Non-negotiables: Handling my personal #debtlimit

I hate to publicly air my family's dirty laundry like this, but here goes.  Our family finances are in trouble.  I make less money today than I did in the late 20th century, but our expenses have skyrocketed since then. Predictably, we've accumulated a debt that we may or may not be able to repay, but that's not the worst of it.  The real problem is that our debt is growing at an unsustainable rate.  And the bank has taken notice.  We are almost out of credit.  When we hit our limit, circumstances will force draconian changes on us.

The solution is obvious.  There is only one thing to do.  We must convince the bank to raise the credit limit on our credit card.

Things have gotten so bad that my wife, bless her heart, suggested a family conference to discuss what to do about it.  I have to give her credit for "thinking outside the box," but when I heard what she had in mind, I had to put my foot down.  She had a long list of ideas:  1) maybe we could eliminate or scale back our cable and cell phone services; 2) perhaps we could choose the higher deductible health insurance option to lower our premiums; 3) maybe we should temporarily scale back or suspend the money we've been contributing to the local boy scout troop; 4) maybe we should cancel the lawn and maid services and start doing our own cleaning and yard work; 5) perhaps we could eat out less often or not at all; 6) maybe we should cancel the new furniture that we just ordered yesterday.

Apparently she doesn't understand that I am a man of principle.  When I make a commitment, I stand by it. Each of those expenditures she wanted to cut were decisions that we had made together.  I'm willing to talk about scaling back future purchasing decisions, but I told her in no uncertain terms that the one thing I will not negotiate over is whether we should pay the bills that we have already racked up.

She quickly agreed that we had to pay back our accumulated debt, but she tried to convince me that cutting ongoing expenditures is not the same thing as reneging on financial commitments.  If only it were that simple. For example, we've had cable tv and cell phone service in our house for decades.  Can you imagine how disruptive it would be to eliminate some of the channels that we've grown accustomed to watching?  The same goes for all those other expenditures.  She tried to argue that we might not have ANY cable tv if we don't choose a plan that we can afford before it's too late.   But I stuck by my guns.  We've already made those spending decisions, and those are in the past.  There's nothing we can do about that.  Those expenditures must continue to go forward as they have for years. Principle demands as much, and I am a man of principle.

Now, hopefully, she'll end her unprincipled obstructionism so that she and I can work together on a real solution -- convincing the bank to extend us more credit.  One thing is for sure:  I won't engage in any more family conferences to talk about that other stuff.  I'll maintain my integrity to the end.

No Justice for Trayvon

As most trials do, the Trayvon Martin case  involves the clash of two perspectives.  Martin's perspective clashed with Zimmerman's, with deadly results.  From Martin's perspective, he was being following by a "creepy *ss cracker" (Trayvon's words).  From Zimmerman's perspective, he was keeping an eye on a dangerous stranger who looked like he was "on drugs or something" (Zimmerman's words). Both probably were right.

Martin found Zimmerman to be creepy.  The prosecution, which managed to prove little else in the case, might just have raised a jury issue on Zimmerman's creepiness.  Finding both the law and the facts arrayed against proving the crime they had charged, the prosecutors (with assists from the judge) resorted to putting Zimmerman's character on trial.  They portrayed Zimmerman, with at least some success, as a frustrated cop wannabe on a power trip.  Maybe he was.  One could understand why Martin found being followed by such a man to be "creepy."

From Zimmerman's perspective, Zimmerman thought he was keeping an eye on a dangerous stranger wandering around in his neighborhood. He may have been right.  While the jury didn't get to hear this, we know that Trayvon was outside his home neighborhood at the time because he was on his third suspension from school, this time for drug possession.  An earlier school suspension for writing obscenity on a locker also involved a search of his backpack which turned up a watch, a bag of women's jewelry, and a "burglary tool" i.e. a screwdriver that Trayvon claimed belonged to a friend whom he refused to identify.  We also know that Trayvon bragged about engaging in (and winning) multiple fights and that he was seeking to obtain a firearm.  Martin's brags about his macho exploits caused his friend to text Trayvon some good advice: "Boy don't get one planted in ya chest." Tragically, that wise advice went unheeded.  Finally, and the jury was allowed to hear this part, Zimmerman's observation that Martin appeared to be "on drugs or something" was correct -- marijuana (the very substance he had been suspended from school for possessing) was in his system at the time.  In summary, contrary to the picture painted by the media, Trayvon was not a young man that you would want to meet in a dark alley, yet that is pretty much what Zimmerman did.

So what happened when these two perspectives clashed?  The overwhelming evidence indicates that Martin confronted Zimmerman and beat him while Zimmerman screamed for help until Zimmerman finally shot Martin to death.  So what would "justice" look like when the creepy cop wannabe meets the young punk thug?  Only Heaven knows for sure.  Our criminal system cannot make "justice" out of these circumstances, and it doesn't even try.

What our criminal justice system does is draw some bright lines that the creepy cracker and the young thug must not cross in their interactions with each other.  Zimmerman felt threatened by seeing Martin wandering through his neighborhood, but even assuming that Martin was the dangerous figure Zimmerman thought he was, there is nothing illegal about a young thug wandering through a gated community.  Martin crossed no legal line by being there.  Similarly, Martin may have been creeped out by being watched by Zimmerman. But, again, Zimmerman's watching Martin crossed no legal line.  Those who are clamoring for Zimmerman's head must be doing so because they think it SHOULD be illegal for a private citizen to be armed while keeping an eye on a stranger in his neighborhood, but it's not, at least not there.

The legal lines designed to allow the creepy cracker and the young thug to coexist were crossed when the first punch was thrown.  The jury apparently thought that punch was thrown by Martin, and the evidence amply supports that conclusion.  So Zimmerman was found "not guilty" beyond a reasonable doubt, which clearly was the correct legal result.  Was it "justice"?  I'm sure it doesn't feel like justice to Martin's family and friends, but it's the best our criminal legal system can do.

The Boston bombers were Chechen terrorists? Oh, never mind!

“And maintain good conduct among the non-Christians, so that though they now malign you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when he appears.”  (1 Peter 2:12 NET Bible)

On Monday, April 15, at 2:50 p.m. a bomb exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon. A second bomb exploded a few seconds later.  I heard about it shortly thereafter and posted the following facebook status at 3:38 p.m.:  “At the Boston Marathon? What's wrong with people?”  Not one of my better posts – just a gut reaction on the spur of the moment. 

I reacted quickly, but the left reacted even more quickly.  By 3:22 p.m. Charles Pierce of Esquire.com had already “cautioned” us against “jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism” and warned us “to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts.”  The implication was clear enough – this looks like the work of right-wingers.  Pierce did not have to speculate alone.  Later that evening Michael Moore initiated a series of tweets implying the same thing that Pierce had.  Moore suggested that he could put “2+2” together, a backhanded insult to anyone who didn’t reach the same simple conclusion that he had.

And so it went for days.  You probably saw the same coverage that I did – the talking heads perched on the edges of their chairs atingle with the anticipation that some right-wing nut might have been responsible for this.  Typical was the April 17 CNN piece asserting that the pressure cooker bomb formula has been used, not only by Islamic terrorists, but also “has been adopted by extreme right-wing individuals in the United States.”  Seriously. 

Well, now we know that the bombers were Chechen terrorists after all.  So should we expect the sheepish apologies to start flowing as fast and furious as the slanderous innuendo?  Of course not.  I guess Michael Moore has “apologized” in his own way – he tacitly acknowledged that he had slandered the right by tweeting a lame joke about his error.  I guess the victims of his false speculation aren’t worthy of a real apology.  It’s almost as though the left-wing media apparatus is channeling Roseanne Roseannadanna with a collective, “Oh, never mind!”

So be it.  We all have a tendency to assume the worst about those who differ from us.  We even have words for that tendency—words like “prejudice” and “bigotry.”  I’m certainly not immune, so I suppose that I shouldn’t throw stones.  But I do pray that the next time I publicly assume the worst about a group and am proven wrong that I will have the decency simply to apologize, without jokes and without excuses.  Now that I’ve written this, I suppose there might be someone there to help keep me honest.  I hope so.

I think I just saved the White House Tours!

No need to thank me -- the smiling faces on thousands of kids around the country is thanks enough.  Here's how I did it.

As we all know by now, President Obama came up with this brilliant idea (known as sequester) that he and the Republicans would agree to slow the rate in federal spending (mostly in defense spending, which is why Obama likes the idea) if they could not agree in the meantime on a fiscal deal.  The Republicans thought they would be negotiating over spending cuts, especially to our unsustainable entitlement programs.  But the President fooled them by insisting on tax increases instead.  The Republicans went along with one giant tax increase on January 1, but when the President insisted on a second (apparently monthly) tax increase in February, they balked.  The President kept the pressure on by flying around the country on Air Force One railing against his own sequester idea (and playing golf with Tiger Woods).  But the Republicans called his bluff, and now the rate of growth in federal spending must be slowed.

Well, there's nothing that ticks this President off like slowed federal spending, and now he's mad.  To demonstrate his displeasure at not getting his second tax increase, the Obama administration has been implementing the reduced spending increases (sounds oxymoronic, doesn't it?) in the most painful ways that it can imagine.  Now my impulsive response to these vindictive and petty moves generally is:  "Do your darnedest, Mr. President.  We can take it."  After all, unlike the federal government, I've actually had to cut my spending before (not just slow its growth), so I figured I could stomach any "slowed growth" that the White House could dish out.

Then they canceled the White House tours.  Oh the humanity!  Kids from around the country are finding out that they won't get herded through the executive mansion by volunteer tour guides after all, and all because the mean Republicans won't agree to raise taxes (again).  The initial reaction of some was, "How does eliminating tours by volunteer guides save ANY money?"  The White House was ready for this rhetorical thrust and parried it by explaining that  the Secret Service has to step up security during the tours.  After all, you never know when one of those school kids (some of whom are even HOME SCHOOLED) might be a closet paramilitary commando bent on bringing down the Obama administration.

As it turns out, presidential protection does not come cheap, and ABC News reported that the extra security to make sure that the school kids don't blow up the White House would cost $18K/week.  Yikes!  Frankly, that seems a little high to me, but lets go with it.  I searched high and low to find $18K/week in alternate cuts that would allow the little children to see the White House, and I think I found it.  In fact, it was the President himself who showed me the way.  Remember all that flying around the country on Air Force One fighting his own sequester idea (and playing golf)?  I got to thinking, I wonder how much that costs?  And here's the answer:  Travel on Air Force One costs, wait for it . . . $180,000/hour.  That's right.  One less hour on Air Force One = White House tours for ten weeks.  Five fewer hours pays for the tours for the whole year.  Basically, if the President could find it in his heart to avoid one unnecessary campaign trip on Air Force One (or to spend Christmas in the continental US instead of Hawaii), then all tours can be restored!  You're welcome, kiddies!

Can President Obama Break His Own Record?

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to submit his budget request for the upcoming fiscal year no later than the first Monday of February.  Obviously, President Obama has missed the deadline this year.  But this is not the first time.  Or the second.  Or the third.  In fact he's one for five in complying with this statutory mandate.  In only his first term, President Obama set the record for the most missed budget deadlines by a single president.  Now, every time he misses the deadline (again) he merely pads is own record.  But that's not the record referenced in the title to this post.  Rather, I'm talking about the number of days by which the deadline is missed.

Before President Obama took office, Bill Clinton was the holder of that record.  In 1993, he missed the budget deadline by sixty-six days -- more than two months!  President George W. Bush with his very first budget missed his deadline (the only deadline he missed) by a whopping sixty-three days!  Impressive you say?  That's child's play for President Obama.  In his very first attempt, President Obama missed his budget deadline by, wait for it . . . ninety-eight days.  While he also has missed three deadlines out of his other four opportunities, he has not yet matched the length of that first prodigious miss.  

Some think that President Obama's ninety-eight day overage is a record that will stand forever, but I'm not ready to give up on him just yet.  Records were made to be broken, and never one to shrink from a challenge, President Obama already has blown through the lengths of his other two budget deadline misses.  So we know for sure that his latest deadline fail will be at least his second longest to date (with three more chances to come)!  True, he'll have to push his budget proposal well into May to break his own record this year, but all evidence suggests that he may be up to the task.  The key to his success appears to be an almost uncanny (lack of) focus:  Don't get bogged down in the details of doing the job.  Instead, travel around the country on the taxpayer dime (racking up more deficits and debt -- another record!) talking about budgets.  

In fact, I think President Obama just might mean never to relinquish this particular record.  I can't confirm this, but I suspect that President Obama, taking a page out of Harry Reid's playbook, may just intend never to submit a proposed budget.  And, after all, why should he?  What has happened to the other budgets he submitted?  The last two haven't garnered a single positive vote.  In either the House or the Senate.  And the Senate has been controlled by the President's own party!  If his own political allies are going to disrespect his budgets like that, why should he submit them?

Anyway, if President Obama pulls a Harry Reid and never proposes another budget, then his own record never can be broken by any subsequent upstart president!  Pure genius.  This president continues to find ways to write himself into the record books.  I don't think anyone can stand in his way this time.  Hail to the Chief!

Skewed Priorities

Some people are working hard to reduce their credit card debt, and that sounds like a good idea, but I'm going to suggest that they are wasting their time.  That credit card debt is a drop in the bucket.  Americans owe $858 billion in credit card debt.  Sounds like a big number you say?  Worthy of your attention you think?  Try this on for size: The national debt is $16.5 trillion.  That's almost 20x all of our credit card debt combined.  Yet those of us with credit card debt fret about it and keep electing officials who are running us into the hole faster than we ever could pay our way out.  The national debt has increased almost $6 trillion during the Obama administration.  That means that every year of the Obama administration, we have added to our national debt almost double our total credit card debt.  So if the entire country had, over the last four years, worked extremely hard and had paid off ALL of our credit card debt, we'd still be about $5 trillion behind where we started.  My point is this:  If you're not worried about the national debt, then forget about your credit card debt -- that's chicken feed by comparison.  If your credit card debt is keeping you up at night, then you should really be pulling your hair out over the national debt.  Quit wasting your time trying to reduce your credit card debt and get yourself educated so that you can turn out the bums who keep running up your much larger national debt.  Better yet, get started paying off both.

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

There are plenty of lessons for republicans to learn from the recent election defeat, and I hope this is one of them: Reagan’s eleventh commandment must be obeyed: "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."


The key to President Obama’s ultimately successful campaign strategy was a summer spent “carpet-bombing” Romney with attack ads. Were the ads fair? No. Were they even truthful? No. Did they violate the principles Obama announced when he ran four years ago? Yes. Were the ads effective? Yes. And Romney is hardly in any position to complain.


Rewind to the Republican primaries. Newt Gingrich stung the Romney campaign with an important victory in South Carolina. How did Romney’s supporters respond? They assassinated Gingrich’s character with vicious ads. No great campaign of ideas – just savage attacks. The ads that were run against Gingrich weren’t fair, just like the ads Obama ran against Romney, and as Obama’s ads were effective over the summer, the ads against Gingrich were effective during the republican primary.


And then it happened. Unfairly attacked, Gingrich predictably hit back. Gingrich went after what should have been a strength for Romney -- Bain Capital. Gingrich’s negative attacks against Romney gave the Obama campaign free market testing for its own unfair negative ad campaign. Now I don’t think for a second that Gingrich’s attacks caused Obama to attack Romney – Obama was going to character-assassinate Romney in any event. Smearing Romney was the only way for the incumbent in the midst of a failed presidency to win. But I am suggesting that when Obama ended up saying the same things about Romney that Gingrich had been saying earlier, it lent an air of credibility to Obama’s attacks that they did not deserve. Obama ended up reinforcing false charges that had first been leveled by those of Romney’s own party. But, again, Romney is in no position to complain. His supporters started it – they carpet-bombed Gingrich at the first sign of trouble. What did they think would happen?


Perhaps a campaign of ideas will never work, at least not in this day and age. Perhaps the only way to win today is by paying for lies on television. I hope not. In any event, I hope that three years from now, when republicans start this process all over again, that they remember the wisdom of the Gipper. Leave the vicious lies to the left next time.