Category: Politics

I realize that California is experiencing a fiscal meltdown. Layoff notices are flying all around the ranks of government workers. In the midst of all this drama would you believe that I got a job with the State of California? No I didn’t land a cushy appointment from the Governor. I started as a lowly paper pusher for the Department of Corrections. Yes the same department that just sent out over 1,500 layoff notices!

I interviewed and was hired a week before the notices were sent out in May. I did part of my pre-employment paperwork in May; most notably the Form I-9. I had to speak with four different people before I could convince them that a passport was the only document required, (I only spent 15 years doing HR and payroll and I know what documents you need to check to hire someone.) The third week after I reported to work, I finally got fingerprinted and filled out the IRS Form W-4.

Interestingly, I signed the form with the oath required by state employees to uphold the constitution twice but neither time did anyone actually administer the oath to me. The second time, the person helping me with the paperwork even signed the portion saying they were a witness to the oath being administered—even though they never administered the oath. Go figure!

The conditions in the office were surprisingly Spartan. There are virtually no office supplies in the supply room. Employees are cannibalizing empty cubicles for supplies. The supply cabinets consist of odd sized Post-it Notes, red pens, typewriter ribbons and tractor feed labels. After trying two calculators that were both broken, I ended-up bringing my calculator from home.

My four year old has a better computer than I was given at the government office. The HP that I run at work is a real dinosaur. It is slow. I’m sure the video memory is shared with RAM which makes it even slower. The user rights are fairly locked-down and I can’t install any programs or run Windows Update. My son’s computer is dual core with 640 MB of video memory. It is very fast running XP Professional.

Every copy machine in the office is either dead or on its last legs. I have difficulty getting my work done when I can’t make copies. I thought about bring in my flatbed scanner just to run copies but I don’t have rights to install any programs.

Contrary to what you would expect in government service, there are no procedure manuals for the work I am currently doing. I am processing paper forms that are then entered on a mainframe program that was probably new in the 1980s. It takes days to process the forms for payment. Partially this is because the people filling out the forms don’t follow directions. All the places they leave blank or incomplete I have to fix. I then have to check all math on the forms. I must then hand-code all entries and write them on the form. I have to check vendor setup in the mainframe and then check for advance payments prior to authorizing A/P entries into the system. After several more tedious steps, I have to do some more antiquated procedures. The copy of the paperwork that is sent to the State Controller for payment is literally held together with string. I had to salvage a three-hole punch and rig it as a two-hole punch to get holes in the paper for the string to go thru!

There is a system that employees can use to do this online and deliver folks like me from as much paperwork but the computerized system is only optional. This system is also obsolete but the new accounting program used by the rest of the state is not yet compatible with what I’m doing.

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Barack Hussein Obama

Just for the record, I ran the numbers and the United States ranks 56th in the world and has a population of 0.78 percent Muslims. Yeah, less than ONE percent. Hey Barry WTF? Obama is not only lying, it’s a whopper that is reminiscent of Bill Clinton in his heyday.

Niccolò Machiavelli would be proud of Barry’s brazenness. Does this guy really believe this stuff or just think people with towels on their head will believe any BS that is said for their consumption. Obama probably thinks he is giving an olive branch to the Middle East but he is actually double-dog daring them to call his bluff. We will regret his stupidity and arrogance.

Sorry, but can we really afford four years of this fascist buffoon?

I finally was able to hear Steve Poizner speak at our much delayed Reagan-Lincoln Dinner here in Sacramento County. I was most impressed by his presentation and understanding that “it’s the spending stupid” to lift a phrase from another political campaign.

He fielded a number of questions on a variety of issues. The person next to me was anxious to ask Poizner about his position on abortion—a subject that many folks are passionate about. I suggested instead of asking him which label—prolife or prochoice—he wished to apply to himself that this person ask him specifics about issues that Poizner would likely face as governor. I suggested that he ask about taxpayer funding of abortion and conscientious objections by pharmacists and other healthcare providers to being forced to provide “morning after” pills and other such methods of abortion.

The person seated at my table got up after Poizner had completed his Q & A period and went looking for his. This person had stated previously that he would only vote for prolife candidates. He must have been successful with what he was told by Poizner because when he returned to the table, he was filling out an endorsement card.

The voters have spoken. California’s legislature and our Governor were sent back to the drawing board to try again to fix the budget. Meanwhile, we have the highest and oppressive taxes this side of New York.

It’s time for voters to take the next step in the tax revolt. It’s time for a series of ballot initiatives to implement a part-time legislature; probably with a unicameral one with about 180 members. If we had one representative for every 200,000 people, we could have more responsive representation with such a variety of interests that no party would be able to firmly run the state. Budgets would be on a two year cycle and lawmakers would meet for three months every other year. Lastly, we need to reign in the power of state employee unions. They need to comply with the rules that every other business in the state must adhere to.

In the wee hours of the morning, Republican state senator Abel Maldonado finally caved to pressure from Democrats and cast the deciding vote in favor of the pathetic budget deal hammered out by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat leaders. Maldonado traded his vote for one change to the budget and a pyrrhic dream of political reform. Maldonado swapped a twelve cents a gallon gasoline tax for an increase in personal income taxes and some hoped for federal money courtesy of the Obama bailout. He also got Democrats to reluctantly allow a ballot measure for open primaries to appear at a future election.

In reality, all Maldonado did was kick the budget can down the road a year or two. No structural reforms were implemented. All he did was allow taxes to be raised in the midst of a recession that is much deeper in California than in the rest of the country. This will make any hope of recovery in California much more difficult due to an even more hostile business climate than any of our neighboring states. The reality is that not one dime of taxes had to be raised to fix this budget. It is a spending problem. Period!

California is sitting on billions of dollars of oil and natural gas that the government won’t allow anyone to go after. We waste millions on firefighting every summer when proper timber management would prevent these fires from being severe and generate jobs and revenue to state coffers. Water is horribly mismanaged in this state and the list goes on. There is no need for any tax increases.

If we conformed to President Clinton’s welfare reform bill and quit treating illegals as citizens we could realize billions more in savings but as the Good Book says, “The compassion of the wicked is cruelty”. Education is a black hole of money that eats up over 75 percent of all its funding in top heavy bureaucracies that favor San Francisco and Los Angeles at the expense of the rest of the state. We are in the bottom of the nation in our quality of education but we have the strongest teacher’s union in the country.

There is one other factor which the media was too lazy to investigate as to why this deal had to be made this week and that is that we are one day away from the state convention of the California Republican Party. The main focus of many grassroots Republicans was a series of competing measures that would deny any funding from the State Party for any Republican that supported increasing taxes. Some ideas that went along with these resolutions included the State Party being required to fund primary challengers to any Republican politician that voted for tax increases and an automatic censure of any office holder supporting tax increases. Whether Maldonado and company will get this treatment remains to be seen.

I can assure you that rank and file Republicans are mad as hell and some heads in the Party are in serious danger of getting chopped. California is on the verge of becoming a one party state and gutless men like Schwarzenegger and Maldonado are to blame. If current trends hold, Decline to State—California’s version of “None of the Above”—will soon be the second largest political block in the State with Republicans a distant third.

Rev Jeremiah Wright once preached that God should damn the United States. Well he got his wish. That is how I would describe the coming presidency of Barack Obama. Death, chaos and destruction are what he has promised and I fully expect him to keep his promise.

Abortion and infanticide will be better funded by the government as they continue Margaret Sanger’s dream of eliminating poverty by purging blacks from society by never allowing them to be born.

The economy will be ravaged by excessive and oppressive taxation and regulation. Government spending will soar to heights never seen before. More and more of the economy will be controlled by the government.

Less individual freedom and liberty will exist. Religious persecution will be more common especially for those who stand for traditional morality. Look for government to take children away from their parents for having wrong beliefs on issues like homosexuality. Private schools will come under more government control and homeschoolers will be targeted by public schools and teacher’s unions as threats to the State.

The most long lasting damage to society will be the flood of judicial appointments that Obama will make. I expect government to remove any pretext of following the Constitution as judicial legislation will become the norm under Obama.
The country will never recover from the turbulent times that we are about to enter.

Look for Obama to mandate two years of service for all young people either during high school or between high school and college. The Obama Youth Corps will be modeled after a similar European group from the last century. I’m sure they will get extra points or promotions for turning in their parents.

I have told my sister that as soon as Texas leaves the Union we will move there but her response was only laughter. Living under President Obama is not funny, it scares the hell out of me. The world is a much more dangerous place with him in the White House.

Steve Taylor’s old song is an apt description of the financial mess our country finds itself in this month. The stock market is almost half of its all-time high. When do the stock brokers start jumping out of the windows instead of facing the disgrace? When do the Democrats that arranged this wholesale theft of the financial markets finally get theirs? Now we know the real legacy of Bill Clinton.

“For whatsoever a man soweth , that shall he also reap.” The “greatest economy ever” was the claim of President Clinton. Now we know how he did it. Financial institutions were forced into making bad loans in the name of affirmative action. No down payment, no proof of income, no proof of citizenship, just sign the papers. Does it bother anybody besides me that five million of these bad mortgages were to illegal aliens? Dire Straits had a song many years ago about “money for nothing and your chicks for free.” That’s the Clinton legacy in a nutshell.

Now the housing bubble has burst and many people are confronted with reality they always knew. The pyramid scheme has finally collapsed. The funny thing is that this is a cakewalk compared to the collapse of Social Security that is about two decades away.

The other factor that is amplifying this whole mess is something Congress did about a year ago. They changed the way that companies have to report losses on assets that they own. While it is technical I will give you the layman’s version of what they did.

Suppose that you bought a house for $400,000. Because of the housing bubble bursting it is now worth $300,000. As long as you continue living in the house and making the payment, everything is fine because the issue is not current value but the value when you decide to sell the home. If you hold onto the house, hopefully the value will increase and you will not take a loss if the market recovers before you sell.

However, under the new rules enacted by Congress, your lender is in a much different situation. On the books your lender must now show a loss of $100,000! There is really no loss because the mortgage payments are being made and the property is not for sale; however, the new Congressional rules say that it must be shown on the lender’s financial statement as a loss. This has turned otherwise solvent institutions into bankrupt lenders. Effectively, the Congress has turned the housing collapse from a 9/11 attack on a segment of the economy into a hydrogen bomb detonation in the middle of the economic heart of the country.

As I’ve said before, if Republicans were to blame for this mess there would be hearings every days 24/7 until the election, but there are no hearings, no subpoenas, no investigations of any kind. There is only more government programs and money to the same people that created this mess in the first place. Reward the failures, it’s the Democrat way.

The only question is can the Dems fool the voters for another month without being exposed for who they are?

Congress defeated the “Wall Street Bail-out” earlier today. There’s too much government power grabbing to think it’s a dead issue. Maybe it will be less socialist next time it reappears.

My question with this whole issue is if this legislation passes in any form similar to what was voted on today, won’t it be a huge step toward nationalizing several sectors of business and making the federal government the biggest owner of residential real estate in the country? If this is true, how does it benefit us? Until several ranking democrats and CEOs are frog-marched to jail in handcuffs, I think the taxpayers should root for private sector solutions. Let these troubled companies sell assets and restructure before Congress starts writing checks.

Congress seems bent on doing economic brain surgery with a chain saw. Why not make the sausage in public so the process has openness instead of trusting Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi to write something in secret and then expecting YES votes before anyone can read it. The root problem with these financial issues is government mandates so why is the solution to intrusive government to get an even more intrusive government?

Congressional Democrats cave again and will let the 25 year old ban on off-shore drilling expire. Yahoo!

This is wonderful news. Now the states can decide the issue.

If only the socialists in California would see that this opportunity is a key component on the path to solving the debt problem in Sacramento. Why borrow lottery monies when you can get more debt free cash from drilling leases and royalties. (Of course if they come to their senses enough to allow drilling, they just might decide to tackle their spending addiction. )