Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Nike, Best Buy, Target and Other Crony Capitalists back the EPA's Soviet-Style Control of Industrial Policy

I'm not a big fan of boycotts, but if you can avoid buying Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target stuff, you might help stop their support of the global warming scam.

Crony capitalism is a stepping-stone to socialism. The term is used to describe the unholy, anti-citizen alliances between corporations and big government. These kinds of companies generally engage in massive lobbying efforts (read: backscratching) to coerce government into various taxpayer-funded schemes:

• by paying them directly through government purchases...
• by carving out market segments for them through regulation...
• and otherwise increasing profit margins by suppressing the free market.

With this as our context, let's examine The American Spectator's article entitled "What Do Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target Have in Common?".

They all support EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, even though that circumvents the citizens' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws. More on the Obama Administration overreach and his crony corporatists support at the National Legal and Policy Center blog today.

Heading over to the NLPC, we can discover the sordid details.

Earlier this month corporate climateers including Nike and 3M were given awards -- supposedly "the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world" -- for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions... Nike also co-signed a letter to President Obama that called for U.S. leadership in an initiative to create and finance the Global Climate Fund, which was established at the UN climate talks in Cancun in early December.

Other members of [this group include] Levi Strauss & Co., Starbucks, Timberland, Best Buy, Ben & Jerry's, eBay, Gap Inc., The North Face, and Target Corporation. Mark them down as corporations who favor the circumvention of the peoples' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws.

Carbon dioxide is plant food. It can no more be a pollutant than water vapor or oxygen. The Marxist Left progressives believe, or want us to think they believe, that capping CO2 emissions can act as a thermostat on the climate.

The reality is quite different. Trying to control carbon dioxide is a money-making scam and it has been since the original IPCC reports that were issued by folks poised to make millions through inherent conflicts-of-interest.

Companies that feed this government-run monstrosity should be treated as the anti-free market pariahs they are.


Image: Fox News.

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) doing the work Democrats won't do: sounding the public pension crisis alarm and protecting taxpayers

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is focusing much-needed attention on the public sector pension programs that Democrats have driven off a cliff.

The country's public pension system is grossly underfunded and needs an overhaul, Rep. Devin Nunes said this week... [He] s promoting legislation designed to gauge the extent of the problem, while also establishing a ban on federal bailouts of public pension programs.

How bad is the underfunding problem?

Nationwide, the country's pension programs for public employees had roughly $1.9 trillion set aside in 2008 to pay promised retirement benefits, according to Nunes...

...Yet those same programs have liabilities totaling $5.2 trillion — a gap of more than $3.2 trillion.

Introduced earlier this month, Nunes' Public Pension Transparency Act would force state and local pension programs to report their liabilities to the federal government using a uniform accounting standard. It would also create a federal ban on any future public pension bailouts by Washington.

The bill has picked up the support of several leading Republicans, including Reps. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Darrell Issa (Calif.).

Last week The Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway also hit the alarm, describing the fatal default of Pritchard, Alabama on its pension obligations. Hemingway's question is a troubling one: "If the busted public pensions in small-town Alabama make for a particularly tragic tale, what kind of misery is going to unfold when some of the largest towns and states in the country run out of money?"

The public sector pension crisis is here. The nefarious alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians and their public sector union bosses have left pensioners and taxpayers high and dry. Rep. Nunes' efforts are a brave and utterly necessary start at addressing this impending catastrophe.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum. Thanks!

Friday, December 31, 2010

Dems Rip Rule Change That Could Constrain Their Reckless Spending

There's no outrage like the outrage of a liberal who's been told the taxpayer's wallet is closed.

Dems rip proposed rule giving new power to GOP Budget chairman


A proposed House rule granting new powers to the GOP chairman of the Budget Committee has sparked outrage from Democrats... The proposed rule would allow the Budget Committee chairman to set spending ceilings for 2011 without a vote by the full House.

...In practice, this would give power to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the panel, to impose deep spending cuts since spending bills cannot exceed the budget ceiling for the 2011 fiscal year...

Sounds good. What's not to like?

Democrats argue the provision would give unilateral power to Ryan and flies in the face of GOP promises of transparency.

Coming from the party that promised -- and failed to deliver in spectacular fashion -- "the most transparent administration ever", that guilt trip rings a tad hollow, no?

...Republicans argue allowing the Budget chairman to set spending ceilings is necessary because of the failure of the last Congress to approve a budget last year.

“This provision is only necessary because of Democrats’ historic failure to pass a budget last year. They have nothing but their own ineptitude to blame for this temporary authority,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House Republican transition... Another House aide argued the powers are not unprecedented. The GOP gave the chairman of the House similar powers in the opening days of the 1999 Congress, when the GOP also controlled the chamber.

Gee, you mean this rule change not only has precedent but could also help prevent the radical Left Democrat Party from further destroying America's balance sheet?

Faster, please!


Hat tip: Memeorandum. Linked by: Michelle Malkin and Weasel Zippers. Thanks!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

In our Continuing Saga of the Democrats' Collapsing Welfare Society, Bankrupt States About to 'Sentence People to Death'

In a morbid sort of way, it's almost humorous that Democrats rammed through socialized medicine when the very welfare state they created is in the process of collapsing. Oh, and that's not me saying it -- that's coming from the Democrats in charge of these fiascoes.

Medicaid Pushes U.S. States Off ‘Cliff’ as Governors Seek Cuts


Governors nationwide are taking a scalpel to Medicaid, the jointly run state and federal health-care program for 48 million poor Americans, half of whom are children. The single biggest expense for states, Medicaid consumes about 22 percent of their total $1.6 trillion in expenditures, more than what is allocated to elementary and secondary education...

I don’t think most states want to sentence people to death,” said Judy Solomon, co-director of health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy. “But what we see is a pretty bleak picture of tough cuts made this year, and next year’s numbers look worse.”

... Every state has a unique formula for calculating the federal contribution for Medicaid. The 12 with the highest personal income, including California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Colorado, typically depend on the U.S. government for about half their expenditures.

Under the stimulus, the federal share rose to about 62 percent. In July it will return to the old formula, forcing the states to pick up 50 percent of the total cost of the program instead of 38 percent.

You read that right. A large chunk of the Obama Stimulus program was directed to states in order to make up for Medicaid shortfalls and to keep their biggest backers -- union bosses -- in clover.

Not much of a job creator, it turns out.

I'm still waiting for Democrats to take credit for all of their wonderful programs. All of them: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Welfare State, and everything in between. Programs that ultimately crush the human spirit, bankrupt governments, and destroy democracy.

Like Obamacare.


Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Q: If you're the Democrat Governor of a Blue State With a $15 Billion Budget Deficit, What Do You Do? A: Borrow More Money!

Does anyone else think of the phrase "death spiral" when they read a story like this?

Illinois' borrowing spree would continue into 2011 under a plan Governor Pat Quinn is floating to sell more debt to deal with a huge unpaid bill backlog and pension payments... The state's lack of cash could lead to a $15 billion deficit that would include $8 billion of unpaid bills heading into fiscal 2012, which begins July 1, the state comptroller has warned.

...The state is betting on a good reception in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market to borrow as much as $15 billion next year because debt service payments are a top priority... Illinois was the biggest single issuer of municipal debt, at $8.67 billion, in the first three quarters of 2010, according to Thomson Reuters data.

But the state's cascading bond ratings and well-publicized cash woes are raising some concerns... Bill Gross, who invested $5.5 million of his own money in five municipal bond funds run by his Pacific Investment Management Co earlier this month, told CNBC on Tuesday he would avoid Illinois debt...

The cost for a bondholder to insure against a default by Illinois has more than doubled in less than a year.

The collapse of the welfare-slash-open borders economy will be felt first in reckless, "progressive" Blue States like Illinois, New York and California.

And if someone comes to me floating a federal bailout for these states, I have but a two-word response. The second word is "you". The first word is not printable in a family blog. And "Hellz, no" works almost as well.


President Obama Keeps His Perfect Economic Track Record Intact: 40% of Loans Modified Under HAMP Are Defaulting

Is there a better predictor of economic failure than President Obama's support for a particular policy? I could make a solid case that there isn't a superior guarantee of an epic fail than support by Obama, ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They have an absolutely perfect track record of visiting catastrophe upon the American people with their policies.

The latest example?

US mortgage foreclosures jumped in the third quarter as fewer borrowers qualified for loan modifications that would have reduced their monthly payments, bank regulators have said... The number of homes entering foreclosure rose 31 per cent compared with the second quarter and 3.7 per cent compared with the year-earlier period...

...As these [newly foreclosed] properties come on the market, they are expected to depress home prices by between 5 per cent and 10 per cent over the next year, economists said... Hamp modifications totalled 504,648 as of November, well short of the government’s 3m target.

Even when borrowers receive loan modifications, they are redefaulting at high rates. According to a report by the Congressional Oversight Panel, 40 per cent of borrowers who receive a Hamp modification are expected to redefault over the next five years.

In other words, HAMP neither met expectations for volume of refinancing (by a factor of six) or in preventing foreclosures.

Let's tack this onto the administration's stellar economic track record:

 FAIL: The "Cash-for-Clunkers" program cost taxpayers between $20,000 and $45,000 per vehicle purchased.

 FAIL: The "Stimulus" program, which cost $787 billion and was rammed through Congress using the premise that, without it, unemployment would not pass 8%, has resulted in 10.2% unemployment and 17% "under-employment" (U-6). The tab will be paid for by your children and grandchildren.

 FAIL: The $60 billion bailout of GM and Chrysler -- abrogating bankruptcy law with payoffs to various union bosses -- is an utter and complete failure. The businesses are unsustainable without a massive restructuring, including dramatically retooling union contracts.

 FAIL: "Green jobs" in the form of weatherization programs that have been utter, cash-burning frauds and failures. A series of spot-check audits of the $5 billion program indicates that fraud is rampant -- easily 20% can be chalked up to phantom services, blatant overspending on simple items, and unverifiable expenses. But not to worry -- it's only a billion dollars of wasted money, a pittance for this administration.

 FAIL: The bailout of AIG, orchestrated by the then-head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) Timothy F. Geithner, "wasted billions" of taxpayer money according to the inspector generator of the TARP program. The initial $85 billion rescue failed, forcing the Fed to pay above-market for the swaps it acquired. The result? "There is no question that the effect of the FRBNY's decision - indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG - was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG's counterparties," according to the inspector general. In fact, the terms of the plan were so flawed that the Treasury Department had to dole out an additional $40 billion to AIG just weeks later. For his part in the debacle, FRBNY chairman Geithner was rewarded with a Secretary of the Treasury role by President Obama.

These are the economic qualifications of President Obama and his Congressional sycophants -- the very same masterminds who are in the process of nationalizing the health care sector.

I'll give you one guess as to how that's going to turn out.


Tuesday, December 28, 2010

So the Democrats Finally Want Fiscal Responsibility? Great. Let's End Their Disastrous "War on Poverty"

Race Hustler Wants More Spending for the "War on Poverty"--It Seems $16 Trillion Isn't Enough


The nation's foremost race hustler is in the news again, agitating for more spending in the "War on Poverty". Oh, and he wants a "radical reordering" of our economy, because the Consitution is apparently an arcane relic with no particular relevance to race hustlers.

Jesse Jackson appeared on MSNBC yesterday and let it be known that President Obama better enjoy his vacation now, because come January, Jackson expects a lot from the President. Not only does he want a renewed commitment to the war on poverty, but he also wants the President to go right to Congress and to stick up for the women and children Jackson meets in homeless shelters who apparently are working every day and still can’t afford the rent.

Jackson has seen enough and calls for “a radical reordering of our economy, bottom up, because those, the very top are drowning in wealth. It’s paper-driven not even productivity-driven.” Given Jackson’s unique and mangled pronunciation of so many words in the brief clip, it sounds like Jackson is actually the one under water and drowning... Overall it’s debatable which is crazier: the radical rearrangement of the economy or the idea that Obama wants economic advice from Jackson.

I can answer that question.

Since the inception of means-tested welfare programs in 1964, Americans have spent $15.9 trillion on the "War on Poverty".

Coincidentally, our national debt is approaching $15 trillion and is projected to top $20 trillion by the end of the decade.

After adjusting for inflation, America's welfare expenditures are 1300% higher than in 1965. And the results have been absolutely catastrophic. But the documented failures haven't stopped President Obama and the Democrats from charting a course for massive new spending programs, at a time when the country can least afford it.

A record number of Americans -- 3.7 million -- fell into poverty in 2009, according to the Census Bureau. And the percentage of poor today is virtually unchanged from what it was in 1966. America's poverty rate stays within a range of 11 to 15 percent, year in and year out, no matter how many trillions in money borrowed from our children we spend.

Worse still, unbridled welfare programs have insidious impacts on society


The out-of-wedlock birthrate is now 40 percent and the African-American out-of-wedlock birthrate is a shocking 72 percent. But when the "War on Poverty" began, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was just 7 percent.

Of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency. Research "strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are far more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead states that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

What legacy media and Democrats won't tell you is this shocking fact: the statistical link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is conclusive. The more welfare society provides, the more single-parent families society creates.

There have been dozens of studies that link the availability of welfare benefits to out-of-wedlock births. One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995, Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

To summarize these facts (in simple words for any Democrats reading along): not only has the "War on Poverty" been a $15 trillion failure, it has actually caused more misery, more poverty, and more violent crime than if we had never spent that money in the first place.

President Obama wants ideas to help balance the budget. Here's one: end the failed "War on Poverty", once and for all.


References: Washington Examiner, 12/12/10, "Let a vigorous economy fight the War on Poverty"; Heritage Foundation, 9/16/10, "Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty."

Friday, December 24, 2010

Muni meltdown: 'Don't panic about states, panic ... about cities'

Manhattan Institute economist Josh Barro appeared Wednesday on the Fox Business Network to assess the risk of municipal bankruptcies over the next few years. In general, Barro doesn't see states as default risks for several reasons. Most of their obligations are long-term (e.g., 30-year bonds) and their balance sheets, in his view, are not beyond repair.

I don't expect state defaults because the primary fiscal problem in states is not insolvency but a cash flow mismatch--they are spending more money than they take in. Default can fix your solvency problem, but it can't fix your cash flow problem; only spending cuts or tax increases can.

However ... we are likely to see a number of significant defaults and bankruptcies of local governments. We've already seen Vallejo, California go into bankruptcy, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would be in bankruptcy but the state of Pennsylvania is (for now) propping it up. Pittsburgh is also in worrisome financial condition. Bell, California may also end up in bankruptcy soon. There will be more of these situations in years to come.

I particularly worry about the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District, which have unsustainable cost structures, have large bond and pension loads, and face unusually great barriers to either raising more revenue or cutting spending.

The most fiscally troubled states are the usual suspects--California, Illinois, Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey. Michigan and New York are also in pretty tough shape. However, the consequences of "trouble" are likely to be tax increases, cutbacks of employee pensions, and substantial cuts in programs (even in traditionally protected areas, like education and policing). I don't think it makes sense for any of these states to default on their bonds.

I believe states will place a high priority on meeting obligations to bondholders, because failing to do so will result in a loss of access to short-term debt markets, which states use to manage their cash flow. Long-term bonds are simply not that large of a state's cost burden (pensions are a much bigger issue) so defaulting on your bonds causes you a lot of headaches and doesn't save you that much money.

The Los Angeles Unified School District [LAUSD] is a perfect example of failed government -- or, more correctly, failed Democrat policies. Scandals that erupted just this year include:

• "Already ballooning to $572 million, Los Angeles Unified's most expensive school – and possibly the nation's – looks like it will need a final $6 million infusion before fully opening this fall... [it] needs the money to satisfy environmental regulations."

• "A grand jury has indicted a top [LAUSD] manager for allegedly funneling business from the district’s massive school-building effort to a company he co-owned, highlighting flaws in the way one of the nation’s largest public-works projects has been overseen."

• "An investigation prompted by whistle-blowers within [LAUSD]'s school construction program found a series of irregularities in awarding $65 million in contracts, including authorizing work that exceeded pre-approved amounts by nearly 50 percent."

• "An environmental consulting firm that worked for Los Angeles Unified for more than a decade engaged in "egregious" conflicts of interest and overcharged the school district's construction program by $2.5 million, an audit released this month said."

• "The LAUSD high school graduation rate was 40.6%–the second worst rate in the country."

Is it just me, or do Democrats destroy everything they touch?


Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.

Inevitable Failure of Eurozone Watch: Ireland nationalizes yet another bank in move to 'staunch panicked run on savings'

In a move aimed to contain a country-wide run on banks, Ireland has nationalized a fourth bank with its takeover of Allied Irish.

Ireland has nationalised its fourth troubled financial institution after taking control of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) today in an attempt to stem the run on deposits at the stricken bank... In the latest sign of the lack of confidence in the Irish banking system, Ireland's government secured a high court order to inject €3.7bn (£3.15bn) of funds into the bank through the nation's pension fund.

As Ireland was shoring up its banking system, problems inside the eurozone worsened after Fitch downgraded Portugal, the country that many market experts believe will follow Ireland in taking financial aid from its EU partners and the International Monetary Fund...

...AIB is joining Anglo Irish, Irish Nationwide Building Society and EBS building society in being taken into state control. Irish Life is the only lender so far to avoid a bailout.

Several days ago, Guggenheim Partners' Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd issued a report that all but predicts a meltdown of the Eurozone (PDF, via Tyler Durden):

Much of the shakeout in Europe is likely to occur in the next 12 months, but the chronology and rapidity of how the crisis will fully unfold is less clear. One thing I believe with certainty, however, is that the tenuous situation in Europe will eventually unravel to the extent that the only solution will be quantitative easing and ultimately some form of federalization of Europe...

...To help explain why I believe a broader financial crisis is coming to Europe, let me start with a quick story. Imagine for a moment that you’re an Irish citizen. Needless to say, you have many concerns about your country’s economic situation. The unemployment rate is 13.7 percent and climbing, your economy continues to contract, your nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 97 percent and rising (up from 44 percent just two years ago), your national deficit has ballooned to a whopping 30 percent of GDP, your government is caught in a debt trap, and its borrowing costs have increased 75 percent year-to-date. If expressed in current market rates, the interest payments on your government’s debt obligations could easily account for 7 percent of GDP, or roughly one third of annual tax revenues. To put this into perspective, the situation facing the Irish government is akin to waking up everyday only to realize that one-third of your salary is gone before you even think about paying for the necessities of life...

...The entire domestic Irish banking system has essentially failed, but the government wants you to believe that everything is fine. After all, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Union member countries have cobbled together an 85 billion-euro rescue package of which approximately 35 billion euros is set aside for the banking system...

...you get a hold of the Central Bank of Ireland’s most recent Credit, Money, and Banking report (publicly available on the internet). You see that total deposits for Ireland’s dwindling base of domestic credit institutions were roughly 496 billion euros as of October 2010. Some quick math tells you that this is more than three times Ireland’s GDP, and 14 times the scope of the current banking system bailout package. You start to wonder, “If I try to get my money from the bank at the same time everyone else does, where is the government going to get the euros to pay everyone?” You can’t think of an answer. Then you start to feel silly. “Why am I even bothering with all this worry?” you ask yourself. “I’ll just go down to the bank and take my money out now before things get worse. I can give it to a multi-national bank and sleep better at night.” ...It seems trite, but this little scenario is essentially what’s happening today. The Irish banking system is literally experiencing a run on its banks...

...Year-over-year, deposits declined 10.5 percent, and foreign investors are pulling their money out at an even faster rate of just over 20 percent per year. If the October data was that brutal, I cringe at the thought of what the November and December numbers may reveal. Even more disconcerting, domestic deposits have begun to contract. It’s one thing for foreign depositors to lose confidence, but now even the domestic deposit base is losing faith... Facing facts like these, each morning when I wake up I have to wonder, “Why is today not a good day for a wholesale run on the Irish banking system?” And if there is a wholesale run on the Irish banking system, then what stops the same scenario from cascading into Portugal, Greece, Italy, and most importantly, Spain?

It's a matter of when, not if.

Europe's Social Democrat welfare state is in the process of collapsing before our very eyes.

Yet the Obama Democrat blueprint -- from industrial policy to health care -- is precisely that of Europe's failing model.

Which says a great deal both about Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Census Confirms: People Fleeing States Governed by Locusts -- eh, I mean Democrats

It was Mark Levin, I believe, who first observed that "Democrats are like locusts -- they destroy everything they touch; moving from state to state with their Utopian schemes, destroying one after the other."

The 2010 Census results confirm this assessment, revealing today that residents and businesses are fleeing Blue States like Tokyo after Godzilla's first dance-dance revolution. Don't believe me: check the maps. First, here's the official Census guide to Congressional puts and takes.

Now let's compare that map to the 2008 Electoral College results.

Eyeballing the differences yields the following counts:

+4 TX Red 34 --> 38
+2 FL Blue 27 --> 29 (2.5% margin)
+1 GA Red 15 --> 16
+1 SC Red 8 --> 9
+1 AZ Red 10 --> 11
+1 UT Red 5 --> 6
+1 NV Blue 5 --> 6
+1 WA Blue 11 --> 12
-1 NJ Blue 15 --> 14
-1 MA Blue 12 --> 11
-1 PA Blue 21 --> 20
-1 MI Blue 17 --> 16
-1 IL Blue 21 --> 20
-1 IA Blue 7 --> 6
-1 LA Red 9 --> 8
-1 MO Red 11 --> 10 (0.1% margin)
-2 OH Blue 20 --> 18
-2 NY Blue 31 --> 29

Remember that the 2008 results were skewed thanks to a slobberingly complicit media and a branding campaign worthy of a new Verizon phone. All those factors notwithstanding, however, the GOP appears to have gained 11 House seats and Electoral College votes.

Gee, I'm no Fred Einstein, but we could be detecting a trend. Barack Obama and the Party of Massive Economic Destruction (which is the slogan they prefer, I hear) could be positioned for a 1980 Carter-style implosion or, better yet, a full-frontal Dukakis. All it takes is some hard work mobilizing real Americans to protect the Constitution.


Related Must-Read: Victor Davis Hanson's "Two Californias"

Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Obama's ShoreBank: Jeremiah Wright's $10 Million Cash Machine

This is Senator Barack Obama with his pastor of 20 years, the Reverand Jeremiah A. Wright of Trinity United Church.

This is Rev. Wright in 2008, after a public repudiation by then-candidate Obama, for his series of incendiary and racist remarks such as "The government invented the AIDS virus as a means of genocide."

This is Rev. Wright, earlier in his career, railing against whites, Jews, and America. Wright built a small church called Trinity United into one of the largest of Chicago's south-side congregations with heated and divisive rhetoric sometimes called "Black Liberation Theology".

These are some of Rev. Wright's neighbors' homes, located on an exclusive golf course and country club in a Chicago suburb.

This is Rev. Wright's home, when it was under construction in 2008. He has since moved into the estate, estimated to have cost well over $1,000,000.

At 10,400-square feet, the home includes a large family room with wet bar, an exercise room, and a spare room that could be for a large home theater or indoor pool, based upon building plans.

The house features an elevator, a whirlpool, a butler's pantry and a four-car garage.

This is one of the loan agreements that Trinity United Church used to purchase the home for Rev. Wright. In addition to a $1.6 million mortgage, the agreement also attached a $10 million line-of-credit. As a non-profit entity, Trinity United did not have to report any of these financial dealings to the IRS, according to an April 2008 Fox News report.

Since that time, Trinity United Church sold the property to a trust company called ATG Trust, the executives for whom are all pictured above. Presumably ATG Trust, which specializes in tax shelters, trusts and investment management, created a trust and other investment strategies for Rev. Wright to minimize his tax exposure and maximize his returns.

Curiously, Wright appears to have utilized a firm with a distinct lack of diversity among its key executives in order to set up his tax shelters or whatever legal structures he used to protect his assets.

And what bank underwrote Wright's mortgage and $10 million line-of-credit? That would be none other than the troubled ShoreBank, a favorite of the Obama family and other Democrat politicians, who have worked mightily to have the feds rescue it despite the fact that it would otherwise not qualify for a bailout.

In fact, while other banks in ShoreBank's boat have been permitted to fail, the Obama administration allegedly pressured Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others to prop up the bank. According to news reports, this infusion would permit ShoreBank to receive an additional $75 million in TARP funds. The Central Illinois 9/12 Project has described the bank's ties to the president and his associates, including Rev. Wright and Obama's self-described "Communist" associate Van Jones. In fact, according to erstwhile 2010 GOP Congressional candidate Joel Pollak, Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky -- one of Nancy Pelosi's favorite far left House members -- has strenuously argued for the bailout of the bank.

Scum is too kind a word to use to describe the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright. Here is a man who lives in the lap of luxury, surrounded by the very white people he claims to despise. A man who hypocritically uses a lily-white firm to shelter and protect his own millions, though he preaches a poisonous form of racial Marxism and wealth redistribution for others.

Here is a man who attacks the very society that has allowed him to prosper -- the most magnificent society ever created on the face of the Earth -- and then stealthily embeds himself in that society, with law firms and gated communities protecting himself from the very rabble he claims to protect.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, just remember that these bailouts are paid for with money that you, your children and your grandchildren will have to repay with interest. And you'll be pleased to know you're also helping to subsidize the despicable, racist and amazingly hypocritical teachings of one Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.


Sunday, December 19, 2010

Warmal Colding Juxtaposed Headlines o' the Day

Two stories, separated by a decade, brought to us courtesy of Matt Drudge:

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past


The Sunday Independent, 20 March 2000, By Charles Onians

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives... [Sleds], snowmen, snowballs ... are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

...Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community... Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event... Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

That's right. "Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

Coldest December since records began...travel chaos across Britain


London Daily Mail, 18 December 2010, By Daily Mail Staff


• Millions begin the big Christmas and New Year getaway early as the AA urged motorists to beware of the ‘worst driving conditions imaginable’
• Quarter of train services disrupted, travel warning in Kent
• Experts warn of a backlog of up to 4 million of parcels which could remain undelivered this Christmas
• The NHS issues an urgent appeal for blood donors as concerns grow over shortages
• Councils reveal plans to share grit amid fears the cold snap could last until January 14

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned - grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill... tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures - with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910...

Not to worry, folks. Remember, any hot spells are to be treated as concrete proof of global warming.

But when there's a brutal and record-setting cold snap, perhaps even -- as some scientists believe -- an imminent ice age, that's just weather. It should not be considered evidence that global warming is one of the greatest criminal scams since Charles Ponzi.

Prediction: once we give the "scientists" a few more 'specially located' temperature stations, the AP will be declaring December 2010 the warmest on record in no time flat.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Does the Estate Tax Contribute to the Destruction of the American Family Farm? Media Matters Says No, Which Means...

...it does. Without a shadow of a scintilla of a flicker of a doubt.

The return of the Estate Tax impacts many small businesses, but most especially family farms. These estates possess wealth in the form of real estate and equipment but are taxed at obscene rates -- as if their assets were liquid. Often times, these awful tolls result in estate liquidations after business owners pass away.

The ham-handed propagandists at Media Matters attacked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough for mentioning this uncomfortable fact during Wednesday's broadcast of Morning Joe ("Scarborough advances family farm myth in attacking estate tax"). It represents the fourth time this month that the Soros-funded front group has promoted the return of the tax.

But does the return of the Estate Tax really endanger family farms?


In 2009, no less an authority than the Obama USDA said it does, issuing a cautionary report in Amber Waves, its quarterly economics journal.

While the aggregate importance of Federal estate and gift taxes is relatively small, their potential effect on farmers and other small business owners has been a major concern among policymakers. These groups are more likely than the general public to owe estate taxes, and much of the concern focuses on the ability of the next generation to continue operating and investing in these family-owned businesses. For many farms, business assets account for a large share of the owner’s estate. In such instances, estate tax liabilities not only drain the business of funds that might otherwise be reinvested, but could also force the liquidation of business assets.

...Providing tax relief to farmers and other small business owners was also an impetus for the Economic Growth and Taxpayer Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (the 2001 Act). The 2001 Act reduced Federal estate and gift tax rates and substantially increased the amount of property that can be transferred to the next generation free of Federal estate tax, culminating in the complete repeal of the tax in 2010...

The USDA states that in 2007 40% of all U.S. estate taxes were paid by farms. And it predicted that a quarter of farm estates would be required to file an estate tax return in 2011.

Earlier this year the American Farm Bureau Federation's John Hart wrote the following in Farm and Ranch Guide:

Unfortunately, the federal estate tax does much to steal the joy of keeping the farm in the family. Estate taxes are especially harmful to farmers and ranchers because their businesses are capital-intensive with a high concentration of assets tied up in land, buildings and equipment... ...80 percent of farm and ranch assets are land-based. When estate taxes exceed cash and other liquid assets on hand, surviving family members may be forced to sell land, buildings or equipment needed to keep the business operating.

...Farm Bureau backs permanent repeal of federal estate taxes. Until permanent repeal is achieved, Farm Bureau calls for an exemption of $10 million per person, indexed for inflation... The $10 million exemption may sound high, but it really isn't when you factor in land costs and other variables, particularly for farms in areas where land values are high.

There are many reasons why the estate tax is unfair. It amounts to double taxation, because the income is taxed first when it is earned and again when it is transferred to heirs. Eliminating the estate tax will encourage farmers and ranchers to keep the businesses in the family.

So we have the Obama USDA and the Farm Bureau Federation directly refuting Media Matters. We'll call this Chapter 86,204 of the Soros-ians failed propaganda efforts.

Piercing the veneer of the Democrats' estate tax propaganda


If the Democrats really wanted to tax the estates of billionaires, they could simply propose an Estate Tax to do so. But they haven't. And they won't. After all, some of their biggest contributors -- from Warren Buffett to Bill Gates -- are billionaires.

No, Democrats are intentionally targeting small businesses and especially family farms. They want to see them broken up, sold off and unionized.

Once these small businesses are absorbed into larger corporate entities, they become ripe for unionization and illegal immigration. More union members means more dues; which, in turn, means more contributions to the Democrat Party.

Democrats are insatiable power addicts. And an onerous Estate Tax aids their pursuit of power in three ways: it hastens the corporate takeover of small businesses, it lines the pockets of their crony capitalist pals like Jeff Immelt, and it ignites mass unionization.

Piercing the veneer of the Estate Tax reveals a truly ugly side of the Democrat Party. And it's one that Media Matters is more than happy to promote, no matter the cost to its already tattered reputation.