The last thing we should do right now is raise taxes in any way, shape, or form. Our country is at a crossroad where we can opt for real economic survival or follow the gluttonous Romans to our demise.
Living within our means in order to balance our budget is absolutely essential and is expected of us by our creditors in the world. It is also impossible to raise taxes above a certain amount, which we have reached, or we will self implode, which we are in the process of now.
We have momentum right now, especially at the local and state level, in making drastic cuts in every department and agency. Daily we hear the cries from the "suffer citizens, but don't touch my pie" bureaucrats in education, public service, welfare, and prisons. We need to cut all those budgets by another 20% next year and do some real soul searching as a nation so we can establish our real priorities that will coincide with our true financial capabilities.
The federal government has yet to wake up to our economic realities. They manipulate the numbers and ignore the wants and wills of the taxpayers and needs push their responsibilities off to local municipalities and states, as we all know what runs downhill.
And, by ignoring taxpayers, I mean just that---those that actually pay taxes--- while they pander to the illegal aliens, welfare rolls, the public employees, and the rest of the people who have everything to gain by bleeding the real supporters of this country's needs and infrastructure. It has to stop and the only way to stop it is by refusing to allow these dirt-bag politicians to put their taxation screws to us any more.
We need less scum bags on disability and welfare. We need to call illegal kids dropped on our soil the illegals they are and deport them back right along with their parents. We need less prisoners, jails, and prison guards. We need to expect our educations system to work and get paid like the rest of us and to be accountable for the goals of their industry, which is educating many or all at a realistic cost.
We need more potholes in our roads and more volunteer fire departments. We need to abolish the usurious practice of "prevailing wage" jobs as graft to the unions for their member's votes. We need make absolutely certain that no person in our public institutions earns one dime more than that in the private sector including their benefit package.
The time is right, the need is certain, and the momentum is here. Lets capitalize on it all! We must fight for now new taxes and even tax cuts. We have to get the massive pork out of the bloated self-perpetuating bureaucracies that have grown like cancer. We need to re-make America and this is the most critical step in so-doing.

Professor Wolfe's anger in his response to my call for the education bureaucracy to get off their high horses and grasp the reality of our country's need to live within our means is to be expected. He and his liberal ilk, just can not fathom that money doesn't grow on trees. The hey-day is over my friend-- get a grip.

You can't get a job at a private university at 200% higher wages, as you claim, or you would be there. Matter of fact, other than in the bloated education industry that you are in, your only hope for a job would be to become a prostitute for some mega drug, agricultural, or petrol concern in promoting their agendas, which you may not want to rule out at this point.

Our economy has failed, and is worsening with Obama as economically ignorant as he is, and we will be adjusting the labor costs of every industry in America to survive. This especially includes the bloated government bureaucracy that has grown like a cancer, and which you are part of.

I don't believe in government bailouts at all, as you suggest. Raising taxes anywhere is ignorant of the fact that we are simply living at a make believe, non-sustainable level that will cease soon, with or without our will or want.

You teachers, government workers, union member, retirees, and welfare recipients better go to my blog at http://www.norcalblogs.com/outloud/ and read it carefully so you can see your futures!

Here we go again on the illegal immigrant amnesty trail! What in the Sam's hell are these liberal scumbags thinking about and why in the hell isn't every Republican leader up in arms against this rape of America???

The Dems are now proposing that we open the door for the 30 million illegals here now, to stay here, and become taxpaying (non-taxpaying), productive (welfare recipient), Americans ( that don't speak english and will enlist the ACLU for their right not to), decent (70% of our federal prisons are illegals), good ol' Americans.

The republicans are silent as they need to be whores to these possible voters themselves.

Us Americans, means-while, are simply apathetic pawns to be sacrificed for the good of these political parties in vying for the future votes of these future welfare recipients who will vote our country into an abyss that will cause its destruction.

Our political parties have lost complete touch with the Constitution of the United States, our national identity, our national security, our national financial well being, and pretty much everything except their own goals of power and corruption.

Why can't we hear that illegals are being thrown out and that the constitution is being changed so that when any illegal alien plops a kid out on our soil it belongs to the country of its parents, not our country? After all, 95% of the kids born last year in San Diego county were illegal "anchor babies, 70% in L.A. County, and no telling about the others. Why can't we have some politician step up and support American??? They all can't be worthless whores, can they?

Wake up California and USA! Breaking news.... We are a bankrupt country with our businesses going broke and our financial system is in ruins. Our College professors and the entire government sector are drawing wages and benefits that are ruining America while they promote policies like illegal immigration that serve to benefit only them Our health care system in California is collapsing under pressure from illegal immigration. Our prisons are devastating our colleges.

It has to stop!!!

My friend,

When these faculty members do even more work for much less money, they will be starting to experience the real world. Our nation is broke and the time of over paying state and federal jobs must end. These folks are through fooling all but the idiots--- no one works their hours in the private sector for this type of pay and benefits. Maybe in the past but no more.

The furlough days are a joke. Get a 3 day weekend and still earn more than all the people that are paying your wages -- including the struggling students who just want a chance at an education. How about we demolish tenure? After all, all of us in the private sector have to worry our jobs will be lost or shipped overseas by our idiot leaders. Why should teachers be exempt? Produce at competitive costs or be replaced. That is the way it is supposed to be.

Our politicians and Wall Street leaders sent our jobs, industries, technologies and therefor our money to China, India, Mexico, and where ever they could make more money than doing business in our overpriced self indulgent economy my friend.

BRACE YOUR SELVES FOR A CRASH LANDING!!!

Our economy, absolutely, must adjust for the reality of what it is. In California, we are playing a three-card- monte game to balance our budget--- robbing local property taxes to pay for state programs--- many unnecessary or un-needed.

Our economy, as it now sits in the world is unsustainable, arrogant, and must adjust to a point that is financially practical. Yes, our road crews must be cut so that our roads openly display disrepair that we are not used to. Yes, our fire protection must shrink to a point that our communities resort to vollenteer departments as they once were and still are in most countries.

Yes, we need to dismantle the prison bureaucracy whose union and their political action committee has caused the prison population to grow to the largest per-capita incarceration in the world for their own benefit. We need to carefully examine their agenda, which boils down to the policy of locking up, and keeping locked up, many our fellow Americans for crimes that are non violent or should and could be addressed in a more positive and productive manner.

Yes, we need to reform our school and university systems, and our entire government employee systems to align them with the realities of the constraints and burdens of the ordinary working folks that pay their wages. Under no circumstance should government workers have more income, job security, health care, or retirement benefits than our working class folks that perform the same tasks---- that is just simply wrong.

Yes, we need health reform, but only so simple so as to only allow legal citizens access to our system and require minimal co-pays, say $40 for any visit what so ever, no matter what your hardship, and if needed the bleeding heart liberals can take over the shopping center exits with signs from the $5 per pack Camel smoking scumbags that now dominate them for a truly good cause. AND, everyone can afford a $5000 deductible for standard health care that is employed. Face it, in reality, you only spend money for minor issues that are affordable like check-ups and flu shots and if it is more that than it meets the five grand deductible anyway. Sure, this really screws the insurance giants out of their gravy money, but ain't it about time they got a little vasaline anyway??? Screw them, they don't care about you or America anyway and are probably owned by the Saudis or Chinese when the smoke clears. What we don't need is our new communist president jamming some unknown system down our throats just to turn us into the next socialistic nation for his idealistic experiment because of his contempt and dislike for our kind and generous nation.

My friends, we will be forced to adjust and accept a reasonable standard of living that is far from what we have known, but is well known and lived by our fellow men and women in most other nations. I expect that they will yearn for our freedoms and learn to appreciate our generosity over time and we will be accepted into most of their arms with grace as we become more and more like them in our standard of living, al-bet ever so awkward. We need to change and we need to change now--- and I mean in a humble conservative and practical way, not Obama's way.

Coop

Kathy, you left the private sector for some reason that affords you a benefit that you were after. Was it better pay? Job security? Nice cush benefits? A lot of paid time off? I'm dying to know the truth - not some made up feel good story about the satisfaction of working like a dog to benefit others for charity as if this was the case, you could really do some good laddling soup tho the homeless for free at the Jesus center.

And remember Kathy, you are not trapped in this profession - you can jump right back out into the private sector with the rest of the world. Did I happen to mention to you, in case your mom never did, that money doesn't grow on trees??

By the way, exactly how many actual scheduled class room hours does your work load require and how many actual required days of work per year are required. Please educate us all with this bit of truth in black and white terms if you aren't ashamed to tell us.

The faculty of the California State University system need to understand that they are part of America's and California's overpaid and under performing bureaucracy that is selfishly yanking us under the quick sand and that we taxpayers refuse to continue to feather their nests while we all suffer this financial meltdown.

Tenure, protecting the lazy and incompetent, year long paid vacations they call "sabbaticals", salaries far beyond what the private sector could or would pay for their skills (many of which are not even marketable except in academia), benefits for retirement and health care exceeding most of the taxpayers that pay their salaries, months off work annually while receiving full pay.

Now, their union is contemplating whether to take some unpaid days off to help the budget and it is pissing them off. My thoughts are to just simply not pay them for the days they already don't work and the budget problem is solved. Also, pay your own health insurance like most of us out here do or at least part of it, and jump out here in the real world.

We want our children to have educations for their future and for our country's very survival and the goals of the university system and every one of its members must have that one main focus instead of their own self interest or the system has failed -- which seems to be the case. We want to see enrollment expand and the system employees make it happen at whatever expense to their personal wellbeing and for those that don't like it, quit and jump out in the real world of 10% unemployment, and find a better opportunity.

Yeah Government bureaucrats, we are sick of being used. Retiring at your high salary and then drawing another for doing the same job or getting paid as a consultant some exorbitant fee. Firefighters working their jobs and running full time contracting or other businesses on the "side", which is impossible in other professions and crying about the long hours and pay cuts. Senators and congressmen working 4 years and drawing a pension for life with full health benefits. These days are gone and you too need to adjust to the new American standard of living we are about to experience. Sorry, but the party is over.

Well folks, here we are with our new president running around attacking the world's problems like some crankster who inherited a second hand store. The economy is continuing to slide into the inevitable abyss that Bush, Clinton, Greenspan, the big investment firms, Wall street, and now Obama, are ignorantly guiding us into.

China's auto sales rose 17% this year and they have been securing real assets and dumping dollars at every chance. Their economy, which has one fifth of the world's population, is basically fine and certainly not in debt. Their labor costs and freedom from regulation will certainly cause them to recover from this "economic downturn" at the first inkling of economic demand. In turn, our economy is ruined to a point that we will for certain be excluded from any world economic upturn in the next decade or two at least. AND, with Pelosi, Obama, and the rest of the radical leftist, who are living in their fantasy utopia where money grows on trees and basic economic principles are of no value, raising our taxes and imposing economic killing policies like "Cap in Trade" and spending expensively borrowed money on idiotic pork projects that are geared to get them re-elected rather than do America any good, we are truly screwed.

Our "stimulus money" is pretty much going to bail out state governments, pork barrel union contracts that pay "prevailing wages" to the union workers at wages that no one else earns for infrastructure that we cannot afford and do not need, and apparently to green energy programs to "bring us to the forefront of the green energy movement" as if most of the world who earn pennies an hour are going to buy our overpriced solar panels.

Last week, I heard some talking head for Obama saying that we need to address the housing construction market immediately as that is "what got us into this mess". That truly convinced me that we are screwed, glued and tattood! How can anyone be that stupid, and especially be on TV???

Folks, construction and housing are luxuries. So are cars, Big Macs, Big homes, private schools, health care, social security, welfare, and spending money on anything at this point that does not directly produce value in the world economy that we have been thrust into. We need to spend every dollar focusing on our country's survival and we need to come to grips with the reality of our situation---which is not good.

China and India are now producing damn nice $1800 cars, all of our tee shirts and textiles, and most of our goods including our computer customer service. Twenty years from now, when we take our heads out of our asses and see the fact that we absolutely must produce goods and services at these same costs to become a meaningful economy once again, we may once again flourish, albeit, at the mercy of continuing to live on the upside of the ongoing competitive edge that will surely exist. We sure as hell aren't going to reap any benefit from pumping money into our housing and construction industry and doing so will make us the laughing stock of the world, for being arrogant, short sighted, gluttonous Americans.

We need to focus on what Henry Ford taught us--- mechanization and capitalize on our few economies of scale like large farming operations, and guard our trade secrets and patents with the death penalty to violators. We must pare back our illegal alien costs and stop tomorrow the Anchor Baby loophole, that no one in either party ever brings up even though every American here legally sees as rape to our system. Above all, we must learn to live once again with generations of family surviving together as a family in one household and learn to live poor again like our grand parents so we can save our country by becoming economically viable once again one day.

I am convinced that Obama and his Democrat cohorts are completely insane and dumber than a box of rocks!

Here our economy is flailing its arms, trying not to sink in the sea of bad financial decisions and debt, and these idiots are increasing our debt and acting like money grows on trees. Obama wants to strengthen unions, Pelosi wants to open our borders to illegal aliens, the FED is madly printing money, and e3ntire Democratic party are spending money on the U.S. credit card like childish drunken sailors.

Don’t they see that sooner or later (probably sooner) that we will not be able to borrow more money from the lenders that are essential to our nations very survival because they are observing ludicrous financial irresponsibility? What sense does it make for China, Kuwait, the Saudis, and other nations to sink their own ships when it is avoidable simply by cutting us off.

We need to cut everything but essential operations to live within our country’s income to prove to others that we intend to fix our finances, not scare our lenders away with our irresponsible insanity.

We should not be acting like we are “bailing out the economy” when we are robbing from Peter to pay Paul. We should not be bailing out anyone. We should be biting the proverbial bullet and paying the piper for living far beyond our means as a country and as individuals, We need to suffer now and begin to align our country’s income and expenses but instead we are ruining our nation’s credit, respect, and status to an irreparable point.

I am truly afraid folks that we are going to face ruin in the very short term and we all will see our nation in a state that could never be imagined and that at this point “the horse is out of the barn” and nothing can be done. I have used the term “self consuming economy” for many years and I think now we have devoured ourselves to a fatal point. One can only eat themselves up to a certain point.

I am fully convinced that there are zero economists in Washington within this or the prior administrations that have one iota of competence. None. They are blindly, without forethought or analysis, leading our country into the abyss. Worst thing is that any kindergartner with a piggy bank could put this two and two together. It is a sad state of affairs my friends.