Breaking News of California's New Budget Proposal for 2009

So we all know that several states are in dire need of money because they were too stupid to save any money in the past when tax revenues were high. Many have asked for emergency bailout money from the federal government and have received a sypathetic ear almost everywhere.

Today governor Patterson of New York proposed a new budget that only increased 1% over last year! Glorious Revolution!!! I'm completely out of money so I'm just increasing what I spend by 1%. In a state where everything is regulated, taxed, incentivized and ueber-liberal, there will now be 88 new fees and/or taxes for those cash-strapped New Yarkers.

Some include an "iPod tax" that charges state and local sales tax for "digitally delivered entertainment services", State sales tax at movie theaters, sporting events, taxis, buses, limousines and cable and satellite TV and radio, costlier driving with the repeal of the 8-cents-per-gallon sales tax cap on motor and diesel motor fuel, plus and increase in the auto rental tax, tuition increases at state colleges, a 50 cent tax on cigars, no more sales tax break on clothes and shoes worth $110 or less, except during two weeks a year, higher taxes on wine, beer and flavored malt beverages. He would also impose an 18% tax on non-nutritional drinks like soda. The rich would pay more for luxury items through an additional 5% tax imposed on cars costing more than $60,000, aircraft costing more than $500,000, yachts costing at least $200,000 and jewelry and furs costing in excess of $20,000. In addition, a host of a fees, including those related to motor vehicle licensing and registration, parks and auto insurance, would go up, as would various state-imposed fines. Source here.

Glorious Revolution has obtained an exclusive copy of Republiliberal Governor Arnold Scharzenegger's notes for a news conference tomorrow and I have taken the liberty of posting them here. With both of my readers, this should help get the word out.

Fellow Citizens of the Great State of California, (to be read in an Austrian accent)

The following steps will be used to help ease the pain of the state checkbook.

1. Christmas lights-They are a waste of energy and a source of marital divisiveness. Christmas is an offensive Christian holiday anyway not celebrated by most progressives in California or at least not in the Bay Area.

2. Public television-Under the current tax code, too much valuable entertainment such as "Celtic Woman" and "Riverdance" has been given away for free for too long for those willing to watch the telethon commercials.

3. Drive In's-Old fashioned hamburgers and shakes have to be double taxed. If you want to enjoy them you will be paying dearly. They fatten you first of all and second of all, if you eat in your car you will be polluting the environment. "Idling eaters" would be ticketed.

4. Mini-Vans-This is an indirect tax on large families-Specifically bigoted "Pro-8" Mormon families. They are over-populating our already stressed planet with religious children and a mini-van tax should curb their overactive libidos. At least until the economy is back on track.

5. Carpet in General-Carpet is a petroleum product and contributes to the overall demise of mankind and must have a tax levied against it to promote eco-friendly floors such as dirt and bamboo.

6. Roast Beef-regular Glorious Revolution readers already know how much pollution those darn cows make.

7. Toilet Tax-Private johns will be taxed by the flush to deter water wasters and help with recent pay increases to the local sanitation workers union. Toilet paper will be extra. Citizens are counseled to compost their own waste and use it for composting home grown salsa gardens.

8. Fruit and Vegetable Tax-for those who don't heed afore-mentioned waste composting counsel.

9. Running Water tax-civilizations did without it for thousands of years and it didn't kill them...oh wait....

10. Grass Tax-any citizen with more than 10 square feet of lawn for their dog to do it's business on will be taxed at a rate of $5 per square foot per month until the grass dies and is replaced by xero-scaping.

11. Mail tax-this has been a service provided by the federal government but we are still going to tax it. It will still be available for those who really need it.

Hey at least we're not infringing upon the rights of i-pod owners like NY!! That's ridiculous.

Scary because you know some might actually be tried!

Do as I tax, Not as I do......

Perhaps the democratic socialist party would like to know the reason why their candidates support an even more progressive tax code. They have apparently had a rough time redistributing their own wealth. Perhaps with a new tax code they can create a kind of forced charity for themselves. I have to actually laugh at this because it is so hypocritical. If you want to know the character of the man you're voting for, perhaps you ought to examine how he practices what he preaches. Nevermind....if he preached this, he'd want 10%.....we all know that's impossible to do.

Barack and Michelle Obama had an average annual income of more than $500,000 between 2000 and 2006, but only gave two percent of their income for charitable purposes.

The Bidens' income averaged $260,000 over the last 10 years, but they averaged just $650 a year in charitable giving.

And the cherry on top.....last week in Florida.....

"We want to do this, change our tax code... John McCain and, and Sarah Palin, uh, they, they call this socialistic. You know I, I, I don't know when, when, uh, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness." ---Barack H. Obama

Don't Mix the Kool-Aid!

Today, New York State Governor David Patterson held a press conference with the same tone as California did about a month ago. "We are broke and we'll need federal assistance"An article about it can be found here. Since New York State derives a whopping 20% of it's revenues from Wall Street which is obviously not making the money it once was, the State find itself much like a welfare recipient told that he will have to go to work or sell the bimmer. The falling revenues have ballooned the deficit projection for the state to $12.5 Billion. So here's my question for the day....if this was your household and you found out that next year you'd be severely in debt, what would you be expected to do? Probably sell your belongings, get another job, move from your home and reduce your standard of living. And when a government faces extreme debts? We just ask for a loan, a grant or assistance from the federal government's checkbook from the Bank of China. Is it any coincidence that the first two states to publicly acknowledge their financial turmoil are irrefutably and by far the two most socialistic and big government run liberal homesteads? Eh....don't think so.

So what should these states do? Perhaps some welfare reform, perhaps some funding cuts for their ultra-liberalized education system and less government bureaucracy. I don't think New York or California deserve any more federal grants. In 2006, New York received 5.9% of the entire country's budget. ($144 Billion dollars in government assistance) What American in their right mind would let the State get away with asking for more? Trim some fat people.....

So what did we learn today?

#1.Socialism and Capitalism don't mix. You can't have it both ways. If you're going to spend the money, you'd better have it to spend before you write the check. However, there is always the US Government which has opened the door and given itself to become the "Sugar-Daddy" of the new century.

#2. If you're going to ride the liberal high tide of spending on government social programs on the backs of Wall Street investors in the good times, then you'd better think twice about denouncing the "evils of American Capitalism" in the bad at the risk of appearing to be a financially illiterate kool-aid drinker.

#3. Diversify your investments and save 10 percent of your income for a rainy day. These "ideas" have been around a while. If NY knew that 20% of it's income depended on securities who hedged that the overinflated prices of 600 sq. ft. Manhattan apartments averaging $1.67 M would continue to rise, don't you think you'd have a back-up plan if Wall Street had a period of repricing? That never happens though..I mean look at history......or not. And just because you have the money doesn't mean it needs to be spent. It rains in New York right?

This is one socio-economic policy whose merits the Manhattan liberals would have a hard time explaining. (Notice a couple of the links are to the unbiased NY Times?)

Reality Check

I've been thinking lately about the two men you want to be President. My thoughts have been as follows...

Right now we have a Republican Executive Branch, Democratically controlled congress and in my opinion pretty left leaning Federal and Supreme Court judges. If McCain wins, none of that really changes. If Obama wins, a lot will change.

A lot of Republican seats are up for re-election and several republican incumbents are retiring this cycle. There is a very real possibility that with the unpopularity of President Bush, the democrats could gain a super-majority in the Senate and the House. That leaves us with Democratic Executive Branch, Democratically controlled congress and leftist judges. So here's my take on what these two men's promises on policy mean to me.

If Obama wins...what he says he will do, will probably get done. This includes a higher tax on businesses, nationalized health care and a foreign policy that no one really has any idea about. His decisions will be most likely supported by congress and if the conservatives in congress don't like his ideas, well tough.

If McCain wins, he will fight an uphill battle every step of the way. He will have a congress that can most likely override his veto and his policies will be dead in the water before they even get started. There would be so much outrage and hate already for the McCain Administration that he'd have two strikes before he was even sworn in. The only way he'd be able to get anything done is to lean left to satisfy the democrats. (Great options huh?)


I'm not endorsing Obama by any stretch of the imagination but facing the reality that the Obama's plans are more likely to become reality than McCain's if elected. The last time the democrats controlled the government was Bill Clinton's first administration. He did get a lot done though...but many interns do not a good president make.

ACORN Has Grown to a Giant Oak Tree

So I have been doing some homework on ACORN. I have been hearing about it in the news and didn't even know what it was. It is an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and is the largest left wing radical group in America. They have over 150 sub-organizations with various fields they concentrate their efforts. They are a group of community organizations that use two forms of activism. One of force, civil disobedience and fear tactics to get their messages out. Second, an inside approach where they control a situation through legislation and bullying tactics. The group makes no effort to conceal that they are a radical socialist party. ACORN turns in thousands upon thousands of new voter registrations each week throughout the country. Massive task forces must be employed to review these application due to a track record of voter fraud. ACORN is currently being investigated in as many as 12 states for voter fraud. Naturally the majority of them democratic.

ACORN is the modern successor of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO)that sought to remove eligibility restrictions for welfare, thus flooding the welfare rolls and requiring a massive government rehaul of the entire welfare system for our "socially unjust capitalist society." Their efforts did nothing but destroy the inner cities and create a culture of dependency.

Now you may be thinking, this kind of sounds like the bailout problem that now requires the government to intervene. Well, there's a bit more to the story than this.

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)passed under the ACORN supported Clinton administration, banks are required to make a certain number of sub-prime loans to certain ethnic and low-income groups. If the banks want to expand or merge, they are required to show that they have met these requirements. So the banks comply and the housing bubble begins to build. The banks begin making plenty of money and ACORN no longer has to threaten lawsuits to push these lending practices. You know the rest of the story now.

Now I am not one for believing in and loosing a lot of sleep over conspiracy theories but this is not a coincidence. In the bailout bill as it was voted on the first time, those Congresspeople close to ACORN included a loophole to allow them to give the first 20% of any profits made to organizations such as ACORN. Before the taxpayer! Many house republicans recognized this bamboozle and voted against it. It was removed in the second version of the bill because of public outcry.

A side note now. Apparently, Obama has close ties to ACORN. He has trained staffers for them during his community organizer days, argued for them as a lawyer in major cases and while serving on the board of directors of two foundations, funneled millions of dollars to ACORN.

When all this bailout started being talked about, I find it funny that Obama remained so quiet and unopinionated. Perhaps because he knew of these connections and how ACORN stood to potentially profit from the bill passing.

So the organization that helped cause this massive financial meltdown is now sitting in the corner watching their plans for the meltdown of capitalism as we know it unfold. I think now our eyes are open and we can see what has happened and it's too late to fix this in a rational way. France, Germany, Russia and now Al Queda are all watching this happen and claiming this is a result of our corrupt capitalist society. Perhaps the problem with our capitalist society is we allow the government intervention that allows groups like ACORN to exert their influence on private enterprise and legislators that taint the system with failed policies. I categorically reject the stance Obama takes on this mess. He claims it is the Bush administration's failed policies. In 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 both Greenspan and the Republican treasury secretary warned of the impending crisis if action was not taken to reform lending practices of Fannie and Freddie. Each time, democrats voted no along party lines on reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If you need proof check the congressional record.

I apologize for the lengthy post.

Prediction

I am going to make a prediction and I want it documented. The 850 Billion Bailout is just the beginning. Watch what our government does now that we've given them a mile. They will take a marathon.

12 Zeros?

In a world so quick to place blame, I would like to know why are the names of the CEOs and investment managers of failing investment banks not front page news? They grossly mismanaged, over-valued and leveraged themselves right out of business and have brought the global economy with them. Why have you not heard of the Lehman Brothers CEO that took home $34 Million dollar salary last year? Curious. His name is Richard S. Fuld, Jr. He's probably not hurting for money but I sure hope he finds it hard to find another job. In a country where money is now controlled by the government, maybe we could lobby the IRS to garnish his pension. He will probably go to the race track a leverage his earnings 30-1 on the slowest horse in the field. Oh I forgot it is all Bush's fault for letting these men be so greedy.

So it looks like the masterminds have hatched a plan to rescue the failing financial system in the United States. I have spent a lot of time myself trying to understand the plan and think most are in the same position. I will try to put it in the simplest terms possible because I think it is important for us to understand. The details are not out yet but should be next week if Harry Ried and Nancy Pelosi can postpone their vacations for a week or so.

First thing is to understand that the guy you signed your mortgage with and the credit card company who's logo graces your card is probably not the company that cares whether or not you make your payments. These companies make the transaction and then sell these mortgages and credit cards as securities on the markets. For the last 5 years, a lot of people have got mortgages and credit cards that shouldn't have and are now defaulting on these loans. These securities that were once so good have turned sour very quickly. The investment banks and other financial institutions that bought them were okay as long as this housing market stayed hot and rates low. They are now stuck with a security that is worthless right now because no one in their right mind would buy them. Thus the financial crisis you see on the news.

Is this the only cause? No. But it's a big one.

So our government has said to these big investment banks with a lot of bad debt (Lehman Brothers filed chapter 11 with $618 Billion dollars worth of bad debt) that the American taxpayer will be the buyers of these worthless securities and exchange good money that they just printed for bad securities so that these bad mortgage securities don't appear on their balance sheets any more. The government will then hold these securities until they are again marketable and sell them when the markets come back. I would hope there to be some tangible asset behind these dead securities.

The dollar amount has yet to be disclosed but is thought to be at least $500 Billion and maybe as much as a Trillion. That's a one with 12 zeros. Put that into perspective-If our treasury scattered that much money on a football field in $100 bills, it would take a person picking them up at an average on one bill per second 1180 years to pick up that much money. We are talking 20 times the net worth of the richest man in the world. I have my doubts that this will not cause a "bit" of inflation.

All being told, I find myself torn. I understand the devastation that this debt could cause our financial markets if nothing is done. At the same time, when the government is now involved in essentially a state run economy, I see something that resembles communist China where all the banks are controlled by their central government. I believe in the free markets but it scares me to know that if our government, who is already in debt $9 Trillion dollars, can write a check or extend phantom credit to whom it pleases, they can.

If i remember correctly, the problem stemmed from when people who had no business buying a home or were no good at managing their money in the first place were granted this debt. Now the federal government is extending credit in the same way. These companies can neither manage nor are they trustworthy in their "credit past."

I am not claiming to have the answer here. I will leave that to the experts. I am merely stating my claims that it seems to be a completely ironic situation that resembles a very socialist country.

Catching Pigs

I received this email today. Liberals might not like what it says. It's a dig on their entire platform.

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the Prof noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist regime.
In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.. He asked: 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd... Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn . They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.' The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemented income, tax credit for unearned income, tax cuts, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

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Blame Game

Have you ever listened to a debate or even an exchange on a cable news show between a commentator and a pundit (Republicans or Democrats) or even a congressman or house member and wanted to pull your hair out?



The commentator spends the entire time trying to get the other to admit fault and cross his words while the guest spends the whole time prancing around a real answer and dodging the question.



What ever happened to a man owning up to his mistakes? And why is it such an accomplishment to be the one to get someone to cross their words or admit something that will end up on the Drudge report?



Example today with Chris Matthews and a Republican House Member-Matthews could not ask the question more forcefully if the Repub would admit that the President's policies put us in the financial mess we are in as a nation. Obviously there have been some big goofs on the part of practically everyone but the Repub could not defend the president or he'd be seen as a Bush supporter and ostracised by his own party but could not deny the truth or he would give ammo to the demos against McCain. So he danced.......and Matthews went for blood. He saw himself being replayed on YouTube all day tomorrow.



Dale Carnegie gave very simple and profound advice when he said,"If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.". Now that would blow some minds and make the news!



Otherwise, the same old stuff makes for great TV or Radio-if you're into the "throwing people under the bus for self agrandizement" stuff. Obama's a great mentor. Ask his grandma.







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