After a long series of taxes and arrogant acts that could not fail to anger the citizens of Boston, Massachusetts and nearby colonists affected by them, the American colonists finally picked up their guns and fired on the British coming to seize their store of munitions in Concord and Lexington.

The American Revolution did not occur in a week, a month or a year. It came after a Navigation Act, a Stamp Act, and others called the Intolerable Acts that actually closed Boston Harbor in retaliation for the famous Boston Tea Party.

By then the British had dispatched troops to Massachusetts to put some muscle behind their demands that the colonies help pay for the deep debt the King and Parliament had incurred from England’s many wars on the continent.

America was their nation in spirit long before it was organized as one. Americans were not going to be pushed around. They had tried everything they could to make their case, but finally there was nothing left but to unite and throw off the tyranny.

In 1770, the Boston massacre had inflamed public sentiment, but it would not be until 1774 that the citizens of Lexington and Concord would take up arms. In 1776, the second Continental Congress would convene in Philadelphia and sign a Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson wrote, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

It has taken a brief year and a half for President Obama and his Democrat-controlled Congress to enflame the anger of a broad spectrum of Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, who have been rallying in Washington, D.C., and in towns and cities across the nation against a healthcare “reform” they overwhelmingly opposed, but which became law.

Since then, twenty States have joined together to nullify it, challenging it in the courts while some passed laws to protect their citizens against it. This is very much in the spirit of the Tenth Amendment that posits powers in the States and in the People that are not specific to the federal government. America is a republic composed of separate and distinct republics.

The initial seizure of General Motors raised questions of its constitutionality that have never been answered. Rather than standard bankruptcy proceedings, stockholders and creditors were shoved aside to grant control to the very unions that had brought the iconic auto company to its knees.

This has since been followed by open threats to Wall Street that include proposals that would allow the government to seize firms, toss out their board of directors and officers, and, in effect, nationalize them. This is not unlike the dictatorship of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

It is the antithesis of a nation of laws, a republic; a democracy where power is situated in the people and the constitution limits the powers of the executive and the legislative branches that are, in turn, subject to the judicial process.

If, between now and the midterm elections, the President and Congress pass the Cap-and-Trade Act and an amnesty for illegal aliens, I suspect that some Americans may not be content to sit by while States and the courts work their way within the Constitution. They will sense—and rightfully so—a despotism never before associated with the presidency.

There is a whiff of revolution in the air and that is why the White House and Far Left are leveling the bogus charge that the Tea Partiers are all violent neo-Nazi types. It is not beyond this White House to deliberately provoke violence. There have already been isolated incidents of Tea Partiers being attacked by union goons.

Since the White House operates on the basis of one questionable “crisis” to another to impose unwanted laws, nothing can be ruled out by these community organizers.

One thing is clear. We have a very unpopular president.

We have had others in the past. Lyndon B. Johnson chose not to run again after his first and only full term. Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. Richard Nixon was forced to resign. Even George W. Bush, after two terms, had worn out his welcome.

It has not been uncommon to characterize unpopular presidents as despots, but Obama is different.

He exudes arrogance.

He offends our nation’s allies and is seen as weak by our enemies.

He’s declared war on our vital energy sector and now on Wall Street.

He imposed a healthcare reform that will drive up costs and cause millions to lose the insurance coverage their employers provide.

Add to this the growing legion of unemployed.

There’s a lot of anger in America today.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” — John Adams (1835-1826)

There is no question in my mind that I have lived long enough to see everything the nation once stood for in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world begin to disintegrate and fail.

John Adams, for those who slept through history class, was America’s second president, and one of the Founders who participated in the writing of our Constitution. If you worry about deals made behind closed doors, you are herewith reminded that the Constitution was written behind closed doors. Though the room in Philadelphia had its share of lawyers, the man who presided over the process was a soldier and farmer called George Washington. Others included farmers, physicians, and even clergymen.

Along with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the sharpest mind among them was that of John Adams. After the ratification of the Constitution, he warned that “a Constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

The healthcare bill is freedom lost forever. I hope I am wrong, but I now doubt it will be repealed, nullified by the states, or reversed by the Supreme Court. While it is true that most constitutional scholars believe it is unconstitutional, taking and twisting the Commerce clause beyond recognition, I believe the damage has been done.

I freely admit that, before the vote, I remained hopeful that, even if enacted and signed, it could be overturned, but I am now less confident of that. In retrospect, the entitlement society that began in the depths of 1930s Great Depression and has been expanded ever since has proven to be the slow poison that will undo our constitutional system of government.

Conservatives have long warned against the excesses and delusions of liberals, but we have also seen self-identified conservatives like former President George W. Bush preside over the expansion of Medicare with a prescription program that defied any manner of funding at a time when Medicare and Social Security was known to be going broke.

In 2005, Bush did try to mend the system for the vast redistribution of wealth by campaigning to allow workers to divert some of their Social Security into private accounts as a hedge against old age and illness. When Nancy Pelosi said this was a plan to unravel public pensions, the voters decided they didn’t like that idea.

I confess I have tried in my mind to dismiss the Speaker of the House as just some lunatic, fringe advocate for liberalism run amuck, but like a lot of Republicans today, it is clear that she was underestimated (along with the Senate’s Harry Reid) for her political skills.

She engineered a political victory that has not only restored President Obama’s reputation as a leader on the domestic front, but has set in motion the destruction of America’s frail financial foundations.

Few believe that the U.S. can continue to borrow the billions necessary to maintain Social Security and Medicare. The alternative, of course, is to tax all Americans to such an extent that it destroys the middle class and drives more corporations offshore.

Speaker Pelosi eat, drank, and breathed Democrat politics from birth. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro was a congressman and mayor of Baltimore. Her brother was also a mayor of Baltimore. She made her first public speech at age seven at her father’s swearing in ceremony.

I opened with a quote by John Adams and will close with one by Thomas Jefferson:
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Americans, however, have long since abandoned the principles of the Constitution, a small and limited central government, for a behemoth that now controls our very lives through a bill that vastly expands the federal government and gives it the power to intervene between our physicians and ourselves.

We have been betrayed by an insurance industry that will be happy to rid itself the high risk and costly need to provide health insurance while continuing to prosper from life, property, and other forms. We have been betrayed by the pharmaceutical companies now salivating at the prospect of future profits funded by the taxpayers. The American Medical Association supported healthcare reform; a betrayal.

Even the States, many of which now want to protect themselves from even greater unfunded mandates, have long since abandoned their sovereignty by allowing the federal government to control education, highways, environment, and a myriad of other local responsibilities.

None of the institutions of government, not the executive, not the Congress, and probably not the courts will uphold a Constitution now distorted beyond recognition. Despite the usual talk of a new revolution, of midterm elections to return power to the Republican Party, the People are essentially defenseless.

Tell me I am wrong. Then tell me why.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

There are certain laws of nature that no one can amend or avoid. In the classic Greek tale of Icarus, despite warnings Icarus flew too close to the sun, melted the wax that held the feathers that had given him the gift of flight, and falls to his death. The law of gravity contributed to his end because what goes up must come down.

These days I think of the nation in general and the Democrats in Congress in particular as Icarus. They have ignored all the warnings about Obamacare and now have the political trajectory of a rock tossed too high in the air.

The voters reaction to the excesses of the Bush administration—-which now seem minor in comparison to those of the Democrats—-catapulted a virtually unknown and literally unvetted, minor first-term senator from Illinois into the Oval Office. The voters had first expressed their unhappiness in 2006 when control of Congress passed from the Republicans.

It seems to me that Americans have been unhappy for a very long time, but I can recall few decades when they were happy. With World War Two behind them, Americans launched themselves into the 1950s with enthusiasm, getting married, having babies, and building an economy that was unrivaled. America became the lone superpower.

By the 1960s, though, things began to sour. A generation of young people began to question all the values that had served their parents and grandparents well. The civil rights movement emerged and by the end of the decade the nation was mired in a war in Vietnam most people did not support. It would result in the death of more than 50,000 of our youth. A drug culture began to take root.

The signal political change during the 1960s was the implementation of Medicare in 1965, a significant expansion of Social Security. It quickly exceeded its projected costs.

By the 1970s, despite the inspiration of having begun to explore space, putting men on the Moon in 1969, and an abundance of material goods, America’s mood was growing dark. Between 1972 and 1974, the Watergate scandal dragged on until the first and only resignation of a president ended it.

In 1973 abortion was legalized. The feminist movement gained momentum. As the decade ended in 1979 Iranians seized U.S. diplomats, holding them hostage for 444 days.

The 1980s were, for conservatives, a golden age led by Ronald Reagan. The economy improved and, in general, so did the mood of the nation. It was also a time in which Islam began to reassert itself with a series of terrorist acts. Democrats in Congress continued to be in control.

At the end of Reagan’s term, George H.W. Bush, his vice president, was elected in 1988, but despite a military campaign to contain Saddam Hussein, the voters opted for a young Arkansas Governor named Bill Clinton.

What came to be seen as a series of excesses by liberal Democrats led to the defeat of the Clinton Medicare expansion effort and, in 1994, Congressional power was transferred to the Republican Party for the first time in some 40 years!

Clinton, despite being reelected, proved to be a major embarrassment to the nation as the result of his sexual appetites. Popular to the end with most Democrats, he would be replaced by George W. Bush as the new century began in 2000.

If the mood of the nation was one of cautious optimism, that changed dramatically on September 11, 2001. Fear swept the nation and a desire to punish the stateless terror inflicted led also to a decision by Bush to alter the direction of the Middle East by removing Saddam Hussein from power. Despite a brilliant initial dash to Baghdad the Iraq war was plagued with a cascade of bad decisions.

A sudden financial crisis toward the end of the 2008 political campaign returned a Democrat to the White House. It has taken just over a year for Barack Hussein Obama to see his performance ratings plummet from around 70 percent to around 40 percent these days. He is rivaling the worse ratings for any president since such polls began.

The bruising battle over the expansion of Medicare at a time of high unemployment and the imposition of high levels of national debt will likely push the President’s ratings even lower before the year is out.

What has been discussed here is not a rising curve of optimism for the future of the nation, but a declining one made worse and seriously endangered by irrational borrowing and spending.

Like Icarus, the nation has flown too close to its source of life, weakened its economic foundations, gave itself over to the greatest hoax of the modern era, global warming, and now has witnessed a Democrat controlled Congress do what most voters opposed.

America has weathered previous crisis, but there is a growing sense that its future is in the hands of people who do not like America, do not like its slow, methodical way of debating and reflecting the will of the people, and who threaten liberties its citizens have taken for granted.

Weighed down by growing debt, threatened by expanded “entitlement” programs that promise to grow that debt while subjecting Americans to higher taxation, the mood of the nation has rarely been at such a critical and dour point.

Gravity is about to have its way with the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

On the eve before Daylight Savings Time, I managed to break a wall clock in the process of trying to grasp it to “spring ahead.” It crashed to a counter top and gave up the ghost. I then went online to Staples and 24 hours later I had a new wall clock. We take such efficiency for granted these days.

In the midst of the heated debate over healthcare “reform”, we need to remind ourselves of how superior the private sector is to our now bloated, wasteful, and inefficient government. The bill that the Democrats and the president are desperately trying to foist on Americans is a nightmare to be avoided at all costs.

Recently I received a comparison between Wal-Mart and the U.S. government. Candidly, I do not know the source of the information provided, but I am inclined to believe it.

“Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Sears, Costco, and K-Mart combined. It employs 1.6 million people and is the nation’s largest private employer. It is the largest company in the history of the world.”

“Wal-Mart has approximately 3,906 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are super centers. This is more than 1,000 than it had a scant five years ago.”

If the economy is in trouble, maybe the people who run Wal-Mart should be consulted instead of the 535 members of Congress who appear to not only be utterly clueless, but who have assisted Obama in running up the largest budget deficit in American history.

This is not a Democrat, Republican or independent problem. It is a government problem starting with the federal government and mimicked by state governments who have also spent themselves into penury.

Consider the following examples.

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. It had 234 years to get it right, but it is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. It has had 74 years to get it right, but it is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 to underwrite the provision of mortgages so that everyone could own a home. It has had 71 years to get it right and it is broke. As the result of the financial meltdown, the government had to seize control of it.

The War on Poverty started in 1964 and has 45 years to presumably eliminate poverty. $1 trillion in public funds is allocated to “the poor” every year and there is no evidence they are any less poor.

The Department of Energy was created in 1977 allegedly to lesson the nation’s dependence on foreign, imported oil. It has since ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year. The U.S. imports more oil than ever before because the U.S. government forbids exploration and extraction on 85% of the nation’s continental shelf. It forbids the same in ANWR. It has had 32 years to address the need and it is an abysmal failure.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. They have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

There aren’t that many things that the government does well or does right. Meanwhile, the private sector, corporations and small business enterprises continue to innovate and provide products and services with remarkable efficiency. Both are heavily taxed. U.S. taxes on corporations are the second highest in the world.

Right now, Americans have to ensure that a Democrat-controlled Congress does not pass a 2,700 page Medicare “reform” because our lives are literally on the line if they do.

After that, the government has to stop wasting billions to create jobs because the only jobs it creates are government jobs.

It’s not like we the People can escape responsibility for this. A majority of voters elected these morons.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

At age 72 I have been taking a full range of vitamin and mineral supplements for years. Even I find it amusing to open more than a dozen bottles every morning to extract vitamins A, B, C, D and E, along with zinc, potassium, selenium, and fish oil. On the advice of my physician long ago, I also take a low dose aspirin every day. I also take some herbal supplements.

In early January I fell and broke my collar bone. A month later it was completely healed. I don’t get the common cold, although I do experience seasonal allergies that are controlled with anti-histamine. In sum, I am as healthy as a person of my age can hope to be.

So why have Sen. John McCain (R-NV) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) joined to introduce an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that would deny freedom of easy access to these vitamins and minerals that are now commonly available in supermarkets, pharmacies and other outlets at affordable prices?

Why would they conspire to make dietary supplements such as purified fish oil seven times more expensive than it is today?

It is irrational, not to say obscene, at a time when a debate is raging over the costs of Medicare and the various illnesses that afflict Americans to introduce a law that would raise the cost of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements that are among the best forms of preventative medicine available to the general public.

Who, ultimately, will benefit from such a law? The answer is the pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Steven Joyal, M.D., vice president of science and medical affairs of the Life Extension Foundation, says “This bill aims to further pharmaceutical profits by creating wide-ranging, unprecedented FDA power to reclassify natural nutritional products as drugs.”

I am a free market capitalist, but I also know that many companies engage in “rent seeking”, a term to describe how they use the ability of Congress to pass laws and regulations that improperly and unfairly increase their profits.

The bill, titled that “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010” is a classic example of how an ever-expanding federal government continues to get between Americans and the freedoms they have come to take for granted. High on the list is the freedom to maintain one’s health; in this case with affordable and easily accessible vitamins and minerals.

The “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010” has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with increasing the profits of pharmaceutical companies. It does not enhance safety because vitamins and mineral supplements are already manufactured under some of the most stringent restrictions placed on any products sold anywhere in the world.

My friend, Frank Murray, is the author of nearly 50 books on health and nutrition. He is the former editor of Better Nutrition, GreatLife, and Let’s Live magazines. His books have documented how various vitamins and minerals, as well as herbal supplements have preventative and curative affects on a wide range of ailments and afflictions.

His latest book, “Sunshine and Vitamin D” describes the research concerning this vitamin’s ability to reduce or ameliorate cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and a host of other ailments. And that is just one common vitamin!

It is astonishing how vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements can aid the body to resist the many pathogens in our environment, to digest the food we eat, and to enhance many of our mental and physical abilities.

This latest bill in Congress should be defeated. Its two sponsors should be held up to scrutiny to determine how great a role the donations of pharmaceutical companies to their election campaigns played in the drafting and introduction of this bill.

There is not enough scorn that can be heaped upon the bill’s sponsors and any member of Congress that votes for it.

I don’t want and I don’t need a doctor’s prescription to purchase the vitamins and minerals I take daily. Neither do you!

(c)Alan Caruba, 2010

Perhaps it is just the product of the times in which I grew up and my experience with the events of the world. Or perhaps it is the spin that has been added to the word “global”, endowing it with an almost spiritual quality.

Mostly, though, I think it is my utter disgust with “global warming”, having spent the better part of three decades striving to defeat this plot to enable all forms of governmental intrusion into people’s lives and choices.

A bit of personal history; as a child I recall riding the train to and from the Jersey shore when it was filled with young men in uniform, all destined to fight in far-off places whose names even then seemed exotic to me; Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Sicily. It was the harsh geography of war, but to a youngster it only meant someplace far away.

By the time I was a teenager, an older brother was already in Japan at the headquarters from which the Korean conflict was conducted. There were new names to deal with, Seoul, Incheon, and the Yalu River. By then the Cold War was well on its way.

The 1950s were full of talk of A-bombs and then H-bombs, and then intercontinental missiles. In college I took scant notice of events in Cuba, but a few years later I would be in full combat gear waiting for orders to invade. Then the problem went away without ever really going away. It has since spread to Venezuela.

Like many Americans, I learned about the world because we were sending troops somewhere to push back against some form of aggression or some new oppressive regime. At home the streets were filled with Civil Rights marchers or anti-war marchers, both of whom would be replaced by new groups demanding to be heard. It was the era of Woodstock and Watergate.

And no trains filled with soldiers because the military had ceased to be every young man’s duty to serve their nation. It became a voluntary military and, we’re told, one that is superior to the former model. It would suffer casualties in Beirut, wrest Grenada from a communist takeover, invade Panama to remove yet another corrupt leader and then, in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, go there to set things right. After 9/11, in 2001 it would drive the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and then in 2003 invade Iraq to bring down Saddam Hussein.

Is it any wonder Americans are weary of war? Is it any wonder that the word “global” to my generation means some new place where young, dedicated Americans are battling some new despot, regime, or threat to peace anywhere and everywhere?

All of which brings me to the new meaning of “global” for the generations that followed mine. It is attached to “global warming”, the greatest hoax, not merely in the modern era, but in all of history! And it was initiated and implemented by an international institution that was supposed to end wars, the United Nations.

Some years ago, the UN published a book called “Our Global Neighborhood”, but we do not live in a global neighborhood. We live in our own, local neighborhood. The UN is all about global government with, of course, global taxes, a global army, and, as in the case of every dictatorship, a global restriction on gun ownership.

It is all about a vast matrix of global treaties that involve the surrender of some element of U.S. sovereignty to the UN to oversee “heritage” sites and our national parks. It is about an educational indoctrination program to turn American children into “citizens of the world.”

So you will have to forgive me if I look at the world and see places where Americans have continually had to sacrifice blood and treasure because someone or some nation had ambitions to impose their will on people who just wanted to be left alone.

If something terrible happens in America I do not expect to see one single other nation on Earth come to our aid.

In America today, the enemy is not always in some far-off place. It is in Washington, D.C. where an out-of-control Congress is spending and borrowing to the point where we are being warned that our dollar is at risk of being worthless. Led by a feckless new president, it has imposed huge debts on generations yet to be born.

The White House is trying to expand an “entitlement” program, Medicare, that is already broke for the purpose of controlling one sixth of the nation’s economy.

The White House is giving money to banks and then threatening to tax them after they have repaid it.

The White House has bought General Motors and Chrysler instead of letting them go through a bankruptcy process like any other business.

The White House is squandering billions on “clean energy” and “green jobs”, both of which are mere fantasies while billions of barrels of oil go untapped, billions of cubic feet of natural gas remains unavailable, and hundreds of year’s worth of coal is not mined.

Congress is engaged in phony, multi-billion dollar “stimulus” programs instead of cutting taxes to jump-start the economy.

“Think globally. Act locally” is the mantra of the environmental movement, but the movement itself is a global monster, determined to decide what you can eat, how you should deal with your garbage, what kind of car or truck you can drive, how much you should heat or cool your home.

It is despotism, no matter what other name you call it.

And then there are those insane followers of Islam who want to inflict more harm on America because they are not content with killing their fellow Muslims.

I wish I could ignore the world beyond my neighborhood, but it won’t let me.

If you think that you are going mad, based on the statements out of the White House and Congress, let me assure you that you are sane, but those in charge of governing the nation appear to have lost their wits.

The Democrat’s third-ranking House leader, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), during an appearance on Fox News asserted that “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession.” It is his view that “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession.” So saving money is bad. Spending money we are borrowing at a rate of a billion dollars a day is good. If that sounds insane, you’re right.

In defending his new budget, President Obama declared that “Already, we have made historic strides…to cut wasteful spending.” The problem with that is that his budget proposal, for a second year in a row, would increase federal spending as a percentage of the Gross National Product at a higher rate than any time in the past 65 years. Fully a quarter of the GNP would be sucked up and spent by the government.

As we all know by now, because the President keeps telling us, that everything that happened last year was the fault of the previous President, George W. Bush, but it turns out that President Obama proposes once again to spend 30% more of the GDP than Bush.

President Obama has also given notice to the United Nations that the U.S. would agree to the Copenhagen Climate Change Accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is reported that this means a reduction of “carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.” This would be contingent on the passage of the Cap-and-Trade bill lingering in the Senate.

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is based on the now widely discredited global warming hoax that blamed carbon dioxide for the non-existent rise in the planet’s temperature.

Thus, the Cap-and-Trade bill is, itself, a hoax and, worse, would increase taxes on all energy use for all Americans. The reduction that President Obama calls for would require a return to the days of horse-drawn vehicles and an end to manufacturing and other activities dependent on oil, natural gas, and coal.

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its intention to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas other than oxygen on which all life on Earth depends. Its justification for this is, of course, global warming. It requires a lot of gall to ignore the fact that the Earth entered a cooling cycle in 1998 that is likely to last another decade or two.

If the insanity emanating from the White House, Congress and the EPA is not enough, over at the United Nations last Monday the Human Rights Council met in Geneva. It was presided over by Halima Warzasi, a woman whom UN Watch notes “personally shielded the Saddam regime from international censure over the (Kurdish) gas attacks.” She was preceded in the chairmanship by Alfonso Martinez of Cuba. The Council’s principal members include China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, none of which are famous for their attention to human rights.

Also last Monday, one brief moment of sanity; Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali” for having ordered the poison gas attacks on the Kurds, was hanged.

To Americans struggling with debt, with mortgages that cost more than the present value of their homes, and, for many, with unemployment, the notion that the nation would end the Bush tax cuts while raising taxes at the same time it is borrowing and spending money at an unsustainable rate is a good definition of madness.

In November, the Obama administration released a report stating that more than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted. The main culprit according to the report was Medicare, a program that the same administration via its “healthcare reform” legislation wanted to expand by adding millions more to its rolls.

So you may be forgiven for thinking that something is terribly wrong with the White House and Congress because it is.

Each one of us has their own “state of the union” so far as the economy is concerned. Much of the workforce receives a paycheck, but many of those jobs have ceased to exist. Other jobs involve contract services. A reported 10% of the workforce is unemployed and the likelihood is that the actual percentage is much higher.

Small business, one of the largest components of the economy, is hurting because consumers are cutting back on spending. It is no surprise either that the banking community, under direct attack by the President, is reluctant to stick its neck out. The result is an understandable reluctance to extend credit and loans, and a loss of investor confidence.

On Wednesday, the President will give his first State of the Union (SOTU) speech, but if it looks and sounds familiar, it is because it will be the third time in the past year he has addressed a joint session of Congress. That has to be some kind of record, but he has set records for more than 400 speeches in the past year.

When the President reads yet another speech written for him by other people, keep in mind that he has surrounded himself with a cabinet and advisors composed primarily of lawyers like himself. Most have no experience in private enterprise. They have not managed a business, nor met a payroll. Less than ten percent of them have experience in the business sector. And these are the people charged with solving the current financial crisis!

I do not need to wait until Wednesday to hear President Obama’s State of the Union speech. I already know he cannot be trusted to respond honestly and candidly about any issue. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) gained fame by calling out “You Lie!” in an earlier speech and he was right. He did, however, apologize for the breach of etiquette, but I am pretty sure other Republicans in the chamber will feel the same impulse.

After fifty years of earning a good living as a public relations counselor and a provider of editorial skills, the market for my skills has contracted in response to the economy. That’s my SOTU. I am confident that, when the economy improves, there will be individuals, corporations, trade associations and others who will rev up their efforts to influence consumers and issues, but until then, while the President lives off the fat of the land, I am pretty much living off my “fat.”

A recent issue of U.S News & World Report devoted an entire issue to my generation and those closely gaining on it. It concluded that many either do not want to retire, nor can afford to. I have a cousin, also in his 70s, who’s in his Wall Street office every day. According to the magazine, both of us have a good chance of making it to age 100!

Many investments intended to provide a retirement nest egg have been reduced in value, interest on savings is miniscule, and the rising cost of living has left those in their seventies and older often unable to opt out of the work force if they are fortunate to be employed or considering re-employment if a job can be found. We make excellent workers because we come equipped with a good work ethic and attitudes.

Meanwhile, a legion of Baby Boomers is beginning to join our ranks, lining up for their Social Security and other benefits.

Tampering with Medicare this year, a huge distraction from the task of encouraging job growth, was possibly the dumbest thing the White House and Democrat Congress could have done. There will be a senior citizen payback at the ballot box in November.

I have a younger member of my family who, like thousands of Americans these days, owns a home whose value is less than his mortgage. Like all homes, it is a money pit. And worse for him, it is in New Jersey, a state with the highest property and other taxes in the nation. At the height of the housing bubble, I sold the home in which I had lived for more than sixty years and moved to a luxury apartment complex. I miss my former home, but it didn’t come with a pool, a fitness center, and a charming concierge staff.

Having been born during the Great Depression of the 1930s, I have now lived long enough to be in a new Depression. The irony is that both had their roots in government policies and, in both cases, were prolonged by government hostility to corporations, banks, and other generators of income and growth.

The present administration is maniacally opposed to Wall Street. They oppose the engines of energy in America, oil, coal, and natural gas. They waste billions on so-called “renewable” energy or “biofuels”, all of which are incapable of producing sufficient energy for even a moderate-sized city or town. Biofuels just drive up the cost of crops like corn for no sensible reason.

Those “shovel-ready” construction projects have not yet materialized while the nation’s infrastructure continues to be neglected. Not one single new nuclear plant or refinery has been built since the 1970s.

Over the years, the auto industry has been destroyed by increasing congressional interference in the form of mileage mandates, by requirements for ethanol use, and, internally, by the auto unions that demanded and received huge medical and retirement plans that ate profits. Two of the largest American auto manufacturers are essentially owned by the taxpayers due to massive, multi-billion bailouts, and controlled by the unions that destroyed them.

So my SOTU is to find a market for my editorial and other skills. I don’t give a rat’s patoot what the President will say Wednesday evening. He’s not the solution. He is the problem.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister

It began as a beautiful cruise to a land of “hope and change”, but it has become a nightmare in which the ship of state is being deliberately steered toward a whirlpool of debt from which, if Obama is successful, the nation cannot escape.

One of the primary reasons the U.S. economy has grown over the years has been the confidence in its innovation and productivity. It has generated investment from around the world from those who wanted to profit from our success story. There was a time when U.S. securities were the safest in the world, but that is no longer the case.

On December 24, 2009, the U.S. Senate voted to raise the ceiling of the government debt to $12.4 trillion, described by an Associated Press reporter as “a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Barack Obama has promised to address next year.”

On January 20, 2010, barely a month later, Senate Democrats “proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion.”

This is the reason, by virtue of the Massachusetts special election; the United States has dodged the bullet of a “reformed” healthcare system which would have slashed a half trillion dollars from Medicare coffers while adding millions more people to its rolls.

It would have turned the health insurance industry into a public utility. They would have ceased to be private enterprises of competing companies. It would have driven physicians out of practice. It would have bankrupted the nation and reduced a widely acknowledged excellent health system to that of a third world nation.

The proposed “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on all energy use—the lifeblood of any economy, must be defeated. This will come most likely from a lack of votes as Senate Democrats are finally scared enough of the electorate to act with some degree of rationality.

In a recent commentary, Jerome R. Corsi, the author of “America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving the Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty”, wrote “With the recession and the huge stimulus package added to the beginning of the baby boomers retiring, United States debt is already at 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the Obama administration plans as they currently stand.”

In other words, the U.S. government is committed through various “entitlement” programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with other expenditures, to spend more than it takes in via taxes. The other major expense is for defense. These three factors represent half of the annual U.S. budget.

The situation is so grave that, on January 18, The Washington Times editorialized that “Obama is killing the economy.”

The bill has finally come due for decades of socialism that began in the 1930s.

“The 2009 budget deficit tripled over 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal year 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year.”

At present rates, the public debt of the United States will reach 85 percent of GDP by 2018, just eight years from now, and 100 percent by 2022. It would be 200 percent by 2038 unless some brakes on spending are not applied before the ship of state gets sucked down beneath an ocean of debt.

What does President Obama propose? He wants to apply an unconstitutional special tax on banks! And not all banks, but just those banks on “Wall Street” whom he blames for the current recession.

His most recent proposal to regulate the banking system drove down the Dow Jones Average signaling further fears of his intention to micro-manage the economy. It is a recipe for disaster and shares of the big Wall Street banks in particular fell. He is deliberately attacking the great engine of the nation’s economy.

Wall Street is not the problem. The government is the problem.

Obama made no mention of the real culprits for the housing market meltdown, the reckless spending of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act that underwrote a program that put $12 trillion of mortgage loans, half of all such loans, in the hands of the federal government!

As John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out, “President Obama’s proposal (would) bring back 1930s-like separation of commercial and investment banks, dubbed Glass-Steagall II or Glass-Steagall 2.0, (and) would do little to prevent the problem of financial institutions being too big to fail. What it would do is hurt economic recovery, reduce types of financing available to businesses big and small, and give European and Asian financial services firm a huge competitive advantage over their U.S. counterparts.”

The billions still unspent in the so-called “Stimulus” bill should be returned to the Treasury. Plans to expand Medicare and Medicaid need to be scrapped. Taxes on greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, must be avoided if for no other reason that CO2 has nothing to do with a non-existent global warming.

The capacity of the United States to recover calls for an end or at least a cap on the mindless spending of taxpayer millions on the pet projects and crony deals of Representatives and Senators.

It calls for an end to the restrictions on the exploration for and extraction of the nation’s vast coal, oil and natural gas reserves, including in ANWR and aggressively in the offshore continental shelf.

It calls for an end to huge multi-million dollar subsidies for “renewable energy” schemes such as solar and wind power.

It calls for an end to the ethanol mandates that dilute the mileage of every gallon of gasoline and actually increase CO2 emissions!

It calls for an end to congressional mandates on the auto industry that have, in part, driven two of its largest manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler, into bankruptcy. The U.S. must divest its ownership in both companies.

It calls for reining in the rogue government agency, the Environment Protection Agency that is attempting to unilaterally impose control of CO2 emissions and has long engaged in practices that impede economic growth for business, industry, and the nation’s agricultural sector.

There are many reasonable and rational steps that can and should be taken, but it seems clear that the President, with the support of a Democrat controlled Congress, has no intention of taking any of these steps and, indeed, is intent on bankrupting the U.S. government and its people.

This is by way of just blowing off a bit of frustration in the wake of the non-stop news coverage of the latest disaster to hit Haiti.

To begin with, we are witnessing in this first day or so of news coverage that I call the “Five Known Facts” school of reporting; repeated endlessly!

That is to say, 98% of everything being “reported” is pure spectulation from the news room anchors and assorted experts, and the rest of the reporting is the most obvious stuff from the on-the-scene reporters. They are scrambling to say something more than just that hundreds, if not thousands, have died, buildings are destroyed, et cetera. We know that already!

It is the story of every major earthquake or comparable disaster anywhere.

For my part, however, it is a reminder that I have never heard anything about Haiti that was not a testament to the most vile aspects of despotism and corruption found in too many nations around the world.

How many millions have been poured into that chunk of Hispanola at this point? None of it ever reaches the people. None of it ever builds a road, a bridge, a school, or a hospital.

The minute Haitians can escape Haiti and come to America they become productive, wonderful citizens, but Haiti is a prison nation of no value to them or the rest of the world.

Haiti’s current grief will be the focus of news organizations for perhaps two weeks at most. Forgotten or ignored is the way Haiti reflects comparable conditions in several African nations and elsewhere around the world where dictators continue to pillage whatever is of value and to oppress freedom.

Our attention span for such things is short and, if I dare to say so, America is in the early stages of becoming a failed nation, defaulting its debts, and rendering its dollar valueless.

The nation is being deliberately destroyed by Barack Hussein Obama and his cronies. That’s why he doesn’t care if he takes down the Democrat Party as well.

So, instead of really doing something about the rising unemployment occurring here, tending to the long-needed repair of our bridges and other infrastructure, cutting taxes so we can use our own money for our own needs, Americans blithly pass their time watching “American Idol” and discovering that yet another athlete is a failed human being.

Our Congress is no longer responsive to the millions of Americans, Democrats, Republicans and Independents, who hate the vile Obamacare program, something which the White House and Congress have wasted far too much time upon, given the fact that it is a hugely bad idea and occurring at the worst of times; wasteful and hurtful in more ways than one can count.

Is there death and destruction in Haiti? Yes. Will America do what it can to help? Yes. BUT! We have terribly serious problems here at home and, instead of solutions, we have been forced to deal with the failed ideology of socialism while abandoning the successful application of capitalist answers. The government will not let either Wall Street or Main Street function properly!

We need to stop beating up the bankers who were forced to make the bad loans and then to take TARP money. We need to stop kicking around the Wall Street crowd that risks billions to underwrite new technologies and help businesses and industries of every description grow and prosper.

The government must stop thwarting the building of more nuclear plants, more coal-fired plants, and the generation of the energy we will desperately need in the very near future. We need to Drill Here and Drill Now!

America is a treasure trove of coal, oil, and natural gas, but the government will not allow private industry to find it and extract it.

Do I feel bad about the Haitians? Sure, but five, ten, or twenty years from now they will still be wearing rags and living in shacks.

Right now, I want to avoid that future for more than 300 million Americans.

I want to stop the flow of illegal aliens draining our economy and using our services while contributing nothing in return. They have no right to be here. I want us to stop pretending that Islamists are not plotting to kill all of us and a nuclear Iran will give them the means to do it.

So, look at the television footage of the misery of the Haitians and think to yourself, unless we rid ourselves of those in power, fix our present economic problems without “bailing out” failed industries and financial institutions, and begin to prepare for the future, there but for the grace of God, go us.

The phrase, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” comes from the world of boxing, but it applies increasingly to government.

Americans have seen that the bigger the government grows, the less able it is to respond to both the major needs of Americans, like national security, and the immediate ones such as the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The thing I liked most about our response to 9/11 was the fairly swift response of President Bush and the U.S. military. It wasn’t long before bombs were falling in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora. The thing I liked least was the astonishing incompetence that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The lesson, I think, is that the military is ideally structured to identify and carry out a mission while its civilian counterparts are so mired in caution as to eviscerate any likelihood of success.

The consolidation of several agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security was possibly a good idea though it has its detractors. Americans are forced to believe that both they and our intelligence community are functioning well enough to protect us right up to the moment we learn they are not. It is thankless work to know you have deterred terrorist attacks only to have that wiped out with an incident like the one on Christmas.

It is made worse when, as in the normal course of things, the people at the top of the departments and agencies are too often the end result of politics, not competence. Janet Napolitano, the former Governor of Arizona, is a classic example of someone with virtually no security experience being tasked to oversee a department entirely devoted to security.

It is clear to everyone that Janet Napolitano needs to be replaced. She poses a danger to the nation’s security because she has probably demoralized her entire department and because her judgment is severely impaired.

Beyond Napolitano, there are the many “czars” that have been added to the White House payroll, the director of what has become a rogue agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and serious concerns about an Attorney General who dismisses action against union thugs at election centers while extending the rights asserted by the U.S. Constitution to admitted enemy combatants.

The November 2010 midterm elections will afford Americans the opportunity to rid itself of as many Democrats as possible in Congress and, presumably, Republicans that will replace them will have learned their lesson since 2006. There is one overriding requirement facing Congress and that is to put our fiscal house in order, pay down debts, and get out of the way of Main Street so they can begin to create jobs again.

The only jobs government can create are government jobs and there are clearly far too many of them.

I must confess I do not see the Obama administration doing any of this. What I expect is more idiotic “Cash for Clunkers” and “Cash for Caulkers” programs, more billions wasted on “clean energy” industries that cannot attract private investment, and in the fullness of time, more revelations about corruption in the body politic.

If the Republic should fail from the prolificacy we are witnessing, it will take all of us with it.

When I listen to politicians arguing the merits of some piece of legislation, I am usually 99% sure they have no idea how demography-—population—-will affect the outcome of their grand schemes.

This is particularly true of advocates of fixed and often flawed ideas about the environment. Most “save the Earth” true believers want to see huge reductions in the population of the planet. They don’t much care for human beings.

Demography is the study of population; focusing on things like fertility rates, aging, ethnic identity, and immigration. Knowing the accurate demographics of a nation is central to its governance and this is particularly true for a democracy. It is no accident that both words have the same root, demos as in people.

Knowing the size and distribution of the U.S. population was a serious concern for the Founders and it is part of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution which states that “[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” Congress first met in 1789, and the first national census was held in 1790.

For the world in general, fertility rates have been falling as more women receive education and become part of the workplace. Higher standards of living and education reduce birth rates. It makes it easier for women to be part of the workforce and households have more money for savings as well as the consumption of goods. As nations like India and China improve their economic status, their populations will stabilize and population growth will slow. The odious one-child policy in China will, in time, pass into history.

Thus, industrialization, the increased spread of electrical power, a global economy with fewer trade restrictions, all will favorably impact population growth by slowing it. In contrast, the objectives of the environmental movement such as the reduction of energy use based on the false assertion that it produces carbon dioxide that, in turn, will heat the Earth, are in direct conflict with population stabilization and reduction.

In the United States, government policies have been in direct contradiction of what native-born and naturalized citizens want. If the latter had there way, there would not have been a sharp increase in the population. Instead, the government has pursued policies that increase, largely through legal and illegal immigration, the number of people in the nation.

In 1970, the U.S. population was about 203 million. This followed the unprecedented “Baby Boom” years,1946-1964. Today the population has surpassed 293 million. These numbers come from the Census Bureau. At no other time in U.S. history have recent immigrants and their children dominated population growth.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s official estimate is that there are eight million illegal immigrants currently in the nation. Most observers of illegal immigrant believe that the actual number range from twelve to seventeen million.

So, since 1970, each Congress and each President has adopted policies not only allowing, but encouraging, legal, and in particular, illegal immigration far above traditional levels and setting the stage for increasing economic and social problems.

As reported by USA Today, the U.S. population is expected to “soar to 438 million by 2050 and the Hispanic population will triple according to projections…by the Pew Reseach Center.

Moreover, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that “the future age structure of the population will be older than it is now. Very nearly 40% will be senior citizens, over 65, by 2050. The last members of the Baby Boom will reach 65 by 2029. All will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare if, in fact, these two entitlement programs have not become insolvent by then.

Here, again, we see government policy ignoring or just ignorant of population changes as the Congress moves toward passing a healthcare reform package that 80% of the voters disapprove; one that will slash a trillion dollars from Medicare funds and institute rationing of care as the number of older Americans increase. The harm to the current healthcare system is incalculable.

In addition, yet another amnesty bill has been introduced in Congress at a time when it is obvious that a growth in the genera population will only exacerbate and increase the costs of educating the children of the newly enfranchised, formerly illegal immigrants, along with the cost providing medical care to those who cannot afford it, and incarcerating those who break the law. These costs will add billions at all levels of society.

So, demographics do matter, even if politicians and other special interests ignore them. They have local, national, and international ramifications as populations either stabilize or increase worldwide.

A lesson for the United States can be drawn from the decline of the Roman Empire. It was a combination of the cost of far-flung military commitments and the invasions of populations from outside of the empire that ultimately caused its collapse through an inability to impose Pax Romana or stop the depredations of northern European tribes and threats from the Huns.

Policies that deliberately deny the benefits of the provision of widespread energy availability and of education to increase literary; policies that deny protection against the scurge of malaria and other diseases; discourage the use of genetically modified crops to avoid deforestation and to provide ample food supplies; policies that impose foolish mandates such as ethanol or even attempt to regulate carbon dioxide with the false claim that it is a harmful gas, all contribute to the waste of the Earth’s greatest resource, its human population.

There are, of course, events beyond our imagination, though not necessarily our control. As the great physicist Albert Einstein warned, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

I am frequently asked how I come up with something new to write about every day, but in fact I write about the same things, the Constitution, energy issues, the global warming fraud, education, immigration, et cetera. There is, however, always something new to address within these and other ongoing topics.

As another weekend beckons, I have any number of questions rambling around in my brain about current events.

Is 2010 the year in which global warming will be officially declared dead?

How is it that the Obama administration can announce it is ready to given $10 BILLION DOLLARS a year to developing nations to help them cope with climate change? First of all, the U.S. is for all intents and purposes broke. We exist off of the billions we have to BORROW DAILY just to function and meet enormous obligations such as Medicare and Social Security payments, pensions, the entire U.S. military, and countless pork projects. We don’t have the money to give and climate change has been around 4.5 billion years.

Why can’t these so-called developing nations—which have been developing since I was born over seventy years ago—start developing a few things themselves, like water purification programs, supporting agriculture through the use of genetically modified seeds so crops can resist drought or insect depredation, or just ensuring that, in some cases, the riches from oil royalties actually gets used to build some schools, health clinics, et cetera?

Friends of the Earth put out a letter to their members saying, “Since day one of the Copenhagen climate summit, our Friends of the Earth delegation has stood with people from African nations, small island states, and other poor countries in demanding climate justice.” What exactly is “climate justice”? The climate is the climate. It has nothing to do with justice. Unless, of course, you think rich countries are responsible for the reason poor countries are poor. In which case, you’re just nuts.

Is it possible that the Democrat Party and its leadership, President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are either stark raving mad or just such dedicated Marxists that they believe the U.S. must be bankrupted with a bizarre healthcare “reform”, taxes on all forms of energy use, and the regulation of the second most vital gas on planet Earth, carbon dioxide, as a “pollutant” that is “harmful” to public health?

Where is the Constitution at work these days except for the extension of its Bill of Rights to foreign combatants who are self-admitted Islamic terrorists that engaged in an act of war called 9/11? Since when do we try war criminals in anything other than military tribunals? The answer is and was never.

How long will it take Iran to launch a missile at Israel after it has put together a nuclear warhead? My guess is about five minutes because the ayatollahs who have been in charge since 1979 see such an act as possibly the sole reason for their Islamic Revolution.

Here’s another random thought. If the Constitution expressly says “No person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” And just what is the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize and how much money comes with the shiny medal, if not a present and emolument? If Congress passed a resolution of consent, I didn’t hear about it.

Monday marks the beginning of winter. For all those global warming enthusiasts, it is a period of deep denial about the fact that the Earth gets particularly cold for several months. To make it worse, having been in a cooling cycle since 1998 winter may stick around longer in the coming decade or two. During the last Little Ice Age, the Thames froze over regularly from 1300 to 1850. Here in America, soldiers billeted at Valley Forge had to endure bitter cold.

By the way, four inches of snow fell on Copenhagen in the last few days. This is considered a blizzard by the Danes because it is an unusual amount for that city.

Santa will arrive next week. I have been a very good little boy.

While it is incontestably true that a lot of people took out mortgage loans they could not afford to replay, it is just as true that they were encouraged to do so because banks were required by federal law to make these bad loans. Bankers even gave them an acronym, “Ninja” loans as in “No Income, No Job, No Assets.”

The result was the government created “housing bubble” that was coupled with the Federal Reserves’ policy of keeping interest rates so low that many were tempted to borrow beyond their means. When the financial crisis struck, these loans were called “toxic assets” requiring billions in taxpayer money to bail out the same banks forced to make them. Mortgage loan companies were not so fortunate.

Consistent with that government inspired economic disaster, however, has been the many ways federal and state governments have found to tax Americans directly and indirectly. A new book, “Bankrupting Joe the Taxpayer”, by D.J. Golio ($24.95/$16.95, Authorhouse, hard and softcover) reveals how taxation and irrational government spending has reached the present point and offers suggestions how to correct it.

A classic example of hidden taxes can be found in your telephone bill. This month mine was $63.00, but $14.00 of it was taxes, so my actual cost was less than $50. This occurs again every time I fill up my gas tank or pay my utility bill. For example, in 2007 the estimated take by states alone in gasoline taxes exceeded $50 billion.

The combined average of all taxes loaded into the price per gallon is approximately 56.4 cents. Fill up with twenty gallons and you’ve paid average federal and state taxes of more than $11.00! And the government has the nerve to call oil companies “greedy.”

One might be inclined to say that this money, if applied to highway and bridge repairs, was worth it, except that these repairs are often ignored by politicians who find that such expenditures are not sexy enough to garner reelection, so we end up with roads filled with potholes and, as occurred not long ago, a bridge collapse. Civil engineers have been warning about these failures for decades.

The gasoline tax is known as an excise tax and Golio points out that they have been around for more than 200 years and are older than income, estate, and gift taxes. They were initially imposed to finance wars.

In 1913, the income tax was introduced and, if the politicians could restrain themselves from spending every cent collected, government might not now be borrowing and, at the same time, raising its debt ceiling. Moreover, the nation might not be on the verge of losing its triple-A rating!

Federal and state governments have found ingenious ways to apply excise taxes. They include, in addition to gasoline and utility taxes, telephone services such as pre-paid phone cards, subscriber line charges, directory listings, WATS services, and long-distance toll charges, among others.

There are taxes on domestic and international air travel, wagering, occupation taxes covering importers and manufactures, firearms and ammunition, oil and chemicals, vaccines, and coal production sales.

As Americans are learning, the definition of “rich” now includes approximately 117 million households. In 2007, one group representing 28% of households that earned between $0 and $25,000 paid no income taxes, but received tax refunds in the form of credits such as earned income and child care. The federal government considers you to be wealthy if you earned $53,000 this year. About 25% of all tax filers fall into this category.

Golio is a Certified Public Accountant with an Masters degree in taxation. He has taught at the college level and knows the present tax system inside and out. He also knows that federal and state governments have long been spending beyond their means and places much of the blame for today’s high rates on the public employee unions that have negotiated huge pension programs well beyond those in the private sector.

These and other compensation, such as healthcare, cost taxpayers millions of dollars in the form of property and other local taxes as states and communities bludgeon homeowners to pay for generous contracts. Despite a failing educational system, teachers and administrators continue to enjoy exceptional terms.

That is why states also impose alcohol taxes, inheritance and estate (death) taxes, tobacco taxes, parking taxes, hotel occupancy taxes, leased vehicle gross receipts taxes, severance taxes in states fortunate enough to have natural resources, in addition to the aforementioned telecommunications and utilities taxes.

In 2008, forty-six states and the District of Columbia collected corporate income taxes and forty-four states and Washington, D.C., collected individual personal income taxes for the privilege of living there.

Entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, both of which could be addressed by private savings and insurance programs, are rapidly reaching insolvency which one might suppose was a strong argument against allowing the government to engage in their provision; particularly since Congress has dipped into the Social Security fund to pay for its endless pork-ridden spending programs.

And, of course, the Obama administration is currently engaged in trying to strip a trillion dollars out of Medicare and to sign up millions more so-called uninsured persons, many of whom are younger citizens, 20 to 40, who see no need to self-insure. If the Medicare “reform” passes, they will be hit up for thousands from their personal income.

It is, however, a matter of law that no one can be turned away and denied medical care at any hospital in the nation.

Americans are vaguely aware that illegal immigration adds enormous costs to the nation’s healthcare, education, and law enforcement functions, but right now in Congress, yet another “amnesty” bill has been introduced, virtually ensuring that millions more will enter the nation illegally in anticipation of a swift path to citizenship. It is a very bad idea.

Current costs associated with illegal immigration range upward to more than $636 billion. Meanwhile, some $235.8 billion is wired to Mexico and Latin America every year by those who have illegally entered the nation. There are 389,000 illegals incarcerated in our prisons and approximately 699,000 who are fugitives!

The real problem, however, in addition to federal spending, are the state legislatures that have abandoned all reason when it comes to spending. There are states like California and New Jersey that are, simply stated, broke.

The fact that the Obama administration has increased the national debt and appears indifferent to public protests against its Medicare “reform” and proposed new taxes on all energy use in the form of “Cap-and-Trade” suggests that it is either infantile or determined to bankrupt the entire nation.

The sad part is that Golio and many others are well aware of what must be done to correct and avoid the horror of America becoming another Zimbabwe, but many Americans have concluded they are powerless to stop it.

It has taken less than a year for most Americans to conclude that the Obama White House is all about appearances. The “Job Summit” is a classic example. Just how does one hold such a conference without inviting representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to participate?

Most administrations worry about their credibility, whether most of the public believes what they are saying, but this one doesn’t really care. The result is an endless succession of staged events in which the hand-picked participants all say what the White House wants.

The December 2nd edition of Business Week, however, had something different to say on the subject of “The Slow Road to Jobs.” Reporter Jane Sasseen began by asking, “Could it take as long as five years for the economy to replace all of the eight million jobs lost since the Great Recession began? The most bearish economists think so.”

“Job creation,” reported Sasseen, “is proving to be painfully slow, and Washington is starting to panic. With unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2% and climbing, the Democrats are scrambling to rev up the economy before the midterm elections next November.” Unofficial estimates put the unemployment rate closer to 17% which would put it in the category of a full-blown Depression.

The notion that the White House or Congress can create any jobs other than government jobs is a fallacy. Real jobs are largely created by small business owners and by major corporate enterprises, but the latter keep leaving the United States because they are paying among the highest corporate taxes to be found anywhere in the world. Neither can plan ahead thanks to the uncertain penalties that Obamacare would impose.

The prospect of an increase in the costs of healthcare insurance and/or the complete government takeover of healthcare is enough to make corporations look for a friendlier place in which to set up shop.

The present recession differs from previous ones. “The U.S. economy, once the greatest job-creation machine in the world, has taken longer and longer to replace the jobs lost in recent recession,” reported Sasseen. “This time could be even worse. U.S. payrolls peaked at 138 million in December 2007; today they stand at roughly 130 million.”

As household and businesses reduce their spending, the prospect of any near-term increase in hiring or economic recovery is unlikely.

The government’s spending binge continues. Fox News reported that “The federal government spent $3.5 trillion during President Obama’s first year in office.”

Though fond of blaming President Bush for all the ills of the economy, President Obama “shattered the budget record for first-year presidents, spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.”

“That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush’s for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.”

The stimulus bill has billions allocated for so-called “green jobs” in the area of solar, wind, and biofuels; so-called “renewable energy.” In a December 2 commentary in The Washington Examiner, Thomas J. Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research pointed out that, “At the height of its construction this past summer, the largest solar plant in the United States employed 400 workers. Now that it’s complete, the DeSoto Solar Center in Arcadia, Florida, stakes claim to two – yes two – full time ‘green jobs.’”

Contrast this with an estimated 1.2 million energy jobs that would be made available if the Obama administration would permit exploration of the nation’s vast continental shelf for the vast oil and natural gas resources going untapped. There are an estimated 115 billion barrels of recoverable oil and more than 565 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Institute for Energy Research estimates those jobs would generate $70 billion in annual wages. Then add in the savings in the cost of importing these energy sources, plus the bonus if increased national security.

The costs of the proposed economy-killing healthcare “reform” could be reduced starting with tort reform, opening the marketplace for the sale of insurance, and a serious effort to reduce the estimated $70 billion in Medicare fraud.

Instead of taking billions out of Medicare and thus likely causing some hospitals to shut down and the widespread denial of care to the millions of seniors who paid into the system, the Obama administration is more focused on government control of one-sixth of the economy. Or what will be left of it after they run it into the ground.

All manner of steps could be taken to energize the economy, not the least of which would be tax cuts that would encourage spending and hiring.

But no, the Obama administration would rather put on a show for the cameras.