CAP & TRADE CALL TO ACTION

You MUST call your Senators about the Cap & Trade bill that is in Congress right now. The ramifications of this bill on Americans and Businesses will overwhelmingly tax the hell out of us in more ways than one:

1. Our electric bills will rise to costs between $700 - $3,100 per year.

2. Businesses will see an even bigger rise in their electric bills.

3. When businesses see a bigger electric bill that cost will be added into the price of all consumer goods that we purchase. EVERYTHING WE BUY will be up to twice as expensive.

4. This could potentially cause job losses as businesses will have to cut somewhere and they won’t be able to cut these costs – think about factories, machine shops, the very automakers that we now own.

5. College tuition will go up even more because their electric bills will double also.

6. Public schools will have to pay more in electricity, which means higher taxes at a state level.

7. Cable companies will have to pay more – and we will pay the costs.

8. Grocery stores will be paying more in electricity which means WE will be paying even more for food.

9. Rents will go up if electricity is included. People are already having a hard times paying their rent – what will happen when their rent is increased even more?

10. Phone companies, restaurants, the Post Office, local government, pet stores, convenience stores, museums, ballparks… it affects EVERY SINGLE PERSON AND BUSINESS IN THIS COUNTRY!

The above doesn’t even include the increase in gas prices which will add ANOTHER whammy of taxes that will be paid directly by consumers and then again indirectly by businesses passing on the costs to consumer goods.

WE ARE THE ONLY COUNTRY TRYING TO SAVE THE ‘ATMOSPHERE’. No other countries are on board with this – how much of the atmosphere are WE alone really going to save????

Americans are being punished for an ideology that has not yet been proven. We are already in dire straights as a country – millions of people losing their jobs, not being able to pay their mortgages, their rent, provide food for their families and Obama wants to add THIS TAX BURDEN TO US???

This affects ALL AMERICANS, not just tax payers. The single Mom who can barely make ends meet for her family. The college kids who are already over stretched with student loans. The middle class family of four whose parents work hard and are trying to save for their kids’ college tuition. The poor welfare mother who hit hard times and just needs temporary help will never be able to climb her way off of the welfare roles.

Any of you who have Senators who are DEMOCRATS need to call, call, fax, email, write over and over again to GET THE POINT ACROSS THAT THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!! No Republicans are going to vote for this insanity and some Democrats seem to have found a brain cell or two and are realizing voting for this would jeopardize their re-election and yeah maybe some of them actually care about their constituents. THESE are the ones that need to be targeted.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

FOREIGN IMPORTERS will not be affected by this. So THEIR prices will remain lower. Businesses in this country will be put OUT of business because they will NOT be able to compete. They are already struggling in this country and fleeing. This will force MORE businesses to flee.. more jobs to be lost... the economy will delve further into the nether regions!!!!!!

It happens before and after every election. It happens because one side is getting over the fact their rivals won. It happens because the media can't shut its mouth. It happens because of past horrors. It happens because people have become childishly paranoid in our paradoxical world of constant bad news coupled with a anti-reality bubble.

What I'm talking about is the idea that a specific set of politics will create an atmosphere of hate and bile that will lead to political violence. What I'm talking about is the idea that talk radio, right wing blogs and conservative hysteria over Obama's more radical plans will somehow create a path to terrorism or the President's assassination.

The notion that talk radio or any other kind of political media incites hate is absurd beyond belief. For eight years, the left wing medias had extremists promoting the assassination of President Bush, promoting the deaths of our soldiers, predicting terrorist attacks and even welcoming them in some cases, yet the closest anyone got to assassinating Mr. Bush was a disgruntled Georgian with a dud grenade that landed dozens of feet away from its target. If the media foments homicidal emotions based on its opposition to an administration, where are the bodies of the Bushites?

I feel pretty silly even writing about this so-called issue, but I've run in to it way too much to not comment on it. The anti-Rush backlash, the people I hear on the radio talking about Hannity's “hateful” rants, and so on. How is calling out President Obama's statist/socialist agenda “hateful”? How is wishing an agenda you deem dangerous to fail a call to murder? I really don't get it. Its as if principles themselves are enough to create a new civil war.

I have a deep cynicism over American politics today. How can we run a nation with honor and timidity when we have Congress fueling populist backlash against its enemies? How can we be truly informed when our media stalwarts are nothing more than parrots reading off a script or partisan hacks pretending to be journalists? Where is our future when our schools are unwilling to punish violent radicals because of the fear of backlash by tenured radicals?

There's a reason I haven't joined any political party since I registered to vote. There is a inherent and chaotic factionalism that takes small issues and blows them up into heated debates. The second and third elections in our nation's history, between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were full of outright blasphemous tirades based on nothing else but the other side's very existence. This between two friends and political philosophers who believed in slightly different forms of government.

I know I can't step away from politics. The inquizitveness I have for it, history and philosophy will never cease, but I will be damned if I fall to the fool's idea that simply believing and professing belief in a political philosophy (one rooted in the very creation of this nation) is putting the President of the United States in danger. It wasn't true during Clinton's and Bush's terms in office and it is not true now. I call upon these fear mongers to look to their common sense and try to see how idiotic their anxiety is.

And if they don't do that, well, there's always telling them to shut the hell up.

Politely.

Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal will find it’s way into the House this week for debate. Hopefully they are actually allowed to debate this ginormous budget and not just forced to shove it through as they have with all other expensive outputs of our taxpayer dollars. If you have read Obama’s budget you will understand why so many people are outraged by the massive spending. Spending that we simply cannot afford.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if you don’t have the money to buy things you don’t ‘need’ then you do not spend that money. You wait until times are better and you can afford to spend on things that are ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘wants’. Mr. Obama does not seem to grasp this concept. Even though the Congressional Budget Office told him that his budget will cause a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years, Obama simply does not care.

We pay more per child for education than most, if not all, countries. Yet the test scores do not improve year over year. So what is the solution according to Obama? Throw more money at education rather than actually solving the problem as to why our children are not getting ‘smarter’. He may want to look at his beloved unions as part of the problem.

Universal Health care will destroy the healthcare system as we know it today. It will be outrageously more expensive for taxpayers and for those of us with private insurance. We will have to make up the high costs of insuring the entire country, not to mention still footing the bill for the 20 million plus illegal aliens who use the emergency room as their primary care facility. All you have to do is look to England, Sweden, Switzerland or Canada to see how their socialized healthcare systems work – people DIE because the government uses rationing as a form of controlling costs. The government has proven they cannot run ANY type of business efficiently or effectively yet we are going to allow them to have control over our healthcare??? What needs to be done is to figure out exactly why heathcare costs are so outrageous and then implement a solution so that all Americans can pay for their OWN insurance rather than having half the population foot the bill at a very high expense.

Mr. Obama’s cap & trade proposal is following the insane and unproven ideologies of Al Gore. In case anyone hasn’t noticed our wonderful mother Earth is actually getting colder, NOT warmer. The cap & trade program will tax business and ALL people at alarming rates based on their use of utilities. The more you use, the more you pay in taxes based on ‘polluting the atmosphere’. Earth to Obama – there are hundreds of scientists who completely debunk Gore’s ‘global warming alarmist ideologies’. The cap & trade program is estimated to cost taxpayers from $1,600 - $3,000 MORE in taxes every year. This includes the very poor and middle class who Obama pretends to care so much about.

There are many more ‘nice-to-haves’ in Mr. Obama’s outrageous and unaffordable budget. You can read all about it here: www.omb.gov. Do yourself a favor and take the time to look through it and understand exactly what our President is proposing. Then be sure to see what the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says about his budget and what it will do to our economy in the future here: www.cbo.gov. Don’t hesitate to contact your Senators and Representatives. We simply cannot sit back and allow government to continually overspend money that we do not have. You can contact your representatives here: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/. Just as we are cutting back on our own personal budgets in this time of recession, so too should the government. They are spending our future, our children’s future and our grandchildren’s futures without hesitation. TAKE ACTION and let your voice be heard. We cannot afford Obama’s budget. We cannot afford to spend money that we do not have. We cannot afford to watch our country go further down the road into oblivion all because the President wants to push his far left ideologies.

Our future looks strangely familiar. Now why would Planned Parenthood need a pyramid, I wonder...

I just got this wonderful E-Mail from my good friends at Rock The Vote, who want me to contact my Senators and tell them to take away my ability to contribute freely of my time and energy to activities of my own choosing.

For those who haven't heard about the GIVE and Serve America Acts because you were to busy being distracted by the contrived AIG scandal, here's a summary of what they entail:

http://www.infowars.com/house-passes-mandatory-national-service-bill/

"Dear Juan,

Contact Your Senator.

Check this out, last week Congress voted and passed the 'GIVE Act,' a bill to significantly expand community service opportunities and reward young people for their service with education stipends, job training, and more. It was huge and this week the Senate is taking up their version with the 'Serve America Act'. We need to make sure this passes.

Will you contact your Senators and ask them to vote 'yes' on the Serve America Act?

Our country, and many of us, are facing crazy hard times right now. We need to reshape what our country looks like and how it works, change where we get our energy from, create new jobs and train workers for these new jobs, restructure our health care system to cover the tens of million of 18-29 year olds without coverage, and make college affordable.

Many of you are already doing your part, taking action online and in your communities. And this bill will open up significantly more opportunities.

This is why we need the Senate to pass the Serve America Act, the boldest service legislation in 70 years.

Here are some more details, the Serve America Act creates a chance for young people to participate in actively rebuilding and changing the direction of our country, while rewarding us with job training, financial support, education awards, and more. Specifically it will:

* More than triple the number of volunteer opportunities for Americans, from 75,000 to 250,000.

* Create four targeted problem-solving corps that will deploy Americans of all ages to increase access to job training and placement resources, help raise high school graduation and college-going rates, enhance energy efficiency and preserve natural resources, and improve access to health care

* Launch Youth Engagement Zones to involve young people in high-quality service learning projects, and recognize 'Campuses of Service' that engage students in service activities, integrate service and learning, and promote service careers

* Mobilize skilled Americans to serve in developing countries around the world to tackle urgent problems, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, through Volunteers for Prosperity, and expand international service opportunities that help better connect America to the world.

Want to know all the details? Check out the bill.

We want to make sure those we elected last November know we are paying attention to the decisions that are making.

Please contact your Senators.

Thanks for taking action,
Heather Smith"

Sadly, the blatant misrepresentation and ignorance in this letter, which has gone out to millions of young Americans, will go unnoticed by most. However, I am not most and would, thus, like to make a quick point.

Forcing people to partake in specific, ideologically driven, government subsidized and approved pet projects is NOT the same as increasing volunteer opportunities. It's more like telling your neighbor at gun point to mow your lawn without pay and claiming he did it voluntarily.

There are plenty of volunteer opportunities. The Salvation Army isn't closing its doors and turning away people who want to stand out in the freezing cold, ringing a bell next to a rusty bucket. Habitat for Humanity isn't telling teens and young adults that their services aren't needed because the homeless in South America enjoy living in cardboard shacks. The fact is, the United States is already the most charitable nation in the world, even without the tax payer dollars that go to foreign aid, so this bill has nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with serving the community and making a better world, and everything to do with forcing individuals to partake in a social and ideological agenda that over half of them do not agree with, and doing so with threats and coercion.

The GIVE act requires that any child in middle or high school perform 50 hours of community service and that any college student perform 100 hours per year. Of course, you don't get to decide what kind of community service is acceptable, the government does. The Secretary of Education for the United states will decide what organizations will be accepted as community service and this law specifically disallows any religious organizations to be a part of the program. Organizations such as Planned Parenthood, for instance, are perfectly within the bounds of the program because they receive federal funding, yet Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical Christian organization, will not be considered an acceptable use of your community service time. That is the reality of this legislation.

Perhaps it is time to teach these bloated heads in Washington what charity actually entails. First and foremost, charity requires the free will to make the decision of engaging in the charitable act. Sending billions of tax payer dollars to combat AIDS in Africa or for food in third world countries, for instance, is not charity, despite what the claims may be. The simple fact that it is forced upon party A (the taxpayer) by party B (the government) disqualifies it from being labeled as such, whatever the merits or demerits of the actual action may be. Now, many of you may argue that such action being undertaken by the government is good, and will help feed starving peoples in under-developed nations, and that may be true, but who made the choice?

Another way to look at this may help to better explain my point. Recently, President Obama lifted the ban on Federal funding for abortions performed in other countries and increased the amount of tax payer money (our money) that goes to fund the procedures. If you pay taxes (~55% of Americans), you are, at this very moment, indirectly funding an abortion. Would you, under normal circumstances, donate to Planned Parenthood, or its Chinese equivalent? Maybe, maybe not, yet you were not given the option. The money was simply taken from you and transferred to someone else. That is the crux of the issue.

What this bill does, much to my dismay, is take away your ability to decide where, when, and how to spend 500 hours of your life. 500 hours dictated to you by the benevolent government of the United States of America. Many of us would have no issue with doing 500 hours of community service in our lifetime, and many of us gladly exceed that, but we do so of our own free will and in the charity of our choice. Mandatory volunteer work is, in and of itself, the epitome of an oxymoron, and should be called what it actually is: indentured servitude. “We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” states contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation Luke Sheahan. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”

Unfortunately, that is not the most egregious attack on liberty contained in this bill, which, while unsurprising given the administration's complete disregard for the people they supposedly serve, should have caused outrage within both the House and Senate the moment it was proposed. What truly is awe inspiring, however, is the grievous violation of the most basic and fundamental protection granted to private individuals in the very first amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America: the freedom to speak out against our government. As is pointed out in an article from TheCitizen.com, an amendment to the GIVE act contains language that strips First Amendment rights from participants, which includes every 'volunteer' in the mandatory program, even taking from them their right to attend religious services.

The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”

Gary Wood explains it best when he writes, “...the people associated through service under the G.I.V.E. Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”

Section 125 of the bill states which organizations are and which aren't eligible for the program as well as what activities people involved will not be allowed to partake in.

SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

‘(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:

‘(1) Attempting to influence legislation.

‘(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.

‘(3) Assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing.

‘(4) Impairing existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements.

‘(5) Engaging in partisan political activities, or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to any public office.

‘(6) Participating in, or endorsing, events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, political platforms, political candidates, proposed legislation, or elected officials.

‘(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

‘(8) Providing a direct benefit to–

‘(A.) a business organized for profit;

‘(B.) a labor organization;

‘(C.) a partisan political organization;

‘(D.) a nonprofit organization that fails to comply with the restrictions contained in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 except that nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent participants from engaging in advocacy activities undertaken at their own initiative; and

‘(E.) an organization engaged in the religious activities described in paragraph (7), unless Corporation assistance is not used to support those religious activities.

‘(9) Conducting a voter registration drive or using Corporation funds to conduct a voter registration drive.

‘(10) Such other activities as the Corporation may prohibit.

Section 120 of the bill, which discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” also states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”

Additionally, the corps included in this bill, by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's own admission, will be run much differently than current volunteer organizations. Emanuel, who has publicly stated his intent to of creating a “universal civil defense training” program, explained during an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News that "somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training… but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”

When asked if it would be military style training, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” and added that the state National Guard could possibly be put in charge of the training.

Whether or not this is cause for concern is up to you to decide, but, personally, I'll be keeping an eye on what's happening under the cover of pretend corporate scandals and contrived political outrage. Just because the boy cries wolf doesn't mean it's a good idea to let the fox guard the hen house. When politicians put on a show, there's always a reason.

1.http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/25/video-demint-opposes-give-act/
2.http://www.blog.rockthevote.com/2009/03/dear-senator-vote-yes.html
3.http://www.thecitizen.com/node/35819
4.http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1388

The sign of a thawing frozen credit market and rising home sales was not enough to stop Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner from constructing another unnecessary big-government plan. The market may have initially reacted in favor to the announcement; however, the long-term picture does not illustrate anything nearly as positive.

Last Monday, Geithner announced a hybrid plan between the public and private sector that would help to remove toxic assets from the balance sheets of banking institutions. The plan will provide financing for $500 billion with some funds coming from taxpayer dollars from the initial Wall Street bailout and the rest from private-sector investors. The plan’s cost could expand to $1 trillion over time according to Geithner. (1)

Geithner’s plan is hardly original, as former Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had initially proposed a plan of this nature, although he never followed through. He decided to give the funds directly to the failing banking institutions. Regardless, both approaches continue to avert systemic risk because investors have a guarantee from the government.

After all that has happened, it is still unclear to our lawmakers that the government cannot fix a problem that it caused. Government guarantees are what caused the financial turmoil in the first place. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteed over half of the United States’ $12 trillion mortgage market, and both were among the largest lenders in the secondary mortgage market. (2) Now the government wishes to guarantee the very same assets it guaranteed in the past.

There is no talk anywhere in Washington D.C. about reviving sound lending practices, doing away with the sub-prime mortgage market or stopping government meddling in the financial sector – the very actions that were responsible for the crash. Instead, the government offers more guarantees for the same type of recklessness.

Also, absent from Geithner’s plan is assurance regarding regulator cooperation with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s willingness to change mark-to-market accounting rules. If this valuation technique is not changed, Geithner’s plan will do little to help, as it will not have a positive cash flow effect. The current rules force companies to show realized losses (“paper” losses) because the “mark-to-market” price is lower than its cash flow value. For this reason, institutions were forced to show losses in the hundred billions – hence the “toxic” asset effect.

Perhaps the most concerning issue with Geithner’s plan is the likelihood of more government control. If the government becomes both a shareholder and stakeholder in the financial sector, it could very well have the power to regulate executive compensation. Driven by populist outcries, the government has been empowered to attempt to pass unconstitutional ex post facto laws. These types of actions could very well cause the private sector to say “thanks but no thanks” to the government’s generosity. The fear of success being taxed to unprecedented levels along with negative publicity will make investors in the private sector reticent to partner up with the government. However, this could be a ray of hope that a limited non-interventional government works best for everyone.

Geithner’s plan in conjunction with the Federal Reserve’s announcement last week gives a despairing long-term picture. The U.S. dollar is on the decline, and China and Russia are calling for a new reserve currency. Both countries are among the United States’ largest debt holders. In the midst of these events, President Obama has spent this week selling his budget that will cost over $9 trillion over the next 10 years according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. If only our elected officials were half as concerned about the long-term impact of their spending decisions…

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123776536222709061.html

(2) http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/09/08/daily9.html