Butler on Business WAFS 1190, Atlanta's Premier Station

My 10 minute radio segment on Butler on Business on November 5, 2012. Topic: tiny homes dreamed by progressives to combat global warming and the global warming conference in Doha, Qatar/
http://host1.cyberears.com//17999.mp3

Lilliputian Homes and the New American Dream: Match Box Housing for Smurfs

The one world government elites stand to make billions from the global warming/climate change scam. That is why they are not going to give up. Too many billions have already been invested to implement a society dependent on an omnipotent government that claims to control nature – they are not going to give up that easily or any time soon.

The fact that we are forced to pay, cap, swap, and trade carbon taxes on the open market does nothing to affect the level of pollution that takes place in the world. It is so arrogant to believe that humans can control the fury of Mother Nature when it is ready to unleash its ire.

Although scientists have debunked global warming and have proven that the globe has actually cooled in the last 16 years, our Secretary of State still promotes the myth of global warming. In a recent speech, she said, “We’ve doubled production of clean energy, made historic investments in breakthrough technologies, and launched new international partnerships like the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to take aim at pollutants like black carbon and methane that account for more than 30 percent of current global warming. (CNSNews.com)

According to Cathie Adams, President of Texas Eagle Forum and Chairman of Eagle Forum International Issues, who is attending the Doha, Qatar U.N. Conference on Climate Change, quoted Christina Figueres, that the meeting in Qatar is to “negotiate a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”

Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, “What is occurring here, not just in Doha, but in the whole climate change process is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world. It should happen much quicker, but it cannot happen overnight.” The Kyoto Protocol will go “into a second commitment period as of January 1, 2013… We are also moving toward a universal legally based agreement by 2015 to go into effect in 2020.”

Cathie Adams reported that the U.S. delegation chief, Todd Stern, did not object to the U.N.’s plan to fundamentally transform the global economy, on the contrary, he boasted about the U.S. reduction in greenhouse gas emission by 16.5% in the last four years of President Obama’s rule. “It is to appease the U.N. that Obama has placed excessive regulations on automobile emissions, power plants and appliances, as they destroy the American economy.” (Cathie Adams, December 3, 2012)

The United Nation’s multifaceted assault on every human activity and its end goal to control and destroy capitalism to the benefit of the one world communist governance includes the U.N. Agenda 21 with its hallmark of Sustainable Development, Green Growth, Green Cities, Solar Energy, Wind Energy, alternative food and plant derived energy, Green everything from cradle to grave.

I have watched this complex Agenda 21 octopus encroach everything across the globe stealthily, with little resistance from the population. Why would anyone oppose such a kind and gentle goal of greening everything? Who does not want a green planet or clean air and water? Who does not want to recycle inputs in order to maximize the use of raw materials? The problem is that the goal is more nefarious than people are led to believe if they only took the time to read and inform themselves.

United Nations is concerned about the size of our cars, our homes, our property, our farms, our wealth, the size of our “socially unjust” use of energy and resources, our recreational areas, the size of our hunting and fishing grounds, and the size and rights to our living space in general vis-à-vis a needy planet whose wildlife needs more space and wilderness devoid of humans.

We laughed years ago when Europeans came out with the Smart car with interchangeable fashionable side panels to match the driver’s outfit. It looked like a fun toy to drive to the local grocery store not a safe car to drive 60 mph on a busy highway. Years later and millions of dollars in advertising and brainwashing of our liberal youth into the urgent need to save the planet, the rather expensive-for-its-size Smart car is now a fixture on our freeways.

To conserve space and reduce human habitation to city dwelling in high rise and/or crowded spaces, the liberal architects and developers have come up with a new green idea – the 150-200 square foot home in an alley, the new “American dream.” Americans don’t know yet that this is what they want – they must be first convinced, indoctrinated, or coerced that this exactly how they want to live in the future.

The Northeast Washington neighborhood of Stronghold (close to the Capitol) is building a cluster of Lilliputian houses.  Emily Wax of the Washington Post describes such homes as a dream of “compact bathrooms and cozy sleeping lofts that add up to living spaces that are smaller than the walk-in closets in a suburban McMansion.” (November 27, 2012)

There is no secret that proponents of Green Growth and Agenda 21 hate suburban sprawl and wish to ban further building of homes in suburbia because it is unsustainable growth. They would love to move everyone into high-rises downtown within walking distance of everything, abandoning the land to the state.

The diminutive homes that can be bought with wheels were first designed by Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. in Santa Rosa, California in 2000.  According to Wax, “their increasing popularity could be seen as a denunciation of conspicuous consumption.” I have not met one person yet who was eager to live in a space the size of a prison cell unless forced to.  

Boneyard Studios preferred the Smurf-sized houses to be built in a community connected to a neighborhood but zoning laws do not allow residential dwellings on alley lots unless they are at least 30 feet wide. No problem, it is time for D.C. to change its zoning laws and make them progressive.

The tiny homes sell for $20,000 to $50,000. Who can afford a real house when the economy has been driven into a downward spiral in the last four years and it is harder and harder to qualify for a real mortgage loan when you’ve been living in your parents’ basement unemployed?

Europeans have been living in crowded conditions for ages, multi-generational families forced to live together with elderly parents by the dearth of living space, city crowding, and high rental prices. Home ownership was discouraged in some countries by generous government-subsidized rental housing. Europeans always excused their cramped spaces as more enlightened priorities than American’s selfishly sprawling dream homes. If truth was to be known, they would gladly swap their living quarters with those of Americans.

What are the best selling points of a “tiny” house? They are easy to clean, mobile, “save a ton of money on heating and AC,” and the price is right. Besides, the generational trend gurus instruct us that our love affair with a real house has ended when progressives took over the economy and turned it into a disaster.

Saving money on heating and cooling, of course, features prominently into the playbook of Agenda 21 supporters who would prefer to roll back the clock to pre-industrial America in terms of energy use and living conditions, preferably to pioneer days.

Emily Wax said, “Here in Stronghold, the tiny houses also signal a culture clash between generations with different ideas about which American dream to aspire to.” The author must be referring to the new and improved American dream as envisioned by progressives. Patricia Harris, a descendant of freed slaves, (I am not sure why it was relevant to mention her lineage) is quoted, “These tiny houses feels like we are going backwards.”

Progressives and their children seem to prefer “restaurants, fitness centers, and a community life they can walk to.” The rest of Americans like to walk as well but they also prefer to own a car, a larger home, and a more independent lifestyle that allows mobility and travel to distant places.

Affordable-housing promoters hope that “tiny” homes will replace the much maligned trailer parks and low-income housing – well, at least until a hurricane or straight line winds decide to make land in D.C.

Emily Wax reports that a 5,200 square feet lot for a “tiny” home sold for $31,000. In a different part of the country, a family can buy a nice traditional home for $81,000, avoiding the indignity of having to live in a matchbox or a home the size of a prison cell.

 

 

 

 

Being Bourgeois

Ana and I picked up nine year old Stefan from school one October day, a gorgeous Indian summer day before the winter chill. A musical prodigy, little Stefan is a genius with a penchant for Italian food. Half a block from the art school is a restaurant called Da Vinci’s, always bustling with patrons dining under the grape vine pergola.

I was happy to see so many people out to lunch, able to afford food and particularly restaurant food, previously considered a luxury under communism that only the ruling elite could afford and felt entitled to have and enjoy.

Adjacent to Da Vinci’s was an old stately mansion in a terrible state of disrepair. A tall fence covered in vines obscured the full view to the house. I peered through the wooden slats that had separated here and there where the nails broke or the wood decayed. The gate opened with a groan and I stepped inside the yard. Someone forgot to lock the gate. There was neither a trespassing warning nor any sign of habitation. The formerly tended front garden was overcome with tall weeds, growing from the most unlikely places – like the many cracks of the cement garden path.

I walked to the front door and rang the massive lion head door knocker. It made a hollow sound. I waited for a few minutes but nobody answered. I looked through a window – the house was empty and had been empty for quite some time.

The mansion was oozing rust from everywhere but especially the wrought iron front foyer bump-out. The stained glass windows were still beautiful, just as I remembered them. I used to count the squares and name the colors to pass the time. The walls were cracked and peeling and the fancy silk wall paper hung desolate onto the floor stained from water leaks. The Bohemian crystal chandelier was still hanging in the dining room, missing bulbs and electricity. The heavy rosewood furniture with strange carvings was gone. The parquet discolorations bore witness to the place where they stood. Did the owners remove them? Were they sold at auction? Did the communists apparatchiks confiscate them in the 1980s and moved them to their villas?

Aunt Ecaterina’s bedroom bay window that I admired was missing the heavy curtains. Mom used to open them to let fresh air in. Miraculously the dingy glass was not broken. I sat on a pillow in the bay window many Sundays checking out the lush rose garden, now a jungle mess of weeds, or staring mesmerized at the rain. Mom and aunt Ecaterina talked in hushed tones and she cried a lot.

She always wore her finest housecoat and slippers made of rich silk brocade. I did not understand at the time what secrets they shared, why we had to walk so much to her home every weekend. It was a trek I dreaded but I was not old enough to stay home alone.

Her husband had been arrested because he was bourgeois. It must have been a terrible crime, I thought at the time. I asked Grandma several times why her youngest brother was in prison but she always avoided my question and turned her eyes away, waving her hand in the air.

Years later I understood. Grandma’s brother had acquired too much land and a nice home and that was a crime in the new communist regime. He had worked very hard to build a successful store from scratch, built the mansion, bought some land, got married, and had a son whom he sent to the best schools to become a lawyer.

Class envy and re-distribution of wealth sent him to prison for seven years. His wife was devastated! The communist regime confiscated all the land, the store, the bank accounts, and the furnishings. They left Ecaterina’s ornate bed. She became so depressed; she seldom got out of her matrimonial bed. Mom tried to cheer her up with our weekend visits. I only looked forward to her sour cherry preserves on rye bread. It was a real treat.

Nobody knows how uncle Pavel survived seven years in jail – it certainly was not a walk in the park being beaten daily and eating potato soup and bread. He died several years after having served the full sentence. Aunt Ecaterina never recovered from her depression. Not only did she have to suffer the indignity of losing everything, including the love and comfort of her husband, the communist party moved two families of strangers into her home. Nine more people made the large house look suddenly small and crowded. She had to share the kitchen, the hallways, and bathrooms with total strangers. She lived long enough to see her only adult son succumb to lung cancer. I wonder if the grandchildren inherited the mansion and did not have the money to remodel.

It was bittersweet, stepping back in time 40 some years, remembering the misery and abuse of communism. I walked back into the street and to the restaurant. By now, Ana and Stefan had arrived and were looking for me. I glanced back one more time at the rusty tin roof – the sun was shining but the house looked forlorn and leaning.

I smiled when Stefan gave me a hug and threw his back pack on the ground. The day was going to be all right, the fog of the past dissipated. Unpleasant memories still hound me, triggered by unusual circumstances. I went back to Romania to revisit my past but the unplanned encounters with the ghosts of communism were still painful.

Butler on Business, WAFS 1190 Atlanta

My ten minute segment on Atlanta's Premier Radio Station, WAFS 1190, on November 28, 2012.
Topic: Welfare system in Europe, a mirror of what is coming this way.
I come on at the 34 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//17959.mp3

Radio Chat with Silvio Canto of Dallas on U.S. Economy

U.S. Economy, fiscal cliff, this day in history - radio chat with Silvio Canto of Dallas
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2012/11/30/the-us-economy-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

National Debt Is Still the Biggest Threat to Our National Security

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily a power to destroy, because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.” – John Marshall

Americans are in denial about the simple fact that our national debt is the biggest threat to our national security. National debt grew exponentially from Washington’s profligate deficit spending, recessions, and wars.

When I looked today at the national debt clock, each taxpayer owed approximately $142,000, the figure changing rapidly based on factors such as the value of the dollar, trade deficits, and the latest sums borrowed from U.S. taxpayers or from whatever country willing to buy our Treasury Securities, T-bills, T-notes, and T-bonds - China, Japan, and oil exporters being the largest buyers of U.S. debt so far.

The national debt to most Americans is something on paper in a faraway place that does not concern or affect us. Americans have no idea how it grew so exponentially large, where it came from, who owes it, who owns it, and how many zeroes a trillion has.

Perhaps the debt figure would become more real to Americans and take on dire significance if each taxpaying citizen would receive a bill for $142,000 payable in full right now, no kicking the can down the road to our children and grandchildren in exchange for our current comfort.

It is true, our national debt is measured in dollars, which we can always print in order to meet our payments. This is called monetizing the deficit. Doing so, however, creates inflation, as too much money is chasing too few goods. A responsible government should never print money in outlandish excess of GDP, the amount of final goods and services produced in a year. If they do, hyperinflation will occur, and severe devaluation of the currency.

“Since 1971, U.S. borrowed $50 trillion to produce only $13 trillion of goods and services in a 40 year period.” Egon von Greyerz, a financial analyst with Matterhorn Asset Management AG in Zurich, Switzerland, said, “From 1971 when President Nixon ended the gold-backing of the dollar, virtually all of the growth in the Western world has come from the massive increase in credit rather than from real growth in the economy.”

The mantra that the “rich are not paying their fair share” promoted by the MSM sound bites and the Democrat ruling party prompted many to calculate what would happen if we were to confiscate every millionaire and billionaire’s wealth, what impact would have on our national debt, the accumulated budget deficits of previous years. All the U.S. accumulated wealth would last a mere two months.

There is a difference between income and wealth. The Democrats are talking about taxing the rich (income), not taxing the wealth – big difference which voters clearly do not understand. Taxing income will result in “spreading the wealth” from producers to takers in the name of “social justice” and the subsequent consumer spending, with no tangible assets created. Excessive tax discourages capital formation and job creation, stifling economic growth. Perhaps that is the political intent of the ruling party.

Taxing the rich already brings in the lion’s share of revenue to the Treasury. If the rich are taxed too much, who is going to create manufacturing jobs, the government?

Average earners and small businesses that pay taxes at the personal income tax level are now the rich - the middle class will be taxed more when the Bush era tax cuts expire and the Obamacare taxes will go into effect in January 2013, contracting job creation. The Democrats and the President have no intention or concrete plans to cut spending. Their main goal seems to be tax increases.

According to Mark Steyn, if the government was to confiscate all of the $44 billion that Warren Buffett has, it would only last four days at the current level of spending.

Much ado has been made in the press about Warren Buffet who did not pay the same tax percentage as his secretary. When Mr. Buffett complained, I was not clear what kept him from writing a “fair share” check to the IRS, matching his secretary’s percentage.

Mark Steyn calculated again that, if everyone’s tax indebtedness would go up according to this Buffett rule, the deficit created by the Obama administration in 2011 would be paid off in 514 years and we would still have the deficits created in the other three years of this presidency.

The national debt has exceeded $16.3 trillion but Gross Domestic Product (all the final goods and services produced in a year domestically) is only $15.3 trillion, one trillion short. The federal revenue from taxes is $2.4 trillion. We have spent almost 7 times what we raise in taxes annually. 

The problem is not that Americans, rich or poor, are not paying enough taxes, the problem is that Congress and this administration are spending too much money. Spending to GDP ratio is 41 percent.

We have paid so far in 2012 almost $4 trillion in interest from excessive borrowing when our money supply from cash and savings is $10.3 trillion.

Our national debt has exploded in the last four years. During President Obama’s first three years in office, it grew by $4.7 trillion, an increase of 45 percent. (factcheck.org)

Our current policy seems to be putting pressure on the U.S. dollar until two options remain - default on the U.S. debt, or monetizing it by printing more money. If we default, as in any case of bankruptcy, creditor nations would demand payment in American assets – our oil fields, mines, land, parks, monuments, buildings, military bases, and even the indentured servitude of generations of taxpayers.

Can we refuse to pay our national debt?  We could but the consequences might not be so pleasant. Britain, Germany, and Italy blockaded the ports of Venezuela during the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902-1903 when dictator Cipriano Castro refused to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in the Venezuelan civil war.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the following during the November 20 speech to the Center for a New American Security (a think-tank in Washington):

“One of the national security threats is the question of whether or not the leaders we elect can, in fact, govern and can, in fact deal with the challenges that face this country.” (Emelie Rutherford, Defense Daily, November 26, 2012)

Secretary Panetta was initially questioned during this meeting why the Senate failed to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). Most Americans are actually glad that LOST was not ratified since it is part of U.N. Agenda 21’s plan of global governance.

Sequestration may not be such a good idea when it involves the military. Si vis pacem, para bellum, the Romans said, “if you want peace, prepare for war.”

Panetta acknowledged that budgeting “can’t just be about cutting, it’s got to be about investing, investing in space and cyber, investing in unmanned systems, investing in the kind of capability to mobilize quickly if we have to. And most importantly, maintaining our defense industrial base in this country so that we are not in a position where I’m forced to contract out the most important defense capabilities that I need. I can’t do that. I can’t just contract those out to another country. I’ve got to have that capability here in the United States.”

National debt is the number one threat to national security. If we keep squandering trillions of dollars borrowed from our potential foes and have nothing to show for our spending, except increasing dependency of our population on welfare, food stamps, and entitlements, if we cut NASA and rent space on Russian flights, if we spend so much that we are no longer able to invest in infrastructure, technology, medicine, space exploration, industry, manufacturing, and defense, our integrity as a powerful nation is severely threatened and damaged.

 

 

I Dream of Southfork

The late Larry Hagman was credited with saving Romania from communism. In a video clip, the actor who portrayed the infamous and villainous J. R. Ewing tells the story of a Romanian who approached him on a visit to the formerly communist country with tears in his eyes, “Thank you, J.R., for saving Romania.”(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZ4FNIn0VA)

Millions of people around the globe tuned in from 1977 to 1991 to watch the TV show Dallas and the celluloid life of the fictitious Ewings, the oil rich tycoons, the detestable J.R., his alcoholic and co-dependent wife Sue Ellen, his honest brother Bobby, and all his sordid affairs.

I am not sure why the tyrant Ceausescu allowed us to watch Dallas. Perhaps he thought or was advised that this soap opera represented everything that was bad about capitalism and we needed one more reason to hate capitalism. Instead, we loved it!

Every weekend we tuned in faithfully, escaping for one hour from our imprisoned lives, glued to black and white TVs. The streets were empty, whole blocks would get together to watch the soap opera on the one TV screen that was larger and newer, and we prayed that the local government did not turn our electricity off.  It was common occurrence to have blackouts – we had shortages of everything else, all the time, due to poor centralized planning by uneducated communist bureaucrats.

The ranch at Southfork became larger than life; its palatial surroundings made our concrete block apartments seem so small, that one could easily fit into Sue Ellen’s well-appointed closet. I was disappointed when a Texan friend told me that the Southfork ranch was rather small. We had imagined a massive mansion with beautiful bedrooms and a huge kitchen stuffed to the brim with food. Southfork became a metaphor for freedom and success through the opulent lifestyles of the Dallas characters.

We thought all Americans were rich like the Ewings and money grew on trees. We longed for and saw freedom through the eyes of a badly scripted soap opera that kept our poor and miserable proletariat mesmerized.

There was a love-hate relationship with the character of J.R., the all-around bad guy without a conscience who tortured his wife with his blatant infidelity.

When J.R. was shot by Kristen, everybody asked me who did it since we were watching episodes distributed ahead of everyone else in the world. My relatives, whom I was visiting, were quite disappointed when I did not know at the time the answer to the question of the day - who shot J.R.

Larry Hagman told the Associated Press, “I think we were directly or indirectly responsible for the fall of [communism.]” “They would see the wealthy Ewings and say, ‘Hey, we don’t have all this stuff.” (reason.com)

I don’t think J.R. Ewing helped overthrow communism at all, directly or indirectly, but it gave us hope that someday we could make it to America, the land of the free. Our dreams could come true, and success would be within reach through hard work if only the communist party, its brutal regime, and the dictator Ceausescu were gone.

It took a long time to topple communism, from its initial creep after the forced abdication of the king in 1948, until 1989 when the dictator and his wife were executed for treason and other crimes against humanity. There were many who emboldened the millions suffering under the Iron Curtain to break the chains of communism – among them the Polish Pope, John Paul II. When people could hunger and suffer no more, the barbed wire fences and concrete walls were demolished, and justice was served.

Sadly today, people who were born, raised, and grew old under the welfare-dependent, freedom robbing communism, never learned how to cope on their own and be self-reliant. Those Romanians are now the pro-communism voices, joined by neo-communist and pliable youth who are naïve enough to believe in a failed and miserable utopia. The lessons of history fall by deaf ears.