Speak Up...

Just some thoughts from Mark Farage concerning today’s difficult economic environment and politics. I am not sure if you are like me but, recently every time I open up a news website it looks like the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate is talking about bailing someone out or throwing a billion dollars at this problem or a billion dollars at that problem. It seems like our elected representatives are becoming very casual with our hard earned money. Perhaps too many of them have been working on “the Hill” too long and have forgot what it is like to have a real job. When you have a real job it sure seems crazy that companies are getting bailed out for making bad decisions. In the real world if you make a bad decision you usually have to face the consequences, sometimes very harsh consequences.

So, I am asking all of you to take time and talk with your elected officials. Remember that every elected official serves on behalf of their constituents and it is our job as the constituents to let them know how we feel on something. If we sit back and say nothing…don’t be upset when something happens that you are not too pleased with. Only through raising our voices can we be heard as constituents and tax payers. It is not enough to just vote when Election Day comes…we must all be active and take an active role in the politics of our great country on a daily basis if needed.

I consistently review what the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are voting on or discussing and I take time to send emails to my elected officials. My voice is being heard, is yours? The following links will take you to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. I encourage you to contact your elected officials and let them know how you feel on certain subjects.

United States House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/

United States Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Right now I am very concerned about the “talk” of bailing out the U.S. auto industry or certain failing members of that industry. I am appalled that we as American taxpayers are going to be potentially liable for the mistakes these companies have made over the last three decades. We are quickly becoming a nation of “bail outs” and the last time I checked that is not what this country was founded on. We are a nation built on “opportunity” and the freedom to pursue that opportunity. To me it would appear that GM and Ford have not made good on that opportunity and in a free market under the rules of capitalism you lead, follow, or get out of the way. Ford and GM have certainly not led and I don’t think they have even followed successful automotive companies like Honda, Audi, BMW, Toyota, etc. So, that means it is time for them to get out of the way.

Anyway, I have attached a message I sent my elected officials…use it as a base for your own personal message or laugh at it and chalk it up to the musings of a young Capitalist with dreams of the United States returning to a free market.

Sen. Alexander and Sen. Corker:

I am writing to you in regards to the discussion on the Hill about the possible bail out of part of the United States’ automotive industry.

I implore you to vote against any measure that would amount to a "bail out" of the industry or members of the industry. It is absolutely astonishing that members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are seriously talking about bailing out another industry in today's economic situation.

As a constituent and young professional in Tennessee; I am amazed that such a measure would even be discussed. In the free market world of Capitalism you lead, follow, or get out of the way. It is time for GM and Ford to get out of the way. For the last 30 years their management has made poor decisions, produced poor products, and made poor decisions when dealing with the UAW. It is no wonder that they are now in trouble.

Amazingly companies like Toyota, Audi, BMW, etc. are functioning fine in the current economy and have cash reserves to make it through difficult times. They operated as a business should...smartly while ensuring that their management decisions are not just made for next quarter's results but, rather for the next decade's results.

I fully understand the impact that our economy would face if GM and Ford were to sink into bankruptcy; however, the alternative is not any better. Dumping billions of hard earned tax payer dollars into their coffers is not going to change their management and will not suddenly make their products more appealing. Let's face it...the stubbornness and inability of GM and Ford to respond to today's market and the demands of today's consumers is no fault but their own.

The inability of the $700 billion financial bail out plan to boost the economy should certainly serve as warning to not make the same mistake with the auto industry. If money is given to them they will only ask for more later...and it will serve as nothing but an incentive to continue their poor business practices.

If GM and Ford fail it will leave a hole in the market and new companies will be able to take advantage of the hole. That is the essence of a free market and Capitalism. It is absolutely irresponsible for the federal government to bail out an ailing company because of decades of bad decisions.

I am a young professional with a MBA and I work for one of Tennessee's leading examples of innovative business success...FedEx. I know that the loss of GM and Ford would put pressure on FedEx...that is fact. However, FedEx will survive because our leadership has been proactive over the last three decades ensuring that we adapt and remain flexible to the demands of the international marketplace. GM and Ford have not...thus, it makes absolutely no sense to bail them out. There are hundreds of examples of companies in Tennessee that are surviving and thriving in today's harsh economic times and it is because the management of those companies have made smart decisions, planned for the future, and maintained flexibility in all they do.

I see absolutely no reason to bail out GM or Ford and neither should you. You as an elected official represent your constituents and your constituents do not want you to vote for any measure that would "bail out" the auto industry. Enough is enough it is time for companies to face their own actions or inaction. We are quickly becoming a nation of "bail outs". Who is next…the individual home owner because he/she bought a house they could not afford...sure…makes sense. Let's reward people for making bad decisions. It is time that we get back to the principles of limited government; the same principles that helped our country prosper through the darkest hours. Oversight, reform, and regulation are all keys to a successful economy but, no economy has been successful when the taxpayer begins bailing out private industry.

We as your constituents and as American taxpayers work hard for our money. My family has never owned an American car nor will I. I certainly don't want to pay for one now when I won't even be driving it. Let common sense prevail here and let companies sink or swim on their own merits. If we cross the line any further we will soon have every industry from fast food to luxury yachts lining up at the government window for a "bail out".

You represent the hard working people of the State of Tennessee...vote as we would...vote against a bail out. Remember that democracy still works and change can come at every election.

If a business is truly successful they will be able to weather any economic recession...or they will be flexible and adapt to a new reality. Let Capitalism and the free markets work as they are intended.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Your constituent and a hard working taxpayer of this great country.

Mark Farage

A Wonderful Day...

Cool weather has finally arrived in Hong Kong. Friday night saw a "cold" front move into the region and temperatures have drastically changed. Saturday and Sunday were absolutely wonderful days...I would have to say they were perhaps the nicest days we have yet to have in Hong Kong. Almost no pollution could be seen in the skies...perhaps the election of President-elect Obama has indeed changed the world. I am kidding of course.

Randi and I had a great weekend...a busy weekend. My management was in town from the states and we had a "junk" trip on Saturday night. It was a beautiful night for a cruise on Victoria Harbor and the food was as tasty as always...courtesy of Jaspa's Junk. Sunday we spent the day outside with Henry enjoying the beautiful weather, pizza with friends (and other dogs) at Pizza Express, and then dinner with Erlynn and her husband (who is visiting before he returns to Manila).

It was a great weekend. Monday saw more beautiful weather...I am currently watching the sun set out of our office window over a shimmering (but still polluted) South China Sea and cool temperatures in the 70's. Randi's management is in town this week and she will be busy with work.

We are approaching the end of my contract and that means only 110 days left before we tentatively leave Hong Kong. It will be sad to leave but, as with all things in life...usually the best is around the corner. I just tell Randi only God knows what is planned for our next journey in life and all we can do is move forward with faith. I have figured out that in the last 6 years...over 3 years have been spent outside of the United States...who would have thought?

It will be an interesting week in the news...I am sure we will see more from President-elect Obama and his choices or ideas for his cabinet, etc. I am sure his world view changed Friday afternoon after his first Presidential security briefing...I am sure the reality of being responsible for the safety of 300,000,000 people hit home. In a world full of threats...securing freedom, protecting the citizens of our great country, promoting democracy, and ensuring capitalism continues to reign is a lot harder than just making a great speech and sounding "Presidential". I along with millions of people around the world pray that President-elect Obama makes sound, careful, and considerate decisions over the next two months.

Election Day...

I have not made a posting to the blog in quite awhile…my wife has asked that I make our blog less political and more about what we are doing. Unfortunately; I believe that what we do is intimately tied to our politics. Everything we have, everything we do, and every opportunity we have is because of and related directly to the politics of the United States of America. I firmly believe that our nation is the greatest nation on earth and today I still believe that.

However; I believe we have, as a nation, just made a tragic error in judgment. We have just elected a man to become President of the United States who was a college student, community organizer, law school student, junior associate, Illinois State Senator, a university lecturer, and a United States Senator. Not one of those jobs has a hint of what it will be like to command our great military, to lead our nation, and to be the chief executive of the United States of America. Independent of your political inclination we just “hired” an individual that is unqualified for the job…based solely on the implied need for “change”.

Let’s look at the true, hard, and undeniable facts for a moment. President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961 making him forty-seven years old. He attended Occidental College for two years and then transferred to Columbia University where he graduated with a B.A. in 1983. He admitted (in his book “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”) that he used marijuana, cocaine, and abused alcohol during his “college-aged” years. Upon graduation he went to work for a few years for Business International Corporation and the New York Public Interest Research Group.

After four years with these two companies he went to Chicago and worked for Developing Communities Project (DCP) a faith-based community organization for approximately three years. While the director of DCP the organization grew from a staff of one to thirteen and the budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000.

In 1988 he traveled to Europe for three weeks and then went to Kenya. These were his first international trips as an “adult”. He then went to Harvard Law School in late 1988. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 magna cum laude. While in law school he interned at two law firms in Chicago: Sidley & Austin and Hopkins & Sutter.

After law school he had a fellowship with the University of Chicago, worked for Project Vote, taught constitutional law as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, and worked as an associate for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland for three years. In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois State Senate where he served until 2004.

During his time on the senate; he voted "present" over 130 times...thus avoiding having to vote "yes" or "no" on some hard issues. As far as being hard on crime, while in the state senate he voted in 2001 against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they killed someone to help their gang. Oh...and unsuccessfully sponsored a bill that would have limited the number of handgun's someone could purchase in 2000. And we cannot forget that he voted for the stellar piece of legislation that successfully sponsored a law enforcement study of the race of people pulled over for traffic tickets.

In 2004 he was elected to the United States Senate where he serves/served as a junior senator. Sen. Obama missed over 24% of the votes since January 2005. He sponsored 120 resolutions since Jan 24, 2005, of which 115 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. He has co-sponsored approximately 488 resolutions during the same time. The resolutions of his that have passed are mild resolutions dealing with celebrating the life of someone...legislation that I would not say is at the forefront of politics.

In 2007 he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. After that announcement he did very little actual senatorial related work.

So, looking solely at the facts we (as in the United States of America) just elected a man that was: (1) a community organizer of an organization with thirteen people and a budget of $400,000 (at its largest); (2) a junior associate at a law firm for three years without any supervisory responsibility; (3) an Illinois State Senator for approximately 8 years; (4) a part-time university lecturer; (4) an author; and (5) a junior United States Senator for approximately four years (two of which were spent campaigning for President of the United States). In my opinion that is absolutely one of the worst resumes to be leader of the free world. The man has absolutely no substantive executive experience, no substantive international relations work, and no substantial legislative experience. He is without a doubt the most inexperienced individual elected President of the United States of America.

Now, if you want to argue as he did and state that he has executive experience because he ran his campaign; well don’t jump on that one too fast; I would have to say the following people ran his campaign: (1) David Axelrod - Media Strategist; (2) David Plouffe - Campaign Manager; (3) Steve Hildebrand - Deputy Campaign Manager; (4) Betsy Myers - Chief Operating Officer; (5) Robert Gibbs - Communications Chief; and (6) Penny Pritzker - National Finance Director. The actual candidate does not do much "leading" in a presidential campaign.

So, let’s look at what we elected in the name of “change”. We elected a man that has promised the world to everyone. This man has literally promised to change the world…literally this guy has pledged to bring the U.S. energy independence, universal health care, better education, new social programs, reduced fuel costs, solve the home mortgage issue, get Wall Street back on track, solve the Iraq situation (by pulling out), calm Afghanistan, find Bin Laden, bring back America’s prestige to the world, cut taxes for everyone making less than $250,000…I mean $200,000…I mean $150,000….I mean $120,000…I mean $100,000, revolutionize our transportation, raise corporate taxes, simplify the tax code, restore the military to some sort of “prestige” (last time I checked we were still the greatest fighting force in the world), and of course encourage dads to take care of their children. If you think that this is just campaign rhetoric and no one believes it; try this on for size: in a widely publicized video President-elect Obama supporter Peggy Joseph stated: “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage, you know if…if I help him he’s going to help me.” You can’t deny this folks, people actually believe this stuff and I guarantee you there are millions of Peggy Joseph’s around the United States that voted with those same false hopes. How disappointed they will truly be.

I have no doubt that President-elect Obama truly believes that he is going to help America and he probably believes that his “change” is the right “change” for this country. But, there are million of people who voted that his “change” was not their “change”. There are millions of people in the United States who don’t want universal health care, more social programs, a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, higher individual taxes, higher corporate taxes, etc.

Let’s look at just one of his campaign promises to raise corporate taxes and close those evil corporate tax “loop holes”. Let’s just look at Exxon-Mobil as an example, a company everyone on the left loves to hate and even a company some on the right despise. No one factors into their "complaints" nor do they take into consideration that we are talking about a company that is 125 years old, a company that started small and over the last 125 years has grown and helped the world grow. You can't just judge a company on their revenue...there is so much more there. If anyone starts a business and 125 years later it is still around and has grown into a multi-billion dollar company, they have contributed greatly to this country. How much do you think Exxon and their employees have paid in U.S. taxes over the last 125 years?

I believe that large corporations deserve tax breaks, because as a corporation grows larger every incremental saving (from taxes, etc.) is being pushed into the “economic system” one way or another. A corporation is a corporation, the individuals still have to pay their taxes but, the more money a corporation keeps the more it can grow, expand, create, etc. The more a corporation can grow, expand, and create the more jobs that can be created, the higher salaries can go, higher dividends can be paid, etc.

All of that money goes into the economy and helps it expand. The engineer with a larger salary buys a new house, which was built by a construction company, which employees construction workers, who buy lunch from the local restaurant, which employees a few waitresses, who go buy some new clothes, from a store that just opened, which just hired some sales associates, etc.

Fundamental economic theory dictates that reducing the tax burden increases the ability of a corporation to expand and increase profits; which literally trickles down to everyone. Just look at your 401(k) or local restaurant and ask yourself where the money is coming from; businesses or the government? Just look at Memphis. Memphis is literally supported by FedEx; even though FedEx only employees around 30,000 people in Memphis, how many other jobs are dependent upon the incomes of the 30,000…100,000, 200,000 and then how many jobs are dependent upon the income of those 100,000, 200,000?

Increasing the tax burden on corporations is a very bad idea, very bad. Remember the employees still have to pay their taxes, a corporation is its own entity and individuals (themselves) do not reap a huge windfall from corporate tax decreases; in fact their tax burden usually goes up. How you ask? If a corporation has a lower tax rate they can afford to pay their people more, which means higher taxes on those higher incomes. What about more cash available for dividends; you guessed it more taxes for the shareholders on those dividends.

Corporations do not “eat” higher tax rates; they pass them on to their customers through higher prices for their products, services, etc. A tax increase on corporations will directly and negatively affect the purchasing power of the average citizen that President-elect Obama is so enamored with protecting and helping.

This is not rocket science; this is basic math and basic economics. Apparently, subjects that President-elect Obama did not dive into deeply while he was getting his J.D. This proves once again that we should not look to lawyers to run our government but, rather businessmen and businesswomen who understand basic economic theory, basic accounting, etc.

Now, since we are talking about money; let’s talk about charitable contributions. For those that think Sen. Obama is "salt of the earth", think again. Sen. Obama and his wife Michelle both went to Harvard Law. She earned approximately $300,000 a year from the University of Chicago Hospital System and he earned over $150,000 as a U.S. Senator. That is approximately $450,000 a year before you even take into consideration the fact that he has written two books and her income from sitting on several boards. When you factor those in, since 2005 their family has earned over $1,000,000 a year. Up until 2004 the Obama’s gave an abysmal amount of their income to charity, something that surprised me considering how much he talks about helping those less fortunate. Amazingly, the Obama’s charitable giving rose dramatically (as a percentage of income) when he began running for the presidency, but, he clearly did not have that pattern prior to 2005. Clearly, this is another point that the data clearly demonstrates that he says one thing while he does another.

Even though they were making over $200,000 a year from 2000 through 2004, they were giving a very small percentage of their money to charity and considering he is such a proponent for the disadvantaged; I would have figured (and thought so prior to looking at their returns) they would have given much more than they did.


I would also consider, since he seems to think the wealthy are making over $250,000 that being wealthy also means that you need to help out the less fortunate. Looking at their charitable giving, it would seem that was neither the case nor his true belief until they made over a $1,000,000 a year or coincidentally until he started his run for the presidency. So, he may need to reassess what he thinks wealthy is based on his own actions and income. Looking at the raw data leaves no room for argument. President-elect Obama did not put his money where his mouth was prior to 2005 and one can argue if he is even doing so today…considering he is only giving an average of 5.4% of his AGI to charity. Considering this quote by then Sen. Obama himself, when talking about money helping to solve the problems associated with the disadvantaged, "money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference..." he clearly did not believe in giving his own until 2005. For someone who speaks so eloquently about helping the disadvantaged you really have to ask yourself were these talking points to help him get elected or are they his fundamental beliefs. His charitable giving standards do not reflect his words...period.

The United States of America has, in my opinion, just elected an unqualified individual to be President of the United States. This is a man whose actions do not follow his words, a man who has promised everything to everyone, and a man who does not understand even basic economic theory. This is a man that has little to no international relations experience and zero military experience who is about to be our Commander-in-chief. I hope we all pray tonight that President-elect Obama will remember that he represents the United State of America and not just his friends who have a left leaning ideological vision of America. These next four years are going to be interesting and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Well, I also blame the media for doing such a great job digging for the truth as related to Sen. Obama. I think we have witnessed one of the most disgusting uses of biased media to date.

My final thoughts:

I do not believe "change" amounts to throwing away common sense and falling for campaign rhetoric. I do not believe "change" requires a forty-seven year old man with little experience to be elected President of the United States. I do not believe "change" requires more social programs. I do not "believe" change requires higher individual taxes. I do not believe "change" requires increasing the tax burden for corporations. I do not believe "change" encourages a "I deserve it society".

I do believe "change" requires you to become involved in your community. I do believe "change" requires you to become involved in politics. I believe "change" requires holding the individual accountable. I believe "change" requires hard work. I believe "change" involves more than campaign rhetoric. I believe "change" is in each and every one of us.