The Heritage Foundation explains the current state of the Administration's response to the oil spill.  Which is in a word, "nothing."  Is Obama really stupid enough to mishandle this?  Or is he doing it on purpose?  You be the judge.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/12/morning-bell-oil-spill-response-is-stuck-on-stupid/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

The NC legislature is preparing to vote on a measure to use taxpayer funds to pay for political campaigns.  This would use limited funds from the state (your tax dollars) which should be going to fund infrastructure, roads, education, etc.

Remember, if a politician is willing to let their vote be decided by their campaign donors, public funding is not going to stop them from taking a bribe.

I called 747-7555 and the mailbox was full. So I called (919) 733-5621 (http://www.capwiz.com/americansforprosperity/issues/alert/?alertid=15217571&type=ST) and was able to speak to a young guy that tried to answer questions about House bill 120 scheduled for debate later this morning. The Senate bill 20 will not be discussed until the house debate is completed and passed. Apparently, this legislation was previously amended to House bill 961 (an ethics bill in regards to campaign financing if you can believe that) but was stripped out because it was holding up the passage of its parent bill.

House bill 120 supposedly would provide funds for all candidates not just the candidates supported by the state and local municipalities or its leaders. Any candidate would have the option to "opt out" if they wanted to run their campaign on traditional funding sources (non taxpayer dollars). There was no mention of a cap but I was assured it was a non discriminatory bill.

When I posed the question about why taxpayer dollars taken from the general fund would be used to pay for any candidates campaign instead of increasing the number of first responders to decrease response times in life threatening emergencies from 10-15 minutes per call to less than 5 minutes he responded with "I see your point."  So raising mil levies would not only provide funding for paving streets, improving our educational system, etc., it would be used to fund local candidates campaigns that do not have the resources to raise their own funds. My conclusion is this. Its another welfare\entitlement program for "want to be" politicians. If this passes and the state or municipalities have to help fund 30-40 new political campaigns every two years (remember its non discriminatory so they have to provide funds to everyone that wants to run for any office seat), where does that leave the general fund? Broke! And you (the taxpayer) have no say in who gets the funds. Your taxpayer dollars could be used to fund candidates that promote agendas like increased spending, big government, more entitlement programs, illegal immigrant amnesty, abortions, racism, etc.

If you don't call and voice your opinion in opposition you are supporting this outrageous legislation!

Jeff Nice

Ask your representative this:

"Do you think that your representation will be less corrupt because of public financing? And what private donors have influenced your votes in the past that public funding would have prevented?"

See what they have to say about that.

Who doesn't want to see some kind of reform to prevent the financial meltdown we've seen in our country?  Ask just about anybody, and they'll tell you they want something done to fix it.  Well, now they'll get it.

Financial reform is coming down from our Congress and seems to be gaining pretty wide support.  Republicans are objecting to a $50 billion dollar bailout fund, and Democrats even seem to agree with this.  Almost as if it was put there just to have something that Republicans would object to, only so the Democrats would "concede" and remove the provision.

The financial reform will create many new government agencies.  Why does it do this?  Well, the host of financial regulatory agencies created by the government in previous bills aren't doing their jobs and/or are completely dysfunctional.  If your car breaks down, you go out and buy a new one - and keep the old one, right?  Well, now we have a new bill that creates new agencies - but these will work because they're "better."

Much of the bill is devoted to telling non-bank financial institutions how much liquidity they must have or at least have access to.  While this can dampen a market slowdown, it's not likely to stop a national meltdown of the entire housing market.

Well, really, most of this started because of defaults on mortgages.  Banks lent money to home buyers who couldn't afford to repay, pretty stupid on their part.  Mortgages were put together into bundles, which were then rated by government-approved ratings agencies.  Investors bought and sold these bundles according to the ratings since these were essentially government-approved ratings.  Then AAA rated mortgages went kablooey and defaulted all at once.

So the financial reform legislation will create an agency to oversee the credit rating companies.  Oh, and if you buy some government-rated investments that go belly-up, you can sue the ratings companies.  Pretty nifty if you're the government and you want to be able to exert pressure at any point in our economy arbitrarily high atop your "progressively better view."  I'm sure a bunch of Senators are qualified to fix economic policies while running astronomical deficits, huge unemployment, and looming unsustainable national debt.

But wait a minute - weren't these ratings companies were already government-approved?  Wasn't the SEC already watching Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff?  Wasn't US housing policy encouraging lending to less-qualified buyers?  Weren't government-backed loans allowing buyers to borrow more than a home was worth with no money down?

Come on, this isn't a used car lot.  This is the United States of America.  The most free and wealthy nation on earth.  Maybe if mortgages are only given to qualified buyers and then these are allowed to be rated by competitive ratings companies, and then existing agencies do their damn job that we're already paying them to do, then we would have financial reform.

Let's boil it down.  The bill amounts to a lot of new government control that will be ratcheted up when a Democrat sits in the White House, then wound down when a Republican is in power, and back and forth like so.  In another 10 years, we'll trash our economy again, all of these new agencies will be defunct, so we'll leave them there and create a bunch of new agencies.  Same game, new name.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/23/pm-credit-ratings-agencies-reform-bill-change/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gF0kwIAtxgclssb3eUF6x534HLjQD9F8VGKG1

Here is the information for the budget proposal from Bev Perdue.  You should look through this, and then call your representatives to let them know what you think.  Remember, everyone in the private sector has had to tighten their belts.  The public sector should not continue to expand on the backs of those who are left trying to grow our economy.  Since a government doesn't produce consumables, and expanding government is not capable of growing our economy.

http://www.governor.state.nc.us/budget/

If you're too stupid to make your own choice of how much salt you want, don't worry, the FDA will be making this choice for you.  You wanted to know how the federal government will try to reduct health care spending costs?  Restricting your lifestyle choices seems to be a good option for them.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/the-fda-plans-to-force-a-massive-salt-cutback/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWPzur4NCKW0O98FXg8DtBEyag8QD9F6T1D02

If you don't think that you are a moron, contact your representative.

Any federally-funded construction project over $25 million will have to be built using union labor, which excluded 85% of contractors.  Yes, this is by executive order from your President of the United States, Obama.  Yes, this stuff comes so fast and so hard that sometimes it seems like a fairy tale.  When even the SFGate is knocking it, it's got to be pretty bad.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/12/bloomberg1376-L0TRND1A74E9-3.DTL

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303695604575182333308913608.html

What is going on?  Everyone wants to know.  For someone who doesn't normally follow these markets, it took me two days just to find out.  I had to wade through all the junk articles trying to ride the back of the media wave but didn't provide any useful information about what happened.

The timing is a smart move for policy makers.  Now you know why these charges haven't come sooner.  Regulatory reform is coming at a rapid pace (see our previous blog entry for details) and this will make a pretty strong case that will make it difficult for banks and the markets to oppose.  Doesn't really matter what's in the reform bill, people are asking for blood, now they can get a little taste.  I'm sure we'll get to read the bill after it's passed.

Here's a few articles that explain the whole Goldman Sachs debacle:

NY Times - Goldman Sach's dirty deal

Business Week - Market reaction to charges

Business Week - The Deal Details and Key Players

Basically, Goldman Sachs coordinated a deal in which CDO's picked by ACA (an investment organization) were sold to IKB and other banks.  One of Goldman's customers, Paulson & Co, made a bet that the CDO's would fail.  When the CDO's failed, Paulson made $1 billion.  The charges by the SEC are that Goldman VP Fabrice Tourre not only knew that Paulson had bet against the CDO's, but he knew that Paulson had helped to select the securities in the CDO's and that these details were not disclosed to the buyers.  This will be a case of  "who knew what and when?"

The timing practically guarantees that financial reform will pass with overwhelming popular support.  Time to learn more about the financial reform package, does it provide a $50 billion bailout fund, will the banks be broken up, and what transactions will get consolidated?

Update 1: It should be noted that Paulson & Co's actions were not only legal, apparently they were common in the industry. The banks getting the CDO's would have known this was common practice This SEC action is based on whether Goldman needed to make disclosures since they were basically marketing the CDO's.  Many believe CDO's should never have been legal since they aren't required to be actually backed by an asset, but are a bet on the success of an asset.

Update 2:  Countrywide's SEC suit and now a federal probe - (Also in AP )

Financial reform is now coming at us fast and furious.  How much do you know about it?  What needs to be reformed?  Who needs to be reformed?  What does reform mean?  Who will be controlling the financial markets?

I don't know.  This is a highly complex issue.  But, never fear, the Internet has plenty of news articles discussing what we're doing.  Get educated, call you congressmen (http://www.greeneteaparty.org/Elections_and_Candidates.html) and let them know what you think.  Leave comments and let us know what you think about it.

Here are some news stories and articles relevant to the current debate.  Get your congressmen on speeddial and call them up.  Ask questions and find out what kinds of changes we can expect to see.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E5QE20100416?feedType=RSS
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304628704575186423079992684.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703312504575141703012449686.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/fixing_the_financial_crisis_fi.html

Update 1: Track the bill - http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3217

After watching the video on this website, you have to ask, maybe they really don't get it?  Maybe they misunderstand that bailing out local governments doesn't create jobs and doesn't spur economic growth?  Maybe they don't realize that in order to maintain government, they need tax revenues created by growing businesses and industry?  Maybe they don't realize that sending a check to a local government doesn't cause businesses to generate more revenue and in turn more tax dollars?

Or maybe they do understand.  Ultimately, socialists believe that they can run all industries better than the private sector.  Why would they help businesses and industry to grow when they plan on either taking them over or regulating them into complete government control?

Maybe they realize that it's easier to pay people to stay at home while they socialize our country rather than help them get back to work and grow the economy?

It's not an accident.  It's not that they don't understand.  Obama said he would fundamentally change the direction of our country.  Here is the change he was talking about.  Almost everything in this video explains how the recovery helped out local governments.  The socialists want it to be OK that private sector tax dollars are used to pay cushy public sector protected jobs at the expense of economic growth, job growth, and the freedom of the American people.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/Recovery

Obama's biggest tax increases will be on the middle class and they will have nothing to do with health care.  With a new "value added tax" that adds levels of taxation to most products and services where they have never been taxed before, the prices of things you buy every day would be increased dramatically.  We know that our current government spending is unsustainable and taxes must be increased in order to continue spending.  If you thought the economy was slow now, compared to this you thought wrong.

http://www.examiner.com/x-42345-Tea-Party-Examiner~y2010m4d8-White-House-advisor-recommends-implementation-of-a-value-added-tax

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303720604575170320672253834.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop