The US Approaching Insolvency
According to a Federal Reserve official, we are:
“If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when,” Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said in a question and answer session after delivering a speech at the University of Frankfurt. “The short-term negotiations are very important, I look at this as a tipping point.”
A big part of the blame is on Congress. Both parties had a hand in it, but the Pelosi Democrats and the Obama Administration have made things much, much worse than anyone before them including Bush as the chart shows.
And a large part of this problem has also been the Federal Reserves policies. But a driving force has been the unfunded liabilities that stem from entitlements. All the major countries in the world are learning the hard way that governments cannot provide for a welfare state. As this lengthy article in the National Journal puts it:
All over the developed world, nations are coming to terms with the fact that the social-democratic welfare state is turning out to be untenable. The reason is partly institutional: The administrative state is dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety. The reason is also partly cultural and moral: The attempt to rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility has undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government. But, in practice, it is above all fiscal: The welfare state has turned out to be unaffordable, dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era. Sustaining existing programs of social insurance, let alone continuing to build new ones on the social-democratic model, has become increasingly difficult in recent years, and projections for the coming decades paint an impossibly grim and baleful picture. There is simply no way that Europe, Japan, or America can actually go where the economists’ long-term charts now point — to debts that utterly overwhelm their productive capacities, governments that do almost nothing but support the elderly, and economies with no room for dynamism, for growth, or for youth. Some change must come, and so it will.
Bureaucracies cannot run things reasonably well. Especially over long terms. The longer a bureaucracy exists, the larger and more corrupt it gets. It is an inevitable reality which is why there should be an amendment to the constitution that limits the size of government to a small percent of the GDP. That would force them to live within their means, but give them an incentive to help the GDP grow instead of allow them to harm it as they are now.
We cannot continue the way we’re going. Look at the chart in that article to see what that actually means.
The Fed at Work
This is from last year. Ron Paul, who has been a huge critic of the Federal Reserve, is now head of the committee that provides oversight. The Fed has never been audited. Ron Paul has made it his mission to have it done.
Trillions of American Dollars have went down rat holes and disappeared. Notice now non-chalant and evasive the answers are here. I am not a fan of Alan Grayson, but at least he asked some good questions. Apparently, the last Congress did nothing to deal with the issue, however.
Four Reasons Why Big Government Is Bad Government
A good economics primer on why limited government is not only desired, it is necessary. The fact is, statists have been lying to you your whole life, promising you that government can take care of you. The reality is, bureaucrats can’t manage economies. They destroy them eventually. All large socialist states either collapsed or are forced to change to a more free market, privatized system. China is doing it, Sweden is doing it, Cuba is doing it. All those examples the leftists said were proof Socialism works are finding that, no, it does not.
And yes, Great Britain is looking at privatizing aspects of their national health system. Can Canada be far behind?
Shut Up, Bitch
The First (ahem) Lady, aka FLOTUS, is taking her dominatrix act to the restaurant industry next.
Michelle Obama is taking her next shot at obesity, calling on the National Restaurant Association to enact nutrition reforms similar to those she has worked out with Walmart and the nation’s schools, the New York Times reports. The first lady is pushing for restaurants to serve smaller portions and make sure that kids’ menus provide more fruits and vegetables and less saturated fat and sugar.
The move is an extension of Obama’s approach to nutrition reform, which emphasizes partnering with industry to enact change. Nonetheless, critics worry that her initiatives could be co-opted and neutered by business leaders whose motives are less than pure. “The best initiatives can be subverted for special interest, and it’s important to be vigilant when we form partnerships with industry,” says one nutrition doctor. Yet the Times notes that Obama vets proposals thoroughly an scientifically before she lends anything her name.
By critics I guess they mean toadies who believe in the statist lie. As we can see from the following video, fans of big brother love the idea of the government taking over the food and health care industry. Having incompetant criminals dictate every aspect of your life is something slaves love to cheer.
Meanwhile, this was their Super Bowl menu at the White House. It’s nice to see they practice what they preach.
Terrorists are the Fascists Best Friends
Without terrorism as a bogeyman, statists would have little excuse to impose draconian police state measures on the populous. And just to show they mean business, the Obama administration is now taking their act to hotels and shopping malls.
The United States is stepping up security at “soft targets” like hotels and shopping malls, as well as trains and ports, as it counters the evolving Al-Qaeda threat, a top official said Sunday.
A year after a foiled plot to bomb a US-bound passenger plane, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that other places and modes of transportation must now be scrutinized.
“We look at so-called soft targets — the hotels, shopping malls, for example — all of which we have reached out to in the past year and have done a fair amount of training for their own employees,” Napolitano said.
Since an attempted bombing on a packed Saturday night in Times Square in May, New York, for example, has installed hundreds of security cameras as part of a plan to triple the number of cameras to 3,000.
In September, the city activated some 500 new surveillance cameras at its three busiest subway stations — Times Square, Penn Station and Grand Central.
“The overall message is everything is objectively better than it was a year ago, particularly in the aviation environment. But we’re also looking at addressing other areas,” Napolitano said.
Don’t you feel safe now? The government is your friend. Noting to fear. They are just looking out for your interests after all. Or, I should say, their own.
Read This Story
If you need further proof that the TSA, like many other Federal Agencies, is out of control and quasi-fascist, this will do it for you. The system is broken. Some serious house cleaning is in order. Here’s hoping the new congress will be doing its job next year,.
The Danger of Governments
You might think that government is there to protect you and take care of you. But we have seen over the years that is not strictly true. In many cases the government is run by avaricious and/or incompetent creatures who don’t have the people’s interests at heart. They would rather dance to the whims of crazed ideologues with destructive agendas.
Fortunately today, the farmers in California have been granted a reprieve after the government shut down their access to water over a delta smelt. A judge has ruled that the study that supported that stupid decision was based on junk science and that the edict to shut off the water to the central valley farm belt was “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
“Despite the harm visited on California water users, (the Fish and Wildlife Service) has failed to provide lawful explanations for the apparent over-appropriation of project water supplies for species protection,” Wanger wrote. “The public cannot afford sloppy science and uni-directional prescriptions that ignore California’s water needs.”
The fact is, they have harmed many farms in the course of this long, bitter debate. Thousands of people have been effected, lost work, lost business. Food prices have soared as once productive farms have laid fallow. Food prices have gone up because of this and insane edicts on ethanol which is made from corn. Corn goes into everything, so ethanol has raised corn prices and has effected almost every food on the market. Government makes things worse for people. Not better.
A good example is the lawsuit filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest against McDonalds for putting toys in happy meals. This group, which is an enemy of consumer choice and freedom, is in fact allied with statist bureaucrats in California who would love to see such a lawsuit pay off. It would open the way for them to sue fast food companies for marketing their products to children the way they did against big tobacco. Fast food companies are rich targets and government have become, in these times, a form of organized crime looking for marks to fleece.
When they can steal enough from people in the form of taxes, licenses and fees, they can sue them.
This is why we need limited government, to reign in the corrupt practices of bureaucrats and prevent them from preying on the public. The delta smelt issue has effected people all over the country and the world as it has harmed California’s agriculture belt which was one of the biggest produce producing regions globally. It has harmed the California economy and the livelihoods of untold thousands of people all for some fish which may or may not even be in danger.
Such is the danger of unchecked power in the hands of so called elites.
Mexicans to Bypass TSA Screenings
This has to be one of the worst of the stupid decisions made by this utterly insane Administration, if true. The TSA is planning to give special “trusted traveler” status to some Mexicans so they don’t have to go through TSA security checkpoints. Now why would they do that, I wonder?
As violent drug cartels take over Mexico and expand their criminal enterprises north, the United States has signed a “trusted traveler” agreement that allows pre-screened Mexican airline passengers to bypass lengthy airport security checkpoints.
The foreigners will get “trusted traveler cards” with fingerprints and other biometric data and they must answer customs declarations questions on touch-screen kiosks before leaving airport inspection areas. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claims it’s a way to enhance information sharing and mutual security in the face of “ever-evolving, multinational threats.”
About 84 million Mexicans are expected to qualify for the trusted traveler program, according to Mexico’s Interior Ministry Secretary, who signed the agreement on behalf of his country this week. Celebrating the festive occasion, the Mexican government official assured that the new accord will facilitate the U.S. entry of business travelers and tourists who are key factors in economic development, growth of trade and cultural exchange.
Get that? 84 million. Meanwhile your mom and grandma may be felt up next time they fly. How do you like that change, peeps?
The Assault on Assange
Julian Assange was arrested today for not wearing a condom in Sweden. In that country not wearing a condom can be considered sexual assault even if the sex was consensual. The real reason so many governments are after Assange is because he dared expose their stupidity, arrogance and corruption. That is why so many politicians, even congenial dopes like Mike Huckabee, have called for his death, shows that revealing the sins of the powerful the probably more dangerous than any other crime.
After all, a lot of terrorists who’ve been caught have been left free. One wonders of Assange will be so lucky.
Here are two three articles that bring up some good points about why Wikileaks may actually be a good thing over all. I happen to agree with their points. The first from Vasko Kohlmayer at the American Thinker. Anther from John Sexton at Big Journalism. And finally one from Wired Magazine.
Assange has redacted most of the information he released to protect people’s names in sensitive areas. He held back information that might have been helpful to terrorists, though he has threatened to release it if he were ever arrested. I know defending him puts me in the same class as people like Noam Chomsky in this instance, but the fact is we need to live in a world where we’re not constantly lied to and screwed over by imbecilic elites. Wikileaks is a small group of people sticking it to the powerful. That is ultimately a good thing in the long run. Because the truth is, a lot of what is done in our name is wrong. Hillary ordering State Department diplomats to steal credit card information for example is not in the interests of Americans. It’s in the interest of blackmailers in the government.
This whole affair is exposing a lot of dirt that’s been swept under the rug by the media. Sunshine in dark places can often be a good thing.
UPDATE: A timeline of the attacks on Wikileaks and Assange. Meanwhile, the US government declares Wikileaks off limits to researchers. And while this edict came out, so did the following from the state department.
The powerful live in fear of the day the people might turn on them. For thousands of years it has happened now and then when rulers were hauled out into the streets. Wikileaks is perhaps a metaphor for the elites losing some control. Or perhaps it’s the beginning of a sea change.
Welcome to the Fascist Regime
Obama’s FCC commissioner wants to dictate what’s “appropriate content” for news channels, wants to control what’s said in campaign commercials and impose other autocratic edicts, without congressional oversight. This is extremely disturbing stuff. Hopefully, the new Republican majority will shut this clown down.
Free To Choose: The Tyranny of Control
Part 2 of the series by Milton Friedman. This one is about how government controls leads to poverty. As I said a couple posts down, the state doesn’t protect people from social injustice. It creates and enforces it.
Among the usual group of academics, politicians and union clowns, a young Donald Rumsfeld is arguing with Friedman in this one.
