HOW THE USA COULD LOWER DEBT WITHOUT TAXES OR CUTS

The USA Federal Reserve board could invest in foreign stocks and bonds and other debt instruments that would earn the US dividends and possible capital gain. If the Fed set up a portfolio of say $10,000,000,000,000 (that's 10 trillion) of investments, and the Fed had a reasonable rate of return of 10% a year, the typical gain on long term stock and bond investments, the return would be a full 1 trillion a year! This would be a good income and would allow substantial reductions in taxes while still providing for social needs, military, and even space exploration projects. Where would the US get 10 trillion to invest? The Fed should be able to easily come up with that at the rate it is printing money now, but of course it might take a few years of savings and financing activities here and there to do it without causing a massive inflation spiral! The US has a lot of agencies and operations that could be sold to private companies to operate. Examples are federal prisons, portions of NASA, some law enforcement activities, some agencies, some federal parks, and other federal activities that are not critical. If the US continued to invest in foreign stocks and bonds it could participate in the funding of foreign companies and nations and at the same time gain influence and wealth around the world as well! Another thing the US could do is venture capital activities, providing seed capital for new businesses in foreign lands in return for partial ownership and a share of profits. This would be a way to reduce the need for foreign aid as it is now provided, and instead be a way to build the economies and the standard of living in other countries without causing a cash drain on our economy. It would also be good if the US could be a net exporter instead of a net importer. We need to take a look at our trade practices to make sure we are not killing our own industries and businesses by allowing cheap imports without pricing fairness or adjustment with tariffs or import taxes. So lets get busy USA. And you people out there reading this, call and write your Congressmen about my plan!

THE PROBLEMS WITH US EDUCATION

Teachers in Wisconsin are on an illegal strike for union rights, higher pay, etc. I won't presume to argue either for or against their case, but I am very concerned about the quality of public education in the United States. Does anyone want to argue that education in the US is OK when the US ranks 30th among nations in math and science knowledge of US students? So what is wrong with US education? Here are the problems that I believe we have:

1. There is a generally an "I don't care" attitude among both teachers and students.  Students don't care about school because they are forced to go and because they are not properly motivated to get an education. Teachers do not teach the most important lesson which is Why People Need to be Educated and what are the great benefits of education as well as the downside if a person is not educated. Teachers are not motivated because they know that no matter how hard they teach and work at educating children, they will still get the same pay. There is no incentive to do their best. There is no merit pay system.

2.  The schools have no competition. The public school systems are total state monopolies so there is no incentive for any one school to provide any better education than any other school. Schools should be operated by private corporations that are chartered to provide the best possible education and their work is monitored to verify that they do, of course. The best run schools that achieve the best results for students receive additional bonuses so that there will be competition and a reward for better results.

3. Education is not valued by students or parents because it is free and actually forced on people. Education should be dear and all students should pay something according to their parents income. This would also provide additional funds for teacher's pay and other benefits.

4. There are too many "goof-off" courses available to students in high schools. I know this is true because I myself went through a public school system and there were always courses available for students to take that were very easy and would allow students to get out of taking more serious math, science, chemistry, and biology courses that the students should have been taking.

5.  The school systems are very rigid with more time wasted on political issues than actual teaching activities. 

6. Students and teachers have too much time off. A long summer vacation, "spring break", "fall break", "teacher days" and short hours. If we are going to have better education for our students we need to spend more time at it.

7. Poor discipline in school buildings, class rooms, and on school grounds. A lot of our students are not safe at school because of a lack of discipline and poor security measures. It is easy for a student to walk right into a school even though he is carrying a weapon of some sort.

The entire US public school system needs a total overhaul if we are interested at all in having better educated students.

NOW IS A CRITICAL TIME FOR THE UNITED STATES

It seems like the politicians in Washington DC do not realize how much trouble the US is in right now and are not going to do anything about it. We have spent our nation into almost impossible debt, that can never be paid- off, spending on worthless entitlement programs and other boondoggle programs of no lasting value. We have spent trillions on so-called bail outs that have done almost nothing and we still have heavy unemployment. Our balance of trade with foreign nations is ridiculous. We import billions of dollars in cheap goods every year wiping out our own industries and building up the economies of countries that are really enemies of our country. Free trade is killing our industries because our own industries can not compete with the practically slave labor rates of foreign nations. To fix this problem we need FAIR trade instead of free trade. This means taxes or tariffs on goods that are priced below our domestically produced goods or are made with much lower labor rates than ours. Because of so-called free trade, we have lost many industries. As just a few examples, we have lost the textile industry, shoes, consumer electronics, household goods, and other important industries. A few US manufactures that are left have either moved their factories overseas, or are in the process of moving them.  Heavy industries such as steel, machine tools, heavy equipment, aircraft, and shipbuilding, are all in serious straits because of the free trade. Now we let our infrastructure decay but don't have any money left to fix it. Our railroads are antiquated, our roads and bridges are falling apart. We are doing almost no new infrastructure construction which is hurting our labor force and our heavy equipment and steel industries. One of the worst situations is in our energy sector where we are almost entirely dependent on the OPEC robber barons for our oil supplies. There is no way this condition should continue! I could go on but I am sure you get the picture and have known these facts all along. The important point is that our government is doing nothing to correct our situation. Please write and call your Congressmen and make sure they understand your concerns.

OBAMA'S SPEECH TO THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

President Obama made a great speech to the Chamber of Commerce today but he left out one important fact that apparently he considers impossible to do anything about. And that is the heavy imbalance between our imports and our exports. We are still importing far more than we export in terms of dollars. The reason is that manufactured goods made overseas are generally much cheaper than what we can manufacture here in the US for the same price. So what could we do? We could raise tariffs or tax imported goods so that there is a level playing field for US manufactures. Doing this would also encourage business people to build plants and hire people in the US to make products domestically. We know that we need jobs here so why can't we fix our trade policies to take care of this trade imbalance problem? The nay-sayers will try to scare us by saying, "Oh, import taxes and tariffs will start a trade war!" Well if it does, so be it! Businesses will eventually learn that they have to deal with it and re-adjust their business practices accordingly.

PEOPLE ARE FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

People arround the world are fighting for freedom. The United States is supposed to be holding up the standard of democracy for the people of the world, but are we (the US?) I don't think so when we are giving aid and comfort to dictators so that we can have "allies". What good are allies when they turn their own people against us because of their repressive and authoritarian non-democratic rule? I would rather that we have no allies than allies that are dictatorships!

The US should support democracy and freedom for all peoples regardless of whether we like the outcome or not, what their religion is, or any other cultural or ethnic qualities that they have. If a democracy elects a group that is against us or one we don't like politically, that is too bad, but that does not mean that we should in any way a support dictator to maintain that country as an "allie".

The US should boldly speak out in support of freedom and democracy for all peoples of the world and start supporting democracies that are our friends and our are true allies, not evil despotic dictatorships that cause people to be against us and actually creates enemies for us instead of supposed "allies".

And what about the billions in foreign aid the US wastes supporting these dictatorships? It ultimatley results in nothing but bad effects. Examples are many but the best example is the results of supporting the Shaw in Iran. You know what the results of that is.

ARE HIGH TECHNOLOGY NATIONS FRAGILE?

High technology nations such as the United States and a few others are potentially vulnerable to natural disasters of even fairly minor proportions. One quick example is the possibility of a "little ice age" that could cause a severe food shortage. Almost all Americans depend solely on our farmers to supply all of their food needs and never give it a thought in their daily routine. There is little in the way of emergency food stockpiles, at least not enough to handle an extended food shortage. How could a "little ice age" happen? There are several ways, a large volcanic eruption that throws a lot of debris and ash into the atmosphere, a large meteor strike that does the same thing, and oddly enough global warming that could cause the Gulf Stream to stop flowing and warming the North Atlantic nations.

Another area of fragility is our national power grid. What if suddenly most of the electric power in major cities blacks out? How many people in cities are prepared to cope with that, especially during winter time? Almost everything is controlled by electricity now, our heating and cooling systems, refrigeration, communications, etc. An extended period of power black outs would wreak havoc on business, trade, food production, and virtually all of our livelihoods and living conditions. Another danger is the vulnerability of our water supplies to contamination by fallout from the ash of a major volcanic eruption. Where could this happen? Almost anywhere in the world but one likely place is Yellowstone Park where there is a severe danger of a massive eruption. In conclusion, I believe that the government Homeland Security Agency or FEMA should initiate a study of the problem and take steps to provide emergency stores and plans of action in the event of disasters of the magnitude I have mentioned. What can we do about it? Each family and individual needs to think about their emergency preparedness and take actions to provide supplies for themselves to cover at least several weeks of food, water, and heating fuel such as wood for a fireplace or wood stove.

GOV. TO INTERFERE IN COMMODITIES MARKETS

Eight Democratic Senators are supporting a plan by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to limit the quantity of futures contracts. These Senators, apparently uneducated in the operation of commodities and futures markets, are supporting the mistaken idea that markets will be more stable if futures trading is limited. Prices of commodities are governed by supply, demand, and the expected future demand based on economic and weather conditions depending on the type of commodity. Professional speculators, who trade the largest contracts, actually help to stabilize markets because they will sell when futures prices are too high and they will buy when futures prices are too low, thereby acting to stabilize the markets.

For the government to interfere in the free action of financial and commodities markets will cause our capital system to require more and more government control until America is another controlled economy like communist China or the other socialist countries of the world. There are always unintended consequences to government interference in the natural operation of the capital system. It is like interference in nature. It always causes imbalance, and other undesirable and unintended consequences.

Here is a list of Senators who supported this action with a letter. Vote against them when they come up for re-election:

Sens. Bill Nelson, Maria Cantwell, Carl Levin, Rebert Menendez, Patty Murray, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, Ron Wyden.

AMERICA WILL GRIND TO A HALT

America will grind to a stop with oil prices going over $90 a barrel because of Obama's oil policies. The policy has stopped drilling offshore in most areas. Deep water drilling and even shallow water drilling is hit hard with new regulations when all that was needed was for the government to enforce regulations already in existence before the BP disaster (if regulators had been doing their job there should not have been a disaster.) At least 130 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas are available to the US from offshore drilling according to the Investors Business Daily.

Obama's policy will not allow mining of shale deposits in the Northeast and Northwest that contain hundreds of billions of more oil right in our own backward. Now the high price of oil will not only kill businesses and cause more job losses, but hit the consumer hard with high gasoline prices, already over $3 per gallon in some places (I had to look for gas today that was under $3, and finally settled for a price of $2.96) but also the developed nations around the world, except of course for the Robber-Barron OPEC nations that will get even richer in the future.

Why should we pay these horrendous prices when we already have resources of our own at our disposal? At the same time we should be working very hard to develop green sources of energy as well as nuclear power, not just giving it the Obama lip-service routine. But as long as we sit on our butt and do nothing except impede exploration, drilling, and mining because of some supposed environmental problem, we risk our economy,individual prosperity, our military power, and our status as a world power.

HOW CAN WE MAKE AMERICA A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE?

What could we do to make America BETTER? The first priority is to improve education, I believe. Better education of the entire population is the way to make us more prosperous by improving business through innovation, better productivity of workers, and more JOB OPPORTUNITIES. This would REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT and improve our situation and quality of life. At the same time we need to focus on helping people who are in need of help, who cannot provide for themselves, and are in danger of becoming homeless, or turning to crime, drugs, or prostitution. I am not talking about welfare handouts, but providing real help in the form of training, job opportunities, and programs designed to turn peoples' lives around when they need it. If you think people don't need help just take a look at some slums, especially the ones in Washington DC where the main seat of the federal government cannot even take care of their city! In fact almost every large city in America has slums. This should not be. I don't pretend to know the answer to this problem, but I do know that we need to be working to solve this problem without giving up our freedoms or turning to socialism. We need to prove that capitalist democracy can be made to work by cleaning up our own country first. There is probably no one magical answer but I am sure that a lot of things can be done if we really wanted to do them, without spending billions. One thing that I think needs to be considered is to gradually decentralize large cities. We have a lot of land. We have high speed communications that span our country already, E-conferencing, Skype (TM), etc. We need better high speed low cost mass transportation but this is within our technological capabilities. Manufacturing is already mostly outside of the large cities. Why can't we move the rest of our activities outside of cities and spread out into the vast land areas we have, and get rid of the slums? Why can't our leadership realize this problem is in need of serious attention NOW and start doing something about it instead of fighting over mostly minor issues? I know that the Health Care Law is in need of repeal or at least major changes, but is it really a major issue right now, or do we really need jobs and more opportunities? Reducing taxes to stimulate business would be a better issue to work on. If we get our great capitalist system working right, it would solve a lot of our troubles! Call and write your Congressmen and tell them you are sick and tired of their infighting and lack of attention to our real problems!

A PROSPEROUS AMERICA

What is needed to create a prosperous America? How can we eradicate slums? How can we improve our people's quality of life? How can we reduce crime? How can we improve our government, our technology, our military capability, our industries, our productivity, creativeness, scientific knowledge, and many other aspects of our life as Americans?

The basic need in America is providing every child and young person the best possible education in line with their abilities. Education is the key to prosperity. Education empowers people to improve their condition through their own efforts. A person that is educated is able to get a job, or even better, to start a company or even start a new industry which will employ many others. Education is the precursor of innovation, technology, and creativity. That is not to say that there cannot be innovation and creativity that is achieved without significant education. There have been and are today many great achievers who had little or no education. But for many people in society to become achievers and contributors to the prosperity of the nation they must have at least a basic education and ideally the best education possible.

From improved education for the American population will spring jobs, new industries, new technologies, improvements in medicine and other sciences. This is what is needed to make America prosperous. Improving education for all Americans should be our number one priority. Write and call your Congressmen and tell them. If you agree with me, email me and let me know.