Jesus and the Democrat

A Republican in a wheelchair entered a restaurant one afternoon and asked the waitress for a cup of coffee. The Republican looked across the restaurant and asked, 'Is that Jesus sitting over there?'

The waitress nodded 'yes,' so the Republican requested that she give Jesus a cup of coffee, on him.

The next patron to come in was a Libertarian with a hunched back. He shuffled over to a booth, painfully sat down, and asked the waitress for a cup of hot tea. He also glanced across the restaurant and asked, 'Is that Jesus over there?'

The waitress nodded, so the Libertarian asked her to give Jesus a cup of hot tea, 'My treat.'

The third patron to come into the restaurant was a Democrat on crutches. He hobbled over to a booth, sat down and hollered, 'Hey there, honey! How's about getting' me a cold glass of Miller Light?' He, too, looked across the restaurant and asked, 'Is that God's boy over there?'

The waitress once more nodded, so the Democrat directed her to give Jesus a cold glass of beer. 'On my bill,' he said.

As Jesus got up to leave, he passed by the Republican, touched him and said, 'For your kindness, you are healed.'

The Republican felt the strength come back into his legs, got up, and danced a jig out the door.

Jesus also passed by the Libertarian, touched him and said, 'For your kindness, you are healed.' The Libertarian felt his back straightening up, and he raised his hands, praised the Lord and did a series of back flips out the door.

Then Jesus walked towards the Democrat. The Democrat jumped up and yelled, 'Don't touch me .. I'm collecting disability.'

Historic Election Results

It will be very interesting to see how Obama responds to this historic transfer of power in the House.  Clearly voters were not voting for Repulicans but against the over reaching policies of the Obama Administration.


Will he still refuse to listen to "We the People?" Will he continue to call people who disagree with him enemies?  Will he continue to insist on a European style of Socialism?  Will he take responsibility for his actions and stop blaming Republicans?

The House needs to understand that they were sent to Washington to stop the excessive spending, reduce the size of government and to reduce the defecit.  It is clear that if the newly elected House members do not listen to the will of the people, they will be tossed out in the next election.

The American people expect and deserve results.

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like?

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000 and fits in your pocket easily.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...

And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...

Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It's pretty surprising.

Go ahead...

Scroll down...

Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...

Notice those pallets are double stacked.

...and remember those are $100 bills.

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.

It is time we stop tossing these numbers around like they are nothing.  We have become desensitized and need to recognize that a billion is a lot and a trillion is way more than we should even be considering. 

Hopefully this Tuesday you will make your voice heard and send a message to our elected officials that we need to manage the governmental budget like we do our own household budget.  We don't spend more than we have and we don't spend everything we make.  We put money aside for a "rainy" day and we only spend what we need to spend.  Let's get people in office that understand this and that can get this country back on firm financial footing.

Health Care Hoopla

Look for the administration to begin a media blitz on specific provisions of the health care bill that take effect this week.
Leave it to a politician to time the changes in the law to the election cycle. Democrats purposely made these provisions effective just before the election because they thought they would be perceived as consumer friendly and therefore equate to votes.

What the administration will tout as great for the consumer actually is expensive to the insurer, so as a result they are being force to raise rates to pay for the mandated changes. Instead of acknowledging that these mandated changes have any cost, this administration simply criticizes the insurance companies for raising rates.

Since when did every business in this country become a non-profit? Oh yeah, Jan. 2009. Under this administration any company that makes a profit is frowned upon and immediately a candidate for investigation and further government scrutiny.
Regulated mandates have a cost despite what politicians will have you believe. So not only are we spending way more money than we take in each month, we are taking more and more money out of the taxpayer’s pocket through all of this government intervention.

So what are the health care changes that are going to take effect this Thursday?

1. Children over 18, but under the age of 25 can now remain on their parents' health plan.
Most insurers already provide this coverage as long as the child is a student. This change is likely to help some jobless young adults. Rules adopted after the law passed say insurers must charge the same for children regardless of age. That is good news for those with infants and older children who buy individual coverage—they previously paid more to cover the expensive first two years and those in their 20s—bad news for most others. What this means for insurers is more people insured on the same policy.

2. Preventive Care - New plans, sold after 9-23-10, must provide dozens of preventive services without charging a copayment. While a nice idea, it has cost implications for the insurance companies in the form of lost revenue formerly provided in the form of copayments.

3. Removal of Lifetime Benefit Cap - No lifetime limits on benefit payouts. Most plans today have some maximum amount that the insurance company will pay out over the lifetime of an individual. Many employer sponsored plans have lower lifetime limits than plans purchased by individuals. Again, while a nice idea, it is not without financial impact to the insurance company.

4. Phase out of Annual Limits – similar to the lifetime limit on benefits, this ruling begins to phase out annual limits on benefit payouts, starting by making the limit no less than $750,000. Several employer and individual plans can either get a waiver or will be exempt.

5. Pre-Existing Condition waiver for children - Insurers can't deny children coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Regulators broadened the provision so that insurers, in effect, must guarantee coverage to all consumers under age 19.

While it is hard to argue that these changes are not beneficial to consumers, for the most part, it is also equally true to state that these come at a cost. Then when the insurers try to point out this fact they are threatened by the current administration.

In fact, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association of health insurers, calling on their members to stop using scare tactics and misinformation to falsely blame premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act. She further warned insurers that states have new resources under the Affordable Care Act to crack down on unjustified premium increases.

I am fed up with playing politics with every aspect of our life. Can anyone in Washington be honest with “We the People?”

Exercise your Civic Duty

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 is Election Day in Wisconsin and your vote is important.

Many people complain about their elected officials, but when you ask, you find out they didn’t even bother to vote. If you won’t even take time to vote you have no right to complain.

I was curious about the voting behavior of Wisconsin residents so I visited the Wisconsin Governmental Accountability Board website and found some interesting statistics. Care to guess what percent of the eligible population in Wisconsin voted in the last September primary race?

In Sept, 2008, only 8.9% of the eligible voters bothered to vote in the primary. That is the lowest voter turnout in a September primary since they began tracking this in 1948. Over 81% of the eligible voters in the State didn’t think it was important enough for them to take time and cast a vote. No wonder we get the kind of representation we do.

The best turnout for a Sept. primary was in 1952 with 38.9% of population voting. Normally, the Sept. election has less than 25% of the eligible voters participating. People in Iraq were willing to risk being shot to participate in the election process. Where is that same passion here?

The numbers are a bit better when you look at the general election, especially when there is a Presidential race, but still 30-40% don’t bother to vote.

Tomorrow expectations are for a strong turnout but that equates to only 28% of the eligible population bothering to cast a vote. The stakes could not be higher with this election and I am just shocked and amazed that more people won’t be compelled to have their voice heard. Have we become that pathetic as an electorate or are we so disgusted with our leaders that we have decided no matter what we do it won’t make a difference?

But what is worse than not voting is casting an uninformed vote. Nothing irritates me more than someone who votes for someone because someone else told them to vote for that person. While you have the right to cast a vote, I believe you have a responsibility to take the time to understand the people on the ballot and their view on the issues.

Specific to Wisconsin, I have issues with the switching of parties for the primary so as to affect the results of the general election. A perfect case in point is the Governor’s race where it has been encouraged by many Democratic organizations that normally Democratic voters vote the Republican ballot instead of the Democratic ballot. The sole purpose of doing so it to vote for Mark Neumann, in hopes that he defeats Scott Walker.

Other states require you to register a Democrat or Republican and then you can only vote the ballot for the party to which you are registered. While it is nice that Wisconsin allows an open primary, it is games like these that undermine the reason why the primaries are open.

When you have such low turnouts in the primaries, tactics like those being proposed by the Democrats might influence the election. While there is nothing illegal about what the Democrats are proposing, it is unfortunate that they need to rely on such slimy tactics.

Let’s hope that Republicans have a chance to determine which candidate they want to place on the ballot for the general election and it is not determined by desperados who think the only way the can win is to hijack the system.

No mater what your political persuasion, please review the candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice on Tuesday.

HOW TO SELL TOOTHBRUSHES

(Thanks Sue Foley for Sharing)

The kids filed back into class Monday morning. They were very excited. Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship.

Little Sally led off: "I sold Girl Scout cookies and I made $30," she said proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civic spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success."

"Very good," said the teacher.

Little Jenny was next:

"I sold magazines," she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events."

"Very good, Jenny," said the teacher..

Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn.

The teacher held her breath ...

Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467," he said.

"$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?"

"Toothbrushes," said Little Johnny.

"Toothbrushes!" echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?"

"I found the busiest corner in town," said Little Johnny. "I set up a Chip & Dip stand and gave everybody who walked by a free sample. They all said the same thing, 'Hey, this tastes like dog shit!' Then I would say, 'It is dog shit. Wanna buy a toothbrush?' I used the governmental approach of giving people something for free, and then making them pay to get the shitty taste out of their mouth."

Pay for Performance? Not at Fannie Mae

With all the outrage by the Obama administration relative to executive compensation at banks, why is the pay czar not concerned about the excessive pay at Fannie Mae?


If you look at the executive compensation table below you can see that Michael Williams was paid $6.68 million last year at a time when Fannie posted a ($71) billion dollar loss. That was after a ($58.7) billion dollar loss in 2008 when Mr. Williams was paid just under $7.1 million. So much for “pay for performance.”

Let’s make this even simpler. In 2008 Fannie lost ($8,270) for every dollar Mr. Williams received in total compensation. In 2009 the story got even worse. Fannie lost even more money in 2009, but Mr. Williams only saw a 5% reduction in his compensation, while losses at the company increased 22.9%. As a result, for every dollar that Mr. Williams received in compensation in 2009, Fannie lost ($10,722)!!

Let’s not demonize some about executive compensation and give others a free pass. Through the end of 2009, the government poured some $125 billion of capital into Fannie and Freddie and they still want more. They have received more federal aid than any other financial in this crisis and yet they are exempt from all the financial reform, including executive compensation.

Most of the banks have already repaid their TARP money and turned a profit for the government. With all the hand wringing about TARP, at the end of the day, if you take out all the non-financials, like GM, Chrysler, AIG, etc. you will find that the government actually made money with the TARP program. While the program has been demonized in the press as a taxpayer, I would do it all again, except I would keep it to banks and not car companies and insurance companies. Name me another government program that actually returns more money to the Treasury than it initially took.

It is hard to fight facts, so let’s keep the dialogue to the facts and quit using rhetoric, scare tactics and populist language to talk about these government programs.

The Facts about Health Care Reform Part 1

I expect this to be one of many posts I do relative to the new health care law the President Obama signed. Most Americans, and I would venture to say, most politicians who voted on this, have no clue what was actually signed into law. I hope to shed some light on some of what is actually in this bill.

Here is my first installment after getting through the first 44 pages, of which the first 17 were the table of contents.

Talk about a blank check. Below is the actual wording on page 40 of the new Health Care Law. $30 million in initial funding to carry out tracking of consumer problems, assisting with customer complaints, education on consumer rights and responsibilities related to group health plans, assisting with enrollment in a group plan and problem resolution related to premium tax credits. The kicker is that this legislation authorized unlimited funds in subsequent years.

(1) INITIAL FUNDING.—There is hereby appropriated to the Secretary, out of any funds in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $30,000,000 for the first fiscal year for which this section applies to carry out this section. Such amount shall remain available without fiscal year limitation.

(2) AUTHORIZATION FOR SUBSEQUENT YEARS.—There is authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary for each fiscal year following the fiscal year described in paragraph (1), such sums as may be necessary to carry out this section.’’.

What makes this amusing is the very next section of the law (Sec. 2794) is titled “Ensuring that consumers get value for their dollars.” Unfortunately, they are not referring to the $30 million above or the $938 billion in the whole bill. They are legislating the unreasonable increase in premiums for health insurance coverage. For that they are appropriating another $250 million. And by the way, if they don’t spend all $250 million by 2014, they won’t give it back to us the taxpayer, they get to keep the unused funds and use it for grants to the states.

I have an idea, how about if we design legislation that encourages the government to spend less, not more. There is absolutely no incentive here to save the taxpayer money. The provisions in this law always ensure that the money is spent, no matter how inefficiently. I would welcome incentives that provide good quality programs, but at a reasonable cost.

With the government I think it is safe to say: You can buy better, but you can’t pay more.

We need fiscally responsible legislation that encourages the most efficient use of limited resources. All too often politicians believe they have an unlimited source of funds. We, the taxpayers, provide that funding and it is limited and should be allocated where it can be put to the most productive use.

Enough rambling for now. I will continue to plow through the new law and report back what I find.

Fannie and Freddie - "The Money Pit"

Now let’s deal with what is probably the most costly bailout from the financial crisis. It is not a bank, it is Fannie and Freddie, which surprise surprise are run by the government. Fannie has received $60.9 billion of direct government support while Freddie has received another $51.7 billion. That is over $111 billion, way more than any bank has received. This $111 billion represents 4 times what is left to be paid in TARP money by the banks.


On top of the enormous aid provided, both Fannie and Freddie have had enormous losses. Fannie reported a fourth-quarter loss of $16.3 billion, including $1.2 billion in dividend payments to the Treasury Department which was down from the $25.2 billion they lost a year earlier and the $19.8 billion they lost in the third quarter. For 2009, Fannie's losses totaled $74.4 billion, compared with $59.8 billion in 2008.

The news at the much smaller Freddy Mac is not much better. Freddie reported a fourth-quarter loss of $7.8 billion, compared to a loss of $23.9 billion a year earlier. They lost $21.6 billion for all of 2009 which was an improvement over the $50.1 billion they lost in 2008.

So in essence, we the taxpayers, had to fund another $100 billion for Fannie and Freddie to cover their losses. Oh did anyone mention that the top brass at Fannie and Freddie got cash compensation in excess of $6 million. If this were a CEO at a bank you can be sure it would have been page 1 news.

To use Mr. Obama’s own words, We Want Our Money Back!! What is the plan to get the $100 billion back from Fannie and Freddie? What about the $174 billion still outstanding to all the non-banks?

“We want our Money Back”

How many times have you heard President Obama utter these words? For me, it has been 200 times too many. What irritates me is that he says this and he either doesn’t know the facts or refuses to accept them. Consider the excerpt from the most recent Treasury report on the TARP Capital Purchase Program.


To date, the disposition of warrants has succeeded in significantly increasing taxpayer returns on the TARP preferred investments that have been repaid by Banks. As of December 31, 2009, Treasury has received $4 billion in gross proceeds on the disposition of warrants in 34 banks, consisting of (i) $2.9 billion from repurchases by the issuers at agreed upon fair market values and (ii) $1.1 billion from auctions.1 For those 34 institutions, Treasury received an absolute return of 3.1% from dividends and an added 5.7% return from the sale of the warrants for a total absolute return of 8.8%.

Did anyone you know earn 8.8% on any investment last year? Do you know of any other government program that actually makes money for the taxpayer?

Did President Obama not read the report that Treasury created? Is he not aware of what is happening in his own administration? Or does he just like to bully the banks?

Now let’s look at who received TARP funds:

As you can see from the chart below TARP funds were given to not only banks, but also to AIG, GM, GMAC, Discover and oddly enough the suppliers to GM. As you can see almost half of the TARP funds were given to non-banks (47%). Of the $191 billion given to the banks, $149 billion has already been repaid. In other words 78% of the money given to banks under the TARP program has already been repaid. In contrast, none of the money has been paid back from AIG or any of the auto companies.

I think it is right for President Obama to ask for his money back, he just needs to ask the right people. Let’s not be beating on the banks to return the TARP money until we see at least 75% of the funds returned from these non-bank entities that should have never received TARP funds in the first place.

Make Savings Automatic

Many American Families Don’t Have Savings Accounts

 

The latest Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances data, revealed that most low and moderate income households don’t have savings accounts:

• 68% of low-income households (incomes below $18,900) – don’t have a savings or money market account.
• 52% of moderate-income households (incomes $18,900 -$33,899) – don’t have a savings or money market account.
•  42% of middle-income households (incomes $33,899 - $53,599) don’t have a savings or money market account. 
• Only 20% of upper-income households income of $89,300+ don’t have an account.

 Kind of hard to be a saver if you don't have a savings.  If you don't have a savings account, now would be the perfect time to set one up and if you are getting a tax refund, have the refund directly deposited into your new savings to give you a nice jump start.  

 

A nationwide survey this month showed that a large majority of Americans (83%) believe that the most effective way to build up personal savings balances is to automatically transfer funds from a paycheck or from checking to savings. 

  

While many consumers believe in this systematic approach to savings, most don't actually have these systematic transfers set up for themselves.  Setting up a systematic savings transfers is really easy.  You can have money directly deposited to your savings account right from your paycheck or with most online banking programs you can just set up a transfer yourself.  With online banking you decide the amount and frequency of these transfers and can easily adjustment instantly.  The key is to make sure they happen automatically.  If you don't see it you won't spend it.

   

Next week is America Saves Week, and the message you will be hearing from many Banks and consumer groups is “Make Savings Automatic”.   Why not make it a point to set up a automatic deposit from your payroll or a transfer from your checking into a savings account ever pay period.  You will be amazed at how quickly the dollars will add up.  You owe it to yourself to "Pay Yourself First" and "Make Savings Automatic.".

 

 

 America Saves Week

 

 

A Billion, it's Nothing . . . Or Is It?

How many zeros in a billion?  We have become desensitized to these large numbers and I thought it would help to put them in perspective.  We are only talking about billions, yet our government is throwing around trillions of dollars, so just imagine how much more horrifying this would be if we looked at trillions instead of billions.

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases…  

• A billion seconds ago it was 1959
• A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive
• A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age
• A billion days ago no one walked on the earth on two feet

A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

  

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at real life example.  After hurrican Katrina, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) requested Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting number....what does it mean?  Let's examine it by doing some simple division:

• Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you would get $516,528.
• Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your household would get $1,329,787.
• Or... if you are a family of four... your family would get $2,066,012.

Are you serious?  Washington, D.C., HELLO! Are all your calculators broken??  Wouldn't we have been much better off just offering $250,000 to each household and have them repair/rebuild their homes by employing workers in the local market?  Think of the multiplier effect of doing that!!

We need sanity back in government, and the realization that "We the People" , not the government, are the solution to our problems.

TARP - A history lesson

We all tend to have short memories and we like to remember what is convenient to our own political position. So let's take a look back and review what actually happened and why TARP was originally created.

The initial purpose of the TARP program was to purchase "toxic assets" from banks and get them off of their balance sheets so they could free up funds to lend. This was included in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that was passed by Congress on Oct. 3, 2008. Just 11 days later, on October 14, 2008 Secretary Paulson announced a change to the TARP program. Instead of buying "toxic assets" the Treasury would buy preferred stock and warrants from the big banks.

If you remember the press reports, the top 10 banks were required to participate. The government made them participate. The government then announced they would allow other banks to participate and they indicated that they would award funds to "healthy" institutions. Banks were encouraged to participate and those who did participate were perceived as stronger than those that did not.

As part of the program, banks were required to pay a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share. These dividend payments as well as the profit from the warrants was to be used to reduce the deficit. This entire program should not add to the national debt. Find another government program that does this.

If you recall during the height of the financial crisis, Secretary Paulson was quick to allow non-banks to become banks. Morgan Stanley, American Express and GMAC among others were quickly granted Bank Charters so they could participate in the TARP program. Now we look at Morgan Stanley and Goldman and lump them in with all the other banks in the country.

So before we start trashing all banks let's remember from whence we came.

Also, we need to get the facts on what the financial implications are for the TARP program. I will provide a bit more clarity in my next update. But for now, let's stop the bank bashing and start working together to get this country moving in the right direction.