So you’re getting 300 to 600 dollars in a tax rebate check

A few days ago I posted my thoughts about the proposed “economic stimulus” where the government will be giving back about 300 dollars per tax payer in a retroactive tax cut from 2007’s tax year. You can read my thoughts about this tax rebate here. In short though I believe income tax is theft and I am for any and all cutting of income tax for anyone from the poorest to the most wealthy. On the other side though I think this rebate is bad for the country because there will be NO SPENDING CUTS on anything to fund it. All we are doing is going deeper in debt. Again read my full post on this to understand this better.

What I wanted to ask though today is what will you do with your 300-600 dollars in rebates?

Since I posted that orginal post I have been getting many visitors each day finding my blog from Google, they are all searching for things like

• “when do we get our tax rebates”
• “government giving out rebate checks”
• “will we get stimulate the economy checks?”
• “when will we get our government rebate checks”
• “800 dollar rebate checks government”
• and you have to love this one “government giving 300 dollars to everyone“

Now I am not here to criticize anyone but my guess is most of the people doing these searches are just itching to get that “free money” and blow it. Indeed that is “the plan”, yes indeed Uncle Scam (not a misspelling) wants you to spend every dime on consumer goods to “stimulate the economy”. The theory is more spending is good because more money is in circulation.

So please comment below after you read this post and tell me what you plan to do with your money. As many may suspect mine will be invested and many in the government want to not give the money to people like me that will save it. No they want “good Americans” to spend the money and “put it to work”.

So what are you doing with your refund?

• Taking a vacation
• Just blowing it
• Saving it
• Paying on debt
• Investing it
• Not sure yet?

Let us know because it is interesting what happens when you really ask yourself what you will do with extra money. Perhaps just perhaps thinking about this may make a few more of us think about saving this refund for a really rainy day. Trust me if you remember 1978 times are really not that bad right now.

Keep in mind this is not some government “entitlement” this is indeed your money, your tax dollars that you paid being returned to you. To do so your government has grow our debt by BILLIONS more. Again I am 100% for any rebate, any tax cut, any tax abolishment. Just realize that our elected officials did not think about how to fund this thing, they are just buying your votes from you with your own money and charging it along with interest to your children.

So knowing that how will you be spending your money, remember it is indeed yours it is not a gift from our exalted officials.

Tax rebate checks may be on the way

In an effort to stimulate the economy the congress and the president are working to provide an economic stimulus package. One big part will be sending most tax payers some of their tax money back, to the tune of from 300-800 dollars per taxpayer may be even as high as 1600 per household. You can read an article by newsday.com to get more specifics about it.

In any event I have mixed emotions about this. As a Libertarian I believe that all income tax is theft in the first place and I really can’t argue with the government giving back money they should have never taken in the first place. However, in this instance while not totally opposed (I just can’t oppose less tax no matter how it comes) I have sever very big concerns/issues with this plan.

• Right now everyone is worried about the 2008 election. So even Mr. and Mrs. raise taxes (Barak and Hillary) are behind this massive retroactive tax rebate. Make no mistake this is buying votes by both sides of the isle.

• True conservatives are always saying lower taxes are good for the economy and liberals always say that is wrong. Yet now that we are in deep shit everyone agrees cutting taxes makes the economy better? All this means is they all know all the time that low taxes are good and simply keep up the graduated income tax as a way to distract us all with “class warfare”.

• In most instances I don’t see cutting taxes as “spending” yet in this case it is pure reckless spending. Why? How? Simple, no one in congress is talking about cutting any expenditures to fund this rebate. In other words they are still going to spend all the money they were going to spend and GET THIS our country is OUT OF MONEY. So where will we get the billions to fund this rebate? Well the fed will fire up the presses and just print more money at least symbolically. Honestly though our government will borrow it from foreign governments and increase out debt. In other words you kids get to pay back you debt on your 800 bucks with interest and will have to do so with a dollar that is weaker in the world market every day.

• This package is a very short term fix. The whole theory is most people will “blow” their money and dump it in the economy and that will beef up spending for a bit and put more money into the economy and the rising tide will then float all boats. The theory is sound most people will blow it (instead of saving or paying on debt) and it will make it “better” but our “boat” has big holes in it. Make sense? This move won’t reduce US debt, reduce toxic consumer debt, fix the housing market or reduce our massive spending deficit.

So how could this plan actually work? You only have to change the spending equation on the side of the government to make it work very well. Check this way out,

1. Require the government to give back at least the money they plan to right now.
2. Require that they also cut 2 dollars in spending for every dollar returned to tax payers

That’s it! That would “stimulate the economy”! Our nation is not in trouble because our people spend to little, it is in trouble because the government takes too much of our money and then spends far more then even what they steal from us. Fix that problem, yes cut taxes but cut spending by 2 dollars for every dollar you refund to us.

Building your brand with promotional products

Everyone loves free stuff, be it a pen a koozie or perhaps a coffee cup. Of course that is why stuff like these things make great Promotional Products for building your brand, handing out at trade shows or just doing something nice for your customers. You can break out of the usual stuff too. I used to go to a lot of trade shows and I got tons of cups, pens, etc. all the time. Don’t get me wrong they were cool and all but off all that stuff there is one item that I remember carrying and using for a long time after receiving it.

The item was a simple shoe shine kit and it was small enough to carry in any pocket and certainly took up very little space in my brief case. And what do these little things cost? About 53 cents a piece from a pretty cool online shop called, Gimmees.com. What made this little shoe shiner so cool is first how small it was and second it worked. I would get off a plane or walk a few city blocks and have scuffed up shoes and a simple swipe and they looked great when I walked into my meetings.

Gimmees.com (got to love that name) has tons of cool items you can use to build your brand and very low prices in fact they are some of the lowest I have found anywhere. So if you have a trade show coming or a customer function or just want to do something for your regular customers have a look a their site and get creative. Everyone likes to get cool free stuff and by putting your name on it you earn a lot of good will every time your customers or prospects use it.

What does the sub prime melt down mean and who gets the blame

Right now all we seem to hear about in any economic news is the subprime meltdown and how it is responsible for everything. Now the sub prime meltdown is bad but it is also misunderstood in both cause and effect. Let’s look briefly at both sides

The Cause - Everyone wants to blame the lenders for this. To me they get say 20-40% of the blame at most, sure they were stupid and sure it is biting them in the ass right now, as it should but they are not the real ones to blame. Our nation is so fixated on passing the buck and not actually blaming the person who is guilty our grandparents may not recognize our nation if they were with us today.

So who should get the blame for taking rapidly accelerating ARMs, hybrid mortgage loans and borrowing to the absolute limits of their budgets? Doesn’t really take a genius to figure it out does it? The people that took out mortgages that were too high or had bad terms are to blame. That is your fellow Americans and or you yourself if you took out these loans. It is so ever loving easy to blame corporate America but in the end if you borrow money and can’t or don’t repay it the blame is on you, not the company that loaned you the money.

The Effect - The news about the subprime market makes me think of El Niño. Remember El Niño the weather pattern back in the 90s that we blamed for everything. To me that is the sub prime meltdown today. A stock goes down, blame the sub prime lenders. A company lays off workers blame the sub prime market. To many illegal aliens are crushing our educational and health care systems, blame it on the subprime market. Our nation has over spent and is in a 58 trillion dollar hole just for social security alone, blame it on….OK you get the point.

The reality is the subprime bust is bad, very bad but it is also being used as an excuse for other problems in the market. Even the lenders are probably more effected by toxic unsecured (credit card) debt then bad sub prime loans. Yet make no mistake lending institutions are going to loose an estimated 300-400 billion or more before the whole thing comes to an end. Some banks will get bought by other banks, some will flat out shut down and all and all this is going to be another reason for the coming recession or more accurately depression.

Yet when it hits don’t let the talking heads on the idiot box tell you it all because of the greedy sub prime lenders First they are taking a bath you would not believe right now and getting what they deserve, lost money and some going under. Next the real reason for our recession is the US Government is spending far more money then we have and has been for 35 years, the bills are coming due.

So what can you do about all this?

First I advise you to read my post from yesterday about the overall weakness in the economy and watch the video with Comptroller General David Walker to get some specific understanding of what our real problems are and to learn some ways you can protect your assets.

Second I recommend you visit MorCap Fund Advisors, LLC and read their excellent article on the subprime meltdown to better understand it and its’ impact our our economy.

Lee Iacocca launches new site and snubs Ron Paul

I recently listened to the audio book version of Where Have all the Leaders Gone by Lee Iacocca. The book was pretty good and quite insightful and while Lee has quite a few views I think are bad ideas (raising the gas tax for one) he also has a lot of good ones. The biggest point was that we need more people to pay attention to the political process specifically the younger voters.

In the book he went through all the front runners and left Ron Paul out, not sure when he had written the book I let that go. Yet in the book he talks about setting up a website for the 2008 election where people can rank the canditates on his “9 C’s of Leadership”. In December with very little plubicity that site was launched. You can find it here, http://www.iacocca.com

While I was able to let go of the Ron Paul omission in the book the fact that he now basicly owns the internet for the 2008 race makes his exclusion from the listed candidates unacceptable. To be fair Ron is not really excluded you can and should rank him, he is just hidden from the initial view.

And just who is listed on the main score card!

Joe Biden - Dropped out

Bill Richardson - Dropped out

All the rest included I can’t argue with their inclusion, nor do it it is only Ron Paul’s exclusion while Biden and Richardson are included that tweaks me.

There is a solution though, if you want to make sure Ron is ranked to this,

1. Go to Iaccoca’s Rate the Candidates Site and set up a free account.

2. Click the confirmation email and log in.

3. Click on rate the canditates and while you are doing it in the left margin you will see a link that says, “score more candidates” click that and about a dozen more will show up. Then one from the very bottom you will find Ron. Rank him and any others you wish.

To me Ron is a much a candidate as anyone right now, 10% in Iowa, 8% in New Hampshire and massive support online. It is clear to me that Iacocca must have something against Ron Paul as there is no good reason to exclude him from what is a pretty cool Web 2.0 website while including Biden and Richardson both who are not even in the race!

Now the irony, while there click on “view aggregated score card” and guess who is number one anyway? Ron Paul and who is number two, Alan Keyes who I also think is an outstanding leader! Will such exclusion never end. Anyway I would ask you to consider getting an account at Lee’s site and ranking Paul and the other candidates because the idea is an excellent one.

One more suggestion. There is a link on the score card page to request inclusion of candidates. Please send a NICE but firm message to Iacocca asking that Ron be included based on his campaign and good finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and pointing out that two candidates they currently display in the default have dropped out may not hurt either.

My New Hampshire Predictions

OK the other day I made a series of predictions on the New Hampshire primary in my what are you doing in 2008 post. Some I got right, some I got very wrong. Lets review….

Republican side

1. Rudy does awful and everyone says it doesn’t matter. - Got it dead on!

2. John McCain wins and his national numbers rock because people are lemmings. - Got it dead on!

3. Mitt Romney does OK and comes in second and they say it is over for him. - Got it sort of, Romney did come in 2nd but the media has held off saying his campaign is over. - Where I went wrong, the republican base stayed with Romney in New Hampshire and only a 4 to 1 break for McCain in independents that voted republican gave McCain the victory. I am not sorry about being wrong here, Romney to me is a much better choice then McCain.

4. Ron Paul does far better then the 8% the polls say he can expect. Comes in third and gets ignored again. - I was wrong he got almost exactly 8% which still put him right in the mix with the other candidates but he did not do as well as I predicted. He did however, largely get ignored by everyone but Fox News. Why? Backlash for the debate the excluded Ron from! Where did I go wrong? I gave the concept of freedom in the minds of New Hampshire voters to much credit. Honestly this concerns me for our nation.

There were really 6 predictions there I got 4 of 6. Not all that bad and I don’t pretend to understand New Hampshire primary voters.

On the Democrat Side

1. Barock wins by 10% - Wrong and the rest of my predictions hinged upon this. Barock lost, I was wrong.

2. Hillary gets slammed and the media runs to her defense. - Wrong, clearly missing number one blew this for me. This is another place I am happy to be wrong. I don’t want Hillary but I think she is easier to be for any republican and her economics while disastrous for the U.S. economy are still better then Obama’s.

3. Edwards does ok in 3rd but the media talks about how that is “hope for his campaign” even though there are only four Democrats in the race. Idiots. - Got it spot on but this was no real big prediction.

4. Bill Richardson gets a clue and drops out. - Another easy one and Bill is “making an announcement at a press conference today”, wanna guess what he is going to be saying.

So how did I blow it so bad expecting Obama to slam Hillary? I commited a cardinal sin and believed the polls with out knowing more about the landscape of democrats and democrat voting independents in New Hampshire. I must admit I am not strong when it comes to understanding how liberals think, like Michael Savage I believe, “liberalism is a mental disorder”.

Well South Carolina is the next place everyone will really be looking at. On the Democrats I am not ready to pick a winner but I do think it is do or die for Edwards. On the republican side look for a shoot out between Mike Hukabee and Fred Thompson. I will make some predictions and go on the line with them in another few days.

Do you need to fund a lawsuit

I am not big on “suing people for profit” and in fact I think that business is a big part of what is wrong with America today. Yet lawsuits have a place and they are a way for individuals and companies to attempt to right a wrong.  Business owners in particular may on occasion have no recourse other to file suit in certain circumstances.

In fact put yourself in this place for a second.  You own a small company that makes software and you come up with a great new product.  Along comes a much bigger company and steals your code, “improves” the product and basically says there is nothing you can do about it.  Such things can and do happen.  Now again you are a small company, facing a much bigger fish and you know they can drag it out and bankrupt you before you ever get a decision.

What recourse do you have?

You might want to consider Commercial Lawsuit Financing to fund your case from LawMax Legal Finance.   There are many times when you can’t get a good attorney on a “contingency basis” which is where the attorney will handle the case and all expenses and only get paid after they win the case for you.   In fact getting an attorney to work that way may be pretty easy in a personal injury case but in a business to business suit it can be very difficult indeed.

Services such as LawMax actually evaluate your case, determine if you have a good case and then if approved they actually loan you the money on that same contingency basis where you only repay the advance if you win your case or reach an out-of-court settlement!.  Again while I don’t think people should be suing for profit it is good to see that a service like this exists to help smaller companies take on their adversaries when necessary.

A book and the comming recession or depression

I am a pretty upbeat guy so a lot of my friends ask why I am so sure that our economy is in the toilet. The answer is pretty damn simple! We are as a nation in debt way over our heads just at the consumer level, our government is trillions of dollars in debt with China along with a massive trade deficit and on top of that the mortgage and real estate markets are in the hole as well.

Yet my reasons are bigger then that! More because I am a student of history. I really suggest you read a book called The Forgotten Man to learn about how similar both our situation and our governments moronic reaction to it are to the years leading up to and during the great depression. This book is a fascinating and enlightening read.

It is very important for us to understand the history of our welfare state, how so many once proud Americans ended up on “the dole” because the coming problems may cause a worse knee jerk reaction. Always remember once the government creates a tax, a department or a program it never ever goes away. Check out The Forgotten Man today and plan well for the tough times to come.