Josh Ferguson

I can’t wait!

Someone has finally come up with a way that we can all help the environment. If not us, then who?

Personal Methane Collection System

If that link no longer works, I’ve made a copy here

Thanks to Green Hell Blog for the link.

Obama is receiving resistance, even from his own party on his new proposal to close corporate tax “loopholes” for American companies operating internationally. It seems most people can see how ill-conceived his plan really is.

The supposed “loophole” that Obama is trying to close is a law that says that companies that make profits oversees are not taxed in America on those profits since they are already taxed in the country where the profits are made. This prevents them from being double-taxed. What some countries have done is made sure that profits are made in foreign countries where the tax rates are really low. This is the exact same reason so many companies here in the US incorporate in tax friendly states like Nevada.

We have to remember that every “loophole” in the tax code was put in for a reason and are part of the tax code. These laws are to encourage certain behaviors the same way many Americans take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction. There is nothing illegal in using these tax laws to minimize their tax burden just like there is nothing illegal in using the charitable contribution deduction on your personal taxes.

Yet Obama is characterizing these companies as being as bad as tax cheats in order to gain support for his tax hike. That’s exactly what this is. It’s a huge tax hikes on all of our largest and most competitive companies here in the US. The only thing this will do is increase the expenses of companies and make them less competitive with foreign companies. Is that what we really want to do in this economy? Are we trying to improve our economy or destroy it?

I have no doubt that we need to take a closer look at the tax code and simplify it immensely, but let’s wait until things stabilize and recover before we put more companies at a disadvantage.

After hearing about the bailouts of GM and Chrysler, I thought of a new tagline they can add to every commercial and advertisement they put out:

GM - You can pay us now or you can pay us later!

What do you think? Catchy, isn’t it?

The Onion News Network has the following report:

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Obviously made for fun but it wouldn’t be funny if there weren’t an element of truth in it.

It wasn’t a surprise but the finality of it was kind of sad last night. It’s now official that for at least the next 4 years we’re going to have Barak Hussein Obama as the president of the United States. I could take some comfort in the fact that since we’ve elected the first black president, we can now put some of the racist accusations of Americans to bed but we’ve already heard from black leaders that since Obama is only half black and didn’t descend from slaves, he really isn’t the first black president so I can’t even feel good about that.

I just thought I’d throw out a few things that we can now look forward to with a new Obama administration.

More Government Regulations

Nothing leads to government regulations like a country in crisis. If congress ever had a creed, it would be “If in doubt, regulate”. We’re in a huge financial crisis and Obama will use that to create more regulation. Never mind that it was government regulation that created the mess in the first place. Never let a few facts get in the way of good ‘ole government control.

Higher Taxes

I’m not even talking about people who make $250,000 per year, either. First thing that will happen is Obama and the Democratic congress is going to let the Bush tax cuts expire. They don’t really count that as a tax increase, just the expiration of a tax cut. In the end, though, your taxes will be higher next year than they were this past year. Then Obama will increase taxes on the “rich”. Now he’s mentioned that the “rich” are those who make $250,000 or more….or was that $200,000….or maybe it was $150,000. There were actually lots of numbers thrown out there. The truth is, we don’t, and probably neither does he know how low that number needs to go. According to the article in my last post, it could be as low as $75,000. Congratulations. You just may have been declared rich by Obama. Please pay more next April.

Socialized Medicine

Barak wants everyone covered by insurance. If you work for a “large” company, he says that you will be fined if you don’t provide health insurance to your employees. He has yet to define “large”. If you are a small company, your employees will go on a state insurance program. Who will pay for this? Everyone. See the “higher taxes” point above. That’s the plan laid out during the campaign. Ultimately I believe there will be a push for universal coverage a la Canada. After all, we can’t have the rich with better coverage than the poor.

Civil Military

Obama wants to create some sort of Civilian Security Force that was just as well funded and equipped as our current military. We’re not exactly sure what the role of this new military would be but if history serves as any kind of guide, a civil military corps usually leads to some sort of oppression. I’ve heard people say that it’d be like the peace corps building houses and roads and stuff. If it’s just as well equipped as the military, I’m not sure what they’ll need tanks and F-22 Raptors for. On the other hand, maybe our foreign military (for lack of a better name) will trade in their tanks and jet fighters for bulldozers and shovels. Either way, I can’t see it as being a very good thing.

Lose Your 401(k)

With Obama’s support Democrats are discussing a plan that will eliminate the tax exempt status of your 401(k) and turn it over to the Social Security office to invest it in government bonds in exchange for a guaranteed 3% return. You would be required to put 5% of your pay into this account. Also, without the tax benefits associated with 401(k) plans, all employer matching programs would cease. So if you have a 1:1 match with your employer and you put 5% of your income into your 401(k), you currently have 10% tax deferred which is then most likely invested in funds that over the long term return 8% to 12%. This will be replaced with 5% of your income with a 3% return. Also, since this will essentially be part of Social Security, about the time you retire, we’ll be hearing about how for years Congress has been raiding Social Security and it won’t be solvent by the time you retire so your promised 3% won’t even be there.

Well, these are some things I could think of off the top of my head. My only hope is that these 4 years will be a disaster and it will remind people just what a liberal administration means. Those of us that don’t remember much of the Carter administration will have Obama to give us an idea of how it was. Hopefully this will pave the way for another Ronald Reagan to bring sane conservatism back into government and get this country back on track. I can hope, can’t I?

In the Wall Street Journal today there is an opinion article written by Adam Lerrick, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. This article states that Obama’s tax rebate that takes money from the top 5% and distributes it to everyone else will place the number of people that do not pay taxes (or even get more back than they pay in) will reach 50%. What happens when half of the voters of the US receive services but don’t pay any taxes to get them. They’ll vote for increasing taxes on those that do pay so that they’ll receive even more services (and checks?) from the government. This is so extremely dangerous.

This is the end result of Obama’s tax and economic policies. How long will it take for the top income earners in this country to start pulling back because of increased expenses caused by taxes? As a company’s expenses increase, in order to stay profitable, they have to either cut back on other expenses (ie employing people) or increase their prices. Price increases across the economy is inflation. That coupled with increased unemployment from companies cutting back and the Fed printing money like it’s going out of style to inflate us out of our national debts then we’re starting to see the misery index of Jimmy Carter’s administration rear its ugly head.

This country cannot afford moving towards the failed European policies that they are in turn moving away from to strengthen their economies. If we lose our economic strength while others, learning from their past mistakes, are gaining it, we may never catch up again.

Lerrick sums it up better than I ever could:

The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

McCain is now way back in the polls. Unless something drastic happens, Obama is going to be our next president. If McCain wants to win, he needs to stand up and give us policies that are new, innovative, and will truly set him apart from Obama and give us a real choice. I don’t know if it will lead him to a win, but what he’s currently doing surely won’t and it will at least give him a fighting chance.

McCain is good on foreign policy so I wouldn’t change much there. He’s got the experience and the background to give him credibility in this area. McCain needs to focus on sweeping changes here at home because that is what people are worrying about.

First, he needs to support a completely restructuring of the tax system. The biggest issue we have right now is that congress is monkeying with our tax system every year. The biggest benefit to the economy is stability and being able to count on how much your tax expense is going to be. McCain needs to support a drastic simplification of the tax code. I very much support the Fair Tax and would love to see him support something like it.

Next he needs to champion a balanced budget. If we, the people, are expected to live within our means, than so is the federal government. He should say that any budget that crosses his desk, whether put there by a Democratic or Republican congress, that the expenses are more than the revenues, he will veto. If he wants to soften it, he can give them a 3 year window to get in line. The first year needs to be within 25%, the next 15%, then 5% and then from then on it must balance or revenues must surpass expenses. He’ll have to take a stance that the people are going to have to sacrifice and people will be receptive to this in this climate of fiscal insanity.

Lastly he needs to reject all of this foolishness with dumping money that the government doesn’t even have to buy up mortgages. The problem with the market is that banks won’t lend to each other. Come up with an insurance situation so that banks will again have confidence to lend to each other. He needs to suspend the mark to market rules put in place after the Enron scandal so that banks can establish a value of these securities that contain the bad mortgages. The government has no business giving money away tax payer money in order to reward bad behavior. They can do something very similar simply by insuring the securities.

Anyway, there are more sweeping changes he can support but those are big ones in my book. With policies like these, who could truly be that candidate of “Change”?

It’s taken a while but I’m just getting around to writing about the second and third debates. I’ll just give my overall impression.

The VP debate, I think, disappointed a lot of people who wanted to see Sarah Palin fall flat on her face. After mediocre appearances in some interviews with the media, there were really low expectations. Her biggest problem in those interview was she was over-coached. She tried to answer the questions how she was coached to do it. Sarah Palin isn’t that kind of politician and she and the McCain campaign quickly realized it. She can’t say things in a rehearsed manner. She is genuine and has to say things in a genuine way. Luckily that’s exactly how she did the debate. Her performance wasn’t perfect but it was very good and much beyond the expectations. Joe Biden came off slightly smoother because he’s been doing this for a very long time. His performance would have been a lot better if it weren’t for the bold-faced lies he told, for example, saying that 3 weeks in the Iraq war cost more than the whole 6 to 7 years spent in Afghanistan. He was only off by a factor of 20 when comparing the average of the most expensive year in Iraq. The fact that he can state such a bold-faced lie and come off truthful tells us more about Biden than anything else he’s ever said in this campaign.

On the second Presidential debate, I was much less enthusiastic. McCain chose to use the debate to roll out a plan to renegotiate and change the terms of sub-prime loans of people who are facing foreclosure. I’m already unhappy with McCain’s position on the bail-out package that the Senate passed. It was completely hypocritical for McCain to vote for that given the over $150 billion dollars of pork and earmarks included in that bill. I’m also very much against any bail-out bill that rewards bad behavior with huge payouts. Nevertheless, this is perhaps better said in its own post.

Now McCain wants to take loans of people how made stupid decisions and fix them for them. So if my neighbor is in foreclosure because he took out a 125% no-doc ARM that he couldn’t afford because he didn’t qualify for a more traditional loan, he can go to the federal government and they’ll reduce his principle to the current market price and give him a fixed 30 year mortgage at the current interest rate. My neighbor could end up with a better loan than I have simply because he was in default and I’ve honestly made my payments. Now if that saves his home from getting foreclosed, I might be able to swallow it just to maintain the value of my home. The thing is, my neighbor could still end up foreclosing if the new terms of the loan are still something he can’t afford (remember he got a sub-prime loan to begin with because he couldn’t afford a traditional loan in the first place). I’m a firm believer that the government should have no place in rewarding bad behavior. It should not go in and tell someone, “oh, you poor thing, you were merely a victim of the mortgage broker. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it for you.” People are not victims. They made these decisions of their own free will hoping to get a big payday at the end. The risk of foreclosure is supposed to temper bad decisions like that. If the government takes away that risk, what keeps them from making risky decisions in the future?

Anyway, back to the debate. McCain’s new financial plan is almost as dismal as the bail-out package he voted for in the Senate. So that didn’t endear him to me much. Nevertheless, he did well and was pretty hard-hitting without hitting below the belt. In another post I’ll talk about what I think McCain should do if he really wants a chance to win.

The funniest thing I heard said in the debate was when Obama talks about the dangers of getting oil from Russia and Venezuela and that’s why he wants to eliminate our dependence on middle-eastern oil. I do hope Obama knows that Russia and Venezuela are not in the middle east. Maybe one of his foreign policy advisers can coach him on that one.

I know I’m late in the game. The debate was last Friday. I didn’t get around to watching it until last night. Life is just so busy.

I’m not going to go line-by-line of what was said and I’m just going to give my impression. My main impression was that McCain won the debate. Obama gave off an air of having studied a lot and was able to give a lot of facts and figures. It was probably the best he could hope to do on a debate based off of foreign affairs. McCain gave off an air of experience. Obama could give his opinion. McCain can say what he’d do and list off a number of experiences supporting why he’d do it that way. Opinions are great and if you can back them up with book-learning, it’s even better, but if you can back it up with experiences in your past, it’s by far the best of all.

It all came down to accentuating that McCain knows what he’s doing and Obama doesn’t because McCain is vastly more experienced than Obama and that’s how it came off.