Quote of the Day: Ted Cruz (R-Tx)

Let me be clear, I do not support default on the debt and we should never default on the debt and the only players who are threatening to default are President Obama and Harry Reid. This is an issue, and earlier in the show you played the President threatening default. In any given month tax revenue are 200 billion and interest is 30 or 40 billion. There is it plenty of revenue to service the debt and any responsible President would’ve stood at that podium and said ‘whatever happens with the debt ceiling, we will always pay our debt. We’ll never default on the debt’ and the reason the President isn’t doing that is he’s trying to scare people and raise the specter of financial apocalypse.” – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Fox News Sunday 1/6/12

It’s good to hear some common sense coming from a politician.

Advertisement

Book Review: The Coming Revolution By Dr. Richard Lee

Today I am reviewing “The Coming Revolution: Signs from America’s Past That Signal Our Nation’s FutureBy Dr. Richard Lee”. Up front I will say that I have been a fan of several other books written by Dr Lee. He brings a strong biblical view to American history. So I was excited to read this book and see what Dr Lee had to say about current events.

From page one you get the sense that this book is a hand book for the modern conservative Tea Party movement that has swept across America since 2009. With the ever increasing national Debt and the increased feeling of being ignored by our leaders in Washington, the conservative majority in America has become active in our political process once again and this book shows how it parallels what happened during the first American Revolution.

I would recommend this book for anyone that would like to learn a little about American history, get a look into where the modern Tea Party movement gets it’s foundation and why many are worried that we are nearing a point that changing politicians may not be enough to right things. Thankfully it is not too late at this time to make change through our political process and this book explains why.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Open Letter to PolitiFact:

Hello,

On the White House website ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/fiscal ) it states:

Cut the deficit in half by the end of the President’s first term.
On January 20, 2009, the President inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit. The President has put forth a budget that will halve this deficit by the end of his first term, bring non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of GDP since 1962.

I have attached a screen print of the Website for your convenience.

All though it is a fact the President made this pledge, it is also true that he has not done this. In fact, the deficit during his time his office has gone up each year and his latest budget proposal only brings it down to where it was when he took office.

(I can’t wait to see if they acknowledge this email in anyway)

History repeating itself.

Let me introduce you to a man named Herbert Hoover. As the 31st President of the United States of America he is often listed as one of the worst our country has ever had. Why would he be looked at so poorly? Two words, Great Depression. 8 months after taking Wall street handed the new President the worst economic disaster our country has ever had and it was how he handled that disaster that made President Hoover known as one of our worst presidents.

So what did he do so wrong? There were several landmark policies that Hoover championed as the best solutions to end the depression.

First he believed in public works projects and infrastructure stimulus. Ever hear of the “Hoover Damn”? Hoover asked congress for millions of dollars (because they did not think in billions back then) to build the power generating damn. Yes that damn has provided Nevada and other states with electricity but the jobs created by that projected did nothing to end the great depression.

Secondly he raised taxes on the top tax bracket from 25% to 63%. Yes the top rate was at 25% during one of the largest economic booms in American history, the roaring 20s, so Hoover thought it would be a good idea to raise the top tax rate at the beginning of the great depression. How did that one work out?

Thirdly, if taxing the evil rich didn’t work maybe his plan to increase corporate taxes should have worked. Nope.

Wait a moment, I am having a sense of deja vu here. Hasn’t this been the DNC plan to deal with the current recession? Infrastructure, tax teh rich and tax corporation has been the campaign chants of the DNC. How is that working out? About as good as it did for Hoover.

Yes, there where other policies that did not help, the most obvious was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Oh wait, President Obama has been championing “The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act” that will impose a tariff on China, one of the top owners of US debt.

Will President Obama be remembered as Hoover 2.0? Of course not, because Hoover didn’t have support through out academia for his policies to the level Obama does. The media of the time did not give Hoover a free pass while doing nothing but going after anyone that opposes him. President Obama will be sugar coated for history.

Don’t let the truth be ignored. The DNC is repeating all the mistakes of pass presidents, we need to get on the right direction before it is too late.

The Free Market at Work.

Even inAmerica, where the free market has not been allowed in almost a century, we see glimpses of how it works. In a free market the public decides the fate of businesses, they decide the fate of fads and they decide what the best policies for businesses to have are. How does the public do this? With their wallets.

If you do not like the way Nike treats its workers, don’t buy their shoes. Unhappy with GE shipping jobs over seas, don’t buy their appliances. Disappointed with the coverage your insurance agency offers, go to a competitor. The free market is the only way you can have freedom of choice.

In a socialist Democracy, our progressive friends think it is better to have politicians step in and tell businesses what they can and can’t do. So how has that been working in the banking industry lately?

Most people have heard of the new debit card fee Bank of America was planning on charging their customers, I say was because yesterday they announced they where canceling their plans to implement the fee.

I would like to look at two questions. First, why did they consider charging the fee and secondly, why did they cancel.

The first part of the question is up for debate but I feel there is enough evidence to suggest that the fee was introduced to cover the loss of revenue when the Dodd-Frank bill limited the amount of money banks could charge merchants for the use of the debit card charging system. So government intervenes and we get left paying the bill.

The second question is much easier to answer, the free market dictated to the banks that the policy was not going to work. Customers of Bank of America told the bank that they rejected the new fee by pulling out their money and going to other banks and/or credit unions. BoA has since see the error of their policy and have made a change to benefit their customers, WITH OUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. Of course there are politicians saying that “we need a law that restricts what fees banks can charge for debit card use”, but this is foolish. The free market can control those fees, we the people control those fees with out relinquishing power to a politician to do it for us.

I hope the junior socialists of the Democratic party and the progressives learn from this lesson. The free market is the only system that allows the people to have freedom.

WSJ: “The about-face represents a concession to customer sensitivities over fees. Banks have been adding charges in an attempt to make up for billions of dollars in revenue that is expected to vanish as a result of new restrictions on credit cards, debit cards and overdraft policies. A provision in last year’s Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law halved the amount that banks can charge merchants for accepting debit cards.”

Progressives use jealousy as a political tool

I am getting sick and tired of the lunatic left using jealousy as a tool to motivate voters. The “class war” being waged by the left is sad and irrelevant.

So often we hear the rant that “The growth in the income of the rich far exceeds the middle class”. First notice that they always focus on the middle class and ignore the plite of the lower class. Second, who cares how much the “rich” are making. The progressives fail to understand that the American free market economy creates wealth. Those with money have opportunity to grow their wealth by creating new wealth, they do not need to take it from some mythical lower class. If you want to see an economic system that requires the wealthy to take from the poor to increase their wealth, look at communist Russia or Socialist Germany.

Anyways,  over at Reason.org Anthony Randazzo wrote a great article address Paul Krugman’s attempt at class warfare. Enjoy: (source)

Paul Krugman must have been channeling some Sun Tzu with his Art of War inspired feign of innocence at the start of his column last week, claiming that the Presidentially popularized phrasing of the rich paying their “fair share” in society today—an idea that Mr. Krugman strongly advocates—is not class warfare. After the diplomatic argument that really, there is no war being fought by his side, he then proceed to engage in a full on mortar strike in the class war that is raging right now and that progressives have been waging for decades.

Specifically, Krugman argues:

detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

A simple question in response: So what? Is the growth of the middle class so slow that they are living in squalor or with poor living standards? Why should I care if the rich made such a dramatically higher amount of money than I do? It doesn’t take away from me, who is in the top 25 percent of income earners. There is not a fixed economic pie, it is constantly expending and we can all get a slice. My rich neighbor getting a bigger slice doesn’t impact the size or taste of my slice.

Even worse though is the contention towards the end of Mr. Krugman’s column that betrays the real value position which separates progressives from libertarians:

Now, I know how the right will respond to these facts: with misleading statistics and dubious moral claims…

On the other side, we have the claim that the rich have the right to keep their money — which misses the point that all of us live in and benefit from being part of a larger society.

WHAT?!

Far be it for us to defend the rights of any and all taxpayers to keep what belongs to them. Property rights so often get in the way of a few elites trying to construct society in their own vision of it.

Backing down to earth, there is the fair point that in the midst of our national and global social contract we depend on each other for economic development. Few are the businessmen who manufacture everything necessary to run their companies. Everyone relies to some extent on others, as Leonard Read spelled out in his famous essay, “I, Pencil.”

So the businessman is dependent on suppliers and innovators of other technology to help his profit. And he is dependent on consumers to buy his product. The consumer is dependent on the businessman to provide a product in demand. And the suppliers are dependent on the businessman to buy their equipment. This is all easily observed.

What does not follow from this is the contention that, because a social contract binds all of this together, the collective have a claim on the resources of the wealthy few. By this logic, since we are all dependent on each other, why does the collective not have a claim on the resources of everyone else in society?  (If only such a system had a name.) Put another way, in Krugman’s social contract, how does one define the limits of the government’s claim on the resources of the wealthy to fund its activities?

Raising taxes on the “rich” will not solve the problem.

Recently President Obama dredged up his same old campaign speech about the “rich” needing to pay their fare share. Of course, after finding out that too many Americans that make over $250k/year vote, he is now looking to attack those that make over a million a year.

Ok, I throw in the towel. We should give the Democrats all the tax increase they are asking for and more. We should tax all income over $1million/year at 100%. I guess everything will be sunshine and roses after that, right? Wrong.

Lets look at the income tax numbers of 2009, mainly because that is the last year available. If we took every penny of income earned by Americans over $1million in 2009 the IRS would have collected almost $184 billion.

So let me ask all those brilliant Democrats, progressives, liberals, socialists or whatever you want to be called… what about the other $1,400,000,000 in deficit spending?

Now back to reality. First, it would be unAmerican to tax anyone at 100% no matter what FDR said when he tried it. Don’t forget the fact that if the Democrats raised the taxes as much as they wanted to people would leave America in droves and millions more would be unemployed.

Secondly, raising revenue through taxes will not solve the problem of our out of control federal budget. We need real significant cuts to spending if we want to ever see a growing economy in this country again.

So cut the spending, then we can raise revenue to meet the needs of a growing economy. Besides, if you cut spending and the economy starts to flourish, we will see increase revenue through economic growth… as it is intended to happen.

Today is Wednesday September 21st 2011 and it is not too late to fix it. I don’t know if I will be able to say that tomorrow so don’t wait.

This bears repeating…

This a wonderful blog that I read regularly called ” Craig Steiner, u.s. Common Sense American Conservatism “. I recommend this blog to everyone.  Well, back on September 6th he posted an amazing article titled “Hoping for an Impossible Recovery” and I want to just report it here in hopes that others will see it and read when Mr Steiner had to say:

The economic news from day to day is like reading a schizophrenic reporting of reality.

Markets engage in a triple-digit rally because Hurricane Irene wasn’t as damaging as hyped.  Or pundits claim that a strong month of car sales are driving away fears of a double-dip recession (even though the same article indicates such spending is unsustainable with high unemployment).  There is celebration in the markets when second quarter housing prices come in higher than expected  despite the fact that there are millions of homes either in or near foreclosure, and despite the fact that the second quarter’s sale prices were actually down year-over-year. Some days the market goes up because, allegedly, investors are thinking Europe isn’t as bad as was thought. Other days the markets are down on “renewed concern” over Europe’s situation.

By reading economic news, one would think the economy is slowly moving away from the financial crisis of 2008.

The truth is that absolutely nothing is changing in our economy on a day to day basis. Whether it be a tsunami in Japan or a hurricane on the eastern seaboard–or even an earthquake in Washington DC–nothing has changed economically in any significant way.

In fact, the only change since September 2008 is that things have gotten worse.

Our federal government is closer to bankruptcy, as are many of our states, counties, and cities.

Our unemployment rate is higher than it was when Obama was elected, and appears to be going higher.

We have millions of homes in or near foreclosure, and many which are abandoned and falling into disrepair, yet construction companies continue to build new homes,

Obama’s stimulus failed to create jobs. So did QE1. And QE2. The Keynesian’s are out of tricks.

Even as Social Security enters deficit territory we’ve created a new unfunded entitlement with Obamacare.

Around the world, individual debts became too much so they were unloaded on banks. The debt of the banks then became too much so they were bailed out and unloaded on the taxpayers. And now sovereign debt is too much and countries are collapsing and the United States has been downgraded.

The reality is that what the unemployed feel–that the recession never really ended–is completely true. Sure, it may have ended from a strictly statistical measure of GDP. But employment never recovered and–just as importantly–the root causes of the financial crisis have never been addressed.

We’re not just going to wake up one morning and find that the economy has gotten better for no apparent reason. A month of good car sales or a quarter of increased home prices are just blips on the economic radar. As long as we continue to ignore the fundamental problems in our economy, there’s no need to get excited about occasional good economic news. It’s nothing more than statistical noise.

The state of our economy will not significantly change until we change our economic policies.

Instead of trying to prevent housing prices from falling, we need to let them fall and find their bottom. Instead of stopping foreclosures, we need to foreclose on homes as quickly as possible and get it over with. Instead of pumping up the stock market with QE1 and QE2, we need to let the market find its true value. Instead of trying to convince consumers to spend more money to spark economic activity, we need to encourage them to complete the process of deleveraging and fixing their balance sheets. Instead of getting in the way of corporate bankruptcies, we need to let those companies fail.

None of these things will be pleasant, but they are absolutely necessary before there can be any expectation of a true, solid recovery. And since none of these policies will be implemented as long as Obama is president, it is extremely unlikely there will be any recovery before he leaves office.

Until then, we’re simply hoping for an impossible recovery.

Recovery doesn’t need to be impossible. But it is impossible given the policies of President Obama.

Original Source

What I suggest…

Our national debt is an anchor keeping our economy from growing. Does anyone disagree with that? So what do we do about it?

Like any shop-aholic we can not ask Washington to quit cold turkey, look how they are freaking out over the debt ceiling debate. But like any shop-aholic we can not give Washington an unlimited credit card. So I propose that we grant the federal government an increase in the national debt ceiling. Wait, don’t start throwing tea bags at me yet, listen to the stipulations I would place on that increase. I would allow congress to raise the debt ceiling with two stipulations:

1. No new spending until the budget is balanced.
2. A debt ceiling reduction schedule.

My point one is necessary because Washington can not take a rise in the debt ceiling as an opportunity to create new spending programs that will continue to drive our economy in to the ground. I think this is a nice barrier to put in the way of an over grown federal government while allow us to meet out debt obligations.

The second point is necessary because it would create a timeline to get our debt under control. I would say lowering the debt ceiling by $1 trillion a year until it is down to $0 starting in 2014. This gives the federal government time to clean up its books and stop borrowing more money before they are forced to start paying back the outstanding debt we have. There would be some fine print that restricts the raising of income taxes, but would allow closing tax loop holes that favor corporations and unions.

This plan accomplishes two things, it forces the federal government to balance the budget and to payback our debt. Could you image the strong economy we would have if we have no federal debt and a balanced budget? You can not even dream about the level of growth and prosperity we would see as a nation if we did.

Now is the time to go through the pain of 20 years of reducing government spending until we get to a balanced budget a zero debt. Tomorrow is the time for prosperity, tomorrow is for out children and grandchildren, tomorrow could be a brighter future if only we are willing to act like adults and be responsible with the federal government TODAY.

Why do progressives miss the big picture?

I read an interesting article about the failed stimlus, you know.. the one the progressives said was not big enough.

On Friday the white house published a report about the performance of the stimulus and it made me want to cry. First tehy state it “saved or created” 2.4 million jobs. All though I think there number gathering system is deeply flawed, lets give them their number for this exercise.

The report then claims to have only cost the American tax payers $666 billion dollars, for the Christians in the house that is a fitting number for this pork bill.

So lets do the math, that means that the Democrats spent $278,000 / per job, and then they still have the gull to say they needed to spend more. We could have simply cut checks for $100,000 for each job they claim to have “saved ro created” and the American tax payers would have still spent $427 billion less.

Government, the biggest waste of money ever thought of.

 

(source article)