House Votes 245-189 to Repeal ObamaCare

Well, that's all well and good, as it at least puts House critters on record.

What I want to know is, when are they going to pull out the knives and start gutting this atrocity, and thus de-funding it until there is no trace of it remaining - not a shadow, not even a speck of dust?

We're waiting, Mr Boehner.

(h/t: politico.com)

Outrage! Daisy Khan's $12K Taxpayer-Funded 'Hate America' Tour

Okay, so it's only a mere $12,000 of our tax money, which doesn't even rate a spit in the ocean in the overall scheme of things, but it is what that money is funding that infuriates me.

This, coming on top of another taxpayer-funded outrage involving this woman's jihad-supporting, camel-washer husband, is appalling beyond words.

Suppose during WWII our tax dollars had been used to send Heinrich Himmler on a fund-raising tour to raise money for the NAZI death camps while trashing America, or to send Vice Admiral Nagumo around to raise money so that the Japanese could replace the carriers we destroyed at the Battle of Midway while also trashing America.

The American people would have had a collective conniption over it, and probably would have demanded the immediate arrest of the government officials responsible, if not the outright impeachment of FDR himself.

Today, we sit and watch the GWOT equivalent as our government uses our tax dollars to send a couple of jihad supporters to trash America in front of our enemies, as well as probabaly raise money for their trophy Mosque, and mmany of the American people yawn and reach for the TV remote.

Assuming the American sheeple actually do wake up from their slumber and vote the commies and their RINO enablers the hell out of congress come November (and I say the chances of that are still only around 50/50) , We the People need to pressure the next congress to start cleaning some serious house.

They can start with the idiot bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom, right after dragging Broom Hilda up to the Hill and grilling her in an effort to determine whether or not she has totally lost her mind. 

The idiot far-left's shameless pandering to the jihadists and their enablers who are working for the destruction of America is bad enough, but using our tax dollars to do it is not only reprehensible, in my opinion, it's not a little treasonous, either.

"Recovery" Summer

Via www.atr.org:

• The Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have said that they want to raise taxes in the top two income tax rates in January 2011. Under their plan, the 33 percent rate will rise to 36 percent, and the 35 percent rate will rise to 39.6 percent automatically in January. These rates affect families and small business owners earning at least $200,000 per year.

• 
  Unlike corporations, small businesses usually don’t pay their own taxes. Rather, business profits flow through to the business owner. The business owner pays taxes on her small business by adding the profits to her income tax form. Therefore, personal income taxes are the same thing as small business taxes.

• 
  According to the IRS, most small business profits pay taxes in households making more than $200,000 per year. The IRS keeps track of two types of small business income: sole proprietors, and “pass-through” entities like partnerships and S-corporations.

• 
  All small businesses. There were 30 million tax returns reporting small business income in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $631billion. A large chunk of this net profit--$457 billion—faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. A majority of small business profits will face a tax rate hike under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid plan.

• 
  Sole proprietors. There were 22 million tax returns reporting sole proprietor income in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $264 billion. A large chunk of this net profit--$90 billion—faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. 34 percent of sole proprietor profits will face a tax rate hike under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid tax hike plan.

• 
  S-corporations and partnerships. There were 8 million partners and S-corporation shareholders in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $367 billion. Virtually all of this profit faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. Aggregate pass-through entity profits will almost entirely fall in households making more than $200,000 per year.
  

The above can be found in its original form here.

The Wall Street Journal has more here.

For someone who claims to want to "fix" our ailing private sector economy, the former community agitator seems to be doing all he can to destroy it.

Boortz Explains It All

Via Boortz.com:

Did you catch the Dow yesterday? Not what you might call good. So, how's this economic recovery working for you folks? 

Truth is, we may be about the fall off the edge of an economic cliff. We are roaring toward the precipice at 100 while Biden is touring the country trying to tell us we're well within the speed limit. It may well be that by the time the American people fully realize how dire our economic situation is .. and how bad it is going to get under Obama's policies .. it may well be too late.

We are approaching that point. Fast. Yesterday's 2.7% drop in the Dow Jones was just an indicator that we are not on a fast track to recovery. In fact, quite the opposite. While Joe Biden tours the country on a "Summer Recovery" tour, trying to convince you how the Obama administration saved us from disaster ... our economy is slowing. Businesses aren't hiring. And Democrats in Washington are poised to only make matters worse. The Royal Bank of Scotland is warning that the global economy is stalling out and that this could lead to a massive flooding of the money supply by the Federal Reserve in efforts to fight off a world-wide deflationary recession.

You can read the rest at this link.

Fasten you seat belts, folks, as I see some major turbulence coming our way.

The Debt Monster is Upon Us

And it's about to bite us right in the ass.

Via Reason.com:

America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade.

While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s public debt reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril.

And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Figure 1 compares the CBO’s long-term public debt projections from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. Three years ago, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would not surpass 60 percent until 2023.

You will find the entire article at this link.

Scared yet? You should be shaking in your loafers.

I hope the American people are finally waking up to the imminent financial peril we face as a nation, as I believe the time we have to avoid disaster is growing very, very short.

Why is America in such Seriously Deep Doo-Doo?

Because we allow morons like this to vote in our elections:



Perhaps this blissfully ignorant Obamabot should have spent his time in government school actually learning how to read.


(h/t: Boortz.com)

Man-Made 'Climate Change' Scam Finally Unraveling (Maybe)

I pegged man-made climate change as a scam pretty much from day one. I mean, the very idea that human activity could affect the climate of the Earth has always struck me as preposterous, if not a little arrogant.

What I found equally preposterous, and not a little disturbing, was the large number of people the world over who were so easily convinced by the scam artists that CO2 was somehow a pollutant. This probably reflects on the rather sorry state of science education not just here in America, but all over the planet. The appalling lack of common sense so prevalent today probably contributed to this, too.

I also began to notice something else, and that was the political leanings of those who were pushing this fraud. I very quickly picked up on a common trait that most all of them shared: They were all socialists, Marxists and communists.

Other people began noticing this, too, hence the term watermelon - green on the outside, red on the inside. Many also began noticing the rank hypocrisy of the fraudsters themselves, such as Al Gore, R.F.K. Jr., and many many others who were living in huge mansions and flying all over creation in private jets of all sizes and descriptions telling us ignorant peons to bury our cars, go live in tents, eat vegetables and wear hemp sandals.

There was something else going on, too. These frauds were using scare tactics to push a lot of legislation through congress that was decidedly hostile to freedom and liberty. They managed to get a lot of it through, too, which to date has cost the American taxpayer approximately $79 billion. They are still trying today with the hideous freedom and liberty destroying Cap & Trade (which I refer to as Crap & Tax) bill.

Even if they can't get this abomination through congress, the EPA is saying they will implement it through regulation with the blessings of Obama administration, which isn't exactly keen when it comes to defending the country's founding principles. I just bet our nations founders are overjoyed.

It now seems one of the scientists at the center off all this is now backing away from many of his earlier claims about man's affect on the planet's climate.

Via the dailymail.co.uk:

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

You can read the entire article here.

Even if this scam is finally fully exposed for the hideous fraud that it is, that won't stop the federal government from continuing to use climate change in a effort to further encroach on our God-given freedoms. I'm not real sure if it is going to hamstring the U.N. from trying to use it as a tool for yet another global wealth redistribution scheme, either, although the recent collapse at Copenhagen was encouraging.

I do, however, think we are moving closer to a time when Al Gore & Co. are going to owe us an engraved apology - along with $79 billion.

Time to End Universal Suffrage?

Tom Tancredo makes his case:

---

---

The uncivil debate over civic illiteracy

---

Posted: February 13, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

After 35 years in politics, I am seldom surprised by the venom that flows from the mouths of liberals when one of their sacred cows is criticized. But the "fan mail" following my speech a week ago to the tea-party convention in Nashville has been truly amazing.

I spoke to the opening session of the event about why it is a good thing that John McCain was not elected president. I expected those remarks to be controversial in some quarters, but the only controversy in the news coverage of my speech was about my suggestion that we need a civics literacy test for voters.

Evidently, you cannot question the value of universal suffrage, and in the liberal lexicon, universal suffrage means not only that there should be no unreasonable or discriminatory bars to voting, but that all adults should be forced to vote, no matter how ignorant or disconnected to the civic affairs of the community.

I did not say in Nashville that all 67 million Obama voters are illiterate rabble who would fail a civics literacy test. What I did suggest and what I believe is that in the 2008 presidential election, the margin of victory for Obama was provided by people who would not be at the polls if we had meaningful civics literacy requirements for voting. Hence my statement that the lack of a civics literacy requirement is one reason we have a committed socialist ideologue in the White House today.

That statement provoked a stream of angry e-mail messages from outraged Obama voters, many of whom proudly proclaimed their advanced degrees in art history, Egyptology and political science. The message was as consistent as it was strident: What an ignoramus I must be to question the educational level of Obama voters!

My tea-party remarks had nothing to do with educational credentials or even IQ. We are all painfully aware that Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, got more votes from college professors than his Republican opponent. My remarks were aimed at the electorate's lack of civics literacy, which is quite different. Literacy in civics and American history is not necessarily enhanced by additional years of higher education devoted to increasingly specialized expertise in some field.

I have often suggested that new voters should be required to pass the civics literacy test already given to immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens. Yet, my suggestion was twisted into the idea that I want to see a return to "Jim Crow laws" that were used to keep blacks from voting.

This distortion of my proposal requires two acts of self-deception. First, it requires you to believe that minorities will fail any civics test, an idea that is highly insulting to all minorities. Secondly, it requires a willful disregard of the real history of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were not kept from voting by the laws themselves but the blatant discriminatory way they were administered by local officials. It is absurd to claim that any civics literacy test will be discriminatory, yet that is how my proposal was described by leftist bloggers and liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne.

Predictably, in this age of Internet video messaging

, left-wing blogs and liberal advocacy groups sent the video clip of my remarks to their members and asked them to "send Tancredo a message." The messages generated by this organized temper tantrum ran the gamut from questions about my patriotism to solemn prayers that I would get some horrible disease and die a painful death – and soon.

All our founders' inspiring, biblical quotes in one place – a must-have for your library: "America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations"

The potential for "elected despots" was well understood by our nation's founders, and they devised mechanisms in the Constitution to reduce that danger. They understood that throughout history, democracies had followed certain patterns and cycles, cycles ending in tyranny. So, instead of a pure democracy, they designed and established a republic organized as a representative democracy, with checks and balances and other innovations to help safeguard our liberties.

Voting your own short-term self-interest over the common good is a problem as old as Rome, but today it has taken on a new urgency. Using the powers of government to expropriate other people's wealth and property enters the pandemic stage when half the voting public pays no taxes

and a third of adults are government employees

or living on government pensions.

Can civics literacy programs in our schools and civics literacy tests for voters hold these forces in check? Maybe it's not the whole answer, but to me, it sure seems like a good start.

-End

Tom Tancredo's commentary was originally posted here.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rep. Tancredo. The votes of the stoopid and the illiterate (civic or otherwise) have pushed this nation right to the very edge of its destruction.

In fact, I would go one step further and restrict voting in national elections to only those who actually pay federal income taxes. Net tax consumers should have no say.

There is, after all, no constitutional right to vote in a national election.

If we continue to allow the non-productive to use the power of the federal government to take from the productive, the fate that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about all those years ago is going to become a cold, stark reality.

Since the beginning of recorded history all free republics have shared one common trait: They all managed to vote themselves right out of existence.

Perhaps we might be the ones to finally break the chain.

Obama is Spending Us Into Well Beyond Mere Oblivion

Let's face it, folks, George W. Bush did not exactly endear himself to we of the fiscal conservative persuasion, but Barack Hussein Obama, with no small amount of help from a slew of like-minded, out-of-control congress-critters, is on a blistering pace to make the Bush administration appear positively miserly in comparison.

I pulled this form Boortz.com a little earlier, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for future Americans:

THE TRUTH ABOUT GOVERNMENT

By Neal Boortz @ February 8, 2010 8:42 AM

Since we're talking about our wonderful Imperial Federal Government .... Here are some shocking facts to keep in mind:

-The cost of our federal government is 25% of our total economy (GDP).
This is compared with the average of 20.7% of the GDP during 1970-2009

- If you include the cost of state and local government, the total cost of government is almost 40% of our GDP

- Since 2008, the cost of our federal government has increased by one-fourth

- By 2020, Obama will have increased the federal government by one-half on a per family basis

- Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per household

- By 2020, Obama would raise that to $36,000 per household

Just remember these numbers folks. They have meaning.

-End

Obama and the far-left are very rapidly spending this country right down the financial crapper. Personally, I believe this is being done deliberately.

This idiocy must be stopped now, not in 2013.

The Government Wants Your Retirement Cash

Via Neal Boortz:

I've been telling you about this for a while now. This, to me, is one of the most dangerous schemes currently slithering through the crevices and dark spots of the Imperial Federal Government in Washington. What am I talking about? What I believe to be plans by the Obama administration to, in effect, seize your retirement funds and use them to finance their deficit spending. Remember ... there are more than $3 trillion dollars sitting out there in individual retirement, IRA and 401K plans. Politicians just cant stand the idea of this much money sitting out there in private investments ... out of the grasp of politicians. So .... Something needs to be done. And sure enough, something is going to be done. The Treasury Department and the Department of Labor were going to start taking comments on ways to promote the idea converting 401(k) savings and IRAs into annuities or other steady payment streams. Well you can finally take a look at this document for yourself:

Request for Information Regarding Lifetime Income Options for Participants and

Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans

Here, I'll post a little to get you started:

The Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury (the "Agencies") are currently reviewing the rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the plan qualification rules under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine whether, and, if so, how, the Agencies could or should enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans and in individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) by facilitating access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement. The purpose of this request for information is to solicit views, suggestions and comments from plan participants, employers and other plan sponsors, plan service providers, and members of the financial community, as well as the general public, on this important issue.

You will find Neal's entire article here.

Wake the hell up, sheeple. You are missing one hell of a coup.

Porkulus II to be called 'Jobs Bill'

They could just call it what it is - a slush fund.

I hate to tell Rep. Sherman, but thanks to Barack Hussein Obama, we're broke and cannot afford this lunacy. We can't even afford the lunacy that has already passed through this rogue and completely out-of-control congress.

Besides, jobs don't come from government, congressman Sherman, they come from the private sector, which your hero Obama is currently destroying.

My guess is, just like TARP and Porkulus I, the bulk of however much money this ends up being will be combined with what they have already stolen, and used in an all-out effort to install a permanent socialist congress - if not next November, then in 2012.

We must throw these Marxists out of power before it's too late.

America's Declining Economic Freedom

If, like me, you are one who pays fairly close attention to the level of freedom and liberty we still enjoy as citizens of the greatest experiment in freedom that has ever been conducted since the first historians began scratching figures into the walls of caves, you have no doubt noticed that we have been losing said freedoms at what I consider to be an alarming, as well as an unacceptable, rate.

Like me, you have probably wondered from time to time just exactly where we stack up against the rest of the world in this all-important area. Well, the people at the Heritage Foundation have been examining this, as they do each year, and have come up with some analysis that should send a chill down the spine of anyone who truly values their freedom, particularly that of the economic variety. One year ago, we were the sixth freest economy in the world, which was pretty pathetic. Now we have dropped to eighth place.

Via the Wall Street Journal (Bolds are mine):

The United States is losing ground to its major competitors in the global marketplace, according to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. This year, of the world's 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. Its score declined to 78 from 80.7 on the 0 to 100 Index scale.

The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government's interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed "too big to fail." These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits.

In the world-wide rankings of economic freedom, the U.S. fell to eighth from sixth place. Canada now ranks higher and boasts North America's freest economy. More worrisome, for the first time in the Index's 16-year history, the U.S. has fallen out of the elite group of countries identified as "economically free" by the objective measures of the Index. Four Asia-Pacific economies now sit atop the global rankings. Hong Kong stands in first place for the 16th consecutive year, followed by Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Every region of the world maintains at least one country among those deemed "free" or "mostly free" by the Index.

You will find the rest at this link. I strongly encourage you to read it in its entirety.

I have to believe the overall decline of America is reversible, even though it flies in the face of recorded history.

What helped get us here was the spread of the idea that people could use government to loot the property of others. That idea can be eliminated, even though doing so is an extremely tall order.

History does not have to repeat itself.

The Extreme Left's Plan for Amerika

Via John F. Gaski at American Thinker (emphasis is mine):

Poor Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume. There they were on the O'Reilly show a few weeks ago, puzzling over why Barack Obama and the Democrats are doing so many things that are damaging to our country. Bill and Brit agreed that they couldn't possibly be harming the nation intentionally, because negative voter reaction would redound to them politically and electorally. Can't the Democrats see this? Did they suddenly get stupid politically? This is so unlike them. How to explain this anomaly?

Poor Bill and Brit, and many others, indeed. It is time to think the unthinkable and speak the ineffable. Apart from the troubling question of intent, or whether Obama-Pelosi-Reid just have a novel view of the public interest, the national Democrats are unnaturally and mysteriously sanguine despite growing backlash by the American people. Why? One reason: The Dems don't believe they will ever have to face a real election again. Is their plan not becoming obvious? It is very straightforward:

(1) Grant amnesty to the illegal aliens (the correct term for lawbreaking invaders, regardless of their natural and rational motives) which will create up to 30 million reliably Democrat voters -- especially after being registered at least once each by ACORN. That is cushion enough to carry any national election. Why else could Dems be so fixated on this agenda item?

You will find the rest of Gaski's excellent column here.

I believe Gaski has it exactly right, and far too many conservatives are already chilling the bubbly in anticipation of a huge conservative victory next November that I am not at all convinced is coming.

There is no doubt in my mind that TARP and Porkulus were brought about for the sole purpose of ensuring a permanent defeat-proof socialist congress is put into place, and I expect the far-left to employ every dirty trick contained within its arsenal over the next two elections to make that a reality. They might even manage to invent some new ones along the way, such as Universal Voter Registration, which even a blind monkey could see as the vote-fraud scheme it obviously is.

Neal Boortz has been warning us for years about the far-left taking power and never relinquishing it again, and spelled out exactly how they are doing it.

Sadly, there are still too many among us who have yet to wake up and take notice. Yes, the Tea Parties were all well and good, but when you really think about it, they didn't get really cranking until the intricacies of ObamaCare began filtering out.

It's just too bad they didn't get up and going back when the bailouts and slush funds were being proposed and put into place. Those horses have now left the barn and bolted for God-knows-where, and rounding them up again my very well prove impossible.

The people of this nation have historically gotten away with waiting around to the last second of the last minute of the eleventh hour before realizing something was amiss in this country. I fear that we have now reached the point where, by the time most Americans put down their People Magazines, turn off American Idol, and finally began taking notice as to what is really happening to our republic, it is going to be too late to repair the damage.

I pray every day that I am wrong.

The Approaching Financial Train Wreck

From Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson at the Center for Vision & Values:

We have a problem. This could be “the big one”—bigger than coping with the Ahmadinejads, Kims, and Chavezes of the world and bigger than our current economic woes. Our republic, our society, may be heading for a crackup. We are bankrupt, both financially and politically.

The source of the problem is democracy. Decades of so-called “progressive” thought have led us to abandon the limited-government, constitutional republic established by our founding fathers. In the name of putting more power into the hands of "the people," the government has arrogated sweeping powers.

[...]

Crude, majoritarian democracy (as in, “there are more of us than there are of you, so we’re going to redistribute your wealth”) inevitably undermines the harmony of society. A free market, as competitive as it is, is based on peaceful, voluntary cooperation. When commerce is free and unfettered by government interference, both sides to a transaction normally gain, thereby promoting social harmony.

Democracy, by contrast, engenders social conflict. Money changes hands by force of the taxman and the threat of imprisonment, not voluntarily. Democracy pits citizens against each other in a sordid squabble whereby many strive to have the state confer benefits seized from their fellow citizens.

[...]

How bad could it get? If the social order breaks down, civil unrest could disrupt markets and shortages of essential goods could occur. The resulting chaos could trigger martial law. A strong leader—a Caesar—could institute some sort of command order. Millions would resent it, but it would be accepted, because the alternative—civil conflict, chronic disorder, and impending starvation—would be intolerable. In such a calamity, Caesar would be the lesser of two evils. The American Republic and Constitution would join earlier democracies in the ashbin of history.

God help us.

God help us, indeed.

You will find the entire article here.

All I can say at this point is buckle up, as I really do not see a way to avoid the approaching train wreck.

(h/t: WorldNetDaily)

Photocredit: The Relationship Economy

Libertarianism on the Rise?

I essentially abandoned the Republican Party in favor of the libertarians back in the late 1990s, as I had become so disgusted with their relentless move leftward fiscally that I just couldn't take it anymore. I cast my presidential vote for Harry Browne in the 2000 election, and have never once regretted having done so. The obscene spending spree the Republicans later embarked on in the first half of this decade served to only reinforce the belief that my decision to abandon the party was the correct one.

I have long believed that the majority of Americans are basically libertarians at heart, it is just one or two pet issues that hang them up, thus preventing them from making the full leap. I have only one real disagreement with the libertarians, and that is with those who are such staunch, no-matter-what isolationists, which I believe is a totally unworkable concept in this day and age.

Isolationism may have worked out okay once upon a time, but consider the kind of world we might now be residing in had the isolationists held sway in the late 1930s.

Yeah, same here.

Anyhow, Cato@Liberty has taken a look at a Gallup poll released this past Monday, and points out the number of libertarians is at its highest point in a decade:

The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.

You will find the entire article here.

The Democrats are an utter lost cause, as far as I am concerned, and like most of my libertarian-minded fellow travelers, and probably many Americans who perhaps aren't, I have little confidence in the Republicans. I seriously question the GOP's will to not just merely stop Obama and his hideous, relentless transformation of America, but to actually reverse it, should they be elected in sufficient numbers to do so.

They are, after all, the only political party that has any chance to stop Obama, as I believe a break-away third party now would be completely nonviable in the near-term, and would most likely ensure Obama will have enough congressional support to bring his "plan" to its logical conclusion. That outcome would not be conducive to freedom and liberty in this country.

However, the fiscal transgressions they committed while in control of congress under George W. Bush are just too fresh in my mind for me to trust them to any real degree right now. They controlled congress for 12 years, six of which were under a "Republican" president, and yet they failed to reverse any of the fiscally-irresponsible policies that had been previously put into place.

Why should I now believe they will reverse any of the serious damage Obama is currently wantonly wreaking on our country, particularly given that party's "leadership" is, as I write this, supporting free-spending RINOs like Dede Scozzafava?

Fool me once, shame on you... as they say.

I may change my mind between now and the election next November, but unless true fiscal conservatism once again rises to the fore within the Republican Party, I will continue to hold them at arms length, and will continue voting for libertarians in my state and local elections.

$4 Billion Bailout for the Postal Service?

Via David Rogers at Politico (emphasis mine):

The House voted Thursday to freeze Medicare Part B premiums for most elderly next year, even as Democrats moved to exempt the Postal Service from having to make $4 billion in payments due next week to cover retirement health benefits for its employees.

[...]

At a meeting of House and Senate Appropriations Committee negotiators Thursday morning, the Postal Service language was incorporated into a stop-gap continuing resolution, or CR, that Congress must enact in the next week to keep the full government operations. As adopted, the postal agency, which now faces a liability of $5.4 billion due Sept. 30, would have to pay only $1.4 billion and would be allowed to effectively defer the remaining $4 billion until after 2017.

Will their even be a Postal Service by 2017? I have my doubts here.

“That’s good news” said a Postal Service spokesman, who argued the arrangement posed no risk for the taxpayer since the retirement fund holds $32 billion at this time. Nonetheless, critics argued the $4 billion will now be added as a potential cost on the government’s books given the fragile state of the Postal Service, and the whole handling of the issue is seen by many as a parliamentary sleight-of-hand.

Republicans made no effort to target the postal provision but complained it had been added without warning to the otherwise non-controversial 30 day resolution. Moreover, to doubly protect their work product, the Democratic leadership for the Appropriations Committees has wrapped it into an otherwise non-controversial $4.65 billion budget bill covering the operations of the Capitol and such agencies as the Library of Congress.

[...]

Ranking Republican, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, countered that the whole strategy was “one of the most cynical legislative maneuvers I’ve ever seen.” And Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) said Democrats made matters worse by wrapping the spending provision into the legislative appropriations bill –taking care of Congress’s “backyard” and doing little for the rest of the nation.

You can read the entire article here.

My question is, where are they going to get $4 billion? We're effectively broke.

I think it's time to cut the USPS loose and let it sink or swim on its own. Seriously, given the advent of faxing, email and texting, do we even need a Postal Service anymore, especially one that is going to pick our pockets every time it gets in over its financial head?

Maybe people attending the next Tea Party in D.C. will show up with the pitchforks and torches, as that appears to be our only option to finally put a stop to this endless fiscal insanity.

If this lunacy continues unchecked, and it appears it will, by November of 2010 we are going to be in dire straits as a nation.

Even more dire than we are already.

(h/t: Boortz.com)

From the No Sh*t, Sherlock File:

IG: Taxpayers May Lose Money on Bailouts

Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:21 PM

By: Dan Weil

Taxpayers may lose money on the $700 billion bailout engineered by the Treasury Department of the Bush and Obama administrations.

So says Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the bailout, formally known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

In testimony prepared for the Senate Banking Committee Thursday, Barofsky says the Treasury Department has ignored suggestions to improve the program’s transparency. And he says Treasury has never solved the vexing problem of disposing with the toxic assets that remain on banks' balance sheets.

"While several TARP recipients have repaid funds for what has widely been reported as a 17 percent profit, it is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment," Barofsky said in the remarks, as cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The Treasury’s attempt to use government aid to spark bank loans hasn’t worked, he says. Lending has actually dropped, despite the government’s injection of billions of dollars into the banking system.

To be sure, he acknowledges that lending would have plunged even more precipitously if the TARP program hadn’t been enacted.

Barofsky has clashed repeatedly with the Treasury over the program’s transparency.

"TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested," Barofsky said.

While U.S. taxpayers may not make out so well in the financial buyout, some other investors have profited handsomely. Warren Buffett, for instance, has earned paper profit of $3 billion, or 60 percent, on the $5 billion investment he made in Goldman Sachs a year ago.

And Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC) announced this week that it gained a $1.6 billion profit by selling about half of its holdings in Citigroup.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

-End

I have long felt that TARP was nothing less than an illegal treasury raid cooked up by Paulson & Co. for the express purpose of helping out their Wall Street buddies. I never bought into the notion that our financial system was on the verge of imminent collapse.

I hope to see an investigation someday into where our money went, who got it, and what it was used for, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

Personally, I think TARP is the largest and most egregious scam ever pulled off.

Obama Open To Birdcage Liner Bailout

From The Hill:

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue.

In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn't asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, "I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it."

You can read the rest of article here.

Aside from the now obligatory disconnect between Obama and Gibbs that seems to be the MO for this crowd, as well as the fact that this will brign the idea of State Controlled Media that much closer to reality, I only have one thing to say:


What are these people not getting about the concept of NO MORE BAILOUTS!

America: World's Largest Nanny State?

We aren't quite there yet, but we are getting closer to the Europeans as each day passes.

Things have gotten so bad in the U.K. income tax-wise that Andrew Lloyd Weber is worried that with a new 50% top rate, many talented people are going to up and flee the country.

Somehow, I don't think they will be coming here.

Jerome Corsi at WordNetDaily warns that we may soon be on par with the Europeans when it comes to government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

Data emerging from the Congressional Budget Office and various international agencies, including the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD, indicate the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget will dramatically increase government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, on a scale that rivals even the European Union social welfare states of France, Great Britain and Germany.

That is bad enough all by itself, but it isn't the only problem that we face, as our future economic growth may be far less than we have enjoyed in past expansions:

The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly warned that running federal budget deficits that result in dramatically expanding national debt by trillions of dollars in the next few years will diminish the prospects for growth in the U.S. economy.

In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., dated May 19, 2008, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained that trillions of dollars in projected federal deficits "would crowd out productive investment in capital in the United States" by absorbing funds from the nation's pool of savings and absorbing foreign capital that might otherwise be invested in the U.S. private economy.

What is even more disheartening is that the actions being taken by our own government to "fix" the problem are being seen as (and in my opinion are) part of what got us into this mess to begin with:

Merkel further warned that President Obama was repeating the problem that caused the global economic meltdown in the first place.

Specifically, her charge was that the economy collapsed because the economic stimulus after Sept. 11 depended entirely upon the credit abundantly made available when then-Fed Chairman Greenspan held interest rates at 1 percent in 2003 and 2004.

"This crisis did not come about because we used too little money but because we created economic growth with too much money, and it was not sustainable growth," Merkel told the Financial Times. "If we want to learn from that, the answer is not to repeat the mistakes of the past."

You can read the whole excerpt here.

Perhaps it might be a really good idea to start thinking about attending the next Tea Party that takes place in your area.

Just a thought.

Total Federal Subsidies Climb Above 1,800

Chris Edwards, the Director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, has done some research in the area of federal subsidies and recently published a report of his findings that contains some pretty eye-popping figures:

By 2008, there were 1,804 different subsidy programs in the federal budget. Hundreds of programs were added this decade—ranging from a $62 billion prescription drug plan to a $1 million anti-drug education grant—and the recent stimulus bill added even more. We are in the midst of the largest federal gold rush since the 1960s.

You can view the entire pdf file of his findings here.

I have to warn you, the picture it paints of our financial future as a nation isn't the least bit pretty.

But why worry, eh? After all, its just your money, as well as your freedom, and that of your children and grandchildren, too.