Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: Scotch & Sounds

The best Boston rock club that wasn’t in Boston was named Scotch & Sounds. Anybody who was anybody in Boston played there and even some big name New York groups you wouldn’t believe played there.

My friends Bill and Steve loved this place and we went there frequently during its run in the 1980s I’d have to say I saw some great shows there. Bill and Steve weren’t so interested in the music as there were in all the new chics each band would draw. The Sounds had hot and cold running chics! Bill and Steve were “regulars” and were on a first name basis with the entire staff which meant when I was with them there was no cover and the likelihood of being arrested if and when an altercation took place was low. This came in handy on more than one occasion.

Scotch & Sounds resided at the Westgate Lanes bowling plaza at the Westgate Mall in Brockton, Massachusetts, about 22 miles from Kenmore Square which, to me, was always the epicenter of the Boston Music Universe of the 80s. the legendary Rathskeller was there, the two most popular discotheques in town, Celebrations and Narcissus were there just across the square from "The Rat" where the BU bookstore now resides. The Paradise rock club sat just up Comm Ave and Lansdowne Street was a short walk around the corner where other Boston clubs like The Metro, Spit and that "$5 dungeon" called 9 Landsdowne St all resided in a row. There was no other place you had to be to catch a band from Boston.

Except for Scotch & Sounds.

This place was too different to be in Boston but they loved booking Boston bands. It was actually a NICE PLACE to go. You could even dress up and not be out of place there and people did. It was a big room, had a thoughtfully lit interior, tables with lights, lots of glass and wood, a nice bar, an open center placed stage, a good sized dance floor and while writing this now, I don’t think they ever had a night when I was there that the sound was bad.  They had door men, a coat lady, waitresses and they served a stiff drink in a real glass. It was a classy joint in those classic cocaine days of the mid-to-late 1980s, a real nightclub where people came to meet and see what they otherwise would have had to travel for. They also had a police detail for when things got out of hand. If there was a full moon, it was best you get out in the parking lot first to watch the fireworks.

Robin Lane and the Chartbusters played there often. I was told this was after Robin had previously left the band to go back to California to be “discovered” and apparently she wasn’t so she was back and the band dropped what they were into to reform. I had never seen them previously so I don’t know if they were different from before but judging by the Scotch & Sounds shows, although well played, lacked the intensity of their best selling albums that had been out for about 6 years by that time.

Part of the problem could have been that a few times they were put on the same night with the Neighborhoods who would make anybody else following them look low-fi. Having won the inaugeral Rock & Roll Rumble in Boston in 1979, I've seen plenty of "Hoods gigs and I can say with all honesty I’ve never seen them play or sound better than when they played The Sounds. One time they were opening for Til Tuesday and there were tables and chairs already set up on the dance floor for the headliner's crowd which drove the ‘Hoods lead man, David Minehan, to announce to his audience who were looking for room to dance, “I don’t give a shit, come up and dance on the stage!” And they did and it was great! There were so many people pogoing on and around the stage while the band weaved through them playing, it was a riot! They blew anybody else on the bill off the stage when they played Scotch & Sounds and that included Robin Lane and Til’ Tuesday.

David Johansen of the New York Dolls played Scotch & Sounds with his band not long before he became “Buster Poindexter”, had his big hit “Hot, Hot, Hot” and was in the movie “Scrooged”. He looked and dressed like a regular guy and put on a real professional show and the Dolls hit “Personality Crisis” was a memorable highlight.

There was a local southern rock cover band that played  The Sounds regularly called “Midnight Traveler” and they would play “Whipping Post”, “Rambling Man”,  “Freebird” and any southern rock song you can think of note for note like the record. I wasn’t into cover acts much at the time but they really jammed and were the best southern rock band I've ever seen before or since. Other than that, where they came from or where they went, I know nothing about. 

The Boston band The Lines played the Sounds as did the The Drive and if anybody didn’t know, The Lines were a popular Boston band and I remember WBCN had put their picture up on a bill board in Kenmore Sq for awhile but there was some sort of split and some members left to form The Drive. The Drive was the far more dynamic and popular act after the split, had catchier tunes and released a big Boston hit called “Doing the Countdown”. The Lines had sort of disappeared by that time. I know for a fact that the guitarist/singer Jaime Walker and the bass player Paul Kochanski are still out there as part of The Swinging Steaks, an original country band and having seen them play a number of times, they’re really good.

Charlie Farren played the club regularly with both his post-Joe Perry Project acts, The Enemy and Farrenheit. There weren't many "hooks you could hang your hat on" and I couldn't tell you one name of any of his songs but Charlie Ferren was wildly popular and his bands were fucking LOUD!

Jon Butcher was another regular and his live performance of “Ocean in Motion” I can still see if I close my eyes. Anybody who’s every caught one of his shows knows how dynamic a musician he was in those days and he really worked the stage and the crowd.

Berlin Airlift played Scotch & Sounds of course! And I was there every time. One memorable moment I can think of was one time Rick Berlin asked the crowd, “Did you ever throw up a little but catch it in your mouth and swallow it? Well that just happened to me.” A Berlin Airlift gig would find Rick playing the keyboards, singing and dancing and fronting one of the tightest acts Boston ever produced. Two keyboards, bass, drums, Steven Perry on guitar and everybody sang. Rick Berlin is certainly one of the most insightful lyricists to ever come out of the Boston music scene. And his tenor voice on “Can I Fall In Love?” would just rip your heart out. Steven Perry would bring 6 guitars to every show and was the first guitarist I ever saw who had guitars handed to him between songs. Just who the hell is this guy, needing a different guitar for a song? They were on a different level in my mind.

Arguably the biggest band to play the Sounds was John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band who sounded so much like Springsteen you wouldn’t believe but who also had those two Eddie & The Cruisers albums they recorded go triple PLATINUM and GOLD respectively and yeilding two number one hits (C.I.T.Y & Dark Side).  The Beaver Brown band was what I call one of those “12 year overnight sensations”. They had been gigging the East Coast regularly all those years and finally hit it big. Very professional act and they would come out and sound just like the record.

The Outlets and O Positive played the Sounds on a couple of occasions. Neither were memorable sets as I recall and they were "go get a beer and try to talk to chics" bands.

I don't know if anybody remembers the pop metal band L 88 but they had a big local hit with "I Want You" or rather "I...Want You". They played a couple of shows at the club and were both tight and entertaining. They didn't take themselves too seriously and looked every bit like they enjoyed their time on stage.

Digny Fingus of "Girl with the Curious Hand" fame played on at least one occasion that I can remember. Scotch & Sounds at most times had quite a diverse mix of patrons but my impression was that Fingus and the people that followed them somewhat weirded out the locals a little bit.

The Ramones played The Sounds near the end of their career and it was a mob-scene! Never saw a crowd that big in the place and it was most likely way over legal capacity. It was an impenetrable mob of Ramones fans and getting close to the stage wasn't going to happen unless you were prepared to fight for it.

Occasionally the Sounds would have a comedy night and none other than the late, great Sam Kinison himself did a show. He drank two bottles of champagne during his routine which included his Ethiopian jokes “If I could, I'd get a bunch of trailers and I'd take ‘em to where the food is! Look, this is SAND! Nothing grows here, asshole!” and he did his song he said he wrote about his ex-girlfriend, enough said.

I’m not 100% sure when Scotch & Sounds bit the big one but I believe it was around 1989. By then the owner, Mr. "I can’t remember his name” most likely succumbed to his habits and the club changed hands. As I recall, he was a classic nervous club owner who ran a club in one of the biggest cocaine trafficking areas in the state. There was a lot of Blow and the Bickford’s Breakfast Restaurant was always packed from 2 to 5 am after a full evening of music.

Yep, Scotch & Sounds was quite a place and it was quite a time.

Another Disappointing Doomsday Prediction

Can’t anybody get this right?

Just once I’d like to see these people predicting the End of the World to get it right. Just once.

But they never have. What a gyp!

And so many people fall for this game every time it’s played. You’d think they’d learn a thing or two from the whole experience. They get us all worked up, get our hopes up and BAM, they let us down.

First one I can remember is all the planets lining up in 1983 or something and it was going to pull the oceans up on top of us with monstrous tides with the flooding and the cataclysm and the whatnot…didn’t happen.

Then it was the Harmonic Convergence with the Mayan “Hell” cycles ever 52 years which ended in 1987…never came.

More recently there was that crock of shit called Global Warming that was going to do so much damage until it was discovered that the Earth is actually getting cooler and then it turns out that all those Brown Shirt scientists were cooking the numbers. Thanks Wikileaks! This is the real reason the U.S. government is after that Julian Assange guy, he outted the world global warming cabal among other seedier elements of governments everywhere.

Of course there's always been that crack-pot Nostradamus who not only alledgedly predicts WW III and when the world will end but continues to publish new books and "predictions" every year even though he's been dead since 1566. I'd say the real trick would be to get your hands on his FIRST book and see how well he did with the predictions. I'll bet his track record isn't nearly as good as anybody you've met down at the dog track.

More recently there was the Oakland, California Pastor, Harold Camping, who predicted the world would end May 21, 2011 for no apparent reason other than he said the Bible said so.  Just more wishful thinking as far as I’m concerned. The government media just loves the distraction of a long count-down and so all this optimistic talk of the world ending just left me and a boat-load of other people sorely disappointed. Damn! Wrong again.

What an empty feeling it is to be waiting for the end of the world and then nothing happens and you have to go to work the next day. Bummer!

So now it’s back to the Mayan Calendar again because, well, that’s all they got left. And, since I’m putting this out on the “Day of” our latest predicted end and you’re reading it, well, you get the idea. Another letdown, that’s what!

So I’m swearing off the whole Doomsday thing. Never again I say. I’m not taking any more days off from work just to hunker down in the back yard bunker. It just never happens so I’m going to save my vacation time and go someplace nice next time.  

So now the end of the world will just have to happen without me. I’m not buying into it anymore. How many times do these people think I can be fooled?

Now what am I going to do with 7 years’ worth of military Meals-Ready-to-Eat?

The Decline and Fall of the American Socialist System

Rather than recent events being a triumph of the Leftist agenda to transfer the assets of successful people to those less successful and of Governments attempts to gain unrestricted control of the nation’s economy, we are actually seeing the final downfall of Socialism in the world.

Much like other totalitarian regimes before it, the takeover of the Federal aspect of the United States by the Liberal Left is failing just ahead of what many are pointing to as its greatest triumph: Total responsibility for what is produced and not produced in the nation.

Of course this all hasn’t happened overnight. Economic historians can point to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and broad powers of administration for not defeating the depression but prolonging it by almost a decade. Imagine what would have only lasted 3 or 4 years was stretched by bad policy to 13 years. Then WWII came along and we HAD to dedicate resources to making stuff again. But that demand came without the means of actually paying for it so the debts began to pile up.

Later President Lyndon Banes Johnson provided us with The Great Society, a war on poverty in America! But as always happens, his war on poverty only cause poverty to increase. The rewards for not being successful started to gain on the rewards of actually being successful. Coupling this with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really was a wealth of positive information for the Socialist Left of this nation: They discovered that they could make the slaves love their slavery.

These “Movements” have nothing to do with actually taking care of people or caring for their economic situation or even “Fairness” since statistically their situation overall doesn’t improve. It only means that the beneficiaries of the Welfare State don’t have to work as hard or educate themselves to stay where they are. And it’s all about making people happy to be where they are even if it’s comfortably poor. These people actually think they’re getting away with something. The joke is on them.

But at any rate, bad policy takes decades to manifest itself in the shaping of the collectivist mind, the attitude that the common good outweighs the rights and successes of the individual. What’s yours is also mine. It’s that air of entitlement that the left needs so much to drive its mobs of newly uneducated.

This is why it was imperative to take over the National School System and to buy its way into public media, to control the message and to control the mind.

So now they have 51% of the vote. But here is the fatal flaw in their newest plan: It Doesn’t Work!

It can’t work. Every new set of Leftists throughout the recent history of Karl Marx think that this NEXT TIME will work, that every time before there was something done wrong and that THIS TIME they will make it work. They will take from the successful and buy their influence with the majority of less successful or just plain unsuccessful. Of course government has helped those less fortunate from actually being successful in so many ways by controlling access to capital, providing the standard, sub-standard education and by taxing money out of your pocket so that you can’t do anything with it yourself. BUT they’ll lend your money back to you if you want to go to college. Just as long as it’s the government hand you go running to for your sustenance, it’s good.

But subsequently the Left is always doomed to failure unless they can force you to stay and take it. This is why the Soviet Union had to build wall around the entire country and put people with guns in towers. But even doing that, people never stopped trying and dying to reach the other side of that wall. Why? Because they’d rather die than live the way they were living.  And this is the end-game of all totalitarian Marxist regimes.: Shortages, Hardship and Financial Ruin.  

When have you ever heard of a CAPITALIST PURGE? Never? That’s because freedom doesn’t need a purge. Joseph Stalin is “credited” with killing up to 50 MILLION Russian people during his bloody reign. Mao Tse-tung? He leads the way with up to 70 MILLION Chinese people. Then there was Pol Pot who only managed to kill 2 Million Vietnamese in his quest for a Communist farming society.

And who did these purges target? Smart People! If you had any brains or education you were TOAST! They didn’t want a guy/gal like you around telling people things. You were out in a bad way.

Knowing this, how can anybody speak in admiration of these killers? Yet Mao and Stalin are actually revered by the left. The Chinese totalitarian regime, though decidedly more Capitalist than Communist is still a totalitarian regime. No one has a vote and no one gets to decide how they are to be governed. They are told what to do and what to make. The government decides what it wants and it takes it. Just ask the people of Tibet. Way to go China!

But ultimately the Socialist Systems always crumble because they lack imagination and the freedom to pursue an idea. An idea like a personal computer or a new way of drawing oil from a place previously thought impossible. A Socialist System cannot think like this. It draws resources but cannot replace what it has taken nor increase its production since many times it will make what people don’t want. It ignores the Strongest Force in the World: The Market. And without that swirling force of ideas, risk, failures and triumphs, Socialism cannot stand.

So as of right now, The Federal Government has spent 17 times the country’s Gross National Product and has nothing to show for it. It has artificially held up its public workforce with tax money that has yet to be earned. But even the United States cannot defy gravity. Now Obama’s government owns the economy. Who can they blame?

It’s a shame that freedom loving peoples all over the world have to endure such misguided ideology and hardship but such is freedom that it has to be savored and revered to survive. It’s when people trade their freedom for the promise of a Pot o’ Gold is where the figure of man so imperfect still stumbles from time to time.

People will find alternatives. They'll join the underground economy and step away from the taxed goods. They'll vote with their feet and the successful will move to the red states. The country will stratify and there will be successful states and very, very unsuccessful states. The Federal overlords will eventually capitulate to the forces of the Market since the Government will be totally broke and the dependent class without it's mother's milk.

The wheels are already in motion.   

Washington State Legalizes Pot: One Week Later…

Overheard from a local advocate for the legalization of pot in Washington State:

“Oh man, my head! I’ve been smoking bombers for a week and I can’t think straight. Where are my keys? I can barely open my eyes. I’ve got to cut down on this shit. “Wheeze”, I can’t make it up these stairs! Why did I get a 4^th floor walk-up? Man, I think I’ve gained 20 pounds this week. I’ve gotta start back at the gym. I think I’ll take a couple weeks off of smoking Hoot. Where are my keys!?  Man, I’ve gotta start taking better care of myself. “

Once the novelty of marijuana being legalized wears off, people will return to normal and life in Washington State will go on. Yeah, people will go a little crazy but within a week or so it will all blow over except for maybe some saber rattling from some federal agency or another. It certainly won’t be Eric Holder; he’s in enough hot water what with conspiring to run guns to Mexico, conspiring to undermine the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution, being an accessory to the murder of a federal agent and many, many innocent Mexican citizens and lying about the whole thing. Mr. Holder and the federal government have lost the moral high ground, I would say.

Legalization of pot is just the first step. In order to kill the illegal drug trade and to dry up its resultant illegal money that is almost impossible to track and which has funded terrorist organizations all over the world including al-Qaida, we must legalize it all.

But more people will do drugs, comes the cry of the misinformed right wing which has much to lose if such a scenario should finally come about.

The answer is: No they won’t.

There could be an increase in experimentation but it’s not like anybody who wanted to get their hands on drugs couldn’t do so before. It’s almost literally on every street corner. Kids are exposed to drugs at a very early age, weren’t you? Are you a drug addict? I first saw marijuana in the 6^th grade which coincided with the first visit to our class by the local police drug education officers. Don’t know if they still do this sort of thing anymore. They still should.

Nobody grows up wanting to be addicted to drugs yet here they are and we as a society still don’t do the right thing to handle the situation. Although drugs are illegal, thanks to the bourgeois capitalist principle of supply and demand, they are everywhere and even the cops know their job isn’t to stop them but to make them pay. We have a judicial system in this country that’s only in it for the money. They can find you a jail cell but can’t find you a bed in a rehab center. That’s not the job of the State.

Let’s not pretend that people aren’t dying by the cart-load in this country because of illegal drug trafficking because they are. Good people, law enforcement people, innocent citizens and, of course, drug dealers. All because what they sell has been branded as illegitimate by the government.

This is a waste of resources and lives.

With what we spend on the multi-billion dollar corrections industry every year, which has the most people behind bars in the world, we could fund rehab for people who want it and need it. We could also watch terrorist organizations try to hold telethons to raise the cash they won’t be getting because people would be able to buy their drugs legally.

Although care should be taken to ease the nation into this, let’s not wait another 35 years for government to finally realize what most people already know.

The War on Drugs was a giant and wasteful failure.

Raising the Capital Gains Tax Hurts Every Working Person

For all you “Soak the Rich” types, one thing that should be explained is that everybody has something in the stock market. There are millions of small investors when compared to the super rich we keep hearing about. There are municipalities across this nation that have money in the stock market whether it be in floating bonds to pay for school systems and local infrastructure or town and city pension plans. They’re in there. And the small investors, people who have under $100,000.00 in scattered across different stocks like Verizon and Columbia Gas, aren’t exactly what you call wheeler-dealers in the stock market. For most people it has taken a working career to accumulate this sum.

Utilities are highly regulated and their stocks don’t swing far up or down but remain a steady source of income for retired people who have worked their whole lives to build up a nest egg. Many retired people have at least part of their savings in the stock market and it’s not particularly big money but along with a 401k and their Social Security, retired folks can live the way they were living prior to stopping working.

I want to add that these were also the people who the government stiffed out of their savings by taking over General Motors and royally screwing the small investor while practically handing the GM Union the company. Not rich people by any stretch of the imagination and actually many retired GM employees to boot!

It is the middle class investors who are the people most hurt by taxes on dividends and capital gains taxes, not the super-rich or the just plain rich who can either afford to pay the tax or more likely avoid them altogether. It’s Ma and Pa that are afraid to sell when capital gains rates go up or get whacked when they have to pay the higher rates on their dividends.

If you’re working and contributing to a 401k, you are going to see higher administration costs and fees. If you’re a small stock holder, you’re going to see a tax increase bite into your investment.

What’s that you’re saying? You don’t own any stocks in rich Wall Street traded companies so screw all the people who do? Here’s news for you:  Stock investment has been very easy for people for quite a while now. With an initial $250.00 a person can buy a big or small company’s stock direct without a broker and reinvest the dividends to purchase more stock so when it comes time to retire, they can then start to draw dividends to subsidize their other retirement savings. Many millions of people, regular middle-class people with jobs, have taken advantage of this savings option. If you have a bank account, you can have a stock account.

Plus, your private 401k as well as your teacher’s pension, your DPW pension, your Police and Firefighter’s pensions are in the stock market.

Now the government is going after this too to fund their unwieldy and on the verge of collapse welfare state.

But even if they do, it won’t be enough. Once the government gets their tax hikes, it won’t do anything to bring down the massive debt it has accumulated in just the last year, never mind the last 8 years. Even if the government declares everybody with a job “rich”, it won’t be enough. There just aren’t enough rich folks to take care of everybody else.

So when you hear people in government talking about raising the capital gains tax rates, they’re really talking about YOU.

Who did you vote for again?

Left Wing Nuts Come Out for Thanksgiving

Yes, I get it, Columbus was a killer. The difference between him and a thousand or so other people who landed on the north American continent back in the day was that Columbus made the new world pay. He found the gold and he found the slave trade. Ok, so now what?

This is the time of year where, perhaps emboldened by another four years of an Obama administration that is all for the tearing down long standing “White European” traditions, whatever they are, where everybody and their immigrant uncle rails against Thanksgiving and Christmas. While they’re at it they should unearth the truth about Plymouth Rock, the Liberty Bell and the Tooth Fairy.

I’ll have to say that 1492 was a long time ago yet I can’t get enough of hearing about how ruthless post Renaissance “Euro-Whitey” came over and exploited, deceived and murdered millions of peaceful, communal and environmentally friendly indigenous peoples of both South and North America.

Now I realize that one cannot discover a new land when there are already people living on it. It seems to me that the people living there must have discovered it first but I’m just plain tired of hearing about it over and over again every year. It’s really just annoying and it’s HISTORY.

My ancestors, the CELTS, were murdered, enslaved and walled off by the Romans. The Irish had the crap kicked out of them by the VIKINGS and were starved by the ENGLISH not half as long ago as when Columbus did his dirty work for crying out loud. When do we stop carping about the past and move on with our lives and our civilization?  

One of the statistics of the “New World” was that 90% of the indigenous population did not die from a bullet. Most of the Indians died of disease. Smallpox, a former scourge of human existence everywhere from the beginning of human history and which was finally eradicated from the world only in 1978, killed 1/3 of the population of Boston in 1730 and again in 1740. It generally killed one out of three Europeans it infected.  Do you hazard a guess as to the percentage of Indians it killed? Smallpox killed 98% of infected Indians. Sometimes it killed 100%. Disease killed entire villages, some who never even had a chance to lay their eyes on a white man, their bones littering the ground because there was no one left alive to bury them.

The difference was that the Europeans were living in the filth of their pack animals. They slept with them for warmth and caught their bovine and swine flus and the survivors built up immunities. The Indians of the Americas had no such animals and no such immunities. I don’t know what could have changed this fact.

If it wasn't Columbus who came over and went “Achoo!” then it would have been someone else. 
Perhaps an African, they got around in those days too. But it was inevitable that it was going to happen and I suppose it would be somebody else’s name these people would be cursing. Perhaps it would've been a guy named “Clarence”, “Clarence the Killer!”

And the idea of the “Noble Savage” is a bigger myth than that big “Euro-Whitey” Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox. The tribes were in a state of almost constant warfare with each other and the local indian tribe, the Wampanoag, originally embraced the Pilgrims in the hopes that they would help them in their efforts to repel the aggressive Narragansett of the Rhode Island territory.

The Incas and Aztecs were cannibals who practiced in ritual human sacrifice. There is also archeological evidence that the Native Americans of Arizona and New Mexico also ate human flesh.

In his 1586 memoir, "The True History of the Conquest of Mexico", published in 1632, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a man who actaully marched with  Cortez during the 1520 Spanish conquest of Mexico, describes scenes of ritual sacrifice that are astounding in their scope and savagery. It is one of the world’s great works and everyone should read it.

This is history warts and all and the history of America, like the hisotries of most countries, is the history of conquest. What land has not been taken from another? And the conquerors will not hold it forever either since someone else will surely come along and lay claim to what is under our feet.

But stop whining about it. It isn’t going to change. If you’re looking for a handout, perhaps you’ll get one but if you aren’t, just let it go already and move on.

Everybody knows what happened and its all water under the bridge. Nobody living in the U.S. now has ever owned a slave or oppressed an Indian. People like having a day of Thanksgiving and don't give a rat's patoot what the real origin of the day is.

This act is growing tiresome. Get a job!

Libertarians Unite

Yes I know that’s what is known as a Libertarian oxymoron since Libertarians are notorious non-joiners.

But the many individuals that make up the Libertarian consciousness have made an impact on this presidential election. It wasn’t an election that the Democrat won or the Republican would have won, it was an election where both parties lost.

Let’s take a look.

We had an incumbent president with a below 50% approval rating, presiding over a nation with a real unemployment rate of around 15% and whose wanton patronage of the Public Sector has now all but guaranteed the bankruptcy of this nation. The only boon to the economy president Obama has presided over is that the sale of guns has gone through the roof.

Then there is Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts who, as a businessman, managed to balance the state budget and put in place the Rainy Day fund that the now Governor, Deval Patrick, will rely on to keep the budget in balance since his management of the state has been less than stellar. But for all the good Romney has done with business and saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, he has tried too hard to be everything to everybody most of the time. His image as one sympathetic to big business did not help him and he never rose above a 50% approval rating either.

It was the Republican Party that has most resisted change this election cycle. Instead of embracing the masses of Tea Party groups that sprang up with the passage of the National Healthcare Initiative, the GOP fought them tooth and nail and even abandoned Tea Party candidates who were voted in as GOP candidates.

Neither did they embrace the Libertarians out there especially Ron Paul who, as the pillar of Libertarian principles, was branded a “Kook” and out of step with the mainstream. Dr. Paul was dismissed by mainstream conservative media and even had to withstand a withering attack by so called conservative radio talk show hosts across the nation.

And yet the Republican Party wonders out loud why they lost.

It has now come to light that the election wasn’t won or lost because of women’s issues or because the welfare nation has grown or even the rise of the Hispanic voting bloc. It was because 3 million registered Republicans stayed home and did not vote. It has also been reported that 8 million registered Democrats did not make it to the polls either. Also the voter turnout was less that the previous presidential contest featuring Obama vs. McCain. Looks like many voters just stayed home.

So how can you say a candidate would be a winner of such a contest?

There is no people’s mandate in this election. It only serves to prove that people wanted neither party.

Why? Because they are the same party, there is no difference.

I wonder what the vote would have looked like if "None of the Above" was on the ballot.

Election News: NPR First to Call Presidentail Race For Obama

Yes, its 8AM on the East Coast and the polls have just opened but National Public Radio has just confirmed that President Barak Obama has already garnered enough votes nationwide to gain re-election.

NPR, that bastion of fairness, unbiased reporting and pluralism, has assured the nation that they know better than everybody else that President Obama is the most deserving of being president this time and next time too and the vote will certainly be in his favor once all the strings have been pulled. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Why question their results?

It's over now so sit down and shut up if you know what's good for you.

Obama Needs Voter Fraud

The President can’t run on his record because all he has no record to speak of other than spending, spending and spending. There is also ObamaCare, a plan so ill-conceived that there isn’t enough money in the world today or tomorrow that could make it actually work. The Obama administration has not produced a workable budget in four years and has spent umpteen Trillions of dollars just to try to prop up the government and its vast bureaucratic hive of agencies and affiliates that the country won’t be paying back anytime soon.  It has been everything for the public sector at the expense of the private.

But we know all this. EVERYBODY knows all this!

So why is this guy so composed and so confident of victory this November?

Every private sector working person in this country, new citizen and native born, non-citizen and citizen, has got to be tired of seeing government institutions saved while their private enterprises crumble.

Who would vote this guy in for another four years?

Only people who THINK they will get ahead under another four years of Obama. People whose primary bread and butter is from the government. And there are plenty these days.

Public unions, Federal and State employees from the IRS to the TSA, Homeland Security and, of course, the “downtrodden” the people on the endless public dole, SSI, WIC and whatever other State tit sticking out of a government issue brassiere you can think of.

Then there are the Community Organizer/Activist ACORN-like organizations that the Obama Administration has cultivated in their “Get out the Vote” programs. This is the Obama administrations paid mob and voting "experts".

I suppose elections these days have become almost biblical in nature. The dead will rise but instead of ascending to heaven, they’ll go to the polls and vote.

Florida and California have uncovered massive voter fraud in there registration rolls. Voter fraud is everywhere and it can be attributable the loosening of the voter registration process under the “Motor/Voter” bills. These bills, where a person can register to vote while they’re getting their driver’s licenses renewed, is a perfect opportunity for fraud especially since many states are giving non-citizens the right to drive an automobile. The government cannot be relyed upon to administer this program because they're looking the other way.

So while you’re getting your illegal license or fake ID, you can also get your illegal voter registration. Onyango Obama, Barack Obama's uncle who was arrested for drunk driving last year had a valid driver's liscense for the state of Massachusetts even though he was in the country illegally. He was elegible to vote. He didn't but he could have. How did this happen? Because the state enables him and other illegals to do so. Their job is supposed to be to stop such things from happening but they didn't. Why? Because they get their marching orders, not from the people who pay their salaries but from their bosses who owe their jobs to the political kleptocrasy that passes for good governement these days.

One of the tenants of government is to administer voter registration. They aren't.  If they can’t then they should either scrap their Motor/ Voter registrations programs or simply deny non-citizens the right to drive.  Period.

Then there are the “Immigrant Advocates” and their ACLU legal storm-troopers that assail any efforts to cleanup state voting irregularities with law suits and accusations of racism.

There’s also the government itself. The Department of Justice has filed suit against states attempts to initiate Voter ID laws. Yet they look the other way when leftist groups like ACORN and the New Black Pathers attempt to undermine the vote in favor of Obama.

I suspect the New Black Panthers will be back on the street also since nothing happened to them last time since that blatant racist Eric Holder refused to prosecute them because they are "his people".

Wouldn’t we all want to know if people are voting legally in this country? I guess not.  When the state of Florida asked the Department of Homeland Security requesting access to their federal citizenship databases, they were denied.

These are the ways Obama plans to get re-elected. This is about getting votes and holding onto power!

To Obama, the Captain of a sinking ship is still the Captain.

The presidency of the United States is an opportunity that Barak Obama has squandered. He has abdicated sound judgment to promote disunion, chosen every path to chaos over unity and rewards failure over success. He grinds his ax for all to see.

His intellectual mission has either been to bring up the lower classes by bringing down the higher classes or he was aiming at just causing chaos from the beginning. But either way it is clear he favors chaos over order, class warfare over unity and spending over saving. To a man like this, any way justifys the means.

Obama may not have success on his side or truth or even substance but he has legions of fraud-meisters and that could be all that he needs.  

National Media “All In” For Obama

Everywhere you look there’s a dig at Mitt Romney. All media circles on the Internet have captions either proclaiming some gaff by Romney or some new accolade for the President.

Reuter’s, The Associated Press, NPR and MSN have always been in the bucket for Obama with their over-the-top gushing for everything Obama and overt bashing of everything Tea Party and Republican but every link is directly connected to something praising “our dear leader” or mentioning some slip on a banana peel by his “most disloyal opponent”.  They are all compromised in some fashion whether it’s a link or a directly published article. Quite frankly it’s disgusting how soundly these outfits have been bought and paid for by the government machine. 

Look at what's out there now on every outlet except for The Savage Nation and The Drudge Report. 

Google news is a great example because none of there so called “news” links have anything promising to say about Mitt Romney. None. There are no links with anything good to say about the presidential hopeful? I’ll bet there is, somewhere. But Google, for all their eggheads working there, can’t seem to come up with one. How strange.

Bottom line is that there are no longer any trusted news sources on the national level. If they can’t be trusted to bring you the news or even give us the real time line on the Bengazi consulate attack, then there is not a word to be believed in ANY of their content. You are on your own as a truth consumer. You’ll just have to go find it yourself and not rely on big media “News”. You’d be a fool to do so. Every story is suspect.

I think Mitt Romney fell for the latest news “plant” where Jeep “announced” they were moving production to China. Mitt’s people pounced on it but then Jeep came out and said they were doing nothing of the sort, in fact they were going to create more jobs in Detroit and that Mitt was lying about the whole thing. This smacks of a set-up. This is what the truth is up against in this country.

So what we have is a propaganda machine that has seen few rivals in the history of the world and will perhaps be the envy of Statists and Dictators everywhere.

So while you’re watching the Evening “news” on TV and thinking how wonderful we are to live in a free society, I’d say you should think again.

Crazed NY Mayor Disconnects From Reality, Endorses President Obama

One need not look any farther, indeed, if one should need more proof of how disconnected from mainstream realities Mayor for Life; Michael Bloomberg is. He just has no idea. He goes to his board meetings, checks his bank account, goes to his office and goes home with no inkling of what the real problems are and how they are to be solved.

The news is that it looks like Michael Bloomberg has taken a sidetrack in his excellency's most glorious efforts to ban the 64 oz. Soda in NYC to tilt at yet another windmill: Global Warming.

Oops, I meant “Climate Change”. I forgot that it’s not called Global Warming anymore. It’s called “Climate Change” now since it’s been proven 100 times over that the planet is not getting warmer.

There have been plenty of scientists who’ve shot holes through the “Climate Change” ruse too but as long as the Political Left still act like it’s a real thing and broadcast it daily on NPR and other government run media organizations, well I guess we’ll continue to hear about it.

So with the Federal Government spending itself into default, companies continuing to close or laying off thousands of workers to join the millions of people already out of work, regulations strangling the businesses that remain, Increased taxes looming, people who are working going years without a raise, States ability to hold up its bloated public workforces dwindling at the resultant drop in tax revenue, a crumbling infrastructure and failure at every level of our government, what monumental cause does Mayor Michael Bloomberg choose to champion?

Climate Change!

That’s the biggest cause of the country's problems in Mayor Bloomberg’s Ivory Tower.

Who still thinks this man is a rational human being?

New York is facing a $6 Billion dollar bill for the latest Tropical Storm Turned Campaign Issue: Sandy. How does one get the government to turn up the printing press to get New York the dough? What have they got left to sell? I know, endorse Obama for re-election! Yay, we’re saved!

So Mayor Bloomberg has taken his neatly pressed Brown Shirt out of the closet to march along with the Global Warm…I mean Climate Change crowd to now hail Obama. Hail Obama!

And like everybody else who is either endorsing or voting for President Obama this time around, Bloomberg can't think of a good reason other than to say that it’s President Obama who recognizes this looming threat to the world and that Mitt Romney just hasn't embraced the cause. Talk about pulling an excuse out of your ass!

This is the best this guy can come up with? Somebody throw a net over him already. It's really hard to listen to.

This country needs a better environment alright. A better environment for BUSINESS! Especially small business. Because right now it STINKS! And the reason it stinks is people like Bloomberg who either don't know or don’t care about what anybody else but themselves are doing, saying or thinking.

Climate change?  

Are you shittin me?!!

Vote For Obama And Stick It To Whitey

It seems the only people who are voting for Obama these days are white liberals and people of color. They all have many detailed and varied reasons to do this: Because he is black.

They don’t even know why they’re voting for the guy and they don’t care. He’s black and he’s sticking it to whitey. Rich, racist, whitey. That’s all they care to know. Even the white liberals want to stick it to whitey.

There is so much we don’t know about Mr. Obama. We can’t see what he’s written in college and we don’t even know if his birth certificate is real. You think the nurse runs into the office and types a certificate as soon as a kid is born? Nope, the doctor first writes the parent’s names and birth information by hand. Where is THAT document? I have mine.

But that doesn't matter. We do know he’s black and that’s good enough for his major voting group: black and hispanic people. Ignorance is bliss.

We have a funny idea of what compassion really is in this country over the last several decades. Is compassion handing out Section 8 rent vouchers, EBT cards and free health care? Or is compassion about having the opportunity to do things on your own? Should government be in the business of carrying liabilities at other’s expense or should they be in the business of diminishing liabilities by providing a level field of play for all to excel and to contribute to a healthy society and a fulfilling life?

It’s clear that Romney has a better grasp of the state of the economy than president Obama. This is because he knows where money actually comes from. Love him or hate him, Mitt Romney is a “money guy”.

All Obama has to fall back on, since he’s made a bad situation so much worse by spending up the deficit, is racial division.

There are still many black people who think that Obama’s failure as a president is because of Whitey. There are black folks who think white people have it in for them to the point of extermination. They hold an innate animosity and distrust towards all white people regardless of ancestry. This is not only unfair, but profoundly racist. This is a racism that many black people are born into. They get if from their folks and the people they grow up with. It is environmental. Now where have I heard that before?

I have a friend who happens to be black. He was being held back in his job and was unable to advance. He felt it was because they were white and he was not. They may have even have made a racial comment but it seems to be a vague reference. He quit and went elsewhere and he’s happier and doing better.

I related a similar experience where I worked. I was also being held back and passed over even for a job I was holding at the time while a candidate for the permanent position. I didn’t get it. There were comments and none too vague. The only thing I couldn’t pin it on was because I was black since I’m not.

I have been told that since I’m not black, I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be put in such a position and my answer was: “Shove it up your ass!” I got jobbed, you got jobbed. WE got jobbed.

The difference is that I can recognize it for what is. One of us is in denial.

I was born in the Boston projects. We got out. I was told that it was because we had the privilege of being white. But other white people did not get out. How’d that privilege work for them? And there were black families that got out too. How does that work? I thought they weren’t privileged? Blow it out your ass!

I’ve just spent the past week in Nashville, TN near the grounds of Vanderbilt University. I saw many young professionals there like doctors and businessmen and they are black. Was whitey holding them back? Oh, I see, whitey WOULD have held them back if they had the chance.

Whitey can’t win this argument. 

Barak Obama has become the most divisive president since Woodrow Wilson. He needs this racial division, he needs the La Razas of this country to rise up and vote for him because he’s black. He needs voter fraud and underhanded election skulldugery because his ideas aren't supported by the majority of Americans still working in this country. Obama needs the liberal media sheep on his side bleeting the party line because he's made so many errors in judgement it's hard to imagine he's still taken seriously.

But most of all Obama needs racial hatred. That will get out the vote for him. He will motivate the growing hispanic masses and established liberal haters to go to the polls for fear of a Great White Satan who will try to unite the country and give it back to their repressive European masters for only Obama knows them like whitey will never know them.

But they’ll be cutting their own throats. There can be no redistribution if there is no wealth. You can’t hand out what you don’t have coming in and the leftist, wealth destroying policies that Obama champions will eventually cause all these giveaways to dry up.

When that happens you won’t be able to blame Congress, the Republicans or Whitey.  

After this, there'll be no one left to blame but themselves.

Obama Offers Only Lip Service In Third Debate

From his tough talk on China to his love for Israel, President Obama will say anything to get re-elected.

But his actions have never reflected his words.

He’s had four years to deliver those tough words to China but he never has.

He hasn’t proven to be the best friend of Israel either, preferring to throw them under the bus in his dogged pursuit of acceptance by the Muslims of the North African nations. He’s had four years to prove his balance in the Middle East and we have yet to see it.

He said that he has bet on the American worker but he has chosen the wrong American worker. He continues to support the public unions with his education drive over the private sector American worker. The difference here is that the public sector, government, doesn’t actually produce anything. They don’t make pocket combs.

Obama’s idea of research is backing experimental companies with public funds…and losing. His green companies have not thrived. Quite the opposite really.

I especially liked Obama taking credit for the ending of the Iraq war and coming into office while there were two wars. This is odd to me because the wars haven’t ended. There’s still fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and then there was that intervention in Libya, a third war front. Where are the war endings? I don’t see any wars ending. I also have a vague recollection about closing the prison at Gitmo which is still in business.

A policy that seeks to expand government is a policy that will continue to drain the economy with increasing diminished returns. If government takes $ 5 Trillion out of the private sector in the form of taxes, that is $5 Trillion less that the private sector has to spend. If you give that money to the teachers, what will come back? A bunch of educated unemployed people. That’s just dandy!

What you won’t see is the businesses, the goods and the opportunities that weren’t created because of the lack of capital. You won’t see it because it was never created. This is the difference between government and the private sector. The private sector produces goods and generates revenue and government taxes and spends that revenue for its own works. You don’t have a choice and you don’t have a voice in its dispersal. The only money you can control is the money in your pocket, the money you've earned, after the government takes their cut.

President Obama is sticking to his ideology; Government provides, education must be funded and expanded and government picking its pet projects and punishing entities like coal and oil should continue. For his Socialist Vision, the President will go out on his shield but he should go out just the same. His positions are untenable and the country will suffer for his ideology.

Socialism and Redistribution of resources by government in reality has always lacked imagination. It is an unwieldy and cumbersome archaic idea that has already been tried and tried and has failed and failed. How boring to see this all unfold again.

But the President is going to stick to his agenda until some other force; the American people perhaps, can intercede. That’s why he’s in “Say Anything” mode. All he wants is to get back in office to continue his mission of upending the institutions that have made America the world’s largest economy.

And that all depends if you can believe what he says.

Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: TT the Bears Place

TT the Bear's Place had it's final shows on the evening of July 25, 2015. They have now closed their doors forever. Whether it's a testament to their location, their business model, for what it was, or sheer luck that they lasted as long as they did when other clubs went out, I don't know.

Located on 10 Brookline St in Central Square just off the corner with Mass Ave, TT the Bears Place or better known as “TT’s” is one of only a select few rock clubs that was part of the Boston original music scene in the 1980s that is still in business. Johnny Ds is another.

Places like the Plough & Stars were open at the time but decidedly NOT rock clubs. Not many rock and roll bars survived for long in the land of “Soda & Lime” which is how I describe Cambridge, which certainly was not a town with a reputation for beer drinkers. You would be better off to open a Tall Man’s clothing shop in Tokyo than a rock club in Cambridge, MA.  

At the time, as I can recall, there was anywhere between 14 to16 original rock and roll venues open at any one time in Boston. Some of these were: Jonathan Swifts, TTs, Jack’s, The Rat, Storyville, The Insquare Men’s Bar, The Channel, Green St. Station in J.P., Club III in Somerville, Bunratty’s, The Paradise, Johnny Ds, Harper’s Ferry, Chet’s Last Call, O’Brians and Ed Burke’s in J.P. There seemed to be no lack of places to play and many of the most popular acts like Til Tuesday, Berlin Airlift, Scruffy the Cat, City Thrills, Robin Lane, The Del Fuegos, The Dogmatics, The Stompers and The Neighborhoods we out playing a couple of nights a week. These bands were tight as anything out there since they were working so much.

Our band, Cool McCool, played TT’s maybe about a dozen times in the 6 years we banged around the Boston music scene. We started on a Tuesday of course but never really worked our way into the place past Thursday. You have to draw in this business and although most shows were well attended, we never could pack the place like they always insisted.

We were part of the RosBury Sound (Roslindale/West Roxbury) group of bands of which ourselves, Uncalled For, Stop Calling Me Frank, The Visigoths and The Infections were the better known and it was always a struggle to get people from that area into Cambridge on, say, a Wednesday for an 11 o’clock set. Hell, it wasn’t like they made it easy for you since it was cheaper to get into the Channel, the beer was more expensive there and they didn’t give you a lot of time to play.

A 45 minute set was the most you were ever going to get and many times you didn’t get that. A 30 minute set was always a looming possibility. You just never knew how many bands were going to show up on your night. And if you couldn’t make the 6 o’clock sound check, you were bumped to the last band to step on stage on a work night but none of this was an uncommon practice on the “New Music” or in other words: “ No Money” scene. Not exactly the stuff of legends.

Come to think of it, I really can’t recall anybody of note playing there beyond an occasional Barrance Whitfield and Pajama Slave Dancers double bill. No, TT the Bear’s Place’s stock and trade seemed to come from beating on Boston’s newest bands to bring a drinking draw since they’d give you a gig to start playing somewhere.  Chet’s was at least a square deal but if Chet wouldn’t book you, the next step on the ladder to the bottom that had its own sound system was TT the Bear’s Place.

We could never figure out where all the money TT’s was fleecing the bands out of was going except perhaps up the noses of management. It was six bucks to get in to see your friends play for 30 minutes and the beers, Bud bottles, were like $2.50 and they hardly paid the bands anything in comparison to the draw. I don’t think we ever walked out of there with anything more than $50.00 for the band with 2 free drinks each. If you said anything they’d just tell you to go play someplace else. Needless to say, I was never a fan of that business model.

Musically it wasn’t a bad place to play. The people were cool, the sound was good, people seemed to enjoy our stuff and we managed to get our underage entourage past the doormen (again) with that old standby, “the Roadie Ruse”. But there were a few things that I remember happened there:

At one show James, our guitar player, was having a hard time keeping the guitar in tune. This sort of thing didn’t happen all the time but there are some days you just don’t hear so well and the tuner isn't helping in a room full of chatting rock & roll fans. Anyway the soundman had enough of that after the second song and left his station, took a running leap up onto the front of the stage, takes James’s guitar, tunes it, hands it back to him without a word and goes back to his business as soundman. Then with a quick look to see if everyone was ready we jump straight into the next song on the setlist like nothing happened.

To this day James does not remember the incident. He was probably more concerned with losing the extra minute since we never seemed to have enough of those when we played TT’s.

Another time we were less than a half hour from the first band going on when a woman at the bar right across from me just straight up, mid-sentence, eyes rolling into the head, over backwards, passes out cold (warning: if you’re going to take “downers” don’t chase them with a shot!). So they call an ambulance but two show up coming from opposite ends of the street (Brookline St. is a one-way), causing a totally messed up traffic jam with the drivers out of the vehicles arguing which one is going to take the lady and delaying anything musical from happening for over an hour. I think we all got 20 minutes that night even though the right amount of bands had shown up. It figures.

After 1990, when I got out of the Boston “Originals” rooms and into the GB circuit, I never set foot in TT’s ever again. To quote James recently about the place: “They weren’t that great but they never totally pissed us off and for the Boston music scene in those days that was good enough.”

As for me, Chet’s, Green Street, The Channel, I miss being at and playing those places. TT’s, I miss not at all.

Obama Doesn’t Understand Business

Each debate paints a more cohesive picture in regard to President Obama's business acumen.

He has none.

It’s clear he doesn’t know the difference between Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code. And neither do many of the people who will vote for him again as president.

The President didn’t “Save” General Motors. General Motors filed Chapter 11, a legal motion to restructure its debt and to reach new agreements with its creditors and contracts with its unions. The only change that occurs is the terms of the company’s debt and so business continues. The company does not get liquidated and disappear. So to say the government saved General Motors is not the truth. What the government did by buying into GM was to save the GM Union from having to take a step back from the crazy money they make and the sumptuous benefits they enjoy. And all at the expense of the people who invested their money in the company. It's the GM shareholders: retirees, town governments and regular people, who got the shaft on their investments when the government voided their stock holdings. This is what the Obama administration did. And General Motors, despite of what you may hear, isn't out of the woods as far as it's solvency is concerned, they still have a flawed business structure which it has yet to address.

President Obama is counting on the American people not to know the difference between Chapters 7 and 11 also.  

But other aspects of the economy and business seem to either elude or just doesn’t have an effect on the President’s policies toward a vibrant economic recovery for the nation.

Regulating business: The cost of doing business in this country is high. There are permits and restrictions on business, some good and some bad but all cost money and contribute to overhead.

And who bears the costs of compliance with all these State and Federal regulations? The businesses themselves, of course. All businesses have to hire their own people to make sure that they are in compliance with all the articles of regulation and tax that they are responsible for.  There is no write-off for these expenditures. They're expenditures.

It's not just an issue of good business practices, some of these regulations are out of control like the Americans with Disabilities Act which almost closed every public pool in the state of Massachusetts this Summer before it was put on hold, required all public pools to have a lift to transport disabled people into and out of the pool. A nice idea but so costly that the pools had decided that it was better to just close. The requirement has not gone away, it’s just on hold. There is also the provision in the ADA that requires public buildings to have elevators if there is a second floor. Elevators are very costly to purchase, install and maintain. This is a prohibitive sum in purchase and maintenance costs.

There are also permits, insurance, certification and licensing to starting a business that have become a burden to the point that many businesses cannot become legitimate in the eyes of government and remain thus restricted and under the table.

Then there are the taxes. The Federal tax rate on business runs from 15% to 35%. Then there are the State taxes, local property taxe, taxes on income, sales and even exise taxes on unsold inventory. There are taxes on utility bills, phone bills, shipping and purchasing. Add to that unemployement taxes, workers compensation taxes and the cost of offering a subsidy for health insurance for employees.

All this contributes to a businesses’ “Overhead” or the cost of doing business before they collect a penny in sales.

Currently the climate for American business is bad based on all of the above.

The more overhead, the less profit. The less profit, the less expansion. The less expansion, the less hiring. The less hiring, the less payroll and income taxes that are collected. It is an inevitable downward spiral of Socialism. There is no balance, only eventual failure.

Mitt Romney has proposed to drop some of this overhead. Obama isn’t on board with that right now, he's got a big government to feed.

President Obama believes if the government buys enough Chevy Volts that General Motors will become solvent. He also believes that if the government spends enough money, the economy will turn around. They also believe that by the Federal Reserve purchasing mortgage debt with printed money and deficit spending, that this will help lift up a sagging economy.

Does anybody believe this will happen?

The more taxes and fees go up, the more businesses that will close under the pressure and the less money gets collected. The government; Federal, State and Local have many mouths to feed. If tax revenues fall, these governing bodies will have to start letting some people go.

This they should understand.

With the governments faith in the so called “Green Business” to the tune of handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in support money starting to show real collapse and failure, one can draw the clear conclusion that government interference in the marketplace is never a good idea.

This particular failure falls squarely on the shoulders of the Obama administration.

In order to support business one must know what it takes to run a business and there are few in the current administration that have done that. Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner is one and President Obama is another. Vice President Joe Biden is yet another. Together they have zero business experience, being mainly long time bureaucrats, and it shows in their understanding of the country’s economy and business atmosphere. This is not an encouraging scenario.

And here we are. Do you go to the guy who’s had a business for a job or do you go to a guy who’s never had a business and who’s only jobs were on the public payrolls?

So what’s the answer?

Both Republicans and Democrats Complicit in U.S. Decline

Neither side is without blame for the mess we’re in. Both sides voted for the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and both sides continue to support them. Both sides have intervened in the affairs of foreign nations and both sides spend money like sailors on shore leave in their attempts to buy the vote from one group or another.  

George Bush proposed a stimulus package and both the Republicans and Democrats voted for it. The new Democratic administration proposed another stimulus package and  the Democrats and Republicans voted for it and also asked for the funds knowing full well that those funds were adding to the deficit.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats have neglected to mandate balanced budgets or fiscal responsibility based on the financial realities that face every working citizen in this country every goddamned day. They are above such things and are actually exempt from the laws they themselves pass.

Since the advent of Medicare and the Great Society, each administration has been kicking another brick under the pyramid in order to prop up bad policy and to pass the debt for such on to a new generation. There isn’t a whole lot of difference between either party from what recent history reveals. Each change brings more spending on entitlements and increased costs for people who only want to get ahead in this world so they’ll have enough to raise and educate their children and have enough to live comfortably in their retirement years.

The government should have nothing to do with any of that.

But here they are, inside every major system in the country and making a shambles out of it. The public school systems across the nation are shameful in their costs and failure to deliver results on a par with other nations. To them it is all about the lunch programs or teaching diversity whereas in other nations it’s all about math and science. There is nothing in the Constitution that says the Federal Government, the people who are supposed to be providing for our common defense and creating a level playing field for business, should be involved with the day to day minutia of what’s going on in a public school. That’s for the States to provide.  And the result of the Federal Government buying its way into the public school system is increased requests now for them to fix it. Go figure. It's like asking an arsonist for help putting out a fire.

There is also no mandate for the government to be involved in your medical care but there they are stacking yet another bureaucratic plan on top of the other past bureaucratic plans before it and each infusing more money into it to cover for it's failures.

And throughout it all, each administration, Republican or Democrat, has added to the mess, raised the debt ceiling, voted for the unfunded mandate and attempted to fix the previous administrations fiscal missteps by either throwing more money at it or paying out less in benefits.

So now when a Republican  presidential hopeful comes along and says he wants to right the sinking ship, they have little to stand on. The Republicans like Paul Ryan actually asked for stimulus money for his state. Many Republicans have asked just like many Democrats have asked. Yes, to their credit there were also Republicans who refused stimulus funds, they get it, but they are but a cry in the wilderness.  And I'll only mention RomneyCare.

But ultimately, it’s just all about the dough to these bureaucrats, each clamoring for Federal money for their state and bowing to all the conditions and strings attached to it no matter whether it’s harmful to the nation and its people in the long run. The Congress has gone along with many hair brained spending scemes like "No Child Left Behind" and "Medicaid Plan B" prescription benefit plan.

The Federal Government has become a giant "Make Work" program and results are not as important as long as the government checks keep coming in. Since government doesn'ctually produce anything, this sends the country into deficit.

Even those crusaders for reform have skeletons in their closets voting for stimulus packages, requesting government money and voting for endless wars or crazy spending by past administrations. No one, it seems, has any moral high ground anymore. We’ve become a society too easily bought and it shows.

But there is now a nation of people the government has to support and much of it is mandated by law.  This is really what the people will decide in November: Which side can keep those checks coming?

By the way things are looking, the answer will probably be: Neither.