Common Sense Approach To Healthcare Reform

Most Americans feel that the healthcare system in our country needs to be reformed in some manner. At the same time, most Americans LIKE their own current coverage. My question to those who want to revamp the entire healthcare system into a government run nightmare is, "Why throw out the baby with the bathwater?"

There are many opportunities to streamline cost and increase quality of care in a way which is comfortable and acceptable to most Americans. Below is a list of smart reform ideas from Physicians for Reform which would significantly effect American healthcare in a positive way. Is there a reason why our elected leaders won't address these very plain and simple measures? Does it have something to do with the fact that 84% of trial lawyers' campaign contributions in 2008 went to the Democratic party?

Brief Overview

Insurance Reform:
Health Savings Accounts combined with higher deductable policies reduce healthcare spending by placing patients in control of their own healthcare dollars. This strategy can decrease healthcare sending by 13% without compromising access to care. If America reduces even one fourth of its healthcare spending by even 10%, this will save $50 billion every year.

Tax Reform:
Physicians for Reform advocates making health insurance and Health Savings Accounts tax deductable for Americans with higher incomes. We also advocate funding individual policies and Health Savings Account with tax credits for Americans with lower incomes. This plan not only makes healthcare affordable for every American, it keeps patients in control of their own healthcare dollars. This program would cost approximately $80 billion every year.

Tort Reform:
Physicians spend approximately $124 billion every year in defensive medicine. Much of this is driven by the unpredictable results of our medical legal system. Federal level tort reform would decrease healthcare spending by an estimated $70 billion yearly.

Combined, Insurance Reform and Tort Reform would save Americans approximately $120 billion every year. Tax credits for Americans without healthcare would cost $80 billion. The net result? Not only does every American have access to healthcare, we save approximately $40 billion every year.

In this time of economic crisis, this plan not only reduces federal spending, it lowers the cost of healthcare of both small and large businesses. This in turn will create jobs as businesses have more money to hire people.

Looking for a Leader

Letter from an American

June 17, 2009

I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now.

You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Two, the TARP bill. I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars. I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why -- what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band-Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try -- please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now. Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work, pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Beware Obamacare

A New Public Health Plan: How Congressional Details Will Impact Doctors and Patients
by Greg D'Angelo

President Obama and congressional leaders are proposing the creation of a new public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance plans. The President first proposed a public insurance option during the 2008
presidential campaign, but now the details and design of this new option--like most other aspects of the health reform legislation currently under development--have been left almost entirely to Congress.

Many in Congress are looking to Medicare as a model for a new public health plan, yet they fail to realize the consequences for patients and providers alike, as millions of Americans would lose the private coverage that they have today.

Crucial Details

According to the Lewin Group, a nationally prominent econometrics firm, the two most crucial design details of this new option are the size of employers eligible to buy into the new plan and the provider payment levels used for reimbursement under the plan.

These key issues are bound to be contentious in the upcoming debate over health care reform. The Obama campaign proposal would have made individuals without employer coverage, the self-employed, and small employers (defined as fewer than 25 employees) eligible for the public plan. But the President never specified provider payment levels or the method for
determining reimbursement rates for doctors, hospitals, and other medical professionals for the thousands of medical services that would be delivered.

Members of Congress and their staffs will thus have to hammer out these crucial details in legislation if a public plan is to be introduced.

Unlevel Playing Field

If Congress creates a public plan modeled on Medicare--as some have previously proposed--the result, of course, would be to undercut any pretense of a promised "level playing field" for competition with private health insurance.[4] Public plan premiums would be 25-40 percent lower than private insurance premiums as the public plan would reimburse providers less
than private payers would--and often less than the cost of care delivered.

Payment rates for doctors and hospitals under public programs are set administratively, not by the market. They are, on average, lower than private payment rates for similar care.[5] Medicare provider payments for hospital care are only 71 percent of private rates, while Medicare provider payments for physician care are only 81 percent of private rates.[6] In
other words, Medicare payment levels are roughly 19-29 percent lower than private levels.

Congress's ability to impose low provider payments and artificially reduce the cost of the public option compared to private insurance will increase enrollment in the public plan while crowding out, or displacing, existing private coverage.

Loss of Private Coverage

When considering a public plan modeled after Medicare, Lewin finds that the estimated reduction in the number of uninsured does not vary greatly (observing a change of only 800,000 individuals) as eligibility for the plan
is extended beyond small employers to employers of all sizes.[7] Instead, there is a substantial increase in enrollment in the public plan and in the loss of private coverage.

If the public plan were opened to only small employers, enrollment in the public plan would reach 42.9 million, and 32 million Americans would lose their private coverage.[8] However, if the public plan is opened to all employers, enrollment in the public plan increases dramatically to 131.2 million, and 119.1 million Americans would lose their private coverage. In this particular case, of the 171.6 million people who currently have private coverage, about 70 percent of them would lose the coverage that they have today.

More specifically, of the estimated 157.4 million Americans who have private employer coverage, up to 107.6 million people could lose their private employer coverage, even if they like it and would prefer to keep it.[11]

Imposing Higher Costs on Individuals and Families

Increased enrollment in a new public plan would likely result in higher premiums for those with private insurance.

Historically, public programs--specifically Medicare and Medicaid--have reimbursed providers at levels below the costs of their services. For example, in 2003, on average, Medicare paid hospitals only 95 percent of the cost of providing services, while Medicaid paid hospitals only 89 percent of the cost of providing services.[12] These below-cost payments in public
programs are at least in part offset by above-cost reimbursements to providers by private payers--as evidenced by hospital reimbursements to the tune of 122 percent of costs in 2003.[13] This cost-shift, in turn, inflates private health insurance premiums for individuals and families.[14]

The cost-shift dynamic plays a prominent role in the health care sector. A study by the actuarial firm Milliman calculated that public programs currently shift $88.8 billion in costs onto private payers per year, increasing the typical American family's annual private health insurance premium by $1,512, or 10.6 percent.[15] Moreover, Lewin speculates that a new public plan could increase the annual cost-shift per privately insured by as much as $526, which will only serve to further perpetuate the
crowd-out of private insurance.[16]

Lower Incomes for Physician and Hospitals

A new public plan could also significantly reduce provider incomes. As more people gain insurance, physicians and hospitals would benefit from decreased levels of uncompensated care. However, the increase in public coverage along with new demands to provide services to the newly insured could outweigh any increased revenues from reductions in uncompensated care.

If all employers become eligible for the public plan, the annual net income of hospitals could fall by $36 billion while the annual net income of physicians could drop by $33.1 billion. Increasing demands on health care providers coupled with decreasing provider incomes could compromise patients' access to high-quality care. Faced with low reimbursement, doctors
are already reportedly opting out of Medicare--a problem that is likely to be exacerbated with the creation of a new public plan.

Consider the Consequences

Discussions surrounding the creation of a new public plan, based on Medicare and intended to compete with private health plans, have not adequately considered the potential consequences for patients and providers. Creating a new public health plan option is likely in direct conflict with the many promises Congress and the Obama Administration have made regarding health reform.

While many claim that a public plan would merely represent an alternative choice to private health plans operating on "a level playing field," the reality is that Congress will use the government's power to artificially deflate the cost of the public plan by lowering provider reimbursement rates.

It has been suggested repeatedly that if Americans like their health plan they can keep it and that nothing would change except that they would pay less. But the creation of a new public plan modeled on Medicare could result in the loss of the private coverage that millions have today by undermining the current system of employer-sponsored insurance. Those who are actually able to keeping their private insurance will likely be forced to pay more--not less--to cross-subsidize the public plan.

While patients have been ensured their choice of doctor and care without government interference, great uncertainties remain regarding what the future holds for the doctor-patient relationship as millions of Americans are pushed into a new public plan.

The Devil Is in the Details

It is unlikely that Congress and the President will be able enact a major overhaul of the health care system that both includes a new public health insurance option and meets their many oft-stated promises.

When it comes to health care policy, what politicians promise is less important than the details of their policy prescriptions. Watch carefully.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2482.cfm

Hey America, Do You Remember?

Written by Thomas Segel


Harlingen, Texas, May 20, 2009: Hey America, do you remember when a single political party took over complete control of the government? It happened because of bitterness about the war and unhappiness among the citizens.

Do you remember when people started believing that the only way to solve what they perceived as problems was to ignore the Constitution? The lack of citizen concern for the way the country should be governed led to multiple constitutional violations.

Do you remember when massive financial support provided the funding for the election campaign? This was particularly evident when wealthy businessmen offered their backing.

Do you remember when the opposition party, religious groups and other interests were blamed for the countrys ills? Things were made to sound so bad that only one party and one man were identified as being able to save the nation.

Do you remember when everybody was promised everything? There were so many changes being promised to so many people that support came from everyone who felt personal need for government assistance.

Do you remember the attacks on people of different political beliefs and on opponents? Even the media and the courts closed their eyes to the lies and distortions offered up by the campaign.

Do you remember when the media became a tool of the new government? There was an infiltration of personnel supporting the promises of change into every element of the media and the people seldom heard the complete political message or truth of the times.

Do you remember he came to power during an economic collapse? The number of unemployed grew. There was major crisis in the country and people needed something or someone to blame for their problems.

Do you remember he was a brilliant speaker, his presence had a power over people, he was a good organizer and a smooth politician? Do you remember he was a driven man, who believed he had the destiny to become the leader of his country? Do you remember that his strong ego and self-belief persuaded other people to believe in him?

Well, most of you are really not old enough to remember. It happened 77 years ago in a country called Germany.

Obama's Credit Card Fraud

Under the credit card reform proposed by the Obama administration, customers who pay their bills on time will now be subjected to higher fees to compensate for the restrictions that these companies face regarding what fees they can charge their delinquent customers. But wait! Looks like they get to screw the delinquent customers as well, through unrestrained interest rates, which will be far more debilitating over the long term to those who do not pay their bills on time. Credit Card Companies to ALL consumers: Checkmate.

OBAMA'S CREDIT CARD REFORM IS A FRAUD

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on May 22, 2009


The widely heralded credit card reform legislation making its way through Congress is a sellout to the credit card companies. Obama has proposed and Congress has passed a series of minor reforms that deal with the fringes of the problem - late billings, retroactive interest rate hikes, misapplication of payments and such - but fail to reform the most basic offense of the companies: their usury.

Congress explicitly rejected any limitation on the interest rate credit card companies can charge. It remains perfectly legal for them to charge rates that would make a loan shark blush.

In our book Fleeced, we explain how, until 1979, credit card interest was subject to usury limits of the various states. But the Supreme Court emasculated these limits by ruling that the state of the lender, not of the borrower, had the sole power to legislate interest rate limits. South Dakota swiftly jumped into the void the Court created, eliminating any usury limits. All the credit card companies moved there and took advantage of the regulatory vacuum to hike up their rates to unconscionable levels.

Competition can do nothing to force down rates since 90% of the credit cards are issued by a handful of companies. And states are paralyzed when it comes to regulating rates.

It is up to Congress to act. Yet the credit card companies' massive campaign donations succeeded in buying off enough Democrats and virtually all the Republicans to kill any limits on interest rates. So companies can continue to charge basic rates of 18 percent and then up to 30 percent as punishment for minor offenses like being a few days late in making payments.

But Obama and his Democratic allies are loudly proclaiming their success in fighting for the consumer despite their failure to use their majorities to afford any real protection form usurious interest rates.

Congress should have legislated a ceiling on regular interest rates limiting them to five points above prime and on punitive rates requiring them to be no more than ten points above prime. But Obama and the Democrats (and, of course, the Republicans) caved into the special interests and left out any interest rate controls.

The high rates charged by credit card companies obviously do a great deal to impede consumer spending and drive families into bankruptcy. The average credit card balance for those who have such debt is over $13,000. A 30 percent interest rate means more than $300 per month in interest payments alone!

It is cruel to see Obama offering the illusion of hope for credit card victims while denying them real relief.

Don't Underestimate the Will of the American People

Feeding the Monster

A great post from the blog, Get Liberty, which details the differences in pay and benefits between the public and private sector. Here in RI, this is one of the main issues which has caused our economy to circle the drain. Looks like the rest of the US is using our state as a model for growth. Good luck with that.

Feeding the Monster

By: adminOn: 04/28/2009 12:22:24In: Fiscal ResponsibilityComments: 0
By Isaac MacMillen

“An appeaser is one who feeds everyone else around him to the crocodile, in hopes he'll eat him last.” –Winston Churchill

American taxpayers are feeding a voracious monster that threatens their very existence. Much like the unwitting tourist that feeds a wild animal only to whet its insatiable appetite, American taxpayers are funding a government bureaucracy that, at its current and projected growth rate, will eventually consume the private sector.

Now, with the release of a study drawing attention to the disparity in pay and benefits between the public and private sectors, the seriousness of the situation is finally being brought into full view.

According to USA Today, public sector employees make nearly 44 percent more than their private sector colleagues, once benefits are factored into the equation. The average state or federal employee makes $39.25, of which $13.38 is benefits, while the average salary of a private employee is $11.90 less—$27.35, including $7.98 in benefits.

This huge disparity is dangerous. While the private sector produces goods and services that stimulate economic growth, the public sector siphons off tax dollars and drains the investment pool. As the public sector grows—and no doubt it will continue to expand, as the Democrats in the White House and in Congress push their Big Government plans—production declines and deficits explode.

Read the rest HERE.

ALERT: Critical Bill To Support

Please CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMEN
(http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt)and urge them to SUPPORT “HR 1207 The FEDERAL RESERVE TRANSPARENCY ACT of 2009″ and insist on a ROLL CALL VOTE on the bill. This may the most important positive legislation towards truly fixing our economy. The bill, sponsored by Ron Paul and co-sponsored by at least 28 others, is in congress right now. The Fed refuses to give a public accounting of the trillions in recent taxpayer-backed loans, and the American people
deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent and their currency inflated. The Fed has been shrouded in secrecy too long which allows for abuse. Hold the Fed accountable, auditable and transparent. Any politician that doesn’t support this bill doesn’t deserve to be re-elected in 2010.

If you want the government to be accountable, this is the way to do it.
Want to know where all the money went, this is the way to do it.

Joke of the Day

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car..

Then the Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a Herd of sheep.

.... Now give me back my dog.

How To Contact Your Elected Representatives

This is directly from RollCall. Org. Please note you may find your representatives contact information to the right on the page.


Tips On Telephoning Your Elected Representatives

To find your senators' and representative's phone numbers, you may use our searchable online congressional directory or call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask for your senators' and/or representative's office.
Remember that telephone calls are usually taken by a staff member, not the member of Congress. Ask to speak with the aide who handles the issue about which you wish to comment.
After identifying yourself, tell the aide you would like to leave a brief message, such as: "Please tell Senator/Representative (Name) that I support/oppose (S.___/H.R.___)."
You will also want to state reasons for your support or opposition to the bill. Ask for your senators' or representative's position on the bill. You may also request a written response to your telephone call.
Tips On Writing Congress

The letter is the most popular choice of communication with a congressional office. If you decide to write a letter, this list of helpful suggestions will improve the effectiveness of the letter:
Your purpose for writing should be stated in the first paragraph of the letter. If your letter pertains to a specific piece of legislation, identify it accordingly, e.g., House bill: H. R. ____, Senate bill: S.____.
Be courteous, to the point, and include key information, using examples to support your position.
Address only one issue in each letter; and, if possible, keep the letter to one page.

Addressing Correspondence:
To a Senator:
The Honorable (full name)
__(Rm.#)__(name of)Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator:
To a Representative:
The Honorable (full name)
__(Rm.#)__(name of)House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative:
Note: When writing to the Chair of a Committee or the Speaker of the House, it is proper to address them as:
Dear Mr. Chairman or Madam Chairwoman:
Dear Madam Speaker or Mr. Speaker:
Tips On E-mailing Congress

Generally, the same guidelines apply as with writing letters to Congress. You may find and e-mail your senators and representative directly from this Web site.

Republican Congressmen and Women Rock!

While the grotesque $819B Bucket of Organic Lard known as the stimulus plan was passed by the House yesterday, it was done without one Republican vote. Eleven brave Democrats also voted nay to this travesty of legislative crap, which was passed with 244-188 votes. While it has been sold to the American people as a package to stimulate jobs, the WSJ reports that only $90B, or 12% of the money will be spent on job creation. The rest of the package includes significant funds for Democrat favored programs such as ACORN, STD prevention, the arts, smoking cessation programs, construction of new ATV trails, etc. etc. The $275B in tax relief will be doled out as a rebate and aimed at primarily lower income individuals who do not pay any federal income taxes. In other words, it's a welfare check. Of course, we know Bush tried the same thing last year, with little stimulatory effect on the economy, and that was BEFORE the crisis hit. Anyone want to guess how much of that $275B in welfare payments will actually be spent to stimulate the economy rather than used to pay a couple of bills? So kudos to the men and women who finally had the guts to stand up and vote No, in the face of hearty opposition. Let's hope that this is the opening salvo in a strong Republican opposition to reckless spending. Finally, I feel that someone is representing the will of so many of us across this country who feel disenfranchised and without a voice in government.

Next up: the Senate vote. This one may be tougher, as Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has indicated he will not filibuster, and the bill in the Senate has more provisions amenable to the GOP. This is where we come in, folks. Our huge groundswell of phone, email, and fax messages sent to Congressmen screamed NO!, and they listened. We must continue to light up the phones, now in the Senate, and make our voices loud and clear.

Click on the links to the left and find your Senator's contact information. Tell them that the Stimulus Plan as currently written is an outrage and and that you encourage them to vote No. They represent you; not the myriad special interests who have hopped on board this train wreck of a bill. Call Mitch too. He needs to demonstrate the same strength that the House leadership has. We won't stand idly by while they sell us down the river.

No Mo' Money

Just as Obama is warning of future years of trillion dollar deficits, and Nancy and Harry are salivating over the prospect of spending more money that we don't have, China has indicated through its economic policies over the past two weeks that it's appetite for buying up US debt is fading fast. So who then is going to buy up all the debt that our government is intent on amassing? The actions of our leaders are reminiscent of a college kid with their first credit card, cluelessly buying cool clothes and partying away, without thinking about the reckoning that awaits.

I'm confused. FDR's big spending on infrastructure did not push the US out of the Depression. Instead, it was a host of other factors, most notably the involvement of the US in WWII, which finally propelled the country out of it's long financial drought. The tax rebates of last spring which put a little spending money in people's pockets, did not curtail the current recession. The $700 billion bailout along with all of the other billions recently spent on nationalizing private businesses, has not had the expected effect of minimizing the pain. So what makes Obama and the Democrats think that doing more of the same is going to do anything more than dig us into a deeper hole? A hole which may be impossible to dig ourselves out of without the aid of Chinese willingness to hold our debt?

This all seems like nothing more than the bad policy of reckless spending and denial which caused the housing bust, but on a much larger scale. Unfortunately, the ramifications could be far more ominous. The US can print more money, but that will only diminish the value of the dollar. If our debtors call in the chips, and the dollar becomes more and more worthless, where does that leave us? It seems like in lean times, it might be worth considering cutting out every bit of fat in the budget. Take the medicine now and stave off a full blown potentially lethal infection later. The problem is that a fiscal conservative's view of wants is a liberal's view of needs. Do we really need to fund cutting edge gyms in prisons, housing for illegal immigrants, private jumbo jets and expensive junkets for members of Congress, and cappuccino makers in schools, when we have NO money? Someone always comes up with an argument why some bit of unnecessary spending should continue, or why some new spending should be initiated. When will they just say "No"? I'll tell you when; when it's too late. When we are in such bad shape that the country becomes like a dying elephant and the scavengers around the globe come and pick our bones. Then people will demand accountability from their leaders.

What scares me is that the people who should know this stuff don't seem to be doing anything to change the direction of our impending wreck.

Ode to 2008

A variation on "My Favorite Things"....

Patriots blow a SO perfect season
Real estate markets collapse for some reason
Fannie and Freddie and Barney and Dodd
Madoff's exposed as a rob-the-rich fraud

McCain and Obama run a strange race
Media bias a slap in the face
Caribou Barbie riles up the crowds
Wright hates the US and yells it out loud

Terrorists, Pirates, and Hurricane Ike
Joe asks Barack all about his tax hike
Iran's getting Nukes and Putin's real cranky
Edwards the Hypocrite likes hanky-panky

Meltdown on Wall Street, $700 billion bailouts
Bush and Congress, OMG they're such sell-outs!
Mumbai and Plaxico, where does it end
Dems are UAW's very best friend

GM and Chrysler and Ford all with their hands out
Blagojevich puts Senate-For-Sale out
Gas and oil prices go through the roof
Kenyan Obama won't show us the proof

When I watch stocks fall, and more bailouts,
and I'm feeling mad
I simply remember I'm not going insane
And then I don't feel so bad.

What If...

Headlines scream of looming deficits and ongoing, seemingly never ending new stimulus programs proposed and dreamed up by the Democrats in their quest to nationalize every industry in the USA, and I wonder what the consequences will be. What will the USA look like when my kids are adults? What kind of tax burdens will they shoulder in order to ensure that everyone gets their "fair share", with no regard to their contribution to society? Will they ever know of the opportunities to attain prosperity for which America has been known for 200 years? Or will their efforts be for naught in a country which will eagerly strip them of their earnings should they desire to go above and beyond to educate themselves, work harder, and provide more for their own families?

If indeed the USA of tomorrow looks more like the France or Denmark of today, (minus the beautifully preserved historic cities and towns), then would I, or my children choose to live here? What other options exist for a fruitful existence based on one's personal responsibility and desire to achieve, to reach farther down into the human spirit to create, to strive, to provide a better life for one's family? What if huge numbers of educated people with a strong work ethic got so fed up that they just....left? Went to Mexico or Tazmania or Kenya or wherever to start a new life? Doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, engineers, computer geeks, scientists, entreprenuers, manufacturers. For a moment, forget the issues related to visas and attaining citizenship and whatnot. Just imagine a mass of the (relatively) richest, most educated, and entreprenuerial people on the planet moving to some other place to start a new life, based on the principles espoused by the America they once knew. The America which rewarded creativity and work ethic and education and risk taking rather than rewarding only abject failure. The kind of America our ancestors left their homelands for in search of opportunity. Would a developing country willingly throw this great human capital away? Perhaps some would welcome their traditional American can-do spirit and allow them to create an existence which would better the lives of all. Without having to own them all.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

One of the comments I received on my last blog post suggested that I list the links to our government leaders on the blog. I thought that was a superb idea, and now you can easily access your US Congressman or Woman and your Senators by clicking on the links to the right. We can complain all we want about how inept, corrupt, or out of touch our leaders may be, but unless we make our opinions known to them, nothing will change. Thus I urge you to contact your government leaders as often as you feel necessary and Let Your Voice Be Heard! Do nothing and you will change nothing.

I've Been Thinking

As I watch and read about Congress grilling the CEO's of the Big Three Automakers, some questions keep popping into my mind.

1) The CEO's rightfully took it on the chin for flying to Washington to beg for money in their private corporate jets. They have failing companies, and yet they still flew in those things, which cost $20,000 each for a round trip from Detroit to Washington. The leaders of Congress also have failed miserably in their jobs, and have approval ratings in the toilet. Why doesn't someone grill Nancy Pelosi about her taxpayer funded jumbo jet, which flies her non-stop to California and back every week at an estimated cost of over $5 million per year? Of OUR money? In THIS economy?

2) Barney Frank has also been front and center in the debate about how to spend bailout money. Why doesn't someone ask him about the part he played in the collapse of the economy with his demands to allow non-qualified buyers to buy houses?

3) Chris Dodd is asking for the ouster of failed GM CEO Richard Wagoner as part of the auto bailout deal. Why doesn't somone ask for his ouster for his part in the Fannie and Freddie debacle?

4) Sniveling Senate leader Harry Reid complains about the stinky tourists in Washington. Why doesn't someone ask him to go home where he will not have to put up with the unwashed masses he purports to stand up for?

The outright hypocrisy of our Congressional leaders boggles the mind. They don't even bother to hide it. Do they think that we are really that stupid? Apparently so.

The Effects of Credit Gluttony

An interesting commentary on the free market system:

THE FREE MARKET CONSENSUS 1989-2008: RIP
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on November 26, 2008

The subprime mortgage crisis is only the Sarajevo which caused the financial collapse. The real reason is the massive explosion of debt at all levels and in all forms that has engulfed the world. Since 1992, the total of debt in the world has gone from a level equal to global GDP to a level that is now 3.7 times as much as global GDP. This debt explosion, explained in Charles Morris' book (no relation) The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, consists not only of mortgages, but bonds for corporations that can't repay them, credit cards for consumers who are neck deep in debt, car loans for drivers who can't meet the payments, student loans that are swamping young couples, and default insurance sold by companies that can't make good on their commitments. This massive debt has to be sweated out of our global economic system like a heroin addiction. But we won't have to go cold turkey. Governments around the world are committed to mitigating the pain. They are not about to ask us to go through the agony of another Great Depression. They have learned the lessons of the 30s. So government will ease our pain with stimulus packages and corporate bailouts to protect us and the companies that sustain our employment base. These bailouts and stimuli will not solve the problem. They are simply pain killers - methadone - designed to mitigate our suffering. It is only the private sector shakeout, "creative destruction" in the words of Joseph Shumpeter, that can eradicate the bad debt and bring the economy back to health. To fail to go through this process would put us in the same situation as Japan, which evaded a reckoning with its bad debt crisis and has suffered with twenty years of stagnation as a result. But to go through withdrawal, even with methadone, will be a long and painful process. Liberals -- demand siders -- and conservatives -- supply siders -- disagree on the remedies for the crisis. The demand siders feel that we need to stimulate demand by passing out checks and cutting middle class taxes. The right points out that this will only be a drop in the ocean of global demand and that much of the money will be used for debt reduction and to buy Chinese products. The supply siders plead for a cut in corporate taxes and capital gains levies. Critics say that the current lack of confidence in the economy inhibits investment no matter how much the tax code incentivizes it. Both solutions and both criticisms are correct. The proper medication - the right methadone - is a balance between the two. But, conceptually, what is happening is the end of the consensus around free market economics engendered by the fall of communism. The era of free market consensus lasted from 1989 through 2008. It is now over. Bush and Obama will leave us with a legacy of government regulation, at a minimum, and control, at the maximum, over the economy. When the Republican version of the bailout, calling for loans and insurance instead of outright grants of money to corporations, was rejected (thanks to John McCain), the fate of the free market era was sealed. With the bailout cash came the reasonable demand for "equity for the taxpayers" in return. Enter the government. Now the federal government is the major shareholder in most of our important financial and insurance companies and in many of our manufacturing corporations. Now we hear this leverage articulated in reasonable demands for limits on corporate executive bonuses and compensation. But soon it will metastasize into calls for a public voice in lending policies and government management and control. Obama and a top heavy Democratic Congress will accelerate this trend and there is nothing the Republican Party will be able to do about it. In the meantime, Obama will pass his entire radical agenda by dressing up the expansion of health insurance and his other schemes as part of a "stimulus package." Thus sanitized, the most massive pork barrel in history will be rubber stamped in a matter of days by the new Democratic Congress. Obama will be freed from the discipline of the balanced budget. With a bi-partisan consensus t hat deficits are vital in fighting the crisis (or mitigating the pain) there is no constraint on Obama and his party. The sky is the limit on spending. Indeed, spending is now a national duty. The inevitable result is massive inflation. And since the deficit spending will have been simply to reduce the pain of the depression and not to cure its cause, it will be a stagflation beyond anything we have ever known. A depressflation. Then the question will be: When will we realize that government controls are magnifying, not solving the problems that caused the depression? When will the patience of the public with Obama's remedies run out? When will we realize that the inflation the deficits are causing are more painful than the unemployment they are mitigating? Eventually all this will come to pass. Our guess is 2010. But maybe it won't be until 2012 or alter. In the meantime, the era of big government is back!

Wolves at the Door

The numbers being thrown around by the Fed to bailout various entities is staggering. I'm not sure how many zeros are involved anymore; I simply can't keep up. Our current leader, Bush, tells us there will be more where that came from, while our future leader, Obama, is busily crafting another $500-$700 billion stimulus package which he plans to sign on Inauguration Day. While we are in the midst of a significant financial crisis, this country has been through it before, and has survived.

My concern is that Obama and his posse of Democrats in Congress see this as an opportunity. An opportunity to push through the biggest changes in our government since it's inception. They are licking their chops at the opportunity to drastically alter the landscape by using our fear and our panic. "Don't worry, we'll take care of it. We're really, really smart, and we know better than you. Don't you worry your pretty little heads about this." In times of deep stress, particularly when the situation is complicated, most people will hunker down and let their leaders do what they may. They put their faith in their leaders out of lack of confidence in themselves and their ability to effect change. To do that in the current environment would be a huge mistake, and create irrevocable damage to our country.

Step into the future for a minute. Hopefully, we've weathered the storm, a little bedraggled, but still here. What will our country look like in terms of it's economic principles? With the government owning stakes in banks, insurers, homeowner's mortgages, automakers, and God knows what else, along with a government run healthcare system, tighter government regulations, and a massive redistribution of income, what will we call ourselves? Certainly not capitalists. The principle of liberty, which our founders wrote in stone in our Constitution, will be thwarted, because without the individual ability to control our own destiny, we lose our freedom. We lose our freedom to pursue happiness through our own endeavors. Our nation will lose the very essence of what makes it great.

Snookered: $24,000 Per Man, Woman, and Child

Eye-Popping Numbers from Bloomberg today:

Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Update1)
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the only plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.
When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.
“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”
Too Big to Fail
Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and interviewed regulatory officials, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort.
The bailout includes a Fed program to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes, called commercial paper, that companies use to pay bills, begun Oct. 27, and $1.4 trillion from the FDIC to guarantee bank-to-bank loans, started Oct. 14.
William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said the two programs are unlikely to lose money. The bigger risk comes from rescuing companies perceived as “too big to fail,” he said.
The government committed $29 billion to help engineer the takeover in March of Bear Stearns Cos. by New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and $122.8 billion in addition to TARP allocations to bail out New York-based American International Group Inc., once the world’s largest insurer. Yesterday, Citigroup Inc. received $306 billion of government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets. The Treasury Department also will inject $20 billion into the bank after its stock fell 60 percent last week.
“No question there is some credit risk there,” Poole said.
Exposure
Congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican on the Financial Services Committee, said risk is lurking in the programs that Poole thinks are safe.
“The thing that people don’t understand is it’s not how likely that the exposure becomes a reality, but what if it does?” Issa said. “There’s no transparency to it so who’s to say they’re right?”
The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $23 trillion, or 38 percent, of the value of the world’s companies and brought down three of the biggest Wall Street firms.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average through Friday is down 38 percent since the beginning of the year and 43 percent from its peak on Oct. 9, 2007. The S&P 500 fell 45 percent from the beginning of the year through Friday and 49 percent from its peak on Oct. 9, 2007. The Nikkei 225 Index has fallen 46 percent from the beginning of the year through Friday and 57 percent from its most recent peak of 18,261.98 on July 9, 2007. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is down 78 percent, to $53.31, on Friday from its peak of $247.92 on Oct. 31, 2007, and 75 percent this year.
‘Snookered’
Regulators hope the rescue will contain the damage and keep banks providing the credit that is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.
Most of the spending programs are run out of the New York Fed, whose president, Timothy Geithner, is said to be President- elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury Secretary.
The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. and an economist for the Atlanta Fed for 10 years until January. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer.”
New Deal
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, when almost 10,000 banks failed and there was no mechanism to bolster them with cash, is the only rival to the government’s current response. The savings and loan bailout of the 1990s cost $209.5 billion in inflation-adjusted numbers, of which $173 billion came from taxpayers, according to a July 1996 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office.
The 1979 U.S. government bailout of Chrysler consisted of bond guarantees, adjusted for inflation, of $4.2 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation report.
The commitment of public money is appropriate to the peril, said Ethan Harris, co-head of U.S. economic research at Barclays Capital Inc. and a former economist at the New York Fed. U.S. financial firms have taken writedowns and losses of $666.1 billion since the beginning of 2007, according to Bloomberg data.
“This is the worst capital markets crisis in modern history,” Harris said. “So you have the biggest intervention in modern history.”
Federal Lawsuit
Bloomberg has requested details of Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral.
Collateral is an asset pledged to a lender in the event a loan payment isn’t made.
“Some have asked us to reveal the names of the banks that are borrowing, how much they are borrowing, what collateral they are posting,” Bernanke said Nov. 18 to the House Financial Services Committee. “We think that’s counterproductive.”
The Fed should account for the collateral it takes in exchange for loans to banks, said Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago-based Northern Trust Co. and a former research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
“There is a lack of transparency here and, given that the Fed is taking on a huge amount of credit risk now, it would seem to me as a taxpayer there should be more transparency,” Kasriel said.
$4.4 Trillion
Bernanke’s Fed is responsible for $4.4 trillion of pledges, or 60 percent of the total commitment of $7.4 trillion, based on data compiled by Bloomberg concerning U.S. bailout steps started a year ago.
“Too often the public is focused on the wrong piece of that number, the $700 billion that Congress approved,” said J.D. Foster, a former staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The other areas are quite a bit larger.”
The Fed’s rescue attempts began last December with the creation of the Term Auction Facility to allow lending to dealers for collateral. After Bear Stearns’s collapse in March, the central bank started making direct loans to securities firms at the same discount rate it charges commercial banks, which take customer deposits.
In the three years before the crisis, such average weekly borrowing by banks was $48 million, according to the central bank. Last week it was $91.5 billion.
Lehman Failure
The failure of a second securities firm, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., in September, led to the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, or MMIFF. The two programs, which have pledged $2.3 trillion, are designed to restore calm in the money markets, which deal in certificates of deposit, commercial paper and Treasury bills.
“Money markets seized up after Lehman failed,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse Group in New York and a former aide to Fed chief Paul Volcker. “Lehman failing made a lot of subsequent actions necessary.”
The FDIC, chaired by Sheila Bair, is contributing 20 percent of total rescue commitments. The FDIC’s $1.4 trillion in guarantees will amount to a bank subsidy of as much as $54 billion over three years, or $18 billion a year, because borrowers will pay a lower interest rate than they would on the open market, according to Raghu Sundurum and Viral Acharya of New York University and the London Business School.
Bank Subsidy
Congress and the Treasury have ponied up $892 billion in TARP and other funding, or 12 percent.
The Federal Housing Administration, overseen by Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steven Preston, was given the authority to guarantee $300 billion of mortgages, or about 4 percent of the total commitment, with its Hope for Homeowners program, designed to keep distressed borrowers from foreclosure.
Most of the federal guarantees reduce interest rates on loans to banks and securities firms, which would create a subsidy of at least $6.6 billion annually for the financial industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg comparing rates charged by the Fed against market interest currently paid by banks.
Not included in the calculation of pledged funds is an FDIC proposal to prevent foreclosures by guaranteeing modifications on $444 billion in mortgages at an expected cost of $24.4 billion to be paid from the TARP, according to FDIC spokesman David Barr. The Treasury Department hasn’t approved the program.
Automakers
Bernanke and Paulson, former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, have also promised as much as $200 billion to shore up nationalized mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FDIC arranged for $139 billion in loan guarantees for General Electric Co.’s finance unit.
The tally doesn’t include money to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. Obama has said he favors financial assistance to keep them from collapse.
Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee Nov. 18 that the $250 billion already allocated to banks through the TARP is an investment, not an expenditure.
“I think it would be extraordinarily unusual if the government did not get that money back and more,” Paulson said.
‘We Haircut It’
In his Nov. 18 testimony, Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee that the central bank wouldn’t lose money.
“We take collateral, we haircut it, it is a short-term loan, it is very safe, we have never lost a penny in these various lending programs,” he said.
A haircut refers to the practice of lending less money than the collateral’s current market value.
Requiring the Fed to disclose loan recipients might set off panic, said David Tobin, principal of New York-based loan-sale consultants and investment bank Mission Capital Advisors LLC.
“If you mark to market today, the banking system is bankrupt,” Tobin said. “So what do you do? You try to keep it going as best you can.”
“Mark to market” means adjusting the value of an asset, such as a mortgage-backed security, to reflect current prices.
Some of the bailout assistance could come from tax breaks in the future. The Treasury Department changed the tax code on Sept. 30 to allow banks to expand the deductions on the losses banks they were buying, according to Robert Willens, a former Lehman Brothers tax and accounting analyst who teaches at Columbia University Business School in New York.
‘Wells Fargo Notice’
Wells Fargo & Co., which is buying Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia Corp., will be able to deduct $22 billion, Willens said. Adding in other banks, the code change will cost $29 billion, he said.
“The rule is now popularly known among tax lawyers as the ‘Wells Fargo Notice,’” Willens said.
The regulation was changed to make it easier for healthy banks to buy troubled ones, said Treasury Department spokesman Andrew DeSouza.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said he was angry that banks used the money for acquisitions.
“The only purpose for this money is to lend,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “It’s not for dividends, it’s not for purchases of new banks, it’s not for bonuses. There better be a showing of increased lending roughly in the amount of the capital infusions” or Congress may not approve the second half of the TARP money.

Life On Mars

Have you seen that new tv show in which the cop hits his head in a car accident and wakes up from a coma in 1973? He has no idea why or how he got there. I'm kind of feeling the same thing these days, as if I am living in some sort of alternate reality, in which everything I took for granted has been turned on its head. For instance:

1) I see Barney Frank on tv in his dandy striped suits lisping his socialist, "thank God I'm here to save the little guy" nonsense, and who is now saying that perhaps the automakers will need a $100 billion loan. Isn't this the same guy who refused to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who "wanted to roll the dice with the housing market" some more? You know, the same subprime housing market which has sunk us into the worst financial crisis since the Depression? And this guy was promptly voted back into office by the geniuses in Massachusetts with 60% of the vote.
2) Bankers, Insurers, and Big Three Automakers are lining up to receive their share of the gazillions of dollars of taxpayer money because they took advantage of the system, and failed miserably. Some bankers have stated that they would give up their giant bonuses this year and (gasp) take only $600,000 in pay. AIG, the nation's big insurer, has taken our money and gone on executive spa retreats. And the Big 3 CEO's flew to the HILL to beg for money in their individual corporate jets at a mere cost of $20,000 per trip. That's Detroit to Washington, DC, a $300 round trip ticket on a commercial airline.
4) Homeowners who bought more house than they could afford, with no money down, and who are now defaulting on their mortgages, are clamoring for part of the $700 billion dollar bailout. Sure, give the delinquents a reduction on their principal owed (basically a free down payment on their house). After all, Christmas is coming and they need to buy a new flat screen tv for the family.
5) Blue states and municipalities with their overbloated budgets and union strangleholds are lining up for some moola too. Sure, let's pay for some more overlapping, unnecessary services and money draining contracts. Don't bother cutting back on spending. That would be a bit Grinch-like at this time of year.
6) Students are getting in on the act. Why not? Why should they actually have to pay for school? And homebuilders are asking for a $22,000 per home tax credit for homebuyers next year, as well as a government subsidized 2.99% mortgage rate. Golly, if I'd only known that, I'd have waited a year to buy my new fixer-upper.
7) Obama, the man who shouted "CHANGE" from the rooftops for his 22 month campaign, is filling his White House with a bunch of Clintonistas. Perhaps I'm actually living in 1992?
8) Pirates have emerged as a big international threat in the waters off of Somalia. Only instead of cannons and swords, they use AK47's and speed boats. I wonder if there will be a movie with Johnny Depp.
9)Iran's ready to build a nuke and Israel is standing on alert. Our good buddies in Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela are all playing nicey-nice with each other in our own backyard.

Meanwhile, those people who played by the rules, saved some money, and lived within their means have lost half of their investments over the past 2 months, are losing their jobs, and are living paycheck to paycheck.

Am I missing something here? Is this the United States of America, the country which prides itself on working hard for the chance to get ahead, self reliance, personal responsibility, and innovation? Why is failure being so eagerly rewarded by our government? Where the heck am I?