I love trivia game shows.
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It didn't take long for our first rebellion to occur, and it was in 1791 while George Washington was president. It lasted for three years. I've got to say it probably wasn't a good idea on the government's part to tax whiskey as the first domestic product to be taxed. Not only were the states beginning to feel the financial pressure of being part of a Union, but they also felt like things were being dictated to them which of course helped lead to the Civil War. The tax was put in place to help pay off debt that our new nation had accrued to fight for independence. Most of the trouble was coming from Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Tax collectors who were trying to get whiskey distillers and sellers to start paying the taxes were getting beaten up. It got so bad that President George Washington led a group of 13,000 soldiers to squelch the "Whiskey Rebellion." To this day, tax collectors are trying to put an end to black market distribution of whiskey. Some things never change.  With what I've witnessed over the years, it seems like in a lot of cases, the bigger the house the smaller the home.  Democrats try to sell the notion that the Republican Party doesn’t care about poor people, when the fact is it’s only a difference in philosophy about how to help them. Republicans believe that freeing small business owners up (people making on average $150,000), through lower taxes, will create more jobs and stimulate the economy thus helping all economic classes. Seventy-four percent of job growth has come from the small business sector so anything we can do to allow them to keep more of their earnings, will benefit everyone.
The Democrats have a different philosophy as they believe in a bottom-up approach. They figure if they can get the money in the hands of people with lower incomes, they’ll spend their money and stimulate the economy. One of the problems with this is that when this happens, we miss out on a huge amount of tax revenues because they don’t pay income taxes which are what keeps our Federal Government afloat. Sure, when they spend their money there’s a sales tax, but we miss out on much needed income taxes to finance our budget. The Democrats bottom-up approach negatively impacts both Federal and State tax revenues by roughly 18% per person which is a huge shortfall. This can’t be sustained as we’ve seen with our skyrocketing, $31 trillion dollar debt. We’re not going bankrupt we’re bankrupt which means the hand-outs are going to disappear. Benefits will be reduced. Doesn’t it make sense that we create jobs so we can continue to help people in need for the long haul? If you believe in the Bible like I do, then I’m sure you’re aware of the many times Jesus spoke about personal productivity; he believed in helping the widows and orphans because they didn’t have any opportunities to make a living, but he didn’t believe in handouts for those who could work. He did not like laziness. He inspired the saying: “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day but teach him how to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” Our forefathers had the same mentality, they believed in promoting the general welfare/wellbeing of our nation but not giving money to those who could work because our Republic would fall. The bottom line is that both parties try to help the poor it’s just a difference of philosophies. I strongly believe in a top-down approach because of the very reasons I mentioned above. We’re paying out more and more and collecting less and less which is a recipe for disaster. It has now been confirmed that 14 different Biden family members received money transfers tracked back to various Chinese companies and organizations. They weren't direct transfers, but instead multi-transfers of electronic money. I wonder why? No, I don't.
Could you imagine the uproar from democrats and the mainstream media if it were the Trump family involved? But in this case, it's difficult finding information on this historic scandal and the DOJ is refusing to provide answers such as why hasn't Hunter Biden already been arrested for various crimes? There's no doubt in my mind that the federal government could get all of them for tax evasion at the very least. I just don't see the Biden family members reporting the extra income they were getting from China. How about you? I probably listened to the group Alabama thousands of times when I was in the military. They were winning awards right and left back then. Many of their songs have great messages, some I didn't understand at the time as much as I do now like their song: "I'm in a Hurry," which includes the following lyrics: "I'm in a hurry to get things done Oh, I rush and rush until life's no fun All I really gotta do is live and die I'm in a hurry and don't know why." Quite profound. Their video of this song is great if you'd like to check it out. Some serious investigations are now taking place in reference to artificial intelligence's impact on potential nuclear attacks. Is this a shock to me? No, because I watched the movies "2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)," "War Games (1983)," and "The Terminator (1984)," among several more. I already knew the dangers of AI. :) If we're interested in insight into the future, we won't get it from scientists, we'll get it from authors and screen writers. They seem to be all over it.  Did you know the cigarette lighter was invented before the match? One of the first functional lighters was invented by a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner in 1823 (picture of it below). This lighter worked by passing flammable hydrogen gas, produced within the lighter by a chemical reaction, over a platinum metal catalyst which in turn caused it to ignite and give off a great amount of heat and light. Simple, right? I mention functional lighter above, but the fact is, as with a lot of inventions, soldiers had their own way of lighting cigarettes using their flintlock pistols well before Johann's invention. The problem was that gun powder was a precious commodity and could determine a soldier's life or death, so they limited the use of these flintlocks when it came to lighting their smokes. In 1826, a chemist from England by the name of John Walker, invented the match. It was actually by luck when he witnessed a stick that had some fuel on it and it burst into flames not on the entire stick, but only on the section with fuel. He then cut small sticks, dipped the tips in fuel, and added a form of sandpaper to the boxes he was packaging the matches in, so that the friction would ignite the match. Now you know the rest of the story. 😉 Johann's cigarette lighter:  You've probably heard that the Chinese has been operating secret police stations in the U.S. to maintain control over their citizens. We know very little about it at this point so there will be more to follow. I've written several posts over this last year where I question the connections between democrat lawmakers and China. It seems like everything the Biden Administration does actually benefits China. We know of Chinese spies that have had personal relationships with some democratic party lawmakers and nothing comes from it. Well, here's another one. It wasn't a government agency which uncovered these secret Chinese police stations, it was a non-profit group. We should ask ourselves how this happened? How in the world did the DOJ/FBI/HLS, miss this? Or did they? To me it's yet another example of democrats turning a blind eye to Chinese atrocities, so the next logical question is why are some democrats doing this? We should follow the trail of influence, power, and money, because this is where we'll get our answers.  We all know we need to have money on hand for difficult times (raining days), but hardly any of us has saved enough money based on what financial experts say we should. Some say we should save at least six months of our salary meaning if you earn $50,000 a year then your goal should be to have $25,000 in the bank for emergencies like losing a job.
Regarding saving for retirement, some say we should save 5% of our annual income each year and put it into a 401k. There are a variety of thoughts regarding savings plans, but the bottom line is 97% of Americans aren’t following sound financial strategies when it comes to saving money. But here’s the thing, we might not be doing what’s best for us as far as following sound financial advice, but we are doing what’s generally best for our politicians, and that is to spend, spend, spend. Good luck finding a politician who truly wants people to take care of their own livelihoods, instead, the more tax revenues the more influence and power they have which as we've seen, leads to their personal wealth. The more we spend the more we pay in taxes at every level even down to our city taxes. No, they don’t want us to put our money in the bank and not buy that fancy new SUV. The fact is, they know they'll make more money off of electric vehicles because they cost so much more than what an average consumer is spending now on a vehicle. The more we spend the more they can legally take away from us. I guess what it all boils down to is this, if you really want to stick it to the government (the man), start your effective saving strategy today. |
Author: John Mann |
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