The video below is explains in just a few minutes why the US budget cannot be balanced. You will never have a better explanation than this one.
You should be afraid that the two parties that got us into this mess will not get us out. Then you should vote like your life depends upon it. It does.
There is a lot happening at the Nevada Republican Convention right now.
If you ever need proof that education does not equal wisdom look no farther than the Department of the Treasury, the Congress, and the President of the United States. Educated at the finest colleges in America, some of these people trace their government service decades into the past. Reared in privilege, surrounded by brilliant and accomplished families, and with access to all the knowledge in America, the leaders in all three areas have failed to manage the government’s household and its bank account in a responsible manner. If the National Treasury were a blind trust, those managers would be charged with crimes by the trust owners. That’s us… and we should think about that.
When it comes to big government and low taxes, David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the United States said, “That historical trend has left us with a big government that is constantly at war with a philosophy of personal responsibility and individual liberty that demands a limited government. We have created big-government programs, but we try to finance them with small-government taxes. That spells deficits and debt, and if we don’t reconcile these conflicting views of government, it will spell insolvency for the government and a worse life for many Americans. We have to balance our ideas about what government can do with our recognition of what it should do and what we are willing to pay for.”
America borrows about 40 cents of every dollar that it spends. The American government has a spending problem. There are two kinds of spending: Mandatory and Discretionary. Within the Mandatory category, 71% of government spending is for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Each was established for the noble purpose of reducing the misery of people. Within the Discretionary category, the Defense Department accounts for 51% of the spending. It makes the world a safer place to live for us, our allies, and even our enemies by ensuring the safety of the global trading routes. Another 46% of the Discretionary spending goes for domestic programs like infrastructure.
The American Pie is only so big and it is not big enough for all the Mandatory and Discretionary spending our leaders want. Is our solution to make a bigger pie (raise taxes) or to change the size of each piece (i.e., cut Discretionary and increase Mandatory spending) or to simply make smaller pies with the crust and filling that we already have (cut spending)? These are choices that we voters face. The worst of all possibilities, David M. Walker tells us, is ‘big-government programs and small-government taxes’.
Reasonable citizens everywhere can see that we must begin making smaller pies immediately, change the size of the pieces to ensure our priorities are balanced, and then consider how we will find more crust and filling to make a bigger American Pie in the future. Yet the two political parties will never agree on anything.
If America is to have a pie at all in the future, think differently and vote independently this year. The two parties that got us into this mess will not be the ones to get us out.
If big government and low taxes are at war with personal responsibility and individual liberty then I say we should begin a return to individual freedom, personal responsibility, and personal choice. Let our efforts be about right-sizing America and not capsizing it.
Dale Lehner
Oh, dear. Every time Congress “modernize’s” a law you and I get taken to the cleaners. ( Remember the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 that created the recession? How about the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that created unregulated derivatives? How about the Food Safety Modernization Act which seeks to prevent contamination and now includes pet food under its control?)
You know we are in deep trouble when both political parties get together and pass a JOBS Act. This is after 2 years of a Republican Party thwarting every Democrat-sponsored legislation brought forward and when Senate Democrats continuously fail to pass a budget in the past two years. But now they both agree.
I know, I know. You thought those Republicans were telling you the truth when they said “Government doesn’t create jobs, the private sector creates jobs”. Then those pesky Republicans got together with those pesky Democrats and they decided to “modernize” the way that companies raise capital via the stock market and they call it a JOBS Act. Funny. Reducing safeguards results in more jobs?
You and I are in deep trouble. Matt Taibbi writes about it here.
The “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.
In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.
Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.
The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.
Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give “pre-prospectus” presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they’ll still be held liable for what’s in those. But it’ll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the “pre-presentation.”
The JOBS Act also loosens a whole range of other reporting requirements, and expands stock investment beyond “accredited investors,” giving official sanction to the internet-based fundraising activity known as “crowdfunding.”
But the big one, to me, is the bit about exempting firms from real independent tests of internal controls for five years.
There we have it. Democrats and Republicans working together to invite fraud in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) by “modernizing” the laws that gave us a level playing field. Caveat Emptor ( Let the buyer beware) when it comes to believing anything about new IPOs. Seems to me that those blue-collar workers with 401Ks invested in the stock market are not going to know that the financial services managers in financial growth markets are buying stock in companies whose value may be illusory. Only company insiders are going to know the truth in the future.
The article has more to say about this new law. Modernization. Yup, that’s what they call it.
And what is wrong with the staid tradition in capitalism? Can’t some people make enough money ‘the old fashioned way’ anymore?
Vote for me and I’ll work to retain traditions that have brought America and its people success. Like the Bill of Rights. Like the Constitution. Like honorable and traditional capitalism.
Reasonable Citizen 