Will you Vote for a Free Country or one of Dependency?

Thomas Sowell writes a terrific piece in the American Spectator on the broken ideology of dependency of Obama, the Democrat party, and the Left here in the US. It’s a terrible situation when one political party takes an emotional approach to addressing virtually every issue instead of an outcome-oriented one.
To wit:
• Liberals talk more about giving (via the Government) and Conservatives actually give more of their private money. Also, the US gives more in private charity globally than the rest of the world (and all the ‘compassionate’ leftist governments) combined.
• Conservatives want to get people jobs, Liberals can only focus (and understand) on how to expand and lock people into the dependency of Government welfare programs. The ultimate welfare is getting someone a job, not some need to feel good about yourself for taking over their life.
• Republicans are pushing a free market economic model where individuals are in charge (the model that has given us our past historical prosperity). The Democrats vilify business and the individuals that build them, and wonder why our private industry is sitting on the sidelines and the economy continues to falter in the longest ‘recovery’ since the Great Depression (screwed up in the same way by FDR).
• Republicans want to create and promote domestic energy production of actual working and known resources of oil, gas, and job-creating projects like the Keystone pipeline. Democrats can only talk from a headlock by the environmental-zealot lobby that pushes Wind and Solar energy sources that cost more than they produce. The poor suffer the most from paying higher costs they can’t avoid on gas, heating, and electricity. You want world peace or at least a significantly smaller chance of US intervention in some primitive and regressive Middle East country? Produce our needed energy here!
And the list can go on interminably. The terrifying reality is that the Democrats don’t have one area that doesn’t drive toward a negative outcome and/or increased dependency on the Government. This is the exact opposite of the founding principles of our country.
In November, vote for Mitt Romney for a return to individual freedom and prosperity and vote against Barack Obama’s collectivism and drive to make us a failing nation of dependents.

Filed under: American Values, Business, Culture, Politics, 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, Culture, Life, Mitt Romney, News, Politics

Obama’s Big Government Administration Learns Painful Lessons about the Real World

After many disingenuous statements from the Administration on how Wall Street ‘caused’ the housing market collapse, the real world has once again stepped in to squash their flawed collectivist world view with reality. 

The free market works when it is free and populated with private businesses working with, and responding to, rational market incentives.

Whenever the Government interferes (whatever its ‘good’ intentions) in the private marketplace, it always causes more damage than good as an outcome. Why? Because the Government does not work on the same principals as private business. Private businesses have to adapt to economic conditions or risk going out of business. The Government only makes and responds to political conditions. Given that, how does any think it would EVER it would or should act outside its sphere in the economic realm? The Government never has to worry about ‘going out of business’, so it does NOT act rationally in a free market environment. It’s that simple. 

As I’ve said in the past, politicians of primarily Democrat party orientation have pushed the flawed concept that you had a right to a house. This was especially true if you were of a preferred ethnic minority background or were of a lower economic strata. Through Government interference of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Democrats have tried to buy votes through ‘buying’ people houses they couldn’t afford. This financially irrational behavior was done through political pressue on banks to make bad loans to politically favored groups (CRA) or using fake, Government ‘business’ entities (Fannie and Freddie) to buy bad loans with our tax dollars.

What they didn’t realize is that this would, over the course of 10-15 years, create a multi-trillion dollar housing bubble that would severely injure the US economy and ripple through out the world economy as well. 

Wall Street did NOT create this financial melt down. The Government and Democrats did by politically interfereing in the US economic market. Now, like with all their collectivist or utopian worldviews, we all have to pay when reality comes crashing down.

Filed under: Business, Economy, Politics, Barack Obama, Business, Government, Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Life, New, Politics, President Obama

Obama- A Man Permanently Out of Step with America



I’ve seen a bizarre pattern where our (younger) President embraces and proposes the failed theories and mis-learnings of past eras that were before his time. He espouses failed collectivist theories of the 20’s and 30’s as well as a desire to be a modern-day John F. Kennedy (who was also young and lacking experience). Obama wasn’t around in the 1920’s or 1930’s and was only between 4 and 7 years old when Kennedy was president.

 

When the President sought to rally our nation with a “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” in his 2011 State of the Union address, I had to wonder: ‘who was he talking to?’ It certainly wasn’t ‘our generation.’ Who today feels an emotional impact from that statement- if they even get the reference? Did a 70 year old write the state of the union address?

 

I’m 44 and the ‘Sputnik Moment’ occurred 10 years before I was even born. This would be the same for someone who was 54 (born that year) and likely lost on anyone who was 10 years old or younger. That would put you at retirement age! And honestly, adults in their 20’s and older would be the ones that really reacted to, and did something about that with our own space program and moon landing in 1969.

 

If you were 20 in 1957, you’d be 74 this year. If you are younger than that, the Sputnik Moment is only an intellectual footnote in history to you. For most, it was likely a moment of blank faces and puzzlement.

 

Our country will be saved, revitalized, and restored by the present working class of our country: 18 to 64 years of age. Like with all the major themes of his collectivist and utopian presidency, Obama is just fundamentally out of touch with the reality of our American experience that is happening today.

Filed under: American Values, Business, Politics, Barack Obama, Culture, Government, Life, News, Politics, President Obama, SOTU 2011, State of the Union

Will Obama Get it? Pre-SOTU Comments

Will Obama get that the country’s private sector, free market economy is held back by his collectivist attitude and policies or will our rookie President continue to run the most anti-business, anti-American values administration in recent history?

My guess is he won’t get it. Unless his rigid adherence to discredited collectivist ideas changes, he will still push to spend more (grow the government) and use the government to ‘create’ (or save) jobs like he has been unsuccessfully doing now for 2 years.

Pundits suggest (I think accurately) that he will talk a good game of going to the center, but will not do anything of substance to back it up- just like the campaign rhetoric that got him elected. They say he will use focus-group tested political marketing for the mentally dim like ‘investment’ instead of spending and tie these distorting terms to feel-good topics like education or jobs. So, if we hear tonight that we need to ‘invest’ in our schools and jobs for our economy to grow, we’ve just gotten more rhetorical blather to cover up that he will try the same failed approaches again and hope for a different outcome.

Reality and human nature are such harsh courts of appeal when it comes to collectivist and utopian theories. I wonder how many repetitions it takes before the outcome not matching the theory shows that certain theories don’t work? You don’t need to be smart to get this- you need to be wise.

The big question is: Will our book-smart and world-dumb President finally grow in wisdom? Will he finally start to support American founding values like smaller central government, individual liberties and freedoms, and get government out of the way so our private, free market will function again?

While he threatens us with whole-scale ‘transformation’ to the fascism of collectivism and the degradation of individual effort and reward, we will go nowhere economically and socially.

Filed under: American Values, Business, Economy, Philosophy, Politics, Business, Capitalism, Collectivism, Government, Life, News, Philosophy, Politics, President Obama, State of the Union, TV

Taxcuts and the ‘Rich’

The President wants to raise taxes on those who make more than $250K while continuing our less-than-stellar tax levels for the few others of us under that figure that actually pay taxes.

This is another reason why we will never see any significant new job growth for as long as Obama and collectivists of his mentality continue to advance these broken economic ideas.

This economy is squarely depressed because of this Administration’s policies- not Bush or any other scapegoat. The market is rationally assessing Obama’s anti-business outlook and burdensome/costly future policy statements (Expire Bush tax cuts, Cap and Tax, Negative ObamaCare impacts coming up, Green ‘jobs’ focus, etc.) as toxic to taking any business risk or investing for growth. And why wouldn’t they? Where’s the upside? There is none. All of this Administration’s tone is how anyone making more than the poverty level should be ashamed of their success and get ready to hand over significantly more of their hard-earned profits to Big Government. Temporary, tepid tax measures will not motivate job growth. Higher taxes will not motivate job growth. Temporary, minute infusions of cash for disproven Keynesian ‘growth’ theories (also called history) will not motivate job growth.

Now on to the term the ‘Rich’. How long will politicians in our country try to push this resentful and Feudal term? Everyone in this country should be unashamed to say they want to be ‘rich’. America is the land of opportunity for those that want to work for it. No one here is born into some aristocratic class and the rest of us are stuck being peasants. The real meaning of the term ‘Rich’ class is the Productive class, the Investor class, or the Job Creation class. Where does Obama think the jobs come from? The very people he demonizes!

Just in case people are not aware of it, the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of our taxes already- a patently unfair share as it stands now. The top 10% pay 70% of our total taxes! And he thinks they need a tax hike?! This is unbelievable!

Democrats in Congress have just made an announcement that they are running away from/avoiding this issue like everything else unpopular they want to do because an election is coming up. If it’s not okay now, it’s not okay 6 months from now! This will still be hanging out there and the Investor class will still be sitting on cash (and therefore job creation) because of it.

Send a message this November! Vote!

Filed under: Business, Politics, Barack Obama, Business, Economics, Job Creation, Politics, President Obama, Taxes

More Proof Why Government Can’t Run Businesses

Once again, it’s painfully evident to everyone except the Obama administration that the realities of politics and the realities of running a business are completely different and virtually always are. 

The motivators of politicians (vs. leaders) are votes, public perception, and the pursuit of power. The motivator of businesses is profit from the sale of their goods and/or services to the marketplace.  The restructuring of a rigid, non-responsive and failing company so it can more efficiently serve it’s market is critical if that company wants to survive. So, it was amazing to read:

GM proposed moving out if it’s Detroit’s Renaissance Center HQ to its sprawling suburban tech center, arguing that the move would save money and would symbolize a commitment by top brass to be more involved in the company.

But this would involve some creative destruction in the marketplace to create a sustainable, long-term outcome of a viable company instead of a dying one. This, however, was not a consideration at all to the politicians in the white house:

But the “hands-off” White House snuffed the idea, opting to protect Detroit — a key political constituency of the Democratic Party. “Are you out of your mind?” Rattner quoted Brian Deese, who has been heavily involved in auto policy, as saying. “Think what it would do to Detroit.”

This is why Govt can’t and should not try to run businesses or be an actor in the market place. This is why, if GM ever recovers, it will take much longer than it would have in a free-market situation.

And the White House wonder’s why they have not been successful in creating jobs?

Filed under: Business, Economy, Politics, Auto Bailout, Auto industry, Business, General Motors, Job Creation, Obama, Politics