Federal Bailout

It is totally irresponsible for Congress to use so much of the taxpayer's money the way they are to bail out financial institutions.

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that it is foolish to let those who are responsible for the program be solely responsible for attempting to fix the problem. Congress has vividly demonstrated its incompetence in most areas that involve spending and the reason is almost as obvious.

Unlike what our Founding Fathers intended, our Legislature is made up primarily of professional politicians and attorneys. The original intention was that an individual would offer a few years of his life to serve his country, then return to the business he was in prior to running for office. The reason for this was that the majority of these individuals had experience in forming and running businesses in the free enterprise system the Founding Fathers had set up. The country is not unlike a business except on a much larger scale.

Unfortunately our Founding Fathers only had two requirements for running for the Legislature - the candidate must be an American Citizen and must meet an age limit. There was one additional requirement to run for the office of President - to be a native born citizen. I feel there should be a third and fourth requirement - having spent a minimum of 10 years as a responsible officer in a business in the private sector and after serving for a maximum of 12 years, the individual must return to the private sector for a like term before running for office in the Legislative or Executive branches.

While I am not opposed to a highly restrictive bailout of major institutions that have a major effect on a majority of citizens, Congress has put few restrictions on the huge amount of bailout money they have allocated.

1. The company should be required to file for re-organization. This will eliminate all contracts, such as the so-called golden parachutes, union contacts, etc.
2. The ones responsible for a successful company are the Board of Directors and the CEO. These individuals should be replaced.
3. The maximum salary and other compensation and perks for the company’s exeecutives should be limited to 50 times the salary of the company’s lowest paid employee.
4. All bonuses should be based upon the success the executives are able to achieve – possibly a small percentage of the increased profit and any golden parachute should be limited to 12 month’s salary.
5. There should be strict oversight on how any taxpayer funds are used. For each of these institutions a committee of 5-10 individuals should be appointed. No more than one attorney and one legislator should be on that committee. The remaining members should be successful entrepreneurs.
6. Any taxpayer funds given to the company would be a loan that had to be repaid once the company’s profitability turned around. If it is unable to come out of the re-organization, those funds would need to be written off by Congress.

A philosophy similar to the above would at least have a chance for success. If the company is not able to come out of the re-organization, let them fail. If they do fail, they would not go completely out of business because other better managed and more successful companies would acquire their assets that had any value and simply close down the non profitable part of the company.

There would be some loss of jobs, but that would be temporary. It would not take long before new jobs would be created.

Militaria Collectibles

Feel free to use this blog for any militaria interest you may have. My particular area of militaria interest is signed photos and autographs of military heroes - both Allied and Axis - primarily WWII. I have a huge collection of signed WWII Medal of Honor, Victoria Cross, and Knights Cross items as well as many framed displays I have created using smaller excavated US Civil War relics. You can get an idea of some of the things I have by going to my website at www.hotlinecy.com or my German partner's site, www.heroautographs.com.

I will attempt to anwer any questions I can answer and hope that others will also give their input in areas I have no expertise in,

I create descriptive album pages for each of my signed items and affix the signed item to the album pages using a special removable adhesive. I offer these for sale on my website and other auction sites.

Welcome to my Blog

I hope you will find this blog interesting. Let's get started with a little controversy...

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Are we approaching the point of no return?

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is one of the world’s most accurate predictors, and his outlook for our country is bleak.

While democracy and free enterprise is without question the finest governmental concept that has ever been developed, it is most unfortunate that historically these types of government last only about two centuries before collapsing. The reason is that it does not take long before the citizens figure out that they can vote themselves largess at the expense of others.

We are already there. Unlike generations past when citizens and immigrants from around the world took advantage of the incredible opportunities the United States offered, today they are insisting of another type of opportunity – something for nothing at the expense of that dwindling number of citizens who our country’s producers.

Clente predicts that by 2012 we will be a “third world country” and …”there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.”

Our government is not the solution to the problem but rather our government is the problem. More and more of our citizens simply do not have enough interest in politics to be able to cast their vote with any knowledge of what they are voting for. This was evidenced in the recent election. The electorate elected a handsome man who was one of our country’s most captivating orators, but one we know very little about other than in his abbreviated first time in the Senate he earned the dubious reputation of being the most liberal member of the entire Senate, always voted the Party line, and introduced no significant legislation. He had a brief and undistinguished period of being in the Illinois legislature. He served as a “community organizer” and had little to show for that. He had close associations with numerous questionable characters throughout his career and, were he not exempted by being the President Elect, he would not even be able to pass a top security investigation.

Under normal circumstances our country could survive 4 years of any administration. The Carter administration is a prime example of this. However, if Obama is able to get through even a few of his promises, we will be in deep trouble and our country as we know it will be a thing of the past. He will appoint judges that do not interpret the law or our Constitution, but rather ones who make law and chip away at our Constitution.

I hope that this is one of Clenete’s mistaken predictions, but all indications point to another accurate one.

There is always the possibility that Obama may be totally different from what the indications are. We all should pray that is the case. But his entire campaign was built upon “change.” We are already seeing things that point to the contrary. The vast majority of his top advisors and announced appointees are from the Clinton administration and other Washington “insiders.” What kind of change will that bring?