A recent report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) describes America's long term fiscal outlook:

Weaknesses in the economy and financial markets—and the government’s response to them—have contributed to near-term increases in federal deficits, which reached a record level in fiscal year 2009. While a lot of attention has been given to the recent fiscal deterioration, the federal government faces even larger fiscal challenges that will persist long after the return of financial stability and economic growth…GAO’s simulations continue to show escalating levels of debt that illustrate that the long-term fiscal outlook remains unsustainable

The GAO tells us why our fiscal outlook is unsustainable:

roughly 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue will be spent on the major entitlement programs and net interest costs on the debt by 2019. This is due largely to a substantial increase in interest on federal debt…by 2030 there will be little room for “all other spending,” which consists of what many think of as “government,” including national defense, homeland security, investment in highways and mass transit and alternative energy sources, plus smaller entitlement programs such as Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and farm price supports.

The GAO estimates assume that federal revenue will be 20.2% of GDP, which is already higher than historical levels of taxation.

Currently, our federal debt is over $12 trillion. Here are the debt projections for the next 10 years.

2010 – $14 trillion.
2011 – $15.2 trillion
2012 – $16.2 trillion
2013 – $17.1 trillion
2014 – $18 trillion
2015 – $19 trillion
2016 – $20 trillion
2017 – $21 trillion
2018 – $22 trillion
2019 – $23 trillion

As you can see, our debt is rising at roughly $1 trillion each year.

These numbers do not include the health care reform that is making it's way through Congress, which will be a major increase in the entitlement programs that are already unsustainable. The recently released Senate health care bill is estimated to cost $849 billion over 10 years, but those numbers are bogus. They are hugely underestimated, because Congress uses sleight of hand to arrive at those numbers. The full benefits of the health care bill don't start until 2014, but the taxes (about 14 different taxes in all) start in 2010, skewing the true costs if the bill. If you start calculating the cost of the Senate health care bill from when the benefits start, that makes the cost more like $1.5-2 trillion. Even the $849 billion rigged figure depends on massive Medicare cuts that Congress will probably never have the guts to make (they never have before), along with the fact that the doc-fix of $247 billion was separated out to make the Senate bill look cheaper. As always, our dishonest Congress is being dishonest about the true costs of health care reform. This reform will almost certainly add even more to the deficit and debt, unless even more taxes are raised to pay for it.

There are two ways to deal with our unsustainable fiscal problem. True conservatives (not pretenders like Bush) would say reduce government spending, which has spun completely out of control over the last decade. This is known as the smart way out. Liberals would say increase taxes to levels unprecedented in American history. It would probably take a 40-50% increase in tax levels to pay for all our committments and begin paying down our unsustainable, dollar-killing debt. Such tax increases would also have a business-killing, dampening effect on our economy at a time when unemployment is already skyrocketing and we're trying to climb out of a recession. This is known as the stupid way out.

It's up to you America. They called my father's era The Greatest Generation. From what I'm seeing so far, I'm calling my own era The Greediest Generation. We are bankrupting our children's futures for our own momentary comfort. We can't even face the unsustainable reality that WE CREATED. We just pretend it doesn't exist, while our crooked politicians drive us deeper into the hole and tell us how much they are helping us at the same time. Shame on them, and shame on us for letting them get away with it. Shame on us even more for voting for the biggest liars, the ones who promise us the most goodies as they abandon all sense of financial responsibility and sell us down the river.

Calling all big government advocates !!! It's time to do your patriotic duty for your country. As VP Joe Biden would say, "step up and be part of the deal."

As the Christmas season approaches, what better present could all you compassionate statists, leftists, socialists, communists, marxists, maoists, progressives, and liberals give us than to pay down the massive federal debt that all this out-of-control government spending has rained down upon our heads ? Show those mean old conservative grinches that you big government types are standup people who have the courage of your convictions. Send a big fat check to Uncle Sam to brighten the holidays for all us recession stressed Americans. We know you are the good people (because you keep telling us you are), so I'm going to tell you where to send your money. No need to thank me. Remember to dig deep, and give until it hurts. Your country needs you. The poor and oppressed need you, now more than ever.

Reuters has helpfully written an article on this subject. Here is the essential info:

The U.S. Treasury Department accepts gifts, payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt. Just mail them to the attention of Department G, Post Office Box 2188, Parkersburg, West Virginia, 26106-2188. Make a note in the memo section that it is a gift to reduce the debt held by the public.

The info is also contained on the U.S. Treasury website here.

I'll even help you big government lovers calculate the amount you should send in. According to the U.S. debt clock, the federal debt is just short of $12 trillion. Now I have to figure out how many liberals we have. Let's see…..we have about 250 million adults over the age of 18 living in the United States, and about 20% of the people refer to themselves as liberals according to polling……….soooo, that means there are around 50 million caring liberals in our broke country.

Dividing $12 trillion by 50 million liberals comes to…………

If you all would send in a check for $240,000, then voila!, our debt problem is solved.

Man, this is gonna be great !!! You liberals just paid for health care reform and lots more, because by paying off the federal debt, you saved America from paying over $330 billion a year in interest on that debt. We can use that savings to pay for health care reform, AND have lots left over to institute massive tax cuts, thereby revving up the economy !!! God bless you, every one !!! The recession will be over and jobs will be created !!! It'll be morning in America again !!!

Of course, there's always the possibility that you will think only of yourselves instead of helping others, and not send in any money, but no way do I think you good liberal people would be that selfish. I have complete confidence in you. I'm so excited.

Oh, wait a sec. There is one other thing. Even if you pay off the debt, we'll still have that $106 trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities hanging over our heads. Rats. Still, I know how you good liberals love your entitlements. You'll certainly want to pay for those, so allow me to recalculate the amount of money you need to send in….$106 trillion plus $12 trillion equals $118 trillion. If I divide that by the 50 million liberals in America……….

You all need to send in a check for $2,360,000. Then we'll be good.

I offer my heartfelt thanks on behalf of all Americans. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

The reason I hold the fiscally conservative political beliefs I do has nothing to do with political parties. Really, I could care less if a Democrat or a Republican is in office. I don't hold an allegiance to either of those tribes. What I look for above all is a politician who is economically intelligent. I look for someone who may provide us a way out of the economic mess we are in, someone who will reverse this unsustainable fiscal course we are embarked upon. We are all in this mess collectively, regardless of political stripe, and I don't care where the solution comes from. I just want a solution. Lately, I haven't seen one. Lately, I've only seen politicians arrive on the scene who make things worse. Barack Obama is making our fiscal situation far worse. George W. Bush made our fiscal situation far worse. During the last couple years of his presidency, Bill Clinton and his GOP-led Congress actually made things a little better, however short-lived it turned out to be. As much of the country squares off along lines of left-right tribal warfare like a bunch of ignorant savages, the real threat to the future of America almost always seems to remain unaddressed amidst the partisan smokescreen. We fiddle while Rome burns.

An article in the Wall Street Journal called 'Taking The National Debt Seriously" outlines this unaddressed threat:

If you think those town hall meetings over health care were fierce, wait until Americans come to understand the threat to our national financial survival posed by the interest on the government's credit card.

When the government spends more than its revenue, there is a budget deficit. These deficits are paid for by Washington selling interest bearing Treasury securities. If the government were ever to default on its promise to pay periodic interest payments or to repay the debt at maturity, the United States economy would plunge into a level of chaos that would make the Lehman bankruptcy look like a nonevent.

It is the interest on the national debt that makes our future unstable. The exploding size of that burden suggests that, short of devaluing the dollar and taking a large bite out of the middle class through inflation and taxation, there is no way to ever pay down that bill.

As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt. The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10% of GDP). In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes.

Except for a few years in the late 1990s, for decades Washington has spent more than it has taken in each year and borrowed the rest. Taxpayer dollars that could have paid off debt each year have instead been spent on interest to finance debt. Unfortunately, that's a vicious cycle that will likely only get worse.

Imagine that. 40% of our individual income taxes did nothing but pay interest on the federal debt. None of that money paved a road, provided health care, went toward job creation, or helped a single American in any way. That is money we just throw away.

And the only thing our current President has done so far is to make it twice as bad as it was before he arrived on the scene. Get a load of this:

The OMB projects deficits of about $9 trillion over the next 10 years. If that occurs, the national debt will be almost $21 trillion by 2019. However, the actual amount could be much higher. The OMB also optimistically projects $13.5 trillion of revenue increases over the next decade, while minimizing the inevitable rise in interest rates that will come with an expanding national debt.

Forget the political rhetoric, no matter how soaring and inspirational it may sound on the surface. Forget the Democrat vs. Republican horse manure. We are heading for disaster. Look at the actions of our politicians, not the words, not the party. We don't function on hope. We function on a successful economic foundation. That economy is teetering on the brink, and was even before the current recession got under way. Our long term economic forecast would have to get better to be called dismal.

Here is will happen if we don't reverse course immediately, if not sooner.

In stark but simple terms, unless Americans are made aware of this financial crisis and demand accountability, the very fabric of our society will be destroyed. Interest rates and interest costs will soar and government revenues will be devoured by interest on the national debt. Eventually, most of what we spend on Social Security, Medicare, education, national defense and much more may have to come from new borrowing, if such funding can be obtained. Left unchecked, this destructive deficit-debt cycle will leave the White House and Congress with either having to default on the national debt or instruct the Treasury to run the printing presses into a policy of hyperinflation.

Faced with this ever-growing financial house of cards that we call America, what is our government doing ???????

Why, creating ever more social and federal programs we can't afford, of course. Massively EXPANDING the cost of government. The federal government is like Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine. "What, me worry ?" Our government is so out of touch that it can't even figure out what the real problem is, or if they do know, they won't admit to it. That would require HARD political choices, and our politicians know you don't get elected by making hard choices, you get elected by pretending to be Santa Claus, giving all the kiddies their presents for free. We don't have statesmen running things, we have carnival barkers. We have propaganda.

Wake up, America. Take your country back. Time is running out, faster than you know.

When seeking solutions to health care, who better to look to than our own Hollywood celebrities ? These celebrities have become very wealthy in our capitalist system, and they live in big mansions. Who better to speak out against the evils of insurance company profits (average 3.4% profit margin) than super-profitable celebs ? I only wish film director/child rapist Roman Polanski could have been added to the following Hollywood public service announcement. Many celebrities support him too. You know the old saying in Hollywood, "each Oscar received entitles you to one child rape." What can I say ? Hollywood celebrities are just better than the rest of us.

Alas, I have bad news for our celebs. The Democratic-led Senate Finance Committee just voted down the health care reform public option. How did that happen ? It must be Bush's fault.

But the celebrities aren't the only ones who can make public service announcements these days. The folks over at PJTV have their own PSA, that looks very much like the one above from Hollywood and moveon.org. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect……..satire of the Hollywood satire.

Obviously, there's something wrong with those PJTV people, who must be listening to Glenn Beck. We better kick Beck off the air before a Rwanda-type civil war breaks out in America, as Hollywood celeb Bette Midler said. Yes sirree. Genocide and civil dissent are EXACTLY THE SAME THING. PJTV is probably paid by the insurance industry. What a bunch of right-wing extremists, expecting people to actually PAY for health care services. What can they possibly be thinking ? We don't pay for things in America anymore. That's a failed idea from the past. Ask a celebrity, they'll tell you. Or just shell out some dough and go see a Hollywood movie to forget all your woes for a couple hours. Maybe then you won't even notice the economy shed another 263,000 jobs in september. Not to worry, though. Will Ferrell is doing fine.

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." - President Barack Hussein Obama, narcissist, addressing the United Nations, September, 2009.

I'm sure glad Barry came along and fixed the character and cause of this nation after 232 years of American villainy, aren't you ? On the bright side, at least he didn't call pre-Obama America "The Great Satan." And our President spoke these words in front of an audience that included the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Moammar Gadhafi, and a slew of other human rights violators (many of whom are on the Orwellian UN Human Rights Council).
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"Since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol." - pot-smoking comedian Bill Maher, September, 2009.

Unbelievably, Maher calls himself a Libertarian. In reality, he's just another authoritarian left-winger. Someone should familiarize Maher with the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It's none of Bill Maher's business who smokes, drinks, or eats what, which Maher would quickly realize if someone took his weed away. Maher's "libertarianism" extends only to his desire to get high. What a hypocrite.
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"Is capitalism a sin ?" - Leni Riefenstahl Award-winning, Castro-loving filmmaker Michael Moore, in a trailer from his forthcoming movie, Capitalism, A Love Story.

The answer from Moore's questionee is "yes," by the way, capitalism IS a sin. Hugo Chavez couldn't have said it better.
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"President Obama didn't make much news on his round of five Sunday talk shows … with one notable exception. The President revealed a great deal about his philosophy of government and how he defines a tax increase. It turns out the President thinks a health-care tax is not a tax if he thinks the tax is for your own good. … Mr. Obama was asked by [ABC] host George Stephanopoulos about the 'individual mandate.' Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when 'the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. … How is that not a tax?' 'Well, hold on a second, George,' Mr. Obama replied. 'Here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's…' 'That may be,' Mr. Stephanopoulos responded, 'but it's still a tax increase.' (In fact, uncompensated care accounts for about only 2.2% of national health spending today, but that's another subject.) Mr. Obama: 'No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore…' In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy — don't call it a tax — is for your own good. … Mr. Obama complains that 'My critics say everything is a tax increase,' as if that is his political problem. His real problem is that the individual mandate really is a tax, but the President doesn't want voters to think of it that way, because taxes are unpopular." –The Wall Street Journal, September, 2009.

Yes, of course, Obama's penalty for not having health insurance is a tax, no matter what he wants to call it. Obama probably wouldn't consider his cap-and-trade proposal a tax either, but that's exactly what it is. The creative subterfuge being engaged in by Democrats these days is to pass tax increases without calling them tax increases. Instead, they are called penalties, mandates, fees, carbon allowances, etc. Does this stuff actually fool anyone ? (except for liberals, that is). I hope not. Obama isn't "helping the little guy" one bit, in case anyone hasn't noticed (and the media sure hasn't). He's only raising the little guy's expenses, through both direct and indirect means. This brings to mind Ronald Reagan's quote about the most terrifying words in the english language – "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
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"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations." - Barack Obama, speaking at the UN climate change conference, September, 2009.

"Responsibility to future generations," eh ? More than a tad ironic, coming from the President who is running up the debt faster than every other administration in history combined, thereby irresponsibly ruining the prospects of future generations.
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"It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore. It smells of something else. It smells of hope." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, addressing the UN, September, 2009.

The "sulfur" smell was Bush, whom Chavez called "the devil" at last year's UN meeting. The "hope" smell is Obama. It's sure nice that we've won over Chavez, don't you think ? Yes, he may be a tyrannical nut who nationalizes industries, shuts down opposition media, and puts opposition political figures in jail, but that's the socialist way. Because Chavez's version of "hope" would be hope of a worldwide socialist revolution, I wonder what it is he likes so much about Obama ??? I can agree with Chavez on this much – something smells alright.

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.” - Senator Barack Obama, in a 2006 floor speech preceding a Senate vote to extend the federal debt limit.

Ah, how I liked THAT Barack Obama back in 2006, when he was railing against the irresponsible fiscal policies of President Bush and his GOP-led Congress. I even went out and bought Obama's book, The Audacity Of Hope. Obama seemed different. He was the post-partisan, responsible voice for change. Obama's book turned out to be pretty light on substance, but his rhetorical fluorishes promised a new kind of politics that could bring left and right together for the betterment of the country.

Too bad it was all rubbish. Obama's idea of bipartisanship is to have Democrats write all the bills, to ignore all Republican suggestions, and to have Republicans sit quietly in the corner and go along with whatever Obama and the Dems want. When Republicans refused to do that, an absolute certainty, Obama and company then demonized them as the "failed policies of the past," the "party of no," "racists," "dividers," "rightwing domestic terrorists (my personal fave)," and so on and so forth.

Speaking of the failed policies of the past, Democrats voted as a bloc against raising the federal debt limit back in 2006, when Obama was allegedly so concerned about shifting bad policy choices onto the backs of our children. Since then, after the Democrats took over Congress and eventually the White House, the debt limit has been raised three times. Now the Senate needs to raise it again, because we are going to exceed the current $12 trillion debt limit next month. We're going to have to keep on raising it too, because both the White House and Congressional Budget Office agree that Obama and the Democrats are going to add another $9 trillion to the debt (and the Dems have lots MORE groovy new spending plans they haven't implemented yet.) Apparently, Obama isn't quite so concerned about the burdens our children will have to bear anymore. Instead, he has declared open season on their futures. Ironically, it's the young people who seem to support Obama the most. Go figure. It's like falling in love with your executioner.

The rest of the world has taken notice of America's massive financial irresponsibility and is proposing changes. China wants to back away from buying U.S. debt, alarmed over massive American money printing (backed by nothing). China sees rampant U.S. inflation coming as soon as the recession ends. Can't argue with them there. The UN wants to move to a new world currency other than the dollar for similar reasons. The dollar just hit a new low for the year, and we're still hemorrhaging jobs at an alarming pace, with unemployment at a 26-year high. In addition, the FHA, which has taken over as the new securitized subprime mortgage lender of choice after the private lenders stopped making those boneheaded loans in the wake of the housing meltdown, is coming perilously close to not meeting it's 2% reserve requirements, as the economy continues to tank and foreclosures continue to rise. A new bailout for the FHA, perhaps ? Hey, why not ? What's another $100 billion these days ?

So naturally, with all this "good" news abounding, our Vice President, Joe Biden, recently declared, "The recovery act has played a significant role in changing the trajectory of our economy." Sure, Joe, whatever you say. Everything's going great. Keep creating your own reality. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

When all is said and done, the plans of the Democrats are the same as they always are, and as simple as the directions on a bottle of shampoo – Spend. Tax. Repeat.

The children be damned.

Do you believe our federal government is competent ? Do you think it's doing a good job of solving our problems ? Are we getting our money's worth ? Let's run through a checklist.

The government declared a war on poverty about 45 years ago. How'd that work out ? We may not have an exit strategy from Afghanistan yet, but you'd think we'd have one for the war on poverty after all these years. Nope.

What about the war on drugs ? We've put a lot of American citizens in prison on drug charges, giving us the highest incarceration rate in the world here in the land of the free, but drugs are still everywhere. If you want to find illegal drugs in America, you don't have to look very hard.

How about the problem of illegal immigration ? I bet you didn't know that the government fixed that problem back in 1986 with the Immigration Reform And Control Act. Listen to this excerpt from the signing statement from that Act, and tell me if it sounds at all familiar to any discussions of the issue we are having today:

In 1981 this administration asked the Congress to pass a comprehensive legislative package, including employer sanctions, other measures to increase enforcement of the immigration laws, and legalization. The act provides these three essential components. The employer sanctions program is the keystone and major element. It will remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw illegal aliens here. We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.

In 1986, we had approximately 2.7 million illegal immigrants. Now the estimate is around 13 million, and we're having the exact same discussions about illegal immigration that we had 23 years ago. Good job, government.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Some of you might be thinking of all the super neato government programs that have been put in place to help us, like the Social Security ponzi scam, or Medicare, which is going broke. Plus, Social Security and Medicare comprise the lion's share of our unfunded liabilities, which, when added to our stated national debt of $11.7 trillion, make the real national debt around $56.4 trillion (note – the national debt figures are outdated as soon as they are printed because the debt is rising so fast. The real national debt might be over $58 trillion by now).

FYI – If you want to see the startling truth behind the U.S. economy, check out the U.S. Debt Clock. We are becoming a hollowed out shell of an economic power. It can't last. America, as it stands, is not sustainable (and our idiotic mainstream media wonders what all the protesting is about. "It must be racism," they say. Why do they call those media types "the elite" anyway ? They sound like a bunch of imbeciles to me).

Our government has done a bang up job of not eliminating poverty, drugs, and illegal immigration. It has also done a fine job of living beyond it's means and selling us down the river with massive debt that will destroy the hopes of future generations. It was also instrumental in creating the housing bubble that led to the current recession.

So, obviously, the correct path to follow now is to hand another 17% of our economy over to that same government to "fix" health care, right ? I mean, the government has such an excellent track record of solving economic problems (NOT). Much better than that miserable failure known as the free market (that made us the wealthiest country in the history of the world). After all, the free market has failed to rein in health care costs, right ? Wrong. The government has inserted itself into health care to such an extent that the free market isn't really functioning in health care. The government got into health care in a big way in 1965, and it's influence has grown ever since. This is also the same time period that health care costs have spiraled out of control.

I was listening to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday on television talking about how there isn't enough competition among private health care insurers, how some states are dominated by only a few insurance companies. What Schumer didn't bother to mention was that insurers are limited by law from competing on a national level, across state lines. So, we have the government restricting private health insurance choice on the one hand, and then complaining that there isn't enough choice on the other hand. I don't know how some of these politicians peddle this nonsense with a straight face. Schumer, of course, wasn't advocating to open up competition on a national level among diverse insurance companies. No, because that would make sense. We can't have that. Instead, Schumer was advocating for a public health insurance option, where the government competes directly against the private sector, as if that's even possible. It isn't. Schumer kept saying that government competing with private industry is fine, as long as there's "a level playing field." Schumer said that with a straight face too, somehow. The idea that there could ever be a level playing field between the federal government and the private sector is absurd on it's face, as is Chuck Schumer. A private industry trying to compete with the federal government in health care insurance would be like trying to play a football game against a government team, where the government got to pick the players on both teams, got to pick the referees, got to change the rules of the game after every play, and made your team pay the expenses of it's team. There's little doubt who would win the game with such a "level playing field."

I'd have much more respect for the politicians peddling the public health care option if they'd just tell the truth about it. It's not about "keeping the insurance companies honest" any more than Medicare was about "giving Seniors a choice" in 1965. It's about government control. Don't lie to me and tell me anything different.

In the last nine months, our federal government has bailed out big business left and right. Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, car companies. The federal government serves as a backstop for big business. Big business also happens to be the ones with the deep pockets, lobbyists, and campaign cash to help get the politicians re-elected. It's a cozy little quid pro quo of the nation's power brokers. The elite taking care of their own. The government has also bailed itself out by sending huge chunks of cash to state governments via Obama's stimulus bill. Those government jobs were "saved," even as us schlubs in the private sector lost our jobs. It seems ALL the big boys in our country are "too big to fail," and the enormous bailout price tag is put on the national credit card for some future taxpayer schlubs to worry about. That's a sweet deal for the big boys in and out of government. Their risk is alleviated. Their past sins, which led to these dire financial straits in the first place, are absolved. The taxpayers serve as the sin-eaters and the pain-eaters. Btw, the federal employees health care plan is top-notch. Thank you very much, schlubs.

But with all this bailing out of the big boys, something critical has been forgotten.

70% of the jobs created in this country come from small business. How are we treating our small businesses, the ones who create the lion's share of employment opportunities ???? Let's take a look.

The liberal solution to every conceivable financial woe comes down to basically three words – "tax the rich." Then the liberals spew out inanities about how the top income tax rates used to be MUCH higher, like 70% or 90% (as if that's a good thing). What they don't tell you is that small businesses are scooped up along with the wealthy as liberals cast their tax nets, trolling for rich people. The reason for this is because 75% of small businesses are sub-chapter S corporations, who file their business taxes under the individual income tax code. When the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, causing the top tax rate to increase by 4.6% to 39.6%, small businesses (the job creators) have to pay those increased taxes too. That leaves less money available to successful small businesses for investment, growth, wage increases for it's employees, and/or new job creation.

Reversing the Bush tax cuts is far from the only anti-small business measure being proposed. As part of the ObamaCare reform, the House Committee has propsed a surcharge tax for anyone making over $1 million per year, raising the top income tax rate to 45%. Last month, freshman Democrats in the House (who apparently have a lot more economic sense than many veteran Democrats in the House), sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) objecting to the measures, which they say will hurt small businesses. Here is a portion of that letter:

While the Ways and Means Committee states that the proposed surcharge in H.R. 3200 will only impact 4.1 percent of small businesses, we are concerned that this does not paint a complete picture. According to the Internal Revenue Service's 2002 Statistics of Income, 64 percent of households filing income tax forms with AGI above $250,000 filed as an S corporation or a partnership or filed a Schedule C sole proprietorship tax form. Further, of all small businesses, 75% are S-Corporations where the business income is passed through to the business owners' individual tax return, increasing the chances that it will be impacted by the proposed surcharge.

So, the Ways and Means Committees' 4.1% number of small businesses being affected is an outright lie. No surprise there. I'm only surprised when they don't lie. The letter goes on:

The proposed surcharge will also have a direct negative impact on manufacturers, another industry essential for our recovery. As manufacturers are capital intensive businesses, their taxable income is often higher (nearly 70 percent of the manufacturers that pay at the individual rate have an average taxable income of $570,000). Manufacturing machinery can cost of $1 million and many owners have to save for years to expand and buy new equipment. Yet those profits saved each year would be hit by the new surcharge, which could lead to reduced investment.

Especially in a recession, we need to make sure not to kill the goose that will lay the golden eggs of our recovery…Combined with state taxes, many successful small businesses — the very kind of business that should lead in creating new jobs and help us emerge from this recession — will be taxed at over 50 percent.

A 50% tax rate on job creators……Dumb-da-da-dumb-dumb. Small business can't thrive in such an environment.

The freshmen House Democrats go on to explain how, at a 50% tax rate, small businesses would also be at a huge disadvantage to the big corporations and multinationals, who would still be paying the lower 35% business tax rate. What an unbelievable coincidence. The big boys, after being bailed out and immunized from failure at the taxpayer's expense, and after all their lobbying and campaign contributions, get FAVORABLE TREATMENT FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT over the biggest job creators in the country, small business.

Btw, the letter also mentioned that $21 billion of the stimulus package funds are going to small businesses, the biggest job creators in the country. That comes out to about TWO PERCENT of the $787 billion Obama stimulus total. Do any of you STILL think that was a stimulus package ???? It wasn't. It was mostly just an extraordinarily large appropriations spending package, aka, pork. That's why it hasn't and won't work.

Let's also not forget that cap-and-trade is looming on the horizon, so Obama can "skyrocket" those energy costs for small businesses too. Then, if Card Check passes, the Big O can just drive a lot of small businesses out of business via unionization and it's unaffordable wages and mandates on business. Peachy.

Back to health care reform. The President is trying to sell the health care plan as being pro-small business, but a proposal in the House calls for employers with a total payroll above $250,000 to offer health insurance to their workers or face a surtax of as much as 8 percent. A Senate committee version would require all businesses, except those with fewer than 25 employees, to provide health coverage or pay a $750 fine per year for each worker. I've heard there will be a tax credit for businesses to provide health care (that doesn't help struggling businesses, which are many these days), but if these plans are pro-small business, I'd sure hate to see what anti-small business would look like.

That's why the business community, with the exception of those big and favored few who will prosper under Obama's plans (like Big Pharma or GE) is scared to death of Barack Obama, and is fighting back. I can't blame them. Anti-business craziness abounds.

I guess my only remaining question would be – is Obama trying to destroy this country on purpose, or is he just too stupid to know any better ?

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) computed the day of the year when all the costs of government at all levels are paid for. ATR calls it Cost Of Government Day. This year, that day fell on August 12, 2009. It has taken from January 1st until now to pay for all the costs of federal, state, and local government, plus the regulatory burdens imposed by the government. This year's Cost Of Government Day was almost a full month later than it was in 2008. The biggest reason for the change was the recession, which sparked a massive Keynesian government spending spree (TARP, stimulus, etc). Another reason is the unchecked growth of unfunded entitlement liabilities (Medicare, Social Security, etc).

This year, the cost of government consumed 61.34% of national income. Working people toil 224 days of the year to pay for their government. You can view the Cost Of Government Day report for 2009 here. It makes for some very interesting and disturbing reading.

Put in it's simplest terms, this means that we are becoming slaves to incremental government tyranny. ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade are some of the next steps in that planned process.

The breakdown of Cost Of Government Day is as follows:
- We work 111 days to pay for federal spending.
- We work 49 days for state and local spending.
- We work 42 days for federal regulations.
- We work 23 days for state and local regulations.

Cost Of Government Day varies from state to state, of course, because each state and locality has a differing burden. The state with the least burden (most free) in 2009 was Alaska (where that radical Sarah Palin governed. No wonder liberals hate her). Predictably, the states with the highest government burdens (least free) were liberal states, with Connecticut being the highest, followed by New Jersey, New York, and California. Liberals LOVE to give their hard-earned money to the government (well, actually, they love to give other people's hard-earned money to the government). Liberals exhibit a plantation mentality, with the government playing the role of master, and the liberals playing the happy slaves whose every need is met by Massuh (at the price of their liberty and free choice). This somehow makes sense to them, though I can never understand WHY it makes sense to them. I run from it like I'm headed for the Underground Railroad.

When you're working 7-8 months per year just to pay off the government burdens, it's only natural that you will be poorer than you'd be otherwise, but somehow liberals can never figure this out either. They are always clamoring for more and more government spending, taxation, and regulation. It's their version of Stockholm Syndrome. They loves them some Massuh. Massuh is SO very good and kind. Massuh is SO very smart.

In an irony so thick you could cut it with a knife, liberals, the willing slaves, call people "racists" when they resist the big government takeovers being planned by President Barack Obama. They actually think it's racist to want to be free from government tyranny, all because Obama's skin is black. They can't see past that singular, irrelevant fact. At this point, crying racism is nothing more than the liberal Pavlovian response to freedom. They can't help it, and they don't understand what the rest of us are so upset about. They don't get that most people don't want to become wards of the state. They are completely baffled when people don't want the government to takeover every aspect of their lives, so they use "racist" as a sort of intellectual firewall. Go figure.

Back to the Cost Of Government Day report. One of the many myths the report destroys is the idea that Obama's stimulus package was actually an economic stimulus package. It wasn't. It was mostly just a bunch of big government appropriations spending under the guise of stimulus, along with spending to prop up, guess who? – the government ("never let a crisis go to waste"). Here's the breakdown of spending in the alleged stimulus package:

- $90 billion for “State Fiscal Relief;”
- $71.3 billion for the Department of Labor, Health and
Human Services and Education (including $16.6 billion for
Student Financial Assistance, $13 billion for Education for
the Disadvantaged, $12.2 billion for Special Education and
$9.7 billion for National Institutes of Health);
- $61.1 billion for Transportation, Urban Development and
Housing (including $27.5 billion for Highway
Construction);
- $57.3 billion for Assistance for Unemployed Workers and
Struggling Families (including 39.2 billion for
Unemployment Compensation);
- $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund;
- $50.8 billion for Energy and Water (including $16.8 billion
for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy);
- $26.4 billion for Agriculture, Rural Development and Food
and Drug Administration (including $20 billion for the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program);
- $25.1 billion for Health Insurance Assistance;
- $20.8 billion for Health Information Technology;
- $15.8 billion on Commerce, Justice and Science (including
$4.7 billion on the Broadband Technology Opportunities
Program);
- $10.6 billion on Interior and Environment (including Clean
Water and DrinkingWater State Revolving Funds);
- $7.9 billion on Defense and Homeland Security;
- $6.7 billion on Financial Services and General Government
(including $5.4 billion on the Federal Buildings Fund);
- $4.3 billion on Military Construction and Veteran Affairs.

Another interesting item in the report is how the tax burden of the various states affects the population and prosperity of those states. The report states that between 1997 and 2007, the ten states with the highest tax burdens lost 3 million citizens and $82 billion in income. During the same period, over 2.6 million people moved to the states with no income tax, bringing in about $98.5 billion in income. Hmmm. Those no income tax states must be racist.

Maybe the most important thing to remember about President Obama's first year in office is this – in 2009, taxpayers are confronted with a federal budget that raises spending to over $9,000 for every man, woman and child in America—forever. That's $36,000 for a family of four. EVERY YEAR. And our President has only just begun to "change" America. Change into what, I shudder to think.

In conclusion, keep going to those Tea Parties and townhall meetings. Keep telling your Congressperson what you think. The only ones who can stop this tyrannical government (and it started long before Obama arrived on the scene) is we, the people. Ignore all the name-calling you endure from the leftist slaves and their pet slave media. They are the problem. You are the solution.

Barney Frank (D-VT) wants the federal government to decide how much Wall Street executives (and all other executives of private companies) are paid. Barney also wants the government to decide how they are paid. Legislation to ban incentive-based pay for private corporations has been approved by the House Financial Services Committee.

I don't know where in the U.S. Constitution the federal government thinks it obtains the authority to do this, but, hey, we don't use that musty old Constitution thingy anymore anyway. The notion of limiting centralized governmental power (federalism) envisioned by the founding fathers is as outdated as bell bottomed jeans. These days, we seem to be climbing all over ourselves to give the federal government all the power it wants (totalitarianism). The statists are on the march, making all the same false promises the statists always make, the false promises that never quite seem to materialize (FYI – health care reform = forcing all Americans to buy health care insurance and then having the government determine what medical procedures you are allowed to have, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

Here is Barney's rationale for limiting executive pay:

"The problem with executive compensation is essentially, from the systemic standpoint, that it gives perverse incentives," said Frank, a Democrat. Without penalties for bad bets, the system means "heads you win, tails you break even," he said.

Perverse incentives. That means people shouldn't be rewarded for driving their companies into the ground. They should be held accountable instead. I think we can all agree with that, if not with the idea that the federal government should dictate people's salaries. That is so……Soviet.

Let's continue with these ideas of accountability and perverse incentives. As of July 31st, 2009, the federal debt stood at $11,617,400,889,464.57. That's over $11.6 trillion. As soon as I write these words, they are outdated, because the national debt is now higher. The debt has increased by $3.89 billion PER DAY since September 2007. In addition, the federal government is projected to run nearly a $2 trillion deficit in 2009. We paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt in 2008. This year it will be much higher. The interest on the debt is money flushed down the toilet (or sent to a foreign government, like China) that could easily pay for any imaginable health care reform we could dream up. Instead, our federal government has burdened every American citizen with roughly $38,000 in debt. The federal government is the poster child for incompetence.

This means the federal government, if viewed as a corporation (FedCorp), would be the worst run corporation in the entire history of the world (with the possible exception of those defunct Soviets we're trying to emulate). So, how are we holding FedCorp accountable ? Why, we're about to hand the entire health care system over to them !!! We're going to reward the worst company ever, FedCorp, by handing it control over 16% more of our economy. Talk about perverse incentives. This is equivalent to handing the entire energy sector over to Enron. FedCorp has shown NO ability to be responsible managers of taxpayer dollars, so, naturally, let's keep giving them ever more and more. That's the ticket. And never mind that the part of health care FedCorp already controls, Medicare/Medicaid, has such massive unfunded liabilities that it is threatening to destroy our economy down the road. If not addressed, the unfunded entitlement liabilities will hit our economy with such an economic tidal wave that the current recession will look like a ripple in a pond by comparison.

While we're on the subject of salaries, FedCorp is holding itself accountable for it's putrid mismanagement by…..giving all FedCorp's civilian employees a 2.9% pay raise in 2010. This is after Congress voted itself a 2.8% pay raise in January 2009, with the country in the depths of the recession. Apparently, accountability and perverse incentives don't apply to FedCorp, only to that horribly greedy entity known as the private sector (the sector that produces all our goods and services). FedCorp is spitting directly in your faces, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. YOU tighten your belts. THEY get raises.

There are so many examples of the federal government throwing away taxpayer dollars that I could never list them all. This post would be a thousand pages long if I tried. Go to the website YouDontKnowJack to see some examples of how just one Congressman, Jack Murtha (D-PA), aka, the King Of Pork, throws YOUR money around to his cronies and special interests. It's disgusting.

And it wasn't that much better when the Republicans were in charge. During the Bush years, with Republicans controlling Congress, government spending STILL skyrocketed. Federal spending went from $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year during Bush's tenure (and those guys were supposed to be conservatives ??? I don't think so). The only way the Bushies were conservative is if you compare them to Obama and the Democrats, who are trying to match Bush's 8-year federal spending increase total ($1 trillion) in their FIRST YEAR. If Bush was the frying pan, Obama is the fire. I find myself longing for the return of Bill Clinton and his Republican Congress. At least those guys realized the economy was EVERYTHING. Those guys look like geniuses compared to Bush and Barry, and even Clinton ran net deficits and added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Things have been so bad since then that Clinton and his GOP'ers seem like the good old days.

Our federal government is so far out of control that I barely know where to start. This post is only a drop in the bucket in trying to describe it. FedCorp is like a bunch of crack addicts with our money. They can never get enough. With an addict, there's only one cure. You have to MAKE them stop. WE have to make them stop. WE have to get rid of the whole bunch of them. WE have to vote them all out of office and start over. That's the only way WE can make a difference, the only way WE can make the federal crackheads stop. Barring that, WE are screwed. Barring that, America, the land of the free, will very soon be OVER. There is only so much money that FedCorp can spend. There are only so much taxes that FedCorp can take from us. We're on the express train to poverty as long as this continues. Wake up, America. Your country is disappearing before your very eyes.

Certain things defy explanation. For example, Bill Ayers went from being a domestic terrorist bomber for the Weathermen to being a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Chicago-Illinois. There is no rational explanation for how that happens, for how a radical like Ayers gets in a position to shape impressionable young minds when his proper place in society should be behind bars. It boggles the mind. There is a sense of unreality about it.

I had the same sense of unreality when I saw Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken (D-MN) sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Sotomayor hearings. Stuart Smalley is the Distinguished Gentleman from Minnesota now. How did that happen ? How did Minnesotans decide Stuart was good enough, smart enough, and that, doggone-it, they liked him ? Some Republicans will tell you that Franken didn't really win the Minnesota election, and that IS a source of controversy (Minnesota counties didn't all use the same standard for accepting or rejecting ballots. We don't really know who won), but that's not the real reason Franken is in Congress today. The real reason Franken won with just under 42% of the popular vote is that three other candidates from three other parties (Independence, Libertarian, Constitutional) split off about 459,000 votes from the Democrats and Republicans. If not for the third parties, the vast majority of those votes would have been cast for Franken's opponent, Norm Coleman, giving him an easy victory. A substantial majority of Minnesotans (over 58%) did NOT vote for Stuart Smalley, which gives me a degree of comfort regarding the collective sanity of that state. I mean, you can convince 42% of Americans of almost anything. You can even convince them that Barack Obama is doing a good job of handling the economy, though the reality is, he's doing his level best to destroy it (tax increases, massive government expansion, anti-business policies, anti-free market policies, and anti-growth policies in the midst of the worst recession in nearly 70 years). There's a sense of unreality about that too. I feel like I'm watching the socialist endgame unfold right before my eyes.

But it is what it is, and now we have Stuart Smalley in the Senate. During the Sotomayor hearings, I found myself wondering how Franken got appointed to the Judiciary Committee. He has no background in the law. None whatsoever. He was a poli-sci major at Harvard. After that, he was a comedian and a radio talk show host (and a failed one at that). How did he get the appointment ? Granted, the Sotomayor hearings were a joke, but I still don't think that's any reason to put a comedian on the Judiciary Committee.

Luckily for us, Senator Franken himself revealed why he was on the Judiciary Committee. He has no background in the law, but, doggone-it, he watched Perry Mason on television when he was a kid. Every episode, apparently, because Franken knew that Perry Mason only lost one case during his distinguished imaginary legal career (though he couldn't remember which one). Watch the following video to see how Stuart Saves The Senate:

I look forward to lots of yuks for the next four years. Too bad the joke's on us. Maybe we should elect Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to the Senate next, being the serious country that we are.

Back to Obama's war on the economy – It seems the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office isn't buying Obama's inane claim that ObamaCare will result in a net cost savings. The CBO knows that is exactly the opposite of the truth. The CBO also knows ObamaCare will not address the long-term unfunded entitlement liabilities, as the President has suggested:

Sen. Kent Conrad: Dr. Elmendorf, I am going to really put you on the spot because we are in the middle of this health care debate, but it is critically important that we get this right. Everyone has said, virtually everyone, that bending the cost curve over time is critically important and one of the key goals of this entire effort. From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?

Doug Elmendorf, Director of the CBO: No, Mr. Chairman. In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.

Conrad: So the cost curve in your judgement is being bent, but it is being bent the wrong way. Is that correct?

Elmendorf: The way I would put it is that the curve is being raised, so there is a justifiable focus on growth rates because of course it is the compounding of growth rates faster than the economy that leads to these unsustainable paths. But it is very hard to look out over a very long term and say very accurate things about growth rates. So most health experts that we talk with focus particularly on what is happening over the next 10 or 20 years, still a pretty long time period for projections, but focus on the next 10 or 20 years and look at whether efforts are being made that are bringing costs down or pushing costs up over that period.

As we wrote in our letter to you and Senator Gregg, the creation of a new subsidy for health insurance, which is a critical part of expanding health insurance coverage in our judgement, would by itself increase the federal responsibility for health care that raises federal spending on health care. It raises the amount of activity that is growing at this unsustainable rate and to offset that there has to be very substantial reductions in other parts of the federal commitment to health care, either on the tax revenue side through changes in the tax exclusion or on the spending side through reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. Certainly reforms of that sort are included in some of the packages, and we are still analyzing the reforms in the House package. Legislation was only released as you know two days ago. But changes we have looked at so far do not represent the fundamental change on the order of magnitude that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage proposals.

On the bright side, ObamaCare will result in more health care bureaucracy and less choice. Maybe Senator Franken can help with this issue as well. I hear he used to watch Dr. Kildare on television when he was a kid.

As with the stimulus, Obama is pushing Congress to ram the health care bill through quickly (before people find out what's in it) Here's Obama:

“This progress should make us hopeful, but it can't make us complacent. It should instead provide the urgency for both the House and the Senate to finish their critical work on health reform before the August recess."

As a general principle, isn't it better to get something done RIGHT, as opposed to getting it done QUICK, especially with something as big and consequential as health care ? If the stimulus bill misfire (only 10% of the funds spent in 5 months) taught us anything, it should have taught us that. Obama continually pretends that the sky is going to fall if his policies aren't implemented immediately or sooner. It won't. The only reasons to rush a health care bill through Congress without thinking the issues through are political ones, so Obama can claim "victory." We don't need his victory. We need good health care solutions.

One of the talking points used by those favoring a single-payer health care system is that Medicare's administrative costs are FAR lower than those of private insurance companies. Here's liberal columnist and writer Joe Conason (whose latest book was titled 'The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth') parroting that point at Truthdig.com:

Private insurers consistently spend more on overhead and administration than Medicare. To anyone who shares the broad prejudice against government, the difference will be startling, although these numbers are very well known to health experts. The average overhead cost of Medicare is roughly 2 or 3 percent, far below the administrative costs of private insurers, which range between 27 and 40 percent.

Wow. According to Conason, there would be a 25-37% savings in overhead if we go to a universal Medicare-type government single-payer insurance plan. That's GREAT ! Sign me up !

Well, there is one teeny weeny little problem with Conason's statement…

It's a big ole pile of stinking cow flop. Not even remotely factual. For a guy who wrote a book about right-wingers distorting the truth, Conason is distorting the bejesus out of the truth. Here's why:

First of all, the 2% figure for Medicare's administrative costs comes from a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate. That much is true. However, the CBO expresses administrative costs as a percentage of Medicare's total patient costs. Because Medicare patients are elderly and suffer from more health issues than the general population, Medicare patients incur a lot more per patient expense than the general population demographic that is covered by private insurers. That distorts the real administrative costs of Medicare. Here's the Council For Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) to explain:

Medicare calculates administrative costs as a ratio of identified administrative costs divided by claims. In 2003, the average medical cost for Medicare was estimated to be about $6,600 per person per year (because of the nature of Medicare’s beneficiary pool of older and disabled people), while the average medical cost for private health insurance, excluding out-of-pocket cost, was $2,700 per person per year. Because of the higher cost per beneficiary, Medicare’s method of calculation makes administrative costs, albeit unintentionally, appear to be lower than they really are. Indeed, if the numbers were adequately “handicapped,” they [Medicare] would be in the 6 to 8 percent range.

To illustrate this, let's assume that both Medicare and private insurers have a fixed per patient administrative overhead of $132 per patient, exactly the same. If we express this as a percentage of patient costs, that makes it appear to be a 2% administrative overhead for Medicare (based on $6600 spent per patient), and a 4.9% overhead for private insurers (based on $2700 spent per patient), 2 1/2 times as much. This would make Medicare appear to be more efficient from an administrative standpoint even if their administrative costs were identical to those of private insurers. That's the first way administrative costs are skewed.

Second, Medicare doesn't include everything as administrative cost in the same way that private insurers are required to do. These are Medicare's hidden costs that don't appear in the CBO estimate. Here's more information from CAHI:

Company Policies — Executives and boards of directors consider, debate and decide company policy; in Medicare that function is often handled by Congress and its legislative staff. Setting program policy requires time and money not reflected in Medicare’s official administrative cost estimates. Just imagine all of the congressional and administrative staff time and effort devoted to creating, debating, promoting, opposing and ultimately passing the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. One might compare it to a huge new corporate venture or restructuring. Yet not a dime of the money and time spent on that months-long public debate appear in Medicare’s administrative costs.

Management — Businesses must include management costs in their administrative costs: Medicare doesn’t. The salaries of those professionals at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), from Dr. Mark McClellan down, are excluded from Medicare’s administrative cost estimates, as are the building costs to house that part of the leadership team. Private insurers don’t have that luxury.

Raising Capital — Private industry has to raise capital, usually by selling stock or borrowing funds. And if an insurance company borrows money to pay for a building, it must pay interest on the loan. In other words, in the private sector there is a cost of capital. Of course, the federal government also raises capital and borrows money to pay Medicare claims, and it even pays itself interest on some of that borrowed money. But it includes none of these costs in its administrative estimates; it simply takes (or will take) the money from taxpayers. And while Medicare’s “cost of capital” is big now, it will grow exponentially in the future as Medicare outlays grow faster than the Part A payroll tax [the Medicare/SocSec unfunded liability has reached $107 trillion].

Premiums and Commissions — One of the most common complaints is that the private sector has to pay agents to market and sell its products, which, critics contend, the government doesn’t have to do. Well, not exactly. You may have noticed that CMS has been heavily involved lately in promoting the new Medicare drug benefit. Nothing wrong with that, but those are marketing costs, which are ignored in Medicare’s administrative numbers. Premiums are the primary way private insurers obtain the funds they use to pay claims. But the government also has to bring in funds in order to pay Medicare claims. How does it do that? Through taxes. Employers, the IRS and the Social Security Administration are, in effect, the sales force and collection arm for the Medicare program. Workers and employers currently split the 2.9 percent payroll tax that funds Medicare Part A. Employers, of course, have to handle the administrative functions of getting that money to the government. Thus, that part of Medicare’s “premium collection” actually shows up in employers’ administrative costs — including, ironically, those of insurers collecting that 2.9 percent for the government — rather than Medicare’s. Revenue to pay the government’s share of Part B — 75 percent of the program’s costs — comes from general revenues collected by the IRS. And the Social Security Administration collects the 25 percent of the Part B program that comes from seniors’ Social Security checks. Yet again, those “collection costs” are ignored in Medicare administrative cost estimates.

Claims Processing and Fraud — Medicare pays claims, millions and millions of them. The claims volume is so heavy that there is little time to do anything else — like scrutinize and review the providers’ bills, check with providers if something looks amiss and withhold payment until discrepancies have been resolved. Rather, Medicare is set up to catch problems primarily in cases of massive fraud and abuse, and it does that through the Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services, not CMS. In other words, while insurers see claims oversight as responsible stewardship and a collaborative effort to ensure proper payment, HHS operates more as a policing effort [Medicare fraud is estimated at $60 billion per year].

Premium Taxes — Every state imposes a tax on premiums collected, usually running in the 1 to 3 percent range. Those taxes are factored in as part of a company’s administrative costs. Obviously Medicare has no equivalent. But it highlights the point that part of the insurance industry’s administrative costs are not because the private sector is inefficient, but because government is taxing it and imposing regulations and unfunded mandates (that is, it tells the private sector to do something, but doesn’t reimburse its costs). There is something a little disingenuous about imposing unwanted taxes and regulations on an industry and then criticizing it because its administrative costs are higher than the untaxed government program.

Now you know a little more of the truth about administrative costs, and how the numbers are so heavily skewed in the government's favor. But the question remains, does Medicare have lower administrative costs than the private sector ? With all it's unfair advantages, you'd think so. CAHI admits it's very difficult to estimate the true costs of administering Medicare. In a 1994 study, CAHI found Medicare's administrative costs to be significantly higher than those of the private sector, but CAHI came up with a the following results in it's 2003 study:

we calculate Medicare’s administrative costs to be 5.2 percent in 2003, while the private sector runs 8.9 percent when commissions, profit and premium taxes are excluded, and 16.7 percent when those factors are included.

Medicare is still less by 3.4% according to CAHI's 2003 study, until profit and taxes are added in. Because profit and taxes are fluid, obviously those number can change, but they are still a factor. Yahoo Finance shows the average net profit margim in the health insurance industry to be 3% right now, for what it's worth.

A recent article by the Heritage Foundation actually showed that the per patient administrative overhead for Medicare was higher than the equivalent private insurance overhead from the years 2000-2005. Heritage based it's numbers on CMS (Medicare) data and Census Bureau extrapolations. There's a graph at the link explaining the numbers. After Heritage published it's results, the worst economist in the world and former Enron adviser, Paul Krugman of the NY Times, attempted to refute the Heritage Foundation with some statistics of his own (while ignoring Heritage's actual data and simultaneously launching ad hominem attacks against Heritage). Then Heritage attempted to refute Krugman's refutation. And so it goes.

Are Medicare's administrative costs cheaper ? I don't know. Maybe a little, or maybe not at all. Beats me, but I know one thing for sure. Guys like Joe Conason are lying through their teeth. Where did he pull those figures about private insurer overhead being 27-37% from anyway ? I never could find any corroborating info on that. Maybe he pulled it from his "anal"ytic file.

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.” – Thomas Jefferson

Allow me to construct a hypothetical set of circumstances. Let's say our country was in the midst of a severe recession, that unemployment was rising rapidly as millions of jobs were being lost, that average people were having an increasingly difficult time getting by, that our industries were having a difficult time competing, that the value of the dollar was dropping, that we were up to our ears in debt……

Okay, that isn't hypothetical at all. That's what is actually happening.

Now, in response to this not-so-hypothetical set of crisis circumstances, what would you think of our government if it passed legislation that would bring about massive tax increases, that would make it even more difficult for our industries to compete, that would cause more job losses, that would raise energy costs dramatically, that would increase the price of practically every product consumers purchase, that would put the average person much further in the hole, and that wouldn't even provide the desired benefit of said legislation ???? (link)

I'd call that government destructive to the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd want that government replaced for working against the interests of the American people. That's what I'm thinking today after the House of Representatives passed Cap-And-Trade legislation by a narrow vote of 219-212.

The Cap-and-Trade bill, also known as Waxman-Markey, also known as The American Clean Energy And Security Act, also known as the Let Them Eat Cake Act, is a 1,200 page monstrosity that nobody in the House had time to read, because the final version of the bill wasn't posted until the night before friday's vote, and a 300 page amendment was added at 3:00am on the day of the vote. I seem to remember President Obama saying something about having the most transparent administration EVAH !…….I guess Congress didn't get the memo on that, because they are operating like cat burglars in the dead of night.

Here's a quick rundown of the bad guys and the good guys in the House. The bad guys voting FOR the destruction of America included 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The good guys voting AGAINST destruction included 44 Democrats and 168 Republicans. You can find a complete vote tally here. I'd like to single out Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) for praise for standing against this bill. I've maligned Mr. Kucinich in the past, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong about him. He seems to be one of the few in the House who actually stands on his principles. That's noteworthy to me, even if I often disagree with him. The fact that 44 Democrats voted against this bill shows us that the Dems know Cap-And-Trade is a really bad idea, but lots of Democrats caved to pressure from the White House. El Presidente badly wants more control over all aspects of America, and this bill puts him in the express lane toward acquiring that control (but he believe in free markets ! lol).

"We've seen the example in Spain, it's a colossal mistake there, a political and an economic error. This could be the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of the United State Congress." – Congressman Steve King (R-IOWA).

I picked the above quote not only because a guy named King must be right, but because he mentioned Spain. What happened in Spain ?

Spain already implemented cap-and-trade, and has the most far-reaching renewable energy agenda in the European Union. The result ? Unemployment is at 18% in Spain (double the EU average), and there have been 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created. In addition, tons of subsidies are required for green energy initiatives to be competitive. The wind industry jobs created in Spain have come at a cost of $1.4 million PER JOB. (link)

Gee, who wouldn't want to emulate such "success" ???

But my favorite comment on the cap-and-trade legislation came from Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who when asked why he spent an hour reading portions of the bill aloud on the House floor, said, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s–t." (link)

Even those who are in favor of restricting carbon emissions know that this cap-and-trade bill is, um, crap. Here's one such person, billionaire Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway:

"I think if you get into the way it was written, it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers, and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity. So I think that can be improved." (link)

Speaking of restricting carbon emissions, which is the stated purpose of cap-and-trade (all it's negative and destructive effects are just icing on the cake), exactly how much of an effect on global warming will this cap-and-trade bill have ? (for the sake of brevity, I'm assuming here that man-made carbon emissions are a significant cause of global warming, an assumption that is itself a source of controversy).

Washington Post writer Martin Feldstein lays it out in an article called Cap-And-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction — slightly less than the Waxman-Markey target — would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

Waxman-Markey will have NO EFFECT on global warming, but it will have the "benefit" of further destroying our country.

In spite of all this, there are many American corporations ready to jump on the green bandwagon and profit from the carbon credit trading frenzy that El Presidente is trying to unleash on us. You're even familiar with some of these corporations – AIG, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, General Electric…you know, the GOOD corporations that we've all come to know and love so much during the recession. They are ready to jump on the manufactured energy bubble and rake in the big bucks. That these same companies are all recipients of government bailouts is just a big old coincidence, I'm sure. Too bad Enron isn't around any longer. Those guys knew how to run an energy bubble. I bet most of you didn't even know that General Electric got a bailout. Somehow, that hasn't been mentioned by the mainstream media very much. Not only did GE get a bailout, they got a $139 billion bailout, second in size to AIG's bailout. Yet somehow, the enormous GE bailout hasn't been mentioned or condemned by major television networks like……NBC, nor by NBC's retarded cable stepchildren over at MSNBC (aka, The Obama Channel). I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that General Electric OWNS NBC, or the fact that GE is deeply in bed with the Obama administration. I'm sure that can't be it. Everyone knows MSNBC is a group of highly dedicated professional journalists who would never compromise their integrity or ideals for…….LOL. Oh, man. I can't finish this sentence. Sometime I even crack myself up.

But make sure you contact GE for all your carbon credit trading needs. They are primed and ready for all their cap-and-trade lobbying to start paying dividends.

As for you, America, I hope you like cake, because if you don't rise up and stop this Cap-And-Trade disaster in the Senate, cake is all you'll have left. And maybe some government cheese to go with it, if you're lucky.

We have another Obama nominee who didn't pay taxes (notify the CDC. This is becoming an epidemic):

President Obama’s choice as chief of protocol for the State Department, a position that carries the status of an ambassadorship, did not file tax returns for 2005 and 2006, errors she corrected last November. The nominee, Capricia Penavic Marshall, has placed blame for the problem on the Postal Service and on miscommunication between her husband and their accountant.

Ah, the old "it got lost in the mail" excuse. I'm also wondering what kind of an accountant forgets to file one's income taxes. Perhaps the Dems all use the same one. Time for a switch.
—
President Obama is in trouble with a liberal group – for killing a fly during a television interview, in an impressive display of hand-eye coordination by our prez. PETA is upset. They are terming Obama's act an "execution," and called for President Miyagi to show compassion for "the least sympathetic animals." Compassion for unsympathetic creatures is a liberal trait, so PETA has a point here. I mean, who is a more unsympathetic animal than 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ? Liberals have sympathy for him. They'd even like to put President Bush in prison for swatting KSM. I have more sympathy for the fly.
—
An Iranian envoy to the IAEA, the UN atomic watchdog group, is gonna be in big trouble with the Mullahs back home, because he let the cat out of the bag regarding Iran's intentions to acquire nuclear weapons (like we didn't already know):

After saying as usual that Iran was only pursuing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, Ali Asghar Soltanieh strayed alarmingly from the Islamic republic's usual line.

"The whole Iranian nation are united… on (the) inalienable right of (having a) nuclear weapon," the envoy to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said.

Oops. Maybe what Soltanieh meant was, Iran would only use their nuclear weapons for civilian purposes, like to nuke those civilian protestors and their crazy ideas about fair democratic elections.
—
It seems the Israelis have lost their appetite for Hopenchange. They no longer think Obama is pro-Israel, according to the latest poll:

The percentage of Jewish Israelis who see the Obama administration as being pro-Israel has declined from 31% to 6% since May 17 according to a JPost/Smith poll published in Friday's editions. In the intervening month, Obama gave his homily to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4, and his administration has come into open conflict with Israel's leaders over a 'settlement freeze' and over the opening of the Gaza crossings without the release of kidnapped IDF corporal Gilad Shalit.

In related news, more Americans are starting to catch on to what Hopenchange really is – total domination by the federal government. Obama's poll ratings are dropping here too, down to 56% approval for the prez, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey:

According to the survey , the greatest loss of support was registered among those who described themselves as "politically independent."
"President Obama’s honeymoon is coming to an end," affirmed Chuck Todd, the NBC correspondent to the White House, while presenting the results of the survey.
"The public appears to be judging the president for some of his actions. There is now a growing concern over the budget deficit, as well as other government measures with respect to the economy," he added.

Outrageous. Judging the president for his actions ?!?! What kind of right-wing claptrap is Chuck Todd trying to pass off here ? You just gotta B-E-L-I-E-V-E, people. Don't worry your pretty little heads. Remember, Obama is "saving" jobs, even though we've lost 1.6 million jobs since the $800 billion Porkulus package was passed. Remember, Obama is "fiscally responsible," even though we're going to have the largest single year deficit in American history, with more enormous deficits as far as the eye can see. Don't worry, be happy. Besides, the Federal Reserve is in charge now, with the new financial rules Obama has put in place. The Fed will oversee everything, so it's all being handled. Problem solved.

As a reminder of how well the Fed handles things, just remember what a great job Ben Bernanke, the current Fed chairman, did in predicting the housing market crash and recession we're in now. Let's go to the videotape !

In Bernanke's defense, except for housing, energy, the automobile industry, the stock market, the economy, the coming recession, jobs, and just about everything else, Bernake NAILED it from 2005-2007. Also, once we were up to our necks in the recession, Bernanke DID recognize it. He's the expert leading the Fed now, so, no worries. What could possibly go wrong ?

"One hundred days ago, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in half a century, we passed the most sweeping economic recovery act in history. One hundred days later, we are already seeing results. In these last few months, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs." President Obama, May 27, 2009.

Nobody knows where President Obama came up with that 150,000 number for jobs allegedly "saved or created" by his stimulus package. It cannot be verified. We do, however, know the overall jobs situation. Since Obama signed his stimulus package in february, 1.6 million American jobs have been lost. Unemployment now stands at 9.4%, the highest in over a quarter century. Things have gotten so bad that pundits (and Obama) have taken to claiming the 345,000 jobs shed by the economy in May are actually a GOOD sign (we lost 539,000 in April). Our economic Titanic is still headed toward the iceberg, but at a reduced speed. Let's celebrate !

On monday, for the first time, the Obama administration admitted it's forecasts on the impact of the stimulus package were way off. From the Associated Press:

"At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable," said Vice President Joe Biden's top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. "Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic."

By this point, according to earlier White House economic models, the nation's unemployment rate should be on the decline. The forecasts White House advisers used to drum up support for the plan projected today's unemployment rate would be about 8 percent. Instead, it sits at 9.4 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.

But don't worry campers, Obama is large and in-charge. On monday, he also had this to say:

"We've done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again. I'm not satisfied. We've got more work to do."

There you go, folks ! Our Prez is not satisfied with only losing 1.6 million jobs. He thinks we can do EVEN BETTER. Talk about low expectations.

Obama also took a swipe at his critics who deny the "success" of the stimulus plan so far:

"Now, I know that there's some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don't believe in the necessity and promise of this recovery act."

Take that, critics ! You lousy critics are just ignoring all the evidence that the stimulus package is turning the economy around, like, um, well….the, uh….and the other (cough), you know, sorta stuff…..Oh, never mind. You know what he means. All that, ah, evidence, whatever it is.

Even though the stimulus package has been such a wild success so far, Obama is ramping it up by announcing the stimulus will create 600,000 more jobs over the summer. Yes, I remember those jobs from when I was a teenager. In fact, they were called "summer jobs" then too. They are also known as temp jobs.

Here's one of Obama's critics taking a swipe at our President:

"This is President Obama's economy, and his administration must provide results and specifics rather than vague descriptions of success that seem to change by the week. The administration looks dramatically out of touch as they highlight the creation of temporary summer employment in the face of job losses unseen in decades, record unemployment and massive deficits." – House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA).

Ah ! That's why I love politics so much. Here's Cantor pushing a familiar refrain from Republicans these days, by saying "This is President Obama's economy." While technically true (Obama IS the President, after all), it is a transparent attempt by Republicans to push the former Republican administration out of memory. Obama didn't create the problems we face today. They didn't suddenly show up the day Obama took office. The problems were already here. As much as I disagree with Obama's stimulus plan and other policies myself, I don't blame him for the recession (except for his Senate votes). That would be S-T-U-P-I-D, as in C-A-N-T-O-R.

I've been trying to find out how much of the stimulus package has been spent so far, and I keep hearing different numbers. The AP article I linked to said $44 billion has been spent in the last four months. A White House report from the end of May said $112 billion has been spent, but critics and pundits jumped all over that number, calling it inaccurate . If anyone has the facts on this, please clue me in.

Most economists say the effects of Obama's stimulus package will not be felt until the end of this year or early next year. This is one reason I was against spending so much money on Obama's stimulus plan. Most economists predict the recession will end anyway during this same time period. Without Obama's $1 trillion stimulus ($787 billion + interest), the recession will end. With Obama's $1 trillion stimulus, the recession will end and we'll be another trillion bucks in the hole. That's WORSE over the longer term. Stimulus, by nature, is short term, but short term thinking (instant gratification) is what got us into this mess in the first place. Only responsible long term planning will get us out of it. The stimulus package just kicks the can down the road a bit, while making our long term position that much less tenable. In addition, all Obama's projected massive deficits (between $1.8 trillion and $500+ billion annually as far as the eye can see) are based upon pretty optimistic economic growth scenarios. In the first four months of his administration, Obama's team has already been overly optimistic, as I just showed with the unemployment figures. If Obama's economic growth figures also prove to be overly optimistic, all this current profligate spending will hurt us that much more. The deficits will be larger, we'll have to borrow even more money at higher interest rates, and the inflationary risks following the recession will be enormous. Big government's favorite economist, John Maynard Keynes, did say "in the long run, we are all dead," but that's no reason to play Russian Roulette. Obama is taking a huge risk.

In the last nine months, we have learned a great deal about how "free market" economics in America really works. With all the bailouts of financial institutions (TARP), automobile companies (TARP), and federal/state/local governments (Stimulus package), it has become clear that our economic model is – profits are privatized (paid to investors), and losses are socialized (borne by taxpayers).

Not that this model applies to everyone. It doesn't. It only applies to the wealthy and powerful, those in the "too big to fail" category. For the non-powerful, the rules are the same as always. If mom and pop's bakery goes under, mom and pop still take the entire loss. The taxpayer's don't prop them up. Mom and pop assume the entire risk for the success or failure of their business. Only the big boys like Citigroup, AIG, GM, Chrysler, and Government get to operate in risk-free mode (nice work if you can get it). In fact, mom and pop not only have to bear the burden for their own business, they have to bear the burden for the big boys as well, because mom and pop are the taxpayers ameliorating risk for the wealthy and powerful. If GM loses, it comes out of mom and pop's pocket (thus giving new meaning to the old saying, 'As GM goes, so goes America.' That has never been more literally true than it is today). When GM (Government Motors) loses, mom and pop taxpayer have to pony up $62 billion and counting. If GM should turn around and start making money again someday, don't hold your breath waiting for mom and pop taxpayer to get paid back. Mark my words, that will NEVER happen. Chrysler's loan from taxpayers has already been forgiven (link). As part of GM's bankruptcy, $15.4 billion in loans from the taxpayer have been forgiven (link). President Obama has referred to GM's loan forgiveness as a "gift." In return for the "gift," the government gets to own a car company. Kewl. I'd say the taxpayers get to own a car company, but we all know that isn't true. The taxpayers don't really own squat. Remember the rule – profits are privatized, losses are socialized. If GM ever returns to profitability, Mr. and Mrs. American Taxpayer will never see a dime of it. There won't be any dividend checks coming their way.

In America, just like in the mob, you are either connected or you're not. Mr. and Mrs. American Taxpayers are NOT connected, therefore they don't get a cut of the loot. In America, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer are the marks. They don't get a cut, they only get the shakedown. In the case of GM, it's realy simple to figure out who's connected and who's not. Just look at the terms of the bankruptcy, which were handed down by diktat from the Don Fed-leone. Here's the new ownership of GM following bankruptcy:

Don Fed-leone (the federal government) gets a 60% ownership stake in GM.

Shareholders get virtually wiped out.

Of particular interest is the difference in terms between the bondholders and the union, both of whom are unsecured GM creditors. The bondholders got 10% for $28 billion in GM holdings, and the union got 17.5% for $20 billion in GM holdings. In addition, the union gets preferred stock. The bondholders do not. Preferred stockholders get paid first and are guaranteed dividends. The union got a MUCH better bankruptcy deal than the bondholders did. Why ?

Because the unions are more connected, that's why. They helped get President Obama elected, remember ? As Obama himself said, "I owe those unions." Don Fed-leone repays favors when it can.

Go here for a half-decent summary of GM's bankruptcy.

Btw, taxpayers. You get to back GM's warranties too.

We might have to rewrite the terms of bankruptcy law after this, because no such terms have ever been granted in bankruptcy before. This Presidential administration continues to move into uncharted waters of governmental authoritarianism. Uncharted for America, at least. Other countries operate like this all the time. Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

But not to worry, the government assures us that it doesn't really want to own or run automobile companies. The government assures us this is only temporary.

Like when the government took over Amtrak.

38 years ago.

Which the government still runs.

And which loses money every single year.

One guess who pays for those losses.

Why, you do, Mr. and Mrs. American Taxpayer.

You're the mark.

The Democratic party represents the little guy. Republicans only care about the rich.

I've been hearing this my entire life. I even believed it when I was very young, before I knew any better.

Let's examine how Barack Obama is helping the little guy.

- One of his first acts as President was to raise the tax on cigarettes by 61 cents per pack. It is common knowledge that the little guy smokes the most.

- The CAFE standards Obama is increasing are estimated to cost the little guy at least $1,300 more to buy a car, and will also result in lighter vehicles and more highway deaths. Happy motoring, little guy.

- The credit card reforms Obama is implementing are going to change the credit card business, resulting in higher user fees for ALL credit card users, including the little guy. Other little guys won't be able to get credit cards at all, because the requirements will be more strict.

- Obama's cap and trade energy policies are estimated to cost the little guy between $560-$1,800 (2003 CBO estimate, other estimates of the cost are well over $3,000) each year, and will result in millions of job losses.

- Obama's health care plan is estimated to cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion over ten years. There are plans to count the employer's contribution to health care insurance as taxable income for the employee. This is what is commonly known as a tax increase for the little guy. The Dems are also proposing tax increases on liquor, food items, and other things to pay for it's health care plan. The little guy takes it on the chin again.

- Obama is running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, another trillion+ deficit next year, and he has projected deficits above $500 billion for the next ten years in a row. Obama is projected to double the national debt in four years, and triple it in eight years. If you think none of this will affect the little guy, take a look at what's happening right now in California. Cali has the highest income tax rates in the nation, and is trying to raise taxes even higher. People are fleeing California and other high tax progressive states. What a surprise.

- Speaking of California, that state wants some TARP bailout money. No doubt they will be "too big to fail," and Obama will take money from the responsible states to bail out the California dreamers and other progressive states as well. The highest tax and spend progressive states are the ones doing the worst. Evidently, no little guys live in those states.

- Obama plans to forgive GM's $15.4 billion in loans from the American taxpayer. Take that, little guy (or instead of "little guy," maybe I should refer to the American taxpayer as what the government really thinks of him/her – "nobody").

- Obama has cut $3.3 billion from the AIDS prevention program that Bush promised, which is estimated to result in the deaths of millions more little guys in Africa and around the world.

- Obama's much ballyhooed and meager tax cuts for 95% of Americans ($400-$800 annually) expire in 2010. Sorry, little guys. Can't you take a joke ?

Let's summarize. The Democrats, led by President Obama, are going to jack up the cost of health care, energy, cars, cigarettes, liquor, and food. They are vastly increasing federal spending and raising taxes – all to "help" the little guy, of course. Plus, they are going to deficit spend the country into massive debt that must be paid by future generations of little guys.

And have I mentioned that the government stole the Social Security Trust Fund, leaving nothing but a file cabinet of IOU's for future taxpayers to pay off ??? I'm pretty sure I've brought that up a time or two. Another stick in the eye of the little guy.

Now you know why Ronald Reagan said the scariest words in the English language were "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Please, Democrats, STOP helping me, before I have nothing left.

The most stupefying thing of all is, the Democrats are proposing all this during the worst recession since the 1930's. Even the constraints of reality don't get in their way.

An Obama clone or impersonator held a townhall meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico a couple days ago and pretended to be the actual President Of The United States. The man was clearly an impostor, because listen to what he said. From Bloomberg News:

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

Obviously, this is not the same Barack Obama who is running up trillions in deficits and debt faster than any other president in history, the one who is actively bringing about the very economic dampening and mortgaging of our children's futures that this phony baloney Obama is complaining about in Albuquerque. This fake Obama sounds a lot like……ME. I like the fake Obama, but c'mon, that's not the Hopenchange guy we elected. Perhaps something has happened to the real Obama, and now this impersonator has taken his place, like in that movie Dave, starring Kevin Kline.

It must have been fake Obama who reversed the real Obama's position on military commission trials for terrorists. The Bush-era military commissions are back on. Fake Obama must also be the guy who decided not to release any more terrorist abuse photos. The real Obama had no problem releasing such photos only last month, and had no problem releasing the Bush OLC memos either.

It appears fake Obama has been in charge for most of the week. We better find some people who are experts in fraud to investigate this matter………….I know !!!! Let's get ACORN to do it !!! Nobody knows more about fraud than they do. ACORN is so good at fraud that nobody can even track ACORN's financial dealings. Nobody can even tell what ACORN is doing, or what is ACORN and what isn't ACORN. They'd be perfect ! Those shadowy community organizers are just the ones to smoke out the Shadow Community Organizer In Chief. Quick, let's contact ACORN's headquarters in New Orleans, where ACORN has 270 different corporations operating out of a former funeral home. That's no lie. I told you they were good at fraud. Those ACORN voter registration fraud indictments are just the tip of the iceberg. ACORN is world class in the fraud game. They are so good that they even manage to pass themselves off as non-partisan, LOL. Can't wait till they get hold of the U.S. Census.

Wait a minute. What am I saying ?

On second thought, let's keep the real Obama away and let fake Obama run the show. Fake Obama makes a lot more sense, even if he does represent the shadow government. I might even vote for fake Obama in 2012 if he keeps making these kinds of decisions.

So let's hold off on that call to ACORN. Their number is probably unlisted anyway.

In my last post, I touched on the problem of our huge unfunded entitlement liabilities, primarily Social Security and Medicare. Yesterday, the Obama administration admitted the problem exists. Yippee ! This may not seem like such a big step forward, but it is. Remember, for years the Democrats in Congress denied there was any problem whatsoever. They kept saying SS and Medicare were in fine shape for decades. Little to worry about. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in 2005:

“Today’s report confirms that the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place — the minds of Republicans. In reality, the program is on solid ground for decades to come.”

That Harry is such a kidder. Fellow kidder and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), said this in 2005:

"There is no Social Security crisis. We all agree that there is a problem down the road that we should address before it becomes a bigger problem.”

But Pelosi has taken no action on Social Security or Medicare since becoming House leader. None. She also helped shoot down all previous Republican attempts at reform.

The Associated Press reports on the Obama administrations response to a Trustee report detailing the dire financial straits of SS and Medicare:

Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported.

Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year, just as it did for the first time in 2008. The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year's report.

The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that Social Security will collect just $3 billion more in 2010 than it will pay out in benefits. A year ago, the CBO had projected that Social Security would have a much higher $86 billion cash surplus for the 2010 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

Medicare's condition is more precarious.

The trust funds — which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. — are bonds that are backed by the government's "full faith and credit" but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

Did you catch that last part ? SS and Medicare are NOT BACKED BY ANY ACTUAL ASSETS, and funding them would require the government to BORROW MONEY OR RAISE TAXES. In other words, the government spent your trust funds. I've been trying to make people aware of this for years, and this has to be the first time in recorded history that our mainstream media has admitted the truth about our Ponzi scheme SS and Medicare "trust funds." Halellujah !!!

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Of course, the AP is also admitting that our wonderful, compassionate politicians in Washington D.C. have been ripping us off for trillions and trillions of dollars for several decades, but I don't expect Obama or Congress to appoint any blue ribbon investigative panels or independent prosecutors to look into the matter anytime soon. We'd have to put a LOT of people in jail, and if we did put the deserving Congressers in jail for SS and Medicare fraud, well, let's just say the Democrats wouldn't be the majority party any longer.

Hate to say 'I told you so' to some of my more doubting readers, but I told you so. The federal government is worse than Enron and worse than Madoff. Far worse.

Here's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

"The longer we wait to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the sooner those challenges will be upon us and the harder the options will be."

That's right, Tim. Btw, haven't Republicans been saying the same thing for years and years ? Yes, they have, including former President Bush.

The bottom line here is – get ready for massive tax increases. Massive. And lots of them.

The coup de grace of Democratic bs also came from Pelosi yesterday. Guess who San Fran Nan blames for the SS and Medicare crises she didn't think even existed previously ? If you said "Bush," you win a cigar. From cnsnews.com :

"The Trustee's reports reveal that, just as they left behind a record of recession, deficits and debt, the Bush administration's economic and fiscal mismanagement undermined the strength of Social Security and Medicare,” Pelosi said Tuesday in a news release. "The previous administration's shortsighted economic policies and fiscal recklessness have made the task of strengthening Social Security and Medicare for the future more difficult."

Un-be-liev-able. I better stop now, before I unleash a string of profanity aimed at our "esteemed" Speaker of the House. Is this woman genetically incapable of honesty ? She has no business leading the Democratic party in the House, or leading anything else, for that matter.

At the end of each fiscal year, the Treasury Department issues a financial report. The last such report was the 2008 Financial Report Of the United States Government. There is a link to the Citizens Guide version of the report here.

The stated 2008 deficit under President Bush was $454.8 billion. That was the largest budget deficit in American history in dollars, though President Obama's first year deficit of $1.8 trillion makes the 2008 deficit look like chump change by comparison. Every other projected Obama deficit over the next 10 years will also be larger than the 2008 largest deficit in history. Yet somehow, Obama's popularity ratings are still high. Go figure. Maybe bankruptcy is the new fiscal responsibility. I don't know. I don't get it.

But the American financial picture is much worse than those deficit numbers alone suggest. The real deficit in 2008 wasn't really $454.8 billion. It was actually much higher, because our federal government does it's accounting on a cash basis. Any debt obligations that are incurred, but have not yet paid, are treated as if they don't exist when it comes to the deficit. Those debts, however, do exist. In 2008, if you add in the debts accrued to pay federal employee and veterans benefits, the deficit balloons to over $1 trillion. If you add in all existing federal debt, we are in the red to the tune of $11 trillion. And if you add in all the accrued entitlement debts from Social Security, Medicare, and others, we are in the neighborhood of $55 trillion in the hole.

Now, imagine you are an incoming President looking at that 2008 financial report, and you can clearly see that America is on an unsustainable fiscal path. The report even states in plain English that America is on an unsustainable fiscal path. What would you do ? If your name is Barack Obama, you would….spend trillions more dollars, skyrocket the debt beyond all historical levels, permanently increase the cost of government, create an enormous new health care entitlement, and expand other entitlements. On top of that, you'd cut taxes for the middle class. In other words, if your name was Barack Obama, you'd do the most fiscally irresponsible thing imaginable. Because one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I'd say Barack Obama must be insane.

But most of the media talking heads and so-called journalists seem to think Obama is some kind of genius. They act as if he is fixing all that ails our country, even though Obama has taken an already unsustainable fiscal path and made it far more unsustainable, and he did it all in only 100 days. Therefore, most of the media must be insane too. Then the media acts like the Americans who are calling for fiscal responsibility, like the Tea Party protesters for instance, are the insane ones. The media is openly hostile to them. What gives ? What on earth has happened to our country ? It's like a mass delusion has replaced all common sense. Up has become down. Has partisan spin so replaced rational thought that we can't even add and subtract anymore ? We can't even see what is right in front of our faces ? It seems so. I can't think of another reasonable explanation.

To add insult to injury, the same folks who are putting America on course to crash and burn at warp speed say they are doing it because they are "compassionate." They are destroying the future because they "care" about the common man. Are you freaking kidding me ? Please STOP "caring" about me, oh "compassionate" ones, before all your "caring" and "compassion" leaves me penniless and shivering out on the street.

The federal government of the United States Of America is the most broke institution in the entire history of planet earth, bar none. That's what all the "caring" and "compassionate" do-gooders have brought us. We couldn't be worse off if we let the Enron executives out of jail to run this country. Bernie Madoff might as well become the next President.

Btw, the state and local governments are another $160 billion in the red for this year. The house of cards is collapsing, and our government doesn't seem to care, not one bit.

An old Temptations song had the lyric "Vote for me, and I'll set you free." That's what our politicians are doing, setting us free – from our money. The Temptations had it right. It's a ball of confusion. That's what the world is today.

Hey, hey.

Baffle 'em with you-know-what.

If Washington D.C. has a credo, that must surely be it. The media isn't far behind.

But before I get into that, I'd like to take a moment to thank President Obama for saving us all from last week's swine flu pandemic (worldwide epidemic). Just think, if Bush was still the President, we'd probably all be dead now. Plus, Obama saved the country for the bargain basement price of $1.5 billion, which hasn't even been spent yet. Oh man, that Obama is GOOD.

The media was speculating today that the recession has bottomed out, because we only LOST 539,000 jobs in April. This rosy optimism came because the experts had predicted job losses of over 600,000. The media left out that the government hired 66,000 people to do the census, and the government hired many others as well (which accounts for almost the entire difference between the projections and the actual job numbers). Those government jobs are all on the taxpayer dime, of course, and add nothing to economic growth. The private sector is still hemorrhaging jobs as fast as ever, but I guess the media is looking for something positive to hand their hat on, because Obama is the president now, and that means CHANGE has come. Call me crazy, but I'll say the recession is over when we start CREATING jobs instead of losing them. The media's optimism comes in spite of the fact that GDP shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter, and that we're $11 trillion in debt, and that we'll be running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and that we have massive deficits projected as far as the eye can see, and that Obama is projected to double the national debt in four years and triple it in eight years, and that unemployment is 8.9%, the highest in 25 years, and that we had a Treasury bond auction with demand so weak that we had to pay higher interest rates just to continue selling our long-term debt (which will raise Obama's deficit and debt projections even higher), and that our industrial base is vanishing, and that what's left of it is collapsing, and that we have massive unfunded entitlement liabilities looming on the horizon (growing at the rate of $2 trillion yearly), and that most of our state governments are broke, and that many banks failed the stress tests (they need $75 billion more bailout dollars, with more surely to come), and that credit still isn't flowing after $700 billion spent on TARP, and that companies all across the country are cutting back the hours of the workers they are retaining, and that if you add the folks who have fallen off the unemployment rolls to the unemployed numbers, unemployment comes out close to 15%, and that the federal government is spending dollars it doesn't have at an all-time record pace, and that the government is printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, and that the government has committed a total of $12 trillion thus far in fighting the recession, and that on top of that, Obama wants to raise energy prices through the roof and create lots more entitlements…………

I guess other than that, happy days are here again.

Oh yeah, and we're still fighting two wars, Obama has no idea what to do with the Gitmo prisoners, we're funneling money to Hamas, we're pondering whether to charge Bushco with war crimes, Pelosi's STILL lying about her knowledge of waterboarding even after the leaked CIA information proves she lied her butt off, Obama is looking for a Supreme Court Justice who is "empathetic" to certain groups as opposed to one who follows the law, the price index is rising in while we're in the depths of recession, Iran is almost certain to have nuclear weapons soon, the Pakistan government is in jeopardy (and Pakistan has nukes, which just maybe could be a problem if the Taliban gets their hands on)…

But other than that, everything's coming up roses.

Plus, Obama cut $17 billion from the budget. Golf clap for Obama. What the media left out of that story was that Obama isn't reducing the deficit by that $17 billion, oh no, he's going to use that money for OTHER government programs, so the net savings to taxpayers is ZERO. This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the new Obama CHANGE era.

But it's all good. Thar's a new sheriff in town, and he reads that thar teleprompter REAL good.

Never mind that in order to avert fiscal armaggedon, Obama is going to have to come up with a tax increase of proportions never before contemplated in this country's history. By my reckoning, it will have to be at least $2 trillion per year to cover the deficits, interest on the debt, and the unfunded entitlements. It's either that or make drastic government spending cuts, and you know our new sheriff ain't 'bout to do that. Only them thar rightwing extremist fellas talk that kind o' crazy talk.

Welcome to the age of universal government.

I've gone on several rants on this blog previously about what a Ponzi scheme Social Security is. I now realize I've been thinking too small. It isn't just SS that is a Ponzi scheme. It's our entire federal government, and that Ponzi scheme is unraveling. The new funds required from the taxpayers can no longer keep up with the demand for funds the federal government requires. Like all Ponzi schemes, even one on as grand a scale as our government, it is destined to collapse.

But remember, put your hand over your mouth when you cough, and wash your hands frequently. Then everything should be fine.

Following are some of President Obama's more dubious pronouncements from his 100-day news conference.

OBAMA: "We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs."

FACTS: Over 1.2 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of Obama's presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, 2009, 663,000 jobs were lost. And by including "saved" jobs in his calculations (if he even has any calculations), Obama can make any wild claim about job creation that he wishes, because "saved" jobs can neither be proven nor disproven.
—
OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit….That wasn't me."

FACTS: Congress controls the federal purse strings, and Democrats controlled Congress for that $1.3 trillion deficit. Obama was a member of that Congress, and Obama voted FOR all the deficit spending. It WAS him who created the deficit, along with Congressional Democrats and former President Bush, who signed the spending legislation into law.
—
OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. … If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term."

FACTS: In 2008, the New England Journal of Medicine warned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching," and that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not." A study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."
—
OBAMA: "You could cut [Social Security] benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax."

FACTS: Obama's plan is to lift the SS cap for those making over $250,000 per year. The Tax Policy Center says Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, but I don't think even that is accurate. Let's not forget that Congress spends all excess SS revenue, and then writes IOU's back to the imaginary SS Trust Fund in the form of Treasury bonds. Those bonds have to be redeemed later and someone (taxpayers) has to pay for them (again, because Congress spent the Trust Fund the first time). Because our SS system is so perverted, the more excess SS revenue there is, the more that has to redeemed (paid back via taxation) later. Obama's SS plan will reduce the federal deficit with the extra incoming payroll taxes, but it will actually make the SS Trust Fund hole even deeper, unless Obama just eliminates the entire phony SS Trust Fund concept and merges SS in completely with the general fund, which would be more honest that what is being done now.
—
OBAMA: "My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier."

FACTS: The Democrats are taking measures to overcome any Republican opposition on the health care bill. In the budget Congress passed last wednesday, Democrats have the option to deny Republicans the right to filibuster, which is the normal way the minority party uses to remove objectionable provisions from a bill. The inclusion of this provision, along with the 60-vote Democratic supermajority, paves the way for the Democrats to pass a health care bill without ANY Republican votes. The Dems have taken steps to insure that bipartisanship on the health care bill will not be required.

And btw, Obama's health care bill won't be an "investment," as Obama claims. It will be a "cost to taxpayers." The question will be, is the cost worth it ? We'll see.
—
OBAMA: "I've personally asked the leadership in Congress to pass into law rules that follow the simple principle: You pay for what you spend, so that government acts the same way any responsible family does."

Coming from a spendthrift president who in only 100 days has put America on a path to more deficits and debt than all other presidential administrations in American history COMBINED, this statement from Obama makes me want to go medieval on his arse. But if Obama really wants a rule passed that will require Congress to pay for what it spends, I have good news for our President. That rule is ALREADY ON THE BOOKS. It's called PAYGO and it was enacted in January 2007. The Democrats have ignored it ever since.
—
OBAMA: "I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture' "

FACTS: It appears Obama might have made this up, or else the article Obama was reading was a fabrication (maybe it came from the NY Times. That would explain things.) The historian at the Churchill Centre could not find any quotes about Churchill not torturing terrorists or Nazis, and, in fact, Churchill DID torture Nazis. Churchill's daughter said Winston would have done anything to win the war (for reasons obvious to everybody but liberals, who wouldn't have cared if the Nazis had won as long as we were nice to the Nazis, thus proving how morally superior we were to our new Nazi masters).

OBAMA: "I also campaigned on the promise that I would change the direction of our nation's foreign policy. And we've begun to do that as well. We've begun to end the war in Iraq."

FACTS: Sorry Barry, but it was President Bush who put the Status Of Forces Agreement in place that set a timetable for the removal of our troops from Iraq, not you. You only fiddled a bit around the edges to make it look like you did something.

OBAMA: "We'll continue scouring the federal budget for savings and target more programs for elimination."

FACTS: Obama will "continue" scouring the federal budget ? How can you "continue" something you haven't started ? He hasn't scoured the budget for jack squat so far, and he hasn't eliminated any significant programs either. He has saved $100 million total, while spending trillions. Great job, BO. You're a regular taxpayer hero.

I guess that's enough for now. This is getting pretty long.

The standard Democratic version of what caused the financial crisis is – a lack of regulation from the Bush administration, you know, all those "failed policies." That's a convenient story for the Democrats, but let's briefly review again what happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together bundle and securitize 60% of the mortgage loans in the country. Remember, it was the mortgage industry meltdown that started the financial domino effect. Here's a video you've never seen on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, or any of the rest of of the "unbiased" mainstream media.

Now ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, there still haven't been any regulatory changes at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The only change has been to bring the bankrupted former Government Sponsored Enterprises under full government control, thus formally making the American taxpayers fully responsible for them. Also ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, has the government still not implemented any mortgage loan standards for the financial industry ? The banks are largely implementing mortgage loan standards on themselves, but the government is actually trying to get the banks to loan money as indiscriminately as before, in order to "get credit moving again." Banks are even being criticized by the government for not making loans that the banks deem too risky.

Finally, ask yourself why, seven months AFTER the financial meltdown, is Barney Frank (D-MA) STILL the head of the House Financial Services Committee ?

In related news, read about how President Obama's first 100 days come out to a cost to taxpayers of $65 billion PER DAY (and that's a conservative estimate). Of course, there's no possibility that could EVER be a problem. Heck no. Obama's cool, and with all his vast management/economic education and experience (NONE before now), what could possibly go wrong ?

And to think, liberals keep asking what all the Tea Party protests are about. They don't understand. They're baffled. Un-be-liev-able.

Very impressive. Cleveland had an estimated 1,500 (according to WKYC) at it's tax day Tea Party. The Associated Press said "tens of thousands" attended the Tea Parties across the country. The actual attendance figure has to be in the hundreds of thousands, because there were upwards of 800 Tea Party events held, though I have no way of arriving at a close estimate yet. There are some event photos at Michelle Malkin's website. There is a decent piece about how the Tea Parties got started from the Wall Street Journal. It wasn't from CNBC's Rick Santelli, as some have stated, though he did help publicize it. When Santelli called for Tea Parties, he was picking up on the Tea Party movement that had already been started by bloggers.

There were SO many countrywide protests held yesterday that the mainstream media actually had to take a little time out of it's busy day to criticize them. I'm sure that was very irritating for our media. Usually, they'd just ignore something like this altogether. I guess the criticism passes for progress in today's America.

The liberal side of the media has made complete asses of themselves about this, telling one lie after another about the Tea Parties, and calling the Tea Partiers whiners, sore losers, racists, and "crazy people," as Paul Krugman of the NY Times and others have said. The lefty media really brought out it's first class demonizers for these events, proving who the crazy people really are (hint: it's not the Tea Party protesters). The liberal media makes little sense, because the tea parties really are non-partisan events. In fact, one of my favorite protest signs said "Bush – Too Much Spending. Obama – Worse Than Bush." That captures it in a nutshell. You don't have to be a member of any certain political party to realize our federal government is way out of control. You just have to be sane and paying attention.

For those who still don't understand what the Tea Party movement is about (who I'll assume have been staying in the Amazon rainforest for the last 7 months, or have been listening to MSLSD, virtually the same thing), here's a chart of U.S. federal deficits in the 21st century that explains why protests are being held. Anyone who has only been listening to the fools (Olbermann, Maddow, Krugman, Begala, etc) talk about the Tea Parties should pay particular attention to this chart:

Now, I'd like to explain this chart to the fiscally impaired. You know who you are. The rest of you already know this stuff quite well, so I don't mean to insult your intelligence here, but this is going to be remedial for the slow learners.

Okay, libs. Pay attention now. Do you see the gray deficit lines on the left side of the chart ? Those were the deficits from the Bush administration. The Bush administration ran THE LARGEST DEFICITS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Bush added about $4.5 trillion to the national debt. That is a BAD thing. Can I get a big "AMEN!" from the liberals on that one ? Yes sir, I knew I could. If the libbies know anything, it's "Bush bad."

Now, my liberal friends, look at the red and pink deficit lines on the right side of the chart. See the WAY, WAY, WAY BIGGER DEFICITS that the Obama administration is projected to run up ? Do you see them ? Do you ? Good. Do you see that the deficits and debt Obama will be running up are FAR WORSE THAN WHAT BUSH DID, WHICH WILL MAKE OBAMA THE MOTHER OF ALL DEFICIT AND DEBT CREATORS ? (this is where I usually lose the liberals, for some reason. They generally start saying something like "Cheney sucks" right about here. Maybe it's Attention "Deficit" Disorder).

THAT'S why we're having Tea Parties. Our federal government is, as I said before, way out of control, and all that federal spending will have to be paid for. And how do massive deficts and debt get paid off ? With massive, crushing tax increases down the road. There's no way around it. As former Comptroller General David Walker said during the Bush years, "we're on an unsustainable fiscal path." In less than three months, Obama isn't giving us change we can believe in. I know how hard that is to hear for my left-feathered friends, but it's true. Obama isn't giving us change at all. He's just bankrupting the country at a much quicker pace than Bush did, that's all. Obama is bankrupting us at warp speed.

Hope this helps clear up the confusion (even though it probably won't). You see, dear liberals, if you can look at the above chart objectively and then call the Tea Partiers "crazy people," well, that's rather like Charlie Manson calling Gandhi violent. It's too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

P.S. – For any Democrats and/or liberals who aren't blind Obama sockpuppets, I apologize for the condescending tone of the second part of this post, but there was no other way.

Last fall, when I kept hearing that the Obama presidential campaign would accept fraudulent campaign donations, I decided to test it out for myself. I tried to donate $15 to the Obama campaign using my credit card and a phony name. The name I used even signaled my fraudulent intentions. It was 'Campy Aignfraud,' (as in 'Campaign Fraud'). Not only did the Obama campaign accept my donation, but six months later, they haven't returned the money, and 'Campy' still receives e-mails and literature from them. Here's an e-mail I (Campy) received this morning from Obama's activist arm, which is called Organizing For America:

Campy –

It makes you wonder whether they see the same thing we do.
Advocates for the status quo are calling for President Obama to fail while millions of families struggle. They're playing the same old political games and offering the same failed policies at a time of crisis.

In the coming days, opponents will do everything they can to destroy the President's proposed budget, a bold plan to help fix our broken economy and healthcare system and finally make energy and education the priority we all know they must be.

Americans…deserve better than the kind of divisive politics we've seen year after year. They deserve a truthful debate about real issues and a budget that will turn this economy around so that they can turn their lives around.

The e-mail went on to ask for a donation of $25 or more.

I'd like to say this in response to Obama's e-mail – No, I DON'T see things the same way you do, Mr. President, and I object to you "playing the same old political games" even as you complain about others doing the same. Just because I disagree with your enormous unfunded spending plans that will skyrocket the deficits and debt, it doesn't make me an "advocate for the status quo." In fact, those calling for fiscal responsibility from their government are the real advocates for change, not you, Mr. Obama. I also think it's pretty pathetic that you keep lumping everyone who disagrees with you in with radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, by saying your critics are "calling for President Obama to fail while millions of families struggle." If that isn't "playing political games," I don't know what is.

First, Obama said that if his enormous and unprecedented stimulus package didn't pass, it would be "catastrophic" for America, that we'd plunge into another Great Depression. Then, Obama said the same thing about his bloated, pork-filled Omnibus spending bill, the largest in history. Now, he's playing the exact same tune about his budget, the largest budget in the history of the country, about $500 billion larger than any other budget. Obama beats the fear drum over and over, and at the same time he has the nerve to talk about ending "divisive politics," and calls for a "truthful debate about real issues." Give me a break already. The government spending our country into third world status and printing trillions of dollars out of thin air IS a real issue. It's the ultimate real issue. It would be nice if our President would engage in a "truthful debate" about it. But he won't. Instead, he demonizes his dissenters. Post-partisan, my butt. Obama's vauge buzzwords and phrases have become very tired. His talk about the "failed policies of the past" about makes me want to throw up. The biggest failed policy of the past I can think of is the endless red ink our government runs up, and Obama is DOUBLING the rate of the red ink. Obama embodies the failed policieis of the past, but this time on steriods.

I did a little checking about where the donations for Obama's Organizing For America group go. It turns out they go directly to the Democratic National Committee. As the Washington Post reports:

The [Organization For America] brought Obama's massive campaign e-mail and address list under the umbrella of the DNC, which is run by Obama's handpicked chairman, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine…DNC financial filings give little indication of the contours of OFA, since the project's expenditures are not separated from the committee's overall operations.

So, in essence, the Organization For America IS the Democratic National Committee, yet the Obamans make the OFA appear to be an independent grassroots movement. There's your hope and change, folks. It's the same old cynical partisan politics as ever.

And did any of you notice that in his April 12th e-mail to 'Campy', Obama is calling for donations to HELP PASS HIS BUDGET, when that budget has ALREADY PASSED IN BOTH THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE ???? All that's left is for the two chambers of Congress to reconcile the two versions. Obama doesn't need any money to help pass a budget that has already been passed. That's just misdirection on Obama's part, more smoke and mirrors. He's just trying to raise money for the DNC. The budget has nothing to do with it. Obama is being dishonest and playing political games to fool the rubes.

As for Obama's call for "truthful debate about real issues," the Republicans offered an alternative to Obama's budget that would have resulted in $4.8 trillion LESS in spending over the next 10 years. It was voted down in the House along party lines. While Obama was quick to point out a few weeks ago that the Republicans didn't have an alternative budget, did you ever hear him mention it again once the Republicans proposed one ? No, you didn't.
Obama disproves his own rhetoric time after time. Obama didn't want to consider any alternative budget. Obama just wanted to play partisan politics during his endless campaign.

P.S. – Speaking of Obama's budget, it will be interesting to see how Obama's "tax cuts for 95% of all Americans" fares. In the House version, those tax cuts EXPIRE IN 2010. Yes, that's right. They expire NEXT YEAR. They'd be ONE YEAR tax cuts. What a great help to the middle class, a one time $400 tax cut. Suckers. In the Senate version, they expire in 2012. I guarantee you that none of Obama's spending and tax increases will expire.

Wake up, America. You're being played.