Looking for a diamond in a manure pile

So, we've "officially" kicked off the 2012 Presidential Election Cycle. We've seen what the Iowan people have had to say about it and I'm not too surprised at the outcome, but I feel that the press is putting WAY too much emphasis on it. Perhaps because there is too little to talk about. Well, there was too little to talk about since our Beloved Present-dent has made some really goofy decisions on some appointments and his cuts to the military the past couple of days. Not to mention the new mortgage bailout fiasco he unleashed today. The man truly scares me.

As a conservative I tend to (mostly) align myself with the republican party.  I tend to label myself  as socially neutral, small government and fiscally conservative. There are no candidates in this race that I feel truly comfortable supporting.  Romney and Perry are both flip-floppy and therefore morally challenged. Gingrich also falls into this camp as his record indicates he's willing to compromise and support items that are, basically, untenable.  Santorum is a bit of a bright spot at the moment and his platform  is most in line with my personal beliefs, but his history in the Senate is wacky and doesn't support his current positions. Paul is too libertarian for my taste and I'm a small government guy. That says something. Huntsman is a dark horse who may surprise some people, but is too much of a dark horse to garner too much attention and Bachmann should have dropped out a long time ago.

Our country is in trouble as we all know. Our debt has now exceeded our GDP and we've lost our AAA+ rating. We owe everything to the Chinese and as our government keeps moving forward with quantitative easing (printing actual cash) and the dollar keeps falling we are facing an issue like none other that we've ever faced.

People keep talking about "supporting the 99%" and making things easier, then why are they (or we, since we voted these dopes into office) allowing prices to keep rising by the allowing the devaluation of the dollar?   We have to get this turned around and turned around soon. We have to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and keep the unions out of the workplace.

Aside: As long as a company treats people fairly, then a union is null and void. I work for a wonderful, small company in chemical manufacturing and a union has NO chance of ever getting a foot in the door. The mines in our neck of the woods are non-union and the miners here all make better wages, benefits and safe workplaces that their compatriots in the union mines do not enjoy. Unions have tried to come into the local mines but failed miserably. Why? They could NOT guarantee a better wage, conditions or benefits.

We have a long, long road back from the brink, but we have to turn around and take that first step. The socialist-leaning democrats are not willing to take those steps. I don't know that any of the people currently vying for the republican nomination have the intestinal fortitude to get us turned, nor do most in the House or Senate have the will to do this. But it must be done.

WWJD?

I'm usurping a famous acronym, WWJD, for my own nefariousness purposes.

I think I understand what is going on with the Occupy Wall Street movement. They want life to be more fair. They think that the unfairness of life and our current economic woes are the direct result of banks policy and the greedy, evil corporations on Wall Street. Hence the gatherings across the country to protest the profits of these evil companies and banks.

The vast majority of these protesters, however, cannot elucidate what it is that they want exactly; what it is they are trying to do, they simply want things to be fair. So, basically, the way that I'm reading their goals is they want the wealth to be redistributed evenly amongst the masses. They want to have a part of the earnings of others labors, they want something for nothing. I've heard other pundits define this as an attempt start a "Tea Party" like movement across the left. But where the Tea Party had a clear cut, well defined goal the Occupy crowd has no clue. PROTEST! It worked in Egypt, right?

A lot of our current economic woes can be traced directly to Carter Era Policy that was put in place to try and make things "more fair". I've actually heard the argument that "...if I couldn't afford it, the bank shouldn't have given me the loan..." Really? Really? No, you should be able to look at a loan and determine if you could pay it back or not. Was there predatory lending? Absolutely. Lending Acts passed by our government from 1968 to the present day kinda allowed this to happen. Shoot, the gov't even got into the predatory lending business themselves. But in the end it still comes back to the borrowers. Who applied for the loan? Who should have read the loan papers? Who signed the paperwork? The Borrower. And the Lenders (usually more than just "banks" per se) used gov't policy to justify what was happening.

So, now it's come back to bite us in the butt and the 99% are in the streets demanding their fair share.

So, let me as them this question: WWJD? Jesus? No, Jobs. What Would Jobs Do?

Most everybody in the world has heard by now that we lost another Great American yesterday. Mr Steve Jobs, the man who brought about the personal computer revolution, lost his battle to cancer. I offer my condolences to his family who are no doubt hurting and missing him today.

But, how would Mr. Jobs respond to this situation? The man was kicked out of the company that HE started! Did you hear him cry that it was unfair and pitch a fit in the street? Nope, he got involved in another project and helped get Pixar Animation off the ground. Then, when the idiots ran Apple into the ground he went back and TURNED IT INTO THE BIGGEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD! You never heard him cry and whine about life being unfair. He simply got over himself and refocused and carried on with life.

And if you truly don't like how a company or bank operates then don't use them! And let the companies that do business with them know that you won't be doing business with them either as long as the affiliation lasts. Be prepared to stick to your guns and do without "stuff" in your life as a result. You don't like KFC because they are mean to chickens?? Fine, boycott all Pepsi products. Do research and find out who all supplies stuff to KFC and stop buying their products. Get your friends and family involved, they get their friends and family involved and pretty soon KFC will either be out of business as they can't sell stuff or get supplied or you will get live, free range chickens in your order that you can do with as you please.

So, to my friends who are occupying Wall Street and protesting capitalism, either truly divest yourself of everything that the free-market system supplies in your life, move to a truly communist country (are there any?), or ask yourself how you can get a piece of the American Dream. What Would Jobs Do?

Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. You will be ever remembered with the likes of Edison and Ford.

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.