Taking Over the Tea Party Movement

This morning, I heard a radio political advertisement for one of our local candidates who claimed he was endorsed by the Tea Party. When I heard that, I wondered who he was talking about. The advertisement included a gentleman that stated that he was the President of a Local Tea Party. That surprised me even more, but at the same time I thought it was also predictable.

When Americans first came out in force across the country to express their frustration with politicians in general, you can be sure that some politicians are going to want to jump on that bandwagon. The Tea Party movement was never a political party, but rather an outpouring of expression from citizens of many persuasions. They were simply trying to be heard in Washington and make a tone deaf Congress and Administration sit up and take notice. This was a rebellion against government intrusion and self serving politicians. This was the people's movement, not the politicians.

Now we see individuals gathering to take advantage of that public emotion and frustration. They are meeting together, forming small groups that call themselves the Tea Party, electing leaders, and now endorsing candidates as though they represented the sentiments of all of those that came out to the Tea Party movement gatherings. It is almost the same thing that many citizens were rebelling against in the first place.

In my view, the last thing we need in this country is another political party with a new agenda of their own. We have difficulty trying to sort out the politics of a two party system. The greatest problem with multiple parties is the same one with which Europe constantly struggles. Multi party systems split the vote of the citizens so that a majority is seldom ever achieved. Because of that, the majority never feels that they are represented and thet don't' agree on most policies.

While it is possible that the Tea Party movement could evolve into a political party, it is highly doubtful that it would ever become a major party. As soon as it becomes a party, much of its support will disappear from those who were protesting that very idea of it. However, strange things happen in the world of politics. Creating a new party would only undermine the ability to unseat the power structure that they are fighting against. There is not enough support in the nation to elect a majority of 3rd Party candidates that would be required in order to control the committees and chair positions. It would only take some seats from both Democrats and Republicans, but the control would remain where it is today. That is to the advantage of the Democrats and they are not oblivious to that fact. I suggest that those who support the Tea Party movement should focus on changing control of Congress and the Administration first, before deciding whether we need additional political parties.

Incompetence Reigns in Washington

While I have pointed out many times over the last couple of years the importance of credentials, experience, and competence in the people we elect, the importance of those qualities has never been clearer than the last 18 months. I have run out of adjectives to properly describe the moronic level of incompetence we have sunk to in this country. This lack of professional ability has resulted in the appointment of even lower levels of incompetence in every key position in the federal government. Repeatedly, we see people whose primary purpose in life is to promote the transformation of America into a socialist government. They have no personal executive skills, no functional expertise in the positions they have been asked to manage, no seeming knowledge of the facts as they exist in the world. Most of these bureaucrats seem oblivious and uncaring about the Constitution and the limits it places on their power and are far more interested in advancing their own personal agendas and control over our thinking and personal choices.

Just in the last few days, we hear Eric Holder, the US Attorney General criticize severely the immigration control law passed in Arizona and then admit before the entire country that he had never even read it. Even more unbelievably, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano did not take a lesson from that enormous flub and told reporters the exact same thing. She was highly critical of the law and days after Holder is mocked by the media, she tells reporters she has not read it either. She had to know this would be asked, yet she still couldn't take a few minutes to read a 10 page bill. This is followed again yesterday by Assistant Secretary of State, Michael Posner's comments that he agreed with China's criticism of US for human rights violations and cited the Arizona law. It is simply crazy to listen to China of all countries criticizing us, and over a law none have read. As it happens, I have read the Arizona bill and see none of the points contained in it that are being charged by these members of the Obama administration. The President himself has criticized the bill for things that are not in the law and has intentionally distorted the truth, that in fact it is the same as current federal law, only giving direct authority to local police to enforce it. That authority is also available under federal statute, but has not been enforced or requested by our federal government. It was because federal authorities have ignored enforcement that state authorities felt compelled to protect themselves. That is the right and responsibility of every government.

When will this stop? It stops only when the American have had enough of this outrageous out of control government who like Cass Sunstein, the White House's Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, says government often knows best and should act to correct the behaviors of citizens when they don't believe what the bureaucrats believe. That is why he wants to control internet content and ensure that you and I view what he wants us to see. He would require us to place links to opposing views on everything we write. That is insane nonsense and tyrannical thinking. However, that is captured on video and I have seen him say it in that exact context. This is the same Cass Sunstein, who was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago and Harvard, that the next candidate for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan calls the preeminent constitutional law expert of our time. This is truly frightening. America must wake up to this onslaught on the Constitution and our freedoms. It is encouraging to see the results of recent elections but we must inform all Americans of the truth of what is happening. Only through the truth and all of the facts can people make the right choice.

The Liberal Media Spins the National Debt

For those of you who might happen to get Parade Magazine as an insert in your Sunday newspaper, you might have come across an article written by Rebecca Webber and Dr. Ranit Mishori in the section called Intelligence Report. This is an excellent example of taking the best set of numbers you can find to fit your personal world narrative. Parade Magazine has always been a very liberal piece of Sunday entertainment, but in the last few years it has become blatantly biased toward the Socialist agenda. So, what was wrong with their report?

In their article they try to show that other countries are in worse shape than the US and conclude that we are not so bad off. The title of their article was "Does America Owe Too Much?" They start out by saying that "the US public debt was $7.5 trillion - about 53% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Technically, that is factual, but what is wrong is that they are including only part of the debt, the public debt, not the gross national debt. The Gross National Debt, which includes the total of our obligations is actually around $13 trillion and is estimated to be over $14 trillion at the end of this year and that is nearly equal to the entire (GDP). These kinds of distortions are not just wrong, they are dangerous. They intentionally mislead the public into a false sense of security. They go on in the article to site other numbers used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as though these were official numbers that we should all use. The CBO is not an official source for any economic numbers. They use the numbers supplied by others to estimate outcomes based on various scenarios. The source for most the official government numbers comes from the Department of Commerce and the Treasury Department. Do not be mislead by these spinners of political narratives. The truth lies with the facts and we should let the numbers speak for themselves.

It is also important for citizens to understand that there is no bottomless pit of investment money around the world waiting to absorb our debt. Nearly all money that is available for investment is already invested in something. In order for markets to be willing to buy our debt through treasury notes, they have to be more attractive than what the money is already earning in other investment instruments.
At the moment, Congress and this Administration are on a very dangerous path and something will eventually have to give. There is simply not enough money in the system to be able to support these massive numbers that are being spent. Americans must wake up because only they can stop this drunken spending spree.

The Fiscal Monster

In February, a New York Times columnist, and college professor, Paul Krugman wrote one of the strangest articles related to national debt ever written by someone professing to be an economist. Krugman is well known for two things. He is a devoted a socialist and winner of a Nobel Prize for which being a socialist now seems to be a prerequisite. Nobel Prizes these days are handed out only to those who carry the party message and Krugman does that with some zeal, albeit more than a bit crazy. However, that credential seems to have given him access to the media and he has busied himself helping the Obama administration try to sell the notion that national debt is a good thing.

In this week's article, entitled "Fiscal scare tactics miscast deficit as a monster", Krugman claims that Republicans in Congress and other economists around the world are simply stirring up hysteria. He believes there is nothing to be concerned about and that the current deficits represent no threat. This is tantamount to someone telling you that even though you are bankrupt, you have nothing to worry about and you should just take it all in stride and keep right on spending. This is not just bad advice; it is lunacy at the top of the scale. It is no wonder that the Obama administration loves Krugman. It is like taking your alcoholic friend along to go drinking. Not only is Krugman wrong, I think it is probable that he is suffering from some kind of mental delusion. Certainly no sane finance or economics expert would consider such statements. On the other hand, this might be from spending too many years locked away in his office in his university. I can see why he remains where he is, safely tenured in his job, because no business would hire him.

Lest anyone actually believe Professor Krugman, let me assure them that this is certainly not the view of the real world business economists and finance community. Clearly around the world, there is great concern, not just for the deficits of the US, but even more for some of the major European and Asian countries. This is not mystical, not opinion as Krugman suggests, not guess work, it is fact. The numbers do the speaking, not the economists. They only have to gather the numbers and assemble them. The reality is very simple to understand. There are only so many dollars in our economy and only so many in all those of the other countries. We know where that money is, what is available to invest, what financial instruments each is invested in, and what can be supported. In order for the US Government to get people to buy their notes, money must be transferred from some other investment source that either offers less return or is less secure. Taking money out of the capital investment market means businesses stop growing and so do jobs. This normally means that others will have to increase their returns to investors, thus setting off another round of inflation and a new cycle competing for the same dollars. In order to meet these staggering deficit numbers, profits, and wealth will have to grow enormously or they will simply not be able to find buyers for treasury notes.

The size of national debts that are being run up, exceed not just the amount of cash available in every kind of investment instrument, but in the entire gross domestic products (GDPs) of the countries that are creating them. Not only that, the unfunded liabilities for government programs like social security and Medicare are becoming many times larger than the GDPs and at current rates there is simply no money in the system to pay them. To suggest there is nothing to worry about is just insanity. Anyone that buys into Krugman's ideas is either as crazy as he is, unbelievably naive, or is trying to destroy the nation. We should speak out strongly against any such attempts to undermine the drive to fix these national problems. They must be fixed soon, or they will fix themselves with dire consequences.

The Public and Media Weigh In

Perhaps it is in the nature of humans to make quick assumptions and judgments. Maybe our early ancestors had to do that to survive. That’s a question I certainly am unqualified to answer, but like others, have asked. There are dozens of media reports every day about subjects such as an air traffic controller who let his kids speak from the control tower, how government bills that have not yet been written will affect us, how new tax systems will solve our problems, and so on. Before anyone has the facts on these issues, many in the media are writing stories suggesting who is at fault, who should be fired, who should apologize, how our lives will be affected, and so forth. The public immediately begins choosing sides, yet no one has any real facts on either side of the debates. Why do we do this?

I am increasingly troubled by these leaps to judgment because rather than learning the truth and making good rational decisions, we may end up with the exact opposite of what we thought we were going to achieve. Even being a professional researcher, I am still inclined to jump to conclusions myself, and am constantly battling with myself to remain objective and to get the facts before forming an opinion. I know that I have expertise in certain subjects, but even then it is limited to some fairly narrow areas. I try my best to confine my advice to others based on what I actually know, not on what might be. The world is full of misinformation, now more than ever because of the internet and cable TV. We are flooded with it daily.

One of the important things we try to teach our children at home and at school is how to think. Hopefully, the most important thing we try to learn in college is to not assume but deductively analyze what we read. I wonder at times if we are failing there too. When examining any issue it is as important to know what we don’t know as it is what we know. Much more often, what we don’t know is far greater. We need to challenge the information we get and not just accept it on face value. I frequently hear pundits taking positions about things that they have absolutely no expertise or experience to even know the right questions to ask. Many of these issues are highly technical and even those within those professional fields don’t have all the information or answers. Those leaps to judgment seem to be especially true in the media and politics.

We are currently faced with many national and state issues that could affect our lives for many years. It is critical that we try to inform the public and not mislead them. Trying to lead the public through emotional pleas from one side or the other may create unintended consequences that will severely damage our way of life. I believe it is critical for all leaders in government, business, and professional organizations to refrain from jumping to conclusions until they have the facts. They should question what they are shown and told. They should ask those who claim expertise for their own credentials to advise. Not all opinions are equal and simply because someone agrees with your position does not make them an expert or qualified to make an assessment. They must know what they don’t know and seek the truth, regardless of where that truth leads. I am not naïve enough to think that those who have personal interests in the outcomes of the decisions will stop spinning their versions. However, those who represent the public’s interest must stop the misrepresentations, the withholding of contradictory information, and jumping to conclusions about things of which they know little or nothing. We, the citizens, should do the same and demand it of our leaders.

Congress Strikes Again

Happy New Year to all.

With the start of the New Year, we have not been disappointed by Congress in their immediate return to partisan agenda politics. Democrats have decided that they no longer need or are even interested in any input from their Republican colleagues and therefore are essentially cutting them out the process entirely as they force through a healthcare bill that American citizens have resoundingly rejected. These members of Congress want to charge us all more for less and penalize those that do not want to buy their product. I personally view this as taxation without representation. If my representative is not even allowed to participate in the process, this is not the intent of our forefathers when they established Congress. However, there is very little that Congress has done in the last few years that is consistent with the intent of the founders and the wording of our Constitution. This document is being shredded before our very eyes. Where is the authority granted in the Constitution that would allow most of this legislation? Article 1, section 8, clause 3, often referred to as the Commerce Clause states “The Congress shall have the power to…. Regulate Commerce with foreign nations and among the several states and with Indian Tribes.” It says “regulate”, not “operate.” It says regulate among the states, not within the states. The clear intent both in the wording and in the Federalist papers was to regulate to ensure free and open trade between the states. It was not to tell people what they had to buy, from whom they had to buy, or to create a federal business that competed with private commerce. The job of the federal government was and is to regulate, but they have failed in that responsibility as well. It is the failure to regulate that has caused the loss of competition, unfair business practices, and other unethical and illegal behaviors. This is a clear failure of Congress, the Administration, the courts, and the voters who elected them to represent their views. We are all to blame for this massive incompetence and destruction of the values and principles set out in the Constitution.

Why do American’s allow their government to ignore the very document that sets out the limits of the authority that each of these governing bodies is given? Why do we give away our freedoms so easily when prior generations sacrificed their lives to achieve them for us? Others around the world are still dying in order to give those rights to their children. Recently, Congress decided to take over the board rooms of private companies, make them pay back monies earned under contract, and even pay additional taxes. Legislators once again ignored the Constitution and decided to punish certain members of those businesses although they had committed no crime. The Constitution states “No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed”. The Supreme Court in 1946 in US v. Lovett defined it this way. Legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial are bills of attainder prohibited by the Constitution. These acts by Congress certainly seem to meet those conditions. While we leave these matters to the Constitutional lawyers to sort out, we the people are suppose to decide what we want them to mean too. We have a responsibility to be informed, to understand our Constitution, and to elect those people who will uphold those principles as sacred. Those who don’t must be removed. Those who intentionally ignore them fail their oath of office and are acting in a treasonous manner. Citizens who value their Constitution must never politely sit silently at home or in public and allow this to happen. We must stand up for what we believe. We must demand that our Constitution be respected. We must take back our freedoms. We must stand up for America.

Show Me the Money

The House of Representatives was seen gleefully cheering and patting themselves on the back after passing a bill to create one of the most expensive government programs in the history of the country. Democrat members of the House spent the following day before television cameras extolling the claimed benefits of their handiwork. They never once revealed where the billions or future trillions of dollars were going to come from to fund this massive federal takeover of healthcare in America. I won’t begin to get into all the controversial provisions of this bill, as it is highly unlikely to pass the Senate in its present form. What every American should demand to know though is where all this money is going to be found. Supposedly there is $500 billion dollars in Medicare fraud that they plan to find and convert to new benefits. If that were true, it would seem to be the biggest argument against giving federal bureaucrats more money to waste. If they are in fact throwing away half a trillion dollars a year in fraud, they should all be put in jail for criminal negligence.

The nation is out of money as I write this article. We are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from foreign nations just to pay the interest on our existing debt. How can we be taking out more loans when we can’t even pay the interest on existing debt? As this is being written, the debt now stands at $11,981,837,000,000. That is essentially now equal to the Gross Domestic Product of the entire country. The interest on that amount is increasing at the rate of $864,000,000 per day. Not only are we adding to the debt through borrowing on the interest, we continue to add to the debt through continued deficit spending. This is like maxing out your credit cards and then getting loans to pay the interest on your cards. Since you have no money left in your bank account, you borrow some more.

The sight of these House members jumping up and down and congratulating themselves is just astonishing to watch. Do they care nothing of the financial solvency of our country? Do they not realize that the greatest threat to our nation is not importing foreign oil, but exporting cash to countries that care nothing about our own survival? Wake up America. Congress is spending your freedom. They are spending the future of all of our families. Unless this is reversed, the numbers cannot be sustained indefinitely. At some point it will just stop because there is not enough money in the world system to support it. China is already starting to back away from buying more American debt. There are few other countries with the cash to replace their support. China could single handedly collapse our economy if they dumped all of their notes at once, or even a substantial portion. China only continues to support us because it is in their own self interest. If they quit believing that, we would be in serious danger. This is an enormous threat to the sovereignty of our nation and the freedom of every American. Not only is this Healthcare Bill an intrusion into the individual’s decisions on their own healthcare, all massive spending bills, that have no funding from existing revenues, threaten the economic survivability of our nation. This should be causing us to jump up and down too, but for a much different reason and it is not in celebration.