My burning question(s) for "Gay America"

I don't use drugs. I have never used a prostitute. I do not drink raw milk. I don't have six wives. I would never (willingly) take part in an abortion. I could go on and on. There are many things I don't participate in and in some cases find myself diametrically opposed to; but that doesn't give me, or the state, the right to dictate conformity to our beliefs. That's an arrogant and elitist's modus operandi. 

Propostion-8 is no different. 

I have heard many opposing views and with them some very passionate and articulate points (regarding insurance reasons and what not) but at the end of the day it comes down to one simple philosophy; live and let live. 

I understand this doesn't work for many of us. I understand for many, it goes against their faith. I also understand the culture we are embracing as time goes on, is less and less like the culture that this country was founded upon and how change from that could be the very undoing of our republic. As so many have said, America will never fall from the outside, it will crumble, like all empires, from within. This from Abraham Lincoln:

 "All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

 At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

 
I get all that. 

But, our nation was founded on freedom and liberty for all men. The meaning is universal and authoritarian persecution is the archenemy to liberty. Denying another person their choice to do something because it doesn't fit into your view of how the country should live; is a contradiction to what being an American is. This is doing exactly what Lincoln warned us about because a freeman is free to live his life, with respect to others, as he sees fit. To be told that a man is lesser and cannot participate in his own free will because he chooses an alternative lifestyle is not free.

For too many years Blacks were slaves. Women weren't allowed to vote...These took changes as well. People will argue those are fundamental natural rights that had to be corrected. While this is true, it is also true that denying a persons right to live in peace, with the basic natural rights we heterosexuals enjoy, just because they are attracted to the same sex, is ridiculous.

I cannot speak for anyone else but as a man, no matter how many naked men you dangle in my face... there will be no temptation. I'm never going to want to "try it out". You can’t be infected gay by gay people. The media will never turn a straight person into a gay person. You can’t pray it away. There is no sinister plot to deride the species of fertility. Actually, I think it’s quite logical to liken being gay to Gatorade and its ad campaign: is it in YOU? For me it’s rather simple. Why no, no it is not. 

From a pure primal point of view, as a male, I never had any problems with homosexuals - especially gay men. And no, not because I had some closeted tendencies locked away either. It was because at an earlier age (in my teens) I began to understand a disproportionate amount of gay men were found to be attractive by women. In turn, it brought everyone up in the "pecking order". This is just simply the law of supply and demand. I guess I have always been a free market guy after-all?

So, "Gay America", as you can see, I respect your rights to your life, liberty and your pursuit of happiness to marry whomever you will. So you too can receive all the perks of being married: divorce, the decline in household income, a DVR full of Dancing with the Stars (pardon the semi-gay pun) etc, I do however have just a few questions for you and they all stem from this one:

Will you support MY rights that are already on the books, as in the Bill of Rights? The same rights that apply to all of us Americans; regardless of color, gender or sexual attraction.

Do I have faith you will be so vigilant against the PC Gestapo who wish to suppress the 1st Amendment? Protecting the freedom of speech with the same courage your small community displays standing up to those who seek to not allow your equal rights and marriages? To even stand up and protect the rights of those religious organizations that does not wish to marry you (homosexuals) in their churches?

Can I count on you to voice and stand against any encroachment on the 2nd amendment?

Will you stand with me against the tyranny of an executive office who's not only held in check the previous administrations assault on civil liberty's but has gone out of its way to expand this assault on freedom with their D.H.S bullet buying surge, their drone surveillance, National Defense Authorization Act etc? All measures that trample on my 4th, 5th and 14th amendments.

I ask these questions not because my support for your freedom to marry comes with a clause or a condition of support. No, my support is based on a simple premise... as long as anyone isn't harming or encroaching on another person’s property or life; I support you. Again, live and let live, a simple premise. A premise that seems to have been lost amongst all the noise that permeates through the united states of division. Are you for liberty for all or for freedom that only promotes your self interests? Where do you stand?

Circling The Drain. The death of the American family and its middle class; now two incomes be damned. (Part 2 of 2)

This 

The second part of the blog entry entitled: How to fix the economy: throw your wife back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant is optional



This is the most complicated aspect of working mothers in the workforce and the part that would be considered third-rail politically; the economic impact. I feel to date, this might be the most important topic I have talked about on this blog because it affects all of us on so many levels. I would like to think after reading this you would agree.

The confusing aspect of this, as mentioned in Part 1, is not intertwined in the complexity of the argument. On the contrary, it lies in the simplicity of it; yet it’s not even in the discussion of what ails our economy?

When it comes to children being cared for outside of the home, its hard to find clear cut data that points out positively home is better, thus I’m sure someone could call it subjective. Now it's common sense having one parent home works better but I like to deal in absolutes rather than conjecture. What is totally objective is the impact of working parents (and to a degree women in general) on the economy. This all can be traced back to two words: supply and demand.

Obviously, with any prospering nation, the population has been on the incline since its inception. Thus, there have always been more than enough people looking to work. If we compare our population today (315 Million) to 1960 (180 Million) we can see a 75% increase in population in 53 years. In 1960, there were 69 Million Americans employed. Today, there are 155 million Americans employed. That’s a 125% increase in Americans working today from 1960. If we include real unemployment numbers in one of the worst economic recovery’s in history (said to be about 22 million more Americans) that 125% climbs over 150%.

Adjusted for population and time, we have seen the true workforce expand more than 25% in 53 years. Even with the staggering unemployment, we are seeing 49% of our population in the workforce compared to just 38% in 1960. As we know, women entering the workforce deserve the spotlight here, but with all these added workers, are we getting our money worth?

From almost every statistical standpoint the answer is simple. No. And it doesn’t end there. First, this is what the employment history looks like men versus women over the last 60 years.









As we can see, women have almost doubled their numbers, while men in the workforce have fallen about fifteen percent since 1960. With the influx of all these new workers over time, it’s only natural to expect that a “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario would exist but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Despite the fact that the US has more billionaires than anywhere else on the globe, despite the fact that the average net worth of the newly elected 113th Congress is 966k; the average American family has been stuck in neutral for 40+ years.

Nothing paints this picture more vividly than what has happened and will continue to happen to the middle class. Like the time you left the bath running too long, low-interest rates/created new money has been filling up the economy. By the time you do notice and go to shut the faucet off, you find the handle is stripped (as there is no end in sight to new money with record low-interest rates). And no matter what you do, we cannot keep up with rising costs (inflation via new money).

You work and work and work some more. Your spouse goes to work; your youngest kids are off to daycare while your teenager competes with those without a high school diploma for jobs. Debt, credit, 2nd job... it doesn’t matter; whatever it takes, you will use any bucket you can find. You throw every bucket you can into that tub to keep it from spilling over, to keep from falling under that median. To keep that American dream still afloat. The fear of being poor is a great motivator. But to no avail.

As we can see below the median income has been relatively unchanged for Americans over the last 40+ years. In fact, today, real household income is LESS than it was in 2000, adjusted for that inflation. Meanwhile, the median income for males in this country is LESS today than it was in 1973. Does this sound like a 'dream' or progress? Women have gained roughly 80% in median income in this span but it's still substantially less than men (there goes that richer sex theory).










The destruction of the middle class is taking place before our very eyes. We have more people getting rich but substantially more getting poorer. I suppose this is “better for everyone” too? And this lunacy isn’t just limited to Time Magazine either. All media seems to be nothing but a mouthpiece for this propaganda. As I said yesterday, we know it’s not better for kids and more specifically the family and as we can clearly see here it’s been no blessing for the overwhelming majority of Americans economies either.









Let’s re-cap. We work long hours. We are flooding the job markets over the last 50 years with record number job seekers, turning upside down our outlook on work and family in our culture in the process. All of this just to keep a foot in the middle class or otherwise known as: ‘living the American dream’. But inflation (read theft) through loose (read suicidal) monetary policy and cost of living has not just made this 'dream' impossible but in turn nothing short of a nightmare.

If this sobering fact of our economy wasn’t enough, we also have the reality that nationally; this situation is even worse. In fact, this is how the banksters and those at the top of the pyramid power structure want it. After all, all this work and no gain by the masses have to go somewhere, right?

It wasn’t until 1982 that we as a nation reached a national debt over 1 Trillion (1,142,034,000,000.00). That took 191 years to reach that numerical milestone. Thirty years later, we have surpassed the 16 trillion dollar ceiling. As I have pointed out before, interest rates are at record lows to finance this gargantuan debt, thus we don’t necessarily have to feel the direct pain associated with such outlandish debt. But that doesn’t indicate there isn’t damage. The public debt side of the national debt has risen 140% since 2007, from 5.1 trillion to 11.9 trillion today. 140% in just six years.








And for all this debt, we know GDP has grown, but really has it?






As we can see, our growth,  like our economy, both micro and macro is nothing but an illusion. A dirty trick, made possible by the complacent yet complicit public. So eager, to be dictated by emotion, so much so that sound logic is actually discouraged and looked down upon. Have you seen the savings rates at your local bank? Check out a CD. You’d make a better investment buying scratch off lottery tickets than let your savings be ravaged by the fractional reserve banking system who rely on ‘kick the can down the road’ politicians who spend more time whoring for re-election than legislating. Or you know… what they were elected for in the first place.


You think it's bad, now? Wait until the FED start's raising rates again (if that's even possible).

This isn’t about women staying home and men working. The reality of men staying home while a woman works is not something that is concerning. What is concerning to me and should be to you is the reality of the American family. How one income is no longer able to support a family (regardless of the sex) and how we have been conditioned to accept this as the norm! As we can see, we are just barely staying afloat with two incomes, in the meantime causing major damage to the fabric of the family structure. What happens 30 years from now?

We are seeing our wealth being vaporized at the expense of our families and our way of life. This leads to only one thing. As “we” Americans continue to be duped, dumped-on and mislead, don’t expect things to change. We are paving our inevitable road that leads into a cul-de-sac of serfdom. I think George Carlin said it best in his last HBO stand-up before his death:


"The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."


So, wake up America, the wolves are already at the door.

How to fix the economy: throw your wife back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant is optional (Part 1 of 2)

This is a two part blog entry regarding how to fix our rigged economy despite 200 or so detractors at every avenue of every corner at both the micro and macro economic chess game. Enjoy.

Recently, I was at an ACL lab here in town waiting to have a routine blood panel. It’s been about four years since I have been to my family Doctor. I’ve been relatively healthy outside of a cold virus here and there so I have had no reason to go. This changed about two weeks ago when I got a letter from my doctor reflecting my noted absence.  Being a proactive individual (yet a habitual procrastinator) I figured it would be a good time to go and get a check-up.

So, a week later, there I am surrounded by CNN and an orgy of magazines. As I work my way through the titles I stumbled onto this Time Magazine cover-story, entitled:

The Richer $ex: Women are overtaking men as America’s breadwinners. Why that’s good for everyone.

This article was penned by Liza Mundy, whom also wrote the book: The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family.

 
Now, it wasn’t until the last page of this piece before I realized it was from March 26, 2012 (mornings after a 12-hour fast is cruel and unusual punishment to this 6-1 235lb frame). With that being said, the article brought up a great point: women are becoming more assertive in the work force and in board rooms all across the country. And me being of the freedom of choice mindset; god bless.

Although the article did a decent job of pointing out the gains of women and the subsequent natural losses of men; I felt a bit empty inside however after finishing it up. This could have been due partly to my empty/gurgling stomach but nonetheless, it made me think and ask myself; while this is obviously great for one sex, is this really great for America as a whole? Are we all really 'better' for it? The short answer, I would say is this: it’s complicated. The long answer... its even more complicated.

On the surface, superficially, it’s obviously great. Nobody should be not hired based on anything but the ability to live up to, if not exceed, expectations of said job. Now, from a true Libertarian mindset this could get complicated because business owners should be able to decide what’s best for their business regardless of what is considered 'fair' but that’s another topic for another day.

What you and I consider to be the ingredients for functional/prosperous economy is always going to be different. From my viewpoint it’s simple. Sound money, home ownership, strong middle class & strong families are a cornerstone to a strong, free economy for all. We can scratch sound money off the table (thank you Federal Reserve, complicit banksters, elected and unelected political whores). What about Home ownership? We have seen that to a mixed bag at best, especially of late.

How about strong families?

According to this article, in 1960, five-percent of children were born to unmarried mothers; in 2010 there was 41%. Now social factors have to be taken into account. For example; people do not always marry before or after having children today, when in 1960 it was culturally looked down upon to not be married before hand. With that being said, the numbers are staggering. In the black community alone those numbers of children born to unmarried mothers are almost in the seventy percentile (67%).

Once these baby’s are born, more times than not, they are sent off to some form of childcare and with more and more women having children unmarried; it’s often out of the home in the hands of strangers.

May Saubier who authored: ‘Doing Time: What It Really Means To Grow Up In Daycare’ says in her book:

“A baby who spends five years at one center will lose one-third to almost half of her caregivers every twelve months or so.”

Not only do you lose the one on one relationship that comes with one parent at home to classes with sometimes a 10-1 child to caregiver ratio you also have to factor in the fact that 40+ hours a week that baby is out of the home not bonding with loved ones. If it wasn’t for weekends, you would have strangers raising a child as much as the parent(s).

This is not to say having your child in childcare outside of the home makes you a bad parent. Without work and income there is no stability. However, to say its “good for everyone” as the author of this Time article suggests in the subtitle, is incredibly shortsighted.

There was also an English study, released in 2009, that centered around 12,000 British schoolchildren. The study determined: mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest followed by those who worked part-time. The study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health went on to state that:

“Currently, approximately 60% of women with a child aged five or younger in the UK or USA are employed. For many families the only parent or both parents are working.” 

Now you might look at this study and say what does 12k students in England have to do with the 315 million people here in the states. Statistically the sample size is small but I would also think, just based on common sense, that a parent in the home as opposed to a parent not in the home just works better. It would more often than not, lead to better choices all across the board.

There was also a revelation regarding Head Start, which is primarily a low income based program for pre-school aged children.  A Congressional mandated study of the Department of Health and Human Services (that fund Head Start) found that there was no benefit to the program for kids. In fact, in some cases it was actually a negative influence. But don’t allow those facts get in the way of this 8 Billion dollar job’s program. Don’t take my word for it either; this column by Mary Katharine Ham (Hotair.com) neuters this failure quite efficiently enough.

 Do we see a connection yet?

We have more and more mothers not marrying at alarming rates. However, we still have a healthy birth rate. We also have more women entering the workforce, more so than ever before and the kids home alone or in daycare are at a sided disadvantage versus kids with one parent who is always at home. Yet, it’s said to be “good for everyone”? I must confess, from the kid’s standpoint – I would emphatically disagree.


Part 2 tomorrow centering on the economic impact.

The sky IS FALLING (in graphs)

The NCAA tournament isn’t over yet but we know its coming to an end in exactly 16 days. If I was to tell you it’s not over yet, I would be correct. But does change the fact that is will end? Of course it doesn’t. For many people, because we haven’t seen bread lines or riots in the streets the “sky isn’t falling” yet. Does that change the reality that our economy is on the downside of the bell curve?

When the FED dropped interest rates back in ’07 the idea was that it would incur borrowing from the public & private business; therefore creating new/bigger business and in the process creating jobs or at least not hemorrhaging more than the economy was already in the process of doing. Then the rates kept dropping and dropping and wont go up until the very least 2014 and then what? Go up? The debt will explode in a hyperbolic fashion.

This graph shows we paid MORE in interest on our debt in 2008 (10,024,724,896,912.49) then we did in 2012 (16,066,241,407,385.89). How do you pay LESS interest on six trillion more in principal? There is only one solution; you pay substantial less interest. 

As we know, unemployment has dropped from its high of 10.0% back in ’09 to 7.7% as of last month but at what cost?

GDP has only seen moderate gains during the last five years and in fact, as you can see below, the last quarter actually seen our GDP in decline; despite the fact that private GDP rose in the same period. 

Some people will point to the cuts in defense spending as the main culprit and they would be correct (as defense have seen a 22% drop in spending) but if running nothing short of an empire and that is how we are keeping afloat in the first place, well… 

Mortgage rates are now at their lowest rate in recorded history and this has been a yearly trend these last few years. Only now in March of 2013, are we beginning to see signs of the real estate market coming back to life; despite a plummet in interest rates the last six years that were supposed to (as said in my opening) entice borrowers. Was it worth it?

Was it worth it and at what cost are the two questions I pose to you today. At what cost and is it worth it to live for today at the expense of tomorrow?

The CBO estimates of this nation’s debt keep getting worse, study after study. This is a quite simple process: the interest rates remain low, the debt piles up and the economy barley moves. These projections below are based on current conditions. Remember, zero is the end game; there isn’t much that can be done after that. We are basically at zero interest rates now.  

These examples I gave are just the tip of the iceberg and they are all interconnected. And that iceberg is the general public of this nation being so inundated in debt, so much so that we are getting to the point where offers of basically free money can’t move the needle any longer. These last four years of record low interest rates with barley a crawl until four, five sometimes six years later illustrates this quite luminously.

With wages not keeping up with real inflation (not the phony government statistics) and the globalization of the market, incomes for the average American (an overwhelming majority of) are stagnated; if not in decline. Is there any way that changes? Of course not, this is the new reality.

So to keep up, for most Americans, debt is the only logical solution. Afterall, we know saving via the conventional bank route is futile with rates being under 1%. And as we know debt = money, so when the economy can’t jump start and the FED’s QE programs don’t jump start growth; what else can the FED do? It’s been said by Bernanke that the quick death of deflation will not occur, so that only leaves one alternative; go to zero and close its eyes. Then hold on for limb and life as the decent to a slow death via hyperinflation begins.

The political process here has become a joke. A crooked game ran by self-serving lawyers and career politicians hell bent on seeing who can kick the can down the road the furthest. What was once a calling of statesmen has been replace by a bloodthirsty pack of statists. Republicans blame Democrats for not cutting spending despite having no solution themselves and god-damn you if you want to cut a bloated defense budget! Democrats want to actually ADD to the problem with a monstrosity addition to healthcare. While both “sides” will tell you it’s the other guys fault. Then all the puppets and zombies watching/reading the propaganda will parrot it. You think this is going to change?

At this moment, under these terms we are watching the beginning of the end finally become visible before our very eyes. Americans and their distractions have reached the crescendo. They can no longer afford them. The sky isn’t falling, but our economy is. It’s circling the drain, not as fast as Greece or Spain but its circling nonetheless. So move over American Idol, the freak show isn’t just in your living room its right outside your window. Get ya’ popcorn ready.