“It’s the government’s money”….that was said to me by a cousin of mine (a Democrat). We were debating the upcoming 2008 elections at the time, and, of course, taxes became a big part of the debate. It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone when they don’t understand that the money we earn does not come from the government. It is our money not the government’s, and so I dropped the subject with him. I remember wondering how we can have the same blood running through our veins yet have such polar opposite views …. after all our mother and my father were brother and sister!
You may have gathered that I don’t believe that our money is the government’s money. I’ve never thought that at any point in my life….not even when I was a kid! However there are a lot of, or should I say, there are far too many people that seem to think that our money belongs to the government and that the government should be able to set just how much of that money we may keep. I say to hell with that!
Taxes are always a touchy subject, I don’t know anyone that enjoys paying them. I know that I don’t….do you? I have heard some people say that they do not mind paying their taxes, I call those people…………liars.
Right now there is debate in Washington DC on whether or not taxes should be raised on the “rich”, whomever they may be. However, just not so long ago, President Obama and other Democrats were saying that in these tough economic times, raising taxes on anyone is a bad idea. Have things gotten better since then? Or has this bad idea somehow become a good idea? No things haven’t gotten better and it’s still a bad idea.
Millionaires and Billionaires aren’t paying their fair share they say. So I guess Zillionaires are really getting away with it! They say we can’t keep giving them money. I did not know that Uncle Sam was writing checks to those scoundrels! Wait a minute! Uncle Sam isn’t writing them checks is he?! No he’s not….what Democrats and the President want to do is take more money away from them, because, as my cousin said, “it’s the government’s money”.
Warren Buffet’s been saying that taxes should be raised on millionaires and billionaires, however I’ve heard that Mr. Buffet’s been fighting a billion dollar tax bill for years. He says that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does. Well no wonder she does, he’s been dodging a billion dollar tax bill! I’m sure she hasn’t had a zillion dollar tax bill. Come on Warren, a lot Americans were born at night … but not last night. Sounds to me like Warren’s been drinking too many tequila sunrises with Jimmy Buffet … he must be drunk talking that kind of nonsense.
Some people argue, “what’s wrong with increasing taxes on the wealthy four or five percent more?”. I say it’s one thing if you’re increasing taxes from 1% to 6%, but quite another when you increase 23 % to 27% or 28 %. Here’s what’s wrong with it….it’s their money! It is not the government’s. How would you like it if all of a sudden Uncle Sam decides that now you aren’t paying your fair share because your earn more money than other people in the neighborhood? Answer…you wouldn’t.
Let’s not kid ourselves … there aren’t enough millionaires, billionaires, or even zillionaires in the country to have an significant impact on the national debt. Nor will raising taxes address budget shortfalls either. The only way to lower the debt and fix the budget is by cutting government spending and reducing the size and scope of our federal government. I know people are saying that a lot Americans depend on government to provide them with all kinds of services, benefits, and income … but if we do nothing about how the federal government spends our money, very soon there won’t be enough money for any of those things. We’ve created dependency and now that dependency is killing our independent spirit and is stressing our finances.
Why has that happened? … because for almost a century we have let government forget just whose money it is they spend. Whose money is that? … ours, yours and mine, it doesn’t belong to anyone else. That includes money taxed away from millionaires and billionaires. They best way to increase the money flow into the federal coffers is to increase the number of taxpayers paying taxes into the system, not increasing tax rates.
The most common argument for increasing taxes on high income earners isn’t because it will increase federal revenues, because it won’t. The argument becomes: because it is fair. What’s fair about that? My argument always boils down to this: whose money is it anyway!?! Does it belong to the people that work for it, or does it belong to government?
The President has said that he believes in spreading the wealth around. I say that he should believe in spreading prosperity around … but, he hasn’t a clue on how to do it.
This nation has created a monster. We’ve created a monster of debt, of government, of dependence, and of envy. The trouble with monsters is that they always turn on their creators.
There you have it.
Pass it on if you like or let me know if I don’t have a clue.
Eddie
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
HERE’S YOUR NEW JOBS….$BILL
President Obama spoke before a joint session of Congress on Thursday, September 8, 2011. I did not watch his speech … I never do. That is because I have zero confidence in the man and the political party that he leads. The speech was touted as the unveiling of his new jobs programs and initiatives ...it wasn’t. What it was, was just another campaign speech. He spewed the same old class warfare rhetoric that he’s far too accustomed to using. In his speech he repeatedly told Congress to pass his jobs bill. A bill, that at the time of the speech, no one in Congress had seen. I doubt that even Barack Obama himself had seen the mystery bill. I had to jokingly say that not only had he and the Democrats started passing bills without reading them, but now they were going to pass bills without writing them! .... as I’m righting this blog (today is September 14, 2011) the jobs bill has been in congressional circulation a day or so.
As I said, I did not watch the televised speech, but that does not mean that I didn’t follow up on it. I was not surprised that the speech was long on words (just words) and short on details … that is not unusual for a Barack Obama speech. What did surprise me is that he did not have the presence of mind to acknowledge the upcoming tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Here he was in front of a joint session of Congress live on prime time television and he says nothing. I found that to be remarkable, but what I found to be even more remarkable than that, is that almost no one else in the US did.
I (as well as many others) have said that far too many of us have forgotten what happened on 9-11. We’ve become insulated from it. We don’t talk about it. We don’t hear about it. We don’t think about it. But our enemies do think about, talk about, and hear about it … the attack on our homeland was considered a victory in their eyes. What do most people do when they’ve suffered a defeat? … they avoid the topic. And we has a nation have been doing just that. Yes, we’ve taken the war to them but we’ve not defeated them. I’m a big Dallas Cowboys fan …. but just this past weekend, on 9-11-11, I watched them lose a game they thought they were winning. And I believe we as a nation are on the verge of losing a game we think we’ve won.
We’ve not ended the threat of Islamic terrorism against us and we have not ended the threat of our economic woes either. Recently my wife was very excited that we received a letter in the mail from our credit card company informing us that they were going to lower our interest rate. Isn’t that something! Just because we’ve been paying down our debt and then not adding to it they have decided to lower the interest rate. Now if only Barack Obama, the Democrats, and RINO Republicans would do the same with our national debt … pay it down and then stop adding to it.
Barack Obama’s latest bill does neither of those things. He’s going to borrow some more to pay for mostly government jobs and projects. He’s willing to mortgage still more of America’s future to pay for the mistakes of this and former generations rather than fix those problems today. Affixing a great debt on posterity is un-American and immoral. I cannot say it any better than my cousin Lonnie did and so I won’t …. so I’ll let you read how he felt after hearing President Obama jobs speech, “I was extremely disappointed, that, as we approach the tenth anniversary of the attack on our nation, our president would call for a joint session of Congress to declare to the world that the evil intentions of our enemies; to destroy our financial, governmental and military systems were accomplished. We are broke, leaderless, and our ability to defend ourselves is diminishing”. Lonnie Perez , Sept 2011.
There you have it.
Pass it on if you like or let me know if I don’t have a clue.
Eddie
As I said, I did not watch the televised speech, but that does not mean that I didn’t follow up on it. I was not surprised that the speech was long on words (just words) and short on details … that is not unusual for a Barack Obama speech. What did surprise me is that he did not have the presence of mind to acknowledge the upcoming tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Here he was in front of a joint session of Congress live on prime time television and he says nothing. I found that to be remarkable, but what I found to be even more remarkable than that, is that almost no one else in the US did.
I (as well as many others) have said that far too many of us have forgotten what happened on 9-11. We’ve become insulated from it. We don’t talk about it. We don’t hear about it. We don’t think about it. But our enemies do think about, talk about, and hear about it … the attack on our homeland was considered a victory in their eyes. What do most people do when they’ve suffered a defeat? … they avoid the topic. And we has a nation have been doing just that. Yes, we’ve taken the war to them but we’ve not defeated them. I’m a big Dallas Cowboys fan …. but just this past weekend, on 9-11-11, I watched them lose a game they thought they were winning. And I believe we as a nation are on the verge of losing a game we think we’ve won.
We’ve not ended the threat of Islamic terrorism against us and we have not ended the threat of our economic woes either. Recently my wife was very excited that we received a letter in the mail from our credit card company informing us that they were going to lower our interest rate. Isn’t that something! Just because we’ve been paying down our debt and then not adding to it they have decided to lower the interest rate. Now if only Barack Obama, the Democrats, and RINO Republicans would do the same with our national debt … pay it down and then stop adding to it.
Barack Obama’s latest bill does neither of those things. He’s going to borrow some more to pay for mostly government jobs and projects. He’s willing to mortgage still more of America’s future to pay for the mistakes of this and former generations rather than fix those problems today. Affixing a great debt on posterity is un-American and immoral. I cannot say it any better than my cousin Lonnie did and so I won’t …. so I’ll let you read how he felt after hearing President Obama jobs speech, “I was extremely disappointed, that, as we approach the tenth anniversary of the attack on our nation, our president would call for a joint session of Congress to declare to the world that the evil intentions of our enemies; to destroy our financial, governmental and military systems were accomplished. We are broke, leaderless, and our ability to defend ourselves is diminishing”. Lonnie Perez , Sept 2011.
There you have it.
Pass it on if you like or let me know if I don’t have a clue.
Eddie
Friday, September 2, 2011
TWO EATHQUAKES AND A HURRICANE
Two earthquakes (one in Virginia, the other in Colorado) and a hurricane hit the United States in the same week; that’s weird isn’t it? From what I understand, Virginia’s never been hit by both a hurricane and an earthquake in the same week. In that same week NYC Mayor Bloomberg announced that he was not going to allow religious leaders to speak at the September 11th tenth anniversary memorial. That’s not only weird, it ain’t right. But he is going to allow politicians to speak at the event … isn’t that special.
Let’s not forget about the earthquake that rocked Alaska in June, or the wild fires, floods, and drought that have hit the USA. And never mind all of the other natural and manmade disasters that have happened everywhere else in the world this year.
The strangeness never seem to end. In the very week that the US was experiencing earthquakes and a hurricane, the rebels in Libya captured Muammar Gaddafi’s son, and now Colonel Gaddafi is seemingly out of power. While in other regional news, Israel launched missiles into Egypt in retaliation to suicide bombings and missile attacks that have been carried out against them on the Israeli / Egyptian border. Security on the border has weakened since Hosni Mubarak was removed from power in Egypt. The Arab uprisings that have been taking place everywhere in the region are all unsettled and will be for the foreseeable future. In a nut shell, no one knows how the Arab uprisings this year will effect global and regional peace, or the world economy, and what Israel is going to have to do in order to survive as a nation.
But that’s not all of the weirdness we should be thinking about. London burned as riots and flash mobs ran rampant through the streets. Destroying property, neighborhoods, and lives … mostly out of class envy, jealousy, and evilness. The riots were not to protest political or religious oppression, or to remove a tyrannical dictatorship, or to establish democracy. They already have democracy in England as well as political and religious freedom. No, it was mob lawlessness that caused the violence. Some will say it was due to the police killing of Mark Duggan, a known drug dealer, that caused the riots … I don’t agree. I would say that his killing was used as a convenient excuse by the rioters, just as was the case with Rodney King and the LA riots. But it doesn’t take much to move a mob to violence … a riot could have easily erupted after a soccer match.
On the economic front, Standard and Poor’s lowered the credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+ as a direct result of how Congress and the White House have mishandled fiscal policy. However, Moody’s and other ratings institutions have not lowered the US rating … but that doesn’t mean that they won’t. Billionaire investor Warren Buffet has publicly criticized the downgrade, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened nor does it mean that other rating companies will not follow suit. The United States has never before had its credit rating lowered. That means that our country is no longer considered good as gold. As a result of that, what has Congress and the White House done to correct this strange turn of events? … nothing. Sure there’s been a lot of talk, but talk is cheap … and the national debt and deficits aren’t.
What will happen next is anyone’s guess. So much has happened this year that I can’t recall all of it … from the Japanese spumoni and earthquakes, to the Arab uprisings, to the Arizona shootings. Here in the US we’ve had wild fires, storms, floods, tornadoes, and now hurricanes. Who will ever forget Joplin, Missouri, being destroyed by a massive tornado this year … or the millions of acres of land that has been burned in fires … or birds falling dead from the sky and dead fish washing up on or beaches and shore lines. I won’t … will you? Gas prices have soared this year and unemployment remains much too high. I have said that 2011 will be a year we would like to forget, but most likely never will.
There you have it.
Pass it along if you like or let me know if I don’t have a clue.
Eddie
Let’s not forget about the earthquake that rocked Alaska in June, or the wild fires, floods, and drought that have hit the USA. And never mind all of the other natural and manmade disasters that have happened everywhere else in the world this year.
The strangeness never seem to end. In the very week that the US was experiencing earthquakes and a hurricane, the rebels in Libya captured Muammar Gaddafi’s son, and now Colonel Gaddafi is seemingly out of power. While in other regional news, Israel launched missiles into Egypt in retaliation to suicide bombings and missile attacks that have been carried out against them on the Israeli / Egyptian border. Security on the border has weakened since Hosni Mubarak was removed from power in Egypt. The Arab uprisings that have been taking place everywhere in the region are all unsettled and will be for the foreseeable future. In a nut shell, no one knows how the Arab uprisings this year will effect global and regional peace, or the world economy, and what Israel is going to have to do in order to survive as a nation.
But that’s not all of the weirdness we should be thinking about. London burned as riots and flash mobs ran rampant through the streets. Destroying property, neighborhoods, and lives … mostly out of class envy, jealousy, and evilness. The riots were not to protest political or religious oppression, or to remove a tyrannical dictatorship, or to establish democracy. They already have democracy in England as well as political and religious freedom. No, it was mob lawlessness that caused the violence. Some will say it was due to the police killing of Mark Duggan, a known drug dealer, that caused the riots … I don’t agree. I would say that his killing was used as a convenient excuse by the rioters, just as was the case with Rodney King and the LA riots. But it doesn’t take much to move a mob to violence … a riot could have easily erupted after a soccer match.
On the economic front, Standard and Poor’s lowered the credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+ as a direct result of how Congress and the White House have mishandled fiscal policy. However, Moody’s and other ratings institutions have not lowered the US rating … but that doesn’t mean that they won’t. Billionaire investor Warren Buffet has publicly criticized the downgrade, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened nor does it mean that other rating companies will not follow suit. The United States has never before had its credit rating lowered. That means that our country is no longer considered good as gold. As a result of that, what has Congress and the White House done to correct this strange turn of events? … nothing. Sure there’s been a lot of talk, but talk is cheap … and the national debt and deficits aren’t.
What will happen next is anyone’s guess. So much has happened this year that I can’t recall all of it … from the Japanese spumoni and earthquakes, to the Arab uprisings, to the Arizona shootings. Here in the US we’ve had wild fires, storms, floods, tornadoes, and now hurricanes. Who will ever forget Joplin, Missouri, being destroyed by a massive tornado this year … or the millions of acres of land that has been burned in fires … or birds falling dead from the sky and dead fish washing up on or beaches and shore lines. I won’t … will you? Gas prices have soared this year and unemployment remains much too high. I have said that 2011 will be a year we would like to forget, but most likely never will.
There you have it.
Pass it along if you like or let me know if I don’t have a clue.
Eddie
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