Articles tagged as

Debt

Red Ink Rules

The federal government drools when it come to budgeting The federal deficit was $693 billion for the first half of fiscal year 2019. That is $94 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last year. By anybody’s numbers the deficit and our accumulated debt are too large. Quite simply our federal government … Read more

burning money

Our Gross Overspending … $1 Trillion Again

Fiscal insanity Fiscal insanity continues to reign in the District of Columbia. Congress steadfastly refuses to budget for the nation. It continues to authorize spending while refusing to acknowledge responsibility for repayment. There are no signs of a return to fiscal sanity in sight. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicates that … Read more

America’s Pension Crisis part 2

ICYMI – part two of our interview with Lawrence J. McQuillan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute and author of CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis.    

America’s Pension Crisis

Our guest is Lawrence J. McQuillan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute and author of  CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis

The basis of his economic theory

You can steal from your children and your grandchildren with impunity because, after all,  “In the long run, we’re all dead“. “We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists. The consequences of being found out had, of course, to be … Read more

The Sedately Blindfolded…

At first glance, I thought “oh, a juxtaposition of encroaching Islam and the West’s willing full blindness to it”. But after just an exhale, I thought, the clear, focused eye of the vigilant vs the languid, insouciant, and blithe blindfolded adorning rube extends beyond the global cultural tectonic  shifts.  The blindfold’s breadth is exceedingly broad.  … Read more

Is Senator Shaheen Your Senator…or Just the Democrat Party Senator?

New Hampshire US Senator Jeanne Shaheen is not here to talk to any little people that are not her little people.   When asked a question about more spending stimulus, as recommended by President Obama, that would be more debt spending at the expense of our children and their children, she couldn’t even be bothered to respond. I guess she’s … Read more

The White House is out with its Sequester Doom & Gloom – but what does the chart really say?

Ah yes, Obama hoisted on his own petard.  How “smooth” is it for the White House to start hauling out these “the Sequester is going to hurt children and old people” stats, but fail to note “Oh yeah, our boss was the one that first suggested this with his last self-serving hissy fit on the last debt ceiling fight”:

  • Some 600,000 poor women and children will no longer get free milk and cheese
  • 2,100 fewer food inspections will take place if federal budget cuts expected to kick in March 1 actually take place.
  • federal agencies notified hundreds of thousands of federal workers that furloughs could be around the corner
  • 70,000 children would get kicked out of early childhood intervention programs that help poorer children catch up to middle-class peers, heading into kindergarten.
  • 1,000 fewer criminals would be prosecuted due to furloughed federal prosecutors.
  • 4 million fewer “Meals on Wheels” would be delivered to the elderly.
  • 1,000 fewer research grants would be awarded, cutting research and laboratories for some 12,000 scientists and students.

Oh, the horror of it all – this PROGRESSIVE policy of “try to trick the Republicans” – Obama set this up to take a hard toll on the Military, believing that the Republicans would cave before letting that happen.  Seems, however…

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Data Point – Future Entitlement Spending

When you look at future Federal budgets and wonder why you can’t feed YOUR kids because the Progressive programs (and the debt for funding them) are sucking it away from you, you can blame ourselves for putting these chuckleheads at the helm. (H/T: Heritage)

Obama – always the victim

A primary tool of any Community Organizer is to create a set of people to believe they are victims.  Victims of a circumstance, victims by “authority”, victims by ginning up a fabricated storyline (see: Reverands Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as examples).  Well, isn’t it rather obnoxious to see the most powerful man in the … Read more

Forward is the New Backward

Taxes and Democrats The pledge politics lie and broad based taxesReality thy name is payroll tax cut, or more to the point the absence of same.  That’s right, the federal government will no longer be subsidizing your lifestyle.  The “holiday” is over.  They are taking back that which is theirs.  And all of our paychecks are going down as a result.

Effective January 1st the payroll tax rises from 4.2% to 6.2%.  That hits everyone.  And there is a lesson to be learned here if liberals, and people who refuse to pay attention, pay attention.  That 2% subsidy you just lost–that is what the Democrats call it when they don’t tax rich people, business owners, or oil companies, a subsidy–really is your money, just like it really does belong to everyone else who goes to work or runs a business or takes on investment risk.

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Seven “Firsts” for the US Economy

Gas Prices – Image Credit: Washington Post.com

From Wynton Hall at Breitbart…an end of year (or beginning of year) list of Mr. Obama’s new normal.  This is his America, and that of Democrats who have had a majority control of the US government for six years now. Mr. Hall calls these “seven firsts for the US economy.”

1. All-time record annual average gas price: In 2012, the average cost of a gallon of gas eclipsed the previous record by nine cents, bringing the annual average to $3.60.

2. All-time record food stamp participation: As of last month, for the first time in American history, 47,710,324 individuals — roughly one out of every seven people living in the United States — now receive food stamps.

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An indictment of America’s political class

Bill Whittle speaking on America’s current political leadership: “The stockpile of wealth that it has taken over 200 years to accumulate has been spent. The miserable, unserious, criminally negligent, incompetent, immoral, reprehensible, traitorous, swine have spent every last gold coin in America’s former mountain of wealth. And they haven’t stopped.” From Afterburner. Well. Worth. Watching.

Add on thought from my previous post – whose really is kidding who?

The Fiscal Cliff – such a crisis.  A man-made crisis created by Politicians that had 10 years to defuse it (the expiration of the Bush era tax cuts).  It does have real consequences – and in the end, won’t solve the two biggest problems we have: a $16 Trillion debt and that we are adding to it at over $1 Trillion / year.  Are any of these clowns in DC actually serious about the real financial danger they are putting us into?  Here they are talking about a $1 Trillion revenue over 10 years – and about $85 Billion in less spending over the same time frame (ok, I’m being optimistic).  Put them together and what do you get?  About $200 Billion per year “saving” if we do “Washington style  rounding”.

Again, we are at what seems to be a constant $1.2 Trillion in deficit spending per year.  Do our “Leaders” ever take time out from politics, do the math AND check that some of us actually watch them?  For all of the ink and pixels being used over this issue, how often do we see our MSM Journalists go “er, that isn’t going to pay the bills, is it?”

Hardly – even if we avoid this Fiscal Cliff with what seems to be a  badly stitched together patchwork will still be spending the magic $1 Trillion per year that we don’t have.  We’ve had 4 years of it thus far, piling up almost $6 Trillion in additional debt – there is no telling how much additional debt we would have if Obama controls setting the new debt ceiling – or the one after that, and after that, and after that….you get the picture.

Thus, this whole Fiscal Cliff is just so much horsepuckey in comparison.

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Let Us Dine On the Rotten Fruit of Compromise With the Left

Let it Burn Lets go over the Fiscal Cliff
Democrats Wanted the Fiscal Cliff. They voted for it. They signed it into Law. So Let them have their way.

If you ignore all the marketing and PR that surrounds the fiscal cliff and just boil it all down to the bones, what happens on January first is what Democrats wanted. Ace Gets it right Here.

Remember, the deal that got us to this point was agreed to by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and signed by Obama. That’s as bi-partisan as it gets. I’ve heard from squishy low information voters, Obama and the media that “bi-partisan problem solving” is the Holy Grail of politics. Well, here it is.

The Cliff is a Democrat plan. It was passed by a Democrat Senate, signed by a Democrat President, and as Ace points out, is precisely the kind of compromise the left insists Republicans engage in over and over again.

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Secession By Atrophy

Ah, what’s a little secession between states, eh?  So a state is no longer under the auspices of the United States, it’ll be an orphan. Big deal. What do you think will happen? That the forlorn and forgotten former territory of the United State will sit in pathetic darkness like a shivering punished child at an Oliver Twist orphanage after ditching all of the other states to go off on its own, and now is no longer welcome? That trade will cease between the former compatriots, and an occasional border skirmish will break out like a resentful anthema on the blistered skin of envy?  C’mon, that won’t happen…. okay maybe that will happen.

But if you’re one of those screaming “Secession!”, a little patience may serve you well. It might happen, maybe not officially, but in effect secession has a chance to occur if we do not soon take an exit from the economic road on which we are currently speeding. We’re $16,000,000,000,000 in debt, and nowhere in sight is there any curtailing indicator.  As I and others have stated previously that once a dollar is payment on the debt, that same dollar cannot be then used for other things. As the debt begins to siphon funds from Federal Government responsibilities to the bondholders, that money cannot be used again, and choices must be made.

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