Congress | Ain't Complicated

Bailout Arrows

Whether or not you’re for the huge bailout that went into law yesterday, I suppose you should know this:

An Oregon arrow maker suffers slings of outrage

An Oregon company selling a 30-cent shaft for children’s arrows became a bull’s-eye for critics of congressional pork nationwide Friday, when lawmakers eliminated an arcane tax as part of their $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.

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The critics gathered force, and the tiny company based in southern Oregon’s Myrtle Point found itself the surprising flash point for public venting against a bailout package with costs too vast for most citizens to grasp.

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As of Friday, Dishion received more than 100 phone calls, 40 e-mails and hate mail from people across the country, not to mention phone calls from the BBC and mentions on the Bill O’Reilly talk show.

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The flap reveals the misinformation circulating about what the 43-cent tax repeal is really about, according to Jay McAninch, president of the Archery Trade Association.

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The tax became a problem for Rose City and a handful of other companies in 2004, when lawmakers, while trying to correct another problem with the arrow tax, changed a 12 percent tax on all arrows to a flat 43-cent tax on arrow shafts. The tax, which got tacked on to every arrow shaft, goes to fund educational programs put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

[…]

Rose City Archery’s wooden arrow shafts sell for 30 cents.

Wait a minute. How does that work?

A 43-cent tax on a 30-cent shaft? 😯

“The 43-cent tax took a huge toll on its youth archery business” the above article goes on to say.

No kidding.

Breaking: Bailout Blowout

OK, OK. I don’t have time for this.

But here’s a bit to acknowledge that this crisis thing is big stuff for this country (and for the world, no doubt).

House defeats financial industry bailout bill

The House has defeated the $700 billion bail-out legislation for the financial industry.

More than enough members of the House had cast votes to defeat the Bush administration-pushed bill, but the vote was held open for a while, apparently as efforts were under way to persuade people to change their vote.

On Wall Street, stocks plummeted as investors followed the developments in Congress.

I’m surprised they defeated it.

So it’s “the Bush administration-pushed bill” — never mind Pelosi-pushed, Reed-pushed, Franks-pushed, etcetera-pushed. 🙄

But they held the vote open?! I guess I’d forgotten they could do that while they tried to ~~armtwist and/or threaten and/or entice~~ persuade people to change their votes. Wow! 😯

And stocks plummeted. By more than 700 points at one point. But “only” 514 as I type.

I Don’t Want To Alarm You

I’m no banking expert. Or anything remotely related to one. Period.

I don’t know what to make of the current crisis in the finance system.

I don’t even know if I’m using the right lingo.

But here’s something I just read:

Dominoes: Large Euro, US Banks On The Brink

We are witnessing a failure in government. Our Congress cannot work together to provide an immediate fix to a problem it created in the first place: forcing the American financial sector to extend mortgages to those who were high risk borrowers in order to champion to the American people that more minorities own homes than ever. That worked well under a booming economy. But when the natural cycle of economics turned downward, fear dismissed became reality unavoidable. The house of cards came tumbling down.

And even still, amid all the haggling and fighting going on in Congress over how to shore up the financial cash crisis, not a word is mentioned about changing the counter-intuitive practices forced upon mortgage lenders in the first place. In this respect, it’s not unlike how Congress and the White House chose to address illegal immigration: by trying to deal with those already here first rather than initially addressing the cause: the influx of illegals that continues to flow unabated.

Make no mistake, if we wake to Black Monday this week, the responsibility lies squarely upon Congress and the electorate which has put them there, not our banks. Our banks’ hands were forced by mandates from Washington, not their boardrooms.

And here we are. With a Congress so polarized that they are incapable of working together.

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America does not seem nearly as polarized as its elected representation. But perhaps in less than one full week, it really won’t matter but for hindsight and lessons going forward. Hard, painful, demanding lessons.

I don’t have time to say more, though there’s plenty I could say.

For now, I remind you about Roger Hertzler’s article I posted here.

Two Exciting Investment Opportunities

I’m sure that by now most of you have heard of the financial meltdown being faced by the United States economy. It all started with the banking system starting to tremble. No, wait, it all started with people not being able to pay back all the money they had borrowed from the banks. Actually, I think it all started with real estate prices going down. Well, come to think of it, it really started before that, back when real estate prices went up. Or I guess it started before that, back when the banks decided to loan money to anybody who was willing to borrow money, which is what helped make the land prices go up.

Anyway, it started somewhere, sometime. And by all appearances, getting it started was a lot simpler than getting it stopped is going to be. You see, just this evening President Bush got on the radio, TV, and just about everything else he could get on and told Americans in general that there is going to be a widespread financial disaster. In other words, the average person would lose his house, his job, his retirement, his savings, his insurance, his sanity, and perhaps an arm and a leg. Unless, of course, we allow the government to step in and bail us out. Bail us out, mind you, to the tune of seven hundred billion dollars. For those of you who don’t know how much money that is, it is a 7 with a whole wagon load of zeros.

Anyway, in the midst of a world full of financial turmoil and uncertainty, I thought you would all be excited about a couple of wonderful investment opportunities I recently learned about. These are both guaranteed not to lose any of their value, and will not be affected by moth, rust, thieves, or financial market melt-downs. You have no need to fear when you invest in these securities, because they are backed by a pool of wealth far in excess of a measly 700 billion greenbacks. Read it all

At Work: For the People

Here’s “proof” that some CongressFolks are still doing stuff:

Brand new push in Congress to prevent Shariah invasion

Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that seeks to prevent Islam’s radical Shariah law from gaining a foothold in the U.S. legal system, as it has in other countries.

Tancredo introduced HR 6975, the Jihad Prevention Act, last week. If made into law, the bill would allow American authorities to prevent advocates of Shariah law from entering the country, revoke the visa of any foreigners that did champion Shariah law and revoke naturalization for citizens that seek to implement Shariah law in the U.S.

The radical form of Islam’s Shariah religious law includes several statutes often objectionable to Western minds, including stoning for adulterous women, amputation for thieves and the death sentence for converting from Islam.

That one has no chance of becoming law.

And the chances for this one are somewhat better, though not by much:

Another Bright Idea

An act sponsored by 25 representatives asking the government to reconsider its ban on incandescent light bulbs has been stalled in committee – and the leading sponsor is faulting Democratic leadership.

The Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act highlights growing concerns over the safety and environmental impact of compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs. Before the sale of incandescent bulbs is banned, the representatives are asking the comptroller general to prove replacement with CFLs will be cost-effective, reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent in the United States by 2025 and that the bulbs will not pose a health risk to the general public.

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As WND reported, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law in December, phasing out the use of traditional, incandescent light bulbs in favor of CFLs beginning in 2012 and culminating in a ban on incandescent bulbs in 2014.

Concerns about mercury in the bulbs and mercury vapor released when a CFL is broken led Bachmann and a group of legislators in the House to second-guess the government’s choice.

Inflating vs Drilling

I meant to post this yesterday, but I’ve been too busy with Anabaptist Bookstore and Reaching Out Magazine:

Obama energy policy: ‘Inflate your tires’

"There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy," Obama said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You'd actually save just as much!"

This is stunning.

No wonder Congress shut down yesterday for their five-week break without doing whatever it was they were supposed to do about the “energy crisis.”

They just inflated their tires and away they went, saving oil so no more drilling would have to be done.

Somehow, that sounds like a perpetual motion machine.

PS: What if Dan Quayle had said that?

Then Tax Abortions Also!

Taxes trigger big drop in U.S. smoking

Higher state taxes on smoking are producing sharp declines in tobacco consumption in the United States, just as Congress considers a huge federal cigarette tax hike, USA Today reported in its Friday editions.

The newspaper, conducting its own analysis of taxation and consumption figures, said the degree of decline in smoking appears to be tied directly to the size of the tax increase.

We know taxing smokes isn’t about legislating morality. So taxing abortion wouldn’t be either.

We know that consistency demands that “pro-choicers” should oppose someone deciding to smoke just as much as they should oppose someone deciding to have an abortion.

And what would be done with the money generated by state and federal taxes on abortions?

Well, I take you back to the story for my answer:

The Senate last week approved a $35 billion tobacco tax increase as a way to pay for expanded government health care for children. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has proposed its own plan to provide health care to children through higher tobacco taxes

Abortion taxes for the children!

Makes sense to me.