Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.







A nice graphical representation of what the President has put on the table to avoid the fiscal cliff.

It doesn't appear that someone is dealing in good faith.


Related: Why have conservatives ceded to the left the term "revenue" to mean exclusively "raise taxes"? What about "pro-growth policies" as a means to generate revenue?



So, what should the Republican response be to the President's proposal? Guy Benson thinks the Republicans should embrace the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.

Simpson-Bowles, for all its faults, was conducted in an open and transparent manner and brought disparate political players into a room to forge a serious compromise. It overhauls and streamlines our byzantine tax code, takes some important first steps on entitlements, and reduces and caps federal spending. On substance, I'd wager that it would be considerably better than anything Obama and Boehner might produce after weeks of behind-closed-doors acrimony with the proverbial gun to their heads. Politically, it paints Democrats into a tough corner. Republicans could make a grand show of reluctantly supporting Simpson-Bowles for the betterment of the country. Ideally, the press conference would be led by Paul Ryan, who might explain why he voted against the plan as a commissioner, but is now willing to set aside some of his strong ideological preferences to move the nation forward.

Remember, Simpson-Bowles was the President’s own idea and which had bipartisan support. Thus far, the President has not embraced a single part of the plan. We think it would be a brilliant stroke by the Republicans to put the Democrats back on their heels and have they and the President playing defense.

As Benson stated, Simpson-Bowles has its flaws, but we see it as a giving the Republicans a leg up both tactically and strategically because as it stands now, the Republicans, fair or not, are going to take the hit, P.R.-wise, unless they get the President to take a stand on a commission that he specifically requested and whose recommendations he has since rejected.






Salary.com on the 8 college degrees with the worst return on investments.

Yep, all the usual suspects: sociology, fine arts and nutrition are in the mix.




And Salary.com on the 8 college degrees with the best return on investment.








Atari's "Pong" turned 40 years old this past week.

Here's Buzzfeed's short history of the first video arcade game many of us played.









Warren Buffet has been out again pushing his soak-the-rich tax plan. As you are about to read, raising taxes on the rich isn't so much about improving the economy as it is about improving our... feelings.


From the TODAY Show:

MATT LAUER, TODAY: So bottom line, would raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans have a chilling effect on hiring in this country?

WARREN BUFFETT: No, and I think would have a great effect in terms of the morale of the middle class, who have seen themselves paying high payroll taxes, income taxes. And then they watch guys like me end up paying a rate that's below that, you know, paid by the people in my office.

This is an admission of naked class warfare aggression that, never mind the dismal state of the economy, we'll somehow feel better knowing that the rich are paying more in taxes than they did previously.

It's hard to see someone as independently successful as Buffett become such a hack and such a dishonest one at that. Again, if Buffett paid himself a salary above the $100,000/year he so nobly limits himself, he would land himself in a tax bracket that would make us all feel a whole lot better.








Remember, gang, these are the people that will be in charge of your compliance with ObamaCare:

South Carolina's governor faulted an outdated IRS standard as a contributing factor to a massive data breach that exposed Social Security numbers of 3.8 million taxpayers plus credit card and bank account data. Gov. Nikki Haley's remarks on Tuesday came after a report into the breach revealed that 74.7 GB was stolen from computers belonging to South Carolina's Department of Revenue after an employee fell victim to a phishing email. People who filed tax returns electronically from 1998 on were affected, although most of the data appears to be after 2002, Haley said during a news conference.

It's not just small businesses and restaurants that are doing it but now it appears that colleges are getting in on the act.

From College Insurrection:

Youngstown State University is the second institution to be public about cutting adjuncts’ hours to avoid Affordable Care Act-related costs.

The Ohio university announced its plans in a campuswide memo Thursday, hours after an internal department memo from an English professor warning colleagues about the cuts was leaked to the media.

“A provision under the [Affordable Care Act] requires employers to share in the responsibility of providing health insurance to full-time employees,” the campus memo reads. “Effective this academic year, part-time faculty will not be allowed to teach more than 24 hours over fall, spring and summer.”

Youngstown’s announcement comes just weeks after Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania announced it was preemptively cutting hundreds of adjuncts’ hours to avoid an estimated $6 million in employee health care costs when the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate begins in January 2014.

Curious if the deranged left will now consider boycotting institutes of higher education.






America's trusted highway life line, AAA, not down with ethanol:

The AAA says the Environmental Protection Agency and gasoline retailers should halt the sale of E15, a new ethanol blend that could damage millions of vehicles and void car warranties.

AAA, which issued its warning Friday, says just 12 million of more than 240 million cars, trucks and SUVs now in use have manufacturers' approval for E15. Flex-fuel vehicles, 2012 and newer General Motors vehicles, 2013 Fords and 2001 and later model Porsches are the exceptions, according to AAA, the nation's largest motorist group, with 53.5 million members.

"It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle," AAA President and CEO Robert Darbelnet tells USA TODAY. "Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers."

BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and VW have said their warranties will not cover fuel-related claims caused by E15. Ford, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have said E15 use will void warranties, says Darbelnet, citing potential corrosive damage to fuel lines, gaskets and other engine components

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It's bad for your car, it drives up food prices and its production has a larger carbon footprint than does the extraction, refining and shipment of crude oil. It's the worst alternative energy idea ever created yet it continues because it is a subsidized cash crop in a state that is first up during primary season every 4 years.




OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.

Image of the day

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Team O wanted to make tax-payer funding of Big Bird and Sesame Street a campaign issue. We will continue to grant them their wish.


P.S. Remember, Bert is still evil.



H/T: Instapundit

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Charts of the day

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Alternate headline: Dear, Liza...*


Illustrating the absurdity that Bush was responsible for spending deficits:

And via Hot Air, a look at federal spending per household since 1965 in inflation-adjusted 1965 dollars:


(click to enlarge)

We're constantly being beat over the head, especially at election time that we need to spend more on our schools (we'd be neglecting the children, otherwise), firefighters and infrastructure (bridges!).

OK, sure. We don't want to be the meanies but... what the hell? Where is all that our money going?

A 152% increase in spending for declining classroom performance and an evidently declining national infrastructure?



*Is there a hole in the bucket?

Video clip of the day

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Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and now San Bernardino; California cities that have all filed for bankruptcy.

Reason.com Managing Editor Tim Cavanaugh on Fox Business to discuss California's municipal debt crisis.

(appox. 5 minutes)






CALPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) is heavily vested in the municipal bond market of which there is $167 billiion in obligations. If the CALPERS pension obligations, which are a source of state budgetary woe, are dependent upon municipal bond obligations, you can see where this goes death spiral pretty quickly.

As Cavanaugh says, Governor Jerry Brown has a plan but with all things in this state, seemingly, it lacks any sort of seriousness to attack the root cause of the problem which is completely unsustainable public employee pension obligations.

Goody that we here in San Diego have a front row seat for all of this.

The problem is...

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... we just keep finding more of the stuff

From Zero Hedge:

The oil in the ground will run out some day. But as the discovery of proven reserves continues to significantly outpace the rate of extraction, the claims that we’re facing immediate shortages looks trashy.

Some may try to cast doubt on these figures, saying that BP are counting inaccessible reserves, and that we must accept that while there are huge quantities of shale oil in the ground, the era of cheap and readily accessible oil is over. They might cite the idea that oil prices are much higher than they were ten years ago. Yet this is mostly a monetary phenomenon resulting from excessive money creation beyond the economy’s productive capacity. Priced in gold, oil is still very cheap — almost as cheap as it has ever been:

So no. I’m not lying awake at night worrying about imminent peak oil. There’s plenty of extractable oil, and renewable energy will eventually supplement and replace it. But will politics get in the way of energy extraction? The United States has huge hydrocarbon reserves, yet regulation is preventing drilling and shipment, leaving America dependent on foreign oil. And the oil companies themselves are largely to blame — after Deepwater Horizon, should anyone be surprised that politicians and the public want to strangle the oil industry?

The President calls himself an "all of the above" sort but his actions betray his words. He has committed himself fully to the business of picking winners and losers in his energy policy. An aggressive pursuit of crude and shale oil and natural gas would jump-start and sustain a robust economy that could then, with private capital, fund the fledgling green energy sector instead of throwing tens of billions of dollars at the politically connected and technology that, quite simply, is not yet market-ready.




And somewhat related if we're talking politics: Hey, that speech on the economy on Thursday was a big flopper. How about an extra-constitutional executive order on illegal immigration to distract everybody?

Here's Leslie at Temple of Mut:

Dear Readers: While I usually strive to put some humor into my posts, as it helps sustain our emotional balance during these turbulent times, I find little to joke about today. President Obama, in an exceedingly cynical and politically-motivated move, has forgotten the basic tenets of the US Constitution and legislated by executive order.

Leslie predicts Obama will move on to forgiving student loan debts and underwater mortgages via EO sometime prior to November. Markets would necessarily take a dump but when you are on a re-elect panderfest run like this guy is, anything is possible.

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Enjoy your Father's Day, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow.

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Not that we should be worried or anything

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Some more good news out of the Congressional Budget Office this week. If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, the following should not come as any big surprise. From The Hill:

U.S. debt is on track to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned Tuesday.

The new CBO report states that increased entitlement spending driven by the retirement of the baby boomers and insufficient revenue is making the long-term outlook for the national debt increasingly dire.

Under CBO’s most likely scenario, in which lawmakers extend current tax rates and fail to curb entitlement spending, debt held by the public would reach 109 percent of the economy by 2026, and it would be almost 200 percent of GDP by 2037. 


Many economists have warned that if debt held by the public approaches 100 percent of GDP, it can bring on the kind of fiscal crisis being felt in European countries today, in which governments must suddenly slash spending and laying off workers in the face of rising interest rates caused by spooked investors. 



We're assuming the CBO is using a linear model to predict the revenue captured by letting the Bush-era tax cuts to expire because people will shield their money as they always do when taxes are raised, resulting in less revenue generated than previously assumed. That's just the way things work.

Besides, we believe any additional revenue generated through raising taxes is absolutely small potatoes compared to the massive looming liabilities of our big three four entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicair, Medicaid and ObamaCare.


For a graphical representation of what this looks like, please go to the CBO link, here (difficulties inserting image).





Not pretty, huh? But when we said "good" earlier we meant it in the Chip Diller context. Recall it was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner when being questioned by Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) who said of both his and Ryan's budget proposals

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term (debt) problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours."

In other words...






A complete and abject failure of leadership from this administration in this particular area. We await to see Governor Romney's proposed solution.


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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, columns, articles and blog posts that caught our eye this past week:

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Here's some of that new civility we've been hearing so much about:

Calypso Louie Farrakhan brining it earlier this week at LeMoyne-Owens College in Memphis, TN.



Wonder to whom Louie was referring in that "started off good but got corrupted..." clause at the end of the clip.






Dude...









How do you know when a scandal is potentially hugely damaging to a sitting (Democrat) President? The legacy media virtually ignores it. While everyone is rightly up in arms over the shameless wastefulness of the GSA/Las Vegas dust-up and the sleazy unprofessionalism of the Secret Service hooker-gate down in Columbia, we don't recall anyone dying in those scandals in which there were no direct ties to the administration. We were not aware that lavish conferences in Vegas nor hiring prostitutes in Columbia were official administration policies as was the case in Fast and Furious, the widely successful gun-running scheme that put arms into the hands of drug cartels and which cost the lives of 2 U.S. officials as well as hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans.

One must imagine, then, the administration is actually breathing a sigh of relief seeing GSA and hooker-gate splashed across the front pages of the dead tree media. As if you haven't figured it out by now, this administration has been reduced to governing by distraction. The President admits that the Buffett Rule (which wouldn't even apply to Warren Buffet) to which he is hitching his campaign wagon, won't do a damn thing to lower the debt or deficit (distraction).
He admits his $52 million scheme to crack down on oil speculators won't actually lower the price of gas at the pump and in fact may actually backfire and raise the price of gas as this plan may serve to drive down the number of speculators in the market causing a monopoly effect (counter-effective distraction). And now these two latest non-administration-related distractions. Keep 'em coming says the administration and its water carriers.

And while governance by distraction is the current M.O., B-Daddy reminds us that it is merely a result of a mindset of resentment in the DNA of the Obama administration:

Scratch the surface of leftist complaint and you always seem to find resentment, whether about the general unfairness of society or the indifference to the harm done to the powerless. While unfairness and harm exist, the almost exclusive focus by the left on these perspectives stems from a psychology of resentment and learned powerlessness. Because most Americans are self-reliant and optimistic, the left does not usually win elections. 2008 was an anomaly, because the blatant unfairness of the bailouts and Republican duplicity made it logical for Americans to turn to the Democrats.

Ultimately, I think that Obama has chosen the politics of resentment as the key to electoral success. I may be wrong, but since he has launched attacks on Pau l Ryan and on the rich with the Buffett rule, his poll numbers already seem to be slipping. I believe that it is important to defeat him, but more important to educate Americans on the virtues of our positions.

Please do get to the link as B-Daddy does an excellent job on bridging the gap between the tea party/freedom coalition and liberals on several key policy issues


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So, what has Shane Atwell been up to? Reading. Reading and sharing:

I read Oleg Atbashian's Shakedown Socialism almost two years ago now. I remember it being an enjoyable short read on the evils of communism. I don't remember many details. But one quotation comes back to mind over and over, everytime I hear about the Left's supposed support for due process, or freedom of the press, or closing Guantanimo, or transparency in government (from the bottom of page 8):

In the words of prominent Party theoretician Nikolai Bukharin, "We asked for freedom of the press, thought, and civil liberties in the past because we were in the opposition and needed these liberties to conquer. Now that we have conquered, there is no longer any need for such civil liberties."

Shane's right, of course. There does indeed seem to be a certain convenience if not outright hypocrisy when it comes to liberalism circa 2010-2012 vs. liberalism circa 2005 with respect to trashing the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution Act when it came to our involvement in Libya and the indefinite detainment and wacking of U.S. citizens both here and abroad without traditionally recognized due process. Far less egregious transgressions had the left in full-blown garment-rending mode back when dissent was patriotic and it wasn't their guy calling the shots.






As seen on Facebook:

Fifteen years on and dude scores another internet/urban myth meme. Not too shabby.






drozz is naming names and compiling lists. Drop by and leave suggestions on how best to chronicle those who voted for ObamaCare as we ramp up to the elections in November. It's not just the Oval Office that needs turnover.


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Quick... before the news cycle expires on this: Sir Charles has a round-up of all media/blogosphere-related Obama ate dog goodies.




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Charles Krauthammer on the fall of NASA:

Is there a better symbol of willed American decline? The pity is not Discovery's retirement — beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate — but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on — the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon — was suddenly canceled in 2010. And with that, control of manned spaceflight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China.

We're torn on this one. Litterally running a shuttle service is pretty mundane stuff, but space exploration is inherently cool and was, at one time, the exclusive domain of this country, exemplifying our nation's exceptionalism. If there was one thing that could bring this country together, it was NASA and it's manned space flights. Now, we're broke... beyond broke and sadder perhaps than even that is the fact that effectively shutting down NASA is a result of the deficits in resolve, imagination and leadership of our political class.






So does this mean we are finally going to get to see Zeppelin live?


Dead for 16 years, Tupac... or rather a hologram of Tupac makes an appearance with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre last weekend at the Coachella Music Festival (extreme language warning):









Chapman University demographer, Joel Kotkin on the California exodus:

California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.

Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."

There is an old, ribald saying regarding messing up a really, really good dream that would certainly apply here. Seriously, it would appear to take incompetence and not only incompetence but the Herculean effort of, day after day and year after year of actively applying that incompetence in order to screw up such a good thing as California. By damn, it looks like 35-40 years after it started, the job is nearly complete.


OK, gang. That's it for today. We will see you all tomorrow.

Quote of the campaign season

. Back in February, Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner was responding to questions raised by House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, and specifically what the broadly outlined Obama budget made public via an Obama speech was going to do with respect to our long-term debt problem. Geithner's response:

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours (Ryan's budget proposal.)”

Everything you need to know about the shameless cynicism, small-mindedness and lack of seriousness possessed by this administration is summed up in that quote. But you better get used to it because that quote will represent the emotional and intellectual rigor behind everything else you will hear from now until November.

High unemployment? We're going to tax the rich through the Buffet Rule. High gas prices? We're going to investigate oil market speculators or something. Unsustainable long-term debt? You suck.

If you haven't got the idea, you'll get it soon enough. James Pethokoukis, writing for the Enterprise Blog summarizes government by gimmick: Obama's 7 most meaningless policy gestures, here. Bonus quote: A couple of months after the aforementioned speech that unveiled the Obama budget, at a House Budget Committee hearing, Chairman Paul Ryan and Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf had this exchange:

Ryan: “We got your re-analysis of the President’s budget. I won’t go back into that. But the President gave a speech on April 13th where he outlined a new budget framework that claims $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years. Have you estimated the budget impact of this framework?”

Elmendorf: “No, Mr. Chairman. We don’t estimate speeches. We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.”

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Law designed to lower health care costs and provide coverage to more people not doing a whole lot of either

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It turns out one of the things we are finding out about ObamaCare once we passed it is that not only is it turning out to cost a heck of a lot more than advertised 2-3 years ago, many of its new intended beneficiaries will be getting stiffed because of existing laws.

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. His analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law, which calls for an expensive expansion of coverage for the uninsured beginning in 2014, will nonetheless reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers.

The 2010 law does generate both savings and revenue. But much of that money will flow into the Medicare hospitalization trust fund — and, under law, the money must be used to pay years of additional benefits to those who are already insured. That means those savings would not be available to pay for expanding coverage for the uninsured.

(italics, ours)

Bummer, dude.

All those young, healthy millenials who were forced to sign up for ObamaCare as a means to help finance ObamaCare, thinking they will reap the benefits of ObamaCare will be getting squeezed by their Boomer grandparents. How do you say, "priceless"?

“Does the health-care act worsen the deficit? The answer, I think, is clearly that it does,” Blahous, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said in an interview. “If one asserts that this law extends the solvency of Medicare, then one is affirming that this law adds to the deficit. Because the expansion of the Medicare trust fund and the creation of the new subsidies together create more spending than existed under prior law.”

It certainly doesn't take an Ivy League economy degree to surmise that an expansion of benefits as contained within ObamaCare is going to cost quite a bit of money and may very well not be deficit-neutral.

Of course, those Ivy League economists retort:

Administration officials dismissed the study, arguing that it departs from bipartisan budget rules used to measure every major deficit-reduction effort for the past four decades (ed. note: and how has that been working out?) — including the blueprint offered last month by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

“Opponents of reform are using ‘new math’ while they attempt to refight the political battles of the past,” a White House budget official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report was not publicly available. “The fact of the matter is, the Congressional Budget Office and independent experts concluded that the health-reform law will reduce the deficit. That was true the day the bill was signed into law, and it’s true today.”

The CBO has done nothing of the sort and, in fact, projected ObamaCare to cost nearly twice as much over the next ten years than their 10-year projection just two years ago.



But let's talk some "double-counting", shall we?

Blahous acknowledged that his analysis departs from budget conventions, which, he said, make sense for the most part. He said that in this case, however, those rules do not fully illuminate the financial impact of the health-care law, since they permit what conservative critics have dubbed a “double counting” of proposed Medicare savings.

Medicare is financed in part through a trust fund that receives revenue from payroll taxes. Before Obama’s health-care act passed, the trust fund was projected to be drained by 2017 (later updated to 2016). Absent the health-care law, Blahous writes, Medicare would have been forced to enact a sharp reduction in benefit payments in the middle of this decade, or “other Medicare savings would have had to be found.”

Enter the health-care law, which provides about $575 billion in Medicare savings — enough to automatically extend the life of the trust fund through 2029, according to estimates at the time, and avoid a sharp cut in benefits.

But in cost estimates by the nonpartisan CBO, those savings also offset a dramatic expansion of Medicaid under the law, as well as new subsidies for uninsured people to purchase coverage.

Very simply, you cannot take additional revenue and count it equally towards two separate entities... even three but we now know those newly-insured millenials are screwed.


That this double-counting has, for years, been recognized as a standard, bi-partisan accounting practice in D.C. speaks volumes.



Still two years away from full enactment and this thing is looking like a fiscal train wreck of epic proportions.

California's death spiral...

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... by the numbers:




254: the number of companies that moved out of state last year; five times as many that moved out in 2009.


120,000: the number of jobs lost last year; Texas gained 130,000.


3,600: the number of people that will be employed at Apple's next expansion in Austin, Texas. Apple, you will recall, was founded in California.


12: the percentage Americans living in California.

34: the percentage of Americans on welfare living in California.



9 billion: the amount of dollars Governor Brown expects to generate in revenue from his proposed tax plan (that will be voted on in November) in the first year.

2.2 billion: the actual amount of dollars in revenue that the Legislative Analyst's Office expects the state to realize from the Governor's proposed taxes.


9.2 billion: the deficit this year as estimated by the State Controller's Office.




Here's Brown's ad announcing his candidacy for governor back in 2009:





The numbers demonstrate things have got progressively worse since then.

The man has exhibited zero leadership in forging any headway with respect to our budget deficits, instead resorting to the gimmickry of hoped-for "unexpected revenue" windfalls that never materialize in order to balance the budget.

He has zero interest in standing up to the public employee unions that are saddling the state with unsustainable pension obligations and he has allowed himself to be painted into a corner by Big Labor, the green lobby, Big Construction, Democratic mayoral machine politics and the Obama administration over the high-speed choo-choo project that is estimated to cost as much as $120 billion when all is said and done.

Jerry Brown claimed he was just "too old" to give a damn any longer in his pitch to solve the problems of California. Turns out, even old age can't wring out deeply engrained statist hackery.


That man in the ad requesting "courage" is nowhere to be found these days.

Video clip of the day

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Alternate headline: Why we are looking forward to 2016... or 2020*


Paul Ryan, one of the few people in Washington D.C. that is serious about the budget, national debt and our unsustainable legacy entitlement programs.





We'll have more on this later.



* Ryan, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie are among those on the GOP's deep and quality bench team and any of whom, unlike this particular presidential cycle, will garner enthusiastic support from us should they decide to throw their hats in the ring.

The economic recovery by the numbers

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With a lapdog media panting over the prospects of the unemployment number holding steady at 8.3%, it begs to be revealed what some of the internal numbers are showing.


By the numbers:


49: the number of months since the country hit peak employment in January of 2008 surpassing the previous record of 47 months following the post-9/11 recession of 2001.


37: the consecutive number of months the unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent. The longest streak in the post-WWII era.


63.9: the labor force participation rate in February - a near-historic low. Individuals who have stopped looking for work do not count toward the unemployment rate, masking the true extent of the jobs crisis.


5.4 million: the number of individuals looking for work for more than six months, double the amount from when the President took office in 2009.


8 million: the number of Americans working part-time despite wishing to work full-time.


19.1: the total underemployment rate in which Gallup combines the unemployment with underemployment and which has been steadily rising over the last several months.


14.1: the black unemployment rate which rose half a percentage point in February.


6.7 trillion: the amount of dollars the President has requested in additional deficit spending over the next decade.


229 billion: the amount of dollars to which the CBO says will be added to the deficit in February marking the 41st consecutive month the federal government has run a budget deficit. The previous longest streak was 11 months.


$45,000: the per capita debt in this country which is higher than in many of Europe's most financially distressed countries.


$1.5 million: the amount of money an American born today will be required to pay off our current national debt which is $16 trillion and growing.



For a President that employs Keynesian gimmickry to "jumpstart" the economy, that adds unneeded complexity and additional regulatory burdens to the healthcare sector, that is attempting via bureaucratic fiat to regulate that which we exhale every second of our lives, that sinks billions and billions of dollars into a cronyistic green energy loan program and who sics his Labor Bureau on an airline company who is attempting to start up a brand new manufacturing facility, just to name a few examples... is it any small wonder then that despite the terrific news that the unemployment rate did not actually go up last month, that the long-term and behind-the-scenes numbers continue to remain absolutely dreadful?

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Video clip of the day

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It's almost becoming un-nerving: another conservative-themed video with higher-than-questionable production values?


From the office of Paul Ryan (R-Wisky) from whom we look forward to hearing a lot more in the future and in particular 2016:

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Profiles in courage

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Via B-Daddy. This is jaw-droppingly stunning: if there is a bigger case of management-speak bullshit bingo than what Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, gives in the first minute of this clip regarding the admninistration's budget proposal, we have yet to hear it.

"Leaders are supposed to fix problems"

They've pretty much given up. Geithner admits they don't have any plan nor any actual desire to get long-range debt, which is driven by currently unsustainable entitlements in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, under control.


More lying to the American public will have to suffice because Geithner's basis for opposition to Paul Ryan's budget is simply, "We don't like yours".


This is what passes for leadership in this country in 2012. Four more years of cowardice and shameful cynicism. We can't wait.

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Not grasping the concept

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What are we missing here?

The Greek parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.

Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens as black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament.

State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were looted in the capital where police said 34 buildings were ablaze.

We won't pretend to know the collective Greek mind but does this represent the impulse of coddled two year-old who fully bought in to the lie of the sclerotic European social democracy model only to be told now that it isn't working or is there something more deep-seated that would cause these rioters to destroy the very wealth creators that would be able to raise them out of their debt hole?


Perhaps the two are not entirely exclusive of one another.


Then again, when in Greece (and in doubt), just do it.

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We'll be commenting on another demographic closer to home that behaves in somewhat similar fashion later today or tomorrow.

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How broke are we...?

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... we're so broke that Paul Ryan (R-Wisky) can't even afford to make something other than a tinny-audioed video marking the point when this nation has rocketed past the $15 trillion debt mark.





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He's right though - a historic mark in our country's history is also marked by a historic abdication in leadership on this issue by which the (P)resident has simply refused to take one step towards any meaningful action.

Traitor?

Mark Cuban, bazillionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has got quite a bit of run from a blog post he put up few days ago where he exhorted everone to get rich so they can pay a lot of taxes.

Some excerpts:

Bust your ass and get rich.

Make a boatload of money. Pay your
taxes. Lots of taxes. Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services. Pay more taxes.

When you make a shitload of money. Do something positive with it. If you are smart enough to make it, you will be smart enough to know where to put it to work.
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So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes , your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be “what a great problem to have”, and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.
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I’m not saying that the government’s use of tax money is the most efficient use of our hard-earned capital. It obviously is not. In a perfect world, there would be a better option. We don’t live in a perfect world. We don’t live in a perfect time. We live in a time where the government plays a big role in an effort to help lead us out this Great Recession. That’s reality.

So I will repeat my point. Get out there and make a boatload of money. Enjoy the shit out your money. Pay your taxes.

It’s the most Patriotic thing you can do.

We like Cuban. We're praying for the day when he will be able to buy the Dodgers from that noxious pair, Frank and Jamie McCourt. And we're glad he appears to realize that private enterprise (such as his own) is far more efficient at taking care of the well-being and livlihood of people than the government (which begs for why it is he wrote this blog post in the first place) but saying paying your taxes is the most patriotic thing you can do? Got it.

After hearing stories of bravery and heroism displayed by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan or remembering 9-11 and sacrifices made by the passengers of Flight 93 and the first responders at the World Trade Center, that has to be one of the most patently ridiculous statements we have heard in quite some time.

Our friend "Sherry" advised us that perhaps Cuban was referring only to the rest of us "civilians". Perhaps... but it's still ridiculous to assert that merely obeying the law is somehow patriotic. Hey there, Patriot, thanks for not jay-walking.

And if paying taxes is the most patriotic thing you can do, then Warren Buffet who grants himself a salary of only $100,000 should be guilty of treason.

Of course, liberals are just eating up what Cuban wrote because it's a narrative that fits quite nicely into the President's call for more taxes on the rich. But Obama’s call to raise taxes on the rich is so shamelessly cynical, it’s pathetic. He knows that he’s not going to come anywhere close to closing the deficit on the backs of the rich. Like Buffet, the rich will alter their behavior and/or use the tax code to legally shelter their assets so they won't have to pay those higher taxes. That is just how things work whether statists want to acknowledge it or not.

At the end of the day, whether the President actually believes taxing the rich will somehow improve our economic outlook and/or reduce the deficit is irrelevant. Like the story of the scorpion and the frog, “class warfare” is just what he does. He can’t help himself.

California dreamin'

So, what happens when you "balance" a budget but still come up $11 billion dollars short as California did just a couple of months ago? Not a problem... you just pencil in that $11 billion as "unanticipated revenue" and send it up to the Governor's office for a sign-off. What could possibly go wrong?

California's tax revenue plummeted in July, missing expectations by nearly $539 million and raising fears that deep education cuts will be needed to keep the state budget balanced.

The bad news, announced Tuesday, came less than two months after Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers patched together a budget on the assumption that a budding economic recovery would produce a $4-billion revenue windfall. Those hopes are now fading.

The plunge occurred before the recent Wall Street gyrations that wiped away many of the year's stock-market gains. If the economy remains sluggish and the $4 billion does not materialize, cuts in public schools, universities, libraries, child care, and services for the elderly and frail will automatically take effect.

"Every drop in revenues puts us closer to the drastic trigger cuts that could be imposed next year," state Controller John Chiang said in a statement accompanying his July revenue report.

(italics, ours)

If you're wondering where that downgraded expectation of $4 billion in unanticipated revenue came from, we're just as confused as you are as that $11 billion figure was the one reported out in back in June.

And, it is duly noted that while California's political class were "missing expectations", we're curious about just what it is about California's economic/poltical climate that would be cause for any expectations to be missed.

More than most states, California depends upon revenue generated from capital gains on the wealthy but if you create a hostile business climate where the evil rich are moving out of the state and taking their businesses with them, what would you expect?

Again, more evidence of the completely amateurish and un-serious nature of California's ruling class.

Some more thoughts on the downgrade

In response to the credit rating downgrade, the President came out yesterday and gave a speech... a speech that he's made, seemingly, for the past few months now. Promising "recommendations" (presumeably akin to the ones made by the debt commission that he set up and which he promptly ignored) and the rote, obligatory "repairs to roads and bridges" (5:45). There's nothing left in his statist quiver and his body language seems to sense that.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here's Charles Krauthammer on the matter at hand:

"He has put nothing on the table but yet he blames everyone else"

Despite that, Allahpundit comes up with the best explanation of why Obama sounds like a broken record and how it is we've painted ourselves into a corner.

But the deeper horror, of course, is that not all of this will be cured by dumping The One. It’s not Obama who attached that eurozone ball-and-chain to the market’s ankle, and even a Republican president will find his or her options limited amid the next financial crisis. This is an epic fail to some extent not because Hopenchange is a spent force, which it is, but because the western world’s finally been cornered economically by entitlement liabilities that were foreseeable when The One was a toddler. The bill’s come due. What else can he say?

The sober among us have seen this moment coming for years but instead of exclusively pointing the finger at the bad actors in Washington D.C., perhaps we should also be looking at the people who put them there. The political will to turn this thing around is, as the President would say, a shared responsibility.

What we are also experiencing is a leadership crisis

The talking points have gone out...


John Kerry was out and about on the talkies Sunday making a complete ass of himself again by blaming the credit downgrade on the tea party.

While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party.

“I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and their economies.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, used the exact same phrase in dubbing the credit rating drop the “tea party downgrade,” as Democrats tried to position themselves as reasonable, pragmatic leaders and conservative Republicans as irresponsible ideologues who caused the downgrade by refusing to accept any new taxes.

So, let's get this straight: One of the leaders of a party that has controlled the Senate for over 4 for years and which has not come close to producing a budget in about 2-1/2 years and which also shows no testicular fortitude to address the real driver of our national debt, entitlements, is calling out an entity that has applied a laser-like focus on achieving some degree of fiscal sanity to avoid the credit downgrade that just happened on Friday.

Or to put it another way: If Kerry is correct, what Standard and Poor's was saying was needed to avert a downgrade was more spending, more taxes and more government. But somehow, we don't think that Paul Krugman and S&P are of the same mind on this. Crazy, we know, but it's just a notion.


But don't take our word for it, what did S&P have to say about all this?:

The credit-rating agency did not call for tax hikes in its assessment: “Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.” No position on tax hikes. But S&P, along with the other credit-rating agencies, has long taken a position on one aspect of our fiscal troubles: entitlement reform. From S&P again: “The plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.”

Kind of sounds like it was about the debt and the lack of any real debt-limiting/reducing entitlement reform, doesn't it?


Well, you can probably forget about that as the pedophiles that form the ruling class in D.C. don't want anything to do with entitlement reform least of all the man currently in the Oval Office who made a speech not too long ago calling for $4 trillion in deficit-reduction to which the head of the Congressional Budget Office, a Democrat, responded wryly, "(unfortunately), the CBO does not score speeches."



Exit question: Since we are lacking any real adult leadership in this debt crisis how long before we get downgraded again?