Cheaters

When I was in school I always hated the teachers who would punish an entire classroom just because a handful of students misbehaved. I think this was my first glimpse that life wasn't fair. And I didn't like it one bit.

Unfortunately once grownup, the miscreants and cheaters became even more numerous and in some instances more flagrant in their behavior.


Except instead of a teacher, the authority they are trying to cheat is our government. And like my teachers of yesteryear, the government punishes all of us through new laws and taxes because of the few people trying to beat the system. Just think how many laws would be unnecessary if people followed even half of the ten commandments. Or what if everyone had to pay x% of their income or $100 whichever is greater. No loopholes, no excuses for the rich, and it makes the 50% who don't pay any taxes chip in a small amount, to be fair, of course.

What got me thinking about this were two stories in the news this week. First, more people are claiming SSI disability pay than in the past and the government is concerned and plans to investigate. The next day, completely unassociated with the earlier story, there was yet another headline about someone cheating the government of disability pay.


This time it was a fireman who was collecting full disability pay yet they showed clips of him participating in some kind of mixed martial arts fight. The government investigated and found him able to return to work. But his fireman's union disagrees and continue to pay him roughly $70,000 to not work!

People who abuse the system just infuriate me. As most know, I am disabled and it would be impossible for me to return to work. Yet because of all the past and current cheaters, I am being punished. I had to fight first our government then the insurance company for them to recognize that, yes, I really am disabled. Out of everything I went through, and I went through a lot, perhaps what bothered me the most was the accusation behind their actions that I, too, was a cheat and a liar trying to beat the system. Even now, I feel as if I have to defend why I really am disabled and apologize for not working.

The news story about the increase in disability claims actually blamed it on cheaters. They said this increase didn't make sense as the country is healthier than in the past. Yet I don't think that being healthy and being disabled are necessarily the same. I haven't had a cold or the flu in years; but I can't sit up, stand or walk for more than a few hours a day. Plus as everyone knows, the population is aging so of course there will be more disabled people.


Unfortunately, the government is predisposed to think everyone is like that fireman, out to beat the system. Now, all that will happen are more laws or requirements making it even more difficult for those of us who really are disabled to qualify for disability pay.

Life isn't fair. Thanks to the cheaters who abuse the system, we will continue to be burdened with unnecessary laws and harassed by the government and other people who wonder if we are cheaters, too. And I still don't like it one bit!





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Not My Fault

After a long weekend of silence the president finally came out of his office to discuss S&P's ratings downgrade. He might as well have stayed in his office for all the help he was. At one point I did start to get excited when he said "I have a plan.." thinking he was finally going to produce his own plan to reduce the debt but no, the whole sentence was "I have a plan on how to proceed." Gee thanks. And it seemed as if his great plan was for the committee proposed by the new debt bill to determine what to do. Why bother? He already has a plan from his first debt committee.




Last year he commissioned a bipartisan committee of primarily retired (I think) Congressmen to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit. And they did. Their 59 page Bowles Simpson report would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion while also lowering the tax rate! Unfortunately it had one fatal flaw.

This concise well thought out plan had the nerve to propose increasing the age for Social Security and making cuts to Medicare. So, true to form, the Democrats refused to let this plan even get out of committee. And yet during his speech Obama lectured Congress on the need for compromise. Maybe it's just the other side that needs to compromise.



For Obama, compromise certainly doesn't include any changes to his proposed fair share tax - you know the one where he sticks it to the rich to redistribute their wealth to the poor. Nope, no compromise on that but he did offer to look at "a modest adjustment to health care..." (and, in spite of the word "modest", I still got excited wondering if he actually cut back Obamacare?) "... like Medicare". Damn Disappointed again.



S&P dropped our ratings on Friday and the next day a memo must have gone to Democrats for by Sunday every liberal was calling the S&P move "the Tea Party downgrade". Of course, blame it on the Tea Party. I had hoped that the president would be above this type of petty politics. Not exactly. He didn't come out and name the Tea Party but he definitely insinuated them a lot.

At one point he talked about how defaulting on the debt was used as a bargaining chip which could do enormous damage. Another time he said the debt problem was "not due to a lack of a plan but due to lack of political will, the insistence in drawing lines and the refusal to put what is best for the country ahead of self interest, or party or ideology". Yup, that's the Tea Party, those terrible men and women with principles they believe in.

But why are liberals afraid of the Tea Party? Democrats still hold two of the three branches, not to mention most of the media. Republicans only have a majority in the House and within that are the small coalition known as the Tea Party. Out of all the men and women running the country or reporting on it the Tea Party is a very small group. And yet the President and every other Liberal are afraid of them and the media spends a disproportionate time bashing them. So why?




Thinking about this question I keep seeing the image of Toto pulling back the curtain and revealing the "great and powerful Wizard of Oz". That's the power of the Tea Party citizens. Ever since the mortgage crisis and stimulus bills people have been confronting their politicians and demanding answers. OMG. Citizens actually wanting to hold their representatives and senators accountable for their actions. How dare they. Well they dare alright! And we will continue to hold them accountable for fixing this debt mess.

As for the Tea Party politicians? Well let me quote a Democrat friend of mine. He recently said he didn't necessarily agree with them but he admired the fact that Tea Party politicians were willing to stand on their principles even if it meant not be re-elected next year. Wow. Too bad more Democrats don't feel that way.

One last thought. Every Democrat, including the president, was either blaming the Tea Party or else insinuating that Standard & Poors were wrong. These politicians adamantly stated that the US didn't deserve this downgrade or that S&P miscalculated. No. We did deserve this wake up call. But how typical of the liberals to either say the information was wrong or else blame it on somebody else. Never have I heard any Democrat own up to even a part of the downgrade. Sadly, not even President Obama showed any leadership. No "the buck stops here" with him. To them accountability is a dirty word. No wonder they fear the Tea Party!

*Double click on a graph to view them bigger

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

No Confidence

I wasn't planning on writing this soon but the banker in me just had to bring up the new banking trend. Some of the biggest US banks began to inform their clients today on a new fee. In the past, if you had millions to deposit you looked for the bank that paid the highest interest rate, right? No more. Instead the new trend is to charge the customer a fee to deposit their money at the bank!

That's right, the rich, businesses or anyone wanting to deposit millions will have to pay for the privilege of banking at one of the bigger banks.





You thought the rediculously small interest paid on savings, money market accounts or CDs was bad - now customers and businesses have to pay the banks to hold their millions! You're better off putting it under your mattress.

I hate to admit this, but as a former banking consultant I can understand why banks are doing this. Basically there is too much cash floating around as investors are getting out of the stock market and real estate. In fact money is so prevalent that the Federal Reserve is charging the few banks that need to borrow money an interest rate of 0%. Yup, it is free to borrow but that isn't the problem, the problem is too much money.

Not to get too technical but banks have to balance out their Assets which are loans and cash on hand vs. their Liabilities of deposits and stocks.







Too much deposits and they can't make enough loans to balance it out. Businesses today are afraid to get new loans as the economy is uncertain and they are afraid of the future impact of Obamacare. There are few mortgages as no one is buying houses and the few customers who try for a loan are turned down as banks are being very strict. So banks can't turn the big deposits into loans today.

In today's economy, banks interest margin (the rates they collect on loans minus the rate they pay out on deposits)has been smaller and smaller. And now they can't even turn around and loan out the big deposits to earn even a small interest fee. Banks are making up that lost income by now charging customers a fee to hold their large deposits.

So I understand why this sort of makes sense from the bank's point of view. But I worry about the bigger picture. I don't like that we have all this excess cash. It is scary to think that people and companies are not investing in our future nor are banks helping out individuals or small businesses with loans.

Some analyst reviewing today's 512 drop in the stock market said it was a vote of no confidence in our future. I agree. For how can you blame anyone for shying away from investing in the stock market after the last few days of free fall and the jump in gold? Not to forget that Washington just agreed to more spending and more debt.

How do we turn our economy around? How do we give our citizens, and big and small businesses confidence in our future?


Unfortunately, does anyone truly believe our economy and unemployment will get any better considering who is in the White House? Or will confidence return only after we get a true leader? Preferably someone with real business acumen, someone who knows how to live on a budget like the rest of us do. Most of all, we need a leader who understands how to give Americans and American businesses the freedom to succeed or even to fail, then learn from it and come back stronger and wiser. Until then, add my voice in with all the others who are starting to shout "No confidence!"

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Debt Doldrums

I am back. Or for those who hadn't noticed, PC Fugitive has been down for nearly a year due to technical problems. But switching from my PC to my new IPad and adding a blog app and I am finally back in business. Yeah!

The funny thing, however, is that even if I could write I am not sure how much I would have. It just all seems so redundant.



The Democrats want more spending and would increase taxes to pay for some of it while the Republicans, led by the Tea Party, want less spending and fewer taxes and to not raise the dent ceiling. But as we all know now, after months of bitter arguing the debt ceiling was raised, some new spending approved but thanks to the Tea Party there are no new taxes. Yet.

When the president gave a short speech about the new debt ceiling he primarily talked about how we would pay it off. Once again he talked about taxing the rich through new taxes, closing loopholes or taxing luxury items like corporate jets. It's probably a losing battle but let me try one more time to explain why Obama is totally wrong, again.

First, the United States top 10% wealthiest citizens pays 45.1% of all income


taxes. (http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/27134.html) This is more than any other industrialized nation. In France, the top 10% richest payed just 28% while in England it was 38.6% of all personal income taxes. So our richest citizens are already paying substantiously more than their counterparts yet the Democrats want to take even more money from them! We can't let that happen.

As for taxing luxury items, doesn't anyone remember the Carter years? Jimmy had the same idea except instead of going after jets he added a new tax on luxury boats. And guess what happened? The rich stopped buying boats and then all across New England's coast people were suddenly jobless.


No one bought boats so skilled shipmakers were let go. Docks that relied on docking fees were empty. The businesses that catered to the people who were now unemployed started to go bankrupt. So basically the only people hurt by that luxury tax were the middle class. And I don't know this for sure but it only figures that if fewer luxury boats were sold than even with the higher tax rate the government probably collected less tax dollars on the boats. Typical. Whenever the government tries to interfere they always make things worse!

So what is the solution? I have a few ideas (surprise, surprise) but plenty of time to talk about that another day. And now that I have my new iPad and blog app I have no more excuses for not keeping this up-to-date. So thanks for your patience and welcome back!

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