March 2009

Dealing with A deficit

To most common sense people the way you deal with a deficit in your income is to first quit spending. Especially quit spending money you don’t have. You quit doing things that cost money like going out to eat at expensive (or any) restaurants, going to movies and taking trips you don’t need to take.

Second you start replacing necessary things with less expensive item, like eating hamburger instead of steak. You buy regular foods instead of the higher price organics. You use coupons to purchase necessities like toilet paper, food staples, etc.

Third you start unloading things. You have a yard sale. You put your third car up for sale. You put your gas guzzler on sale. You even put your fishing boat up for sale when you really get desperate.

This is common sense stuff you can do to make it through difficult times. You do whatever it takes to economize and save money until good times return.

Our government does not have this ability. The thing they need the most and have yet to create is a Senate and House Committee of Common Sense. The Committee of Common Sense would see the obvious things that government should and can do.

The Committee of Common Sense would find ways to eliminate spending, like buying nothing new for any non essential government department. Of course every department in the government thinks they are non-essential. Now there are some departments that we know are really essential, like the FBI, Flight Controllers and so on. But there are many that are completely non-essential. The Committee of Common Sense could propose shutting down all suspected non-essential departments for one month. The department that receives the most complaints from citizens (not employees calling from home) for not being open gets to stay open the next month. The bottom 25% of the departments receiving little or no complaints at all will be closed. If more than 25% receive no complaints for being close then they all will be closed and we will save approximately $55 billion dollars a year in salaries alone.

The Committee of Common Sense would see all those empty buildings not being used by the closed non-essential departments and would put them up for sale immediately. All the money from these sales would go back into the Social Security fund which was robbed by the non-common sense arm of the government, thus giving back to the people the money they were told would be going into a trust fund which in fact could not be trusted because it was run by the government.

Now The Committee of Common Sense could really begin to whittle down the rest of government waste. Announce a 5% across the board personnel cuts in every department. This will be to eliminate any deadwood and lazy individuals that do not produce any real work. As soon as that 5% is gone announce that there will be another 5% cut, of anyone who spend too much time talking, sloughing off, doing makeup (male or female) or any other non-productive activity. This is to strike the fear of God into them which the rest of us experience every time there is a down turn in the economy. Third The Committee of Common Sense should announce another cut will be coming soon. Now the remaining 90% of the federal workforce should be energized and adequately productive to do the work that the laid off 10% wasn’t doing anyway. This will save another $16 billion a year.

The Committee of Common Sense should now equalize the benefits and retirement programs of the government with the rest of the working force. Much of the excuse for having such benefits is that it is the only way to get employee to work for lower pay than what the public sector is receiving. I agree to some extent but for the holidays, extra vacation days, above reasonable retirement and job security that is not even comparable, only the laziest of people are drawn to government jobs not the higher quality workers who actually produce something of value.

Once when trying to hire a Veteran Administration nurse for a salary substantially more than what she was making with the VA, the private practice administrator begin to list all the responsibilities that went along with the increased salary. The nurse kinda paled thinking of all that work she would have to do in comparison to her same titled job at the VA, and then she slowly got up from the interviewer’s desk and said “I think I will stay where I am” and left. A job in the real world was too much for her.

A friend of mine took a government job after being laid off from a major corporation.  She was a very industrious person who was used to working hard for a full eight hours a day. After six months on the job she couldn't stand it anymore. The laziness, the people who didn't care about the quality of thier work or have any sense of urgency about it was driving her crazy. These are the ones who want the security, the extr holidays and benefits of a government job.

My own experience of dealing with government employees with the Social Security Administration, the Immigration Department (former name), the beloved IRS and of course The Transportation and Security Administration has proven that it is not drawing the highest qualified people to these job but the minimally qualified people who need the job security because they could not maintain a job anywhere in the public sector.

Enough of that subject. The Committee of Common Sense should recommend that we require taxes only for the necessities of the federal government. This would eliminate programs that the federal government would not have if they actually adhered to the Constitution. Eliminate the Department of Education. That is a local issue. Nowhere in the Constitution do I read that education is the responsibility of the Federal Government. It is therefore the responsibility of each individual State. If the state you’re in doesn’t do a good job you are free to go elsewhere.

When education is fully controlled by the Federal Government only people with a socialist mentality want to be in charge. They will try to dictate what will be taught in our schools (socialism) and thus destroy our current Constitutional, Free Enterprise system.

No more money to the Arts. There are enough evil rich (including liberals) out there to support all the arts needed if the artist is good enough to deserve it. It works in the music industry, books, TV and theaters. It should work for the rest of the artist too.

No more money to PBS TV or radio. They have enough marathon care-athons and gimme-athons to raise all the money they need. There are a lot of independent TV and radio stations that have to raise money and do quite well without government support.

The Committee of Common Sense should be able to understand that the economy is a living, growing entity. It is not a stagnant fix sum of money. Otherwise we would still be dealing with money limits from the Early 1900’s. The economy has grown, expanded and created all the new wealth needed to support all the people wanting to work and make something of their lives and for the lives of others. Set a goal to get the economy growing and reach its maximum growth.

The Committee of Common Sense should also see that like other countries (i.e. Ireland) if you lower your business tax rate to the single digits that economic growth will explode. Even with lower single digit tax rates the tax revenues have increased because more money is flowing through the system and the speed of money (the number of times money exchanges hands for goods and services) increases. Therefore all the money the government needs is generated off the ever increasing economy.

The United States could also grow if we reduced our tax rate to single digits or converted to the FairTax system of a sales tax which would remove all business taxes and put the burden on a retail sales tax, which is fair to everyone. I would expect our economy to grow enough to pay off this horrendous debt our current gum brained leaders are putting upon us. The only real solution to our current problem is not government spending but to create a positive atmosphere of open markets where growth is encouraged to the maximum. Without great growth and speedy growth in the economy we will never overcome this debt and it will destroy us. The United States cannot exist under such a burden.

Socialist should not qualify for public office

The Committee of Common Sense should also recognize that socialism is not the way to go. It is opposed to free markets, free speech and most of our Constitution. Many of the current liberal leaders have bought the pie in the sky version of Marxism that if government just takes control and unifies everything then we will have this wonderful utopia where everyone is equal and everyone has everything equal. It is fantasy. It only works on Startrek. It is the dream of 1960 dope smokers. It is the dream of college students who have no experience in the real world who sit around study halls thinking of what the perfect world should be. In the unreal world of their non-experience Marxism sounds like a perfect solution. In our case Obama hasn’t graduated from his freshman college fantasies. Many professors on campuses all over the US push Marxism as the way to shape the world. Those professors were the one sitting around in 1960 and ....... well you know.

In reality Marxism is a death wave. To make it work everyone must be on board. Everyone must buy into the system. To them it is so important to start teaching our children as young as possible (i.e. Bill Ayers, the hero of education) so they will be taught how to grow into the socialist system. That is what we are seeing now in today’s schools. It’s not about true education, it all about thinking, the way they want your children to think so their ideas of socialist fantasy will work. That is why they cannot allow conservative thought on school campuses. They have found how to control the main stream media and now they will find a way to quiet the opposition media. Free speech will be eliminated eventually unless we resist the socialist onslaught to our system of government.

The down to earth problem is not everyone will buy into their dream world. Not everyone is willing to give up their freedom and individualism, the kind of individualism that built great factories, the individualism that started companies with huge success and provided jobs for thousands upon thousands of people.

Then finally the worst of all is religion. Essentially Marxism is godless and requires man to worship man. We will be required to worship the government of man. The government shall be our god. It is no different than when man builds a statue of stone and then tells us to give it our homage. We should fall before this stone statue and recognize it as supreme. It will supply all our needs. It will tell us what we can and cannot do. It will tell us what is right and what is wrong. But instead of a statue it is stone buildings, bricks and mortar, steel and glass. The people contained with these buildings of worship are supposed to contain all the wisdom and knowledge we need. They will usher in the new age (is it Aquarius?), our utopia. What do Marxist do when people don't buy in to their ideas?  Oh yes, what about those pesky Christians and the conservative thinkers and those people who believe in freedom and choice, what about those? To truly bring about this wonderful new world they will be required to conform. In Russia and in China they also had to deal with this problem. The answer was simple to them, it was reconditioning camps to begin with and later, elimination. Communism/Socialism has killed over 100 million people since 1921. It may not be over yet. Communism is simply socialism with enforcement, socialism with an army. The easiest way to eliminate opposition and stay in power is to kill (eliminate) the ones who resist. That is the way it has always been and that is what will happen if we continue to allow this current regime to reign.

Now it is no different than when a super religious person begins to use government to force his religious beliefs on other. Marxism is a fantasy and in practice it is a religion for atheists and other. Its teachings should be treated as a religion and not be allowed to be incorporated in any part of our government or shape policy. If we make it though this period of literal enemy control of our government maybe we can make that change.

Therefore The Committee of Common Sense should ban anyone who supports and believes in socialism or communism from serving in office because you cannot swear an oath to the Constitution on one hand and the support a Marxist system that is directly in contradiction with it on the other. Yes we should have exchanges of free ideas in the United States. Yes we should have freedom of speech, but when a person begins to act out those ideas and wants to hold a position of power in our federal government to try to effect policy changes, that should be a no-no. If I acted out a plan to overthrow our constitutional government I would be charged with treason. I would be tried and executed. It is no different if you elected to an office. If your plan is to radically change and overthrow our form of government then you are a traitor and should be tried for it. Clear and simple.

The Downward step

In the immediate crisis’ we are now facing with the bailouts, the recession (that the media help to create), mortgage crisis, oil crisis (depending on the day of the month) and lending crisis, there is one overhanging thought that really bothers me. The democrats were basically responsible for this entire mess. They created the Community Reinvestment Act. They supported the lowering of standards to get loans for people who couldn’t afford loans and weren’t qualified. They resisted efforts by Bush and McCain in 2002, 2005 to increase regulations over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When it all came crashing down they blamed too little regulation (when we wanted more), they blamed capitalism (when it was government intervention) and they blamed conservatives (with the media’s help to sell the idea) for the debacle they created. Our President says only government can save us now. But government was the original problem and is still the problem not the solution.

Now that Obama has taken over and with a sympathetic congress I fear the worst could happen. What if this debacle is what they wanted? For what they plan to do is logically the wrong thing to do, but they are going to it anyway, you have to ask why? Why continue doing things that only add to the problem (like going into more and more debt, destroying health care, etc.) unless you have another plan. It would seem to me that the lefties want this country to fail, why?

If our country went into such a terrible financial collapse under trillions and trillions of dollars of debt, with inflation and super unemployment to boot, it would create the worst crisis the country ever faced. (Karl Marx taught that socialist instigators should use crisis to effect change "Create a crisis if you have to" sound familiar?) Then our wonderful messiah president could step forward and declare that we are in a state of emergency, that the government needs control over every phase of the economy, small businesses, big businesses, banks, ballparks and every hot dog stands. Things will be so bad that we need to suspend the Constitution and declare a state of martial law to get things under control. The left wing Democrats in congress will cheer and 53% of voters, people who got stimulus checks but didn’t pay taxes will support it and we will no longer be America. In one sweeping move Reid and Polisi would create an emergency bill to supersede the Constitution and that would be it. Overnight we would become the Nationalist States of America run by the Supreme B.H. Obama.

This is not to far from how Hitler got into power. With Germany in economic disaster the poor, the unemployed, the dishearten workers had no problem voting him to be the supreme ruler over Germany and we know the rest.

I could see in less than two years, before the next elections, before we could have a chance to effect a change, we could have the Grand Supreme Obama, leader of the Nationalist States of America. Savior of the new world.