Monday, June 28, 2010

Political Power Grab

Does anyone see that the obama administration is taking the USA through the exact
same steps that the Nazi political structure did in its grab for absolute power over its
people in the 1930's???

Whether you are on the left, center or right, we will all be losers if the obama administration
grabs any more power. Now the obama admin is hoping to control all the internet. With this
control, he can single-handedly block any news that he deems non-obama.

And what do you call that type of power??? A Dictator.

Do we want to be governed by a dictator??? No Way !!!

How do we stop this from going any further??? Good question.

The left, center and right need to learn to come together for the protection of their
individual rights and their freedom.

The founders of this Republic saw this as a possibility and put in place a balance of powers
where each side could moderate the other side. Today, we have one party and the Presidency
and the Supreme court favoring one side. And that is bad for everyone.

We need a balance in all parts of government.

Remember this blog if you fail to get congress and mostly the Presidency to stop grabbing power.

The only way to stop this is to vote out enough of one party so after elections in Nov 2010, there is a balance
between both sides of the congress. If you do not, then there will be no turning back and the USA
will be led by a dictator. And your stocks and money will be worthless.

The only thing that work's with a dictator will be 'crowny-ism'. This is the Chicago way. Bride people or
make people do what you want by threatening them with financial harm or worse. The Chicago way.

And why is this important??? Because that is where obama learned politics.

Remember, vote out the incumbents in Nov 2010 elections. Or else you will wake up after the
elections to a dictator and there will be no turning back. Don't believe me. Well the people of
Germany in the 1930's had the same choices and look what rose to power and what happened
to the world.

Does anyone still remember that over 55,000,000 people were killed in World War 11 ??? And that all
of Europe and western Russian became a prison.

And that's the way I see it...
Straight Talk with Jay Clifford

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Leader or Follower? - Action tells

The difference between being a leader and a follower

The oil spill and its aftermath bring out the best and worst of people. On the worst side, there is the President who said just before BP was about to cap the well and trying to take the glory for himself by saying he is responsible and the buck stops with him. Yeah and pigs fly!

He has never managed anything nor been in charge of any group of people and it shows. His lack of leadership is embarrassing to me, the people of the United States and the World.

He never seems to make a decision. He spent his entire term in the ILLINOIS congress voting: ‘Present’. Never a YES or a NO. As a US Senator, his record is about the same.

Now as President, he pushed for a health care bill using the Chicago way – The home of Al Capone and The BOSS. That’s where he learned politics. Anyone not willing to vote his way was put under intense pressure. Maybe that is not strong enough. How would you like to be in an gym’s shower room showering and have someone intensely swear at you to change your vote or you will never get anything for your district passed and they will work with the opposition to make sure you are not re-elected? That would make me angry. But some people had more savvy and requested that their district or state receive tens of millions of dollars for their vote. They knew how to work the Chicago way. And they received the “bribe”.

Only trouble is that the “bribe’ money (OK some will want to say that it was encouragement money) but the money had to come from somewhere. Where do you think the money came from? It came from you and me - from the stimulus money. That’s why there has been no new jobs created with $787,000,000,000 dollars of stimulus money.

So the politicians have learned to bribe the congress people with our own money. That’s one of the Chicago’s ways. So we have a President pushing for a bill that every poll suggested that 55% to 75% did not want. Was he a leader in this instance? No Way! He was just a stubborn man trying to get what he wanted no matter how it hurt the United States and it will hurt the United States in a terrible way now that the “real truth” of the cost of the health care bill is out.

There was no leadership here – Just Bribing.

As for leadership, you see it in the Governor of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
And you see it in the hundreds of vacationers who on their vacation are scooping up tar balls from the oil spill. You see it in the people who collected hundreds and hundreds of birds and turtles still covered with tar. They are cleaning these birds and turtles to save the environment as best as they can. And the People who roped barges together to stop the flow of oil into the wetlands. Even with Kevin Kostner with his great oil/water separator.

Leadership has its own quality. People stepping up to take charge. People forcing the government to accept doing something to at least get a “handle’ on the spilled oil and accept the equipment offered to the US to help in the clean-up. It took the President 50 days before he acted. It took people to save the birds and turtles one day to act. The difference is being able to take real responsibility in tough times and not use it for political advantage.

So many individual acts of responsibility – all need to be praised versus a President without a clue who is using this oil spill to help pass a law that will cost the American people jobs and costs all Americans more just to live in exchange for what? An empty promise?. This President should begin thinking about stepping down and letting a real leader handle the job of the Presidency. He must know it in his heart by now that he is in way over his head.

And that’s the way I see it…
Jay Clifford
JayClifford@att.net

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Why are we so dependent on OIL?

Why are we so dependent on OIL?

Most of the modern world runs on oil and its by-products. Most people know that gasoline comes from ëcrackingí oil. And gasolineís primarily use is for fuel for cars. The more cars in the world, the more gasoline is needed, the more is needed and so on.

That leads to why cars run on gasoline instead of some other source of fuel. The quick history is that the earliest cars replaced a different pollution. Since the transportation prior to cars was based on the horse, the pollution was both a foul smell, tons of flies and one huge mess on all the roads. At that time, even the earliest autos with all their problems was a great improvement.

But most cars were build one at a time and expensive. Some of the best cars ran on steam. This had its own pollution and the range was limited by the size of the boiler. Still, models like the Stanley Steamer could travel fast and far, if you could afford one. Another problem faced by early auto drivers was that there were no paved roads ñ only horse trails and foot paths.

The future of the auto at that time looked bleak. Then Henry Ford figured out how to mass produce autos at a price that most people could afford. The engine he used was a gasoline engine. And while the Model T used as much oil as gasoline, they were well received. Soon the days of the horse as the only means of transportation were past. And we became an oil dependent nation and world.

And the world never looked back. Eventually roads wee built and autos became more reliable. Roads were built ñ most with bricks ñ but still an improvement over dirt horse trails, specially in wet weather. Then accessories were added and features that made driving a pleasure. Finally in the 1950ís a national highway system was completed. The car was king.

Even though a diesel engine was developed, it was many years before it came a popular choice in cars.
One factor was that few service stations offered diesel fuel. As improvements to the diesel engine were made, it now stands as the best alternative to gasoline. When you can use strained grease from a restaurant as fuel with little pollution at a greater savings than the cost of gasoline, you would think that most manufacturers would have built more diesel models. But the government helped the car industry expand.

Now, we use ethanol, a by-product of corn, Thatís why the price of bread is now so high. Much of the corn crop is sold to made ethanol. WHY? Because the government made that choice. BUT everyone knows that saw-grass, a weed that grows anywhere, can be used to produce the same ethanol for less money than using corn. But the government insists that we use corn. So itís an even swap ñ oil for corn. A no-gain transaction.

So we now used a 10% ethanol ñ 90% gasoline mixture at the ìpumps.î Itís the 90% that costs us dearly and sends billions of dollars to unfriendly countries that is the driving force behind cutting our dependence on foreign oil. Not oil completely ñ just foreign oil. That amounts to about 17% of the oil we import.

Now, with the unbelievable halting of all oil exploration (and drilling) in the Gulf, we will become more dependent on foreign oil. There is an almost perfect clean record of drilling for oil in shallow waters and on land. So why not drill for USA oil in Alaska. The people of Alaska want it. The United States needs to reduce the importing of foreign oil. But the government says no. One more bad business decision by government

The answer to both questions is poor, unfocused on the goal, management. When politics enters into a business decision, most of the time the business end suffers. Think of the post office. They have way too many employees and are bleeding money at an alarming rate. The governmentís answer? To take more money from the taxpayer to pay for jobs that are unneeded.

Then there is the railroads. And the two most corrupt of all programs: medicare and social security.
Both are bleeding and will continue to bleed until they bankrupt the USA? If medicare was handled in a private manner and people were allowed to invest 10% to 50% of their social security in fixed income treasury bonds, two things would happen. But government wants control of our money.

If private interest managed medicare, the medicare fraud would be squeezed out and those people committing fraud would go to prison. The result, more services and a savings plus a profit which could become taxable income. But the government says no.

Instead of a ëponzieí scheme which is what the social security system is based on, people could invest in both the United States and their retirement at the same time. Best of all, when a person dies, the money set aside would pass on to the family instead of being lost, as the social security system treats recipients now.

My argument here is that whatever the government touches becomes corrupt and a waste of taxpayerís money. The recent health law is an example of the most corrupt passage of a law you may ever see in your lifetime. We will begin taxing people now for services that will not be available for 3 or 4 or 5 years. Talk about cheating the citizens with their own money, this scam has beat all previous scams. And the true BUDGET-BUSTING accounting is just now coming out. When this new health care bill is in full operation, the USA will begin to slide into a time when we are spending more than the total country is earning.

The result will be either huge inflation or a deep depression.

So why oil? Because cars vans, SUVs, trucks, trains, airplanes are important to our way of life. Itís the government with itís terrible sense of doing business that will drive oil prices to skyrocket because of one terrible tragedy in the Gulf which was preventable if government was acting in our best interest from the start. But with the President using this crisis to push for Cap & Trade which will raise prices of gasoline and electricity up by a lot, instead of trying to solve the crisis, you and I can expect a lower standard of living and all things will get more expensive. And more people will be unemployed.

Just having the government throw money at people in the HOPE that they will come up with a new idea to make the USA less dependent on foreign oil or oil completely is absurd and beyond being stupid. Invention happens when it happens. No amount of government interference will speed things up or make something appear magically on schedule.

We need oil. Oil is essential to our way of life. Without oil there would be no plastics, very few medications and the world would be thrown back to a time of great disease, high unemployment reaching 50%, little food besides what you can grow, and so much more. And by limiting coal use for electricity, the cost of electricity will skyrocket while we experience several blackouts every years.

Why OIL? Because we need it.

And that's the way I see it.
Jay Clifford

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Oil everywhere – in the wetlands – covering the ducks, pelicans and dolphins – dissolved into small goblets flowing into the ocean’s conveyor belt and on the beaches. And no one can stop the leak. Not BP. Not the President. But someone needs to stop the lies coming from the President. He was not involved with the Gulf oil leak disaster the first five weeks after the explosion. He made four photo ops just recently and talked and talked and talked but did nothing. There was help from the Dutch 3 days after the explosion. BUT the President dismissed the help. Hundreds of people wrote, e-mailed and called in with all sorts of ways to collect the oil and the President did nothing. The marshes are being killed and the President did nothing. Then in a official Tuesday evening broadcast from the Oval Office, the President said nothing about how he would stop the leak or even collect the oil. Instead he said, he wants congress to pass a new law to tax the people on the whim that someone, someday will figure out how to replace our dependence on fossil fuel. And he wants to destroy one of our basic industries – the coal mining industry. But he offers no replacement for the fuel. Since most electricity is created form coal, we would be faced with either much higher electricity costs, black outs or both all over the USA. Now that’s an offer you can refuse. And the President said he wanted to establish an escrow fund from BP’s money that the President through his CZAR would manage. That’s like having the foxes guard the hen house. Talk about a new big slush find.

How about phasing in new technologies while continuing to explore and drill for more domestic oil and to continue using coal for the production of electricity. And over the next decade, we can add into the mix more wind, solar and even nuclear created electricity. In that decade, there could be vast improvements in these technologies by entrepreneurs. This type of break- thought cannot be legislated. It happens when it happens. By setting a realistic goal and timetable, we can work towards energy independence. Not by demanding that we come up with something if we throw money at it. Central planning did not work in the Soviet Union and will not work in the USA free market.

One factor in our use of oil is the average miles per gallon rate for entire automobile company-wide models. The SUV (a truck if ever there was one yet figured as an automobile for license plates and not figured in the auto company’s average miles per gallon) is one factor that continues to bring the UNOFFICIAL average miles per gallon per auto company down. At least the SUV is being replaced by the old station wagon now called a crossover. What’s in a word? Marketing.

OK there’s new legislation that raises the minimum miles per gallon per auto company and that is good. However, that will take effect about 2013. So for the next few years there might be a slight increase in each auto company’s miles per gallon. This will be offset by an increase in the number of cars, SUVs and trucks. So where is the savings? And how soon will it arrive? And why the rush to bring A NEW TAX NOW on the “IF-COME” that someone – someday will call out ‘eureka’ and develop a better solar panel or auto battery or who knows what. The economy needs to recover from the recession we are in first.

Oh Yes – remember the recession that was supposed to be shortened by the stimulus? Well the government run stimulus worked well didn’t it. Not even 100,000 new industry full time job created at an expense of $787,000,000,000. WOW! That’s a lot of zeros. Seven Hundred Eighty-Seven BILLION and no results. That’s how governments work.

Do you feel scammed. I do. Added to that, is that part of that stimulus money was used, in my opinion, to bribe enough senators and congresspersons to get the health care bill past. One huge slush fund and no new jobs. More on this later.

The president’s words show that he has no experience, no sense of history (except his place in it), doesn’t care about the people of the USA and is surrounded by people with no experience. They are ivory tower dreamers with zero management experience and it shows by their inaction or bad actions. At least hire some people to make good management decisions. Instead, all the CZARS are so unqualified to run the United States of America that its scary. And as a student of history, this looks a lot like 1930’s when the people of Austria welcomed the Central planning regime of Germany. And look where that got them. We are traveling down the same path. When people demand more of their government than their government is able to provide and able to pay, then we are headed for a collapse much like Greece.

In 1909 someone said: The Constitution is a great document until someone figures out how to bribe the citizens with their own money.” My fellow citizens, the congress has figured this out and is using this against all the people of the United States of America. Unless the balance of power is returned to Washington DC, the USA will turn into a second class country. The Congress needs to reflect the will of the people – not the interest groups nor big business.

And that’s the way I see it…
Straight Talk with Jay Clifford.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Let's talk about OIL

Oil is much in the news lately. Its spilling out into the Gulf at an alarming rate. And it’s used in exchange for hundreds of Billions of dollars from the USA to some countries that are not exactly an enemy of the USA and seek to harm the people of the USA.

OK – Gulf oil first. This is a problem of potential world problems. If the micro-globules of oil get into the ocean currents, all fish in all the oceans could be wiped out. That means this is a worldwide problem and not a BP problem. Imagine a time when the oceans population was reduced by 90%. People all over the world would starve. It would even destroy the Omega-3 industry. This needs to be handled with more action and less political photo ops. The USA should be inviting the entire world into helping resolve stopping this oil leak. And of course, the local people could be employed to help with the clean up. That would be a good use of the stimulus money, which has dripped through the politicians fingers so thoroughly without any tangible “work-ready” results that politicians are now asking for more money. This story will go on.

One issue is that it shows that we have a pseudo college substitute teacher who asked to work for free to get a college teaching position on his resume who is without any management nor work experience running the Gulf clean up. And his way of doing things is the Chicago way. If you do not know what the Chicago way is, then you probably voted for the current President. Just when the USA needs a strong LEADER, we have a President without the abilities to act in a manner that breeds confidence, gets things accomplished and in the best interest of the United States of America and the World.

Then, there is the source of OIL for the USA. About 17% comes from the Middle East. In my way of thinking, the United States needs to find another source to replace that 17%. That would solve two issues with one action. And then there is the looming Venezuela problem. If they stopped sending the USA it’s oil, the USA would be in for tough times. This is another source of oil that needs to be replaced.

How do we replace all those millions of barrels of oil? For one, we could drill in Alaska. In 5 years or less, that would add a significant amount of domestic oil. Another thing that will happen in a few years occurs when the new fuel standards for autos comes into place. That reduction for gasoline will significantly reduce the oil that is needed to be imported into the USA to be “cracked” into gasoline.

All this will take time. During that time, the USA needs to bring on as much oil source as we can find.

Why do we need so much OIL? Gasoline is only one part. Our cosmetic, plastic and pharmaceutical industries use most of the rest of the oil. Our modern world uses oil for a wide variety of uses.

Barely skimmed the surface on this subject. More later. You are encouraged to comment on the facts.

And that’s the way I see it…
Straight Take With Jay Clifford