Posts Tagged ‘Good’

Politics- is it Good at All

Politics- a word detested by most of the common people. To an ordinary person, politics is a synonym to corruption, misuse of power, money laundering and other malpractices. Politics has earned such a bad name for itself everywhere, that even the most honest political leader is looked upon with suspicion. Elections come and go. Majority of the populace does not bother to vote. They know, once elected a candidate forgets his electorate and runs after money and power. But these elected leaders can play havoc or bring peace and prosperity in the society. It depends on both their decisions and participation of people. It is true that political decisions and activities affect all aspects of people’s lives. But is it really unfortunate?

Right from start of elections, candidates go on talking glibly about their plans to work for the benefit of all. They give speeches, hold rallies, fund raisers and waste precious money and time- just for power. It’s after they are elected, their ambiguous talk is exposed. Elected representatives often get portfolios for which they are totally unqualified. Imagine an illiterate politician becoming a minister for education. Hard to believe but is commonplace in many backward countries. Such a man will be totally incompetent for office and may end up spoiling the education system. The common man won’t be able to do a thing except watching promising careers and dreams fade away into oblivion.

It’s nothing new that money gets decisions reversed. Bribe more than your adversaries and the decision or policy will be in your favour. Cigarette and liquor companies with backing of billions of dollars put public health on the path of deterioration. The governments do nothing. This was brought to light after so many years when a big tobacco companies were ordered by the American courts to dole out billions of dollars to people suffering from diseases acquired by smoking. Construction companies cut off trees in hundreds and thousands to build new towers and buildings. All with no objections from the government. The environment suffers.

In most cases common people get most affected while not even being fully aware of the reasons. Thats the whole irony of it. Most decisions and policies get formed without the peoples say. They are helpless watchers of the whole game.

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Forex Trading Fundamentals: Good News for the Dollar

Over the past six months it seems like almost every major finance magazine has published an article related to the weakness of the dollar. If you are a currency trader like I am then this topic is particularly relevant to you because you need to know what the long-term trends of each currency are so that you can make profitable trades.

What you probably have not been reading about in the news are some of the events that have been happening behind the scenes or that will be happening in the near future, and why the American economy will ultimately regain its strength.

The single most significant factor affecting the American dollar is the trade balance, and the biggest portion of this problem is related to our war in the Middle East that should never have been authorized, yet is still costing us billions of dollars every single day. I will not spend a lot of time talking about the horrendous actions of the Bush administration (namely that they defrauded their way into office in order to wage a cultural genocide for the sake of gaining control over oil), but there are truly good things that have been happening behind the scenes and that will be happening in the near future.

You will not hear about many of these things in the mass media news outlets in America such as CNN and ABC, and there is an exceedingly simple reason why these manipulated news networks try to convince the American people that there is a threat of danger when really none exists at all: War is profitable. There are powerful groups in our world today whose agendas are motivated by greed and control, and these people engage in heartless wartime profiteering so that they may satisfy their lust for power. But it is not all bad: I will discuss some of the wondrous events that are causing these groups to rapidly lose their power, and what all of this information means for the currency markets.

The Bush Administration has dropped to single-digit approval ratings, and millions of Americans have gone to websites such as Impeach Bush and spoken out about their opinions of why this man is no longer our leader. Dennis Kucinich, a representative from my home state of Ohio that I have had the pleasure of meeting, is leading the way for the eventual impeachment and forcible removal from office of Bush and his war-mongering cronies.

The Bush Administration has inadvertently caused a global recession with their desire to wage a heartless war, and the signs are strong that the global community has finally come together and told these warmongers “Enough!” They are rapidly losing power as people are becoming more conscious and aware of the fact that they have been lied to by the controlled mass media outlets.

If you are looking for really good forex trading opportunities, I would be willing to bet that when the news releases come out stating things such as Bush’s impeachment or other things that peace-loving people the world over are working to create, there will be a large jump in the value of the dollar in the window of a day or two.

The really good news for the dollar and for the American people is coming from Japan. The Japanese are the largest holders of foreign dollar reserves (around trillion dollars), and they have openly declared that they will no longer fund the American war effort.

The reason why I remain optimistic about the future of the American economy is because of the two main presidential candidates that have come forward to lead our country. In my mind (and in accordance with recent political data), the two main candidates in the 2008 presidential election will be Barack Obama and Ron Paul. Both of these men are benevolent leaders and are sufficiently equipped to rectify the errors of the Bush Administration, and Ron Paul has openly stated that he will abolish the Federal Reserve and the IRS to create a more prosperous America.

In the last paragraph, notice that I said the “American economy” and not the dollar. This is an important point, because many benevolent and powerful leaders are discussing new potential monetary systems for the United States that can lead to greater prosperity. The Federal Reserve system is based upon perpetual debt, and it is not sustainable because it steals wealth from the American people and puts it into the pockets of a few. This is all very good news, and so you may be wondering how this plays into your forex trading.

The dollar will continue to go down so long as our war is not stopped, and so for the next few months until the Bush Administration is forcibly removed from office or until they simply fade away to be replaced by a new leader, there will still be a downwards trend for the USD.

After our war ends due to internal political pressure from our benevolent leaders as well as financial pressure from the Japanese, many Japanese leaders are discussing the possibility of using their foreign dollar reserves to create a global humanitarian mission where they can bring knowledge and modern telecommunications access to countries that have not been able to provide it for themselves.

As this happens the American economy will regain strength because our trade balance will become much more sustainable. So ultimately for your forex trading, the downwards trend for the dollar will continue until these big benevolent changes occur, afterwards the American economy (as well as the global economy as a whole) will regain its stability.

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Why Do We Need Good Manners and Politeness?

Parents attempt to teach their children at an early age about manners, though some people may have a common misunderstanding about manners. There are three things that make up the basis for manners; they are consideration, common sense and customs. Abel Stevens says that politeness is the art that consists in choosing from someone’s own real thoughts. Customs constitute a habit of doing definite things such as shaking hands or tipping hats. Consideration is the most significant concept behind all good manners. Very often a considerate person has good manners. Consideration has a very simple definition; it consists in thinking about the way the other people feel. Almost all good manners have a component of common sense. For example, if you are in the back of an overcrowded elevator it is neither wisely nor good manners to make an attempt to push your way through the crowd to the exit in order to get out first. These are the three main ideas of manners and politeness.

Manners can be used as synonym to politeness, though politeness is the most expectable dissimulation. It is often really so. Parents and teachers attempt to teach the children good manners and politeness, but are they, teaching good manners, taking their own advice? That is why we should strive to disprove the fact that politeness is often the most expectable hypocrisy. We can do that by finding out what a person will do if she or he is alone or in public.

Primarily, manners and politeness need to be an integral part of relations at home. People should respect the privacy of his or her family members, and be polite to them. It is also important to use good table manners. We can see that all these small acts that often seem insignificant, are a sign of good manners that help us to understand each other.

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Government, Politics, Elections – I Have Hit the Wall for Good

You wanna stir things up? Just blurt out to your family and friends that you are so disgusted with government, politics and elections that you will no longer be voting. God, you’d think i drew a cartoon of a sacred religious idol or something. But, I truly have hit the wall with American politics. Granted, I do suffer horrific bouts of BTSD: Bush Traumatic Stress Disorder. And, I’ve read or listened to too many pieces by or about the likes of Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson (13 Bankers), Elizabeth Warren, Nouriel Roubini, Bill Moyers, Jim Hightower, et al. I am convinced that as long as Wall Street, the big banks, Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Corporate America own the government, there will be no change. Ever. Greed-fueled lobbying and campaign contributions mean our government is not about We The People and never will be. Both parties are morally bankrupt, and a viable third party will always be out of the question unless you count the Tean Party, the Libertarians, or the Green Party, which I don’t. Nope. It’s a two-party system we are corruptly governed by that will always crush any true threat to its continued conniving ways. So, call me crazy, call me an idiot, mock me, dis me, for I fully deserve it. But, I will no longer be a meaningless part of The Great American Pyramid Scheme. I will no longer participate in this exercise in futility called “voting in elections,” nor will I deceive myself into believing that my vote matters. It doesn’t. I will give not one more shred of cred to a political system that is so not “Of The People, By The People and For The People…” At nearly 60, I am burning my voter registration card knowing that the more things don’t change, the more they remain the same.

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2009 Year Review – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly From The American Political Class

Throughout 2009, while the country and it’s citizens were facing a terrible economy, foreign wars, extreme Congressional partisanship and sniping, no improvements in the major issues facing this country such as the soaring national debt, high unemployment, failing public schools, wide spread drug addiction problems, rising health care costs, and other major issues, what were the politicians worried about? Looking back on 2009, there appears to have been three distinct categories of American political class behavior: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good

By all accounts, 2009 was a rough year in America. The good news is that I could actually identify some areas where the political class did some good things. The bad news is I could only come up with three examples where the actions of the political class had taxpayers and fellow citizens in mind when they executed their actions:

1) The first example is based on personal experience. I live in Pinellas county in Florida and over the past four years my property taxes have gone down on a year over year basis. They have gone down so much that I now pay about 40% in less in property taxes today than I paid four years ago with a significant portion of that decrease occurring in 2009. There are probably a number of factors, both political and non-political, that have gone into this decrease but the bottom line is that they have gone down significantly. And here is the good news: I still have police protection, I still have fire protection, the schools are still open, the parks are still open, most of the libraries are still open and the roads and traffic lights are still in good shape. This is proof, that on a very local level, excess waste can be taken out of government without substantial reduction in essential protection and services. The primary word in that previous sentence is essential.

2) The second example comes from the U.S. Senate and it was a suggestion and formal proposal to the Senate from Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. His reasoning: since the Federal government paid about billion of U.S. taxpayer money to acquire a 60% share of General Motors and theoretically save it from bankruptcy, shouldn’t each American taxpayer get stock certificates and partial ownership of GM rather than the Washington bureaucrats? After all, since government is able to function only because it takes money from taxpayers, if government acquires ownership in a private company, doesn’t that mean that the taxpayers own the company since it was their money? Senator Alexander was the single politician this year that showed he understood the relationship between paying taxes and government spending. Giving individual citizens those shares of GM would ensure more interest in how GM performed going forward since each citizen would have had a stake in its survival, probably giving GM a better shot at survival than it has with government ownership. Unfortunately, the Senator’s suggestion was not approved by the Senate.

3) The final example comes from a small town in south Florida, Miami Gardens. In the past year, Miami Gardens city government took the following actions:

The city payroll grew. Most everywhere else in the country unemployment increased.
City employees still got cost of living raises and merit raises. Most everywhere else in the country salaries and wages were frozen or reduced.
The city increased its financial reserves by about 0,000. Most everywhere else in the country, local and state governments dipped into their reserves to cover operating costs.
The city upgraded 17 parks and 4 schools. Most other government entities were reducing or eliminating maintenance projects.

 

How was Miami Gardens able to do all of these positive things in light of a very, very deep recession and the fact that they are not a city of wealthy residents? According to interviews with city officials:

City employees share both personnel resources and other resources.
The city hires only those people they actually need to do the work needed to be done.
City officials claim they have the ability and backbone to say “No” to non-essential projects and programs, claiming that they cannot be everything to everybody.

 

Thus, much like the first example above, the Miami Gardens politicians have shown that running a lean, efficient government operation is possible if you are respectful of taxpayers’ dollars. All it takes is a little planning and the ability to just say No.

The Bad

In life you have to take the good with the bad so now let’s review some of the less than glorious antics that the political class served us with in the second half of 2009:

Ginny Brown-Waite, a Congresswoman from Florida, was actively investing in bank stocks at the same time she was sitting on the House banking committee to determine which banks got what levels of bailout money and support from the American taxpayer through the Federal government. This is a blatant conflict of interest. Ordinary Americans would probably have gone to jail for insider trading if they did the same thing, apparently conflict of interest and insider trading activities do not apply to Congressional members.
Senator Hillary Clinton apparently also does not understand conflict of interest theory. She helped pass a bill that allowed a mall developer in New York state to get preferential tax treatment, shortly after the developer made a significant donation to Bill Clinton’s foundation.
Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye’s staff helped a bank in Hawaii get bailout money from the FDIC after the the FDIC determined the bank was not worth saving. Turns out that the Senator had invested heavily in the bank and stood to lose a load of money unless the bank was saved by the American taxpayer.
Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut received substantial campaign donations from Fannie Me and Freddie Mac. Two things wrong here. First, Dodd was chairman of the Senate banking committee responsible for overseeing the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a clear cut case of conflict of interest. Second, how do two Federal organizations that exist now solely because of taxpayer support and bailout money get to use taxpayer money to support specific candidates for office? Shouldn’t government organizations remain non-partisan and not a piggy bank for the politicians who are supposed to oversee them?
Ex-Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was convicted of taking bribes and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. You may recall that Mr. Jefferson was caught with frozen bribe money in his home freezer. This continues the hall of shame tradition of the political class who recently included Congressman Randy Cunningham who was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking .4 million in bribes, Congressman Bill Ney who was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for taking bribes, Congressman James Traficant who was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking bribes, and the majority of ex-Governors of Illinois who are either serving prison time, have served prison time, or may soon face prison time.
60% of the Congressional members sitting on the House Armed Services Committee received campaign contributions from the very companies that they had previously earmarked pork barrel budget money for.
Congressman Charles Rangel of New York is being investigated for a number of ethics violations including, but not limited to, non-declaration of rental income, certain assets, and other income.
In the area of “who really cares about this bill”, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California and her staff are working on legislation to Federally regulate the sound volume on television commercials. Never mind that TV watchers can mute the sound, change the channel, leave the room to get something to eat, fast forward on their DVR machines, or just ignore the TV for 60 seconds. Why work on Iraq, Afghanistan, soaring deficits, unemployment, failing public schools, etc. when the TV commercial sound volume issue is so pressing?
In the same vein as Ms. Eshoo’s contribution to America, Congressman Jim Moran and his staff are investigating whether certain television commercials alluding to a specific male health problem should be banned. I did not know this was so important either. As with Ms. Eshoo, let’s ignore real issues facing America and work on television commercial issues.
And it never ends. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter and his staff is working on legislation to provide up to 0 a month in income tax deductions so that the unemployed do not have to put their pets up for adoption. Maybe if his staff and he were working on how to get America working again, there would be no need for this ridiculous program that would never be able to be tracked and would be rife with fraud.
Worse than individual Congress people and their staffs working on trivial bills, how about an entire House subcommittee worked on legislation aimed at forcing the NCAA to go to a playoff format to determine the best Division One college football team? Where would this issue rank with the vast majority of Americans today? Probably not very high.
The fence along the border between America and Mexico was the work of the entire Congress. A 2009 report documented that the construction of the fence is seven years behind schedule, it will cost .4 billion to maintain the fence over the next twenty years (0,000 a day!), and there have been at least 3,000 breaches of the fence where illegal immigrants were able to enter the country despite this billion dollar fence.
The new Washington D.C. visitors’ center was completed but only after it overran it’s construction budget by about 50%.
California Congressman Henry Waxman was quoted as saying: “I certainly don’t claim to know everything’s that’s in this bill” in referring to the massive cap and trade legislation that is likely to come before Congress in 2010. The troubling aspect of this statement is that Waxman is the official co-author and writer of the bill!
Recently, who could forget the blatant bribes the recently passed health care reform bill required where a handful of Democratic Senators were able to get breaks for their individual states to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for their final vote in support of this bill.

 

If these actions were not serious and far reaching, they would be comical. Conflicts of interest, trivial projects, wastes of money, sad but true in 2009.

The Ugly

It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, it is difficult to find much beauty in any of the following Federally funded projects since they waste Federal tax dollars on local projects that contribute nothing to solving the major, national issues facing the country today. The only beauty is in the eye of incumbent politicians who waste these taxpayer dollars to support their re-election efforts:

Exhibits at the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation – 0,000
Restoration of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Music Hall – ,000,000
Restoration of the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia – 0,000
Construction of the Monroe County (Kentucky) Farmers’ Market – 0,000
Restoration of the Murphy Theater in Ohio – 0,000
Restoration of the Slater Mill in Rhode Island – 4,000
Restoration of the Pregone Theater in the Bronx – 0,000
Construction of the Santa Ana River Trail in California – 0,000
Funding for the Myrtle Beach International Trade and Conference Center – 0,000
Funding for the Washington (state) Opera – 0,000
Funding for the Montana World Trade Center – 4,000
Funding for the Arkansas Commercial Driver Training Institute – 0,000
Funding to study and educate citizens about the role and importance of the U.S. Senate, located in Massachusetts – ,900,000
Funding for the Brown Tree Snake Program, funding that was embedded in the 2010 Defense Department budget – 0,000
Renovation of the Ritz Theater in Newburgh, New York – 0,000
Renovation of the Laredo Little Theater in Lardeo, Texas – 0,000
Widening of Bristol Street in Santa Ana, California – 0,000
Construction of a bike path in Port Sanilax, Michigan – 0,000
Funding for the Museum Of Aviation – 0,000
Funding for the World Food Prize in Iowa – 0,000
Questionable Medicare claims including such, as an example, paying for blood glucose strips for sexual impotence – ,000,000,000
Government waste due to improper payments across all Federal government departments – ,000,000,000
Conversion of 21 cabooses into a caboose motel in Pennsylvania – 0,000
Funding for a remote Pennsylvania airport that serves about twenty passengers a day – 0,000,000
Funding for a state of the art radar system for that remote Pennsylvania airport that has never been used – ,000,000
Funding for a remote Montana border checkpoint at the Canadian border that handles about three travelers a day on average and less than 0 of freight a day on average – ,000,000
Funding for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii – 8,000
Funding for the Forage Animal Production Research Lab in Kentucky- ,600,000
Funding for Swine Odor and Manure Management Research in Iowa – ,790,000
Funding for oyster rehabilitation in Alabama – 0,000
Support of health and economic development activities for the Arctic region – ,600,000
A loan to a California company to develop and build an expensive hybrid sports car…. in Finland – 9,000,000

 

These are just a couple dozen programs that waste hard earned taxpayer dollars. The 2010 budget bills have over 11,000 other such programs, even though President Obama campaigned to keep the number of pork projects like these well under 2,000. The reasons we have state and local governments is to handle state and local needs. It should not be the role of the Federal government to fund local bike paths, widen local roads, renovate theaters, etc. It diverts time, money, and resources from the truly national problems like the two wars we are currently involved in, soaring Federal deficits, high unemployment levels, Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency, failing public schools, high drug addiction rates and the associated crime problems, the lacking of a national strategic energy plan, etc.

Then why does the political class spend/waste time and money on these clearly local issues and needs? It helps guarantee them re-election by attempting to prove to their own voters that they are adept at stealing money from other U.S. taxpayers and funneling into their home districts and states. Remember, the government pays for nothing, it funds programs with taxpayer money taken from all American taxpayers. Thus, the bike trail in Michigan is being financed in part by taxpayers in Arizona who will never ride that trail. The Polynesian Voyaging Society is being funded in part by taxpayers in Vermont who will never get any benefits from the Society.

A long time ago, the Statue Of Liberty, an enduing symbol of this entire country and its freedom, was in badly need of repair and renovation. The country rose up to privately donate enough funds to restore this national symbol. If the Statue Of Liberty did not merit Federal money several decades ago, why do farmers’ markets and bike paths merit such Federal support today?

This pilfering of national tax dollars possibly hides a more dangerous reality. It could be that this generation of politicians, and the ones that have come immediately before them, do not know how to solve the real national problems facing America today. In the 1960s, Nixon declared war on drugs but we still have a major drug problem in this country. In the 1970s, Carter was President when we lived through the energy crises but we still no do not have a national strategic energy program in place. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration identified the danger of our failing public school systems but today many of our public schools are still failing. In the 1990s, despite numerous wake-up calls (first World Trade Center attacks, U.S. embassy terrorist bombings in Africa, USS Cole attack, etc.) we still do not have the terrorist threat under control, as witnessed by the almost catastrophic airline security breakdown on the Christmas day KLM flight into Detroit.

Thus, it could be that our current politicians work on useless and wasteful local spending programs and worry about the sound volume on television commercials because they are incapable of doing anything else. If they were, than many of our national problems would have been addressed and solved already. That is why the following steps need to be taken to start reducing “The Bad” and “The Ugly” and expanding the “The Good” from the political class:

Step 1 – start reducing Federal spending by 10% a year, for five years, in order to begin weeding out the wasteful, but politically convenient, local wastes of money.
Step 2 – allow only individual citizens to contribute to political election campaigns since many of the wasteful programs are really bribes, directing taxpayer dollars to companies, unions, and lobbyists in order to get reciprocal campaign donations for incumbents’ re-election campaigns.
Step 3 – hold Congressional committee and subcommittee members accountable for their performance, removing them from committee posts when their efforts are unsatisfactory and wasteful.
Step 4 – establish term limits for all Senators and Congressmen since allowing them to serve forever is not working. If the President, the most important elected official in the world, has term limits, less important Senate and House of Representative seats should also be limited in term length.
Step 5 – no Federal money could be spent on any program or project unless it materially affects a substantial number of residents in at least five states, i.e. spend Federal tax dollars on national needs, let state and local governments and private citizens handle the local needs.

While “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” made for a good Clint Eastwood movie, it does not make for effective and efficient governance. Let’s hope that 2010 is better and that somehow some of the steps listed above take hold this year, resulting in a 2010 list of wasteful spending programs and negative political antics that is far smaller than in 2009.

Note: only credible, well known news sources were used for the information included in this article. These sources included, but were not limited to, the New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times, CNN, the Associated Pres, The Week Magazine, and Reason Magazine and does not include personal opinions or information from highly partisan sources. For detailed information on the sources please refer to www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com where all of these facts and figures have been previously identified and discussed.
 
Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to learn about “Love My Country, Loathe My Government – Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class”.

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