Alexandra Swann's Blog, page 25

Why (as an Evangelical) I Am Voting for Mitt Romney..Not Just Against Barack Obama

We have heard a lot this election season about the importance of voting in the upcoming election.  Many believe that this election is the most important in our nation's history--I agree with them.  But we are so focused on wanting to get rid of Barack Obama as President that we have largely ignored our own candidate.  People who supported one of the many other Republicans who ran in the GOP primary may feel that they are merely voting for "the lesser of two evils."  That feeling, combined with nagging uncertainties that some have about Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith--fears that are being fueled by the Democrats in many cases--leads election observers to conclude that this year we in the RNC are not voting FOR anybody, we are merely voting AGAINST something we don't like--further proof that the GOP has disintegrated into the party of NO.




That is why I am using my final blog posts before the election to write about why I am voting FOR Mitt Romney and not just against Barack Obama.  To be sure, I want badly to see Obama lose this election.  But I want to see him replaced with a qualified man who can do the job.  Today's post is why, as an evangelical Christian, I am voting for Mitt Romney. 




I was a supporter of Mitt Romney in the 2008 election cycle.  I had subscribed to his text message alerts and gotten on his email list one day before he announced that he was dropping out of the race. I was deeply disappointed when he announced that he was not going to pursue his candidacy for president.




Regular readers of this blog know that in this primary season I actually supported Texas governor Rick Perry.  Why?  Because in the intervening years between 2008 and 2011, we as a nation had Obamacare forced upon us, and I had a lot of initial concerns that Mitt Romney would not repeal Obamacare.  I have since listened carefully to his speeches and statements and I now feel comfortable that he will keep his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act--an action which is going to determine whether small businesses like mine can stay open.  But Mitt's Mormonism was never a factor in my support.




My parents were in the Jesus movement in the 1970s, so I grew up in a Southern Evangelical house. Anyone who has read my book, No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen knows that at the age of twelve I entered Brigham Young University, where I graduated with a bachelor's degree at age fifteen.  My parents reasons for sending me to BYU are too complicated to go into here, but they believed that God wanted me to go there.  I studied the Mormon religion thoroughly--I read all of the doctrinal texts of the church.  Dr. Reed Benson, the son of the then President (Prophet) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was my religion professor.  All of my brothers and sisters (there are 10 of us) also attended BYU so my association with the school did not end when I graduated.  When I was seventeen years old, my father and sister and I were granted an hour long interview with President Ezra Taft Benson in his offices at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I was a guest of Dr. Reed Benson and his wife when I spoke at the Utah Home Education Convention.  I never converted to the Mormon faith--I remain a Southern Evangelical to this day--but I know a LOT about Mormonism, Mormon culture and life among Mormons.  While I disagree completely with the theology of the LDS church, I know that Mitt Romney's culture has been badly mischaracterized in the media.  I also know that his background provides him with specific strengths that he will take with him to the White House.  Based on my experiences (a total of sixteen years) spent with members of the Mormon community, I am outlining below some of the strengths that Mitt's Mormonism will contribute to his presidency.





Work Ethic.  The symbol of Utah is the beehive.  Mormon culture emphasizes hard work as a virtue, a responsibility, and a privilege.  Too many people today have an entitlement culture that says that they should not have to work--they should be taken care of.  I read this morning a Facebook post by the RNC that quoted from Mitt Romney's book No Apology where he talked about doing the jobs of every day people in Massachusetts while he was running for governor.  One such job included being a garbage collector for a day.  Mitt would have learned as a child that everyone is expected to work, and no honest, legitimate work is beneath any other honest legitimate work.  That is a lesson that all of us could benefit from right now.


Thriftiness.  During the RNC convention I saw the video of Mitt's sons saying that their father was a "cheapskate." Some of his business partners at Bain Capital agreed. But many people do not know that "waste not; want not" is an important part of Mormon culture.  The Mormons built a thriving community in a state that had among its most notable features the Great Salt Lake and the Great Salt Flats.  Much of Utah is a desolate, foreboding place. They survived there by using and reusing every resource.  During one of my last visits to the BYU campus, I saw preparations for the new library that was being built on the campus.  The student workers who were prepping the area started by cutting the grass and rolling it up as sod so that it could be reused elsewhere and nothing would be wasted.  Our current government which is wasting money and resources with no regard to how we will get more could use the leadership of a man who has been taught the value of frugality.


Patriotism.  When I watched the RNC convention a few weeks ago, I noticed that Mitt Romney knew all of the words to all of the stanzas of "America the Beautiful" and was singing along with the choir.  I smiled--I know only the first stanza, but then I recalled that in Mormon culture patriotism is very important.  Because of the bachelor's program I graduated from, I spent my summers at BYU rather than my winters.  Every year at the Fourth of July, the campus was completely decorated in red, white and blue.  (The campus changes all of the flowers with the season so that they can have theme colors.)  LDS church meetings (which I attended several times as a student at BYU) include patriotic songs in the hymnal.  Mormon culture teaches that the U.S. is a great country with a strong future.  I am voting for a man who will be proud to salute the flag--a man who was taught to be proud of his country from birth.


Respect for life and for family.  Much has been made of large Mormon families, but many who are not part of LDS culture do not understand that Mormons adopt large numbers of children.  Dr. Reed Benson and his wife had no biological children of their own, but they were adopted parents of nine children.  Children are prized and valued in Mormon culture--an attitude that would be a good one for our culture as a whole to adopt.


Sobriety.  I have read comments online that a man who does not drink alcohol is not fit to be president. What nonsense!  One reason that my parents were comfortable sending me to BYU is that we do not drink any alcohol. (I do drink both tea and coffee, but I did not do so for the years that I was enrolled as a student in keeping with my pledge that I signed when I was admitted.)  Christians have argued among themselves for centuries about whether Christians may drink alcohol and there are prominent Christians on both sides of this debate.  But whether you are in the "it's fine; Jesus drank so there's nothing wrong with it," or the "lips that touch wine may never touch mine," camps consider this excerpt from Proverbs 31, "And it is not for kings (the leader of the nation) to drink wine and whiskey. For if they drink they may forget their duties and be unable to give justice to those who are oppressed."  In a culture such as ours which frequently uses intoxicants, what a great role model for young people to have a sober man for president who has lived a successful life without getting drunk and high.


Respect for the rules.  At BYU there were lots of rules.  I have alluded already to the pledge about not using alcohol, tobacco, tea or coffee while enrolled in the school.  One year, one of the sports teams went out and got drunk and the school suspended the entire team for the season. Obeying the rules was more important than winning for the school.

If that seems excessive, consider this:  We are a nation of laws.  We are supposed to be governed by the Constitution and laws passed by Congress that do not contradict the Constitution--not a series of executive orders issued by a president who thinks he is king.  I am voting for man who understands that he is not above the rules.


At attitude of service.  When the media mentions that Mitt Romney was a bishop in his church, they do not mention that these duties were performed without pay.  All clergy in the Mormon church are unpaid volunteers.  One reason that Mitt Romney has spent so much of his life in volunteer work is that Mormon culture teaches a life of service.  The gates of BYU are inscribed with the words, "Enter to learn; go forth to serve."  Mormonism teaches that no person is above such service--when I met Dr. Benson I was surprised that he volunteered several shifts a week in the church charities--canning, picking crops in the orchards, etc.  Even though his father was the Church leader, he was not exempt from doing all of the work that was required.



The stories of Mitt's kindnesses that we heard during the convention are actually an outgrowth of his faith. Likewise, when Ann Romney made her famous Welsh cookies for the Secret Service, I smiled because I know that as the wife of the bishop she would be accustomed to making food items to take to women in the community who were ill, or grieving or had just had babies, and she would be used to receiving their support during her own illnesses.  Service to the community and to others is one of the most important Mormon virtues.  It is a stark contrast with our current president and his wife who appear to feel that they are entitled to be on permanent vacation with an entourage.



Finally, Mitt Romney's Mormonism gives him an understanding of what it is to be an outsider.  The only people we are allowed to discriminate against in our society are those with whom we disagree ideologically.  Mormons have been mocked, marginalized and ridiculed since the church started--the doctrines of the church are currently satirized in the Broadway play The Book of Mormon.  (I experienced some of this when No Regrets was published, and I received a letter telling me that I could not possibly be a Christian and have attended BYU.)  Yet, Romney does not allow other people's perceptions of him, his family or his church to dictate his life.  He has learned how to be okay with being different.  That is another good lesson that we could all take from his presidency.




If you are a Christian and have doubts about Mitt Romney based on his Mormon faith, I hope that the seven reasons I have outlined above will help you to view a Romney presidency differently.  If you are concerned that he will somehow make the nation Mormon--don't be.  As I mentioned at the start of this post, I have nine brothers and sisters--of the ten of us NONE converted to Mormonism.  But we took away a lot of good virtues from our time at BYU, and it is those same virtues that I hope that our country can learn from President Romney.




Read Alexandra's new novel, The Chosen, free on Kindle October 3rd through October 7th.






Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Chosen, about one small group of Americans' fight to restore the Constitution and end indefinite detentions without trial, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net

Indefinite Detention, The NDAA, and You

Regular readers of this blog know that it is entitled "Paying for Protection" because it focuses on the ways that we as Americans give up our rights and freedoms to the government in exchange for promised protection against all sorts of potential ills.  In no case is this more evident than in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows indefinite detention without charges without trial of persons who are accused of acting against the U.S. government.




The Indefinite Detention Provisions of the defense spending bill passed by Congress last year and signed by President Obama on December 31, 2011, state that the U.S. government has the right to detain  "a person who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."  The act does not define what is meant by "associated forces" or "directly supported." 




Although the Obama Administration stated that the bill would never be used against American citizens, even his most liberal allies concede that the president has vigorously defended this law since its passage.  Almost immediately after it was passed, a group of journalists brought suit against this law claiming that because of their work in getting interviews with terrorists they could be subject to indefinite detention without trial.  Judge Forrest agreed and issued a temporary injunction against enforcement of the indefinite detention provisions in May of 2012.  In August, the plaintiffs and the government went back to court to argue their case again, and on September 13th the judge issued a permanent injunction on the grounds that the indefinite detention provisions violate the U.S. Constitution.  However, the Administration that promised to never enforce these provisions declared them necessary to national security and persuaded a different judge to lift Judge Forrest's ban on indefinite detention.  That means that as of the date of this writing, the government has the power to arrest and detain, indefinitely and without trial, any American for pretty much any reason.  A three-judge panel is supposed to begin a review of section 1021 tomorrow (September 28th).



Most disturbing, however, are some of the facts of the law that the suit in front of Judge Forrest revealed.  First, a person can be detained by "unwittingly" supporting belligerent forces, such as innocently sending money to a friend who is on a terror watchlist.  Attending a party or a fundraiser for a group that ends up on the terror watchlist can lead to a black van arresting you and taking you away, as can attending a protest or a rally.  The government attorneys refused to assure Judge Forrest that the journalists performing their normal duties would be safe from detention.



Since word has begun to spread of the dangers of indefinite detention, local governments have gotten involved.  At least nine states have passed "anti-kidnapping laws" to protect their citizens against indefinite detention without trial by the federal government.  But enforcement of these laws would be difficult, since the military will be handling these detainees on military bases.




The very concept of indefinite detention flies in the face of everything that we as Americans believe and every protection that has been afforded to us by our Constitution.   The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Bill of Rights guarantee Americans due process, and those guarantees are being destroyed by sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA.




Fifth Amendment






No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment of indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.







Sixth Amendment




In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.




Although the law was supposedly passed to help the government contain al-Qaeda, Americans need to be asking themselves who it is really intended for.  Do we really believe that a government that has invited the Muslim Brotherhood to the White House but can't find time to meet with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu really needs indefinite detention to deal with al-Qaeda?  I think it much more likely that the real targets of indefinite detention are the rest of us in light of recent comments from Chuck Schumer and other high profile Democrats that the First Amendment is not absolute and in light of the President's remarks to the UN only yesterday that the future cannot belong to people who are disrespectful of Islam. (That would be everyone who professes a different faith than Islam, along with those who profess no faith at all, since Islam requires that everyone be a follower.)  Those facts, coupled with Homeland Security's watchlist of potential domestic terrorists, which includes people who believe in pro-life causes, ex-military, and people who quote the Constitution, should sound warning bells for our entire nation.  This law and it's potential applications have the ability to destroy the very fabric of our nation.




What can we do?  Joyce and I have written our new novel, The Chosen, about indefinite detention.  In our novel, set just three years from now, the main character is detained partially because of his support of the nation of Israel, and his wife takes his case to the Supreme Court.  But in real life we know that we cannot rely on the U.S. Supreme Court to undo the consequences of elections. If the section 1021 of the NDAA is to be stopped, we the people have to the ones to stop it.





Everybody needs to get out and vote in this election.  The Obama Administration, in spite of his protests to the contrary, has been a driving force in getting section 1021 of the NDAA moved forward.  He insisted that the language be put in the bill in the first place, and his Adminstration has fought every legal challenge to it.  His assertions that he will never use it against the American people are lies--if he weren't planning to use it he wouldn't be fighting so hard for it.


We need to start pressuring Congress and the Senate about this language.  All references to indefinite detention need to be removed from the 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill.  We also need to find out whether we need to pass additional legislation to repeal the 2012 provisions. 


For years we have had persistent rumors of FEMA camps waiting for detainees.  The newest rumor involves a FEMA camp at Palmdale, California, that has a crematorium and reportedly not much else. We need to pressure Congress to open an investigation to determine whether these rumors are true.  If it is determined that they are true and that we have allowed the government to construct the equivalent of massive concentration camps on U.S. soil, we need to insist that all such camps be destroyed.  Such facilities are antithetical to American freedoms and should not exist.








Get informed. Get involved.  Stand up for the Constitution.  Fight for the laws of our country.  Every American deserves a trial.




Read Alexandra's new novel, The Chosen , free on Kindle October 3rd through October 8th.





Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Chosen, about one small group of Americans' fight to restore the Constitution and end indefinite detentions without trial, will be available on Kindle and in paperback October 1st. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net

Taking Ownership

First the Obama Administration told us that if we own a business we did not build it--somebody else did that for us.  SeeThe Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away  for more info. Now this week, the DNC wants us to know that we belong to the government.  In a highly circulated video aired at the convention this week, a narrator tells us that "government is the only thing that we all belong to."  He goes on to explain that we have various religions and clubs, but all of us belong to the government and that is what unites us as Americans.



See the video here:











After the video began receiving a lot of negative feedback, the Obama Campaign began immediate damage control insisting that they had nothing to do with the video.  Regardless of their protestations of innocence, however, the fact remains that the video aired as part of the DNC convention in Charlotte.



This "Property of Uncle Sam" mentality is a huge part of what is wrong with our country today. The current administration apparently believes that they have a right to take over property, water rights, healthcare, and all other aspects of American life.  And now we know why--we belong to the government, first and foremost so whatever we have they by rights own since they own us.  To identify ourselves as belonging to the government is to deny individual freedom and individual rights.  It is a dangerous theory of the relationship between the state and the people that can only end in totalitarianism.



In the Gettysburg address, Lincoln spoke eloquently of government by the people, for the people, of the people--not people by, of and for the government.  In the next 60 days, our country gets to make a decision about what kind of a country we want to be--a country in which the government owns the people, controls all of our property and micromanages our lives, or a country in which we own the government and are willing to take responsibility for firing unresponsive politicians and replacing them with elected officials who understand that at the end of the day they answer to us.  It is a decision that will affect the future of our nation for generations.  May we all choose wisely.



Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net

It Just Isn't Fair....(What Disparate Impact Rulings Really Mean)

On July 12, Wells Fargo Bank, the nation's largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay $175 million to settle DOJ accusations that it had steered black and Hispanic borrowers into high cost subprime loans to earn higher points and fees.  The bank did not admit wrong-doing, but faced with the prospect of going to court against the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, the bank agreed to pay the settlement.  The next day, they announced the closure of their wholesale division which had allowed mortgage brokers to wholesale loans to the bank.




The DOJ's Civil Rights Division, led by assistant attorney general Thomas Perez, did not prove that Wells Fargo had intentionally discriminated against minority borrowers.  However, they did not have to prove such discrimination because they based their case on a legal theory called disparate impact. As opposed to policies that are designed to discriminate against minorities, policies that unintentionally discriminate or that have the unintentional effect of causing minorities to receive less favorable terms that non-minorities are covered under disparate impact rules.  In the Wells Fargo case, the government never proved that the bank had any policies in place which openly discriminated against minority borrowers or which encouraged others to so.  They didn't have to prove that.  All they had to do was take a random sampling of broker loans in high-minority population cities and determine that these loans--on the whole--featured higher interest rates and fees than non-minority loans in the same area, and then determine that Wells Fargo's policies overall had a disparate impact on minority borrowers, even though only 5% of Wells Fargo's loans were brokered so the sampling was far from representative of their overall portfolio. No other factors--for instance, borrower credit history--were considered in the disparate impact decision.  For an excellent description of the DOJ's philosophy of discrimination overall as well as their specific handling of this case read this National Legal and Policy Center paper on how the Civil Rights Division interprets discrimination.




The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has also announced that it will be looking for examples of discrimination and taking action against cases of disparate impact. Further the agency will apply disparate impact standards to student loans and credit cards as well as mortgage loans. For more on this see

CFPB Will Use Disparate Impact to Prove Discrimination.




Those of us in mortgage lending are still feeling the fallout from the disparate impact settlement.  The primary issue in this case was whether brokers in certain areas were steering borrowers into subprime loans.  Since subprime no longer exists, this can no longer be an issue--right?  Wrong.  In an industry where more and more the federal government is dictating income, lenders are now having to look at their contracts with individual brokers to make sure that those contracts are indeed fair to the borrowers.  And in light of the disparate impact settlement, the only way to make the contracts fair is to make them uniform. 




In April of 2011, the Federal Reserve implemented a new loan originator compensation system which dictated that loan originators could be paid either by the borrower or by the lender but not by both. Further, in the interests of making sure that borrowers were not being steered into higher interest rate loans, the government mandated that each originator had to sign a contract with the lenders with whom he works establishing a pre-determined percentage of compensation for each loan he brokers for a set period of time. For example, if I want to broker loans to Lender X, I must have a contract which is usually in place for 90-120 days, stating that on each transaction on which I am paid by the lender, the percentage of payment I will receive will be X%.  That percentage cannot vary based on the terms of the loan--credit score, debt to income, etc.  Virtually all lenders have a cap which does not allow brokers to exceed 3% at most--in many cases compensation is limited to 2.5%, but many brokers have chosen smaller percentages so that they can remain competitive in their marketplaces.  Brokers are encouraged to set the same percentage of compensation with each lender they represent so that they cannot be accused of steering borrowers to higher interest rate loans.  Therefore, the theory goes, if you apply for a mortgage loan with me, and I am being paid exactly the same rate by each lender I represent, I do not personally benefit from sending you to one lender vs. another; and I must therefore be making my choices based on what is in your best interests.




The anti-steering provisions were designed to be "fair"--to make sure that all borrowers applying for a loan are treated equally.  The problem is, of course, that treating everyone equally only applies to each individual business where the borrowers have applied.  So if I see 10 prospective borrowers in a week, I will treat them all exactly equally since I am compensated at exactly the same rate for each loan that I close, and for each loan that I do not close I am not compensated at all.  However, if a borrower comes to me and gets a good faith estimate and then goes down the street to ABC mortgage and gets a good faith estimate with a different rate and different fees, even though ABC mortgage just happens to sell to the same lender I sell to, then according to the theory of disparate impact, the borrower has not been treated fairly.  I may treat each borrower who comes through my door exactly the same as every other borrower and ABC may treat each borrower who comes through their door exactly the same as every other borrower, but unless ABC and I treat each borrower exactly the same as each other, we and the lender we represent are guilty of "unintentional discrimination."




To address this problem, lenders are now changing compensation models so that rather than brokers determining the level of compensation they want or need to make in order to remain competitive in their markets, the lender sets the level of compensation it is willing to pay based on regions of the country.  For example, one of the lenders with whom I work is setting up regional compensation for brokers in the region covering Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.  This way all brokers working in this region will receive exactly the same pre-determined compensation from the lender.  Other lenders have announced that they will no longer permit borrowers to pay the broker directly--all pay must come only from the lender at the pre-set rate to insure that there is no disparate impact.




There are some obvious problems with this approach, however.  One of the most obvious is that the government can carry this issue of "fairness" and "unfairness" to whatever degree they choose.  For instance, who is to say that if lenders pay brokers in the New York/New Jersey region on a differing scale than those in the Texas/Louisiana/Oklahoma region that this differing pay has not had a disparate impact on the people in one of those regions? Further, why should borrowers be subjected to differing interest rates by different brokers representing competing lenders?  Isn't the job of the broker now to make sure that the borrower gets the best deal possible?  The borrower does not see the end lender until closing, so they are dealing only with the broker.  Why should some brokers be allowed to earn more more money than others just because they have relationships with lenders who are willing to pay them more?  Isn't that unfair? 




Because of the nature of disparate impact, the government never has to prove real discrimination; they have only to show through statistical data that actions produced differing outcomes for different groups of people, and this is a dangerous road to go down.  First, in order to correct these inequities, we can put the federal government in the position of setting and regulating private business agreements and private compensation.  This is particularly important at a time when Obama administration insiders have indicated that in his second term he wants to regulate private market compensation for people working in private industry based on the value of a job rather than what the market will bear. Using these standards, the government can set and cap compensation based on arbitrary standards of fairness.  Arguably, the janitor of a Fortune 500 company has a physically more difficult job than the CEO--certainly a more unpleasant job.  So why should the CEO be paid more and the janitor less?  Might it not be discriminatory to give higher compensation to people with more education, training and experience and less compensation to those who perhaps work very hard but have not had as many opportunities as their better-paid colleagues?  Why not pay everybody the same no matter where they work?




Ridiculous?  Yes, but it may not be that far from becoming reality.  The mortgage industry has been a proving grounds for some of the most radical invasions into private enterprise that our country has ever seen.  If the federal government can dictate how much we earn based on arbitrary standards of fairness, than ultimately it can apply those same standards to any industry and any employer.  The government can dictate the terms of private employment contracts, the costs of good and services, and even how much profit retail stores are allowed to earn.  In short, when "fairness" becomes the standard, there are no limits to the intrusions by the feds that are possible and even probable.




Life is not fair--outcomes are certainly not fair.  Attempting to guarantee that everyone experiences an equal outcome merely guarantees that no one has anything.  That is not the American system.  In a free enterprise system we believe in equality of opportunity but never equality of outcomes.  That takes away freedom of choice and freedom to make decisions--both of which are at the heart of a free society.




We have an election coming up in about 70 days.  That election is going to determine whether we restore the free enterprise system or we become more and more deeply enmeshed in a system where the federal government, in the name of fairness, dictates everything we are allowed to have, to earn and to keep.  Personally, I am counting the days until I go down to my local polling station and cast my vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket and against socialism.  I hope that at least 51% of my fellow Americans are willing to do the same.  Otherwise, we are going to wake up on November 7 in a country where capitalism and free enterprise are just distant memories and all of our decisions are subject to question by the arbitrary standards of Washington bureaucrats.






Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at

Frontier 2000.

Break the Chains

Yesterday Vice President Joe Biden again made headlines over his controversial remarks to a crowd in Virginia when he told his audience that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will put people "in chains," while unchaining Wall Street.  The remarks drew a lot of attention partially because they were made to a largely African-American audience and because they highlighted Joe Biden's general disconnect with reality--he apparently believed that he was giving the speech to a crowd in North Carolina although he was actually speaking in Virginia.




Romney's campaign has demanded an apology, and I agree with him. Insinuating that Romney/Ryan and their supporters want to enslave people is a horrendous lie.  But I think that perhaps the more significant part of Biden's remarks have been overlooked in all of the furor--the part where Biden claims that the GOP pair want to "unchain" the banks and Wall Street.




Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I am completely and fully against Dodd Frank.  In fact, I started this blog just prior to the passage of Dodd Frank--my first post was April 29, 2010 and Dodd Frank was signed in July of 2010--in an attempt to spread the word about how dangerous and destructive this piece of legislation would be to the financial health of our country.  Now, two years later, Biden is sneering that Romney wants to "unchain" the banks by repealing the legislation.




So much is wrong with Biden's statement.  The mere fact that he is applauding business being "chained" is symptomatic of what is wrong with this country.  Unemployment is over 8% officially and is much higher if we count the people who no longer look for work. Thousands of small businesses like mine are now closed.  Once successful companies that sold products to the real estate market have locked their doors.  Community banks have closed their mortgage departments because they do not want to have to deal with the rigorous restrictions that Dodd Frank is imposing on entities that sell mortgages.  We have created a huge new bureaucracy with unprecedented powers.  And Biden is celebrating the fact that businesses operating in what is supposed to be a free country are now "in chains." 




No one who does not work in real estate will ever understand the real human cost of what has happened in the mortgage and real estate markets over the last four years.  Nine years ago, I was invited to attend an open house for a very successful local builder.  He had constructed a custom, multi-million dollar home for a prominent local businessman.  Because the home was unique, he had asked his customer to allow him to put the home on display for one weekend. The open house was a ticketed event so that the community could see the home; all of the proceeds were donated to benefit a children's charity.




I lost touch with the builder--he was never a client of mine although I did know both him and his wife socially through organizations of which we were both members.  But this spring I was talking to a long-time acquaintance/client when the builder's name came up in the conversation.  "It's terrible what happened to him.  So sad," my client said.  I had surmised from some things I had seen in the community that the builder had been suffering from financial problems, so I assumed the client was referring to a bankruptcy, but I asked him what he meant.  "You didn't hear? He committed suicide two weeks ago," my client said, adding that the builder couldn't see a way out of his financial problems.  I was stunned, but as I contemplated his suicide I realized that there probably was no way for this man to come out of his financial problems.  Like many of the rest of us, he probably came to a place where he finally had no hope at all and for him, suicide appeared to be the best option.




That's partly what makes Biden's latest comments so infuriating.  By implying that Romney will "unchain banks and Wall Street and put y'all in chains," he is also implying that Obama has set us free.  So exactly how do regulations that destroy small business and cut off access to capital make us free?  During the same four years that I have watched Dodd Frank strangle the life out of legitimate sources of credit, I have watched title loan companies and cash for gold businesses proliferate in our community.  Are the people who can no longer get a credit card but who can easily find a place to sell their gold jewelry better off than they were four years ago?  The truth is that Americans are going to borrow money--either from habit or necessity.  The only question is from whom. 




Yesterday I got a phone call from a doctor who had gotten a construction loan for his dream home.  The home is now about two weeks away from completion, and he can't get permanent financing to take out the construction mortgage because his credit score is 679.  Because he owes more than $417,000 on the construction note, he needs either a jumbo loan or a second lien to pay his obligation to the bank and at 679 he does not qualify for either even though he has a good credit history and plenty of income to cover his obligation.  At the end of our conversation he told me that he wanted to look into private "hard money" to see if a private lender would loan him what he needs for a second lien.  Four years ago, a man in his position would have never considered going to a private lender for a second lien on his residence because he could have gotten a fairly inexpensive second lien or a jumbo mortgage.  Now, expensive private money is his only option.  I wonder whether he would agree that he is more "free" under Obama.




I am hoping very much that the Romney/Ryan ticket will prevail in November, and I also hope that if they do win the election that Romney and Ryan will make a sincere commitment to repeal Dodd Frank in its entirety.  If they are able to do that, they won't just be taking the chains off of the banks--they will be breaking the chains that the Obama Administration has used to bind all of us. That would be something to celebrate. 


Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at Frontier 2000.

Water, Water Everywhere...

About 10 days ago, my mother told me that she had received a census from the federal government.  The survey, which she believed was sent to her from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stated in its instructions that compliance was mandatory and that failure to return this data subjected residents to fines and penalties. But aside from the nuisance factor involved in completing yet another census document, the invasive, personal nature of the questions bothered my mother a great deal. 




For example, she said that the form asked how large the house was, how many rooms it contained, how many bathrooms it contained, whether it was site built, and how much land it sits on.  The questionnaire demanded to know how much the last utility bills were for the property and whether the utilities were public or private.  Further, the census required detailed information on each occupant of the home including age, annual income, the source of that income, whether any of the residents was receiving any sort of public assistance including Medicaid, and on and on.  The form demanded information about whether the house had a mortgage on it and ordered the homeowner to estimate its value "if you had to sell it today."




My parents bought their home in 1978 and paid it off several years ago.  It sits on a half acre in a rural community in New Mexico.  Other than being located on a state highway, it has no distinguishing characteristics that might be of interest to any government agency.  That made the intrusive nature of the questions to homeowners even more odd.  When Mother told me about it, she suggested the questions might be connected in some way to the new push for sustainable housing and urban living--after all why else would the federal government require such detailed information about not only the structure of the house and the cost to maintain it, but also the make-up of the occupants and whether the property is mortgaged or paid off.  Always the optimist, I responded that perhaps the information was needed by the USDA to refine the lending guidelines for the Guaranteed Rural Housing loan program.  After all, many of areas within close proximity to my parents' home are eligible under the Guaranteed Rural Housing program, and information about the incomes and occupations of the residents as well as type of housing available could be useful in updating guidelines for a loan program that qualifies both the borrower and the property based on a set of pre-determined, area specific guidelines.




I had almost forgotten about the entire incident, when last week, I saw a tweet linked to an article from the Las Cruces Sun News about a law suit that the federal government had filed against the state of New Mexico to seize control of the state's groundwater. I was shocked--partly because I watch local news covering events in El Paso and Las Cruces every morning, and I had never seen even a mention of this.  (The next day the local ABC affiliate did briefly mention that the state and the federal government were going to court in a battle over the water rights.)  I wondered how a legal conflict so crucial to our state could go unnoticed and unreported.




Many people who have not been to New Mexico tend to think of the state only in terms of the arid scenes from old Westerns, but large parts of our state are thriving agriculture regions.  In addition to producing green chile and onions, New Mexico is also home to beautiful orchards, including Stahmann Farms--a pecan orchard spanning several thousand acres. The state sits atop the Deming Water Basin, which produces delicious water.  The combination of bright sunshine and good water makes Southern New Mexico an ideal location for farms of all sizes, while Northern New Mexico boasts some stunning forests.




Of course, without our water, none of this would be possible, and now the federal government has apparently determined that they have a legal claim this lifeline.  Much of the irrigation our region depends on originates in the Rio Grande through Elephant Butte irrigation district.  Through an agreement with Texas, New Mexico and the nation of Mexico, the water from the Rio Grande is divided among these three entities. The state of New Mexico is responsible for managing ground water pumping.  The Feds argued that they have ownership over the state's groundwater because the flow of the Rio Grande, and the surface water, over which they already have authority, is closely tied to the groundwater.  Currently the Elephant Butte Irrigation District covers about 90,000 acres.  In the spring, water that has been stored at Elephant Butte lake is released by the federal government from the dam into the river and then delivered through the EBID canals to farmers in Southern New Mexico, El Paso, Texas and Mexico.  Once farmland has been irrigated, the water can be recaptured in the drain systems and sent on to other farmers downstream.  That re-use of the water was one of the factors that the Feds sought to regulate.  The Fed also want to be able to prevent the "overpumping" of ground water by residents of New Mexico.




During a year of drought such as the one that we are currently experiencing, very little water has been released from Elephant Butte to the farmers.  As a result, the local residents have had to pump groundwater from their wells in order to irrigate their orchards and farms and keep their crops alive.  And that practice apparently does not sit well with Uncle Sam.




The Federal government is also apparently alleging that they have a right to claims for damages to groundwater in a damage case involving Chevron.  The Feds claim that the damages owed to them should be awarded in the form of the management of the water rights.




The state argued that the federal government's claim to the water was "unprecedented" and apparently a state judge agreed. On Wednesday, August 1, state judge James Wechsler determined that the federal government has rights only to the surface water.  That does include management of the river water and may include water reused by farmers downstream, although that area appears a little gray right now following his ruling.  But the Feds do not have the right to regulate how much water New Mexicans pump.




While we have won this first round, the fact that the Feds would even attempt to take over management of the groundwater is very troubling. There are so many implications for the state--for the cities, for the farmers, and for the rest of us.  When asked about the case, Las Cruces city utilities director Jorge Garcia told The Las Cruces Sun News, "If the feds end up owning the groundwater, it would negatively affect any future water planning the city would want to do."  In fact, it would negatively affect any future growth of any of the cities.  How can cities attract new industries or residents without control of their own water? And doesn't ownership of the water give the federal government the right to dictate exactly where residents can live and work?




Although the Feds claimed that they do not actually want to control all of the groundwater usage, state rep Brian Egolf told The Albuquerque Journal that "There's not necessarily a limit to what the feds are claiming," adding that if the Feds won the suit they could set up pumps, pump out the ground water and ship it to other states.  That could leave our state with insufficient water not only for the farmers but for the residents.




The Feds' claim that they should have the legal rights to the groundwater go the heart not only of states' rights, but also private property rights.  When the federal government asserts the right to take the water and send it wherever they wish, they have the ability to render properties worthless. 




That takes me back to my mother's census form.  Did this questionnaire go out because the Feds plan to own the water, and they want to find out exactly to whom it is being supplied?  If they eventually do win, will they assess a limit on how much water each household can use?  Will there be a "water tax" for those property owners with wells who are already paying the cost of electricity to pump water?  Or might they just decide that certain property owners in some parts of the state are using up too many resources and are not allowed to pump anymore water at all, forcing them to abandon their properties or have them seized by eminent domain. In an era when governments increasingly believe that they should have final say over every aspect of our lives, the possibilities are almost endless--and very frightening.




What is for sure is that the water battle is not over--it is just getting started. According to an article posted at kunm.org., public information officers of the New Mexico State Engineer's office say that the federal government is pursuing three legal theories that they hope will ultimately change ownership of the New Mexico's groundwater--clean up of a mine in northern New Mexico, protection of an endangered species in the Middle Rio Grande, and tribal water rights claims.  The state appears to be in for a long legal battle to hold on to what has always been theirs.




Maybe the battle is part of a larger plan to exert ever-increasing control over the lives of citizens. Then again, maybe it is just a little federal retribution against the state which allowed Tea Party Conservatives to elect the first female Hispanic governor in the history of the United States. We may never know the true answer to that last question.  And it may be many years and court battles from now before we can know with any certainty whether we get to keep our water.



Now through August 12, download No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen  FREE on Kindle.



Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at Frontier 2000.

Dream Small

In Leo Tolstoy's short story, "How Much Land Does a Man Really Need?" the peasant Pahom determines that his main problem in life is that he does not have enough land.  In his quest to get more and more property, he meets the Chief of the Bashkirs, who own 13,000 acres of the finest, most beautiful land Pahom has ever seen which they are eager to sell.  The price, the Chief informs Pahom, is "one thousand rubles a day"--prospective buyers pay 1000 rubles and then begin a journey around whatever parcel of the land they want.  They can have anything they mark off as theirs as long as they return to their starting point by sunset.  If, however, he cannot reach his starting point by sunset, Pahom will forfeit his thousand rubles to the Chief and leave empty-handed.



Pahom begins early in the morning, and because he is so entranced by the beauty of the land in front of him, he journeys further and further from his starting point as he marks off more desirable tracts of land.  By afternoon it is very hot and he is exhausted and thirsty from traveling all day, but he now realizes that he is a long way from the place where he started and he begins to run back to his destination.  The Bashkirs cheer him on as he desperately runs trying to get back to the designated finish line, where the Chief of the Baskirs awaits him, by sunset.  Just as the last rays of sunlight leave the sky, Pahom's reaches his destination, but as he does so he collapses and dies and the Chief of the Baskirs rolls with laughter as he pockets Pahom's rubles and orders a servant to bury him next to the bodies of all of the others who have fallen before him.  Taking a shovel, the servant digs a grave and buries Pahom in the amount of the land he really needs--six feet to cover him from head to foot. 



I was reminded of this story a couple of weeks ago as I read of Michael Bloomberg's newest plans for New York City--to move New Yorkers into tiny "Micro" Apartments of 275-300 square feet.  To accomplish this, Bloomberg is getting the zoning laws in New York changed which currently set minimum apartment square footage at 450 square feet. The original laws were passed to prevent over crowded tenements, but now Bloomberg says that they need to be changed because many New Yorkers live alone (approximately half of the people in Manhattan live by themselves) and they need cheaper, smaller housing.  Bloomberg is even promoting a contest for designers to compete for the best design of a 275-300 square foot space to include a kitchen and bathroom.



Bloomberg has made a lot of national news this year with his draconian restrictions on what New Yorkers are allowed to eat and drink and specifically his ban on soft drinks over 16 ounces.  He claims that it is his government's job to keep people healthy--and hey if you are going to fit in a tiny apartment you probably need to keep your weight under control.  Most recently, in the wake of the Colorado shootings he was pressuring both Obama and Romney to support gun control legislation.



What many people do not understand is that Bloomberg's initiatives, including his intense desire to control what people in his city can eat and drink and where they can live, come straight out of the playbook of the current elites who use "green" agendas to justify stripping wealth and opportunity away from everyone else and promote pushing people into tiny apartments and controlling their food intake.  Virtually all the United Nations initiatives, including Agenda 21 push for tight control over  Americans and all other residents of developed nations, including where we live, how we travel, what we eat, and what we are allowed to have.  Bloomberg governs a major U.S. city, so the fact that he is implementing these standards as part of his Administration is no small thing.  In fact, we can look for more and more U.S. cities to copy what New York is doing even as they implement their own versions of Agenda 21 through Smart Growth, Smart Code and sustainable living initiatives.  (My sister in Dallas Texas recently visited an IKEA furniture store which featured micro housing displays.  My sister commented that it was cute but had room enough for only one person and even with that, "You would not even have room for a pet."  Sounds delightful.



All of this brings me back to Tolstoy's story and the question in its title, "How Much Land Does A Man Really Need?"  According to Bloomberg, New Yorkers NEED only 275-300 square feet of space.  Yet, according to Forbes Magazine,  Bloomberg himself has an estimated net worth of $22 billion.  Forbes lists Bloomberg as #11 on the list of U.S. billionaires (number 22 worldwide) number 17 on the list of most powerful people and number 12 in the Forbes 400.  According to a May 25, 2012 article in the New York Times, Bloomberg currently owns 11 homes,  including 33 acre estate in North Salem which he purchased for 4.55 million dollars in 2011 for his daughter who is an accomplished equestrian.  His residence in New York City is a Park Avenue condominium which we can be quite certain is great deal larger than 300 square feet.  He owns a 35 acre estate in the Hamptons, also purchased in 2011.  His other real estate holdings include homes in London, Bermuda, Southampton, New York, Vail Colorado and Wellington, Florida.



Forbes lists Bloomberg as a self-made man, and I applaud his success; after all, America offers innovative people opportunities to succeed through their own efforts (in spite of Obama's recent, "You didn't build that" comments, everyone knows that success basically comes through individual achievement.)  But Mayor Bloomberg exemplifies the worst of what is wrong with our country today--wealthy powerful elites stepping on the fingers of those trying to work their way up the ladder to enjoy success of their own.  Bloomberg made his money in a country which allowed opportunity, but now he is determined to micro manage every aspect of every life he can control by determining for us how much we need and are allowed to have, while increasingly fattening his own already luxurious lifestyle.



The American dream used to be to buy a home of our own. Americans aspired to find a good job, or perhaps start a business, marry a person we loved and raise a family.  For most Americans success like Bloombergs has always been out of reach, but tens of millions have achieved their own version of the American Dream.  By saying that New Yorkers live alone and therefore only require 300 square feet of living space, Bloomberg is eliminating the possibility of  sharing a  life and certainly of raising a family.  By telling New Yorkers that they are not intelligent enough to determine how much salt and sugar they should consume he is conditioning them to the nanny state which dictates every part of their lives.



Bloomberg's dictatorship may be confined to New York City, but his ideas are spreading across the country and the message is very clear.  If you have any dreams for your own future, be prepared to dream small. 



Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at Frontier 2000.

A Tale of Two Cities

Last Friday our country was stunned to learn of a senseless shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, which left 14 people dead and over 50 wounded.  This inexplicable act of evil has left many in our country calling for solutions to prevent any other such events from occurring. For many on the left, the tragedy has given life to resounding calls for more gun control.  New York City Mayor Bloomberg called on both President Obama and Mitt Romney to take a stance in favor of new gun control laws.  In Congress, liberals have been calling for bans on assault rifles and limitations on ammunition. 




Yesterday, Obama stated his position on increased gun control. While he affirms that he, "like most Americans" believes that the second Amendment guarantees citizens the right to bear arms, he also believes that we need stricter laws to prevent criminals from purchasing weapons and ammunition.  Specifically, he is calling on lawmakers to work to prevent "mentally unstable" people from purchasing weapons. (I would like to know who determines whether a given person is 'mentally unstable' considering some of the definitions of potential terrorists that we have seen from Homeland Security over the past few years.)




The timing of this new push for gun control is interesting in light of the new UN Small Arms Treaty that is being completed this week.  The UN Small Arms Treaty is an international attempt at gun control, both on a military and individual level, which has been endorsed by both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Volumes could be written on the various provisions of this treaty--including the wisdom of allowing an enemy nation such as Iran whose leader believes that he has a mission from his god to establish a Muslim Caliphate (government) which will spread across the world to be allowed to dictate the number of weapons each country can have. Today, though, I want to focus on just one aspect of gun control--it's ineffectiveness in preventing violence.




As a life-long resident of the El Paso, Texas, region I have gotten to witness up close and personal the difference between a society which limited gun control (Texas) and a society with restrictive gun control (Mexico) and to see the differences between the two.




Many who live off the border wrongly assume that Mexico's problems with violence are the product of the drug war between warring cartels.  That is the current source of the murder and mayhem in Mexico, but Juarez has been a dangerous, violent city for many years--long before outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon began the war that has torn the country apart.  Several years ago, before the drug wars began, I did a mortgage loan for a woman living in the U.S. whose family owned a money-changing business in Juarez.  She and her brothers had inherited the business, but she told me that her brothers did not want to work in it because it was too dangerous.  The business had been robbed a number of times, and during one of these robberies her husband had been shot.  Fearing that he would be killed if he continued to work in the business, she had encouraged him to go to work in a restaurant in El Paso. She, herself, continued to cross the bridge every day to open and operate her business, and she hoped and prayed each day that she would not be killed while doing so.




My client was unable to buy a gun to protect herself and her business because of the strict gun control laws in Mexico.  These laws, which are among the strictest in the world, are designed to make gun ownership nearly impossible.  According to an article in the Washington Post, the entire nation of Mexico has only one gun store, which is located in Mexico city and operated by the Mexican military.  The clerks are soldiers.  The store is located on a secure military base and to enter customers must provide valid ID, pass through a metal detector, give up their cell phones and cameras, provide proof of income, submit references, pass a criminal background check and provide proof that they have been honorably discharged from any military service.  If they pass all of these checks, they are allowed to purchase just ONE small caliber weapon and a box of bullets.  The weapons are allowed only at home. A business owner who wants to possess a weapon must apply for a separate permit.  Business owners are normally encouraged to hire a private security company to protect themselves rather than getting a gun.




Mexico's no tolerance laws about gun control frequently cause problems for U.S. citizens who cross the border with weapons.  Several years ago, a member of our police force drove his vehicle across the border in pursuit of a suspect. Upon crossing to the Mexican side, he was immediately detained by Mexican authorities and jailed. (He remained in custody for months while U.S. officials negotiated his release.) Most recently, a young truck driver from Dallas, Texas, who was transporting a shipment of ammunition, crossed the border and was jailed in Mexico.  Although the Mexican customs official who detained him said in her statement that he told her he had crossed accidentally and was trying to turn around before entering Mexico, and in spite of calls from various civic leaders for his release, he remains incarcerated for illegally bringing guns into Mexico.




So how has all of this gun control worked out for Mexico?  Since 2008, over 51,000 people have been murdered in Mexico in the nation's drug war. (To put this figure into perspective, only about 58,000 Americans died during the entire Vietnam War).  In 2010, over 3100 people died in the city of Juarez, Mexico, earning the city the title of the "murder capital of the world."  In 2011 the number of murders in Juarez dropped to 1904.  In 2012,  murders are declining, but there is still incredible violence in the city. Year to date, 60 women have been murdered in a story that is being largely obscured by the larger story of the wars over drug territory; a total of about 100 women have been reported missing over the past two years.  More women have been killed in Juarez in 2012 than in any of the earlier years of "femicide."




Our whole nation is mourning the Aurora, Colorado shootings, as well we should be.  This is the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.  But a look at international headlines shows that in Mexico, where guns are virtually impossible to legally obtain, a shooting that claims the lives of 14 people is a common occurrence:




1. October 23, 2010, at least 10 gunmen burst into a birthday party in a private home in Juarez, killing 13 people and wounding twenty.  The party was for a 15 year old boy; at least four of the people killed at the party were teenagers, and one wounded was nine years old.  This incident was the second shooting at a house party that month--in the first attack, gunmen stormed a house and killed six people.




2.  February 12, 2011, LA Times reports that 8 people, six of them waitresses, were gunned down in the Las Torres bar in Juarez, Mexico.  Assailants bearing assault rifles opened fire in the bar. Elsewhere throughout the city, an additional 10 people were killed in other shootings for a total of 18 deaths in 24 hours.




3. January 13, 2011, Mexican activist Susana Chavez was found strangled with one had cut off in Cuidad Juarez.  Chavez had worked during the 1990's to bring attention to the murders of hundreds of young low-income women in Juarez.  The Chihuahua State Attorney General's office said that Chavez's death was not the result of her activism but was the work of teenagers who cut off her hand to make authorities think she had been killed by organized crime.




4. April 5, 2011, CNN World reports that 41 people were murdered in Juarez, Mexico in four days, including a 10 year old boy who was shot and killed in an attack meant to kill his father.




I have known many people living in Juarez who have not been able to continue to run their businesses because of crime and violence.  Many are afraid to visit family members and loved ones because of the constant threat of violence. Danger is not confined to people involved in drug trafficking. In Mexico, business owners are routinely targeted for kidnappings.  In Mexico in 2011, an average of 49 kidnappings took place every single day.  In 2010, there were 13,505 abductions; in 2011 that number rose to 17,889.  These figures do not include "express kidnappings" which normally last just a few hours and are facilitated by taxi drivers.




Today with the election of the new president of Mexico, there appears to be general consensus that the city is going to become less violent.  Many attribute that to the fact that "El Chapo" Guzman and his Sinaloa Cartel have actually taken control of the city away from the Juarez cartel.  Last week, our local news featured a story about business owners who are once again reopening restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Juarez to take advantage of anticipated visits from Americans as well as to serve the needs of residents of Juarez who are becoming less afraid to go out in public.  These entrepreneurs admit openly that they are allowed to open these businesses only if they pay protection money to organized crime, but the "tax" that the cartels impose on them is just a cost of living and working in Mexico.




When the drug war started in 2008, many of us who own businesses and work in El Paso feared that the violence might spill over into our community. By and large, that has not happened. El Paso has been ranked for the past several years as one of the safest cities in the United States.  In 2010, there were just a mere 5 murders in El Paso.  In 2011 that number rose to 16, but six of those were proven to be domestic-violence related killings.  I could not find specific statistics regarding kidnappings in El Paso, but I did find FBI statistics that in 2010 the FBI had identified 25 cartel-related kidnappings along the entire Southwestern border of the United States.  Our city has made national headlines when bullets have strayed across the border and hit our city hall or bounced off a pedestrian, but the guns and gunmen connected to those bullets have remained on the other side of the border. (In a recent incident, a bullet grazed, but did not penetrate, the leg of a woman pushing a stroller near the border.  The bullet was believed to have come from a shoot- out involving automatic weapons taking place between masked gunman and authorities on the streets of Juarez.  The woman was treated for minor injuries and allowed to go home.)




So what is the difference?  Why is Juarez, Mexico, so dangerous and El Paso, Texas, so safe?  Some attribute Fort Bliss to the safety of our city, but the military is not allowed to function as a police force on U.S. soil.  And the mere presence of military does not make a city safe--during the height of the violence the president of Mexico stationed military troops in tanks on the streets of Juarez, but it did not stop the killings or the extortion or the other crimes.  In fact, residents just complained that they were now victims of crimes perpetrated by the soldiers.




Is it our law enforcement?  We do have a lot of federal law enforcement here--FBI, DEA, and ICE all have a powerful presence in our city.  But is that enough to keep armed gunmen at bay and to protect a population of over 800,000 people?  I don't think so.




Is it demographics?  No.  Many of the residents of El Paso have family members living in Juarez or in other parts of Mexico.  We are separated from Mexico by a few international bridges and a river--for the most part our culture and the dynamic of our community is the same.




The difference is guns.  Whereas Mexico has restrictive gun laws that allow criminals to access weapons illegally while keeping weapons away from the citizenry, El Paso is the beneficiary of Texas' gun laws which allow residents to carry guns openly and to apply for concealed carry permits.  Would be killers and kidnappers who operate without any real obstacles in Mexico know that if they enter an El Paso business to kill or extort money, they run a very good risk of being killed themselves.  And this is a better deterrent than the world's finest law enforcement.  Trained law enforcement may be able to successfully track down murderers after crimes have taken place and bring the perpetrators to justice, but an armed populace can keep those murders from ever happening in the first place.




Last week, I received a tweet criticizing my anti-gun control stance that said that mutually assured destruction is not a good deterrent.  I disagree.  Mutually assured destruction is often the only deterrent. A lifetime spent living a few miles from one of the most dangerous cities on earth has taught me that most violent criminals are also cowards.  They may not mind slaughtering everyone else, but they don't want to risk getting killed themselves.  Mexico is proof that complete disarmament of a society is not possible.  We just have to decide who we want to be armed--only the violent criminals, or the whole of society.  Having seen both situations up close, I definitely vote for the latter.








Download Alexandra Swann's novel, The Twelfth Juror FREE through July 29, 2012.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/.

The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away

The old Testament Book of Job records that the Lord tested a righteous man named Job by allowing the loss of his health, family, prosperity and possessions.  As Job reeled from the news of the deaths of all of his children, followed by news that all of his flocks and herds had been driven away and that he had become destitute, he responded by saying,  "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,"  or as The Living Bible paraphrases this verse, "The Lord gave me everything I had, and they were His to take away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."  (Job 2:21)




I was reminded of this story this week as I saw President Obama's comments about business owners replayed in the news over and over. While it is widely accepted that his non-teleprompter address signals his desire to justify higher taxes on Americans earning over $250,000 a year, I think that his statements signal a much deeper hostility toward business in general and a much greater sense of entitlement than many of even his most serious critics realize: 

"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back...If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.




"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen...The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

For video of the event and Mitt Romney's response see,  Obama's Remarks on Business




Obama's remarks have been rightly attacked by everybody from Dan Danner, the President of the NFIB, to GOP candidate Mitt Romney for being insulting to business owners, and they are.  As someone who has worked in small business since 1998, I can say definitely that the government was not there when I cashed in an IRA to open the business; they were not there for the long days and late evenings spent in the office working to close loans; they were not there for the countless hours spent training and paying for training to learn how to do our jobs better. What the government has done is increase the cost of doing business and heap on regulation on top of regulation so that most businesses like mine have closed.  They have piled on forms and buried us under paperwork.  They have created an environment that heavily favors huge corporations over small companies, and now they are about to destroy us with taxes we cannot afford.  Before the economy and the housing market became so bad under the weight of all of their rules, we had excellent health insurance, but because of the constraints of the economy we are no longer able to pay for that, and now we are being told that we will be fined because we do not have the money to pay to for something we used to provide of our volition.




Although some of the details of the regulations vary, my story is not that different from that of other small business owners.  Our doors are still open in spite of the government--not because of it.  True, the military created the Internet, and that has created opportunities for business owners.  But does Obama really believe that small business success begins and ends with the Internet?  The Internet is only about 30 years old--small businesses have been impacting the American economy since before the Revolutionary war.  True, we have roads and bridges. So does everyone else.  The ancient Romans had roads so well planned and maintained that they gave birth to the saying, "All roads lead to Rome."  But well maintained roads do not produce a thriving economy or a thriving business environment.




Many are taking Obama's comments as just his personal opinion of business--a reflection of the fact that he has never owned or managed a business, never made a payroll, nor hired nor fired an employee.  He is the community organizer who thinks welfare and food stamps are economic stimulants.  He doesn't know what creates jobs or builds opportunity, so when he gets up to speak he puts his foot in his mouth.




Maybe.  My own opinion is that Obama's comments are symptomatic of a much greater ideological problem in this nation, which goes way beyond just increased taxation.  This idea is the concept that no one succeeds on his own merits--be it in business, or as a parent (It Takes a Village) or as a non-profit or in any other area of life.  As Obama says, "if you are successful, you didn't get there on your own."  Success is the result not of individual effort or initiative or hard work but of the collective. That being the case, any rewards for this success belong to the collective. For any individual to believe that he has a right to profit from his own achievements is selfish, egotistical and un-American and unfair. And this mindset can extend far beyond increased taxes to actual nationalization of industries and confiscation of personal property.  (After all, if you have a luxurious home which you bought because your business was thriving, you don't really have any right to it, since all of your success was made possible by the greater society in which you live.) To paraphrase Job, "The government [state, society, the collective] gave me everything I have, and it was theirs to take away. Blessed be the name of the government."




The book of Job records that when the Lord was finished testing Job, He restored to Job twice as much as he had lost--wealth, flocks, herds--and God even gave him ten more children to replace the ones who had died.  Those of us who are Christians believe in the inherent goodness, fairness and mercy of God who always ultimately looks out for our good.  But when the government becomes our master, there is no such happy ending--just widespread poverty and overall hopelessness that never ends as bureaucrats take from the producers while extending unconditional welfare to create a class of unskilled, uneducated people who will never be able to do anything except depend on the collective for their next meal.  Such thinking produces people who quickly determine that since there is no reward for work, they are better off not working and just being on the receiving end of whatever the society is able to dole out.  And as more and more people embrace this idea, our productivity will continue to drop and our deficits will continue to increase as we slide into Marxism.




Obama's words are not just insulting--they are dangerous, for business, for individuals and for the American way of life.




Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/.

It Feels Like Friday the 13th

Last week we got to celebrate our country's birthday (albeit on a Wednesday which made the rest of the workweek strange for those of us unfortunate enough not to be able to take additional vacation. That set the month of July off on a strange note, involving a series of bizarre,Twilight-zonesque events in the lending world so that I now find myself, appropriately, on the afternoon of Friday the 13th wondering if the past five days has been an out-of body experience.




Monday, July 9th was the final day that we could give the CFPB our input about a series of proposals they are considering implementing to make mortgage lending even more difficult than it already is.  Among these include adding residual income requirements for all borrowers on conventional loans--a residual income requirement means that the borrower must have a certain amount of cash left over at the end of the month for himself and each dependant after paying all of the bills, utilities, credit cards, mortgage, etc.  Residual income requirements are currently used for VA loans, which have traditionally provided loans with reduced down payment requirements, but now the CFPB is apparently considering adding this as a requirement to the new qualified residential mortgages.  Also up for consideration--a proposal to require that every borrower prove that he has cash reserves sufficient to cover several months worth of  payments on all of his debts, credit cards, car payment, child support, and mortgage at closing.  Currently, some conventional loan products require that the borrower have two months of mortgage payments in the bank at the time of closing.  This is the first time that we have seen a proposal expanding that requirement to cover all debt.  These are just two of a number of radical new proposals which will exclude a greater number of borrowers from being able to purchase or refinance a home under the new qualified residential mortgages. The CFPB had granted an extension on the comment period through July 9th, but that also means that the final rule will not be published until after the November 2012 elections.  My own personal opinion is that delaying the final rule until after the elections was the ONLY reason for the extended comment period; based on what we have seen so far I think the CFPB probably has already written their final rule and is just waiting to publish it with no regard for any comments they may receive about it.




Also this week, the CFPB released  for public comment their proposed new version of the Good Faith Estimate and the Truth in Lending.  The Dodd-Frank bill charges the CFPB with combining these two estimates into one estimate which will be more user friendly.  I examined the form.  The three page good faith estimate and the two page truth in lending have now been combined into one new five page form.  Beyond correcting two of the serious problems in the 2010 good faith estimate--1. The estimate did not show the total amount of cash that borrowers would need to close the transaction 2. The estimate did not show the total payment including taxes and insurance--the form is very similar to the two forms it is replacing.  More disturbing is that the CFPB has released 1100 pages of proposed regulations accompanying their new five page form.  In an industry that is drowning in regulations now, I am curious to see how many more our regulators can pile on top of us.  We will find out soon.  To see the forms and the 1100 page regulations that accompany them, click the links below:




Proposed New Loan Estimate Form




Proposed New Closing Statement Form




1100 Pages of Proposed New Regulations




In other news, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers testified before the House Financial Services Committee regarding the unintended consequences of the Dodd Frank Act.  I hope that they also had time to comment on the intended consequences--the goal of Progressives is to cut off individual access to wealth and capital and to destroy single family home ownership in America.  To the end of achieving these goals, Dodd Frank works beautifully. To read the written testimony and view the House Financial Services Committee hearings click the links belows:




NAMB Written Testimony to HFSC




Archived House Financial Services Committee Hearing on Mortgage Reform




Finally, Wells Fargo closed all of its wholesale lending operations today in response to a settlement with the Department of Justice over discriminatory subprime loans originated by mortgage brokers.  Although exiting wholesale was not part of its settlement, Wells believed that no longer dealing with brokers was in its best interests as a company.  I think we can expect to see more of this as the DOJ is used increasingly as a political weapon to enforce policy decisions rather than a law enforcement agency.




To put all of this in perspective, on Wednesday I closed a refinance for a long time acquaintance of mine.  He was refinancing his primary residence to a new fifteen year loan to take advantage of the lowest interest rates since the 1950s.  Although his credit scores are over 800, he has millions of dollars, owns a number of successful companies, has been self employed his entire working life and pays himself a high six figure income, this refinance took 60 days to complete.  We had to document every company he owned, every penny he was using for closing and basically every aspect of his life.  All of this was to do a conventional rate and term refinance with the same lender who currently holds his mortgage note.  My client leans considerably left of center politically but by the end of the process, he told me that Congress needs to fix these housing regulations because as long as borrowing for a mortgage remains as difficult as it is today, the housing market will never recover, and without a robust housing market the overall economy will never recover.  He's exactly right, of course, but unfortunately, few people appear to understand the correlation between massive over-regulation that is strangling the life out of lending and the lack luster economy.  Until both the people in this country who make the laws and the people who are forced to live under them begin to recognize this problem, all of us will continue to suffer under a slow economy with high unemployment and little opportunity for advancement.




For now, I am just glad that Friday the 13th and the week leading up to it are coming to a close.





Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her newest novel, The Planner, about an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government, was released June 28, 2012. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/.