Buckles

Buckle up for safety. Buckle down for financial security. Put them together and you just might survive the next crash, whether it be from an auto accident or the next big dip in the market value of your dwindling investments.

In neither instance are you likely to come out unscathed… unless you’re a corporate executive who’s assured of a big fat pay check and a hefty bonus or two, fitted with designer crash helmets and an armored military Humvee; a commercialized Hummer might not suffice with a revolting public, what with the continued excesses of Big business, Big government, Big Banks and all the Big-dealing lobbyists whose only goal is to keep the status quo of the average American living under the thumb prints of serfdom.

Corporate executives are aghast at the very thought they should give up a penny’s worth of compensation through a redistribution of their wealth, and that of their cronies, to those who do the grunt work to fill their pockets with riches beyond our wildest prayers.

We’re much too reliant on government. We have become submissive to governing bodies who cower unabatedly to the real power brokers, certainly not the voters who put them in office, but the Big Game players aforementioned.

The pittance of minimum wage salaries does nothing to keep families from living in poverty. To make a point, out of approximately 32 million people who may [be forced to] participate in the government mandated health care system [if enacted], 19 million are expected to be eligible to receive subsidies of anywhere from 90% for a family of four whose income is about $88,000 ($44,000 for individuals) to a 97% subsidy for a four family household with an annual income of approximately $29,000 ($14,000 threshold for singles). That’s a lot of people and a whole lot of subsidizing with taxpayer dollars.

Since 1980, the average working man and woman has seen their income increase about thirty percent. Also since then, corporate executives have given themselves (through their hand-picked board of directors) anywhere from three hundred to four hundred percent pay raises.

(It’s rather interesting, and disappointing, that during my extensive searches through the mazes of Google, which in (4.4 seconds) might display upwards of ‘About 1,234,578 results’, could I find a single source that narrowed the gap of the 300% to 400% figures. This led me to believe that no one really knows, or willing to admit, to what degree the top 1% of these high and mighty money mongers actually ‘earn’. In some cases, might it possibly be 1,000% above and beyond that of what the core majority of Americans make?)

Going a step further, and pointing out that nobody wants to give up what they’ve been generously given, the expiration of the G. W. Bush tax cuts that only benefited those with the highest bundles of cash reserves, is under fire from the ones who benefited from those tax cuts.

Nor can I fail to comment on the claims, and complaints, that the top 1% wage earners pay a ‘disproportionate’ percent of income taxes. Their accountants know what loopholes to leap through to lessen the impact of paying the government their fortunes as allowed by current tax codes. They have accountants; we have tax preparers who may receive training but, otherwise, don’t have the same level of education, thus no CPA after their names – many are seasonal employees who are paid hourly wages instead of commissions, such as many who work for, as an example, H&R Block.

From 2007 figures, the top 1% of income earners had a 19% share of all income in the U.S. but paid 37% of the total U.S. tax bills. The bottom 50% made 13% of all earnings but contributed only 3% in federal income taxes. But the bottom 50% are the American consumers whose spending make up 70% of GDP but only with what financial resources they by spending whatever their financial resources allow. Most have lost their jobs, savings, investments and home values. By no stretch of the imagination do these people have the disposable income to help dig the U.S. out of the continued deterioration of the nation’s still faltering economy. With their credit cards maxed out, or cancelled for non-payments and declared bankruptcies, the situation makes it a foregone conclusion that a solid recovery is nowhere in sight.

In my estimation, the best course of action for the average American, whether working, living from one extension of unemployment benefits to another, or barely surviving on Social Security incomes, is to buckle down before they buckle under. It may be the worst course of action to avoid deflation and Dow Street investors would send industrial averages tumbling to lows not seen since when? The depression maybe?

If you should take personal responsibility of your financial future and place your dollars and cents in a guaranteed but low interest money market accounts or certificate of deposit, it may prolong the recovery but you will have done what all wise people should do: look out for your own self interest and emulate what the Big Bad Boys are doing.

A Racy Cup of Tea

There’s something seriously wrong with the ideology of Tea Party Movement. The ‘official website’ mission statement professes ‘The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.’ Sounds like mighty good stuff, doesn’t it? But it’s not necessarily so.

Massachusetts voters got it right when they handily elected Republican Scott Brown over what was supposed to be a shoe-in victory for Democrat Martha Coakley. Although Brown claimed during an interview with the Boston Globe that he was “not quite sure what you are talking about”, when questioned about what he thought about the Tea Party movement, he had nonetheless attended a fundraiser sponsored by the Greater Boston Tea Party eleven days prior to making the statement.

As it turned out, Brown went to Washington as an “independent voice” and proved to be true to form when the first piece of legislation he voted in favor of was the Democratic Jobs Bill. Aghast at such audacity, Tea Party enthusiasts chastised Brown for having “voted for it because it contains measures that will help put people back to work.” Although the Congressional Budget Office estimated the $15 billion will create between 100,000 to 200,000 jobs, it lacked the premise of fiscal responsibility, a heinous crime by any measure to the Tea Party.

The Tea Party was formed in response to the growing number of moderate Republicans. If the intentions of the Tea party are to attract voter support in the upcoming mid-term elections, their defeat may be preordained by making statements that could very likely alienate a vast majority of the electorate.

To begin with, during a January town hall meeting on Medicare, Republican South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer said federal government entitlement programs for the poor are like “feeding stray animals” and that by giving “an animal or a person ample food supply” they will “reproduce, especially the ones that don’t think too much further than that.”

The comment may have been made in correlating a budget shortfall of $1.1 billion with food stamp benefits totaling $706 billion and that with 34% of the children in the state being black as compared to 14% nationwide, and the poverty rate among blacks is 33.5% the solution may be to drug test parents as a condition for people to continue public assistance when 58% of South Carolina school children receive free or subsidized lunch programs.

I can‘t imagine Bauer will be able to fulfill his 2012 goal of becoming the next Governor of South Carolina in 2012 when Mark Sanford vacates the post due to term limits. A third of the registered voters are non-white and only 3% of the population is Hispanic. Bauer isn’t the only politician to make statements that are blatantly racist.

In February, Tom Tancredo, former Republican Congressman from Colorado and a 2008 presidential candidate, told an audience at a Tea Party Convention in Nashville that "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House." The statement suggested literacy tests would have prevented Obama from becoming President.

I don’t know where Tancredo’s future political aspirations may lie but they’re seriously in doubt when he makes statements that too easily group together illiterate blacks and Hispanics that don’t speak English. They are racist in nature and hopefully at odds with the majority of the electorate.

Such are my concerns about the Tea Party movement. What I thought would be a group of patriots destined to become political game changers have, instead, become what I refer to as ‘political punks’ for their unrelenting intentions on disrupting the status quo with no structured solutions to combat what is socially unacceptable to their simplistic ideals.