I thought I would pay my bills today.  I normally log into GMAC bank, pay the bills in one window and I'm done in under 5 minutes.  Today I spent 30 minutes with the helpdesk.  Great, how we can we blame Obama for this, I mean that the real question right?  If I were a liberal and Bush were President it wouldn't take them long.  They say he's responsible for the bank failure so they had to move to that new substandard service and if the government would just control the banks we wouldn't have this problem.  But Bush is too busy killing women and mothers and other innocent people to worry about how much time I waste on phone calls, they would ramble on.  I love when they chatter in groups too, all the nodding and agreement just looks so fun and happy.  You have to give them credit, they can come up with this garbage pretty quick.
Its sort of like playing the Kevin Bacon game, except there game is how to blame Bush for everything.  Maybe that's where they got all their practice.  I'm pretty certain some liberal reading this now could probably make it Bush's fault even though he's gone already.  Please leave the comment, because I so want to be mad at someone!  That nice lady on phone support doesn't deserve my poor attitude, after all she said I'm the only one having this problem.
I guess that might be true because in this difficult times, I might be the only one logging in to pay my bills instead of waiting for Obama to pay them for me.

Have you ever wondered why a court would give custody of a grandchild to the grandparents because the parents were not fit parents?  Seriously, lets think about this.  We have parents that are 'not fit', meaning the state agrees these people should not be raising children.  The reasons can be differ but this is the important agreement.  So the court now must decide who gets the kids.  So the parents are incompetent, and the courts first choice is to the go the parents who raised them!  Because we want more incompetent people running around?  They don't have a good track record, lets give them another try..  Really what are they thinking? 
With the all the other crazy political stuff floating around, hopefully this gave you something else to think about.

Watching Fox news this morning, considered the most conservative by some, and not even news by the liberal crazies.  The stories today in a short 5-10 minute period were about the following, a new book called take your oxygen first, a lady who put her kids out of the car, actors not responsible for the action because of alcohol, and finally a lady fired for social networking in her free time.
All of these could be normal stories, and represent an obviously slow news day but look at what we are talking about.  Its a probably a great book, but the author describes caregivers as the hero's of our time.  Are we going a little to far here?  What ever happened to fireman?  Maybe they are the hero's of time because in a world so self centered, this behavior seems odd.  Taking care of one's parents was the expected norm not long ago.  My mother took care of her grandmother and her mother, my whole life and my dad takes care of his dad now.  Hero's I guess.  Maybe we are just hurting so badly to find the good people that taking care of your family is now consider special.
Then a lady frustrated with her kids, puts them out of the car, drives around the block and goes back to pick them up.  The headline is may escape endangerment charges.  We wonder what's wrong with our kids, and why they don't behave.  It's simple, there is no discipline anymore.  Parents can't be parents in the nanny state we live in.  That's all for the state or federal government to decide now. Well if that's the case, they might as well offer a class in 8th or 9th grade on how legally parent.  At least then we will know the rules.  As I recall driving is a privilege, which means not everyone gets to do it.  Well riding should be a privilege too.  Where are liberal when you need them.  You can't drive and talk on the cell phone in the New York but I guess you can allow fighting screaming kids because that's not distracting.  Maybe we should dream up a no talking in the car policy, then parents can use the I'll call the policy excuse on them and our nanny state can take care of us.  While they are at maybe they can put that on their permanent record, destroy their future and make them permanently dependent thereby ensuring the regulators job in the future.  Wait, before we do that, how about we let parents be parents and live in a free country.
So an actor beats up another famous person or some such thing.  First, who cares?  My life is not so boring I need to hear about this gossip.  But it gets worse.  The guest on TV says he can't be responsible if he has an alcohol problem, because its a disease.  Oh well, in that case he should have just killed the guy, now that we are blaming diseases.  I mean how could we hold him responsible for something he did, and a "disease" that was self inflicted.  Meaning 'but for' his own action some other person was damaged.  That's usually the definition of responsible.  Not these days, no one is responsible, no one can think for themselves, everyone needs the help of the government to live normal lives.  Or just maybe we should charge him with battery like any other person and check him in AA.  Now in this case, maybe he had a good reason to hit him, that case hasn't been tried yet, but you can't scapegoat this one on alcohol.
So this lady off work hours, goes into a private discussion group and makes comments about her boss.  Someone else in the group shows the boss, who was not in the group.  The lady gets fired.  This one is tough, because in a right to work environment you should be able to be fired for having hair out of place or the boss/owner just didn't like you.  Too bad.  However we don't live in that world.  We live in Nanny state and nanny state says you have to fire people for cause.  Which is odd, because we don't seem to be able to fire people for being incompetent, which happens regularly but they were able to fire this lady pretty quickly for belonging to a social networking group.  In today's world you should be fired for what you do out of work if its not breaking the law.  This does prove one thing about corporate america.  Its more important for people to like you at work than to actually work.
All of these stories reflect where we have gone as a society.  A group of people where its special to take of your family, impossible to discipline your children, faultless in our crimes and punished for using free speech.

How is it that a country that hasn't been fully formed yet, has a better process for voting than we do in the US?  We still can't figure out what happened in MN.  In Iraq you go to the voting booth, if your finger in purple you can't vote again.  Its that simple.
If you live in MN you simply send in an early ballot and then go vote again on voting day.  They know they have duplicates in MN, they just can't figure out which are which.  So how many years have we been doing this and we are left with no confidence in our electoral process and yet we are expecting to coach Iraq's on how to setup their own democracy. 
We need to take some action in area of voting and clean this up. This today has been totally corrupted.  We need to get back to simple paper, and you vote on voting day, with an ID card or you don't vote.  You don't get to vote for dead people, you don't get to vote twice, you don't get to vote for your spouse in Iraq.  Let the military vote in their locations, certify the results and send them to the states to be recorded.

What are we waiting for?

Our country is coming to a cross roads its greatest challenge.  It is a country divided, split just about 50/50 with two side equal passionate about the direction for this country but with a totally different directions in mind.  Obama is not going to unify this country or the world.  He is not the messiah.  At the present time he is having trouble bringing his own party together.  Woman have started to complain that they have not been represented in his government.  The press has started to complain he hasn't been open.  Foreign governments have said he is more of the same.  He hired someone to manage our money, that lied about his own taxes, that should make everyone mad.  Republicans obviously don't like him.  The stimulus bill is full of leftist pork and the people of America hate it.  He signed the order to close Guantanamo which a majority of American oppose.  We are approaching a reality that this President can't and won't deliver as promised.  This day is coming faster than I thought.  I thought it would take much longer for anyone in the press to even question him much less disagree with him.
What are people left to do?  How can they possibly deal with the dissapointment and anger?  You try to ignore it and say it will be ok, but at some point you can't ignore it.  You write congressman and senators and get the weakest of replies.  You could vent in a blog or facebook to no avail.  At some point during this administration I think the boiling point will reach new a height that we have not seen in America since the Civil war if we can't find a way for our government to listen and represent its people.
I often held the belief that the dismantling of the Federal Government and a return to States rights is a key to the answer.  Smaller more localized government can control spending better to match the needs of its people.  The 50/50 split we have can manage their states the to what is good for them.  The representatives are accessible at least more accessible than at a Federal level.  Its helps the avoid the mass one size fits all approach to wasting our money or to hand-outs on a scale we have never seen before.  It certainly won't fix all the problems in all states, but it will be a start toward the right direction.
If you have some other ideas on how people can more involved or we can solve some of the problems before there is violence please comment.

We all agree the economy is in trouble and something needs to be done.  The government should make whatever attempts it can to help the economy get back on track.  The current plan to spend $1 Trillion is not going to work.  What they are doing is paying off their friends.  So don't be an idiot and fall for that.  Really, this isn't even worth debating, the stimulus package is a payoff to liberal friends.  Nothing more.  It will make some people rich, get some people re-elected in the mid-terms, but do nothing for America.  End of story, so read this blog 2 years from now and if that plan goes into place, you see that unemployment is higher and all we have done put more of our children’s future in jeopardy.
The answer on what to do is really quite simple.  The government can do this easily and quickly and it will have an immediate positive impact on the economy and job growth.
I’m always surprised why this is so astonishing to people and how much debate there is over this.  Bush cut taxes and tax receipts went up.  Reagan cut taxes and tax receipts went up.   When taxes are raised, receipts go down.  Simple fact.
I propose a two-part plan that is extremely simple to understand.  First cut the corporate tax in half.  Business will pass the cost savings on to consumers.  Consumers will gain instant buying power.  The same level spending will actually translate into a demand for more goods and services, which will create jobs. More employed people will be able to spend more money.  The liberal always say this is a tax break for the rich, but that is not true.  It is a break for everyone who spends money.  Yes business owners could make more money and some will.  Some will still go out of business.  Being in business is hard and risky and some will fail, but the good ones will grow, higher more people and add to the economy.  This is also better than saving failing business, which are poorly managed like GM.  The government can’t pick winners and losers because they aren’t business savvy people.  They are politicians, not businessmen so reduce the burden on businessman and let them do what they do well.  Grow their businesses and create jobs.
My second action is totally contrary in some ways.  Create a Federal Sales tax and reduce raise the minimum amount people pay income tax on.  The key to sales tax is that everyone pays it.  Illegal immigrants pay it, criminals pay it, rich people pay it, everyone pays it.  If you spend money you pay it.  The dirty secrete about income tax is that rich people pay a lot but still less than you think because they can afford to avoid it.  The middle class married family can’t afford it and they get slapped with the marriage penalty if both spouses work.  By raising the lower limit of where you start paying income tax you relieve the burden on the lower to middle class.  This is offset by the sales tax only if they spend money.  This plan lets people take home more of their money and if they choose to actually try to save some money they can and they have more money to save.  The sales tax encourages savings.  Savings makes money available for investment, which is the heart and sole of the American economy.  As part of this, I would consider shifting payroll taxes so they were not paid on the first $30,000 but went up to $200,000.  The system needs the money, and I only suggest this because it might be acceptable to more parties, than getting rid of those taxes once and for all.  
This plan achieves many goals.  It reduces the cost of goods to consumers, creates jobs, provides confidence to businesses that must take risks, reduces the tax burden on the poor and the hiring of new employees, encourages savings, and could reduce taxes on the middle class.  This could go into effect retroactive starting January 1, 2009.  Businesses would respond immediately.
Tax receipts have gone up when taxes were lowered in the past, but lets say we run a deficit.  What will the deficit be?  More than $1 Trillion?  We are about to throw money away, and then it will be gone.   Once you spend the money, the demand dries up and its gone.  Everyone just gets laid off again.  Nothing sustainable is created.  Creating business, with new jobs, new products that can compete on a global market, is how you move toward a sustainable economy.

I'm taking a break for the daily news, and I wanted to reflect on what real change would look like, what would promote real hope in this country and return it to economic stability. At that end of that analysis and research, the single most important thing that this country and its people need to work towards right now is to repeal the 16^th Amendment. Many people are sure what it is so you can read it here, this site has further links on its history.

The 16^th Amendment makes it legal for income tax to exist from the federal government. This was not a right given in the original Constitution. Income taxes have grown to be everything the originators of this country thought they would be, a source of tyranny, extortion, waste and class warfare.

I wondered what is going on to make this happen now, if anything. What action could we take? There are several things we can do right now and I urge you to find a way to take some action today. Nothing will happen if we just read and write blogs. Please do something today, I’ll put links to sites here and many of them take just a minute.

The main objections I have seen to date are the following:

1. There is no alternative plan
2. We have to pay the bill anyway, so lets fix the system we have (There is no difference)

Both of the objections are totally wrong. Before federal income tax the federal government collected money from the states. My historical point of view is that the states wimped out and didn’t want to be responsible for collecting the money they needed from people and being the bad guy, so they let the federal government be the guy and supported this amendment. History recorded it slightly differently. In any event, they collected the money based on the size of the population in your state. Which is also how it is decided how much representation you have in our government today. That is the basis of our government; we are a Republic, not a Democracy. If we were a democracy than, I would be fine with the federal tax, because I would get to vote. As it is today, I don’t get to vote on a bill, I vote for a representative who votes on bills. So collect the percentage from each state by the percentage of votes they get. Very simple and very fair. Certain states don’t like this of course because they like to pass laws that take money from smaller states and give it to big ones. This is the direct cause of the failure of California to balance its own budget and then to look to the federal government for a bailout. It’s the perception that the Federal Government has money but it’s the state’s money. So they are suggesting taking money from one state to fund another’s inept ability to manage itself.

We do have to pay the bill anyway, but moving the collection of the money to the states does many things to improve the process. This is very different. It moves collection closer to the people. Those people can have influence or more influence at a state level to control how those funds are collected. It also makes States competitive, they have to spend and collect our money wisely or in the end a business or a person can move out of that state. It will mean a dramatic reduction in waste because people will not complete 2 tax returns one for State and one for Federal. It will mean that the federal government can’t dictate state policy through the use of federal funds. For example, it is the right of a state to set its own speed limits. But at one point in time there was a national speed limit of 55MPH because you couldn’t get money for roads if you didn’t comply. This is exactly the behavior the founders of this country wanted to avoid.

So do something:

• Electronically sign a petition here, slightly out of date.
• Join John Linder’s fight – GA congressman; Fair tax is a move in the right direction but doesn’t go far enough.
• Check out the fairtaxblog which has some good articles.
  
• Write/Email your Congressman and Senator
• The Claremont Institute's position - Another source of why
  

Let me know what you do, what we can do, or about any other person or group trying to bring about this same goal.

In order to have a discussion about what from the Left means or from the Center, what is moderate and what is Right we should define the measure we are using to make that judgment. While I don’t think solving that completely right now is the most important item, I’d like to set out a very simple guideline.

If the majority of the party on the Right votes for something and only a minority on the Left do, I would consider that leaning Right. If none to almost none do from the Left, I’d say its far Right. I would apply that same standard to the Left. When both parties vote for something in a majority, I would call the Moderate. That is the basis I use to analyze these issues in general.

So we watch Obama’s actions and by the scale we begin make judgment about from where he ‘rule’. In his first actions, within hours, he ordered to suspend prosecutions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for 120 days. This should be alarming to many who hoped he would rule from the Center. This is clearly not a center position.

This issue received bi-partisan support two times and now he has stopped it.    The Congress and Senate voted this was the best way to deal with this issue, and in a Gallup poll American’s felt this was the best way to deal with the issue. The Gallup question was should the base be closed and 45% said no and 35% said yes. 

By the standard I have outlined, the position in the center is to keep the base open have the prosecutions continue as the best alternative able at this time. But he has chosen to test the water early with far Left action, while he gives rosy speeches no one seems to actually listen too from the center. I think we are going to see more of this and need to watch it closely.

I read a blog post where they were advocating that the North should have let the south go when they could and BTW “we are keeping CA with the north.”  Which I thought was rather funny.  I’m all for the South splitting away as long as Indiana can come.

I was born in NY, my father has recently moved south.  He used to say; you need to get of the NY early so you not last one left there holding the bag.  That was a long time ago but how right he was.  It seems a bit ironic how much the North looks down their nose at the South, yet NY, MA, MI and CA are all out of money.  They want the federal government to bail them out.  As I have stated before the Federal Government has no money, it makes no income, it has no money of its own to give.  They can borrow it, print it, or take it from the States.  So in the case the superior states of the North have worked themselves into bankruptcy and now need a way out.

I think the governors of each of those states should personally go to each state in the south and apologize for their arrogance and beg for the money to bail their state out.  That’s all it is, is begging.  Whole states turned in to beggars.  Not just any beggars either, they still have their pride, still think they are better than everyone else and still fully expect they are entitled to their way of life no matter if it is viable or not.

We cannot as a nation start bailing out states.  We cannot let this happen because if it does, the people will start to think succession as a normal thought, not an after thought.

What happened to the guy who was so articulate and yet he can't speak at all off the teleprompter.  Unscripted he is down right terrible.  I've talked about it before in his first press release, it was terrible.  He continues to be terrible with all the uhms.  Even worse he messes up what he actually saying and drops bad jokes or changes the subject to something that doesn't make sense.  I don't think it would be newsworthy except for how bad the press treated Bush.  Now the press keeps giving Obama a pass.  They don't seem to care that he can't get a sentence out without a script.

Update:
Looks like some others are catching on to the same idea based on this article in the WSJ.  When will the honeymoon end for these people?

Update:
Had to post this, thank you Jennifer for pointing me too this:

I always thought My Man Mitch was a smart guy.  He balanced the budget, and made hard choices.  He continues to push for balanced budgets and continues to move the state forward.  Indiana is fiscally sound.  But the current logic is that because Indiana has money, they need to give it to MI, and NY because they can't manage anything much less their money.

So I have to conclude that Mitch is an Idiot is the lesson.  Spend as much as you can, while you can and if you get in big enough trouble the Federal government will violate the constitution and steal money from the citizens of some states and provide handouts to failed mismanaged states.

Following the logic that if the Auto companies take bail out money the Federal government can tell them how to run their business, with no experience actually running a business.  The federal government must certainly believe it will have the right to tell States that accept money how to run their state.  Haven't they always tried to do this in the past?  Its the great power shift, that the States allowed the Federal government to assume a superior role to them, by accept money for roads and education it has a been a slippery slope to lost independence and full dependence on a totally incompetent organization like the Federal government.

Last, I wonder if anyone reads the Constitution anymore.  All of this activity is totally illegal and we the People are going to have to step up and fight what is right, our rights.

It amazed me that housing construction, or new home permits to build was only down < 12% when I heard that stat.  I did a little looking at the government website with the census for new residential construction and as always the numbers interesting and not as simple as we would like.  The short of it is, October 2008 is down 4.5% from September 2008 and down 38% from a year ago.  Is that enough?!
I was expecting down 80%.  Why are you building new homes if people can't get loans?  If people can't buy houses, if they can't keep the ones they have.  Something doesn't add up.
Housing prices depend on supply and demand.  If we keep build more homes, more supply is created and the value of your current home is changed.  That change depends on the demand.  We have seen demand, it varies by location obviously but its lower.  I've discussed before the numbers of people who are in the home buying demographic.  The numbers are historically small and should remain that way until Gen Y gets there.  During that time the baby boomers will put more homes on the market, increasing supply.
That should add up to a picture, that even without the worst lending practices and reckless greed would be negative.  With those things compounding the problem, we have the current issues you see in the paper.  My point of advice that I don't think has been stated, is lets start doing some better city planning.  We should reduce the number of new homes that are allowed to be built.  We should preserve more of the open space and farm land.  We should reinvest in declining areas so we don't treat home like disposable assets.

Some crazy person suggested that Bush should step down so Obama could start early and she added that what's happening is the fault of Bush, so he should leave now.
Seriously this link is not worth reading but reference sake - here it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/opinion/22collins.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Really, she gets paid to do this, and its more insane than what I write for free.  Its not a real option that Bush would leave office, and she knows that.  Its just to get some people looking a excite her base reader.  Neat.  What I find more interesting is how she is working to attach the current drop in the DOW to Bush.  While that is neat, we have published data that show the Obama win is contributing in a large amount to the future confidence in the market.  Investors simply aren't confident that the bail out strategy thought up by Democrats, opposed by Republicans (except Bush) will work and lead to profits.  While I'm sure they care about jobs, they buy stocks based on the future expectations of profits.  So saying you are going to raise taxes, reduce profits and give the money away doesn't inspire investment, so the money can be given away.

What if you were the person or family that has spent within their means, had a budget, pinched pennies, didn't collect a mountain of debt, drove an old car, and maybe skipped that vacation you always wanted to take because you had priorities.  You listened Dave Ramsey and you live debt free.  Your reward is higher taxes if you have a job and with other around you so irresponsible you could be out of work.  Hopefully the worst thing that happens to you is higher taxes, but let’s look at what is happening.

With more bailouts of these companies our government puts more of the 'responsible' people in jeopardy every day. Bail outs lead to more bailouts as people line up to get their ‘fair’ share of the money that’s being handed out. Basically this amounts to looting the US treasury. While we should be focused on saving people’s jobs these bailouts are still helping rich people maintain their wealth and avoid the risk they took investing in and managing companies. The companies receiving aid should be required to go through bankruptcy and all shareholder equity removed from the companies. This will at least hold the people accountable that took the risk and managed the companies. The executives looted these companies as well. They paid up to 100% of salary in bonuses. Maybe more, but I can’t document those cases. Now they are out of cash, of course they are. So the response is to give them money, tax those people who can pay more. Basically everyone who didn’t take the risk, and was conservative. Punishment for the people that didn’t take the risk in the first place.

Today our I heard on Fox that they government plans to make it so that people will only have to pay a max of 38% of their income toward their mortgage to keep their house. They should have never been approved for a loan over 38% of their gross income in the first place! My father always told me your mortgage shouldn’t be no more than 1 weeks gross pay. I was more conservative and plan for 1 week’s take home pay. This is below 25%.   It would be like the government to say I need to now pay 38% of my income towards housing, to make up the difference. In one way they have because while that won’t be the law, they will get it from me in other ways. I’ll have to pay higher income taxes, everything will cost more because this policy will create inflation, and new ways that I haven’t even thought of yet.

In a free market economy we can’t afford to bail out risk takers. Risks have rewards, and failures. If we remove the downside more people will take risks they can’t afford. If we bail out one company we must bail out more. If we say it will be 700 Billion that’s the least it will cost because people we spend more.    They will learn nothing.

If you think I’m wrong, look at the Automakers who flew private jets to Washington to make their case for needing money. A $20,000 flight instead of a $1,000 first class ticket, we aren’t talking coach here. Meanwhile, I’m still flying coach so I can pay for the reckless theft. Its nothing more than theft and they haven’t learned a thing.