mike and ruth

It is that time of year… it snows one day and then the next it is 50 degree farenheit. Then the next day it clouds up and snows again. This week finished up with a storm. The snow started early Thursday evening and when I went home Friday morning I had to sweep at least six inches of snow off of the car. I shoveled the walks when I came home and a few hours later the neighbors came by again with a four-wheeler that had a plow on the front, clearing off all the walks. The snow continued for part of the day but it warmed up and the plows were out, to the snow on the street didn’t last too long. Now mind you I am not complaining about it, heaven forbid we get even a small taste of the humongous storms that have plauged the eastern states for the past month! However it is interesting that in the west we have had relatively small snow amounts (remember the Olympics in the northwest? Not enough snow!) but the east has really been pounded. The picture at the left is from my siter-in-law and was taken by someone to show how much snow is on the ground in Maryland. We still have snow on the grass here, but the afternoon was fairly warm. The low temperature last night was below freezing. Not only was there snow left on the ground but heavy frost on the windows this morning. A nice contrast to the last few days. Last April after a few weeks of spring weather we had a huge snowstorm that left almost a foot in our front yard and hundreds of trees in the city with broken branches. Hopefully we will get more snow and rain this spring; we really need the moisture. Northern Utah is currently only at about 65 percent of normal for precipitation while southern Utah is about 130 percent of normal. They may have flooding again in that part of the state. All we can hope and pray for is enough moisture because with the population increase here and the demands of the western and soutwestern states for more of the water we are already supplying, we need all we can handle.

Grandma Hill celebrated her 87th birthday a few weeks ago. Several of her daughters went to her home and fixed lunch for her and them, and stayed to have a nice lunch party for her. Happy Birthday Grandma! We love you and hope you are around a long time to give your love and example to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren!

Quentin and Sharisse came to our home tonight and we had a nice dinner and birthday celebration with them. WE don’t get to see them as often as we would like to since they live about an hour away, and work keeps them busy along with school and other commitments. Sharisse made a wonderful birthday cake and Tamara made some delicious cheese rolls to go with the wonderful dinner Mom prepared. We invited everyone and they all came, so we had Rosie, Tamara, Charlotte and their families along with the four of us at home. It was a pretty good crowd. Dad was asleep through dinner but got up in time to get some cake and take photos of Quentin opening some gifts. I think you might say that he “did pretty well” considering what Sharisse got for him along with the rest of us. It is so fun to have everyone together, something we need to do more often because the family is growing and growing. Two more grandchildren will be coming along in the next few months, for which we are very excited. We are so grateful for each of our children and it was fun to have then and our grandkids here tonight!

As we have seen portions of the Olympic Games broadcast from Canada this week we have thought many times about the many talents that each person participating in the games has worked so hard to develop and use. In spite of the differences between cultures we have also seen a lot of comaraderie amonst the participants; more than I would have expected to see, especially at times between countries that have had less than friendly relationships in other venues. It reminds me of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City where there were concerts and other cultural events referred to as the “Cultural Olympiad” where music making and other fine arts were shared with the Olympic Audiences in the evenings. At the same time I have thought about a family who went on a local skiing trip last week and had to come home without their patriarch. Steven Rowley went with his family members to enjoy an evening of skiing, leaving his wife and one of his sons at home because they had other commitments. They never saw him alive again and the injuries that caused his death at age 52 are somewhat of a mystery. He was found unconscious somewhere on the hill with severe internal injuries and was not able to be revived by EMTs on the scene. We attended his funeral services today, which were a celebration of his life and that of his family. It was a combination of happy and sad as events which filled his life were explained and described. His family loves him and he loved them too. They will be alright but the pain and sorrow will take some time to overcome. We pray for them as well as others who may be in the same situation. The athletes at the Olympics did their best today. Some won gold medals, others with high expectations had unexpected issues and were out of the running even before the final events in their fields. Life is precious. We all need to look at the positive side of every situation and stop dwelling on negative things. The circumstances we find ourselves in, whatever they may be, could probably be worse than they are. Think of the people in Haiti. Many of them have lost absolutely everything. We need to be more grateful for what we have, including friends and family, homes, relative peace, health, and food.

I thought the following was an excellent essay on why the national debt is such a big issue. Thanks Glenn!

Published Tuesday , February 02, 2010 on FOX NEWS, By Glenn Beck
I want to talk to you about a couple things.
First, we need to stop living in a fantasy. America has fundamentally changed: We’re not going back to where it was unless we admit we have a problem. And it’s all based on one word: debt.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789:
“Then I say, the Earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”
Remember the debt clock? When I looked at it the other day, I was really encouraged. Take a look: Does anything jump out at you?
One line is actually going down: personal debt. Across the whole line, our personal debt is shrinking.
Now, my first hope was that hey, maybe that’s the common sense effect. People have actually listened and gotten out of debt; they’ve stopped spending money they don’t have on credit!
Uh, no. Unfortunately, that’s not it.
People aren’t paying off their debts; they’re defaulting on them. When you default on a credit card loan, the money goes back up on the “national debt” line. It’s the same thing with mortgages.
Now let’s compare a couple of charts.
If this were a normal time, we’d assume that drop in residential mortgage loans outstanding meant that people are paying off their mortgages. But we know it’s not normal times because it’s coupled with a spike in the number of distressed mortgages. The banks are foreclosing on so many mortgages and so many people are delinquent, they aren’t paying.
You may as well make me the Grim Reaper today, but the bad news is banks are not foreclosing on as many mortgages as they should.
The banks don’t want to foreclose on the mortgages or the credit cards because they’d have to write it off. Which means more money from the Fed in their reserve and they’d be telling clients “uh-huh, we are in trouble.” So they are just leaving them alone. And beyond that, they are motivated because Big Brother is standing over their shoulder saying “don’t foreclose on these people! If you do we are coming after you.” It’s that attitude that caused the problem in the first place. The same thing is happening with credit card debt.
So now what? We keep hearing from progressives that the federal debt is not like personal debt; we just can’t comprehend it. With the federal debt, we have to spend our way out of this recession — as Congressman Clyburn just said:
REP. JAMES CLYBURN, D-S.C.: We are not going to save our way out of this recession. We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession.
That doesn’t make any sense, but that is what TARP is all about. Remember that $700 billion that took our breath away? That’s just a down payment; it’s actually a slush fund they can draw from as long as they want.
Our problem is, we haven’t learned from history. Most Americans are completely unaware of the huge bailout of 1895. Back then there was a massive financial problem and, like this time, a bailout. Only this wasn’t the government bailing out big, evil corporations. In 1895, it was a big, evil corporation bailing out the U.S. government.
Mainly because of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, U.S. Treasury reserves had shrunk to under $100 million. The federal government was just about broke. So, J.P. Morgan and his group stepped in to replenish the United States government with $62 million in gold reserves to shore it up.
Morgan had already bailed out the U.S. Army payroll in 1877. By 1907, after Morgan also bailed out Wall Street, there was sentiment that we should get away from J.P. Morgan and not be beholden to him. The progressives at that time made the case that we should never owe anyone like that; that owing them that much would give them too much control.
Now, fast-forward 100 years and J.P. Morgan’s bank — JP Morgan Chase — is bailed out by the U.S. government and is now being vilified for it. The progressives learned the lesson; JP Morgan Chase forgot it. And the rest of us all stood by and should have seen all of this coming.
Just like it was bad that the government was owned by J.P. Morgan, it’s equally as bad to have the government own JP Morgan Chase; the bank owning the government would tell government what to do, just like the government is now telling banks what to do.
With J.P. Morgan at the turn of the century it was his gold. But this isn’t the government’s gold. Where is the government borrowing the money to control the banks? China.
So? Why is that bad? Why shouldn’t we borrow all this money from China?
Well, when I first became a small businessman, I vowed not to borrow any money. I remember telling my dad, who owned a bakery, “You don’t have a boss.” He replied, “Everyone has a boss. My boss is the bank.”
Mr. President, everyone has a boss. Our president’s boss is now the bank of China.
When we found out that China was selling our children lead painted toys and poisoned dog food, did anyone wonder why George Bush didn’t say anything? Imagine if an American or British company were selling our kids chewable, lead-based toys? We would have hammered them. Why didn’t we say anything to China? For the same reason you usually don’t stick your finger in your boss’s chest: You don’t bite the hand that feeds you!
China now rules the world. Worse, the White House has gone even further for China. The White House has directed U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority placed on intelligence collection on China, resulting in opposition from top agents who fear the move will badly hit efforts to obtain secrets about Beijing’s military program and its cyber attacks on U.S. targets.
But don’t worry. I’m told by contacts with the CIA, that we only experience cyber attacks from China daily.
When we can’t say “stay away from our secrets” because we can’t lose their money, we’ve become slaves to them. But beyond just being afraid to stand up to them; maybe this is some sort of payment to the Chinese.
By not tracking their spy activities we’re actually just paying a higher interest rate on our loans or when we allow them to steal our “stealth technology,” maybe that’s a payment on the principle. I’ve said before, as soon as China demands a higher interest rate, it’s over. And everyone said, no, no, that’ll never happen. That’s not in their best interest.
Really? What is this move by Obama? But don’t worry about it, Obama told us during the State of the Union that we’ll double our exports — so, even if they steal all our stuff, we’ll still make it anyway and we’ll just make it cheaper than they do, right?
We’re already hearing, as we did during the State of the Union address, that the worst of this is over. They’ll start pointing to the GDP growth in the 4th quarter of around 5.7 percent as proof that they have fixed the problem. But they haven’t. They haven’t spent two-thirds of the stimulus money yet because they’re saving it for election season this fall. The Democrats need it to look like our economic problems have been solved.
But here’s our problem: Our debt is unsustainable. There is no J.P. Morgan who can loan us $107 trillion. We long ago dropped the gold standard. We don’t manufacture anything to sell for profit anymore.
Even during the Great Depression, we had three things missing from the terrible situation we faced then, that are not missing now:
One: massive debt was missing. Our debt to GDP ration in 1929 was about 16.3 percent. In 2009 it was 83 percent. This year it’s estimated that it will be 94 percent and in 2011 it will be 99 percent. Unsustainable.
Two: unfunded liabilities. There was no Social Security or Medicare program to fund. This is our most crushing debt — $107 trillion and counting. There is no way to ever pay that off.
Three: We didn’t have the total personal debt. People were not living lifestyles on credit.
So what can we do with a debt that is unsustainable? We can get out of debt ourselves. We can take control of our personal financial situation.
In 1907, Americans thought it was a terrible thing to be beholden to JP Morgan. We believed that it gave him too much clout and influence over the government. But today, we are infinitely more beholden to communist China.
The $65 million J.P. Morgan loaned the government in 1895 is equivalent to more than $1.6 billion today. Well, our current debt is $12 trillion and, as I mentioned, we’ve promised $107 trillion.
Who owns us? I’d rather be owned by J.P. Morgan — an American. We owe this money to communists — even the Soviet Union wouldn’t borrow money from their enemies.
You might say, “Oh Glenn, that’s ridiculous. China’s a great trading partner. There’s no problem there!” Really? Remember the poisoned toys; the poisoned dog food; the Clinton influence-buying scandal? Remember that we sold seaports in California to China? And now, we’re taking them off the spy list. Do we really think they’re not going to steal anything? Come on!
Illegal copies of “Harry Potter” popped up in China before the ink was even dry on the originals — unauthorized, incredibly bizarre stories stealing J.K. Rowling’s beloved characters and work, including a version of the boy wizard as a fat, hairy dwarf. China’s response? So sue us. No one did.
Our national debt has become a freakish, fat, hairy giant that’s stealing from our children’s future and dishonoring our Founders in the past.