Thursday, January 29, 2009

Welcome All America's Debate Subscribers

Hello everyone who listened to America's Debate Wednesday the 28th, sadly I didn't get to talk on it and rant how bad this blog is right now (the geitner post isn't very good, but it's the first update in a while). However, I will say that i must urge you to look at the bigger picture, i'm a New Jersey conservative who, though doesn't like Obama, isn't racist (it's ideology, not what color he is). I'll also admit that i listen to Talk Radio, though i try not to listen to Rush. And finally, I have to say that my Introduction needs updating, the views have slowly been changing so i need to keep that post updated once a month. My blog is still being tested for which style is best, so please voice your opinions.

I'll be updating this better soon, i have a writing class which i can use to create my blog posts... and i'll try to find better sources for my blogging. If you have any suggestions please send me an E-mail at steel.politics.steve@gmail.com, and don't forget to vote in my poll on the side.

Re: Introduction

Hello,

My name is Steven, and as you guys might already know is that I’m an amateur political analyst. I'm a center-right college student and I’m hoping to update this once a week (not sure about if I’ll always be able to)



In this intro I’ll be simply listing my ideas on how the federal government should handle certain issues:


Abortion: libertarian on federal level, it's a moral issue, and those are decided by the state by law. However, I personally am against abortions and would never put a person in danger


Economy - to stimulate the economy we should cut taxes to encourage long term growth, which is always necessary for an economy like ours, bailouts are temporary solutions that should only be done if you want to create deficit. and right now our


Welfare State: it is a waste of money, unlike the 1930s (when people needed it) the Social Security program is outdated and bankrupt. So are Medicare and Medicaid. We need to get rid of these programs and prevent any more like these to take hold.


Civil Rights: gay marriage; 'marriage' should only be for a man/woman couple, not a homosexual couple. Tradition defines the word marriage as a union of a man and a woman. in what way would a civil union be any different? however, this is a state issue, not a federal one, let the states decide


Education - we need to re-do our public school system, right now many children of ours are failing high school, which I find unchallenging already, if we can't even get kids to focus on school there must be something wrong with how they are learning, loosing interest in your future is not an option!


Energy - we do need to invest in so called 'green energy' especially ones like tidal and others, as well as invest in different modes of transportation, Japan has a massive train system and excellent infrastructure so for our cities and between them we should invest in high-speed, efficient public transport systems, doing this would also keep us from becoming dark once oil runs out


Environment - not only should we invest into 'green energy' (if it is green), we should focus on a program that gives money to companies who wish to clean the air with ultra-efficient carbon scrubbers and work on a way to remove the excess carbon dioxide.


Fiscal - (deficit) - we need to reduce our deficit as much as we can, our debt clock has run out of numbers and we NEED to get it under control, we spent too much on a war during the bush years, made an unnecessary war last too long (it would have been fine if we could have just gone in, cut off the head, then pull out... even better if we just assassinated them and blamed it on Iran) and now our children (and myself) is going to pay in about 20-40 years, we need to balance our budget


Foreign Policy - we need to improve our relations with European nations and china and other first-world nations, these nations are part of the life-blood of our nation and all of our economies are important


Homeland Security- though we are quite secure now, we need to increase security now! we need to constantly change our security network and our ways of security. Of course, we need to also be efficient as well, accelerating the integration technology into our forces to effectively work with the least amount of time wasted


this is all that I can think of for now, I’ll edit this later Next up: Obama's Transition Team (research will have to be done, please bear with me)
Or perhaps it's going to be Universal health care, expect one or both.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Tim Geitner and the history of his involvement

Hi folks, Steve here, and in light of Geitner's conformation on Monday, i am here to present Facts and Opinion of why he's not what americans want for this seat. Ok Facts first, then i'll get to my opinion at the end of the post.

First off, let's start with his history of jobs in Taxes. In 1985 Geitner worked for Kissinger and Associates in D.C., a firm that identifies strategic partners and investment oppertunities for many companies including many of the companies that make up the Dow Industrial Average (JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Coca-Cola, ect.) after three years of working in D.C. After that he joined the US Treasury and started in the international affairs Division of the Treasury department in 1988, then to serve in Tokyo in the US Embassy there (perhaps he's the reason why the Japanese economy crashed back in the 1990s, just a suggestion). for a year he was deputy assistant secretary for the international monetary and finnancal policy (1995-96), senior deputy assistant fir international affairs ('96-'97) and assistant secretary for international affairs ('97-'98). After that he was undersecretary for the Treasury for international affairs ('98 - '01) under the clinton secretares of Robert Rubin and Lawence Summers

in 2002 he left the Treasury (finnaly) to join the Council on Forgin Realations and became the director of the policy development and Review Department of the the international Monetary Fund. His time at the International Monetary Fund is very intresting, as the three years he was there (2001-'03, but i don't understand why he had two government positions at this time)

Also, in the 90s, he managed the multiple international Crises in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. I'll start with what was wrong in Brazil, Brazil's collaspe in the 1990s, was due to hyperinflation  and a bankrupt public sector, the plan called for a new imaginary currency which was roughly equal to the US dollar. all prices were quoted in both the imaginary currency and the real currency (which, at the time, wascruzeiro) but all payments must be done through the Cruzeiro. several attemps to stablize the hyperinflation rates failed and Brazil was forced to adopt a new currency. the new currency (called the real, or reais if plural). though this plan ultimatly failed in '99, it was a good idea. All of these ideas came out of the U.S. treasury office at the time, and failed, the economy right now is still in the slumps and mostlikely falling further as this recession (which in the stock market is leveling out) deepens.[please note, i don't know how accurate this report on the brazil economic catastrophy, it's a wikipedia page]

The Mexico 'crisis' can be summed up rather quickly, the peso collasped late in '94 and caused the economy to contract by about 7% in '95, by '96 it started to come back out of the recession. no more information found on this crisis

Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea all fall into the same Financial Crisis in 1997. The crisis allegedly started in Thailand with their decision to float, or take the hands off of it, the Thai baht, their national currency. Already an almost bankrupt country through forgin debt (sound famillar?) this essentally lead to the collaspe of the south-east asian market. the next stop is Indonesia, they made the mistake of widening the rupiah trading band from 8%-12%. after that the rupiah dropped sharply as the IMF (international monetary fund) rushed in with a rescue package of 23 billion (note, it still didn't work, much like today's economy). in November, the accounting books found that companies, loosing money, started to invest in US dollars through the selling of rupiah, depreciating it's value even more. Soon after that Rioting occured and the aproxamate number counted dead in Jakarta was 500 people. in '98 president Suharto was forced to resign and president Habibie took over, somehow ending the crisis. [again, the same as above applies here, wikipedia: the information center of all students strikes again]

Finally South Korea's strong economy fell as large banks defaulted on non-performing loans (essentally the mortgage crisis we're in now) as large corporations were funding large agressive expansion to compete with other world leaders like America or Japan. Many of the tiny nations' car companies were either disolved, sold to america, or taken over by Hyundai. the Won weakened severly. However, they managed to survive, though not unscathed, as the national debt:GDP ratio more than doubled. This crisis is also known as the IMF crisis.

The IMF was the cause of many of these collapses as they created a 'fast track to capitalism'. the argument was that Keynesian economics of large government spending, the propping up of corporations, and the lowering of interest rates. It didn't work and the liberalization of the financial sector (elimination of restrictions of capital flows) is the cause. This fast track is remarkable similar to our own economy as we head into this recession, and the solution is exactly the same. What needed to be done was not the Keynesian economics but the supply-side economic strategy, which focuses on tax cuts rather than sudden injection of money. Geitner worked with the IMF during the 90s to help fix the problem they caused, but honestly, I don't see how he helped, if he was surrounded by such tragic economies which were harsh and have lasting effects all the way until today, what will running this country and thus all other countries' economies do in this recession. [this is wikipedia]
 
Now onto the debate on why he is unfit for the job. Well for one, $34,023 of self-employment taxes while in the IMF. of course, the question of how can a 'genius' like him be so stupid to forget about such a thing AND still be allowed into the head of the IRS? i doubt he'll let us do the same mistake. Also, Democrats have it so easy whenever they do anything wrong (unless you're blago, in which case you're excommunicated) It's a double standard. If anyone on a republican side of the isle has tax problems, never mind tax EVASION, then they are expected to resign immediately, regardless of what position they have. Not only that he also recieved a severence payment from the Federal Reserve bank in New York upwards of $434,500 dollars, ontop of his $411k salary. This guy screams corruption and we're putting him in charge of our monetary system, I don't see how we're going to survive the next few years with the stimulus bill and this guy incharge of handing it out. [most of this is from a fox news report]

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Obama's Inarguration and BDS

Today was a historic day, Barrack Hussein Obama
was hailed by thousands of 'Obamagasms' while George W. Bush was
shunned by people suffering from BDS, Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Today,
while Bush was making his final circle around D.C., not only did the
crowds sing 'nah nah nah na' as Bush passed by, he was also,
collectively, given the middle finger as he passed by at one point.

Now
i'll admit that Bush's popularity has not been the best ever, in fact
right now it's hovering around Jimmy Carter's when he left office, but
you don't do this to a man who just lost his job (and someone who may
or may not have illegally bought his way into office as well).

On Wikipedia, BDS is defined as:
"the acute onset of paranoia
in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency
— nay — the very existence of George W. Bush"

No, i'm not happy about this, but when our Terrorist friends in Afganistan and Iran, look at this, i expect something akin to the Obamagasms. perhaps another round of gunpowder and nitro into Israel would have the same effect.

Now i'm sorry that i haven't said anything reccently, but i'm back and i'll be ready to post weekly, if not more-so.