And so it goes...

Yup. The crying, whiny, mad, angry, disillusioned masses on all sides are waxing verbose on the ups and downs of this election.

It was expected and if it is a suprise to you then I recommend that you crawl back to whatever rock you were under and hide your head, because life is going to get even stranger.

We are at a cross-roads in this country. A massive, multi-option intersection that is commonly referred to in my industry as a "malfunction junction". We need to choose the right one before the next truck comes lumbering down the path and flattens us.

As I write this, the dollar is in a free fall, the Fed just pumped another $600,000,000,000 dollars into the "economy" in a Keynesian attempt to animate a dead thing in a manner that would make Shelley proud and we're on the verge of an economic implosion the likes of which the world has never seen.

This has got to stop. We need to get our stuff under control and pick the path that will take us out of the muck and back to the top.

"A democracy fails the moment the people realize they can write themselves gifts from the treasury."

~Aristotle~

And friends, that is exactly what we've been doing. Our Government has been borrowing money that it is going to have trouble paying back. It has become so commonplace and put so many people out of touch with reality that they believed they could also borrow money beyond their means and be ok. We called it the "housing bubble". The mess that was started by our government, perpetuated by a bunch of greedy thieves and taken up whole-heartedly by the masses. Most people's credit is a mess and their finances are on the edge of total chaos. Most American's believe that they should have the best of everything. Biggest house, nicest car, full tank, stylish clothes and our system allows people to live that dream without honestly showing the reality of it.

We cannot maintain this.

So, what is the plan to fix it? Tax the rich. By golly, why not? They HAVE the money to pay off our debt and solve the country's problems. Right? Wrong. If you were to liquidate Mr. Soros' fortune today and give it to the government, it wouldn't even put a dent in what the Fed spent yesterday.

You've heard that the top percent of earners already pay the lions share of taxes anyway. Most don't buy that as you also hear, "They have accountants figuring out how to keep them from paying their taxes." And that is true to some extent. But, there is a larger majority that don't pay taxes at all! Are you one of them? Did you get back more than you paid in? Then you are part of the problem.

We've grown our government by demanding that they provide us with this, that and the other. We've allowed our government to grow by failing to watch what they are doing and holding them accountable. We have allowed ourselves the luxury of writing gifts to ourselves from our own treasury.

We need to do the following; right away:

• Balanced budget amendment. This needs to restrict the spending to no more than the government takes in for the previous fiscal year.

• Clarity in Legislation amendment Where all laws put forth for consideration are a single item issue. No tacking laws and funding onto the back of a seemingly innocuous bill. And all bills be written in such a manner that they are clear, concise and eliminate loopholes. I'm thinking that limiting bills to ten pages would do the trick.

• Flat tax for everyone. Eliminate the tax refund and everybody pays their share. Flat - say five or six percent. You could even make this a sales tax rather than an income tax. This would eliminate the IRS in large part. Save a chuck of change right there. Simplifies life, too.

• Shrink Government. We have a preponderance of bureaucratic nonsense in this country that is almost totally unnecessary. Most of them are not even Constitutionally legal! I do see the need for some commonality of laws that govern, say...interstate commerce. A truck driver shouldn't have to worry about what laws change as they cross from Pennsylvania into Ohio, or the necessity of the National Weather Service. But Education? Arts? No. these do not need funding. These should be left to the private sector and/or states exclusively.

• Set a plan to pay off the debt. This may need to be an amendment as well to keep it on track! But, we need a plan to pay off our national debt in a given amount of time. It won't happen over night, either.

• Charge an additional "non-employment" tax to those who ship jobs out of the country. One that can't be passed on to the consumer. We need our jobs back. We need to be protectionist of our country and her goods. There is a finite amount of money in the world and we've always had the lions share of it because we made the lions share of the worlds goods. Henry Ford started this whole mess because he wanted a faster, cheaper way to make goods. And he found it. BUT! the cost was finding automatons to do one simple job all day long. The only way was to up the pay. Then the unions got involved from a safety stand-point and slowly evolved to a profit venture. I don't like unions, personally, but if you take them back to their original intent (safety - primarily) then bring them on. BUT, make the US a Right to Work nation.

• Last, we need to re-regulate banking, lending and credit agencies to help keep the common man within due bounds and living within his means. Not regulate investment banking per se where a man can go and propose an idea and get money to pursue it, but personal lending; housing, cars and the like. When people only spend what they can afford, then prices and expenses will fall into line. If item Y cost's $X.xx today, but people don't buy it, then the price will fall until people do, or the company goes under. Supply and demand at it's finest. It's a known fact that prices will go up when demand is high and supply is low. Gasoline, food, hotel rooms and the like. Yep. You ever read the "rack rate" on the back of the hotel door? That is there by law to prevent the hotelier from gouging you during a blizzard. But you see it all the time. Why does a room go from $70 one week to $259 the next? Demand. It's also a known fact that some prices go up during shortages (canned food) but don't come back down as the situation corrects itself. So, when Del Monte raises the price on string beans because Florida froze it's royal naynays off, but the crops come in ok, don't buy the Del Monte brand. The prices will come down.

These are going to be hard decisions to make. Things aren't going to correct themselves overnight. Many will tell me that they are all pipe dreams and maybe they are, but we are at the point where we have to make the hard choices. China owns us right now. We should be beholden to NO country. Not for anything. Money, goods, energy...anything! We have to take steps to correct what we've screwed up. We need to limit our gluttony or face the consequences. And those are too terrible to contemplate.

And so it begins...

Election day. November 2, 2010. Is it the start of something big? A return to common sense? Or just a flash in the pan?

One cannot help but thing of the film "Vendetta" and the connotation that it brings.

Regardless of the outcome of today's various and sundry races and ballot issues "it" will begin. By this time tomorrow there will come the accusations, the tooth-gnashing, demands for recounts and lawsuits. The "found" ballots in trunks, attics and where ever else they are "stashed". The lost ballots of the disenfranchised. The heavy, dirty, ugly side of our democratic form of government.

We need to find a solid, honest form of one person (see, I can be PC), one vote. Biometric scanner comes to mind. Do it when you register, do it when you vote and any other votes by that biometric entity would be invalid and that person marked for investigation. A person could contrive to register multiple times, but a comparison matrix would eliminate all duplicate biometric signatures and mark that person for investigation.

And re-counts should be done by an out of state team of certified counters and the expense shouldered by the person who demanded it. These should NOT be allowed to drag out for weeks, months and/or years.

Again, these may all be pipe dreams. The ideas are definitely outside the "norm" and would require a major paradigm shift (ugh - old buzz phrase hauntings) by ALL the politicians AND the public. Any attempt to positively identify a voter has always met with stiff resistance and you have to wonder why, unless something shady was/is going on. But it needs to be done.

Internet voting is too rife with complications to ever be practicable for the foreseeable future. But something needs done to stop all the grief that follows any election these days.

A brief comparison study

People have been comparing our President to FDR. I've been looking back and I have to agree with them. FDR brought this country many of our socialist institutions that we have today. Our President is trying to do the same; bring us many more socialist programs. Programs that have no constitutional basis what so ever.

I agree that we need to have some major health care reform, but the only input that the government should have is to design a set of rules that would allow for national competition of all the insurance companies across all state lines. Also, and I almost can't believe that I'm saying this, a light regulation of the insurance industry that disallows them to drop or deny policies for any reason.

I digress, this post is not about health care. It is about the comparison of Obama to Roosevelt.

Given the price tags of all the policies implemented by FDR and trying to be implemented by Obama, and given the state of our country both then and now we can say that history is, indeed, repeating itself. The Democrats had control of both houses and the presidency, the same as today. However, things really didn't improve a lot.

FDR died while in office and we saw another great American step into office: Truman. It was during his presidency that things began to come unraveled. FDR's policy costs began to catch up with our budget and the cost of the war didn't help (again with the amazing comparisons). Americans were almost as financially oppressed as they were during the thirties. There were HUGE food and materials shortages and retail costs were sky rocketing as much as 6% in one month!

And all of this led to something not totally unprecedented in politics, but damning none the less: a total sweep by the opposing party.

Now, I'm not suggesting that President Obama is going to die in office. God forbid that would happen. I don't like his policies, but I wouldn't wish that on his family in any way, shape or form. Rather, I'm suggesting that his attitudes and policies are driving this country to the brink. We are going to become so financially unstable that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are going to be impossible.

And, as before, that will lead to another Republican Sweep. And the Democrats are cheering this on; Obama is more like FDR than anybody else in history. They need to stop and take a look at what they are saying and use the old 20/20 hind sight to see what they are saying and where it will lead them.

Republicans Sweep Mid-term Elections in 1946