Senator Spector is Busy

I attempted to send to Senator Spector, the same letter that I sent to Senator Casey. For some reason Senator Spector's website is not responding. I then tried to call his office. It was busy. I certainly hope that this is due to the hoards of people contacting them about this momentous bill and not caused by Senator Spector trying to avoid said hoards.

Don't stop trying. I won't.

Bail-out Alternatives

Below is a letter I wrote to my Senator this morning regarding the bail-out bill now working it's way through Congress. I implore you all to do the same regardless of your view. Let your voice be heard.

Greetings Senator Casey,

It is imperative that something be done to preserve our free market economy.

I know that you are a freedom loving, and America loving individual just as your father was and I thank you for your service to the country.

In this urgent time, I hope that you and your colleagues in the Senate will take a deep breath and give great thought to what changes this bail-out bill will make to our nation.

Nothing done in haste has ever ended well.

I implore you not to spend $700 billion (give or take) of our (the taxpayers') money on this bail-out. While something must be done, we should at least try some more market-driven and less costly options first.

1. Let us have a capital gains tax holiday for the next several years.

2. Let us lower the corporate tax rate to a level that is more competitive with what our global trading partners are charging. This and the capital gains cut will attract capital to our markets and will alleviate the pressure.

3. Let us look at the causes of this crisis and set rules in place to limit the activities that put our markets in jeopardy.

4. Let us make it clear to energy producing companies in our country, (oil, gas, coal, wind, solar) that the Federal Government will not stand in the way of development of any of these resources. If our nation were using all of the resources we have, we would have more than enough for ourselves, and could sell the surpluses to other nations, thereby bringing more capital into the United States.

These changes would strengthen our markets instantly, because those on Wall Street know that these business friendly changes would not only strengthen Main Street, but would go a long way towards retiring our trade deficits, and our national debt.

Please vote no on the bail-out in it's present form and request some if not all of the items I have detailed above. I am not an economist, but I am a concerned citizen and voter in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

I am confident you will do the right thing.

Let's make it illegal!

Another police officer was executed by a thug on the streets of Philadelphia. I can almost hear Bruce Springsteens voice mutter these words in his depressing monotone song from the 90's. Unfortunately, this is more than a song, this is fact.

The fifth police officer lost in Philadelphia since 2006. That is five too many. What can we do to stop this violence? The Nutter administration would like to remove the high powered weapons from the criminals who are using them on our streets. Wouldn't we all. His solution, and the solution of many mayors in large cities is to make the guns illegal.

While we are at it, I would like to remove all of the heroin, crack and cocaine from the streets.

We should make those drugs illegal. Once we make heroin crack and cocaine illegal, I know that there will be nobody using them. What a utopia that would be!

A beacon of freedom. For how much longer?

I am a decadent man. I never really thought of myself that way, but I have come to that conclusion. It feels like an addiction that I can't shake. I can not imagine getting home from work, and after mowing the lawn, not sitting down with a beer and watching Monday Night Football. It is unimaginable to me.

I can not imagine not being able to buy a nice Christmas present for my wife, or not being able to pay for my son's soccer dues. They may seem like necessities, but they are not. They are all luxuries that so many do not have.

Here I sit, on the computer, typing away spewing my gray matter onto the page. There are people in other countries that are struggling just to eat; struggling for shelter from the weather; struggling to resist an oppressive government.

I am not writing this to guilt you into sending money to some starving people in Ethiopia or the American inner cities; although that is a wonderful, blessed thing to do. No, I am writing this for fear that soon, someday very soon, we may have to choose between living in those same conditions, albeit temporarily (we can only hope), or allowing complete government control of everything.

Even before this financial mess came to fruition, the government was talking about taking over the healthcare industry, the oil industry, imposing new controls on how people live in the name of a global climate change that may or may not lead to our destruction, and may or may not be caused by anything that we are doing.

Now with this financial mess the Federal government will take over the bulk of our financial markets first. Then, not to be deterred by the fact that we will be responsible for 8 trillion dollars of debt to China and other foreign nations, but also more than a trillion dollars of bad debt accumulated by shady dealings in our financial sector, the Federal government will still reach out and take over the healthcare industry and continue to impose those environmental controls.

We are mere days away from becoming a socialist country and losing the freedom and prosperity that only a free market can bring. Human beings will always trade liberty for security and when we have spent so many years living decadent lives, we will latch onto anything that will prevent the walls of our straw houses from being blown in by the big, bad financial or terrorist wolves.

We need to be vigilant. We need G-d fearing, fiscally minded, people with common sense and a belief in the ability of people to govern themselves (like our founding fathers had) to run for congress, and for President so as to turn us around before we rush off of that cliff and end up with bread lines and gulags.

We have been so blessed to live in the United States of America, a beacon of freedom and hope to the world. That beacon is now running on an old laptop battery that has seen too many charges; credit card charges that is.

Introduction to The Distraction Culture

This blog is a 44 ounce cup at McDonalds into which I can pour my overflowing pitcher of thoughts. I hope that you find I have an original and interesting voice. As the name of this blog page suggests, however, this is more about emptying the pitcher a little bit so that I can put the distractions aside and actually get some work done and spend some focused time with the family.

The "Distraction Culture" in itself is a description of our culture. Whether by design, or by accident, we are distracted constantly by meaningless television shows, our jobs, running our children around from activity to activity, and generally all of the noise and information that spills out of everywhere and everything.

When I am sitting "vegging" in front of the television at night watching "America's Got Talent" because I feel I deserve a break, I think of men like Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo Da Vinci. Have you seen how much they accomplished in their lives? It is incredible! All of the masterpieces and inventions they created. All of their contributions to society and literature and art. What's stopping us from doing the same? Distractions. Too many distractions.

This, I hope will be my small contribution. The small mark that I make. Perhaps it can serve as a wakeup call to all of us to turn off the TVs and the noise, cancel our kids softball practice, and join together with our families to create something greater than ourselves, to leave our marks on the world.

Hope fully I am not like a tree falling in the woods that nobody hears. I can only hope I make a sound.

More Bail-Outs?!!

I found myself so distracted this morning with the idea of "we the people" taking on more astronomical debt and giving up more of our freedom to the Federal government in the name of "saving the economy" that I wrote a letter to my congressman. I thought I would share this distraction with you and see what you think.





Dear Representative Murphy,

Thank you for your service, both in Iraq, and in Washington. I am inspired by what you have accomplished, and look forward to following your lead and getting more involved in my community, commonwealth and country.

I am writing today to impress upon you my love of those things that you have fought for, our liberty and freedom. I think we can both agree that the United States has been a beacon for these ideals since the signing of our great Constitution.

That is why I am so concerned with what has been taking place in Washington and Wall Street of late. People in the business community have made bad (very bad) decisions over, at least, the last 8 years. These decisions have lead to the tenuous state of our economy today.

While I am concerned about the ramifications to our economy of letting first Bear Stearns, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and now Lehman Bros fail. I have two, even greater concerns.

1. Loss of Liberty - As a result of these bail-outs, our government now owns more than 50% of the mortgages in our country. While the Fed may have the right intentions, we live, unfortunately, in a world where power corrupts. These bail-outs are a monumental transfer of power to a Federal government that already has way too much power. This is not what our founding fathers intended.

2. Loss of Sovereignty - This may sound alarmist, but our National Debt is at least 9 Trillion dollars. This debt weakens us as a country and threatens our sovereignty. We are at the mercy of those nations to whom we are indebted. This number will not go down any time soon, and if the government continues to bail out these businesses as they have, the country will go broke rather than the big businesses that got us in this mess in the first place.

I know that I am not telling you anything you don’t already know. As a member of our great military, you fought for these ideals which is how I know that I am writing to a kindred spirit in this regard.

I am just a working man, a father of 2 young boys, a husband, and a citizen who wants to see our great country remain free and prosperous for my children and grandchildren. We the people are the way. Not the Federal government.

I hope you will represent me and our great Commonwealth, and vote against bailing out Lehman Bros, vote for breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and putting liberty back in the hands of the people.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I know you will not dismiss my concerns out of turn. I have every confidence that you will look very closely at what your colleagues in Washington are doing, and you will choose to do what is right.


-----Wow. That feels so much better. I feel cleansed. Maybe now I can focus and get some work done. Let me know what you think.