I don’t mind having different opinions when people are respectable of me opinions like you were.

Like Patton once said: “If everyone agree with me, there is problem” or something like this.

Glad to have another user of MSB

Anyway, thanks for letting me rattle on. I guess we will agree to disagree about the US Government and it’s current leadership..

And yes, I hope that 2010 will be better then 90.

I am looking forward to buying MyStarterBlog in the future. That is the reason I made it to your blog in the first place..

Once again, my apologies for my “extended comments”..

Robert – The Wholesale Products Guy

The AIG thing is bad since it’s public money. But, a contract is a contract and legal ways must be used. The special 90% income is a good way.

Now, Obama is only there for 2 months. We had provincial(state) election around the same time here. I can say that Obama did more for the US than our prime minister(Governor) during the same time.

Many Americans don’t see that it’s a great opportunity to rethink the ways things are done in many aspects(education, health care, energy…). I know, it’s hard to do.

I used to be a half empty glass thinking guy. But since I started doing Internet Marketing, I see more opportunities around me. Did Obama do Internet Marketing before lol

Americans should get behind Obama and support him. Maybe not at 100% but at least give a chance to your President first. Republicans/Democrats in Congress/Senate should also do the same instead of dragging their politician feet. The longer they stall, the harder for you and normal people it will be. If they can accelerate spending before 2010, they it would be a plus.

You mentioned $9.3 trillion. I can say is that I don’t trust long and even short range prognostics. If they were good, they would had seen the mess coming

We had the provincial budget this week and it goes on the theory that the recession will end in 2009. They even announced a consumer tax increase for 2011(January first) and increase many fees(licenses, certificate of birth, death…).

I do hope 2009 will be the worst and 2010 better everywhere in the world too.

“I saw a report on a small US school (poor) that had more success with their students than those throwing money like mad. That was a good example that money was not the reason. Having good interesting teachers also help.

Robert Responds..

Yes, and I wish more people in the US education system would realize that. It is about good teaching and student interest that is paramount to good graduation rates.

Michigan, specifically the Detroit area, only graduates an average of about 35% of their students. Yet, Obama is going to send a failing system 530 million dollars. I love the Democratic party. If it fails, send it more money. Don’t change it..

Going to your point about money. I forget the specifics about where the school was – but a Midwest high school had spent millions of dollars on their infrastructure.

They even have money to pick up students by cab if they could not get to school. The academic results were not much better then those high schools who spent considerably less. One of the problems we have here is teacher’s unions.

The Democratic party is beholdant to them and receive money for their PAC (Political Action Committees). They want “pay back” when a Democratic president gets elected. So, you do what we want, or no money or support.

When a man with wealth and means wanted to give 200 million dollars to build 15 new Charter schools (independent schools that pay their teacher by performance – not held to any union standards) in the Detroit area he was turned down by the city council. Why? I would venture to guess it was because of the teachers unions..

Full story is here..

Detroit School Establishment Turns Away $200 million Gift
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=5811

The problem with our current government is that it is about power, money, control, and pandering to different interest groups more then what is actually good for the country. Unfortunately, most of the local and city school systems are run by Democrats..

Liberal, bordering on socialistic democrats are extremely power hungry. Not that Republicans aren’t either, but currently Democrats are the ones running just about everything.

When the Republicans had control Nationally, they were not that great either. But, they do have some virtues. Unfortunately, Obama is trying to spend us into permanent debt status. Our CBO, (Congressional Budget Office) just came out with a report said that the Obama budget will create trillion dollar deficits

Full report here..

Obama budget could bring $9.3 trillion in deficits
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_budget

And the excuse here is that we have a recession and that are health care system needs fixing. Well, no, it doesn’t. Our medical costs and insurance coverage needs fixing.

I don’t want medical rationing or long wait times if I have a heart condition thank you very much. I want life saving drugs and medical innovations not government run mandates.

If they would let the states compete for insurance coverage pricing then we might be getting somewhere. There are other factors as well, but that is a major one. If we go the way of socialized medicine, our medical breakthrough technology will go away and companies will move elsewhere.

When it comes to the US Government managing anything it is like the gang that could not shoot straight. They waste about 50 cents of every tax dollar. I don’t want any of these clowns managing health care.

They have screwed up Social Security and Medicare enough. We don’t need more spending we need to fix what we already have. It is a shame that we do not have more parties to choose from. We always have to ping pong from Democrat to Republican..

Neither are doing anything constructive. The only Government entity that is efficient is the Military. And if you fight for your country you get to be put down and told that the Iraq war is a failure from the likes of Harry Reid (democrat majority whip) and Nancy Pelosi (democrat speaker of the house). So much for support.

Steven Sez..

“Like many Canadian/foreigners, I watched the last US presidential race because it does impact us (my IM side see new niches ). I found Obama to be someone that could change many aspect of the US system for the best. The idea to use the current recession to retool your country is a very good one. Other politicians would not do that.”

Well, like a lot of people that voted for him in this country, they thought he was going to fill their gas tanks and pay their mortgage.
He was that “shining light on the hill” that was going to bring peace to the world, and stop the oceans from rising.

Yes, he did tell people that he would help to stop the oceans from rising, and that hey would negotiate with our enemies. Of course, better then anything that evil George Bush ever did. The type of sweeping changes that he will propose and the money he just signed into law (800 billion dollars) to help the economy will just be wasted and create debt.

I just see his efforts as a power grab for his administration and the Democratic party. You just don’t throw money up against the wall and see if it sticks. As they say, “it has to be timely, targeted, and temporary”. This 800 billion boon – doggle is suppose to “stimulate” the economy. But yet, most of it won’t go into effect until 2010 – just around the time of the congressional elections.

Obama said he would veto any bill that had unnecessary “earmark” spending (earmarks are things like teapot museums, woodstock memorials – we also call them pork barrel spending projects).

He then turned around and signed a bill that had over 9000 of them in the bill. This is not change you can believe in, it is debt for your children and great grandchildren that you can count on.

Maybe things will turn around and Obama might be the “one we have been waiting for”. But so far, his performance and been lack luster and typical of any run of the mill politician. Politicians have very little accomplishments.

Most have never run a business, held a payroll, or did anything outside being a “pol”. Right from law school into campaigning. And that is the problem. They will use the office to enrich themselves. There have been congressmen and senators both houses of government for over 30 years. Some 50.

Benjamin Franklin wanted people to come off their farms or close their businesses, serve a few years and then go back home. They would be appalled by the mess the government has made.

We are at a point where we have a stunning lack of leadership and an incredible amount of people who do business at Pennsylvania Avenue who sound smart – but act without common sense, direction, or a clear sense of how to solve problems.

Everything is looked at through a political prism of “how can I make this issue look good for me”. What do the polls say? For instance. The big manufactured outrage these days is the AIG scandal.

They were recently shocked that AIG paid bonus money to their employees, supposedly from the TARP program (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), i.e, tax payer funded bailout.

Yet, Chris Dodd, a senator on the Finance committee, put that provision in the so called “stimulas” bill that they just passed. He said he was not aware of it, and blamed it on staffers, and the Treasury department. He might have even blamed George Bush!

They are outraged that it happened. Get to the media, lets get some class warfare going! Funny thing is, he, and Obama, got contributions from AIG! Obama being the largest recipient of monies from the firm!

No, no hippocracy there! Congress also gave themselves a raise! Now, in tough times, you would think that they would be more sensitive to the needs of the public. But, yea, no, not so much..

What’s even sadder was that he and Barney Frank, another financial genius from the Senate Banking Committee said that Fannie May and Freddie Mac were not in trouble. They resisted any suggestions to curb the ARM loans (adjusted rate mortgages) that were being passed out like candy to anyone who wanted one, ultimately bringing the finance system to it’s knees.

My point here is that nobody in the US Government is going to change things for the better. They are too en-grained in their own power structure. They care about the preservation power. I hope things will get better here in terms of leadership. But it is not on the horizon anytime soon.

That’s my rant..

Robert C – The Wholesale Products Guy

Btw, I’m calling March my “Build a lot of new sites” month using AuctionSiteWriter and MyStarterBlog. I love passive income.

On a private site of fellow IMer’s, one guy is now making 10K/month by building sites. He only started about 5 months ago. That’s my inspiration to build sites.

To link to this subject of this post: He is making a real killing. lol

Joe, I’m glad you try to get other opinions. That’s the wonderful side of the Internet because of that possibility. On NBC, they once mentioned that US cities are often populated of like minded folks when before, it was more on a state level. In that case, you have to look outside of your own opinion to understand more the other side.

Sharing opinions is also good but if you have the facts, it’s even better.

Nice, a fellow fan of Vic and Grizz. You see, you went and got opinions that are different from other A-list bloggers. Now, you need to apply what they teach.

I’ve also read that about our U.S. schools, that just throwing more money at them doesn’t work. It looks to me like we need better teachers, more effective teaching methods, more hands-on approaches. Kind of like a pay per click campaign. You don’t just keep raising your bid prices on an unsuccessful campaign. You target your site, your ad groups, and your keywords better. You make a better back-end or you make your call to action more effective. Ha ha, there, I’ve managed to link this to IM.

Anyway, I have to do more research. I try my best not to share my opinions online without solid facts but I still slip sometimes. Thanks for your help Steve. Btw, I’ve subscribed to your blog maybe a couple/few months ago, found you through Vic and Grizz’s sites.

This morning in the newspaper they had a story about pregnant tourist women giving birth in Montreal. It cost $5000-7000 here and the doctor make $400. The woman still has to pay the doctor. Unlike the US, we don’t see the bill. Maybe they should show it to us.

I’m all for free market when IT can prove to me that they can make their industry work. If not, the gov should try.

I like the $50 hamburger example. But how many times, the food industry was caught not doing proper verification of their food.

The Us recently had the peanut butter fiasco. In this case, it was greed at it’s worst(rats). In Canada last year, we had 2 cases in the meat and cheese industries that had “cleaning” problems too and left us with some deaths and many sick. In all 3 cases, it was the lack of food inspectors(gov and industry). Most companies had to recheck their own methods to bring us saver food. That was the good thing that came from it.

We don’t have the same failing public schools here but many young men drop out too soon. I can’t remember but the cost of 1 men is costing the overall system more on the long run. They get low paying wage thus pay less taxes. They were other factors that I can’t remember.

I saw a report on a small US school(poor) that had more success with their students than those throwing money like mad. That was a good example that money was not the reason. Having good interesting teachers also help.

Like many Canadian/foreigners, I watched the last US presidential race because it does impact us(my IM side see new niches ). I found Obama to be someone that could change many aspect of the US system for the best. The idea to use the current recession to retool your country is a very good one. Other politicians would not do that.

Maybe it’s my programmers side but sometimes, it’s better to start fresh than keep patching the same old software. You must invest on the long run and he is planning to do that.

You are too young but in 90s, the recession lasted here longer than the US but the structural change that companies made then is what make them stronger today.

In a normal recession, the economy drop fast but pickup faster too like a letter “J”. Here and in the 90s, the recession was like or look like a slanted J. Some will go bankrupt on the upside too and take longer.

I am only 27 years old and not as knowledgeable as I should be politically, but am trying to learn more. I generally consider myself libertarian/conservative. I’m generally pro-business and want the government as non-intrusive as possible. The big two parties here in the U.S. are way too corrupt. I would happily welcome more choices.

I am still trying to understand the health care issue, specifically the cause of its high prices. There seems to be many causes, including uninsured citizens and illegal immigrants getting free care, high malpractice insurance, expensive research, bureaucratic wastes, etc. They say the free market has failed, but I’ve read that we’ve been messing with health coverage in the U.S. from the early 1900s, giving financial incentives to insurance companies and businesses over individuals. My father says that if the government took over the food industry, the price of a hamburger would go to $50. It seems laughable, but I think he’s right.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, but I just have a hard time believing the same people in charge of our failing public schools and our soon to be bankrupt Social Security system are going to do any better with health care.