Election Weary?

   Are you weary of this election just passed? I know I am and I am now looking forward to what will happen. All the sound bites, demogogury, lies and spin is over for now and President Obama and the Congress must get down to actually governing. The so-called fiscal cliff is approaching because everyone has kicked the can down the road. They have delayed the decisions that have to be made until after the election when they will have a so-called mandate for the direction we must go.
   The crux of the matter is that we spend too much. We spend more than we take in by $1Trillion dollars per year. There are lots of reasons including the aging of the society collecting SSI and the increasing cost of health care paid for by Medicare. However, explaining the reasons does not make it less important to fix it. The Congress and the President must come together and fix this.
    "A rising tide lifts all boats" is a quote from JFK regarding improving the economy. getting the economy growing again at rates needed will require Congress to relook the basics of supply side economics. By stimulating the supply side of the economy we stimulate the economy. The economy is simply trade. Products for products. Trade is the reason we go to work every day. The fruits of our labor and production are used to trade for the things we don't produce, food, clothing, cars, houses etc.. Taxes are the cost of productivity. The more you produce and the more you make, the more taxes you pay therefore you are increasing the cost of work and productivity. Is that what we want? If we want to increase productivity should we not be reducing the cost of production?
    In addition, capital gains taxes are a tax on capital which is price paid on investment. There would be no companies and no jobs without investment first, therefore any tax on capital reduces the amount of capital available for investment in new companies.
    We should be reducing the cost of production and the cost of capital as much as possible to stimulate the trade we all want to improve the economy.
    We have historically been the country that attracts the best and the brightest of the world to come here and produce in their pursuit of happiness. We are poised to raise the cost of capital and the cost of production in Jan 2013. If the President and Congress want to stimilate the economy, increase revenue and solve out debt and deficit problems, they must not let that happen. 

The Election

As we reach the end of this hard fought election and we filter through the media spin and the candidate's surrogate's spin, the election come down to two points. 1) Do you want more government or less government and 2) Do you trust the President or Mitt Romney?
     I will attempt to put this in some perspective. Government by and for the people ie representative government has not been representative for a long time except for what we can get from government. Many politicians measure their performance by how much largesse they can bring home from Washington. Robert C Byrd, my Senator, was the master at this and many present Senators are trying to emulate his example. Government as the founding fathers described was for three things. 1)Establish Justice  (Rule of Law) 2) Promote the General Welfare (Protection of our unalienabhle rights) and 3) provide for the Common Defense. Our government has grown out of control as people expected more and more from the government. Instead of insuring we can "pursue liberty", the government has intervened in our daily lives in so many ways that we don't even know or understand them anymore. Do we need a Department of Education? In years past local communities provided the funds for local schools, hired teachers, set the direction through a school board and educated our kids. How did we go from that to a Department of Education that has a $43 Billion budget. During the Carter Administration OPEC embargoed oil and drove prices up which caused President Carter to found the Department of Energy for the purpose of getting us off the dependency on the Middle East for oil. Now thirty years later we still import lots of oil from the Middle East and the Department of Energy has a budget of $27 Billion. The EPA Budget is $8.5 Billion, Deaprtment of Interior is $11.5 Billion, Department of Commerce is $14.2 Billion and on and on. We have more government than we can afford and we keep adding more and it costs us more in taxes, more in debt and more devalued money. If Romney does only one thing and repeals the Affordable Care Act, we will have smaller government. Once Romney is in place there will be many opportunities to rationally decide what we can afford and what we can't and do the job of reducing the size and scope of government.
    As for the trust element, Obama said he would be a post racial president but his surrogates have used the race card more than anyone else. He has demogogued the rich as "not paying their fair share" even though the top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of the total tax. He has pushed for redistribution of wealth. In 2008, Barack Obama ran as a moderate, bipartisan reformer who was going to change the tone in Washington. He has governed as a hyper-partisan, arrogant, divisive, polar opposite of the man he pretended to be in 2008. The Democrats and President Obama have increased federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) to 25.3%.

Thoughtful Americans know the difference between the voluntary agreement to taxation to pay for legitimate government services, and confiscation of wealth for redistribution by the power brokers to fund a welfare state and a block of dependable voters.

Thoughtful Americans know this election is a choice between the American Dream and the Welfare State, or more succinctly between liberty and tyranny.