I’m writing this because Paul Williams  deserves to not be forgotten. If you remember he was five foot two, had long blond hair, and always wore large sunglasses. He was raised in Omaha, Nebraska (not the usual place for artists to come from). He had one brother who became a
rocket scientist for NASA while the other brother ended up being a songwriter ike Paul and wrote the hit “Drift Away.” He was all over television and was in the movie Smokey and the Bandit.
Johnny Carson had Paul on his show several times because he was so funny that he could’ve been a comedian. 

Although he was a professional actor, musician, singer, song writer, and Academy Award Winning composer, songwriting was his bread and butter. He’s arguably one of the most talented song writers of all time (of course he’s in the Hall of Fame). A few years ago and at the age of 69, he was elected Chairman and President of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. 

I can’t cover all his amazing feats but some of his acting accomplishments include: The
Hardy Boys, Hawaii Five-0, The Love Boat, The Odd Couple, Babylon 5, Star Trek Voyager, and The Muppet Show.   
 
Besides being unique for looking completely different than what a successful person in the movie and music industry usually looked like he was also unique for writing many hit songs for a wide variety of music genres. He appeared in Hank Williams’s Jr. Video: “All My Rowdy Friends
are coming over Tonight.” He wrote hit songs for Anne Murray, Barbara Streisand, The Carpenters (Rainy Days and Mondays, We’ve Only Just Begun), Daft Punk, David Bowie, Helen Reddy, and Three Dog Night (Just an Old Fashioned Love Song), and The Monkeys. But surprisingly one of his greatest hits came from a song he wrote for The Muppet Movie called: “The Rainbow Connection.” He won an Academy Award for this one. Is there anyone in the modernized world who hasn’t heard this song?

A documentary will be coming out soon about his life and it does include some embarrassing moments. When interviewed Paul said a documentary should be about the truth both good and bad. He’s been sober from alcohol and drugs since 1990 and he has been counseling addicts for years as a way of helping others get their lives back like he did his. 
 
I think we too often move on with our lives and leave the past behind; certainly some things are worth forgetting but some memories have great value. Paul Williams is a genius who in my opinion deserves a bit of space in our accessible memory banks.  I think when we remind ourselves of
greatness that it inspires us even if we don’t feel it right away. We are inundated with bad stimuli every day of our lives and if we don’t do something to proactively seek good stimuli the bad will rule our beings; as they say: “Garbage in garbage out.” One of my favorite quotes is from Gandhi and it is: “As you thinkso you shall become.” In this case think smallnot big…the five foot two phenom, Mr. Paul Williams.

Every election period both parties come up with different strategies to grow our economy and create jobs; of course they each attack the other party’s plan. Politicians want us to believe they can alleviate our economic fears in order to get our votes but the truth is there’s no easy or quick
way to recover from the mess they’ve gotten us in. But one thing is for sure, we’d better address how to pay down our debt because even a stabilized economy isn’t enough at this point; meaning even if we improved our economy and created more jobs we could still crash if we don’t get our debt paid down soon. 
 
Keep in mind it’s not good enough at this point to balance our Federal budget because we need a surplus to pay down the debt; instead were spending more than we’re taking in so our debt is increasing not decreasing. So when you hear politicians brag about creating a balanced budget know it’s a necessary step in the right direction but it won’t save us from an economic collapse. 

I would like for you to consider a few things anytime you hear about various economic plans. First of all, collecting more taxes does nothing but throw good money after bad. It doesn’t help our
economic recovery it just keeps politicians from cutting the budget; basically we’ve become enablers to their spending addiction and it’s time for an intervention. 

How can we possibly stimulate our economy by giving our money to the government who then turns around and gives the money to someone else? Think about it; what would happen if you gave $100 to your neighbor? Your neighbor will use the money just like you would've like buying
gas and groceries so where’s the stimulus? The only thing that happened was you got negatively impacted. I’m absolutely shocked and scared quite frankly that Obama was able to sell this idea to voters. And did Obama’s stimulus plan work? No. All that happened was money was moved around (a.k.a. redistributed) and in some cases moved to companies that went bankrupt so people didn’t gain jobs they lost them. Bottom line, no stimulus plan is a good economic solution. 
 
We need to keep in mind that giving more money to our Federal Government doesn’t grow our economy but allowing citizens to keep more of their money does; it’s that simple. The fact is most people aren’t good at saving money so they spend it which grows our economy and increases tax revenues at all levels of government (i.e. city, county, state, Federal, etc.). The Federal government is terrible about spending money; they buy votes with it and they waste it. Think of the Federal government like a son who is caught up in using drugs. We wouldn’t want to continue to give our son money because we know it won’t be spent on the right things. Our Federal
government is a userwho needs their money taken away. 

Do you think any of the money you send to Washington ever makes its way back to you? Practically every piece of legislation proves that it isn’t the case because politicians send our money to areas with more political clout like California, Ohio, and New York. If you think about it we’re actually donating money unknowingly and unwillingly outside of our communities. Stimulus plans don’t’ help us they hurt us; well unless you live in places like Detroit and San Francisco where stimulus packages are a windfall. The bottom line, please fight tooth and nail to prevent any
tax increases on any income bracket and instead force our politicians to cut the Federal budget down to the bone. 

Politicians need to respond to this financial crisis just like you or I would. When were struggling financially we cut non-essentials out of our budget. My guess is if you were really hurting for
money you’d keep your cell phone but you’d drop internet service until you got back on your feet. If you were using a lawn service you’d probably stop and start mowing your yard yourself. This is called being responsible which is exactly what our government isn’t. They’re like a little kid who is spoiled rotten. 

Why in the world doesn’t our government do the same things we do to get back on our feet? To me it just goes to show how ineffective they are. Our representatives aren’t addressing one of our greatest concerns as citizens and that’s to have economic security. In the business world if someone isn’t cutting it they’re fired; instead most politicians get re-elected. It begs the question, what’s wrong with us? 

Keep in mind that while paying down our  debt we won’t necessarily stimulate our economy but it will help prevent a depression. Most of us don’t spend a lot of money when we’re busy focusing on
paying down our debt. But once we’ve paid down things like credit card bills we end up with more money to spend because we’ve reduced our interest expenses. 
 
A good example of the benefit of paying down debt is when someone pays off their mortgage early. A home that costs $200,000 in the end could cost the buyer $450,000 because of interests. In this case if they paid more than their expected mortgage payment they’d pay down their debt faster and pay much less for their home. They’d also increase their cash flow sooner. It works the same way in government; they need to pay down debt in order to reduce the cost of our loans to other countries so we can improve our cash flow. Paying down debt isn’t a quick fix but it’s a critical one. 

Debt reduction will help keep our economy from crashing but it won’t solve our need for economic growth and more jobs. We’re in a real catch 22 right now because jobs are created when businesses gain incremental sales but as it is now most people don’t have extra money to spend
especially those living paycheck to paycheck and certainly not those 23 million  people who are out of work or underemployed. 
 
We’re in a mess with no good solutions at this point so I decided to analyze various approaches we could take and came up with a few ideas that in my opinion would help. Now you’re probably thinking at this point how John could possibly come up with a plan that expert economists
haven’t; hang in there and you’ll see why. 
 
Our best chance of turning our economy around expeditiously is to attack our trade deficits. For example we have a $600 billion dollar trade deficit with China (growing at 23%) and if we would address this deficit we’d create over seven million jobs (I calculated this using a variety of factors like average salaries and benefits, support personnel like human resources, etc). 

One of the main reasons this would be so effective at stimulating and sustaining our economy is that the problem I mentioned above regarding the Catch 22 were in would no longer be an issue. If our citizens don’t have the money to spend then we need to change the way we approach trade.

There are two major reasons we have struggled when it comes to our imbalance of imports and exports. Countries like China have a major cost advantage over us because our salaries are substantially higher than theirs. With this in mind they offer us lower priced goods and we gladly buy them. But the good deal we get in buying an inexpensive product from China is truly costing us jobs. I’m going to mention this one more time because I think we’ve become desensitized over the years: every dollar we spend on products manufactured outside of the U.S. eliminates American jobs. 

It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out there’s a direct correlation between our increase in unemployment and China’s increase in sales to the U.S. We can point at Washington all we want but what about our responsibility as U.S. citizens to do all we can? The truth is we can fix things without our Federal government’s help. I don’t know about you but I feel like every time the
government tries to help me I take a hit in my wallet.

This is a sensitive topic for a lot of people but it has to be addressed. It’s easy to feel good about buying foreign vehicles when they’re made in the U.S. but we shouldn’t if we care about our
economy. There’s no doubt it helps when foreign companies manufacture their products here but profits go back to their foreign corporate offices providing jobs in accounting, building maintenance, human resources, information technology, janitorial services, office personnel, etc. If we bought vehicles from U.S. manufacturers we’d get these particular jobs back and those people
with these new jobs would help grow our economy not the economies of places like China and Indonesia. 

Think about it, there’s no way we can force other countries to change the way they do business. We can certainly be more aggressive at preventing them from stealing our patented technology but we can’t force them to raise their costs. Their citizens are willing to work for much  less than we are and that’s not going to change anytime soon. 
 
So in my opinion the greatest way to create jobs, grow our economy, and increase tax revenues is through purchasing goods and services from U.S. businesses. This is the only thing we can do to
drastically and quickly improve our economy. My company strongly believed in focusing our efforts on those things we could control/change and this is exactly what we need to do. The only thing we can control in this situation is our spending habits. This is how we’ll turn things around and the good thing is we can start making a difference immediately.

You might be asking yourself why our Federal government isn’t pushing this idea. Their rationale isn’t a good one in my opinion but it’s understandable because of international politics. When it
comes to trade relations there’s always a concern about protectionism. Meaning in a free trade agreement a country isn’t supposed to push their goods over the country they’re trading with and they’re not supposed to impede the other country’s sales through unfair import taxes. This is why our Federal government is afraid to push the agenda that I’m suggesting; it’s too sensitive an issue because anything we do could be used against us. Meaning if we increased import taxes they’d just turn around and do the same thing so nobody wins. 

The reason I think our Federal government is missing an opportunity is there’s nothing in our trade agreement that reads our country can’t recommend we purchase U.S. products. We can’t force the issue but recommending it isn’t a problem. There’s nothing in our agreements that states we can’t educate our citizens on what happens to our economy when there’s a trade imbalance. There’s nothing in our treaties that states we can’t educate our citizens on the economic impact of buying foreign goods. These are the things we could and should be doing. A junior high school student could easily understand these economic issues if explained properly. It wouldn’t even take
long to do it. Hopefully I’ve been able to explain it to you decently in around six minutes.

Lastly, let’s say we make a trading partner  mad; China for example. If they don’t want to do business with us they would lose over one trillion dollars in sales which there’s no way they would ever allow to happen. The fact is our trade deficit with them is so bad now that we’d actually improve our economy if we stopped doing business with them. We should also use our significant purchasing leverage at this point to stop them from stealing our patents. As it is now, we’re letting them do it without trying to do anything about it (Romney said he would but I haven't heard any specifics). Of course China is our piggy bank so we might not want to make them mad. This is
kind of like a slave and master relationship because we're pretty much shackled; we need to pay off our debts and set ourselves free. 
 
So  to wrap up I’ll repeat the messages I hoped to get across: stimulus plans don’t work, our budget needs to be cut to the bone, we must pay down our debt or we’ll go over a fiscal cliff, and if we want to truly jump start our economy the answer is in attacking our trade deficits and buying more American goods and services. The great news about this is that every citizen could start
making a positive difference immediately. We need to get our patriotic spirit
back and buy only American goods and services anytime we can. Washington can’t
turn our economy around as quickly as we need but we certainly can. The ball is
now in your court.

This is another one of those Paul Harvey kinds of blogs where you’ll learn who he is at the end. 

He was a singer, songwriter, but most notably a poet. He read more than anyone his high school literary teacher had ever seen and the books he read were post graduate material. There were many times his teacher had to call around to see if the book this student did  report on actually existed; they always did. 
 
His father was a Rear Admiral something he never mentioned to other people. Most people thought his family died in a car accident which wasn’t true. He attended both Florida State University and UCLA. At UCLA he became interested in film and created a few shorts films.  
 
One day a friend of his read this guy’s poem and said it was the greatest thing he’d ever read. He then asked him if he could sing and he talked him into singing the words/lyrics which when he did,
his best friend immediately said they had to form a band.

When the band got together and started singing in small clubs the crowds went wild not only because the songs were so different and their sound so unique but that the front man was strikingly good looking. Even though he was good looking he was shy when he first started singing because he had never done it before his friend asked him to sing. He even turned his back to the audience sometimes because he was so nervous. Of course this nervousness gave way eventually and he became one of the most exciting singers on stage at the time. Girls were constantly running up on stage to kiss him so there had to be a large police presence at each concert. The other band members became a little jealous of the girls going wild for him but they knew they’d become famous if they hung in there. 

All of his songs and his poetry were a bit dark so their manager kept trying to get them to mix in some more upbeat songs like they Byrds and the Turtles were doing but he refused. The music industry was hearing something they’d never heard before which was a mix of Blues and Dark Rock and it was working as seen by the packed concert halls.  

When one of his songs hit number one on the charts, Ed Sullivan asked his band to be on his show. The producer of the Ed Sullivan Show asked him to revise some of his lyrics because of television standards yet during the show he didn’t change them. After the show the producer
said his group would never be on the Sullivan Show again. This made his band members livid but they couldn’t do anything about it because he was their meal ticket. 

He had a reputation for being an extreme partier and he slept with his groupies all the time (something his girl friend knew) which led to twenty paternity suits against him by the end of his career. He had both alcohol and drug problems from the beginning of his career; things his band mates tried to keep under wraps for public relations purposes. He would get stoned before going on stage and the band never knew what he was going to do. He often broke into sharing his poetry while the band did what they could to keep the background music going. His girl friend who was with before he became famous asked him several times to quit the band and focus instead on his poetry but he refused. 

Unfortunately he kept falling deeper and deeper into drugs and alcohol and ended up being pulled off stage several times for indecent exposure and profane language; this led to numerous arrests and concert venues banning the group.  In his last concert he began cussing at the fans which led to people booing and leaving the show. His band members were fed up but didn’t know what they could do to help because he wouldn’t accept their offers.  

He always had a fascination with France because so many poets were from there so he moved to Paris to live with his girl friend. One night she found him in a bath tub dead from a drug overdose; he was 27 at the time. His career skyrocketed for six years when he ended it abruptly. His band members said he was always talking about death and that it was the only way he’d finally experience peace. They said his songs directly reflected who he was because they were so dark. He never discussed his family with them even though there was no evidence he had a difficult one. He did move around a lot because of his dad’s Navy career.

The people who got hurt the most by his overdose were his original band members who formed The Doors because when Jim Morrison died so did the band. We can never know what is in someone’s mind but it appears he didn’t feel like he deserved happiness. People who knew him said he always had a death wish and said he'd only find peace when he died. He passed away depressed feeling like he had nothing left to do with his life. What an awful way to leave this place. I hope that when I'm on my way out that I'll be more like a child on Christmas day; all excited and looking forward to seeing my gifts.