Living Free in America

While it is becoming less possible almost every day to exercise our freedoms in America, that is not the topic of this article. No, this article is about a totally different kind of free, a freedom that drives those of us who struggle to make a decent living every day and have some good things in our lives absolutely insane!

If you are like most Americans, you probably have a cell phone. In fact, for many of us, including this author, the cell phone has become our only phone. Cell phone usage has become such an integral part of our lives that many of us feel incomplete without it. Try this: go to any public place, take a break from your phone and look around. You’ll see that virtually everyone is staring at the little screen and working away at games, texting, surfing the Internet, etc. We ignore people around us and commit our complete attention to these little remarkable devices.

Click to read more ...

Can Jobs Return to America?

Does the President finally get it? His new campaign strategy seems to be focused on encouraging American business to stop outsourcing jobs, but rather insourcing them.

According to the Huffington Post, “The practice of U.S. companies moving jobs to foreign countries such as India and China, where labor is cheaper, is a source of concern to many U.S. workers.” Is this really a revelation to anyone? Perhaps it is to the president. Of course, this is an election year and politicians always seem to “get it” when they are up for election, but will he remember and follow through with this apparent campaign promise? As we all know, that is often not the case.

It should be clear to those who’ve followed my earlier columns that our economy is confronted with many catastrophic issues. Outsourcing is one of the most critical detriments to financial well-being. Perhaps it would help if we could understand why this has become a problem in the first place and why it is very possible that jobs may be returning in spite of the presidents concerns.

Click to read more ...

Why Our Debt is Much More Than $15 Trillion

In last week’s column, I offered my predictions for the New Year; one of my predictions was that our debt would reach $20 trillion by the end of this year. One reader questioned that figure, so I will expound on my reasons and explain why I believe the debt crisis is so dire.

First, it is important to remember that the debt stood at about $13 trillion just three months ago and currently stands at $15 trillion – I fear that I may be too conservative in my forecast for this year.

Why did the debt increase so much in such a short period of time? The most significant reason is that we borrowed another trillion dollars from China. The second is that we increase debt dramatically every hour due to the interest owed on our borrowing – the interest alone will probably be sufficient to cause our debt to surge to the $20 trillion mark.

Click to read more ...

2012: My Predictions for America

We will have rung in the New Year by the time this columns posts and will be well on our way to discovering what this New Year has in store for us. I am not a psychic, of course (and I am pretty sure that no one else is either), but it is possible to make some reasonable guesses, based on knowledge of the past.

The biggest concern for the New Year is our economy. In this past year, we saw the worldwide collapse of more banks and the imminent collapse of significant countries’ economies. When I first started talking about the economic crisis in America as a candidate for United States Congress, we were facing a debt crisis of about 8 trillion dollars. As I continued to hammer away about our surging debt for the past three years, I had to continually adjust that number upward. Trillions of dollars are added rapidly to our national debt, now giving us an absolutely staggering 15 trillion dollar deficit and growing.

My prediction is that the debt will reach 20 trillion dollars by the end of 2012 putting the United States at greater risk of financial collapse than it has ever been. Please remember the often used analogy that if one were to spend one million dollars per day from the time Christ was born until now, we would only have spent 750 billion dollars. That means that spending 20 million dollars per day from the time Christ was born would leave us 25% short of paying off the debt. To my thinking, there is no salvation for America without controlling our spending.

Click to read more ...

The Traditions of Christmas

Almost everything that we do to celebrate the birth of Christ is only somewhat associated with Scripture. Many of the things that we do to celebrate Christmas have absolutely no context within Christianity or the Bible, and yet these celebrations, ceremonies and traditions are vitally important to Christians. In fact, most of what we do is exactly that; tradition.

Click to read more ...