If you didn't read yesterday's newsbites I strongly suggest you check out "twofer" comment #13/#14.
I don't know about "rednecks," but I do know that if We as a People - an American People with an American Creed - don't "take America back" from those who want to "fundamentally change" her...
(*SIGH*)
Folks... the inmates are running asylum and if We The People don't take the the keys to the front gate back, then the die is surely cast putting paid to all of the hopes and dreams we grew up believing in and which we had hoped to bequeath to our children and grandchildren.
6 comments:
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576637290931614006.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
* BY THE HON. RON PAUL, MEMBER OF CONGRESS (R-TX) AND GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money.
Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value.
Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing, which leads not to prosperity but to disaster.
* AS WE'VE SEEN AGAIN AND AGAIN!
The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy.
* "SPUR" THE ECONOMY... BUT AT A COST...!!!
Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time - the interest rate - lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.
* THIS... IS... NOT... ROCKET... SCIENCE...!!!
* To be continued...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use - the uses the free market actually desires - the economy stagnates.
[P]olicy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.
* AND THAT'S THE "GIVE 'EM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT" EXPLANATION!
In many respects the governors of the Federal Reserve System and the members of the Federal Open Market Committee are like all other high-ranking powerful officials. Because they make decisions that profoundly affect the workings of the economy and because they have hundreds of bright economists working for them doing research and collecting data, they buy into the pretense of knowledge - the illusion that because they have all these resources at their fingertips they therefore have the ability to guide the economy as they see fit.
* OBVIOUSLY THEY'RE WRONG... (*BLOOD PRESSURE RISING*)
The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.
(*THROBBING HEADACHE*)
The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price - the price of time - and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control.
[The Fed] fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels. (Instead, the Fed's actions have had one aim - to keep prices elevated at bubble levels - thus ensuring that bad debt remains on the books and failing firms remain in business, albatrosses around the market's neck.)
* I'VE SAID IT BEFORE, I'LL SAY IT AGAIN: UNTIL BEN BERNANKE IS OUT OF OFFICE... WE'RE SCREWED.
The Fed's quantitative easing programs increased the national debt by trillions of dollars.
(*NOD*)
The debt is now so large that if the central bank begins to move away from its zero interest-rate policy, the rise in interest rates will result in the U.S. government having to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional interest on the national debt each year.
(*SIGH*)
Thus there is significant political pressure being placed on the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Fed has painted itself so far into a corner now that even if it wanted to raise interest rates, as a practical matter it might not be able to do so. But it will do something, we know, because the pressure to "just do something" often outweighs all other considerations.
* WE'RE DEALING WITH IDIOTS...!!! IRRESPONSIBLE FOOLS...!!!
What exactly the Fed will do is anyone's guess, and it is no surprise that markets continue to founder as anticipation mounts. If the Fed would stop intervening and distorting the market, and would allow the functioning of a truly free market that deals with profit and loss, our economy could recover. The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TAX_CREDIT_MISTAKE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-10-20-12-50-07
More than 2 million taxpayers - including some prisoners claiming students as dependents - apparently wrongly collected $3.2 billion in college tax credits last year, according to a report issued Thursday by a federal investigator.
* BUT, WAIT... THERE'S MORE!
The suspect credits represent more than a fifth of the $15.5 billion in college credits the report says went to nearly 8.9 million taxpayers through 2010.
* MORE THAN 20%...?!?!
The Internal Revenue Service disputed the findings, saying they were vastly overblown and based on a faulty analysis. The IRS, though, agreed to implement many of the recommendations the report made to ensure that only eligible taxpayers receive the credit.
* WHAT THE HELL KIND OF TALKING OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF YOUR MOUTH RESPONSE IS THAT...?!?! SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT... OBAMA'S IRS "DISPUTED" THE FINDINGS... BUT AGREED TO IMPLEMENT MANY OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS WHICH WERE BASED UPON... er... SUPPOSEDLY "FAULTY ANALYSIS?"
* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS KIND OF SHIT UP... (*SIGH*)
The program in question is the American Opportunity Tax Credit, created in President Barack Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus law of 2009 as an expansion of the Hope Scholarship Tax Credit. Extended by Congress last year through 2012, it provides students with tax credits of up to $2,500 annually, as long as their families don't exceed income limits.
The report by the Treasury Department's inspector general for taxes found that for the first five months of 2010, $2.6 billion went to 1.7 million taxpayers for students for whom the IRS lacked documents showing that they attended school.
Another $550 million went to 371,000 taxpayers for students who didn't qualify because they didn't attend school long enough or were graduate students.
Nearly 64,000 taxpayers received $88 million in credits for students who were listed as a dependent or spouse on someone else's tax return.
In addition, 250 prisoners who were in custody for all of 2009 erroneously got $256,000 in credits.
* JUST ANOTHER OBAMA DEBACLE... (*SIGH*)
http://nationaljournal.com/for-1-billion-one-dictator-muammar-el-qaddafi-20111020
Call him the billion-dollar man. One billion for one dictator.
According to the Pentagon, that was the cost to U.S. taxpayers for Muammar el-Qaddafi’s head: $1.1 billion through September, the latest figure just out of the Defense Department.
And that’s just for the Americans.
The final totals will take some time to add up, and still do not include the State Department, CIA, and other agencies involved or other NATO and participating countries. Vice President Joe Biden said that the U.S. "spent $2 billion total..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576641324142710998.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about."
[Yes... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] really said that.
Mr. Reid was trying to defend a new Democratic proposal to spend another $35 billion that the government doesn't have to help states hire teachers and other public workers. (He seems to be under the impression that private job creation is doing well, and that happy days would be here again if we could only gin up more government jobs.)
So let's go to the videotape: According to the White House budget office, the federal executive branch had 1.875 million civilian full-time equivalent employees when the financial crisis hit in 2008. Two years later, that number had risen by 253,000 jobs to 2.128 million, a 13.5% increase.
(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)
The budget office...
* AGAIN, FOLKS... THAT THE WHITE HOUSE BUDGET OFFICE...
...predicted earlier this year that the number would fall slightly to 2.101 million in fiscal 2011, which ended on September 30, but then rise again in 2012 to 2.116 million. ... There's been no jobs recession in the Beltway.
Mr. Reid's latest stimulus ...goal is to help state and local government workers, especially teachers, most of whom are unionized and pay dues that can finance Democratic Senate campaigns. (The $35 billion would operate as a campaign-finance pass-through account, from Senate Democrats to unions and back to Senate Democrats.)
Mr. Reid's comments yesterday reveal that he and his fellow Democrats inhabit an economic universe in which government is the main engine of job creation. That's how you get a jobs crisis.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576643152017035800.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Here's a puzzle: Try to figure out what we're describing.
It costs a lot of money, so much that most people have to go into debt to buy it. It has considerable intrinsic value, but it is also understood to be an investment. And it is a status symbol--indeed, almost a necessary condition for achieving middle-class status.
Its acquisition by as wide a swath of the population is widely seen as a social good. Thus the government heavily subsidizes it through tax incentives and other means. That, however, creates an artificial demand that drives prices up and, in a vicious circle, spurs demands for more subsidies. Efforts to make it more easily acquired for minorities, who by objective standards tend to be less qualified, compound the problem.
In the current economy, it has turned out to be considerably less valuable than promised. As a result, many Americans are under water, with debts that they will not be able to pay off easily.
What is it?
* I KNOW! I KNOW! (*JUMPING UP AND DOWN WHILE WAVING MY HAND IN THE AIR*) IT'S A COLLEGE EDUCATION...!!!
We're thinking of a college education.
* I KNEW IT...!!! I WAS RIGHT...!!!
"The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year," USA Today reports.
Growing up, [young Americans are] told they need a college education as a ticket to a productive life.
Now they find themselves deeply in debt, their employment prospects limited in the Obama economy. So they're lashing out at the banks that hold their debt and at the corporations that have made a college degree into a license to hunt for a job.
Their anger is...misplaced.
The banks were merely doing what banks do; if they had refused to make student loans, these youngsters would have been just as upset.
As for the corporations, the reason they demand college degrees...is that is that the government forbids them to screen applicants directly for basic intelligence under a doctrine of antidiscrimination law known as "disparate impact" that the U.S. Supreme Court established in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
But why [you might ask] are employers able to get away with requiring a degree without running afoul of Griggs?
Because colleges and universities - especially elite ones - go out of their way to discriminate in favor of minorities.
By admitting blacks and Hispanics with much lower SAT scores than their white and Asian classmates, purportedly in order to promote "diversity," these institutions launder the exam of its disparity. Thus the higher-education industry and corporate employers have formed a symbiotic relationship in which the former profits by acting as the latter's gatekeeper and shield against civil-rights lawsuits.
Little wonder that in 2003, when the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of discriminatory admissions policies at the University of Michigan, 65 Fortune 500 companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging that they be upheld.
Now of course the kids at Occupy Wall Street don't know any of this. They have received four-plus years of "education" from mostly left-wing professors who owe their sinecures to this arrangement and who are happy, for reasons of both ideology and self-interest, to vilify the capitalist system they feed off.
If these young people ever figure out the real reasons they're so deeply in debt, maybe they'll "occupy" Columbia and NYU rather than Wall Street.
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