A Simple Recipe for Fixing America
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Okay, I’m going to give you a very simple recipe for fixing America. You know, that’s the problem with so many pundits and politicians and experts and Wall Street types. They like everyone to feel like things are so complicated. Life’s not that complicated. Things are not that complicated. When I talk about financial preparation, financial planning, they’re not complicated things that we get into by any stretch of the imagination.
throughout the ages. Now, over the holiday break, I was busy. Holiday weeks are very busy times. We may do a ton of interviews, various different stations. And I also do guest appearances or guest hosting of programs as well. And I filled in for several radio show hosts over the break and it was interesting. I haven’t done call-ins for a long time.
my Watchdog and Wall Street radio show originally was a call-in show. But again, because it didn’t make any sense because it airs at so many different times over the course of the weekend. We record it and play it. I don’t wanna give out a call-in number because, I don’t know if people are gonna catch it live or not. Also did drive time talk as well. And I miss having the callers. And of course being the equal opportunity basher that I am. And we’re talking politics on these programs and issues of the day. I would get the…
the super Trump types out there and this large swath population that seemed to think that he’s Elijah for crying out loud, some sort of prophet. And I debate and present to them my case and what I believe him and my various different points on candidates. And oftentimes, and the people believe it or not, they weren’t rude, which was great. Their comeback was the fact that they couldn’t debate me.
or win the debate on the issues was, well, what would you do? What would you do if you were in charge? So, you know what? Let’s let’s address that. Let’s talk a little bit about that. Now, yesterday we talked about the thirty four trillion dollar debt hole that we’re in as a nation. Thirty four trillion dollars. And I was brought to my attention today was actually by Reason magazine. They said, do you realize?
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that our nation’s debt went up by a trillion dollars and less than a football season. That’s right, it went from 33 to $34 trillion and less than a complete football season. 40 years ago, the entire national debt was under a trillion. Anyway, I’m gonna do a little history. And again, this is from a column that I did, interestingly enough, in the lead up to the 2016 election.
again, the 2016 election, I was again, I was very much behind at this point, I’m very much behind Rand Paul, that it came down remember came down to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And I kind of backed away from that. And then, you know, I ended up voting for Trump in that election. But I went back to history, to look at, you know, comparative history, because again, I mentioned I said, you know, I’ve got a crystal ball.
here at the Watchdog on Wall Street, showing Markowski investments, but my crystal ball tells the past. It doesn’t tell the future. Take a look at our situation as a country, the problems we have. It’s not without precedent. You look to Rome and you see the amazing parallels. I mean, it’s extraordinary. Rome, like the United States, was conceived as what?
It was basically a pushback, pushback against monarchies. Both nations at the time were both very suspicious when our founding of concentrated power and authority. The United States and Rome, we both established republics. That did what? We enshrined checks and balances. We have separation of powers, protection of individual liberty and rights.
And this led to what? For both. Incredible prosperity. Prosperity without precedent in world history. Rome, thousand years, thousand years. First 500 years, Republic. Second 500 years, uh-oh, imperial autocracy. And you take a look at the events and the conditions and the things that were present at the time.
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and how they transform from one to the other. It’s looking a little too familiar. In this piece that I did back in 2016, I took from Lawrence Reed from the FEE Foundation of Economic Education. And he had this lesson that I found fascinating and I believe is correct, I believe is true. He called it the three most stubborn lessons of history. Number one,
No people who lost their character kept their liberties. Power that is shackled, that is contained, that is dispersed, is preferable to power that is unrestrained and centralized. What do we have now? We have an all-powerful Washington, D.C. We have a capital city. We have an executive branch of government with all of these acronym agencies that have become all-powerful.
The here and now, this is a big one. And again, the lessons applicable to financial preparation, financial planning, being prudent, the here and now is rarely important as tomorrow. Now, Reed explains that character embodies the trait of virtue, right? Veritas, excuse me, vert, veritas, truth.
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courageous honesty. And that was an end all be all in Roman society. Other traits that were stressed that were important in Roman society were dignity, goodwill, loyalty, and candor. Now I got a quote, read here, he said, the connection between character and liberty is powerful. Liberty, by which I mean rule of law,
respect for and protection of the lives, rights, property, and contracts of others is the only social arrangement that requires character. No other system, especially collectivism, communism, socialism asks much of you other than to what? Keep your mouth shut, pay your taxes, and yeah, go get yourself killed when we wanna start another war.
The absence of character produces what? Chaos and tyranny. Its presence makes liberty possible. Again, our founders understood this so well, the importance of character. Rome rose from nothing and sustained itself as a great entity for centuries because of its character. Now, Rome transformed from a republic.
to an empire through the process of wearing down, erosion. Erosion. The welfare state that was instituted little by little by individuals craving power ate away at the character, the vertus of the Roman people. Slowly but surely self-reliant people abandoned responsibility, discipline, property rights. They did what? Oh, government come help me. Government bail me out.
I’m calling on the government, government solve all of my problems. What’s in it for me? What am I entitled to? We love that word, entitled, I’m entitled to this. Entitlements. Yep, millions of Americans asked that question today. And again, it’s just an echo. Echo of the past. Again, my crystal ball looking into the past. Politics of Rome, also a familiar tune.
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ungodly sums of money like we do here spent to get one elected, taxes being raised in the aftermath because you got to pay for all of those, got to pay for all those grandiose promises made to a self-centered populace. The emperors of Rome built their power on entitlements the same way our politicians do today. Again, when founded, Rome understood concentrated power.
dangerous. They originally, this is interesting, they originally split the top position of power between two individuals. They were called consuls. The one was a check upon the other. You want to talk about term limits. I love this. One year. One year. Nobody could serve as a consul for longer than a year. The legislature was composed of the Senate and assemblies of elected
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What happened? These checks and balances dissipated. Why? Again, you have the various different, Rome was large, the cities and provinces out there, they lost their power, they lost their independence to the central government. By what? I want stuff, I want the federal government to give me stuff. I don’t wanna have to deal with the problem. We have this here in the United States.
States are supposed to be independent, 10th Amendment of the Constitution, but we punt, these states punt to the federal government for all of these responsibilities that should be taken on by the states. Anyway, Tacitus, Roman historian, wrote that freedom was undermined when the focus of Roman legislation changed from the security and good of all to the satisfaction of particular individuals
and interest groups, holy shnikes. How about that? Nah, we don’t have interest groups. We don’t have little carve outs and little tribes here in this country. I mean, of course we do. Bills were passed not only for national objects, but for individual cases. And laws were most numerous when the Commonwealth was most corrupt. Rome also decided that they
Two needed to be policemen of the world going from one quagmire to another. As we know, wars are not cheap as we’re all aware. Costs of an ever expanding welfare state and you get a big fat bill with not enough people to tax to pay for it. And again, the early Romans, they understood the need and importance to plan for the future. Delayed.
Gratification, delayed gratification. Again, something that unfortunately too many Americans don’t seem to understand when it comes to their finances. It was understood by the early Romans and was ever present in their lives. Rome drifted as we’re drifting, as we’re adrift right now, to a point where all that matters is the here and now. Don’t worry about.
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the cost or future ramifications of your choice. Somebody else is gonna pay the bill or clean up the mess later on. Again, how often do I describe Washington, DC and the Capitol building as the grand cathedral of unintended consequences? Now, again, I’m gonna answer that question I posed earlier. Well, I didn’t pose earlier. People are saying, you know, when I’m critical of candidates and their ridiculous positions, what would you do? Okay, okay.
Again, this is the Watchdog on Wall Street show. We’re about fixing problems. I’m gonna go through the things that I would do. If Chris Markowski was running for the presidency, number one, simplify the tax code. And when I mean simplify the tax code, I mean cut it down a few pages, okay? No loopholes, no handouts.
No giveaways, no nothing. This is where all of politicians get their power from. They get it from the tax code and they get it from the federal registry. Giving handouts, loopholes and giveaways. Simplify the tax code. Number two, balanced budget amendment. You’re not allowed to spend more than you’re taking in. It’s not difficult, okay? It’s not a difficult thing. A balanced budget.
amendment. We’re going to also reform the regulatory process here in the United States. Again, no more this judge, jury and executioner bull crap that we’ve got going on from all these ridiculous acronym agencies. Again, we’re big believers that legislating should come from a legislative branch of government. Yes, it should come from Congress. That’s their job. That’s what they should be doing. We need to make the United States user friendly again.
were bogged down in endless amounts of stupid red tape from unelected bureaucrats. This one, again, term limits, term limits, that’s right. And I go, like I’ve said before, my term limits are much harsher than the term limits that some politicians throw out there, but they’re never serious about, I mean termed out of Washington. Oh yeah, about eight years, that’s it.
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eight years. That’s all you get in Washington, D.C. meaning what? Meaning what? If if you serve in the House of Representatives for two terms, guess what? You only get one term if you decide to run for the presidency and you’re out. Not to mention the fact that you are barred from life, from working from any sort of lobbying agency within Washington, D.C.
Number five on my list, break up monopolies, especially in banking and media. And we need to allow small business to strive again. Foreign policy, non-interventionist foreign policy. Have we had not enough of perpetual wars? Again, I’ve mentioned this before on the program. Think about the trillions of dollars.
the trillions of dollars we spent to go to war in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. No, enough of this nonsense. No more perpetual war. No more Team America, world police. No more world policemen nonsense, over. Free trade. That’s right. I’m sorry, Donald, your trade policies are stupid. Free trade when the playing field.
is level. It has to be the same rules for both sides. Immigration reform, and again, it needs to make sense. We need immigrants into this country. There’s no doubt about that. But we also need to focus on assimilating people into our society. And it needs to be controlled. It needs to make sense. Can we can’t, we can’t make ourselves weaker as a nation by being unable to handle what’s coming in.
And right now it’s beyond a poop show. I mean, it’s beyond it. I mean, you got the state of New York and New Jersey basically fighting over who’s taking migrants and Jersey sneaking them into New York on trains. It’s crazy. No more subsidies. That’s right. Nobody gets a subsidy. Nobody gets a government handout. No private. The government is not allowed to give any private concern a dime. I’m sick and tired of paying for other people’s Teslas.
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You want a Tesla? Fine. You buy yourself a Tesla. I’m sick and tired of paying for other people’s automobiles. I’m sick and tired of subsidizing companies, chip factories. Why do I got to pay for your chip factory? Nonsense. This is not the job of the government. The government should be judge, jury and executioner in the sense that guess what? They’re a referee. They’re a referee on the free economy.
They’re not supposed to participate in it.
Entitlement reform, again, this is two plus two equals four. It’s basic algebra, the numbers don’t add up. The social security unsustainable pensions are unsustainable, you gotta rethink the entire concept. You got people that are growing older and healthier and the numbers don’t add up. Welfare reform, again, I’ve talked about welfare as being our nation’s number one drug problem because people get addicted to it.
It’s a way of life for too many people. We need to break this awful cycle. These great society programs, again, I’ve written countless columns on this, discuss this, by every single observable metric, measurable metric out there have been a failure. And again, children at risk of becoming part of this cycle need to be attending institutions that provide them from what they’re not getting at home.
Get out of healthcare, housing and college education. Again, this is in essence, it’s kind of like the subsidy thing. It’s not the government’s job to be involved in these things and every single time they get involved with these things, they make the costs go up. So there you go. What would you do, Markowski? That’s what I do. That’s my platform. What do you think? Can you compare it to the other candidates? Go ahead. Have at it. Anyway, you know, I will.
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We discussed this again this weekend on the radio show. But again, is this difficult? I gave 12 things, simple. Simple things. Now again, I get it. You know, and I’ll get there. I guarantee you. Why don’t you run then Markowski? Are you nuts? You’re gonna, I, the most difficult thing about this is not, you know, being taken out by some guy in a grassy knoll somewhere trying to institute term limits or something like that. But anyway, I want to get conspiracy on you. Watchdog on wallstreet.com, watchdog on wallstreet.com.