By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… With both the Republicans and Democrats more concerned about the election of 2012, than the health of the country, we are on the verge of seeing our nation go into default on its debt. Now the real issue is not the default but the debt itself.

The Republicans are screaming no new taxes. The Democrats counter with no cuts in welfare benefits or entitlements.

This should sound familiar to Nevadans.

While Congressmen of both parties don’t want to admit it, there is a difference in welfare and entitlements. While it is no longer politically correct to use the term welfare, it is still out there folks. Entitlements are programs like Social Security. Welfare is money given by the government to people who have not invested or earned it in anyway. Forty seven percent of the American people are on the dole of some kind or another.

This does not include Social Security. The government took money, up to fourteen percent of what you made, with a promise you would get a small, and I emphasize the word small, retirement. That is not welfare; that is an investment program. The fact that the government has mismanaged this program is not the fault of those who were forced to pay into it. The fact is that, had you and I set up a similar program and abused it as the federal government has, we would be eating dinner with Bernie Madoff.

For the government to now contemplate not paying benefits is not a violation of a promise, it is a violation of a contract.

What we need now is rational human beings in Congress to look at the economic issues of America and set up a program to solve the problem with the least pain possible. This would include the cutting of welfare, not the elimination thereof, and the increase in revenue by closing loopholes in the tax laws, not new taxes. These loop holes should include all Americans across the economic spectrum.

I would further suggest that we have nationwide bond drives similar to those in World War II. This crisis is every bit as dangerous as the aggression of the Axis powers of WWII. Those bonds could only be used to buy back our debt from foreign countries. We would at least then owe the money to our own people.

We need to move immediately to becoming completely energy independent. We need to stop getting involved in the problems in foreign nations and bring our troops home. How soon? Tomorrow.

We need to stop trying to export our flawed philosophy that everyone should have everything. Sometime we decided every American has a right to everything every other American has and we now are trying to export that philosophy around the world.

We should understand that we are not the policeman or the grandfather of the world. Some people have more, some less, and it is the same with countries. For the most part, that is due to the individuals not the circumstances.

It is simple; if we don’t get the economics of America under control and our nose out of the business of other countries, there will be no America.

No One Asked Me But… The rumor is that by 2012, the incandescent light bulb will be banned from use within the United States.

We have all been bombarded with the rants and raves of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as to the violation of our right to choose the lighting for our house. We have been duped into believing a great left wing conspiracy is underway making us purchase a light bulb that looks like a pigtail and gives off light with a sickly blue hue. This is a bulb filled with deadly mercury and manufactured by our great economic rival, China.

The radical right would have you believe that this is the result of left wing conspirators, but what they forget to tell the American public is that the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, was signed into law by none other than George W. Bush.

They also fail to tell us that the law does not require the banning of incandescent light bulbs. The law stated that the incandescent bulb, that produces more heat than light, must be made 25% more efficient by 2012. Rather than improving the light, manufacturers merely decided they could not economically compete with the compact fluorescent bulbs and closed their plants.

I am not championing the cause of the bulb that looks like it came off the back end of a hog. I indeed dislike the new lights and am in the process of stocking up on the incandescent bulbs. However, I would appreciate it if my conservative friends would lay blame where it belongs or at least tell the truth about the law that most of us abhor.

There are enough reasons to dislike this law without falsehoods.

This law should be repealed and Michelle Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman who would be President, introduced a bill to repeal this 2007 mandate. I salute her for her effort.

It is time for Congress to spend a whole lot more time repealing federal mandates that originate in the hearts and minds of those busy bodies who would regulate the private lives of Americans.

I see where some in the federal government want to take obese children from their parents, force doctors to quiz me about my gun ownership, regulate what fast foods I will eat, mandate that I have medical insurance and the list of interference in my private life goes on and on.

Two hundred and thirty some years ago the Founding Fathers wrote an easily-understandable Constitution and ever since then mental midgets in Congress have been passing laws to try and explain what they meant. However, I am sure that the Founding Fathers did not care what type of candle or lanterns the people of America used to light their homes.

Thought of the week…. “I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another…”

- George Washington

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