Lame Duck? Not So Much!

As the Kenyan's term winds down, we would normally expect him to rock back a little, and ride out the rest of the next several months.  But, no, that's not for the Destroyer-in-Chief, despite his feigned disinterest while he  guffaws on the various golf courses.  His unparallelled drive to subjugate this nation into his own distorted world view continues as he acts more like a dictatorial monarch than an elected (albeit illegal and unqualified) president of a democratic republic.  It matters little that the entire country has a severe case of Kenyan fatigue and his popularity wanes, the destruction must go on.

Flush with the the recent successes of his lawless administration, the Kenyan now seeks to forge a sweeping international "climate change" agreement to compel nations to cut planet-warming fossil fuel emissions.  Ignore the inconvenient fact that the earth is cooling, we must stifle industry at all  costs.  But in keeping with the Kenyan's illegal standard operating procedures, he will attempt to do so without ratification from Congress.  Never mind that the US Constitution requires treaties to be ratified by congress, it's "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!"  Constitution?  I don't need no stinkin' Constitution!

In domestic affairs, the Kenyan sends several White House representatives to attend the funeral of recently slain gangsta-thug Micheal Brown, yet snubbed Margaret Thatcher's funeral last year.  As his party stalwarts run for the tall grass, and even his black-voter base begin to tire of his race-baiting dis-unification policies, the Kenyan presses on with his goal to incite race war and class envy.  Even Al Sharpton extolled the virtues of self responsibility and gainful employment for blacks in his Micheal Brown eulogy, angering some racist blacks in the audience.  In his ever expanding search for "back door" methods to enact his illegal and unpopular edicts, the Kenyan is now tying gun control policies to health issues.  If you own guns, you may well fear your doctor's betrayal of your personal health information, as much as the federal police kicking in your door, to relieve you of your guns, and possibly your freedom.

In the face of all this tyranny, the mainstream media considers any story is fit to print, as long as it keeps attention off the invasion of our southern border. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, as California's governor, has welcomed those illegal aliens with open arms to the "other Mexico".  Does no one remember the Mariel boat lift, and the disastrous affect it had - and continues to have -  on Miami and South Florida?  Castro dumped his criminals, mental patients and political prisoners on the US, and the hapless Jimmy carter couldn't wait to welcome them.  Maybe his heart was in the right place, but we're dealing with reality here, not ideology.  The Kenyan wants strife and conflict in the country, so how better to create that than to welcome murderous gangs, drug cartel thugs, diseased Typhoid Marys, jihadists, terrorists, opportunists, criminals of all stripes, and lest I forget, those poor frightened children fleeing political tyranny?

No, he is anything but distracted.  It's all part of his grand plan to transform America; to bring her to her knees by simply overwhelming every aspect of American culture.   I think he may be one of the giants in the list of American presidents in that his plan - as devious and destructive as can be possibly imagined - is working.  When the inevitable result of these policies manifest themselves - that is, when militias begin firing on illegals committing rapes and other crimes, when long-forgotten diseases run rampant in pandemics across the US, when the management of non-English speaking teens disrupt every school system in the county,  when folks black and white start again tearing into each other and riot to obtain "justice" for perceived grievances, when the Federal Reserve stops feeding the bloated stock market and it crashes in upon itself and the economy completely collapses, and finally when a jihadist successfully strikes a high value target with a nuke dirty bomb, we will then realize what a great job the Kenyan has done for his global puppet masters.  Promises made, promises kept.

Have You Committed Your Felony Today?

So.  How many federal crimes have you committed today?  None, you say?  You're a law abiding citizen in good standing, right?  That's a ridiculous question to ask, isn't it? Or is it?  A recent study indicates that the average law abiding citizen, like you and me, on average commits at least three felonies daily.  That can't be, you say.  But it's true.  In the last five years, the federal government has added over 400 new crimes to the already staggering four thousand or so currently on the books, according to a report to the House Judiciary drafted by the Congressional Research Service.  These are mostly expansions or broader interpretations of existing laws, which lowers thresholds for breaking them.  Some new expansions are troubling; far broader interpretations of mens rea laws, or guilty minds, for example, smack of Minority Report-like thought crimes.

Is crime really that rampant that we need fifty new federal felonies per year for the last thirty years?  Well no.  In fact, violent crime is down in America, across the board, spanning two decades. In 2009 the Justice Department announced that the incidence of reported rape had hit a 20-year low. Homicides are down, as are juvenile violence and crimes committed against children. Crime rates have been plummeting since the early 1990s to such an extent that explaining the drop has become something of an obsession among criminologists and sociologists.  And that trend continues even today.  But what may be good for society isn't necessarily good for law enforcement.  Recently, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, wrote that, as an extreme departure from English common law, upon which our legal system is based, police now use financial gain as a justification for defining criminal activity and incarceration. 

What's worse is that federal prosecutors are by law immune to indemnity as they partake in the over-criminalization of American citizens.  They can drag anyone through the system, any time and for any reason, essentially destroying folks at the least, or incarcerating them for years at worst - without any threat of liability, no matter how egregious their conduct. We're not talking about Edward Snowden-esque security leaks here - we're talking about things like Amish farmers going to jail for selling their own farm produced raw milk to neighbors. 

So the evidence continues to mount that we indeed live in a police state. But how did we get to this point? Not only is criminalization expanding socially, but in commerce as well.  Clearly the cause of this expanding crimes against the state philosophy is the trend away from a philosophy of laissez-faire.  The Economist, in a recent article titled Over-regulated America, agrees.  Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of the infamous Dodd-Frank bill that one can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.

The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government's drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favors. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their cronies and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favors for the political correct and the vocal radicals. Congress's last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.

How many felonies do you think are created in just the Affordable Health Care Act, and the Dodd-Frank Act alone?  No one else knows, either, because both are deliberately open to broad interpretation, and that leads to prosecutorial discretion.  See ya in jail!

Where Should I Put My Money?

The world's a mess.  Really.  Madeleine Albright said so.  Governments are collapsing, others are defaulting on loans, some are carrying unsustainable massive debt, and even the wealthiest countries are struggling.  So what's a poor middle class American investor to do?  Jump in the stock market?  Bonds?  Convert everything to precious metals?  Move to Belize?

My financial advisement gurus give me this simple advice:  stay in tangibles and focus on cash flow.  Tangibles, of course, are things you can touch and feel.  Intangibles, like the stock and bond markets, lack the element of investor control that is afforded by tangibles such as real estate, precious metals, art, collectables, Many analysts think the stock market is overvalued and a correction is inevitable, especially given the Fed's recent decision to ease qualitative easing.  In the next eighteen months, look for a sell off of gigantic proportions.

OK, so what about tangibles?  Let's take real estate.  This investment meets both criteria:  cash flow and is certainly tangible.  These days cash is king, but there are ways to lever into real estate.  Interest rates are still low - if you can actually get a mortgage - but as many people lost their homes and credit rating over the last few years, and the rental market is strong as those folks must rent until they can afford to purchase a home again.  In may areas of the country demand exceeds supply, and residential prices are being pushed upward.  This is especially true in areas where the foreclosure rate was the highest, like California, Nevada, Texas, and Florida.  Buy and hold is my preference, but buy and flip can be a winner, too.  Especially if the reinvestment plan is to stay in other tangibles.

Where's the smart money going?  What about such innocuous things like wine?  Wine as an personal investment is a hobby; don't expect get rich on that.  But large scale wine purchase is another matter.  This week KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), a leading global investment firm bid over $3 billion USD for Australia's Treasury Wine Estate, clearly seeing potential in the world's thirst for vino.  What's to be made of that?  I make my own wine.  Really.

Investment in precious metals can be a safe haven.  Gold and silver are pushing records highs, but copper, titanium and platinum have a significant market share as well. What about things you can't buy individually?  Partnerships in energy (oil, gas and coal; but not wind, solar or hydro) are available and are lucrative with high cash flows and very desirable tax benefits.  The "new energy" sources have proven unreliable and without any profit potential, so the world must stay with the reliable and vast existing resources. 

Collectibles are an investment as well, but do not meet the cash flow criterion.  And, government interference can render them essentially worthless.  Ivory is a prime example.  I have some very old pieces I've collected over the last five decades, and because of reactionary government policies to illegal elephant poaching in Africa, they have no value other than memorabilia.

So what's it all mean?  Invest in tangibles that produce sustainable and reliable cash flow.  Makes sense.  But as everything else, that advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.

Open Letter to US Chamber of Commerce

As a former member of the USCC, I'd like to offer a suggestion.  Rather than promote and encourage amnesty for illegal aliens in any effort to hire cheap labor, a position that is immensely unpopular outside the D.C. beltway, try offering those low wage under the table jobs to Americans.  I know it's illegal, but it's what many of your members are doing now.  As a real estate broker, over the last nine years I have sold more short sale properties than I can count.  Do you not think that any one of those displaced Americans who have lost their homes would not jump at the chance to acquire gainful employment, even if it's under the table?  Of the fifty million or so Americans who can't find work, I think you'd have a workforce pool far in excess of any pool of illegal aliens (they are not migrants, not undocumented aliens, not guest workers - they are illegal border-crashing aliens).  I'm sure that many unemployed Americans would jump at the chance to earn even $15 an hour.  Why?  Because that's $15 in take home pay, and that money stays in the economy, not sent back to Mexico, as many credible reports indicate is happening now.  That's $120 billion overall, and $23 billion just to Mexico.  Would that employment help American workers?    Americans would be able to pay the rent, put food on the table, keep the power and water connected, and keep the car in gas.  And maybe go out to dinner once a week.  And all of that money stays in the local American economy - not supporting the corruption to the south. So how about it?  Have an English-speaking, drug and disease free, non-criminal workforce for your corporate members by supporting currently unemployed Americans.  Those American workers will gladly do the job better for you.

And for the illegal aliens on your staff that are already here, or those who contemplate coming here, I say this to you:

Si vienes aqui ilegalment, se le enviara a casa a su propio costo.  Gobierno en consecuencia. 

Sincerely,
An American Business