The Socialist Republic of America?

Fitting that as we cruise into the first week of Next Generation Leaders' blog, and I being the Politics/Business guy that our country is entering its largest state of socialism, ever.

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Erik Watkins, otherwise known as Erik Wayne (call me what you will). I'm a registered independent and like Tony, spend far too much time listening to radio, watching tv, and reading news about my respective subject. At a point in my life I probably listened to 4 hours of CNBC, 2 hours of CNN, 4 hours of Howard Stern, and read every article on Yahoo! Finance. I've also given a good 2 years' worth of listening to such talk radio hosts as Mike Savage, Glen Beck, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'm not sure why I never got into Rush Limbaugh, could be that I don't have patience for strung out, druggie, hypocrites. I'm a self taught investor and learned a lot by reading books about random walks on wall street, confessions of street addicts, and an oracle of omaha. I've also learned a lot by losing a lot of money in the dot com boom.

Now to the topic at hand, The Bailout. I did some rough numbers the other day when the government announced that they were going to bail out CEOs on wall street. Here are my numbers: 300 million population = 240 million in the lower and middle class (my rough estimate that 80% of the population fits these categories). Urban planners use an estimate of 2.7 persons per household to estimate population densities, so I will use that. 240 million / 2.7 = roughly 90 million households. $700 billion bailout / 90 million households = roughly $7,700 per household in the middle and lower classes.

Your government was nice enough to give you $600 each and $300 for your kids earlier this year, thank you uncle sam.

Aaaaaand. . . . today I saw that we have 43 days until we know for sure Bush is not going to remain in the White House. Unless we go to war at which point he may decide that life outside may not be as safe as he originally thought 8 years ago. Am I the only one who gets mad at the national polls and mass media who tell me everyday who is going to be the next president? I don't think so. Who am I voting for? I'm a realist republican, meaning, I believe that minimizing government benefits everyone (come on, we've all been to DMV (MVD for those of you who live outside California). . . uh huh, thank you), yet republicans have run up the largest budget deficit EVER, and we're still going. I want some input here. Since I'm registered independent, I want people to respond to this blog and tell me at the very least which party I belong to and if you have time, why.

Where's my political party?

Believe in a balanced budget

Believe in lower taxes

Believe in moderate government spending for the necessary items such as welfare

Believe in a woman's right to choose (believing that though it may not be my choice, I wish to not impose my beliefs on someone else)

Believe in equal rights for gay and lesbian couples

Believe in strengthening the dollar (more on this later)

Believe in strategic covert military actions vs. all out war

Keep in mind the fiscal items from above are more important to me than the social ones. Am I a republican or a democrat?

Maybe next week I'll tell you who I'm voting for.

Thanks for reading, enjoy Jen's post on Friday!

-Erik