MYFOXNY.COM - If you think you've been seeing more people sleep on city streets, statistics back up the perception. The homeless population living on New York City streets has gone up 50 percent in the past year, according to city statistics reported by the HellsKitchenLife.com blog.
The New York City Department of Homeless Services conducts a yearly survey of the streets of the city to count the number of homeless who are not in shelters. The HOPE survey was conducted in January 2010.
The number of homeless in the borough of Manhattan was up 47 percent in the past year, according to the count. The 2010 count had 1,145 people living in the streets. That is up 368 from 2009.
Brooklyn had the biggest increase of any borough. It saw a homeless increase of more than 100 percent in 2010.
More than 1,000 people now live in New York City's subway system -- up 11 percent in the past year.
While the numbers are alarming, they are still at historically low levels and the ratio of homeless to the general population remains low compared to other major cities, according to the city. The HOPE survey showed a 29 percent drop in homelessness from 2005.
DHS works to prevent homelessness and also provides short-term emergency shelter. The agency seeks to help homeless individuals move from shelters back to permanent housing.
For example, the DHS says it provided temporary, emergency shelter to 8,230 families with children -- equating to 25,204 adults and children in July. But the agency says shelters have seen fewer families. From October 2009 through June 2010, shelters had 11 percent fewer children, who are now back in homes of their own
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule In America.
How Wall Street Died
Let me take you back to the fall of 1999. I was a senior in college without a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Wall Street was in a boom and seemed exciting. I had always loved the financial markets since I had first discovered them years earlier; however, I wasn’t convinced this was the profession I wanted. I had majored in Economics at school for practical purposes but I found almost all of the courses to be extraordinarily uninspiring with the exception of a few like Corporate Finance and the Economic History of China. It was the general micro and macro economics courses that I found the most painful to sit through. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Many of my close friends were Economics majors as well and we all felt the same way (I later found out this was because we were being indoctrinated in voodoo Keynesian economics) . So even with the Economics degree I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pursue a career in finance given the fact that I found myself more interested in subjects such as English , History and Philosophy. Nevertheless, the firms were hiring, I had the degree and it would allow me to move back to New York City without living at home.
What I discovered as I interviewed for jobs disturbed me right away. Every single firm with the exception of one was completely obsessed with math. Entire interviews revolved around “how quantitative are you” and the like. Although I hadn’t had much experience with investing I had enough to know this line of thinking seemed preposterous. It seemed to me only basic math skills are necessary to be a successful equity investor. Besides that, it seemed that the key is understanding that the world is always changing rapidly under the surface and therefore what is a good business today might be bankrupt tomorrow and what is a start up today could be the next Microsoft. This seems obvious but the skill set to figuring all this out is more geared to an appreciation of human psychology, historical cycles and cultural shifts (both fads and structural changes) than math. What I realized later is the reason they were so focused on mathematicians and Phd’s is that Wall Street was moving away from what it was always meant to be - a conduit between the holders of capital and those that wish to deploy that capital in productive economic activity. Rather than trying to hire a well rounded workforce of intelligent college graduates the firms were hiring a cadre of quantitative robots that would play an instrumental roll in blowing up the world’s financial system.
When you get too many people of a particular mindset (in this case highly quantitative and academic) to aggregate in a field that is very much a people business and one where “street smart” common sense is of extreme importance you are asking for serious trouble. When you couple that with a Federal Reserve that keeps interest rates too low what you get is a bunch of quants inventing products that provide a yield sufficient for pensions and others struggling to earn a return. Products that are completely mispriced for the risk inherent in them. I am not placing all of the blame on the Wall Street firms (although they deserve a lot and the fact people haven’t been punished severely is a huge reason why there is no confidence on main street), rather I believe the Federal Reserve deserves 95% of it. If it wasn’t for them manipulating the price of money to absurdly low levels you wouldn’t have had the rush into toxic products in a search for yield. While the newly enthroned Wall Street quant army would surely have done their damage nonetheless it wouldn’t have resulted in the complete destruction of the financial and monetary system that we face today. In a nutshell, this is how I think Wall Street died and until it gets its act together will remain a corpse.
The Elites Have Lost Their Right to Rule
One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Schumpeter who said “everyone has elites the important thing is to change them from time to time.” Of course, this is what happens in a well functioning democracy. The problem today and the reason why the United States is on the verge of some sort of revolution (I believe it will manifest as a revolution of ideas and not an armed one) is that the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.
Of course it is not just Obama. He is at the end of a long line of Presidents that think they have some sort of divine right of kings to rule. Think about the Presidency of the United States since 1988. Bush, Clinton, Bush…If Obama had not won the Democratic primary we would have ended up with President Hilary Clinton. Catch my drift? Something is not right here. This is the United States not some sort of petty monarchy. There is no divine right of any family or group of families to rule. When this starts to happen you get the disaster we are now faced with. That said, the bigger point is this. What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttresses this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.
Let me take you back to the fall of 1999. I was a senior in college without a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Wall Street was in a boom and seemed exciting. I had always loved the financial markets since I had first discovered them years earlier; however, I wasn’t convinced this was the profession I wanted. I had majored in Economics at school for practical purposes but I found almost all of the courses to be extraordinarily uninspiring with the exception of a few like Corporate Finance and the Economic History of China. It was the general micro and macro economics courses that I found the most painful to sit through. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Many of my close friends were Economics majors as well and we all felt the same way (I later found out this was because we were being indoctrinated in voodoo Keynesian economics) . So even with the Economics degree I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pursue a career in finance given the fact that I found myself more interested in subjects such as English , History and Philosophy. Nevertheless, the firms were hiring, I had the degree and it would allow me to move back to New York City without living at home.
What I discovered as I interviewed for jobs disturbed me right away. Every single firm with the exception of one was completely obsessed with math. Entire interviews revolved around “how quantitative are you” and the like. Although I hadn’t had much experience with investing I had enough to know this line of thinking seemed preposterous. It seemed to me only basic math skills are necessary to be a successful equity investor. Besides that, it seemed that the key is understanding that the world is always changing rapidly under the surface and therefore what is a good business today might be bankrupt tomorrow and what is a start up today could be the next Microsoft. This seems obvious but the skill set to figuring all this out is more geared to an appreciation of human psychology, historical cycles and cultural shifts (both fads and structural changes) than math. What I realized later is the reason they were so focused on mathematicians and Phd’s is that Wall Street was moving away from what it was always meant to be - a conduit between the holders of capital and those that wish to deploy that capital in productive economic activity. Rather than trying to hire a well rounded workforce of intelligent college graduates the firms were hiring a cadre of quantitative robots that would play an instrumental roll in blowing up the world’s financial system.
When you get too many people of a particular mindset (in this case highly quantitative and academic) to aggregate in a field that is very much a people business and one where “street smart” common sense is of extreme importance you are asking for serious trouble. When you couple that with a Federal Reserve that keeps interest rates too low what you get is a bunch of quants inventing products that provide a yield sufficient for pensions and others struggling to earn a return. Products that are completely mispriced for the risk inherent in them. I am not placing all of the blame on the Wall Street firms (although they deserve a lot and the fact people haven’t been punished severely is a huge reason why there is no confidence on main street), rather I believe the Federal Reserve deserves 95% of it. If it wasn’t for them manipulating the price of money to absurdly low levels you wouldn’t have had the rush into toxic products in a search for yield. While the newly enthroned Wall Street quant army would surely have done their damage nonetheless it wouldn’t have resulted in the complete destruction of the financial and monetary system that we face today. In a nutshell, this is how I think Wall Street died and until it gets its act together will remain a corpse.
The Elites Have Lost Their Right to Rule
One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Schumpeter who said “everyone has elites the important thing is to change them from time to time.” Of course, this is what happens in a well functioning democracy. The problem today and the reason why the United States is on the verge of some sort of revolution (I believe it will manifest as a revolution of ideas and not an armed one) is that the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.
Of course it is not just Obama. He is at the end of a long line of Presidents that think they have some sort of divine right of kings to rule. Think about the Presidency of the United States since 1988. Bush, Clinton, Bush…If Obama had not won the Democratic primary we would have ended up with President Hilary Clinton. Catch my drift? Something is not right here. This is the United States not some sort of petty monarchy. There is no divine right of any family or group of families to rule. When this starts to happen you get the disaster we are now faced with. That said, the bigger point is this. What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttresses this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Man Arrested at Alaska State Fair For Impeach Obama Sign
This first day of the 2010 Alaska State Fair starts with sunny skies and a brutal assault by security personnel on a LaRouche supporter.
At about 5pm Alaska Time, Thursday, August 26, 2010, security personnel approach a lone man peacefully displaying an impeach Obama sign near Pioneer Plaza on the Alaska State Fairgrounds in Palmer. Minutes later, a crowd assembles, additional security forces arrive, and they physically assault the man holding the sign. He’s taken to the ground with force and detained.
An unidentified Alaska State Trooper arrives to physically disperse the crowd, and at several points during the conflict, crowd members yell in support of the demonstrator’s right to speak his message. The demonstrator is held captive until Palmer police arrive to escort the man away in cuffs.
Assault at 3:30
Gun in security guard’s left hand at 4:41
At about 5pm Alaska Time, Thursday, August 26, 2010, security personnel approach a lone man peacefully displaying an impeach Obama sign near Pioneer Plaza on the Alaska State Fairgrounds in Palmer. Minutes later, a crowd assembles, additional security forces arrive, and they physically assault the man holding the sign. He’s taken to the ground with force and detained.
An unidentified Alaska State Trooper arrives to physically disperse the crowd, and at several points during the conflict, crowd members yell in support of the demonstrator’s right to speak his message. The demonstrator is held captive until Palmer police arrive to escort the man away in cuffs.
Assault at 3:30
Gun in security guard’s left hand at 4:41
Thursday, August 26, 2010
America's Debt:: The Big Wave Is Coming Soon
Damien Hoffman - This morning credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (MHP) said in order for the US to keep its AAA-rating, it is “very important” for Congress to deal with the cascading US Debt. China’s largest credit rating agency Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. was less diplomatic: they simply downgraded the US credit rating to AA.
This, my friends, is only the tip of the iceberg of what will unfold should we choose to kick the proverbial can farther down the road. As you can see in the infographic below, according to the US Treasury we are watching a debt Tsunami come ashore. If we have any pride or patriotism, we’ve got to start dealing with the crisis now before it wipes out generations of wealth.
This, my friends, is only the tip of the iceberg of what will unfold should we choose to kick the proverbial can farther down the road. As you can see in the infographic below, according to the US Treasury we are watching a debt Tsunami come ashore. If we have any pride or patriotism, we’ve got to start dealing with the crisis now before it wipes out generations of wealth.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
America "May Have Won 3.3 Million Jobs!
Le-gal In-sur-rection: - The credibility of the Congressional Budget Office suffered a grievous blow during the health care debate when the CBO was forced by Harry Reid to "score" Obamacare using preposterous and plainly contrived assumptions in order to keep the cost estimates below a trillion dollars.
Now, the CBO is damaging itself some more with wildly speculative estimates as to how many jobs, and how much economic growth, have been created by the Stimulus Plan. This headline at The Washington Post about the latest CBO report say it all: CBO says stimulus may have added 3.3 million jobs.
Notice the "may have" language. That is because the CBO is not calculating actual jobs created. Rather, it simply uses economic models which purport to predict how many jobs are created, and how much economic growth is generated, for each dollar of government spending.
Hence, the CBO gives extremely wide ranges to its estimates of how the economy was affected by the Stimulus Plan:
* "Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent"
* "Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points"
* "Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million,"
* "Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)"
These are not real numbers, but you would not know it from the headlines.
The CBO does not even attempt, in its full report, to compare how the economy would have performed in the absence of the Stimulus Plan:
Although CBO has examined data on output and employment during the period since ARRA’s enactment, those data are not as helpful in determining ARRA’s economic effects as might be supposed because isolating the effects would require knowing what path the economy would have taken in the absence of the law.
The Heritage Foundation, in connection with an earlier CBO Stimulus report, noted the flawed methodology of the CBO:
The CBO's conclusion that the stimulus created jobs is based on an economic model that began with the premise that all stimulus bills create jobs. In other words, the conclusion is already assumed as a premise. Logicians call this the fallacy of begging the question. Mathematicians call it assuming what you are trying to prove....
The problem here is obvious. Once the CBO decided to assume that every dollar of government spending increased GDP by the multipliers above, its conclusion that the stimulus saved jobs was pre-ordained. The economy could have lost 30 million jobs, and the model would have said that the economy would otherwise have lost 31.5 million jobs without the stimulus. An asteroid could have hit the United States, wiping out everyone outside of Washington, D.C., and (as long as Washington still spent the stimulus money) the CBO's economic model would have produced the same stimulus jobs data. There is no adjustment made to reflect what actually happened in the economy after the stimulus was enacted.
The American people "may have" won 3.3 million jobs. This is what it has come to:
Now, the CBO is damaging itself some more with wildly speculative estimates as to how many jobs, and how much economic growth, have been created by the Stimulus Plan. This headline at The Washington Post about the latest CBO report say it all: CBO says stimulus may have added 3.3 million jobs.
Notice the "may have" language. That is because the CBO is not calculating actual jobs created. Rather, it simply uses economic models which purport to predict how many jobs are created, and how much economic growth is generated, for each dollar of government spending.
Hence, the CBO gives extremely wide ranges to its estimates of how the economy was affected by the Stimulus Plan:
* "Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent"
* "Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points"
* "Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million,"
* "Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)"
These are not real numbers, but you would not know it from the headlines.
The CBO does not even attempt, in its full report, to compare how the economy would have performed in the absence of the Stimulus Plan:
Although CBO has examined data on output and employment during the period since ARRA’s enactment, those data are not as helpful in determining ARRA’s economic effects as might be supposed because isolating the effects would require knowing what path the economy would have taken in the absence of the law.
The Heritage Foundation, in connection with an earlier CBO Stimulus report, noted the flawed methodology of the CBO:
The CBO's conclusion that the stimulus created jobs is based on an economic model that began with the premise that all stimulus bills create jobs. In other words, the conclusion is already assumed as a premise. Logicians call this the fallacy of begging the question. Mathematicians call it assuming what you are trying to prove....
The problem here is obvious. Once the CBO decided to assume that every dollar of government spending increased GDP by the multipliers above, its conclusion that the stimulus saved jobs was pre-ordained. The economy could have lost 30 million jobs, and the model would have said that the economy would otherwise have lost 31.5 million jobs without the stimulus. An asteroid could have hit the United States, wiping out everyone outside of Washington, D.C., and (as long as Washington still spent the stimulus money) the CBO's economic model would have produced the same stimulus jobs data. There is no adjustment made to reflect what actually happened in the economy after the stimulus was enacted.
The American people "may have" won 3.3 million jobs. This is what it has come to:
Mexican Marines Find 72 Bodies in Northern Mexico
MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.
The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.
"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," The Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."
Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried.
The discovery of bodies came about when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in northern Tamaulipas state were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by cartel gunmen at a nearby ranch. The man was placed under the protection of federal authorities.
Navy aircraft were dispatched to the scene, and when the gunmen saw them, they opened fire on the marines and tried to flee in a convoy of vehicles.
In the ensuing shootout, one marine and three suspected gunmen were killed. Navy personnel seized 21 assault rifles, shotguns and rifles, and detained a minor.
The youth, who was apparently part of the gang, was handed over to civilian prosecutors.
When marines searched the area, near the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, they found the bodies. It was unclear whether the victims had been killed at the same time or separately, and the Navy did not say when they were found.
The area has been wracked by bloody turf battles between the Gulf drug cartel and their one-time allies, the Zetas drug gang.
In May, authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco, a colonial-era city south of Mexico City that is popular with international tourists.
In July, investigators found 51 corpses in two days of digging in a field near a trash dump outside the northern city of Monterrey. Many of those found were believed to have been rival traffickers. But cartels often dispose of the bodies of kidnap victims in such dumping grounds.
More than 28,000 people have been killed in violence tied to Mexico's drug war since the offensive began.
The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.
"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," The Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."
Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried.
The discovery of bodies came about when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in northern Tamaulipas state were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by cartel gunmen at a nearby ranch. The man was placed under the protection of federal authorities.
Navy aircraft were dispatched to the scene, and when the gunmen saw them, they opened fire on the marines and tried to flee in a convoy of vehicles.
In the ensuing shootout, one marine and three suspected gunmen were killed. Navy personnel seized 21 assault rifles, shotguns and rifles, and detained a minor.
The youth, who was apparently part of the gang, was handed over to civilian prosecutors.
When marines searched the area, near the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, they found the bodies. It was unclear whether the victims had been killed at the same time or separately, and the Navy did not say when they were found.
The area has been wracked by bloody turf battles between the Gulf drug cartel and their one-time allies, the Zetas drug gang.
In May, authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco, a colonial-era city south of Mexico City that is popular with international tourists.
In July, investigators found 51 corpses in two days of digging in a field near a trash dump outside the northern city of Monterrey. Many of those found were believed to have been rival traffickers. But cartels often dispose of the bodies of kidnap victims in such dumping grounds.
More than 28,000 people have been killed in violence tied to Mexico's drug war since the offensive began.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
GZM IMAN: USA Has More Muslim Blood On It's Hands Than Al-Qaeda
Sister Toldjah - Is there really anything else we need to know about this man after this?
Waiting for the apologists on the left to feign ‘concern’ about the comments before asserting that he has the ‘right’ to say whatever he wants to, when none of this – not what he says, not the proposed site of the mosque – is about whether he has a right to do/say what he does, but whether or not it is right to do/say.
And we’re supposed to be “tolerant” when it comes to this blame-America firster? I don’t think so.
Waiting for the apologists on the left to feign ‘concern’ about the comments before asserting that he has the ‘right’ to say whatever he wants to, when none of this – not what he says, not the proposed site of the mosque – is about whether he has a right to do/say what he does, but whether or not it is right to do/say.
And we’re supposed to be “tolerant” when it comes to this blame-America firster? I don’t think so.
Mexican Bullets Shut Down El Paso, Texas
Newsvine.com - Yes, this is another dispatch from the war zone along the Mexican border (where I live in El Paso, right across from Juarez, Mexico–a stone’s throw, or bullet path, away).
This story–from events over the weekend, but still making news today in El Paso–is beyond belief. I thought things were bad when the El Paso City Hall was splattered with bullets from a firefight across the river. But this weekend El Paso police SHUT DOWN part of downtown El Paso because of flying bullets from a gun battle in a house on a hill in Juarez–a gun battle that evidently lasted 30 minutes and illed at least three people in Juarez. No one was–a matter of luck–killed in El Paso, although there are reports that a shattered car window may have been from a bullet. It is evidently estimated (no, they can’t know) that about 50 bullets came over the border into downtown El Paso.
And Obama has the GALL to tell me it is SAFER along the border. The man is a piece of work. I have lived in the El Paso area of the Southwest for approximately 50 years. At NO time, during that entire period, do I remember this kin of thing happening. I think the last time anything close to it happended were in the days of Pancho Villa.
This story–from events over the weekend, but still making news today in El Paso–is beyond belief. I thought things were bad when the El Paso City Hall was splattered with bullets from a firefight across the river. But this weekend El Paso police SHUT DOWN part of downtown El Paso because of flying bullets from a gun battle in a house on a hill in Juarez–a gun battle that evidently lasted 30 minutes and illed at least three people in Juarez. No one was–a matter of luck–killed in El Paso, although there are reports that a shattered car window may have been from a bullet. It is evidently estimated (no, they can’t know) that about 50 bullets came over the border into downtown El Paso.
And Obama has the GALL to tell me it is SAFER along the border. The man is a piece of work. I have lived in the El Paso area of the Southwest for approximately 50 years. At NO time, during that entire period, do I remember this kin of thing happening. I think the last time anything close to it happended were in the days of Pancho Villa.
Monday, August 23, 2010
L.A. Times Delivers A Pro -Muslim Spin On The Ground Zero Mosque
Patterico's Pontifications - The L.A. Times today publishes an article by Borzou Daragahi about how Muslims across the world disapprove of opposition to the Ground Zero mosque:
The heated debate across America over construction of the so-called ground zero mosque is reverberating across the globe, with the potential of creating a worldwide black eye for the United States.
Many Muslims abroad are miffed by the stateside debate, largely conducted by non-Muslims, that has grown so loud as to become a topic of discussion on talk shows and newspapers from Bali to Bahrain, from Baghdad to Berlin. The proposed Cordoba House has become a symbol of America’s fraught relations with the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
I don’t understand why anyone would discern hostile intentions from the builders. After all, t’s not like the project’s “moderate” imam Feisal Rauf is happy about the controversy, right?
“The fact we are getting this kind of attention is a sign of success,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf reportedly said Sunday with respect to the project, addressing a gathering at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.
“It is my hope that people will understand more,” Rauf said without elaborating, according to the AP.
Oh.
While the paper does report that quote in a separate article, portraying it as benign, the quote does not make it into this article.
That wouldn’t be good propaganda.
Amid a flurry of Arab complaints about the U.S. — we need to do something about Israel; we need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan; etc. — the article does include the perspective of some Muslims that the mosque is a bad idea. See if you can figure out what aspect of that admission they leave out.
“Building a mosque there will increase hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West,” said Gamal Awad, a professor at Cairo’s Al Azhar University. “It will further connect Islam with a horrible event.”
Al Aznar, eh? They’re the folks who declared the mosque a Zionist conspiracy — a little tidbit that the L.A. Times doesn’t tell you about.
That wouldn’t be good propaganda.
Are we seriously to believe that Borzou Daragahi, or his special correspondents — Amro Hassan in Cairo, Ranya Kadri in Amman, Jordan, Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran, or Meris Lutz in Beirut — elicited no anti-Semitic comments about the mosque being a Zionist conspiracy?
Or should we conclude, rather, that somewhere along the chain, such comments were deemed “unhelpful” to the agenda of the story?
The heated debate across America over construction of the so-called ground zero mosque is reverberating across the globe, with the potential of creating a worldwide black eye for the United States.
Many Muslims abroad are miffed by the stateside debate, largely conducted by non-Muslims, that has grown so loud as to become a topic of discussion on talk shows and newspapers from Bali to Bahrain, from Baghdad to Berlin. The proposed Cordoba House has become a symbol of America’s fraught relations with the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
I don’t understand why anyone would discern hostile intentions from the builders. After all, t’s not like the project’s “moderate” imam Feisal Rauf is happy about the controversy, right?
“The fact we are getting this kind of attention is a sign of success,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf reportedly said Sunday with respect to the project, addressing a gathering at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.
“It is my hope that people will understand more,” Rauf said without elaborating, according to the AP.
Oh.
While the paper does report that quote in a separate article, portraying it as benign, the quote does not make it into this article.
That wouldn’t be good propaganda.
Amid a flurry of Arab complaints about the U.S. — we need to do something about Israel; we need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan; etc. — the article does include the perspective of some Muslims that the mosque is a bad idea. See if you can figure out what aspect of that admission they leave out.
“Building a mosque there will increase hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West,” said Gamal Awad, a professor at Cairo’s Al Azhar University. “It will further connect Islam with a horrible event.”
Al Aznar, eh? They’re the folks who declared the mosque a Zionist conspiracy — a little tidbit that the L.A. Times doesn’t tell you about.
That wouldn’t be good propaganda.
Are we seriously to believe that Borzou Daragahi, or his special correspondents — Amro Hassan in Cairo, Ranya Kadri in Amman, Jordan, Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran, or Meris Lutz in Beirut — elicited no anti-Semitic comments about the mosque being a Zionist conspiracy?
Or should we conclude, rather, that somewhere along the chain, such comments were deemed “unhelpful” to the agenda of the story?
Mexican Police Help Kill Their Own Local Mayor
Ioan Grillo - The murder scarred a part of Mexico that was supposed to be reasonably safe from violence and crime. Santiago is a picturesque town of waterfalls, colonial churches and holiday homes for the rich. Its mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was a blue-eyed 38-year old, educated in the United States. But it seems that no corner of the country is shielded from the relentless rain of drug-related bloodshed.
The killers came for Mayor Cavazos in the early hours of Aug. 16 when seven SUV's rolled up and men in police uniforms descended on his palatial home. Servants stood back terrified, as their boss was forced away at gunpoint. On Aug. 18, his corpse was dumped on a nearby road. There was a mercy of sorts in the manner of his killing - shot dead with two bullets in the head and one in the chest, and spared the mutilation and rape inflicted on so many other victims. The following day, hundreds of residents wept over his coffin in Santiago's central plaza, lining the stairs up to the church with candles and holding signs calling for peace. (See pictures of Culiac[a {a}]n, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.)
Then on Aug. 20, more disturbing news broke. State agents arrested six of the mayor's own police officers and said they confessed to involvement in the murder. The suspects had been working for a drug cartel that is fighting a bloody turf war with its rival throughout northeast Mexico, state prosecutors said. Another four alleged gunmen were arrested with automatic rifles and grenade launchers in their possession and accused of being involved in the plot. The revelation had very concerning implications: in Mexico's drug war, officials are now killing officials.
Cavazos - a member of President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party - was the latest in a series of politicians who have been killed or kidnapped this year. In June, a commando group of gunmen assassinated the front-running gubernatorial candidate in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. In May, a former presidential candidate was kidnapped from his ranch in Central Mexico and is still missing. A mayoral candidate and state legislator have also been murdered. Following the latest slaying, President Calderon said that Mexico's very democracy is under threat. "The death of Edelmiro, makes us angry and obliges us to double our efforts in the struggle against these criminal cowards that attack citizens," he said.
But despite calls for national unity to face this challenge, Mexico's politicians keep slinging mud and trading mutual recriminations over who is to blame. Opposition deputies say that Calderon's policy of sending the entire army after cartels has been catastrophic, inflaming turf wars and shoot-outs. Since Calderon took office in December 2006, there have been an incredible 28,000 drug-related killings, it was recently revealed. Calderon has answered back, challenging the opposition to come up with a better idea. (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)
When the president called for a dialog with Congress this week to work out a national security plan, key leaders in two major parties snubbed him and said they had other engagements. An irritated Calderon then said that soldiers would stay on the streets until his last day in office in 2012. Politicians could not even manage to unify over the latest tragedy. As National Action Party militants prepared posters lamenting the death of Mayor Cavazos, the opposition accused them of political opportunism. (See pictures of Mexico City's police fighting crime.)
With Mexico's justice system failing to clear up the facts surrounding the the vast majority of killings, it is unclear exactly why politicians are being targeted. Federal agents say that gangsters are desperate after so many drug busts and arrests and are lashing back at the system in the hope the army will be sent back to the barracks. However, the government has also conceded there are cases of corruption with elected officials themselves in cahoots with drug gangs. In May, police arrested former Cancun mayor and gubernatorial candidate Greg Sanchez on racketeering and drug smuggling charges. On Aug. 19, gunmen attacked the judge in charge of Sanchez's case, killing his bodyguard. Calderon responded that Mexico should consider judges with protected identities to handle drug-related cases. Officials have also come under fire for attacking corrupt officers. Following an attack on the Public Safety Secretary of Michoacan this year, an arrested cartel member said she has been targeted for trying to shake up the state police force, threatening officers on their payroll.
There are fears that that many more officials could be in danger. Sen. Ramon Galindo, the former mayor of murder capital Ciudad Juarez, said he knew of dozens of mayors who had received threats. "It is clear that organized crime groups are not only threatening but are also doing great harm to local politicians," Galindo said. Back in Santiago, the fallen mayor's mother Rubinia Leal de Cavazos told reporters that her son had feared attacks. "I told him to watch out for traitors and to leave his job," she said, shielding her tearful eyes with sunglasses. "He never said he was scared. I hugged him and told him I loved him."
The killers came for Mayor Cavazos in the early hours of Aug. 16 when seven SUV's rolled up and men in police uniforms descended on his palatial home. Servants stood back terrified, as their boss was forced away at gunpoint. On Aug. 18, his corpse was dumped on a nearby road. There was a mercy of sorts in the manner of his killing - shot dead with two bullets in the head and one in the chest, and spared the mutilation and rape inflicted on so many other victims. The following day, hundreds of residents wept over his coffin in Santiago's central plaza, lining the stairs up to the church with candles and holding signs calling for peace. (See pictures of Culiac[a {a}]n, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.)
Then on Aug. 20, more disturbing news broke. State agents arrested six of the mayor's own police officers and said they confessed to involvement in the murder. The suspects had been working for a drug cartel that is fighting a bloody turf war with its rival throughout northeast Mexico, state prosecutors said. Another four alleged gunmen were arrested with automatic rifles and grenade launchers in their possession and accused of being involved in the plot. The revelation had very concerning implications: in Mexico's drug war, officials are now killing officials.
Cavazos - a member of President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party - was the latest in a series of politicians who have been killed or kidnapped this year. In June, a commando group of gunmen assassinated the front-running gubernatorial candidate in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. In May, a former presidential candidate was kidnapped from his ranch in Central Mexico and is still missing. A mayoral candidate and state legislator have also been murdered. Following the latest slaying, President Calderon said that Mexico's very democracy is under threat. "The death of Edelmiro, makes us angry and obliges us to double our efforts in the struggle against these criminal cowards that attack citizens," he said.
But despite calls for national unity to face this challenge, Mexico's politicians keep slinging mud and trading mutual recriminations over who is to blame. Opposition deputies say that Calderon's policy of sending the entire army after cartels has been catastrophic, inflaming turf wars and shoot-outs. Since Calderon took office in December 2006, there have been an incredible 28,000 drug-related killings, it was recently revealed. Calderon has answered back, challenging the opposition to come up with a better idea. (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)
When the president called for a dialog with Congress this week to work out a national security plan, key leaders in two major parties snubbed him and said they had other engagements. An irritated Calderon then said that soldiers would stay on the streets until his last day in office in 2012. Politicians could not even manage to unify over the latest tragedy. As National Action Party militants prepared posters lamenting the death of Mayor Cavazos, the opposition accused them of political opportunism. (See pictures of Mexico City's police fighting crime.)
With Mexico's justice system failing to clear up the facts surrounding the the vast majority of killings, it is unclear exactly why politicians are being targeted. Federal agents say that gangsters are desperate after so many drug busts and arrests and are lashing back at the system in the hope the army will be sent back to the barracks. However, the government has also conceded there are cases of corruption with elected officials themselves in cahoots with drug gangs. In May, police arrested former Cancun mayor and gubernatorial candidate Greg Sanchez on racketeering and drug smuggling charges. On Aug. 19, gunmen attacked the judge in charge of Sanchez's case, killing his bodyguard. Calderon responded that Mexico should consider judges with protected identities to handle drug-related cases. Officials have also come under fire for attacking corrupt officers. Following an attack on the Public Safety Secretary of Michoacan this year, an arrested cartel member said she has been targeted for trying to shake up the state police force, threatening officers on their payroll.
There are fears that that many more officials could be in danger. Sen. Ramon Galindo, the former mayor of murder capital Ciudad Juarez, said he knew of dozens of mayors who had received threats. "It is clear that organized crime groups are not only threatening but are also doing great harm to local politicians," Galindo said. Back in Santiago, the fallen mayor's mother Rubinia Leal de Cavazos told reporters that her son had feared attacks. "I told him to watch out for traitors and to leave his job," she said, shielding her tearful eyes with sunglasses. "He never said he was scared. I hugged him and told him I loved him."
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Google's And Government Plans To Take Over The Internet Exposed!
Google’s agreement with Verizon to speed certain Internet content to users opens the door to the complete sterilization of the world wide web as a force for political change. Under Google’s takeover plan, the Internet will closely resemble cable TV, independent voices will be silenced and the entire Internet will be bought up by transnational media giants.
Friday, August 20, 2010
5 Trillion More Dollars To Fix Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac
Economic Collapse - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become gigantic financial black holes that the U.S. government endlessly pours massive quantities of money into. Unfortunately, if the U.S. government did allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to totally implode, both the mortgage industry and the housing industry in the United States would completely collapse. So essentially the U.S. government finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Prior to the financial crisis of the last few years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were profit-seeking private corporations that also had a government-chartered mission of expanding home ownership in America. But now that they have been officially taken over by the U.S. government, they have become gigantic bottomless money pits. It is hard to even describe just how much of a mess Fannie and Freddie are in. However, the unprecedented intervention by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the mortgage market over the past couple of years has been about the only thing that has kept it from plunging into absolute chaos. So what does the future hold for Fannie Mae and for Freddie Mac? Well, according to one estimate, it could take another 5 trillion dollars to “fix” Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac.
Yes, you read the correctly. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing $5 trillion dollars in liabilities that the federal government is going to have to deal with one way or another….
An exit strategy could involve adding Fannie and Freddie’s roughly $5 trillion in obligations, in effect, to a federal balance sheet that already includes $13.3 trillion in federal government debts. The GSE obligations would be a different animal, because those liabilities would need to be covered by taxpayers only if things went bad in the housing market.
It is hard to even put into words how much money that is. If you were alive when Jesus was born, and you spent one million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not a one trillion dollar problem.
They are a five trillion dollar problem.
And if the housing market gets even worse (which it will), that figure could rise substantially.
Of course the U.S. government should have never gotten into the mortgage business in the first place, but these days the U.S. government is intervening in virtually every industry.
And don’t expect U.S. government support for the mortgage industry to stop any time soon. In fact, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the U.S. government plans to continue to play a prominent role in back-stopping mortgages in order to keep the U.S. economy stabilized.
But if the only thing keeping the U.S. housing industry from plunging into the abyss is unprecedented intervention by the U.S. government, what does that say about the overall health of the U.S. economy?
Mortgage defaults and foreclosures continue to set new all-time records even with all of this government intervention. In fact, major U.S. banks wrote off about $8 billion on mortgages during the first 3 months of 2010, and if this pace continues it will even exceed 2009′s staggering full-year total of $31 billion.
Not only that, but construction of new homes in the U.S. and applications to build new homes in the U.S. both declined to their lowest levels in more than a year during July.
And things are rapidly getting even worse for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are going delinquent at a very alarming pace as the Christian Science Monitor recently explained….
As of March 31 this year, 6.3 percent of mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are either seriously delinquent or in foreclosure. Although that’s down slightly from the figure three months earlier, it represents a big one-year rise (from 3.9 percent in early 2009).
An increase in delinquencies of over 50 percent in just one year?
That is not a promising trend.
If the U.S. housing market takes another big dive in the next few years, and things certainly look very ominous at the moment, what in the world is that going to do to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
So what is the solution?
Well, on Tuesday the Obama administration invited prominent banking executives to offer their thoughts on the mortgage market.
So what was the consensus?
It was something along the lines of this: “Please, oh please, oh please continue propping up the 11 trillion dollar mortgage market.”
So much for capitalism, eh?
When even the banksters are begging for massive ongoing government intervention you know that the game has changed.
Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave.
But this is where we are at.
We are on the verge of a horrific economic collapse, and it is only enormous intervention by the U.S. government that is holding things together.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration backed approximately 90 percent of all home loans made during the first half of 2010.
So where would we be without the government?
Of course we could let the whole thing collapse and allow housing prices to eventually settle at a level where people could actually afford them, but what fun would that be?
No, for now the U.S. government will continue to endlessly spend billions of dollars to prop up a system that is artificially inflated and that is destined to collapse one way or another.
The truth is that the American middle class is slowly being wiped out and they just can’t afford to pay $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 for their houses anymore.
Without good jobs, the American people are not going to be able to afford hefty mortgages. Unfortunately, millions upon millions of middle class jobs are being offshored and outsourced every single year and they are not coming back.
There simply will never be a recovery in the housing market without jobs. But in the new global economy, American workers have been put in direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that jobs are going to be taken away from American workers and given to people who are willing to work for less than ten percent as much.
So, no, the housing market is never going to fully recover. Things got dramatically out of balance over the past couple of decades, and the housing market is going to try to restore that balance regardless of what the U.S. government does.
The U.S. government can continue to throw billions (or even trillions) of dollars at the problem, but in the end the underlying economic fundamentals are simply not going to be denied.
Yes, you read the correctly. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing $5 trillion dollars in liabilities that the federal government is going to have to deal with one way or another….
An exit strategy could involve adding Fannie and Freddie’s roughly $5 trillion in obligations, in effect, to a federal balance sheet that already includes $13.3 trillion in federal government debts. The GSE obligations would be a different animal, because those liabilities would need to be covered by taxpayers only if things went bad in the housing market.
It is hard to even put into words how much money that is. If you were alive when Jesus was born, and you spent one million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not a one trillion dollar problem.
They are a five trillion dollar problem.
And if the housing market gets even worse (which it will), that figure could rise substantially.
Of course the U.S. government should have never gotten into the mortgage business in the first place, but these days the U.S. government is intervening in virtually every industry.
And don’t expect U.S. government support for the mortgage industry to stop any time soon. In fact, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the U.S. government plans to continue to play a prominent role in back-stopping mortgages in order to keep the U.S. economy stabilized.
But if the only thing keeping the U.S. housing industry from plunging into the abyss is unprecedented intervention by the U.S. government, what does that say about the overall health of the U.S. economy?
Mortgage defaults and foreclosures continue to set new all-time records even with all of this government intervention. In fact, major U.S. banks wrote off about $8 billion on mortgages during the first 3 months of 2010, and if this pace continues it will even exceed 2009′s staggering full-year total of $31 billion.
Not only that, but construction of new homes in the U.S. and applications to build new homes in the U.S. both declined to their lowest levels in more than a year during July.
And things are rapidly getting even worse for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are going delinquent at a very alarming pace as the Christian Science Monitor recently explained….
As of March 31 this year, 6.3 percent of mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie are either seriously delinquent or in foreclosure. Although that’s down slightly from the figure three months earlier, it represents a big one-year rise (from 3.9 percent in early 2009).
An increase in delinquencies of over 50 percent in just one year?
That is not a promising trend.
If the U.S. housing market takes another big dive in the next few years, and things certainly look very ominous at the moment, what in the world is that going to do to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
So what is the solution?
Well, on Tuesday the Obama administration invited prominent banking executives to offer their thoughts on the mortgage market.
So what was the consensus?
It was something along the lines of this: “Please, oh please, oh please continue propping up the 11 trillion dollar mortgage market.”
So much for capitalism, eh?
When even the banksters are begging for massive ongoing government intervention you know that the game has changed.
Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave.
But this is where we are at.
We are on the verge of a horrific economic collapse, and it is only enormous intervention by the U.S. government that is holding things together.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration backed approximately 90 percent of all home loans made during the first half of 2010.
So where would we be without the government?
Of course we could let the whole thing collapse and allow housing prices to eventually settle at a level where people could actually afford them, but what fun would that be?
No, for now the U.S. government will continue to endlessly spend billions of dollars to prop up a system that is artificially inflated and that is destined to collapse one way or another.
The truth is that the American middle class is slowly being wiped out and they just can’t afford to pay $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 for their houses anymore.
Without good jobs, the American people are not going to be able to afford hefty mortgages. Unfortunately, millions upon millions of middle class jobs are being offshored and outsourced every single year and they are not coming back.
There simply will never be a recovery in the housing market without jobs. But in the new global economy, American workers have been put in direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that jobs are going to be taken away from American workers and given to people who are willing to work for less than ten percent as much.
So, no, the housing market is never going to fully recover. Things got dramatically out of balance over the past couple of decades, and the housing market is going to try to restore that balance regardless of what the U.S. government does.
The U.S. government can continue to throw billions (or even trillions) of dollars at the problem, but in the end the underlying economic fundamentals are simply not going to be denied.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Obama Mosque Stance Hurting, Gallup Finds, Americans Disapprove of It And Him
L.A Times - Democrat president Barack Obama walks off Air Force One somewhere new
President Obama busily continued his five-state cross-country political money collection tour today.
But he took time out to declare that he has "no regrets" about his firm statement of support for a new mosque and social center near the site in New York City of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Shortly after, Gallup released a new overnight poll showing, however, that many Americans have regrets that their president made that statement.
The new survey found that among the 57% of Americans with an opinion, 37% of Americans disapprove of the Democrat's mosque comments. Twenty percent support them. Another 41% said they don't yet know enough to have an opinion.
Two-thirds of Americans told Gallup they are paying a great deal or fair amount of attention to the mosque issue, which Gallup suggests is playing a role in Obama's overall approval this week falling to 41%, the lowest level of his 19-month presidency.
Of course, Obama's not on any ballot for the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
But many Democrats worry that disapproval of him, his administration, controversial legislative agenda and now a mosque could cost them control of at least one house of Congress.
The party of presidents under 50% approval in midterm years usually suffers severe....
Democrat president Barack Obama speaks at White house Iftar dinner in the White House 8-13-10 supporting a new mosque near 9-11 Ground Zero site
...congressional losses. And another Gallup Poll earlier this week shows the Republican lead on the generic congressional ballot has grown to seven points, its largest this year.
We published the full text of Obama's remarks, as usual.
Friday night at a sundown White House Iftar dinner celebrating the breaking of the day's Ramadan fast, Obama said Sept. 11 was a traumatic event, that he supported America's religious freedoms and "that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."
The next day criticism of Obama's mosque statement mounted. House Republican Leader John A. Boehner said:
The decision to build this mosque so close to ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it. The American people certainly don’t support it. The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do. That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding.
Former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin asked:
Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?
In Florida on another vacation, Obama attempted to clarify by saying: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there." Later, however, aides said the president was not back-pedaling on his dinner statement.
Gallup's overall approval polling, which includes the first two days of fallout after the mosque statement, would appear to confirm that Americans heard him supporting the idea.
This afternoon ABC News reported that mosque supporters said they would need $100 million for the development and would not rule out accepting funds from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other nations.
Exactly why an already embattled U.S. president would voluntarily insert himself into what had been a local controversy, thereby poking the country's still-tender Sept. 11 scars and raising a Muslim place of worship to a divisive national campaign issue, has puzzled many political observers. Especially since there is another mosque just 12 blocks from the site.
On the other hand, if people are arguing about a possible mosque near ground zero, they're not debating the responsibilities of Obama and his large Democratic congressional majorities for the stubbornly stagnant economy, high unemployment rates and deficits, which previous polls showed were their most vulnerable political points heading toward November.
President Obama busily continued his five-state cross-country political money collection tour today.
But he took time out to declare that he has "no regrets" about his firm statement of support for a new mosque and social center near the site in New York City of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Shortly after, Gallup released a new overnight poll showing, however, that many Americans have regrets that their president made that statement.
The new survey found that among the 57% of Americans with an opinion, 37% of Americans disapprove of the Democrat's mosque comments. Twenty percent support them. Another 41% said they don't yet know enough to have an opinion.
Two-thirds of Americans told Gallup they are paying a great deal or fair amount of attention to the mosque issue, which Gallup suggests is playing a role in Obama's overall approval this week falling to 41%, the lowest level of his 19-month presidency.
Of course, Obama's not on any ballot for the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
But many Democrats worry that disapproval of him, his administration, controversial legislative agenda and now a mosque could cost them control of at least one house of Congress.
The party of presidents under 50% approval in midterm years usually suffers severe....
Democrat president Barack Obama speaks at White house Iftar dinner in the White House 8-13-10 supporting a new mosque near 9-11 Ground Zero site
...congressional losses. And another Gallup Poll earlier this week shows the Republican lead on the generic congressional ballot has grown to seven points, its largest this year.
We published the full text of Obama's remarks, as usual.
Friday night at a sundown White House Iftar dinner celebrating the breaking of the day's Ramadan fast, Obama said Sept. 11 was a traumatic event, that he supported America's religious freedoms and "that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."
The next day criticism of Obama's mosque statement mounted. House Republican Leader John A. Boehner said:
The decision to build this mosque so close to ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it. The American people certainly don’t support it. The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do. That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding.
Former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin asked:
Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?
In Florida on another vacation, Obama attempted to clarify by saying: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there." Later, however, aides said the president was not back-pedaling on his dinner statement.
Gallup's overall approval polling, which includes the first two days of fallout after the mosque statement, would appear to confirm that Americans heard him supporting the idea.
This afternoon ABC News reported that mosque supporters said they would need $100 million for the development and would not rule out accepting funds from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other nations.
Exactly why an already embattled U.S. president would voluntarily insert himself into what had been a local controversy, thereby poking the country's still-tender Sept. 11 scars and raising a Muslim place of worship to a divisive national campaign issue, has puzzled many political observers. Especially since there is another mosque just 12 blocks from the site.
On the other hand, if people are arguing about a possible mosque near ground zero, they're not debating the responsibilities of Obama and his large Democratic congressional majorities for the stubbornly stagnant economy, high unemployment rates and deficits, which previous polls showed were their most vulnerable political points heading toward November.
Dems Use Food Stamp Money To Pay Michelle Obama Nutrition Program
Russell Berman - Democrats who reluctantly slashed a food-stamp program to fund a state-aid bill may have to do so again to pay for a top priority of first lady Michelle Obama.
The House will soon consider an $8 billion child-nutrition bill that’s at the center of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative. Before leaving for the summer recess, the Senate passed a smaller version of the legislation that is paid for by trimming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as the food-stamp program.
The proposed cuts would come on top of a 13.6 percent food-stamp reduction in the $26 billion Medicaid and education state-funding bill that President Obama signed this week.
Food stamps have made multiple appearances on the fiscal chopping block because Democrats have few other places to turn to offset the cost of legislation.
Party leaders raided the budget to find off-setting tax increases and spending cuts to pay for their top legislative priorities, including the roughly $900 billion healthcare law. Congressional pay-as-you-go rules require lawmakers to offset all non-emergency spending.
Democrats have turned to the food-stamp program because funding increases enacted in the stimulus package last year were already scheduled to phase out over time. The changes proposed in the state-aid and nutrition bills would simply cut off that increase early, in March 2014. Because the cuts would not take effect for more than three years, Democratic leaders have voiced the hope that they will be able to stop the cuts in future legislation.
But House liberals are balking now, saying that while they swallowed the food-stamp cuts to pay for urgent funding for Medicaid and teachers, they will not vote for more cuts in the child-nutrition bill. In a letter sent this week to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 106 House Democrats urged the Speaker to take the House version of the child-nutrition bill, which does not slash food stamps, rather than the Senate version.
“This is one of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and is a vote we do not take lightly,” the lawmakers, led by Reps. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said of their vote on the state-aid bill.
The House version of the child-nutrition bill, authored by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), passed the Education and Labor Committee earlier this year, but lawmakers must find a way to pay for it before it comes to the floor for a vote. “Chairman Miller is working to find other ways to pay for this bill,” a spokeswoman said when asked if cuts to the food stamp program would be used.
A House leadership aide noted that the food-stamp decrease approved in the state-aid bill will not take effect right away and will leave the program at the same funding level it was at before the stimulus law was signed. “That doesn’t mean many Democrats are not concerned about the issue, but this is a process which gives us time to deal with immediate issues (like jobs) and helping the economy grow, while giving you time to deal with the food-stamp issue,” the aide said.
The nutrition bill is clearly a priority for Michelle Obama, who has made a push for healthy eating — one of her signature policy issues at White House. When the House version of the nutrition bill won committee approval in July, it marked the first time she weighed in publicly on pending legislation.
The Obama administration has not directly addressed the debate over the food-stamp cuts, but it is backing the Senate bill. “We strongly supported the Senate action and look forward to working with the House to get a final bill onto the president’s desk,” an administration official told The Hill.
The $4.5 billion Senate bill would expand eligibility for school meal programs, establish nutrition standards for all food sold in schools and provide a 6-cent increase for each school lunch to help cafeterias serve healthier meals. The $8 billion House version includes more money for expanding access to school lunches for children in low-income households.
The deeper food-stamp reductions in the Senate version would set an earlier date — in November 2013 — for eliminating the increased benefits passed last year. A family of four would see their benefits reduced by $59 a month, or about 9 percent. The bill would also cut funding for nutrition-education programs aimed at low-income neighborhoods and households.
“It’s very sad. I think it’s just illustrating what dire straits our federal government budget is in,” said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. “It’s unprecedented to raid one safety net program to feed another.”
The House will soon consider an $8 billion child-nutrition bill that’s at the center of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative. Before leaving for the summer recess, the Senate passed a smaller version of the legislation that is paid for by trimming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as the food-stamp program.
The proposed cuts would come on top of a 13.6 percent food-stamp reduction in the $26 billion Medicaid and education state-funding bill that President Obama signed this week.
Food stamps have made multiple appearances on the fiscal chopping block because Democrats have few other places to turn to offset the cost of legislation.
Party leaders raided the budget to find off-setting tax increases and spending cuts to pay for their top legislative priorities, including the roughly $900 billion healthcare law. Congressional pay-as-you-go rules require lawmakers to offset all non-emergency spending.
Democrats have turned to the food-stamp program because funding increases enacted in the stimulus package last year were already scheduled to phase out over time. The changes proposed in the state-aid and nutrition bills would simply cut off that increase early, in March 2014. Because the cuts would not take effect for more than three years, Democratic leaders have voiced the hope that they will be able to stop the cuts in future legislation.
But House liberals are balking now, saying that while they swallowed the food-stamp cuts to pay for urgent funding for Medicaid and teachers, they will not vote for more cuts in the child-nutrition bill. In a letter sent this week to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 106 House Democrats urged the Speaker to take the House version of the child-nutrition bill, which does not slash food stamps, rather than the Senate version.
“This is one of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and is a vote we do not take lightly,” the lawmakers, led by Reps. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said of their vote on the state-aid bill.
The House version of the child-nutrition bill, authored by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), passed the Education and Labor Committee earlier this year, but lawmakers must find a way to pay for it before it comes to the floor for a vote. “Chairman Miller is working to find other ways to pay for this bill,” a spokeswoman said when asked if cuts to the food stamp program would be used.
A House leadership aide noted that the food-stamp decrease approved in the state-aid bill will not take effect right away and will leave the program at the same funding level it was at before the stimulus law was signed. “That doesn’t mean many Democrats are not concerned about the issue, but this is a process which gives us time to deal with immediate issues (like jobs) and helping the economy grow, while giving you time to deal with the food-stamp issue,” the aide said.
The nutrition bill is clearly a priority for Michelle Obama, who has made a push for healthy eating — one of her signature policy issues at White House. When the House version of the nutrition bill won committee approval in July, it marked the first time she weighed in publicly on pending legislation.
The Obama administration has not directly addressed the debate over the food-stamp cuts, but it is backing the Senate bill. “We strongly supported the Senate action and look forward to working with the House to get a final bill onto the president’s desk,” an administration official told The Hill.
The $4.5 billion Senate bill would expand eligibility for school meal programs, establish nutrition standards for all food sold in schools and provide a 6-cent increase for each school lunch to help cafeterias serve healthier meals. The $8 billion House version includes more money for expanding access to school lunches for children in low-income households.
The deeper food-stamp reductions in the Senate version would set an earlier date — in November 2013 — for eliminating the increased benefits passed last year. A family of four would see their benefits reduced by $59 a month, or about 9 percent. The bill would also cut funding for nutrition-education programs aimed at low-income neighborhoods and households.
“It’s very sad. I think it’s just illustrating what dire straits our federal government budget is in,” said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. “It’s unprecedented to raid one safety net program to feed another.”
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Speaker Pelosi Wants Ground Zero Opponents To Be Investigated
John Joseph Watson - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for opponents of the proposed Ground Zero mosque to be investigated in order to establish who is funding their activities, in a throwback to how Pelosi also claimed that the Tea Party was a phony “astroturf” movement being orchestrated by the Republican hierarchy.
“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” Pelosi told San Francisco’s KCBS radio.
“How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City,” she added.
No matter where you stand on the proposed mosque, which is set to be built within a community center a couple of blocks from where the twin towers once stood, Pelosi’s implication that opposition to its construction is being bankrolled by the Republican party is simply not true.
A Rasmussen poll conducted nearly a month ago, before the mosque story had received widespread media coverage, found that a mere 20 per cent of Americans supported the construction of the mosque. People were not swayed to oppose the mosque because of an engineered PR campaign to ‘gin up’ the controversy as Pelosi claims, they were opposed to it from the very start.
Pelosi’s comments bear resemblance to similar rhetoric that we heard earlier this year, when she claimed the Tea Party movement was not grass roots because it was being orchestrated by the Republican establishment.
“The Republican Party directs a lot of what the Tea Party does, but not everybody in the Tea Party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, Astroturf, as opposed to grassroots,” she stated at the time.
Pelosi is so arrogant and out of touch with the American people that she truly believes that any significant opposition to Barack Obama, who on Friday committed political suicide by publicly backing the mosque, and his policies is not the genuine backlash of millions of Americans sick to the back teeth with big government and must be artificially engineered.
When she is heckled and booed, as routinely happens when she makes any kind of public appearance, Pelosi resorts to blaming “insurance companies” and other mythical creatures of her imagination.
In reality, Obama’s poll numbers continue to plunge to record lows as more Americans reject his policies and Pelosi’s own approval rating according to a CBS poll stands at a pathetic 11 per cent, making her even more unpopular than George W. Bush ever was.
This is a woman who, along with Harry Reid who has even worse approval ratings, has come to represent the Obama administration’s big government policies. She is despised by the vast majority of Americans and yet has the temerity to pretend that this resentment and opposition is an artificial construct of the Republican party.
Pelosi, who is fond of public displays of smiling and cackling as she sinks a dagger into the heart of America with the passage of Obamacare, is living in a self-perpetuated fantasy world where the vast majority of Americans vehemently support her activities, when in reality she is reviled and detested by around 90 per cent of the entire country.
“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” Pelosi told San Francisco’s KCBS radio.
“How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City,” she added.
No matter where you stand on the proposed mosque, which is set to be built within a community center a couple of blocks from where the twin towers once stood, Pelosi’s implication that opposition to its construction is being bankrolled by the Republican party is simply not true.
A Rasmussen poll conducted nearly a month ago, before the mosque story had received widespread media coverage, found that a mere 20 per cent of Americans supported the construction of the mosque. People were not swayed to oppose the mosque because of an engineered PR campaign to ‘gin up’ the controversy as Pelosi claims, they were opposed to it from the very start.
Pelosi’s comments bear resemblance to similar rhetoric that we heard earlier this year, when she claimed the Tea Party movement was not grass roots because it was being orchestrated by the Republican establishment.
“The Republican Party directs a lot of what the Tea Party does, but not everybody in the Tea Party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, Astroturf, as opposed to grassroots,” she stated at the time.
Pelosi is so arrogant and out of touch with the American people that she truly believes that any significant opposition to Barack Obama, who on Friday committed political suicide by publicly backing the mosque, and his policies is not the genuine backlash of millions of Americans sick to the back teeth with big government and must be artificially engineered.
When she is heckled and booed, as routinely happens when she makes any kind of public appearance, Pelosi resorts to blaming “insurance companies” and other mythical creatures of her imagination.
In reality, Obama’s poll numbers continue to plunge to record lows as more Americans reject his policies and Pelosi’s own approval rating according to a CBS poll stands at a pathetic 11 per cent, making her even more unpopular than George W. Bush ever was.
This is a woman who, along with Harry Reid who has even worse approval ratings, has come to represent the Obama administration’s big government policies. She is despised by the vast majority of Americans and yet has the temerity to pretend that this resentment and opposition is an artificial construct of the Republican party.
Pelosi, who is fond of public displays of smiling and cackling as she sinks a dagger into the heart of America with the passage of Obamacare, is living in a self-perpetuated fantasy world where the vast majority of Americans vehemently support her activities, when in reality she is reviled and detested by around 90 per cent of the entire country.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
10 Signs The U.S. Is Becoming a Third World Country
Activist Post - The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America’s future.
The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.
While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.
1. Rising unemployment and poverty: Unemployment numbers, food stamps, and home foreclosures continue to reach new record highs. The ugly reality of those numbers was recently on display when 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, GA for 455 available vouchers. Fights broke out, people were fainting from the heat while in line, and riot police showed up to handle the angry poor.
2. Economic dependence: The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The current trend projects the United States to finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%. The 90% level has become the IMF’s make-or-break point for countries hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution for reducing that debt, and the IMF insists on austerity measures. Surpassing this debt threshold has also caused China’s lead credit rating agency to cut America’s credit rating.
3. Declining civil rights: Everyday freedoms are often a casualty of a society in collapse. As the anger of the populace mounts in response to declining economic conditions and political corruption, the government counters by increasing draconian measures that restrict the political rights and civil liberties of its citizens.
America is becoming a country like China, which has one of the lowest scores according to Freedom House. In America, private discussions and movements are monitored, free speech is corralled, the freedom to assemble for protest is by government decree, and independent thought that questions the political system is increasingly looked upon with suspicion. A final indicator is when the government insists upon secrecy for its own actions, while new laws and systems are created to put the individual under nearly constant surveillance.
4. Increasing political corruption: When political corruption becomes the accepted norm, as opposed to the exception, then there’s a good bet your country resembles the Third World. Congress and all major institutions face a growing crisis in confidence, where a record-low 11% of the population believe Congress is doing a good job. It now seems obvious to all observers that big corporations directly control the agenda in Washington — much like typically corrupt Third World countries.
5. Military patrolling the streets: The rise of a militarized police state is a hallmark of most Third World countries, particularly in times of rapid economic collapse. America’s declaration of the War on Terror has created a constant threat to National Security that has allowed for the military to be deployed on American soil. Building upon the War on Drugs, this has created a fusion between the military and local police, where military-grade weapons and tactics are being used against American citizens in a cascade of violent confrontations over non-violent offenses. Military checkpoints are moving farther inland, away from meaningful border control functions, and a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the U.S. Army War College.
6. Failing infrastructure: As 46 of 50 states are on the verge of bankruptcy, cities are going dark, asphalt roads are returning to the stone age, and nationwide budget cuts are leaving students without teachers, supplies, or a full-time education. These are common features one will see as they travel through the poorest of Third World countries.
7. Disappearing middle class: During the last presidential debate season, they argued that a family income of $250K was solidly middle-class. Well, Census data shows less than 15% of families make over $100K, and only 1.5% of families make over $250K. The income gap between the rich and poor has increased at a staggering pace, while many more middle-class folks join the ranks of the poor every day. Cavernous income gaps may be what Third-World nations are best known for.
8. Devalued currency: The value of the Federal Reserve Note (U.S. dollar) has declined 96% since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The value of the dollar is based on its supply in circulation and, to a lesser extent, the demand for those dollars. For the last three years, the money supply has spiked literally off the charts. It can be argued that the dollar has become America’s top export as the world’s reserve currency, and if the volatile dollar is scrapped, which the U.N. and IMF now suggest, then demand will plummet, killing the currency.
9. Controlling the media: A government-influenced media that censors information is a key component of Third World countries. In some countries it is openly owned by the State. In America, privately-owned major media is not as balanced or as diverse as it seems; the concentration of ownership has led to censorship when national and corporate interests have sometimes overlapped. The persecution of high-profile investigative journalists such as WikiLeaks is set amid a backdrop of the proposed Internet censorship of bloggers who wish to remain anonymous. The end of net neutrality creates a pay-to-play system that can lead to further corporate and government control of information and opinion. Cybersecurity initiatives are the final nail in the coffin, as the entire free flow of information can be vetted in a China-style system of “identity management.” On the street, the police state and media control have converged in the recent rise of arrests for those who videotape the police. This is a huge blow to First Amendment rights and the role of photojournalists who wish to document public police behavior.
10. Capital Controls: Many nations have enforced capital controls as their economies collapse. It most recently happened in Argentina and Venezuela as they sought to keep the remaining wealth within their borders. The SEC already has adopted policies to allow money market funds to suspend withdrawals during a financial crisis, while the recent HIRE bill (HR 2487) puts restrictions on Americans moving capital to foreign countries. Some economists suggest that the national debt has gotten so high that the government must now force investment of private capital into U.S. Treasury debt.
Key economic indicators point to a situation potentially worse than the Great Depression. The land of opportunity for so many is devolving into a system of government corruption, corporate looting, and military rule that threatens to sink the American Dream. The capital flight from America has left a dwindling middle class holding an empty bag. This style of underinvestment in the foundation of society is similar to what already has led to the exodus from the rural Midwest. Now, there are ominous signs of a silent exodus of young, intelligent professionals seeking opportunities to realize their dreams outside of America; they are becoming known as Generation Xpat. Lastly, many skilled immigrants have returned to their home countries to seek a better quality of life, which might be the scariest indicator of all.
The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.
While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.
1. Rising unemployment and poverty: Unemployment numbers, food stamps, and home foreclosures continue to reach new record highs. The ugly reality of those numbers was recently on display when 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, GA for 455 available vouchers. Fights broke out, people were fainting from the heat while in line, and riot police showed up to handle the angry poor.
2. Economic dependence: The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The current trend projects the United States to finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%. The 90% level has become the IMF’s make-or-break point for countries hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution for reducing that debt, and the IMF insists on austerity measures. Surpassing this debt threshold has also caused China’s lead credit rating agency to cut America’s credit rating.
3. Declining civil rights: Everyday freedoms are often a casualty of a society in collapse. As the anger of the populace mounts in response to declining economic conditions and political corruption, the government counters by increasing draconian measures that restrict the political rights and civil liberties of its citizens.
America is becoming a country like China, which has one of the lowest scores according to Freedom House. In America, private discussions and movements are monitored, free speech is corralled, the freedom to assemble for protest is by government decree, and independent thought that questions the political system is increasingly looked upon with suspicion. A final indicator is when the government insists upon secrecy for its own actions, while new laws and systems are created to put the individual under nearly constant surveillance.
4. Increasing political corruption: When political corruption becomes the accepted norm, as opposed to the exception, then there’s a good bet your country resembles the Third World. Congress and all major institutions face a growing crisis in confidence, where a record-low 11% of the population believe Congress is doing a good job. It now seems obvious to all observers that big corporations directly control the agenda in Washington — much like typically corrupt Third World countries.
5. Military patrolling the streets: The rise of a militarized police state is a hallmark of most Third World countries, particularly in times of rapid economic collapse. America’s declaration of the War on Terror has created a constant threat to National Security that has allowed for the military to be deployed on American soil. Building upon the War on Drugs, this has created a fusion between the military and local police, where military-grade weapons and tactics are being used against American citizens in a cascade of violent confrontations over non-violent offenses. Military checkpoints are moving farther inland, away from meaningful border control functions, and a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the U.S. Army War College.
6. Failing infrastructure: As 46 of 50 states are on the verge of bankruptcy, cities are going dark, asphalt roads are returning to the stone age, and nationwide budget cuts are leaving students without teachers, supplies, or a full-time education. These are common features one will see as they travel through the poorest of Third World countries.
7. Disappearing middle class: During the last presidential debate season, they argued that a family income of $250K was solidly middle-class. Well, Census data shows less than 15% of families make over $100K, and only 1.5% of families make over $250K. The income gap between the rich and poor has increased at a staggering pace, while many more middle-class folks join the ranks of the poor every day. Cavernous income gaps may be what Third-World nations are best known for.
8. Devalued currency: The value of the Federal Reserve Note (U.S. dollar) has declined 96% since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The value of the dollar is based on its supply in circulation and, to a lesser extent, the demand for those dollars. For the last three years, the money supply has spiked literally off the charts. It can be argued that the dollar has become America’s top export as the world’s reserve currency, and if the volatile dollar is scrapped, which the U.N. and IMF now suggest, then demand will plummet, killing the currency.
9. Controlling the media: A government-influenced media that censors information is a key component of Third World countries. In some countries it is openly owned by the State. In America, privately-owned major media is not as balanced or as diverse as it seems; the concentration of ownership has led to censorship when national and corporate interests have sometimes overlapped. The persecution of high-profile investigative journalists such as WikiLeaks is set amid a backdrop of the proposed Internet censorship of bloggers who wish to remain anonymous. The end of net neutrality creates a pay-to-play system that can lead to further corporate and government control of information and opinion. Cybersecurity initiatives are the final nail in the coffin, as the entire free flow of information can be vetted in a China-style system of “identity management.” On the street, the police state and media control have converged in the recent rise of arrests for those who videotape the police. This is a huge blow to First Amendment rights and the role of photojournalists who wish to document public police behavior.
10. Capital Controls: Many nations have enforced capital controls as their economies collapse. It most recently happened in Argentina and Venezuela as they sought to keep the remaining wealth within their borders. The SEC already has adopted policies to allow money market funds to suspend withdrawals during a financial crisis, while the recent HIRE bill (HR 2487) puts restrictions on Americans moving capital to foreign countries. Some economists suggest that the national debt has gotten so high that the government must now force investment of private capital into U.S. Treasury debt.
Key economic indicators point to a situation potentially worse than the Great Depression. The land of opportunity for so many is devolving into a system of government corruption, corporate looting, and military rule that threatens to sink the American Dream. The capital flight from America has left a dwindling middle class holding an empty bag. This style of underinvestment in the foundation of society is similar to what already has led to the exodus from the rural Midwest. Now, there are ominous signs of a silent exodus of young, intelligent professionals seeking opportunities to realize their dreams outside of America; they are becoming known as Generation Xpat. Lastly, many skilled immigrants have returned to their home countries to seek a better quality of life, which might be the scariest indicator of all.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Lady Gaga And Music Industry Is Posioning Our Children's Minds
Bel Mooney - Please don’t take it the wrong way when I tell you that it was Cliff Richard who introduced me to sex.
In 1958, Cliff’s single Move It (described as ‘Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll record’ by John Lennon) topped the charts, and he visited Liverpool on tour — wiggling like Elvis in his shocking pink suit.
I have no illusions as to precisely why that was so exciting. How my friends and I screamed! I was 12 years old.
That memory is an important reminder that the pop industry has always thrived on sexy rebellion.
The fact that my father detested Cliff for his ‘jungle music’ made it all the more thrilling for me.
Why then do I sympathise with music mogul Mike Stock’s condemnation of the pornification of pop?
Because what was once rebellious is now mainstream and inescapable; what was once suggestive is now graphically explicit — and, most worryingly of all, it’s being aimed at a fan base that is getting younger and younger.
Stock (one third of the legendary pop factory Stock, Aitken and Waterman) has publicly attacked pop culture for prematurely ‘sexualising’ today’s children.
Inside view: Mike Stock - pictured here in his 80s hit-making heyday with colleagues Matt Aitken, centre, and Pete Waterman, right, - made stars of the likes of Kylie Minogue without resorting to overt sexualisation
Inside view: Mike Stock - pictured here in his 80s hit-making heyday with colleagues Matt Aitken, centre, and Pete Waterman, right, - made stars of the likes of Kylie Minogue without resorting to overt sexualisation
He believes it’s all gone too far: ‘These days you can’t watch modern stars — such as Britney Spears or Lady Gaga — with a two-year-old.
'Now, 99 per cent of the charts is R&B and 99 per cent of that is pornography.’
If an ordinary person came out with a statement like that the critics would be quick to sneer about ‘moral panic’.
If you dare to challenge the ‘anything goes’ conventions of our society you get dismissed as a prude.
But Stock is the man who launched the career of Kylie Minogue and has made his fortune from the business he’s condemning.
Even then, he obviously feels he has to defend himself in advance by adding: ‘It’s not about me being old-fashioned. It’s about keeping values that are important in the modern world.’
Can it really be as bad as he claims?
People like me don’t sit around watching pop videos because there’s no time, and anyway, they’re hardly aimed at my generation.
But it’s the generation they are aimed that has caused Stock’s alarm.
I wrote an article about going to a Pussycat Dolls/Rihanna concert at Wembley in 2006, when I was amazed at the vast number of children in the audience.
Thrusting dancers: 'The Pussycat Dolls concert I attended It was a Sunday night in school term time and no place for children, let alone toddlers'
Thrusting dancers: 'The Pussycat Dolls concert I attended It was a Sunday night in school term time and no place for children, let alone toddlers'
They’d been taken by their parents to see an adult show full of pumping music and thrusting dancers: raunch from start to finish.
It was a Sunday night in school term time. No place for children, let alone toddlers.
With that experience in mind, I knew what to expect yesterday when — to investigate Stock’s claims — I settled down to watch a series of Lady Gaga videos on YouTube.
But even I was taken aback by the relentlessness of the imagery — not just sexual, but cruel, too.
No Romance: Gaga's videos included bondage and grotesque sexual violence, but Cher, pictured on the right in 1992, and Madonna were the mothers of pop-porn.
Bad Romance contains bondage and grotesque sexual violence; Paparazzi is particularly tasteless with its references to death and disability; while Alejandro is full of jackboots, bondage and menace — culminating in a hideous gang-attack/rape on a nun-type figure.
I don’t deny the theatrical impact or the professionalism of the product. No matter that the choreography is repetitive — all crotch-clutching, writhing and open-mouthed suggestiveness.
No matter that the male dancers have to be tattooed to get the job — this is, after all, rough trade.
No matter that the mesmeric electro-beat is synthetic to a point of mind-numbing tedium.
No matter that the lyrics reach depths such as: ‘Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.’
More...
* Lady Gaga and her flaming piano: Singer sets the crowd alight as she receives plaque for 51 million singles sold
* JAN MOIR: Cheryl Cole's tiny dress would look like a duvet in my size - but why don't designers make clothes that flatter real women?
* Children 'at risk from pop charts porn': Top producer Mike Stock blasts his own industry
The point is Lady Gaga has sold more than 15 million albums and 40 million singles worldwide. She’s a phenomenon — who knows that she must up the ante all the time in order to go on selling.
Even if it means launching yourself into a festival crowd wearing nothing but a fishnet body suit and a pair of tiny knickers, not caring who grabs you.
Sleaze and Gaga are two sides of the same coin, which wouldn’t matter if all this took place between consenting adults.
But any eight-year-old can watch this stuff on the TV or computer — and they do.
‘Mothers of young children are worried because you can’t control the TV remote control,’ says Mike Stock.
‘Before children even step into school they have all these images — the pop videos and computer games, such as Grand Theft Auto — confronting them, and the parents can’t control it.’
Pop music has always used subtle sexual innuendo, but once it wasn’t de rigueur.
Shock value: Britney Spears and Madonna shared an infamous kiss at the MTV awards, as performers seek ever more explicit ways to impact on audiences
Shock value: Britney Spears and Madonna shared an infamous kiss at the MTV awards, as performers seek ever more explicit ways to impact on audiences
Now raunchy R&B and hip-hop seem to have a stranglehold on the market, so that what used to be edgy and extreme is now the commercial mainstream.
One of the results is that female singers are happy to flog themselves as sex objects.
Cher probably started it 20 years ago with the video for If I Could Turn Back Time being briefly banned on MTV because of her outrageous outfit.
Today, a minute black leather thong, buttock tattoo, fishnets and leather jacket wouldn’t turn a hair. Cher and Madonna were the ‘mothers’ of this pop-porn chic.
But how sad that nowadays if you’re a pop star (with some honourable exceptions such as Leona Lewis) you feel you have to ape the clothes and gestures of the downmarket glamour model — the cheaper the better.
Female singers seem to think that the only way to sell their albums is to flash their gussets, while looking mean, vacant and up for it.
Cheryl Cole could look beautiful in a bin liner so why does she stoop to degradation?
Cheryl Cole could look beautiful in a bin liner so why does she stoop to degradation?
Even Cheryl Cole (the most sexy woman in the world, according to the men’s magazine FHM) chose to perform on The X Factor wearing boots and bizarre side-split trousers that showed her knickers. Did she need to? No. Cheryl Cole would look beautiful in a boiler suit.
But such porn-fashion infects the majority of pop videos — from Katy Perry’s wide-eyed suggestiveness to Britney Spears’s tired old sleaze.
And therefore it’s on the High Street.
The costumes familiar from pop videos have become (more or less) what every teen wants to wear on a Saturday night out.
Make no mistake, many young girls (and women) believe the only way to look attractive is to look sexy, and to look sexy you have to look trashy.
It’s a short step from that to behaving like, well, trash. That’s a word I intensely dislike (unless applied to the contents of the dustbin), but I use it deliberately.
Sadly, many young women don’t value themselves much higher.
The messages they receive through the screen as children affect their behaviour — and anyone who suggests they don’t is ignorant of the power of advertising and the market.
Last year, a survey published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that teenagers who preferred pop songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to become sexually active.
Note that the emphasis was on ‘degrading’ lyrics — which is a world away from the love (and longing) traditionally associated with pop music, as well as the naughty innuendo of Chuck Berry’s complaint, ‘I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt’ in his 1964 hit No Particular Place To Go.
The research concluded that exposure to raunchy sex in the media could certainly be a risk factor, encouraging young people to experiment sexually at a young age.
I have no doubt that those who defend the ‘message’ of Lady Gaga and the raunchy pop sisterhood will say that their videos make them look ‘powerful.’
After all, a woman made tall by platform boots, dressed in a sci-fi outfit and strutting her stuff can look as if she could rule the world.
But that’s an illusion. The artistes are controlled by a powerful management who know this is all about sexuality — while Cheryl Cole, left, joins in with the over-exposure selling an image.
A powerful female image? Or is this sexual imagery simply a demand of record company executives
A powerful female image? Or is this sexual imagery simply a demand of record company executives
And the image, handed down to ordinary young girls, is that of a very easy conquest.
That message is, I’m afraid, reflected in too many statistics to bore you with here.
A shocking number of young people are so accustomed to all the varieties of porn (the real stuff as well as its fashionable pop-culture spin-off) they carry its conventions through into their own behaviour.
Boys expect certain sexual ‘services’ from their girlfriends that were once the province of prostitutes. And the girls feel they have to comply — or seem hopelessly strait-laced. It’s nasty.
If you have any doubts about the degrading message of popular pop videos you should look at the No 4 in the charts, Love The Way You Lie by Eminem with Rihanna. This song is an overt glamorisation of domestic violence.
The video shows a beautiful girl and a rough-looking guy locked into a destructive relationship, hitting each other, making up with lingering kisses, only to resort to aggression once more.
The ‘dialogue’ between the two singers is disturbing. What effect will it have on impressionable minds of both genders?
Lady Gaga crowd surfs at Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, seemingly not caring who gropes her
Lady Gaga crowd surfs at Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, seemingly not caring who gropes her
Eminem epitomises the inarticulate, violent, macho frustration of a certain kind of man who thinks he owns his woman — and will certainly show her who is boss.
He sings: ‘If she ever tries to f****** leave again/I’mma tie her to the bed and set the house on fire.’
Then Rihanna comes in with her chorus (background of flames, by the way) that responds to this aggression with: ‘That’s all right — because I like the way it hurts.’
It’s mind-boggling that a woman who was beaten up by her former boyfriend, the rapper Chris Brown, should agree to justify a woman’s victimisation. But then she does like to pose with devil’s horns on her head.
The message to girls is —– ‘Yes, he owns you and will lie to you and treat you bad, but you put up with it because you like it. Or you’ll be in trouble.’
And this is all being ‘sold’ to the fans by means of a beautifully produced video, employing the obvious talents of designers and filmmakers alike.
What a criminal waste. It’s not a message I want any girls to hear.
Nor do I want boys to admire Snoop Dogg’s revolting sexual bragging on Gangsta Luv — to name just one of many similar tracks.
Like Mike Stock, I wish we could turn back the clock to the time when Elvis’s fully-clothed wiggle changed the history of popular music for ever. But of course, that’s impossible.
Yet I applaud this one man with influence in the music business for speaking out.
For the rest — well, I wish that the producers of music videos would realise that ‘restraint’ is not a dirty word and that selling everything by means of the nastiest sexual message has a long-term corrupting effect on the next generation.
They won’t, of course. But just don’t tell me that doesn’t matter.
In 1958, Cliff’s single Move It (described as ‘Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll record’ by John Lennon) topped the charts, and he visited Liverpool on tour — wiggling like Elvis in his shocking pink suit.
I have no illusions as to precisely why that was so exciting. How my friends and I screamed! I was 12 years old.
That memory is an important reminder that the pop industry has always thrived on sexy rebellion.
The fact that my father detested Cliff for his ‘jungle music’ made it all the more thrilling for me.
Why then do I sympathise with music mogul Mike Stock’s condemnation of the pornification of pop?
Because what was once rebellious is now mainstream and inescapable; what was once suggestive is now graphically explicit — and, most worryingly of all, it’s being aimed at a fan base that is getting younger and younger.
Stock (one third of the legendary pop factory Stock, Aitken and Waterman) has publicly attacked pop culture for prematurely ‘sexualising’ today’s children.
Inside view: Mike Stock - pictured here in his 80s hit-making heyday with colleagues Matt Aitken, centre, and Pete Waterman, right, - made stars of the likes of Kylie Minogue without resorting to overt sexualisation
Inside view: Mike Stock - pictured here in his 80s hit-making heyday with colleagues Matt Aitken, centre, and Pete Waterman, right, - made stars of the likes of Kylie Minogue without resorting to overt sexualisation
He believes it’s all gone too far: ‘These days you can’t watch modern stars — such as Britney Spears or Lady Gaga — with a two-year-old.
'Now, 99 per cent of the charts is R&B and 99 per cent of that is pornography.’
If an ordinary person came out with a statement like that the critics would be quick to sneer about ‘moral panic’.
If you dare to challenge the ‘anything goes’ conventions of our society you get dismissed as a prude.
But Stock is the man who launched the career of Kylie Minogue and has made his fortune from the business he’s condemning.
Even then, he obviously feels he has to defend himself in advance by adding: ‘It’s not about me being old-fashioned. It’s about keeping values that are important in the modern world.’
Can it really be as bad as he claims?
People like me don’t sit around watching pop videos because there’s no time, and anyway, they’re hardly aimed at my generation.
But it’s the generation they are aimed that has caused Stock’s alarm.
I wrote an article about going to a Pussycat Dolls/Rihanna concert at Wembley in 2006, when I was amazed at the vast number of children in the audience.
Thrusting dancers: 'The Pussycat Dolls concert I attended It was a Sunday night in school term time and no place for children, let alone toddlers'
Thrusting dancers: 'The Pussycat Dolls concert I attended It was a Sunday night in school term time and no place for children, let alone toddlers'
They’d been taken by their parents to see an adult show full of pumping music and thrusting dancers: raunch from start to finish.
It was a Sunday night in school term time. No place for children, let alone toddlers.
With that experience in mind, I knew what to expect yesterday when — to investigate Stock’s claims — I settled down to watch a series of Lady Gaga videos on YouTube.
But even I was taken aback by the relentlessness of the imagery — not just sexual, but cruel, too.
No Romance: Gaga's videos included bondage and grotesque sexual violence, but Cher, pictured on the right in 1992, and Madonna were the mothers of pop-porn.
Bad Romance contains bondage and grotesque sexual violence; Paparazzi is particularly tasteless with its references to death and disability; while Alejandro is full of jackboots, bondage and menace — culminating in a hideous gang-attack/rape on a nun-type figure.
I don’t deny the theatrical impact or the professionalism of the product. No matter that the choreography is repetitive — all crotch-clutching, writhing and open-mouthed suggestiveness.
No matter that the male dancers have to be tattooed to get the job — this is, after all, rough trade.
No matter that the mesmeric electro-beat is synthetic to a point of mind-numbing tedium.
No matter that the lyrics reach depths such as: ‘Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.’
More...
* Lady Gaga and her flaming piano: Singer sets the crowd alight as she receives plaque for 51 million singles sold
* JAN MOIR: Cheryl Cole's tiny dress would look like a duvet in my size - but why don't designers make clothes that flatter real women?
* Children 'at risk from pop charts porn': Top producer Mike Stock blasts his own industry
The point is Lady Gaga has sold more than 15 million albums and 40 million singles worldwide. She’s a phenomenon — who knows that she must up the ante all the time in order to go on selling.
Even if it means launching yourself into a festival crowd wearing nothing but a fishnet body suit and a pair of tiny knickers, not caring who grabs you.
Sleaze and Gaga are two sides of the same coin, which wouldn’t matter if all this took place between consenting adults.
But any eight-year-old can watch this stuff on the TV or computer — and they do.
‘Mothers of young children are worried because you can’t control the TV remote control,’ says Mike Stock.
‘Before children even step into school they have all these images — the pop videos and computer games, such as Grand Theft Auto — confronting them, and the parents can’t control it.’
Pop music has always used subtle sexual innuendo, but once it wasn’t de rigueur.
Shock value: Britney Spears and Madonna shared an infamous kiss at the MTV awards, as performers seek ever more explicit ways to impact on audiences
Shock value: Britney Spears and Madonna shared an infamous kiss at the MTV awards, as performers seek ever more explicit ways to impact on audiences
Now raunchy R&B and hip-hop seem to have a stranglehold on the market, so that what used to be edgy and extreme is now the commercial mainstream.
One of the results is that female singers are happy to flog themselves as sex objects.
Cher probably started it 20 years ago with the video for If I Could Turn Back Time being briefly banned on MTV because of her outrageous outfit.
Today, a minute black leather thong, buttock tattoo, fishnets and leather jacket wouldn’t turn a hair. Cher and Madonna were the ‘mothers’ of this pop-porn chic.
But how sad that nowadays if you’re a pop star (with some honourable exceptions such as Leona Lewis) you feel you have to ape the clothes and gestures of the downmarket glamour model — the cheaper the better.
Female singers seem to think that the only way to sell their albums is to flash their gussets, while looking mean, vacant and up for it.
Cheryl Cole could look beautiful in a bin liner so why does she stoop to degradation?
Cheryl Cole could look beautiful in a bin liner so why does she stoop to degradation?
Even Cheryl Cole (the most sexy woman in the world, according to the men’s magazine FHM) chose to perform on The X Factor wearing boots and bizarre side-split trousers that showed her knickers. Did she need to? No. Cheryl Cole would look beautiful in a boiler suit.
But such porn-fashion infects the majority of pop videos — from Katy Perry’s wide-eyed suggestiveness to Britney Spears’s tired old sleaze.
And therefore it’s on the High Street.
The costumes familiar from pop videos have become (more or less) what every teen wants to wear on a Saturday night out.
Make no mistake, many young girls (and women) believe the only way to look attractive is to look sexy, and to look sexy you have to look trashy.
It’s a short step from that to behaving like, well, trash. That’s a word I intensely dislike (unless applied to the contents of the dustbin), but I use it deliberately.
Sadly, many young women don’t value themselves much higher.
The messages they receive through the screen as children affect their behaviour — and anyone who suggests they don’t is ignorant of the power of advertising and the market.
Last year, a survey published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that teenagers who preferred pop songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to become sexually active.
Note that the emphasis was on ‘degrading’ lyrics — which is a world away from the love (and longing) traditionally associated with pop music, as well as the naughty innuendo of Chuck Berry’s complaint, ‘I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt’ in his 1964 hit No Particular Place To Go.
The research concluded that exposure to raunchy sex in the media could certainly be a risk factor, encouraging young people to experiment sexually at a young age.
I have no doubt that those who defend the ‘message’ of Lady Gaga and the raunchy pop sisterhood will say that their videos make them look ‘powerful.’
After all, a woman made tall by platform boots, dressed in a sci-fi outfit and strutting her stuff can look as if she could rule the world.
But that’s an illusion. The artistes are controlled by a powerful management who know this is all about sexuality — while Cheryl Cole, left, joins in with the over-exposure selling an image.
A powerful female image? Or is this sexual imagery simply a demand of record company executives
A powerful female image? Or is this sexual imagery simply a demand of record company executives
And the image, handed down to ordinary young girls, is that of a very easy conquest.
That message is, I’m afraid, reflected in too many statistics to bore you with here.
A shocking number of young people are so accustomed to all the varieties of porn (the real stuff as well as its fashionable pop-culture spin-off) they carry its conventions through into their own behaviour.
Boys expect certain sexual ‘services’ from their girlfriends that were once the province of prostitutes. And the girls feel they have to comply — or seem hopelessly strait-laced. It’s nasty.
If you have any doubts about the degrading message of popular pop videos you should look at the No 4 in the charts, Love The Way You Lie by Eminem with Rihanna. This song is an overt glamorisation of domestic violence.
The video shows a beautiful girl and a rough-looking guy locked into a destructive relationship, hitting each other, making up with lingering kisses, only to resort to aggression once more.
The ‘dialogue’ between the two singers is disturbing. What effect will it have on impressionable minds of both genders?
Lady Gaga crowd surfs at Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, seemingly not caring who gropes her
Lady Gaga crowd surfs at Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, seemingly not caring who gropes her
Eminem epitomises the inarticulate, violent, macho frustration of a certain kind of man who thinks he owns his woman — and will certainly show her who is boss.
He sings: ‘If she ever tries to f****** leave again/I’mma tie her to the bed and set the house on fire.’
Then Rihanna comes in with her chorus (background of flames, by the way) that responds to this aggression with: ‘That’s all right — because I like the way it hurts.’
It’s mind-boggling that a woman who was beaten up by her former boyfriend, the rapper Chris Brown, should agree to justify a woman’s victimisation. But then she does like to pose with devil’s horns on her head.
The message to girls is —– ‘Yes, he owns you and will lie to you and treat you bad, but you put up with it because you like it. Or you’ll be in trouble.’
And this is all being ‘sold’ to the fans by means of a beautifully produced video, employing the obvious talents of designers and filmmakers alike.
What a criminal waste. It’s not a message I want any girls to hear.
Nor do I want boys to admire Snoop Dogg’s revolting sexual bragging on Gangsta Luv — to name just one of many similar tracks.
Like Mike Stock, I wish we could turn back the clock to the time when Elvis’s fully-clothed wiggle changed the history of popular music for ever. But of course, that’s impossible.
Yet I applaud this one man with influence in the music business for speaking out.
For the rest — well, I wish that the producers of music videos would realise that ‘restraint’ is not a dirty word and that selling everything by means of the nastiest sexual message has a long-term corrupting effect on the next generation.
They won’t, of course. But just don’t tell me that doesn’t matter.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
1-15 Children In U.S. Has Illegal Immigrant Parents
Howard Fischer - About one out of every 15 children in the United States was born to a family where at least one parent is in this country illegally, according to a new report today.
And four out of five of them are “anchor babies,” the Pew Hispanic Center concluded.
The figures, which the organization calculated based on 2009 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, are the best estimates to date of the scope of the issue which has resulted in calls to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny automatic citizenship to children solely by virtue of their birth within this country.
That percentage of children of illegal immigrant parents might be increasing.
The overall figure is about 6.8 percent of all children 17 and younger have at least one illegal immigrant parent.
But the center calculated that about 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States in 2008 were offspring of “unauthorized” immigrants. That computes out to 7.9 percent.
Researchers peg the number of illegal immigrants in the United States at something slightly in excess of 4 percent of the total population.
“But because they are relatively young and have high birth rates, their children make up a much larger share of the newborn population and the child population in this country,” the report says.
The 14th Amendment says that anyone born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of both this country and the state where they reside. Courts have interpreted that to entitle citizenship to those born in the United States regardless of whether one or both parents had no legal right to be here.
Some foes, including Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, argue those rulings are flawed.
He noted that the amendment makes its provisions conditional on the children being “subject to the jurisdiction” of this country. Pearce said courts, citing that language, concluded for years that did not entitle Native Americans to citizenship even though they were clearly born within the country’s borders.
It was only after Congress specifically altered the law regarding Indians that situation changed.
And four out of five of them are “anchor babies,” the Pew Hispanic Center concluded.
The figures, which the organization calculated based on 2009 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, are the best estimates to date of the scope of the issue which has resulted in calls to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny automatic citizenship to children solely by virtue of their birth within this country.
That percentage of children of illegal immigrant parents might be increasing.
The overall figure is about 6.8 percent of all children 17 and younger have at least one illegal immigrant parent.
But the center calculated that about 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States in 2008 were offspring of “unauthorized” immigrants. That computes out to 7.9 percent.
Researchers peg the number of illegal immigrants in the United States at something slightly in excess of 4 percent of the total population.
“But because they are relatively young and have high birth rates, their children make up a much larger share of the newborn population and the child population in this country,” the report says.
The 14th Amendment says that anyone born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of both this country and the state where they reside. Courts have interpreted that to entitle citizenship to those born in the United States regardless of whether one or both parents had no legal right to be here.
Some foes, including Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, argue those rulings are flawed.
He noted that the amendment makes its provisions conditional on the children being “subject to the jurisdiction” of this country. Pearce said courts, citing that language, concluded for years that did not entitle Native Americans to citizenship even though they were clearly born within the country’s borders.
It was only after Congress specifically altered the law regarding Indians that situation changed.
Friday, August 13, 2010
15 Economic Statistics That Just Keep Getting Worse
Economic Collapse - A little over a week ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner penned an article for the New York Times entitled “Welcome To The Recovery” in which he touted the great strides that the U.S. economy was making. But with unemployment still dangerously high and with foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continuing to set all-time records, should we really be talking about a “recovery”? The truth is that the numbers don’t lie, and statistic after statistic shows that the economic fundamentals continue to get progressively worse. The U.S. government can continue to try to pump up with economy with more debt, but the reality is that there is not going to be a legitimate “recovery” until consumer spending rebounds. Consumer spending makes up the vast majority of U.S. GDP. But without good jobs, consumers are not going to be able to spend money. Unfortunately, our jobs base continues to be erode as millions upon millions of middle class jobs are shipped over to China, India and dozens of third world nations by the global predator corporations that now dominate the world economy.
The U.S. government cannot create real wealth out of thin air. It can borrow even more money and flood the economy with even more paper currency, but the short-term “buzz” that creates does absolutely nothing to solve our long-term economic problems.
It is the private sector that actually creates wealth. But unfortunately, over the last several decades we have allowed that wealth to become highly concentrated. Now the giant global predator corporations have decided that American workers aren’t really that desirable after all. They are slowly taking away their factories and their offices and they are moving them to where people are willing to work for one-tenth the pay.
So where does that leave middle class American “consumers”?
Well, it leaves us in a world of hurt.
The following are 15 key economic statistics that just keep getting worse and which reveal the horrific economic plight in which we now find ourselves….
1 – The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a new all-time record of 40.8 million in May. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has set a new all-time record for 18 months in a row. But there is every indication that things are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the number of Americans on food stamps will increase to 43 million in 2011.
2 – The U.S. economy lost 131,000 more jobs during the month of July. But the truth is that the U.S. economy has been bleeding jobs for a long time. According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007. Meanwhile, immigrants (both legal and illegal) continue to pour into this nation in unprecedented numbers.
3 – Americans who are out of work are finding it incredibly difficult to get back into the workforce. In the United States today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.
4 – The U.S. government keeps trying to pump up the economy with debt, and in the process things are getting wildly out of control. According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
5 – The interest on all of this debt is becoming increasingly oppressive. As of July 1st, the U.S. government had spent $355 billion so far in 2010 on interest payments to the holders of the national debt. The total for 2010 should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 billion. According to Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama’s national debt commission, the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion just on interest on the national debt by 2020. Keep in mind that the entire U.S. government budget is less than $4 trillion for the entire year of 2010.
6 – If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
7 – Social Security will pay out more in benefits in 2010 than it receives in payroll taxes. This was not supposed to happen until at least 2015. In the years ahead, these new “Social Security deficits” are projected to be absolutely catastrophic.
8 – There are simply far too many retirees and not nearly enough workers to support them. Back in 1950 each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
9 – Wealth continues to become highly concentrated at the top. Since 1973, the average CEO’s salary has increased from 26 times the median income to over 300 times the median income.
10 – According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans ”always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Advertisement)
11 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10% of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one mortgage payment during the January to March time period. That was a new all-time record and represented an increase from 9.1 percent a year ago.
12 – A recent survey of last year’s college graduates found that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation. That was up substantially from 63 percent in 2006.
13 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
14 – The total number of U.S. bank failures passed the 100 mark in July of this year. In 2009, the total number of U.S. bank failures did not pass the century barrier until October.
15 – The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.
Any rational observer (and clearly U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does not qualify) can see that the foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart. The rapidly accumulating mountain of debt that has fueled our “prosperity” is impossible to repay and is going to progressively choke the life out of our economic system. The good jobs that we have allowed to be shipped out of our country are never coming back. Every single day, more wealth flows out of this country than flows into it.
Anyone who claims that things are getting “better” is either ignorant, completely deluded or is purposely lying.
The U.S. economy is not getting “better”.
The U.S. economy is dying.
You should adjust your plans accordingly.
The U.S. government cannot create real wealth out of thin air. It can borrow even more money and flood the economy with even more paper currency, but the short-term “buzz” that creates does absolutely nothing to solve our long-term economic problems.
It is the private sector that actually creates wealth. But unfortunately, over the last several decades we have allowed that wealth to become highly concentrated. Now the giant global predator corporations have decided that American workers aren’t really that desirable after all. They are slowly taking away their factories and their offices and they are moving them to where people are willing to work for one-tenth the pay.
So where does that leave middle class American “consumers”?
Well, it leaves us in a world of hurt.
The following are 15 key economic statistics that just keep getting worse and which reveal the horrific economic plight in which we now find ourselves….
1 – The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a new all-time record of 40.8 million in May. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has set a new all-time record for 18 months in a row. But there is every indication that things are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the number of Americans on food stamps will increase to 43 million in 2011.
2 – The U.S. economy lost 131,000 more jobs during the month of July. But the truth is that the U.S. economy has been bleeding jobs for a long time. According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007. Meanwhile, immigrants (both legal and illegal) continue to pour into this nation in unprecedented numbers.
3 – Americans who are out of work are finding it incredibly difficult to get back into the workforce. In the United States today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.
4 – The U.S. government keeps trying to pump up the economy with debt, and in the process things are getting wildly out of control. According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
5 – The interest on all of this debt is becoming increasingly oppressive. As of July 1st, the U.S. government had spent $355 billion so far in 2010 on interest payments to the holders of the national debt. The total for 2010 should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 billion. According to Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama’s national debt commission, the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion just on interest on the national debt by 2020. Keep in mind that the entire U.S. government budget is less than $4 trillion for the entire year of 2010.
6 – If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
7 – Social Security will pay out more in benefits in 2010 than it receives in payroll taxes. This was not supposed to happen until at least 2015. In the years ahead, these new “Social Security deficits” are projected to be absolutely catastrophic.
8 – There are simply far too many retirees and not nearly enough workers to support them. Back in 1950 each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
9 – Wealth continues to become highly concentrated at the top. Since 1973, the average CEO’s salary has increased from 26 times the median income to over 300 times the median income.
10 – According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans ”always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Advertisement)
11 – The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10% of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one mortgage payment during the January to March time period. That was a new all-time record and represented an increase from 9.1 percent a year ago.
12 – A recent survey of last year’s college graduates found that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation. That was up substantially from 63 percent in 2006.
13 – During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
14 – The total number of U.S. bank failures passed the 100 mark in July of this year. In 2009, the total number of U.S. bank failures did not pass the century barrier until October.
15 – The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.
Any rational observer (and clearly U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does not qualify) can see that the foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart. The rapidly accumulating mountain of debt that has fueled our “prosperity” is impossible to repay and is going to progressively choke the life out of our economic system. The good jobs that we have allowed to be shipped out of our country are never coming back. Every single day, more wealth flows out of this country than flows into it.
Anyone who claims that things are getting “better” is either ignorant, completely deluded or is purposely lying.
The U.S. economy is not getting “better”.
The U.S. economy is dying.
You should adjust your plans accordingly.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
U.S. Is Bankrupt And We Don't Even Know It
Laurence Kotlikoff - Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.
Double Our Taxes
To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.
Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.
Is the IMF bonkers?
No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.
‘Unofficial’ Liabilities
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.
The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.
$4 Trillion Bill
How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.
Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.
And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.
Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.
Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.
Laurence Kotlikoff - This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.
Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”
(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.
Double Our Taxes
To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.
Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.
Is the IMF bonkers?
No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.
‘Unofficial’ Liabilities
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.
The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.
$4 Trillion Bill
How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.
Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.
And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.
Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.
Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.
Laurence Kotlikoff - This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.
Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”
(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Gallup Predicts A Republican Party Rout In The Midterms Based On Obama's Popularity Rating
Tyler Gurden - Gallup presents some troubling statistics for the democrats as we approach mid-term elections (a mere three months away). In a nutshell, the party of a president who has a sub-50% rating into midterms, has lost, on average, 36 seats since 1946. Alternatively, presidents with a popularity rating over 50%, lose just 14. As Gallup says: “The clear implication is that the Democrats are vulnerable to losing a significant number of House seats this fall with Barack Obama’s approval rating averaging 45% during the last two full weeks of Gallup Daily tracking. The Republicans would need to gain 40 House seats to retake majority control.”
Of course, the administration (and its dwindling members) is well-aware of this fact, which is why the next three months will likely see a record amount of pandering, populism and outright manipulation of everything that can be manipulated: that includes mortgages rates, and of course, stocks. Which leads us to observe the calendar of FOMC meetings until November: there are two - tomorrow and September 21. However, for a Fed loosening decision to have a material impact, the September meeting is likely cutting it too close to the election date, as the market will likely not have enough time to digest a favorable outcome, or in turn will be into its reactionary phase by the time November rolls around. Furthermore, the traditionally busy post-Labor day docket will likely mean events on the economic front already have to be in motion by then. Lastly, the fact that the Fed will have just a bare minimum quorum of just four directors through September 10 (at a minimum), means that any decision in the 11 days between then and the 21st will likely be far more problematic than one which has to be taken tomorrow. Which is why from a purely political calendar point of view, tomorrow’s Fed meeting is likely seen by the administration as a make or break. The tenuous 40 seat lead which will likely disappear should the current economic trajectory not change, is certainly on the radar for both Obama, and the very independent Federal Reserve.
More observations from Gallup:
On a historical basis, the Democrats under Jimmy Carter suffered the slimmest seat loss of a party whose president was below 50% approval, losing 11 seats in the 1978 midterms. More recently, Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006 saw their parties lose enough seats in the House to turn party control over to the opposition party when they had less than majority approval.
The president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterm elections, regardless of how well the president is rated by the public. Since World War II, only Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2002 saw their parties gain seats in a midterm. Both men had approval ratings above 60% at the time of those elections. However, the parties of the other three presidents with ratings above 60% (Eisenhower in 1954, Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in 1986) lost seats.
In general, though, the more popular a president is, the fewer seats his party loses, as presidents with approval ratings above 60% have averaged just a three-seat loss.
Of course, the administration (and its dwindling members) is well-aware of this fact, which is why the next three months will likely see a record amount of pandering, populism and outright manipulation of everything that can be manipulated: that includes mortgages rates, and of course, stocks. Which leads us to observe the calendar of FOMC meetings until November: there are two - tomorrow and September 21. However, for a Fed loosening decision to have a material impact, the September meeting is likely cutting it too close to the election date, as the market will likely not have enough time to digest a favorable outcome, or in turn will be into its reactionary phase by the time November rolls around. Furthermore, the traditionally busy post-Labor day docket will likely mean events on the economic front already have to be in motion by then. Lastly, the fact that the Fed will have just a bare minimum quorum of just four directors through September 10 (at a minimum), means that any decision in the 11 days between then and the 21st will likely be far more problematic than one which has to be taken tomorrow. Which is why from a purely political calendar point of view, tomorrow’s Fed meeting is likely seen by the administration as a make or break. The tenuous 40 seat lead which will likely disappear should the current economic trajectory not change, is certainly on the radar for both Obama, and the very independent Federal Reserve.
More observations from Gallup:
On a historical basis, the Democrats under Jimmy Carter suffered the slimmest seat loss of a party whose president was below 50% approval, losing 11 seats in the 1978 midterms. More recently, Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006 saw their parties lose enough seats in the House to turn party control over to the opposition party when they had less than majority approval.
The president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterm elections, regardless of how well the president is rated by the public. Since World War II, only Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2002 saw their parties gain seats in a midterm. Both men had approval ratings above 60% at the time of those elections. However, the parties of the other three presidents with ratings above 60% (Eisenhower in 1954, Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in 1986) lost seats.
In general, though, the more popular a president is, the fewer seats his party loses, as presidents with approval ratings above 60% have averaged just a three-seat loss.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Economist Herald A Great New Depression
Steve Watson - The world is currently experiencing the modern day equivalent of the Great Depression, according to a prominent economist who has added his voice to scores of others now forecasting ongoing economic doom on a scale not seen since the 1930s.
Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC Monday that he sees the stock market bottoming out in October as the world has entered significant financial depression.
"Equities are for losers and bond markets for winners. Equities are simply for people who like losing money," Griffiths said.
"A double-dip is inevitable and imminent, as Keynesian stimulus measures have never worked anywhere. We are in the equivalent of a Great Depression following 3 years of credit crisis," he added.
Griffiths also says he has charted a 20-year secular downturn in the West, which we are currently halfway through.
Griffiths’ comments echo those of other notable economists and experts who have concluded that zero growth, mass unemployment, and devastating monetary tightening spells depression on a 1932 level.
With real measures of unemployment having been at around 20% and rising for some time, other analysts have pointed out that the numbers are in the same ballpark as the Great Depression.
The number of Americans relying on food stamps is at a record level of over 40.8 million, that is one out of every eight, with the figure projected to rise to 43.3 million next year. At the height of the Great Depression, the rate was just one out of thirty-five Americans.
Furthermore, the M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the all the stimulus activity.
July’s dismal jobs report and forecasts of even weaker job growth ahead, along with signs of food inflation, also signals an era of stagflation is upon us, a phenomenon not seen during even the Great Depression.
Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense
Other economists are beginning to pin the blame for the continuing spiral into depression at the feet of the central bankers:
"The major problem is that quantitative easing has been counter-productive." Brendan Brown, head of research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities tells CNBC.
"The central banks have stopped prices from falling. When prices fall, people buy but by shoring up asset prices the central bankers have stood in the way of recovery," he added.
"The big risk is that the Fed reacts to its own depression. The Fed could over-react and would be better off going on holiday rather than announcing yet more QE," Brown said on the eve of a Fed meeting to discuss more QE.
Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC Monday that he sees the stock market bottoming out in October as the world has entered significant financial depression.
"Equities are for losers and bond markets for winners. Equities are simply for people who like losing money," Griffiths said.
"A double-dip is inevitable and imminent, as Keynesian stimulus measures have never worked anywhere. We are in the equivalent of a Great Depression following 3 years of credit crisis," he added.
Griffiths also says he has charted a 20-year secular downturn in the West, which we are currently halfway through.
Griffiths’ comments echo those of other notable economists and experts who have concluded that zero growth, mass unemployment, and devastating monetary tightening spells depression on a 1932 level.
With real measures of unemployment having been at around 20% and rising for some time, other analysts have pointed out that the numbers are in the same ballpark as the Great Depression.
The number of Americans relying on food stamps is at a record level of over 40.8 million, that is one out of every eight, with the figure projected to rise to 43.3 million next year. At the height of the Great Depression, the rate was just one out of thirty-five Americans.
Furthermore, the M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the all the stimulus activity.
July’s dismal jobs report and forecasts of even weaker job growth ahead, along with signs of food inflation, also signals an era of stagflation is upon us, a phenomenon not seen during even the Great Depression.
Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense
Other economists are beginning to pin the blame for the continuing spiral into depression at the feet of the central bankers:
"The major problem is that quantitative easing has been counter-productive." Brendan Brown, head of research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities tells CNBC.
"The central banks have stopped prices from falling. When prices fall, people buy but by shoring up asset prices the central bankers have stood in the way of recovery," he added.
"The big risk is that the Fed reacts to its own depression. The Fed could over-react and would be better off going on holiday rather than announcing yet more QE," Brown said on the eve of a Fed meeting to discuss more QE.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Texas, 60,000 Babies Of Noncitizens Get U.S. Birthright
Sherry Jacobson - As Republican members of Congress press for changes to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, preventing automatic citizenship for babies born to illegal immigrants, opponents insist the debate is not really about babies.
Instead, they say it is about politics and votes – not fixing the immigration system.
Still, the debate could resonate in Texas, where not only 1.5 million illegal immigrants are estimated to reside but at least 60,000 babies are added to their households annually.
Parkland Memorial Hospital delivers more of those babies than any other hospital in the state. Last year at Parkland, 11,071 babies were born to women who were noncitizens, about 74 percent of total deliveries. Most of these women are believed to be in the country illegally.
State Rep. Rafael AnchÃa, D-Dallas, accused Republicans of using the births to generate an explosive election issue.
"They're pulling the pin on the immigration grenade," he said. "It's all about the November elections and continuing to use the immigration issue as a wedge to win votes this fall."
But to Republicans, the emerging national debate is long overdue, considering that millions of immigrants have been living illegally in this country for years.
"They're violating our law, and we're giving their children the benefit of U.S. citizenship," said state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, whose 2009 bill in the Legislature would have challenged the birthright of immigrant children.
That bill died in committee, although Berman has vowed to file another version next year that would prohibit the state from issuing birth certificates to the children of "illegal aliens."
"I've checked the Congressional Record for when the 14th Amendment was written, and the author was quoted as saying that it did not apply to foreigners," he said. "There's no question in my mind about it."
Amendment's history
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 as a way to block state laws that prevented former slaves from becoming citizens. It also effectively overruled the Dred Scott decision of 1857 in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that slaves were mere property and could not become citizens.
The amendment offered a broad definition of citizenship in one simple sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
Donald Kerwin, a vice president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said he feared that altering the current interpretation of that law "would essentially restore the Dred Scott reasoning and create a hereditary underclass in the United States.
"These children, who didn't break any laws, would have no rights and nowhere to go," he said. "It's a very extreme position."
The effort to reinterpret the 14th Amendment has been talked about for years and been targeted by numerous congressional measures that went nowhere. Last year's unsuccessful Birthright Citizenship Act, which had about 100 co-sponsors in Congress, would have required at least one parent to be a U.S. citizen for a baby to become an American citizen at birth.
The difference in this year's effort to change the 14th Amendment is that prominent Republicans are offering their support and making public statements demanding a national debate of the issue.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called Wednesday for a review of "birthright citizenship," after concluding that illegal immigrants had taken advantage of the post-Civil War constitutional provision.
"We need to have hearings," he said. "We need to consult constitutional scholars and study what the implications are."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he might introduce a constitutional amendment that would repeal the citizenship provision of the amendment.
And both Arizona Republican senators, John McCain and John Kyl, announced that the time was ripe for such a change.
"If both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?" Kyl said recently on a Sunday morning talk show.
Changing the Constitution, however, is not as simple as getting a bill through Congress by majority vote.
Amendments have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, then ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. It has happened only 27 times in U.S. history, most recently in 1992 in reference to congressional pay increases.
This latest effort would fall far short of tackling the entire Latino population now living illegally in the U.S. – the 11 million to 12 million people, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center – because it would target only the children.
That distinction has drawn an outcry from some, who believe the U.S. should be embracing its growing diversity rather than trying to disenfranchise the youngest elements of it.
"Babies are born without awareness, while other individuals chose to migrate because they want something," said Dr. Jacobo Kupersztoch, an associate professor at Richland College. "If we want to grow and we want to continue to be on the top of the world, we have to continue to integrate these people into our system."
16 percent of births
In Texas, between 60,000 to 65,000 babies achieve U.S. citizenship annually by being born in the state's hospitals, according to a tally released by the state's Health and Human Services Commission. Last year, such births represented almost 16 percent of the total births statewide.
Between 2001 and 2009, births to illegal immigrant women totaled 542,152 in Texas alone.
"The next 10 years will be an even more transformative decade demographically for Texas," said Dr. Roberto Calderon, an associate history professor at the University of North Texas and a Latin American expert following the debate.
He speculated that the Republicans probably were aware of this ongoing demographic shift and how it might threaten their party since Hispanic voters tend to support Democrats.
"Manipulating the status ... the rights and the opportunities for Latinos is the only avenue many on the conservative right see as a solution to remaining viable electorally," he said. "They're expecting what used to be safe Republican seats on the state and federal level will no longer be so safe."
However, Dr. Steve Murdock, a past director of the U.S. Census Bureau, said it would be difficult – even impossible – to turn this demographic tide by targeting the legal status of future births.
"It might slow it down some," he said. "But the idea that the majority of Texas Hispanics are illegal is ludicrous. The vast majority are citizens."
Murdock, previously the state's chief demographer and now a professor at Rice University, said the growth of Hispanics as a group in Texas has more to do with their relatively younger ages than the Anglo majority and their higher birthrates.
"In the last decade in Texas, over 60 percent of the state population increase was due to Hispanics," he said. "The idea that the growth of Hispanics is sudden or happened only in the past few years or only in Texas is not correct."
Instead, they say it is about politics and votes – not fixing the immigration system.
Still, the debate could resonate in Texas, where not only 1.5 million illegal immigrants are estimated to reside but at least 60,000 babies are added to their households annually.
Parkland Memorial Hospital delivers more of those babies than any other hospital in the state. Last year at Parkland, 11,071 babies were born to women who were noncitizens, about 74 percent of total deliveries. Most of these women are believed to be in the country illegally.
State Rep. Rafael AnchÃa, D-Dallas, accused Republicans of using the births to generate an explosive election issue.
"They're pulling the pin on the immigration grenade," he said. "It's all about the November elections and continuing to use the immigration issue as a wedge to win votes this fall."
But to Republicans, the emerging national debate is long overdue, considering that millions of immigrants have been living illegally in this country for years.
"They're violating our law, and we're giving their children the benefit of U.S. citizenship," said state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, whose 2009 bill in the Legislature would have challenged the birthright of immigrant children.
That bill died in committee, although Berman has vowed to file another version next year that would prohibit the state from issuing birth certificates to the children of "illegal aliens."
"I've checked the Congressional Record for when the 14th Amendment was written, and the author was quoted as saying that it did not apply to foreigners," he said. "There's no question in my mind about it."
Amendment's history
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 as a way to block state laws that prevented former slaves from becoming citizens. It also effectively overruled the Dred Scott decision of 1857 in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that slaves were mere property and could not become citizens.
The amendment offered a broad definition of citizenship in one simple sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
Donald Kerwin, a vice president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said he feared that altering the current interpretation of that law "would essentially restore the Dred Scott reasoning and create a hereditary underclass in the United States.
"These children, who didn't break any laws, would have no rights and nowhere to go," he said. "It's a very extreme position."
The effort to reinterpret the 14th Amendment has been talked about for years and been targeted by numerous congressional measures that went nowhere. Last year's unsuccessful Birthright Citizenship Act, which had about 100 co-sponsors in Congress, would have required at least one parent to be a U.S. citizen for a baby to become an American citizen at birth.
The difference in this year's effort to change the 14th Amendment is that prominent Republicans are offering their support and making public statements demanding a national debate of the issue.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called Wednesday for a review of "birthright citizenship," after concluding that illegal immigrants had taken advantage of the post-Civil War constitutional provision.
"We need to have hearings," he said. "We need to consult constitutional scholars and study what the implications are."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he might introduce a constitutional amendment that would repeal the citizenship provision of the amendment.
And both Arizona Republican senators, John McCain and John Kyl, announced that the time was ripe for such a change.
"If both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?" Kyl said recently on a Sunday morning talk show.
Changing the Constitution, however, is not as simple as getting a bill through Congress by majority vote.
Amendments have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, then ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. It has happened only 27 times in U.S. history, most recently in 1992 in reference to congressional pay increases.
This latest effort would fall far short of tackling the entire Latino population now living illegally in the U.S. – the 11 million to 12 million people, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center – because it would target only the children.
That distinction has drawn an outcry from some, who believe the U.S. should be embracing its growing diversity rather than trying to disenfranchise the youngest elements of it.
"Babies are born without awareness, while other individuals chose to migrate because they want something," said Dr. Jacobo Kupersztoch, an associate professor at Richland College. "If we want to grow and we want to continue to be on the top of the world, we have to continue to integrate these people into our system."
16 percent of births
In Texas, between 60,000 to 65,000 babies achieve U.S. citizenship annually by being born in the state's hospitals, according to a tally released by the state's Health and Human Services Commission. Last year, such births represented almost 16 percent of the total births statewide.
Between 2001 and 2009, births to illegal immigrant women totaled 542,152 in Texas alone.
"The next 10 years will be an even more transformative decade demographically for Texas," said Dr. Roberto Calderon, an associate history professor at the University of North Texas and a Latin American expert following the debate.
He speculated that the Republicans probably were aware of this ongoing demographic shift and how it might threaten their party since Hispanic voters tend to support Democrats.
"Manipulating the status ... the rights and the opportunities for Latinos is the only avenue many on the conservative right see as a solution to remaining viable electorally," he said. "They're expecting what used to be safe Republican seats on the state and federal level will no longer be so safe."
However, Dr. Steve Murdock, a past director of the U.S. Census Bureau, said it would be difficult – even impossible – to turn this demographic tide by targeting the legal status of future births.
"It might slow it down some," he said. "But the idea that the majority of Texas Hispanics are illegal is ludicrous. The vast majority are citizens."
Murdock, previously the state's chief demographer and now a professor at Rice University, said the growth of Hispanics as a group in Texas has more to do with their relatively younger ages than the Anglo majority and their higher birthrates.
"In the last decade in Texas, over 60 percent of the state population increase was due to Hispanics," he said. "The idea that the growth of Hispanics is sudden or happened only in the past few years or only in Texas is not correct."
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Camden N.J. Closing Library System
CAMDEN, N.J. - New Jersey's most impoverished city will close all three branches of its public library at year's end unless a rescue can be pulled off.
Camden's library board says the libraries won't be able to afford to stay open past Dec. 31 because of budget cuts from the city government. The city had its subsidy from the state cut.
The library board president says the library system, which opened in 1904, is preparing to donate, sell or destroy its collections, including 187,000 books.
Board president Martin McKernan says keeping the books around would pose a fire hazard.
Camden's library system is not the only one having financial problems. Fourteen libraries in Queens cut weekend services earlier this year.
As people looked for ways to weather the tough economic storm, many have found relief at their local library.
Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, said he started noticing a large increase in library attendance when the stock market went into its steep decline. And that attendance has continued to build. "We've got more people visiting us now than we've had in half a century," he said.
New York library customer Elle Byram said she's trying to avoid coffee shops where she'll end up spending money. She said the library "is spacious, it has free internet access. You meet cool people, but it's not really supposed to be a social place."
"What the down economy is doing is reminding people that these libraries are there for them," LeClerc said. "Lots of folks have been going around, I think naively in the past, saying 'do we still need libraries?' Well the proof in the pudding is now 'yes.' Libraries are as essential, if not more essential, now than they have been in the last fifty years.
Camden's library board says the libraries won't be able to afford to stay open past Dec. 31 because of budget cuts from the city government. The city had its subsidy from the state cut.
The library board president says the library system, which opened in 1904, is preparing to donate, sell or destroy its collections, including 187,000 books.
Board president Martin McKernan says keeping the books around would pose a fire hazard.
Camden's library system is not the only one having financial problems. Fourteen libraries in Queens cut weekend services earlier this year.
As people looked for ways to weather the tough economic storm, many have found relief at their local library.
Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, said he started noticing a large increase in library attendance when the stock market went into its steep decline. And that attendance has continued to build. "We've got more people visiting us now than we've had in half a century," he said.
New York library customer Elle Byram said she's trying to avoid coffee shops where she'll end up spending money. She said the library "is spacious, it has free internet access. You meet cool people, but it's not really supposed to be a social place."
"What the down economy is doing is reminding people that these libraries are there for them," LeClerc said. "Lots of folks have been going around, I think naively in the past, saying 'do we still need libraries?' Well the proof in the pudding is now 'yes.' Libraries are as essential, if not more essential, now than they have been in the last fifty years.
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