Ponderstorm My Brainstorm on Life & Politics

I regularly read Obama 2.0 and just learned of some very interesting commentary by the talented founder of Macho Sauce Productions Alfonzo (Zo) Rachel. In his own words, Zo is a “musician, martial artist, amateure movie makin’, Christian conservative republican.”

His latest video is entitled 1 More B4 11 04 and builds a strong case for electing a conservative as President. He also describes very well the differences between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and Obama and McCain in ways that are very compelling. His logic is tight (I would dispute his dinosaur comment given some historic and scientific evidence that may suggest otherwise) and his reasons for supporting conservatives and John McCain in particular are some of the best I’ve heard. He is passionate about freedom and excessive government involvement in our lives. It’s well worth watching.

Posted under Barack Obama, Campaign, John McCain, Politics, Video

I’m tired of hearing Democrats say we should raise taxes on the rich or the rich should never receive a tax cut. To make matters even more frustrating, they often state this sentiment as if there’s something evil about being rich. Here are three things to consider before embracing the “tax the rich” notion.

1. Only people who earn more money than they need can afford to hire others.

Excessively taxing the rich kills the economy. Have you ever seen somebody barely scraping a living from paycheck to paycheck start a business and hire employees? Can poor people offer health insurance plans and pay benefits? Of course not. They don’t have any extra money to risk or invest. Excessive taxation of the rich takes their investment capital away which harms the economy.

2. The rich enlarge the economy by their consumption.

Let me illustrate this point by an example. Following the 1993 Clinton tax increase a large surcharge on the sale of new luxury yachts was imposed. That luxury tax almost put the the American yacht construction industry out of business. Who builds the yachts? The rich? Of course not. So guess who was laid off when nobody was buying yachts? The lower class yacht construction workers suffered for that tax (and from the government’s point of view it raised almost no revenue because domestic yacht sales dried up).

3. Who decides what qualifies as rich and how much to confiscate?

Taxing the rich is a Marxist income redistribution scheme. It punishes work, risk and capitalism. It deprives poeple of their individual freedoms and personal property rights. In a free society government has no right to decide who needs how much money and what amount they get to keep.

In conclusion, excessive taxation of the rich is like killing Read More…

Posted under 60 Seconds, Economy, Government

Yesterday the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) released a new web video showing why Democrats, in their own words, are responsible for the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Interestingly, conservative Internet broadcast network Hotair.com called this video “awesome.”

I appreciate the video and think it’s a great start. In the future I want to see more names named including why, at more than $125,000, Barack Obama was the #2 recipient of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions from 1989-2008 (and he made that position after less than 3 years in the Senate!).

Watch for yourself:

Posted under Barack Obama, Economy, Video

A few hours ago the U.S. House of Representatives defeated the $700 billion “emergency rescue” package designed to boost our nation’s financial systems and prevent an economic meltdown. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40% of Democrats voted against this legislation.

AP Reporter Julie Hieschfeld Davis reported the following comments from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) after the measure’s failure to pass:

“The legislation may have failed; the crisis is still with us,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a news conference after the defeat.

“What happened today cannot stand,” Pelosi said. “We must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that message.”

Sounds like she was disappointed that the vote was insufficient to move the package out of the House, doesn’t it? Likewise Democrats were quick to blame Republicans for defeating this bill. However, that’s only part of the story. Some Republicans are saying they feel that Pelosi poisoned Read More…

Posted under Politics, Video

Yesterday director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Bloomberg News columnist Kevin Hasset reported at Bloomberg.com that Democrats are the ones who created the current financial crisis that we find ourselves in as a nation. According to his commentary, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “exploded” and injured many bystanders (some fatally). “Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it’s hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.”

Hassett reports that as of the end of June 2008, “Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments.” He continues (emphasis mine).

Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Hassett suggests that many Democrats may have opposed this bill due to the massive financial contributions they received from Fannie and Freddie. He continues Read More…

Posted under Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics