Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Despite the fondest wishes of Franklin D. Roosevelt's cheerleading "historians", FDR made America's economic situation substantially worse. Not even World War II could bring a halt to the Great Depression. Ironically, FDR's policies prolonged the Depression, and it was actually his death near the end of the War that helped the Depression to end. The energetic productivity of World War II ended the Great Depression? Well, then, in these current times of economic uncertainty, why don't you tear your house down and rebuild it? That will ensure that you're extremely productive for a while. During WWII, historians and even some economists told us how much better of we were because we were in a war. Unemployment was way down, they cheered, even though a lot of the newly employed were coming home in body bags. We built lots of bombs, tanks, and airplanes during the War, but building weapons of destruction does not make a country productive. Real productivit...

Based on my unscientific observation, it seems that very few Mormons believe that people have much effect on the warming of earth. Does this mean that most Mormons have their heads in the sand? Does it make our Church look a bit hickish? I think it makes us look kinda smart. In a recent letter to the editor of Brigham Young University's Daily Universe, a writer bemoaned the supposed sad state of man-made global warming acceptance at BYU: The denial of global warming seems to be epidemic in Utah. Even among students at BYU, the reality of global warming has been treated with skepticism and even animosity. I can’t help but to ask, “Why?”... Why? Because we've already found the true Most Mormons would love to drive a hybrid car or put up solar panels and wind turbines in our back yard--if someone can get them in our price range. religion, and the Church of the Man-Made Warming Globe isn't it. Mormon scientists responded to the above letter with the following : We the under...

Do you have a friend or family member for which nearly everything seems to be a crisis? Isn't it annoying? Doesn't it eventually become depressing? Have you noticed that almost none of these "crises" really is that big of a deal? Your federal government has taken lately to calling nearly everything a crisis. If you're as sick and tired as me of one presidential administration after another running from panic to panic, perhaps you'll agree that it's time to get someone in the federal government who actually knows what they're doing. 9/11. To me it seems like crisis mode began with the attacks on September 11, 2001. The dust had barely settled when the Bush Administration dusted off the several-hundred-page U.S.A Patriot Act. No one had a chance to read it, because according to the conventional wisdom of the day, we had no time to waste. Only if we passed this draconian new law would another attack not be imminent. It was critical to cede to gov...

Every function of the Federal Reserve can be accomplished without a Federal Reserve. Why then, do we have one? For precisely one reason. To enrich the few at the expense of the many. Does it seem to you that you are one of the many at whose expense the rich are getting richer? Your mind is not playing tricks on you. The Federal Reserve is the primary cause of this phenomenon. According to Investopedia : the Fed's job is to foster a sound banking system and a healthy economy. Wow. They pretty much suck at their job, don't they? Investopedia continues: The biggest customer of the Federal Reserve is one of the largest spenders in the world - the U.S. government. So, the Fed provides its services for free, right? Nope. Every dollar that the Federal Reserve loans to the United States government comes with a price. It's called interest. In other words, every dollar that is loaned by the Federal Reserve to the United States government must be paid back with interest. Ba...

Are you of the opinion that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, because government has given them too many breaks on their income taxes? Or are you of the point of view that it is immoral for government to given Earned Income Tax Credits to those who haven't earned enough many to pay any taxes? I'm neither, actually. I'm of the opinion that the income tax is an unconscionable affront to our sensibilities and that it should be abolished. Worse than the money that it takes out of our pockets is the surefire way in which it gets Americans to hate each other. Government has the means at its disposal to raise enough revenue through taxes other than the income tax to satisfy its enormous greed. But, like so the Income Tax was not instituted in order to give the Federal Government more revenue. It was established in order to give the Government more power. many other government programs, the Income Tax was not instituted in order to give the Federal Gover...

A recent article on USA Today asks: Could We Be Wrong About Global Warming ? The answer? It depends on the meaning of the word "we". True science has always been about the free flow of ideas. Today's so-called "science" of global warming has, however, come to more and more closely resemble the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Fortunately, as more and more scientists rise above the crowd of politically motivated pseudo-scientific sheep to demonstrate what science--unaffected by politics--really points to, we may have happily avoided a modern-day Global Warming Inquisition. If, like me, you belong to the side of the debate that is open to the free flow of ideas, then you can confidently say that "we" were not wrong. To the Spanish Inquisitors, everything was settled. A consensus had been reached. If someone violated the consensus, they stood to forfeit much of their property, and they might perhaps have been thrown in prison. As the Inquisition gat...

Democrats are very quick to accuse Republicans of the sort of deregulation that creates crises on Wall Street. They're correct. However, Democrats themselves have been guilty of the same immoral sorts of deregulation. It was the Bill Clinton administration that made it possible for some Wall Street tycoons to make it rich in the financial markets at the same time that you and I are losing our shirts. How can Goldman Sachs be increasing profits by over half when yours and my 401k plans are floundering? Because of deregulation by Democrats. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is also a former CEO My greatest worry during the current barrage of revelations regarding Goldman Sachs' chicanery is that we'll take our eye off the juiciest target--the Federal Reserve. But hopefully that won't be too difficult now Goldman and the Fed are two whores in the same bed. of Goldman Sachs. In 2008, when Lehman brothers--a strong rival to Goldman Sachs--asked to become a "b...

What's worse, having a government bureaucrat between you and proper health care, or having a corporate bureaucrat? When health insurance companies' allegiances shift away from people who need health care and toward pleasing their investors, you get the kinds of runaway health care costs that we have in the United States today. In a day of rampant greed and immorality, I don't hold out much hope that a government directed, single-payer health care plan will be any better than what we currently have, but I'm starting to think that it couldn't be worse, either. Have your costs for health care seemed to outpace your standard of living over the last decade or more? There are several contributing reasons, but one of the greatest is that greed for profit has seeped into the health insurance industry until it has become a flood. Medical loss ratios measure how much insurance companies lose to administrative costs. In the 1990's 95% of costs paid for actutal health c...

While Orrin Hatch is busy being worried about the unfairness of college football's Bowl Championship Series, Wall Street poster child Goldman Sachs has admitted that special "program trading" software that allowed it to manipulate the financial markets has been stolen, which is ironically proof that Goldman Sachs has been engaging in highly criminal behavior. Bernard Madoff needs someone to keep him company in his prison cell, and Goldman Sachs would be a good place to start the search to find a whole bunch of those someones. When the whistle was blown on Bernie Madoff several months ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission and everyone else who knew what was going on turned the other way and ignored the problem. Now, when the ability to bring world financial markets to their knees has been released through theft to the world--the United States Senate is debating whether the Bowl Championship Series is fair or not. According to the July 8th, 2009 edition of the radio ...

How was your 4th of July? I'm sure you regularly attend some sort of patriotic service on the 4th of July. I do, too. This time, though, I celebrated with my family in a different way. While traveling home from Canada, it was gratifying to make it back to the American homeland in time for a plethora of fireworks shows in the night sky to light our road home. The united devotions along our path reminded me of the "bonfires and illuminations" of which John Adams prophesied 233 years ago. Our fireworks celebrations still show that, although America may be a bit tattered and torn of late, her genius lives on. Not long after we dropped through the Canadian border at Last night, as we drove down Highway 93, a panoramic pattern of American devotion unfolded before our eyes. No matter in which which nook or cranny of the country you find yourself, it's easy to observe the love of liberty that is the common thread among Americans of every stripe. Roosville on Highway 93,...

Those who subscribe to the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes believe that it is the "animal spirits" that reside in people that cause economic manias and panics. They're partly right. Classical economists believe that government mismanagement causes them. They're right, too. It's not hard to figure out which one is the most right, though. Too bad the Keynesians still cling to their disproven theories and ignore the inconvenient facts that have disproved them. In their book Animal Spirits: Why Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism , authors George Akerlof and Robert Shiller resurrect an interesting concept that was first observed by John Maynard Keynes--that people have "animal spirits" that cause them to act in abnormal, non-economic ways. The concept of animal spirits is a valuable contribution to the understanding of economics, because people sometimes do not act rationally. Although they may often ac...

If you thought that America's foreign policy outlook would improve with the election of Barack Obama, you thought wrong. Part of the problem, being residual blowback from previous American sins, is, admittedly, not Obama's fault. But a great deal of it is. When Establishment candidates are elected one right after the other, you should expect that U.S. foreign policy will continue to be inane. And you should expect that more and more of the world will have reason to hate us. At exactly the time American troops are pulling back from the cities in Iraq, new revelations of old torture are giving Iraqis another perfectly good reason to hate everything that is American. As if their enmity were not enough, deaths of scores of civilians in Pakistan at the hands of remote-piloted U.S. airplanes are ensuring another bumper crop of American enemies. With the advent of high technology, virtually every person in the world knows about yet additional episodes of American perfidy on Presid...