Preface:
In the United States, Republicans create our debt by giving our money to people who don’t need it, and Democrats create our debt by giving our money away to people who don’t know what they’re doing.
The figures & observations used in this article were based on research between 2006-2009. Unfortunately, much of what is happening has not improved, and has gotten worse. There are of course some genius business people creating solutions to problems, but alas there are also politicians hampering their progress, or injecting themselves or their appointees needlessly into the process.
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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS ANTI-PARTISAN IN NATURE, REQUIRES THOUGHT, AND IS LONGER THAN 140 CHARACTERS
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The Essence of the Scam
We listen to these arcane demagogues go back and forth on their mutually failed policies, struggling to maintain their relevance in a world where their rhetoric and their policies have left us bone dry, but what about the rest of us? What about the citizenry who have to live in the shambles of what is left? And what about those of us who are not satisfied to wait it out and see if some new program or other works? We have problems we need to solve now, and we are in a conundrum, because we Americans are the only ones who can solve our problems, but it seems like many of us have forgotten that.
I know that when people become vocal in their personal criticism of government policy, and the politics that have laid us low, we are in danger of being smacked down before we get started, I know we are all supposed to “remember our place and just pay our taxes and let the experts take care of things”, (which is what got us into this mess) and I know people are going to see this headline and make the incorrect assumption that I am a crank. I’m not cranky, I’m motivated.
When politicians blame failures on each other, and the people blame failure on the politicians, then we have failed ourselves. I swear on the rest of my days that I will not go about making my way in this world on the whims of and the hope in policy makers. No way! If it were up to me, it’s up to me. I’m the only one who can let me down. If I am doing everything I can do to get private capital back in to the economy so the government can stop borrowing more from the Federal Reserve printing press interest machine, I really can’t ask any more of myself than that.
I keep hearing Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and a lot of other people constantly whine and cry crocodile tears as though they care about all the money being printed, even though the policies they support were supposed to create jobs and never did. They gave so much of our money away to corporate welfare queens that they have no business complaining about printing more, because you know they are going to do everything they can to get it out of the economy and into their contributors’ hands anyways.
It has always been like this. The Republicans give our money to people who don’t need it and the Democrats give our money to people who don’t know what they’re doing. Then they both complain about not getting their way, when in fact the entire problem is that they are both getting their way.1 We spend so much time paying attention to the manufactured perception of rivalry that we have lost sight of what they agree on, and it’s not acceptable, and we have just about lost the country to their insider business scams that cripple free enterprise to appease their big government corporate connections, with special emphasis at the State level, too. They just can’t seem to pass enough special interest laws.2
I am tempted to say that we owe ourselves better than these two choices, but maybe we don’t. Maybe we are getting exactly what we deserve. Maybe this is the best we can do because this is the best we can do. Maybe I have to suck it up when Dick Armey and Mitch McConnell, two real career academic elitists and political hacks who have never worked or created a thing in their lives refer to my Dad’s pension, which is a contract from the Ford Motor Company, where he worked for 45 years out of his 85 year life as a “legacy tax”, when they are the ones who have left a legacy we can’t afford, and we pay their salaries, even when they are out of government; when they will be receiving a salary and benefits from the government for the rest of their lives. They and the tax subsidized executives they work for are true legacy tax. The hypocrisy is deafening and maddening. (Since originally written, the State of Michigan elected a Republican Governor who has begun taxing the pensions of retirees 4%. Where is the Sheriff? And what happened to small government and less taxes?)
Maybe I have to suck it up when I hear Machine Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel, another careerist, say things like “We cannot let a crisis go to waste”, and scheme to use our misfortune as an opportunity to grab more rights and power from the people at exactly the time when people need to be freed from control so we can solve problems. Don’t even get me started on Herr Lieberman. Maybe when our President, Barack Obama, who I believe is a genuinely intelligent and uniquely qualified person surrounds himself with the same Federal Reserve Bankers, Wall Street bankers and political players that his predecessors did, instead of solid business and social leaders we need to get serious and realistic about from where our solutions are really going to come, us. It is more than clear that if we are still voting for Democrats and Republicans that we deserve what we are getting.
Citizens, we are the only hope we have. We are going to have to give private capital a reason to come back into our economy. If we don’t do that, no one will. There will be more cash for trash3, more money printed and none earned, and more smarmy, set for life politicians insulting us and diverting our attention with perceptions of rivalries that we simply cannot afford.
We Owe Our Grandparents Better: Starting from Scratch
I am going all the way with this. Reader, I am going to do the cliché, I am going to have to tell you some of my family history to see if we can jog your memory toward what it takes to make things happen. Yes, looking forward is good, but there are some things we all have in common beyond just being in the same boat, and if we can get in touch with the essence of what that is we might have a chance at remembering enough about the identity of this country to pull out a respectable win-win, as our enemies and some of our rivals are hoping for, and banking on our demise.
One day, my Grandpa had to make a decision to leave his home in Poland, so in 1916 he took a walk across Europe. Yes… he WALKED across Europe to see if he could find a way to provide for his young family. That was a tough time in that part of the world. He could not find any work, there was nothing he could find on the Continent, so he heard about a boat that was leaving the Continent and going to America, and the boat needed a crew. So, he took the gig.
This boat, probably a barge of some kind, made it’s way through the St. Lawrence Seaway, into the Great Lakes, and finally into Lake Superior via the Soo Locks. There were several ports in operation in those days that are not in operation for commercial use today, but whichever one they docked in, when my Grandpa got off that ship, he did not re-board. It could have been Copper Harbor, Black River Harbor, or maybe even Duluth, MN. Whichever Port is was, he hiked through the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and continued his walk to find work.
There was lots of work to be had. He worked in the mines for a while, but they were so unsafe that he did not remain there, people were dying in the mines every day. From what we know, he was a woodsman in Poland; some kind of builder too, and he finally settled in as a lumberjack in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That is where he remained for a while, and within two years he had sent for my Grandma and their daughter and first son, within a year of my Grandma’s arrival my Dad was born, and they lived in the U.P. for three years before they moved to Detroit, where they had another son.
Now, through a weird chain of events, some frugality on my part and some sheer coincidence, I currently live in that same town in the U.P. where my Dad was born. I can tell you that living up here year-round is tough enough now even with all the comforts and standard of living that we enjoy these days. My Grandpa must have been a hell of a man to stay up here at that time in the world. Seriously people, the hell that our forebears went through to make the way for us should make us ashamed if we ever complain about anything that is not criminal in nature.
My Grandpa had to leave everything behind in Europe due to politics, land grabbers, revolutionists, loyalists and thieves. He had to start from scratch. As a matter of fact, this is something that pretty much everyone in the United States can relate to or learn from their family’s history if they are honest. Let me go further and say that I think we have taken our forebears for granted. They have gotten us here, and now too many people are looking around for where the next handout and free ride is going to come from. What would they say about us?
Bent Over and Borrowed
We are borrowing money to borrow money so we can print money to lend money that we have to pay interest on. If you are not concerned about this, remind me to not do any business with you, hire you, or work for you. Avoid me and my business at all costs. I’m not looking for any taxpayer funds, I’m not asking any banks for any loans, and I only want to be involved with seasoned business people who know how to avoid the boom and bust mentality, who are not looking for heavy front end loading, and can manage money competently from a position of experience and success; that’s what I want because that’s what’s needed right now.
The other way of thinking about business is what has gotten us into trouble, and there are still scoundrels and scammers waiting with shiny fangs for the government free-for-all to begin. The front loading boom and bust mentality is still a threat, and It is going to take more than 140 characters, a soundbite and 10 seconds to get us out of the economic fix we are in.
I am one of those people who could see the irrational nature of the bubble that was created and I avoided it. I did not want to have anything to do with it. Some people are saying that the green conversion is the next bubble. Only if it is managed improperly. Only if it is done in the same manner as the banking and real estate chaos. When businesses remember their roots, when they remember that success takes time and that it takes work, and when they do not confuse an influx of cash with success, only then can things move forward. I’ve seen so many people celebrate as thought they’ve become successful because a loan goes through, or because they received a government grant. It used to be people celebrated success when they became successful. If you are celebrating about an influx of operating capital, it must be due to the fact that you have set the wrong goals.
Short Sights
Over the past 20 years I have seen people from the entire spectrum of society make the mistake of confusing an influx of cash with success. Everything in the world is not about money, just because your business gets a loan, or your 501c3 gets some grant, does not make you successful, it does not mean you are in business. What are you doing? What are you creating? What are you producing? Who are you serving? Success is built, and if you think that simply having a large some of cash or gigantic corporate income is the measure of your success, then you are a part of the problem. If you think knowing the right people and playing the game enough to get your hands on a chunk of change is what it all comes down to, you are standing in the way of your descendants’ future.
You can have the biggest pile of money on the planet, but if it is not worth anything because the value of the unit is being driven down due to over saturation, and no one wants any of it, and you have to borrow money to print money so you can buy up bad assets and stave off your failures, then what is it worth? Is that really success? It’s paper, it’s not real value.
Replace Politicians with Geniuses
How about the people who can provide actual solutions to real problems? These are the real success stories, that is the real news, and this is who you are looking for right now. The innovators, the people with the decades of experience developing and honing the new technology and practices that will make our lives less wasteful and more efficient, saving our resources, keeping us safer, healthier and thinking objectively. These are the people who have mastered the art of keeping [the use of arcane technology with its value being eclipsed by its cost to a minimum. These are the people who are beginning to make lateral moves and investments away from the old energy sources to the new, and these are the people you need to know right now, and the recognition of their talent is long overdue. (R.I.P. Steve Jobs)
Let me ask you two serious questions:
Why are the innovations that are created by the people who are actually good at things controlled by politicians and bureaucrats instead? Do you think it’s time to let the intelligent people who actually create our solutions, systems and innovations have the opportunity to deliver them, unencumbered by government and corporate interests?
Incredulity
This movement toward clean technology and the weaning from the old is one of the most exciting opportunities right now. Half a trillion dollars in private capital has been invested in the past six years, and you should not need some guru, consulting firm or costly government program to put you in touch with the results of those investments; results being the opportunity to have those technologies in your life, and the benefits and savings that go with them.
Not Buying It
I hope the free ride mentality is ending, and I do not like getting into policy debates, especially when there is work to be done, but I have a foreboding sense about the top popping off the Government Cheez Whiz can that is aimed at the Green Business Community. When that stuff starts flowing, everyone and their mother are going to be coming after that money whether they have anything to offer or not, and if you are in one of the good businesses, you are going to be bombarded by “consultants” telling you how you need to be spending that money on them, when you are totally able to find the answers and information you need on your own, and from other businesses who are in the same boat as you, and directly from the people who have the solutions you need, and directly from the demand source who recognize who the real heroes and heroines are. If this situation is handled poorly, the way things have been done to this point, the opportunity will be lost, and the incredulity of the people will prevent what could be a positive and rewarding experience for everyone.4
Conclusion
So, let’s finish up on the bit about starting from scratch. There is something quite significant that almost everyone in the US has in common. Do we remember that the vast majority of people on our Continent are either immigrants or descended from immigrants who started from scratch? Regardless of whether it was the Mayflower or a Steamship? Can we see that if our descendants could do it then we owe it to their memories to do it too? How about the descendants of the people who came here in the hulls of ships and were not even recognized as human? You’d better believe that they know about starting from scratch, and how to do it too. And the Native people. What about them? They were here all along and were nearly decimated and conquered. Think they know a little something about starting from scratch? Damn skippy they do. What if that common denominator became our focus rather than the differences the politicians love to exploit and use as political leverage?
How about you? Do you think you can take a look around this Continent, put the chains of Colonization behind you, grit your teeth, bend your knees, and look in your neighbors eyes and decide to agree to start from scratch together?
You’d better.
1 Here are some recent articles that are finally revealing the truth about the conflicts of interest in our Government
-[CNBC-Congressional Trading on Advance Info Not Illegal: SEC]
-[WSJ-Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks]
-[Wash. Post-Congress Mulls Trading Curbs for Its Own]
2 Oh yeah, it’s an epic sellout of grand proportions, under the garb of the phoniest “conservatism” ever. -[ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council]
3 [let’s not forget last years cash for trash deal]
4[I wrote this piece in 2006, the Solyndra scandal occurred as predicted in 2011, which really is a pittance of loss compared to what we lose with oil, LNG, & Nukes, & proves that it is the same old thing regardless of which Party is pulling the strings]