Politics

States

4/5/11

State Debts
A few weeks ago 60 Minutes' first item was on all fifty states racking up huge budget losses. There were, of course, no solutions proposed for solving the problem.
When a business is losing money there's a need to increase revenues, decrease expenses, or both. Since increasing revenues usually means increasing taxes, this is not going to be popular with the voters, and could cost the governor and legislators the jobs they spent so much to get. Alas, cutting expenses generally means cutting government jobs, so that's not much of an alternative.
If you've read Parkinson's Law, which is reviewed on pages 24 and 53 of my Secret Guide to Wisdom, you know that government bureaus and departments have historically grown at a 5.75% rate per year, regardless of how much work there is to be done.
Read my 1/25/09 entry for a good solution to getting government departments to happily cut themselves in half or better.

5/9/07

Iraq
Putting together what I learned from visiting Singapore, Yugoslavia, New Caledonia, Jordan and Nepal, I came up with a practical win-win solution for us in Iraq. It has to do with helping them to start thousands of new small and medium-sized businesses. Instead of trying to sell democracy, which is a nice idea, but offers little personal short term benefit to the people, let’s sell capitalism, which can benefit every person immediately.
I think you’ll also like my short and long term solution to the terrorist problem. It’s all in my little $1 pamphlet #45, Iraq.

5/6/07

Lynch Vetoes
Governor Lynch should be held responsible for his pocket-veto of the proposed plan for making the University of New Hampshire totally tuition-free, and at no cost to the state. And the same for the development of Business Incubator Groups to help as many as a thousand new businesses get started every year.
He similarly vetoed a plan which would allow the state and private land owners to generate about $250,000 per acre growing a new legal crop which would cost nothing to plant. And a plan which would have cut state Medicaid and Medicare costs drastically. Oh, and a proposed plan which would have cut state bureaus and departments in half in three years, with everyone involved cooperating enthusiastically.
Then there was the poposal for developing the North Country into an Aspen-East, bringing millions more winter visitors to the area. That suffered the same veto fate. As did the proposal for eliminating the New Hampshire property tax…one of the highest in the country.
Proposals to cut school costs, while greatly improving their effectiveness went into the same bulging pocket. Ditto a proposal for drastically cutting prison costs.
Please send a note to Governor Lynch asking him if he will reconsider any of these proposed plans that you think would be worthwhile. Oh, and a copy to me at Box 360, Hancock NH 03449. Better yet, via email to w2nsd@aol.com. The details of these proposals are available in my $5 A Greenprint for New Hampshire 2020 booklet.

4/30/07

Please Advise
With the country being up to here in presidential candidates for the next year or so, I’d be interested in any of them have presented a proposal for how to keep America in business.
Within my memory Great Britain went from a top world power to a country of shopkeepers. Gone are the large hunks of Africa they colonized…Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Zanzibar, South Africa, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Basutoland, and so on. Gone are their countries in the Middle East such as Trans-Jordan, Palestine, and a few more. In Asia they had India, Ceylon, Malaysia, Borneo, Hong Kong, etc. Then there was Australia, New Zealand, etc. In our area they had British Guiana, British Honduras, and most of the Caribbean Windward Islands, including British Virgin Islands and down to Trinidad and Tobago. Pfft.
So, here we are, busy moving our manufacturing to Asia as fast as we can. We’re out of the electronics and clothing businesses, and fading fast with cars. All it’ll take is a Chinese car and pfft GM and Ford. Meanwhile, our 300-million market is fast being dwarfed by the three billion Asian market, where the coolies are warming up, rising to the middle class, and the Untouchables now touchable. Meanwhile we’re staying in business by giving China $2 billion in IOUs every day. What was that about the sub-prime lending market?
We’ve got far more people in government (I almost said “working”) than we do in manufacturing. For a business (or a country) to stay in business it has to bring in more revenue than it spends. Government people bring in no revenue, they’re just an expense, and a not very necessary one in most cases.
With America being one of the least healthy countries (at by far the highest health-care cost), and with our children getting the poorest education, we’re in an increasingly vulnerable situation. The Asians are smarter (they have an average 10-point IQ advantage over Caucasians and a 25-point advantage over Africans), and better educated. They’re also working harder.
We’re the patsies buying their products, thereby helping them build a middle-class which can take over as customers when they pull the plug on us.
Yes, I have a practical solution to offer, but I’m a voice, lost in the wilderness. So, if any of the candidates come up with something, please let me know. I’ve seen little sign that anyone with intelligence goes into politics, so I don’t expect any answers. Surprise me.

4/26/07

Campaign Spending
With an estimated $1 billion expected to be spent, up from $211 million ten years ago, the New Hampshire media and caterers should have a glorious year. Well, they’ll be using lots of newspaper ads, making tons of mailings, endless email assaults, parties, charter flights to ferry busloads of assistants and advisors to all the key states.
There’s been talk of limiting campaign spending or donations, but since the people who are doing the spending are the ones making the rules, the fox is in the hen house.
All of ’em have their fingers in the wind so they can tell their audiences what they want to hear. None that I’ve heard about so far, seem to have any original ideas. They’re for or against stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and other such really important matters. Oh, and when to pull out of Iraq. They’re a Mormon, a Jew, a woman, a black, an Italian…and what else? I’ve lost track.
What the country desperately needs now is a savior, not another politician. We’re in trouble. Deep and getting deeper. We’re trillions in debt, the dollar is fast losing its value, we’ve exported our manufacturing, we’ve got a lot of the world hating out guts, we’re fat, dumb, and happily being endlessly entertained. We’re partying while our ship of state is sailing towards the brink of the flat earth. Oh, you haven’t read Friedman’s The World Is Flat yet?
On the bright side, if you put the Clintons back in the White House, at least they’ll have all the furnishings they took with them when they left, so we won’t have to pay for those again.

4/25/07

Stacking Up
We’re proud to be Americans. Mighty proud. And we have a lot to be proud about.
I’d be a lot prouder if we weren’t the world’s leading debtor nation, if our kids weren’t the poorest educated in the developed world, our adults weren’t 32% obese as compared to 3.6% for the Japanese. And look what we’re doing to our kids with obesity, ADHD, and autism.
We have over two million people in prison (at around $40,000 a year each in storage charges), the highest percentage in the world. Our infant mortality rate is the pits, as is our life expectancy…down there with Mexico and Cuba. We have the highest rate of gun-related homicides in the developed world.
Our health-care system is by far the most expensive in the world and we’re one of the unhealthiest people. Our public school system is the most expensive in the world, and our kids the dumbest. Or have you watched Jay Leno’s street interviews?
It’s difficult for me to be proud of what we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan, or in any of our other military adventures…like in Vietnam. Or even Korea.
Please give me a hand with some things I can be proud about. We’re 28th on the global index of environmental performance. Maybe those faked Moon landings thirty-some years ago? KFC dipping live chickens in boiling water to remove their feathers? Our hormone-antibiotic-GM corn-stuffed beef? Our enormously profitable pharmaceutical industry? The oil industry’s ability to stop cold fusion development?
Well, gee, how about our music? Hip-hop and rap? When’s the last time you heard a catchy tune? Art? Har-de-har. And, sigh, no more Imus. Our movies of late? TV shows? Where’s Sergeant Bilko when we need him?
Help!

3/31/11

China??
War with China? Absolutely ridiculous, of course. With America, the country with the largest military in the world? And backed up by lots of ICBMs?
Or are we sitting ducks?
If you read Imprimis you know that China is building an advanced army, navy, air force, and space capability. It already has over two million men under arms, and a large number of ICBMs (most aimed our way) plus plenty of medium range nuclear weapons. With only one other nation with a major military force (us), who could they possibly be spending all that money and effort to fight?
They're also making strides in space, working on a space station, launch vehicles, and anti-satellite weaponry. Their military journals frankly discuss opposing American supremacy, and using terrorism, cyber warfare, economic warfare, and atomic warfare.
We won WWII by outproducing the enemy. Now, with few factories left, and with no capability to make electronic products, we're in no shape to fight a war. Sure, we have a bunch of carrier fleets, but ICBMs can easily take out our mobile airports…and thus our air force. Without satellites, our communications and other important services will be gone.
Even tiny Antrim, a mile down the road, which has a post office, a pizza shop, a gas station, and a small grocery, has a Chinese restaurant (put in by the Chinese government) with a staff that, except for the waiter, speak only Chinese. In the next town, which is a little larger (Hillsborough), there are three Chinese restaurants. Three!
If I were organizing it, my first move would be to disable our power grid, which would be simple to do. That would paralyze the whole country. No food, no gas, no radio or TV…except for a few families who'd put in solar cells. Next it would be a few high altitude nukes whose magnetic pulses would wipe out anything electronic we have…stopping our cars, at the least.
When the threat of Russian missiles went away, so did our anti-missile defense program. All we can do is shoot back what few missile the Chinese don't take out first. Hmm, I wonder if our missile sites are hardened against the magnetic pulses?
China recognizes what we're just beginning to sense…America is in a decline. We're bankrupt, sick, poorly educated (China is graduating over twenty times as many engineers as we are), and we've lost our industrial base.
Is it too late? Unless we replace our present Congress with some gung-ho newcomers, it sure looks we could be headed for the toilet.

3/31/11

The Mess
After two wishy-washy Bushes, an even worse Clinton, and now what may turn out to be a bastard, Kenyan, Muslim, President, leading a heavily-bribed socialist Congress, our once-great country is in a terrible mess.
Worse, the 2012 elections are looming and there's no savior in sight. Sarah Palin? Mike Huckabee? Ron Paul? Newt Gingrich? Mitt Romney? The Donald? Hillary? Yoiks!
Hey, please let me know if any of the pretenders to the throne have practical plans for saving our once great country from ending up on the empire trash heap with Britain, Spain, Rome, Athens, Egypt, and so on.
So, here we are, with most of our manufacturing having been exported to Asia, with an incredibly super-bloated government, with the most expensive and almost the least effective so-called healthcare system (we're 37th in health), with the most expensive school system and the poorest educated kids, the country is broke, with a devastating inflation threatening, two (or three) seemingly unwinnable wars, with some twenty million illegal aliens (and millions more pouring in our open border), which we're bribing to come with hundreds of billions of dollars in enticements…and that's just part of our miseries.
Sure, I've got damned good solutions to our problems…solutions that could get us back on top of the empire heap again in a few years…if anyone in authority would listen. No, I have no interest in running for president, and who would vote for a 90-year old president anyway, even one promising them health and wealth? Sure, if you know me you know I have the key to cutting our healthcare costs by about 90% and our energy (oil, nuclear) by more like 99% (with now proven cold fusion), get our industries back from Asia (even electronics), eliminate the income tax (and the IRS), and cut our super-bloated government in half in just a few years.
We could successfully end the two Bush wars in a few weeks, make colleges tuition-free, and have the best (and least expensive) public school system. We could even get rid of those millions of illegals (bye-bye Mexifornia), and unbankrupt social security.
Oh yes, Obama and his birther miseries. There may be more than one problem for Barry Soetoro (AKA Obama). It may turn out that his grandmother and wife are right about his having been born in Mombassa, but it could also turn out that his mother wasn't actually married. Oops! His claim to a Hawaiian birth has been denied by Hawaiian authorities, so no wonder Trump has jumped on this bandwagon in a start toward a campaign. I have my birth certificate right here in my office. It'll take me less than a minute to whip it out…while Barry is spending millions on lawyers to avoid showing his. Tsk.
Winning Bush's two wars quickly? See my 3/6/10 entry. Eliminating the income tax…thus about doubling our paychecks? See my 4/15/10 entry for three practical ways to end that immediately. Healthcare? Somehow get the major media to get the word out that when we stop putting poisons in and on our bodies, we'll stop getting sick, and our bodies will repair the damage we've done. No more cancer or any other sickness. Of course this means the end of the pharmaceutical industry, and most of the food industry as we know it today…putting some 700,000 doctors and 100,000 or so dentists out of work.
My proposal for Business Incubator Groups (4/4/08) would help find work for the millions of de-bloated government employees (I almost called them workers), by helping millions of small businesses get started (at no cost to the government). I explain my de-bloating approach in my 1/25/09, 11/16/08 and 1/25/08 entries.
Congress could, if their bribery could somehow be curbed, end inflation by dumping the Federal Reserve system, as Ron Paul as espoused.
Anyway, if you find a candidate that makes sense, please let me know. Sigh. Or, you can sit, watching TV, while China (with our money) installs thousands more Chinese restaurants here, plus buys up tens of thousands more acres of our oil shale land. And the Saudis build thousands more mosques here (with our oil money), with Muslim towns growing around them…the way they have all over Europe, Viva Sharia Law!

3/30/11

Population
With billions of Muslim families busy having ten and more children, the earth's resources will soon be stretched beyond its capacity to feed us. Already we're seeing the ocean's fish supply growing scarcer. Fresh water is drying up. Our farmlands have been poisoned with chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and the rest devoid of the minerals crops need to be healthy, and we need to eat for us to be healthy.
Here, in America, by the way, the blacks and Hispanics are also doing a good job of out-multiplying whites.
With Cold Fusion finally arriving, we can stop using up the earth's dwindling supply of oil, coal, and natural gas. It may even make ocean water desalination practical to give us water for crops…if there's any usable dirt left for farming. Well, we can get busy grinding down some mountains for rock dust to remineralize our soil.
Alas the Muslim growth is going to put an unbearable strain on the world food supply.
Gee, with all of the scientific progress we've made in the last century, we're still prisoners of our religions…most of them hangovers from ancient times. Well, our American public school system has been purposely designed to prevent children from learning to think or be creative, so it's easy to control them with inculcated religious beliefs.

3/30/11

Our Forests
Technology looks like it is coming along in time to save our forests from being further decimated. Well, maybe. While the internet is making newspapers, magazines, and books obsolete, thus reducing the need for wood pulp to make paper, plus cold fusion units for those homes still heated by wood, we may see some forests returning, making homes for our wild animals.
But then, if our population grows a lot, we're going to need more farm land cleared for crops. My suggestion? Get Congress to both make legal immigration more difficult, and kick the growing millions of illegals the hell out. Further, we really don't have any need for all those Muslims and their ten to fifteen-child families. Let's encourage ’em to go back to where they came from, and stop making more and more Muslim towns, complete with sharia law. Let's maybe learn from what's been happening in Europe.

3/29/11

Collapse?
Will Congress' ridiculous extravagances collapse the dollar? Worse, will that take along with it the Euro, and perhaps even China's and India's money? A global collapse? Wiser heads than mine are predicting this potential.
The idea that the current, still Democrat dominated Congress, will start making major changes seems slight. Our main hope is for next year's elections to sweep in the most conservative Republicans we can find, and hope they'll be able to turn things around quickly enough to avoid a dollar melt-down.
In the meanwhile you have everything to gain and little to lose by buying silver with those Federal Reserve paper dollars. I'm hoping we can get our New Hampshire legislature to have the state make quarter, half and one-ounce silver coins available. And, let's put our "first-in-the-nation" aerial tramway on them. Maybe we can beat Utah on this one.
We need a draconian new Congress that will eliminate the hundreds of billions they're squandering on illegal aliens, follow the model New Zealand used to cut their super-bloated government (see 11/1/7/06), dump the Federal Reserve system, rethink welfare, get out of the postal, Medicare, and Medicaid businesses, and so on.
Our so-called healthcare system cost an be cut about 90%. So can our prison system cost. School costs could be cut a fast 50%, just by getting rid of the administration layers. Instituting duties on imports will not only help support the government, but will start bringing back the industries we've exported to lower wage countries. Oh, and let's cut way back on our military, bringing em back from most of the 130 countries we have them now.

3/27/11

Thanks, Congress!
Under the management of the Congress we have elected…and trusted to do what would be in the best interests of us and our country, those few of us not too busy watching Oprah, ball games, and Judge Judy, have seen our once mighty country being slowly destroyed.
Hundreds of billions on welfare. More hundreds of billions coddling illegal aliens, plus wide open borders inviting more to the bonanza. One ill-advised (stupid) losing war after another. Not having learned anything from the Prohibition of alcohol, which gave us the Mafia, they outlawed drugs, making a mess of our country, plus Mexico and Colombia. They got rid of the tax on imports (duties), which had been the only needed funding for the federal government, replacing it with the income tax…which started out at 2% on the wealthy, and now is some 50% on most of us. Plus it put our workers in direct competition with Chinese coolies and Mexican peons, thus moving our major manufacturing industries out of the country.
I'm not done yet. They turned our country's money over to (mainly) the European Rothschild banking family, giving the U.S., for the first time since it's founding, inflation. They're now busy printing hundreds of billions of dollars in new paper money to cover Congress' extravagances…threatening a catastrophic inflation (soon).
Our government-run public school system (thanks, Congress) is churning out the poorest educated students in the developed world. Though we're spending more on sickness than any other country, we're 37th in health and 49th in longevity. Oh, thanks too, for spending all of the money you took from us to save for our for social security, bankrupting that program.
If you don't care about the mess Congress has made of our country, and many of our lives, keep watching the ball games instead of forming a local group to start getting rid of every sitting congressman in next year's elections. My mantra is "Never Re-elect Anyone." Let's get new blood in there and insist they end their "salary for life" gravy train. Let's have them make lobbying illegal, and end earmarks too.
Look, we know how to cure any illness with no drugs and never get sick again. We know how to generate unlimited energy with no oil, coal, nuclear, hydro, etc. We know how to grow a new generation of 150 average IQ kids (geniuses) and have them, by far, the best educated in the world, and at a fraction of what we're spending on our schools today. Free college tuition, at no cost to the government. And no more inflation, either.
We can even start deflating the government bloat at about 15% per year, with every government bureau enthusiastically cooperating, Think of the hundreds of billions that would save! Oh, and I have three different ways the income tax (and the IRS) could be eliminated, with no loss of revenue to the government. Wow, what super suckers we've been!
Unemployment? Not with a couple million new small business…started at no cost to the government. Oh, and with our major industries coming back from Asia.

3/22/11

Assimilation
The original idea was to attract immigrants to develop America and have them adopt our language (English) and our customs. This worked pretty well up through most of the 19th century, with a large part of the immigrants from English-speaking countries like the English, Scotch, and Irish.
WWII brought us a huge immigration of Jews from all over Europe, with their second generation English-speaking, but not assimilating nearly as much. They had their own Daily Forward newspaper in Hebrew to help keep the adults from bothering to learn much English, and they tended to live in their own groups and patronize their own shops.
It was the same with the blacks…and still is. They mostly live in black neighborhoods and patronize black stores.
In my grammar schools in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Washington, and Brooklyn there were no blacks. In my Brooklyn high school, which had over 10,000 students, there were less than a dozen blacks. When I visited it a few years ago I found it had been broken into five smaller schools in the same buildings, and I saw no whites. The 120-some after-school clubs we had have disappeared.
A couple blocks away, the all-white St. Paul's High Episcopal church, where I sang as a boy soprano in the choir, was now all black…and a mess.
With thousands of restaurants run by non-assimilating Chinese, and thousands of mosques serving millions of recent immigrant Muslims, also non-assimilating, America sure is different from the country of my childhood. And not for the better, as I see it.
I have no problem with different religions, as long as they aren't aggressive about it. But Islam, which teaches death to all disbelievers, is something else. I enjoyed the Catholics banning birth control and abortions as a way to build their congregations. Ditto the Mormons and their likewise push for large Mormon families.
WWII, where most of the men went off to war, forcing women to leave their homes and go to work, not only cut down on family size but, after the men returned, the prices for things like homes kept families needing two paychecks, where one did the job before. Prices rise to meet the money supply.
With very little white growth, and with much larger Hispanic, black, Muslim and Chinese growth, with them showing little interest in accepting our language or customs, I wonder what our country will be like in a couple more decades?

3/7/11

Do-Do
That stands (a) for the shape our country is in, and (b) for Domp Obama,
Sure, we've got presidential elections next year. The Dems are stuck with Barry Soetoro, who's school records say he's a Muslim, a religion from which there is no escape. Not alive, anyway. The Reps are a mess with, so far, just a few failed retreads to run, and not much money to back them up anyway. And less enthusiasm.
Rah rah Ron Paul, a nice ex-doctor with two first names and a rickety platform. Oh, he's right on with dumping the Federal Reserve. That was one of the three humongous Dem sellouts in 1913…the other two being the institution of the income tax, which was an insignificant 2% on the wealthy, and has kinda grown (groan). The other being the elimination of duties on imports, which previously had been the only needed revenue for the federal government.
Eliminating tariffs on imports essentially put American workers in competition with those anywhere else in the world…like Chinese coolies. Gee, thanks a few trillion, guys. Unless we elect a congress that has the guts to start undoing the terrible things the guys we've elected in the past…and then endlessly re-elected…that do-do is going to flush us down the drain hole of history…along with Great Britain, Spain, Rome, Greece, and Egypt.
Yes, dump the Federal Reserve, and fast…before the paper dollars they've been printing by the hundreds of billions tank us into a devastating inflation.
Then institute a 2% duty on imports, like they did with the income tax. Gee, not even Walmart shoppers would notice that! And wow, with a new source of money to spend, in no time congress will have that up to 5%, 10%, and so on, gradually making American-made products competitive with Chinese labor.
Speaking of which, have you seen any signs that the huge boom in the Chinese economy we've helped finance, with an enormous growth in their middle class, has kindled any appreciation from their communist government? What I see is thousands of new Chinese restaurants opening in even the smallest towns…like little Antrim, whose business section has a gas station, a bank, a hardware store, a small grocery…and a Chinese Restaurant. I find it interesting and strange that these restaurants and the houses for the workers are paid for by the Chinese government, and that only the waiter bothers to learn English. Well, broken English. Are we, for some reason being infiltrated. I'll bet our McDonalds in China have all-Chinese workers.
I digress (as usual).
Let's elect a president and congress next year that will start turning America around. They need to get the government out of running businesses. That's socialism, and it's failed in every country where it's been tried. It's failing here, big time. Our post office, Medicaid, Medicare, and so on are losing billions. Entrepreneurs run businesses successfully, not bureaucrats…driven by political motives. They need to limit congress to two terms, like they did the presidents, after FDR screwed things up so badly…intentionally getting us into WWII, and before that, stretching the depression out for over ten years with government works projects.
There's much to be said for getting congress to stop spending the social security revenues immediately, replacing them with worthless IOUs. If they'd done as promised, and invested them, we could be enjoying ten times the retirement benefits, like those using the Chilean social security system are enjoying. Heck, read Every Man A Millionaire by Genetsky (my 1/13/08 entry). In the meanwhile, at lets bring back the cost-of-living increases they canceled a couple years ago.
Maybe, if we can find business people to run for congress instead of professional politicians (mostly ex-lawyers), we'll see a turnaround in things like welfare and the millions of coddled illegal immigrants that are draining us. And wouldn't it be nice to see congress downsize the perks they've voted for themselves…like lifetime salaries and super-generous healthcare benefits?
With the Reps not yet coming up with a viable candidate, and the Dems stuck with Barry, we're in do-do. At least let's get the senate Republicanized so we'll see some change to the right.
If I could get through to Steve Jobs and get him to change to a raw food diet so he's stop making himself sick, with his success record in business, he'd make a great president.

3/6/11

Silver
With the government somewhere between $18 and $100+ trillion in debt, we're bankrupt. And that means the possibility of the dollar collapsing has to be considered. Runaway inflation could be looming, which accounts for the enormous recent run-up on gold prices, with silver, as usual, following cautiously behind.
Yes, of course, I have a proposal to salvage the situation…including the potential collapse of our banks,
The dollar, which a small group of Dems, almost a hundred years ago, took away from the U.S. Treasury and turned over to a group of European bankers, the Federal Reserve Banks, which has recently been printing hundreds of billions of paper dollars for the government to borrow (and pay interest on), to spend on its largess to the millions of illegal immigrants, failing government businesses like the post office, Medicaid, Medicare, etc., the world's largest and most expensive military, welfare, very generous foreign aid, and millions upon millions of government employees (I almost called them workers…oops), I think you'll like my win-win proposal.
I have a one-ounce gold Kruggerrand I bought for $350 a while back on a visit to South Africa. It's worth about $1,400 today. That's too expensive to be of use for daily transactions. It's about the size of our old silver dollars, if you're old enough to remember when they were still around. So what I'm proposing is the making available of quarter, half, and one-ounce silver coins, as I first suggested a year ago.
So let's get our legislature busy making New Hampshire sovereign, and then have the state make silver coins available at the current silver cost, plus some extra to cover the cost of the program. This would give New Hampshire merchants two prices to charge, one for the silver coins at that day's exchange rate, and the other for the Fed paper dollars, at their value that day. Thus, no matter how bad the inflation, the value of products and services in silver will change little. Today a one-ouncer would probably run about $40, and the quarter-ounce coin $10. Yeah, I'll take the rest of my change in a handful of those almost worthless Reserve notes.
Okay. Okay, we'll make some dime-sized eighth-ounce silver coins, worth around $5. Heck, also make some three-inch four-ouncers worth today around $150 or so.
Oh, we'll need a name for the new coins. Any suggestions? I like "sovereigns," but "S" is too much like "$".

3/23/11

Stock Market Crash?
My email has been alerting me that a group of Dems want to crash the stock market as a way to get back the $7 trillion (or is it $17 trillion) our richest Americans have "taken from our middle class."
If these stupid idiots would do their homework they'd know that about 70% of the investment in the stock market are the pension funds of some 84,000 local, state, and federal departments, and not where the super-elite are hiding their loot. Their plan would wipe out the retirement pensions for millions of government workers. Heck, just look into the CAFR investment data. Gee , thanks, guys.
Or, do they know that already and are using the ignorance of other Dems to crash the market for some other reason? Hmm, could this be a Muslin plot to destroy The Big Satan?

2/12/11

Illegals
The Panama City Beach (FL) sheriff's department has developed a remarkably effective, if controversial, way of catching illegal immigrants: Deputies in patrol cars pull up to a construction site in force, and watch and see who runs. Those who take off are chased down and arrested on charges such as trespassing, cutting through someone else's property, loitering, hiding out in someone's yard, or reckless driving if they speed off in a car.
U.S. immigration authorities are then given the names of those believed to be in this country illegally.
Illegal immigrants are leaving town, so builders are worried the crackdown will deprive them of the labor they need to take part in a building boom in which Panama City's Beach cheap spring-break motels are being torn down and replaced with high-rise condos.
The sheriff said the raids are justified under a long-standing Florida law prohibiting employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. His department has conducted dozens of these raids over the past three months, sometimes using five or six patrol cars, and has reported more than 500 people to immigration officials since November.
The illegal aliens are supposed to be a federal responsibility, but the feds' seeming disinterest in enforcing the federal laws has forced states and cities to act, as we've seen in Arizona and a couple other states. For example, Farmers Branch, Texas, is trying to prohibit apartment rentals to illegal immigrants in the Dallas suburb. Georgia passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of all new employees.
So we have states trying to stem the flow of illegals, while the feds are spending hundreds of billions encouraging even more to sneak in for the gravy train. Is there something wrong here that's worth asking the 2012 candidates about?

2/11/11

How the Senators Voted

With a little digging I found a list of the senators who voted against making English America's official language:

Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)*
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Clinton (D-NY)*
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Domenici (R-NM)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)*
Kerry (D-MA)*
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)*
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)*
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wyden (D-OR)

Multiculturalism, that's going to bite us in the ass, is running amok. I'd like to see it made illegal to publish or sell foreign language newspapers and magazines in America.
Now, the following are the senators who voted to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits. They are grouped by home state. If a state is not listed, there was no voting representative.

Alaska : Stevens (R)
Arizona : McCain (R)*
Arkansas : Lincoln (D) Pryor (D)
California : Boxer (D) Feinstein (D)
Colorado : Salazar (D)
Connecticut : Dodd (D) Lieberman (D)
Delaware : Biden (D) * Carper (D)
Florida : Martinez (R)
Hawaii : Akaka (D) Inouye (D)
Illinois : Durbin (D) Obama (D)*
Indiana : Bayh (D) Lugar (R)
Iowa : Harkin (D)
Kansas : Brownback (R)
Louisiana : Landrieu (D)
Maryland : Mikulski (D) Sarbanes (D)
Massachusetts : Kennedy (D)* Kerry (D)*
Montana : Baucus (D)
Nebraska : Hagel (R)
Nevada : Reid (D)
New Jersey : Lautenberg (D) Menendez (D)
New Mexico : Bingaman (D)
New York : Clinton (D)* Schumer (D)
North Dakota : Dorgan (D)
Ohio : DeWine (R) Voinovich(R)
Oregon : Wyden (D)
Pennsylvania : Specter (R)
Rhode Island : Chafee (R) Reed (D)
South Carolina : Graham (R)
South Dakota : Johnson (D)
Vermont : Jeffords (I) Leahy (D)
Washington : Cantwell (D) Murray (D)
West Virginia : Rockefeller (D), by Not Voting
Wisconsin : Feingold (D) Kohl (D)

Everyone needs to know about this, unless they don't mind sharing their social security with foreign workers who didn’t have to pay in a dime.
By golly, there's Obama…on both lists.

2/10/11

The Liberal Media
Bottom Line Books offered the following information:
1. The liberal press is not going to report the fact that only 2% of illegal aliens are actually picking fruit and vegetables, but 41% are on welfare.
2. The liberal media is not going to report that one of every ten babies born in the United States are to illegal aliens.
3. The liberal media is not going to report that 60% of Housing & Urban Development funds go to illegal aliens.
4. The liberal media is not going to report that 13 Americans are killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals.
5. 30% of the prisoners in the federal prisons are illegal aliens.

1/30/11

America At War! (I originally wrote this 15 years ago, So what's changed?)
Short quiz: What is the most expensive war in American history? It is a war that cost more than WWII, Korea, and Vietnam combined? Hint…it’s one we lost. One we lost in a big way. One that has brought about catastrophic changes in our country.
It’s President Johnson’s (Lyndon) War on Poverty. Welfare. Welfare mothers. Hey, it’s your money your politicians are doling out. Over $5 trillion so far, with no end in sight.
When the government pays women welfare benefits equivalent to $12 an hour, two and a half times the minimum wage, in New York and Washington, not to work, what do you think this does to wages in those areas? To be “entitled” to this largess at our expense the women have to have children…the more the better… no job, and no husband that’s working.
In 39 states welfare benefits are equivalent to about $16,600 a year. In eight it’s over $20,000.
I’ve already written about a woman with two children who is on welfare in my small New Hampshire town. Her food and apartment are provided, plus schooling for one child, complete with a paid driver to ferry the child to school and back every day. The woman is bitterly complaining that her welfare-provided cable TV only gives her two paid channels. Oh yes, her husband is working, but they are “separated.” One of my ex-employee’s wives gets $50 a week just to drive the child to school. A recent exposé on welfare showed a couple of women in Laconia (NH) sitting in their apartments getting fat on this same system. Work? And lose all those benefits? You’ve got to be kidding!
So we complain about the single mothers. We complain about the loss of family values that’s turning out one generation after another of uneducated welfare mothers and resulting criminal children with no incentive or skills to work. Compassion gone berserk, and to hell with the survival of the fittest concept. We’re making sure that the least fit survive and proliferate, dragging us all down.
What can you do about this mess you’ve meekly let fester? Two things. First, we’ve got to stop Congress from making things worse. Second, we’ve got to get Congress to strike out the laws they’ve made that are screwing us up. My bumper-sticker approach to this is to start with Green’s NRA: Never Re-elect Anyone! Get those bribed (via lobbyists) professional politician scoundrels out of Washington. Let’s build a whole new breed of one-term politicians.
But most important is to take a few days off from watching mind-numbing TV and educate yourself. There are some damned good books which will help you understand what’s gone wrong with our school system, with the war on poverty, the war on drugs, our terrible so-called health-care system, our “correctional institutions,” and so on. Hey, we have the potential for having a pretty good country, but it’s going to take a lot of work by a lot of people to make it happen.
The multi-level marketing (chain-letter) approach will work for us. First, educate yourself. Then you get two or three other people started being educated. And they do the same for two or three more. The next thing you know, we’ll have a movement.
I’d like to see local political action clubs (PACs) get going. Members would be encouraged to read a book and report on it at the next meeting. There are an awful lot of books out there, but only a small percentage of them are interesting and educational. By distributing the work of separating the wheat from the chaff, a group can easily do something that no one person could accomplish.
Perhaps I’ve let my idealism run away with me in even suggesting that we try to run our country on reason instead of fanaticism. Maybe screaming protesters and terrorism are the rule of the day and reason passé.
Anyway, if you feel that people who prefer not to work are worth $335 billion of your money being taken out of our paychecks every year, then go back and watch that ball game. As long as you’re satisfied that you’re getting your money’s worth it’s no problem.
One chap suggested a way to solve the deficit problem would be to fire the top three layers of management of all federal bureaus on the basis that it’s unlikely anyone lower down would notice much difference. Oh, the bureau’s jet planes would get less use. But why not fire ’em down five levels and start reducing the deficit instead of just stopping its growth?
Oh yes, one more innovation. Since many of our more serious social problems have been caused by federal judges running amok, by-passing the legislative system, how about putting term limits on those rascals too?

1/28/11

Freedom
For a country that prides itself on and preaches freedom, we have an awful lot of tyranny going on. I think I can even make a good case for liberals being disciples of the Devil. All those things that our beloved government legislates "for our own good" are my beef.
Like what? Like vaccinations, fluorides in our water supply, seat belt laws, helmet laws, and so on. I've written about vaccinations, which besides not working, are causing life-long health problems for many people…like autistic children. Ditto fluorides in our water. I wish that Congress and the state legislatures would stop using the law to do things for my good. All I need is the information and then the freedom to make my own decisions.
Sure, seat belts save lives, but if I'm dumb enough to not use them, then that should be my decision. Mother Nature (aka God) has a system that has worked for millions of years. Billions. It's called natural selection, or the survival of the fittest. So if I'm dumb enough to not wear a helmet on my scooter or a seat belt in my car, if I get killed that will tend to weed out that kind of dumbness. By forcing me to live longer and thus be able to have more children, the government is going against God and weakening the human race.
How about so-called Social Security? It was originally set up as a way for the government to take in more money, pretending it was insurance instead of increased taxes. It's still taking in billions, with Congress "borrowing" the money and spending it. If it was a voluntary system I'd have no complaint. But it's mandatory, and that's not my idea of freedom. Sure, it's "for my own good." If I'm dumb enough not to provide for my old age, the government will support me. The result of that is that a lot of people don't provide for their old age in some other much cheaper way.
Look up my piece on the Chilean social security system, which is paying about ten times what ours is because the funds are actually invested instead of immediately spent.
Please, politicians, stop making laws to protect me from my own stupidity.

1/27/11

Trapped!
The feeling I'm getting is that our country, like the Titanic, is headed toward a huge iceberg and I'm going to go down with the ship. There's the $1.5 trillion national debt announced for this year, with nothing to pay it with but paper dollars we borrow from the Federal Reserve Banks, and owe interest on.
We're blowing some $2.2T a year on so-called health-care because our government and media are safely in the hands of the pharmaceutical/medical/food industries. Scientists and a few doctors have figured out how to cure any illness with no drugs, and at no cost…but we sure aren't hearing about that.
Our military/industrial complex is spending some $700 billion a year on outposts in some 140 countries, billions on new aircraft carriers, which guided missiles have made as obsolete now as airplanes made battleships in WWII. Between unions driving American industries to Asia with their wage demands, and the elimination of taxes on imports, we've lost most of our major industries. Oh, we buy imported products as fast as those huge container ships can bring them, but they're going back empty, so we're buying all that with dollars borrowed from the Fed, driving the country faster into bankruptcy.
How soon will this bring us a Zimbabwe-class inflation? The handwriting is on the wall and neither Obama nor Congress seem to have an eraser.

1/25/11

Frustration
Under the present management, our country is in deep trouble. Congress has recently had to borrow around a trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve Banks, part of it just to pay the interest on past Fed loans. So we're seeing signs the dollar might suddenly collapse.
Our hospitals are jammed. Our prisons jammed. Our unemployment offices jammed. Our schools are leaking dropouts. Our graduates are the poorest educated of the developed world. Our borders are wide open. Our factories moved to Asia. Our people are obese, watching TV all day, and on welfare. Drugs are cheaper than ever. Our government-run businesses bankrupt. Our home mortgages unpaid, and our homes being repossessed. Social Security is bankrupt, with the usual cost-of-living increases canceled for the last several years. The same for payments to our disabled veterans, The government bureaus have recently doubled in size, with federal employee paychecks running around $100,000 a year. And our worries are global warming, abortion rights, and homosexual marriage.
Sure, I've proposed practical ways to turn all this around, but few are paying attention. Like how to cut our so-called health-care costs by about 90%. Ditto our prison costs. How to make colleges tuition-free, and at no cost to the government. How we can have the best-educated kids in the world. How we can get our major industries back. How we can ease unemployment by starting a million or so new businesses, and at no cost to the government. How to make social security pay ten times what it does now, and at no cost to the government. I even have a good solution to the impending runaway inflation.
Yes, I know, you're too busy watching a Red Sox game today. Maybe next week.

1/15/11

The Fed
Though you probably already know that the Federal Reserve Bank isn’t government owned, but is a group of private banks, I’ll bet a bunch you don’t know how these banks got their franchise to issue all of the money for the country.
It all happened between 1:30 and 4:30 am on December 22, 1913, when the Democratic members of the Conference Committee, without letting the Republicans know about the meeting, rushed the Federal Reserve Act through the House and Senate. The next day President Wilson signed the Act into law.
The act transferred the money supply of the United States from the Treasury to a private banking elite, giving them a monopoly. The Federal Reserve is controlled via 53% of the stock by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Chase Manhattan Bank.
The Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, Louis McFadden, once said, “ We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board.”
Well, gee, if the Fed is so terrible, how come we haven’t been seeing media exposés in the papers and on TV?
Guess who the majority stockholders of the TV networks and major newspapers and magazines are. The banks, of course. The same banks that control the Fed. Less than 25% of our daily papers are independently owned.
Well, if you were controlling a major bank with an exclusive government license to make money, you’d cover your ass by using some of that clout to make sure no one would upset the apple cart.
John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, made this statement at the New York Press Club. “There is no such thing as an independent press in America, if we except that of little country towns. You know this and I know it. Not a man among you dares to utter his honest opinion. Were you to utter it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. Were I to permit that a single edition of my newspaper contained an honest opinion, my occupation, like Othello’s, would be gone in less than 24 hours. It is the duty of a New York journalist to lie, to distort, to revile, to toady at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and the vassals of the rich behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our capacities are all the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
It’s interesting to read about how banks got started as money changers (maybe you remember Jesus getting himself in big trouble messing with these guys). Check out www.themoneymasters.com.
With a potential cash panic coming up as more and more people get wind of the possibility of a serious inflation as a result of the deficit, you have to remember that 97% of the money you have in the bank has been loaned out, so once their 3% cash reserve is gone they have to close their doors.
Actually, banks are permitted to lend out ten times more money than they actually have, and charge interest on it. Maybe you’ve wondered why bank buildings are always the biggest and fanciest in town.
If I die of a “heart attack” or something, you’ll know that I’ve finally managed to step on toes that are too big.
Congress did this to us, and Congress could undo it, but with the money controlled by the few people who control the big banks and the media, and Congress being controlled by money, there isn’t a chance.
Other than this 88 year old crack-pot in New Hampshire, who else has the stupidity to blow the whistle on how crooked out money, banks, schools, government, and health systems are?

1/10/11

Wetbacks
Yes, America has millions of acres of unused land. Of course, most of it is owned by the government, and little of it is of any real value for living.
So what? Well, we have this controversy about immigration. Should we seriously limit immigration or should we maintain our loose borders which allow in millions of illegal immigrants every year?
Oh, I can understand how our country would benefit from allowing highly educated or skilled workers to move here, but that isn’t what we’re getting most of the time.
The open borders believers point to all of our undeveloped land. What they don’t point to is our more and more crowded cities, which is where most of the illegal immigrants head. That’s where the jobs are, not out in the desert or remote mountain areas. If you’ve visited a city lately you’ve seen the jammed highways. California’s freeways turn into gigantic parking lots at drive time, as do the highways around every major city. I’ve been in the traffic jams that surround New York City, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, and so on.
Are we going to just build more and bigger roads and watch while our cities gradually creep toward each other. In the northeast, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington have just about connected. They call it a megalopolis. Just what we need is to double the population of this area, which is what it’s done within my lifetime.
Without immigrants our population has stabilized and is not growing. So, if you really want to let anyone in that wants to come, be prepared to pay the price. The immigrants sure aren’t going to pay it. And the price is stiff, with the need to virtually rebuild our city infrastructures to accommodate everyone.
Our subways are already jammed solid. Are we going to build more tracks and stations? That means digging up our streets for years, plus spending hundreds of billions of dollars.
More cars and busses mean more pollution and smog. That what you want?
We have laws limiting immigration, we’re intentionally just not enforcing them.
Every now and then I’m forced to drive on a jammed highway and I wonder at the patience of people who have to commute to and from work every day under those conditions. That’s a terrible waste of time and a lousy way to live. It’s even reached New Hampshire, where the Interstate highway from Nashua going into Massachusetts is absolutely terrible at morning and afternoon drive times.
The fact is that there are very few jobs for unskilled or uneducated workers outside of the cities, so that’s where immigrants are forced to go…and forced to live under awful conditions. But that’s still better than where they came from. At least here, in a generation or two, their children will be part of the middle class. They’ll be Americans. Some will even learn to speak English.

Politics

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