Category Economy

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The Amazing Disappearing Middle Class

Oct 24, 11 12:28 AM

America is the only country on the planet where the poor have cars and cable TV. If you’re listening to the so-called “99%”, better known as Occupy Wall Street, the middle class in America no longer exists. They say it was decimated by the financial crisis. If the middle class is truly no more, though, then I’m about to have a serious identity crisis.

I’m pretty sure I’m not poor. I’ve seen what poor is and it ain’t me. I have two good jobs, I make decent money, and I have a great little apartment where my only complaint is my noisy neighbors. I have uninterrupted electricity, clean running water, a washer and dryer, a refrigerator, and air conditioning in the middle of the desert. I have a nice little Ford pickup truck that I can take up to Sedona or Crown King when the mood strikes me. I have a big TV, a PS3, a sizable movie and game collection, a custom computer, high-speed internet access and three guitars – including my dream guitar, a Taylor. I have a cat who only gets Iams or Science Diet. I’m a TAM (Tammy Army Member) and I make donations to the ASPCA, the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, the 100 Club, and the Anthony Holly Foundation. I’m certainly not hurting.

On the flip side, I wouldn’t consider myself wealthy, either. I can treat myself once in a while to a good steak, but it isn’t at Donovan’s. I don’t wear designer clothing (unless you count Black Helmet and RangerUp). I have a Taylor (top-of-the-line, hand-made guitars built right here in America by a fantastic capitalist named Bob Taylor), but it’s not made of solid koa and I can’t afford one of those in the near future. I’d love to have a fully restored ’67 Shelby GT Mustang and a Harley-Davidson VRSCDX Night Rod Special, but both are a pipe dream. I can’t just blow money on whatever my heart desires no matter how much I drool over these things.

So we’ve established that I’m neither poor nor rich, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not alone; the majority of my friends and relatives don’t fit into either category. If I’m not middle class, then what am I?

I’ve said many times that the liberals in this country are masters of misinformation. 9/11 happens and patriotism ends up being warped into Islamophobia. After eight years of tacit refusal to obey the terms of his 1991 surrender, we go take out Saddam Hussein and we’re called murderous warmongers who need to give peace a chance. An economic crash brings us to our virtual knees and it’s all the fault of the president who warned that it was coming – and the career politicians who blew him off are swooping in to rescue us. A Tea Party movement finally stirs to combat all of these lies and they’re pegged as racist, hatemongering bigots who goose-step to a capitalist beat – never mind that the REAL Nazis were actually cut from the same socialist cloth that today’s liberals are (hence the Nazi party name, in English: National Socialist German Workers’ Party).

The Occupiers are typical emotional Americans who have no idea what “poor” really is. Even when I was making half what I make now, pinching every penny to make ends meet and find some way to save something, I wouldn’t have called myself poor. Not being able to go to the movies, have a smartphone, carry a Coach purse or get your nails and hair done does not classify as poor. Go to Mexico, Jamaica, or Haiti, where you have to know someone or have money to get a job – qualifications be damned. Nobody earns anything on merit in those countries; if you’re not connected or greasing a few palms, you’re doomed to a life without plumbing or electricity. Basic education is spotty at best. College? Yeah, right.

The reality is that this movement isn’t about “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”. It’s not even about equality of opportunity. It’s a group of people who feel they’ve been cheated out of an equal outcome with those who are wealthy. It’s being funded and supported by avowed communists and union thugs – and like the Bolsheviks and Nazis before them, many are getting paid to make this statement. Buy a revolution and lie enough to the right people and eventually the truth is lost.

The middle class is, believe it or not, thriving. Don’t buy the hype. I am among the last of a dying breed, but that breed ain’t the middle class, and I can be proud enough to say that I have earned what I have and didn’t take it from anyone else.

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Oh, The Possibilities

Oct 20, 11 10:18 PM

Most folks who are not in my line of work don’t realize how a capitalist society helps me thrive in my job. EMS is more difficult than it sounds; I once had a liberal chastise me in an argument about education, saying, “why should I listen to you, an EMT, when probably all you have is a certificate from a vocational school?” When I pointed out that I had quite a bit more than that (and pointed out that I could actually pronounce ‘nuclear’ properly, which he couldn’t) he found something else to turn into a personal attack.

These are the people who have lately been screaming for federal aid for “teachers and first responders”.

Anyhow…injuries frequently sideline people I know and respect. Several companies work hard to produce clothing and equipment that make our job easier and put less strain on our bodies. Back injuries are common, as are pulled/strained muscles, sprains, and broken bones. It’s not just treating a patient that can be dangerous – lifting and lowering them is actually even more so.

Stryker is a company that has produced some of the best equipment I’ve ever used in the field. I promise that companies like this would not exist were it not for capitalism. A universal health care system run by the government would not hold up the kind of research and innovation that is helping me do a better job…and come back to do it again on my next scheduled shift.

So click on that link and take a look at some of the things that they have built in the past two decades. The next time you see an ambulance roll by, you should wonder how much time both of the medics driving that tank have had to take off because of injuries that could have been avoided with better gear.

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Breaking News: This Ain’t The First Time

Oct 19, 11 2:50 PM

Ann Coulter brought up an important part of history I had forgotten. The Occupy Wall Street protests are going a month strong now, and the same press that called Tea Partiers names that ought not be repeated in a professional office (and certainly not on TV) are comparing the communist uprising of this generation to the Tea Party. Here and I thought the Tea Party was so evil it could not have a link to the hippies.

They can’t figure out what the hell they want. I’ve heard them answer the “what do you want” question with all manner of responses, including everything from an investigation into 9/11 to an end to greed to “hang[ing] and shoot[ing] the Bush administration”. No joke. We’ve seen protesters defecating on police cars. We’ve seen signs that make no sense. We’ve heard calls for greedy businessmen to go to jail. And we’ve seen the owners of Zucotti Park – a privately-owned park on Wall Street with archaic rules such as “no pitching tents” – tuck their shafts between their cheeks and run away when asked if they’ll ever pitch the occupiers out of the park.

(You’ll pardon the crude humor, but I DO spend a lot of time with cops, firefighters and soldiers. If you thought we were all innocent…)

Major unions have paid people to go protest. Union heads have screamed for the blood of wealthy businessmen. They’re upset about outsourcing, foreclosures, problems with the stock market, having to move back in with mom and dad, not having a degree…they’re just mad as hell, and nobody will ever stop them from using their voice, dammit! There’s just one problem with this whole thing. The bible makes a very good point: “Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘see, is this new?’ It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after.” (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11)

What these anti-capitalist occupiers don’t realize is that this isn’t the first time a movement has risen in America out of anger with lenders and other businessmen, including those who foreclose on mortgages. They would have known that if they’d paid attention in history class when Shays’ Rebellion was taught (of course, that’s assuming that schools still see fit to tell kids that it happened in the first place).

In 1783, America took a leap toward her legitimate revolution becoming the bloody travesty that was the French Revolution. Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, left the Army without being paid only to get home and find himself on the verge of having his home in Massachusetts foreclosed on by the mortgage holder. He also faced time in debtors’ prison. Over a span of years, Shays recruited friends and relatives – many of them fellow veterans of the war – for a massive protest. First they began by petitioning the state legislature and the courts to stop foreclosures; a large number of veterans were facing the same fate. Part of the problem was that they hadn’t been paid much for their service in the war; a large part, however, was that many of the lenders, most of them French, demanded payment in gold and silver – things that they didn’t have much of in the Republic at the time. It simply wasn’t possible to repay the debts in silver and gold.

In the middle of the protesting, one member of the uprising, Plough Jogger, said, “The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers.” Replace “the great men” with “the rich” and what have you got?

It was in August 1786 that things turned really violent. The occupations that had been intended to peacefully shut down courthouses in Massachusetts to stop judges from handing down the very rulings that would order foreclosures and evictions became a violent uprising. Shays led his rabble to seize the armory in Springfield only to be met by the state militia; the general of the militia fired directly into the protesters, killing a handful and wounding about two dozen. The rebels scurried away without firing a shot. Daniel Shays himself had been sentenced to death but was pardoned by governor James Bowdoin. After spending more than four years of his life blaming everyone else and screaming for the government to do something about it, Shays died in relative obscurity in New York and was buried in a potter’s field.

Shays actually had a serious grievance. Back in those days, we didn’t have a federal government in place to regulate lenders. He came home from helping to free his country and was told that he no longer had a home. How fair is that? His response, however, was what got him into trouble. It was that very rebellion that pushed our founding fathers to create a centralized federal government with the power to regulate the financial industry, particularly lending. Thomas Jefferson was just about the only one who objected. It was at the height of Shays’ Rebellion that he penned the famous words, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Nowadays, we have a government big enough to take care of entire swaths of citizens. We don’t have soldiers coming home from war and not getting paid for their service. Banks don’t demand payment in precious metals. We don’t have debtor’s prison anymore. We even have courts that may side with a debtor and order a bank to cease and desist in the midst of foreclosure proceedings. Public opinion has become so fierce in recent years that JP Morgan Chase, one of the three biggest banks in the nation, has backed off of several foreclosures, particularly on mortgages owed by military families. Yet despite there being many ways to find relief, we still have hordes of people occupying Wall Street to decry capitalism as evil. The one thing that I find absolutely hilarious is that celebrities are coming out in their designer clothes and protesters are using the very devices of those evil, greedy corporations to social network their way into the history books as the most ridiculous display in US history.

Ecclesiastes said something else that I believe applies to this movement. “As I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task that God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.” (Ecc. 1:13-14)

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More Signs of Negativity — Gap, Inc. Closing Stores

Oct 14, 11 8:27 AM

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Gap, Inc. will be closing 21% of it’s stores in North America due to struggles in the United States as profits fell by 19%.

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Business As Usual

Aug 3, 11 2:14 PM

Despite being punch-drunk in love for the past two weeks in a whirlwind of a new relationship, I have still managed to catch all the news about the deficit flap. Republicans come up with a plan, Democrats shoot it down, Republicans ask Democrats for a plan, Democrats simply sneer. After eight-hundred-odd days of not having a solution to the debt crisis, talking heads claimed we were nearing a default on our debt. Republicans and Democrats alike scrambled to find something they could sign so they could all say, “see? We really are doing our jobs!”

Oh, gag me.

Rather than trying to get spending under control, the only thing either side has managed to do is make a bigger mess of things. While some of the finer points may be complicated, the general idea is still quite simple: you and I, John and Jane Q. Taxpayer, have to live within our means. We have to live on a budget. We write it all out usually, starting with the bills we owe, subtracting them from the amount of money we’ve earned, and delegating the remainder to different categories, usually simple things such as groceries, savings, and extra spending money. We know that if we don’t save up we may end up in the midst of a crisis with little to no money to help ourselves. When that happens, we may take out a loan or credit card to cover the crisis and pay it back over time as we can. When I landed in the hospital a few months ago in need of emergency surgery, my insurance covered all but $1800; if I’d had no savings, I would still be in debt.

Some folks don’t know how to manage their budget and end up with tens of thousands of dollars in debt on top of a mortgage that easily tops $200,000. They end up spending the rest of their lives treading financial water, trying to pay off credit cards and loans that they didn’t consider the affordability of when they took them out. Many end up declaring bankruptcy at least once, some of them multiple times (former MCSO chief deputy Dave Hendershott famously declared bankruptcy three times in his personal finances while nearly tanking MCSO’s budget). All of these people end up in serious legal trouble with creditors and government agencies alike. They don’t know how to live within their means, much less plan for the possibility of a crisis that can be costly.

The federal government lost the ability to live within its means right around the time George Bush Sr. took office.

The deal that was struck was not an argument about debt reduction – it was about deficit reduction. There’s a distinct difference. Debt is the amount you owe. Deficit is the damage done when you’re operating in the red; in other words, how much money you’re losing in a given year because you’re spending more than you’re getting. When Bill Clinton took office, his famous tagline was “it’s the economy, stupid.” Yet Clinton still managed to raise spending during his tenure by more than $520 million over Bush Sr.’s spending.

Bush Jr. was far worse – he raised spending by $1.6 trillion over Clinton, though it took him eight years to do it. Thus far, Obama has raised spending by a whopping $4.3 trillion over Bush’s spending in a mere three years. That means federal spending has gone up by nearly six trillion dollars since the days of Bill Clinton. There has been plenty of anger here at gayconservative.org over Bush’s terrible fiscal policies, but liberals have far outdone Bush in less than half the time. The only thing they’ve offered is a cheap one-liner: “they drove the car into the ditch, now they want the keys back!”

Again…gag me.

If the government is pulling in $175 billion in revenue from taxes alone every month, that gives them $2.1 trillion annually (estimated). That’s just in taxes from you and I. Where is the money going? The government has a few essentials: immediate infrastructure (such as Congress), military, federal-level law enforcement and corrections, and federally-kept interstate highways. What else are we paying for? Medicare, social security, and a host of government-sponsored programs, most of which have a plurality (particularly education). We send billions to other countries annually, including to Brazil to do the offshore drilling that Obama doesn’t want going on near America’s shores.

Why are we spending so much money on non-essential programs? Well, that depends on who you ask. There’s not a liberal alive who is willing to call any government program expendable unless it has to do with the military. To a liberal, it is unthinkable to get rid of entitlements. Of course, we’re talking about liberals, many of whom have put Republicans to shame in the era of earmarks (which is saying something, because there are some Republicans who have managed some pretty silly earmarks). Why should the federal government fund a Woodstock museum? Damned if I know, but Hillary Clinton wrangled an earmark for it.

(As an aside, you can get a liberal to agree to an earmark for the Woodstock museum, but they’ll scream bloody murder if you start suggesting that the government pay for a few hundred kids to attend private religious schools. Not that I think the government should pay for that, but hey, at least those religious schools don’t churn out illiterate thugs the way government-run schools do.)

I’m an EMT-I currently going to paramedic school. I was told back in 2005 when I started my original EMT classes that it wasn’t a matter of if I’d get sued, but when. Eventually, no matter how good you are, you’ll get sued by someone who didn’t get the outcome they wanted. Did you c-spine a patient correctly while they still ended up paralyzed? Did you go to a child drowning and bring that child back to life only for them to be declared brain-dead at the hospital? You’ll still get sued, they told me, and I’ve seen friends who did everything right end up in court defending themselves from money-hungry lawyers and their clients who are simply looking for their lottery payment. That comes from the idea that the government has endless pockets. People really, honestly believe that the government has an endless supply of money that they can hand out at will, all they have to do is get in line. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The government can’t keep shelling out money like candy any more than you or I can.

Why in the name of Thomas Jefferson are we talking about reducing the deficit and raising the debt ceiling rather than going beyond that and reducing our debt? Both sides are being complete idiots here. There are tax-exempt organizations fronting as quasi-political organizations for both sides (i.e. the Heritage Foundation, Media Matters) that should have their tax-exempt status revoked. That status was created for charities, not for front groups who funnel money from elitists to certain political groups. As incentive, we should enact term limits and stop people from holding seats for entire lifetimes. The government should get out of the charity business and leave the charity to those who wish to offer it. Unemployment should not be unending. While we’re at it, I think those who accept government handouts should not be allowed to vote. Liberals need to stop labeling all conservatives as terrorists for simply wanting some commonsense rules to be applied to the Beltway.

Business as usual cannot continue or the government will end up in the same predicament as those people who continually take out new credit cards when they run out of money: destitute.

It’s the economy, stupid.

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Where Are The Jobs? (Left vs. Right)

Aug 1, 11 4:40 PM

In response to a voter’s question in August of 2009, President Obama said:

Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.

Oddly enough, conservatives are still shying away from indignant liberal cries: “Where are the jobs?” when they attempt to underscore the success of the Bush Tax Cuts including raising revenue to the Treasury 785B by 2007, adding 8 million jobs to the economy, and increasing the median household wealth by more than $20K.

But what about the Lamestream Media who constantly allows the White House and Democrats in Congress to escape their drunken spending spree which took place in the last three years including the failed stimulus and the ObamaCare travesty?  “Where are the jobs?”  Trillions of dollars of feckless spending, unemployment did go above 8%, and revenues to the treasury are at historic lows.  Yet, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are allowed to escape on their loose versions of a series of “what-ifs?”

Can you imagine what would have happened if we weren’t allowed to fecklessly spend trillions of dollars in historic amounts of time? If you thought unemployment was bad now, you wouldn’t believe what it would have been if we hadn’t printed billions of valueless paper and created a few temporary Census jobs!

Listening to the House today during the debt-ceiling debates made me ill.  After it being crystal clear, not only proven by President Bush but also by President Reagan, that tax cuts and deregulation creates millions of jobs, liberals are still allowed to deny the benefit of the doubt to tax cuts but get to hand it over no- questions-asked to excuse the most unbelievable spending ever in the history of our government.

This is common sense.  This is what we must continue to remember as our party heads into the 2012 battle for the White House and the Senate.

America is broke.  We need politicians who are going to respect Americans by being honest with them.  Clearly, the accounting tricks, gimmicks, and experiments of the left are not prepared to do that.

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Do Democrats Hate Poor People?

Mar 6, 11 3:17 PM

All too often, the issues facing our country are discussed in purely political terms with partisan ideology at the center. This guarantees that opinions will be formed purely on emotion, and not the facts. If the issue is illegal immigration, Republicans hate Mexicans. If it’s education, Republicans hate children. If it’s welfare reform, Republicans hate poor people.

So on that note, let’s examine how Democrats fare under the same level of scrutiny, shall we?

 

Hating Mexicans

In America, we have immigration laws – like them or not. They are in place for a reason, mainly to ensure that we know who is coming here, and that we can accommodate the increase in local, state, and federal services their presence requires. Currently, we let roughly 1 million immigrants into America legally, almost 2,800 per day. Think about it: 2,800 people per day that need jobs, housing, food, education for themselves or their children, drivers licenses, social security cards, and many other necessities. Now add to that another 1 million who come in illegally, or overstay their visas. These are people we don’t know. They could be anyone from a hard-working farmer to an Al Qaeda terrorist – and anyone who tells you differently is wrong. If we don’t know who they are, then we don’t know how they aren’t. Now, while some people will say it’s racist to single out Mexicans in the illegal immigration discussion, let me explain why that is by showing you the country of origin of those living in the U.S. illegally, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

#1 – Mexico: 62%

#2 – El Salvador: 5%

#3 – Guatemala: 4%

#4 – Honduras: 3%

That’s quite a drop-off from #1 to #2, isn’t it? Also bear in mind that these 4 countries equate to 74% of our illegal immigration problem, and they all enter the U.S. through our border with Mexico. So it’s not racist to talk about our southern border, it’s REALITY.

So, don’t like the laws? Change them. But until then, the government’s job is to enforce them. And that’s what Republicans want. They want a secure border. They want legal immigration. They want those here illegally to be deported when caught, according to the law.

Now we can argue immigration reform all day, and I’m one Republican who thinks it is impossible to deport the 15-20 million people here illegally. However, until we actually pass immigration reform and discover a way to handle all of these issues, we have no choice but to enforce the laws.

But what about Democrats? Do they hate Mexicans too?

Many liberal Democrats argue against raiding businesses that hire illegals. Why? Because they will be deported, and working for $3 per hour in unsafe conditions is still better than Mexico.

Really?

If that’s the case, isn’t the problem Mexico? And if everyone with the motivation to work hard leaves Mexico, who will be left to fix it, other than the drug cartels?

So these liberals would rather have illegal immigrants working in unsafe conditions, unable to report accidents, earning slave wages – simply so they don’t have to return to their home country?

Appalling.

Slavery was wrong in the 19th century, and it’s wrong today. But you don’t hear anyone saying that liberals hate Mexicans, do you?

 

Hating Children

Education is a hot button issue that is frequently distorted into an ideological war of emotions, when in fact there is nothing emotional about it. Schools exist to educate. Period. And on that measure, they are failing.

Since 1970, our education system has flat-lined on achievement in reading and math. Despite that, we’ve increased funding exponentially with zero results. Zero. Absolutely no movement of the needle. So the answer is more money?

“Since 1971, educational spending in the United states has more than doubled, from $4,300 per student to more than $9,000 per student, adjusted for inflation.” – “Waiting for ‘Superman’”

So if money is the answer, why has money not been the answer? And does wanting the correct answer constitute hating children? Of course not. Does putting your own selfish agenda ahead of the success of our children, and our nation, constitute hating children? Judge for yourself.

Many of the obstacles to fixing our education system reside with those controlling it: Teachers’ unions.

Do not confuse teachers’ unions with other unions, or you will fall into the same trap of thinking with emotions. Unions were created to help workers negotiate for better pay and working conditions, against giants of industry who were profit-driven. Education is a non-profit endeavor, paid for by tax payers, and therefore there is no evil CEO to demonize.

There are many things that will help toward improving our education system, including the use of technology to lower the cost of educating our children as a whole, rewarding the best teachers while coaching or removing the underperformers, adequately preparing middle school children for high school, and high school children for college, and making school districts accountable to parents and tax payers.

Unfortunately, teachers’ unions do not want technology to lower the cost of education our children, because it will result in a need for less teachers – even though our school districts are wildly under-staffed as it is.

Teachers’ unions also do not want teachers to be treated differently, in any way. So rewarding great teachers, and firing bad ones, is completely off the table.

Furthermore, these unions resent standardized tests, as they do not believe the performance of students has any bearing on how qualified a teacher is. After all, they can’t make the kids learn.

In fact, according to “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (the two most organized unions) spent $55 million on federal campaigns over the past 20 years, and 90% of it went to Democrats. So, if teachers’ unions are in the way of improving education, and they donate almost entirely to Democrats, do Democrats hate children?

Let’s pretend you own your own business. Would you want to keep your good employees, and get rid of the bad ones? Would you want to reward your best people with incentives to perform well? Would you expect a return on your investment? Well none of that applies to education, mainly because of teachers’ unions.

Apparently, if you support school choice, merit pay for teachers, and accountability to parents and taxpayers, you hate children. But if you want to give those controlling our education system more money, after a 40-year track record of failure, well… you’re a kid’s best friend. (Read: nightmare)

 

Hating Poor People

Almost a full 50% of Americans pay no income tax. Now just to clarify, most do pay it in their paychecks, but they get it all back on their tax returns. And while they do contribute to Medicare and Social Security like all Americans do, this 50% of Americans are far more likely to need Medicare and Social Security than those who do pay income tax.

With that said, the answer to everything these days seems to be: “Tax the rich – or you hate poor people.” I guess it is perfectly okay to hate rich people. After all, rich people are the ones hiring the rest of us. But it’s not all rich people that are evil blood-sucking greed-mongers. What about actors? Hollywood is gluttonously wealthy, yet you don’t hear liberals screaming for them to hang, do you? Nobody blames the ills of society on Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller, do they? Yet from June 2009 – June 2010, they were the two highest paid actors in Hollywood, earning $75 million and $53 million respectively.

“But it’s different,” they’ll say, because people pay to go see Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller, which justifies their huge salaries. Of course that argument doesn’t seem to work for the rich guy who created Wal-Mart, an outlet in which millions of Americans pay to buy things – justifying his huge salary.

You see, it’s all about emotion. The guy who runs the business must be exploiting workers, while Johnny Depp makes people smile. Of course if Wal-Mart went out of business tomorrow, we’d see how many people would be smiling when all of their employees were out of a job, and the public could no longer buy a pair of jeans for $8 or an entertainment center for $69.

If you wanted to raise taxes on soda and bottled water, would that be good for poor people whose grocery bills would go up? Well, that’s what Democrats in New York and Nevada want to do.

Does it help or hurt poor people when gas is $4/gallon? Wouldn’t drilling for oil inside the U.S. help bring those prices down? Many Democrats are against drilling in America, even though they love beating up Republicans for going to war for oil in the Middle East. If we had more drilling here, Democrats would have one less thing to blame on Republicans – so obviously that’s out of the question.

 

Conclusion

There are many things to dislike in our country, and even some things to hate. There are a lot of things to love about American too, but most people take those for granted.

To think that Republicans hate Mexicans, children, and poor people, simply because of their political views is just plain ignorant.

I don’t think Democrats hate Mexicans, children, and poor people either. But they do hate Republicans – and that’s really what all their bitching is about.

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How Do You Spell “Union”?

Feb 26, 11 2:43 AM

G-R-E-E-D.

Just a week ago, Mark wrote quite eloquently on the subject of the public worker strikes in Wisconsin:

Today, most labor unions are very similar to the “evil corporations” they so frequently rail against. They claim big business doesn’t care about its workers, only profit. But are unions any different? They need members to pay dues, or they cease to exist. Clearly they are also profit-driven. They believe industry has too much influence compared with the working class. But unions have far more influence than their numbers would suggest, given that only 8% of Americans are in unions. And what do many of these labor organizations do with the hard-earned dollars they take from their members in the form of dues? They give them to politicians running for office – almost exclusively in the Democratic Party – whether their members support them or not.

The bill being bandied about in Wisconsin, AB-11, would end collective bargaining rights for state employees (excluding public safety workers), require that state employees pay more than the paisley 5% they’ve been paying for health insurance and the ridiculous 2% they’ve been paying for their pensions, and would cut medical services to the poor and uninsured. During all the brouhaha going on at the state capitol, this woman was filmed to make a statement:

Don’t worry, dear damsel! Obamacare will save you!

First of all, we all need to understand something: corporations can simply go out of business if a union or special group continues to push for what they cannot afford. Government bodies – local, state or federal – cannot go out of business. They are unfortunately necessary to survival in our country. While corporations will do nearly everything to save face all the way to the bankruptcy line, governments that need to save money start cutting things from the budget. What does that mean? It means that in governments such as those in Europe, which have multitudes of entitlement programs to include socialized healthcare systems, they simply start cutting out things they can’t afford. It usually starts with healthcare; what Sarah Palin dubbed “death panels” are bureaucratic panels that convene to determine what they can change and how they can shuffle things in an effort to cut costs. Since healthcare workers are already paid peanuts, they start with services. Are you too old to benefit from a transplant or chemotherapy? Sorry, the state can’t afford it, especially since you probably won’t go back to work when you recover, anyway. We’d rather spend that money on a teenager who will benefit us more. Is your prognosis too grim? Sorry, we’re not going to pay for any treatment at all because you’ll die anyway and it would be a waste. Do you have a minor illness? Well, you’ll wait a while to be seen, we only have doctors available during certain hours and they have to triage their patients. Once you have pneumonia give us a call.

How does this not make sense to people? We already have entitlements for welfare, unemployment, healthcare for the uninsured and all kinds of grants for college, the arts, and home buying. Our tax dollars are stretching thinner and thinner with every passing year, yet here we have left-wing moonbats still demanding that the government give us what they literally cannot afford. If we keep going down this road, we will one day find ourselves watching the US dollar collapse and the Democrats will still try to blame the right wing.

Greed is not solely a label for the wealthy. Every human being is greedy to some degree…it’s in our very nature to want to look out for number one. Even the Founding Fathers tried to remind us long ago that our rights end when they infringe on the rights of another – that means that when we demand we be recognized for the right to have what we want at the expense of the government and the government can’t afford it, the rights of the majority who ARE paying for it trump yours.

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Unions vs. America: The Final Battle?

Feb 19, 11 12:30 PM

The events taking place in Wisconsin regarding collective bargaining agreements, there’s no better time to address the relationship between unions and businesses. When labor unions began in the late 19th Century, they were desperately needed to represent the interest of workers in America against the exploitative nature of industry. Over the years, these organizations helped institute minimum wage laws, child labor laws, 8-hour work days, vacation time, sick time, and more. These were well-intentioned measures, and most Americans are happy they exist today. But making sure workers have basic rights is not what labor unions are about today. They are about profit, greed, and political influence.

Today, most labor unions are very similar to the “evil corporations” they so frequently rail against. They claim big business doesn’t care about its workers, only profit. But are unions any different? They need members to pay dues, or they cease to exist. Clearly they are also profit-driven. They believe industry has too much influence compared with the working class. But unions have far more influence than their numbers would suggest, given that only 8% of Americans are in unions. And what do many of these labor organizations do with the hard-earned dollars they take from their members in the form of dues? They give them to politicians running for office – almost exclusively in the Democratic Party – whether their members support them or not.

The issue with unions today is a simple math problem. For years, unions have negotiated pretty good contracts for their workers. These contracts typically result in higher pay, better benefits, and more perks than non-union employees receive. As years go by, these contracts are renegotiated over and over again, raising wages and increasing benefits and perks each time. Then, when we have an economic crisis like the Great Recession (2008 – present), companies can no longer afford the expensive contracts they negotiated when profits were good. As the costs of these labor contracts rise, profits must rise along with them – or something needs to give. Either the union agrees to make concessions, or the business goes bankrupt.

This face-off is happening all over the country, including in Wisconsin. During the economic crisis, some unions have agreed to work with businesses to arrive at a mutually-agreeable solution to the problem of expensive contracts and low profits. But that is not always the case. Unions were willing to do very little in the case of Ford, GM and Chrysler, so the companies had no choice but to declare bankruptcy in order to restructure their organization and renegotiate labor contracts. Who are the labor unions helping if their own greed causes businesses to fail? It’s clearly not the workers, who end up out on their collective-bargaining asses when their company closes its doors.

We see this problem everywhere in America, and frankly it is out of control.

In government, collective bargaining agreements are paid by tax dollars. When federal, state and local government experiences drops in revenue due to high unemployment and a slow economy, unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are unwilling to give up a dime. Governments are then forced to fix their budget issues while suffering under the strains of paying these high-priced contracts – which would never have been agreed to under the present conditions.

In business, the unions’ unwillingness to cooperate often results in businesses going bankrupt or closing altogether. This may be good for the individual unions who get to show off their “power,” but it’s bad for their members who have no jobs, and bad for America. If businesses go away, so do our hopes of putting Americans back to work. Industry should not be allowed to exploit workers, but unions should not be allowed to exploit industry either.

In education, unions may be the largest contributor to our failures. Without declaring financial exigency (think bankruptcy), universities cannot renegotiate their contracts with tenured professors. In K-12 education, unions demand more and more money be spent on education, yet they ensure that very little ever makes it into the classroom. Nevada is the perfect example of the problem with education, since it has the lowest graduation rates in the nation. The Clark County School District (CCSD), which covers Las Vegas and surrounding areas, is the 5th largest school district in the country. Only 11% of its operating budget makes it into the classroom, yet unions and education officials are screaming bloody murder over impending budget cuts. The University of Nevada – Las Vegas (UNLV), where I am currently a student, has $647 million in total operating funds for this year. Under budget cuts proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Brian Sandoval, UNLV will see a cut of $47.5 million (or 7%). Unions and education officials, as well as Democrats in the state legislature, are twisting the numbers and telling Nevadans that the cut is 29%.

Americans won’t put up with this nonsense much longer.

They see what is happening in Wisconsin, and realizing that this is a battle between greedy unions and over-taxed taxpayers. They see teachers shutting down schools so they can protest, instead of educating their children by DOING THEIR JOB! Fire these teachers for abandoning their positions, and replace them with unemployed Wisconsinites who put education above greed.

Americans are starting to see the damage unions can do when they put greed ahead of their original purpose – protecting the basic rights of employees.

This is not an issue unions can win, unless they are willing to work with businesses and governments to achieve mutually-agreeable solutions. Bankrupting businesses and governments through unreasonable demands during this economic crisis won’t earn them any support from hard-working American taxpayers.

We will learn as these battles unfold exactly how much power unions will be allowed to have in America, and how the outcomes will affect their power in the future. We will also see how this will affect the Democratic Party, with which labor organizations are closely aligned.

With unemployment at 10% nationwide, there are plenty of Americans ready and willing to take the jobs of ANYONE who strikes. Perhaps it is time to call their bluff.

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Big Government and Short Attention Spans: A Recipe for Disaster

Jan 10, 11 12:13 PM

LQQkin4LUV: yo. spot me a $20?
CaliGIRL420z: k
LQQkin4LUV: imma give u $15 back. k?
CaliGIRL420z: hellz no!

Would you take that offer?

Whether or not that chat conversation is real, the federal government does that to us every day. They take our tax dollars, and then return far less to us in the form of funding and services. So why do we let them get away with it? Do we think the government is the only entity that can provide those goods and services, or do we simply not care enough to pay attention? The answer of course is both, and that chat exchange is the most in-depth many of us get when discussing economics.

Most of the issues we deal with as Americans, especially those that involve government, turn into a political war of opposing ideologies. However, some issues have nothing to do with Party affiliation and big government is one of them. Many people hear “big government” and they think a far-right, Glenn Beck, Tea Party lecture is about to follow, but that is not the case here. This is an honest explanation of what “big government” means, and how the more power the federal government has, the less we do. Unfortunately, learning that often means reading and investigating beyond the headlines – something we’re becoming increasingly unfamiliar with as a society.

First, it is important to understand that almost all arguments against big government are directed at the size of the federal government, and not necessarily the states.  Sure, state government can become bloated and inefficient, but that’s the problem of those living in that state – and not necessarily yours or mine. In addition, state government is far more in touch with their own people than the federal government will ever be; an important fact to remember when discussing policies pertaining to taxes, education, energy, health care, and so on. Putting the debate over the actual spending aside for a moment, the real question is whether an issue falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government or the individual states.

If you had a friend that only earns $25,000 per year, but somehow managed to spend $41,250 this year while racking up $175,000 in credit card bills – would you think an intervention is in order? What if your friend already owed his grandparents $1,137,500?

That’s exactly what our federal government did.

Our federal government brought in $2 trillion in revenue, spent $3.3 trillion, and racked up $14 trillion in debt; all while being committed to spending $91 trillion in Social Security and Medicare down the road.

Is there anyone left in America that thinks we’re not in a crisis? We’re going to be paying for this mismanagement for decades, if not more! And if you speak up you are somehow considered to be a racist, anti-poor, right-wing extremist.

Education is one of the biggest areas in which the American people are victims of big government. Yes, I said it – victims. We enjoy a public education system in this country, albeit one that competes very poorly with those in other countries despite much higher funding. In exchange for that public education we pay taxes, a portion of which is directed to various school districts all over our nation in the form of federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Education accounts for roughly 9% of all K-12 education spending in the nation. To put this in perspective, state and local governments in California estimate $112 billion in education spending for 2011, while the federal government will spend roughly $78 billion across all 50 states. So if federal education spending is just a drop in the bucket, why do we need the Department of Education to pay 4,603 employees a total of $1.8 billion to administer it? Couldn’t we just keep that money, along with the $77.8 billion in federal education dollars, in our states? Do we really need the middleman skimming off the top?

This is why many conservatives favor a voucher system in which the government gives the money to parents, to spend at the school of their choice. That, of course, is a threat to the public school system, who until recently have had no reason to concern themselves with efficiency. Education “advocates” continue to demand more money, even though the U.S. already spends more than most countries that rank above us in test scores. They scream bloody murder about education “cuts,” even though they are merely reductions in planned increases, and not actual cuts at all.

The same can be said about health care. In passing health care reform in March 2010, Congress decided NOT to allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines. So if you live in Texas, you can only purchase policies available in Texas, from companies licensed in Texas. If you live in New York you’d be very upset to hear that the average insurance policy there is $200/month higher than the average policy in Iowa. Too bad you can’t “shop around.” So if we don’t have a national health insurance system, why do we need the federal government to regulate it?

If all personal health insurance purchasing is wholly contained within a state, why can’t the state handle these issues? Massachusetts did when they passed universal health care. And while their system is costing far more than expected, and currently bankrupting the state, people can choose to move elsewhere if they don’t like it. That’s the beauty of living in a country with 50 individual state governments. Unfortunately President Obama and the Democrats don’t agree, and they’d prefer to saddle the entire nation with one giant, expensive, unmanageable health care system, from which there is no escape. Their almost $2 trillion health care bill requires us to send more money to Washington, so a fraction of it can be returned to us in less efficient ways than if we just kept it here to begin with.

We would realize this, if we were paying attention! But we’re clearly not.

There are no easy solutions to this problem, especially since many Americans simply don’t care enough to take an active role in keeping our government in check. We’ve also created a society so dependent on the government that no one wants to risk losing their hand-outs. The Tea Party movement addressed some of these issues, but was then demonized as a group of whack jobs by those who felt threatened by their demands for smaller government. But is trying to save our children and grandchildren from mountains of debt an extremist view? Is giving up local control, to a national system that treats us like numbers, a partisan issue?

Our inattentiveness has led to a runaway federal government that reaches so deep into our lives that we don’t dare confront it.

We may each have different views on how to address these issues, but that’s no excuse for remaining complacent. Whatever the solution is, it’s time for all Americans to get involved and demand better from our government and our elected officials.

If we don’t, we may have no country left to fix.

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