Ken Martin’s Blog

Two images. Interesting juxtaposition, I think. Especially considering President Obama’s recent words: “It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.” (Emphasis mine.)

First, our projected deficit:

And then this:

Updated: A couple more recent quotes from President Obama… 

“To kick these problems down the road for another four years or eight years, that would be to continue the same irresponsibility that got us to this point.”

“I didn’t run for president to pass on our problems to the next generation, or the next president.”

Apart from the need to dig his predecessor, I do like his words. But when a person buys on credit, they are kicking the financial problem down the road. When the credit obligation being created is has the word “trillion” in it, there’s no way this generation is going to pay it down.

Please spend just a minute thinking about this.

Well, probably. But I saw this commentary on the economic plan by Jim Cramer of Mad Money With Jim Cramer (a show which I’ve only seen when I travel because long ago I trimmed down my cable… see post below).

Basically, he’s really worried about the “stimulus plan”, too. And if you read the article, you might think it’s just one more sore-loser, conservative whiner. But I hope you keep reading; on “page 5″:

I actually embrace every part of Obama’s agenda, right down to the increase on personal taxes and the mortgage deduction. I am a fierce environmentalist who has donated multiple acres to the state of New Jersey to keep forever wild. I believe in cap and trade. I favor playing hardball with drug companies that hold up the U.S. government with me-too products.

And he goes on… six figure donations to democrats, etc.

It’s really simple: we as individuals and we as a nation cannot afford this spending spree. This isn’t a partisan assertion; it’s just common sense. A couple of years ago we all understood that Social Security is in danger because it didn’t have enough money to meet it’s obligations. Now we want to commit to more obligations while having less money and a struggling economy.

We never did fix Social Security. Funny how no one talks about that right now.

By the way: this isn’t about President Obama. President Bush did the wrong thing by opening this Pandora’s box. He spent a big glob of money: what did it get us? Why are we chasing that failed concept?

So, let me get the straight. Those who are close to defaulting on their mortgages (and also those who have defaulted?) can get their mortgage interest rates reduced to a set percentage of their income. “The Treasury Department” would subsibize this:

For a loan modification, lenders would have to reduce the mortgage payments to no more than 38 percent of the borrower’s income. The Treasury Department would share the cost for lenders to cut that debt-to-income ratio to 31 percent. (link)

Since I’m not about to default, I can’t take advantage of this. So I pay the same as always because I have acted responsibly and made adjustments as necessary to meet my obligations. But those who haven’t get a discounted mortgage and a partial subsidy from the government.

Of course, “The Treasury Department” has no money with which to “share the cost”. They can only spend what they have collected or plan on collecting in taxes, or what they print (and if they print too much, it’s inflation, and the dollars we have are worth even less). And since our government really doesn’t have a surplus of collected taxes, they will borrow money and pay interest on it to fund this.

I don’t really want to pay a percentage of someone else’s mortgage.

And I really don’t want to pay interest for the privilege of paying for a percentage of someone else’s mortgage.

This is a dreadful idea.

Sigh.

Well… I have all sorts of stuff to say, but no time to form it into moderately meaningful sentences. So here - if you want something to do - go check out my new YouTube channel!

I’m only three days into three year and I’ve got mysteriously failing house wiring, a backed up main line, a flat tire, and a broken refrigerator shelf. Oh, and I slipped and fell on the stairs (and thus broke a coat hook). Sheesh. May I have 2008 back, please? It was pretty good. :)

Cover of modern "Revolve" NCV Bible

Title page of original KJV Bible

God bless the NCV folks for wanting to reach out to a new generation. But I just get this feeling that something is lost.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
Now heaven knows, anything goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words writing prose,
Anything goes.

The world has gone mad today,
And good’s bad today, and black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos.

So though I’m not a great romancer,
I know that you’re bound to answer
When I propose, anything goes.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
Now heaven knows, anything goes.

And good authors too who once knew
Better words, now only use four-letter words
Writing prose, cause anything goes.

The world has gone mad today,
And good’s bad today, and black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos.

So though I’m not a great romancer,
I know that you’re bound to answer
When I propose, anything goes.

May I say before this record spins to a close,
I want you to know anything goes.

That’s a weird title for a post on my own blog. Well, here’s the story: there’s another Ken Martin. Actually, there’s a bunch of us, but there’s one in particular who is the campaign manager for the ”Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment”. So folks are searching the web for him and seem to stumble in here.

Well, OK, but I’m not that Ken Martin, and though I’m sure he’s a perfectly fine fellow, I don’t agree with him that there should be a constitutional amendment like the one his group is supporting. In fact, I think it’s a dreadful idea. Please, vote no for the “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment”.

I’m tempted to rant… sorely tempted. But I promised myself I’d keep this short. OK, I’ll try the constraint of bullet points:

• Let’s keep our “how government spends money” questions out of the constitution and in the legislature. That’s where government is faced with all the needs and must draw up a budget. Doing this constitutionally feels like an end run around representative government.
• “Yeah, well they did it!” Yes, others have pulled exactly this shenanigan, but I don’t accept that excuse from my kids, and none of us should accept it as a basis for creating public policy.
• I don’t trust a movement that talks all about “clean water” and then has 19.75% of the funds going to “the arts and cultural heritage fund”. You want to clean the water? Go clean the water. This is the hackneyed old political shell game… and a little for my friends to get this passed.
• Only 33% of the funds actually go exclusively to clean water.
• It’s a 25 year tax hike. Hello? A tax hike. I don’t really want to increase the “Minnesota Taxes” portion of my family’s budget. Certainly not in times like these.
• It’s a constitutional amendment. Hello? OK, that’s basically the same as my first bullet, but does anyone get this? If you’re unhappy with this choice - if it turns out to be a mistake - what will you do about it? Replace your legislator? Tough cookies… won’t work. Nothing will work! That’s why you shouldn’t make it a constitutional amendment.

Look, it’s a good idea to have clean resources. A very good idea. But there are a lot of very good ideas. It’s a good idea to help disadvantaged folks. It’s a good idea to make sure folks are educated. It’s good idea to have excellent law enforcement. It’s a good idea to replace the carpet in the capitol once in a while. So what we do is we get all the good ideas together and prioritize and find out which ones we can afford. We hire and pay for legislators for this very purpose.

My guess is folks behind this initiative have tried that, and have constantly missed the “cut”. And they’re just trying to find a way to get this thing - what they think is a good idea - done.

Don’t vote for this. If you care about this, you make your legislator pay attention to them and support them, but don’t support this practically irreversible end run around how we as a people prioritize our resources.

Ken looks like a nice guy (all of us Ken Martins are), and he’s done a nice job on the web site (I look at such things). But I just disagree with what he’s doing. This particular Ken Martin in Minnesota urges you to vote “No” for the “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment“ on Tuesday.

28 minutes. I’m OK with that.

UPDATE: Here’s 10 reasons to vote “no”.

UPDATE: One more link with nice, balanced pro and con information.