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

Monday, July 04, 2011

The Case for a Balanced Budget Amendment in Three Disturbing Charts

When the federal government steals money from one individual to give to another it doesn't term it "Redistribution of Wealth" in any official capacity. No, that would be too close to the actual Marxist policies driving the modern Democrat agenda. No, instead they call this legalized form of theft "Personal Current Transfer Receipts."

Personal Current Transfer Receipts Examples

• Medicare • Medicaid • Food Stamps • Social Security • Unemployment Insurance

Personal Current Transfer Receipts:

Note that transfer receipts are nearly $2.4 trillion.

Federal Government Receipts:

Ratio of Personal Transfer Receipts to Federal Government Receipts:

Notes

• Nearly every dime of federal government receipts goes to personal transfer payments.
• Between 1960 and 1970, personal transfer payments were 30-35% of federal government receipts.
• From 1980-2000 the percentage fluctuated between 50% and 65%.
• If (when) the economy slips back into recession personal transfer payments will exceed 100% of federal government receipts.

Given personal transfer receipts take up nearly 100% of federal government receipts, in theory, there should be no room for anything else, including wars, roads and bridges, and wages of federal employees.

Which is why Congressional Republicans must reject any hike of the debt ceiling until a Balanced Budget Amendment is passed by Congress and signed into law by the President.


Sunday, July 03, 2011

Typical: Democrat official celebrates violence against Republicans

The party of tolerance, free speech and the democratic process is at it again: advocating violence against political opponents, Third Reich-style.*

And now... a special message about the importance of civility in politics, brought to you by the same people who continually claim the Tea Party is a bunch of violent extremists. Via Legal Insurrection:

This Tweet is from Graeme Zielinski, the Communications Director for the Wisconsin State Democratic Party. Would you be surprised to learn he used to be a “reporter” for The Washington Post...?

Uhm, in truth? No.

This is yet another example demonstrating how far the modern Democrat Party has fallen. Harry Truman and JFK would no longer recognize their party, hijacked by the likes of George Soros and other monied, hard-left forces of internationalism.

Their hatred of the Constitution is palpable. Violence and suppression of free speech are on their menu if it will help them retain power. Elections don't matter, laws don't matter, our history and traditions don't matter.

Which is why we must obliterate them -- politically -- in 2012, leaving them no more a force than are the Whigs. We have no choice if we are to save this Republic.


Hat tip: Instapundit. Linked by: Memeorandum. Thanks!

Combating class warfare rhetoric the easy Doug Ross way

My critics on Twitter revel in the standard class warfare rhetoric endemic to failed revolutions throughout history. The French Revolution. Russia in 1917. Peron in Argentina. The game-plan is always the same: demonize the rich, attack private industry, segregate political constituencies by race, gender, creed and religion in order to prey upon the weak-willed.

Such is the recipe of one Barack Obama, who has attacked industry after industry: coal miners, oil companies, health insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical professionals, and "millionaires and billionaires", among others.

The following are the kinds of messages I often receive on Twitter:

• Maybe we should just hand over country to REpub/CorpAmerica

• I found that Laws are about controlling WallSt,but we suffer too. Loopholes/oxymoron clauses have brought #us to the brink.

• UR to smart NOT to believe CorpAmerica wants to pay any Taxes

Unfortunately, we've bankrupted the Treasury with the alternative: the collectivist roadmap. And it's failed like it's failed every other time in history. Central planning by masterminds in some far-off capitol has a perfect track record. Zero-for-Eternity.

Remember that "Stimulus" program? How's that working out for ya', Sparky? Or the Department of Education? Working out swimmingly for low-income students? And that solar technology in which Jimmy Carter invested billions of taxpayer dollars? Remember how it revolutionized our energy infrastructure?

Spewing Marxist class warfare rhetoric is simply indicative of a lack of education.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman: who are these angels on Earth that can redistribute everyone's wealth?

There isn't a corporation on Earth that can force you to pay it whether you want to or not.

There isn't a corporation on the planet that can throw you in jail for failure to adhere to its millions of pages of laws, regulations and dictates.

There isn't a corporation anywhere that can make you buy a one-size-fits-all health care plan, or a certain kind of light bulb, or a low-flow toilet, or a certain kind of car, and so on and on.

There isn't a corporation anywhere that can command you -- the citizen -- to participate in multi-trillion dollar Ponzi schemes like Medicare, set to collapse in only ten short years.

No, there isn't any corporation powerful enough to do these things.

Only a giant, enormous, bloated federal government can ruin our economy in these ways. And, then, only because a certain group of power-hungry, easily corrupted politicians, lawyers and judges have ignored our highest law: the Constitution.

Our Framers created the Constitution to prevent the rise of an all-powerful, autocratic, authoritarian central government.

It wasn't the corporations that have ruined the economy: it's the politicians who violate their oath of office every day of the week. That's what the Tea Party is all about. And that is why every one concerned with the future of America should support Constitutional conservatism.


Good news: Obama's own economists admit that each job "saved or created" by the Stimulus cost only $278,000

It turns out that the Obama administration could have written a $100,000 check to each person whose employment was allegedly saved by the "Stimulus" and saved $427 billion.

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

In other words, Obama's own economic advisers have confessed that the Stimulus was a failure.

Obama and the 111th Congress burned trillions and trillions of our dollars -- more money than the annual budgets of the Defense Department or Medicare -- in the furnace of government cronyism.

Our children and grandchildren are on the hook for these so-called "Stimulus" funds, with interest payments, that utterly and completely failed. Unless you count rewarding Obama's public sector union supporters.


Hat tip: TrendingRight.com.

Cause and Effect in California -- Cause: Raise taxes on evil, rich corporations. Effect: Everyone suffers.

California's recent attempt to raise new taxes on Internet retailers like Amazon and Overstock has had the predictable consequence. It is hurting small businesses and entrepreneurs. In order to avoid the tax, Amazon killed off its affiliate programs in the state, halting a reliable revenue stream for thousands of small businesses and individuals.

Consider this Exhibit 42,303 in our library of evidence proving that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid.

Amazon, Overstock thumb nose at California tax


San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, July 3, 2011

So, I went online Friday looking to buy a copy of John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Affluent Society & Other Writings, 1952-1967." Thought it might be timely to revisit the Harvard economist's distinction between "private affluence" and "public squalor."

Barnes & Noble's website was selling it for $26.53. Total, which included California sales tax: $28.79. "Total Before Tax" at Amazon.com: $26.40. "Estimated Tax To Be Collected: $0.00."

At Overstock.com, I could still buy furniture and various knickknacks free of the 7.25 percent tax, even though California's law mandating out-of-state Internet retailers to start collecting the taxes was now in effect.

In other words, screw you, California, and your laws.

"They're not intending to comply, by all indications," said Betty Yee, former chairwoman and current member of the state Board of Equalization, the agency charged with implementing the law. Friday evening, the board posted a "special notice clarifying the obligations of out-of-state retailers" on its website...

"So, we'll bill them at the end of this quarter, based on estimates either they provide or we come up from other data sources. Then, if they don't come forward and pay, we'll consider other courses of action."

That most likely means litigation, or, as Amazon and Overstock might see it, a game of "catch us if you can."

I believe our educational system has to be reformed to teach two simple concepts to liberals.

• Economics is not a zero-sum game.

• Businesses do not operate to fund government; they are in business to make money. And if they can't do so, they go bankrupt or relocate.

Not overly difficult, true, but these basic tenets are rocket science to the doltish nincompoops on the Left.


On the Road to Totalitarianism With the Sixth Circuit

Last week's decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare, which was handed down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, is troubling on many fronts.

Two of the three judges asserted that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to compel individuals' behavior by dint of their mere existence. A requirement that citizens purchase a product -- in this case, health care insurance -- whether they wish to or not, has never before occurred in all of American history.

Virtually everyone will need health care services at some point, including, in the aggregate, those without health insurance. Even dramatic attempts to protect one’s health and minimize the need for health care will not always be successful, and the health care market is characterized by unpredictable and unavoidable needs for care.

It is under this rubric that the Court shreds the United States Constitution, eviscerates the Declaration of Independence and completely ignores the stated intent of the Framers in The Federalist Papers.

Because, the Judges assert, that most people will participate in the health care market, the federal government has the right to compel -- with the force of law -- individuals to purchase health insurance contracts of the central government's design.

How is the health care industry segregated from other industries to prevent the federal government from encroaching upon every other segment of human activity? The judges spare but a few words on this critical issue, stating "...unlike nearly all other industries, the health care market is governed by federal and state laws requiring institutions to provide services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay."

In other words, the only "firewall" the judges construct to shield other industries from the Orwellian reach of the government is one made of cardboard. In essence, because the health care market is already regulated, the industry is said to be unique and therefore can be utterly controlled by the central government.

Consider:

All citizens will need shelter and many regulations already dictate the nature and construction of housing. Can the central government compel individuals to purchase certain minimum levels of housing and builders to offer certain services under a regime of price controls? Apparently so.

All citizens will need food and a battery of regulations at every level of government already dictate every aspect of food manufacture and distribution. Can the central government require individuals to buy certain foods -- perhaps under the aegis of healthy eating -- and businesses to offer a menu dictated by a central authority? Apparently so.

All citizens will require transportation and a host of regulations govern every modality of travel -- by air, bus, automobile, and even bicycle. Can the central govenrment require all individuals to buy, say, bicycles under the banner of healthy living, clean energy and personal transportation? Apparently so.

Under this decision, with this Court, the destruction of our country -- through its transformation into a totalitarian regime -- comes one step closer to reality.

2012 may be our last chance to save this Republic, if indeed any time remains at all.


Saturday, July 02, 2011

Graphic: More fun facts about the award-winning, worst-in-the-nation, Illinois Pension System

Isn't it fun to ruminate on the fact that the same jamokes destroying Illinois are now running Washington, DC?

You can download the PDF version of this fact-sheet to distribute to your friends in Illinois.


Kewl: Top 100 Illinois Teachers' Union Retirees to Receive Nearly $1 Billion in Lifetime Benefits

While the California teachers' unions are effectively destroying one school system after another, an alert commenter pointed me to some even more shocking news from Illinois. Their pension system for educators is -- if you can believe it -- even farther off the reservation.

Using actuarial calculations from the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), Champion News reports that the total estimated pension liability for the top 100 retirees will equal...

Make sure you're sitting down.

Seriously.

$887,925,790.00

You read this right. The top 100 retirees, by themselves, will cost Illinois taxpayers nearly one billion dollars.

I can think of only one possible, rational reaction.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #1: We must do something. He's serious this
time.

Beleaguered Taxpayers: -He's right.
-You're right. We got to do something.
-Absolutely.
-Know what we gotta do?

Beleaguered Taxpayer #2: Toga party.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #1: We're tens of billions in debt! We can't afford to have a toga party.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #2: You guys up for a toga party?

Beleaguered Taxpayer #3: -Toga! Toga!

Beleaguered Taxpayer #2: -They like the idea.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #1: Please don't do this.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #3: I've got news for you, pal. The SEIU is going to screw us, no matter what we do.

Beleaguered Taxpayer #2: So we might as well have a good time.

Beleaguered Taxpayers: Toga! Toga! Toga!

(Chanting louder and louder)

(All chanting)

Thursday, June 30, 2011

The genius of Democrat governance: 'Massive error' in new California tax code causes triple taxation on small businesses

When you've lost the San Francisco Chronicle...

California and Governor Jerry Brown made a massive error in the formation of a California Online Tax, that amounts to triple taxation in the state for online S-corporations. Amazon and Overstock aren't the only ones hurt by the new tax, and it should be challenged in court...

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011...

...Frankly, while the law itself has many affiliates hoping mad, it was bound to happen. But the law's got a nasty bug in it that must be cleared up. I'll use my online sports game company as an example.

The State Of California has already taxed my Internet company for income earned. All of our sales are online. Plus, they get me for a personal income tax!

Under the new law, an online company like mine could be taxed three times: for total income tax, corporate, tax and then for sales tax. That's too much.

There's nothing in the law preventing such a scenario from happening, because there's to language to restrict the State Of California from such an action. If you're an online legal California Corporation, you're going to get taxed three times. It's that simple.

...It sets up a massive incentive for thousands of California Corporations to just quit the state and find other homes... One day next year, Governor Brown's going to wake up to the reality of no new taxes collected, and a massive exodus of Internet vendors. By then, any retro action would be too little, too late.

That's okay.

Send the businesses our way. We need smart, talented entrepreneurs who want to live in a free state. I mean, a Red State.


How's this for a deal: contribute $193K to your pension over your entire career, receive $130K pension salary for life. Welcome to Illinois!

When it comes to Illinois teachers' pensions, does the term ludicrous ring a bell?

...how can a 54 year-old Music teacher retire on a pension of $130,000 after working only 33 years and contributing only $193,000? Since he retired in 2009 he has already received more than he contributed ($225,000). That does not seem reasonable to the 95% of IL workers who are not in the state pension system. The cash value of his pension is 8 times what Social Security would be for the same salary and years worked. Why does any public employee deserve more than 8 times Social Security?

In fact, when you see the union hacks protesting, please consider the following:

Pensions four to seven times Social Security are not “modest”.

Here are the stats for the “average” retired teacher:
1. Average TRS [Teachers' Retirement System] pension – $46,000.
2. Average age at retirement – 58.
3. Average years worked – 25.
4. Average salary final year $61,000.

Mark Levin has a funny and uncannily accurate catch-phrase: "Liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid."

And every day we seem to gather more confirming evidence.


Want Jobs and Higher Salaries? Move to a Right-to-Work State

Do you prefer slavery or freedom? I ask that question because the modern-day version of slavery in this country is being forced to join a union -- and pay union dues -- against your will. And, as it turns out, in "union/slave states" there are provably fewer jobs and lower wages.

The business world is abuzz over the National Labor Relations Board's complaint vs. Boeing's new South Carolina production line. For NLRB critics, the case boils down to one thing: "right-to-work" laws.

Right-to-work states have generally lower unemployment, higher job growth, lower taxes and better business climates. They have growing populations and have been attracting businesses from other states.

In most states, once a workplace is unionized, employees are required to join the union or they can't work there. But 22 states, including South Carolina, have passed laws that give employees the right not to join. Hence the term "right-to-work."

Unions dislike these laws for the obvious reason: It reduces their membership.

Critics like the Chamber of Commerce say a union-friendly NLRB is simply punishing Boeing for choosing a right-to-work state, a charge the agency has rejected.

But if the complaint stands, it could stop firms in heavily unionized states from expanding or moving to right-to-work states. [And these states seem] to be a good deal for the workers, too. The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1%. In right-to-work states the average is 7.9% — 8.6% adjusted for population.

Between 1977-08, employment grew 100% in right-to-work states vs. the national average of 71% and 56.5% in non-right-to-work states. That's according to a January study that Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder did for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

In this period, real per capita income in the right-to-work states grew 62.3% vs. the national average of 54.7% and 52.8% for non-right-to-work states... Between 2000-09, about 5 million people moved to right-to-work states from other states. The population of 25- to 34-year-olds in right-to-work states has grown 16%, according to an American Legislative Exchange Council study, indicating that they "attract the most productive members of society."

Union members: it's time to throw off your shackles. The Democrat-Union Boss alliance -- and their oppressive regulations from the EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Labor, and dozens of other useless bureaucracies -- are funding your destruction.

Fight back.


Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Obama 2012 Campaign: Nothing says 'I feel your pain' like $36,000-a-plate fundraisers with Wall Street executives

John Edwards was right. There really are two Americas. One for Democrat-slash-Wall Street royalty and one for the rest of us.

While many of the biggest name financiers feel that they can’t publicly support Mr. Obama through campaign contributions the way they did in 2008 — “it would be bad for business,” one brand-name chief executive of a major bank acknowledged — some still plan to vote for him. And some begrudgingly acknowledged that they don’t yet see a viable alternative to Mr. Obama among the Republican field.

It also turns out that Wall Street is not the only one concerned about optics. The president’s re-election campaign has not been actively courting Wall Street’s biggest C.E.O.’s to appear at such fund-raisers out of fear that their support could offend his most liberal backers, two people involved in planning his fund-raiser at Daniel said.

A picture of [Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd [Blankfein] and Obama together probably isn’t helpful,” one of these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting his role in the campaign... While Wall Street executives still complain about the president’s name-calling and pressure for a regulatory overhaul, many say privately that his bark has been worse than his bite.

Obama hasn’t been too bad to banks. He could have been worse,” said a top executive at one of the nation’s largest banks, a big supporter in the past who decided against attending the dinner because he did not want his colleagues and clients to see him supporting the president... “His rhetoric was obnoxious,” he added, referring to the “fat cat” comments, “but since the midterms, he’s turned it off.”

He pointed to the appointment of William Daley, a former senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as the president’s chief of staff as a sign of Mr. Obama’s shifting approach toward big business... Mr. Obama’s dinner last week raised $2.3 million, outpacing an original projection of $1.5 million. And the Democratic National Committee raised $10.5 million in May, surpassing the Republican National Committee, which raised $6.2 million...

Of course, if you've lost the readers of The New York Times...


Monday, June 27, 2011

Bankrupt 'Green Jobs Company' Received $535 Million in Stimulus Money, Was Coincidentally Headed by Huge Obama Contributor

If this Republic survives the Obama presidency, I truly look forward to the first comprehensive, tell-all biography of our 44th president. Because when it comes to stories like this one, I'm betting we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

The Obama 'Green Jobs' Scam That Redistributed Half-a-Billion Dollars to His Political Backers


Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s stimulus and green jobs initiatives, but instead it has become the center of congressional attention for waste, fraud and abuse of such programs.

According to a Feb. 17 letter signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, Florida Republican, to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturer should never have received a $535 million loan guarantee from the stimulus.*

...The Energy Department estimated in a March 20, 2009 press release that the loan guarantee would create 3,000 construction jobs and a further 1,000 jobs after the plant opened... And President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden each personally showcased Solyndra as an example of how stimulus dollars were at work creating jobs, during appearances at the company over the course of the following year...

...Obama made similar claims in a May 26, 2010 speech at the plant, but the 1,000 jobs he and Biden touted in their respective speeches failed to materialize...

Instead, Solyndra announced on Nov. 3 it planned to postpone expanding the plant, which put the taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $390.5 million taxpayers... It also announced that it no longer planned to hire the 1,000 workers that Obama and Biden had touted in their speeches and that it planned to close one of its older factories and planned to lay-off 135 temporary or contract workers and 40 full-time employees.

A closer look at the company shows it has never turned a profit since it was founded in 2005... And Solyndra’s auditor declared that “the company has suffered recurring losses, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, [that] raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a growing concern” in ... March 2010...

A June 2010 Wall Street Journal report indicating that Solyndra’s majority owner, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, was a major fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign...

In other words, your kids and grandkids will be paying back that half-a-billion dollars (with interest) -- which was borrowed from the Chinese -- to pay off a huge Obama contributor (coincidentally).

Hashtag: WeGotReamed. Hashtag: Criminals. Hashtag: ChicagoPolitics.


Sunday, June 26, 2011

Good news from the failed blue state of California: number of retired teachers with $100K pensions jumped 650% in last six years

As if California didn't have enough problems -- from a massive budget deficit to runaway illegal immigration -- news that the powerful public sector unions are raping the system should certainly cheer taxpayers.

Thousands of newly retired school administrators will earn more during retirement than most Californians will make during their working careers.

The number of educators receiving $100,000-plus annual pensions jumped 650 percent from 2005 to 2011, going from 700 to 5,400, according to a Bee review of data from the California State Teachers' Retirement System... [these retirees] get millions more than they put into the system.

Booming administrator salaries are largely behind the trend. Public school superintendents, on average, earned $168,000 in base pay last year, roughly 56 percent more than they did 10 years ago... A series of benefit enhancements a decade ago also explain the rise... as a result, more than a third of the state's six-figure pensioners earn more each year in retirement than they ever did on the job.

...Like other public pension systems, CalSTRS has financial problems. The value of its assets isn't enough to cover what it has promised in benefits. System officials estimate CalSTRS will be unable to fund benefits in about 30 years unless the Legislature implements higher contribution rates for school districts, employees or the state.

California isn't alone. The Manhattan Institute estimates that teacher pension systems around the country are, in aggregate, $1 trillion underfunded.

But California and its ludicrous governor, a product of the public sector unions, are completely off the rails. Like the blue states of Illinois and New York, the inevitable result of Democrat governance -- bankruptcy -- is obvious for all to see.


'Just When You Thought Our Fiscal Nightmare Couldn't Get Any Worse'

It is anything but cheery, but David Limbaugh's latest at Human Events is a must-read for every American.

...Projections of the nation's impending doom have worsened: We face destruction if we don't act, and the crisis is accelerating.

Last year, the CBO predicted our national debt would be 91 percent of gross domestic product in 2021. Now, just a year later, it is projected to be 101 percent in 2021.


It gets worse. The debt is forecasted to be 150 percent of GDP by 2030 and 200 percent by 2037. And, if you can even imagine this, it will proliferate more rapidly thereafter. On our present course, by 2035, federal interest payments will be 9 percent of our entire economy, compared with 1 percent today.

Adding insult to injury, Obamacare, which Obama fraudulently sold as an indispensable component of balancing the budget, will greatly drive up health care costs. The CBO says that mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 86 percent, from 5.6 percent of GDP presently to 10.4 percent over the next 24 years. Don't say we didn't warn you... Adding aggravation to insult is the recently discovered "glitch" in Obamacare that allows for more than 3 million middle-class Americans to qualify for Medicaid...

What Limbaugh alludes to is a devastating problem: the estimates of Medicare collapsing in only a dozen years and Social Security imploding shortly thereafter assumes rosy growth and hiring projections that can't possibly happen in the current economic climate. In short, these disastrous entitlement programs will collapse much sooner than anyone is willing to admit.


Consider the current situation:

Real US GDP has risen 0.8% over the 13 quarters since the current recession began, compared to an average increase of 9.9% in past recoveries.

Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus failed.

The unemployment rate is still above a 9%.

Obama is the worst jobs president since the Great Depression overseeing the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression and the worst slide in home prices since the Great Depression.

And, just to make it official: "The Obama recovery is the worst ever since the Great Depression".

President Obama took what should have been a normal, run-of-the-mill recession and turned it into a full-blown depression.

By the time his first term ends, Obama will have nearly doubled the U.S. national debt. And just think: he spent it on a series of utterly failed programs like the "Stimulus", HAMP, Cash-for-Clunkers, Weatherization, Green Jobs Initiatives, Obamacare, "Banking Reform", drilling moratoriums, First-Time Home-Buyer Tax Credits, auto company takeovers and QE2, to name but a few.

These are the disastrous policy failures that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for, in the unlikely event our financial system hasn't already collapsed. This is Democrat child abuse, plain and simple.

Remember in 2012.


Saturday, June 25, 2011

In pictures: the 'devastating ad' that calls out Obama's jobs failures

I think this is as good a 30-second overview of Obama's economic record as you'll find.






Help out here.


Democrat Republik of Illinois Stiffs 8,000 Businesses to Whom It Owes Money, Including Funeral Homes and Plumbers

President Obama's home state -- the People's Republik of Illinois -- is maintaining its stellar record for fiscal irresponsibility by stiffing vendors -- especially small businesses and charities -- to whom it owes billions.

...In Illinois, you’re never too big or too small to get stiffed by the state, which is $4 billion behind in its bills.

International Business Machines Inc. is owed $1.1 million. Office Depot Inc. (ODP) is waiting for a $660,955 check. And the 17th Street Bar & Grill in Sparta is due $340.52. They are among at least 8,000 vendors including businesses, charities and government agencies waiting months for the state to pay up. At least 114 companies are due more than $1 million...

While states periodically fall behind in paying Medicaid providers or, in the case of California, rely on bank loans and IOUs, the Illinois backlog has been growing for three years... forcing some vendors to fire workers, cut services and, if they can, obtain loans and lines of credit to keep their businesses going while the state takes months to pay.

...Creditors include health and education agencies, schools, charities, funeral homes, plumbing-and-heating contractors and purveyors of food, coal, clothing, electronics and pizza...

...In January, lawmakers approved increases of 67 percent in the state income tax and a 46 percent in the corporate income tax. Those, however, weren’t sufficient to cover the backlog, and the bills will be passed onto the fiscal year that begins July 1... They include $5.5 million owed Wright Express Financial Services Corp., for gasoline credit-card charges; $1.4 million for Xerox Corp. (XRX); $11,300 to a downstate restaurant, La Roma Pizza in Canton; and fees for burying the indigent dead to almost 100 funeral homes.

...Delayed payments are also affecting hospitals, universities and public-school districts... Help at Home cares for about 14,000 Illinois senior citizens. Ford said his company is fortunate because it is large -- it operates in 10 states -- and has access to credit. He said he is compensating by billing other governments more quickly... “Other states are carrying the Illinois burden,” Ford said.

Small businesses and charities have been hit hardest by the Democrat-controlled state's fiscal mismanagement: Illinois is waiting between six and nine months to pay its bills.

Decade after decade of graft, corruption, runaway public sector unions, and other Democrat success stories have transformed Illinois from a powerhouse into the lowest-rated state (along with another blue state, California) according to Moody's.

But keep voting Democrat, people of Illinois! Maybe they'll get it right someday!



Friday, June 24, 2011

Good News: Illegal Aliens Helping to Reduce Unemployment Among Young Women by Trafficking Sex Slaves in Texas

Folks, sometimes you just can't even add any snark.

...the Houston Police Department detail[ed] a shocking sex trafficking operation run by illegal aliens, including a former prostitute, Maria Rojas, who had previously been deported. The documents indicate that police officers responded to service calls to the business co-owned by Ms. Rojas on 60 occasions, and were well aware of the criminal activity taking place at these establishments, but apparently did not check the immigration status of any of the arrestees or Ms. Rojas. Houston, Texas, has in place an illegal alien sanctuary policy, Houston PD General Order 500-5, which prohibits police officers from inquiring about the citizenship status of any person.

...The indictment alleges that Maria and Jose Luis Rojas ran a sex slave trafficking ring since at least August 1999. The scheme involved luring young women into the country illegally from Mexico with false promises of employment, then forcing them to work as prostitutes at La Costeñita Bar and El Club Restaurante in Houston. Maria Rojas and Javier Guevara Belmontes (a legal resident) co-owned the locations. The remaining defendants were illegal aliens who served as managers or employees of the businesses...

* Police documented 48 calls for service to La Costeñita between 2006 and 2011. Nine of these events involved vice squad investigations and/or arrests for prostitution, and during this time frame 12 individuals were arrested for prostitution. There were 17 cases of assault (including three shootings and a stabbing). There was one cocaine possession arrest (in May 2008) and one armed robbery arrest (in December 2007).
* There were 12 documented police calls for service to El Club Restaurante between 2006 and 2010. These included four burglaries, two assaults and a shooting.
* Between May 2006 and November 2010, Houston police responded to the residence of Maria Rojas and Javier Belmontes eight times. On three occasions, police spoke with and documented a complaint by Jose Luis Rojas. On November 1, 2010, Jose Luis Rojas reported an armed robbery by six unknown assailants. Three weeks later, Jose Luis Rojas reported receiving a telephonic death threat.

Thanks to the Democrat Party, millions upon millions of illegal immigrants have entered this country without any review whatsoever. No TSA pat-downs, no background checks, no civics tests, no paperwork.

The inevitable result? Drugs, crime, slavery, disease, poverty and Balkanization. Which is why we have a process for this sort of thing. Waiting lists. Background checks. Education on America's founding, the Declaration and the Constitution.

We must seal the border first and foremost and then invite the best and the brightest from other countries.


The Obama Depression: Two-and-a-half years after the 'Stimulus', there are 'more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression'

Who could have predicted that the president's virulent anti-job policies would result in rampant unemployment?

The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.

The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.

The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.

Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression...

And good news, drones: yesterday, CNBC reported that the employment situation just got worse.

So your plan to destroy America appears to be succeeding.