Everyone and I mean everyone is wringing their hands, wracking their brains in an effort to find a solution for this recession. The Obama administration is at least attempting action while they wring, but an FDR buy-out will only devalue our already weakened dollar. Because of the content of some of what Obama has said, I think a good portion of that weakening is intentional. Our sitting President does not like the idea of common people being able of afford gasoline, but that is a subject for another day.

The way out of this mess is so simple and straight forward that it is not at all surprising every single political leader missed it. One good reason is that part of the recipe demands a lessening of the greed factor. Right there we have ruled out a significant portion of corporate and political America, but, believe me, it is necessary.

In order to get through this we have to hit the problem from both ends, both in the reduction of costs and in revenue growth. A huge factor is the cost of fuel, which is directly related to infrastructure. If we spent the time to put in place the infrastructure to handle and distribute alternative fuels, gas prices would plummet. Nothing balances a market like competition, and building that infrastructure would add thousands of high quality jobs. The greed factor could be handled by adding in real oversight that included stiff fines and even jail time for corruption, including that of politicians. If such oversight upsets some of the powerful and prevents certain multinational corporations from participating, so much the better, who needs ‘em? This country has plenty of smaller and smarter firms willing to step in and grow. This could be a chance for Obama to put his pen where his mouth is and prove he actually is for the little guy.

Another area is education. Our elected leaders claim they are for excellence in education, but they just don’t want to pay for it. If we diverted one tenth of the money we send overseas and put it into education, not administration, we would have enough to pay teachers what they are really worth, build schools large enough to accommodate all of the students and put every text book and tool they need into their hands. Imagine what we could do if we raised that amount to 20%. It’s high time the rest of the UN paid its portion of the freight any way.

Have you ever heard of the Toyota Volta? It is an electric car that looks good and can travel upwards of 250 miles on a single charge from a standard household outlet. Ever wonder why it isn’t offered for sale? How about the Mini Cooper Hybrid that gets 85 miles to the gallon with no loss of acceleration? It isn’t allowed to be sold in the US. Ever wonder why? The answers to these questions can be had in Washington, if you can get them to talk.

Just north of Las Vegas, up I15 before you get to the town of Mesquite, there is a long stretch of BLM land that would be ideal for an industrial development. Imagine putting in plants to build cars like the Cooper Hybrid and the Volta. Do you think the companies would have problems selling them? Absolutely not. Of course, we would have to deal with the greed factor again. This means that executives would have to trim their wages back far enough so that factory workers could be paid a real living wage without the crippling financial effect the unions had on Detroit. It can be done if all sides can actually work together.

In the Armagosa Valley there is a dairy. Because of milk price controls (the price is kept high, not low), the dairy is not allowed to sell all of its production. A deal was worked out so a gourmet ice cream company could build a plant across the street from the dairy to turn the overproduction into ice cream. Nevada and California sued to prevent the plant from being built because of “environmental concerns”. Now Utah has yet another prospering concern adding to its fortunes.

Ever since gambling was legalized in Nevada, tourists have been crowding I15 as the flow in from California. Train tracks run along that route for most of the way. A commuter train has been discussed without resolution for about as long. The problem is that no one can decide who pays what. This is where the heavy hand of Washington is needed. The same way the legislature is being forced to fund education if they want to get federal dollars, the same can be used to bring commuter travel into this century. Force a joint state public private partnership. Do not allow corruption of favoritism to enter in by jailing anyone, regardless of who they are, and that includes mayors and governors if they break the law, and begin building. The cost can be paid by the use of tickets and tools. Commuter choice can be enhanced by also maintaining a free travel highway for those who don’t mind traveling at a slower pace.

Home ownership is one of the big ones right now. With so many banks crumbling because they allowed themselves to be sucked into the ACORN ponzi scheme, a radical restructuring needs to be done. Even if a mortgage holder is upside down, there was a point where they were able to pay the monthly freight on the mortgage. A great number of the failures, excluding those idiots who purchased multiple homes hoping for a quick flip, were brought on because the bank raised the interest rates and refused to back down on that rate even when it became apparent they would have to eat the loan. All they have to do is reduce that rate down to a level where the original mortgagee can again make a payment, even if that level is below prime. A little profit is better than a loss. This is again where greed has to take a back seat. There is nothing wrong in flying coach instead of buying an over-priced private jet.

The recipe is, education, enforced corporate and governmental honesty, public-private partnerships, the ignoring of bothersome environmental suits only intended to prevent growth, and common sense. That last component is the rarest of all.

Last night Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada issued his State of the State address. Because Governor Gibbons made a promise of not raising any taxes at all, Nevada’s economic woes grew right along with its population while revenues went down. Governor Gibbon’s solution to this pressing need for more money? Fire teachers.

Before I go into just how imbecilic his suggestion is, let’s explore the region of common sense. Nevada is a unique state. It is the only one where gaming is allowed state wide. New Jersey has Atlantic City and a few others have Indian Casinos, but they are not Nevada. To build a casino anywhere else other than Nevada, a gaming company has to convince that state that allowing them in is a good thing, translate that as “profitable”. The gaming taxes for the successful bidder can be as high as a full third of the gross profits. In Nevada the gaming tax is less than ten percent and it is not calculated on the gross, but the net. For some of the companies this winds up as less than one percent a year. It is no wonder that a good portion of the gaming CEOs in Nevada own their own jets and commute from their Oceanside estates in Southern California.

Mining is the other primary business in Nevada. More gold comes out of Nevada’s ground than any other state in the union. The mining industry pays an effective .5% a year in taxes while the sale price of gold continues to skyrocket. Barbara K. Cegvaske, the State Senator for District 8 in Nevada told a group of teachers being threatened with the loss of their careers that if the state raised taxes on mining to save the teachers’ jobs, mining would leave the state. I’ve had the misfortune to speak with Senator Cegvaske. You would not be blinded by her intellect. It is very likely she actually believes what she says. More’s the pity. Gold is found deep within the ground. If mining left the state, where will the mineral they seek be? Mining technology has improved since the gold rush, but I doubt it has climbed to the level where they could take the mountains with them when they go.

Governor Gibbons has a problem he did not mention in his address; he has no veto power. The last election eliminated the Republican leadership in the State Senate and gave the Democrat Speaker in the State Assembly a veto-proof majority. The power shift in the Assembly can be placed onto the shoulders of one man, George Harris, publisher of a poorly written rag called Liberty Watch. Harris never forgave me for defeating his anointed candidate, Kris Munn for the District 21 Assembly seat. That made me the 15^th vote in the Assembly on the Republican side. Because of that position, I was able to block a couple of measures that would have severely impacted small business’s ability to survive in Nevada. Harris spent a fortune attacking me in the last primary. Because of that and a record low Republican turn out at the polls, Harris’ puppet got into the general. I was quite happy to help the Democrat Candidate Ellen Spiegel win the seat. Because of Harris, the Governor has no power over legislation at all. The question is whether or not the legislature has the wisdom to do what is right.

Most legislators have more than one face, the one they show in public and the one they wear in private. While in the legislature, I learned what most Republican legislators think of public education. They consider teachers in public schools the enemy. A few of them actually think teachers are a danger to their children. They make the error of confusing the teachers union and its political agenda with teachers. It is impossible to convince them otherwise. I’ve tried.

If the Nevada Legislature does the right thing and raises revenue properly, we have a hope of becoming a better state. If they act as they have in the past and continue to kowtow to the spoiled industries of gaming and mining, we run the risk of becoming incapable of educating even a tiny percentage of our children. Vouchers will not solve the problem because they still involve state monies and private schools have the option of refusing any child that may present a problem.

Right now more than half of the students leaving high school cannot read or write at a functional level. Business, small and large continues to complain about the quality of applicants, especially in the technical trades. I wonder what they will be saying when they cannot find applicants even capable of writing their own name?

Yesterday the congress wisely decided not to go along with King George and his exchequer "Shifty" Paulson on the bailout scam. Republican and Democrat both, they shocked several of us in the blogsphere by listening to the people outside of the beltway elite. The President was not at all pleased and could not understand the concern Congress had over his plan. What is so wrong with giving CEO’s millions of dollars in treasury funds for their personal use? Who needs oversight anyway?

Special rights and privileges, in a country where everyone regardless of race, creed, or income is supposed to be equal, leave a bad taste in the average person’s mouth. Unfortunately Americans, through their lack of concern, have shifted the responsibility to insuring that state to those who feel different; the media and the elite. These groups wanted the bailout bill to pass. The media, because they believe in Corporate Socialism. The elite, because they believe it isn't your money, it is theirs. Special interests, corporatism, shifting of responsibility...all these are a priority.

If a congressman wrote a bill mandating that no special consideration in hiring was to be extended to any citizen of this country, that only their qualifications to do the job mattered...that congressman would be branded as a racist, homophobe, fascist, etc... You see, to some groups on the left, being treated as equal is an insult to them. They have been told so often that they are special, or that somewhere in the past their ancestors were oppressed, that they have an ingrained need to redress that imagined wrong. One way to redress that was to take out loans they had no intention of being able to repay.

On the elite side(both right and left mingle here), they believe that they are above the law. They believe that their income or their inherited wealth places them into a strata where they have rights and privileges superior to those of the unclean masses. How many times has an individual of this group uttered this phrase, “Do you know who I am?” Often it is said to the cop arresting them for drunken driving. For them, the ability to steal from the masses is a given. That house your grandfather built on land he tilled by hand? It's not yours, it's theirs.

Obama, though the offices of ACORN and as a radical community organizer, had a large hand in the credit meltdown. The government he lobbied helped to start this mess, and the government he worked with as a Senator lit the fuse for the blow-up. Since I wrote my blog about how racism had a hand in creating the crisis, several writers of far more public stature have chimed in on the same note. All the evidence is there. On the sub prime side you have pressure being levered against lenders to give loans to people with no history of being able to repay. On the elite side, you have speculators dipping into those loans because they have been granted an oversight-free status. One side is being forced to violate every established economic principle and the other side is gleefully violating the law; resulting in a perfect storm.

Now King George and Shifty Paulson want to bail out their criminal buddies with our money, place massive tracts of American property into the government’s hands, give obscene monetary golden parachutes to CEO’s guilty of running their corporations into the ground, and do so with no watchdog. Thankfully congress couldn’t stomach this bitter pill. Given an honest chance, the free market (not the one the neocons like), will reestablish itself. Just like the 1920’s a false balloon was created and it popped. Now all those people who were profiting through graft and greed have lost. Many of them are Bush’s buddies. The financial security he mentions is not that of the average blue-collar worker, but the puce-collar CEO. Any wonder he pushed this bill so fervently?

 “The party is over”.

That phrase in all of its assorted guises is being bandied around Washington right now, sometime with the drool of extreme relish dripping down the chin of whichever politico or media wonk is speaking at the time. They are salivating over the prospect of this particular economic meltdown because they see the possibility of it being a golden gateway for a 16 year Democrat rule just like the Roosevelt administration. The fact that the Bush administration seems to be bending over backwards to help this dream become a reality is not lost on them.

“Free Market”.

This phrase is repeated even more than the previous one. When it comes from the mouth of a leftie, it is uttered somewhat like #@!!. Lefties do not like the idea of a free market at all because it means that sometimes people lose. It contains evil words such as competition and responsibility. Neocons like the phrase, but only if it is used with their own particularly twisted definition. To them “free market” means free from the responsibilities of the law, ethics and personal responsibility. The left wants to be able to control every personal and financial aspect of your life. If they can control where your money comes from, they have every thing else. That is why they continuously push for ever broader and higher taxes. That is why they will never allow the second amendment to be interpreted as the founders intended.

Neocons do not necessarily want to be able to control every aspect of your life, but the end result of what they want will essentially be the same thing. They want absolute control of the money supply, but not through taxes. They want it through the establishment of a tiered social structure such as what used to exist in feudal England. A royal class is being constructed right now. The gentry are not answerable to the same law as you and I. This is no more exemplified than by the clause that “Shifty” Paulson wants placed into the trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street. Only the lords of this country would consider the granting of hundreds of millions of tax dollars to men and women responsible for driving their company’s stock into the cellar as a right and proper thing.

Right now we do not have a free market. Small business has to fight both the economy and the political machine that is owned by big business to survive. The free market does not mean that you are allowed to hire illegals over citizens. It does not mean that you can lie to, cheat and steal from your employees. It does not mean that you can cheat on your taxes. It does not mean that you can ship jobs overseas simply so you can buy yet another Lear Jet. It does not mean that you can create TV ads that lie and mislead. It means that you should have the same chance as everyone else to succeed or fail without special rights and privileges given to you or your racial group.

Do you want to be the most hated individual in the US? Take on the responsibility of doing actual, honest and timely oversight of the so-called free market. Every time a CEO tries to rob his company, every time a board acts unethically or dishonestly, every time a business tries to skirt the law protecting the consumer from fraud, use your authority to stop them. In a very short order you would have achieved that status. Right now the American public does not want honesty, not the majority any way. They don’t even bother to vote. We have the exact government and the exact results we asked for, and if you are one of those who couldn’t be bothered to vote, you have no right to complain.

I was asked to define what a dollar is. When I began researching this subject, I had no idea just how murky the waters were. According to a monograph written by Edwin Vieira, Jr., even those who purport to print our money don’t really know what a dollar is.

No statute defines - or ever has defined - the "one dollar" Federal Reserve Note “FRN” as the "dollar,” or even as a species of "dollar.” Moreover, the United States Code provides that FRNs "shall be redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States…or at any Federal Reserve bank.” Thus, FRNs are not themselves "lawful money" - otherwise, they would not be "redeemable in lawful money.” And if FRNs are not even "lawful money,” it is inconceivable that they are somehow "dollars,” the very units in which all "United States money is expressed.”

People are confused on this point because of the insidious manner in which FRNs "evolved" - actually, degenerated is a more appropriate verb - from the late 1920s until today. FRNs of Series 1928 through Series 1950E carried the obligation "The United States of America will pay to the bearer on demand [some number of] dollars.” Prior to 1934, the notes carried the inscription "Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury, or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.” After 1934, the notes carried the inscription "this note…is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank" (post-1934). Starting with Series 1963, the words "will pay to the bearer on demand" no longer appear; and each FRN simply states a particular denomination in "dollars.”

Citizens have written to both their representatives and the Treasury Department asking for a definition of what a “dollar” is. The replies reveal just how confused this situation is. Being a man who considers his word his bond, I would have to say that the FRN is and remains a contract; whether or not the government chooses to admit this…they printed the things. At the top of the contract they proudly proclaim it to be a Federal Reserve Note. At the bottom they declare the value, as in the dollar bill as One Dollar. The value of goods or services the note may purchase has changed, albeit not for the better. However, if you hold a 1900 $20 gold piece, you can still purchase what that coin could buy when it was minted. For example, back in 1920, a $20 gold coin would pay for a good suit. You can still do that today…if you have a $20 gold coin. A 1920 silver dime would pay for a decent breakfast…you can see my point.

The situation with coinage is more complex, but equally (if not more) confusing. The United States Code provides for three different types of coinage denominated in "dollars": namely, base- metallic coinage, gold coinage, and silver coinage. The base-metallic coinage consists of "a dollar coin,” weighing "8.1 grams,” "a half dollar coin,” weighing "11.34 grams"; "a quarter coin,” weighing "5.67 grams": and "a dime coin,” weighing "2.268 grams.” All of these coins are composed of copper and nickel. The weights of the dime, the quarter, and the half dollar are in the correct arithmetical proportions, the one to each of the others. But the "dollar" is disproportionately light (or the other coins disproportionately heavy). In this series of base metallic coins, then, the questions naturally arise: Is the "dollar" a cupro-nickel coin weighing "8.1 grams"? Or is it two cupro- nickel coins (or four or ten coins) collectively weighing 22.68 grams? Or is it both? Or is it neither, but something else altogether, to which the weights of these coins are irrelevant?

In regards to the silver dollar...back when we actually minted silver coins for everyday use, the dollar coin weighed .999 troy ounces of silver. I would say that particular coin is the closest to anything as far as actually being a dollar. The value was there, the trust was there and the value of that coin has not varied through the years. If you currently have a silver dollar of nominal numismatic value (not one of the rarities) you can still purchase roughly the same value of goods or services you could back when the coin was minted, as stated in the examples above. Now we do still mint “Liberty Dollars”, but they are minted as collectibles more so than money.
Similarly, the gold coinage consists of "a fifty dollar gold coin" that "weighs 33.931 grams, and contains one troy ounce of fine gold"; "a twenty-five dollar gold coin" that "contains one-half ounce of fine gold"; "a ten dollar gold coin" that "contains one fourth ounce of fine gold"; and "a five dollar gold coin" that "contains one tenth ounce of fine gold.” The "fifty dollar,” "twenty-five dollar,” and "five dollar" coins are in the correct arithmetical proportions each to the others. But the "ten dollar" coin is not. Therefore, is a "dollar" one-fiftieth or one-fortieth of an ounce of gold? It appears to be undecided.

The US Government has not upheld its part on a contract begun back when it first began printing monetary notes. We still trade the notes for goods and services, but the trust is no longer there, in fact, based on the current crisis, the lack of trust is completely justified. If we had an administration with the courage to place the U.S. back onto the gold standard, we would see the value of the dollar skyrocket, whether or not enough gold exists to do so is beside the point. Experts disagree on both sides of that issue. What would be important would be the willingness to actually declare a foundation and to keep a promise...something our government hasn’t been willing to do for nearly three quarters of a century.