Tick, tick, tick

I was at the gym working up a sweat on one of the machines, thinking about why I chose to run for Congress at sixty-three. The answer was simple: when I was forty-three, the country was in good shape and even up to year 2000, I thought that this century would be golden for America. I was wrong.

As you know, Washington’s answer to everything is to borrow, borrow, borrow. Why? So it can spend, spend, spend.

In the same way you can live high on the hog by using your credit cards for everything, you know that it’s just a matter of time before either your credit is cut off, or you max out your cards and you’re done.

In Washington’s instance, it thinks that it can increase the national debt forever. It can’t. The secret plan is to do your time in congress, spend, spend, spend and hope that the day of reckoning won’t come on your watch. You can retire with a nice pension, start “working” as a consultant for the companies that you threw a few billion dollar bones to, and never have to wait in line at a restaurant again. Those are some of the perks.

The problem is as in musical chairs, that the music will stop eventually and all hell will break loose. China, our biggest banker (other than the smoke and mirrors Federal Reserve), will cut off our credit.

We’ll have a crisis and a massive dollar devaluation, coupled with loss of reserve status deferring to the Yuan. It will make the Great Depression seems like boom times. Naturally, the Republicans will blame the Democrats and vice-versa.

The Chinese have become so powerful that in this last decade they are trashing the economies of both Australia and Brazil. How? Both countries have had strong growth as they were prostituting their natural resources and exporting them to China’s enormous manufacturing industries. China is now focusing on getting them cheaper from Africa, so both countries are tanking. Africa is on the ascent.

Ours almost collapsed except for the Federal Reserve buying about $1 1/2 trillion of government bonds to boost liquidity, a technique pioneered by the Japanese. It’s like a heroin addiction. The more you inject, the more you need. We need to detox.

So why are these comments titled, tick, tick, tick? It’s because the ticking of your life’s clock is inaudible in your twenties, thirties and even forties.

You think that you’re going to live forever so you don’t worry about the future and doing important things, as you have forever, a limitless life.

When fifty rolls around you start to hear a slight ticking, but at sixty the tick, tick, tick starts to get very loud. You start to focus on what needs to be done, before your personal expiration date.

My driving passion as I clearly hear the ticking is to get elected, go to Washington and become very noisy so I can fix things. My choice was to either plan for retirement, or commit to eight years of very hard work. While most people would take the easy path, I do not. As a first generation American of forty years, it’s time to give back to this amazing nation. It’s now or never. I choose now.

I must be noisy to get the public’s attention so they’ll become upset at government. I’ll form a like minded caucus of congress-people to pass bills that will boost our economy and stop the madness. That boost can steer us away from the edge.

The public has no idea of what’s coming, so I have to sound the alarm. We must stop spending money as fast as we are, so our children and grand-children won’t live in a country decimated by bankruptcy.

No amount of stupid domestic and foreign policy, politically motivated wars, “keeping us safe” canards, domestic money wasting to curry future votes or bluster will get us out of this mess. Only good governance. That’s going to be my job… with your help.

Tick, tick, tick. The nation’s clock is ticking. If you hear it, please contribute to my campaign or at least spread the word.

I hear it loud and clear. It’s getting louder.