Arm and Arm with China?

British prime minister Gordon Brown is calling for a globalization of fiscal and monetary policy.

China is on board!

Where do we sign up?

Auto Bailout?

Check out this Washington Post Story.

To briefly highlight its’ content…

The U.S. automakers are seeking to get their hands on some of the $700 billion bailout money that the legislative and executive branches of government shoved down our throats.

To quote the article, “In recent weeks, top auto industry executives have been making the rounds in Washington, trying to shake loose federal cash all over town. Both GM and Ford posted big losses yesterday as the car companies continued to pay out in salaries and other expenses more than they are taking in from sales.”

Growing up in a state dominated by the auto industry, this has been coming for the past 35 years.

Lets look at the average auto worker.

Wages: From U.A.W:  Average auto worker $28.71/hr ($60K/yr).   According to Workers Comp Insider, the typical auto worker gets five weeks vacation and 17 holidays a year…but no sick time…it has to be used as vacation time.

From Bloomberg ” Under a four-year accord reached Sept. 26 (2007), all new employees would start in so-called non-core jobs such as janitorial and maintenance work and make about $28 an hour in pay and benefits, compared with $51 for present employees, the people said. They asked not to be identified because contract details haven’t been released.

For you business savvy people, this is labor and labor burden (The costs, above and beyond gross compensation, that an employer incurs in order for an employee to perform the work he was hired to do).

This cost per vehicle for wages per vehicle according to the U.A.W. itself:  $2400

Health Care : $0 + co-pays. (USA Today) The cost of this benefit adds $1,100 to $1,500 to every vehicle made by U.S. Auto workers.  They pay nothing out of their paychecks for health care.

This whole industry has been failing for decades and they have failed to adequately modernize their plants, keep wages even close to controllable levels and keep with the the full efficiency needs of this nation.

Now they want money to bail them out of their trouble because the companies are failing to bring in more than they are spending.

I would love to know what they intend on doing with this money they want to get from the tax payers…and how are they planning to pay it back.

They aren’t really working from the best business model.   Sell sub-standard vehicles at over inflated prices while paying workers and executives outrageous salaries and benefit packages.

Only in America…

OHHHH!!!!! If this isn’t a beauty of a quote.

If you would have told me that a presidential candidate actually pleaded for the need of a civilian national security force for the United States, I would not have believed you.

Well…now you are the one not believing me…

Here it is. Not just audio, but video too…

From Three Pages to 102 Pages

In the below story, reported by the AP, it shows the typical work our government is capable of producing.   There are now 102 reason why our government needs to sty out of this fiasco that they created.

This is just more of the same.  I can’t wait to hear about this on the Sunday morning talk shows.

By The Associated Press Fri Sep 26, 6:15 PM ET

A week ago, it totaled just three pages — the White House’s request for $700 billion to rescue tottering financial institutions by buying their devalued mortgage-related assets

By Monday, after an intense weekend of negotiations, the draft of the bailout legislation before Congress had swelled to 42 pages.

By Friday, after almost a week of marathon talks between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and key lawmakers in both parties, the working version was up to 102 pages

It likely will grow even longer as negotiators continue to tweak the proposal this weekend, adding and subtracting key elements.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the House Financial Services Committee’s chairman, was optimistic Friday that a final agreement could be reached by Sunday.

A Crook is a Crook!

These words come from a dear friend of mine.

This country is in the midst of a financial fiasco at this time and I have been doing a little digging.

The Government is currently scrambling to come up with solutions to this problem, but do not be naive enough to think that they haven’t had a hand in this process from the start. State and local governments are equally at fault.

In this area, the local governments were increasing property assessments (tied to property taxes) on the basis that these homes were selling at such high rates and big $$$. The lending institutions were issuing “interest only loans”, “paper free loans” and “sub-prime” loans” because “EVERYBODY DESERVES A HOUSE”…even if they couldn’t pay.

The State and local governments became “fat” because of the increased property tax revenue and the lending institutions were just passing this loans around as commodities like they weren’t real. Everyone was “fat and happy because they were just “kicking the can down the road”, but this money wasn’t real.

The Government LOVED the tax revenue, the banks loved the “assets” they could show on their books (and the bonuses that came along with them) and the people who could actually afford to own a home, now had a mortgage. Don’t be fooled…these programs aren’t just for the poor. Depending on the area, these loans could be purchased up to $417,000.

Most of this happened under the guise of these two quasi-government agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They were government sponsored enterprises, but publicly traded companies, and as of today the U.S Government is under control of a $6,000,000,000,000 piece (50%) of the U.S. Housing market. Fannie Mae was stated in the 1930’s under FDR “New Deal” that has handcuffed us with the antiquated Social Security System (which should be ready to fail soon) and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which helped WATCH this whole financial crisis happen.

On September 17, 2004, The government reports of gross accounting abuses in 2004 at Fannie Mae.

The referenced 121 page report outlined the culture of behavior that was an issue over four years ago at Fannie Mae.

• Management’s desire to portray Fannie Mae as a consistent generator of stable and growing earnings;
• A dysfunctional and ineffective process for developing accounting policies;
• An operating environment that tolerated weak or non-existent controls;
• Key person dependencies and poor segregation of duties;
• Incomplete and ineffective reviews by the Office of Auditing;
• An inordinate concentration of responsibility vested in the Chief Financial Officer; and
• AN EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION STRUCTURE THAT REWARDED MANAGEMENT FOR MEETING GOALS TIED TO EARNINGS PER SHARE, A METRIC SUBJECT TO MANIPULATION BY MANAGEMENT.

Read that last one again. The company lied about profits to increase the management bonuses in the government sponsored enterprise.

Fannie Mae is was the largest purchaser of Countrywide Financial Corporation loans.

Countrywide was by Bank of America almost two weeks ago.

Countrywide was one of the institutions that obtained these sub-prime loans. Since Countrywide didn’t want to have these bad sub-prime loans on their books, they passed them off to Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac.

Countrywide, according to the linked article, gave favorable loans to the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd and the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee Kent Conrad among others.

In a “completely unrelated” turn of events. Senator Dodd was one of the sponsors for a $300 Billion measure that would enable these same loans initiated by Countywide (and other institutions) to be insured from loss and foreclosure. These two Senators are currently under ethics investigation (by other Senators who are a part of the same broken system.)

This June Wall Street Journal article outlines a couple of additional interested parties (James A. Johnson and Franklin Raines) who had received “favorable” loans from Country Wide. These people are current advisers on one of our Presidential candidate’s political staffs.

James A. Johnson was, from 1991 to 1996, the CEO of Fannie Mae after a five year stint at Lehmen Brothers (now bankrupt). He was the head of one candidates VP search committee and is currently a bundler of donations for the same candidate.

Franklin Raines held the same position with Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2004, before “accepting early retirement”. They have been under investigation since that time of overstating Fannie Mac’s earnings by thirty percent… or $3,000,000,000 ($3 billion) in 2004. He has since agreed to pay over $40 million in fines, penalties and stock options according to this April NY Times article. Raines worked for Fannie Mae previously and even served for one Presidential Administration as Director of the U.S Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is tasked with giving expert advice to senior White House officials on a range of topics relating to federal policy, management, legislative, regulatory, and budgetary issues.

Mr. Raines is also a financial adviser for the same Presidential candidate as Mr. Johnson.

I am not saying the other guy is as clean as a whistle and I have tried to keep partisanship out of this by mentioning political parties. But I know that this post, if you do some research, is going to be bashing one of them and ignoring the other.

The other party is just as guilty for doing nothing all of the years that this has been happening.

This is where our Government has put us. They knew this was coming and no one had the “balls” to say NO!

I encourage you to research this stuff yourself…it is all there. There was even a Senate Bill in 2005 that could have stopped this over three years ago…but it never made it out of committee.

To stop lending money they didn’t have to people who wouldn’t ever be able to pay it back.

They just kicked the can down the road.

Watch how much power and control you give the Government because it doesn’t know what to do with it. The premise that everyone “deserves” a house is much different that having the “opportunity” to earn one.

I want to know who is really going to change the style of business in Washington.

This is bigger than one President can handle. We have to look at our Congressmen and Senators (along with the President and the Cabinet) and get them out of there. Washington D.C. has turned into a place of lobbying and special interest groups when the writers of the Constitution envisioned a government “for the people and by the people.”

These people “representing” us are either a cause or a solution to the issues we have in front of us. Look at each one of them and ask yourself, “Cause…or Solution?”

No partisanship.

A crook is a crook.

Democrat or Republicans.

We are the people to institute change by holding public officials accountable.

Rights vs. Responsibilities

As Americans, we have be blessed with a number of rights.

These rights may be listed in the Constitution or they have have been established by the individual states or the federal government.

Most of us a familiar with the rights established by the Constitution.    We are also familiar with the rights each of us have in the workplace, the rights guaranteed to those with disabilities and the civil liberties rights granted to each person.

Prisoners of War and even those incarcerated have rights.

All of these rights have one thing in common.

For every right we have, there is a RESPONSIBILITY to establish a way and means of enforcement.

These rights also have one thing other thing in common…They establish the RESPONSIBILITY of the “collective” to ensure the right is granted.

The rights to vote, speak (this list is long and can be found in the Constitution) are pretty much agreed upon and most Americans don’t have an issue “picking up the tab” for these and having the RESPONSIBILITY of making sure each of us have these rights.

In this country, every person has the right to have as many children as they want to have.    This is a freedom of the individual as long as they can provide for their family and these children.   By providing for their own family, the individual has the responsibility to care for them.

When a person, or family, keeps having children and the government (collective) has to provide for their welfare, this is where the individual has the right to have unprotected intercourse and procreate, but not have the responsibility of ensuring for the care of the result of these actions.

In a situations like this, we (the collective), are assuming the responsibility for the actions of the individual.

Welfare is just the example used here.  There are many others.

This example can be used for just about any freedom we have and the question should be asked for all of them as the size of our Government grows.

Each and every day the Government is assuming more and more of the RESPONSIBILITY for our “individual” freedoms.  We, the collective, are assuming the RESPONSIBILITY for the rights of the individual.

When individual wants the right to have unprotected intercourse, abuse substances (alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs and medications) and not assume the responsibility (unwanted  children, AIDS, dependency), we (the collective) are forced to do so.

Is it right for you to expect your neighbor to give you money (welfare, food, daycare, etc…) to care for your children?

It would be nice, but by requiring them do so infringes on their rights as an individual.

Is it right for you to expect your neighbor to pay the bill for your alcohol or drug rehab?

It would be nice, but by requiring them do so infringes on their rights as an individual.

With all RIGHTS come RESPONSIBILITIES.

Candidate to limit freedoms?

One of glorious Presidential candidates came up with this gem over the weekend…

“We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.”

Who is he to tell us how to live?

What is next? A sq. ft. allowance for each person?

We can’t have a family of four living in a 3,000 4,500 sq ft house. It is wasteful to heat a cool a place of that size.

Maybe that hits a little too close to home?

Fairness in taxation

This whole tax system has got me stumped.

I fall into the $42,650-$110,100 group.  This means I get taxed at $5,837.50 plus 25% of anything over $42,650.

So If I make $70,000. I would pay $5,837.50 + $6837.50  (($70,000-$42,650) * .25) = $12,675 in taxes on my income.  This turns out to be 18% of my income.

If someone makes $500,000 they pay $98,355.50 plus 35% of the amount over 349,700.

They pay $98,355.50 + $52,605  (($500,000- $349,700) *.35) = $150,960.50 in taxes on their income.  It would turn out to be 30.1% of their income.

Is someone makes $1,000,000 they pay $98,355.50 plus 35% of the amount over 349,700.

They pay  $98,355.50 + $227,605  (($1,000,000- $349,700) *.35) = $325,960.50 in taxes on their income.  It would turn out to be 32.6% of their income.

The popular argument is that the top earners should pay more in taxes and they surely do.  They also buy more vehicles, televisions, more valuable property and pay taxes on those items also.

So, this push to get taxes increases for the wealthy is just a push by our government to get their hands on even more money.

Don’t fall for the tricks.

Two Faced Ben Affleck

This is a subject I heard discussed on The Wilkow Majority this afternoon.

Ben Affleck has been telling us for years about things we should be doing in this country, people we should vote for, changes we should be making to our Constitution.

He is one of the first to tell us where we should be giving our tax dollars and voters who are being “disenfranchised” , even though he hasn’t regularly voted himself.

Then there is this story is about Mr. Affleck supporting eliminating voting rights from in his guild members because…”would ensure that those with the most at stake are the ones who decide whether to approve a contract or walk picket lines.”

Ben Affleck is a piece of work. He can lecture us all day about how unfair we Americans are to people, but when something that impacts him comes along, he is quick to pull the trigger on the rights of his fellow guild members.

Evidently, principles that are good for us, aren’t good enough for him.

Do as he says, not as he does!!!!!!!!