Band-Aid Anyone?

In mid November, I outlined my ideas for how our politicians ought to address a long term solution for the pending financial cliff. With just three days to go, clearly a long term solution isn’t in the cards before the deadline. With that sad but not unexpected reality in front of us, what can Obama, Boehner, Reid, McConnell, and the rest of our court jesters manage to do to at least avoid every American paying thousands more in taxes this year? Below is my band-aid solution until the longer term plan can be developed.

First, it’s glaringly clear that neither side is going to “win”. If anything is going to be agreed upon, it’s going to have to be a compromise. Both sides will get something they want and both will give up something they don’t want to lose. From a revenue perspective, Boehner has suggested limiting the higher, Clinton era tax rates that are about to kick in to millionaires only. This is in response to Obama’s call for applying those higher rates to anyone making over $200K per year. Limiting the higher tax rate to millionaires would mean only the richest 250K Americans would pay more. That’s about $250B in new revenue over 10 years.

For the sake of a short term deal, let’s say Obama and the Democrats take Boehner up on this offer. Now, to make the Republicans (and Libertarians like me) happy, let’s find $250B in savings over the next decade to match that increased revenue without stripping our military, intelligence, or needy communities bare.

If Congress and Obama do nothing, automatic cuts to spending will come out to $1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. That’s $120 billion a year, split almost evenly between defense and benefits. To satisfy our balanced band-aid approach, let’s ask for less than ten percent of that. $10 billion in annual DOD discretionary spending and another $10 billion from the combined departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Treasury, and Interior. That’s $20 billion saved per year, totaling $200 billion over the next ten years.

Next, as I mentioned in that November post, we’re giving away over $8 billion in aid to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan every year. Let’s cut that in half. $40 billion saved over the next ten years and it doesn’t impact a single citizen.

And finally, the EPA has an annual budget of $8.7B. Their job is to make it more expensive for companies to do business by enforcing higher environmental standards on things like fracking and mining in order to provide cleaner air and water. Let’s ask the EPA to take one for the team themselves over the next decade to the tune of $1B per year. That’s the last $10 billion we need to make our goal.

Make no mistake, $250 billion dollars over ten years won’t solve our deficit problem, but it would solve the crisis our government and people are facing this weekend and might be the sort of compromise that could lead to a bigger, better deal down the road.

Reflecting on Sandy Hook

 

Like many of you, I don’t know how to express the horror and sadness I feel about the murder spree that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut Friday morning. I’m rattled and I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m a parent. My world would be utterly destroyed if something like this befell any of my children. There is nothing on this Earth that can balance what was taken from those poor mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.

I think all of us want answers. Why would anyone ever do such a horrible thing? How could anyone, no matter their level of hatred, target innocent children? And already, we’re beginning to point the finger of blame. It’s hard not to.

Many people, apparently President Obama included, are pointing to gun control. They believe that access to guns is the reason for this type of violence in America and that the only way to stop it is to severely limit or ban access to those weapons. I wish it were that simple. A look at both history and a glance around the world tells me that it isn’t.

We came to a similar conclusion about alcohol in this country in 1919 when we implemented Prohibition with the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution. After 14 years of organized crime reaping record profits and committing an unprecedented level of violence as they fought for control of this illegal market, we repealed that “solution” with the 21^st Amendment.

Today, we’re fighting that same hopeless battle against marijuana. This recreational drug has never been more popular. However its illegal status in the U.S. allows Mexican cartels to make all the profit, killing over 50K people in the past six years as they compete for routes and territories.

Making guns illegal will not keep guns out of the hands of those that would do evil with them. It would only prevent citizens from protecting themselves from violence and tyranny. It would also transfer the profits of the sale of those weapons exclusively to the criminal organizations that would continue to provide them to other criminals.

I do not know anything more about Friday morning’s mass murderer, Adam Lanza, than you do. I’ve read that he was troubled, that his mother, who he still lived with, was strict, and that his parents divorced three years ago. I don’t know who he hung out with, what his hobbies were, what television shows he watched, what video games he played, or if there were any warning signs that someone should have caught. But what I do know is that guns have been around for centuries. Guns are available to people all over the world. I also know that anger, hatred, poverty, and injustice exist all over the world and have since the earliest days of civilization. If all of those things are true, what makes our country and this past decade or two so different? Why do we have Columbine, Aurora, Clackamas, and now Newtown?

I believe the difference is our current culture and both the economy and the media that spawned and perpetuate it. I believe the United States has lost its moral way. People no longer have good jobs that they’re proud of. People are no longer confident that they have a secure future ahead of them. People no longer know and love their neighbors. People are no longer able to stay home and raise their children. They both work.  As a country, we decided two-income families should be the norm in order to continue the growth of our consumer-based economic policies. We decided it was better to spend than save. We decided shareholders were more important than workers. Instead of a parent being there to teach and guide our children about life and the differences between right and wrong, we could rely on poorly paid public educators and 24/7 television.

Instead of entertainment and news programming that depict the value of community, the wonders of love, and the benefits of giving, we’re deluged with reality tv, dramas, and sitcoms that bombard us with messages that we must be better looking, richer, greedier, meaner, sluttier, and famous at any cost if our lives are to mean anything. It’s more important to be a celebrity than to be a good person. Instead of video games where cute protagonists chomp dots or navigate mazes full of amusing baddies, we have hyper-realistic games of war or ultra-bloody carnage.

We’ve desensitized a generation to violence and marginalized charity and kindness in favor of gluttony and doom. I know turning around a culture is no easy or short-term task and by no means am I suggesting we can or should try to regulate our way to a more gentle nation. What I am saying is that perhaps it’s time all of us question ourselves. What is truly important? What warrants our time, our attention, our devotion, and our passion and have we misplaced those things today? When will we turn off the television and go outside? When will we stop shopping and start saving? When will we stop texting and start talking? And finally, when will we stop waiting for “them” to solve our country’s problems and start fixing them ourselves instead?

Over the Cliff and Across the Sea

The United States of America had a deficit of $1.3 trillion in 2012. That’s trillion with a t. That number is tough for some of us 99 percenters to fathom so I’ll write it out. $1,300,000,000,000. And that’s just the annual number. All told, our country is in debt to the tune of around $16 trillion. Almost half of that debt is owed to foreign investors, China and Japan being the two largest. These sobering statistics provide some back-drop to the current “fiscal cliff” drama that is playing out between the Obama administration and Congress over how to lower our debt without dipping the country into another (or worse) recession. Obama and some of the more left-leaning Democrats believe we should raise taxes on those making over $200K per year in the form of not renewing the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of December while extending those cuts for anyone making less than that threshold. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their rightwing Republican counterparts want to extend those tax cuts for all Americans, no matter their income level, and believe the deficit should be reduced via cuts to domestic spending, i.e. welfare benefits for the poor. Both parties have been steadfast in their refusal to bend on these stances and if a compromise isn’t reached in the next month, the result will be a higher tax bill for all Americans. Estimates put that tax increase at $2000-$3000 per American family.

Neither of our two major political parties is tackling the problem properly. Raising taxes per the Democrats’ plan punishes the very business owners that we need to create more jobs. The less they can profit, the more wages, benefits, and jobs they’ll need to cut. On the other hand, cutting benefits to the poor, elderly, and unemployed in an already weak economy will only drive us further away from being a land of equal opportunity and closer to the type of caste system found in India and Pakistan.

What we should do is reduce the size of government, create tax policies that foster bringing jobs back onshore, legalize and tax marijuana, and most importantly, pull our troops and funding out of the Middle Eastern countries that pretend to be our allies only to repeatedly stab us in the back. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to cost our country four to six trillion dollars when all is said and done. Obama’s proposed 2013 budget earmarks over $8 billion dollars in aid for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. That doesn’t even include the billions set aside for “friendlier” countries like Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.

Earlier today, Iraq’s representative to the Arab league, Qais al-Azzawy, told that body "Iraq will invite (Arab) ministers to use the weapon of oil, with the aim of asserting real pressure on the United States and whoever stands with Israel.” This is a representative of the country that we spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives freeing from the tyrannical grip of Saddam Hussein telling his fellow Arabs that they should charge Americans more for oil in order to pressure us to leave them alone in their mission to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, Pakistan holds our supply routes for ransom, demanding astronomical fees on top of the billions of dollars we already provide them while they spent years protecting the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. I don’t think anyone in this country is naïve enough to believe that Pakistani officials wouldn’t have spirited bin Laden out of that compound if Obama had given them warning of our Navy SEALs mission that night.

Enough is enough. Spending must be reduced and it needs to start with slashing the funds to these foreign cutthroats. Let them fight their own battles and fund their own nation building. We have a nation of our own that is crumbling while our leaders’ eyes are across the sea instead of focusing on what they were elected to do.

The Insanity of American Politics

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That quote is generally attributed to Albert Einstein, a man most consider to be one of the smartest people to have made a mark on our country in the past hundred years. I wonder what he’d say about yesterday’s election results.

If you pay attention to some of the Republican blowhards in this country, you’d think the reelection of Barack Obama is the end of our country and way of life. It isn’t. But his reelection and that of the vast majority of Congressional incumbents begs the question, why do Americans keep voting these people into office if they aren’t happy with the direction our country has been going? The answer you’ll hear most often is that voters are given no real choice. Congressional House districts are gerrymandered to ensure they never change hands and election funding rules allow the two major parties to accumulate and spend vast amounts of money on campaigning in order to drown out any opposition.

The United States’ two party system is now so entrenched that nearly 99% of the 1.2 million voters yesterday chose between Obama or Romney despite the fact that 28 candidates received at least 500 votes each. That is the power of money in politics and the influence money has on the American press. I’d wager 98% of those 1.2M voters couldn’t even name one of the other 26 candidates.

My candidate, as documented in my previous post, was the Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson. With two successful terms as governor of New Mexico, he has more political experience than Romney or Obama before Obama took office in 2008, but he still wasn’t invited to the debates, wasn’t reported on by the press, and came in a very distant third place with just over 1.1 million votes. Why is that? Money, of course.

In George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, he shared the following warning about political parties:

 “They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.”

Washington’s fears have come to pass. Our federal government no longer serves the people, but serves only itself and those rich corporate donors and PACs that pay for it. Politicians vote based on party platform rather than conscience, common sense or the voice of their constituents.

The saddest part of this is that American voters have been fooled into believing one party is better and significantly different than the other. In fact, the majority of voters passionately believe this, but they’re wrong. Unless you make over $200K per year, there’s almost no difference in how the two parties’ tax plans will impact you. Neither supports pulling all troops and funds out of the Middle East. Neither supports smaller government and significant deficit reduction despite rhetoric from the Republican party stating otherwise. Neither has the political will to solve the mounting crisis of Medicare costs or the corruption of Wall Street. Neither supports the legalization and taxation of marijuana despite the revenue it would generate, the huge hit it would deliver to the Mexican cartels, or the fact that it’s no more medically dangerous than alcohol. Neither supports Congressional term limits despite the fact it would reduce corruption and force regular change within the ranks of leadership. In short, for almost all of the major issues facing this country’s well being, the choice of Democrat or Republican doesn’t improve a thing in the life of a typical American citizen.  

So what’s the answer? 3^rd party candidates. If you want real change in this country, you must stop voting for the candidates our two major parties and their media cronies spoon-feed you and begin voting for independent candidates instead. Support independents at every level; city, state, and federal. Sure, they probably won’t win in the next election or two, but movements must start somewhere and the longer we wait, the longer things remain status quo.

Every Vote Counts

I haven’t added to this blog in almost seven months and that wasn’t due to forgetfulness or laziness. I stopped writing because so few bother to read it. This lack of public interest in my writing is the title to one of my upcoming short stories. Apathy Rules. I’m sure few will read it either.

Despite being the falling tree in an empty forest, I feel compelled to write this piece as our next presidential elections approach. Perhaps no one will read it, but if nothing else, it will make me feel better to get this off my chest.

So many issues plague our country right now but I think the one that more American citizens can agree upon than any other, regardless of political affiliation, is the idea that taxes paid by our citizens ought to support the needs of our citizens. Not the needs of the corporations that downsize, marginalize, and patronize us. And not the needs of Middle Eastern countries that claim to be our allies yet use those funds to kill our soldiers and support our enemies.

If we can agree upon that, then I submit that the four most important Congressional votes in the past ten years are the 2002 vote to invade Iraq, the 2008 TARP bailout, the 2009 Stimulus Package, and the 2009 Health Care initiative. Those four votes spent more of our taxes on foreign countries and big business than any others. If a congressman voted yes for any of those bills, he/she took my hard-earned money (and yours) via threat of imprisonment and then gave it to one of those groups to spend as they like.

Now let’s consider the office that’s up for grabs this November, the President of the United States. We’ve had 44 presidents so far and of those, only one came from the House of Representatives and didn’t hold the higher office of Senator, Governor, Secretary of State, or Vice President before being elected to the top job. That president was Abraham Lincoln. I think even those of us that really like Ron Paul can agree, he’s no Abraham Lincoln. He is not going to be our president. Ever.

If Ron Paul and his House peers are out, what about our senators?  How did they vote on those four bills? I did some research. Only twelve senators voted against all three 2008/2009 bills. Not surprisingly, given that they were Democrat-sponsored, all twelve were Republicans. Before we start patting them on the back, let’s mention that eight of them were in office in 2002 also. All eight voted for the invasion. These aren’t men of conviction. They’re men toeing the party line. You can do your own research on the remaining four, John Barrasso, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, and Roger Wicker, but if you think any of them would have stood up against then-president, George Bush and his desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein via concocting the tale of “weapons of mass destruction”, I’ll have to leave you to your illusions.

That brings us to the three men left standing in the November election. Two with a real shot at winning, and one merely a way for people to make a statement about their growing resentment at the death of the American Dream and the rise of the American Plutocracy. Either Obama or Romney is going to win in November. There’s no doubt about that. And there’s no difference between them. They’re both in the pocket of the wealthy elite and both will continue down the current political path. You only need to look at their voting records to understand that.

The other is running as the Libertarian candidate, GaryJohnson. Gary will not win. However as the former two-term governor of New Mexico, Gary is the only candidate with a record of rejecting bills like the ones mentioned above. He’s the only candidate that would bring our troops home, keep our tax revenues onshore, balance our budget and restore some sanity to our spending prioritization.

I am not stupid. I’m confident that most of my readers (those few of you there are) are not stupid either. As I stated above, this election will result in status quo. Either Obama or Romney will win and no major change for the better will happen in the next four years. But perhaps if we vote for change, if we vote outside the two parties that have been force-fed to us for generations, we can begin to move toward that change. We can make a statement that we want something better for our country.

On November 6, 2012 I am voting for Gary Johnson. I hope you will too.

Remembering Ike

The United States last balanced its budget in 2001. Since then, revenues have gone down and government spending has gone through the roof. And yet, we sure don’t seem to have much to show for it, do we? That is, unless you work on Wall Street or Capitol Hill.

Congress and the President waste more of our money every year and approval polls make it clear that the American public has had enough. Obama’s job approval is around 44% and Congress’s is an absolutely dismal 13%. Surely they’ve gotten the message, don’t you think? Surely they’re trying to establish a lower profile and to cut back on unnecessary spending.

Think again.

Congress has approved a $112.5 million budget to build a memorial in the Washington D.C. mall to our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. At least 80% of that budget will come from taxpayers. No, you weren’t asked to vote on this expense. The wonderful folks on Capitol Hill decided for you. To put that cost in perspective, the recently opened Martin Luther King Memorial only cost taxpayers $10 million.

One might debate that honoring Eisenhower with a new memorial is a worthy cause despite how unpopular our current leaders are. After all, he is one of the major American heroes of World War II and is considered by many to be one of the top ten Presidents of our nation’s history. He is credited for the Interstate Highway System which changed our road system into the modern cross-country mode of transportation that it is today, he approved the act that founded NASA, and he signed two Civil Rights acts that helped desegregate our schools. Of course, he also got us involved in the Korean War in an effort to stave off Chinese aggression and is the man responsible for putting us in the middle of Middle Eastern conflict. Oddly enough, his area of expertise during his time in office was considered foreign policy rather than domestic.

Consider for a minute if we had been asked to vote on the decision. Perhaps we would have approved it just as Congress did. If you believe he was one of our country’s greatest leaders and that our need to glorify our past is more important than using that $100+ million dollars to create jobs or lower taxes, then we just need to make sure that the project’s budget is legitimate despite its size and get the blessing of the Eisenhower family on the design before we break ground. Those sound like appropriate next steps, don’t they?

That’s where things get really interesting.

The Eisenhower family hates the design and doesn’t approve of the architect, Frank Gehry or the sculptor, Charles Ray. Gehry was chosen without having to submit an actual design and Ray is known for his sculptures of naked children. Originally part of the commission overseeing the project, Ike’s grandson David resigned in protest of the design. Gehry’s vision calls for Eisenhower to be depicted as a barefoot seven-year-old boy sitting in the midst of four acres surrounded by eight-story tall pillars that hold up steel mesh tapestries that show images of the Kansas plains he grew up on. David’s sister Anne has argued that the mesh is likely to collect debris and require a great deal of maintenance to avoid looking uncared for. David and Anne’s sister Susan has also voiced her objections, stating that the design should be simple and should represent the fiscal responsibility her grandfather was known for.

All told, it seems difficult to believe that the project is moving forward, yet it is scheduled to break ground this summer. It seems Congress just doesn’t care what the public or even the great man’s family thinks. One more reason to vote your incumbent Congressmen out of office at the next opportunity.

Energy Independence

Gasoline prices in the US have risen 43% since 2006. In the same time period, the average US income has risen by 4.2%. It doesn’t take a mathematician to determine that fuel prices are taking an ever increasing bite out of an American citizen’s wallet. Recently, headlines have been made regarding TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone Pipeline expansion project and President Obama’s rejection of the proposal until further studies can be conducted on its economic and environmental impacts. Proponents of the pipeline state that it will create jobs and help America obtain energy independence. But will it?

Personally, I believe it will create jobs, although they’re likely to be temporary since most of them would disappear once construction is complete. But the purpose of this post isn’t to debate the project’s merits on that front. My focus in on this country’s need to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Would Keystone allow us to import less crude oil from the Middle East, replacing it with Canadian oil instead? Yes, it would.

However, it’s at that point that the issue gets murky. Despite our need to import crude oil, we actually export more of the petroleum products made from it (like gasoline) than we import. In fact, the rate of these exports is growing rapidly. How can that be? How can Americans be forced to pay 43% more for a necessity like gasoline while our country exports more and more of that same product overseas to places like China, Brazil, and India?

The answer is – deregulation.

Over the past decade, Congress has made it increasingly easy to profit from commodity stockpiling and selling. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) has provided exemptions to most of the large banks, allowing them to falsely manipulate the price of commodities like oil in order to reap massive profits for their investors.  US oil companies sell their products offshore because demand in those countries allows them to sell at a higher price, lowering US supply and falsely inflating US prices in the process. Furthermore, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars attempting to influence Middle Eastern countries through a combination of war and bribery in the hopes it will positively impact the supply of crude oil when we could be spending a portion of that money on supporting the development of alternative energy instead.

Imagine how independent we could be of Middle Eastern conflict if we replaced 20% to 30% of our cars with electric vehicles? Imagine how much lower US gas prices would be if they were controlled by supply and domestic demand instead of speculation and offshore profiteering. That future isn’t so far fetched. With proper regulation, oil and gasoline prices could be stabilized while still allowing a fair profit to investors. With proper investment, electric cars and recharging facilities could be built to turn our gasoline driven economy into an electricity driven economy. In comparison, the amount of domestic jobs such a transformation would create dwarf anything possible via projects like Keystone.

Tesla Motors is a great example of the sort of company the United States should be investing in via tax credits and rebates to buyers. These aren’t dinky cars that you’d be embarrassed to drive and they don’t have wimpy batteries that need to be recharged every hundred miles. These are beautiful vehicles with batteries that last over 200 miles. If our country were to invest in the development of cars like this and the recharging stations that would supply replacement batteries (instead of pumping gasoline), we’d be well on our way to solving one of the biggest factors in the demise of this country’s middle-class.

In conclusion, the Keystone Pipeline is a short term improvement, and in my opinion, should be approved. But the long term solution is not increasing the supply of crude oil and the sooner our leaders recognize what really needs to be done, the better.

Tax Reform and Jobs

Plenty of government and financial scumbaggery went on over the holiday break. Some of the highlights include Obama signing Congress’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which stomps all over our Constitutional Bill of Rights. Financial derivatives broker MF Global and its CEO Jon Corzine filed a $41B bankruptcy claim which brought to light that they’d “lost” $1.2B in client money by illegally combining client and company funds.  And D.C. councilman Harry Thomas Jr. was charged with stealing $350K in government funds earmarked for youth sports programs in order to purchase, among other things, a luxury SUV and rounds of golf.

But that’s not what I want to write about today. There will always be liars, crooks, and politicians (or is that redundant?) to complain about, but how about another solution proposal instead? In fact, how about two solutions wrapped into one?

President Obama is crowing about the unemployment rate dropping to 8.5%, the lowest it’s been since February 2009. That rate is still above his promised 8% and of course, under-reported given that it doesn’t include the folks that have stopped actively looking for work. Businesses are complaining about our corporate tax rate that tops out at 35%, the second highest rate in the world. They state that this forces them to transfer and invest their profits overseas rather than keep them here where they can help our economy.  That 35% rate is also misleading since our tax laws include so many corporate loop holes that few companies actually pay that rate. Instead, they use creative accountants to help them retain more of their profits, doubling the problem for citizens. Companies have less money to hire and pay US workers and our government receives less tax from those companies to pay for its programs.

This brings us to my idea. Why don’t we dramatically simplify the tax rules, offering companies a large tax break based on their percentage of US employees? We remove most of the tax code loop holes, leveling the playing field. Then we offer companies the opportunity to lower their tax rate to 20% based on the percentage of their workforce, including contractors, who are US citizens. The baseline for this tax break starts at 60% of the workforce. If 100% of their employees are US citizens, that company pays 20%. If 75% are US citizens, they pay 27.5%. If 60% or less of their workers are citizens, they’re subject to the current 35%. Obviously migrating offshore jobs back onshore takes time so we offer a one-year grace period from the day the bill is passed. After that, the new rules are in effect. Companies that employ Americans enjoy a greatly reduced tax rate. Companies that export their jobs pay the higher rate to make up for the harm they’re doing to our economy. Sounds reasonable, don’t you think?