President Obama has turned down Arizona Governor Jan Brewers request for a meeting regarding the Arizona Immigration policy, and says he has no plans to meet with her in the future.

Brilliant.

Rather than try and work with the Governor and the rest of the State representatives on policy that the majority of Americans agree with, he’s going to continue blasting the bill, and bringing foreign leaders in to follow suit.

All the while neither he nor Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have read the bill (by her own admission).

Talk about poor leadership skills.

The Obama Administration is now saying that it will push BP off cleanup duty and take over if they determine that BP isn’t taking all the appropriate actions.

Great. Call in the experts.

The administration also accuses BP of “missing deadline after deadline”.

If that isn’t the kettle talking…

BP will try a top kill on Tuesday, and if that doesn’t go well I suspect they’ll try a junk shot. I don’t have much faith in junk shots.

In an interview by Fareed Zakaria, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner revealed (or more, admitted?) that he’d never held a “real job”.  Essentially, since grad school he’s spent his entire professional life in some sort of “policy job”.

Initially, this made me really mad, until I realized that a good portion of those making “policy” haven’t held a real job either.  So Geithner is no odd duck.

Realizing that I’ve got better things to do than be enraged about the people that make up our corrupt government, I moved on to determining what criteria candidates need to get my vote in the future.

A real job is now one of those criteria.

From now on, you need experience in a “real job” to get my vote.  That means a real, no kiddin’ 8 to 5 gig making a no-kiddin’ paycheck.  And you need some tenure too.  None of this, “I worked as an intern as a financial analyst while in school” stuff.

If you want a government job determining how my hard earned tax dollars get spent, you need to have some concept of how my tax dollars are earned.

I’m not sure I know why this is so complicated.

Perhaps it’s because no one really understands the problem.

We don’t need healthcare reform.  We do need health insurance reform.  The cost of simple procedures is completely out of control.

Recently I had to take a trip to the emergency room at 2am with my son for a condition that turned out to be no big deal really, but as a rookie parent we had to err on the safe side.

I received the bill for that 4 hour adventure a week or two later, totaling over $800.  Interestingly enough, we incurred a $400 charge just for signing in at the window!

How absurd.

So let’s cut to the chase.

Our government is setting out to provide affordable healthcare to everyone, and you can read my rant on the word affordable in a previous post.

Aside from the fact that not a single person in this country even has a right to heathcare, the government thinks everyone needs it anyway.  And quite frankly, the governments record isn’t all that stellar.  Medicare, medicaid, social security… the postal service…

Our representatives have no idea where their constituency stands on this position, as many of them refuse to even find out.

One of my representatives voted for the House version of the healthcare bill even though a majority in his district don’t want it.  On top of that, he didn’t even read the 2,000+ page bill before he voted on it.  Big surprise.

So why is this so hard?

If our government would get back to basics instead of trying to fix problems by baffling us with thousands of pages of bullshit, we’d probably all be better off.  Let’s remember what rights we do have as set forth in the constitution, and not try and level the playing field by asking people who can pay, to pay for people who can’t.

What does a MRI, X-ray, CT-scan really cost, and how can we lower those costs.  The Japanese figured out how to make a cheaper MRI machine and got the cost of a MRI down to less than $100, a $1,400 proposition here in the U.S.

Figure out how we can promote the reduction in costs.  Creating competition in the health sector will be a start, along with opening up health insurance across state lines.

Let the free market work, and quite artificially stimulating it!

I’m the biggest fan of the U.S. military there is, and if it weren’t for a disqualifying condition I’d probably be flying something with the stars and bars down the side of it.

So when I hear that President Obama is tabling the request to send more troops to Afghanistan at the request of his top commander in the field, gentle terms would suggest I was a bit peeved.

And then it was revealed that he had only talked to his top leaders in the ground once since taking office in January.  What a disgrace.

The President has the ultimate say on troop levels and mission strategy, and he is ultimately accountable for the lives of our soldiers in battle.

Personally I think he owes the families of those serving our great country a bit more time in the briefing room making command decisions than on television pitching some half thought out health care plan or traveling over seas to lobby for the Olympics.

The Commander-in-Chief’s true colors are starting to show, and it’s clear he has a tough time making a very serious and critical decision.

If the man doesn’t wish to talk to his commanders in the field, it’s only right that the troops be called home until we get someone in office that can make decisions about the fate of our soldiers.

I’ve been pondering the validity of these frequent “town hall” meetings President Obama has been holding for some time.  They’ve effectively become (or maybe they always were) an invitation to a select few, on in the most recent case, thoroughly filtered questions submitted by email, that toss up softball questions for the President to knock out of the park.

Well, it seems the media is catching on, and it’s not just the Fox News folks that are starting to question the transparency of the big show.

Even Helen Thomas got riled up over this…

Check it out.

Yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court finally declared Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota Senate seat over incumbent Norm Coleman.

While its frustrating to me to watch a character like Al Franken be elected to the Senate to take a seat next to all the other clowns we already have in Washington (both Republican and Democrat), the drama that’s played out over the last several months reveals one thing to me.

The system we have in place to cast and count votes is broken!

And I don’t just say this because Franken won.

As the voting public, we have this inherent expectation that when we vote, the votes will be counted accurately and the winner will be declared with a high amount of certainty.  Ideally, a recount of the votes would return the exact same results as the initial count, and it’s clear that this doesn’t happen.  Remember, Coleman was declared the winner of a tight race until Franken legitimately demanded a recount that resulted in a very different outcome.

In an age where I can order merchandise over a secure website, access my bank account from anywhere in the world with a feeling of security, it bothers me that many places in our country are still using paper ballots to cast votes and human beings to count them.

In the end, I think Minnesota got the Senate representative they deserve, and maybe Franken will step in and shed some light on how comedic and corrupt our government is.

The only thing we can do now is watch the fallout and hope that technology will lend a hand in our political system.

Wagoner’s out at GM, essentially pushed out by the Obama administration without consult from the rest of the policy makers in Washington (i.e. Congress) as a condition of new government loans.

This serves as nothing more than strengthened evidence of how screwed up our government really is.  At no point in history has a CEO ever been forced to leave through direct consult of the President of the United States.  A company board of directors reigns supreme over the function of the company, and last I checked no one from the Obama administration sits on the GM board of directors.

This is not how capitalism works.  This is not how free markets work.  This is not how a publicly traded company works.

If the Obama administration wanted authoritative power over who holds what position in a company, they should have bought stock and run the CEO and the board of directors straight out of Detroit.  Instead, the government gave the company a loan, which at last check, does not come with any voting rights.

To be sure, Wagoner needed to leave. His leadership was and has been ineffective for the last 5 years with no forward thinking and a complete lack of influence from the corner office.  But to be run out of town by the Government is preposterous.

The punchline to all this came from the joker himself:  “The government does not wish to run an auto company.”

Furthermore, if bankruptcy is an option, as Mr. Obama now states, then why did all that taxpayer money get dumped into the company in the first place?

The next joke will come at the conclusion of the bankruptcy hearings; as repayment of taxpayer money will be forgiven as debt is erased and creditors are shooed away.  All in the name of a stronger and healthier General Motors.

Meanwhile, Ford hasn’t taken a dime.

If you haven’t read Jake DeSantis’ public resignation from AIG, you should.

It bears no surprise to this free market capitalist that businesses have and will suffer greatly from Congresses grand standing and bloviating in Washington these last several weeks.  Why would anyone care to work for a company that has taken taxpayer money if they will be personally lambasted for doing a good job and compensated for doing so.

It’s clear that Congress has no desire to hear or even seek out the facts, and makes no bones about acting childishly before the people that are working to unwind troubled companies.

As with any good poker game, with employment you must know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.  And this is a prime example of when it’s just a smart move to walk away from the table.

I’m always interested in how a leader at the top of an enterprise communicates with regard to his own business.  A lot depends on the corporate structure, however there are some leaders that can speak intelligently about any aspect of their company.  Others have a broad understanding for how their business works, and shy on details of minutia.

There are others that must defer every question to the resident expert for that topic.

It’s with that basis for which Barack Obama’s leadership is telling.  The fact that he uses teleprompters for every public communique suggests that while he can pen intelligent prose while sitting at his desk, he can’t speak off the cuff to those details of minutia that the public so dearly wants to hear.  The fact that he won’t answer pointed questions at press conferences reinforces that trait.

The lack of deep minded intelligence from the administration as a whole is also reflected in its policy.

Tim Geithner

Obama’s  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (see: Oh, I need to pay my taxes?) talked about the tax implications of Obama’s budget proposal on the oil and gas sector earlier this month, and he too revealed a lack of deep-level understanding of the energy sector.

On the tax breaks given to oil and gas companies, Geithner had the following comment while speaking to the Senate Finance Committee:

“We don’t believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don’t think that’s good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country.”

That’s good economic policy?  I think not.  That might be good environmental policy, if it were true.

It takes little critical thinking to realize that, if you believe in the money-making, man-made global warming, any and all contributions to global warming would come from the consumption of petroleum products, not the production of petroleum products.

The government doesn’t increase taxes on cigarette manufacturers whose products are known to cause lung cancer, they increase the taxes on the consumer.

Why would the energy sector be any different?

Because there would be a huge backlash if the government came out and said it was increasing taxes on gasoline and other refined petroleum products because those products may cause global warming.

The administration went further to reveal the lack of understanding by proposing “a $4 per acre annual fee on energy leases in the Gulf that are designated as non producing.  The budget proposal projects the fee would generate $1.2 billion from 2010 to 2019″.

Perhaps someone in Obama’s energy cabinet should explain to the smooth talking President that not every acre out in the big Gulf of Mexico has petroleum reserves on it.  The fact that an oil company hasn’t drilled a well on acreage may mean that there’s no oil or gas to be found on that acreage.

The administration needs to get past the notion that “big oil” is holding back exploration and production in an effort to drive up the price in crude.  The most recent bust of the crude market should be evidence of that, but as the President suggests, we shouldn’t look to the markets to make long-term policy decisions.

Brilliant.

Evidently Geithner suggests that these new policies that roll out of Obama’s budget proposals are justified since the oil and gas companies are making such great money.

The additional taxes “can be absorbed” by the oil and gas companies, given the billions of dollars they have earned from high energy prices. -Tim Geithner, Source

Contrary to the fact that Exxon’s fourth quarter profit decreased 33% due to falling oil and gas prices, the Obama administration thinks that since they’ve made all that money in the past, they should spread the wealth in the future.

“The impact of these subsidies are very small relative to revenues produced by U.S. oil and gas producers.” -Tim Geithner, Source

It’s too bad that Geithner doesn’t understand that not every oil and gas producer has the balance sheet of Chevron or Exxon.  Furthermore, if the government does have the countries best interest at heart and wants to see these major oil producers expand into the renewable energy sector, they would be best served not to put a damper on those efforts through “relatively small tax increases”.

It’s clear to me that the Obama administration is trying to squeeze every dollar out of every nook and cranny in the American economy it can without actually thinking, or understanding where those dollars are actually coming from.

No one from the administration has shown that they can speak intelligently about the economy, finance or the budget, and that lack of intelligence will do our country more harm than good in the long run.  It will only be when real leaders with knowledge of the subjects of which they speak  step to the podium that our economy will start to right itself.

Until then, we wait for the next speech.

I tried listening to Obama’s speech last night, but got distracted doing other things.

I must say, Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent speakers I’ve listened to in a long time.  He has a way of telling you what you want to hear while getting you on board with what he wants to accomplish.  But maybe that’s the problem, he wants to accomplish so much that he really doesn’t focus on any one issue long enough to tell you how he plans to bring the endeavor to fruition.

As many readers of The Corner Office know, I’m not a big fan of big government, and quite frankly I believe most in Washington D.C. need a history lesson, and I’m not talking about going back to the civil war era.  The last 15 to 20 years would be a good start.

I’m tired of hearing about what Obama inherited; I really don’t care, and it seems like he’s trying to proactively cover his backside if by chance these billions of dollars he just printed don’t work out.

I really want this country to get back to taking ownership for one’s own self, and I believe that in the end, that’s what truly empowers Americans.

President Obama is a great speaker, but his words lack substance; details of how we’re going to get from point A to point B and not end up wishing we were back at point A.

Regardless of what side you’re taking on this stimulus mess, John Boehner does seem to have a good point.  1,100+ pages in a bill, and our representatives are given less than 10 hours to digest it before they’re expected to make a decision on how to vote.

I still say this whole thing stinks.

With the latest rendition of the “stimulus” bill heading to the Senate, after passing without partisan support in the House, the pressure is still on the Obama administration to prove spending nearly $900 billion of our money to “stimulate” the economy will actually work.  (I use quotation marks around the word stimulus intentionally, since I’m not sure anyone in Washington actually knows what stimulates anything.)

Stimulus Watch

Obama has also offered transparency and a new age of accountability in his administration, and with the nomination of two clowns that can’t pay their taxes to his cabinet, I have reason to believe the whole transparency thing may become a subjective talking point rather than a new standard.

Luckily, there are a few creative people out there with the technical expertise to help President Obama fulfill his promise of transparency, starting with the “stimulus” bill coming to a Senators desk near you.

Jerry Brito started StimulusWatch.org as a means to track federal grant money stemming from the passing of the “stimulus” bill, should it happen.

Jerry is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University focuses on government transparency and accountability.  In specific, he studies how the internet can be used to help keep government officials accountable.

Essentially, Jerry and his team took the U.S. Conference of Mayors report that contains a list of “shovel-ready” projects to help President Obama spend $900 billion effectively.

So how how do I use the website?

The website lets everyday Joe’s like you and me review the list of projects that the Conference of Mayors supplied to President Obama.  You can search for projects in your state, by the number of jobs created for that project, by the total cost per project, etc.

You can then rank and comment on each project and vote as to whether or not you think an individual project is “critical” or not.

As of this posting, the least critical project would be providing doorbells in Laurel, Mississippi. It would only create 2 jobs, and would cost just shy of $100,000.

The most expensive project would involve providing new energy efficient industrial zones in Puerto Rico to the tune of $17.5 billion.

Where do I sign up?

The site is free to peruse, and if you wish to participate in the ranking and discussion, you’ll need to sign up with an email address and a password (it’s free).

So there you have it.  Technology helping our new leader keep his word.

Dear Mr. President;

Good show, and good luck.

Please remember that you work for me, my neighbors, my friends, and the rest of my fellow Americans.  We will support you as long as you support us and our best interests.

My biggest request: Please work to restore our trust and confidence in our government; both sides of the isle.  The rest will follow.

Best regards,

Grant and the rest of The Corner Office

Does this irritate anyone else besides me?  Today it was revealed that the Treasury Secretary appointee, Timothy Geithner, failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004.

He claims that he didn’t think he needed to pay them because he was working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is an international entity.  While this may be true (the IMF actually pays the taxes for the employee), the IRS considers that the employee is actually self employed and must pay their own portion of social security and medicare taxes.

And this guy is going to run the treasury?

It seems to me that if the guy doesn’t know what taxes he’s legally required to pay (even years after the IRS actually sent him a bill), does he really have any business running the treasury of the United States of America?

What’s even further aggravating is that Democrats say we should look past this little problem due to the extreme challenges Geithner faces in his new position.

So effectively, the rules don’t really apply to those who hold a really, really, demanding position with extreme challenges.

If a schmuck like me owed that much to the IRS, I’d be in jail.

Is it really so difficult to find people in our government who have ignored or bent the rules for their own personal political or financial gain?

Maybe so.

The fact that these issues are downplayed is all the more irritating, considering these people aren’t even in office yet.

I’ll be the first to say that we need more transparency in the information we receive.  Inarguably, the quantity of the media we take in on a daily basis is severely overshadowing the quality.  In that light, I’m very careful to lend any credence to snippets seen on TV or through condensed versions of interviews.

It’s with that regard that I really enjoy reading full transcripts of interviews, in particular interviews given by fairly level headed people, even when the interviewee is someone not so level headed.  A politician, if you will.

So it was with great concern that I read an interview by Maria Bartiromo in this weeks edition of Business Week.  Coincidentally, I had just got done watching a 60 minutes interview with chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank, when I opened up to Maria’s weekly Facetime piece with none other than Barney Frank himself.

Naturally, many of Franks responses to straight forward questions took jabs at Republicans.  To be expected, we are talking about a Democrat in this instance (not to say that Republicans don’t take jabs, it’s just an observation).  What troubles me are Franks views on the market place, and the ability of a free market to regulate itself.

The kicker for me was Franks response to Bartiromo’s very pointed question, “So whose fault is this?“, with regards to the current housing crisis.

The bad loans were made by the unregulated entities. What you’re going to see next year is a rediscovery of the importance of regulation. We’ve had a period of a philosophy that said: “Let capital do whatever it wants. Don’t regulate it. Don’t tax it. Don’t restrict its international movement, and it will reward you.” And yes, it does do some good because it creates wealth, but it creates wealth in a maldistributed way. More important, it creates excessive risk. What we will do next year is put rules in place that constrain those risks. -Source

Right.  Let capital do whatever it wants.  Don’t regulate it?  So what does it mean when when the government goes to two public companies (namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and says “We think you ought to open up lending to more people.”

And it creates excessive risk?  Far be it for the government to force excessive risk upon the markets, say, by forcing them to make loans to people they know couldn’t pay them off?

And creating wealth in a “maldistributed way”?  How about forcing risk in a maldistributed way, Mr. Frank?

It appears that Mr. Barney Frank is yet another politician who needs a lesson in history.

Actually, he could just use a transcript of his own decisions.  For instance, in 2000, when Richard Baker proposed a Fannie and Freddie reform bill that would force more oversight on the then over leveraged firms, Frank insisted that the concerns were overblown and there was “no federal liability there whatsoever.”

Then, in 2002, Mr. Frank stated, “I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems,” he said in response to another reform push. And on top of that, “I regard them as great assets.”

Then, in late 2003, when the Fannie and Freddie accounting scandal reared it’s ugly head, Mr. Frank simply stated the following :

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems,the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” -Source

Right.  What he really meant to say was that we shouldn’t exaggerate the problems, lest we risk not being able to give everyone the ability to own a home… that they really can’t afford.

On to 2004, after Fannie Mae came forward revealing they had made a financial mistake to the tune of billions of dollars, Mr. Frank continued that the lenders “posed no risk to taxpayers”, and went further to say that “I think Wall Street will get over it” should the two companies fold.

On to today.

Today Mr. Frank is taking the traditional road by blaming who else?  The Bush administration.

“The truth is when President Bush took office, and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, he did not make any progress on comprehensive legislation to reform the regulation of the Government Sponsored Enterprises.  It was not until 2005, when the House, on a bipartisan basis, and over the President’s objections finally passed a reform bill.  It died in the Senate in part because the White House’s failure to make it a priority. -Source

Note: I embolden the word “truth” in the above statement, as when a politician starts off a sentence by saying “The truth is…”, you know he’s lying.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

Back in 2003,

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. -Source

It’s too bad that Mr. Frank opposed President Bush’s efforts to impose more regulation on Fannie and Freddie in 2003, yet now that he has some skin in the game, he needs to divert attention away from his own historical ineptitude.

I suppose he’s merely taking advantage of the short term memory of America.

Two days ago, my good buddy MJ posted a comment on the post regarding how I voted.  One of his questions was how the Republicans would have faired against Barack Obama if Romney were their man instead of McCain.

To be honest, I’m not sure it would have mattered.  Taking a step outside my own viewpoint and looking at the overall campaign Barack Obama ran, I’m not sure the Republicans had a big name they could put up against the man from Illinois and stand a fair chance in the same economic environment that McCain had to operate in.

As I mentioned in a quick response to MJ, Barack Obama had the charm and charisma that is almost uncharacteristic of a politician, regardless of affiliation.  He has a way of communicating that sucks you in, mesmerizes you, and you go away feeling part of his team.  The problem is, he really doesn’t say much at all, you know you like what ever it was, you just don’t know why.

Try this: Watch a speech given by Barack Obama, and try and quantify how you feel after watching.  Then, sit down and read the transcript of what he just said.  If you remove the charisma and charm, his message takes on a whole new meaning.  Or at least less of one.

In my opinion, if this election were held 10 months ago, Barack Obama doesn’t stand a chance.  Given the nature of our political system, capitalizing on such a widespread event like a severe economic downturn that affects nearly everyone, the minority party will beat the incumbent 9 times of 10.

I take issue with MJ’s other statement, though:

I said it before and I will say it again, the economy is hurting and until programs are put together to keep people in homes and save banks, instead of programs just to save banks, the current course of events will continue until things bottom out.

I disagree.  Putting a program in place to keep people in homes is like trying to fight a war without taking casualties. There are two types of people that are being forced out of their homes: the type that couldn’t afford the home in the first place, and the type that gambled on variable rate interest rates when interest rates were at an all time low to begin with.

You won’t solve any economic problems by keeping people in houses that couldn’t afford them in the first place. Even if you (and I mean YOU because the government would spend YOUR money to do it) pay off their mortgage all together, their income levels won’t support the local economics of their neighborhood as it would if they had their own money to make the monthly payments.

The other type, the type that gambled on moving interest rates, are arguably collateral damage.  You could say that they were taken advantage of, and to a certain extent I agree, but it doesn’t justify bailing them out of a decision that was ultimately their own.  No one should know and understand your finances and investments better than you.  And if some one convinces you that a 4% variable rate mortgage is a good idea when rates really can’t go down much more, that’s on you pal.

There is another type of person that is being forced out of their homes right now, and those are the people that were living on the ragged edge of their means, even though they were making all their payments.  One lay off and they’re done.  You’ll have that during any economic down turn.

Bailing out the banks is another issue, as the economic effect of an illiquid banking system is more far reaching than the housing problem.  You have retirment accounts and pensions, along with other traditional investments that are predicated on a financial system that makes loans.  You have to keep liquidity in the banking system, or the banking system will fail at it’s sole purpose: lending.

That’s not to say I agree with how the government is going about stimulating the banks at all.

In the end, you’re going to see the course of events continue until things bottom out, regardless of whom you bail out.  The more money you use to do the bailing though, the longer it will take to bottom out.

MJ goes on to say:

It’s scary to see different companies reporting their earnings, because with each report an annoucement of job cuts of 3%-5% occurs.

True.  That happens in every recession.  Always remember, the harder the markets rise, the harder they fall.

You see job cuts follow earnings because job cuts have an immediate effect.  You tell an employee to stop working, and you stop paying them right then and there.

Capitalism will heal this problem fastest so long as the government doesn’t try to “help” it.  There are those that say capitalism is what got us into the spot we’re in, but what they forget is that it was Bill Clinton that tried to “help” it by pushing Freddie and Fannie to make loans to those who couldn’t afford them.  That’s not capitalism.

You can have capitalism, or you can have socialism.  You can’t have both and expect things to work out and differently than they have.

To be honest, I’m not at all happy with how the election turned out.  However, I’m not sure I would have been “happy” if John McCain would have won, either. But the people voted, and I accept that, and political affiliations aside, I think it’s pretty cool that we have an African American President.

Perhaps it’s not that I’m not happy with the results, maybe it’s that I’m uneasy.  Yeah, that’s a better term.

I find it troubling that we’ve elected to the office of the President of the United States a man that has unarguably affiliated himself with such questionable people.  The likes of Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers; neither of these men reflect what I view as men with respectable character to be associated with at all.  One can argue about the extent in which Barack Obama was associated with either of these men, but the fact that he was associated with them at all speaks to his own character and morals, first and foremost.  After all, I believe your character is reflected upon by the company you keep.

As citizens, we’re asked to select the next leader of the free world, and John McCain and Barack Obama were the best our two political parties could come up with?  This year more than previous, I feel as though I had to vote for the lesser of two evils.

I digress.

Barack Obama’s success as President is at the mercy of the economy.  The majority of people leaving polling places indicated that the economy was the number one factor when making their decision to vote, and I believe Obama’s success as President will hinge on the same.

If the economy does not turn around within four years, and if unemployment is at levels higher than during the Bush administration, and if the stock market is at levels lower than highest-high during the Bush administration, Barack Obama will have a very difficult time getting re-elected.

Why? He promised change, and people are going to hold him to it (the Republicans specifically will too, for sure).  There were very few fine details of what Barack Obama would change, aside from broad and general overtones that he would raise taxes on the rich, redistribute wealth, raise capital gains and dividends taxes, bankrupt the coal industry allowing electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, give everyone the right to health care, etc.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, if he does any of these things before the economy rebounds, he’ll do nothing but stretch out the recession.  And if he stretches it out too far, he’ll only see a single term as President.

What do you mean by “too far”?

As I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog, Americans have a severe short-term memory problem (after all, they forgot that it was actually the Clinton administration that started the housing problem). They view $3 gas as “cheap” compared to $4 gas they bought two months prior, even though just 8 months further back in time it was under $2.

They voted for change, but even more explicitly they want change now.  I’m reminded of the character “Violet” in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory… “I want the world, and I want it now!”

So, smart guy, what should he do?

If Barack Obama is smart, he’ll “change” very little in the first year of his administration.  The harder the government tries to “fix” our economic problems, the longer those problems will drag out.

Instead, he should cut federal spending until it hurts, and then cut some more.  Be smart about it, and leave the programs that provide a return on investment alone.  There are some obvious infrastructures within the federal government that may benefit from an increase in spending (spending money on the federal highway system always pays off in tough economic times), although those are few and far between.

He can also put a stop to all the needless pork stemming out of Washington too.  All he needs to do is hold a 10 minute press conference on national television and say the following words:  “Any bill that crosses my desk that has so much as one cent of pork or earmarks attached to it will be vetoed, no questions asked.”  Then, back that statement up with action.

Even if it’s a bill to cure cancer, with an additional million to fund a bacon museum, he vetoes it, and holds another 10 minute press conference on national television and explain to the American people why he had to veto a bill to cure cancer.  It’s a simple as that.

After that, show the people the results.  Show them what the budget was before he made his federal spending cuts, and then show the budget afterwords, and detail all the federal programs that were cut and what those cuts saved us.

If there is still a budget deficit, explain to the American people that he’s going to have to raise taxes, slowly, and for everyone, over the next 4 years (assuming he’s planning on running for re-election), and he’ll evaluate the budget every year to determine if he can halt the tax increases or even lower them.

Remember, all Americans should benefit from federal programs equally.  The rich typically don’t benefit from the federal highway system any more than the middle class, and they shouldn’t pay more for it either.  The postal system benefits everyone who has ever mailed a letter.  Just because you pay more taxes doesn’t mean your mail gets delivered any faster, or for any less money for a stamp.  The FAA benefits anyone who travels by air, or anyone who has received cargo or mailed anything via the federal airspace system.  Just because you pay more in taxes doesn’t mean your plane goes any faster or your ticket is any cheaper.  NASA benefits us all, just about equally.  Velcro, microwaves, Tang… all used and consumed by those who pay taxes and those who do.

So it’s all about the economy?

Yes, for the most part.  Barack Obama ran his campaign leveraging his ability to attract money as well as taking advantage of the weak economy.  Remember, it was just over 12 months ago that Barack Obama came out and said he was going to raise taxes… for everyone.  It was easier to get away with then because people still had funds in their 401(k).  As the economic downturn started pressing people financially, he realized that claiming to raise taxes on everyone would be political suicide.  So that’s when he started talking about raising taxes on anyone over a certain dollar amount.  After all, those people should be able to absorb higher taxes… right?

Barack Obama has to “change” things drastically and he has to give the people that voted for him a qualitative and quantitative return on their vote.

If the people that voted for him are no better off than they were at the end of George W. Bush’s term, he will not be re-elected.

I went to the polls to vote for the best man for President, only to find out he wasn’t running.

Yesterday I went to vote for the best man for the job; only to find out he wasn’t even running.

Take a step back and look at what’s happening in our country.  We’ve got two political parties that are taking pot shots at each other, saying what ever needs to be said to get elected. We’ve got media outlets that have taken sides, one way or another, along with those in Hollywood who spill out phrases like “…I will be terrified if so and so gets elected” or “…I am truly scared as to what will happen if that man gets elected”.

Terrified? Really?

Houses are being shot up because of political affiliation.  Cars are being vandalized because of a bumper sticker.  The common folks in our country have never been so divided.  Well, at least going back to the civil war.  And that’s the part that is really scary.

The civil war was fueled by differences in opinion on high level political issues, i.e. slavery.  The differences grew so strong that groups stormed into nearby towns, divided by political boarders, murdered entire families, and burned towns to the ground, just because of their political affiliation which was determined by nothing more than geographic location.

And back then, they didn’t even have the internet to spread the vitriol of today at warp speed.

People are becoming so passionate about their candidate that they’ll stop nothing short of cursing in public and starting feuds with people who are their neighbors.

So when does this stop?  No one can agree to disagree any longer.  We’ve got the Democratic party who would love nothing more than to have a total of 60 seats in the Senate so they can leverage their numbers to “get things done”.

Is that really a good idea?  Removing the dissenting opinions from debate ultimately will lead to destruction. Providing any one group with unbridled power will remove any common sense from the system.  Just ask the Germans.

The really scary part of all this is that our own political system is doing a better job of dividing the country than uniting it. Where will that philosophy take us?

Politicians want nothing more than for their party to rein supreme, but don’t understand the cost.