Gas prices suck. They are through the roof, and since most of the goods that we purchase rely on transportation to get them to us, the cost of everything is increasing. Due to the fact that I took two economics classes in college, I understand that this is due to supply and demand.

The supply of oil (relative to the demand) has dwindled; therefore the cost of it has gone up. Since the United States is sitting onvast untapped oil reserves, it would only make sense that we tap those. It could take up to ten years for us to see that oil in production, which causes many people to overlook our own resources as a potential solution to our supply problems.

Too bad our politicians thought that would take too long in 1996.That oil would be in our cars at this moment, and maybe gas wouldn’t cost over $4 a gallon.

Instead of trying to fix the supply and demand problem with more supply, the government seems keen on lessening our demand. The latest idea out of the Department of Transportation is to levy a tax on everyone based on the number of miles that they drive.

Read the rest at The Stir

California is one of the most generous states in the nation toward illegal immigrants, teachers, the unemployed, and single mothers. It’s also just about bankrupt. As the saying goes, it’s easy to be generous with other people’s money.

One of the biggest money pits that the oh-so-generousCalifornia taxpayers are funding is the state workers’ pension fund. California public employees have some of the cushiest retirement packages around. These so-called public employeesoften get fatter paychecks in retirement than they did when they were working.

The Golden State? The Welfare State seems more appropriate.

Something is horribly wrong with California’s pension system, and unless something is done to reform it (soon!) the pyramid scheme will collapse. Early retirement ages combined with longer life expectancies means that retirees often collect more checks during retirement than they did during employment. This is not a pension — this is welfare.

No one needs to retire at the ripe-old age of 55 and receive an average of 75% of their last annual salary for the rest of their life. California is unique in this, as all other states average salaries over the last 3-5 years on the job when determining pension payouts. Because of this ‘one year’ rule, California retirees are often able to artificially inflate their salary by switching to a high-earning job for one year, or cashing out years worth of accrued vacation time.

Read the rest at The Stir

One of the aspects of Obamacare that has gotten a lot of attention for being unconstitutional is the individual mandate. This is the section of the Affordable Care Act that requires all citizens to purchase health insurance, regardless of their need, desire, or financial ability to pay for it.

In a perfect world, no one would ever get sick and require medical attention. In a fantasy world, doctors would work for free, and no one would ever have to worry about their ability to purchase health insurance. Since it’s a fantasy world, mechanics, plumbers, estheticians, babysitters, and housekeepers would also work for free.

Much to my chagrin, this is not a perfect world, and fantasy is not reality. Medical care is neither a right nor a privilege — it is a service, and as such, it must be paid for or donated.

Since health care is a service, Americans should have the ability to choose whether or not they want to spend their money on it. It’s not really anyone’s business as to how another person spends their money on their health.

Read the rest at The Stir

Washington State has spent a lot of effort over the past few years enticing people to buy electric cars over old school gas-guzzlers. In addition to a tax incentive from the federal government, the state has exempted sales tax on the purchase of electric vehicles. In other words, it’s a great deal to buy a car that uses less gas.

People buy hybrid or electric cars for one of two reasons: To save money or to appear cool. People that actually want to save the planet ride bikes, not drive coal-powered cars.

To the hipsters, a tax on electric vehicles might not be a huge issue. These people might even feel that paying higher taxes for the privilege of driving a Prius makes them even cooler.

Read the rest at The Stir

On Wednesday, President Obama addressed the nation to talk about the deficit problem. Theannual deficit is the amount of money our government spends in a year that is not covered by the taxes we pay. That is opposed to the national debt, which is the accumulation of these deficits.

Currently, our deficit is $1.65 trillion. To put that in perspective, if one dollar equaled one second, it would take over 52,000 years to equal this year’s deficit. I don’t think my poor little calculator could do the math on our over $14 trillion of accumulated debt.

Obviously something needs to be done. We either need more money coming in, or less money going out. As pointed out on IowaHawk’s blog, not enough money realistically exists to cover our expenditures. Therefore, we must reduce our spending to balance the budget and begin to pay down our tremendous debt.

According to Reuters, 59% of Americans would cut programs to reduce deficit spending, while 30% would raise taxes to cover the cost. President Obama agreed in Wednesday’s speech that cutting some spending might be necessary … right before he slammed Republicans for trying to lead us to a fundamentally different America than the one he’s known.

Read the rest at The Stir

Unless the politicians in Washington can come up with a budgetfor the fiscal year we’re currently halfway through, the government will shut down all non-essential services. The funding dries up Friday at midnight, which means that some 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed and also that Yellowstone Park will close temporarily.

The problem with creating a budget is that Republicans andDemocrats can’t agree on how much money to spend and what items to spend it on. There are just so many ways to spend other people’s money that sometimes it’s hard to decide whether to fundmenopausal yoga classes or blatantly biased media outlets.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pointed out the key difference between the ideologies of the right and the left: Liberals care about their fellow citizens, and Conservatives don’t give a crap about starving seniors. OK, maybe I paraphrased a teensy bit. Here’s what she actually said:

In one of the bills before us, six million seniors are deprived of meals — homebound seniors are deprived of meals. People ask us to find our common ground, the middle ground. Is middle ground three million seniors not receiving meals? I don’t think so. We’ve got to take this conversation from a debate about numbers and dollar figures and finding middle ground there, to the higher ground of national values. I don’t think the American people want any one of those six million people to lose their meals.

Read the rest at The Stir

In which I rant about cleaning my daughters’ room, household budgets versus the federal budget, and Amelia Hamilton joins me for Conservative Chick Chat.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Last March, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly told the public that the Affordable Care Act needed to be passed before we could find out what was in it. The bill was soon passed and signed into law, and one year later, we are still peeling back the layers on the onion that is Obamacare.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) originally didn’t support President Obama’s health care initiative, but for a different reason than his Republicans counterparts. Where Republicans on the Hill voted against a massive intrusion of government into 1/6 of the economy, Rep. Weiner wasn’t fond of Obamacare because he didn’t believe it went far enough. The congressman sponsored an amendment to implement universal coverage – Medicare for all.

Read the rest at The Stir

We’re almost half way through the fiscal year (which began on October 1, 2010), and the federal government still hasn’t figured out its budget.They keep passing continuing resolutions, which means that they agree to stick mostly with last year’s budget until a final budget can be passed.

The most recent extension passed 87-13 in the Senate on Thursday, with our politicians assuring us that this will be the last time. The resolution included $6 billion in cuts for the fiscal year, yet nine Republicansenators voted against it.

The conservative naysayers say that the cuts aren’t deep enough for their conscience to allow them to vote in favor of the short-term budget stopgap. Florida Senator Marco Rubio released a press statement explaining his vote in opposition of the resolution:

Today’s vote, first of all, should remind us of how we got here. Why are we funding government in two or three week increments? And it’s because Democrats, when they ran the House, the Senate and the White House, didn’t pass a budget.

“But more importantly, this is a terrible way to run government. We are facing some serious issues in America today, particularly the fact that we are borrowing $4 billion a day to keep the lights on and particularly the fact that we owe $14 trillion and growing. It’s time to face those issues in a serious way. The time for waiting is over. The time for games has passed.

Read the rest at The Stir

I just filled up my gas tank and I didn’t want to cry — I actually did cry. At $4 per gallon, it cost me nearly a c-note to fill up my mid-size SUV. That’s not for the fancy high-octane stuff either; we’re talking regular unleaded.

We don’t have room in our budget to increase the amount of money we spend on gas, so this means we’ll be doing a lot less driving. Fewer trips to visit friends in neighboring cities, no running back to the store for that one thing we forgot, and definitely no drives through the countryside.

I’ve had to do a lot of economizing in the kitchen too, as the price of food has been going up and up. The First Lady likes to tout the benefits of organic rabbit food (which, by the way, children would rather throw away than eat), but she’s not the one trying to pay for it on a modest salary.

Organic farming is much more expensive than farming with pesticides. Without pesticides, there’s nothing to kill the hungry bugs in the fields, which means that actual people need to be employed to keep the produce from being chomped to the vine by the creepy-crawlers. Employing people to care for the plants in organic farms is much more expensive than hiring a crop-duster once or twice a season.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of organic food, but all food that has climbed in recent months and years. In fact, food prices rose more last month than they have in 36 years.

Read the rest at The Stir