Deliberately Destroying America

By Alan Caruba | June 17, 2012 | Canada Free Press

It has taken three and a half years into Barack Obama’s presidency for most Americans to realize that he has been deliberately destroying America by driving up the nation’s debt and deficit, reducing privately held wealth, forcing millions onto the public dole, undermining its moral structure, and weakening the nation’s reputation internationally.

His latest lie is that “the private sector is doing just fine”, but the numbers tell the whole story and one can find them on an excellent blog, Economic Collapse, that offers seventy examples:

Six Media Giants Now Control a Staggering 90% of What We Read, Watch or Listen to [Infographic]

Note: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn’t own AOL, so Huffington Post isn’t affiliated with them

Hat Tip: Business Insider

Infographic Source: Frugal Dad

Obama Thinks the Private Sector is Doing Fine and He Did NOT Walk It Back

By Rush Limbaugh | June 11, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Barack Hussein Kardashian, the Celebrity of the United States, went out for a press conference, impromptu on Friday. A State-Controlled Media reporter said, “What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?”

OBAMA: The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I think that he meant to say exactly what he said. I don’t see a problem here. The private sector, as far as he’s concerned, is doing fine. If he thinks that the public sector is losing jobs, that’s a problem. If there are fewer government workers, that’s a major problem to Barack Obama. As far as he’s concerned, the private sector’s fine. And as far as he’s concerned, the way he’s been educated and taught, the private sector’s always just gonna be there.

Detroit: The Moral of the Story

By Kevin D. Williamson | Jun 8, 2012 | National Review

The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis: raise taxes to pay off old spending. For the Left, every deficit is a revenue-side problem, not a spending-side problem, and the solution to every economic problem is more spending, necessitating more taxes. The problem with that way of looking at things is called Detroit, which looks to be running out of money in about one week. Detroit is what liberalism’s end-game looks like.

The Bell Tolls For the Government Unions

By Patrick J. Buchanan | June 8, 2012 | Human Events

In 1919, after Boston police went on strike to protest the city’s refusal to recognize their new union, Gov. Calvin Coolidge ordered the National Guard into the streets.

Sam Gompers, the legendary father of American labor, wrote the governor that the Boston police had been denied their rights.

Coolidge’s terse reply put him in our history books:

Hope: The Sequel

By John Heilemann | May 27, 2012 | New York Magazine

For Obama & Co., this time around it’s all about fear.

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

David Plouffe sits in his White House office, just a few steps from the Oval, staring at an oversize map of these United States. It’s late afternoon on May 9, two hours after Barack Obama’s declaration that his evolution on gay marriage has reached its terminus. The president is down the hall and on the phone, discussing his decision’s theological implications with several prominent African-American pastors—while Plouffe is being queried about its political dimensions by a querulous Caucasian reporter. The map at which Plouffe is gazing isn’t the electoral kind with the states shaded blue and red; as a federal employee, he notes wryly, “I’m not permitted to have one on the wall.” But given the way his head is hardwired, I’m pretty sure Plouffe is seeing those colors regardless.

The World Wildlife Fund Targets Humanity

By Robert Zubrin | May 23, 2012 | National Review

To save the Earth, the WWF urges us to adopt the living standards of Chad or Sudan.

The World Wildlife Fund, the posh flagship of the global environmentalist movement, has just released its biennial publication assessing “the state of the planet.” Entitled “Living Planet Report 2012,” the publication bemoans alleged catastrophic effects that humanity is inflicting upon the Earth, and calls for drastic curbs on civilization as a necessary corrective measure.

According to the WWF, the human race is currently consuming at a rate that would be sustainable only if we had 1.5 Earths. Since we do not, overall human activity needs to be reduced by 33 percent to put mankind “in balance with the Earth’s biocapacity.”

45 Signs That America Will Soon Be A Nation With A Very Tiny Elite And The Rest Of Us Will Be Poor

By 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.

The Road From Serfdom

By Stephen Moore & Peter Ferrara | May 2012 | American Spectator

Let workers choose: the New Deal, or a better deal?

Conservative leaders—from Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, to Tea Party Republicans who stormed the House in 2010—have been trying to reform and transform failed government programs for nearly two generations now, with only limited and frustrating progress. Republicans argue that the recipients of social spending will be better off under a conservative approach, but the public remains skeptical. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public schools, and welfare programs might be run poorly, but they are a security blanket nonetheless. Voters don’t want to trade a devil they know for a devil they don’t.

Perhaps compulsion is the problem. The argument conservatives too often make seems to be: “Trust us; we know what’s best for you.” Yet when was the last time that voters trusted politicians of either party to make wise decisions on their behalf? With congressional approval now hovering in the teens, there is little likelihood the public will back fundamental reform of the $1 trillion entitlement system. But there is another way: Give individual citizens the freedom to either stick with the government-run plan, or choose a market-based option. Those who like Social Security and Medicare could keep them as they are. Those who think otherwise would have alternatives.

Just look at what happened when House Republicans proposed to fundamentally change Medicare and give seniors private insurance instead. Democrats ran TV ads—the campaign was dubbed “Mediscare”—telling seniors the GOP was trying to destroy Medicare. One commercial shows a man in a suit pushing the wheelchair of an elderly woman. The man leads her to the edge of a cliff and throws her off, while “America the Beautiful” plays in the background. Scary stuff.

But if Republicans gave seniors the choice, between the new Medicare and the old, could Democrats block that approach? Ultimately, we don’t think so. And political benefits are just the hors d’oeuvre. We also believe that choice-driven programs would achieve social-welfare goals more effectively, serve seniors and the poor far better, and cost just a fraction of what taxpayers pay for current programs.

Let’s examine how this model might apply. Baby boomers are now beginning to retire; eventually more than 75 million boomers will move onto Social Security and Medicare. For decades, the federal government’s own reports have shown that Social Security will be unable to pay boomers all promised benefits without dramatic, unsustainable tax increases. Medicare’s prospects are even worse.

Last year, Social Security ran an annual deficit for the first time since President Reagan and Congress raised the payroll tax back in 1983. Under government actuaries’ middling projections for economic and demographic growth, those deficits will continue until the Social Security trust funds run dry by 2037. After that, paying all the promised Social Security and Medicare benefits that are financed by the payroll tax will require almost doubling the tax from 15.3 percent today to nearly 30 percent.

Under more pessimistic growth projections, the Social Security trust funds will run out of money by 2029. In that case, paying all promised benefits to today’s young workers would eventually require a total payroll tax rate of 44 percent, three times current levels.

Social Security operates as a pure tax-and-spend system, so it has no real savings or investments anywhere. Even when it was running annual surpluses, close to 90 percent of the revenue that came in was paid out within the year. Remaining annual surpluses were lent to the federal government and spent on other programs, from foreign aid to bridges to nowhere. The Social Security trust funds received only internal federal IOUs, which promise the money will be paid back when it is needed for benefits. But those federal IOUs represent not savings, but actual additional liabilities for federal taxpayers.

Such a tax and redistribution scheme does not earn real market returns, as a fully-funded savings and investment system would. Consequently, over the long run the “trust fund” can pay only low, below-market benefits. Studies show that for most young workers today, even if Social Security does somehow pay all it has promised, those benefits would represent a real rate of return of around 1 to 1.5 percent, or less. For many, the effective return might even be negative. That’s like putting your money in a savings account, but instead of earning interest on it, you end up paying the bank for the pleasure of keeping your deposit there.

There is a better way. Workers could be empowered to save and invest the money they and their employers would otherwise pay into Social Security. Studies show that an average-income, two-earner couple would, over the course of their careers, accumulate close to a million dollars or more, given standard, long-term, market returns, and depending on what fraction of their Social Security contributions they are allowed to invest. Lower-income workers could regularly accumulate half a million dollars over their careers.

Those accumulated funds would pay all workers of all income levels and family combinations much higher benefits than Social Security even promises, let alone what it might pay. That includes one-earner couples with stay-at-home moms caring for the children. Retirees would be free to leave any portion of these funds to their children at death, further strengthening the family. Under Social Security, if you die, your heirs get a small death benefit, and Uncle Sam keeps the rest.

Read the full story here.

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Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail — Now

		
View this document on Scribd

25 Horrible Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To Know

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.

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The Laughable Economic Fallacies Embraced By Progressives

By Peter Ferrara | April 19, 2012 | Forbes

Persistent economic fallacies hurt working people and the poor the most.  They are the ones most in need of the new jobs and higher wages that capital investment and economic growth produce.  And they suffer the most from unemployment and declining wages and incomes when the economy falters.  Self-styled Progressives are the source of the economic fallacies that are hurting working people and the poor today.

One common fallacy popular among self-proclaimed Progressives is to reply to the point that America now has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% with the counter that the average effective corporate tax rate is only around 25%.  But it is the marginal tax rate on the next dollar earned, not the average rate, that influences new investment, business expansion, and hiring.

Pro-growth tax reform would involve reducing that top rate in return for closing many of the loopholes that make the average rate so much lower.  The average rate would rise as a result.  But the lower marginal rate would increase incentives for more capital investment, business expansion and job creation.

Another fallacy among Progressives is to argue that America has enjoyed historically low taxes under President Obama with federal revenues around 15% of GDP compared to the long-term, postwar average of 18.3%.  But that is due to the persistent weakness of the economy under Obama, which lowers federal revenues as a percent of  GDP, as bankrupt businesses and unemployed workers pay little or nothing in taxes.

Again, what influences the capital investment, business start ups, and business expansion that creates jobs and bids up wages for working people and the poor are the marginal tax rates, not taxes as a percent of GDP.  Obama has persistently focused on raising those marginal tax rates across the board, the exact opposite of what Reagan did with so much success, which is a main reason Obama is getting the opposite results of Reagan.  Obama has recently taken to citing Reagan for the opposite of what he believed and implemented as President, in claiming his support for the so-called Buffett Rule.  But the real economy will not be fooled, and working people and the poor will not benefit from dishonest rhetoric.

When the economy recovers, with more businesses making more profits, and more workers earning more in income, federal revenues as a percent of GDP will rise.  That is how Paul Ryan’s budget is scored by CBO as restoring federal revenues to their long term postwar historical average at 18.3% even while cutting corporate and personal income tax rates sharply.  Cutting those rates as Ryan proposes will lead to stronger recovery sooner because of the incentive effects of those lower rates, an effect not even counted by CBO.

Progressives also purport not to understand the multiple taxation of capital.  Under our tax system the earnings from capital investment are taxed not once, but multiple times.  First, by the corporate income tax, then again by the individual income tax through the tax on dividends, then if you sell the capital investment, through the capital gains tax, then when you die, by the death tax.  When Progressives like Obama complain that the rich are not paying their fair share, they are just looking at the rate on any one of these taxes, and not considering all of the others.

The tax on capital gains is especially egregious because the market price of any capital asset just reflects the present discounted value of the future income stream to be produced by that asset, which will be taxed when it is earned.  Progressives claim that they can’t understand all that math, but it means the capital gains tax itself is inherently a double tax.  It is like taxing an orchard not only by taking some of the apples it produces, but also taking some of the trees in taxes as well.

Moreover, it is worse, because some of the gain taxed is just inflation and not real.  It is like assessing a tax on some imaginary apples as well.  These are all reasons why there should not be any tax on capital gains at all.  It is enough to take some of the apples.  Taking some of the trees as well is just abusive, multiple, overtaxation.  That means not just unfair tax piracy, but the squelching of the capital investment at the root of jobs and rising wages and incomes for working people and the poor.

These are the reasons why fourteen out of thirty OECD countries, plus China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and others, already enjoy zero capital gains taxes.  They can understand it, but America’s “Progressives” cannot.  This is part of the reason why these countries have been booming, while America is stagnating.  “Progressives” seem to think of economic growth and prosperity as just occurring naturally, like trees growing in the forest.  They don’t see the decisions made by investors to put their capital at risk, the decisions by entrepreneurs to start or expand businesses, the decisions by employers to hire new workers, and how incentives affect those decisions.  When “Progressives” hold governing power, their blindness becomes America’s blindness, and the American Dream recedes.

Read the full article here.

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22 Red Flags That Indicate That Very Serious Doom Is Coming For Global Financial Markets

Staff Report | April 24 | The Economic Collapse Blog

If you enjoy watching financial doom, then you are quite likely to really enjoy the rest of 2012.  Right now, red flags are popping up all over the place.  Corporate insiders are selling off stock like there is no tomorrow, major economies all over Europe continue to implode, the IMF is warning that the eurozone could actually break up and there are signs of trouble at major banks all over the planet.  Unfortunately, it looks like the period of relative stability that global financial markets have been enjoying is about to come to an end.  A whole host of problems that have been festering just below the surface are starting to manifest, and we are beginning to see the ingredients for a “perfect storm” start to come together.  The greatest global debt bubble in human history is showing signs that it is getting ready to burst, and when that happens the consequences are going to be absolutely horrific.  Hopefully we still have at least a little bit more time before the global financial system implodes, but at this point it doesn’t look like anything is going to be able to stop the chaos that is on the horizon.

The following are 22 red flags that indicate that very serious doom is coming for global financial markets….

#1 According to CNN, the level of selling by insiders at corporations listed on the S&P 500 is the highest that it has been in almost a decade.  Do those insiders know something that the rest of us do not?

#2 Home prices in the United States have fallen for six months in a row and are now down 35 percent from the peak of the housing market.  The last time that home prices in the U.S. were this low was back in 2002.

#3 It is now being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by another 5 percent this year.

#4 Despite wave after wave of austerity measures, Greece is still going to have a budget deficit equivalent to about 7 percent of GDP in 2012.

#5 Interest rates on Italian and Spanish sovereign debt are rapidly rising.  The following is from a recent RTE article….

Spain’s borrowing rate nearly doubled in a short-term debt auction as investors fretted over the euro zone’s determination to deal with its debts. 

And Italy raised nearly €3.5 billion in a short-term bond sale today but at sharply higher interest rates amid fresh concerns over the euro zone outlook, the Bank of Italy said.

#6 The government of Spain recently announced that its 2011 budget deficit was much larger than originally projected and that it probably will not meet its budget targets for 2012 either.

Read the full article here.

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25 Signs That Middle Class Families Have Been Targeted For Extinction

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.

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The Debt Bomb Showdown

By Mark Alexander | February 10, 2011 | The Patriot Post

Future Shock Debt Bill

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” Thomas Jefferson

There’s currently a lot of talk about deficits and debt among the new House Republican majority; much of it is contentious intraparty debate about whether to raise the “debt ceiling,” and if so, how to leverage that in order to get Democrats to approve more cuts.

This month, the central government accrued a $223 BILLION record deficit. Republicans are trying to scrape together a few more cuts, but Senate Democrats indicate they will only approve $4.7 billion in additional cuts to the whole year’s expenditures, when what is needed is $4.7 billion in additional cuts everyday of the next year.

For the purpose of clarity, let me reiterate a few definitions.

The national budget deficit is the difference between the total spending budget (including interest on debt) authorized by Congress for each year, and total tax receipts. For this fiscal year alone (October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2011), the shortfall is projected to be 1.15trillion dollars.

The national debt is the total of all outstanding U.S. Treasury obligations held by domestic and foreign individuals, institutions and governments, and is currently 14.05 trillion dollars.

The debt ceiling is the self-imposed limit Congress sets for what it can legally borrow to pay for all the government services that it can’t afford. A year ago, Congress increased that limit to 14.29 trillion dollars. But since Congress has authorized spending almost five billion dollars a day more than it takes in, that debt ceiling will be hit sometime between the end of March and mid-May.

Complicating matters further, the then-Democrat-controlled Congress failed to set a new budget for the current year, instead opting for continuing resolutions (CR) that authorize the prior year’s spending levels. They utilized this budget ruse in order to avoid greater accountability (greater losses) in the midterm election last year. The current CR expires on 4 March, and House Republicans are using that expiration date to force Barack Hussein Obama into budget-cutting submission.

Here is how the key Republican players in this crisis — and it is a crisis — have positioned themselves on the issue of deficits and the debt ceiling.

House Speaker John Boehner notes, “We have to work our will in the House. We have to work with our colleagues in the Senate and put something on the president’s desk. If the president is going to ask us to increase the debt limit, then he’s going to have to be willing to cut up the credit cards. … [Default] would be a financial disaster not only for our country, but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs. You can’t create jobs if you default on the federal debt.”

Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), president of the powerful freshman class of the 112th Congress, adds, “If there is a vote put forward to increase the national debt ceiling and that is all the legislation does, I think it will fail overwhelmingly.”

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is advancing a budget plan with $32 billion in spending cuts for the current budget year (FY11), well short of the Republican Pledge to America’s “$100 billion in the first year alone.”

But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) explains, “It fulfills the pledge because we said in a year’s time we were going to cut spending by $100 billion. As you know, we are five-twelfths of the way through the fiscal year by the time the expiration occurs. We will be proposing this again in the next fiscal year, and if you look at it on an annualized basis, I assure you it will be over $100 billion.”

It better be!

Read the full article here.

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Democratic Socialism

By Mark Alexander | March 10, 2011 | The Patriot Post

The Democrat’s Design to Demolish Free Enterprise

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared.” –Thomas Jefferson

Paraphrasing the esteemed classical liberal economist, Friedrich von Hayek, Future Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger wrote, “There is no difference in principle, between the economic philosophy of Nazism, socialism, communism, and fascism and that of the American welfare state and regulated economy.”

Not only is there no economic distinction between socialist systems in different political wrappers, ultimately there is no consequential societal distinction between Marxist Socialism, Nationalist Socialism, or the most recent incarnation of this beast, Democratic Socialism. The conclusion of socialism by any name, once it has replaced Rule of Law with the rule of men, is tyranny.

Noted Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, no stranger to the consequences of statism, wrote, “Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.”

Democratic Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism, is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged. Likewise, it seeks a centrally planned economy directed by a dominant-party state that controls economic production by way of taxation, regulation and income redistribution. The success of Democrat Socialism depends upon supplanting Essential Liberty — the rights “endowed by our Creator” — primarily by refuting such endowment.

Notably, regardless of the populist variant of Socialism, the consequences of of all three are tyranny. For those who are offended by the comparison of Democratic Socialism to Marxist and Nationalist Socialism, neither Stalin nor Hitler were guilty of exterminating “enemies of the state” until they had ascended to political positions affording consolidation of power in their respective Socialist states. The terminus of Socialism under any label, is tyranny. As Von Hayek observed, “Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.”

So what do these observations have to do with the current state of economic and political affairs in our great nation? Unfortunately, more than most Americans currently realize.

However discomforting this fact might be, there is abundant and irrefutable evidence that Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadre are endeavoring to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” with a debt bomb, the future shockwave of which, they surmise, will break the back of free enterprise. From the ashes of that cataclysm, Obama and his ilk envision restructuring our national economy as a Democrat Socialism State.

Read the full article here.

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Obama as Farce

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.

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Stefan Molyneux on the Keiser Report – The Federal Reserve is a Crime! [Video]

45 Signs That America Will Soon Be A Nation With A Very Tiny Elite And The Rest Of Us Will Be Poor

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.

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The Global Elite Are Hiding 18 Trillion Dollars In Offshore Banks

Staff Report | January 20th, 2012 | The Economic Collapse Blog

In recent days, the fact that Mitt Romney has millions of dollars parked down in the Cayman Islands has made headlines all over the world.  But when it comes to offshore banking, what Mitt Romney is doing is small potatoes.  The truth is that the global elite are hiding an almost unbelievable amount of money in offshore banks.  According to shocking research done by the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks.  And that figure does not even count any money being held in Switzerland.  That is a staggering amount of money.  Keep in mind that U.S. GDP in 2010 was only 14.58 trillion dollars.  So why do the global elite go to such trouble to hide their money in offshore banks?  Well, there are two main reasons.  One is privacy and the other is low taxation.  Privacy is a big issue for those that are involved in illegal enterprises such as drug running, but the biggest reason why people move money into offshore banks is in order to avoid taxes.  Some set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to legallyminimize their taxes and others set up bank accounts in foreign nations because they want to illegally avoid taxes.  You would be absolutely amazed at what some large corporations and wealthy individuals do to get out of paying taxes.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of the rest of us don’t have the resources or the knowledge to play these games, so we get taxed into oblivion.

So why do they call it “offshore banking”?

Well, the term originally developed because the banks on the Channel Islands were “offshore” from the United Kingdom.  Most “offshore banks” are still located on islands today.  The Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Man are examples of this.  Other “offshore banking centers” such as Monaco are actually not “offshore” at all, but the term applies to them anyway.

Traditionally, these offshore banking centers have been very attractive to both criminals and to the global elite because they would not tell anyone (including governments) about the money that anyone had parked there.

These days some governments (particularly the U.S. government) are trying to change this, but we certainly will not see the end of offshore banking any time soon.

The amount of money that goes through these offshore banks is absolutely astounding.

Read the full article here.

The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

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 […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

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 […]