USA or Zimbabwe?

From Dr. Martin A. Weiss at Uncommon Wisdom:

FACT #1: The official national debt now stands at $12.68 trillion — an amount equal to about 88.5% of all the goods and services our economy produces in an entire year.

FACT #2: Contingent obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, and pensions now stand at an additional $108 trillion over and above the "official" national debt.

FACT #3: State, county and local governments are nearly $3 trillion in debt. Many can't pay and will ultimately demand that Washington assume responsibility for that debt as well.

FACT #4: Total federal, state and local government indebtedness now stands at a mind-blowing $123.6 trillion.

FACT #5: Last year, Washington added $1.4 trillion to the debt. In this fiscal year, the Obama administration will add another $1.6 trillion!

FACT #6: In addition to funding the current trillion-dollar-plus deficits, the U.S. Treasury must borrow MORE each year to replace bills, notes and bonds that are maturing.

FACT #7: This record-shattering borrowing by the Treasury has resulted in a Mt. Everest of Treasury obligations being dumped onto the market, which naturally depresses bond prices and drives interest rates higher.

FACT #8: In a desperate attempt to keep interest rates low, the Bernanke Federal Reserve has created $1.25 trillion out of thin air to buy mortgage-backed securities ... another $300 billion to buy U.S. Treasuries ... and yet another $170.6 billion to buy other government bonds — a total of nearly $1.7 trillion in all.

FACT #9: From September 10, 2008 to March 10 of this year, Bernanke increased the nation's monetary base from $850 billion to $2.1 trillion — a 250% increase in just 18 months.

FACT #10: Despite this massive money-printing, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note has STILL risen by more than one-fifth — from 3.2% to 3.86% — since December.

FACT #11: Because of this massive money-printing, the U.S. dollar has lost nearly 10% of its value in the past 12 months alone.

The Clowns in Washington have to STOP THE SPENDING!

Obama Funds ACORN Anyway

The Obama administration has quietly restored federal funding to ACORN. From Big Government, "In a March 16 memo Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag quietly ordered federal agencies to resume funding the group whose employees were caught on hidden camera videos last year condoning a variety of crimes including child prostitution and tax evasion."

The information was released March 19 in the usual Friday night dump of information the administration doesn't want anyone to notice.

One Eye and Half-Sense*

Every single American has complained frequently and vehemently about the lack of efficiency and the increased costs inherent in any large organization whether public or private. However, these problems metastasize in government organizations, like the Post Office, Social Security Administration, the Veterans' Administration, and the IRS.

Therefore, every single American ought to be vehemently against any proposed Health Care Bill. There is absolutely no way on God's green earth that adding bureaucrats between you and your physician is going to make it cheaper, better, or more available to more people.

No matter which sales pitch is used to favor the current proposals, it's obviously a cover-up of the real intent - taking away personal freedom and extending the power of the federal government.

If you're interested in reading more about specific proposals in the Senate bill, then please read "Guess Who's Coming to Your House?" in today's American Thinker. You'll learn new ways to be frightened about the Senate Bill which has already passed. And you should be even more inspired to call/write/email Congressional Clowns in the House protesting it.

*The title of this blog comes from my political activist grandmother who, thankfully, died before the era of politically correct speech. She used it to illustrate obvious truths that others were unwilling to understand, as in, "Well, anyone with one eye and half sense ought can see . . ." I hope that being practically one eyed myself because of ocular melanoma, you'll forgive my lapse back into the old ways of speaking.

Give Bunning A Gold Medal

He deserves one for trying to bring a little bit of honesty and common sense to the Senate floor by opposing a bill to extend government benefits without showing where in the current budget the money would come from, meaning it will expand our current debt. The opposition stepped up their personal attacks and resorted to bomb threats at his office in Kentucky before he relented and quit his one man campaign to stop the spending and obey the Pay Go law passed just two weeks ago. Of course the media attackers painted him as someone who hated the poor unemployed instead of examining the policies that put so many people on unemployment for such a long time.

Although his stand appeals to the public and would have garnered additional voters for the Republican party, the entrenched RINO's in the Senate refused to voice any support for his principled stand. In the end, only 18 others voted with him:
Alexander, TN
Barrasso. WY
Bennett, UT
Burr, NC
Coburn, OK
Corker, TN
Cornyn, TX
Crapo, ID
DeMint, SC
Ensign, NV
Enzi, WY
Gregg, NH
Hatch, UT
Johanns, NE
McConnell, KY
Risch, ID
Sessions, AL
Thune, SD

This is not the first time Bunning has stood for sanity: a)In 2008, he was the lone dissenter in the massive mortgage bill, b)he voted against TARP, c)he has severely questioned Ben Bernanke when other committee members rolled over like eager puppies, d) he voted against the massive bailout for the UAW and GM, and e) he voted against the GIVE/SERVE program that wastes money and inhibits personal freedom.

I'm just sorry that he plans to retire, although I don't blame him.

Thank Townhall.com for This Cartoon

Save this cartoon just in case any of your friends or neighbors were impressed by Obama's 'budget freeze.' First off, he is increasing the budget as much as he possibly can this year, but the freeze does not begin until next year. Secondly, he has artfully eliminated most budget items from the freeze. Third, he's already broken innumerable promises, so one can hardly believe he will live up to this one. And fourth, ALL politicans routinely and repeatedly break promises regarding spending our money. Remember "Read My Lips" H. W. Bush.

They HAVE to Go!

There are no words, not even profane ones, that adequately describe the digust and revulsion I feel about the senators who just voted to ruin our entire healthcare system and in the process to destroy many freedoms that we take for granted. In the name of "saving the economy" they have loaded the unconstitutional bill with pork (to buy the senators' votes) and mandates that the CBO estimates to cost us an additional $2,500,000,000,000. And remember that Congressional Budget Office projections ALWAYS are low; Medicare expenses quickly exceeded their original estimate by a factor of 19.

Our politicians had already put us and our children into debt, now our unborn grandchildren and great grandchildren will be born owing money to our government or to the Chinese. And the stalwart American people will suffer and die sooner because healthcare will be rationed and innovation will wither away under bureacratic control.

The following list of senators are Democrats from conservative states who voted for the bill. We must see to it through encouragement and donations to conservative candidates who can oppose them and by votes if we live in their states, that they lose their seats in the next election.

In 2010, target:
Arkansas - Senator Lincoln
North Dakota - Senator Dorgan

In 2012, target:
Missouri - Senator McCaskill
Montana - Senator Tester
Nebraska - Senator Nelson
North Dakota - Senator Conrad
West Virginia - Senator Byrd

In 2014, target:
Alaska - Senator Begich
Arkansas - Senator Pryor
Louisiana - Senator Landrieu
Montana - Senator Baucus
South Dakota - Senator Johnson
West Virginia - Senator Rockefeller

In the meantime, we must work against ACORN and all of its affiliates, or we'll never have honest elections again.

Our New Pledge*

"I pledge allegiance to Americaʼs debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money. And to the interest, for which we pay, compoundable, with higher taxes and lower pay until the day we die." *from The Daily Bail.

American tax payers daily need to pay more than $500 million just to cover the interest on our debt, most of which is owed to foreign governments. Obamas first budget deficit is greater than ALL of the Bush deficits combined.

Everybody Is Cheering

After all the Dow topped $10,000 yesterday. But what does it mean? With Treasury printing presses running at top speed, it doesn’t carry the same financial euphoria it used to.

For example, ten years ago the Dow was $11,497 and it would have taken 40.6 ounces of gold to equal that value. But yesterday’s Dow would only require 9.44 ounces of gold to “buy” that amount.

Inflation has plagued the US all through the 20th Century and threatens to become worse in the 21st because our Federal government insists on spending more money than we can reasonably pay back. Like the Banana Republics we recently disdained, we keep printing more fiat money to avoid raising taxes and to hide the growing reluctance of other countries to buy our treasuries.

"By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."
- John Maynard Keynes, 1920

Slow Learners

This is an email message from my brother this morning. It's time for both voters and politicians learn the lesson.

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
- Cicero - 55 BC

So what have we learned in 2,064 years?
Evidently nothing...

Shock! We ALREADY Spend More on Healthcare Than Other Countries!

According to Americans for Tax Reform, the US government already spends more money per capita on health care than countries with socialized medicine. Italy, Japan, Australia, Ireland, UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and France all spend less than the over $3,000 the US pays out for various government programs. When you think about it, it becomes painfully obvious that the answer to health care costs in the USA is NOT to add more government programs, but to reduce them. Only free market competition can improve products while reducing costs.

If the government had been in control of personal computer market back in the late seventies, the cost of the average home computer would be several thousand dollars by now, and we probably would not be too far advanced beyond the 48kb of memory that the first Apples had. We purchased an Apple II in 1978 for $2,638 (that would be $8,726.97 in today's dollars) plus shipping costs. The few programs that were available at the time were on black disks that really were floppy. We had to insert a different disk each time we wanted to use a different program.

Just 21 years later, the cheapest Apple costs $999 (or $301.98 in 1978 dollars) and comes with 2gb of memory, plus audio, video, color, Internet, and wireless capabilities. And it's portable. That represents an increase in memory of 6 degrees of magnitude - from thousands to billions, not to mention all the ancillary improvements.

We can all thank heaven for the competition between Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. And pray that more free market competition will be allowed in health care, not a one payer system that only cuts costs by eliminating services.

8 Months = $1,00,000,000,000 Debt

We have faced $1,000,000,000,000 in debt before, since 1981 in fact. At that time the trillion referred to total or cumulative debt acquired over years of deficits. At the end of May the US ran up a trillion dollars in debt in less than a year. Investor's Business Daily has an excellent editorial today about some of the implications. Read it and weep.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

While Obama remains unapologetic about serving $100 per pound steak at weekly White House parties, sending Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty in order to create publicity photos, and flying to New York City for a date night, he believes that business executives should restrict their use of private jets, fore go refurbishing their offices, and quit sponsoring corporate functions to woo clients.

And after running up the debt to frightening heights in his first four months of office, he had decided to come out in favor of “pay as you go” in relation to future spending bills. By publicly adopting a “conservative” stance, he hopes to defuse the rising fears about his spending policies.

“Entitlement increases and tax cuts need to be paid for. They are not free. . . . The reckless fiscal policies of the past* have left us in a very deep hole. Digging our way out will take time and patience and tough choices."

The easy translation of his new mantra is that taxes will definitely increase despite his oft repeated campaign promise that 95% of Americans would pay no new taxes. Front Page Magazine has an article about his new found penury as does Reuters.

*Almost certainly a reference to his favorite whipping boy, George Bush, not to his own decisions.

Everyone Understands Except The Politicians

It’s just common sense to understand the danger of continuing unbridled spending by Washington. Last week Ben Bernanke testified to the House about the grave hazard of our burgeoning debt.

His bottom line was our level of borrowing and spending cannot continue at the current rate. When asked about the possibility of the United States losing its AAA credit rating just as England did recently, Bernanke could offer no desirable outcome.

“At -- at some point, you have to have a path of spending and taxes that will give you a stabilization of the debt-to- GDP ratio. If you don't, then fear that the debt will continue to rise will make it very difficult to finance it.

And at some point, you'll hit a point where you'll have to have both very draconian cuts and very large tax increases, which is not something we want. So in order to avoid that outcome down the road, we need to begin now to plan how we're going to get the fiscal situation into a better balance in the medium term. ...”

And he refused to comment on the possibility of rampant inflation, although his questioner brought it up. Read more at Powerline.

Have you told your Congressional Clowns to STOP THE SPENDING? If so, remind them again.

Get Your Dialing Finger Ready

Congress is back in session and up to no good. Please contact by phone and/or email your own Congressional Clowns to insist they STOP THE SPENDING!

Last week Chinese students laughed out loud at both Congressman Nancy Pelosi and Secretary Timothy Geithner when they started explaining the administration’s “responsible” spending policies while visiting China. Why do 18-year-olds catch on immediately while more experienced American journalists are still fooled by Obama’s sophistry?

Pravda Assesses The US

Read yesterday’s Pravda article (yes, that Pravda) to find some truths about “the American descent into Marxism.” Conservative Americans are routinely excoriated as alarmists for saying what Pravda journalists accept as plain truth. The article traces our descent in three levels:
1. The dumbing down of our educational system where pop culture is substituted for true education.
2. Removal of faith in God until church services have become “Sunday circuses.”
3. The election of Barack Obama created the final collapse with spending that has been record setting in the history of the world.

Pravda predicts that we’ll end up somewhere between the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe. And explains that the proposed taxes (however disguised) of the current administration to fund “thefts, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars” make Russian oligarchs look like petty thieves.

The Definition of Insanity

Someone needs to remind President Obama that “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” On *Saturday he admitted in a C Span interview, “We are out of money now.”

That’s precisely what the Tea Party People have been grousing about for months.

Unfortunately, Obama went on to explain that the $1,700,000,000,000 in debt and the deficit of $11,000,000,000,000 was NOT due to his actions – the fault lies with previous administration(s), particularly in the area of health care. (Thus reminding some viewers of a three-year-old with icing on his cheeks earnestly telling his mother that he was NOT the one who ate the icing off the cake before it was served.)

He further enlightened the interviewer by stating that the short term problem of spending money on the financial and automobile industries coupled with a recession would soon be dwarfed by the long term problem of increased health care costs if we do nothing about health care now in spite of the mounting deficit.

In essence, he said we should continue spending even if we are out of money. It sounds exactly like the theory of someone who regularly maxed out his credit cards and borrowed on his home equity to pay them.

Frankly, the theory seldom, if ever, works well in the real world. Eventually one runs out of the possibility of credit on all levels. And it has never worked on a national level, as numerous failed regimes attest.

Footnote: Over the weekend I heard a radio commentator say that our deficit now exceeds the value of all the gold that has ever been mined in the history of the world. I have no way of checking the truth of his statement, so I offer it with that caveat.

*Always, always, always pay attention to the news on Friday evening and Saturday morning. That’s when politicians dump whatever bad news they can no longer conceal. Their modus operandi is to slip the information out when people are least likely to pay attention to the news and by Monday, they hope that new “news” will overshadow the bad “news” they just released. This “Friday Night (or Saturday) Dump” is especially effective on holiday weekends. Consider this Rule Three for the Mass Media.

The Governator Does Something Right

After Tuesday's defeat at the polls, Governor Schwarzenegger has included defunding Planned Parenthood to the tune of $73,000 in his proposed budget cuts. Why any government entity funds the group is beyond logical reasoning, yet they enjoy tax payer support in almost every state. While legally a non-profit organization, the major abortion provider in the US netted around $1,000,000,000 in profit from sales (abortions) last year. Their pro abortion supporters are at this very moment sending out frantic emails begging Californians to oppose the small budget cut proposal.

Beware of ACORN Supporters

Most Americans are truly upset that in spite of proven fraud and numerous indictments, ACORN continues to receive ever increasing clout and funding from the federal government. The American Spectator has a great article up explaining the $8,500,000,000 they will receive under current spending bills. Note that our dear Barney Frank recently lied about this figure on the Lou Dobbs show.

Note also that Glenn Beck has attacked ACORN and its many affiliations on his television show recently. If you go to his website, you can find a list of about 90 written articles, video clips, and audio segments about this group.

Spend And The Lord Shall Send?

Now we find out that the man who runs our country, our banks, and two of our automobile companies, the very man who plans to take over our health care industry ASAP, didn’t even run his own household very well. Apparently Obama and Michele were up to their eyeballs in debt before the book deal came through and Michele got a sweetheart salary increase of 260% the year he became US senator.

In April, The American Thinker had an analysis of their personal finances during the 2000-2005 period from public records. With around $240,000 in annual income, Obama had little or no savings and regularly used lines of credit on his home to make ends meet. Now we understand why he had trouble using his credit card during the Democratic convention 2004. They reported annual child care expenses of $23,000 to $24,000 and Michele recently mentioned that they spent about $10,000 for extra curricular activities for during those difficult years.

Book royalties and an astronomical raise rescued the family finances in 2005. Do you think Obama secretly believes that something like that will rescue the US from his spending spree that quadruples the national debt during his first year in office?

Obama Finally Gets It! . . . Or Does He?

At a town hall meeting yesterday, Obama “courageously” spoke out against excessive spending. "The long-term deficit and debt that we have accumulated is unsustainable. We can't keep on just borrowing from China or borrowing from other countries. We have to pay interest on that debt and that means that we're mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt.”

Even the most rabid conservative could say “amen” to that; it was part of the Tea Party message. However, Obama was using that spiel as a major selling point for his health care proposals. Somehow in his magical economic utopia, if the government spends more money on health care for everyone, then we will save money, get the economy going, and get out of debt.

This is from the guy who within 107 days in office has increased the deficit to 11.9% of the Gross Domestic Product, or $1,800,000,000,000. Since 1946, that percentage has varied, but the average for all of those years was 2.3%. In 1934, the year the Depression deficit peaked, the percentage was 5.9% of the GDP. (Read Investor’s Business Daily for more.)


And the people responsible for this are the same ones who excoriated Bush’s $400,000,000,000 deficit. Go to Heritage Foundation to see an excellent visual comparison. Since everyone tends to nod off when mentally comparing billions and trillions, it is necessary to have a visual to understand the impact. In fact, the Obamatrons are depending on our misunderstanding to continue their plans to change the country without opposition.