Month: April 2011

While Congress has delayed crafting a budget for fiscal 2011, which ends September 30, they are already squabbling about what to do about the 2012 budget.  In the meantime though, we are about to bump our heads on the debt ceiling, which is currently $14.294 trillion.  That’s because the Federal government is borrowing $189 million dollars AN HOUR! (article)

A few years ago, the debt ceiling was a mere $12 trillion, yet George W. Bush wanted to raise it.  Senator Barack Obama voted against it then, but he is pushing it now.  I wonder, did Obama vote “no” because it was ONLY going up to $14 trillion?

Anyway, Obama and most Democrats and thoughtful, chin-stroking Keynesian economists and MSM pundits now say we “must” raise the debt ceiling to maintain our credibility.  Really?

One analysis says it would take the entire economic production of private business in the United States in 2010 to retire our national debt.  How is increasing our debt  going to help our credibility when we are hurtling toward ruin as it is?  Standard and Poor’s is threatening to reduce the nation’s credit rating because of our runaway debt.  Rather than saying we “must” raise the debt ceiling, it would seem we ought to be saying the opposite.

The only solution the Democrats can see is to raise taxes, but we are already taxed too much.  They also talk about “fairness” but there is nothing “fair” about our tax code currently.

One illustration I saw recently compared a hypothetical single mother making $14,000 per year with a couple with combined gross income of $60,000 (both families have the same number of children).  The single mother can get food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, childcare assistance, housing subsidies, Medicaid, etc. that increase her spending power to $37,000.  The working couple makes too much to get any government assistance, PLUS their tax burden and household expenses reduces their spendable cash to $34,000!

While I understand that the single mother would have trouble making it on $14,000 a year, is it really “fair” that she has more spendable cash than a family where both spouses are working full time? Shouldn’t the government be going after the deadbeat dad to help the single mom?

It goes without saying that $60,000 per year earned by two people is not “rich” and certainly not the “millionaire/billionaire” status that Obama regularly demonizes.  Yet the Democrats never miss an opportunity to raise taxes on people earning more than other people.

I say the Federal government needs to “Stop the Insanity” and get the spending under control like every household and private business and nonprofit in the country is having to do right now.  Where is it written that government can never tighten its belt?

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Jay Carney, the relatively new Press Secretary for President Obama, stepped in it this week when journalists asked him why there was no formal Easter Proclamation from the president this year, like past presidents have done for most of our history.  Carney’s reaction was to make fun of the questioner.  He laughed and belittled the question with sarcasm, saying “I’m glad you’re asking about important issues”, or words to that effect.

If Obama was a Republican we would be reading about how out of touch the White House is, since nearly 80% of Americans are Christians and probably 75% of those were in church Sunday morning.  People who don’t darken a church door the rest of the year are usually in church on Easter.  Few experiences are more universal in America.

The contrast is made more stark when you realize that the White House has issued official proclamations honoring several Muslim holidays on multiple occasions.

After callously laughing at the question, Carney launched into a defense of Obama by recounting how he had gone to church on Easter Sunday, as if to say, “and furthermore, Obama is most definitely a Christian!” — referring to the fact that the numbers who believe Obama is really Muslim remain high.

As it turns out, Obama’s Easter church attendance has its own set of problems, since the pastor of the church he chose is on videotape calling all the personalities on talk radio and Fox News racists.  Nothing crazy about that! (See what I did there? I used sarcasm just like Jay Carney).

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I have a book that I had nearly forgotten about until I was rearranging one of my floor-to-ceiling shelves today.  It was most appropriate that I found it today, between Good Friday and Easter.  The title is “I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus”.  The book is by George Eldon Ladd and it’s probably been 25 years (or 35?) since I read it, but I still remember the main premise of the book, and just as the resurrection was the rock of faith for believers in the first century, Ladd’s book helped it to undergird my own faith.

The essence of the book is that the resurrection of Jesus is not a miracle to be tested by the scientific method, although there are definite scientific questions raised by it.  However, the real reason to believe is that those first century believers did.  And many, many of them endured tortuous martyrdom rather than recant their faith.

Ladd says, rather than the proof of biological science, we should be asking if the testimony of those early believers would stand in a court of law.  That’s the kind of proof that counts in this situation.  And of course, the evidence speaks for itself.  All but one of those 12 apostles who were there as eye witnesses died brutal, violent deaths at the hands of unbelieving rulers rather than deny what they had seen and experienced.  People just don’t brave horrible deaths for something they know to be untrue.

Of course this is just the bedrock of faith.  The benefits of believing go far beyond to Forgiveness, Hope, Salvation and Victory.

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In a speech at a Virginia college, President Obama said, “I want to live in a country that’s fair.”  Now who could disagree with that?  Certainly not most of those college students, who, if they are like most young people, are easily stirred up with indignation toward any injustice, because they still believe that life can be fair.

But life experience tends to teach most of us that there are simply too many variables for life to be remotely similar for everyone, much less “fair”, whatever that means.

About the most it can mean is that we all start with as level a playing field as possible.  Of course it won’t be level, because heredity, IQ, physical prowess, gender, race, culture, attitude and many other factors do much to determine our chances of success and happiness in life, so there can never be a truly level playing field.  Civil rights legislation of various types seeks to ensure that people aren’t hampered by prejudice regarding surface things like race, gender, disabilities, etc., but no law can equalize the chances of one person with bottomless drive to succeed and another without an ambitious bone in his body.

Of course Obama’s main concern is with people who have more money than other people, but, there are many reasons one person may have more money than another.  The most obvious reason is that some people don’t have a goal of becoming rich.  The irony is that many of those same people think it’s not fair that they aren’t rich, even though they did none of the things one must do to become rich.  Becoming rich is hard work, and most people who are rich have also been under soul-crushing poverty during their rise to the top.  In short, it ain’t easy.  Even some who try to get rich, ultimately fail.

But many people who have taken the easy 9-to-5 job don’t seem to realize that and think they should receive the same rewards as someone who risked everything and expended their blood to build a business that might someday make them rich (Few people become rich working for a salary; just a few upper management types.  Most of the rich got there by starting businesses.  Not everyone has the stomach for that)

Obama’s idea is to take money from people who have it and give it to people who don’t.  This, he thinks, will make the country more “fair”.  But I couldn’t disagree more, since taking money at gunpoint from one person who earned it “fair and square” (so to speak) and giving it to someone who did nothing except “need” it, seems profoundly UNFAIR.

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I had to look it up online to be sure I heard right after hearing a byte from President Obama’s speech last Wednesday.  Apparently, referring to the Bush tax cuts, he did actually say we’ve got to reduce the “spending in our tax code.”  Huh?

Then it hit me: the reason Obama so often seems to live in some Bizzare-O World is that he thinks ALL money belongs to the government and if you have any money in your pocket it’s because the government “spent” it!  To Obama a tax cut is spending!  Ironically, he also calls government spending “investment”, which it obviously is NOT, since there’s no prospect of a return.  But that’s life in Obama’s world.

This attitude is so foreign to me that it was practically invisible, but now much has been made clear and it is very frightening.  Now it’s clear why 16,000 IRS agents have been hired since Obama took office.  His concern isn’t for you and me and our welfare but his focus is to make sure that you and I aren’t taking too much money from his beloved government!

The 2012 election can’t come soon enough.

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I never thought it would happen, but Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has finally been released and it is great! (official website)

Actually, just Part 1 was released yesterday.  It will be a trilogy, since the book is over 1,000 pages.  It’s been about 15 years since I read the book, which first appeared in 1957, but the message has never been needed more than now.

It is being independently distributed which means I only know of three theaters within 100 miles of Atlanta that are showing it.  The website has a place to request the movie be shown in your area.  MovieFone.com’s reviews show that 92% of people like the movie, but only 27% of movie critics like it.  That figures, since most movie critics are limousine liberals and the message of “Atlas Shrugged” is anathema to them.  The book is sort of the Libertarian’s credo, but it makes Liberals/Progressives spit nails.

Here’s my review: The movie does a good job of generally following the book but manages to be paced well and doesn’t lag.  I’ve written books and screenplays and I know how difficult it can be to adapt one to the other.  “Atlas Shrugged” is one of those “unfilmable” books, because there is SO MUCH lofty dialog (pages and pages of it), but the movie captures the essence without slowing the pace.  My wife hasn’t read the book so I asked her if she followed everything and she said she did.  In fact, she exclaimed her disappointment when it ended with “To Be Continued…” and said it didn’t feel as long as it was.

I was curious, going in, how they would make the railroads as important in the movie as they are in the book, and they actually solved that problem neatly in the first couple of minutes (I won’t give it away).  Still there are incongruities because things are so different now than they were in 1957.  I wasn’t sure but what they might set the movie in the 1950s, but, while that would have solved the incongruities, it would have also made its message easier to dismiss as belonging to another time.

One difficulty that the movie has no less than the book is that the heroes are corporate tycoons, which are the favorite whipping boys of the establishment in Hollywood (if I see one more movie where the villain is a real estate developer I may scream!).  Most people are accustomed to thinking of corporate management as undeserving of their salaries and “workers” as unappreciated and the real reason for business success.  Getting the average person to get their minds around the creativity and risk required to launch a business venture is difficult.  However, if a few people are made to think about where real value comes from, maybe the tide can be turned away from the “looters” (Ayn Rand’s word) that are in control of Washington DC today.

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I didn’t get to hear President Obama’s speech on the budget the other day because it was in the middle of the day and I work for a living, but the excerpts I’ve heard have been very disappointing,

I understand Obama recommends taxing the rich.  How creative!  How original!  Who would have seen that coming?

Although he talked about billionaires, the tax increase will actually affect anyone making $250,000 or more.  One analysis says that, to close the deficit gap by raising taxes on “the richest Americans”, the tax rate would need to be 134%!  Yes that means we would have to take 34% more than EVERYTHING the high wage earners make to solve our deficit problem.

Now Obama is saying he was wrong to vote against raising the debt ceiling when he was in the Senate (and a Republican wanted to raise it), so now he says we MUST raise it.  But 40 cents on every dollar the Federal Government spends is already borrowed, which means we are paying interest on our interest now.

If that doesn’t alarm you, you aren’t paying attention.

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“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.” Ayn Rand

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We are at a tipping point. The point at which the weight shifts and everything crashes down one way or the other.  In fact, the rancor in Washington DC over the 2011 AND 2012 budgets is because both Democrats and Republicans realize we are at this point.

On the right, the Tea Party movement came about because an awful lot of people who are usually too busy to be involved realize that our country’s debt is completely unsustainable.  They believe drastic action is necessary to avert economic disaster.

On the left, people who depend on government, from employees to recipients of government handouts to foreign heads of state with hat in hand are adamant that spending must go up, ever upward. The Democrats are counting on the weight of the dependent class to tip things in their favor.

Never mind the 2011 budget, since the fiscal year is half over, and if Congress doesn’t make a deal, there could be shutdowns every other month.  The Republican-led House Budget Committee’s 2012 budget for the next 10 years is being roundly condemned for cutting $6 trillion compared with previous budgets.  It should be pointed out that spending still goes UP in this budget, just not as much as the previous budgets.

There is also a Tea Party Caucus proposal that cuts more than $9 trillion and balances the budget by 2020.  Neither this proposal nor the official committee product are expected to survive the Senate vote.  This raises several questions:

1. If we can cut $9 trillion, almost a trillion a year, how much are we spending, for Pete’s sake?
2. If the official budget proposal only cuts $6 trillion, how long will IT take to balance the budget and will I live to see it?
3. If cutting $9 trillion takes 9 years to get us even, how long will the Democrats’ plan take?

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So the Federal government spent eight times what it took in in revenue during March! But Nancy Pelosi says if we cut anything from the budget, seniors and children will starve. Seniors and children are outraged!!!! Not about budget cuts but that Nancy Pelosi thinks they are so incompetent that they will starve without government money!

Pelosi’s outburst was prompted by Wisconsin Congressman and House Budget Director Paul Ryan’s proposed budget for 2012, which cuts government spending by several trillion (with a “T”) dollars over several years.

I haven’t had time to see the details of the budget, since I work for a living, but in view of the extreme fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama and the Democrat-led Congress, which only needed two years to double the national debt that took almost 250 years to accumulate, you’d think some some cutting would make sense.

Earth to Nancy:  when you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING!

Common sense is completely lost on Washington DC.  Even liberals have to live their daily lives conservatively.  If they don’t they’ll wind up homeless, in jail or at least in an episode of “Cops”.  But apparently Washington, DC is like some parallel universe, where none of the rules apply.  Lollipops grow in manicured beds, the Potomac flows green with hundred dollar bills and the pigeons poop Susan B. Anthony dollars.

Could someone please STOP THE INSANITY?!

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