Office of Holiday Decorations, Activities, Music and Nutrition

Double digit unemployment, flea-bitten malcontents occupying and agitating in our major cities, $15 TRILLION in debt and growing, and on the agenda of this administration is...wait for it...

A Christmas tree tax

The Department of Agriculture has since backed off of this lunacy, for now. They claimed it was merely a fee that would be used to help promote the fresh Christmas tree growers. But do they really need a government program to advertise Christmas trees? Its not like its the biggest holiday of the year or anything. And what about the artificial tree market and the mall Santas? How long before they start demanding their piece of the pie?

Whether its billion dollar bailouts for car companies, or a $0.15 tax on Christmas tress, does any private business really need or deserve taxpayer dollars? That is OUR money and should not be wasted beyond the Constitutionally mandated functions of the Federal government. It was never the intent of our Founding Fathers to take money from one group and give it to another. That sure has changed over the years.

If the Christmas tree growers feel the need to increase their price and pool their resources to fund a national marketing campaign, I applaud them. Give me a call and I will help with their marketing efforts. Just keep the government out of it.

Let's pretend that this is a good idea. Start with a small fee that gets passed down the distribution chain until the consumer has to absorb this increase in cost. Money is tight, so maybe they skip the tree this year, or go back to the artificial one in the attic. Government is now faced with a shortfall, so the fee becomes a tax and is expanded and added to all Christmas decorations. Do you see the insanity at work here?

Having been on this planet for a few years now, I know how government corruption works. We start with a small fee. Then, we need someone to manage these funds. And of course we need bureaucrats to monitor the money to make sure it is spent "wisely" and find new ways to regulate trees and anything holiday related. The media trots out "victims" of holiday trauma sounding the alarm that something must be done...for the children. Before long, President Obama recognizes the need to regulate all holidays, so with much fanfare he creates a whole new agency:

Office of Holiday Decorations, Activities, Music and Nutrition - OH DAMN for short

Staffed with the best and the brightest of Obama's campaign contributors and loyal supporters, America is stuck with yet another bloated agency determined to out mission creep the others. And of course the Democrat party has yet another large and growing staff of loyal voters determined to keep their gravy train a chugging along. 

Naturally, American taxpayers will have to reach deep down and send in a few more dollars they don't have to keep this behemoth growing and functioning properly. How could we have a proper Winter Celebration with a beautiful Holiday Tree all decorated with OH DAMN approved ornaments and lights. And don't worry about those obnoxious carolers, OH DAMN would approve, license and monitor to make sure only OH DAMN approved Holiday Carols are performed by qualified OH DAMN licensed performers. 

The Spring Bunny would bring us only the best OH DAMN approved chocolate bunnies in our Holiday baskets and the OH DAMN approved Spring Eggs would never be hidden, so as not to disappoint the little ones.

Bobbing for apples would no longer be a terrifying ordeal. With the OH DAMN approved water level and temperature monitors, safety always comes first. Turkey, don't even think about the hassle of preparation. You will be eternally thankful such a government agency exists to ensure Turkey Day and football watching parties are a blast.

I'm not sure how we have lasted for so long without OH DAMN to save us.

Hope and Spare Change!

I was going to blog about Fort Hood, but decided I better avoid the subject until I calm down a bit. Instead, I give you selected headlines from today's news. Click on the links for the full story.

$230,769.23 Spent Per Stimulus Job "Created or Saved"
Reports to be released Friday on the government Web site Recovery.gov are expected to show that the $150 billion in grants and loans made so far under the economic stimulus package have created or saved about 650,000 jobs, White House officials said Friday morning.

Harrison - I still can't figure out how to measure a "saved" job. I wonder how many jobs could be created by your average entrepreneur/business owner with $230,000?

Only a Democrat could waste $230,000 in taxpayer money to create ONE freakin' job and think that is a good thing.


Unemployment Hits Record High - 10.2% In October!
Remember that Obama claimed the stimulus bill would save or create millions of jobs. It didn’t. Remember that the Obama Administration said that the stimulus bill would keep unemployment from rising above 8% and that the bill was too important to take the time to read it? Remember that after a slight dip in unemployment in August Obama claimed that he had “rescued our economy from catastrophe?”

Harrison - The CBO argued it would have been better to do nothing.

10.2% is hardly accurate. The actual number is closer to 17.5%. This is the U-6 category which includes: people who have given up, taken part time jobs, gone back to school etc. Under a Democrat controlled Congress and President Bush, that number was 11.1% last October. It is now 17.5% after a year at the mercy of a Federal government completely dominated by Democrats. Here is the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Read it quickly before the White House wipes away the evidence.

Democrats have spent taxpayer money we don't have like drunken sailors (no offense intended to my Navy friends). They have nationalized school loans and taken over car companies. They are now openly debating a takeover of health care. All these actions will just delay the natural recovery. If we ever want to get out of this economic funk, we must stop spending, shrink the government and lower taxes. Get DC out of the way of private business and watch the economy roar back to life.

20% Unemployment? Yes We Can!

In 2007, Obama joined the Senate in a Democrat takeover of both houses. Based on our laws, Congress owns the purse strings for our government. So effectively, Obama and his Democrat minions owned the economy from 2007 forward.

What was the economy like at the start of 2007?
Unemployment - 4.5%
Dow - 14,000
Deficit - $190 Billion and declining

What has two and a half years of Democrat control of Congress plus 6 months of Obama brought us?
Unemployment - 9.7%*
Dow - 9,000
Deficit - $1.8 TRILLION and growing


*That 9.7% figure has always seemed low to me. So I did more checking to see if they were properly counting people who had given up and/or exhausted their benefits. It seems my suspicion was warranted. If you look at the combined totals, the numbers are depressing.

Michigan is actually above 19% along with 8 other states 15% or higher (Oregon: 18.4%, California: 17.7%, Rhode Island: 17.1%, South Carolina: 16.8%, Tennessee: 15.7%, Florida: 15.6 %, Arizona: 15.5% and Nevada: 15.2%! Yikes!

The great economist Walter Williams is estimating it closer to 20% nationally.

I keep hearing Obama tout "jobs saved" and frankly, I have no idea how one would measure that other than pull it out of their less flattering parts.

Everything Obama and Congress has done since January has merely cost jobs and further hampered the natural economic recovery. Spending billions on ACORN and Democrat pet projects does nothing to create private sector jobs or stimulate the economy. Spending millions on pork - quite literally buying ham at twice what you pay at your local supermarket. Does nothing to help spur the economy, but its a nice pay off for Democrat supporters I guess.

Next up, destruction of the energy sector and government takeover of health care.

Hope and Change!!