Double dip anyone?
Thursday, September 22, 2011
It’s time to eschew Peters and Eshoo, two more liberals we can’t afford to fund.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-21/disaster-aid-government-shutdown/50487302/1
"While the government has a responsibility to fund disaster response in places that were devastated by Hurricane Irene or other natural disasters, it is unconscionable to use funds designed to create jobs in manufacturing states to pay for it," Reps. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.
Why are taxpayers on the hook for people who decide to live in hurricane or earthquake zones? Those people should be paying the insurance premium based on their risky lifestyle, not stealing from taxpayers in what amounts to risk subsidies.
Why are taxpayers gouged for “green jobs” that it is abundantly clear are not sustainable, and as demonstrated by our job loss, not even real jobs? The market should make these decisions, and in fact has done so, while the bureaucracy throws money away fighting reality.
It’s time to eschew Peters and Eshoo, two more liberals driving jobs out of America with excessive taxes, driving up our cost of living with subsidies to their voter base, driving up our debt with their tax and spend lunacy.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Obama Losing It: George Washington's Cool With His Tax Hikes
Methinks that Michelle Obama must be lacing the organic vegetables at the White House with some illegal narcotic. Either that or Obama’s smoking addiction goes way beyond cigarettes.How else to explain his attempt to persuade us that he and our first President are like brothers? He’s just a habitual liar, you say? Well, I guess there’s that.
During his televised address in the Rose Garden yesterday, Obama actually justified his blowout government spending palooza by quoting none other than George Washington.
Said the Messiah, “It’s always more popular to promise the moon and leave the bill for after the next election or the election after that. That’s been true since our founding. George Washington grappled with this problem. He said, ‘Towards the payment of debts, there must be revenue, that to have revenue there must be taxes, [and] no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.’ He understood that dealing with the debt is—these are his words—‘always a choice of difficulties.’ ”
For Obama to pull the “Hey, George Washington loved taxes too” card is almost comical. Almost, because there’s really nothing funny about the nation’s President being this unlearned about American history. Clearly Washington and his compatriots understood that taxation was needed to fund programs, but to justify the level of taxation that Obama and his minions advocate today to feed the ever-growing beast that is our federal government falls squarely outside of the structural limits of what was intended.
Don’t believe me? Just read a little something—something called the U.S. Constitution—to see exactly what the government was designed to do. A scandalous loan to Solyndra isn’t an enumerated power, FYI.
While the fact remains that while Americans are growing weary of BHO’s infatuation with green jobs and shovel-ready projects, do they have the stomach for the large-scale cuts that are needed in order to mitigate a national debt exploding past $14 trillion, and actually restore constitutional fidelity to Washington, D.C?
A lot of departments and agencies would have to get axed or severely restructured.
That depends, says freshman Sen. Mike Lee. “I don’t think the public necessarily has an appetite for saying let's slash this department and that one,” he told HUMAN EVENTS. “The American people understand that there are good people in every department of government.”
He went on to say that Americans do understand that the government can’t support every area of life. Something’s gotta give.
“So the question isn’t, ‘Do we want to slash entire departments just for the sake of doing it?’ It’s, ‘What do we need to cut in order protect those things that only the federal government can do?’ ”
Here’s the last installment of our exclusive interview with the Utah senator, where he also gives the skinny on what you can expect in the Senate these next few months.
Gird your loins, people!
In other news, Obama says that his huge tax hike on job producers is basic arithmetic. 'Do the math,' he implored Congress. But can he? How about releasing those college transcripts, champ.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The UN, a waste of 7 Billion per year.
U.N. Reform Advocate Questions What U.S. Is Getting for Its $7B Contribution
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, addresses a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss the U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act. Standing with her is Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.). (Photo courtesy House Foreign Affairs Committee)
As she prepares to mark up her bill in committee, Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) faces mounting opposition from the Obama administration and advocacy groups supportive of deeper U.S. engagement with the U.N.
The U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act (H.R. 2829) also lacks the support of a single House Democrat. The number of co-sponsors has climbed from 57 on Aug. 30 – the day the bill was introduced – to 74 as of Tuesday; all 74 are Republicans.
The bill seeks to change the way the U.N. is funded, allowing the U.S. and other member states to fund only those activities and agencies deemed efficient and in the national interest.
It also contains a raft of provisions targeting areas such as the Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition; the roles played at U.N. agencies by countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia; and linking reforms to support for any new or expanded peacekeeping missions.
Addressing a press conference on Capitol Hill in front of pictures of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shaking hands with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi addressing the world body, Ros-Lehtinen made an appeal to “get back to the founding principles of the U.N.”
“Let’s not make it a staging ground for pariah states,” she said.
Flanked by Republican colleagues, Ros-Lehtinen defended the initiative against administration criticism, including the charge by a senior State Department official last week that it was “backwards.”
“Some call our bill ‘backwards’ but I don’t think it's backwards to demand transparency, accountability, and reform,” she said. “I do think the adjective ‘backwards’ too often applies to what we’re paying for at the U.N.”
American taxpayers provide 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget and 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget, and additional billions of dollars in “voluntary” contributions to miscellaneous U.N. agencies. The total U.S. contribution in fiscal year 2010 was $7.69 billion.
“What did U.S. taxpayers get in return for all of that money?” Ros-Lehtinen asked. “We got a U.N. that is increasingly non-transparent, unaccountable, ineffective, biased against the U.S., Israel, and other free democracies.”
Illegal Amnesty, courtesy Obama.
Gutierrez: 'I Want to Thank' Obama for Bypassing Congress to Cancel Deportation of Illegals
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., left, talks with Rep. Jose Serrano, D-NY, on Capitol
Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code makes it a federal crime to be in the United States illegally. Nevertheless, the Obama administration in August directed federal immigration officials to use "prosecutorial discretion" in deciding which illegal aliens to detain and deport.
“We had a president of the United States that recently was speaking at National Council of La Raza who said during his speech, ‘There are those who simply wish me to bypass Congress when it comes to immigration,’ and many in the audience clapped, saying, ‘Yup, bypass Congress…’” Gutierrez told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference on Monday.
“He (Obama) said, ‘But I can’t bypass Congress,’ and people in the audience said, ‘Yes you can,’ and you want to know something? They were right -- he could and he did, and I want to thank the President of the United States, and I want to thank all of those that work at the White House for issuing new guidance when it comes to deportations,” Gutierrez added.
(Obama in July told the National Council of La Raza that although the idea of bypassing Congress and changing U.S. immigration laws on his own was “very tempting,” his hands were tied because “that is not how our system works.”)
Obama Whitehouse says it’s still not their fault
‘White House spokesman Jay Carney attributed Turner's win in New York's 9th congressional district to local factors that do not apply nationally. "Special elections are often unique, and their outcomes don't tell you very much about future regularly scheduled elections" ‘
Fair enough on one special election, but the liberals have been soundly beaten in how many special elections now? Even the liberal medias polls, which anyone of us can remember repeated instances of being biased 5-10% toward the left as compared to the actual results, show Obama in freefall.
$528M loan to solar company failed, and cost jobs.
Another failed Obama jobs initiative. This one cost the taxpayers $528 million AND 1100 jobs. Oh, and this is yet another Obama screw-up that isn’t Bush’s fault… Bush said no only 6 months earlier. As usual the whole problem is the liberal philosophy of government micromanaging all aspects of the economy. No government ever has done so successfully, and none ever will. Only free markets can succeed.
Obama, worst president since 1920 in NY9.
What, Obama worry? New York House district elects first Republican since 1920
September 14, 2011 | 4:04am
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President Obama is taking his big airplane out of Dodge today, down to North Carolina.
And who can blame him for going the opposite direction from Gotham after this morning's special election results in New York 9?
There, as forecast here last week, a 70-year-old Republican businessman and political novice named Bob Turner whacked veteran Democrat David Weprin, 53-47, in a special election to replace Rep. Anthony "Look at My Junk" Weiner.
This kind of stunning upset in that area of Brooklyn and Queens happens like clockwork every 91 years. Whenever the approval of a disinterested Democratic president hovers in the mid-30s on a stagnant economy and he looks wishy-washy on rigid support for Israel.
Weprin had everything going for him in Archie Bunker's boroughs:
He's an Orthodox Jew in a district that's 40% Jewish running against a Catholic. He's a well-known political name with state legislative experience. He has the backing of big-time Dems including Chuckie Schumer, who used to represent the district and bequeathed it to his aide Weiner. This Obama guy carried the area by 11 points back in 2008.
And Weprin's got a moustache.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, Weprin was off on the national debt by $10 trillion in one interview. But that presidential election win was 1,048 days ago. Obama's much better known now and that seems to work against him.
This White House has had its own agenda all along -- the healthcare heave, financial reforms. While all along polls told the Chicagoans that jobs and the economy are top priority.
If history repeats itself, this Obama crowd as it did after losing the Virginia governor's office and the New Jersey governor's office and Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, will find fault with someone else, likely the candidate.
The wise Marc Ambinder hears it already.
Remember all the White House whispers about lousy campaigner Martha Coakley when she lost to Scott Brown despite (or perhaps because of?) a last-minute campaign day with Obama?
And then there were last November's midterms when voters tossed all those House Pelosi people who obeyed Obama's pleas to pass healthcare.
Those dozens of Democrats going under the bus turned out great for the president, however. With a Republican House the Democratic president has someone else to blame now when his belated jobs bill goes nowhere.
That's what he'll be touting in Raleigh-Durham today, his doomed $447 billion jobs program.
Good thing that Air Force One, like Southwest, doesn't charge for baggage because along on Obama's Southern trip is a new Bloomberg News Poll. It shows, among other gloomy tidings, that 33% approve of his economy job, 39% like his healthcare handling and 30% are pleased with his deficit doings.
Oh, and a majority don't think his new jobs program will get the job done.
Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi!
Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi! There, I said it. To the extent people believe there are trust funds with their names on them, Social Security is absolutely a Ponzi scheme. So is Medicare. People need to hear it.
Many people think that when the government takes payroll tax from their paychecks, it goes to something like a savings account. Seniors who collect Social Security think they're just getting back money that they put into their "account." Or they think it's like an insurance policy -- you win if you live long enough to get more than you paid in. Neither is true. Nothing is invested. The money taken from you was spent by government that year. Right away. There's no trust fund. The plan is unsustainable. Medicare is worse.
Mitt Romney and other Republicans who scoff at Rick Perry shamelessly pander to older voters. They should tell people the truth.
Still, I'm not convinced Perry has more than a sound bite. In his USA Today op-ed this week, the most he says is, "We must consider reforms to make Social Security financially viable." He doesn't say what kind of reforms.
Charles Ponzi promised to make money for investors by taking advantage of price differences in coupons for postage stamps. Trouble is, he paid some early "investors" with money wheedled from later "investors."
What sustains a Ponzi scheme is deception. If people really knew how it worked, they wouldn't sign on.
Social Security and Medicare are different. You could say no to Ponzi. I wouldn't advise saying no to the government. Not if you want to stay out of prison.
Social Security is nothing more than a promise from politicians. The next gang can break the promise.
Twice the government has argued before the Supreme Court that Social Security is not insurance. In 1960, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Arthur Sherwood Flemming submitted a brief to the courts stating: "The contribution exacted under the Social Security plan is a true tax. It is not comparable to a premium promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age."
In a ruling that denied a man's property claim to Social Security benefits, the Supreme Court said, "It is apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments."
So anyone who believes Social Security is an investment plan really has only himself to blame.
If you want evidence, listen to how politicians talk about your Social Security "contributions." They are taxes and nothing more. No one pretends they are premiums. In fact, President Obama and the Republicans want to stimulate the economy by extending a cut in the payroll tax for workers and cutting the employer's share of the tax -- but without reducing Social Security benefits.
Now, I like tax cuts more than the next person, but as Freeman editor Sheldon Richman points out, this one has a complication the politicians don't seem to care about:
"President Obama's jobs program calls for cuts in both sides of the payroll tax. That tax finances Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are already taking in less money than they need to pay retirees. So they will have to cash in more of the Treasury IOUs left behind when previous surpluses were used to finance general expenditures. But the Treasury is also already running a deficit, a trillion dollars-plus. So it will have to borrow more in the capital markets in order to pay back the Social Security and Medicare funds. Unless Obama makes up the lost revenue by changing the tax code. But then money will be withdrawn from the economy in the form of higher taxes so it can be put back into the economy through the payroll-tax cut. Somehow that's supposed to stimulate the economy."
Like all jobs programs, Obama's latest plan is a scam. The economy would create ample opportunities to earn income -- and make it easier for people to look after themselves in retirement -- if the government would just slash spending, taxes, regulation and privilege.
Ponzi scheme or not, we wouldn't need Social Security.
Many people think that when the government takes payroll tax from their paychecks, it goes to something like a savings account. Seniors who collect Social Security think they're just getting back money that they put into their "account." Or they think it's like an insurance policy -- you win if you live long enough to get more than you paid in. Neither is true. Nothing is invested. The money taken from you was spent by government that year. Right away. There's no trust fund. The plan is unsustainable. Medicare is worse.
Mitt Romney and other Republicans who scoff at Rick Perry shamelessly pander to older voters. They should tell people the truth.
Still, I'm not convinced Perry has more than a sound bite. In his USA Today op-ed this week, the most he says is, "We must consider reforms to make Social Security financially viable." He doesn't say what kind of reforms.
Charles Ponzi promised to make money for investors by taking advantage of price differences in coupons for postage stamps. Trouble is, he paid some early "investors" with money wheedled from later "investors."
What sustains a Ponzi scheme is deception. If people really knew how it worked, they wouldn't sign on.
Social Security and Medicare are different. You could say no to Ponzi. I wouldn't advise saying no to the government. Not if you want to stay out of prison.
Social Security is nothing more than a promise from politicians. The next gang can break the promise.
Twice the government has argued before the Supreme Court that Social Security is not insurance. In 1960, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Arthur Sherwood Flemming submitted a brief to the courts stating: "The contribution exacted under the Social Security plan is a true tax. It is not comparable to a premium promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age."
In a ruling that denied a man's property claim to Social Security benefits, the Supreme Court said, "It is apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments."
So anyone who believes Social Security is an investment plan really has only himself to blame.
If you want evidence, listen to how politicians talk about your Social Security "contributions." They are taxes and nothing more. No one pretends they are premiums. In fact, President Obama and the Republicans want to stimulate the economy by extending a cut in the payroll tax for workers and cutting the employer's share of the tax -- but without reducing Social Security benefits.
Now, I like tax cuts more than the next person, but as Freeman editor Sheldon Richman points out, this one has a complication the politicians don't seem to care about:
"President Obama's jobs program calls for cuts in both sides of the payroll tax. That tax finances Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are already taking in less money than they need to pay retirees. So they will have to cash in more of the Treasury IOUs left behind when previous surpluses were used to finance general expenditures. But the Treasury is also already running a deficit, a trillion dollars-plus. So it will have to borrow more in the capital markets in order to pay back the Social Security and Medicare funds. Unless Obama makes up the lost revenue by changing the tax code. But then money will be withdrawn from the economy in the form of higher taxes so it can be put back into the economy through the payroll-tax cut. Somehow that's supposed to stimulate the economy."
Like all jobs programs, Obama's latest plan is a scam. The economy would create ample opportunities to earn income -- and make it easier for people to look after themselves in retirement -- if the government would just slash spending, taxes, regulation and privilege.
Ponzi scheme or not, we wouldn't need Social Security.
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