MiltonConservative

Gotta Love Those Muslims!!!

2012-02-10T16:52:00.001-05:00

Cops arrest suspects in alleged case of forced underage prostitution

The men arrested are, (from left) Naib Ali Soilihi, Mohammed Rami Taha, Abdul Karim Nassereddine, while Mehdi Mohamed Hamza Mezri (right) is still being sought.

Updated: Thu Feb. 09 2012 5:05:28 PM
ctvmontreal.ca

MONTREAL — The Montreal police Child Sexual Exploitation Investigations Section has announced the arrest of six young men in a case of human trafficking and prostitution.

Two underage girls allegedly met the suspects in February 2011 and were forced into prostitution.

The girls told police that they managed to flee to their freedom a week later.

Police have arrested Abdul Karim Nassereddine, 20, Naib Ali Soilihi, 20 and Mohammed Rami Taha, 19. Mezri Mehdi Mohamed Hamza, 21, turned himself in Thursday after being sought by authorities.

The two others arrested cannot be named, as they were minors at the time of the alleged offences.

The suspects were charged with a variety of crimes related to sexual assault and prostitution of minors Thursday.

Sunspot-cycle Chart Shows Strong Cooling Ahead (From Iceagenow.info)

2012-02-08T07:54:00.001-05:00

By Robert On February 7, 2012 · 7 Comments

After looking at this chart, can there be any question as to where our climate is headed?

Temperatures went up in sync with the sunspot cycle, and temperatures went down in sync with the sunspot cycle.

Down, down, down into the Dalton Minimum.

Down, down, down, into the Maunder Minimum and The Little Ice Age.

Source: Dr Timo Niroma

Let me ask it again. Can there be any question as to where our climate is headed?

Thanks to David Spurgeon for this info.

Dr. Niroma is highly respected Finnish climatologist who has been linking solar activity with temperature in a series of many papers.

http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/tilmari/

Whither the US Economy?

2012-02-07T08:15:00.001-05:00

Huge Plunge In Petroleum and Gasoline Usage
Global Economic Trend Analysis ^ | 2/6/12 | Mish Shedlock

Posted on Monday, February 06, 2012 12:00:17 PM by DeaconBenjamin

Reader Tim Wallace writes

Hello Mish

As I have been telling you recently, there is some unprecedented data coming out in petroleum distillates, and they slap me in the face and tell me we have some very bad economic trends going on, totally out of line with such things as the hopium market - I mean stock market.

This past week I actually had to reformat my graphs as the drop off peak exceeded my bottom number for reporting off peak - a drop of ALMOST 4,000,000 BARRELS PER DAY off the peak usage in our past for this week of the year.

I have added a new graph to my distillates report, a "Graph of Raw Data" to which I have added a polynomial trendline. You can easily see that the plunge is accelerating and more than rivals 2008/09 and in gasoline is greatly exceeding the rate.

An amazing thing to note is that in two out of the last three weeks gasoline usage has dropped below 8,000,000 barrels per day.

The last time usage fell that low was the week of September 21, 2001! And you know what that week was! Prior to that you have to go back to 1996 to have a time period truly consistently below 8,000. We have done it two out of the last three weeks.

The second graph once again shows the year on year change in usage of distillates. The Obama "stimulus" package and Fed monetary actions masked the underlying systemic problems.

The third and final graph shows the changes in usage off the peak year of 2007. Once again you can see the effect of the stimulus and how now we are heading below 2008/09 in an accelerating fashion.

Looking at these numbers I believe we are about to have a surge in unemployment - by the end of April latest, possibly as early as beginning of March.

Tim

Petroleum Distillates and Gasoline Usage in Barrels per Day

Note that on a best curve fit, petroleum usage is back to 1997 level and gasoline usage is back to 2001 level. Moreover, as Wallace points out, two out of the last three weeks gasoline usage has dropped below 8,000,000 barrels per day.

Year-Over-Year Petroleum and Gasoline Usage (Compared to Peak Usage)

Note the trough of the recent recession, the rebound, and now a sudden plunge in gasoline and petroleum usage once again.

Decline from Peak Usage

A mild winter can explain part of the drop in petroleum usage (heating oil), but it does not explain the declines in gasoline usage or the overall trends

A Defining Moment (Sowell on Romney & minimum wage)

2012-02-06T13:54:00.001-05:00

Creators Syndicate ^ | February 7, 2012 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on Monday, February 06, 2012 1:56:14 PM by jazusamo

Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP's nominee for president — with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen — have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug.

But Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor — because they "have a very ample safety net" — was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man's qualifications as a conservative and, more important, as a potential President of the United States.

Mitt Romney has come out in support of indexing the minimum wage law, to have it rise automatically to keep pace with inflation. To many people, that would seem like a small thing that can be left for economists or statisticians to deal with.

But to people who call themselves conservatives, and aspire to public office, there is no excuse for not being aware of what a major social disaster the minimum wage law has been for the young, the poor and especially for young and poor blacks.

It is not written in the stars that young black males must have astronomical rates of unemployment. It is written implicitly in the minimum wage laws.

We have gotten so used to seeing unemployment rates of 30 or 40 percent for black teenage males that it might come as a shock to many people to learn that the unemployment rate for sixteen- and seventeen-year-old black males was just under 10 percent back in 1948. Moreover, it was slightly lower than the unemployment rate for white males of the same age.

How could this be?

The economic reason is quite plain. The inflation of the 1940s had pushed money wages for even unskilled, entry-level labor above the level specified in the minimum wage law passed ten years earlier. In other words, there was in practical effect no national minimum wage law in the late 1940s.

My first full-time job, as a black teenage high-school dropout in 1946, was as a lowly messenger delivering telegrams. But my starting pay was more than 50 percent above the level specified in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Liberals were of course appalled that the federal minimum wage law had lagged so far behind inflation — and, in 1950, they began a series of escalations of the minimum wage level over the years.

It was in the wake of these escalations that black teenage unemployment rose to levels that were three or four times the level in 1948. Even in the most prosperous years of later times, the unemployment rate for black teenage males was some multiple of what it was even in the recession year of 1949. And now it was often double the unemployment rate for white males of the same ages.

This was not the first or the last time that liberals did something that made them feel good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake, especially among the poor whom they were supposedly helping.

For those for whom "racism" is the explanation of all racial differences, let me assure them, from personal experience, that there was not less racism in the 1940s.

For those who want to check out the statistics — and I hope that would include Mitt Romney — they can be found detailed on pages 42 to 45 of "Race and Economics" by Walter Williams.

Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more "advanced" than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20 percent or higher.

The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don't get hired. It is not rocket science.

Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, "Capitalism and Freedom." So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself "conservative" has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to.

Caterpillar the Bad Guy???

2012-02-06T12:11:00.001-05:00

Listening to Oakley this morning, I heard that the contract offered by Caterpillar was NOT voted on. That means that a handful of union activists sealed the fate of their co-workers and a large number of others. I heard an estimate of 2,100 total jobs were lost.

How is it that Caterpillar is the villain for our news media? They made a good faith offer to keep the plant going. On the other hand, 2,100 people had their livelihoods curtailed by faceless goons.

If I were one of those people I would attempt a class action lawsuit against those INDIVIDUALS involved.

Why own a gun?(SC) (American but true Everywhere)

2012-02-06T09:17:00.001-05:00

thetandd.com ^ | 5 February, 2012 | Dr. John Rheney

Posted on Monday, February 06, 2012 9:20:50 AM by marktwain

The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

That sentence above all else seems to cause more debate than any other in the Constitution. In 2008 The Supreme Court found, and I think correctly so, that the founding fathers meant this to mean that individuals had the right to possess firearms to protect themselves from an overzealous and dictatorial government. Gun control advocates seem to think it means only the Army or National Guard has the right to bear arms to protect us from outside aggression.

At the time of the below writings in 2010, The Supreme Court further found that cities such as Chicago didn't have the authority to disarm law-abiding citizens. This case came before the high court before the appointment of radical and liberal Judges Suttomayor and Kagen.

I was reading an email from a friend the other day and he referenced an article written by a retired Marine major. The subject was on gun control, or more appropriately the lack thereof for private citizens when faced with excessive control or even confiscation of firearms as was in the case in the state of Illinois. I thought that Maj. Caudill's retort was poignant and concise, so I'llshare it with you.

If anyone thinks that the appointment of one more liberal judge to the Supreme Court would not adversely affect gun ownership, then you are kidding yourself. Presidents come and go but their judicial appointments affect the courts for the entirety of a justice's life. Without getting overly political, I think this upcoming election will support or break the back of the Constitution. Do you as an individual have the right to possess a firearm for protection? Can the government force you to buy health insurance even if you can't afford it and fine you if you don't? Can the government interfere with and force churches such as the Catholic church to administer health care plans that include abortion, contraception and day-after medications that go strictly against their core beliefs?

Read and decide for yourself:

The Gun Is Civilization," by USMC Retired Maj. L. Caudill

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories,without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year-old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang-banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat - it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation ... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

n Dr. John Rheney has been writing his outdoors column for The Times and Democrat for more than 25 years.

Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low (Zerohedge.com)

2012-02-03T09:16:00.001-05:00

You can’t make this stuff up, but Obama can!

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/03/2012 08:51 -0500

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.

Chart below shows it all - that jump is not a fat finger!

And Labor Force Participation:

This is the largest absolute jump in 'Persons Not In Labor Force' on record...and biggest percentage jump in 30 years.

Chart: Bloomberg

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Read Between the Lines: Hollywood Mogul Buys 2,600 Acres of Farmland; Moving to New Zealand

2012-02-02T10:03:00.001-05:00

Posted By Mac Slavo On February 1, 2012 @ 9:26 pm In Emergency Preparedness | 75 Comments

James Cameron, the Hollywood producer responsible for blockbuster films like Terminator, Titanic and Avatar, is reportedly preparing to exit stage left. While the move for the Canadian born Cameron may initially be perceived as a rejection or denouncement of American policies and ideals, Cameron, who has made campaign donations to the Democrat Party ^[1] in the past, most notably during the 2004 Presidential election where he supported democrat John Kerry, may have ulterior motivations, as evidenced by where he’s planning on moving and what he’s planning on doing once he gets there.

From time to time we get a glimpse into the goings on of the well connected. This may be one of those moments:

Cameron has successfully applied to buy 1,067 hectares (2,636 acres) of farmland in New Zealand. In an application filed with the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office, Cameron says he and his family “intend to reside indefinitely in New Zealand and are acquiring the property to reside on and operate as a working farm.”

Source: Associated Press ^[2], via Matt Drudge ^[3]

As we’ve outlined before, farmland is one of the only reasonable physical assets to hold in the event of a major crisis ^[4], as you’ll be outside of highly populated metropolitan areas, you’ll have the ability to produce your own food, generate your own energy, and, more so than your urbanite and suburbanite counterparts, stay away from the chaos that will ensue during a major upheaval.

Liberty Media CEO James Malone, like director James Cameron, has also taken refuge outside of major cities at his ranch ^[5] on the Quebec border, giving him and his family an immediate international bug out plan in the event of an emergency. Another sign from the elite is that large net worth individuals and investment managers are buying up and taking physical delivery of precious metals ^[6], which in our humble opinion, is a leading indicator that large in-the-know investors are preparing for a loss of confidence in the stability of the global economic, monetary, financial and/or political systems.

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett recently warned that Those Who Can, Should Move Their Families Out Of the City ^[7], and insiders are worried about game changing riots ^[8] stemming from the Occupy movement.

The theory that elite members of society know something is amiss is further strengthened by comments such as those of financier George Soros who publicly declared in a recent interview with Newsweek that he expects violent riots on the streets of America ^[9] in coming months and years.

Furthermore, we have federal agencies and local police departments actively training for urban conflict ^[10], and the Pentagon has been war gaming scenarios that include large scale economic breakdown and civil unrest ^[11].

The stories reported over the last several years point to a growing consensus among elite business leaders, politicians, and military generals that we’re headed into a situation that is wholly unpredictable. They know the system is on the brink, ^[12] have said so repeatedly ^[13], and are actively taking steps to manage a crisis should it ever come to that.

Short of the mainstream media coming out and broadcasting to the American people that the system is about to destabilize and to expect nothing short of total meltdown and pandemonium, reading between the lines and watching the actions of those who are interconnected with the money and power structures on which the system is built will be our only warning signal for the difficult times we face in the near future.

The message is loud and clear. Are you listening?

I Finally Understand Democrats (American Thinker)

2012-01-23T08:41:00.001-05:00

By Johnny Alamo

After years of puzzlement and curiosity observing modern day Democrats, I think I have finally figured them out.

I'm constantly amazed that modern Democrats have evolved beyond living in caves. I mean what other animal on this planet can disregard all common sense and logic and survive? Scientists have recently discovered that even giant sea slugs that do not possess a brain as such can learn from past experiences. That puts them a leg up over the current crop of liberals in this country. I used to subscribe to the adage that liberalism was a mental disorder, but even Rainman would have a hard time buying into the standard mantra of the present day Democratic Party. In order to believe that Democrats have the answer today, you would have to believe:

That you can grow the entitlement class beyond the taxpayer class and never hit critical mass where there is no money left.

That using the military to oust a murderous thug dictator in 2003 was criminal, and using the military to oust a murderous thug dictator in 2011 was noble.

That the best way to grow the wealth of the private sector is to take all the money out of it.

That the best way to make us energy independent is to block any effort to produce more petrocarbons in this country.

That the best way to create jobs is to increase taxes and regulations on the job creators.

That the best way to stop arms from this country from getting into the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico is to provide arms to the drug cartels in Mexico.

That all the ills of the economy are due to the fat cat banks and other corporations, and the best way to deal with that is to provide billions in bailouts to the fat cat banks and other corporations.

That more unemployment checks create more jobs.

That investigating the background of George W Bush to the point that you have color photographs of his colon is proper vetting of the Chief Executive, but asking for Barack Hussein Obama's college records or for information on his association with a known terrorist is racist.

That somehow making firearms illegal will prevent criminals from using them.

That the life of a murderer on death row is sacred, but an unborn baby's is not.

That the best way to overcome our racist past is to enforce racist affirmative action policies.

That people who are too ignorant to get a free state issued I.D. card are smart enough to vote.

That the best way to overcome our current spending crisis is to spend more money.

That the federal government with no competition can provide a better health care product than the private sector with competition can.

That a grandma in a wheelchair is a bigger potential threat on an airplane than a guy with a name that takes phlegm to pronounce.

That we need to be sensitive to the feelings of people that subscribe to a religion that teaches that we all should submit to their version of righteousness or face beheading, but should demean and diminish those that believe in the religion that teaches we should love and embrace our neighbors no matter what religion they belong to.

That poll watchers who want to ensure that election laws are observed and the vote is without fraud are intimidating voters, and black radicals with clubs in front of a polling place are not.

That ice ages and the warming periods in between were not caused by man's influence on the earth but a half degree rise in average temperatures over 30 years is.

That using the equivalent of two gallons of fossil fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol makes sense because it is "renewable."

That a picture of a female guard in Abu Ghraib pointing at the genitals of a terrorist and laughing is deplorable but those same goofballs setting off an IED and killing our troops are just freedom fighters.

That a 70 year old woman with a Gadsden flag is a radical but an OWS protestor that defecates on a police car and breaks windows of businesses is a frustrated citizen.

That in spite of the fact that one third of the world is hungry it makes more sense to use food for fuel than drilling for a fuel source that nobody can eat.

The simple fact is that Democrats are the Dodo birds of the human race. The Dodo was discovered by Portuguese explorers in the late 1500's. The name comes from the Portuguese word "Doudo" which means simpleton. They called this bird a simpleton because in their minds it lacked any common sense whatsoever. That lack of common sense or survival instinct eventually led to its demise as a species.

Wait a minute, that's not really fair of me, I shouldn't equate Democrats to a simple minded flightless bird that was too stupid to run from predators. The Dodo had a job foraging for food.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/01/i_finally_understand_democrats.html at January 23, 2012 - 07:40:57 AM CST

The End Of Social Norms, From The Titanic To The Concordia

2012-01-21T09:41:00.001-05:00

By MARK STEYN Posted 01/20/2012 06:47 PM ET

Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine tweets: "Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won't use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse?"

Oh, dear. You've got to get up early in the morning to beat me to civilizational-collapse metaphors. Been there, done that. See page 185 of my most recent book, where I contrast the orderly, dignified and moving behavior of those on the Titanic (the ship, not the mendacious Hollywood blockbuster) with that manifested in more recent disasters.

There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos punctuated by individual acts of courage from, for example, an Hungarian violinist in the orchestra and a ship's entertainer in a Spiderman costume, both of whom helped children to safety, the former paying with his life.

The miserable Captain Schettino, by contrast, is presently under house arrest, charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship. His explanation is that, when the vessel listed suddenly, he fell into a lifeboat and was unable to climb out. Seriously. Could happen to anyone, slippery decks and all that.

Next thing you know, he was safe on shore, leaving his passengers all at sea. On the other hand, the audio of him being ordered by Coast Guard officers to return to his ship and refusing to do so is not helpful to this version of events.

In the centenary year of the most famous of all maritime disasters, we would do well to consider honestly the tale of the Titanic. When James Cameron made his movie, he was interested in everything except what the story was actually about.

I confess I have very little memory of the film except for Kate Winslet's lush full breasts and some tedious sub-Riverdance prancing in the hold, but what I do recall traduced the memory of honorable men:

In my book, I cite First Officer William Murdoch. In real life, he threw deckchairs to passengers drowning in the water to give them something to cling to, and then he went down with the ship — the dull, decent thing, all very British, with no fuss. In Cameron's movie, Murdoch takes a bribe and murders a third-class passenger.

The director subsequently apologized to the First Officer's hometown in Scotland and offered 5,000 pounds toward a memorial, which converted into Hollywood dollars equals rather less than what Cameron and his family paid for dinner after the Oscars.

© Mark Steyn, 2012

Read the rest here

Debunking the Greenhouse Gas Theory in Three Simple Steps (from Co2 Insanity.com)

2012-01-20T09:39:00.001-05:00

By: John O’Sullivan

A group of international scientists find that carbon dioxide is a coolant, the calculations in the greenhouse gas theory are wrong and humans are not killing the planet.

It may have taken the Climategate controversy to prompt a growing band of specialist scientists to come forward and work together to help climatologists get themselves out of an almighty mess. But at last we know for sure that the doomsaying equations behind the man-made global warming new research shows the numbers were fudged, the physics was misapplied and group thinking perpetuated gross errors.

Yes, the greenhouse effect has now been proven to be a fabrication. That mythical concept called ‘back radiation’ whereby heat was supposed to be recycled in the atmosphere and worsened by the dreaded burning of fossil fuels is contradicted. In reality it’s now been shown that the atmosphere acts like a coolant of Earth’s surface, which, otherwise, would have a temperature of 121 Degrees Celsius, or 394 Kelvin (K).

A team of dedicated international experts, known as the ‘Slayers,’ all highly qualified in their respective fields, spent the past year deliberating over the deep-rooted errors in the calculations employed in the greenhouse gas theory. Their findings are devastating to all those who claim carbon dioxide and the ‘greenhouse effect’ heats our atmosphere.

The standard argument of a clique of climatologists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is as follows:

A warm body (the earth) radiates heat to a cool body (the atmosphere)
The cool body “back-radiates” (IPCC term) heat to the warm body.
This process continues perpetually, with heat flowing round and round in a continuous cycle.
The result of this perpetual process is that the warm body becomes warmer.

This is the so-called greenhouse effect (GHE) examined closely by a team of professors of physics, mathematics, astrophysics, chemistry and biology who joined forces to put the numbers under a fresh microscope.

This group of 20+ specialist scientists has given the infant (and generalist) science of climatology a much-need shake up. Indeed, the ‘Slayers’ say a monumental paradigm shift is now very much under way.

Below, in simplified form, we examine in three parts how their brilliant analysis has eviscerated one of the most costly and mistaken theories of modern science, man-made global warming.

Part One: Coolant Carbon Dioxide

In a recent ground breaking paper Professor Nasif Nahle proved that carbon dioxide (CO2) actually works as a coolant when it interacts with water vapor in the atmosphere to induce the air temperature to cool not a warm.

Physicist, Joe Postma, in this epic debunk further describes the correct application of the laws of thermodynamics to address how the thermal capacity (or conductivity) works with the ‘coolant’ CO2. As Postma tells us,

“Carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases merely serve to make the atmosphere cooler in daytime, warmer at nighttime. This is what empirical evidence tells us. ”

He asks us to think of how this interpretation differs from what the uneducated and pseudo scientists say that is “the greenhouse effect makes the planet warmer than it should be.” But we know that in truth what we actually observe is somewhat entirely different.

In the future, says Joe, people will declare: “The atmosphere keeps the planet from getting too hot in the daytime, and too cold at night-time”.

Just that simple realization alone kills the so-called ‘blanket’ analogy of greenhouse gas theorists stone dead.

Step Two: How the IPCC Picked Wrong Numbers from the Get-go

Now we address the IPCC’s biggest mistake. They started off with a flawed number, and then have to invent lots of other unreal processes and mechanisms to make the real Earth’s average temperature coincide with their numbers.

Professor Nasif Nahle points out that error in IPCC models:

“It’s quite simple. The flux of power on the top of the atmosphere is 1368 W/m^2; however, they [IPCC] say it is 341 W/m^2.”

Without an atmosphere, the Earth would be receiving a flux of 1368 W/m^2 of solar power (394K under the zenith facing the Sun). With the atmosphere, it receives and absorbs 718 W/m^2 (335K) on its surface.

Postma, a recent addition to the team sums up how much getting those first numbers right matters:

“We all agree that the atmosphere has an “atmosphere effect.” But what is of interest to us is how this effect changes if the properties of the atmosphere changes (a little).”

In this excellent paper geologist, Timothy Casey, gives a calculation for how much temperature variation will be caused by changes in CO2. It tells us:

“If carbon dioxide produced the backradiation claimed by Arrhenius, thermal conductivity measurements of carbon dioxide would be so suppressed by the backradiation of heat conducted into this material, that the correspondingly steep temperature gradient would yield a negative thermal conductivity of carbon dioxide.”

What Casey shows is that in reality, a 10,000 ppm increase in carbon dioxide could, at most, reduce the conductivity of air by a measly one percent and given the actual difference between the thermal conductivities of carbon dioxide (0.0168) and zero grade air (0.0260), a 10,000 ppm increase in carbon dioxide would lower the thermal conductivity of zero grade air by 0.36 percent.

Casey finds,

“That would represent a 0.36 percent increase in thermal gradient, or a surface warming of 0.18 percent and a ceiling cooling of 0.18 percent of the total difference in temperature between the top and bottom of the affected air mass. In the case of a tropospheric carbon dioxide increase of 10,000 ppm, that would correspond to a warming of 0.125ºC, or one eighth of a degree Celsius at the earth’s surface.”

“However, even if this wasn’t a negligible enough effect, Casey finds the proverbial doubling of CO2 would only contribute a change of 0.004⁰C at the surface”.

Step Three: Exposing the Idiocy

Groupthink is ‘Step Three’ in our explanation of how climatology got itself into such a muddle. Here’s a perfect example of scientific idiocy displayed by someone who ought to know better. Postma shows how a reality disconnect by one such theorist makes a mockery of IPCC numbers when applied to the real world. He explains,

“Yesterday a professor tried to tell me that a blackbody (BB) would heat itself up if its radiation would shine back on it – if it was surrounded completely by a perfect mirror.

I told him that all that would happen is you’d get a standing electromagnetic wave between the BB and the mirror, with a frequency spectrum and flux density equal to that of the BB – there’d be no spontaneous increase of temperature. 50C is 50C and there’s no way to get more than 50C, from 50C. The only way to get more than 50C is to bring in some outside work or something hotter than 50C.”

Postma then enlightened the perplexed professor that it’s impossible to make candles or insulation warm itself by its own radiation. “If we could make a candle burn hotter by reflecting it’s light back onto it, that would have been discovered long ago.”

The Slayers thus ask us to put it all in terms of radiation and conduction being analogous modes of heat transfer. Then it becomes plainly obvious and ridiculous.

Like his learned colleagues Postma suggests climatologists apply a little more common sense and joined up thinking; their heat transport equations should properly be addressed in terms of conduction such that radiation and conduction are simply MODES of heat transfer. If an object can heat itself via its own, or “colder” radiation, then it should also be able to heat itself by conducting with itself, or conducting with a cold body.

“An object conducting with itself to make itself hotter? What the heck does that even mean? An object conducting with a colder one and thereby becoming hotter? I don’t think so,” insists Postma.

Thus when we start to accept that conduction and radiation are analogous modes of heat transfer, then it dawns on us all that the laws work the same way with both of them.

Therefore, by working through this ‘Three Step Greenhouse Effect Debunk’ we are left with only one conclusion: IPCC junk (generalist) science is well and truly busted by the specialists in their fields.

Source: John O’Sullivan

The Icelandic Saga Continues (The Fraud is Breathtaking)

2012-01-19T08:38:00.001-05:00

January 18, 2012

tags: GISS, Iceland

By Paul Homewood

Just to recap, we have learnt that GISS temperatures for Iceland and Greenland have been artificially adjusted, with the result that current temperatures appear much warmer than when compared with the warm period during the 1940’s. Temperature data for Reykjavik from the Iceland Met Office confirmed that this adjustment was wholly artificial and resulted in a net warming of about a half a degree centigrade since 1940 and that the actual mean temperatures in the last decade are about a degree less than GISS show.

I also have data from the Iceland Met Office for two other stations, Stykkisholmur and Akureyri and these show the same pattern of adjustments as the graphs below illustrate.

In both cases the temperatures from 1940 to 1964 have been adjusted downwards, and as with Reykjavik the overall effect is to create about a half a degree of warming.

On further investigation, it appears that the adjustments have actually been carried out by GHCN, whose figures GISS use. The changes seem to have taken place when they issued a revised version, 3.1, of their database in November 2011. The GHCN website gives access to all their stations and shows both adjusted and unadjusted data. Examination of these records confirms that, out of eight stations in Iceland, seven have had such artificial warming applied, e.g

The top right hand graph (red) is the unadjusted version, middle one is adjusted, and the bottom one graphs the adjustment (blue is minus, red plus).

Evidence is already building up that these adjustments are not limited to only Iceland. Similar adjustments have already been found in Greenland, Ireland and Scotland.

This issue raises several points of concern :-

1) These are palpably not “one-off” adjustments, which might be justified for station location changes or other local reasons. Have they been made as a result of a deliberate decision by GHCN, or are they the result of an error or a faulty piece of software?

2) If the result of error, what does this tell us about the quality control procedures at GHCN and GISS?

3) How many other similar adjustments have been made previously that have not been spotted? Would these have been uncovered without the attention of independent observers?

4) If GHCN believe the adjustments are justified, why have they not published their results and reasons for discussion, before issuing the revision? According to their CHANGELOG “GHCNMv3.1.0 is released with several minor corrections and a reworking of internal arrays for more efficient operations.” No mention of large scale temperature adjustments!

5) What assurance do we have that more changes of this sort won’t be made in future?

I believe in Tim Tebow (Rick Reilly) ESPN.COM

2012-01-13T17:02:00.001-05:00

By Rick Reilly
ESPN.com


	Tim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season.

I've come to believe in Tim Tebow, but not for what he does on a football field, which is still three parts Dr. Jekyll and two parts Mr. Hyde.

No, I've come to believe in Tim Tebow for what he does off a football field, which is represent the best parts of us, the parts I want to be and so rarely am.

Who among us is this selfless?

Every week, Tebow picks out someone who is suffering, or who is dying, or who is injured. He flies these people and their families to the Broncos game, rents them a car, puts them up in a nice hotel, buys them dinner (usually at a Dave & Buster's), gets them and their families pregame passes, visits with them just before kickoff (!), gets them 30-yard-line tickets down low, visits with them after the game (sometimes for an hour), has them walk him to his car, and sends them off with a basket of gifts.

Home or road, win or lose, hero or goat.

Remember last week, when the world was pulling its hair out in the hour after Tebow had stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers with an 80-yard OT touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the playoffs? And Twitter was exploding with 9,420 tweets about Tebow per second? When an ESPN poll was naming him the most popular athlete in America?

Tebow was spending that hour talking to 16-year-old Bailey Knaub about her 73 surgeries so far and what TV shows she likes.

MORE FROM TIM TEBOW

For Tim Tebow's take on being named America's most popular athlete, click here.

"Here he'd just played the game of his life," recalls Bailey's mother, Kathy, of Loveland, Colo., "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey."

More than that, Tebow kept corralling people into the room for Bailey to meet. Hey, Demaryius, come in here a minute. Hey, Mr. Elway. Hey, Coach Fox.

Even though sometimes-fatal Wegener's granulomatosis has left Bailey with only one lung, the attention took her breath away.

"It was the best day of my life," she emailed. "It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises."

I read that email to Tebow, and he was honestly floored.

"Why me? Why should I inspire her?" he said. "I just don't feel, I don't know, adequate. Really, hearing her story inspires me."

It's not just NFL defenses that get Tebowed. It's high school girls who don't know whether they'll ever go to a prom. It's adults who can hardly stand. It's kids who will die soon.

For the game at Buffalo, it was Charlottesville, Va., blue-chip high school QB Jacob Rainey, who lost his leg after a freak tackle in a scrimmage. Tebow threw three interceptions in that Buffalo game and the Broncos were crushed 40-14.

"He walked in and took a big sigh and said, 'Well, that didn't go as planned,'" Rainey remembers. "Where I'm from, people wonder how sincere and genuine he is. But I think he's the most genuine person I've ever met."

There's not an ounce of artifice or phoniness or Hollywood in this kid Tebow, and I've looked everywhere for it.

Take 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Immediately after Tebow shocked the Chicago Bears with a 13-10 comeback win, Tebow spent an hour with Zac and his family. At one point, Zac, who has 10 doctors, asked Tebow whether he has a secret prayer for hospital visits. Tebow whispered it in his ear. And because Tebow still needed to be checked out by the Broncos' team doctor, he took Zac in with him, but only after they had whispered it together.

And it's not always kids. Tom Driscoll, a 55-year-old who is dying of brain cancer at a hospice in Denver, was Tebow's guest for the Cincinnati game. "The doctors took some of my brain," Driscoll says, "so my short-term memory is kind of shot. But that day I'll never forget. Tim is such a good man."

This whole thing makes no football sense, of course. Most NFL players hardly talk to teammates before a game, much less visit with the sick and dying.

Isn't that a huge distraction?


	Not everything Tim Tebow does on one knee is controversial. Ask Zac Taylor.

"Just the opposite," Tebow says. "It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference."

So that's it. I've given up giving up on him. I'm a 100 percent believer. Not in his arm. Not in his skills. I believe in his heart, his there-will-definitely-be-a-pony-under-the-tree optimism, the way his love pours into people, right up to their eyeballs, until they believe they can master the hopeless comeback, too.

Remember the QB who lost his leg, Jacob Rainey? He got his prosthetic leg a few weeks ago, and he wants to play high school football next season. Yes, tackle football. He'd be the first to do that on an above-the-knee amputation.

Hmmm. Wonder where he got that crazy idea?

"Tim told me to keep fighting, no matter what," Rainey says. "I am."

Follow Rick on Twitter @ReillyRick
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Rick Reilly is the 11-time National Sportswriter of the Year. He contributes essays and commentary to "Monday Night Countdown," "SportsCenter," and ESPN/ABC golf and tennis coverage. He's also the host of "Homecoming," ESPN's unique, one-hour interview show set in the hometowns of legendary athletes. For more Rick, check out the archive.

Feel like taking a detour from sane sports? Try Rick's latest book, "Sports from Hell."

The Myth of Income Inequality

2012-01-13T16:38:00.001-05:00

January 13, 2012 By David Milstein 8 Comments

By David A. Milstein, TheCollegeConservative.com

January 13, 2012

For years, the Left led by President Obama and aided by the robots in the media have continued to say there is a growing income gap in America. They say the rich are getting richer and the poor are being left behind. President Obama recently stated in his weekend address to the nation, “Over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier.” The recent flurry of news stories came as a result of a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that concluded: “From 1979 to 2007, real (inflation-adjusted) average household income… for households at the higher end of the income scale rose much more rapidly than income for households in the middle or at the lower end of the income scale.”Not surprisingly, the Left jumped all over the airwaves to promote the report and argued for the need for higher taxes and redistribution. Yet some of the conclusions from studies like the CBO report can be extremely misleading and perpetuate fallacies about income and upward mobility in America.

First, the broad claims are true that categorically the top 1% continue to have higher income. The top 1%, like all levels, will continue to grow with technology, innovation and investment. We should be very worried if the opposite happened. Yet the problem with studies like the CBO report is they only take statistical, bracket snapshots of household income and fail to follow the growth of individual income over that same period of time, let alone measure the constant individual movement between the brackets. As pointed out by renowned economist Thomas Sowell in his must-read new book Economic Facts and Fallacies; there is a huge difference between measuring household, individual and categorical data and our focus should instead be on the movement of individuals, not bracket growth.

Here is what he means. Despite the conventional wisdom, a 2007 IRS, Treasury report studied individual tax returns rather than income brackets. It found between the years 1996 and 2005, those individuals whose income were in the top 1% and 5% in 1996 actually saw a decline in their income by 2005. On the flip side, the IRS and Treasury found that the individual income for those in the bottom 20% in 1996 had an average income increase of 91% by 2005, almost doubling their income. They also found “roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.”

The difference in conclusions is simple: individuals move between income categories all the time. If someone who makes $70,000 a year and sells their $200,000 house in a given year, the snapshot of that given year will show much higher income. The same goes for a wealthy investor whose income could drop after losing a large investment. These categories create the illusion that those who fill each bracket actually remain fixed there each year.

Second, it is very misleading to use household income levels as a way to measure the income gap. Today, fewer people live in the average household. As a result, total household income has decreased. In fact, the latest 2010 Census report actually found there are almost five times more earners among wealthier households than those at the bottom, and those at the top are usually more educated and married. Quite logically, those at the bottom are usually single-family households, young adults and less educated. As you can see, it is easy for the household data to paint the wrong picture of income in America.

And finally, there is a major difference between income and wealth. Seniors rely on Social Security or dividend payments from their stocks for much of their income once they retire. But the decrease in their income doesn’t mean they are now categorically poor. In fact in a 17-page rebuke of the CBO report, Rep. Paul Ryan noted that much of these studies don’t account for transfer payments. It also ignores the wealth that seniors have accumulated throughout their lives.

If I wanted to use Obama’s argument, a recent Census Bureau report highlighted by Investors Business Daily shows the greatest average household income gap in the last thirty years actually occurred under President Clinton and those at the very top actually lost income under President Bush. But it is extremely misleading. It only shows a snapshot of the distribution of income during specific years. Instead we should focus on the individual income and recognize people move between multiple income levels throughout their lifetime. Upward mobility, or even a loss of income is the essence of risk, reward, success and failure that happens within a capitalistic, opportunity society. The Left has successfully created many economic fallacies like this one to promote their redistribution plans of taking more from the rich to give to the poor. In reality, it will simply lead to a contraction in the private sector and everyone financially worse off. Rather than pushing for equal outcome that would only punish the more successful, we should instead promote equal opportunity to ensure greater upward mobility. This is the principle that makes us an exceptional nation.

Climate Science (a Consensus?)

2012-01-01T09:39:00.001-05:00

Dec 31, 2011

Four Professors testify before the Canadian Senate Committee

The four submissions on December 15th to the Senate Committee by Drs. Clark, McKitrick, Veizer and Patterson) have been reformatted with all the slides by Tom Harris of ICSC. As Dr. Clark says of his presentation, it is his climate course packaged into ten minutes and for a lay audience.

Ian Clark:

Ross McKitrick:

Tim Patterson:

Jan Veizer:

Happy New Year? by Mark Steyn (From National Review Online)

2012-01-01T09:25:00.001-05:00

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT

By Mark Steyn

December 31, 2011 7:00 A.M.

Ring out the new, ring in the old.

No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion — a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

#ad#Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks. So, for example, a pipeline delivering Canadian energy from Alberta to Texas is blocked by the president on no grounds whatsoever except that the very thought of it is an aesthetic affront to the moneyed Sierra Club types who infest his fundraisers. The offending energy, of course, does not simply get mothballed in the Canadian attic: The Dominion’s prime minister has already pointed out that they’ll sell it to the Chinese, whose Politburo lacks our exquisitely refined revulsion at economic dynamism, and indeed seems increasingly amused by it. Pace the ecopalyptics, the planet will be just fine: Would it kill you to try saving your country, or state, or municipality?

Last January, the BBC’s Brian Milligan inaugurated the new year by driving an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh taking advantage of the many government-subsidized charge posts en route. It took him four days, which works out to an average speed of six miles per hour — or longer than it would have taken on a stagecoach in the mid–19th century. This was hailed as a great triumph by the environmentalists. I mean, c’mon, what’s the hurry?

What indeed? In September, the tenth anniversary of a murderous strike at the heart of America’s most glittering city was commemorated at a building site: The Empire State Building was finished in 18 months during a depression, but in the 21st century the global superpower cannot put up two replacement skyscrapers within a decade. The 9/11 memorial museum was supposed to open on the eleventh anniversary, this coming September. On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that there is “no chance of it being open on time.” No big deal. What’s one more endlessly delayed, inefficient, over-bureaucratized construction project in a sclerotic republic?

Barely had the 9/11 observances ended than America’s gilded if somewhat long-in-the-tooth youth took to the streets of Lower Manhattan to launch “Occupy Wall Street.” The young certainly should be mad about something: After all, it’s their future that got looted to bribe the present. As things stand, they’ll end their days in an impoverished, violent, disease-ridden swamp of dysfunction that would be all but unrecognizable to Americans of the mid–20th century — and, if that’s not reason to take to the streets, what is? Alas, our somnolent youth are also laboring under the misapprehension that advanced Western societies still have somebody to stick it to. The total combined wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans is $1.5 trillion. So, if you confiscated the lot, it would barely cover one Obama debt-ceiling increase. Nevertheless, America’s student princes’ main demand was that someone else should pick up the six-figure tab for their leisurely half-decade varsity of Social Justice studies. Lest sticking it to the Man by demanding the Man write them a large check sound insufficiently idealistic, they also wanted a trillion dollars for “ecological restoration.” Hey, why not? What difference is another lousy trill gonna make?

#page#Underneath the patchouli and pneumatic drumming, the starry-eyed young share the same cobwebbed parochial assumptions of permanence as their grandparents: We’re gayer, greener, and groovier, but other than that it’s still 1950 and we’ve got more money than anybody else on the planet, so why get hung up about a few trillion here and a few trillion there? In a mere half century, the richest nation on earth became the brokest nation in history, but the attitudes and assumptions of half the population and 90 percent of the ruling class remain unchanged.

Auld acquaintance can be forgot, for a while. But eventually even the most complacent and myopic societies get reacquainted with reality. For anyone who cares about the future of America and the broader West, the most important task in 2012 is to puncture the cocoon of denial. Instead, the governing class obsesses on trivia: just to pluck at random from recent Californian legislative proposals, a ban on non-fitted sheets in motels, mandatory gay history for first graders, car seats for children up to the age of eight. Why not up to the age of 38? Just to be on the safe side. And all this in an ever more insolvent jurisdiction that every year drives ever more of its productive class to flee its borders.

#ad#Tens of millions of Americans have yet to understand that the can can no longer be kicked down the road, because we’re all out of road. The pavement ends, and there’s just a long drop into the abyss. And, even in a state-compliant car seat, you’ll land with a bump. At this stage in a critical election cycle, we ought to be arguing about how many government departments to close, how many government programs to end, how many millions of government regulations to do away with. Instead, one party remains committed to encrusting even more barnacles to America’s rusting hulk, while the other is far too wary of harshing the electorate’s mellow.

The sooner we recognize the 20th-century entitlement state is over, the sooner we can ring in something new. The longer we delay ringing out the old, the worse it will be. Happy New Year?

As '11 Ends, 11 Charts Of 11 Disturbing 11 Year Trends

2011-12-31T09:21:00.001-05:00

Published on ZeroHedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)

Home > As '11 Ends, 11 Charts Of 11 Disturbing 11 Year Trends

By Tyler Durden

Created 12/30/2011 - 15:07

[1]

Submitted by Tyler Durden [1] on 12/30/2011 15:07 -0500

Mean Reversion [2]

As we pop the corks of our proverbial champagne this weekend with an eye to a better year ahead, perhaps it is worth thinking about these 11 incredible trends that have evolved in a rather disturbing manner over the last 11 years. As John Lohman [3] points out, the 21st century has not been pretty for ongoing centrally planned attempts to defer the 30 year overdue mean reversion.

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A World without Schoolteachers (American Thinker)

2011-12-26T09:16:00.001-05:00

By Richard F. Miniter

The Kindle and Nook may make for not only the most important advance in reading since Gutenberg, but also, quite likely, a major lesson in unintended consequences. Especially for the educational establishment, because for the first time in history, Americans should be able to envision a future without public-school teachers -- indeed, a future without public-school administrators or state departments of education with their rigidly enforced, politically correct social-transformation curriculum. A future without onerous school taxes, "education president(s)," self-preening school boards, or million-dollar classrooms. But most happily, a future without a single supercilious finger wagging in our face as we're forever lectured about how much a securely tenured, part-time, self-important, overpaid class of public employees "cares" about our sons and daughters. Really, really, really cares. And, of course, knows much better than we do how to bring them up.

And it's all possible because these cheap, handheld, downloadable reading devices such as Kindle and Nook now give parents a choice between tutoring and classroom education.

Tutoring has always been the preferred model. That is after all how the very rich educated their children. Second-best, and not-so-second-best at that, were the small schools where the second tier of society, the well-off not-so-rich, pooled their resources in some public location and shared tutors. (Which is why the British, as in Eton and Harrow, still call exclusive private schools "public" schools.) And of course, the elite universities did their best to maintain the tutoring model of education. Did their best, that is, to steer clear of classroom instruction.

Because as opposed to a setting where the instructor stands in front a blackboard lecturing a group of students day after day, guiding and encouraging them through a restricted curriculum, tutoring is a process of individualized on-your-own reading and writing followed a quick critique from the tutor. A character and skill-building technique which not only consumes vastly more learning material, but hits it harder. In much less time.

A number of years ago, the Wall Street Journal had a piece about homeschooling in which a professional in some other field explained his discovery of the huge amount of material but amazingly small amount of time it takes to thoroughly educate a child with the tutoring model. A routine his daughter explained as reading a book every day and then writing an essay about it. "Read a book, write an essay."

In fact, even the simplest tutoring approach often works magic. Years ago, a twelve-year-old foster child arrived in our home essentially unable to read after six or seven years of classroom "special" education. To the point where he didn't even know how to use a dictionary. Our oldest son, a prolific writer, happened to be visiting us at the time, saw the problem, and came up with a fix. He handed the boy the newspaper he read each morning, told him to sit on his bed, read it aloud, and circle every word he couldn't pronounce or didn't know the meaning of. Then, later, the two of them went over the circled words together. The first day, every fourth or fifth word was circled, but it wasn't very long before the number of circles began to decrease, and something clicked in the boy's mind. "Hey," he seemed to say to himself, "this is not such a mystery. I can get this reading and writing thing working on my own." And he went on to other material. Then, when he was ready to begin high school, the state and local school district sent a team to evaluate him in order to design a classroom program that met his "special needs." Only there wasn't any, because they were shocked to discover that he tested at or above -- and in a couple of subjects, far above -- his grade level.

And that's all it takes. Hand out the reading assignment, be available, or have someone else available to examine the essay they write and perhaps send them back to the same material book for another go or two on the same subject. Because tutoring doesn't teach a discrete body of knowledge as much as it does a skill we don't hear much about anymore: scholarship. Not simply memorizing some facts about a subject, but examining it from one perspective and then another until you develop a detailed, three-dimensional view of the subject. It's your month to learn about the Revolutionary War? Read a biography of Washington one day, then in the next Paine or Jefferson, Madison and Adams. Intersperse these books with a personal account of a common soldier, a slave, a parson of the time. Sample some fiction which portrays the period -- Drums Along the Mohawk, for example. Some of the short and breezy economic looks about the period like The Timber Economy of New England. Maybe read the newspapers of the time.

Twenty days, twenty books, all of which a student has had to think fairly deeply about because he knows that he has to write about them, and voilà: a child knows more about the Revolutionary period than -- not to put too fine a point on it -- the average public-school teacher.

Too much to expect of your little second-grader? Well, for little people, there are little books with little words, and at the end of the day, little essays. They'll grow. Kids are smart.

It also sums down to a little block of time because without having to get ready for the school bus; the bus ride; dispersing to classroom; disciplinary issues in classrooms; having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom; noisy, chaotic hallways scenes every fifty minutes; noisy, chaotic lunch periods; announcements; fire drills; lectures about bullying, respecting alternative lifestyles, or strangers; then preparing for the bus ride home, followed by homework, one can do a better job with a child in two hours than a traditional school classroom setting can in eight.

There's also the issue of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the classroom which the educational establishment will never admit to: indoctrination.

After all, whom do we thank for the classroom? Yes, that right -- dissenting religious sects who wanted their children to read the Bible (their version of it), couldn't afford individual tutors or many other books, and stood a schoolmaster/preacher up in front of a bunch of benches. An effort in indoctrination which later sublimated into civics (a branch of the same tree), after the schools were secularized and then in these latter days into a mushy leveling philosophy rooted in certain psychological/Marxist precepts that seem to impart a new and even higher truth.

Such as the very strange belief that competition is damaging -- that children are fragile, everyone is the same as everyone else, everyone is special, students can learn as much from other students as they may from adults, don't judge, don't strive...and teachers, don't you dare encourage students to study really hard in order to achieve "ability status"...don't make any gestures when you sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" because it might offend deaf people -- yada, yada. Anyone with even just a passing acquaintance knows the drill. Knows that this is in fact the end-game of public education -- a belief system.

And so, just as in the earlier religious schools and later in the quasi-religious civics schools, the information allowed to reach the classroom is controlled.

Via the texts.

Diane Ravitch and others have written extensively on the issue of K-12 textbooks, and anybody interested in the Byzantine, incredibly politically correct process by which they are formulated should read her. Suffice it to say that they provide a very restricted view of subjects and, even in "science," do their best to push the party line in much the same manner as a communist math textbook from the 1930s would offer the problem "if one capitalist can exploit twelve workers a day, how many can ten exploit in seven point five days?"

Public-school textbooks also make things up. Portray the starving times in the early Virginia colony as a transitional period in which the early colonists hadn't yet learned to "share," when the exact opposite was the case. I believe that it was Ravitch herself who used the example of a passage in a social studies text which presented as fact, and so glorified, the vanished Anasazi of the southwest as developing an egalitarian society in which everything was shared, when the fact is that they left no written record and so nobody knows how they organized themselves. But the examples of selection and mendacity are legion. And cut from exactly the same bolt of cloth used by earlier educators, who portrayed the four-hundred-year history of the Spanish Inquisition as history's benchmark for terror (and it is a good example) but ignored the fact that religious fanatics from their own doctrinal camp in tiny Scotland burned as many so-called heretics in forty.

But suddenly, with a Kindle or Nook in hand, children can skip the propaganda. At the fingertips of parents armed with a one of these electronic reading devices, there are eight hundred thousand free books -- and a million for sometimes as little as ninety-nine cents. They can find their own lies if they want to. Or, more importantly, the truth.

Which means that just as the automatic washing machine and dryer made in-house, twenty-four-a-day laundry service available to the middle-class (who couldn't afford live-in maids), these new, quickly downloadable electronic readers have put individual tutoring within reach of the great mass of families. Because the problem with tutoring has always been the books. A wealthy family might have had a huge, expensive library to draw from, while the peasants never did. Even a middle-class family in America today would be hard-put to sample and then make available 300 different print books for a child every year -- three children, 900 books. But now even the meanest family can have the Library of Congress in their pocket, or their child's backpack. In fact, there isn't any need to lug a backpack around any longer.

So should all parents begin tutoring their children at home? I don't know. My children are long grown and on their own, but if I had them back and compared the two visions -- a tutoring program taking only an hour or two out of my day which would land my child on his feet at age eighteen, having read and written about the lessons of over four thousand books, or a public education in which he would read and understand, if I was lucky, a hundred or two -- I'd be mighty tempted. Not to mention the fact that for twelve years I wouldn't have had some other adult whispering strange nothings in my kid's ear.

But what I am convinced of is that given the advent of the Kindle and Nook and whatever surprises follow, the current model of classroom-based public education is simply a dead woman walking. Teachers are going to have to reinvent themselves because children aren't going to be lectured to anymore day after dreary day. They won't allow it. Parents won't allow it. For the one single reason that they don't have to anymore. Instead, more and more children are going to be reading and writing and talking about the world of knowledge they're exploring. Intelligently. Becoming ever more educated while spending a much greater portion of their day doing what kids are wont to do. Running and shouting in the autumn sunshine, assembling a model of the Empire State Building in the basement, collecting rocks or dolls or pets. Being, one might say, kids.

...Who, if you're really lucky, might decide to take a walk down the road and interrupt Grandpa's nap.

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most (BDD, Random House) and the coming e-book Conversations With My Graddaughter. He writes in Stone Ridge New York and can be reached at miniterhome@aol.com.

Just How Bad is it? (The US Economy)

2011-12-19T08:44:00.001-05:00

“If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that ‘business as usual’ will result in a national economic apocalypse,” writes TEC.

Here are the 50 economic numbers from 2011 that will shock you (via The Economic Collapse):

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

11. Back in 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40 percent of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

15. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

18. In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

22. New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

23. 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

24. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

25. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5 percent of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3 percent.

26. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

27. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

28. The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

29. It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

30. The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5 percent in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

35. According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

36. If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

37. A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7 percent) than has ever been measured before.

38. Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

39. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

40. Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

41. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

42. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7 percent of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

43. A staggering 48.5 percent of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

44. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

45. For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

46. If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

47. Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

48. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

49. The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

50. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Of course, after going through all these numbers, the obvious question is, “how has it come to this?” The Economic Collapse has a simple answer:

. . . the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence. If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape. The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based.

But who among America’s leaders has the will and determination to do this? Judging by how the Obama administration has conducted itself thus far, it probably won’t consider (let alone implement) any of the suggestions mentioned in the above. Therefore, that leaves only the GOP candidates.

Who among them has the best chance to restore economic stability? Who is the most likely to return the U.S. to prosperity?

“Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country,” TEC writes.

Indeed, 2012 may be one of the biggest turning points this country has ever seen.

(h/t Zero Hedge)

What I learned as a cop ( By a Chicago Cop)

2011-12-14T11:00:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - Middle Class Guy by Peter Bella

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CHICAGO, December 13, 2011 ― I was a Chicago Police Officer for almost 30 years. I spent the first ten years of my career in one of the worst, most impoverished areas of Chicago, Lawndale. It was named as one of the ten most dangerous neighborhoods in America. Even people’s dreams weren’t safe.

Everyday I patrolled streets where there was no hope, no change, no future, and no way out. Self survival was paramount. People did whatever they could to live through one more day. Crime was just a day’s work.

The only thing that differentiated Lawndale from a fourth world country was indoor plumbing. The armies of rats and stray dogs ate better than the people. They were healthier too.

There was block after block of perfectly good commercial, manufacturing, and industrial property, all of it vacant, buildings and land. Urban renewal meant tearing things down, not redevelopment.

Day after day all we did was deal with people who were just trying to survive in any way they could. I developed a very healthy hatred. It wasn’t racism. I did not hate poor people. I hated a system of welfare, social engineering, and entitlement that did nothing to help poor people or alleviate poverty.

There was never a war on poverty. It was a war on poor people, a long term war designed to keep them in perpetual dependence and poverty. Our government created a system of slavery. They made people slaves to dependency, generation after generation.

I witnessed the big lies: wealth redistribution, social justice, social economic justice, and social engineering. Lies the progressives, liberals, and our president keep alive to this day.

I learned one thing. There are no safety nets. Government benevolence does everything to enslave people in a cycle of generational womb to tomb dependency. The so called safety nets are nothing but chains and shackles in disguise.

America has wasted money on programs that only benefit bureaucrats, social service agencies and their workers. Those are the only jobs created. The people the programs were designed to help are allowed to barely survive.

Not much has changed in Lawndale since 1978. There are still the same vacant buildings and vacant land, just more of it. There are still people living in abject poverty, just more of them.

There is still no hope, no change, and no way out. The vicious cycle continues.

There is anger in this community. Over 60% of the men are ex-felons. The unemployment rate is upwards of 70%. There is misery and hopelessness. People no longer want welfare or food stamps. They do not want subsidized housing. They want their share of the American dream. They want economic independence: They want jobs.

The politicians are still not listening. They are still pushing the politics of poverty.

The people no longer believe believe racism is the cause of their plight. They know politicians, including Black politicians, are the reason they remain poor.

No one is listening. The career politicians, at all levels of government, keep pushing the same slave agenda. The progressives and liberals keep pushing the same benevolent dependency policies. The bureaucrats and social workers, the only beneficiaries of government largesse, keep selling the dream of dependency.

One thing you learn as a police officer is how to spot a lie. The politicians have been lying to all of us since the 1960s. They are still lying, now to the middle class. They are pushing the same agenda of dependence and slavery instead of prosperity and independence.

Instead of economic development, which creates jobs, they push for more social welfare programs. More and longer unemployment benefits, tax holidays that will punish people when they end, food stamps, and other welfare type schemes - the false safety nets.

They absolutely refuse to pursue an agenda of economic development. They refuse to provide the certainty and confidence that will allow businesses to expand, grow, build, or even start.

Liberals want to create a more dependent society. They can control dependents. That is what progressive politics is all about, control. You cannot control people with paychecks.

I witnessed the failure of these programs over thirty years ago. They failed then and they will fail now. It is easier to get people on welfare programs than it is to build a factory to put them to work.

In Chicago there are square miles, in the aggregate, of land that could be used to build factories and other industrial entities. There is land that could be used for commercial and small business use. It all lies vacant.

Chicago is no different than other cities. No one wants to even attempt to build anything there. The hurdles, obstacles, and barriers are too high. Federal, state, and local governments put up roadblocks.

Better to have people survive on their benevolent largesse. Better to have people with their hands out instead of their hands dirty from work. Better to have welfare and unemployment checks than paychecks.

Those programs failed to help the poor. Poverty has never been alleviated and never will be. What is going on in America today is just a repeat on a larger scale. No one will be helped. No one will benefit except the politicians, the bureaucrats, and social service agencies, the sales people of misery and dependence.

We are supposed to learn from history. We learn nothing. We keep repeating the same mistakes. We keep electing the same kinds of people. Over and over again.

Peter Bella is a retired Chicago Police Officer, freelance writer, freelance photographer, and consultant. He is a passionate cook and eater. He likes to be the sharp stick that pokes, annoys, and provokes. His opinions are his and his alone.

Who are the One Percent?

2011-12-13T09:03:00.001-05:00

Townhall.com ^ | December 13, 2011 | Michael Tanner

Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 8:50:51 AM by Kaslin

So just who are those top 1 percent of Americans that we're all supposed to hate?

If you listen to President Obama, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, and much of the media, it's obvious. They're either "trust-fund babies" who inherited their money, or greedy bankers and hedge-fund managers. Certainly, they haven't worked especially hard for their money. While the recession has thrown millions of Americans out of work, they've been getting even richer. Worse, they don't even pay their fair share in taxes: Millionaires and billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

In reality, each of these stereotypes is wrong.

By and large, the wealthy have worked hard for their money.

Roughly 80 percent of millionaires in America are the first generation of their family to be rich. They didn't inherit their wealth; they earned it. How? According to a recent survey of the top 1 percent of American earners, slightly less than 14 percent were involved in banking or finance.

Roughly a third were entrepreneurs or managers of nonfinancial businesses. Nearly 16 percent were doctors or other medical professionals.

Lawyers made up slightly more than 8 percent, and engineers, scientists and computer professionals another 6.6 percent.

Sports and entertainment figures — the folks flying in on their private jets to express solidarity with Occupy Wall Street — composed almost 2 percent.

By and large, the wealthy have worked hard for their money. NYU sociologist Dalton Conley says that "higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do."

Because so much of their income is tied up in investments, the recession has hit the rich especially hard. Much attention has been paid recently to a Congressional Budget Office study that showed incomes for the top 1 percent rose far faster from 1980 until 2007 than for the rest of us. But the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has found that since 2007, there has been a 39 percent decline in the number of American millionaires.

Among the "super-rich," the decline has been even sharper: The number of Americans earning more than $10 million a year has fallen by 55 percent. In fact, while in 2008 the top 1 percent earned 20 percent of all income here, that figure has declined to just 16 percent. Inequality in America is declining.

As for not paying their fair share, the top 1 percent pay 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. Because, as noted above, they earn just 16 percent of all income, that certainly seems like more than a fair share.

Maybe Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, as he claims. But the comparison is misleading because Buffett's income comes mostly from capital gains, which were already taxed at their origin through the corporate-income tax.

Moreover, the Buffetts of the world are clearly an exception. Overall, the rich pay an effective tax rate (after all deductions and exemptions) of roughly 24 percent. For all taxpayers as a group, the average effective tax rate is about 11 percent.

Beyond taxes, the rich also pay in terms of private charity. Households with more than $1 million in income donated more than $150 billion to charity last year, roughly half of all US charitable donations. Greedy? It hardly seems so. And let us not forget the fact that the rich provide the investment capital that funds ventures, creates jobs and spurs innovation. The money that the rich save and invest is the money that companies use to start or expand businesses, buy machinery and other physical capital and hire workers.

It has become fashionable to ridicule the idea of the rich as "job creators," but if the rich don't create jobs, who will? How many workers have been hired recently by the poor?

No doubt dishonest or unscrupulous businessmen have gotten rich by taking advantage of others. And few of us are likely to lose much sleep over the plight of the rich.

But shouldn't public policy be based on something more than class warfare, envy and stereotypes?

Durban: what the media are not telling you (From Watts Up With That?)

2011-12-10T08:10:00.001-05:00

Posted on December 9, 2011by Anthony Watts

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Main points:

Ø A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.
Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years’ data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.

Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.
Ø A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C° cut in today’s temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.
Ø The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total economic destruction.
Ø The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv.
Ø The peak-greenhouse-gas target year – for the West only – will be this year. We will be obliged to cut our emissions from now on, regardless of the effect on our economies (and the lack of effect on the climate).
Ø The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now on.

The real lunacy comes in the small print – all of it in 8-point type, near-illegibly printed on grubby, recycled paper. Every fashionable leftist idiocy is catered for.

Talking of which, note in passing that Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who, in the topsy-turvy looking-glass world of international climate insanity is the “science” chairman of the UN’s climate panel, has admitted that no one has been talking about climate science at the climate conference here in Durban. Not really surprising, given no real warming for getting on for two decades, no recent sea-level rise, no new record Arctic ice-melt, fewer hurricanes than at almost any time in 30 years, no Pacific atolls disappearing beneath the waves.

Here – and, as always, you heard it here first, for the mainstream media have conspired to keep secret the Madness of King Rajendra and his entire coterie of governmental and bureaucratic lunatics worldwide – is what the dribbling, twitching thrones and dominions, principalities and powers of the world will be asked to agree to.

“International Climate Court of Justice”: This kangaroo court is to be established by next year “to guarantee the compliance of Annex I Parties with all the provisions of this decision, which are essential elements in the obtaining of the global goal”. Note that, here as elsewhere, the bias is only against the nations of the West. However badly the third-world countries behave, they cannot be brought before the new court. Though none of what the draft calls the “modalities” of the proposed marsupial dicastery are set out in detail, one can imagine that the intention is to oblige Western nations to pay up however much the world government run by the Convention secretariat feels like demanding, just as the unelected tyrants of the EU demand – and get – ever-larger cash payments from the ever-shrinking economies and ever-poorer tribute-payers of their dismal empire.

The temperature target: At Copenhagen and Cancun, the states parties to the Convention arrogated to themselves the power – previously safe in the hands of Divine Providence – to alter the weather in such a way as to prevent global mean surface temperature from rising by more than 2 C° above the “pre-industrial” level. They did not even say what they meant by “pre-industrial”. From 1695-1745 temperatures in central England, quite a good proxy for global temperatures, rose by 2.2 C°, with about another 0.8 C° since then, making 3 C° in all. The previous temperature target, therefore, was already absurd. Yet the new, improved, madder target is to keep global temperatures either “1 C°” or “well below 1.5 C°” above “pre-industrial levels” – i.e., well below half of the temperature increase that has already occurred since the pre-industrial era. The twittering states parties are committing themselves, in effect, to reducing today’s global temperatures by getting on for 2 C°. This is madness. Throughout pre-history, the governing class – Druids or Pharaohs or Mayans or Incas – thought they could replace their Creator and command the weather. They couldn’t. No more can we. But try telling that to the strait-jacketed ninnies of today’s governing “elite”. Speech after speech at the plenary sessions of the Durban conference has drivelled on about how We Are The People Who At This Historic Juncture Are Willing And Able To Undertake The Noble Purpose Of Saving The Planet From Thermageddon and Saving You From Yourselves [entirely at your prodigious expense, natch].

The emissions-reduction targets: The new target proposed by the staring-eyed global-village idiots will be a reduction of 50-85% of global greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels (i.e. by 65-100% of today’s levels) by 2050, with emissions falling still further thereafter. The West should cut its emissions by 30-50% from 1990 levels (i.e. by 40-65% of today’s levels) in just eight years, and by more than 95% (i.e. more than 100%) by 2050. Alternatively (for there are many alternatives in the text, indicating that agreement among the inmates in the Durban asylum is a long way off), the West must cut its emissions “more than 50%” in just five years, and “more than 100%” by 2050. The words “more than 100%” actually appear in the draft. The Third World, however, need cut its emissions only by 15-30% over the next eight years, provided – of course – that the West fully reimburses it for the cost.

The greenhouse-gas reduction target: Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere “should stabilize well below 300-450 ppm CO2 equivalent”. This target, like the temperature target, is plain daft. CO2 concentration is currently at 392 ppmv, and the IPCC increases this by 43% to allow for other greenhouse gases. Accordingly, today’s CO2-equivalent concentration of greenhouse gases is 560 ppmv, and the current lunacy is to cut this perhaps by very nearly half, reducing the CO2 component to just 210 ppmv, at which point trees and plants become starved of CO2, which is their food, and start to die.

The greenhouse-gas peak targets: Global greenhouse gas emissions, say the mentally-challenged Durban droolers, should peak in not more than eight years’ time, and perhaps as soon as two years’ time. Western greenhouse-gas emissions should peak immediately (or perhaps by next year, or maybe the year after that) and must decline thereafter. The greenhouse-gas emissions peak in third-world countries will be later than that of the West, and – no surprises here – will depend on the West to pay the cost of it.

“Historical responsibility”: The nations of the West (for which the UN’s code is “Annex I parties”) are from now on required to beat their breasts (or at least their strait-jackets) and acknowledge their “historical responsibility” for increasing CO2 emissions and giving us warmer weather. The draft says: “Acknowledging that the largest share of the historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in Annex I Parties and that, owing to this historical responsibility in terms of their contribution to the average global temperature increase, Annex I Parties must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.” This new concept of “historical responsibility” – suspiciously akin to the “war-guilt” of post-1918 Germany, declared by the imprudent governments of the world at the Versailles conference, which was no small cause of World War II – further underscores the rapidly-growing anti-Western bias in the UN and in the Convention’s secretariat.

Who pays? Oh, you guessed it before I told you. The West pays. The third world (UN code: “non-Annex-I parties”) thinks it will collect, so it will always vote for the UN’s insane proposals. But the UN’s bureaucrats will actually get all or nearly all the money, and will decide how to allocate what minuscule fraction they have not already spent on themselves. As a senior UN diplomat told me last year, “The UN exists for only one purpose: to get more money. That, and that alone, is the reason why it takes such an interest in climate change.” The draft says: “Developed-country Parties shall provide developing-country Parties with new and additional finance, inter alia through a percentage of the gross domestic product of developed-country Parties.” And, of course, “The extent of participation by non-Annex-I parties in the global effort to deal with climate change is directly dependent on the level of support provided by developed-country Parties.”

The get-out clause: One or two Western countries – Canada and Japan, for instance – have begun to come off the Kool-Aid. They have worked out what scientifically-baseless nonsense the climate scam is and have said they are not really playing any more. To try to keep these and the growing number of nations who want out of “the process” bankrolling the ever-more-lavish UN, an ingenious escape clause has been crafted: “The scale of financial flows to non-Annex-I parties shall be based on the assessments of their needs to deal with climate change.” Since climate is not going to change measurably as a result of Man’s emissions, any honest assessment of the needs of third-world countries “to deal with climate change” is that they don’t need any money at all for this purpose and shouldn’t get a single red cent. The UN is now the biggest obstacle to the eradication of poverty worldwide, because its pampered functionaries divert so much cash to themselves, to an ever-expanding alphabet-soup of bureaucracies, and then to heroically lunatic projects like “global warming” control. Time to abolish it.

World government: The Copenhagen Treaty draft establishing a world “government” with unlimited powers of taxation and intervention in the affairs of states parties to the UN Framework Convention fortunately failed. Yet at the Cancun climate conference the following year 1000 new bureaucracies were established to form the nucleus of a world government, with central control in the hands of the Convention’s secretariat and tentacles in every region and nation. The draft “agrees that common principles, modalities and procedures as well as the coordinating and oversight functions of the UNFCCC are needed” – in short, global centralization of political, economic and environmental power in the manicured hands of the Convention’s near-invisible but all-powerful secretariat. No provision is made for the democratic election of key members of the all-powerful secretariat – in effect, a world government – by the peoples of our planet.

Reporting to the world government: From 2013/14, the world government will oblige Western nations to prepare reports and submit them to it every two years. The format of these reports is specified in obsessive detail over several pages of the draft. The reports will describe the extent of their compliance with the mitigation targets imposed by the various treaties and agreements. The West will be obliged to to continue reporting “greenhouse-gas emission inventories”, for which “common reporting formats and methodologies for the calculation of emission, established at the international level, are essential”. Separately, Western nations will now be required to provide information on the financial support they have pledged to assist third-world countries in mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and adapting to “the adverse effects of climate change”. The world government also expects to receive reports from Western nations on their financial contributions to the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries’ Trust Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund and the Trust Fund for Supplementary Activities”. Western nations must also provide information on the steps taken to promote technology development and transfer to third-world countries, and on how they have provided “capacity-building support” to third-world countries, and on numerous other matters. The inexorable increase in compulsory reporting was one of the mechanisms by which the unelected Kommissars of the anti-democratic European Union acquired absolute power over the member states. EU advisors have been helping the UN to learn how to use similar techniques to centralize global power just as anti-democratically in its own hands.

Review of Western nations’ conduct: Once the multitude of mechanisms for Western nations’ compulsory reporting to the world government are in place, the information gathered by it will be used as the basis of a continuous review of every aspect of their compliance with the various agreements and concords, whether legally-binding or not. Teams of five to eight members of the Convention’s secretariat will scrutinize each Western nation’s conduct, and will have the power to ask questions and to require additional information, as well as to make recommendations that will gradually become binding. The world government will then prepare a record of the review for each Western nation, including reports of various aspects of the review, an assessment of that nation’s compliance, questions and answers, conclusions and recommendations (eventually instructions) to that nation, and a “facilitative process” (UN code for a mechanism to compel the nation to do as it is told by people whom no one has elected).

Finance: One of the 1000 bureaucracies established at Cancun is the Standing Committee on Finance, which the draft says will have the power of “mobilizing financial resources” through flows of public and private finance, “mobilizing additional funding”, and requiring and verifying the reporting of finance provided to third-world Parties by the Western nations through a new Financial Support Registry. Finance for third-world countries is to be scaled up “significantly”, and Western countries will be obliged to provide “a clear work-plan on their pledged assessed contributions” from 2012-2020 “for approval by the Conference of the Parties”. Taxpayers will be compelled to provide the major source of funding through public expenditure.

Green Climate Fund: Western nations are urged to “commit to the initial capitalization of the Green Climate Fund without delay”, to include “the full running costs” and “the funding required for the formation and operating costs of the board and secretariat of the Green Climate Fund”. Here, as always, the UN bureaucrats want their own pay, perks, pensions and organizational structure guaranteed before any money goes to third-world countries.

Worldwide cap-and-trade: The draft establishes a “new market-based approach/mechanism … to promote the reduction or avoidance of greenhouse-gas emissions” – once again for Western countries only. Also, “Ambitious, legally-binding emission reduction targets for developed-country Parties … are essential to drive a global carbon market”. What this means, in the plain English that is almost entirely absent from the 138-page draft, is worldwide compulsory cap-and-trade, centrally imposed and regulated, imposed on Western countries only.

Patent rights: Under the guise of action to prevent “global warming” that is not happening at anything like the predicted rate, coded references to the extinction of patent rights in third-world countries are creeping into the text. For instance, “identification and removal of all barriers that prevent effective technology development and transfer to developing-country Parties”; and “the removal of all obstacles, including intellectual property rights and patents on climate-related technologies to ensure the transfer of technology to developing countries”. As an inventor with patents to my name, I can predict what effect any such provision will have. It will prevent the establishment and development of patent offices in continents such as Africa, which – thus far – has contributed remarkably little to the world’s inventions, not least because the structure for protecting and encouraging inventors is rickety or non-existent.

Shipping and aviation fuels were previously excluded from the scope of the Convention and are now to be included. International shipping and aviation are described as “a source of financial resources for climate change actions”. More money for UN bureaucrats.

The new bureaucracies: As though the 1000 bureaucracies created at Cancun were not enough, another bureaucracy is to be created “to oversee, monitor and ensure overall implementation of capacity-building activities consistent with the provisions of the Convention”. There will also be a new “International Climate Court of Justice” (see above). A “Financial Support Registry” is also to be set up.

The new special-interest group: Meet the “Parties that are alternative-energy-disadvantaged”. No wind, no sun, no renewables – so, handouts from the West, please.

The new buzzwords: Welcome to the notion of “equitable access to global atmospheric space”; “Mother Earth” [I kid you not: it's in the draft]; “climate-resilient infrastructure” and “paradigm shift towards building a low-carbon society”. These buzzwords are in addition to pre-existing buzzwords such as “climate justice” and “climate debt” – the latter being the notion that because the West has emitted more carbon dioxide than the rest it owes the Third World lots of money.

“Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft burbles insanely about “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature, and that there will be no commodification [whatever that may be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.

“Right to survive”: “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite shows that sea-level has dropped over the past three years.

The science is at last to be reviewed in a manner that appears independent of the discredited IPCC. However, no details of the method of review are provided, and other parts of the schizophrenic draft say we must defer to the science put forward not by the peer-reviewed learned journals but by a political body whose reports are not peer-reviewed in the usual sense.

Legally-binding treaty: According to the draft, the aim is to create a “legally-binding instrument/outcome”. This is UN code for an international Treaty. The US will sign no such treaty. Nor will Canada, Japan, France, India and many other countries. On the basis of drafts as in-your-face idiotic as this, no legally-binding climate treaty will ever be signed: which is just as well, because no such treaty is necessary.

War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease because they contribute to climate change. Just like that. The UN draft text asserts: “Stopping wars, defending lives and ceasing destructive activities will protect the climate system; conflict-related activities emit significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.” A wave of the UN’s magic wand and peace will reign throughout the Earth, the sun will shine (but not too much) the rain will fall (just where and when needed), and non-gender-specific motherhood and non-commodificated apple pie will be available to all. Ouroborindra, ba-ba hee! It does not seem to have occurred to the Druids of the UN that they have near-totally failed to prevent wars on Earth – the original purpose for which it was founded. Yet now, in their gibbering, spastic arrogance, they think to command the weather. Canute, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

DEUS EX MACHINA (from Gold Switzerland)

2011-12-09T08:28:00.001-05:00

"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ZERO" - Voltaire 1729

Complete Article at

By Egon von Greyerz , December 6, 2011 @ 1:41 pm In 1. Egon von Greyerz' Newsletters,2. The Matterhorn Interview

DEUS EX MACHINA

by Egon von Greyerz – December 2011

With most of the world’s major economies as well as the financial system bankrupt, there is only one solution that can save the world economy. Like in the Greek tragedies, Deus ex Machina is now the only way that the world can avoid a total economic collapse. This would involve God being lowered down onto the world stage and miraculously saving the plot.

DEUS EX MACHINA by Leo Lein – www.leolein.se

For those few who believe in this, may God bless them. But since this is a very unlikely solution most people will instead rely on governments and central banks to save us. But how can anyone possibly believe that totally incompetent and clueless politicians and central bankers could solve anything. They created the problem in the first place and are therefore totally unsuitable to play the role of Deus. The main objective of governments is to stay in power and thus to buy votes. Therefore they are incapable of taking the right decisions. And the opposition, aspiring to power is even less suitable since they will lie through their teeth and promise the earth in order to be elected. (We know that there are exceptions like Ron Paul, but the voters will most probably find his medicine too strong to swallow.)

What about central bankers, can’t they save us? Unfortunately any sensible person who becomes a central banker loses all his senses and becomes a prisoner of the political system.

Solution?

So if there is no Deus ex Machina and if governments or bankers can’t rescue the world, who can and what is the solution. Let us return to the wise von Mises to look at the options available now:

“THERE IS NO MEANS OF AVOIDING THE FINAL COLLAPSE OF A BOOM BROUGHT ABOUT BY CREDIT EXPANSION. THE ALTERNATIVE IS ONLY WHETHER THE CRISIS SHOULD COME SOONER AS A RESULT OF A VOLUNTARY ABANDONMENT OF FURTHER CREDIT EXPANSION, OR LATER AS A FINAL OR TOTAL CATASTROPHE OF THE CURRENCY SYSTEM INVOLVED”

Ludwig von Mises

Mises is absolutely correct: “There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion”. Whatever politicians, bankers, economists or others experts say, there is no solution to this crisis. We have reached the end of the road and are now staring into the abyss.

The credit manufacturing system that started in 1913 when the Fed was founded, began its terminal phase in 1971 when Nixon abolished gold backing of the dollar. It has been clear to us for at least 20 years that the outcome was inevitable. It was never a question of “if” but only “when” it would happen. It is now clear to us that the false prosperity that the world has experienced by printing unlimited amounts of money will very soon come to an end. Thus the “if” and “when” conditions are now satisfied so the remaining question is HOW?

To try to answer this let’s return to Mises: “The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion ….”

To stop the money printing and credit creation would be the only sensible way of ending the failed quasi-capitalist, socialist experiment which is in the process of destroying the structure of the Western world. For almost 100 years we have lived on a system based on debt. This has created a false prosperity as well as false values. The transfer of capital from private enterprise to government by massive taxation is approaching 50% in many countries (see table). The average for 18 industrialised countries is almost 40%. This means that on average 40% of the productive economy is transferred to a non-producing entity (government) which wastes most of the money in the process of redistribution. But not only that, since the state has taken over up to 50% of the economy in these countries, the desire to work, to strive, to take risk and to invent has been taken away from a major part of the population.

Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms? (You can’t make this crap up!)

2011-12-01T09:32:00.001-05:00

Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms?
Townhall.com ^ | December 1, 2011 | Judge Andrew Napolitano

Posted on Thursday, December 01, 2011 9:19:22 AM by Kaslin

Can the president use the military to arrest anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate's dark and terrifying vision of the Constitution, he can.

Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government. We know from the now-defunct supercommittee, and other times when Congress has locked its doors, that government loves secrecy and hates transparency. Transparency forces the government to answer to us. Secrecy lets it steal our liberty and our property behind our backs.

Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.

The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.

It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.

Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty -- from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial -- simply because the president says you are dangerous?

Nothing terrified or animated the Founders more than that. The Founders, who wrote the Constitution, had just won a war against a king who had less power than this legislation will give to the president. But to protect their freedoms, they wrote in the Constitution the now iconic guarantee of due process. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Note, the Founders used the word "person." Thus, the requirement of due process must be accorded to all human beings held by the government -- not just Americans, not just nice people, but all persons. When Lincoln tried to deny this during the Civil War, the Supreme Court rejected him and held that the Constitution guarantees its protections to everyone that the government restrains, no matter the crime, no matter the charge, no matter the evidence, no matter the danger.

If this legislation becomes law, it will be dangerous for anyone to be right when the government is wrong. It will be dangerous for all of us. Just consider what any president could get away with. Who would he make disappear first? Might it be his political opponents? Might it be you?

How to Make Sense of the European Union Disaster (American Thinker)

2011-11-30T08:06:00.001-05:00

By T.S. Weidler

Everything you need to know to understand the European Union can be discovered by simply glancing at the location of its headquarters. Brussels is in Belgium, which is not a real country, does not have a government, and does not have any money.

Belgium has not had a government for a year and half, yet the capital city (to the degree that a country without a government can have a capital) is host to one of the largest government organizations in the world. The ironies and paradoxes of the EU are clearly seen in the microcosm of Belgium.

Belgium was invented in 1839, when the powers of Europe decided to carve out sections of the Netherlands and Luxembourg and assigned what resulted the name "Belgium." This despite the fact that the bit of land was inhabited by Flemish, Walloons, Dutch, French, various Germans, and several other minority groups that had been hostile to each other for centuries. A group of unelected European leaders stepped in and said, "Let there be Belgium," and suddenly, there was Belgium -- but it was not a nation. Decrees do not make nations. Belgium is a haphazard collection of once-independent states with no interest in joining together and substantial reasons not to.

Over the years, Belgian governments have maintained majority rule by offering entitlements and subsidies to every niche group they can find. This is the only way to get a majority in a country with eleven major political parties divided on ethnic and linguistic lines. Naturally, it leads to dangerous deficits. It all came to a halt in the general election of June 2010. No coalition has been able to strike a deal to create a majority. Parties join together to form majorities only when there is a significant handout being offered, but with a crashing economy, nobody is willing to continue this charade. Last week the interest rate on Belgian debt jumped into crisis levels. Belgium's credit rating has been systematically cycling downward for the past two years. There is a strong secessionist movement to break into at least two independent nations, while others push for a stronger central authority to enforce unification. So Belgium hasn't had a government for seventeen months running.

Aside from debt, secession, and anarchy, there is also the matter of national defense. The powers that breathed Belgium into existence did so on the condition that it remain neutral in military affairs. Neutrality ensured that France, Germany, and Britain would have a low-lying, centrally located piece of land on which to fight wars, rather than having to deal with the unpleasantries on their own land. Belgium is whatever Europe needs it to be: a buffer zone when things are hostile, a highway for tanks when you want to go on offense, and a shooting range when the war starts. It was created for the purpose of hosting other countries' wars and is required to remain neutral so as not to spoil the fun. It has served this purpose quite well over the years. It doesn't matter that the various factions that happen to be stuck inside its borders have no desire to run a country of their own. They have to do it anyway because it is convenient for the rest of Europe. Belgium would be a joke if it weren't a tragedy.

So it goes for the EU. Germany would rather not bail out Greece and Italy, and Greece and Italy would rather not be swallowed up by the European leviathan. Doesn't matter -- they have to do it anyway because Europe is all roped together now.

The EU is not a real country. It is a collection of independent states that have no national interest in joining forces, and substantial reasons not to. It does not have a functional government, but it does have just enough of a government to make everyone's life worse, and to run up enormous deficits. Like Belgium, it has no national defense to speak of and numerous factions that are hostile to one another.

All historical evidence suggests that Europe is a fragmented and dangerous place, with constant wars covering its entire history. It is the only continent on which something called "The Hundred Years' War" ever happened. In the last century, some of these constant small battles were saved up and unleashed as the two biggest wars in world history. But even WWI and WWII were not enough to satisfy the bloodlust haunting Europe. There was also the small matter of a Soviet occupation of half the continent and countless feuds within feuds. Italy just completed its 61^st change in government in 66 years. Spain was ruled by a dictator up until 1975 and had its first democratic election in 1977. Germany, of course, tried to take over the world twice, and always followed the advice of bumper stickers by thinking globally and invading locally. The effort to make these nations suddenly join together in happiness and love is one of the most foolish ventures ever conceived. It is unraveling now. It would be a joke if it weren't tragic.

The EU is Belgium writ large. A group of unelected officials from around Europe got together and dreamed up the EU, then arbitrarily made it happen. Now it is in the position of managing the countless factions of Europe. Constant bailouts and subsidies are the only things that keep everyone happy. There isn't enough money to keep up the charade, and there are considerable efforts to break it up. Each nation of the EU is held together by nothing more than the selfish decrees of others. It is crashing as you read.

Europe has come full circle. The EU has taken over Italy and Greece and installed unelected puppet regimes there. Belgium, a puppet nation dreamed up by Europe with no history, no government, and no money, finds itself ruling puppet governments of the two foundational sources of European civilization because they have no money. In WWII Germany went through Belgium to take over France. Now Germany is going through Belgium to take over Italy and Greece.

This is all you need to know about the EU. It is a messy assortment of peoples haphazardly crammed together, with no functional government, saddled with extremely high debt. Belgium was created as a puppet nation with no historical roots. Now it's been converted into a base from which all of Europe is held together as a puppet nation with no historical roots. The EU, like Belgium, is not strong enough to govern its various factions, nor does any freedom-lover desire it to be. The cradles of European history, Athens and Rome, are swallowed up by a puppet newcomer. It would be tragic if it wasn't an outrage.

The next EU takeover will probably be Spain, and there will be more after that. At some point Europe will fall. The only question is the direction in which it falls. It may fall into totalitarianism, or it may dissolve back to its historical national divisions. There are mounting efforts in both of these directions already, and there will be tremendous instability either way. Do not be surprised if there is war. Watch what Belgium does.

T.S. Weidler is the editor of a $1.4-million line of research databases and the sole operator of hermancainfacts.com. He can be contacted at tsweidler@yahoo.com.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/11/how_to_make_sense_of_the_european_union_disaster.html at November 30, 2011 - 07:06:06 AM CST

Virtue and Society with Bill Whittle

2011-11-27T10:55:00.001-05:00

Short but Sweet–This is the ultimate Rant (Nigel Farage at the European Parliament)

2011-11-27T10:20:00.002-05:00

Scientists in Revolt against Global Warming (American Thinker)

2011-11-27T10:11:00.001-05:00

November 27, 2011

By Karin McQuillan

Global warming became a cause to save life on earth before it had a chance to become good science. The belief that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO₂ emissions took over the media and political arena by storm. The issue was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was stunted. We have never had a full, honest national debate on either the science or government policy issues.

Everyone "knows" that global warming is true. The public has no idea of the number of scientists -- precisely one thousand at last count of a congressional committee -- who believe that global warming is benign and natural, and that it ended in 1998. We have not been informed of the costs to our economy of discouraging fossil fuel development and promoting alternatives. The public need to know the choices being made on their behalf, and to have a say in the matter. We are constantly told that the scientific and policy debate on global warming is over. It has just begun.

What is never discussed is this: the theory of global warming has catastrophic implications for our economy and national security. Case in point: Obama's recent decision to block the Keystone pipeline in order to placate global warming advocates. Key Democrat supporters fear the use of oil more than they care about losing jobs or our dangerous dependence on the Mideast for oil. The president delayed the pipeline by fiat, and the general public has had no say. (For the impact on our economy, see my article, "The Whole Country Can Be Rich.")

President Obama has spoken out passionately on the danger of developing oil and gas because of man-made global warming. "What we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe."

Obama calls for the debate to end. He cites hurricanes as proof: "dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real -- it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster."

Happily, our president is wrong. The worst hurricanes were in 1926, the second-worst in 1900. The world's top hurricane experts say that there is no evidence that global warming affects storms. There is no such thing as a man-made hurricane. Storm cycles and long patterns of bad weather are entirely natural. Yet this good news is suppressed by our politicized media. We hear only one side.

More and more scientists are revolting against the global warming consensus enforced by government funding, the academic establishment, and media misrepresentation. They are saying that solar cycles and the complex systems of cloud formation have much more influence on our climate, and account for historical periods of warming and cooling much more accurately that a straight line graph of industrialization, CO₂, and rising temperatures. They also point out that the rising temperatures that set off the global warming panic ended in 1998.

It takes a lot of courage. Scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks. This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.

Here is how it has worked. The theory that entirely natural sun cycles best explain warming patterns emerged years ago, but the Danish scientists "soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials." Physicists at Europe's most prestigious CERN laboratory tried to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked. This fall, the top scientific journal Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in global warming is the sun, not humans. But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."

As more and more scientific evidence is published that debunks global warming, the enforced consensus is ending. The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution -- whose previous president declared that "the debate on climate change is over" -- "is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures. ... The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause." Most of the rebels were retired, as one of them explained, "One of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk from being labeled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into silence has unfortunately been effective."

In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring." Dr. Giaver:

Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science.

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?

The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this "warming" period.

In 2008, Prof. Giaever endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy, but he has since joined 100 scientists who wrote an open letter to Obama, declaring: "We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated."

Do a Google search: you will find this letter reported in Britain and even India, but not in America.

Fifty-one thousand Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were recently polled by their professional organization. Sixty-eight percent of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled." Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil fuels." APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said, "We're not surprised at all. There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."

Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was finally free to speak "frankly" on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain skeptical." She says she remained silent for fear of personal attacks. Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict global climate trends.

Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect to see.

Recently we've had a perfect example of the enforced global warming consensus falling apart. Berkeley Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming. Predictably, the Washington Post proclaimed that the BEST study had "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud."

But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly."

This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," Prof Curry said. "Whatever it is that's going on here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO₂." In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics' arguments were now taking them much more seriously. They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.

Other scientists jumped in, calling Muller's false claims to the media that BEST proved global warming "highly unethical." Professor Muller, confronted with dissent, caved and admitted that indeed, both ocean and land measurements show that global warming stopped increasing in 1998.

Media coverage on global warming has been criminally one-sided. The public doesn't know where the global warming theory came from in the first place. Answer: the U.N., not a scientific body. The threat of catastrophic warming was launched by the U.N. to promote international climate treaties that would transfer wealth from rich countries to developing countries. It was political from the beginning, with the conclusion assumed: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (U.N. IPCC) was funded to report on how man was changing climate. Its scientific reports have been repeatedly corrected for misrepresentation and outright fraud.

This is important. Global warming theory did not come from a breakthrough in scientific research that enabled us to understand our climate. We still don't understand global climate any more than we understand the human brain or how to cure cancer. The science of global climate is in its infancy.

Yet the U.N. IPCC reports drive American policy. The EPA broke federal law requiring independent analysis and used the U.N. IPCC reports in its "endangerment" finding that justifies extreme regulatory actions. Senator Inhofe is apoplectic:

Global warming regulations imposed by the Obama-EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the 'absurd result' that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime.

Former top scientists at the U.N. IPCC are protesting publicly against falsification of global warming data and misleading media reports. Dr. John Everett, for example, was the lead researcher on Fisheries, Polar Regions, Oceans and Coastal Zones at the IPCC and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) senior manager, and he received an award while at NOAA for "accomplishments in assessing the impacts of climate change on global oceans and fisheries." Here is what he has to say on global warming:

It is time for a reality check. Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios ... I would much rather have the present warm climate, and even further warming...No one knows whether the Earth is going to keep warming, or since reaching a peak in 1998, we are at the start of a cooling cycle that will last several decades or more.

That is why we must hear from all the best scientists, not only those who say fossil fuel use is dangerous. It is very important that we honestly discuss whether this theory is true and, if so, what reasonable steps we can afford to take to mitigate warming. If the theory is not based on solid science, we are free to develop our fossil fuel wealth responsibly and swiftly.

Instead, federal policies are based on global warming fears. Obama has adopted the California model. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 has shed a million jobs in that state. California now has almost 12% unemployment, ranking 50^th in the nation.

The country could be following North Dakota, where oil development has led to a 3.5% unemployment rate, or Texas, which has created 40% of the jobs nationwide since the 2009 economic crash thanks to its robust energy sector. These are good jobs. An entry-level job on an oil rig pays $70,000 a year. A roughneck with a high school diploma earns $100,000 a year in Wyoming's Jonah Fields. Brazil's new offshore oil discoveries are predicted to create 2 million jobs there. We have almost three times more oil than Brazil.

When we treat oil and gas companies like pariahs, we threaten America's economic viability. For global warming alarmists who believe that man-made CO₂ threatens life on earth, no cost is too high to fight it. They avert their eyes from the human suffering of people without jobs, with diminished life savings, limited future prospects, and looming national bankruptcy.

This is not all about idealism. There are crasser reasons of money and power for wanting to close the debate. Billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies are spent to fight global warming. The cover of fighting to save the planet gives the government unlimited powers to intrude into private business and our individual homes. The government can reach its long arm right into your shower and control how much hot water you are allowed to use. In the words of MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Lindzen, "[c]ontrolling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life."

Warming advocates persistently argue that we cannot afford to pause for a reality check; we must not ignore the possibility that global warming theory might be true. Limiting fossil fuels and promoting green energy are presented as a benign, a "why not be on the safe side," commonsense approach.

There is a lot of emotion and little common sense in this argument. If a diagnosis is based on a shaky and partly fraudulent theory, ignores much more convincing evidence, and has terrible negative side effects, you don't perform major surgery. We do not have to run around like Chicken Little on the off-chance that the sky may be falling.

There has been a high economic cost to limiting our oil and gas wealth, with much human anguish because of government-imposed economic contraction. Responsible government policy requires honest media coverage, unfettered scientific inquiry, and robust political debate. Our country cannot afford the costs of foolish energy policy based on politicized science and fear.

Spending Wars (American Thinker)

2011-11-25T08:16:00.001-05:00

By Randall Hoven

The ideas that federal spending exploded under George W. Bush, that "Bush's wars" account for our spending explosion, that Reaganism died with Reagan, and that we are on a spending binge that started decades ago are all nonsense.

Our current spending binge is a very recent phenomenon with a very specific starting point: the year Democrats started writing budgets (or continuing resolutions), compounded by Barack Obama's inauguration.

Look at the chart below. If you were to cover up the last four years on the right, 2008-11, would you say spending was getting out of hand? In 2007, total spending was 19.6% of GDP, a level nearly matching that of 1996, and comfortably below the average level of spending from 1960 through 2000: 20.3% of GDP.

Sources: OMB and CBO.

And that relatively low level of spending in 2007 included War-on-Terror spending. Without the WOT, a reaction to being attacked on our soil, federal spending in 2007 was just 18.4% of GDP -- a level not experienced at any time between 1967 and 1999, and nearly matching the post-1966 low of 18.1% in 2001.

There is something else special about 2007. That was the last fiscal year in which the federal budget was written by a Republican=controlled Congress. As you look at the chart above, recall that the U.S. House of Representatives was Republican-controlled corresponding to the budgets of 1996 through 2007 -- the years of the lowest federal spending since Lyndon Baines Johnson was president.

The trend in government spending prior to 1983 was upward. In fact, it was growing 2% of GDP every decade. (I wrote of this previously here.) That upward trend was reversed in 1983, the year Ronald Reagan's tax cuts went into full effect. Reagan's downward trend in spending did not stop with Reagan; it continued through 2001. The 17-year result was to cut federal spending from over 23% of GDP to almost 18%. (Imagine a 230-pound man losing 50 pounds.)

If by "Reaganism" you mean a struggle to keep federal spending below 20% of GDP, it was alive and kicking through 2007.

George Bush's "compassionate conservatism" did not kill Reaganism. See the chart below. Take away WOT spending, itself rather modest, and federal spending barely budged from 2000 to 2007. In 2000 it was 18.2% of GDP; in 2007 it was 18.4%. There was no spending explosion under Bush.

Sources: OMB and CBO.

The "bad" things started happening almost the minute voters turned over both the House and the Senate to Democrats. The FY 2008 budget was written by a Democrat Congress and signed by a weakened, lame-duck President Bush. In 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated. Within weeks of his inauguration, he and his fellow Democrats increased the baseline FY 2009 budget and passed the $825-billion Stimulus. Look at what happened to spending just from 2007 to 2009.

And the spending never stops under Democrats. The step up in spending was both immediate and permanent. The CBO estimates that spending under President Obama's proposals will remain above 24% of GDP through 2019 and 2020. That is above even the post-World-War peak of 1983! There is nothing "temporary and targeted" about Obama's spending. Democrats are doing everything in their power to make Obama's "stimulus" level of spending the new normal.

Do not buy the lie that federal spending is some kind of inanimate object that must inevitably grow. Federal spending is not a result of the laws of physics, but of laws written by men who are voted into office by you and me. Spending was under control as recently as 2007. It all went south only when today's Democrats took control of budgeting.

(A note on data sources used in the graphs. Total spending numbers came from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), specifically Table 1.3. The most recent OMB data has estimates for FY 2011; all previous years are actual. War-on-Terror (WOT) spending numbers came from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). See Table A-1 from CBO's congressional testimony of October 26, 2011. Calculations to convert CBO's WOT current-year spending numbers to percentages of GDP were done by the author. Also, each 1% of GDP is about $150 billion in today's dollars, in round numbers.)

Randall Hoven can be followed on Twitter. His bio and previous writings can be found at randallhoven.com.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/11/spending_wars.html at November 25, 2011 - 07:15:12 AM CST

Judge Andrew Napolitano (The US Constitution!)

2011-11-24T10:01:00.001-05:00

What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress' enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress' authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become a democratically elected, term-limited monarch? What if the president assumed everything he did was legal, just because he's the president? What if he could interrupt your regularly scheduled radio and TV programming for a special message from him? What if he could declare war on his own? What if he could read your emails and texts without a search warrant? What if he could kill you without warning?

What if the rights and principles guaranteed in the Constitution have been so distorted in the past 200 years as to be unrecognizable by the Founders? What if the states were mere provinces of a totally nationalized and fully centralized government? What if the Constitution was amended stealthily, not by constitutional amendments duly passed by the states, but by the constant and persistent expansion of the federal government's role in our lives? What if the federal government decided whether its own powers were proper and constitutional?

What if you needed a license from the government to speak, to assemble or to protest the government? What if the right to keep and bear arms only applied to the government? What if posse comitatus -- the law that prohibits our military from our streets -- were no longer in effect? What if the government considered the military an adequate dispenser of domestic law enforcement? What if cops looked and acted like troops and you couldn't distinguish the military from the police? What if federal agents could write their own search warrants in defiance of the Constitution? What if the government could decide when you weren't entitled to a jury trial?

What if the government could take your property whenever it wanted it? What if the government could continue prosecuting you until it got the verdict it wanted? What if the government could force you to testify against yourself simply by labeling you a domestic terrorist? What if the government could torture you until you said what the government wanted to hear? What if people running for president actually supported torture? What if the government tortured your children to get to you? What if the government could send you to your death and your innocence meant nothing so long as the government's procedures were followed? What if America's prison population, the largest in the world, was the result of a cruel and unusual way for a country to be free? What if half the prison population never harmed anyone but themselves?

What if the people had no rights except those the government chose to let them have? What if the states had no rights except to do as the federal government commanded? What if our elected officials didn't really live among us, but all instead had their hearts and their homes in Washington, D.C.? What if the government could strip you of your rights because of where your mother was when you were born? What if the income tax was unconstitutional? What if the states were convinced to give up their representation in Congress? What if the government tried to ban you from using a substance older than the government itself? What if voting didn't mean anything anymore because both political parties stand for Big Government?

What if the government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, the Constitution be damned? What if the government was the reason we don't have a Constitution anymore? What if you could love your country but hate what the government has done to it? What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if I'm right? What if the government is wrong? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

William Black Was The Man Who Prosecuted The Savings And Loan Fiasco!

2011-11-24T08:59:00.001-05:00

This is amazing!

Generational Wealth Gap (American Thinker)

2011-11-15T08:13:00.001-05:00

By Jeffrey Folks

A recent census report disclosed that the wealth gap between seniors and younger Americans is at an all-time high. Those over 65 have accumulated $170,494 in total assets, while those between 25-34 had a net worth of $3,662 -- a difference of 47-to-1. Media commentators floated a variety of reasons for this supposed inequity: globalization, bad timing, and government retirement programs that supposedly transfer wealth from young to old. The real reason, I believe, has more to do with the choices that the young have made.

One of the most important generational differences has to do with home ownership. Those over 65 typically purchased homes at a time when prices were low and saw the value of their homes increase. Even with recent declines, these homeowners are way ahead on their investment. On the other hand, those who bought in at the height of the market in the mid-2000s have seen the value of their homes decline by an average of 30%. It's not their fault, the liberal media tells us, that they're underwater and behind on their mortgages. They are the victims of the worst housing market in 50 years.

That is an argument that many would like to believe because it absolves delinquent homeowners of responsibility and helps make the case for government-mandated principle forgiveness. Unfortunately, that argument is also largely bogus.

For one thing, most of those now underwater did not buy precisely at the market top. They bought before or after the top, saw their home prices rise or decline, and now sit on an investment that may be somewhat above or below what they actually paid for the property. On average, the current value of homes purchased in 2002 or 2003 is about the same as the purchase price. Many homeowners now find themselves underwater not because they bought at the market peak, but because they purchased a more expensive home than they could afford, and because they borrowed against its value as home prices increased.

In other words, they made no allowance for risk. They bought beyond their means, often after submitting fraudulent loan applications, and then they borrowed more as the value of the property peaked. They were the victims not of bad timing but of their own bad judgment.

Compare this behavior with that of Americans over 65 -- those with a net worth of $170,494. This generation purchased "starter homes" in the 1950s and 1960s, normally with a down payment of 5% to 20% on a fixed 30-year loan. These homes were modestly priced in relation to their buyers' incomes. (The median home price in 1950 was $7,354 compared to $172,800 in 2008.) As their incomes grew, those now over 65 moved up to larger homes, but their ambition was always to pay off their loans before retirement. Except in a real emergency, they did not take out home equity lines of credit.

In too many cases, younger Americans attempted to game the system by purchasing expensive homes, borrowing against the value of those homes, and hoping that home prices would continue to rise. But it was not just housing where they were gaming the system. They were doing much the same thing in regard to the job market.

Typically, Americans over 65 sought the best education they could afford, obtained stable employment, and worked for decades with the same employer. Even those who completed only a high school degree were well-educated -- more so than high school graduates today. The evidence of college entrance scores is telling: SATs scores peaked in 1963 and have declined ever since -- so much so that testing agencies have felt compelled to adjust the difficulty of exams and recalibrate scores in response to declining aptitudes. For whatever reasons, young people today are poorly educated in comparison with those over 65.

As to why graduates are poorly prepared, it is not that they are less intelligent: they have simply not worked as hard as previous generations. Large numbers of college students have chosen "soft majors" over more demanding fields in science, math, and engineering. And among all students, there has been a declining commitment to study. Among current college students, time devoted to homework has declined by half as compared to the baby-boomer generation. The loss of 13 hours per week, over a four-year period, means that today's college graduate has studied some 2,000 hours less than a 1965 graduate. No wonder he seems poorly prepared; he is.

This failure to obtain an education translates into lower earnings. CEOs and human resources managers often complain that younger workers are not well-prepared. A Business Roundtable report stressed the "overall inadequate level of education" among graduates entering the workforce. In a workplace that increasingly requires more than a high school education (63% of new jobs will require at least some college and 45% a college degree), less than 30% are college graduates.

In the same vein, a report issued by the Conference Board noted that younger workers lack "basic knowledge and skills." But it is not just preparation. Managers complain that the "generational characteristics" of millennials include the need for instant gratification, unwillingness to work long hours, and a lack of respect for rules and authority. As a group, younger workers are just not as disciplined or hardworking as their elders.

The whole argument that the young are the unfortunate victims of bad timing, unfair trade practices, or generational wealth transfers does not hold up. Every generation has faced challenges (the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, the severe recession and inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s), but earlier generations prepared for hard times by studying and working hard, obtaining stable employment, avoiding debt, and saving for retirement.

What separates the young today from earlier generations is their choices, not their luck. Among past generations, taking on debt was accompanied by a sense of moral hazard. The possibility of bankruptcy was frightening not only for economic reasons, but for moral ones as well. Bankruptcy was considered a lifelong stain on one's reputation. Today it is seen as a temporary hit to one's credit rating.

It's no mystery as to why younger Americans have an average net worth of only $3,662. So far, as a group, they have made all the wrong choices. Bad choices have consequences, and for the Millennials, the consequences will be reduced lifetime earnings, a lower standard of living, and a less comfortable retirement. This is not the fault of their elders, and it is not a situation that can or should be addressed with a government bailout. As a generation, those under 35 will never recoup what they have lost as a result of their poor choices. The best they can do is to redouble their efforts, focus on saving and paying off their homes, and trust that they will be rewarded with at least an acceptable if not a prosperous retirement.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/11/generational_wealth_gap.html at November 15, 2011 - 07:12:45 AM CST

Slouching toward the 1930s (American Thinker)

2011-10-31T08:30:00.001-04:00

Return to the Article

October 31, 2011

By Monty Pelerin

The current economic crisis rivals the one of the 1930s. Despite shameless propaganda by government and its cronies in the media, people understand that the situation is getting worse. Consumer confidence continues to decline as does confidence in the future.

We are headed for an event that history will record as worse than the Great Depression. It is unavoidable.

The Level of Debt

The principal reason for the dire prediction is the level of debt outstanding. Current debt levels are simply not sustainable. Assets and cash flows cannot support or service this debt.

No economic recovery can occur without massive debt reduction. As shown below, current debt is much higher than the 1930s:

As a percentage of GDP, debt is at an all-time high. Immediately prior to the Great Depression US debt was about 200% of GDP. It rose briefly to 300% as a result of massive government interventions to combat the Depression.

At the beginning of the current downturn, debt was about 370% of GDP. It is about 400% currently.

Eyeballing the chart from 1870 forward, debt levels are generally in the range of 150% of GDP. That appears to be the norm for the last 140 years. Only in the 1920s and recently did debt exceed 180% of GDP. Even funding World Wars I and II did not drive debt above 180%.

To return to 150% requires a reduction of about $30 Trillion in debt. That represents about two full years worth of GDP!

The Political Myths

After the 1930s politicians convinced themselves and the public of two things:

Free markets need government interventions to produce a healthy economy.
Keynesian pseudo science provided the tools necessary to manage the economy.

Both beliefs were false, but both aided politicians' insatiable drive for power and control. Once the public came to believe these myths, government owned the economy. Any economic problem became a political one. Economic slowdowns were no longer politically acceptable.

"Don't just stand there, do something" drove economic policy. It was politically impossible to allow an economy to correct on its own. Political action was required, even if such activity was ultimately harmful. Politicians had to do something, anything! Their constituents demanded it.

The "government is responsible" attitude quickly spread. Today, virtually any perceived problem or inequity is assumed to be fixable by government. Government readily took on responsibility for virtually every aspect of our lives.

The madness is evident. It is assumed that government creates jobs, educates kids, designs toilets and light bulbs. It is necessary to provide mortgages, retirement benefits and healthcare. "Green energy" and other new technologies are assumed impossible without the assistance of government.

This litany of the presumed need for government could continue for pages. Virtually all these presumptions are false. Worse, many in the public still believe that these "services" are "free."

Economic Reality

Every swing in the business cycle, no matter how mild, became the responsibility of government. Government was to step in and "fix" economic problems. Seventy years of such "fixes" preceded our current problem.

Economic downturns are both normal and necessary. Individual and business mistakes are remedied via economic slowdowns. Misplaced capital and labor is freed up for more productive uses. When this cleansing does not occur, an economy becomes less efficient and grows at a slower rate. The mistakes remain in place and are perpetuated.

Government intervention is not corrective. It is a cover up of prior mistakes. The phrase "pretend and extend" describes what happens. Instead of allowing the economy to correct, government attempts to avoid the correction and the pain by covering up the mistakes. That has been the history of much of the last 80 years. Continued interventionism brought the economy to this crisis point.

The artificial boom that began decades ago is exhausted. Response to the dot-com stock market bubble was the last coverup that "worked." The system was flooded with credit and one bubble was replaced with another. Now the housing bubble has burst, marking the high point of "pretend and extend."

Credit expansion since 2008 has been impotent. The real economy has stopped responding. Economists who advocate more stimulus or credit are either ill-trained or have political motives. Governmental stimulus and credit expansion created the problem. Recommendations for more of the same qualify as insanity per Albert Einstein's definition.

A Worldwide Problem

The US is not unique. Most of the developed world is burdened by excessive credit and government spending. Easy credit enabled governments to grow too large and individuals to take on too much debt. The point where markets are unwilling to provide more debt has arrived.

The position of the US, thought to be stronger than other countries, is not, as shown in this chart:

Rumors of another US credit downgrade circulate for good reason.

Governments everywhere are trying to prevent a massive economic and financial correction, but they will not succeed. In order for economies to return to health, debt must be liquidated. De-leveraging must occur. Debt will be paid down and/or defaulted upon. Normal economic growth cannot resume until excess debt is removed from the system.

The Problem With De-Leveraging

Reducing debt is known as de-leveraging. The ramifications of de-leveraging are not widely understood. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates discussed the process on the Charlie Rose show (full transcript):

I think it's important to understand that we're going through a deleveraging. So we have to understand the big picture is -- there's a deleveraging. Three big themes: first there's a deleveraging; secondly we have a problem with monetary and fiscal policies are running out of ammunition; and thirdly we have an issue in terms of people most importantly who are at each other's throats politically and globally in terms of having a problem resolving those.

So then we begin the process in reverse as you can't spend as much you -- somebody else's income falls. And that process works in reverse.

Imagine you earned $100,000 a year and you didn't have any debt. You can go to a bank and borrow $10,000 a year. You can spend, therefore, $110 a year. When you spend $110,000 a year, somebody else earns $110,000 and they can go to a bank and there's a self-reinforcing process in which your debt rises in relationship to your income.

And that goes on for a long time and that goes on for 50 or 75 years through history. We've had 50, 75-year cycles and then you reach a point where you can't anymore get more debt and the process starts to change. And you can't leverage up. Traditionally the private sector leverages up, we leveraged up then we got to a point in 2007 where we had a bubble and that same sort of bubble that happened in Japan, same sort of bubble that happened in the Great Depression, meaning we reached our debt limits. Europe's reached its debt limits.

The current credit bubble is bigger than the one that preceded and caused The Great Depression. Consumer and government balance sheets are worse than they were eighty years ago. Income is incapable of supporting current debt levels.

Reducing debt to manageable levels will produce another Great Depression, likely greater and more painful than the original. Debt reduction requires lower spending and higher savings. Large amounts of debt will not be paid and will be liquidated via defaults.

Until now, governments have done everything to prevent this natural process from occurring. According to Dalio, governments have "no more tools in the tool kit."

Some governments and private companies will experience bankruptcy. Harrisburg, PA just did so. National government defaults will occur with Greece most likely be the first. When the economy begins to shrink, private companies will follow.

The Other Alternative

There is no other alternative cure for the economy other than de-leveraging.

Governments around the world will attempt to avoid de-leveraging because of the associated pain of a Great Depression. Unfortunately, that is not possible as Ludwig von Mises pointed out:

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

Prior attempts to avoid corrections got us to this point. Now the supply of credit has been exhausted and taxpayers deeply indebted. Another coverup is not possible.

The simple summary of what years of governmental intervention accomplished is the impending economic and financial tragedy. Politicians from the past may have gleaned benefits. Our generation is left to pick up the pieces.

A printing press is available to most countries. It is no solution to the underlying economic problems, but is the method that the political class will try once again. Doing so will make the situation worse. It steals purchasing power from the private sector. In extremis, it will cause hyperinflation, effectively wiping out the value of savings and fixed contract obligations.

Credit creation cannot prevent de-leveraging. It merely defers it and impoverishes the citizens of a country prior to the onset of a Depression. Will the US government engage in such chicanery? Based on past history, the answer must be an unqualified Yes! Jon Hilsenrath, sometimes referred to as the unofficial trial balloon holder for the Fed, has reported:

Federal Reserve officials are starting to build a case for a new program of buying mortgage-backed securities to boost the ailing economy, though they appear unlikely to move swiftly.

Steve Englander of Citibank describes how Europe will be set up as an excuse for more credit creation:

Policymakers in the US, UK and elsewhere are using the euro crisis as cover to ease policy. For example, the FRBNY's Dudley yesterday characterized even the improved US numbers as disappointing and pointed to further measures if growth did not improve. Chinese growth targets and policy maker comments imply that measures might be taken if there is any sign of slowing. The BoE has already expanded it QE program.

That a Great Depression lies in our near future is not at issue. Whether we are forced down the route of hyperinflation before the correction occurs is unknown.

Our best outcome is a Depression tomorrow. Better sooner than later. That is what politicians have provided. Hopefully they will not "do something" but "just stand there." The economy needs to be left alone. Their help is killing us. Hyperinflation will truly destroy.

Monty Pelerin blogs at Monty Pelerin's World.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/10/slouching_toward_the_1930s.html at October 31, 2011 - 07:29:17 AM CDT

OWS (And Everyone Else): Pay Attention To Greece (The Market Ticker)

2011-10-17T08:52:00.001-04:00

The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets

Posted 2011-10-16 14:06
by Karl Denninger
in Editorial

OWS (And Everyone Else): Pay Attention To Greece

The politicians are now reduced to begging:

(Reuters) - Prime Minister George Papandreou pleaded for patience from Greeks growing increasingly angry with relentless austerity efforts, telling a newspaper his government was struggling to prevent a financial "catastrophe."In an interview with the weekly Proto Thema newspaper, Papandreou said the government was fighting to stop Greece defaulting on its debts but the road ahead was hard.

"I would very much like to guarantee everyone an immediate solution, a better life today," he told the newspaper in an interview which hit newsstands Saturday.

"I would be the happiest man in the world if I could do that but I can't and I have a duty to be honest and tell this truth to every Greek citizen," he said.

Finally, the truth.

Here are some realities for everyone to think about and (hopefully) understand:

Government cannot expand faster than domestic economic output does. That is, if you want government to get bigger, the economy must get bigger to support it.

Growth in the economy must come from economic surplus, not borrowing. Economic surplus is what you have left after you (1) labor, and (2) pay for all of the things you must buy with that labor. Whether your payment is direct (e.g. you pick strawberries and get to keep X% of your output) or indirect (you are paid a wage in "dollars" and then spend that money) the fact remains that economic growth can, in the long run, only come from economic surplus.

The process by which economic surplus is turned into economic expansion is called capital formation. Capital formation is not borrowing; borrowed funds are fungible (that is, interchangeable) with formed capital but they are not the same thing. Only capital formation produces lasting prosperity. Replacing formed capital with borrowed funds produces bubbles; these are inherently pyramid schemes in both concept and execution and thus must eventually burst.

Due to inefficiency in all things, including the markets, when a bubble bursts you're worse off than if it had never occurred in the first place. This is the principle known simply as "there's no such thing as a free lunch." It's true in thermodynamics and it's also true in economics.

Trade deficits are self-correcting phenomena without explicit and intentional acts by the government and monetary authority to cover up their natural effects. Specifically, a trade deficit causes capital to drain from the deficit nation to the surplus nation. This in turn makes their currency balance shift and shuts down the cycle all on its own. Only intentional and willful distortion, in this case by injecting "credit" to replace capital, allows it to continue. Yes, the Chinese are responsible for what has happened in this regard with offshoring, but so are our politicians and Federal Reserve! Any actual means of addressing this problem must include all guilty parties.

Politicians turn to producing bubbles when they want to promise you something they cannot pay for via voluntary taxation. And make no mistake on this point: All taxation is voluntary. Greece is showing us this fact in stark relief. The people can withdraw their consent to taxation any time they'd like. Sure, they have to go on a general strike to do so, which is the inhibiting factor - it results in personal pain. But it's the correct, non-violent and legal means to tell the government to stuff it when it comes to their tax policies.

There are only two means to compel a government to act when it becomes co-opted by minority interests, such as what happened with the bailouts, banks and similar foolishness. One is lawful and the other is not. The unlawful means comes through violence. In the "common name" we call these "riots" when they're localized and small (e.g. looting, etc.) When they're not we call them "Revolution", and the legal term for inciting one is "Sedition." The key point to remember about the latter is that on a historical basis you have a very low probability of success through revolution -- most of the time what comes out of a revolution is worse than what you started with. Keep that in mind before you go pining for it, because you are much more likely to get a Hitler out the other end of that process than a George Washington, and the outcome is generally not under your control.

The lawful means of compelling a government to act is called a "General Strike." It is a refusal to work, and it is effective because it is work that is taxable. If you perform none then there is nothing to tax; ergo the government's finances collapse. This is what is happening in Greece.

Beware, however, that if you demand that which is impossible, you won't get it - no matter whether you press that demand through a General Strike or through unlawful means. That's simply because that which cannot happen won't.

There is no such thing as a Unicorn that craps out pretty colored candies.

In the case at hand in the United States we have a government on both sides of the aisle that has made promises that are mathematically impossible to keep. That same government conspired with The Fed and with Wall Street to blow a series of bubbles that led you to believe, over the space of 30 years, that you could have more than you can actually pay for with your work output. This claim was a lie and it infested virtually every area of our nation. Housing, education, medical care - all were used as a means to blow up the bubble to larger and larger dimension whenever it threatened to collapse and expose the frauds.

These claims were active frauds as anyone who examined them with any sort of critical eye toward the mathematical realities of the claims knew they were crap and could never happen.

As just one example of dozens the claim that "house prices are expected to increase 10% a year for the foreseeable future" was interpreted by many as "it's safe to finance the purchase of a house and then withdraw the claimed increase in value as this will go on forever" (see the foreseeable future words for justification in the common man's reliance.)

The lie is the mathematical impossibility of this. A $150,000 house that appreciated at that rate for 10 years would be worth $389,000. But over 30 years that same $150,000 house would be "worth" $2,617,410. Nobody ever asked the obvious question: Exactly how was a "middle class" person going to afford to buy a $389,000 house, say much less a $2,617,410 one?

They couldn't, of course, but this was the lie that was run.

In College education land the same lie was run. It led to an outrageous increase in college costs that dramatically outstripped earnings for degree-holding graduates. This in turn made college a bad deal nearly across-the-board and as it occurred colleges and lenders lobbied Congress to change the law so that when your kid got rooked by this scam they couldn't file bankruptcy and force those who blew the bubble to eat the loss.

We did the same thing with Medical Care. By providing "free" (or nearly so) care to Seniors and illegal immigrants, with the former being told "they paid for it" through Medicare taxes (a bald lie as on average they only put in 1/3rd in inflation-adjusted dollars as to what is spent on them) and the latter being simply told "you deserve it" the increase in medical insurance costs has run approximately 9% annually and will continue until and unless policies are changed. This means that the $700 a month insurance policy for the reasonably-healthy 50 year old ($8,400 a year) who has been promised "no reduction in his Medicare" will cost $171,477 a year by the time he's 85 with no adjustment for the higher expense that comes with age. That is, today's 15 year old will be forced to pay $171,477 a year for his medical insurance when he reaches 50. Obviously, he won't as that amount is more than three times today's median family income and even if we allow a 3% inflation rate (which we should not) it will be more than 100% of the median family income in inflated dollars! Since you can't pay more for something than you earn in total, what the politicians are telling you they will do cannot happen.

This, fundamentally, is the problem.

The slams and frankly slanderous lies coming from the so-called "Tea Party" jackasses are just as bad as those coming from the Soros mouthpieces. They're all lies.

As an example:

I am saying that no matter what your reasoning is, beyond Pensacola Florida's limited provincialism, or that of other small city's, the VAST MAJORITY of the OWS crowd, its organizers and "friends" (ACORN, SEIU, UAW, AFL-CIO, Ayres, Dohrn, Obama & Co. underwritten by George Soros who certainly never made a dime on Wall Street), are NOT OUR FRIENDS.

THEY ARE THE ENEMY!

Well, yes. Now prove that the VAST MAJORITY of the "OWS" crowd on a national basis is affiliated with or paid for and/or underwritten by George Soros and those others who you claim have done so.

Prove it. And do so under the rules of strict proof, because this sort of claim is an extraordinary one. I didn't see any evidence of it - at all.

There was one table that was clearly union-oriented. It contained members of the local transportation union trying to get a petition going against Veolia, a foreign company that the local area apparently hired to run the city buses. Is their complaint legitimate? I don't know; I haven't looked at it yet. I did take their flier and will see what I can find out. It will be a feature article later this week, I suspect.

But there was no hidden agenda here; these were clearly people asking for a redress of grievances. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you have grievances?

They are generally the crowd of entitlements and breaking America down, dumming America down, LEGALIZING ILLIGALS, and making what made America wealthy in the first place - capitalism - into something evil, into something it isn't and never was.

Oh really? What "Capitalism" is present in making student loans non-dischargable, so that the student who does a dumb thing in taking them goes bankrupt and is hounded for life while the lender and their cronies can double - or more - the debt owed and lose nothing? These same so-called "Capitalists" include the Mortgage Bankers Association who strategically defaulted on their own building mortgage, a common (and perfectly legal) tactic in the business world, yet they tell people it's immoral to do it themselves, and when possible these same "capitalists" get the laws changed so you, the people, cannot do what they did and do themselves!

Capitalism? Where, may I ask? The penalty for making bad loans is you go bankrupt!

When you change the laws so that the other guy goes bankrupt and you get to keep the loot the word for that is not capitalism, it is THEFT.

Where are the so-called "Tea Party" people that should be arguing for the REVOCATION OF BANK AND CORPORATE CHARTERS when they steal in this fashion? Isn't that the same thing at a corporate level as imprisonment is at a personal level? It sure is!

Now explain the so-called "Tea Party's" utter refusal to demand that Wachovia have its charter revoked for drug money laundering, something they admitted to doing, or shall we talk about the drug company that got caught twice committing the same criminal offense of marketing for unapproved purposes with the second offense occurring as they were negotiating a trivial FINE for the first one!

The so-called "Tea Party" is "for" the drug war, but refuses to demand that the penalties enforced against PERSONS who participate in the distribution of drugs be applied against CORPORATIONS that are part and parcel of the same offense!

They are the Politics of Envy, of DISTRIBUTING of OTHER'S PROPERTY. Of other's sweat and blood; of other's future, the eventual and certain diminishing of the quality of lives of our children. And equal society where the LCD's run things for the LCD's benefit. Where excellence is punished, stupidity and commonness rewarded.

Again, oh really? What's Capitalist about Citifinancial who had their former chief risk officer testify under oath that the firm was selling on loans that they knew did not meet underwriting guidelines - that is, they knew they were defective and not what was represented to buyers. This isn't conjecture and it wasn't a "small number" either - he testified that 80% of the loans they made in 2007 were defective.

Is it "capitalism" when I sell you a car showing 50,000 miles on the odometer but I rolled it back from 150,000, or is that theft and fraud when you buy said car and discover later that the engine and transmission are basically worn out, and thus you paid $10,000 for something that was worth $2,000? I ****ed you out of the other $8,000 - I stole it - and in every other area of business when I do that it's illegal.

That is not capitalism - it is theft. THAT is what you are supporting.

Reducing the ability of our nation to defend itself. That is what it's about. It is redistributing the nation's revenues from defense to various social programs (green energy and glabal warming concerns) under the phake and phoney flag of blaming banks and "banksters" for everything that went wrong with the economy and the human race. The irony never sparks in their minds that the banks allowed 99% of Americans to own a home in the first place.

Oh, "reducing our ability to defend ourselves", eh? This is why after 9/11, when we knew that the majority of the people who did it came from and were funded by Saudi Arabia, we did not act against them?

What are we "defending", may I ask? Oh I don't have to: We're defending "access" to cheap oil. We're promulgating a failed foreign policy that has now turned to propping up literal Kings and Dictators (Chavez anyone?) so we don't have to face the fact that we didn't do what was required to have a secure and thermodynamically sound energy policy for 30 years.

What went wrong, and why the unions are out in force, is the FACT the $85/hw wages the UAW now takes for granted cannot compete with $2-5/hr wages in Korea, Taiwan and China and the $1 TATA Motors pays in India to manufacture low end cars in second and third world countries in Asia and Africa - the only global sector that is actually growing.

And what is your solution?

My solution is to stop the stupid, including but not limited to those who want to promote mathematically bankrupt and therefore stupid policies in the monetary, economic, trade policy, tax policy and energy realm.

We cannot have illegal aliens in this nation at the behest of so-called "capitalists" who are simply exploiting effective slaves, smug in the knowledge that not only can they not complain when abused (lest the INS get called) but that when or if they get hurt, have a baby, or send their kids to school they will get to force, literally at gunpoint, everyone else to cover those costs they shoved up everyone else's ass. The bleeding heart liberals are bad enough, but it is the hard-core right that has serially pandered to the "demand" for illegal labor for the farmers, home builders, lawn services and poultry houses across this nation! I stand for ejecting every illegal immigrant from this nation right now!

We cannot have a Federal Reserve that believes in "2% inflation" when the law says STABLE PRICES. A 2% increase is not stable; over the average man's working life of 45 years that leads to prices that are 244% of where they were when he was 20. This makes it impossible for him to save for retirement; he either "takes risk" or winds up with literally 1/3rd of what he saved when he was 18. This is theft and fraud; the value I earned and that represents my economic surplus is mine and when you steal it whether you do it a penny at a time or all at once you're still a thief.

We cannot have a Federal Government that spends more than it takes in via taxes for so-called "social programs" - or anything else, including "defense." Compound growth - the very nature of exponents - makes such concepts, irrespective of where you try to run them, literally impossible to sustain over the long haul. This rock we call "Earth" is of finite size, mass and resource. Those resources are vast but the "dominionists" who believe they are infinite are factually wrong. The House, Republican controlled, has not put forward a budget containing one dollar in actual spending reduction and they continue to pass "continuing resolutions" to permit continued increases in spending despite the Senate's refusal to follow The Constitution and pass a damn budget! Republicans support "The Rule of Law" my ass.

We cannot have an economic system where debt grows faster than output does. The fundamental nature of exponents -- mathematical law -- guarantees that any such attempt will fail. Those who argue otherwise are doing the equivalent of persecuting Galileo, are just as evil, and should be tried and imprisoned for their crimes that they intentionally and willfully inflict upon society with their factually bankrupt and morally evil stupidity.

You want to know what I stand for?

THAT is what I stand for.

It is why I started writing The Market Ticker in 2007, when I saw the exact same wingnut crap being run by Bush and company after seeing the same bull**** run by the lefty redistributionist Clinton and company in the 1990s with his willful and intentional refusal to deal with obvious frauds in the Internet space that led to the Nasdaq market collapse. I gave interviews at the time (1998/99) stating exactly this. It was a known fact that the claimed "doublings" were not happening yet they were reported in so-called "Earnings" reports. Literal thousands of people knew this was a lie and yet not one person was indicted or imprisoned for these intentionally false statements. When I saw evidence of the same crap again in 07 I decided that it was not going to happen to the public a second time without me raising hell about it.

It was that fact and the fact that the so-called "conservatives" in fact had stolen the wealth and futures of people from infants to young adults who they scammed into taking unpayable loans for "college" while changing the laws so they could not petition for bankruptcy and blew an intentional housing bubble while offshoring our jobs at the same time, thereby guaranteeing both a monstrous bubble and the ensuing bust that led me to this publication.

It was the fact that McCain and his advisors knew damn well that this was theft and fraud yet he suspended his campaign to bail out the thieves that led me to publicly denounce him and everyone involved in it.

It was the fact that instead of focusing on this where The Tea Party began with both my call for tea bags to be sent to Congress and Santelli's scream, which was focused on exactly the same scams and theft, the so-called "Tea Party" instantly turned to "Guns, Gays and God" and gave a complete and utter pass to the intentional theft that led us to where are now, and has to this day refused to demand that those who participated in that theft face the music for their acts and that the stupid lenders go bankrupt right next to the stupid borrowers who must be afforded the same opportunity, including students who were scammed into taking unpayable loans with ridiculously rosy and intentionally false projections of job prospects that the math PhDs at those colleges had to know were factually impossible.

It is the fact that despite claiming to be for "fiscal responsibility" The Tea Party folded with many of its members voting Yes to the debt ceiling increase, refusing to publicly denounce the Ryan and McConnell plans that do not cut one single dollar of federal expenditures; they in fact both RAISE federal expenditures. Worse, both plans contain projections (such as Ryan's "5% growth rates") that have never been sustained on a forward basis over the time projected in the history of the nation once one subtracts out additional systemic debt. In other words these plans are knowing and willful frauds upon the public and the Tea Party is supporting them. Even the CBO, which has historically always projected a too-rosy future on a fiscal basis (they projected in 2000, remember that the nation would have no debt whatsoever by 2010!) says these plans rely on unreasonably-rosy projections into the future.

You want to know why I said "**** the Tea Party", called it out before the 2010 elections as a bunch of bull**** artists playing the same tired "Guns, Gays and God" song that the Catholic Church ran against Galileo oh so long ago?

THAT is why I did so and will continue to do so right up until people just like you who claim to be "affiliated" with that "movement" (which you stole from one Sam of some 200+ years ago; you no more own it than I do as it's an idea, not a person or organization) quit perverting that idea and*****ing on the graves of men who actually were great, actually had sound ideas, and gave us this nation - a nation you seek to destroy through utterly bankrupt and knowingly-fraudulent promises just as do the hard-core leftists.

Incidentally, the Catholic Church eventually apologized for what they did. The Tea Party has not.

PS: You want to know why I should have not had to write Leverage? It's found right here - it is the willful and intentional refusal to understand what you learn in fifth grade, which is the subject of a rather dry academic lecture you can find online. It is this willful and intentional refusal to deal with these fundamental mathematical facts that led to the outright theft and fraud in our economy and government, and until the so-called "Tea Party" comes to face mathematics you're just as much a part of the scam as is the left. Period.

Discussion below (registration required to post)

OccupyWallStreet vs. Bill Whittle

2011-10-14T09:17:00.001-04:00

I know who my money’s on: Bill Whittle delivers yet another awesome Afterburner, taking to task the Wall Street Whiners.

America's Children Come Home to Roost (American Thinker)

2011-10-14T08:34:00.001-04:00

By Stella Paul

Do you think the young gent from Occupy Wall Street who defecated on the cop car got an A in "Dialectics of Hegemony"?

The hordes of pathetic, dead-eyed pagans pustulating through our cities with Occupy Wall Street are the crowning achievement of America's academy.

Thousands of vampires with PhDs labored for decades to perfect the art of sucking the souls from America's trusting young, and then hustling them into the slavery of terminal stupidity.

How obedient these foul-smelling young wretches are! How touchingly eager they are to please! They sit on the ground in kindergarten formation, obligingly parroting whatever hellish nihilism oozes from the "microphone leader's" lips: "Everything is possible! You can have sex with animals!" Up go the "happy hands" in dutiful response. They so want to be good!

A British paper informs us that Bard College students are gracing the Occupy Wall Street throngs in New York, playing hookey on their $57,000 a year classes. Or are they? I suspect they're apple-polishing for extra credit. Last year, that towering intellectual, Bard's Leon Botstein became the first college president to welcome the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) as an official campus organization.

Attention Bard parents, who thought you were shelling out a fortune to put a little artsy sheen on your precious darlings! Actually, you were thrusting them into the hands of the ISM, a terrorist-enabling group awarded a gold medal by Hamas for all their lovely help.

President Botstein now explicitly funnels campus funds and resources to ISM, which trains students on Bard's idyllic grounds to take "direct action" against Israel. "The training was led by 3 Bard students. 14 trainees were present," notes Bard's ISM website. "Many were headed for December's Gaza Freedom March to break the Israeli siege of Gaza."

Those eager, painfully naive Bard students smelling up the streets of New York aren't being transgressive! They're trying to be virtuous like their hero, student activist Rachel Corrie, who was ferreted to her death in Gaza by the very same ISM. After all, "direct action" is what all those lavishly credentialed grown-ups keep telling them to do.

In case you're worried about Leon Botstein's paying a price for his outrageous antics, let me assure you that destroying young people's souls is lucrative work. George Soros -- imagine that! -- just donated $60 million to Bard College for international work under the aegis of the brand-new Bard College Center for Civic Engagement.

Civic engagement, indeed!

Let us now place an urgently needed cordon sanitaire around the pigsty of New York's Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street holds forth, and fly to Occupy Boston.

There, in America's college town, we'll find our dewy-eyed innocents rallying on behalf of accused terrorist Tarek Mehanna. But of course! Who better to pour out their sympathies to than a PhD pharmacist who allegedly plotted to machine gun shoppers in New England malls? No one can accuse Tarek Mahenna of lacking "civic engagement."

Perhaps the Occupy Boston mob feels a collegial warmth for Mahenna, who's one of five New England Muslim college graduates either arrested for or convicted of terrorist acts. For the record, alumni donors, their colleges were Northeastern, MIT, U Mass, Boston and Brandeis University. Holy Che Guevera, what are they teaching there?

Oh, just the usual "America is an imperialistic war-monger in thrall to the ethnic cleansing Zionists" shtick. Just look over to the Big Campus in Town where Harvard's Stephen Walt is patiently explaining the evils of America's Jews in his legendary effluvia, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

(Does anyone else find it disconcerting that the German translation works out as Die-Israel Lobby?)

The $20 million the Saudis gave to Harvard goes a long way to buying young minds. You need a strong academic infrastructure to get students so inspired they surge through the streets on behalf of terrorists planning to kill them. But Allah willing, with the help of "scholars" like Sara Roy of Harvard's Center for Middle East Studies, all is possible. The tireless Dr. Roy specializes in instructing impressionable youngsters on the moral beauty of Hamas and other terror groups, in her unofficial capacity as "the ringmaster of Harvard's bash Israel circus."

The nationwide scenes of robotic debauchery, moral confusion and nihilistic violence are searing my heart. This Yom Kippur, I read a tale of a Hasidic master whose disciples asked him, "What is the worst thing a person's evil impulse can achieve?" His answer: "to make him forget that he is the child of a King."

America's children were born into the blessings of Constitutional freedom and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness should be theirs for the taking. Instead, they obediently wallow in the muck of anarchy, as their academic pagan priests taught them. May this tragic farce playing out on our campuses and main streets mark the bottom of our descent, before we begin to rise again.

Stella Paul can be reached at Stellapundit@aol.com

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/10/americas_children_come_home_to_roost.html at October 14, 2011 - 07:33:09 AM CDT

California, the Example of What the Nation Could Become (California Political Review)

2011-10-12T15:36:00.001-04:00

October 10, 2011 By Tom McClintock 4 Comments

I want to welcome this groundbreaking scientific expedition to the savage lands of the Left Coast. You are here in California to answer an important theoretical question and now you have your answer.

Yes, this is what Barack Obama’s second term would look like.

Study it. Fear it. And then go home and make sure that it never happens to the rest of the country.

Of course, in spite of all of its problems, California is still one of the best places in the country to build a successful small business. All you have to do is start with a successful large business.

Laugh if you will, but as you whistle past this cemetery, do heed the medieval epitaph: “Remember man as you walk by, as you are now so once was I; as I am now so you will be.”

Mark that well, because if we lose this struggle for the future of our country, you too someday will live in a California – only without the nice climate.

Bad policies. Bad process. Bad politics. Those are the three acts in a Greek tragedy that tell the tale of how, in the span of a single generation, the most prosperous and golden state in the nation became an economic basket case.

When my parents came to California in the 1960’s looking for a better future, they found it here. The state government consumed about half of what it does today after adjusting for both inflation and population. HALF. We had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country. California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one. We produced water and electricity so cheaply that some communities didn’t bother to meter the stuff. Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and our diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.

One thing – and one thing only – changed in those years: public policy. The political Left gradually gained dominance over California’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.

The Census bureau has reported for the better part of the decade that California is undergoing the biggest population exodus in its history, with many fleeing to such garden spots as Nevada, Arizona and Texas. Think about that. California is blessed with the most equitable climate in the entire Western Hemisphere; it has the most bountiful resources anywhere in the continental United States; it is poised on the Pacific Rim in a position to dominate world trade for the next century, and yet people are finding a better place to live and work and raise their families in the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range.

I submit to you that no conceivable act of God could wreak such devastation. Only acts of government can do that. And they have.

We conservatives espouse principles of individual liberty, free markets, constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, the protection of natural rights – not out of some slavish devotion to ideology, but because all human experience has shown these principles to be the most certain means to achieve a prosperous and happy society. If you want to see the opposite of that – come to California.

James Madison said the trickiest question the Constitutional convention confronted was how to oblige a government to control itself. History records not a single example of a nation that spent, borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity; but it offers us many, many examples of nations that spent and borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy. And history is screaming this warning at us: that nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long, because before you can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty – you have to be able to pay for it.

California may not have invented deficit spending but we certainly refined it into a science. Before the crash of 2008, when California was taking in more money than ever in its history, it was already running a nine billion dollar deficit, under a Republican governor elected on the pledge to “cut up the credit cards.”

Federal spending increased 26 percent in the last three years literally consuming and squandering the wealth of the nation at the worst possible time. Yet consider this: from July of 2005 to July of 2008, California increased its spending by 31 percent, under a Republican governor elected on the pledge to “stop the crazy deficit spending”. You can see how well that’s worked for us.

If stimulus spending, massive deficits and burgeoning government bureaucracies were the path to economic prosperity, California should be leading the nation from the top rather than from the bottom. After we lost the nation’s triple-A credit rating this summer specifically because of chronic deficit spending, it should surprise no one that California suffers the lowest bond rating in the nation for precisely the same reason.

Our regulatory burdens are also years ahead of the rest of the nation – we’ve had our own version of Cap and Trade on the books for five years now, and even though the bulk of these restrictions yet to take effect, investors make decisions every day anticipating their impact.

This has already proven utterly devastating to energy generation, cargo and passenger transportation, cement production, construction, wine making, agriculture and manufacturing. When he signed this legislation, Gov. Schwarzenegger promised that this would produce a cornucopia of new green jobs.

How’s that working out? Up until the autumn of 2006, California’s unemployment rate tracked fairly steadily with the national unemployment numbers. But beginning in that quarter, California’s unemployment rate moved steadily beyond the national numbers. Today it stands at 12.1 percent – three full points above the national rate. You can’t blame the national economy for that – you have to find something specific to California that occurred in the autumn of 2006 to explain this divergence. I submit that the only significant event in that period was the signing of AB 32.

And I should note that although we’ve devastated California’s once recession-proof economy with these ridiculous regulations, the Earth stubbornly continues to warm and cool as it has for billions of years.

I mentioned water and electricity so cheap that some communities didn’t meter the stuff. There’s a reason for that: California had embarked on an aggressive program of hydroelectric and nuclear power construction that promised an era of clean, cheap and abundant electricity. But beginning with the first “small is beautiful” administration of Jerry Brown, these programs were abandoned in favor of “green energy.” We now have the most stringent renewable energy requirements in the nation.

Which helps explain why California is the home to such stunning green energy success stories as Solyndra. We have among the highest electricity prices in the continental United States. We have the lowest per-capita electricity consumption in the nation as well. And every day, our government spends part of our sky-high electricity bills to lecture us to conserve more.

We completed our last major dam in 1979. Last year, environmentalists diverted 200 billion gallons of water from central valley agriculture for the enjoyment and amusement of the Delta Smelt – a three-inch long minnow that has become the environmental left’s pet cause. This single action destroyed thousands of jobs and laid waste to a half million acres of the most fertile farmland in America. It is no coincidence that four of the ten metropolitan areas suffering the highest unemployment rate in the country are all in California’s Central Valley.

Meanwhile, up north on the Klamath River, California has found a new partnership with the Obama administration as they proceed to tear down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams capable of producing 155 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the planet — enough to power 155,000 homes. This is due, we are told, to the decline of the salmon population. The Iron Gate Fish Hatchery on the Klamath produces 5 million salmon smolts each year – 17,000 of which return as fully-grown adults to spawn – but they don’t include them in the population count. To add insult to insanity, when the Iron Gate Dam is destroyed, we will lose the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery.

We have the most aggressive mass transit program in the country – although we have not added significant capacity to our highway system in a generation. Californians consistently pay among the highest taxes per gallon of gasoline in the country and yet make among the lowest per capita expenditures on our roads. And what a surprise: we also have among the highest congestion rates in the country.

We have the largest population of illegal aliens in the country, consuming somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion in direct state expenditures. A few years ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff reported that fully 25 percent of the jail inmates were illegal aliens. For years, California has provided in-state tuition for illegal aliens at the expense of California taxpayers – and with the signing of the California Dream Act four days ago, they will also have access to taxpayer-financed grants. Meanwhile, CSU has increased tuition 22 percent in just two years.

I’ve noticed a few of you on your cell phones no doubt checking to be sure that your return reservations are confirmed.

But I need to remind you that the Obama administration is pursuing exactly the same policies nationally – and so far with the same results. When you step off the plane back in your home state, just remember that all your plane trip will buy you is a couple of years if we lose the fight in 2012.

The second act of this morality tale is how bad process accommodated and amplified bad policy.

The Left loves to throw the term “dysfunctional” at our governing institutions. In the last week, the Democratic governor of North Carolina seriously opined that we ought to postpone congressional elections so that congressmen would “do the right thing.” Peter Orzag this week wrote of wanting to shift even more decision-making from our elected representatives to elitist boards appointed by our betters.

We have reached this point not because of a failure of our republican institutions, but because of a failure to respect those institutions.

Again, California is a pioneer, but the rest of the country is fast catching up. In the 1960’s, California’s legislature was respected throughout the country as the model for others to follow. It was professional, it respected process, and it worked. It did a few things, but it did them exceedingly well. It left local schools, local governments and local revenues in local hands. But beginning in the 1970’s this began to break down.

The humility that kept Sacramento from sticking its nose into the business of local governments gave way to the hubris that the state knew better what was important to local communities than those communities themselves. The appalling breakdown of federalist principles at the national level now geometrically compounds this problem.

But at the core of this breakdown was the abandonment of our basic republican structure of government – and it began right here.

Our parliamentary institutions have evolved over centuries to distill diverse viewpoints to a common direction within constitutional boundaries. When this process is applied, it works extremely well.

For a quarter of a century, I watched as these brilliant checks and balances that had produced reasonably punctual and reasonably balanced budgets for over a century, and nurtured the most prosperous economy in the nation, were gradually abandoned in the name of liberal efficiency.

Slowly, inexorably, decision-making that had been done broadly and independently by the two houses of the legislature — involving the active participation of every elected representative — was usurped by an extra-constitutional abomination called the “Big Five.”

See if any of this sounds familiar: The “Big Five” is essentially a super-committee that meets behind closed doors outside the scrutiny of the public, sidelining the legislature, short-circuiting the independent judgment of the two houses, and then in the eleventh hour drops its decision into the laps of the legislature for a take-it–or-leave it vote that cannot even be amended.

I know I don’t have to connect the dots for anybody here. Ladies and gentlemen, it does not work. California’s plague of chronically late and chronically unbalanced budgets coincides quite clearly with the disintegration of the legislative process and the replacement of parliamentary institutions with handpicked super-committees.

Which brings me to the third act of this Greek Tragedy – bad politics.

Last November, while the rest of the country was celebrating historic Republican gains (including a shift of 63 U.S. House Seats, six U.S. Senate Seats, 680 state legislative seats, 19 state legislatures and six governors), the statewide Republican ticket in California – despite massively outspending the Democrats in the best Republican year since 1938 – lost every statewide race and even lost ground in the state legislature.

Republicans nationally now hold more state legislative seats than in any year since 1928. In California, they hold fewer than at any time since 1978!

That is not because the voting population of California has lost its collective mind and it is not because the state is divinely ordained to be run by morons.

It happened because Dick Armey is right: “When we act like us we win, and when we act like them we lose.”

Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections not because voters abandoned Republican principles, but because they looked at the Republicans and concluded that the Republicans had abandoned Republican principles.

During the Bush years, Republicans had increased federal spending at twice the rate of Bill Clinton; they left our borders wide open; they approved the biggest increase in entitlement spending since the Great Society and that turned record budget surpluses into record deficits to launch this brave new era of stimulus spending.

I last visited with the CNP in Washington in May of 2009. What a depressing meeting that was! Obama enjoyed 66 percent public approval. The week before, a conference of self-appointed Republican leaders had concluded that “we had to put the Reagan era behind us” and we had to be “mindful and respectful that the other side has something and that we have nothing and you can’t beat something with nothing.” (I won’t mention names, but his initials were Jeb Bush.)

Thank God House Republicans didn’t take that approach.

In the aftermath of that debacle, House Republican leaders resolved to restore traditional Republican principles as the policy and political focus of the party and they achieved something no one at the time thought possible: they united House Republicans as a determined voice of opposition to the Left and they rallied the American people.

Republicans rediscovered why we were Republicans, and Republican leaders rediscovered Reagan’s advice to paint our positions in bold colors and not hide them in pale pastels.

The result was one of the most dramatic watershed elections in American history.

California Republicans did exactly the opposite, and ended up replaying the disaster of 2008 while the rest of the country was enjoying one of the greatest Republican landslides ever recorded.

In California, the Democrats attacked Republicans for imposing the biggest state tax increase in American history. The Democrats attacked Republicans for obstructing pension reform to protect the prison guards union. These attacks had the unfortunate element of being true.

Meanwhile, the Republican ticket attacked Arizona’s immigration law. Republicans attacked the Proposition that would have stopped AB 32 – California’s version of Cap and Trade.

The sad truth is that we were more like the Democrats than the Democrats.

A few days after the election, a Republican leader whose mission in life has been to redefine the Republican Party in the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger said he just couldn’t explain the results.

I can. We didn’t need to redefine our principles. We needed to return to them. House Republicans did. California Republicans did not. Any questions?

Great parties are built upon great principles and they are judged by their devotion to those principles. Since its inception, the central principle of the Republican Party can be summed up in a single word, Freedom.

The closer we have hewn to that principle, the better we have done. The farther we have strayed from that principle, the worse we have done.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned the nation that two incompatible and irreconcilable philosophies, freedom and slavery, competed for our future and reminded us that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” “I do not believe the house will fall,” he said, “but I do believe that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

Today two incompatible and irreconcilable philosophies — freedom and socialism — compete for our nation’s future and the stage is set for one of the greatest debates in the history of the American Republic.

We are winning that debate. But we have to stand firm.

What has happened to California and now is threatening our country is the inevitable consequence of bad policy, bad process and bad politics – and the good news is, that’s all within our power as a people to change.

I believe that if Californians rediscover these self-evident truths, Jerry Brown will be to California what Barack Obama has been to the rest of the country – a giant wake-up call. And if Americans rally behind these truths, together, we will write the next great chapter of the American Republic: that just when it looked like America would fade into history as just another failed socialist state, this generation of Americans rediscovered, revived and restored those uniquely American principles of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government, rallied under a bold banner held high by the traditional party of freedom, and from that moment America began her next great era of expansion, prosperity and influence.

(Congressman Tom McClintock delivered these remarks to the Council for National Policy.)

Bad Financial News Keeps Pouring In: 14 Facts That Just Might Scare The Living Daylights Out Of You

2011-10-04T09:48:00.001-04:00

Full Article Here

Will the bad financial news ever stop? A lot of people in the financial world were hoping for a much better fourth quarter after an absolutely disastrous third quarter. Well, if Monday was any indication, October could end up being a really rough month for global financial markets. So much bad financial news keeps pouring in that it really is a challenge to try to keep track of it all. Greece seems to get closer to defaulting on their debts with each passing day, and it appears that Germany is not going to contribute any more bailout money beyond what they have already committed to. Major banks on both sides of the Atlantic are on the verge of collapse, and investors all over the world are afraid that we may have another "Lehman Brothers moment" soon. Shares of American Airlines dropped a staggering 33 percent on Monday as rumors that they will soon be entering bankruptcy swirled. Yes, things certainly are getting interesting. Back in 2008, the governments of the western world saved the financial system with gigantic bailouts that were absolutely unprecedented. If the financial system crashes again at some point in the coming weeks or months, will the political will for more bank bailouts be there? If not, what is going to happen to the banking system?

On both sides of the Atlantic, the big banks are highly leveraged, they have taken on a ton of risk and they are very deeply exposed to derivatives. It is as if virtually nobody learned any lessons during the financial crisis of 2008. Once again we are facing a situation where if a couple of financial dominoes fall it could send dozens of others tumbling to the ground.

Some very significant things happened on Monday. But the media has gotten so used to reporting on tremendous financial instability that Monday's events mostly got brushed to the side. Instead, Amanda Knox captured most of the headlines.

But the reality is that some really, really monumental stuff has been going down.

The following are 14 facts that just might scare the living daylights out of you....

#1 On Monday, the Dow was down 258 points. Lately it seems as though the Dow has been going up or down by several hundred points almost every single day, and that much volatility is not a good sign for the health of the financial system.

#2 Shares of Wall Street banking giant Morgan Stanley fell by another 8 percent on Monday. Overall, shares of Morgan Stanley have declined by more than 50 percent since February.

#3 Bank of America stock dropped down to $5.53 a share on Monday. Just a few years ago, it was trading for more than $50 a share.

#4 There are reports that Goldman Sachs may actually show a loss for the third quarter of 2011 and that yearly bonuses for employees may be slashed to next to nothing. Yes, not too many people are going to have sympathy for Goldman Sachs, but this just shows how bad things are getting out there for the big Wall Street banks.

#5 Normally Goldman Sachs is quite upbeat, but lately they have been coming out with some really frightening reports. For example, a new report from Goldman Sachs declares that there is a 40 percent chance that we are entering a "Great Stagnation".

#6 Shares of European banking giant Dexia plunged by about 10 percent on Monday on rumors that it will soon need a significant bailout. The stocks of major banks all across Europe have been getting absolutely hammered for weeks.

#7 Shares of American Airlines fell by 33 percent on Monday on rumors that the airline is about to enter bankruptcy. Amazingly, trading in the stock was stopped 7 different times on Monday.

#8 It is being reported that approximately 240 pilots for American Airlines have retired in the last two months alone. All of those pilots are retiring so that they can shield their pensions from the upcoming bankruptcy filing.

#9 Nearly the entire airline industry got hit really hard on Monday. Shares of United Continental, U.S. Airways and Delta were all down more than 10 percent.

#10 Overall, U.S. stocks fell by 14 percent during the third quarter of 2011, and now the fourth quarter is off to a very rocky start.

#11 The incoming head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has publicly admitted that major European banks are having "funding problems". Just like back in 2008, we are rapidly heading for a giant "credit crunch".

#12 A shocking new Bloomberg survey has found that approximately one out of every three international investors expects a "global economic meltdown" within the next 12 months, and 70 percent of them believe that the global economy is "deteriorating". Perhaps they have been reading The Economic Collapse Blog too much.

#13 Financial markets in Europe were rocked on Monday when it was revealed that Greece is not going to hit the deficit reduction targets set for it either this year or next year despite all of the severe austerity measures that have already been implemented. Needless to say, a lot of financial authorities in Europe were very displeased by this news.

#14 German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is publicly declaring that Germany will not contribute any more money to the European bailout fund.

The truth is that the political will for more bailouts has totally dried up in Germany.

The recent vote by the Bundestag to approve money for the European rescue fund should not be misinterpreted.

That vote simply approved money that was part of a deal that was agreed to over two months ago.

What is more important is what many major German politicians said after the vote. Essentially, the overwhelming consensus is that Germany is done contributing money. Once the money is gone from the current bailout pool (which is not anywhere close to what is really needed), there will be no more money from Germany.

That means that the era of the bailouts in Europe is drawing to a close.

In a recent editorial, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard described the situation in Germany in this manner....

The furious debate over the erosion of German fiscal sovereignty and democracy – as well as the escalating costs of the EU rescue machinery – has made it absolutely clear that the Bundestag will not prop up the ruins of monetary union for much longer.

Horst Seehofer, the leader of Bavaria’s Social Christians, said his party would go "this far, and no further".

Let that last phrase sink in.

Basically, what politicians all over Germany are saying is that Germany has now done all that it is going to do.

The implications of this are huge.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recognized this in his editorial. In fact, the usually reserved journalist actually used all caps for six straight sentences and broke out some very strong language that is very uncharacteristic for him....

Repeat after me:

THERE WILL BE NO FISCAL UNION.

THERE WILL BE NO EUROBONDS.

THERE WILL BE NO DEBT POOL.

THERE WILL BE NO EU TREASURY.

THERE WILL BE NO FISCAL TRANSFERS IN PERPETUITY.

THERE WILL BE A STABILITY UNION – OR NO MONETARY UNION.

Get used to it. This is the political reality of Europe, since nothing of importance can be done without Germany. All else is wishful thinking, clutching at straws, and evasion. If this means the euro will shed some members or blow apart – as it almost certainly does – then the rest of the world must prepare for the day.

Basically, this is his way of saying that "the sky is falling" and that the financial system of Europe is doomed.

If you have followed the writing of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for any length of time, then you know that he is one of the most respected financial journalists in the world and that he is not prone to indulge in much "doom and gloom". For him to say what he did is very significant.

But even if there were no financial problems in Europe, the United States would probably be slipping into another recession anyway.

Right now our economy is a total mess, and all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork and are trying to take credit for "calling" the upcoming recession.

Some of the pronouncements are so bold that you would think that some half-crazed blogger wrote them. For example, just check out the following quote from a report recently put out by the Economic Cycle Research Institute....

"Here's what ECRI's recession call really says: If you think this is a bad economy, you haven't seen anything yet."

But do the American people really need some experts to tell them that we are going into another recession?

The American people know what is going on.

According to one recent poll, 90 percent of the American people believe that economic conditions in the United States are "poor". According to another recent poll, 80 percent of the American people believe that we are actually in a recession right now.

So perhaps the American people are actually ahead of most of the so-called "experts".

In any event, economic conditions in the United States continue to get worse. The average American family is having a harder and harder time getting to the end of each month. According to a Harris Interactive survey taken near the end of last year, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. In 2007, the same survey found that only 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.

At least Barack Obama is not talking so much about an "economic recovery" these days. When asked recently if Americans are better off today than they were four years ago, Obama said the following....

"Well, I don't think they're better off than they were four years ago."

Finally, something that we can all agree with Barack Obama about.

Sadly, things are about to get even worse.

Pay close attention to all of the bad financial news that keeps pouring in.

Just like in 2008, something really big is happening.

When the current bailout fund in Europe runs out in a few months, things could really start to unravel.

If Greece (or any other eurozone nation for that matter) defaults, it could set off a chain of financial events so catastrophic that it just might scare the living daylights out of all of us.

Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

Tremendous fear and panic has gripped the financial world, and the underlying problems causing this crisis are not going to be solved any time soon.

We are about to enter unprecedented territory.

Hold on tight.

The Dark and Dangerous Road of Modern Politics (American Thinker)

2011-09-30T08:32:00.001-04:00

September 30, 2011

By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.

Imagine sitting down for dinner with the news on in the background. Everyone is enjoying dinner while half-listening to the latest political intrigue going on in Washington and in the media. Suddenly one of your guests starts calling 14- and 17-year-old girls who just happen to be a child of a notable politician "whores" and "tramps." How, as father of a young girl yourself, could you nod or laugh? I have often wondered what kind of state of mind it would take to find such a thing acceptable or even funny.

Unfortunately such conversations are going on all over the political spectrum these days. The nastiest of allegations and accusations are coming from the statists, directed towards the Tea Party and like-minded politicians. The statists and especially the far left seem to have willingly and consciously abandoned all morality, taste, and ethics for the purpose of winning a political battle. They seem willing to put the lives of young men and women at risk to win an election, and the trend is disturbing.

Take for example a young woman named Bristol Palin. Her mother entered the national political scene when she was 17. Bristol herself had not violated laws or abused anyone, or even held political office; she simply had a mother who was a politician, and Bristol had made an unfortunate decision that resulted in her becoming pregnant at a young age. The vultures of the left swarmed in on the young woman with the vilest accusations imaginable and they continue to do so today. They alleged she was promiscuous and that she was "white trash," and national shows like Saturday Night Live implied that her own father was the father of her baby.

While watching the media and blogosphere treatment of Bristol, I was reminded of the tale of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old teenager who was bullied online and eventually took her own life in her despair. As a father, I felt a stab of horror and sadness when I heard about the poor young lady. Yet Bristol Palin has endured what Phoebe did on an international level and at levels of magnitude more intensity. Frankly, it is a miracle that she was able to live through those times. The attacks were, in fact, calculated to destroy her personally.

After reading Bristol's book, I was taken aback by the misery that Bristol's life had become and the steel spine she must have had to make it through. I admired her resolve and resilience and was saddened by her ordeal. As a father, I sat back and tried, but failed, to imagine the mind of a man who could bully a young teenage girl, risking causing a suicide, and then face his family calmly. I often wonder if they have trouble facing their young daughters after writing a particularly nasty comment on a blog somewhere.

However, Bristol isn't the only person who has had to endure such vitriolic attacks. Her mother, of course, has received more such attacks than any other politician in history. Apparently threatening to kill Sarah Palin is something of a sport to some leftists. They have even proudly published a video game that allows the players to indulge their murder fantasy. I wonder how a player of such a game explains the game to his or her 10-year-old when the kid looks over Mom's or Dad's shoulder. Long before the game there were posters, drawings, and altered photographs that indulged in a sick fantasy of murdering Mrs. Palin. However, the Palin family isn't alone in being the recipient of such hostility.

The Tea Party has been under increasingly vitriolic and nasty attacks trying to bully the membership into retreating from public life. Throughout their short existence, they have been accused of being racists and white supremacist Nazis -- ironic, since their views have little in common with the National Socialist German Worker's Party. The accusers aren't limited to a few oddballs in the blogosphere and political commentators. Even the vice president of the United States implied that the Tea Party were terrorists, saying that Republican leaders had "guns to their heads" when trying to negotiate a bill. From the second-highest office in the executive branch, that is just irresponsible and dangerous.

What I can't understand is how the leftists manage to make such attacks without having a crisis of conscience. How does the black man who endured racism under Democrat George Wallace in Alabama allow leftists to trivialize the fear and oppression they went through by tossing "racism" around like a ping-pong ball? How does a feminist who suffered against the glass ceiling allow others to refer to a female politician as a "slut" or "whore" just because she is in the opposite party? How does a father allow such horrible things to be said of children just because their mother is a politician? I know if I heard such things about Sasha and Malia Obama at my dinner table, despite my deep disagreements with their father, I would throw the guest out of my house, and feel I had to shampoo the carpets where he or she walked.

It is as if the left have tossed out the window any sense of morality, ethics, tolerance, and diversity of opinion that they professed to believe in for a hundred years. The rise of the Tea Party didn't surprise me, given the vast overreach of statists in both parties, but that an entire group in politics was willing to throw out their humanity for the sake of political gain does surprise me. I suppose I had naively thought that Americans were unable to go down the roads traveled in so many dark times in human history. I suppose I cannot understand such a mindset.

The question is, will that mindset be the new politics in America? Have we traded in the debate halls and questions of Constitution and the freedom of speech for vicious allegations and attempts to destroy others' lives because we disagree with them? Will we laugh when a 47-year-old man verbally attacks a 20-year-old woman in public with words like "slut" and "whore"? Each one of us, no matter what the political persuasion, has that power in our blogs, comments online, and interactions to change the tone of the conversation. The only requirement is the courage to not remain silent.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/09/the_dark_and_dangerous_road_of_modern_politics.html at September 30, 2011 - 07:31:48 AM CDT

Coddling Misinformation About Taxation (American Thinker)

2011-09-29T10:02:00.001-04:00

September 29, 2011

By Chris Banescu

Warren Buffett and President Obama claim that the rich do not pay enough taxes. They both accuse the American tax code of being unfair and coddling the rich. Both have been pushing the same class warfare narrative for years, using current U.S. capital gains and dividends taxation rates as evidence for their big-government progressive agenda. Both are spreading misinformation about all the taxes corporations and individuals actually pay.

As far back in 2007, Mr. Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, began criticizing the U.S. tax code for its low tax rates on dividends and capital gains from long-term investments. One of his most infamous statements, one often repeated by the left to support its punish-the-rich schemes, was made in a speech at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton in New York:

The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

In that same speech, Buffett also said that he was taxed at 17.7% on the $46 million he made the previous year, "without trying to avoid paying higher taxes," while his own secretary, who earned $60,000 per year, was taxed at 30%.

A similar comment was made by Mr. Buffett in his "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich" article published on August 14, 2011 in The New York Times.

Last year my federal tax bill -- the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf -- was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income -- and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Perpetuating the same "the rich are not being taxed enough" storyline, President Obama picked up Buffett's talking points and included then in his own address to Congress. In his September 8, 2011 "jobs" speech, Mr. Obama said:

Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary -- an outrage he has asked us to fix. We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake, and everybody pays their fair share. And I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that, if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order.

Yet things are not as they appear to be. In fact, the full level of taxation of U.S. corporations and taxpayers is much higher than these men keep saying it is.

Dividends Taxation -- Double-Taxation

While it is true that the federal income tax on dividends from investments held for one year or more (and capital gains from sales of stock held for at least one year) is only 15%, this is not the whole story. Mr. Buffett and President Obama completely ignore the double-taxation aspect of corporate earnings, a key aspect of our income tax system. They purposely fail to mention that dividend income streams reach the taxpayers and the rich only after they have been already taxed once (35% to 41.6%) at the corporate level (with some exceptions with regards to REITs and certain trusts, etc.) before being distributed to their shareholders. Then the same income streams get taxed a second time (15%) when individuals actually receive the money from the corporations they own. The true and full federal tax rate on those earnings is not 15%, but anywhere from 50% to 56.6%.

Fair or Unfair?

Is it really "unfair" that shareholders are taxed only 15% the second time around, after the companies they own have already been taxed once at 35% to 41.6% on average?

Stocks grant investors part-ownership of companies. The money invested buying those stocks is 100% at risk. Share purchasers are the actual owners of those businesses, and the earnings they produce are lawfully and ethically theirs. Once those corporations pay their federal and state income taxes -- averaging from the lowest (35%) in Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota to the highest (41.6%) in Pennsylvania and Iowa, as reported by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation -- the remaining earnings belong to the shareholders. That income is now their income.

However, once companies have made a profit and paid their taxes, the owners -- the investors who risked their money on purchasing these stocks -- have not yet seen a dime from the earnings of their corporations. In order for money to actually reach the shareholders, a company must pay out dividends. When those dividends are paid out, then the IRS taxes them at rate of 15% (for long-term investments held for one year or more; the regular federal rates are applied for stocks held for less than one year) for each individual who receives them. By the time stockholders get to keep any money from the earnings of the corporations they own, the government has taxed it twice and confiscated at least half of it (50% to 56.6% approximate rates). That's not enough of a "fair share" to pay?

Top 10% of Taxpayers Pay 70% of All Taxes

The latest research on U.S. income taxes data (conducted by several nonpartisan and independent organizations) shows that, on average, the top 10% of taxpayers pay approximately 70% of all federal taxes in America. Does "fair" mean they should be paying 80%, 90%, or 100% of all taxes instead? Is that the definition of "fair share" that both Obama and Buffett would be more comfortable and happy with? I think Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would definitely have approved.

Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneur, and university professor. He regularly blogs at www.chrisbanescu.com and www.orthodoxnet.com/blog.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/09/coddling_misinformation_about_taxation.html at September 29, 2011 - 09:00:42 AM CDT

The Moral High Ground: The Left’s “morally superior” policies kill millions and impoverish billions (National Review)

2011-09-08T12:11:00.001-04:00

The Moral High Ground: The Left’s “morally superior” policies kill millions and impoverish billions
National Review ^ | 09/08/2011 | Jim Lacey

Posted on Thursday, September 08, 2011 10:05:46 AM by SeekAndFind

Soon after I published an article questioning the global-warming orthodoxy, the world’s foremost hypocrite, Al Gore, informed anyone who still listens to him that my position is akin to racism. The wise course of action would be to ignore the rants of a man who desperately needs the world to remain fearful of carbon, the element on which all life on earth is based. If that fear were to vanish, how would he continue to rake in the millions needed for the purchase of his next beach house?

But enough is enough. Why should I sit quietly and let myself be branded a racist? In fact, will someone please explain how the Left is always assumed to have the moral high ground in these kinds of debates? I am particularly curious about this, as leftist policies continue to destroy the lives of tens of millions in this country and billions worldwide.

Let’s go through just a small part of the evidence.

The Left has fought the spread of genetically modified (GM) foods with every weapon in its arsenal. Leftists did this in the name of combatting a long list of “potential risks” that never materialized. They have been permitted to overlook the fact that their assaults on GM food were not cost free. For instance, they have greatly delayed and in some places stopped cold the use of rice modified to increase vitamin A content. For the Left this is cause for celebration. In fact, widespread use of this “golden rice” would have prevented a half-million cases of child blindness a year. So the next time someone talks to you about the evils of genetically modified foods, remind him of the millions of poor children this crusade has condemned to a lifetime of blindness. How do folks prepared to allow millions to needlessly go blind still command the respect of any truly moral person?

However, even looking the other way as children go blind pales in comparison to the needless starving of millions that has occurred because anti-GM-food groups have frightened and bullied the people and governments of Africa into forbidding the use of GM seeds. Such seeds, modified to resist the effects of drought and disease, would make Africa self-sufficient in foodstuffs. But for most African farmers they remain unavailable because of the successful efforts of American and European anti-GM-food groups. Even though every American consumes GM foods on an almost daily basis, with no ill effects, they remain off limits to those most in need.

There is no reason the Somali child pictured below needs to be hungry except for the fact that some groups are working overtime to prevent his country from growing the food needed to feed him. What do you call people who are willing to let millions starve to death rather than let them grow food that scientists long ago proved safe?Why the anti-GM groups are not condemned for crimes against humanity escapes me. For that matter, as these groups have made it their life mission to starve poor Africans, Asians, and other peoples of color, how come they have never been branded as racists?

And malnutrition is not the only problem afflicting Africa and other poor regions of the world. Among the greatest scourges is malaria, which infects 250 million and kills 1 million every year. In fact, in Africa, one in every five childhood deaths is a result of malaria. If you are a reader of average speed, then consider that ten to twelve children will have died from malaria between the time you started this article and the time you finish it. None of this is necessary. Malaria was vanquished in the United States and Europe through the copious use of DDT. But this blessing has been denied poor African nations because Rachel Carson in her 1962 book Silent Spring blamed DDT for killing eagles and other birds.

Fifty years later Carson’s discredited work remains a rallying cry for environmentalists who tirelessly work to ensure that poor nations do not have access to DDT, favoring instead a cocktail of methods that have been proven ineffective. Interestingly, I was once accosted by an environmental zealot over that last statement. He wanted to know what proof I had that other methods were ineffective. I pointed out the continuing deaths of a million people and asked how long he had been involved in the environmental movement. When he told me he had been doing this for a dozen years I casually mentioned that during his activist years he had worked for a movement responsible for killing two times as many persons as perished in the Holocaust, and that was just from malaria-related deaths alone. Yet he thought, and probably still thinks, that he occupies the moral high ground.

In truth, almost all the harmful effects attributed to DDT have been proven not to exist. Moreover, the benefits of DDT use can be achieved using a fraction of the quantity used to eradicate malaria in the United States. Just what do leftists have against blacks, particularly blacks in Africa, that causes them to push policies that sicken and kill them by the tens of millions? And why do they get to claim they sing with the angels as they preside over this slaughter of innocents?

Let’s move on a bit. That most stupendous of hypocrites, Al Gore again, uses more electricity in a week than 28 million poor Ugandans use in a year. Still he gets to brand me a racist for doubting his unsupported claims about global warming. The simple fact of the matter is that alternative sources of energy are inefficient, unreliable, and very expensive. If poor countries are forced to adopt alternative energy sources over cheap carbon-based energy, then there is no feasible scenario in which developing nations will be able to afford even a fraction of the energy required to escape poverty. As the Ugandan Fiona Kobusingye points out in a recent article:

Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning — or offices, factories, and shops to make things and create good jobs. Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles, and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.

She goes on to say, “Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development — except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels — is immoral. It is a crime against humanity.” And she concludes, “We need to stop listening to global-warming witch doctors, who get rich telling us to keep living ‘indigenous,’ impoverished lives.”

Yet I am the one Al Gore brands as a racist.

But the damage the warmists are doing or hope to do does not end there. To save a planet that stopped warming in 1998, they want the United States and other industrial countries to reduce carbon output by 80 percent by 2050 (many are shooting for 2020), relative to a 1990 baseline. Let’s assume we multiply our wasteful spending on solar and wind power tenfold. If we do, then on particularly sunny and windy days we may eventually get 25 percent of our energy from those sources. That leaves us short about half the energy we need to support current GDP levels. As studies demonstrate that every 1 percent reduction in power causes a 0.7 percent reduction in GDP, I wonder how the warmists plan to employ the additional 25 million Americans thrown out of work.

Moreover, in the world’s emerging economies each 1 percent loss of GDP causes almost 2,500 premature deaths per 100,000 population. So, if the warmists get their way, they would kill off about 50 million persons a year on their way to a 2050 nirvana. One could plausibly claim that as soon as the pain became apparent, politicians would immediately reverse course before more damage was done. Such a belief would be comforting if we were not witnessing the destruction of huge amounts of food in order to turn it into inefficient and costly energy. One would think that global food riots and millions of starving people would cause a rethinking of our priorities. But this year, American farmers will grow more corn for ethanol than for food. After all, why should the empty bellies of countless children get in the way of saving the planet from warmist fantasies? Look again at that picture of a starving black child and tell me whose policies are racist.

How about something closer to home? Data released last week show that America’s jobless rate among black teenagers was 46.5 percent, and the overall rate of black joblessness is double that of the white population. Why? One needs to look no further than liberal policies implemented in our major cities, which have destroyed the black family unit, discouraged business investment, and subsidized the worst education system in the developed world. In fact, if a foreign power tried to force our education system on inner cities, we would send in the Marines to stop it.

Instead, we let leftist-dominated teachers’ unions run an education system that ensures half of the students trapped in it will be unemployable upon graduation. When these unions are called to account, they attack the critics as wanting to hurt the children. For how much longer will unions be allowed to claim they are “all about the children,” while in fact they are wrecking those children’s futures and condemning many of them to spend the rest of their lives in poverty? And why am I called a child-hating racist for daring to point out the truth?

There is so much more. What, for instance, can one say about the morality of economic policies that place a $70,000 debt on every American child? Is it really moral to take all the money the better-off earn and thereby deprive them of funds they could have invested to create the millions of jobs the unemployed need? What is moral about expanding the multicultural dogma, when the one thing it definitely creates is an unassimilated mass of youths with limited future prospects? What is moral about diversity programs that more often than not create isolated warring tribes within America’s most important institutions? Finally, is it really moral to force Americans to purchase medical insurance coverage they don’t want? And if you think it is, then where does government power over private lives end? What of freedom?

The day has long since passed when the Right needs to concede the moral high ground to the Left on any issue. Yes, we may be able to win most of the great debates on the merits of our ideas; but as a wise man once explained to me: “What I believe rationally is open to debate and change. What I believe emotionally cannot be changed by reason. An emotional belief can only be changed by an emotional argument.” The Left has known this for decades. That is why the those on the left never misses a chance to brand those on the right with the most contemptible slurs they can think of. We need not descend into the gutter and trade personal insults, but we should never miss a chance to point out the vile results of the policies the Left is pushing.

In every sphere of public debate, the moral high ground belongs to the Right. Claim it!

— Jim Lacey is the author of The First Clash and Keep from All Thoughtful Men.

The Democrats' Invincible Ignorance (American Thinker)

2011-09-06T08:22:00.001-04:00

September 6, 2011

By Paul Kengor

I've only recently come to realize the nature of the hurdle this country faces in trying to turn around a stalled economy and horrendous deficit. Here it is: liberal Democrat politicians have completely convinced huge numbers of their followers that our economic/fiscal mess is the result of two principal demons: 1) "the rich," and 2) the Tea Party. The former, of course, has been a longtime liberal scapegoat; the latter is a new one.

Note that I use the word "followers." That's because I'm hearing from a disturbingly high number of people who apparently buy the Democratic Party line with no question whatsoever. They exhibit a remarkable, frightful willingness to act against their own interests in blind service to partisanship and ideology. It's like a mass self-flagellation.

I've realized this painfully only in the last few weeks as a result of several commentaries I've done (USA Today, FoxNews, among others), viewed by a large portion of Americans from across the political spectrum. In these commentaries, I tried to stick to statistics and facts. I naïvely thought my approach would be convincing. It was not.

Or, perhaps I should say, it was thoroughly unconvincing to followers of the Democratic Party line. My emailing with them has been a total waste of my time. I've found myself repeating numbers over and over, with no effect whatsoever.

To keep it simple here today, I'll stick to the one factoid that I thought was irrefutable, and (my main point) which I'm finding is irrelevant to countless liberals:

I wrote an article titled, "It's spending, stupid." There I noted that the federal government, from 1965 to 2009, never cut spending one single year. That's right, not one time -- nope, nada, nothing. To repeat: from 1965 to 2009, the federal government never decreased annual spending. To see the figures on a chart is eye-opening. The annual rise in spending has been a steady, nonstop, unbroken, upward climb for over 40 years. To the contrary, revenues to the federal government have gone up and down, the result not of tax rates on "the rich," but of the status of the economy from year to year, especially during recessions. It's both amazing and depressing to see that the federal government, unlike you and your family and your household and your business and your anything and everything else, is apparently incapable of adjusting (i.e., decreasing) its spending based on available revenues. It used to do so, but that changed in 1965, when the federal government, starting with the Great Society, began an outright spending addiction.

As I noted in the article, seeing this for yourself is as easy as Googling "historical tables deficit," where one can view two sources: CBO historical tables (Congressional Budget Office) and OMB historical tables (Office of Management and Budget). These are the official sources for data on federal budgets. In the OMB link, look at Table 1.1, titled, "Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits: 1789-2016."

In my commentaries and emails, I even included hyperlinks (as I have here) to these tables, imploring people to look for themselves rather than accept my word. I arrogantly and mistakenly thought I was providing a service to people who otherwise didn't know these things. Once they saw the data for themselves, I figured, they would reconsider their view. How naïve I was.

I can't begin to try to recount the angry emails I got from liberals insisting that the reasons for our deficits/debt problem is not over-spending by the federal government, but greed by wealthy people who don't pay "their fair share" of income taxes and by dastardly "racist" "terrorists" in the Tea Party. And, yes, I actually got emails (many of them) from people insisting that Tea Party members are "terrorists." It is astonishing to see, but it's absolutely true that when Democratic Party officials mouth charges like this, they are immediately accepted and repeated by their followers. It's very dispiriting. And to observe an American public, only 10 years removed from September 11, somehow equating Tea Party members with "terrorists" leaves me almost speechless and hopeless.

I won't bother here responding to that particular smear, but I would like to address the charge that the rich are not paying "their fair share." Again, I will stick to data, and I again fear that it will make no difference among the liberal faithful.

If you Google the words "Who pays income tax?" you will find a chart (click here) from the National Taxpayers Union. It includes these telling statistics:

The top 1% of income earners pay 38% of all federal tax revenue. The top 5% pay 59%. The top 10% pay 70%. The top 25% pay 86%. The top 50% pay 97.3%. Conversely, the bottom 50% pay merely 2.7% of all federal tax revenue.

As the data shows, the rich are certainly paying their fair share. In fact, they pay the vast share. The poorest Americans, conversely, pay literally nothing in income taxes.

If anything, the system is disproportionately titled against the wealthy. Our "rich" are paying for the reckless behavior of politicians addicted to spending; they are subsidizing spending addicts. And to watch those addicts blame the mess on the rich for not paying enough? It's obscene.

But the folks who have emailed me have the complete opposite opinion -- and it is that: an opinion. It is an incorrect opinion. And lately, it has been aided and abetted not merely by the usual class-warfare demagogues in the Democratic Party, but by the likes of Warren Buffet and even some liberal Republican writers, who are dupes for this line of propaganda. Warren Buffet is the Democrats' dupe.

Let me repeat: America's deficit/debt problem is a spending problem. It is not the fault of rich people who pay too little income tax or Tea Party members guilty of "terrorism." Don't take my word for it. Look at the data.

My fear, however, is that the data just doesn't matter to a huge number of blind followers. And that's a very serious problem for this country, a giant propaganda hurdle that may be insurmountable.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/09/the_democrats_invincible_ignorance.html at September 06, 2011 - 07:19:31 AM CDT

The Racial Violence that Dare Not Speak Its Name (American Thinker)

2011-08-30T09:38:00.001-04:00

By John T. Bennett

Recent flash mob violence has alerted Americans to a troubling wave of sadistic racial mayhem. A notable outbreak occurred in Denver in 2009, setting a pattern of delay, denial, and silence. Now that same scourge has returned to Denver, among many other places.

In 2009, a four month wave of mayhem broke out in Denver. There were at least 26 violent robberies committed by two black gangs. The victims were -- without exception -- whites and Hispanics. When the dust settled from that initial spate of violence, victims were left with injuries ranging from a skull fracture to broken noses and shattered eye sockets. The local Denver ABC news affiliate summarized the crime spree:

Black gangs roaming downtown Denver often vented their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave, according to interviews and court records obtained by 7NEWS.

That is not the language of a conservative commentator; it's simply a mainstream local news report from an American city that has witnessed widespread racial violence.

The first-hand accounts and surveillance videos of the 2009 attacks are shocking. These weren't sucker punches or fair fights -- the attackers swing madly and rapidly with a viciousness that can only come from blind cruelty. The victims, who can be seen in interviews, were kind-looking, ordinary people. The victims were mostly either gay or straight couples. They didn't provoke the attacks in any conceivable way. The attackers sometimes fractured skulls, or broke eye sockets, and left one victim in a coma. There were a total of 26 attacks from July 17 to Nov. 17.

An incredible 38 people were arrested in connection with this campaign of racist violence. Thirty were ultimately charged, all black. Has this number of arrests been made against any violent white supremacist or right wing organization in the last 50 years?

The story first came to light in 2009 when a source inside the Denver police department said that the department was "keeping the public in the dark" about the attacks. Court documents show that the police did indeed have knowledge of a pattern of racial attacks, but remained silent for 27 days. One victim complained that, had the police informed the public sooner, he could have protected himself. The same group responsible for that violence is suspected in the murder of Andrew Graham, a young graduate student who was senselessly shot in 2010.

Late last month, Denver saw a possible return to violence, as couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats. The Denver Police have renewed warnings of those attacks.

The brutality in Denver is disturbingly similar to violence occurring elsewhere, nationwide. In the last few months alone, a young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten in Milwaukee. A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne. Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten and kicked to the ground in separate Philadelphia flash mobs. Every weekend in July, mobs have attacked in Greensboro, NC. In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of "teens" walking through the streets, "shouting profanities and racial epithets," and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends. In all of those cases, the victims were white and the attackers were black.

Then there are the ominous stories that no one has ever heard about. For instance, a mob of 150 "young people" descended on a small, predominantly white NJ town named Winfield Township during a firefighter's carnival. Perhaps the townspeople are merely lucky that there wasn't violence. Isn't the racial mob mentality scary enough that we shouldn't have to wait for violence before we take it seriously?

It cannot be emphasized enough that these attacks often occur in suburban areas where the black groups have to leave their own neighborhoods and purposefully travel to areas that are predominantly non-black, to attack non-black victims. For instance, in one of the many flash mob attacks in Chicago, Trovulus Pickett, 17, is part of a group that attacked and robbed several victims, including a 68-year-old doctor. The attacks occurred in the North side, which is 15 miles away from Pickett's home. This indicates a serious level of planning and potential racial targeting. If these were just run-of-the mill robberies, it wouldn't be too surprising. But the social problem we're looking at is large groups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, sometimes armed, engaging in racially-focused violent crimes.

There is quite simply no way for a politically correct society to grasp these events, much less effectively deal with them. Liberals have reached the depths of self-deception and self-censorship in response. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, have all openly stated that they will refuse to report on the racial facts of these violent crimes. The Los Angeles Times explains that they don't want to "unfairly stigmatize racial groups." They prefer the soft bigotry of low expectations instead.

These flash mobs have turned the comfortable narrative of racism on its head. Politicians, the media, academics, and the legal community do not have the capacity to face the issue. The reigning dogma of white racism is too deeply entrenched. There is a small grievance industry built around condemning white racism and intolerance, real or imagined. Indeed, the welfare state itself is in large part based on the assumption that whites need to give more to achieve racial equality, as reflected in President Obama's lament that the civil rights movement didn't focus on economic redistribution. Legal treatises complain that the racist white power structure grows into the bitter fruit of anti-minority racist violence. For instance, the work of Mari Matsuda and Richard Delgado is featured in countless undergraduate courses, and is ubiquitous in graduate and law school courses. They argue that hate speech is a severe social problem and that such speech, along with other tools of racism, keeps minorities in an inferior position (1). While academics dwell on hateful speech, the actual violence continues. We all pay the price, as racial guilt is used to extort tax money for the welfare state, which fosters the mobs. The PC status quo will not acknowledge the fact that the worst form of racism today is black mob violence.

John Bennett (MA, University of Chicago, MAPSS '07) is a veteran, writer, and law student at Emory University living in Atlanta, GA.

1. Matsuda, Mari J., Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story, 87 Michigan Law Review. 2320, 2362, note 10 (1989); Richard Delgado, Words That Wound: A Tort Action For Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling, 17 Harv. Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. 133 (1982).

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/the_racial_violence_that_dare_not_speak_its_name.html at August 30, 2011 - 08:37:21 AM CDT

What Liberals Fear More Than Obama Losing (American Thinker)

2011-08-30T09:28:00.001-04:00

What Liberals Fear More Than Obama Losing

By Geoffrey P. Hunt

The left are now wringing their hands fearing their agenda is overripe, blaming everyone else for their own spoiled pickling. While Obama's sinking prospects for re-election are disquieting, the real source of liberals' despair is their sudden, unexpected realization that the progressive agenda is dead in its tracks and will likely be in full retreat after 2012.

Obama is finished, but the demise of their identity politician is neither the main event nor surprising. He was a lame duck after he returned from Copenhagen empty handed in September 2009, expecting the mere presence of his electro-magnetic glow would secure the 2016 summer Olympics for Chicago.

He cannot claim a single success. His resume is a bibliography of failure. His signature achievement, the dubious namesake ObamaCare, was designed by someone else. Its central feature, the individual insurance mandate, is destined to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

We will have our fill of post mortems, ad nauseam, about how The One broke their hearts; his considerable skills, now considered overrated, were just no match for the enormity of the clean- up needed after Bush's mess; a victim of his opponents' entrenched racism.

Obama was only a convenient vessel, a mere tool. But enough about Obama; even the Congressional Black Caucus is ready to Move On.

The end of the Progressive Era, eclipsing Obama, has come from two places -- one fiscal and pragmatic, the other ideological and visceral. First, the debt crisis and persistent economic woes have made it clear that the progressive agenda is unaffordable and unsustainable. The money pumps in the forms of more borrowing and taxes cannot possibly keep up with the tons of green water spending coming aboard.

"Short-handed" by Lionel Smythe, National Maritime Museum, UK

Second, beyond the limited government ideology now gaining real traction, Americans without an ideology are finding that central planning madness from Washington is making their lives worse, not better.

The tipping point provoking the libs' worst nightmare was contained in Rick Perry's speech announcing his candidacy to be the Republican nominee for president. Perry proclaimed his mission was not to make government more accountable, effective, or efficient -- that's standard issue bromide from populist reformers. No, Perry was bold enough, and as his critics will assert reckless, to suggest government should be irrelevant -- his words "as inconsequential to your lives as possible." This may be the most radical anti-government posture since Calvin Coolidge, leaning on the likes of Lord Acton:

There are many things the government can't do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people.

The liberal press are frightened out of their wits. Whether Perry is an authentic purebred limited government advocate may be debatable. No matter, he's close enough.

Perry's credibility as a governor, his disdain for Washington, his unapologetic and outspoken defense of conservative principles, his jobs and business climate record, all despite occasional lapses and rhetorical excesses -- in short his popularity and substance overcoming his defects -- make him the candidate the Dems fear most. Perry, more ruthless, pragmatic, and plain spoken than any of his rivals is the most likely to lead the coming dismantling of the federal government monstrosity.

MSM's Jeff Greenfield nearly soiled his pants describing Perry's brand of extremist limited government:

It is a formulation of a brand of current conservative thinking that breaks radically with two centuries of American history. There is no mission - other than defense against foreign foes - that is the proper task of Washington...

To argue that there is nothing of moment that Washington should be doing marks a version of that argument that is nothing short of astonishing.

Read all of it here. Greenfield seems to believe whatever the federal government does is equally momentous -- fighting wars, ending slavery, enabling westward expansion beyond the Alleghenies, and mandating rules on low flow toilets and energy saving light bulbs. Greenfield commits the increasingly commonplace liberal fallacy of conflating real with surreal. How absurd to suggest that by rejecting job killing global warming taxes and denouncing EPA regulations crippling business expansion and economic growth, Perry would also have opposed the Homestead Act and desegregation.

It doesn't require a PhD in economics or history to sort out the origins of the progressives' inevitable downfall. During the past 60 years we've rung up deficits in 51 of them. Democrats controlled both the US House and Senate in 38 of those years. The Democrats, increasingly dominated by the ideology of redistributive economics, welfare state largesse, and central planning elitism, have simply engorged themselves without restraint, spending us into oblivion.

Spend, spend , spend some more...of someone else's money. Then threaten to take more of it while libeling those who protest financing this bottomless pit.

The liberal vision of the ideal state is fat, sloppy and lazy. Why exert yourself if someone else will buy you food stamps and school lunches? Why bother learning to read, write, do simple algebra, or acquire any employable skills when you'll get free health care and subsidized housing? Why eat right and keep fit when obesity and diabetes is a protected disability?

Americans are finally fed up with the Democrats' value system: no personal accountability; moral equivalence; belief that success is derived from exploiting everybody else; everybody else is a hapless victim; we are all racists and xenophobes, consigned to endless acts of contrition where reparations and open borders would be the only relief.

Here's a story of a public school janitor describing the obscene waste in his school's cafeteria. An apt metaphor for the trillions of social program spending since LBJ's Great Society: taxpayer dollars shoveled onto a compost pile with nothing to show for it. Far from a bed of roses, instead fostering a culture of depravity, dependency, and entitlement. The writer of this piece wonders out loud what many of us think in private. Is poverty real with such bounty? Certainly poverty of spirit is real. We are an impoverished nation when it comes to intellectual honesty, denying that self- reliance and sweat equity, not government handouts, enabled American exceptionalism.

The liberal legacy soon to visit America has been displayed writ large in the London rioting. The consequences of the welfare state combined with illiteracy and a moral vacuum were predicted nearly 50 years ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan's infamous "Report", The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. Moynihan focused his attention on urban black society, the fatal breakdown of the family unit, and was vilified by the left for doing so. Moynihan's insights should not confined to the black community. His observations would equally apply to Britain today and throughout much of post-modern America.

Today's black unemployment rate ranges from 20-40% depending on who's counting and where. What have the trillions devoted to our welfare state achieved for them? More illiteracy, more broken single parent families, more crime, more dependency, more rage. And now, we're bankrupt. What next?

What next is not more of the same. The welfare, entitlement and central planning state is a perpetual resource sink paying no dividends. Flush Obama and turn out the lights on the Progressive Century. The party is over.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/what_liberals_fear_more_than_obama_losing.html at August 30, 2011 - 08:27:04 AM CDT

The Recognition of Reality (Karl Denninger–market-ticker.org)

2011-08-24T08:32:00.001-04:00

The Recognition of Reality

It would be a good idea to become grounded in it folks, because it's coming, and it's not going to be fun if you're not well-grounded in the facts.

Let's take a few examples, some of them from the forum and some from my own personal experience, and flesh them out.

Take many if not most allegedly "middle-class" and "upper middle-class" business owners and managers. They live in a nice 3,500 sq/ft house in the suburbs with a manicured lawn and the service that comes once a week. Their home is immaculate and full of granite counter tops and Viking appliances. There are two $50,000 automobiles in the driveway - and perhaps another one, or some sort of recreational vehicle (a boat or RV) in the garage or a nearby storage area.

Now look at how much actual wealth they have, on a balance-sheet basis. Their home is likely underwater or has limited equity - 10 or 20% of the current market value at most. Their vehicles are not owned outright, they all have notes on them. There's $100,000 or less in their retirement accounts, but they're middle-aged - in their 40s.

On the spending side they have a $200/month cellphone bill for themselves and their kids ($2,400 a year), spend $300/month on utilities ($3,600 a year) and pay $5,000 or more in property taxes and hazard insurance. Between these there's more than $10,000 that goes out the front door, plus their income tax burden. This family also eats out a couple of times a week ($200/month or $2,400 a year) and in general treats money and credit as though it's something they have access to and thus will use.

This prototypical family manages to make it work predicated on being paid by the government for the use of leverage through the mortgage tax deduction. This has induced them to (among other things) refinance serially, since as a loan amortizes the interest percentage drops and so does the tax write-off. To keep that "extra" $3,000 a year in deduction the family has buried itself in debt - intentionally - through serial refinances, while stripping every dime of equity they could get their hands on to spend on their lifestyle. What they don't admit to is that they're simply pyramiding debt upon debt, goaded on by a tax system that has encouraged profligacy, immaturity and a mathematically-inevitable economic collapse.

As they head toward "retirement age" their children have gone off on their own. They treated their kids as chattel during the time they were kids, smothering them and yet at the same time showering them with "things." A car at 16. An extravagant prom experience. Travel-team soccer at hundreds of dollars a month. New clothes from the latest trendy place - several times a year. A college that costs $20,000/year. None of this was earned by Junior, it was "deserved" because the little darlings "should have the best."

These people will argue, to the last man and woman, that they've done "everything right all their lives."

They're deluded, and if you're reading this you're probably one of them.

The fact is that the bubble that made possible the appearance of rapid accumulation of wealth was just that - a bubble. It was a fraud. This prototypical family, and the majority of Americans live like this even today, having learned nothing from the last few years, is literally one disruption in the ability to put leverage upon leverage from a full-blown economic disaster.

But bubbles always pop.

Always.

It's not a bubble eh? Care to rethink that in light of this chart?

If you want to know where that came from, look right here:

When did the market start to take off? Right after 1980, right when the government, industry and you set forth upon the path of borrowing more and more money to spend beyond your means, saving nothing, investing nothing.

This drove asset prices higher. But this game must eventually end, because every dollar you borrow comes with interest, and eventually you are unable to borrow any more, since your borrowing has outrun your earnings capacity.

That's what happened in 2007. It is why all the games with QEx have failed - all they did was create more "excess reserves" that could be loaned out, but the economy's ability to absorb more loans and pay more interest has been exceeded.

Pressing that bet further and further will not work. It cannot work.

Now we're in trouble, and lots of it. We're faced with the reality of what we've done because when that leverage comes out of the system and it will the market is likely to go right back where it started - or fairly close to it. Contemplate that, and read the Ticker I posted yesterday, because that's the macro economic impact of that leverage being removed.

But on a personal note the impact is going to suck too. In no particular order you might want to consider all of the following:

Americans have levered themselves up to the gills. Despite claims in the media, that leverage has not been taken down. Think about yourself, your family, neighbors and friends. Would you be ok if you had no credit cards, in fact no credit of any sort, no government handouts and no job - for six months. Very few families would be able to survive such a thing without ending up in the street, yet without that ability you have excessive financial leverage in your life. You have not removed that leverage. You had better start - now. If you didn't believe in the risk in 2007 when I started writing about this, the 2008/09 market collapse should have convinced you. If that wasn't enough this latest swoon should have underlined the point. If neither of those two events has made clear what you must do - right now - then like it or not you deserve what's going to happen to you, despite the fact that I'm sure I'll get hate mail for saying it.
Can you make it in "retirement" - by whatever means, including continuing to work, without government support? If not, you're not unlevered. You've simply believed the lies told to you by the political establishment that it could lever itself up on an indefinite forward basis and give the benefits to you despite the fact that the demographics - that the Baby Boomers were going to retire en-masse and overload the Medicare and Social Security systems - has been known for more than 30 years. The government did nothing about it because fixing this would have meant curtailing forward promises of benefits or massive tax increases thirty years ago. Today, that problem cannot be solved with tax increases as the money is not there and cannot be extracted from the economy. As a consequence major benefit cuts are going to happen, irrespective of the political demands placed on the government. You must be prepared to survive and continue onward without any government support. Figure it out, right now and alter your lifestyle today, or suffer the consequences.
Did you successfully transition your relationship with your children (if any) from one of dependence to one of mutual respect? This doesn't always work, by the way. Kids are independent human beings, and no matter how you parent them some percentage will be anti-social jackasses as will some parents. This is reality. However, it doesn't help if you treated your kids as chattel or worse, abused them or worse, or showered them with all sorts of "entitlements" as kids, because now they'll expect the same as adults! Historically the solution to getting older meant living in extended family units. It will again - if you didn't ruin those connections with your children. If you did, I hope you're wealthy - truly wealthy - or you're in lots of trouble. Begging sucks as does apologizing for your previous acts along with repairing broken family relationships but it beats the hell out of starving and/or freezing to death. Choose wisely and choose today.
Got faith? There may or may not be a God, but it's a fact that there's a congregation in the corner Church on Sunday. Consider that if the Zombie Apocalypse comes knocking your local faith community may be the best option for mutually-arranged self-defense, the patching of any holes that might get made in places you'd rather not have them, and the provision of basic human needs, including most-particularly something hot to put down the pie hole. Is faith practical? You decide, and consider this along with the following indisputable fact: Once you know for sure if there's a God it's too late to change your mind.
Resolve self-regulation issues - now. The majority of Americans are overweight or obese. A minority exercise three times a week for 20 minutes at a moderate to intense level of activity. One of the Christian "seven deadly sins" is gluttony, and it's not just found in the bottle or the dope bag - it's also found in the grocery store, at the fast-food joint and on the couch. America has enjoyed the ability to call "911" any time and have an ambulance magically appear to whisk you to the hospital when you feel that nasty tightness in your chest. In fact, an amazing number of municipalities have managed to vote into place ridiculous tax increases (including my local area) to pay for exactly that. Instead, a volunteer fire department would be sufficient without the "ALS" ambulance service at a quarter of the cost - and the average homeowner, who pays $250 a year or more for that "enhanaced" level of service, could buy more than enough running shoes and save five times that much or more on food not consumed - and not need the EMS! The same thing happens in the doctor's office every day: "Doc, do you have a pill for that?" Guess what - we can't afford to pay for your pills, the EMS, or the hospital - you can't cover it individually and we can't cover it as a society. Therefore, either solve your self-regulation issues or suffer the inevitable consequences. It's time to grow up America.
Come to grips with your mortality. If you prefer to use faith, that's fine. If you don't believe in God, that's fine too - Darwin will do as well. Nonetheless we are all mortal and we are going to have to deal with the fact that we cannot have medical services we are unable to personally pay for. This is a major shift after the idiotic moves of the last 30 years, but it is nonetheless a fact. Leverage enabled the pulling forward of demand for medical services into today that were promised to be paid for tomorrow, but now tomorrow has come and there's no more ability to pull that demand forward. See the "Self-Regulation" bullet point above and consider that your success or failure in dealing with that will materially change your interaction with this point, then choose. If you believe that with the global finance ponzi collapsing you'll be able to demand a pair of $100,000 hips, a $90,000 prostate cancer treatment or $250,000 for bypass surgery from "society", you're wrong. The money doesn't exist any more, which means you either earn and stash it yourself during your productive years, do what you need to so those things are unnecessary (to the extent you can), or face the fact that we all die and your time might be now.

If you'd like the above in a "religious" format someone on the forum posted a link to the a sermon tracking much of the above. Yeah, it's 45 minutes. But it's pretty much spot-on in Christian terms.

Time is short; choose wisely.

To Understand The US Current Mess (From Investopedia.com)

2011-08-22T08:42:00.001-04:00

What Was The Glass-Steagall Act?

Reem Heakal

Contact | Author Bio

In 1933, in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and during a nationwide commercial bank failure and the Great Depression, two members of Congress put their names on what is known today as the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA). This act separated investment and commercial banking activities. At the time, "improper banking activity", or what was considered overzealous commercial bank involvement in stock market investment, was deemed the main culprit of the financial crash. According to that reasoning, commercial banks took on too much risk with depositors' money. Additional and sometimes non-related explanations for the Great Depression evolved over the years, and many questioned whether the GSA hindered the establishment of financial services firms that can equally compete against each other. We will take a look at why the GSA was established and what led to its final repeal in 1999.
Reasons for the Act - Commercial Speculation
Commercial banks were accused of being too speculative in the pre-Depression era, not only because they were investing their assets but also because they were buying new issues for resale to the public. Thus, banks became greedy, taking on huge risks in the hope of even bigger rewards. Banking itself became sloppy and objectives became blurred. Unsound loans were issued to companies in which the bank had invested, and clients would be encouraged to invest in those same stocks.
Effects of the Act - Creating Barriers
Senator Carter Glass, a former Treasury secretary and the founder of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, was the primary force behind the GSA. Henry Bascom Steagall was a House of Representatives member and chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee. Steagall agreed to support the act with Glass after an amendment was added permitting bank deposit insurance (this was the first time it was allowed).
As a collective reaction to one of the worst financial crises at the time, the GSA set up a regulatory firewall between commercial and investment bank activities, both of which were curbed and controlled. Banks were given a year to decide on whether they would specialize in commercial or in investment banking. Only 10% of commercial banks' total income could stem from securities; however, an exception allowed commercial banks to underwrite government-issued bonds. Financial giants at the time such as JP Morgan and Company, which were seen as part of the problem, were directly targeted and forced to cut their services and, hence, a main source of their income. By creating this barrier, the GSA was aiming to prevent the banks' use of deposits in the case of a failed underwriting job.
The GSA, however, was considered harsh by most in the financial community, and it was reported that even Glass himself moved to repeal the GSA shortly after it was passed, claiming it was an overreaction to the crisis.
Building More Walls
Despite the lax implementation of the GSA by the Federal Reserve Board, which is the regulator of U.S. banks, in 1956, Congress made another decision to regulate the banking sector. In an effort to prevent financial conglomerates from amassing too much power, the new act focused on banks involved in the insurance sector. Congress agreed that bearing the high risks undertaken in underwriting insurance is not good banking practice. Thus, as an extension of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Bank Holding Company Act further separated financial activities by creating a wall between insurance and banking. Even though banks could, and can still can, sell insurance and insurance products, underwriting insurance was forbidden.
Were the Walls Necessary? - The New Rules of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
The limitations of the GSA on the banking sector sparked a debate over how much restriction is healthy for the industry. Many argued that allowing banks to diversify in moderation offers the banking industry the potential to reduce risk, so the restrictions of the GSA could have actually had an adverse effect, making the banking industry riskier rather than safer. Furthermore, big banks of the post-Enron market are likely to be more transparent, lessening the possibility of assuming too much risk or masking unsound investment decisions. As such, reputation has come to mean everything in today's market, and that could be enough to motivate banks to regulate themselves.
Consequently, to the delight of many in the banking industry (not everyone, however, was happy), in November of 1999 Congress repealed the GSA with the establishment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated the GSA restrictions against affiliations between commercial and investment banks. Furthermore, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allows banking institutions to provide a broader range of services, including underwriting and other dealing activities.
Conclusion
Although the barrier between commercial and investment banking aimed to prevent a loss of deposits in the event of investment failures, the reasons for the repeal of the GSA and the establishment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act show that even regulatory attempts for safety can have adverse effects.

by Reem Heakal

When They Come for your Guns!

2011-08-18T12:34:00.001-04:00

Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value (DailyMail)

2011-08-11T12:06:00.001-04:00

By Melanie Phillips

Last updated at 8:33 AM on 11th August 2011

So now the chickens have well and truly come home terrifyingly to roost. The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.

The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

Looters in Peckham. The riots have been fuelled by moral collapse says Melanie Phillips

Now we can see what they have brought about in the unprecedented and horrific scenes of mob violence, with homes and businesses going up in flames, and epidemic looting.

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Clearly, there is some as yet unidentified direction and co-ordination behind the anarchy. But what is so notable and distressing is that, after the first day when adults were clearly involved, this mayhem has been carried out in the main by teenagers and children, some as young as eight.

The idea that they should not steal other people’s property, or beat up and rob passers-by, appears to be as weird and outlandish to them as the suggestion that they should fly to the moon.

These youths feel absolutely entitled to go ‘on the rob’ and steal whatever they want. Indeed, they are incredulous that anyone should suggest they might pass up such an opportunity.

What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse. What we have been experiencing is a complete breakdown of civilised behaviour among children and young people straight out of William Golding’s seminal novel about childhood savagery, Lord Of The Flies.

Trouble in Manchester last night. Melanie Phillips says youths feel absolutely entitled to go ‘on the rob’ and steal whatever they want

There has been much bewildered talk about ‘feral’ children, and desperate calls upon their parents to keep them in at night and to ask them about any stolen goods they are bringing home.

As if there were responsible parents in such homes! We are not merely up against feral children, but feral parents.

Of course these parents know their children are out on the streets. Of course they see them staggering back with what they have looted. But either they are too drunk or drugged or otherwise out of it to care, or else they are helping themselves to the proceeds, too.

As David Cameron observed yesterday, there are clearly pockets of society that are not just broken, but sick.

Melanie Phillips said every problem was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government under Tony Blair

The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family.

For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.

Of course there are many lone parents who do a tremendous job. But we’re talking here about widespread social collapse. And there are whole areas of Britain, white as well as black, where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon.

In such areas, successive generations are being brought up only by mothers, through whose houses pass transitory males by whom these women have yet more children — and who inevitably repeat the pattern of lone and dysfunctional parenting.

The result is fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them. Such children inhabit what is effectively a different world from the rest of society. It’s a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos.

A world where a child responds to the slightest setback or disagreement by resorting to violence. A world where the parent is unwilling or incapable of providing the loving and disciplined framework that a child needs in order to thrive.

Yet instead of lone parenthood being regarded as a tragedy for individuals, and a catastrophe for society, it has been redefined as a ‘right’.

'The riots have been fuelled by moral collapse'

When Labour came to power in 1997, it set about systematically destroying not just the traditional family but the very idea that married parents were better for children than any other arrangement.

Instead, it introduced the sexual free-for-all of ‘lifestyle choice’; claimed that the idea of the male breadwinner was a sexist anachronism; and told girls that they could, and should, go it alone as mothers.

This was the outcome of the shattering defeat of Tony Blair, in the two years or so after he came to power, at the hands of the ultra-feminists and apostles of non-judgmentalism in his Cabinet and party who were determined, above all, to destroy the traditional nuclear family.

Blair stood virtually alone against them, and lost.

One of these ultra-feminist wreckers was Harriet Harman. The other night, she was on TV preposterously suggesting that cuts in educational allowances or youth workers had something to do with young people torching and looting shops, robbing and leaving people for dead in the streets.

But Harman was one of the principal forces in the Labour government behind the promotion of lone parenthood and the marginalisation of fathers. If anyone should be blamed for bringing about the conditions which have led to these appalling scenes in our cities, it is surely Ms Harman.

And this breaking of the family was further condoned, rewarded and encouraged by the Welfare State, which conceives of need solely in terms of absence of money, and which accordingly subsidises lone parenthood and the destructive behaviour that fatherlessness brings in its train.

Under Labour criminal wrongdoing was excused on the basis that the criminal couldn't help himself says Melanie Phillips

Welfare dependency further created the entitlement culture that the looters so egregiously display. It taught them that the world owed them a living. It taught them that their actions had no consequences. And it taught them that the world revolved around themselves.

'Punishment became a dirty word'

The result of this toxic combination of welfare and non-judgmentalism was an explosion of elective lone parenthood and dysfunctional behaviour transmitted down through the generations at the very bottom of the social heap — creating, in effect, a class apart.

Phillips: If anyone should be blamed for bringing about the conditions which have led to these appalling scenes in our cities, it is surely Harriet Harman, pictured

Once, children would have been rescued from their disadvantaged backgrounds by schools which gave them not just an education but structure and purpose to their lives.

But the liberal intelligentsia destroyed that escape route, too. For its onslaught upon marriage — the bedrock institution of society — with a tax system that penalises married couples with a wife who doesn’t work, was replicated by an onslaught upon the understanding and very identity of that society. Instead of transmitting knowledge to children, teaching was deemed to be an attack upon a child’s autonomy and self-esteem.

Thus it was that teachers adopted the ‘child-centred’ approach, which expected children not only to learn for themselves but also to decide for themselves about behaviour such as sexual morality or drug-taking.

The outcome was that children were left illiterate and innumerate and unable to think. Abandoned to wander through the world without any guidance, they predictably ended up without any moral compass.

All of this was compounded still further by the disaster of multiculturalism — the doctrine which held that no culture could be considered superior to any other because that was ‘racist’.

That meant children were no longer taught about the nation in which they lived, and about its culture. So not only were they left in ignorance of their own society, but any attachment to a shared and over-arching culture was deliberately shattered.

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Instead of forging social bonds, multiculturalism dissolved them — and introduced instead a primitive war of all against all, in which the strongest groups would destroy the weak.

Closely related to this was ‘victim culture’, in which all minority groups were regarded as victims of the majority. So any bad behaviour by them was excused and blamed on the majority.

In similar vein, all criminal wrongdoing was excused on the basis that the criminal couldn’t help himself, as he was the victim of circumstances such as poverty, unemployment, or as yet illusory cuts in public spending. The human rights of the criminal became seen as more important than the safety and security of his victims. Punishment became a dirty word. So the entire criminal justice system turned into a sick joke, with young hoodlums walking off with community sentences or Asbos which they held in total contempt.

Mr Cameron has declared that all those convicted of violent disorder in these riots will go to prison.

Really? Isn’t it more likely that they will end up on some community penalty which will see them taken on trips to Alton Towers to make up for their disadvantaged upbringing? This is the normal response of our sentimentalised and addle-brained criminal justice officials.

In short, what we have seen unfolding before our horrified gaze over the past four days in Britain is the true legacy of the Labour years.

The social and moral breakdown behind the riots was deliberately willed upon Britain by Left-wing politicians and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism.

These are the people who — against the evidence of a mountain of empirical research — hurl execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is, in general, a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women); who promote drug liberalisation, oppose selective education (while paying for private tutors for their own children) and call those who oppose unlimited immigration and multiculturalism ‘racists’.

And the real victims of these people ‘who know best’ are always those at the bottom of the social heap, who possess neither the money nor the social or intellectual resources to cushion them against the most catastrophic effects of such nonsense.

Britain was once an ordered society that was the envy of the world — the most civilised, the most gentle and law-abiding.

Can Broken Britain be put together again? David Cameron is commendably talking tough: but will he have the stomach for tough action?

Will he, for example, remove the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage? Will he dismantle the concept of entitlement from the Welfare State? Will he vigorously enforce the drug laws? Will he end the kid-glove treatment of ‘victim groups’, and hold them to account for their behaviour in exactly the same way as everyone else?

Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality.

Anyone heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury about the riots? Anyone care to guess what he will eventually say about them? Quite.

When church leaders stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilisation, and when our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilisation rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then — and only then — will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem.

Until then, within the smouldering embers of our smashed and burned-out cities, we can only look upon the ruins of the Britain we have so dearly loved; the Britain that once led the world towards civilisation, but is now so tragically leading the way out.