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Posts Tagged ‘Economic Reform’

Hope and Change – What do YOU think?

January 2, 2014 2 comments

It’s 2014! How about that “Hope And Change” from Obama and his wonderful team? How is the Affordable Care Act treating you?

Just how amazing is this new law? Forbes is saying that individual premium rates will increase by almost 100%. 

In Tennessee the rates appear to be going up even more than that.

In Alabama many residents are receiving notices that their insurance premiums will soon double.

Here’s a descriptive excerpt about how a single mother of 4 is being affected in the Alabama story:

Stay-at-home mother of four, Courtney Long, was shocked when she received a notice from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama stating that come January her family’s individual health insurance policy premium would increase from $352 per month to $796.

“It’s devastating. I started crying,” said Long. “I mean, we have worked so hard to get out of credit card debt, get ahead on the car loan, transfer our mortgage to a 15 from a 30 year mortgage… and for what?”

Long’s story is not unique. Many have received this same letter – alerting them their premiums were set to double (anywhere from $290/mo-$599/mo up to $603/mo-$1060/mo). That’s quite a jump! So, the “Affordable Care Act” is affordable for whom?

I am interested in hearing from people both for and against the Affordable Care Act.

Charles Krauthammer says that Obamacare is a massive transfer of wealth from the Young to the Old in our nation. Here’s why.

Let me know — how is the Affordable Care Act affecting you?

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Categories: Economics, Politics Tags: , , , ,

Obama’s Economy Not Working

July 16, 2010 7 comments

It’s the ECONOMY, Stupid!

Barack Obama’s White House has decided to back a Keynesian economic policy of “let’s get big government dollars to spend our way out of this economic crisis.”

Is it working? Absolutely Not.

Has Obama effectively lined his supporter’s pocket’s in the process? Absolutely.

When US Automaker General Motors was in financial trouble, the US Government effectively took GM over. As the US Gov’t reworked the company, it ditched the banks and creditors of GM, and transferred huge amounts of the “New GM Ownership” to Unions and other Obama supporters. It’s almost like when a new King started in England, and he decided to take enormous tracts of land from people he didn’t like, and bequeath enormous wealth to his new supporters. Basically it’s robbery, but legalized!

In the Federal Reserve minutes from their meeting last month, there were some very important words hidden near the back, in the small print: The Fed doesn’t think that the US Economy will recover for 5 to 6 years.

In other words, far from winding down the Great Recession and talking about the new Economic Gains that Obama has been touting this week, this shows that in the global economic crisis, the US is now becoming the problem.

The new Fed Reserve minutes show a complete change in policy, demonstrating how fast the recovery has lost steam. International Monetary Research says that the US authorities have “botched the policy response.” Oh really?

  • New home sales at 300,000 in May, lowest since records began in 1963
  • Outbound exports from Long Beach (major SoCal shipping port) dropped from 139,000 in May to 116,000 in June.
  • Philadelphia’s new manufacturing orders index plunged to -4.3 in early July

So what will Barack Obama and his team of Economic Advisers do? According to Gabriel Stein of Lombard Street Research, they are “throwing in the towel.” Washington wants to start another round of government spending again — raising the debt level from $2.4 trillion, to a whopping $5 trillion.

Sound HOPEful and CHANGEful to you? Me either.

We need to get government deficit spending to stop before the dollar becomes totally worthless. Out of all the dollars ever created in the 234 years of USA’s history, over half has been created in the last 3 years.

We need to get the US Government out of the business of spending money on stimulus programs and bailouts. We have spent billions of dollars, and it hasn’t brought the economy out of the recession. Now we want to do it again?

The US Government needs to stop the bleeding. Reduce entitlement payments immediately. Reduce the size of the behemoth that has become our Federal Government, creating Czars of This and Czars of That, each with mandatory staff and spending budgets. We need to get out of the business of saving failing banks and businesses. Let the AIG’s of the world fail. Stop the bailout spending spree. And reduce the US Federal Income Tax.

The more money is in the hands of the individual consumers, the better. What, we won’t be able to afford all of the government programs? It’s okay. The individual cities and communities will pick up the slack, feeding the poor, helping them back onto their feet.

It’s what Americans do.

Categories: Economics, Politics Tags: , , , ,

What the Ruling Class is doing with your money

May 6, 2010 13 comments

One evidence of a Ruling Class taking over a country is when the rulers go against the wishes of the people who have elected them.

Roughly 90% of Americans rejected the $700,000,000,000.00 ($700B) TARP bailout plan, but the Ruling Class pushed it through anyway.

We rejected the $40B bailout of AIG and trading partner Goldman Sachs – which subsequently grew to a $180B bailout – but the Ruling Class hid what they were doing and illegally used taxpayer monies to perform the bailout anyway. (The guy in charge of this one? Current Treasury Secretary Geithner. Nice.)

We the people also rejected a government take over of GM and Chrysler, but the Ruling Class went ahead and used billions of our dollars to do it anyway, paying preferred creditors pennies on the dollar, and transferred huge proportions of the newly formed companies into the hands of the United Auto Workers union. Yet another Chicago-style cronyism move by the current administration.

If this isn’t going against the will of the people, I don’t know what is. This is government taking power into its own hands and doing what it wants against the will of the people, making huge transfers of wealth and often – like Geithner – feathering his own bed in the process. I don’t know what you call this type of government, but it is not a democratic republic.

Can the US Government actually run a program without bankrupting it?

  • Social Security ($17,500,000,000,000.00 underfunded; $17.5 trillion);
  • Medicare Part A ($36,700,000,000,000.00 underfunded; $36.7 trillion);
  • Medicare Part B ($37,000,000,000,000.00 underfunded; $37 trillion);
  • Medicare Part D ($15,600,000,000,000 underfunded; $15.6 trillion),
  • Government and military pensions ($2,000,000,000,000 underfunded; $2 trillion)

And we are going to let this same Government run Healthcare? Even the Office of Management and Budget is reporting that the United States government will experience massive, non-stop deficits for the next 70 (SEVENTY) years, requiring the issuance of tens of trillions of dollars of additional debt. The OMB does not project even one year of surplus during the entire seventy year budget period. Link HERE. (And don’t even get me started that these budget numbers are already including $646 Billion in tax revenues from 2012 to 2019 from Cap & Trade, which hasn’t even been passed yet!) Has your elected official talked to you about that? You don’t have to answer.

What is our Government’s response? Print more dollars. The US government has announced that during the fiscal years from 2010 through 2019, it will create an additional $9,000,000,000,000.00 ($9 trillion) in deficits, an amount that is almost certain to be understated by trillions given the country’s current economic trajectory. The government assumes that this vast additional deficit will be funded by others, such as the Chinese, as it is a statistical fact that the United States will be incapable of funding it. Link HERE.

What does this mean to you and me? That our wealth (if we have any) is being destroyed. Create enough dollars and they won’t be worth anything. It’s a simple truth: too much of something makes it worthless. The more our government creates money to cover their RECORD SPENDING, the less valuable your salary is, the less valuable your savings are, etc. Our government is bankrupting us through this spending policy. I know we sometimes think the United States is a blessed country and more immune to these problems than other nations, but let’s not be naive enough to think that somehow supply and demand doesn’t apply here! And that the value of our dollars won’t be adversely affected by the Government printing trillions and trillions more of them!

What can we do? Make a plan to protect yourself and your family. Don’t hold your assets only in dollars. Diversify into other things (land, gold, etc.) Even the Wall Street Journal is saying it’s a good idea to stockpile food. Link HERE.

And let’s get these big spenders out of Washington. I’m not talking Democrats vs. Republicans. Vote people into the House of Representatives that will work to put an end to this spending. The House is the easiest access we have to the Federal Machine. Find people you can support that will work to stop this spending madness. It won’t be easy to stand up to the current machine that is playing party politics as hard as anyone has in recent memory, but we might as well try while our dollars are still worth something.

Honestly, though, I’m not sure what kind of difference we can make at the Federal level until there is a massive reset (huge depression, market collapse, currency devaluation or failure, etc.) but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We can, however, make a difference at the local level. When our Federal government’s spending policies finally make it impossible to be the “be-all, end-all” throughout America — which it never should be trying to do — we will still need to make life work where we live. Getting involved at the local level will make a huge difference in how our communities adapt and move forward.

What are your thoughts? What are other ways we can prepare for the inevitable problems facing the dollar due to government monetary policy?

Categories: Economics, Politics Tags: , , , , ,

Scenario for the President

March 29, 2010 2 comments
“QUICK!  Mr. President, bad policies for the past 20 years have dug us into a hole….and the brightest minds we have tell us we’re within 48 hours of the financial system freezing.  Make a decision:
1) Inject liquidity AS A LOAN to the system (Like we did for S&L crisis which turned a profit for the US Gov’t.  This was how the TARP plan was sold to the Administration – but it has clearly been hijacked since by Congress, Geithner, others.).
…or….
2)  Stand there and we’ll take a guess about just how far the market can crash.  But we’re being told it is as bad/worse than 1929.
QUICK…”

If you are standing on principles, the speed of the decision doesn’t matter as much.

I think the scenario sort-of makes one point: Government gets involved with “A” in mind (in this case the S&L loans or Financial Bailout.) First blush is positive. But as with most if not all government involvement, it gets hijacked, and turned into something not intended. Go back (choose the years) and we will see the examples. Income tax; FDR’s programs; Welfare; The Great Society programs; etc. etc. I don’t know them all.

My opinion? Given the above scenario, the President should choose 2, and let Lehman Brothers collapse. And he should have pressured the Fed to not get involved in helping bail them out. (Or maybe he didn’t know cuz it was secretive, but he could have found out, and fired the guy for doing it.) Also, allowing the Fed to facilitate JP Morgan Chase’s purchase of Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. Yes these banks should have failed. There’s no way that a banking system performing the kinds of stunts that they have been performing should have been bailed out with taxpayers money. You think laissez faire is adversely affected by uncertainty (absence of full information)? Absolutely it is. What about Keynesianism and other interventionist policies? Are they immune to the ails of uncertainty? Absolutely not. And the market forces will correct for any uncertainty a LOT quicker than a poor government policy that has become LAW and may take generations to overcome. We’re still paying for the ones from 60-70 years ago. In fact, the government injects it’s own uncertainty into the system, but more on that below.

We appear to have changed topics from Bush vs. the Constitution, and maybe for good reason after listening to Paul, Jeff and Deon’s points. One of the best conservative minds — possibly ever — was Edmund Burke. I bring him into the Constitution discussion because he advocated gradual change, but at the same time not destroying the pillars of freedom with our experimental Acts. I’m equating his mentioning of Experimental Acts of his time to the Patriot Acts of our time. Yes we have to change with the times as Burke says (e.g. we have to deal with terrorists), but according to him, it’s not worth destroying the pillars of liberty that we have built our society on in order to accomplish that change. If we do so, we are destroying the foundation upon which our nation is built.

In terms of the banking issues, absolutely let Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns fail. Don’t let the Fed get involved at all. The banks made bad business decisions. There is tons of evidence of corruption. Why inject loans into that? What is the economic principle that that decision is based on? In my opinion the decision was based on fear. Once again, we have a government trying — through their macro economic policies — to right the ship. “We can fix it. We can control the market forces.” And once again, the evidence is that they can’t. It might have stabilized some things for the time being, but anyone watching KNOWS with their gut that this glut of spending is going to have to be paid for at some point, and it’s going to be worse when it’s time to pay the piper. The Fear Move didn’t do anything but delay a market correction. Check out Karl Denninger if you’d like to read more.

AND, there are even some studies, like this one by the Stanford economist John Taylor, which purports to show (pdf) that the credit markets actually did not react all that badly to Lehman going under and that the crisis was really the product of market uncertainty about the effects of government action. So, the “market” reacted not all that badly to a market force of letting a bank go under, but the real market crisis started after the government decided to get involved to try to “control” the natural market forces? Add to this the fact that the bond market says it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffet than to Barak Obama, and I think we see what Keynesian fiscal policies bring to the table in terms of uncertainty.

See, now this makes sense to me.

Categories: Economics, Literature, Politics Tags: , , , , , ,

My 2012 Presidential Campaign Speech

March 5, 2010 16 comments

Campaign Slogan: Restoring our Country’s Greatness

You know, there was a time, not very long ago, that “Made in America” meant something special.  You would see it on labels of clothing; on the handles of tools; and on spare parts and toys you purchased at many different types of stores. It made us feel proud: proud to be part of this great nation; proud of the work that went into building the greatest nation on earth; proud of our heritage; hopeful for the possibilities of our future. But you don’t see the “Made in America” slogan these days as much….

We’ve shipped many of our jobs beyond our borders. We are increasingly dependent on other nations for our food supply. We have become massively in debt as we have adopted policies that mirror the social democracies of Europe with their massive entitlement payouts. Those countries are nearly bankrupt – is it any wonder that we are too?

And there is a growing feeling of negative anticipation in our nation. I’ve heard people say they are ‘hunkering down’, and ‘waiting for the end to come’. People just seem to sense that we cannot continue in this manner. But when will it change?

The time is Now. It is time for Restoring our Country’s Greatness. America has never shrunk from a challenge, and we will not do so this time. My plan, as outlined in my 6-point Party Platform, will Restore our Country’s Greatness. The first plan of attack is to get our economy turned around, and the American people working again. We must make it easier for small businesses to prosper in America. We also have plans to bring corporate manufacturing jobs back to America, but that will take some time. I strongly believe that our small businesses will lead us out of this economic recession.

The American people are the most ingenious, inventive, and hardworking people on the planet. I believe that federal government bureaucracies have grown to unduly tax and interfere with our economic progress.

For example, in 2010 the Obama administration passed legislation aimed at protecting us from dangerous goods from China. This is a commendable idea. But in the legislation that passed, crippling bureaucratic hurdles have been placed in the way of American businesses. Now, small business that produce and ship goods around our country will need to spend thousands of dollars to get each of their products tested and “certified” to sell by yet another new governmental department. This will harm many small American companies, the Mom & Pop stores barely scraping by. It will cripple their bottom lines, and cause many more to shut their doors completely. And it continues to grow the size of our ever-increasing government, adding more expenditures that we cannot afford.

I will work to help small businesses, not hinder. We will simplify the tax code, and reduce bureaucracy and regulation for the small business owners of America. We will get the government out of their way, and allow them the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. We will encourage investment in new technologies, US factories, and minimize government hurdles and costs for businesses of all sizes. We will also do away with farm subsidies to get America’s farmers working their farms again, bringing food production home where it belongs. For large corporations, corporate tax breaks for companies that manufacture in the United States, keeping our economic advantages on our own soil.

…And we need to keep our soil safe. When our country is safe and well protected, the American citizens feel safe and happy about our security. Our military forces have struggles for years to provide an opportunity for Iraq and Afghanistan to make better governments for themselves. After so many years, it is time to allow them to stand on their own. We have shown them the way. At this time of great worldwide economic struggle, the US military personnel need to be home with their families. Our own borders need to be better protected. We will always protect the United States from attacks, both foreign and domestic, but we need to get out of the business of nation building and the idealism of creating our “brand” of government around the world.

As we focus internally, let’s take a look at our country’s education system. The education of our current and rising generations is the key to our future. Therefore, I propose to gradually wean the Federal Government from managing the education process in America. This will be a big change for us, but it is necessary. The American people should be in charge of their own education at the family, community, and State levels. By removing federal monies and requirements, we will clear the path for education to become competitive, and for states to regulate education within their own borders. We will work with party members at the state and local levels to weaken union strangleholds in the education arena that are destroying the education process for millions of young Americans, provide tax credits to leave failing schools, and offer merit pay and other performance-based incentives to ensure our teachers and students are the best they can be.

And let me make this pledge to you this evening: I will work to create real reform and change in America’s government. By spending more money than we have as a country, the current administration has created a debt burden for future generations that will take many years to overcome. This is not fair for our future generations, and it is common sense that it cannot go on forever. Spending more than you have doesn’t work in your homes, and it does not work for our country. We will work for a balanced budget, eliminate deficit spending, and introduce greater oversight and transparency on the workings of the Federal Reserve System and other banking institutions. Clear steps will be taken to “follow the money” and measures will be put in place to put an end to reckless financial practices, like credit default swaps, as well as create a payback schedule for all bailout monies received by our financial institutions. We cannot continue to “print money” at record levels, like our current administration, and not expect to reap the consequences of high inflation and a valueless dollar.

Too much money gets spent and too many laws are created outside of the legislative process. Our government cannot continue to allow the executive branch to wield the power of the Executive Order to create binding laws outside of our checks-and-balances system. If given the chance I promise I will correct these and other corrupt practices currently taking place in Washington. I promise to reduce our spending year upon year until we can see an end to the uncontrollable deficits.
(pause…)

Why are we in this prolonged recession after some of the best growth decades our nation has ever seen? Some of the biggest reasons are right here in Washington: It’s called Politics as Usual. Bloated government. Spend, spend, spend. Miles of bureaucracies thwarting American business. You were promised Hope & Change. But let me ask: Is this the Hope & Change you were looking for? I don’t think so.

THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA has the HIGHEST levels of RESERVE ENERGY RESOURCES of any country in the world.* Yet we struggle with rising energy costs and energy dependence on countries with unstable leadership and that often have anti-American positions. This situation can be rectified by developing environmentally safe methods to extract the natural resources within our own country. We will work to encourage and provide incentives for private companies to help the USA attain energy independence, through the extraction of existing American oil reserves, as well as developing new sources of clean, renewable energy. These resources alone “represent tens of trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of American jobs.”*

If given the chance, my fellow Americans, we can make this dream a reality. If given the chance, you and I together will Restore our Country’s Greatness.

Thank you, and God Bless America.

Eric Merten
President 2012

*Congressional Research Report 2009    http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233

Categories: Economics, Politics Tags: , , , , ,

I’m running for President of the United States of America

March 4, 2010 Leave a comment

OK, play along with me here…

It is April of 2012.  The last four years have been difficult for our country.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued with no end in sight. Worse yet, the Obama administration has run huge budget deficits in the last three years that has increased the U.S. debt by almost 6 trillion dollars. In addition, the economy continues to stagnate, unemployment is still over 10% and many Americans have ceased looking for work.  Obama’s healthcare package was passed in a dramatically scaled back version in 2010.  And, while the Cap and Trade bill was stopped, many of its provisions have been instituted though executive mandates, and departmental directives.

On the other side of the aisle, Republicans have been on a course of self-destruction.  In 2008, Romney, Giuliani, and McCain each spent record amounts trying to win the Republican nomination. Again in 2011 increased spending has been accompanied by increasingly negative campaigns.  The battles of the different factions of the Republican Party have been so intense that many voters have become apathetic, if not down right hostile to politics in general.  Early polling data in 2012 shows than none of the Republican candidates would beat Obama in the general election. The Republican Party’s “big tent strategy” (seeking for moderate swing voters) appears to be a total failure.  NBC Nightly News may have summed it up best saying, “America has not seen such a lack of political leadership since the 1880s. The candidates are not only bankrupt financially, but are destitute when it comes to ideas.”

I am a delegate to the Republican Party National Convention in 2012.  Last night the president of the RNC delivered a stirring address to all presidential candidates as well as the delegates to the national convention via the Internet. He called for all candidates and delegates to put previous loyalties aside and search for a single candidate that will unify both the party and the nation.  In response, all three top runners (Romney, Giuliani, and Palin) have offered to withdraw their names as candidates if the RNC can find a better candidate in the next 2 weeks. Due to my leadership and support of the RNC President, he has said that if I can get create some of my own ground swell (grass-roots support), he will ensure that I will be part of the select group that gets to address the convention in the coming weeks.

So stay tuned. You just might be witnessing the discovery of the next JFK. Or better. I will be sharing my platform of ideas describing the necessary changes I believe we need in America on Friday, March 5th.

Will I win? Do I stand a chance? Check back and see as I post how the convention unfolds and the voting results over the coming days.

If you have any suggestions for what changes you would like to see, you’d better get them in. Just leave a comment…one of the RNC aides will get to it.

Categories: Politics Tags: , , , ,