White House Economics Is Killing Americans

[From article]
The inability of people aged 40 and above to find a decent job to support their families has led to an epidemic of suicides.
But as Betsy McCaughey points out in this New York Post column, you'd never know it to hear President Obama and Hillary Clinton talk. President Obama insists that the "“American economy is pretty darn good right now.”
[. . .]
When the recession hit, suicide deaths suddenly started outnumbering deaths from auto accidents. But eight years later, job losses are still driving the suicide rate higher and higher.
Clinton seems unmoved. She’s pledging to close down the coal industry and block natural-gas fracking. More pain for coal country or for portions of upstate New York that are sitting on natural-gas treasure.
Self-inflicted deaths in the Syracuse area are up about 40 percent in the past five years, and rates in depressed western New York are double New York City’s rate. Upstate New Yorkers are literally dying for jobs.
[. . .]



Economic distress is so widespread that for the first time ever, life expectancy for white women in the United States actually dropped. Despite progress against cancer and heart disease, lives are being cut short by hopelessness.
It’s a national health emergency. Suicide kills more middle-agers than flu, pneumonia and diabetes combined — often after dashed expectations, abandonment by a spouse and loss of self-worth. Then a bullet to the head or a noose (for men), or a deliberate drug overdose (for women) ends the pain.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/the_obama_economy_is_killing_people.html

April 27, 2016
The Obama economy is killing people
By Rick Moran

European Union Disintegrating. Will US Withstand Divisions?

[From article]
On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation, my column, “Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent,” contained this pessimistic prognosis:
“This European superstate will not endure, but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism. For when the hard times come, patriots will recapture control of their national destinies from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.”
The column described what was already happening.
“Europe is dying. There is not a single nation in all of Europe with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania.
[. . .]



“Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America will add 3 billion to 4 billion people — 30 to 40 new Mexicos! — as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
[. . .]
Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East, the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries. And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.
[. . .]
My prediction that European “patriots will recapture control of their national destinies,” looks even more probable today.
[. . .]
Anti-immigrant, right-wing parties are making strides all across Europe, as the EU is bedeviled by a host of crises.
Europe’s open borders that facilitate free trade also assure freedom of travel to homegrown terrorists.
Mass migration into the EU is causing member nations to put up checkpoints and close borders. The Schengen Agreement on the free movement of goods and people is being ignored or openly violated.
[. . .]



How does an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural United States avoid the fate to which Europe appears to be headed, when there is no identifiable racial or ethnic majority here in 2042?
Are our own political and racial divisions disappearing, or do they, too, seem to be deepening?

http://buchanan.org/blog/is-the-west-disintegrating-124491

Is the West Disintegrating?
Monday - December 28, 2015 at 10:20 pm
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Moral Decline, Not Financial Is Destroying The Country

[From article]
Nowadays baby showers are often held for unwed mothers. Yesteryear such an acceptance of illegitimacy would have been unthinkable. Today there is little or no social sanction or shame for illegitimate births. There are no "shotgun" weddings to make the man live up to his responsibilities. But not to worry. Taxpayers bear the financial burden of illegitimacy. Any economist worth his salt will tell you that if something is taxed, expect less of it. If something is subsidized, expect more of it. Taxpayers have been forced to subsidize slovenly behavior. The statistical evidence proves it. According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Today 72 percent of black children and 30 percent of white children are born to unwed mothers.
[. . .]
What are the massive government spending programs that threaten to bankrupt our nation in the future? The answer would have to be Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Over 50 percent of today's federal budget is spent on these programs. Around the time when many in the so-called Greatest Generation were born (1920), there were no such programs, and federal spending was $53 billion. In 2014, federal spending was $3.5 trillion.
If it were only the economic decline threatening our future, there might be hope. It's the moral decline that spells our doom.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams061715.php3

Culture and Social Pathology


By Walter Williams
Published June 17, 2015

Economic Solution to Palestinian Intransigence

[From article]
The Arab claim to the Southern Mosque -- I refuse to call it Al-Aqsa -- is totally baseless, as there was no mosque in Jerusalem for Mohammed to visit in his lifetime.
The Bible gives positive commands for Jews to build a temple once they are in the land. After the Israeli takeover of Jerusalem in 1967, General Dayan allowed the Jordanian Waqf (Religious Authority) to control the Temple Area, as a show of magnanimity. However, this would not stand. The Arabs were still intent on fighting, while religious Jews were intent on rebuilding the temple, if only a step at a time. The status quo could not hold. That it held as long as it did is rather amazing.
[. . .]
The Southern Mosque's leadership saw this as the beginning of process whereby the Jews would take over the Temple. While, I applaud the courageous Jews, and have no respect for the legends and lies concerning the Southern Mosque, the Waqf was right on this one thing: This time the Jews would not be stopped, and eventually they will get their Temple. Riots started.
[. . .]
Israel has to make some hard unpopular decisions. It can persist in this idiocy, with recurring expensive wars, a martial regulation which not only tyrannizes the Palestinians but imperils Jewish liberty as well, or Israel can act in one of two ways: Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians or paid relocation.
I know many might think that the Palestinians merit ethnic cleansing; but Israel will be a pariah. So again, I am going to suggest one nation for an option as a test case, with facts and figures: Chile.
[. . .]
They have a premier social club in Chile's capital: The Palestine Club, founded in 1938, with an agreement made with the then British Mandatory. I know many Zionists like to claim that Palestinian identity was created in 1964, but Chile's Palestinians should put an end to that error. The Palestinians did have an identity, and that is partly why this fight is so intractable, even though Islam aggravates it.
[. . .]
For $10 Billion dollars, 100,000 Palestinians could be given $100,000 each to move to Chile. Such a move would increase Chile's population by a mere 0.6%, barely noticeable.
[. . .]
Right or wrong, the only other alternative is continual war or ethnic cleansing. If no one pays, then more Jews will die.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/before_all_hell_breaks_loose.html

October 15, 2015
Before all Hell Breaks Loose
By Mike Konrad

Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Share Misguided Economic Views

Brooklyn's U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders(I-VT), left, Pope Francis, right


[From article]
Once the world’s breadbasket and fourth-richest nation per-capita — hence the saying “rich as an Argentine” — the Pope’s native land is now a basket case with economic well-being (gross domestic product per capita) only one-third America’s.
[. . .]
“In dealing with poverty,” rock star Bono stresses, “welfare and foreign aid are a Band-Aid. Free enterprise is a cure.”
[. . .]



In his new book, “The Conservative Heart,” American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks calls the free-enterprise system “America’s gift to the world,” enabling more people to pursue their happiness through earned success derived from work.
“It was the free-enterprise system that not only attracted millions of the world’s poor to our shores and gave them lives of dignity but also empowered billions more worldwide to pull themselves out of poverty,” Brooks asserts.
[. . .]



it feels like we’re slouching toward Argentina.
While Wall Street and Silicon Valley have boomed, the richest and most generous nation on earth contains pockets of destitution and immiseration — like Baltimore — where millions are deprived of the dignity and fulfillment of work.
[. . .]
“People see corporate cronies getting rich because of their cozy relationship with the government. They see bailouts for huge banks but small businesses going bust.
[. . .]



Ranked among the world’s most economically free nations for decades, America has fallen to 16 in Fraser’s Index due to these unfair government policies. Consequently, U.S. annual growth is projected to be half its 3 percent historical average.
That His Holiness is unaware of the relationship between economic freedom and human flourishing is a sin, though not original. After all, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sins similarly, arguing for greater government control of our lives, even at the expense of economic growth.
[. . .]



The truth is that poverty is humanity’s natural state, and free enterprise is the most merciful economic system yet designed for moving people toward productive and dignified lives. No central planner exists who’s capable of improving on the endless autonomous decisions made efficiently, creatively and cooperatively in the free market, as if divinely guided. Think Again — as long as we enjoy the blessings of economic freedom, we have the choice not to attend the Pope Francis & Bernie Sanders School of Economics, where the tuition is free but extraordinarily costly,

http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/18538554-113/sturm-the-pope-and-sanders-misguided-economic-missionaries

Sturm: The Pope and Sanders: Misguided economic missionaries
Melanie Sturm
Think Again
October 8, 2015

Accepting Migrants For Some, Not For Others

Not all migrants are refugees. Some seek better economic opportunities. Some are recruiters for terror organizations. Were the effects of these two groups discussed? You didn't say. Not all are from Syria. Was question raised why Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE refuse to accept any of these migrants? Saudi Arabia said it was because they fear bringing terrorists into their country. Why is this not an issue for EU nations and the United States?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/9/24/ces-future-europe-summit/

Amid Crises, Experts Gather To Discuss E.U.’s Future
By ALEC J. GRIGORIAN and CLAIRE E. PARKER, CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Harvard Crimson
September 24, 2015

Opposing Migrants From Middle East Makes Sense

[From article]

The United States is the most generous nation in the world, and we have taken many refugees from foreign lands. Europe has not offered to take refugees from Central America, so why are some politicians here insisting that we take many thousands of refugees from the Middle East?
While refugee crises are tragic, crimes committed by transplanted peoples against unwarned, unprotected victims in our own country are even more tragic. Politicians demanding that American neighborhoods accept thousands of refugees, without proper screening or any indication by the migrants that they genuinely want to assimilate into our culture, should be rejected.
Americans are horrified by images of tens of thousands of people, mostly young unattached Muslim men from the Middle East and Africa, crossing unguarded borders into Europe. The news media often describe these people sympathetically as refugees from the civil war in Syria, but many could be migrants seeking a more comfortable life in a rich society with a cradle-to-grave welfare state.
The scene is eerily reminiscent of the tens of thousands of people from Central America who crossed into the United States last summer. Often described sympathetically as unaccompanied minors fleeing gang violence, most of those Central American arrivals were able-bodied, tough young men who left their families in search of better economic opportunities.
Wealthy European nations did not offer to help out by accepting thousands of migrants from Central America. We did not expect that of them, and they should not expect it of us now.
The Muslim migrants follow a route through Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia into Hungary, the European country closest to the Middle East, and from Hungary they can travel throughout 26 European nations. That route may soon close when Hungary completes the razor-wire fence it is building along its entire 108-mile border with Serbia.
[. . .]



The idea of creating nations without borders, allowing the free movement of people inside a common perimeter, was pushed by President George W. Bush when he met with Mexico's president and Canada's prime minister in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005. Soon after that first summit of "the three amigos," the Council on Foreign Relations published "Toward a North American Community," which called for a "seamless market" with "a more open border for the movement of goods and people."
[. . .]
Stark financial problems also stand against welcoming so many strangers into our country. More than 90 percent of recent refugees from the Middle East are on welfare, according to official statistics published by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Our welfare system is already strained by the Central American migrants who entered our country illegally and never went home. There are a potential six billion people in the world who would like to partake in the American welfare system if given the opportunity, but we cannot afford to foot the bill for everyone in the world who does not have a job.

http://www.creators.com/conservative/phyllis-schlafly/america-has-taken-more-than-our-share-of-refugees.html

America Has Taken More Than Our Share of Refugees
Phyllis Schlafly
Creators.com

Republican Illinois Governor Fights Democrats For Fiscal Integrity

[From article]
Rauner, 58, won his first elective office by promising to change Illinois's political culture of one-party rule by entrenched politicians subservient to public-sector unions. This culture's consequences include:
After more than a dozen credit-rating downgrades in five years, Illinois has the lowest rating among the states. Unfunded public employees' pension liabilities are estimated, perhaps conservatively, at $111 billion, the nation's largest such deficit as a percentage of state revenue. Currently, public pensions consume nearly 25 percent of general state revenues. The state owes vendors $6.4 billion in unpaid bills, and more than 1 million people have left Illinois for less dysfunctional states in the last 15 years. Debt per resident is about $24,989, compared with $7,094 in neighboring Indiana.
[. . .]
Four of the previous nine governors went to prison, so, Rauner says, "people know we've had bad people in charge." Bad but routine practices are astonishing.
[. . .]
Rauner says previous governors from both parties have been complicit in the unionization of about 93 percent of government employees.
[. . .]
Rauner hopes to ban, as some states do, public employees unions from making political contributions, whereby they elect the employers with whom they negotiate their compensation. Rauner notes that an owner of a small firm that does business with Illinois's government is forbidden to make political contributions.
[. . .]
Democrats have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature, and redistricting has entrenched incumbents. Democrats do, however, fear being challenged in primaries by unions punishing anyone disobedient.
[. . .]
An Illinois governor (Adlai Stevenson) once said, "Cleanliness is next to godliness, except in the Illinois legislature, where it is next to impossible."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will022615.php3

He's is out to emancipate the Land of Lincoln
By George Will
Published Feb. 26, 2015

Benefits and Harms From Government Deficit Spending

[From article]
The national and global discourse makes this association: Debt is to good financial practice as cancer is to good health.
[. . .]
Our partner, government, is doing us wrong. We lived our lives not completely ignorant of what was going on, but lazy enough not to stop it. We heard the warnings, but were not very motivated to heed them. We heard about the fiscal cliff a few years ago, not realizing that we sailed off the cliff in the 1950s or 1960s, maybe before, and now we are in free fall. They say it’s not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the bottom, and our partner cares nary a bit.
As I look back over my fifty-plus year life in America, growing up in a medium-sized city, attending average public schools, going to public college, and working regular jobs as a regular guy, I’m realizing that a large proportion of my America was bought with borrowed money.
[. . .]
Since 1930, the government has run deficits in 74 of the 87 years. (See historical figures published by OMB.) From 2006 to 2015, the average of deficits has been 770 billion dollars, per year.
[. . .]
On top of all that disillusionment, deficit spending has financed a whole bunch of bad things, such as global warming research, corporate bailouts, multiple wars, and the entire Obama administration. I would like to think that eliminating deficit spending would cut the bad stuff first, but I’m probably being naïve.
This evening, think back over your life and consider all the things that were bought with borrowed money. Has this diminished the value and meaning of your life by some fraction? The America we loved was, at least partially, no better than an impulse buy.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/the_debt_deception.html

August 8, 2015
The Debt Deception
By Hank Wallace

Two Views of Iran Nuclear Deal, Pat Buchanan and Melanie Sturm

Sturm's analysis makes more sense. Buchanan ignores the long term antipathy of Iran toward the United States since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. He focuses on economics rather than national security. He equates China and Russia who were, and are, large established nations with a lot to lose, with Iran which supports terror networks throughout the world. Iran is a theocracy unlike China and Russia.

[From article]
Causing the collective eyes of the political class to roll, Trump and Sanders resonate with a pablum-fed electorate starving for authentic debate, policies aligned with citizens’ concerns and leaders who say what they mean and mean what they say.
Witness the deceptions being used to normalize the mortal threat posed by Tuesday’s nuclear deal with Iran’s genocidal Ayatollahs. They’ve sponsored a slow-motion jihad against America ever since revolutionaries seized our embassy and hostages in 1979, asserting their constitution’s commitment to “universal holy government and the downfall of all others.”
[. . .]
The truth is, every president since Carter has failed to deploy these powers to oppose Iranian hostility, allowing committed revolutionaries and skilled diplomats to out-flank and out-negotiate the mightiest nation on Earth.
Iran doesn’t control all terrorists, but it’s the head of an Islamic supremacist snake seeking to subjugate humanity and destroy freedom. Responsible for killing and maiming thousands of Americans, and posing threats we’ve neither anticipated nor mitigated, their unanswered aggression has stimulated more aggression.
[. . .]
The truth is, every president since Carter has failed to deploy these powers to oppose Iranian hostility, allowing committed revolutionaries and skilled diplomats to out-flank and out-negotiate the mightiest nation on Earth.
Iran doesn’t control all terrorists, but it’s the head of an Islamic supremacist snake seeking to subjugate humanity and destroy freedom. Responsible for killing and maiming thousands of Americans, and posing threats we’ve neither anticipated nor mitigated, their unanswered aggression has stimulated more aggression.

http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/17276064-113/sturm-the-iran-deal-normalizing-a-mortal-threat

Melanie Sturm
Think Again
July 15, 2015
Sturm: The Iran deal: Normalizing a mortal threat

* * *

[From article]
For even if Congress votes to deny Obama authority to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. will vote to lift sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. And Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, all parties to the deal, will also lift sanctions.
[. . .]
Would we bomb Iran? Would we go to war? Not only would Americans divide on any such action, the world would unite — against us.
[How does Buchanan know this?]
[. . .]
“Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons is resolved diplomatically through negotiation or it’s resolved through force,” said the president, “Those are the options.”
[. . .]
Our principal enemies are now al-Qaida and ISIS. And while both have been aided by our old allies, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, both are being resisted by Iran.
[Oh? is it only ISIS and al Qaeda who openly demand, "Death to America!"?]
[. . .]
Remarkable. Iran agrees not to build a bomb it had already decided not to build, and we agree to lift all sanctions. And they pulled it off.
What is one or two atom bombs you can’t use, without committing national suicide, compared to $100 billion in freed assets and a welcome mat back to the community of nations.
[Has Buchanan become a lobbyist for Iran? Or for John Kerry?]

http://buchanan.org/blog/the-gops-iran-dilemma-16263

The GOP’s Iran Dilemma
Thursday - July 16, 2015 at 11:36 pm
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Progressive Policies Making United States A Poor Nation

[From article]
The conditions that lifted North America so far above the economic norm were a unique combination: available land and resources, a smaller, pro-development government, disparate post Renaissance and mostly post Reformation immigrants that shattered traditional classes, and an industrial revolution supported with European capital. But as ever, time having passed, things are changed. Few of the listed conditions remain unaltered and America’s economic direction shows it.
The defining American middle class is devolving toward poverty. The 1970’s brought an undeniable economic retreat: the disappearance of the traditional middle class housewife into the workplace. A declining standard of living was heralded as a feminist triumph. The linked map illustrates the accelerated middle class economic decline since the 2008 financial crash; today, 20% of American families include no workers and most Americans receive government benefits.
[. . .]
Politicians who promise free goodies and painless cures for sad economies can’t afford stagnant ones; they require published recovery, preferably quickly. So government and its client media tell us we are recovering. They point to the currently 5.4% unemployment rate as evidence. They don’t mention that the rate isn’t computed as it once was. The older computation remains available at shadowstats.com, where U–3 Unemployment surpasses 20%. A different useful government statistic is the Labor Force Participation Rate, the percentage of the available workforce that is working. That has (quietly) declined to late 1970’s levels; there is no real recovery. Stocks and real estate have been inflated by the Federal Reserve’s flood of funny money while the middle class, largely dependent upon wages, has declined.
Using reality and disregarding propaganda, we see progressing American impoverishment reflecting general government policy. “Progressive” economic policies have amounted to promising a free lunch, for which the bill has arrived. Government/union cronies can force wages up; government can circumvent markets with legislated wages/prices and regulatory distortions, but none can repeal the ultimate operations of economics that simply reflect human behavior. America’s economically excessive labor costs are in unadmitted, forced decline to meet world competition.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/05/impoverishment_americas_new_normal.html

May 27, 2015
Impoverishment: America's New Normal
By Jack Curtis

Russian Oil Interests Fund Opposition to Fracking, Environmental Groups

[From article]
Well, a recent report offers some useful detailed information about the role of Russia in funding the opposition to fracking by so-called Green groups.
The piece was written by investigative reporter Lachlan Markay. He reports the amazing news that a mysterious Bermuda-based company with Russian connections has been feeding tens of millions of dollars to American environmentalist groups who just happen to be virulently anti-fracking.
[. . .]
The Bermudan company is called “Klein Ltd.” Klein donated (i.e., transferred) over $23 million – in the year 2010 alone! – to American environmentalist groups that aim to halt the American fracking revolution and its expansion abroad. Klein funneled the cash to a non-profit organization called “the Sea Change Foundation,” based (where else?) in California. This amounted to 40% of the foundation’s money, please note. The Sea Change Foundation in turn shoveled the loot to anti-fossil fuel activist groups such as the Center for American Progress, Food and Water Watch, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Resource Defense Council, and (but of course) the Sierra Club. These environmentalist machines in turn use the pelf to fund their agitprop disinformation campaigns against fracking.
[. . .]
Klein Ltd. has a director by the name of Nicholas Hopkins. Hopkins just coincidentally is also a director of an investment company that is deeply invested in Russian oil and natural gas companies.
[. . .]
However, the purpose of this web is clear: keep the price of oil high, and keep Russia and its pals like Venezuela and Iran well-funded. All these companies are well-hidden behind walls of secrecy and an iron curtain of opacity. This Russian funding of green groups from behind a screen of secrecy is reminiscent of the Soviet campaign over decades to influence our movie industry and fund various “peace” groups.
[. . .]
In fact, this is of a piece with the long history of the Soviets funneling money to useful American idiots, from socialists and communist fellow-travelers to peace groups to now environmentalist groups.
[. . .]
It is high time for Congress to set up a joint committee to investigate the graft, corruption, cronyism, and foreign influence of the so-called green energy industries. And legislation should be crafted totally outlawing foreign money going to any organization that does any political advocacy in the U.S. That should include foundations like the Clintons’, which even now is accepting massive amounts of foreign money to help Hilary run for president.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/russian_money_and_useful_american_idiots_the_same_old_story.html

March 2, 2015
Russian Money and Useful American Idiots: The Same Old Story
By Gary Jason

Global Currency Crisis Near

Janet Henry from HSBC said Sweden's measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the krone.

Photo: CORBIS
[From article]
Sweden has cut interest rates below zero and launched quantitative easing to fight deflation, becoming the latest Scandinavian state to join Europe’s escalating currency wars.
The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10pc and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece.
Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the krone, the latest such action in a global currency war that does little to tackle the deeper problem of deficient world demand.
The move comes as neighbouring Denmark takes ever more drastic steps to stop a flood of money overwhelming its exchange rate peg to the euro and tightening the deflationary noose.
[. . .]
The Chinese yuan is linked to the US dollar through a “dirty float”. Yet the dollar is rising relentlessly against other Asian currencies as the prospect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve lures a flood of capital into the US, a replay of the strains that led to the East Asia crisis in 1998.
[. . .]
Manoj Pradhan, Morgan Stanley’s global economist, said the world is revisiting the “ghosts of the 1930s” as one country after another tries to steal a march on others by getting in devaluation first. “The lesson from the 1930s is that those who do so early benefit at the expense of those who wait too long,” he said.
Mr Pradhan said it is becoming harder to extract advantage from this ploy now that “everyone is doing it”. China faces strong pressure to defend itself while it still can. “The longer they wait, the harder it will be for China’s policy-makers,” he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11408950/Sweden-cuts-rates-below-zero-as-global-currency-wars-spread.html

Sweden cuts rates below zero as global currency wars spread
Morgan Stanley warns that the world is revisiting the “ghosts of the 1930s” as one country after another tries to steal a march on others by devaluing first
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
4:58PM GMT 12 Feb 2015

Shameful Misuse of Resources In Africa

[From article]
Here's how my Aug. 11, 2003, column began: "Anyone who believes President Bush's Africa initiative, including sending U.S. troops to Liberia, will amount to more than a hill of beans is whistling Dixie. Maybe it's overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people." More than a decade has passed since that assessment, and little has changed to suggest a more optimistic outlook. Now Ebola threatens the very existence of the West African nations Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Moreover, the deadly disease is likely to spread to neighboring nations.
[. . .]
Poverty is not a cause but a result of Africa's problems. What African countries need the West cannot provide. They need personal liberty. That means a political system in which there are guarantees of private property rights, free markets, honest government and the rule of law. Africa's poverty is, for the most part, self-inflicted. Some people might disagree because their college professors taught them that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That's nonsense. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Third World countries such as Ethiopia, Liberia, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, yet they are home to some of the world's poorest people.
[. . .]
Once a food-exporting country, Zimbabwe recently stood near the brink of starvation. Sierra Leone is rich in minerals -- especially diamonds -- has highly fertile land and is the best port site in West Africa, but it has declined into a state of utter despair. Africa is the world's most natural-resources-rich continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, and millions of acres of untilled farmland, as well as other natural resources. Before independence, every African country was self-sufficient in food production; today many depend on imports, and others stand at the brink of famine.

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/10/29/africa-a-tragic-continent-n1910507

Africa: A Tragic Continent
Walter E. Williams

Oct 29, 2014

People Oppose European Elite and Their Misguided Policies

[From article]
The people of Germany, like those of many other European countries, are feeling increasingly desperate about the imposition upon them of mass immigration – an inflow that is unending and which is largely composed of Muslims who are hostile to Christianity and the indigenous culture.
Well, you might think, that is a serious situation; but fortunately Germany is a representative democracy and when citizens make their concerns known to their representatives, the government will surely take steps to help them. Not so. German Chancellor Angela Merkel used her New Year’s Eve address to vilify her fellow citizens in the Pegida movement who are protesting against the Islamisation of the West.
[. . .]
But the governments of Germany, Britain and other EU states are not simply behaving incompetently and allowing their populations to be overrun through their ineptness. On the contrary, they are actively promoting the destruction of their own societies, in the interests of globalisation and the elimination of national identities and cultures.
Merkel has mobilised all the forces at her disposal in an attempt to suppress the incipient rebellion against liberal totalitarianism.
[. . .]
A member of the innermost elite confirms the EU’s role as undermining homogeneity. Europe, formerly the most civilised entity in the world, is to be subsumed into a globalised pool of cheap labour exploited by large corporations and regulated by bureaucrats. All distinctive culture, national identity, the Judaeo-Christian ethic and everything that contributed so greatly to human civilisation are to be expunged in favour of profit for the few and state regulation for the many.
[. . .]
Such soft totalitarianism might seem less frightening than Nazism or Communism, but the end product will be in every way as nightmarish. It must be defeated. Until now, the populations of Britain, Germany and other EU states have behaved like somnambulists, passively accepting the projected New Order.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/01/07/the-european-civil-war-elites-vs-people-in-a-fight-for-survival/

THE EUROPEAN CIVIL WAR: ELITES VS PEOPLE IN A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
by GERALD WARNER
7 Jan 2015

Professor Gruber, Social Scientist Masquerading As Scientist

[From article]
J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer, the great physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, was an heir of Isaac Newton, who invented modern science. Newton showed that science could be used to manage nature. Ever since Newton, fools have believed that, by analogy, social science could be used to manage human nature. The fact that this has never worked has not diminished the faith of progressives in this idea
[. . .]
It was Oppenheimer that we saw on the Gruber tapes. He took some shots at the public, and opened the progressive kimono by admitting that Obamacare could never have been passed if its supporters had told the public the truth about it
[. . .]
Gruber must think he is an Oppenheimer -- that through his intellect and his academic training, he is in possession of a body of knowledge not available to the public at large and is capable of creating something new and spectacular.
[. . .]
All economics models fizzle when exposed to the subjectivity of value, but that does not diminish the reputations of those who built them. That is the difference between physics and economics. And the difference between the U.S. and the old Soviet Union. And the difference between success and failure in human affairs.
[. . .]
Why, then, does the market work? Because it discards failure. A capitalist economy generates almost nothing but failure. The wealth that we see around us, that supports us all, is those few things that worked. Everything that didn’t work, which was most of the things tried, has been discarded.
But a government bureaucracy rarely discards anything, rarely recognizes failures and rarely changes in light of it. That is why the societies they rule fail. The bureaucracy succeeds -- meaning perpetuates itself and its privileged position - and the society fails. But because the bureaucracy is so entrenched, is so secure in its positions and privileges, it is almost impossible to dislodge it except through military failure.
[. . .]
If we use a literary analogy and if Oppenheimer is the sorcerer, Gruber is the sorcerer’s apprentice. Creating chaos by a misapplication of the sorcerer’s powers.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/jonathan_gruber_sorcerers_apprentice.html

January 2, 2015
Jonathan Gruber, Sorcerer's Apprentice
By Greg Richards

Nuclear War Cheaper Than Conventional Weapons War

[From article]
At a Conference on Atomic Energy Control, Jacob Viner, a University of Chicago economist, told the conference in 1945 that “the atomic bomb was the cheapest way yet devised of killing people.” Developing a nuclear weapon certainly isn't inexpensive, but it's much cheaper than producing the amount of conventional weapons that would cause equivalent damage. And from a manpower perspective, nuclear weapons are much cheaper. One completely untrained suicide bomber can deliver it.
[. . .]
It appears as if fearless leader Barack Hussein Obama, primarily through his feckless puppet Secretary of State John Kerry, is trying to allow Iran to be able to wage war "on the cheap."
[. . .]
Why do we (America) even negotiate? Just tell Iran that its entire nuclear capability must be dismantled by a certain date, and if it's not, we will dismantle it. If Iran refuses, just do it! Remove Iran's capability to wage war "on the cheap" before it's developed. Let's then see if Iran can then produce enough conventional materiel to wage a war. If Iran resorts to terrorism, we can and should inflict pain on that country with conventional weapons until it cries "uncle," is no longer capable of harming us.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/waging_war_on_the_cheap.html

December 13, 2014
Waging War 'On The Cheap'
By Warren Beatty

Who Is The Man, Jonathan Gruber, MIT Economics Professor?

Prof. Gruber is not unique. There are thousands of academics who have an expertise in one or another area. They are often called upon to give advice on public policy issues. They know more than voters, taxpayers, and elected officials on their pencil point area of academic endeavor. But what do these knowledgeable members of the elite do? They recognize that they are dealing with people who are effectively clueless about their subject matter. In this case economics, few politicians know much in that area. Though many politicians are lawyers few know much law, so it is not a surprise to find they are ignorant about areas they did not study in a reputable school. Experts can make it up as they go and lie all they want. And many of them do that. Who's to know? You might wonder if they are receiving millions of taxpayer dollars they might want to provide reliable truthful information. But they do not feel obligated to do that. Why should they share what they know? Even if they are paid to do so. This is my concern about experts. I began to recognize the problem when I attended lectures at Harvard University that were open to the public. Though I have a degree from Columbia University, Harvard University faculty and students treat me as if I was a high school dropout, which is some of what what the FBI says about me. So it is not unusual that I often find myself in a humorous situation being spoken to as if I was a moron by arrogant, pompous academic know-it-alls. Gruber is just one of many, who was exposed and ridiculed.

[From article]
Poor Gruber. Now he lives in a $1.12 million mansion in Lexington. It’s on Pleasant Street, but it wasn’t very pleasant yesterday for Goober.
He looks like an adult version of the kind of kid who had his lunch bag stomped on more than once by the bad boys.
[. . .]
he was being pushed around not just by the evil Republican “haters,” as Goober calls everybody who’s angry at his remarks about “the stupidity of the American voters,” by which he really meant Obama voters.
No wonder Elijah Cummings was so angry, describing Goober’s remarks in front of various adoring college audiences as “stupid, I mean absolutely stupid … And they were
indeed insulting.”
[. . .]
He reaped millions upon millions of dollars demolishing your health care, and now he pulls a Sgt. Schultz. He knows nothing. He even had the gall to claim he had no idea how much he’d made wrecking the U.S. health-care system. He kept telling the congressmen they could take up the issue of his greed-crazed profiteering spree with his “counsel.” He was trying to plead the Fifth without taking the Fifth.
In case you were wondering, his father was a professor too.
[. . .]
Republican congressman from Kentucky with two MIT degrees told him how embarrassing Goober had made it to be an MIT grad. A GOP rep from Georgia pointed out that 80 percent of his district had voted against Obama “so I guess we’re not the stupid voters you were talking about.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2014/12/carr_revenge_on_the_nerd

Carr: Revenge on the nerd
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
By: Howie Carr
Boston Herald

* * *

[From article]
How Cambridge is it? This arrogant Ph.D. gets paid millions to take a wrecking ball to the best health-care system in the world, then takes a victory lap around the country, making hundreds of thousands more to brag how he and the rest of the Obamatrons lied and got away it because of the “stupidity of the American voters.”
In other words, Obama voters. Because they’re the only ones who believed Obama when he said that if you liked your doctor you could keep him.
And now if you’re angry at Gruber’s appalling arrogance and hubris, you’re a “hater.”
No joke. It came out over the weekend. One of the health-care officials in Vermont, another state paying him a six-figure stipend to gut its medical system, sent Goober an email asking him to, uh, please explain.
“I am laying low on this,” Goober wrote back. “Anything I say will just feed the haters. I went on MSNBC yesterday and apologized but other than that I have been strongly advised to stay off the radar.”
[. . .]
A majority of the congressmen on the panel are, you guessed it, haters. How scared are the Democrats of putting this poster boy for their insanity on display? The lame-duck Senate Democrats decided to release the “terror” report on CIA interrogations of Muslim terrorists this morning, at just about the time the Goober-man takes the stand.
[. . .]
How bad is it going to be? The Obama administration has asked to have its witness this morning seated in a “separate panel” from the obnoxious Cambridge puke. The request noted that witnesses are “almost always afforded an opportunity” to shun someone as despised as Dr. Goober.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2014/12/carr_get_ready_for_jonathan_gruber_to_infect_obamacare?utm_campaign=bostonherald_trending_stories&utm_source=bostonherald&utm_medium=trending_stories

Tuesday, December 9, 2014
By: Howie Carr
Boston Herald

American Dream Is Just That, A Dream

[From article]
Gregory Clark is sharing his research as a hard truth with no hope—whether or not you can get ahead in America is as predictable as any formula.
In fact, he says, the formulas for social mobility in the United States show there’s nothing to dream about.
“America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England, Or pre-industrial Sweden,” he said. “That’s the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because it is shattering people s dreams.”
[.  . .]
“My students always argue with me, but I think the thing they find very hard to accept, is the idea that much of their lives can be predicted from their lineage and their ancestry,” he said.
Stuck in a social status is no American Dream—Clark says it’s the American reality.
“The good news is that this is coming from an economist, because economists are used to being unpopular, and so we are the right people to bear this message that the world is a limiting place,” he said.
There’s one caveat to the study, and that is for any one of us, there is always an exception to the rule.
Clarks’ study was published by the Council on Foreign Relations.


http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/11/26/uc-davis-economics-professor-there-is-no-american-dream/

UC Davis Economics Professor: There Is No American Dream
November 26, 2014 11:44 PM
Steve Large
CBS News Sacramento CA

U.S. Senator Chuck "You" Schumer (D-NY) Admits Passing Obamacare Was Musguided

[From article]
Sen. Chuck Schumer upbraided his own party Tuesday for pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010.
While Schumer emphasized during a speech at the National Press Club that he supports the law and that its policies "are and will continue to be positive changes," he argued that the Democrats acted wrongly in using their new mandate after the 2008 election to focus on the issue rather than the economy at the height of a terrible recession.
[. . .]
"We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform."
The third-ranking Senate Democrat noted that just about 5 percent of registered voters in the United States lacked health insurance before the implementation of the law, arguing that to focus on a problem affecting such "a small percentage of the electoral made no political sense."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/chuck-schumer-passing-obamacare-in-2010-was-a-mistake-20141125

Chuck Schumer: Passing Obamacare in 2010 Was a Mistake
The Senate’s No. 3 Democrat says that his party misused its mandate.
BY SARAH MIMMS
November 25, 2014