Should the Government Be our Master?

America prides itself on being the land of the brave and the home of the free, yet you definitely are not free if the government monitors your every action, and proselytizes to you and makes you to suffer endless propaganda, and tells you what foods you can or can't eat, and makes laws both arbitrary and capricious.  Today's government is force, it is power, it controls your freedom of movement, your thought, and your employment.  Every power given to government is less power aggrandized to you to make your own decisions and to make your own way.  A government that in theory can give you everything is the same government that can take away from you everything, including your life.

Our government likes to pretend that it is your big brother, looking out for your best interests, and that it is intimately concerned about your welfare.  The government says that it just wants to help you to make better decisions but in point of fact, the government mainly wants you to obey it, and to not think for yourself.  The most basic questions that all men should answer, is who should rule your life, yourself, or the government?  If you believe that it is the government, than you need to change not a thing in your life, because the government from cradle to grave will take care of you in every aspect of your life, for better or for worse.  If you believe, instead, that you should be the master of your own fate, than you are a true American and a true patriot to your country, which is a country created by the consent of the governed.

The government wants and does mandate what things you can or cannot do with your body.  Each year, the individual cedes more and more control of his body to the State, so that the State can determine what foods you can or cannot consume what drinks you can or cannot drink, and what chemicals you can or cannot assimilate into your own body.  While the government claims that it is doing this all in your best interests, the government conveniently forgets, that our Creator has blessed each of us with our own mind and our own thoughts, so that we can make our own decisions, ourselves. 

The steps for total government control start first from controlling what you are and are not allowed to do with your own body, all under the guise that the government is concerned about your health.  The next step is to control and to monitor your activities throughout the day, through social media, through your cell phone, through GPS, so that the government knows where you are at all times, so that it has the data to find you and to deal with you at any time of day.  The final step in governmental control is to control your behavior, which is for the government to reward "right" behavior and to punish "wrong" behavior.  These rewards and punishments are not based on Judeo-Christian principles, far from it; instead they are based on the dictates of the State and its powerful apparatus.

They say that "nothing is really free", mainly because there will come a time when the real master must be paid in blood, in coin, or whatever that it desires.   A real man has no king but the King Himself, and conducts his life with this knowledge and the understanding that he is the master of his own fate; whereas those that cede their God-given sovereignty to the State will reap what they sow.

Republic v. Democracy

In today's world, in all probability, most people in the United States believe that we live in a Constitutional democracy, and that we are all part of a democratic society. In all likelihood that belief originates because the media propagates the illusion that this is a democracy, but also because it just seems that "one man, one vote" is, in fact, the very definition of democracy in action.  The fact of the matter is, the United States was not created as a democracy; it was instead created specifically as a republican from of government.  Further to this point, our Constitution states that: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government," to which our President takes an oath to: …preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The fundamental flaw with democracy, and the reason why the United States was deliberately not created as a democracy, is that a democracy in its most basic form is a form of government to which the majority rules, so that what the majority wants is what the majority gets.  A republic on the other hand, is a form of government which has a Constitution to which the republic must at all time pay obeisance to, unless that Constitution is amended.  This means that at all times the individual and by implication those of the minority position are protected by the Constitution from being subjected to arbitrary laws and rules.  Further this signifies that the majority cannot democratically vote themselves powers that are not available to them by our Constitution, protecting the individual from not having his inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness trampled upon by his own government or majority rule.

During our great civil war, our Constitution and our republican form of government were tested to its very limits, of which Abraham Lincoln wrote: "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Further to this, Lincoln wrote: "I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power."  This signifies, in its essence, the importance and respect that Lincoln gave the Constitution, to which, in completion of his legacy, the 13th through 15th amendments to the Constitution were passed, assuring that the rights given to those that had formerly been enslaved, but liberated through the Emancipation Proclamation, became part and parcel of the Constitution, itself.

It would be better and truer to state that we live in a Republican form of government, of which, most legislators are elected democratically, that is by majority vote, to which each individual that is eligible to vote, is entitled to exactly one vote on each ballot issue.  Further it can be said, that we live within a Constitution to which our laws, and our rule of law, all originate from, and it therefore follows that this Constitution applies to all, equally, that is to say that we have equal application of the law to all individuals, so that there is no one individual that is subject to different laws, separate from the people as a whole, because it there are those to which the Constitution does not apply, than you have the makings of a despotic government and the collapse of our republic.

Private Companies, War, and Profit

War should be the very last resort of any reasonable and mature nation, something not to be taken lightly, especially for countries such as America, which has not only a moral responsibility to lead by example, but also because America as a military force, is far and above the most powerful, the most sophisticated, and has the most awesome military strength the world has ever known.  Another fundamental thing about war that should never be discounted is that it is relatively easy to destroy, ravage, and rape a foreign country, but it is a far more difficult and challenging task to build up a foreign country, to assist and aid that foreign country so that in fundamental ways it can be a better place to live and to work in.  In short, it can be said that war is destructive in all of its phases, destructive of materials as well as our fellow human beings, although sometimes war is necessary, often times it is not.

One way for America to cut down on wars and its unnecessary foreign meddling is to cut the profit out of war.  In point of fact, war should never be an opportunity for private enterprise, and especially for large multi-national corporations to profit from death and ruination, yet war is very profitable for many corporations as well as a proven path of advancement for certain military personnel.  If one was to take the profit out of war, for a certainty, there would be a lot less war, because without the spoils of war, those corporations that make it their ply and trade to gain from it would quickly lose their interest in it.

While it can be said, that most corporations are in existence in order to make money and that therefore the taking away of any profit would disincentive them and subsequently in a time of real need, that they would not rally around the cause, that could be readily mitigated.  First off, most corporations are interested in increasing their size, even at the expense of profits; secondly, most corporations love monies spent on R&D, especially if those monies are being compensated by the government; thirdly, a very small profit, perhaps tied to the three-year treasury bill rate, should be enough to provide some profit compensation that would be acceptable to those corporations.

Another critical issue that is very upsetting when it comes to war and the profits that are made by corporations involved in the war effort, is that there are two very important things that are often pushed aside or ignored in the public debate which are the huge dollar deficits that are typically run up to fund the war as well as the lasting cost and damages to the soldiers themselves that fought in our wars.   Our country's war-time deficits must be paid, sooner or later, and unfortunately this means that future generations pay for the wars of our past, and if those wars were unnecessary or unneeded or un-debated in the first place, the more shame and dishonor that should be associated with it.  Even worse, is the lifetime cost of our young soldiers that come back home to America with psychological and mental damages, and/or physical injuries, to which some of those injuries those soldiers will never become whole from.  The cost of taking care of these veterans is once again, put upon the shoulders of the public itself, while those that profit from the war, are blithely unconcerned, while taking pleasure in counting what most would consider to be: blood-money.

Mark Felt: Hero or Traitor

Mark Felt joined the FBI in 1942 and rose to become one of the most powerful men in that organization, in fact, an associate director, to which upon J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972, Felt had hoped that he would be appointed the head of the FBI to which his credentials to become FBI director were solid, but instead Nixon appointed Patrick Gray an outsider to the FBI as the Director, probably in the hope that the new Director would be more Nixon's man, rather than someone picked internal to the FBI.  Soon thereafter, just six weeks later, the Watergate break-in occurred, to which the intrepid reporters Bernstein and Woodward, eventually were to interact with a very knowledgeable inside source, who later became known as "deep throat", that provided to them guidance as well as important confirmation of information, of which many of the materials were known only to the FBI, conducting their own investigation of the Watergate break-in which included as stated by Woodward: "… access to information from the White House, Justice, the FBI, and CRP [Committee for the Re-election of the President)."

This means that Mark Felt, who admitted to being the inside source for Bernstein and Woodward, thirty-three years after the fact, was working for the FBI at the same time as he was leaking, confirming, guiding, and providing actionable information to the Washington Post reporters, a clear dereliction of duty, to which if Mark Felt really believed that he had documentation that needed to be presented for public discourse, the most honorable course to have taken would have  been to present such to a grand jury, which he did not do.  Instead, Mark Felt is on record, repeatedly denying that he was "deep throat", and in his memoir which was published in 1979, Felt denied to his co-author, de Toledano, that he was deep throat. 

The fact that Felt denied for so long that he was deep throat, is somewhat perplexing, until you recognize that his admission to being the FBI leak, probably came about not from a deep desire to "come clean", but probably from the need for his family to monetize his notoriety at the end of his life so as to gain money from it.  There is little doubt that Felt himself believed that his own actions taken during Watergate while with the FBI were not honorable, or he would have willingly and gladly come out as the source, upon Nixon's resignation in  1974, especially considering that Felt resigned from the FBI in June of 1973. 

While the actions of Felt may be considered to be heroic by some, perhaps more because he was an important instrument in the taking down of a President that had abused his power and authority, Felt is no hero.  Felt isn't a hero, because his actions were probably taken not for any noble reasons, but more out of spite for being denied the directorship of the FBI, as well as the knowledge that his future time was now going to be limited within the bureau, a job that he had loved and took great pride in. 

While we may consider Mark Felt to be a great and important whistleblower, here too, he falls short, because unlike other whistleblowers that have identified themselves, and either faced the music, their possible jail time, notoriety, hostility, and legal problems, they have done so, because they stand behind their actions.  Mark Felt, on the other hand, did not.

Let China Take Care of the Middle East

The United States has to be one of the dumbest nations in the global history of the world as again and again it gets "played" into taking over or becoming intimately involved into complicated political issues of long standing intransigence at the behest of European powers that have smartly walked away and cut their losses.  However, as China grows in both influence and power, there may indeed be a light at the end of the tunnel for American foreign interventions and unseemly dilemmas.  In regards to the Middle East, on the good side you have their abundance of oil as well as archeological sites of historical importance; however, on the bad side in the Middle East you have virtually everything else, to which the United States has repeatedly seen their worldwide image suffer greatly as well as monies and resources repeatedly wasted, unnecessarily.  Fortunately, American ingenuity, has come to our rescue, as America, has become, once again, as reported by politico.com the largest oil producer in the world, and it: "…is effectively producing 14 million barrels a day."  This clearly indicates that the necessity for the United States to have a strong military presence and intervention policy in the Middle East needs to be seriously re-evaluated.  Fortuitously, China, as reported by eia.gov is: "… the largest net importer of crude oil and other liquids in the world."

As you might imagine, there was a time when America had little or nothing to do with the Middle East, to which, it was primarily the European nations of Great Britain and France that had the greatest influence and logistical footprint within this region, but, by the conclusion of World War II, that mantle had been passed onto the United States, for better or for worse.  Given the fact that China has a great need for oil and further that China has already made significant inroads into the Middle East, which as reported by dw.de that: "… Chinese trade with the Middle East has risen from around 20 billion USD a decade ago to an estimated 230 billion USD last year."  It therefore makes all the sense in the world that China, not America, and not Europe, should be the one to make all the arrangements, treaties, trade agreements and anything else that is most appropriate to conduct successful business transactions in the Middle East.

Rather than having the United States becoming involved and entangled in more and more foreign countries with their incumbent warring political factions and other long-standing intractable problems, we should be instead actively pursuing exit strategies so that America can spend more of its resources and wealth on resolving its own domestic issues and getting its own house in order.  It is a grave mistake of the highest order for America to continually play the role of the world's policeman, to which our men and materials are constantly put into harm's way, often for a purpose that does not benefit America directly.  In the Middle East it seems that America puts up all the money, takes all the risk, and suffers all the blowback, all for a purpose that no longer exists.  There isn't any good reason to let China have a free ride on our backs, especially considering that China ultimately reaps the benefits of our military presence in the Middle East without risking much of their own reputation, their men, and their resources to do so.

 It's high time to change that.

Jumping with your Elbows Raised in Soccer should be banned

The most popular sport in the world is soccer, although it is known in virtually every other country other than America, as football.  Like any sport, soccer has its rules, and sometimes those rules need to be updated or revised to reflect the reality of the play of the game.  For instance, a two-footed lunging challenge on another player is basically a red-card offense, because of the inherent danger that could occur should either of these feet hit with impact against another's players leg.  If you watch soccer, often enough, you will notice that a significant portion of the game is actually played up in the air, to which the player that is able to control an aerial ball with his head can help his teammates or create a goal for his team.  While contact in the sport of soccer is expected, what occurs way too often in soccer games, is contact between one player's elbow or arm and another player's face.  As these are great athletes that are both young and strong, an errant elbow to the face can break a cheekbone, break a nose, knock a player unconscious, or take away another player's courage.

Too many times during the play of the game the incidents with an errant elbow or arm striking an opponent happens, to which sometimes it is clearly a foul, sometimes it appears incidental, and other times it isn't really clear at all.  The thing is there should be a rule applied that you should not be allowed to jump and attempt to head the ball in such a way that you are using your arms and/or elbows to shield another player away or to possibly harm them.  The easiest way to effect that change is to mandate that a player's arms must be kept to his sides in a normal natural motion and that while jumping, that the player's arm cannot be extended out at a height higher than mid-chest level.  For players complaining that need to extend arms to get aerial lift or to shield the ball, they will have to make do with this modified rule with arm usage and subsequently to widen their legs so as to control their space better.

Those that have taken an errant or deliberate elbow know the power and damage an elbow or arm can do to their face when it is left unprotected.  It is far better to change the rules of soccer so that rather than put the referee in the position as to adjudge whether an arm or elbow is inadvertent or deliberate, the rules will simply allow the referee to apply it as necessary as well as for the protection of the players. 

Without players, no sport would exist, and to know any player's intention on a given play is something that is not actually knowable, whereas a rule equally applied to all, is fair to all, and will not noticeably affect the game of soccer at all, except to cut down on unnecessary injuries and damage that errant elbows and arms create.  For instance, inside the 18-yard box, defenders are known for not making stupid tackles on the opposing players, as well as typically keeping their arms behind their backs so as to not incur a penalty.  The game does not suffer for having them do so, nor will it suffer for the non-usage of elbows and arms.

Christ: To Be or Not to Be

However that you view Jesus the Christ, rather as a charlatan or fake, as a mythical figure, the incarnate Son of the living God, a great prophet, the Messiah, or perhaps He who had Oneness with the Christ spirit, there can be little or no doubt that the Christ was at a minimum, a special man of immense importance not only for His time in history, but clearly with historical and present day implications unequaled by any other man.  If your life on earth, was set aside for nothing more than the intensive studying and for the edification of who, what, and how Jesus was the Christ, your life would definitely not have been lived in vain, because the value and the Truth that Christ brought to us, is unparalleled.

Yet, there is something troubling about this King of Kings, and the most troubling aspect for most people, is the physical and the ignominious death of the Christ.  The crucifixion of Christ seems to be wrong in all of its aspects, yet, we are taught that this is not so.  At the time of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, we read in Luke 22:44: "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."  This Biblical passage is disturbing, because it implies that within the Christ there is conflict, as if even the Christ is unsure or not welcoming the completion of his mission to become the sacrificial lamb for mankind.  We know through many other passages that Christ could foresee the future, so it is understandable that our Christ would be disturbed to know that he must suffer from the desertion of his closest adherents, as well as the duplicity of Judas Iscariot, the scourging and beating of his body, the deep disappointment that the public wished to see Barabbas freed rather than Himself, the Sadducees and the Pharisees actively wishing for His harm and death, and the judgment of the Roman authorities that He would be put to death by the ignoble means of crucifixion, and later at the point of his physical death, Christ would believe for at least a moment that God had unjustly abandoned Him.  Within all of these future events, however, Christ had the power, Christ had the authority, Christ had the strength, to overcome them all, yet He did not. 

Jesus the Christ was given a mission here on earth, a mission that scripture had already recorded before His birth, a mission that He was already aware of, knew of, was part of, and was prepared for.  Yet within that all, like any human, there was an honest questioning, as to whether this path had to be the path, the only path, the right path, and it was.  While the message of Christ was manifold, encompassing so very many mysteries, His physical death on Good Friday, was necessary to send the message to all of mankind that the justice that you seek cannot be found here, and never will be.  Further, that if all we ever are is the physical, than crucifixion of the Christ, is the end of the story, and will be the end of the story for all physical beings.  However, the true message of our Christ, the everlasting message that He sent to all of us, is that He has overcome the world, as you can too can overcome the world, because His resurrection on Easter Sunday, demonstrated once and for all, that the Spirit is the master of the physical, that we are both eternal as well as spiritual, and that the death on the physical plane rebirths us on the spiritual plane.  Further to this, that within each of us is the Kingdom of God that will not be denied to us, if we earnestly pray for it and surrenders ourselves to our loving God.

American Demagogue

American is fortunate, that unlike other countries it isn't ruled by a monarchy that is hereditary and therefore cannot be voted out of power, or by a dictator, or by a military junta, or by a demagogue, or by any other form of government that subverts the rights of the people.  However, just because this historically has been the way in America, and just because we live under Constitution government, doesn't mean that America can't suffer the same fates of so many other countries throughout history.

America is blessed, that it's greatest military leader, George Washington, who was unanimously elected twice by the electoral college, was so gracious and so wise as to leave the Presidential office, voluntarily, after two terms, so as to set the example that no one man was greater than the nation that so many had sacrificed so much to create.  Unfortunately, in the 20th century, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did not follow this precedent, and probably used the excuse of the pressing concerns of World War II to justify his running for both a third and a fourth term in office.  Had, FDR, not died in office, at age 63, one must wonder as to how many terms, or how long in the oval office he would have stayed, as for instance, President Reagan completed his second term in office at the age of 77.

Although since the passing of FDR, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution has been ratified, stipulating that the President is limited to two terms in office; in a nation to which there are so many lawyers, and so many legal interpretations, it would not be a stretch of the imagination that someone acting in the capacity of Executive Counselin conjunction with the standing President might look upon the 22nd Amendment as something that could be circumvented by the nature of the words:  "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…" and simply interpret that to mean that as long as there are no further elections, because perhaps of a wartime emergency, or perhaps the declaration of martial law to suppress civil uprising or unrest, or perhaps some other such crisis, that national elections could simply become suspended.

Of course, most people, would state that this could never happen in the United States, but for the most part, most of America is pretty much content with the status quo as long as they get their proper "bread and circuses", to which no President would be fool enough not to provide this so as to maintain their power.  Additionally, the American public has been mainly deaf and mute as the Presidency has again and again throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, passed Executive Order after Executive Order, aggregating to the Executive Office certain immunities and privileges which has effectively neutralized and trivialized our Legislative and Judicial branches of government.

The truth of the matter is, if the Presidency is supported by the military-industrial complex of this country, and further that if the President is gifted in charisma, oratory, and has found something that represents that "devil" or evil that must be destroyed or fought against, than that President, representing the avenging angel, will be able to lure the public into his siren's song.  Sure, there will be some hue and cry from the public, but that will be drowned out by the sheep of this nation, willing to sacrifice a little freedom, for safety and their American Demagogue.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me

In Exodus 20:3 we read: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."  One could interpret this to mean, that within the society that you reside, the highest power in authority should be God, who shalt rule over his people.  That is to say, if one wishes to truly adhere to this Commandment, a valid argument can be made, that God's law trumps all.  This, in fact, encompasses the very basis of natural law, which is right reason, revealed, and applicable to all, which is the foundation of Western Civilization.

This would thereby imply to a significant degree, that the best form of Government is some form of a Theocracy or something similar that recognizes that God's law is the best form of law because, by definition, it is morally correct, immutable, applicable to all beings, and for the common good.  On the other hand, while man's law can be equally good and well applied, it is also subject to being corrupted, incorrect, wrongly applied, and a form of injustice under the guise of justice.

In today's word there are only a few countries that are Theocratic, to which, with the exception of the small city-state of Vatican City, which is Roman Catholic, the balance of all others such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Sudan, are all Islamic.  Unfortunately, Theocracies of today are, for the most part, oppressors of their subjects, arbitrary, capricious, autocratic, and suppressive.  To make matters worse, because they are Theocracies, there is little in their mindset to satiate their lusts in submitting their people to the sword of their wrongly applied Divine Justice.   This then makes a strong case that in unprincipled Theocracies, the people are in the most abject position, because when having to deal with the consequences of injustice, their appeal to the Highest Court, which is God himself, is subverted by the State.

Generally, the best Government for the people is a government that allows its citizens their freedom of conscience as to how they wish to submit themselves or to profess themselves to their faith.  This basically means, that the conception of the United States and similar countries, to which the people are afforded the free exercise of their religious persuasion without State interference or intervention is the ideal condition to which all may be afforded the opportunity to follow the Biblical command to have no other god.

Having said this, many modern western civilizations are increasingly becoming closer and closer to essentially secular states that actively oppose God and His commandments, by allowing the State, alone, to rule all as it sees fit.  The problem as seen by too many countries, today, is that they do not want their subjects to even conceive that there could possibly be a Higher Authority that they should consider answering a call to.  The State, in many nations today, wants to, in principle, to be the god to their people, and therefore it follows that they want their people to have no other gods but the State.  This is the reason why the State is so insistent, in so many cases, to stridently state that it's only fair and right that there should be a wall of separation between Church and State.   

If, in fact, God is eliminated from the public square, that God Himself is eliminated from governmental principles, there will be nothing, absolutely nothing that the State will not be permitted to do against its own subjects in its tyrannical possession of them for their own nefarious means.

They Would Kill John the Baptist, Today

There are plenty of people that profess their religious faith, be it Christian, Jewish, Islam, Buddhist, or whatever, and in all those faiths there are a special few that end up becoming great heroes and prophets, who are rightly admired by the adherents of that faith. Yet, in many instances, many of those prophets have met with ignoble ends, such as John the Baptist, who was beheaded, not only because of his powerful influence over the common people, but also as a vengeful act for the inconvenience and embarrassment that John the Baptist had caused in regards to the relationship of Herodias to her husband, Herod Antipas, who was not only her uncle but also because she had been already married, that she was in an adulterous relationship with the tetrarch of Galilee.

John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, and we learn that he: "… had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey," (Matthew 3:4). We also learn that John the Baptist was: "…preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins," (Luke 3:3).  So John the Baptist was a man that lived off of the land, with the simplest of clothing that commanded that his adherents repent so as to receive the forgiveness of their sins. 

The problem, therefore, for so many of today's Christians, is that they fail to understand that this repentance that John preached, was not something that was only applicable to people at the time of Christ's ministry, but applicable for all times, without end.  That is to say, when John the Baptist said: "… Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," (Matthew 3:3), this was not meant to be interpreted as being of just that one certain time period, of when Christ was physically incarnated here on earth, but for all time periods, for all time, because Christ's reign is forever. 

The point is, that there are few people, that are willing to walk the way of the Cross, and to suffer, if need be, or to sacrifice, as they must, for their faith.  Far too many people today, are fair-weather Christians that merely want to hear things or to accomplish things that really don't inconvenience them and find it somewhat offensive to be preached to in such a manner, as to convict them of any wrongs or any sins, whatsoever.  But that wasn't the message of the Baptist, nor was this the message of the Christ, who upon being questioned as to what law should apply to the woman taken in adultery, told her, after the stones that had been taken up to slay her, had been cast away, that: "… neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more," (John 8:11). 

So you must therefore picture this, there is a man in the wilderness, probably not a real educated man, poorly clothed, living off of the land, and preaching this "madness" that you need to repent of your sins, so that you can thereby be baptized into repentance, and further to prepare yourself to straighten up your act so as to be worthy to receive the real baptism of the Holy Spirit.  How many of you, would really participate, and how many, on the other hand, would simply want this rather "annoying" man to just to shut-up, once and for all.

Today's world wants so badly to believe that they are so much more civilized, but beneath that surface, is a savage, a savage that is easily unleashed against those that have the audacity to make us question ourselves, and when we duly find out that indeed we are truly lacking, that in fact, we are the Pharisees of old, hypocrites, who merely look the part of being a Christian, but beneath are "…  full of greed and self-indulgence," there wouldn't be any doubt, that they would surely want to silence the Baptist, today.

The Capital Loss Limit is Way too Low

In America, virtually every financial media outlet encourages the average investor to invest in equities as his best opportunity for him to increase his net worth over time.  When the stock markets are going up, this appears to be a safe and sound strategy, but when they collapse, such as in 2008, the investor becomes well aware, that markets are far more volatile, and far less secure, than he previously imagined.  Additionally, even when markets move up, investors may have picked investments that did poorly and therefore loss money, as well as the fact, that investors can bet on either side of the market, whether it goes up or goes down, so while in general, when markets move up investors make money, your results may vary considerably.

While there aren't many people that enjoy paying taxes, all individuals would rather pay some percentage tax on a gain, rather than to have simply lost money on their investment in the first place, to which they will not owe any tax because they have instead lost money.  Fortunately, for those losers, of which at some point, every investor has experienced this, the taxpayer is allowed to write off to the maximum of $3,000 of capital losses over and above any gains that he may or may not have recognized in that fiscal year.  So if you made $10,000 on some of your investments but also loss $10,000 on some other investments, you don't have any tax liability on those investments at all.  If, you made $10,000 on your investments, but loss $13,000 on some other investments, you have a $3,000 capital loss deduction.  If, you made $10,000 on your investments, but loss $25,000 on some other investments, you are allowed to write off $3,000 in capital loss deductions, and carry-over the balance of the $12,000 loss for future years, to which you are limited to no more than recognizing a $3,000 loss in any given fiscal year.

The truth of the matter is when investors are encouraged to put their money into the stock market, year after year, in order to attain the funds necessary to retire and to thereupon live upon, is that some years are going to be bad years for investors, to which a paltry loss limit of $3,000, which has not been raised since 1976, is substantially too low.  Now in situations whereupon the market moves up, there isn't a lot of hue and cry about raising the loss limits because these  times, for most investors, are good, but those times do not ever last, and when the crash or the correction comes, $3,000, will appear to be ridiculously low.

The fact is that all the income that you make in a given year is typically treated as taxable income for that year, but because the capital loss limit is $3,000 in a given fiscal year, this means that all capital losses that you have in a fiscal year, will not be counted in that year, if those net losses are above $3,000.  While our tax code allows an unlimited capital loss carry-over, this isn't going to do a whole lot of good for a taxpayer that dies in some future year without having availed himself of all of his capital losses, nor does it do that taxpayer any good in a year in which he lost a substantial amount of money, yet is limited to only writing off $3,000 of it. 

The current tax loss limit of $3,000 is way too low, it should either be raised substantially to something like $100,000, or eliminated in its entirety, thereby allowing that taxpayer to more quickly write off a bad year in that year and not to suffer the indignity of paying more than what he really must to the tax authorities in a year to which his investments performed very poorly.

The Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obama-care was implemented with full effect in 2014.  Even without reading a word of the law, because of the fact that it is estimated to be some 11,000 pages in length and possibly many thousands more, makes this Act, by the length of the Act itself, inherently unfair and unequally applied to all.   Any law, to be a law, must be specific and understandable by the average citizen, to whom, by definition, a law with 11,000 pages could not possibly be understood by the average citizen, or I submit, by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Why the Affordable Care Act is so many pages is something that only those that authored it could possibly explained, but the basic reason would always be so as to obfuscate the issues and ultimately for the Act for be whatever, the powers-to-be wants the Act to represent. 

While, one might applaud or appreciate the desire of having Universal HealthCare for all in the United States, this Act, is in actuality, not really a HealthCare Act, in and of itself, but a new federal tax mandated upon most citizens of America under the guise of HealthCare.  The reason that we now know that this is a tax, is because, in the filing of one's Federal Taxes, there is now a column that is seen onyour Tax Software (such as TurboTax) dedicated to answering the questions in regards to your HealthCare service.  Additionally, for those that used the HealthCare.gov marketplace in order to procure their required HealthCare insurance, a Form 1095-A was issued to you for your Tax obligations for Fiscal Year 2014.

The Affordable Care Act, gets just about everything wrong, if, it is in fact suppose to be both: affordable and for the healthcare for the people, in general.  First, in regards to those people that have been paying for their HealthCare insurance either through their company employment or through their own pockets, their premiums for the same policy that they had been utilizing before the HealthCare act was implemented, for the most part, saw significant increases in their premium amounts after the HealthCare act was put into place.  Additionally, for many people, 2015, will be the last year, that they will be able to utilize the same HealthCare plan that they had been historically using with their selected HealthCare provider, before it is phased out, and subsequently they will be placed into another plan that, is in accordance with the HealthCare Act provisions, in 2016, for a higher premium.  In these cases, the HealthCare Act has done these people no good at all.  For those people that were previously without insurance, because they believed that they could not affordor didn't desired health insurance, unless they earned income that fell under the Medicaid threshold, are now instead required, by law, to have HealthCare insurance, whether they desired it or not, or to pay a monetary taxation fine for not having done so.  

There are myriad ways to provide HealthCare services to people in America, to which the Affordable Care Act is one such way, but a poorly and fatally structured one, suffering from governmental overreach, waste, lobbyist favoritism, and the like.  In point of fact, the Affordable Care Act has resolved nothing in regards to the fairness or the betterment of Health Care; it has merely made certain industries and connected people richer at the expense of most Americans, and ceded more sovereign power from the people to the Government.

Stop Complaining about Immigration, Outsourcing Is the Issue

There are plenty of Americans that complain about immigration, in particular illegal immigration, usually because they claim that immigrants take away jobs from native-born Americans and further that illegal aliens are able to avail themselves of the generosity of our welfare state.  While there is some merit in their argument, especially in regards to the welfare state, their general complaint suffers from an inability to understand that we do not live within a stagnant economic pie, that is permanently fixed in both size and benefits, to which if we did, their complaints about immigration would be valid.  The fact of the matter is that we do not live in a zero-sum society, that our prosperity is only limited by our imagination, our work ethics, our efficiency, and yes, somewhat unfortunately, the availability of ready capital.  Still, I am sympathetic to those that are struggling in their employment, and typically slash out at the most readily accessible target, immigrants, but I do believe that their anger is misplaced.

The thing is that America is the biggest economic force that the world has ever seen, to which there is no continent, and probably no country, that is not impacted or affected by some degree by what America does.   For those that are so fortunate as to have been born in this great nation, you are in the fortuitous situation of being right where the real money is at.  However, unfortunately, in today's modern society, something tragic has happened to the core of America, specifically its middle class, and subsequently their wages, along with their opportunities have often stagnated over recent years.  Additionally, America's "war on poverty" looks to be in a permanent standstill, unable to improve millions upon millions of American's lives, despite billions upon billions of dollars being set aside to do this very thing.

The highest percentage of the largest multi-national corporations in the world, are based right here in America, but the priorities of this behemoths has changed to such an extent, thatit truly can be stated, that they are "American" only in the sense to which that is their legal home of residence for financial purposes.  Somewhat disturbingly, wHowqeHowwwhen it comes to the employment of the people needed to service, sell, and make their products and wares, a significant portion of companies that we consider to be American, have done their country wrong, by deliberately outsourcing millions of jobs overseas.  This means that jobs that could easily and readily be performed right here in America, have been exported overseas, primarily because of the savings in wages, tax benefits, labor and factory concessions, or similar.  So, in short, while many complain vociferously about illegal immigrants in America, at least those immigrants are providing services to Americans on American soil, while also spending their monies earned here, primarily in America.  Whereas, for jobs that are outsourced, that money is leaving America to provide foreign employment in foreign countries, and any monies being repatriated to America, are for the most part, going into the pockets of the 1% of the 1%, and not you and me.

The outsourcing of American jobs, such as all aspects of customer service, manufacturing, data entry, and pretty much anything that you might possible imagine, is done primarily to increase profits for said Multi-national Corporation at primarily the expense of the American worker.  This means that the multi-national corporations are able to make extra money hand over fist, while sticking the government of America with the responsibility of taking care of the American public that has been left behind.

Shay's Rebellion

The American revolutionary war ended in September of 1783, but the Constitution of the United States of America was not formulated until 1787, and later signed in September of 1787.  In the meanwhile, the thirteen original colonies had signed and ratified the Articles of Confederation which in essence, served as the first Constitution of the United States of America, before becoming superseded by the Constitution that rules our land today.  At the time of our revolution, there were soldiers that having served in our armed forces found upon returning to their rural life as farmers, had suffered the inconveniences of a credit squeeze, or lack of monetary credit or currency, leading to seizures of their land itself, or found themselves in situations to which they were forced to declare bankruptcy to discharge debts.

Shay's rebellion was named after Daniel Shays who was alleged to have been the ring leader of four thousand men that in their protest of this perceived injustice took up arms in order to seize the Springfield Armory.  They were met there by a militia that defeated them at Springfield, and additional skirmishes amongst them ultimately ended in defeat and the dissolution of Daniel Shays and his rebellious men.  While to a certain degree Shay's rebellion was somewhat successful in that it led to a moratorium of certain debts and a reduction in interest rates, it's lasting legacy is that this insurgent action led to the call for a more formal declaration of the powers of a united and forceful National Government, because it was feared as stated by General Washington that: "If government shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws; fresh maneuvers will be displayed by the insurgents – anarchy & confusion must prevail…"

The upshot of all this, is that Shay's rebellion set the tone within America, that in instances, even if apparently justified, that citizens, or bands of citizens, felt that they had been given short shrift that the taking up of arms against their State or State militia, or National Government, would not now, nor never, be permitted in this land.  After all, the very purpose of our Declaration of Independence was a solemn Declaration, that made it absolutely crystal clear and forthright that in any state of oppression, that the people first must petition for redress, that further that those that desire to dissolve their political bands must declare formerly and specifically the causes that bring them to this said action, and further to it all, they must then unite in their alliance by offering forth to the Supreme Judge of all their lives, their fortunes, and their honor.

While there is little doubt that those that were part of Shay's rebellion had their valid points, the taking up of arms or the application of force to assert those rights, is a circumvention of the rule of law, to which having done so, the State was justified in taking the needful steps to suppress it.     As it was said so wisely, a house divided against itself cannot stand, nor can a house be further broken down into many small pieces and principalities, because it will cease to be a house itself.   

Compulsory Religion

Within America there are many religious faiths, as well as factions of religious faiths, all keeping in accordance that per our Constitution, we are allowed the free exercise of religion according to our conscience.  This means for the individual, that for the most part, our government allows us to worship in our way and in our time, as per our desire, but that does not mean, however, that within the faith of your religion, that those same conditions would apply.  That is to say, for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, there are in most cases, obligations that the professed adherents must attend to or there will be consequences for having come short of those said obligations.  

For instance, in the Jewish religion, depending upon the sect, you will be required to wear a head covering and to dress appropriately for the service in the synagogue, as well as recognizing that the Sabbath commences on Friday evening at sunset and concludes upon nightfall of Saturday night.  During that time of Sabbath, certain activities such as conducting business or even driving your vehicle are prohibited, and during the Sabbath prayers are offered and encouraged, as well as the reading of the Torah. 

In the Christian religion, depending upon the faith, the Sabbath day is recognized on Sunday, to which, according to your sect, attendance at your place of worship may be compulsory, as well as that the day should be given to the Lord as a time of contemplation, respect, and servitude, with any work or work-related activities held to either an absolute minimum or prohibited.

The Muslim faith does not recognize a Sabbath day, instead, depending upon the sect, most recognize that prayers are obligatory within their faith for every day of the week, and are set aside at certain specific times throughout the day.  Further to this point, Muslims are literally called to prayer by the muezzin at those times of day, so as to make their way to either a mosque or a quiet place set aside for prayer wherever they may be at.

In each of these respective religions, depending upon the sect, there are specific rules and obligations that the faithful must adhere to, or else they will suffer some sort of banishment, punishment, admonishment, or be considered to be unclean, unworthy, or something similar in concept.  This means, that for the believer, whether he is a true and faithful follower or not, one's religion can be such that you have relinquished your sovereignty of yourself to a designated power.  While, it may be that the greatest service that you can do is to surrender to your faith, this does not necessarily mean that this is actually the right thing to do, because in actuality every religion at its core, is selling the story, that they, that their particular religion, knows God's word, for a certainty, and that your obligation is to follow those dictates, because they, the human representatives of God's word, know best.

The thing to remember, though, is that God has gifted each of us with our own mind, our own body, and our own soul.  If we are so fortunate as to live in a country to which we can freely worship our Lord, without governmental obligation or interference, we would be wise to recognize that ceding that freedom to some other authority, one that indeed often has the audacity to claim rights to our eternity, is something that should not be done lightly.  

Can you Make Money in After Hours Trading?

The stock market is open from 9:30AM to 4:00PM EST, Monday through Friday, market holidays excepted.  However, in looking at equities, one must remember, that overall it is news that moves markets, and specific news, that moves stocks.  For instance, study after study has shown, that unanticipated earnings surprises whether they are positive or negative immediately impacts a particular stock price, yet most of these earning releases are provided as a press report, after hours.  This, then, would imply that someone that is able to get a hold of that information and then to trade upon it, before virtually everyone else would have a material advantage over others, less informed.  This, therefore, is where after hour trading or pre-market trading could potentially be an avenue to make money for an investor.

While the foregoing is definitely true, that earnings surprises or other noteworthy news such as clinical trials approved or disapproved, significant lawsuits, merger and acquisition news, and whatnot, definitely will impact equity pricing, this doesn't mean that you, as an individual investor, have the skill, discipline, and knowhow on how to profit from this.  That is to say, when you are swimming with the sharks, you must determine as to whether you have true "shark-like" capabilities, or are instead, merely a pretender, and thereby thoroughly outclassed.

The value of news, and the comprehension of said news, before others are even aware of it, can be demonstrated by the Rothschild's who are said to have received news of the British victory over the French at Waterloo a day ahead of the government messengers, to which the Rothschild's rightly predicated that English bonds would become much more valuable, and subsequently made an enormous profit from it. 

The fact that others can and have profited by news does not mean that you as a trader can also do so, but it does indicate that the basic premise is sound, only awaiting someone with the appropriate skill level and boldness to actuate it, as the after-hours market, is inherently and substantially far less efficient in the equitability of market pricing, as compared to normal stock market hours pricing.

In today's world, without actual access to insider information, which would probably be considered illegal, a trader cannot hope to have access to marking moving information ahead of someone else for more than a few minutes, at most.  This means, for after hour traders, just being a few seconds ahead of the curve is the difference between making some money as opposed to getting played for some money, as the market is at this level,  is a zero-sum game, to which, for every winner there will be a corresponding loser. 

The ability to make money in after hour trading is both a skill as well as an art.  It is thus, because your interpretation of noteworthy news items may be diametrically opposed to the "smart money" because they are skilled at reading in-between the lines and you are not.  In short, after hour trading is not for the faint of heart, it also takes a mercenary mindset as well as a disciplined trading arm, to which most probably fall far short, while there are a few that can and will thrive.

Buy Your Way into America

America literally lets in thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants each and every year, to which on the one hand, government authorities claim that they are trying to secure our borders, but on the other hand, never seem to do a very good job doing so, making one come to the obvious conclusion, that America is implicitly allowing aliens to cross our border.  While there are indeed benefits for certain Americans and certain American industries for this activity to continue, you can easily say with very little exception, that the typical immigrant that crosses our border illegally is impoverished, and often poorly educated.

In 1990, Congress created the "EB-5" visa program, which essentially allows up to 10,000 immigrants yearly to come into America legally as long as they:  "create or preserve at least 10 full-time jobs…" and invest either 1 million dollars or instead $500,000 in a " Targeted Employment Area".   If accepted within the program, this allows the qualified immigrant to receive a "green card" which ultimately will allow said immigrant to apply for citizenship in America. 

The initial take from this program is that it is brilliant, I mean, sometimes the best plans are the ones that are most straightforward and easily comprehensible.  To begin with, millions upon millions of people want to immigrate to America, so why not create a program, which takes people that have either been successful in their country and want to come to America, or for whatever reason have the wherewithal financially to invest in our country, which allows America to receive in return: money for their residency, job creation, and monies invested in infrastructure. 

There are a couple things, though that I don't really understand about this program, such as, why have limits of a paltry 10,000 EB-5 immigrants per year?  Instead, the limit should immediately be pushed up to at least match the historic rate of illegal immigration to America, which probably lays around 1,000,000 a year.  Additionally, the EB-5 program should be structured with different tiers, so that those that have substantially more than $1 million to invest in America, can be "fast-passed" into receiving their residency and green card more quickly, for having doing so.

While I suppose some Americans might be appalled that green cards are, in essence, for sale, they should feel instead that these capital-rich immigrants are doing us a grand service by both investing into America, and by providing Americans employment; unlike many of the biggest multi-national companies based in America, that so often send jobs that could be performed here, overseas.  One can make a very strong argument, that the foreigner that invests in this land is far more patriotic and much more American, than the so-called native-born American businessman which would sell his soul just to cut his expenses by a few pennies, at the expense of American labor.

Should foreigners be allowed to buy their way into America?  Absolutely, they should, and I welcome them, because true Americans, are those that desire deeply to pursue their dreams and goals so as to achieve with vigor: their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

America: The Great Melting Pot

America is a grand experiment, asking the question as to whether people from different cultures, nationalities, creeds, and whatnot can live together and to eventually coalesce as one people.  While it is true, that America is a country that has not embraced all peoples historically as equal members, it has as a country and as a people made great strides in doing so.  In point of fact, upon its founding as a nation, virtually all of the people of power and influence in America, such as those that signed the Declaration of Independence, or its Constitution, were white, Protestant, male, and either quite wealthy or quite influential.  That was the way it was back then, but the country as a whole, has made enormous strides in treating all those that are American citizens by virtue of birth, or by adoption, as equally entitled to its benefits, and its rule of law.  While America, has fallen short of meeting these ideals, again and again, it has also, inexorably, relentlessly, made progress, step by step, so that we have come ever closer to dealing with others based upon their merit, their character, and their achievements, rather than by making snap judgments on them simply based on the color of their skin, or other superficial items.

It is well said, that often two heads are better than one, because each person can work off the skill-set and wisdom of the other, to ultimately achieve an end result that will be far richer than one person, rowing alone.  America made the choice, years ago, that it would help to build the foundations and roadways necessary so that all Americans would be afforded the opportunity to get ahead.  In America, it is acknowledged that we are all created equally by God, and while that does not mean that we all have equal abilities, or equal opportunities, it does mean that we all are equally entitled to reap the benefits of what we have sowed.

The Christian religion teaches us that we are to "love thy neighbor as thy self", and further that our neighbor is any and all peoples such as: the poor, the downtrodden, the abused, and the oppressed, because God is no respecter of persons as He loves all as his own.  In this world, there are so many sorts of cultures, along with all sorts of people of different sizes, shapes, beliefs, and colors, but those differences which seem so rich in variety, are in actuality merely different forms on display of how God has created a rainbow coalition of humanity on this planet. 

God loves to test us, as is seen so vividly in this great American experiment, testing this very nation, as to whether it will indeed live up to its creed, that "all men are created equal", and further whether it indeed believes in its Statue of Liberty proclamation as to being that safe harbor for refugees "yearning to be free".   America is that great melting pot, because Americans have made it so, this struggle has cost mankind much in blood, sweat, and tears, but there is nothing in this world that is really worth anything of value, if we are not willing to sacrifice ourselves to it.

The New Racism: the Poor

In Mark 14:7 we read: "For ye have the poor with you always…", and this statement made two thousand years, certainly, but unfortunately, still rings very true today.  While the United States is still a racist nation in whole, it has begun to turn the corner into a partial acceptance of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's speech that: "…my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."  It does appear that as time goes on, that America will become and has become more and more accepting of people of color, but, however, instead of accepting the worth and dignity of all human beings, they have merely replace those born of color as the "boogeyman" of society to those that are simply poor and powerless.  There is a two-fold reason for having done so, one is that the sheer numbers of poor people in America are staggering, to which nearly forty-seven million Americans are considered to be living under the poverty line, in addition to the fact that a blanket policy of oppressing the poor is much more saleable to the America public as a whole, since this doesn't discriminate against race, color, or national origin, making it overall quite palatable to the American taste in general; especially considering the historic American Puritan work ethic, that believes all people should be able to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Within our capitalistic society the labor cost is a component that most businesses want to keep down or under control so as to stay both competitive as well as to make money for the beneficiaries of the business, itself.  There are some very basic ways to keep labor costs down, such as to make the applicants themselves compete against each other in a "race to the bottom" and for the business to do its upmost not to see its employees or future employees join together into unions or other labor-type organizational units.  Additionally, by keeping labor costs unfairly suppressed and/or by expending money on capital equipment and/or outsourcing jobs to foreign countries in lieu of hiring domestic people in the first place, the burden of taking care of the poor and the untrained can be passed from private enterprise onto government or government agencies, itself. 

By effectively making poor people, wards of the State, this means that implicitly or explicitly that these poor people in one way or another will sacrifice their Constitutional rights and freedoms in order to just survive and in order to receive their "benefits" from the State.  This massive amount of peoples, will now be obedient to the State, or will suffer the indignity of being locked up, or banished in a way, for failing to adhere to the rules and regulations that are specifically set aside to applied to them, or suffer the consequences for their failure to do so.   The poor in America have become entrapped into an unending cycle of poverty, one of which there is almost no positive outcome available to them, because they have received in aggregate from the State the worst housing, the worst schooling, the worst living conditions, and the worst opportunities. 

The poor have effectively been left behind, left for the State to exploit as they best see fit, as they are considered to be children of a lesser god.

The Middle East: War and Oil

The United States seems to constantly be involved in wars or interventions in the Middle East year after year after year.  While the United States attempts to sell the same canard that we are involved in the Middle East for humanitarian reasons, for democracy, to counter terrorism, to neutralize weapons of mass destruction, the fact of the matter is, the United States is primarily involved in the Middle East for two basic reasons: oil and to keep the Middle Eastern trade routes free and clear of danger.  The bottom line is that despite all of our interventions, all of our war materials and personnel, America never seems to resolve anything within the Middle East, ever.  This would strongly imply that America needs to make a fundamental change in its Middle Eastern policy and its strategic planning.

The best way to address the changes that America needs to make in its Middle Eastern policy is to simply recognized the facts that are staring the United States in the face, which is the Middle East has oil, we, and our allies, and the international oil companies want it, or at least to have ready access to it, so consequently that should be the focus of our country and others that have the same vested interest.  The United States does not need to pretend to be something that we are not, as we are the imperial power, unstoppable, unconquerable, and invincible.  This means if our purpose is oil, we should be about our purpose, simple as that.

In any given country in the Middle East, the United States does not need to conquer that nation, to place a puppet in command, or to attack that country, none of that is even necessary.  What is necessary is for the United States, either directly or through a "negotiation" to simply take over certain territorial parts of a particular Middle Eastern country so as to control the oil fields within certain regions of that country, and to leave the balance of the nation, as is.  Of course, the foregoing implies strongly that America would be violating the sovereignty of these nations, but, in point of fact, the United States already does that; this suggestion simply makes it much more purposeful.

There is such a thing as the art of negotiation, and America has the best and most creative legal minds in the world, there isn't any doubt, therefore, that legal documents couldn't be drawn up in such a way, that certain parts and resources of certain countries would be leased or ceded to America for certain specific amounts of time and money, to which the treaty could not be broken, unless both sides of the equation agreed to do so. 

You might argue that there would be howling about these somewhat "coerced" treaties all over the world, but in actuality, there wouldn't be.  Those that would even consider howling would rather make a deal with the United States, than stand opposed against it as that is just plain pragmatism.  America has all of the muscle, but apparently lacks the subtlety to carry out the most basic of objectives, because that oil is ours, already, it just happens to be located in the Middle East.