Eric the Red

The more I hear about economic aid, the more I think its just keeping us out of a major depression that (one day anyway) will be long over due. Many of the mistakes of the present were mistakes in 1929. Among them:
– Businesses purchasing capital assets on credit
– Purchase of houses and other personal real estate on credit
– Purchase of stocks, cars, home furnishings on credit

In other words, people and businesses bought everything on credit, and when jobs were lost or sales declined defaults occurred. Waves of defaults drained bank reserves and resulted in tightened credit from more solvent institutions. The result was an inability for further spending and more losses, along with mass unemployment.

Today, we have lots of houses bought on credit that have lost value. Consumer spending is driven by credit. There is little liquidity. The governments solution: get more credit and make consumers spend more money. The Fed is lowering interest rates to make it easier to spend, but without increased liquidity in consumer bank accounts, this is a short term fix. Eventually, the situation will present itself again.

The Fed needs to stop lowering interest rates to spur stock purchases. The government should stop pushing people to spend and start pushing them to save and reduce their debt levels. They should tackle the issues associated with a lack of liquidity, and take steps to boost or maintain credit to BUSINESSES and NOT CONSUMERS to discourage layoffs.

With less reliance on shaky credit, the economy will be in a position for long-term growth.

Well….to be totally honest with you all I’m suffering from election fatigue. Yes, already. I think a lot of it has to do with the constant polls. Obama is up. Huckabee is up, but Rudy is in the lead. Bah! I’m just sick of the pundits and talking heads as our screwed up primary election (yes, its meaningless) starts spinning up. Heres a thought: screw Iowa. Screw New Hampshire. These states are measly compared to the rest. Just have all the stupid primaries on one day and kill off the debate. It will save the rest of us a lot of boredom.

Does anyone really think primaries mean anything? It’s a mock election to let the parties test out their panel of candidates so they can consider which are most marketable to the public. So we spend all this money so all these bozos can drift around the country and act like they care what we think. Bleck!

“A huge victory for the Bay, the most significant environmental advance in Maryland in nearly 20 years”
-Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker on Governor Ehrlich’s Chesapeake Bay Restoration Act

Governor Ehrlich proposed a $33.5 million groundbreaking funding package for the investment in stem cell technology in Maryland, including $20 million for research and development of stem cell technologies and $13.5 million for the construction of the Center for Regenerative Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

In just under four years, Governor Ehrlich has increased K-12 funding by a record 43 percent to $4.5 billion this year alonethe most ever.

He also increased beginning teacher salaries by 12 percent statewide.

When Governor Ehrlich was first elected, Maryland was 4 billion dollars in debt. This year there is a 2 billion surplus.

Ehrlich is a moderate choice with ideas and goals that make sense.

When you vote tomorrow, make sure you’ve looked at the issues at hand, and not just the party lines.

I received an email from a friend asking if I had heard about this nonsense with Representative Foley. I have written about sexual predators before (see Are Your Children Safe), and welcome the opportunity to do so again.

I will leave it to the reader to interpret this IM conversation [ABC News] (allegedly) between Rep. Foley and an unidentified teen page. This conversation is about the young mans penis size and masturbatory habits. A local copy is here.

I hope that when the investigation into these events is complete, Foley and those who covered up his grossly inappropriate behavior are made example of.

Earlier I wrote about the odds of hillary clinton being elected. I thought that she would, because many of my peers think her being a woman is enough. A CNN poll disagrees:

Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would “definitely not vote for” both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party’s candidate in 2004.

This poll is silly for one particular historical reason:

Among all choices, Clinton had the highest positive number; of those polled, 22 percent said they would “definitely vote for” her.

Remember folks that Bill Clinton won with less than 50% of the vote both times. If the republicans put up a Bob Dole against Hillary Clinton, a Clinton II is not so hard to believe.

Every now and then, I get these email messages from the Alliance for Marriage. These emails are about gay marriage. Recall, I wrote about this topic months ago from an equality point of view. BoiFromTroy has a whole category on it. The tone of the debate surrouding the issue is what I would call theological.

While Bush says we need to defend the “sanctity of marriage“, I ask why are we passing constitutional amendments to defend the sanctity of a largely economic institution? Sure, we have the whole “love” thing, but should the government get involved in determining who loves who? What if politicians decide to extend religious principles into other aspects of our lives?

Lets look at some examples:

• In Iraq, Islamic fundamentalism is eroding the rights of women in academia and many were killed since the invasion. It seems that under Sharia law, womens rights erode mens rights
• Islamic theocrats in Iran have prevented women from dressing, working, traveling or choosing spouses freely. Honor killings due to “unchaste” behavior are common.
• In Afghanistan, the Taliban regularly amputated the limbs of criminals and dissidents.
• Fred Phelps routinely demonstrates at military funerals, an activity for which his family is currently being sued. Phelps preaches that the United States is under attack because it is tolerant of homosexuals.

If an Islamic leader were voted into office in 2008 and attempted to institute Sharia law in order to defend the sanctity of mens rights, or defend the sanctity of women, what would we say? What if Fred Phelps was voted into office and decided to institute the laws of Leviticus, so that we can defend the sanctity of cloth made of only one thread?

The bottom line is that the government can not and should not try to defend that sanctity of anything. When you remove the religious interests in marriage, what is there to attack? And while we are at it, how does a same-sex marriage attack anything, other than the Old Testament?

I would challenge anyone with an interest in the Federal Marriage Amendment to explain to me how same-sex marriages threaten any other couples. Instead, I’ll get the usual barrage of hate mail. What the gay community needs is a loudspeaker, to frame it as an issue of conflicting principles.

As the debate over illegal immigration continues, a new Zogby poll suggests the the American people don’t trust the governments ability to handle it. Apparently, millions of illegals demonstrating turns us off to the whole immigration thing. Indeed, the majority of Republicans and Democrats across all ethnicities and economic levels agree that the government will be totally ineffective in addressing the issue.

I will research the voting records of each Senator and Representative on each immigration bill. I will try to provide some commentary covering the pros and cons of each bill voted upon.

I would also encourage anyone registered to vote to write their congressman to tell them what you think, regardless of your opinion.

Read the rest of this entry »

So some women were fired from a meat packing plant for skipping work to protest pending immigration legislation. This gives them a valuable lesson in at-will employment. If the don’t like it, they can move to France.

A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest.

“It was not fair,’” said Mercedes, a 31-year-old Detroit woman who attended the rally and was fired. “We went to fight for our rights.” Mercedes is undocumented and asked that her last name not be used.

This incident raises an interesting point: if all these “undocumented” workers are demonstrating, why doesnt the INS go round them up and ship them off?

Aside
As a child of immigrants, I feel that these people do nothing but further their own enslavement. Sure, they get paid, but how high can they climb up the economic ladder? Real wealth comes from education, hard work and a mastry of the English language. While my ancestors did not speak english when they came to this country, they worked hard to learn. They also educated themselves and worked just as hard at their jobs. The result: fulfillment of the American dream. I challenge my readers to show me a success story that happens without any of these things.

Many protests in my area over immigration reform legislation say that illegal migrant workers are the backbone of the US economy. While some say that they ruin our country, others think illegal immigration is related to Mexico re-taking the West. While the Senate would create a legalization path for many of the 11 million migrants in the country, I agree with many members of the House of Representatives.

Lets be real, exploiting such workers has nothing to do with compassion, its about money. A business that employs so-called undocumented workers does not have to pay taxes that fund unemployment insurance funds or workers compensation funds. Such workers bilk social security out of millions upon millions of dollars per year. The same applies to state treasuries and the Federal government, to say nothing of the crime and unemployment that occurs among our own citizens that occurs as a result of our migrant worker population. How many members of MS-13 do you suppose waited in line for a visa? Simple: None of them.

The United States does not need any of these people to function economically. My dad paid for college in the 1970s by working in the areas these workers do: agriculture and construction, and there are plenty of high school graduates to fill these positions.

Legalizing those who have traveled here over the last 15+ years will only open a floodgate in the future. Why wait on a list for years, hoping your priority number for a visa will come up when you can creep across the border and wait for Congress to buckle under political pressure?

So how do we deal with it? Since most of these workers are employed in agriculture and construction, have the INS and local police spot-check construction sites. If they find illegal aliens working there, deport them that week and make the employer pay all the bills as a penalty. The border should be sealed off with a wall and the military and/or national guard should be deployed with the border patrol to ensure its security.

While this will no doubt cause a political uproar in Mexico, so what? Their government has done its part to help millions of their citizens sneak their way in. And whats this crap about our hospitals contributing to those in mexico?? We are on the verge of a crisis over health care costs in this country, and we are sending our money to MEXICO??

Why are we rewarding criminals and cheaters at the expense of our own people?

It seems that paying off ones credit card balance in full raises national security flags. From the article:

“They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.”

Lord help us, from those who cost the credit card company money by avoiding interest and finance charges!

In a possibly related bit of fiscal terrorism, the Treasury Department is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling by a modest $781 billion (with a “B”), to $8.2 trillion (with a “T”) in order to avoid universal default and higher interest rates across on all of their credit cards (known as the taxpayers). What are the finance charges on $8.2 trillion anyway?