Logical Republican » The Economy

Please Mr. President Raise My Taxes

Rich — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:57:18 +0000

Please, Mr. President, raise my taxes so you don’t have to cut entitlements, pensions or waste.

Please raise my taxes so we can continue to send aid checks to countries that hate us.

Please raise my taxes so we can create new government agencies that give jobs and pensions to people who accomplish nothing.

Please raise my taxes so we can pay college tuition for illegal immigrants.

Please raise my taxes so we can pay for medical expenses of family members of non-citizens who can sponsor their parents even though they only hold a green card.

Please raise my taxes so we can continue paying welfare to people who have cashed checks for decades without ever looking for a job.

Please raise my taxes so we can cover growing pension payments for every government aide that has graced the land of the free and home of the brave.

Please raise my taxes so we subsidize corn farmers so we can make ethanol. Never mind that it costs $5.00 per gallon to produce and sells for $3.00.

Please raise my taxes so we can fund another Solyndra.

Doug Edwards, a former Google tech-millionaire, and Obama supporter was apparently OK’d to get up and ask Mr. Obama to raise his taxes, while speaking at a townhall meeting at LinkedIn.com. Since raising taxes has been one of Obama’s goals since he has been in office, and since Edwards has donated large sums of money to Democratic causes in the past, it would not be surprising if he approached the Obama team to pre-qualify the question knowing full well the sound-bite press coverage it would get.

Again, instead of raising taxes for anyone, let’s cut the fat, and let’s start with pensions. I challenge a politician, particularly a Republican politician to announce for the record they will forgo their pension once retired and then have them challenge others and see if it gains any traction.

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Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Rich — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:13:19 +0000

An interesting tidbit that I just came across: 29-percent of new entrepreneurs in the United States are immigrants.

Truly the land of opportunity, and I see it all day and every day in Silicon Valley. Why is it that other parts of the country cannot get on the bandwagon instead of waiting for Obama-care to take care of them with temp jobs that lead nowhere?

In Silicon Valley we aren’t afraid of failure; it’s a badge of valor – it means you tried. Take your lumps and go for another. Companies fail all the time out here, and there are layoffs as well. Guess where so many of the new brilliant ideas ferment – yes, from laid-off tech geeks.

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Grocery Store Plastic Bag Ban

Rich — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 04:23:46 +0000

Politicians have nothing else to do. Never mind the budget overruns, out of whack pensions for public employees or transit systems that are terminally broken. None of these matter as much as stopping me from having my milk put into a bag made from plastic at the grocery store. It started in San Francisco, likely the most dysfunctional city in America, and has filtered south to San Jose, a city where bootleg DVDs and handbags can be found in a dozen ethnic shopping malls around town without a second glance from city hall.

Years ago stores phased out paper bags because they killed trees and plastic was cheaper. Now plastic is evil and paper is coming back, or to some stores, such as Ikea, bags have been eliminated, period. We are supposed to bring a re-usable bags. A bag I am supposed to buy.

Never mind the inconvenience or how I will get 4 gallons of milk upstairs from the garage, plus my groceries. Never mind the cans of green beans rolling around my trunk. Never mind that I now have to buy trash bags – plastic trash bags. Today, I reuse these bags for garbage and recycling, but that is probably evil, too.

grocery-store-plastic-bags-banned

The micro-management of our elected politicians is getting more and more bizarre, and we as a population seem to tolerate this behavior. The silent majority needs to take a stand to the so-called “correct left” and say enough is enough: do something useful like eliminating all government pensions for those who don’t teach our children or risk their life on our behalf so we can stop living in a deficit world.

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Private Vaults To Protect Your Assets

Rich — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:22:17 +0000

After I cash my paycheck, that money should be mine. Taxes have been deducted and if I choose to spend that money on a stereo, invest in a penny stock or change everything into $5.00 dollar bills and fill up a mattress, that should be my prerogative.

Of course, this isn’t the case. Interest on my bank account is added to my yearly tax return, any money I earn from selling a stock is taxable income. The government wants to know pretty much what you have and where you put it, which to me, feels like an invasion of privacy.

Flipping through a magazine, I came across an advertisement for private vaults. The ad captured me, “….we won’t ask your name or anything about you.” They use an iris scan, and prices start at $250.00 for a small box, annually. The company, Private Vaults, is located in Las Vegas, and while they have a pretty cheesy looking website, I love the concept.

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California Train to Nowhere is Not a Solution

Rich — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 21:41:07 +0000

As we all celebrate Christmas and the upcoming New Year, we are a country that refuses to look itself in the mirror. Politicians and labor leaders harp on the fact there are fewer and fewer jobs in manufacturing and other blue-collar occupations, and put together all kinds of works projects to create temporary jobs that will last for a few months or years but don ‘t solve the big problem of long-term employment.

California has decided to build the “Train to Nowhere,” or as is it now called, “The Train to Bakersfield.” This project is hailed by the liberals as a job-creator and a method to travel throughout the state on a high-speed rail system. With $4 Billion on federal stimulus money, tracks are being laid on a 65-mile route starting in a town named Corcoran.

Corcoran, California is a town of 25,000 and is probably most famous as the place where Robert Downey Jr. was incarcerated.

Again, short-term solutions to long-term problems.

A train. A manufacturing plant. A construction project.

None of these are solutions, as once the project is done, the workers are all looking for the next government-funded gig. America has to realize that we never will be a manufacturing country to the magnitude we once were. We have evolved. Specialty manufacturing, yes, but able to compete with countries that have cheap, non-union labor, no way. Allen Edmonds shoes in Wisconsin and John Deere, Mack Trucks and Boeing jets.

Allen-Edmonds-Shows-made-in-wisconsin

It’s all about technology and companies that can scale without the need to have incremental head-count increases. Groupon‘s costs do not increase 10-fold when their web traffic increases the same amount. It costs no more to to complete 1o transactions than it does 5 transactions. In other words, it is not labor intensive. And they are worth $6 Billion.

So how do we solve the technology gap? How to we get the people who want to work and now pawns of the liberal programs involved? The days of the UAW having 100,000 people in a town building transmissions are done. We need to find the niche markets that the global market needs and demands Made in the USA on the product.

It takes one brilliant idea to transform a town or region. One visionary to create a widget that everyone needs. One amazing person to rejuvenate all the pizza parlors and beauty salons and grocery stores. It’s not a train line or a highway project. Let’s encourage our brightest and best to create, design and build here and the rest will take care of itself.

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Silicon Valley Start-Up Companies Thrive Without Unions

Rich — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 04:31:05 +0000

The State of California is broke. Santa Clara County is broke, and so is the City of San Jose. Most cities and counties in California have nothing in their coffers, and that can be said for most cities and counties regardless of their state. We all know the reason(s) and we all know that next to nothing can be done, since most politicians bow to the unions that get them elected. A few, like San Jose mayor, Chuck Reed, have the guts to say enough is enough, and threaten the unions that fill city hall with pay cuts or layoffs.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed Fought City Hall Unions

Despite this mess that we all live in, start up companies all around us are thriving. It’s not Google or eBay that I am talking about, but new companies that are making huge splashes, such as Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and FourSquare. These companies, if they were children would be in Elementary School, but are taking the Internet by storm.

Facebook is now the 2nd most trafficked website in the world, according to Alexa.com, and Twitter helped Barack Obama “tweet” his way into the White House.

These companies all hire bunches of really smart engineers and developers to create cool concepts and interfaces. They work crazy hours and get gobs of low-priced stock options that may or may not ever pay off. It’s a gamble, certainly, but with so many companies having hit the proverbial jackpot of an IPO or an acquisition, the chance of becoming stupid-rich is pretty compelling.

Did I mention that none of these jobs are unionized, and none of these people have a pension? There is no shop steward and no hall meetings and dues to pay. Nope. These really smart engineers and developers are paid based on their level of experience and what they produce. If they are no good, they don’t get the job in the first place, and if they suck after they get hired, they will be let go. If the company folds, which so many start-ups do, they lose their job and need to look for the next opportunity. There is no place to hide.

And this is why Silicon Valley has created 95% of the technology we use in our daily life, union-free. If you disagree with this statement, just think what brought you to this page in the first place and read through this list of companies located within a 50-mile radius of where I currently sit: Apple, Adobe, Intel, AMD, HP, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Oracle, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Friendster, HiFive, Cisco, Symantec, Tivo, Netflix, Seagate, NVIDIA, Tesla, and hundreds more.

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Ike’s Place Great Sandwiches Terrorizing The Neighborhood

Rich — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:08:31 +0000

Only in San Francisco a company can become successful and then get sued by its neighbors for being too successful and get evicted by their landlord.

Ike’s Place, a deli which is located in the heavily gay Castro District is a Yelp.com darling. They have out-of-this-world ratings and comments, and allegedly put together some of the greatest sandwiches this side of the memory of Little Woman on 29th and Clement.

After the general public started raving about Ike’s on Yelp, the lines started and people who wouldn’t normally venture to that part of town were taking up parking spots and, heaven forbid, spending money. The tenants in the upstairs units complained about the increased traffic, and the local business decided to call their lawyers and sue Ike.

Ike’s lease is supposed to run until 2018, but the landlord wants him out on his ear so he can find a less successful tenant. His neighboring business want him out so they have less foot traffic of people they could potentially monetize. Ike’s neighbors accuse of him of “terrorizing the neighborhood.”

The good part is that it’s nearly impossible to evict anyone in San Francisco, the really stupid part is that his neighbors, instead of opening a lemonade stand and profiting from the traffic, they decide to litigate. I say we begin a boycott on his neighbors; your thoughts?!

Ike's Place Deli in San Francisco Castro District is being evicted

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Republican Radio Shows Have Highest Ratings

Rich — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:48:18 +0000

I am sure the Democrats will have a testy or humorous comeback to this, but I just read an article in a recent edition of Forbes Magazine that the three highest rated radio talk-shows in America are Rush Limbaugh 15.3 million weekly listeners, Sean Hannity with 14.3 million and Glenn Beck, with 9 million.

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Meg Whitman Fights Claims of Racism and Job Outsourcing

Rich — Mon, 10 May 2010 20:55:12 +0000

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay is running for governor of California, we all know this. We also know that eBay grew leaps and bounds under her watch, and made her and many eBay employees and investors phenomenally wealthy.

The fact that people from around the world, from all walks of life and all political slants utilize the eBay platform to earn a living, seems be lost on Democrats who would elect a French poodle over any Republican, regardless of their pedigree.

When opponents cannot come up with any real beef against a candidate they grasp for straws, so let’s toss the racism card at Meg, since after all, she wants to control illegal immigration from Mexico. A perennial candidate for office, Stewart Alexander, makes these “Meg Whitman is a racist” claims for no other reason than because he can. He claims, and I quote, “Whitman’s position is racist and discriminates against Mexican-Americans.”

Immigration Control Benefits Mexican-Americans

Huh? If anything, it helps Mexican-Americans in the view of non Mexican-Americans in that there won’t be a question if they are here “legally” or if they are undocumented.

There is a huge difference between immigrating legally and going through the proper procedures versus hopping a fence and avoiding border patrols.

This leads me to a man named Osama Bedier. Osama, who?! Osama Bedier is the Vice President of New Ventures at the eBay subsidiary, PayPal.com.

Osama-Bedier-VP of PayPal-eBay

Would a woman hire a man named Osama if she were a xenophobe? Or did she hire Mr. Bedier because he was the best candidate? That is something few democrats grasp, Silicon Valley and start-up companies work on merit – if you are great, you are greatly rewarded. If you are mediocre or lazy, you’re gone. There are no unions here.

Another jab at Whitman has been that since she is pro-business, she will outsource all jobs to a far-away land, like India, and all the “real” jobs will vanish. Something to chomp on here – ex-eBay and PayPal employees have spawned companies such as YouTube.com. LinkedIn.com, Yelp.com, and Slide.com to name just a portion of the long list. In other words, she hired really smart people who left to start new companies that also hire really smart people and create more jobs.

Meg Whitman will likely become California’s next governor, despite taunts and jabs from democrats that have no muscle behind them.

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Omni Berkshire Hotel in New York, Unions and the Mafia

Rich — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:40:18 +0000

Is organized crime involved with union affairs in New York City? Is the mob involved with their daily operations, work stoppages and protests?

I was in Manhattan last week, and while on my way to a meeting there was a big commotion with banging drums and a group chanting, “union…union…” across the street from the Omni Berkshire Hotel on 52nd and Madison. There was a 10-foot tall inflatable rat placed in the street directly in front of the hotel’s main entrance to imply the hotel’s management is rodent-like in their dealings with their particular union.

Omni Berkshire Hotel New York Union Protests and The Mafia

It was a small gathering, maybe 20 guys who looked like rugged dudes from Hollywood Central Casting, if there indeed was a call for longshoreman and construction workers. The guys were mostly standing around looking like rugged union members tend to look, while a couple of loud-mouths did the screaming into a distorted bullhorn.

And then I saw him, in the sea of ruggedness, there he was. We made eye contact, and I made him. He wasn’t rugged, and he wasn’t a loudmouth. He was standing behind the barricade next to the HVAC guys, looking like a leftover from a Soprano’s episode. He didn’t wear a well-worn paint-stained t-shirt like the rest of the guys, calloused hands or a weathered leathery skin from decades of working in the elements. No, he had perfectly combed, slicked-back hair, a designer sweater and gold chain around his neck. It wasn’t a Sir Mix-A-Lot rope chain, but it wasn’t purchased at Zale’s for $99.00 either.

He looked how “muscle” is supposed to look, or at least how it’s portrayed in the movies.

Could he have been there to protect the “interests” of someone or some group, or protect the union workers from being harassed by hotel security or a local beat cop? Maybe.

Could he have simply been the well-dressed son of one of the protesters hanging out in the middle of the afternoon showing solidarity and support for his dad’s union? Maybe.

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