The Texas 18th District Blog

Citizens For A Freer America

The socialism paradigm penalizes success and rewards mediocrity and failure. It brings to mind an old Russian saying. “The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.” An apropos epithet for USSR’S Gross Domestic Product. Well folks, there isn’t a one of us that haven’t heard someone say “I don’t want to work overtime on Saturday because all the extra money will go to taxes.” We’re penalizing productivity for the alleged benefit of all. All being those that can’t or won’t provide adequate income, retirement or medical care for themselves, and those who don’t need it, but having had it extorted from them, insist on receiving their rebate as a social entitlement program.

Making The Rounds On The Internet (Satire I think)

Note To Employees

As of November 5, 2008, when President Obama officially becomes president-elect, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:

1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales and bonuses into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are under-achieving a ‘fair shake’.

2. All low level workers will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst you. This will help those who are ‘too busy for overtime’ to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.

3. All top management will now be referred to as ‘the government.’ We will not participate in this ‘pooling’ experience because the law doesn’t apply to us.

4. The ‘government’ will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging its workers to continue to work hard ‘for the good of all’.

5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it’s ‘good to spread the wealth around’. Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more ‘patriotic’.

6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad, though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our Democrat Congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn’t all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?)!!!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th.

 My question is where do they get money when the last dollar has been “redistributed” and spent?  When government taxes and spends, it spends through contractors to build anything and everything and also pocket huge sums (which are shared with the politicians).   Government employees don’t mine anything, grow anything, manufacture anything, repair anything, sing, dance or otherwise entertain us.  The government doesn’t create wealth it only takes it from us. 

I was just cleaning out some old files from my hard drive when I came across this article.  It is amazing how accurate it was and still is.  You can see what they have accomplished.  I checked and her website address is still active (it is at bottom of the article).

Every day, the headlines scream with some new threat from the American Civil Liberties Union. I believe it’s important to look behind the curtain and discover the origins of groups and organizations to better understand their activities.

The ACLU was founded in the 1920s by Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman, described as a “progressive” and “the perfect feminist.”

Earl Browder was general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States from 1930 through its dissolution in 1944. When the party was reconstituted as the Communist Political Association later that year, Browder was chosen as its president. Browder proudly proclaimed that the ACLU functioned as “a transmission belt” for the party. To deny the ACLU’s founding was attached at the hip to communist organizations is to deny what can easily be proven as truth.

For the past few decades, the ACLU has been on a major crusade to destroy Christianity in America, promote filth under “freedom of speech and expression,” and of course, vigorously defend the homosexual culture of death. On Jan. 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr., D-Fla., read a list of 45 communist goals into the Congressional Record. Below are the communist goals being implemented by the ACLU in their quest to destroy America’s culture and traditions:

• Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
• Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
• Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,” substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
• Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
• Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
• Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and television.
• Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”
• Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
• Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
• Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over. Obliterating the American past, with its antecedents in principles of freedom, liberty and private ownership is a major goal of the communists then and now.
• Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
• Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Anyone who has been following the destructive path of the ACLU can easily see how effective these communist goals have been implemented to “promote democracy” and protect your “civil rights.” Lenin stated: “Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy.” (See Tucker, “The Lenin Anthology”). James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution” had something different to say about a democracy:

Democracy is the most vile form of government … democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Perhaps it’s time to recognize the ACLU as the American Communist Lawyers Union instead of their disingenuous “civil rights” stage name.

No organization can exist without memberships and funding. It is inconceivable to me how anyone who claims to be a Christian, lawyer or layman, could belong to such an anti-American organization as the ACLU. Burn your card and get out. Organizations like Working Assets, tobacco companies and big corporations all donate to the ACLU, which in turn uses that money to buy the favors of those who serve in Congress – who vote to unconstitutionally fund the activities of the ACLU under the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976.

If Americans really want to put the ACLU out of business, remove yourself as a member of their organization, boycott companies that donate to them and demand these public servants in Congress repeal the unconstitutional funding of this subversive organization.

There is no justification under Art. 1, Sec. 8, to steal from the people’s treasury to give money to the ACLU or any other organization for “civil rights” lawsuits. Your Congress critter will be in your district during the month of December – make the most of it.

We have been down these roads before. I doubt that many Americans even know what a “Resolution Trust Corporation” is.

It’s a shame how fast we Americans forgot our history lessons taught by the 1987 Market Crash.

Watching Bernanke’s and Paulson’s testimony over the last 2 days, it almost seemed as though no one in either camp (Senate or Congress) understands what a “RTC” does and how it can help the American Economy, the global economy and taxpayers out of this mess forged by government over-regulation, except Bernanke and Paulson. Why do Americans pay so much for our Senatorial and Congressional Representatives to sit in those seats without expressed background knowledge?

Maybe we’d be more attuned to these issues if the fundamantals of finance were taught in high school as they should be. It’s worth your time to take a few moments and review this report; “Banks: “RTC” - Historical Perspective” by Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc., published; September 19, 2008

Here are a few highlights to tweak your interest:

• 1989 - Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) FIRREA was arguably the most important banking law since the Great Depression when the FDIC was created. FIRREA was the beginning of statutory attempts to re-regulate the banking and S&L industry. This act authorized the use of taxpayer money to resolve S&L failures. Importantly, it established the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) as a temporary agency to resolve S&L failures from August 9, 1989, to July 1, 1995. The RTC resolved and liquidated the assets of 747 thrifts with total assets of $394 billion.
• BANK VALUATIONS bottomed about four quarters after the formation of the RTC, in the 4th quarter of 1990 while delinquencies and chargeoffs peaked about 6-8 quarters later by the 2nd & 3rd quarter of 1991. Bank failures however, peaked (1Q:1989) prior to the formation of the RTC. [See attached time line graph below].
• IMPLICATIONS: While it is hard to draw exact parallels between the current crisis and the previous one from 1990, we would note that any effort that would allow banks to take the markdowns and offload illiquid mortgage securities and troubled real estate loans would be a major positive, as that would provide a bottom in valuing what the worst case losses for some of these banks would be…effectively increasing investor confidence in the tangible book values of these companies andshift focus on the core earnings power and the franchise value for some of theseinstitutions.
• Boost M&A Activity – This could also potentially accelerate M&A activity as banks could rid themselves of these troubled assets, merging with bigger/stronger institutions.
  Attractive franchises like CNB, FHN, SNV, STI, TCBI & TSFG could see valuations improve significantly as both the US and Foreign rivals start seeking growth opportunities to build up their franchises in what are longer-term attractive growth markets.
• Significant Liquidity on the Sidelines - We also know that there is a significant amount of liquidity sitting on the sidelines in the form of private funds to acquire troubled real estate assets…we could see an acceleration with these funds scooping up distressed bank assets, as the Bid/Ask should likely narrow as a result of the formation of a RTC type entity.

This report steps out further and chronicles an: “Historical Perspective: Timeline of Bank & Thrift Failures” during that time:

• 1984 - Continental Illinois National Bank in Chicago, Illinois, with $34 billion in assets, is the largest bank to ever fail in
  the FDIC’s history. The bank is weakened by its participations in Penn Square energy loans. Continental experiences a
  high-speed electronic bank run. Bank regulators are faced with a potential run on the bank and provide a $2 billion
  assistance package.
• The FDIC promises to protect all of Continental’s depositors and other creditors, regardless of the $100,000 limit on deposit
  insurance. Continental receives assistance from the FDIC because it is deemed “too big to fail.” (In 1997, the estimated cost to the
  FDIC of resolving Continental was $1.1 billion). For the first time, the FDIC spends more on resolving failures than it receives in
  premiums. 79 FDIC-insured banks (not including failed banks that were insured by FSLIC) with $3 billion in assets fail.
• The Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) chairman testifies before the House Banking Committee, stating that an S&L crisis is
  imminent. The banking regulators individually publish new uniform capital standards. In response to a 1983 law, banking regulatory
  agencies set minimum capital requirement standards for individual institutions.
• 1985 - 120 FDIC-insured banks (not including failed banks that were insured by FSLIC) with $8.7 billion in assets fail—the
  first time more than 100 banks fail in one year since the FDIC was created.
• 1986 - Real estate investments are less attractive because of overbuilding and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. A $15 billion attempt to
  recapitalize Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) fails in Congress. The next year, Congress authorizes $10.75
  billion. Reg Q, the regulation that dictated what banks and S&Ls can pay in interest, is fully phased out in accordance with the 1980
  law. 1,840 mutual funds control $716 billion in stock, bonds, and money market assets. 138 FDIC-insured banks with $7 billion in
  assets fail.
• Tax Reform Act of 1986
  This act: Repeals many of the 1981 tax incentives that were meant to encourage real estate investment.
• 1987 - Competitive Equality Banking Act of 1987 (CEBA)
  Authorizes $10.75 billion to recapitalize Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) over a three-year period. Grants
  the FDIC bridge-bank authority. Becomes the first legislation to explicitly state that insured deposits are backed by the full-faith-andcredit
  of the U.S. government.

There is a lot more information for informed voters in this report….. If interested you can grab it for yourself here:

“Banks: “RTC” - Historical Perspective” by Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc., published; September 19, 2008

Bernanke is not asking for American taxpayers to overpay for distresed assets.

Let’s make sure he and Paulson intend to see a profit in taxpayers behalf as we go through this process together. Even Warren Buffet has invested $5 Billion, throwing his support behind Paulson’s and Bernanke’s positions. Let’s run down the road and demand that Congress act and act now, without delay.  We Americans can no longer tolerate a Democrat led “Most Do Nothing Congress” in US history. They must act and they need to act quickly.  This is way too serious an issue for partisan politics (partisan paralysis).

John Faulk has a strong background in accounting.  As an owner of a 10 year old thriving accounting firm supporting Houston businesses; There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that John Faulk is a much better Congressional choice to represent Houston than Sheila Jackson Lee (lawyer) in these dire economic times.  

Disclaimer - My opinions do not necessarily reflect John Faulk’s position, nor are they in any way intended as investment advice. I do not have an investment position in any company mentioned in this post or links therein.

These are perilous times for all of us and any post on John Faulk’s websites by anyone are not intended in any way to be misconstrued as investment advice. Any such posts by anyone will be removed as soon as possible. Everything posted here is soley intended to appropiately inform the American voter.

You can help John Faulk defeat Sheila Jackson Lee, right now!

Engineer2

Below is a table with a comparison of views on issues by the candidates; John Faulk and Sheila Jackson Lee in their race for the Texas 18 Congressional seat.

Candidate views represented above are presented true and accurately as best I know. Make sure and bookmark this page because this table may change as we wind down to election day, most everyone seems to be “flip-flopping” this year, except John.

Ken

You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today.

Words of Wisdom borrowed from Dr. Thomas Sowell:

“Some of the most emotionally powerful words are undefined, such as “social justice,” “a living wage,” “price gouging” or a “fragile” environment, for example. Such terms are especially valuable to politicians during an election year, for these terms can attract the votes of people who mean very different– and even mutually contradictory– things when they use these words.”

When you listen to speechs or read campaign articles this election season, run the words through  a mental filter or better yet ask the speaker to define what he/she means if you are attending an event.  Keep in mind, the primary goal of any officeholder is to retain that office,  political or in business.  Frequently after hearing a rousing speech everyone leaves feeling good although each heard and remembers something different from the same words and phrases.

When I hear the words “common sense” my BS antenna goes up because “common sense” is not common at all.  It depends on a person’s lifetime experiences, culture and personality.  A minimum wage increase usually helps union members whose wages are tied to a multiple of the minimum wage, it harms lower paid employees who are laid off because small enterprises cannot support the higher costs.  (For more on that topic visit Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Kudlow, Larry Elder at Townhall.com.)

His statement is available in the following link.  Go read it all.

Random Thoughts

Breaking News: An Exhaustive Search of NASA Archives Reveals Missing Photo of the American Flag Planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong in 1969

An exhaustive search of the NASA image database has revealed a long lost image that Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) asked for during a visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in late 2005. Here it is; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the American Flag on Mars in 1969 during the Apollo 11 Mars Mission to the Red Planet:

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LOL (Laughing Out Loud) - Here’s the story in case you missed it:

“The Congressional bonehead award goes to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who, on a visit to JPL, asked if Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted there in 1969 by Neil Armstrong! Quipped Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) to the Washington Times: “We just don’t teach enough science.” Worse, Jackson Lee, who represents Houston, is a member of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. Perhaps some committee reassignments are in order…”

Read the original story

Read some of the comments on this issue at FreeRepublic.com
Leaving sad satire behind:

Houston we have a problem here!

We have a Congressional Representative that doesn’t have a technical bone in her body “representing” leading world class engineering & technical industries engaged in Oil & Gas, Energy, Space Travel and Medicine.

Many bloggers have blogged on this particular issue, scoffing at Houston Congressional Representative; Sheila Jackson Lee. Let’s leave the “Bone Head Awards” behind and look at this problem in a more serious light. This is a multifaceted issue that needs to be dealt with in more depth:

First of all Sheila Jackson Lee sets on several Congressional Committees and Subcommittees:

Sheila Jackson-Lee sits on the following committees:

• Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs
• Member, Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
• Member, Subcommittee on The Middle East and South Asia
• Member, House Committee on Homeland Security
• Member, Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counter terrorism
• Chair, Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection
• Member, House Committee on the Judiciary
• Member, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property
• Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security
• Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law

If Sheila is performing so poorly that she committed these atrocities against her technical constituency in Houston.. Then we need to have a real serious look at how she is performing in her other Committee and Sub-Committee Congressional Positions on other important issues such as Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs, Immigration and the Judiciary. You can bet we are going to be reviewing her voting history on these issues since she sets on these important committees!

Yes we played a political satire here in response to the most mal informed question in history by a U.S. congressperson concerning NASA to illustrate this point, so let’s take it down the road and clear out other issues:

Not long ago we had a conspirators movement claiming that the U.S. never landed on the moon. A big part of their argument was that the flag shouldn’t have been extended, blowing in a breeze that couldn’t have been there. Let’s step back for a moment and have a close-up look at “The Flag on the Moon” (not Mars, Sheila) set in 1969 by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin (from the NASA Archives):

Here’s the original Moon Flag Image from Nasa Archives in High Resolution

All those; “We didn’t Land on the Moon Conspirators’” had to do to disprove their own rhetoric was to go take a close-up look at the flag and see that it had a horizontal “curtain rod” deployed by NASA in anticipation of no wind on the moon’s surface (close-up view):

Stick with me, it gets funnier yet!

NASA is recorded in history as saying:

“The Apollo 11 flag did not stand long. It was blown over during takeoff by the LM (Lunar Module) ascent engine’s exhaust plume.”

That’s right folks, there’s not an American Flag standing on Mars… There’s not even one standing on the Moon any more!

And then we have Sheila Jackson Lee back at it again, campaigning in 08 attempting to use NASA on her campaign trail:

I think fantasycongress.com expressed it well!

Our Congress is sidetracked with getting elected again, instead of dealing with the extreme issues our country is facing right now, and Sheila Jackson Lee is one of the worst culprits on the campaign trail.

Let’s go on to the next issue this mess dredges up:

Sheila being raised in Queens, New York should have some idea of how parents feel about sending their kids to waning inner-city public schools. You would think she would support school vouchers to help those inner-city parents who want to send their kids to better schools. You can bet we are going to cover that issue too, so hang tight and stay tuned right here!

Houston, We Have a Problem Here! - It’s Sheila Jackson Lee

We need a Congressional Repesentative that supports us all (Houston) here. Every which way I look, I can’t find support from Sheila Jackson Lee for her constituency in the Texas 18th Congressional District or the Greater Houston area.

Have a look at John Faulk’s Platform views on NASA. Let’s elect someone dedicated to supporting all of Houston this year. Let’s elect John Faulk for Congress and send Sheila Jackson Lee back to New York.

You can help us send John Faulk to Congress in November, today.

Engineer2