Memo to Romney on Inauguration Day

It’s January 20, 2013. You’re Mitt Romney and you’ve just been sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. It’s your first day on the job and you’ve come to work to find this memo on your desk from your Chief of Staff.

Greetings President Romney,

I thought it would be prudent to outline a few of the main issues you will need to prioritize and address. Please note that you’ll only have two years in which to accomplish significant progress or the mid-terms will see Congress turn back to the democrats.

• National debt exceeding $16 trillion dollars
• Annual deficits exceeding $1.5 trillion dollars
• Over 12.5 million unemployed
• Over 46 million Americans in poverty
• Over 47 million Americans on food stamps
• Personal income declining
• Home values declining
• Gas prices near record highs
• Insurance costs soaring
• Anti-American hatred increasing globally
• Infrastructure crumbling
• Borders porous
• Liberty vanishing
• Unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of trillions
• Unprecedented debt service costs looming
• Massive wave of inflation potential if you resurrect the economy and the printing press money begins to circulate

Those are just a few issues needing resolution. Please bear in mind that should you seriously take on out-of-control Congressional spending, this will require austerity measures which will immediately trigger a massive negative public backlash and calls for your impeachment. You merely need to find a way to immediate grow the economy, kickstart a hiring frenzy to offset the austerity measures, repeal Obamacare, eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat, stop the massive tax increases from the expiring Bush tax cuts, stop the Fed from printing money, etc., etc. Oh, and all the while you need to do this while pacifying the democrats calling for your head every minute of every day.

Have a great day and congratulations!

As Mitt Romney, you can choose a response from the list below:

• immediately resign and go golfing with Obama
• slap your mother for ever bringing you into this mess
• immediately head to Camp David and go on vacation until your term expires
• the last and least likely option would be to morph into a true conservative and take on all of these issues head-on for the good of the country

p.s. 2016 re-election campaign meeting scheduled for next Monday

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Obama speaks the truth

Can’t argue with the man. Now the right will be quick to pounce on this as a gaffe. You know, if you can’t do the job then step aside rhetoric. But it’s just that type of naiveté that is frustrating to those who are really fed up with Washington and want real change. The fact is that the establishment infiltrates all of the beltway regardless of party lines. Of course, the type of change Obama speaks of is different from what I would want. His agenda is for fundamental change to alter America’s world standing and achieve the progressive agenda for equality and sustainability. That’s a debate for another day.

I only wish to point out that regardless of the election outcome, the establishment will still reign supreme. If the people of America are truly tired of beltway politics, than they had better acknowledge the obvious and be realistic with your expectations. Does that mean I don’t care who wins? No, I’ll still side with the thinking that Obama must go no matter who he is running against. But my expectations for a Romney administration are non-existent.

I am not an anarchist. Nor should any Christian be since the Bible teaches of the need for a government. Again, that’s another post. I do fully support severely checking the Federal Government down to size and returning the balance of decision-making to state and local governments where the people have a more realistic input. Obama was right when he stated that no one will change the status quo from within. At least not to the extent we need to save this country. Anyone who truly believes we have come to the state we are in this country on a partisan basis is a fool. Is it any more rational to see us changing course now with the same players in charge?

I know full well those types of comments piss off those of you partisans who see the other side as the source of what ails us. So be it. America’s salvation lies in your epiphany. Until you come to that realization that the standard fare of hoping for your majorities amongst the branches of government will decide the course of the country, nothing will change. The problem isn’t the balance of power among the three branches, it’s the balance heavily tilted toward a Federal behemoth with a statist mentality. Centralized power. It ensures that those of us not part of the elite will merely continue to squabble amongst ourselves about who to blame while we stay firmly entrenched right where we are.

Afghanistan occupation may go on and on…

Any of you who have read this blog previously know that I jumped on the bandwagon concerning the real reason we fight in Afghanistan years ago. Here is a post from 2010. As time goes by, more and more people are asking the question “why are we still in Afghanistan?”. Is it really to eradicate the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Could it be the vast mineral riches buried there? I never bought into the Iraq logic in that we were there to take the oil. Strategic reasons however? Hmmm.  We aren’t in Afghanistan to secure all the minerals for ourselves either. We do, however, need those mineral deposits on the world market and not secured by nations such as Russia or China.

Lew Rockwell has a link up today from WhoWhatWhy.com who has also been reporting on this idea for years. Seems the New York Times is also getting in on the questioning. The Soviets started mapping the mineral deposits in the 60’s. The British began in the 1800’s. American geologist’s discounted the value of the minerals back in the 40’s and 50’s leaving others to step in. The DOD has had a task force in place since 2006 to promote economic opportunities. Congress has heard testimony on the Hill since the late 90’s concerning accessing Afghanistan’s riches. Point is that knowledge of the deposits has been around for a long, long time. Of course, today’s mapping technologies are vastly improved  to further pinpoint the location and quantities available.

The bottom line is that we are essentially in a strategic war with Russia and China and precious metals, minerals, oil and gas play a big role. We can’t publicly admit that, however, as blood for minerals is not acceptable to the average American. The fact remains that if we pull out and allow the country to descend into another civil war with the Taliban as the arbiter of who gets the spoils, we risk placing ourselves at a tremendous disadvantage on a number of fronts. Your military personnel are not dying in the wastelands of Afghanistan for no reason, just not for the reasons advertised. Only the families can decide the legitimacy of that.

It would seem that the narrative is changing regarding Afghanistan as you’re now seeing the likes of Gen. David Petraeus going public with the notion that we can’t afford to pull out now. He points out in the clip that a “foundation of security” is a prerequisite for extracting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. Who better to provide it than the world’s cop? I think we’ll continue to see a shift toward this reasoning to explain our ongoing presence. Once enough time has passed, it’s an easier sell to say that our mission there has evolved. I’ve always been a strong believer that U.S. foreign policy has been very Rahm Emanuel like in that we don’t allow a good crisis to go to waste. Iraq and Afghanistan are perfect examples. Despite the lip service, I say we’ve had our agenda in place all along.

The entire state of Wyoming just quit looking for work

The August 2012 employment summary is out and the spin has begun. Read the report here. It’s hard to comprehend that over 3 years into a recession recovery, we are still seeing over half a million Americans simply give up looking for a job. In one month! It’s difficult to wrap your arms around that. Particularly when you consider that the 581,000 Americans who gave up looking for a job exceeds the entire population of the state of Wyoming! Guess they aren’t part of the democrats big tent.

Just for fun, I thought I would speculate a bit. Total non-farm payroll employment rose 96,000 in August 2012. The average so far in 2012 has been 139,000 per month. There are two more BLS employment summary reports that will be released prior to the November general election. Utilizing the 2012 average, we will add 278,000 non-farm payroll jobs prior to the election. So how many more Americans will need to drop out of the labor force in the next two months in order for Obama to get his facetiously important sub 8% unemployment rate? Assuming the total civilian labor force were to remain the same, we would need just 606,000 Americans to give up on finding a job. The monthly average for the last year has been about 227,000 dropping out each month so we’ll have to step it up a bit to get there.

Oh, my math? I’ve had people write me previously and tell me to show how I came up with the numbers I use so here you go. Just take the civilian labor force of 154,645 million. Assume 278,000 jobs will be added. Have 606,000 drop out leaving a net loss of 328,000 (606,000-278,000=328,000).  Take 154,645 and multiply by 7.9% and you get 12,216. The total unemployed for August 2012 was 12,544 million.  12,544 million less the 328,000 leaves 12,216 and a 7.9% unemployment rate.

The difference between 7.9% and 8% should not be understated in the realm of political talking points since the number will be released just 4 days prior to the election. The President just told us last night that we’re all in this together so I have to believe that 606,000 Americans will take one for the team and voluntarily give up working to see this through! There has to be another 606,000 democrats out there willing to feed off the public trough, aren’t there? After all, that’s just slightly more than the population of Washington, D.C. How ironic.

Democrats and Republicans agree to bring the VAT to America

The 2012 GOP Platform has been officially released and you may be surprised to find the Republicans in agreement with the Democrats that the time has come to implement a Value-Added Tax (VAT) scheme in the United States. From the platform-

In any restructuring of federal taxation, to guard against hypertaxation of the American people, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.

Once thought to be politically unfeasible, the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment may be in play should Mitt Romney win election. Seems that both sides have seen the light that the VAT is the way to go to raise tax revenue just as the European model has illustrated for decades. It’s taken until now for both sides to see a way to sell it to the American people. Fairness is the motto here. It’s a winner for both sides to lay claim to and still stay on message. The left can use it in their class warfare verbage and the right can use it along the lines of their unfair income tax motto. It takes just the right mix to pull this off and America seems primed to buy into the sales pitch from both sides and see it as an opportunity to screw the other guys.

America will rue the day if this gets done. It will start out rather innocuously enough. It will have to if it is to garner the political capital required to sell repealing the Sixteenth Amendment. It will be easy enough to follow the Euro’s and systematically raise rates down the road as the public will be powerless to stop it. Make no mistake, the VAT is fully intended to increase government revenue across the board. You’ll just feel better about it when your brethren are getting equally stiffed.

It certainly won’t end with the VAT. A national sales tax will come. An internet sales tax is already coming soon. The point is that it will be much easier to lay and then increase taxes without as much transparency as we have now with the income tax.  The VAT is both regressive and a consumption tax so it will cover all income classes. It’s already in place in over 100 countries worldwide and has a track record of destruction that is unmatched. The worst part? Americans will embrace it as a way to be fair. You’ll ask for the shellacking that lies in wait for you.