EMAILS SOMETIMES GET ME MOTIVATED TO BLOG

I have to admit here that much of the following was expressed in the proceeding blog, but I think it bares repeating. This blog was inspired by a couple of emails forwarded to me recently by my friend, Greg, in Kansas City. I met him while I was working in the KC area about six years ago as a safety consultant. He was a foreman for a roofing company client of mine, so I got to associate with him on just about a weekly basis, and I got to know him as a very earnest individual on the road to enlightenment. When I first met him, he had recently become more religious, and I think his faith had begun to prompt him to consider other facets of life beyond religion. So, during by safety inspections of his job sites, we would often talk for a little while on subjects apart from safety issues. He admitted that it was relatively uneducated and it was often difficult for him to read and get his mind around some things that he read. He had a lot of questions on various topics including religion and recent events and, having apparently developed some respect for my opinions would ask me my thoughts about the subjects. He was often conflicted about politics. Because of his recent turn to God, he had become more concerned about social issues and generally expressed socially conservative thoughts. However, his family background and voting pattern had been exclusively for democrats. He had grown to believe like my father, the old tired dogma that the democrats were for the working man and the republicans were for the rich man. We had number of chats on politics and I tried to help him see that the Democrat Party had evolved from the so called “working man party” to a collection of special interest groups and that the old-guard-leadership of conservative democrats had been replaced largely by liberals with proclivities towards socialism. I cannot say that I was able to make much headway initially. Old prejudices are often hard to overcome and when our conversations would head down the same tracks and he would voice his frustration with what society was becoming and what our government was doing, I often had to make the same arguments: that liberal politicians and federal judges—mainly democrats—were pushing liberal and socialist agendas that he obviously opposed and that he needed to recognize that he and others like him were voting against their conscience when they keep voting for democrats, that leadership of that party was not governing in their interest. I was never sure if my admonishments were doing him any good and I do not know how he has voted since then.

After I moved to Salt Lake we kept in contact—we have exchanged emails regularly, and, occasionally, he has called me to ask me to explain something or get my opinion on something. The emails are often forwards with religious content and occasionally with social or political content that he thinks I will appreciate. It appears from the content of the socially and politically charged emails I have gotten as of late that he is taking a more conservative stand on social, even political issues, and may be recognizing who is representing him in government. The first email he sent me, that inspired this blog, was about Speaker of the House, Pelosi, and her desire to tax “windfall retirement income.”

My response was the following:

Yes, it's not bad enough that Congress meddling in sub prime loans (mishandling Freddie Mac and Fannie May and coercing lending institutions to give bad loans, and funding ACORN to blackmail banks and falsify elections) caused the recent economic collapse and most Americans to lose 1/2 of their retirement--I lost half of my 401K--now they want to steal what is left. We now have a majority in both houses and a White House that thinks the same way Pelosi does. They are a despicable bunch. I've never been so disgusted with American political leadership. We've always had these types in government, but they were almost always in the minority. Now the nuts are running the asylum, and it's the American electorate's fault. We have to pay attention and vote these crazies out as soon as possible or even darker days are ahead of us.

I later received another email from my friend, Greg, with a rather long attachment about a Tennessee high school sporting event where a school official allegedly stood and apologized to the people in the stands for not being able to do the usual prayer and playing of the National Anthem to honor God and Country that they were accustomed to. The official went on to lament that, though he could not, by federal court dictate, express anything publicly that might be construed as religious, but that he was free to express any politically correct policy, such as promote condom use to students, no matter who might be offended. I am not sure that the origin of the email was legitimate—things like this are often fabricated and get sent around a lot—I have not checked it with Snopes. However, the reason it is believable is because it is not far from the truth in this day and age in America and will surely be the case in short order. The gist of the email got me motivated and I responded to him with some of the following, and as I wrote my thoughts down I decided add some additional thoughts and make it the subject for this blog:

Again, we have had anti religious zealots around since the birth of the United States, because our Constitution largely allows American citizens the freedom to express their beliefs as they wish, acknowledging that free agency is God's gift to man. However, though they have always been in the small minority in our nation's past, this group has grown, because of the freedom they enjoy to preach and spread their anti religion (primarily anti-Christian), and they have influenced many of the majority of religious Americans (primarily liberals or progressives) over the past 60 years or so to believe the Constitution says something that it clearly does not. Again we need to see and understand that we in the electorate have allowed this to come to pass. We have allowed the faithless to gain the highest positions in the land and they will surely lead us to destruction, if we let them continue. Obama made a very astute analogy the other day in a press conference when he compared the US economy to a big battle ship, that it took time to reverse course, intimating that the turn had to be very wide. This can be said about the state of religious faith in America as well. We have drifted way of course and it will take some serious time, and possibly dire circumstances to humble the majority enough, to turn this ship of faith around.

Again, we have had anti religious zealots around since the birth of the United States, because our Constitution largely allows American citizens the freedom to express their beliefs as they wish, acknowledging that free agency is God's gift to man. However, though they have always been in the small minority in our nation's past, this group has grown, because of the freedom they enjoy to preach and spread their anti religion (primarily anti-Christian), and they have influenced many of the majority of religious Americans (primarily liberals or progressives) over the past 60 years or so to believe the Constitution says something that it clearly does not. Again we need to see and understand that we in the electorate have allowed this to come to pass. We have allowed the faithless to gain the highest positions in the land and they will surely lead us to destruction, if we let them continue. Obama made a very astute analogy the other day in a press conference when he compared the US economy to a big battle ship, that it took time to reverse course, intimating that the turn had to be very wide. This can be said about the state of religious faith in America as well. We have drifted way of course and it will take some serious time, and possibly dire circumstances to humble the majority enough, to turn this ship of faith around.

Having brought up the economy, I might express here again that what Obama and Congress are doing and plan to do on the economy mirrors almost exactly what was done by FDR and the Democrat majority in the 30s and 40s. Hoover, a progressive Republican, much like Bush (liberal on spending), had the great stock market crash of 1929 during his presidency. His response was to raise taxes and try to spend the way out. It was ineffective. Franklin Roosevelt then came to power with a new Democrat majority in both houses and did the same as Hoover, but more so. He tried everything he could think of but what should have been a short recession was turned into the Great Depression, which lasted until almost the end of World War II. In fact, the war is what finally brought America out of it. With the war came employment for everyone--even women who were never in the workforce in such great numbers before. When the war ended, the whole world needed what America--virtually untouched by the ravages of war that the rest of the world suffered--could make and sell to them. The stock market finally regained its prior level in the early 50s. Like it was last year, the stock market in 1929 was overvalued due to unprecedented growth and prosperity during the (roaring) 20s and needed to drop to right itself, which it would do as it had done on prior occasions. Property values were inflated and many banks had made faulty loans and investments without real security. When the Crash happened, there was a panic that influenced government to try to control it--just like it did last year. Clearly, that approach did not work well and it is very likely that it will not work well again.

A free economy must ebb and flow and right itself when it gets too inflated. If you remember the 70s and the recession then, with inflation in the double digits and interest rates for home loans as high as 19%, and Jimmy Carter trying to manage the economy with governmental price controls, you can see that we have been on this precipice before. However, Reagan's approach was to cut taxes and do away with price controls and the economy righted itself, leading to continued economic growth that continued over 25 years. It should be clear to anyone who thinks about it that when you tax something it becomes more expensive to buy or consume, whether it is food, clothing, housing, energy, or entertainment and diversions. When something is more expensive, there are fewer people who can afford to buy or consume it. When farmers, manufacturers, and merchandisers are unable to sell as much of their product, they are unable to make as much profit. Loss of profit, of course, will eventually translate to a need for cutting costs, including cutting jobs and payroll and, if they are a large enough to do so, possibly moving their businesses to states or countries with less tax stress for business. If businesses have to reduce their number of employees to keep more of their profits, or even to stay in business, the numbers of unemployed Americans go up, creating more "need" for government spending, in the form of unemployment benefits and government welfare. No economy can grow to its potential if government overly taxes it or tries to unduly control it.

The area where our local, state, and federal governments can really help the economy is where it has not done a very good job: Policing Criminal Behavior in the Business Place. We have laws on the books against graft and theft, but many times the perpetrators of these crimes in business and government--and it is generally when these two entities are combined or conspire to steal from the public that they go unpunished or ignored. It has become clear that, during the last decade quasi-government lending institutions (Freddie and Fannie)and community groups (ACORN, for one), funded by Congress and being over-sighted by Congressional committees, have repeatedly falsified records and stolen profits and coerced and blackmailed lending institutions to give faulty loans to borrowers, including illegal aliens who did not have to prove their identity, who have no serious hope of repaying them. When the Bush administration's commerce department suspected that things were getting too loose and asked for tighter oversight by Congress, they were told by powerful ranking members of the banking committee (mainly democrats, like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd) told them to fly a kite, that there was nothing wrong with those institutions. Instead of prosecuting the CEOs of these institutions who clearly cooked the books and got away with millions in bonuses before leaving their posts before the recent "economic crisis" they are allowed to skate or even become an economic advisor to President Obama like Franklin Raines, the ex-CEO of Fannie Mae. So far, not only has not one of these corrupt members of Congress or the aforementioned institutions been brought up on criminal charges, but they have been allowed to become the chairmen of their committees and to keep their ill-gotten gains. The party in control of the federal government at this time, though they have routinely scathed their opposing party for alleged corruption and misgovernment over the past decade, has been loath to police their own--William Jefferson, the democrat congressman from Louisiana who ordered government relief troops to take him to his flooded residence, during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to retrieve a hundred thousand dollars in bribe money hidden in his refrigerator did not suffer any reprisals from his party had to be ousted from office by losing his bid for reelection to a republican. Instead, they continue to muddy the water around their own culpability and shower blame on capitalism and big business, while agreeing to bailout failing companies and institutions which should have been allowed or required to file chapter 11 bankruptcies, requiring renegotiation of supplier and labor union contracts, or selling off assets. These actions do nothing but support the status quo of corruption and will, at best cost us and future Americans quadrillions of dollars for many decades, even if we see the proverbial light in the next elections and seriously try to change course to a more conservative social and fiscal direction. My fear is that we might have to scrap what we have and start over again. If that becomes the case, we will need a more moral and faith-based society, willing to make sacrifice and do the right things.

May God Bless Us! And my all my friends come to see the light!