Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Bad Days & Good Days

The people of America have 2 fundamental problems that I have observed in action of late.

The first is that they do not have enough common sense themselves to admire it, respect it and choose it in others. Thats how we got the senseless Barack Obama and his equally senseless compatriot Harry Reid. Nancy Pelosi is also senseless, but her problems are far more sinister than a lack of ability to comprehend common sense - let alone use it.

The second and more critical issue amongst Americans is their inability to understand the concept of Karma as the middle eastern religion refers to it. It is simply that what goes around comes around. And far too many Americans are making their living being someone else's reason for having a 'Bad Day'. Listen. You can't be everyone else's bad day every day without having a bad day come back to you increasingly in a world intent on making a bad day for everyone.

Now bad days are very easily created and are contagious. You can have 99.5% of a day be a good day, and one nominal incident can make it a 'bad day'. And just as easily, someone who is having a good day, can get upset about the most nominal thing and decide to turn a bunch of people around them's relatively good day into a 'bad day'.

Now if every American simply understood that the moment of 'bad day' you are having and passing on could be minimized in its impact, a lot of others may be able to skip having a 'bad day'. And more importantly, if those of you that create 'bad day's for a living would figure out how to earn a living in another way, the world could find itself with a lack of people that are willing to be always creating 'bad days' for a living against others. Most of you need to learn the basic concept of forgiveness and how to apply it to everything worth doing in this life.

That means a lot of you bankers, government workers, and police really ought to go find other jobs - either in your chosen profession, or in a different field entirely. I can tell you this: if you abuse your authority for a living, and have no conscience any longer about it, you are the biggest part of America's problem today! And some of us are committed to helping recreate your future, and in some cases making it a heck of a lot shorter.

Also a lot of you simply create bad days for either yourself - or more often others simply out of ignorance. Thats right ignorance. Ignorant activities, or simply an ignorant or rude way about you. Or frankly, after years of doing it - with a seared conscience: you have simply justified to yourself why you deserve the right to do what you do. (By the way, you have NO right to treat people as less than you.) You are no better than any other person, and the fact that you think that you are is solid proof of the fact that you have this problem in your life.

But more often it is mental ignorance. You are too damn stupid to even know how ignorant you are. You don't understand the golden rule, and you never practice the mental test of putting yourself in the other person's shoes to see how you would feel - as if you were in their position dealing with you. And then you justify what you do as legal or right. Laws are no justification for the poor treatment of people. That is why God overrode the Old Testament law with the New Testament grace. Your use and understanding of grace had better far exceed your knowledge and justification in law, or I promise you that if we cross paths, you will be looking for a new kind of grace when I am done with you. Because frankly, the law gives me more than enough justification, and ability to make your life go directly to hell ... here.... now.
And I am just the boy to deliver it to you!

This is the primary reason that you lack common sense, and can be generally categorized as just damn stupid (and selfish). More recently, this is the most common attitude I find amongst Americans so preoccupied with their own selfish wants and desires that they don't even care about the people around them, let alone try to feel what it would be like to be in the other persons shoes.

In the meantime, I am committed to creating bad days for people that author other people's bad days for a living. And it is turning into a full time unpaid career that I frankly find exhausting - giving the people around me a taste of their own medicine or relatively more. And worse yet, so many around me are so stupid, they don't even know why I am dishing it back out at them.

So if this little rant is about you, you better watch out - I'm probably coming after you - SOON!!!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

What America Needs - Leadership's Key 7 Steps

So what is missing in America? Leadership.

But what should we be looking for in leadership in America in 2011 and 2012?
How about a clearly stated and simple to understand solution to every economic, moral, and security problem America has to deal with right now.

So what are these problems?

A. Economic Issues:
1. An out of control unemployment problem exacerbated by a technologically shifting economy that is moving from people provided services to machine generated services.
2. A grossly mishandled, overfunded, and paranoid banking sector that won't lend
money.
3. Gas and energy prices that are out of control, and killing the working sectors.
4. A persistently declining GDP.
5. A lagging housing sector complicated by banks that will not lend.
6. A growing government sector that even an idiot knows cannot be either justified or sustained built on a bureaucratic growth in every funded entity in America with no limits on growth, and no ability to eliminate incompetence. Like anything else that cannot eliminate properly, it fills itself with waste.
7. Out of touch union leadership and membership that have no interests in anything beyond themselves individually and collectively.

B. Moral Issues (from the perspective of a tradition loving Christian):
1. Rampant dishonesty, and consequent lawlessness.
2. A corrupt government that has forfeited the moral right to lead.
3. An education sector that is incapable of educating - instead only serving to perpetuate the current levels of ignorance, and increase the problem cyclically over time, as even the majority of teachers are even unaware of what the problems are.
4. A legal system that is confused, and at war with itself, lead by incompetents that know nothing of the basis, purpose, and value of law. Run by a justice department that can no longer even define what Justice is, let alone manage the implementation of it at any level - including the fundamental policing level - where law and justice have been replaced with 'gotcha' fund raising scams on every street corner, and in every office, while morality has been removed from their equation.
5. Disregard for people as a priority of corporations, organizations, and government entities. Consequently, peoples rights are increasingly trampled and destroyed by larger powers.
6. Breakdown of the traditional family including by its definition. A traditional family is still an original union of one young man and one young woman, who come together to have and raise children under the protections of a supporting church and country. Everything else is non traditional, and a deviation from the norm that was defined by the Judaeo Christian God in the context of historical and still currently relevant scripture - even as we progress as a country from blessing into judgment.
7. An irresponsible and unaccountable media that now wags the dog despite the chaos of explosive amounts of information availability through 1,000's more venues, and options.

C. Security
1. A foreign relations duplicity that has left America confused, and incapable of protecting itself.
2. Immigration policies that are inconsistent and lack credibility.
3. Borders that are porous and open.
4. Impossible levels of tolerance of foreign influence, invasion, and abuse - ignored as though they do not exist.
5. A joke of a United Nations relationship that entertains the leadership rights of "turd world" countries as though they were equals in knowledge, standards maintenance, and understanding of excellence - so as not to insult them. These are the attitudes that lead to Iran and Syria having seats on the Committee responsible for dealing with Human Rights issues. The net effect is the negation of the concept.
6. An economically disastrous foreign trade policy that embraces highly imbalanced foreign trade deficits leaving this country vulnerable to every other lending countries chosen resolutions at any point they choose in the future.
7. An oil policy that creates hazardous relationships with some of the most unstable leadership groups on the face of the earth.

In other words: its a mess.

But what can be done about it?

A few simple solutions will correct all but the dishonesty of the American people. This unfortunately cannot be resolved amongst a free people until their is a will to see this morality deficit change. This will does not exist in America.

In reality, America is no longer a free people as they have forfeited freedom to the government, the media, and the economic power of almost every other major country on earth.

Of course, things can turn around quickly when one realizes the condition and is willing to acknowledge it, as well as deal with the consequences in light of this understanding.

Here is how simply America could be turned around this week if the will and leadership existed to make it happen:

1. Immediate law regarding new bank lending requirements: All banks are frozen from further growth, or internal capital investment effective immediately, and must lend 90% of their liquid assets within the next 12 months according to the following model, or their license to function will be revoked:
30% of lending must be in the form of mortgages.
20% of lending must be in the form of car, truck and equipment loans, and
50% of lending must be in the form of business loans.
The discretion for the basis of lending will be up to the banks, including the terms and who they lend to, as well as how they lend. But failure to lend according to this format will cost their business license, and they will be penalized the balance of the unlent amount. Once banks are forced to start lending, bank's terms of lending will become consistent with the economy they serve in, and this economy will have the juice it needs to start firing again.

2. All American oil drilling moratoriums to be lifted on a scheduled release of oil drilling priorities over the next 12 months. Because oil prices are held high by perceived lack of supply, an immediate influx of future supply and consequent price reductions will have an immediate flight from value. Add to this a monthly freezing of offshore based oil prices (OPEC) such that each month a starting price will be established and for every dollar of oil price increase in the oil market, another dollar of American tariff be attached, and used as a subsidy to offset the pricing of North American generated oil such that the American focused investment in oil supply development is ramped up at the expense of offshore oil supplies - leading to a decline in focus on world price, and an independent American oil market develops on its own. This would develop the Bakken fields more quickly and efficiently.

3. Taxation of unworking capital held by corporations. The greatest threat to the American economy is the fear of losing money in the private marketplace by cash holding investors, and currently almost all are in paralysis to some extent. Once the loss of money for failing to invest is introduced, the money will move quickly.

4. Elimination of directed media free speech. Treat the individuals with the right to free speech - but not in media while under corporate control. Speak for yourself - but not a corporation. New rules for holding directed media accountable including State rights, and local control on television, radio, and internet directing. The internet provides real opportunities for individual expression, but only as long as entities such as google that manage content are made publicly accountable. Pay the boys for their work, but if search engines are the new method for distributing information, they need to have public input and accountability, and be controlled by public protecting structures of accountability - not one Corporation, or small group.

5. Close the southern border, work visa everyone in the country illegally within 180 days, and start collecting taxes from every one of them. Then be aggressive about illegal immigration thereafter without compromise.

6. Give every government department in America a mandate to cut 5% each year out of their departments including the ability to layoff and/or dismiss people without cause and without penalty.

7. Make unemployment insurance collection dependent on each person working a minimum of 24 hours per week, and make every employer in America offer a job to the unemployed in the way that they can make the best possible use of them effective immediately. The new deal would be that while working for an employer, each unemployed person's unemployment would continued to be paid to them at the full rate for the first 90 days, and then be reduced by 10% per month until it runs out at the end of the year. The employer's responsibility is to provide the job, make it profitable enough to pay for the employee after the full year, and pay the additional amount necessary to keep the employee in reasonable wages throughout the year. There would be no limit on what the employer pays the employee throughout the year, except that at the end of the year, it needs to be able to be an ongoing full time job for the employee (24 hours or more per week). If the employer is responsible for letting the employee go within 90 days after the end of the unemployment year, the employer would be responsible for a penalty of one months wages as due to the government. Each month after that until the end of the second year, the amount of penalty would be reduced by 10% until the penalty evaporates at the end of the second year.

This program would put 10-15 million more people to work in the next year for less than the cost we are now paying to have those same people sit at home now.

So thats if for today.

Really, a little creativity and shaking up the status quo is exactly what America needs right now anyway. Now I am just looking for a real leader to sell it and make it happen.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Bright Future? Where Are You Headed?

“Are you sentimentally attached any longer to this broken Christmas ornament my wife asked as she carefully packed the Christmas decorations?”
“No” I replied - without even looking at whatever it was she was considered throwing out ”… I am no longer sentimentally attached to any of this I replied” wondering to myself how I had become so calloused, and uncaring.

I stopped my cleaning and pondered the thought a moment before an overwhelming wave of disgust settled in the forefront of my mind, and it became clear that the real reason I was no longer sentimental was because I have spent the last two years of my life being sentimental for much bigger and more important things – that affect my family and I much more deeply than a Christmas ornament, and/or anything it represents.

The reality is that I am sentimental for my children to have the hope, joy and promise that attracted me to immigrate to America in the first place – the great American values and integrity of America’s Christian founding fathers; the promise of a bright and prosperous future in the political environment defended by the world’s greatest military protecting the world’s greatest Constitution as proven over time in history as the longest succeeding and most successful republic in the history of the world.

Now that is all something I miss for me and my wife – but especially for my children.

So I ask myself – where did it all go in the last 10, 20, 30 & 40 years? Where did America’s strength go, and who let it go? Who took it from us, and who held them accountable? Who is responsible for destroying America’s moral, economic, military, and political strength over the last 40 years? Was it my generation that allowed all of this failure? Was it my parents? How did this happen?

An Oracle Against America

My thoughts have already asked these questions over and over again increasingly loudly over the last 10 years. I already know the answer because I have taken the time to study this history, and the people involved. I know who has done this and you probably know some of them to.

The reality is that America’s strength was initially inflated beyond reality when the American government of the early 20th century embraced Keynesian economics, and revved up the economic engine of America with debt and taxation of created wealth.

The great engine hit its prime in the middle of the last century when America beat the world at war with economic prosperity still married to disciplined resolve. And carried it forward as the disciplined resolve was refocused on the development of the biggest industrial and consequent broadly based socio-economic age in history. Never before has a middle class seen such affluence so broadly spread amongst so many people as has been the God ordained and blessed history of America.

But then the disciplined resolve of the greatest generation waned as their children began to influence more of the priorities of America, and disciplined community resolve was replaced with the “me” generation, civil rights, women’s liberation, pro choice selfishness and the new attitude that no one is more important than me.

Subscribe if you have, or would choose this now, but God has a much more effective way of dealing with the proud and selfish motivations of the arrogant, and now increasingly stupid. America has become selfish, lazy, too comfortable, unmotivated, incompetent, and ignorant to even understand what it takes any longer to be a great nation. The Congress has been overtaken by imbeciles incapable of making a simple calculation or demonstrating enough conviction to stand up for a principle. The education system has been overtaken by failed Congressmen, and women and are incapable of even knowing what a lesson is, let alone how to prepare it, what to accomplish with it, how to deliver it, and how to end it. Conviction? Only on their records. And you can add Law enforcement that have become the tax collection pansies for the only growing sector of America – the overspending bureaucrats. And while these bloated butt minorities now run the new America, hardly a one is capable of even reaching their shoe laces – let alone knowing how to tie them if they still had laces. Not a clue what they are there for, how they could ever begin to contribute a thing to the good of the country. And there are the Unions – the new mafia that has put the Sicilians and Italians out of their own businesses with shame as these ridiculous caricatures of power abuse every organization and person they touch to justify collecting political contributions for their democratic Congressional hacks, cronies, and now even a President.

So where are you going America? Straight into the toilet is the obvious answer. Hopefully a few thinking, caring, and less misguided souls will set down their 44 oz Slurpee, take their baseball caps off and use all this massive knowledge base known as the internet to take a moment, and see where it went off the rails, find out what was working better before, and share it with the rest of us so we can return to prosperity, and promise once again before we hit the wall. I would suggest a return to the Judaeo-Christian God as the creator and author of America’s founding documents, the God of it’s fathers, and the historically consistent provider of blessing to His children and destroyer of His enemies. If you don’t make yourself one of His children by choice, you already likely fall into the latter category, and apparently there are more of you than there is of us. This may be why we have lost our blessing America.

Call me a religious loon if you will, but you clearly haven’t demonstrated a better understanding of the problems, or especially any solution in the last decades, so who are you to criticize? Oh yeah, one other little problem for you PC types: God is just. Honest and just. That is the same word that is the root of the word Justice. Not like the kids store, or any myopic strained liberal lunacy as purveyed as a Justice Department by that nincompoop Eric Holder. Justice is the final weighing of a matter in the balance of all considerations – the only one capable of truly defining true and honest Justice – let alone meting it out – is the creator of all things – the Omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (in all places at once) God of the universe. If you haven’t taken the time to know the one that made you, you are simply an idiotic fool.

So if you really care a whit about your future let alone anyone else’s, why don’t you do us all a favor and take a moment to search him out on Google (where else would you start a search?). But I strongly suggest you go to Biblegateway.com and begin by reading the book of John. Use the search item “John 1:1”, and follow on reading from there. I don’t suggest you use the KJV (King James Version) as the style is outdated and often confusing. Instead use the NIV (New International Version) of the NASB (New American Standard Bible) and drop me a line if you have any questions.

Now as for America’s future, it isn’t looking to bright with the current crop of loons regardless of your political bent. So when you finally head to China, Brazil, India, Switzerland, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, Korea, England, Germany, Italy, or anywhere in Africa, be sure to take some bottled water, a souvenir American dollar, and shut off the lights on your way out. I doubt there is anyone else ready to lead this mess again until the Chinese come to collect on their investments.

Happy New Year!
Alan Este
December 31, 2010