It was during one of our Sunday cruises around the valley, that I realized that the wifey and I have more money than our Government. Yes folks, like many others, we-- who have had our own struggles during the economic downturn-- now have more discretionary cash on hand than either California or the U.S. Government. Let’s review.
The State of California is currently $30 billion upside down on its budget. But the dirty little secret is that it has over $500 billion in unfunded pensions, that a whole lot of public workers have no intention of walking away from. Add to that billions more in waste and mismanagement, exorbitant rents, bloated agencies and redundant bureaucracies and you just can see bankruptcy from your porch.
Unfortunately it’s ditto for the U.S. Government. If we sold ever square foot of Federal lands, leased every oil and gas reserve we have and allowed logging and mining on every productive site, we couldn’t get near the $100 plus trillion we have in unfunded mandates. For you folks in Entitlement America that means taking money from productive citizens and giving it to YOU! And when you are over a hundred trillion in debt with a $12 trillion GDP and less than $5 trillion in assets, you have redefined insolvency.
And to just illustrate how crazy it is becoming, since January, we are borrowing money from China and giving it to union pensions, union contractors, bankrupt States, Cities and Counties, and now foreign countries that have been overrun by socialist entitlement recipients demanding their dole. Recovery, under these circumstances, is about as likely as Michael Phelps winning another gold medal with an anvil tied to his foot.
Yessir, it is time to stop the locomotive and let some of us off. We’ve been predicting this train wreck and don’t want to see how it ends. We’ll just cling to our guns and bibles and let the Harvard graduates show the rest of us just how smart they are.
Meanwhile, wifey and I will go quietly on our way enjoying our beautiful valley, knowing that we are far better stewards of our finances than the 536 madmen in Washington or a cigar chomping ex-muscleman in Sacramento.
Monday, May 10, 2010
What About Us White Guys?
Well now, we can’t profile Blacks, Hispanics or Muslims because that might violate their Constitutional rights. So what about us taxpaying white guys? I mean we are pulled over every day for such heinous crimes as cracked windshields, trailer ball obscuring license plates or “wear bars” showing on our tires. Then the inquiring officer asks us for driver’s license, insurance card and AARP membership certificate. Now that’s profiling.
So where’s our Rights?
Meanwhile, our officer is writing us up for our infractions, while a carload of San Jose gang bangers, in an $80k BMW, zooms by, with totally blacked out windows and marijuana wafting out of the windows. And the other way goes a plain wrapper Dodge van driven by a gentleman in classic Muslim suicide bomber garb talking on his cell phone, to Allah knows who.
But does our Barney give them so much as a glance? No. No. and Hell no. He can’t, that would be profiling. Meanwhile, he discovers a small crack in one of my backup lights.
In the midst of writing me up for my growing list of infractions, four African American males, between 18 and 35, have a flat tire, pulls over and parks not 50 yards in front of us. But they remain in the car, talking with agitated hand signals. Nevermind that none of them have shoulder belts, have an expired registration, two broken tail lights and four bald tires, Andy of Mayberry is unmoved and continues to write my ticket. I’m feeling better about this profiling thing every minute.
Then, just when I thought this whole thing was over, there drives by a big rig, driven by another fat white guy, and low and behold, Ranger Rick’s head rotates like Linda Blair avoiding Communion. Hastily ripping the ticket from his book, he tosses it at me, saying, “did you see that?” “The font size of his DOT Permit number looks a little small to me, gotta go”.
Whew, and I thought he might spot my busted license plate light. Good that I don’t drive at night. Dumbplumber
So where’s our Rights?
Meanwhile, our officer is writing us up for our infractions, while a carload of San Jose gang bangers, in an $80k BMW, zooms by, with totally blacked out windows and marijuana wafting out of the windows. And the other way goes a plain wrapper Dodge van driven by a gentleman in classic Muslim suicide bomber garb talking on his cell phone, to Allah knows who.
But does our Barney give them so much as a glance? No. No. and Hell no. He can’t, that would be profiling. Meanwhile, he discovers a small crack in one of my backup lights.
In the midst of writing me up for my growing list of infractions, four African American males, between 18 and 35, have a flat tire, pulls over and parks not 50 yards in front of us. But they remain in the car, talking with agitated hand signals. Nevermind that none of them have shoulder belts, have an expired registration, two broken tail lights and four bald tires, Andy of Mayberry is unmoved and continues to write my ticket. I’m feeling better about this profiling thing every minute.
Then, just when I thought this whole thing was over, there drives by a big rig, driven by another fat white guy, and low and behold, Ranger Rick’s head rotates like Linda Blair avoiding Communion. Hastily ripping the ticket from his book, he tosses it at me, saying, “did you see that?” “The font size of his DOT Permit number looks a little small to me, gotta go”.
Whew, and I thought he might spot my busted license plate light. Good that I don’t drive at night. Dumbplumber
Salt in the Wounds
The real enemy of the Constitution….stare decisis.
Stare decisis is the legal principle by which judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions. "Maintain what has been decided and do not alter that which has been established".
Has anyone but me realized that the real enemy of our Constitution and its included Liberties and Freedoms is our courts and not necessarily our Congress? Thanks to ‘stare decisis’ our freedoms under the Bill of Rights have little or no resemblance to the stated words and phrases of our Founders. For instance:
Our government’s prohibition of “establishment of a religion or prohibition of the exercise thereof” has been bastardized into the mantra of “Church and State”, which is slowly removing any reference of God, the Ten Commandments, or anything else remotely uttered in the Bible from everything remotely associated to government. Which is clearly NOT what the founders said, but stare decisis has established over decades of court decisions.
Additionally, stare decisis hasn’t removed a citizen’s right to redress of grievances from government. But it has rather made the effort far outweigh the reward of justice or compensation from such grievances.
Ditto for the 2nd Amendment, which in essence said that the right to keep and bear arms shall NOT be infringed. But that has what has been going on since day one. Registration, restrictions, prohibitions and outright banning is not the exception but the rule today.
Probably the most maligned Right is the tenth Amendment, where, “rights not specified to the U.S. Government are reserved for the States and citizens thereof“. Yeah right. The Federal Government has grown to be omnipotent. They’re almost everywhere, and where they’re not, they’re filling in the gaps. Now they want to regulate “salt” in food. So tell me again how the Feds are a limited government. And if you try to sue the Feds for over- reaching, and you somehow make it to the Supreme Court, just try to get past stare decisis.
Stare decisis is the legal principle by which judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions. "Maintain what has been decided and do not alter that which has been established".
Has anyone but me realized that the real enemy of our Constitution and its included Liberties and Freedoms is our courts and not necessarily our Congress? Thanks to ‘stare decisis’ our freedoms under the Bill of Rights have little or no resemblance to the stated words and phrases of our Founders. For instance:
Our government’s prohibition of “establishment of a religion or prohibition of the exercise thereof” has been bastardized into the mantra of “Church and State”, which is slowly removing any reference of God, the Ten Commandments, or anything else remotely uttered in the Bible from everything remotely associated to government. Which is clearly NOT what the founders said, but stare decisis has established over decades of court decisions.
Additionally, stare decisis hasn’t removed a citizen’s right to redress of grievances from government. But it has rather made the effort far outweigh the reward of justice or compensation from such grievances.
Ditto for the 2nd Amendment, which in essence said that the right to keep and bear arms shall NOT be infringed. But that has what has been going on since day one. Registration, restrictions, prohibitions and outright banning is not the exception but the rule today.
Probably the most maligned Right is the tenth Amendment, where, “rights not specified to the U.S. Government are reserved for the States and citizens thereof“. Yeah right. The Federal Government has grown to be omnipotent. They’re almost everywhere, and where they’re not, they’re filling in the gaps. Now they want to regulate “salt” in food. So tell me again how the Feds are a limited government. And if you try to sue the Feds for over- reaching, and you somehow make it to the Supreme Court, just try to get past stare decisis.
Not Me or Mine
You would have thought that with the financial meltdown (spurred on by the housing debacle), two wars (where our adversaries advocate the death of everyone NOT a radical Muslim), the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, the ongoing inability of the Post Office to live within its means (due to spiraling salaries, bonuses and health care costs) and the inability of our Congress to recognize that we are in a financial crisis…created by them, that president Obama would have had plenty on his plate some 14 months ago.
Add to that an exploding population of illegal aliens tapping our entitlement programs (exacerbated by a porous border enticing illegals to come here for handouts), then “cube” this folly with hundreds of billions (of our money)being handed out to trillion dollar banks (at no interest) to be loaned back to us at low interest, and hundreds of billions more being funneled directly to 18% of our “unionized” population (but given by 100% of the taxpayers), masquerading as stimulus money to ‘kickstart’ a financial recovery. But no.
No, this Bozo decided somewhere between breakfast in Chicago and dinner in D.C. that he is way above all that. He doesn’t believe that we are spiraling fast enough into oblivion, so to speed things up he takes over the Auto industry, the Energy industries, the health insurance industry and the financial industry, nevermind that the government already regulates the airlines, communications and our domestic energy resources.
If I were a cynic, I would start to believe that the government has more interest in controlling America than protecting it. As there is no nook or cranny they don’t seek to regulate and/or tax. And not to point out the obvious, government does all this under our Constitution of a limited Federal government, which confers to its citizens all rights not otherwise granted to the states.
So when the president goes looking for money to pay for all this folly, he can look somewhere other than here, since nothing that has brought us to this point involved me, mine or anybody I know.
Add to that an exploding population of illegal aliens tapping our entitlement programs (exacerbated by a porous border enticing illegals to come here for handouts), then “cube” this folly with hundreds of billions (of our money)being handed out to trillion dollar banks (at no interest) to be loaned back to us at low interest, and hundreds of billions more being funneled directly to 18% of our “unionized” population (but given by 100% of the taxpayers), masquerading as stimulus money to ‘kickstart’ a financial recovery. But no.
No, this Bozo decided somewhere between breakfast in Chicago and dinner in D.C. that he is way above all that. He doesn’t believe that we are spiraling fast enough into oblivion, so to speed things up he takes over the Auto industry, the Energy industries, the health insurance industry and the financial industry, nevermind that the government already regulates the airlines, communications and our domestic energy resources.
If I were a cynic, I would start to believe that the government has more interest in controlling America than protecting it. As there is no nook or cranny they don’t seek to regulate and/or tax. And not to point out the obvious, government does all this under our Constitution of a limited Federal government, which confers to its citizens all rights not otherwise granted to the states.
So when the president goes looking for money to pay for all this folly, he can look somewhere other than here, since nothing that has brought us to this point involved me, mine or anybody I know.
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