ISOLATIONISM - A MUST FOR AMERICA

As the political situation in Egypt becomes more volatile and the days of Mubarak appear to be limited, the leaders (and I use that term loosely) of America have begun to voice opinions as to what should occur in that foreign nation. Official statements have already been given by President Obama and by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This attention being made to the internal operation of yet another foreign nation by the United States has again promoted the notion of the value of the political theory of isolationism.

Isolationism is not a new theory to American government. In his farewell address, George Washington express a real concern that our nation should avoid compacts with foreign nations and remain primarily focused on developing our own country. The famous Monroe Doctrine promoted the idea that as we leave other nations alone, America and its area of concern should be left unmolested. Do otherwise and you will face the wrath of our military.

Prior to our entry into World War I and for many years after that war ended, there were strong feelings throughout America promoting isolationism. The League of Nations was formed and many nations joined but the USA did not. This all ended with Pearl Harbor.

Since the end of World War II, America has become more and more involved in the internal affairs of foreign nations. Our military is stationed in many other lands; our dollars are paid to support and enhance many nations; and our armed forces have died in conflicts from Asia to the Middle East to Africa to South/Central America. As these events have transpired our own country has slipped in its standard of living and in its internal financial well being. More than 200,000 members of our military are current overseas and our national debt is over $14.1 Trillion.

Recently it was expressed that America "erred by too much isolationism pre-WWI and pre-WWII and now has erred in too much internationalism."

So what should we do?

The old expression of "speak softly but carry a big stick" is as valid today as is was 100 years ago and should be followed. What the people of Egypt elect to do with their nation is their business and should not be subject to interference from Washington. Let us focus on curing the problems that face America from unemployment to massive public debt to wasted foreign aid expenditures to military presence all over the globe.

The old adage of "America First", an idea absolutely alien to Obama and his political allies, needs to be rejuvenated and made a real part of all of the decisions our government leaders.

THE ATTACK CONTINUES

At 9 o'clock in the evening on nationwide television, and therefore viewed by millions, B. H. Obama delivered his 2011 State of the Union address. His delivery was good; his demeanor stately and his message nothing more than a challenge to all of his political opponents.

The President did not openly declare that he would continue with his efforts to convert America from a democratic republic to a liberal/socialist/progressive country but two of his comments gave this exact not-to-subtle message.

The quotes are, "We are poised for progress" and "We will move forward together".

In both citations the President uses the term "We" and does so for a particular purpose. He is not talking about any coalition between Democrats and Republicans but rather the "We" is a message to all of his fellow liberals that the old Obama joined by his established dedicated followers in the House and Senate will remain a clique that wants to and shall be in control.

The newly coined Obama slogans, "poised for progress" (great alliteration) and "move forward together" carry the message to his allies that what has been accomplished in the past two years was intended to be only the groundwork for the actual governmental programs which Obama has promoted since his inauguration. These programs, or would it be more accurate to call them pogroms with democracy being the intended victim, have a goal of extending Washington's influence and control over the American way of life from big business to the private use of the Internet.

Of course the media and the naive and those Republican members of the House and Senate who want federal money for their state or district or "special interest projects" regardless of its negative, recession extending impact will proclaim what a wonderful opportunity Obama has offered. These same groups will point the accusing finger at the Obama opposition and place all blame on conservative Republicans if the economy of America remains stagnant or slides further downhill.

You can imagine the comments from the liberals. "If only the Republicans had followed Obama's lead, America would not be suffering as it is today."

The initial answer to our recession and huge international debt and unacceptable level of unemployment would be to follow advise offer by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). He is promoting a single year cut-back in federal spending of $500.0 Billion along with the closing of federal funded entities along with the end of most subsidies. The reductions would impact the PBS; Amtrak; international aid; foreign agriculture programs; and end our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Things in Washington have to change. Those changes must include the rebirth of the notions that internationally America comes first and that between Washington and common citizens, the common citizen is always first.

Cute double meaning expressions are not a remedy.

THE CONFLICT APPROACHES

The upcoming events in Washington will soon give all Americans a good idea as to how tough and dedicated the new Republican led House of Representatives will be on Obama and his programs. Much talk on how to limit and reverse Obama, including very successful campaign rhetoric, has come from such conservative House leaders as John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Both now hold positions of power and authority in Congress.

These first tests will establish if Obama will continue with some success to try to move the USA toward a socialist/liberal/progressive nation or if he will fold and become, as a recent commentator christened him, President Eunuch. On the other hand, these rapidly approaching governmental clashes will test the dedication of conservative Republicans. The big question has to be, "Who will blink first?".

There are many issues confronted daily by all Americans but there are primarily three of greatest concern. Those are government debt, unemployment and growing government control over all aspects of American life. Under Obama the national debt has increased by $3,600,000,000,000.00 so that today we as a nation are looking a total obligation that is over $14 Trillion. On the topic of unemployment, no matter how the current Administration manipulates the data, some 17+% of our fellow citizens or under/unemployed. The third of these issues is the obvious desire of the White House for America to be a socialist state.

Now the pending conflict. Congress, that is the House of Representatives, has the authority to fund or not to fund all or any part of the federal government. Their position has to be that Obama's massive spending comes to an end, or is at least reigned in, and if this does not occur then any increase in the federal debt limit will be rejected. A freezing of the national debt ceiling will cause the federal government to shut down because it will not have any source for its operating fund. One can just imagine the interviews that the White House and liberal media will expose to America as this funding conflict arises. The airways will be filled with sad, weeping images of dependant citizens who will surely suffer if federal funding no longer exists for some specific program. Congress has to remain strong and call Obama's hand.

There will be some hardships to be faced but nothing fatal. Obama has to learn that his days of overspending and pushing America further down the road to accepting absolute Washington rule have come to an end.

Let us hope that Boehner and Cantor stay strong.

ON-GOING BAD NEWS

The anti-Obama media has this week run several stories condemning the leadership ability of B. H. Obama and lamenting the terrible condition in which our nation finds itself. The vast majority of these depressing reports centered on the American economy or, better put, the shortfalls of the American economy.

One of these reports was headlined "1793-2011, US Dollar RIP" and pointed out that America was $14 Trillion in debt and that under just the past two (2) years of Obama leadership some $3.4 Trillion had been added to this national debt obligation. Mention was made that nations including Communist China, Russia, India and Brazil have entered into economic agreements designating payment in species other than the US Dollar. Another story pointed out that inflation was hitting many nations. In an article captioned "Surging Food Prices Fueling Global Inflation" many countries, including America, were designated as beginning to feel the negative impact of the leap in the retail cost of food.

One of the impacts of the current economic troubles in which America is suffering was expressed in the article headline "More Cities Will Go Bk". It was pointed out that for almost all American cities tax revenues were down; that expenses were up or at best the same; and that the day of being able to raise money via municipal bonds was gone or no longer economically feasible. Attention was drawn to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and to Detroit as just two cities which could well be facing default, and therefore a possible bankruptcy, on the payment of their bond obligations. Warren Buffet was quoted as expressing that there has been and continues to be an overall reduction by public traded companies in their holdings of municipal bonds.

Some time ago a religious historian, Andre Ravier, SJ, expressed some thoughts on "authority" and those words continue to be absolutely true and are clearly not adhered to by our current President. Ravier expressed, "Authority has strict and rigorous obligations: the obligation fully to divulge; the obligation to consult and discuss not only with the usual advisers but with every person competent in the matter to be decided; the obligation to confer in depth; the obligation to give the widest possible place, as if to an important sign from God, to the opinion of the majority...".

The economy is bad. Obama has done little to help it and lots to increase the American debt. There is no question that the President has manipulated data pertaining to the economy, just consider the most recent unemployment figures, and has massively increased the existing debt of our nation. BHO does not fully divulge; only consults with those who follow his socialist/liberal/progressive views; and ignores the well and often expressed opinions of the majority of the citizens of America.

The unfortunate results of two years of Obama White House leadership has well and correctly caused the above cited article headlines, and many more like them, to appear.

LET'S LOOK AT THE GOOD NEWS

As it does every week, the Obama Administration through the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new, fully updated statistically information on the subject of the number and scope of the unemployed in our nation. This latest "update" also included the monthly totals for this just past month of December. Obama and the liberal press are all pointing to this new report with a smile. They are saying we told you our nation, under the leadership of the current administration, was solving the unemployment problem. The "good" news was that national unemployment had dropped from 9.8% to 9.4%.

It would be anti-American to not consider this published reduction in the national unemployment rate a piece of wonderful news but we must be careful because we are dealing with a group in Washington that can best be described as socialist/liberal/progressives. These far left leaning politicians would not be opposed to manipulating unemployment figures in a hope to sway the American voting public to seriously consider rewarding Obama with a second term as President - a reward for putting Americans back to work.

But not so fast with the credit.

Today Washington claims that there are 14.5 Million unemployed Americans with 6.4 Million of them being labeled as "long term" unemployed. This particularly described "long term" segment of the unemployed population remained unchanged during the past month. The problem in accepting that these are the only unemployed in our nation is that millions of Americans are intentionally omitted from the list.

The BLS openly admits that approximately 2.6 Million Americans were omitted from this latest unemployment count because they had not looked for a job in the past 4 weeks. Another 8.9 Million of our fellow citizens were not included in the sad total but rather were defined as "involuntary part timers". By the way, our "full time" employees worked between 33.6 and 34.3 hours per week, depending upon which recent period of time you wanted to focus.

The bottom line is that at least 17.1 Million Americans are unemployed and 26.0 Million Americans are under/unemployed. Our real unemployment rate (not counting the under employed) is not 9.4% but much more correctly stated at 11.08%.

Obama has failed again in both his efforts to begin to ease the unemployment disaster and to convey the complete truth to the American public.

REALITY

The year 2010 has come to a close and some of the end-of-the-year statistical information pertaining to our nation has been released. Unfortunately, none of it is good.

The best estimate for the number of "officially" unemployed Americans, as of the last day of December, is 15,439,775. Obviously the "actual" figure would be much higher if it including those citizens who are involuntarily only part time employees and those who have stopped looking for work completely. As an obvious result of this massive unemployment, at the end of 2010 some 1.6 million of our fellow citizens had filed bankruptcy during the past 12 months. Even more depressing is the news that in 2010 there were 1,058,773 residential foreclosure actions filed in American courts.

Another bare statistic pointed out that of our overall population of 310.5 million just over 64.6 million were receiving retirement/social security benefits. This fact has to make a reader question if other world dominating nations have over 20% of its population in the category of economically unproductive senior citizens. Maybe this is one reason why, until most recently, Obama was urging a death program for older Americans.

Following this same course of less than pleasing news, in 2010 there were 157 banks that failed; were closed by the federal government; and cost taxpayers a significant amount of money. This closure number was the worse since 1992 and there are literally 100s of other American banks on the same narrow edge of being closed by the federal government.

Finally, it was announced that during this past week some 409,000 new applications for unemployment benefits were filed by Americans who had lost their jobs. Remember that last week Washington was gloating over its success in lowering unemployment in that new weekly claims were, for the first time in many, many months, well below 400,000. This much lower reported unemployment figure was a Christmas holiday fluke and it is quite possible that the 409,000 figure could be a New Year holiday fluke.

The bottom line is that Obama and the Democrat House and Senate absolutely dropped the ball on economic rejuvenation for our nation. With any luck and a display of "guts" the newly installed Congress can start a real reversal and figures like those cited above will no longer be the sad truth.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Most recently there have been three (3) news items that have made me stop and think.



Item 1: Jerry Brown has just been sworn in as the new governor of the State of California. He is now the 39th governor of that state but remember he was, almost 30 years ago, the 34th governor of California. Things have changed since he left office, particularly in the realm of finances. California is one of the most indebted states in the Union with a current public debt right at $70,000,000,000.00 ($70 Billion). In his inaugural address, the new Governor Brown stated, "The financial choices facing California will be painful." This is a very true statement but he failed to define upon whom these "pains" will fall. The choices are several. The citizens of this state could well see a substantial increase in various taxes; the employees of the state could see reductions in pay or pay freezes and/or loss of jobs; public entities/services could be limited and more expensive; and retirement benefits for government workers could be lowered or at worst terminated. Pain will, without a doubt, be felt throughout California if Jerry Brown truly addresses the money issue.

Item 2: A conservative writer recently reminded his audience that in January of 2007 Nancy Pelosi assumed a leadership role in Congress. At that time she made an initial address in which she said that the federal government should, "Pay as you go, no new deficit spending." Today, January 4, 2011, the federal deficit topped $14,000,000,000,000.00. ($14 Trillion) and has grown by almost $3.5 Trillion since Obama took office. Good job, Nancy, now former Congressional leader.

Item 3: At least one governmental think-tank has made the recommendation that American tax payers no longer be able to deduct from their taxable income the amount of mortgage interest charged and paid on their home. It appears that this mortgage interest deduction (MID) was a loop hole discovered in 1913 when federal income tax was becoming the law of the land. One of the arguments being made by the anti-deduction group is that for MID to be deductible it must have been incurred as a business expense. The logic being to encourage American businesses to borrow money to expand and to add jobs but not to have to carry the burden of the interest. A second argument made is that the additional amount of income tax that Washington would receive could well be tremendous. There are flaws to this anti-deduction thinking which include that the American housing industry would suffer a near fatal blow and only the upper class could afford homes. On the other hand, the increase in the residential/apartment rental business would be tremendous.

It looks like 2011 will be a very interesting year.