So yesterday morning I was getting ready for work. Part of my normal morning ritual is to turn on the news—before 7 am, it’s the local news, then followed by CBS’s morning news. They are, of course, buzzing all about that moron House member who blogged various naked pictures of himself…this is truly exciting stuff. He has a prego wife, he’s a moron, and he has an idiotic name. Yep, very amusing (can you feel the sarcasm?!?!). Yes, with the fires in Arizona, the flooding along some of the midwestern rivers, the scorching heat in the entire southern United States…well, you get my point. They dedicated a moment blurbage to these things (although the other week when NYC was scorching hot they dedicated almost what seemed like a lifetime—of course, they’re in NYC and doesn’t the closeness for them make it oh so much more important for the rest of us…), meanwhile hyping up this scandal. Ok, let’s blurb up my point of view of the scandal. The man has been married for a year. Yes, a year. Sounds like a marriage made in heaven. Move on. The weather concerns me—I’ve vaguely caught how many people have died. How the electricity has gone off in some areas. Yada, yada, yada. However, here’s my assessment. It’s cyclitic. The weather that is. Eighty years ago-ish, the plain states suffered a huge draught, horribly cold winters (estimated worse than the Blizzard in 78)--terrible heat, followed by insufferable cold. Hmmm, sound familiar…anyone, anyone?!?!?! Hell, has anyone heard hide nor hair of the Japanese nuclear plant? Nope. Not a word. Old news…although the added heat to the atmosphere, that floats over the Pacific to find landfall in North America…ah, right, there I go thinking again. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the unusally high temperatures that we are experiencing in the South. I can’t understand why anyone would continue to consider that newsworthy!! Hell, even the 1st Republican debate only received a noteworthy 2 minutes tops. (And this is CBS!! The most “fair” of the big non-cable televison networks… but, of course, “fair” is relative…) The news seems more like a visually active version of the National Enquirer anymore—which, as usual, is a b*tch for an entirely different blog…
Because this blog isn’t about that. It's about the economy and it’s about the insufferable amount on non-blame being put on Obama for the economy. They spent 10 minutes-ish yesterday morning talking about his visit to Puerto Rico to “win” the hispanic vote. (Yes, his visit to Puerto Rico actually received more coverage than Weiner did.) First off, Puerto Rico is NOT a state!!! Really, seriously, Puerto Rico is a territory and as such, Puerto Ricans have no vote. Would the media be equally excited if he went to our territory of Guam and started kissing babies and shaking hands there? No (ok, maybe, the morons), but they went on and on about how this trip was to help him with the hispanic population. OK, so apparently, the Mexican American population is supposed to be won over with a visit to Puerto Rico?!?! How stupid do they think we are? How stupid does Obummer think the hispanic population of this country is? Second, they pointed out how important the hispanic population is to a re-election run. Yes, absolutely. But how about the economy? Does Obummer seriously think that hispanics are so stupid that they will be so impressed by him shaking a few hands in a territory that they will go completely brain dead as far as his lack of doing jacksh*t about our economy?!?!? Perhaps, he’s going to impress the upper-class, white-protestant liberals who like to pat themselves on the back for the menial dollars that they throw at Goodwill after someone points out how many homeless veterans there are in the United States. These people are often all about what they can do to “help”, but somehow their version of volunteering, all too often, is going to $100 per plate dinner for their favorite politician and writing it off on their taxes. Yes, Obummer, please impress them with your trivial trip to Puerto Rico.
In the meantime, when the news does talk about the economy, they point out it’s getting worse. North Carolina is still at 9%+ unemployment. Almost all of the automotive manufacturing dominated states are still in or damn close to double digit unemployment. Automotive, although on the path to recovery, can only recover as fast as the rest of us are willing to run out and buy a new car. However, people, average Joes like you and me, are not spending money. Our taxes are set to be up to double for many of us at the end of this year. We’re all freaking out that when we complete our tax forms next year we’ll be screwed writing checks to the IRS rather than breaking even or getting back something. We’re all still afraid that the economy isn’t making a turn around and tomorrow could be our last day of work—even those of us that feel we’re ok for now are unwilling to risk that the economy gets even worse and we’ll be in the pooper tomorrow.
Those of us that are middle class (the rich, according to Obummer) are worried that the definition of rich for a family of 4 is now $80K a year. This coming from an idiot that lives in a 50K square foot home--provided to him for free including all of the needed utilities, with a salary of over $400K, who made millions on the people that bought his book. He wants to talk about deficit reduction…I’m all for him giving over his $400K a year. How about anyone in the US Government that has an income of more than $500K of their own go ahead and forfeit their government salary for the year? It’s not unheard of. Several major corporation CEOs took no income as a gesture of good faith to prove that it wasn’t about the almighty dollar. Let’s see Obummer do it. Nancy Pelosi? Hillary Clinton? John Edwards? (Oh wait, his rich wife left his cheating ass…) How do we seriously expect these people to know what it’s like to suffer when they can write all the bounced checks they want, never with a fee, against our own Government’s bank? They want to buy something, and unlike the rest of us, they literally aren’t out of money until they run out of checks!!!! Yet, somehow to the news media, even the less rampantly left media, no one seems to be to blame when the economy comes up. It's all about the economy failing, and gee whiz kiddies, isn’t it so sad that the average minions are suffering? (YES, for clarification, I do consider a family of 4 with $80K a year the minions!!)
My personal favorite from this morning, “Wall Street analysts are ok with the last 6 weeks of downturn, because it wasn’t as bad as their projections said.” Ah yes, because every guy and gal that makes money on stocks going up in price doesn’t mind a loss across the board as long as the loss was less than they thought. Yes, aren’t we all just thrilled that the analysts estimated even bigger losses. Bonds (the safest bet) were estimated to lose 20%...some of those retirees must be so excited that they only lost 15%. Seriously!?!?! With the last 6 weeks of downturn, I want personal tax cuts!!! I want corporate tax cuts!! I want true incentives to get the economy rolling—lower interest rates on car purchases, household purchase incentives, government incentives for investing that aren’t regulated to those people that know how to manipulate the system and have the high amount of money to make it worth their effort like the Rockefellers or Kennedys.
I know, I stated it: TAX CUTS. Individual, corporate, across the damn board. Bet most of my readers are completely unaware that several major corporations have moved their headquarters to Europe because their taxes on corporations are cheaper!!! Cisco Systems literally moved all of their top executives to Europe, bought homes for them to live in, and pay to send them and their families home to visit the United States (Americans, people) because it’s cheaper for them to do that than pay the taxes our government has levied on them. (Yes, really, look it up.) Cisco isn’t the only one. And do the math folks, people, American or not--overseas, build overseas, employ overseas, buy overseas. A measly two weeks out of the year they’re here, and the rest of the time, they are feeding the EU economy. Not helping our economy one bit.
But our greedy government doesn’t give up there. No. Now if a company wants to bring capital (cash) into the United States for building a new plant, adding a new department, hiring new people, capital is now taxable!!!! Corporations pay taxes on money earned just like any average Joe does. They put it in a working fund (I’m not an accountant so I have no idea what they really call it) kinda like any average middle class citizen would put money in a savings account. Now we already paid tax on the money we earned—how would average Joe feel about putting $1000 in his savings account then deciding to buy a new dryer but paying tax again as he took his money out of his savings? Not the sales tax. No, no. At the end of the year, he pays 15% to the federal government. How many of us are ok with that? We all know how 401Ks work. We don’t pay tax on that money, but we pay tax and penalties if we take it out. Would we be ok with paying tax and penalties on money that we already paid the tax on? If not, why in the hell would we be ok with corporations doing it? Especially if it means investment in the American economy, on American soil, and American jobs? (Don’t get me wrong here—I believe in a world economy, but the world economy is as interdependant on the American economy recovery as EU’s recovery.) My point is our laws, more importantly, our tax structure is not helping us recover.
I know, Obummer is so worried about the deficit. My Grams used to say “a time and place for everything”. This is not the time, unfortunately. (If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, you know where the US stands as far as deficit compared to other countries’ deficits.) While I agree our deficit is amazing (in that whole sarcastic, holy sh*t batman, who let it get that out of control?!?!), it’s the spending that is the real problem. Our government still spends thousands of dollars on non-value add crap—there are still government watchdog organizations that can show them spending $10K on something average Joe could buy for $500. They lost, LOST, $6.8 BILLION in the Iraq Recovery Fund--LOST!!! Money went over there and we have no idea where it went, but we know it didn't go to the recovery. Hmm, what if we had applied that to our deficit. But even that only received a 30 second blurb on the news!!! The bottom line is no matter what higher taxes aren't the answer. Hell just the fear of higher taxes is keeping all of us from spending any money at all. The fear factor alone is stagnating our economy. No one wants to spend in case they lose their jobs. No one wants to spend if they might be paying higher taxes. No company wants to pour in capital or hire if they might be hit with higher taxes. Here's a clue Obummer: If no one is working, no amount of taxes is going to help the deficit. Can’t squeeze the lemon dry if the lemon doesn’t have any juice.
President Obama has an agenda—perhaps, with the best intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Tunnel vision about his view of the new world order, tunnel vision about the deficit in a time that needs tax cuts and spending cuts to be effective, tunnel vision about healthcare reforms that most of us that had good insurance are still scoffing at what we lost, tunnel vision about the environment which he can’t even get to (thank God!!), tunnel vision about what Americans and the United States of America are, represent and should be. Tunnel vision is a limit. There’s no left, no right, no other direction but forward. And unfortunately, Obummer is missing that there’s no way to get to the end of the tunnel in this economy. He doesn’t have the money to reform healthcare…he did it anyway. He has a vision and he wants someone else to figure out how to get there (his budget actually gives numbers while not actually deciding how to get to those numbers). All fine and good. But, there’s a hell of a lot more going on than those great ideas in his head.
Frankly, he reminds me of Jimmy Carter—except Jimmy Carter knew he couldn’t get his vision to fruitition. (For those of you that don’t remember, Jimmy Carter wanted farm subsidies and serious aid to American farmers. During his Presidency, President Carter kept pushing it, but to no avail. Ironically, the farm subsidies and aid did come—during President Reagan’s administration.) President Carter was side-swiped by the American hostages in Iran. His Presidency was marred by the fact that he had plenty of vision and no idea how to get there—very similar to President Obama. The same failing economy, horribly high gas prices, rising prices on just about everything, high unemployment, and issues that never seemed to end with the Middle East. Ironically, there was only one hope in that situation: a President that not only had a vision, but a plan to get there. President Reagan was different in that his only ideal, his only vision: The Greatest Nation in the World—Proud to be American. The plan to get there—“carry a big stick” and burying the Iron Curtain, threaten Iran if they didn’t return our people, hire an economic think-tank to figure out how to save the economy. He had a plan, he wasn't hell bent that it had to be "his" plan, and the Great Communicator could sell it. President Obama is very likely to be destined to be like President Carter. A lot of talk, a LOT of ideas—some very good, and no plan to make anything come to frutition. Perhaps like President Carter, he will be a far better politician and man after office than during--just wonder what kinda spin CBS news will put on it…
Politicians just really don’t get it. How can most of them? They enter the political scene as soon as they can out of college. They start being a cog in the wheel immediately—dependant on how much money they can raise, if their political allies get into office, et cetera. If they are elected, well, they are distanced that much further from the rest of us—better health care than any American (working or not), a bank that pays all the bounced checks with no penalties (really, I’m just so flabbergasted by this I have to beat the dead horse), paychecks for the rest of their lives, guaranteed retirements…ah, the list goes on and on and on and on…Really why worry that the rest of us are on edge about losing our jobs? They’ve got a job, a paycheck, oh and if we get fed up and vote them out of office, they’ve got other politicians that they can work for. Amazing. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a HUGE fan of our political system. Not a huge fan of politicians. They voted in their own pork bellies (decades ago,so really most of them are dead that actually put the initial pork bellies in), but the idiots in office now aren’t clamouring to get rid of those pork bellies….and actually, every so often, have the audacity to add a new pork belly for themselves. Obummer.
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