Life, Liberty, Property
By Andrew Malcolm | June 5, 2012 | Investor’s Business Daily
AP (Can you spot the electric car?)
Great news: State governments are finally realizing they’ve about topped out the huge taxes hidden in the price of each gallon of gasoline. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll make do with the tax revenues they have.
By Rush Limbaugh | May 09, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Democrats did turn out, however. Well, they didn’t turn out in Wisconsin. They didn’t turn out in North Carolina. But guess where they did turn out?Democrats turned out big time in West Virginia in the presidential primary to vote for an inmate. A federal prisoner, the Boyd Crowder of West Virginia. Federal inmate 11593-051. There’s a picture of the guy. Let me see if it’s still up. Let me check real quick. Yep, there’s a picture of the guy on Drudge, a picture of Inmate 11593-051. This is the guy that gave Obama a run for his money in West Virginia. Now, ask yourself this, folks. Why would Democrats in West Virginia vote for a federal inmate as opposed to a president, a sitting president in their own party?
Maybe it is something very simple, very common sense, and very explainable. Maybe it’s that the people of West Virginia realize that Barack Obama poses the biggest threat to their livelihood of anybody on the ballot this time around. With his attacks on the coal industry, with his attacks on the oil industry, with his attacks on natural gas, with his attacks on conventional energy, with his promotion of green energy shutting down all these jobs that exist in West Virginia.
And even now the media (as we’re doing, too, I will admit) is looking at the results yesterday: “What will be the effect on Obama?” How about this? Could we once look at what the effect be on the country will be? Because that’s what the people voting on voting on. Yes, it’s Obama that’s getting them out. There wasn’t a single, singular Republican leader on a ballot yesterday. You had Mourdock in Indiana and Scott Walker attracting votes, but there wasn’t a presidential candidate on the ballot yesterday.
There were ideas. Ideas were on ballots yesterday. Ideas are what triumphed. And it was conservative ideas that skunked socialist utopianism yesterday. So the Democrats don’t turn out in North Carolina. They don’t turn out in Wisconsin. But they do turn out in the Democrat primary in West Virginia. And in eight maybe more counties, they beat Obama with a federal inmate. If I didn’t know better, I would say there is a War on Obama being waged by the Democrats!
It certainly looks that way to me. It looks to me like Democrats in West Virginia want jobs. It would appear to me that Democrats in West Virginia want lower gasoline prices. They want higher home values. They want more disposable income. They don’t want people telling them what kind of light bulb they have to buy! They don’t want a bunch of nameless bureaucrats running around talking about “crucifying” energy executives. But you see, the Democrats in West Virginia figured out their president put a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf and refused to okay the Keystone pipeline.
Read the full article here.
By Victor Davis Hanson | April 29, 2012 | PJ Media
Our New Regressivism
About fifteen years ago, many liberals began to self-identify as progressives—partly because of the implosion of the Great Society and the Reagan reaction that had tarnished the liberal brand and left it as something akin to “permissive” or “naïve,” partly because “progressive” was supposedly an ideological rather than a political identification, and had included some early twentieth-century Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.
But twenty-first century progressivism is not aimed at political reform. There is no new effort at racial unity. There is not much realization that we are in a globalized, rapidly changing, high-tech economy or that race and gender are not as they were fifty years ago. Instead, progressivism has become a reactionary return to the 1960s—or even well before. The new regressivism seeks to resurrect the machine ethos of Mayor Daley, the glory green days of the Whole Earth Catalog, the union era of George Meany, Jimmy Hoffa, and Walter Reuther, the racial polarization of the old Black Panther Party and the old Al Sharpton, and a Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, or Peter Jennings reading to us each evening three slightly different versions of the Truth.
The New Old Chicago
Barack Obama is trying to turn back the way of politics to the era of the pre-reform Chicago machine. He was the first presidential candidate to renounce campaign-financing funds since the law was enacted. He opposes any effort to clamp down on voting fraud. Even his compliant media worries that the president’s current jetting from one campaign stop to another in the key swing states is a poorly disguised way to politick on the federal government’s dime. Bundlers are, as was the ancient custom, given plum honorific posts abroad. Obama has held twice as many fundraisers as the much reviled George Bush had at a similar point in his administration. Obama supporters now target large Romney givers and post their names with negative bios on websites, as if we are back to Nixon’s enemies of the people. Websites sprout up that go after administration critics in Agnew style, but without the latter’s self-caricature. The 2008 criticism about ending the revolving door, lobbyists, and pay-for-play renting out of the Lincoln bedroom was, well…just examine the career of a Peter Orszag. An embarrassed media keeps silent about the new reactionary ethics, apparently on the premise that not to would endanger four more years of the “progressive” agenda. On matters of presidential style, we are likewise retro, as Obama sets records for playing golf, and in Marie Antoinette style the First Family bounces between Vail, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, Vegas, and Costa del Sol, often in separate jets, as if we, the people, receive vicarious joy from catching glimpses of the Obama versions of Camelot. We have Kennedy wannabes without their own Kennedy money.
Earth Day Forever
On matters of energy, Obama has regressed to the Earth Day mindset of the 1970s, when we were reaching “peak” oil, and untried wind and solar were soon to be the new-age remedy for soon-to-be-exhausted fossil fuels. Add up the anti-empirical quotes from Obama himself, Energy Secretary Chu, and Interior Secretary Salazar (inflate your tires, “tune up” your car, look to U.S. algae reserves, let energy prices “skyrocket,” hope gas rises to European levels, don’t open federal lands even if gas reaches $10 a gallon, etc.) and, in reactionary fashion, we are time-machined back to the campus quad of the 1970s. In this la la world of Van Jones, evil oil companies supposedly connived to stifle green energy and hook us on fossil fuels, inferior energies that have nothing to recommend them. It is as if the revolutions in horizontal drilling, fracking, and discoveries of vast new reserves never occurred, as if Exxon and Chevron dodge taxes in a manner that Google and Amazon never would, as if efficient smaller gas engines, clean gas blends, and pollution devices have not made the American car both clean-burning and economical beyond our imagination forty years ago. The Obamians, frozen in amber, really believe oil is about to run out, “tuned up” internal combustion engines powering underinflated tires pollute as they did in the 1920s, and Teapot Dome U.S. oil companies need to be “crucified”—as regional EPA director and Obama appointee Al Armendariz, in fact, boasted. So we borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize money-losing solar and wind plants, while putting federal lands rich in oil and gas off-limits to companies eager to pay royalties, hire thousands, and supply the U.S. with its own energy—and all for a regressive ideology. Few see that Solyndra really is the new Teapot Dome.
Read the full article here.
By Robert Ringer | May 3, 2012 | WND
The two most poisonous words in the English language are rights and entitlements. They mean essentially the same thing, and both are subjectively created in the minds of collectivist dreamers.
Though the notion of rights/entitlements has been around since the founding, and has been heating up at an accelerating pace since FDR first introduced Americans to the welfare state, it is Barack Obama whom historians will credit with bringing the issue into the debate arena.
His nasty, Alinsky double-down style has caused millions of heretofore sleepwalking citizens to wonder if his fundamental change of America is transforming it into the kind of country they really want for their children and grandchildren.
Right now, Republicans are obsessing about “reforming” entitlements, though few of them dare talk about taking away people’s artificially created rights (a right to an education, a right to a good job at a “decent” wage, a right to “affordable” housing, a right to free health care … a right to just about anything one can imagine).
Even though rights and entitlements are really one and the same, the word rights has a much stronger moral connotation. A right sounds very official, as though it were handed down from on high, while an entitlement has a twinge of victimization to it.
But whether one refers to involuntary gifts from his neighbor as rights or entitlements, the bottom line is that they are made possible only through the government’s never-fail trump card: the use of force. And it’s not a force for good, but evil.
Mao had it right: Political power does, indeed, grow from the barrel of a gun. Patriotic Americans like to delude themselves, but the reality is that government can do anything it wants to you, your children, or your property through the threat force – and the use of force, if necessary.
Even so, most people – including some of the most sophisticated media types – tend to ignore what government’s essentially unrestricted use of force means in real terms. Their normalcy bias tells them that we have checks and balances via our three branches of government, so a Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Castro, or Chavez could never happen in today’s America. Alas, they are hopelessly naïve.
Whether it’s Waco, Ruby Ridge, taxes, silencing free speech, or regulating activities individuals want to engage in, government’s use of force is always the trump card. This was made evident yet again when a video of another Obama far-left appointee, Alfredo Armendariz, went viral last week.
Read the full article here.
By Victor Davis Hanson | April 22, 2012 | PJ Media
I. Power—Always Was and Always Will Be
In my dumber days, between 2001-2008, I used to wonder why the Left relentlessly hammered the war on terror (e.g., renditions, tribunals, predators, preventative detention, Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, Guantanamo Bay) when these measures had not only proven quite useful in preventing another 9/11-like attack, but had been sanctioned by both the Congress and the courts. In those ancient times, I was not as cynical as I am now. So I assumed that Harold Koh and MoveOn.org, though mistaken, were worried about civil liberties, or measures that they felt were both illegal and without utility.
But, of course, the Obama (who attacked each and every element of the war on terror as a legislator and senator) Left never had any principled objection at all. Instead, whatever Bush was for, they were in Pavlovian fashion against. I can say that without a charge of cynicism, because after January 2009, Obama embraced or expanded every Bush-Cheney protocol that he inherited. In response, the anti-war Left simply kept silent, or indeed vanished, or went to work extending the anti-terrorism agenda. Guantanamo Bay, in other words, was a national sin until the mid-morning of January 20, 2009.
II. The Year 4
We are in the year four of our lord, when darkness was made light, the seas gently receded, and the planet cooled. In the space of 24 hours in January 2009 the world was turned upside down: massive deficits were no longer “unpatriotic”; 5% (heck, even 9%) unemployment was no longer to be seen as a “jobless recovery”; $4 plus gasoline no longer would become “intolerable.” Filibusters suddenly became ossified obstructionism. Recess appointments were now quite legitimate; lecturing the media about the myth of objective fairness was salutary. Pay-for-play time with the president was consulting; attacking the “unelected” courts was progressive. Voter fraud was not thugs eyeing polling monitors with clubs, but officials asking voters to present a picture ID—and mentioning any of these inconsistencies or writing about the Trostkyzation of American life was either racism or Palinism.
Around March 2008, the Ministry of Truth had issued new edicts about campaign financing, big Wall Street money, and the supposedly pernicious role of contributions: all bad if Bush trumped Kerry, all now good if Obama trumped McCain. So when Obama became the first candidate in the history of the law to renounce public campaign financing in order to shake down $1 billion, there was silence. The Left never really worried about Big Money, but only if more Big Money went to conservatives than to themselves. (Consider the current shameless money grubbing of Jon Corzine to raise cash for Obama after Corzine’s looting of thousands of individuals’ lifetime investments, or the shrillness over Mitt Romney’s supposed mansion in La Jolla juxtaposed to the prior silence about the Kerry mansions, the multiple Gore residences, or “John’s room,” as in the huge and crass Edwards estate.) What was interesting about Hilary Rosen was not her stupid thoughts on Ann Romney, but her cursus honorum that led to hired-gun riches by parlaying political contacts into commerce.
III. Tongue-tied Presidents
We can play this Orwellian game with almost everything these days. Take presidential cosmopolitanism and the Bush-as-oaf trope. The disdain was not for an inept president, but rather a simple means to destroy an ideological opponent. Why again the cynicism? Because the Left cares little that Barack Obama has no clue where particular islands in the news are and cannot even do political correctness right when he wishes to ingratiate himself to his South American hosts by wanting to trill the “Maldives.” We have a president who can say Talêban, drop the g’s in a black patois, and trill his Spanish words in front of Latin American hosts, but is off 8,000 miles in his geography.
Ditto “corpse-man,” the Austrian language, 57 states, and all the other parochialism and gaffes that remind us not only that it is hard being a president without making gaffes, but that it is especially hard as a conservative president when each gaffe is cited as proof of ignorance.
IV. So What?
What is going on? Two things, really. One, the media believes that the noble ends justify the tawdry means. So if it is a choice between emphasizing the latest Obama embarrassment by digging into the scary Fast and Furious, the “millions of green jobs” Solyndra insider giveaways, the Secret Service decadence, the GSA buffoonery, and the work while getting food stamps con in Washington OR endangering Obamacare and by extension “the children,” or the war to eliminate autism, or the right to breath clean air–well, why would one ever wish to derail all that by weakening a landmark progressive and his enlightened agenda?
Or for you more cynical readers, why would you wish to enervate the present comfortable culture in Washington in which the press and politics are at last one? Or why undermine the first African-American president, who is a constant reminder of our progressive advancement? Or why weaken our only chance some day to have open borders or gay marriage?
Two, the Left has always operated on the theory of medieval penance. We surely must assume that Warren Buffett has never had problems with the ethics of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. or had a company he controls sued by the IRS for back taxes. Why? Because he has confessed his sins, and accepted the faith and paid his tithe to the Church. Ditto a Bill Gates or a rich celebrity like Sean Penn or Oprah. In the relativism of the left, if the one-percenters will simply confess that their class is greedy and needs to pay their fair share—even if they are entirely cynical in the manner of GE’s Jeffrey Immelt and penance is written off as the cost of doing business—then they become exempt from the wages of them/us warfare and the “you want to kill the children” rhetoric.
V. Good and Bad Fat Cats
There is no difference in the way the Koch brothers or Exxon run their empires and the way that GM, GE, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Google do. But the former are enemies of the people, while the latter are protectors who have have confessed to their bishops and agreed to mouth doctrine and thereby obtained penance to make as much money as they want and to spend it as they damn well please. Suddenly in America after 2009 there are good and bad cable networks, good and bad celebrities, good and bad CEOs, good and bad sports teams (ask Lovie Smith), good and bad states, good and bad everything—not adjudicated on the actual basis of behavior, but rather on whether some are willing to go to reeducation camp, admit their errors, and join the effort to clean the air and feed the kids.
Or do any of you believe there are not Google “corporate jet setters,” or Facebook “fat cats,” or GE executives who didn’t know when it was time not to profit, or Microsoft grandees who ignored the point at which they had made enough money? (For that matter, why could not Barack Obama have made $550,000 last year; had he not reached the point where he didn’t need any more cash?)
Read the full article here.
By Ken Cohen | January 27, 2012 | ExxonMobil Perspectives
I’m asked this question a lot. And I know a lot of drivers ask themselves this question when they pull up to the pump.
The answer is based on the economics of supply and demand and how products are manufactured and sold – along with what the government takes in taxes. Let’s take a look, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s breakdown of the estimated average price of a gallon of gas in December 2011, which was $3.27.
Raw materials = $2.62
The cost of the raw materials used to make a product has a major impact on the final product price. The raw material for gasoline is crude oil. The price of crude oil is set by global markets, where buyers and sellers constantly react to supply and demand factors. Oil is just one of many commodities traded every day in the global market. Others are the corn that affects the price of food and the cotton that affects the price of clothing.
Crude oil is by far the largest factor in the price of a gallon of gasoline – accounting for 80 percent of the $3.27 average retail price per gallon in December, according to the EIA.
To put that in another way – about $2.62 of the average gallon of gas in this example is set before a refiner even touches the raw material.
Where I find many people get confused is that they assume oil companies are producing all the oil that goes into their own refineries – and therefore can control gas prices by controlling the supply chain. That’s not the case.
U.S. crude oil production in 2010 was 5.5 million barrels per day. But U.S. refineries processed 15.2 million barrels of oil per day – almost three times more oil than was produced in the U.S. That means U.S. refiners, like ExxonMobil, have to purchase millions of barrels of crude oil – at market prices – to produce gasoline and other products for American consumers. For example, in 2010, ExxonMobil spent $198 billion purchasing oil around the world for its refining operations.
Manufacturing the product
Like any product, there are costs to manufacture it – so the manufacturer tries to recover those costs, plus make a profit, when it goes to sell the product.
The refining portion of a gallon of gasoline has, on average, accounted for about 11 percent of the price in 2011, according to the EIA data through December. That means a little less than 40 cents per gallon would be due to refiners’ costs – wages, equipment, financing and others – plus their profits.
As the EIA figures show, however, refining doesn’t always produce a profit. In December, the data indicate that the U.S. market price for gasoline coming out of refineries was on average about 7 cents per gallon (-2 percent) below the refiners’ cost of crude oil alone, and before accounting for their costs of upgrading the crude into gasoline. In other words, refineries faced a market where domestic gasoline prices were very weak relative to global crude prices.
How does that happen? Refiners are “price takers” that operate on relatively low profit margins that are highly dependent on the market demand for petroleum products. That means at times, the value of a petroleum product coming out of the refinery isn’t enough to cover the costs of obtaining and refining the crude oil.
Distributing and marketing the product = $0.33
Products then have to get from the manufacturing site to the retail site. When gasoline leaves the refinery, it is shipped largely via pipelines to local terminals. There, distributors load their trucks and transport the gasoline to a service station. Naturally, each step in the distribution chain includes labor, capital equipment and other expenses that must be recovered by operators. Of course, these operators must also compete to sustain their profitability while also paying taxes.
Retailers then set the price at the pump, based on recovering these costs of getting gasoline to the service station and the costs of marketing it to consumers. They also have to generate enough money to pay their taxes and make a profit to keep their business running. And on top of that, they have to collect mandatory state and federal gasoline taxes from the consumer (which we’ll break down in the next section).
So who are the retailers setting the prices? When consumers pull into an Exxon or Mobil station, they assume it’s ExxonMobil. But we own only about 5 percent of the stations with our name on them. About 95 percent of the stations carrying the Exxon or Mobil brand are actually owned by network retailers or local business owners – not ExxonMobil.
Taxes = $0.39
So how much does the government make on a gallon of gas?
In this example, retailers collected state and federal gasoline taxes of 39 cents per gallon on average. Total gas taxes per gallon range by state – from lows of less than 30 cents per gallon to highs of more than 60 cents per gallon in places like New York and California.
How does this compare to what a company like ExxonMobil makes on a gallon of gasoline? As we saw earlier, sometimes a company or an operation may lose money. Other times, it may make money. A competitive market just provides an opportunity, not a guaranteed profit. In the first two quarters of 2011, for example, ExxonMobil made 7 cents and 8 cents a gallon , respectively, on the gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products it refined and sold in the United States.
Read the full article here.
By Jed Chancey | April 26, 2012 | Policy Mic
When most people hear about the redistribution of wealth they think of welfare payments and health care for the elderly, but the real redistribution of wealth is from the 99% to the 1%, not the other way around. The rapid expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve does not flow into the economy evenly, but is added in at distinct points.
The most distinct of these points is through the too-big-to-fail banks. Access to the new money first means these banks can buy assets and drive up prices in the stock market, benefiting themselves and the 1% that make up their best clients. By the time this new money has time to flow out into the broader economy; the 99% see no benefit and in fact suffer from higher prices.
The real cause of the increasing disparity in income levels in the U.S. is not capitalism, but central planning from the Federal Reserve. Continuing expansion of the money supply and artificially low interest rates are maintained by a process in which the Fed buys assets from the major banks and the richest Americans at inflated prices, or lends money to them at low rates that they can then use to buy assets at inflated prices.
Read the full article here.
Staff Report | April 27, 2012 | End of the American Dream
The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable. Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face. Take the U.S. economy for example. Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have worked and that the U.S. economy is improving. So that is what he is telling the American people. The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that we are experiencing an economic recovery. A very large segment of the U.S. population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream media is feeding them. But is the U.S. economy really improving? The truth is that it is not. The rate of employment among working age Americans is exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down while Obama has been president. Home ownership levels and home prices continue to decline. Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more expensive. The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars under Obama. We simply have not seen the type of economic recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War II.
The horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that you are about to read are not talked about much by the mainstream media. They would rather be “positive” and “upbeat” about the direction that things are headed.
But lying to the American people is not going to help them. If you are speeding in a car toward a 500 foot cliff, you don’t need someone to cheer you on. Instead, you need someone to slam on the brakes.
The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was four or five years ago.
We have never come close to recovering from the last recession and another one will be here soon.
The following are 25 horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that Barack Obama does not want you to know….
#1 The percentage of Americans that own homes is dropping rapidly. According to Gallup, the current level of home ownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.
#2 Home prices in the U.S. continue to fall like a rock as well. They have declined for six months in a row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble. The last time that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.
#3 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
#4 Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
#5 When Barack Obama first became president, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was 2.6 million. Today, it is 5.3 million.
#6 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is about three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#7 Despite what the mainstream media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing. Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2011, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. So how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment situation in the United States is getting better? The employment rate is still essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.
#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
#9 In 1962, 28 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.
#10 In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.
#11 According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
#12 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.
Read the full article here.
By Becket Adams | April 25, 2012 | The Blaze
Are you familiar with a certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official named Al Armendariz?
Chances are you’ve never heard of him. We suspect most Americans haven’t. However, with the recent unearthing of the video below, that could change very soon.
Thanks to a little digging by the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), attention has been brought to a 2010 video that seems to confirm what many conservative have long suspected: that the EPA is at war with the oil and gas industries.
“[O]il and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production,” Armendariz says in the video.
The top-ranking EPA official goes on to explain his philosophy of policy enforcement [emphases added]:
I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff…the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.
And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there.
And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.
Watch the video here:
Read the full article here.
Brian Sussman, author of “Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda will Dismantle America,” has exposed Barack Obama’s secret plan to seize land from the American people, on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.”
In an interview with Steve Doocy, Sussman said the scheme was “secret no longer” because of his new book, “Eco-Tyranny,” which reveals confidential memos from inside the administration.
Sussman explained to Doocy’s audience that the plan revealed in “Eco-Tyranny” was “concocted by Obama’s Department of the Interior to take over hundreds of thousands of acres of private land, take it off the books for development.”
Doocy observed that federal landholdings are already considerable, with the government owning more than half of some Western states.
Agreed, Sussman said.
“The government owns seven hundred million acres and they want more.”
He added, “This plan must be stopped because it’s antithetical to what America is all about. It’s not about the federal government owning land, it’s about we the people owning land and allowing us to do whatever we would like to do with that land, especially when it comes to natural resources.”
Sussman believes that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to restrict America’s energy production in order to keep the country dependent on foreign foes. He drew laughter from Doocy when he commented, “If we started drilling for oil in our own country the way we should, the Saudis would soil their tunics.”
Sussman also made the point that environmentalists explicitly seek to prevent energy production, even clean nuclear energy, which Doocy referred to as a no brainer.
Finally, Sussman laid out the case that rising population requires not just additional energy but additional water supplies that are not being developed. Sussman asked, “Who is standing in the way of our water resources? The environmentalists and the Department of the Interior.”
“This is a long running plot, quite frankly concocted in the minds as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – use the environment to hammer capitalism,” he said.
Read the full article here.
Staff Report | April 16, 2012 | The Economic Collapse Blog
The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out, and most people don’t even realize what is happening. Every single year, millions more Americans fall out of the middle class and become dependent on the government. The United States once had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class is rapidly shrinking and government dependence is at an all-time high. So why is this happening? Well, America is becoming a poorer nation at the same time that wealth is becoming extremely concentrated at the very top. At this point, our economic system is designed to funnel as much money and power to the federal government and to the big corporations as possible. Individuals and small businesses have a really hard time thriving in this environment. To most big corporations these days, workers are viewed as financial liabilities. Most corporations want to reduce their payrolls as much as possible. You see, the truth is that most corporations want to be just like Apple. If you can believe it, Apple makes $400,000 in profit per employee. Big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and provide for your family. Their goal is to make as much money as possible. And most of the control freaks that run our bloated federal government don’t care much about middle class families either. To many politicians and federal bureaucrats, middle class families are “useless eaters” that are constantly damaging the environment with their “excessive” lifestyles. In this day and age, neither the federal government nor the big corporations really have much use for middle class Americans, and that is really, really bad news for the the future of the middle class family in America.
There are three key factors that are constantly chipping away at the middle class….
-Globalization
-Inflation
-Taxes
Labor has become a global commodity, and American workers are often 10 to 20 times as expensive as workers on the other side of the world are. Middle class jobs (such as manufacturing, etc.) have been leaving this country at an astounding pace. Competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely fierce, and this has driven wages down. The following is from a recent article in the New York Times….
But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.
As paychecks have stagnated, the cost of living has continued to escalate. Middle class families are finding that their paychecks simply do not go nearly as far as they did before. This is creating a tremendous amount of financial stress in households all over America.
Meanwhile, our politicians are taxing the middle class like crazy. Most people only focus on federal and state income taxes, but that is only a small part of the story. As I detailed the other day, our politicians are taxing us in literally dozens of different ways and it is almost always the middle class that ends up getting hit the hardest.
If America wants to be great again, it is going to need a thriving middle class. But right now the federal government and the big corporations are gobbling up all of the power and all of the money and the middle class is shrinking rapidly.
If current trends continue, eventually there will not be much of a middle class left.
The following are 25 signs that middle class families have been targeted for extinction….
#1 Over the past several decades, millions upon millions of middle class Americans have been systematically turned into government dependents. Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages. In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages. Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.
#2 Unemployment is at epidemic levels and the vast majority of the new jobs that have been “created” in recent years have been low paying jobs. Of those Americans that do have a job at this point, one out of every four works a job that pays $10 an hour or less.
#3 The “working poor” is a group that is rapidly growing in this country. If you can believe it, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
Read the full article here.
By Breitbart News | April 13, 2012 | Breitbart
Breitbart News Network: We’ve been talking about energy independence for decades. Why are we no closer to it now than we were during the energy crisis back in the 70s?
Governor Sarah Palin: The problem is not the American people or our vast resources. The problem is a lack of political will. Our politicians don’t have comprehensive energy plans. They have a couple of talking points that they spout over and over. Obama is a perfect example of this. We need an administration that comprehensively looks at our energy infrastructure and resources and develops and implements a real energy plan for the future. We should bring everyone to the table for this – from the left and the right. Give everyone a stake in the discussion. That’s what I did in Alaska in developing the legislation for our natural gas pipeline (AGIA) and in reforming our oil and gas valuation system (ACES). My team included everyone from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans to everything in between. We were committed to responsible and ethical resource development that both protects Alaska’s pristine environment and provides for our future. We were able to put politics aside and find common sense solutions that everyone could buy into and Alaskans could get behind. There is no reason why we can’t do this on a national level. We need to come together to find a safe, ethical, economical, and environmentally responsible way to provide for our energy needs by tapping our own resources. The time is now.
BNN: As governor of Alaska, you were often at odds with the Big Oil companies. You’re no stranger to holding them accountable. Obama wants to eliminate the tax subsidies to oil companies. Is this a good idea?
Gov. Palin: I’ve said in the past that all energy subsidies need to be re-looked at and perhaps eliminated. But let’s be clear about what President Obama is referring to. There are a couple of tax breaks the oil and gas industry has access to. One of them is a tax credit available to all U.S. manufacturers – so it’s unfair to target just this one industry if you’re not going to remove that tax credit for everyone else. Another tax break they get is to accelerate their deductions of what they call “intangible drilling costs” related to drilling oil or gas wells. This is particularly beneficial to smaller independent oil producers who can deduct 100% of these costs in the well’s first year, while the larger companies can deduct 70% in the first year and the rest over the next five years. If people have a problem with this particular break, then why not follow the suggestion the Heritage Foundation made and allow all companies to expense their full capital costs immediately. That would “level the playing field” between the oil and gas industry and every other industry. But President Obama is not interested in leveling the playing field. He’s in favor of subsidizing his pet industries—like these bankrupt green energy companies—and punishing the industries he dislikes. That makes no sense from a free market standpoint or from an energy standpoint.
BNN: Do you believe we should be investing in alternative or renewable energy research?
Gov. Palin: Yes, for the private sector. I don’t think there is anything wrong with setting goals for alternative energy, but we have to be realistic. A truly effective alternative energy source needs to be efficient and profitable. No amount of Obama’s subsidizing his campaign donors’ bankrupt green energy companies—some with harebrained ideas that will never be economic—will get us to that efficient and profitable alternative. The free market will determine this. Sure, we can support research and development when it’s appropriate, but as scientists and venture capitalists continue to look for viable alternative energy sources, we should be encouraging the development of natural gas as a clean and plentiful bridge-fuel to a more renewable future. We have enough natural gas in America to be energy independent for many decades!
Read the full article here.
By William L. Gensert | April 11, 2012 | American Thinker
Karl Marx said history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Barack Obama has reversed that. His first term was certainly farce; his second will be tragedy.
Obama has Forrest Gumped his way through his presidency, except without the success, charm, and endearing sweetness of the original. He has given America three and a half years of farce, even if no one is laughing.
He is an adumbrated president, desperate about his re-election prospects. Sold as a bipartisan moderate, a post-racial healer, a transformative leader — we were told he would not just solve our problems, but heal the earth and save humanity.
The president has governed as a hyper-partisan, race-baiting, barely present tyrant with absolutely no leadership skills and little regard for the constitution. His daily ululations paint anyone who dares to disagree as evil and un-American. People are either pro-Barack or an enemy of the nation — there is no in-between.
It is the intangible aspects of the presidency where Barack Obama is most adept: entertaining, vacationing, and golf. The parties are legendary and extravagant. Bringing the NBA to the White House, or the NFL or Motown or Broadway — when he feels like it, the party comes to him. The vacations are even more extravagant, and the golf…everyone knows about the golf. He may not be good, but at least he puts in the time.
America has to pay for it all, but this is an opportunity to see the true Barack Obama, surrounded by minions and sycophants constantly telling him how great he is. Is it any surprise he wants four more years of this?
Obama hagiographer Davis Guggenheim has said, “I mean, the negative for me was there were too many accomplishments.” Barack wholeheartedly agrees; after all didn’t he recently say, “My entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism”?
Popeil’s Pocket President, brought to you by Ronco, or Rahm Emanuel — one of those. At least the Pocket Fisherman worked. Barack doesn’t work; it’s all parties, vacations, and golf — in between, he practices verbal assassination of anyone who disagrees. Chin up, he turns away and looks off in the distance, à la Mussolini, as the applause and adulation reverberate from the rafters.
“No, please,” he pleads, “I do this for you.”
In less than four years, he has reduced America to the laughingstock of the world. We are threatened by Iran with nuclear Armageddon, while he lines up a putt and tells us what his imaginary son would look like.
He talks of “flexibility,” while he plots both unilateral disarmament and the scrapping of missile defense. With no deterrent and no defensive capability, the nation will be defenseless and impotent.
Read the full article here.
Rush Limbaugh | April 09, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s a new Rasmussen poll out. The Supreme Court’s approval rating. (laughing) No, I kid you not. The Supreme Court’s approval rating has skyrocketed since taking up Obamacare, since the oral arguments. Forty-one percent of likely voters now rate the Supreme Court’s performance as good or excellent. It’s up 13 points. It’s up 13 points since mid-March, where it was 28%. (interruption) Well, I don’t know what they’re gonna do about it, but it’s back to the drawing board for Obama and Axelrod. I mean, the court’s approval numbers are… I don’t care who you are; you like it when your approval numbers are on the upswing. You just do. I mean, whether you’re a justice, whether you’re a judge.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Supreme Court, approval numbers up to 41% now of likely voters, even though nobody will ever vote on them. It’s a Rasmussen poll, but the fact of the matter, the numbers are going up, and dramatically. Thirteen points after the oral arguments. Now, the White House is gonna look at this, it cannot make them happy. Obama has been trying to make people despise the court, distrust the court. It’s like everything else in reality that’s happening to Obama, it’s going in the wrong direction. Like they’re trying to manufacture, for example, this phony Republican war on women, and now they’re out trying to say that Romney is forever tainted by this and cannot overcome it.
Now, the fact of the matter remains, the stock market today is down anywhere from 139 to 150 points, and most of the analysts that we trust on this program are saying that it is a delayed reaction to the lousy job news on Friday. “US stocks sank in opening trade Monday, reacting for the first time to disappointing job market data released Friday when the markets were closed. In the first five minutes of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dived 137.51 points (1.05 percent) to 12,922.63.” And what is it now? 12,929. Down 131 points now, and it’s been in that range. And this is prompting a lot of people — (interruption) No, that’s right. They’re losing their war on the Supreme Court, Snerdley, is what it means. You know, I settle something. I solve it. I explain it. And Snerdley keeps asking me in the IFB. No, it means that they have lost their war on the Supreme Court. But they think they’re winning their war on the economy.
The war on the economy is to make people think that 8.2% unemployment is equal to 5% unemployment. That five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is the same as three dollars. They’re trying to redefine the economy now, what we have now as the new normal. This is it. And, folks, we can’t allow that to happen. It simply isn’t true. This country is much better than what is happening now. The media and the Democrats are continuing this mythical Republican war on women as though out of the blue the Republicans decided to take away birth control pills from women. All of this was started on January 7th with a question from George Stephanopoulos to Mitt Romney in a Republican primary debate asking him if states should be able to ban contraception, birth control pills. Romney said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nobody’s thinking about this.” But all it took was the question be asked, therefore the subject has been introduced by the Republicans, since Romney answered the question. Santorum answered it last fall. And so they’re off to the races on this now.
Read the full article here.
To view the original infographic go here.
By Mac Slavo | April 2nd, 2012 | SHTF Plan
Most Americans take for granted the intricate systems that make it possible for us to engage in seemingly mundane day to day tasks like filling up our gas tanks, loading up our shopping carts at the local grocery store, obtaining necessary medications, and even pouring ourselves a clean glass of water. When we wake up each morning we just expect that all of these things will work today the same way they worked yesterday. Very few have considered the complexity involved in the underlying infrastructure that keeps goods, services and commerce in America flowing. Fewer still have ever spent the time to contemplate the fragility of these systems or the consequences on food, water, health care, the financial system, and the economy if they are interrupted.
A report prepared for legislators and business leaders by the American Trucking Associations highlights just how critical our just-in-time inventory and delivery systems are, and assesses the impact on the general population in the event of an emergency or incident of national significance that disrupts the truck transportation systems which are responsible for carrying some ten billion tons of commodities and supplies across the United States each year.
A shut down of truck operations as a result of elevated threat levels, terrorist attacks, or pandemics would, according to the report, have “a swift and devastating impact on the food, healthcare, transportation, waste removal, retail, manufacturing, and financial sectors.”
So too would events such as an EMP attack or a coordinated cyber-attack that could shut down global positioning systems and the computers responsible for inventory control. Another potential scenario that is more likely now than ever before is liquidity problems within the financial system stemming from currency crisis or hyperinflation. All of our just-in-time delivery systems are built upon the unhindered transfer of money and credit, but when credit flow becomes restricted or money becomes worthless, no one will be able to pay for their goods. Likewise, no one will trust the credit worthiness of anyone else. This is exactly the scenario playing out in Greece right now and the consequences on the health care industry in that country have left many without life saving drugs. When there’s no money, no one will be transporting anything.
The effects of a transportation shutdown for any reason would be immediate (in some cases, within hours) and absolutely catastrophic.
Excerpted from the American Truckers Associations report
Food
- Significant shortages will occur in as little as three days, especially for perishable items following a national emergency and a ban on truck traffic.
- Consumer fear and panic will exacerbate shortages. News of a truck stoppage—whether on the local level, state or regional level, or nationwide—will spur hoarding and drastic increases in consumer purchases of essential goods. Shortages will materialize quickly and could lead to civil unrest. (We’re seeing this in the UK right now)
Water
- Supplies of clean drinking water will run dry in two to four weeks. For safety and security reasons, most water supply plants maintain a larger inventory of supplies than the typical business. However, the amount of chemical storage varies significantly and is site specific. According to the Chlorine Institute, most water treatment facilities receive chlorine in cylinders that are delivered by motor carriers. On average, trucks deliver purification chemicals to water supply plants every seven to 14 days. Without these chemicals, water cannot be purified and made safe for drinking.
Health Care
- Without truck transportation, patient care within the truck stoppage zone will be immediately jeopardized. According to Cook, many hospitals have moved to a just-in-time inventory system. In fact, some work from a low-unit-of-measure system. This means that essential basic supplies, such as syringes and catheters, are not ordered until the supplies are depleted. These systems depend on trucks to deliver needed supplies within hours of order placement. Internal redistribution of supplies in hospitals could forestall a crisis for a short time; however, in a matter of hours, hospitals would be unable to supply critical patient care.
- If an incident of national significance produces mass injuries, truck transportation is the key to delivering urgently needed medical supplies necessary to save lives.
- Hospitals and nursing homes will exhaust food supplies in as little as 24 hours
- Pharmacy stocks of prescription drugs will be depleted quickly. According to the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, most of the nation’s 55,000 drug stores receive daily merchandise deliveries by truck.
Transportation
- Service station fuel supplies will start to run out in just one to two days. An average service station requires a delivery every 2.4 days. Based on these statistics, the busiest service stations could run out of fuel within hours of a truck stoppage, with the remaining stations following within one to two days
- Air, rail and maritime transportation will be disrupted.
- A fuel shortage will create secondary effects. Without access to automobile travel, people will be unable to get to work causing labor shortages and increased economic damage. Without cars, many people cannot access grocery stores, banks, doctors, and other daily needs. Public bus systems will cease to operate as well, preventing many disabled and elderly people from accessing these necessities. Without fuel, police, fire, rescue and other public service vehicles will be paralyzed, further jeopardizing public safety.
Waste Removal
- Within days of a truck stoppage, Americans will be literally buried in garbage with serious health and environmental consequences. Further, without fuel deliveries, many waste processing facilities will be unable to operate equipment such as backhoes and incinerators.
- Uncollected and deteriorating waste products create rich breeding grounds for microorganisms, insects, and other vermin.Hazardous materials and medical waste will introduce toxins as well as infectious diseases into living environments. Urban areas will, of course, be significantly impacted within just a couple of days.
Retail / Manufacturing / Economy
- Replenishment of goods will be disrupted. Many of the nation’s leading retailers rely on just-in-time delivery to keep inventory levels as low as possible. Similar to the low-unit-of-measure hospital inventory system, these stores rely on frequent deliveries to replenish basic goods. Often, delivery of a shipment is not triggered until the current inventory is nearly depleted. Without truck deliveries, retailers will be unable to restock goods, including consumer basics such as bottled water, canned goods, and paper products.
- Consumer behavior during emergencies triples the rate of inventory turn-over.Since many large retail outlets typically keep inventories as lean as possible, problems often arise quickly during truck transportation slowdowns that occur from crises such as hurricanes.
- Just-in-time manufacturers will shut down assembly lines within hours. Major American manufacturers, ranging from computer manufacturers such as Dell and Compaq to major automakers such as GM and Ford, rely on just-in-time manufacturing. Without truck deliveries, component shortages and manufacturing delays will develop within hours
Financial Sector
- ATM and branch bank cash resources will be exhausted quicky.In today’s fastpaced, high-technology economy, consumers access cash 24/7 from 370,000 ATMs nationwide. JP Morgan Chase, the nation’s second largest consumer bank, replenishes its 6,600 ATMs via armored truck delivery every two to three days. Given the increase in ATM activity that occurs before and after any type of crisis, ATMs would run out of cash much sooner.
- Small and medium-size businesses will lose access to cash.
- Regular bank functions will cease.
While an event that disrupts truck transportation systems may be unlikely, recent history suggests it is fully plausible and the blowback can be devastating. A day after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, panicked government officials stopped all transportation flow into the region, forcing hundreds of trucks loaded with emergency supplies like food and water to wait for permission before they could enter the area. As a result, thousands of residents of the city were left without items essential for survival. It took days before truck routes were re-opened and supplies were allowed to flow. Government officials acting on limited information, lack of knowledge and personal politics were responsible for restricting the flow of goods into New Orleans, potentially killing hundreds of people in the process.
What this incident demonstrated is that when the trucks in America stop, all commerce and delivery stops with it.
Now consider what may happen if the emergency is more widespread, affecting not just a city, but the population of an entire region or the United States in its entirety.
Via SHTFplan
Author: Mac Slavo
Date: April 2nd, 2012
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
Staff Report | April 2, 2012 | End of the American Dream
The middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States today. America is a nation with a very tiny elite that is rapidly becoming increasingly wealthy while everyone else is becoming poorer. So why is this happening? Well, it is actually very simple. Our institutions are designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a very limited number of people. Throughout human history, almost all societies that have had a big centralized government have also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite. Throughout human history, almost all societies that have allowed big business or big corporations to dominate the economy have also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite. Well, the United States has allowed both big government and big corporations to grow wildly out of control. Those were huge mistakes. Our founding fathers attempted to establish a nation where the federal government would be greatly limited and where corporations would be greatly restricted. Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on those principles and now we are paying the price.
When you have great concentrations of wealth and power, the economic rewards of a society tend to go to just a few.
In the United States today, big businesses and wealthy individuals fund the campaigns of our politicians, and in turn our politicians pass laws which rig the game in their favor. It is a symbiotic relationship which is very bad for America.
Sadly, most conservatives tend to cheer on the big corporations, but this is not how our founding fathers envisioned our capitalist system working. Our founding fathers envisioned large numbers of similar companies competing against one another for customers. They did not envision a very small number of giant corporations buying up all of their competitors or smashing them into oblivion with their giant piles of money.
True conservatives should want to see more competition instead of less competition. Competition helped make America great, and we need to get back to that.
Instead of an economic landscape dominated by monolithic predator corporations, we need an economic environment where millions of small businesses can thrive and compete directly with one another.
Our founding fathers never intended for us to have the kind of system that we have today. As I have discussed in previous articles, our founding fathers greatly restricted the size and scope of corporations in early America. The following is how author Stephen D. Foster Jr. described the attitude toward corporations in the early years of the United States….
The East India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade angered the colonists so much, that they dumped the tea products it had on a ship into Boston Harbor which today is universally known as the Boston Tea Party. At the time, in Britain, large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by nearly everyone in parliament. The founding fathers did not think much of these corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And that is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was organized under the Constitution.
After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today. Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense. A giant central government that spends more than 20 percent of our GDP is a collectivist institution.
Enormous predator corporations that are constantly sucking up even more money and power are collectivist institutions.
Our founding fathers did not intend for our society to be dominated by collectivist institutions.
Very large institutions tend to reward the people that own and run them at the expense of everyone else.
And you know what?
A lot of these giant corporations have figured out that they don’t even need American workers anymore.
Instead, many of them are shipping our jobs to the other side of the world where it it legal to pay slave labor wages. That means bigger profits for them but less jobs for the rest of us.
In America today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and big government and big corporations are the mechanisms by which this is happening.
Posted below are 45 signs that America will soon be a nation with a very tiny elite and the rest of us will be poor….
Read the full article here.
"One man with courage is a majority." ~Thomas Jefferson
By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]
By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]
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