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

Saturday, December 08, 2012

DUDE: Don't show this chart to Grandpa...

He may blow a gasket.

After all, he paid into Medicare for more than four decades, but under Obamacare he will receive lower quality care than illegal aliens, the poor and the indigent who are on Medicaid.

It's all about reimbursements to doctors for services rendered:

The Trustees of the Medicare program have released their annual report... Medicare’s reimbursements to doctors are scheduled to drop by 31 percent on January 1, 2013. Only then is Medicare solvent until 2016/2024. If Congress passes another of its numerous “doc fixes,” Medicare’s insolvency will be even closer at hand. The optimistic insolvency estimate from the Trustees will require “unprecedented changes in health care delivery systems and payment mechanisms,” without which Medicare fees “are very likely to fall increasingly short of the costs of providing those services.”

“For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range…or the long range,” writes Foster.

The executive summary: seniors who paid into the system are going to find fewer and fewer doctors accepting Medicare patients; rationing of health care will be the inevitable result.

But remember: the people have spoken! This is what America wanted!


A PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE FOR AMERICA'S YOUTH: Here's How You're Being Ripped Off

Ever seen these numbers on your pay stub? The numbers I've highlighted?

That money is being taken from you -- or, more properly, it's being stolen from you -- to fund a myth. A mirage.

You're never going to see a dime of that "Social Security Retirement Insurance" you're paying for.

You'll never a see a nickel of that "Medicare Health Care Insurance" either.

That money is being taken from your pay -- your livelihood -- to fund a system that will be bankrupt in less than a dozen years.

Oh, and it's not me saying that: Medicare’s own actuary, Richard Foster, is. Social Security is in a similar situation, according to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who serves as the system's senior trustee.

Suffice it to say that these systems will actually go broke far sooner than anyone's really admitting because the economy remains poor and appears to be slowing down even further.

My public service message is this: this money is being taken from your pay in exchange for a promise that will be broken in just a few years. You'll never see that money again. And it is the government -- the government, not "the rich", not the Koch brothers, not the oil companies -- that is ripping you off.

It is the government, not corporations, spending untold billions on "green energy" scams like Solyndra. It is the government, not "the rich", slathering EBT-welfare cards around like confetti. And it is the government, not "the Tea Party", that is promoting illegal immigration and offering huge financial benefits to those in the country illegally. All with your money.

Unless you like being ripped off every week, I'd recommend you get involved in returning government to its rightful and proper role, which includes having Washington spend within its means -- like all of us must do to survive.

After all, it's your money.


Friday, December 07, 2012

GRIM MILESTONE: Welfare Spending Per Household Surpasses the Median American's Income

Trillions of dollars have been laundered through the welfare bureaucracy since the inception of "Great Society". And what do we have to show for it?

Rampant fraud and increased poverty:

'Welfare Spending Equates to $168 Per Day for Every Household in Poverty'

The amount of money spent on welfare programs equals, when converted to cash payments, about "$168 per day for every household in poverty"...


...welfare spending per day per household in poverty is $168, which is higher than the $137 median income per day. When broken down per hour, welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour.

History teaches us -- or at least, the intelligent among us, which rules out Democrats -- that collectivism spreads misery.

We are headed for fiscal collapse -- and the welfare state keeps growing like a cancer, incentivizing sloth, formalizing a culture of dependency, and killing self-sufficiency.

Liberty, I am sad to say, is on the wane.


TA-DA! Small Business Owners' Hiring Intent Plunges to 2008 Lows

The people have spoken!

U.S. small-business owners expect to add fewer net new jobs over the next 12 months than at any time since the depths of the 2008-2009 recession...


...In good economic years, net hiring intentions have been in the double-digits. This has not been the case since the recession and financial crisis in 2008-2009 with net hiring intentions reaching a low of -4 in November 2008...

...In November, more small-business owners reported decreasing the number of employees (26%) than increasing (14%), resulting in a net hiring score of -12. That is down from -7 in July and -9 in the prior three quarterly measurements...


It is difficult to blame this on the fiscal cliff, and even more difficult to pin this on Sandy. More than likely, the poor net result is primarily the result of a clear slowdown in the economy (lack of customers).

I believe the US is back in recession and so does the ECRI.

On top of deteriorating economic conditions, also factor in the election and Obamacare...

This history of the Obama administration could be titled Worse and Worser.


Thursday, December 06, 2012

"BIZARRE ECONOMIC SUICIDE PACT": Jim Geraghty's Soak-the-Blue-State-Rich Tax Plan

Jim Geraghty is an evil genius:

...the assessment from Joel Kotkin of Forbes about how blue states voted for policies that are likely to hurt themselves was pretty fascinating:

With their enthusiastic backing of President Obama and the Democratic Party on Election Day, the bluest parts of America may have embraced a program utterly at odds with their economic self-interest. The almost uniform support of blue states' congressional representatives for the administration's campaign for tax "fairness" represents a kind of bizarre economic suicide pact.

Any move to raise taxes on the rich -- defined as households making over $250,000 annually -- strikes directly at the economies of these states, which depend heavily on the earnings of high-income professionals, entrepreneurs and technical workers. In fact, when you examine which states, and metropolitan areas, have the highest concentrations of such people, it turns out they are overwhelmingly located in the bluest states and regions
.

So I put together my "Soak the Blue State Rich" plan:

• Keep the tax rate on capital gains the same.

• Raise income taxes on the top income bracket for 2013, those making $398,350 and up (single filers, married joint filers, or head of household).

• Means-test, or eliminate entirely, the mortgage-interest deduction (which benefits taxpayers in areas with the highest real-estate values and mortgages -- i.e., Hawaii, D.C., New York, California, and Connecticut).

• Means-test or eliminate entirely the federal deduction of state and local taxes, which is disproportionately utilized by those in high-tax blue states: “In 2005, taxpayers in California and New York together made up 20 percent of those claiming the deduction and accounted for 30 percent of its value. Itemizers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California claimed on average over $12,000 per household.”

Of course, there are some wealthy right-leaning folk who will get snared under this plan. But they will have at least two options to alleviate their tax bill: first, move to red states with lower real-estate prices, lower state and local taxes, and lower costs of living...

I'm Doug Ross, and I endorse this tax plan.


JAN 2013: The Statement the Next Speaker of the House Must Give

As Ned Ryun suggests, with some luck January may bring a new Speaker of the House. A conservative Speaker. And this is the kind of plain talk -- the truth --- that the American people need to hear.

We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts that address the so-called "Stimulus" package, which was sold as a one-time, emergency measure. We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without these necessary cuts, because our entire system faces a fiscal disaster without them.

By the way, we don't live in a dictatorship. We live in a Republic with checks and balances.

If the President attempts to illegally raise the debt ceiling without Congress and thereby violates the Constitution, there are remedies and we will hold him accountable.

Furthermore, we are not going to raise the debt ceiling without three questions being answered by Senator Harry Reid and the President:

1. At what point will Democrats have borrowed enough from America's young people and from future generations? Is there a dollar limit or a percentage of GDP they can point to and say, "That's it! That's the limit!"?

2. At what point will Democrats have spent enough? Is there a dollar limit or a threshold of GDP that, once surpassed, they admit their central planning in the housing, health care, retirement, banking and other markets have failed?

3. How much longer will Democrats operate the country without a budget? For the first time in modern American history, Democrats have refused to pass a budget for three years in a row, an act which no country, no state, no city, and certainly no family would ever tolerate.

Because if they can't identify any limits on their spending -- if they recognize no constraints to their policies nor learn from the past -- then they are tacitly admitting that they intend to poison, through bankruptcy and fiscal chaos, the American system of government.

None of America's young people should tolerate this fiscal destruction and I pledge that this Congress will stand up for America's youth. We will not tolerate Democrats poisoning the wellspring of freedom any longer.


Wednesday, December 05, 2012

CONGRATULATIONS, DEMS! "Get ready for some startling [health care] rate increases"

From the party that brought you Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicare, "Great Society" and every other bankrupt exercise in central planning, comes the ultimate in epic fails

The Affordable Care Act: Ten Months to Launch “Obamacare”––Get Ready for Some Startling Rate Increases

...I conducted an informal survey of a number of insurers... On average, expect a 30% to 40% increase in the baseline cost of individual health insurance to account for the new premium taxes, reinsurance costs, benefit mandate increases, and underwriting reforms...

In states with the least mandates or for health insurance companies with the tightest underwriting now, the increase could be a lot more...

[E]xpect individual health insurance rates for people in their 20s and early 30s to about double…

Will the feds be ready to provide an insurance exchange in all of the states that don’t have one on October 1, 2013?

I have no idea. And neither does anyone else I talk to inside the Beltway. We only hear vague reports that parts of the new federal exchange information systems are in testing.

The former CIA director couldn’t get away with an affair in this town but the Obama administration has a complete lid on just where they are on health insurance exchanges and haven’t shown any willingness to want to talk about their progress toward launching on time––except to tell us all not to worry.

We are all worried. I would not want to be responsible for the work that remains and only have ten months to do it…

The Republicans said this would not work. If it does not launch on time, or does with serious problems, I would not want to be an incumbent Democrat.

I told them not to call this the “Affordable Care Act.”

I can't wait for these losers to try and blame this SCOAMF on Bush.

Oh, and let's come up with a more appropriate name for the Democrat Party:

The Bankruptocrat Party?

The Crashocrat Party?

The Lying-Sack-o-crat Party?

The Failocrat Party?

Help me out here, folks.


Image hat tip: Looking Spoon.

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

NOT HYPOCRITICAL IN THE LEAST: Now the Left SIMPLY ADORES the Bush Tax Cuts

I'm stunned that vintage media ignores the hypocrisy of a Democrat Party that now urges extensions to the same "Bush Tax Cuts" they pilloried for a decade.

Opponents of the Bush tax cuts have done a silent flip-flop on whether those cuts helped the middle class.

With the so-called fiscal cliff approaching, politicians are virtually unanimous that the expiration of the Bush-era tax law presents a clear and present danger to the middle class. According to the White House, the typical middle class family’s taxes would jump by $2,200 per year. The president recently took this message directly to the people [...with the hashtag My2K...]

Curiously, however, hardly anyone has noticed that today’s sentiment is a flip-flop for just about any Democrat who has run for any political office any time in the past decade — from the presidency on down....
...In other words, if the Bush cuts actually were just “tax cuts for the rich,” then their expiration couldn’t hurt the middle class. On the other hand, if their expiration would hurt the middle class, then characterizing them as “tax cuts for the rich” was a false message all along.

[...American] history (available from the Tax Foundation) begs two questions. First: is it wise to assume that a feel-good increase in the top tax rate will really extract a higher share of the total taxes from the top earners? If so, by all means, let’s proceed — but we should at least understand that recent history doesn’t necessarily support our case. Second: just what is a “fair share”? The top 10 percent of income tax payers paid 64 percent of the burden when Clinton left office, and they are paying significantly more of the burden today — so if they’re not paying their “fair share” yet, they were even further away from paying their “fair share” under Clinton...

What, then, is the “fair share” of the top income tax payers: 80 percent of the total? 90 percent? 100 percent? If we don’t define “fair share,” we can never know whether we’ve reached — or unfairly overshot — the goal.

What is a "fair share" of your income -- your life -- that the government deserves?

Whatever they say it is, of course.

Remember, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.


CHEERY: The Debt Dam Bursts In Two to Four Years

Economic writer Robert Wiedemer's assessment matches those of former House Ways and Means chief Chris Carter and Paul Ryan: we have two years -- four years at the outside -- before the federal government's Ponzi scheme implodes.

...this dollar bubble and this government debt bubble – will burst. It is not as if it will not burst for 15 or 20 years. We say it is somewhere in two to four years. You need to be prepared for it.

The debt will always be funded as long as the Federal Reserve stands willing to buy all the bonds that the government sells. At some point, that creates inflation: that pushes up interest rates. The Fed will fight those interest rates going up. At first, they can do it. They just print more money. That keeps interest rates down, but ultimately that inflation will force them up. We cannot just pull the money out and raise interest rates now; it's going to pop the real estate and stock bubbles.

What is going to happen is the Fed is going to lose control of those interest rates. When you print too much money, it gets you control short-term, but it is a recipe for losing control long-term. With those interest rates going up, what is going to pop? The stock market and real estate bubbles. All of that is what kicks off the big problem going forward. Normally you would say the bond market is going to be the problem, but I would tell you that it is actually going to be more stocks and eventually even real estate combined. Then ultimately, the bond market starts to go down, and down quickly once it starts.

When the dam finally breaks, it will break quickly. Literally, it is in a matter of months or certainly no more than a year once it really starts to go.

You get very, very high inflation. We could have stock market holidays and things like that.

The big difference between now and the depression is that the government is also in trouble at this point. We are really not going to have a huge failure until the government kind of comes to its wits' end. It will, but it comes as a last massive orgy of money printing to try to save everything - unlike anything you have seen yet. QE1, QE2, QE3 is nothing like what the Fed has to do when this thing starts to fall. They have to print, buy, and buy, and buy, and try to keep up the falling house. They will not be able to do it, but that will be the reaction.

Then at some point, it is not going to work and the whole thing goes.

As Mark Levin observes, the only bright spot is that the progressive kooks are going down the tubes along with the rest of us.


Chart: Wikipedia.


Monday, December 03, 2012

JUST PERFECT: John Boehner Purges Conservatives From Prominent Committee Spots

John Boehner is the Speaker of the House thanks to Tea Party and Constitutional conservatives. But instead of embracing the principles of the base that put him in power, he has purged anyone who doesn't agree with his feckless leadership.

Speaker John A. Boehner initiated today a small purge of rebellious Republicans — mostly conservatives — from prominent committees; it’s the latest instance of the Ohio Republican’s clamping down on his fractious conference.

The decisions were made by the GOP Steering Committee at a Monday meeting, which reviewed a spreadsheet listing each GOP lawmaker and how often he or she had voted with leadership, three sources said.

Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Walter Jones of North Carolina were booted from the Financial Services Committee. Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas were removed from the Budget Committee... According to a source, Schweikert was told that he was ousted in part because his “votes were not in lockstep with leadership.”

All of the lawmakers other than Jones were rebellious right-wingers. Huelskamp and Amash, for instance, both voted against the budget proposed by Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin in committee and on the floor, because it did not cut spending fast enough. They also voted against the current continuing resolution that is funding the government through the end of March.

...The decisions came as a major surprise to Republican members. When first contacted about the changes, several of the lawmakers’ offices said they had not yet been notified.

Complete classlessness. As Jimmie Bise, Jr. observes:

This sort of move — summary dismissal from important committees for which you leak to the press before you notify the affected members — is a big, fat backhand to the face, a reminder that John Boehner is in charge of the GOP House caucus and not we upstart conservative Tea Partiers... It’s what happens when a besieged leader wants to secure his position to hold off a siege. Make no mistake, conservatives have gotten very close to positions of real influence inside the ranks of the professional Republicans and that just won’t do. And so, a purge of the problem children who believe conservatism is more than a suit you put on to gull the rubes during an election year.

Here's my advice: Don't give a single penny to any official Republican organization. Not a cent to the RNC. Not a nickel to the NRSC. Not a dime to the NRCC. Not a quarter to Karl Rove's idiotic "grassroots" fund, American Crossroads.

Instead, give your money and support to conservative candidates directly and to organizations proven to support conservative principles like Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund.


IT EXPLAINS ALOT: The Confidence Fairy

Zero Hedge commenter TruthInSunshine has a perspective worth sharing. He explains why no one in a position of power will speak the truth about the financial wall -- not cliff -- that the economy is headed for:

No government agency or business association spokesperson is ever going to speak of the truth of how bad things are in the present, unless they have no choice because incontrovertible proof has already been released to the masses that would otherwise and obviously demonstrate their insincerity.

As long as "official datum" as published by the various governmental and quasi-governmental agencies/bodies allow governmental and business association spokespeople to understate the severity of our real economic crisis, they will, whether Democrats, Republicans or the chief economist for The National Association of Realtors.

No governmental employee (and especially no politician) will voluntarily relay how dire things may be (again, given a backdrop of "official" statistical datum that is inaccurate and relatively misleading they can fall back on) because they wouldn't want to upset the apple cart, cause further distress or even panic amongst the populace or within the "markets," and no business association spokesperson, whose very jobs entail, at least in significant part, a public confidence-building role, will do anything to further dampen the confidence that ... hope remains amongst potential consumers of their products (e.g. would a spokesperson for the NAR really come out and say that existing homes are selling quickly because inventory is being artificially constrained by GSEs and federal reserve policy and also due to federal reserve monetary policy that has a huge % of listed homes being purchased by investors for cash in an attempt to produce yields in a yield-starved economy - BECAUSE of federal reserve monetary policy? What impact would that have on the confidence of conventional, prospective existing home purchasers, who might then realize there is no true present price discovery and that another leg down is more than possible?).

In other words, they lie because our economy is dependent, in quite a large degree, on an illusion that is often referred to as the "confidence fairy."

If those people who still have the means to purchase a particular service or good feel confident about the security of their own jobs and the current & likely future state of the economy, they're more apt to go ahead and dig themselves into more debt or pay cash to purchase that service or good, regardless of the accuracy (and realism) of their "confidence level."

Conversely, if they don't feel confident about the security of their own employment situation and/or the current and likely future state of the economy, they're more apt to refrain from purchasing that good or service, and save instead, in preparation for what may lay ahead.

And this is why, without exception, throughout history, the masses do not understand there is a crisis until well after it has already begun, and they've already committed to many purchases, indebtedness and other forms of dis-saving, that they wouldn't have committed to had they known accurate information sooner.

Hence, the "confidence fairy," which governmental employees, politicians and business spokespeople all actively perpetuate in their own methods and by various tactices, is a serial and mass killer of efficient markets and rational economic behavior (as it severely distorts essential economic information that is relied upon by economic and market participants)

As Monty Pelerin so succinctly puts it, "21st Century politics sees no need for truth."


Sunday, December 02, 2012

THE "STUPIDITY" OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR: The Left's Other Economic Straw Man

Writing at The Reformed Broker, Joshua Brown correctly dismisses the Left's incessant calls for economic "fairness", but then ensnares himself in another field of rhetorical quicksand: the "stupidity" of corporations and the private sector.

...the economy isn't fair and you can make a pretty strong case that it's gotten less fair, but that fact alone will never sway those in power...

...So instead of lamenting the lack of fairness, let's talk about the stupidity of this hollowing out of the middle class in this country, year after year, with bought and paid for legislation and preferential tax treatment.

Henry Blodget demonstrated last night how, while corporate profits have never been higher, the wages paid to workers at these same corporations have never been lower. While corporate profit margins just hit a 70-year high, have a glance at wages as a percentage of GDP:


Corporations haven't magically learned a new secret to profitability, they've just found a workaround to the need for a living wage in this country. F*** it, someone else's problem.

Yes, Joshua: corporations have all -- in concert -- decided to screw the "middle class", whoever that may be. It's not the insane, ever growing number of regulations from hundreds of government entities that grow like weeds in good times and bad. It's not takeovers of entire industries -- like health care -- with countless repercussions as diktats and fiats emanate from unelected, faceless bureaucrats. Corporations certainly couldn't be husbanding resources to prepare for the unknown, could they?

And, oh my: 54 percent of jobs are created by small businesses, not large companies. How is it that they, too, appear to have conspired to screw "the middle class"?

...the stupidity of having such an obviously unbalanced economy is the more important discussion we should be having right now. The corporations are every bit as vulnerable to the disappearance of the middle class as the middle class is itself.

They've managed around this issue thus far with an increasing emphasis on exports (now responsible for half of the S&P 500's sales and profits) as well as systemic and legally-sanctioned overseas tax evasion. Consider that Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and paid zero Federal income tax (you want to laugh, they actually got a rebate of $256 million). GE earned $14 billion in 2010 and also paid zero in Federal income tax. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have each set up offshore subsidiaries which they use as payment conduits so as to keep their profits shielded from the IRS.

But offshoring of profits and the export of goods and services won't sustain these corporations forever. At a certain point, native companies within the developing world will nudge our adventuring multinationals aside (China's already building its own version of Wall Street). And when that happens, Corporate America is going to turn around and be horrified by the devastation in its own backyard.

So, Joshua, why have these corporate entities set up offshore tax shelters? Could it be because they are incented to do so, thanks to populist -- and destructive -- corporate tax policies and (in the case of GE) crony capitalism?

And concerning Exxon Mobil, could it also be that we already pay an incredible rate of taxation on every gallon of gas, which -- by the way -- hits the middle class, and poor, and the rich equally?

Well, you enormous f***ing idiots, you fired all your customers. You've spent the last decade or so suppressing wage growth in the name of "creating shareholder value" and now even your shareholder base is disappearing.

You allowed wages to stagnate for a decade and made every decision you could in the service of nudging the quarterly profit higher, thinking less of the yearly profit and virtually nothing of the long-term viability of your business.

No, Joshua: you are dead wrong.

I have an Almanac from 1929. It is fascinating. As you flip the pages, you see dozens of pages of advertising representing hundreds of different companies. Perhaps one-half of one percent of these companies are still alive today.

No, Joshua: companies (and individuals) are trying to survive an out-of-control government that is leeching more and more money from every corner of the economy, issuing ever more onerous regulations, and wreaking administrative havoc with bills like Dodd-Frank and PPACA that have yet to be fully fleshed out.

Companies are terrified of a federal government that has grown like a cancer, decade after decade.

See, Joshua: we already have a structure that will work for all Americans. We have a precious and priceless framework our predecessors bequeathed to us called "The Constitution".

It attempted to limit the powers of a centralized federal government because it knew that "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

And so it is we have arrived in November of 2012: with an unconstrained central government, borrowing and printing money that will never be repaid in pursuit of a collectivist ideology that has no blueprint, no design, and no endgame that can be shared with the citizenry.

It confiscates ever more money from the private sector, recycles it through thousands of inefficient bureaucracies, and then sends the remainder to its favorite constituent groups to aid in its reelection efforts.

It micromanages our lives and regulates every aspect of the private sector. It tells us what kind of light bulbs we can buy, how much mileage our cars must get, how much water can flow through our shower heads, and how big a pond can be in our backyards before it turns into a "protected wetland".

The federal government is the world's biggest borrower, its biggest lender, its biggest health insurer, and runs the biggest retirement system. And every time it has touched any part of our economic system, it has bankrupted or destroyed it.

The system is going to collapse, just as it is collapsing in Europe today, just as it did in Argentina a decade ago, and just as it did in the Weimar Republic. And the tragedy -- the travesty -- is that we were blessed with a system of Constitutional government that was explicitly designed to prevent all of this madness.

Corporations are terrified of the federal government. And those ostensibly running things, our politicians -- with the exception of a handful of plain-spoken folks demonized as "extremists" -- have largely surrendered to the corruption endemic to an unconstitutional, centralized government that, each and every day, pushes us closer to tyranny.

That, Joshua, is the problem: the world's biggest corporation called the federal government.


INTERESTING: "The Main Problem With Republicans"

Dark Water Retreat:

The main problem with the Republicans is that they are perpetually uncool. Although some take comfort in the glow of self-righteousness and condemnation of those who are not worthy, the Republican Party has little to offer the citizens of the United States. Even the once strong point of having solid economic principles they purportedly endorse, this idea seems to be no-more as evidenced by the economic liberal choices of president they continue to select. I mean, really? McCain and Romney were planning to get the country back on sound economic ground? Instead of being economic stalwarts of fiscal responsibility, they seem to be socialist lite… That is, ”only half the socialist calories of the other brand!”


What they are doing is doubling down on is the social issues that piss people off. Republicans are on the wrong side of these issues and they represent a black eye that history will not remember fondly. Most voters don’t understand fiscal and economic policy. They just don’t. What they do understand is that they have a relative or friend that is gay. They do understand that they have a relative or friend that smokes an occasional joint. They do understand that they have a relative or friend that is an immigrant. They do not like watching family friendly entertainment all the time. People are turned off by the self-righteous holier-than-thou attitude that Republicans continue to put forth. While not considering the many fine people they are disenfranchising, the Republicans seem to be more than willing to water down sound financial principles of which everyone would benefit. We only have one shot in this world and if we are going to be labeled as ”sinners” we might as well (as said by Billy Joel): “we would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints because the sinners are much more fun.”

We have our work cut out for us. As Trevor Loudon reminds us, the next four years are going to be disastrous unless Republicans stand for something basic, primitive and real: America.

• Diverting money from the military to social spending will be a huge part of the agenda. After all, a strong US military is the major block to world revolution.

• The push will be towards universal socialist healthcare and an economy wrecking Financial Transactions Tax.

• Ending poverty through massive re-distribution will be a big focus… capitalizing on the 50th anniversary of DSA founder Michael Harrington‘s famous book “The Other America,” which helped to launch Lyndon Johnson’s catastrophic and completely counter productive “War on Poverty” in the mid-1960s.

• Students will be manipulated with promises of loan forgiveness. There will be a huge push for immigration reform. DSA leader Eliseo Medina, a leader of the movement, has openly boasted that this will mean eight million more Democrat Party votes.

Until conservatives and Republicans realize that they are opposing a Marxist dominated party, they are destined to a series of defeats on the way to political oblivion... [Democrats are no longer] the party of Truman or Kennedy, but the party of Marx, Lenin, Alinsky and Gramsci.

...Republicans are no longer fighting old line Democrats. They are effectively battling D.S.A, the Communist Party and the labor unions. The Democrats are simply a front for the Marxists.

These people play dirty, and they play for keeps.

We're Americans. We don't give up. We don't give in to thugs. And we need leaders who won't give in either. Who will stand tall in the face of existential threats to this country.

We need Republicans who can speak eloquently about what the future holds under the collectivists in the Democrat Party, about the failures of big government, and about liberty. Liberty is cool. Liberty is inclusive. Liberty appeals to all ages, races, religions, colors and backgrounds.

We need Republicans who can give voice to liberty and who will politically offer no quarter to the progressives who seek to destroy this great land. That will appeal to the old and the young, the rich and the poor, women and men, and anyone else who dreams of a better future for themselves and subsequent generations.



Saturday, December 01, 2012

The evil Bush tax cuts in one graph

Let's take a look at federal spending versus its receipts from the last two years of Bill Clinton, all eight years of G. W. Bush, and four years of Barack Obama:

George W. Bush and supporters of the tax cut said federal revenue would go up after passing the cuts and it appears it did...


In fact, federal receipts reached Clinton-era levels without Clinton-era tax rates in 2006, not long after all the cuts went into effect (passed in 2001 and 2003, they were tweaked with in 2005)...

In other words, tax cuts grow revenue to the government.

That said, the next time Democrats take facts, logic and reason into account when setting policy will be the first time.


THE END: Three Must-See Charts

Icecap Asset Management, via (who else?) Tyler Durden:

...Since WWII, the Americans, Japanese, British and Europeans have spent way more money than they owned. But that was okay because the money they borrowed wouldn’t have to be repaid until some far away day in the future.

Unfortunately the future has now arrived and today, the next generations of Americans, Japanese, British and Europeans have all plunged into a deathly debt spiral... Today it is no coincidence that the Americans, Japanese, British and Europeans have all set interest rates as close to 0% as possible. Also today, it is no coincidence that the Americans, Japanese, British and Europeans are all printing money...


...The crash of 2008 wasn’t simply due to an overheated American housing market – this was just the one of many final straws. In fact, those dark days of just a few short years ago were the culmination of years of too much spending and too much borrowing, and then trying to sweep these stresses under a money printing rug to be forgotten...

...The excesses of today were not accumulated over a standard 3-5 year business cycle, but rather the excesses accumulated over 60 years of fortuitous, kicking-the-can-down-the-road policies by governments and central bankers...


...Now, the “save the day” strategy of cutting interest rates can work for a really long time – well, at least until there are no more interest rates left to cut. Unfortunately – with close to 0% rates everywhere, the World has reached that day.

In addition to cutting interest rates, Keynesian economics also believes that to really save the day, governments should combine cutting interest rates with deficit spending... The belief is that when the economy slumps, lower interest rates will encourage private investors to borrow, hire and spend again, but in the meantime governments should fill this spending lull by building new bridges, roads and sidewalks...

...Keynesians want you to believe that although cutting interest rates, running deficits and excessively borrowing didn’t exactly work out as planned – this last great hope of money printing should work.

We of course have our doubts. Like Friedrich Hayek, we believe the only way for the global economy to recover is for governments to dramatically reduce their interference in private markets. As long as central banks and governments continue to influence interest rates, lending, and employment - private capital will not return.

Instead of living in a World where economic success is rewarded, we now see a wave of new Western World governments who support taxing success to reward those who failed...

...the one point we hear no one pondering aloud is exactly what happens the moment the Americans decide (or are forced) to stop printing money.

...For those who don’t quite understand the effects of money printing, you just have to know that during the last year the Americas had a $1 trillion deficit – meaning the government spent $1 trillion more than what they collected in taxes. In a normal World, people and countries have to borrow the $1 trillion to pay the bills, but not the Americans.

Only in America does money grow on trees. And, in this case of the $1 trillion that was needed to fund the deficit, Ben Bernanke and the US Federal Reserve will print about $480 billion...


...The real concern and balancing act facing Mr. Bernanke and his Keynesian team is what happens to private capital the moment it is announced that money printing will stop, or if over night interest rates were to rise.

At that moment, make believe becomes real believe as private capital once again gets to play in the real World. And in the real World, private capital will demand to be paid given the amount of real risk that is present.

Two things will happen. For starters some of the private capital will simply leave to find a new home in other countries or markets. In addition, the price of money (ie. interest rates) will increase but not just for US government treasuries and bonds – but across the entire credit spectrum...

...To understand the importance of this concept, you just need to know that currently the average interest rate paid by the Americans on their debt is 2.56%. This equals $417 billion/year. If long-term rates were to double to 5%, the cost of funding this mess rises to $834 billion or 6% of GDP...

...the ill-fated exercise of following Keynesian economics to kick the can down the road will continue once again. The World has already seen the failure of the Keynesian approach of continuous interest rate cutting, deficit spending and tax cuts.

The bad news is that the money printing option embraced today will not create a different outcome.


LAUGHINGSTOCK: The Washington Post Commits Suicide

Is there anyone on either side of the aisle that takes The Washington Post seriously?

That's a rhetorical question.


"Obama takes a hard line on debt"?

"Obama takes a hard line on debt"?

"Obama takes a hard line on debt"?


Here's the real debt that Barack Obama and the Democrats have created since January of 2009, depicted in red.

You see that tiny little sliver of green? That's Obama's proposal - to generate about $80 billion by raising taxes on "the rich".

That's what The Washington Post calls "a hard line on the debt."

This egregious deficit spending cannot be sustained much longer: two, three years tops, according to former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, before the system begins to unravel.

We are headed for a societal collapse. We are headed for runaway inflation, a collapse of the currency, and civil unrest... in that order. We are seeing it break out in Europe now, we saw it in Argentina a dozen years ago, and we saw it in the Weimar Republic before the rise of Hitler.

Inevitably, the laws of economics overtake the politics.

And The Washington Post is led by people so criminally dishonest and so infected with partisan greed that they are willing to lie -- boldfaced -- to the American people time and time again, as the country prepares to walk off the real economic cliff.


Photo of headline: @EmilyMiller.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

JUST BOUNCE: Stunned pundits react to Obama's "balanced deal" of no cuts, tax hikes, and increased spending

Charles Krauthammer:

It’s not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal… Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House. Republicans won the House. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that’s what the administration is asking of Republicans.

There not only are no cuts in this, there’s an increase in new spending with a stimulus – this is almost unheard of. I mean, what do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think Republican ought to simply walk away. The president is the president, he’s the leader.


They are demanding that Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make. We had that movie a year and a half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to give a speech in which he would respond with a counter offer and what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row, he called the Ryan proposal un-American and insulted him, offered nothing and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months. And they expect Republicans are going to do this again?

The Republicans are going to walk on this and I think they have leverage. Yes, for congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we’re going to have a recession. But Obama’s not running again unlike the congressional Democrats. He’s going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that’s going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you’re Barack Obama.

Newt Gingrich:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks.

“One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.


“They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to cave in to Obama; they don’t need to form a ‘Surrender Caucus.’”

...He also addressed the recent focus on Grover Norquist and his no-raising taxes pledge, which some Republicans have abandoned in recent weeks, calling it a “distraction.”

“I give Obama great credit for this. I have never seen anybody better at finding trivial distractions in order to avoid responsibility,” Gingrich said.

Rush Limbaugh:

Part of Obama's transformation of America is wiping out the Republican Party. And anyone who fails to understand that that is also part of Obama's agenda at this moment, anybody who fails to understand that is really not paying attention and is too caught up in traditional conventional wisdom about, "Well, it was just another election. Well, yes, Obama won. Yes, we marshaled our forces, but we need to stand for pro-growth policies and all that rotgut." Yes, we do. There's no way we're ever gonna be tied to pro-growth policies if our fingerprints are on this coming disaster...

... The best thing to do is back out of this and let Obama and the Democrats have it and do what they gotta do. 'Cause that's gonna happen anyway. I don't know about you, but I don't want my fingerprints on this.

Obama has yet to make any serious offer -- a "balanced" offer, using his terminology -- and Republicans need to just walk away. Obama created the fiscal cliff; he created sequestration; he made his bed. Let him lie in it.



HEY, DEMOCRATS: I'll listen to Warren Buffett's tax hike ideas when he decides to PAY HIS OWN DAMN TAXES

Warren Buffett's marketing efforts for Barack Obama's class warfare campaign are despicable on two fronts. First, they do nothing to address the country's catastrophic deficit problem:

A search at the Associated Press’s national website on Warren Buffett’s last name at about 5 p.m. ET returned two recent items which are still present there. Each item (here and here) mentions the Obama Fan of Omaha’s idea to “impose a minimum tax of 30 percent on income between $1 million and $10 million, and a 35 percent rate for income above that.” Neither mentions the pathetically small amount such a tax would raise while seriously impacting the ability of high income earners who own or run businesses to expand them — or in some cases causing them to shrink.

It’s the same at other establishment press outlets. Two recent New York Times items found in a search on Buffett’s full name (here and here, the latter item being Buffett’s own op-ed on Sunday) fail to note how little money Buffett’s proposed tax hikes would raise. So how little is “little”?

Buffett hasn’t been entirely consistent in his expressed suggestion. Earlier this year, he wanted a rate of 30%, while his recent Times op-ed suggests 35% for those earning over $10 million. James Pethokoukis estimated in April that the amount which would be raised would be about $5 billion — “although experience suggests that it won’t raise even that much.” The government currently spends $5 billion about every 12 hours, and runs an $5 billion deficit in less than two days.

You read that right: even if the truly wealthy didn't find ways to get their money out of the U.S. or otherwise evade these taxes, the amount raised by Buffett's brilliant plan wouldn't pay for two days of this massive, bloated federal government's deficit spending.

It also turns out that Buffett is hardly a model citizen when it comes to paying his own taxes:

It Turns Out Warren Buffett Is A Master Of Avoiding Taxes


Lately, Warren has been a shill for Obama. Over and over again, we hear how good ole Warren “wants” to pay more taxes and thinks his wealthy buddies ought to follow suit. “We aren’t taxed enough,” he says. Well, let’s take a closer look at just where Warren stands when it really comes down to paying his taxes...

There are two recent cases where Warren has done everything possible to AVOID paying taxes that he actually owes. The first case involved a 14-year fight over the dividend-received deduction that was finally settled with the IRS in 2005. The second case is still pending after 10 years in which he owes just over $1 BILLION in back taxes. Both of these cases are well-documented and you can satisfy yourself simply by using Google to inquire as to the voracity of these assertions. Also note the timeframes of 14-years and 10+-years; not exactly a haphazard hissy fit. While you’re at it, you might also ask yourself “why” Warren says one thing in public discourse while he practices the exact opposite in his business and personal life. Is not that the definition of hypocrite?

...Buffett is now at the center of another tax controversy, according to The Wall Street Journal. His recent decision to invest in Bank of America “represents another tax-avoidance triumph for the Berkshire chief executive,” the Journal wrote in an editorial ... “With the exclusion for Mr. Buffett and his fellow shareholders, Berkshire will enjoy an effective tax rate of 14.175% on the $300 million in dividends it will receive each year from Bank of America,” the Journal reported. [Remember, his secretary pays a higher tax rate?].

Look up "crony capitalist" in the dictionary and I'll bet you see a lithograph of Warren Buffett staring back at you.


Hat tips: Mark Levin and BadBlue News.

CHART: The Financial Impact of Raising Taxes on "the Rich"

I created this chart to put the "fiscal cliff" discussion in perspective.


The overall pie represents total federal outlays since Barack Obama took office, including next year, which is the subject of all the hullabaloo.

The red represents the amount of debt -- borrowing, which must be repaid along with interest -- that the federal leviathan has rung up on our children's behalf.

And that tiny green sliver? That represents the impact of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the top two tax brackets, er, I mean: "The Rich".

Those additional taxes mean nothing to the yawning chasm of debt. It's a spit in the bucket. Bupkis.

So, where are your spending cuts, Mr. President?