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As I have spent the last 2 ½ years (the time at which I became awake) trying to awake my friends and associates as to what is going on in America, I find that I have made very little progress.  Spending over two years devoted to something and seeing very little progress is disheartening to say the least, but there comes a point where one just gives up as seeing ones efforts as an exercise in futility.  For those of you who know me, you know I don’t give up that easily.  An exercise in futility or not, I will continue to hound you to wake up albeit the frequency of my requests will be diminished because frankly I have a business to run and grow and can only devote limited time to political endeavors.

The title of this piece is “One Day You’ll Wake Up and It’s Gone.”  I want to hammer this point home to you today.  From a personal perspective, I know the meaning of those words in my professional life.  Many of you have been fortunate enough to avoid the impact of this recession; I wasn’t that fortunate, but I wouldn’t trade that misfortunate for anything.  In the time that I was laid off from my job, as most of you know, I have taken great financial losses, but I’m still making it.  I may have gone through my personal and retirement savings, but I still own my home (even if it’s worth less than half what I paid for it).  I’ve started a business which is finally making enough money per month to support my expenditures, and I am happier than I have been for a very long time.

I learned a lot about myself when I was laid off, and I learned not to take anything for granted.  More important than anything else, I reacquainted myself with God, and for the first time in my life, I finally believe in God and feel a personal relationship with Christ.  This is no small thing for a former agnostic, and I am grateful everyday for having achieved this relationship with Christ.  What I wish to share with you today is that one day you will wake up and find that everything is gone.  I’m here to try to encourage you to wake up before that happens.

While slumbering myself, during the George Bush administration, the Patriot Act was passed.  Do any of you know what is in the Patriot Act?  Do any of you know that your 4^th amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been reduced due to the Patriot Act?  The Patriot Act allows for warrantless wiretaps.  The 4^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that you have the following rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 

When your private telephone conversations can be tapped without a warrant said Act allowing it, and the act itself being committed is in direct violation of the 4^th Amendment.  So you say you don’t care, you are willing to give up a little portion of your rights and freedoms to stop terrorists because that was the argument made by politicians (specifically Republican politicians at the time the Act was debated and passed).  No one bothered to adhere to the maxim by our Founder Benjamin Franklin who stated:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Maybe you are willing to give up essential liberty to purchase your temporary safety, but I am not for history shows us that freedoms given up are not easily returned and eventually all freedom is lost resulting in tyranny.

When President Bush and Congress (where the Democrats were the majority in both houses) in 2008 bailed out the financial industry through the TARP program against the will of the American people, I really woke up.  For those of you who argue that this was necessary to keep America from collapsing financially, I can simply state that we will never know because we were never allowed to see what would result.  The TARP program has done nothing to fix the toxic assets held by the banks.  They still hold these toxic assets to this day.  The Federal government simply propped up the banks, but they did not solve the problem, and there were and are banks that lent responsibly and do not have a problem with toxic assets.  The TARP program has merely prolonged the inevitable.  The collapse will eventually occur if it was ever going to occur in the first place.  The only thing the TARP program did was bailout irresponsible banks while burdening responsible banks.  Whenever the government picks winners and losers, we all lose.

And picking winners and losers didn’t stop there.  The government initially under the Bush administration and then later under the Obama administration bailed out both General Motors and Chrysler.  Those of you who cried, we must bail out GM and Chrysler because their American car companies that we can’t allow to go bankrupt, I ask you, how did that work out?  After pouring several billions of dollars into each of these companies they both went bankrupt.  Even worse, instead of going through a traditional bankruptcy procedure following the long established bankruptcy rules, the Federal government once again stepped in, picking winners and losers and placing union interests above share holders in direct violation of existing bankruptcy laws.  Chrysler was sold to Fiat as part of its bankruptcy proceedings and in violation of law over 700 Chrysler dealerships were closed.  Does this sound like successful intervention by the Federal government?  Of course, it doesn’t, but we weren’t allowed to see how things would shake out if GM and Chrysler just followed the normal process of filing for bankruptcy and reorganizing their companies under the existing bankruptcy long established procedures and laws.  We weren’t allowed to see that happen because of the unions. 

For those of you who haven’t woken up yet, there’s more.  As if bailing out the banks and car companies wasn’t enough, the Obama administration decided it was now time to take control of your health care.  In direct contradiction to the will of the vast majority of Americans, the Congress rammed through a nearly 3,000 page health care overall in which to this day we are still finding all of the little Easter eggs planted in this Un-Constitutional legislation.  Businesses are already warning that they will drop their health care plans and just pay the government fines (taxes) because it will be more cost effective for them.  That means that eventually this legislation will lead to a single-payer system.  For those of you not keeping up, that means socialized medicine (government run health care).  Enjoy!

But that wasn’t enough control for the Democrats.  No my friends, they want more.  They are now about to finalize and pass financial reform another 2,000 + page bill, a legislative effort led by Senator Dodd (Countrywide scandal) and Barney Frank (who said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are fiscally sound right before they required a 65 billion dollar bailout).  Speaking of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the leading causes of the financial crisis along with AIG, nothing in the financial reform legislation says anything about reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  In fact, what many believe largely led to the financial crisis was the ending of the Glass Steagall Act provisions of the post 1929 stock market crash.  Instead of completely rewriting financial reform that has nothing to do with reforming what caused the financial crisis, the Congress simply could have reinstated the Glass Steagall Act, but that would make far too much sense, and would be too simple for such an intellectually elevated Congress to ponder.

For those of you still asleep, your peaceful slumber is nearing an end.  There is not much time left before you will be forced to awaken.  You are about to awake from your dreams to the present day reality which is a nightmare.  You are about to find that the day you wake up, it is too late, for it is already gone.

You can insert your State’s Senators or your District’s House member in the sentence above. For me, I’ll use my State Senator John McCain who is running for reelection, or in other words asking the good voters of Arizona to send him back to D.C. to complete his third decade as a Senator. So facing a backlash by us conservative folk here in Arizona, Senator McCain has decided to let us all know that he was misled when he voted for TARP. That’s right, the wizard of smart, John McCain thought that the TARP bill was going to cure the housing crisis. Senator McCain, how can you be so naïve?  Maybe it’s best that you weren’t elected President because if you are this stupid maybe that would actually have been worse than sending a Marxist to the Whitehouse. At least with the Marxist, we know where he stands. With you Senator McCain, we would be forever wondering whether or not you had been duped again (think cap and trade, something you supported during the 2008 campaign).

For the rest of us, John, you know the over 90% of Americans that called their representatives in the fall of 2008 and told their representatives to vote NO on TARP, we weren’t fooled. We knew the legislation had no specifics in it. We knew it simply said that the big banks were gonna get big bucks, and we not only said NO, we said HELL NO!  But you sir said, yes. You sir, allowed the federal government to dictate to the banks that they were going to take TARP or risk heavy regulation. That’s right John, there were some banks that didn’t want the TARP money as they felt they were liquid, but they weren’t given that choice. They were forced to take the money.

So here we are Senator McCain almost a year and half later with no resolution to this problem. The housing crisis remains. But guess what John?  The Federal government shouldn’t be in the business of fixing the housing crisis, rather it should have been in the business of preventing it. You see, I’ve been told over and over again that George W. Bush tried to do something about this housing crisis early on stating that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were insolvent encouraging the congress to do something. Of course, Barney Frank told us all was fine with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here’s the rub Senator McCain, you and your colleagues were the majority in Congress during the time President Bush was showing concern for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and yet you folks did nothing to shore up the problem. So blame Barney Frank all you want, but if you held the majorities, you should have had the power to do something.

Look, I purchased my first home here in Arizona in January of 2005 at the height of the housing bubble. My home is worth less than half of what I paid for it. I can only hope that it will only take a decade before I break even on this terrible investment that I made, but guess what John?  That’s my problem. I knew when I purchased the home that prices were over inflated. I knew there was a great likelihood that the bubble would burst and my house wouldn’t be worth what I paid for it. I won’t tell you that I anticipated its value going this low, but I knew I was signing a contract and making a commitment. It isn’t up to my fellow citizens to bail me out of the bad deal I got myself into. It’s my responsibility to ride out the storm and continue to pay my mortgage (a contract I have with the bank) until it is paid off, or until I can sell it for more than I owe on it. That’s the reality I face. That’s the reality you faced as a Senator when you voted for TARP. We asked you to vote NO on TARP, but you didn’t listen to your constituents or the American People. So guess what John?  Today, we aren’t listening to your lame excuse, and I for one don’t intend to send you back to the Senate to make more mistakes on my behalf. Trust me, I am fully capable of making my own mistakes and acting a fool all on my own. I don’t need you adding to my burden John. Enjoy your retirement.

Today, Barack Obama kicked off the Inauguration ceremonies by hopping a train (ala Lincoln) from Philadelphia, PA with stops in (Joe Bieden’s) Wilmington, DE, Baltimore, MD finally arriving at its destination in Washington, DC.  A historic journey no doubt, but one tempered by the economic woes of our country, and I couldn’t help but think while watching the coverage on TV, the gravy train rolls on.

Do you remember those commercials for Gravy Train dog food where you buy some normal dog food with a powdered substance on it, add warm water and voila, your dog has a tasty gravy dog food treat.  But then you ask yourself, does my dog really need gravy on his dog food, and more importantly is it even good for him to have gravy on his dog food?  And then I start thinking about the bailout package (TARP) where the second 350B was just released with approval from the Senate this week, and I think about the, at least, 850B stimulus package President-elect Obama has Congress drawing up, and I think do we really need this, and more importantly, is it even good for us?  Of course, as a fiscal conservative, I come up with the emphatic answer NO!

Then I find myself wondering has America really gotten to this point where it thinks it needs handouts and a government so hell bent on spending that it can’t see the forest for the trees, but then I think, well it’s a good thing we can see the trees because we’ll need to be chopping them down for the paper we will need to print for all of the money the government will need.  Or, I think the government can save the trees by borrowing the money from China, and then I guess we all just learn Mandarine.  What I’m trying to say here is the gravy train of government is certainly off the tracks and does not represent the government I remember the United States of America operating under.

I don’t think that Gravy Train dog food sells so well anymore, and I’m guessing government bailouts and stimuli packages bankrupting this country aren’t going to sell so well for very long either.  In fact, I remember a time before there was Gravy Train dog food, where our dogs ate normal dog food and where we humans took pride in personal responsibility, personal sacrifice, and actually making our own way which was the foundation on which our country was built.  I think it is now time to stop buying Gravy Train dog food, and bring the government big spending gravy train to an immediate stop before it leaves our nation’s capital and bankrupts us all.