Too many things happening!

Okay, we know there is a lot going on, but have we ever stopped to see what we are really facing in a short period of time. Lets look at some of the news items in the last two weeks.

Tin Geithner says “the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was part of a broader crisis that revealed flaws in the entire housing finance system.” He blamed problems on “insufficient regulation and enforcement, which did not provide a check on lax underwriting, irresponsible lending and excessive risk-taking.” It seems Mr. Geithner has forgotten that it was the Clinton and Bush administrations that forced the changes on the mortgage industry and allowed people to enter the home buying market that did not belong there.

Leading into a bank overhaul bill that Geithner says, “If we fail to act, America will lose this opportunity to set the global agenda, to define new high standards for all financial companies and to lead the debate in shaping a level playing field on terms that play to our strengths.” Does that kind of statement from the government scare anyone else?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “sees a loss in investment by bond holders” in the changes coming to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. May I give you a pain terms version of this? The government is going to seize final control of the two government sponsored enterprises, “GSE’s” and those bond holders still left will lose their investment, just like the bond holders in the GM bankruptcy where for the first time in U.S. bankruptcy history were not given preferred status in the bankruptcy proceedings. Corporate bonds are not what they used to be, thanks to this new change we have from the Obama era!

Oh yeah, the failure of these two GSE’s has now cost taxpayers $127 Billion so far with more to come. Maybe we should let banks and mortgage companies decide themselves who deserves to be buying a home? They seem much better at it.

The Republicans tried to get a few amendments into the final version of the Health Care and Education Affordability and Reconciliation Act. One that got stopped by the Democrats was an amendment that would have kept illegal aliens from accessing taxpayer funded tax subsidies created by the bill, the use of a verification system (E-Verify) to see if one was eligible for these subsidies and another creating a five-year waiting period for immigrants to receive tax payer funded benefits so that new comers to the country would not become an immediate burden to the American people. Remember them telling us that illegal aliens would not be able to get benefits from this bill? I guess they didn’t really mean that.

Now that Obamacare is reality, the unions are asking for their next item, Card Check. That is the simple little bill that allows unions to have the removal of private or secret ballots for unionization in the workplace. So if you vote no against unionization, guess who will know? Everyone! Does anyone see a problem with the union thugs now being the biggest factor in persuading a yes vote or else?

But that wouldn’t happen would it? Craig Becker is one of the hardcore liberal appointments to the NLRB was rejected by the Senate for this new position. The unions were furious that newly elected Senator Brown from Massachusetts was seated before they could get a vote on Craig Becker in place! He was found to be too radical with a personal agenda. He actually wrote in a paper “employers should be banned from attending NLRB hearings about elections and from challenging election results even amid evidence of misconduct.” An advisor to SEIU in the well known newly unionized health care workers in Illinois that helped cost ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich his job and praise from Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN for his relentless work there. Whew, good thing the senate rejected him.

Ooooooops! Sorry, I spoke too soon! Craig Becker has been appointed to the NLRB! Howa can this happen? The senate rejected him. Obama used the little old “recess appointment” rule when Congress went home for Easter. Imagine that. Senate goes home, not in session, Obama makes an appointment of a hardcore progressive to pay some debt to the unions. Not only did he appoint Becker, he also appointed 14 others in the same manner to get around this new obstacle of not having 60 votes to handle his bad appointments. It gets worse; four of these new under the table appointees were former lobbyists! That brings the total number of top policy appointments to 50 former lobbyists now. Remember the executive order that Obama put in place that there would be no former lobbyists in his administration? I think I remember the quote describing it as they “won’t find a job in my White House!” That’s easy to get around; each one was given an ethics waiver in the public’s interest. Wow, and I was afraid they were breaking rules to do this! Good thing we have those ethic waivers isn’t it?

So does anyone else remember the quote by Obama, “I owe these unions!” It seems the paybacks are happening.

Speaking of labor, anyone read the report saying that almost 2,000 House of Representatives staffers are making six-figure salaries? That includes 43 that are making the maximum of $172,500 per year. Only $1,500 per year less than the members of Congress! Another 117 are within $2,000 of the same cap. 53 personal office staffers are making the $168,411 maximum cap along with another 80 that are within $2,00 from that cap. In case you were wondering, there are over 10,000 staffers for the House of Representatives.

So now we have lost the health care industry to the government also. Only the government is good at this. They have learned from their other takeovers, we don’t get benefits for four years but we start the taxation to pay for this now! Do you really think the benefits will start on time? Has anything the government started ever been on time? I guess we will probably wait for benefits while we keep paying.

Part of Obamacare was also the takeover of the student loan program also. No longer will this be handled by private industry. I guess we will be able to add that to the list of AMTRAK, US Postal System, Social Security, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac as great success stories!

Did you hear that the malpractice section of Obamacare is actually just an encouragement for the states to set up commissions to study TORT Reform?

The New York Times admits two things about Obamacare: 1. It is more about redistribution of wealth than healthcare. (Wow, these guys are good!) 2. There will be rationing of health care to afford the new system. (Pretty good for them to realize this after they have had it screamed at them for the last year during the debates!)

Obamacare is not going to fix everything, the ski resorts are going to be hit exceptionally hard. Any employer that does not provide health insurance of at least $2,000 per full-time employee if they work more than 120 days per year will be fined. This could cost ski resorts up to $1 Million in New Hampshire alone!

Due to changes in the way prescriptions are accounted for retirees, some companies are having to take charges against earnings to cover this lost deduction in their retirement programs. AT&T announced $1 Billion in charge offs because of this. Prudential will take a $100 Million charge. In the Fortune 500, there will be a write-off of $14 Billion from this single provision! Guess what that will be for the whole country. It is so big, they haven’t been able to calculate it yet! Talk about a huge reduction in tax revenues for the government coming from this. I guess it might not work out as well as they said after all.

So what does the government do as soon as these charge offs are announced? They get angry and start accusing these companies of trying to underscore the business displeasure with the new law. In fact Sen. Henry Waxman has already called a hearing to begin April 21 that the CEO’s of many of these companies have been subpoenaed to for explanation of their outlandish claims to these charge offs. The nerve of these companies following the new law when it will cost the government money!

Power companies and oil companies, get ready you are on the agenda. New legislation that will require power companies to buy and sell pollution rights in a carbon market and force oil companies to pay fixed fees for emissions. Sounds like CAP AND TRADE is going to be done in sections after all.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announces that the public wants non-motorized modes of transportation including mass transit and bicycles. This will also take a key part in removing “gas-guzzling trucks” off the road. Unfortunately they haven’t mentioned how they plan to have all of the goods we use in this country getting to the market and us without these gas guzzling tucks!

This is all just a part of the Obama era war on automobiles. The trucking industry is still trying to figure out how to operate with the new emission reduction rules of 2010. The new trucks meeting these regulations are costing about $10,000 more per truck, are more expensive to operate because of the fluids, filters and maintenance required to operate them not to mention that they burn more fuel also! Now the auto industry has to meet new requirements by 2012 that will continue them to reduce emissions by 5% per year thereafter! The government says it will only cost about $1,000 per vehicle. Right, I really believe that!

But don’t worry, Obama has announced the opening of offshore drilling! Of course he also closed the offshore Alaskan fields, kept the Gulf of Mexico off limits (the two most productive regions we have!). Of course this just means you have the right to explore, it does not give you the right to produce! So I guess his promise on June 20, 2008 in Jacksonville, FL that he would do everything he could to eliminate offshore drilling is safe. Even if they let them go after the oil, it would be at least 10 years before they got through to where oil would be making an impact on the markets!

Unemployment is still at 9.7%! Underemployment is now at 20.3%! How can it be going up while the other stays the same? New unemployment claims keep happening while old claimants who no longer qualify for unemployment fall off the rolls. Geithner says that these numbers will remain this way for a long time!

Come back in a couple of days for the rest of the list. What, you thought this was all? Are you kidding? This is just a drop in the bucket!

Now you see why it is so important for all of us to register to vote and then actually vote for new leadership in Washington DC! This is a government gone out of control! It is our duty to stop it by removing the problems on election day!