The Possible Trump “En passant”

Let’s see, no wall for Trump after he opens the government for three weeks. Pelosi said the government had to be open for any discussion of the border wall. It doesn’t look like she is open to any sort of border wall negotiations after the government was reopened.

What if Trump decides to build the wall by using his emergency powers? And then tells Congress to pass the budget with two thirds vote, because his signature is not forthcoming. He can claim that what ever they pass will have the blessing of the American people. And it will be up to Congress to accept the guilt for any foot dragging in coming to an agreement. If Congress truly represents the people, this will come to be, at some point in time. Its about time for them to pass a budget that has a firm support from both sides.

Congress needs to be shown that the real world, looks at what you have accomplished, not what you stand for. Many of these Congressman have dreams that elude reality. Practicality and pragmatism are what we need.

Compromise will build unity.

The Power of Presidential Executive Directives

Most people think that the laws of this country are passed by the Congress and State legislatures. That is not the case. In most cases, a Government department is created and funded by Congress. The head of that department is responsible for writing the code of laws. If the traffic department wants to write a law that has a fine of $300 for sneezing at a stop sign, you pay the fine or hire a lawyer for $1,000. Mind you, if you don’t pay the fine or obey the restriction, the bureaucrats activate the next line of enforcement which is the police. And as you saw in the BLM cattle feed charges of a few years ago, they had the FBI out there trying to enforce their edicts. The laws had been changed by bureaucratic proclamation.

So, what is happening? We have a President that is starting to eliminate a lot of these directives that gave these agencies regulatory authority over us. The EPA has lost about 770 employees and they are not being replaced. It was those people claiming that the car companies were getting better gas mileage due to their regulations. The truth was, the increased mileage was due to the forced production of more fuel-efficient economy cars than high performance models. By averaging the overall mileage as a group, you got the desired result. You could still buy both, but you paid more for the gas guzzler. Get rid of ethanol additive to your gas, and you might even see an extra 4 miles a gallon.

Basically, the President enforces the laws. He can help validate a future law if it has less than a 2/3 majority vote for it and at least a 50 % approval. As chief enforcer, he can write Executive directives to define how a department functions and can issue directives on how to execute the law, like forget it. Obama did this with the border guards.

Obama’s presidency was fraught with executive directives for everything. These were bureaucrats deciding what was right for you to do or not do. If you didn’t march to their drummer, you were fined or jailed.

We are slowly emerging from this Obama fiasco of government regulations for everything, to one of less government regulation. The Trump administration brings anticipation of less supervision and more economic freedom.

Let’s ring in the new year and forget that we are Democrats or Republicans. Of course, with Congress it is very hard to forget what Obama did with health care. He taught the Republicans that he didn’t need them for anything. Attitudes matter and I think the Democratic party is going to get pay back in the coming new year. Hopefully less government regulation will turn the economy loose.

Have a Happy New Year!

Its been a slow year for posts. I can’t honestly claim that we have emerged from the Great Depression, but things have improved. The improvement has been, that people no longer question where the new-found money that Congress spends is coming from. Congress has funded the budget like this since the 1960’s, so they don’t mettle with what works. And as long as it works run with it. I might delve more into that concept in the coming new year.

So, for now, here is wishing my readers a Happy New Year from my family to yours.

Dollars Are the Real Election Voters

Trump got elected and had no private backing for funds in the beginning. Plus, he is working for one dollar a year. Not your typical rags to riches story in Congress.

Now take the average politician running for office, Democrat or Republican. People donate money towards your election because of your political views. Once you get into office there is a small change as to how things are run. The politician needs to worry about getting re elected and this amounts to raising about 1 to 3 million in funds to run again. He sits there and lets it be known that he would like to hear “both sides” before he votes. In come the lobbyists and they bend his ear. Some of the lobbyists will donate a fixed amount to a Congressman’s reelection campaign and mention that he may get the same amount next year conditional on how he votes this year. The key word here is “may.”

Now with President Trump in office, he has no group of people he is beholding to. Big money didn’t get him elected and he has ideas where he wants the government to improve. It has nothing to do with "Scratch my back and I scratch yours." His attitude is, “I’m going to kick your ass if you piss me off.”

This is not the standard operating procedures (SOP) that the government has been using in the past. This is probably why so many Congressmen are against President Trump. Their way of raising funds has been trashed. Trump is going to do it for free, and the Congress is used to getting cash for their votes. I’d tend to believe that “yes” and “no” votes costs more to buy, the closer the vote is. This is why most politicians never get anything done. There are enough “don’t care” votes out there to buy at any one time to sway the vote one way or the other.

So, in reality, the dollars spent by private enterprise help to determine who wins an election. While in office, the dollars donated to the Congressmen by special interest groups, determines how many people will vote for or against a certain issue. This is what President Trump might not understand. The lobbyists have the power to influence the final vote of each bill presented in Congress. “How many dollars does it take to change your mind?” And when you think about it, there is always that one little thing in the bill that irks a Congressman enough not to vote for it.

Look at it from a different point of view as a Democrat. Support a Republican bill like “Build the Wall,” puts no money in your election fund, whereas voting against it would keep it on the agenda the next time they run.

Before Trump, it was “Read my lips” or “You can keep your doctor.” We are used to politicians promising the moon and delivering nothing. Trump is different, he is a real horse trader. Pelosi and Schumer have met their match.
Trump is not in this game for money. That’s what makes things peculiar. He’s not acting like a politician. He adds an unknown element into the game. He isn’t afraid to be wrong, because he knows, the winner is always right.

Post Script:

Take this article with a grain of salt. It is pretty much conjecture on my part. Most Congressmen are very responsible to the voters that got them elected. The trouble is, it only takes a few bad apples to ruin a barrel of apples.

Global Warming? Or is it global Climate change?

Admittedly this is off topic a bit, but it may give you some perspective on the liberals’ manipulation of our minds by others in higher education.

The Global warming issue comes up all of the time. The major push on all of this is from the universities. If you want to do research on global warming, there is plenty of money available at the college level for government grants. If you want to pursue a research topic of global cooling, you’ll find, no funds are available. This is a political sponsored event, to project their green earth polices, on the masses unquestioned.

The dire warnings from most of these college research papers suggest that if we do nothing, we are doomed. We will resemble Venus in a few years. They want to panic the masses in order to force us to accept their agenda.

If we go back one billion years, there was no oxygen on the planet to speak of, and the atmosphere contained 20 percent CO2. Another unusual thing at that time, was that there was no oxygen so nothing could burn. It took another 500 million years for the oxygen level to rise to 15 percent which allowed combustion. Notice that 20 percent CO2 in the atmosphere didn’t cook the planet; plant life flourished. It took a half billion years for enough oxygen to collect for life as we know it to evolve.

We appear to be in the midst of a transition of global climate change. In recent history of millions of years, we can see that the sea level has been a lot lower by some 60 feet or more. The African deserts once were very productive fertile growth areas as were other areas in South America. We really can’t state that we are entering a period of global warming; the data of a billion years refute this. We are in the midst of a transition of Global Climate Change.

Once the Ice caps melt, the Gulf Stream will change course. Europe could become too cold for farming. Expect the transition to happen over maybe 50 to 200 years. What it means is this, areas that were farm land will not be productive and other new areas will now have the desirable weather for food cultivation.

What needs to be realized is that food can still be grown, but the weather shift enables areas that are now unhospitable to farming, to become prime agricultural areas once again.

Both camps agree, there appears to be a change in the computer projection modules of our climate. Is it possible that "Global Warming" is really nothing more than "Global Climate Change?" Desert land is very cheap right now. The best deals are when nobody wants it.

Invasion of Mexico a Possibility

14,000 people moving in Mexico towards the US border. Question, what happens after their first step on American soil? They have rights (ridiculous as it may seem).

If the Mexican government cannot stop a caravan of 14,000 people, where can they find the means to stop 10,000 US marines from crossing the Mexican border to control the people on the Mexican side?

I have no information to support my suggested scenario, but if you want to address a problem, you do not wait for it to become your problem. You anticipate and react before it becomes a problem with unanticipated consequences.

Plus’s

Mexico could become the 51st state
Drug traffic would stop
People would be more secure
Real law would help our retired senior citizens down there

Legislative Budget Tricks

It is getting close to election time and the voters are being bombarded with all sorts of bond measures and other goodies to vote on. The plea for money for roads, infrastructure, and schools sound like a very honest necessity, but hold on for one minute. The logic at work here is just that logic, commonly called smoke and mirrors.

In California they passed the gambling lottery for “Our Kids.” The premise was that the additional money would help the schools. What happened? The funds that the state was previously paying to the schools could now be used somewhere else, the lottery money didn’t appreciable increase the dollars for the schools. The legislature already has money for road repairs, pass the tax measure for new roads, and the money that they budgeted for roads will be spent on the homeless.

We are looking at roads falling apart, that were designed to be replaced after 30 years. Current age is more like 60 years for many of LA’s concrete highways. The water system dates back to 1900, no wonder at why so many pipes are bursting. There is no budgeted scheduled replacement of the infrastructure, repair is the main option. This deterioration took time. The tax dollars were deemed better spent somewhere else by the Legislature. The new bullet train that is to run from LA to San Francisco could probably replace a lot of the infrastructure in LA an San Francisco.

Sales taxes are approaching 10 percent in California. Jerry Brown said the state had a 16 billion dollars budget surplus this year. The fact that CalPERS needs more than twice that to be solvent is probably too insignificant to even mention. See if that surplus carries over to next year—we know where it is going. The state will distribute it to the cities and the cities will send it to CalPERS.

In high school when I was a kid, it was a common joke, if you dad couldn’t get a job, go work for the government. They didn’t pay good, but if you were an outstanding employee the private sector would offer you a real job.

Where is the logic that we can afford to pay public employees more that the same ones in the private sector? And to top that off, offer them 100K yearly retirement.

When we go to the polls this year, don’t let the bleeding-heart liberals bring up our kids, widows and orphans as an excuse for new funds. We need to cut them off completely. They need to do more with what they already have.

I didn't mean this to sound like an editorial, but I get the feeling that politicians are a bunch of con-artists that consider every voter a goodie-two-shoes Samaritan that they can rob blind. The thing that bothers me is that they are probably right in their assumption. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the politicians want to charge extra for a hand basket. Go Figure!

Idealism verses Realism or “Perspective”

There are 2 different classifications of voters in the general election, Idealists and Realists. Their education ranges from the educated to the uneducated.

The idealists are for health care provided by the government and higher education for all. There has to be a minimum wage and open borders for all. Government has a blank check to solve all of our problems

Whereas, the realists, want prisons, walls around the border, no government health care and a balanced budget.

The main thing about health care and higher education, if the individual can’t pay for it, It doesn’t become more affordable if the government pays for it. Anything the government tends to produce or supply is done very inefficiently and becomes increasingly expensive over time. Sometimes the goals set are not even questioned. What good does it do to send everyone to college? Has the question even been asked??? No!!! Everyone should be entitled to a higher education? What makes that a given truth. This is idealism speaking. Trade schools could offer a better life than the promise of a college education. Many never make it through their sophomore year at college and by God, they have the student loans to prove it.

Many mothers want their kids to go to college and become a doctor, lawyer or scientist. A carpenter, plumber, merchant seaman or oilrig worker might not seem like much, many make very good money.

The big problem is the elections. As a Republican, I did not vote for the president that won the election 6 years ago. But I kept quiet and lived with the results. What we need to realize is that there is a fringe element that determines the elections. 43 percent are Democrats and 43 percent are Republicans (guesstimates on my part). Notice that over the two last elections most of you remained faithful to you party. What happened is that the fringe people, the non-committed who were one issue voters, came into play. It was this 14% that elected the president.

Sadly, for the next election, we are again looking at one item voters. Save the whales, abortion, non-abortion, gay rights, black lives matter, border security, immigration etc. So, when you see CNN of MSN deliver the news you have to wonder. Why are they are reaching to absurd levels to stretch the truth? They are working the fringe voters.

It is kind of funny the idealist will protest for a minimum wage and the realist will sell them signs for their protest. You want a college education; a realist will make it happen for you. Want to buy a home you can’t afford; a realist will make it happen.

We have a split of the electorate 43 percent Republican and 43 percent Democrat. It is the 14 percent of the undecided voters that the news media is interested in influencing. This is where the 2020 election will be won or lost. And it could have very interesting results in the coming election in November. The average voter has no idea that the news media is assuming how the majority of the people will vote. The hard-core votes are fixed in stone. What the committed voter doesn’t understand, is that the media is focusing on the 14 percent “one item uncommitted voters.” They may be hoping, to sway these voters, with their rather absurd hate Trump rhetoric. I believe they have a good chance to accomplish their goal.

The line between realism and idealism is fading. The realist has lost the argument that the government has to pay for what it borrows (this camel has a strong back as far as straw is concerned). From here we only have Republicans and Democrats as two distinct classes of voters. But there is one more now, the news media. This is the organization that speaks for the swamp that lost control of the government when Trump got elected.

Imagine how much money could be lost by ethanol suppliers if we got rid of ethanol added to gas? That is swamp money. Less miles per gallon and it costs more. HMMMM.

Lets see if the media can sell the uncommitted voters "a pig in a poke."

The Tariff wars are Good for the US

Many people believe that tariffs are bad for the country. Let’s point out that the first 100 years of our country, those tariffs paid almost all of the revenue needed to run our government. And of course, we stole and abused patents back then, from all over the world, like China is doing now.

We could completely get rid of our steel and aluminum production if we cut our tariffs to zero. The only trouble is that if we got in a war, we might have to purchase the steel and aluminum from the party we are fighting. It’s a little like our civil war. The South lost because they did not have an industrial base.

In today’s modern world, any manufacturer can pick up and move to a cheap labor country for production. Every time I iron my button-down shirts, I tour the world; Singapore, India, Panama, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh to name a few. I can’t document it, but I would guess that most Ex-American manufacturers that produce product in another country get to avoid a lot of the overhead that was generated from production in the USA. What they would have paid in expenses over here, disappear over there, and surface as extra profit for the entrepreneur.

China thinks by limiting soy beans from the US with a tariff will be retaliatory. Sorry you’re wrong there. Fewer farmers will plant soy beans next year and prices will jump just because of the shortage. The Chinese government might understand tariffs, but they have no idea of what the futures market is all about. Food and raw materials are not really taxable with tariffs. If China wants to import soybeans from another country, go for it.

It cracks me up when Europe says it will put a tariff on Harley Davidson and Jim Beam whisky. Why not put a tariff on the cars we export over there? The reason they don’t is because they already have a tariff in place on our auto exports. Europe will pay for our whisky and our motorcycles whatever the tariff. Luxury items are immune to tariffs. You have to be part of the upper 10% to afford them.

The tariff problem could work out. If we don’t make the item, the tariff would imply that we should. Tariffs protect infant industry just starting up. In the past, letting imports crush our local industry with cheap foreign labor and production, changed our country in a bad way.

It scares me when everything I pick up in my office says “Made in China.” There was a time when you bought American because of the quality. If you are a frog, it has been a very slow boil, 50 years since they turned on the heat.

What we can be certain of is that before Trump, everyone was very comfy with all of the existing trade agreements. In return the US got cheaper goods and lost their industrial base. On top of that, the transition was gradual and everyone got used to it. Or so we thought. Ross Perot ran for president on the "Giant sucking sound in Mexico called the Nafta agreement." Who wanted to believe him? Give the peasants cheaper toys and they will be happy.

What happened over time? American industry moved to Mexico and then from there to China. The consumer got very little benefit. Of course, food stamps and unemployment insurance are benefits. Let’s see how Trump's tariffs work out over the next 3 years. Our industrial production over the last 30 years hasn’t been that great for the country as a whole.

The Future Housing Crash In Kalifornia

If you are a veteran and want to live in California or have been living there for years as a homeowner, boy, do we have a deal for you. California veterans are entitled to buy a home up to $649,999 dollars with no money down. At present interest rates, that's about a $3,000 a month payment.

My wife and I bought our home for about 500k and put 50k down for a down payment about 18 months ago. We have been getting 3 to 10 letters a week like the one below to refinance our mortgage and drag out another 100K in cash.

Something is wrong here, this refinancing with nothing down as a veteran is insane. The 10 solicitations a week to refinance our home loan sounds like an exaggeration of what we are receiving in the mail but it isn’t. Back in 2005 I wrote Greenspan a letter about the abuses in the real estate market and got a form letter back and these were published in my blog back in Aug 28, 2009. Here is a Link


You have to wonder why a lender would want to give any VA home owner all of the equity in their home including the appreciation. I am still trying to figure out why they wrote me a thirty year loan at the age of 70 , I'll be a hundred years old when I pay it off.