Manly's Blog - Part 2

Best Quote Ever

By Rick | Published: March 1, 2009

It pretty much sums up my feelings on the current trend of entitlement and wealth envy.

Manly

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

~~~ The late Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005 ~~~

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One of these days the responsible, successful people living within our means will be out of money to give to the rest of the knuckleheads in this country.

By Rick | Published: February 19, 2009

I don’t agree with everything Michelle Malkin says and I am sure the libs hate her with a passion but she is DEAD ON with her post below.

In this case, I agree with pretty much everything she is saying. I am so sick of having to pay for the bad behavior and stupid decisions of everyone else.

I have worked my tail off to nearly have my house paid for and now I get to bail those out that were greedy and/or just plain stupid. Ignorance is no defense for stupidity.

The fact that the government seems to want to turn all renters into homeowners is completely asinine. People rent for a reason. They don’t have the money or the discipline to own a home.

Manly

Questions & answers and more questions about O’s massive mortgage entitlement

By Michelle Malkin • February 18, 2009 11:28 AM

The White House just released the dirty details of Obama’s massive mortgage entitlement program.

Bottom line:

Refinancing for Up to 4 to 5 Million Responsible Homeowners to Make Their Mortgages More Affordable

A $75 Billion Homeowner Stability Initiative to Reach Up to 3 to 4 Million At-Risk Homeowners

Supporting Low Mortgage Rates By Strengthening Confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

In addition, there will be forced mortgage modifications (bad idea when GOP pitched it, bad idea now) and unprecedented new meddling in private loan contracts, including a $10 billion “insurance fund,” $100 billion more for Freddie and Fannie (rewarding failures again), and a provision to “Allow Judicial Modifications of Home Mortgages During Bankruptcy for
Borrowers Who Have Run Out of Options” (pushed by Dodd and the Dems for more than a year now).

More details:

“Pay for Success” Incentives to Servicers: Servicers will receive an up-front fee of $1,000 for each eligible modification meeting guidelines established under this initiative. They will also receive “pay for success” fees – awarded monthly as long as the borrower stays current on the loan – of up to $1,000 each year for three years.

Incentives to Help Borrowers Stay Current: To provide an extra incentive for borrowers to keep paying on time, the initiative will provide a monthly balance reduction payment that goes straight towards reducing the principal balance of the mortgage loan. As long as a borrower stays current on his or her loan, he or she can get up to $1,000 each year for five years.

Reaching Borrowers Early: To keep lenders focused on reaching borrowers who are trying their best to stay current on their mortgages, an incentive payment of $500 will be paid to servicers, and an incentive payment of $1,500 will be paid to mortgage holders, if they modify at-risk loans before the borrower falls behind.

Home Price Decline Reserve Payments: To encourage lenders to modify more mortgages and enable more families to keep their homes, the Administration — together with the FDIC — has developed an innovative partial guarantee initiative. The insurance fund – to be created by the Treasury Department at a size of up to $10 billion – will be designed to discourage lenders from opting to foreclose on mortgages that could be viable now out of fear that home prices will fall even further later on. Holders of mortgages modified under the program would be provided with an additional insurance payment on each modified loan, linked to declines in the home price index.

Now, before we get to questions about O’s plan, let me remind you of the basic questions I had when Mitch McConnell proposed the GOP’s moronic mortgage entitlement plan two weeks ago:

Question: Why should government be guaranteeing mortgages? Isn’t that what got us into trouble in the first place?

Question: Why should government be setting mortgage rates? Aren’t those supposed to be set by the market?

Question: How can Republicans on the one hand argue that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mae, and other interventions in the housing and mortgage markets were bad and then at the same time propose a doomed policy along similar lines?

Question: Have Republicans learned nothing from the housing meltdown? “Credit-worthy” borrower = anyone with a pulse. Who will pay when these borrowers default on their loans? Taxpayers will.

Question: Who will sell these mortgages? Probably the banks. What incentive do they have to ensure the credit-worthiness of borrowers, since they will bear no risk if the borrowers default? Sounds like a formula for another mega-subsidy to the banks…to go along with all the others.

Question: Why do Republicans continue to believe, as Democrats do, that the number one goal of economic policy should be to prop up housing prices? (Recall McCain’s moronic $300 billion mortgage plan.) Why not let the market determine the correct level of housing prices? Clearly, in many parts of the country, housing prices are still too high.

The proper response by government is to let the market allow prices to decline.

The problem is too much borrowing, too much artificial inflation of home prices.

On what planet should the Republican/conservative alternative be to encourage more borrowing and to prop up prices so they don’t fall “too much?”

This is more of the same old, same old: Kicking the can down the road. Real change — fiscally repsonsible change — means sucking it up, allowing housing prices to fall, and getting the government out of the home-lending business.

What a disaster and — coming from Sen. McConnell — how sadly, utterly predictable.

More than a year ago, I called for the GOP to distinguish itself from the Big Government Democrats running for president and demagoguing this issue. Remember?

MakeStickers.com

The bipartisan meddlers in Washington are going to make the housing “crisis” drag on for a decade when, if they had adopted the suck it up plan in the first place, it would have been over by now.

You remember what the response from Senate GOP staffers was to my questions? They rationalized their support for this disastrous “solution” by explaining to me that Republicans needed to be “for something” because they didn’t want to look obstructionist.

Now, just as I warned, Obama has picked up the mortgage entitlement ball and run with it — with the muscle of ACORN thugs behind him. How is the underlying premise of his plan any different than what Senate Republicans foolishly championed two weeks ago?

At least the House Republicans seem to have a clue. Here are questions about O’s plan they’ve released this morning:

1. What will your plan do for the over 90% of homeowners who are playing and paying by the rules?

2. Does your plan compensate banks for bad mortgages they should have never made in the first place?

3. Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original mortgage application be eligible to get the taxpayer funded assistance under your plan?

4. Similarly, will you require mortgage servicers to verify income and other eligibility standards before modifying mortgages?

5. What will you do to prevent the same mortgages that receive assistance and are modified from going into default three, six, or eight months later?

6. How do you intend to move forward in the drafting of the legislation?

Chris Kinnan of Freedomworks adds a few more questions:

Will people who cashed out their equity with a refinancing be eligible?

Will borrowers who never had any equity in their homes be eligible (people who financed 100%)?

What is the upside for taxpayers if housing prices recover? Who gets the gain?

And mine:

How is this fair to renters and home owners who had the foresight to take on loans they could afford?

Will illegal aliens be eligible for the program?

Why is it government’s role to take my money to fund someone else’s property value preservation?

Answers, please.

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LOL. Obama’s “Change” translated into shell commands.

By Rick | Published: February 11, 2009

For all the geeks out there like me.

Many people believed that by “change”, Obama intended to:

su – President
del /SpecialInterests
cd /newUS
./configure
make
make install

Unfortunately for them, by “change” he meant:

su – President
mv /SpecialInterests /opt/agenda2009

and they never expected to see

cp lobbyists /home/whitehouse/cabinet/

cp taxcheats /home/whitehouse/cabinet/

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A primer on what ‘Keynesian’ really means.

By Rick | Published: February 10, 2009

Most people who are well educated and interested in economics know who Keynes and Friedman are. I keep hearing people mention Keynes in the news lately. Few really understand his theories or his thinking.

What is more important, in my opinion is understanding the difference between Keynes and Friedman (who’s work came a long much later and is more widely accepted).

It interests me that the differences between the two are also basic differences between Liberals and Libertarians/Moderate Conservatives.

I.E. Government is everything to the Liberals, it will provide for our every need and save us from every problem we may encounter. In contrast, Libertarians view government as a necessary evil and believe in personal freedom and less government intervention. Low taxes, small but strong government, limited regulation.

Keynes	Friedman
His framework is based on spending and demand, the determinants of the components of spending, the liquidity-preference theory of short-run interest rates, and the requirement that government make strategic but powerful interventions in the economy to keep it on an even keel and avoid extremes of depression and manic excess. His theory was one of employment, interest and money.	To Keynes’s framework, Friedman added a theory of prices and inflation, based on the idea of the natural rate of unemployment and the limits of government policy in stabilising the economy around its long-run growth trend — limits beyond which intervention would trigger uncontrollable and destructive inflation.
The experience of the Great Depression led Keynes and his more orthodox successors to greatly underestimatethe role and influence of monetary policy.	Friedman, in a 30-year campaign starting with his and Anna J Schwartz’s “A Monetary History of the United States”, restored the balance. He gave prominence to monetary policy.
Friedman and Keynes both agreed that successful macroeconomic management was necessary — that the private economy on its own might well be subject to unbearable instability — and that strategic, powerful, but limited economic intervention by the government was necessary to maintain stability.
For Keynes, the key was to keep the sum of government spending and private investment stable.	For Friedman the key was to keep the money supply— the amount of purchasing power in readily spendable form in the hands of businesses and households — stable.
Keynes saw himself as the enemy of laissez-faire and an advocate of public management. Clever government officials of goodwill, he thought, could design economic institutions that would be superior to the market — or could at least tweak the market with taxes, subsidies, and regulations to produce superior outcomes. It was simply not the case, Keynes argued, that the private incentives of those active in the marketplace were aligned with the public good. Technocracy was Keynes’s faith: skilled experts designing and fine-tuning institutions out of the goodness of their hearts to make possible general prosperity — as Keynes, indeed, did at BrettonWoods where the World Bank and IMF were created.	In his view, it usually was the case that private market interests were aligned with the public good: episodes of important and significant market failure were the exception, rather than the rule, and laissez-fairewas a good first approximation. Moreover, Friedman believed that even when private interests were not aligned with public interests, governments could not be relied on to fix the problem. Government failures, Friedman argued, were greater and more terrible than market failures. Governments were corrupt, inept. The kinds of people who staffed governments were the kinds of people who liked ordering others around.

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Not everyone agrees that we need a huge spending bill to get ourselves out of this mess…

By Rick | Published: February 10, 2009

Cato Stimulus

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Reports Articles money economy

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WTB – No Stimulus (or Stimulus, sans useless pork)

By Rick | Published: February 9, 2009

Will this guy ever get it? Handing out money taken from the pockets of taxpayers to every Tom, Dick and Harry does NOT stimulate the economy.

I have to believe that Obama actually understands this. He simply cannot be that stupid. If he does understand this then it’s almost as bad. He is now just paying back the special interests who put him in the White House.

If I were in charge of this mess, I would offer a little relief to homeowners, extend unemployment benefits and health care and do NOTHING ELSE. The wheat needs to be separated from the chaff in times like these. Sparing everyone the pain they NEED TO FEEL does little to prevent this from happening again.

Manly

Taken from the Wall Street Journal:

President Obama has started to play the “catastrophe” card to sell his economic stimulus plan, using yesterday’s terrible January jobs report to predict doom unless Congress acts. No doubt he’ll get his way, but the tragedy of this first great effort of the Obama Presidency is what a lost opportunity it is.

AP

Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession. The stage was thus set for the popular President to forge a bipartisan consensus that combined ideas from both parties. A major cut in the corporate tax favored by Republicans could have been added to Democratic public works spending for a quick political triumph that might have done at least some economic good.

Instead, Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy. (See here for a case study.) It is designed to support incomes with transfer payments, rather than grow incomes through job creation.

This is the reason the bill has run into political trouble, despite a new President with 65% job approval. The 11 Democrats who opposed it in the House didn’t do so because they want to hand Mr. Obama a defeat. The same is true of the Senate moderates of both parties working to trim their $900 billion version. They’ve acted because they can’t justify a vote for so much spending for so little economic effect. You know a piece of legislation is in trouble when even its authors begin to deny paternity, as economist Martin Feldstein has recently done.

Speaking to a House Democratic retreat on Thursday night, Mr. Obama took on those critics. “So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That’s the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That’s the point. (Applause.)”

So there it is: Mr. Obama is now endorsing a sort of reductionist Keynesianism that argues that any government spending is an economic stimulus. This is so manifestly false that we doubt Mr. Obama really believes it. He has to know that it matters what the government spends the money on, as well as how it is financed. A dollar doled out in jobless benefits may well be spent by the worker who receives it. That $1 of spending will count as economic activity and add to GDP.

But that same dollar can’t be conjured out of thin air. The government has to take that dollar away from someone else — either in higher taxes, or by issuing new debt in the form of a bond. The person who is taxed or buys the bond will have $1 less to spend. If the beneficiary of that $1 spends it on something less productive than the taxed American or the lender would have, then the net impact on growth will be negative.

Some Democrats claim these transfer payments are stimulating because they go mainly to poor people, who immediately spend the money. Tax cuts for business or for incomes across the board won’t work, they add, because those tax cuts go disproportionately to “the rich,” who will save the money. But a saved $1 doesn’t vanish from the economy, unless it is stuffed into a mattress. It enters the financial system, where it is lent to others; or it is invested in the stock market as capital for businesses; or it is invested in entirely new businesses, which are the real drivers of job creation and prosperity.

At the current moment, amid a capital strike, the latter is the kind of fiscal stimulus we really need. Yet there is virtually none of it in the bills now moving through Congress. Senate moderates may succeed in cutting $100 billion or so in spending from the bill, which is political window dressing. Even they aren’t talking about adding the kind of tax cuts that would really help the economy now.

We should add how different this is from the 1980s or even the 1960s. Democrats added business tax cuts to the Reagan package of 1981, while Jack Kennedy’s chief economist (Walter Heller) promoted marginal rate tax cuts on stimulus grounds in the 1960s. Yet Mr. Obama, on Thursday, dismissed any such tax cuts as “the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” That’s rhetoric for a campaign, not for a President hoping to rally bipartisan support.

The biggest gamble with this stimulus is what it means if the economy doesn’t recover. Monetary policy is already as stimulative as it can safely get, and the Obama Administration is set to announce its big financial fix on Monday. Stocks rallied Friday on expectations of the latter, despite the job loss report, with big bank stocks leading the way. If done right, this will help reduce risk aversion and gradually restore financial confidence.

We hope it does, because the size and waste of the stimulus means we won’t have much ammunition left. The spending will take the U.S. budget deficit up to some 12% of GDP, about double the peak of the 1980s and into uncharted territory. The tragedy of the Obama stimulus is that we are getting so little for all that money.

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I bet you forgot what form of Government we have here in the U.S.A.

By Rick | Published: January 20, 2009

I keep hearing people say that we have a Democracy here in the U.S. or that we need to “save” our Democracy.

When I hear that I think WOW. Are most people that uninformed? Have we corrupted the term “Democracy”? Has the meaning somehow changed?

We do not live in a Democracy, we live in a Constitutional Republic.

Watch the video below for a more eloquent explanation of this fact.

Manly

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Give me a break, I actually laughed at this one.

By Rick | Published: January 13, 2009

Barney Frank is a symbol of all that is wrong with the far far left. What an idiot.

I sure hope we all realize that judicious use of private planes by CEO’s of large companies makes a TON of sense. From the safety/security standpoint for certain. It’s also not in the best interest of a large corporation to have their CEO wasting time in airports when his time is worth thousands of dollars per hour.

Add to that the fact that it’s not the government’s job to run the day to day activities of any company.

Once again, Barney is playing to wealth envy.

Article below:

— cut here —

By Silla Brush

If House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass) has his way, companies with corporate jets will not receive any future bailout money.

President-elect Obama has asked President Bush to seek the remaining $350 billion before he takes office. Meanwhile, Frank introduced legislation with a wide range of restrictions on how the rest of the funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) may be spent.

One provision in Frank’s legislation specifically prohibits companies that own, lease, or hold an ownership stake in private planes from receiving money, unless they can show the Treasury secretary that they are in the process of getting rid of their access to the planes.

The restriction on corporate jets would apply as long as the company receives federal money under the bailout package.

Lawmakers scolded the heads of the Detroit automakers for traveling to Washington aboard their corporate jets as they sought billions of dollars in taxpayer assistance.

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You took the words right out of my mouth…

By Rick | Published: November 19, 2008

This letter was written by a man in East Texas as an open letter to Senator Obama. He really does exist and says anyone can email his letter around, just don’t change it.

“Mr. Obama, Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me “Cory the well driller”. I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn’t go to college like you, I was too ready to go “conquer the world” when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80′s oil boom. I didn’t get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start as a result of privilege. They are the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly.

From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn’t afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck). A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs.

Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time… $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all. I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn’t work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine.

No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business. 2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business. A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.

Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers’ pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers’ product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow.

No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that’s ok, I didn’t expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me. Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn’t it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages.

You see, at the very time when I couldn’t get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It’s funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.

You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture.

I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land. What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states.

If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn’t it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What’s remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn’t need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.

You see, I know because I’ve had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.

Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I’ve seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office – can you pronounce “politically motivated”), you averaged less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you and Joe Biden. combined (don’t you just hate google?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us…

Cory Miller just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.

P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American… www.cmillerdrilling.com “

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Veterans.

By Rick | Published: November 11, 2008

During these times, Veteran’s day has a special meaning for many of us.

Being at war brings out the patriotism in many people. The other side of the coin are those that oppose the war and show their patriotism in different ways.

However, on Veteran’s day it is time to put aside differences and remember those that are currently serving in the armed forces, those that died for your freedom and those that served honorably in the past.

I had the honor of serviing the the military and it was one of the best experiences of my entire life. Even though there were many times I would have rather been somewhere else, I still look back on my 8 years with fondness. I will never forget what it was like to share fear, pain, commitment, laughter and a great love for my country with the people that I served with.

Those who make the commitment to be there when their country needs them deserve your thanks, make sure you take the time to offer it to them.

Manly

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Reprint of an open letter to the president-elect.

By Rick | Published: November 5, 2008

Amazing. I agree with everything that Neal says below.

Number 17 below hits closest to home for me. I am deeply saddened by the apparent lack of individualism that we have seen in this election process. No more are Americans asked to provide for themselves. It seems that they want a Nanny State government to provide for their every need.

Original post HERE.

A few thoughts for our next President and Congress, whoever may win.

You should run our country like we do our own households, live within your means.

Spend what you have, not what you’d like to have. When in doubt, just say no.

Just because the benefits of a policy are good, does not mean they outweigh the costs.

Just because the credit crisis is real, does not mean we need more regulation. Different, yes, more, no. As with most things, less is generally more.

You do not create jobs. We create jobs. But you do have the power to destroy jobs. Don’t forget that.

When it comes to taxes, the more you take, the less we make. In all senses of the phrase.

Energy is life. Our country has been built for 100 years on plentiful energy resources. We need cheap energy. Clean energy. And safe energy. All three, not just one or two.

Climate change and our environment are a problem. This is an area you owe it to your constituents to deal with.

Free trade is a good thing. Whether you understand it or not. If you don’t believe me, two words: Smoot Hawley.

Change is sometimes good. But considered change. Not change just for the sake of change.

Sometimes the best policies are the ones we did not do.

Making promises to win an election is all well and good, but in policy, compromise always wins. But please make sure that compromise does not mean pork. You work for all of us.

My generation faces a looming crisis in social security and medicare entitlement costs. Don’t make it worse.

Those who seek power are generally the last people who ought to be granted that power. Make sure, when your time is done, that you do not remind us of this axiom.

We really do live in the greatest nation the world has ever seen. We set all time world records every year. So when you are trying to “fix” our economy and foreign policies, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Ask why things have worked so well before you complain about what’s not working. And certainly ask that before you tell me that another country is doing it better than we are.

What makes us different than all other countries? A profound respect for property rights. The rule of law. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The belief that each of us has the power to change ourselves, and our world. Faith in God. Each of these, and all of these.

And finally, Who is John Galt?

-Neal Dikeman

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Redistribution

By Rick | Published: October 24, 2008

I found this amusing.

Redistribute the Wealth

Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read
‘Vote Obama, I need the money.’ I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on a ‘Obama 08′ tie, again I laughed
as he had given away his political preference — just imagine the
coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him
that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood
there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his
tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The
server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server
inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was
grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized
the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter
was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the
actual recipient needed the money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept
than in practical application.

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Mark Cuban and I are on the same wavelength…

By Rick | Published: October 14, 2008

Mark Cuban says it perfectly.

How to Get Rich

Oct 4th 2008 11:24AM

Thats what so many want. Right ? I’m certainly not going to lie and say it is not a whole lot better having lots of money. I had a whole lot of fun and loved my life when I was eating mustard and ketchup sandwiches and sleeping on the floor of a 3 bedroom apartment that housed me and 5 buddies.

I have a whole lot more fun now. It doesn’t suck to be rich.

The question everyone wants answered, is how to get there. There are ways to get there. But there is not a template that works every time for everyone. It works sometimes. Getting there requires being ready when opportunity presents itself.

IMHO, change and uncertainty create opportunity. Times like we are facing now, with complete financial uncertainty are perfect times to start on the road to getting ahead financially.

First, here is WHAT NOT TO DO:

There are no shortcuts. NONE. With all of this craziness in the stock and financial markets, there will be scams popping up left and right. The less money you have, the more likely someone will come at you with some scheme . The schemes will guarantee returns, use multi level marketing, or be something crazy that is now “backed by the US Government”. Please ignore them. Always remember this. If a deal is a great deal, they aren’t going to share it with you.

I dont broadcast my great deals. I keep them all to myself. The 2nd thing to remember is that if the person selling the deal was so smart, they would be rich beyond rich rather than trolling the streets looking to turn you into a sucker. There are no shortcuts.

So what should you do to get rich ?

Save your money. Save as much money as you possibly can. Every penny you can. Instead of coffee, drink water. Instead of going to McDonalds, eat Mac and Cheese. Cut up your credit cards. If you use a credit card, you dont want to be rich. The first step to getting rich, requires discipline. If you really want to be rich, you need to find the discipline, can you ?

If you can, you will quickly find that the greatest rate of return you will earn is on your own personal spending. Being a smart shopper is the first step to getting rich. Yeah you have to give things up and that doesn’t work for everyone, particularly if you have a family. That is reality. But whatever you can save, save it. As much as you possibly can. Then put it in 6 month CDs in the bank.

The first step to getting rich is having cash available. You arent saving for retirement. You are saving for the moment you need cash. Buy and hold is a suckers game for you. This market is a perfect example. Right at the very moment when cash creates unbelievable opportunity, those who followed the buy and hold strategy have no cash. they cant or wont sell into markets this low, that kills the entire point of buy and hold. Those who have put their money in CDs sleep well at night and definitely have more money today than they did yesterday. And because they are smart, disciplined shoppers, their personal rate of inflation is within their means. Cash is king for those wanting to get rich

The 2nd rule for getting rich is getting smart. Investing your time in yourself and becoming knowledgeable about the business of something you really love to do

It doesn’t matter what it is. Whatever your hobbies, interests, passions are. Find the one you love the best and GET A JOB in the business that supports it.

It could be as a clerk, a salesperson, whatever you can find. You have to start learning the business somewhere. Instead of paying to go to school somewhere, you are getting paid to learn. It may not be the perfect job, but there is no perfect path to getting rich.

Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from.

This is not a short term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path

Now you wait for times of uncertainty and change in your business. The time will come. It may come quickly, it may take years and years. But it will come. The nature of our country’s business infrastructure is that it is destined to be boom and bust. Booms are when the smart people sell. Busts are when rich people started on their path to wealth.

You will know when that time is here for you because you will know your business inside and out. You will be ready because you will have been saving up for this moment in time

With all the change and uncertainty in the financial markets, there are people right now making more money than they ever dreamed of. They are the ones who have been living the real estate market and the financing behind it and understanding what actually what was going on. They re the one who understood the complexities of the credit markets. When everyone was following the crowd, they kept on saving their money and avoiding the temptation of groupthink.

Boom and busts happen to every industry. The question is whether you have the discipline to be ready when it happens for you ?

If you do, you will find out what it feels like to get lucky.

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Use your head in the voting booth.

By Rick | Published: October 10, 2008

This is pretty scary stuff. If you vote for Obama, I hope you get what you deserve.

Problem is, I will get what I don’t deserve if he wins.

Some of what is listed below doesn’t sound too bad (daycare for people who are single pares so they can actually work, etc). However, it is the method with which Obama will implement this that is bad for America.

He doesn’t want to cut other government spending to accomplish this, he just wants to tax the hell out of people who are successful in life. This is *not* how America became the best country in the world.

Manly

The article quoted is HERE.

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he said at the group’s 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.

And as president, “we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

It’s the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we’re launching this special educational series.

“Economic justice” simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.

In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

In his latest memoir he shares that he’d like to “recast” the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the “winner-take-all” market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).

Obama also talks about “restoring fairness to the economy,” code for soaking the “rich” — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.

It’s clear from a close reading of his two books that he’s a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.

Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He’s disguising the wealth transfers as “investments” — “to make America more competitive,” he says, or “that give us a fighting chance,” whatever that means.

Among his proposed “investments”:

• “Universal,” “guaranteed” health care.

• “Free” college tuition.

• “Universal national service” (a la Havana).

• “Universal 401(k)s” (in which the government would match contributions made by “low- and moderate-income families”).

• “Free” job training (even for criminals).

• “Wage insurance” (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).

• “Free” child care and “universal” preschool.

• More subsidized public housing.

• A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”

• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a “living wage,” with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and “fair trade” and “fair labor practices,” with breaks for “patriot employers” who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for “nonpatriot” companies that don’t.

That’s just for starters — first-term stuff.

Obama doesn’t stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.

You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he’s the most liberal member in Congress.

But could he really be “more left,” as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?

Obama’s voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.

The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.

A careful reading of Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as “Frank” — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his “subversive,” “un-American activities.”

As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis’ feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.

“They’ll train you so good,” he said, “you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**.”

After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences “for inspiration,” Obama followed in Davis’ footsteps, becoming a “community organizer” in Chicago.

His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman’s a disciple of the late Saul “The Red” Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the “Rules for Radicals” and agitated for social revolution in America.

The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama’s early political supporters.

After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to “bring about real change” — on a large scale.

While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky’s “agitation” tactics.

(A video-streamed bio on Obama’s Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words “Power Analysis” and “Relationships Built on Self Interest” — terms right out of Alinsky’s rule book.)

Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father’s communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses “owned by Asians and Europeans.”

His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn’t stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to “redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all.”

“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed,” Obama Sr. wrote. “I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development.”

Taxes and “investment” . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.

(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father’s communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)

In Kenya’s recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called “black liberation theology” and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Obama joined Wright’s militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of “black values” that demonizes white “middle classness” and other mainstream pursuits.

(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values “sensible.” There’s no mention of them in his new book.)

With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for “change” more effectively. “As an elected official,” he said, “I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer.”

He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.

Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for “economic justice.”

He’s been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.

Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as “liberal,” let alone socialist.

Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate “outsider” (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a “breath of fresh air” to Washington.

The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded “r” word.

But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.

Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.

Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that’s made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.

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Ben Stein for the win.

By Rick | Published: October 7, 2008

Ben Stein sums up my thoughts precisely.

Original link HERE.

How to Ruin the U.S. Economy

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America’s posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.

2) Eliminate regulation of Wall Street and/or fail to enforce the regulations that already exist, instead trusting Wall Street and other money managers and speculators to manage other people’s money with few or no regulations and little oversight.

3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.

4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.

5) Allow investment banks, insurers, and banks to bet their entire net worth and then some on the premise that borrowers known to be improvident will in fact repay those loans.

6) Allow the creation of large betting pools called “hedge funds” that can move markets and control the outcome of trading, thus taking a forum for savings and retirement for families and making it into a rigged casino game that exists primarily to fleece suckers like ordinary working men and women.

7) Have laws that protect corporate officers from being sued for misconduct but at the same time punish lawyers in the private sector who ferret out such misconduct and try to make accountable the people responsible for shareholder and investor losses. If one of those lawyers gets particularly aggressive in protecting stockholders, put him in prison.

8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.

9) Scare Americans into putting up $750 billion of their hard earned money to bail out the billionaires and their friends who created the market for loans to poor credit risks (The “subprime” market) and the unbelievably large side bets on those loans, promising that such a bailout would save the retirement savings of Americans, then allow the immense hedge funds to make the market crater immediately afterwards.

10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.

11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since the days of FDR.

12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.

There, that should do it.

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