Cap and Trade, what does that mean to you? To Democrats in Congress, who do not want you to know what it really is, it is a bill to make energy producing companies pay their share to clean up the environment. But, since everyone knows that companies do not pay taxes, people do, the costs the companies get will be passed on to us in the form of higher energy costs.

How much will our energy go up? The estimated amount here in Phoenix for our electric to go up is just under $4000 per year. Gasoline costs are estimated to go up 74%. Those amounts are going to destroy the economy for sure. We are already in trouble from the banking and housing failures last fall. We have not even begun to get out of that hole. The Democrats in Congress must believe that adding thousands of dollars in new taxes for every American family is the way out of the recession/depression we are in? That is crazy talk. We need fewer tax dollars removed from our wallets, not more, to get us out of this problem.

Democrats never have been very good at understanding what gets us into or out of a recession. They believe that higher taxes got us out of the last recession. They are deluded in that thinking. They believe that higher spending is the way to get out of a recession. Higher spending usually puts us into a depression from a recession. That is why we are seeing this current recession last so long. We should be on our way out of the recession and have no signs that we have even hit bottom yet.

The Cap and Trade bill that the House of Representatives is supposed to pass out of committee within the next week is a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately for you and me, the Republicans in the House have almost no power at all. They could not stop the bill unless a lot of Democrats had second thoughts and voted with them. With the power structure the Democrats have, that is extremely unlikely. There is a better chance in the Senate, but even there the chances are slim. There are those northeast Republicans that tend to vote Democrat on these types of issues. That means a massive tax increase is in store by the end of the year. It also means that any chance the Democrats have of holding onto the House of Representatives and the Senate are also gone by the end of the year.

The public will scream loudly when faced with the high energy costs. The blame will fall squarely on the backs of the Democrats in Congress who passed the bill. Any person running against those Democrats would be wise to focus the public’s attention on the fact that their Congressman/woman voted a massive tax increase when we are in a recession. I am not just talking your usual massive 10% tax increase. I am talking about a tax increase that would be in the nature of 40-50%. That will get people’s attention real quick. Any Democrat who votes for the bill will be guaranteeing that they will not be back to Congress after the 2010 elections. Unless there are more stupid Democrat voters than I think there are.

Even though the bill would destroy the economy of the country, the Republicans should just put up a token resistance to the bill. They should talk against it. They should work to have it defeated. They should not filibuster the bill in the Senate. The reason is that letting the bill pass will destroy the Democrats chances at winning in the 2010 elections. The bill would do a lot of damage in the mean time. The bill would pass anyway. The Democrats have the votes to push it through. This is one to let go. You have to fight the fights that you can win. I can’t see pulling enough Democrats into the light to make any difference. You might get a few in the House who are in competitive districts, but none in the Senate. If the Republicans put up a fight in the House, they would not even get the few from the competitive districts.

This bill will destroy what is left of our economy. All that could be done from then on would be to pick up the pieces. The Democrats would probably put in some provisions that people below a certain level of income could apply for relief from these taxes. That would just frost the people not receiving the subsidies even more. There is no good thing that can come out of this for Democrats.

The Trojan Horse Porkulus Bill was passed yesterday. The Democrats promised that the public would have 48 hours to review the bill before they voted. That never happened. The only people that got to review the bill before the vote were the lobbyists that had interests in the bill itself. They finished work on the bill late Thursday night and passed it on Friday afternoon. The reason for the haste is that Nancy Pelosi was leaving the country Friday evening to go to Paris, France. That is a lousy reason to speed up passage of a bill with such an impact on the American public.

I have been tied up in work all morning, so I do not know if Barack Hussein Obama has signed the bill. Since it is exactly what he wanted, he will sign it.

Some of the agreements that were made look really suspicious. The Reid train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was only in the Senate bill for $2 billion. After they negotiated the agreement, the train had grown to $8 billion. I thought that the negotiations between the House and Senate were to iron out the differences between the bills, not increase earmarks. If someone put an earmark in the bill in the first place, that should be the amount that they want for the earmark. They should not suddenly need 4X more over the space of a couple of days. It is things like this that cause us to lose confidence in our elected officials.

The only good thing about the bill is that it did not get ANY Republican support. I do not consider Specter, Snowe and Collins to be real Republicans. They are RINOs and as such are really Democrats. That means that this bill is entirely on the shoulders of the Democrats. When it fails and fail it will the blame will go entirely to the Democrats.

When the American public learns what is really in the bill the Democrats better be real worried about their seats in the House and Senate. They may have won a victory today that puts billions of dollars into Democrat hands, but in the end, they will lose the confidence of the American public. People will not stand to be told that they cannot have health care for their loved ones after having it forever. The public will rise up and vote anyone out of office that voted for this bill. The only ones that will vote for the Democrats will be the Communists and Socialists. They will get election results in the 30% or lower range in supposed safe Democrat districts. The Republicans will come into Washington with a mandate to repeal most or all of this boondoggle that would be left. Any socialist ideas hidden in the bill would be instantly removed by the Republicans when they got the majorities. Of course, Obama would veto the legislation. But the boards would have no funding and any appointments would not be approved. In that way they would be hamstrung until they could be repealed after Obama is soundly defeated in 2012 by a Conservative Republican, not a liberal Republican like we had in 2008.

Better times are ahead for the Republicans. Unfortunately, we will have to endure a long depression until we can vote the depression enablers out of office. Obama and the Democrats are doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. What they did will turn this recession into a depression. Inflation will raise its ugly head and savings will be wiped out in an instant. The public will be very upset with anyone that voted for the bill and had not been talking about fiscal responsibility. At least, that is how I see it on Valentines Day, 2009.

Last night, President Bush gave his final talk as President. He basically thanked people and looked forward to the future. In his opinion, the history has been written and it is up to the historians to write it correctly.

A lot of good things happened under George W. Bush and some bad things happened under George W. Bush. First, the bad things: the economy tanked at exactly the wrong time. For the economy to go into a recession is a bad thing at any time, but the timing on this one could not have been worse because President Bush couldn’t do much to fix it. He had to try draconian measures that were basically Democrat in design to try and deflect the effects of the recession. So far, nothing has worked because they are the wrong fixes for the problem. What caused the problem? Democrats and reporters blame the recession on too little regulation of the markets and the economy. The real problem was too much regulation of the markets and the economy. A truly free economy will have its ups and downs, but the ups are higher and the downs are smaller than the regulated economy that we have now. The problem with a truly free economy is that the people involved have to be aware that people might try and take advantage. That is happening under regulation, but people believe the regulators are catching the people trying to fool them. That allows crooks like Bernie Madoff to run up huge paydays until he gets caught. Under a truly free economy, Bernie Madoff would have been detected sooner.

Second, spending got out of control. President Bush never said that he would veto a spending bill and he never did. That was a mistake. He should have stood firm against Democrat excesses. But, he allowed the Democrats and some Republicans to run away with spending. That cost the Republicans the House and Senate in 2006 and 2008.

Third, is related to the second but it is the increase in Medicare with adding prescription drugs. There was not a call to add this benefit, but he added it anyway. Now, we are stuck with the bill because it will never be repealed.

Now for the good things, first up is the handling of 9/11. On that day and the days that followed, President Bush was the best President that anyone could ever want. He was strong and brave. The only flaw was allowing his handlers to delay his return to Washington. He should have insisted on returning to Washington sooner. It would have made him look even better.

Second is how President Bush has handled the subsequent war against Islamo Fascism. President Bush decided that the best defense is a good offense, so he took the fight to the terrorists. By doing that, he kept the terrorists from having the time or ability to strike the United States again. On 9/11 everyone expected the US to be hit again. It is now over 7 years later and we are still free from terrorist strikes within the US. That is a remarkable achievement.

Third, is his handling of the economy in general, specifically in getting tax cuts through Congress. The tax cuts were the corner stone of his economic boom for most of the 8 years he was in office. Unfortunately for President Bush, he will be remembered for the economy that tanked at the end of his administration, not for the economy that boomed for the 7 years before that. It can be argued and is probably true that Senator Schumer from New York is primarily responsible for the economy tanking just prior to the election. Senator Schumer set in motion a series of events that culminated in the economy entering a recession.

Overall, President Bush will be seen as a good President. He, like all Presidents, is not perfect. He made mistakes. But, overall he did most things right. His most important job, he did perfectly and that is remarkable. History will judge President Bush much like history has judged President Truman. The people with Bush derangement syndrome will have to get over it before that can happen, however.

The Democrats and Barack Obama are hot to trot to do their something to “fix” the mess that is the economy. They are drafting a (currently) $745-800 Billion bailout. There are rumors that earmarks will put that total way over the $1 trillion mark. Barack Obama says that there will not be any earmarks. But, you have to remember that he works with Democrats. They live by the earmark. There will be earmarks, or most of the congressional Democrats will have heart attacks.

The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is that the Republicans filibuster this bill for a while. That would give the economy to recover on its own and show that this stimulus is not needed. What the economy does not need is a massive infusion of money from the federal government. That is one of the reasons that the recession of 1929 became the depression of 1930-1939. The stimulus we already put into the system may have prolonged it too much. Most recessions last between 16 and 21 months. Taking the shorter time, the economy should be coming out of recession by the end of 2009. Taking the longer time, the economy should be coming out of recession by the beginning of 2010.

A stimulus plan will have lots of spending on government projects. These government projects are supposed to be “shovel” ready. That does not mean that they have been through all the court proceedings that the environmental groups will put them through. If we pass the stimulus bill in February, most of the construction projects will not actually be constructed for 3-5 years. That is way past the time when they would have been necessary to curb the recession and inflation will have increased the cost way over what was set for the project. That will mean that the construction parts of the stimulus will have little impact on whether we come out of recession or not.

Last year, Congress gave each family a stimulus check. The stimulus check did not do what the government intended it to do. They intended that people would purchase things with the check. People saved money or paid down debt with the check, they did not go on the spending spree that Congress intended. If this stimulus plan includes giving people a one-time check, you can count on the same thing happening. If you want people to spend money, you have to give them notice that the money will be there in the future. Give them a tax break that is permanent and people will spend that money because they will know it will be there in the future.

One thing Obama is talking about is decreasing taxes for people who do not pay taxes. That is impossible, even for Barack Obama. He can increase their welfare checks, but he cannot lower their taxes. We should call this what it really is: a welfare check for those who do not pay taxes. One thing it is not is a tax break. We have to get away from letting Democrats redefine the English language every time they want. Some Democrats are calling the FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) payments a “tax”. They are not a tax; they are a contribution to their social security.

There is no real reason to pass this stimulus package except that Congress and Obama will be able to say they did “something” to fix the economy. Then, when the economy finally recovers, they can claim to have shortened the time frame. If they shorten the time frame from the 16-21 month window, then I will believe them. If the time frame goes beyond the 16-21 month window, then they are not telling the truth. Telling the truth will not matter, the public will believe them no matter what they say. People need to become more informed about what is happening. Then, politicians from both parties will not be able to pull the wool over their eyes so much. It will not stop all people from being fooled, but it should stop enough that politicians will have to watch what they say and do.  

The Barack Obama administration is starting to take shape and it looks like it will give us change. Change back to the policies of the Clinton administration. Over 2/3 of the current appointments have been former Clinton administration appointees. If Obama was going to give us change, I am not sure that this is the change that most of his followers had in mind. If they wanted to go back to the Clinton administration, they had Mrs. Clinton as a candidate. She would have fit the bill much better than Barack Obama.

We can also see some other signs of what the Obama administration will do. One is that any industry that wants a bailout will be able to get a bailout under an Obama administration. The Democrats are currently talking about bailing out the auto industry. If they bail out the auto industry, could others be far behind? The strings attached to the bailout should be a killer, but the auto makers seem not to care about the strings. The government basically wants to be able to tell the auto makers what autos they will be able to manufacture, not what the public wants. This will mean that more and more people will go to the foreign auto makers to find the cars they want, rather than Detroit where they get cars they do not want. The bailout will just be a stop-gap to foreclosure. The government knows nothing about what the public wants. How could Detroit keep the government happy and make what the buying public wants? It is an impossible task and one doomed to failure.

Even government entities are lining up to get bailout money. Cities put in a request that they be included in the bailout. Their justification is that they are where people live and they need to give services to those people. It is the job of the local people to provide the services they want and need. It is not the job of the federal government to come in and provide services that the local people should provide. If the local government is so inefficient that it cannot provide the services it is supposed to do, it is the responsibility of the local people to remove the leaders and get new ones. The problem is that the inefficient local leaders are big into Democrat politics. If the public rose up and removed the inefficient local leaders they might put in Republican leaders that could actually provide the services at lower costs. That would never do for Democrats. Their voting blocks would then diminish as the public learned how efficient Republicans are at providing services at lower costs. That is why cities and counties will get bailout dollars. The Democrat politicians have to be propped up at any cost. You cannot allow anyone to have a chance to vote for any evil Republicans at any time.

Other signs of problems caused by an Obama administration are the buying habits of the wealthy and near wealthy. They are the ones that will have a higher tax rate under an Obama administration. They have started cutting back on their purchases. That is reducing the volume of sales at retail stores, especially auto dealers. It is reducing the building industry to almost nothing. Contractors are really feeling the pinch as people are less likely to remodel or build new construction. That means people are being laid off from work. That is slowing down the economy. As long as the threat of higher taxes on the “wealthy” hangs over their heads, the economy is in for rough times. When the taxes on the wealthy will be reduced, you will see buying pick up and people will go back to work. Since Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency, higher taxes on the wealthy and really everyone are on the docket. I can see a recession or depression for the entire Obama Presidency. The slowdown in the economy will not occur until the “wealthy” either gets used to the higher taxes or their taxes get reduced. As long as Democrats control things, that would be four years or more. Bad times are ahead for the United States and the world.