Opinions

So when did the government first get the idea that they should provide subsidies to private enterprise? Turns out the answer is in 1847 when Congress was convinced by a lobbiest that the US must leap-frog the UK in the steamship business. Here's how it worked.

Edward K. Collins went to Congress and asked for $385k to operate a steamship company that would compete with Britain. Congress had surplusses but wasn't sure it had a precedent for granting the funds. It decided that the example of government support for the US mail was good enough and handed over the dough. It should be noted that as an afterthought, Collins was also granted $3 million to build the four ships he needed to actually have a business in the first place.

The next year, Collins got $400k to operate the business because he said that operating costs were more than he expected and apparently the business wasn't actually making enough money to support itself. Congress agreed. The next year, he got $500k and the year after that, he received $600k.

Upon seeing Collins' success with government handouts, Corneilus Vanderbilt told them he could do the same job for half of what they gave Collins and he would use his own ships. Despite the Commodore's success with ferries and ocean going steamships, Congress, of course, said no since they already had so much invested in Collins. Vanderbilt competed anyway and made a profit while Collins continued to lose money. In fact, Collins lost two of his ships and asked Congress for $1 million more to build another one. They agreed, but the ship was so poorly built and leaked so badly on her maiden voyage, that they could secure no passengers for the return voyage and sold the ship for $10,000 in England for scrap.

In 1858, Congress extracted itself from the steamship business after having spent 11 years and 11 million taxpayer dollars. So in the very first example of government involvement in the private sector, we learn it doesn't pay... or at least we should have learned that.

Congress should be reminded how the US got where it is today. If you study American history, you will find that Christian values, work ethic and family are present at the center of it's successes and lacking where you find its failures.

Going Wrong Since the Seventies

It's my opinion that the country has been going wrong since the early seventies when the establishment didn't stand up to the hippie generation's socialist leanings (my generation). We were right about a few things that needed correcting; we were totally wrong about many, not the least of which were God, morality and respect for the founding principles set up by our forefathers.

Political Correctness Voids the 1st Amendment

Furthermore, the political correctness that arose from that time has been the single most devastating blow to freedom our nation has seen. Rather than call things what they are, everyone walks on eggs to avoid hurting someone's feelings, thereby forfeiting that most precious gift of the first amendment. Everything is OK; nothing is bad; to avoid hurting someone's feelings, we must do something about it at all cost. This has resulted in the rampant idiotic mind set that says it's OK to ban stuff and protect people from themselves. We have laws to make people wear seat belts and motorcycle helmets, we are banning smoking and trans-fats and a thousand other things and every time it happens, someone's freedom goes down the drain, step by little step.

Irresponsible Legislators

I think it's a travesty that the great and many failures of George Bush, the advantage of an attractive black candidate and the many weaknesses of John McCain resulted in the anomaly of a single party super majority in the Senate, a heavily single party controlled House and a socialist / anarchist President. They know this will not happen again for a long while. They are taking full advantage of it and are even willing to have a great many Democrats fall on their swords in order to put the icing on a cake that has been baking since the Wilson administration, really, but especially since the seventies. The opposition has no power and the Democratic Party is rushing its agenda through without regard for sanity, the will of the people or even self preservation. First, the Obama stimulus included every possible self-interested boondoggle that Democrats have been trying to achieve over the last 40 years with no regard for cost whatsoever. Some spending was even marked TBA because they couldn't think of enough ways to pillage us right off. Stimulus, cash for clunkers, mini stimulus all have no regard for whether we can pay for them. The lessons of the New Deal have been ignored. Roosevelt and his top finance guy agreed after eight years that it was a financial disaster that prolonged the Depression and did nothing but double the national debt, but we are repeating it anyway, this time in spades. Our Congress has abandoned rational care in favor of a dive into the piñata of our pockets.

Unwanted Healthcare Reform

Then they foist an unwanted healthcare bill on the people saying it won't cost much, but they have totally misrepresented the figures by having many years of tax cover just a few years of spending. This is a complete financial and practical disaster. There are actual solutions to our healthcare problems available, but Congress has not included a single one of them in the proposed bills.

Congress Ignoring Rational Solutions

In one way, thisis exactly like the stimulus. The initial cause of the economic meltdown was our government forcing banks to make bad loans they knew would never be repaid, but Congress has never addressed that issue and Fannie and Freddie are still at it, doing the same thing. This is like bailing the boat without fixing the leak.

What's Next?

After healthcare comes amnesty (don't get me started on the disaster this will cause), then will come cap and trade, a totally irresponsible and unnecessary burden on tax payers that will line the pockets of a few in the interest of "solving" a non-existent problem. And finally, the domestic Federal police force Obama promised in his campaign... BUT WAIT...

Power to Interpol

Obama signed an executive order over Christmas giving Interpol the ability to investigate and arrest you or me and we would have no recourse under US law. The FBI can't ask for documents or anything else regarding their ongoing investigations from Interpol any longer. Could this be the beginning of that powerful domestic police force he said he would create. Rather than establish a new Federal entity which would alarm everyone under the sun, he slipped it in under an existing International organization, simply by giving a foreign force unlimited powers right here on our soil. You wait and see what happens once Interpol realizes this has been handed over to them. The "world government" with real teeth has arrived.

Too Late for Back to Basics?

We need to get back, way back, to the things that made this country great. I'm not sure that's even possible, though. It may be too late. Certainly the damage Congress has done to the dollar that hasn't come home to roost yet may preclude any recovery. When that finally happens and the "money" runs out, there may be such a financial crisis, that we will go totally down the tubes without recourse. Remember what a trillion is? If you made a million dollars a day and worked 250 days per year, it would take you 4000 years to pay off a trillion dollars. In 2009 alone, our Congress and this administration spent 2 trillion that we don't even have and that our kids and their kids and their kids will have to pay for.

Most Democrats and Republicans on the hill have no idea what they have done. They are in it for self interest, not for the good of the country. There are a few solid souls up there, but not many. We need to fix this fast or it WILL be too late.

The FCC has said they will pursue guidelines for net neutrality. This would prevent ISP's and phone companies from blocking or slowing traffic for certain kinds of content.

While on the surface, this may sould like an egalitarian and acceptable thought, there is more to this than meets the eye. Like most things, these decisions should be left in the hands of businesses, not regulators.

For example, Comcast wanted to limit bandwidth usage on certain kinds of traffic, like illegal file sharing because those few customers hogging bandwidth slowed traffic for the vast majority of their other clients. This should be their choice. If their high bandwidth customers don't like it, then they should go find another ISP that doesn't do that.

As always, the market can sort this out. Net Neutrality is a solution that is looking for a problem. There is no need to take this step yet, if ever. There are almost no examples of big problems for lots of people being caused by ISPs controlling bandwidth. The truth is that a few greedy folks can now ruin the Internet experience for many.

An interesting phenomena happened again the other day and while it's happened before, the intensity of the reaction this time made me smile... and think about an important feature of social media: Accountability.

A person on LinkedIn sent a spam message to all his contacts including me. The reaction was swift and severe. A great number of contacts sent him back varying degrees of negative feedback, some of it rather emotionally charged. As an added bonus, in this case, because some of the replying people copied everyone who received the original message, the "dope-slap" was public.

I think everyone will agree that spam is extremely antisocial and relies heavily on anonymity for its success. Since social media is anything but anonymous, participants must be accountable for their blog posts, emails, tweets and other public comments. If they are not behaving in a "social" way, they will find out very quickly.

So two important contributions result from the use of social media. First, good old spam will be severly curtailed and secondly, people wil be taught social behavior regardless of whether they come into the space knowing it ahead of time.

The following is a copy of an article I thought was good enough to reprint exactly as it was written by Doug Grindstaff and printed in the Williamson Herald on 07/23/09.

7/23/09 Wiliamson Herald.
E.D.Grindstaff

What is a Washington lie?

A lie is a person telling someone an untruth. A complicated lie is when the listener knows the person is lying to him. A Washington lie is when the person telling the lie knows the listener knows he's lying. We are now into Washington lies on almost every issue coming from Washington.

The first talking point on health care uttered these days is, "Everyone knows health care is broken and if we don't fix it we'll go broke." Actually, everyone doesn't know that and the statement is just a convenient lie.  Sure, health insurance is increasing too quickly just as it has been for the past 50 years, but that's a poor reason to rush another trillion dollar unread law through Congress. If we simply passed tort reform and stopped all new research and development, our age-adjusted health care rates would only increase at inflation rates. But do we want to stop all research and the new cures that come with it? If not, then let's realize that advanced technology is going to cost us advancing health care costs. We pay for it or we don't get it. (Unlike the socialized medicine countries that use our inventions and drugs without paying for the research.)

"Other countries spend less on health care and have better outcomes."  This is an ingenious lie! We do spend more on health care than other countries, but we have the best health care in the world. A woman with breast cancer in Italy has only a 50 percent 5 year survival rate compared to the same situation in the U.S.  A male in England with prostate cancer has only 10% of the U.S. survival rate. So what do they mean by "outcomes"? It means we have a higher infant mortality rate than some developed countries. But we allow pregnant women to use drugs and harm their babies. Certainly we don't condone that, but we do allow people the freedom to do bad things and suffer the consequences. If we drop those deaths from the stats, we are among the best. If anything, we spend enormous amounts to save premature infants that would simply die in most countries. Also the U.S. life expectancy is lower than some countries that spend less than we do on health care. However, we are a country in love with fast cars and we are a country with drug and gang problems. If we remove traffic deaths and homicides from the stats, our life expectancy is among the best. So if you are an average middle class couple who wears seat belts, doesn't drink and drive, and doesn't get involved with drugs and gangs, your "outcomes" are among the best in the world.

"We will lower your health care costs and improve the quality of care." They know you know they're lying.  How can one reduce costs by giving free health insurance to 12 million illegal immigrants?  Should we assume that won't attract another 20 million illegals through our admittedly porous borders?  Of the so-called 46 million uninsured people, studies show that 26 million are either currently eligible for government insurance or are financially able to afford insurance and choose not to because they are young and healthy. With 12 million illegals in the total, there are only 8 million citizens who are uninsured through no fault of their own. While these people need help, we need not destroy the health insurance of the 200 million Americans currently covered in order to cover them?

"You'll be able to get health insurance regardless of preconditions."  Certainly our society needs to help care for people truly in need, but this pandering statement is self defeating. If one knows he can purchase insurance after discovering a serious illness, why would anyone purchase it before they became ill?  Isn't that like buying life insurance from your death bed?  Once the government requires this, private insurance will be priced out of existence. Another lie: "You can keep your existing insurance and doctors".

"We will pay for two-thirds of the increased costs through savings."  They know you know! Even their own Inspector General reports there are no savings! The only savings will come from denying coverage to people over 65 and to people with expensive treatments.  Joint replacements in retired people can be avoided with enough pain killers.  So what if they can't really function with all the drugs?  It's a savings!  It is true that private insurance companies have too high an overhead and profits, but Medicaid/Medicare have just as much fraud and abuse of the system. We need to improve both, not destroy them.

Every country in the world rations health care. There is an infinite demand and a finite supply. It can only be contained by limiting the amount spent. Then the system has to decide how to spend the dollars. America has always rationed health care by the amount people who are willing to pay either for the care directly or for insurance to pay for it. The socialized systems ration health care by a bureaucracy that decides what to cover.  If you think that is hyperbole, the recently passed stimulus bill contained funding to establish just such a bureaucracy. It was labeled as a committee to establish guidelines to ensure everyone got the best care at the lowest price by use of national best practices. But, in fact, it is an exact copy of the British committee that establishes how much a "quality year of life" is worth and then refuses coverage for procedures or drugs that do not meet their criteria.  So a $50,000 chemotherapy treatment to extend one's life by a year, would not qualify because it's too expensive for just an extra year. A $500,000 heart transplant would only qualify if the patient still had 20 years to work and pay taxes. Everything comes down to rationing the cost of a procedure compared to the value of the patient to the state. (For full disclosure, I lived under a socialized system in Canada for 6 years and I fully understand it.)

Looking at heath costs from the government's perspective, it is a fact that medications to lower cholesterol are a bad investment for the state. If they pay for 20 million people to take the drugs for 20 years and only prevent 10,000 heart attacks or strokes, it is cheaper to pay for the heart attacks. Therefore it is a savings for the government to not cover such drugs. But for me (or you), it is a "bad investment" I'm gladly willing to make to not be one of the 10,000.

So ultimately it all boils down to who makes the decision. YOU OR THE GOVERNMENT THAT OWNS YOU?

Here are some highly questionable decisions by the "Best President Ever" and a few broken promises just for fun. These are not speculation, they have all happened. They will change America for the worst, make the world a more dangerous place, slow any potential economic recovery and result in inflation like we have never experienced. All this during a time when we are struggling to recover from a government initiated financial collapse and have the highest unemployment in 26 years.

Here are some domestic policy disasters:

• Ignoring illegal immigration makes a mockery of our laws and costs taxpayers billions (of course, Bush did this too).
• Spending 4 times the highest debt ever incurred in a single year is insanity. If you made a million dollars a day it would take 8000 years to pay off the 2009 deficit alone.
• US tax payers are now paying for overseas abortions.
• Pushing green too hard, too soon is not cost effective or logical. It will come on it's own with private sector effort and some government tax incentives. No more is needed, but the administration charges on with Cap and Trade, which is a disaster. Latest manufacturing poll says it will result in 20% of manufacturers closing.
• Making policy decisions on unfounded science such as global warming is foolish and frightening. Leaked emails show the EPA is suppressing information that that undermines the CO2 argument and more and more evidence piles up daily against the reality of man's effect on the environment.
• Increasing the number of government jobs and agencies which add nothing to GDP, steal talent from the productive private sector and cost billions more in taxes.
• Putting census under white house control and pouring millions into ACORN and other gerrymandering groups will bias voting results.
• Government involvement in universal healthcare will increase healthcare costs, lose jobs and reduce the level of care significantly, yet the administration sees this as their number one goal.
• Buying bad US businesses with taxpayer dollars is sure to fail. Let the businesses and banks fail instead. The private sector will work it out. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for foolish executive decision makers?

Here are some international blunders:

• Hard line against Israel and support of dictators is very bad for world peace.
• Iran protestors try to move towards democracy and Obama ignores them and invites the thugs to a July 4th party.
• In Honduras the supreme court upholds its constitution and Obama supports the reinstatement of a Chavez puppet.
• North Korea is rattling sabers and setting off nukes and Obama won't stop a single ship.
• Proposing a racist member of La Raza known for making unconstitutional decisions to the Supreme Court.

Here are some broken promises:

• Closing Gitmo makes America less safe, but fortunately Obama can't even seem to keep that promise as he has released a new opinion that allows indefinite detention.
• Don't ask, don't tell is still in place as Obama blocked it's removal.
• His promised transparency is so transparent, you can't see it. Some 300 pages were added to the Cap and Trade bill a few hours before the vote so the minority party couldn't even have time to read or comment on it. Of course, 8 of those idiots voted for it anyway.
• Corruption lives on unlike his promise. The DoJ was ordered to stop investigating Muslim charities and ACORN, even after both were found guilty of wrongdoing. AmeriCorps Inspector General Walpin was fired illegally for investigating corruption of Obama's pal and financial supporter Kevin Johnson.
• Obama said if we passed the stimulus package in a rush like he wanted, unemployment would never go over 8%. It's in double digits now and rising. Of course only 6% of the trillion dollar pork stimulus package has been handed out nine months later. But maybe that's a good thing?

Just to be fair, here is a list of those I can think of that have been acceptable.

• Decision to stick with the fight in Afghanistan.
• He finally gave the go-ahead to take out the Somali pirates (after much fingering of political winds).
• OK... I'm working on more...

An open letter for GE's CEO Jeff Immelt.

I listened to your speech to the Detroit Economic Club. On the whole a strong statement I applaud, but I have a couple of things you might think about.

1) I think US investment in R&D has shrunk due to government disincentives. If Congress believes what you and I believe, they should incentivize business to invest more in R&D. I don't see that happening at all. They are chasing manufacturing from the US with every new major regulation and law.

2) Not so sure there is that global warming that you seem to think is a foregone conclusion. Even if you're right, the industrial age is only 150 years old in a planet life of billions of years. Give us another 150 years and we'll have the technological solution to clean energy. We'll probably be running cars on bad breath. It's not wrong to be working on it for GE profitability, but for government to turn it's back on current domestic energy supplies and destroy the current day economy in it's name is foolishness. We have 350 to 400 years of oil right here... OK, half that with growth. Let's use it now, let 3rd world countries fend for themselves rather than thrive on our dollars and let's figure out the clean solutions while minimizing our costs today.

3) Healthcare in the US is not a problem. It's the best in the world. Cost is another matter, but there are two sides to that problem. One is financial which everyone seems to be focused on, but the other is delivery: where the dollars are spent. This is the real problem that nobody wants to address, especially GE, since this is where you live. People need to be aware of the costs of their own care so they can make intelligent decisions on how to spend their healthcare dollars. Will a $5000 ultrasound instead of a $500 stethoscope bring that value to John Q public? I don't know. Do you? Maybe another innovation would be more productive, like cheaper MRI's.

4) You're right on the nut about manufacturing. But our government chases it away every day with SOX and Cap & Trade being just two of the enormous disincentives. We need to get legislators to understand this issue or we have seen the end of the US's golden age. What's GE's backup plan? Leave the US?

5) Your labor relations comments are nice, but workers simply don't know they are suffering as a result of unions. It's management's fault totally. When they have unions, they are pussies. Without unions they are bullies. There is no hope without a changed attitude from strong leaders at the top of companies who do the right thing by their employees without union pressure. I've been in both union and non-union environments and have seen it clearly.

6) Good luck trying to get government money to go to innovation rather than bureaucracy when Congress has invested in some 600,000 new government jobs. What a joke. This administration is interested in their own power, not GE's or anyone else's potential innovation.

7) Partner with local governments to fix education? What is that about? Why would GE be involved. In fact, why is the government involved. The Articles of Confederation had the right idea on education. Let it happen at a local level where the participants are personally invested. Neither GE, nor the US needs to do it. Dismantle the DOE and save the taxpayers a bundle and have GE spend their money on R&D.

Thanks for trying to be a good business leader. You're on a fair track, but be careful. You don't want to get into stuff you shouldn't be in.

People throw a trillion around like it's just another billion. But what is it really?

Let's say you got a great job. A job that pays a million dollars a day. Let's say, for easy math purposes, you decided to work 250 days a year. That should be enough to get by on with a reasonable paycheck like that. In four years, you'd have a billion dollars. But in order to pay off this year's 2 trillion dollar deficit, you'd have to work for 8000 years.

Yep, that's right. Eight thousand years at a million dollars a day. So when our illustrious Senators and Representatives speak in trillions, even though they have no perspective on it, at least now, you do.

So what does it mean to each of us? Based on the number of households in the US in 2000, the latest figure I could find, that means Congress spent $18,960 more per household this year than they are taking in. That means the obligation we each have to cover the 11.4 trillion national debt stands at $37,223 per citizen.

If the current economic crisis happened because estimations of future human productivity failed to support the estimated value of the assets being represented, then I would say there is hope for America and the investor community was simply fooled. A general correction in the marketplace will take care of the problem and after a little correction, all will be fine again. That's pure and simple business economics. It works. It's proven. It's logical.

But what if the capital / innovation marketplace had little to do with the current economic crisis? What if government interference in the form of mandated, unsound investment practice was put in place to enable a social engineering experiment? Could this cause a "tear" in the fabric of logical, "invisible hand" economics? Could it be that this crisis happened because those in power discovered a way to tap the incredible power of human nature by creating opportunity while hiding their motives?

If so, what were their motives? Some saw power. Some saw financial opportunity. Some saw personal gain. Others were simply naive and believed the myth of successful socialism is attainable. Regardless of the motives, the 535 people in our government destroyed our economy as certainly as a wrecking ball will destroy any formidable edifice with its momentum.

Government policy encouraged individuals and corporations to "make hay while the sun shined" and take financial risks they would never otherwise take. People recognized the short term opportunity available to them as a result of government policy and took advantage of it despite their understanding of the potential long term consequences. Why would they do that? Because it was too good a deal to pass up. The short term gain was far greater than the long term risk. Yes, you can call it greed. But like it or not, "greed" is a powerful engine that drives each of us to greatness absent negative consequences.

Of course, there are lots of motivators besides money and people make decisions based on the relative value of the alternatives available to them. That value may be monetary. It may be altruistic, emotional or survival related, but the result is the same. People make logical, rewarding choices. All other things being equal or satisfied, then money is the driver.

A mortgage broker makes a commission by giving a loan to someone he knows will never pay. If he makes the loan, the company prospers, he prospers. If he doesn't, someone else will and he's out of a job. So what does he do? He makes lots of bad loans. He makes a bundle. The company makes a bundle. The borrower gets a house for a while and the government's mandates are met. Someday, somebody will pay, but not today...

A banker identifies bad loans that will likely never be paid. He does what he must to mitigate his risk. He spreads the loss by inventing financial devices nobody understands, wraps them in a nice bow and sells them to buyers who purchase them because they trust him or his company. Someday, somebody will pay, but not today...

The process spreads throughout the financial system. People do what they are good at. They make the best decision they can based on the alternatives presented to them at the moment. The alternatives get worse and worse. Eventually, they are all bad ones. Some bailed because they spotted the big picture, but not many. Some never got involved because they were too fiscally conservative, but not many.

Eventually today comes and the other shoe drops. Some risk takers get burned. Some turn to the government for help. Some weak businesses and entire industries are sucked into the vortex of widening economic trauma. Most people blame corporate greed, individual greed, personal irresponsibility. Somehow, few blame the government and Congress gets a bye. If we had an informed public, they would recognize the culprit and demand accountability. If we had a responsible media, they would inform the public. As it is, we have neither a responsible media nor an informed public. 

Solutions are seldom found when a problem has not been identified correctly. Are we doomed to this hopeless path upon which we tread? If there is to be hope for America, the problem must be correctly identified and action taken accordingly.

It continues to surprise me when our new administration displays it's naivete of the world. I am somewhat embarrassed for America every time it happens. Comments by David Axelrod, administration adviser, that Obama's pandering to the world's villains has "made anti-Americanism uncool" would be pretty funny if he was kidding. Unfortunately, they are drinking their own Kool-Aid.

Somehow Mr. Obama sitting through Ortega's nearly hour long diatribe against the US, his bow to a Saudi prince, his pandering to Chavez and tolerance of the Iranian and North Korean maniacs seems to have his own administration advisors believing that all of those folks will soon become America's friends as a result of his actions. Do these guys really believe this or is it just wishful thinking or is it damage control for things they didn't plan. Certainly, the media has proven that if you say a lie often enough, it becomes the accepted version of events. Maybe that's what's afoot. We shall see.

Back when Total Quality Management was first coming on the scene for American businesses, it was the Quality Manager's job to learn how to do it, how it applied to the company's business and then teach the rest of the company what to do so they could implement the new technology and contribute to the bottom line. Today, TQM is built into most successful organizations at all levels and there may be no single person with the title Quality Manager. Back then, however, as the technology was being adopted, the Quality Manager typically reported directly to the chief executive officer of the company. Why? Because it was most important that the executive suite fully understand the things that were going to transform their company into a more profitable entity and that they be directly involved in the adoption of the new technology to help the Quality Manager with the strategic insight necessary to direct the effort in the most successful ways possible.

Sound familiar? In order for social media to make the greatest impact possible to improve the future of an organization, it must be endorsed and understood fully from the top down. Those responsible for bringing this new technology to an organization will have to report to the top to make sure there are no surprises and that the most benefit possible can be garnered from it. This is especially crucial because of the lightning speed at which this new technology moves. It's easy to do a lot of good quickly using social media, but doing it wrong is noticed just as quickly.

So where does your company's Social Media Manager report? Is it time for the top brass to help that person make the decisions about how your company is going to... Join the Conversation?

Some thirty plus years ago, US manufacturing companies began to wake up to the realization that they needed to get serious about quality. Foreign and domestic competition who understood the power of Total Quality Management were eating their lunch. Businesses had to learn about quality management and quality improvement techniques and learn fast. So what did they do? They established a position called "Quality Manager." They gave this person the mission of learning about TQM, applying it to their own business and then teaching the rest of the organization what they learned so it could be implemented quickly and successfully across the organization. This strategy worked and many businesses rapidly adopted the new techniques to improve quality and reduce costs, thereby increasing both market share and the bottom line.

Sound familiar? Today, modern businesses are in exactly the same position with regard to Social Media as they were with regard to TQM all those years ago. They know it's out there and that it's potentially very important. But they don't know what it really can do for them, how to use it properly and how to stay out of trouble with it. It's time for companies to recognize the enormous opportunity and potential of using social media to contribute to the bottom line.

Early adopters of TQM had the edge and early adopters of SM will, too. So who's your company's Social Media manager? Is it time for you to get one and... Join the Conversation?

Surprise, Surprise! Banks who took US Government money have just discovered a flaw in their logic that it would be a good idea to get something for nothing. When Uncle Sam asked them if they'd like a little hand out, some banks took it, even though they had no real need. Apparently, their Daddies never told them, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

Now the US Congress in it's predictable knee-jerk reaction to AIG bonuses is in the process of implementing yet another tightening of the noose on anyone who took government money. And the real beauty of this is that they have the banks right where they want them. Banks who have now realized their folly would love to give the money back to the government and back out of the deal, but in order to do so, they have to claim the paid back money as taxable income. That means that some bank that got say $100 million, will end up paying $3-4 million in taxes just to get out of the deal. Game. Set. Match. Welcome to your new business partner... the US Congress!

I'd say the smart banks will run, not walk from this disaster. More demands will follow this one. They should pay back the dough and charge their executives who were party to the decision the extra cost rather than their stockholders. After all, those guys were the dopes who had the shortsightedness not to realize that this was inevitable. There were many banks that did not take government money. Good for them. They will end up being more profitable than the ones that did. I ask you to witness the American free market at work.

At least Democrats are consistent in their willingness to cheat to win. The current Congress is trying to do everything they can to stay in power for the long term. First, they tried to add 4.1 billion to the "stimulus" package for Acorn. Why does Acorn need money and what do they do with it, you ask? Unfortunately, you won't like the answer. Acorn uses this money to pay for votes. They go into neighborhoods where they know the constituents will favor democrat candidates and drive these people to the polls and a little "thank you" payment is handed over. $3-4 billion worth of votes is enough to swing many an election.

If that doesn't bother you, for decades the US Census has been under the care of the US Commerce Department. Suddenly, the Obama administration has seen the opportunity to control the census with the certain goal of rigging future elections by gerrymandering districts. By controlling districts, Rahm Emanuel can control Congress and the white house. Newsmax has a video by US Congressman Marsha Blackburn who is leading a charge to investigate this issue.

The Nashville Metro government is currently in the throes of a battle over whether the government should do business only in English. The Nashville Chamber is against this initiative and I am saddened to see them take that stand. I suspect a lot of self-interested business people who are Chamber members like the idea of keeping the immigrant population down by preventing their assimilation into society, but I am absolutely certain that the best thing that can be done to advance the future of our immigrants is to get them speaking English and get them into society quickly.

My immigrant grandfather dictated that his children, including my father, not teach their kids anything but English. He was a firm believer that to make the most of the bounty this country has to offer, his grandchildren should be 100% committed to this country, not the old country. He was right in the early 1900s just as he would be right today. The issue has not changed.

If the Chamber can't bring themselves to support the vote, they should at the very least remain neutral.

The editors of BoatUS had an editorial in their November 08 issue asking if we should consider the Pickens Plan or reconsider wind farms off the coast based on the recent hike in gas prices. The article can be viewed here. My reply to the Letters to the Editor follows...

You're absolutely right that a discussion of home grown energy is in order. However, wind, solar and Mr. Pickens' self serving, thinly veiled plan to use his own gas wells are not the best solution. There will almost certainly be a time when technology delivers low cost hydrogen production, effective fuel cells, efficient solar power or a host of even better low cost energy alternatives unimagined today. However, we need to give technology a chance to catch up with our dreams. It's time we woke up to the facts. The most expensive oil to extract in the US is the oil shale in Colorado. There is a 250 year of supply at the exorbitant cost of extraction of a mere $80/barrel revealing the $140 we saw this summer for the ridiculous panic figure that it was.  Further, the absurd fear of nuclear power must also be assuaged. Perhaps the greatest disservice to the American people has been the nuclear power misinformation campaign. Our 104 nuclear power plants are nearly double the number they have in France, often touted as the nuclear power poster child. This is a cheap, clean resource that needs to be recognized for what it is.

If the US uses it's low cost home grown oil reserves today (forget oil shale for a moment) and maybe even builds a few more nuclear plants, and lets technology catch up, it won't be many years before a better solution is found. When you look what technology has brought us in the last 100 years, it's impossible to imagine what the next 100 will bring. So with a little faith in good old American ingenuity and the practical use of the energy resources we have today, there's no need to muddy up our coastal waters with giant wind props or anything else.

Somehow American politics seems to generate a situation where surprise and disappointment abound. The solution that Congress came up with to "solve" the recent financial crisis that they caused is yet another example.

Act 1: Congress disappoints by setting up Fannie and Freddie so they don't have to play by the same rules as private business. That Fannie and Freddie become giants as a result should surprise no one, yet many are amazed. Then Congress and the Clinton administration disappoint further by advancing the Community Reinvestment Act and tell Fannie and Freddie to make the kinds of loans that no private business would logically make. That they eventually failed should surprise no one, yet many are again astounded.

To me, the real surprise is that when Government encouraged non-governmental business to do the same thing, some of them actually did it. These businesses somehow came to believe that Government knew better than them how to establish the criteria by which they should lend money. Not surprisingly, some lenders ignored the "encouragement" and today are healthy, while those who followed the Government's lead are failing left and right... and they are, of course, surprised about this.

Act 2: A few large businesses fail because they engage in dishonest business practices, Congress takes the disappointing action to attempt to legislate honesty, which any fool knows is impossible, with Sarbanes-Oxley and other ill-advised regulation. These foolish regulations cause some companies to leave America so they don't have to comply. Others stay and experience the unintended consequences of having to state valuable assets as worth nothing, and everyone is surprised when they fail.

Act 3: So we have seen businesses fail because of bad regulation and their own bad decisions and Congress suddenly feels the urge to "do something and do it quick," a certain recipe for disaster. Of course, their disappointing solution is more bad regulation. Congress establishes a single entity with the power to dole out $700 billion dollars - a figure equivalent to 35% of the entire federal budget - and take over private businesses. Wall street answers by dropping even further as they recognize the coming disaster.

There is no doubt that we are in for tough economic times. The only questions up to now have been who pays for the problem and when does it happen. If the markets were left to their own devices, the problem is paid for by the people who caused it and the pain is suffered now. Congress' disappointing "bailout" means that the taxpayer pays for the problem and the economic pain is delayed for a little while. In my opinion, I would have rather had the former, but since Congress knows what to do with my money better than I do, they have chosen the latter for me.

When the disappointing result of further economic woe strikes, you can be certain that everyone will be surprised... and the curtain closes.

The remarkable and senseless mass appeal of Barak Obama has made me realize that that the socialists among us seem to have grabbed more than a little control of our fair land. Even with the recent Supreme Court decision telling DC to allow it's citizens to arm themselves, the loss of our ability to protect ourselves from any force that might do us harm is always at risk from left wing elitists. They just don't understand why the common, law abiding citizen who wishes to arm himself should be allowed to do so. Here are three things for them to think about.

1) If 9/11/01 and Flight 93 taught us anything, it was that as individuals, we are not going to be protected from terrorists by the government, law enforcement, the FAA or anyone else. Those agencies do a fine job with the big picture, but if an individual is to be protected in the instantaneous face of an attack, it is the individual who will protect himself or perish. Being armed may not save you in every case, but at least you will have a chance in some cases.

2) It should be noted that the first thing a potential dictator will do prior to installing his regime is to disarm the people. There are too many examples of this over the course of history for it to be ignored. Armed citizens are a constant vigil against authority run amok.

3) In example after example, gun ownership has proven to be a deterrent to crime. Following is a paper written by my 17 year old daughter for school on the subject: 

It’s amazing how much one single gunshot can impact history. JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, the list goes on. If all these influential people died from gunshots, why would our founding fathers, with the best intentions for keeping this country safe, create the second amendment? The second amendment states, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Guns are not the problem; it’s the person pulling the trigger. What is protected in the Second Amendment is the individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner. It does not justify criminal actions used with a gun. The idea of the person, rather than the gun being the problem is a hard concept for some people to grasp, but there are several studies that have proven the anti-gun theory to be incorrect.

When an innocent person dies of a gunshot, the media never hesitates to report on it. It isn’t wrong for the media to report these extreme tragedies, after all that is their job, but the media has a bad habit of leading people to assumptions instead of telling them the whole story and the facts that go along with it. One thing the media doesn’t tell their listeners is that making it legal for civilians to carry guns has been statistically proven to make society less violent. A life is saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. The rate of criminal misuse of firearms among people licensed to carry guns in Florida is so low that it is can be considered statistically zero. In fact, homicide, assault, rape, and robbery are dramatically lower in areas of the United States where the public is allowed easy access to carrying concealed firearms in public. In 1966-1967 in Orlando, Florida, the media decided to publicize a safety course which taught women how to use guns. Orlando's rape rate, as a result, dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant elsewhere in the state. In 1985, the National Institute for Justice reported that 60% of felons polled agreed that "a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun." There is example after example of different circumstances where allowing and/or encouraging citizens to have guns has paid off.

Some people think they don’t have to carry a gun because the police will protect them. Although policemen do their jobs skillfully and are reliable most of the time, they cannot protect and are not required to protect every individual in the community. Their only obligation is to protect the public in general. In fact, it is physically impossible for the police to protect every individual. Currently, there are about 600,000 total law enforcement officers on duty to protect a population of more than 300 million Americans, that’s about 500 citizens per officer. More so, 57% of felons polled agreed that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police." This is why each citizen needs to have an alternative method of protection. A cry for help can go unanswered, and if the police force is the only thing that an individual needing help has to rely on, that individual could be seriously injured or even killed. Owning a firearm in a case like that would be beneficial and has been for thousands of people already.

As stated earlier: it is not the gun that’s the issue; it’s the person pulling the trigger. So, since it’s the person with the gun that’s the problem, should we make guns illegal so that nobody can own one? A major problem with making guns illegal is that the law abiding citizens would obey it, and the criminals would not. A Justice Department survey showed that 93% of handgun predators had obtained their most recent guns "off-the-record." This practice of criminals would just continue and the people would have to resort to other forms of defense that would be much less effective against the gun of a criminal.

It’s amazing how much one single gunshot can impact history, but what if this change in history is a positive one. Criminals have been shot by individuals with guns, but often the death of one criminal has saved the lives of more than one innocent citizen. There will always be negative consequences from guns, but the lives saved by guns for self defense will hopefully teach people that instead of being despised, guns should be respected.
 

A presidential candidate recently said something like, “I think that we need to make some adjustments in the tax code where those who earn the most should be paying their fair share of taxes.”

There is no question that high income taxpayers are already paying far more than their fair share of taxes in this country. Here are the facts as reported in a recent article in the Kiplinger Tax Letter as reported by the IRS from 2006 federal income tax returns. 

The top 1% of taxpayers earned at least $ 388,800 and paid 39.9% of taxes paid. So, 1% of the US taxpayers paid almost 40% of the taxes collected.

The top 5% of taxpayers earned at least $ 153,500 and paid 60.1% of taxes paid. So, 5% of US taxpayers made 36.7% of the total income of all taxpayers, but paid over 60% of the taxes collected in the US.

The top 10% of taxpayers earned at least $ 108,900 and paid 70.8% of taxes paid. So, the top 10% in the US had approximately 47% of all the income in the US but paid over 70% of the taxes. Or to put it another way, 90% of US taxpayers contributed less that 30% of all the taxes that were collected in 2006.

Finally, it should be recognized that the bottom 50% of income earners paid only 3% of the total tax bill. This is a frightening statistic since it means that , so those who make the most are already paying more than their fair share. It would be a terrible mistake to ask those who already shoulder the burden to pick up more of it. The real problem is out of control government spending.