Mar

2

Congress agreed on “pay as you go.” Find and cut 10 billion dollars in items in the current budget and pass the bill.

Feb

21

Have you ever noticed that? I do all the time. Bother you? Bothers me. Lots of catchy slogans, lots of hyperbole, but hardly ever does one hear it directly quoted.

Why is that?

Could it be that most folks have never read it?

Could it be that they have read it and realize that they cannot use the constitution to support their own positions?

Why is it?

Curious? …I am.

Here is quote from the constitution:

“Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States”

I would like to offer a few points here.

For those that claim that our Federal Income Tax is unconstitutional because of issues concerning apportionment.  Note that section 8 authorizes “Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” be collected for the purpose of paying its debts. But, it only mentions “Duties, Imposts and Excises ” needing to be uniform. It purposely excludes the word taxes.

Next point, section 8 authorizes Congress the power to collect revenues for not only our defense, but also for the “general welfare” of the United States. We have a healthcare system that in the last 20 years doubled expenditures when weighed against GDP.

We have insurance companies that have dropped over 2 million US Citizens from covereage. We have young people and other reckless citizens that refuse to buy healthcare but do not think twice about showing up at an ER knowing they must be care for in some way. Frankly, I want to blame the insurance companies. I really do. But, they are involved in a for profit business. The less they dole out in expenditures (our care) the more profit they make. That is their charter.

How is this problem not related to the “general welfare” of the Untied States?

You may not agree on the solution, but share with me an area of the constitution that will make your case that healthcare reform is in violation of the constitution. I just have cited you section 8 which unless you are a total bullshit artist and spin-meister (The name Dick Armey comes to mind) is in direct support of healthcare reform. This section also justifies single payor and even a complete takeover of healthcare by our government. This is not something I would be in favor of. But our constitution supports it.

Finally, I would suggest all you folks out there pick up and read our constitution. You will find that many of your positions are quite baseless when trying to tie them directly to the constitution.

Finally, section 8 says, and I quote… ”Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”…

Hmmmmmm, “to pay the Debts.”

Maybe you could all quit the talk about bloodshed and revolution. The constitution also has provisions for dealing with idiots like you. If you have something that our government is doing that is unconstitutional then I am with you 100%…

Maybe some of you could become rationale again and we could start to have a meaningful dialog about how we are running up debt for things we really do not need, and that we are paying for it with debt. I believe in this we may have actually stumbled across something that is unconstitutional.

Like say… giving the American public a tax cut for 7 years that had to be financed through debt from other countries.

 

 

Feb

8

The Federal Reserve and the Banks are keeping Americans from being able to save. I recently got a “act quick” from Ameritrade. If I put $25,000 into a CD I could get 2.2%. Whoah, where do I sign-up.

Current savings rates for accounts under $10,000 are between 1.2 and 1.4%.

Inflation is currently over 5%. Putting your money into a savings account at these rates is not really an option. Given the volitility of the stock market I would not recommend putting your money there unless you have time to pay very close attention to it (which I have been doing, and it has been a fair amount of work.)

What are you supposed to do?

Well, if you have credit card debt start paying it off. With interest rates at outrageous levels (even for folks with good credit) paying off this debt is really a good investment.

Pay down your mortgage. Make payments towards the principle. Doing this can save you a ton of money.

Think about creating a pantry with a few months of food staples that you can rotate through. With rising food prices this is not a bad investment at the moment.

You can buy Series I savings bonds which are paying 3.36%.

Keep in mind it is always good to have a few months of living expenses in the bank. Just do not expect to get much of a return on that money.

 

Jan

22

Their bonus pool is only 16.2 billion dollars. Yes, only a paltry $16,200,000,000 dollars for the year. We need you to sing Fergie, Bono, Ms. Crow. We need to raise some cash for these poor souls.

We have become numb to numbers to the point that they have no meaning to us any more, so let me put this in perspective for you. According to yahoo (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GS) they have 35,500 employees. That bonus pool works out to $456,338 dollars per employee. Given old Lloyd and his top cronies will be getting a few hundred million of that it is safe to say that the mailroom and the admin pool will be getting stiffed.

To further put this in perspective, with the median household income around $55,000 this bonus pool represents 294,545 families in America. The 10 billion we gave these ziff-bags in TARP money could have been used to put 285,000 Americans to work at a decent wage for a year.

What exactly does Goldman Sachs do to contribute to America?

Well, they do make a contribution to our economy. For one they took risky, reckless real estate loans, packaged them up and sold them as securities, and then had balls so big they also bought hedges against the manure they sold.

Not only did they make money selling this crap to institutional investors dumb enough to buy them, they also make billions (with a B) when our economy almost went over the cliff. In fact, some of the TARP money we gave to AIG went to payoff these vile scumbags.

This is capitalism? This is so far beyond Antionette telling the poor “to eat cake” it is not even funny. Each day I dig a little deeper into the cess-pool that corporations have become the more I realize that socialism is alive and well. Socialism for the the rich that is.

Where art thou Robin Hood? 

 

Jan

20

In 7 of the 8 years Bush was in office we received a tax cut. Since I do want to spark civil unrest I will not even tell you what people with incomes over 100,000 got out of the deal (much more than the numbers you see below).

My source for this information is 100% solid. I used the IRS Tax Tables to determine this information. If you think I am snowing you, Google and look for yourself. They are readily available on the net.

If you were married with a total income of $25,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $2.80 a month.

If you were married with a total income of $50,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $7.55 (1.1%) a month. 

If you were married with a total income of $95,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $39.55 (2.8%) a month. 

Share with me how those numbers increased the quality of your life? As I said, these are not B.S. numbers, they are straight out of the tax tables you and I use to file our taxes.

So, what did this cost us? [This is where Macro and Micro are worlds apart]

The Bush tax cuts will cost the American Public $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt. The tax cuts were DEBT FINANCED! China I believe covered most of the costs.

 

Jan

6

We recently purchased a new car. Our credit is good. I had no doubt walking in that we would be approved and we were. If your credit is good you can borrow money.

Banks have begun lending to people and businesses that are a good credit risk. This is a good thing. People in debt are paying off their debts. This is a very good thing. Savings rates which were actually zero have dramatically gone up in the past 14 months. This is actually a good thing as banks are allowed to loan money based upon a multiplier (this is called leverage) based upon the deposits they have on  hand.  Manufacturing is up which is a good thing.

They call all this capitalism, something we have failed to practice in the last decade. 

On the flip-side. Most the banks have paid the government TARP money back. They have done this based upon these 0 interest rate loans that they invested back into the stock market that is now up. Unfortunately they still are holding many of these stocks. If the market takes another dip, guess what? We are back in the same boat.

The behavior of wall street is still reckless. We still have a mortgage crisis in both the commercial and residential sectors. This is not so good. We need to kick some ass and take names on this front.

We are still fighting and paying for two wars, this is not good.

Government deficits are out of control with no end in sight. To add to this we are between a rock and hard place in the respect that to get out of this mess for the next few years we need to keep spending more than we have. This is not good.

The biggest challenge we face is medicare and medicade expenditures. This is why healthcare reform is so damn important. The Democrats less the blue-dogs holding the party hostage actually have the 51 votes in Congress to pass real reform that will help us reign in costs in both the short term and for the future. Unfortunately the Democrats are too stupid to use reconciliation. They say doing so would take to long. Hmmmmmm, you mean like the Republicans did to you to get through tax cuts during the Bush administration when we were running two wars. They seemed to be able to do it pretty quick. For those of you with short memories Dick “Lucifer” Cheney cast the deciding vote to break the 50-50 deadlock. Hmmmmm, Tea-party people where was your outrage back then on this?

To be fair here are the republicans that voted no.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine,
Gordon Smith of Oregon,
Mike DeWine of Ohio and
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Voting no on a tax cut in the midst of running two wars, low unemployment, and huge federal deficits is beyond insane. These five did the right thing. Three are out of office now. That was their reward. Only the Maine Senators remain. Obviously Maine has their head screwed on straight. Maybe when we stop voting people out of office for doing the hard but right thing more of our elected officials will be inclined to do the right thing.

Anyone that tells you that they are going to increase spending and lower taxes and it will all balance out is an idiot. Anyone that thinks that makes sense is an idiot. Maybe it is time that we stop listening to idiots.

Out #1 immediate priority is to drop unemployment back to pre meltdown levels. This will require more deficit spending but is needed. On the day we accomplish this the next priority is to have a tax increase that affects every American making more than the poverty level.

Yes, a tax increase!

We also need to cut federal spending and to take the excess and pay down our debt owned to foreign nations. The only way we are going to pull this off is to give the president line item veto like Clinton had. He was able to have 4 years of budget surpluses. It worked back then it will work again. He was the last president since Eisenhower that had budget surpluses.

It is time to pull our heads out and quit living on fantasy island. I am completely aligned with the tea-party on this one. But this includes all Americans and all of our elected officials irrespective of political party.

Once we pull our collective heads out many of you could go out to your vehicles and scrape off the bumper sticker that says “We are spending are children inheritance.”

Spending tomorrows money today screws future generations. It is not funny. It is selfish. It is immoral. Knock it off.

Dec

8

The AP reported that Consumer Credit fell by 3.51 billion in October. They went on to report that demand for revolving credit fell 9.3%. But, the number is even better as auto loans are included in this category and actually rose by 2.6%. Revolving credit has fallen for the past 13 months. (Source: NY Times Dec 8th, page B7)

The report implied that this trend could be a problem to the economy recovering I about fell over. Are you kidding?

Americans, you need to be commended for paying down your debt. Spend what you make and nothing more. In fact, you are saving more and this too is a good thing, as Banks actually get to loan X number of dollars based on the $$$ of deposits they have on hand. So actually, savings is good for our recovery!!!

While we are not close to being out of the woods, and I still think something smells funny with the banks , but, lets take a quick inventory of the good.

Last October we were in the face of a complete and total meltdown of the economy. At that time your government, both parties, stepped up to the plate and took steps to stop the bleeding.

After the Obama election our President and the Democratic party have continued working on this matter. Much work is still left, but…

- We have received back 500 billion of the 700 billion in TARP money.
- Americans are saving more
- Americans are shedding debt that is bad (credit cards!)

Our government has done what was needed to help a complete meltdown. Now, hopefully they will reapply this TARP money to stimulate job growth in meaningful and enduring ways, like building up green infrastructure and investing in education. Frankly the government has acted far more like capitalists than our captains of business and industry. Hopefully big business they will continue to become more responsible with their balance sheets.

The road to change is about being fiscally responsible, from the government down to each one of us. We have a long way to go, but we must continue this pattern of behavior in sustaining ways.

If we can get people back to work, we can soon begin paying down our deficit again, which if you recall President Clinton started doing during his administration.

Good work America. Keep it up.

Nov

17

This is a question for forty million of you out there.

What would you do without medicare?

“Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day…we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Ronald Reagan spoke these words in 1961 for a public service ad against medicare.

Now this question is for 45 million of you…

What would your quality of life be without social security?

In 1935 Sen. Bennett Clark of Montana proposed an amendment that would have enabled employers to opt out of Social Security if they had pension plans offering more generous benefits than Social Security. By the way, Clark was a Democrat.

“The Clark Amendment was developed by a group of insurance lobbyists under the leadership of Walter Forster, of the insurance brokerage firm of Towers, Perrin, Forster and Crosby, and introduced by Senator Clark as an amendment to the Administration’s bill while it was under consideration in the Senate Finance Committee.”

(Source: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/clarkamend.html)

Seems some things never change. Sometimes smart people are wrong.

This is the for all us. Next time you are driving on an interstate imagine what American life would be like had Eisenhower not enacted the  “Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.” Ike was a Republican.

As you look around at our crumbling national infrastructure, as you watch people oppose Obama’s ambitious plans to revitalize our energy grid, build up our infrastructure, and call him a socialist and compare him to Hitler think about what your lives would be like had our earlier leaders not had the foresight to create the SSA, Medicare, or our national interstate highways.

Think hard about these things.

Apr

22

Commercial: CITI
“If you are stuggling to make payments your credit card is here to help”

Who exactly are these jokers talking to?

Those of us that do not use credit card all that much?

–or–

The people that have a problem with credit they fed more and more credit to for years and now have jacked up their rates to over 30%?

Many people that carry balances have found their credit line slashed (not such a bad thing) and their monthly interest rates raised above 30%.

Credit card companies have a captive audience they can now feed upon like loan sharks for awhile. These organizations screwed you by providing you access to cheap credit. Now they are screwing you by charging you massive interest.

What does 30% interest look like on a 10,000 balance?

If you plan on paying off the card in 36 months it looks like this:
Monthly Payment: $424.52
Interest Paid: $5,287.57

Back when you had a 12% rate it would have cost you $332.14 a month to pay off the balance over three years.

If you continue to make the minimum monthly payment (4% per month on the unpaid balance) here is what that looks like
Payment Period: 10 years
Interest Paid: $13,949.00
Balance still owed after 10 years: $1630.60

You monthly payment at $10,000 is $400.00. The balance declines each month. But, the credit card company is counting on you to continue using your card to keep the balance at or around $10,000.

A serious question for you…

Are your planning on no longer using your card?

Welcome to financial slavery.

It is time to cut up those cards and start paying them off. If you can trasnfer the balance to a lower interest card do so. But pay it off. Even if you can get a 20% rate it will only cost you $371.64 to pay it off over 4 years. That saves you a bit over $50 a month.

You will find more information and a link to a free Excel spreadsheet you can use to figure out how to get out of credit card debt.
http://www.everydollarmatters.com/your_debt.php

 

Mar

9

For the past ten years we have deregulated business to the point that it drove us into the current crapper we are now all flushing in.

Greed and stupidity at unprecendented levels lead us into this mess. Companies “too big to fail” really are too big to fail. The only real alternative is government intervention.

The question is what type of government intervention…

A) Give billions more to the “good ‘ol boy” numbskulls that got us into this mess.

B) Take over these “Too big to Fail” companies and throw the bastards out and clean up their mess.

It would be much cheaper to buy the common stock of these failing companies and choose option B. I think this would make most Americans feel more confident about the direction we are headed.

Obama Administration, show some stones and make it happen. The American people are behind you.

— keep looking »

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