Tea Party Hypocrasy?

One of the canards thrown at the Tea Party crowd is that we are hypocrites because while we want small government, we don't want to lose our Social Security.

No, I don't want to lose my Social Security! I've INVESTED money in my retirement for 40 years now with government coercion. Give me the money removed from my paychecks, that is supposedly sitting in some lock box, and let me deal with it. I think I could do better than the 1.23 percent.

Even with the few working years left to me, I doubt I could come out worse.

An Alternate Reason?

I was listening to Talk Radio on the way home from work this morning and they we discussing the L.A. County Supervisors vote on a boycott of Arizona.

L.A. County votes to boycott Arizona over immigration law

I suppose the only thing that surprised me was that the vote was 3-2.

It did get me thinking though. I was wondering what other reason all these cities and counties would have to protest a state trying to enforce the law?

It suddenly dawned on me that their motive might possibly be SELF PRESERVATION!!!

When this law kicks in, illegals are going to flood out of Arizona, and they ain't going back to Mexico. Where are they going to go? L.A., San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, New York, Oakland, Seattle, El Paso and Columbus. All these cities voted to boycott and put themselves on the list that the illegals are going to head for because they know they can find sanctuary there.

Kind of a double edge sword here. These cities are already quaking under the weight of paying for the amenities given out. What's going to happen when those 450,000 vacate Arizona and take up residence in their new barrio then apply for food stamps, WIC, go to the Emergency Room, ect. ? Now that they've advertised (again)that they are willing to take in people that don't pay taxes...and if you make 25K or under, you don't pay taxes...hell my kid the last time I did his returns not only got back what he paid, they decided he should get MORE back on top of that. If it was at least "Zero Sum", I might not have gotten upset, but he got a bonus thrown in. The taxes I paid got redistributed to him, plus I was getting the pleasure of providing his room and board.

The weeks around July 28th (the enactment date of SB 1070) should be interesting.

My Poor, Poor State

I really do like living in California. It's a beautiful place and I've lived here my whole life, so even living in L.A. with it's overcrowding doesn't bother me too much, it's normal for me. However the politics and government of the state/county/city has me wanting to escape at the first opportunity.

Do I Get Credit(s)

Under Cap and Trade Crap and Tax and/or the EPA diktat on reduction of Green house gases along with whatever BS they come up with in Copenhagen, would I get credit for sending my son to a different country and reducing the amount of energy used in the U.S.? Or could I get hit with an tariff from South Korea for exporting a pollutant to their country?

Could the tax credit offset the tariff, or will one be significantly higher than the other and it will cost me anyway?

If CO2 (breathing) is a greenhouse gas, am I going to have to pay a C&T tax/EPA fee on my animals? Food, water and license for them I understand and pay for willingly, but if I have to pay $100/year because they exhale...well, the dog can stay, but the cat goes...the bird...we'll see.

I Now Officially HATE This Effing State!!!

I kinda went into hibernation this last week. Five busy 12 hour shifts in a row just about did me in. I actually slept for 20 hours straight after the final (and hardest)shift.

Yesterday when I finally felt up to checking some news, this is what I run into:

California Outright Steals Worker's Money

LA Times:

Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento - Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners -- holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers' annual tax bills won't change.

Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.

These SOB's are "borrowing" my money INTEREST FREE to supposedly dig themselves out of the hole they put us in. They won't cut anything, but just keep on spending...probably adding more spending on top, and next April when I file for my refund...they'll still be broke.

I will come close to actually breaking even being whoever calculated the Kalifornia Tax Table for withholding must have graduated from a UC skool, I've always had a little extra State withholding taken out once I realized I was paying about $300 every April. I just have to cancel that extra withholding and the numbers should work out about right.

We're All Flakes In California

A lady who owns a bakery in California has two minutes to address her congresscritter:



And the Congresswoman ignored her and moved on to the next question.

Everything the Government Runs is Bankrupt!

(I tried to post this yesterday, but FoxNews can't get their embeds or links written correctly and it wasn't up on YouTube yet.)

Judge Napolitano explaining why government cannot be allowed to take over health care.

When government wants to save money, it shut down like Chicago's City Hall did yesterday.

When private enterprise wants to make more money, it works overtime.

That is going to be posted on the wall above my desk along with:

I have never been given a job by a poor person

Need a good sign for a rally you're going to try this one.

Maybe They Should Have a Different Title

Representative just doesn't seem to fit anymore.

Doggett gets chilly reception

Back in Central Texas while Congress is on a month-long recess, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett faced an angry audience at a town hall meeting at an Austin Randalls grocery store Saturday.

Doggett, D-Austin, spoke at the store at Brodie and Slaughter lanes. A video of the event on YouTube shows that many in the crowd had signs denouncing President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan.

Witnesses said that when Doggett was asked whether he would support the plan even if he found that his constituents opposed it, Doggett said he would. People then began chanting "just say no" and overwhelmed the congressman as he moved through the crowd and into the parking lot.

"The folks there thought their voices weren't being heard," said Kathy Acosta, a Bastrop resident who attended the meeting at Randalls and another one later that day in her hometown. "They were angry, but they were respectful. There wasn't any violence."

Calls and e-mails to Doggett's office were not returned Sunday

They don't address the concerns of their constituents, won't answer calls or e-mails and vote the way they want to regardless.

Czar, maybe...no being used, perhaps commissar.

Tea Party Ad

(From the info on You Tube)

This resulted from a Mom in Alabama asking her high school son to help with a commercial for the Tea Party she was involved in organizing. Boy, does it slam the message home. Very impressive.
Here is her note:
"I asked Justin if he could help me make a commercial for my group's Tea Party. He sat down at the laptop for about an hour, and then brought this to me and asked, 'is this okay, Mom?' After I finished watching it, my stomach was in my throat.
Everyone that I have sent it to has really enjoyed it, so I wanted my friends to see it. I am so proud!"
A very powerful video...turn up the sound & sit back...!!!

HT: Nice Deb

And Now For Something Completely Different

Back to Politics!

As I've mentioned before I really am an easygoing guy. I can take a lot of grief without getting ruffled. I have my values and beliefs and if you don't agree with me, I may think you're wrong, but mostly I'll turn the other cheek. If they want to be an idiot, that's their right.

However, over the last month I've HAD to listen to this ad:



Sounds great, doesn't it? Can-do Americanism!

Any time this comes on I scare my animals and the neighbors ask themselves "What the hell keeps happening over at that house?", because most people just don't remember this:



This is the real message. "You will do as we say or we're going to hit you with taxes and fees so hard you can't survive, Damn the consequences."

It doesn't matter whether the technology exists, or even if it can be developed. Doesn't matter if this "change" can be met on the bureaucrats schedule or not..we'll just punish you and reduce your income so that your R&D funds are gone. Most likely in taxes that will subsidize the "poor" (all of us after paying our utility bills) that can't afford $3/Kwh bills.

Don't consider that 70% of our electrical needs come from coal.

If you still believe that the eco-nazi's or "workers of the world" really want (or care) about "green power" read this:

Solar Energy Meets Greenies and Big Labor

A chance to go to one of their chosen power sources that will save the world...but there ain't no where they will allow it to be built.

The first problem was the squirrel, or more specifically, the Mohave ground squirrel, which is considered to be threatened. While the squirrel has never been found at the project site, nor was there any evidence it had ever lived there, it could decide sometime in the future to live there.

I may, at any moment, decide to live in Texas. Maybe I should start paying taxes and registering my car there.

Fun With Taxes

I had my Geithner moment this year.

My wife did the taxes two years ago, gave me the forms (State and Federal)to sign, and after cringing at the amount due, signed them and I thought that was over.

Last year, with my wife gone, I did the taxes. With only one income, we were getting money back (both State and Federal)for the first time since I can remember. Silly me!!!

Turns out she "neglected" to send in the checks to pay the owed taxes, so I got letters stating not only would they not rebate my overpayment, they were garnishing my wages to collect the past due amounts (plus penalties and interest).

Odd thing though, they garnished the total due (plus penalties and interest).

The State of California, finally realized what they did (overcharge me and forcibly took more money than they were "owed"), so they issued me a credit of $550 on this years taxes for their overcharge (NO interest or penalty to them).

The really fun thing about this is the State of California is broke, so being my financial situation hasn't changed, I should be getting a refund again this year, so I should get another refund of around $500, there is no money in the state treasury to pay me, so they are going to give me an IOU (no penalty or interest).

$1000 owed me by an agency, that refuses to pay me the money they owe me and there ain't squat I can do about it.

That $1000 would pay for my trip to Georgia to see my son's graduation from Boot.

The Feds have done the exact same thing. I just haven't had time to figure out how much they've screwed me for. Rough guess...about $3500.

We're Pathetic

The U.S. has become a nation of cry babies that can't deal with anything like adults.

From Mark Steyn in the OCResgister:

Our permanent state of routine emergency

In just about his last act as president, George W. Bush has declared Washington, D.C., a federal disaster area.

It's been a disaster area since it was founded, but I don't think that's what he's getting at.

No, seriously. I'm not setting up some lame-o punchline here, like we used to do a decade back in the good old Monica days: "President Clinton today declared his pants a federal disaster area," etc. What happened last week was that the Bush administration formally declared a federal emergency in the District of Columbia.

So what was it? An ice storm? A hurricane?

Do tell! What is this impending disaster?

No, it's the inauguration of his successor. The inauguration is scheduled to make landfall on Tuesday and wreak havoc all night long, as Category Five conga lines buckle highways round town, and emergency busboy crews find themselves overwhelmed as they struggle to clear drained champagne flutes. So the mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, put in a request for more federal money, and, apparently, the easiest way to sluice the cash to him no questions asked was for the president to declare a state of emergency in the District and funnel however many extra gazillions he wants through FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I don't know if anybody's ever done that," said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary.

Aaahh! I get it. This sudden, unforeseeable "disaster" is about to fall on the district, and in spite of us being told that all expenses ($150 mil worth) would come from private donations, they need more and lucky us, we get to pay for it.

They don't even have the cajones to come right out and tell us we've got to pick up this slack, they do the little sidestep, and sneak it through as disaster relief.

Indeed. One reason why nobody's ever done that before is because a presidential inauguration is not (to be boringly technical about it) an "emergency." It's penciled in well in advance – in this case, so well in advance that for years Democrats have been driving around with "1-20-09" bumper stickers on the back of their Priuses. Emergency-wise, that's the equivalent of Hurricane Dan Rather wrapped around a lamppost in his sou'wester, hanging there in eager anticipation every night for half a decade. Generally speaking, changes of government are only "emergencies" in the livelier banana republics where this week's president-for-life suddenly spots the machete-wielding mob scrambling over the palace walls so nimbly he barely has time to dial the Liberian branch of FEMA and put in a request for extra Portapotties and a rope-line management team

As far as the allusion to banana republics...we'll have to wait and see how the gathered throngs react.

The proposition that a new federal administration is itself a federal emergency is almost too perfect an emblem of American government in the 21st century. FEMA was created in the 1970s initially to coordinate the emergency response to catastrophic events such as a nuclear attack. But there weren't a lot of those even in the Carter years, so, as is the way with bureaucracies, FEMA just growed like Topsy. In his first year in office, Bill Clinton declared a then-record-setting 58 federal emergencies. By the end of the Nineties, Mother Nature was finding it hard to come up with a meteorological phenomenon that didn't qualify as a federal emergency: Heavy rain in the Midwest? Call FEMA! Light snow in Vermont? FEMA! Fifty-seven under cloudy skies in California? Let those FEMA trailers roll!

Tent...camel nose...Nobody seems to learn. Once a state or federal agency is formed, all the DDT, dynamite or penicillin in the world will ever make it go away let alone stay with the constraints it started with. It'll just morph into something bigger with more areas to cover. And it won't matter that they sucked at trying to cover their original obligations...if they get bigger, and get a larger budget, they'll provide more civil servants services.

The Cato Institute's James Bovard was struck by the plight of Vernon, Conn., a town ravaged in the winter of 1995-96 by, er, slightly more snow than they'd expected. So FEMA sent them a check for $40,023. Vernon had 30,000 people, and its town snow-removal costs that winter were $258,000. "That's just $8.60 per person," Bovard pointed out, "less than a 12-year-old charges to shovel out a driveway after a good snowfall."

OMG!!! A town in Connecticut got snow (love that Global Wormering) and it was more than they anticipated? Being rational human beings one would plan for something close to the same thing next year, right?

So why did they need "federal emergency" aid? Because the town had only budgeted $104,516, and so claimed to be "overwhelmed" by the additional costs. They could have asked the good burghers of Vernon to chip in an extra five bucks apiece. But why bother when FEMA's so eager to give you a warm bath in the federal love nectar? The town government wised up pretty quickly. The next winter, they set the snow-removal budget at just $69,383.

That's the ticket, cut the snow removal budget by 33%! If it snows this year (want to take bets on if it did?), the Feds will make up any shortfall.

So a "federal emergency" is no longer a nuclear strike on Cleveland or even a Category Three hurricane, but now a snowfall in New England and an inaugural ball at the Mayflower Hotel. As Mister Incredible shrewdly observes to his kid in "The Incredibles," when everybody's special, nobody is. Likewise, when everything's an emergency, nothing is: We live in a permanent state of routine emergency.

Anything basic that we don't want to pay for now can just be ignored, don't plan for snowfall, don't plan for mudslides (Calif.), don't expect it to get effing hot in Arizona and have a shortage of electricity to run the A/C... FEMA is there and will bail us all out.

This is just another example of "spreading the wealth". I'm in California paying for snow removal in Connecticut, and Iowa is paying for my mudslides and fire prevention. That Bush declared this POS just fries my bacon...to burnt!

The metastasization of FEMA teaches several lessons – the first and most obvious being that any new government program, agency or entitlement will always outgrow whatever narrow purpose it was created for. Which is why we small-government types are wary of creating any new ones in the first place. Thus, an itsy-bitsy bit of inconsequential government tinkering on the periphery of the mortgage market expanded to the point where federally mandated home loans to the uncreditworthy came close to collapsing not just the U.S. property market but the global financial system.

If you'd suggested in the Seventies a new federal agency to cope with municipal snow removal in Connecticut, you'd have been laughed out the room. But, with government, mission creep isn't a bug but the defining feature. In mid-September, the "bailout" was a once-in-a-lifetime emergency measure to save the planet. A mere four months later, it's the new baseline. If your congressman's lousy boondoggle has got six zeroes on the end, it's an earmark: Boooooooooo! If it's got 12 zeroes, it's a "stimulus": Hurrah!

Laugh it up fuzzball. FEMA is now willing to cover any inconvenience our elected officials decided not to budget for, that way they can supply free needles to addicts and university education to illegals. Oh, you get to pay for that too.

I'm not worried about "change" so much as creep. The Obama administration doesn't have to do anything terribly transformative – overnight socialization of health care, etc. In fact, it doesn't have to do anything at all. It could just sit there, and America would still drift remorselessly, incrementally left, inch by inch. Eventually, you reach a tipping point: At some point in the next four years, we will reach a situation where the majority of Americans pay no federal income tax but are able to vote themselves more goodies from those who do. The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions and to individual voters. And the heirs to those Connecticut town meetings that Tocqueville regarded as the best form of government ever devised by man now underbudget their snow-removal costs, secure in the knowledge that the Feds will pick up the tab.

This is beyond bad behavior, this is pathetic. My income was cut in half two years ago, but I've kept my house payments current, paid insurance, even most of my bills are paid up. I cut back on expenses and prioritized what was necessary to keep up with my obligations and try to plan for future "disaster". I doubt I'm going to get a court ordered refi on my house or any forgiveness on debts. Most likely, I'm going to be taxed higher to help those SOB's that were underqualified for a loan. Sounds fair to me.

We're now told that the problem with the last New Deal is that it was too small, so Obama's new New Deal has to be even bigger. That's like telling New Orleans that the problem is they're not far enough below sea level so they need to dig deeper. If Washington is now a federal disaster area, it would be nice to think of Barney Frank and the gang waving from the roof of the Capitol until they can be evacuated somewhere safe, like one of the outlying South Sandwich Islands or Charley Rangel's vacation property in the Dominican Republic. But, alas, Washington is one of those disaster relief cases, where they get the relief, and the rest of us get the disaster. As the incoming president has said, this is the worst crisis since …oh, at least the great Vernon, Conn., snowfall of 1996. To facilitate the stimulus, I urge him to declare every American his own individual federal disaster area.

Government does not create productivity!!!

Government may create a job, but to pay for the job they must provide the funds, The funds come from the taxpayer, who must now pay more in taxes to fund the government created job, thereby, the taxpayer, having less to spend on products depresses the economy more, causing layoffs with more people looking to the government to give them something to do (or at least pick up their bills), making the few remaining taxpayers pay more....and around and around...and around.

Obama seems to be naming a lot of "czar's" in his administration. These are people who are going to make policy on all these different facets of my life. I didn't elect them and I don't what them telling me how I have to live my life. If I can afford something, I'll use it. If I can't, then I'll adjust my lifestyle (right Mr. Gore?).

I waiting for the food police to kick in, probably shortly after they get National Health Care. I've never eaten a "good" diet, I've got too many vices that I indulge in, BUT, even though I'm way under BMI and eat what I feel like, I've had 5 sick days in the last 10 years...and I don't get paid for unused sick days. (Aside: I don't take "Metal Health" sick days, I can get sick, but it's not on a Monday or Friday.)

Anyone want to go up against that? I don't need instruction on how to live, I think I do OK.

We're a nation wussies that want someone else to cover our shortcomings, but we've forgotten that the money to do that comes from us, and the more people that want to be protected from their shortsightedness, the fewer people there are to cover their mistake(s).

As Reality Rears It's Head

Am I surprised? Not at all. That it started so quickly did.

As I've been cruising around the web the last couple of days I've noticed a consistant theme t coming out of the Obambi camp and the Dhimmi Congresscritters..."We may not be able to deliver what we promised."

Let's start with the President-elect.

Back in June 2007:

“While we’re at it,” he said, “we’re going to close Guantanamo. And we’re going to restore habeas corpus. … We’re going to lead by example _ by not just word but by deed. That’s our vision for the future.

Now that he would be the one responsible for jihadi's running around the country the message from his team:

“You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone,” said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.

How about those changes in the tax codes to redistribute money to those less fortunate lazier? Our old friend Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy has a little epiphany:

New York Representative Charles Rangel said he’s revising his tax overhaul proposal to reduce U.S. corporate tax rates to 28 percent, down from the current rate of 35 percent.

Although like most of what comes out of Rangel's mouth he leaves out the details that contradict what he just said:

In July 2007, the Treasury Department said the U.S. could reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent by eliminating popular benefits such as a research credit and a deduction for making products domestically.

Rangel two months later also recommended repealing the deduction for domestic production, other incentives that primarily benefit multinational corporations, as well as tax benefits associated with a popular accounting method known as last-in, first-out.

So, they lower the taxes, but remove deductions for the things they want accomplished.

No deduction for research? How do they plan on getting companies to invest in developing all those new green energy systems?

No deduction for domestic production? Bye-bye domestic jobs.

And just for grins and giggles, let's not forget out esteemed Goddard Institute for Space Studies announcement that last month was the warmest October on record.

Really? Turns out they don't have, nor can they guarantee that they can get accurate figures to punch into their computers to predict the weather. What do they do, they reuse old data or just make up what they beleive it should be. Even in the face of facts that counter what they "feel".

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious “hockey stick” graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new “hotspot” in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

They lie, then when caught, make up a new lie, only to be caught again. Management at GISS needs to go now!

It's been two weeks since the elections and the Dems are feeling the heat from how the world works in reality. I don't think they believed any of the crap they spewed during the last two years, they knew if they could put off the collapse of the mortgage industry and confuse the populous long enough about what caused it, they could win by promising everything to everybody.

This whole thing reminds me of a little ditty from "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas".

Vote Early!!!

Obambi is not a good closer. At first I was wondering why there was such a big push from his campaign to vote early!!! Get your vote in now!!! Don't wait!!!

As was shown in the primaries, Teh One almost let Hillary pull it out at the end. It's happening again. Obambi was up 16 points last week and now with just 5 days left, McVain has closed to about 2 points (within the margin of error).

There are quite a few things that could have caused this.

The shackles being taken of Sarah Palin and letting her do what the VP nominee is suppose to do, challenge the other side.

Maybe "Joe the Plumber" struck a chord with some younger people just starting out and do not appreciate the message of "If you make too much more than everyone else, WE will take that "extra" money and give it to someone who didn't feel like working as hard as you...and where that line of "too much" is is in doubt. It seems to get lower as time moves on, 250K, 200K, 150k...where's it going to settle?

I've heard that these numbers have been out there all the time, they just didn't specify which particular tax classification they were using. These are the guys who we expect to state our goals to other countries. There can be no doubt about what you're saying when dealing with foreign countries. Obambi can't count on the press digging them out or hiding what they said in those circumstances, and he's got to keep in mind, his VP would be "Mr. Gafftastic".

Personally, I beleive that the earlier polls were completely made up (i.e. weighted on bad data), the MSM held out as long as they could with polls shifted to the Dems, to discourage the Right, that they will look like complete idiots if the vote runs closer to where it stands now. If they stuck with the 16 point lead for Teh One up to Monday, and the popular vote ends up 46/48 either way, any believability in fairness would be proven even to the densest among us.

The votes that went in early missed all the info that comes out in the last week. A lot of it is BS, but some of it is when the candidates slip and say what they didn't want to let out yet. I have to wonder about those who voted weeks ago wish they could have that vote back?

I Am Joe

Amazing!!

That the Obamamedia fears a normal everyday guy asking Teh One a simple question about his tax plan.

It wasn't really the question that bothered them, it was the answer their candidate gave. The easiest way to push attention away form that answer was to attack the guy that asked the question.

Why I'm So Damn Sick of the Elections

The primaries ran what? About 3 years? If it was a strategy to make the populace just bore and sick of the whole thing, it seems to have worked with me.

I decided how I was going to vote at the end of the conventions, and now I just wish we could cast our vote and get the thing over with.

For the last couple of days I have been listening to the Dhimicrats gloat over how bad the economy is and how we can't afford 4 more years of the policies that got us into this shit.

They just forget to mention the facts behind the collapse of Bear Sterns and the collapse and bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG.

What was the Bush policy on Fannie and Freddie? (From the NY Times Sept. 11, 2003)

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

Whoa!!! We can't have that! Imagine the nerve of trying to rein in a runaway train 5 years before it hits the wall. Surely the Dhimicrats foresaw the problem also.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Either they really didn't see it coming, or they were just using their usual playbook and giving "free" money to people to win the next election. Whichever it was, can we afford four years of a continuation of this type of planning and policy?

It goes back way further, back to our old buddy Clinton. (from IBD)

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

The Demorats set it up in the '90's and when Bush tried to correct it, they told Bush he was racist, denying affordable housing to the poor and minorities. Now that their homes are foreclosed and their credit is fubar, I bet they'd really thank their protectors on the left side of the aisle, not to mention how trilled I am to pay part of the mortgage they never should have had in the first place.

When they raise my taxes to pay this fiasco off, there is a good chance I may not be able to meet my obligations, so the situation won't be getting better. It'll most likely get worse being we're already committed to the bailouts.

On top of this, WTF is the gov't doing pledging to cover housing for a month for the people of Texas that were displaced by the hurricane? Since I was born, I've heard the rest of the U.S. bitch at me about if I live in an earthquake zone and get hit, I deserve the grief. We get a quake that does damage about every 10 years. You asshats that live in hurricane and tornado country get nailed how many time EVERY year? And then go right back into the same place and rebuild, but don't worry, we'll bail you out again next year.

World...Hell...Hand basket. I think it's already been assembled.

Maxine: Read the Constitution!

I'm still reeling from Maxine's declaration during the Congressional hearings on gas prides:

Borrowing liberally from: Maxine: Read the Constitution! by Henry Lamb

And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be about socializing – would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies.

That someone cannot take all the facts of OPEC cannot produce much more than they are, Russia's oil industry is an ecological nightmare, and we have at least a 60- to 70-year known supply of domestic oil available, but can't touch and world demand has outstripped supply, that prices are going to be high.

Congress does expect us to ignore that while "BIG OIL" is making under 8% profit per gallon, the gov't gets a 23% profit through taxes.

Government intervention into the marketplace is justified only to ensure consumer safety and honest competition. Beyond this, government intervention into business affairs creates a drag on the economy, and the greater the intervention, the heavier the weight that drags down the economy.

And the fun thing about gov't intervention is that when dealing with the multiple agencies, City, State and Federal, they all have their own rules that often run counter to each other, but expect you to comply with theirs, and being they all seem sit in their office all year then in a flurry try to catch up on inspections, you end up wasting time readjusting equipment to comply with whichever agency is coming in this week.

Maxine Waters' remedy – to nationalize the oil companies and, by inference, any other business she thinks the government can run better than the owners – is a sure-fire formula for the destruction of the U.S. economy and of the nation.

You can be damn sure the taxes won't be dropped, they'll probably be increased as a subsidy for a give back to the "poor". So now the gov't will get 31%+ profit from gas, but there will be no "Windfall Profit" brought up.


The main points are:

The more government dictates what business may and may not do, and the more costs the government imposes upon business in the form of taxes and regulatory compliance, the slower the economy turns.

and

Unless the elected representatives at every level of government get a grip on the principles of freedom the Constitution holds, the United States of America will continue to descend into the collectivist, dictatorial regime that Maxine Waters threatened. It may already be too late. A generation or more of people have been taught to expect the government to take control and solve whatever problems may come along. This is the mentality that drives the likes of Maxine Waters and Hugo Chavez.

What The Dem's Really Want

The *spit* Hon. Maxine Waters (D-L.A.) let slip during the House Judiciary Committee's Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust Laws hearing to investigate competition in the oil industry what their real plans for the country are.



Waters: "And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be about socializing--would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies."

Yeah, they'll take the price of a gallon of gas down from $4/gal. to $2.35 (a $1.65 "saving), but in order for the gov't to do it, they'll raise your taxes by $2.50/gal. to subsidize it.

The only thing I found even slightly amusing about this was watching the two Reps in the background try to stifle their laughter when this crap fell out of her mouth. Not only is what she says she going to do unconstitutional, but by allowing the oil industry to fall into the hands of gov't, they will have total control on how much we can drive and where we can go.

I felt it wasn't going to be to long until one of them let it slip that they were planning on taking any business they felt like "for the good of the people". Welcome to the Brave New World, comrade.

Windfall Profits?

OK, here it comes. Just yesterday I was bitching about nothing to write about and what happens...one flies down the pipe.

Profits Of Doom?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, May 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Profits: Exxon Mobil's first-quarter earnings of $10.9 billion, up 17% from a year earlier, are stirring outrage in Washington. Some are calling such profits "obscene." What a sad lack of understanding of economics.

I said it a few times before, I kept hearing these whispers of "Windfall Profit Taxes" being imposed again. I had just started working in the oil industry when Jimmy Peanutbrain tried this back in the early '80's. It didn't work then and it won't work now. "The Congressional Research Service has analysed that the windfall profit tax brought in $80 billion in extra revenues for the United States government, which was far less than the projected $393 billion. Also, domestic oil production by oil producers was said to be lowered."

Case in point: Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Like her rival, Barack Obama, she's pushing a massive "windfall profit" tax on those "greedy" oil companies. "There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon's record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street," Clinton said Thursday. "This is truly Dick Cheney's wonderland."

No, what's seriously wrong is that politicians such as Clinton can cynically manipulate public opinion to enact disastrous policies.

[all emphasis: mine]

Believe me, it will be disastrous. They know what happened last time they tried this, so I'm fairly sure that if elected, they won't really push this too hard...either that, or they are insane. (They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)

Our free-market economy is built on profit. Higher profits mean more jobs, higher incomes, more investment in equipment and people, higher standards of living. Yes, profits are the engine for all of this — and that includes the profits of "Big Oil."

By signaling that supply is scarce, higher profits encourage more production. Except, that is, when Congress through its inept lawmaking stands in the way. And that's the case now with the oil industry.Our free-market economy is built on profit. Higher profits mean more jobs, higher incomes, more investment in equipment and people, higher standards of living. Yes, profits are the engine for all of this — and that includes the profits of "Big Oil."

Congress seems almost constantly at war with the oil companies — slapping them with taxes and pillorying their CEOs while ignoring the fact that higher profits lead to more exploration, drilling and development.

Why is this? Having a domestic oil supply is what made this country grow and, over the last 100+ years, show the rest of the world what people can accomplished, given the means to develop an idea, manufacture it, and get it to a population spread over huge distances and still be worth the effort (profit).

If anyone is to blame for our current energy mess, it's Congress. At least 20 billion barrels of oil sit untapped in Alaska and another 30 billion lie offshore. Such sources that could help satisfy U.S. demand for years to come. Yet, Congress has put them out of bounds.

ANWAR has been blocked for years...because of the way oil was developed back in the 1890's. I've seen pictures of the "Old Downtown L.A. Oil Field" (where I started, see pic above), in a book, and the chapter's title was "Oil In The Streets Of Los Angeles". There where lakes of oil right next to the houses and wells gushing when brought in, but the industry doesn't work that way anymore.

At the price of oil, especially now-a-days, you don't just let that stuff just dump on the ground. The industry has really evolved over the last century and they understand and take (overly regulated) precautions so that doesn't happen any more.

Instead, Congress scapegoats oil profits. In reality, according to Ernst & Young, from 1992 to 2006 the U.S. oil industry spent $1.25 trillion on long-term investment vs. profits of $900 billion.

Truth is, oil industry profits are in line with the rest of American industry. In 2007, a record year, they earned 8.3 cents per dollar of sales. Beverage companies and cigarette makers, by contrast, earned 19.1 cents. Drug makers, 18.4 cents. Indeed, all manufacturers, 8.9 cents on average, made more than "Big Oil."

I know...I know, they've put extra ("sin") taxes on liquor and cigarettes, but did that "punish" the corporations for their perceived windfall profits....NO!! It only increased the consumers price of the product more. These taxes do not affect the profit of the company, just the amount you pay.

Besides, we've tried windfall profits taxes before, in the early 1980s, and they were an utter failure. As the Congressional Research Service found, revenues produced for the government were nearly 75% below what was expected. Meanwhile, , while oil imports surged 16%.

That's just poor policy, and even worse economics.

Oh. come on, give 'em a chance...They'll make this formula work this time.

NOTE: domestic oil output fell 8%

Due to this tax, for independents, it wasn't making money so they just shut it down.

Remember: Oil companies don't really pay "windfall profit" taxes, anyway. You do. Some 50 million Americans today own oil company stock, either directly or through 401(k)s and mutual funds. Don't be suckered: "Windfall profits" taxes come right out of your retirement account, not out of the oil industry's business.

Oh sure, Big Oil's profits are up. But so are the taxes they pay. In 2006, that came to $90 billion — up 334% in just four years.

As to the added tax, I covered that, however, did you notice that the taxes that they pay under the current system is up 334% in just four years.

Note: Those that were able restarted idled wells because they could make some money off producing. Nobody is going to pay $1.50 to deliver a commodity that you pay $1.00 for.

This is how Clinton-style populism works. It starts with ignorance and ends with serious damage to our economy.

I've never understood how anyone that has held a job and had the slightest grasp of the cost to keep a company going and still get enough return to make the hours worth the effort, unless you're Union.

Oil prices aren't high because profits are up; they're high because we don't have enough oil. By clamping down on drilling, refusing to move forward on nuclear energy and hitting producers with punitive taxes, Congress is doing all it can to ensure we don't have enough in the future.

I'm all for getting us off dependency on Middle East, Venezuelan, Mexican, even Canadian oil. I favor Nuclear myself. If the Frogs can handle it, I think we can.

If we started drilling today, it would be almost 12 years for ANWAR to be producing. I bet we could build quit a few nuclear plants in that time frame.

If you want to keep paying $100+ per barrel for oil, I'm not going to complain, you've guaranteed my income.

8.3% profit...damn them.

No Taxation Without Representation

Wow! Here it is April 10th and I have a feeling something is hanging over my head that needs to be done. Oh, yeah...I'm right on it, it'll be done tomorrow, if I can figure out where I filed my W-2.

I was watching Glenn Beck tonight and saw where the top 10% earners pay 70% of taxes and the top 1% pay 40% of that. Sounds fair to me.

My boy, who is trying to figure out what he wants to do with himself, is working a crappy job. I did his taxes a while ago and along with getting the 300 some-odd dollars they took away in taxes, he is entitled to another 300 dollars.

How did our tax code get so screwed up that when you pay taxes, you can get it back, PLUS, you get back more? I can understand when someone is hovering around minimum wage getting back what they paid in, but to say they get back what they paid, and then Double it is insane socialism.

Now, on top of that, he will get another 600 dollars back as an "Economic Stimulus Payment".

Someone who paid around $340 in taxes, gets a return of $1250, and we wonder why the country runs a deficit.