Select Page
Is The Middle A Place To Deal With Debt?

Is The Middle A Place To Deal With Debt?

As of this writing, debate continues in the US Senate on the compromise Debt Ceiling bill, but one bit of information from the House vote presents an interesting view on the state of the Moderate position: all 5 of Iowa’s congressmen voted against the bill, even...
Is The Middle A Place To Deal With Debt?

OppurtuniTEA to RealiTEA

In a lot of ways you wouldn't need much of a crystal ball to see this coming: A Country over 13 trillion dollars in debt with a government either completely ineffectual or damaging in nearly all spheres except military, enacting massive expenditures passed against the majority opinion of its citizens, which gives rise to a movement that wants to stop spending money it doesn't have and return their government to its Constitutionally relegated space. These people have been branded with a name: the Tea Party, which is weird because I have never been to a party where everyone is this mad. Much has been said about this newly minted surge and much is known. Though you may not have needed it to see it coming, that crystal ball sure could come in handy when trying to envision how the Tea Party will attempt to pivot from being a movement to achieving movement. Being that mine seems to be broken about half the time I'll just tell you that if I could write the script it would look something like this. Never minding how sad it is a movement is needed for this, the beauty of this uprising is the underlying confidence that is implied by the movement. The confidence of the people in saying we can take care of ourselves. We, as Americans, can make decisions on a personal level to better ourselves and our Country while weathering the results. Let us keep the vast majority of our own money and we will be the stewards of our own future. The next step is to have the fortitude to extend this confidence into the political proposals that will be forthcoming after the mid-term elections, when at a minimum Republicans will control the House, if not the Senate as well. Here is what I mean by this-- the process for passing legislation in Washington is to argue for it by making grand proclamations for how some bill's passage will control costs, provide this or that, or stop this or that. Once passed the game turns into one of managing expectations. When a bill is written never is there included benchmarks that need to be met for it to be continued, no rip-cord provisions stating that if certain measurable effects that have been promised do not materialize in a certain amount of time the bill is nullified or re-opened for debate. The reasons for this are obvious. First, when you pass bills upwards of 1,500 pages for a country of over 350 million people nobody knows what will really happen. Second, it flies in the face of political self-preservation by opening the door to, god forbid, being proven wrong. A perfect example of this is [...]
Spreading The Wealth: Is It Socialism?

Spreading The Wealth: Is It Socialism?

It's been an interesting week so far as reaction to the whole Joe The Plumber escapade has heightened people's awareness of Barack Obama's agenda. For the sake of full disclosure, and ensuring people don't accuse me of taking his words out of context, you can see the full transcript of the conversation between Obama and Joe here. I'm going to focus on one sentence that Obama said:
I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.
One can argue a hundred different opinions on this topic, and there's been a lot of comments around how this is a Socialist agenda (and many consider this to be pretty obvious). However, the new argument from the Left is that there's nothing new here that make Obama's plans more Socialist than we are today. Or more Socialist than we have been for nearly 100 years. I received an email

The Housing Bill Is Law

As expected, President Bush signed HR 3221 into law this morning, making billions of federal dollars available to home owners, shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and providing closer oversight of the financial aspects of home ownership to the Administration and...

Swamp Stomper Alert: Housing Bill Heads to White House

Well, it took almost 3 months, but Congress finally passed the bill today, on older version of which was  passed by the House in May, after some considerable back and forth between the Senate and the House.  The bill is HR 3221 (pdf), titled: “Housing and...
    Log in