“Balanced Budget” is a Bad Idea The idea of balancing the budget sounds fine. It means the expenses do not, or are not supposed to, exceed revenue. Good accounting practice. That idea has a lot of...

Things we must change As a nation we made a terrible mistake. We voted with our emotions rather than our brains. We became lemmings, and we ran off the cliff. We became mesmerized by a very...

"THE FORMULA THAT NEVER FAILS" (Pay attention) Here it is---DA, DA, DA "You tell me the rules; I'll tell you if I want to play the game" That's it. Don't forget it. Got it? Don't forget it. Understanding THE FORMULA THAT NEVER FAILS is the key to understanding how we continually stumble on the "greatest surprises in the world" UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES! Let me explain this. Each of us does an analysis, it may be conscious, or autonomic, when we are confronted with an opportunity to comply, or not comply-with almost anything. Our analysis considers the probable result of complying versus the negative consequence of not complying. In days gone by, in school, we had opportunities to choose to be "good kids”, or “bad kids". When we realized that better results were probable if we chose to be "good kids" most of the time we chose that course. In many cases we saw the consequence of the other choice. Applying the school lessons to business we observed stories of great business success, and sometimes, bad failures. In almost each case, it is possible to recognize “turning points” which occurred where the business took a turn for the worse, or, for the better. In many of these examples, it is possible to realize that emphasis was on “easy” rather than “right” and the results turned out badly. There had been no, or very little, analysis about possible consequences of each of the choices. In the case of America, we are in a major economic jam due to the fact that we chose what appeared to be “easy” rather than choose other choices that would be harder, but would have better results for the future. As an example, a major responsibility of the Federal Reserve is to control the money supply. That means that when the economy is without great stress, and inflation in not wild, payments are steady, employment is at a good level, money supply should accommodate sound growth. The Fed has abilities (tools) to restrain growth when “bubbles” are developing. It can reduce the amount of money the banks have available to lend, it can increase interest rates by controlling interest rates to banks, it can loosen up money supply so as to make borrowing easier etc. There are many ways to put a lid on expansion or to boost the economy. So when congress, ala Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and many others, thought it would be a good idea to increase the percentage of home owners in the country, they went to Congress and sold the idea of relaxing lending standards so the down payments were reduced, credit scores were relaxed, income requirements were reduced, and a myriad of new easy to qualify mortgage programs were introduced. Congress authorized this new relaxation. No doubt members of congress were pleased because now they could tell their constituents that where many of them seemed to be renters for life, now they could be homeowners. The fox was in the henhouse. Now for the bad news. We had some new rules. “THEY TOLD US THE RULES” and people, companies, and industries had the opportunity to examine these new rules, and make decisions. Many of them realized that there was going to be torrents of mortgage money available for previously non-able home buyers, which would therefore increase demand for homes. The increased demand would result in competition for homes, which would increase price levels, and every aspect of the housing industry would boom. After a quick analysis they decided that “THEY WOULD PLAY THE GAME” Guess what? That is exactly what happened. They played. To the hilt. Because of lower underwriting standards, millions of people were able to sign for mortgages that they were not able to service and pay on time. Enough of that. You understand. We had loads of “UNINTEND CONSEQUENCES” Please understand, whenever there are rules, we owe it to ourselves to carefully analyze how they apply to us, and how, or if we should come under their jurisdiction. One final thing, and I will write about it later, is that something that we have proven again and again, is that the way to create permanent, long lasting jobs is to let Americans get to work-with their own money. No government “stimulus” no long term debt. We will risk our own money, with our own management, and have the goal of reaping the rewards for our knowledge, efforts and investment. Later. Thanks, RW

Title Putting Government First—Ahead of the Nation By Patrick J. Buchanan Posted: August 12, 2010 WorldNetDaily Commentary Where a man's purse is, there his heart will be also. If you would know where the heart of the Obama party is today, consider. In the dog days of August, with temperatures in D.C. rising above 100, Nancy Pelosi called the House back to Washington to enact legislation that could not wait until September. Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose own governments had decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their constitutional duty to balance their books. Workers their own governments thought expendable, Congress decided were so essential, it borrowed another 26 thousand million dollars from China to keep them on state and local payrolls. A nation whose national debt is approaching the size of its gross national product, that goes abroad to borrow money to keep non-essential workers on government payroll is a nation on the way down and out. And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America's house in order is deluding himself. As long as this Congress and White House remain in power, a U.S. default on its national debt is inevitable. The only question is when. Nor is this the first time the Obama administration has rushed to save workers whom their own state, city and county governments were prepared to let go. Among the reasons the $800 billion stimulus failed is that so little of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent to ensure that government workers did not have to share in the national sacrifice. Why Pelosi & Co. felt compelled to return to D.C., to ensure that state and local government payrolls were not pared is not hard to understand. Which party does the American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees usually contribute to, work for, and vote for? At which of the two party conventions are teachers and government employees hugely over-represented? Consider, too, the states deepest in debt and facing the largest cuts in employee ranks, pay and benefits: California, Illinois, federal workers are paid too well, Obamaland- New York. In these states, public employees earn at least $10,000 per year more in pay and benefits than the average America worker who is bailing them out. Hence, we have a situation where private-sector workers in Middle America are being taxed, their children being driven ever deeper into debt to China, so government employees, who have greater job security than they do, and earn more in pay and benefits than they will ever earn, can stay in Fat City. And folks wonder why so many Americans detest government. In the same week Congress came back to prevent AFSCME from taking a haircut, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in 2009, only three of 52 metro areas with over 1 million in population saw "net earnings and the broader measure of personal income both rise." Are you surprised to learn Washington, D.C., was among the three? That same day, USA Today had a startling report on how, during the last decade, U.S. Government workers, like Wall Street bankers, left their fellow Americans in the dust. "Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade. "Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. ... The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year." Remarkable. U.S. government workers, who enjoy the greatest job security of any Americans, now earn twice as much in pay and benefits as the average American. This is not the D.C. some of us grew up in. Nor is this all Obama's doing – for most of the fat years of the federal workforce came while Washington was being run by a Congress of big-government conservatives and a White House of Bush-Cheney Republicans. No wonder the tea party is targeting both parties. Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that the Obamaites, who intervened twice and massively with bailouts to prevent minor layoffs of local and state government employees, have the stomach to do the major surgery needed to cut the federal monolith down to size. For the vast majority of the tens of millions of government workers vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state and local programs. What Pelosi & Co. were saying with that $26 billion bailout this week is, "We are going to protect our own." Which is why either Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. go, or we are gone.