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The last members of the IUSB Vision staff have now graduated. After all these years of informing the students and the general public. None of the few students who we deemed qualified were available to take the reigns here at IUSB Vision so soon we will be posting our final post.
We would like to thank Professor Ernest Goforth for taking the heat from the administration for us. We would like to thank our founding editor Craig Chamberlain, our second editor Jarrod Brigham, our third editor Chuck Norton, and all of the staff who have contributed to the IUSB Vision for so long.
We are very much aware that our 40,000 readers and dozens of other blogs have come to count on us so we would like to let the readers know that IUSB Vision editor Chuck Norton has purchased a terrific root domain and will be launching a new web site very soon. The IUSB Vision archives will forever be available.
On behalf of the entire IUSB Vision staff both past and present we would like to thank you all for reading IUSB Vision. It is the goal of every student publication to have an impact and we have the satisfaction of knowing we did.
Faculty Advisor – Prof. Ernest Goforth.
Editors in Chief – Craig Chamberlain, Jarrod Brigham, Chuck Norton.
Contributors –Stacy Rummel,Ed Hellig, Ed Lima, Gerry Rough, Marcus Vigil, Heather White Vigil, Larry Browning, Andrew Filmer, Sandy Brigham, Sarah Chamberlain, Sydney Chase, Naoko Fujimoto, Misty Perrin, Joanna Reusser, Rashida Vindic, Bo Lowman, Carlie Barr, Rachel Wesner, Ryan Hill, Stacie Jensen, Maria Pirrie.
I have been waiting for this for a long time. When I was in college finishing my latest degree here at IUSB I was making many of these very same claims about global warming alarmist nonsense as the IAC report below. Leftist students and faculty pretty much told me that I was nuts, and I wasn’t a climate scientist so how would I know? Well it looks like I knew. It was easy. First of all it doesn’t take a genius to see when the scientific method is being ignored and second of all, what I am an expert on is politics and I know a political movement when I see one.
At the bottom of the article I posted a list of links that I wrote starting in 2007 saying many of the same things the IAC has pointed out below. I have reactivated IUSB Vision just for the purpose of posting this story. All of you PhD. laden academics who doubted me and called me all of those names behind my back should ask yourselves; why was a mere undergrad like me spot on and all of you who are supposed to be teachers wrong? And this isn’t this first time that happened is it? – Chuck Norton
On June 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement saying it had “complete[d] the process of implementation of a set of recommendations issued in August 2010 by the Inter Academy Council (IAC), the group created by the world’s science academies to provide advice to international bodies.”
Hidden behind this seemingly routine update on bureaucratic processes is an astonishing and entirely unreported story. The IPCC is the world’s most prominent source of alarmist predictions and claims about man-made global warming. Its four reports (a fifth report is scheduled for release in various parts in 2013 and 2014) are cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. and by national academies of science around the world as “proof” that the global warming of the past five or so decades was both man-made and evidence of a mounting crisis.
If the IPCC’s reports were flawed, as a many global warming “skeptics” have long claimed, then the scientific footing of the man-made global warming movement — the environmental movement’s “mother of all environmental scares” — is undermined. The Obama administration’s war on coal may be unnecessary. Billions of dollars in subsidies to solar and wind may have been wasted. Trillions of dollars of personal income may have been squandered worldwide in campaigns to “fix” a problem that didn’t really exist.
The “recommendations” issued by the IAC were not minor adjustments to a fundamentally sound scientific procedure. Here are some of the findings of the IAC’s 2010 report.
Alternative views not considered, claims not properly peer reviewed
The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give “due consideration … to properly documented alternative views” (p. 20), fail to “provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors” (p. 21), and are not “consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses” (p. 22). In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.
No formal criteria for selecting IPCC authors
The IAC found that “the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors” and “the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents” (p. 18). Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and “do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications” (p. 18). In other words: authors are selected from a “club” of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.
Too political…
The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers by politicians and environmental activists — a problem called out by global warming realists for many years, but with little apparent notice by the media or policymakers — was plainly admitted, perhaps for the first time by an organization in the “mainstream” of alarmist climate change thinking. “[M]any were concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment’s findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be politically motivated,” the IAC auditors wrote. The scientists they interviewed commonly found the Synthesis Report “too political” (p. 25).
Really? Too political? We were told by everyone — environmentalists, reporters, politicians, even celebrities — that the IPCC reports were science, not politics. Now we are told that even the scientists involved in writing the reports — remember, they are all true believers in man-made global warming themselves — felt the summaries were “too political.”
Here is how the IAC described how the IPCC arrives at the “consensus of scientists”:
Plenary sessions to approve a Summary for Policy Makers last for several days and commonly end with an all-night meeting. Thus, the individuals with the most endurance or the countries that have large delegations can end up having the most influence on the report (p. 25).
How can such a process possibly be said to capture or represent the “true consensus of scientists”?
Phony estimates of certainty
Another problem documented by the IAC is the use of phony “confidence intervals” and estimates of “certainty” in the Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27-34). Those of us who study the IPCC reports knew this was make-believe when we first saw it in 2007. Work by J. Scott Armstrong on the science of forecasting makes it clear that scientists cannot simply gather around a table and vote on how confident they are about some prediction, and then affix a number to it such as “80% confident.” Yet that is how the IPCC proceeds.
The IAC authors say it is “not an appropriate way to characterize uncertainty” (p. 34), a huge understatement. Unfortunately, the IAC authors recommend an equally fraudulent substitute, called “level of understanding scale,” which is more mush-mouth for “consensus.”
The IAC authors warn, also on page 34, that “conclusions will likely be stated so vaguely as to make them impossible to refute, and therefore statements of ‘very high confidence’ will have little substantive value.” Yes, but that doesn’t keep the media and environmental activists from citing them over and over again as “proof” that global warming is man-made and a crisis…even if that’s not really what the reports’ authors are saying.
IPCC participants had conflicts of interest
Finally, the IAC noted, “the lack of a conflict of interest and disclosure policy for IPCC leaders and Lead Authors was a concern raised by a number of individuals who were interviewed by the Committee or provided written input” as well as “the practice of scientists responsible for writing IPCC assessments reviewing their own work. The Committee did not investigate the basis of these claims, which is beyond the mandate of this review” (p. 46).
Too bad, because these are both big issues in light of recent revelations that a majority of the authors and contributors to some chapters of the IPCC reports are environmental activists, not scientists at all. That’s a structural problem with the IPCC that could dwarf the big problems already reported.
IPCC critics vindicated
So on June 27, nearly two years after these bombshells fell (without so much as a raised eyebrow by the mainstream media in the U.S. — go ahead and try Googling it), the IPCC admits that it was all true and promises to do better for its next report. Nothing to see here…keep on moving.
Well I say, hold on, there! The news release means that the IAC report was right. That, in turn, means that the first four IPCC reports were, in fact, unreliable. Not just “possibly flawed” or “could have been improved,” but likely to be wrong and even fraudulent.
It means that all of the “endorsements” of the climate consensus made by the world’s national academies of science — which invariably refer to the reports of the IPCC as their scientific basis — were based on false or unreliable data and therefore should be disregarded or revised. It means that the EPA’s “endangerment finding” — its claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and threat to human health — was wrong and should be overturned.
And what of the next IPCC report, due out in 2013 and 2014? The near-final drafts of that report have been circulating for months already. They were written by scientists chosen by politicians rather than on the basis of merit; many of them were reviewing their own work and were free to ignore the questions and comments of people with whom they disagree. Instead of “confidence,” we will get “level of understanding scales” that are just as meaningless.
And on this basis we should transform the world’s economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?
In 2010, we learned that much of what we thought we knew about global warming was compromised and probably false. On June 27, the culprits confessed and promised to do better. But where do we go to get our money back?
Related from this old college blog:
Inconvenient Questions Global Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You to Ask – February 18, 2007 – LINK
Top Scientists Say: You Are Not the Cause of Global Warming – October 22, 2007 – LINK
Global Cooling Continues; Global Warming Alarmists Still Issuing Death Threats – December 28, 2008 – LINK
UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – December 28, 2008 – LINK
National Climatic Data Center: Cooling in Last 10 Years – January 10, 2009 – LINK
The Debate is Over. Global Warming Alarmism is About Achieving Central Control of the Economy and Now They Admit It Openly – March 27, 2009 – LINK
Al Gore: Climate change issue can lead to world government – July 11, 2009 – LINK
EPA Tried to Suppress Global Warming Report Admitting Skeptics Correct – October 23, 2009 – LINK
New AP Article on “Global Cooling Myth” Spins a Bad Study – UPDATED: Look where they put THIS ground station… – October 27, 2009 – LINK
Professors Paid to Plagiarize – UPDATE: Global warming scientists hacked emails show manipulation of data, hiding of other data and conspiring to attack/smear global warming skeptics! – November 19, 2009 – LINK
National Association of Scholars on the “ClimateGate” Scandal – November 28, 2009 – LINK
Examples of the “Climategate” Documents – UPDATE: BBC Had the emails and files for 6 weeks, sat on story. UPDATE II – They carried out their conspiracy threat; much of the raw data from CRU destroyed! – November 28, 2009 – LINK
Scientific American thinks you are stupid: The dissection of a blatant propaganda piece for global warming alarmism. – December 6, 2009 – LINK
The Roundup: IPCC Authors Now Admitting Fault – No Warming Since 1995 – Sea Levels Not Rising. Senator Inhofe: Possible criminal misuse of taxpayer research funds. – February 23, 2010 – LINK
OOPS AGAIN: IPCC scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits… – April 23, 2010 – LINK
UN IPCC Co-chair: climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth – November 18, 2010 – LINK
More Hadley Center Global Warming Horror Claims Debunked by Real Science – December 6, 2010 – LINK
ClimateGate One Year Later. Elite Media Still Lying – December 6, 2010 – LINK
More ClimateGate One Year Later – December 7, 2010 – LINK
IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT: Most global warming models are exaggerated, many scientists in it for the grant money or treat it like a religion – December 7, 2010 – LINK
How Global Warming Propaganda Works – December 8, 2010 – LINK
NASA’s global warming evidence page filled with lies, half truths and suspect data – December 10, 2010 – LINK
Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: Halt economic growth, start government rationing. Global Warming Alarmists Party Fat in Cancun – December 21, 2010 – LINK
Global Warming Conference Delegates Sign Petitions to Ban Water and “Destabilize U.S. Economy” – February 15, 2011 – LINK
Global Warming Alarmist Quote of the Day – Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart: No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.
AAUP Seeks to Limit Transparency Over Climate Science – September 19, 2011 – LINK
The University of Montana School of Law has agreed to stop discrimination against a Christian group in its allocation of student funds.
Prior to this, the leftist dominated school administration and student government had denied funding to the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society on the basis of its religious and political viewpoints.
In response, the group filed a lawsuit, assisted by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal aid group.
You would think that a law school would know how to follow clearly established anti-discrimination laws. The truth is that of course U of M Law knew full well what the law was as said law can be looked up in minutes, but their zeal for anti-Christian bigotry was more important to them than the law, as evidenced by the fact that they held out until they faced a lawsuit they had no chance of winning.
Now keep in mind this is the University of Montana where the people there are as traditional and religious as can be and yet look at how detached the university is from the people it is paid to serve. This is an indicator of just how completely the radical left has compromised the public education system. University departments tend to clone themselves. The only place most Americans are likely to encounter neo-Marxists and genuine ‘capital C’ communists is on a university campus. The truth is that even moderate and center/right professors are persecuted at most colleges and that includes IU South Bend.
Would a university such as the University of Montana whose entire administration engaged in obviously illegal view point discrimination and anti-Christian bigotry to the point of having a lawsuit filed against them even hesitate to not hire or drum out a traditional or conservative professor?
Is your group being discriminated against by your administration or student government association? Contact your Regional Field Coordinator to learn about the legal resources you can use to ensure fair treatment for your conservative group on campus.
I have to ask. Is anyone shocked or even surprised by AAUP’s action? AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has demonstrated itself to be just slightly less ideologically corrupt than MSNBC. Politics trumps science, academic freedom, and transparency as a matter of course at AAUP. Such behavior is anti-education and anti-science.
In a letter to University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, the AAUP requested that the administration scale back an open-records agreement with a conservative organization seeking documents from UVa climate researchers. They were joined by 3 other climate science advocacy organizations: theAmerican Geophysical Union, Climate Science Watch, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The university reached an agreement with the American Tradition Institute (ATI) on May 24, 2011 to hand over documents pertaining to former UVa professor Michael Mann and other climate scientists.
Mann, a current professor at Pennsylvania State University, was widely criticized in 2009 when his global warming research was debunked in the heavily publicized“ClimateGate” scandal.
The AAUP cites academic freedom and the necessity of protecting professors from public scrutiny as reasons for scaling back the agreement. “The university should seek to improve the agreement to better protect scientists from harassment and intimidation,” the letter says.
David Schnare, Director of ATI’s Environmental Law Center, refuted the AAUP’s claim. “There is no adequate means to inspect the ethical standards and behaviors of the faculty of the university without public access to these records,” he said.
Schnare also points out the ATI is under a gag order regarding documents that are exempt from public disclosure according to Virginia open records law. He asserts that ATI and UVa are, “cooperating in a professional manner to insure that the faculty and the scientists are properly protected while meeting the needs of the public.”
This is not the first time that the AAUP has sought to limit transparency in the name of “academic freedom.” In 2009, the organizationopposedthe public posting of course syllabi and faculty curriculum vita in public universities in Texas.
University professors across the country are given free license to espouse their left-wing ideology while under the guise of academic freedom. Are faculty at your university using the classroom to promote a liberal worldview?
VIDEO: Northern Arizona University (NAU) campus administration attempts to shut down 9/11 event; students hold their ground and defend the First Amendment.
Northern Arizona University (NAU) doesn’t want students to remember 9/11. At least that’s the message that NAU is sending to members of the Conservatives club who were interrupted and threatened by university administrators for four hours on Friday.
These actions by the administration occurred when the conservatives passed out American flags, buttons, stickers, and posters to students as part of the YAF 9/11: Never Forget Project.
The group was confronted for setting up their own table inside the university union, instead of registering with Student Life to request a space. After several administrators hassled them about the project, the club members took down the table and put it away along with the posters. In order to still remember 9/11, and comply with the administrators, Conservatives Club stood against the wall and handed out American flags to passerby.
This was not enough for the administration. They continued to go out of their way to intimidate, threaten, and interrupt the project.
Two students are currently being charged with several misconduct violations, and the club as a whole is facing suspension even though the event did not display the club’s name in any way.
The event paid reverence to the innocent victims that were lost and the broken families that were left behind. This is an example of how an act of free speech can go terribly wrong when students’ rights are infringed upon by leftist university bureaucrats.
Did administrators give you a hard time for your 9/11 memorial? Write about it on Campus Reform or contact your Regional Field Coordinator today for advice and assistance.
Let us clear a few things up for any university admins who are viewing this page and watched that video. “Time, Place, and Manner” does not, has never and will never mean that you can set up “First Amendment zones” or “designated areas” as one administrator tried to invent in that video. Attempts to do so have always failed in the courts and universities that have enacted them have had them successfully challenged in federal court and in some cases paying damages/attorney’s fees.
“Time, Place, and Manner” comes into effect if the purpose of the demonstration is not speech, but rather to disrupt and prevent others from leaving or getting around the speech event.
Here are some examples:
One cannot hold a protest in the middle of a highway during rush hour.
One cannot have a large protest in the middle of a classroom while class is in session thus preventing the class from doing its mission.
One can have a protest in a cafeteria, but could not have one that surrounds the checkout so that people could not pay for their food.
All “Time, Place, and Manner” restrictions if proved necessary must place the minimum possible restrictions on the speech event and cannot be arbitrary.
Standing on the wall in a wide hallway or foyer doesn’t even come close to meeting the allowed “Time, Place, and Manner” legal standard, and if the university has ever let anyone set up a booth or table there than the university has already lost. If the university has bulletin boards there for people to stop and read those people would be taking up the same space as two students handing out flags on 9-11.
Under these circumstances it means that the university knew that such a small demonstration was allowable and the result would be the university suffering a humiliating defeat in court, and could also subject the administrators to a section 1983 lawsuit because they would have or should have reasonably known that they were using the color of law to selectively violate these students First Amendment rights by abusing the public trust using color of law. If a section 1983 lawsuit were successful it would mean that those students whose rights were violated could go after the personal assets of the said offending administrator (A legal strategy that FIRE and other groups who defend the First Amendment are now considering due to the gross misconduct of so many college administrators).
The administrators at Northern Arizona University are still trying to figure out what hit them. As a Leadership Institute Field Rep I worked with the NAU Conservatives to fight back after administrators tried to shut down their YAF 9/11 display.
After releasing a YouTube video that gained more than 1,500 hits exposing the NAU administrators harassing the students, local and national media outlets picked up on the story.
The Arizona Daily Sun, Drudge Report, Townhall, The Blaze, and the Daily Caller all posted stories on the absurd actions of the NAU administrators.
The media pressure became too much for the NAU administration. They have decided to drop the charges against all the students involved in the 9/11 memorial event.
On Monday morning, following Friday’s run-in with NAU Student Life administrators, the students being tried for misconduct violations requested their hearings be extended until the next week when their attorneys could be present.
The students wanted to make sure they were familiar with all of their rights. With the help of The Leadership Institute, they contacted both the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund for legal assistance. Both organizations took an interest, and are providing legal support to the students.
The administration responded to the student’s request late Monday afternoon stating that they would, in fact, grant a hearing extension so that they could “review the situation more.”
Three hours later, the students were again contacted, and told that all charges were to be dropped.
More: Marietta College Attacks 9/11 Display for Being “Too American”…
On the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, we are finding our way of life, our culture, our system of law, and even our history under attack. This is the message of Todd Beamer’s father in an interview with Megyn Kelly.
The history, founding, and philosophy of this country is crystal clear, the enemy, both foreign and domestic, is just hoping that you will not discover it.
Kate Smith introducing God Bless America with Ronald Reagan at 4:20
[Editor’s Note: Obama has Jimmy Hoffa and Trumka out there trashing people, has the Congressional Black Caucus out there race bating, has MSNBC doctoring Rick Perry videos, all on HIS behalf and he comes out after yet another of his umpteen vacations saying that we need to rise above politics & we have to do this NOW NOW NOW; yet he has proposed no bill. He asks that the rich pay their “fair share” except for buddies Buffet, GE, and the others who earn income in ways that are exempted from the wage earner rate that he wants to raise.
He wants another half a trillion stimulus package, after he promised us that not one dime of the first one would be wasted and yet the billions of wasted dollars are still being tallied such as gay sex studies in South America, billions invested in solar panel companies that took the money and then vanished, billions into Chinese companies and make work projects for unions who give the Democrats kick backs.
What happened to the $2.5 trillion that was just handed to him in the so called budget ceiling increase deal he just got? What happened to ‘The stimulus is working we just need more time for it to work’, ‘recovery summer’ and all that?
WHAT Jobs Bill?? Is this another case that we have to pass the bill before we are allowed to see it? The last one that was passed like that had three multi-billion dollar slush funds hidden in it. No more.
Boehner: Here we are with an 1,100 pages that not one member has read this not one! When happened to the promise that we were going to let the American people see what was in this bill?!
Boehner goes nuclear when he finds out that language was illegally inserted into the bill at the last minute giving the AIG execs big bonuses with our money. You see they were big contributors to Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Democrats break transparency promise again; Boehner chews out Henry Waxman for dropping a 300 page amendment to energy tax bill in the hopper at 3:09 am (so that no one could read it).
Newt treated the press as they should have been treated, as trying to generate drama, hype and ratings instead of being the 4th branch. His way of dealing with them is the same style I advocate for my political clients. The elite media will never be your friend, they are out to further their own careers by destroying yours no matter what damage it does to the country.
Obama says that “Rick Perry doesn’t believe in Social Security”. Rick Perry has made it clear several times as I have that we both believe in Social Security, we believe that big government types spent the money and wrecked the system and are now desperate for someone else to blame.
Rick Perry praises Obama on the few things he has done for the country such as keeping GITMO open and killing Osama . Then he adds, “Keynesian policy is now done. We will never have to have that experiment on America again.”
It is no secret that IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton is no fan of Ron Paul, but when he gets it right he deserves credit just as anyone else. Representative Paul knocked the TSA question out of the park. The TSA is abusive and recently an agent raped a prominent blogger by penetrating her vulva four times, and then threatened to sue her for speaking out about it. The TSA is ineffective which has been proved time and time again by the GSA whose inspectors are able to sneak guns, bombs, and other weapons on planes in over 80% of attempts. Ron Paul is correct that it is government who set up the stage for the 9-11 hijackings by telling people not to resist and by preventing pilots from having deadly force training and guns.
Bill Whittle makes some remarkable comments in his must see video and we expand on those comments below:
Lying and/or deception is a staple of leftist philosophy (like Radical Islam’s Taqiyyah concept) and anyone can read Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, Mao, Goebbels, Van Jones, Piven, Hegel, Walter Lippmann, Stalin, ACORN materials, union activist manuals that have been leaked, etc and see that they advocate that the “truth” is anything that supports their position, the ends justifies the means, etc. I then remind them that our philosophy punishes those who lie or break their word – Just ask Bush 41 (read my lips).
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says that bluedogs are just conservative and rhetorical cover so the socialists can get away with more.
While many politicians on both sides do spin and commonly lie when there is a scandal to attempt to get themselves out of trouble, for the left lying is calculated aggression.
For example:
Barack Obama says that government must live within its means and then puts forth a budget with 1.3 trillion to 1.6 trillion yearly deficits for as long as they eye can see, all while his budgets assume 4-5% economic growth.
When Obama goes to El Paso and says that he has done everything the GOP wants him to do with the border and now it is time to pass amnesty (laughable), or after he signed the Stimulus Bill he bragged about how it did not have one single earmark on national television, and then a few days later signed a $411 billion dollar omnibus spening bill with over 8000 earmarks in it, or how his Press Sec. claims that Texas Governor Rick Perry is lying about the federal government denying Texas disaster aid because of the wildfire problem there that has burned millions of acres “because the federal government is paying 75% of the bill” – but here is the rub, they are paying 75% of the bill for 25 fires out of 9000; a key fact he chose to omit. I could go on for 10 pages but I would not want to rub it in.
The truth is not neutral. Truth is demonstrated as truth when it can be demonstrated with a full body of evidence. That is why comments like “That web site isn’t balanced” are meaningless as the truth is not neutral.
What we are stating here was first recorded by Aristotle with his ‘Law of Identity’, also known as A=A; meaning that no matter how something is spun or misperceived truth is what it is and A=A no matter how many people say it equals Q. Aristotle had to break down rhetoric to this common sense level because of another school of rhetoric and ethics known as “The Sophists”. The Sophists prided themselves in their ability to defeat good arguments with bad ones and to use emotional pleas and deception to undermine truth whenever it suited them.
Obama claimed that his health care reform plan (now called Obamacare) would not allocate money for illegal immigrants.
According to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the Congressman who yelled out at Obama, nearly $8.5 million has been set aside for “seasonal farm workers.” Wilson says this group is made up of at least 25% illegal immigrants according to the Pew Research Center.
Now the Congressman says he was right. “It is clearly providing money that should be going to American citizens to illegal immigrants,” Rep. Wilson told FOX News today.
With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home.
John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to do is work at something he loves doing and be successful at it—something that most normal Americans would call ‘The American Dream.’
After high school and some college, Mr. King briefly worked for an IBEW contractor before being drafted into the military. Following his service in the early 70s, King became his own boss by going into business as the youngest electrical contractor in Toledo.
Over the years, King Electrical Services had always been a small business. However, during the Great Recession, King’s business has actually improved as his union competitors have priced themselves out of work.
Unfortunately, being a non-union electrical company, King has always been on the radar of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). In fact, in 2006, he won a significant case against the IBEW at the US Court of Appeals, after the union had improperly promised his electricians jobs on union sites if they voted the union into King’s company.
Since he’s been in business, in addition to the legal battles and verbal abuse, King’s company has been vandalized and threatened on numerous occasions.
“Back then, it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires.” King said during a telephone interview on Tuesday. “The ice pick was the weapon of choice.”
Until Wednesday, the worst of the union attacks on King and his business came in the mid-eighties during the UAW strike at AP Parts. During a lull during the lengthy strike, King’s business was picketed by more than 50 IBEW picketers. This was at a time when he only had eight or nine employees. One of his employees, whose car was trashed by the union picketers, was also beaten up by IBEW thugs.
Unfortunately, the vandalism has never stopped. This year alone, he’s had to report three incidents of damage to police. This doesn’t include the incidents of stalking he and his men have to go through while they’re working.
In one incident earlier this year, rocks were thrown through the front windows of his shop, one of which had the word “kill” written on it.
Last Wednesday, however, the attacks on Mr. King became much more serious when he was awakened late in the evening at his home in Monroe County, Michigan and saw that the motion lights in his driveway had come on. When he looked out his front window, he saw a figure near his SUV and went outside.
As soon as he got outside his front door, King yelled at the individual who was crouched down by King’s vehicle. As soon as King yelled, the suspect stood and, without hesitation, fired a shot at Mr. King.
UPDATE – Even MORE Wild Hypocrisy – Remember this photo?
Remember how the left and the elite media had a collective conniption fit saying that Bush was “profiteering” from 9-11 and exploiting the tragedy for political gain (see links below in this update)? President Obama allowed Sony Corp to have exclusive access to the files of the Osama bin-Laden raid for their upcoming movie that they will be releasing 30 days before the election.
Bill Press of Tribune Media Services wrote: “… Bush’s selling of that third photo, taken on September 11, sets a new, disgusting low in political fund-raising.” – LINK
Remember how President Obama even dressed down the Supreme Court at the State of the Union Address over this issue?
Citizens United released a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton’s corrupt political and business dealings. One of those dealings involved ripping off Marvel Comics and film legend Stan Lee. Here is a short clip from that documentary:
The Democrats and the elite media had a collective cow blasting the Supreme Court on their decision to stand up for the First Amendment.
This is how far the left has gone folks. Once again they have resorted to just making stuff up out of thin air. Mathews claimed on his show that Rush Limbaugh said that we should reverse the reintegration of the military that happened at the end of WWII. Mathews is lying in the worst form of smear. It is no different when MSNBC made up the false quotes about Limbaugh when he was trying to buy an NFL team.
Audio and transcripts of every Rush Limbaugh show are posted online every day.
Keep in mind it was Democrats led by Woodrow Wilson that re-segregated the military after Republicans had integrated it. The NAACP before it was hijacked by the neo-marxist left, was a solidly Republican organization that formed largely in response to Wilson who was also known as “the first progressive president”.
This is indicative of what we will see in the upcoming campaign.
In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs [Barney Frank & Chris Dodd] who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.
Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.
Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.
Many IUSB Vision readers will remember substantive multi-part analysis which had gone viral on the internet with some of our posts on the subject still getting hundreds of hits per day; these posts being the most popular –HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
Last year famed economist Dr. Thomas Sowell published his best-selling tome of the mortgage collapse Housing Boom & Bust which told what happened in an analysis that very closely matched ours. Some of our critics might say that this is no surprise because the editors of this website and Dr. Sowell are very like-minded, but the critics did not expect Reckless Endangerment.
This new book from the New York Times business columnist also tells the story almost point per point as we told you right here at IUSB Vision, with the exception of how we saw the modification of Glass-Steagal with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill. Partisan leftist Robert B. Reich’s review of this book tells several important parts of the same story that we did (and I am sure he didn’t like it), and The American Interest says that Reckless Endangerment could bring about the end of the Democratic Party itself.
Campus leftists who said that our analysis of the mortgage collapse was just partisan rhetoric can stick this in your pipe and smoke it. Our analysis has been confirmed by sources from the left and right, as well as financial publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Forbes etc. While the New York Times took a different view during the campaign season to help the Democrats, outside of the campaign season the NYT has done some top rate analysis on this issue which they deserve credit for. We told you in our analysis that the New York Times predicted in 1999 that this collapse could happen and published the Republican attempts to fix the problem since 2001.
We have been vindicated. As IUSB Vision Editor I also feel vindicated as I spent countless hours of research and sleepless nights to bring you such an accurate analysis early on in the collapse. We are pleased that our analysis has stood the test of time and is still considered one of the best abridged online sources of this crisis available on the internet.
Here is a 30 minute interview with Dr. Sowell on Housing Boom & Bust which we believe is a must see to get insight on the issue –
It is more than just a scarey title. Mark Steyn is a Canadian news, political, economic, and demographic analyst whose rhetorical witt, wisdom and skill has been compared to Samuel Clemens. He is an award winning writer.
Steyn’s 2008 book titled America Alone, predicted the economic and cultural fall of Western Europe that we are witnessing in our news today. Steyn is not a bomb thrower, rather he is one of the most dedicated and mindful analysts that Canada has ever produced.
Steyn has written for a wide range of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, The Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Maclean’s, Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Western Standard and New Criterion.
Steyn is a visiting professor at Hillsdale College, is a saught after lecturer. There are few in the world that are his rhetorical equal.
In the coming days we’ll sort through the repercussions of S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating, including concerns about the impact a potential interest rate increase would have on our ability to service our suffocating $14.5 trillion debt.
I’m surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision. Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming? I’ve been writing and speaking about it myself for quite some time.
Back in December 2010,I wrote: “If the European debt crisis teaches us anything, it’s that tomorrow always comes. Sooner or later, the markets will expect us to settle the bill for the enormous Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge. We’ve already been warned by the credit ratings agency Moody’s that unless we get serious about reducing our deficit, we may face a downgrade of our credit rating.” And again in January, in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address I wrote: “With credit ratings agency Moody’s warning us that the federal government must reverse the rapid growth of national debt or face losing our triple-A rating, keep in mind that a nation doesn’t look so ‘great’ when its credit rating is in tatters.”
One doesn’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure this out! Just look across the pond at Europe. European nations with less debt and smaller deficits than ours and with real “austerity” plans in place to deal with them have had their ratings downgraded. By what magical thinking did we figure we could run up perpetual trillion dollar deficits and still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics of a downgrade? Nothing is ever “too big to fail.” And there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Didn’t we all learn that in our micro and macro econ classes? I did at the University of Idaho. How could Obama skip through Columbia and Harvard without learning that?
Many commonsense Americans like myself saw this day coming. In fact, in June 2010, Rick Santelli articulated the view of independent Tea Party patriots everywhere when he shouted on CNBC, “I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! STOP SPENDING!” So, how shamelessly cynical and dishonest must one be to blame this inevitable downgrade on the very people who have been shouting all along “stop spending”? Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome. Tea Party Americans weren’t the ones “fiddling” while our country’s fiscal house was going up in smoke. In fact, we commonsense fiscal conservatives were the ones grabbing for the extinguishers while politically correct politicians and their cronies buried their heads in what soon became this bonfire.
With S&P and others now warning that we could face another downgrade if we don’t get serious about our debt problem (i.e., recklessly spending money we don’t have), Washington needs to wake upbefore things get worse! We’re already hearing murmurs about QE3, which is just madness and will further debase our currency at a time when the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is already being questioned. The loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status would adversely impact us in every conceivable way. Our standard of living would decline as imports become more expensive (including imports of foreign oil), government wouldn’t be able to finance deficits as cheaply, and American corporations – employers – would lose a competitive edge. It would be another crack in our status as a financial superpower.
Now we’re all getting hit with rising food prices too. Back in November of last year, I predicted this would happen when the Federal Reserve dropped a $600 billion money bomb called QE2 on us! That’s short for “quantitative easing 2.” It’s a fancy term for running the printing presses and creating money out of thin air – which drives down the value of the dollar and makes the price of everything more expensive.
As I predicted six months ago, these policies will lead us down a path where for the first time in our history our fate will be taken out of our own hands and placed in the hands of the world’s capital markets. They will force us to make the responsible decisions that our leaders are unwilling to make. Just as the destinies of the Central Valley farms have been taken out of your hands by the federal government’s overreach into your water rights, so the destiny of our nation will be taken out of our hands because our leadership has failed to get our financial house in order.
This isn’t some theoretical threat any more. It’s already happening. The world’s biggest bond investment fund PIMCO announced last month that it was dumping U.S. Treasury bonds. The head of PIMCO, Bill Gross, one of the world’s preeminent debt investors, warned that the U.S. is in serious risk of default with our trillion dollar deficits and no end in sight. And last week, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded our credit outlook to “negative” – that’s the first time that has happened to us since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The IMF has even given us formal notice that, unless we do something to deal with our debt problem, we could tip the world economy into another recession.
It is a disgraceful and embarrassing situation when the United States finds itself justifiably chastised in the same tone normally reserved for near-bankrupt economies.
And in this, like in shutting off your water, the federal government has failed you. Their reckless spending and destruction of the dollar will make access to available credit for farmers and small business owners harder to get. And it will make transportation costs higher because it will hit everyone at the gas pump. You see, because the Obama White House won’t let us drill domestically, we’re forced to import oil that we pay for in dollars. So, when the value of the dollar drops, the price of gas goes up. And if you think $4 a gallon is bad, wait till you see what life is like at $6 or $7 a gallon.
Last November, the so-called smart people all laughed at me when I warned them of this. They told me not to make such a big deal about rising prices. Well, guess what – it became a big deal all on its own.
In fact, there was an editorial in the New York Sun that said – and I quote: “As gasoline is nearing six dollars a gallon at some pumps, the cost of groceries is skyrocketing, and the value of the dollars…has collapsed to less than a 1,500th of an ounce of gold. Unemployment is still high. Shakespeare couldn’t come up with a better plot. But how in the world did Mrs. Palin, who is supposed to be so thick, manage to figure all this out so far ahead of the New York Times and all the economists it talked to?”
Well, I’m sure the New York Times writers will remember the famous line: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And right now the American economy is in the howling, hot headwinds of a gathering storm. We’re printing up and buying up our own notes at an unprecedented rate, and the Fed is artificially holding interest rates down to nearly zero. Anyone with commonsense could see what was coming. Unfortunately, common sense is in short supply among our leaders. It’s like they never believe that the rules of common sense apply to them. They think somehow we’ll escape from the consequences of their policies. It’s the same magical thinking that allows them to run up trillion dollar deficits and still think that we can “win the future.”
Every other generation has weathered recessions by sacrifice and belt tightening. But our leaders today decided that they could magically paper over the tough decisions by running the printing presses. A little history lesson might have showed them how well that worked out for Germany in the 1930s. The Weimar Republic inflated its currency so much that it took a wheel barrel full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread. That might be the main thing I remember from Mr. Crum’s history class at Wasilla High, but it told me all I needed to know about the inflationary dangers of a weak currency and why we must avoid it. What a shame Mr. Crum didn’t teach at Harvard.
That was just three months ago, and things have already gotten worse. We have to face this storm head on. It won’t be easy, but there are real solutions to grow our economy and reduce our debt.
First, we need to get serious about our deficit. No more accounting gimmicks. No more cuts in “out-years” that never materialize. The permanent political class in D.C. might be fooling themselves with these Enron-like accounting games, but they’re not fooling the world’s capital markets. And we don’t need any more happy talk from the White House about “investing” in solar shingles and really fast trains. The White House shouldn’t even bother floating these new spending programs. We can’t afford them. Period. We need to stop this deficit spending, balance our budget, repeal Obamacare, cancel all unused stimulus funds, and reform our entitlement programs. We have to have an adult conversation about our spending commitments; circumstances have changed, and we must adapt. I know none of this will be easy, but, “thick” or not, the average American outside the D.C. politico bubble knows that we no longer have a choice! We will have entitlement reform and a balanced budget; it’s just a matter of how. We can do it ourselves in a calm, methodical, and responsible manner, or we can wait for the world’s capital markets to ram it down on us. Let’s be responsible and do it ourselves. And let’s get serious about reducing the size of government across the board and rooting out waste. How many more reports (that today are destined to merely gather dust on the shelf) do we need about duplicative and unnecessary programs before we actually do something about government waste?
We need to get this economy moving again, and the real stimulus we’ve been waiting for is domestic energy development. We must reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil by responsibly developing natural resources here. This will provide good paying jobs, reduce our trade deficit, increase federal and state revenue, ensure environmental standards, and actually stimulate our economy without incurring any debt. That’s real stimulus! Affordable, plentiful, and secure energy is the foundation of every thriving economy. Let’s make it the foundation of ours. Let’s do the opposite of President Obama’s manipulation of U.S. energy supplies. Let’s drill here, build refineries, and stop kowtowing to foreign countries in asking them to ramp up energy production which makes us even more beholden to them as we rely on their foreign product. Let’s move on tapping our massive domestic natural gas reserves. Natural gas is the perfect “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available. It’s clean, it’s green, and we’ve got a lot of it. Let’s drill. Let’s build an infrastructure for natural gas cars and power plants. Energy development can help kick start our economic engine.
In addition to energy security, I embrace a pro-growth agenda that can make American corporations far more competitive on the global stage. (I will be writing more about this in the coming days.) We need to tell the world, “America is open for business again!” And let’s welcome industry by reducing burdensome regulations. The Obama administration keeps strangling businesses in red tape. From the EPA’s rulings to that nightmare known as Obamacare, the Obama administration is hanging one regulatory albatross after another around the private sector’s neck. Let’s get government out of the way and give the private sector room to breathe, grow, and thrive. We can provide businesses confidence to expand and hire Americans in a stable environment.
Be wary of the efforts President Obama makes to “fix” the debt problem. The more he tries to “fix” things, the worse they get because his “solutions” always involve spending more, taxing more, growing government, and increasing debt. This debt problem is the greatest challenge facing our country today. Obviously, President Obama doesn’t have a plan or even a notion of how to deal with it. His press conference today was just a rehash of his old talking points and finger-pointing. That’s why he can’t be re-elected in 2012.
Our economic news is disheartening and the task before us can seem daunting, but we must not lose our sense of optimism. People look around today and may see only the negative. They see a culture and a nation in decline, but that’s not who we are! America must regain its optimistic pioneering spirit again. Our founders declared that “we were born the heirs of freedom.” We are the heirs of those who froze with Washington at Valley Forge, who held the line at Gettysburg, who freed the slaves, carved a nation out of the wilderness, and allowed reward for work ethic. We are the sons and daughters of that Greatest Generation who stormed the beaches of Normandy, raised the flag at Iwo Jima, and made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the history of mankind. By God, we will not squander what has been given us!
Our destiny is still in our own hands if we pick ourselves up and act responsibly and quickly. We must all get involved. Concerned Americans must seek truth, work harder than ever, and be willing to sacrifice today to ensure freedom tomorrow. Please get engaged in 2012 electoral politics and support experienced, vetted, pro-free market fiscal conservatives who will dedicate all to preserving our Republic and protecting our Constitution.
Mr. Walter Smith included me in his list of email recipients. Here is an excerpt.
“Does any one know Lloyd Marcus?
“Since when did African Americans become so equal that they could afford to support groups that are obviously anti-Black. Does he not know that a vote against Barack Obama is a vote against all African Americans?”
Dear Mr. Smith:
I usually delete hate mail from the left. Because your email did not begin with the typical calling me numerous expletives and the “n” word, I will reply.
I find it amazing how blind you are regarding YOUR racism. You call millions of Americans, many who voted for Obama, “obviously anti-Black” because they disapprove of his socialistic agenda . So, because we have a black president, any and all criticism is automatically deemed to be racist. Last time I checked, this is still America where folks have a right to disagree regardless of the president’s skin color.
In response to your statement: “Does he not know that a vote against Barack Obama is a vote against all African Americans?”
Good lord Mr. Smith, not only is this statement absurd, it is evil. You are instructing black Americans not to consider who Obama is as a human being. According to you, Obama’s values, principles and vision for America are irrelevant.
In essence, you are saying Obama’s skin color MUST trump EVERYTHING! Can you not see the immorality of such thinking? What if white America followed your lead. “If you do not vote for the white guy, you are voting against all white Americans.” Only a white skin head would make such an idiotic, evil proclamation.
But then, you probably do not consider black racism to be immoral. I suspect you view America’s sin of slavery, a ga-zillion years ago, as a gold credit card entitling blacks to limitless acts of racism.
Mr Smith, over 50% of black babies are aborted which Obama supports via Planned Parenthood. Obama supports gay marriage. Black unemployment has risen to an unprecedented high under Obama.
As a Christian, Obama’s agenda does not “jive” with my values. You are insisting that I worship Obama’s skin color over my God. I will not.
UPDATE II – Bachmann calls for Tim Geithner’s resignation:
This will affect you.
Moody’s said it was going to hold off for a while but after this they may follow suit.
Unsecured credit will be more expensive. This means those who use short-term loans such as farmers, import/exporters etc will pay more. It means that interest the USA pays on the debt will go up, costing up to $110 billion a year and there will be other impacts.
[Note: This was released late on a Friday night. Releasing at this time skips the weekday news cycle and my Monday there will be other big news to report. As a result most people will not see this in the news therefore it will have less of an effect on Obama.]
· We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term rating.
· We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from CreditWatch negative.
· The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics. · More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
· Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.
· The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.
The message is clear, the cuts are not good enough, and if we spend more than the current cuts (which are actually not cuts at all but planned decreases in the increase of spending) we will get lowered again. As IUSB Vision readers are well aware, we have a history of enacting spending cuts down the road that are reversed by a later Congress.
Our revised downside scenario–which, other things being equal, we view as being consistent with a possible further downgrade to a ‘AA’ long-term rating–features less-favorable macroeconomic assumptions, as outlined below and also assumes that the second round of spending cuts (at least $1.2 trillion) that the act calls for does not occur.
Expect Democrats to read the first point and say, “See it fell short because we did not increase taxes” but as you can see point five makes it crystal clear. S&P is not threatening our rating if tax rates drop or stay the same, they are threatening to lower us again if we spend more than we say.
We must not forget that the Democrats rejected every that had a real shot of preserving AAA. This latest calamity is very solidly in the Democrats responsibility. I know that leftist partisans will reject that fact, but to them I ask, what plan did the Democrats put up that had a shot of preserving AAA? The Democrats did not put up even one plan that would bring us to the point where we just stopped having yearly deficits even ten years down the road.
Granted the GOP could have fought for a slightly better deal, but the government cannot be controlled from just one House of Congress. This is why elections matter.
The S&P Report linked in the PDF above continues to say that there have only been modest reductions in intended discretionary spending and that the real problems of Medicare and other entitlements have not been addressed. The GOP has put forward a plan that will work, the Democrats have been promising to come out with an entitlement reform plan but have reneged.
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.
Analysts say that, over time, the downgrade could push up borrowing costs for the U.S. government, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. It could also drive up interest rates for consumers and companies seeking mortgages, credit cards and business loans.
A downgrade could also have a cascading series of effects on states and localities, including nearly all of those in the Washington metro area. These governments could lose their AAA credit ratings as well, potentially raising the cost of borrowing for schools, roads and parks.
UPDATE – Here are the talking points from the NYT and Paul Krugman in reaction to this. Quite frankly their response is a joke and is designed to fool people who are not trained in economics.
It was S&P that had Lehman Brothers rated AAA just a month before they went bankrupt.
The truth: the overwhelming majority thought that the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac junk paper and the credit default swaps that insured them were backed up by the US Government, and they were, as this was what most of the bailouts were about, but the government decided to pick winners and losers as to who would get bailed out and who would not.
AIG got bailed out in large part so that it could pay Goldman Sachs who it owed a massive amount of cash. Lehmen Brothers did not get bailed out, by and large because they were Goldman Sachs biggest competitor. All too often Bank A would apply for bailout and so would Bank B; Bank B would get bought out by Bank A using TARP funds and then Bank A would give a large donation to ACORN or another Democrat ally.
This is why so many smaller banks got bailout while Lehman Bros was allowed to collapse arbitrarily and capriciously.
It was S&P that rated AIG’s credit default swaps as rock solid investments.
The truth: and the US Govt bailed them out and the credit default swaps were paid, just as almost everyone expected would happen, so yes indeed they were pretty solid, they got overextended and the claims could not be paid, so you and I paid them and the Goldman Sachs of the world made megabucks.
Of course, if Fannie Mae had not engaged in the behavior it did; buying high risk loans, pushing banks to issue more high risk loans, issuing junk investments based on those loans, and long term massive internal corruption, all while it was being given total cover by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama and Paul Krugman defended them with the zeal of a defense attorney.
The Democrats Financial Regulation Bill doubled down and reimplemented the exact same government policies that started the ball rolling towards mortgage collapse in the first place, e.g. the government forcing banks to give out high risk loans in inner cities. Paul Krugman supported that legislation and this policy and does to this day.
It was S&P that admitted to making a $2 trillion accounting error (remember, playing with numbers is their core business and reason for being) in advance of the downgrade of U.S. debt.
The truth: and the Dept. of Education has lost over a billion dollars and has no idea where it went, all in all this adds up to a colossal “so what” as is explained further below.
A downgrade in U.S. debt means functionally that U.S. treasury bills are, in S&P’s oh-so-wise opinion, less trustworthy and a greater credit risk to investors. This comes only a day after investors fled the DOW and S&P500 into the safe and waiting hands of…you guessed it: U.S. treasuries. The same treasuries that S&P suddenly finds a more dangerous buy. So what does that say about the stock market, and the S&P500? Perhaps S&P might wish to re-evaluate the credibility of its own market index.
The truth: with every plan to lead to a balanced budget rejected by Democrats for as long as the eye can see, it is a crystal clear message that the government, as long as Democrats are in power, has no intention to pay off the debt, ever. If you don’t think that this makes our Treasury Bills less secure than you are likely smoking something you shouldn’t be.
History has shown that when a nation’s deficits exceed 100% of GDP its currency and credit have a rapid collapse. It happened to Greece as it approached 120% of GDP. It is predicted that it will soon happen to Spain. If you think it cannot happen here please see the previous paragraph.
None of the other ratings agencies are taking the drastic step that S&P has. S&P is all alone in their move to downgrade U.S. credit.
The truth: There is nothing drastic about it, both S&P and Moodys have warned since 2009 that this would happen if the United States continued to burrow like this. They both put out warning after warning. I have written about those warnings and so has the elite media. Moody’s will likely follow suit in a matter of months. Mini-UPDATE – This talking point is a LIE. Egan-Jones Rating Agency downgraded the USA to AA+ on July 16, 2011.
When all is said and done, U.S. treasuries are still the safest investment in the world, and it would take either an idiot or someone with a strong political agenda to contend otherwise.
The truth: and that is why so many countries are dumping our debt and buying Gold, Euros, oil futures, etc. Why? The economic policy the Democrats and the Federal Reserve is following reduces the value of the dollar so that the dollars we pay back are worth far far less than the dollars the government burrowed.
The investments are safe IF you consider the mass printing of money to pay those bills and service the debt to be just fine. What good is a 4% interest long-term T-Bill when the dollar loses twice that plus in inflation/devaluing?
As is often the case Paul Krugman’s talking points that are nothing but a pack of mostly irrelevant half-truths (read lies as half-truths are just lies designed to paint a false picture).
Lastly, it does not matter what you or Paul Krugman things of S&P and Moodys. Slandering them will not change the fact that the interest we pay on debt will go up, local governments will see a major impact, those who use unsecured debt such as seasonal loans for farmers, import/exporters etc will have to pay more and the credit markets will freeze up even worse than they are now. All of this will cause inflation that impacts the poor the most.
It has been well reported that the markets have expected this and have been bracing for it for months so that the impact would not be as immediate, but even the markets meltdown of the last 10 days is an indicator as the market has not behaved like it has of late since Jimmy Carter.
UPDATE III – Rick Santelli understands basic economics, Ezra Klein does not (what a shock). Listen to what Ezra Klein calls for policy wise. Did you catch it?
UPDATE V: The latest spin and talking points from the left as of Saturday, August 6.
It amazes me how dishonest the far left will go to paint a false picture. The latest tactic is to snip out every instance of revenue from the S&P report and present it as if the credit rating was lowered because the GOP would not raise taxes.
In essence this is the leftists case –
Blaming the Republicans (Tea Party):
“We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.”
“The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.”
Tax Increases Needed:
“It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.”
“The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.”
“..if the recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction–independently or coupled with other initiatives, such as the lapsing of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners–“
Here are a couple of opinion pieces in the elite media taking that spin:
Is the U.S. Credit Rating a Victim of GOP Sabotage? – http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross/u-credit-rating-victim-gop-sabotage-021622372.html
First of all, the attempt to spin the S&P report as a slam on the GOP is debunked by the text of the report itself:
Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.
Second, S&P uses the word revenue several times in the report, but in context they make it clear that what they want to see is a plan that cuts spending with the cuts actually happening, and any revenue enhancing plan actually enhance revenue. Here is the rub, when non-partisan economic realists use the word revenue, this does not always means raising tax rates on wage earners and small businesses as the Democrats define it. There are a number of ways to raise revenue. For example when Bill Clinton signed off on the Newt Gingrich/John Kasich budgets in the late 1990’s this included a temporary reduction in the capital gains tax rate.
In 1997, the Republican Congress passed a tax-relief and deficit-reduction bill that was resisted but ultimately signed by President Clinton. The legislation:
Lowered the top capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent
Created a new $500 child tax credit
Phased in an increase in the estate tax exemption from $600,000 to $1 million
And we all know what happened, government revenues shot up in a big way and we actually had a deficit free year.
President Bush and the GOP used this same strategy to increase revenue after the Clinton/Gingrich/Kasich capital gains tax cut expired.
Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% increased capital gains tax receipts by 79% from 2000 to 2004. Cutting the dividend tax rate by more than half–from 39.6% to 15%–increased dividend tax receipts by 35% from 2002 to 2004. And corporate tax receipts have nearly tripled since 2003, reaching $250 billion for the past nine months, 26% higher than the same period last year. (WSJ July 25, 2006)
———
For anyone willing to read it, the January 2007 Congressional Budget Office annual report settles any debate. Citing the original CBO forecasts of capital gains tax revenue of $42 billion in 2003, $46 billion in 2004, $52 billion in 2005, and $57 billion in 2006, Democrats who opposed the rate reduction in 2003 claimed that the capital gains tax cut would “cost” the federal treasury $5.4 billion in fiscal years 2003-2006.
Those forecasts were embarrassingly wrong. The 2007 CBO report revealed that capital gains and dividends tax collections were actually $51 billion in 2003, $72 billion in 2004, $97 billion in 2005, and $110 billion in 2006, the last two years nearly doubling initial forecasts.
In other words, forecasts in earlier CBO reports were low by a total of $133 billion for the four-year period. (Am Thinker September 11, 2010)
By lowering the rate we increased the revenue. Why is that?
It is the same reason that the Obama Deficit Commission, which was totally ignored by the Democrats, said that the best way to increase revenue is to lower the tax rates, including the corporate tax rate, make the progressive taxes flatter, reform the tax code so that it is easier and less expensive to comply with. Their reasoning is simple, the expense of compliance causes people to resist the tax code, or to often avoid taking action that will be taxable. High tax rates encourage people who have disposable assets/income to just park their money in such a way that it is not taxed. The money just sits there, or is invested in gold, or in China, or is sheltered. This is why “tax the rich schemes” actually transfer the tax burden to the lower middle class and accomplish exactly the opposite of their stated intent. For explanations in great detail of why that is examine the following LINK. Also the tax increase plan put forth by the administration does not target the millionaires and billionaires hardly at all, but guess who it will impact the hardest – LINK?
There are two more ways that this report has been spun. They quote this section of the report on page four:
Our revised upside scenario–which, other things being equal, we view as consistent with the outlook on the ‘AA+’ long-term rating being revised to stable–retains these same macroeconomic assumptions. In addition, it incorporates $950 billion of new revenues on the assumption that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.
But here is what the left leaves out; immediately above those lines it says the following:
Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade.
So what does that mean in English? It means that IF we have a REAL GDP growth of 3% steady and inflation stays below 2% a tax increase can work. But you see that is the problem, those are BIG ifs. Real GDP growth is under 2% and close to 1% in the private sector. Inflation, when measured with the same formula that was used under Carter/Reagan is at almost 10%. This figure also assumes that growth will not be impacted by such a tax increase, and since small businesses and upper middle class wage earners would get hit hardest by the Administration’s proposed tax increase (as we demonstrated above) the impact on economic growth would be substantial.
Some, like the economically incompetent and flamboyantly partisan Daniel Gross who writes in the Yahoo Finance column linked above, simply engage in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable:
It has long been obvious to all observers — to economists, to politicians, to anti-deficit groups, to the ratings agencies — that closing fiscal gaps will require tax increases, or the closure of big tax loopholes, or significant tax reform that will raise significantly larger sums of tax revenue than the system does now. Today, taxes as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows. Marginal rates on income and investments are at historic lows. Corporate tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows. Perhaps taxes don’t need to rise this year or next, but they do need to go up in the future.
Otherwise, the math of deficit reduction simply doesn’t work. And that’s how the deficit reduction deals signed off on by Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush came about.
Yet the action in Washington in the past year has all gone in the opposite direction. President Obama deserves some of the blame. Several months ago, he struck a deal with Congress to make the fiscal situation worse — extending the Bush tax cuts for two more years and enacting a temporary cut in the payroll tax.
Wow it sounds horrible doesn’t it? Can we just tax ourselves into prosperity or is there something missing from Mr. Gross’ assessment?
Today, taxes as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows
That is because government spending as a percentage of GDP is at historic highs. The way that GDP is calculated the formula (which is greatly flawed but that subject is a 40 page term paper) adds governments spending to all private sector consumer, investment, exports minus imports, and capital goods spending – so when government spending goes up by 80% and the tax rates stay the same the percentage of the tax rate to GDP drops. If you simply compare the private sector part of the equation to how much is taxed that paints quite the opposite picture. So in essence, the more the government prints, burrows and spends, the lower it pushes that tax to GDP ratio. In 2007 the yearly deficit was a measly 198 billion, whereas last year just the yearly deficit approached $2 trillion – an increase by a factor of 10. 2010 YEARLY DEFICIT: $2.08 Trillion. That is 10 times higher than the last year Republicans had budgetary control.
Marginal rates on income and investments are at historic lows.
In the 1950’s the top marginal tax rate was 90% and after 1964 the trop marginal rate was lowered to 70% by JFK. So this appears to be true, or is it? Here is what he forgot to tell you. Back in those days almost every transaction was a cash transaction. It is very easy to keep cash transactions off the books and they did not have computers tracking things like we have today. The simple fact is that there was massive tax noncompliance. If you were going to have to pay 90% tax on doing a business transaction why would you do it? People just cheated and did not report many of their transactions. Much of the private sector did this as a matter of survival to stay competitive. The fact is that we pay much more now than we did before because compliance is much higher than it was back then. Also Mr. Gross looks at only two taxes, the wage rate and the capital gains rate, but how many other taxes are there now which we did not have back then? There are hundreds of smaller other taxes now of phones, internet, etc and this list could go on forever. There is a great deal of direct inflation cause by being taxed right and left.
And speaking of that capital gains tax, which we showed you before that actually takes in more money as the rate is lowered; China has zero capital gains tax because they see it as a disincentive to engage in economic activity. China has been enjoying 9% plus GDP growth for some time now and they buy much of our debt.
Corporate tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows
Also keep in mind that Canada and Japan have recently lowered their corporate tax rates to attract business back home. When Ireland lowered its corporate tax rates they attracted a lot of companies to set up shop there and their revenue went way up. Higher taxes on businesses cause businesses to either go out of business or flee the country. When companies decide to stop being American companies the tax from them vanishes. The more you tax corporations, the more will leave, the less money you will get and the more unemployed you will have. Never forget that when corporations have to pay high taxes, they simply raise the price of their product to cover it so it is YOU that pays. A high corporate tax simply inflates prices and makes the corporation the tax collector for the state.
But just for good measure:
One place it (the “unexpected” revenue) has come from are corporations, whose tax collections have climbed by 76% over the past two years thanks to greater profitability. Personal income tax payments are up by 30.3% since 2004 too, despite the fact that the highest tax rate is down to 35% from 39.6%. The IRS tax-return data just released last month indicates that a near-record 37% of those income tax payments are received from the top 1% of earners — “the rich,” who are derided regularly in Washington for not paying their “fair share.” (WSJ Oct. 6 2006) – The rich paid more in real dollars after the tax cuts.
This professor used liberal sources and people to decide what the liberal bias was. So this was not conservatives deciding what was liberal bias and what was not. Several studies were used and put together such as what facts were omitted, what euphemisms were used and what side did they favor, polls of the journalists themselves, prominence of ideologically charged stories etc.
One method used was to give half of a sample a free subscription to the Washington Post and the other half a subscription to the Washington Times determined by a coin flip. They went back to the families some months later and polled them on their political views to see how much they had shifted.
Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or “political quotient” of voters and politicians.
Among his conclusions are: all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets.
Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.
“I’m no conservative, but I loved Left Turn. Tim Groseclose has written the best kind of book: one that is firmly anchored in rigorous academic research, but is still so much fun to read that it is hard to put down. Liberals will not like the conclusions of this book, which in my opinion, is all the more reason why they should want to read it.”–Steven Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, and co-author of Freakonomics.
“This book—an evolution from the pioneering article in the 2005 Quarterly Journal of Economics by Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo—uses a clever statistical technique to construct an objective measure of conservative or liberal bias in news coverage. This method and those now adopted by other serious researchers show clearly that most U.S. news outlets lean left. Most frighteningly, we learn that the media bias actually affects the ways that people think and vote.”–Robert Barro, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.
The conclusions draw upon recent studies by some highly respected economists and political scientists. For instance, one study, conducted by Yale researchers Alan Gerber, Dean Karlan and Daniel Bergan, is akin to a biology experiment. To one set of randomly selected voters in Northern Virginia, the researchers gave trial subscriptions to The Washington Post. To another set, they gave trial subscriptions to The Washington Times. After the subsequent election, the researchers polled their subjects and found that their Post-subscribing subjects voted for the Democrat at a 3.8 percentage higher rate than did the Times-subscribing subjects. That is, the more liberal newspaper truly seemed to cause people to vote more liberally.
After aggregating the results of this and similar studies, one finds an inescapable conclusion: Newspapers, television, radio and online media are extremely influential, especially over consumers’ political views.
For example, the results imply that if the “slant quotient” of the entire media moved 34 points leftward – approximately the difference between Fox News’ Special Report and The New York Times – then the “political quotient” of the average voter would move about 24 points leftward. The latter shift is approximately the difference between the average voter in Colorado or Iowa and the average voter in Rhode Island or Massachusetts.
If the analysis is right – that media bias really does change political views so significantly – then this no doubt has some important – and largely unrecognized – consequences.
It is always painful when people who call themselves conservative buy into the elite media narrative, or want to place party leadership on a pedestal so bad that they make arguments that they would normally never make.
Now watch as this Republican parrots some of this same spin.
My original comment:
What I find interesting is that any plan that would actually have a real chance of preserving our AAA credit rating was painted as extreme.
We should not let pundits move the Overton Window and decide what is extreme and what is not.
There will be many impacts to losing AAA, including the US Govt having to pay so much more interest on the debt every year that the savings from debt ceiling agreement (to only increase spending by $7.4 trillion over the next ten years instead of the base line $9.5 trillion) will be used up. Losing AAA will also cause more economic suffering for the average person.
Marco Rubio said that his line in the sand is to have a solution that actually fixes the problem. When preserving our AAA credit is considered “extreme” there is something very wrong with someone’s perceptions.
Person suckered in by the elite media spin responds to the above:
Economics trump any & all talking heads & forms my opinion on domestic fiscal policy, in my world. Anything more than 4% in cuts at a time most certainly would cause more recession, possibly depression. [Note: Notice that this is a classic far left Krugman/Keynes position and she doesn’t realize it.] The LiberTEArians want one extreme (too many cuts all at once) the Democrats want the polar opposite extreme (NO cuts, more taxes). That’s ‘extreme’ to Center Right America.
Reality:
When the government cut spending drastically under Calvin Coolidge/Warren Harding it helped us out of the depression of 1920. Also when the governmment cut spending by 50% in 1947 from 1945 levels the economy boomed.
Also conversely, look at the 80% increase in federal spending just since FY 2008 and look at the economic performance, and look at the economic performance under the New Deal which was a total fail as non farm unemployment never dropped below 20% during the New Deal.
Look at welfare reform and the reductions in spending growth that happened with the John Kasich budgets under Bill Clinton. The economy improved again as well.
Your premise, based on outdated neo-Keynsian theory, is falsified by history.
The reason why government increases in spending do not have the desired Keynesian effect, is the same reason that reductions in govt spending do not have the predicted Keynesian impact; and that is because govt does not spend money for the purpose of economic impact or to aid the market where it needs aid the most. Politicians spend money for the purpose of political impact.
This is why you see things in econ textbooks such as “Okun’s Leaky Bucket Theory” and why government spending tends to result in a very low velocity of money (supporting LINK).
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
Your pedantic tendencies are showing again… I am most certainly not a Keynesian ~ I’m with Paul Ryan & Charles Krauthammer. [NOTE: Paul Ryan & Charles Krauthammer never said that cutting spending would cause a depression; Paul Krugman says it every day.]
Reality:
That is great name calling, but that isn’t an argument. I also support Paul Ryan. For someone who claims not to be a Keynesian, you did a a great job of giving the typical Krugman/Keynes argument.
How many in 2010 got elected on taking the position that we should go back to 2008 spending levels? 2008 spending levels would still increase the yearly deficits by almost half a trillion a year – so that is not a “cut” nor is that even a spending freeze, it is just a reduction in the coming increases. So your entire notion that TEA party candidates or most new freshman argued for massive cuts is also just factually wrong.
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
The fact still remains that TEA’s expectations exceed their ability to make any large meaningful changes with only controlling The House. The Ryan Plan would never have passed in this climate. The Smart Thing to do is get the best deal, that could be passed in a Dem controlled Senate & a Dem controlled WH, live to fight another day, win BIG in 2012, then & only then, can the necessary stepos be taken. LiberTEA’s unrealistic demands & damn the torpedos bravado, are hindering that goal. We can argue about the best next steps forward in January ’13, IF IF IF the LiberTEArians don’t thwart that most important goal with their divisive bullheaded bravado.
Reality:
I think you misunderstand my position in part. Many do not think that we got the best deal. I say that because look at what happened in Minnesota recently with the government shutdown there. It was all doom and gloom, the media said that people blamed Republicans… until the governor caved and the GOP’s poll numbers went up.
I think we should have tried to get a little better of a deal for another reason, if the Dems went passed August 2, and America saw that we would not default and Social Security checks would indeed go out (as the govt brings in almost 200 billion a month on revenue) Obama would have had egg all over his face and his scare tactics would have blown up in his face.
I very much understand that we cannot run the govt from just the House, but we were timid and operating form a position of fear because of what happened in 1998.
I never said “all or nothing, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead”; I am just saying that we could have done better.
My problem is with those who are wiping their feet on this deal to make it look like that the deal is rockin’awesome and that those who wanted more are somehow extreme.
In fact that whole way of looking at it works against us in 2012. We should just admit the truth and say that this was not a very good deal. We should explain how the Democrats insited on 7.4 trillion in NEW spending or they would shut everything down, how they threatened default and social security when it was unnecessary, we should tell people how the Democrats INSISTED on a deal that would NOT preserve AAA – that is a key point.
What we should not be doing is saying that those who supported a deal that had a chance of preserving AAA are extremists, as that undermines our position in 2012. Paul Krugman is already saying that losing AAA is just fine.
You are trashing people in the Republican base who wanted to save AAA as extreme (some TEA Party people and other conservatives), instead of trashing Democrats whgo deserve to get trashed, and that plays right into Obama’s hands in 2012.
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
At the MOST critical of times, TEA voted with Libertarians & the Democrats, voted AGAINST the GOP… Making them the RINOs they so clamorously hunt. That will not be forgotten by the electorate. This is a Center Right nation. I do not believe their constituents wanted them to risk turning the country against conservatives for advocating default by having completely unrealistic expectations in the political climate we currently find ourselves working within. Bulls in a China shop are never welcome, regardless of what side of the aisle they come from. But, I could be wrong, we’ll see what happens in their reelection bids, I suppose. [Note: How many important votes has the House voted on a bill or against a bill with the support of the entire party?]
Reality:
Hmm lets see Bachmann voted for the Patriot Act, Allen West just supported the budget deal. With that said, look at where that “TEA Party bullheadedness” has gotten us. Just a short time ago we were talking about Bailouts, stimulus, perhaps a stimulus II, massive multi-trillion dollar health care take overs, cap & trade, etc etc. Now the discussion is Balanced Budget Amendment, how much will be cut, entitlement reform and GOP stalwarts such as Haley Barbour are even talking about the ethanol scam and farm subsidy reform in IOWA of all places.
Stacy, the problem with what you are doing, besides that fact that it is helping Obama to get re-elected, is that you have got it in your brain somehow that most TEA Party folks are these Ron Paul loonies. While the Ron Paul loonies would like people to think that, it just isn’t the case, as the big polling outfits have polled them and done demograghics on them demonstrate this clearly.
Rasmussen:
48% Say Their Views Closer to Tea Party Than Congress
In the ongoing budget-cutting debate in Washington, some congressional Democrats have accused their Republican opponents of being held captive by the Tea Party movement, but voters like the Tea Party more than Congress.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters say when it comes to the major issues facing the country, their views are closer to the average Tea Party member as opposed to the average member of Congress. Just 22% say their views are closest to those of the average congressman. Even more (30%) aren’t sure. (To see survey question wording, click here .)
This shows little change from a survey in late March of last year . Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters think the Tea Party movement is good for the country, consistent with findings since May 2010 . Twenty-six percent (26%) disagree and say the grassroots, small government movement is bad for America. Sixteen percent (16%) say neither.
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
That’s not to TEA’s credit. But, I find it fascinating that they are all about wanting to claim credit. As Reagan said, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Unfortunately, LiberTEA’s all about themselves. 2010 was a national referendum against Failed Liberal Governance. I was happy to have TEA join us in making history, handing the Dems a shellacking, UNTIL they started acting like Libertarians, in deed (voting with them & the Democrats) & in tactics (their constant disparaging of the GOP, RINO Hunting, etc). The LiberTEArians went after both West & Bachmann for those stances, too, I might add… It’s their way or assault. No thank you. [Note: TEA Party groups are cellular in nature and not all of them agree on every issue as to be expected, yet this person takes an elite media report saying that a cell, somewhere is unhappy about a vote and all of the sudden in her mind it is all of them. The fact is that Bachmann and West enjoy broad support.
Rasmussen is laughable. [Note: Notice no supporting evidence.] It is NOT the GOP causing the damage & divide, it is TEA. How many times has the GOP reached out in the spirit of unity to TEA only to draw back a nub? Too many. Still today, credit is being thrown to TEA for helping turn the national debate, etc, yet they still are combative. Again, it is NOT the GOP causing the divide. It is the LiberTEArians, as is their MO, thus far.
Reality:
Than you oppose Charles Krauthammer – because what I just said about how the TEA Party changed the debate is near exact quote from him from two days ago. Feel free to look up the video. [Note: fooled person said earlier that she believed in Charles Krauthammer, but now that Krauthammer is used to debunk her claim that the TEA Partry people deserve credit for changing the debate, as an emotionally charged person would, I predicted that she would dismiss him and it did not take long to have my prediction come to reality.]
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
I repeat, “How many times has the GOP reached out in the spirit of unity to TEA only to draw back a nub? Too many. Still today, credit is being thrown to TEA for helping turn the national debate, etc, yet they still are combative.”
Reality:
Of course they are combative, that is how you change a debate. But hey, I am just sticking with Charles Krauthammer on this one. You really should watch him as he makes some great sense [Zing]. How dare those people who worked so hard to make 2010 happen actually stand up and fight for what they said they believe in such as balanced budgets and a change in the way Washington works. Why the nerve!
Person suckered in by the elite media spin:
I never miss him. And his throwing the LiberTEArian dog a bone was very nice of him. What did it get him? More LiberTEArian teenaged angst. [Note: So Krauthammer wasn’t serious he was just throwing them a bone. Mind reading must be her specialty.]
Reality:
How is the constant unsubstantiated name calling at a large portion of the base a plan for victory in 2012? It seems to me that some are TRYING to insult them and smear them to the point where they might consider voting for a third party.
Amazing isn’t it, the zeal to defend the attitude she got from the elite media. It goes to show just how effective elite media attitude change propaganda can be.
Please forgive the lack of updates as I described in our previous post we have not been in a position to do a lot of blogging lately. A new web site is coming as well for the editor.
As far as the budget deal we thought we have a few comments.
1 – We were never in danger of a default. The government brings in almost 200 billion a month in tax dollars which is more than enough to service the debt. Anyone who said that the August 2nd date would result in default is just lying straight up. Judging by how the elite media has been repeating this it furthers my personal observation that journalists are lazy and are, as a collective, the most uninformed people I have ever encountered.
2 – These polls that you here about in the news saying that the people want “republicans to compromise” are polls like the CBS News poll that had a sample which included only 25% Republicans, so the sample was rigged. Notice how the Democrats are not asked to compromise in the press? When the people were stone against Obama Care by a 60% margin where was the press pounding the polls than? Where was the compromise when the Democrats would not allow the GOP into the room and would only see the bill a few hours before a vote?
3 – “Reagan increased the debt limit”… Reagan did not have a House controlled by his own party. During that time we had the 24/7 nuclear triangle operating at the pinnacle of the Cold War and a government shut down at such a time would have undermined our efforts to posture and beat the Soviets.
4 – “We need to raise taxes on the rich”. First of all we have been “raising taxes on the rich” for decades now so why is it that John Kerry paid 12.34% on $5,072,000 worth of income? The dirty little secret is that the tax rate that the Democrats are talking about is the wage earner rate which is paid by high-end wage earners such as doctors and engineers, but it is also the rate paid by most small businesses that have employees. Most of the income that the “rich” bring is defined by the tax code as “unearned income”, so you could raise this tax rate to the moon and the multimillionaires and billionaires will laugh as it will not be they who pay it. For more details on why this is follow this LINK.
Using static models as the CBO likes to use the Democrats proposed tax increase would pay for all of 10 days of deficit spending. Of course since people do not operate in a static universe the result would be an impact on job creators and even less revenue growth to the government. Can anyone name a mainstream economic theorist who said to raise taxes during what appears to be a double dip recession?
4 – As far as spending cuts in the “deal”, we must remember base line budgeting. If we froze spending at current levels Washington would consider that to be a $9.5 trillion dollar “cut”, so all we are talking about here is a small reduction in the typical increases in spending. As far as spending cuts are concerned this is not a serious plan as spending under this deal will continue to skyrocket. Democrats and some leftist journalists are calling these “draconian cuts” and are simply engaging in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable.
5 – But here is the rub, when we lose our AAA credit rating, which now appears unavoidable as both Moodys and S&P have said that neither the Boehner plan nor the Reid plan are serious about getting spending under control, it will cost us more than $100 billion a year in interest alone; when that is factored in there are no reductions even in the increases in spending. It gets worse. When you add the damage to the economy that loss of AAA will bring it makes all of this worse.
The loss of AAA will impact most unsecured credit, it will impact the value of the dollar (inflation), it will impact those who use short-term credit such as farmers who use seasonal loans and import/export businesses. It is going to damage the economy in such a way that most people will feel it. We did not lose AAA even during the great depression. The “deal” which passed is also easy to demagogue because the left will say that this deal IS the “Boehner Plan” (which is largely isn’t any more do to an almost total cave on spending cuts) and HIS plan caused us to lose AAA.
[Note: The first plans that were introduced by the Tea Party/GOP were much more serious and had a real chance of preventing the loss of AAA. While this is indeed a failure of government, is there any doubt that the Democratic Party is intent on blowing up our credit rating? The first proposals from the House had a chance of preserving AAA and the media/Democrats had a conniption fit calling called it extreme. Think about this folks, preserving AAA is now an extreme position according to much of the elite media and a political party. The Constitution does have limits and the GOP cannot run the government from the House. This is why elections matter.]
6 – The deal also includes a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment to send it to the states. If this amendment resolution passes the Democrat controlled Senate and gets to the states it will be a great tool to begin to get this spending problem under control. If it looks like it will pass the Senate I expect the Democrat leadership will pull some stunt prevent the vote or prevent its passage. Government has a structural institutional incentive to spend more and more, so the only way to curb that is to make a structural change. Aside from a vote on this Amendment, which I will stress has not happened yet, this was not a tough deal or a Herculean compromise by any stretch.
This is a must see exchange between Marco Rubio and John Kerry on the debt limit debate. Be sure to watch every second as this is invaluable.
Kerry will think twice before trying to posture Marco Rubio again. Notice also, even though Rubio did not join the TEA Party Caucus he defends their position, which is to offer a plan that fixes the problem. Rubio uses a most interesting analogy to show why this is so important.
UPDATE – The latest version of the deal includes $2.1 Trillion in cuts over 10 years with half planned now and the other half planned by a “budget cut committee later”. Keep in mind that cuts in “Washington Speak” are not cuts, but rather a decrease in the increase in spending. So instead of a planned increase in spending over 10 years of $9.5 Trillion they will plan to increase spending by $7.4 trillion. The president gets his debt increase limit extended to well passed the campaign, deficit spending shoots up, no entitlement reform, no plan to balance the budget over the next eight years. There are some actual small cuts in discretionary spending, but entitlement spending that is on autopilot. Of course even this is a fraction of the increase in discretionary spending that has gone up since 2008.
Due to technical issues, family medical emergencies, and power outages we have been unable to post updates. Please accept our apologies. Also we are in the process of upgrading to a bigger and better web site. Good things are coming so stay tuned.
Wow, Geithner is spinning hard. 3% of businesses. Most businesses are on paper or are 1-2 man operations. Small businesses used to do almost 80% of the hiring in this country, now it is only 64%. The tax he wants will affect most businesses who actually hire. That is the point he is so desperate to avoid. Congressman Ellmers almost put him away and the following two questions in red text would be the key followups that would have finished him, “Mr. Geithner, how much of that 3% of small businesses you want to tax actually employ five or more people?”
At the same time the Obama Administration is fine with his friends at Google paying 2.4% on $3.1 billion in profits. General Electric, which was ran by Obama’s friend GE CEO Jeffery Immelt who just took a job at the White House, paid no tax on $14.2 billion in income and actually got government subsidies. GE also owned MSNBC until just recently, but I am sure that is just another one of those funny coincidences.
Geithner talks about the top 2%, but what he didn’t tell you is that the way the tax code works that top 2% excludes much of the very wealthy [see this link for details why]; who such a tax smacks are the genuine wealth creators , upper middle class risk takers and small businesses. A husband and wife with two kids may own and operate three local pizza shops and on paper that small business will bring in $250,000 a year in income (notice I did not say profits, I said income), but most of that money will go to paying employees, buying the pizza delivery man’s gasoline, food, energy for the ovens and freezers, boxes, cleaning supplies, wages, other taxes etc. Everyone must get paid before the owners do and they will be lucky to scrape $50K for themselves, which in turn they will be paying more taxes on.
Then comes the right hook, “Mr. Geithner, how can one be against small businesses that actually hire (pause for effect) and for jobs at the same time?”
I just talked to Addison Scott, who is on Congressman Ellmers’ staff, and I passed those two questions on to them. I can’t wait to see her lay these two questions on Geithner and watch him squirm.
Geithner’s explanation of the administration’s small-business tax plan came in an exchange with first-term Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.). Ellmers, a nurse, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 after she became active in the grass-roots opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reform plan in 2009.
“Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring,” Ellmers told Geithner. “They just simply cannot.”
She then challenged Geithner on the administration’s tax plan.
“Looking into the future, you are supporting the idea of taxation, increasing taxes on those who make $250,000 or more. Those are our business owners,” said Ellmers.
Geithner initially responded by saying that the administration’s planned tax increase would hit “three percent of your small businesses.”
Ellmers then said: “Sixty-four percent of jobs that are created in this country are for small business.”
Geithner conceded the point, but then suggested the administration’s planned tax increase on small businesses would be “good for growth.”
Good for the growth of government perhaps, not the economy.
The greatest thing about science fiction is that it allows us to explore humanity in ways that rarely come along in day to day life.
What does a good man do when put in the most impossible of situations? How does he react? How does it impact him in the face of a man’s strengths and frailties? These are the questions that good science fiction seeks to find the answers to.
Gene Roddenberry said that science fiction is the last playground of the philosophers. Truer words could not be spoken. Green Lantern is a good movie because it is a story of the greatest battle every man must face in some way, the internal battle to determine who and what he will chose to be.
So here we have Hal Jordan, a pilot who suffers from great character strengths and flaws [Note: if you do not think that strength of character can cause one to suffer than you have never tried to do the right thing in the face of a group of people determined to do wrong – Editor].
In the following scenes Hal Jordan’s day starts off bad and by evening his life is turned up side down as he is thrust into an impossible situation.
Bill Whiddle, who is as solid and bright as any communications strategist I have ever seen, in the video below gives us a great refresher in advertising techniques, branding, political messaging, and what he calls “iconography”. The best modern text on this very subject comes from author David Kupellian in his book The Marketing of Evil.
Let me give you an example of what is meant by iconography.
The Nazi Brand:
We all know what the Nazi Swastika is. Today it represents the kind of leviathan state evil that resulted in the murder of millions. It is important to keep in mind that the perception of the Swastika icon or brand was not always so negative. In the 1930’s Hitler was the darling of a large portion of American leftist academia, the media and many leftist political groups. For several years until Hitler took the rest of the Czechoslovakia after being handed the Czech Sudetenlands his brand was largely respected by large groups of people. For years Hitler and Mussolini were treated as brilliant visionaries who had discovered a “third way” as it were.
A brand can have its meaning changed, but the iconography stays virtually forever. Just like…
The GM Brand:
Here is another icon whose brand has changed and is in the process of changing at this moment.
This brand symbol represents also used to be highly respected and in many ways revered. A true American icon. In short the GM brand used to mean this:
Now the GM brand is in the process of becoming a joke. Government Motors it is called. They make cars that are too expensive, do not hold up well, and that people do not want to drive. Ironically those are the qualities of the current status of government today.
Like all iconography, as we will see more of in the video below, the icon can be used against the brand.
The Obama Brand:
One will find that much of the same manipulation of iconography is used by the Obama brand and against it.
[Note: Disclaimer for leftists and idiots – We are NOT saying that Obama is the same thing as Hitler and neither is Bill Whiddle in the video below, so don’t even go there. This is about the iconography ONLY!]
UPDATE – It looks like the DNC found this little post and removed the video. I should have archived it. I found an unedited version of the video.
In the video they all use slogans except three who mention policy positions. [Editor’s Note: In the video one person mentions NAFTA, which is just too long and complex of an issue to tackle in this post other than to say that here is a video of Bill Clinton’s comments at the signing]
1 – The Civil Rights Act – which Democrats filibustered and Republicans voted for by an 82% margin (eventually Dems caved). Democrats filibustered (successfully stopping the bills) all of the civil rights legislation in the 1950’s all of what was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans. One look at inner cities and inner city schools which are controlled by the Democratic Party show that the party is exploiting black Americans and has no real interest in empowering them.
2 – The Patriot Act – of which internal violations of using the act illegally have gone up exponentially under this administration. Through fast and loose “interpretation” Democrats have expanded the Act and Obama has been the worst administration when it comes to abuse of privacy rights that I am aware of.
Obama promised to put an end to warrantless wiretapping and do something about the Patriot Act. Where are the so called “far left privacy advocates” now? The Obama Administration (along with a willing Democratic Leadership in Congress) has consistently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) pushed for more domestic spying ability and extended the Patriot Act. More spying includes including wanting more wire taps on the internet and arguing that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or… well I think you got the point. Of course who was the first TV personality to speak out on these privacy violations. Clue: He’s the new Oprah.
Now we get to ask you if Obama is spying on YOUR library book list!
3 – Because more women should be involved in politics – Wow that one is amazing. Shall we go through a list of Democrat misogyny hall of shame? While the first names that come up for sexual attacks, smears, lies, and name calling by Democrats are against Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Nikki Haley – Let us NOT forget how Hillary Clinton was mistreated by her fellow Democrats which resulted in the creation of dozens of PUMA groups and websites such as Hillbuzz. Remember how the Obama thugs used threats and in some cases physically kept Hillary delegates out of some caucuses? Remember how the Democrats “super delegates” stepped in when it looked like Hillary was going to win the nomination?
In fact Hillary Clinton’s own Communications Director Howard Wolfson said that Fox News was the only place where her campaign could get a fair shake because the Democrat Media Complex, also known as the elite media, was so grossly unfair even this web site spoke out against it.
This video is one the GOP can use, as it demonstrates that Democrats count on ignorance and mobocracy like sloganeering.
Where’s the best state for you to retire? Here’s a good place to start your search: These ten impose the lowest taxes on retirees in the contiguous U.S., according to our research. All these retiree tax heavens exempt Social Security benefits from state income taxes. Many of them exclude government and military pensions from income taxes, too, or offer blanket exclusions up to a specific dollar amount for a wide variety of retirement income.
Although relocating to an income-tax-free state such as Florida or Texas may sound appealing, sometimes the best retirement destination is a state that imposes an income tax but offers generous exemptions for retirement income.
Once you narrow your search to a few key states, zero in on local taxes. Municipalities can impose hefty property taxes or other assessments, or they may layer local sales taxes on top of statewide levies. Federal taxes? If you claim the standard deduction, they’ll be the same no matter where you live. But if you itemize your deductions, you’ll be able to write off real estate taxes and state income taxes, reducing your federal tax bill and easing some of the pain.
# 1 Wyoming
State Income Tax: None State Sales Tax: 4% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Thanks to the abundant revenues that Wyoming collects from oil and mineral companies, its residents have one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, D.C. There is no state income tax. The state sales tax is 4%, and counties in the Equality State can only add up to 1% in additional levies — a very low ceiling. Plus, prescription drugs and groceries are exempt from state sales taxes. For most property, only 9.5% of market value is subject to tax, so a home worth $100,000 is taxed on $9,500 of assessed value.
#2 Mississippi
State Income Tax: 3%-5% State Sales Tax: 7% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Mississippi offers a sweet income-tax deal for retirees. It not only exempts Social Security benefits from state income taxes but also excludes all qualified retirement income — including pensions, annuities, and IRA and 401(k) distributions. Remaining income is taxed at a maximum 5%. In addition, the Magnolia State is home to some of the lowest property taxes in the nation. Residential property is taxed at 10% of assessed value, and seniors qualify for a homestead exemption on the first $75,000 of value. The statewide sales tax is 7%, and counties and cities may add up to 3% to the state rate. But prescription drugs and health care services are exempt.
#3 Pennsylvania
State Income Tax: Flat rate of 3.07% State Sales Tax: 6% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: Yes/Yes
True to its Quaker roots, Pennsylvania extends a friendly hand to retirees. It offers unusually generous exclusions from state income tax on a wide variety of retirement income. Pennsylvania does not tax Social Security benefits or any type of public or private pensions. Nor does it nick distributions from 401(k)s, IRAs, deferred-compensation plans or other retirement accounts. Remaining income is taxed at a low, flat rate of 3.07%. Food, clothing and medicine are exempt from state sales taxes. Property taxes can be high in the Keystone State, especially near larger cities, but rates vary widely. One caveat for the wealthy: Your heirs won’t get off so easily. Pennsylvania is one of the few states to have both an inheritance tax, paid by the heirs, and an estate tax — though it applies only when an estate is large enough to trigger federal estate taxes ($5 million or more).
#4 Kentucky
State Income Tax: 2%-6% State Sales Tax: 6% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/Yes
The home of the Kentucky Derby is a good bet for retirees. It exempts Social Security benefits from state income taxes, and it allows residents to exclude up to $41,110 per person in retirement income from a wide variety of sources, including public and private pensions and annuities. Personal income-tax rates range from 2% to 6%. A 6% sales tax is imposed at the state level only. Homeowners 65 and older qualify for a homestead provision that exempts part of the value of their property from state taxes. The Bluegrass State has an inheritance tax, but immediate family members are exempt.
#5 Alabama
State Income Tax: 2%-5% State Sales Tax: 4% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Alabama is a tax haven for retirees. Social Security benefits, as well as military, public and private defined-benefit pensions, are excluded from state income taxes. Remaining income is taxed at the state’s low rates, which range from 2% to 5%. Alabama also has some of the lowest property taxes in the U.S. Homeowners 65 and older are exempt from state property taxes, but some cities assess their own property tax. The only downside is sales taxes. Although the statewide rate is just 4%, cities and counties in the Yellowhammer State can impose their own levies, and together the taxes can add up to a whopping 10% or more in some cities. Food is taxed, but prescription drugs are not.
#6 Georgia
State Income Tax: 1%-6% State Sales Tax: 4% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Georgia offers a peachy tax environment for retirees. Social Security income is exempt from taxes and so is up to $35,000 per person of most types of retirement income, including pensions, annuities, rental income, interest, dividends and capital gains for residents 62 and older. Beginning in 2012, taxes on all retirement income will be phased out completely. Remaining income is taxed at rates ranging from 1% to 6%, with the top tax rate kicking in on income in excess of $7,000. The statewide sales tax is 4%, but local jurisdictions can add up to 4% of their own taxes. Food and prescription drugs are exempt from sales taxes. Full-time residents of the Peach State qualify for a homestead exemption, and residents 65 and older may qualify for additional property tax deductions.
#7 Oklahoma
State Income Tax: 0.5%-5.5% State Sales Tax: 4.5% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
Oklahoma is more than OK for retirees. The Sooner State has been attracting newcomers since its days when settlers could claim 160 acres of public lands free. It does not tax Social Security benefits or the federal pensions of those who do not participate in the Social Security system. In addition, all residents can exclude up to $10,000 per person ($20,000 per couple) of other types of retirement income (previous income limits for claiming this exclusion were eliminated in 2010). Income-tax rates are low, ranging from 0.5% to 5.5%. Real estate is assessed at an amount between 11% and 13.5% of market value. The statewide sales tax is a modest 4.5%, with prescription drugs exempt. One thing to watch out for: Cities, towns and counties may levy additional sales taxes, which can make the combined sales tax rate top 8%.
#8 South Carolina
State Income Tax: 3%-7% State Sales Tax: 6% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/No
South Carolina extends its Southern hospitality to retirees. The Palmetto State exempts Social Security benefits from state income taxes, and it allows residents 65 and older to deduct up to $15,000 per person ($30,000 per couple) of qualified retirement income when calculating their state income tax. Retired military personnel 65 and older can deduct up to $10,000 of military retirement benefits. Property taxes are very low. Taxes are based on 4% of the market value of a home, and homeowners 65 and older qualify for a homestead exemption that excludes the first $50,000 of their property’s fair market value from property taxes. Sales taxes can be high, though. The statewide rate is 6%, and counties can levy an additional 2%. Prescription drugs are exempt.
#9 Delaware
State Income Tax: 2.2%-6.95% State Sales Tax: None Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: Yes/No
The First State is number one with many retirees, thanks to low real estate taxes, modest income taxes and no sales tax. Social Security and Railroad Retirement benefits are exempt from income taxes, and residents 60 and older can exclude $12,500 per person of investment and qualified retirement income, including out-of-state pensions, dividends, interest and capital gains. Income-tax rates on remaining income range from 2.2% to 6.95%. The top tax rate kicks in when taxable income exceeds $60,000. Residents 65 and older who do not itemize their deductions are eligible for an additional standard deduction of $2,500. Real estate taxes vary by county but are generally low. Residents 65 and older can get a credit equal to half of the school property taxes, up to $500.
#10 Louisiana
State Income Tax: 2%-6% State Sales Tax: 6% Estate Tax/Inheritance Tax: No/Yes
Louisiana offers a bayou full of tax breaks to retirees. Social Security and military, civil-service, and state- and local-government pensions are exempt from state income taxes, plus up to $6,000 per person of pension and annuity income. Personal income tax rates are low, ranging from 2% to 6%. Property taxes are the lowest in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, and assessments are based on 10% of the fair market value. But sales taxes can be steep. The statewide sales tax is 4%, but local parishes and jurisdictions within those parishes can add their own sales taxes. In New Orleans, the combined sales tax rate is 9%. But food and drugs are exempt from sales taxes throughout the Pelican State.
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