Consider yourself warned. Two Republicans in the House yesterday warned the Obama administration that Congress cannot bailout the Financial Housing Administration. Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Spencer Bachus released a letter warning that if Washington does not take swift action to address the problems of the FHA, it may result in another massive taxpayer-funded bailout, which we cannot afford.

I pointed this crisis out to you in the beginning of October. First it was Fannie and Freddie. The next big shoe to drop is the FHA. One quarter of all home loans made this year were through the FHA, and 80% of those loans were to first-time home buyers. But the FHA may be in need of a bailout after suffering losses of $54 billion. And how does this happen? By making loans to people who can't afford to pay them.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

As time passes from the passage Obama's crafted-by-radicals $787 billion stimulus, we learn more about what is really going on. A whole 'lotta spending and not a lot of stimulating, that's what.

Michigan, for example, received $5.2 billion in federal stimulus. Now we're told that 22,500 were "created or saved." It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that our taxpayers forked out $231,000 for every job created or saved in Michigan. And when it all comes down to it, our government can't even do an adequate job of figuring out how many jobs it created/saved. Check out how it calculates a "job" created or saved by federal stimulus money. You'll love it.

And while you're in a checking-out mode, here are some of these examples that have surfaced lately. Read on and find out what our imperial federal government and the ACORN Administration consider crucial to turning the tide of this economy:

Let's start with $100,000 for a program in Maryland to keep tabs on how often doctors and nurses wash their hands at hospitals. Now that is really going to stimulate some jobs, isn't it?

We're not through trying to horrify you .... Check out this lengthy list from Tom Coburn's office:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.

- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.

- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.

- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.

- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.

- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.

- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.

- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine.

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri

- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

This, my friends, is what happens when government takes money from the private sector to spend on stimulating our economy. It ends up being spent to create votes, not jobs. There can't possibly be one cogent American who thinks that these items were big-time job producers. Any jobs created are, at best, temporary ... and government. Spending our money in this manner should be punishable by law. As it is, it is only punishable by votes .. and let's hope the votes are out there in one year.

An analysis was released this week by the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Sounds like a real snoozer, eh? But it found that nearly half of all children in the United States will be on food stamps at some point during their childhood. Considering the current recession, those numbers could be even higher. The study suggests that nearly every American knows a family that has received food stamps or will in the future. Broken down on racial lines, 90% of black children are expected to be on food stamps at some point during their childhood compared to 37% of white children. No other ethnic groups were included in the study.

Much of this is about expanding food stamp eligibility and thus teaching Americans how to become part of our culture of dependency. And ... to open this bag of worms again ... much of this is about adults having children that they know they cannot afford to raise. But who's watching, right?

A must-read blog every day in preparation for the show is Cato@Liberty. There you will find information like this ... KPMG released its latest global survey of corporate tax systems. Sounds like a real snoozer, right? Well that's why you have me. I'm the guy who wrote a New York Times best seller about taxes.

So back to this survey ... for the 10th year in a row, the average corporate tax rate world-wide has fallen. Now it rests at 25.5%. But that's the average. This means that some countries have a corporate tax rate higher than 25.5% and some less. So ... where is the United States? Well, we're stuck. Stuck at 40% .. where we've been for quite some time. Only one country has a higher corporate tax rate than the United States; Japan.

In case you haven't noticed .. .the world is shrinking. Businesses and businessmen find it easier to move around the world in search of advantageous business climates. In a world of instant communications; in a world where no business hot spot is more than one day's travel from another ... why would a company continue to subject itself to a confiscatory tax rate when it can simply move?

This, of course, brings me to the FairTax. Right now we have the second-highest corporate tax structure in the world. But what would happen if we had the lowest? In fact, what might happen if businesses could operate in the United States without any tax component on capital or labor? What if corporate leaders never had to consider the tax implications of any decision? What if business decisions could be made on the basis of what is good for the company, the stockholders, the employees and the customers, rather than on how to minimize tax consequences. This would be life under the FairTax.

Right now you can bet that business owners are contemplating ways to escape the coming increases in tax rates in the United States. The response will be to move more jobs and more business out of the country. Sure, The Community Organizer will try to find a way to erect some sort of an economic Berlin Wall to keep American wealth from fleeing tax tyranny, but it will only be partially effective. Why not try to attract wealth, rather than looking for ways to chase wealth away?

Well, you know the answer; don't you? To attract wealth the political class must transfer power to the private sector. That isn't going to happen; not with the looters in charge. The game here is power, not the economic welfare of the American people. The FairTax would be the greatest transfer of power from government to the people in the history of our Republic. You don't' see very many people with a "D" after their names who like that idea.

Webguy and Cristina tell me that I have a lot of thongs in a wad over a caller to the show on Friday. We haven't seen hate mail like this in a long time. Someone went to the Church of the Painful Truth and apparently didn't like the sermon. I love it! So if you want to hear how I stirred the puddin', listen to Nealz Nuze today during the Information Overload Hour at 12:35PM ET. Or if you missed it, just listen here. In the meantime, here is a taste of the emails:

• Name: john
  Subject: your attitude
  your conversation with the unemployed construction worker with 4 kids was so degrading!!! not everyone can be a college grad nor does that guarantee success in life. you are such a snob. i could see you treating the poor & unfortunate as hitler did the jews. my grandaughter just graduated gov school with a 4.2 average & started univ of central fla as a sophmore due to college accredited honor classes in high school. her parents were not irresponble but wonderful loving parents. not everyone can afford a private school. get real neal!!!
  Right ... invoke Hitler. That's always a good move for small minds. And would someone please teach John where the "shift" key is?

• Name: Robert
  Subject: todays show
  Today I was unimpressed with your show, in paticular the call from the construction worker, the one you cut off and railroaded for have 4 kids. You called him uneducated which just because someone didnt or couldnt go to collage does not make him stupid. I myself am a electrical contractor and take alook around your office and tell me could you do what you see? I bet not. We, like it or not are middle class America so you slamming us that make your privileged world go around isnt helping a thing, most times I can listen in , Today I think you crossed a line that I found offensive
  Huh? Slamming construction workers? This has nothing to do with the things in my office. It's about people, construction workers or airline pilots, having children they can't afford to raise. So many of our national problems can be blamed on this one behavior.
   

• Name: Jo
  Subject: Food stamp caller
  Your tirade against the father of four who now uses food stamps was a disgrace. His taxes, for years, went to pay for others to eat; now that he has need, you dare rail against him like he is some low-life deadbeat? You shot yourself in the head as far as I am concerned, pal. This listener is gone for good.
  Ahhhh ... another one of those "I'm never going to listen to you again" emails. If I lost a listener for every one of these emails I get I would have been off the radio years ago. By the way ... there is no evidence this man has ever paid income taxes.
  
  
• Name: Cecilia
  Subject: unemployed construction worker on today's show
  Iknow part of your spiel is "in your face" dialogue, but I just want to say I was disturbed with your message to the construction worker who called in and said he was currently unemployed. Your diatribe against him personally was shameful. Whenever one has to belittle someone and attack their personal integrity to try and make a point, really in my opinion has no valid point to make ... Your words to that gentleman were cruel and unnecessary. You could have given your perspective without the name calling (Mooch?) and insults. Blatant disrespect towards any human being will never further your agenda because it reveals a degraded heart. I hope you are really not that bitter towards your fellow man. I will pray for you!
  Sorry, Cecilia. I had a point to make, and it wasn't going to be made by me stroking this guy and telling him everything was going to be OK.

Well ... there's the reaction to that call from the construction worker. Now .. my response:

THE CONSTRUCTION WORKER VISITS THE CHURCH OF THE PAINFUL TRUTH

As you can see from those emails, more than a few of you were upset with my conversation with the construction worker last Friday. To recap: We had an out of work construction worker with six mouths to feed ... and he had made the decision to use the police power of government to seize someone else's property for his personal use. In other words .. he was on food stamps.

Ohhhhh .... that upsets you? Aw ... I'm sorry! Want me to kiss it and make it all better for you? What are you here for? Do you want me to just say things on the air that will make you nod your head and say "attaboy Neal!" You don't like your way of thinking challenged? Tell you what, why don't you write a set of rules and parameters for looters? Why don't you tell us when its OK to use the government to force the transfer of wealth from someone else to you, and when it's not. The world awaits your list of reasons that it would OK for you to use force to seize someone else's property. Theft is theft. Looting is looting .. no matter whether you do it for yourself, or use an agent like the government. Need is not a defense that will help you to escape punishment for your crime. If you hire someone to kill for you, you're guilty of murder. Why is it so different when you hire (vote for) someone to steal for you?

Your whining and moaning emails reminded me that this poor construction worker was out of work. He's not alone. You were upset that I have him a hard time for having four kids he couldn't feed.

Let's look at this situation without all the emotion for a minute. You ready? It's time for the PAINFUL TRUTH!

The estimate of what it takes to raise a child from fetus to 18 ranges from $200,000 to $250,000. That means our construction worker needs up to one million dollars to do an adequate job or raising his four kids. More than a million if he wants to put them through college.

I spent some time over the weekend on the Internet trying to learn a bit more about just what the average construction worker brings home. CareerBuilder.com has a website where you can research salaries and wages for thousands of jobs. The average salary for construction workers across the country is $29,805. In Atlanta that number is $26,746.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services issues poverty guidelines referred to as the "federal poverty level." Our construction worker has a family of six. The federal poverty level for a family that size is $29,530. In other words, the average wage in Atlanta for our construction worker with his family of six is below the federal poverty level. And that is IF he can find work.

You want some reality? Try this: Looking at these average wage figures, this man needs to work steadily for over 37 years just to pay the cost of raising those four children. He's a construction worker! What are the chances for this type of steady employment year-after-year for 37 years! No construction worker with any sense expects to be employed week after week, year after year. Oh .. and buy the way, that 37-year figure is somewhat bogus. Let's say these kids are three years apart. The oldest was nine when the youngest was born. That gives him 27 years, not 37, to earn that million bucks ... or end up over his head in debt. That $37,000 a year. You're not going to do that on a construction worker's wages.

Here's the bottom line. Our construction worker made a conscious decision to have four children. He knew, or he should have know if he had paid any attention at all, that his chosen field of construction work was not barley going to allow him and his family to live at the poverty level. A college education for his children? Well, you can pretty much forget that unless they excel in sports, or they have a rich grandma somewhere.

Well here's someone who deserves our pity, right? Look at the decisions he's made. Education? Maybe high school. If there was a college degree in the picture he wouldn't be a construction worker. (Well .. he could, I guess, be one of those brainiacs who pursued a degree in English or history.) Then ... after deciding to forego higher education, he gets married and starts downloading children - each with a $200,000 or more price tag - at a pretty fair clip; stopping at four. He's chosen employment in an industry where continued and steady employment is, at best, problematic, ... and he starts having children like a hamster; children that he cannot afford to raise. Then the inevitable happens. The work dries up. He can't feed his family ... and he decides it's time to take advantage of the willingness of the political class to seize property from private citizens and give it to him in return for his support and vote. Then, of course, I'm the bad guy when I point all this out!

I'm sorry folks, but you can meekly submit to this looting, but I'm not going to. If a person asks my help, that's one thing. Most Americans are more than willing to step forward and offer help to people in a tough spot; especially when children are involved. There are many private charities out there; and a community of churches, synagogues and mosques more than willing to help. But that's not what our construction worker has done. Instead, he has gone to the government - the only entity out there that can use deadly force to accomplish its goals - and, pointing a finger at his more productive neighbor, tells the government to "take that guy's money and give it to me. I have mouths to feed." One person's good decision-making and hard work should not set him up as a target for plunder by someone who has made poor decisions.

No excuses. If you're using food stamps - by whatever name - you are using the government as an instrument of plunder. You are instructing your political representatives to steal - to transfer wealth from those who earned it to you. Make all the excuses you want .. but you're a thief. Ditto for Section 8 housing and a variety of other government welfare programs.

One more thing ... there's this argument which says "Well, he paid his taxes, so now there's nothing wrong if he goes on food stamps for a while." Oh really? How about a shoplifter saying "Hey, I shopped at this store for years and paid for everything! Now I don't have the money, so it should be OK for me to take a few things I need." Yeah .... Works for me.

When it comes to our economic recovery, did you know that our government still has perhaps the most important decision yet to make? And it has to be made within the next six months ... and that decision is all up to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The guy who may single-handedly be responsible for sinking the US dollar. Yep. That guy. He will need to decide when to pull out $1 trillion from our US banking system that is currently keeping it a float.

As The Politico points out, this is a very difficult decision. And Barack Obama may have a different idea of what he would like to see Ben Bernanke do. Bernanke, though, is supposed to be an apolitical figure. He isn't supposed to care about the politics of the matter, or popularity or getting re-elected; he is supposed to make the unpopular decisions. Good thing for Barack Obama - we are coming to find that he is incapable of making decisions.

When in trouble ... appease the people by playing into their wealth envy. Right now, the liberals are upset with Obama and the Democrats for not being liberal ENOUGH. Republicans are upset about the impending government takeover of healthcare. But if there is one issue on which the two spheres may ... and that's a big "may" ... overlap, it is the issue of wealth envy. And so it has been since the dawn of civilized man. Thousands of years ago nomadic camel herders harbored seething envy over individuals or tribes with more stuff than they had. As you know, in ObamaLand everyone should have an equal amount of stuff.

So after weeks of focusing and floundering on healthcare and global warming; and ignoring the needs of our troops in Afghanistan, suddenly we get this announcement from Washington: we are going to cut top executive pay at the biggest corporations that took bailout money. Of course many Americans are now rejoicing! "Great! These evil rich people are getting exactly what they deserve!"

Then, the very next day we see the White House pulling away from bearing any reasonability on the issue. Officials in the administration say that they didn't have much to do with the decision at all. It all came from one man: Kenneth Feinberg. The Pay Czar. This Obama appointee (without any sort of Congressional approval), single-handedly decided to cut CEO pay for these executives. Is Obama going to take responsibility for ANYTHING that comes out of his White House?

So now the question is ... how far will this go? Just the other day, Obama also announced plans to increase lending to small businesses and give them access to rescue funds. Will Kenneth Feinberg eventually have the "authority" to slash salaries of top executives at these small businesses that take bailout funds?

Let's take a closer look at this Kenneth Feinberg fellow ... how did he come to have so much "authority" that he is able to cut salaries at private corporations in this country? If you'll remember months ago, Congress decided that it wanted to crack down on millions of dollars in AIG bonuses. There was only one slight, teeny-tiny little problem - Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to do so. Maybe you've heard of a little something called the "Bill of Attainder"? This basically limits Congress from passing legislation that would single out or punish specific people or groups (or companies).

Then magically, Obama creates a new czar in his administration. This man would be a "special master on compensation." Ta-da! Now if the government wants to punish certain companies, all it has to do is call on its compensation czar.

Pretty clever, huh? And we're supposed to think that The Community Organizer is oblivious to all of this.

The day after our special master on compensation decided to slash executive pay, the Obama administration decided that it would be a good idea to clamp down on banks while we are at it. The Federal Reserve decided to curb executive pay packages "that encouraged bankers and other executives to take the kinds of reckless risks that contributed to the housing bubble."

The housing bubble came from Washington, not from bank board rooms. It was Washington that told these banks that their future growth would be halted or curtailed if they didn't make sure that pretty much anyone with a pulse that wanted a home loan could get one. It was Washington that set up these extraordinary systems whereby banks could make the loans and then pass of the liability to the American taxpayers. It was WASHINGTON, not the banks, that took the reckless risks.

Quick, can you tell me the ceiling for our national debt limit? It's okay if you can't ... the Talkmaster is here to educate you. In the economic stimulus package passed in February, the Democrats raised the national debt limit to $12.1 trillion. Just eight months later, the Democrats are already looking to increase that limit yet again ... to $13 trillion. But don't blame it all on Democrats. Republicans are very adept at raising the debt limit when they're in charge as well.

A trillion here, a trillion there .. what's the difference? Your grandchildren will one day be able to tell you that difference. But in the meantime, the only thing stopping Democrats in Congress from raising the limit are the Republicans. The Democrats have already thought about the fact that a few of you taxpayers may not be too happy to hear about this raise ... and this would be a prime issue for the GOP to embrace and attack the Democrats for their spending habits. The Democrat solution? Attach this debt increase to a bill that MUST pass - like a Defense spending bill.

Let's noodle this one through.

• For the last ten years, our government spending has skyrocketed thanks to George Bush.
• Congress votes to increase the debt ceiling.
• Barack Obama gets into office and spends more in his first few months than all other presidents combined.
• Congress needs to increase the debt ceiling, but Democrats don't want to get blamed.
• Democrats attach the vote on the increase to a Defense spending bill to fund the troops in Afghanistan (a hot issue at the moment).
• The Democrats try to downplay the issue of increase so as to not spark public outrage.
• The Republicans say they don't want to vote for the bill because of the increase.
• The Democrats say that the Republicans don't want to support the troops.
• The Republicans end up voting for the bill anyway.
• Election time rolls around, and Democrats use the vote against Republicans saying that they voted to increase the debt limit to a whopping $13 trillion (neglecting to mention the fact that the increase was attached to a bill to fund the troops because the Democrats manipulated it that way).

Isn't this fun, folks?

Of course we need a thread to talk about the pay caps for TARP fund recipients, right?

In the 10 o'clock hour ET, or the first network hour of the show depending on where and how you're listening, Neal will get into his grave concern about the value of the American dollar and what it means for our economy.

By popular demand, listen here:

Part 1: Listen Download

Part 2: Listen Download

Knowing that the nation's schools are doing so poorly teaching basic math skills to our children; and assuming that parents, being the ultra-responsible lot that you are, will try to fill in the gaps with some home schooling --- I thought it might be useful to present you with some numbers you might want to use in your remedial education efforts. The added bonus here is that you can also use these numbers to reinforce in your children that President Barack Obama really is, as has been written, "sort of" a God and is clearly succeeding in his quest to lead America to a golden new economic age.

30,383 That's the number of jobs the Obama Administration claimed to have "saved or created" in a statement last Thursday. The trouble is, there is no clearly defined way to determine jobs "saved or created." You can pretty much choose any number and run with it. The New York Post tells us that the tab comes out to $71,500 per saved-or-created job. Ask you child what they think might happen if small businesses had this money through tax cuts to use to expand and grow their businesses.

48,000,000 Since we're speaking of jobs, that's the approximate number of people employed by America's small businesses - specifically the ones that employ between 1 and 49 people. Medium-sized businesses employing 50 to 499 workers count for another 42,000,000 jobs. What about large businesses that employ over 500 people? Try 17,000,000. Surprising, isn't it? Now while you're working through these numbers with your kids be sure to tell them that the vast majority of these small and medium-sized businesses report their business income on their owner's personal tax return. These business owners, then, will be the ones hit when Barack Obama gets his tax increases on people earning over $250,000 a year. They employ most of our workers, and they're going to take the tax hit. Ask your child how they think this is going to work out! If you work for one of these small businesses you may want to give that some thought yourself.

$2,300,000 That's the amount of borrowed stimulus money that was sent to beauty schools in the Tampa, Florida area to train hairdressers, masseuses and nail technicians. People who are already licensed to do hair, nails and give massages in the Tampa area are looking for work. There will be no jobs waiting for the students who use this money to get their "beauty" licenses. The Florida Cosmetology Association says only 1% to 2% of beauty school grads will be working in that field five years after graduation. Use these numbers to try to convince your child that there are better things for them to train for than cutting hair, polishing nails and giving massages in Tampa.

61.4% Percentages are fun! It's bonus time when you can use percentages to teach your children about the perils of debt. At the end of 1999, as we were moving into the last year of the Clinton Administration, the amount of money our government owed was 61.4% of our GDP; the total value of all goods and services produced in this country during that year. By the time George Bush was through that figure had gone up by 8.8 percentage points to 70.2%. Not good. But ... by the time Barack Obama gets his first year all wrapped up that figure will have risen another 20.2 percentage points to 90.4%! We're on a roll! And here's your final fun percentage figure: In 2011 that figure will reach the magic 100%. At that point we owe more than the total value of our economy. That has to be the definition of something! Bankruptcy? Oh ... and we're not even talking unfunded liabilities here.

Finally ...

9% That's an unemployment figure. That's how high Barack Obama said our unemployment figure would go if we did not quickly pass his super-effective stimulus plan earlier this year.

7.9% That's how high Obama said unemployment would rise if we would just give him over $750 billion dollars to stimulate our economy. We did; and ....

9.8% That's our latest unemployment figure. Looks like the stimulus worked! The figure includes hairdressers, nail techs and massage therapists - in case you're wondering.

#1 As in Rule No. 1. Elections have consequences.

Ron Bloom. Ever heard the name? He is Obama's manufacturing czar. Last year, Bloom gave a speech to some union members in New York. He apparently was giving a speech on the union role in bankruptcy and restructuring of the auto industry. Here's what the guy had to say:

"Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system ... we know that this is largely about power. That this is an adults only, no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog."

Can you believe this? This character is The Community Organizer's manufacturing czar! Manufacturing is part of the private sector! It is at the core of our free market economy! And this moonbat is saying that the "free market is nonsense?" He believes that the whole point of free enterprise is to "game the system?"

Let's do a little recap here:

1. Obama writes of his gravitation toward Communist student groups and Marxist professors in college.
2. Obama appoints an avowed Communist to be his green jobs czar.
3. Obama's communications director sings the praises of Mao
4. Now we have Obama's manufacturing Czar citing Mao and calling the free market "nonsense."

What am I missing here?

I don't think I'm missing anything at all. I believe we have a president who feels great animosity toward the free markets and everything-not-government.

I think if the American voters ... and this includes black voters who voted for this menace simply because of skin pigmentation ... need to freaking wake up or this country is royally screwed.

Sadly, this is a legitimate question to ask. The Democrat plans to take over 18% of our economy (under the guise of healthcare reform) is well underway ..... but in order to get this thing passed, Democrats are not beyond bribery. Essentially, yes, that is what we are seeing. Democrats in Washington are including perks or exemptions for certain states in order to gain Senate votes from those states.

You want some examples?

Nevada would get help from the federal government with its Medicaid bills. Isn't that special? However, the same does not go for every state. Hmm wonder why. Could it be that Harry Reid is from Nevada, and he sure pulls his weight around Congress.

Senior citizens in Florida and New York get additional Medicare benefits! Aren't they lucky? Too bad if you decided to retire in Minnesota. Or Wisconsin. No extra benefits for you.

And it's not just states, folks. Some professions are being singled out. Like firefighting and construction ... these "high-risk professions" will be getting a tax break on a new insurance tax that the Democrats want to pass. Soon, teaching government schools will be a "high-risk" profession .... or being a Senator!

Are you seeing what is happening here, folks? This healthcare reform is nothing but a scam to make more Americans dependent on government. It is nothing more than a scam to give the government control of more of our economy. And the way the Democrats will achieve this scam is to offer perks and benefits and exemptions and pork until they get the votes they need.

Barack Obama and the White House have decided that their $787 billion economic stimulus bill has been a success. How do they figure?? They base this on the fact that as many as a quarter of the jobs that have "saved or created" are government school teachers.

The chief economic advisor for Joe Biden says that recent data shows that at least 250,000 educational jobs have been saved or created. Oddly enough, no one has actually SEEN this report. The Republicans point out that 250,000 jobs were lost last month alone and 3 million have been lost since the economic stimulus bill was signed. But don't slow us down with the facts! Let's celebrate that we have done exactly what we wanted to do: get more people on the government payroll. After all, folks, remember that these teachers are nothing more than glorified government bureaucrats. They are paid by the government, report to the government, abide by government regulations to fulfill their jobs requirement ... they are government employees.

So we spend $787 billion to provide pork barrel projects and hire more government workers. That sounds like stimulus to me!

Keep in mind that data released last week by the federal government found that federal contracts paid for with stimulus money created or saved 30,383 jobs. That is not a lot of jobs, folks. In fact, the White House at one point had a goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs over two years. There is a pretty big gap between 30,000 and 3.5 million, wouldn't you say? So when in doubt, emphasize the fact that you kept the government school teachers around and hope that Americans are too ignorant to realize that the darn thing isn't working.

And while we're at it .. you do know this whole "created or saved" thing is a crock, don't you? There is no way the government can accurately tell you how many jobs have been "saved" by stimulus spending. What we have here is the local governments telling the federal government "Oh yeah! Thanks for the money! If it hadn't been for that money we would have fired a bunch of people!" Hogwash. This is nothing but a transparent PR scam designed to convince the public that this stimulus plan is working. Try to get some private business to talk about jobs saved

When Barack Obama was elected, he and the Democrats insisted that we could spend our way out of this crisis. Remember that? Remember the $787 billion stimulus bill that needed to be passed IMMEDIATELY in order to start our economy on its way to recovery? Yeah ... the bill that was essentially written by hard-left, anti-capitalistic activist groups like The Apollo Alliance. Well more than six months later, we have unemployment creeping up on 10%. And we have this ..... from Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama's effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.

Did you hear that, folks? Isn't that just wonderful? Isn't that just the type of change you voted for? All of this spending ... all of this printing of money ... all of these government dreams and schemes and bailouts .... they are starting to affect America. Big time.

The dollar went into "crisis mode" earlier this week when the euro and the yen surpassed the dollar as the favored currency by central banks.

Thank you Oh Great Chosen One ... the American dollar on the back bench. That's the type of change we voted for, isn't it?

Then we get reports like this from the New York Post:

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

"He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing."

Bringing "the whole thing" down! Even MORE change you can believe in!

Don't you see what has happened here, folks? Obama has succeeded in weakening America. Low interest rates, flooding the economy with money by simply printing it, a mounting pile of debt. So now ask you again ... how's this hopey, changey, spendy thing working out for ya? Better yet, how is it going to work out for your grandchildren?

Speaking of unemployment ... that, too, is having an impact on our massive government deficit, which is currently $1.4 trillion in 2009. This makes perfect sense if you think about it.

High unemployment means two things: more taxpayer dollars spent on unemployment checks and less tax revenue. This will cost the government about $100 billion a year.

I bring this up for one reason and one reason only. The Democrat solution to this is to throw more money at the unemployed ... to extend unemployment benefits. In the meantime, they wish to increase taxes on the very people who would be able to create jobs for these people .. to get them off the government dole. Creating jobs, not spending money, is the solution.

There. How hard was that?

It is sad that government involvement in executive compensation has become such a normal concept. Two years ago, if an article like this had been written, I would have been spitting nails. And I am sure a lot of you would be doing the same. Now, I am still spitting nails, but there is not much I can do about it, is there? Not with the Democrats and Barack Obama in the driver seat.

The White House is working on its plans to rein in executive compensation. It will start with the firms receiving the largest sums of taxpayer money - AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler LLC and Chrysler Financial. The plan is as follows ... instead of being compensated with cash salaries, the government has decided to shift top employees' annual salaries into stocks that cannot be accessed for many years. This move is being described as "the most intrusive yet into corporate compensation." And trust me folks, this is just the beginning.

Remember ... the looters believe that all wealth belongs to them. They, and only they get to decide how the wealth is distributed .. and that includes how much we can earn for what we do.

Stolen from fark.com and used with love whenever TARP comes up. -ww

A few details to note from the report. We are coming to find that these nine financial institutions -- Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, State Street and the Bank of New York Mellon - were chosen not because they needed money, but because of their size and involvement in the financial system. They were big players, and the government wanted control

This is also where Hank Paulson got into some trouble. Recent news articles have reported that Paulson lied to the American public. Okay ... let's first nail down the definition of a lie. A person lies only when they utter a statement that they know to be untrue. Now, Hank Paulson assured us last year that these nine institutions receiving bailout money were healthy and that they were only taking the money for the good of the economy. However, it turns out that this was untrue and federal officials (including Paulson) knew it. The report says, "Senior government officials had affirmative concerns at the time the nine institutions were selected about the health of at least some of those institutions ... The Federal Reserve had concerns over the financial condition of several of these institutions individually and for all of them collectively absent some governmental action. And former Secretary Paulson noted concerns about the outright failure of one of the institutions."

Then the government comes along and tells these institutions that took bailout money ... under the threat of government retribution ... that they must submit to executive compensation restrictions. Restrictions that will only grow and expand with Democrats in charge.

Nice. Bureaucrats don't like what the executives of certain financial institutions are making. The institutions are healthy .. at least healthy enough to weather the downturn. But this doesn't matter to the bureaucrat class. They want something done about the money these people are making. So they gin up some rather dire threats and force these institutions to take government bailout money. Besides, the more people who accept the bailout, the more involved the government seems to be in rescuing the country from financial collapse. Then, as soon as the money is in hand the bureaucrats start setting executive compensation rates. Yeah ... that's the way it's supposed to work, right?

Well of course! The Asian stock markets are down this morning. The (usually liberal) news pages of The Wall Street Journal are reporting that whatever economic recovery we've experienced in the United States is due to the resilience of the free market economy, not Washington's stimulus spending.

So ... what to do? Well, the Democrats are talking another stimulus bill! Just wonderful. We now know that the last stimulus bill was largely written in 2008 by some left-wing activist group called The Apollo Alliance. The board of that group features such luminaries as former Obama green-jobs czar and avowed communist Van Jones, with deep involvement by Bill Ayers and other Weather Underground characters. It wasn't a stimulus bill at all. Perhaps that's why it isn't working. The $787 billion dollar mess was nothing but a collection of spending dreams and schemes designed to please backers of Democrat causes and politicians. Stimulus money for a puppet theatre in Atlanta? Give me a break. And what can we say about millions spent to study grandparents in Alaska?

Still ... this idea of a new stimulus will get some strong attention in Washington. And why is that? That would be because improving out economy is not the primary goal of these politicians. Job one is to stay in office. Everything else comes in second --- and I'm not just talking Democrats here; I'm talking all of them. And how do you stay in office? By bringing home the pork, that's how. That's why so much of this stimulus spending was nothing but pure, 100% unadulterated pork. If they can pass this off on the government-educated dumb masses, so much the better.

Here's an idea. Read this and then see if you can figure out why our politicians wouldn't go for this in a heartbeat!

Because of America's punishing tax system there is a lot of money that is owned by Americans but invested overseas. How much? Well, before the economic downturn some people estimated that figure at around $13 trillion. That's with a "T" folks. How much of a hit has it taken? Well, let's cut it back by about 30% and say that the figure now stands at $11 trillion.

It would be grand, wouldn't it, if that money came back home to America to go to work in our economy? So ... why doesn't that happen? Taxes, that's why. That money is overseas doing well, thank you very much, earning money outside of our confiscatory tax system. If a corporation or individual tries to bring some of that money back home our federal government jumps on it like Clinton on a bimbo.

Now .. what if that money could come back home to work in our economy without being taxed? Under the FairTax, of course, that would be the case. Not only would that money come back to work here, but it could be put to work creating jobs and growing wealth without any tax component being added. But we don't have the FairTax right now, so how can we get this done?

AMNESTY!

There you go! Declare a tax amnesty for all American-owned dollar-denominated deposits overseas! Welcome that money back home without any taxes, any interest or any penalties. Just ask the money to come home and work here! Would every dollar come home? Certainly not! But let's just go for about one-half about $5.5 trillion! Do you have any idea what this could do for our economy? That's the equivalent of about seven Obama stimulus plans. What's more, this money wouldn't be spent by politicians trying to insure their reelection. The cash would belong to and would be spent by the private sector! You can be sure that unless someone saw an investment opportunity - a possibility of a financial return - the money would not be spent on puppet theatres or giant inflatable alligators (seriously). Over $5 trillion dollars infused into our economy could be quite a jolt, especially in the private sector.

OK ... is there anything wrong with this amnesty idea? Sure there is! I've already outlined it. The money would be spent by the private sector, not the government. We have an administration based on the premise that America's greatness comes from government, not freedom. In the minds of these politicians the way to make America greater is to move as much money from the private sector to the government as possible, and then have the government spend it. That, by the way, is exactly what Obama is trying to do with the overseas funds. Tax them. Send the IRS out there looking for these corporations and people. Bludgeon the Swiss into releasing account information. Increase penalties. Beat this money into submission and then seize as much of it as you can.

There are, after all, puppets to be built.

The Tax Foundation has done a study on which states are best suited for businesses ... and those that are set on punishing the achievers. The study ranked the "business-friendliness" of the states' tax systems based on five different aspects: corporate, individual income, sales, unemployment insurance and property taxes. The states with the best tax systems were "business-neutral, broad based, and transparent, and that states whose systems most reflected this ideal were the most competitive."

Want to know the states that met this criteria? In descending order ...

-- South Dakota
-- Wyoming
-- Alaska
-- Nevada
-- Florida
-- Montana
-- New Hampshire
-- Delaware
-- Washington
-- Utah

My home state of Georgia (for now) is bordered by Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Caroline and ... Florida. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation reports that Georgia's business tax climate has become worse .. moving from 27th to 29th in the nation. That's a dangerous trend when Florida, with it's 5th most business-friendly tax climate is just down I-75. The only neighboring state that ranks worse than Georgia would be North Carolina. In the meantime property owners in Atlanta were just hit with a 45% property tax increase.

At least Georgia isn't at the bottom of the list. The states that ranked absolute worst for businesses were New Jersey, New York and California. Hmmmm ... could that be why we so many people from New York and Jersey in Florida?

Now ... speaking of California, perhaps they see the problem and are getting ready to take some action. A commission studying California's tax structure has come up with some ideas:

• Repeal all sales and corporate taxes
• Flatten the income tax rate
• Reduce the tax burden on the high-achievers a/k/a the "wealthy."
• Levy a new tax on business net receipts.

Democrats are already attacking the recommendations. What's not to like? Well .. right there at the front of the list would be, as the critics present it, letting the "super-wealthy .. off the hook from paying their fair share." Oh how the left likes that "fair share" line. In the meantime the producers and high-achievers continue to move out of Taxifornia. The left will never learn.

Below you'll see a note about CNN's Wolf Blitzer promoting an upcoming appearance on The Situation Room by Michael Moore. Blitzer told his eagerly awaiting viewers that Michael Moore would explain why capitalism is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.

Wait a minute! This is exactly why we do the afterthought here. Now in my notes I mention that Blitzer would never invite a FairTax proponent on the show to "explain how this new tax reform idea could transform our economy." But here's another angle: CNN has a stated policy of not allowing radio talk show hosts on CNN. The president of CNN said that these hosts have "nothing to add to the conversation." So ... talk show hosts are banned from CNN .. but the CNN arms are open wide for someone who wants to slam capitalism.

Ok .. I know these anarchists and assorted mutts that are demonstrating at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh need baths and all ... but I want you to click here and listen to the sound of government lined up against protestors. Does this make you uncomfortable like it does me? Wouldn't it have been better just to hose them down with some disinfectant?

Every time the G20 decides to hold a summit, you can guarantee that the grungy moonbats will be there to protest. When I say moonbats, I am talking about the true underbelly of the unproductive class. They get out their signs about the evils of capitalism. They throw rocks at police cars, roll trash bins around the streets, light things on fire. Basically their form of protest is on the mental level of a child. Throwing a temper tantrum. I wouldn't expect anything less. And sure enough ... they showed up again in Pittsburgh. Police using pepper spray and smoke to contain the violent protesters. Me? I would vote for dogs.

This is all a big game with these groady kids. Many of them just take their little anarchist party on the road, traveling from location to location to stage their little protests and smoke some weed. In no way do these ratty kids represent their generation .. they're aberrations. The worst thing you can do is ignore than.

A few questions: How many tea party protests did we have over the last few months? Hundreds? How many people showed up in Washington on 9/12? Maybe over a million?

I think you see where I am going with this ....

To the best of my knowledge, I do not know of one incident of violence of use of pepper spray on tea party protesters around this country. When millions of people showed up in Washington, there was no property damage. Tea party protesters weren't throwing rocks at police cars.

... but unfortunately not in the United States. Sweden announced over the weekend that it is going to cut income taxes in order to stimulate the job market. The government says, "The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees."

Seems like such a simple concept. I wish someone in the Democrat Party would take notice.

When it comes to jobs in the United States, take a look at this alarming statistic:

The number of private-sector jobs is now slightly below the level of August 1999 -- meaning that a decade has passed without any net creation of non-government jobs, even in a span during which the population grew substantially.

When the government absorbs so much of our economic power - how can you be surprised?

With the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there has been a lot of talk about the current state of our financial system one year later. With Obama's talks on Wall Street, and Barney Frank still banging the drum for more regulation ... let us not forget two extremely important entities that got this bull rolling: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In fact, here is a little factoid that the mainstream media will probably not tell you. A report from the Government Accountability Office says that "privatizing the government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could mitigate the systemic economic risk caused by the federal government's guarantees to the now-defunct mortgage giants, but that the benefits of privatization could be reversed by government efforts to insure private-sector mortgages."

Oh no! Not privatize! Where's the government? How is the government to save people? How is the government going to make people more dependent if we privatize?

When in doubt ... blame capitalism. That seems to be the latest line from the moonbats. At the helm is none other than Michael Moore. He made a documentary, which premiered over the weekend, declaring capitalism to be evil. You see, now that George Bush is gone, we are out of Iraq and people aren't buying into their global warming scheme anymore ...the left is grasping at concepts to leach onto. So right now we are just going to stick with good 'ole capitalism. Michael Moore says, "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil ... You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy."

Capitalism is freedom and economic liberty.

Democracy is mob rule.

Huh. Now there's an interesting thought. At least Michael Moore realizes that our current system is not a democracy. Moonbats like Michael Moore like the idea of democracy because it is rule by man compared to rule by law. I'm more of a law kinda guy myself. Maybe that's because of what our founding fathers believed about the notion of democracy. Remember this one?

"... the term "democrat" originated as an epithet and referred to 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.'"

Yeah, that seems to fit for a moonbat like Michael Moore.

This new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan is making some waves. It says that Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression. Here's a taste:

His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says.

There are "troubling similarities" between the US President's actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiraling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs ... the White House's plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars of cash into the economy will undermine it in the long run. They say that by employing deficit spending and increased state intervention President Obama will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the US economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years.

If the American people knew beans about economics .. and hadn't been filled with myths about FDR ... we might have a better chance of surviving this.

Vice President Joe Biden has finally figured out the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Here dumb little ole me thought it was all about more government or less government, more individual responsibility or more government dependency. Guess I was wrong. Now I have good 'ole Joe to enlighten me. The difference is morality. Yep. You got it! Democrats are moral, Republicans and (I guess) Libertarians aren't.

Joe has caught a lot of flak lately for the lack of economic impact we have seen from the $787 billion stimulus. Most Americans are of the opinion that the stimulus bill was more about pork than getting our economy on its feet. Joe's been on the defensive for a while .. but he's figured out a counterattack. The new line? Well ... the stimulus was the right thing to do "morally." The financial or economic impacts are just side-notes .. but we had a moral obligation to help people! And this is where the Democrats and Republicans differ. Joe says that the Democrats wanted to "bring relief to those who are falling into the abyss." The Republicans, of course, didn't; those moral heathens. But what's missing from Joe's assessment? The word "government." Interesting concept, don't you think? Using the police power of government to seize money from one person to give to another is "moral." Putting future generations of Americans into debt is a moral imperative. So glad Joe straightened this one out for us.

People who purchased cars recently under this cash for clunkers program may find out a little something they weren't expecting: that $4,500 rebate from the government taxpayers is taxable.

Not only are you taxed once, but this blogger points out that depending on which state you live in, you could be taxed twice on clunker rebates. "Specifically, you pay sales tax on the full vehicle price (effectively paying sales tax on the $4,500!) and what's worse those states that tax income (that would be most of them!) might wind up counting this as income for state income tax purposes too, effectively taxing you twice."

Even when the government tries to kiss you, it is just a prelude to a good screwing.

Do you remember when the Congress called all of the evil executives of oil companies to Capitol Hill to testify about their profits? And remember last summer when the auto executives rolled into Washington to beg for a bailout? Or how about the executives of financial firms that were called to testify about what happened on Wall Street?

Well the parade continues. Next up to the Hill are the chief executives of ... you guessed it ... the health insurance companies. They have been called to testify before a congressional hearing about "the nature, cost/benefit, and impact of administrative measures and protocols used by the health insurance industry to determine coverage." The request came in the form of a letter from Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The date is set for September 17th.

That outta be fun to watch.

The Office of Management and Budget presents the sobering reality for the Obama administration. There is no way that the administration can deny these facts. It's time to wake up and smell the pork, fellow Americans: Our current level of government spending is unsustainable. This is the first year that America will run a trillion-dollar budget deficit. Over the next decade, Obama's budget plans to borrow another $9 trillion ... more than doubling our national debt. This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household. The breakdown goes something like this: about $17,000 from taxes and $13,000 from borrowing. That is an increase of 22% in federal spending this year and a record 26% of the GDP. So you are saying, "Ah well this is just an extraordinary year and Obama inherited Bush's mess and blah blah blah." Well Obama's budget permanently keeps spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it was under George Bush.

In other words ... there is absolutely no way that we can continue the current level of government spending and expect this nation to survive. If the Republicans can capture that sentiment and run with it, maybe they will have a chance of winning some seats in 2010. However, what have they done to earn the people's trust again? Plus .. even if the Republicans do manage to come up with a viable plan to turn this spending and debt splurge around, how in the world to you get the Obama-crazed media to report it?

Either way, what Barack Obama is currently doing in Washington will be paid for for generations. The Heritage Foundation has done some research into Obama's spending habits. Here are just a few of the highlights .. things that your children can thank Barack Obama for someday, and things that you can thank those drivers with the Obama bumper stickers for today:

- The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.

- While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion--60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout.

- President Obama claims that "we have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade." This is not true. The President first creates a fantasy baseline that assumes the Iraq surge continues forever (which was never U.S. policy) and then "saves" $1.5 trillion against that baseline by ending the surge as scheduled. It is like a family "saving" $10,000 by first assuming an expensive vacation and then not taking it. Another $1 trillion in "savings" is actually tax increases (in other words, savings for government, not taxpayers).

- Federal spending per household (adjusted for inflation) remained constant at $21,000 throughout the 1980s and 1990s, before President Bush hiked it to $25,000. In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household--the highest level in American history--and under President Obama's budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.

- While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the "stimulus" was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession. This suggests that even if the President had not inherited a big deficit, he would have created one as a matter of anti-recessionary policy.

- The public national debt--$5.8 trillion as of 2008--is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.

- The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush...

Besides the healthcare debate, Washington is also figuring out how to handle large executive salaries at companies that received bailout money. Not only do we have our pay czar Kenneth Feinberg; but Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs decided to chime into the debate. Baby Huey says, "I don't think the American people begrudge that people make big salaries, as long as they're not jeopardizing the good will of the public in doing so."

Oh, isn't that just so sweet! It's OK with the American people if private companies pay their executives big salaries ... but they need to make sure that they keep the good will of the public along the way. Fine .. so how do we determine whether or not a particular company still enjoys the public's good will? Does some political hack figure that out for us and let us know? Hardly. The public votes with their pocketbooks. If they feel good about the company, they become customers. If they don't, they don't. It is not for the government to decide.

Things have gotten so bad with this cash for clunkers program that car dealers in New York have withdrawn from the program. They are frustrated by the fact that they have yet to be reimbursed by the federal government. Keep in mind that only 2% of cash for clunkers payments have been doled out. A lot of these auto dealers genuinely believe that they will never be repaid by the government. Others are still holding on to hope, but they can't wait any longer because they don't have any more cash. Imagine that. The government would never understand a concept like this ... how to run a business when you have to meet a bottom line.

Mark Schienberg, president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association says, "The program is a great program in the sense that it's creating a lot of floor traffic that a lot of dealers haven't seen in a long time ... But it's in the hands of this enormous bureaucracy and regulatory agency ... If they don't get out of their own way, this program is going to be a huge failure."

And you think that this same government can run your healthcare.

A group of leftists and centre-leftists have come together in ecumenical communion to call for the establishment of a High Pay Commission. The 100 signatories to the request include Lib Dems, Labourites, Greens and lecturers in media studies, and their most famous champion (in these days when the General Secretary of the TUC is no longer a household name) is the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor, Vincent Cable. The argument of the 100 signatories is that, just as in 1997 there was a case for the Low Pay Commission to tackle the problem of low pay, so today we need a commission to tackle the problem of high pay.

So .. there you have looters in Great Britain talking about putting the government in charge of deciding who can make what in the private marketplace. Does this sound a bit like any other country you know? I mean, other than China.

Do you realize how much power the Congress has given Barack Obama's pay czar? Not only does pay czar Kenneth Feinberg have "binding" authority over executive compensation, he has the ability to "claw back" money that has already been paid.

The reason this is coming to light now is because seven major companies that participated in the TARP program have to submit their executive contracts for government approval. One contract for energy trader Andrew Hall could be as much as $100 million this year. Some are looking at that amount and thinking that no one should be allowed to earn that kind of income! So the question is ... will our pay czar allow this man to receive his $100 million?

Not only that, but he hasn't even begun to explore this idea of a "claw back" provision. Did you even know that the Congress has given this man the authority to do that? Just tell me where in the Constitution it says that Congress can create laws that would allow a government bureaucrat to retroactively seize money from private businesses? Just curious ....

This power is not just limited to large TARP recipients. Feinberg has the ability to recover any compensation paid to executives of "any company that received federal assistance." Feinberg himself says, "Anything is possible under the law." He's right. Try to name a company that someone can't build some sort of a claim of having received federal assistance.

The Obama administration has decided to do away with the petty notion of an "ownership society." Instead, Obama would like to increase the number of government leaches. He would like to create a larger class of people dependent on the government for their every need, including housing. That is why Barack Obama is going to spend another $4.25 billion of your tax dollars - under the guise of economic stimulus - in order to build more subsidized housing.

He wants to use federal stimulus money to build subsidized rental units: low-rise apartment buildings and town homes. He also wants your tax dollars to fund the purchasing of foreclosed homes so they can be refurbished and then rented to poor people at "affordable" rates.

The White House did get one thing right ... not everyone can or should own a home. But that doesn't mean that the government should support those who choose to be renters for life.

Here are a few points to remember when it comes to government subsidized apartments:

1. As I said, the goal here is to create dependency. I can hear the Democrat talking points during the next election now: "Vote for the Republicans and they will take your home away."
    
2. If you are not in need of a government subsidy to find a place to live, listen and heed. Do not, whatever you do, rent an apartment in a complex that permits government-subsidized housing. You do not want to live there. You do not want to be living around a bunch of people who cannot carry their own load. The crime rates will be high and the place will quickly fall into disrepair. You may not like the insensitivity, but facts is facts.

Transcript of remarks made by Leo Carrington (who doesn't exist) to a mandatory meeting of all employees of Carrington Automotive Enterprises, Inc. (which doesn't exist either) on August 17th, 2009 at the Royal Payne Hotel (a purely imaginary place) in Norfolk, Virginia (which does, in fact, exist).

I would like to start by thanking you for attending this meeting, though it's not like you had much of a choice. After all, attendance was mandatory. I'm also glad many of you accepted my invitation to your family members to be here as well. I have a few remarks to make to all of you, and then we'll retire to the ballroom for a great lunch and some employee awards.

I felt that this meeting was important enough to close all 12 of our tire and automotive shops today so that you could be here. To reassure you, everybody is being paid for the day --- except me. Since our stores are closed we're making no money. That economic loss is mine to sustain. Carrington Automotive has 157 full time employees and around 30 additional part-timers. All of you are here. I thank you for that.

When you walked into this auditorium you were handed a rather thick 78-page document. Many of you have already taken a peek. You were probably surprised to see that it's my personal tax return for 2008. Those of you who are adept at reading these tax returns will see that last year my taxable income was $534,000.00. Now I'm sure this seems rather high to many of you. So ... let's talk about this tax return.

Carrington Automotive Enterprises is what we call a Sub-S - a Subchapter S corporation. The name comes from a particular part of our tax code. Sub-S status means that the income from all 12 of our stores is reported on my personal tax return. Businesses that report their income on the owner's personal tax return are referred to as "small businesses." So, you see now that this $534,000 is really the total taxable income - the total combined profit from all 12 of our stores. That works out to an average of a bit over $44,000 per store.

Why did I feel it important for you to see my actual 2008 tax return? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric being thrown around today about taxes, small businesses and rich people. To the people in charge in Washington right now I'm a wealthy American making over a half-million dollars a year. Most Americans would agree: I'm just another rich guy; after all ... I had over a half-million in income last year, right? In this room we know that the reality is that I'm a small business owner who runs 12 retail establishments and employs 187 people. Now here's something that shouldn't surprise you, but it will: Just under 100 percent ... make that 99.7 percent of all employers in this countries are small businesses, just like ours. Every one of these businesses reports their income on a personal income tax return. You need to understand that small businesses like ours are responsible for about 80 percent of all private sector jobs in this country, and about 70 percent of all jobs that have been created over the past year. You also need to know that when you hear some politician talking about rich people who earn over $200,000 or $500,000 a year, they're talking about the people who create the jobs.

The people who are now running the show in Washington have been talking for months about raising taxes on wealthy Americans. I already know that in two years my federal income taxes are going to go up by about 4.5 percent. That happens when Obama and the Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. When my taxes climb by 4.5 percent the Democrats will be on television saying that this really isn't a tax increase. They'll explain that the Bush tax cuts have expired .. nothing more. Here at Carrington we'll know that almost 5% has been taken right off of our bottom line. And that means it will be coming off your bottom line.

Numbers are boring, I know ... but let's talk a bit more about that $534,000. That's the money that was left last year from company revenues after I paid all of the salaries and expenses of running this business. Now I could have kept every penny of that for myself, but that would have left us with nothing to grow our business, to attract new customers and to hire new employees. You're aware that we've been talking about opening new stores in Virginia Beach and Newport News. To do that I will have to buy or lease property, construct a building and purchase inventory. I also have to hire additional people to work in those stores. These people wouldn't immediately be earning their pay. So, where do you think the money for all of this comes from? Right out of our profits .. right out of that $534,000. I need to advertise to bring customers in, especially in these tough times. Where do you think that money comes from? Oh sure, I can count it as an expense when I file my next income tax return .. but for right now that comes from either current revenues or last year's profits. Revenues right now aren't all that hot ... so do the math. A good effective advertising campaign might cost us more than $300,000.

Is this all starting to come together for you now?

Right now the Democrats are pushing a nationalized health care plan that, depending on who's doing the talking, will add anywhere from another two percent to an additional 4.6 percent to my taxes. If I add a few more stores, which I would like to do, and if the economy improves, my taxable income ... our business income ... could go over one million dollars! If that happens the Democrats have yet another tax waiting, another five percent plus! I've really lost tract of all of the new government programs the Democrats and President Obama are proposing that they claim they will be able to finance with new taxes on what they call "wealthy Americans."

And while we're talking about health care, let me explain something else to you. I understand that possibly your biggest complaint with our company is that we don't provide you with health insurance. That is because as your employer I believe that it is my responsibility to provide you with a safe workplace and a fair wage and to do all that I can to preserve and grow this company that provides us all with income. I no more have a responsibility to provide you with health insurance than I do with life, auto or homeowner's insurance. As you know, I have periodically invited agents for health insurance companies here to provide you with information on private health insurance plans. The Democrats are proposing to levy yet another tax against Carrington in the amount of 8 percent of my payroll as a penalty for not providing you with health insurance. You should know that if they do this I will be reducing every person's salary or hourly wage by that same 8 percent. This will not be done to put any more money in my pocket. It will be done to make sure that I don't suffer financially from the Democrat's efforts to place our healthcare under the control of the federal government. It is your health, not mine. It is your healthcare, not mine. These are your expenses, not mine. If you think I'm wrong about all this, I would sure love to hear your reasoning.

Try to understand what I'm telling you here. Those people that Obama and the Democrats call "wealthy Americans" are, in very large part, America's small business owners. I'm one of them. You have the evidence, and surely you don't think that the owner of a bunch of tire stores is anything special. That $534,000 figure on my income tax return puts me squarely in Democrat crosshairs when it comes to tax increases.

Let's be clear about this ... crystal clear. Any federal tax increase on me is going to cost you money, not me. Any new taxes on Carrington Automotive will be new taxes that you, or the people I don't hire to staff the new stores I won't be building, will be paying. Do you understand what I'm telling you? You've heard about things rolling downhill, right? Fine .. then you need to know that taxes, like that other stuff, roll downhill. Now you and I may understand that you are not among those that the Democrats call "wealthy Americans," but when this "tax the rich" thing comes down you are going to be standing at the bottom of the mud slide, if you get my drift. That's life in the big city, my friends ... where elections have consequences.

You know our economy is very weak right now. I've pledged to get us through this without layoffs or cuts in your wages and benefits. It's too bad the politicians can't get us through this without attacking our profits. To insure our survival I have to take a substantial portion of that $534,000 and set it aside for unexpected expenses and a worsening economy. Trouble is, the government is eyeing that money too ... and they have the guns. If they want it, they can take it.

I don't want to make this too long. There's a great lunch waiting for us all. But you need to understand what's happening here. I've worked hard for 23 years to create this business. There were many years where I couldn't take a penny in income because every dollar was being dedicated to expanding the business. There were tough times when it took every dollar of revenues to replenish our inventory and cover your paychecks. During those times I earned nothing. If you want to see those tax returns, just let me know.

OK .. I know I'm repeating myself here. I don't hire stupid people, and you are probably getting it now. So let me just ramble for a few more minutes.

Most Americans don't realize that when the Democrats talk about raising taxes on people making more than $250 thousand a year, they're talking about raising taxes on small businesses. The U.S. Treasury Department says that six out of every ten individuals in this country with incomes of more than $280,000 are actually small business owners. About one-half of the income in this country that would be subject to these increased taxes is from small businesses like ours. Depending on how many of these wonderful new taxes the Democrats manage to pass, this company could see its tax burden increase by as much as $60,000. Perhaps more.

I know a lot of you voted for President Obama. A lot of you voted for Democrats across the board. Whether you voted out of support for some specific policies, or because you liked his slogans, you need to learn one very valuable lesson from this election. Elections have consequences. You might have thought it would be cool to have a president who looks like you; or a president who is young, has a buff bod, and speaks eloquently when there's a teleprompter in the neighborhood. Maybe you liked his promises to tax the rich. Maybe you believed his promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than a certain amount. Maybe you actually bought into his promise to cut taxes on millions of Americans who actually don't pay income taxes in the first place. Whatever the reason .. your vote had consequences; and here they are.

Bottom line? I'm not taking this hit alone. As soon as the Democrats manage to get their tax increases on the books, I'm going to take steps to make sure that my family isn't affected. When you own the business, that is what you're allowed to do. I built this business over a period of 23 years, and I'm not going to see my family suffer because we have a president and a congress who think that wealth is distributed rather than earned. Any additional taxes, of whatever description, that President Obama and the Democrats inflict on this business will come straight out of any funds I have set aside for expansion or pay and benefit increases. Any plans I might have had to hire additional employees for new stores will be put aside. Any plans for raises for the people I now have working for me will be shelved. Year-end bonuses might well be eliminated. That may sound rough, but that's the reality.

You're going to continue to hear a lot of anti-wealth rhetoric out there from the media and from the left. You can chose to believe what you wish .. .but when it comes to Carrington Automotive you will know the truth. The books are open to any of you at any time. I have nothing to hide. I would hope that other small business owners out there would hold meetings like this one, but I know it won't happen that often. One of the lessons to be learned here is that taxes ... all taxes ... and all regulatory costs that are placed on businesses anywhere in this country, will eventually be passed right on down to individuals; individuals such as yourself. This hasn't been about admonishing anyone and it hasn't been about issuing threats. This is part of the education you should have received in the government schools, but didn't. Class is now dismissed.

Let's eat.

© 2009 Neal Boortz

There are two schools of thought out there right now when it comes to healthcare reform. The first is that of Rahm Emanuel: Never let a good crisis go to waste. With the economy slowly starting to get better, some analysts in Washington are really worried that they will lose their edge on healthcare reform. Why is that? Well because Barack Obama has been trying for months to pin the turn-around of our economy to healthcare reform. Example .. statement's like this one, "Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America." Sound familiar?

The other school of thought is that the better the economy gets, the less angry people will be about healthcare. Why is that? Because as more people become unemployed, the more people gain health insurance and therefore aren't as emotional on the issue.

Naturally there is a third school of thought, thanks to evil, brown-shirted, white sheet-wearing, swastika toting people like me. The fact is that the people of this country never really bought into this idea that healthcare reform was going to make or break our economy. Sorry, President Obama but you did a lousy job of convincing America. And whether or not the economy gets better, healthcare is always going to be a hot-button issue because it hits close to home for everyone.

I am proud of what we are currently seeing in this country. People are actually getting up and becoming involved. They're engaged. Sure, they get rude every once in a while. That seems to be a problem now. Never was a problem when the rudeness was directed at George Bush.

While healthcare may be the initial topic that got you into a town hall meeting or a protest or rally, there really is something larger at stake. From tea parties to healthcare, we are seeing a backlash against big government. It's about freakin' time. People see a government takeover of healthcare as a huge government takeover of a large segment of our economy and a good portion of our very lives. Somehow people are starting to relate to that. Both parties need to wake up and realize what is going on. Democrats need to realize that these are "real Americans" with "real reservations" and "real votes." Republicans need to realize that these are the people they have abandoned for so many years. If they were smart, they would take that and run with it.

Web Guy responded to this guy by reminding him that during the first year of the Clinton administration they were actually formulating an idea to seize 15% of the outstanding balance of all pension and 401K plans. Howard was also reminded that one of Obama's heroes, Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina, recently seized all private pension plans in that country.

That's OK. It could never happen here, right?

You haven't heard a lot about the union's precious "card check" bill lately. I don't think it's dead ... just dormant. Count on the unions to do everything in their considerable power to get this passed ... they're virtually licking their chops at the idea of their union organizing thugs being able to intimidate workers into signing a card saying they want to join a union. (Hey, buddy, remember: We know where you live, and we know where your children go to school.)

Here's another reason why you do not want to see the power of unions to increase in this country. You've heard of the financial problems facing California. But have you heard what the California government-employee unions are doing to help? Well ... they've voted to authorize a strike. They don't like the idea that government union workers are being furloughed to save taxpayers money.

BTW .. did you know that over the past year wages have been working twice as fast in the government sector than they have in the private? Government employee unions.

The California government employee unions think it's just fine if California looks for ways to save money --- but from now on that money has to come from somewhere other than union paychecks.

Yeah ... we really want more unions, don't we?

I have a message for Slobbering Barney Frank: stay out of the housing crisis. You've already caused enough damage for this country. Please butt out ... if I can use the phrase "butt out" with you.

Who am I kidding? Yesterday Barney Frank threatened the banks. Yep he says that if the banks do not volunteer to save more homeowners from foreclosure, Congress is going to force them. All hail the imperial federal government!

Barney Frank is going to revive the legislation that I told you about earlier in the year. This is the bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify home loans. He also says that his committee will not consider any legislation to help banks with lending unless there is a "significant increase" in mortgage modifications.

Promise you this ... as soon as bankruptcy judges are allowed to modify the provisions of home loans, including the principal balance due, mortgage interest rates will be on the way up. Way up.

You know ... maybe the real goal here on the part of Slobbering Barney and his Democrat fellow travelers is to nationalize the home mortgage business. Only by making the government the one and only mortgage lender can you make sure that Barney stays happy.

This Friday the House is going to vote to ban corporate pay practices at financial firms. What kind of pay practices? Anything that the government deems to be an "inappropriate risk." What exactly is considered an "inappropriate risk." Well that is for the government - that means bureaucrats -- to decide. People like Barney Frank or other government hacks will suddenly be in charge of determining what pay practices are appropriate for financial firms in this country. This is a prime example of our imperial federal government run amuck. We are talking about unprecedented power in the hands of the federal government. This is power that would have our Founding Fathers spinning around like they were on a rotisserie.

Slobbering Barney says, "If the risk pays off, you make money .. and if the risk doesn't, you suffer no penalties. Heads you win, tails you break even. It's like selling lottery tickets that only cost you money if they pay off." Yep. That's the man who is going to be in charge of regulating corporate pay for our financial system. His bill would ban any "risky" compensation that could threaten the "safety and soundness" of our economy.

Also, I think that Barney also managed to include in the bill a provision that would require financial companies to disclose to federal regulators any details on "incentive-based" compensation. Any details on ALL incentive-based compensation? We are talking about any and all bonuses paid out by the financial sector.

Oh and you will love this comment. This comes from one of my favorite Representatives. You people in Central Florida should be ashamed. Rep. Alan Grayson says that any attempts to water down this bill would only help "irresponsible managers who loot their companies.". Yep, because that is exactly what these financial institutions are all about.

Here's what this all boils down to: Government hacks who probably would have a tough time making it in the private sector are going to be telling business owners and managers what they can and what they cannot do in the operations of their businesses. This is a wholesale attack on economic liberty and free enterprise, and it is exactly what you would expect of the Democrat party and a president who, in writing, professed his affinity for Communism and Marxism.

You folks with the Obama bumper stickers? Thanks a pantload.

Yesterday I told you about the Congressional Budget Office estimate that said the House Democrat healthcare plan would save virtually nothing in terms of healthcare costs over the next ten years, yet it would cost about $1 trillion. Now that's some serious money. The Democrats have finally figure out how they are going to spin this one. The Hill writes, "Following a blow from the Congressional Budget Office, Democratic leaders in Congress likely will make the case this week that the healthcare reform plan has multiple benefits and cost savings that cannot be scored by independent congressional accountants."

Did you get that? So now the Democrats are relying on you to trust them and believe that somehow their bill will save money that just can't currently be predicted. Savings out of the blue ... how convenient.

Downplaying the CBO's estimates will be another tactic used by Democrats. For example, a leadership aide says, "At CBO, they are accountants, but we still have our case to make." Oh, so now I get it. The CBO is just filled with a bunch of pencil-pushing accountants ... but the almighty politicians have yet to have their say! Politicians are elected by the people! Accountants are not! Besides, accountants are boring.. so just ignore them.

Today, the federal minimum wage is set to increase to $7.25. Just what our economy needs to get things moving again, right? Wrong. Even people educated in government schools can figure out how this one is going to turn out.

Wages increase. Employers have to figure out ways to get the extra funds. The first way would be to increase the amount of cash coming in. That's easier said than done .. especially considering this economy. Another way could be to scale back employee hours. Suddenly that increase doesn't seem to matter much, because your employer needs you less. Or you could simply fire people. Get rid of them. Less employees in the work force means longer lines at the unemployed office. More people suckling off the government teat until the next burger-flipping job comes along.

I'm not just blowing smoke here. When I was in high school I got a job bagging groceries at the A&P on 9th Ave. in Pensacola, Florida. I was being paid the minimum wage. After a few months on the job the minimum wage went up by 25 cents. The manager of the store fired me. He said that the increase in the minimum wage increased his bag boy budget over the limit, and since I was the last hired I would be the one who had to go. My first real brush with the idiocy of government intervention in the marketplace. I was willing to work for the hourly rate I was getting, and the manager was willing to pay me that rate ... but the government said no. Back then I just couldn't understand what role the government had in the wage negotiations between me and my employer. I thought that the government's responsibility would be to provide the means of forcing compliance with whatever agreement we made .... But did I ever have a lot to learn.

Basically what you can expect is for this to prolong the economic recovery. But it could get even worse. Did you know that one of Barack Obama's campaign promises was to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011? Yeah, that'll really work wonders for our economy.

But advocates for the minimum wage increases love to use this phrase "the working poor." I'm sorry, folks but nobody in their right mind should expect for you to raise a family earning minimum wage. If you do, you are a low-life. You are a failure. "The working poor" is just a fancy way of masking that reality. But with this minimum wage increase, it looks like we are going to have less "working poor" people to worry about and more plain 'po people.

Probably good news for the Democrats.

General Motors just emerged from bankruptcy after receiving billions of dollars in bailout funds. What does it want to do now? Sell perfume. GM will launch the Cadillac fragrance for men this fall to mark its 100th anniversary. The fragrance license is held by a cosmetics company based in Dubai. Retail price will cost you $73 a bottle. Now apparently this isn't the first time GM has licensed fragrances. There are also smells for Hummer, Chevrolet and Corvette. A Beauty Contact director says, "Cadillac, the new fragrance for men is part of the recent Cadillac renaissance: Hot new products and redesigns that capture the mantra of life, liberty and the pursuit."

We're in an economic crisis, and GM is going to sell smelly for $73 a bottle? You let AIG entertain top sales agents and all hell breaks loose. Let some one pay a bonus to an executive for a job well done ... Armageddon. But the government-owned auto company is going to stink up Cadillac drivers and all is fine.

Just for fun, describe what you think the scents for Cadillac, Hummer, Chevrolet and Corvette should be like.Try to keep it clean, mmmkay? --ww 

A report from a federal inspector general says that the new tab to bail out banks .. could be as much as $24 trillion. Now that's a doomsday estimate ... the figure for the worst possible scenario. But it sure is way above the $4.7 trillion that has been spent so far.

Solution? Well .. here's one for you. Nationalization. I absolutely believe that Barack Obama would love to nationalize America's major banks and financial institutions. We were talking to Dick Morris about this yesterday, and he concurs. Just think of the power Obama would have if he controlled banking. He would get to determine who gets loans, and who doesn't. What businesses receive startup financing, and what businesses don't. Control of financial institutions would give Obama and the Democrats the control the direction and operation of our economy in ways you cannot imagine. They don't have to seize control of the means of production. Private industrial concerns, businesses, transportation companies .. all can remain under private ownership. Give politicians power over their financing arrangements and government becomes omnipotent.

Here's another statistic for you. By the end of this fiscal year, Sept. 30, 2009, our federal government will have spent $11 billion every day.

... and you wonder why I am worried about the future of this country.

Let's watch. By the end of the year maybe you'll be able to tell me just how off base I was about all this.

Las Vegas can be a bit exhausting, so all I wanted to do on the AirTran flight home yesterday was saw some logs. I cranked up the Kindle, though, and started reading the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. An AJC editorial presented some ways the Atlanta area might crawl out of the economic doldrums. Here was one suggestion:

"We believe, though, that Atlantans in the right tax brackets should shake off a bit of their investing conservatism and put more dollars behind our hometown startups and young companies.

"If the prospect of triple-digit investment returns aren't enough, consider the civic good of helping the region grow high-paying jobs.

"Surely Atlanta investors can step up more, even during hard times, and seize potentially lucrative, if risky, opportunities.

Say what?

This jewel of an editorial was written by one Andre Jackson representing the AJC editorial board.

Well, Andre ... have a seat. I have a few things to say to you. First ... I haven't seen your name before, so I have no idea how long you've been hanging around the AJC. You should know, though, that your paper has excelled in promoting wealth envy since I stepped off that Greyhound here 42 years ago. Your editorial board has never missed a chance to throw the word "greed" at high-achievers. In reading years worth of AJC editorials you would scarcely know that Atlantans with money to invest actually worked for their wealth. They earned it. To the editors of the AJC they were either "lucky" or they exploited some poor, downtrodden, pitiful poor people. AJC editorial word processors have a two-key macro for inserting the phrase "pay their fair share" into commentaries. I dare say that there is not one person on the editorial board that could come close to telling you (a) what percentage of total income is earned by the top 1% of income earners; and, (b) what percentage of total income taxes the disgusting top 1% pay.

So .. here you come suggesting that the very people your paper has made a cause out of vilifying for decades step forward and, if necessary, sacrifice a goodly portion of their wealth in Atlanta startups.

As it turns out, I have a bit of money I could invest, but I'm holding those funds very close. Let me tell you why, sport. I would bet five dollars to a donut hole that you voted for Obama. Good for you. Hope you're enjoying all of this wonderful change while you're telling me how you want me to invest my money. While you're getting your jollies from the hopey-changy thing I am working overtime trying to figure out how to save as much of my future income and retirement nest egg from this guy as I possibly can; and I suspect I'm not alone.

Have you taken stock of how your man wants to raise our taxes? Or, I should say, have you seen his plan of attack on the very people whom you think ought to be pouring money into Atlanta startups? Let's start with a guaranteed 4.6% tax increase in about 17 months. Then we have surtaxes ranging from 1% to 3% to cover his health care dreams, plus taxes on our health care plans. Charlie Rangel has an even higher surtax - this one over 5% -- waiting for the super achievers, the ones with real money to invest. Then let's add to all of this a reduction in allowable tax deductions (really another tax increase) and the removal of the Social Security earnings cap. You total these goodies up and the tax rate will be around 50% for the people you think have all this money to invest. And Andre ... we're just talking federal taxes. You might want to remember that our esteemed city council just raised property taxes by 45%, and then there's the Georgia income tax on top of it all. To make things even worse, Obama thinks that Christine Kirchner, the President of Argentina, is one of the hottest things going in this hemisphere. She nationalized all pension plans in Argentina. Retired Argentineans will now get their checks from the government. Do you, Andre, want to convince me that your president isn't thinking the same thoughts here?

Tell you what, Andre. When we get a president and a controlling party in Washington that exhibits even a faint affection for capitalism and economic liberty, you can drop us another note. When we have a governing --- or "ruling," as Obama likes to day --- party that doesn't see tax increases as the answer to every problem plaguing mankind; when the leaders of this nation respect private property ... then you can talk to me about investing in your pet startup projects. While this menace is in the White House, and while the corrupt Charlie Rangel is writing our tax laws, I'm sitting tight.

White House economic advisor Larry Summers has made a very convincing argument that the economic crisis is over. Are you ready for this? He says that the number of people searching the term "economic depression" on Google is back to normal levels.

Yep. That's one of the White House's indicating factors that their stimulus plans have turned the tide for Americans ... they aren't googling "economic depression" as much. Are you buying this, folks?

Not all that well, huh?

Have you gone from recognizing that the stimulus isn't working to actually trying to figure out why? Allow me to help.

Economists will tell you that the economy will really start to recover when people start spending money. Thus far, that isn't happening. The only stimulus money was actually put into the hands of the people was that pitiful $400 for individuals and $800 for families. Most of these people used the extra money not to buy something, but to either save or pay down some bills. They're scared, remain scared, and aren't in a buying mood right now. A one-time check doesn't really do it. They need to see a long-term and permanent increase in their take-home income, and thus a long-term increase in their ability to spend. How do you do that? Simple - tax cuts. Not just a one-time check, but a real tax cut. And not just a tax cut for the poor (who don't pay taxes anyway) and the middle class; but a tax cut for everyone, businesses included. Let the people who create the jobs keep more of the money they earn - and what happens? Do you think that somehow more jobs might be created?

President Hopenchange went the opposite way. Instead of a promise that people will be able to keep more of what they earn, his administration (and the entire Democrat party, for that matter) delivers a cacophony of rhetoric about increasing taxes on the very people we need to start the economic recovery. How smart his that? In the meantime they dump billions of dollars into idiotic government pork projects and call it economic stimulus.

It's the old Bill Clinton "You won't spend your money the right way" bit revisited. Just how long are we going to sit around and let these so-called "leaders" in Washington play us for such fools? When do the majority of Americans wake up and see this as the government power play it is? With so many Americans being government educated, there's not much real hope out there. Let's face it, the Republican Party sure isn't doing anything worth mentioning. They can't even come up with a counter-offer to Obama's socialized medicine.

Now ... Cristina has chosen some reading assignments.

The government has some money left over from the $700 billion bank bailout. There is something like $259 billion in the fund plus another $70 billion that has been repaid by the banks. So now the debate remains ... what should be done with the "extra" money?

Tax cheat Tim Geithner wants to keep money in the program to provide "headroom" for "additional flexibility to Treasury in its efforts to stabilize the economy and build the foundation for long-term economic growth." Politicians, like Barney Frank, are just itching to get their hands on the money to be used for entitlement program. Slobbering Barney, for example, wants to use the dividends earned through interest owed by banks to go toward affordable housing programs .. read: welfare.

But the answer here should be really simple, folks. Give the money back to the taxpayers. This is not the government's money. It is not money that was willingly donated to Timothy Geithner's piggy bank. This is money that has been seized by the government from you, the taxpayers. How hard is this?

This is how your federal government believes we are going to get this economy back on track. It wants to spend stimulus money on preventing homelessness. Yes, seriously. That would be another $1.5 billion of your tax dollars to be distributed to communities around the country for the purpose of preventing homelessness. Here are some examples of projects that are being funded. You take a look and tell me if you think these are the people that you are going to be looking for when you need your next pay check.

• Fresno, California will be given $1 million to dismantle tent cities and move resident's into privately owned apartments.
• A nonprofit in eastern Idaho hopes to apply its stimulus funds toward one-time payments for rent or mortgages to those on the verge of losing their homes.
• Stockton, California plans to buy foreclosed houses and renovate them as affordable housing.
• Franklin County, Pa., will use stimulus money to help families with back rent and utilities, moving costs, short-term storage and credit repair.
• In Reading, Pa., a coalition for the homeless plans to provide short-term rent aid and landlord-tenant mediation to prevent evictions.

Now ... do you have any questions as to why this wonderful Obama generated stimulus program isn't working? How in the world does tearing down a tent city stimulate our economy?

You're starting to get a clue as to why Barack's approval rating is heading steadily down, aren't you?

Republicans on the House Oversight panel are finally getting down to business on what caused the initial housing crisis that led to the collapse of the economy. A new 26-page report highlight's the government's role in trying to increase sub-prime home ownership. Michelle Malkin has some details:

* Political pressure led to the erosion of responsible lending practices: In the early 1990s, Fannie and Freddie began to come under considerable political pressure to lower their underwriting standards, particularly on the size of down payments and the credit quality of borrowers. (p.6)

* Lower down payments led to housing prices that outpaced income growth: Once government-sponsored efforts to decrease down payments spread to the wider market, home prices became increasingly untethered from any kind of demand limited by borrowers' ability to pay. Instead, borrowers could just make smaller down payments and take on higher debt, allowing home prices to continue their unrestrained rise. Some statistics help illustrate how this occurred. Between 2001 and 2006, median home prices increased by an inflation-adjusted 50 percent, yet at the same time Americans' income failed to keep up. (p. 11)

* Members of an "affordable housing" coalition shared profits with political allies to help legitimize their business practices: Fannie Mae created and used The Fannie Mae Foundation to spread millions of dollars around to politically-connected organizations like the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. It also hired well-known academics to give an aura of academic rigor to policy positions favorable to Fannie Mae. One paper coauthored by now-Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag, concluded that the chance was minimal that the GSEs were not holding sufficient capital to cover their losses in the event of a severe economic shock. The authors suggested that "the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero," and that "the expected cost to the government of providing an explicit government guarantee on $1 trillion in GSE debt is just $2 million." (p.7)

* The Government Sponsored Enterprises led the way into the housing crisis: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were leaders in risky mortgage lending. According to an analysis presented to the Committee, between 2002 and 2007, Fannie and Freddie purchased $1.9 trillion of mortgages made to borrowers with credit scores below 660, one of the definitions of "subprime" used by federal banking regulators. This represents over 54% of all such mortgages purchased during those years. (p.24)

Well now. Our economy is really lunging forward, isn't it? What a ride! Are you holding on?

We're billions of dollars further in debt (trillions?) and the economy is still stagnant. TARP, the stimulus bill, massive debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay .. and what has this all brought us? Banks aren't lending, businesses aren't hiring - let along expanding - and consumers aren't buying. Oh, to be sure, the malls are crowded. Turn up the thermostats and see how long that lasts. Those aren't shoppers, they're just your neighbors trying to stay cool while watching the latest absurd teen fashion and freak shows.

Do what the initials SNAFU mean? That word was created to define government action, or inaction as the case may be. In 1942 Time magazine carried this revelation: "Last week U.S. citizens knew that gasoline rationing and rubber requisitioning were snafu." Well .. if there was ever a SNAFU, our economy would fit the description. To fully understand this, you have to know what the acronym stands for. Go ahead ... Google it

So ... after hundreds of billions of dollars, government seizures of GM, Citigroup and others, imminent bank nationalization, massive favors handed to unions at the expense of private investors, and a pantload of new czars in the White House ... all done to kick start our economy ... what do we have. SNAFU, that's what. Or TAUFU, if you like.

Look ... I'm just a talk show host. What the hell do I know? I've been sitting behind a microphone for 40 years now sparring with hundreds of thousands of callers who generally knew a helluva lot more than the hundreds of politicians I've interviewed over that time. Having said that ... I'm betting that this particular talk show host can, in just a few hundred words, give you some better ideas for kick starting our economy than you've heard from Obama and his Democrat sycophants over the past four months. Oh, and throw in most of the Republicans as well.

It's not all that hard, really. All you have to do is recognize and acknowledge the true goal of the political class. It's summed up in one word: POWER. You think they actually give a flying Krispy Kreme about you? What? I know you were born at night, but was it last night? They may care about your vote .. but that's it. It's power, my friends. Power and little else. Politicians will spout some lofty rhetoric about public service and wanting to leave this country a better place when they leave office; but, with few exceptions, that changes rather quickly. Once they get used to the privileges and the perks that go with their exalted positions their mindset changes. These people don't name research centers, bridges, parks, sports stadiums, university buildings, highways and office buildings after themselves because of their dedication to public service.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us in a situation where the people in power, the people who make the rules and decide how our economy is going to be fixed, are going to worry first about preserving and expanding their power and secondly (if they have time) about putting us back on a track to prosperity.

The basics: What does it take to get our economy moving again? Spending. If nobody is spending nobody needs to produce. You aren't going to gather the raw materials and personnel together to spend time and money creating a product or service unless you have some degree of confidence that there are people out there who either have or can borrow the money to buy it. Our economy is a constant day-by-day election process. The products and services put into the marketplace are the candidates. Consumers are the voters. Dollars are the ballots. If a candidate gets no votes, the candidate either reinvents himself or just simply goes away. The whole process slows down or grinds to a halt if the voters don't have ballots to cast.

Clearly, to stimulate our economy money had to be spent. That's basic. The question, then, was who gets to spend the money? If the American public gets to make the choices as to when and where the money is spent, that equates to power for the people. If, on the other hands, those decisions are made by the political class, it means no power to the people - the power goes to the elected elite. Now would someone please try to explain to me why these politicians, as completely immersed as they are in building their individual power bases, would ever want to turn over the power that goes with spending these huge sums of money to the great unwashed? How in the world is that going to benefit a politician? How do you generate a campaign ad for radio telling the voters that you deserve reelection because the private consumers in your district kept the local hardware store and a few clothing shops in business with their spending? Better you should be able to lay claim to a few road widenings and resurfacings and a new rehearsal hall for the local high school band.

Do you remember how much that stimulus bills was? Let's just call it $750 billion. For the sake of argument let's accept that this $750 billion had to be borrowed and spent to get our economy cranking again. Once you've accepted the $750 billion figure we're going to borrow, you then have to decide just who gets to spend that money and what they get to spend it on.

Here's an idea from Texas congressman Louis Gohmert (R 1st Dist.). Gohmert wanted a tax holiday. I've taken his idea and expanded it a bit. Last year Gohmert was floating an idea of allowing the American people to go one full month without paying any federal income or payroll taxes. The idea was that they would then spend this money and stimulate the economy. When Obama started talking about the $750 billion dollar stimulus price tag I did some quick calculations. It seems that $750 billion is almost exactly equal to the amount of federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from American paychecks over a six-month period.

Are you following me? How about not a one-month tax holiday, but six months? How about letting people keep almost their entire paychecks for one-half of a year?

So -- here are the two possible scenarios our politicians had to work with:

1. Borrow the $750 billion and let the politicians (the looters) decide how it is going to be spent to stimulate our economy.
    
2. Give the producers a six month period in which they owe no federal income or payroll taxes. For these six months they get to keep their checks. This puts $750 billion into the hands of American workers - American producers - to spend and invest.

Either way you are going to have to borrow $750 billion. If you give the people a six-month tax holiday the money will have to be borrowed to replace the lost revenue.

You see it, don't you? There is one huge difference between the two plans. Under the government spending scenario the politicians get to decide how the money is spent. In other words, they get the power. Remember ... power is the goal. It's everything to the political class. Politicians wanted to decide which road is built, which park is refurbished, and which research project gets additional funding. Every one of these decisions would be made based on the political capital it will generate.

Under the tax holiday plan the people, not the politicians, get to cast the ballots/dollars. Spending choices would not be made on the basis of political expediency, but on the free choices of the people. Businesses that delivered a good product and good customer service would get the votes, not politicians who delivered a pork project to their districts.

A dollar spent on a new lawnmower at the hardware store does not generate a single vote. A dollar spent on a new job mowing grass along an Interstate highway does.

So ... there was a decision to be made. Massive amounts of money were going to be borrowed and spent to stimulate our economy (or so the storyline went). But just who would get to spend the money?

Do you remember that famous Bill Clinton line? It was January of 1999. The place was Buffalo, New York. The federal government had actually collected more tax money that it needed. There was a surplus. Someone asked Clinton if, considering the surplus, there might be a tax cut. His response: "We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right... But ... if you don't spend it right, here's what's going to happen." He then went on to describe the gloomy future of Social Security when more people are collecting benefits than paying taxes.

Sure .. it's your money. You worked for it; you earned it. That money actually represents the expenditure of a portion of your life ... and here's this politician telling you that even though he doesn't actually need that money right now, he's going to go ahead and keep it because if he returns it to its rightful owner - you - then you won't "spend it right." Now excuse me, but don't you get to decide what would be the right way and the wrong way to spend your money?

You know the rest of this story. The politicians in Washington decided that they would be doing the spending, not you. You just could not be trusted to spend it "right." So President Obama sent the word to Princess Pelosi to gather together all of the spending dreams and schemes of her Democrat members of congress and compile them into a massive spending bill. The bill would be pure pork and designed for nothing more than to secure reelections; but it would be called stimulus.

Now I could waste a few thousand words here describing all of the absurd ways this money is being spent. Vice President Biden actually told us that there would be waste. He was talking to business leaders in New York in early June when he said that waste would be inevitable in spending the stimulus money. Inevitable doesn't begin to cover it.

As we well know, California is in some deep horsesqueeze. They need to come up with some serious cash to balance the budget, and luckily Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refuses to increase taxes. So his latest idea to save taxpayer money is to deport illegal immigrates in California jails. Wow! A sane and logical plan from government? The only question is .... why have they waited so long?

The proposal will supposedly save California more than $180 million. It plans to commute the sentences of thousands of illegal immigrants and turn them over to the Feds to be deported.

Something tells me that there will be a lot of panties in a wad over this one. Besides .. how long do you think it will take the illegals to get back across the border once they're sent home ... and they'll be out of jail and ready to commit more crimes! What a state!

I don't want it to say that I never display any empathy. Fact is, I do. I have empathy up to here [gesturing] for all of those ObamaBots who put so much thought and attention into their vote last year. You know the ones I'm talking about ... the people who swooned and fainted at the very mention of the word "change" and who went to sleep every night with visions of sugar plums and change we can believe in.

I'm trying to build a scorecard. Here's just a few items:

• Trillions added to our national debt.
• American is having trouble getting other countries to buy American debt
• Obama virtually ignores a corrupt election in Iran. We leave it to French President Sarkozy to speak out for the Iranian people wanting a free election.
• GM and Citigroup now government operations. More to come.
• The government (Obama) gets to set executive compensation levels.
• Obama seeking the ability to seize private businesses.
• Firing inspector generals who uncover corruption involving Obama buddies.
• Overturning established law to favor unions over secured creditors in GM's bankruptcy.
• Obama wants to reduce tax deductions for charitable deductions. Government doesn't like competition.
• The Washington DC voucher system, with a great record of success, slated for elimination while Obama's kids go to private school.
• Obama says 8% unemployment max. We're nearing 10%
• Obama moves to raise taxes on the small businesses that create the jobs.
• North Korea threatening to send a missile toward Hawaii
• While NK is lobbing missiles, Obama cuts spending in missile defense systems.

Hey .. that's just scratching the surface. How's this "change you can believe in" working out for you? I know. It's tough. You put all of this faith in Barack Obama. He's going to make everything just wonderful. All we need is change. Now you're sitting here trying to figure out just how long you will be able to keep that Obama bumper sticker on your car. After all ... being a sucker is one thing. Advertising to the world that you got suckered by focus group slogans is another.

Working out pretty well, isn't it?

Today is the day that Barack Obama unveils his plans for one of the most radical growths in government this country has ever seen. Obama's plan will give the government the power to seize companies that are considered "too big to fail" and could jeopardize the financial system. We aren't just talking about banks, folks. We are talking about ANY company.

OK ... I can't let this pass. Over a week ago, when Obama was first promoting his executive compensation limitations, I told you that it would be no time at all before Mr. Government Control was expanding his ideas to companies his administration deemed to be "too big to fail." Thus far Hugo Obama hasn't actually used the "too big to fail" language. Instead we are hearing things about companies who's failure, as the Lost Angeles Times puts it, "jeopardizes the financial system." As determined by who? As determined by Obama's henchmen, of course. Now ... here we are. Just how hard was that one to predict? Why, not hard at all, actually.

This is what our country has come to. Our Founding Fathers are rolling over right now at the thought that our imperial federal government will soon have the power to seize virtually any company that it wants. All we have to do is get some government hack, like our tax-cheat Treasury Secretary, to say that the failure of this company would be bad news for our economy ... and that the government needs to take it over. And Obama gets upset when he hears people refer to him as a Socialist. How sad.

Think all of this over for a second. Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. Welfare Housing. Veteran's Administration hospitals. TSA. Homeland Security. Look at all the enterprises our wonderful Imperial Federal Government operates? Do you really think that the government operates any of these entities more efficiently than the private sector could? And now we are going to sit back while Barack Obama sets up a system where he can seize pretty much any company he wants so long as he can make some argument that the failure of that company would be troublesome.

While we're at it, why not go ahead and create another government agency? You really can't have enough government, can you? Obama's new regulatory body will be called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. An administration official says that the agency will "protect consumers of credit, savings, payment and other consumer financial products and services, and to regulate all providers of such products and services." It will have the authority to write and enforce rules for financial firms. This agency will enforce so-called "fair lending" laws. Yeah ... that will work. Can't wait until we find out what the government seems to think is "fair."

Douglas J. Elliott, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former investment banker says, "As far as I can tell, the administration doesn't think it's as important to get that structure right as to get the rules right and make sure people are focused on acting the right way."

Acting the right way. Now government will be the one to determine whether or not these businesses are "acting the right way."

Could you have imagined when this last presidential election cycle started that we were going to end up with an administration that would be hell-bent on placing private businesses under government ownership? There were some people around who were warning you about that. They're called talk show hosts.

Elections have consequences.

Last week, Obama announced that he was appointing a pay czar. Well .. he isn't going to exactly call this character a "Pay Czar," the official title will be "Special Master for Compensation. This is the guy who will be in charge of making sure that executives at evil financial institutions wouldn't make too much money At least, that is what we expected a pay czar to do. We are finally starting to get a better idea of what exactly the Obama administration had in mind. We will supposedly get all the details sometime this week. But here's a start ...

Any bank or corporation that has received two rounds of bailout money will be forced to submit changes in executive pay to be approved by the government pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg. Those would be companies like Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, General Motors and its finance arm, GMAC.

Now do you really think that these pay restrictions will only apply to the institutions who have received two rounds of bailout funds? You're kidding me, right? Once the standards are set you can bet that the businesses and financial institutions will be under tremendous pressure to follow suit. This will apply to financial companies, US operations of foreign banks, and other private hedge fund companies and private equity firms. Even companies that repay the TARP funds in full will not escape oversight on their compensation structures. We are talking about the government setting the standards for an entire industry to make them more fair and comparable to other industries.

The principles currently being drafted by the Treasury Department will apparently allow regulators to tell banks when they need to change their compensation arrangements if the government feels it would "encourage too much risk-taking." What is defined as "too much risk" has yet to be determined. It will be a politically motivated government-style definition, though, and you can just guess what that will entail.

Here's a nifty little line that appeared in this article from the New York Times. Tell me that it doesn't make you do a double take ... to think that we once lived in a time when private companies like banks had the luxury of setting their own compensation levels! Here's the quote: "In the past, banks had free rein to determine the base salary and bonuses they awarded their employees." OMG! Can you believe that? Can you actually believe that there was a time in this country when private businesses could decide how to compensate their own employees? Just how backward were we? Any government-educated person certainly knows that this is a job for government, not the private sector.

Government setting private sector compensation ... change you can believe in.

Despite Obama's warning that blocking the Chrysler deal would have "grave consequences" ... The Supreme Court granted the request to hold the sale of Chrysler to Italy's Fiat. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that order of the bankruptcy judge allowing the sale "are stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the court." Fiat can walk away from the sale if it doesn't close by June 15th.

One of the issues here is the brilliant idea to stiff the secured interest of Chrysler bondholders in favor of Obama's union buddies.

Maybe we ought to let Chrysler decide what is best, rather than come to a hasty agreement in the middle of the night in order to comply with the Obama agenda.

I don't have to go into the details of what is going on in California right now. The bottom line is that the state is broke. Part of the reason California is broke is because the wealthy, the high-producers, the larger taxpayers have fled. Can you blame them? We are still free enough to chose to escape high tax states, though that may change under the enlightened leadership of Barack Obama. At any rate, now California has to balance its budget, and it is ugly. Amusingly, it is putting a real strain on the relationship between state Democrats and the labor unions. I say amusingly because I love to see unions scream and politicians squirm.

California is going to have to cut government services --- big time. In fact, some government services may be eliminated altogether. CalGrants, for instance, provides financial aid to low-income students of union members. That program would be phased out. Also, government home healthcare services would be slashed. There's even a headline on Drudge this morning suggesting that California may end its welfare programs. It's news like this has the unions' thongs in a wad because many of them would lose their jobs or see a significant reduction in forces.

What is the solution offered up by the unions? Well .. the same solution Obama has for funding his government takeover of health care. It's really very easy. You just tax the rich! Yep, there is a union pledge being passed around to support $44 million in new or higher taxes on the wealthy, oil companies, tobacco industry and others. The California Democrats, it seems, aren't biting. The unions are "appalled" that Democrats are openly discussing the idea of cutting government programs without first considering the idea of tax increases. Union members are beginning to ask themselves: "If these Democrats are not going to stand up for us, then what good is it to have them there?"

So will these Democrats end up bending to union demands? If not, it could lead to the end of their political careers. If they do, it could lead to the financial collapse of California.

All of the sudden, Congressional Democrats are realizing the implications of this government takeover of GM. Why? Because they are starting to hear from constituents who aren't too happy about the fact that the government is deciding which dealerships will be put out of businesses. So now that these politicians have to worry about votes, they express "growing concern" to Obama about the closure of GM and Chrysler dealerships. Here, for your pleasure, is a letter from House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer and Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Daniel Maffei.

Dear President Obama:

We are writing to express our concerns about General Motors' and Chrysler's decision to close profitable automobile dealerships across the country, and urge you to ask GM and Chrysler to delay final action on proposed closures pending further review of the decision to consolidate dealerships and the process by which Chrysler and GM selected the dealerships to close.

Closing these dealerships will put over 100,000 jobs at risk at a time when our country is shedding jobs at an alarming rate. We also question the criteria being used to determine which dealerships should be closed and the fundamental fairness involved in this effort. It is our view that the market rather than leaving it up to the manufacturers whose poor leadership contributed to their demise. Furthermore, we believe car dealers will be key players in any effort to revive the American auto industry.

We believe the dealerships are one of the auto industry's key sources of strength and the manufacturers should continue to honor their agreements and contracts. The dealerships, and their more than 1 million employees, form personal relationships with customers that often contribute to brand loyalty and will be key to General Motors' and Chrysler's recovery following this economic downturn. While we understand the desire to reduce the number of unprofitable dealerships, no one has yet sufficiently explained the need to close profitable dealerships.

We recognize that efforts by your Auto Task Force prevented the total liquidation of General Motors and Chrysler, as well as their dealership networks. We commend your efforts to help these businesses survive these challenging economic times.

However, we are concerned that manufacturers are closing profitable dealerships to circumvent current contracts which could require expensive buy-outs under normal conditions. We are also concerned about allegations that dealers that have previously stood up for their rights against the manufacturers are being targeted by these closures. We believe that the forced closures of profitable dealerships needs to be scrutinized by the Task Force to prevent additional future financial loses to General Motors and Chrysler and job loses across the United States

We may consider legislative proposals to ensure that dealers and their employees are treated fairly, and we look forward to your timely response.

Look, folks. This is just the beginning. Obama is promoting a fascist economic system in the country. OK .. I know you're government educated and you don't really understand economic fascism. Here's your primer:

• An economic system where both industry and business is owned and controlled by the government ..... Socialism.
• An economic system where industry and business is privately owned, but controlled by the government ..... Fascism.
• An economic system where industry and business is privately owned an privately controlled. .... Free enterprise.

See if this is taught in your local government school.

By the time this nuze is posted, GM will have filed for bankruptcy protection. Sadly, there are more Americans that can explain the intimate details of the American Idol finalists, but they cannot explain why GM is going bankrupt or what effect this will have on our economy and the future of American capitalism.

This arranged bankruptcy filing essentially hands GM over to the government. When all is said and done, the government will own 72.5% of General Motors. The United Auto Workers union will own another 17.5% of General Motors. Major bondholders will essentially own 10% of the company. GM stock will probably not be traded for at least six to 18 months. If you are a current GM stockholder, say goodbye to your shares. The taxpayers will make back the $40 billion loaned to GM if shares of the new GM increase dramatically in value. This is change you can believe in.

Sometime this morning, around 11:30 EST, we will be addressed by GM's CEO Barack Obama. The Looter-In-Chief. He will explain why GM's bankruptcy and government ownership will be the best route for this nation. He will do it in a way so that the government educated will understand just enough to nod their heads in agreement and then go back to reading their People magazines. They won't question the Constitutionality of it all. They won't question the free market implications. All they need to know is that their right to watch a big screen TV hasn't been "taken" away from them.

By the way, if we had Mitt Romney in charge right now, GM and Chrysler would have been pushed into bankruptcy months ago. But either way, he says that now the government should immediately turn around and distribute its 72.5% stake to the taxpayers and the UAW should do the same for its members.

Are we encouraging companies to turn to the government? GM is going to save more than $12 billion in tax breaks .... If it ever becomes a viable company again. But these new tax rules don't apply to companies that don't turn to the government for help but are taken over by other private companies. Chrysler, for example, could lose the value of its tax write-offs if it merges with Fiat.

The AP explains:

U.S. taxpayers are about to become majority shareholders in GM, acquiring more than 70 percent of the company in exchange for billions of dollars in aid. Under ordinary circumstances, an ownership change like that would trigger a big tax hit for a money-losing corporation like GM, severely limiting its ability to use current losses to lower future tax bills.

But these are far from ordinary times. The Treasury Department has, in effect, suspended long-standing tax rules for companies that receive bailout money, providing benefits not available to firms that don't receive government help. New Treasury rules could provide GM billions in tax breaks once it becomes profitable and starts paying taxes again, which could be years away.

The value of those savings, however, would be dramatically reduced if GM is taken over by another company. Decades ago, Congress severely restricted the ability of money-losing companies to cash in on the tax breaks if they are taken over by other companies.

The goal was to discourage corporate takeovers for the principle purpose of avoiding taxes, Willens said.

The government, however, doesn't want to penalize firms for taking part in the taxpayer-financed bailout, so the Treasury Department has issued several notices in recent months creating exceptions for firms that receive bailout money. Under the new rules, corporations can keep their tax breaks if the government becomes a majority owner.

OK ... let's put this in language that even the purposely dumbed-down government educated myrmidons in this country can understand. If you are running a substantial private business and if you decide that it is your responsibility to weather this economic storm and keep your business viable without using taxpayer's money and submitting to more authoritarian government control, you will then have to pay your taxes just like everyone else. Wait ... NOT like everyone else. That would be because if you decide that you can't make it on your own, and government intervention with taxpayer's money would be helpful, you will be rewarded with corporate tax breaks. Got it on your own, no help. Play footsie with government control, financial benefits await. Not the way to run a free enterprise economy.

What headlines am I talking about? Ones like this: "Obama Halves Chrysler's Planned Marketing Budget." Barack Obama, the president of the United States, is now in the business of setting marketing budgets. Tell me, where in the Constitution does it mention this one? Probably right next to the part where it says that he can oust CEOs of private companies.

Here's the deal ... Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the next nine weeks. But Barack Obama's auto task force decided to give them half of that. The sad part about this is that many people are simply excited that the Obama task force would even somewhat recognize advertising as a necessary expense. How sad. In the real world a bankruptcy trustee would make decisions of this type with the approval of the bankruptcy judge. No more, it seems. It's the rule of Obama now, not the rule of law.

Byron York has an excellent column about Barack Obama's budget. It seems as though the problem is that Obama's budget is so large and ostentatious that the Republicans don't even know where to begin. If that is how the Republicans in Washington feel, imagine the average ignorant voter out there.

From York's column:

Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.

"How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?" a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn't have one.

GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call "insensitivity to scope." It affects us all; we can understand something on a small scale but have a difficult time comprehending the same thing on a massive scale.

Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right -- it's a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.

There's more here .....

The government will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year.

Borrowing implies that it will one day be paid back. With interest. Actually, it has to be paid off. Much of that debt is owned by foreign governments. That debt will have to be repaid. Some of the debt is held by Americans ... and the government can easily just ignore that. After all ... the government owns us. We work at the pleasure and for the pleasure of the political class. Whatever wealth we produce, they own. In their infinite wisdom they'll allow you to keep just enough of your wealth to encourage you to keep working so that you can keep funding them. It will be the same for your children and your grandchildren. There's a huge multi-trillion debt to be paid ... thank goodness the government has the assets to cover that debt. Your children.

The White House has decided that private companies deemed "too big to fail" need to be policed by a supercop, and the White House is recommending the Federal Reserve play the role.

Last week, Obama's economic advisors had a meeting with representatives from banks, hedge funds and financial groups. These groups had suggested to the president that if the government insisted on regulating industries, that the task should be divided among various regulators. But that doesn't seem to be what the White House is going for. It wants a single independent regulator to monitor system-wide risk, and that one regulator "should be given better visibility into all institutions that pose a risk to the financial system, regardless of what business they are in."

So we aren't just talking the financial industry here. We are talking about any company that the government feels is too big to fail and would pose a risk to the financial system. Who in Congress has been chosen to lead the task for drafting legislation for such a supercop?? None other than slobbering Barney Frank.

This legislation, according to tax cheat Tim Geithner will include an "aggressive" package of reforms for the financial industry. That includes a fundamental overhaul of how the industry pays its senior executives. In other words, those evil bonuses will be a thing of the past.

This is a massive proposed increase in the control privately-owned businesses by government. But I don't have to tell you that, do I? What you may not know, however, is what you call this type of economic system --- a system where business is owned privately but owned by the government. The word would be Fascism.

Barack Obama's auto task force has a difficult choice to make ... will it bend to union demands and require GM to keep more jobs in the US or will it allow GM to expand its operations in countries with cheaper labor?

After pouring billions of OUR CHILDREN'S DOLLARS into GM, the fact of the matter is that it can't survive while it is beholden to the United Auto Workers. This means moving more manufacturing (and therefore jobs) overseas. Needless to say, the unions are less than happy. They feel as they have a right to these jobs! How dare GM try and make money by paying people to do the same job for less money!

The current outline for GM would roughly double the number of cars built in Mexico, China and South Korea. This makes absolute sense. In the United States, GM pays UAW workers about $54 an hour with benefits. However in South Korea, GM would pay its workers less than half of that at $22 an hour. In Mexico, workers could earn about $10 an hour and in China that figure could be as low as $3 an hour.

A UAW official says, "My hope is that the government is like the UAW: protectors of the people." I'm sorry but GM is not in the business of protecting the people. It is in the business of making cars. As for the UAW .. it isn't in the business of protecting people either .. unless they're UAW union members.

When I'm thinking about these autoworkers one image sticks in my mind. When is the last time you saw an autoworker wearing a windbreaker or hat with just a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler logo on it? I'm sure they're out there .. but I haven't seen one. Instead they're always wearing their clothing emblazoned with the UAW logo .. UAW Local this, that and the other thing. Who are they working for? Ask them and they'll point to their union logo. Seems a lot of them forgot that the union doesn't sign their paychecks.

So what is it going to be, Obama? Are you going to let GM survive by allowing it to expand its overseas production with less costs, or are you going to bow to the labor unions and force GM to make cars in the United States?

After releasing the results of these "stress tests" ... the Obama administration says that it is still open to the idea of government dictating management changes at these companies receiving "substantial" government aid. Robert Gibbs says the government would consider changes at the CEO level and at the board of directors level in order to make sure "that the management was in place to remedy the situation and ensure long-term viability without continued government assistance."

Tax cheat Timothy Geithner also echoed this sentiment. He says, "We'll have to make judgments about whether the quality of leadership of those boards is strong enough so that again our interests are met best." Did you hear that? "Our" interests. Who exactly is he speaking for? The federal government .. the Obama administration .. the Treasury Department .. the taxpayers? Either way, I am still waiting for someone to show me where in the Constitution it says that the executive branch of our federal government can remove anyone from a private company.

Again .. I'll point out, though it won't register with most people, that there is a name for an economy where the means of production are privately owned but controlled by the government. That would be a fascist economy. Not that anyone really cares.

How would you feel if I told you that our imperial federal government was going to set up a powerful national agency to bailout cities and states? Considering where the looter-in-chief and the Democrats are taking this country, it probably wouldn't surprise you. The man who orchestrated the financial rescue of New York City in the 1970s is advocating this type of agency. Felix Rohatyn says that Congress should consider creating an entity like the Reconstruction Finance Corp. that was created back in 1932.

Seeing as our government is doing such a fantastic job bailing out the financial industry or the auto industry ... don't you think that we should give the government even more power to bailout our cities and states? You know where this goes, don't you? The emasculation of local governments and the primacy of the federal government. Come on, folks. Can't you see this coming? We have a president who is completely and absolutely in love with government - a president that has no love for the private sector. Just where do you think this is going to take our country? Do you see those people driving around with Obama bumper stickers on their cars? Your children are going to have a lot to thank them for.

Speaking of bailouts ...

It's been a while since Americans have had a corporation that they could really rail against. It feels like ages since everyone raised their pitchforks over the AIG bonuses. Well, maybe the time has come again, as AIG makes its way back into the news. The original outrage, you may remember, came when AIG announced that it was going to pay $120 million in 2008 bonuses to about 6,000 employees.

You'll be happy to know that this $120 million isn't even close to the amount AIG will actually pay to employees in the form of bonuses for 2008. Try $454 million ... that's quadruple what Americans were outraged over before.

AIG's explanation is that this $454 million is the answer to a different question than what as previously asked ... this new figure "'reflects all types of variable compensation across all of our businesses,' while the $120 million figure he provided earlier reflected only bonuses paid to corporate headquarters executives and high ranking officers at its major businesses around the world."

So if it has been a while since you have let your wealth-envy really get the best of you .... Just remember that all of these evil people working for this evil corporation are going to be getting bonuses!

Yesterday I gave you a Boortz economic lesson in an attempt to explain what the Barack Obama administration is trying to pull in this Chrysler bankruptcy. The latest on this story ... Thomas Lauria, a lawyer for top creditors, has officially filed a motion to stop the Chrysler bankruptcy. Lauria claims that the Obama administration has violated the Constitution by trying to devalue the senior creditors' holdings on behalf of junior creditors. What does Lauria base this on? Something called the 5th Amendment. Maybe you have heard of it. Just in case, here is a little reminder:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

But wait ... as they say ... there's more! Lauria, who represents the group referred to as the non-TARP lenders, is going to ask that the bankruptcy court keep the names of his client confidential. Why would that be? Because they have been receiving threats. You can bet that some of the threats are coming from union members. These union goons like the idea of their pension debts being given priority to Chrysler's secured lenders, and I think we all know what union goons do when something happens they don't like. There was a time not too long ago when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms noted that the number one illegal use of explosives in the United States came at the hands of union members engaged in work actions.

But there's another group threatening the secured non-TARP creditors. That would be the White House. Lauria and others have claimed that people within the Obama administration have made it clear that if any of these secured lenders get in the way of Obama's gift to the unions the White House will work to destroy their reputation. Now the White House denies this. What would you expect? But listen to the language ... Obama has attacked these people in public as being "vultures" and has painted them as evil capitalists who don't want to stand by the families of Chrysler workers. If he'll do this in public, what do you think his attack dogs will do in private?

Even if you think Obama hung the moon; even if you're now calling him the best president this country ever had; you just have to recognize the danger in the precedent that's been set here. The United Auto Workers are getting priority for their unsecured Chrysler debt simply because they are political powerful. Now just how is that going to work out for us in the future? Do you want to live in a financial world where lenders base lending decision in part on the political prominence of the borrower?

Giving unsecured creditors priority over secured lenders in bankruptcy proceedings .. now that's change you can believe in.

You've read, no doubt, about the Chrysler bankruptcy. Have you read, though, of how Obama used his power as president to demonize and browbeat some of the people to whom Chrysler owed money? I've been saying for years that despotic politicians depend on the ignorance of the American people to work their schemes and protect their positions of privilege and power. The behind the scenes goings-on are a brilliant case in point.

Now I'm not trying to insult anyone here, but permit me to couch this bit in terms that the victims (though they aren't aware of their victimhood) of our government education system can grasp. Getting down to basics is necessary for as many people as possible to understand how our anti-capitalist president has possibly turned business lending on its ear. If you think I'm stating the case wrongly here you're welcome to chime in with a comment. (You do see the "comments" link, don't you?)

There are two kinds of people in the world: People who divide the people in this world into two types, and those who don't. There are also two types of loans. You have secured loans, and unsecured loans. The terms under which you borrow or lend the money will depend on large part whether the loan is secured or unsecured. The difference: With a secured loan the borrower has put up something of value that he owns as security to ensure his payment. If he doesn't pay, the lender can perfect his security interest on that item of value. The most common examples would be real estate loans and car loans. You put up either the car or your house as security for the loan, and if you don't pay the lender sends out some huge tattooed menace to repossess your car or a pot bellied Sheriff with aviator sunglasses to foreclose on your home.

If you put up nothing but your good reputation and credit history as security for the loan, well that would make your loan unsecured.  Good reputations and credit histories tend to be worthless when economic times get rough. 

When you're lending other people's money and you owe those people a  duty to do everything you can to make sure the loan is paid back, with interest.  In many cases the lender is actually a corporation and the corporate officers loaning the corporate money have a responsibility to corporate shareholders to keep their investments safe. 

Loans, like talk show hosts, have a pecking order. (I'm one of the smaller peckers out there). When a borrower goes Tango Uniform the lenders line up to get their money out of the carcass ... usually through a bankruptcy procedure. The secured lenders go first. The unsecured creditors go last. This is as it should be. What good is getting security for your loan if you know that when you get to a liquidation of your borrower through bankruptcy you're going to have to wait until some unsecured lenders get made whole. Let's expand this a bit. Let's say a corporation or business comes to you for a loan. It doesn't matter for what: Maybe they want to expand, add jobs, develop a new product. Doesn't matter. They want money; you have money ... and you're trying to make a deal. You, the lender, have a responsibility to your shareholders, so you're going to insist on security for the loan. No security - no loan. You're also going to want to know that in the event of a meltdown you loan is going to be given priority over all of the unsecured loans your borrow may have. Without that assurance you're not likely to make the loan.

OK .. why all of these basics? That would be because they all come into play in this Chrysler bankruptcy. The two warring parties here were bondholders and unions. Chrysler owes money to bondholders. Those loans are secured. Chrysler also owns money to union pension funds. Those obligations are not secured. Enter, politics. Unions are a lot more important to a Democrat president than are bondholders. After all, bondholders are mere investors ... and they are more likely to be wealthy than the retired union members. That, of course, makes them evil.

So ... this appears to be how the Chrysler bankruptcy is going to shake out. The union pension funds are going to get priority over the bondholders. In other words, unsecured creditors will get preference over secured lenders. Cats and dogs sleeping together. Not only will the unsecured union pension plans get priority, Obama and his minions did no small amount of demonizing the secured lenders in the process.

Some of the secured lenders - those not under the thumb of the Obama administration because they took TARP funds - balked at Obama's plan. They were secured Chrysler lenders, and secured lenders they wished to remain. Obama demagogued these secured lenders by saying "I stand with Chrysler's employees and their families and communities" and not "those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices." So there you go. If you want to enforce your security interest - if you want your money back -- you're against Chrysler's employees and families. Everyone else is making sacrifices and you don't want to. Hey ... wait a minute here. Are we forgetting that these people have obligations to their shareholders?

OppenheimerFunds is one of those secured creditors. They issued a statement saying "Our holdings in secured Chrysler debt are entitled to priority in long-established U.S. Bankruptcy law, and we are obligated to our fund shareholders to support agreements that respect these laws." How do you go to your shareholders and tell them that you've just flushed a bunch of their money down the crapper because you wanted to stand by Chrysler's families and communities? Other liberals also have a name for the secured creditors. They call them "vultures." You'll also hear the word "greedy" Obama called them "speculators," a word that doesn't carry a positive image with the dumb masses. That's Obama for you. Investors are evil. They're "speculators!" They're greedy because they want their loans repaid. Only in the anti-capitalist mind of a liberal moonbat would you hear such asinine language.

Yesterday afternoon we got news that the Obama White House threatened to destroy the reputation of a particular investment bank if they didn't cave in and go along with Obama's bankruptcy plan for Chrysler. How? By calling them traitors and vultures? That's been done already.

OK ... so what's going to happen now? Two things:

First: Some of Chrysler's secured creditors are going to object to the Obama-negotiated bankruptcy plan. They will fulfill their obligation to their shareholders, as they should, and try to get the favored treatment from the bankruptcy court usually reserved for secured creditors; and for standing by the rule-of-law they will be called every but Children of God. The anti-capitalist crowd will use these creditor hold-outs to demonize the financial sector in general and to promote the cause of even more government control.

Second: Lenders are going to be very careful in their lending decisions. What lender, for instance, will want to buy any bonds in any company that might end up a protectorate of the federal government? Who would want to loan that company any money? You want security for your loan, and you don't want political hacks demagoguing you if you actually try to foreclose on your security interest. Under this standard businesses - especially businesses in a wee bit of trouble - are going to have a rougher time getting needed financing.

Here's a scenario from you. A manufacturing concern is in trouble. If they don't get some financial help to make it through a rough spot they're going to tank, and about 2000 workers are going to lose their jobs. The manufacturing company goes to an investment bank and seeks a loan. As security for the loan the manufacturing company offers a lien on its buildings, corporate aircraft and manufacturing equipment. The lender, though, says no. The company is in trouble and there is a possibility that the loan might not be repaid. Under the new Obama scenario the government might step in and prevent the lender from foreclosing on its security interest in land, buildings and equipment. The government might decide that all of the company's assets should be sold in bankruptcy and the funds dedicated to the unsecured pension obligations to the 2000 workers. Result? Since the normal rules about secured and unsecured credit don't really apply any more, the lender declines the loan. We'll be in a situation where the best way for a company to get a loan is to prove to the lender that they don't need the money. This will all work out well for Obama, of course, because if the ailing company can't get the private sector financing ... where is there to go? Why, to the government, of course!

OK ... a bit wordy. But you need to know just how having a dedicated anti-capitalist in office works. Good for those who love government. For those who don't ... not so good.

Barack Obama is really doing wonders when it comes to building confidence in our financial institutions. (Please note the sarcasm.) Obama wants to make sure that you know that Wall Street is still going to be an important part of our economy, but it will never be half of our economy ever again. At least, if he gets his way.

What does this mean? Obama says, "That means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy ... I actually think that's healthy. We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design."

Ironically enough, what is the "other" sector in our economy that is showing the most growth right now? That would be the government. It takes college grads with mathematical aptitude to control so many people's lives you know.

The other night during his press conference, Obama claimed that his economic stimulus bill had "already saved or created 150,000 jobs."

For most of the dumb-masses out there, no one thought twice about this statistic. Considering the fact that our economy has lost well over a million jobs since Obama took office, one might wonder ... where in the heck did he get 150,000 jobs from?

It turns out that the president is basing this number on estimates of what his economic advisers THINK the economic stimulus bill is doing, rather than what it is actually doing.

An Obama spokesman explains, "... the estimate does not mean that employment has risen by 150,000. Rather, it means that employment is 150,000 higher than it otherwise would have been." The figure is simply an estimate of the number of people hired to work directly on stimulus-funded projects, as well as "jobs created by the tax cuts, aid to the states, and other parts of the ARRA." Question .... What tax cuts did the Obama administration provide that would allow for jobs to be created?

Doesn't really matter, though. You've seen those bumper stickers out there, haven't you? "Obama said it. I believe it. That settles it."

Are you enjoying your whopping $10 a week from Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit? Well enjoy it while you can, because the government is more than likely going to re-seize it in the long run. This is because new IRS withholding tables could cause millions of taxpayers to receive more money than they are "entitled" to under the credit. For some, this will mean a smaller-than-expected tax refund. For others who calculate their withholding differently, you could end up owing the government, come next April.

Here are some prime examples of what some people may be facing.

-- A single worker with two jobs making $20,000 a year at each job will get a $400 boost in take-home pay at each of them, for a total of $800. That worker, however, is eligible for a maximum credit of $400, so the remaining $400 will have to be paid back at tax time--either through a smaller refund or a payment to the IRS.

-- A married couple with a combined income of $50,000 is eligible for an $800 credit. However, if both spouses work and make more than $13,000, the new withholding tables give them each a $600 boost--for a total of $1,200.

-- A single college student with a part-time job making $10,000 would get a $400 boost in pay. However, if that student is claimed as a dependent on a parent's tax return, she doesn't qualify for the credit and would have to repay it when she files next year.

And when it comes to Social Security and veterans, there are a whole heap of issues there too. But don't you worry. Tax cheat Timothy Geithner says that he is "exploring ways to mitigate that effect."

That should make you feel much, much better.

Jamie Dupree is fond of illustrating just how bad our budget situation is. We could eliminate every bit of discretionary spending in the federal budget and still be so deep in the tank we would not be able to see daylight ... and the spending is only going up. You could also levy a 99% income tax on every penny earned over $500,000 and all you would accomplish is to send waves of unbridled sensual joy through the hearts of the wealth envy crowd out there.

There is one way out of this ... one way short of government tyranny. We can grow the private sector economy. It was economic growth that wiped out much of our debt during the dot.com boom, and it will have to be economic growth again. The trouble is we now have an administration that only believes in growing government. Government doesn't produce wealth. Government seizes wealth. Growing government while damning the private sector only makes our problems worse. Now ... try to explain this to some government-educated young person who, like, voted, you know, for, like, change.

This information came from an radio industry email overnight. We've learned something that we already knew. A lot of people out there have a rough time accepting responsibility for their own actions. If you spend too much ... if you run up a huge balance on your credit card ... it just must be somebody's else's fault, right?

It would seem that this is so. A new Harris Poll tells us that most - not just some, but most ... Americans believe the media is in some part responsible for the current economic crisis. And how would that be? Because the media, through advertising, made these poor pitiful people go out there and buy things they couldn't afford. Fifty-four percent of these Americans actually blame talk shows as having some responsibility.

Some specific findings from Harris:

• Ad agencies took the brunt of the blame, with 66% of people saying they believe the agencies are somewhat responsible and 33% attributing complete or a great deal of responsibility.
• Print media, including newspapers and magazines, are the next most culpable, with 59% of Americans pointing a finger at the medium.
• Other media that got shares of the blame include news and information Web sites (56%), cable news programs (54%) and networks and local news programs (53%).

This brings smiles to those handsome leftist faces out there. The mantra of the left is that people cannot be held responsible for their actions and that government, therefore the government must be there to take care of them.

The more you think about this the more depressing it gets.

Barack Obama's plan to create green jobs in this country is purely in efforts to expand the number of workers on the government dole. This man is in love with government, and the more people who are getting their paychecks from the government, the better off this country will be.

So when it comes to these "green jobs" .. you do realize that this is an industry that is being created by government for government. This isn't about global warming or saving the planet. It is about government control. And Barack Obama has modeled his plan to create green jobs after Spain's recent efforts create green jobs.

But here are the ugly facts ... every "green job" that was funded by the Spanish government caused the loss of 2.2 regular jobs, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created. And - and this is a big one - only one out of the 10 newly created green jobs became a permanent job. In other words, folks. This isn't long term stimulus. This is a government-created industry that will create a temporary surge in jobs that aren't permanent and will squeeze out private sector growth.

Oh and there is more. Now Spain has been at it for about eight to ten years. And when this economic crisis hit, the study shows that Spain's "green jobs" policy hindered its ability to cope with the crisis. Which is ironic, considering that Barack Obama feels that created "green jobs" will be America's way of getting out of this crisis.

Speaking of green jobs, I've been reading reports recently of community colleges that are seeing a surge in unemployed workers enrolling in courses that offer training in "green-collar" jobs. These are the people that will be installing solar panels and repairing wind turbines and producing biofuels.

But guess what ... all of these people are getting trained, but where are the jobs? The current financial crisis has caused the green industry to take a major hit. Businesses are drying up. So what we will have are a lot of trained workers and too few jobs.

Barack Obama has decided to help out the auto industry by having the government purchase 17,600 new US-made fuel-efficient cars. These are cars that the government more than likely doesn't need. But they will be purchased in order to boost the auto industry. Is this a long term boost? A true economic stimulus? Absolutely not. It is nothing but a government gimmick. The government is not really buying these cars. The government doesn't have the money. The government is borrowing the money and sticking you, the taxpayers, for the payments. All this to make some sort of a political point about green cars.

Imagine what the American taxpayers could do with $285 million. You could spend it on cars that you will actually want! Not cars that the government wants you to want. Buying what you want is a free market exercise. Buying what the government wants you to buy - or the government buying it in your name --- well, that's certainly not free enterprise.

The government decides what you want. More change you can believe in.

And speaking of stimulus. Joe Biden announced that $2.3 billion in federal stimulus money is going to be spent on child care programs and to help the "less fortunate" get vaccinated.

Again, my question remains: how in the hell is the economic stimulus?

The money will go to the Child Care and Development Fund that can help states pay for child care for parents who are working, looking for work or going to school. The concept of these people actually funding their own means of child care is not an option .. because it doesn't make them dependent on government. And Joe Biden says that these parents "shouldn't have to worry about finding affordable, quality day care." Why shouldn't they have to worry about it? It is their child! This child does not belong to the government. The parents chose to bring this child into the world and therefore should be responsible for taking care of it, and that includes finding a dang babysitter. It is not the government's job to provide you with a babysitting service.

Oh and the other part of this announcement included $300 million to help the "less fortunate" get vaccinated. Don't ya just love that phrase .. the less fortunate? It implies that somehow, you are able to pay for your own vaccinations because you are lucky. And that person over there, they can't afford it because they have been unlucky. Therefore the government should pay to help them in their misfortune.

And part of this money will also be used to educate people about the importance of getting their shots. Again, my question: how is educating people on the importance of getting shots going to stimulate our economy? Seems like a simple question, considering this was included in an "economic stimulus" bill.

End result? A few more people are added to the list of those who believe that their health care is the responsibility of the government. That's the goal here ... government dependency. Nothing less.

Just remember that whenever government says that a program is going to cost a certain amount, it is never ever going to cost that cited figure ... it will always cost more. In this case we are talking about the $700 billion TARP, which was originally cited to cost the tax payers $189 billion. But guess what? The Congressional Budget Office has raised its estimate of how much the tax payers are really on the hook for .. try $356 billion. That's just a mere $167 billion more than originally estimated. It is guaranteed to go higher.

By the way, TARP belongs to Bush, you know. The original intent was to purchase toxic assets from financial institutions so that they could lend again. Sure didn't work out that way. Another spending program that belongs to Bush is the Medicare prescription program. I wonder what the tab is for that now. At a minimum it is twice what Bush told us it would cost.

Maxine Waters is one of the most brain-dead politicians in Washington. Truly the representative of the dumb masses. Yesterday, she was complaining that Obama's Treasury Department isn't doing enough to help minority firms that want to help manage bailout programs.

Yesterday, the Treasury announced that it was extending the deadline to apply to manage the assets, it was loosening the criteria to evaluate applications and it was going to "emphasize the department's interest" in minority-owned firms participation.

But this apparently wasn't enough for Maxine, who says that the Treasury should be required to give priority to firms that include minorities and women as partners. Maxine says, "Even under the updated guidelines, the burden remains on minority- and women-owned businesses to find willing partners among a select group of very large asset managers who do not have a particular incentive to welcome their assistance."

Remember ... while we're trying to get ourselves out of this economic mess ... we have to make sure that not too many white men are involved. It's not whether or not we recover, it's who is working on the recovery.

Last week, Slobbering Barney (a man who has never worked in the private sector during his entire life) passed a bill through the House called the Pay for Performance Act that would allow the government to set compensation restrictions on all employees of all banks receiving bailout funds. Here comes the law of unintended consequences. Now we have the Obama administration is apparently trying to figure out ways to get around these restrictions. Why? Because some banks out there are trying to pay back their bailout funds while others are sending the signal that they don't want to get into the bailout process at all. Obama wants to control the banks. In order to control the banks he needs this bailout connection. Essentially it's a "you take my money and I own you" deal. Barney's wealth-envy based restrictions are a problem here.

So .. what do you do as president if there's a law in the way of your agenda? Simple. You figure out a way around the law. What do you think we're operating here? A system based on the rule of law? Get serious. So here's the plan. Sources indicate that Obama can get around the rules by not providing direct aid to financial companies. What you do here is set up some special entity that will act as a middleman. The government pays the middleman, and the middleman then sends the money off to the financial institution. Since the financial institution isn't getting bailout money "from the government" the Barney restrictions don't apply.

Is this legal? Heck, that doesn't really seem to be an issue any more. What does legality have to do with it? Where is the Constitutional authority for the government to seize these banks in the first place? Questions of legal and illegal have come to only apply to the private sector. As Mark Levin says in his book, we're now in what you might term a soft tyranny. The Constitution is only in the way. For the time being questions of legality don't apply.

You may remember that Barack Obama met with bank CEOs before heading to Europe. And more details are emerging from what exactly was said in the meeting. But according to two sources cited on Politico, here is a direct quote from the president:

"My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

Well ... let's see. The Obama administration and the Democrat Party demonizes the private financial sector in this country, and then Obama claims to be their ultimate protector. What a guy!

Well ... That is about what we expected from the G20 summit. World leaders pledged over a trillion dollars to poor countries. More seizure and redistribution of wealth. Other countries didn't bite at Obama's grand plan to stimulate the global economy by spending more money. Angela and Nicolas got somewhat of a compromise on their global financial regulators. The communiqué established the creation of a supervisory body to "flag" problems in the global financial system. Supervisory today .. regulatory tomorrow?

For all you wealth-envy types, you will be happy to know that the honchos managed to "bridge the gap" in terms of how far governments should go to regulate the market and curb what the political class deems to be "excesses." Obama says that world leaders have agreed on principles that would bring accountability and transparency to executive compensation at corporations. Note, please, that this communiqué wasn't limited to corporations receiving taxpayer bailout money. We are talking about Corporations ---Period. Obama says that company shareholders should be able to vote on executive compensation, implementing some sort of "shame function" into the establishment of corporate salaries.

"Shame." That is the word that our president would like to associate with evil CEOs and executive. If you receive compensation that is not in keeping with some politically set global standard, then you should be feeling shame.

Please tell me you don't actually think that this effort to control executive compensation is going to end with companies that receive bailout funds. Democrats - and some Republicans - know that wealth envy and hatred is at a historical high right now. They've been working for decades to bring us to this point - and now it's time to exploit. If these politicians can excuse limits on compensation based on the fact that the involved companies are receiving bailout funds, why not extend those controls to all companies with government contracts? How easy would it be to make the argument that any defense contractor should not be allowed to "unfairly" enrich top executives "at the expense of our men and women serving their country overseas." Once we have established the government contractor controls, we can extend the controls to any companies who supply goods or services to these contractors.

Smack down the executives with their high salaries and become a hero to the jealous class. There are far more people envious of highly compensated executives than there are people making a million a year. Count the votes and you'll see where this is going. The result will be executive and financial talent fleeing this country to work where the compensation matches the contribution.

As of yesterday's Barack Obama's miraculous tax credits began showing up in people's paychecks. How are you enjoying that extra $10? Are you going to use it to buy a pack of cigarettes? Or some new wheels for your house? With an extra $10 a week .. I'm sure that a lot of entrepreneurs are going to go out there and start creating jobs and businesses to get our economy going again.

For some people these are actually tax cuts. For SOME. For most of the people, however, they are handouts. When the final accounting is done this will be money that was taken away from one worker - who actually paid federal income taxes --- and given to another --- who pays none. This is ObamaTalk for a "tax cut."

Today is officially the first day of the G20 meeting. As I pointed out yesterday, world leaders have very different ideas on how to properly stabilize the world economy. The most dangerous proposals comes from the leaders of France and Germany. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are insisting that the world impose tighter financial regulations of banks, executive bonuses, hedge funds and offshore tax havens. And they say that these regulations are "non-negotiable." They are willing to discuss other things, so long as these issues are resolved.

Think forward ... consider the implications. How long before you hear from your boss that they are going to have to tweak your compensation to bring your salary, bonuses and benefits in line with some world standard. These leaders say they want to use international regulation to "rein in financial market excesses." That's just the half of it. This is really about international financial competition. France has what we would basically call a social welfare state. For example .. in 2000 France adopted a mandatory 35-hour work week. The idea was that if they could limit the number of hours that someone could work, employers would be forced to hire more workers to fill in the gaps. France actually had their work Gestapo cruising parking lots after hours taking down license numbers. They would then check on the owners of those cars to see if they were working too many hours. Now how's that for freedom? The law was relaxed in 2005 to allow workers to work more hours if employers would pay them more. Duhhhhh.

We could go on and on about the French work ethic. These people will strike at the drop of a hat. A farmer gets too little for his broccoli crop and suddenly hundreds of tractors are blocking major roads. And we haven't even mentioned the 5 to 8 weeks of mandatory vacation for French workers. While France carries on this way, the last thing they need is a country competing with them by allowing workers the freedom to work the hours they want to work and passing laws that hold strikers and unions in check.

Countries with high tax rates (like France) also don't like it all that much when other countries compete for their executive talent, their workers and their employers with lower tax rates. Sarkozy and Markel would like for some world body to regulate tax rates - at a high level of course - so that high-tax countries don't have to compete with these low-tax nations.

Our sovereignty is under attack in London. Do you care? No? Well, maybe this next Nuze bit will help you some:

When it comes to rescuing the financial system, the Congressional Black Caucus has one thing on its mind: the government better not forget about minority-owned companies.

I thought that you would enjoy this quote from one of the most ignorant politicians in Washington, Maxine Waters. She says, "We are not going to sit back and allow billions of dollars to be dumped into this economy and watch the same old players be advantaged by it .. We're not going to sit back and watch some of the players who are responsible for the economic mess we're in today be the recipients of these taxpayer dollars and provide services and make even more money despite the fact they have mismanaged their own businesses."

Yup .. here comes Maxine, and she's going to make the bailout a racial issue. Well .. that's what she does. She might as well dance with who brung her.

Yesterday we got Obama's official plan for the auto industry. Step #1: Fire the CEO of General Motors. Step #2: Push Chrysler toward a merger with an Italian car company. Step #3: Threaten bankruptcy for both companies.

Wall Street didn't seem to like the administration's response. The Dow responded remarkably ... sinking nearly 4%. I guess I would have lost confidence too, if I realized that the government could oust any CEO at will if the president thinks it is the right thing to do. In fact, some experts are saying that this is the most significant presidential intervention in the private sector since 1952 and Harry Truman with the steel industry.

So it is clearly Obama's goal to re-make the auto industry the way he wants it to be, not based on profitability or the demand of the market place. He says, "I am absolutely committed to working with Congress and the auto companies to meet one goal: The United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars ... our auto industry is not moving in the right direction fast enough to succeed." In other words .. Obama gets to decide the right direction. Instead of making cars that the consumers want, Obama will decree that the automakers will make cars that HE wants. If they don't move in that direction fast enough he'll just fire one team and hire another.

Well it turns out that this is a direction that Barack Obama has envisioned for a while .. and like his chief of staff says, "never let a good crisis go to waste." In Obama's 2006 autobiography, The Audacity Of Hope, here's what he had to say about his vision for the auto industry:

The bottom line is that fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85 percent ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry. It is a future American car companies can attain if we start making some tough choices now. For years U.S. automakers and the UAW have resisted higher fuel-efficiency standards because retooling costs money, and Detroit is already struggling under huge retiree health-care costs and stiff competition. So during my first year in the Senate I proposed legislation I called "Health Care for Hybrids." The bill makes a deal with U.S. automakers: In exchange for federal financial assistance in meeting the health-care costs of retired autoworkers, the Big Three would reinvest these savings into developing more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Aggressively investing in alternative fuel sources can also lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Ten or twenty years down the road, that old Maytag plant in Galesburg could reopen its doors as a cellulosic ethanol refinery. Down the street, scientists might be busy in a research lab working on a new hydrogen cell. And across the way, a new auto company could be busy churning out hybrid cars. The new jobs created could be filled by American workers trained with new skills and a world-class education, from elementary school to college.

It seems as though Obama is doing a real good job of selling a crisis as a means to institute his vision of the automotive industry. Are you comfortable with this? In fact .. are you comfortable with this level of government enterprise in the marketplace?

I'm think that there's a nagging thought with many of you that this has gone entirely too far .. and that our markets might have self-corrected if the government had let this crisis run its course. And .. if you've been paying attention you should know that this crisis wouldn't have happened .. and it certainly would have been less severe if Barney Frank hadn't stood in the way of efforts of people like George Bush and John McCain to intervene in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac years ago.

This is something, isn't it? Obama replaces the GM boss, but Barney Frank - the one individual who carries more of the responsibility for this mess than any other single living human being -- seems to be untouchable.

Last week Barack Obama met with top executives of US banks. This was his message to the banks: bonuses are not acceptable.

That's right. Not just "excessive" bonuses or bonuses paid with bailout money. But bonuses. Period. They are unacceptable while other Americans are struggling to make ends meet.

On CBS's "Face the Nation" Obama said that he made sure the bankers knew that big bonuses during a financial crisis is "just not acceptable." He also told the bankers, "Show some restraint. Show that you get that this is a crisis and everybody has to make sacrifices."

Sadly, the American people will applaud this move. They just won't understand that the amazing financial minds that we need to turn these banks and other financial institutions around are simply going to go somewhere else .. perhaps to another country .. where they can sell their services in a free economy.

Perhaps we will find out what these people are capable of when they're working for our overseas competitors where their earnings are unrestrained.

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Our Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Tim Geithner wants to make sure that you know that government is going to be the answer to our financial problems. Not the market. Not tax cuts or small business development. Not Wall Street. None of it. Government is the answer.

On ABC's "This Week," Giethner was trying to defend his approach to fixing our economic problems. He said, "The market will not solve this. And the great risk for us is we do too little, not that we do too much." Yup ... forget the market, put hour reliance and faith in government. The same government, by the way, that brought us Social Security.

On "Meet the Press" he also said that people, as a result of the recession, will be "living within their means more, which is helpful." And that when this crisis is over, "people are going to care less about what they make, more about what they do. What they achieve is what they make. And that will help make this country stronger." Oh, I see. We're supposed to be happy with a sense of achievement. Our achievements don't necessarily have to be rewarded by the marketplace. Someone please straighten me out .. but this sounds just a wee bit Marxist to me. What am I missing here? There's a lot of "from each according to their ability" here ....

Chrysler .. $4 billion bailout recipient .. is raising some eyebrows. Why? Because the company is spending an average of $5,600 per vehicle in incentives to get people to buy. And now, Chrysler sales are increasing .. and people are upset because they believe that bailout money is being used to offer larger incentives to buyers.

Apparently Chrysler has always been one to give steep incentives, but those deals have only increased from a year ago. According to the Detroit News, "In February, Chrysler spent an average of $5,608 per vehicle on incentives, according to Edmunds.com. That compares with $3,681 from General Motors Corp.; $3,384 at Ford Motor Co.; $2,572 at Nissan Motor Co.; $1,682 at Toyota Motor Corp.; and $1,249 from Honda Motor Co."

So now, people are questioning the spending levels of Chrysler, asking whether taxpayer money is being used to subsidize incentives that other auto companies that didn't receive a bailout can't offer. In other words, is the government bailout giving Chrysler an edge in the market place.

So ... let's recap. You can't use bailout money to reward extraordinary employee performance, and you can't use bailout money to encourage people to buy your product. Oh ... wait! I get it! The only acceptable thing you can use this bailout money for is building electric cars.

The more government gets involved in our businesses and marketplace, the more screwed up things are going to become. Capitalism is under assault. The left, with full cooperation of the media, has done a wonderful job of convincing the American people that it was capitalism, not government, which failed here. The people are wrong - but not educated to the point that they can see it. A big thanks to the wonderful voters for putting the Democrats - and this Obama guy - in charge.

The ObamaBots really like this line, don't they? Rambo E. was the first one to come out with it: "you never let a good crisis go to waste." We've actually heard those words from the Leader of the Free World as well. Yesterday it was the tax cheat in chief ... Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He was testifying before some group of self-important legislators in Washington when he uttered the line again, though in slightly different form. Said Geithner: "We have a moment of opportunity here, and we don't want to waste this opportunity." What was he talking about? Regulation. Getting the government more and more involved in regulating the private sector.

I know you hate it when I bring this up, but how else are you going to learn? What sort of economic system do you call it when industry, businesses and financial institutions are privately owned but government controlled? The word would be "fascist." Never let a good learning opportunity go to waste.