Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Redefine Economic Justice

The Progressives have taken over the asylum. If this latest wealth transfer is an example of economic justice, it’s time we redefined it. We now live in a socialist republic like Russia, Iran and Venezuela. The Politburo selects the candidates and we get to vote for one of them.

Economic Justice is when organizations deliver overpriced, poor quality goods and services and they go out of business. Economic Injustice is when these organizations who deliver overpriced, poor quality goods and services are bailed out by the Federal Government and don’t go out of business, like public schools, investment banks, AIG, GM, Chrysler, unions, the Fed and Congress,

Political Priorities for 2010 should include getting rid of all Progressives in elected office. Emphasize the protection of private property and a return to a strict interpretation of the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

Federal Government Priorities - Defense – Send Special Operations Teams to deal with Terrorists. Recall all Military Units to guard our Southern Border. Do Interstate Highway maintenance, sell all government land that poses a fire threat. Limit visas and immigration.
State Government Priorities: clean water supply, sanitation, good road & bridge systems,

Eliminate Unconstitutional Expenditures The Federal Government should eliminate expenditures for Healthcare including Medicare and Medicaid, Education including Universities, Foreign Military Bases, Foreign Aid, U.N., World Bank, Environmental Agendas, also privatize Social Security. In effect, undo the entire Progressive agenda back to 1900.

All Education should be by internet. Comprehensive Exams can replace the political indoctrination we now receive from the Education Establishment. Research should be done by small, un-politicized Research Companies. There should be no Grants to University Professors to study anything.

Healthcare and saving for retirement are individual responsibilities.

Remove the bureaucracy and delays and streamline processes to allow for drilling oil and gas.

The Judicial System should be fixed to ensure that dangerous criminals are not released and that prisoners should earn their own keep and be cloistered. Illegal alien prisoners should be returned to Mexican jails.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Japan Meltdown Due

Japan entered their economic depression in the 1990s. Their government has been spending like we are and now their national debt is 266% of their GDP. When they meltdown, they will go into hyper-inflation and ruin their currency. We will not be far behind them. Nothing else is more important than reversing our government spending binge. So far, the Federal Reserve has debased the dollar to death by ten thousand cuts. We have been bleeding out about 4% a year in currency debasement since 1913. The Japanese meltdown could happen as soon as the fourth quarter of 2010. This disruption will have a double dip effect on our stock market. If Japan melts down at the same time the Fed plans to pull back on M3, they will end their pull-back to “help” with the Japanese crisis. Don’t let them do that. It will assure that we will be taken down the same drain with Japan.

The Federal Government gives $400 Billion a year in bribes to the States. The Federal Government is broke. We need to gradually decrease the amount of printed and borrowed money that goes to the States. We also need to remove unfunded liabilities from States for Public Education, Healthcare and all other purposes. States should consider what they are going to support and throw off the rest.

The Treasury and Federal Reserve have now given over $25 Trillion to banks in the form of zero cost loans to deleverage their businesses. The Fed is buying U.S. Bonds, because there are more Bonds than buyers. The TARP was the tip of the iceberg. All the bailed-out banks and financial firms should have been allowed to go bankrupt.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Hapless Federal Regulations

Our current banking and financial service laws and regulations didn’t prevent the Meltdown of 2008 or Bernie Madoff, but the Community Reinvestment Act, HUD anti-discrimination regulations and lawsuit extortion against banks caused lending institutions to make bad loans. The inattentive Fed allowed financial institutions to expand their leverage to an unsustainable 30 to1. ACORN and HUD extorted banks into giving mortgages to un-creditworthy borrowers and those mortgages are still defaulting. I wonder if Freddie and Fannie are still bundling these for sale as mortgage-based securities. Many no-doc mortgages went to minimum –wagers and illegal alien day laborers.

Sarbanes Oxley did not encourage any companies to remain in the U.S. Lots of companies relocate overseas. The bulk of U.S. businesses dutifully complied with Sarbanes Oxley and quietly passed the costs on to their customers or vendors. No U.S. businesses were caught violating the law. It was a useless expense and we missed the mark. The proposed banking and financial services regulations do not include a rescinding of the Community Reinvestment Act or HUD Regulations that caused the 2008 Meltdown, so should banks continue to comply with the CRA, or take Bernanke’s advice to now only lend to credit-worthy borrowers ? Should they keep making bad loans because the CRA hasn’t been repealed ? Are ACORN lawyers now gearing up to sue lenders again for not lending to the poor ?

Our newly proposed finance laws do nothing to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act There are no Bills proposing that we close the loopholes that allow hedge fund owner / campaign contributors to pay a 15% capital gains tax on their earnings instead of paying 35% regular income tax. There are no new regulations requiring firms like AIG to set aside reserves for credit default swaps. There is nothing in this Bill to limit financial firms from returning to their leveraging ways, or stating clearly that the Treasury and Fed will not bail them out from the next meltdown.

Congress needs to temper the “parade of victims” method of legislation with a website that allows the rest of us to let you know the real problems we uncover and give us a chance to give you the priorities we would like for you to address. Starting with Bush 1, we received a raft of laws imposed on businesses that were not helpful. The enactment of these laws resulted in little or no benefit to employees compared to the cost. We were protected from polygraphs, entitled to 12 weeks unpaid leave and our anti- discrimination laws were allowed to morph into nightmares like the Meltdown. This alone has resulted in putting us on the hook to restore global banking liquidity to the tune of $25 Trillion. That’s too high a price to pay just to maintain evolving anti-discrimination laws that result in reverse discrimination findings. We are chasing our tail and going broke in the process.

The EPA has blocked drilling for oil and gas, kept gridlocked cities from expanding their road systems and will make our electric bills go up 5 fold unless we stop them.
We are not in a good place to bring our manufacturing back from China, Mexico and Indonesia. We have a “new normal” that suggests that if we want to survive, we will cut government spending by 50%. We are following the Japanese and most of Europe into the economic abyss of national bankruptcy.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Congress, Give Us Back Our Country

The first thing newly elected congressmen and senators do is to take an oath to defend the Constitution, but the results of their labors has resulted in the subversion of the Constitution. It’s just another law we can ignore, like Immigration enforcement. If the primary job is to pass laws, there seems to be little time to read and understand them and less of a chance to amend them. Many laws should be repealed. Most should be amended. Remember, we are broke.

Congress must understand, we want the spending stopped and the debt paid off. We as sick of seeing them piss away our tax dollars on trivia, monuments, welfare, foreign aid, earmarks, healthcare, education, liberty-killing laws, economy-killing regulations, atheists, anti-discrimination liberals and their bloated government employees, unions, pensions and bail-outs. We need to starve the beast or we will be bankrupt. We would love to end all transfer payments, social engineering, progressive indoctrination and “political science”.

If special interests can affect the laws in their favor with threats and campaign contributions, how do they avoid being charged with bribery ? This kind of mafia style extortion is right out of the union playbook. The evolution of using federal dollars to fund everything has brought us to a point where we no longer have the tax money to fund earmarks and that’s probably a good thing. The stranglehold the unions, healthcare, education, banks, environmentalists and anti-discrimination industry has on Congress is a fiscal death trap.

The only thing I can think to do to unravel this mess is to restrict campaign contributions to registered voters who live in the district, city, county or state the candidate is running to represent, and ban campaign contributions from all other outsiders. I would specifically ban contributions from unions, government employees, wealthy ideologues, industries and businesses. You would claim that you are only beholden to your constituents. You would need to include real questionnaires on your websites, so you would know what the majority of your voters want. More importantly, you would be immune from outside attacks by special interests. Contributions of one dollar per voter would be more than enough to maintain candidate’s websites and provide yard signs and travel expenses, but we would have to forego those irritating negative attack ads. I don’t think we would miss them.

Homogeneous districts would be pleasant, happy places. Ideologically split districts could use simple majority rule as their excuse to side one way or another. It would, however, be “representative government”. I don’t expect the proposals coming out of San Francisco to make much sense. I could only pray that the Southern and Midwestern values would prevail. Populations could shift ideologically, but for national issues, the majority would rule.
Having removed special interests from the money trail, it would be possible to revisit the laws that supported the mess that started this revolution. Loopholes could be closed, special deals could be ended, subsidies could be reduced and earmarks could be banned. The entire political / special interest / industrial complex could be dismantled. Anti-discrimination laws could be defanged, so that no group is more equal than any other group and could not extort or sue anybody. Social engineering could be laid in the dust bin along with the “political science” of global warming. All unconstitutional rights usurped by the federal government would be returned to the states. At that point, you could claim that you have defended the Constitution. There would still be a relationship with industries, but they would not be writing the legislation.

The next challenge is to unravel the retirement and healthcare entanglement. We can admit that Social Security was a chain letter that began in 1933 and ended around 2033. And now, for those who haven’t earned anything yet, the 15.3% contribution will be deposited in their self-directed investment account, turning this unsustainable defined benefit plan into a sustainable defined contribution plan. To be fair, we should make sure the investment options are not run by a bunch of crooks. For the rest of us, Social Security would have to pay us out, all $35 Trillion dollars. We must also admit that retirement might return to it’s pre-1933 condition and that not working may not be an option. Healthcare should return to a patient-pays model as much as possible. Like education, healthcare has become to labor intensive and it doesn’t need to be. Some private insurance might be helpful for accidents and major medical procedures, but government must not be expected to step in. Certainly self-funded health savings accounts should be encouraged.

We would do well to remove the federal government from education. The states and school districts should be reformed to deal with improving education, but we first need to demand interactivity with school administrators to ensure that the current systems are dismantled and replaced with systems that succeed in educating rather than indoctrinating and costing way more than it’s worth.

Having removed government benefits, unfunded mandates and special interests from congressional representatives, all congress would need to do is clean up the laws and the Judiciary and appropriate money for federal highway and land maintenance, defense and a few other departments. Congress should revisit all the laws on the books and correct the errors. We would expect congress to interact with constituents to explain and sell their ideas very honestly and easily via the representative’s website. We would want a cost / benefit analysis for everything. We would vote down cap & trade, government involvement in healthcare and every other thinly explained proposal Congress might contemplate. We would hope you would become experts at crafting laws that maximize honest free enterprise and minimize crime and fraud. Most of our current laws do just the opposite.

The Judicial System should view the newly enacted, clearly written laws as preempting case law and behave accordingly. I would make the Judicial System interpret the law rather than establish the law. I would reform the prison system to ensure that inmates earn their own keep and work 50 hours a week like the rest of us.

I would view unstable and undeveloped countries with skepticism. I would not want our tax money going to these countries in any form, because it tends to backfire on us. The money we give the U.N. ends up with Hamas. I would only trust private and church-based relief organizations to help these people clean up their water and sanitation, but they must solve their own problems without expecting U.S. tax dollars to arrive. I would end U.S. support of the World Bank and the United Nations unless their activities could be limited to something worthwhile.

To reduce military expenditures, we must examine why we maintain each of our 700 military bases worldwide and close those we can and make these countries take responsibility for their own defense. We must continue to develop the infrastructure to track and stop terrorists and international criminals.

Freedom would reign. Our federal taxes would be lower than anywhere in the world. And it would be the job of all other countries to reform their systems and follow our lead. State and local taxes could vary, but competition between states and cities would be refreshing. Our economy would be on a rock-solid footing. Manufacturing would return to the U.S. as fully automated facilities. We would not have to abandon the starving and homeless, but I imagine the private sector would provide most assistance anyway.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Light Rail - Too Expensive

The Atlanta Journal bemoaned our passing on Federal seed-money to build a Light Rail line from Atlanta to Macon GA. There were also discussions about running a light rail to Charlotte NC. We were correct to pass.

The Greyhound Bus from Atlanta GA to Macon GA costs $25 one way, 89 miles, 1 hour 30 minutes. The Greyhound Bus to Charlotte NC costs $50 one way, 288 miles, 6 hours. The cost for gas, to drive a Prius from Atlanta GA to Macon GA is $6. The cost for gas, to drive a Prius from Atlanta GA to Charlotte NC is $19. The cost of building the light rail system in Seattle was $176 million per mile. The cost of building a light passenger rail system from Atlanta to Macon could be well over $1 billion.

The number of Greyhound Bus tickets from Atlanta GA to Macon GA we could buy with $1 billion is 40 million tickets. If two bus-loads, 80 passengers, bought tickets to go to and from Macon to Atlanta every day, their total daily round-trip cost would be $4000. The $1 billion cost of building a passenger rail service would buy tickets for these 80 passengers for 500,000 trips, or daily round- trips for these 80 passengers for the next 685 years

Shipping freight pods on regular rail is very cost-effective. Cost for light passenger rail is not cost-effective. It requires federal or state subsidies to operate to the tune of $200 per ticket. These 500,000 trips would then cost the state $190 million a year to operate. It’s a Trojan Horse.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Real Reform

“Amendment 10 The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

To reduce the national debt, the federal government must begin plans to pull back from spending federal dollars on activities that are reserved to the States, or the people. Legislation should be passed in 2011 to begin this process. The goal of the process is to take federal spending down to match federal revenue. An acceptable level of spending for the next 4 yours would be $2.9 trillion.

To give voters the right to elect their own representatives, campaign contributions should be restricted to voters in the candidates’ city, county, district or state. Banning contributions is not a violation of special interest political free speech; they would be allowed to pay for their own ads. Representatives should add voter polls to their websites, so voters can select the legislative agenda via email, polling results and voting to adopt legislation put on the ballot. The practice of appointing Judges should be ended and all Judges should be elected. Their record should be on their websites.

Earmarks should be banned forever. These are roads and bridges in the states that should be paid for by the city, county or state. Building and maintaining roads and bridges are the responsibility of local government and should not be a responsibility of the federal government.

Education is the next responsibility to return to the States and the school districts. Federal involvement in the 1970s heralded the beginning of the decline in public school outcomes. Planned reductions in federal spending should begin now. The states can pass laws protecting schools from the ACLU. Schools will do well to restore math, reading and science outcomes to begin to narrow the global gap in our standardized test scores. The Department of Education should be abolished. Congress should not regulate public schools. No Federal tax money should be spent in funding public or private education at any level. States should begin to reduce spending for Education at the same time and press for innovative reforms that reduce headcount including internet K – college and home-based school.

Health & Human Services and Labor are the next departments to begin spending reductions. They should be abolished by 2014. States should begin to reduce spending in these areas at the same time. All federal lands should be transferred to the states along with the interstate highway systems. Spending by the Transportation and Interior Departments could be eliminated. States would determine how much of this land should be sold to private ownership. The Endangered Species Act should be repealed. Private nature preserves should take care of the wild-life. The Environmental groups can contribute to these preserves rather than contributing to political campaigns. The additional expenses shifted to the States should be off-set by reductions in State spending for Education and Healthcare; these expenses will fall to the counties. The federal government would continue to own their own buildings and military bases, ports and proving grounds.

Taxpayer money for foreign aid, grants, loans and military assistance to foreign countries should begin spending cuts immediately and should be abolished as soon as possible.

Union membership for all government employees should be banned, including federal, state and local employees. Federal, state and local government pensions should be converted to defined contribution

Formal Military operations with large forces engaged in nation building should cease in 2012 and never to return. Every nation-building effort has reversed itself back to the tribal or dictator structures where no economy or private property existed. In the meantime, Special Operations, drone and air strikes should quadruple supported on the ground by in-country troops and police. These forces should be launched from and returned to shipboard or nearby secure bases after each operation.

The Mexican border should be secured. All anti-discrimination laws should be repealed. The most damaging EPA regulations should be scaled back to allow local and private access to water, oil, gas, timber and minerals. All bailouts and stimulus packages for all corporations should be banned for all time. Fanny and Freddie should be phased out and closed. Student loans should be returned to the private sector. “Free speech”, “separation of church and state”, “Born” and “Life” should be redefined in the courts to reflect their original intent. “Torture” should be redefined as causing permanent physical damage.

Employment-based health insurance should be ended; allow individuals to purchase health insurance from anywhere with coverage selected by the consumer. End the practice of accepting patients’ hospital admissions regardless of their ability to pay. States will need to determine if they will continue price supports for agriculture and other spending that will need to be reduced by the federal government. Counties will determine how they will deal with healthcare for the poor. Medicare payments to providers should be emailed to members as they are paid, to self-police fraud. Tort reform is necessary and should be passed by 2012 to allow the states to pass and enforce caps for malpractice and loser pays for frivolous lawsuits. Health insurance should be based on insuring against catastrophic major medical costs with premiums community rated. Chronic disease management should be funded through Medical Savings Accounts, not through the insurance bureaucracy. Patients should be free to seek pharmaceuticals and medical care anywhere. Home healthcare should be favored. If Medicare costs don’t fall with these reforms, it should be phased out.

Social Security should be replaced by sending the 15.3% of earnings to individual IRA accounts for all citizens who have not yet earned any income. Social Security should be maintained for those who have already paid in to the system and funded by a 5% national sales tax. All surplus funds from the national sales tax should be used to reduce the national debt. If the debt is paid, the surplus sales taxes may be deposited in the Treasury. Surpluses in the Treasury over $ 1 trillion may be used to reduce income taxes across the board. Some income tax should be paid by 80% of the population to avoid recreating a government-dependent class.

Federal taxpayer dollars should not be lent or donated to other countries. Restore the Bush income tax cuts. It will take $1 trillion a year in principle and interest to pay down the national debt. We should reduce corporate income taxes and remove special interest tax breaks from the tax code.

Manufacturing and agriculture will necessarily invest in mechanization and automation. That together with lower taxes on business and no health insurance expenses should restore our global competitiveness. To restore control of our government to the people, campaign contributions will necessarily need to be restricted to registered voters in the candidates’ city district or state. We will be the only developed country without burdensome taxes. Maybe the other countries will follow our lead.

Lessons in International Relations

Expansionism As the world’s leading colonial power, we have managed to attract an ever-growing number of Mexicans without having to seize any Mexican territory.

Third World
When dealing with the Third World, we must take a lesson from our missionaries. A missionary journeyed to a Third World country to meet the native people and show them that he had a good heart. Once they were convinced his heart was good, they ate it.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Stunned

After 2004 Democrats stunned us by:
1) refusing to allow for oil and gas drilling in the U.S. during our $4 a gallon gasoline.
2) failing to regulate financial institutions and allowing the global financial meltdown to occur.
3) passing the TARP giveaway and the AIG bailout.
4) pretending that water-boarding is torture when it causes no permanent damage.
5) damaging our intelligence efforts and endangering our security
6) pretending that closing Guantanamo is necessary.
7) releasing terrorists, so they can to return to Alkida Terrorist Camps,
8) pretending that global warming is real.
9) passing a trillion dollar carbon tax through cap & trade pretending it will save the planet.
10) canceling previously passed pro-life laws
11) declaring that politicized labor unions are our salvation
12) passing a $700B“stimulus plan” full of payback to political supporters and useless projects
13) declaring that we are going to implement undeveloped energy strategies like wind and solar.
14) drafting HR 3200 adding a minimum $1 trillion to our debt subsidizing health insurance for the poor, allowing coverage to Illegal Aliens, forcing businesses to provide expensive health insurance plans or be fined, forcing individuals who chose not to buy expensive health insurance to buy is or be fined, expanding government control of healthcare by introducing a single payer plan, providing government paid abortion, requiring doctors to perform abortions,
15) pretending that making everybody buy health insurance will lower healthcare costs.
16) threatening to tax anything that moves, then taxing it,
17) increasing our National Debt from $3 trillion in 2004 to a projected $20 trillion.
18) advancing progressive, socialistic, pro-abortion, atheistic, anti-religion, ACLU, Trial Lawyer and labor union agendas.
19) continuing to promote legal and illegal immigration when we have 25% real unemployment.
20) trying to raise the cost of all basic services to get us to use less of everything including gasoline, water, natural gas and electricity.
21) trying to increase our population with low skill, low potential illegal aliens, so they will have more supporters.
22) trying to destroy our economy, so that we are so weakened, we will accept socialism and trade our freedom for subsistence.

Before 2004 Republicans stunned us by:
1) failing to protect our religious freedom
2) failing to define “life” as a Constitutional right of newborns at conception.
3) failing to close the border and deport illegal aliens
4) allowing illegal aliens access to costly government benefits, prisons and public schools
5) failing to define “born” allowing the children of illegal aliens the right to U.S. citizenship.
6) releasing dangerous criminals back into society where they commit more crimes.
7) passing hapless, burdensome, useless, or Liberal legislation
8) being ineffective in preventing the fraud in financial industries that lead to the global meltdown.
9) failing to be true conservatives

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Hapless Healthcare System

Malpractice-avoiding defensive medicine and government and third party insurance payer schemes allow prices to rise, so cost containment is unnecessary. The healthcare industry, like the government seems to find ways to make what they do wildly expensive. A Tale of two treatments:
1. My adult daughter had a scooter accident and was taken involuntarily to the “regional trauma center”, Grady Hospital, infamous for being a place you don’t want to check into. We all took turns staying with her because Grady is a “do it yourself hospital”. No less than 20 “doctors” billed her insurance. They kept her for 2 weeks and wanted to do a tracheotomy despite the fact she was breathing on her own. She pulled out her tubes to announce her desire to escape. They released her. We found out later they botched the post-op treatment. Her incision infected and stayed that way. A year later she had another operation at a real hospital with a real surgeon to repair a huge hernia caused by the infection. The repair included sewing in a $20,000 piece of lab-grown skin. I’ve been told, this kind of Post-op problem is routine.

2. My son-in-law’s father developed no feeling on one side of his face. When he smiled, he looked like Dick Chaney. His doctor put him through $20.000 worth of tests and MRIs to determine that it wasn’t a stroke. He then had this guy to hold a mouthful of salt water in his mouth and asked if could taste the salt. When he said no, the doctor diagnosed him with bell’s palsy. In the old days the doctor would have done the salt water test first.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Terminate Government Pension Plans

Government must get lean during recessions. Our cost structures need to be pared down to match revenues. This is the new normal and could last for years. Defined Benefit Pension Plans should be terminated and replaced by Age-Weighted Defined Contribution Plans. The deficits forced on government are the direct result underfunded pensions, excessive spending and reduced revenues. The stock market crash killed the pension plan balances. Even with the stock market partial recovery, it remains at 70% of it’s high. The 90% of salary after 30 years of service Pension Plans are the worst. In a Pension Termination, the Trustees are empowered to terminate the Pension Plans. They are also responsible for communicating the replacement Age-Weighted Defined Contribution Plans. Employees are given the option to take a lump sum from the Pension Plan and pay taxes on the distribution or transfer their balances to the new plan untaxed. Employers usually donate some annual percentage of payroll to the Pension Plan. In the private sector, it was around 5% of payroll. Whatever that average is (discounting stock market slumps) can be offered as the next years’ contribution, beyond that, it’s a year to year decision. This has a positive effect on employees’ commitment to continue to eliminate waste and remain within budget, because they know a bad year could result in a reduced employer contribution. State and local government cannot sustain the current cost structures required to pay government operating costs. Labor costs need to be brought more in line with the private sector. Healthcare and Education are way over-funded by the State. There should be a concerted effort to reduce these expenditures.

Monday, March 22, 2010

End Social Security

Social Security needs to be repealed. It is a ponzie scheme. Many of us have contributed $500,000 to this program and we think these contributions should be returned to us over time. If you had not allowed the slaughter of 50 million babies, we might not have this problem, but we do. The problem with the wind-down is that we who paid in want our money back. We also think those who have not yet earned any income should be exempted from contributing to social security when they do go to work. They should instead have their 15.3% deposited in their own IRA Accounts. That creates an inconvenient shortfall that should be funded by a national sales tax that is used for nothing else. So for a few decades starting in 2030, the government would have to pay out social security with progressively less coming in. As you see from the table below, our real leap in liabilities doesn’t really start until 2013. That’s what we get for ignoring the 10th Amendment.

Social Security Expenditures Budgeted
Year SS Expense Amt Increase over prior year
2008 – 615.256 B
2009 – 649.332 B 34.076 B more
2010 – 686.689 B 37.357 B more
2011 – 725.468 B 38.779 B more
2012 – 768.681 B 43.213 B more
2013 – 847.380 B 78.699 B more

Medicare should first have all the fraud rooted out to see if it should also be repealed. This can be done by emailing members every time a check is cut to a provider, including provider name, address, date, procedure and amount paid. Removing all retired persons from the Healthcare Cartel should bring down some prices and force healthcare back to house calls.
5% Sales Tax

A 5% National Sales Tax would pay for most Social Security Payments in the near term with an increase to 7% in 2013. The Same 5% would reduce the National Debt by $600 billion a year. Be warned that the sales tax would reduce the GDP by 5% as well. Our real unemployment is 25% and it will get 5% worse with a 5% Sales Tax. We cannot continue to raise the debt ceiling while refusing to deal with unfunded liabilities which never should have been started. A further caution is that we do not have the mechanisms to collect a National Sales Tax and we would probably screw it up. Businesses, if there are any left, have great difficulty collecting and filing State sales taxes. The administrative costs passed on the businesses is not insignificant. However, our unfunded liabilities are currently from $76 trillion to over $100 trillion depending on whose numbers you use. This is not a debt we are giving to our grandchildren. This is a debt that will shut us down within this decade. When we can’t borrow from anybody to fund our debt, we will find that we cannot fund our obligations. We will print money, go into hyperinflation and the dollar will collapse. This will be a buy gold, buy a gun, buy a farm, buy chickens, pigs, cows and seed, and get ready to return to a Wild West kind of Depression. The dollar will collapse and unemployment will go to 50% overnight in 2013. If you guys don’t go after the waste and fraud in the current giveaway programs first, we will all show up in Washington DC with pitchforks and torches.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Government Waste

I believe all spending not in strict compliance with the 10th Amendment of the Constitution is government waste. Each time government has ignored the 10th Amendment and attempted to take responsibility for our responsibilities, it ruined whatever it took over.

Education is broken. I would put k-12 and college on the internet and close the schools and colleges. I would remove all government financial support from education.

Healthcare is broken. I would replace hospitals with home care, replace malpractice settlements with license suspension, remove all defensive medicine Healthcare costs are too high because its paid for by a third party who has no reason to want to change it. I would remove all government and corporate financial support from healthcare and force insurance companies to return to catastrophic coverage and HSAs.

Social Security is broken We should end it
We should pay out what each participant put in. We should have all who haven’t yet earned any income to have their 15.3% deposited in their own self-directed IRA.

Courts are out of control
The courts slam us with whatever anti-people schemes environmentalists and atheists cook up. They allow clearly unconstitutional laws and court decisions. The Supreme Court has misinterpreted the meaning of the words in the Constitution. “Life” should include the unborn. “Born” should apply to those children born to U.S. citizens. The separation of church and state has been distorted to support anti-Christian court decisions and now challenges our freedom of worship. They won’t even intervene in violations of the 10th Amendment passed by Congress.

Giveaways
Welfare, foreign aid, foreign military base maintenance, pork project that are truly unnecessary and a myriad of do-gooder, busybody nanny state departments and agencies are all part of government waste

Campaign Finance is broken. I would limit campaign expenses to $1 to $5 per registered voter in their district. There are 600,000 people in congressional districts. I think that could fund a website and buy a few yard signs.

What can we do to get this to happen ?
I think the first step toward sanity would be to purchase our elected representatives back from the special interests and only allow constituents to make campaign contributions… no PACs, no outsiders, just registered voters in the candidates’ city, county, district or state. State legislatures need to do this… the U.S. Congress won’t.

Loss of self sufficiency is loss of freedom
It’s bad enough that about 25% of us are receiving Social Security and Medicare and another 25% of us are receiving tax subsidies of other various sorts. At least 50% of us are naturally conflicted in demanding that the government reduce its spending on us. Also we are split 50-50 in our opinion over the wisdom of expanding the social safety net. We are not in a good place. If the Left prevails, we could find ourselves with a $100 trillion real National Debt, with interest only payments at 4% of $3 trillion a year, 80% tax rates and no economy left in the U.S. Our loss of freedom would come in two ways: 1. we wouldn’t have an economy and could not support ourselves and 2. we expect our guns would have been confiscated, our churches closed and our freedom to disagree eliminated. This has already taken place in our public schools and colleges. We would be at the mercy of criminals and subjugated by government and cultural oppression. If this sounds like Communist Russia, it is. If we keep our current system, no one would be able to retire before age 80 except government employees.

The bailouts and stimulus spending thus far is like ensuring that all the passengers on the Titanic have scuba air tanks so they won’t drown. That’s nice, but when the Titanic sinks, everyone will freeze to death.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Enforce the 10th Amendment

“Amendment 10 The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

To reduce the national debt, the federal government must begin plans to pull back from spending federal dollars on activities that are reserved to the States, or the people. This would limit federal responsibilities to only those outlined in the Constitution and should include the transfer of federal lands to the States. This would involve the closing of many federal departments and the consolidation of others. Shifting these functions to states would reduce federal spending by $ 1 trillion a year. Legislation should be passed in 2010 to begin this process. The immediate goal of the process is to take federal spending down to match federal revenue from current sources. An acceptable level of spending revenues from income tax and other sources for the next 2 years would be $2.9 trillion and would decline thereafter with the transfer of responsibilities to the States and should eventually include reductions in income tax rates.

A National Sales Tax should be established to pay down the National Debt and close down Social Security and Medicare. It will take $1 trillion a year in principle and interest to pay down the national debt plus up to $1 trillion a year to fund the Social Security and Medicare payouts.
Social Security and Medicare should be replaced by sending the 15.3% of earnings to individual, self-directed IRA accounts for all citizens who have not yet earned any income. Social Security should be maintained for those who have already paid in to the system and funded by the national sales tax.

This strategy coupled with eliminating company-based health insurance and lowering business income tax rates would enable us to reduce costs to business. We would be the only developed country without burdensome taxes.

To restore control of our government to the people, campaign contributions will necessarily need to be restricted to registered voters in the candidates’ city, district or state.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Corrupt Campaign Finance Laws

We believe our current campaign finance laws foster corruption, including bribery, kickbacks, extortion and treason, just as bad as Afghanistan or Haiti. We view contributions from corporations as bribery and favorable legislation as payoffs. We view pork and earmarks as kickbacks. We think accepting campaign contributions from Progressives, socialists, unions and environmentalists amounts to succumbing to extortion and treason. We believe there is a corrupt relationship between large entity campaign contributors and the Congress. The Democrat’s reckless spending in 2009, handing out trillions to political supporters is clearly payback. We abhor the kickbacks for votes offered in Louisiana, Nebraska and the unions.

We need to work toward dismantling all transfer payments and entitlement programs, so elected representatives can remove ‘helping constituents deal with government agencies for their benefits’. We need to dismantle federal involvement in education and healthcare. We need remove all involvements in activities by the federal government not granted by the Constitution.

For decades, Congressional Reps and Senators complained about the increasing cost of running for office, the problems with pork-barrel spending and the undue influence of special interests, yet, it seems to get worse. Current campaign finance laws only perpetuate the corruption. The fact that a Progressive Socialist crook like George Soros could put his man in the Whitehouse and put Pelosi and Reed in charge of the Congress is alarming. I wonder how much money laundering the Democrats really did with unions, banks and liberal financiers.

Wall Street banks and financial firms, the insurance industry, all healthcare insurers and providers, all government employees, all state agencies, all universities, public schools and colleges, environmentalists, unions and Socialist entities contribute billions to political campaigns. This practice holds the elective process hostage and has destroyed our representative form of government.

The Federal Government has corrupted public schools. Text books have been politicized. Teachers are trained to promote progressivism, environmentalism, unionism, socialism, atheism and a statist entitlement mentality.

We have become a socialist republic like Iran, Russia and Venezuela. These countries have elected Presidents and legislatures, but the game is rigged. It will take drastic measures to repair our political system.

We must have Republican State Legislatures pass campaign finance reform laws to restrict campaign contributions to registered voters in the candidates’ city, county, district or state. Funds and costs of campaigns will drop, but it will be a level playing field within each state. It should start in the South.

The entire Democrat Party legislative agenda is dangerous, destructive and based on lies. Healthcare Reform needs to drop forced purchases, taxes, fines, expensive subsidies, bureaucracy and an additional $2 Trillion entitlement. Cap & Trade is dangerous and destructive. Global Warming is a hoax. Wind and Solar costs 5 times more than nuclear and coal. Forcing Electric utilities to resort to these uneconomical energy sources will raise our electric bills 5 fold and put our entire economy in jeopardy. Card Check is ridiculous. The last thing we need is the expansion of unions. Unions are destructive socialist front groups. They poison the well. Our bail-out relationship with banks, financial firms, insurance companies, the U.N. and the World Bank is destructive. We need to pull back from the abyss.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Government Screw-Ups

We voters have been objecting to congressional screw-ups for decades. And now, due to congressional meddling we find ourselves in a 2nd Great Depression. The Meltdown of 2008 was caused by a combination of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, HUD lawsuits, Fannie, Freddie, Barney, Chris, FASB, the Fed, AIG, big Banks, Mortgage Loan Companies, unregulated derivatives, credit default swaps and leveraging 30:1. The primary cause of the mortgage default explosion that caused this Depression had its roots in housing anti-discrimination enforcement. Banks were not approving mortgages for people who were not credit-worthy, so the federal government stepped in force the banks to lend to these folks. The Fed artificially held interest rates at below-market levels and speculators entered the housing market. Housing prices rose in response to the lower interest rates. Concurrently, the SEC failed to detect the Bernie Madoff ponzie scheme despite their audits. Throughout this period, big Banks believed they would be bailed out if the “house of cards” collapsed. We bailed them out with the TARP. This has not been fixed.

Earlier, congress went into a scramble to promote alternative fuels, so farmers grew corn to turn into ethanol. We later learned that ethanol was corrosive and would destroy automobile parts. In the meantime, we experienced a famine in the third world, directly traceable to the ethanol fiasco. Not long ago, gasoline prices rose to $4 / gallon. Democrats blocked drilling for U.S. oil and gas and I believe this is still going on. This has not been fixed.
In prior years, after 3 Mile Island, the Hudson River catching on fire, acid rain and the hole in the ozone, the Environmentalists got some traction. The auto safety fanatics joined them and they all went after the auto industry. The auto industry went into a financial meltdown due to union pensions, retiree medical, union work rules and competition, despite their ability to move plants to Mexico after NAFTA. Most other large manufacturers moved production to Indonesia, Mexico and other countries in their flight from unions and higher U.S. manufacturing costs. This has not been fixed.

Today, we continue to fight congress to prevent more “ready – fire – aim” screw-ups. Our current battles include stopping costly bills like Healthcare, Cap & Trade and Card Check. Green jobs is a joke. Solar and wind cost 5 times more than nuclear and coal. Climate change is a hoax. Light Rail is the dumbest, most expensive boondoggle yet. So far, we have squandered $4 trillion on bailouts, given away $26 trillion through the FED and are facing a $100 trillion unfunded liability. We’re broke and congress is still scrambling to spend more money. This has not been fixed.

The only thing we can do is to drop the scrambling and concentrate on drastically reducing our national debt. At the same time, we need to kill Healthcare, Cap & Trade and Card Check, rein back the EPA and repeal the Community Reinvestment Act and HUD non-discrimination rules and other job and economy killing laws. We need to convert all government pensions to age-weighted defined contribution plans, freeze all government hiring and stop bailing out the States and everybody else. After that, we need to restrict campaign contributions to only registered voters in the candidates’ city, district, county or state. Remember, this Depression will continue and demand will not return until Obama and the Democrats stop and reverse federal spending.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Gay History

Instead of redefining marriage, we should give gays their due as contributors to western civilization and study Gay History

Homer 850 BC Homer was extremely close to his brother Jethro,

Amenities, an ancient gay Greek, is the father of interior decorating, 480 BC. His significant others included Socrates and the 300 Spartans.

Obscene, the gay Persian was known for the colorful rugs he sold to Amenities. He had a brief tryst with Plato and his brothers Knifo, Forko and Cupo, but his extreme guilt about being gay drove him to the edge. He beheaded himself in 400 BC

Precarious, an ancient gay Roman was the father of acrobatics and the inventor of the high wire and trapeze. He fell to his death in 80 BC and was devoured by lions. His significant others included Grabus and his sister Flagella.

Promiscuous, the gay Roman hooker (80 BC) was pursued for years by Sparticus and his army. His significant others included the Emperor Gluteus Maximus, his sister Flotilla and whoever happened to be in the Roman baths.

Pediphillious the 4th century gay Roman monk was the founder of the Vatican boy’s choir. Enough said.

Béarnaise, an 11th century gay Frenchman was the father of French cooking and rich sauces. His significant others included his students Soufflé, Escargot, and Croissant, who became famous in their own right.

Ambiance and Venue were 14th century gay French interior decorators who were students of Amenities. Ambiance greatly influenced later generations. They were the inspiration for 17th century Gays barbers to become ballet dancers and hairdressers.

Plie’ the 16th century gay ballet dancer’s influence is unrivaled. Virtually all of our ballet dancers today are gay. His significant others included Glissades and Saute who helped him perfect the Ronds de Jambs A Terre, which can be very painful.

Bouffant was a 17th century gay French barber. Bouffant is the father of gay hairdressers. His significant others included the court of Louie XIV and most of the sheep in Leon. .

Disabled History (I couldn’t stop….someone help me…)

Homer’s blindness
Yes that’s right Homer the 8th century BC Greek poet was blind. Homer’s mother would tell him, “If you don’t stop doing that, you’ll go blind.” He didn’t listen. But being blind was a blessing for Homer. He would wander about reciting his poetry thinking everyone was listening and never felt rejected, because he couldn’t see everybody quietly walking away.

Alexander the Greats’ epilepsy
Alexander suffered greatly from epilepsy because he couldn’t get health insurance. He tried to be gay, but every time he got excited he fell down and oscillated. This frightened his would-be partners and they ran out of his tent.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven was a great 18th century musician and composer, even after he became deaf. Like Homer’s blindness, this was a mixed blessing. He no longer flew into a rage in reaction to bad music played sloppily.

Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh was a gifted 19th century Dutch painter. He had everything including: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria, aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular. Having lived 37 years by 1890, the beginning of the gay 90s, and not being gay, he shot himself.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Local Politics

We in local government get most of our money from the federal government, so we should take their lead and be hapless, blind-sighted and incapable of anticipating crises.

Water & Sewer Maintenance - We don’t know how to anticipate where water and sewer line breaks might occur, so we don’t bother to do that. We usually wait until a road collapses to give us a general idea of where a break has occurred. We make sure we block off all the roads around these work areas for quite some time.

Road Maintenance - We only do road maintenance after we have a water or sewer line break.

Traffic - We asked everyone not to drive. For a while they didn’t listen to us, but lately we think we’re getting through to them.

Road Expansion - Our multi-use mall and apartment developers do most of this, so we try to approve all of their crazy schemes. We don’t like to do road expansion. We just want everyone to drive less.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Running for Office

Planning Your National Campaign
If you have a million dollars in the bank, a Harvard or Yale degree and a personality, you can consider running for a National office in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House. You will need a boat-load of money, so you need to know who has the money and what you’ll need to do to get some. First you need to decide what job you want to run for, and where; then find out what party the majority of the voters belong to, so you can pick that party. At this point, you should figure out how you’re going to handle what you’ll say to different groups on a variety of issues. If you think anybody will buy it, you go forward. You then hire a pre-campaign staff to plan and execute a series of gatherings of potential contributors. The staff will gather a committee of interested donors, who will gather more donors and pretty soon you’re rolling.

Securing Contributions
Your staff should be able to find out what your contributors want in return for the contributions they will make. It could be “access” to you, to give you their take on legislation, their support of your shared “world view” and political philosophy or other reasons. Some businesses and investors are more susceptible to legislator’s actions. Some potential contributors are more influenced by ideology. Here you should be taking notes.

Doing the Straight Jacket Dance
Now you know what your contributors want. It’s time to reread all applicable sections above and practice your responses to questions from the very diverse groups of voters who hate each other, without saying anything that would offend your big contributors. Don’t forget to be candid, sincere and careful.

Planning a Local Campaign
If you want to run for state senate or house or a city office, you’ll need $50,000 in the bank, a personality and lots of friends. The fundraising need not be as heady as a National Office run, but the basics are the same. Make sure you stick with local issues like water, roads, highways, zoning, parks, crime and services. I knew a state senate candidate who wanted to lower health insurance costs. Now he attacks windmills with his lance.

Get Out The Vote
Illegal aliens can be paid to vote for us, and don’t forget dead people, but the best list is the 40% of Americans who don’t vote or have health insurance. Make sure your ballot-box stuffing gang of voter fraud executors don’t get caught (see ACORN).

Friday, March 12, 2010

Union Ambitions

Unions continue to exist in private utilities and very large industries. In the 1970s Unions targeted government employees, illegal immigrant farm workers and educational institutions to replace manufacturing employees they lost beginning in the 1970s.. They want to keep that base. Unions have attempted to organize healthcare workers and have had modest success. Despite these gains, their total membership has slipped from 21 million in 1979 to 15.3 million in 2009. Of these 15.3 million members, 7.9 million are government employees and 7.4 million are in the private sector, down from 8.2 in 2008. That means 5.1% of the U.S. population belong to unions (yawn….) . So, when Obama touts the importance of unions, we wonder where he’s been since 1930.

Unions and their functionaries (see Democrats) usually mess with companies in industries they think they could succeed in organizing. A few industries come to mind: 1) Banks – 80% of bank employees are Tellers earning $22,000 a year. 2) Retail – the same applies, look at their war on Wal-Mart. 3) Insurance and Financial Services – pay is a little higher, but the workforce is the same. 4) Healthcare is over-priced, sensitive to criticism (see extortion), land-locked and labor intensive - perfect. If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until all hospitals are forced to unionize.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Why the Tea Parties ?

50% of us have two primary complaints.
1. The government has printed money and inflated prices by over 4% every year for the past 40 years We can easily debase the currency by printing more money and we’ve done so undetected at the rate of over 4% per year for the past 40 years. In 1968 new cars were $2,000, now they’re $20,000. Houses were $30,000, now they same house is $300,000. Family health insurance was $600 a year, now it’s $12,000 a year; College tuition was $900 a year, now it’s $18,000 a year. Health Care and Education inflated 8% per year. A good family income was $10000 / year, now it takes $100000 / year. Most large purchases are 10 times higher than they were 40 years ago, except for health insurance and education; these are 20 times more expensive. The way to confirm changes in inflation is to look at the growth in the gross domestic product (GDP). It too has grown 4% per year for that past 40 years. (isn’t that interesting…) The purpose of announcing the GDP is to give us the illusion that we are making progress. Looking forward, because of the size of our debt and the diminishing value of our economic capability, we look forward to debasing the dollar at double the rate of the last 40 years.

Inflation is caused by the government printing too much money. In 1913 the congress passed the Federal Reserve Act giving it the right to tax income and print money. The Gold Standard Act was passed in 1900 defining the dollar’s value at 1.5 grams of gold or a troy ounce at $20.67. From 1930s through the 1970s, the government had debased the dollar to $35.00 per troy ounce of gold. Finally in the 1970s the government cut the dollar loose from gold or silver backing completely and printed Federal Reserve Notes instead of Silver Certificates and stopped backing the dollar with gold or silver. With nothing to tie the dollar to, congress could debase the currency at will, urging the Federal Reserve to print money and cause inflation. That’s when our current bout of overspending and inflation started. Rather than holding to balanced budgets, government continued to spend more than they took in revenue. The 1913 dollar is now worth 3 cents.

2. Since 2004, the government has increased the national debt from $3.2 trillion to over $12 trillion and, when added to the overspending in the trillions that began with the TARP in 2008 and the stimulus and bailouts in 2009 and 2010 could bring the national debt to $20 trillion in 2019. In addition, the government has $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities for our Social Security pensions and Medicare. It does not appear that government will ever reign in the spending when they can simply debase the currency and call it growth, or raise taxes and kill off any recovery.

We believe government should follow the same rules we follow: 1) Pay Principle and Interest when you pay off your debt. 2) Don’t let your debt exceed 2.5 times your annual income. 3) Don’t let your P&I payments exceed 28% of your annual income. Our federal debt is $12 Trillion. Our GDP for 2009 was $14 trillion. Our Federal Tax Revenue in 2009 was $2.4 trillion. Our Federal budget for 2010 is $3.9 trillion, with trillion dollar deficits planned to 2019. Our Interest is $480 billion at about 4% of the national debt, but interest payments will rise to $1 trillion by 2019. Our real total debt is well over $100 trillion and the total value of all property held in the U.S. is only $50 trillion. We need to reduce our government debt to $6 trillion or 3 times our annual revenue. We expect GDP to remain flat or even decline. Do the math.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Political Science

The last time the progressive mathematicians raised havoc was in the 1960s. These folks are disciples of Margaret Sanger. They predicted the world would run out of food because the global population was rising. They extended the curve and declared the population explosion crisis. They gathered together the usual clueless global crisis crowd and raised hell for a few years. The Supreme Court made it legal to kill unborn babies and this made them happy. Knowing the demand for food would increase, farmers everywhere grew more food. This crisis eventually got trumped in the late 1970s by the Jimmy Carter crisis, these pinheads went back to riding their bikes between the library and their lecture halls.. They were ignored until the 1990s, when they found Al Gore. They had invented the Global Warming crisis using the same math model they used to discover the population explosion. Everybody ignored them until the Democrats took over the House in 2006. However, even before that they sold their math model to AIG to do risk analysis on their mortgage-based securities. They again gathered the clueless global crisis crowd, so global warming became the new population explosion. .

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

EPA Greenhouse Gas Permit Proposal

The EPA has proposed that they require that all entities secure a greenhouse gas emissions permit. Before we require everybody to purchase a hydrogen fuel cell lawn mower (which doesn’t exist), we should do the following:

Remove all deliberate and inadvertent emissions from government owned property, involving cap & trade for the Brea Tar Pit, most of Yellowstone Park, all volcanoes, all annual California wildfires, all other wildfires, all cows, all unnecessary jet plane trips (especially environmental conferences), all unnecessary exhaling and congress,

Citizens should do their part by: refusing to turn on their air conditioners this summer, refusing to turn on their furnaces next winter, removing their fireplaces, removing their in-ground watering systems (anticipating water shortages), refusing to use any automobiles or air planes, refusing to walk anywhere that requires exhaling (don’t even mention bicycling), refusing to eat spicy foods and insisting that the Postal Worker who delivers their government welfare and unemployment checks use only electric vehicles.

Citizens of other countries should receive U.S. assistance to ensure that they don’t have any emissions. These are expenses for cap & trade for all of Iceland, Chinese coal fired electric plants, and flatulence for all countries serving spicy food.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Pensions & Healthcare

It’s never a good idea to entrust your pension and healthcare with the same organization, especially if it’s a government that can make selective homicide legal. We have that government right now, with our pensions an abortion law and a strong desire to take over healthcare. If they need to save money and they will, they will restrict healthcare based on age and push out pension payments to age 80. The politically correct Thought Police will have everyone over age 65 thinking they should check themselves in to Soylent Green.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Lessons in Leadership
If you’re tired of a lackluster stock market, there are a few things you can do:
1. Make banks loan money to people with no money.
2. Get investment banks to package these loans so their actual value cannot be determined.
3. Place bets that the loans will default and wait for the loans to go bad
4. Get FASB to impose Mark to Market accounting rules; these don’t work so well in a down market.
5. Pull all your money out of the stock market and wait for the bottom.
6. Head for a down market and sell short on stocks you don’t even own.
7. Let mortgage-based security values go to zero under Mark to Market to create a liquidity freeze.
8. Give $ trillions of taxpayer dollars to your campaign contributors.
9. Let the stock market drop at least 50%.
10. Relax your Mark to Market rule and announce that you and your friends are going to buy these worthless assets;
11. Buy stocks at half their original cost, make a lot of money and take credit for saving the global financial system.
12. Sell all your stocks, buy gold and wait for the dollar to tank.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Politically Correct Cars

These will all be overpriced electric cars with a 100 mile limit between charging. By the time the government has these available, cap & trade will be in effect. By then, it will cost you $30 each night to charge it for the next day. I guess we showed those Arabs a thing or two ! These electric cars will have a government controlled GPS system. If the government doesn’t like where you’re going, it will drive you to wherever the government wants you to go. Also, if you tune your radio to a conservative talk radio show, it will shut off your electric motor.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Lessons from Healthcare

If you want to increase your revenue, there are a few things you can do. First, you create team managed customer care. This will allow you to have everybody in your firm, especially relatives, contribute something to the fulfillment of all customer orders, and bill their marked up shop rate and charge it to the customer bill. This requires that you make up tasks they can perform, so you can put that service on the bill. For example, if you own a transmission repair business, you have probably been assigning disassembly, inspection, ordering new parts and reassembly to one mechanic, with a senior mechanic available to give assistance. When the health care folks used this model, family coverage insurance premiums were $600 a year. Now, that coverage is $12000 a year. Following the hospital model, you should hire 6 auto mechanics students as interns, who show up every day and go on rounds with a Sr. Mechanic. Now you can charge shop rates for an additional 7 people in addition to the 2 people you have been billing time for. You will, of course want to purchase an array of the latest diagnostic equipment available and charge large fees for the use of this equipment on the customer’s bill. Make sure that the repair will be covered by auto insurance and all your competitors are doing the same thing. The next step is to get the customer ready to be billed, even when you don’t fix their car. You will need to start working this out with the auto insurance folks now, so you can bring that on line next year. Once this is rolling through the insurance companies, you can charge bay fees and have your mechanics specialize in different parts of the transmission, so they can all jump on the bill. The increase in auto repair insurance premiums takes us to government funding. Everyone will want help in paying for this right to auto repair insurance and our elected officials will be eager to provide that support. Now nothing stands in your way to ensure that all transmissions are cared for way beyond what they actually need.