General Spouting

Life and times of John Roberts

I am really unhappy about the decision to allow the government to mandate health care coverage and to TAX people when you don't purchase it. But let's focus on that something else first, To start off, i disagree with the majority opinion written by Chief Justice of the SCOTUS, Mr John Roberts. He has received a lot of flack from Republicans and conservatives for going with the liberal side of the court. My main bone to pick with Mr Roberts is that he was influenced by what happened with Bush vs Gore and didn't want the court to have too seem partisan and to have his court (while he is Chief Justice) to be thought as illegitimate. Yes I said it. You should never make decisions based on how your the legacy of the court will be looked at. From everything I know about John Roberts, he seemed like a middle to right justice and it just stuns me with his decision. I just don't truly believe John Roberts had thought evolution on the specific topic of allowing the government to tax and penalize for you not buying something. This ruling has a far reaching impact as it allows our government to "tax" or penalize us for not doing something. This vote was not about whether you think people should have universal health care (which i think we all somewhat agree people should have in the US). It is about whether you want the government to have your hands on your life even more than it already is.

My conclusion is that I hope that John Roberts voted on what he believed and didn't think about politics or his legacy. When people do not make decisions on how they truly believe (ex. - check out most politicians (Dems and Repubs) in Congress for more than 10 years), this country is hurt by that behavior.

Good day everyone.....

Been a long time......

It has been a few days since I have ranted or spouted (as we call it here), but I want open the week with a little verbage on this whole Mitt Romney / Bain Capital situation. Mitt Romney was a very successful person at Bain Capital.  He made a signficant amount of his wealth from that job and that is a good thing.  I am not sure why people want to degrade his success or any person that has done well.  Did everything that Bain Capital did during his tenor fit what common middle class folks seems right or makes sense..probably not, but that is the world of private equity and finance.  This world of finance and banking is not the "cleanest" or most transparent business in the world, but it does serve a large purpose in the global economy.

The larger point here is that we are a nation of educated, smart, forward thinking and passionate people.  We should stop making people feel bad for being successful and be honest as to why we do that.

SCOTUS Ruling - ObamaCare

Well the ruling is in and the SCOTUS upheld ObamaCare. I am actually too annoyed right now to comment in much detail, but here are my initial thoughts:

  • In concept, having the government come up with a plan to cover more Americans, I am generally in favor with (THIS IS NOT OBAMACARE)
  • No one in the US has any clue how expensive and financially ruinous this will be to our budget. Everything is puppy dogs and ice cream cones until the bill comes in
  • Mandating people what they need to buy with regards to healthcare is such a massive overstep
  • Has anyone seen the budgets of Europe who have government-run healthcare? Oh yeah, they are doing really well
  • As much as it sounds great for the government to help everyone out, the government's job is not to run every aspect of our lives.

Health care needed reforming, but this decision will mark a day in American history where we ceded control of our future to even more debt and being less powerful.....

Tuesday Primary Results..our friend Charlie Rangel

Charging to a 22nd term in Congress....here are the recent accomplishments of your very own Charlie Rannnngggeeell

  • Scandal with failing to pay taxes on his beach home and using the home for fundraising (remember him passed out in the Caribbean on that chair)..so great !
  • Censure in the House

My point about this example is to say, "don't we expect more from our politicians?"  Republicans and Democrats both have issues but this guy is STILL going to represent people in his district in Congress.  If someone had done this working at Merck or GM, he or she would have been fired.

I also don't like people serving in government for 50 years.  Government service should be limited to a certain time frame as this should make people focus on doing the right thing instead of trying to get reelected.

New Campaign slogan "Hi I am Charlie Rangel.....what's my next scandal....Just kidding :)"

The education discussion

In America today we are always talking about education.  It dominates local, state and national races.  People are constantly discussing the importance of educating our children and having great teachers and compensating teachers more.  All of those topics are long discussions in themselves, but I want to briefly talk about where I think the most important part of education starts....in your home. I think education starts with your parents.  Each home is different with respect to what your parents do for a living or their interests or passion resides. But I believe good parenting starts with giving your children the drive and focus that in the early parts of education.  From a personal experience both of my parents constantly pushed me to excel in any subject or class I was in.  One could say that they pushed too hard or they were too strict, but I deep down enjoyed the challenge. 

In today's hyper competitive global economy and job market, the push, drive and support that parents show their children in my view is critical to how our society will grow and flourish in the decades to come.  Most kids today do not learn science and math like kids in Asia or India, and I am not saying that is for everyone.  To be a musician, actor or writer are amazing things, just like being a doctor or lawyer or even focusing a trade like a carpenter or plumber etc. 

We have to be realistic where the economy will grow in the next 20+ years is related to computers and technology and we have to be prepared as a society to keep those jobs and companies here in the US.  It all starts with your parents and the children being on the same page of the importance of education.

Musings from the corner bar seat....

We all have been in a bar or pub in our lives and have had political discussions where there is passion, agreement, disagreement, arguing and even a touch of compromise over a few cocktails. I am writing this because I love to debate and have frank discussions with people.  I may agree or disagree, but I want to hear their point of view.  What makes this nation great is the ability for everyone to voice their opinion with numerous forums to express it......and sometimes that forum is from that corner bar stool.

The corner bar stool at many establishments is a place of power.  It's a place where a person sits and controls the space and sometimes the discussion.  I mention this because I always find talking to these people to be the most fascinating.  They are generally passionate and definitely have their own strong opinions.  With the state of the global economy and our many issues we have on our soil, its a time where we should be debating, discussing and working on practical solutions for things. 

Last night I had a honest discussion with some amazing people.  I was accused of being:  right, wrong, close minded, tea party guy (I AM NOT) etc.  I have a very positive view of this nation going forward, but I am also a realist.  I realize that health care, entitlements, taxes, immigration and creating jobs are all very dynamic and hard issues to solve, but having the debate and throwing out ideas is the way we move forward and create a dialogue that allows for solutions.

I will try and tackle the specific topics discussed last night over the coming weeks because I truly believe in my heart that debates like last night (from the corner bar seat) are the small embers that inspire all of us to move forward and create compromise on really tough issues.

Our Prez....and twitter...and jobs....

I love Twitter. I really do, as its a medium that goes to the heart of my inner mind, short and to the point. One could argue that the shortness allows for some poetic license and that is what struck me today with Barack little tirade on Mitt shipping job overseas etc. I do not doubt the "factual" nature of what he said (sorry if that sounded disingenuous) but I would hope that the president of the united states would realize (along with his predecessor) that capital flows to the place of least resistance. When you make it hard for people to create jobs or businesses they will go where they can. In the US that could between states ( see Texas and South Carolina vs California and New York) or between countries like the US and china or other Asian countries.

Let's start focusing on why jobs are leaving the US and not what someone did in the past. Please realize that if you ran a business and you could make a profit of 3x by making it somewhere else, you would do that most of the time. I won't even go to the fact that our best company (Apple) can't even hire enough computer science and engineers in the America which would be American jobs....but china and India now has those jobs......

Many angles will be taken from this last paragraph in the coming weeks

Have a great weekend everyone!!!!

Fidgeting through 2012

My teachers, friends and family said that I could never stay still.  My leg would bounce up and down at the dinner table or even in the classroom.  You may say, what is the relevance to a blog focused on politics and markets etc.  Well here it is, I feel like our politicians and leaders are like me...SO FIDGETY.  

Deep down if you asked Barack Obama or Mitt Romney without anyone around and the tapes would be destroyed, I think they would say this: "I think America is the greatest country in the world, but i am really nervous and scared about so many things (debt, wars, China etc".  

I truly believe that our leaders are nervous because they actually don't know what to do.  That is a bold statement but if this was a company who job was to make money and sell a product, the CEO and the whole leadership would have been fired.  I don't just mean the president, but the whole congressional leadership.  We are broke and have 2 parties who cant agree on anything except spend more money we don't have.

#boldeststatementoftheyear

 

 

Student Loans

This is a great example of how Washington looks at things individually instead of looking at the overall picture.

I am sure we all agree that student loans should be kept as low as possible to allow people to go to school and get a great education....but we need to start paying for things. Our country can not fund everything through raising taxes. Sometimes you have to cut costs and the partisan atmosphere in DC is just horrible. No one wants to CUT anything or RAISE anything. That is a disaster that is waiting to happen.

Like many things in life, you can take a small thing or solution and apply it to larger problem. Can our leaders rise above this partisan rancor and solve things......

Yes I am frustrated and its only day three on this blog!

Inflation - honesty!

On the back on my writing about the Fed yesterday and the topic of inflation, I really think it something that should be discussed in detail at some point, but here are a few thoughts: - Do prices seem like they have only gone up 2%?  per year? 

- When you go the store, everything is more expensive and packaged in smaller boxes to shield us from the sticker price

 - We always ignore gas and fuel from this discussion, but stripping it out is like saying, I have alot of money each month if I didnt have to pay my mortgage.

The genesis of this discussion is at the heart of why people dont trust the government or what some of our politicians tell us.  Reality of our daily lives always trump stats by some agency etc.  I think it's important to be real with people and have an HONEST and OPEN discussion. 

More to come....

I was just thinking....

As the temperature starts to approach 100 degrees in NYC and our economy is supposed to be as hot as the weather, I look at the Bloomberg website and see all of this positive economic news (just kidding): - US Stocks decline among bads reports

- Banks to be downgraded

- More Americans forecast to file as jobless

The list goes on and I think, where are the leaders of both parties. Well they are arguing about Eric Holder and some documents. I dont diminish the importance of truth in government and this issue, but as you read this blog, a theme will emerge. People run the government like nothing else in their lives. The overspend, waste time and refuse to move forward.

This country is essentially going bankrupt and our leaders can't honesty discuss issues like our debt or entitlements going bankrupt. We scare senior citizens about cutting benefits or we say raising taxes are bad. BOTH are bad, but what are our choices here? A balanced approach to bring back fiscal sanity to our nation is needed.

Join me in this discussion over the coming months and maybe we can start making these people in Washington realize that they work for us and we want something different on both side of the aisle. We want term limits for these people so they have incentives to solve problems and not just to get reelected!

Have some passion America and let's move this country forward....

The Fed and more..

Since this is my first day doing this, I have alot of fresh thoughts, but this one has been with me for a while.  The Fed has a hard job.  Some folks like Ron Paul think they are evil and others think they are the greatest financial bankers in the world.  The truth always lies in the middle, but I just dont believe the evidence is there anymore that the Fed is truly independent anymore and furthermore I think this constant grind for lower rates etc will eventually doom this recovery. 

The housing bubble and all the overpriced mortgages and under-priced homes has never been purged from the market.  A true cleansing of the housing market has been replaced by foreclosures, people being unable to refinance and people with very good credit scores being able to cut their mortgage rates.  People may read this and say "@StretchNelson - are you saying that is bad and the government should do more to help the people underwater"...NO!!!  What I am saying is that you never can truly have a recovery when so many people are still in a bad place.  We can put duct tape over the situation by artificially keeping rates low (and thus reducing the government's borrowing costs tremendously) or we can let the market set the appropriate rate of interest, within reason, that allows the market to clear and also allow folks to not have their money be deflated by low-interest rates and increasing food and gas prices (oh yeah - per the government that is not happening).

Anyway, the main point here is that people seem to think the Fed and the government can do this forever. I guess we are just lucky that Europe is so bad that we look good....kind of?

Here we go...

Here we go!  This is the official blog of Stretch Nelson (follow me on twitter at @StretchNelson).  We are going to discuss practical solutions to real problems.  I am passionate about politics and the process of making our lives in this country and the world better.  Our leaders have failed us for years for not having the courage to make decisions on fiscal soundness or real reforms that will make our country better.  Come join the conversation because honesty is the only way to make real change!