1) It will cost more than any estimate makes it first appear. (Additionally if we need this kind of reform now, why wait three to five years to start it after using those years to tax everyone more.)

2) It will destroy the private insurance companies that will but several million people out of work; some will be rehired by the government. (The private health insurance companies will go out of business due to the government of standardizing our health insurance and the fact that the public option will be able to get additional money from the tax payers every year it does not break even.)

3) Once the private companies are out of business health insurance costs will increase anyway or at least our taxes because one seventh of the economy has been transferred to the government. The government does not add to anything to the economic pie. (The power to tax is the power to destroy)

4) Once the government runs our health insurance what is to say they do not have the right to determine how we live in other areas such as what we eat, who we marry and who gets to have kids. These things all relate to our health so the government will have a right to dictate them.

I have proposed other solutions to the Public option that will lead to lower health costs and lower health insurance costs in earlier posts.

Recently our President attempted to couch the healthcare debate in such a way that he implied that it is a Christian’s responsibility to support universal healthcare. He used line such as “our brother’s keeper” and taking care of the poor. I agree with his point but I disagree with the conclusion. I see no where in the scripture where Jesus or the prophets told the Jews or the Christians to give to the government to give to the poor and care for the sick. I do see many places were he told individuals and the church to care for the poor and sick. I would think it would be a huge moral failure of the Church to back away from its duty and hand the responsibility to the government that is shown to be uncaring in how it handles the poor as a number to be eliminated versus the Church which see the poor and people who need a savior. The Church and individual Christians could take advantage of the fact that not all people have health care and provide for the sick and not only minister to the body but to the soul as well.

I work in a Public Housing Authority and have noticed that HUD (Department of Housing & Urban Development) like to collect data from the Housing Authority, at least five different reports some monthly, and some annually. This data that is collect is housed in the software system and is then printed or converted to an electronic format and uploaded to a website but in at least four cases it is entered manually into the HUD system making it prone to error. I know what accounting systems are capable of now days and HUD says it wants data now and a bunch of other things but it is going about this the wrong way. I would like to propose a better solution all housing authorities should have one HUD generated software system that is maintained online that allows HUD central to get the data at any time. This will reduce errors on data entry and also enable HUD to get a clearer picture of what is happening in between housing authorities as well as in particular regions. It will also reduce audit costs when HUD does internal reviews because they can obtain some of the data they need before the audit team goes to the local housing authority. A typical cost for a housing authority to purchase a software system is at least $50,000 plus training costs, and annual maintenance costs, if the Housing Authorities had one standardized system, the overall procurement costs would go away and there would be reduced training costs and maintenance costs because of the only one over arching system. Other benefits might be increased ability to find fraud and also reduced chance of housing people removed from the program of legitimate reasons. In addition one standardized software system should also allow HUD to reduce it staff because of ease of capturing and processing data in the long term. This would not be an easy process but the software to do this is out there and the cost of not doing this now far outweigh the costs of ignoring the problem or putting the problem off.

The government is proposing a massive change in our energy is taxed in hopes of getting more green energy. As some one who works in Government Housing I don’t like the bill because it can cripple us and the people we are suppose to help. The Cap and Trade bill will increase utilities cost and will increase the cost of living all around. This will require the Housing Agency to pay more in utility allowances costing the agency more money to house people meaning we will house less people and cost the government more to run. Whoever is developing this bill is only looking at one industry and not taking into account the impact on related industries. In addition if the changes go into effect the price of housing and apartments will go up in the area meaning the Housing Agency will have to pay out more for those aspects of our programs as well. The whole of Cap and Trade is really going to hurt the residents because of the increased energy costs, increased food costs, gasoline costs, and other necessities that the families need to thrive. My impression of Cap and Trade is like cutting of your nose to spite your face.

This past week the President told us that we would have to accept a "peaceful" Iran with nuclear power.  I find that outrageous as someone who grew up in the Middle East and it shows an extreme amount of naivety on the part of the President.  Iran may never launch nukes at us or Israel but I would not be surprised if they give it nuclear components to people who would like to see us or Israel dead.  In addition the leaders of Iran who view on the world is totally different from the western mindset; Iran being so close to have nuclear weapons could be too big of a temptation.  Let me explain the reason the reason we could rely on Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) when we were dealing with the Soviets was because they viewed it as a loss when we died and they died as well, but when you have a culture that breeds suicide bombers and views it as a victory as long as the enemy is dead as well one cannot rely on MAD to work because they don't care if everyone in their county is exterminated as long as the opposing country is exterminated as well.  I don't want to live and have my children live in a place with that kind of threat and the President's unwillingness to take a hard line could cost millions of lives.

 Corporate taxes are a myth, a good business doesn’t pay taxes its customers do. This is an economic fact that has been iterated hundreds of times but people still don’t get it. Let me explain if I am a business and I want to make $100 dollars profit after taxes per unit I will make that money either by raising my price or lowering my costs no matter what the tax rate is as long as it is not 100%.

A corporation is not an end user of the government like an individual and corporations are made up of individuals so the best way to tax a corporation is not to tax it at all. It is better to tax the employees and the people who receive dividends from the corporation. If the United States of America was to eliminate Corporate Taxes the following could occur: increased employment due to lower corporate overhead, lower prices to consumers because corporations will be trying to be more competitive than other business, more business remaining in the United States instead of relocated abroad because of the advantages of remaining in the United States, and more corporations from abroad relocating to the United States because of the more favorable tax rate. The catch is how to allow this without leading to abuse of the system. I propose the following corporate income and balance sheets must still be submitted to the IRS or SEC in order to verify that the Corporation is a Corporation and not an individual claiming to be a Corporation to avoid taxes. People committing fraud should be subject to taxes and penalties at double the highest individual tax rate. The associated costs for the IRS and corporations should be significantly less than what we are currently doing and will lead further productivity in the economy.

A major concern with eliminating corporate taxes would be concern about the loss of corporate tax revenue. I believe that this revenue would be recovered and exceeded by the increased personal income tax collection due to the higher employment rate inside the United States. In addition if the United States was the first 1^st world county to implement this strategy it would benefit from the full migration of the business to the United States because of its fully developed infrastructure and technology base.

I wonder if the people in Washington D.C. get it.  When we have a President that states he wants to usher in an era of fiscal responsibility yet requests a deficit budget.  I know if I did that I would be in the poor house.  Currently it is very hard to cut the expenses in the budget because so many of them are entitlements and if you even suggest cutting them you are accused of hurting the children or seniors.  If you want to balance the budget you have to cut expenses everywhere but also logically not just across the board review who the money is being spent and eliminate expenses that are not up to the standard.  Many not-for-profits have a ratio of 20% of every dollar is spent on administration and fund raising the remaining is spent on program expenses.  If the private sector can do that the government can do that.  If any program can not run expenses that way eliminate it regardless the consequences.  If people complain, the Federal government should say it is dropping this program and it is now up to the States and Cities to do the program they can raise the taxes to provide for their residents and the Federal government can lower its taxes accordingly.  I work in for a Housing Authority and I would expect my job to be eliminated but I believe that the private sector can do it cheaper and with better results.  We can not afford to be irresponsible in what we do.  The Federal government should only spend it money on the courts, forgiven policy, defense, boarder security, and multistate infrastructure.  All other activities could be handled by the States and other local entities.  If this is done Federal taxes should decrease however State and Local taxes will increase.  I doubt people in power is willing to make these cuts and changes because of the chaos it would cause but also the loss of power that would happen to the Federal government. The Federal government needs to be willing to make big changes if it wants to solve the problems we face and enabling more local control could make the problem easier to solve who know the local issues than the people there. Enough with my ranting what do you think?

I hear on the radio and TV that it is important to give and volunteer and I agree with those sentiments. I don’t agree with this concept that the way to give to charity or the poor is through the government. Some how people have come to equate paying taxes to help the poor is the same as actually giving to help the poor. It is not the same.

1.                  If you give yourself you direct the flow of the money and to what organizations it goes to it can be local or global it is up to you. If the government give it goes to the place that is going to get the most votes or what the government decides is pressing

2.                  If you give it comes from your heart. The government takes your money by the law and the threat of force if you don’t pay.

3.                  If you give you have the discretion on how much to give and you can stop giving if the organization or person is not responsible. The government always requires being paid and you can not stop if you think the government is not being responsible.

4.                  Private charities can separate from the deserving poor and the undeserving poor i.e. those that want to improve and change there ways and those that do not. The government because of how it is founded can not do that.

Based on these four reasons it is more obvious why when one is giving or volunteering it is better to do it yourself and not depend on the government. America is already renown on our private giving that usually exceeds the giving of entire nations that engage in foreign AID. I think Americans should seek to grow private giving and reduce government giving because we are not able to hold them to the same standards or demands drastic reforms like givers can do with private organization because of the competition private not for profits face in competing for our dollars.

During this week, my wife and I went to the Grand Canyon.  While I was there it got me to thinking particularly about worldviews.  I am a Christian and I believe in a literal interpretation of the creation story.  I am not going to get into that right now.  What I want to get into is when I see the Grand Canyon I see God's handiwork through the process of creation and the fall out and chaos following the flood.  When an evolutionist sees the Grand Canyon they see the product of millions to billions of years.  We are both looking at the same thing and are receiving the same data.  One might argue that I am not a scientist so I am coming to the wrong conclusion, but there are scientists that agree with me not as many but there are scientists that do.  My question is how much does our worldview taint our conclusions and could possibly make us miss the truth because of the assumptions we are making when we review the data we see?

A friend of mine commentated to me about how the News media generally engage in fear mongering and misinformation.  I don't think that is entirely true.  I think the reporters are generally honest it is only when they are biased about what they are reporting do they engage in fear mongering and misinformation.  There are two ways to handle from the News Media perspective this first is require reporters to be completely objective and unbiased, or the second is require reports to come out and be honest with there bias.  Doing the first is impossible because people are naturally are biased it is just a condition from growing up in the world.  The second is possible but I don't think it the news media would willing switch to being honest about biases of its reports, also how would one report the biases to the public.  I think the better solution is for the views to realize that the media is going to be biased and take what the media says with a grain of salt and not assume that experts, commentators, and pundits know everything about everything.  It would also help if the views tried to think critically of what the stream of news is saying to them, granted that is like trying to drink water from a fire hose.  I think it is troubling that we have people who analyze what the President says but that isn't enough we have to analyze the analyst.  In conclusion we the view must take a greater role of understanding the news and how it applies to us and what action if any the viewer has to take instead of relying on someone else to tell us what to do.