Economic Stimulus?

What is Economic Stimulus and how is it supposed to work? Apparently it depends on who is implementing the stimulus. So far the current administration defines it by taking taxpayer dollars, actually future taxpayer dollars, and giving the money to who they want to stimulate. Our President has come out and said that the economic stimulus is working and I quote; “It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession”. Who actually believes that this is a stimulus? I would have to call this a handout. If it was truly a stimulus the unemployed would have their jobs back and their job benefits would be re-established. The problem with the federal government handing economic stimulus is that they are only going to stimulate who they want to stimulate and historically speaking, it has always been a failure, costing a lot of money for little impact. As I have stated; true stimulus would be getting the unemployed employed. How do we do that? Instead of taking billions of future taxpayer dollars we could have started by suspending all corporate income taxes immediately. Secondly if we recall the economic boom in the 90’s it was largely because of the computer and telecommunications industry (private industry) resulting from a lot of hard work from company’s R&D divisions. Taking that into account we need to create some incentives to get these R&D divisions of these companies developing new technologies. Only then will we see true economic stimulus. Putting people back to work by having the private sector put the money on the streets, and not the government, is the most efficient way to achieve economic stimulus.

      I understand that critics are going to blame private industry and/or Wall Street for this current situation but let’s look at what the government has done so far. We have given taxpayer dollars to companies that have proven to be a failure. Can you imagine that? Taking money from the citizens and successful companies and giving it to companies that have been proven to be a failure! How American can sit by and watch this without total disgust is unforgivable. “We the People”, sat back in the last election and allowed a candidate to redefine what a small business was, he said a small business was defined as earning $250,000 per year or less. I disagree completely, that is a micro business. I had always believed that a small business was a company with less than one hundred employees, but did anyone challenge the candidate on that notion? No! “We the people” need to find a voice here soon otherwise the economic stimulus may be the economic ruin of a once prosperous nation.

     I believe the current administrations goal is to have everyone working for the government. We have had a huge increase in the number of government employees just since this administration come into office. An example of that is the number of czars appointed and they all have office staffs. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics we can see that about 22 million people work for federal, state and local government, which is about 14% of the work force. Which by the way exceeds the number of employed in manufacturing and production jobs in this country. How many more people can the US government employ? Well if we take over the health insurance industry we can expect to gain another 2-3 million government jobs because that is how many are currently working for private health insurance companies as of 2006. If we get Cap and Trade forced upon us we can expect another 3-5 million federal and state employees to develop, run and enforce this program. Is this really stimulus? Is this really sustainable? None of the government jobs create revenue; they confiscate revenue from the private sector. The private sector is being taxed to a point which it may not survive, tax revenues are dropping at a record pace as unemployment increases. Government is continuing to spend with no regards to the damage that is being done and now we are going to be voting on the Obama care and Cap and Trade, are we really getting economic stimulus or economic disaster?

Privileges are rights granted to us by the states, such as driving, hunting or fishing and the state passes laws to regulate these privileges. Rights are granted to us by the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution. Every state has laws or regulations that establish age and other criteria so that one can drive a motor vehicle in the state that you reside in . As you drive throughout the United States you see different maximum speed limits, different rules regarding vehicle inspections, insurance coverage etc. However once you obtain a driver’s license in one state you have complete access to drive your vehicle through any state in the union, no questions asked. It is amazing such a privilege and nowhere in the United States Bill of Rights do you see anything about driving a car in the United States. Did you know that over the past five years there have been over 207,000 deaths (from FARS) nationwide on our highways? That is an average of over 41,000 deaths per year on our highway just to have a privilege to drive. Is congress concerned over these numbers at all? I do not see any bills in congress addressing this.

On July 2oth 2009 Senator John Thune introduced a bill to the United States Senate that would allow law abiding citizens that have concealed weapon permits in their home state to have the RIGHT that was granted to us by the United States Bill of Rights, the second amendment, to legally carry their weapon throughout any state in the continental United States. We are not talking about a privilege; we are talking about a RIGHT, which was just reinforced by the Supreme Court on June 27^th 2008 in the case of District of Columbia v Heller. We are not talking about the ability of criminals to carry weapons across state lines, because criminals are already doing that. We are talking about law abiding citizens that have most likely taken a course in gun safety, and for me I have been photographed, finger printed and paid for a concealed weapons permit, and legally purchased a firearm and filed the necessary paperwork with the state. So once again I remind you that we are talking about a right under the constitution, and not a privilege controlled by the states. Furthermore if you look at the accidental gun fatalities, from 2002-2006 another five year period we have only 3,572 deaths, (unfortunately that is the most current information available) that is less than any one year for driving fatalities for having a privilege. From Human Rights Watch, the number of all crimes, not deaths, committed by citizens with legally owned firearms is so minute it hardly shows up, we are talking about 1 in 140,000 or .0007% per year. There are approximately 70million gun owners, and that number has probably increased since this new administration has taken office, owning approximately 200million firearms. It is blatantly obvious that a vast majority of crimes and deaths are committed with illegally owned firearms and not legally owned firearms. There are more laws being made, and actions being taken to control the legally owned weapons than trying to control the real problem of illegally owned weapons. If you want to fix the problem try starting with the criminals and not the law abiding citizens. When I see injustices as this I wonder maybe we need to rename our country because I really fail to see that “United” part of the United States.