My Predictions from November 4, 2008

(These originally appeared on RaisingAmerica but now I guess that's an invite only blog)

Here are my predictions for what will happen during or by the end of the Obama Presidency

1. Unemployment will be at 8 percent or more

2. Gas prices will rise again to 4 dollars a gallon and stay within 50 cents of that.

3. Health Care will be nationalized

4. The government will institute a harsh windfall profits tax on oil Companies

5. The Dow Jones will be within 200 points of 9500 by January 1, 2012

6. Inflation will be between 8-10 percent

7. The Supreme Court will be liberal

8. There will be a severe threat to our national security, like the Cuban Missile Crisis

9. A cap and trade system will be instituted in the United States

10. There will not be any federal tax cuts for anyone

11. The partial birth abortion ban will be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court

12. Most US troops will be out of Iraq by 2011, according to the timetable already setup by the Bush administration, but Obama will take credit for it and not acknowledge that the war was already won through the surge, but that he ended it by "redeploying" our troops

13. There will be a nuclear, biological, chemical, or other attack on an American or an American allied city

14. The oceans will continue to rise

15. Interest rates will rise to 12 percent and hover within 2 points of that

Double Dip

The only solution is to reign in spending, reform entitlements, and let the economy know what is going to be happening for the next 10 years. The economy needs stability, and not constant threats from the administration. The whole argument over Obamacare is hampering the economy in and of itself. If there was no question Obamacare was here to stay then at least companies would know what to plan for. But because the Democrats crammed it down the throat of the American people it is still up in the air and businesses don't know how to plan. This is a horrible administration that is ruling against the will of the American people. They are trying to push an unpopular agenda on a reluctant populace. These are not servants of the people, these are little tyrants who know their time in power is short, and they are trying to do as much damage as they can before we come for them in November 2012.

Save Our Republic: Repeal the 17th Amendment

I mailed this letter to all my members of Congress

Hi,

I'm concerned about ever increasing federal power. I think the best way to thwart the flow of power to the central government is to repeal the part of the 17th amendment that allows the election of US Senators by the people instead of the state houses. The major argument against this (or at least the one I have heard) is that the state houses were corrupt when they elected the Senators. Well, they could not have been more corrupt than Washington is now. Also, state houses are much easier for the people to clean up than the corrupt bureaucracies and legislature in Washington where we have very little power. State Senators and Congressmen actually live in our neighborhoods and represent far fewer people than federal Senators and Congressmen. They are much easier to monitor and control. The states are becoming more and more impotent and the balance of power in our federated system is moving too much to the center.

I think we should promote this idea and put it out there for the people to think about. The people are upset (to put it lightly) with the incredibly powerful, unresponsive, inefficient, and corrupt federal government. We need to strike while public opinion is open to solutions. This would fix so many of our problems by giving states more of their sovereignty back and moving government closer to the people. There are very few (if any) sound arguments against this idea, and when they are raised we could easily defeat them. We must convince the people that this is the single most powerful and effective action we can take to save our republic.

The Case Against Compulsory High School Education

One of the reasons our schools today are underachieving is because we force all kids to go to school and we allow them to graduate whether or not they can read, do math or speak English. Our schools function as a daycare for many high school students. These students drag down students who actually want to learn. They cause discipline problems and require extra attention from teachers; attention that good students deserve and would actually use to their benefit. Instead, students who want to learn are neglected. Those who refuse to work and would rather be out having fun should be allowed to leave. If their parents can’t make them work, then why should we have to pay someone to do the parent’s job. Let those students go and see what they can do without an education. They will either find a career, or they will flounder until they realize that they need to grow up and learn a marketable skill or enter college so they can go into a profession.

This already happens in college when students leave a compulsory experience and enter real life (if college can be called real life) where they can slack off all they want. Many freshmen flunk their first semester and then they either drop out altogether, or they actually start working. This is because it is not free and they have a choice. They see the benefit of an education and they realize they won’t graduate unless they actually work. This makes a college degree actually mean something. A high school degree means little if anything now because everyone graduates regardless of whether they know anything or not.

If we ended compulsory high school all the students who just want to have fun for four years would leave and those who want to study would remain. Our money would not be wasted corralling unruly students and the time of the good students would not be wasted while the teacher deals with disruptors. High schools would function more like colleges do, where there are still those that skate through but they do not detract from the students who want to do well because the professors aren’t required to have disruptors in their class. In college, if someone is disrupting the class, the professor can just tell them to leave. If they never study and don’t care about learning then they get an F.

Abandoning compulsory high school would benefit students who are not disruptive or lazy, but would rather enter the labor force sooner. They could go find a job, or get focused education that would teach them a skill with which they could earn a decent living without all the arts, sports, and stuff they will never use on the job. Everyone does not need a liberal education. There is some truth to all those times that kids said “when am I going to use this?” A lot of jobs don’t require employees to know history, art, calculus, or sports. Instead of forcing all our kids to fit into one prescribed mold, we should actually let them learn what they want and as much or as little as they need. The sooner they learn what they want to do in life, the better off they will be. Eventually we have to let them decide what they want anyway. I think it would be better to let a freshman in high school screw up, realize that the real world is rough and thereby realize the value of a free education. Than to wait until he is a freshman in college and realize that four free years of high school education were wasted.

The FDR Deception

FDR is credited by many with brining us out of the Depression. This is demonstrably false and it is important that we inform others because the left is trying to use that idea to enlarge the federal government and fundamentally change America. FDR did many unconstitutional things during his presidency, but since the people wanted change they didn't care. He spent billions on public works projects and other programs trying to "prime the pump" and get the economy moving again. Well, none of it worked. He and the congress enacted some needed legislation that regulate the banks and wall street, and established the FDIC. Those were probably needed and healthy. Pretty much everything else he did was counterproductive though. He raised taxes, which hindered investment and kept unemployment high. He enacted wage and price controls, as well as many other regulations on industry that discouraged economic activity. All of this remaking of America made the business environment unpredictable. People don't invest in an unpredictable environment. They hold onto their money.

With all this spending and restructuring of the economy you would think that the economy would have recovered right? Wrong. Look at the unemployment graph on this website

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/recovery.htm

Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took power in 1933. All of his programs never brought unemployment below 10 percent. It wasn't even a steady decline. We had a second depression in 1938. That's just when all of his programs would have had time to take effect.

Of course people could make the argument that his programs weren't given enough time to work. But if they were exactly what the country needed then why did it take until 1941 for unemployment to get anywhere approaching acceptable?

http://www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp?StartYear=1980-11&EndYear=1989-01&submit1=Create+Report

Now go to this unemployment report from November 1980-January 1989, from Reagan's election to Bush I's inagauguration.

He inherited an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent from Carter in Jan 1980. It peaked at 10.8 percent in November 1982. That's two years of high unemployment, totally unacceptable. But look what happens afterward, a slow, but steady decline until it was at acceptable levels, almost full employment by the end of his second term.

Granted, this was with a war buildup, just as FDR's pre-war buildup, but on a much larger scale.

The economies are far different and the world situation was different so you can't fairly compare them. But they are worth comparing because Reagan was cutting taxes and deregulating the economy while FDR was doing the exact opposite. Reagan's growth wasn't based on government remaking America, he let the private sector remake itself.

If we want a stagnant economy, if we want to become like Europe and Japan, then we can sit back and let the left ruin our private sector by strangling it with red tape and higher taxes. Or we can fight them, pass actual reforms instead of wholesale takeovers of the economy and let the private sector do what it does best, create wealth and jobs. The government has never done that and it won't now. During this crisis we need to not let our fears allow us to let benevolent tyrants take control of our country.

Sure we need reforms in many aspects of our government. Let the congress pass those new rules to make business more able to fairly provide goods and services. Don't hamper them with more red tape and taxes. And especially don't hamper them with Marxist wage controls and profit limits like are in the current health care bill. Don't let them use the government to re-engineer our society into one that looks like Europe. We are not subjects dependent on government programs for our well being. We are citizens of a republic, if given the chance and the freedom we will provide for ourselves. If the government would get out of business and step back into its proper goal as the referee, not a player, then our country would be a lot better off.

Our Last Christmas with the Constitution

The health care bill moving through the Senate is unconstitutional and reveals the Marxist beliefs of the ultra-leftists in control of our country. Limiting CEO pay and shareholder profits for insurance companies is totally unconstitutional. They didn't take any government money. If this sort of thing continues the American republic with be no more. I'm not only blaming this on the Democrats, both sides have contributed to the dramatic shift of power from the states to the federal government.

This health care bill will touch every American life, for their entire life. It will end certain people's lives earlier than they otherwise would have because of rationing. It will involve bureaucrats (looking out for the "collective good") in our individual health care decisions. It will destroy the health insurance companies, laying the groundwork for a federal takeover of the industry.

They are marxists and their aim is to have the state control the production and distribution of goods and services in this country. Their rationale is that the workers are being taken advantage of by "big business" and the "fat cats" on wall street. The state will provide what services we need because the state is objective, the state has the good of the people in mind, not their shareholders or their executives. The state knows what is good for the largest number, so instead of having a few rich, then everyone will have what they need. Those who are able will give what they can to those who are unable to provide for themselves. The capitalists who are soaking up all the wealth by being in positions of power will be put in their place, and replaced by government officials who have the people's best interest at heart, not their bank account, and the bank accounts of their rich friends. All wealth is ultimately derived from the people's labor and therefore they should be able to decide what happens to it, instead of the wealthy CEOs.

This is Marxism. The idea that the wealthy took advantage of you, and their wealth is the result of your labor, therefore you are more entitled to it than they are because they got it illegitimately. You are powerless to get any of it, you are only one person, but in a group you can run things. If you enlist the power of government to make things fair then you will be provided for, because you deserve it.

This is in all the talk we hear from Obama. He gives lip service to capitalism to placate concerned citizens, but all of his actions show that he believes in Marxism. It's not just him it's the whole left wing of his party. They see nothing wrong with Marxism and everything wrong with capitalism.

The only time I have seen Obama show any emotion is when he told the country how outraged he was about AIG. They spent 1 tenth of 1 percent of the federal budget on bonuses and he got outraged. They did what was outlined in the bill that HE SIGNED!!! and he was still outraged. He is a Marxist and he wants to remake us into a Marxist country. Their first step is a socialist health care system. They are going to get it. They have already run up our deficit to unprecedented levels to build public works and fix our infrastructure. This is another Marxist practice.

Russia and China have good public transportation; owned and operated by the government of course. It is for the masses. They don't trust money in the hands of private businesses, they won't do what is right for the people. Only the government knows what is right for the people, they have the people's best interest at heart, naturally. The capitalists only have their own greed as their interest. They only want to take advantage of the people. Having said that, China and Russia are changing. They are giving their businesses more autonomy and greater financial freedoms. Exactly the opposite of what we are doing.

How much more power can the federal government accumulate? At what point will it be enough? When will they have fixed every problem in the country with their programs and all knowing boards of bureaucrats?

It will never stop. They will only add more regulation, another new program, request more power, and in the process further fracture the constitution to achieve their benevolent goals. We are fast approaching the time when our country will no longer be a federated republic, it will be an empire. An empire with powerless state governments and a corrupt legislature that is only a rubber stamp for the president. They will no longer care what their constituents want because they are too busy getting rich off the corruption in Washington.

I think we are at a tipping point. If we assert our power in elections and remove the power in Washington, it will simultaneously remove the corruption and power will devolve back to the states. If we don't, and we let this gathering of power in Washington continue, then our republic will end. It won't disappear, but it will no longer be a true representative republic. It will be a charade. The leaders will go through the motions of appealing to the people and stay within their terms of office. We will still have our freedoms generally, but certain things will be locked in, that we will not ever be able to change.

The enormous federal debt will hamper our ability to defend our allies, it will weaken our economy and currency. Much of our lives will be run by or be dependent upon the federal government, with the state governments acting as administrative districts of the federal government. The economy will be largely regulated and molded by the federal government. Entire industries will be run from Washington. We will be given aid for school, housing, car loans, transportation, child care, retirement, health care, and food. The vast majority will welcome the help because taxes and expenses will be so high that we will need the help to make ends meet. We will have free speech, we won't have illegal searches and seizures. We'll still have our guns and religion, but they will both be regulated to some extent. It won't be that bad. We'll have food, modest houses, decent cars, enough food, decent medical care. There will still be poor people, but they will be that way if they want to, or if they are mentally ill. We will all be a little poorer, except for the wealthy ruling class. We will be like France or Sweden, but without a powerful wealthy ally to protect us and support our lavish and unrealistic welfare state. We won't have the luxury of acting like a selfish teenager living in our parents house, eating, playing, and having fun, while the grownups take care of things in the real world. While all the while telling our guardians how old fashioned and uptight they are about everything and that they should cool off and just hang out like us.

If we don't confront the Marxist ideology that has infected this country we are headed for a languid, insecure, and bankrupt mediocrity.

Iraq is Taking Control Depsite Democratic Calls for Surrender

Iraq is finally taking control of its own country.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533798,00.html

They are enforcing the status of forces agreement that was agreed to during the Bush administration. Iraq is finally stable enough, and the Iraqi forces are strong enough to patrol the country on their own. This is a direct result of Bush's surge. This result is also in direct contradiction to what Obama predicted would happen when the surge started. Obama wanted U.S. troops to leave in order to force the Iraqis to fix their political differences. As if fixing political differences would stop suicide bombers. Force was what fixed this war, not political maneuvering, twitter, freedom of the press, or Obama's beloved diplomacy. Brute force, boots on the ground made Iraq secure enough for Iraq to fix its problems. Obama had it in reverse order. Just like he does now. Negotiating alone will not get Iran, or any of our enemies, to change. A credible threat of, or actual show of force is the only thing that will make negotiations effectual.

Just as we can't give Obama credit for a peaceful Iraq, we also can't reasonably blame him for the bad economy. We can blame him for what he is doing to it right now to prolong and deepen it, but being in this situation is not his fault.