OBAMA'S $33 BILLION TAX CREDIT

During his State of the Union speech on Wednesday, President Obama brought up one point that really interested me. I guess the reason that it made me wake up from the mind-numbing stupor that the rest of the speech had put me in is because ... I had advocated it from the time of the first stimulus program.

The tax credit for businesses that hire new employees should have been part of the stimulus program from the beginning. Not that I don't think that building tunnels under roadways in New England so that frogs can safely cross the road was not a good use of my tax dollars (NOT!), but encouraging companies to hire workers ... Now there is an idea that will improve the employment situation in the United States.

Of course, besides being late, there are several other things the President has gotten wrong on this idea. Feel free to add others if I miss anything.

1. The money should be taken out of the unspent portion of the pork-laden stimulus package ... not the TARP money that has been paid back. Use the TARP money to pay down our national debt.
2. A company can hire a worker that makes $7000.00 a year and get the entire $5000.00 tax credit ... Why would we want to do that? We need full-time job creation, not part-time jobs.
3. Companies would be capped at $500 million dollars in tax credits so that big businesses would not be getting the lions' share of this money ... If I'm an unemployed worker ... I don't care if my paycheck comes from IBM or Moe's bar and grill, a job is a job. Don't cap a large company ... if it wants to hire, let it.
4. The current proposal has provisions for tax incentives to companies that increase pay ... this is estimated to account for more than half of the $33 billion. Drop this provision and use it all for the creation of full-time jobs. At $5000.00 per job, this translates into 6.5 million jobs ... Voila, back to 5% unemployment.

As usual, the Democrats can screw-up even a great idea. Don't let them. Call your representatives and offer your support for this idea ... but ask them to make some changes.

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Is The Recession Over???

Don't count on the recession being over just yet. We have been hearing about job losses slowing down, factory orders being up, housing sales starting to take off and the stock market chugging away ... but all this can end quickly.

Unemployment always goes down in December, as many retailers hire temporary workers for the Christmas Season. These workers are then let go in January after the sales are over.

Factory orders are up, being led by orders for cars. New car inventories were depleted by the "cash for clunkers" program, and once inventories are replenished, these orders will fall.

Housing sales were bolstered by the $8000.00 tax credit that new homeowners were given last year. Even though the credit has been extended, most of those that were in the market already purchased, and we should see a fall in housing sales.

The stock market is on a high after many companies reported huge earnings. These companies are front-loading their profit and earnings statements because the fear is that taxes will go up next year and they want to report earnings before any new tax rates set in. Wall Street will come to this conclusion fairly soon and the market will over-react, wiping out most of the recent gains.

President Obama will continue to make banks, financial institutions and big corporations his scape-goats, exasperating a hatred between the common investor and the companies that need their capital.

I'm not an economist, but this seems to be a recipe for a double-dip recession.

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Congratulations Massachusetts

Now that Scott Brown is the Senator-Elect for the great state of Massachusetts, let's see what tricks the Democrat Party plays to shove Obama-Care down our throats. Already, one Democrat Senator, Jim Webb of Virginia wants actions on health care legislation halted till Brown is sworn-in.

Now we will see if our representatives in DC are willing to actually represent us ... or if they will once again go against the will of the American people and push their own agendas.

Hopefully this election has been a wake-up call to ALL of our politicians. We hired you ... we can fire you too.

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They Just Don't Care What The People Want

Just when you thought that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel in the Health Care Debacle being hammered out in the back-rooms of Washington ... we find out that the results of the hotly-contested Mass. special senatorial election on Jan 19th may not matter at all.

The Senate race between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley is in a virtual dead-heat. Brown has vowed to kill the health-care bill if elected and Coakley is supporting its' passage. The fact that a Republican is even competitive in a race in very left-leaning Massachusetts is evidence that the American public DOES NOT WANT THIS BILL.

If elected, Brown would break the super-majority now enjoyed by the Democrats in the Senate. This would force our Senate to go back to the drawing board on health care and come up with a bi-partisan bill that could include some Republican ideas like "tort-reform" and the ability to purchase insurance across state lines.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE!!!

Going into their bag of dirty little tricks, the Democrats, in the person of the Mass Sec of State is telling us that it may take weeks to certify the election ... and then there is the problem of Vice President Joe Biden finding the "time" to swear in the new Senator.

If the State of Mass. elects Brown, it is because the people do not want this bill ... we want health care reform ... just not THIS bill. To delay the seating of a democratically elected Senator, just so an interim senator (appointed by a Democrat governor) can vote for this bill borders on unconstitutional ... and is against the spirit of this Democracy at the very least.

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