The Audacity of Chrysler
I dont even think I need to comment on this.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’
A Costly Gamble
There has been a lot going on lately and Ive been too busy to write, but Im gonna try to catch up today.
I want to begin by talking about the “stimulus” that Obama is pushing and has passed both the House and the Senate in different versions.
Less than a week after President Obama declared an end to partisan bickering, he failed to get even a single Republican vote on his “stimulus” bill. Even 11 Democrats voted against the hyper-expensive $819 BILLION bill. To put that in perspective, $819 billion is more than the total amount of US currency in circulation! The $819 billion also exceeds the cost of the Iraq War by over $200 billion dollars.
Apparently, Democrats and Republicans are negotiating a compromise that will cost around $900 billion dollars (thats a cost of $3000 for every single American man, woman, and child).
On top of this, Obama has requested $350 billion from the second half of the TARP program.
And Obama’s administration is considering requesting an additional $1-2 Trillion for a similar bank and mortgage bailout program. Meanwhile, New York Senator Charles Schumer who is vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee says that the government may need $3-4 Trillion for this program.
Lets add up the “worst case scenarios.” $900 billion for this new “stimulus,” $350 billion in additional TARP funding, and $4 trillion for this new program being proposed and we have a total of $5.25 trillion! This would increase the size of the national debt by 50% and cost $17,500 per person.
And of course none of this has any guarantee of working.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
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Busy
I have been very busy applying for summer internships. I will try to post something tomorrow, but I will definitely have something for yall by Friday.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
Free Trade Link Exchange
I would like to offer you the chance to exchange links with me. If you agree to put up a link to my site on your site, I will place a link for your website on mine.
This is free trade at its finest. If I send you 100 hits per day and you only send me 1, then we will both benefit. I will have an additional reader that I did not have before, and you will have many new readers. It doesnt matter that under this example you benefit “more” than I do. What matters is that we both benefit. Such is the nature of free trade.
The email address for the site isnt working correctly right now, but if you are interested, email me at phredbarnet@gmail.com. I will put a link to any site, whether it agrees with me completely, supports communism, or is about South Indian arts and crafts, so long as it does not promote rascist ideals.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
Property Taxes
I received my property tax bill the other day and noticed a substantial increase. I think that property taxes are entirely inappropriate and should be abolished for several simple and logical reasons.
If you buy a house or some land, you become the owner of that property.
When the government charges a property owner a property tax, they are essentially charging the owner to use property that he already owns. To me, at least, this idea is completely baffling. I could not imagine how vocal the opposition would be if the government began assessing a 5% annual tax on the value of your jewelery or your ipod. Why then should the government be allowed to charge you money to live in a house that you have already purchased?
The government does this because it has a captive audience, meaning that most of us cannot simply pick up and move our property to another county. They also claim that in exchange for the increases, you will be given a better standard of living—new roads, better schools, and more parks. I’m not even going to address the fallacy of these claims now.
The main problem now is that the government is raising property taxes at a time when foreclosures are growing and the unemployment rate is surging higher. Simply put, people are hurting for money and they are afraid of losing their jobs. This is the wrong time for the government to raise property taxes on its citizens.
You might be saying that you dont own your home, and therefore the increases in property taxes do not affect you. However, you are wrong. If you rent your home or apartment, the owner of the property still has to pay property taxes to the government. Any increases in his property taxes will likely lead to increases in your rent. Homeowners arent the only people who are required to pay property taxes. Businesses also pay them. When property taxes on businesses increase, so does the cost of goods and services produced by the businesses. Even worse, these increased costs on businesses could cause companies to cut down on their employees’ hours, or even cause the businesses to fire some workers.
Property taxes are immoral because they result in the government charging you a fee to use something which you have already purchased. When the government charges a property tax, they are essentially saying that even though you have already bought the land, the government still considers it to be their land, and they reserve the right to charge you to use it. In fact, you could argue that property taxes are nothing more than the government charging you rent to use your own property.
Besides this, property taxes are not fair to older Americans. Retired Americans who are earning a fixed income from Social Security or their corporate pension already have to deal with inflation in the costs of everyday goods. It is unfair for them to also have to continue to pay taxes on something that they may have purchased decades ago.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
