A friend sent me a list of questions that was originally posted on GlennBeck.com. The list was well done, well thought out, and quite thought provoking…
    But I absolutely hated the way it was organized! It was written ALL IN CAPS, was filled with typos, and some of the questions were a little confusing in their structure.

    So I decided to play editor and this is what I came up with! For the most part the credit totally belongs to Mr. Beck. I have added a few things, because as I was reading, it got me thinking. And I think I’ve come up with a great idea to counter the OWS’ idea of our own American Spring.
    So read on! Or if you’ve already read the list of questions, please click here to check out my concluding thoughts about my own take on the American Spring, and the word that should come next.
    Let’s get to it!

Questions for Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street
   - Who is the Father of OWS?
   - How did this movement start?
   - Who planned this event?
   - Who is paying for the Madison Avenue marketing firm? The color-printed newspapers (e.g. The Occupy Wall Street Journal)? The flyers?
   - What role did SEIU & The Working Families Party play in the planning of this event?
   - Who is Stephen Lerner?
   - Who is Van Jones?
   - What is the Center for American Progress?
   - Who is George Soros?
   - What is his relationship to the Center for American Progress? To OWS?
   - Is he a crony capitalist?
   - Does Soros pay his “fair share”?
   - Is Soros getting rich off of the corrupt system of Wall Street speculation?
   - How does Soros make his money?
   - What do George Soros and the economies of the United Kingdom & Thailand have in common?
   - Soros made $7 billion dollars last year personally through his hedge fund and various investments – is that okay? If yes, why? If no, why?

Our Government
   - What system of government do we currently have?
   - In what ways does our current system of government differ from when it was originally founded?
   - What system of government would you prefer?
   - Can you name other nations throughout history which have used your preferred system of government?
   - What happened to those countries?
   - What can we learn from the experiences of those nations?

The Economy
   Name the specific time in history in which the global economy collapsed (as it seems to be shaping up to do now.)
   - If you cannot, please explain why not?
   - If you were to plan a global economic collapse, how long would it take for this system to be dismantled and the new, “fairer” system to be created?
   - Would there be unintended consequences? Can you detail any potential unintended consequences that could occur?
   - Could people die?
   - If not, why?
   - If yes, estimate how many. How do you justify those deaths?
   - By collapsing the system (Wall Street), and causing economic chaos, how does that make you any different than one of the corporations you are protesting? Wouldn’t destroying the system outright – as opposed to thoughtfully reforming it – cause just as much human pain and suffering?

Fair Share & Corporations
It’s a pretty universally agreed point: people should pay their fair share in taxes. That said, please answer the following:
   - What is that specific number? Please quantify what, exactly, is “fair”. Not just for the wealthy, but for everyone.
   - If it’s not zero, please explain GE – another major corporation – evading so many of their taxes, getting excessive tax breaks, etc.
   - Why wasn’t GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, on the protest tour of wealthy billionaires’ homes? Are you planning any protests at his home in the future?
   - Do you even know who he is?
   - What about George Soros?
   - Russel Simmons? Who happens, by the way, to be the owner of a debit card company, in addition to other various Wall Street-related enterprises.
   - Kanye West?
   - Are they Wall Street criminals? Are they not involved in evil corporations which are in bed with the government?
   - Can there be good people in an evil corporation? If so, how do you judge good from bad?
   - GE – led by Jeffrey Immelt – pays no income tax. Immelt, their CEO, is on President Obama’s Economic Council. Why not protest GE?
   - Do you object to the ways in which this President has intertwined himself with so many leaders of large business, like GE?
   - Explain any potential conflicts of interest between President Obama, Jeffrey Immelt, and NBC’s ‘Green Week’ initiatives.
   - If there are conflicts in any way, why? And do you object?
   - If President Obama is in bed with, and/or excuses the bad behavior of, large multinational corporations within the system that you believe should be collapsed, shouldn’t President Obama be deemed guilty as well?
   - If no, explain why.
   - If yes, explain why.
   - If yes, compare GE Green Week answer above.

“Capitalism is Destroying America”
Rockefeller, Astor Mellon, and Carnegie are known as “Robber Barons” and would probably be targets of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Given that, answer the following.
   - Who built the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts?
   - Who built MoMA?
   - The New York Public Library?
   - Carnegie Hall?
   - Carnegie Mellon University?
   - The National Gallery of Art?
   - Who began the Smithsonian? Who funds the vast majority of its exhibits?
   - What is the relationship between Rockefeller Center and Columbia University?
   - Does this mean Capitalism helped Columbia University?
   - How did Capitalism help Columbia?
   - Does Capitalism help or hurt Columbia today?
   - If not, how does it continue to operate? How does it even exist at all?
   - If yes, doesn’t that make the majority of their political teachings a teensy bit hypocritical?

The Obama Administration
   - Does your University support this administration and its policies?
   - Did you or those you are with vote or campaign for this President in the past?
   - Are you campaigning for him now?
   - If so, are you betraying your ideals by helping someone who has compromised on important anti-corruption principles and policies?
   - If he has not done all that he promised to do, and in fact betrayed the “hope” and “change” he promised, what stood in his way? Especially during the first two years of his presidency.
   - Could you name specific examples? Specific legislative attempts that were in some way blocked? Again, especially during the first two years, when he had the most power and the most political clout.
   - If Obama truly believed the same things you did, that a collapse was imminent and there were villains on Wall Street about to do those in this country grave harm, why wasn’t Wall Street reform the very first thing on his agenda?
   - Who has received more donations than any other politician in history from large banks & Wall Street firms?
   - Obama claims that he is not in bed with bankers and big corporations. Is he lying?
   - Is Obama justified in not telling the truth if it furthers his or your agenda?
   - What are the conditions under which a leader can lie to you and it be justified or morally acceptable?

Investigations, Justice & Protests
   - Why has the Obama administration not initiated or conducted investigations into the banks, major corporations, Wall Street firms, or individual bankers?
   - Why hasn’t this administration initiated an investigation into the actions of the Federal Reserve?
   - Why hasn’t this administration initiated investigations into Freddie, Fannie, or Sally Mac?
   - Why has no one except Bernie Madoff gone to prison under this or the last administration?
   - Wasn’t the Hope we were looking for – and promised – supposed to come from a President that was different? That was beyond politics? Beyond race, creed, color, or class?
   - Wasn’t the Change that America was looking for an end to Crony Capitalism? An end to the marriage of Big Business and Big Government?
   - Were you wrong about this President during the last election?
   - How are you sure this time?
   - If yes, and if none of the GOP candidates are for whatever reason acceptable to you, wouldn’t it be important for the future of this nation to push for a primary challenger against Obama?
   - Did America learn from its mistake of not demanding a clear declaration of what Hope & Change really meant?
   - Should there have been a clear plan to ensure that this new President remained on course to deliver the “Change” he promised? Should more details have been demanded regarding how he would fulfill your “Hope” for an end of corruption and cronyism?
   - If you do not primary Obama, why not demand such detailed plans now before you agree to give him your vote? Before your campaign for him, if you’re currently doing so?
   - What is Solyndra? What is Light Squared?
   - Do you think those who have designed this event (collapse Wall Street) should have a clear plan to ensure that after the collapse, they will deliver the change you hope for, of an end to corruption and cronyism? Shouldn’t we expect more details before we initiate such a potentially dangerous and catastrophic collapse?
   - Did it discredit the Tea Party movement that it was said to be funded, organized and/or co-opted by those who had direct ties and interests in the Republican Party?
   - Would it taint or hurt Occupy Wall Street if that were the case here, but with those involved in the Democrat Party?
   - If not, why not? What’s the difference?

Social Justice vs. Equal Justice
   - Can Social Justice co-exist with Equal Justice?
   - Is everyone on Wall Street guilty?
   - If not, should everyone on Wall Street be punished for the crimes of the guilty?
   - If not, are your actions to collapse Wall Street punishing those who are innocent?
   - If yes, is that Equal Justice, considering you would be punishing the innocent for the sake of Social Justice?
   - Do you believe in fair trials? A jury of your peers? A chance to face your accusers? Innocent until proven guilty?
   - Should Wall Street bankers:
      - A) Lose their jobs?
      - B) Have all of their wealth taken?
      - C) Go to jail? If yes, how long? If you wish for a judge and jury to decide, why? (If yes, see your previous answer regarding Social Justice vs. Equal Justice.)

Lynch Mobs, Then & Now
   - Do you believe the lynch mobs of the civil rights era were wrong? If yes, why?
   - What is the difference between a lynch mob and what you are being encouraged to do now? (e.g. Congressman Lewis, going to the homes of the wealthy even if children are inside, going against the principle of innocent until proven guilty, using tactics of intimidation, shouting down those with whom you disagree, etc.)

The Police & Criminal Justice
   - Are cops good or bad?
   - Are there good cops and bad cops?
   - If there are both good and bad cops, how do you tell the difference?
   - If you were a good, honest cop, what would you do while performing your duties right now in this situation on Wall Street?
   - If you walked away, as a cop, and allowed the crowd absolute freed to do as it wished no matter what, would you be a hero or a coward?
   - Would damage to private and public property be done if the police should choose to leave? Does that matter?
   - Could innocent people be hurt? Does that matter?
   - If you or anyone in your group answered there are no innocent here, does that matter?
   - If no on above, please check answer for consistency on lynch mobs and jury trials.
   - Define ‘Mob Rule’. Is this good or bad?
   - There are many prisoners that have been wrongfully accused and convicted. It happens the world over, but according to OWS, especially it seems in America. The recent execution in Georgia is merely one example cited by many involved in OWS. In light of this and knowing what we know, what should be done with those who are currently incarcerated?
   - How would you determine who is innocent and who is guilty?
   - Would it matter if a truly guilty prisoner were released?
   - If the criminal justice system is corrupt, how will you assess and fix it?
   - Is it fair to leave the possibly innocent behind bars while that process is going on? (Again, consider your previous answer regarding the truly guilty being released.)

Higher Education
Many of the signs at Occupy Wall Street complain about student loans. Many Americans outside OWS agree that:
    A) Many have stolen from us.
    B) No one should pay such astronomically high costs for a higher education.
Given that, answer the following.
   - Who is responsible for setting the tuition rates for a college education?
   - Who is responsible for the price of that college education rising 8% just last year?
   - How much money is in your University’s endowment fund?
   - Does your University have private savings and/or investments?
   - What are those savings and/or investments used for?
   - Is there nothing that your University can do to lower tuition costs?

Mom & Dad
   - Are you sincerely worried about your parents and what they face as well as what the future holds for you?
   - Have your parents worked hard for their home and what little money they have saved during their lifetime?
   - If you succeed in collapsing Wall Street, who is hurt? Who would be hurt the most?
   - Would your parents be hurt? Your friends’ parents?
   - Union pensions are invested in Wall Street. As is your University endowment. The average American’s retirement is invested in Wall Street (e.g. 401k.) What would happen to those in the event of a collapse of Wall Street?
   - What happens to the lifetime of work by your parents if your actions cause a collapse of the system?
   - Is an absolute collapse worth that much human suffering?
   - Is there perhaps another way that would be less costly and harmful?

Foreign Governments & Outside Influence
   - Do you believe that any government abroad would take advantage of an economic collapse of the United States/?
   - Could such actions by foreign governments have a negative impact on your freedoms?
   - What about your plans to build a new system in its place? Could any actions by foreign governments impact such plans?
   - Do you believe that US troops should be called home?
   - Do you believe our troops are baby killers? Or people like you who were either misguided or used?
   - What happens to those troops overseas if there were an economic collapse?
   - If you don’t pull the troops out before a collapse, would there be a greater or lesser chance of more killing?
   - Do you believe that forces on either side could or would use an economic collapse as an excuse for more killing?
   - Would you have played any role in that possible killing based on your actions here to collapse Wall Street? Would you bear any responsibility?
   - If no, do the ends justify the means?
   - If yes, if the ends justify the means, does that include the death of innocents?
   - If not, why?
   - If yes, explain what makes you different than George W. Bush, who also thought he was right.

Egypt & The Arab Spring
   - How did the Egyptian Revolution turn out?
   - Is it better than what they had?
   - Free, fair and democratic elections were promised to be held by August of this year. What date were they actually held?
   - Who is currently in charge of Egypt?
   - Do you believe in Military Rule?
   - Would you want to live under it here?
   - What would be the difference between the military rule here and in Egypt?
   - The media claims you are the same and are striving for the same ideals as the youth that overturned their oppressive and corrupt system in Egypt. Is that true?
   - If yes, if you wouldn’t want to live under military rule, what responsibility do you have to correct the injustice of their system?
   - If you answer that you do have a responsibility, please explain why.
   - Wasn’t American insertion into global politics what caused the hatred for the West?
   - How do you know that you are fighting on the side of right and not helping those who will develop a repressive regime after the chaos of a collapse?
   - Is Iran a repressive regime?
   - If you answered no to the previous question, please describe what happens to homosexuals in Iran.
   - How are homosexuals & women treated in other Arab nations? Specifically, how does Hamas & the PLO perceive homosexuality & what would they do if they had absolute power?

After the Revolution
   - If those who take power, after the successful Occupy Wall Street collapse, betrayed the revolution and the people by not following the plan (that has not yet been developed), what should the people do?
   - Could they do anything?
   - Would those new leaders step down or would an event like this need to be staged again to force them out?
   - If they didn’t voluntarily step down would you seek to have them arrested?
   - Is violence an option to achieve the goals of revolution?
   - Can you solve violence with violence?
   - Should the people be allowed to have a gun in case those in charge did betray the revolution?
   - If yes, why.
If no, who authorizes the use of force and what force is allowed?
   - Who protects the idea or yet to be formed ideas of the new revolutionary democracy?
   - Who would arrest those who betrayed the revolution if the system has collapsed and the cops were all either fired or jailed?
   - Are jails needed?
   - If yes, who runs the new democratic jails formally known as the prison industrial complex?
   - Assuming there was an immediate citizens police force enacted to replace the corrupt system that we currently have, what system of trial would you engage?
   - Che said, “We don’t need a trial to convict the guilty.” Do you agree?
   - If no, would there be a jury?
   - Who would be the judge?
   - What rules of evidence would there be?
   - Will the people have rights?
   - What are they?
   - Have they been written down anywhere?
   - If no, because you were planning on doing that after the collapse, if the above scenario played out and either your leader betrayed the revolution or an outside force took advantage of the chaos, would you regret that decision?
   - If yes, what are the rights based on?
   - Where do man’s rights come from?
   - If they come from a committee or a specific leader, what’s to stop those leaders from changing your rights and declaring you a traitor to the revolution?
   - Has this ever happened in history?
   - If yes, where?
   - What were the conditions?
   - Were there warning signs?
   - Do any of those signs exist now?

Energy in the New Order
   - Now that the economy has collapsed in America, but has not somehow affected the rest of the world, how can we afford oil? Gasoline? Plastic products?

If you say we cannot afford gasoline and that’s a good thing for the environment, let’s for the sake of argument, agree on that point. Now answer the following.
   - How do we fuel tractors for farming on the scale needed to feed the citizens of the new revolutionary United States and elsewhere?
   - How is said food trucked to stores here in New York if truckers can’t afford fuel?
   - How do your parents get food from the store to their home?
   - Now that the police force has been replaced with a citizen patrol, are your parents safe walking the streets with food in an area after the currency has just collapsed?
   - If one of them were hurt or killed due to a scenario like this, would you be in any way responsible?
   - If they were hurt and couldn’t receive medical treatment in time because the EMS couldn’t afford gas for the ambulance, would you be in any way responsible?
   - How would the hospitals pay doctors and EMS without a currency?
   - Why would doctors and nurses come to work?
   - To ensure they did go to work, who would protect and feed their families while they were at work?
   - How do the doctors afford gas to go to work?
   - What system of electricity is running the hospitals?
   - If oil is no longer affordable, how do we manufacture the plastics products that make modern medicine possible and keep infection rates so low?

Leadership
If you are not planning on your group holding on to power, please answer the following:
   - Who will be in charge? Will it be you? Or the leaders you have not yet chosen?
   - How will you ensure that those who do take power are not currently part of the problem?
   - Who will fund the Universities, health care, K-12 education, the homeless & poor, while a new system is designed to stabilize the population, replace the corrupt system of corporatism, big medicine, big oil, and big farms?
   - Who is in charge of the military and the military industrial complex during this time?

Crony Capitalism
   - Please define crony capitalism.
   - When the government took over General Motors, gave all the banks TARP money, and allowed companies like GE to pay no taxes while making billions & shipping jobs overseas, is that Crony Socialism, Crony Capitalism, or Crony Statism?
   - Is there a difference?
- In all three aforementioned scenarios or titles, what is the problem: the system or the cronyism?
   - What is the best way to end cronyism?
   - Has your approach of collapse and revolution been tried before?
   - If yes, list all examples of attempts, both failed and successful. Or at least list as many as you can.
   - Why did they fail?
   - How did those that failed begin?
   - Who led the way on those failed attempts?
   - How did those who began the revolution fair in the new systems?
   - Who is Thomas Paine?
   - What was his role in the French Revolution?
   - What happened to him?
   - What did he learn about revolutions?
   - How did the French Revolution end?
   - Once the New Order was established, who took power in France?
   - Was that good or bad for the people of France?
   - What does this tell us about the current situation we find ourselves in, here in America?
   - What were the main differences between the French & American revolutions?
   - Why do you think the two turned out so differently?
   - Do you have hostile feelings about these questions? Why?

If you are reading in a group of like-minded, open-minded and educated people – take note – have they provoked any serious discussion? If not, why?
   - If so, did you do everything in your power to get those in Washington to investigate and arrest those who will not “change” and begin to do business in a legal and non-corrupt way?
   - Why didn’t that work?

The Importance of Answers
Please consider all of your answers carefully. After all, if OWS is successful, these questions won’t just be an interesting, thought-provoking thought experiment.
It will be real life, with real consequences, and real lives on the line.
Are you really willing to risk everything in this world without having all the answers yet?

My Concluding Thoughts & Where To Go From Here

    Thank you for reading all of that. After investing all that time & hard work, you’ve earned yourself a reward…

    A delicious cookie!

    Now head out to your nearest privately-owned business, where you will willingly part with currency – a symbol of your time and productivity – in exchange for something you would much rather have. Like a sweet, delicious chocolate chip cookie, created by someone else’s hard work and time so you didn’t have to! You will participate in a willing transaction between yourself and the nice cookie vendor, who happens to be quite skilled at baking cookies and does so in exchange for your currency.

    The nice cookie vendor man provides you a service you willingly pay him for. Something that makes your life easier and your taste buds happy. No one is forced to buy cookies, no one is forced to make them. And if the nice cookie vendor man sucks at making cookies, you’ll eventually willingly decide to go to the other nicer cookie vendor down the street. Time, talent, and materials are allocated to where they’ll be most productive, most valuable, and most desired.
    Thus the world goes round and round according to the decisions of millions upon millions of free individuals, choosing with their own hearts and minds to spend their money – their symbols of time, effort & productivity – as they see fit.
    To buy yummy, yummy cookies.

    That is the beauty of capitalism.

    That is, when it’s not infested with a bunch of nepotism and cronyism.

    So rather than scrapping the whole system with our own version of the Arab Spring, why don’t we focus on a different spring tradition?

We can call it American Spring… Cleaning!

    Let’s call our friendly pest control expert to smoke out the infestation of nepotism and cronyism! Let’s put on our gloves & pull out that feather duster to clean out all the cobwebs of our convoluted tax system! Grab your vacuum to suck up all the decades of old, conflicting, confusing regulations that are hindering our economic growth!
    Pull out that dust mop so we can clean up all the dust bunnies that are hiding under our nation’s proverbial couch (otherwise known as the House & the Senate!) Maybe we could even set up regular cleaning schedules – just for funsies, let’s call ‘em “term limits” – to make sure that no dust bunny stays down there so long that it starts to develop its own ecosystem of corruption and special deals.
You bring the cleaning supplies, I’ll wear the maid costume! Let’s get down and dirty scrubbing out every nook and cranny of our Constitutional Republic!

    Spring Cleaning isn’t about just throwing out the old and bringing in the new, no matter what “new” might be. It’s about cleaning, making fresh what we already have. With all this cleaning, there’s no need to chuck the good out with the bad! Let’s keep the original foundation – our family homestead – intact in its original condition.
    You know, it’s like that whole renew, reuse, recycle thing? New isn’t always better, especially when you don’t even know for sure what “new” is.

    So let’s not be wasteful! There’s no need to throw away the system that made us the Land of Opportunity in the first place.
    Instead, let’s get to work and say hello to our American Spring Cleaning!

Yeah, I haven’t been around much. Yeah, we had an awesome election. Yeah, I know I need to blog more.
Meh, I’m human, what can I say?

In the meantime, while I’m busily doing whatever it is I do, enjoy these awesome, fantastic, shareable videos from Bill Whittle explaining so beautifully what it is the Tea Party is all about. I still don’t know if I consider myself a tea partier, but this pretty much explains precisely what I believe. At least, so far anyway. And I bet, if you listened, you might be surprised to find, you believe this stuff too.

What We Believe, Part 1: Small Government & Free Enterprise

More videos in the series “below the fold”. So click here!

Steven Crowder has just done a remarkable expose on Canada’s healthcare system, where he actually went to Canada and attempted to get treatment, as well as speaking with multiple people who could tell horror stories of their own about their experiences with socialized medicine. It’s twenty minutes well spent, believe me.

Given my own first-hand experiences with socialized medicine in the UK, let me tell you, what you’ve seen in this video is certainly not an exception to the rule. Everything you saw here is the every day reality of living under socialized medicine. It does nothing to bridge the gap of poverty and ensure greater quality of care for all people. All it does is ensure that all of us suffer, while the uber-rich can still get quality care. More of us right now in the United States, despite the faults that currently exist in our system, still have more access to better quality care than in any other nation. I’ve seen the NHS up close and personal, and believe me, no American would ever stand for that sort of treatment. No American would tolerate waiting up to a year for a single 5-minute appointment with a specialist; no American would tolerate waiting six months to a year for a simple MRI; no American would tolerate being denied the care they need just because the government has decided your life isn’t worth it, even though you’re still being forced to pay taxes to cover the care some bureaucrat doesn’t think you deserve.
Choice is always the best option. Do you really want to face having only one option for healthcare? Just think about it for a minute! Any time in history, in any nation, has a monopoly in any market ever, ever produced a multitude of cheaper, higher quality products to more people? No! And furthermore, has the government – hell, any government – any run any sort of program that was efficient and cost effective? Yet again, the answer is no! Why? Simply because their jobs aren’t dependent on things being run smoothly, efficiently, and cost-effectively, so they have absolutely no incentive to keep things in line with the demands of their consumers.
The bottom line is, when your health is on the line, when your life is hanging in the balance, how do you want your doctors to treat you – like a customer who’s always right, or a poorly leech on an already over-burdened system, who should frankly be grateful for any care they receive at all?

As every other nation on earth that employs universal healthcare is – at this very moment – acknowledging the failure of their socialist models and choosing to revert to a freer more capitalistic model, it boggles my mind that somehow we’re still blindly stumbling along the very same destructive, expensive, and deadly path of absolute failure that they’re already rejecting after decades of experiencing the hardships that it inevitably creates. In this day and age where we can instantly communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, why is it that we don’t see more of the truth about the day to day realities of socialized medicine? We are blinding ourselves about the consequences of one of the biggest decisions our government will ever make! Please, let’s educate ourselves before we leap blindly toward the very same mistakes that other nations have already proven to be abject failures. One day, your life – or the life of someone you love – may very well depend on it.

Huge thanks to Steven Crowder for taking the time to put this video together. Perhaps it will show even one more person the reality of socialized medicine.

I was having lunch with a dear friend of mine not long ago and we were having a discussion about just how bad off I feel politics and the state of our country has become over the past several years, both under Obama AND Bush. When he asked me for something specific, I brought the travesty that is our federal and state taxation system. I mentioned in particular that I feared we could soon see more and more people paying close to 50% in taxes, outside of such taxes as sales tax and things like that which are harder to quantify. He seemed completely aghast at my concerns and basically passed it off as utterly ludicrous, that no one was anywhere close to paying 30 or 40 percent, let alone 50.
Well, I was listening to the news just now and they gave me a set of interesting figures out of New York. Certain higher tax brackets in New York City are paying the following tax ranges:
- 35-39% in Federal Income Tax
- 8-12% in New York State Income Tax
- 4 and a half percent in ‘City tax’
That’s getting awful close, don’t you think? (Hehe, yeah, ya think?!) Hell, the Federal income tax alone is already inching far too close to 50% for comfort, so I certainly don’t think it’s that outlandish of a concern to think that we could soon see half of our income being taken away in one form of taxation alone, let alone all the various taxes combined. And I’m not just talking about the wealthy, although frankly, I don’t feel they should have half of their income taken away any more than anyone else’s. After all, the wealthy are the ones who are investing in companies, creating their own, and getting all that capital out into the system that makes the world go round. But beyond that, everyone’s taxes are escalating, and the threshold for the so-called “wealthy” seems to dip ever lower with each passing year. Those who are currently wagging their fingers at the “evil wealthy” and proclaiming it necessary for them to be unfairly punished, they may soon find themselves in the same boat.
Granted, I don’t personally have any experience with taxation at the moment, given the fact that I’m no longer working due to disability and have no income to speak of. But do any of you out there have any personal experiences to share? How much of your income is being taken away to the government’s National Money Hole?

By the way, I want to apologize for the long delay between new entries lately. My health has declined a bit over the past several months as I’ve been battling both a long term upper respiratory infection as well as decompression sickness (don’t ask…) I’m trying to keep up, but alas, sometimes my body and brain just won’t let me. I’m doing my best, though, and will keep trying to bring you my perspectives on the latest political tidbits. Of course, if any of you would like to suggest a topic, or even if you want to write an entry and submit it, that’d be peachy with me!

Wow, wow, wow! I didn’t even know they made ‘em like this in Britain anymore…

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this man. Keep up the great work, Mr. Hannan, America’s loving it, and here’s to hoping Britain is too!

What happens when you make brash generalizations? You make yourself look like a fool. What happens when you make generalized assumptions about an entire group of people? You betray your own prejudices.

That’s what I believe has happened – among other things – with the vilification of generalized, anonymous, faceless A.I.G. “Executives”. Certain members of Congress, along with the Attorneys General of various states, would have us believe that every executive who ever worked at A.I.G. is directly responsible for all the credit default swaps that landed them and the American economy in such turmoil. Furthermore, not only is it every executive’s fault – regardless of whether they were even in the same departments that handled those credit default swaps or not – all of those executives are also totally heartless, greedy, disgusting bastards who deserve to die for so blatantly disrespecting and victimizing the tax-payers by doing something so wrong, so dastardly, so disgusting as… receiving payment for their hard work, as dictated by contracts signed by those in charge, both at A.I.G. and in the Federal government. If we believe what we’re being told by the likes of Barney Frank, *every* executive is a criminal who deserves to be “named and shamed”, who deserves no sympathy for the death threats they and their families are being subjected to, and who ultimately deserves the first ever retroactive, personally targeted, over-the-top, 90% taxation that was just enacted by Congress, despite the fact such taxation legislation so blatantly violates the Constitution (another contract that no one seems to hold must esteem for these days.)

This is another rash generalization. Not only does it make those who make such generalizations look like fools, and not only does it betray their prejudices, but good people who have done absolutely nothing wrong are being hurt in the process.
Oh, and we, the American people, are also being hopelessly distracted from much more important and pressing issues.

This point is beautifully illustrated by none other than one of those awful executives from A.I.G, Mr. Jake DeSantis. He’s taking an awful risk revealing his name, but I believe that what he has to say is important. After all, didn’t our parents teach us to walk a mile in another man’s shoes before we criticize them? And no, not just so that when we do criticize them we’re a mile away and we have their shoes. No, no, the point is, we need to look at both sides before grabbing our pitchforks and running people out of town who may be completely and utterly innocent. Mob rule isn’t the answer here; reason is.
So for the sake of reason, I beg you to take a look at the letter of resignation which Mr. Jake DeSantis sent to Edward M. Liddy, the Chief Executive of A.I.G. It explains a few things from the point of view of the executives that we’re all being riled up to hate.

Click here to check it out.

Before any of us say another word about these executives, I wish we’d all calm down for a minute and think about a few things. First, contracts should be sacred and the government has no right to interfere with them, especially with regard to contracts that they themselves agreed to.

Secondly, before we let mob rule trump our reason, perhaps we should ask ourselves, who is it that’s trying to get us to behave like a bunch of vicious, thoughtless, violent rioters in the first place? Perhaps then we might have a better idea about what really went on here, and who’s really to blame. Not some faceless, nameless, villain of an executive, but some politicians who didn’t even bother to read the biggest, most expensive bill in the history of our country before they voted for it. They’re the ones who signed a contract before reading the fine print (hell, they didn’t even let us read it!) If that happened to us, the little people, we’d be the ones to blame. We’d be the ones with our credit ruined and our possessions being taken away. Yet Congress is trying to shift the blame and attention onto others, hoping they’ll get away with something tremendously stupid – which, by the way, we’re currently paying the price for. Congress entered into this contract, a contract which simply stated that executives – like any other employee of a company – should be compensated for their work. Whether the Congressmen and Senators now feel that compensation was too high, it’s too bad, so sad. It’s their fault for not reading the fine print. So hold them responsible, not the people who simply got paid for doing their job. If that contract can’t stand, if the government can interfere in that contract, then who’s to say they can’t interfere in one of yours? Who’s to say you won’t be the next villain to distract the people of America from yet another of Congress’ sins? Walk a mile in the shoes of those executives before being so quick to judgment, then maybe you’ll understand why this entire situation is so entirely wrong.

I’m just now watching Obama’s appearance on last night’s Tonight Show – thank you, Tivo! – and I just had to pause it. I couldn’t go any further without commenting on a few things, so this won’t be a full analysis, this is just me having to sound off now before I forget my initial reaction.

First off, here’s a direct quote I just transcribed from Obama. I’ll try to get an exact video clip of this line later on.

“”No, no, no, but, no, th-th-th-th… This is the point that I made, I think two days ago, when somebody asked, ‘Well, do you have confidence in Tim Geithner?’ I said, ‘Look, I’m the President. So ih-eh-uh, ultimately, all of this stuff is my responsibility. If I’m not, uh, giving him the tools that he needs, uh, to make sure that we’re moving this forward, then people need to look at me.”
- Barack Obama, Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 03-19-09, roughly 35-40 minutes into the broadcast.

Um, Mr. President, if it’s your responsibility to get Tim Geithner all the tools he needs to solve what you and your administration repeatedly refer to as the greatest financial and economic disaster to strike this country since the Great Depression, then why is it that you have time to go on a late night chat show, and yet you haven’t had enough time to fill the remaining 17 out of 18 presidential appointments within the Treasury Department? Tim Geithner is the only one you’ve appointed out of those 18 appointments, meaning Tim Geithner is operating without a full compliment of appointees on his staff, to assist him with this massive crisis.
Wouldn’t you say that’s a pretty big error on your part? Wouldn’t you say that’s an instance of you not giving Tim Geithner the “tools that he needs to make sure we’re moving forward”? Don’t you think filling those 17 appointments should be a higher priority than chatting it up with Jay Leno?
Hey, Mr. Obama, you asked us to look at you, you said this was your responsibility. We’re looking at you now.

Secondly, I will say that I was impressed with one question in particular that Jay Leno addressed to Obama. When he asked specifically about his concerns over Congress targeting specific individuals with 90% taxation legislation, did you notice that Obama didn’t even answer the question? He completely deflected and didn’t even come close to addressing Leno’s very legitimate concerns!
But then again, I guess you wouldn’t want to answer that question either, if you were presiding over a Congress that just passed legislation which violated the Constitution not just once, but twice.
Yet again, Mr. Obama, I’m looking at you. This is your responsibility, and you can’t even answer a drastically important question such as the one Jay Leno presented to you?
I sincerely hope I wasn’t the only one who picked up on that deflection, because that’s a very, very, very important question that we should all be demanding a satisfactory answer to.

Lastly, didn’t you just love how in every single answer, the only solution Obama presented to both the economic crisis AND the big AIG mess, was more regulation and oversight? That’s pretty funny, coming from the golden boy of the same Democratic party who repeatedly rejected Republican attempts at providing more regulation and oversight before this crisis even erupted, in an effort to put on the brakes before we hit an absolute catastrophe. Wasn’t it the Democrats who said that Fannie and Freddie were just fine, and that Republicans were doing nothing more than being evil “fear-mongers” for suggesting that a major global financial crisis was on the horizon and that we’d better act now through regulation and oversight?
Kinda funny that Obama thinks we should trust those very same Democrats to effectively implement that regulation and oversight now that the very same crisis the Republicans predicted has hit us at full force, that crisis the Democrats said didn’t exist and was nothing more than a Republican fantasy. But not only did the Democrats fail in that regard, but they also failed to put in any regulation and oversight into the massive stimulus bills they passed which led to this big AIG mess that Obama was commenting on.
Hmm, that’s at least two strikes, if not more. How many strikes will we allow the Democrats before we realize, hey, they have absolutely no track record of success and they flat out suck at implementing any kind of effective regulation and oversight, like the kind Obama was touting on Jay Leno?

Alright, now to hit play and finish the rest of it. I swear, I feel like pulling my hair out, this is so frustrating to listen to. So before my brain just fizzles out, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole debacle, so please, comment away and let me know what you think!

Oh, and by the way, just to add my voice to the chorus – let’s impeach Chris Dodd, shall we?

You have to see this. It’ll break your heart. It certainly does mine.

Only two days in, while in the midst of a major economic crisis, what does Obama do with our money? He uses it to kill babies in foreign countries. Hooray for change.

Our friends over at Deceiver.com have done an absolutely remarkable job of putting this whole Timothy Geithner debacle in perspective. It’s just too good for you to miss, so please, you HAVE to go read this.
Enjoy! Of course, I’m sure – like me – the enjoyment will end when you realize that you’re going to be crying once the reality of the situation sinks in and it becomes all too apparent that this is our country this man is futzing with in making all of this ludicrous nominations, and that these sorry people are the ones who will be determining our fate. Yeah, once that sinks in, all the enjoyment of Deceiver’s clever post kind of dries up and is replaced with a remarkable empty feeling inside. That feeling of finally seeing all that “Hope” and “Change” turn right into exactly what we all thought it would be – nothing but tried and true “Deceit” and “Business as usual.”
But of course, what else can we expect from a whole hoard of Chicago politicians and Clinton retreads setting up camp in Washington? That’s an unholy union in there ever was one.

This is absolutely insane! When this planet is already well on its way to a serious global food shortage, what should we do? According to our beloved federal government, we should start taxing cows and pigs for daring to fart! Doesn’t that make oh so much sense to you

Well that’s exactly what the EPA wants to do. They claim that the methane gas released when a cow or pig toots is causing irreparable harm to our ecosystem. But rather than doing something constructive – like trying to work diplomatically with real enviro-offenders like China, India, Mexico, etc – we’re instead going to damage our own country, our own farmers, our own citizens, and our own economy by placing taxes on cow fluffs!

The plan involves taxing literally every single cow and pig simply for existing, breathing, and breaking wind. According to the American Farm Bureau, the proposed taxes and fees would mean annual assessments of $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 for each head of beef cattle, and $20 for each hog.
Do you realize how much cattle we have in this country? Well I’ll tell you. According to the US Department of Agriculture, we have 104.3 million head of cattle. Let’s figure out how much money would come from those taxes, shall we? (I’m not a math whiz, and in fact I’m dyscalculic [I'm dyslexic with numbers], so if someone finds my arithmetic lacking, please let me know!)
Let’s assume that the 104.3 million head of cattle are evenly split between dairy and beef cattle. With dairy being taxed at $175 per head and beef cattle at $87.50, that makes the average tax per head $131.25. So, 104.3 million times $131.25 equals a grand whopping total of $13,689,375,000!

Maybe that’s what global warming hysterics think of when they hear “cash cow”, but that money’s going to come from somewhere. Where is it ultimately going to come from? From us, straight from our pockets. All of that money, each and every penny of it, will come out of our wallets in the form of drastically increased prices for everything that has anything to do with cattle or pigs. And believe me, that’s a LOT of food! Prices will be skyrocketing on more foods than most people would even realize. All those dairy products, all that beef, all your beloved bacon, anything that contains things like “milk powder”, all of it will become far more expensive than you could ever imagine.

What will this really accomplish? Will we really be saving our environment? Nope! We’ll just be shutting down even more of our farms, reducing our country’s ability to produce its own food, making our entire nation even more dependent on other countries, and putting unbelievable financial burdens on our already struggling citizens. No one in this country would find themselves untouched by this ridiculous, harmful, and ultimately useless tax. $13,689,375,000 is a lot of money. It has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is you. We won’t even be able to afford the cheese those cows keep on cutting!

Now I’m the first to raise my hand and say that we have all gone too far astray from the farming policies that made this country great. What we’ve done to our cattle and our pigs is atrocious. It’s certainly not healthy to warehouse them the way we have been. The quality of our meat has gone down, family farms have all but disappeared, and livestock requires more and more antibiotics, hormones, & drugs just to keep them alive long enough to slaughter them. Honestly, when a cow gets so sick from the way its bred and raised that it’s dying of massive stomach ulcers from the moment its born, I find it hard to believe that eating that meat is any good for you at all.
But is this a matter for the EPA? Will the EPA solve these problems via their ludicrous new taxes? I hardly think so! But what’s worse is they aren’t even trying to solve these problems with their proposed tax! Not even close! They’re trying to blame cow farts for what they believe to be the cause behind global warming. Never mind the fact that even scientists can’t agree on the actual cause, but shouldn’t we start looking at China and India before we start looking at our cattle? Before we go starving our own citizens, damaging our ability to produce our own food, ravaging our agriculture and economy, and placing a damning financial burden on each and every one of us, shouldn’t we hold China and India accountable for their own destructive habits? When this stupid tax won’t even accomplish what it’s setting out to do, and furthermore will only create even bigger and more immediate crises, is it really worth it?

I certainly hope we can all stand up to the EPA and tell them to keep their damn dirty hands off our moo-cows and piggies, once and for all. We have enough problems on our hands as it is, we certainly don’t need our government to manufacture more of them for us. Just let the cows fart, people! For goodness sake, you do it too! Taxes won’t keep the cows from farting, so just let it go.