Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.
It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.
Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24th and 25th as the stimulus plan was being crafted. Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.
Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.
Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009. Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million
In Throw Them All Out, Schweizer catalogs several more of Mr. Soros’s trades and says that, while “it is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’s “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.”
Remember this story? Well it appears justice has been done and the winners are parents, teachers and the kids who were exposed to this radicalized school administrator.
This wen site, but especially my old college blog (2) has countless stories of administrators gone wild. Civil rights groups such as FIRE and ADF list thousands of such cases on their web sites. The problem of radicalized overzealous school administrators (without a residue of good judgment and common sense) is nearly epidemic.
GASTONIA, N.C. (CBS Charlotte/AP) — The principal of a Gaston County school where a 9-year-old boy was suspended for sexual harassment submitted his resignation Tuesday, saying he wasn’t given a chance to apologize.
Jerry Bostic told The Gaston Gazette he could understand being written up for the suspension and having someone follow up during the school year, but he added that he was disappointed because this is how his 44 years in education ended.
“To me it’s a really sad final note to a career that I have found very satisfying and enjoy working with kids,” Bostic said. “I really don’t believe I was treated fairly.”
School officials offered an apology to Emanyea Lockett and his mother, Chiquita Lockett, after the boy was accused of calling a teacher “cute.” A statement from the system said it was determined that the fourth grader at Brookside Elementary School didn’t engage in sexual harassment. The school system said the suspension won’t count against the student, and there will be additional instructional assistance provided to the student for the classroom time missed.
“This is something that everyone needed to see, just to see what’s happening within our school systems,” Lockett told WSOC-TV.
Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon would only say that Bostic submitted his resignation. McGlohon had no further comment.
“He (McGlohon) told me he had made the decision he was going to terminate me or drop me into an assistant principal position,” Bostic said. “I admit I made some errors in what I did, but to fire me or to demote me with 44 years in it, it just doesn’t make sense. To me he was a very heartless man, and he did it because of politics.”
In 44 years of experience he still had such a complete lack of judgment, common sense, and restraint to not see what is perfectly obvious to anyone who is not radicalized by Marxist radical feminism. The real problem is that it took 44 years for this pinhead to get escorted to the door.
Just as I told fellow Political Arena writer and CEO Thomas Zaleski yesterday, Bill Daley had to go because he was not “down with the struggle” enough for Valerie Jerritt and the other Saul Alinsky inspired radicals in the top White House staff. Daley was seen as too pro-business, too willing to work with Republicans in Congress (instead of viewing them as the enemy in a class war), and too Irish Catholic, which offended Michelle Obama.
This should speak volumes about just how leftist, neo-marxist, or pick your favorite description of how radical and out of touch this White House is.
”The bigger truth is that Bill Daley left the White House because he lost to Valerie Jarrett and to the president’s wife in the battle for the philosophical direction of the Obama White House. Daley was only ineffective because his boss would not let him be effective.”
“He is a pro-business Democrat, an increasingly rare breed these days in Washington. Obama is not a pro-business Democrat. Obama has made the fateful decision that he will govern as a left-wing political populist.”
“That is why he has embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement, why he keeps using class-warfare rhetoric, why he has given up on deal-cutting, why he has decided to run against Congress rather than on his accomplishments.”
When debt reaches 100% of GDP it is usually a point of no return. Only one country in the history of the world has survived that much debt. What happens is that spending and interest spiral up to the point where those making the loans realize that the debtor is incapable of paying it back. The currency starts to fall apart fast at 120-130% of GDP, which isn’t far away. We are already seeing the inflationary effects of so much debt.
WASHINGTON – The soaring national debt has reached a symbolic tipping point: It’s now as big as the entire U.S. economy.
The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion.
That’s roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September, the latest estimate. Private projections show the economy likely grew to about $15.3 trillion by December — a level the debt is likely to surpass this month.
“The 100% mark means that your entire debt is as big as everything you’re producing in your country,” says Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has proposed cutting nearly $6 trillion in red ink over 10 years. “Clearly, that can’t continue.”
Long-term projections suggest the debt will continue to grow faster than the economy, which would have to expand by at least 6% a year to keep pace.
Requiring people to have health insurance is “conservative,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.
The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. The Massachusetts law contains an individual mandate similar to the one in President Obama’s healthcare law, which conservatives despise.
“Personal responsibility,” Romney said, “is more conservative in my view than something being given out for free by government.”
I know the difference between personal responsibility and a government mandate and I imagine our fine readers do too….
I give you Joey McMensa – the poster boy for Democrat smarts. And I know this is nothing new to y’all…but he still makes me cringe. Every single time the dude talks, he sounds exponentially more moronic. I mean, how in the holy hizzell did this dude become the Vice President of the United States?
When asked about Afghanistan, he had this to say about the Taliban:
“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.”
Am I the only one shaking my head, asking W…T…F?
Meanwhile, back in People-with-Actual-Brains-land, a bill just passed Congress that states that “any form of support to the Taliban would effectively make anyone a terrorist stripped of their civilian rights and detained indefinitely under military jurisdiction.”
According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.
It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.
On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.
The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.
This is a double edged sword. Romney cannot exactly ding President Obama for his incredible lack of transparency, especially after he promised repeatedly to be the mots transparent president in history, when Romney will not be transparent himself.
On the other hand, if Romney releases the tax returns every point in it will be spun and lied about, 1% nonsense etc. It would give Obama something to run against.
Mitt Romney, who is one of the wealthiest men ever to seek the presidency, said on Wednesday that he had no intention of releasing his tax returns if he became the Republican presidential nominee, breaking with a long tradition in both parties.
Mr. Romney made the statement in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, but the network did not show that part of the interview. Mr. Romney, a multimillionaire who made his fortune running a private equity firm, was asked whether he planned to release his tax return.
“I doubt it,” Mr. Romney said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by NBC News. “I will provide all the financial info, which is an extraordinary pile of documents which show investments and so forth.”
“But you won’t do the tax returns?” asked Chuck Todd, host of “The Daily Rundown.”
“I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t,” Mr. Romney responded.
A spokesman for President Obama‘s re-election campaign blasted Mr. Romney and questioned whether he had something to hide in his finances.
Toyota recently announced it will begin exporting U.S.-built Camry cars and Sienna minivans to South Korea from plants located in Kentucky and Indiana. The cars will be shipped through the Port of Hueneme—ironically, one of the California ports that Occupy Wall Street protestors recently attempted to shut down.
Some people may wonder why Toyota would ship U.S.-built cars 7,000 miles to South Korea instead of shipping Japanese-built cars 130 miles across the Korean Strait.
One reason is the recently approved the South Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), which reduces South Korea’s tariff on passenger vehicles from 8 percent to 4 percent, and eventually to zero. Tariff reductions in KORUS make U.S.-manufactured cars more affordable in South Korea, while also making Korean-manufactured autos more affordable in the United States.
Critics called KORUS a disaster: “Americans need jobs, but it is impossible for them to support their families if they are forced to compete against workers earning almost non-existent wage rates.” Toyota’s employees in Kentucky and Indiana would surely disagree.
Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.
Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.
By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.
#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.
#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base “consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank.” Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.
#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.
#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These are obligations that we have already committed ourselves to but that we do not have any money for.
#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.
#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.
#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.
#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.
#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#23 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
#28 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
#29 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
#30 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 470,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#31 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
#32 According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the future. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….
The government’s total indebtedness — its fiscal gap — now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations — including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt — and all projected future taxes.
#33 If you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer), it comes to more than 56 trillion dollars. That is more than $683,000 per family. Unfortunately, the average amount of savings per family in the U.S. is only about $4,735.
#34 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
But do our leaders care about statistics such as these?
Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.
Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.
Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.
I thought Elizabeth Warren was all about transparency. We are all still waiting for her to file the required financial disclosure form.
The Oklahoma Professor has been criticizing Scott Brown for being “Wall Street’s favorite Senator.” She has also denounced “Wall Street cash in politics.”
But it turns out she may be indirectly accepting Wall Street money. The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is helping the Harvard Professor, has taken over $40 million from Wall Street during the last 7 years according to records from OpenSecrets.org. In fact, Wall Street is the biggest contributors to them. They beat lawyers and labor union[s]. Just during this election season the DSCC has already received $1.5 million from Wall Street.
If Lizzy Warden is truly opposed to Wall Street money, then shouldn’t she reject the DSCC’s money? Otherwise she is just using the DSCC to funnel in Wall Street money.
Via Human Events:
According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2008 Obama campaign received $12.6 million from Wall Street “Securities and Investment” firms versus McCain’s $7.9 million
The top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan
Employees of Lehman Brothers alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)
Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.
CHICAGO (CBS) – A new state law requires those who buy drain cleaners and other caustic substances to provide photo identification and sign a log.
The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight.
State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) obtained passage of the new law following attacks in which drain cleaner was poured on two Chicago women, badly scarring them.
“So that’s who I have to call,” Schroeder said.
He said that when he called his local legislator, the legislator claimed not to know about the new law. Neither, he said, did other retailers in the area. He said he and other store personnel had to call to a number of stores before they could get details.
Non-compliance results in fines: $150 for the first offense, $500 for the second and up to $1,500 for the third and subsequent violations.
Schroeder estimated that there are “easily” 30 or more products in the store that must be reported when sold.
Jewel-Osco has removed the few items it carried from its shelves, but Schroeder said he does not have that option as a hardware store. He said he does not believe that the precautions written into the bill will prevent such crimes from occurring.
Jewish philosopher and theologian Emil Fackenheim has outlined three stages of anti-Semitism: “You cannot live among us as Jews,” leading to forced conversions; “You cannot live among us,” leading to mass deportations; and “You cannot live,” leading to genocide. Amnon Rubinstein, patron of the Israeli Shinui party and author of From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism, has added a fourth stage: “You cannot live in a state of your own,” which leads to boycott, divestment, sanctions, biased reporting, pro forma support of the Palestinians, and calls for the delegitimation, territorial reduction, and in some cases even the disappearance of Israel as we know it.
If this is not unqualified anti-Semitism, then nothing is. As Martin Luther King Jr. observed at a Harvard book fair during which Zionism came under assault: “It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-Semitism. … Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews — make no mistake about it.” King understood, as so many have not, that there is really no daylight between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. To deprive Jews of their national haven or to submerge them in a so-called “binational state” with an Arab majority is to render them vulnerable to prejudicial fury, scapegoating, pogroms, and, ultimately, even to Holocaust.
King’s homespun analysis has been confirmed in a report released in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution by the Yale School of Management in collaboration with its Institute for Social and Policy Studies. The report concludes that the statistical link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism can no longer be denied — a correlation that should have been obvious years ago despite the disclaimers regularly circulated by covert Jew-haters and Jewish revisionists.
In Why The Jews? Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin similarly point out that:
The contention that anti-Zionists are not enemies of Jews, despite the advocacy of policies that would lead to the mass murder of Jews, is, to put it as generously as possible, disingenuous. … Given, then, that if anti-Zionism realized its goal, another Jewish holocaust would take place, attempts to draw distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism are simply meant to fool the naïve.
All that has happened, according to these authors, is “only a change in rhetoric.” Anti-Zionism, they claim, “is unique in only one way: it is the first form of Jew-hatred to deny that it hates the Jews.”
On Wednesday, President Obama deviated from over 90 years of precedent established by the Department of Justice (Department), and the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), by recess appointing four individuals to posts in the Administration, namely Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board, despite the fact that the Senate has not adjourned under the terms of a concurrent resolution passed by Congress. This action was allegedly based upon legal advice provided to the President by the Office of White House Counsel. We write today seeking information about what role, if any, the Department or OLC played in developing, formulating, or advising the White House on the decision to make these recess appointments. Further, we want to know whether the Department has formally revised or amended past opinions issued by the Department on this matter.
In 1921, Attorney General Daugherty issued an opinion to the President regarding recess appointments and the length of recess required for the President to make an appointment under Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The Attorney General opined that “no one, I venture to say, would for a moment contend that the Senate is not in session when an adjournment [of 2 days] is taken. Nor do I think an adjournment for 5 or even 10 days can be said to constitute the recess intended by the Constitution.”
The reasoning of the 1921 opinion was given affirmative recognition in subsequent opinions issued by the Department, including opinions issued in 1960, 1992, and 2001.
The Department has also weighed in on the applicable time period for recess appointments in legal filings in federal courts. In 1993, the Department filed a brief in the federal district court for the District of Columbia arguing, “If the recess here at issue were of three days or less, a closer question would be presented. The Constitution restricts the Senate’s ability to adjourn its session for more than three days without obtaining the consent of the House of Representatives.”
Additionally, the Department, via the Office of the Solicitor General, argued in a 2004 brief to the Supreme Court, “To this day, official congressional documents define a ‘recess’ as ‘any period of three or more complete days-excluding Sundays-when either the House of Representatives or the Senate is not in session.” This exact argument was also filed by the Solicitor General in another case during 2004. Most recently, the Deputy Solicitor General argued before the Supreme Court in 2010 that “the recess appointment power can work in – in a recess. I think our office has opined the recess has
to be longer than 3 days. ”
Taken together, these authorities by the Department clearly indicate the view that a congressional recess must be longer than three days – and perhaps at least as long as ten 9-in order for a recess appointment to be constitutional. These various authorities have reached this conclusion for over 90 years and have become the stated position of the Executive Branch, including multiple representations before the Supreme Court, regarding the required length of time for a recess in order for the President to make a recess appointment.
Moe Lane at RedState has a revealing piece on the California budget crisis; Democrats are making it worse on purpose:
To summarize: $92.6 billion in spending (7% increase over last year’s); $9.2 billion deficit over eighteen months (half in the first six months, the other half in the next twelve). Brown is requesting $7 billion in new taxes, mostly from raising the sales tax again (to 7.75%) but with a faux-populist-friendly soak-the-rich* (actually, soak-the-small-business-owner) increase to 10.3%. Or the state can ‘cut’ an additional $4.8 billion in educational aid (he’s already planning to reduce poverty assistance by $4.2 billion): the most increased spending appears to be in tax relief/local government**… and education. In other words, that cut would actually be mostly in a projected increase in education spending, which means that it’s not really a cut at all.
Or, to summarize the summary: Brown’s bailing out the municipalities; and he’s trying to blackmail the Californian populace into a tax hike to pay for it by threatening to wipe out anincrease in K-12 education funds if they don’t vote said hike in. See how that works? Increase spending in a line-item; then call the threat to remove that increase a ‘budget cut’ and use it to justify a ‘temporary’ tax. It’s a great scam; or, rather, it was a great scam twenty years ago, when there was more give in the system. Today, it’s just kind of alarming.
And, just for anybody still ready to believe in old Moonbeam: “Brown had been scheduled to release his general-fund budget Jan. 10, but was forced to unveil it today after it was inadvertently posted to the Finance Department’s website.” Oops.
*Not to be rude about this, but California business owners should contemplate that, say,Texas has no state income tax and a state sales tax of 6.25%, with a maximum state/local tax of 8.25%. Which is one major reason why Texas now has four extra seats in Congress and California’s delegation has stagnated for the first time since it became a state.
Show this to everyone. There is not a better example of why the Republican Party has always been better on the issues affecting inner city families than the Democrats.
Paul Krugman is the neo-Marxist “economist (and I use the term loosely) from the New York Times. He has been documented wrong more than any columnist I am aware of. Unfortunately, like too many “economists” he is a totally partisan political hack.
Speaking like a true advocate of the Alinsky Model….
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base.
Unless abortion and pressure from eco-extremists about “population control” wither your tax base and work force – and then those making the loans figure out that you have no intention of stopping the accumulation of new debt or paying it back.
Quote:
The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
This is not an argument for increasing debt, this is an argument for economic growth. Growth that is stymied by the anti-wealth, anti-capital and anti-production policies that Paul Krugman advocates. Wealth is the opposite of poverty.
Also, the income subject to taxation is not very relevant. It is the amount of money put in a taxable position by people moving it in ways that are taxable and in ways that take risk to create wealth. It is about tax compliance. The higher the rates, the greater the noncompliance and “Going Galt”. It is also about increasing the growing number of tax payers which only happens when people are confident to produce and take risk here in the United States.
Our friend NeoNeocon has a great critique of this piece HERE. Go read it.
Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but looking back on the past 12 months, it’s tough to see any sense in many of the Administration’s regulatory missteps. Of course, there are bound to be a few howlers when government churns out more than 3,500 rules in a year, including dozens unleashed by Obamacare, Dodd–Frank, and the perpetually errant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But by any standard, 2011 brought forth a remarkable number and variety of regulatory blunders.
Fair warning: Our Top 10 list may prove fatal to any bit of faith in government as a “fixer,” if faith somehow has managed to survive despite all evidence to the contrary. In any event, it should steel our resolve to fight the Leviathan in the coming year.
1. The Dim Bulbs Rule. As per Congress, of course, for issuing an edict to phase out the incandescent light bulbs on which the world has relied for more than a century. With the deadline looming in 2012, Americans by the millions spent the past year pressing lawmakers to lift the ban which, contrary to eco-ideology, will kill more American jobs than create “green” ones. (Congress evidently overlooked the fact that the vast majority of fluorescent bulbs are manufactured in China.) The 2012 appropriations bill barred the use of funds to enforce the regulation, but it remains in law.
2. The Obamacare Chutzpah Rule. The past year was marked by a slew of competing court rulings on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, the cornerstone of Obamacare. The law requires U.S. citizens to obtain health insurance or face financial penalties imposed by the Internal Revenue Service. Never before has the federal government attempted to force all Americans to purchase a product or service. To allow this regulatory overreach to stand would undermine fundamental constitutional constraints on government powers and curtail individual liberties to an unprecedented degree.
3. The Nationalization of Internet Networks Rule. Regulations that took effect on November 1 prohibit owners of broadband networks from differentiating among various content in managing Internet transmissions. (In other words, the Federal Coercion Communications Commission effectively declared the broadband networks to be government-regulated utilities.) The FCC imposed the “network neutrality” rule despite explicit opposition from Congress and a federal court ruling against it. The rule threatens to undermine network investment and increase online congestion.
4. The Equine Equality Rule. As of March 15(the Ides of March, no less), hotels, restaurants, airlines, and the like became obliged to modify “policies, practices, or procedures” to accommodate miniature horses as service animals. According to the Department of Justice, which administers the rule, miniature horses are a “viable alternative” to dogs for individuals with allergies or for observant Muslims and others whose religious beliefs preclude canine accompaniment.
5. The Smash Potatoes Regulation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed stricter nutrition standardsthat would prohibit school lunch ladies from serving more than one cup per week of potatoes per student. Instead, schools would be required to provide more dark green, orange, and dry bean varieties (think kale) in order to foster vegetable diversity. The cafeteria mandate will affect more than 98,000 elementary and secondary schools at a cost exceeding $3.4 billion in the next four years.
6. The Bring on the Blackouts Rule. The EPA is proposing to force power plants to reduce mercury by 90 percent within three years—at an estimated cost of $11 billion annually. A significant number of coal-fired plants will actually exceed the standard—by shutting down altogether. Indeed, grid operators, along with 27 states, are warning that the overly stringent regulations will threaten the reliability of the electricity system and dramatically increase power costs. Just like candidate Obama promised.
7. The Wal-Mart Windfall Amendment. One of hundreds of new regulations dictated by the Dodd–Frank financial regulation statute requires the Federal Reserve to regulate the fees that financial institutions may charge retailers for processing debit card purchases. The prospect of losing more than $6 billion in annual revenue is prompting financial institutions to hike fees on a variety of banking services to make up for the much smaller payments from stores. Thus, consumers are picking up the tab for retailers’ big regulatory score.
8. The Plumbing Police Rule. The U.S. Department of Energy began preparations for tightening the waterefficiency standards on urinals. It’s all spelled out in excruciating detail in the Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products Other Than Automobiles, which also regulates the efficiency of toilets, faucets, and showers. And refrigerators and freezers, air conditioners, water heaters, furnaces, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, ovens and ranges, pool heaters, television sets, and anything else the Energy Secretary deems as electrically profligate. (Urinals also are regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which requires at least one urinal for every 40 workers at a construction site for companies with less than 200 employees and one for every 50 workers where more than 200 are employed. The Americans with Disabilities Act also delineates the proper dimensions and placement of bowls.)
9. The Chill the Economy Regulation. The EPA issued four interrelated rules governing emissions from some 200,000 boilers nationwide at an estimated capital cost of $9.5 billion. These boilers burn natural gas, fuel oil, coal, biomass (e.g., wood), refinery gas, or other gas to produce steam, which is used to generate electricity or provide heat for factories and other industrial and institutional facilities. Under the so-called Boiler MACT, factories, restaurants, schools, churches, and even farms would be required to conduct emissions testing and comply with standards of control that vary by boiler size, feedstock, and available technologies. The stringency and cost of the new regulations provoked an outpouring of protest, including 21 governors and more than 100 Members of Congress. On May 18, the EPA published a notice of postponement in the Federal Register,but the regulations remain on the books.
10. The Unions Rule Rule. New rules require government contractors to give first preference in hiring to the workers of the company that lost the contract. Tens of thousands of companies will be affected, with compliance costs running into the tens of millions of dollars—costs ultimately borne by taxpayers. The rule effectively ensures that a non-unionized contractor cannot replace a unionized one. That’s because any new contractor will be obliged to hire its predecessors’ unionized workers and thus be forced by the “Successorship Doctrine” to bargain with the union(s).
Newt talks about Reagan’s example and explains how Reagan’s example set the path for a genuine American recovery. Be sure to read every last word.
Newt Gingrich:
Officially, the recession ended two and a half years ago. President Obama tells us the economy has been moving in the right direction since June 2009.
Few will take solace in that statistic. Americans are suffering. For nearly three years, nearly one in 10 have been out of work. Almost double that number are either underemployed—working part time when they would rather be full time—or have simply given up looking.
Historically in America, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery. By historical standards, we should be completing the second year of a booming recovery. Recall that, just like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a terrible economy when he took office. But Reagan enacted historic income tax rate cuts, regulatory reforms and spending controls. The recession officially ended in November 1982, and in the following two and a half years the unemployment rate dropped 3.6 percentage points, more than eight million Americans went to work at new jobs, and the longest period of economic growth in American history commenced.
Mr. Obama’s policies have been just the opposite: trillion dollar stimulus-spending waste, a government takeover of the health-care system, an activist EPA attacking businesses, and demonization of job creators. The president barnstorms the country advocating tax increases for investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses, teeing up the country for another crash in 2013 when the Bush-era income tax rates expire. Meanwhile, America’s businesses continue to suffer from the highest business tax rate in the industrialized world, with no relief in sight.
This nightmare will not end until Reagan-era economic policies are restored: tax reform, a sound dollar and smarter regulations. If they are, within a year the American economy will take off on another historic boom.
First, we must reduce the federal business tax rate to 12.5%, eliminate the capital gains tax as a double tax on capital income, and eliminate the estate tax. We must allow immediate expensing (writing off the costs in one year) for investment in capital equipment so American workers can continue to be the most productive in the world, using the latest and most advanced technology.
On the personal income side, I propose an optional 15% flat tax, allowing those American taxpayers who prefer it to file their returns on a postcard. This will save close to half a trillion dollars annually in tax-compliance costs.
These tax reforms are not designed to be revenue-neutral, but to maximize job creation, wages and economic growth. We will balance the budget with the revenues from such growth and spending cuts. That would include breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into manageable, entirely private companies, with no government guarantees.
Second, the dollar needs to be stabilized by establishing a price rule for the Federal Reserve to follow in its conduct of monetary policy. This will help stabilize international exchange rates, resolve the ongoing cycles of global financial crises and investment bubbles, short-circuit the run-up in gas and food prices, and unlock the frozen credit system.
Third, the burden of regulatory costs on American businesses and consumers has to be lightened. Reflecting my unwavering opposition to cap and trade and any other form of tax on energy or carbon, we must replace the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency. We must move from antigrowth confrontation with business to collaboration with job creators, states and local communities to achieve better results. We must repeal Dodd-Frank and its “too big to fail” big-bank bailouts, and repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, restoring Wall Street as the world’s pre-eminent equities market.
We can slash further trillions in taxes, spending and regulatory costs by repealing and replacing ObamaCare with Patient Power, involving no individual insurance mandate and no job-killing employer mandate. We must also modernize the Food and Drug Administration, recognizing the need to get lifesaving medicines and technologies to patients faster and to remove cost barriers to their rapid development.
My economic plan includes sweeping entitlement reforms that would altogether cut federal spending in half over the long run, entirely solving the nation’s entitlement and fiscal crisis. Reforms include starting and then expanding personal savings, investment and insurance accounts until they ultimately finance all the benefits now financed by the payroll tax—and eventually displacing that tax entirely. The successful federal welfare reform of 1996 should be expanded to every federal means-tested welfare program, close to 200 or more, block-granting them to the states and ultimately saving trillions.
We also need an American Energy Plan, freeing the energy industry to maximize production of all forms of American energy, ensuring the reliable supply of low-cost gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal and other energy sources essential to fueling a booming economy.
These policies will ignite another record-smashing, and world-leading, 25-year economic boom, restoring the American Dream and rebuilding the America we love.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 