The vocal minority

Today, we get rid of the worst Congress in our history (112th) and have the swearing-in of the newest members of the 113th Congress. The GOP will probably elect John Boehner to another term as Speaker of the House.

John Boehner said he will not negotiate with President Obama anymore, so 2013 is getting off to a rocky start. I still feel sorry for John Boehner because he is in an abusive relationship with the vocal minority of his party.  He's not exactly on firm ground with establishment republicans from New York and New Jersey right now because he didn't want to overwhelm the tea party by making them vote for a Sandy hurricane relief bill for blue states.  It's been 66 days since Hurricane Sandy hit and they have yet to receive money back to help their state recover.  It only took 10 days to get relief to the victims of hurricane Katrina.  I say get their money back because traditionally, New York and New Jersey have sent more money to the government then they have received back; unlike the southern states. The house will vote on $9 billion of the $60 billion hurricane Friday and on the 15th they will vote on the rest but it's a brand new Congress so they have to start all over and the delays won't make the folks in New York and New Jersey happy.

I was in rare agreement with Joe Scarborough this morning because he said that the right- wing fringe of his party is making it harder for party leaders to get a favorable deal from a president who has a 58% approval rating.  He said as long as the Wayne Lapierre wing of the GOP continues to argue for assault weapons and high-capacity  ammo clips, Middle America will continue voting for democrats in national elections. Republicans have begun to realize that the survivalists, and the paranoid are another vocal minority within their ranks.  “Even as gun purchases rise, the share of U.S. households with a gun has been falling for decades, from 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010, according to the University of Chicago's General Social Survey.” This group does not have faith in the United States Constitution or the Supreme Court of the United States. KTSA's Trey Ware was trying to make the argument that banning assault weapons is a first step in gun confiscation by our government but like the argument that tax cuts pay for themselves, people are no longer buying that argument.

The GOP thinks that they have President Obama over the barrel because the latest fiscal cliff deal permanently locked in the tax rates.  The White House still has a couple of rounds in the chamber because they're going to (1) force the Republicans to name the programs they want to cut (2) and they have the option of limiting deductions to the wealthy and removing loopholes that ordinary Americans do not receive.  The president could use the bully pulpit to educate the people.  He could tell 'em that Congress controls the purse strings, so they could simply not pay our bills and watch as we get downgraded and our economy starts on a downward spiral.  The truth is neither party wants to make serious cuts because of the political flak, they will take from constituents.  Conservatives are using their media like the Wall Street Journal to say that the president must be a leader and tell the people the truth.  We know that goes both ways and we got proof of that the when the Romney tried to demonize Obama for his $716 billion cuts in Medicare, yet Paul Ryan did the very same thing in his budget proposal. I don't need the president to tell me anything. I know that when our economy gets back, the middle class needs to pay a little more because we can't depend on soaking the rich to pay for entitlements.

I got a good laugh when CNBC's Mad Money Kramer and Joe Scarborough were complaining about the new tax rates and the total amount of taxes they were paying.  They finally realized that they were fortunate enough to be paying those taxes ,so either they were bragging or whining.  They didn't think about that poor person who has to stand in line to apply for the minimum-wage job.

Stalemate

We’ll begin 2013 like we ended 2012; I think it now that Joe Biden has entered the picture, and we’ll do just enough to keep us from going over the fiscal cliff. The gun issue will be forgotten by the time Joe Biden’s Commission makes its report to the president because that’s the way we roll these days.

I feel sorry for Speaker Boehner, especially after listening to Amy Kremer, chairperson of the Tea Party Express. She said the Tea Party she represents will NEVER vote for a tax increase because we have a spending problem. She cited the numbers we all know by heart, yearly deficits over a trillion dollars and a 16 trillion-dollar debt. The host stunned her when he said allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will fix the deficit because she obviously didn’t know that extra revenue or spending cuts will reduce the deficit. Amy Kremer then said that states with higher taxes have a higher unemployment rate. That’s true for right down but who thinks that Alabama will outdo California when the economy takes off? Growth, education, infrastructure repair, defense spending or energy investment is of no concern to the Tea Party. The word compromise is not in their vocabulary. After all, of the 234 GOP house seats, President Obama only won 15 of those districts. It will remain that way for least 10 more years because the 30 Republican governors have aligned their congressional district to favor their party. It will remain that way until the next census, which is seven years away.

It’s upsetting (although true) that a deal on January 4 will not affect the markets that much because they have built in an expectation of a non-adaptive government. If Congress does not pass the Farm bill, milk might go up to $7.00 a gallon, the payroll tax is gone, people will not get their unemployment checks, and new markets will finally be convinced that America has a dysfunctional government with no hope in sight. It’s funny how the GOP doesn’t think that allowing the payroll tax to expire is increasing taxes. Raising the Social Security (FICA) to its original 6.2% from the current 4.2% amounts to $1000 for those families making $50,000. I’m glad it expired because we need that extra revenue to fund Social Security during this time of high unemployment.

We’ll have to wait another 10 hours or so but is not as simple as “they knew all this seven months ago and chose not to do anything about it.” They ran into a human nature problem, both political parties that thought they were going to win the White House, so “why buy the cow when you think you can get the milk for free.”

Our hometown newspaper is trying to conjure up a discussion about having armed guards at our schools. I’m not totally against have an armed guard, but I don’t want armed teachers. How will we ever measure the effectiveness of an armed guard? How can you measure the effectiveness of protection against a random mass shooting? This morning’s paper gave an example of an armed teacher averting a potential school shooting, but we also know that Columbine and Virginia Tech had armed guards.

The pro- gun advocates are trying to divert the attention away from guns and put it all on video games, movies and mental illness. I think mental illness funding is a separate issue but I can’t help but think that gun manufacturers love seeing their guns being displayed in video games and movies. I think this issue is about high-capacity ammo clips and the ownership and the registration of semiautomatic weapons. I still think we can do something about 40% of the weapons that are sold without an instant background check.

I hate repeating the same-old topics, and I wish we were like the people in that scene from the movie “We bought a Zoo.” A big tree blew down overnight preventing people from entering the zoo in their cars. The owners of the zoo and its caretakers helped the people climb over the felled tree, thus doing what needed to be done for them to have a successful opening.

Happy New Year everyone.

Down to the Wire

This weekend all the political Einstein's provided us with their prognosis for the presidential outcome. It didn't give me any comfort that most of them said President Obama will be reelected because I remember from history “Dewey defeats Truman."

This morning, the general theme was that Obama has a razor-thin lead in the national and the battleground states. I'm waiting for the actual count Tuesday night or perhaps early Wednesday morning. I was getting a headache trying to decipher all of Chuck Todd's political data and map this morning. For example, Obama has a 2-1 lead in early voting but Republicans always cast more absentee votes and traditionally vote on the day of the election. Mitt Romney has a double-digit lead white male vote nationally but in Ohio, Obama leads in the white male vote. Huh? I now believe that poll responders tend to lie a little bit, but I still believe we will know the results of Ohio by just tallying up a few counties. For example, we know that our 77904 zip code will vote 90% Republican. Of course after the election, the first debate, Hurricane Sandy and the praise of Obama's handling of the storm provided by Governor Chris Christie will be evaluated. Fox News & Company thinks the mainstream media gave the president a pass on Benghazi.

 

I'm glad I left the VA forum because I can imagine that I would have been pretty busy debunking the nonstop partisan comments that have been posted lately.

I don't feel comfortable addressing religious comments because the entire topic is based on a persons' faith and beliefs. I'm not going to argue someone's belief that the Democratic Party is made up of a bunch of heathens because some in the party wanted to omit God from the platform. I think the Democratic Party is more than one issue, and I like the way the party tolerates secular views. It's a big tent party, and that was self-evident as the national television cameras panned the crowd at the convention. You would think that we would have 535 GOP legislators and a Republican president and vice president if God was really on the GOP's side.

I don't know who's going to win tomorrow night but I sincerely think that whoever does, will get an economy that's moving in the right direction. I really hope that President Obama gets reelected and gets the full credit for his efforts. I still think the passing and signing of TARP by the Bush administration, the actions by Federal Chairman Bernanke and a lot of policies by President Obama stabilized an economy that was heading for a depression. I agree with some world economists that I heard on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show yesterday. They said that American may have a lot of debt but our problems have solutions unlike the European and Asian markets. Our problems stem from a broken political system where nothing gets done because of ideological differences.

I will write one more blog Wednesday analyzing the election in my own words and opinion. It looks like the house will remain in Republican hands the Democrats will hold onto the Senate. That means that the Republicans will not get to use reconciliation (51% of votes) and depending on the final tally, and if Romney is elected, he will not have a veto proof repeal of Obamacare. I don't think Romney really wants to repeal Obamacare because it's the carbon copy of his masterpiece in Massachusetts...If President Obama is reelected, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell's plan of not allowing the president a second term goes into the wastebasket. If you watched 60 minutes last night, I think you will agree that Congress has not gotten the message, and that they wear their low approval rating, as a badge of honor.