Observations and revelations

Fox News: "Geithner to seek power to seize imperiled firms"

The Treasury Secretary is out of his mind. First, they take over AIG. Now they just sent a message to the entire financial industry: if you make bad lending decisions, don't worry, as we'll buy those bad debts and take them off your hands so you can keep lending.

This is an absolute outrage. Obama is pushing us toward Socialism, and that is not where this country needs to go. Let capitalism take its course and let these companies fail. If they take part of the economy down with them, then so be it, but let them fail and let the economy recover.

They are trying to prop this economy up on a toothpick. Stop bailing out these firms and let them fail. If banks go down as well, then let the FDIC come in and insure the deposits. If lending firms go down, then let other firms come in and pick up the assets.

Mr President and Mr Secretary, this country was built on capitalism and capitalist ideas. Stop pushing us toward socialism. Let the markets correct themselves and we will be fine. Arguably, FDR's socialist policies kept us in the Great Depression. Socialist policies didn't work then, so what makes you think they'll work now?

At times, you don't really think twice about your seat belt. For many of us, it's second nature: you get into the car, click your belt, and drive to your destination. Rarely do we need a reminder of why to use it, and rarely do we encounter what is clearly a reminder of why it is important.

Early Sunday morning, while driving southbound on I-35, about 1 mile north of Cameron, MO, I received that reminder, and it's something probably forever engraved into my consciousness.

About a quarter-mile in front of me, I saw a car swerve suddenly, over-correcting for what the driver would say was trying to avoid an animal on the freeway. The over-correction caused the car to roll several times before coming to rest on its roof in the median.

"What the f***?" I said, and my fiancée, Elicia, came awake in the passenger seat after she'd been asleep for a good hour and a half.

Because I saw the accident occur, I felt obligated to pull over and assist in any way I could. I flashed my hazard blinkers and slowly pulled to the side on I-35 southbound, coming to a rest and turning the car off. Elicia and I ran across the, thankfully, empty interstate to the median where the driver had already gotten out of the car and was literally trying to pull the doors off his car so he could get the passengers out.

There were two passengers plus the driver in the car, one of whom is a 10-year-old boy. You can take comfort in the fact that I used the verb "is" in that sentence -- thankfully, no one was killed. But of the three passengers, one was not wearing a seat belt, and she suffered the greatest injuries.

The driver said the passenger, a woman in her 30s, took her seat belt off to adjust herself in her seat to get more comfortable, just moments before the driver veered to avoid an animal. She was thrown from her seat, and when we found her, she was laying on her back on what was supposed to be the ceiling of the vehicle if it was properly upright, complaining of pain in her shoulder and leg.

The 10-year-old boy was strapped into the back seat sitting on a pillow. The pillow raised him up so the shoulder-strap was properly positioned while also making the long drive from Minnesota more comfortable for him. When the car came to rest, he was upside-down in his seat, still strapped in and held securely by his seat belt. When he was released from his seat, he was pulled aside and checked over for obvious injuries by a police officer who, like me, was not far away when the accident occurred and watched it happen. It was a chilly night, so Elicia pulled him in close to keep him warm while I fetched a blanket from my car and wrapped the boy up.

The driver had some cuts and scrapes but was otherwise uninjured. He still had x-rays at Cameron Regional Medical Center just to make sure. The female passenger had to be immobilized at the scene and was taken by ambulance to Cameron before being transferred to Liberty. The boy was immobilized at the scene as well as a precautionary measure before being taken in a separate ambulance, still wrapped in my blanket, to Cameron. Elicia and I met up with the boy at the hospital where we went to not only see how everyone was doing, but also to fetch our blanket.

This accident could very easily have been much worse. The passenger could've been ejected from the car. The same with the driver if he wasn't wearing a seat belt. If the boy was not properly secured, he could've easily been severely injured if not killed.

While for most of us we don't need a reminder to wear our seat belt, as it's something that is just second nature, I feel that every once in a while we do need a reminder. We need to see first-hand the difference that a seat belt can make: the difference between minor injuries easily treatable at any ER, to moderate or worse injuries requiring transport to another hospital.

I don't know the full aftermath of the accident, as when Elicia and I left Cameron at 4:15am Sunday morning, the boy was still immobilized in his hospital bed, but conscious and talking. We said goodbye to the boy and his family before taking off for Kansas City, where we would've arrived about an hour earlier were it not for the accident.

Seat belts do make a difference. If you have children, ensure they are secured properly: ask an EMT or police officer if you're unsure if you are securing your children properly.

I don't think this is something that can possibly be stressed too much.

Well following yesterday's tirade by the House, passing a 90% punitary tax on the bonuses of AIG executives, among others, the Senate has at least shed some light on the true problem: the House was voting with their emotions.

Associated Press: "Senate Republicans brake rush to tax AIG bonuses"

When policy is voted into effect based on emotion, bad policies are what get put into place. Laws are supposed to be blind, and this one is far from it. Thankfully Senate Republicans are trying to slow this whole thing down.

Normally I don't agree with the idea of punitive taxation, and I don't agree with punitive taxation on bonuses that anyone receives. Like I said in my posting yesterday, that bill sets very bad precedent. At least it looks like the Senate is going to keep that from becoming law.

And to the House of Representatives I say this, don't repeat this big mistake. Start voting with your brain and not your emotions. Anger and the ability to enact public policy never go together.

Associated Press: “Obama asks patience, guarantees better days ahead”

Mr President, your “guarantee” isn’t a guarantee and here’s why: the economy will improve regardless of whether you help or not. In fact, it’s likely to improve better and faster if you stop this reckless spending tirade you’re on.

Instead of acting like a spoiled 16-year old girl with daddy’s credit card, walk away from the spending and let your first stimulus package go to work.

We’ve become a nation of people who want results NOW! And if we cannot see results soon, or any sign of the intended result soon, then it probably won’t work. Not necessarily the case.

Anyone who’s studied economics should know that economic changes don’t happen at Internet pace. They take time, months, even years, to see any kind of effect, and even then there’s no way to know if this stimulus package helped at all.

But today the Federal Reserve announced it’s going to pump $1 trillion… you read that right, $1 trillion, into the US Treasury. The Federal Reserve created cash from thin air, and doomed our current low rate of inflation in the process.

Here’s a lesson for you: Inflation is a measure of the amount of money floating around. If there’s more money than demand for it, inflation takes hold and forces prices up. If there’s less money than demand, though, it causes the economy to start to slow down, or go recessionary. The opposite of economic inflation is not economic deflation as many would like to believe, it’s recession first, then deflation if the economy slows down enough.

Let me put it this way, many considered the drop in gasoline prices to be a good thing because you can now drive that gas-guzzling SUV or Hummer and actually be able to afford to put gas in the tank. But how quickly the gas prices dropped is not a good sign. I was unemployed when the gas prices dropped through the floor, so I was glad to see prices go down as it loosened my financial belt a little. But at the same time, I knew that it wasn't good for the economy either.

But the economy will recover. It always has, in some way or another. We’ve been through a stock market melt down almost as bad as what we’re going through now that occurred during Warren Harding’s administration. Harding took a hands-off approach, letting the free markets and… dare I say it… capitalism work its magic and the economy recovered rather quickly into the “Roaring Twenties”, spurred on by the administration of his successor, Calvin Coolidge.

Is the laissez-faire approach the best way to go? I say yes, in the short run at least to see if the stimulus package can do the right job. If the economy starts picking up steam, as it eventually will (absent the guarantee by the President), then they can evaluate further spending based on economic projections.

But the fear-based spending Obama’s gotten us into needs to stop. Put down the checkbook, and see if the huge check you’ve already written will do the job.

Every now and then you read something that your government has done that pisses you to no end... I read that very thing this afternoon while I was at work waiting for a software installation to finish.

Associated Press: "House passes bill taxing AIG and other bonuses"

I am with Michelle Malkin in asking "What's next?" Look at how quickly they responded to the AIG bonus fiasco. It's like they said, "Well we can't override those contracts because... you know... they're legally binding, but we can do the next best thing and tax the hell out of them."

Obviously Congress has lost sight of the one document, dare I say contract, that gives them their power to begin with: the Constitution of the United States. Yet this bill will pass the Senate and make it to Pres. Obama's desk where he will gleefully sign it into law, and sign away your rights in the process.

And I say that not to scare you but to open your eyes. Because if they can lay a 90% tax on these executive bonuses, pretty soon the wheels are going to start turning in their heads, and in some they probably already have. If they can tax these bonuses at 90%, what else could they lay an unfair punitive tax on?

Now I can say that hopefully this bill won't stand. Hopefully the government will see what they are doing before they have another Boston Tea Party on their hands. People do not like unfair taxes, and will readily revolt, either peacefully or not, against their government, and have.

That is how this country was formed, by revolting against a government that sought to impose unfair taxes, among other offenses outlined in the Declaration of Independence. The only sad part is that we have taxation with representation in the United States, though it doesn't seem like it as the House of Representatives, within which all tax bills must begin life, is not acting in the best interests of the country.

Now am I saying that revolution is on the horizon if these kinds of actions continue? Peaceful revolution, yes, and it'll start in the voting booths in 2010.

But again I say this: they've levied a punitive tax on these bonuses. Over $165 million is about to be confiscated by the government through taxes on so few a number of people. Unconstitutional? I would like to say it is, but unfortunately it does not appear to be so. The Sixteenth Amendment grants Congress the right to tax incomes, without regard to any census or enumeration. This means they can tax incomes however they wish, and they've decided that several hundred people must bear the burden of a $165 million tax bill.

And I know many say that the company should not have divied the bonuses when the company is failing. To that I say: it happens all the time. Lots of companies continue to reward employees for their good deeds even when they're accounting places them in the red. Payraises, extra-salary compensation, and the like... it happens all the time, people.

But I can see it now, Democrats in Congress will say, "Why stop at a 90% tax on just the AIG bonuses? Let's expand it to all bonuses when the families make over a quarter million per year."

Ah, a quarter million, Obama's magic number (over which his salary places him). So what's next, Congress?

This economy has claimed more than its fair share of victims, but so has the recovery effort. One victim of the recovery from recession is AIG, who received over $180 billion US in "bailout bucks", $165 million of which went to pay executive bonuses.

Now I certainly agree that executive bonuses shouldn't be paid out when a company needs a shock from the government's bailout defibrulator. However there is something more at stake toward which many don't appear to be paying attention: sanctity of contracts.

Contracts are everywhere. You sign one when you're hired on to do a job, though unless you're actually a contracted employee it's typically called an employment agreement. But it's still a contract, nonetheless.

Now in regard to AIG, our Federal government is pushing for something to recouperate the executive bonuses, such as through punitive taxation, and all of the proposed plans are... get this... unconstitutional.

You see much of business occurs on paper with signatures. You sign credit card receipts, and the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution, which is also a contract between the government and the people. So if the Federal government is allowed to void or alter legally binding contracts such as the employment contracts that require AIG to pay bonuses, imagine what other contract they could push to modify or void without our say in the matter... Very dangerous slippery slope in that matter.

Now some of the executives have forfeited their bonuses, which is very generous of them. The rest should follow suit, but whether they do is up to them. But the government shouldn't go after that money either, whether through punitive taxation or whatever else. Instead they should honor the contracts they inherited when they took on an 80% stake in the company they should've just let go away.

Let the AIG executives keep their bonuses...

[1] "Mob Rule in Washington?". Glenn Beck, FOX News.

This has to be the one thing that irks me the most about travelling the Interstate system. Most of my long-distance driving is done at night, unless I'm on vacation and heading for a coastline. So as such, driving at night on the Interstate, you eventually encounter the dreaded, and blindingly dangerous, high beams of other drivers in the oncoming lanes...

Now here's a little nugget of information most people probably don't consider: you will almost never need to use your high beams on the Interstate.

Let me re-iterate that: you will almost never need to use your high beams on the Interstate.

Now why is this? Being a respectful and courteous driver requires that you turn off your high beams when someone is approaching in the oncoming lane. I cannot tell you how many don't do this, but let me just say it's a high proportion of drivers on the Interstate, and it's getting worse. There will be those rare instances on the Interstate where you won't have oncoming traffic, but that is typically after 3am local time or about once every 50 miles any other time. Between West Des Moines, Iowa, and Kansas City, Missouri, I used my high beams 3 times, and 2 of those were to flash others who had their beams glaring -- and trust me when I say there were more than 2 glaring their beams, I just flashed 2 of them.

So if you're driving the Interstate: keep your high beams off. You don't need them, and you risk the precious sight of the oncoming traffic, meaning you're risking lives using your high beams. And how can I say you're risking lives? Several years ago, my (soon to be) father-in-law came up behind my sedan in his pickup truck with his beams glaring into my mirrors. My peripheral vision was practically blinded and my forward vision was nearly so. I almost went into a guard rail as a result.

"But there are deer out there and I don't want to damage my car."

Okay, how fast do you normally go on the Interstate? 70 mph? 75 mph? It's starting to seem that the speed of the average driver on I-35 at least is 80 mph. At that speed, you'll barely see the deer and you will just barely avoid it if you do see it.

So again, keep your high beams off. There are a lot of night drivers who will thank you.