Radio Free JoJo

Just a quick note to warn you and to learn from my mistake last year. I always e-file my federal return, but mail my state and local returns. Well, because of e-filing and the general lack of Tax Day being an event, the Post Office no longer postmarks returns up until midnight. You have to get the returns in before their last pickup or else you will have to use an automated postage machine. Last year, there was a line an hour plus long at the Main facility on E. 38th because the machine transaction takes a while for each piece of postage, and if you are mailing three returns, you can be there a good five minutes. Multiply that by dozens of Erie procrastinators and you’ve got a problem.
Consider 6:00 at the main facility as T-hour, not midnight, ok?

An Air Force One fly-over viewing the devastation. The lack of a serious response. A shameless defense of his inept subordinate.

Sounds like the lowest point of President Bush’s tenure, when Hurricane Katrina left the Gulf and New Orleans in shambles. But it also describes President Obama’s lack of response to the true core of this economic crisis which has left the entire globe in fiscal agony, that being a solution for the banks and their bad assets.

Instead of flying to New York to do the hard work necessary to make headway on the global credit and financial meltdown, the President does a 180, flying to beautiful Downtown Burbank on the Left Coast to crack jokes with Jay Leno. While he’s there comparing his bowling talents to athletes in the Special Olympics, he does a “you’re doing a great job, Brownie” about his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

I know that I’m supposed to have a tingle down my leg just thinking about the President, and any negative comments about Mr. Obama puts me in the dog house with many of my friends and family, but I fear that he is being influenced by the most cynical of political operatives and party hacks. The troika of Emmanuel, Reid, and Pelosi are taking advantage of an American public in real pain to enact the most liberal tax and spend fantasies conjured up over the last forty years.

I don’t want to make too much of it, but to me the Leno appearance indicates a lack of maturity and seriousness; like the rock star persona has gone to his head. What was he trying to accomplish with his performance on the Tonight Show other than yuking it up with Jay? Support for the stimulus package which was rammed through Congress in 18 hours and is now law? Firing up the faithful in their class envy of tone-deaf Wall Street bankers?

It might be that it’s just more fun. Perhaps the President is finding that governing takes more than filling stadia with quivering fans. It means diving into the details and compromise and conviction. And painful in its own right. Mr. President, time to get serious.

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. ~Proverbs 22:7 (NIV)

This global crisis was created by the overleveraging of every sector of our economy. From individuals and families, to small businesses and retailers, to large corporations, financial institutions and governments, everyone going into this crash had way too much debt on their books. I was dumbfounded when I heard that defunct Lehman Bros. had only $1 in cash for every $30 dollars they “invested,” which meant that their equity would be depleted with a loss of just 4%.

The prevalence of easy credit can be blamed for the housing bubble that when it burst brought us to a breaking point. In the markets that were greatly affected, some homeowners were taking out exotic interest-only loans, initially-low adjustable-rate mortgages, as well as taking loans that had debt-to-income ratios over 50%, meaning 1 of every 2 dollars was going to pay for the house and other debt. It got out of control.

All of this credit has made everything we buy cost more than maybe it should be. It makes me wonder what a car would cost if only a three or five-year loan was available rather than a seven-year loan. Certainly if the whole cycle of using home equity to pay down credit cards, just to rack them up again needed to stop.

So it is time for deleveraging. This is the kind of hard medicine that money advisors like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman have been prescribing for years now. The standard outcome is no debt and six to eight months of living expenses liquid in the bank, then start working on the retirement fund.

For small business that means staying off of the line of credit to make payroll, but rather stash cash away to be your own banker in hard times. Governments have to watch costs most closely and brace themselves for lower tax revenue until we turn this thing around.

As I write this, the Dow average is at a near 12-year low, and I’m hoping that we’ve seen or are at least getting close to a bottom. It seems that the doom and gloom advanced by the press is getting to be a bit overstated. I mean, when you have companies that really make things like GE getting hammered to near penny stock status, you start thinking that we may be oversold.

Hopefully, after the pain of lower activity brought on by correcting our overindulgence, we can rebuild our economy on honesty, and intelligent use of credit. I’m not saying that we follow the fiscal policy of It’s A Wonderful Life’s Mr. Potter, who would rather keep the residents of Bedford Falls in his rented slums. But prudent and responsible use of credit could put us back on a strong footing for years to come.

Cue R.E.M.

The flywheel that is the massive societal shift is starting to get some momentum. Ignited by the excesses of unbridled corporate greed, untenable bubbles in every market from dot-com to housing to energy, and tin ears on the right who became corrupt as the government ballooned and scandals abound, the pendulum of change toward progressivism is in full throttle.

In a matter of hours since Barack Obama took the “oaf” of office, the government is poised to take over huge portions of our national economy and society. Not only that, we are reaching further and further into each other’s business. We all have something to say to that executive who refurnishes his office, or the corporation who was taking delivery on a jet it ordered two years ago. We even have created a climate where the well-heeled on Rodeo Drive have to hide their five-figure purchases in plain white shopping bags.

We’re not thinking about all of the normal people it took to create that fine furniture or Gulfstream or Coach bag. We are building the “pain society” and whether you like it or not, we are all going to feel it together.
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This day before Thanksgiving has always been one of excitement and fun. And for a period of eight years, Thanksgiving was this huge holiday for me which gives me great memories.

The story starts right after college when my high school buddy Joe took a job in Florida, taking his new bride, my high school buddy Jackie with him. They had their first child about a year later and invited me and a few of our other high school buddies to join them for Thanksgiving. I remember that first trip quite well because it was only the second time I had been on a plane, and I ended getting stuck in Cincinnati for several hours because of a mechanical breakdown. That’s back in the day when they would give you a voucher for a hotel room and meal vouchers. I ended getting rerouted to Atlanta where I met up with some of my other buddies who were on their way to the same get-together.

On that trip we all helped to make the turkey dinner, took care of the new baby, played games, drove to the beach, swimming in November, and took my first trip to Disney World, living a kid’s dream at 23. With that get-together we set a precedent that would follow our group of friends for many years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Over these past several months as I’ve studied the candidates’ positions and record, I am giving strong support to John McCain and Sarah Palin for President and Vice President. Here’s why:

• McCain is the pro-life candidate. He has a voting record that supports unborn babies
• McCain will nominate constructionist justices committed to upholding the Constitution to the Supreme Court
• McCain will provide conservative balance to the agenda of the far-left leaning Democrat Congressional leadership of Pelosi and Reid
• McCain is a war hero and has solid credentials for national defense and foreign affairs
• McCain will finish the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in victory, not retreat and defeat
• McCain is a strong fiscal conservative and promises to curb spending and balance the budget in five years
• Often to my chagrin, McCain has a record of crossing the aisle and working with Democrats on issues of importance; he is an independent leader
• Palin embodies the achievement of today’s woman; raising five children while working and keeping what’s important, family and faith, foremost

I don’t have to run down McCain’s opponent, Barack Obama, to present McCain’s credentials. The list is long; McCain’s love and sacrifice for country is unquestioned.

In the end, forget about the crooked pollsters, the demoralizing pundits, and the massive amounts of money. Look at the man, what he’s done, what he believes in, and what he’s proven he can do.

John McCain deserves our vote.