October 25, 2008 by Jim.

So, the two parties are duking it out for the Presidency.  The debates are moot, they will both continue the harm to Americans.  It is clear that the parties no longer have the best interests of the populace at heart.  Both parties will continue to print money, spend foolishly and bluster for the benefit of their power, not the people.

The last post was an article about 545 people and how they are ultimately responsible for our government and it’s misdeeds, missteps and lack of responsiveness to the people.  It is eloquent and to the point.  They all need to go.  They have shown that they will not fix problems, just create them and then blame the other party.

I’ve joined the Libertarian Party.  I feel that the next congressional and presidential elections in ‘10 and ‘12 will present the best chance for a third party.  I will be working to mainstream the party, show that there are practical benefits, that the party is not full ok kooks, that it’s ok to leave the mainstream parties and to show the common ground between them.

The third party is not a stranger to me.  I’ve long felt it was closest to my views of the parties but they’ve failed until now to project a sense of inclusion, of sanity and equality with the two biggies and to get anything done you have to play in the sandbox with the big boys.  The next two years are the time to show there are three legitimate parties and that it is the answer to the corruption and failures of the Democrats and Republicans.

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October 16, 2008 by Jim.

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
 
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
 
You and I don’t propose a federal budget.   The president does.
 
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.   The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
 
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
 
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
 
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices  545 human beings out of the 300 million  are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
 
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.   In 1913,

Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
 
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.   They have no legal authority.   They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.   I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash.   The politician has the power to accept or reject it.   No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault.  

They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
 
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.   No normal human being would have

the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget.   He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
 
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.  Who is the speaker of the House?   She is the leader of the majority party.   She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.   If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over

his veto if they agree to.
 
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted - by present facts -

of incompetence and irresponsibility.   I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.   When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must

follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
 
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
 
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.
 
If the Marines are in IRAQ, it’s because they want them in IRAQ .

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it

that way.
 
There are no insoluble government problems.
 
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists,

whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take

this power.  Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like ‘the economy,’ ‘inflation,’ or ‘politics’ that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
 
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
 
They, and they alone, have the power.
 
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption

to manage their own employees.
 
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
 

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
 

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October 8, 2008 by Jim.

Today I saw one of those really annoying ads for a company that negotiates down your back taxes and I thought of why people are looking to Obama as the ‘change’ candidate.

What is annoying about the ads are the people that look so happy they just defrauded all the rest of us.  “I owed the IRS 95 thousand dollars and they settled for 5 thousand”.  At least that’s what I find objectionable. The ads should read “I owed the US Government 95 thousand, but I thought I’d make you pay it”.

What’s damned scary is that the liberals don’t find the same things annoying.  What they hear is “I owed the IRS 95 thousand dollars, and you could get away cheap like I did”.  That is exactly what is happening with the mortgage debacle.  What Senator Biden said in the VP debate last week was the bankruptcy court should have the power to re-write mortgage contracts.  And Senator Obama wants the government to buy mortgages so the government can do the same thing on their own.  Liberals only want to know why they aren’t getting theirs.

What happened to “Ask not what your country can do for you…”?

For the record, Senator McCain has echoed a similar plan on a smaller scale.  He is wrong too. 
But we’re not ready for a third party…  yet.

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October 5, 2008 by Jim.

The financial bailout bill took some of the attention off of the veep debates last week.  There’s one thing I want to point out that I haven’t seen a single article on.

Sen. Biden, in speaking about the financial crisis, said that bankruptcy court judges should have the ability to lower principle and interest on mortgages. 

Ding Ding Ding, doesn’t that set off alarm bells to you?  Apparently it did not to the press, or the Republicans, or the Fed Chairman, or Fannie and Freddie chairpeople.

A mortgage is a private contract.  It lays out the details whereby you receive money in a lump sum in exchange for a promise to pay it back with interest.  If you weren’t going to be paying interest, do you think anyone would loan you money?

If courts had this power, then any mortgage could be written down without the input of creditors and we think the credit market is frozen now?  How could we expect anyone to make a mortgage loan with anything other than punitive interest considering how big the risk just became?

The only ones foolish enough to make loans under those circumstances would be the Federal Government under Democrat leadership. 

The bailout, statements about modifying (federalizing, really) private monetary contracts, mental health parity (read my previous entry) and the meetings over the weekend with Europe’s bankers all point to a push for an Obama regime to radically move America to the Socialist Left and globalization of the world’s central banks.

I’m scared.  And, Halloween is still 3 weeks away.

Boo!

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October 3, 2008 by Jim.

They didn’t get it.  The democrats scared the republicans into passing a bill which will so enrage the people about the changes coming in health care that socialized medicine just took a giant leap forward.  This bailout bill was piggybacked on a ‘mental health parity’ bill, presumably because that bill already made it through committee.  What is a ‘mental health parity’ bill, you ask?  Think lipstick in 5 gallon pails.  (let me quickly inject that the mental health system needs a huge makeover, but this is not how to get it done) What the bill (now law) says is that all group policy health plans that cover mental health must cover it at parity with other illness and injury.  Have you ever looked at the mental health coverage of most health plans?  It usually covers reimbursement at a lower rate and for a limited time or number of visits.  That’s because aside from being very expensive, there are no hard definitions of the ailments that are quantifiable so they can be faked and stretched out.  The end effect of all this is that insurers and employers will have two options, raise rates catastrophically (funny term, but if my rates continue to rise faster than my paycheck I may have to drop it - catastrophe) or drop mental health coverage all together.

Let’s see.  Raise rates dramatically, or drop coverage.  What a choice our congress has just given us!!! Anger enough people and they’ll start calling for government health care - and they’ll look to the democrats who just pushed them into it.

Don’t be fooled, there are no good intentions here.  I know mental illness.  I have a daughter who is bi-polar and an ex-wife who has a bonafide mental illness as well.  I’ve sat in hospital emergency rooms at 3am while they try to find an open bed at a psychiatric facility.  I’ve been to the group therapy sessions, seen and felt the anguish - fear, anxiety, anger - with the other visitors watching our loved ones speak about their treatment.  But the intentions of this bill are not pure or helpful.  There are ways to bring mental health mainstream, but not by forcing the hands of insurers and employers in one of two both terrible and disparate ways.  The only goal here can be as I said earlier:  Artificially decrease coverage or raise the prices to anger the electorate enough to succumb to the socialist end.

They didn’t get it.  The add-on’s to this bill (now law) are unpalatable.  Tax breaks (wooden arrow makers?) and all the other crap stuffed into this pig with lipstick bloat what might have been at least good intentions.  The senators and representatives that let this happen need to go.  They’ve proven themselves unworthy to hold the titles, the honor, the trust of the American People.

I’m going to do my part and publicly state in this auspicious venue that I will not take my seat on the Republican Executive Committee on Dec 1st.  The party has failed, their members are corrupt and it is time to work to break the two party system.

Please take a look at Bob Barr, the libertarian candidate for president.  You can find information at bobbarr2008.com or countless interviews and speeches at youtube.com.  I’ll bet there is less on his platform that you disagree with than either of the two mainstream parties.

James Tall
Practicalamericans.com

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October 2, 2008 by Jim.

To the editor:

While Barney Frank and Speaker Pelosi are fear mongering and guilting our senators and congressman into voting for a Wall St bailout bill, the press is missing the big picture.

The bill passed by the senate Wednesday night is 1. Piggy backed on the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Parity Act which as written (and passed) will demand that all group health policies increase dramatically their coverage and premiums along with them.  2. Is loaded with pork barrel spending including money for film producers and ‘wooden arrow manufacturers’ 3. Does not address the cause of the problem at hand, just a symptom that could be solved with much less invasive action. 4. Causes the federal government to own stock in public corporations - socialism in any other words.

The fact that this high profile bill could not be filed alone, or passed without irrelevant amendment shows that the congress has stepped to a new low of smarminess and they all need to go.

I say to the House, Vote NO!  And to the voters going to the polls on November 4th vote the incumbents out, regardless of party, and let’s see if we can get a fresh start and perspective.

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October 1, 2008 by Jim.

I’ve been lurking again.  The presidential bull festival has been so depressing that I couldn’t even bring myself to write anything about it.  Now with bailouts and money printing the political environs have gone from absurd to patently rediculous.

The fact of the matter is that neither side gets it.  The democrats are coming across as bitter and just plain smarmy.  I’m sorry, but Barny Frank saying that he’ll speak uncharacteristically nice to get a republican to vote for a bill that changes the whole basis of our government is nauseating.

There are two things that will get us through this mess unscathed and not only are neither party talking about it, but you won’t hear it from the colluding press either.

1.  Pass the FairTax tomorrow.  The advantages of replacing our tax structure in this manner will bring so much capital flooding home that this current mess will look like a small speed bump.  There are so many advantages to this, and no disadvantages - yes I said NO DISADVANTAGES (and I challenge a debate with anyone who says otherwise) that it makes no sense to hold off debate and vote even one more day.

2. We need a national ‘back to basics’ campaign.  We need to go back to the constitution and take a new vote re-affirming it.  It needs to be taught in school for a week.  And scholars need to explain to congress the 10th ammendment and show them a list of what they’ve passed in the last 20 years that violates that clause.

We need a national ‘back to basics’ campain.  We need to go back to the education curriculum of the 1950’s and 60’s when we were educating the people with the drive to create vaccines and spaceships to the moon and teach people again how to think, not look something up on the internet.  And, when education was cheap.  Why do so many people judge education by what we spend?  Some of the best performing schools - public and private - are the lowest spending schools. 

It all comes down to being practical.  Which is what we’re here to discuss.  Join in and comment, make posts.  Let’s leave ideology at the door and talk about what we can make work.  Today.  Now.

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