Jassen Bowman

I am hereby officially announcing my candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 for Congressional District 4. The results of this last election literally made me want to puke. I was both shocked and dismayed that northern Colorado would send the greater of two evils to Washington as their representative, and even more dismayed that there was not a third of fourth better choice.

Over the next several days, I will be forming an organizing committee and officially registering my candidacy with the proper authorities. I have been out of the political arena for nearly 4 years, but I can no longer sit idly by and watch my county, my state, and my country flush itself down the proverbial toilet to descend further down the slippery slope to socialism.

I just got done reading the 110 page EESA that passed the U.S. House today. I highly encourage people to read it themselves, rather than listen to the B.S. and hype from the media. Perhaps more important than the EESA itself is the 320+ pages of PORK attached to it. Congress at it's finest. I haven't read the pork yet, but I'm going to write this blog post as I skim the pork, and will report on what gems I find within.

First, the entire bill is here:

http://financialservices.house.gov/essa/essabill.pdf

The government's own summation of the sections, in only 6 pages (worth reading if you're not going to read the whole thing):

http://financialservices.house.gov/essa/eesabill_section-by-section.pdf

To start, let's go over the gist of what the EESA does.

Read more »

Personally, I'm appalled by the entire bailout idea, since my personal political belief is that the government has no business bailing out private firms. Anybody that starts a business or participates in the business as a stakeholder of any sort assumes a certain amount of risk by doing so.

In particular, the little odds and ends of pork that have now been attached to an already overly bloated "economic stabilization" package are disturbing. Ultimately, the taxpayers of America still have to foot the bill for this. As a tax professional working in the IRS collections representation side of things, I see every day how hard a tax bill is on American families and businesses. Tacking an extra $10,000 to $12,000 per person to the federal debt isn't going to help.

To quote a political pundit, "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

-Jassen