So I started this blog. I did this so that I can go into details about various subjects. By coming to my blog you have agreed, at least in principle, to hear me out. In return, you'll be able to post to this blog as well. If you find it informative, provocative, or just downright dumb, I hope you still enjoy it and share it.
The topics discussed will cover a wide range of areas in normal everyday life. Since I am starting this in an election year, then you also must know that politics will be discussed.
So where do I stand politically. In order to understand this, let me tell you where I come from.
I was born and raised in northern Fairfield county Connecticut. My mother is a die-hard Democrat. Her father even held local political office as a Democrat. My mother even went into the most liberal institution in the US today, education. She was a grade school and middle school teacher in Ridgefield, CT for over 30 years. As a result, I grew up believing that the problems we have in this country can only be answered by politicians in Washington. I grew up believing that Jimmy Carter was the smartest President ever and that Reagan was nothing but a war monger and in the pocket of the rich. Just like Nixon before him, all Republicans by their nature were evil and only Democrats could save this country. Pretty pathetic if you think about it. Not that I was influenced to believe these things by my family, but that there actually people who believe this bullshit.
My father, on the other hand, was a Republican, but he rarely argued with my mother about politics because my mother has the normal Democratic reaction to opposition that makes sense, start name-calling. She would call Nixon a crook, Reagan an idiot, Bush Sr. untrustworthy (because he headed the CIA at one point), and Bush Jr., well, he was just an idiot. This is how I grew up. Once I did grow up and started to think for myself, I realized that this religious devotion to a party was outright wrong.
My first election was in 1980. I didn't vote for Carter. The economy was in such a terrible state that I couldn't vote to re-elect him, let alone the lousy way he handled the Iranian hostage crisis. I didn't vote for Reagan either. All those years of listening to my mother kept me from voting for him. I voted for John Anderson. I wasn't even into his politics as much as I was against the established parties.
The next time I voted for a President was George H. W. Bush. Bush Sr. was such a better choice. As Reagan's VP, together they presided in one of the greatest economic turnaround in recent history. At the beginning of the Reagan administration:
- Unemployment was in double digits
- Inflation was in double digits
- Interest rates were in double digits
- The world was pushing us or our allies around
- Hostages held in our embassy in Iran
- USSR invaded Afghanistan while talking to Carter about detante
- The balance of trade was beginning to severely shift against the US
- Our military was stripped of vital and needed munitions and moral was at the lowest point
- Federal income tax rates topped off at 50 percent
- With state rates, some income brackets were paying as much as 90 percent of their income to taxes
- Our industrial base, the strength of our economy, was weakened. Our factories hadn't had any improvements for decades. Meanwhile, emerging economies from Southeast Asia were building factories that were modern and more efficient than those of the US.
When Reagan came into office, his first initiative was to lower the tax rates. This freed up capital. It is interesting that even I thought this was stupid. We were running deficits and building so much debt, why would we cut tax rates. What I didn't understand then is now one of my most important lessons when it comes to the economy and federal spending.
It is not tax rates that determine federal revenues; it is economic activity.
You see, even President Kennedy understood this. In pushing for a tax cut shortly after entering office, he created an economic boom in the early 1960's. You can look back into history and the lesson repeats itself time and time again. Cut taxes results in increased economic activity. Increased economic activity results in increased federal revenue. A simple formula bored out by simply studying history.
By the time Bush Sr. ran for President, I fully understood that the Reagan administration was responsible for the turnaround that began in the mid-1980's and actually lasted nearly 20 years.
A brief note about this 20 years of regular growth. When I say this, I do remember the crash of '87. I do remember recessions. These cyclical events occur regularly. The best thing a government can do is to stay out of the way and the cycle corrects itself.
After four years, the economy did recover, but slowly. Part of the problem was that Bush Sr., after pledging not to raise taxes, ended up raising taxes in order to get a budget deal with the Democratically controlled congress. Of course, the deal on the Dem side fell through and the only result was an increase in taxes and no noticeable cut in spending.
Then came Clinton. I wasn't happy with Bush Sr. and Clinton spoke well. I voted for Clinton. Not only once, but twice. I will state here that I wish I didn't. However, the Republican candidates were not much better. Thank God for the Republican "Contract with America" that forced Clinton, after two year of absolute liberalism, to move toward the center. He suddenly support welfare reform, cutting spending and other more right-leaning policies that he rejected only a few months earlier.
It was during the Clinton era that I became more conservative. Of course this didn't set well with my mother. Our political discussions were heated, loud and sometimes nasty. Again, I find it interesting that it was the liberal, my mother, who would resort to calling me an idiot, that what I thought was nothing but lies, and that Clinton was the best President since Kennedy. I of course disagreed.
Just about 20 years after the Reagan tax cuts, the economy began to falter. This is about right. Any business or accounting major will tell you that capital expenditures in machinery and buildings has an expected life span of about 20 years (that's why these things are depreciated over 20 years for tax purposes). Of course, the tax increases put in by Clinton in the early 90's did have an effect but the bleeding was stopped by the Republican congress. But Clinton supporters kept pointing to the President as to the reason for economic growth through the 1990's. The reality is that our growth had more to do with the lower tax rates put into effect by the Reagan Administration than it had anything to do with the Clinton Administration. They call this "Trickle Down Economics". My mother hated that phrase. She always used to say that the trickle never gets to the little guy. In part, she is right. But it was never meant to be that way. Trickle down means that, when millionaires and corporations pay less to the government, they have more money to invest in new infrastructure such as buildings and equipment. This makes these companies more profitable and able to complete globally. This trickle down leads to lower unemployment and, yes, to higher wages. What it doesn't mean, like many Dems portray it as, is the money doesn't trickle down to the employees directly. If this was how it worked, the portion that makes it to each employee would not even be noticed. But they do notice new factories, updated or upgraded equipment, and companies that can compete.
An example of this would be the auto industry. By the end of the 1970's, American car companies were going under do to competition from abroad. I already explained that this was, at least partially, due to these foreign companies building new and modern manufacturing plants. Remember Chrysler. They were in such bad shape they needed a bailout from the government. By the mid-1980's, things began to change. The first new top to bottom auto plant to be built in decades was built. The Saturn plant was the model of modern manufacturing. Did this come from nowhere? Is the timing just a coincidence? I don't think so. (By the way, that plant went through very few major upgrades over the years and now, just over 20 years later, they closed that plant down. Interesting).
By the end of the Clinton Administration, I began to realize that the country was becoming more and more divided. The Dems were becoming more liberal while the Republicans, at least initially, were keeping to the right. The Democrats figured they had a shoo in with Clinton's VP, Al Gore. Gore was by far one of the most liberal Presidential candidates that I can remember. The Republican response was Bush Jr. Although he worked with the religious right during his fathers Presidency, he was more a center leaning Republican. This was someone, in my early years of conservatism, could support; and I did. I voted for Bush Jr. both times. But the Democrats didn't put up much of a fight. Their candidates were far left leaning liberals whom I would never support. Even the fight over the 2000 election results shows the difference. After first conceding, Gore then fought the results all the way to the Supreme Court. They still lost the election, but of course the Democrats kept saying that it was the Supreme Court that gave Bush the white house. If they looked at the facts, Gore lost Florida. Even after picking Democratic district for the recounts and preventing Republican district from being in the recount, they still lost. To my Democratic friends and family, get over it already. I still hear about how Bush Jr. was an illegal president because of the 2000 election. In the long run, thank God Gore wasn't in office on 9/11. If he was, there probably wouldn't have been any retaliation. The lawyers would have prevented action, just like they prevented Clinton from going after Bin Laden.
Well, that how I went from a liberal Democrat (although registered Unaffiliated) to becoming a conservative. Although I am a registered Republican now, I consider myself a conservative who is a registered Republican.
So that's my politics. I expect to argue with liberals and even Republicans. That's good. Debate brings out the best in society. It's when the debate is quashed that things are taken for granted and soon, we find ourselves in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
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