· Limit Congress persons to not more than 2 terms (never vote for an incumbent – they have all been corrupted by the DC system. The longer in office, the more corrupt.)
· Prohibit Congressmen from voting for their own pay raises. Since when did any of us get to tell our employer how much he was going to pay us? (Did you know that Hillary’s appointment to Secretary of State, Daschle’s as Secretary of HSS, Salazar as Secretary of Interior, Solis as Labor and LaHood as Secretary of Transportation are all illegal? The constitution specifically states that any Congressman who voted to raise the pay of any civil service position, is not eligible for that position. As senators or representatives they all voted for civil service pay raises. [No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased [sic] during such time: and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
US Constitution Article 1, Section 6.] Remember. Barack Obama will be swearing to protect and defend this constitution on 1/20/2009. Selective, and politically convenient defending and protecting? What's up with that?
· Stop paying for law-makers high-priced insurance premiums. Congressmen are part-time employees. They just might legislate some improvements to the insurance industry if they actually had to purchase their own and deal with the claims process.
· We need to eliminate the Congressional pension system. They qualify for 100% retirement after just one tour of duty. Talk about privilege. They are utterly out of touch with the real retirement world. NO ONE else in this country has that level of security which puts them that much more out of touch with their constituents. We have almost nothing in common with them since they have taken the authority to isolate themselves from the “real” world in which we all live.
· Make Congress pay into the social security system. They make the laws for it, they should be participants in it. If they were dependent on it like everyone else, it might actually be solvent.
· Stop handing out aid to ILLEGAL aliens. If we did, there would be enough for Medicaid and the food stamp program for American citizens, without inflationary money printing.
· Secure our borders. At some point our economy will recover and the influx of illegal border jumpers will increase again.
· Amendment 14 was created to protect the citizenship of former slaves, not create an anchor-baby back door to citizenship. Eliminate that loophole.
· Stop the abuse of our welfare system. We feed children 3 meals a day from age 5 to 17. Charitable organizations give away good, clean clothes, companies collect , and donate school supplies. Hospital emergency rooms provide complete health care, at tax payer expense, for illegal residents and uninsured citizens. What are parents doing for their children? What is Congress doing to correct these issues?
· With all of the money being spent on investigative processes by Homeland Security, certainly an automated cross check of Social Security Numbers against IRS records, Medicaid, Medicare, SSI, and other programs could to wonders to track down fraud and abuse of benefit programs.
· Since virtually all mortgage loans are, eventually, government related, establish guidelines that prohibit any lender from approving a mortgage to a borrower who does not qualify, or make the originating lender keep that loan as their own investment.
· CEO and Senior management pay is out of control. It is time to put a stop to the ridiculous compensation packages paid to executives. To preserve free enterprise, offer a board of directors the option of paying it out of their own pockets.
· NO “photo” ID should ever be issued to anyone who’s face is covered, regardless of their religious affiliation.
This opinion owes large thanks to Norma White, Amarillo, TX for her significant and involuntary contribution to this document. If I was getting paid, I would have to send it to her.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Are we there yet?
$350,000,000,000 (Three-hundred and fifty Billion Dollars) was handed off to a baking industry who has no conscience and is motivated almost completely by greed and power hunger. It was handed over with no “oversight”, no strings and no “transparency”. Now we are all left asking wheredit-go? When asked the banks respond with “we don’t know”; “none of your business”; “Keeping track of the money was not part of the deal.”
Bush and Paulson talked us (Congress) out of this money, because everyone is in panic mode, and then just pissed it away. The idea of this money to the banks was to loosen credit by creating liquidity; Get under-performing “toxic” assets off the bank’s balance sheets and replace them with high quality US Treasury assets. The government would take those bad assets, restructure, rework or season them into performing assets, then liquidate them to repay itself. Simple.
The problem is they did this deal with the greediest group of con men in history and they got taken, probably with malice and forethought. I can’t even imagine how much of that money is now in off-shore bank accounts. Their grandkids will have plenty of money to pay back their share. My only advice to them is to remember, somewhere in eternity, the wheel comes full circle and you will be faced with a payback. I just pray to God that I can be there to see it.
I know, Paulson’s real plan, was to have the big boys use that money to buy all of the shaky, failing mid-size banks that could have eventually bankrupted the FDIC. Everybody wins. The entrenched beaurocracy digs in deeper (click to image: large blood-filled tick on a dog’s ear – with chorus – “eeeeuuu”), the big banks get bankier, and all at the expense of that bottomless pit, the tax payers who are too stupid to figure it out. Somebody got paid! We may never know who, but somebody, besides the bankers, got paid!
The bank exectives took the money and bought more banks, subsidized their stock holdings, and entrenched their hold on their own institutions. The idiot beaurocrats (Paulson, Bush & Congress) actually thought these guys would use the money to benefit the country and their own industry, without putting rules or conditions in place. Can you even imagine the stupidity of that kind of thinking? Give an addict a fix and ask him to share it? I don’t know what planet they live on, but it isn’t mine.
So that did not fix the credit liquidity issues. The auto industry can’t sell their crumby cars because nobody and get a loan from the banks, due to “lack of liquidity”. Now we have to dip into the TARP well to give money to Auto companies so they can pay their grossly bloated-wage union workers and annual executive bonuses as usual for the next couple of months. That’s right we are about to spend $15,000,000,000 (BILLION) to save the auto industry from bankruptcy for 90 days.
This did not fix the plummeting housing prices that are pillaging the only asset most of us have. This did not fix the 40% loss of all of our retirement assets while congress keeps theirs fully intact, untouched. This did not help all of the small businesses that are now laying off their staff and shutting their doors.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right [and responsibility?] of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.[1]” Are we there yet folks?
[1] Declaration of Independence
Bush and Paulson talked us (Congress) out of this money, because everyone is in panic mode, and then just pissed it away. The idea of this money to the banks was to loosen credit by creating liquidity; Get under-performing “toxic” assets off the bank’s balance sheets and replace them with high quality US Treasury assets. The government would take those bad assets, restructure, rework or season them into performing assets, then liquidate them to repay itself. Simple.
The problem is they did this deal with the greediest group of con men in history and they got taken, probably with malice and forethought. I can’t even imagine how much of that money is now in off-shore bank accounts. Their grandkids will have plenty of money to pay back their share. My only advice to them is to remember, somewhere in eternity, the wheel comes full circle and you will be faced with a payback. I just pray to God that I can be there to see it.
I know, Paulson’s real plan, was to have the big boys use that money to buy all of the shaky, failing mid-size banks that could have eventually bankrupted the FDIC. Everybody wins. The entrenched beaurocracy digs in deeper (click to image: large blood-filled tick on a dog’s ear – with chorus – “eeeeuuu”), the big banks get bankier, and all at the expense of that bottomless pit, the tax payers who are too stupid to figure it out. Somebody got paid! We may never know who, but somebody, besides the bankers, got paid!
The bank exectives took the money and bought more banks, subsidized their stock holdings, and entrenched their hold on their own institutions. The idiot beaurocrats (Paulson, Bush & Congress) actually thought these guys would use the money to benefit the country and their own industry, without putting rules or conditions in place. Can you even imagine the stupidity of that kind of thinking? Give an addict a fix and ask him to share it? I don’t know what planet they live on, but it isn’t mine.
So that did not fix the credit liquidity issues. The auto industry can’t sell their crumby cars because nobody and get a loan from the banks, due to “lack of liquidity”. Now we have to dip into the TARP well to give money to Auto companies so they can pay their grossly bloated-wage union workers and annual executive bonuses as usual for the next couple of months. That’s right we are about to spend $15,000,000,000 (BILLION) to save the auto industry from bankruptcy for 90 days.
This did not fix the plummeting housing prices that are pillaging the only asset most of us have. This did not fix the 40% loss of all of our retirement assets while congress keeps theirs fully intact, untouched. This did not help all of the small businesses that are now laying off their staff and shutting their doors.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right [and responsibility?] of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.[1]” Are we there yet folks?
[1] Declaration of Independence
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