Tea Party To The Rescue….

This is so odd of me saying this…

But like LOTR‘s Gollum who jumps Frodo in the end of  The Return of The King, it may be the odious monster we were somehow bonded to, that becomes the real hero after all, albeit for selfish motives…..

If the Tea Party does not pass the Senate Deal passed 89-8 in the wee hours of the New Year,  we go onto Clinton’s tax plan.

Just like that.

In a fair way, everyone pays more.  But bottom line,  we start paying  down our deficit, and at the same time we are doing that, we take away the money siphoned off out of our economy, and reinvest it back in at the bottom where it grows again…..

I don’t know how many of you remember it, but during the 2000 election cycle in the debates Al Gore said this of George Bush’s Tax cuts when he advocated that the poor would get tax cuts too… Al Gore said,  the tax cut would amount to getting an extra Diet Coke a week;  it would help a poor family that much!  Well, guess what?  When it  expires, they will do with one less Diet Coke a week….  That hurts but it is something they can live with.

Unless you’ve lived before and during the Clinton Tax Rates, you have difficulty appreciating just how exactly perfect they were.  We’ve had higher rates before, and lower rates after, but none were the perfect balance that achieved economic growth and raised revenue to the extent that had it continued,  it would have eliminated the entire National Debt by 2008.

They were the perfect balance.  Investment flourished, jobs grew, and as the economy responded, more money poured into the treasury, and its loss to individuals was barely felt.

And now,  by default, they are here again….

Estate taxes raise an additional $26 billion a year in revenue over what Obama proposed… Investment income donates an additional $22 billion to the Treasury, each year!   Income tax revenue is $118 billion over what Obama just proposed…   All told, per year, $166 billion extra off our $1.2 trillion deficit, will not have to be borrowed this year…. Of course, we’d still be borrowing $1.1 trillion, but … what the hell,   The $166 billion is just a one percentage off our yearly GDP….  So we lose a penny off every dollar…  It is making us healthier.

Obama couldn’t do it, he ran on not increasing taxes under $250,000.  The Republicans can’t do it, they ran on using cuts, not taxes to balance the budget….  But, in sort of a miraculous way, one only God could have devised,  we can achieve a balanced budget, by having no agreement at all.   Revenues go up, more than promised.  Cuts go into effect, more than promised, and we slowly stop borrowing money to pay for our government’s expenses.   Instead, we start to pay as we go.

Both sides can appeal to their constituents, … look, we did all that we could do.  Fate just took a different turn.  For the most part, both side’s constituents will back them up on that.

But for it to work, the Tea Party has to do what they were elected to do… be fiscal hawks and vote to balance the budget.   If they balk on the Senate deal so no deal is reached, the warm, fuzzy, Clinton tax regime again goes into effect….  Will there be causalities?   If one looks at history, probably not, at least none lasting more than two months…   Then they get a better job than they would have had, had things stayed where they were…

And when history looks back, it will be the Tea Party that saved us…  who again put this nation on the course of peace and prosperity, making us again  the economic engine that drives the world.  Although its motives like those of Gollum may not be of the highest nature,  the results will be the same…    As the “Ring That Has Ruled Us All” ( the Bush Tax Cuts),  slowly melts into the lava under  Mt. Doom,  the dark forces collapse upon themselves, and the good that lies in all America, stands again basking in the New Year’s sun,  resplendent in victory, knowing the Dark Days of Sauron, are gone for good.

Frodo was not the real hero.  If you remember, he, like Democrats walked us up to the edge of the cliff, then failed.  The Tea Party seeing the foot steps walking back from the brink,, can and will take the ring, and destroy it from our sight…. forever…..

Not even i could have seen that coming….. The Tea Party,… coming to the rescue.

“Tea Party Congress” = Big Waste Of Time And $$$

Here is the compilation of John Boehner’s House of Representatives over this last two year period of Congress. During this time frame the public opinion of Congress slipped from an approval rating of 60% to 7%.

Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and the Economy” So what has the GOP House been up to?

House Bills passed:
46 Bills on Abortion
113 Bills on Religion
73 Bills on Family Relationships
36 Bills on Marriage
72 Bills on Firearms
604 Bills on Taxation
437 Bills on Govt Investigations

Bills attempted and failed to be passed even by the GOP:
33 attempts to Defund Obamacare…..Failed
15 attempts to Cut Funding for Planned Parenthood……Failed
3 Attempts to Cut Funding for VA Hospitals…….Failed.

GOP blocked bills:
Blocked bill to aid Small Business
Blocked Unemployment extension
Blocked Bank Reform Bills
Blocked Campaign Finance Reform and open Contributions Law
Blocked MULTIPLE Jobs Bills
Blocked Infrastructure Bill
Blocked Ending Tax Breaks for companies that Outsource Jobs
Blocked Wall Street Reform
Blocked Energy Legislation
Blocked Mine Safety Bill
Blocked Oil Spill Liability Cap increase
Blocked Bill to lower Oil Company Tax Breaks
Blocked Bill to impose charging American Oil Companies on Oil achieved in the Gulf

Number of TRUE Jobs Bills even allowed to come to a vote in the House….NONE.

Alert: The Crises Is Real….

I apologize to all. i too was lulled by press reports that led me to think we could coast two months without resolving the fiscal cliff. I just read data otherwise. I did not know that the debt ceiling fell on December 31. I have been lulled into thinking it wasn’t until February that it became due.

That is because the press assumed that since we got through two months of stopgaps last time, we can do it again.

There is the possibility that we can. But what scares me are the scenarios which portend we will not.

The debt ceiling crises is like a cancer. The United States of America is the patient. We know that at some point the cancer will be so advanced it will be untreatable; after which it will become too pervasive and it will win. We could walk into the cancer center right now, and say “let’s get this started”, and know that we will come out ok. Although we don’t know for sure, the predictions are that our point of no return is at the end of February. If we are wrong, and the cancer unbeknownst to us is too rampant, it will win.

Our huge problem is that we need a consensus to get ourselves into the cancer treatment center. And one party whose vote is required, will not vote yes, because they believe only in medicine proscribed by witch doctors. They will not consider to committing the patient for medical treatment, until a witch doctor has been brought in from deepest Africa to perform his rituals…. That one small contingent believes in mystical witchcraft so much, they refuse to allow medical treatment.

Of course when the line of death approaches and all others remain adamant that saving the country is more important than proving the existence of witchcraft, we assume they will give in….

The real question is whether or not we can get them to commit before it becomes too late….

If not, the Tea Party contingent of the Republican Party of the United States of America, will have signed our nations death warrant.

I know a lot of people raise hell over every crisis in order to promote their argument. I’m always the cool headed one. Simply put, we are now in a minefield because all markets are maxed out, because leverage is off the scale, because the treasury can’t help, so that if the markets were to fall because of the threat of a credit downgrade, there will be no bottom. The financial system as we know it, will be no more….

Today’s Tea Party in the House of Representatives is the metaphorical equivalent of putting 4th Graders in control of our nuclear arsenal… There is still a good possibility that they will act rationally and all will go ok; nothing catastrophic will happen.. But should they not, the results will not be a little minor blip….

Why This Crises Is Worse Than the Last Debt Crises

A. Too many volatile variables to predict exactly how long $200 billion in stopgap will last…..

B. Tax forms and 2013 Tax laws are in limbo, paralyzing the financial acquiring process, so that all projections for the next 5 years are now thrown off.

C. The crash of the world’s financial markets triggered by a downgrading this second time, could create a massive depression possibly four times worse than the crash of 2008. For one, the US Treasury being broke, is powerless to intervene. Treasury interference is credited with stopping the collapse last time.

There are four extra-ordinary means that will be used to borrow $200 billion.

One. Borrow out of the federal employee’s pension fund.

Two. Suspend the G-Fund. The G fund is part of the federal employees’ retirement system thrift savings plan. This provides $155 billion out of the $200 billion available.

Three. The Treasury will also temporarily stop issuing state and local government securities… shutting most of the emergency income state and local governments have.

Four. The Treasury will stop contributing to the exchange stabilization fund, which it uses to buy foreign currencies to keep the American Dollar stable.

These monies will have to be paid back if and when the Tea Party Republicans cave in an allow taxes to go up on the wealthy.

Money Runs Out December 31

Tim Geithner said today, that the Treasury runs out of money on December 31st. That day we cross the $16.4 trillion debt limit.

Extraordinary measures can be expended to provide a stopgap… The Federal Treasury can raise $200 billion as a stopgap which provides 2 months leeway…

We were here once before, and learned nothing.

This crises is caused by a holdout band of renegade Republicans who for better or worse are out to destroy the United States of America.

There is no other scenario.

Republicans Are To Blame If We Fall Off The Cliff

Just saw the right wing group that used half a billion dollars to put Romney into the oval office, just mentioned that Obama was pushing us off the fiscal cliff.

Just like Hitler was under attack and lashed out against Poland.
Just like Tojo was defending himself when he ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Just like Mayor Guiliani was threatening Osama Bin Laden and had 9/11 coming to him.
Just like the teachers and students are to blame for Adam Lanza’s behavior…..
Just like Nazis never did incarcerate and kill any Jews.
Just like Humas never did fire any rockets into Israel.
Just like “Officer, I wasn’t speeding.. You radar must be wrong.”

Anyone can say anything… But since that is true, it means we can certainly make fun of Karl Rove and Americans for Properity, for saying something as absurd as it being the Democrats who pushed us off the cliff…

The Democrats opened the negotiations. The Republicans put up nothing. The Democrats made the first move. The Republicans made no movement at all. The Republicans are solely, unequivocally, and absolutely are the cause of the stalemate right now. There is a bill in the House, pre-approved by the Senate, supported by 201 House Democrats, that just needs 17 Republican votes to sign on and pass it with a majority vote, and instantly dissolve this crises.

Just 17 Republican are:

a) holding up payrolls for every company in America
b) holding up spending plans and budgets for January in every company in America
c) holding up long term unemployment insurance for 40 million Americans who can’t spend anything now.
d) forcing every payroll business, like Jim Paoli’s here in Delaware, to wait-and-see before making adjustments on every client’s payroll for the first week of January.
e) holding up every billionaire who if he guesses wrong right now pays a gigantic price in 2013.

Everyone knows Hitler lies. Everyone know Karl Rove is not synonymous with truth….

So, if you see a Republican, let him know how you really feel, for his party screwing with your life and livelihood…..

Here Is Exactly Why We Need To Raise Taxes

If ever there was a reason showing how the low taxes we currently have cause pain and suffering and damage our economy it is this….

The New York Stock Exchange, after 2 Centuries, 2 Centuries mind you… has lost it’s independence… 2 Centuries of History, kaput. gone. changed…

It is now owned by…. IntercontinentalExchange Inc.

Who? IntercontinentalExchange Inc.! Uh …. who is that? What? You don’t know who the IntercontinentalExchange.Inc is? Oh, my, where have you been?

Right here. I’ve been right here. And I don’t know who the IntercontinentalExchange Inc. is… So, please, enlighten me…

Well, the IntercontinentalExchange Inc didn’t exist when you were learning about finances. If anything, it was known as the Continental Power Exchange when it was taken over by Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE’s founder, in the waning years of the Clinton Administration.

Then in May 2000, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) was established, with its founding shareholders representing some of the world’s largest energy traders. The company’s stated mission was to transform OTC trading by providing an open, accessible, multi-dealer, around-the-clock electronic energy exchange. The new exchange offered the trading community better price transparency, more efficiency, greater liquidity and lower costs than manual trading.

In June 2001, ICE expanded its business into futures trading by acquiring the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now ICE Futures Europe which operated Europe’s leading open-outcry energy futures exchange…

In 2003, ICE partnered with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) to host its electronic marketplaces…

In 2007, it acquired the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT).

Again in 2007 it acquired ChemConnect (a chemical commodity market).

Again in 2007 it acquired the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange.

Again in 2007, it lost its $9.9 billion bid for the Chicago Board of Trade to the Chicago Mercantile Association.

In January 2008, ICE partnered with TSX Group’s Natural Gas Exchange, expanding their offering to clearing and settlement services for physical OTC natural gas contracts…

April 2010 ICE bought CCX’s owner Climate Exchange PLC for 395 million pounds ($622 million). Climate Exchange PLC also owns the European Climate Exchange (ECX)….

In 2011, ICE and NASDAQ OMX Group joined forces to bid against Deutsche Börse after the latter announced a $9.5 billion deal to merge with NYSE Euronext. The two U.S. bidders ultimately withdrew after their bid encountered regulatory antitrust resistance. The proposal, would have brought nearly all U.S. stock listings under a merged Nasdaq-NYSE…..

Oh, and did I say the ICE was based in Atlanta? No wonder you didn’t recognize the name IntercontentalExchange Inc. But you probably are familiar with the letters ICE…

IntercontinentalExchange plans to fund the cash portion of the acquisition with a combination of cash and existing debt. It added that the addition of NYSE will help it cut costs by firing lots and lots of people.

So 2 centuries of independence comes to an end. Bought up by a company barely twelve years old…..

How? By having tremendous amounts of ICE profits that are untaxed. Prior to this decade, we had taxes siphoning a large part of this cash back into our economy and back into paying off our national debt. Now we don’t, thanks to the Republican Tax Cuts passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President.

These companies make money almost tax free…

This purchase of $8.2 billion, is simply the extra money this ICE exchange had left over after expenses, money that normally would have gone into taxes. It is funded by loans approaching interest rates of 0%.

This $8.2 billion will create no new jobs. It will cost jobs. Had that $8 billion been taken in taxes as it would have been at any other time since the Great Depression, that $8 billion might have gone to hiring more firemen, hiring more policemen, hiring more air traffic controllers, hiring more teachers, hiring more accountants, hiring more IRS agents, hiring more SEC investigators, all of which shop at grocery stores and buy more cars…and more houses.

The Republican policy of not taxing the wealthy at higher rates, no only yields the misallocation of valuable investment, but also the elimination of more jobs.

Here is a direct example of why NOT taxing the wealthy at very high rates, cost America jobs instead of create them…

The philosophy that “Taxes are good” applies when used on the top earners… The higher the tax rate, the better for everyone else. If you want a thriving economy, having multiple stock exchanges is better than one person controlling all. And what better way to achieve that, than tax away all ICE’s profits…..

That money needs to flow through our economy and can’t. Because it is getting wasted buying up companies by other companies that are simply being allowed to keep, …way too much money.

200 years. Gone, just like that….

Tea Party: The Arsenic In Republican’s Water

When I was young, and I haven’t been able to find it, we were forced to read a short story about Death Valley. It was supposedly taken from a diary found next to stripped skelatons, that told of a party lost in the desert, which found an oasis, drank the clear cool water, then got poisoned because it was toxic with arsenic…..

That is what the Tea Party has done for the Republican Party.

Had the Tea Party never been formed, there is a good likelihood that Romney would now be the President-elect. Think about that for a minute. Everything Romney was pummeled for, came from the Tea Party contingent. If a nice man had simply stood up, with Obama’s economic record, that nice man might have won by default. But, every Tea Party issue the Republicans took on, generated more voters against that plank, than it did for.

No taxes; More voters think taxes should be raised on the wealthy.
No Abortions: more voters think the government should continue to make contraception free.
No Government: Hurricane Sandy showed what a disaster that would be.
No Evolution: More people believe science over politicians. Evolution and Global Warming are real.
Put Religious Fanatics in Control: More Americans feel that is too risky.

As a result, Obama won by the 6th largest landslide in American history. People really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, and unequivocally, hate the Tea Party.

I’ve always said the Tea Party was on the right track. Only difference between the two of us, is that they blame government for being in bed with corporate henchmen, and I blame the corporate henchmen for seducing the politicians and infiltrating government. On that and views on science, we differ.

But, they blew up. Glenn Beck, blew up. Rush Limbaugh, blew up, Christine O’Donnell, blew up. Rupert Mourdock, blew up. Todd Akins, blew up. Ann Coulter, blew up. Michelle Malkin, blew up. Especially karl Rove on Fox News… blew up..

There is a reason some people are the last to get picked on a pickup team. They are creepy. And that is todays Tea Party…

The Tea Party is the significant reason Congress today is divided. It is impossible for Republicans to get any majority in the Senate, because the Tea Party sets every one against them.

This metaphor explains why. Imagine if instead of winning Germany in 1932, the Nazi Party was just a minor party in the Reichstag. Assume they had one plank in their platform: Banish all Jews. Assume they were aligned with the Republican Party of Germany because it was small, and Jews were a big bloc of the German Democratic Party… Because the Republicans needed the Nazi’s to have a majority, they entertained their notion of banishing all Jews. The Republicans griped it was a necessary evil that had to be tolerated, and longed for the day, it would die on its own… But because of that one embarrassing group, the whole Republican Party kept getting bashed in every election, getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller…

Finally they eject the Nazi’s who quickly die from lack of oxygen. Upon the next election, Republicans make great gains. You see, people weren’t real happy with the Democrats either, but as long as Nazi’s were in the Republican Party, the Democrats were the lesser of the two evils….

The Tea Party Congress, the soon to be historical name for the 112th Congress, will have the notoriety of being the worst Congress held in public esteem, ever since public esteem was invented back in the 1940′s. An approval rating of 9%. 9%. That is what the Tea Party did to government.

The fiscal cliff today drags on. Because as Obama put it so well today, the Tea Party won’t compromise. No surrender is their motto, which may sound great if it is the same philosophy as the rest of the country’s, but it isn’t. We are witnessing the childish two year old tantrum of a immature group that can’t get everything it wants. Like a two year old child, it sits down on the Capitol floor, and screams, screams, screams, screams, screams, screams….. Like that two year old child, because no one comes up and kicks him in the head and instead everyone tries to plead with him to stop, he thinks he is doing the right thing!

As I said, it was the Tea Party that destroyed Republican chances at the White House, and kept them from taking the Senate. How much longer will the Republicans try to bargain with this two year old?

Perhaps they could find some Arsenic to put in its baby bottle?

Make Delaware A Right To Work State?

Before the ink was dry, Delaware Talk Radio struck up the conversation over making Delaware a Right To Work State. Several callers responded, and here are the pros and cons.

“Right to work” means “right to work” with less money…..

Right to work states have simply come to the conclusion…. ” Hey, if we drop the price of our labor, then businesses will come to our state.”

Texas did, and bragged it grew the most jobs over the past couple of recession years… It did away with benefits, it did away with pension, it did away with high wages, and it allowed cheap cross border labor to work for companies and lower their labor obligations…..

Now, Texas is having to adjust to the new growth. It has to build roads, sewers, parks, schools, and do it on the same income… Because even though Texas has more people working, the net amount of all their earnings, still amounts to what it had earlier, when people made more….

In perspective … paying 10 people at $30 an hours gives up the same amount of tax revenue as paying 100 people $3.00 an hour…. You get 290 people’s worth of extra expenses and no new money to pay for them….

Businesses benefit, but you get none of their profits. You gave those away as no-tax incentives to get the jobs….

Texas is facing hard times.

Simply put… when you go to “Right To Work” as your state policy, all you are simply doing is transferring the fixed cost of social responsibility away from private practices who can afford it, over to government who can’t…

Recently it was brought again to our attention that of the health-care costs upcoming in Obama-care, $2 billion will go to covering Wal*mart employees. One of the largest companies in the world, is going all part time so they will not pay a single penny in employee insurance, and throwing all those workers onto Medicaid, so their costs will be picked up entirely by the Federal government.

They are making money and keeping it, while the Federal government is paying their costs.

Can Delaware afford this?

Michigan is a laboratory experiment. The success or failure will be decided in the next election. There are so many variables in whether this law makes a difference.

Right now, talks are being held to make the port of Wilmington non union. It is part of the deal to bring in a corporate buyer for the port. If we go non-union, then labor costs for the buyer are lower. It helps their decision to come here as opposed to going someplace else where others are paying more…..

But, it lowers the economy of Wilmington. Those lost revenues not being paid to those workers, do not flow into Wilmington and do not circulate from business to business.. Taxes are not collected of each of those transactions. Wilmington loses big.

Now if taxes are increased upon the buyer, to compensate for the lost revenue siphoned off the workers, then for the city and it’s economy, the deal is revenue neutral…. Those taxes balance the lost wages….

Having a bustling port is meaningless if Wilmington is not gaining from it…. It is like selling a billion hamburgers at cost… an awful lot of work for no gain…

I use this example to show why keeping unions around to bargain higher rates, is beneficial to communities. Making an entire state drop its entire state’s personal income level, can only slow down the economy.

If a person makes $35,000 and can just barely make ends meet, wouldn’t it make sense to pay them $70,000, taking that out of corporate costs, thereby giving each person $35,000 a year to spend on goods and services pumping money directly into the economy?

If we doubled every working Delawarean’s income, we’d see a burst of economic activity amounting to $10.8 billion dollars.

The opposite occurs when you cut everyone’s pay in half….

That is what a right to work state does. Just look at Texas…..

Then Just Like That, Boom, It Went From White To Brown….

I’m tying together three threads to make a knot..

A. The election 2012 showed the end of political dominance by “white people” on the national stage.

B. John Stapleford wrote a derogatory piece in Wilmington’s News Journal whining that “blacks and browns” (his words) were lazy, no good, bums and would always not vote for a white guy, no matter how fly…..

C. Martin Luther King Blvd. is renamed off of Duke of York Streets, William Penn Street, and Court Street….

This 2012 election bamboozled Republican strategists because they totally neglected to account for the votes of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, who were heavily engaged in this election. To Republicans, these people never mattered. But, these people who never mattered, now have more votes. They, are the majority… and far more moral than any Republican Moral Majority could ever hope to be…..

John Stapleford’s piece was an attempt to denigrate this very vote. By saying thugs had overrun the election, he could still attempt to keep his values above water. He was trying to say….”our outdated values are still the true path; we were overwhelmed by critters and just lost one round, that’s all.” It didn’t fly. His audience almost to every man and woman, saw it as prejudice and nothing else. Instead, the die had been cast. This Obama was the direction America really wanted to go….

Dover changed the name. Now Dover is the 40th Capital City to have a Martin Luther King Boulevard. It will not be the last…. In a sad way, Delaware’s Colonial Heritage is being lost to the 20th Century… The Duke of York put Dover in the same class as Williamsburg. The colonial aspect of Dover is now gone. It is just old buildings on a street that happens to be named after the bravest American of the last century… Before there was correlation…. Now, what’s the correlation?

But that is … as it should be… Times change. And really… though sad to see 300 years of tradition swept away, exactly “who” is the Duke of York? How many of those voting in Dover itself, could have answered that question properly?

He, along with William Penn… have no meaning to people whose ancestors were sold, brought across the Atlantic, sold again, mistreated, and then once freed, quietly kept in second class status, until one man made so much noise it could be ignored no longer…..

It is proper and fitting that someone who has more name recognition and who deserves to be honored, replaces 300 years of tradition… We can only hope he may reign on that street sign, as long as did the Duke of York…..

The vote has passed. We are now in a new America, and it is good.