March 18, 2009
An Exchange Between My Brother and Me

Posted at 8:16 pm, in: Uncategorized

My blog automatically feeds into facebook. So, my family and friends, many who don’t agree with me, are finding out about a side to me they never really knew. My brother Scott decided to respond to one of my blogs. I decided to respond to him, section by section. With his permission, I have posted the exchange below.

Once again, I ask that you refrain from being rude to my brother, as I did with my mother. They are my family and I love them dearly. You can comment, just don’t be mean.

“Every so often, throughout our history, a generation of Americans bears the responsibility of seeing this country through difficult times and protecting the dream of its founding for posterity.” –Barack Obama.

My Brother Scott: You asked the question does it really fall on us to act now. I think you heard or read this wrong. The effects of the actions we take today are going to be felt for generations to come, but really, in short, just like he said, it is now that actions have to be taken for years to come. So, yes, it is our generation that has to take action.

HotMES: It is not our generation that will be forced to make the hard choices and decisions that President Obama has spoken of. He has been on TV for weeks, if not months, using fear mongering to scare most Americans into thinking that the only way we can be saved is by making these changes that he deems necessary. And, at the same time, he keeps presenting all opposition as a false choice and anyone who disputes his claims as politicizing the issue. We can’t spend our way out of debt. All of the money we are spending today will be paid for, at some point, by our children or our children’s children, etc. The hard choices we need to be making today is to cut programs that aren’t vitally necessary, cut government spending, and letting these markets bottom-out so that we can return to normalcy. These markets have to hit bottom at some point, the government bailouts are just prolonging the inevitable.

My Brother Scott: If you want to take issue with any issue then you should be writing in terms of what you think the solutions should be rather than picking apart the verbiage of our Commander-in-Chief. I agree, smaller government and more personal responsibility, but let’s face facts: our country is stupid. We have to educate before we can expect people to govern their own lives.

HotMES: I don’t believe our country is stupid. I think they have been misled, and not just by Obama or Bush, Democrats or Republicans, but they have been duped. And, when you speak of educating them, I’m not sure how you mean. Do you mean by throwing more money at a public educational system that has been failing for years? I believe people do need to be educated, just not the way they are currently being educated. School should be more about learning math, science, and proper grammar than how you feel inside. And, school decisions should be made on a local level, not by the federal government. There is one issue (NCLB) that I did not agree with President Bush and Sen. Kennedy about: the federalization of education.

My Brother Scott: You spoke about inheriting a war with Roosevelt. Well, Obama inherited all of this also.

HotMES: I didn’t speak about Roosevelt inheriting a war. He didn’t inherit a war. After we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, he declared one. My point was that, Obama is trying to argue that he’s not doing too much too quickly and that we have to face all problems immediately. As if he spends $635 (?) million more on “free” health care, that’s not going to exacerbate the current economic meltdown we are in? To support his point, he said that FDR “didn’t have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war.” Either Obama is mistaken here, or being disingenuous. FDR didn’t have to choose between them. FDR is often credited with ending the depression, but most economists now agree that the policies and programs (similar to many Obama is proposing and pushing through) actually prolonged the Great Depression and made it worse. Many credit WWII with finally getting us out of it.

And, Obama did inherit all of this, but he also played a role in it. This all started with the meltdown in the mortgage market. How did that meltdown happen? The government made Fannie and Freddie give loans to people who should have never gotten homes. Bush played into this with his “everyone should own a home” rhetoric. Fannie and Freddie got reckless with their loaning, mainly because all of those loans were being implicitly backed by taxpayer dollars. It wasn’t said, but everyone knew that if the people with the loans didn’t pay, the government would. And, once the bubble burst and the market started to crumble, all of the politicians came out with their “too big to fail” rhetoric, explicitly guaranteeing the loans. All of this government backing created a moral hazard in the home-loan industry which laid the foundation to our economic downfall. Guess which (then) Senator ranks number three as receiving donations from Fannie and Freddie: Barack Obama.

Also, since November, President Bush gave Obama and his team unprecedented access to the decision-making process on how to rescue us from our impending doom. It is not accurate to say that he didn’t play a major role in the mess he has inherited.

My Brother Scott: You talk about taxing the rich, well that kind of does play into the thought of socialism, but you do not present all of the facts either. Bush gave a tax credit for big business and the rich to stimulate our economy, and that did work in Reagan’s day—it was something right out of Reagan’s playbook. The difference is the rich and big business did not invest that money back here at home. They injected that money into foreign counties and markets. They reinvested it in their companies but the trickle-down effect to Main St. never happened because it trickled down to South America, China and India.

HotMES: Taxing the rich is socialism and it’s counterproductive. It’s a redistribution of wealth and it’s penalizing people for generating wealth. It’s inherently against the American ideals that allow us to protect the “dream for America’s posterity.” As for outsourcing, as I assume that is what you are getting at, a lot of that can be placed at the feet of the Democrats. With all of the rules and regulations they place on businesses, it was only a matter of time before they moved elsewhere. Why stay in a country where you are forced to hire everyone at a minimum wage they may not be worth and provide them with a bunch of benefits they may not deserve when you can go elsewhere and get the work done just as effectively, but cheaper? It is Democrat principles that gave businesses incentive to move their factories elsewhere. And, don’t believe the media hype, Bush did not just give tax cuts to big business and the wealthy, and they just got the most tax cuts as they are paying the most in taxes. You can’t give tax cuts to those not paying taxes (although, this is what Obama wants to do), and the tax cuts he gave have been proven to be the most effective in stimulating the economy. Our current economic crisis, contrary to popular belief, is not entirley President Bush’s fault.

My Brother Scott: So, now Obama has said that if you take your cash and keep it here at home we will give you tax credits; we will give you cheaper health care to be able to prosper and compete in a world market while keeping your production and work force here in the USA. I get that, now if taxing them gives them the incentive to continue to invest here at home that does not seem right. At the same time why continue to reward the rich and big business if they are contributing to the problem. Now government control and socialism is not a good way to go. But if the government is using our money to fix all these different sectors of our economy, that my money, my kid’s money, and like you say generations to come, if some one is going to take my money well take as much control as you need to in order to secure my investment returns tomorrow, so be it.

HotMES: Here is where we fundamentally disagree. I don’t believe that government is “saving” anything. I think that Obama has a radical agenda and has inflated a crisis, putting all Americans into a panic to the point they’ll accept anything he says. Government cannot solve this problem. In fact, everything they have done so far has proven they can only make it worse.

My Brother Scott: You bring up some good questions all on two excerpts of a speech. I just think right now, if you are an educated person, your responsibility lies with giving answers to what’s wrong rather than questions. If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

HotMES: I reject the notion that as an “educated” person it is my responsibility to tell people what we should do, rather than getting them to think about it for themselves. I’m just putting information out there and sparking a thought. I believe people will come to the right conclusions if they are given all of the information, which I don’t think we have been given. Obama’s holding press conferences where all of the reporters to be called on and the questions to be asked are screened and approved in advance. Do you think Bush would have gotten away with that? No, and he shouldn’t have. That’s not a free press and that’s not what democracy is about. Bush also wasn’t getting tossed soft questions about baseball players admitting they took steroids seven years ago. It’s absurd. People should be outraged no matter whom the president is or what party he belongs to.

My Brother Scott: And, back to your original question. He is talking about our government today, our working citizens today, our teachers today. It is our responsibility to take action, right now. Yes, it will be felt for generations to come. But the country is in such a state that we must act now. He will make mistakes and spend money where he should not, regulate what should not be regulated. As Bush made mistakes, and every president before him and after him will. It is our responsibility to be less divided, less argumentative, and take more action. Every one seems to have opinions and likes to point out the problems, but no one seems to use their brains to figure out solutions, or point out a better action to be taken. United we stand, divided we fall. So, who ever is our president it is the people of the United States to decide the actions they take: For the people, by the people. Anyone can be a Monday morning quarterback. I just think if you’re not playing in the game you should not say how it should be played. So, yeah, like I said, he is talking about us right now: OUR GENERATION.

HotMES: At this last juncture, I couldn’t disagree with you more. When Bush was president, dissent was patriotic. Now, we’re not allowed to have a discussion? Everyone was concerned about Bush and his deficit spending (once again, rightfully so) but Obama has outspent Bush’s eight years in less than eight weeks and no one seems to care.

I don’t buy that we have to act now, act swiftly. I think we are acting too hastily and this is more about an agenda getting passed before the public becomes wise than it is about saving us from catastrophe. It is our responsibility to do something; I just don’t agree that what we are doing is it. We need to cut spending, not spend more. We need to privatize health care, not socialize it. We need to give more rights and freedom back to the states, not bind them by giving them money with a bunch of strings attached with the sole purpose of instituting a liberal agenda across America.

We got into this mess with reckless spending, how is reckless spending going to get us out?

As for not playing the game, let’s go with your metaphor. People not playing the game tell players how to play everyday. They’re called the coaches. Everyone is allowed to participate in our democracy, in any way they see fit. For me, I work as hard as I can as a government employee and try to cut costs wherever I can. On the side, I like to write about my thoughts and feelings about the news of the day. Perhaps you think I’m not a player in the game, so my opinion doesn’t matter. Or, maybe because I’m not gearing up for a career as a politician, I should just shut up. That is not what this country is about. That’s why we operate under the philosophy of one person, one vote. No matter whether that person is playing in the game or oblivious to the fact that there is even a game being played.