Losing Touch - The Art of the Compromise

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. But once again, it seems the uninformed are taking to the streets against the newly proposed jobs act that asks for a minimal tax rate increase from those who have benefitted the most.

What happened to the great society we had where we all pitched in to make this country great? When we all compromised to the mutual benefit of all? Was I dreaming?

As a quick aside (but in line with my point), I was talking to my dad this past weekend, lamenting the fact that politics is no longer the "art of compromise." Instead it has become the mandate of the extreme. If I recall, even when the last election was run and the Dems were turned out, I don't recall any overwhelming returns for any but a couple of the newly elected representatives. I recall when I first started my foray into politics that most of the candidates understood that there was another percentage of the populace in their district that had voted against them, and the goal was to be able to reach out and accommodate their views. OK, back to my point...

I read the comments that Elizabeth Warren had put out the other day, as follows:

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you!
But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

So we should all be happy that the American Dream is alive and well and that anyone can become wealthy. See Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, to name only a recent few.

Then there are the Madoffs, the Skillings, the mortgage failures, the moves by Lehman, Citigroup, Ernst & Young, list goes on, that pull what they can and run from responsibility. We have lost touch with the fact that oversight is an important role played by the government, and that compromises on how heavily to burden business and the privileged that have benefitted need to continually be addressed so that these types of situations don't occur again are of vital importance to our mutual well being. And yes, Virginia, discuss and compromise as to how much they should be expected to contribute and pay forward for the next person down the line.

When did we lose touch with the true art of politics, the art of compromise, and will I ever see it again in my lifetime? I hope so for the sake of my children.

Losing Touch with Federal Disaster Aid tea-bagger style

08/26/2011
WARNING - RANT ;>)

We interrupt our previously scheduled commentary and story with a breaking news item...Eric Cantor feels that any relief efforts and spending for disaster needs should be offset by a reduction in the budget for subsequent years. Way to go Tea-bagger Eric! Rock on and add more idiotic commentary to the public forum and keep digging your own political grave.

From the Huffington Post:
"Cantor raised some eyebrows on Wednesday when, in the aftermath of the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that rattled the East Coast and originated in his district, he said Congress will help those hurt by the earthquake but will require finding offsets for any federal aid."

Talk about out of touch...so we give money to FEMA every year via taxes, and they set aside what they can in order to provide immediate aid for disaster victims and their infrastructure and communities. Because of the amount of natural disasters due to fires, tornadoes, and now incoming hurricanes (don't mention climate change or you'll get your jaw busted), FEMA is running out of funds (yes, tax dollars, I admitted that earlier, Michael Brown "brownie", please pay attention). So, according to the esteemed representative from the state of eternal bliss and lucrative investment dollars, any expenditure we put in place to cover natural disasters should be managed for in future budgets. Reminder, Mr. Cantor..... We still need to pay for 2 or 3 unbudgeted wars, you ready to raise taxes to cover that? No? Hmmm... So should we cut a little more so that we have more unemployed that won't be paid to support the relief efforts? Should we delay recovery in the event there is a disaster (which I pray there isn't).

Our representation in Washington has truly lost touch with what they were elected to do. It is time to enact true election reform, get PACs of all kinds out of the process, remove any ability for campaign donations to be made by any lobbyists, tighten the requirements for lobbyists to be able to privately or publicly contribute money to campaigns. As a matter of fact, it is time to use PBS and NPR exclusively for political ads and grandstanding, and only allow commercial TV to provide advertising if it gives equal time and equal representation to all candidates. Going to an extreme, maybe commercial stations should be required by the government and the FCC to contribute free time to all candidates during the election cycle. Get rid of greed in the process of Politics, and see how long before career politicians find new work as shady lawyers.....

We will return to our regularly scheduled blog after this rant, and within the next 24 to 48 hours.

Free school lunches make talk show host lose touch with reality and decency

And the idiocy continues.....

Another ridiculous tirade courtesy of 850KOA's Michael Brown (last one I wrote about is here http://losttouchwith.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-went-to-store-couple-nights-ago-on.html). Last night on the radio, Michael reacted to a story from Detroit about the school system there providing free lunch to all students regardless of ability to pay so as to remove the stigma associated with having to accept "charity." Michael then made the jump to comparing this act of compassion and charity to giving free groceries to everyone! I love the absurdity of Michael's brand of conservative thinking.....

The story, from the AP is as follows:

"By The Associated Press

DETROIT - All Detroit Public Schools students from kindergarten through 12th grade will get free breakfast, lunch and snacks starting this fall under a federal pilot program, the district announced Tuesday.

Michigan's largest public school district said the program's goal is to "ensure all children receive healthy meals, regardless of income."

Most Detroit schoolchildren also meet income rules for free lunches.

Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky will participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program during the upcoming school year. Districts in Michigan can participate if at least 40 percent of their students are entitled to public assistance.

"One of the primary goals of this program is to eliminate the stigma that students feel when they get a free lunch, as opposed to paying cash," said Mark Schrupp, the district's chief operating officer. "Some students would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low-income. Now, all students will walk through a lunch line and not have to pay. Low-income students will not be easily identifiable and will be less likely to skip meals."

The district said it still encourages parents to fill out family income surveys because funding for tutoring, after-school programs, extra teachers' aids, classroom technology and other services are still linked to income."

Wow, is that not the worst news? Free food to go along with a free education? And this is in school districts where 40% of the population of the school is already receiving aid. I'm actually glad to see that we are finally providing back to some of our own for a change, but of course to the extremism of talk show radio, this is just another way to cement the divide in our country at present. And...just to cover it, we all know that taxes pay for this program just as it does the education of our youth, cause I'm sure "Brownie", as he was called by President Bush, will want to remind me that even free is really paid for by someone.

So, I decided to email the station and Michael to tell them how sick to my stomach I was listening to his show that evening. And I said the following:

"Sick to my stomach.

There is a big difference between providing a paid for lunch (oh and by the way we provide a paid for education in this country, or should, to all who are interested in bettering themselves) and going to the conservative extreme of providing free groceries.  1) children react negatively to stigma in their environment. 2) adults can handle a little stigma.  Be a responsible talk show host and discuss things from an educated point of view instead of an idiotic incendiary escalatory nature."

My point here is to show the absurdity in the thinking that children who are unfortunately stuck in a bad situation and the parents who have some control and responsibility for their situation can even possibly be compared. So imagine my surprise today, Wednesday, when I turn on the radio to hear my email being read (and unfortunately as is par for the course, not being read verbatim but being edited on air by you know who) as the lead to the talk show du jour. At least I gave him a subject for his show.

So,

I awoke the next morning to the following email reply.....

"So you will provide free lunches to all children, regardless of need?  You are the ones that will destroy this country."

I just can't imagine that providing a meal through taxes would ever destroy a country. Michael Brown, I'd put the amount of money for school lunch subsidies for all children per day up against the cost per day to wage war in the Middle East. Care to take on that bet?

I didn't think so. Whiner.....just goes to show you how talk radio and 24 hour a day "news" alarmists have twisted and pushed the vitality and intellect right out of our country.

Sick to my stomach.....

Losing touch with the middle class

08/14/2011
Here I go again, looking at the issue that all of the talk about cutting the budget never seems to discuss - what to do with all of the unemployed government workers or industries that are dependent on the taxes we all pay. Are we losing touch and forgetting that unemployed government workers become unemployed Americans that are not paying taxes and may become financial support recipients that tax our ability to care for the less than fortunate in the USA?

I listened to a couple of talk shows this weekend, and read a number of articles, editorials, and reader emails to local papers, all talking about the need to raise taxes to cover expenses not allocated properly in the budget, the need to lower taxes to encourage businesses to invest, the need to decrease the size of government, the need to increase the oversight the government provides because of the crooked amongst us, on and on, you hopefully get the picture.

And then, for me, I heard the absolute most depressing news I could, Michelle Bachman had won the non- binding straw poll in Iowa. Talk about something that turned my stomach, can you imagine that people in this country would be so confused by a two-bit con artist that only knows one phrase, something that has to do with one term.

So, I thought I'd pull in some interesting things I learned listening, reading, or otherwise. They will be all over the board, but all will talk about the need for the wealthiest in this country to assist in employing the middle class of this country by contributing an equitable share, not moving their monies out of the country to avoid paying taxes, and generally figure out a way to help when the need is greatest. In the interest of space, I've compressed multiple paragraphs into one for each article, thought, etc.

From The Denver Post, reader mail:
The economy was in a virtual free-fall when Obama took office, losing more than 700,000 jobs in the month he took over. More than 2 million new private-sector jobs have been added in the last 14 months — with positive job numbers every month. The stock market has improved dramatically since Obama took office — with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even after the recent sharp decline, up from 8,228 the day he took office to a close Friday of 11,269. According to the Commerce Department, American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.67 trillion in the third quarter — the highest figure since the government began keeping track 60 years ago. Corporate balance sheets are by far the strongest in U.S. history — with close to $2 trillion in cash.

Another from the Post:
There has been a great deal of debate about the role of tax revenue to close the federal deficit. Republicans feel our deficit problem is a spending issue and vow to fight any tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, labeling such action as job killing. Since we now have individuals making $1 billion in a year, I thought it would be helpful to offer a comparison of the job-creating benefits of this individual versus a group of middle-class Americans. For $1 billion, we could employ 20,000 people, each making $50,000 per year. These individuals would contribute over $76 million toward Social Security and Medicare and their employers would match this amount, while the billionaire would contribute approximately $15,300. If the billionaire is a hedge fund manager, he pays only 15 percent of his income in federal taxes, roughly equal to the middle-income earners. When you add in sales taxes, the middle-class tax burden is substantially higher than that of the billionaire. The 20,000 middle-class employees would generate many other jobs in their local economies as they spend their money on the essentials of living. The billionaire wouldn’t spend but a small fraction of his money on living and wouldn’t need to generate any new jobs. In fact, in the age of globalization, the billionaire is more likely to invest his money overseas than in the United States. In spite of Republican claims, there is not one shred of evidence that tax cuts for the rich generate jobs.

From The Atlantic Magazine:
IN OCTOBER 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was “no such animal as the U.S. consumer,” and that concepts such as “average” consumer debt and “average” consumer spending were highly misleading. In fact, they said, America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn’t matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation’s treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts, Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-middle-class-is-mostly-invisible-to-the-elite/243232/ for the entire story.

To be continued.....

Losing to Terrorism?

07/22/2011
So are we going to let terrorism win and rip the United States to pieces? Has our government lost touch with what we should and shouldn't provide to ourselves VS other countries?

I should explain. If I recall, one of the reasons 9/11 and other attempts on US soil were brought about were because certain terrorists wanted to bring down the financial capabilities of the US. That is one of the main reasons the World Trade Center was targeted. My fear is that by setting after terrorists without funding the war, we have overreached our grasp. My opinion is that we do need to pay for these things, and the corporations that enjoy the freedoms gained in the United States and the ability to do business here do need to pay their fair share. We need to come up with a plan that raises taxes, cuts spending without laying off government workers (for all they will do is strain a system of unemployment benefits that is already weak, think about that you dumb-ass tea party whiners), generate some stay-at-home employment opportunities, and raise more business revenues while at the same time doing a better job of regulating these revenue generators so that they don't cause another financial crisis. And though I hate to say it, limit the greed at the top levels of our country. Does someone really need a million dollar (or more) bonus and the ability to not pay tax on that bonus when that same bonus could be used to employ 10 individuals who then could contribute their own tax revenues?

I think it is seriously time to limit lobbyists abilities to sway with $$, enact election reforms so that officials can't get rich off the selfish companies that pay for special favors and entitlements, invest in manufacturing jobs and factories that allow for this once again instead of outsourcing, and most important of all, please keep more of the taxes generated in this country in this country. It is time to take better care of our own before we lose more than just being out of touch.

Losing Touch Tea Party style.....

07/14/2011
I just read the most ridiculous reader submitted editorial in the Denver Post. In it the writer talked about the Laffer curve. He talked about the fact that low marginal tax rates raise revenue because people spend more of their income when it is available to them. Then the writer said the reason that we have a deficit that is unprecedented is not because we didn't raise the marginal tax rate, but because of the unfunded Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Can I say "well, DUH!". Let's see. Bush II doesn't raise taxes to pay for the wars and takes revenues meant to be used elsewhere to pay for the wars...and that leads to a deficit that is out of control. How do you fix that? Either raise taxes to pay for the war, or don't start a war that you can't or aren't willing to raise taxes to pay for.......

Idiotic. This is what passes for wisdom within the Tea Party......I'm seriously worried about this country.

Rush is always out of touch, but he sure makes me laugh!

I got an especially good laugh today listening to dipstick Rush Limbaugh. Why do I refer to him as a dipstick? Well, first because it is more PC than another word I could use, and second, because of the definition I use for dipstick. Not slang for fool, but something used to measure. I feel that Rush tries to use his bully pulpit to measure the stupidity in the air.

And why was I laughing? Because he is always worth laughing at. He was talking about a comment that Leon Panetta made on MSNBC in an interview with Brian Williams, one that Rush said stated that water boarding was used. Don't misunderstand me, I believe the greater good was served this past weekend, and I am extremely grateful for and proud of our armed forces. Rush decided to say that the comment from Mr. Panetta was proof positive that we used torture to attain the answers. I didn't hear that in the statement.....

WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that --

PANETTA: Right.

WILLIAMS: -- includes water boarding?    

PANETTA: That's correct.

This is the soundbite Limbaugh played today, stating that this is proof positive that water boarding led to the info obtained. What I read is that water boarding is one of the techniques used in the ubiquitous "enhanced interrogation techniques", not that it was in fact used.

Do I care? As I stated at the beginning, I believe the greater good was served. But has Rush once again shown how he will obfuscate the issues and lose touch? You be the judge.

Losing touch with budget and taxes

"We don't have a revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem in Washington," has been spouted incessantly by Representative John Boehner and Paul Ryan for the past few weeks as the budget has been discussed. Have they lost touch with the revenues being brought in across the country because of the lack of employment? Actually Representatives Boehner and Ryan, we have both. But then again, what can one expect with theTeaParty mentality running the right side of "The Hill" at present. The group that only is concerned with reductions in taxes, forgetting that this also will mean an increase in unemployment when government is forced to reduce to cover reductions in programs. Does that mean I'm for an increase in taxes? Nope, I think I pay enough.

I think that we've also seen the big reaction in the business climate to the "cuts". Businesses investing in offshoring, investing in bonuses for those at the top, retaining revenues and not investing in new people, services, capabilities. Figuring out how to pull revenues and profits offshore so as to pay less tax. Can we quickly figure out that government needs to live within their means and not overspend, but not under tax those that can afford it? And within reason of course.

Losing touch with retirement possibilities

I went to the store a couple nights ago on a random errand, and my radio is pretty faithfully tuned to 850 KOA at all times. I like the programming, either because it is good humored talk like "The Ride Home," or provides me with my political laugh quotient because of the heavy handed conservative talk show programming. One of those conservative others is one of my all time least favorite talk show hosts, Michael Brown. You might remember Mike as the head of FEMA back during the Bush regime, and he loves to start his show with the "you're doing a great job Brownie" single highlight in his mind of his career at FEMA. Of course, the people of New Orleans might feel a little different, but 'nuf said about that.

So, as his guest, he had the new Colorado Treasurer on, one Walker Stapleton. A good guy I'm sure, but something he said caught my attention and I just had to write about it. He said that (and I'm not quoting verbatim) public sector workers should take on the "risk" of their own retirement instead of counting on pensions. Now, please don't misunderstand me here, I am not saying that pensions are the be all or end all of financial retirement planning, I'm instead challenging the assumption that anyone who invests in retirement should have to take on an inordinate amount of risk. What do I mean by that? Well, let's explore.

First, I do understand the risk he is talking about, people who work in the private sector regularly are expected to invest in their own future. I do this, my friends and some of my family do this, and it is a way to set aside something for our future. However, we are betting our future on the fact that the executives at the companies that are turning a profit and paying out to the market are trustworthy, and will invest in sound and positive directions that will also benefit our private 401K, Roth IRA's, etc. We're hoping that these executives haven't lost touch, and will make revenue and profits the honest way. Well, scratch that, see Citibank, Lehman Brothers, JPMC, more recently HSBC (look up off shore tax shelter if you don't know about that one) as the companies that have taken your dollars and placed it on risky investment portfolios that have made short-term gains, and big bonuses, but pulled down the market with a HUGE adjustment. I estimate that I lost at least 20% (or more, I may be being very generous) of the value of my private 401K, while the C's at these companies are going to be quite comfortable in their retirement based on the bonuses alone that they have been and are now making. Oh, and by the way got a bailout through our tax dollars and by borrowing more debt from foreign markets, we saved their butts. Tell you what, they should have paid the interest on my home loan and credit cards or frozen it and allowed me to pay on original debt until they paid back the debt my tax dollars bailed them out with just for the privilege of using my money. And, yes, that is a rant, I admit it.

But back to Treasurer Stapleton and risk. Both public and private sector employees work hard all their lives so that they can afford to retire at some point in their lives. To hear that retirement is a risk cannot be a good thing for anyone. And until the playing field between those who have way more and those who want but don't or can't have evens out a little, it is a governmental responsibility to assure that those who want and need do not go without. So here is where one of my real pet peeves comes into play, and unfortunately this division is along party lines. I hear all of the time that Republicans are the more God fearing, and that Democrats have lost touch with God and religion. These lines are so severely drawn that is does make me sick at times. So the party that fight for providing for the populace through governmental programs is the one that is less closely associated to religion and wants to do away with God. And the party that is on the side of the almighty has no qualms pulling dollars away from those that have invested time, dollars, and trust into a populace and government to take care of them. Am I crazy? Maybe. I'm also aware that this is a hard road to hoe because we don't have the money on hand to be able to support these programs.

Right now as I type this, I can hear folks on the right of center saying that "allowing big business to make more without overburdening them with taxes" is what will allow us all to have a bigger piece of the pie. Well I haven't seen a company that wouldn't rather pay less tax, but I also haven't seen them reduce their own pay unless they are small companies trying to stay afloat during the great recession and foregoing their own salaries just to keep their businesses afloat and keep their employees paid. That is rant 2, sorry. I just can't agree that repubs are all bad and dems are all good, or vice versa. Another of what I call my laughable talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh, would say that a middle of the roader like me that wants fiscal responsibility, good governance, and social responsiveness is a fence sitter that can't figure out my own identity, but I disagree. Instead, I feel that those of us who span the middle ground and choose those parts of the discussion that benefit us all are the more responsible to the needs of the majority.

I don't pretend to have the answer. I'd rather see everyone win, even those that need to be taken care of in their advancing years and are totally dependent on the government. We all need to pitch in to solve this, and it is not limited to the US. These are global issues. So how can we all keep in touch with those that need our assistance? Join the conversation, and let me know what you think.

Losing Touch with our valuable assets, people and places!

Well, I thought I'd have trouble writing one blog a week, just goes to show you how much there is to discuss (read: complain, rag on, etc). And this one is a little personal, and really does upset me because of the value I place on our National Parks and the connection with nature they provide, one of the real jewels our government can actually brag about (for those of you unaware, the United States and her National Parks will celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2016).

So, our government is on the brink of shutdown because we can't collectively determine how to fund the budget for the next 6 months, let alone the next year. And one of the "dispensable" services that our tax dollars pay for is our National Parks and the people that run and manage them. Now, this is why it is personal - for the past few summers, our family has taken a trip out west from Colorado to various National Park locations. Our first real road and camping trip was to the absolutely awe inspiring Grand Canyon (which brought back vivid memories of being there as a kid and remembering that thunder storm that scared my sisters half to death when lightning flashed and banged within the same instant, yes, we were that close). On the way there, the kids got their first look at Mesa Verde, a park I fell in love with as a kid. We stopped not only at National Parks, but state parks, one of our all time favorites being the pink sand dunes of Utah (absolutely stunning salmon and pink coral colored sand dunes). We stopped at Sunset Crater, because my son wanted to see a real volcano, even if it was very extinct, stood next to petrified trees at the Petrified Forest National Park (another of my faves as a kid), wandered through painted deserts that had more colors than any painting could ever convey, and had a great car road trip, camping, campfire food, great pictures, even better memories, and the knowledge that I had passed on a legacy I'd inherited from my parents, wanting my children to be able to connect with nature.

We'd been to other Colorado National Parks and monuments before, the Great Sand Dunes, Rocky Mountain National Park, Florissant National Fossil Beds, list goes on. But the road trip to Arizona really allowed us all to connect and have fun. So what did we do the next year? You got it, but this time it was Wyoming, and the incomparable Yellowstone and Teton parks. I had thought that the Grand Canyon was incredible, but this was my first time to the park, and the magnificence of the animals as well as the sheer humbleness you feel before nature in these parks just blew me away. Seeing Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the sound of water crashing over the Lower Falls, there is nothing like it. And throw in to boot our first live view of a grizzly, and the beautiful and mesmerizing Tetons, this was a summer trip worth taking! And one more stop on the way home for the kids, Dinosaur National Monument!

So now we're looking at our summer road trip for this year. Is it Nevada, California, maybe a trip to the Dakotas, we haven't decided quite yet. And if we have no employees and wonderfully dedicated Park Rangers there to watch over visitors, what happens to that summer trip? What happens to their families? One of my snowboarding buddies works for the National Parks (talk about a job I would love to have) what happens to him and the estimated 800,000 other employees that would sit out of work? What would that do to our slightly recovering but still anemic economy? I'm ready to do my part, pay for my yearly National Parks pass, hit the road (though my wife wants to ditch the tent and get an Airstream or the like, which isn't such a bad idea when I think about it, and I am drooling over the Eddie Bauer edition Airstream right now.....). I've read figures like 7.9 MILLION jobs lost during the great recession, this little gov't snafu will be 10% of that number, can you believe it? I'm hoping I wake up in the AM to better news, our legislators working together to stave off this issue, our partisan bickering forgotten as we do what is best and right for these employees. Do I have faith? Always. Do I have confidence? Well.....


"I think I know something about investments, and there’s no better investment than our National Parks."  —HANK PAULSON, Secretary of the Treasury

Has the government we elected lost touch with the constituency?

I read an article in my hometown newspaper, The Denver Post, (article here: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17774563?source=mng_fulltext) about the impending budget/government shutdown. Now, as I admitted in my first post, I am a democrat, and party trumps person for the most part when I vote in elections (and as a quick aside, if you're reading this, and can legally vote in the USA and don't, well then shame on you!) but a quote by President Obama caught my attention and made me determine this weeks rant.

First, the quote... Obama, eager to regain the confidence of independent voters as he seeks a new term, said the American public expects that its leaders "act like grown-ups, and when we are in negotiations like this, that everybody gives a little bit, compromises a little bit in order to do the people's business."

Though I believe the healthcare act is a step in the right direction when it comes to treating our fellow human beings with decency and respect and is truly important legislation, what continues to irk me slightly is the fashion in which it was passed. No compromise during the time that the government was democratically controlled is part of the reason we have a republican controlled congress at this point in time. And for the President to expect compromise after his unwillingness to adopt any of the republican agenda just shows how polarizing our current government as a whole is right now.

I have certain beliefs, but I am a better steward of listening to and compromising with differing points of view than our government is at this time. My hope is that at some point this current body politic can see past the petty differences, look at what is good and right for the country, show the globe a position of leadership and compromise, balance the budget without cutting our own leg off, find ways to stimulate business and at the same time provide tax incentives to once again make this country a place where business is done and done the correct and honorable way.

That is why I feel that our government has definitely lost touch with the people they are there to represent. If you feel the same, remember to vote, make your voice and vote part of the discussion and participate. Because when you don't participate at least with your vote, you have absolutely no right to complain about the person or people that are supposed to be representing your view. But that is a completely different rant of mine that I'll save for another time.

Agree? Disagree? Join the conversation by adding a comment, or let me know what you think by checking off a reaction box. If you have an idea for a blog about someone or something we're losing touch with, please send them in to losttouchwith@hotmail.com or losttouchwith@gmail.com. I can't promise to use all of your ideas, but I promise to read them all. And if you're a twitter fan and want to know when I post a new blog, follow @losttouchwith. See you in the blogsphere!

Welcome to @losttouchwith!

Welcome to @losttouchwith, the blog that will attempt to look at the things we seem to have forgotten or lost touch with (imagine that). Things like decency, making sense of your beliefs in concert with other's beliefs, remembering that free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequence, and that words sometimes can hurt more than action.

So, what is really pissing me off lately? Well, politicians who are disingenuous about their beliefs, partisan BS, (and yes, even though I'm democratically inclined, even the dems ramrodding through bills without compromise), and I'll attempt to use this blog to point out some of these wonderfully idiotic views, ideas, and see if I can at least assuage my conscience through typing like a madman. My goal is to add a post a week, probably on the weekend, we will see how effective I am with that.....

One note, if you have something that you feel we've lost touch with, you can email me at losttouchwith@hotmail.com, or losttouchwith@gmail.com. I can't promise I'll use all ideas sent to me, but i'll read every one that comes my way and listen as openly as I can to your ideas. And if you happen to be a twitter user, please feel free to follow my feed at @losttouchwith, I follow most of the politically bent feeds myself, which is where I get most of my ideas from at present.

And lastly, please feel free to leave a comment, add to the discussion. And who knows, if I value your contributions to the discussion, you may be invited to do a guest post on the blog!

On with the show, and please enjoy. We'll see where it takes us!