The public is angry with the lack of jobs, government excessive spending, corruption and waste. Promises were made and high hopes were raised for people wanting something for nothing like health care. Or single issue voters who wanted immigration enforcement, or the troops to come home and the war to end or the hope and change crowd, who weren't sure what that meant but wanted something positive to happen. Angry voters wanted to punish banks and Wall Street. Instead, they got wild spending for no return. They got even higher unemployment, huge new government deficits and more confusion with business, banks and Wall Street resulting on current growth stagnation. And the war goes on.
New, yet to be understood government regulations and threats of raising taxes along with still unknown health care costs have put the clamps on business borrowing and risk taking. This is killing job creation. Banks are unsure of yet to be determined government regulations to lend to business and home buyers. Government interference in the market place has created stagnation, fear and uncertainty.
Big business needs to show profit to shareholders and they currently are. Their top line has suffered while everything has been done to shore up the bottom line. But the old business adage of, Grow or Die is always in play and growth is hampered by high taxes and the unknown. Businesses have gotten lean and cautious while building reserves because they are leery of what the government might be up to next. Small business are not as flexible as large corporations, they sometimes operate like the average wage earner, month to month. They need to borrow in the lean times and when lending institutions find themselves in uncertain times like now, they say no to small business loans.
The uncertainty?
What is the government planing next? Are they going to raise taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts run out effecting many small businesses and jobs expire or lower corporate taxes to allow big businesses to be more competitive world wide? Good luck on both counts. Will the Pay Czar or another business Czar step in and cause the top people in banks and business to walk away? Is the current government pro business or not? Take a guess.
Our government is so out of touch with citizen and business needs that this November changes should be made in Congressional and Senate seats. There is hope that the current liberal-socialist trend in this country will be seen by the average voter as counter productive to job creation and economic growth. Changes in government will come because there is too much instability in our daily lives. Whether we own a business, work at a job, retired, or unemployed we don't feel comfortable now or about the future. Even the never-working voter is uncomfortable with and uncertain future. Our comfort level determines how we vote.
Tea party movements nationwide have been a reflection of that discomfort.
Set aside for a moment your political point of view and recognise that the reason so many diverse average citizens have grouped together at Tea Party rallies shows their frustration with government. These are not unruly one-issue-mobs burning flags or defying police lines, or making threats of any kind, they are you and me, unhappy with the way things are with our current administration and trying to tell the administration to change it's ways or be voted out of office. Is the administration listing? I don't think so.
Have you ever seen so many private political emails between friends and acquaintances for and against our current government? That's a Tea Party movement in hyperspace.
Still there are many out there that are angry, apathetic and ill informed and they are the ones that scare me the most. They are voters that vote their emotions rather than with informed minds. More the fifty percent of the public does not pay taxes. Voters that are poor, on welfare, disabled, retired, or rich feel guilty about it, are not likely to vote for candidates that espouse cutting government spending. If anything fifty percent want more goodies, like free health care, free education, guaranteed jobs, housing, food, energy, etc. There is no end to the things that people want for free. There will always be politicians out there making promises to give it to them. It's getting scarier, and scarier when so many are blindly willing to accept a free ride.
The remaining fifty percent has to convince the 'in love with government' public that free goodies are not in their best interest. Good luck with that.
Freedom isn't free.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Our Future and Government
We know where we are or do we? Economically we are headed towards a European style of Socialist country. The only difference is national health care and our current government is certainly pushing us in that direction. People who know how we should live, progressives, have ushered us in a socialist direction for decades. Starting with F.D.R., we have been putting reigns on our economic growth for the sake of the ‘less fortunate’. As Sarah Palin would say, ‘How is that working out you?’
There is, after eighty years, a sizeable portion of the population still living in poverty. So all the years of scaling the economy to give entitlements to help the poor folks hasn’t worked so well, has it. Those entitlement promises are crushing us today. The number of poor and less educated is actually growing daily in this country.
By holding back sucessful people and businesses with more and more regulation and taxes, you not only don’t accomplish helping the less fortunate you actually put more out of work. The job creators are being penalized for creating. The more they create the more regulation and taxes they are burdened with. Are we moving towards being a country of pizza shops and beauty salons? I’m all for small business supplying job creation but I’d like to see the USA be the leader in vibrant big business as well. They are not the enemy as progressives would like us to believe. They don’t deserve to pay the highest taxes of any nation in the world. They don’t deserve to be as constrained by government regulation as they are. Big businesses are composed of stockholders, Americans that have invested their savings and futures in the success of big corporations.
Governments are either for business or against them. That seems to be the simple logic to determine the success or failure of a country. Currently, the most successful growth countries are China, and India. Their central governments have created an environment for a successful business climate with favorable taxes, shackles on unions, and minimal regulation. Sounds too simple doesn’t it. That was the formula for America’s unprecedented growth in the early late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfettered capitalism works. Some regulation is, of course, warranted to control the unscrupulous and reckless but in moderation.
So why do governments push for so much control and socialism? I think it’s not so much because they are compassionate or benevolent by nature, I think it’s due to the power trip of high office. Corporations don’t vote, rich are in the minority so it's the rest of the folks who determine who is in government to serve the people. Conservatives selling the idea of less services or entitlements is a tough sell, always has been. In the old days, I’m talking early England in the 1700’s, politicians would bribe and pay voters to get elected. In the thirties elections Chicago started the idea of rigging elections. More recently, organizers were responsible for ‘getting out the vote’ to help their candidates get elected. Rich candidates spend millions of their own money to get elected. Mayor Bloomberg of New York spent untold millions to get elected a job that pays so little compared to what he made in the private sector? Why do he and many others do it?
Power!
Power to push agendas. More than half the voting public thought that Obama’s agenda was their agenda.
‘And how’s that working out for you?’
Most of Europe is going down the toilet from overspending, over regulating, and over growing government with unions dictating benefits and wages. Sound familiar? The only correct thing Europe is doing is holding down the per cent of taxes on big business. This helps growth and generates more tax revenue to keep the governments oversized. They have learned that much.
Who will deliver what the people want? Sarah Palin, Scott Brown or Obama? What do the people want? Smaller government, less spending...living within our means, resonable benovelence and security? Like I said, who will deliver that and not let power corupt?
We know where we are or do we? Economically we are headed towards a European style of Socialist country. The only difference is national health care and our current government is certainly pushing us in that direction. People who know how we should live, progressives, have ushered us in a socialist direction for decades. Starting with F.D.R., we have been putting reigns on our economic growth for the sake of the ‘less fortunate’. As Sarah Palin would say, ‘How is that working out you?’
There is, after eighty years, a sizeable portion of the population still living in poverty. So all the years of scaling the economy to give entitlements to help the poor folks hasn’t worked so well, has it. Those entitlement promises are crushing us today. The number of poor and less educated is actually growing daily in this country.
By holding back sucessful people and businesses with more and more regulation and taxes, you not only don’t accomplish helping the less fortunate you actually put more out of work. The job creators are being penalized for creating. The more they create the more regulation and taxes they are burdened with. Are we moving towards being a country of pizza shops and beauty salons? I’m all for small business supplying job creation but I’d like to see the USA be the leader in vibrant big business as well. They are not the enemy as progressives would like us to believe. They don’t deserve to pay the highest taxes of any nation in the world. They don’t deserve to be as constrained by government regulation as they are. Big businesses are composed of stockholders, Americans that have invested their savings and futures in the success of big corporations.
Governments are either for business or against them. That seems to be the simple logic to determine the success or failure of a country. Currently, the most successful growth countries are China, and India. Their central governments have created an environment for a successful business climate with favorable taxes, shackles on unions, and minimal regulation. Sounds too simple doesn’t it. That was the formula for America’s unprecedented growth in the early late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfettered capitalism works. Some regulation is, of course, warranted to control the unscrupulous and reckless but in moderation.
So why do governments push for so much control and socialism? I think it’s not so much because they are compassionate or benevolent by nature, I think it’s due to the power trip of high office. Corporations don’t vote, rich are in the minority so it's the rest of the folks who determine who is in government to serve the people. Conservatives selling the idea of less services or entitlements is a tough sell, always has been. In the old days, I’m talking early England in the 1700’s, politicians would bribe and pay voters to get elected. In the thirties elections Chicago started the idea of rigging elections. More recently, organizers were responsible for ‘getting out the vote’ to help their candidates get elected. Rich candidates spend millions of their own money to get elected. Mayor Bloomberg of New York spent untold millions to get elected a job that pays so little compared to what he made in the private sector? Why do he and many others do it?
Power!
Power to push agendas. More than half the voting public thought that Obama’s agenda was their agenda.
‘And how’s that working out for you?’
Most of Europe is going down the toilet from overspending, over regulating, and over growing government with unions dictating benefits and wages. Sound familiar? The only correct thing Europe is doing is holding down the per cent of taxes on big business. This helps growth and generates more tax revenue to keep the governments oversized. They have learned that much.
Who will deliver what the people want? Sarah Palin, Scott Brown or Obama? What do the people want? Smaller government, less spending...living within our means, resonable benovelence and security? Like I said, who will deliver that and not let power corupt?
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Political Happenings
The past few months have revealed a lot about the future political direction of the country. Voters have been unhappy with the Obama's vision and they've show their displeasure with a resounding voice. Even with complete control of Congress and the White House President Obama's agenda of social change in health care, global warming carbon management with Cap and Trade, and the stimulus programs for job growth have all been busts.
They failed because they were doomed by bad planning and special interest deals. Health care needed step by step Congressional planning and approvals for laws that would,
A. Allow employees to carry forward their company health plans to another job,
B. Prevent Casino law suits against Doctors and health care facilities, cutting down on defensive, unnecessary, wasteful medicine.
C. Allow insurance companies to sell across state lines to encourage competition and lower insurance costs.
D. Eliminate pre-existing conditions as and excuse for insurance co's claims denials and new policy denials by forming high risk pools. Pools that offer insurance companies manageable risk.
E. Give tax credits to encourage 18 to 30 year olds to have health insurance.
F. Make it a law for medical providers to publish price lists for services.
G. Get rid of the health related lobbyist's and trial lawyers that influence law makers.
Cap and Trade is simply not good business for America and will not happen while India and China are growing their economy's like weeds. Obama should have know that in advance of his wasteful trip to Norway.
The burden on the EU, who have such a law is showing on their countries overburdened economy's. They are faced with very high unemployment rates and extremely high energy costs and slow growth. The Chinese and Indians know this and will distance themselves from anything that will slow there economies.
The $700 billion Jobs Stimulus program is not working and is not going to work because the governments idea of spending our way out of a recession does not work. FDR tried from 1933 until WWII came along he was failed miserably. The war finally brought us out of recession. A second planned stimulus plan will not work either. Obama should have know that if he had studied the history of recessions in this country. The American people know that leaving business alone is the answer for bringing us out of recession.
The Tarp program started by the Bush administration helped see the financial institutions through a difficult time and now most of the money those institutions borrowed from the government has been paid back. Ford survived without it and just announced a 35% growth is car sales year over year. Instead of reducing the debt with these paid back funds as he by law is supposed to do Obama wants to spent it. Stop the spending voters in Massachusetts said. Is he listing?
All of the administrations efforts listed above show that this administration's vision for the future is without understanding of what happened in the past or what the people really want. The American people are smarted than government gives them credit for. They saw eminent failure in the administration's efforts and do not applaud failed efforts, rather they look elsewhere for answers, like newly elected Senator Scott Brown. His election is a rejection of Obama's liberal style of government.
You cannot talk about transparent government then have Harry Reid and some special interest group write a 2000 page health care bill behind closed doors that nobody has a chance to read and insist on a quick vote.
You cannot tell the American people that the government can run health care better than private industries can and expect the American people to believe it.
You cannot promise hearings on health care and other legislation to be on C-Span and deny C-Span access at the same time.
You cannot promise that passage of the Stimulus Bill will keep unemployment under 8% and watch $700 billion be spent and unemployment rise to 10%.
You cannot say that 2 million jobs were saved or created when at the same time 4 million jobs were lost. When stimulus money runs out many of the temporary extra police, city services workers and teachers jobs will be cut.
You cannot promise to close Guantanamo in a year and fail.
You cannot try prisoner's of war as you do American citizens and give them the same protections as American citizens, they haven't earned that distinction of being and American Citizen.
Washington DC has the lowest unemployment by half in the country, that is an open sore to people in Detroit and many other places. Why isn't government cutting labor like the rest of the country has been forced to? Don't they know that they are overwhelming regarded by the American public as doing a poor job?
The American people want the blame game to stop, they want real and sensible plans for cutting waste, cutting spending, cutting the size of government, and real bi-partisan co-operation in government.
To often we put labels on government, what it is to be a Republican or Democrat, a Conservative or a liberal. Scott Brown showed politicians what America wants. A government that is smaller in size, less in control of our lives, more responsive to the wishes of the electorate, lives within it's means and stops blaming industry as the cause for the countries ills.
The past few months have revealed a lot about the future political direction of the country. Voters have been unhappy with the Obama's vision and they've show their displeasure with a resounding voice. Even with complete control of Congress and the White House President Obama's agenda of social change in health care, global warming carbon management with Cap and Trade, and the stimulus programs for job growth have all been busts.
They failed because they were doomed by bad planning and special interest deals. Health care needed step by step Congressional planning and approvals for laws that would,
A. Allow employees to carry forward their company health plans to another job,
B. Prevent Casino law suits against Doctors and health care facilities, cutting down on defensive, unnecessary, wasteful medicine.
C. Allow insurance companies to sell across state lines to encourage competition and lower insurance costs.
D. Eliminate pre-existing conditions as and excuse for insurance co's claims denials and new policy denials by forming high risk pools. Pools that offer insurance companies manageable risk.
E. Give tax credits to encourage 18 to 30 year olds to have health insurance.
F. Make it a law for medical providers to publish price lists for services.
G. Get rid of the health related lobbyist's and trial lawyers that influence law makers.
Cap and Trade is simply not good business for America and will not happen while India and China are growing their economy's like weeds. Obama should have know that in advance of his wasteful trip to Norway.
The burden on the EU, who have such a law is showing on their countries overburdened economy's. They are faced with very high unemployment rates and extremely high energy costs and slow growth. The Chinese and Indians know this and will distance themselves from anything that will slow there economies.
The $700 billion Jobs Stimulus program is not working and is not going to work because the governments idea of spending our way out of a recession does not work. FDR tried from 1933 until WWII came along he was failed miserably. The war finally brought us out of recession. A second planned stimulus plan will not work either. Obama should have know that if he had studied the history of recessions in this country. The American people know that leaving business alone is the answer for bringing us out of recession.
The Tarp program started by the Bush administration helped see the financial institutions through a difficult time and now most of the money those institutions borrowed from the government has been paid back. Ford survived without it and just announced a 35% growth is car sales year over year. Instead of reducing the debt with these paid back funds as he by law is supposed to do Obama wants to spent it. Stop the spending voters in Massachusetts said. Is he listing?
All of the administrations efforts listed above show that this administration's vision for the future is without understanding of what happened in the past or what the people really want. The American people are smarted than government gives them credit for. They saw eminent failure in the administration's efforts and do not applaud failed efforts, rather they look elsewhere for answers, like newly elected Senator Scott Brown. His election is a rejection of Obama's liberal style of government.
You cannot talk about transparent government then have Harry Reid and some special interest group write a 2000 page health care bill behind closed doors that nobody has a chance to read and insist on a quick vote.
You cannot tell the American people that the government can run health care better than private industries can and expect the American people to believe it.
You cannot promise hearings on health care and other legislation to be on C-Span and deny C-Span access at the same time.
You cannot promise that passage of the Stimulus Bill will keep unemployment under 8% and watch $700 billion be spent and unemployment rise to 10%.
You cannot say that 2 million jobs were saved or created when at the same time 4 million jobs were lost. When stimulus money runs out many of the temporary extra police, city services workers and teachers jobs will be cut.
You cannot promise to close Guantanamo in a year and fail.
You cannot try prisoner's of war as you do American citizens and give them the same protections as American citizens, they haven't earned that distinction of being and American Citizen.
Washington DC has the lowest unemployment by half in the country, that is an open sore to people in Detroit and many other places. Why isn't government cutting labor like the rest of the country has been forced to? Don't they know that they are overwhelming regarded by the American public as doing a poor job?
The American people want the blame game to stop, they want real and sensible plans for cutting waste, cutting spending, cutting the size of government, and real bi-partisan co-operation in government.
To often we put labels on government, what it is to be a Republican or Democrat, a Conservative or a liberal. Scott Brown showed politicians what America wants. A government that is smaller in size, less in control of our lives, more responsive to the wishes of the electorate, lives within it's means and stops blaming industry as the cause for the countries ills.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)