It Was Just a Flesh Wound

In tonight's debate, Sarah Palin showed that her interview, dubbed by even some conservative pundits as one of the worst interviews ever with the ever-insolent, always self-indulgent Katie Couric made infamous by Tina Fey's comedically brilliant portrayal of her was merely a flesh wound.

Palin performed well. Better than anyone planned, which isn't saying much, but a solid performance as Vice-Presidential-hockey-mom-hopeful. Biden is good. He's very good. Polished, good-looking, well-spoken and articulate, he's got credibility as a single father who raised his two sons alone after a tragic car accident that took his wife and daughter.

However, we also have to remember that Biden is part of a group of people with an approval rating that ranges from a truly pathetic 9% to a not-too-much-better dismal 25%, depending on which poll you read. He's been in the Senate for almost thirty years. In this climate, I don't see how that could do anything but harm his candidacy. Palin, on the other hand, is, as she puts it, a "fresh face" with new ideas - at least until Randy Scheunmann finishes force feeding her the Kool-Aid of Neo-Conservatism.

As a point for point, and on a more superficial level, Palin looked phenomenal, and spoke like a mom, which I believe is her strength. Biden scored points talking about his family, and I admit I almost got a little choked up as he did so. Overall, even though I disagree with most of what Biden believes in, I'd have to say that Biden was slightly more convincing, although his statements about Obama not being ready to be Commander in Chief during the primaries came back to haunt him in this debate - well played on the part of Palin. I do think Palin came across as more populist, which is what the country is looking for right now in the wake of all of this financial mess.

At this point, I actually think McCain is dragging Palin down. I think she could probably do a better job of being convincing as a candidate than McCain. Biden only adds to Obama's charisma. His eloquence and ability to tell a story is stellar.

Both candidates spent a significant amount of time bragging about their principal's record on economic matters. With respect to the economy, neither Obama nor McCain knows anything about worth speaking of. McCain has even admitted to this. After almost thirty years in the Senate, and having voted on hundreds of bills that affect the economy, this is shameful, even criminal in my opinion. Why would the people of this country allow an elected official who admits "I don't know as much about the economy as I should" to vote on bills that define economic policy for the nation? That would certainly explain his absurd immigration bill he authored with Kennedy. Neither Obama and McCain have spent any amount of their career in the private sector, and have instead worked for government or quasi-governmental groups, and both have surrounded themselves with people who are financial criminals. Neither candidate understands the challenges of running a business or operating anything on a fixed budget or the devastating effects of illegal immigration on this country. Neither could stand on his own for a week without his government paycheck.

Taxation came up briefly, though not enough time was allotted to the subject. Palin actually has a decent personal record on taxes, from property taxes in Wasilla, Alaska, to the windfall profits tax on oil companies, the suspension of the state fuel tax in Alaska, and the elimination of the inventory tax on small business. It doesn't matter that she did some of that work in a town of 8,000 or in a state of less than 700,000. Its tax reform, its the right thing to do and its a start. I think that of all the candidates, she's the single bright light there with what appears to be a solid understanding of how the economy works and the basic effects of taxation upon an economy. I'm still not voting for her, but at least she is the lesser of the four evils.

Biden's tax mantra is fairness. Fairness? What's fair? What would be fair is if government would stop squandering billions of dollars, devaluing our currency and commiting us to billions each year in useless foreign aid that study after study shows has little or no effect, and in some cases, a negative effect upon the way nations react to us. Biden and Obama want to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 per year, and regardless of what Obama wants to tell Bill O'Reilly on his show while they play softball with one another, Obama supports raising the capital gains tax to 35%. The reality of the tax issue is that raising taxes on people who make $250k per year is the same as raising taxes on small business. That will most certainly equate to the loss of jobs. That's not what we need right now.

I do believe that McCain probably has a better energy plan on paper, but I don't know that I trust him to implement it or do as much with alternative energy as Obama would. Most Republicans are, in fact, for some reason, married to big oil, which does everything it can do to quash alternative energy. "Competition is bad, mmmkay?" On the other hand, I'm certain Obama won't drill off shore because of his marriage to lunatic-fringe environmental groups, and I'm almost positive that clean coal and nuclear power wouldn't see a significant expansion under Obama, no matter what he says on the stump. I do believe John McCain would do more for nuclear energy, which I support, and I think that clean coal would be pushed. McCain's close ties with big oil will lead to $4 billion in government welfare for oil companies, which I find absurd. They don't need it.

On healthcare, McCain's plan to tax smployer provided health care plans is a disaster waiting to happen, and Obama's plan to mandate health care is a bad idea as well. McCain has it right on allowing insurance companies to cross state lines in competing with one another (insurance companies are currently not allowed to compete with one another in a different state, reducing competition and driving prices up), but he has it wrong on a measley $5000 tax credit for families to pay for that health care. Subsidies only drive the price of items up, and attempts by government to price-fix only lead to poor service, reduction in choices and inflated profits for corporations. Oil companies are a great examples of what subsidies do.

I was disappointed that neither candidate mentioned the Pickens Plan. Very disappointed. Its such a failure of both of them to ignore Pickens as the founder of a swelling greass-roots movement that I wanted to throw rotten fruit at the both. I wasn't surprised, though.

On foreign policy, Biden wiped the floor with Palin's cute hair-do. The Bush administration's foreign policy has made Jimmy Carter look like a Nobel Prize Winner - oh wait. He is. Bush the Younger has alienated most of the world, most notably Russia with an unbridled, unwise and unnecessary expansion of NATO to nations bordering Russia who have zero ability to provide any assistance to any other member nation. the Ukraine can't even heat its own homes, much less honor the spirit of reciprocity of a NATO agreement.

We heard from Palin that John McCain knows how to win a war. From whom did he learn this? His time in the Senate? In Vietnam while he was a prisoner of war and appeared in propaganda films for the Communist regime? Because he was a pilot he knows how to win a war? If memory serves me, we hired a pilot eight years ago, and look how that turned out. No, Biden and Obama are the clear front runners on foreign policy in my opinion. I'd really prefer not to go to war against Iran, and there are ways to prevent Ahmadinejad and the rest of his handlers from acquiring nukes without going to war on behalf of Isreal. Just because we have 300 million people here in this country doesn't mean we have spare military personnel to throw into the grinder on behalf of the corrupt and bullying state of Isreal, a state who has made a tidy little cottage industry by stealing nuclear (pronounced "nuke-ular" is you're George the Younger) secrets and selling them to our dear friends the Chinese. If McCain is elected, we will not probably go to war with Iran. We will most certainly go to war with Iran.

All in all, I actually enjoyed the debate. I thought both Vice Presidential candidates did a fine job expressing the platforms of their bosses. I wish the two of them had slugged it out a bit more, but that's the Libertarian in me desiring to see permanent damage done to both the Republican and Democrat Party. Any time I get to see blood, whether its blue or red, I'm happy.

Go Home Congress

So Congress has a new bill in front of them for the proposed taxpayer funded bailout. Originally three pages long, after shooting up on government steroids for a few days, this $700 billion bill has mutated into a gargantuan money-eating 451 pages, filled with earmarks for everything from NASCAR tracks to a package for research on wool. Either way, if it passes and we have to eat it, it'll probably taste like a dog-poo taco with a side of dirt sandwich.

Now it turns out that banks don't want to lend money for auto-loans or mortgages right now. Really? No way. Your kidding right? You mean that legislation is pending that will dramatically alter the way banks do business in this country and banks don't want to lend money right now? In the words of Monty Python, "Well I never!"

Every time government gets involved in business, something gets screwed up. Hell, government provided the geniuses that got us into this mess in the first place. Why on earth a bunch of elected, half-wit hacks are running fiscal policy for the world's largest economy is beyond me in the first place. Why isn't someone like Warren Buffet running the economy? Here's a guy who has actually made money in the real world. Where's Ross Perot when you need him? Shouldn't we hire a professional to run our economy? You don't see GE holding an open election for their board of directors. If they did, no one would invest in them.

And why the hell aren't we hearing about the Republicans who pushed for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2004 but were shot down by Barney Franks and crew and accused of trying to push poor people out of home ownership? Why are the Republicans so damn bad at getting facts out? Are they slow? Were they all dropped on their head as children? Is there something about being a House or Senate Republican that requires that you stand around with your thumb in your ass while Barney Franks and Nancy Peolsi appear day after day on television and blame Republicans for this mess? Yes, the Republicans are to blame. I'm not exonerating them for this flying mongolian cluster you-know-what that we've landed in. No way. The Republicans have squandered their advantage in the House and Senate for the last six years of Bush the Younger's disastrous reign. They squandered their political capitol on defending the dumbest war ever fought in the history of mankind against what was an utterly defeated nearly third world status nation. The squandered it defending the gutting of civil liberties in the name of safety. I suppose they thought we were stupid and couldn't read what good old Ben Franklin said a couple of hundred years ago - something about freedom and trading it and for security and deserving neither.

So yeah the Republicans screwed the pooch. And now they're doing it again by standing around and allowing the old crone, Nancy Pelosi, racking up political capitol with the misinformed masses by blaming one singular party for this absurd mess. And just because the Republicans are to blame for this doesn't mean that Democrats don't deserve just as much of that blame pie.

So if Nancy Pelosi, the great leader of a Congress with a comfy 25% approval rating really want to help solve the current crisis we're in, she'll approach the podium, and just before she builds herself a large fire and jumps into it for us, she'll announce that Congress is not going to set a precedent of bailouts for bad decisions made by private enterprise and investors, and that the bailout bill is hereby scrapped.

But we all know that would be way to good to be true. So, instead, we'll end up dining on dog-poo tacos and dirt sandwiches. The bill in some form will pass, and the market will get flooded with fake cash. Oil will go back up, the Dollar will fall against the Euro again, the DOW will climb back up another five hundred points and all will be right with the world again. The bill will go through reeking of pork.

As I sit here writing this, I'm told the bill has just passed in the Senate.

Thank God for the 228

I don't care why they did it. I don't care who they are. I don't care if they overslept after a night of crack-smoking, and a case of Busch Lite. I have 228 new heroes as of yesterday.

If there's one thing I love to see, its the pitiful, forlorn look on a Congressman's (or Congresswoman's in this case) or President's face when their brainchild of a bill has flunked spectacularly. It makes me almost weepy with joy. The look of disappointment yesterday on Nancy Pelosi's permanently scowl-marred mug was priceless. I may print and frame it and kiss it every morning. Bush the Younger's reaction was almost as gratifying. Neither of them got what they wanted, and that made me a happy panda. As a Libertarian, I get worried when Democrats and Republicans want the same thing and start slow dancing to Barry White and talking about having one another's children. As Brave Sir Robin once said, "Thats enough music for now lads, looks like theres dirty work afoot."

One of the first things that stuck in my throat was the fact that the bill called for the funds allocated to be deposited into the general treasury - a place that makes the change jar on my bedside table look like Al Gore's infamus "Lockbox". Everyone knows what happens next. Every special interest with a lobbyist and a telephone starts trying to get their share of the loot. Apparently, I'm not far off here either. Legislators loaded the proposed bill up with almost $3 billion in earmarks. But hey, what's $3 billion between friends?

The question I had all along was, "Where is this money coming from?" We don't have $300 billion dollars. We're trillions in debt. I guess we would have to borrow it, but from whom? The Federal Reserve, of course, which is no more federal than Federal Express. Just what we need, a massive infusion of worthless cash into an economy already tormented by inflation caused by the runaway spending of the Bush Administration, who never met an entitlement program they didn't fall in love with.

In an email the other day, one of the few congressmen from North Carolina who voted for the bailout, a Democrat named Brad Miller, called the bill a "bitter pill". He said "The economy will slow dramatically if every business and every American family has to operate on cash."

That got me to thinking about the possibility of a US with less cash on hand. While it may be true that the economy will slow, guess what else will happen? All of that phony cash that was floating around for the last few years, causing inflation and gas and housing and groceries to skyrocket is gone now. Today, the Euro fell more against the dollar than it had since its creation. Oil dropped $11 per barrel. Why is this happening? Because the lack of cash is forcing the dollar to go up in value.

So who would want to infuse the US with phony cash and continue this spiral of inflation, this devaluation of the dollar that Ron Paul calls the "inflation tax", which robs the poor, the elderly and the middle class? Who else? International corporations, of course, who have a vested interest in seeing the dollar weak. When the dollar is weak, the cost of goods is higher at the checkout counter, while wages paid stay relatively stagnant. No one gets a raise every time prices go up, and almost no one's salary is tied to inflation. So the big multinational corporations stand to benefit from a weak dollar. The cost of labor in China hasn't risen. The people in India and Bangladesh haven't suddenly mobilized and unionized and begun charging higher prices for their labor. Fabric purchased from these countries to make the clothes we wear isn't more expensive. It simply takes more of our relatively worthless dollars to purchase these finished items at the point of sale. What happens next? The stock of the giant multi-national corporations gets a nice little boost for their shareholders. Guess who's making out like a bandit here? I guess if you can't make money the old fashioned way - by earning it, you support legislation to flood the largest economy in the world with trash-cash which causes the currency to fall and inflation to set in so it at least looks like you're making more money.

The government has been getting serious about the business of ruining the value of our dollar with the $700 billion in spending on the war in Iraq for for half a decade while people get all excited about the rising value of their homes, which in my mind, was fake all along. In the meantime, the cost of everything under the sun was going nowhere but up, so many of these people were forced to take out second mortgages, or chose to do so rather than alter their individual lifestyle. Let's face it, as the nation with the largest per capita share of debt in the world, most people in this country live on the very edge of their means, and any significant increase in costs will cause a glut in the amount of disposable cash flow of a family's income. Inflation is like a free pay day for multinational corporations with no allegiance to any nation who buy low overseas and sell high here. The Walton's don't care that bread is $3.00 per loaf when they sell millions of them every week. They love inflation. It tastes good with butter and jam.

Those who say that if we don't swallow nancy Pelosi's "bitter pill", that credit will dry up and there simply won't be any money to lend new homes and autoloans are simply mistaken. On my way home today, I saw a man hanging a banner outside a mortgage company that read, "100% Mortgages Available Here!" Sure, there may be a slowdown, but at the risk of trying to sound like something I'm not - a financial wizard - I predict an upswing as home prices fall back to a reasonable level and the dollar strengthens. The government cannot continue to prop up home prices at the expense of runaway inflation, the worldwide devaluation of our currency and loss of confidence in our financial system. And we certainly can't afford to set this precedent of bailout as an acceptable alternative to a free-market correction. In my mind, this crisis is a good thing, maybe even the best thing to come along in a while - unless we bail it out. Now all we have to do is get our spending under control on a federal level, pass the Fairtax and watch some real prosperity take hold, as opposed to this false prosperity we've been led to believe we've had because the DOW has been up. Of course, why is the DOW up? Say it with me. Because it takes more of our worthless dollars to buy a share of stock. Thank you. Don't you feel better now that you've spoken the truth to yourself?

This isn't just the government's fault. Its the fault of people who took out loans to pay for things they could have done without. Its the fault of people who bought houses they knew they couldn't afford. Its the fault of some mortgage lenders who dreamt up complicated loan schemes that were way beyond the capacity of comprehension of the average person in this country, who isn't that bright to begin with. Its the fault of Democrats like Barney Franks, who opposed stiffer regulation of Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2004. Its the fault of Republicans who controlled the Congress and the Presidency back then to do anything about it. Its the perfect storm of a crisis of financial and military hubris and political alzheimers. What is it about flooding the market with fiat cash that's bad for the country that central banks can't remember? What is it about Roman history and the projection on military power around the world that makes people forget how devastating it is to an economy? Why do we think we can do the same thing Nero did to Rome from 54 to 68 A.D., debasing the currency to worthlessness with endless military and social spending, government intervention in private business and the reduction of economic freedom and end up any differently?

I find it interesting, funny, ironic and deeplly disturbing that politicians are calling the failure of this bill a failure of our political system. Of course it isn't. How insulting. Its an absolute success of our political system. In fact, its one of the few shining moments in our recent tainted history. I called my Congressman, Howard Coble, to tell him that if he voted for this bill in any form, not only would I not vote for him, but that I would actively campaign against him. To my utter delight, he voted against the bill. While I'm certain that he didn't listen solely to me (if he did that he'd co-sponsor the Fairtax Legislation and sign off on the Pickens Plan), his office reported at least 90% vocal opposition to this bailout. That's what the American political system is all about - not Nancy Pelosi and the so-called Republicans who voted for this bill being able to ignore their constituency and ram it down our collective throats.

So a hearty pat on the back to the 228 who voted against this trash, this slap in the face of every taxpayer who expects more than the arrogance and bile they get every year from Congress. Like I stated in the beginning - I don't care why you did it. I just care that you did. Thank you.

Self Service Deportation

The Bush Administration has finally solved the immigration problem. After seven years in the White House, access to the greatest minds in the country and billions of dollars at their disposal, President Bush has put forward a pilot program called "Operation Scheduled Departure". What is the gist of "Operation Scheduled Departure"?

Illegal immigrants will turn themselves in.

Really? That's the best they can come up with? Really? This is your solution? Really? You mean to tell the American people that illegal immigrants are going to voluntarily turn themselves in and subject themselves to deportation back to their third world home nations? What's the incentive here? Supposedly the White House is offering those who choose to leave under this program an additional 90 days to get their affairs in order before they are deported (thus the name "scheduled departure").

This has to be the most absurd idea ever. Even people who support illegal immigration, such as Ali Noorani call this program "harebrained".

This is the Bush Administration's solution to the estimated 4300 Americans who are killed annually by people who aren't supposed to be here in the first place? This is the Bush Administration's solution to the millions of American construction workers displaced by cheap, illegal labor performed by people who often live seven to ten people to a house? This is the Bush Administration's solution to the $45 billion dollars that was wired out of the US last year to Latin America by illegal workers? Is this really the solution to the 20 million illegal immigrants who have made this country their home and subsequently siphon social services money from localities meant for Americans who desperately need it - ironically often because they've lost a job that has been given to an illegal immigrant.

When George Bush and others stand up behind a podium and announce that illegals are doing the jobs that Americans won't do, they're exposing their igonorance. I want to install hardwood floors. I want to do interior trim. I used to. When I moved to Greensboro in 1995 and started my business, I used to be able to charge $2.25 per square foot to install hardwood floors. Now, thirteen years later, when that same $2.25 back then was worth about $4.00 in today's money, thanks to the near invasion of illegal workers into the area, you'd be fortunate to get $1.50. I was even quoted $.90 recently as an amount that a certain carpet store pays their installers.

Interior trim is worse. My business partner and I contracted for a large townhome development for the interior trim. The agreed price was $.95 per square foot. Today you'd be lucky to get $.50 per foot. Its no wonder the standard of living for construction workers has diminished in such a manner. Those of us who have employees are looked upon as the bad guys because we simply cannot afford to pay our employees what they think they may deserve. If we do, we can't compete with the low wages of illegal immigrants. In turn, the American consumer, always hungry for the cheapest, fastest job they can get, is now used to these dirt cheap prices. Does this mean that Americans are supposed to live seven and eight and ten to a house? Are we expected to compete with people with a third world mentality who are willing to work for 25% or even 40% less than what we have become accustomed to? Is this the meaning of the free market?

So this is the solution? That immigrants are supposed to turn themselves in? They're supposed to simply slip away quietly and orderly?

With geniuses who propose solutions like this in the White House, its no wonder we have the problems we have.