Recent news stories remind me of an old Sunday Peanuts comic strip. Snoopy is out jogging one day when his knees start to complain about the punishment they are taking from the jog. The feet then chime in about how they are taking the most pounding and how much they hurt. The lungs then volunteer that they are absorbing the most punishment since they have to work so hard pumping air into the body. The ears even complain about how cold they are and why were they outside jogging anyway. At that point, the heart says something to the effect that they are jogging for the heart’s benefit because if the heart goes, everything goes. At that point, all body parts go silent and the jog continues.
So it goes with the Federal budget deficit and our skyrocketing national debt.. If we cannot fix our fiscal situation, nothing else matters. Much like the heart, if the financial foundation of our country is destroyed, then nothing else has any importance. You cannot even talk about global warming, a national energy program, improving public schools, fighting drug addiction, defending the country, helping out the needy, creating and maintaining job growth and economic growth, nothing else. If the heart goes, it does not matter how strong your legs are or how much air your lungs can pump. Much like the heart, sound fiscal policy makes everything else possible.
Continue Reading…
Related posts
Probably at some point in our nation’s past, this was a true statement: “I’m from the government and I am here to help you.” That was when government was much smaller and more focused on a limited set of functions. So limited, in fact, that government was actually good at getting some problems solved. However, given the behavior of today’s government functions, personnel, and the American political class these past few years, it is probably true that this statement is no longer a fact, it is just a myth. Consider the following myth busting behaviors:
1) The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is responsible for overseeing the integrity of the accounting processes and accuracy of public companies’ financials. They were obviously asleep at the wheel when many of Wall Street’s largest financial firms, rapidly and without warning, either went bankrupt or dove into deep financial stress at the onset of the greatest financial collapse in this country since the Great Depression. How did this economic and financial fiasco occur with almost no advance warning by the SEC? A possible answer was published in an April 23, 2010 Associated Press article which reported on the findings of an SEC Inspector General analysis. The analysis found that more than two and half dozen SEC employees were found to have used their government issued computers to search the Internet for pornography during the time they should have been hard at work protecting the interests of Americans who invest in public companies. As examples of their findings, one SEC attorney spent up to eight hours a day downloading pornography, burning his findings to CDs and DVD discs once his hard drive filled up with the pornographic material. An SEC accountant was blocked over 16,000 times in one month (or about 800 times a day, 10 times an hour) from visiting pornographic websites yet he was able to eventually collect a collection of pornographic material on his government computer by using a method to bypass the SEC filters. Seventeen of the pornography seekers at the SEC were considered “senior level” employees, earning salaries up to $222,000 a year. These government employees were obviously too busy to help protect the interests of the American investors, people who lost untold billions of dollars as a result of the financial crisis that the SEC staff never saw coming.
Continue Reading…
Related posts
Governor Jerry Brown can ignite people’s inner sense of hopeful thinking. He has the capacity to allow businesses to see the greater possibility for them to advance their dreams without infringing on the dreams of the citizenry. You don’t have that occur too often. When he was governor his ratings were very high and jobs and wealth grew in California. He was re-elected for a second term by a significant margin. He won’t be a 10 to 3 governor, spending his time within party circle amassing campaign funds for future campaigning. He’ll be told to take a break every now and then from his 18 hours days. He’ll bring into his administration people like him who are dedicated to working long hours to get California government working again.
This state led is so many categories and was a state to be truly proud of, where we find ourselves in comparison to so many other states is discouraging yet because we are still quite fortunate, rich in people talent and resources and we remain a mighty influence.
Continue Reading…
Related posts