FDR

One of the goals of President Franklin D Roosevelt was to add a second Bill of Rights to the constitution. The Founding Fathers set up the constitution to limit the power of the federal government. They had lived under the tyranny of the King and wanted to avoid that at all cost. The first ten amendments place limits on the power of the federal government. FDR proposed a second bill which included the right of the government to guarantee a job with a living wage, adequate housing for all citizens, adequate medical care for all, education for all and social security for all. He tried to pack the Supreme Court to accomplish this end but was thwarted by the congress. President Obama feels the same way about the constitution but he is trying a different approach. He wants to transfer the power of the constitution to the federal government using presidential decrees and this will eliminate congress from getting in the way. The way he has chosen to accomplish this is by offering more and more benefits to people and causing them to become more dependent on government. If he can get a majority of the voters to side with him he can move toward bigger government. As voters get accustom to unemployment compensation, food stamps, housing assistance, medical assistance, low interest education loans and more dependent on social security for retirement he can get the second list that FDR strived for. Compare the list by FDR with programs we now have on the books. Guaranteed job Unemployment compensation and welfare benefits along with increasing the number of government employees Housing Every person having the right to home ownership……backfired with the mortgage crisis. Medical Obama care (Medicaid for all) Education low interest student loans provided only by the federal government Social security most popular and most expensive of all government programs FDR would be proud

San Bernadino

San Bernardino, CA a city of 200,000 filed for bankruptcy. Experts say this trend will continue across the state as more and more cities find they are unable to meet their legacy requirements. These cities have promised pension and health care benefits that they cannot afford. I have talked about this many times in the past and it is happening to private companies, but more so to public groups like Municipalities, Counties, School Districts and States. Unlike the federal government which is the worst offender these entities cannot print their own money. To explain how this happens you look back over the past thirty plus years to how public unions have negotiated contracts. The cities union leadership backs a particular candidate for city council and using their influence they get that person elected. Then they sit down across the table from that person and negotiate their contract which includes pension and health care. About one third of the people in this town are living below the poverty level but there are 440 retirees who have pensions above $100,000 per year. One former sheriff gets $290,000. Over the past ten years the city has sold bonds to have money to put into the pension fund and it is still short. Wert said the county's retirement obligations will increase dramatically over the next five years. In 2010-11, the amount was $6 million. For 2011-2012, it will grow to $23.6 million and then to $43.5 million and $66.5 million the next two years. By 2014-2015, the county's costs will escalate to $85.1 million. We have witnessed this same back scratching in the salaries of CEO’s. A is a CEO and on the board of directors for B’s company. B in on my board and we each agree to give each other a big raise. CEO salaries used to be 20 times what the average employee made and today they are 500 times. The state representatives negotiate with state workers, the county workers with the elected county commissioners, the city workers with the elected city council members and the teachers with the elected school board. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Likeable

I think the American People in their own immutable way have finally condensed the complex economic concepts of governance into a one sentence easily understood statement. We will vote for Obama because he is more likable. Now I feel better.

Post office

The Post Office is one of many businesses that are changing because of the Internet. They are losing business as people pay bills on line and write emails instead of letters. It is in the process of going out of business but in an attempt to stave off the end the Union has come up with a story that may not be true. In 2006 the congress told the Post Office that they had to put more money into their pension fund and into the fund that pays for health care so the government would not have to step in and bail them out. Each year for ten years starting in 2007 the PO is required to put 5 billion into these two funds. This has accelerated the losses and caused management to threaten lays offs and curtail Saturday delivery. The Union says the problem is not fewer letters but the payments to the pension and that these payments are not necessary. They maintain that these two funds have more funding that is needed and they want to divert some of these pension monies to current expenses to keep from having lay-offs. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has recently released a report saying that the pension funds do not have extra money and if the 5 billion payments are not made the funds will run short and the taxpayers will have to bail out the PO. As the United State Postal Service faces dire financial straits, a report to be released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office asserts that the solution suggested by USPS would not solve the Postal Service’s financial problems, and would instead result in what would essentially be a taxpayer bailout. USPS contends that the $8.5 billion it lost last year, and the $10 billion it is projected to lose this year, is because it has paid too much money to the federal government to fund retiree health benefits, and it would like to be given access to that overpaid sum in order to help alleviate some of the financial pressure. But in a document obtained by The Daily Caller to be released later on Thursday, the GAO says that based on its analysis, there is no such overpayment. Moreover, it concludes, to pay out the requested money would only stave off disaster, not solve USPS’ underlying financial problems, and instead, it would simply increase the federal government’s liability, which would have to be funded through tax revenue and borrowing, in other words, by taxpayers.

Court

Every time I heard Romney say he would overturn Obamacare if elected I knew it was all talk because he would need 60 votes in the senate to overcome the filibuster that the Democrats would use. Since the Supreme Court ruling on Obama care, all of that has changed. Since the court ruled that the so called penalty for not buying insurance is in fact a tax it is a new ballgame. Through a process called reconciliation a law can be overturned with 51 votes if it involves taxes. With this new ruling, if Romney is elected and the Republicans gain three seats in the Senate they will be able to repeal Obamacare. The other thing the court did was to make it more difficult for congress to pass further laws regarding the commerce clause. This was the clause that allowed the government to pass laws that the states objected to. For example they passed Obama care as insurance reform and said anything that is sold on an interstate basis could be regulated by the federal government. Another part of this changed the way congress could encourage states to follow regulations by taking away funding. The law says that states must accept money from the federal government to implement the Medicaid portion of Obama care. In the past if the states refused the feds would cut off all funding but the court has called that coercion and it is no longer allowed.

Pension at 62

I can say that since my house was appraised at $370,000 in 2006 and today it appraises at $270,000 that I have lost $100,000 but that would not be the whole story. When I built the house in 2002 it cost $220,000 so I could sell it today and make $50,000 so have I really lost money? I mention this because something similar is happening with public pensions. Over the years defined benefit pension plans provided to public employees have been overly generous and now many of these plans are underfunded, that is, they don’t have enough money to pay the promised benefits. People now say they have lost income because their pension must be reduced to avoid bankruptcy. Most of these plans allow employees to retire at age 62 and have more net income than when they were working. That tells you something is out of whack. Average life expectancy for someone age 62 is 21 years.

Gays

Not being a person who shies away from controversy I am interested in the current debate over gay marriage and how there is an open discussion about the fairness aspect and a hidden issue about the practical aspects. An open minded liberal person is the one who presents the arguments about people loving whom they please and this is difficult to refute. Let’s go deeper into the subject and see if we begin to lose some of these liberal thinkers. On most evening TV shows and many afternoon Soaps you can see a man and woman in compromising situations and most people don’t pay a lot of attention. Allow me to change the scene. You have two men, scantily clad in bed with their hands roaming over each other while they are feverishly open mouth kissing. Anyone getting uncomfortable yet? Next move away from the TV and imagine these same two in the privacy of their home. Does sodomy come to mind? This is not some abnormal sexual activity but the normal practice of most gay men. Does this make many people uncomfortable? I claim that it does and that is the reason why you don’t see the intimacy on TV with gays that you see with straights. I maintain that most people do not think of the sexual acts when they decide their view on gay marriage. If thoughts like that happen into their minds they quickly push them aside. Now here is the final test. Did you feel a little uneasy just reading this? Are you concerned that you may not be as open minded as you thought?