JUST SOME POSTS

  As I have not done a reminder in a while, first a bit of a review: 1) There is NO government money. There are detailed explanations in other posts on this blog as well as many other sites. Just know that any time you hear something is being paid for with "federal funds", a "federal grant", "State funds'' or any other euphemism for government money, know what it really means is - taxpayer's money - either current or future. 2) Corporations DON'T pay taxes! PEOPLE PAY TAXES! You can put whatever tax rate you want to on Corporations and the taxes will be paid by their customers eventually. I have seen arguments that try to explain why the taxes will be paid by the company due to market forces or other reasons. This is not true in almost all cases. Every Corporate P&L (financial statement/planning) has a line item for taxes. It is a cost of doing business and computed into the finances like any other cost and built into the price of their wa...

 Somewhere among all these posts is one where I talked about how the problems that the politicians were going to fix have been the same all my life. The political ads from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s could be used today with a small bit of "polishing".  Our elected representatives have been correcting inequities and solving the same problems for as long as I have been hearing politicians. I am sure it goes back way before me! If the politicians wanted to (or giving them the benefit of the doubt - were able to ) solve these issues - they would have - period. There are also posts here where I try to delineate the powers and responsibility of the branches of our government as outlined in the Constitution. I will not go there again (if you care - go looking), I will just say that the three branches have to work together - at least somewhat - to get anything done. As a reminder the three branches are the Executive (President), the Judicial (the federal courts headed by the Suprem...

This is one that I have had in my head for a while. I did some research to bolster my knowledge and facts and then did not do the post. So, I reacquainted myself with some more study and I am actually going to write something this time. This is NOT meant to be an all-encompassing intellectual discussion. There will be liberties taken with some of the terms and thoughts. These are my own. I would hope the spirit of the piece is recognized as being factual even if certain small aspects are simplified or otherwise changed. As long as they are civil, I welcome comments and discourse. With the term "socialist" being thrown around so much these days, I wanted to address some facts and thoughts about socialism. First, realize that both socialism and communism can be an economic system and/or a system of government. Capitalism on the other hand is only an economic system. I am particularly going to address socialism as an economic system. Let me start out by saying that on paper ...

People, we have a real problem with our government. I can see a lot of you clicking away - "He's getting political again". BUT WAIT - READ ON. This not specifically a political problem, at least not a political problem specific to one party. We have a systemic and pervasive problem with our elected "representatives" in government. It affects the government at all levels. It is much more of a problem as you get farther away from the voters - ie Washington vs your town hall, but it is a problem everywhere.  It is to the point now that if you are a member of one party, anything a member of the other party comes up with of any significance is said to be wrong. I know this is a bit of an overstatement; but I submit, not much of one. There are still a few important issues that are worked on in a bipartisan manner, but not many and usually not by the "leadership" of the parties. As I said above, this is not a Republican problem nor a Democrat problem. Both ...