Achieving the highest office in the land is an amazing feat for anyone. Many of us as children have the dream of achieving the Presidency. Its a great honor, and a privilege. That is why when Mr. Obama was quoted as saying "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility,", the arrogance struck me as quite appalling.
Let me be clear, my previous statement would be true regardless of political affiliation. I believe the president should maintain a "humble, but strong" demeanor at all times, especially in matters of international policy. Arrogance can be seen as a weakness.
"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense ... this can be solved but it's important for him to give me space," Obama said.
So are we saying, since this year is an election cycle, lets plan for nothing to get done through the office of the President? I don't understand this kind of arrogance, especially from someone who has been notorious for not being able to unite the parties behind his agenda. It took acts of political trickery to pass Healthcare, which polls show a majority of Americans would like to see repealed, and if now in review in the Supreme Court. He could not get the democrats to unit behind his "American Jobs Act". So where does such self assurance come from?
Regardless of if this is typical Washington politics, it is still the wrong attitude, and abuse of the office of the President.
Last week marked the ten year anniversary of the Hawthorne, CA based Space Exploration Technologies. Founded on the realization that launch vehicles were prohibitively expensive to open up space technology and travel to anyone besides large business, and countries, Mr. Elon Musk set out on a journey to challenge the status quo. The goal? Reduce the cost of a launch to < 1000$ a pound. This is the way SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary.
In late April, SpaceX will be seeking to launch and rendezvous its Dragon spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS). A vehicle traveling nearly 17,500 miles an hour in orbit over our heads. This is an incredibly complex task, one that SpaceX is seeking to do more cheaply then ever before, to service the astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory.
It has been a long journey for commercial space, but the government has finally started to make this a possibility, stemming innovation in an industry that clings to heritage. Innovation is the key word. Thats how dreams are met. Thats how the hopes of yesterday become the realities of today, as Dr. Robert Goddard so notably quoted. Whether you believe commercial space to be the answer to opening up the last frontier or not, you should be inspired by the direction the aerospace companies are going. Remember the words of George Bernard shaw.
"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
Make no mistake about it, the government is helping it happen by providing seed money for these technologies, competitively bid for, and allowing the companies to keep almost all rights to their products.
I will be covering commercial space in later blogs post as we get closer to the launch, but I wanted to post this today, as 60 minutes will be showing an episode highlighting what SpaceX is doing for commercial space, and for the country as a whole. Check it out tonight at 7 pm est.
I know that government spending has been a source of much debate on both sides
of the political spectrum for a good bit of time, and often it seems like there
is no middle ground that the parties can seem to reach. That being said, I
am going to step out and discuss something I know to be
very politically sensitive, in hopes that it will spark
some renewed thought on what it means to be fiscally responsible,
both personally and politically.
Personal financial responsibility
has been something I have been feeling very convicted about of late, so I must
say, I am not currently the model of what it means to be working and living to
be free of the millstone of debt. Like many students today, I inherited
a mortgage of student debt by the time I walked on that graduation
stage to receive my diploma. At the time, the money I was borrowing seemed
fake, like one day I would not be held accountable for paying it back. I was
pretty ignorant to the burden it would cause me later in life. I do, however,
believe my degree to have been worth the investment, I just could have been
smarter about the way I approached paying for it. I could have also been more
responsible with what I did with the money I had when I started to work.
The thing about debt is, it
really IS a burden. You end up becoming subservient to your debtors.
Your life options narrow the more of it you have. I started to realize
the truth to this in the past few months. There is so much good I want to
do in this work, serving underprivileged nations, giving generously
to those in need, and I realized debt makes all of this harder. I
do tithe monthly, but without this debt, I would have much more
resource in which to make a difference. I do believe in my heart in the old
adage that money doesn't buy happiness, but it sure does provide the wiggle room
to be able to make more decisions on your terms, and
gosh, wouldn't that be nice?
I have been starting to make a
lot of headway against my debt recently, and found that the formula for getting/staying out of debt is behavioral and has roots in ideals you are taught when you are young. Some of these principles are: If you work hard you get paid, if you want to
buy something you need to save enough to purchase it, if you don’t want to work
you will not be paid, and if you don’t have enough for something, you better save
more. It seems to me that staying out of debt becomes a matter of priority. If
you want to purchase something, you better find the money for it from somewhere
else, and that means conceding something else. Money doesn't just appear. It has to come from somewhere, and
the supply of it is anything but endless. For a long time, I had no patience for waiting to have the money to purchase something, and I wracked up debt because of it. When you use a personal line of
credit, and do not pay it, you are hit with penalties and interest. I
had to realize, was that iPad I wanted so much worth the 499 + interest? Then,
if I cant pay it, was it worth jeopardizing my ability to take out a line of
credit on one of the only things I believe you should take credit out for, a
home?
As a country, we tend to view national debt differently then personal debt. We also tend to approach spending and deficit reduction, very differently then we would in our own lives. This can be a catastrophic mistake.
This month, the Congressional
Budget Office released an update to the outlook of the US budget, in which it
was found that Obama's healthcare bill would cost around 1.76 trillion dollars
between now and 2022 (that 176 billion dollars a year), a full 860 billion more
then the President had originally projected. I could not help to
think about what an absolutely absurd number this is, and what kind of priority
we should assign to such a massive bill, in a time of economic
instability. Is this really the place we should invest our money with the kind of deficit we have? Where will this money come from? What are we giving up to pay for this, or are we just increasing the debt burden for our children? The kind of out of control spending has happened before, during the great depression, disguised as providing for the general welfare. As a matter of fact, in the timeline of the depression the deficit reached 120 percent of the GDP during FDR, and with that an unemployment rate that touched 20 percent, and a top tax bracket of greater then 91 percent. Hardly seems like higher spending promoted the general welfare.
In 2009, the US
Census Bureau found that 40.8 million US Residents, or 13.4 percent
of the US population was without healthcare.1 This would mean
that the US would spend 176 billion, nearly 5 percent of the 2012 authorized
spending limit to provide healthcare to 13.4 percent of the population.
It is important
to note, however, that healthcare is different then health insurance, and
everyone in the United States has the right, by law, to general healthcare,
even those here illegally.
As premiums start to rise in anticipation of this
socialization of Healthcare due to the impending downgrade in reimbursement
rates, the National Physicians Survey conducted a survey in 2011 that showed
that physicians believe the quality of healthcare will decrease over the next 5
years, a whopping 3 to 1. It hardly seems intelligent to spend more taxes, for a lower healthcare standard. A Rasmussen survey also showed that 53 percent of
likely US voters are in favor of repeal of the Healthcare law. 2
Physicians tend to believe that the Obama Administration failed to seek sufficient consultation from the industry regarding his reform. With this much opposition to the Healthcare reform bill, I fail to see why the president continues to push for its implementation. I do believe the Government should provide a safety
net program to help those who have fallen on hard times, but this bill provides
a way of life, not a safety net, that offers little incentive for those out of
work to continue looking for work within a reasonable period of time. A safety
net program could be something we can do for a quarter of this cost, but there
must be caveats that limit
the use of such a program, as to prevent reliance. The government’s job is to
promote, not provide for the general welfare, and a safety net program could be
something we can afford, while allowing the government to fulfill its
obligation to its people. Where are our spending priorities?
Much of the problem with lack of
healthcare for US citizens is the very slow growth of the US economy, making it
very difficult for those who are unemployed to find reasonable jobs that fit
their qualifications. Although I disagree with President Obama’s 447 billion
dollar American Jobs Act, (as I do not believe offering loans to companies will
stimulate the economy nor job growth) and subsequent creation of additional
bureaucracy associated with the American Infrastructure Financing Authority
(AIFA), I believe that the best thing the US government can do is to invest in
the future of America, is to invest in the private sector of major US
industries such as energy, telecommunications, transportation, etc. The
government should pull a good portion of the money associated with the new health care bill and put it into a US Technology Investment fund, in which the
government would put out request for proposals for businesses to competitively
bid to receive seed money to develop new technologies desperately needed for
the infrastructure of the United States. An example could be a sustainable energy contact focusing on finding better ways to power our cars (to reduce
our dependency on petroleum based fuels). Offering such a contract, with a
competitive nature, can stimulate innovation, and in turn, help to create jobs. We are seeing the American aerospace community continue to
innovate under this kind of environment, and they are doing it for much less
the government could possibly dream of doing themselves. It is important,
however, for the IP that comes out of companies assisted by this kind of money
to remain that of the company, and for the government not to over regulate
them. This is a sure fire way to drive up cost.
Tax revenues are strongly linked
to the stability of the economy, and the amount of people employed. In 2009 tax revenues decreased by
nearly 20 percent from income based taxes, while corporate tax revenues
declined by nearly 50 percent.
With the US government investing in creating commercial jobs that address
strong US needs, I believe tax revenues will start to increase again, and the
percentage of those who are uninsured will begin to decline. The key is, make
it easier for businesses to do business in the United States, offer incentive
for innovation through competitive procurements.
The US government must learn to address the root cause of its debt crisis, and its out of control spending. This blog believes it lies in the exponential increase in the size of government, the continuous struggle of the economy, and a lack of true understand of the role of government in the lives of the people. Thomas Jefferson, in a 1791 letter to George Washington wrote about the general welfare clause in the preamble to the US constitution:
"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, to lay taxes of providing for the general welfare. For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."
Thomas Jefferson was warning George Washington to the dangers of the "promote the general welfare clause" of such a phrase taken out of context of the rest of the document, and I believe this is what we are doing as a nation today. Taxation out of context of the constitution under the guise of promoting the general welfare is unconstitutional. The fact is, the US government
takes in roughly 180 billion dollars, and spends 300 billion dollars a month. 120 billion dolar monthly increase in the national deficit should be a number, and a reality, that should absolutely transcend party politics. The only way to balance this number (or reverse it as would be necessary to decrease the deficit) is to increase revenues through increasing the amount of tax payers, and decreasing the size of government. We, as a nation, must learn to look back to the general principles we learn when we are young, that if we work, we get paid, and if we wish to purchase something, we must have the money. The continuous addition of government programs without cutting others to account for its cost, can no longer be tolerated. What are we teaching our next generation of children about what it means to be financially responsible? Would we teach them its ok to open a credit card so you can get everything you want, although you cannot afford it all? We must teach them what it means to be financially responsible, and the value of working to earn a dollar. This is one of the greatest gifts we can give the next generation.
Below is a wonderful video from Senator Marco Rubio that I believe paints a perfect picture of the realities of the financial crisis we face, and the hard decisions we will soon have to make as a nation. I highly recommend watching.
Growing up in a small rural town in the southern part of New Jersey, my parents always sought to give me the opportunities that they lacked as children. My parents worked hard, through job losses, to ensure a steady quality of life. I attribute much of my success today to their hard work and dedication. As a child in America, we often take advantage of the gifts we are endowed with, propagated by a free government, and strong family values.
In an age where child abuse seems to be becoming more prevalent (or is drawing more attention), it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could ever take advantage of a child. Their innocence seems to transcend the understanding of adults. Children rely on the guidance of strong figures in their life, and suffer greatly without it.
Recently, my girlfriend moved to the southern part of the African nation of Uganda to start work with a wonderful organization called Dorcas Widows. She had spent time there last year searching for something that seemed to be lacking deep down within the fiber of her being ; purpose. When she came home from Uganda in December of 2010, I could tell that something in her had been rejuvenated, like the desert after the first rain of the wet season. She had found a deep gladness in Uganda, one centered around working to provide the same steadiness to the children's live in Uganda that my parents had provided for me. The challenge she faces daily are deadly wide spread illnesses such as HIV, rampant poverty, lack of strong male role models to guide the children, and homes devastated by a senseless war that effected thousands of families. Her bravery and steadfastness are things to truly be admired. She gave up the idea of "Living the American Dream" to fight for those in need, to be a voice for the voiceless. It has not been easy for the both of us, but the reward is unquantifiable.
Before I show you some pictures of how life is lived in Uganda, I want you to think about any one child in your life, if its your own, a nephew or niece, or even a child you hope to have some day. Think about the love you have or would have for such a child and how you would do anything to keep them safe. Now think of how you would feel if they were living in these conditions, alone and abandoned....
These are children. Children like you and I once were. Children as I hope to have one day. These are children with aspirations, that have lost their parents, have no money, and therefore no way of attending school (in many cases) to realize those dreams. Without a tangible skill to guide them, many of these children have little hope of escaping the self perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Matthew 25:40
"And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."
Psalm 127:3 ESV
"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward."
Recently, a Southern California NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) called Invisible Children has begun a world wide campaign to shine a light on one of the worst war criminals this planet has ever seen, Joseph Kony. They published a 30 minute video highlighting, briefly, their experiences in Uganda and why they are seeking to capture this man.
Joseph Kony is a brutal Ugandan Warlord who came to power in the early part of 1986 as the leader of a premillennialist group that sprang up in the wake of the Holy Spirit Movement in Uganda. His group would eventually become the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA built much of its military might by kidnapping and assimilating children from local villages into their movement through intimidation and promises for a greater Uganda. Kony would have the parents of the foot soldiers murdered, and would cut off the appendages of children (noses, ears, hands, arms) if they ever resisted. Kony, although a polygamist, rapist and murder, claims to be fighting for the Ten Commandments.
I have been utterly appalled by the recent backlash to the Invisible Children's Kony 2012 ad. I have seen numerous articles bashing the group, and thusly, directly their cause. The most prominent rebuttal seems to stem from their financials (which the NGO openly posts on their site). Whether you believe in their business model or not, their cause remains the same. Before you decide to try to destroy this group of men trying to make a difference by shining a light on these crimes against humanity, search for pictures of children effected by this man, and think of how you would feel if that was your child. By trying to destroy this organization, you are turning the spotlight away from the cause, which I think we can all agree is a very worthy one. If you dont believe in their financial model, you are very welcome not to donate to the cause, but I beg you, do not strip the voice from these children.
To Invisible Children, I say well done. Stay steadfast. Continue to give these children, and this struggling country hope.
If you have not seen their video, I have posted it below.
It is good for you to note, before watching this video that Joseph Kony was in indicted in 2005 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.
The ballots have been counted, and Super Tuesday has finally come and gone like a long anticipated holiday.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor has emerged the victor, by a meager margin, on a day I think that most were hoping for the republican presidential pool to narrow. Now that each candidate has had their chance to speak, it would appear that Super Tuesday was not the decisive day for the front-runners in this important primary.
So why has such a well funded candidate like Mr. Romney, failed to produce the clear victories he was hoping for to date? I think that the Republicans voters are unclear about his convictions, and are not excited about the idea of 4 years of a Romney administration. He does not seem to inspire folks in rural areas, and would likely lose urban voters to Mr. Obama in the coming Presidential election.
Some will have you believe that the state of he political spectrum in Washington is following its normal pattern of ebbs and flows, and that the past 4 years are no different then other administrations in which the economy has gasped for life like a fish pulled out of the sea. Make no mistake about it, however. The next 4 years are going to be a time in which we, as a people, will need to decide what kind of country we would like to live in. Whether we believe in the programs Mr. Obama is trying to implement or not, what I think most of us can agree on is, like Social Security, once we go down this path, it will be very difficult to go back. So the question is, can we continue down this road as a nation, spending more then we earn, increasing entitlement, while decreasing incentives for hard work and success? I think we can all agree the answer is a resounding no. It’s how we move forward from our current state of our union that is in question. The question is, what is the role of the government in times of economic distress? Is it to promote, or provide for the general welfare? Mr. Obama will have you believe that it is the latter, and the Republican pool the former.
This is not a time for political apathy. This is too important. We must be well informed. We must vote on the ground of our principles, and on nothing else. It is a time to review what kind of America our forefathers envisioned for us, and decide if that is the kind of country we want to live in. I believe in a free country run on strong human convictions, where those with little, with hard work, can succeed. What kind of country do you want to live in?
