The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

She’s Still Talking…

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… and she really, really needs to shut up.

Just because her title is Speaker of the House doesn’t mean that Nancy Pelosi must continue to talk about shutting up everyone else who doesn’t agree with her wacked out, socialistic views.  I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here, but instead simply link to a story about her latest attempts to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.  This time by trying to use anti-trust laws.

In case you hadn’t yet noticed, Speaker Pelosi, where you and the rest of this administration are concerned, there’s already more than enough anti-trust to go around.

Putting Congress On Notice

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Normally being generous in my assessments of others, it has taken an empty suit combined with even more loudly echoing empty heads doing their darndest to turn this country inside-out to make me realize that I am very, very comfortable in my previously-unacknowledged Conservative skin.  And part of being a Conservative is being responsible.  Responsible for my own actions.

I have been thinking a lot about civic responsibilities.  These are very basic and inherent with being a citizen of the United States; we use a hierarchy called elected representation to get done all those things that must be done to protect us as a collective.  When we elect people to represent us in Washington, we are, however, in effect hiring them to do a job.  A job that today has become little more than never-ending campaign trail and a pathetic pandering to criminals, using the sacred responsibility for spending American taxpayers’ money to do little more than buy votes at the expense of the laws and freedoms of this land.

Each of us is responsible for sending these people to Washington.  Whether or not we voted for them directly, or allowed them to get there because we failed to exercise our right to vote, we have been extremely negligent bosses and our business has now been run into the ground and is just this short of being ground into the dirt by a fascist’s gleeful heel.

I have decided that it is time to stand up and let these employees know that their services are no longer considered satisfactory.  In fact, if you would do your homework and check on what YOUR personal employees have been doing in Washington, I suspect you will find that, like mine, their performance is not only sub-par, but so bad that it calls for nothing short of immediate firing.

 To that end, I have prepared a letter of dismissal to send to my employees.  It is being sent first to those who are up for reelection in 2010.  Along with Tea Parties, letters, petitions, and other means of making our voices heard, this is a critical step in taking back our power from those who would use it only for their own selfish gain.  It will be printed and sent by regular U.S. postal mail since email is nowadays so often too easily ignored.

Dear Senator or Representative Wanker,

As the new administration moves forward to enact an ideology of “hope and change” that seems to have nothing to do with the Constitution of the United States or the Bill of Rights, I have been closely monitoring your efforts on behalf of those who sent you to Washington to represent us.

What I have been seeing bears no resemblance to our wishes, nor to anything except moving this country deeper into debt and stripping its citizens of their rights.

You voted for the stimulus package and apparently only read enough of it to make sure it included a nice helping of pork ribs for yourself – an embarrassing frivolity considering current economic conditions.  You voted in favor of the EFCA, thereby effectively removing the right of business owners to run their company as they see fit and subjecting workers to union dues that only line the pockets of union organizers.  You voted to give the District of Columbia voting rights in Congress, thereby removing the neutrality of the district as is intended in the Constitution.  And included in that vote was your support for the “Fairness Doctrine”, which seeks to remove your constituents’ right to free speech. 

You also agreed to tax corporate bonuses, even though you agreed to hand them out in the first place; effectively removing “free” from the free market and stripping capitalism of the inherent balance created by supply and demand.

Though I gave you and the new administration the benefit of the doubt, after these first 60 days I am even more disappointed and more truly alarmed than I could ever have imagined.  From your actions, you make it clear that you support the President’s goal that the Republic of the United States turn its back on its hard-won, globally-envied history of independence and freedom and instead embrace the slavery inherent in socialism. 

That, however, is not the wish of this constituent.  Therefore, I hereby put you on notice that you will never again have my support.  In fact, it is my duty as an American citizen to strive to remove the dangers you pose by seeing that you are not given the opportunity to return to Washington ever again.

In your post-Congress life, I suggest you join the rest of us and try to embrace the failure.  Remember, it’s patriotic.

Sincerely,
Your Utterly Disgusted Constituent

     

 This is the list of Congress critters whose terms are ending in 2010.  Is one of yours here?  If so, and you are not intimately familiar with how they have voted to represent your rights and interests, you can find that information easily enough here.  Feel free to copy my letter and replace paragraphs 3 and 4 with the problems applicable to your specific employee.  Conversely, if you have a good representative, let them know you will support them in 2010; praise for good work can never be said too much.

State   What Congress Critter Party   Status (as of this writing)
AK Senate Lisa Murkowski R  
AL House  Artur Davis D To run for Governor of Alabama.
AL Senate Richard Shelby R Running for reelection
AR Senate Blanche Lincoln D Running for reelection
AZ Senate John McCain R Running for reelection
CA Senate Barbara Boxer D Running for reelection
CO Senate Michael Bennet D Running for election
CT Senate Chris Dodd D Running for reelection
DE Senate Ted Kaufman D Retiring
FL House  Kendrick Meek D To run for the U.S. Senate.
FL Senate Mel Martinez R Retiring
FL House  Adam Putnam R To run for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.
GA Senate Johnny Isakson R Running for reelection
HI Senate Daniel Inouye D Running for reelection
HI House  Neil Abercrombie D To run for Governor of Hawaii.
IA Senate Chuck Grassley R  
ID Senate Mike Crapo R  
IL Senate Roland Burris D  
IN Senate Evan Bayh D  
KS Senate Sam Brownback R Retiring
KS House  Jerry Moran R To run for the U.S. Senate.
KS House  Todd Tiahrt R To run for the U.S. Senate.
KY Senate Jim Bunning R Running for reelection
LA Senate David Vitter R Running for reelection
MD Senate Barbara Mikulski D  
MI House  Pete Hoekstra R To run for Governor of Michigan.
MO Senate Kit Bond R Retiring
MO House  Roy Blunt R To run for the U.S. Senate.
NC Senate Richard Burr R  
ND Senate Byron Dorgan D  
NH House  Paul Hodes D To run for the U.S. Senate.
NH Senate Judd Gregg R Likely retiring
NV Senate Harry Reid D Running for reelection
NY Senate Chuck Schumer D  
NY Senate Kirsten Gillibrand D  
OH Senate George Voinovich R Retiring
OK Senate Tom Coburn R  
OK House  Mary Fallin R To run for Governor of Oklahoma.
OR Senate Ron Wyden D  
PA Senate Arlen Specter R Running for reelection
SC Senate Jim DeMint R  
SC House  Gresham Barrett R To run for Governor of South Carolina.
SD Senate John Thune R Running for reelection
TN House  Zach Wamp R To run for Governor of Tennessee.
UT Senate Bob Bennett R Running for reelection
VT Senate Patrick Leahy D  
WA Senate Patty Murray D  
WI Senate Russ Feingold D Running for reelection

     

I hear so much that basically tells me many people are feeling paralyzed by fear.  But we don’t have to take the destruction of our country laying down.  This is just one simple and effective step towards making things right again and all it will cost you is a stamp.

The Most Important Thing Is Your Social Life?

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Victor Davis Hanson continues his thoughtful look at current trends in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Part II“.  This one focuses on the “Ugly” ones; in particulare the corruption of the (free) press, university education versus “entitlement indocrination”, and the Europeanization of America.  While reading anything written by Dr. Hanson is illuminating, it is one comment on this particular piece that quite readily sums up the problems that created all this ugliness in the first place.

While poo-pooing Dr. Hanson’s conclusions, calling them “reductionist and counterproductive”, one poster states (in part):  “As a young twentysomething year old college educated and politically aware student of life…A university education is not an indoctrination.  My professors were brilliant PhDs who confirmed most of what I already knew from high school.  The most important thing to concentrate on is your SOCIAL life.  My professors gave me ample time to explore this philosophical precept.”

This is a perfect example that youth is wasted on the young.

And it is the crux of the ugliness we face today.  Navel-gazing while ASS-U-ME-ing that someone else is going to take care of you, just like Mommy and Daddy and your teachers coddled you no matter what, is 180 degrees from independent thinking, decisive action, and hard work; the very tenets upon which this country was founded.  The very same country that will allow you to gaze at your navel and envy your European “social network” for living a life of perceived entitlement without any understanding of how all that money being spent to take care of you is created in the first place, but that will eventually tell you it’s time to grow up, put on your big boy or big girl underpants and go make yourself useful to society.

It’s difficult to have any kind of enlightening dialogue with those who so obviously chugged the Obamanation Kool-Aid straight from the bottle.  But let me stand up and be counted among those who believe that THE UNITED STATES OWES YOU NOTHING.  Indeed, you owe this country your life for nowhere else on Earth (at least for a little while longer) can you choose what you will do and how you will do it.  Nowhere else on Earth can you blather idiotic ideas without consequences any more severe than being ostracized from your precious “social life”.  Certainly our actions must respect the same rights of others that we claim for ourselves, but otherwise, that’s it.  Your rights end where mine begin. 

So if you choose to do nothing, then don’t come crying to me when you end up living under a bridge.  I don’t owe you one single cent out of my paycheck.  My success is not measured by your failure, nor is your failure measured by my success.  Equality resides in opportunity only; your results may vary and that, boys and girls, is the beauty of diversity.  To each comes the measure of their efforts and competence.

I suggest that any college student who thinks that socialism is an ideal for which this country should strive dare to try doing something different than what Barack Obama chose to do.  Go out into the real world, get a real job and then come back and tell us just how much better you would feel about living a life without the freedoms under attack by this administration.

Otherwise, please feel free to exercise the right to use your passport and go live somewhere else.  Just be careful Lady Liberty doesn’t kick you in the ass on your way out.

The New Mafia

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Everybody has a story.  Everybody has something to teach others.  And most often it is our failures that give us the best stories and provide us with the biggest lessons to share.

This is a rather interesting Fox News interview with a former mob boss, Michael Franzese.  He was extremely successful yet rightly ended up in prison.  He paid his dues, gave up “the life” and now writes and does motivational speaking, sharing his story and its lessons. 

Pay particular attention to the analogies he draws between Congress and the Mafia.  It is an “offer” you can’t refuse.

Baffle ‘Em With Bullshit

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Do you actually read the news?  I mean really read the news; not just looking at the pictures, skimming over to the gossip or entertainment sections so you can then get to the daily cartoons.  Read to the point you know about what’s going on in your town and in your country.

I talk to a lot of people and am often surprised at just how little they know about things that stand to change their very way of life.  So much is taken for granted yet there are times I can’t blame them for wanting to stick their heads in the sand and choose instead to obsess over the next American Idol.  Not only do current events sorely test those few lessons in civics through which most of us nodded so many years ago, the sheer number of them coming at us today is unprecendented.

But maybe that’s the way the new administration and those working behind the scenes of it planned it all along.  Baffle ’em with bullshit about crisis after crisis and then leverage the overwhelming despair to sneak in and steal everything of value.

Today is a day when there’s surely plenty of it.  First and most importantly, there’s the fundamental insanity of “rephrasing” the terms by which we measure what’s going on in the world around us.  That’s a really good way to get yourself in through the backdoor; just don’t let ’em know what you really mean.   The “war on terror” has now become the “ongoing struggle against terror” (courtesy of those alleged-as-nebulous ties to Bill Ayers, we presume?)  On a global level, it’s being referred to as an “overseas contingency operation”. 

Yeah, right.  Where I come from, it’s called fighting those who wish us dead.  In other words, it’s war.

There’s the ongoing saga of government bailouts and the endless AIG ping-pong blame game to take our minds off such insensibilities.   But in an unprecedented move, Treasury Secretary Geithner has proposed a sweeping set of regulations that could well spell the end of business as we know it.  He thinks we need an “independent” agency to monitor “major institutions” or payment systems whose failure “could” present a “destabilizing effect” on the economy.  The stated intention is to restrain companies whose size or complexity “could” threaten the financial systems’ stability, with the power to control all this to be spread among the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and SEC.  Color me an alarmist or color me practical, but there’s nothing to define any of this; much is being left up for “discussion” over the next few weeks.  What is there to discuss?  It’s all being directed at private businesses, where in a free market business operates according to Darwin’s theory – the survival of the fittest (there is a reason the dinosaurs went extinct).  I can easily imagine a government takeover of, say, Microsoft when some hacker unleashes the virus-to-end-all-viruses and manages to take down computers from coast to coast, businesses large and small, and portions of government operations.

This comes from the very same Tiny Tim who was unable to tell anyone just how much TARP money is left.  I can’t help but now wonder if that failure to pay all those taxes didn’t stem from simple stupidity after all. 

And did you know that the IRS is setting up a sort of clemency program, designed to get the wealthy to spill the beans about their oversees bankers?  The government made up rules that allow this sort of thing, but now we’re going to tell other countries that they can’t allow Americans to play by them. 

It isn’t going over very well.  The World Trade Organization is warning about the creeping protectionism now being displayed around the world, but the finger is being pointed at the United States and the European Union for starting the financial crisis.  Suggestions about replacing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency with some mish-mash to be managed by the International Monetary Fund were given a semblance of credence by none other than, yes, Tiny Tim, when he told the Council on Foreign Relations “We’re actually quite open to that.”  Thereby setting off yet another panic in the financial sectors, both nationa and global.  Though it is reported that he’d not even read China’s proposal. 

I fear it is simply a precursor to the latest U.N. proposal for “climate change”, complete with a global shift to a “world economy”.  Though the proposal is still rather vague in terms of dollars, the scope should frighten anyone with a modicum of sense for it will affect absolutely everything from goods to the ability to provide services to utilities through mandates like cap and trade and a shift in the use of subsidies.  The Obama administration is for anything that uses the weasel words, “global warming”, and there is obviously no concern on their part that the “bank” for all of the monies that will involved will be none other than the inept U.N.

Anyone else getting the feeling that reading is somehow something just a bit too plebian for this administration?  Despite all the talk about transparency, they don’t want anyone else to read anything, either.  Fox cable news won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury seeking documents related to the Troubled Asset Recovery Program.  Some 10,000 pages were finally received but, guess what?  The majority of them were redacted.  Thereby continuing to cloak the government’s role in the compensation agreements at AIG and Citigroup, etc.

Meantime, North Korea is preparing to launch what they are calling a satellite and the rest of the world is calling a missile test.  A test to see if whatever-you-choose-to-call-it is capable of reaching the United States.  Japan is preparing to intercept debris over the ocean and the U.S. has 2 warships deployed in southwestern Japan while the inevitable threat of sanctions is being made by allies.  Not that the North Korea contributes to the stability of the region, but this is not just a diplomatic nightmare.  It contains all the potential for the very same ugliness with which we are already heavily involved in the Middle East.  But at least the Middle Eastern leaders aren’t (yet) attempting to launch missiles at us.

But there are some missiles already hitting close to home.  My home.  Your home.  If the technology exists, someone will figure out how to make a buck with it.  And red-light cameras are the latest trick in the revenue-collecting arsenal.  Mississippi,  Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and West Virginia all ban them, though about half the states authorize their use.  Now Chicago – surprise, surprise – is considering using them to not only catch people who run red lights, but to also check to see if they are driving an insured vehicle, since there is big money to be made collecting fines for driving without insurance.  Big money for government and for a Michigan-based company, InsureNet, who would charge up to 30% in collection fees for tying into the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an information-sharing network that links some 35,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.  Though being sold as an adjunct check for drivers who break the law, there is nothing to stop a check of every single car passing through an intersection to see if they are insured.  In fact, that’s still on the table.  Maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see how this makes the roads safer.  Certainly driving is a huge act of faith – that other drivers will obey the rules of the road – but whether or not other drivers are insured has nothing to do with how they operate a vehicle.  The only thing being guaranteed is someone’s pockets are being lined.

And this is just the ones that come readily to mind.  There is legislation pending in the House for reparations to American slaves (worth a rant of its own since, among other things, it speaks to slaves not having been allowed to repatriate – to the very countries and the governments that sold them in the first place, and what about the same discriminations having been made towards women…heh); Senator Dodd is being stripped of more and more of his protective covering to reveal what a slimey mess he really is, national health care is being discussed despite a stern warning from Daniel Hannon (member of the British Parliment and former Obama supporter) last night to Sean Hannity about the dangers of it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  we’re being sold down a river.  De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt but it’s not a place any of us can afford to swim in any longer.

Whatever Barry Wants, Harry Gets?

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I fear the Democratic majority in Congress is starting to feel the heat building up around them as the American people begin to see that all the campaign rhetoric was just that – rhetoric.  To understand that it is the administration’s intention to destroy this country.

And so in all due haste to do as much damage as possible before the Democrats rightly lose their Congressional majority in 2010’s mid-term elections, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now pulling out the final stops and making the decision to include a little procedural tactic called “reconciliation” in legislation intended to, this time, nationalize health care and institute cap and trade.  What this does is allow extremely limited time for debate about a bill, effectively preventing a fillibuster by the minority party and forcing something through to law. 

This is a budget-targeted procedure, and there are provisions to call for exceptions.  You know, those invaluable checks and balances upon which this country was founded and intended to operate.  It could be argued that the fiscal changes to the budget that would accompany nationalizing health care is an exception.  As could the “trickle down” effect of implenting cap and trade in the form of higher prices for everything (since what will be considered “dirty” energy production and therefore become a commodity to be traded for profit will impact the cost of everything from utilities to transportation costs of goods).

Some Democrats are actually – and rightly – concerned about this particular bit of high-handedness from the man who personally supersized the deficit through his heavy hand in crafting the TARP and stimulus packages.  Guess they’ve been reading those cards, letters, and emails from their out-of-change constituents.  There is hope that enough Democrats have begun to recover from their Kool-Aid stupor; however it needs to be a good number because should there be a tie vote, guess who gets to break it?  Yup.  The President’s own little shadow, Vice-President Biden.

We can only hope that his propensity for misspeaking will cause him to say the wrong thing when it would really make a positive difference.

But I’m not going to hold my breath.  It’s time to put pressure on those who work for us – particularly if they are of the Demon-crat persuasion – to stop this one in its tracks and tell Harry that this time he’s gone way, way too far.

How AIG Employees Feel

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Too many people find it too easy to dehumanize and demonize others when you need a scapegoat to cover your own shameful behaviors.  As I wrote last week, the government’s misguided and borderline-illegal lynch mob attacks on AIG over bonuses bore little resemblance to the reality of the mess that they themselves had created.

So now one of AIG’s employees has decided to quit.  And in doing so, he has chosen to tell the world just how stupidly our government has behaved in the wake of their misguided meddling in the free market.  It is interesting to note that during last night’s snoozer of a campaign speech…errrr…during last night’s press conference, President Obama deliberately did not take a question from the New York Times.  I suspect in part because the paper is turning like the Titanic into the iceberg of their misguided support of him that came at the expense of the real issues during the campaign.  Issues that are now more clear each and every day as the President and Congress show us that they meant what they said about wiping out America as we’ve known and loved her.

But the things that make us the news we read and watch are made up of individual stories.  We don’t often get to see them since they are swallowed by the larger issues at hand.  But that doesn’t negate or invalidate them, as the media has so often decided to do.

Here is Jack DeSantis’ letter.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this as the administration and Congress continue down its “way to hell” , as Czech Prime Minister and EU president Mirek Topolanek put it.

*** EFCA Updates ***

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7/19/09:  Unions and Democrats are now starting to follow through on their planned smoke & mirrors strategy by “showing” willingness to drop the “card check” provision of the EFCA.  But the most harmful part of this legislation, government arbitration, is still intact and it is having bureaucrats telling business owners how to run their business that remains the real danger.

7/2/09:  California, anyone?  “…having a job that is protected by a contract is priceless.”  This is the latest mantra from the Teamsters, who are now optimistically kicking off a campaign this month to actively recruiting union organizers to begin strongarming working Americans once EFCA, “this commonsense legislation”, is passed.  I think they are forgetting that “priceless” also can be read as “price less“, aka zero.  As in ZERO jobs when more and more businesses close or fold as a result of the high and wasteful, unsustainable costs of unionized labor.  Unlike the UAW payoffs with Chrysler and GM, the government can’t step in with bailouts and then hand over all of them to the unions. 

5/24/09:  “EFCA in drag” is the latest result of Senator Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats.  Specter and Senator Tom Harkin are beating feet to find some sort of “compromise” that will allow the bill to pass and thereby secure union backing for Democrats during the 2010 elections.  Of particular “concern” are those “conservative” Democrats, who stand to (rightly) lose to true conservatives should they vote for EFCA.

5/15/09:  Do you know Craig Becker?  You should.  He’s President Obama’s latest nominee to the National Labor Relations Board and, in the same vein as all of President Obama’s choices for key positions, Becker’s views about unionization are a full-frontal assault on American freedoms.  If he has his way, “card check” won’t even need to hit the voting table in Congress.

5/13/09:  In a test of the theory that with age comes wisdom, two old politicians find themselves in the spotlight over their views of the fundamental (lack of) ethics of the EFCA.  George McGovern is being blasted by both labor unions and his fellow Democrats for coming out against the EFCA.  Despite his long support of workers, he is now voicing his concern over the principles involved in secret ballot elections, as well as government involvement in negotiations.  As early as last summer, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

“Voting is an immense privilege. “

“We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.”

More recently, he again put his views in writing and drives home an important point:

“Compulsory arbitration is, in one sense, government dictating to employees what they will win or lose in the deal, with no opportunity to approve the “agreement.” Why should employees pay union dues to get such a contract?”

“George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for nearly 30 years before retiring in 1979, had it right in condemning mandatory arbitration as “an abrogation of freedom.” “

On the flip side, Republican defector Specter is now getting another taste of the nasty syrup inevitably poured over political waffles.  An ad running in Pennsylvania, paid for by American Rights at Work, a labor-union-backed group, is pressuring him to change his mind and back the EFCA, telling people, “Call and tell Specter Pennsylvania’s for him…..As long as he’s for the Employee Free Choice Act.”

May the highest principles win.

3/25/09:  Apparently the labor unions have been feeling a little cocky about the pending “card check” legislation currently in the House and Senate.  Foxnews has a little report today about the struggles going on in Albion, Indiana, where the UAW is using almost every trick in the book to get a majority of the 50-odd employees at the Dana Corporation Auto Parts plant to sign a card saying they want UAW representation.

And Mitt Romney documented some of the problems inherent with the EFCA, based on his experience as governor of Massachusetts.  A cautionary tale, indeed.

3/24/09:  Chalk one up for American freedoms!  Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has said that he will oppose legislation aimed at allowing unions easier access to control over American businesses.  Despite reports last week that labor was pulling out all the stops, pressuring him, and even trying to bargain with voter registrations by promising to force a support switch from the Democratic to the Republican party, Senator Specter has done the right thing. 

This Conservative thanks him for defending the right to vote in secret and for preserving the right to work and the free market.

You may thank him, too, by sending him an email through his website.

In Plain English: Obama Is Incompetent

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Just over half the Americans eligible to vote and who chose to do so (well, at least it was presumed that all votes cast were by those who were both living and eligible – some even 77 times eligible – since there were numerous charges and indictments against Obama-campaign-funded ACORN) went to Barack Hussein Obama and in a flash we ushered in what continues to be called a new era of “hope and change”.

The problem is that the hope is now that this man resigns or otherwise disappears and that the change we’ve seen has been nothing but negative.

But I fear that Obama’s audacity (read:  ego) and the fact that too many in this country, including the First Lady, are still willing to covertly or overtly play the race card is going to keep us sliding down the thinly-veiled razor blade he proffered, too many accepted, and for which he continues to campaign.  And that is a sadness even more tragic than the economic meltdown that has the real middle class of this country wondering just how they’re going to manage to survive.

Let us consider for a moment the definition of the word “incompetent”.  There are those claim only worm-eaters make any criticisms of President Obama, but do they really understand what it means?  Merriam-Webster defines it thusly:

Main Entry:   incompetent 
Function:   adjective
Etymology:   Middle French incompétent, from in- + compétent competent
Date:   1595
1: not legally qualified
2: inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose
3 a: lacking the qualities needed for effective action b: unable to function properly
 
Arguments continue to be made that Barack Obama is not legally qualified to hold the office of President of the United States, based on questions about the circumstances surrounding his birth.  While the courts continue to refuse to hear cases on this, that the President continues to allow the question to be asked is at direct odds with all his calls for honesty and transparency.  Like the old saying goes, “He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing.”  Surely it would be a simple matter to allow the release of records and thereby properly refute claims by his family of a Kenyan birth to a mother not old enough to confer U.S. citizenship upon him.  His college records remain protected as well, which again gives, at best, yet another appearance of impropriety.  Like the best of cases made up purely of circumstantial evidence, something both his Harvard law degree and his $800,000 worth of lawyers fighting to keep all his records sealed surely must know, many people have a hard time believing the answer would be something as simple as he doesn’t want anyone to know his grades in school were even worse than those of our much-ridiculed former President George W. Bush.
 
That President Obama is inadequate in his role as President has become a matter of daily course.  While both Hugo Chavez and the Ayatollah Khomeini aren’t exactly leading anyone’s list of reputable advisors, that they have both come out in the last week to blatantly blast Obama with both barrels in derision of his policies and his lack of concrete “change” speaks to the low level of regard with which the United States is now held.  And that is a dangerous place for us to be, yet President Obama continues to attempt to soothe the savage beasts with lullabies of cooperation and dialogue while treating our allies with casual disregard and in some instances outright disrespect.  As if it never occurs to him that no matter what America says or what America does, there are some people in this world who wish for nothing less than America to disappear off the face of the Earth.  
  
Further inadequacy is demonstrated in his insistance – despite rumblings from Europe that the dollar should no longer be taken seriously – that taking trillions and trillions from zero will somehow magically transform the raging rivers of federal red ink into a viable and stable national budget.  
  
The qualities required for a President to be effective are not consistent with the actions of Barack Obama.  He shows more concern about winning a game of oneupmanship with people like Rush Limbaugh and doing late-night comedy with Jay Leno (a trip paid for by the taxpayers) than properly addressing, say, the economy.   Effective leaders care enough to know the facts at hand and are able to speak intelligently most of the time without the aid of a teleprompter.  Functioning properly in the role of President is not resorting to “gallows humor” when asked legitimate questions; indeed, these never-ending media appearances only serve to show that President Obama lacks the maturity required to lead the United States.  He shows the world that he is more enamored with the color of authority and privilege he perceives his role confers upon him than he is with the grave responsibilities it brings.  This immature perspective is reinforced by alleging to have been “blindsided” by the AIG bonuses.  I don’t know very many people who find out what it was they did at work by watching the evening news, do you?  Oh, but I forgot.  When he was to have been serving as a Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was out campaigning instead of working to represent those who had elected him so apparently couldn’t be bothered to know just what he was voting for or what his colleagues were doing.  Along the same lines he couldn’t be bothered to read the stimulus bill.  The applause of the crowds apparently meant more to him – and still does – than actually doing real work.
  
President G.W. Bush may not have been the brightest bulb in the drawer and though his business ventures were all failures, at least he had legitimate experience from which to draw when he was elected.  Including military experience, such as it was.  Barack Obama cannot make the same claim.  Since coming of legal age he has done nothing of real value, he has never gotten his hands dirty doing what anyone might recognize as a regular job.  He is the stuff of debates and models and multi-layered theories, of myths and fantasies that have never known the hard knocks from application in the real world.  Yet he feels entitled to sit in the Oval Office and to make a mockery of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and with the stroke of several pens – because of course it’s all about creating historic souvenirs – destroy the free market.
  
It is no longer a case where the silly Emperor has no clothes on.  It is that the Emperor is, whether naked or clothed, dangerously incompetent.

Stupid Is Not A Race Or A Color

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I personally can’t blame anyone for not agreeing to honor President Obama because of his “uimpeachable reputation for integrity, vision and passion”.  Nor do I agree that “no one could be more worthy of a special honor and recognition by the members of this body and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus than this extraordinary leader.”

Why?  To use juse 2 popular little examples, so far he’s got a losing record selecting honest and law-abiding cabinet appointees, and his vision can’t go past what he sees in the mirror or on his Tivo since he claims to have been “blindsided”, as his ever-fawning minions like to phrase it, by the AIG bonus plan.  A plan that, had he been doing his job as a Senator last spring and last fall, he would have remembered having voted for.

We’ll not mention that he didn’t even bother to read the TARP legislation before signing it as President.  And we’ll forget about the fact that his grandiose schemes to spend even more money – that we, the American taxpayers, don’t have now and won’t have later – is now being estimated to send the deficit soaring towards $10 TRILLION in the next 10 years.  All while cutting the current deficit down to a paltry trillion dollars.  During his “first term”.

Sorry, folks, but I don’t care what color skin you live in, or whether you even walk upright, this is evidence of being dumber than the proverbial box of rocks at best, and at worst a master snake-oil salesman of most nefarious intent.  It is nothing to be honored.  Indeed, it is something that needs to be removed like a cancerous tumor, along with taking out all the lymph nodes made up of Congress critters.

But instead of acting like grownups and demonstrating that they didn’t waste their parents’ or taxpayer money from student loans on all those college degrees by facing the cold, hard facts that this administration has done more damage in its first 2 months than all others combined in the last 20 years, certain lawmakers in Georgia chose to instead play the tattered old race card.  Some dozen of them huffed out of the Georgia House chambers claiming that “white Republicans” are deliberately snubbing the country’s first black president by refusing to go along with their chance to be the first to pass a resolution honoring him in this fashion.

‘Scuse me, O Degreed Ones, need I remind you that President Obama is only half-black?  And while I will grant you that to have anyone other than a “white man” sitting as President of the United States is something to be recognized as a positive step towards the real embrace of American diversity, in the end that’s all it is.  What Obama has done so far merits nothing short of being ridden out of town on a rail.  If he were one of those “white men” flushing us down the toilet this same way just what would you be saying instead?

If we are to be truly color-blind, we will not give credit where credit isn’t due simply because of our differences.  Skin color isn’t some automatic handicap – unless you choose it to be one.

Grow up.