Any person can "sound" great, but to be of any value one's words must have meaning. Let me give you a couple of examples.

WORDS HAVE MEANING

We have a new American President who some months ago said that we had to spend trillions of dollars in the short term to insure prosperity in the long term. Of course that doesn't make sense and he got away with it because of the way he phrased it. His actual quote was, "...we must add to our deficits in the short-term to provide immediate relief to families and get our economy moving."

When said that way, it sounds wonderful. The problem is that trillions of dollars in deficits provides precious little—if any—relief in the short term: None in the long term. We simply cannot get "our economy moving" by saddling ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and even our great grandchildren with a bill for trillions of dollars. That, dear reader, is not temporary, prosperous or economically viable.

And while I’m on the subject… I never thought I would live in a country where the government could tell a private company to ditch their CEO. That sort of thing was okay for the old USSR but in America? Unbelievable.

Don’t tell me we had to do something. That’s a crock. Two wrongs don’t make a right, either. Just because some monster company took a handout—granted a HUGE handout—from the government does not make it right that the government should start taking over. In truth, the government shouldn’t have been handing money out like it was freshly printed monopoly money. If a business has problems that it can’t dig itself out of it should go belly-up. I don’t care how big it is.

The problem with the economy is not one related to Free Enterprise or Capitalism. I know that sounds like a big horse pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. There were specific problems that the Bush administration tried to address as far back as the early 2000s. It was democrats that blocked those recommendations and the very things that are on record as being predicted, have now happened. Also, banks didn’t just decide to abandon sound lending policies and throw money at people who were unlikely to pay it back. The banks were practically strong-armed into making bad loans.

Oh, I'm sure some of you are about to blow your stack about now. I can just hear it: "Tolleson, you capitalistic pig, the problem with our economy isn't a Democratic or Republican issue! We've let too many crooks get away with financial murder!"

Well, you're partly right: It's just that the crooks who got away with financial murder were the Democrats who now run the show by covering up their tracks with high and mighty sound bites.

And no, I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.

Have a look at the this news item:

YOUTUBE: SEPTEMBER 24, 2004 REPORT

Or this one:

YOUTUBE: DEMOCRATS FIGHT REGULATION IN 2004

Or any of these more than sixty video clips of crooks in their own words:

YOUTUBE: 60 PLUS VIDEO CLIPS ON FANNIE MAE HEARINGS

And then on top of all of this came the bailout money. (The term "bailout" works only if you think of the economy as plane in flight and we just bailed out without parachutes.)

Here's a simple truth: If you're in debt up to your eyeballs, you don’t get out of debt by incurring additional interest owed on a new loan. Even though paper money has no intrinsic value, whenever it is borrowed, loaned or printed, it cost more of it.

If you really want to know the truth, then get your head out of the sand and stop listening to the soundbites thrown at you by the Washington crowd. Where to look? Well, if you avoid the goose-stepping mainstream media you’ll learn a lot. But pay attention when looking for the truth: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth are three separate things and when one is absent, you are being fed an agenda.

The truth about the rich, for example...

THE RICH DON’T PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE

Those rich fat cats get away with everything. For example, the filthy rich top 5% of wage earners pay over half (about 54%) of the taxes collected in this country. Drop down the pay scale a bit and include the nearly filthy rich and the top 10% of the wage earners pay about 65% of ALL taxes collected. Drop down the pay scale a bit more to include the “well to do” and we find that nearly the entire burden of taxation—roughly 3½ to 4% shy of the ENTIRE collection of taxes is paid by the top 50% of wage earners. Not 50% of everybody, but rather just half of the top wage earners are paying roughly 96% of all taxes. This group also includes mom and pop operations that hire employees while paying other business-related expenses, overhead, fees and taxes,

If you have Excel, you can look at the numbers for yourself at the IRS web site:

IRS EXCEL 2003 TABLE REGARDING WHO PAYS TAXES

Those are 2003 figures released in late 2005. The current projections are equally staggering. In short, the so-called “rich” are getting taken to the cleaners.

I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture.

Next time maybe I'll discuss the meaning of the words, "Obama tax plan." Here a preview: The "rich" aren't the only people being taken to the cleaners.