Is Greece The New Future Of America

Michael S. Rozeff - Greece has a sovereign debt problem. The bonds of the Greek government have been downgraded by a major rating service. Their prices have fallen sharply in the market. This means that the risk is high that the government will default on its sovereign debt.

The interest rates that the Greek government must pay in order to borrow have risen sharply. This is worsening the government’s solvency and budget problems.
The government faces default. The government’s various spending cutbacks haven’t solved the problem.
They cannot solve the problem. It’s apparently too late. The government would have to restructure its debt by renegotiating with its multiple lenders. That’s a difficult and time-consuming process. It would have to work out repayment while simultaneously altering government policies so that the country’s private market economy could expand. This involves knotty political and economic issues that take years to resolve. The government doesn’t have this time.
The problem traces back to the earlier fact that for some years the government was able to borrow heavily at low interest rates. This means that it was able to sell its bonds at high prices. The problem arose because these market prices were too high.
The sovereign debt of Greece became overvalued due to central bank/banking system money inflation. This inflation, it should be strongly emphasized, originated in the fiat dollar system of the United States and the Federal Reserve.
The central banks of the world and the world money supply are heavily influenced by what the Federal Reserve does through a kind of multiplier effect, because foreign central banks respond to Fed inflation with inflation of their own. Ronald I. McKinnon explained this important process in his June 1982 article in the American Economic Review. We see it happening today when foreign banks have to inflate in reaction to QE2 in order to prevent their currencies from strengthening too much against the depreciating dollar.
The high bond prices encouraged the Greek government to borrow too heavily and to raise government spending. But since its spending was not productive, it didn’t produce high enough tax revenues to service the debt. In time the government faced the problem it now has, which is not enough tax cash flows or income to service the debt.
Monetary inflation, in other words, causes overvalued sovereign debt. This sets in motion larger government spending, higher debt loads, and an eventual fiscal crisis when tax revenues fall short of what is required to maintain government spending and service the debt.
This process goes on in addition to the business cycle effects, well-known in Austrian economics, that inflation produces. In keeping with the analogous finance literature on overvalued equity, I identify this process as one that involves agency costs of overvalued sovereign debt.
This process is only made worse when major lenders, such as large banks, have reason to believe that they occupy a privileged position and that their bond positions will be paid off by political means if necessary. These lenders then all the more become willing to buy overvalued sovereign debt.
This effect of inflation is important because of its broad applicability in an age of inflation. In particular, a number of other countries including the U.S. have followed the Greek path.
Michael C. Jensen was the first to analyze the agency costs of overvalued equity. Everything that he says about the dire effects on a company’s behavior from having an overpriced stock find a parallel when a government issues overpriced debt. The parallels are not perfect, of course. In fact, every bit of analysis suggests that the problem will be worse for overvalued sovereign debt.
Intuition can be a misleading guide in these matters. We are taught that a high stock price is a good thing, and it is a good thing when it accurately reflects value creation in the enterprise. But not all high stock prices arise from value creation. Central bank money inflation fosters speculation. Speculation leads to asset price bubbles. Rising prices attract naive investors.
We have twice seen in recent memory how government/central bank inflation-produced speculation leads to a breakdown in critically important internal market practices and institutions. First we had overvalued stocks break down in 2000 amid hundreds of cases of overstated earnings. Accompanying this were accounting and auditing scandals as well as law firm and investment banking misbehavior. Second, starting in 2006 and continuing to the present, we have the real estate bubble. We have seen similar scandalous behavior pervading the mortgage and real estate businesses. This has included all the major banks, all major investment bankers, the government agencies like Fannie Mae, legislatures, law firms, bond rating agencies, insurance companies, and auditors. The scandal went even more deeply into the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve through their multiple bailout activities.
This breakdown in institutions that are supposed to act as professional agents finds its root cause in government that goes way beyond its appropriate bounds.
In the case of overvalued equity, Jensen points to “earnings management” that becomes lying about earnings as one means by which management becomes corrupted in order to come through with earnings numbers that justify its overvalued equity. The analogue is for governments to lie about the beneficial effects of the programs and activities that they are promoting and funding with their excessive debts. We hear politicians today justify huge sales of overpriced government debt as worthwhile because they are fighting recession, producing jobs and green shoots, kick-starting the economy, and providing national security. Like phony accounting numbers for earnings, these are all myths and lies. We hear Federal Reserve officials peddling similar misinformation to justify their bond purchases that are helping to keep sovereign debt overpriced.
Jensen suggests that “manning the helm of an overvalued company feels great at first.” Among other things, the management bonuses rise steeply. Politicians likewise score among voters and secure campaign contributions when inflation stimulates some economic activity initially. They can point to housing projects going up or a falling unemployment rate or the numbers of people who are first-time homeowners. The financial and housing industries shower money on them. The Federal Reserve can build up its image by broadcasting how it prevented the financial system from collapsing.

But, when there is overvalued equity, Jensen says “massive pain lies ahead”. A company cannot produce real earnings to justify its overpriced stock. It turns to earnings manipulation and fraud. It turns to wasteful acquisitions. Nortel acquired 19 companies between 1997 and 2001.When Nortel stock fell by 95 percent, not only was its value destroyed but also that of these acquisitions. Companies seek out unworkable products and build up unusable capacity.
The same massive pain goes for governments that overextend themselves with excessive borrowing at then-low rates of interest. This is evident in Greece. It threatens to become evident elsewhere, including the U.S. When the nation does not produce enough income to service the government debt, some manner of default is bound to occur.
The U.S. is finding it extremely difficult to find a way out of the looming pain that its overvalued sovereign debt has caused. The U.S. has over-issued debt. Its “acquisitions” lie in every area of government spending, in particular, popular social spending programs and a huge military establishment. Huge numbers of Americans have been “acquired” and linked into programs like food stamps.
Huge numbers of Americans expect a future retirement safety net courtesy of Uncle Sam. This is looking less and less likely as time passes. As in the case of overvalued equity that eventually crashes and burns up phantom value, U.S. sovereign debt will crash and burn as the private market economy increasingly cannot produce sufficient revenues to pay the taxes required to service the debts.
The proximate cause of this likelihood is agency costs of overvalued sovereign debt.
That itself traces back to a faulty political system that has destroyed proper constraints on the funding of government and therefore on government size. This has three main aspects. (1) The central bank is able to enter the sovereign debt market at will and keep the price overvalued. (2) The government is able to impose a wide range of taxes in order to fund its programs and debts.(3) There are no limits to government spending and the demand for such spending is infinite.
Let’s look at each of these briefly.


The constraint on money creation has disappeared Government no longer competes with markets for privately-produced and costly money in the form of gold and silver. When government debt promised and paid gold, government had no recourse but to tax its citizens in gold. Without that constraint, government can pay off debt by issuing more debt and more promises to pay off in paper.
The debt is supported in price by government’s powers to tax. As long as the people are able to produce enough income to pay these taxes and are willing to pay them, the system of debt expansion goes on because debts are serviced. The system is dynamically unstable, however. The larger that government becomes, the lower the ability of the private sector to produce real income becomes because government spending is unproductive and prevents capital formation This undermines the ability of people to pay the required taxes. Debt grows but economic growth falls short of debt growth due to low growth in capital formation. Taxes then fall short of spending and deficits rise. The government and the country’s economy then get into an untenable position.
The third aspect is that the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, does not limit government spending or government activities and size, and this lack of limitation is combined with an infinite demand for receipt of government funds among the population. In other words, almost everyone stands ready to rob his neighbor via government taxes and get the proceeds for himself through redistribution in government spending; and there are no limits on how large this thievery can become.
This system is dynamically unstable too. It eventually must run into a wall or limit because the parasitic activities will overwhelm the productive activities. This limit is now in view. The government’s unfunded liabilities ($200 trillion by some estimates) vastly exceed its capacity to tax at current levels. Only by outright expropriation of wealth in the form of saved assets (seizing pensions) or by high levels of taxation that sap human wealth can the promises be kept. Those routes spell massive pain.
If a society does not impose limits on its own parasitic activities, it will eventually destroy itself. If it crushes its productive activities, it will destroy itself. If the society’s people do not impose the proper limits on their own behavior, individually and collectively, then they are setting a course for massive pain.
At this time, Greece does look like the future of America. Is it too late for America? Just about. When I see this society impose some limits on its parasitic behavior and encourage productive behavior, I will become more optimistic. However, I’ve been waiting for that for 40 years and I’ve yet to see it.

Unemployment Claims Keep Rising Higher And Higher

Reuters - New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to 424,000 last week from a revised 414,000 in the prior week, pointing to a painfully slow improvement in the nation's job markets.

The Labor Department on Thursday revised the prior week's claims number up from an originally reported 409,000.

Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast that claims last week would decline to 400,000, rather than rise.

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims, considered a better measure of trends since it smoothes out weekly variations, eased slightly to 438,500 from a revised 440,250.

Last week marked the seventh straight week in which claims topped the 400,000 level, indicating that payroll growth is soft and may continue to be so for some time. A department official said there were no exceptional factors to account for the rise in last week's claims

Sen. Macro Rubio, "A Man On A Mission"

Sissy Willis - "I have been in the Senate just long enough to be disgusted by the reality that Washington has too many people who think their personal political careers are more important than our country’s future," says GOP rising star Marco Rubio, upstaging the Democrats and their media fellow travelers in the "MediScare" drama with a virtuoso solo performance that's bringing the twitterspere to their feet in a virtual standing ovation.

"THIS is how it's done … a man in a field of mice … take the fight to the Dems," twittered ecstatic Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin this morning, joining the throng of us narrative chasers out here in cyberspace retweeting and blogging about newly-minted Florida Senator Marco Rubio's response to the Democrats' "Mediscare" spin. In "Looking for Medicare Solutions, Not Politics As Usual" the first-generation Cuban American hottie uses the example of his immigrant parents to disarm opponents:

For me, Medicare is not a political talking point. My parents immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s. They worked hard for over 40 years to provide their children the chance to do all the things they themselves could not. But they never made much money.

As a result, they retired with precious little in savings. Medicare was and is the only way they could access healthcare.

Having lured his listeners with emotionally charged personal evocations of the American Dream, he reels us in:

Rep. Paul Ryan has offered a plan that would make no changes whatsoever for anyone age 55 and older. I support it because, right now, it is the only plan out there that helps save Medicare. Democrats oppose it. Fine. But, if they have a better way to save Medicare, what are they waiting for to show us? What is their plan to save Medicare?

Either show us how Medicare survives without any changes or show us what changes you propose we make. Anyone who supports doing nothing is a supporter of bankrupting Medicare.

Paul Ryan noticed and twittered a link to Rubio's speech, with editorial content:

Strong message from strong leader.

"I'm telling you, these two would make an unbeatable ticket," twittered diggrbiii aka RB of The Right Sphere and Big Journalism, linking to Ryan's tweet:

Rubio and Ryan should announce they're running on the same ticket. Today. And then go on a year-long speech tour.

Politico's Ben Smith reports that “American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said in an interview today that he thinks the eventual Republican nominee would be well advised to offer Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio a slot on the ticket — and that Rubio, if asked, would likely assent.” According to a new Gallup poll, Romney and Palin are leading the field. Palin/Rubio. Rolls right off the tongue.
Related: The Right Sphere's Brandon Kiser has a dream:

This is probably all a pipe dream, but you have to agree with Jonah Goldberg when he says ”politics is about moments, and this one is calling [Ryan]. Unless someone suddenly rises to the challenge, the cries of ‘Help us, Paul Ryan, you’re our only hope!’ will only get louder.”

Looks like someone named Marco just did.
Update: Fun banter with Brendan Loy on twitter, referencing the "man in a field of mice" opf our title:

Brendan: He should do something about that. Maybe get a cat.

We: Or maybe a mama grizzly.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Sen. Reid Slams Obama On Israel

Ed Morrissey - If Barack Obama got stung by a lecture from Benjamin Netanyahu last week after publicly insisting on using the 1967 borders as a demarcation for a future Palestinian state, at least he expected the leader of Israel to scold him over the demand. He probably didn’t expect one from Harry Reid. Hours after Obama’s attempt to backpedal at AIPAC from Thursday’s speech, Reid denounced even the concept of issuing demands in speeches and declared that only negotiations between the parties could create mutually defensible borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Reid even managed to sound angry about it:   

The most powerful Democrat in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on  Monday night publicly rejected President Barack Obama’s decision to use a recent speech to lay out aspects of a potential peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
“The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table – and nowhere else,” Reid declared in a speech to an annual gathering in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “Those negotiations … will not happen – and their terms will not be set – through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”
When the Senate leader added, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” the lights quickly came up on the vast audience and most in the crowd at the Washington Convention Center rose to their feet and applauded.

Wow. Reid usually only musters that kind of passion when declaring America the loser in a war.
The White House refused comment on Reid’s remarks, but they sting. Obama framed his remarks on Thursday as merely a public statement of the principles that have guided American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for more than a decade, at least, and he’s right about that much. Previous administrations had the good sense to keep that quiet, however, and work on both sides to gain ground (pardon the pun) on an eventual, mutually-acceptable map. Both sides seem to have understood this as well. Now, just as with the earlier fumble on building in Jerusalem, Obama has changed the negotiating dynamic, and not in favor of Israel.
Reid’s speech puts Obama firmly outside of the mainstream on this issue. The White House is finding itself isolated on the fringe and losing the battle of public opinion. If Obama hoped for a game changer with his speech on Thursday, he got one — but not in the way Obama imagined.

Obama Re-Election Campaign Digging Up Dirt On Gov. Chris Christie

Nice Deb- Even though Christie has said on numerous occasions, in no uncertain terms, he. will. not. be running, (“Short of suicide, I don’t really know what I’d have to do to convince you people that I’m not running. I’m not running,” he’s insisted), the Obama camp is spending resources trawling for dirt on the Republican rock-star governor.
The NY Post reports:

The Obama campaign is trying to keep its efforts from public view, concerned they would only elevate Christie’s already impressive standing within the Republican Party, sources said.
The operatives have chosen not to dispatch their own people to New Jersey, but instead are talking to people there and in New York who know Christie from his time in the governor’s office, as a gubernatorial candidate and as US attorney.
Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, did not respond to messages.

That would be Jim, “we will punch them back twice as hard” Messina. Only they’re not “punching back”, they are on the offensive against a man who has never been anything but cordial with the president.
Of rumors that Christie is considering a run, a “flattered” Christie spokesman said:

“This is just wishful thinking . . . He is not running, and he is not cracking the door open even a little bit.”

Since this is how Obama wants to roll, maybe some Republican opposition researchers should  do a little more digging into Obama’s Chicago years, Columbia years, and Occidental years.

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They could start by reading Stanley Kurtz’s “Radical In Chief”, and Jack Cashill’s, Deconstructing Obama.

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And let’s not forget his WH corruption with Michelle Malkin’s;Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

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And then maybe,  just maybe they could look into that puzzling CT Social Security number issue.

See also:

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The Other McCain: Obama’s Smear Machine

On the one hand, this looks like mind-games: Democrats are trying to mess with Republicans’ heads, to promote the notion that Team Obama is unbeatable even by the GOP elite’s “dream candidate.” On the other hand, the fear of a ferocious Chicago-style attack is very real, as the New York Times obliquely notes in its story on Mitch Daniels’ decision:

Saying that his family did not want to go through a campaign, Mr. Daniels became the third high-profile Republican in eight days to choose not to compete for the chance to challenge Mr. Obama. . . .
But after weeks of deliberating in public and making clear that his wife and four daughters had deep reservations — caused in part by the knowledge that they would be exposed to intensive scrutiny over a period in the 1990s when Mr. Daniels and his wife, Cheri, divorced and then remarried — he said he was unsuccessful in swaying his family.

As we know, Obama has no compunction at all about using an opponent’s divorce records to destroy his political career.

Linked by Michelle Malkin in Buzzworthy, thanks!

Only 27% Of Recent College Grads Will Vote For Obama In 2012

Tina Korbe - A recent informal survey of 500 post-grads primarily between the ages of 22 and 28 — 83 percent of whom voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 — found just 27 percent of Obama’s previous youth supporters plan to vote for him again, The Daily Caller reports. That’s a drop of almost 60 points.
In contrast, of those who voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, a vast majority — 80 percent — said they would vote GOP again. An 80 percent majority of those newly disillusioned by Obama said they would consider voting for a Republican in 2012, too.
Why the change? Probably that first paycheck — or the lack thereof.

The bad news for Obama was underlined May 19 with a report by a job-firm Adecco that roughly 60 percent of recent college-grads have not been able to find a full-time job in their preferred area. One-in-five graduates have taken jobs far from their training, one-in-six are dependent on their parents, and one-in-four say they’re in debt, according to the firm’s data.
Overall, roughly one-third of young voters have some college education, and one-half have college degrees, said [Kellyanne] Conway, [president of The Polling Company based in Washington D.C.]. Many are underemployed or unemployed, they’re worried about their debts and economic trends, and they’re worried about the value of their educations, she said. In 2012, she said, “I suspect a fair number will return to Obama, but maybe not enough, and not in the [swing] states where he needs them,” she said.

But maybe another factor is at work here, too. J. Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel, has suggested young people have no direction in which to rebel — except to the right.

[Today's liberals] compliantly conform – like little windup, patchouli-daubed lemmings – to a carnival-prize caricature of what they imagine nonconformity to look like. You know, the usual stuff: neo-Marxism, environmentalist activism, sexual relativism, big-government nanny statism, an actions-without-consequences rendering of reproductive rights, and other such populist nonsense. Simply put, today’s progressive nonconformist conforms …
So what is a young person – brimming over with that instinctive, defiant impulse to rebel against “the man” – to do?
Well, in this up-is-down, spend-money-to-save-money world, conservatives have become the contemporary nonconformists. Today’s rebellious youth are telling the progressive establishment to put its moral-relativist, redistributionist party-line pig swill in its well-used chamber pipe and smoke it.

I’m inclined to think he could be on to something. Independence, self-reliance, personal responsibility — they’re attractive traits. Maybe folks my age have finally figured out a little of that mix would be attractive in them, too. We’re probably a long way from a true “conservative is cool” culture — as Barber points out, we have pretty entrenched liberalism in media, academia and elsewhere to overcome — but, at the very least, this survey suggests a few of those kids who sported “Yes, we can” T-shirts two years ago have decided they’d like to try their own hand at “hope and change” by creating opportunities for themselves — and by voting out an administration that makes it harder to do that.

Latest Gift Of Obamacare Wavier: AARP

Ed Morrissey - No one seems to know what criteria HHS uses to grant or deny waivers to insurers from provisions in ObamaCare.  The White House won’t release the names of those insurers and employers refused waivers or discuss denials at all.  But maybe, just maybe, we could all agree that organizations that publicly pushed ObamaCare to approval should be ineligible to escape its consequences?

The Daily Caller has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rate review rules, which it finalized on Thursday, exempt “Medigap” policy providers, like the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), from oversight when such providers increase payment rates for their supplemental insurance plans.
Insurance providers who aren’t exempt from Obamacare’s rate review rules are required to publicly release and explain some health care payment rate increases.

Let’s not forget that AARP had a distinct interest in seeing ObamaCare pass, because it helped eliminate competition for AARP’s supplemental insurance program:

The AARP is the nation’s biggest seller of Medigap policies, or supplemental healthcare plans that add onto what Medicare won’t cover for seniors. The senior citizens interest group advocated for Obamacare to include an attack on Medigap policies’ biggest competitor, Medicare Advantage.
Though the White House and HHS dismiss allegations of political favoritism when it comes to who’s getting exceptions from the new health care regulations – such as in the recent uproar over the disproportionate number of Obamacare waivers that went to companies in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district — Obamacare critics say the mere appearance of the administration helping friends is disturbing.

The attack on Medicare Advantage plans was a crucial part of ObamaCare.  Democrats insisted that the public-private partnership was driving the cost curve upward and needed to be drastically curtailed, and the bill sliced $500 billion out of Medicare, largely at the expense of Medicare Advantage.  Fortunately for the AARP, which was conducting a public-relations campaign to drum up support for ObamaCare, those changes didn’t impact their own Medigap plans.
Thanks to the passage of ObamaCare, Medicare Advantage plans began disappearing, and the choices are much fewer for seniors and the disabled who want supplemental insurance.  That puts AARP in perfect position to take advantage (pun intended) of the lack of choice.  And now they don’t even have to deal with the few consequences that their favorite bill created for them.
How coincidentally fortunate for them!
We’re way beyond “mere appearance” here.  If the AARP and the labor unions that backed ObamaCare need waivers from its consequences, then we all do.

Cornel West Slams Obama And Creates Debate Among African-Americans

Krissah Thompson - Scholar Cornel West’s scathing critique of President Obama’s liberal bona fides in a series of recent interviews has ignited a furious debate among African-American bloggers and commentators.
The well-known Princeton professor and author, who has released rap albums and starred in Hollywood films, had been a supporter of Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign but now calls the president a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator,” West told Chris Hedges in an interview for the liberal Political blog Truthdig.
White House officials declined to respond to West’s remarks, which have sparked a hot conversation this week, but have have been content to allow others to take up the president’s defense.
Several commentaries from African American scholars and bloggers have particularly disputed West’s take on Obama and race. West told Hedges: “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men…It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. ”
Melissa Harris-Perry, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and politics, wrote a column for the Nation calling that comment “utter hilarity coming from Cornel West who has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ. ...Harvard and Princeton are not places that are particularly noted for their liberating history for black men.”
Eddie Gladue, a professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton, said African Americans in academia had been discussing West’s comments for days, particularly looking at how he had deployed race in his critique of Obama.
“West came out swinging,” said Glaude, who engaged in the debate on Twitter saying he found West’s political critique much more substantive than his “racial reasoning.”
West argued that Obama’s politics are more centrist than progressive and do not uplift the poor.
“It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made that this was going to be a newcomer ... who wanted to reassure the establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton,” West told Hedges.
West’s comments, which continued in a Tuesday night interview on MSNBC, intensified the criticism of Obama that began after the election. During the 2008 campaign, West said, he traveled to 65 campaign events for the presidential candidate.
According to West, the souring of his relationship with Obama came to a peak following a speech the president gave in July 2010 at the National Urban League’s centennial conference. West said Obama made a beeline to him after the speech and “cussed” him out, saying that West ought to be ashamed for saying Obama is not a progressive. White House aides did not deny that the scolding occured.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a close Obama ally who has sparred with West over the president, said Tuesday that the issue comes down to a misunderstanding of Obama’s role. “This is the first time in this country that we have an African American president. He is not the president of African Americans,” Sharpton said. “The problem we’re seeing with too many older-minded people is you don’t want the next generation. You want clones. And people don’t have to be your clone to validate your sacrifice.”
West, who did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post, sent out this message via Twitter last night in response to the criticism: “This discussion is in no way about me, it has to do with poor and working people having low priority in US governmental policy including the Obama Administration. My personal words had to do with being disrespected by the President. People are disrespected everyday, and they can raise their voices in response to it.”
And he sent out a link to his interview with Hedges.

Obamacare Waviers Gone Wild

Lou Dobbs - Republicans say that the shear number of applications for waivers to the president's healthcare reform law shows its a bad law.

Furthermore, GOP leaders are characterizing the issuance of waivers in Nancy Pelosi's district as "crony politics or crony capitalism."

"I don't blame people for trying to get out from underneath it - that it is an awful law," said former Minnesota governor Pawlenty, "But when you have that many needs for exemptions, it tells you that the law - it is a warning sign that the law is broken and doesn't work."

California Gov't: Some State Workers Get Huge Payouts For Unused Vaction Time

Jack Dolan - Managers in California's government routinely ignore official limits on the number of vacation days their employees can save, compelling the state to cut huge checks — many worth six figures — for unused time off when workers retire.
Prison doctor Fong Lai received $594,976 when he retired in 2010. Like most state employees, Lai was supposed to bank no more than 80 days of vacation, but his payment represented more than 2 1/2 years of unused time off.

Jay Wickizer, an administrator for the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, saved about the same number of days, resulting in a $294,440 check upon his retirement last year. Former parole agent Thomas Berns accrued nearly three years' worth of time off, allowing him a $268,990 cash-out, state records show.
Such payouts are almost unheard of in the private sector. Most companies allow employees to accrue a few weeks of vacation, but after that it's "use it or lose it," said Steven Frates, research director of Pepperdine University's Davenport Institute on public policy. "The theory behind vacations, of course, is rest and recuperation and recharge."
But in state government, lax oversight, understaffing and a spate of furloughs in recent years have resulted in widespread stockpiling.
"This is a problem throughout state service because the vacation caps have not been enforced," said Gil Duran, spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor plans to chip away at the vacation stockpiles with a "budget that is honest and doesn't rely on gimmicks like the furlough program," Duran said.
Of slightly more than 14,000 full-time employees who took a lump-sum payout for unused time when they left state jobs last year, 29% received checks for more than 80 days' pay, according to a Times analysis of data from the state controller's office. Such departure payments in 2010 were compared with each employee's regular pay in 2009 to estimate the number of days off those payments represented.
Nearly 400 employees left state jobs last year with checks equaling or exceeding their previous year's salary, the data show. In most cases, that meant the workers had saved more than a year's worth of time off — more than 260 work days. Lump-sum payments can include money from legal settlements, but the state cannot say which employees received such compensation without violating the confidentiality of personnel records, according to Jacob Roper, spokesman for Controller John Chiang.
The state calculates the payouts using employees' final pay rate, which is generally higher than what they earned earlier in their careers. So the saved vacation days cost the state more than they would have if the employee had taken them as they were earned.
And the number of employees who benefit from large stashes of vacation is actually larger than payroll records show, state officials acknowledge, because some workers choose to "run out" long stretches of unused time at the end of their careers. They stop working but continue to be paid until their banked time is used up.

The controller's office cannot tell how many employees do this, because payroll records offer no way of tracking it, Roper said.
While managers are directed to help an employee reduce accumulated leave when he or she nears the 80-day cap, most public worker contracts allow exceptions for those denied vacation because they are needed in an emergency — to fight a fire or battle a flood, for example — or are assigned work of a "critical nature over an extended period of time."
That final exception, officials say, accounts for much of the banked vacation taxpayers are on the hook for. The state distributed $294 million in departure payments last year.
"A lot of it has to do with hiring freezes," said Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Personnel Administration, the agency that negotiates contracts with state employees. "You have people working in core positions where they can't take time off."
Many employees also have large numbers of personal days that were granted in lieu of raises dating to the administration of Gov. George Deukmejian, Jolley said, and those days are not subject to the contractual cap.
Wickizer said he battled fires and floods during his 37 years with Cal Fire, rarely taking vacation. Many of the thousands of hours of time off he accumulated came from his days as a manager with the agency when, instead of being paid overtime, he was given "compensated time off" when he worked more than 40 hours a week. He often worked 80-hour weeks, he said.
"I did not abuse the system," Wickizer said.
Thomas Berns said managers at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation never questioned his stockpile of unused vacation as it built up over 28 years. Although he knew he'd get paid for those days eventually, he said he was "quite astonished" when he learned what the time was worth. 
Berns said even his bankers, who had "heard about the state going broke … seemed surprised."
Physician Lai, who spent 34 years working for the state, could not be reached for comment. But prison spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Lai had accrued more than 3,000 hours of annual leave and more than 1,000 hours of comp time when he retired last year. "He was very dependable," Thornton said.

Although prison employees, highway patrol officers and firefighters dominate the ranks of those with giant vacation accounts, many other employees took big time-off payouts even though the kinds of emergencies specified in the contracts seemed unlikely for them.
In 2010, the former executive director of the Gambling Control Commission, two managers from the Department of Parks and Recreation and two assistants to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger received six-figure checks for more than a year of accumulated time.
Parks and Recreation Supt. Steve Horvitz got $122,000 for unused time after retiring from his job overseeing operations in the forests of the state's north coast.
"That's a very busy district," department spokesman Roy Stearns said. "So he was burning the midnight oil."
Terri Ciau, former executive director of the gambling commission, cashed out $169,623 in unused time after 40 years of service. She couldn't leave the office to use up vacation because "there was no one else at that level of responsibility to handle the job," said commission spokeswoman Pamela Mares.
Most of Ciau's unused vacation accumulated while she was in other state posts, before she joined the gambling agency, Mares said.
Schwarzenegger's accounting and personnel advisors, Sandra Sharrer and Priscilla Garza, had payouts of $114,733 and $102,840, respectively.
"Most people who work in the governor's office are workaholics, or they wouldn't last very long," Sharrer said. Garza could not be reached for comment.
Despite the difficulties of enforcing the 80-day limit, Brown and his chief contract negotiator — former prison guard union lawyer Ronald Yank — left the provision in all but one of the six contracts they have negotiated with state employee unions since the governor took office in January.
The exception is the deal proposed for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., Yank's old client, which spent nearly $2 million to help Brown win the governor's race.
Administration officials say the cap had to be lifted after Schwarzenegger imposed 70 unpaid furlough days on the guards but many officers had to work those days anyway. The time off was added to accumulated vacation.
Brown spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford wrote in an email to The Times last week that lifting the cap "in this contract acknowledges it is unenforceable" in the prisons, which are understaffed and must operate around the clock.

6 Dirty Secrets About How Inflation Affects The Average American

Swiss American Trading - Today the public and the media are both caught in the web of contradictory disinformation about inflation, which is then spread by governments, political partisans, ideologues and pundits to further their own causes.
American citizens know that rising inflation can be extremely dangerous, so why do politicians and central bankers keep printing reckless amounts of paper money, knowing the catastrophe this can cause?
"The answer is that inflation is many things in addition to devaluation of the currency," writes Craig R. Smith, businessman and author of "Crashing the Dollar."
"Inflation is literally becoming a new kind of governance,” an “Inflatocracy,” Smith explains, “that imposes its own sinister rules and alternative values, values quite different from those of America's Founders."
Mr. Smith invites readers to discover six major hidden government uses of inflation:
1) Inflation as a Tool to help political friends and harm enemies.
2) Inflation as an Ideology.
3) Inflation as a form of Taxation, here and abroad.
4) Inflation as a device for Social Engineering.
5) Inflation as a means of Wealth Redistribution.
6) Inflation as a way to seize and exercise Power.


"$6 Gas Prices by Summer" reports DrudgeReport.com
Some experts are calling for $200+ barrel oil prices in 2011. Find out why rising gas prices are not included in the U.S. inflation index?
All these inflation manipulations are covered in Mr. Smith's hot, new 40-page White Paper: "THE USES OF INFLATION" which is offered free to every American with assets to protect.
THE USES OF INFLATION explains why inflation is much more than higher prices, and what steps you and your family can take to survive, thrive and even prosper during the hard economic times in America's immediate future.
After reading THE USES OF INFLATION, you will never again see inflation or money the way you do now.
George Orwell warned in his futuristic novel "1984" about the risk of being taken in by "Newspeak," government's deceptive use of words – especially when it comes to protecting your hard-earned assets.

Americans Oppose Rasing Debt Ceiling By 47%-19% Margin In Gallup Poll Survey

Ed Morrissey - The trend among pollsters appears to be consistent on the question of raising the federal government’s credit limit.  A recent CBS poll put flat-out opposition to a debt-ceiling hike at 2-1, and Gallup’s latest survey shows the same dynamic, even if it also shows a third of respondents too unengaged to offer an opinion:

By a 47% to 19% margin, Americans say they would want their member of Congress to vote against raising the U.S. debt ceiling, while 34% don’t know enough to say. Republicans oppose raising the debt ceiling by 70% to 8% and independents by 46% to 15%. Democrats favor raising the ceiling by 33% to 26%. …
A majority of Americans (57%) say they are closely following the news about “discussions to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, the maximum amount of money the U.S. government can borrow by law.” Republicans are following the issue more closely than are Democrats and independents; upper-income Americans are following it more closely than lower-income Americans; and those with a postgraduate education more so than those with a high school education or less.

The topline results give Republicans a lot of ammunition in the battle over the debt ceiling, but the large number of unengaged on the issue could be a problem.  For the 43% who haven’t followed the issue closely, the scare tactics that the Obama administration first deployed could become effective if that’s the only message that reaches them.  The GOP will have to press their case hard in the media that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and we need spending reductions rather than enabling more borrowing — or at least in tandem.
For the White House, though, this is all bad news.  First, their own party is the most disengaged on the topic.  Two thirds of Republicans (66%) are following it very or somewhat closely, while only 53% of independents and 51% of Democrats can say the same.  While independents oppose raising the debt ceiling by 46/15 (Republicans oppose it 70/8), Democrats only barely support it 33/26, with more claiming not to know enough to say (40%).
Furthermore, the more closely people follow the debate, the farther they move from Obama’s position.  Among those who are less engaged, the ratio of opposition is 2-1, Gallup reports.  Among the 23% who claim to follow it very closely, it’s more like 5-2, 62/25.
With these numbers, the GOP has little motivation to budge from outright opposition.  The White House will have to offer some powerful incentives to get their debt-ceiling hike this summer, and $36 billion won’t cut it this time around.

18 Reasons Why Illegal Immigration Is a Nightmare For U.S.

Economic Collapse - Barack Obama has declared that “immigration reform is an economic imperative“, and is promising to do his best to get an immigration bill pushed through Congress this year. But will “legalizing” all of the illegal immigration that has taken place over the last several decades improve the struggling U.S. economy or will it actually make our economic problems worse? One of the favorite tricks of top politicians is to promise that the economy is going to improve if we just support what it is that they are currently pushing. Hopefully the Americans people will not buy the nonsense that Obama is spewing. The truth is that Barack Obama is wrong about the economic impact of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants don’t do jobs that Americans “don’t want” to do. A million Americans recently showed up to apply for a job at McDonald’s. That is how desperate Americans are for work these days. Please don’t try to tell me that there aren’t millions of Americans out there that would not pick fruit for minimum wage. The millions upon millions of illegal immigrants in this country are stealing jobs, they are depressing wages in a whole host of industries and they are a huge factor in the erosion of the middle class. Millions of middle class American families can’t afford to provide for their families anymore and are losing their homes, drowning in debt or going bankrupt. Rather than what Barack Obama is proposing (which is to essentially “legalize” illegal immigration), we need an immigration policy that makes sense and that protects American jobs.


Before we go any further, it is important for me to make a few points. It is not a bad thing that people want to come to this nation from another country. A lot of people that want to come to the United States are really hard working and have really solid character. This nation has a long tradition of immigrants arriving to build a better life here. At different times this country will need different levels of immigration, but we will always need new immigrants. People on one side of a border are not more “valuable” than people on another side of a border. There is a reason why our founding fathers believed that “all men are created equal”. In every nation on earth there are really wonderful people. We should love all men, women and children no matter where they were born and no matter what they look like. God created us all and He loves us all dearly.

The reason I went into all that is because of the way politics is played in America in 2011. The moment that anyone suggests that there might be a problem with illegal immigration they are immediately branded with all kinds of horrible labels. To put a horrible label on someone that is completely and totally untrue just to score political points is absolutely despicable.

The funny thing is that some of the organizations that denounce others the loudest should actually be examining themselves. For example, one of the largest pro-illegal immigration organizations is called “La Raza”, which literally means “The Race” (as if we all couldn’t figure it out). Perhaps it is time for them to come up with a new name.

Look, we all have to start learning to love each other. If not, our society is going to continue to break down.

A majority of the American people (yes, that is what the polls show) are not against illegal immigration because they “hate” another group of people. Rather, they just want all immigrants to go through the “front door” and they want the government to be sensitive to changing economic conditions.


The sad truth is that the U.S. government has absolutely refused to secure the U.S. border with Mexico for decades, and this has allowed millions upon millions of criminals, drug dealers and gang members to cross freely into the United States. In addition, by refusing to secure the border we have allowed new diseases to spread unchecked into this country.

Meanwhile, the law abiding people that would like to get into this country legally are put through absolute hell. I used to practice law and I have filled out immigration forms. The process is a complete and total nightmare.

So we have been making it really easy for law breakers to sneak in the back door of our country and we have been making it really hard for law abiding people to get in the front door.

What in the world could be wrong about wanting to fix that?

Once many illegal immigrants arrive in the United States they either try to make a living legally (by directly competing with blue collar American workers for jobs and driving their wages down) or illegally by selling drugs or being involved in other kinds of criminal activity.

Apparently Barack Obama believes that this kind of behavior should be rewarded with a “path to citizenship”.

The vast majority of illegal immigrants pay absolutely no federal or state income taxes and they never intend to. At the same time, they seem more than happy to take advantage of the free social services and benefits offered to them. In fact, stories of how “good” life in America is just encourages more and more immigrants to come to the United States illegally.



We need an immigration policy that insists that everyone come in through the front door.



Is there anyone out there that cannot agree with that?



We also need to set immigration levels that our economy can handle.



Right now our economy is struggling. Millions upon millions of Americans are out of work. 44 million Americans are on food stamps. 47 million Americans are living in poverty. We just can’t take in a whole lot of extra workers right now.



You would think that would just be common sense.



But instead, Barack Obama wants to grant amnesty to all of the illegal immigrants that are already here and put them on a path to citizenship.



Wow – do you think that might embolden millions more illegal immigrants to come flooding in?



Barack Obama is against a border fence. He says we don’t need it.



Meanwhile, thousands more illegal immigrants pour into this country every single day.



Barack Obama supports all of the “sanctuary cities” that have openly declared that they are not going to enforce our immigration laws.



So where do you think illegal immigrants are going to flock to? The truth is that word about these “sanctuary cities” gets around really fast. If you live in one of these cities, then you probably know all about it.



If Barack Obama gets his way, nobody will be breaking our immigration laws because essentially there will not be any more immigration laws.



Not that George W. Bush was any better. He was an absolute disaster on immigration as well.



The truth is that our immigration policy has been slowly eroding the U.S. middle class for many decades.



But according to Barack Obama, we desperately need to implement his “immigration reform” plan for the good of the middle class….



“One way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else.”



What a joke. The reality is that illegal immigration hurts that U.S. middle class and it is severely damaging to the U.S. economy. Because of illegal immigration, every single day wages are lost, taxes don’t get collected, hospitals provide “free health care” for which they are never paid, huge criminal gangs of foreigners are roaming our streets and the cost of providing social services to illegal aliens is slowly bankrupting state and local governments.



The following are 18 facts which prove that illegal immigration is an absolute nightmare for the U.S. economy….



#1 Illegal immigrants take jobs away from American citizens. According to a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data, legal and illegal immigrants gained over a million additional jobs between 2008 and 2010 even as millions of American citizens were losing their jobs during that same time period.



#2 The majority of our immigrants now sneak in through the “back door” that the federal government purposely leaves open. Thanks to the negligence of the federal government, far more people move into the United States illegally than come in through the legal immigration process. This has got to change.



#3 Illegal immigrants generally don’t pay taxes. The vast majority of illegal aliens would never even dream of paying income taxes, but Mexicans living in America send billions upon billions of dollars out of the United States and back to Mexico every single year.

#4 Although illegal aliens pay next to nothing in taxes, they have no problem receiving tens of billions of dollars worth of free education benefits, free health care benefits, free housing assistance and free food stamp benefits. Many communities in the United States now openly advertise that they will help illegal aliens with these things.


#5 The cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants is staggering. It is estimated that U.S. taxpayers spend $12,000,000,000 a year on primary and secondary school education for the children of illegal immigrants.



#6 Thanks to illegal immigration, California’s overstretched health care system is on the verge of collapse. Dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down over the last decade because they could not afford to stay open after being endlessly swamped by illegal immigrants who were simply not able to pay for the services that they were receiving. As a result, the remainder of the health care system in the state of California is now beyond overloaded. This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even unnecessary patient deaths. Sadly, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.



#7 It was estimated that there were approximately 7.7 million illegal aliens employed by U.S. employers during 2008. How much better would our economy look if all of those jobs were being filled by American workers?



#8 The region along the U.S./Mexico border is now an open war zone. Just across the U.S. border, the city of Juarez, Mexico is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there. In fact, Juarez has now become the murder capital of the western hemisphere. Much of that violence has begun to spill over into areas of the southwestern United States.



For example, a while back NPR described one incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens….



A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student’s family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.



“By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick,” says school superintendent Jose Franco. “My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S.”



#9 A substantial percentage of young illegal immigrants end up in gangs. U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year. Latino gangs made up primarily of illegal aliens are responsible for much of this violence.



According to the Center for Immigration Studies, some of the most notorious gangs in the country are made up almost entirely of illegal immigrants….



“Gang investigators in Virginia estimate that 90% of the members of MS-13, the most notorious immigrant gang, are illegal immigrants.”



#10 The “18th Street Gang” is certainly giving MS-13 a run for their money. It is believed that the 18th Street Gang has thousands of members in the city of Los Angeles alone. In fact, the gang has become so notorious that there are even rumors that some police officers in Los Angeles simply will not venture into the areas most heavily controlled by the 18th Street gang.



The following is what Wikipedia says about the 18th Street Gang….



A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery.



#11 The “drug war” in northern Mexico is one gigantic bloodbath. The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007. A very significant percentage of those deaths have happened in areas right along the U.S. border, and yet our federal government still sees no reason to get serious about border security.



#12 It is an open secret that Mexican drug cartels are openly conducting military operations inside the United States. The handful of border patrol agents that we have guarding the border are massively outgunned and outmanned.



One agent who patrols the border and who asked to remain anonymous told Fox News the following….



“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.”



A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News….



“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers.”



#13 Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona. If you go to Arizona today, there are actually signs that have been put up by the federal government warning American citizens not to venture into certain wilderness routes that are used by Mexican drug cartels to bring in drugs.



#14 The drug war being waged on both sides of the border is so violent that it is almost unimaginable. For example, one very prominent Mexican assassin known as “the soupmaker” has confessed that he made approximately 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths. But right now there is essentially nothing that is preventing the next “soupmaker” from crossing the U.S. border and moving into your neighborhood.



#15 Arizona police are being openly warned by the Mexican drug cartels that if they try to interfere with the drug traffic in their area that they will be “taken out” by drug cartel snipers.



#16 While the U.S. military endlessly hunts for “members of al-Qaeda” in the caves of Afghanistan and on the streets of Iraqi cities, a very real threat has been building just south of the border. Over the past 15 to 20 years, Hezbollah has set up operations all over Mexico, Central America and South America. Hezbollah is reportedly making a lot of money in the drug trade and in trafficking illegal aliens. Sadly, our government is largely ignoring this.



#17 Each year, it costs the states billions of dollars to incarcerate illegal immigrant criminals that should have never been allowed into the country in the first place. It is estimated that illegal aliens make up approximately 30 percent of the population in federal, state and local prisons and that the total cost of incarcerating them is more than $1.6 billion annually.



#18 The drug cartels and the gangs always seem to be a couple steps ahead of our agents along the border. Approximately 75 tunnels along the U.S. border with Mexico have been discovered by law enforcement authorities in the last four years alone.



How much do you think all of this crime, gang violence and drug cartel activity is costing our economy?



Why won’t the federal government do what the Constitution requires and secure the border?



Oh, but Barack Obama says that he has a plan.



He says that he is going to save the day.



The following is how Barack Obama describes his plan…



“We are not going to ship back 12 million people, we’re not going to do it as a practical matter. We would have to take all our law enforcement that we have available and we would have to use it and put people on buses, and rip families apart, and that’s not who we are, that’s not what America is about. So what I’ve proposed… is you say we’re going to bring these folks out of the shadows. We’re going to make them pay a fine, they are going to have to learn English, they are going to have to go to the back of the line…but they will have a pathway to citizenship over the course of 10 years.”



So how many illegal immigrants do you think are going to step forward to pay a fine?



One percent?



How many of them do you think are going to show up for English classes?



Who is going to make them do it?



Obama?



Are we going to have law enforcement officials running around trying to collect fines from illegal immigrants and trying to get them to attend their English lessons?



According to Obama, the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants that are in this country are going to be glad to willingly do the following….



1) Admit they broke the law



2) Pay back taxes and a fine



3) Learn English



4) Be willing to undergo background checks before starting the legalization process



Those four points are taken directly from Obama’s plan.



So what are illegal immigrants going to do when this plan is passed?



99 percent of them are going to laugh and they are just going to keep on doing what they have been doing.



Large numbers of illegal immigrants are already enjoying the “high life” in the dozens of “sanctuary cities” across the United States.



The following is how the Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC defines sanctuary cities….



Generally, sanctuary policies instruct city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens living in their communities. The policies also end the distinction between legal resident aliens and illegal aliens–so illegal aliens often benefit from taxpayer funded government services and programs too.



Sounds like a good deal to me.



Can I sign up for that plan?



After all, who wouldn’t want to earn all income tax-free and yet enjoy unlimited government services?



Today we are being told that we need to make life as comfortable as possible for the waves of illegal immigrants that are coming in. In fact, Barack Obama says that all of us need to make sure that our kids are learning how to speak Spanish….



“I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, we need to have English only. They want to pass a law, we just, we want English only…Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English, I agree with this. But understand this, instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they’ll learn English, you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.”



All of this is utter insanity.



The cold, hard reality of the matter is that we have tightly secured the border between South Korea and North Korea for over 50 years and we could secure our own borders if we really wanted to.


But instead, we continue to leave our border with Mexico completely wide open. Thousands of criminals, gang members and drug pushers continue to come in completely unchecked every single day.



Meanwhile, the rest of us have to subject ourselves to some of the most humiliating “security measures” imaginable before we are even allowed to get on to an airplane.



It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Half Of Detroit Residents Are Illiterate

Atlanta Post - Almost Half of Detroit Residents Are Functionally Illiterate A shocking study by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund, may explain a root problem to the struggles within the Motor City.
According to reports, 47 percent of Detroit residents were found to be functionally illiterate.
This means, nearly half of Detroit residents can't do simple things like read a book, fill out a job application or enjoy the daily content on Hiphopwired.com.
The GOOD news report reads:

According to the study, of the "200,000 adults who are functionally illiterate, approximately half have a high school diploma or GED"—which means that the other half do not. Sadly, only 10 percent of residents who need adult literacy classes even receive services to teach them how to read, and only one fourth of adult education programs "provide services for learners at the lowest literacy levels."
Addressing the literacy problem is particularly critical because of the city's steep unemployment rate. In recent years it's been as as high as 50 percent, and 33 percent of adults aged 20-24 are unemployed. Even if a jobs recovery does happen, if the city's residents don't have the basic skills—like being able to read—their career options won't improve much.

Detroit's economic was one of the hardest hit by the U.S. recession, and with a report like this, it's understandable.
Although, this doesn't explain why the Detroit Pistons and Lions suck in professional sports, but it does explain why the city was named of the of most dangerous cities in the world in 2010.
At least Detroit has Eminem to be proud of.
If anyone out there knows someone from Detroit, you might want to read this news report to them, it's a 50% chance they can't read this for themselves.

NY 26 Corwin vs. Hochul To Close Too Call

Jazz Shaw - The last time we reported on the upcoming special election in western New York’s 26th congressional district, things were already pretty much a mess, but Republican Jane Corwin seemed to be holding on to a thin, but comfortable lead. But with the election only a couple of weeks away, at least one sampling has the race pretty much within the margins and both sides are mobilizing.

Republicans in New York may again face defeat in safe district in a special election. The 26th District, formerly held by “Craigslist Congressman” Christopher Lee, will be filled by a special election later this month.
Three candidates have substantial support in polling. Republican Jane Corwin, Democrat Kathleen Hochul and Jack Davis, who is running as a Tea Party candidate.

The new wrinkle in the story seems to be some recent polling into the issues concerning district voters, and one thing on their mind is apparently the Ryan budget plan, specifically the proposed changes to Medicare which are being floated.

A recent Siena College poll of likely voters, for example, indicated that Ms. Corwin and Ms. Hochul are in a tight race. Ms. Corwin leads by only five points, within the poll’s margin of error.
The poll found that 59 percent of respondents said they opposed reining in federal spending by cutting entitlement programs like Medicare. Only 38 percent said they supported such spending cuts to trim the deficit.
Marsha Sherris, 61, a real estate broker in the district, seems to epitomize the challenge for Ms. Corwin. A registered Republican, Ms. Sherris said that she was troubled about the Republican Medicare proposal and that it might ultimately influence her vote in the special election.
“Maybe I would go Democrat,” Ms. Sherris said on Main Street in Williamsville. “We have to worry about the seniors. They are the ones who supported this country all this time.”

Well, that was probably predictable, as we have discussed here before. Education on entitlement reform is an uphill battle and everyone knew it represented potential danger for swing state Republicans. But if this normally safe, R+6 district goes blue, it could sound an alarm for the GOP in Washington.
But it’s also not clear if the Medicare issue is really the main driving factor in the closeness of the race. When I first brought this race to your attention here back in March, we noted that the strange mix of candidates was already having a pronounced effect on the race. Corwin and her Democratic opponent, Ms. Hochul, are not the only players here, and neither of them are anywhere near getting a clear majority.
The main reason is Jack Davis, curiously running on the Tea Party line and pulling more than 1/5 of the vote, though he seems to be drawing from both of the major candidates. I say “curiously” because even back in March the only active, established Tea Party group we could locate in the area, Tea New York, wasn’t even considering Davis. (Not surprising since he has run for office twice as a Democrat and has ties to the Working Families Party.) They were, at the time, considering both Corwin and David Bellavia, who had been lobbying for the NY Conservative Party line. In the end, the Conservative Party went with Corwin and then Tea New York voted on April 13th to endorse Corwin also.
Well, Corwin took notice this week and launched her first ad taking direct aim at Davis.

The ad is her first since a public poll showed Corwin leading Democrat Kathy Hochul by just 5 points, 36 percent to 31 percent. Her lead would be far larger without the presence of Davis, a Congressional candidate with a history of switching parties who will appear on the May 24 ballot under the “Tea Party” line. Davis pulled 23 percent in the poll.
“Davis was a handpicked candidate of Nancy Pelosi, and said he was proud to help her become Speaker,” says the narrator in the new ad. “Davis took thousands of dollars from Barack Obama and even endorsed his campaign for president.”
“Democrat Jack Davis,” the narrator continued. “He just can’t be trusted.”
The ad comes the same day Roll Call reported that a host of conservative outside groups are working to help Corwin hold the 26th district seat, which was previously held by Rep. Chris Lee (R).

Following the last link, we find that American Crossroads is considering jumping into this race on Corwin’s behalf with a major ad buy, but I don’t see any final confirmation of that yet. But barring some major change on the ground out here, this one looks like it’s going to come down to the wire. No matter the real cause, though, if the GOP manages to lose this seat it may send some minor shock waves through a movement which has been riding high since November and looking forward to similar gains in 2012.

McDonald's Jobs Recovery: 1 Million Job Applications, 62,000 Hired, Unemployment Rate 9%

Kurt Nimmo - The Federal Reserve designed 2008 economic takedown is now claiming millions of victims. It is eroding the middle class and slowly turning the United States into a second rank country working its way toward third world status.
In June of 2009, the government announced the economy had entered a recovery after a historical looting by a cartel of international banksters led by the Fed and the Treasury.
It’s turns out to be a McRecovery.
The Labor Department announced today the private sector has created jobs at the fastest pace since 2006. “Nonfarm payrolls rose 244,000 last month, the most in 11 months, the Labor Department said on Friday. The private sector accounted for all of the job gains last month, with payrolls rising 268,000, the largest rise since February 2006,” reports CNBC.
According to the data, McDonald’s was responsible for the modest gain. “McDonald’s and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the United States after receiving more than 1 million applications,” the Star Tribune reports.
Employment at service-providers rose 200,000 in April after a 184,000 gain the prior month, according to Bloomberg.
Service providers like McDonald’s, not decent paying factory or even office jobs. Factory jobs were long ago exported to slave labor gulags in China and Asia. India now absorbs everything from programming and engineering jobs to telemarketing and customer service.
Burger flipping represents economic growth for Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. “The labor market is improving gradually,” Bernanke told reporters during the first-ever press conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. “We would like to make sure that that is sustainable. The longer it goes on, the more confident we are.”
From The Daily Ticker:

– There are 8.5 million people receiving unemployment insurance and over 40 million receiving food stamps.
– At the current pace of job creation, the economy won’t return to full employment until 2018.
– Middle-income jobs are disappearing from the economy. The share of middle-income jobs in the United States has fallen from 52% in 1980 to 42% in 2010.
– Middle-income jobs have been replaced by low-income jobs, which now make up 41% of total employment.
– 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.
– Over the past year, nominal wages grew only 1.7% while all consumer prices, including food and energy, increased by 2.7%.
– Wages and salaries have fallen from 60% of personal income in 1980 to 51% in 2010. Government transfers have risen from 11.7% of personal income in 1980 to 18.4% in 2010, a post-war high.

High unemployment and the restructuring of the labor market under corporatist globalism have eroded middle-class incomes after decades of stagnation, explains the New America Foundation. Meanwhile, the cost of health care, education, and other essential middle-class goods have increased, consuming a larger share of household income and driving millions to the poor house.
None of this is a mistake or the result of government incompetence. Since its inception in 1913, the Federal Reserve has slowly but methodically destroyed the American middle class by printing money and deliberately creating inflation.

“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people,” Ron Paul notes. “The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial ‘boom’ followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.”
Despite the addition of McJobs reported today, the economy continued its slow decline. “The Labor Department reported the jobless rate climbed to 9.0 percent in April from 8.8 percent in March and 244,000 nonfarm jobs were added to the world’s largest economy,” reports AFP.


9.0 percent, of course, is way off the mark. According to the SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate based on alternate data, the real unemployment rate is well over 20 percent and closing in on Great Depression era levels.

Herman Cain Wins South Carolina 2012 GOP Debate

Brian Montopoli - To get an idea of the strangeness of the first debate of the 2012 presidential cycle - the unofficial kickoff to the 2012 GOP race - consider this: Based on the Fox News focus group conducted immediately following the event, Herman Cain is about to run away with the GOP nomination.
If you're wondering who that is, you're not alone: The former Godfather's Pizza CEO, who barely registers in national polls, has never held elected office. And he is seen as having virtually no chance to win the GOP nomination.
But the vast majority of the people sitting in with Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Cain had won the debate with his directness and straightforward delivery. (This despite the fact that when asked about what he would do in Afghanistan, he replied that he would rely on "the experts and their advice and their input." The Fox News debate moderators seemed incredulous that he did not offer a position.) Luntz appeared blown away by the response to Cain, which he cast as unprecedented. "Something very special happened this evening," he said.
Perhaps. But the debate was seen as such a non-event inside the beltway that House Speaker John Boehner spent his evening not watching it, opting instead to have a few drinks at a Washington steakhouse. "I'll read about it tomorrow," he told Hotsheet.
The absence of the biggest-name potential candidates - Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, even Donald Trump - meant the event it generated little attention despite its status as the first debate of the cycle. Among the five men onstage - Cain, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum - only Pawlenty is seen by Washington insiders as having a legitimate shot at the GOP nomination.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the first debate for potential 2012 GOP presidential candidates

(Credit: Fox News)

Pawlenty's goal was to look presidential - despite his relatively unheralded company - and he largely pulled it off. The toughest moment for the former governor was when he was asked to defend his past support for a cap-and-trade energy policy, which got a smattering of boos. Pawlenty explained himself in part by saying, literally, "nobody's perfect."
In perhaps his most interesting response of the night, he notably declined to take a shot at likely rival Mitt Romney over Romney's Massachusetts health care law.
"Governor Romney's not here to defend himself so I'm not going to pick on him or the position he took in Massachusetts," Pawlenty said. The intraparty sparring, it appears, will have to wait.
Pawlenty did find a way to go after President Obama on foreign policy -- despite the boost Mr. Obama got from the killing of Osama bin Laden. He said that while the president "did a good job and I tip my cap to him in that moment," the raid on bin Laden is "not the sum total" of Mr. Obama's foreign policy record. In other areas, Pawlenty insisted, the president has been "weak."
"The issues that have come up while he's been president, he's gotten them wrong strategically every single time," Pawlenty said. At one point, he referred to the United Nations as "pathetic."
Santorum, who was relatively combative much of the evening, complained that Mr. Obama "sided with the mullahs" during the protests in Iran.
"If you look at what President Obama has done right in foreign policy, it has always been a continuation of the Bush policies," said Santorum, who said Mr. Obama has "gotten it wrong" every other time.
The 90-minute debate took place at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina, a key early voting state. The candidates were not asked to engage with one another, limiting the fireworks.

Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum

(Credit: CBS/AP)

The first applause of the evening came for Paul, who said the killing of bin Laden was a good opportunity to end the war in Afghanistan. Johnson, a fellow Libertarian, echoed that sentiment, saying the troops should come home "tomorrow."
Asked if they would support waterboarding terror suspects under certain circumstances - an issue rekindled by the killing of bin Laden, Paul, Pawlenty and Santorum raised their hands. Paul and Johnson did not. Both Paul and Johnson also discussed their support for barring the federal government from making drugs illegal. (Moderators pressed Paul on heroin specifically.) Paul drew another distinction with most of the men onstage when he said all foreign aid to the Middle East should be cut and that America should not be running secret CIA prisons.
Johnson, who supports abortion rights, became frustrated with debate moderators at one point, complaining he was not being asked enough questions. He also received the most frivolous question of the night, asked what his reality show would be about if he were offered one.
Santorum was pressed all night on being an extremist - he denied being "anti-Islam" or too socially conservative to win a general election - and pointed to his past electoral successes to cast himself as electable when debate moderators asked if Mr. Obama is unbeatable. (Unsurprisingly, he left out the 18 percentage point drubbing he took in losing his Senate seat in 2006.)
The also-ran nature of the debate was reflected in the fact that moderators asked a cluster of questions focused on the potential candidates who were not present. Paul was asked if Rep. Michele Bachmann had taken his mantle of Tea Party leader; Pawlenty was asked his thoughts on Huckabee. ("I love the Huck," he replied, awkwardly.)
The economy is the most important issue for a plurality of Americans, and the candidates certainly seized on it. Pawlenty, for one, called the National Labor Relations Board's bid to keep Boeing from building Dreamliner 787s at a nonunion plant in South Carolina "preposterous."
It was a good issue for Pawlenty (and Cain, too, who also cited it), because it allowed them to rail against big government, cast themselves as job creators, and spotlight an issue important to South Carolina voters. That's an opportunity they weren't going to pass up. (Indeed, Pawlenty focused on the same issue in a CBS News interview before the debate.) 
Polls show a wide-open Republican race led by Romney, Huckabee and Trump, and Thursday night's likely-little-watched festivities were unlikely to move the numbers all that much. For the unknown candidates it was a chance to make a splash - and from that perspective, Cain certainly seems to have acquitted himself nicely. But with most eyes focused elsewhere, Thursday night is likely to be remembered -- if it's remembered at all -- as a footnote in the march to the nomination.