Election Day - 2010

On Tuesday, you will be asked to cast your vote in one of the most important off year elections this country has seen in many years. It is an election that will decide which path our nation takes and follows into the future. It is an election to see whether the United States will choose hope or fear; freedom or dependency.

For many people, the choice will be based on looking for a safe alternative. The decision will be made based on holding onto a piece of a perceived shrinking economic pie. To slow the shrinkage, these folks will look to the government to protect them. What they fail to realize, it is that very government which is now asking them to prostrate themselves before it for a few pieces of silver has no silver left to give. It has spent all that it has, and all that their children will make.

It is asking you to give up choices…choices relating to health care; choices relating to how you heat your home; choices as to the car you drive; choices as to what you eat; choices as to how you light your house; choices as to what you can put in your child’s lunch box; choices as to how much water you can use…even how you can flush your toilet. You see, the nanny state has a price for taking care of you. That price is to force you into following its vision for some unattainable utopian future. The government has taken your money. Now it wants your soul.

American self reliance has always been our strong suit. What is our self reliance worth? Barack Obama promised hope in his election. Instead, he is peddling fear. He is saying that you, as an individual, cannot make it without his benevolent help…or that of Nancy Pelosi…or that of Harry Reid. Take his hand and he will lead you…but to where? Do you want a nation of elite bureaucrats deciding every aspect of your life? That, my friends, only leads to a life of despair. There are no limits to what these government operatives will require of you for a taste of their vision of hope.

Real hope lies in the individual. It lies in freedom, common sense, and responsibility to our God, our nation, our family, and to each of one of us. Government is a false god. Thomas Jefferson said a nation is lost when it forgets that freedom comes from God. Freedom isn’t what the government allows us to have. Freedom is God given, and it is our duty to defend it from government assault.

Ronald Reagan said that government isn't the solution to the problem. Government is the problem. If you have any doubts, look around you. Are things getting better or worse? The financial meltdown was caused not by a lack of government regulation, but by a government that actually encouraged those things to happen that led to that fateful day in September in 2008. Those policies started under Jimmy Carter, and were expanded by Bill Clinton and George Bush.

And here is the dirty little secret. Those policies are still in place. None of the regulation reform instituted by Barack Obama has stopped any of the abuses that caused the problems in the first place. The same nasty practices are still going on today. And you should be afraid.

But don’t fear, you have health care…maybe. You have government regulating what you can eat. You have government regulating what you can say. You have government regulating every aspect of your life, except for the one that counts…the ability for you to go and get a job and support yourself and your family.

Wake up America. When you go to vote on Tuesday, vote for true hope and change. Vote for the candidate that will protect individualism, freedom, common sense, and personal responsibility.

God bless the United States of America.

Energy and Fair Trade - The Path to Recovery

I read an article in Newsweek the other day. The guy writing the article had a pretty good grasp of how currency works, and went into great detail about various currency wars over the past 50 years. His premise was that in hard economic times, most nations maneuver to weaken their currency to expand exports, and the United States is no exception. But as I have written several times over the past weeks, China has raised currency manipulation to an art form. That being said, in this cycle the United States has been successful in weakening its currency vis-a-vis the Euro and Yen.

The flip side of the equation is that as the dollar weakens, imports into the United States become more expensive. So…if China lets its currency rise, imported goods from China become more expensive, and goods exported from the United States to China become cheaper. The unintended consequence is that imported oil becomes much more expensive. Given the regulatory, environmental, and redistribution policies of Barack “no growth” Obama, that becomes problematic. Ex.: the oil drilling embargo in the Gulf of Mexico (lifted just this past week due to massive political pressure). We are between the rock and the hard place. Money flows out of the United States either to China with a strong dollar, or to OPEC with a weak dollar.

Any economic recovery has to be two pronged. 1) China has to let its currency float and rise; and 2) We have to increase domestic energy production to stave off the effects of increased imported oil prices. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Two simple things to restore our nation’s economic prowess!! But it won’t happen, not under this ideologically pure President.

In fairness to Barack, he has addressed the trade imbalance with China more than his predecessors. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much. The United States has to be much more aggressive, but our leaders spew fear that the Chinese will stop buying our bonds. Bunk!!! The Chinese will make a lot of noise. And even if they act, more likely than not it would be an anemic reaction! And even if it was a strong reaction, I have read numerous articles saying that it would not be the financial Armageddon that the many people say it will be. The estimates I have read say it would only affect a small percentage of the debt.

As for the energy, Obama’s green policy is purely ideological, based on global warming. That is a problem. His policy is not one of expanding energy supplies, it is based on restricting your access to any kind of energy at all. An energy policy based on environment purity, and one based on economic growth are two different animals. He is foisting his environmental religion on us in the form of green energy jobs. Spain did the same thing. Any energy jobs produced pale in comparison to more traditional energy jobs lost. Just ask the thousands upon thousands of unemployed oil platform workers in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

So…this is what we are facing. Currency and energy are the paths to economic recovery; and how to do it is not complicated. The main problem is finding a political leader that can articulate it, and use common sense action to get the desired result. If you know somebody like that…please let me know.

Meanie Bodinie

My lovely wife Ginger, while discussing a family matter, said to me that she was tired of being a Meanie-Bodinie. This morning I read an article by Robert Reich in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled GOP’s Tough Love Cruel to Millions of Americans. A similar topic was the subject of a sermon about benevolence in church…we were told we are not doing enough. Couple that with one Democratic politician who said the Republican solution to health care reform is death….WOW!

I was aghast. I must be a Meanie-Bodinie. But you know what? I didn’t know that being for smaller government, less taxes, and more individual freedom and choice made me a Meanie-Bodinie. I thought it made me a compassionate conservative. Find me a priest. I need to go to confession.

It all depends on how one views issues of poverty. For example, I think that Second Harvest Food Bank is a worthy endeavor, and I do what I can to support it. On the other hand, when I hear comments from various people that the organization is successful because it is now serving 10,000 families, or 15% more families than last year…that’s not success! That is failure. It is failure on the part of our society and economic system to provide people a means to make a living. If the goal of charitable success is more parties served, the nation is doomed to failure.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. It comes from people working, people making things of value. Government produces nothing. It recycles…taking money from one place and putting it in another. To do that, it must pay bureaucrats to handle the shifting of money. More often than not, bureaucrats aren’t very efficient at their job. It is just the nature of the beast. One never handles other people’s money as carefully as one handles one’s own, be it a government endeavor or not. The bureaucrat takes a cut of every dollar that passes though him. He is a middleman. That middleman has no incentive to make sure the money is spent the way it was intended. His function is to disburse the money…nothing else. And his self interest is served by having more and more money to disburse, not resolving any issues.

As Margaret Thatcher once said…the trouble with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. No matter how noble the cause or how well intentioned the government program, sooner or later it will run out of money. Right now, in the United States, we are out of money.

So how are the poor best served? I subscribe to the belief that a rising tide raises all ships. If the economy improves, all citizens will benefit. If a healthy base is rebuilt from the shambles of the financial meltdown…all citizens will benefit. If small business is able to regenerate itself, all citizens will benefit. But in order for that to happen, the government needs to get out of the way, and yes, some folks will have to feel some pain as things move forward. There is no free lunch. Sooner or later, we are going to have to take the medicine, and a spoonful of Obama sugar won’t help.

Mr. Reich, one of President Obama’s closest advisors testified in Congress we don’t need any more, white, blue collar construction jobs. Unfortunately, Mr. Reich, that’s EXACTLY what we need. It is those white, blue collar construction jobs that pay taxes.

Condemning folks to a lifetime of government assistance and dependency is the worst kind of cruelty. That is a new form of slavery that knows no color..only hardship and dependency. Obama commented this past week it took a long time to free the slaves in this country. Yes, Mr. President, you are right. But how do we free the people stuck in poverty…1/10th of the United States population on food stamps. Who is the real Meanie-Bodinie?