My name is Steve and its been 9 days since my last Blog entry. I realized the depth of my addiction only recently and have tried, mostly without success, to go cold turkey. But you can only hold your breath underwater for so long, right? So, I finally had to come up for air. Just a warning to anyone bored enough to actually read this start to finish: my general level of pissedness is peaking and I'm really sick to death of this election cycle, the bailout, the stock market, and the general state of the Union. I need to take Spence and Cass's advice and just turn it off, unplug, and find my happy place again. Except that I'm completely affected by it all, which makes it difficult.Regardless, I thought that it would be theraputic for me to purge it from my system and then retire back to the solitude of my cave until after election day and cling quietly to my guns and religion. So I thought that I would share my top five or so rants, mostly political, as we approach the end of the world as we know it. One preface, I'm not really into the Democrat vs. Republican debate because they're just parties. There are conservative Donkeys and liberal elephants littering the halls of Congress, there are honorable patriots in both parties, and there are disingenous scumbags on both sides. Thats why you should never vote straight party ticket. Vote for people who have the same vision as you (especially at the local level).
1. The argument that "the rich need to pay their fair share" that is always present somewhere in an Obama speech. This is such a freaking tired retread argument from the Clinton days, and every time Obamarama says those words, I feel myself throw up a little bit in my mouth! What makes him completely disingenuous is that he know its not true, but its a message that appeals to the largest voting block, so he gets all of the mileage out of it that he can (so did W.J. Clinton). According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of all wage earners (at least $388,806 annual household income) pay a whopping 39.38 percent of all collected income taxes; cumulatively, the top 5 percent (AGI of $153,542) pay 60.14 percent; the top 10 percent (AGI of $108,904) pay 70.79 percent of all collected taxes; the top 25 percent (AGI of $64,702) pay 86.27 percent; the top 50 percent (AGI of $31,987) pay 97.01 percent; and the bottom 50 percent pay only 2.99 percent of all collected income taxes. So define rich for me and tell me who needs to start paying their fair share. I don't feel rich, but apparently I'm in the top 10 percent, and as a result, the Dems want to significantly jack my rate up because they think I'm not paying enough. Do I use more government services, highways, bridges, federal program monies, etc than someone who makes half what I do? Short answer: no! So explain this fairness concept to me! Ask the top 1 percent who are paying about 40 percent of the bill if they think it feels fair. Ask me how I feel about Barack's plan to repeal previous estate tax reductions or jack up capital gains tax rates on the top two tax brackets. Totally shameful. Sorry Barack, you don't represent "Change That I Can Believe In;" your vision for change literally scares the crap out of me.
2. Snotty east-coast liberal journalists and news commentators and their visible disdain for average Americans. The world would be a better place if a great wave enveloped the eastern seaboard and washed all of you elitist pigs out to sea. If I have to watch Andrea Mitchell (NBC, MSNBC, BFNBC) run her snotty, biased, condescending mouth anytime in the next two weeks, I'm going to strip naked, light myself on fire, and go running down the street! (sorry for that visual)
3. All politicians who are vowing to reinstate all of the the original provions in the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994) and add a bunch more (see H.R. 1022 and H.R. 6257) once they have the votes after the election. You people are pinheads, your arguments are ridiculous, and you have no business using taxpayer dollars to support such blatantly unconstitutional legislation. Ask the victims of the Armenian masacre how they felt about being disarmed (oh wait, you can't, they all died) by their government. And don't argue with me about why I need a certain type of firearm when it doesn't serve a hunting or sporting purpose. I don't have to defend or justify my ownership of a tactical weapon to you or anyone else. Guess what, I also have a desire to own a Porsche Carrera, which has nearly 500 hp and will go 3 times the posted speed limit. Do I need a car that will do that in order to meet my transportation needs? Hell no, but you don't get to decide whether or not I should have one! If I want to own one tactical gun or 10, you should feel lucky that you live next door to me, not scared.4. The ease with which the government casually committed $700 billion of our money to bail out Wall Street, and how they want progressively more and more every day to bail out more banks and other institutions. You really didn't think that $700b would be the final number did you? That was just the foot in the door, son. By the way, this is not funny money, these are real obligations that have to be paid back by us and our children and their children. Look, I took economics classes at a well-regarded university, I'm not an idiot, and I follow what they're trying to do. However, I don't like where this road leads, and in many ways I think that we need to take the pain and let the market correct itself. Those who caused it, shouldn't get off scott free. No one has ever stepped in to help my business when I've made knucklehead decisions, and no one has certainly ever told me that I sucked at my job and that they would give me $50 million if I would resign. Can you imagine? Ooooh, pick me, pick me!!!
5. Consumer spending being in the toilet. Come on folks, if you have a job, drop some cash, so that the rest of us can sell something. We all rely on each other to make this crazy economy go round and round. I really would have liked to buy a new Tundra this summer, and I'm sure that the sales guy at Mark Miller wanted me to buy a new Tundra this summer, and the guy working at the Tundra assembly plant in San Antonio wanted me to buy a new Tundra this summer, and the dudes that work at the Ultra Wheels factory and at Big O Tires wanted me to buy a new Tundra this summer. However, people stopped spending money at our company and so my company went under. So, no new Tundra for me. You get the picture.
Well, thats all for now kids. I've had enough fun for one night. If you read the whole thing, you qualify for a special prize. Now, back to my cave. See you in November.
4 comments:
Well Steve, I can definitely agree with what you say, even though I don't hit the high tax brackets. I remember not long ago when Hugo Chavez was in the news for wanting to nationalize Venezuelan companies. Everyone thought "That communist jerk, he can't do that." Fast forward to this week, and all of the sudden our government is taking steps to "purchase shares in failing banks" (read: nationalize). President Bush swears it is temporary until the economy turns around. Just one problem, If the government keeps meddling with meaningless change, the economy won't turn around and the banks will be property of the government. I suppose when that's all over they can move on over and nationalize the automakers because they are hurting the economy...scary stuff to me.
I agree on your Barrack Hussein Obama comments. !I work a lot!!!!! I invest a lot of time for my families well being, as do you, so who says I have to redistribute my money to others who may not. I disagree on buying a TOYOTA! Come on STEVE! BUY AMERICAN! They may be built in America but the money funnels back to Japan. On the subject of the $700 billion bailout I partly agree aswell. I don't like the government involved in business. But take the Chrysler bailout in the 70's for example. It helped the auto industry and made the government a lot of money once Chrylser came back and their stock went up. Something had to be done to unfreeze the credit lines. I deal with banks on a daily basis for car loans and they need and we need it to keep flowing. It's getting tough to arrange loans, just ask any mortgage broker. Again government involved in business isn't the best thing but something had to happen now. These are my opinions and sorry to ramble. As you can see I'm not the best writer. I have to compliment you though, you are! The best thing you said is that we need to continue to be consumers because it comes back around to all of us! So buy American!
spence
Two words: Young Kia. Anyone feel like eating Korean tonite? Just kidding Spence, and when I'm ready to buy a diesel (and I will) you're totally my guy. I agree that the Chrysler bailout turned out to be a great thing; what I'm talking about that makes me nervous is that within 48 hours of the bailout announcement, the discussion in Washington went from an $85B infusion into AIG, to a $500B stabilization program to over $1 trillion in potential tax payer dollars being spent. I'm completely on board with the government getting aggressively involved to keep the credit markets loose. However, within a few days of the Rose Garden press conference, everyone was trying to jump on the bailout bandwaggon. The state of California asked for $20B to get them out of their mess; Massachussets asked for something like $10B; various counties and cities around the country who had budget shortfalls starting asking for government loan guarantees. And it hasn't stopped. I just worry that there is a lot of potential for things to spiral wildly out of control. Everyone thinks the government should bail them out of their bad decisions, but the government is us and its our money. For the Big 3 in Detroit to ask for $50B taxpaper dollars so that they can design and build more economical cars and be competitive with Toyota and Honda, is preposterous to me. They should have been making those investments all along when they were making record profits a few years ago. They also let themselves get screwed to the walls by the unions for so many years that they can barely breathe now. Toyota plants aren't unionized and they're not saddled with all of the legacy health care expenses that the US nameplates are. Its too bad that they're in the condition that they're in, but they sort of put themselves there. I'm rambling so I'll stop. I just hope that we all make it out alive.
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