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

Thursday, May 02, 2013

A Parent's Prayer for The Children (Not Valid in Illinois)

Guest post by Charlie Fritschner


Imagine that you are a young parent. You’re 28 years old. You have four young children. You didn’t finish high school, but you work hard and provide your family with a stable home and lots of love.

Your children are bright and curious, and you dream of giving them a first-class education. But your neighborhood public school has a dropout rate of 30%. Most kids don’t read on grade level. Almost none attend college. Personal tutors and private schools are far beyond your means.

You have no power to leave. You have no ability to choose. You’re stuck.

Meet Emilia Melendez. A mother of four from Milwaukee.


Meet the Griffins. A family of seven from Merrillville, Ind., about 50 miles southeast of Chicago. Like Emilia, the Griffins were stuck, scared and powerless.


Today, both families send their children to elite private schools. Both families expect their children to attend top universities and go on to successful professional careers.

Their dreams, and the dreams of their children, are becoming reality thanks to Indiana and Milwaukee’s school voucher systems.

I spent several weeks filming the Griffin and Melendez families.

I saw firsthand the empowerment they not only feel, but exercise daily.

For them, education reform isn’t a concept or a nice idea. It isn’t about policy or politics. It’s about giving their children a chance at a better life.

If Emilia or the Griffins lived in Illinois, none of this would be possible.

Illinois politicians have not yet been convinced that parents deserve the ability to choose the school that best suits their child’s needs and goals.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Hundreds of thousands of children in Illinois could have access to a more dynamic education and more fulfilling lives if we gave their parents the power to choose.

For poor and working parents in Wisconsin and Indiana, education and opportunity are no longer the hopeless struggles they once were.

Can we make the dreams of children in Illinois a reality as well?


Charlie Fritschner is a video specialist at the Illinois Policy Institute

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

BUT MELVIN, HE'S SO HISTORIC: True Unemployment Rate Hits 23 Percent, Highest Since Great Depression

John Williams' ShadowStats charts the real unemployment rate by employing the methods the U.S. government used to use, before they became a political liability.

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.


The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

In conjunction with that news, please consider a report from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), which warns that when the Fed stops quantitative easing the interest on the federal debt will more than quadruple from $205 billion a year to $855 billion. Can you say, "Financial Meltdown", boys and girls?

Gee, I wonder what Paul "Subprime" Krugman and Henry "P.O.S." Blodget think of this?

That TBAC members are Violent, Tea-Bagging Racists™, no doubt?


Hat tip: BadBlue Money.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A CURRENCY DIES: Argentina's farmers hoarding food rather than pesos

Let's pray this isn't a preview of coming attractions here.

Sales of Argentine soybeans are lagging this season due to expectations for higher world prices later and to domestic financial uncertainty that has prompted farmers to save in beans rather than pesos.

With world food demand on the rise, growers in the Pampas grain belt are filling their silos with soy rather than converting their crops into pesos, a currency that hit a new all-time low in informal trade this week.

Considering Argentina’s high inflation, clocked at about 25 percent by private economists, “money in the bank” is not as secure as storing soybeans next to their fields... “We are going to hang onto our soy. One can see higher prices ahead,” said Jose Plazibat, a partner with the firm of Bandurria and Plazibat Brothers, which farms more than 3,000 hectares near the town of Chacabuco in Buenos Aires province.

...Cut off from global bond markets since its 2002 default, Argentina needs farm revenue to help finance public spending increases ahead of October legislative elections.

...Growers say they would plant more corn if the government would stop placing curbs on exports. The farm sector has long feuded with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who won re-election in 2011 on promises of increasing the government’s role in Argentina’s economy.

Confidence has since softened. The peso has slumped in the informal market, opening a breach of 71 percent versus the formal exchange rate and increasing market chatter about a possible devaluation to shore up exports... The government is likely to put off a devaluation of the official peso at least until the October elections have passed.

Say, perhaps the economic geniuses Paul "Enron" Krugman and Henry "POS" Blodget could explain why massive deficits, financial repression, and currency devaluation didn't work for the Argentinian government, which has only tried their Keynesian policy prescriptions for, oh, about the last century or so.


Related: Don't Cry for Me, America.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

NO ONE TELL PAUL KRUGMAN OR HENRY BLODGET: "Spain Is Beyond Doomed"

The Keystone Keynesian Klowns are going to have a delightful time explaining the meltdown of Europe, which has only just begun.

Five years after its housing boom turned to bust, Spanish unemployment hit a record high of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. It's almost too horrible to comprehend, but 19.5 percent of the total workforce has not had a job in the past six months; 15.3 percent have not in the past year; and 9.2 percent have not in the past two years. You can see this 1930s-style catastrophe in the chart below from the National Statistics Institute.


...the real story of the Spanish depression has been the story of the indignados: the mostly young, long-term unemployed. It's a bit hard to see just how dramatic it's been in the chart above, so I converted it to a line chart below. Almost all of the increase in unemployment since 2010 has been due to the increase in long-term unemployment of two years or more...


In other words, unemployment is a trap people fall into, but can't fall out of... That is what a permanent underclass looks like.

This debt-fueled madness will, of course, end in war and misery -- as it has throughout human history.

And Paul Krugman was, you may recall, an early champion of the Euro experiment. Combined with his stint at Enron, championing the housing bubble, and endorsing Fannie Mae's subprime extravaganza, the midget propaganconomist has a track record only Jamie Gorelick could love.


Hat tip: BadBlue Financial News.

STEALTH REPARATIONS: New York Times confirms Obama administration behind billions in fraudulent payments

It's not often that I'll write approvingly of an article in The New York Times, but for Sharon LaFraniere's masterful deconstruction of the Pigford Scandal, I'll make an exception.

Pigford, you may recall, was first exposed by Andrew Breitbart and because of it he was sued, dismissed and lampooned by the Democrat-Media Complex. The term vindication was invented for situations like this.

In the winter of 2010, after a decade of defending the government against bias claims by Hispanic and female farmers, Justice Department lawyers seemed to have victory within their grasp.

Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans had, that biased federal loan officers had systematically thwarted their attempts to borrow money to farm.

But a succession of courts — and finally the Supreme Court — had rebuffed their pleas. Instead of an army of potential claimants, the government faced just 91 plaintiffs. Those cases, the government lawyers figured, could be dispatched at limited cost.

They were wrong.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling, interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.

The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections — until now undisclosed — of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal — the $50,000 payouts to black farmers — had proved a magnet for fraud...

The compensation effort sprang from a desire to redress what the government and a federal judge agreed was a painful legacy of bias against African-Americans by the Agriculture Department. But an examination by The New York Times shows that it became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees. In the past five years, it has grown to encompass a second group of African-Americans as well as Hispanic, female and Native American farmers. In all, more than 90,000 people have filed claims. The total cost could top $4.4 billion...

...From the start, the claims process prompted allegations of widespread fraud and criticism that its very design encouraged people to lie: because relatively few records remained to verify accusations, claimants were not required to present documentary evidence that they had been unfairly treated or had even tried to farm. Agriculture Department reviewers found reams of suspicious claims, from nursery-school-age children and pockets of urban dwellers, sometimes in the same handwriting with nearly identical accounts of discrimination...

...But critics, including some of the original black plaintiffs, say that is precisely what the government did when it first agreed to compensate not only those who had proof of bias, but those who had none...

...[For example, in] 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million...

...Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West, who supervised the civil division and oversaw the handling of the cases, canceled an interview. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. also declined to comment...

Like Operation Fast and Furious and Benghazi, the Pigford Scandal is a hundred times worse than Watergate. It represents institutionalized corruption and theft orchestrated by the President of the United States.

It is, in effect, a form of stealth reparations executed unlawfully on the part of this administration.

Heads should roll and impeachment should be on the table. Knowing the cowardly, feckless House Republican leadership, however, it's likely all of this will be ignored because John Boner and Eric Cantor are more interested in retaining their white-knuckled grip on power than doing the right thing.

Kudos to The New York Times for covering this blatant, open ripoff of the American taxpayer.


Hat tips: Lee Stranahan and Mark Levin.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

A single graph that depicts a society spiraling into the dustbin of history

Why work when you can just collect disability? After all, last month a record 8.9 million took advantage of impossible-to-verify "ailments" like back pain and mood disorders.

...Today, 6.5 workers are on disability for every 100 who have a job. That's double the ratio from two decades ago. The number of people on disability has climbed almost sixfold since 1970.

That influx has caused SSDI costs to climb faster than its dedicated payroll tax revenues. The program has been running a deficit since 2009, and will be insolvent by 2016, according to the program's administrators...


...Last year, the federal government paid $135 billion in disability benefits, which is more money than it devoted to food stamps and welfare combined.

And because those on disability are eligible for Medicare benefits after two years, the sharp rise in SSDI enrollment has put a huge strain on Medicare's budget, costing the program $80 billion in 2012, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In other words, one-sixth of Medicare's budget now goes to pay benefits for working-age disabled.

Record numbers on disability, a large percentage of which are fraudulent. Record numbers on food stamps, many of those fraudulent. Record welfare payments, many of those also fraudulent. Record income tax credit fraud. In fact, government officials have documented hundreds of billions of fraudulent payments each year laced throughout the federal government's massive, unsustainable wealth redistribution programs.

One might call this the Obama-Krugman-Blodget recipe for national suicide.

But I'll be charitable and simply ask: what is this, the fourth annual "Summer of Recovery"?


The Sequester Fraud in One Picture

Suffering through hours of delays in air travel? Blaming the sequester? Thanks to Phil Kerpen, we get a true sense of how "devastating" the cuts to the FAA are.


Not only is the FAA receiving more money this year than ever before (even with the sequester), if memory serves roughly half of its personnel are non-essential. The President, however, chose to furlough only essential personnel to punish the American people.

Have we ever had a President who intentionally tries to inflict pain on the American people?

And have we ever had a media that refuses to report upon this and dozens of other arguably impeachable offenses (e.g., refusing to enforce immigration law, refusing to answer for the murder of an Ambassador, sending thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, etc.)?

Those are both rhetorical questions.


Hat tip: Jim Simpson.

Monday, April 22, 2013

The 20 Most Stunning Poverty Statistics of the Obama Epoch

It's even worse than we thought.

1 - According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one out of every six Americans is now living in poverty. The number of Americans living in poverty is now at a level not seen since the 1960s.

2 - When you add in the number of low income Americans it is even more sobering. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.

3 - Today, approximately 20 percent of all children in the United States are living in poverty. Incredibly, a higher percentage of children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in 1975.


4 - It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

5 - Poverty is the worst in our inner cities. At this point, 29.2 percentof all African-American households with children are dealing with food insecurity.

6 - According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

7 - Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, close to one out of every six Americans is on food stamps. Even more shocking is the fact that more than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.

8 - For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.


9 - Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

10 - One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.

11 - At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the U.S. lives in a home without a father.

12 - Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

13 - Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

14 - About 40 percent of all unemployed workers in America have been out of work for at least half a year.

15 - At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

16 - There has been an explosion in the number of “working poor” Americans in recent years. Today, about one out of every fourworkers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.

17 - Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. And that does not even include Social Security or Medicare.

18 - An all-time record 47.79 million Americans are now on food stamps. Back when Barack Obama first took office, that number was only sitting at about 32 million.

19 - The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

20 - According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

In March of 2009 -- yes, a full four years ago -- I warned "Obama's destruction of the economy is intentional."

After 48 months, I see no evidence to the contrary.

His policies represent fiscal suicide. And nothing, not facts, logic, or reason, will dissuade him from his ideology of collectivism that can't work, won't work and has never worked in all of human history.


Sunday, April 21, 2013

CHART: The Historical Growth of Government

In good times and bad, government grows.

The ever-encroaching 'might' of the government - or perhaps, put another way, the ever-decreasing need to be gainfully employed or productive...

People who choose to work in government aren't angels, they aren't better than you or I. Many are just as corrupt and greedy as miscreants in the private sector. The difference: government corruption steals liberty from each and every one of us.

That is why government just can't seem to downsize.

In retrospect, it would appear that the 16th Amendment -- which legalized the federal income tax in 1913 -- provided the jet fuel for the Beltway's power-hungry elite.

The result? As the government expands, individual liberty contracts.


Thursday, April 18, 2013

Dozens of IRS employees claim to be unemployed in order to receive welfare, housing allowances and food stamps

But -- but -- but -- I thought all who work in government are benevolent public servants? That they're better than the rest of us? That they're angels, working for the public good?

Twenty-four current and former Internal Revenue Service employees have been charged with stealing government benefits, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The IRS employees were indicted on charges that they illegally received more than $250,000 in benefits including unemployment insurance payments, food stamps, welfare, and housing vouchers, the U.S. attorney's office in Memphis said in a news release.

Prosecutors say 13 of the IRS employees face federal charges of lying about being unemployed while applying for or recertifying their government benefits...

They each face up to five years in prison if convicted of making false statements to receive the benefits.

Eleven others face state charges of theft of property over $1,000, a felony that can carry a sentence of probation up to 12 years in prison if they are convicted.

Now take this fraud, multiply it by a million dollars or so, and you get your typical Senator.


Hat tips: Patriot Update and BadBlue News.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Nostradumbass: Paul Krugman on the Euro

But first, a little context-setting: Walter Russell Mead describes the current reality in Europe as the dream of a single currency unravels at an ever-increasing pace:

...For the eurozone to survive as it now stands, house prices, wages, the cost of meals in restaurants, groceries, and so on would all have to fall by as much as 50 percent in the periphery. That can’t happen without massive losses to banks, which have lent money based on current price levels. These loans cannot be repaid if prices fall that far. And this kind of price adjustment also means massive unemployment, probably dragging on for many years...

...this situation means that Europe’s single currency has in effect already failed. €300,000 in Germany is not the same as €300,000 in Italy or Spain, and there is no way to equalize values without years of wretched and ruinous pain.

There are lots of consequences, but the one that may cause the most trouble fastest has to do with banking. If a Spanish euro is really worth much less than a German euro, sooner or later bank deposits in Spain are going to be worth less than bank deposits in Germany. Intelligent people will realize this and start moving their bank deposits out of Spanish banks and into German or even non-eurozone banks; those who fail to do this stand to lose a lot of money when the system finally snaps...

And now is the time when we juxtapose! Mr. Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to January 7, 2002 and turn the channel to The Nightly Business Report, where The New York Times' Paul F. Krugman offered the following commentary:

So now Europe has a single currency. Should Americans care? At first, the euro won't make much of a difference to you and me. Vacations in Europe will be a bit easier to arrange, but they will also be a bit more expensive because the arrival of euro notes will give the currency a boost.

It will take years, maybe decades, before the impact of the euro really hits home. But then it will rock your world. The euro, you see, isn't mainly about economics...

For Europe's economy is as big as America's; Europe's technological sophistication is a match for our own; Europe's population is by and large better-educated. What that means is that soon, for the first time since World War II, we will face a political and economic equal - not an enemy, but another power that offers an alternative model of how a modern society can and should be run.

Europe shares many of our values, including a deep commitment to democracy. But it also disagrees with us about some things, including the appropriate level of taxes and social benefits. Until now, we haven't had to take those differences seriously; we were a superpower and they weren't. Now that may change, and I think that's all to the good. I love big, multicultural democracies; I love them so much I want to see two of them, so we can learn from each other. Viva la difference! I'm Paul Krugman.

But not to worry, gentle readers. Despite his train-wreck of a record -- including Enron and the "Housing Bubble", to name but a few -- Krugman can predict with absolute certainty the inconsequential ramifications of massive sovereign deficits as well as the dire environmental catastrophe that awaits us because of... Carbon Dioxide.

At least that's what passes for the intelligentsia on the Left would have you believe.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Gang of Eight's Secret Amnesty Deal: Enforcement Will Not Come First [Sessions]

Guest post by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

When the Gang of Eight was first formed a publicly stated principle was the enforcement would come first—before legalization. Today, on the Sunday shows, Gang of Eight members admitted that they abandoned this principle and that, in fact, legalization—or amnesty—would come first.

This proposal offers immediate legalization with unfulfilled promises of enforcement in the future. This is contrary to the commitment they made to the American people and raises the same core problem as the 2007 proposal that was rejected by the American people. This should not surprise given that Gang of Eight has refused to meet with ICE officers while consulting with the special interests. The proposal will not stand up to scrutiny.

Another area of great concern in this proposal is the impact it will have on low-income Americans and those individuals and communities suffering from chronic underemployment. The guest worker program in this proposal represents only a fraction of the increase in legal foreign workers that will be rapidly introduced. Including those illegal immigrants that are legalized, this bill, over ten years, will result in at least 30 million new foreign workers—more than the entire population of Texas. While this may mean lower wages for the business lobby, and more political power for AFL-CIO leadership, it will be bad for American workers—union and non-union. And it will expose taxpayers to enormous long-term costs, including trillions in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security from which low-wage foreign workers will draw more benefits than they pay in. These programs need strengthening, not further weakening.


Editor's Note: A 1,500-page bill negotiated in secret is not acceptable. A bill that brings amnesty for illegal aliens before the border is provably secure is not acceptable. I am sick and tired of gangs of this and gangs of that operating as some sort of super legislature, negotiating in secret with special interests like the AFL-CIO, but hiding their machinations from the public and even other Senators.

This bill must be rejected.



WHO NEEDS AMNESTY? Millions of Illegal Aliens Ripping Taxpayers Off for $20 Billion a Year in "Tax Credits"

As the White House shuts down tours and air traffic control towers go dark thanks to the budget sequester, millions of illegal aliens will collect as much as $20 billion in cash from the taxpayers thanks to a widespread scam facilitated by the Obama administration. Ed Rubenstein, president of ESR Research and former chief economist for the Grace Commission on Waste in Government, has issued a new report entitled Defrauding the American Taxpayer: The Earned Income and Additional Child Tax Credits [PDF].

Rubenstein states that, "the IRS knowingly allows illegal aliens claiming children to get Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) cash payments of up to $5,891." Furthermore, “the General Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that 23 percent to 28 percent of EITC payments that totaled $55.7 billion in 2011 are issued improperly every year. The IRS facilitates this tax rebate fraud by issuing individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) to people who lack valid Social Security numbers because they are not authorized to work in the U.S., and encourages them to file for tax credits.” A 2010 government audit found that 72 percent of tax returns filed by people using ITINs, rather than Social Security numbers, claimed the child tax credit.


That's not all, according to Rubenstein. He says that “the Child Tax Credit (CTC) program pays as much as $1,000 per child to families with children and incomes as low as $3,000. The IRS sends checks to anyone claiming the benefit, whether they have Social Security numbers or not. When a tax filer’s Child Tax Credit payment exceeds their tax liability, the IRS sends the filer an Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) refund check for the difference. Individuals can get an ACTC refund checks even if they had no income tax withheld or paid.”


Rubenstein asserts that the IRS has refused to stop the massive ACTC fraud by illegal aliens, which the Treasury Department says costs taxpayers $4.2 billion in 2010.

Fraudulent claims by illegal aliens cost taxpayers about $20 billion through abuse of the EITC (more than $15 billion by some estimates) and the ACTC (more than $4 billion). Worse still, many of the illegal aliens claiming the credit aren't even in the United States -- and many others may not exist at all.

Read the whole thing [PDF] -- and pass it on.

And every time Democrats whine and cry about higher taxes, tell them you're waiting for the IRS to stop the Illegal Alien Tax Credit scam that costs us $20 billion a year.


E.J. DIONNE: Apologist for Criminals, Propagandist for Statism

E.J. Dionne, the least well-known (and reportedly, the least well-liked) of the Washington Post's bevy of Statist writers, is both a big government propagandist and an enabler of criminals. Both assertions can be conclusively proven by analyzing his most recent editorial ("The end of majority rule?"), which seeks to twist the language to promote his radicalized positions.

The language the Statist uses is critical. And when it is employed dishonestly and when it is perverted, as Dionne does more often than Michael Moore super-sizes his order, we must deconstruct it and reject it like an Olajuwon blocked shot.

Such is the case here, where Dionne seeks to portray law-abiding citizens as criminals and extremists.

Universal background checks are supported by 91 percent of Americans. Yet there is enormous resistance in Congress to passing a strong bill to keep arms out of the wrong hands. What does “rule of the people” mean if a 9-to-1 issue is having so much trouble gaining traction?

Here, Dionne's intentionally shallow analysis overlooks the question asked of Americans. There is a big difference between "Do you favor closing the 'gun-show loophole'? versus "Do you favor universal gun registration, which historically has led to gun confiscation?"

The former, of course, is a straw-man. The latter is what Democrats intend, as seen this month in New York.

That said, it's irrelevant. Dionne is arguing for Congressional criminality, because the Second Amendment isn't up for a vote.

Further, Dionne uses the same bogus poll question approach to claim Americans don't care about the crushing debt this government is incurring.

...consider the Morning Joe/Marist poll last week showing 64 percent of Americans saying that job creation should be the top priority for elected officials. Only 33 percent said their focus should be on reducing the deficit.

Had the poll question been posed honestly, something along the lines of "Do you favor the collapse of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid as their Trustees and Actuaries have warned, or do you prefer that the massive federal government bureaucracies instead tighten their belts?", what do you think the results would have been?

But the political far right is, among other things, a big business. The NRA’s chief concern is not sane public policy. Its imperative is to maintain market share within a segment of our country that views the federal government as a conspiracy against its liberties... Within this market niche, background checks are but a first step toward gun confiscation.

As I mentioned earlier, gun confiscation is precisely what is already happening in New York.

Further, the public statements of powerful Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (and many others) make it clear that Dionne is either ill-informed or a bald-faced liar. Given his role at the Post, one can only assume the latter.

Dionne goes on to criticize the Constitution, claiming that it gives smaller states too much power.

...our Constitution combines with the way we draw congressional districts to overrepresent conservatives in both houses. The 100-member Senate is based on two senators per state regardless of size. This gives rural states far more power than population-based representation would. The filibuster makes matters worse. It’s theoretically possible for 41 senators representing less than 11 percent of the population to block pretty much anything.

Because Dionne and the rest of the temporary, power-hungry Beltway elites are impatient. They want "fundamental transformation" and they want it now. And the inconvenient barriers, the speed-bumps that our Framers put in place, all of these things are truly maddening for the greedy, the corrupt and their enablers like Dionne.

There is no immediate solution to the obstruction of the democratic will. But we need to acknowledge that our system is giving extremists far more influence than the voters would.

"Extremists". An "increasingly radicalized right".

Consider the hubris required to market naked agitprop in the form of these descriptions of Constitutional and Tea Party conservatives.

Those who want the federal government to live within its means, to abide by the nation's highest law, for politicians to honor the very oaths they took upon assuming office -- according to Dionne -- those citizens are the "extremists".

What would Dionne call Madison, Jefferson and Adams? What would he call Abraham Lincoln?

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

So far removed from Constitutional government has this federal leviathan become that Dionne can't see the very collapse he cheerleads.

The federal government is involved in every aspect of daily life -- from lightbulbs, to shower-heads, to ponds in your backyard, to gas mileage -- all of it unlawfully, according to the 10th Amendment.

The federal government is also financially imploding, printing millions of dollars an hour to sustain deficits never before seen in the history of the world.

Using standard accounting practices, the federal government is actually incurring over $6 trillion annually in new debt. This must be tacked on to the $80 trillion in existing debt and unfunded liability. Yet the entire size of the American economy, the worth of all goods and services produced, is only about $16 trillion.

The entire system, perverted by Cloward-Piven Democrats, useful idiots, and their sycophants like Dionne, is sliding into the abyss. And the people arguing for sanity are, in his estimation, "extremists".

No, Mr. Dionne: you and your Marxist ilk are the anti-Americans, the traitors and the criminals, you who are intentionally deconstructing this society.


Recommended Reading: "What I saw at the Coup"

ORGANIZED CRIME: Post Office Edition [Quinn]

Guest post by Jim Quinn, The Burning Platform

“One of the things the government can’t do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.” – Lee Iaccoca

You may have heard that the U.S. Post Office lost $16 BILLION last year. You may also have heard that Congress snuck a requirement into a bill that had nothing to do with the Post Office, mandating that they must deliver on Saturdays, even though eliminating Saturday delivery would save the Post Office $2 BILLION per year. Congress evidently can’t read a financial statement or interpret a chart. I’m sure the trends detailed on this chart will reverse themselves shortly.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

5 Super Happy Fun Facts for Taxpayers

Culled from The Wall Street Journal:



5

More than 2.5 million of the nearly 9 million Americans on disability are in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

4

The U.S. tax code is about 4 million words - 7 times the length of "War and Peace".

3

The tax code is so complex, 60 percent of Americans rely upon tax preparers while 30 percent have to buy software to complete their tax forms.

2

Even with all of the assistance, Americans spent 6.1 billion hours preparing their taxes last year.

1

That amount of time is equivalent to the productivity of 3 million full-time workers... wasted on preparing taxes.


I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

One thing's for certain: we need a flat tax or the Fair Tax if we really want this economy to grow. Which is why the Democrat Party opposes any attempt at reforming the monstrosity.


Stories of Government: 30 Blocks of Squalor [Quinn]

Guest post by Jim Quinn, The Burning Platform

The joys of West Philly are multi-faceted. I’ve been getting off at the Girard Avenue exit of the Schulkill Expressway for six years on my way to work.

The Philadelphia Zoo parking lots are located directly in front of the exit ramp. I then proceed to 34th street and take my little shortcut through the hood.

About one year ago, a construction project began on the existing parking lot at 35th and Girard Avenue. I had no idea what they were building and why. Before long it became evident they were building a big ass parking garage. I was stumped. The zoo had multiple existing parking lots that were NEVER filled.

As the months went on I realized they were building the Shangri La of parking garages with a majestic glass tower in front. This is the final result.

Images of the Philadelphia Zoo's new parking garage before and after construction.

I began to wonder who came up with the money for this monstrosity, because the Philadelphia Zoo is a money losing non-profit that depends on donations for its continued existence. As I was driving down 36th Street a couple weeks ago I noticed a brand new sign telling me I was entering the Centennial District. That’s funny because I thought I was entering the slums of West Philly where no one works and everyone has an iPhone. This would be a more appropriate sign.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Hussman: The market can't see the froth for all of the bubbles

John Hussman, founder of Hussman Funds, offers a view into a stock market fueled by Ben Bernanke's magic inkjet printer:

...As in 2000, and as in 2007, it is not necessarily the case that stocks will decline immediately. Still, the percentage of bearish investment advisors reported by Investors Intelligence has declined to just 18.6%, from 18.8% the week earlier. The last times that bearish sentiment was below 20%, at a 4-year market high and a Shiller P/E above 18 ... were for two weeks in May 2007 with the S&P 500 about 1525, two weeks in August 1987, and 3 weeks of a 5-week span in December 1972 and January 1973, which was immediately followed by a 50% market plunge. Still, a handful of observations in March-May 1972 preceded the late-1972 peak and were followed by a modest further advance, and that lag is enough to discourage any near-term conclusions in the present instance. To complete the record, the instance before that was in February 1966, which was promptly followed by a bear market decline over the following year.


When you realize that the 2000-2002 decline wiped out 6 years of S&P 500 total returns in excess of T-bills, and that the 2007-2009 decline wiped out 14 years of excess returns, it may be clear why I am unsympathetic to the idea that we should abandon our discipline in response to a mature - though seemingly endless - market advance today. It’s been said that the best time to invest with a good investor is when he is having his own bear market. The difficulty today is the same one I described approaching the 2000 top – “over the short term, arrogant imprudence will continue to be mistaken for enlightened genius, while studied restraint will be mistaken for stubborn foolishness.” ...

Quantitative easing is not rocket fuel. At best, it is a bungee cord. ...if recent decades have taught investors anything, it is that every time the Federal Reserve drives interest rates to negative levels after inflation, it creates a bubble that subsequently bursts. As part of this painful learning experience, investors have become at least somewhat practiced in identifying bubbles within individual sectors – technology, housing, and debt, for example. The problem, in my view, is that the present bubble is systemic – with short-term interest rates at zero, the prospective returns of nearly every asset class, looking out over a 5-7 year horizon, is also close to zero. Equity investors, in particular, don’t see it because part of this bubble is captured in profit margins rather than in prices (unless one uses cyclically-adjusted earnings, which make the overvaluation more evident). But the result is the same – stock prices are dramatically elevated on the basis of the long-term stream of cash flows that investors can actually expect to receive over time. It may make investors feel better that current profit margins are elevated enough to make price/earnings ratios seem “reasonable.” But then, that’s the hook.

But don't worry: this time is different.



Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Yo, Jacques Tous-tight, how's that "Taxing the Rich" strategy working out for you in France?

IceCap Asset Management, via Zero Hedge, relays the economic results of taxing the hell out of the rich (in this case, levying a 75 percent top rate on "the wealthy"):

...in France, the rock-star status enjoyed by the newly elected president Francois Hollande has completely vanished. In fact, over 67% of people disapprove of his handling of the economy, and this just 10 months into office. Considering the French economy is firmly entrenched in recession (see Chart 2...), exactly how Mr.Hollande plans to ignite a turn around remains unknown.

Tell me, Leftists: can you point to a single instance in all of history where raising taxes grew the economy for a substantial period of time (say, even a decade)?

And, no: Bill Clinton's record doesn't cut it. His "surplus" -- it ignored entitlements and other off-the-books spending -- was the product of a Republican House that was willing to shut down the government to stop Clinton's profligate spending. Furthermore, the gap was short-lived.

Clinton left office just as the tech bubble was imploding.

The real story behind the nineties economic boom has as much to do with Bill Clinton's leadership as Al Gore had to do with the invention of the world-wide web. Which is to say: none.


Monday, April 08, 2013

FINALLY: President Obama to decide how much money you need for your retirement

Mark Levin's been warning about this for years, ever since a Marxist crackpot was asked to testify about nationalizing retirement accounts in front of a Congressional committee.

You can think of that as showing some ankle. Now the president has hiked up the entire skirt.

Welcome to the new U.S. Socialism always has the same predictable process. Once the government collectivizes a sector then the politicos and bureaucrats get to work on "improving the system". In a private enterprise, that'd mean offering more to your customers for a cheaper price. In government, it is always the opposite, finding ways to reduce benefits for their "customers".

This is why Obamacare is and will be a disaster to anyone interested in having quality medical care and choice... Once the government uses its force to gain a monopoly on a sector like medical care then all of a sudden it now becomes everyone else's business what you do with your own body. You smoke? You should be stopped! Don't wear a seatbelt? You should be fined. Why? Because we are all paying for each other's medical care and so it now becomes everyone else's business what you do with your health because it could potentially cost them more money.

The same has been happening since the U.S. government has had a multi-decade long monopoly on retirement savings (IRAs). Since they get to make the rules they get to decide just how much is enough for your retirement and that is exactly what will be happening next week when President Obama will be releasing his budget plan which will limit how much a wealthy individual can keep in those tax-reducing IRA plans and other retirement accounts.

According to a senior administration official, wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving"... What is the "reasonable amount" that he thinks is enough? The numbers being bandied about seem to indicate $3 million. Sounds like quite a bit, right? Well, let's look further at the proposal.

"The budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million in 2013."

[But] if you lived in any number of states where total income taxes are over 50%, very quickly brings that number down to around $100,000... Of course, that is just the beginning of other payments to the state. Your average person with a $3 million IRA probably lives in at least a $1 million house. If that person lived in New Jersey where property tax averages 1.89% of property value, then you can take another $19,000 off of the remaining $100,000 for property tax payments to rent his own home.

Of course, there will be numerous - countless really - other taxes paid over the course of the year... gasoline tax, cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes and numerous others. But, even without including those we are already below $7,000/month.

But here is the real kicker. If that person did take the $205,000/year annuity, their retirement funds would only last them fourteen years. Of course, some may state that they could and should be earning a return during that time which will extend it.

...These are the wonders of the American Dream today. It is turning into a nightmare. They have you coming and going from all sides. And then, if you manage to survive all the taxes and inflation, whatever remaining money you have left will be mostly gutted by the death tax. Yes, there is a tax to die in the land of the free. And don't try to commit suicide either. That's illegal.

And, like the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally designed to target only "the rich" but trapped everyone, rest assured that all Americans are in the cross-hairs. To deploy another cheesy metaphor, Obama's effort to cap retirement accounts at $3 million is the camel's nose under the tent.

This Marxist class warfare, which is provably destructive of the civil society and free enterprise, must be stopped. And if that means crushing the RINO establishment along the way, so be it.