So a hot topic right now is the comments made by Carrie Prejean, Miss California, during the 2009 Miss USA pageant. In case you are unaware, during the Q&A portion of the pageant, Miss Prejean was unfortunate enough to draw a question from Perez Hilton. Let me take a moment to ask why would Hilton even be involved in the pageant, he has no style or class, and even less interest in women. The reason is Donald Trump and his personal financial mess. Trump is only interested in controversy which leads to ratings, and he got just that by adding Perez Hilton to the judging panel.
Regardless, Hilton’s question was;” Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?"
Prejean’s answer was, "Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offence to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you."
This has obviously been a hot topic this far, but I believe the bigger issue here is the impression it creates. Why is it no longer acceptable to disagree with something? Miss California was very respectful, and in no way judgmental. She was asked her opinion. I like, Miss California, and obviously the majority of Americans, do not agree with homosexuality or the marriage of gay couples. If most Americans agree with gay marriage as Hilton claims, why have only four states made it legal?
Within those that disagree you will find varying degrees of opinions, much like among those who support homosexuality. Simply because someone disagrees does not mean they look down or hate anyone. But hatefulness is how the pro-gay community responds when someone opposes it. Since when are we not allowed to have our own values and thoughts? Civil, respectful disagreement is what made this country great.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
How Much Do You Have to Spend to Get Change?
4-20-09
On April 15, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the cities and formed upwards of 700 anti-spending protests. In reverence to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, these protests were referred to tea parties as some protesters literally distributed tea bags and dumped millions of bags into waterways. Interestingly enough, America experienced a semblance of bipartisanship for the first time in a long time when citizens from all walks of life and philosophy joined together to express their outrage at the tactics implemented by the Obama administration in its first 100 days. I don’t know that a president has ever been protested in such fashion, let alone within the first 100 days of the presidency.
President Obama campaigned on no new taxes for Americans making under $250,000 per year. To date working Americans have received an average federal income tax cut equivalent to $11 per week. That’s $572 per year America, you’re welcome! At the same time Obama has enacted legislation such as the Children’s Health Bill which has added significant taxes (in some areas up to 40%) to tobacco, a product largely used by the lower class. An interesting side note, at the same time Obama is working to remove many of the regulations on third term and partial birth abortions. What is the message here?
So while we ignorant, greedy Americans are raking in our extra $572 a year; poor altruistic Wall Street has already received in excess of $1 TRILLION dollars-with hundreds of billions to come. GM and Chrysler have been awarded tens of BILLIONS so we can avoid catastrophic collapse of all American jobs and our entire economy. Keeping that in mind, consider the following. Since May 2008, the US has seen 5.5 MILLION jobs lost-3 MILLION jobs lost since October 2008 (per US Bureau of Labor.) GM is cutting 3-5 lines, closing 14 plants by 2011. Sounds like jobs are being created there. AIG has received upwards of $170 BILLION and has created no new jobs, but rather is planning to eliminate multiple major global portfolios just to achieve break even. To add insult to injury consider the $410,000 executive retreat taken weeks after AIG received its first installment of TARP funds, and the $1 BILLION worth of retention bonuses paid. Actually you can read that over $55 BILLION of this money went to pay debts to other major banks which also received federal monies to include; Merrill Lynch ($6.8B), Citigroup ($2.3B), Goldman Sachs ($12.9B), and Bank of America ($5.2B.) Subsequently, all of these institutions have posted positive first quarter earnings, except AIG which still holds a real potential of failure. A question that should be asked here is, when these bailed-out banks do turn a profit, who gets the dividends?
All of this money passed out in the spirit of job creation and recovery yet 500,000 new Americans lose jobs each month. What good is an $11 income tax cut if you have no income? There’s an old saying that says when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. President Obama has proposed the largest spending package in history. So much so, that Obama’s four year budget delegates more government spending than America has spent in its entire history combined. Let me restate that, in the next four years, President Obama’s budget proposes more spending than the cumulative spending throughout US history.
The primary reason so many Americans are upset is the potential effects the decisions of the current administration are making. While the Bush administration could have done a better job in a lot of ways, as a nation we won’t move forward by bashing President Bush. The point is to reflect on the past decades and understand the potential that irrational spending can have. There are two figures of debt that are very important to understand; the annual spending deficit and the national debt. The deficit is the money spent by the federal government beyond that brought in by federal revenues. Between 2000 and 2008, America has gone from an $86 BILLION surplus to a $642 BILLION deficit. The point to be made is that from 2009 to 2011 the deficit is proposed to be between $1.1TRILLION and $1.6 TRILLION; between 2012 and 2014, $931-991 BILLION, then back over $1 TRILLION each year through 2019. Simply put, we are about to implement the Bush spending plan on steroids.
The bigger concern, directly connected to the deficit we run, is the pile of debt that is accumulating as a result of our government overspending on an annual basis. Players in Washington are addressing short term interests at the cost of our long term livelihood. As of today, the national debt, or the money owed by any level of government; either central government, federal government, municipal or local governments is $11.2 TRILLION ($6.869 TRILLION of which is public debt,) and currently increases at an average of $3.84 BILLION PER DAY. Consider this, that breaks down to $37,000 per citizen, and that’s not per taxpayer-that includes every estimated living American (306 MILLION.) Obama's budget predicts that the national debt will grow by $2.7 TRILLION to $14 TRILLION in 2009 and in 2013 will stand at $17.1 TRILLION–very close to the size of the entire economy as measured by the projected Gross Domestic Product ($17.4 TRILLION.) Taxpayers will be paying hundreds of billions in interest alone on the debt each year. Over the last six months the interest payment alone on our national debt has averaged $28 MILLION PER MONTH. Obama’s budget projects that the national debt will be $23.1 TRILLION in 2019. Generically, Obama’s budget proposes $1 TRILLION of new entitlements, $1.4 TRILLION in new taxes and $5 TRILLION in new debt. You can review the 2010 budget and all budgets back to 1996 at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/browse.html.
There’s no political agenda behind this, I have no personal issues with President Obama. We are at a dire crossroads, and continued negligence can not be accepted. The President needs to look at the people he is surrounding himself with and consider their personal records, backgrounds, and agendas. Normal Americans are afraid to spend their money and even more so, to take those entrepreneurial ventures that made this country great. No amount of government spending will restore this confidence, but what if you let the tax paying Americans do it themselves; you restore confidence and you allow hard working citizens eliminate free riders at the same time. Take the BILLIONS and give it to the tax payers with the requirement that all outstanding debt is paid first. You create government jobs to regulate the program, the creditors that are hurting and overextended get paid, Americans with monies left buy cars, second houses, establish college funds, and purchase health and life insurance. Americans with money in their pockets fund and direct the future markets that will lead to career redirection and the reemergence of a prosperous nation. Oh and I did say tax paying Americans; if you do not have a tax return on file from the previous year, you are not included.
Resources:
http://www.cbo.gov/
http://www.bea.gov/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
http://www.gpo.gov/
On April 15, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the cities and formed upwards of 700 anti-spending protests. In reverence to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, these protests were referred to tea parties as some protesters literally distributed tea bags and dumped millions of bags into waterways. Interestingly enough, America experienced a semblance of bipartisanship for the first time in a long time when citizens from all walks of life and philosophy joined together to express their outrage at the tactics implemented by the Obama administration in its first 100 days. I don’t know that a president has ever been protested in such fashion, let alone within the first 100 days of the presidency.
President Obama campaigned on no new taxes for Americans making under $250,000 per year. To date working Americans have received an average federal income tax cut equivalent to $11 per week. That’s $572 per year America, you’re welcome! At the same time Obama has enacted legislation such as the Children’s Health Bill which has added significant taxes (in some areas up to 40%) to tobacco, a product largely used by the lower class. An interesting side note, at the same time Obama is working to remove many of the regulations on third term and partial birth abortions. What is the message here?
So while we ignorant, greedy Americans are raking in our extra $572 a year; poor altruistic Wall Street has already received in excess of $1 TRILLION dollars-with hundreds of billions to come. GM and Chrysler have been awarded tens of BILLIONS so we can avoid catastrophic collapse of all American jobs and our entire economy. Keeping that in mind, consider the following. Since May 2008, the US has seen 5.5 MILLION jobs lost-3 MILLION jobs lost since October 2008 (per US Bureau of Labor.) GM is cutting 3-5 lines, closing 14 plants by 2011. Sounds like jobs are being created there. AIG has received upwards of $170 BILLION and has created no new jobs, but rather is planning to eliminate multiple major global portfolios just to achieve break even. To add insult to injury consider the $410,000 executive retreat taken weeks after AIG received its first installment of TARP funds, and the $1 BILLION worth of retention bonuses paid. Actually you can read that over $55 BILLION of this money went to pay debts to other major banks which also received federal monies to include; Merrill Lynch ($6.8B), Citigroup ($2.3B), Goldman Sachs ($12.9B), and Bank of America ($5.2B.) Subsequently, all of these institutions have posted positive first quarter earnings, except AIG which still holds a real potential of failure. A question that should be asked here is, when these bailed-out banks do turn a profit, who gets the dividends?
All of this money passed out in the spirit of job creation and recovery yet 500,000 new Americans lose jobs each month. What good is an $11 income tax cut if you have no income? There’s an old saying that says when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. President Obama has proposed the largest spending package in history. So much so, that Obama’s four year budget delegates more government spending than America has spent in its entire history combined. Let me restate that, in the next four years, President Obama’s budget proposes more spending than the cumulative spending throughout US history.
The primary reason so many Americans are upset is the potential effects the decisions of the current administration are making. While the Bush administration could have done a better job in a lot of ways, as a nation we won’t move forward by bashing President Bush. The point is to reflect on the past decades and understand the potential that irrational spending can have. There are two figures of debt that are very important to understand; the annual spending deficit and the national debt. The deficit is the money spent by the federal government beyond that brought in by federal revenues. Between 2000 and 2008, America has gone from an $86 BILLION surplus to a $642 BILLION deficit. The point to be made is that from 2009 to 2011 the deficit is proposed to be between $1.1TRILLION and $1.6 TRILLION; between 2012 and 2014, $931-991 BILLION, then back over $1 TRILLION each year through 2019. Simply put, we are about to implement the Bush spending plan on steroids.
The bigger concern, directly connected to the deficit we run, is the pile of debt that is accumulating as a result of our government overspending on an annual basis. Players in Washington are addressing short term interests at the cost of our long term livelihood. As of today, the national debt, or the money owed by any level of government; either central government, federal government, municipal or local governments is $11.2 TRILLION ($6.869 TRILLION of which is public debt,) and currently increases at an average of $3.84 BILLION PER DAY. Consider this, that breaks down to $37,000 per citizen, and that’s not per taxpayer-that includes every estimated living American (306 MILLION.) Obama's budget predicts that the national debt will grow by $2.7 TRILLION to $14 TRILLION in 2009 and in 2013 will stand at $17.1 TRILLION–very close to the size of the entire economy as measured by the projected Gross Domestic Product ($17.4 TRILLION.) Taxpayers will be paying hundreds of billions in interest alone on the debt each year. Over the last six months the interest payment alone on our national debt has averaged $28 MILLION PER MONTH. Obama’s budget projects that the national debt will be $23.1 TRILLION in 2019. Generically, Obama’s budget proposes $1 TRILLION of new entitlements, $1.4 TRILLION in new taxes and $5 TRILLION in new debt. You can review the 2010 budget and all budgets back to 1996 at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/browse.html.
There’s no political agenda behind this, I have no personal issues with President Obama. We are at a dire crossroads, and continued negligence can not be accepted. The President needs to look at the people he is surrounding himself with and consider their personal records, backgrounds, and agendas. Normal Americans are afraid to spend their money and even more so, to take those entrepreneurial ventures that made this country great. No amount of government spending will restore this confidence, but what if you let the tax paying Americans do it themselves; you restore confidence and you allow hard working citizens eliminate free riders at the same time. Take the BILLIONS and give it to the tax payers with the requirement that all outstanding debt is paid first. You create government jobs to regulate the program, the creditors that are hurting and overextended get paid, Americans with monies left buy cars, second houses, establish college funds, and purchase health and life insurance. Americans with money in their pockets fund and direct the future markets that will lead to career redirection and the reemergence of a prosperous nation. Oh and I did say tax paying Americans; if you do not have a tax return on file from the previous year, you are not included.
Resources:
http://www.cbo.gov/
http://www.bea.gov/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
http://www.gpo.gov/
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