I am a Radical... You should be one too

This week I have been bombarded, in a good way, with discussion, debate, conversation and many other vices that have centered on the idea of being a “radical”.  Discussion that revolves around whether bipartisanism is important or whether a person is too extreme and should not fight for what they believe.  I have had class discussions in history class about how people are offended or feel like a person should not try to convince them of their ideology.  A mindset of “to each their own”.  That is one of the most ludicrous statements I think I have ever heard.

The idea that a good Christian is one that would never try to persuade another human of their faith is contradictory to even being a Christian in the first place.  The call of Christians is to tell others about Christ.  Even aside from religion, if one has an opinion or ideology or a viewpoint, that person should be led to try and get others to see things that way as well. 

Readers, we should all be Radicals in life.  A radical for what we believe in is the way to be.  What is the point of being Luke warm?  I am a radical and proud of that stance.  I believe with a strong passion and desire for things to be done the way I view them.  I want our country to elect a man to office that has my exact views.  That will never happen unless I’m President. 

There should be no such thing as a moderate.  We hear this idea that we need more moderates and that the extreme right and left are destroying our political democratic process.  Readers let me be the first to tell you that a moderate is someone who is unsure of themselves.  A moderate is someone who might not even have an opinion on an issue.  If you vote for President Obama, you are a radical who believes in what you believe.  And that is likely large government in our lives.  No moderate would vote for this President.  If you vote for Mitt Romney you are a radical in what you believe.  We should all be Radicals. 

There are people out there that believe that a person who believes that a child’s life begins before delivery in the hospital room or wherever it might be, and thus is against abortion is a Radical.  Well great.  That person should be a radical.  They should radically stand by that decision and belief.  But don’t act like you are a “moderate” person for believing that a woman should have a choice on what to do with that child or “her body”.  If you view it that way you are too a radical.  We are both radicals. 

I have arguments with people that believe they are right because they are in the middle.  That makes no sense to me.  No one in the middle will ever sway my opinion on anything.  If you do not have conviction of your beliefs and passion for it then you will never impact anyone.  I have passion for economic principals.  I believe that the Tea Party is radical.  Not in a bad way like the media and those on the left want you to believe.  They are radicals because they are passionate about what they stand for.  What they stand for is not extreme.  They believe that the size and scope of government has gotten way too big.  If that is radical than I’m a radical and proud of it. 

Strive to be radical readers.  Stop believing this nonsense that the far right and the far left is destroying the nation.  That we need common ground to fix this nation.  Ladies and Gentlemen, the lasting domestic legacies of former President George W. Bush that people hate are where he compromised.  He made everyone unhappy.  No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drug Program, McCain-Feingold, Immigration policy.  No one was happy because he camped out in the middle.  Even on tax issues he cut taxes sure.  But he did it in a “moderate” way.  He should have reformed the tax code instead.  He should have been a radical!! 

Readers stand firm.  Have debate.  Try to convince people of your sides.  And never argue against someone because they are a “Radical” and therefore their views are too extreme to be used.  Our founders were radical.  Karl Marx was a radical.  Adam Smith was a radical.  So what!  The question is not whether they are radical or not… it’s who is right? I am passionate that I am right.  And until I die I will try to convince others of my views and my ways.  I will do it respectfully but with passion and energy.  I am a radical and I am proud of it.  You should be too.   

Why I care more

How can we not have the FDA?  They check our food to make sure it is not contaminated.  They are to make sure that our drugs are safe for the marketplace to be sold to consumers.  Anyone for ending the FDA has to be evil as they apparently do not care about protecting a person's health just like us terrible guys do not care for women's health by arguing that I should not be forced to pay for her birth control.

But what if I said that I care too much for our health to be willing to keep the FDA around.  I mean lets look at some of the situations that are created with the FDA.

Can the government be sued for messing up when it comes to regulating and inspecting drugs?  Are government employees often fired for bring poor at their jobs?  The answer to each of these is a NO!  Because of this we get the worst of both worlds.  An FDA that is very slow to approve drugs on the market because there is no incentive for them to approve a drug that can help people unless its very very safe because they are not going to make a profit by approving the drug anyways.  But at the same time they will not be sued or fired often for approving a drug or not inspecting food thorough enough.

If the FDA was demolished, then a private insurance company would have to back up a drug company or food company and their product.  That insurance company is in it to make money so you very well better believe that they will make sure food is not contaminated.  They do not want lawsuits so they will get these things right way more often than wrong because the risk of being wrong is being sued in court, having profitable contracts voided, being fired as an employee, or going out of business altogether due to not doing a satisfactory job.

At the same time, there is an incentive to approve drugs to the market that would allow doctors and patients to make more decisions for themselves.  Insurance companies can say that this drug has a high risk and thus to insure it we charge much more.  But drug companies want to approve drugs because that will make the companies more profitable and make them more money as well insuring more drugs.  Thus good drugs that have side effects but can still be helpful despite those side effects will be approved more often than they are by the current FDA.

Many people want to act like Libertarians do not care about people because we want to get rid of rent control laws, minimum wage laws, regulations, the FDA, OSHA, and other things... But in reality... we want to get rid of many of those things because we care MORE than others.  Its like if I'm against some kind of government law or oversight than that means someone else cares and I do not.  But as a libertarian I look at the incentives of laws and the consequences and base my opinions and views there not based on the nation that we need protection from everything.  I care more so I put more time into studying the results than someone who supports simple government protection.

Unfortunately Libertarians are not winning the argument on this because so many of them want to focus on things like legalizing gay marriage, pot, getting our military behind our boarders only, and abortion "rights".  Thus they alienate so many and in fact more often than not the base that usually supports their economic ideas, the conservatives, and thus little is accomplished.  Hopefully younger conservative libertarians like myself will change this and can shrink government.

Gas Prices

Just a quick blog entry today...

Watching a news show that did a segment on gas prices sparked my interest in a new debate that is anti-oil companies and their effect on gas prices.

No industry is probably attacked in our "capitalistic" economy more than oil companies.  There is a new argument used to blame them for the high gas prices that has recently been in the news due to what is happening in California.

The new argument is that these companies are exporting too much gasoline to other countries that are buying it and thus lowering the local supply of gasoline here in America, and driving prices higher here in America.  Now that impact on the actual price here in America is very minimum anyways but lets go with this argument and entertain the thought.

What are we to do?  Tell "big oil" to not sell their gasoline to the best buyer willing to offer the best price.  Are we to expect oil companies to do the "patriotic" thing and turn down foreign buyers in order to supply more gasoline here in America?  The reality is that global demand is outpacing the global supply and this drives prices up.  If our oil companies were to do normal business they would sell this gasoline to the best buyer.  I would argue that if they chose to keep that gasoline here, the supply in other countries would go down, thus driving up global OIL prices and thus it would end up costing more to purchase oil and possibly offset the lowering price of gasoline if oil companies were to keep that gas here.

The other argument is that the government should get involved and force oil companies to keep that here or to somehow maybe restrict or tax those exports in a way that would punish oil companies for doing that.  But do you really expect other countries to not react?  If you believe that our wonderful government can restrict our products from going abroad and do this without other countries responded by restricting goods coming here then you are drinking the cool-aid.  This would of course hurt our economy in other areas where other countries pass restrictions against America.

I have blogged on a more long term solution in the past.  But this is a new argument that is designed to demagogue oil companies once again.  I just wanted to let you know... its not nearly that simple.  Read those past blogs to understand more about how to get gas prices down.

The Clinton Impact on the Election

The most moving and probably surprising speech of the RNC and DNC conventions was in my humble opinion the speech given by Ann Romney.  She talked about a side of her husband that very few people see.  It allowed voters the ability to relate to Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

The speech by Sandra Flucke at the DNC was depressing and embarrassing in my opinion.  Filled with lies and distortions and a passion not truly about women's health but a passion for tyranny that would force people to pay for birth control of women does not move me.  I understand that Birth Control is about more than just being able to have sexual intercourse and almost eliminate the possibility of pregnancy.  I understand that many ladies take it to help their hormones and even recently I have heard it can help acne.  There might be some validity to its effect on cancer.  But the idea that a private business should be forced to pay for birth control if they wish not to is just not mainstream.  its Radical.  I'm not against birth control and I'm sure I pay for it since I have health insurance through the state of TN.  But I have an issue with FORCING a private institute to do so.  As a Conservative Libertarian that just goes way too far.

But the speech that might have the most impact was entirely too long but delivered beautifully.  That was the speech given by Bill Clinton.  Clinton is a terrific speaker and can explain pretty complicated issues to regular Americans who do not spend a great portion of their life studying the issues he talks about.  But I want to point out something that very few people know about.  This information has been researched and recently I read an article on Forbes magazine that uses that research that gave me the idea to blog about it.

Clinton and others who support the President and want to increase taxes on the "rich" do so out of a desire for "fairness" and to help pay off the debt.  I have mentioned many times that increased taxes on the rich will make a minimum impact on the actual debt which is a spending issue.  I have also spoken on the "fairness" issue and how the rich already pay most all the federal income taxes in this country.  But the argument that many use against raising taxes is that it can hurt the economy.  Raising taxes will slow growth.  That argument, which I make daily, is often argued against by referencing the successful economic times under the most popular living president, President Bill Clinton.  But what is interesting is that the understanding of what happened under Clinton is so often misunderstood.

No doubt the 90's were a prosperous time in America.  No doubt Clinton did some good things while President.  And I would like to have him back as compared to the current president.  But lets look at the facts:

"The 1993 Clinton tax increase raised the top two income tax rates to 36% and 39.6%, with the top rate hitting joint returns with incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 in 2012 dollars).  In addition, it removed the cap on the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, raised the corporate tax rate to 35% from 34%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security benefits, and imposed a 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes." -Forbes

These taxes though were met with a 1994 election that brought a major change to congress with the Republicans gaining control under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. I'ms sure there were other circumstances that led to this but even Clinton apparently has said he felt that he increased taxes too much.  .

During the first four years of Clinton's presidency the economy grew but not at an alarming impressive rate.  people were being employed at about 2 million a year but wages were growing very slowly as well and even with inflation in check, GDP was growing at about 3%.  Not real strong considering we had just left a recession.  But these numbers are not bad and we would enjoy them now.  But here is the interesting part.

In 1995 Clinton changed his view on taxes apparently.  Welfare reform took place, We reduced tariffs and other barriers to free trade with NAFTA.  In 1997 Capital Gain taxes were lowered by 8 percent.  He also exempted more people from the, in my opinion immoral, death tax.  Government spending was slowed.  And a strong dollar policy kept inflation low, which in essence is like a tax break in that we have more money left to spend in other areas.  What were the results:

GDP increased by a full percentage point to over 4% a year between 1996 and 2000.  Unemployment fell to 4%.  Real wages increased much faster, the S&P increased by 78%, Revenues to the federal government increased.

The point here is that there was significant prosperity under the Clinton Administration.  But most of that prosperity came later in his tenure when his policies more favored that of the congress.  Those policies are far different than President Obama's.  It is impossible to compare the two eras.  Understand that a technological boom and other things that came together in the 90's would have led to economic growth almost no matter what.  That is why I do not compare the times very often.  But given that former President Bill Clinton's speech in which be bragged about what he did, although much of that was forced by congress, will likely have a large impact on a large segment of the population, I wanted to mention this to a few voters... those of you who read my blog.

Thanks,

Raby

Top Down Economic Policies

It amazes me how confused people get when discussing economics.  I would not be amazed if they were confused as to how the elasticity of demand is one of the most important things for companies to understand when deciding the marginal product they want to supply.  That's confusing and I do not know all that goes into that.  But understanding the media frenzy that is covering this so called "top down" economic approach should be much easier.

The Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, I believe wants to reduce all marginal tax rates by roughly 20%.  He also wants to eliminate enough loop holes and cut spending enough to make this change deficit neutral.  Eliminating loop holes meaning the deductions that many companies take advantage of in order to get around paying taxes.

Obviously since the rich and upper class citizens pay the most taxes and the highest marginal tax rates already, they will receive the largest tax cut.  When the poorest 50% of Americans pay around 3% of the taxes, how can you give that group a comparable tax cut anyways?  The fact is when it comes to Federal Income Taxes, the rich pay the most of the taxes by far.  Thus they will receive the largest tax cut.  That should be simple to understand.

Furthermore, cutting taxes for those making over $250,000 a yr in income/profit will cut taxes for the most important among us.  That is the larger of the "small businesses" in our society.  These companies are responsible for most of the jobs that are lost or created in our nation.  These companies usually file their taxes under individual taxed income and thus to reduce their taxes you have to cut taxes on the very rich.  Why do this?  If you cut taxes on people who create jobs and produce goods, they will be willing to produce more and thus hire more workers.  It allows them to invest more money to expand their business which is what we need right now with unemployment at 8.2% and the real unemployment being much higher than that when you calculate those who have stopped looking for a job because of discouragement or have taken a part time job for the moment.

The purpose of taxation is to raise money for the government to provide services.  The best way to do this is by raising money without impeding the economy.  That is what Mitt Romney wants to do.  Or at least that is what he says.  Forget about politicians for a moment.  That is what I and other people who understand economics wants.

Those who are against the "top down" approach are people who do not see taxation this way.  They see taxation as a way to more equally redistribute wealth.  To take from those who are the richest and most successful to help those less fortunate.  That sounds good even if it is immoral from a liberty standpoint.  But even if you think its benefits outweigh the costs when it comes to the morality argument, how about the economic argument?  If you tax the rich and the businesses who hire people and the economy continues to slowly progress or even go back into another recession, millions of more people will be negatively affected for many more years than would have benefited short term by the benefits of receiving government assistance through higher taxation.

I for one want to use taxation the way it needs to be.  Raise money for the federal government to do what the Constitution allows it to do while not impeding the economy from being a well oiled wealth creating machine!

Where did the time go part II

Personally I am doing really well right now.  I have recently lost some weight and would like to continue this. Such an important part of my life.  The motivation is coming from all over the place.  But most importantly I want to get or stay healthy.

I am still single but I go out and date I guess you could say.  This might be one of the motivating factors of me wanting to lose weight.  I have been seeing some people more regularly but nothing serious.  They are all more attractive than me so maybe that is why I need to lose more weight... haha

As a strong big tough guy I'd like to say I'm always strong but the truth is I have many weaknesses.  I live alone now and often get lonely.  Not that depressed lonely but I have almost always lived with someone.  I moved out of home as a Freshmen in college playing a little baseball and have not moved back home but for one year since.  But I have always lived with my future best man and younger brother or one of my best friends.  So this is different.  Humans are designed to be social.  And I'm a very social person.  Nothing wrong with admitting when you get lonely from time to time.

I deal with anxiety sometimes.  That is embarrassing to admit.  I really have little to get anxious about.  I have a good life as it is right now.  I have a good job and I'm doing what I love.  I am in good health.  But I worry about that.  I have never been one to get sick hardly ever in fact and have had very very little health issues in the past.  But I still worry about that from time to time and that is probably one of the motivating factors with wanting to get into shape.

Most importantly is someone's spiritual life.  I can tell you right now that I do not stack up to my family.  I have two of the most God loving brothers in the world.  That is not a joke.  I have another brother that is married and seems to have kind of rededicated himself spiritually and a sister that has had life change recently and is also on fire for Christ.  My parents are as well and possible motivated by recent changes in our lives attending one of the greatest churches in east Tennessee at Northstar Church.

I personally am battling things and need to be better.  Prayer is needed.  I have been a Sunday Christian for a while now.  Don't get me wrong I still witness some and talk about Christ.  But I do not live it like I use to. I need to work on that as much as anything in life.

My church and family are awesome.  Personally I'm in such a great position in life.  My lifestyle has changed recently with exercise and eating right and trying to get in the scripture.  I have a long ways to go.  I guess until I die I will have to work on it.

I love America as well and will continue to blog and talk about politics and economics in our society.  Which is what I will begin doing once again with my next blog entry.

Where did the time go?

By my account it has been since February that I have blogged.  I apologize to those of you that occasionally read my blog for political commentary and other things.  I am ashamed that I have not prioritized this as much as I should have.  I will most likely bring some more political commentary with an emphasis on the economics of some current events and the upcoming presidential election in the near future.  But today lets get caught back up.

My life has changed a lot since I last blogged.  That has been like a 1/2 year so that is to go expected.  I still teach at Stone Memorial High School and love it.  Some things have changed.

I no longer teach Economics! Not happy about that but there is no economics offered at my school now.  I do not like nor agree with that decision.  I won't bore you with why it has been dropped.  Instead i am teaching U.S. History.  Not just any history but the Advanced Placement and Honors History courses.  Kind of excited about this considering I get the brightest of students.  But doing AP things is a little nerve wracking.  In fact doing this, golf, basketball, and baseball as well as PA responsibilities will keep me busy the next 10 months I'm sure.

I no longer coach girls basketball.  I will miss those girls.  I think from a Junior Varsity/Freshmen standpoint we have two of the most if not the most successful seasons ever at SMHS.  I had a small part in that but the players of course had the largest impact there.  My coaching style was not always appreciated by all.  That is to be expected in high school.  Coaching girls is also different.  I'm sure I will blog about this alone in the future about why I treat girls and guys very much the same on the court and in the classroom.  For the most part, I feel that I was appreciated and well liked by most all the girls and parents.  

After going to the Semi-finals in the TSSAA state tournament, the head coaching position opened up this past off-season and I applied for it.  I did not get the head coaching position.  Why? Well probably a lack of support from some.  I'm not too upset about it now but those reasons are the human reasons that "I" see.  But as a human "I" am very limited as to what I can see.  My relationship with God needs much work but I know he still guides me and loves me and the reason I did not get it is simple... God did not want that for me.

That is hard to accept because a head coach is what I want to be.  But to be honest I'm much better off now.  I am Neil Capps' assistant with the boy's basketball team.  Coach Capps has as much integrity as anyone in Crossville in my opinion.  In the summer that I worked with them I have changed the way I would have ran a practice prob by nearly 20%.  That means I have learned a ton in such a short time.  I'm learning from him and he learned from one of the best college coaches around and one of the best high school coaches around in Coach Buck.  I am now better prepared to be a head coach by far just a few months after I would cry and whine about not getting the girls head job.  How foolish huh?  I still have some disappointment about it but I am very much at peace in what I'm doing now.

For the record.. the guy they hired... Coach Walker... was an excellent choice.  I'd say people in authority would be impressed with the way me and him are already becoming good friends.  Some might have feared that I would have butt heads with whoever they brought in.  That is just part of my job though and stupid anyways.  Why in the world would I hold anything against the new coach?  There is nothing to be impressed with there.  People need to be professional in their lives and not be excited when someone does what they are suppose to do.  We have a great relationship and is fun to work with.  I hope he does well.

I'll cover more personal/spiritual things in my next blog which I plan to post sooner than the next half year.