On Balance What Problems Might Obama be Solving?

As the new Administration continues to struggle to get new programs out the door, which is certainly understandable when you are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the public, I wanted to offer my help to them.

First, I find it rather bizarre that after two years of investment financial analysts, media financial analysts, Congressional financial analysts and Executive branch financial analysts being dead wrong on the economy and virtually every aspect of the economy that Washington, Wall Street and Madison Avenue continue to listen to them as if they had a clue what they are talking about. Don't the leaders in the Obama administration remember? Oh yeah, the same mouthpieces that blew it before are speaking for the new administration.

Congress has been studying the collapse of the housing market for over a year and we are yet to see anything except ways to save mortgages in foreclosure or save the criminals that wrote the mortgages that are in foreclosure. Even Obama's chief of staff was part of the Freddie Mac Fanny Mae mess that evolved from the liberalization of mortgage rules.

You want to fix the problem here is a good start. Allow 4.5% refinancing with minimum closing costs. Bank of America is allowing refinancing after receiving $45 billion in federal bailout funds but the Bank of America closing costs on refinancing have risen to $16,000 when they used to be $3000-5000. What kind of a deal is that for clients? They may be lending money again, our money from the federal bailout, but now it costs us 3-8 times as much.

There is no reason to require appraisals, title searches and registration fees costs thousands of dollars for refinancing mortgages already owned by the banks. Get rid of the corrupt fees and rigged appraisals and put money back in the pocket of mortgage holders and you will finally get real stimulus. While some of those in foreclosure should be saved most should not be when over 95% of the people are making payments on time. Lowering the monthly mortgage payment of the good loans will immediately put those hundreds of dollars a month into the economy.

The sale of foreclosed homes should not be allowed to impact on the market value of homes not being foreclosed. Appraisers are dropping market rates where ever there is a glut of mortgages and applying such loss of value to regional areas experiencing no foreclosures. Unscrupulous appraisers can get away with the same manipulation to lower values as they did to raise values the past 3 years.

Speaking of appraisers, if a home has been remodeled and exceeds energy and environmental code it should have a much higher value than a home not remodeled. Even homes built to code are far from achieving energy and environmental efficiency peak potential. Right now a home needing $50,000 to $100,000 in energy and environmental upgrades to exceed standards is valued the same as a home with the most advanced materials and equipment, a joke if the nation really wants to save energy. There is no value gained by making the improvements. We are encouraged by present law to take shortcuts and not use advanced materials to keep the costs down.


Historic preservation must accommodate energy and environmental improvements and reward them when made but these homes are also discounted for age and penalized for maintaining historical standards. For example, if a home was built without closets but used cabinets or free standing wardrobe closets they will be rejected as a bedroom and significantly decrease the present value of the home even though they are being historically preserved. Does that make any sense?

What about the banks, how do we save them from self-destruction? Well, if you are liberal and believe it is our responsibility to pay for their sins then do whatever Pelosi and Franks tell you as you already have made up your mind they are too big to fail even if it takes nationalization to save them. What is a few more hundred billion dollars when money can be printed at will? Even Obama slipped $750 billion more into his new budget to cover unexpected bank losses.

I wonder why the Administration finds it so important to save banks like Citigroup and Bank of America when they have already cost us $90 billion to keep them alive, snd after all that cash they are still on life support. Now since all individual deposits in those banks were already guaranteed by the FDIC, that means any money they need has nothing to do with the little people. So why in the world have we already pumped in $90 billion when the little people were protected? Who is Congress protecting and bailing out if the money is not needed for depositors?

So where does this leave you? In the first place, 47% of you didn't even vote for Obama which the media seems to keep forgetting as they talk about the president as if everyone in the world voted for him. Here in American a six percent victory is not a landslide. Truth is he should have won by 15-20% and didn't.
However we still have those that did support him. I doubt they all believed he would advance such a liberal - socialist agenda, especially in such dire financial times.

In normal times I would say contact your Congressmen to stop the largest government spending spree in history but the Democratic Majority are demanding he spend even more. Obama promised to stop pork barrel spending. His own stimulus bill had at least $10 billion in pork and a new appropriations bill he is expected to approve has $410 billion, with a substantial amount of pork barrel. I guess Obama can't keep all his promises.

We have no campaign reform being discussed though it is the biggest violator of ethics and cause of corruption in Washington. We have no control over pork barrel spending as witnessed by the legislative record to date. We have no control over lobbyists working in government as a number of lobbyists have been hired by the Obama administration.



We do have a worldwide expansion in abortion approved. We do have stem cell research approved that encourages the "harvesting" of unborn fetuses for scientific research. We do have a move to force unions into all the states and industries nationwide, even if a state has chosen to be right-to-work. We do have millions of federal dollars being poured into liberal activist organizations that demand bigger government and more spending.

One final observation and that is regarding the liberal-biased media in the television and newspaper business who were so responsible for trashing Palin and McCain and getting Obama and Biden elected. As these media are rapidly falling into bankruptcy and disappearing I'd say your hero seems to have lost interest in your cause. Now are you glad you got him elected? Do you still have a job?

Obama Seduces Congress - Promises Everything Now

- - -

President Obama finally adopted the Bill Clinton approach to getting away with anything by copying the Ronald Reagan straight talk technique. The big difference, however, is that Reagan was honest about what he said and straight forward in what he meant. With Clinton the style never matched the morality and with Obama the style was used to mask an expansion of his people's agenda to a liberal assault that has not been seen since FDR tried to stack the Supreme Court because his legislation was constitutionally illegal.

It was a masterful speech before an adoring Congress and media and absolutely no one seemed to notice that anyone in America with money was going to be taxed more, any corporation with success was going to pay more taxes, anyone driving a car, truck or bus was going to be taxed more, and about the only people who really won't be taxed more don't pay any taxes to begin with.

The speech was a blend of Harvard business school, Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School in which we are told why his agenda is the only door to the future that has the blessing of our Founding Fathers, the Ivy League and God. It was great theater. Congress is great theater. The avalanche of congressional hearings on the "crisis" are great theater. We just had no idea how much we were paying for the tickets to this theater.

There is no doubt we are on the way to pouring $5 trillion into solving the crisis, if not much more. We are already way over $1 trillion and there has been no change in the economic mess. A couple of trillion more may be committed already through Federal Reserve, Treasury, FDIC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other agency actions. Then there is the $410 billion slush fund bill sneaking through Congress right now. Add to that all the new money that will be needed to pay off the corrupt bank loans, so called "toxic" debt, and the social agenda Obama described covering everything to do with health, energy and education, and we are close to overtaking France and Spain as leader of contemporary socialism.



One truth we should carefully examine. How much of what is happening is the careful, patient and long term strategy of Osama Bin Laden dating back to 9-11 in NYC? He said he would set in motion actions that would bring down our economy. Blowing up the heart of Wall Street in the World Trade Center was certainly a masterful stroke. Maybe the world economic crisis immediately after 9-11 was just the first wave of the long term impact. Bin Laden knew money, he was worth millions, and he knew the vulnerabilities of the American economy. All he had to do was to quietly encourage the proliferation of greed and dishonesty that was already well entrenched in Wall Street and Washington, DC.

Make no mistake, Osama Bin Laden has cost the USA hundreds of billions of dollars in military expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan every year since then and terrorized many other areas around the world. No one has ever reported the real losses to Wall Street and the economy from the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. What was really in the vaults of the Twin Towers? Was Bin Laden behind the run up in energy costs? Was he behind the repackaging of mortgages into sub-prime investments? Who knows? The most powerful nation with the best intelligence agencies in history doesn't have a clue what mountain he may be hiding in today, let alone how he survived and what he did the past decade.

Oh yes, as for the cost of the tickets to the theater in our nation's capitol, if we throw $5 trillion at the problem that means every citizen of the USA will pay about $14,200 to cover up the corruption, bank mismanagement and expansion of social services that will all be solved with the largest cash infusion in history. Now, are the theater tickets really that valuable? And how is it 95% of our citizens will get a tax reduction?

#

Obama and Geithner - Enough Whining & Finger Pointing - Give Us a Reason to Hope!

- - -

President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner both gave major addresses in the last 24 hours, talks given with a great deal of advanced hype on how they were going to show how the new Administration was in control of the economy, and the result was a public relations nightmare casting severe doubt on the real communications skills in our nation's capitol.

First Obama went on prime time TV and his long winded answers seemed more like a lecture from a professor on the fundamentals of blaming everyone else for his woes, raising fears on the fate of our economic system, and promising everything would be clear this morning when Geithner gave his national address on fixing the economy.

I always thought the president was supposed to give us hope when we were down, not further depress the public with talk of the worst economy in our history or an Armageddon on Wall Street. Even Franklin Roosevelt, on the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, gave us hope.



Obama, Biden and Geithner take every opportunity to remind us that our problems are not theirs, but were inherited by them because of the irresponsible actions of the past. Bush and the Congress let things get out of control but Obama and Biden were Senators, Senators with the power to stop the president at any time. And Geithner, he was president of the New York Federal Reserve and also in a position to stop the financial meltdown.

Obama condemns tax cuts for the wealthy saying it has been tried over and over again and failed. Yet two of the most successful tax cuts for the rich were the work of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton and both led to recovery and economic growth. Did Obama forget he is a Democrat?

So now that we have established that Obama and company are not to blame for anything, but Wall Street and the past government are to blame, then what is the real relationship between Obama and the giant of Wall Street Goldman Sachs? Goldman is the only financial institution on Wall Street whose value has shot up since Obama became president, the only firm out of hundreds in the financial sector. What makes Goldman's different? They have the most toxic debt. They championed the oil price run up that nearly destroyed the world economy.



Several years ago they secretly had the Board meet with a young senator named Obama. They quietly financed his presidential bid before most people knew who Obama was. They even had another secret meeting with Obama during the primary campaign and brought in Tom Brokaw to help prepare the new kid for the grueling campaign. The same Tom Brokaw who was moderator of a debate a year later between Obama and McCain but no one knew that they had practiced a year earlier.

So what happened to Goldman's since Obama got elected. Take a look at the fate of some of our major financial institutions in the time between election day November 4 and today. The stock price 11/4 and 2/10 are shown with the percent change.

Bank of America $23.61 $5.56 -76%
JP Morgan $40.73 $24.62 -40%
Citibank $13.99 $3.35 -76%
Wells Fargo $33.80 $16.35 -52%
Goldman Sachs $89.09 $90.40 +1%

While virtually every other financial institution in the market has lost between 40% and 76% in total value only Goldman Sachs has increased in value since Obama got elected. Of course Goldman has also stated they will return the $10 billion in bailout money they received, meaning they didn't need it in the first place or the restrictions Congress is contemplating don't appeal to the firm with the highest executive bonus program in history. When will the president explain his secret relationship with the super bank and when will the media ask about it?

What is the real relationship of Biden with the credit giant Mastercard and Visa headquartered in Delaware, his home, firms whose outrageous credit fees and practices helped lead to the economic crisis and who were bailed out a couple of years earlier when Congress passed bankruptcy reform that stole the rights of the consumer and allowed the credit card companies to undertake collection and debt recovery methods the Mafia could not get away with?



Who was chief lobbyist for the credit card assault by the thugs on Congress, why I believe it was Biden's son who then became State Attorney General. Let's see, the Biden son lobbies Congress to strip the public of their rights and the bill is sponsored by Senator Biden to strip the consumer of his rights and passed by the Congress. No conflict of interest there because that would violate the high ethical standards of the new Administration who is going to change the way things are done in the capitol.

We deserve explanations and we deserve better. The media seems incapable of digging up the truth because the truth is the media elected Obama. Congress can't dig up the truth because the Democrats controlling Congress think they now rule the world when in truth they were bought and paid for by money interests long ago. The Truth is Out There because it sure isn't here on Wall Street, Madison Avenue or at our nation's capitol.

Big Money Now Owns America

. . . . .

I think this is a pretty good description of the treacherous ground we are venturing down with the financial meltdown and the government response of tossing billions into the mess.

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be saved by the government and nationalized; ..."

Big Money gets greedy. Big Money finds new ways to rip off the public like the sub-prime mortgage market. Big Money hedges their bet by secretly backing a future unknown to be president for when the day of reckoning may come. Big Money gets Congress to change the laws and regulations to allow them to avoid being detected as they pursue the illegal deals. Big Money gets too greedy and people can't afford the phony mortgage deals leaving trillions of dollars in losses to be absorbed by someone.

Big Money has now destroyed the US credit market and must change tactics to cover their losses. Big Money manipulates the oil futures market to generate outrageous oil profits to cover the outrageous mortgage losses driving prices to record $150 per barrel levels. Big Money sees chaos as opportunity to drive competitors from the marketplace and suddenly 10 legendary investment banking houses are reduced to two survivors.





Big Money sees chaos as opportunity to finally secure unlimited control and access of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve and tells Congress, whose campaign coffers are inflated with Big Money donations, to pass multi-billion dollar bailout bills. Big Money gets benefactors in Congress to bail out billion dollar losses in mortgage, insurance and banking industries. Big Money realizes they got too greedy and have now nearly destroyed the world economy thus limiting future chances to steal from the government if they don't fix the mess.




Big Money gets unknown candidate for president elected and promptly loads up his team of economic advisors to assure blame is deflected for mess and they control the future of the world economy. Big Money gets Democratic friends elected to control Congress and assure future Big Money prosperity. Big Money gets new Congress to adopt nearly trillion dollar economic stimulus bill to revive the sconomy and increase stock values.



Big Money gets US Treasury to underwrite "toxic" loans of Big Money and their banking partners thus transferring the debt to the taxpayers. Big Money gets Congress to pass home mortgage reforms to bailout all the toxic pending foreclosure losses of the past three years, again paid for by taxpayers. Big Money keeps new president from laying any blame for the economic meltdown, regulatory and oil price manipulation where it belongs thus assuring the continue to dominate the world.

Big Money never even has to tell the government how many trillions of dollars it will cost them to fulfill the economic stimulus, credit restoration, Wall Street welfare and Main Street salvation programs caused by the greed of Big Money over the years. Big Money has now successfully protected their financial windfalls and deferred payment to the next generation. Big Money is now hauling the taxpayer money from their Big Money friends in Congress and the White House to the big banks they own to finance the latest schemes they devise to further the interests of Big Money around the world.

The world is now the Big Money playground and the Treasury and Federal Reserve are now safely secured in the hands of Big Money. That pretty much sums it up. And by the way, the end of the quote and the source is:

"the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism."

Karl Marx, 1867

# # #

Cathe's Corner - The View From the Other Side of the Mirror

It's not often we dedicate a column to a reader but it is not often a reader fits the mold of Cathe, the pride of Philadelphia. For all the years in the newspaper and media business I have seen it is very seldom that writers get much in the way of feedback from the readers and in most cases the same person seems to keep writing over and over, someone named Anonymous.

Then there is Cathe. A Philly blueblood through and through, Cathe is one of those rare characters whose life has been mystical, a bit bizarre, most certainly entertaining and something Jane Austen would have died to have written about. In Cathe's world reality and fantasy have been genetically compressed and if you do not meet some very high standards you are cast out with the riff raff and cease to exist.

She loves life. She loves Godfathers. She loves family. She cares about everything. She does not like violence or war. To prove it she married a soldier. He stole her from a blueblood. Then he discovered he had to protect the nation and her. Why did she marry a soldier when she didn't like wars and violence? It seems Cathe had a rebellious streak and she was just trying to teach her parents a lesson.

I guess she figured if she threatened to elope with a rifle carrying soldier instead of having a huge family wedding with an ascot wearing blueblood they would react in horror and promise not to cutoff her chauffeur, maids and cooks when she finished college. She underestimated her dad who simply responded, "That's great darling, be sure to let us know where the wedding will take place."

It was not the response she expected. She got the soldier and lost the chauffer, maids and cooks. She might be the only person you ever meet who had never driven a car, made a bed, picked up her clothes or cooked a meal on the day of her wedding. Needless to say the soldier was more than a little surprised but he was the one who pursued her relentlessly before she ever agreed to go out with him. It was all his fault to begin with.

Imagine moving into your first apartment and being asked by your new wife when the interior decorator would be there, what all those pans were for and where was the nearest dry cleaner. Our military might get a decent pay but her needs required a trust fund for a dowry and that was not one of the wedding presents.

To the new bride if the chef wasn't preparing the meal at home then eating meals was going to your favorite restaurant and putting the bill on daddy's account. She had no idea what a credit card might be, nor the cost of the meal as she never bothered to look at prices on the menu. Even the grocery store was a mystery to her, food was supposed to magically appear in the pantry and on the dinner table. Her driver took her back and forth to school or where ever else she wanted to go.

Somehow Cathe and the Godfather survived that start in life. Her hubby made a career of the Navy while seeing the world. They spent a good deal of time in Sicily, the place off the coast of Italy, which seems an ideal post for an Italian American and his bride. In time they went on to build an entire life and family where fantasy always trumped reality. He survived her. She survived without the servants. And they are now happily living in St. Mary's County, Maryland and Cathe can be found at the Vintage Source, the world's most unusual antique center and social club.

Of all my readers Cathe is the most inspiring, most persistent, most demanding and most rewarding as my articles are distributed by her to a host of family and friends throughout the country and when I don't get new articles written she is the first to protest the lack of news. As a result, this column is dedicated to Cathe and all those like her in the world who never stop thinking about ways to help people and never lose their quest for information and/or entertainment.

Obama Cabinet Nominees Spoil New Criminal Rehabilitation Program

Just when we thought the highest ranking appointees in the Obama Administration were going to constitute the most elite criminal rehabilitation program in the nation two of the three charter members withdrew from consideration this week.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay $43,000 in back taxes until his Senate hearing, was first to make it through the process in spite of the tax problem. Obama said it was no big deal and Geithner said he didn't understand that he owed the taxes, a bit scary for the next head of IRS. What would happen to you if IRS discovered you did not pay $43,000 over a four year period? Geithner gets to be US Treasury Secretary. You would get federal prison.

Then along comes Tom Daschle, the former leader of the Democrats in the Senate and Obama's nominee to fix the health care mess. Seems he was paid over $5 million for lobbying for health care companies in a couple of years though he never bothered to register as a lobbyist. That was okay with Obama. But IRS said he owed $143,000 in back taxes for failing to report a full time car and driver paid for by his lobbying firm. He paid that and once again everything was okay with our new king of clean government President Obama and he urged the approval of Daschle.

Would you get a cabinet post with Obama if you owed $143,000 in back taxes? Once again federal prison would be more likely. A third key Obama appointee, Nancy Killefer, picked for what he described as the most important new post in his Administration, the government's first Chief Performance Officer, then had to acknowledge she also owed back taxes but just $946.69, a miniscule amount compared to the tens and hundreds of thousands owned by the old boys.

Nancy did the right thing, she immediately withdrew from consideration. Thus one of the most prominent female appointees of Obama was the first to recognize her civic duty and dropped out. A few hours later Daschle followed suit, even though Obama and others all agreed it was not significant enough to warrant withdrawing from the race. So far the new Obama standard is key employees are okay as long as they don't steal more than $143,000 from the government.

On Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration, Obama issued an executive order barring any former lobbyists who join his administration from dealing with matters or agencies related to their lobbying work. Nor could they join agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years.

However, William J. Lynn III, his choice to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, recently lobbied for military contractor Raytheon. And William Corr, tapped as deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, lobbied through most of last year as an anti-tobacco advocate. Before the ink had dried the first waivers of the brand new executive order had to be granted to allow lobbyists to join his staff in top agencies. Didn't Obama get a lot of mileage smearing John McCain for having lobbyist in his campaign?

It just seems that those campaign promises for a new way to govern free of the influences of the past don't seem so real now. A new level of ethics promised has not materialized. In fact, far more promises have been broken than kept in the early part of the new regime. If there was any doubt about this ask the United Auto Workers at General Motors. The union was one of Obama's biggest supporters and were promised a bail out for the auto industry and told by the new president they were the priority of his administration. Today GM announced one third of the UAW workers must be laid off. That does not sound like they are being protected by the new president.

The Day the Music Died

Today, February 3, is the 50th anniversary of the day the music died in America. On a cold winter night in Iowa this night in 1959 Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash in a snowstorm after leaving a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Holly is considered the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll. His works and innovations were copied by his contemporaries and later musicians, notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and Buddy exerted a profound influence on popular music. On April 15, 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Holly #13 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Also on the private charter with Holly were the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. Holly's death was immortalized by the song The Day the Music Died.

I was a huge Buddy Holly fan while growing up in Iowa. One time I played Oh Boy, a Buddy Holly hit, 43 straight times on a juke box to honor his death much to the chagrin of the country club members in the club Canteen who didn't like country music.

On that fateful night in 1959 I had tickets to the Buddy Holly concert, a drive of a little over 100 miles away, but the snow storm that killed him kept us from reaching the venue. It was a night I will never forget and I will always be sad at how close I came to witnessing his last performance in this world.

Buddy Holly belongs to the ages but his music belongs to us.

# # #

Tough Sledding for the Obama Team

It looks like President Obama got two bionic tongues for the price of one as his greatest liability, VP Joe Biden, and his wife were both able to disconnect their mouths from their brains on the day before and day after the Obama inauguration. First came Jill Biden the day before Obama was sworn in as President when she was on Oprah and said Joe had been offered his choice of vice president or secretary of state, a slap in the face to Hillary Clinton who was not offered vice president and was given secretary of state. She got the job because Joe didn't want it? Try as they might to cover up the release of inside information it didn't work.

The day after the swearing in Joe was at a White House news conference when Obama told him to give the oath of office to the new staff and Biden quipped I don't have as good a memory as the Chief Justice. Of course this was a cheap insult tossed at the Chief Justice when he flubbed the lines during the Obama oath the day earlier. The president could be seen frowning and shaking his head at the cheap shot by his vp.

Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner has had a rather tough time in hearings when he denied knowing his housekeeper was an illegal alien, he said he didn't know he was supposed to pay $34,000 more in taxes and then he caused an international uproar when he said China was manipulating their currency. The first was dumb, the second was dumber and the third was the kind of thing you never say in front of the media but to the representatives of China first.

How is it he didn't know he owed taxes for four years when his employer sent him numerous reminders every year. He was an independent contractor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Even Joe the plumber, also an independent contractor, knows he has to pay social security and federal taxes and Joe is not going to be the next Secretary of Treasury. Since Timothy was audited by IRS and they required he only pay for the last two years because the first two years were beyond the statute of limitations, he only paid the last two years. It was only after he was nominated for Treasurer that he decided to clean up the earlier mess.

However, if he never filed a return, which he clearly didn't because he said he didn't realize he was supposed to pay taxes, and IRS had to audit him, then there is no three year statute of limitations. The three year statute only applies when the return is filed and is found to be inaccurate or fraudulent. There is a ten year statute and he should have paid interest and penalties on the entire four year amount. I think he was given kid glove treatment by IRS because he was the Federal Reserve President in NYC. Do you think IRS would let you get by without paying nearly $100,000 in taxes over four years, and then say you just owed $34,000? Fat chance. He should have said he didn't pay for the first two years because he was trying to beat the government out of their money. It would have been honest.

Obama's Sorry State of the State

Now that the new president is almost the president we should take a look at the state of the state he will be inheriting before we get too caught up in the euphoria of the historic moment. Make no mistake, the challenges facing Obama are among the most difficult ever faced by an incoming president. If he succeeds he will have earned his place among the greatest presidents in our history.

While Obama gets a lot of mileage out of his humble beginnings and life, the fact he went to Columbia and Harvard and his wife went to Princeton belies some of the impact. These Ivy League schools are among the best and most expensive schools in the USA and world. Let us hope he didn't lose his ability to stay humble while rubbing shoulders with the aristocrats. He certainly did acquire the ivy league taste for the good life starting with his home of well over a million dollars.

As a candidate for president Obama spent three times more than any previous candidate in history, about three quarters of a billion dollars to win 53.5% of the vote. His speech the night of the Democratic convention cost $8 million, just one speech mind you. This inauguration will cost more than $150 million, three times more expensive than any in history. Add to that the economic bailouts he already has supported to the tune of over a trillion dollars, and he isn't even president yet, and we have ourselves one very high maintenance newcomer on the political scene.

Then we get to the problems he faces. There is the economy. Big money, big banks and big fat investors are lined up waiting for the new president to bail them out of the trillions and trillions of our dollars they lost, squandered or stole the past couple of years. Seems funny that if you rob a bank you go to jail but if you steal all the money from inside the bank the government bails you out.

Why is it the financial experts guiding us out of this mess are the same financial experts who got us into the mess in the first place? If we put into jail all the people who masterminded the bankruptcy of America and the takeover of the US Treasury New York City and Washington, DC would be ghost towns, Wall Street and Capitol Hill would be surplus property, the Money God would not have a blank check on our tax dollars and unemployment would be greatly reduced because the bad guys would be locked up.

Today 1 out of every 54 mortgages in America is facing imminent foreclosure and everyone in Congress is scrambling to find ways to save the poor citizens. Now if you listen to the politicians, media and Wall Street you would think that means every other house in America is in foreclosure. The truth is less than 2% of the homes with mortgages are in foreclosure, about 2 million out of over 100 million mortgages.

If you look a little deeper at the sub-prime mortgage mess that brought down our economy, a program of waiving the normal mortgage requirements so anyone could buy a home in the mid-2000s that was the brainchild of Barney Franks and other Democratic leaders, things get more interesting. There are over 7.5 million sub-prime mortgages, mortgages in which minimum down payments were accepted, excessive fees were paid, credit fraud was tolerated, balloon interest payments were built in and inflated home values were inherent.

About 25% of the sub-prime loans are in foreclosure meaning nearly 100% of the foreclosures were not the typical citizen buying a home but the people taking advantage of the sub-prime scam and now that they are defaulting on the loans the government is now trying to figure out how to use taxpayers dollars to save them. In short, we are all going to pay for the fraud. It was these loans that were packaged by Wall Street greed mongers and sold through stock offerings that brought the banks, mortgage and financial institutions down and triggered our current recession. Trillions of dollars have been lost by investors to the very institutions claiming responsibly for managing our wealth, pensions funds, savings and so on.

Many other aspects of the economy from AIG and bank bailouts to oil price increases, the futures markets, swaps, derivatives and others were created for the purpose of getting away with what should have been illegal. Is it so important we spend trillions of government dollars to save the very people who created the scams in the first place?

In other areas there is the latest threat from Osama Bin Laden to continue his terrorist actions against the USA while wars continue in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pakistan is ready to fall to insurgents waiting to deliver it to the Taliban. India is being attacked by Pakistan. Did I mention that Pakistan, home to Bin Laden and headquarters for many terrorist groups, really has nuclear weapons unlike Iraq. Russia is testing it's strength against the Ukraine and Europe. Israel is battling the Palestinians, killing them at a rate of 71 dead for every Israeli killed. You get the international picture, just add to the violence the reality of worldwide recession and many more nations could get desperate.

Now beyond the economy, wars and international affairs there remains a health care system that is the most expensive in the world and 56 million people with no health coverage. Schools that don't teach. States that are going broke. Auto and other industries that can't efficiently produce or sell. Energy policy that leaves us subject to the pricing and manipulation of others. Immigration issues with Mexico and the threat of drug cartel warfare in Mexico crossing the border into the USA not to mention the corruption of our southern neighbor.

Wow, come to think of it do you think Obama would have become the greatest spender in campaign politics history if he knew what he was getting into once he won the election? At least we will find out real soon if that Harvard education was all it is supposed to be. If he can solve the mountain of problems and issues he inherits he should be entitled to every award like the Nobel Prize offered.

Lastly, let us not forget the other thorny issue Barack has already raised that may prove more difficult than many I listed. Our new president has already signaled the NCAA that he wants to push for a National College Football playoff and championship, something long overdue. Good luck Mr. President.

Thank you for another good year...

As President-elect Obama prepares to take office next Tuesday the Coltons Point Times now has 25,877 readers according to the tracking services which means our readers total 74 times the total population of Coltons Point. That does not include the circulation of articles by many of our dedicated readers like Cathe who distributes it to about 2,328 of her closest friends and family members. We appreciate your interest in our view of the world and hope you will encourage your friends to check us out. As always we encourage letters to the editor (everyone is entitled to their silly opinions) and welcome story ideas.

The Truth - Manufacturing in America

As part of our commitment to set the record straight we want to address a topic very much in the news which is the loss of manufacturing jobs in America. If you believed the media just about all the jobs have moved to China except the auto workers.

For the record there are 154.4 million Americans in the work force and 143.3 million employed as of the end of December, 2008. Manufacturing in America peaked in 1979 with 19.5 million jobs. Today, after the devastating impact of the global recession manufacturing jobs total about 13 million. However, the loss of jobs started long before the China factor as there were 16.8 million jobs when Congress passed and Clinton signed the NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement) on December 8, 1993, nearly 3 million less than in 1979.

That was the Free Trade Agreement Ross Perot opposed but Clinton and Gore slammed through Congress. I should know because I worked with Perot at the time including the fateful debate between Gore and Perot on the Larry King Show. More on Ross later. He warned us of the long term impact of NAFTA and his warning rings true today as the new Administration is studying ways to limit the scope of the original agreement.

From 2000 to 2008 we lost 4 million more manufacturing jobs yet at the same time we had an increase in worker productivity of eleven times meaning the 13 million remaining workers in 2008 were able to produce far more product (11 times as much) than the 17 million in 2000.

Contrary to media myth, China did not take all our jobs as Asia provides far less goods to America today than ten years ago. In fact most technology related jobs went to India while the Japanese were moving manufacturing facilities to the USA. Even Mexico, who benefited greatly after NAFTA, has lost jobs in the past few years because of growth around the world.

As for the Chinese goods that have been subject to many recalls, don't forget that the Chinese were building to the specs provided by the American corporations ordering the goods, corporations who thought they could lower costs with cheap labor overseas. It was the responsibility of the American companies to provide detailed specifications and to assure quality control and they seemed to have failed in both tasks.

Meanwhile with all the disproportionate attention on China India quietly took over the high tech computer jobs including the service, technical and customer support positions. Both India and China have been hurt bad by the global recession and the reduced spending by Americans.

We lost 791,000 manufacturing jobs in 2008 which was probably quite remarkable considering the economic catastrophe we faced but we still have over 13 million jobs in that sector. When we come out of the recession we should be in the best manufacturing position since 1979. Made in America will always stand for superior quality. As consumers, make sure you look for products that support our jobs as well as insure the highest quality.

Who Controls Congress?

For those of you who still hold out hope that Congress is OUR elected representatives and they are dedicated solely to the purpose of helping the public we have a simple response, fat chance! Once upon a time that might have been the case but once upon a time is the stuff of fairy tales not reality.

If nothing else, Congress is the old boy network updated, meaning I guess it is now the old girl and boy network or woman and man depending on how you rate the maturity of the players. It remains an institution dedicated to the preservation first and foremost to the re-election of the members, second to adherence to the spoils of seniority and third to the inevitable padding of the pockets of the campaign and personal funds of the elected officials and their staff.

I've been there, seen it, and marveled at how it continues to survive scandal after scandal, conflict of interest after conflict of interest, and a general malaise of greed as one of the most dominating virtues of members. Now that does not mean there are not good people there, but most of the good people came and went after getting hit in the side of the head by reality.

So the Congressional leadership control Congress, those with the most savvy to continuously win elections while getting their party in control, and those successful in taking over all the Congressional Committees. Right now the leaders are Harry Reid the Majority Leader in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House, and Steny Hoyer as House Majority Leader. Because of the dominance of the economy in world events I also include Barney Frank the Majority Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

President Obama will get nothing done to save the economy or make good on all his promises without the help from these four players. So who are they and what can we expect? Well combined they have been elected to Congress a total of 104 years with Hoyer and Frank 28 years each, Reid 26 years and Pelosi 22 years. Pelosi is second in line to be president if something should prevent Obama from serving his full term.

One interesting fact about the Democratic leadership and Obama is their religious diversity as every one of the five is from a different religion, something unusual in politics and indicative of the religious diversity of the American public. Obama is Protestant, Reid Mormon, Pelosi Roman Catholic, Hoyer Baptist and Frank Jewish. Another interesting fact is the ages in that Pelosi and Frank will be 69 this year, Hoyer and Reid will be 70, while Obama will be just 48.

Harry Reid, Senator from Nevada, has a personal worth of about $6 million and though he was not up for re-election this past year he still raised $11.6 million in campaign funds and has $2.75 million cash on hand after the election. Of the money raised 69% came from individuals and 29% from Special Interest groups. Of course many of the individual contributions could be from individuals in special interest groups.

Nancy Pelosi, a Maryland native now in California raised $2.8 million in 2008 and has over $405,813 cash on hand. Of the total 47% came from individuals and 53% from special interest groups. Her opponent spent $720,000 and Pelosi won 71% of the vote.

Steny Hoyer, powerful Maryland House leader raised $3.67 million and has over $800,000 cash on hand with 33% of his money coming from individuals and 65% from special interest groups. His number one contributor was J P Morgan banking. Hoyer's opponent raised just $22,570, being outspent more than 10 to 1 and Hoyer won 74% of the vote.

Barney Frank raised $2.2 million and spent $2.7 million and he still shows a cash balance of $326,694 which seems to be rather unusual accounting but those are the federal reports. Of his total 51% came from individuals and 44% from special interest groups. His opponent only raised $39,000 and Frank won 74% of the vote.

What is the 7th District?

For those of you not familiar with the 7th District in Southern Maryland I thought I would offer a little primer in the highly unlikely event you ever fall off the edge of the world and find yourself in the 7th District. First of all it is one of the oldest landing points for the colonization of the original thirteen colonies way back in the early 1600's. St. Clements Island, the actual place where the English pilgrims landed, is just off Coltons Point where the pilgrims first saw the Indians and set foot in Maryland. These are the last two places on the map in the 7th District at the Potomac River.

Now I am not a pilgrim nor related to pilgrims but an awful lot of people here are and it seems that the older the family the more likely they inter-married with other families that have been around about 375 years, since 1634 and this is the anniversary year. That means when you meet a Dorsey, Bailey, Combs, McKay, and all the other names you see on signs down here you might just be meeting the relatives of all the prominent and aristocratic families.

The 7th District folks came here for religious and other freedom and for the last 300 years have been fighting anyone who tried to tame them. Long before the existence of New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, DC these folks had established rights to the 7th District. The early settlers were a combination of watermen, farmers and tobacco farmers and starting in 1639 other people started trying to take this place away from them.

The local Native Americans never tried, I suspect they knew better, and this was about the only place in America where the settlers and Native Americans lived in harmony which tells you a lot about the people who settled as they respected the rights of the Natives. Since it was the only place in the New World that promised religious freedom a lot of other people wanted to stop them. The Puritans and a few other groups seemed to think they had the only connection to God.

So the locals fought off the other white men for about a hundred years before they joined the fight against the Brits as the concept of freedom just kept spreading. In a couple of wars the British actually attacked this area which goes to show military intelligence hasn't much changed after all these years. The 7th District eventually became the last frontier in Maryland which it remains to this day.

So along the way the Civil War was fought and being we were well south of the Mason Dixon line but still in Union controlled territory the 7th District became one of the primary smuggling points for getting supplies and arms to the Confederates since the Union had blockaded all the southern ports. One Union officer said at night the Potomac River was filled with black painted boats sailing supplies across the river to the Confederates in Virginia.

Upcoming scandals we will be reporting on include the English and French support for the Confederate army that was channeled through this area and the fact the English backed John Wilkes Booth and was to pick him up here after the killing of President Lincoln. Of course there is also the disappearance of Booth for almost a week during the manhunt in the area of the 7th District.

Eventually the rest of Maryland got civilized and soon the election of governor in the state always seemed to be tied between the Baltimore Democrats and the Washington DC area Republicans and it was the band of outcasts down in the 7th District that decided many an election throughout the 20th century. I suspect this was the way the folks of the 7th District got even with the politicians. Many a person can recall seeing a candidate for governor from up north sneak into the District, spend a weekend sharing some moonshine with the old boys, and going home to win the election. In the 7th District the vote could be controlled as about everyone was a Catholic Democrat and they knew statewide elections were dependent on them for success.

We had our share of celebrities as well but they always seemed to live just across the water from the 7th District. From Coltons Point you could see where George Washington was born and where Robert E. Lee was born on the Virginia shore.

There is no local government nor local police in the entire 7th District as the people could never see the need for the bureaucrats. Most justice was handed out locally including disposal without the expense of trial or jail for anyone terrorizing the people. No crime wave lasted long.

Of course to this day there are no governments, street lights, stop lights, sidewalks, sewers, water pipes, gas lines or anything else found in most civilizations. The fire and emergency personnel are volunteers. About half of the roads planned for Coltons Point have never been built and you better check the goods in the local store for expiration dates before you buy anything.

People here still eat fish, oysters, crab and clams harvested from the river although the politicians up north have done about everything possible to destroy the environment. More than nine Bald Eagles share year round residence in the Point along with many a strange specimen that can be seen wandering out of the swamps and wetlands on dark and foggy nights.

There is a distinct social structure that has evolved over the years including the Ancients, Aboriginals, Watermen, Yuppies, Yippies, Yappies, Come Downers and Come Backers. The Ancients are the descendents of the original boat people from 1634 on. Since there are no Native Americans left the Aboriginals are the hillbillies, moon shiners, deinstitutionalized head cases, religious zealots, and of course Confederates who run around singing "Don't give a damn what the Yankees say the South's gonna rise again" in a strange pig Latin tongue.

The Watermen are the raucous survivors of the original fisher men, crab men, oyster men, clam men, eel men, (yes I said eels as in scary slithering things on the river bottom) and the people who supported them like the marinas, crab shacks, oyster and clam processing joints etc. There aren't many left and that is one of the enduring tragedies of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

The Yuppies are the new rich who move here to get away from what they spent their lives working to get. Yippies are the younger generation now beyond youth but still trying to find their way through life with a soft spot for environmental issues, nature, birds and privacy. Yappies are Yuppies and Yippies with a big mouth who show up expecting to find all the laws of more civilized places like dog catchers, police and all the other conveniences of modern society.

Down here the Postmaster knows everyone on a first name basis. The local bar doesn't want any more customers as that might put them in a higher tax bracket. There is no fast food, no place to eat period without driving about 10-20 miles, and little need to put on airs. It don't matter whether you are rich or poor, you all eat crabs, oysters and clams the same.

The Come Downers are the city folk who discovered the quaint place along the river and made their way here to escape where they are from or to exploit the area for material gain which never seems to happen. Finally the Come Backers are the kids of the Ancient families who escaped long ago only to discover the rest of the world will never replace what they had here in the first place and eventually they find their way back home.

Now that is a little of what you find down here in the 7th District of Southern Maryland, ferocious defenders of individual freedom a lot of character from a lot of characters, a place steeped deep in history, a keen sense of fair play, a desire to help your neighbors no matter what their social status might be, a bit cynical when it comes to the promises of the government or elected officials, but people who will never turn their backs on people in need, unless, of course they deserve it.

No Hillbilly Joe this is not acceptable art!

In response to the request from Hillbilly Joe to have this sculpture of a human placed on the St. Clements Museum porch, the answer is absolutely not! The people of Coltons Point don't want to literally see through people. Think of something else to endow to the people.