money at business with no strings attached, which is instead the first action that our government took.

It is all about confidence folks, and we have such a long, long way to go yet. Finally to address the immediate federal budgetary shortfalls, we could institute a temporary consumption tax. A federal sales tax no more than 2.25% and phase it out over 10 years.

Race Relations

If ever there were two words in the English language that when appearing together were the epitome of an oxymoron, "race relations" are it. Aren't we all humans? We all belong to the same race after all; the human one. To say that we have a problem with "race relations" is the same as saying that we have a problem relating to each other as people isn't it? Perhaps Rodney King did ask the right question after all, "Can't we all just get along?"

As far as the Obamaphoria goes, I find it sappy at best and a little sickening at worst. He is a man. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you or I do. His pants don't know or care what color his skin is and neither should we. In the grand scheme of things it is largely unimportant. What is important is what he does, not who he is, or what he thinks, feels, or says (even if he is a great orator).

Do we really know the racial makeup of the other 43 Presidents? They all appeared to be Caucasian, but what is "white"? Our ancestors were European, so many have multicultural family histories. They were from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain. When they arrived here they took as wives from the natives who lived here. We are a "melting pot", a hodge-podge, a quilt work society as it were, and we have been that way from the beginning. Why is it then that over 200 years later, that some continually lord it over the rest about the sad state of "race relations"?

People still have bills to pay like mortgages, auto loans, medical bills, and legal bills. How is Obama's race going to help people with that? People need good paying jobs. Our economy is hemorrhaging jobs at the astonishing rate of almost 3 million per year and yet people are positively giddy about having elected a "black man" as President. How is that going to reverse the trend; I don't understand it. It will be what he does that counts.

The time for talking is over. Now is the time for doing. Let's pray that he does it right and does it quickly. Let's also pray that we can start relating to each other with dignity and respect, as if we all belong to the same human race. Let's pray that we can put the stigma of the term "race relations" behind us and press onward and upward towards bigger and better things.