Obama and the Poor

I finished a mortgage on a property and suddenly found my bank account being raided.  The bank had required I have a small checking account with them in order to also have the mortgage, so I put $100 into an account I never used.  For all the time that loan was being paid, the account lay dormant, but as soon as the mortgage was done, they began charging monthly service charges of over $10 a month.  I just closed the account.  But then I began to wonder what was going on.

            What’s happening is that banks are having a hard time making money on small bank accounts often held by poor people.  For years they simply had hefty fees for things the poor folks do—overdrafts, low balances, etc.  But then came Frankendodd law and now banks are capped in fees.  The Durbin amendment to Dodd-Frank capped interchange fees on debit cards and just about ruined that business.  The result is that the economics of banking the poor is now a loser.  Thus my bank, once I had finished my loan, saw me as a small account and started zapping me for a large monthly charge, about the only recourse they had left to make money on a small account. 

            It used to be that banks made money on all their accounts.  Big accounts had a lot of money just sitting there and the bank could use that as an investment—making money on the “spread”.  Small accounts often ran into sundry fees.  But take the fees away and a lot of small accounts lose money for the bankers.  As a result of Frankendodd and other banking regulations, banks lose money on small accounts.  Thus the poor can’t bank.  USA now has one out of 8 people with no bank account anywhere.  That’s the 3^rd highest in the developed world behind Italy and Portugal who have a lot of Muslim guest workers. We have noticed this trend in our renters.  Very few even offer to pay with a check.  Only two use money orders which of course require a hefty charge.  So do paycheck cashing services, pawn shops, and payday loan joints which service the unbanked.

            So all that dreamy talk you hear about how we all will go to online banking is a dream for the well-fixed.  It leaves out that 12% who don’t use banks or the 20+% who are underbanked—have a bank account but mostly deal in cash and use the pawnshops and payday loans.  Dodd-Frank, like practically every other government program, entraps the poor and keeps them from upward mobility and makes them more dependent on the government—a cruel foster parent.

            I continually hear seniors lament that Obama is robbing our grandchildren.  True, but don’t think because you are senior you can escape the inflation to come.  Argentina had an economic crash in 2001 followed by wild and crazy spending by government officials who vowed to save everyone by Big Stimulus.  Sound familiar?  Big Inflation came. Result was that seniors who got government pensions (ANSES, their version of Social Security) were paid with deflated currency, fifty-cent dollars, so to speak.  Result: an old guy sued ANSES in Argentine Supreme Court and won his case that he must be paid in indexed currency.  But the government is doing that slick bureaucratic trick, delaying payment. It takes about 5 years of paperwork to get an indexed pension adjustment.  Maybe the old duffer will die in that time, eh? This is similar to the Obama IRS who delays payments of tax refunds.  With all our modern wizardry of online filing, with all the Golden Hordes of newly hired tax agents, the IRS has gone from 4 weeks for a refund to 3 months. So if inflation ever comes--gasoline prices rise, food prices rise, medical costs rise, etc.—the purchasing power of social security will sink like a stone and ditto the value of your savings.  What? You say those things are actually happening?

            Never fear, Obama wants to raise minimum wage, which will really help all those poor people get jobs, I am sure.  And he demanded that Congress pass cap-and-trade in his State of the Onion address.  Think higher fuel prices, higher utilities, higher transportation charges on everything sold. What a friend of the poor we have!

Rush's Obama Theory is Right

Last year’s presidential campaign surprised me like so many people.  It wasn’t a big Obama win—50.3% to 49.0%-- but I had to rethink where the mentality of the country was.  Here’s the ironclad rule of campaign management.  When times are bad, people want to see a strong contrast in the political parties.  ‘What’s your solution?’ they seem to ask every pol.  But when times are good, people are apathetic and vote more on personality.  I was expecting a contrast election.  What we got was a personality election.  Obama seemed to turn the distress of 2010 into a personality campaign.  I wondered how.  Evidently he appealed to and turned out people who were apathetic but supportive of him—the low-information voters.  Rush Limbaugh makes the point that many people see the direction of the country as bad and most are against all the Obama policies. (NY Times poll)  But they keep electing him.  What gives?? 

            Obama’s strategy is to refuse to govern (no responsibility) but to campaign constantly.  By not governing or he is not associated with the wrong directions and policies.  He just scolds Congress and constantly and rails against some nebulous bad entity, whether it be “the rich” or Republicans in general.  Low information voters lap this up because they don’t think in much depth and the media is a supporting chorus.  Youth identify—accept no responsibility but bitch about the adult world.  Leftists lap this up because like O they think the country was founded upon evil and is inherently vile.   (‘We must apologize for America. Oblamer is just trying to fix this long term badness and 4 years is not nearly long enough to get it changed.’)  If anything bad happens, Obama just disclaims that he had anything to do with it. Bush’s Fault.  And there will never be compromise or bipartisanship because to make an agreement would make him responsible for the results.   The Great Divider.

            But there’s a weakness in this strategy.  What if something happens which sticks to the Teflon Democrat?  The same mob which was excited by the outsider, the protest organizer today will turn on him tomorrow. Look at Robespierre in the French Revolution.  Another Benghazi incident or a bad downturn in the economy will do it. 

            Ever study the story of how Sweden turned Protestant?  It involves how 2 leaders overstepped and overreached.  The Swedes in 1520, were quite happy to be Catholic, and in fact their current version of Lutheranism is considered the most formal and Catholic of the Lutherans. The Church held almost half the land of the country as fiefs.  The people were poor, agrarian, and illiterate in their far-northern climate.  In the 1300’s Queen Margaret unified Norway, Sweden, and Denmark into one country by the Treaty of Calmar.  She is considered by historians to have been perhaps the most capable female monarch of Europe, surpassing even Elizabeth of England.  By the 1500’s some Swedish nobility, however felt they needed their own country again and they elected Sten Shure the Younger as regent.  But Shure was opposed by the Archbishop Gustav Trolle of Uppsala (then the capital of Sweden). Shure tried to depose Trolle.  The Pope got mad and demanded Christian II of Denmark, the ruler of the joint kingdom, put down this rebellion.  Christian did, first taking good will hostages in a truce and then winning in a second campaign.  He was re-crowned king of Sweden by a triumphant Trolle on Nov. 4, 1520.  Three days later, the nobles who were Shure supporters were summoned to a peace conference in Stockholm.  Christian and Trolle had them beheaded—70 noblemen plus others.

            This attempt by Christian II to make his rule secure and Trolle to assert the Church backfired.  It became known as the Stockholm Bath of Blood.  An young man, Gustavus Eriksson, nicknamed Vasa (for the “bundle” of sticks in his family coat of arms), who had been one of the good will hostages of the truce Christian had signed earlier, escaped and traveled back to his native hometown.  Like a George Washington, Vasa was reknowned for being exceedingly honest and principled, and also somewhat intellectual.  En route, he got word of the Bath of Blood and was energized to lead a revolt.  But with winter coming on and news traveling slowly in Sweden, he could find no one to join the cause. They either hadn’t heard of the atrocity in Stockholm or weren’t interested, or wouldn’t be caught dead opposing the Church.  Finally, without a friend, he decided to quietly seek asylum in Norway.  But just as he was near the border, horsemen rode up and begged him come back.  They had now heard of the Stockholm executions of one hundred Swedish patriots and everyone was asking what in the devil was the Archbishop who is supposed to lead us in prayer doing to us?  But Vasa, with all the nobles and brains of the nationalism movement killed off, had a hard time organizing.  He eventually managed a peasant army, trained them, led them brilliantly and won, June 7, 1523.  By luck, Christian II of Denmark was internally deposed about the same time and the new Danish king renounced claims to Sweden. 

            Newly crowned King Gustavus I, Vasa had huge war debts and unpaid soldiers.  He had no way to pay for things and taxation was difficult in Sweden because all the people who could pay would fight it. So he deflated the currency to pay people off but it didn’t work. People were saavy to this strategy and demanded real value.  So he begged the Church bishops to help.  When those tightwads begrudged the effort, he began to think maybe he should be like the Lutheran princes of Germany and just kick out the bishops and take over their vast lands.  This was nothing but a government conundrum at the time. 

            But there was a certain Olaus Petri, a priest who had gone to study in Germany at a small college called Wittenberg in 1519.  He came back to Sweden circulating the writings of Luther.  When one bishop crab-assed about giving Vasa a loan, he replaced the guy with Petri, then made Petri’s brother professor of theology.  Together they published a Swedish translation of the Bible. Then Petri challenged another theologian to debate the Protestant reforms.  The intellectual Vasa showed up and said he would judge the debate.  He found himself siding in faith with the Reformation.  Sweden had a Diet (nationwide assembly) made up of bishops, nobles, merchants and town dwellers, miners and peasants—the most diverse in Europe.  Vasa asked the Diet of 1527 if the country should become Lutheran.  They decided not.  Vasa nodded and said that he would then leave the country and resign his crown.  The Diet debated another 3 days and decided they wanted Vasa more than the Pope. Sweden thus became Lutheran. 

            Vasa instituted reforms that still left the church with lands but donated much to be sold to the benefit of the crown.  It was far less bloodless than what happened in Germany.  Vasa used the wealth to stimulate the iron industry, signed free commerce agreements with England and others, and lowered fees (like taxes) on all the citizenry—sort of an early day Reaganomics.  Sweden flourished and Gustavus Vasa I went down in history as the father of Modern Sweden.

            But the real lesson of this is that Christian and Trolle overstepped Swedish sensibility and found themselves going from beloved guys to bad guys in a hurry.  Instead of annihilating the nationalists, they opened the door for a revolution.  Christian was adulated only so long as life was normal and people were apathetic.  Trolle was adulated as a leader of faith, but when he became Torquemada, Swedes were appalled.  What the nationalists needed was a leader willing to put his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on the line for what he believed.  They found it in Vasa.

Fixing Congress

A lot of people express ire at Congress these days.  I share some of that, but not all.  Mostly, I think Obama and the media have successfully planted blame on Congress for everything.  “Congress doesn’t run things right!” But it’s a legislature, meant to deliberate laws, not a CEO and has no direct control over operations.  Obama does and does nothing, but he has made an art of running a perpetual campaign of being a perpetual critic.  He doesn’t govern.  He just scolds Congress when they don’t fulfill his fantasy government.

            Nonetheless, there is a lot of unaccountability and remoteness of Congressmen and Senators.  They run TV and radio ads every 2 or 6 years and most people don’t know them.   Ha! Most people can’t even name them! Money is the way they get elected, buying sound bites and carefully organized messages, in contrast to state reps and senators who shake hands and speak in person a lot.  You can walk up to your state legislator and ask a lot of questions.  Worse, some in Washington use the power of the office to line their pockets as we see from time to time.  We made a mistake by the 17^th Amendment for the direct election of Senators.  They no longer are representatives of the state’s business (except at election time), but seem to be a collection of prima donnas yearning to run for President.  Hillary Clinton from Arkansas barely represented NY.  She was using it as a stepping stone to run for Prez. 

            I should say that I like our two Oklahoma Senators and my Congressman.  I have met and spoken to all of them and they do a very good job, even when I don’t agree over some detail.  But this isn’t true for most people who don’t attend political events.

            So what should we fix?  First, the US House is represented by 435 members.  Nothing in the Constitution establishes that number and it has varied (mostly grown) over the years. In today’s world of telecommunications, it could just as well be 3435 members.  Hmm.  Come to think of it, we could do this.  It would require a large arena to hold the sessions, but voting could be handled by computerized techniques, even remotely, allowing Congressmen to be home for part of the session.  Having one member for about every 90,000 people (35,000 active voters)makes a district similar in population to the original districts in 1788, where a House member could personally know just about everyone in his district—and almost identical to an OK Senate district.  It would create a mélange of personalities—artists from New Orleans, farmers from the panhandle, coal miners from West Virginia.  Real people who look like those they represent.  And the House could still have leadership to be present on the floor.  There would likely be designated speakers.  How to handle all the bills from so many members?  It would be similar to today, but maybe there would have to be geographic region committees to screen legislation.  Most of all this kind of system would take the big money and influence buying out of the equation.  Good Representatives would be found speaking in small civic meetings of 15-25 people and townhalls of a hundred. Also, gerrymandering would not be the issue it is today, just as gerrymandering is not such a huge issue in state legislatures.  Bottom line: people would know their Rep and their Rep would know them.  And if we still have to pay over $100,000 annually for a guy to travel to Washington and have a staff, that seems a lot less to me than our trillion dollar deficits. Now that I think about it, having a local friend in the House we could call probably wouldn’t begat trillion dollar deficits.  We’d hold them accountable.  They couldn’t go to Walmart without hearing about it.  And it takes no Constitutional Amendment to make this change in the House.

            The Senate is a tougher fix.  Repealing the 17^th would be difficult.  I suggest that we keep the six year statewide system of election, but allow a legislature and governor to recall a senator after two years with a special election.  Hence Oklahoma wouldn’t have to wait around for six years to recall Fred Harris while he grandstands for President and does nothing to represent the state.  The legislature would be cautious to use their power lest they transgress the will of the people who genuinely like their Senator.  But mostly it would force a Senator to act more in concert with their state. No more mavericking just because it will be years before they face an election.  Can you imagine the hell our state governments would give the present Senate which refuses to adopt a budget?  And I don’t think a Constitutional Amendment would be required to make this change in the Senate.  But if it does, that’s a lot easier to argue than just allowing the free reins we now have.

            Thirdly, I would make the following change.  Allow the House, Senate, and Executive branches to select and petition the Supreme Court on 3 or 4 issues apiece each year to ask if something is constitutional.  Rarely does a bill get challenged in the Court like Obamacare.  Rarely does a practice like drone killings of US citizens.  SCOTUS seems to take the attitude that these kinds of things take too much time and are better left to elections.  So then who will protect us from a tyrant determined to seize power?  History is full of dictators who got elected and then seized power before the befuddled citizens could unelect the joker.  This kind of 9-issues-a-year decisions about our governance would require the Supremes be more forthright and to not contort their logic on individual cases.  (Think about how they go back and forth about abortion questions, trying to twist and circumvent with logic)  And this too would only require an internal rules change to how they do their agenda.

Schools and history

Obama’s State of the Union, Black History month, school board elections.  What we need is not so much a black history month but good history that includes those of African ancestry. 

            It was not so much that I resented my public school history teachers, but that they seemed incapable of reasoned curiosity.  One day our American History teacher told us that the cause of the Revolutionary War was taxes on paper (Stamp Act) and a tax on tea.  “Wait a minute,” I stopped him.  “The Stamp Act was a one-half of one percent sales tax on paper products.  It lasted only a year, was repealed in 1765, fully ten years before the Revolution.  The tea tax was similarly miniscule.  Do you mean to tell me that those guys like Paul Revere risked lives and families and property because they disagreed with a tiny tax?”  That was correct, the teacher avowed.  And then he gave me that paternal look, “Well, what do you think the cause was?”  I didn’t know, but his much bandied-about explanation surely wasn’t correct.  Or if Shakespeare would have been in our class, “Methinks the colonists doth protest too much.” Would you risk it all for half a percent?

            So I studied the thing and found out what they don’t tell you in public schools.  Their pro-union perspective is that all history boils down to money.  So the Roman empire fell because of economic problems; communism fell because there weren’t enough consumer goods.  Well, yeah, those things contributed, but Truth is far more interesting.  If you look at the Declaration of Independence, you notice there are 22 reasons that “impel the separation.”  No taxation without representation was #14 and it stands alone as an economic reason.  The first 11 are all abuse of power reasons.  That should tell us something!  Of course, there were monetary reasons.  The Brits needed to pay for the French and Indian War (War of Empire).  General taxes were unusual in the 18^th century and only imposed during times of National distress and upon consultation of the Parliament. That’s what “no taxation without representation” was all about and why the Stamp Act (the first internal taxation of colonies) was controversial.  There was also a Plantation Act that restricted trade and a Currency Act that outlawed Yankee paper notes.

            But there was other stuff going on.  First, in 1763, the British government decided to solve the Indian relations themselves and drew a line down the Appalachians limiting westward expansion.  This angered the colonists as an affront to their sovereignty, a threat to their future expansion, but most of all, they didn’t want government solving any Indian problem.  They had their own system.  It was called Christianity.  Colonists had noted that hostilities with tribes practically disappeared when they became Christian.  To this end they formed many Bible societies to print scriptures and Mission Societies to spread the gospel to the Indians.  But the crown was especially wary of non-Anglican colonies evangelizing. They were especially chagrinned by the Presbyterians in New Jersey and Long Island, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania who organized a multi-state inter-denominational effort and they forbid it in 1775.  This was the last straw for the colonists who saw the mother country meddling in their faith.  This is why the Brits landed at New York City as a first strike to put down the revolt. This is why the last reason for separation of the Declaration is, “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…”

            The crown set up a system of custom houses, staffed by British soldiers who imposed a martial law court in order to collect the tea-glass-lead-paint (Townsend Duties) tax that was imposed ‘externally’ on items coming into port.  The colonists noted however that the martial law court denied the longstanding right to jury of one’s local peers (oops! Magna Carta). Their argument was that as British citizens, they had all rights of the British Bill of Rights of 1689.  Now since the right to vote was restricted to only those who had land and property, 90% of the British public didn’t vote, but in the colonies 90% of the people owned land and voted.  So it was hard for colonists to accept the British language of themselves as parents and Americans as children. As unequals the colonists feared loss of control of their own affairs.  For instance, ‘general warrants’ allowed unlimited search and seizure in America but were illegal in Britain. This was the issue of the famous Boston Massacre when some harassed British regulars opened fire on a hostile crowd.  The New York Assembly refused to accept all British demands for quartering troops.  This practice often left farmers in destitution and near starvation. Parliament threatened to suspend the Assembly.  Intervening in colonies’ constitutional and charter arrangements was considered a high crime by the Americans.  And those interventions comprise most of the reasons of abuse of power at the beginning of that list in the Declaration.

            The Tea Act of 1773 gave the East India Company monopoly rights to sell tea to the colonials.  Bad move.  The Americans saw this as usurpation of the free market and boycotted the Tea. Parliament, under the Quebec Act made Roman Catholicism the official faith of French Canada and joined Canada to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.  This was considered both an illegal appropriation of lands and an attempt to thwart non-Anglican Protestants in the colonies.  Probably true.  The Brits saw Quakers and Baptists as sure insurgents.  Americans who had lived through the Great Awakening saw them as trustworthy friends and neighbors.

            And so collective action was called for.  A Continental Congress was established to transmit grievances to London in 1774.  The mood was cautious optimism for restored harmony.  The King rebuffed the petitions.  A second Continental Congress of  May 1775 was called, but the abolishment of Massachusetts government and the April 19 clash at Lexington and Concord derailed reconciliation for many delegates.  This incident was about disarming the militias. Taking guns from citizens, who had no police, no defense from bandits and Indians, and formed militias to keep law and order was considered an unbelievable usurption of rights.  In August, the King declared a state of rebellion meaning all rights were suspended.  January 1776 brought Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  The die was cast.

            My history teacher chided me that at the beginning of the Revolution, hardly a third of the colonists wanted independence.  “All the more amazing that you think this was just over taxes!” I replied.  “One third were angry enough to want independence from the most powerful empire in the world.  Folly.  And not just 1/3 but think who they were.  Men of distinction, leaders, not unemployed troublemakers.  Don’t tell me this was just in reaction to a silly tax!”

            And you wonder, if someone teaches this way, would they decide that a gathering of concerned citizens over loss of our society, loss of our rights, our faiths calling themselves a modern day Tea Party, would think, “Why this is just a bunch of people obsessed with taxes and money.  What crazy radicals they must be! We need to send the King’s army to straighten ‘em out.”   

Anhiliating Republicans

So Obama is going to anhiliate the R’s.  That should come as no news.  This guy doesn’t govern, he just campaigns.  He didn’t negotiate with the R’s in Congress, he just uses rhetoric to scold and berate Congress. He proposes no serious budgets, but lambasts the Republican House which actually does have a budget.  If you want to work with somebody, you don’t insult them.  But he insults not just Republicans in Congress, but Netanyahu and everyone else who disagrees (you bitter clingers). 

            How then, do the R’s counter this rhetoric and avoid having Obama and the Pravda media parrots kill conservatism as an alternative? (What they are doing is swaying the minds of disinterested and low-information voters with catchy phrases and sound bites.) The answer has to be to fight back, put a label on the liberals.  First point: Congressmen won’t do this.  You get nowhere in a legislature by labeling and offending the other side. They are not of that nature.  Likewise governors and state legislatures have to get along with each other.  So it has to be done by the local party, opinion writers, Tea party, and talk radio.   They can speak their minds.  Point two: Obama is effective in speaking in phrases and sound bites.  He talks about, “Congress must pay our bills” as if he’s the only responsible person in the room.   Bipartisan to him means my-way-or-the-highway.  R’s must counter his effective sound bites and phrases.  Sarah Palin has this ability.  When she talks Death Panels, the phrase sticks and everyone knows how it aptly describes limited health care under Obamacare.  Rightfully the left fears her. She pre-empts their game. They are still trying to destroy her image, long after she has become a minor player in politics. 

            Opinion makers should start by calling Obama exactly what he is, a National Socialist or a fascist.  Most Americans don’t know what a fascist is but they know we fought a war against it.  Fascist is an incendiary term but needs definition. So you pose a question.  “What kind of government do we have that businesses have to be in cahoots with government if they want to succeed?  Dodd-Frank banks, GM, GE? What kind of governmental system do you call that?  When Schindler says he had to stop making pots and pans and do what the government wants or his business wouldn’t survive?  What do you call that? It’s fascism!” Fascism is when the government takes over or controls just enough businesses  to keep everyone under control.  When a company owes its soul to the government, like “you didn’t build that”, but has to be be a piglet sucking on the tits of the big sow government, what kind of system do you call that?  That’s fascism, National Socialism!

            When the leader of a country disregards the constitution, uses executive orders to govern rather than waiting for Congress to pass a law, when bureaucrats are instructed to re-imagine what old laws might mean and implement draconian regulations no one ever heard of, what kind of government is that? Isn’t that Fascist dictatorship! When people are required to buy something their faith forbids or hire someone whose beliefs make mockery of their organization’s beliefs?  When the leader talks school children and security, he wants gun control but won’t touch mental health issues, what is that? To possess a gun to defend yourself is empowerment.  To have your means of defense taken away is disempowerment.  To have local citizens unable to regulate mental health patients is to disempower the citizens and their safety. When people are disempowered and have only hope and security in government, what do you call that?  Fascism!

            When freedom means being able to wear a tee shirt with an obscene hand gesture, or freedom to print pornography, that’s only artistic freedom.  True and complete freedom means the chance to be whatever you want to be. Dinesh D’Souza says that people the world over recognize this true freedom as the precious thing America has had like no other nation.  But what do you call it when you’re a hog farmer who is forbidden to change to dairy by a government agency?  What do you call it when you want to sell soda pop in cups with lids and straws that people can carry around all day, but government tells you you can sell only a tiny cup?  That’s fascism! 

            What do you call it when the leader of a country seeks to demonize a small indefensible group as the scapegoat for all our problems? Jew bankers, Republicans in Congress? What system is it that puts draconian rules on all the people, but hands out exemptions to the ruling elite and political friends-- unions with ‘Cadillac medical plans’ and 1400 special groups getting exemptions from Obamacare? When the leader keeps a “shadow government” as Mussolini did with unapproved-by-congress czars? Fascism!

            If government uses highly questionable science to advance policy instead of waiting for the science to be settled—superior Aryan race theory, exterminating those with genetic weaknesses, global warming theories-- what system is that called? When leaders are chosen, not by the solutions they offer, but people blindly flock to an unknown (Peron, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco) charismatic leader by image and emotional appeal—he’s so German, he has klieg lights and parades of followers, he’s so cool, gives his speech in a huge stadium with Greek columns, the other guy mistreats dogs and puts women in binders—what kind of system is that?  Well, it is a system that sucks people in, and by the time they realize what it really is, it’s too late. Are we ready for fascism or do we speak truth to it?

              

Gun Control

I started hearing about the President’s gun control Executive Actions and I think a number of them are good.  F’instance, #11 sounds reasonable: “Hire an ATF director.”  It really would be nice to have one over at ATF. If nothing else, he could hand out desk calendars and make sure the coffee is made.  Making a DOJ report on stolen guns to local police would also be a good idea.  Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?  But then there are some others that don’t make a lot of sense.  He wants the Center for Disease Control to study video games.  Why not FCC?  Maybe you can catch bubonic plague from a video game. At any rate, I wouldn’t be expecting anything too serious about video games—perhaps that is on purpose. I am hearing the experts on mass killings say that they are consistently the work of disturbed individuals who practice their atrocity with very violent video games and then use weaponry.  If so, why wouldn’t we consider the same thing for video games as we do for guns.  We could require registration, background checks, hefty fees and safety courses for purchase of violent video games. Actually, a realistic strategy might be to restrict certain violent video games and not let them be sold to people under 21.

            Okay, so I don’t know much about guns.  Is a potato gun a gun?  What about Obama’s #16 where Obamacare doctors will have to ask about what guns you possess?  I suppose I could tell the doc that I have several unregistered nail guns.  And the biggest one is an automatic one.  Set it on bump-fire and you can shoot nails like heck. Are you dubious that it can be used as a weapon?  My sons told about one summer they were both working on a carpenter crew and some scoundrel was sneaking between the pickup trucks at the jobsite seeing if there were any loose tools he could steal.  The boys were up on a roof and spotted him.  They had a piece of Styrofoam on the roof, used it compress the nose of the gun, then fired a series of 16d nails at the jerk.  He fled.

            But, you scoff, that doesn’t comprise a “gun” that Obama is talking about.  He means one that shoots bullets.  So then I have to ask what is the definition of an assault rifle?  When I first heard about them I thought it was A Salt Rifle, and I thought how painful to get shot with salt.  That stuff under your skin would burn for days.  No, they told me, an assault rifle has no clear definition except that it looks like a military weapon.  And some might try to define it as a weapon with a magazine larger than some size which is semi-automatic. This is what Obama wants Congress to ban.  “Then what if it’s not a rifle?  What if the barrel is smooth and it is a semi-automatic musket?”  They couldn’t answer that one but thought that would probably be outlawed too.  Or what if it’s not a gun at all but say, a semi-automatic crossbow.  I could see using an electric device to make it draw the bow again after each shot.  Well, no one could tell me how that might be covered.  Apparently, since there is no definition of assault weapons, specific marketed guns have to be outlawed and others allowed.  But what if I have a gunmaker make a custom gun which isn’t on any list?

            Am I the only one that thinks this Obama Gun Control might be hard to enforce?

            And why are we limiting ourselves to guns.  Didn’t Timothy McVeigh do more damage than some nut with a rifle?  He used fertilizer and diesel fuel.  So should we require licensing and permitting of diesel and fertilizer?  Worse, some government crime group noted this week that there were more deaths by hammers and clubs than guns.  Should we walk up to that carpenter and demand to see whether his Estwing framing hammer has an appropriate permit? (Is there open carry for  roofing hatchets?  Sledge hammers?)

            I know you think I  am being facetious.  I’m not very knowlegable about guns.  But I know some history.  I think if you will check, the reason for a 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms is not to aid deer hunters or let you protect yourself from a mugging.  It is clearly about protection against tyrants.  Why doesn’t anyone say this on TV?  Which brings me to the reason I don’t own a gun.  I have no need for a hunting rifle since I don’t hunt.  I have no need for protection because I live in a safe area.  If you ever see me purchasing a gun, start worrying about revolts.

            And since the Constitution is about limits on the federal government, what if there is a part of said Constitution that forbids the federal government from something?  Doesn’t that then make that issue the exclusive jurisdiction of the states and the people while the federal government should butt out?  So if the right to keep and bear arms is not to be infringed, doesn’t that make it entirely a matter for the states and the people?  If the federal government somehow inserts itself, isn’t that borderline tyranny? Do I need to go shopping?

Fixing SS and MC

As a member of the boomer generation who watches the numbers, I have lived in a world of utter disgust over the last 40 years watching Congress play Least Greater Fool with the Social Security.  It was originally billed as a “savings plan” so that no one would go into retirement without savings.  In reality, it is a ponzi scheme on the current workers to pay for those already retired.  Nonetheless, people pay into SS and consider it their due.  As well they should.  Because even if the government had been putting away their ‘contributions’ (I love government-speak.  Jist dem good ol’ SS troopers passing the offering plate, ya’ know.) into federal bonds, it would have yielded at least 4 times as much upon retirement. 

            The cash flow of the SS is now negative.  In the last ten years, the SS payout per working person has doubled, from $3000 to $6000 and will double in another 6 years.  Even so, the donkeys still claim that the fund is perfectly fine and totally solvent. Not true.  We must finally fix the system, or it will begin to rapidly gobble up the national budget. (even if Dingy Harry doesn’t pass one) An unfixed SS and MC will mean that within roughly 20 years, all the federal government will have money to do is pay seniors.  That’s a generational war I don’t want to be part of. We need to fix this thing.

            Here are several proposed solutions that could fix the SS.

1.    Raise retirement age—If you raise the age to 72 it will fix SS in perpetuity.

2.    Raise Taxes—if you triple payroll taxes it will fix SS in perpetuity.

3.    Raise the cap on payroll taxes—if you raise the cap (currently about $110K) to a million, it will fix about half the actuarial problem.

4.    Means test—Just paying SS to the poor could fix however much you wanted but to fix it for all times you’d have to deny SS to about 1/3 of the middle class plus the upper class.

5.    Cap and Gap—this means don’t change the current cap but start re-collecting 6.2% on those over $250,000, i.e. soak the rich.  This fixes about half the problem.

6.     Collect SS on all incomes—Cap gains, 401K distributions, dividends, etc.  This would come close to fixing the problem forever.

7.    Cut benefits—again, if you are willing to live with less than half the benefits, this could fix it.

 

Politically, these are all hard to do.  Dems bray like jackasses if you bring up raising retirement ages or cutting benefits.  They are keen on things like soaking the rich with 3,5 or 6 or making SS a welfare program with 4. Republicans might agree to a small portion of each of the above but would favor cutting COLA increases to benefits first.  I predict that Congress won’t do major changes.  They will just jigger the numbers to kick the can down the road by 5 years.  Thus the most likely fix is to raise the cap on payroll taxes again.  This pains the least number of voters.  (Same politics as Adolf Hitler: pick on some numerically small group that can’t defend itself, like Jew bankers, and put all the burden on them for failure. Or in this case, “the rich”)  The people who study the insolvency problem say that the logical fix is #1, raise the age since 65 was quite old when the system began.  This would also allow progressives to continue to say “this is your savings plan, your insurance against getting old and having no savings.”  That’s utterly logical, but it counters the progressive plan to make as many people beholden to government as possible. And both pols of both parties lament the squall of the citizenry.  I hate to say this, but if you’ve been working 50 years like I have, and haven’t planned for other income in retirement, am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Mr. Grasshopper? Well, okay, personally I might, but I don’t feel morally right in skewering the rest of the taxpayers to make them liable for your behavior.

            And considering all the solutions for the government to soak the rich, do you think the rich got that way by being stupid like the government?  Will they simply stand meekly to be fleeced or will they move accounts overseas, find ways to make assets grow without realizing income, and use corporations to expense things to support their lifestyle?  Hmm?  Failure to realize this gives rise to the story about Greece.  Greece spends $150 billion a year and collects taxes of $336 from the last remaining taxpaying businessman in Athens who is planning to retire in April.

            At least with SS there is a defined amount of benefits paid according to current law.  With Medicare, the outgo per patient keeps rising faster than inflation.   It is for this reason, I am convinced that Obama has folded MC into Obamacare and plans to just not pay the bills for old folks.  The costs of average health insurance policies have gone up $3000 as opposed to his prediction of $2500 savings from Obamacare.  And since 30 million new insurees will show up at insurance companies demanding insurance no matter what sickness they come with, costs of your insurance will approximately double in the next few years.  Thus, I agree with Rep. Joe Wilson.  There is no way Obama could have fooled himself into believing his own rhetoric. 

            Potential fixes for MC are

1.    Raise payroll taxes—maybe 5X as much as current 1.45% is needed, maybe more.

2.    Cut benefits which means not paying docs and hospitals or Death Panels ala Obamacare—“After age 65 you’ve had a full life and we don’t pay for gall bladder surgery.  Nor do we allow doctors to perform them.  Here’s a pill for your pain.” You’ll have to visit Malaysia to get that gall bladder removed.

All the other fixes like SS has don’t work in the case of MC-- like giving benefits only to the poor or soaking the rich (Rich are already taxed).  Stunningly, the Dems favored cutting benefits stealthily in Obamacare rather than raising taxes. This has consequences. Simply not paying docs (in order to cut benefits) will only cause mass retirements from medicine.  Not paying hospitals will kill hospital economics, especially in rural areas. And that means fewer docs practicing in the hinterlands.  Thus most people will be forced to visit “urban clinics” with lesser skilled PA’s and others dispensing medical care.

            The way to fix MC and healthcare in general is to repeal Obamacare and simply set up a healthcare assistance program to partially subsidize healthcare for those with medical conditions while using payroll deductions to mandate that they must purchase insurance.  Annual cost of this would be $200 billion but far less than Obamacare. The costs might go down to $130 billion if several Republican initiatives could be enacted such as purchase of medical insurance across state boundaries.

            Whether this could happen remains to be seen.  So long as we have our present medical system intact, it could be done.  Once half the docs retire and hospitals close, and Obamacare system gets entrenched, it’s too late.  Based on all those years of watching SS, I’m not optimistic.  It will probably be just like the opportunity to easily fix SS years ago--by allowing employees to designate a portion (20%) into a savings plan of government bonds—has now gone by. It’s too late once the cash flow goes negative.

            The real fix is to have pols who are satisfied with just one term and vow to do the RIGHT thing for our country’s future, not the thing that gets them re-elected. 

            If you are young, I seriously suggest that you learn to live on about 2/3 of your income and save the other third in good investments.  Thus you won’t be dependent on Uncle Sugar.  Because one of these days the national credit rating will be downgraded from A to B to horse manure upon discovery that the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone have been repossessed by China.  I averaged Lower-Middle Income earnings for 20 years before retirement and managed to live on almost poverty level expenses.  Subsequent investments promise a modest retirement at least. If I can do it so can you.

            I know, I’m like that old cowpoke who had to testify before Congress and they found him in Contempt of Congress.  He just said, “Wull, yeah.”