Posted by A Stoner on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 10:12:25 PM
There seem to be a large number of blog posts and news articles around the country that state communities are trying to bolster their reduced tax budgets with an increase in fees from policing motorists, primarily for speeding.

I have seen first hand different communities that do this, and most cannot be prevented from doing so. Any community near an interstate is perfectly happy to collect fees for their towns by taxing out of state travellers by pulling them over and fining them for speeding or any other infraction that they can make stick. Because these travellers are from out of state, there is almost no chance they will be willing to challenge the infraction in court, so it is very easy money. Other communities are willing to do this to their own citizens and frame it as a safety promotion issue. Other communities use traffic light cameras for this purpose as well.

Interestingly, studies find that increased speed limits do not translate into higher accident or death rates. When the double nickle was dropped and states were allowed to set speeds to what they desired, accidents and deaths went down, even in the state that actually got rid of interstate speed limits altogether. Studies show that stop light cameras actually lead to an increase in accidents, yet even when the accidents continue to pile up, the cameras do not go away. So, the idea that these are nothing more than stealth unfair taxation does not seem to be very far off.

My feelings on this issue is that speed limits are a distraction to drivers. When you speed, you are always on the look out for a cop, and thus not on the look out for other things. Speed recommendations should be implemented that give a reasonable speed for the area but are not directly enforced. Anyone one involved in an accident in that area would face very steep fines if they were driving higher than the speed limit and in cases of school zones and other pedestrian points I would recommend short jail stays. For those who do not get into accidents, what is the issue? The science of crash site investigations is good enough that evidence on the the scene can hit a pretty close marker as to what the speed of a vehicle was before the crash. If the issue is safety, the jail time and the very steep fines for speeding and getting into an accident will do far more than random and prejudicial enforcement.

Enforcement is prejudicial. If it is raining, a time when cops should be more inclined to stop motorists who are speeding (due to wet pavement making stopping in time harder and frequently visibility is impaired as well) many cops do not pull speeders over so they can remain dry and comfortable. Police officers are very fickle with who they hand out tickets to. I am a white male,when I get pulled over, I always get a ticket and usually one that has a speed higher than I saw on my speedometer. On the other hand, older people who happen to also be blinder and slower in reaction time who I have been in the passenger seat with have never been given anything more than a warning, which they promptly ignore as they accelerate to 20 mph or more over the speed limit within view of the police officer. A woman who has been drinking and was speeding at 40 mph over the speed limit in foggy conditions is pulled over and flirts her way into a ticket that says she was going 4 mph over the speed limit. How can a nation of laws exist when the laws are so malleable as to be either meaningless to some people or completely iron clad against others all at the discretion and prejudice of those who enforce it?

Then you also have the conflict of interest in the judicial process of traffic violations. The judge is an advocate of the state, county or city for which he sits and the plaintiff is the state, county or city in which you are tried.

Posted by A Stoner on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:37:18 AM
The solutions to our loss of values, responsibility and accountability with respect to the health care issue is as follows. It is harsh, unlike some people’s utopian ideas.

Send the Illegal aliens out of the country. Every last one we can by use of the laws on the books. Work site raids, prison sentences for employers who can be proven to have hired known illegals or those who did not do the bare minimum to ensure they only hired legal workers. I would also suggest figuring out who the people are that are doing lawn care, house cleaning and so forth. The jobs illegals take from Americans, they take mostly from the poorest of our nation. Children cannot fairly compete against illegals for character building task oriented jobs for neighbors. Adults cannot fairly compete against illegals for low skill high labor tasks that would give them work experience and a payday. The illegals come from nations with much lower standards of living, and think nothing of shacking up 10 people to a room in a home and eating much lower cost foods than most Americans are accustomed to.

Stop the tax free status of employer provided health insurance. Make the employers pay that money directly to the employee. The employee can then buy insurance on their own or through their employer, or through any voluntary group they chose to associate with. Yeah, it is pretty extreme, but then again, the whole idea of paying people with insurance seems somewhat extreme. I think people would prefer to have cash.

Allow a tax deduction, not a refundable tax credit, for those who buy health insurance. Health Insurance companies can send a 1099-Insurance similar to the 1099 form I get from my student loan company so I have a record for my tax deduction. This will keep the whole tax free health insurance valid, only it will take the power away from corporations and give it back to the worker, where it belongs.

Allow people to create unlimited health savings accounts that are paid with tax free money. They can only be used for the following things. Health care of anyone the owner of the account chooses to pay the health care costs of, funeral services, burial lots and such, and are also fully transferable through their will to any purpose they propose with no limit.

Give health Care providers a strong position to collect unpaid health care bills from deadbeats. Those who wish to pursue payments can, those who do charity can choose to not. But health care providers should have as much right to compensation as any other entity.

Get rid of the health care lottery system. Lawyers who pursue lawsuits over medical malpractice must be paid on a fixed fee or hourly rate basis only, 30% basis makes it a layer’s lottery more than actually paying for the actual damages. Pain and suffering must be limited, based on severity and duration of pain. Any punitive damages awarded do not go to the lawyer or the injured, but go to the insurance companies, so long as they are not also the malpractice insurance provider. It will be paid to these insurance providers based on % of past 5 years payments to the health care facility sued. All damages awarded go directly to the injured party, and malpractice insurance provider picks up lawyer fees and court costs. Loser pays for court costs and lawyer fees of person pursuing lawsuit. Malpractice insurance provider always picks up its own lawyer fees.

Allow insurance companies to sell insurance to any person regardless of location. Do not set lower limits on insurance, people who find it in their best interest for a high deductible catastrophic insurance plan should have one available to them. Those who want a more Cadillac plan should have those available. Basically, cross state sales of insurance.

In order to allow for preexisting conditions, allow insurance companies to exempt preexisting conditions from coverage for a set time frame, after which the insurance company would start to pick up some or all costs associated with the preexisting condition. I think some insurance companies already do this with a 2, 3 or 5 year waiting time. This seems fair. A person with preexisting conditions should be able to get health insurance, but health insurance companies should not be forced to pass on preexisting condition costs onto healthy customers, because it dilutes the value of insurance to those healthy customers and causes them to not feel that paying for it is worth it. People with preexisting conditions can likely count on charity, community and family to help cover many of their preexisting condition expenses.

Get rid of corporate taxes and investment taxes. This includes the death tax, which by a large margin is levied against small businesses and causes many to close. All taxes paid for by businesses are paid by customers. This makes American made products more expensive than outsourced products. This also causes businesses to open foreign plants and close domestic ones. This will do several things. It will increase production in America by Americans and allow Americans to be able to afford health insurance. Along with getting rid of illegal aliens, it will increase wages and move more poor people to middle class. It will improve employment and make workers more valuable through scarcity, and companies that cannot remain in business will go out of business. I do not have a problem with this, if a business cannot pay fair value for work or charge a price people are willing to pay, then they have no reason to be in business. If it means paying more for tomatoes, corn, carrots, shirts, socks, then that is the price that will be paid.

Get rid of medicare and medicaid as well as SCHIP and any other government provided health care benifit. The only exception is Veterans Administration, as we veterans pay for our health care through our blood sweat and tears providing the security through which any one else has the freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, also because the defense of the nation is in fact an enumerated responsibility of the Federal Government.

As far as states, I could care less what they do with health care. If they go the route of Massachusetts or the way of Texas. That is a right that states have. The federal government has no authority to be providing heath care for anyone other than those who serve in the armed forces. Everyone else, including our elected officials and government employees should be paying for their health care through their own pockets. If they chose to do so through insurance, great. If they choose to use a health savings account, awesome. If they can get a charity to pay for it, a relative from their medical savings account, or any other way, more power to them.

There, it is not nice, but it would work. Prices will drop. More people will become medical care practitioners because they are not discouraged by the government red tape and government underpricing. People will understand that there are values, responsibility and accountability in their health care choices, because the money will come from their own pockets, or from some charitable contribution that they will likely face first hand and know that they got something that has value. Taxes will drop, families will become stronger, values will be solidified, responsibility will be lain down on those who owe it, and accountability will be through self, family and community.

Posted by A Stoner on Thursday, November 06, 2008 5:47:24 PM
This is a reply I made to a post on Paterico’s Pontifications.

Not enough money.
He could have had plenty of money if he had chosen to not disenfranchise as many conservatives as he did. I would have supported him if at any point in time after he picked Palin he would have shown he was going to actually have some conservative values in being president, I think many conservatives felt as I do that they could not in good concience support the Maverick liberal senator who will act as much liberal as conservative once elected.
The fallout from Sarah Palin’s pick.
Sarah Palin had no fall-out, at least not with people who mattered. Sarah Palin is just as loved by moderates as she is by conservatives. John McCain lost this because conservatives allegedly stayed home this election.
Too few (or too many) attacks on Obama.
I agree with both too few attacks that mattered on things people would have changed their minds about. Too many attacks on subjects that would make someone maybe not like Barack Obama as much, but not sway their vote anyways. John McCain was too blind to be able to see the whites of their eyes
Moving to the right instead of acting like the maverick he is.
He moved to the right? I am sorry, I never saw that. Maybe it was when he voted against for the $700,000,000,000.00 start-the-socialism-now bail-out of greedy wall street executives, hide-the-misdeeds-of-the-democratic-congress-over-the-last-30-years, and give hand-outs to people who irresponsibly borrowed more for a house they could not afford? No, that is not likely it.
Impossible polls for the GOP following the Bush Presidency.
McCain led from when he Picked Palin until when he chose to suspend his campaign in order to gather support against for the $700,000,000,000.00 boondogle that Paulson the newly minted king is lording over every single large company in the country. He should have stayed on the right here and demanded that capitalism be allowed to run its course correction, and once the correction was near complete have the government give the economy a jumpstart.
Taking a high-risk approach instead of focusing on his experience and leadership.
I do not understand what his high risk style was. Maybe it was how he tried to out liberal the liberal by promising $300,000,000,000.00 of the $700,000,000,000.00 to the lowlifes who cannot pay for the homes they purchased? That was pretty high risk, in fact I think suicidal. Who the hell was it designed to sway the votes of? The only votes that changed with that were people slightly more willing than me to vote for McCain, and it moved them to either stay home like I did, or to support Barack Obama.
Media support for Obama.
Not a problem, all he had to do was keep up the Celebrity theme. Move it to more aspects of the man, but instead all his comercials were one shots that did not stick in the minds of the viewer. John McCain’s best opportunities were when the media had the least opportunity to get in the way of the message. Debates 1, 2 and 3. Each of which were wasted by McCain. Imagine if in the first debate he would have either stayed in Washington and came to the conclusion that the bailout was a mistake and that he would oppose it, sending Palin to stand in for him. It would have humiliated Barack and shown McCain to have a true Country First position. Or if he would have shown up for the debate and told the American people he did not support the bailout, that socialism was not the way for America to go. That capitalism would correct this problem, and that the reason we were in this mess to begin with was because of the socialistic idea that people who cannot get loans because of their low likely hood of paying the loans off were being given loans by force of government mandate and subsidized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Just imagine if the bailout proceeded to get passed (with-out John McCain having Voted for it) and everything that has happened since then still happened. Market dives, 401K losses, job losses and a government hamstrung from being able to do anything because it just added over $1,300,000,000,000.00 to the deficit in one month. Think maybe a few people would have decided to go with That Guy in stead of That One?
The timing of the financial meltdown.
Life happens, prove you can lead no matter what happens. In this case McCain was being led down the path to hell by his good masters. If McCain wanted to win he would have opposed the Bailout, and called for immediate tax releif to companies that were going to survive. He would have called for the treasury to step in and help liquidate the assets of the companies that could not survive. He would have done what anyone with a grain of capitalism in his veins would have done. Instead he followed the leaders down the path to demolition of capitalism and sewed the seeds of marxism into our future heritage.
Bad luck.
Bad choices. The party made a bad choice, we got what we chose. McCain chose to be democrat light, another bad choice. There was only one good choice in all of this and that is the choice of Palin as VP and hopefully future President.

In the end McCain was his worst enemy in this election. The fact of the matter is that this was his election to lose once he picked Palin. In each and every situation he decided to either retreat or hold position. His only redeeming act in this was his choice for VP, and right now he better keep his redemption by defending her.

Edited on 11/22/2009 to fix code. Couple grammar and spelling fixes and such.

Posted by A Stoner on Sunday, November 02, 2008 6:18:06 PM
I think I have figured out why Barack Obama has decided that we need a powerful national civil security force that is as powerful as the military. It is because a national civil security force would not be hamstrung from attacking American Citizens as our military would be. The United States military cannot be used against its citizens, and the people who form the back bone of the military would not allow themselves to be turned against the civilian population, they serve the Constitution, which they respect. The civilian security force would not have these United States of the Constitution restrictions placed on them. The civilian security force would also likely be made up of people who share the views of Barack Obama as well as William Ayers and other people who wish to turn America into the United Socialist States of America because the people who are already serving America serve her in the United States military forces.

When Barack Obama starts to make the changes to this country that he plans to make, many Americans are going to be justly against these changes, and there will eventually come a time when “We the People” are going to be forced to stand up to keep our great nation great. This is when the true nature of the civilian security force will be shown. It will be under the direct command of Barack Obama and will work very much like his truth squads and his radio talk show stopping goon squad’s work. When Americans dare to question Barack first the goon squads will be dispatched to try to over talk them, if this does not work, the truth squads will be set free to prosecute and litigate people into subdued silence, and when all else fails, the National Civilian Security Force will force Americans to remain in their homes, or be taken to reeducation camps, such as what William Ayers and Bernadine Dhorn talked about where 25,000,000 American may need to be terminated in order to bring about socialism. Since then, America has grown much in population and that 25,000,000 may be significantly increased.
Barack Obama’s tax plans will hobble our economy and job creation and likely cause a large exodus of money from American companies into other countries industries. Barack Obama’s plans for or energy sector will cause massive rolling blackouts and likely many in America will no longer be able to afford to heat their homes in winter or cool them in summer. His plans for powering our transportation needs will cause Americans to give up their freedom for public transportation. His plans for our health care will eventually lead to medical rationing. When all of these problems cause the American freedom loving people to stand up, they will need to be knocked down, and since Barack could not trust in the Military to subdue them, he will need the National Civilian Security Forces to do it.

Posted by A Stoner on Saturday, October 18, 2008 9:13:25 AM

I personally do not have the ambition of Joe the Plumber to attain my own business. If I get rich, it will be from a lottery ticket, outside that I am perfectly happy being an employee of someone like Joe the plumber. Even though I work as a well enough paid engineer, most of the work I do is for companies that pay taxes as a small business. Many are privately owned companies that provide work to between 100 and 1000 employees. Most American’s might think that those are large corporations; I mean I certainly did 10 years ago. But then I worked for my last company, and the owner had plans to add hundreds of thousands of square feet of production floor space and 300ish employees. He personally came around and talked to everyone, even a lowly contract engineer like me. He talked about how he was going to be able to afford this expansion, the reason? Because after tax profits were enough that they could put money into savings to be able to expand and hire new employees. Sure, they got richer, but they did not keep the money selfishly for themselves, they spent it for the greater good. Even while this company was expanding here in America, they were building another plant south of the border. They were moving the low skills jobs to a place that had employees who were ecstatic to do the work for low cost to the company. Every single employee was retained, trained by the company to do more difficult tasks. 200 jobs moved to Mexico and still this company was hiring 300 more. The reason is simple. George W Bush’s tax cuts allowed this company to expand to serve their customers when their customers needed more services. I like to work for people like Joe, and millions of Americans like to work for people like Joe.

Joe asked the right question, and amazingly Barack Obama answered honestly. Every American should ask themselves if they want to be Joe, do they want to work for Joe, or do they just want Joe’s money? I would benefit from Barack Obama’s tax plan for about a year. Then when I go to find a new job working for Joe, Joe will have to tell me that Barack Obama took my wages from him.

Thus my new job will be as a slave to Barack Obama, Barack Obama will control how millions of Americans get the things in life they need. It will start off as welfare payments in the suitably Marxist term refundable tax credits, and move on to government mandated healthcare where rationing is required, and ACORN assisted housing arrangements, food stamps and I will not chose my job, it will be dictated to me and it will likely be a job building the infrastructure that Beijing has, because Barack Obama is suitably impressed by that Marxist communist county’s ability get things done against their populations needs and desires.

My children will be slaves to Barack Obama as well. They will be forced to support Barack Obama’s socialist agenda by ‘volunteering’ in order to get college tuition credit.

Because of Barack Obama’s love for Marxist government, he will plant all the seeds in our government and society to make the slippery slope toward communism all but impossible to prevent.

Posted by A Stoner on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 6:09:10 PM
First off the many Republicans deserve to be thrown out with the bath water. They have done nothing to deserve the vote of a conservative. Some of course were conservative, and their constituents should re-elect them.
Heres a list of a few things they did:
Gave out prescription meds for seniors, sure, that is likely to buy alot of votes.
Refused to fix social security, how is that working out? Thank you all very much, I sure like the my election first, country last attitudes have.

Gave money to ACORN, cause they do not want to look like racists pigs, not exactly turning out the way they expected?

Did not really work hard to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, yup that sure as hell helped your re-election prospects, huh rejects?

Well, how about a nice big $700,000,000,000.00 bail-out for wall street, do you think that will buy them a few votes in a few weeks?

Maybe they can add in some tax breaks for wooden arrows, some lower taxes on imported rum, and you know, they are really are going to get votes for having chosen to do the hardest thing any congresscritter could have ever done, they voted for extending the protection from the dreaded alternative minimum tax monster, you would think that would get us votes!!!! Damn, could you imagine if that vote on extending the protection from the alternative minimum tax was done as a single bill? I bet you could not have gotten many more than 99 Senators to vote for that and not many more than 434 Representatives!!! Thank goodness that was attached to the wooden arrows legislation.

Oh, wait, they are not done yet, they also want to give money to people who bought too much house, or refinanced (cashed out) their house for luxury items that other Americans have to earn through hard work and putting off pleasure until they can actually have earned and paid for it, yeah, I am sure that doing a bail-out for irresponsible buyers is surely going to get conservatives elected.

I am sitting this one out. I can survive in any America that ends up happening thanks to all of those conservatives having lost the election.

Some of you though want to win the election, and if you really want to, then here is the simple plan. Story line advertising. The celebrity ad did not work simply because it played to Obama’s supposed strength, it worked because it was a story people could follow. It started of stating what republicans wanted you to think of him, and then laid out in story detail each instance that proved it was true.
I can say exactly what would have turned this election into a cakewalk for the conservatives. CRA, ACORN, AYERS, Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Chriss Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid all balled up in every single add. But it has to be a story.
Start off with “What Just Happened?” show the effects and then walk it back in each consecutive comercial through each of the bad actors.
Ad one would be the $700,000,000,000.00 bail-out and the stock market crashing and retirement accounts tanking (15 seconds) followed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae being the cause (15 seconds) Ad in pictures of Democrats posing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives smiling and shaking hands if possible. Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.
Ad two would be Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae executives talking about how good things are along with each CEO’s pay-out (15 seconds) followed by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Christine Waters telling that there is no problem, especially at Fannie Mae (15 seconds). Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.
Ad three would be about McCain’s proposed bill in 2005 (15 seconds) followed by Barack wrote a strongly worded letter (Leadership? Ready to Lead?) a strongly worded letter from someone who could introduce legislation?(15 seconds). One person was leading, one person was covering his backside. Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.
Ad 4 would Go back to when Barack Obama was helping ACORN sue banks into making bad loans, include some wording indicating what happens when bad loans are made. Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.
Ad 5 would go back to the CRA and what it was really all about, making risky loans, followed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required by law Barney Frank to buy as many bad loans as banks could produce, the greed was fed by Government mandate. Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.
The final ad would show Barack Obama working with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and would question if America can afford unfettered rule by the people who caused the financial meltdown. Barney Frank: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.” Announcer: He rolled the dice, and lost. And now you’re paying the bill.

I would get more information out to the public through full page ads in the major papers. Want to win the election, then each and every single conservative should benifit from this advertizing. But hey, lets just go at this like a bunch of individuals, and not only that, but a bunch of retarded lost individuals that have no direction to the country.

Posted by A Stoner on Saturday, October 11, 2008 10:55:34 AM
Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Chris Cox have all pushed an economy on the brink of a moderate recession into a world headed towards a depression. JONATHAN MACEY has the how over at the Wall Stree Journal The Government Is Contributing to the Panic . I will go into the possible reasons here.

Who are these people?
Henry Paulson is the Secretary of the Treasuryof the United States of America. The Secretary of the Treasury is the principal economic advisor to the President and plays a critical role in policy-making by bringing an economic and government financial policy perspective to issues facing the government. The Secretary is responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial, economic, and tax policy, participating in the formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, and managing the public debt. The Secretary oversees the activities of the Department in carrying out its major law enforcement responsibilities; in serving as the financial agent for the United States Government; and in manufacturing coins and currency. So he has a few things to do.

Ben Bernanke is The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It is his job to ensure that we have low inflation and for some reason the added responsiblity of keeping unemployment low, two things that many times are mutually exclusive. Fighting inflation sometimes means to keep money tight and slowing the economy down which can cause higher unemployment. Fighting higher unemployment requires speeding the economy up, which adds pressure to the sources of inflation. So he has his work cut out for him, but Alan Greenspan did a remarkable job for many years keeping it all balanced, so it is not an impossible task.

Charles Christopher Cox has served as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since August 3, 2005. The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. Basically the only thing this person has to do is enforce the law and ensure the proper functioning of the financial markets.

Can they handle their job titles or was Bush stupid to appoint these people? Looking at the background of each of these people shows a competent person, someone who should be capable of accomplishing the job title they have been appointed to. Henry Paulson ran Goldmans Sachs, he must have done a bang up job there, as he left with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonus’. Ben Bernanke was already a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and worked with Alan Greenspan, he certainly had the experience to do his job. Chris Cox was a member of the House of Representatives for 16 years, giving him ample experience in understanding American Law and the importance of ensuring that it is upheld.

So we have three people in very powerful positions, each one should be competant, so why are they failing so badly?

Ben Bernanke changed the direction of the Fed, not only does he want the mutually exclusive job of ensuring low inflation and high employment, but adds a third “promoting financial stability,” and with it a fourth, regulating “nonbank financial institutions” such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. Taking on too much responsibility and in the process he removes the responsibility for the people who should be responsible. Unfortunately, we cannot blame him as much as, I at least, would like, because it was a lax money supply to keep the economy out of recession that helped fuel the housing bubble.

Chris Cox has obviously not been doing his job very well, as pretty much everyone has been doing things they likely should not have been doing. I mean seriously, he has been in his job since 2005, how many NINJA loan comercials have you seen running on TV ads? No Income, No Job, No Assets. If Chris Cox was doing his job starting in 2005, then 50% of the bad mortgages that happened in the last 7 years would not have occured. It is these loans that are destroying our financial system, and if Chris Cox had done his job in 2005, then 3 years later when the house prices fell and the 3 year ARMs came due, there would be far fewer people defaulting on their mortgages.

That brings us to Henry Paulson, what has he been doing? Well, it is his job to give advice to the President on how to keep the economy as a whole working like a well oiled machine. What did he do? He went out on the world stage and screamed that the end of the world was upon us, and that he needed unfettered access to all the money in the world to prevent it. He said banks were on the verge of failure, that insurance companies were effectively insolvent, that liquidity in the markets was about the freeze solid, and that this freezing would push ever more companies into failure. Basically he told everyone with money invested in the markets that they would lose their money soon, unless they pulled that money out, and pulled it out now. He then said there were bombs planted in every institution around the world and they would start going off, destroying any money left in those institutions. Is it a suprise then that banks stopped lending money to other banks, who might be about to go bankrupt? That banks who needed money from other banks to lend money to companies that rely on credit to remain in business stopped supporting those business’? Paulson basically set up the dominoes and gave the one at the front a push when he let Lehman Brothers fail.

Paulson destroyed this nation’s financial system’s good name. He had this plan in the works for 18 months. Why did he have to set the fall for now? Why indeed? Look at where we are today. The nation is in the grips of the most hotly contested Presidential Election in many decades. We are at war in two nations against an enemy that spans over 60 countries. Our nation’s economy was already teetering at the edge of recession. All that and Paulson decided to scream bomb in a packed theater. What is the reason for that? Every single thing that the $700,000,000,000.00 Paulson plan can do was already available to be used, just under another department. So why push the world into economic epeleptic seisure in order to just move it over to a new department? The only reasons I can think of are; He wants power and picked just the right moment to force congress to conceed to his demands, or he is trying to effect a political coup by destroying the economy in order to get Obama elected president.

If he wants power, then he should have done this months ago, because his tenure is up in just a few short months. Unless he only needs the power for a short time in order to accomplish his goals. Almost everything he has done has been to support Goldman Sachs. Allowing Lehman Brothers to fail got rid of a competitor to Goldman Sachs and did great damage to the economy. Not allowing AIG to fail also favored Goldman Sachs who had a $20,000,000,000.00 stake to lose if AIG failed, and Goldman Sachs was the only company that had an employee in the meetings that decided the fate of AIG. Goldman Sachs is up to it’s eyeballs in sub-prime mortgage backed securities and that is the exact same thing that Paulson wants to buy at inflated prices from the market, likely including much from Goldman Sachs. So, was this multi trillion dollar inplossion of the world markets set into motion for the selfish needs of Goldman Sachs? Sounds plausible to me.

If he wants to get Obama elected, then was this a good strategy? When the economy is the single largest issue on the minds of voters, democrats gain votes. Lets look at this one in detail. The timing is pitch perfect, just 6 weeks from election day. The plan he chose was something out of a socialist wish list, getting the government heavily invested in the private market, almost to 100% of mortgages. then there was the way he treated John McCain. “BOB SCHIEFFER: I am told, Maggie, that the way McCain got involved in this in the first place, the Treasury Secretary was briefing Republicans in the House yesterday, the Republican conference, asked how many were ready to support the bailout plan. Only four of them held up their hands. Paulson then called, according to my sources, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is very close to John McCain, and told him: you’ve got to get the people in the McCain campaign, you’ve got to convince John McCain to give these Republicans some political cover. If you don’t do that, this whole bailout plan is going to fail. So that’s how, McCain, apparently, became involved. ” Then when McCain suspended his campaign, the Democrats came out and claimed, just before McCain landed that a deal had been already brokered, even though it had not. Did Paulson, who has not shown any shyness for camera’s up ’til now support McCain by informing the public that he had asked McCain to come help get a deal brokered? His shameful actions made McCain look like an opportunist instead of the “Country First” man that he is and was when he suspended his campaign. To me, this looks like Paulson set up John McCain.

I cannot think of any other reasons that Paulson acted the way he has over the last few weeks other than he is helping Goldman Sachs or is helping Barack Obama. While Chris Cox is only guilty of negligence, and Ben Bernanke incompetence, I think that Henry Paulson is guilty of treason.

Posted by A Stoner on Friday, October 10, 2008 12:30:51 PM

Dear fellow disabled veteran John McCain:
(personal information was here)
I am 100% against you buying these bad mortgages, but since you seem hell bent on doing so, is there anything you can do along with this plan to help people like me?

I am a disabled veteran, I get a 30% rating, and because of my disability I am not always able to keep a job permanently so I do contracting. It is not that I get fired or anything, but after a while my disability starts to strain relations with other employees so I move on to a new job with new people. I have been wanting to a buy a home for a long time now, I even saved money up until around late 2005 which is when it became painfully obvious I was never going to catch up to the price of homes with my savings and my income. So, I finally gave up on the dream and got married with no home. I am an easy going kind of person, I do not need much to make my life worthwhile and my wife is the same. So it is heartbreaking to see that you are thinking of taking the responsibility of others and putting those responsibilities on me and my wife’s backs, as we are net tax payers.

Many people are going to be getting $50,000 or more of their mortgage forgiven under your plan. I personally see these people as one of three sorts:
1) People who desperately wanted a home and were willing to pay any price to have one and these are the least irresponsible, but they helped force home prices up so they are not without fault. They made their bed, and they should sleep in it, but you see it differently.
2) People who need to be keeping up with the Jones’ types who bought the absolute most expensive home they could afford or if they owned a home borrowed every last penny of equity they had in their home in order to buy new furniture, an SUV, a vacation or something else. While these people did not drive home prices up, they certainly knew what they were getting into when they made their decisions and they profited from this. Once again, these people made their bed, and they should sleep in it, but you see it differently.
3) People who bought on the way up hoping to make a buck on the back of some other person when prices rose at exorbitant inflationary levels, and are just unfortunately stuck with a home with decreasing value, and these are the worst of the worst in this crisis. These are predators in our society, and I do not give much bad feelings towards them, it is a capitalist society after all, but they should be allowed to fail and lose, but again, you see it differently

These are the people that you are planning to bail out. People, who were willing to buy a home at any price, or people who used their home as a status symbol or as a way to gain luxury items, or people who were predatory buyers. Your plan is to forgive them all of their bad choices. Your plan is designed to keep people in homes that they should either pay for according to their original loan principle, thus keeping the home off the market or be foreclosed on, thus making that home available to people like me. Your plan is to short circuit the market forces and this will inevitably damage the market, but it feels good to help people, just as long as you do not notice the people you are hurting in the process, people like me.

With this in mind, let’s look at people like me:
1) Responsible person who just wants a home, but was not willing to buy a home in a market that was deformed. (I had opportunity to do so, I chose not to)
2) Responsible person who is not out to get some status symbol or luxury in life I have not really earned. (I had opportunity to do so, I chose not to)
3) Responsible person who did not try to get a loan I knew I could never repay with the hope of selling my home to the next sucker to come along desperate to buy a home at any price. (I had opportunity to do so, I chose not to)
4) Responsible person who wants to buy a home, but that home needs to be both affordable as well as priced based on sound economic principles in a market place that is not artificially increasing the value of the home.
5) Responsible person who believes your plan is designed to keep house prices artificially high, thus making any purchase at this time risky in the fact that at some point in time the artificially high house value will have to drop to its natural market value, ruining any equity I built by paying my bills.

I can understand if you think that I am not one of the people who are deserving of a government hand out and am instead worthy of the government confiscating my hard earned money. When I see that my government is going to be giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who made bad decisions while taking money from people who made the right and responsible decisions in order to pay for that bailout, I certainly feel like I have been made a victim of my government, a government that is showing every evidence of becoming as corrupt as say the another government that decided one day to steal a man’s business from him, even though he had a government contract to run that business for 23 more years, and give it to a political ally. Even after the man won a federal government lawsuit the corruption to this very day still keeps that business in the hands of the criminal and out of the hand of the man who built that business from the ground up. Again, I can understand that you think these people are more deserving than I am, because there are other governments around the world who also do things this way. Most of them are run by dictators, but many of them are also factually functioning democracies that are in effect simple mob rule. So I can understand.

Maybe I should not feel shamed and just ask the government to give me what I want in life, like a nice home. Perhaps a modest one that even needs some repairs, because the prior owners were not responsible, they may have been very much like the people you plan to bailout. They bought a home they could not afford, and hoped that prices would go up, but when the prices did not go up they realized they were going to lose the home so stopped caring for it until they were evicted. I would be willing to fix the home, if I can get it. I am thinking however that my dream will have to wait, in order to allow people who made bad choices to keep their ill gotten dream.

I am still unable to buy a home; the prices are still much higher than they were before the housing bubble grew. The property taxes are exorbitant and still listed at their highest value, thus making the home harder to afford. So between a higher principle to start, about 35% higher than it would have been if home prices grew based on sound economic policies as they had for the 70 years before 1999, the extra interest payments on that higher principle, the higher down payment requirement because the home price is still inflated, and the property taxes that are double what they should be, I do not have the means to buy a home near where I work. The reason my means is so small is because I send much of my income to my wife’s family who live in the Philippines. Her grandfather who she was raised with is over 70 now and because of corruption over there he lost his business and at his age he is not likely to ever return to employment. This makes it hard for me to save much money each month, but we try. My grandfather in law is a victim of a corrupted government, a government that you must seem to want to emulate, because once the bailouts start flowing in this country the entitlement mentality is hard to shake, and when people are entitled to things they spend time trying to corrupt the system to their advantage instead of working, producing and earning. In fact most of our family savings was recently spent on a trip my wife took back to the Philippines just last month, I was not able to afford to take time off of work and go with her. The reason she had to go back to the Philippines is because the school refused to allow her to get her transcript unless she was there in person, as the school is trying to prevent corruption that is running rampant through that country. So I no longer have enough money for the fees associated with buying a home, let alone the down payment, although I do have access to 100% financing through the VA, VA loans have higher interest rates than conventional loans. I will try to again save enough money to eventually buy a home, but it is not always easy. Sometimes a family member gets sick and needs more money. A friend gets in trouble and needs some money to get by for a while. A disaster happens and people who are true victims need a little charity (Katrina, Ike, Floods in the Midwest, Iowa in particular as I have family there). While I feel bad for people who owe more on their house than the house is worth, these people made contracts and said they could pay the loan off, and they should either be made to fulfill that contract or be evicted so someone else can come in that is truly responsible enough to own that home.

I am a homeless disabled veteran (I rent), and I would really ask that you rethink your position on this give away to irresponsible home buyers. But if you want to bail these people out, then I think you owe it to us veterans that you can at least come up with a meager $25,000 or $50,000 in hard cash to help each and every one of us to buy a home. I am sure there are many other groups of people out there, and maybe just wealthy people who are also willing to ask for their hand out from the government

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: ‘From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.’”
-Alexander Tyler

From Michelle Malkin:

Eight months and trillions of dollars in mega-government bailouts later, my message is being reinforced. Peter Schiff, founder of Euro Pacific Capital, writes in the San Diego Union Tribune today. He rips the perverse incentives of the bailout orgy:

Just stop paying your mortgage

If you are a mortgage holder who is either struggling with crushing payments, bitter for having overpaid for your home during the bubble, or who has extravagantly refinanced when prices were rising, the government’s landmark $700 billion bailout package has an important message for you: stop making your mortgage payments . . . immediately. Furthermore, if you believe that with some planning and sacrifice you may be able to meet your mortgage obligations, the government’s message is clear: relax, don’t bother.

While angry voters have labeled the package as a bailout for Wall Street, it is more akin to a “Get out of Jail Free” card for anyone who acted irresponsibly during the boom. Here’s why.

Nobody likes foreclosure, least of all politicians. The new law clearly indicates that the government will make major efforts to reduce foreclosures through “term extensions, rate reductions and principal write-downs” of the troubled mortgages that it buys from the private sector. In other words, your new landlord will bend over backward to keep you in your home. The legislation telegraphs this by including a provision that extends until 2013 the exclusion of loan reductions from taxable income.

When a financial institution holds a mortgage, homeowners must live with the fear of foreclosure. Private institutions only have obligations to shareholders. In the case of a defaulting borrower, they will look to recover as much of their principal as possible. If foreclosure is their best option, they will take it in a heartbeat.

The government has no such obligations. Its only goal is to keep voters happy. After supposedly bailing out the fat cats on Wall Street, no politician wants to be accused of evicting struggling families. Once you understand this, all of your anxiety should melt away. Why pay your mortgage if foreclosure is off the table, and if you know that lower payments, and possibly a reduced loan amount, would result? A tarnished a credit rating is a small price to pay for such a benefit.

Unfortunately, this boon will not extend to those foolish individuals who either made large down payments or resisted the temptation of cashing out equity. The large amount of home equity built up by these suckers, I mean homeowners, means that in the case of default foreclosure remains a financially attractive option. As a result, these loans will be much less likely to be turned over to the government.

If your mortgage does become the property of Uncle Sam, the growingly popular impulse to “just walk away” should be replaced by “just stay and stop paying.” No one will throw you out. After a few months, or years, of living payment free, you will get a call from a motivated government agent eager to adjust your loan into something affordable.

To bolster your bargaining position it will help to be able to claim poverty. As a result, if you have any savings, spend it soon, before they call. Buy a bigger TV, a new wardrobe, or better yet, take a vacation. After the hardship of spending all of your refi cash, you probably deserve it. If you have any guilt just remember, Washington argues that consumer spending is the best way to stimulate the economy. Living beyond your means is a patriotic duty.

If you do get the opportunity to live for a while with no mortgage payment, don’t make the tragic mistake of using your extra cash to pay down your credit cards. As the growing level of credit card defaults will soon push credit card companies into bankruptcy, we can expect a similar bailout plan for American Express and Discover Financial. When that happens, expect massive balance reductions for Americans who can demonstrate the inability to pay. The bigger your balance, the greater the benefit.

This site will mostly be dedicated to talking politics.

I will bring over some of my posts I had at another blog that seems to be shut down for now, and will then begin to post newer items irregularly.