Are We Becoming a Dictatorship?

The following excerpt is from an article here.

the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

Now this is indeed draconian. The idea that a few people in our government could have the power to set the wages of anyone working for any company that takes bailout funds from the government – even retroactively – is right out of the book I’m reading, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.

This is exactly one step from true totalitarianism – and that is the part about ‘companies that take bailout money’. That is the only limit to this power.

How long do you think it will take them to extend this to all wages, everywhere? If this passes next week, all it will take is one little additional change to the law. Or for them to offer a ‘tax rebate’ to companies like they did to individuals last year. Then they’d have the pretext they would need to set wages for everyone.

I personally think that certain of these congress-critters are getting too blamed big for their britches.

-Popgun

My Dad Shot Maxwell Smart

Once upon a time, when I was about 12 years old, my Dad shot Maxwell Smart.

It happened like this:

Dad had bought himself a used Belgium Browning .22 rifle, take-apart; it was the same as the one in this picture:

Like all parents, my Dad had his moments. And like any owner of a new gun, Dad liked to fool around with it. One evening, we were all in the living room watching TV. This was about the time Bonanza was released in color. This was far enough back that Bonanza was just about the ONLY show in color. Since we couldn’t afford a color TV, we watched our black & white TV. This particular evening, we were watching Maxwell Smart.

Mom was reclining on the couch at the left of the room; I was in the love-seat on the right. Dad was in the middle, in his recliner with his feet up. I think he had probably had a few beers by then. He was resting the barrel of his .22 between his big toe and his second toe of his right foot. He squeezed off a shot. And hit Maxwell Smart right between the eyes.

As I watched Maxwell Smart fade away, the screen of the TV instantly imploded, going absolutely flat, with about a million cracks. Joseph the dog started barking, Mom started crying hysterically, I jumped up to see what happened, and Dad was laughing his head off. Dad, of course, had not realized it was loaded.

And that’s how we got our first color TV.

I told you that one so I could tell you this one.

For my 13th birthday, Dad gave me a Belgium Browning .22 just like his – only it was brand new. This was my first real gun, and I was very excited. So Dad wanted to show me how to run the gun; we went to find something to shoot at. It was a beautiful, unusually warm November day.

We got in his VW Beetle, and drove around to some woods Dad had access to. Dad claimed to see a squirrel in a big oak tree probably fifty feet away, and told me to shoot it. Not seeing the squirrel, I asked Dad where it was – he said “See that knot on the left side about two-thirds of the way up?”

There were about 20,000 knots on that tree, so I picked one and said “Sure.” And I shot it.

To my great surprise (and Dad’s great pleasure) a squirrel fell out of the tree. I had shot it right through the ear – never having seen it until it fell. This was miraculous to me, but Dad was really proud I was doing so well. So after we calmed down, we got back in the VW.

I was wearing flip-flops, and I had the barrel of the gun resting between, you guessed it, my big toe and my second toe. At this point, I wondered if I had the safety on – and I pulled the trigger to find out. I shot a hole in the bottom of Dad’s Beetle (and through my flip-flop).

Dad shouted “What did you do?!?” and I told him. Together, we leaned over and looked at the floorboard of the VW. There was a .22 sized hole there, but the rubber coating of the floorboard slowly closed up until you couldn’t see it, even as we watched. I figured I was in big trouble.

Dad looked over at me and said “Don’t tell your mother.”

And that’s all that was ever said about it. After all, what could he say?

I guess the branch doesn’t fall far from the tree. I do have to say that Dad taught me nothing about gun safety – I learned that elsewhere, somewhat later – and today I place a very high priority on gun safety. Oh, and I still have the Browning. And all my toes.

Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the time he shot a hole in the back door.

-Popgun

Where Is Mexico Getting Guns?

I keep hearing on the news that the Mexican drug syndicates are getting all their guns from the U.S.; mostly purchased at gun shows and then transported across the border. Nearly every news article on the subject of Mexican drug violence makes this claim.

I’d like to see proof. It would be instructional to see an actual inventory of captured weapons. Does anybody out there know where to find such a list?

While it’s probably true that some guns are being smuggled, I doubt that they are being regularly acquired via straw purchases at gun dealers, or at gun shows. The sheer number of guns in use would seem to rule this out, at least as a general thing.

Although my information is limited, from what I’ve read, the great majority of the non-pistol weapons that have been confiscated are fully automatic weapons – not so easy to get here in the U.S. It has also been in the news that the drug gangs have also recently used grenades. Where did they get them?

My opinion, based on available evidence, is that the great majority of firearms being used by the drug cartels are being acquired from the world-wide black market rather than smuggling from the United States. It would be much more efficient and cost-effective for these cartels to buy in bulk than to do straw purchases at dealers and gun shows in the U.S. It simply doesn’t make sense for them to buy guns one or two at a time.

The entire notion that the liberal news media is pushing about the source of these guns being the United States appears to be propaganda put forth by anti-gun factions in the United States, to further their anti-gun agenda.

I hate being lied to. You really have to do some research and spend some time thinking to get some idea of the truth. You won’t find it in the broadcast news, that’s for sure. They repeat their propaganda so frequently that pretty soon most people accept it as fact. (The issue of global warming is another example of this – have you done any of your own research?).

They want you to believe that taking away MY guns will somehow keep them out of the hands of drug-gangs. Let me explain something to you. I live a few hundred miles from the border – I may well need my guns to protect my family – from those gangs, as well as your run-of-the-mill crooks.

I once calculated that the odds are about 1 in 16 that I would actually need to use my guns in self defense at some point in the remainder of my life (based on 20 more years, and statistics from www.gunfacts.info). The violence spilling out of Mexico changes those odds radically upward. If you live in a state bordering Mexico, now would be a good time to get guns and ammo, and perhaps a concealed handgun license. Time may be short.

-Popgun

Atlas Shrugged

I’m about half-way through Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

I got started on this out of curiosity – I kept seeing references to John Galt, on protest signs at the Tea Parties. So I looked it up – and he’s in this book. Spooky – references to “Who is John Galt?”

It’s amazing. Published in 1957, it could have been written with the present administration and push towards liberalism and redistribution of wealth in mind. Today, the fed wants power to take over control of private companies. It’s in Atlas Shrugged. This book is almost prophetic.

It’s about a thousand pages. I can’t wait to see how it comes out. I’ll let you know what I think when I get finished.

ADDENDUM: Wesley Mouch, of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, sounds amazingly like Treasure Secretary Timothy Geithner as he seeks power to take over companies as he sees fit.

-Popgun

TAX, Revisited

They’re working up to voting on this even as I write this.

See my previous article on taxes. Some of this is covered there.

A 3.6 Trillion Dollar Budget. With an anticipated 1 Trillion Dollar DEFICIT each year for the next ten years. Given that there are approximately 138 million tax payers as of 2007. Let’s think about these things a bit.

$3,600,000,000,000 divided by 138,000,000 taxpayers equals $26,087 – for EACH taxpayer for THIS year. That’s an average as if everybody is paying the same.

Taxpayers making over $250,000 a year comprise about 2% of all taxpayers. So there are about 2,760,000 taxpayers in this category. And there are about 135,240,000 “normal” taxpayers.

If the ‘normal’ taxpayer pays around $6000 a year, then that’s a total of $811,440,000,000 paid by them.

That leaves $2,788,560,000,000 to be paid by the 2%, or $1,010,347.83 PER TAXPAYER making over $250,000 a year. This is ridiculous on the face of it.

That’s what happens if we pay for this year’s budget this year. Not very fair. In point of fact, probably not even possible.

Now, let’s think about the predicted One trillion dollar deficit per year, for each of the next ten years:

To keep it simple, that’s $7,246.38 per taxpayer in the U.S. It sounds like that’s not so bad, but this is the DEFICIT – this is the amount per taxpayer that the government is expected to spend each year that is NOT paid by by your taxes in the year it is spent.

At the end of ten years, then, we will have accumulated a debt of $72,463.80 for every taxpayer in the United States.

Plus interest.

Oh, and on the totally contradictory side – Obama says that he will cut the deficit in half in this term as President. Go figure. (Oh yeah – that’s what I’ve been doing… figuring…)

UPDATE: Woops – it’s worse than I thought. I forgot to figure in the existing national debt. It’s already over $11 trillion dollars…

There is one caveat to my arithmetic – it assumes that Obama is going to keep his campaign promise of ‘no new taxes, not one dime, for anybody making less than $250,000′. But if the carbon cap & trade part of this passes, we will see a huge increase in the cost of electricity and gasoline which constitutes an indirect tax on the consumer – thus breaking that campaign promise. And in any case, the total tax burden is as listed above.

Health care reform, and carbon cap & trade, and education are all important and nice to have. But the fact is, we can’t pay for them.

Somehow, spending this money is supposed to ‘fix the economy’. Friends, Obama’s policy is not only unworkable, it will do more damage to the U.S. economy than anything that has ever happened to this country. So says nearly all economists that don’t work for Obama, even those in other countries. Apparently, the only economists that think Obama’s plan will work seem to be those that are on his payroll.

The thing that scares me most is that I believe that Obama knows this. Anybody that can run a spreadsheet can work this out. Clearly, Obama feels it is more important to push his socialist, liberal agenda through while he has a chance of doing so.

If we can’t reign this guy in, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives regretting it.

-Popgun

The Biggest Hoax of All Time

The biggest hoax of all time is being perpetrated. That is the global warming myth, upon which our illustrious government is basing their economic policies.

Some real, live scientists debunk it. Truly good graphs of what the climate is actually doing. Go here to read about it.

-Popgun

So Who Are You Going to Believe?

Interesting. From Fox News:

The Democrats say:

Joe Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein said:

“What we do expect … <is> energy reform, health care reform, education, all done in the context of a budget that cuts the deficit in half over our first term.”

White House Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer said:

“we know that forecasts — both of what the economy is going to do and of what the budget deficits are going to do — are highly uncertain.”

<I am> “Incredibly confident. … We absolutely think that they are going to do the job for the American economy.”

The Republicans say:

Senator Judd Gregg said:

“The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States. There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget over the 10-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt; our dollar will become devalued.”

Senator Susan Collins said:

“It would double the public debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years. … That is not sustainable. It poses a threat to the basic health of our economy.”

The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) predicts:

“a deficit of $2.3 trillion worse than what the administration projected.”

My Opinion Is:

The Democrats have an agenda that includes social engineering as well as getting our economy back on track. They have a vested interest that diverges from the pure goal of saving our economy. Remember the phrase you keep hearing from them – “Never waste a good crisis“.

It appears to me that the Democrats are willing to gamble on the economy, knowing that once their social programs are installed it will be very difficult to remove them. Thus their headlong rush to push these programs through at any cost, disguised as ’stimulus’.

Already they have pushed through massive programs without even giving the congress time to read the bills, claiming that the emergency wouldn’t wait a few days – yet the Porkulus does not seem to have had any immediate impact on the economy.

Many knowledgeable voices are saying that the current administration’s direction is dangerous and foolhardy that it would be wise to exercise caution. In point of fact, I think Obama’s budget will do more harm to the United States than any President has ever managed to do before.

We need to do what we can to stop Obama’s budget from passing. Write your congress-critters!

-Popgun

OK, This One’s for Ali

Quite a long time ago, say about 51 years ago, my sister decided to dig a swimming pool. She was about eight years old at the time. Having secured our father’s permission, she started digging a hole in the back yard with a short-handled square-pointed spade.

After she got the hole a couple of feet deep and maybe the same square, I got the bright idea of jumping in the hole to see how deep it was. I believe I was about four years old, to put it in perspective. Anyhow, I jumped down into the hole – while my sister was still digging. She stabbed my left foot with the shovel, completely unintentionally, leaving a scar running parallel to my toes right in between my third and forth toes, which remains visible to this day.

After I got bandaged up, sister spent the rest of the evening riding me around on her bicycle, she felt so bad about it, even though it was entirely my fault. That pretty much did it for the swimming pool.

I told you that one so I could tell you this one. Many years later…

When my son J was quite young, he decided he wanted a real swimming pool. He pestered me unmercifully about it. That being an expense that was totally beyond us, of course I wouldn’t (couldn’t) bend on this.

He was such a pest about it that finally, in a fit of aggravation, I told him that if he’d dig the hole, I’d buy the concrete – never believing for a moment that he would actually dig a big enough hole for a real swimming pool. After all, hadn’t my sister given up on the same thing after only a couple of hours of digging? I figured he’d never pull it off, and I’d never have to deliver.

The little wart got to work.

He even recruited the neighbor’s son, a la Tom Sawyer, getting him to come over to dig and telling him how much fun they were having.

I started to worry that I might actually have to pay for having a pool put in. Which was simply beyond my resources at the time.

When the hole was about 8′ square by a couple of feet deep, I had to break it to him – that even if he did finish the hole, I couldn’t afford to keep my end of the bargain. I learned a valuable lesson; To never make a promise I couldn’t keep, even if I never thought I’d have to deliver. ESPECIALLY if I was dealing with J.

The blasted hole is still there, being a problem when I mow. He had scattered the dirt so that there wasn’t enough to fill it back in. Anyhow; that’s the story of the swimming pool, and the broken contract.

Sorry, J.

Love,

-Popgun

Bonuses

It looks like they’re going to try to tax away the bonuses received by those AIG managers and others who work for companies that have accepted bailout money.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not happy about those huge bonuses. Those people make more money in a year than I will probably see in my lifetime, and I doubt that level of compensation is justifiable for what they actually do.

But a deal is a deal. Those contracts were signed in good faith by AIG and their employees before the bailout and before the government got involved. No matter how you slice it, a deal is a deal.

For the government to come in and nullify a contract is clearly illegal. If contracts are no good, we have no basis for doing any sort of business.

Punitive taxes on those who weren’t doing anything illegal or wrong at the time those contracts were signed is wrong, too, in my view. Because, who will the government go after next? There has to be some limit on who and how the government can levy taxes against. This particular case seems to have aspects of a vendetta – or a witch hunt.

I can certainly understand making huge bonuses illegal on future business that takes a bailout; and even requiring that such a law override preexisting contracts; – but doing it retroactively stinks.

-Popgun

Veteran’s Benefits, Revisited

Nancy Pelosi said:

“President Obama listened to the genuine concerns expressed by the veteran service organizations regarding the option of billing service-connected injuries to veterans’ insurance companies,” said Pelosi. “Based on the respect President Obama has for veterans and the principle concerns of our veteran leaders, the president made the decision that combat wounds should not be billed through their insurance policies.”

Nancy Pelosi, as always, is full of – well, I don’t really like to say things like that.

If Obama had any respect for veterans, or even any moral sense at all, he would not have considered this for a moment. No decent American would have considered it, much less attempted to implement it. The ONLY reason Obama backed down was the massive outcry against it.

Obama does not deserve my respect.

-Popgun