congress message

It seems congress is not going to get anything done about balancing the budget or our national debt. I said A long time ago that it would be better to let all the Bush tax cuts expire then to do nothing so now is the time to let all the Bush tax cuts expire and if congress passes any laws to reinstate them the president could veto them and let all the tax cuts expire that would give the country A chance to recover. It might be hard on some of the lower income people but it would restore the countrys credit rating and give people confidence to expand their businesses and start new ones and that would create A lot of new jobs. Then if we were to pass the right to work law that also would encourage people to start new businesses. Another law that should be passed is to make english the official language of the U. S. With the stipulation all government business and official printing materials and voting ballots be in english only That would that would save the country billions and would encourage all emigrants to become english speaking american citizens I would agree nobody should get A cost of living increase as long as the government is in trouble. Every time you give A cost of living increase the cost of living goes up another notch. It’s a never ending cycle. You have to draw the line some where. My opinion by John Zilverberg

November 20, 2011

The legislators are not getting anything done about our budget shortfall or our national debt. The legislators are not getting anything done about our budget shortfall or our national debt. Maybe we should give all our legislators A years vacation without pay. That $175000.00 salary and the additional perks each one is getting would be A good start on correcting our budget short fall and our national debt. We could probably hire some retired farmer for $25000.00 to run the government.. He could surly do A better job of running the government then our present legislators are doing, At least he would have enough common sense to know that you have to collect some money to pay your bills if you are going to exist, then there are Fannie mae and Fannie Mac . We have already spent 170 billion to bail them out and they could cost us up to 220 billion by 2014.Right now they are asking for another 13,8 billion bail out money from the government ( that is us the tax payers) In the mean time they are paying their executives millions in salaries and bonuses. .In 08 and 09 twelve executives got 35 million in salaries and bonuses The top executive getting 9.3 million. They claim they have to pay that much to keep their top qualified employees .If I had top qualified employees that were losing me that much money I would send them down the road in A hurry. It should not be hard to qualify for A job to destroy A business. . My opinion by John Zilverberg Maybe we should give all our legislators A years vacation without pay. That $175000.00 salary and the additional perks each one is getting would be A good start on correcting our budget short fall and our national debt. We could probably hire some retired farmer for $25000.00 to run the government.. He could surly do A better job of running the government then our present legislators are doing, At least he would have enough common sense to know that you have to collect some money to pay your bills if you are going to exist, then there are Fannie mae and Fannie Mac . We have already spent 170 billion to bail them out and they could cost us up to 220 billion by 2014.Right now they are asking for another 13,8 billion bail out money from the government ( that is us the tax payers) In the mean time they are paying their executives millions in salaries and bonuses. .In 08 and 09 twelve executives got 35 million in salaries and bonuses The top executive getting 9.3 million. They claim they have to pay that much to keep their top qualified employees .If I had top qualified employees that were losing me that much money I would send them down the road in A hurry. It should not be hard to qualify for A job to destroy A business. . My opinion by John Zilverberg

blue print for congress

A blueprint for congress What they need to do to get this country back on A sound financial basis. First make english the official language of the U. S. All official government documents and voting ballots to be printed in english only. If any one needs an interpater it would be up to them to furnish one. No government equity or business should be required by law to furnish one. that would save the government billions. second pass the right to work law . that would give businesses an opertunity to hire cheaper labor .Thereby creating more jobs , creating new businesses and all these people with new jobs would be paying taxes instead of the govrnment having to support them. Third raise out top income bracket on personal income from the present 35 persent one persent for every 100 thousand after the first 250 thousand up to 90 persent 4th reinstate the inheritance tax with A three million exemption then 10 percent on the fourth million and increase it 10 percent for each additional million up to 50 percent 5th make everybody pay the social security withholding tax on all of their income and return any tax collected on social security payments back in to the social security funds .that would solve the problem of the social security short fall,.If these recomendations were passed we would soon have the national debt paid off and our economy back on track. And we could save 50 percent on the taxes we are paying now because that is presently being used to pay the interest on the national debt If we use social security and medicare funds to pay off the national debt we are taking the money away from the poor people that need the money while the big money people and the unions that are responsible for the trouble we are in . so they should be paying the bill My opinion by John Zilverberg.

Arizona's Law

There has been A lot of fuss about Arizona’s new emigration law. Seems to me it is just supporting the federal emigrattion law. Every state ought to pass the same law then the states might be able to enforce the law which the federal government has failed to do.It’s easy to see why the illegal emigrants and their friends wouldn’t like the law.Criminals never like laws that criminalize them .But what would A country be like if we didn’t have laws and laws should be enforced.congress finaly passed A wallstreet regulation bill. And I hope it helps but I am afraid it is only A band aid on the big problem. While wall street seems to be prospering again We still have nearly 10 percent of our population out of jobs and many people losing their homes. We have to get this downtroden part of our population back into the main street, working and paying taxes. We are creating A society of have and have nots. We need to create some laws to level the playing field. Right now big money is running the show and they are running it to benefit themselves without regard to what it is doing to the country and the rest of the population . My opinion by John Zilverberg

The National Debt

The U.S. Government debt is now 94% of the nation's national gross product. That is 94% of our national income, and at the rate we are spending money, we will soon be a bankrupt nation like Greece. They say a big part of the problem is social security. The reason social security is in trouble is because our government that is our congress, has been using social security money for all kinds of pet projects. Some of which were probably good projects but they should have gotten the money to pay for them somewhere else other than the social security fund. The seniors paid that social security money to be used in their old age and that is all it should be used for.

The social security could still be easily fixed by raising the age bracket and raising the amount of income individuals would have to pay social security on. That way people with large incomes would be paying in more. They would also get larger payments. But with our present tax on social security we would recapture a lot of that. Right now many of the large company executives that get big bonuses in stock options that were in depressed prices and now have gone up are making millions and billions. An increase in taxes on those high incomes is what we need to get the country on a paying basis. That is not apt to happen because we have too many big money people making our laws. They are taking care of themselves and their rich friends that are putting up the money to keep them in office.

Of course, if we could find productive jobs for the 9.7% of the people that are out of a job, they would be paying taxes and that could bail the government out.

There's no way we can keep spending more than our income and survive very long.

Housing and Money

The money is about to run out for the government housing program that has been helping the housing industry at least temporarily.It should temporarily because the government has been selling the houses to low income people without any down payment. Seems to me that was what got the housing industry into trouble in the first place,Selling houses to people that could’nt afford to pay for them . For every house they buy we are adding to the national debt.And if we don’t find jobs for these people the government is apt to end up with A lot of houses.Seems to me the sensible thing to do rather then forclose on all these houses would have been to let the people stay in their houses as long as they maintained them and paid A reasonable interest on their debt. If necessay the government could have given them A temporary loan to pay the interest .That in turn should have kept the financial institutions from going bankrupt.People tend to forget that president Bush asked congress several times to create an overseeing board to check up on the big financial institutions But the democratic congress never did anything about it. Now Obama and the democratic congress are trying to do the same thing and the republicans are dragging their feet.We need to check up on these big institutions and the people that are running them so they don’t con the public out of all that money while they pocket millions. Its criminal for these people to make more in one day then the working people that are producing the wealth in this country earn in A year.We need some laws to level the playing field. My opinion by John Zilverberg

Language Problems

I see where someone introduced A bill in congress that courts should furnish interpreters for people that appear in court and do not understand english.English should be the official language of the U. S. And the congress should have made it so long ago.all official government business and documents should be in english only.If any one needs an interpreter to understand the english language in the courts or anywhere else it should be up to the person needing the interpreter to furnish them or if the courts or anyone else furnishes the interpreter it should be up to the person needing the interpreter to pay all the costs of his services. It would be perty hard for the court or any business to have an interpreter for all languages as there might be 40 or more people with different languages to show up needing an interpreter.If these people want to live in the U. S. They better learn the english language It would cost the government billions of dollars if they had to paint all official documents in multiple languages and the same would be true for any other business or organization. One common language would help unify the country. If different ethnic groups were to speak different languages in different areas that could lead to disagreements between the different ethnic groups and could have serious consequences. MY opinion by John Zilverberg

Rediculous Ads

Some of these rediculas ads you see on the media these days by law firms trying to bilk the public out of their money are A disgrace and ought to be outlawed. They try to make you believe you are entitled to compensation and they will get it for you ,For A price, one example is the ones relating to asbestas Mesathelioma. Then about reverse mortgages. They make it sound like A great deal and all the wonderful things you can do with the money. What they don’t tell you is the with A reverse mortgage you are selling the equity in your home and when the mortgage comes due you will no longer have A home .another is where they have the people telling how much money they saved from what they owed the I.R.S.in taxes.They are talking about thousands of dollars. If these people are telling the truth there is something drasticaly wrong with the system or the people that are running it. What ever these people owe in taxes that is what they should pay . Nobody should be getting any special deals.If they cheated on their taxes and owed that much they should be in jail ,Not saving money.If these kind of deals are really going on some people must be getting A big rake off and we better have an investigation. My opinion by John Zilverberg.

Russian Agreement

Obama has signed an agreement with Russia to reduce our arsenal of nuclear weapons as A means to reduce the chances of A nuclear war which sounds good . But with these rouge nations developing nuclear weapons I am not sure we should be reducing ours. Roosevelt said the best way to keep out of trouble is to carry A big stick. The fact that we have them might deter some other nation from attacking us.And we better keep our missel defense system in good order.It would be great to have A peaceful world .But as long as there has been people on this world they have been fighting for one reason or another,In some cases it is religion others it is energy or greed. And economic conditions are not helping.with our medications improving people are living longer. A lot of countries are being over populated and can not produce enough food for the people. If we could eliminate wars we could take care of A lot of people with the money we spend on maintaining our armies and their equipment.And there in no reason why some people should be making millions and billions while others are starving or living in poverty. We could do A lot to adjust that if we would adjust our tax system to level the playing field. My opinion by John Zilverberg

Country In Trouble

Things are drastically wrong at present when we have millions of people out of jobs or living on the edge that would like to have A job at any wage. It seems the cost of living should go down. Instead everything is getting higher priced. All service and repair jobs are costing more. A loaf of bread is costing almost as much as the farmer is getting for A bushel of wheat,Medical and education prices are going through the ceiling. The Unions are asking for higher wages and more benefits. We are creating A society of the haves and the have nots. The haves are doing better and the have nots are getting worse off every day and our country is in serious trouble. We are already seeing protests and riots and things are going to get A lot worse if we don’t get things corrected. Why isn’t congress doing something to correct things? For one thing the biggest share of them are millionaires and multi-millionaires and they make the laws that take care of themselves and their rich friends that put up the money to keep them in office. We need to get this country back on A sound financial basis and level the playing field for the general public.There is no reason why ten percent of the people in this country should have 90 percent of the money. This is supposed to be A democratic country where the majority rules so we should be able to put people that make the laws in office that would do what is good for the country and the general public. My opinion by John Zilverberg

financial problems

We bailed out the big financial institutions on wall street. Now they are making big profits at the expense of the general public. Paying out over 20 billion in bonuses. It is estimated that broker dealer operations will make over 55 billion in profits. All this while our nation is in big trouble and our congress can’t seem to be able to do any thing about it. They have spent over A year haggling over A massive health care bill that looks like A disaster if they do pass it without the means to pay for it. We need jobs so we have people paying taxes instead of drawing unemployment. And we need to revise our tax system by increasing the present tax system on individuals by one percent for every one hundred thousand dollars after the first $250000.00 up to 90 percent. That would get some of that excessive bonus money back into circulation and pay off the national debt that is costing us billions in interest. Our present tax system is producing A class of multi millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the general public. Also we have twenty million illegal emigrants in the country putting A strain on our health care and education systems and competing for the jobs we do have. The S.D. congress has bills to lower the drinking age and to sell liquor on holidays. As if we don’t already have enough drunk drivers on the road killing themselves and A lot of other innocent people .My opinion by John Zilverberg

Joe Stock of Austin Texas thought the I.R.S.had mistreated him. He felt so strongly about it that he set his house afire got in his plane an crashed it into the I.R.S. building killing himself and at least one other person and putting some more people in the hospital. That was an extreme case . But A lot of people seem to feel that way and it is not justified. The I.R.S. has A tough job trying to collect all the taxes to run the government,build our roads ,educate our children ,Maintain an army ,Navy and Marine core to defend us and our nation .Besides all the other benefits we take for granite.How many people do you think would pay their fair share of the taxes if there was nobody to check up on them.Of course we know that A lot of that money we send to Washington is wasted. But that is not the I.R.S. fault.That is the fault of the people we send to Washington to make our laws.Some people want to eliminate the I.R.S. In fact there was even A bill in congress to do that.If you have A problem with the I.R.S. it is usualy your own fault.Sure they make A mistake once in A while .But if you have good honest records there shouldn't be A problem getting things corrected.I have always found them fair to deal with. My opinion by John Zilverberg

This Country Is In Trouble

This country is in trouble, and it is going to be till we get it on A paying basis. We are paying out billions in interest on our national debt The unemployment population increased by about A third last year and job opportunities decreased by about twenty five percent. It is easy to pass tax relief but that wont pay the bills. Tax relief wont do anything for the people with no jobs and no money because they don’t pay any taxes anyway. Tax breaks for companies are good because companies create jobs and people with jobs pay taxes. We demand A lot of services from our government and someone has to pay for them. The people with the money are going to have to do the paying. At the present time some company executives and directors are making more money in one year then the average worker makes in A lifetime. The same goes for popular sports figures and entertainers etc..We need these people that excel in what they do and they should earn more then the average person but not to such an unreasonable amount. All that excessive income is made at the expense of the general public goes into the private bank accounts and out of the economy. My recommended personal income tax increase of one percent on every one hundred thousand after the first one hundred and fifty thousand up to 90 percent would get A lot of that excessive money back into circulation if properly handled invigorate the economy benefit the nation and everybody in it. This won’t be easy because we have too many rich people in Washington making our laws and they are taking care of themselves and their rich friends that are putting up the money to get them elected into office and now that the judges have thrown out the law that restricts the amount of money any person or organization can contribute to A candidates campaign big money is going to be running the show more than ever. My opinion by John Zilverberg

The Cost of Living

Saturday I was listening to A panel of supposedly experts discussing about the effect of the 87 billion stimulus money and if it was getting the job done. I think some of their opinions were influenced by their political affiliation. Evidently it helped the big financial institutions. Some of them seem to have fully recovered and are back to making record profits that might be A sign it saved us from A total recession, but for the ten percent of the people that are out of jobs the recession is getting worse every day they are out of A job. The cost of living is going up and the prices for labor and repairs is going thru the ceiling. A loaf of bread now costs about as much as the farmer is getting for A bushel of wheat. That may be good for the people that have the jobs and are making the money but it is tough on the rest of the people. And is creating A class of destitute people that have to be taken care of and are not paying any taxes. Now the federal judges threw out the law that limited big companies and organizations as to the amount they could spend on political support so now anyone that wants to pass any legislation to benefit the general public will have to buck A lot of big money that will influence the election. My opinion by John Zilverberg

Obama's State of the Union Address

Obama’s state of the union address was rather long and he tried to justify his programs and himself. But it was not very well received especially by the republicans. He again made A lot of promises that he may not be able to keep. I think his intentions are good and some of his ideas are good if he could get them passed. He has been working on creating new jobs but so far his ideas have cost A lot of money and have not produced very good results. Now he is planing to give the low income people tax breaks. That may be good for the people that have jobs and can pay taxes but for the people that have no jobs and no money to pay taxes it is not going to do them any good. And I am sure it would not create any jobs. He has suggested A tax break for small companies .That is good if it keeps the companies in business because companies are what create jobs and people that have jobs pay taxes. We are going to have to raise taxes some where if we are ever going to pay off the national debt and the people that have the money are going to have to do it and they have no intention of doing that. We are just going to have to put some people into office that are willing to raise the taxes on the super rich people that are taking all the money out of our economy to increase their own bank accounts. Our present tax system is creating A class of multi millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the general public. I would estimate ten percent of the people in this country are holding at least ninety percent of the money. We need to get some of that money back into circulation where it will help the general public and the country. One good idea Obama had was to let the bush tax cuts for the people making over two hundred fifty thousand expire. But of course he probably wont get that done because the people with the money wont let that happen if they can help it. My opinion by John Zilverberg

Where Has The Stimulus Money Gone?

Where has the stimulus money gone besides to the big financial institutions and how many jobs has it created?A couple of examples .One .we built an air strip in Alaska that cost nine million.Probably A 60 day job that created 46 jobs for sixty days .Each worker probably earned about 80 0.00 And each job cost us tax payers $195652.00.Of course if we needed the air strip and it is worth six million maybe we got our moneys worth.then there is the Florida bridge that cost us seventy two million three hundred thousand and created seventy two jobs for probably six months at A cost to the tax payers of over A million dollars for each six month job.Of course the same applies here. If the bridge is worth the seventy two million three hundred thousand and we needed it maybe we got our moneys worth .But the bills still have to be paid and I havn't seen any action in congress that is going to pay the bills.That would be the same as some one that needed A house to live in .They could go out and buy A house for $100000.00 but then if they couldn't raise the money to pay for it they would be right back out on the street.Our government is going to be in big trouble if we don't raise some money to pay our bills . My opinion by John Zilverberg

Stimulus Money

Saturday I was listening to A panel of supposedly experts discussing about the effect of the 87 billion stimulus money and if it was getting the job done. I think some of their opinions were influenced by their political affiliation .Evidently it helped the big financial institutions . Some of them seem to have fully recovered and are back to making record profits.that might be A sign it saved us from A total recession .But for the ten percent of the people that are out of jobs the recession is getting worse every day they are out of A job.The cost of living is going up and the prices for labor and repairs is going thru the ceiling.A loaf of bread now costs about as much as the farmer is getting for A bushel of wheat.That may be good for the people that have the jobs and are making the money but it is tough on the rest of the people.And is creating A class of destitute people that have to be taken care of and are not paying any taxes. Now the federal judges threw out the law that limited big companies and organizations as to the amount they could spend on political support so now anyone that wants to pass any legislation to benefit the general public will have to buck A lot of big money that will influence the election. My opinion by John Zilverberg

Big Execs

Well the execatives of the big financial companies are at it again .Paying themselves millions in bonuses.They already have big salaries and shouldnt be alowed to pay any bonuses untill they have paid back all the government bail out money they got.We have millions of people that would be glad to have A job at any price.And the situation is getting worse .We lost another 85000 jobs last month.With twenty million illegal emigrants in the country and probably that many legal emigrants coming into the country every year.Obama wants another thirty billion to help create jobs . But all the money he has spent to date has not created many jobs so we may need A new kind of approch.Congress is now working on getting the health care bill passed but the big money people and the Unions are going to gut the bill of the best methods of paying for it.The unions are objecting to the tax on the high priced insurance plans and the big money people are objecting to the plan to raise the the income tax on people making over two hundred thousand dollars. why don't we get some good reports on who voted against these parts of the bill and vote them out of office the next election.Because we will know they are voting for what is good for the big money people and not what is good for the general public and the country. Haiti is A real mess after the big earthquake.Obama has promised one hundred million in aid and Haiti can sure use it but that is an awful lot of money for A country that is already in financial trouble. Obama better send some people down there to monitor that money so it gets to the people that realy need it and not into the bank account of some politicion as has happened to A big share of the money we have sent down there in the past. Also we could send some of our unemployed construction crews down to help them rebuild and that way bring some of that money back home. My opinion by John Zilverberg

SD Is Great

I have to put in A good word for S. D. We somtimes like to complain .But realy S.D. is A great place to live.We have very few realy bad storms or floods and are not getting burned out like they are in some other parts of the country.The recession has affected us much less then it has most of the rest of the country.I still see A lot of constuction going on and adds in the local papers for help needed. add it all up and we have A lot to be thankfull for. I see the packistan army is now fighting the Taibon .That should take some of the pressure off of our armed forces and we better give them all the support we can, I am disgusted with some of the people we send to Washington to make our laws .I think some of them are more interested in polatics and keeping their jobs then doing what is best for the country. One thing is our interigation methods ,If we used some methods that were considered illegal ,See to it that it dosnt happen again .But why drag out our dirty laundry and give us A black eye in the rest of the world.It looks like political tactics to give the Bush administration A bad name .Has everybody forgotten what tactics the enemy was using like chopping the prisoners heads off and throwing their bodies in the river, When we were not doing anything to them they flew the planes into the world trade centers and burned up 3 thousand people aalive,And remember what Sadam did to people that didnt agree with his polatics,He had the head of the head of the housholds head chopped off and nailed up on A post in front of their house. Not to mention gassing people by the hundreds.The media could do us A favor by reminding the public of some of these things so people dont forget what kind of enemy we are fighting. My opinion by John Zilverberg

English

the english language should be the official language of the U. S. All official documents and voting ballots should be printed in english only. That would encourage all emigrants to learn english . for one thing we cant afford to print all official documents in multiple languages .Allso if we have people speaking diffrent languages in diffrent sections of the country that could cause friction and discord between the diffrent communities and might even lead to A cival war.As A country we have to be unified with one language.It is good to know other languages but we need one official language .That will help to keep the country united and better able to work on any problems we might have and right now we have plenty of them. What should have been done and maybe still could be is freeze all forclosers on homes and small businesses for two years and guarantee the interest for the people that could not pay up to 250 thousand morgages and take A lien on the property from the people that could not pay.That way people could keep their homes and small businesses ,the financial companies would get the interest, That should bail them out,We would not be putting people out on the streets. That should help out the housing industry and we would have two years to get the economy back on track. My opinion by John Zilverberg