Raise taxes or cut programs?

Unfortunately, the next President will find himself in the position of being forced to both raise taxes and cut programs in order to pay off the national debt. It has gotten so out of control that there are simply no other alternatives.

We cannot continue to spend money we do not have, as anyone who has ever had to balance a checkbook already knows. Unfortunately, as a country, we seem to have never learned this important lesson and have continued spending money that doesn't even exist, leaving us in an unfathomable amount of debt.

If this problem is to be addressed, the President will have to tackle it head on. This will mean a dual approach of both cutting programs to reduce current expenditures as well as raising taxes to pump up income.

Though we're all strapped for cash already, we have to realize that it is our tax dollars that provide the working capitol for our government. Without that money, many of the government programs we rely on would not exist. In order to avoid stumbling blindly into even more increasing debt, we may have to tighten our belts a little more and bite the bullet of increased taxes. Besides, did you really expect that the raise in the minimum wage wouldn't be taken away somehow?

The other option to help reduce the national debt is to cut some government programs. There are a variety of programs that, in my humble opinion, are useless in the first place. Do we really need to pay for a program to teach people how to stay married? Yes, it exists. Cut that out and let people go talk to their pastor or religious leader or their grandmother for free. We don't need to be a nation in debt providing glorified government funded marriage counseling. For more information on this program see the website at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage and decide for yourself whether you think our tax dollars should be going toward these types of programs or if they might be better spent reducing our tremendous, overwhelming debt.

Tough economic times demand sacrifice. Hopefully we will get a President who understands this and we will be strong enough to support him in his efforts to reduce the national debt by whatever means necessary. It is clear that there are wasteful and even idiotic government programs that could very easily stand to be cut. We can also do our parts by coughing up a few more tax dollars. The best we can hope is that the President will find creative ways to cut expenses that don't impede any important or necessary programs and will be moderate and fair with any tax increases so that all people, even the rich, carry their fair share of the burden of keeping our country running smoothly and heading back toward the black.

Big Oil's Big Bucks

Yet again, the nation's largest oil company has posted record profits while we're all scratching our heads trying to figure out how in the world we're going to afford to keep gas in our tanks... It has me thinking, should the United States lift the ban on offshore oil drilling?

Here's what I think...

Yes, the United States should definitely lift the ban on offshore drilling for oil in light of current all-time high gas prices. Further, the US should do anything within it's power to alleviate this situation because of the overall negative impact the high gas prices are having on the economy.

Rising gas prices have raised transportation and delivery costs, resulting in higher prices on consumer goods. These skyrocketing prices have also trickled down to nearly every other aspect of consumer life, causing prices to become so unbearably high that the average person has to think long and hard before spending a penny. Having to decide whether to purchase a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas is placing undue hardship on the American people.

If lifting the ban on offshore drilling would help decrease the prices at the pump, it's a small price to pay to help our ailing economy and should be done immediately. This, of course, should be only one of the steps the US takes to drive down gas prices.

Another approach should be releasing some of the reserves as President Clinton did during his term when gas prices began to get out of control. This approach immediately corrected the problem, leaving me wondering why this hasn't been tried this time. Surely someone somewhere is doing some behind-the-scenes work on these issues, but we consumers certainly haven't seen any results or even any real efforts being made.

Another option would be for the government to step in and do something about the fact that the major oil companies are posting record profits at the same time they are charging more than ever for gasoline. Claims of price gouging need to be thoroughly and seriously investigated. Because of our dependence on gasoline, some form of government control might be in order. While we are a country built on capitalism and free enterprise, the fact that oil companies are making billions upon billions of dollars in profit while the average working class person is struggling to scrape together enough change to fill their gas tank.

Basically, anything that will work should be done. A multi-faceted approach to this problem should yield results, bringing down the high cost of gasoline and freeing up consumer cash for spending on other things. This would, in turn, spur on our currently slugging economy helping us rise out of the current recession everyone seems to want to deny we are in.

Is it healthy to find old school friends on social networks?

Social networks like MySpace and Facebook have allowed many people to reconnect with others with whom they'd lost touch, not only school friends. These online meeting places have simply made it much easier to find people we might otherwise lose contact with over the years. There's nothing unhealthy about getting reacquainted with old friends and reminiscing about good times shared 15, 20 or more years ago.

I am personally thankful to both MySpace and Facebook for allowing me to get back in touch with some friends from my college days that I would have had no other way of tracking down. We have talked about memories of good times we shared in the past and we have gotten caught up on each other's lives. Most importantly, we have formed renewed friendships based on getting to know each other all over again as adults.

It's interesting to remind ourselves of the hopes and dreams we held for ourselves in our school days. Some of those things we even forget until and old friend reminds us. Revisiting the past can help put your today into perspective, and there's no one better to help do that than someone who knew you well in your past. One of the people I go to most often for advice is my best friend from college who lives hundreds of miles away. We communicate almost daily and social networks like MySpace and Facebook make it much easier for us to keep in touch. We have lots of things to talk about that are going on in our lives now, but some of our most entertaining conversations have centered around silly things one or the other of us had nearly forgotten from our time together in school.

As important as these trips down memory lane can be, the only thing unhealthy I can think of about getting together with an old friend after a significant time apart would be to expect things to be the same way they were when you last knew each other. Before contacting an old friend, if you keep in mind that time has passed, you've both grown and changed and your lives have taken you on different paths, you should be fine. If you expect to just pick the relationship back up as if it were yesterday, you could find yourself in for a severe disappointment. Also be prepared for those people who don't care to reminisce about yesterday. For whatever reason, there are those who may not want to be bothered with anyone from their past. If request to join someone's MySpace or Facebook as a friend is declined, respect that person's wishes and move on.

Even if you don't plan on sending out a lot of messages requesting friends, it's still a lot of fun to go through the member directories of social networks and see how many people you know. In most of them, you search for members as specifically as a certain year's graduating class from a certain school. I recently did this with my alma mater, University of Evansville, and was surprised to see lots of people I had forgotten and many I remembered very clearly. It was the digital age equivalent to flipping through a yearbook that had been automatically updated to today.

Keep a healthy perspective on getting reacquainted with old friends, don't go into it with any preconceived expectations, be ready to get to know a person who may be significantly different than you remember them, and be willing to respect those changes and differences. As long as you keep these things in mind, there's nothing at all unhealthy about searching for some old pals on social networks. Someone may just be dying to hear from you.

So, what do you think about it? Leave your comments...

Should restaurants be required to list nutrition information?

Since the only way to require restaurants to list calorie and fat gram information on their menus would be through government regulation, I do not feel it is necessary. After all, no one has to eat at any particular restaurant, or to eat at restaurants at all. Increased government regulation in this area would require unnecessary expenditures by a government that is already running in so much debt it will probably never get out, as well as placing an undue burden on restaurants to comply.

On the other hand, I do feel that in the current climate of increased health consciousness restaurants should be voluntarily offering nutrition information such as calorie and fat gram content for the food they serve.

This is actually already happening and does not require government intervention. As consumers demand the information and begin trying to make healthier choices, free trade and capitalism are driving the changes naturally. Large chains such as McDonald's, which has been criticized in the past for it's high calorie and high fat menu items, have already begun offering nutrition information on their website and by request inside the restaurants. They have also begun to slowly add healthier options to their menu such as fresh apple slices.

Based on their success with these healthier menu options, other restaurants have followed suit so they don't miss out on their share of consumer spending. Burger King's recent addition of apple fries, apples cut to resemble French fries, is an example. Other fast food chains are certain to follow suit.

It comes down to individual responsibility and the laws of supply and demand. If consumers avoid the fat and calorie laden choices and demand healthier alternatives, the restaurants will provide them. They are in business to provide food that people will buy. So, during the years when we continued to blindly buy the burgers and fries with no regard to our health, they were more than happy to continue selling billions and billions of them. Now that we have begun to place a higher value on our health and have begun demanding better options, they've begun to provide them. That's how the free market system works.

If your favorite restaurant doesn't offer nutrition information, you have several options. First, I would suggest asking them. Perhaps it's already available by request and you simply weren't aware of it. Or, if it's not, you may be one of many people who have asked and actually spur them on to provide the information. Your other options include doing a little research on your own. There are numerous books and calorie guides available that give nutrition information on a wide variety of foods, including foods found in many popular restaurants. And, there's always the internet. With information at our fingertips and more easily accessible than ever before, there's not much excuse for not knowing something other than simply being too lazy to find out.

One radical idea that many people seem to not even consider anymore is this: if you don't like the fatty foods that a particular restaurant is serving, simply stop going to that restaurant. Many people act as if there is some secret, hidden force that pulls them like a magnet through a drive-through and forces them to order and eat something bad for them. No amount of government regulation can save those people from the fact that they are simply unwilling to take responsibility for themselves and what they are putting into their bodies.

Many of my blog post ideas come from articles I've written at Helium.com. Click below to read more of my articles on Helium:

Introducing...

Allow me to introduce myself since this is my first blog post here. My name is Bruce W. Coffman. I am a small business owner, a college graduate and a single thirty-something living in a small town in the midwest. That just about sums it up. I don't consider myself an expert in much, but I have strong opinions about a lot of things and I like to write, so I decided to start this blog as a way to write about my strong opinions about a variety of subjects.

There's really no unifying theme and what you'll find here is as likely to be as random as my mind which wanders a lot, so you basically never know what you'll find.

Comments are always welcome, even if you disagree with me. I respect all opinions and viewpoints, even those with which I don't agree and I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. Even if what you have to say is completely assanine, I'll vigorously defend your right to say it.

Happy reading!