We Are From the Government, and We Are Here To Help
May 20, 2009 Political
What a lie. The government never helps- oh that is not to say they do not at times try, feebly- but mostly all they ever manage to do is salt the ground with so many rules and regs that nothing will ever work. Every disaster we have had in the last ten years at least has been aggravated negatively by the Federal Government.
Contrary to what you might wish to believe, they are last in, and first to leave. You could see that in Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Now you can see it in their handling of Ike.
Katrina was a wake up call for FEMA, but in fairness, much of the blame could be laid at the feet of the Mayor of New Orleans, and Governor of Louisiana, who really messed things up by not asking the Feds in soon enough. Not everyone knows that you have to invite the feds into your state to take control of a situation, courtesy of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, but this is so, and so FEMA was delayed even more than normal.
Then Rita struck the same year, and while you might think that since FEMA was already in the area, they might be quicker in their response, oh no- that was not the case.
Now fast- forward to Hurricane Ike, in 2008- this was the Hurricane whose Eyewall went literally over my house at 6:00 in the morning with 100 mph winds, and all these nice little mini- tornados these storms produce. I had to cut my way out of the driveway when the storm had passed, which was no piece of cake if you have arthritis and two foot thick pine trees. I had a tallow tree that fell on our house, but we were spared major damage. We were extremely lucky, and I am the first to say this.
Fema took three days to get any ice, or food out to anyone near me. I had prepared, having been a life- long resident of Texas and veteran of Hurricanes my whole life, and I pretty much have no use for the Feds- they are always a day late and a dollar short, so I had ice chests, propane stove, and a horse trough full of water I had stored and tarped. Others were not so prepared, and particularly on the coast, where everything was literally scraped clean of any living thing, FEMA just looked at the devastation, and thought well, there’s no one here- why are we?
It has taken us in Texas a year, almost, to begin to put our lives back together, but still, we are much more fortunate than Louisiana, who still today is relying on the Federal government to give them back their lives, and that’s not going to happen. It is, #1- not the business of the government (you have to work at it yourself also), and #2-when the government does try to help, they most often get it wrong, because they have no clue how people live, or what people need.
Trailers to live in after Katrina did not arrive until three months or more after the event. You might think the Federal government could have done better by the time Ike came around, but in some cases, trailers didn’t arrive for four months, and now, before people can rebuild their own homes, Fema wants to take the trailers away. And yet we still have people living rent- free in apartments four years after Katrina. There is no logic to the government.
So it appears that Texans get penalized for being more prepared and able to withstand a storm that could be seen as coming for a week or more, but the people of New Orleans are still treated as helpless babies all because they didn’t do the sensible thing and flee when they had the chance. Oh, that’s right, the Mayor of a city that sits 12 feet BELOW sea level didn’t see a reason to evacuate- now THERE’S a sensible man. He let buses that could have evacuated most of the people sit underwater, and be ruined, while people had to cut themselves out of their attics. Wonderful. While his people were floating on the floodwaters, Mayor Nagin was living in Dallas, high and dry. That’s right- he came to Texas.
Now I said that to say this- if you are expecting the Federal government to bail you out, or to fix anything, make the economy better, or even do ANYTHING competent, you will be waiting a long time. Between the natural tendency of bureaucracy to do as little as possible, to the infighting between the various agencies as to who has the biggest, well, bureaucracy- you are better off doing for yourself, because I, and most everyone on the Gulf Coast, know that the Federal government is pretty well useless, and hasn’t gotten any better with this new iteration of “leaders”.
I mean, now we REALLY don’t have the money to help our people- just ask anyone in California.
Of course, they are their own disaster.
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: disaster, fema, incompetence, self reliance
What Is The Big Deal About AIG Bonuses?
Mar 16, 2009 Political
Today the world is in turmoil because AIG is paying out 165 million dollars in bonuses that it is contractually obligated to pay. People are being whipped into a frenzy about this because AIG received about 170 BILLION dollars in taxpayer money as part of the bailout. The problem is, the government placed no restrictions on the money and now wants to dictate terms over existing contracts. If the government had provided proper oversight instead of handing out money like candy at Halloween then there would be room for this indignation but since it did not, oh well.
To be fair, the deal was made by the Bush administration and Obama inherited it but it was crafted by a Democratically controlled Congress. Many of the members of Congress (from both parties) who worked on this are still there and this is on them.
Barney Frank is claiming that the bonuses amount to rewarding incompetence. I think Frank’s pay is a reward for incompetence because he was instrumental in giving us this mess. In fact, nearly all of Congress gets rewarded for incompetence because people keep reelecting them.
The New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, wants the names of all people getting bonuses. Cuomo is going to investigate whether any of the recipients had anything to do with the decline of the company. What does it matter? They had contracts and contracts are legally binding.
Barack Obama said this can’t be justified. It can if you go by the rule of law and see that Congress and the Bush administration allowed Hank Paulson to write the rules and gave him blank checks to hand out. These are the same people that forced solvent banks to take the money so that the ones who needed it would not be singled out as failing thus causing more problems. Wells Fargo paid lower dividends and owes a fortune in interest because money they did not need was forced upon them.
Regardless of all this I want to know what the big deal really is. My understanding is that the companies have to pay back the bailout money. If that is the case what does it matter how they spend it especially if there were no rules?
Additionally, I have heard a number of members of Congress defend the earmarks they added (to the stimulus and the omnibus) by stating that they are a small percentage of the overall sum. Commenters at this site have made the same claim in justifying the spending. If that is the case, the money AIG spent on bonuses is only a small percentage of what it received in bailout money and it is even a smaller percentage of the overall amount spent to bailout all banks.
If the Congress can justify 9000 earmarks by claiming they are a small amount of the total package why can’t AIG do the same with regard to the bonuses?
The bottom line is, both expenditures involve taxpayer money. There is no reason AIG should not be able to live by the same rules that Congress sets for itself.
The other reality is that Congress did a poor job of overseeing this. For all their whining about oversight and checks and balances, they certainly dropped the ball on this one.
Of course, they dropped the ball in the first place and that allowed the collapse to happen. Thank the indignant banking queen Barney Frank and his partner in crime Chris Dodd for that. The subprime problem and Freddie and Fannie toppled the financial world. The other problems were collateral damage.
Suck it up Obama, Frank (maybe that is not the right phrase to use with Frank) and the rest of you whiners. I did not like the idea of the bailouts to begin with and your lack of oversight in the process makes it even worse.
But, those folks had contracts and since you did not address them then it is unlikely you will be able to address them now.
A contract is a contract and all the bluster from Obama, Frank, and Cuomo can’t change that. They can say it amounts to rewarding incompetence but who allowed it to happen? Not providing proper oversight is the definition if incompetence.
As an aside, the government has given AIG the bailout money in about four installments. Do they expect us to believe that they could not have set some kind of rules on any one of those occasions?
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: aig, bailout, barney frank, bonuses, cuome, incompetence, Obama
The AMT, a Congressional Tax Scam
Dec 22, 2007 Political
The Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT, was enacted in 1969 to force millionaires to pay a “minimum” amount of taxes. The law was specifically aimed at the fewer than 200 millionaires in this country. I am sure Congress did not consider that there would be many more millionaires over the years with a few billionaires sprinkled in. They also never figured what would happen to this archaic law over the years. Since Congress failed to index the AMT for inflation, this law has been affecting people who are no where near being millionaires and it has done so for years. People who make a little as $150,000 can be hit by the AMT (and some with lower incomes depending on circumstances). There are people who would argue that $150,000 is a very good salary, and it is, but that in no way makes a person a millionaire.
Nearly 40 years after the AMT was enacted Congress has decided to do something about the way that it is affecting non-millionaires. But this comes with great concerns to our esteemed members of the criminal club in Congress because they are trying to figure out how to make up the revenue that will be lost by fixing the AMT. They want to do this by raising taxes on the rich (who else) but the AMT was a tax that was designed to only affect the rich in the first place. Charlie Rangel is beside himself because of all the money the government will lose if they fix the AMT without replacing the revenue source. Rangel says this as if the money belongs to the government instead of the people.
What I want Rangel and others to do is abolish the AMT completely. It is antiquated and has no place in our system. There are a lot of rich people and they pay a great deal in taxes. Then, I want Rangel and the other members of Congress to find a way to refund the money that they have received illegally over the years. The AMT was designed to impact millionaires. It has resulted in non-millionaires paying a fortune in extra taxes over the years so Congress owes people money back. Their law affected people it was not supposed to touch so the reality of the situation is, Congress will not be losing money, as Rangel claims but rather it will be no longer getting money to which it is not entitled.
My opinion is that Congress has never been entitled to the money the AMT has raised from non-millionaires because this is contrary to the law they enacted in 1969. Congress has been ignoring this for nearly four decades because they liked taking in extra money that they had not planned on getting. This allows them to waste even more. The problem is, the AMT has not reached down to the middle class of America and the middle class is not too happy. Congress might kiss the rears of lobbyists and rich people for campaign money but the middle class is a larger voting block and they do not want to tick everyone off. So they put up a little patch to keep the AMT from getting even more people this year while they work on a way to make the rich pay for a mistake that was only supposed to affect the rich in the first place.
The desire of the Democrats in Congress to always tax the hell out of the rich is one of the reasons many businesses decide to move their efforts out of the country. It is why many rich people have investments that are not subject to the US tax system and it is why rich people hire armies of lawyers to keep them from being raked over the coals. Next time one of you bleeding heart liberals cries about some big company (like Heinz) outsourcing to another country don’t cry about the company and how evil and greedy it is. Instead, focus your anger toward a body that thinks it is OK to rape people because they are successful. The actions of Congress cause people to react.
People who have paid the AMT over the years (and who are not millionaires) should write a letter to their members of Congress demanding their money back. They should assert it was taken by fraud and should be returned.
The AMT does not make millionaires pay a minimum tax. It forces ordinary wage earners to find ways to reduce the burden of taxes by getting higher cost health insurance and making larger contributions to retirement plans. These reduce the amount of income that is actually taxed. Of course, there are plenty of ways to avoid taxes, as the rich in this country (like members of Congress) have found out.
We need a tax code that is no more than 10 pages long. It should include a flat tax that cannot be raised above a certain number without the vote of the people. The flat tax will eliminate the need for the pithy class warfare Democrats love to play and it will eliminate the need for many other tax schemes such as the AMT. It should also reduce the need for an IRS (the Gestapo of the Congress) and it will reduce the cost associated with running the tax scheme of this country.
One thing we should make sure of is that Rangel and the rest of his bandits are not allowed to rape the rich to fix a problem that should never have happened and only happened due the the incompetence of the Congress.
Others with similar items:
Outside the Beltway, Stop the ACLU, The Midnight Sun, Rosemary’s Thoughts, guerrilla radio, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Stix Blog, Shadowscope, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: amt, Congress, crimes, Democrats, incompetence, tax and spend, tax the rich, taxes