One of my all time favorite old time sayings is "you can't get blood out of a turnip", a simple metaphor meaning you simply can't get something from someone who doesn't have it. This metaphor was used primarily when referring to money, or the lack there of.
Now we are entering a time in our country's history when we have to tell the President (and his liberal base) that "you can't get blood out of a turnip". Simply put, we are broke.
As of today, we are over 14.6 trillion dollars (yes, that trillion with a " T " ) in debt. That breaks down to $130,633.00 dollars per tax payer. We borrow $.40 cents on every dollar the Government spends, either from other countries, or worse from the fed (this is done by printing money out of thin air, called monetizing the debt and basically devalues our currency). The interest on our national debt through July of this year has totaled $412,517,504,466.06 (That's $412 billion and change folks) and there are still two months left in this fiscal year, so we are probably looking at over $413 billion dollars by the end of the 2011 fiscal year. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!
Now we get to the second portion of that old saying "you can't get blood out of a turnip, but you can stomp the hell out of it", and that's what President Obama is planing to do, stomp the hell of of the turnip, and if you haven't figured it out yet, America is the turnip.
President Obama recently announced (he announces quiet often even though he never really says anything of substance) that he is going to reveal his new economic plan in September. He has been dropping hints that he will be proposing legislation that will require "additional revenues" to the nations richest people. In a way, I understand this move by the President. It is very easy to gain the support of the have-nots ( which grows larger every day) by recommending that we take more from the haves. What else would you expect from an administration that views the food stamp program as a "positive stimulus for the nations economy" (as stated by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack). How can you view the fact that 46 million people (that's 1 in 7 folks) in America need government assistance to buy food in any way that is positive is completely beyond me, but the Obama administration is trying to put a positive spin on anything they can these days. Now back to my original thought...
So we're going to take from the rich and give to the poor, the unemployed and the deserving. OK, let's look at that, if we raise the tax rate on millionaires and billionaires from it's current rate to 70% that would generate around $350 billion dollars annually. Now if you will just look up the collumn you will notice that this money would not even cover the annual interest on our national debt. It would however bring the price up on pretty much everything that those millionaires and billionaires produce (because they have to make a profit, how do you think they got rich in the first place). These price increases would trickle down to the lower economic classes and put all of us "simple folk" in more of a tight than we already are. Or even worse, they would just move all of their money overseas where they can get a lower tax rate, then we wouldn't be collecting the tax revenue that we are currently getting.
The Obama administration has also thrown around the notion that we could stimulate the economy by further extending and raising unemployment rates (certain progressives have even suggested making unemployment term benifits unlimited). I love this idea, let's pay people not to work. I have heard it over and over again. "Why should I look for a job when I'm getting unemployment", even the Government touts that a lot of Americans are sitting at home and drawing unemployment while that wait for that "high paying job" that Obama keeps promising he will create for everyone. He said it just a few days ago, "Every American deserves a good, high paying job". Well guess what, they don't. People complain about illegal aliens taking jobs away from Americans, the fact of the matter is that most Americans wouldn't do the jobs that Illegals take. But I'll bet they would if they weren't getting a government check every month.
When I was a teenager, I rode bulls on the weekends. I did this because like most things in my life, I tried to balance doing things that I enjoyed with making money (mainly because I didn't have much). So on the weekends, I would compete in the bull riding competitions. The winner would walk away with a couple of hundred bucks in his pocket for 8 seconds of work, seemed like a good deal. But here's the thing, I was always watching for the guy who looked hungry, if you can picture what I mean. He was the guy that came to the event in old stained up clothes, with wornout gear and you could tell he wasn't down there just for the fun of it. To him, winning that event meant the difference between eating meat and potatoes the next day or Ramen noodles. If that type guy was at the event, I didn't even waste my money by paying the entry fee. You see, he was hungry and that meant that he was motivated to win, more so than anyone else at the event.
We, as a nation need to be hungry, or we will be the turnip that gets stomped and like I said before, you can't get blood out of a turnip, only turnip juice.
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