Monday, August 13, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, August 13, 2012



Folks... on a serious note... I really do hope you're availing yourselves of all my labors here at Usually Right.

Bottom line... yes... I do this for me... I do this to create a "journal" of sorts tracking the decline and fall of the once greatest nation on earth.

Can disaster be avoided? Doubtful. Possible... but doubtful.

Perhaps it shouldn't matter to me whether others "get it" or not... (*SIGH*)... but it does.

I so wish at times that I received more feedback. On the other hand, what would it matter? Yes... I'm always ready, willing, and able to be introduced to new data and analysis... I'm always opened to having my mind changed... but the reality is that in most cases I'm just as familiar with "the other side's" arguments as I am with my own and therefore there's little "new" to be shared with me.

Still... at the very least... I'd love to be able to believe that the average Democrat... the average self-described "liberal"... at least bothered to independently examine the facts or at least try to follow the facts and analysis provided here on a daily basis.

Remember ol' bullet-head Carville's "It's the economy, stupid!"?

Well... to me... "It's the ignorance, stupid!"

How anyone can support Obama and the Left... let alone forty-something-percent of the population... it's just beyond me.

18 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://atr.rollcall.com/michigan-pete-hoekstra-not-a-fan-of-17th-amendment/

If it were up to former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), he might envision a different path to the Senate than challenging Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) this November.

The newly minted Republican nominee has said repeatedly he supports repealing the 17th amendment, which allows the direct election of Senators, according to interviews he gave in the last year.

* AND SO DO I...!!!

Hoekstra replied, “I think that would be a positive thing,” when questioned about the repealing the 17th amendment after a Jan. 28 debate at University of Michigan-Dearborn. Without the 17th amendment, the selection of Senators would fall to state legislatures, as originally conceived in the Constitution.

* AND THUS INSTEAD OF 100 SENATORS REPRESENTING THEMSELVES... THEY'D BE REPRESENTING THEIR STATES... THUS WAS THE FOUNDERS VISION!

Democrats point to statements like these as evidence of Republican candidates moving far to the right in a primary, staking positions less palatable for a general election audience. For example, Democrats criticized the new GOP Senate nominee in Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin, for saying in May that he favors repealing the 17th Amendment.

* BECAUSE DEMOCRATS BY AND LARGE FAVOR A CENTRAL POWER EUROPEAN MODEL VS. RETURNING TO OUR NATION'S CONSTITUTIONAL HERITAGE.

In any case, Hoekstra faces an uphill climb to defeat Stabenow: Roll Call rates this race as Likely Democratic.

Hoekstra explained his rationale for repeal as a states rights issues — a common conservative argument to eliminate the 17th Amendment:

“Yeah, because what happens now is that a lot of the stuff where the federal government has assumed power, legislatures are absolutely pissed!” Hoekstra said after the Union Conservatives Debate in January. “Y’know, so, if a Senator had gone and voted for No Child Left Behind, the legislature would’ve said, ‘Hey man, you ain’t going back!’ In terms of getting back to Constitutional roots, absolutely. It’s one of the unintended consequences of making them popularly elected. Yeah, I think it’d be a good thing.”

Hoekstra gave a similar answer last November

“The direct election of U.S. Senators made the U.S. Senate act and behave like the House of Representatives,” Hoekstra told Clarkcast. “The end result has led to an erosion of states’ rights.”

* YES!

A Democratic operative supplied Roll Call with the recordings of Hoekstra.

* MY THANKS TO THAT DEM OPERATIVE! NOW I LIKE HOEKSTRA EVEN MORE!

The Senate hopeful’s campaign responded by saying this issue will “distract” from more important ones.

* BAD MOVE.

“It sounds like Democrats continue to try to distract from the real issue of the economy,” Hoekstra spokesman Greg VanWoerkom said. “When Pete Hoekstra enters the Senate, his agenda will be passing solutions that will create jobs.”

Stabenow supports keeping the 17th amendment in place, her spokesman confirmed.

William R. Barker said...

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/13/13250065-in-iowa-obama-to-announce-measures-to-soothe-drought-pain?lite

President Barack Obama will announce on Monday that the Department of Agriculture intends to buy up to $170 million of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to help support farmers suffering from the drought, a White House official said.

* WTF...?!?! WTF...?!?! WTF...?!?! BY WHOSE... BY WHAT... AUTHORITY...?!?! DID CONGRESS GIVE THE PRESIDENT THIS AUTHORITY...???

The food purchases will go toward "food nutrition assistance" programs, like food banks.

* FOLKS... THIS IS ON TOP OF... IN ADDITON TO... DOUBLING (OR MORE!) OF THE FOOD STAMP ROLLS UNDER THIS PRESIDENT!

During a visit to Iowa, a political swing state that the Democrat hopes to win in the Nov. 6 election, Obama will press Congress to pass a farm bill with short-term relief measures for the ranchers and farmers hurt by the drought.

* NO! NO MORE BAILOUTS!

The president will also direct the Department of Defense to "encourage" its vendors to speed up purchases of lamb, pork and beef and freeze it for later use.

* AT WHAT COST...?!?! DO WE HAVE THE FREEZER SPACE? WHAT OF THE ELECTRICY COSTS...?!?!

"This is a win-win. Farmers and ranchers will have an opportunity to sell more of their products at this critical time and taxpayers will get a better price on food that would have been purchased later," the official said.

* WHAT IS THIS BOZO BABBLING ABOUT...?!?! HOW DOES THIS HELP ME...? HOW DOES THIS HELP YOU...? HOW DOES THIS LOWER MY GROCERY BILLS AT SHOPRITE, STOP & SHOP, WALMART, PRICE CHOPPER... ETC.?! IT DOESN'T! THIS IS BULLSHIT! IT'S SIMPLY MORE DEFICIT SPENDING!

Last week the governors of two poultry-growing states, Maryland and Delaware, asked the Obama administration for relief from the requirement to use corn ethanol in gasoline, saying corn is needed to feed livestock.

* AND THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE! (LET'S SEE IF OBAMA DOES IT. I'M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH.)

William R. Barker said...

http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2003&Itemid=69

* BY THE ALWAYS HONORABLE RON PAUL (R-TX)

I recently held a hearing in my congressional subcommittee on the subject of competing currencies. This is an issue of enormous importance, but unfortunately few Americans understand how the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department impose a strict monopoly on money in America.

This monopoly is maintained using federal counterfeiting laws, which is a bit of a stretch. If any organization is guilty of counterfeiting dollars, it is the Federal Reserve. But those who dare to challenge federal legal tender laws by circulating competing currencies - at least physical currencies - risk going to prison.

Like all government created monopolies, the federal monopoly on money results in substandard product in the form of our ever-depreciating dollars.

Yet governments have always sought to monopolize the issuance of money, either directly or through the creation of central banks. The expanding role of the Federal Reserve in the 20th century enabled our federal government to grow wildly larger than would have been possible otherwise. Our Fed, like all central banks, encourages deficits by effectively monetizing Treasury debt. But the price we pay is the terrible and ongoing debasement of our money.

Allowing individuals and business to use alternate currencies, especially currencies backed by gold and silver, would expose the whole rotten system because the marketplace would prefer such alternate currencies unless and until the Fed suddenly imposed radical discipline on its dollar inflation.

(*NOD*)

Sadly, Americans are far less free than many others around the world when it comes to protecting themselves against the rapidly depreciating US dollar. Mexican workers can set up accounts denominated in ounces of silver and take tax-free delivery of that silver whenever they want. In Singapore and other Asian countries, individuals can set up bank accounts denominated in gold and silver. Debit cards can be linked to gold and silver accounts so that customers can use gold and silver to make point of sale transactions, a service which is only available to non-Americans.

The obvious solution is to legalize monetary freedom and allow the circulation of parallel and competing currencies. There is no reason why Americans should not be able to transact, save, and invest using the currency of their choosing. [We] should be free to use gold, silver, or other currencies with no legal restrictions or punitive taxation standing in the way.

After all, if our monetary system is fundamentally sound - and the Federal Reserve indeed stabilizes the dollar as its apologists claim - then why fear competition?

Why do we accept that centralized, monopoly control over our money is compatible with a supposedly free-market economy?

In a free market, the government’s fiat dollar should compete with alternate currencies for the benefit of American consumers, savers, and investors.

As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, sound money is an instrument that protects our civil liberties against despotic government. Our current monetary system is indeed despotic, and the surest way to correct things simply is to legalize competing currencies.

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Security-Breach-JFK-Jetski-Jamaica-Bay-Airline-165959376.html

A jet-skier who became stranded in Jamaica Bay easily breached JFK's security system by walking undetected through two runways and into a terminal.

Daniel Castillo of Queens swam to shore and then walked past motion sensors and closed-circuit cameras of the airport's state-of-the art Perimeter Intrusion Detection System.

The $100 million system is meant to safeguard against terrorists.

* OH, WELL... (*SHRUG*)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is investigating.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* INVESTIGATING ON OVER-TIME, NO DOUBT!

The agency says it has increased patrols on the ground and in the water...

* BUT... BUT... BUT... THE $100 MILLION STATE-OF-THE-ART PERIMETER INSTRUSION SYSTEM...

(*HEADACHE*)

"We have called for an expedited review of the incident and a complete investigation to determine how Raytheon's perimeter intrusion detection system-which exceeds federal requirements-could be improved," the Port Authority said in a statement.

* "INCOMPETENCE" - THE USUAL FEDERAL STANDARD.

(*SHRUG*)

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP...

William R. Barker said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/google-said-to-cut-about-4-000-employees-in-its-motorola-unit.html

Google Inc. will cut about 4,000 jobs at its Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. unit, or 20% of the staff at the company it bought for about $12.5 billion.

* AH, YES... THE "OBAMA RECOVERY" CONTINUES APACE!

* HEY... ISN'T GOOGLE A MAJOR DEMOCRATIC PARTY/OBAMA CAMPAIGN DONOR...???

(*SMIRK*)

Two-thirds of the reductions will be outside the U.S., the Mountain View, California-based company said in a regulatory filing today.

* WELL... THAT'S RELATIVELY GOOD... HOWEVER... THIS MEANS ONE-THIRD OF LAY-OFFS WILL BE CANNED AMERICAN WORKERS RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA.

Shares of Google rose 1.1% to $649 at 9:31 a.m. in New York.

* MUST HAVE BEEN JUST THOSE WRASCALLY WREPUBLICANS SEEING THE NEWS AS "GOOD NEWS."

(*SNICKER*)

William R. Barker said...

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/13/video-romney-ryan-play-offense-on-medicare-in-60-minutes-appearance/

According to the ever-accurate E-Mail Outrage Sensor, CBS edited this clip when the Romney/Ryan interview went to air...

* THE CLIP CAN BE FOUND WITH THE STORY.

[I]f it’s true that the show didn’t use the last part of the clip, maybe they were saving it for the network news tonight, or for their morning show today?

Romney answered critics who say Ryan’s Medicare plan will hurt the ticket’s chances, especially in Florida.

“There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare,” Romney said.

“What Paul Ryan and I have talked about is saving Medicare, is providing people greater choice in Medicare, making sure it’s there for current seniors. No changes, by the way, for current seniors, or those nearing retirement. But looking for young people down the road and saying, “We’re going to give you a bigger choice.” In America, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. That’s how we make Medicare work down the road.”

*** This is the part that readers claim was edited out of the broadcast, which if true would be journalistic malpractice:

* THE ABOVE IS HOT AIR'S LINE, NOT, MINE... JUST WANNA MAKE THAT CLEAR. (OF COURSE I DO AGREE 100%!)

Ryan added, “My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida. Our point is we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they’ve organized their retirements around. In order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger. And we think these reforms are good reforms. That have bipartisan origins. They started from the Clinton commission in the late ’90s.”

Ryan’s plan doesn’t affect those already eligible for Medicare. In fact, one of the conservative criticisms of the plan was that he didn’t give current Medicare recipients the option to choose a private-insurance plan, as younger Americans will get once they become eligible.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

That’s a pretty newsworthy detail, no?

* YEP!

The Ryan budget proposes the partial privatization of Medicare by turning it into a premium-support system within a federal exchange, where insurance companies compete for business while meeting coverage requirements. That’s really no different than Medicare Advantage, which puts market power into cost control and gets the government out of paying providers over a period of several years. It’s not a perfect solution, as it maintains the third-party-payer system that interferes with pricing signals, which is the main problem driving the cost spiral. (However, it’s as close as we can get to a good political solution, since there is absolutely no support for dismantling Medicare entirely, and it at least lessens the problems of price-signal opacity.)

(*NOD*)

This demonstrates the advantage that Romney gets in picking Ryan as his running mate. Democrats would have hung the Ryan plan around his neck anyway. Now Ryan himself gets to answer those attacks on the biggest stage, and the more people hear what Ryan actually proposes, the more apt they are to like it.

*** Update: The CBS broadcast transcript shows pretty clearly that none of this actually aired on 60 Minutes last night. The E-Mail Outrage Meter got this one right.

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/7/the-civil-war-of-2016/

Imagine Tea Party "extremists" seizing control of a South Carolina town and the Army being sent in to crush the rebellion.

This farcical vision is now part of the discussion in professional military circles.

At issue is an article in the respected Small Wars Journal titled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future.”

It was written by retired Army Col. Kevin Benson of the Army's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Jennifer Weber, a Civil War expert at the University of Kansas.

It posits an “extremist militia motivated by the goals of the ‘tea party’ movement” seizing control of Darlington, S.C., in 2016, “occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council and placing the mayor under house arrest.” The rebels set up checkpoints on Interstate 95 and Interstate 20 looking for illegal aliens. It’s a cartoonish and needlessly provocative scenario.

* SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW...?

The article is a choppy patchwork of doctrinal jargon and liberal nightmare.

The authors make a quasi-legal case for military action and then apply the Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 to the situation.

They write bloodlessly that “once it is put into play, Americans will expect the military to execute without pause and as professionally as if it were acting overseas.” They claim that “the Army cannot disappoint the American people, especially in such a moment,” not pausing to consider that using such efficient, deadly force against U.S. citizens would create a monumental political backlash and severely erode government legitimacy.

The vision is hard to take seriously.

As retired Army Brig. Gen. Russell D. Howard, a former professor at West Point, observed earlier in his career, “I am a colonel, colonels write a lot of crazy stuff, but no one listens to colonels, so I don’t see the problem.”

Twenty years ago, then-Air Force Lt. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. created a stir with an article in Parameters titled “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” It carried a disclaimer that the coup scenario was “purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction.”

The scenario presented in Small Wars Journal isn’t a literary device but an operational lay-down intended to present the rationale and mechanisms for Americans to fight Americans.

Col. Benson and Ms. Weber contend, “Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil.”

This is a dark, pessimistic and wrongheaded view of what military leaders should spend their time studying.

A professor at the Joint Forces Staff College was relieved of duty in June for uttering the "heresy" that the United States is at war with Islam. The Obama administration contended the professor had to be relieved because what he was teaching was not U.S. policy. Because there is no disclaimer attached to the Small Wars piece, it is fair to ask, at least in Col. Benson’s case, whether his views reflect official policy regarding the use of U.S. military force against American citizens.

UPDATE: The standard Defense Department disclaimer was added to the article after The Washington Times drew attention to the omission.

William R. Barker said...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/court-defies-congress-heads-to-hawaiian-junket/article/2504531#.UCkz0aCQPHs

This weekend, judges, lawyers and staff of the country's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will convene in Maui, Hawaii, for a government-funded conference that they refused to cancel despite pressure from Republican lawmakers who balked at the junket's $1 million price tag.

* WHICH REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS?

Two Supreme Court Justices, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy, will attend the three-day event and are scheduled to speak briefly on the conference's final day. Their mere presence will add tens of thousands of dollars to the conference's security costs, law enforcement sources told The Washington Examiner.

* THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES ATTENDING THE MEETING AND SPEAKING... BUT THE MEETING SHOULD HAVE BEEN HELD AT A LOW-COST LOCATION WITHIN THE 9TH CIRCUIT.

Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski recently told Congress it was too late to cancel the event, which was booked two years in advance. Senate aides dispute that claim. After combing through the contract, the aides determined that the court could cancel the event by paying a penalty fee that would save most of the taxpayers' money.

* SO KOZINSKI LIED. (*SHRUG*) RIGHT? HE... JUST... LIED.

"In hindsight, had we foreseen the nation's current fiscal problems, we may have chosen a different site for this year's conference," Kozinski wrote to Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. last week. "But ... canceling contracts at this late date is just not feasible and we remain convinced that the conference will improve the administration of justice within the circuit."

* KOZINSKI SHOULD BE IMPEACHED AND REMOVED FROM OFFICE.

A court official told The Washington Examiner on Thursday that cancellation would have resulted in "enormous penalties."

Grassley and Sessions asked the court to cancel or move the conference nearly three months ago after learning of the event's potential price tag. Contracts provided to senators by the court show that the only nonrefundable fee would have amounted to about $2,500.

* THIS "COURT OFFICIAL" SHOULD BE ARRESTED, TRIED, CONVICTED, AND JAILED. HE (OR SHE) OUTRIGHT LIED TO CONGRESS.

Taxpayer watchdog groups disagree with the court's decision, which comes just weeks after Congress skewered the General Services Administration for handing out $44 million in bonuses to government workers and for holding dozens of often-lavish conferences. "In this financial climate, the Ninth Circuit should have erred on the side of common sense and financial savings, and reconsidered the location and the number of attendees," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight.

(*NOD*)

Senate aides said the court could have at least saved money by booking cheaper rooms at the Hyatt Resorts Hawaii, where some of the reserved ocean-view rooms cost as much as $1,500, a contract shows. The maximum government per diem for judges is $397 a day.

* BUT... BUT... BUT... THEN HOW ARE $1,500 A NIGHT ROOMS BEING RESERVED...?!?! (AND ARE THESE BASTARDS TAKING THEIR WIVES... LOVERS... FAMILY AND FRIENDS?)

"This does not mean the per diem is exceeded, as they are likely part of a larger price agreement," Republican aides noted in reference to the high-priced rooms. "But it does indicate a lower average room cost for the taxpayer could be achieved at a less posh destination."

* SO THEY'RE SCAMMING US!

While the conference officially starts Monday, rooms were beginning made available to conference attendees as early as Friday, according to the contract. A golf tournament is scheduled for the weekend before the conference begins.

The conference includes a list of sidelights, including yoga, Zumba dancing and surfing lessons, which court officials say are being underwritten by private funds.

* BAR ASSOCIATIONS. LAW FIRMS. DISGUSTING.

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/08/13/president_obama_and_the_myth_about_45_million_new_jobs_99816.html

Has the U.S. job market been improving during the recovery?

The Obama administration likes to point to the "22 months of consecutive job growth."

The "recovery" itself supposedly started in July 2009.

Quite frequently, the Administration has presented charts like the following, with the impressive long string of bars showing positive job growth.

* TO SEE THE CHARTS, FOLLOW THE ABOVE-PROVIDED LINK TO THE FULL ARTICLE.

[Partisan Democrat charts deliberately fail to note - and thus adjust for the fact] that there are now about 8 million more working age Americans than when Obama became president.

With a growing population, more jobs were needed just to keep the economy standing in place.

Since the recovery started in July 2009, the working age population has grown by 213,000 people on average each month. Normally about 60% of the working age population is working. Thus, it would have been necessary to add about 128,000 jobs each month just to keep the share of the working age population employed from falling.

That means that a minimum of a little over 4.7 million jobs had to be created during the recovery just to keep us treading water.

That growth wouldn't have done anything to make up for the huge job losses that we had suffered up to that point. In fact, only 2.7 million jobs have been added over that time period - 2 million jobs short of what we needed just to keep from falling further behind.

* FOLKS... THIS AIN'T ROCKET SCIENCE!

Understanding these monthly numbers helps provide some perspective to Obama's claims when the latest unemployment numbers were released: "That means that we've now created 4.5 million new jobs over the last 29 months - and 1.1 million new jobs so far this year," the president asserted.

* THE THING IS, THOUGH... (KEEP READING!)

Obama doesn't accept responsibility for job losses up through February 2010, a year after the stimulus was enacted!

[B]ut even then the total number of jobs created is 4 million and the number necessary to keep the share of the working age population employed from falling is 3.8 million.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 1 of 2)

But whatever time period that Obama wants to point to, job growth has been extremely sluggish. 200,000 net jobs over 29 months is hardly something to brag about.

The next figure updates the numbers by accounting for the growth in the working age population (adjusted for the labor force participation rate). The results are depressing, but not too surprising. Instead of 22 straight months of growth, the current string is just one month. During those 22 months of "growth," only 13 months saw enough job growth to keep up with the increase in population, and most of those increases were quite small.

The 163,000 job uptick in July of this year becomes a net gain of only 47,000 once the population gain is accounted for.

* JEEZUS...

The next two figures...

* AGAIN... BEST TO READ THIS NEWSBITE DIRECTLY AND IN FULL VIA THE ABOVE-PROVIDED LINK.

...show how incredibly weak job growth has been for Obama by comparing his recovery to all the other recoveries since 1975.

Because the size of the job market has changed so much over the last 40 years, job growth is shown as a percent of the number of people employed. A couple hundred thousand jobs being created in a month 40 years ago is a lot more impressive when you only had two-thirds as many people working.

(*NOD*)

Under Obama, job growth only made up for population growth for about half the number of months that it did during previous recoveries.

Worse, under Obama, after accounting for population growth, employment shrunk by an average of -0.02% each month. (During previous rebounds, monthly jobs net of population growth grew an average 0.07%.)

Obama told Black Enterprise magazine in an interview published last week: "we are digging ourselves out of a deep hole." But Obama's claim of creating 4.5 million jobs that he reiterated again on Thursday is simply wrong. Not only do we have fewer jobs in the U.S. today than when Obama first became president, nothing has been done for the 8 million additional working age people.

By anyone's definition, this is not a "recovery."

William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/13/dependency-nation/

Dependency is growing, exploding actually, and it’s no accident.

[O]ne of President Barack Obama’s first reelection campaign offerings, “The Life of Julia,” [was] an ode to an imaginary woman who lived her entire life benefiting from government dependency and other people’s money rather than individual initiative and hard work.

Americans, the administration’s case goes, should be able to enjoy housing aid, student loan forgiveness, food stamps, free birth control, government retirement plans, universal internet service, medical insurance, and that’s just for starters.

If all of that doesn’t cut it, there is always welfare for those who need it — and often for those who do not. [And] because dependency not only costs dollars, it changes the political dynamic in an unhealthy way.

In 1962, the first year measured in the Index of Dependence on Government, the percentage of people who did not pay federal income taxes – and were not claimed as a dependent by someone else who did pay federal income taxes – was around 24%.

In 1969, it was 12%.

In 2000, 34%.

In 2009, nearly 50%.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

No, this doesn’t mean that all citizens who don’t pay federal income tax are dependents on the state. Some are at the end of their careers, others are starting out their lives, some are temporarily struggling and others have been thrust into hardships beyond their control. Yet, as fewer people have a vested interest in the cost of government, as the base of taxpayers shrinks and the number of welfare recipients explodes, a day will come when a majority of Americans may value reliance on government over freedom from it.

The percentage of Americans paying the tab for this utopian state of affairs is shrinking and the growing number of people supposedly “benefiting” threaten to change the dynamics of politics and government.

Last week, the Romney campaign finally took the Obama administration to task for weakening requirements in the popular bipartisan 1996 welfare reform, which allows states to waive work requirement as a condition of receiving welfare. In July, using a request by a number of governors seeking more flexibility in welfare management, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius [illegally] issued a memorandum in July "allowing" the work requirements to be stripped.

Realizing the political potency of the issue, the presumptive Republican nominee went on to accuse the president of fostering a “culture of dependency.”

Some Democrats retorted that Romney was peddling the politics of “resentment” and others claimed that the criticism was implicitly racist.

* BUT HERE'S THE TRUTH, FOLKS... (READ ON!)

[W]hen government disincentivizes self-reliance and treats dependency as a right, we’re going to have a problem.

(*NOD*)

According to data from the U.S. Census’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, almost 110 million Americans received some welfare benefit in 2011.

As the Heritage Foundation points out, in 1962, 28.3% of federal spending was spent on dependence programs...

[I]n 2010 that number had reached over 70%.

* JEEZUS...

Robert Rector, an expert on welfare policy at the conservative think tank, writes that a third of Americans partake in some sort of welfare program.

Washington “currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. Roughly a third of the population receives benefits from one or more of these programs. (These figures do not include Social Security or Medicare.) Total welfare spending in 2011 came to $927 billion.”

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Welfare cases peaked in 1995 and then declined dramatically once time limits on benefits and work-for-welfare requirements were enacted by the [Gingrich] reform bill. The percentage of the population receiving welfare per-capita fell nearly one-third by 2007.

* AND NOW OBAMA SEEKS TO REVERSE THIS PROGRESS!

Take the most obvious dependency program: food stamps. The farm bill changed the name of food stamps to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. One in seven Americans use them. And even that isn’t enough for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which recently spent around $3 million on a series of ads imploring people to find out if they too were eligible — rather than spending taxpayer money educating people about the many ways in which they can wean themselves off handouts.

* I BELIEVE SOME OF THESE ADS WERE IN SPANISH!

The fungibility of food stamps — everyone buys food, after all, so the money saved can be spent on anything — makes it tantamount to sending out cash. A lot of cash.

Enrollment has risen from 17.3 million in 2001 to 46.2 million in October 2011.

Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach nearly $800 billion over the next decade.

* JEEZUS... FRIGGIN'... CHRIST!

It seems unlikely that all these folks would be starving without SNAP.

* YOU'D THINK!

The Department of Agriculture is, in essence, a welfare department of its own.

(*NOD*) (*SIGH*)

Food stamps eat up around 80% of the “farm bill.” (Another chunk of the bill is allocated to a government-sponsored welfare program called farm subsidies — but that’s a story for another day.)

In fact, The Department of Agriculture offers a perfect example of how Washington thinks it is mommy and daddy for all Americans. Drought conditions have hurt crops across the country this summer. It’s a serious problem in many areas, no doubt. The Ag Department has now designated half of all counties in the United States — 1,584 in 32 states — as primary disaster areas this growing season.

* THUS OPENING THE SPIGOTS FOR FEDERAL "ASSISTANCE."

Obviously, Romney cannot run on a “don’t help the farmers” platform, but he can point to an array of examples of how dependency is celebrated by the administration.

There is, of course, the massive expansion of Medicaid enacted through ObamaCare, the student loans forgiveness, the administration’s plan to push the Federal Housing Finance Agency into enacting a mortgage principal reduction program which would put taxpayers on the hook for the hundreds of thousands of mortgages they did not buy.

* AND ON AND ON AND ON IT GOES...

(*SIGH*)

* FOLKS... WE'VE GOTTA REVERSE COURSE! WE'VE GOTTA!

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/313819/ryan-plan-compared-status-quo-its-safe-choice

Medicare currently covers roughly 40 million elderly Americans.

Medicare is paid for by taxes on 162 million Americans.

Medicare is broken into different parts that cover different aspects of health care; Medicare Part A covers hospital costs.

As you hear how horrific and radical Ryan is, keep in mind that Medicare Part A started seeing costs outpacing revenue in 2008; the government has made up the shortfall by shifting funds from other accounts. The future is now.

* IN OTHER WORDS, FOLKS... MEDICARE PART A HAS BEEN BROKE SINCE 2008.

From the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees 2012 report: “The long-run actuarial deficits of the Social Security and Medicare programs worsened in 2012… Both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing, and legislative modifications are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.”

* THEN ADD THE FOLLOWING:

The Disability Insurance Trust Fund fails the short-range test because its projected trust fund ratio falls to 83% by the beginning of 2013, followed by exhaustion of assets in 2016.

* FOLKS... HOW MANY NEWSBITES HAVE I CREATED DEALING WITH SWELLING OF THE DISABILITY ROLLS DURING THE AGE OF OBAMA...???

(*SHRUG*)

* FOLKS... THE WHOLE DAMN PONZI SCHEME IS COMING APART AT THE SEAMS!

We all know the basics of our entitlement program problems: Too many collecting benefits, not enough paying in.

So Paul Ryan puts forth a plan to raise the eligibility age by two months per year until it reaches 67. For those 55 and older, no change to the program. For everyone else, you get an $8,000 voucher. If you’re in the wealthiest 8%, you get less; if you’re in the wealthiest 2%, you get much less. Payments would be adjusted for inflation based on the consumer price index.

Is that radical?

Not nearly as radical as doing nothing[!]

President Obama and Joe Biden have had four years to address this issue and they have done what Democrats have always done: act as if the current system is fine and demonize anyone who puts forth a plan.

[Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.] are the antithesis of hope and change.

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313674/milquetoast-mitt-mark-steyn

* BY MARK STEYN

The other day, I passed a Republican-party county office here in my home state, its window attractively emblazoned with placards declaring “Believe in America. Romney 2012” and “New Hampshire Believes. Romney 2012.” There’s not a lot of evidence for the latter proposition, but I’m certainly willing to believe that Romney believes that New Hampshire believes.

* BUT HERE'S THE REALITY...

[A]nother four years of the present statist ascendancy will seal America’s fate.

As noted here previously, the International Monetary Fund predicts that China will become the world’s dominant economic power by 2016. So the guy elected in November will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to know what it feels like to be the global also-ran.

Even this, however, understates the size of catastrophe the United States faces. There are no precedents in history for a great power spending itself to death on the scale America is doing.

Obama has added $5 trillion to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it.

Do you know how difficult that is to do?

Personal debt per citizen is currently about $50,000, but at least you've got a La-Z-Boy recliner and a gas-fired barbecue out of it.

Obama has spent America’s future, and left no more trace than if he and his high-school “choom gang” had wheeled a barrow of $5-trillion in large notes behind the gym and used them for rolling paper[!]

Right now, combined total debt in the United States is just shy of $700,000 per family.

Add in the so-called “unfunded liabilities” that a normal American business would have to include in its SEC filings but that U.S.-government accounting conveniently absolves itself from, and you’re talking about a debt burden per family of about a million bucks. In other words, look around you: the paved roads, the landscaped shopping mall, the Starbucks and the juice bar and the mountain-bike store . . . There’s nothing holding the joint up.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Hmm. “There’s nothing holding the joint up. Steyn 2012”: How’s that poll with the focus groups? Not exactly “Morning in America,” is it? But what happens when you blithely ignore debt for a few decades? Here’s a headline from the Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” this very week: “More retirees are falling behind on student debt, and Uncle Sam is coming after their benefits.”

Maybe that’s the slogan. “It’s twilight in America: More retirees are falling behind on student debt.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Half the country is entirely unaware of the existential threat Obama-sized government represents, and Mitt seems in no hurry to alert them to what’s at stake, save for occasional warnings that if we’re not careful America will end up like Europe.

(*NOD*)

We should be so lucky[!] The more likely scenario is something closer to the more corrupt and decrepit fiefdoms of Latin America.

This election represents the last exit ramp before the death spiral. (Yes, yes, I know: too long for a campaign button.)

Obama has spent the last four years making things worse. More debt, more dependency, more delusion. For Act Two, he’s now touting the auto bailout as a model for . . . everything!

“I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”

* JEEZUS FRIGGIN' GOD...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

In the last three years, he has “created” 2.6 million new jobs — a number that does not even keep up with the number of (legal) immigrants who arrive each month[!]

Obama does not “create” jobs, he creates disabled people: In the same period as 2.6 million Americans signed on with new employers, 3.1 million signed on at the Social Security Disability Office[!] Obama is the first president in history to create more disabled people than workers[!] He is the biggest creator of disabled people on the planet[!]

[Obama] has disabled more people than the Japanese tsunami. More Americans have been disabled by Obama than have been given cancer by Mitt Romney. “Ask yourself, ‘Are you more disabled now than you were four years ago?’ Obama 2012.” Followed by the wheelchair logo with the Obama “O” where the wheel should be. In the Democrats’ Dependistan, the wheelchair ramp is downhill all the way.

(*CHUCKLE*) (*SNORT*)

I support Romney, and I’m not rattled by a bad week’s polls. But I am bothered that Romney’s insipid message does not rise to the challenge this nation faces. Maybe the milquetoast pantywaist candy-assed soft-focus “Believe in America” shtick will prove sufficient under a relentless barrage of nakedly thuggish attack ads designed to Barry Goldwater the guy. But John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, thinks not: “This is a race he should be able to win,” he wrote, “so if he loses, it won’t be because Obama won it. It will be because he lost it.”

Just so. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The hour is late, and the man needs to get in the game.

William R. Barker said...

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120813/AUTO01/208130392

The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout.

(That's 15% higher than its previous forecast.)

* THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION...? LOW-BALLING LOSSES...? WHO WOULD'VE THUNK IT...?!?!

(*SNICKER*)

In a monthly report sent to Congress on Friday, the Obama administration boosted its forecast of expected losses by more than $3.3 billion to almost $25.1 billion, up from $21.7 billion in the last quarterly update.

(The report may still underestimate the losses. The report covers predicted losses through May 31, when GM's stock price was $22.20 a share. On Monday, GM stock was trading down 6 cents, or 0.2%, to $20.49. At that price, the government would lose another $850 million on its GM bailout.)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has decried the losses on the auto bailout and insisted that forcing GM and Chrysler Group LLC to go through bankruptcy first would have saved taxpayers money.

(Taxpayers incurred a $1.3 billion loss on the $12.5 billion bailout of Chrysler.)

The Obama administration initially estimated it would lose $44 billion on the bailout but reduced the forecast to $30 billion in December 2009.

* LISTEN... FOLKS... BOTTOM LINE...? A COSTLY DISASTER FOR THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER AND THE RULE OF LAW. THE DELPHI EMPLOYEES (NON-UNION WORKERS) GOT SCREWED, AS DID BONDHOLDERS WHOSE LEGAL RIGHTS WERE ILLEGALLY STRIPPED FROM THEM.

* I DON'T KNOW IF ANY OF THESE LOSS NUMBERS BEING TOSSED AROUND INCLUDE THE TAX FORGIVENESS GM WAS GIVEN! (THREE YEARS WORTH IF MEMORY SERVES!)

William R. Barker said...

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/08/13/detroit-store-tries-to-draw-kids-to-school-with-new-shoes/

Got kicks?

* APPARENTLY "KICKS" REFERS TO SNEAKERS - NIKE SNEAKERS.

Every Detroit student who shows up on the cash-crucial Student Count Day will be able to answer “yes” thanks to a donation from Bob’s Classic Kicks in midtown.

* FIRST OF ALL, WHY IS THERE SUCH A THING AS "STUDENT COUNT DAY?" SECOND... ASSUMING WE GO WITH THE CONCEPT... SHOULDN'T EACH YEARLY "STUDENT COUNT DAY" BE PICKED RANDOMLY SO AS TO AT LEAST TRY AND GET A REASONABLY REFLECTIVE COUNT...???

BCK, 4717 Woodward, made an arrangement with the school district to give away a free pair of black leather Nikes to every student who comes to class on Oct. 3, the day when students are counted and their numbers used as the basis for per-pupil funding from the state and federal government.

* I'M ASSUMING "BCK" IS A SHOE STORE.

The more bodies in class, the more money schools have all year.

* YEAH. GOT THAT. (*SMIRK*) WITH THE OFFICIAL GOAL BEING TO GET AN INFLATED COUNT.

* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

“Well, first off, we decided since we’ve been in the community for eight years, we wanted to give back to the community, so why not do what we do best — which is shoes,” explained Christian Dorsey, manager at BCK.

The school district will hand out vouchers to every child in every grade, which could add up to 14,000 to 17,000 pair of shoes.

* DOES BCK GET TO WRITE OFF THIS "DONATION" ON THEIR TAXES - THUS SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF MAKING UP THE "LOSS" TO OTHER TAXPAYERS?

“We know this is a great cause for the community, it’s something that needs to be done,” Dorsey said, adding he’s not worried about the cost of all those shoes because “it’s about educating our kids.”

* UH-HUH.

Detroit schools have been plagued with failing test scores, jumbled finances, violence and plummeting student population.

* DEMOCRAT RULE, MY FRIENDS; DEMOCRAT RULE...

(*SHRUG*)

The district’s emergency manager Roy Roberts unveiled a plan this spring to eliminate the district’s deficit in five years, reduce crime in the schools, improve test scores and start a new culture of success in the district.

* GOOD LUCK WITH BASING THIS "NEW CULTURE" ON BRIBERY RIGHT OFF THE BAT.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... YA JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!