Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?

Do you remember Twilight Zone--The Movie? I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

If Hollywood were making that movie today, rather than having the actor turn into a monster, the director could just show him the dismal state of the economy and a list of the executive orders, taxes and new rules waiting for Americans in 2013.  When he saw what is looming in front of us, he would die of a massive fear-induced heart attack.

Let's start with the executive orders issued by the Obama Administration.  President Obama has repeatedly complained that our current system which requires that laws be passed by Congress is just too difficult to navigate, so he prefers to run the country by executive order.  Below is a short list of some of the major executive orders which he has signed while President:

UPDATE NOVEMBER 1, 2012:  Yesterday when I initally posted this, I took the executive order list from a popular email that is circulating.  A reader commented that in reality many of these executive orders date back to the Kennedy Administration, although they are still in force and could be used by the president. However, I strive to always be accurate, so I have corrected my list today to include only executive orders signed by the President this year.  Each of these is recorded in the Federal Registry:

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13602 signed March 15, 2012, creates the White House Council for Strong Cities and Communities to implement locally-driven community and regional planning approaches.  Think Federally-driven implementation of Agenda 21 goals for Smart Growth and Sustainable living.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13603 signed March 16, 2012, gives the federal government via various federal agencies control over all food, agriculture, livestock, farm equipment, all energy, all modes of transportation, all waterways, and all other resources including construction, in case of a national emergency and allows the secretaries of various departments to prioritize and allocate resources in both emergency and non emergency situations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13618 signed July 6, 2012, gives the federal government power over all modes of communication in a national emergency.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13624 signed August 30, 2012, call for increased investment in industrial energy efficiency, allowing federal agencies to set and enforce new standards for manufacturing energy use.   

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13625, signed August 31, 2012, calls for the Federal Government to do a more thorough job assessing the mental health and possible mental instability of our troops and requires that federal agencies enroll 100,000 troops in a comprehensive mental health study no later than December 31, 2012. 

EXECUTIVE ORDER 13626 signed September 10, 2012, designates the Administrator of EPA and the Secretary of Agriculture as additional trustees for Natural Resource Damage Assessment and restoration solely in connection with injury to, destruction of, loss of, or loss of use of natural resources, including their supporting ecosystems, resulting from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This order will give the EPA power over the areas affected by the Gulf Coast Spill of 2010 (effectively guaranteeing that they will never have any industry or drilling in these areas again.)

FURTHER UPDATE NOV 1.  (This morning Janet Napolitano announced that since Congress has failed to act with a CyberSecurity bill sufficient to meet the needs of the nation, immediately after election day the President will be issuing an executive order restricting the internet.) 

In addition to the executive orders, we have his signature legislative efforts which did pass through Congress--Obamacare and Dodd Frank.  Obamacare imposes taxes and restrictions on freedoms of Americans which we will just begin to experience in January of 2013, such as the new 3.8% tax on the sale of houses.  The taxes, fees and fines of Obamacare threaten individual access to healthcare and the very existence of small businesses nationwide.  And Dodd Frank, one of the scariest pieces of legislation ever passed, is about to produce crippling new regulations that will put homeownership out of the reach of average Americans.

We can expect greater and greater central management of our lives from Washington D.C. as the President forces us out of single family suburban housing and into tiny cramped quarters in the cities as part of "sustainable living."  And we can expect massive new powers bestowed on the EPA which will destroy the coal industry and cripple energy production while causing prices to skyrocket.  These new regulations are ready to be implemented but have been specifically delayed until after the election.

We can also look forward to 2 trillion dollars in tax increases to pay for massive spending and more nationalization of industry as the President campaigns by telling us that he wants to do the same thing for every industry that he did for the auto industry.  (Meaning, I suppose that he wants to take over all businesses and then sell them to foreign entities as he did Chrysler.)

We can expect greater inflation as fuel prices continue to increase, and we can anticipate even higher unemployment so that the ranks of the 23 million already unemployed will swell as more and more businesses shut their doors under the weight of heavy taxes and regulations.  The ranks of the 47 million people on food stamps will also swell, while the number of seniors will begin to shrink as the government rations health care.

And let's don't forget about implementation of the indefinite detention provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.  In September, the Obama Administration was able to get a three-judge panel to overturn the stay previously issued to prevent detention without trial or charges for Americans accused by the government of being threats to national security.  In a second term, we can look for the president to begin to use these broad powers against those he deems "domestic terrorists."

Anyone of the above list could be the subject of its own horror movie.  Taken together, there is nothing I can imagine that is scarier than an Obama second term.

Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

The New American Poverty Part III

On the first day of June, I spent most of my day at the International Council of Shopping Centers Hispanic Markets Conference here in El Paso.  ICSC was holding the conference to teach its members how to reach Hispanic Markets, and they chose El Paso for the site of the event.  One of the speakers at the event was Jose Legaspi who owns a large group of shopping centers in California which cater primarily to Hispanics.  He explained that as part of the marketing strategy, his shopping centers contain areas for small kiosks to incubate tiny start up businesses.  "For Hispanics," Legaspi told us, "the American dream is actually self employment. We want to own our business."

Actually, I think that for many Americans of all ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, self employment and entrepreneurship are a critical component of the American dream.  Owning our own businesses gives us a chance to set the course of our futures in a way that we can never do as employees of a large or even mid-sized corporation.  Even if the corporation is a good one and we could earn a good living, nothing quite compares with the freedom and adventure of owning a business.

But as with homeownership, we are seeing policies from federal, state and local governments dismantle opportunities for business ownership.  We are being transformed from a nation of business owners to a nation of employees through excessive regulations.

If I were to give even a basic list of all of the attacks on small businesses in the U.S. today, I would be writing non-stop until next 4th of July. Every day we see some egregious new assault on business owners, whether through the FDA, the EPA, Health and Human Services, or any of a number of other agencies which are micromanaging small business out of business.  From family farms, to small coal mining operations, to doctors, to restaurants, to small independent professionals selling financial services--practically every industry appears to have some government agency with that particular profession in its sites.  We have Obamacare  poised to tax small businesses into oblivion, although large corporations have been able to get waivers for their employees.  Dodd-Frank has put such onerous burdens on small independent loan originators that they have almost become extinct.  Five years ago, mortgage brokers originated approximately 65% of mortgage loans nationwide, and a study by JD Power and Associates showed that consumers who went to a mortgage broker reported a more positive experience than those who went directly to a lender. Today national licensure requirements, expensive continuing education, and excessive disclosure requirements and caps on income have thinned the ranks of mortgage brokers so dramatically that we originate just under 7% of the mortgage loans in 2011.

But we are by no means the only financial service professionals being affected by the new regulations.  A friend of mine set up her own insurance agency last year after many years of working for someone else. She has been a life and health insurance agent for many years, but she was explaining to me that she is about to be forced out of her profession by Obamacare.  As the states set up their health insurance exchanges, health insurance agents will no longer need to exist.  "But I am close to retirement," she told me, "So I will probably just retire and let somebody else figure this out."  If Obamacare did not exist, my friend would probably keep working.  She might even delay taking her Social Security for a few years since she had always earned a good income and could afford to wait a few years.  Instead, because of the new laws, she will stop contributing to the tax base and start drawing benefits from an already bankrupt system.

It is a tragedy that at a time when unemployment remains extremely high and millions of Americans cannot find work, our combined federal, state and local governments appear to be expending all of their efforts attacking and destroying small business. Small business historically has created 90% of jobs, and yet when regulations in every industry work to dismantle small companies or to make the cost of starting up prohibitively expensive, how do we expect to help unemployed Americans find work?  Instead of trying to shrink the numbers of unemployed people, we are actually adding to their ranks by forcing more and more businesses out of business.  Older workers are likely to say, as my friend has, "Oh well, I am close to retirement anyway."  Younger workers will find themselves competing for a shrinking pool of job openings, and as the number of unemployed continues to rise in proportion to the number of available jobs, wages and benefits will naturally drop.

At the end of this mess, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation that most of the people I know are in today--working many longer hours for less money with less hope for the future.  Years of work and sacrifice and dedication is being rewarded with bankruptcy and business closure.  And we are teaching the younger generations that hard work, sacrifice and dedication are basically meaningless, because in the end they don't produce anything.  So they are less likely to work and sacrifice themselves, having seen that our work and sacrifice produced nothing but loss and heartache. 

The American Dream rewards initiative, creativity, ability and ingenuity with success.  That success is partly in the form of material rewards.  But it also includes self-respect, respect in the community, and a sense of accomplishment.  Achieving the American Dream means building something that we can actually pass down to our children. This is a legacy that past generations have handed down to us as Americans.  The New American Poverty says that achievement, initiative and hard work are not worth recognizing.  Accomplishment should not be rewarded over failure; diligence should not be prized more than sloth. One action is as good as another because no matter how hard we work or how much we refuse to work, we all end up in the same place. The message of the New American Poverty is that success is bad, and the effort expended trying to become successful is just a waste of time.

I don't know about all of you reading, but I don't want to hand poverty down to the next generation as their legacy.  I want my nieces and nephews to know that their actions matter and that they can have as much opportunity as they are willing to work for.  But as a society, we will never be able to hand that message down to the next generation unless we are willing to trade the New American Poverty for the genuine American Dream.

For books and blog posts by Alexandra Swann visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/.