The number of Americans dependent on government rose substantially during the first two years of Obama's presidency:

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

It would be easy to write this off as the normal effect of the recession, except for one thing – the number of people dependent on the government has been going up for decades:

Dependence on the government has climbed steadily since 1962, when the index stood at 19. By 1980, the index had risen to 100. It stood at 294 in 2010, the last year for which the data are available.

Here's a chart of the trend:

This increased dependence on government is the biggest reason for the huge increases in government spending:

The report also found that spending on "dependence programs" accounts for more than 70% of the federal budget. That, too, is up dramatically. In 1990, for example, the figure stood at 48.5%, and in 1962 just over a quarter of federal spending went to dependence programs.

Look at it this way. With dependence programs (enttlements) consuming over 70% of the budget, we could cease ALL other federal government functions and we still wouldn't have a balanced budget. We'd still be in the red. All federal revenue combined won't pay for the entitlements alone. Think about this the next time you hear liberals blasting Republicans for pushing entitlement reform. The Republicans push it because WE HAVE TO DO IT. The Republicans are the only ones with the guts to admit it. Liberals remain in denial, playing partisan games. Such irresponsibility should NOT be respected or rewarded.

At the same time government spending is shooting up as more people become dependent on government, fewer people are contributing to the revenue pool:

…fewer Americans pay income taxes, the report notes. Almost half (49.5%) didn't pay income taxes in 2009, the latest year for which the researchers have data. Back in the late 1960s, only 12% of Americans escaped the income tax burden.

Income taxes are the federal government's number one source of revenue, and almost half the citizenry isn't paying them. And liberals are bashing the rich, the people who pay the most in taxes. As usual, liberals are being less than honest about what is really taking place.

We are getting dangerously near the tipping point:

In 2010, for the first time ever, average spending on dependence programs per recipient exceeded the country's per-capita disposable income.

These numbers are about to get much worse.

In 2014, ObamaCare will begin adding millions to the dependency rolls.

In 2011, the first of the largest generation of Americans, the baby boomers, turned 65 and began retiring. That trend will continue for 17 more years, with 76 milion boomers retiring. The dependency rolls will begin to burst as the boomers collect Social Security and Medicare en masse. The number of workers supplying revenue to the government will wane at the same time. The government has not, to date, approved any plan to meet the entitlement demand of the retiring boomers. The amount of the unfunded entitlement estimates vary based on the amount of time over which you calculate them, but any way you look at it, they are set to explode, and our debt is ALREADY the size of our economy.

As we are headed over a financial cliff, what do liberals push ??? MORE entitlements, of course. They fiddle as the Titanic sinks, and then they pretend that some minor tax increases on the rich are going to pay for it all, when it won't come close. Those liberals should be laughed out of the country. Unfortunately, one of those liberals is the President. We will have an opportunity to correct that situation later this year. We best not miss it.

I really don't care about your political ideology. I care most about the numbers, and that's the main reason why I bash liberals on this blog. Liberals HAVE to know the numbers don't add up, but they keep pushing for more and more spending, more and more entitlements. They HAVE to know we can't tax our way out of this problem without absolutely crushing the economy, but they keep pretending we can. They HAVE to know this isn't about hating the poor, or hating minorities, or hating anyone, but they keep pretending it is. Well, there are some things more important that partisan politics, and the fiscal sustainability of our country is one of those things. If we go down in the flames of debt and fiscal madness, we all go down together. And that's precisely what I wish to avoid. Go ahead and argue with me if you want liberals, but it's your funeral too. And please spare me any further phony rhetoric about taxing the rich, which at best will take the deficit from $1.2 trillion down to…ONLY…$1 trillion !!! Big whoop. As Larry the cable guy would say, that won't "git 'er done".

As for our current economic (non)plan, since the Democrat-led Senate can't be bothered to produce an actual budget, and hasn't for over 1000 days (somebody tell me why I should vote for Democrats again ???), I can only give you Obama's 10-year budget, which adds between $7.2-9.5 trillion to the debt over a decade. He will have added $5 trillion in new debt by the time the next election rolls around. The $7.2 trillion number (which is an Obama fantasy dream number) is the rosiest scenario in a robust economy with excellent economic growth. That rosy scenario has not mamifested itself to date. I repeat, another $7.2 trillion in new debt was Obama's BEST CASE SCENARIO. It looks much more likely that two terms of Obama would add $8-10 trillion to the debt in eight years. Any questions about where he's leading this country ??? C'mon liberals, this isn't' rocket science. The answer is obvious.

The bottom line is this – A dependent nation of takers is a recipe for certain disaster. Until liberals can admit that much, the bashings will continue until morale improves.

In reference to cutting government spending, President Obama likes to say we should use a "scalpel" instead of a "machete".

Obama couldn't be more wrong. We should be using a howitzer instead of a machete on government spending. Using a scalpel just ain't gonna git her done, because we're on an unsustainable fiscal path straight to economic hell.

Unfortunately, we have two political parties of big spenders. We just witnessed the complete failure of 12 members of those big spending parties (the Not-So-Super Committee) to agree on $1.2 trillion in future cuts to future spending increases. The game those two parties played was, they both made offers they knew the other side would reject, then after the Super Committee failed, they both hoped to gain politically by blaming the other side. This is how our leading politicians act when the future of America is on the line. They look after themselves and their party instead of the people. If the two parties, can't even agree on something so minor, what hope is there they will ever implement the changes necessary to put this country back on a sustainable fiscal path ?

It seems the worst thing that can happen in Washington D.C. is for one party to gain complete power.

When Obama and the Democrats gained complete control in 2009-2010, they rammed through unprecedented spending increases and created the largest new entitlement program (ObamaCare) since the creation of Medicare in 1965. They did this with the full knowledge that our current entitlement programs were unsustainable. They did this despite warnings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that ObamaCare would bend the health care cost curve up instead of down. They did this despite the fact that Medicare was already our largest unsustainable entitlement liability going forward, the single biggest future government expense. ObamaCare will add trillions in new spending, and add tens of millions of people to the Medicaid rolls when the states are already struggling to pay for existing Medicaid spending. The Democrats did this when the country was in a major recession with unemployment at 9%. The Democrats made our unsustainable entitlement picture even more unsustainable, and they did it against the will of the American public. The Democrats also made trillion dollar plus deficits routine, and Obama has run up debt faster than any other American president in history. We just passed the $15 trillion debt mark, with no signs of the red ink slowing. Democrat control was a complete and utter failure.

Prior to Obama, we had President Bush and the Republicans in complete control from 2001-2006. What were the results when the so-called "conservative" party was in power ? Massive spending increases, an unnecessary war, and…a new entitlement program (Medicare Part D, the Prescription Drug program) !!! Defense and social spending both rose rapidly under Bush, and Bush accumulated $5 trillion in debt over eight years. Federal spending skyrocketed during the Bush years. If this is what we're calling "conservative" these days, no thank you. Real inflation-adjusted military spending is twice what it was a decade ago, yet the "conservative" Republicans are resisting major defense cuts, as are the Pentagon and the Obama administration. The leading Republican presidential contenders are all acting like hawks, and so is the Obama administration.

It's time for a major reality check for both political parties. While they play their partisan reindeer games, America is going down the tubes. We literally can't afford all this government spending any longer. We can't tax our way out of the problem, and we sure as hell can't "tax the rich" to pay for it all, which is the canard the Democrats keep pimping. Reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich would add maybe $75 billion in new revenue over the next year. How does that address our $1.2 trillion deficit ? It doesn't. The Democrats are talking economic gobbledygook, and even though the American people agree with increasing taxes on the wealthy, it doesn't get us anywhere near to solving our economic sustainability problem. Not to mention that increasing taxes during this Great Recession would be galactically stupid and take even more money out of the hands of struggling American taxpayers and job creators. Lots of those "rich" people are business owners. The Democrats need to be reminded that those are the people who employ workers. Putting more expenses on their backs will only make matters worse. We're losing enough jobs as it is already.

It's time to refocus our Defense budget on what it is supposed to be for, DEFENSE…of America, not the defense of every country around the world. We can't afford to be the world's policeman any longer. This should be pretty obvious when the federal government is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar it spends. We can't justify spending $900 billion on the military when our Social Security and Medicare programs aren't funded. What does that say about our priorities ? The Republicans need to get off the neocon bandwagon already and admit this. It's indefensible, no pun intended.

The only way to get spending in line is to address the main drivers of current and future spending, and those are – Defense, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and interest payments. Here is a pie chart of the 2012 federal budget:

From the above chart, we see that defense, entitlements (health care/pensions/welfare), and interest consume a whopping 88% of the federal budget. Even if Rick Perry could remember all three of the federal departments he wants to close, that 88% in spending would still remain, and nothing would change. Interest payments may seem relatively small at 6%, but they are growing so fast due to our massive deficits/debt that if we don't get our budget under control, the CBO estimates interest payments will soar to $800 billion per year by 2020. That is a tremendous amount of taxpayer money to flush down the toilet, money that could be used for other things, such as Social Security, Medicare, etc. Our unrestrained debt is stealing the future away. Obama and Congress are doing a great job, but only if the goal IS to destroy the country. Otherwise, we need some major changes, and we need them very soon. It's a shame that all we seem to get is the same old partisan rhetoric leading to nowhere, the same old false choices, the same old entrenched interests, the same old choices of Democrat poison or Republican poison. I'd say we deserve better than that, but I'm not sure we do.

Some day people may realize that the libertarian impulses were right, but I fear it will be too late by then. Many people seem to believe the ideas of limiting government and maximizing liberty are too radical, which actually makes me laugh (instead of cry) considering how extremely radical our current fiscal picture has become. How can things get more radical than pursuing policies of national economic suicide ??? It boggles my mind, as does the massive entitlement mentality that has taken over much of this country. We've become warring special interests instead of a united people. That is something else that has to change before we can hope to address our problems. I'm not optimistic.

Good luck, America. You're going to need it.

The Lord Of The Flies movement takes baby steps…

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: “We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out to curb the influx of derelicts.” – OWS kitchen volunteer Rafael Moreno

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others, Part II: "If you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back. There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled. – OWS protestor Lauren Digiola (link)

Yes, we certainly can't have any entitlement-seekers infecting the Occupy movement of…um…entitlement-seekers. Gotta keep those losers out. The stuff the Occupiers have is THEIRS, dammit !!! They can't be expected to redistribute THEIR wealth to the less fortunate !!! We Are The 99%…except for those homeless derelicts !!!
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Robbing Peter To Pay Paul: "With nine days to go before the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) faces default, a Senate committee on Wednesday is expected to vote on a new plan to address the crisis. … The legislation would … provide USPS billions in cash from taxpayers. Specifically, it would hand over some $7 billion in supposedly 'surplus' contributions the government has made to the Federal Employees Retirement System. Such temporary surpluses, however, are common and are typically erased by normal financial swings or amortization over time. Transfer of the entire pot to USPS leaves taxpayers vulnerable if USPS later falls behind (which, given its condition, is not unlikely) while allowing needed structural reforms to be delayed. … USPS, and mail delivery itself, faces an uncertain future. Comprehensive change is needed to prevent massive losses and virtual bankruptcy. The reforms being considered by the Senate, however, fall short — while putting taxpayers even more at risk for the consequences of failure." –The Heritage Foundation's James Gattuso

I call this the Social Security financial oversight model. When the government sees a pile of money, it can't keep it's grubby mitts off of it. Btw, there is about $17.5 trillion sitting in the retirement funds of Americans if you add all of them together. How much do you think the government money-grubbers would love to gain control of that pile of cash ??? You'd have to subtract the $2.5 trillion sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund from the $17.5 trillion amount, because those SS funds don't really exist (the government already "borrowed" that money), but still, that leaves $15 trillion in our retirement funds, which is almost the exact amount of the national debt. When the cash-strapped government is already thinking about "borrowing" money from the pensions of federal employees, how long will it be until your IRA's and 401K's are taken over ? Lest you think I'm engaging in some fanciful paranoid delusion…the Obama administration already has plans to takeover your 401K's, which it could then "borrow" from. Beware.
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National Debate Loser: And what can we say about Rick Perry ? Trying to list the federal departments he would eliminate, Perry had an epic debate brain fart instead…

"Commerce, Education and the, uh, what's the third one there? Let's see…The third agency of government I would — I would do away with, Education, uh, the, uh, Commerce and, let's see,…I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops."

Doh !!!! I think the third government department Perry was going for there is Lingerie, or maybe Junior Miss. Commodore Perry's presidential battleship may have just sunk.
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When Life Gets Tough, Make Things Up: "From a policy standpoint I think it's really important to know that President Obama was a job creator from day one. Now, was the ditch that we were in so deep that when you're talking to people and they still don't have a job, that's any consolation to them? No. But I'll tell you this: If President Obama and the House congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment." –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

For the record, under Obama, the alleged "job creator from day one", we have lost about 2.4 million jobs, and nobody outside Pelosi's vivid imagination believes unemployment would have been at 15 percent without Obama's failed stimulus package. Pelosi is a perpetual brain fart.
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Top 1% Denier: Here's an exchange between left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and a CBS reporter…

Reporter: How are you helping these [Occupy protesters]?
Moore: Because I do well, I want taxes raised on people who do well, including mine.
Reporter: How are you helping these people with your $50 million?
Moore: I don't have $50 million.
Reporter: That's what it's rumored you are worth.
Moore: Well, really. Is that what you do is sell rumors?
Reporter: We're asking you for the truth.
Moore: You're just punk media is all you are. You lie. You lie to people. Stop lying to people. Stop lying.
Reporter: Are you not part of the 1 percent?
Moore: Just don't lie, okay?

I'm still waiting for the FIRST left-wing multi-millionaire like Moore to give their own personal riches away for the "cause". When they start doing that, I'll start taking them more seriously, and not a moment before. Before the wealth redistributors start spending other people's money, how about they spend their own ???
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Unitary Executive Back In Style: "If the Republican Congress won't join us, we're going to continue to act on our own to make the changes that we can to bring relief to middle-class families and those aspiring to get in the middle class". – VP Joe Biden

Whatever you say, Joe, but what about those 15 jobs-producing bills the Republican House has already passed that are sitting in the Senate waiting for the Democrats to bring them up ? In addition, why does every Democrat "jobs package" have to end up costing the taxpayers between $450 billion and $1 trillion ? Do Democrats simply not know our national debt is about to pass $15 trillion any day now ? Maybe their entire party has had a brain fart. The Democrats idea of stimulus is to take a bucket of water out of one end of the pool and pour it into the other end. They seem to believe they can fill up the pool this way. It won't ever work, because it CAN'T work. The real answer is to take money out of the government's hands and put it back into the hands of the private sector where it can do some good. The private sector is where growth comes from, not the government.
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And To Think, THIS Is the Guy They Call The Father Of The Democratic Party: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." – Thomas Jefferson

While I'm quoting Jefferson, who in today's society believes these words ?…

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition". – Thomas Jefferson

Not the political left, I can tell you that for sure.

One thing I've learned about President Obama – when he rails against "politics as usual", as he did in his redundant primetime speech to the country last night, you can rest assured that he will engage in politics as usual, relentlessly. The President had nothing new to say on the subject of the debt limit ceiling last night, but he made a campaign speech on television anyway. Obama carried on about how a "balanced approach" must be used in cutting spending and the deficit. He carried on about how revenue increases must be included as part of that balanced approach, as he has for the last couple months (prior to that the President was perfectly content to raise the debt limit with NO deficit reduction measures included). The President did his politics as usual routine, blaming Bush and Republicans for basically everything. Nothing new there either.

Here's the kicker. After going public for the nth time about how Republicans are intransigent for not raising revenues as part of the debt limit deal, it turns out that the White House had already endorsed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) plan, which included NO REVENUE INCREASES. This means that when the President was standing in front of the American people railing against the Republicans for not raising taxes, he had already backed a Democrat plan that didn't raise taxes. It doesn't get more "politics as usual" than that, or more dishonest.

Of further interest is, where did Harry Reid's plan come from ? He had no plan prior to the weekend. We've been waiting patiently for Democrats to propose a plan. None was forthcoming until now, at the the 11th hour. What happened ? Here's a strong clue from the Washington Post:

A Republican aide e-mails me: “The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan. A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”

If this is accurate the president is playing with fire. By halting a bipartisan deal he imperils the country’s finances and can rightly be accused of putting partisanship above all else. The ONLY reason to reject a short-term, two-step deal embraced by both the House and Senate is to avoid another approval-killing face-off for President Obama before the election. Next to pulling troops out of Afghanistan to fit the election calendar, this is the most irresponsible and shameful move of his presidency.

After rejecting the bipartisan plan, Obama endorsed a similar Democrat plan a day or two later. Why ? For one, Democrats will get the credit for a Democrat plan, but more importantly, Sen. Reid changed ONE element of the plan – it will get us past the 2012 election, which seems to be of utmost (or sole) importance to this President.

Reid's plan calls for $2.7 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years, and as I said previously, it includes no revenue increases. Prior to endorsing Reid's plan, Obama said repeatedly that he'd veto any such Republican proposal that focused only on spending cuts. That has been where the debt limit negotiations broke down every time, over revenues. But when the Democrats propose a spending-only plan, Obama magically sees the light and agrees. Amazing what a difference a 'D' or an 'R' next to a Congressperson's name can make, isn't it ?

Listen to when Reid's announced his plan:

Reid’s statement [announcing his plan] follows an hour-long meeting he attended at the White House with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Separately, Boehner told House Republicans on a conference call Sunday afternoon that he hoped to present a revised debt-ceiling bill on Monday, with a vote possible Wednesday.

The House GOP bill could be a short-term extension, which Reid said would be “a non-starter” in the Senate.

“Tonight, talks broke down over Republicans’ continued insistence on a short-term raise of the debt ceiling, which is something that President Obama, Leader Pelosi and I have been clear we would not support,” Reid said in his statement.

Except that Reid had supported the bipartisan plan, according to the Republican aide. Obama was the one who shot it down.

Translation – Obama told Reid and Pelosi he wanted a plan Democrats could take credit for, even though the ideas in the plan were all promoted previously by Republicans or were part of bipartisan negotiations. Obama wanted a plan that would get him through the 2012 elections, and it didn't matter if Obama and the Democrats had to reverse their position on everything they had said previously about tax increases. Obama even had the audacity to continue to rail against Republican anti-tax increase sentiments AFTER he had agreed to a spending-only plan that he could pretend came from the Democrats.

This President is all about politics as usual.

I haven't had time to analyze Reid's plan completely yet, but in the smoke and mirrors department, it looks pretty smoky and mirrory so far. $1 trillion of the "spending cuts" come from alleged savings on winding down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which were winding down anyway. In other words, Reid's plan projects spending that was never going to happen, and then counts reductions in that imaginary spending as "savings". In fairness, the 2011 House Republican budget plan did the same thing.

Reid's plan also excludes entitlement reform, which means the biggest drivers of future spending are still out there driving. Both Reid's plan and House Majority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) plan kick spending cut decisions down the road, which isn't making Republicans, who are serious about spending cuts, very happy. Boehner may have a tough time getting his plan through the House. Some Democrats aren't very happy about the lack of tax increases in either plan, but I imagine Senate Democrats will largely follow the President's wishes regarding the Reid plan, albeit after some perfunctory grumbling.

Eight days to go…and the political beat goes on.

I found the following current event quotes on The Patriot Post.

Insane The New Sane: "The same politicians who spent $1.7 trillion more than they collected, in just this year alone, say the problem is that private citizens are not paying enough. … [B]ecause the political class has made the national debt so high, it is able to insist that taking a chance on the power of liberty is an irresponsible gamble. Because the government lives so far beyond its means, it would be irresponsible to provide it with reduced means. This is how we have reached the madness of a moment when the national debt is used as an argument against spending reductions, or growth-oriented tax and regulatory policies. The insane problem becomes a weapon against rational solutions." –columnist John Hayward

There's nothing for me to add to that. Well said.

Moron Of The Week: "Isn't the Tea Party — I'm not trying to call them names or anything. I just want to ask a very serious question: Aren't they exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most? Which is people who are ignorant about the way the world works come to power. That is what the Founding Fathers hated the most. They were not for direct democracy" –HBO's Bill Maher

I'm still trying to figure out why Bill Maher has a political television show on HBO. His neverending ignorance on political matters is astounding. In the above quote, Maher not only demonstrates a cluelessness about the Founding Fathers and the original Boston Tea Party (it was about TAXES, Mr. Maher), he also doesn't seem to understand that today's Tea Party is not a direct democracy, it's a protest movement and only one of many political forces in this country. The Tea Party does not govern. Our elected representatives perform that function. That is and always has been a representative democracy. The "serious question" Bill Maher asks here is a complete joke.

Leadership Failure: "Meanwhile, the World's Greatest Orator bemoans the 'intransigence' of Republicans. OK, what's your plan? Give us one actual program you're willing to cut, right now. Oh, don't worry, says Barack Obluffer. To demonstrate how serious he is, he's offered to put on the table for fiscal year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation in History borrows every 10 hours. In other words, in less time than he spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he's already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not worth the time." –columnist Mark Steyn

The extent of Obama's leadership on the debt limit has been to say he wants revenues raised along with spending cuts, and he didn't even care about spending cuts until the Republicans forced him to care. That's how this President leads…by following.

Hijacking The Tax And Spend Crowd: "Here's the thing about Obama. He ran as a transformational president. He sees himself as transformational. He always has. What occurred between 2008 and 2010 is the Tea Party. And the Tea Party has stopped that kind of transformation from occurring because it has hijacked the Republican Party and the John Boehners of the world who would have cut a deal with the president of the United States. It has hijacked the Republican Party and it has now become substantially just a no-tax party as opposed to a party that cares about the deficit. I think no tax trumps their caring and concern about the deficit." –CNN's Gloria Borger

Poor Obama. His transformational dreams were crushed by the Tea Party. Sniff, sniff. Cry me a river. In reality, it was, well, reality that crushed Obama's unrealistic dreams. Plus, if any party NEEDED hijacking after the big spending, debt accumulating Bush years, it was the Republican party. Thank goodness the Tea Party arrived on the scene and changed the discussion, because without it we wouldn't even be talking about reining in the sole cause of our fiscal unsustainability – big government.

Speaking of which…

The Left Calls It 'The Plan': "Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington — the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline. … Forget the fact that such 'entitlements' as Social Security and Medicare — social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound — have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today's benefits out of tomorrow's borrowed receipts. Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks? For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about — the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state." –columnist Michael Walsh

This reminds me of a USA Today article from a few months ago, titled "Americans Depend More On Federal Aid Than Ever". Here's a piece of it:

Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. The trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly 2 years old.

A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

Americans got an average of $7,427 in benefits each in 2010, up from an inflation-adjusted $4,763 in 2000 and $3,686 in 1990. The federal government pays about 90% of the benefits.

"What's frightening is the Baby Boomers haven't really started to retire," says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes of the 77 million people born from 1946 through 1964 whose oldest wave turns 65 this year. "That's when the cost of Medicare will start to explode."

If you think things are bad now, America, prepare yourselves. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Unless we change course dramatically, in a decade we'll be looking back at these times as the good old days.

The political left in this country wants the citizenry to be dependent, and, btw, disarmed. A passive and helpless population is more easily controlled.

My closing quote comes from our "transformational" President himself, though it sounds more like politics as usual to me.

Blaming Bush: "We don't need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs. The Constitution already tells us to do our jobs — and to make sure that the government is living within its means and making responsible choices. … We don't need a balanced budget amendment. We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases. And everybody knows it. … It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade; we ended up instituting new programs like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for; we fought two wars, we didn't pay for them; we had a bad recession that required a Recovery Act and stimulus spending and helping states — and all that accumulated and there's interest on top of that." –Barack Obama

Maybe we wouldn't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment if the government showed any indication it could live within it's means or discipline itself, but it has not done that. When I hear Obama whining about a balanced budget amendment, all I hear is him thinking, 'but how will I spend and borrow more money ? How will I play politics and buy votes ?'

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned that not raising the debt ceiling would be "catastrophic". He said it would lead to millions of job losses, a collapse of America's credit rating, huge increases in the interest rate, and a devaluation of the dollar. Geithner may be exaggerating, but he's correct about the negative effects in general.

A couple days later, a CBS poll asked it's viewers if the debt ceiling should be increased. A whopping 69% said NO. I can only assume the CBS viewing public didn't really understand what they were being asked.

Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann, who leads in the Iowa polls, said last night on The O'Reilly Factor that she wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling "no matter what", even if a deficit reduction plan is reached. Bachmann contended that the country could still operate without borrowing more money. As a member of Congress, Bachmann should know better.

Let's take a look at what might happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. The first thing that would happen is, we couldn't borrow any more money to fund the federal government, meaning that the government would have to live within it's means. That's a wonderful concept. Everyone should live within their means, but the government hasn't done so for a very long time. That's why we have a $14.4 trillion national debt. The government is the all-time poster boy for irresponsibility.

For the federal government to live within it's means, it would have to operate on the revenue it has coming in, which in 2011 is about $2.2 trillion. Unfortunately, our federal government is currently spending about $3.8 trillion. If the debt limit isn't increased, about 40% of the government would have to cease operating. And that is where the problem lies. What would we cut ?

Here's a list of federal expenditures for 2011, ranked by cost.

Defense (including wars and associated costs) – $964.8 billion
Health Care (Medicare/Medicaid, etc) – $882.0 billion
Pensions (Social Security, etc) – $793.2 billion
Welfare – $495.6 billion
Interest – $206.7 billion
Other Spending – $158.4 billion
Education – $129.8 billion
Protection – $60.7 billion
Transportation – $94.5 billion
General Government – $33.2 billion

The cost of the first three items on the list (Defense, Pensions, and Health Care) comes to $2.64 trillion. That is already more than the entire revenue of the federal government ($2.2 trillion). Clearly, a lot would have to go. We couldn't afford to fight these wars any more, but then again, we can't afford to fight them now. Allow me to rephrase. We wouldn't be able to fight the wars anymore, unless we were prepared to eliminate either Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security. I think it's time to get out of the Middle East wars anyway, so let's consider them gone.

Let's prioritize the things we'd HAVE to pay without a debt ceiling increase.

1. We'd have to fund General Government in order to accomplish anything else. Cost – $33.2 billion

2. We'd have to pay the interest on the debt ($206.7 billion), or else we'd lose our credit rating. We'd become a deadbeat country, and as Geithner said, that would cause interest rates to soar and the dollar to collapse. It would be disastrous for our economy.

3. We'd have to pay Social Security and other pensions, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Cost – $793.2 billion.

Now we have some decisions to make. Do we fund Medicare/Medicaid, Welfare programs, Education, Defense, Transportation, or what ? We won't have anywhere near enough money to fund them all. Being the kind and compassionate people we are, let's say we fund Medicare and Welfare programs.

4. Health care – $882 billion

5. Welfare – $ 495.6 billion

Let's find out where we're at. the cost of these first five parts of government comes to….$2.41 trillion. Uh oh. We're short. Let's assume we could make various cuts and knock off $200 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Welfare. We'll only pay 90% of the promised benefits.

So, we've spent all the federal revenue, and we have no military, no Defense budget, no Transportation budget, No Education budget, no Department Of Homeland Security, FBI, ATF, no Post Office, no EPA, no foreign aid, no Federal Justice system, and no spending on anything else. All we are able to accomplish by living within our means is to maintain most entitlement spending and pay the interest on the debt.

(Note – Entitlement spending is going to go WAY up in the future)

Or, we could screw the senior citizens, the sick, and the poor worse to pay for some of those other things.

"Screwed" is the operative word here. We would be. I'm all for reducing spending, but it has to be done in a thoughtful, gradual manner. We can't go from a $1.6 trillion deficit to a balanced budget overnight, and a Presidential candidate such as Michelle Bachmann should know that much, at the very least. The last Presidential candidate who voted against raising the debt ceiling, after which we made him President, was Barack Obama…and look where that has gotten us. We're on the fast track to national bankruptcy.

Here's why, by the numbers.

Total federal revenue for FY2011 will be about $2.2 trillion.

Here are the three biggest federal expenditures YTD:
Medicare/Medicaid – $815.1 billion
Defense including wars – $698.5 billion
Social Security – $711.8 billion

Medicare, Defense, and Social Security expenditures YTD comes to $ 2.225 trillion. These three areas are consuming ALL the revenue the federal government takes in. There is no money left for anything else. The other $1.6 trillion the federal government will spend this year is all borrowed. This is known as the deficit. The federal government is borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.

The federal government has spent beyond it's means for a long, long time, which is why we have a $14.4 trillion federal debt, but the government isn't even coming close to paying for itself these days, and President Obama isn't making any realistic efforts to address the problem. His 10-year budget proposal added another $9-13 trillion to the debt, and his budget assumed economic recovery, the implementation of ObamaCare, an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and a reversal of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. Obama's budget still leaves us on the road to nowhere. Incredibly, Obama tried to peddle his 10-year budget plan as one that reduces the deficit, as if it was fiscally responsible. It is anything but that. Obama is the Nowhere Man.

As bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse. We have future unfunded entitlement liabilities in excess of $114 trillion. $79.1 trillion of that is Medicare. This means we have made enormous future entitlement commitments that we have not funded. And as everyone knows, health care costs are going up much faster than the economy is growing. Those unfunded entitlement liabilities are going to get a lot larger.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) put out this chart in 2008 comparing entitlement growth to GDP growth. This shows how entitlement spending will rise:

Entitlement spending is growing three times faster than GDP, and the GAO's projection was made BEFORE ObamaCare was implemented. ObamaCare created massive new entitlements. It adds 20 million new people to Medicaid. Obama, like Bush before him, added to the entitlement problem (Bush's Prescription Drug plan has an unfunded future entitlement liability of $19 trillion. That's in addition to the $79 trillion Medicare/Medicaid liability).

Politicians like to create programs and promise people all kinds of things, but politicians don't like to pay for those programs and promises. Politicians want all the pleasure without any of the pain. It helps them get elected, but what they are ultimately doing is selling this country down the river with their unsustainable schemes.

A Heritage Foundation chart shows, using a 30-year tax to GDP average of 18%, Medicare/Medicaid, ObamaCare, and Social Security will consume ALL federal revenue by 2049. There won't even be room in the federal budget for Defense spending.

In summary, entitlements are doubling and tripling in size beyond economic growth. Historic levels of taxation can no longer support them and the rest of the government. We have massive entitlement commitments we have not funded….and we are ALREADY $14.4 trillion in debt, with a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and no end to the deficits in sight.

Anyone who doesn't recognize this problem is engaging in willful blindness…which leads me to the Democrats. They are busy ripping apart Republicans who have proposed measures to deal with this coming fiscal crisis, like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), but the Democrats are proposing no solutions of their own that will address the problem. Shame on them. If they don't like Ryan's plan, or any other Republican plan (there are several), then how about the Democrats do the jobs they were elected to do and come up with their own plan(s) ! The Dems think ripping the GOP's ideas will give them an advantage in the 2012 elections, and that's all they care about. They hope nobody will notice they have no solutions of their own. As an example, listen to how Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz answered a question put to her about how the Democrats will address the problem:

There is the message of Democrats. They got nuthin', other than demonizing Republicans. The citizens of this nation deserve a lot better than that.

Democrats are mighty happy about the results of a New York special congressional election held on tuesday. In that race, the Democrat candidate, Kathy Hochul, defeated the Republican candidate, Jane Corwin, by a margin of 47-43%. A third candidate, Jack Davis, who ran under the Tea Party banner, got 9% of the vote.

There are two reasons Democrats are smiling today. The first is that the Democrat Hochul won in a district that is considered a Republican majority district. The second is that Hochul made Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) Medicare plan one of her major issues. Corwin supported Ryan's plan. Hochul was against it, and a left-wing group was running ads in New York of a Ryan look-alike pushing grandma over a cliff. (I seem to recall left-wingers being shocked and outraged over violent political imagery a few short months ago. Must have been my imagination). Democrats say Hochul's victory proves Americans reject Ryan's plan. Republicans downplay the Democrat victory, saying the Tea Party candidate siphoned votes away from the Republican candidate, splitting the vote and handing the Democrat a victory. Let's examine these two claims.

First the Republican claim. Davis, the third candidate, ran under the Tea Party banner, which would seem to indicate he did indeed take votes away from the Republican candidate. Davis also lost the special election Republican primary to Corwin before switching to the Tea Party banner, another indicator he took votes away from the Republican. However, Davis was a lifelong Republican who switched parties and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in elections in 2004, 2006, and 2008. In addition, many Tea Party groups disavowed the candidacy of Davis. Democrats are trying to say Davis also took votes from Hochul. Maybe so, but I have little doubt he took many more votes from the Republican. Just appearing on the ballot with 'Tea Party' next to his name would accomplish that.

The far more important claim is the one being made by Democrats about Americans rejecting Ryan's Medicare/budget plan, because the Republican-led House Of Representatives passed that plan last month, with the vote being along party lines. The Democrat-led Senate rejected Ryan's plan yesterday, with Democrats voting against it. Some Republican Senators also voted against it – Scott Brown (Massachusetts), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Rand Paul (Kentucky). Many Democrats see the Ryan Medicare/budget plan as a big opportunity for them to win in 2012.

Democrat leaders are attempting to capitalize on the "push grandma over the cliff" message. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) keeps talking about the GOP's desire to "kill Medicare". House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Hochul's “victory in a staunchly Republican district has shocked the political world and sent an unmistakable sign that the American people will not stand for the Republicans’ reckless and extreme agenda to end Medicare". You get the idea.

Rep. Ryan says the Democrats are engaging in "Mediscare" and accuses them of demagoguery. Ryan says Americans will approve of his plan once they understand it, and once they accept the reality of what will happen if we don't reform Medicare.

Do Americans reject Ryan's plan ? Polls suggest it depends how the question is asked. Here are examples from two polls, one from the New York Times where a plurality of responders supported the plan, and one from the Washington post where responders rejected the plan:

The Times asked:

In order to reduce the budget deficit, it has been proposed that Medicare should be changed from a program in which the government pays doctors and hospitals for treating seniors to a program in which the government helps seniors purchase private health insurance. Would you approve or disapprove of changing Medicare in this way?

Yet the Post (PDF) asked:

I'm going to read you two statements about the future of the Medicare program. After I read both statements, please tell me which one comes closer to your own view: Medicare should remain as it is today, with a defined set of benefits for people over 65, OR Medicare should be changed so that people over 65 would receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy.

Regardless of how poll questions are asked, Ryan and Republicans have a problem. A recent poll of Ohioans showed a whopping 75% were against cutting Medicare to reduce the debt. An Assocated Press poll found 54% believe we can balance the federal budget without reducing Medicare costs. If Ryan thinks people will support his Medicare plan once they understand it, well, he better start explaining it to them. My feeling is that change is usually met with resistance, even if that change is needed. People don't like to have anything taken from them, ever, and according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Ryan has an even bigger problem. The CBO says Ryan's Medicare plan will require seniors to pay more for their Medicare in the future, and it won't reduce health care costs either:

Under the [Ryan] proposal, most beneficiaries who receive premium support payments would pay more for their health care than if they participated in traditional Medicare under either of CBO’s long-term scenarios. CBO estimated that, in 2030, a typical 65-year-old would pay 68 percent of the benchmark under the proposal, compared with 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.

A private health insurance plan covering the standardized benefit would, CBO estimates, be more expensive currently than traditional Medicare. Both administrative costs (including profits) and payment rates to providers are higher for private plans than for Medicare. Those higher costs would be offset partly but not fully by savings from lower utilization stemming from two sources. First, private health insurers would probably impose greater utilization management than occurs in Medicare. Second, private plans might restrict enrollees’ ability to purchase supplemental insurance plans; enrollees would thus face higher out-of-pocket costs than they do in Medicare, and that increased cost sharing would encourage lower utilization. On net, for a typical 65-year-old in 2011, CBO estimates that average spending in traditional Medicare will be 89 percent of (that is, 11 percent less than) the spending that would occur if that same package of benefits was purchased from a private insurer.

That's a pretty tough sell for Rep. Ryan. The idea with health care is to reduce overall costs, not increase them. That is the biggest flaw in Ryan's plan. As for the CBO's estmate that seniors will have to pay more under Ryan's plan, that is actually less troubling, because there is a hard truth we must face – Medicare/Medicaid costs are skyrocketing, and we have to address them. If we can't reduce those costs, somebody has to pay for them. The health care fairy can't wave her magic wand and make this all go away. We have to face reality.

Former President Bill Clinton had something important to say on the subject yesterday:

Even though Clinton disagrees with the plan put forth by Ryan, the two men both know something must be done. As Clinton said, health care costs will devour our economy. That is the truth. Entitlements are the single biggest driver of future government spending, and therefore the biggest drivers of deficits, debt, and/or tax increases.

I share the same fear as Clinton, that Democrats will beat the kill grandma, kill Medicare drum, using it as a political scare tactic to win elections. The problem with that is, as the Democrats do nothing (the Dems haven't even produced a 2011 budget, for chirissakes, and we're over halfway through 2011), nothing is accomplished. Our challenges remain unmet. The longer we avoid dealing with reality, the more difficult and painful the solutions become. I'm going to leave you with two charts to ponder from the Heritage Foundation.

First is this link to a chart showing that, based upon historical tax revenue to GDP percentages (18%), entitlements will devour ALL tax revenue by 2049. There won't be money left for ANYTHING else.

Second is this link to a chart showing that, based upon current policies, our national debt will skyrocket to 344% of GDP by 2050.

Our country is on an unsustainable path, and anyone who tells you differently is, to put it simply, LYING. I know liberals think I'm some mouthpiece for conservatives (because I'm definitely anti-liberal on fiscal matters. See: unsustainable), but what I really am is someone who sees not just grandma, but his entire country going over a cliff. More than anything else, what I want to do is prevent that from happening.

We're over six months into FY2011 (the government's fiscal year runs from October 1-September 30), and Congress has still not passed a budget for FY2011. There will be a government shutdown at midnight unless Congress can pass a budget or another temporary continuing resolution (CR) today.

First, I must say…Heckuva job, Congress. Thanks for NOT doing the job we elected you to do. Thanks for proving to me once again how well-founded is my skepticism of the government, as if the $14 trillion federal debt and the $1.6 trillion deficit wasn't proof enough already. If I find any solace from a government shutdown, it will come from the fact that members of Congress won't get their paychecks (at least I hope they won't).

The last action I heard about was the CR that passed the GOP-led House yesterday. It contained $12 billion in spending cuts, would fund the Department Of Defense for the rest of the year, and fund the rest of the government for another week. President Obama said he would veto it if it reached his desk. Democrats voted against it, saying they wanted the one-week CR to maintain spending at current levels. So much for all the Democrat calls for compromise I heard on the airwaves yesterday, but even if the CR did pass, the budget issue would not be resolved. The standoff continues.

If you want to know how things deteriorated to this level, I can answer that in one word – politics (which is another reason I distrust the government). Our politicians care more about their parties than they do our country. This goes for both parties, but I have particular animus toward the Democrats in this regard. Remember, the Dems had total control of Congress and the Presidency until January. They could have done their job and passed the FY2011 budget any time they wanted to, but they didn't. Why not ? Because they knew if they passed the big spending budget they wanted to pass, it would lessen their chances in last fall's elections. As Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) said on Fox News last night, the Dems didn't pass a budget because it was "a political hot potato". In other words, the Democrats put the well-being of their party above the well-being of the country. But their self-serving political stunt didn't work. Republicans made big gains in Congress and took control of the House. Now, Congress is locked in an ideological battle of wills. The Dems could have easily avoided the current shutdown scenario, which makes me wonder if what's going on now wasn't the Democrats backup plan all along. Democrats knew spending had to be cut, but they want the Republicans to take the heat for it, because particular spending cuts, especially to domestic programs, aren't popular, even when they are necessary.

On the core issue of spending cuts, I agree with the Republicans a lot more than I do the Democrats. Obama's ten-year budget proposal that increased federal spending by $9 trillion, increased taxes by $2 trillion (it reversed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, among other tax increases), and increased the federal debt by $13 trillion over the next decade was an epic failure of leadership, a complete joke. Obama looked at the biggest long-term problem we face as a country, and then he punted the ball. He abdicated all responsibility. I can't begin to take him seriously since then. I no longer care what he has to say on economic matters. I just want him out. I will vote for a ham sandwich over Obama for President in 2012. He's not a leader. He's a coward, or worse (you can fill in your own Obama motivation here).

Spending must be cut. That is undeniable. Anyone with a shred of honesty has to admit that much. We are living in a fictitious economy fueled by debt. The federal government is borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends. It is beyond obvious that it isn't sustainable. We're on a high-speed rail to financial destruction, yet we can't get Congress to agree on $61 billion in spending cuts, which represents less than a 2% cut from a $3.8 trillion federal budget. Hard to believe.

That being said, I do have some problems with the GOP's cuts. They all focus on domestic spending, which certainly must be cut, but of the GOP proposals I've seen, NONE of them cut the Defense budget. This is outrageous. While I certainly support funding the troops in the field, as we must do, there is much to be cut in the area of Defense. We have nearly 500 military bases in about 100 countries around the world. There's no reason for this. WWII is long over. The Cold War is over. It's time for us to stop being the policeman of the world. We can't afford it any longer. When Republicans cite the Constitution as it's justification for the federal government to "provide for the common defense", they are correct. However, the framers meant that the federal government should defend THIS country, not South Korea, Japan, Europe, etc., etc. Our first President, George Washington, warned against "foreign entanglements". Later, President Eisenhower warned against the "military industrial complex". Today's Republicans and Democrats should take note of our fiscal situation and make some major Defense adjustments. I'm all for defending this country, and when we were attacked on 9/11 it was appropriate for us to go after the terrorists and their state-sponsored supporters in Afghanistan, but enough is enough. The Deparment Of Defense needs to be cut like everything else. It will take an all hands approach to correct the course of our ship of state.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the GOP's budget policy riders are interfering with a budgetary agreement between the two parties. Reid said Republicans were “focusing on ideological matters that have nothing to do with funding the government". Said policy riders include defunding ObamaCare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and weakening the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions. I don't know what world Reid lives in, but in my world, DEFUNDING ObamaCare and Planned Parenthood have everything to do with funding the government. Ideology is certainly involved, just as ideology was involved with funding these programs in the first place, but, I repeat, WE ARE $14 TRILLION IN DEBT AND HAVE A $1.6 TRILLION DEFICIT. Everything should be on the table. We have to reinvent our idea of what government can and should do for us. If we don't, we face a certain finanial meltdown. Thems the facts.

In closing, I hear Democrats and liberals across the land moaning and crying over the Republican spending cuts, such as Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to cut $6 trillion in spending over a decade (which actually doesn't go far enough fast enough), but I ask you this…has anyone heard a plan from the Democrats in Congress or the Executive branch to fix our debt/deficit problem ??? Anyone ??? I haven't, and the last I heard, Democrats were also supposed to be our governmental leaders. Rather than leading, it seems they've chosen to bury their heads in the sand and throw dirt at Republicans to gain a partisan advantage. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to admire such behavior, which is why I don't. Put up or shut up, Democrats. I've heard enough of what the Democrats are against. They should man up and present their own plan to right our fiscal ship, before we collectively sink into the sea. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

As for anyone's particular political beliefs, they should be secondary right now. Everyone is going to have to accept some spending cut they don't like. Yes, it would be fan-frigging-tastic if we could give every citizen in the country everything their little heart desires for free, but that ain't realistic. In fact, that gimme attitude is a large part of the problem.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) has discovered a way to fix the unemployment problem. It involves changing the Constitution and creating a bunch more rights for people. Listen up, y'all, and let Jesse drop some knowledge on ya:

They say the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. Seems so, but….

J.J. Jr's idea is so super-groovy !!! I only wonder why nobody thought of this sooner !!!! We can fix unemployment by creating Constitutional rights to things like houses, health care, education, ipods, and laptops !!! You see, if these things were Constitutional rights, people would HAVE to build these things and supply them to everyone, whether they wanted to or not !!! And if you can't afford to buy these things, then the government would step in and FORCE somebody else to buy them for you, because, hey, these things are Constitutional rights now !!! It would be the government's job to guarantee them !!! It's Fan-tastic !!!

And why stop there ??? Let's keep the gravy, er, I mean, the groovy train going !!! We can also create Constitutional rights to things like automobiles, central air conditioning, jet skis, food processors, fitness center memberships, broccoli, European vacations, NFL tickets, Playstation 3's, and so on and so forth. The list of new Constitutional rights would be virtually endless. I imagine we could keep people pretty darned busy if we MANDATED them by law to produce and pay for a whole bunch of products/rights for other people. Yes indeedy. We'd need a whole lot more government bureaucracy, regulations, and intervention to FORCE people to comply with all these new rights, of course, but that's alright, isn't it ? I mean, there wouldn't be any problems associated with this groovy new Rights-a-Palooza envisioned by Jesse Jr., would there ?

Nope. I can't think of anything.

Rep. Jr. continued his magnificent mental machinations by tying all jobs to the First Amendment. This is the foundational (ill)logic for all those new handouts rights he wants to create. Here's Junior again, courtesy of Ace Of Spades:

I asked the Congressional Research Service the other day how many jobs are tied to the First Amendment, that amendment added to the Constitution in 1791 by the founders of our Republic. You know what they told me? Congressman, it is impossible to calculate how many jobs are tied to the First Amendment.

I said: Impossible to calculate? I said: Why?

He said because to be an American is tied to the First Amendment. He said: Congressman, you must understand–which I did–that all corporate activity in America is First Amendment activity.

Look at the jobs that come from the First Amendment: Washington Post, Washington Times; New York Post, New York Times; Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times; AM/FM, and all of the radio stations, First Amendment.

ABC, NBC, CBS, C-SPAN, all of the jobs, First Amendment.

Magazines, First Amendment.

iPods, iPhones, applications, First Amendment.

Time Square, First Amendment activity. Advertising, the Super Bowl, First Amendment activity.

All of these jobs–the original capitalists who came to the conclusion that this was worth protecting in our Constitution–established in the freedom system, the greatest jobs program in our Nation's history. They called it freedom of speech. And in that same amendment, they included freedom of religion.

Think about the jobs tied to 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, 501(c)(5)s, all of that First Amendment activity. All charitable giving, all foundation activity, all tied to First Amendment activity.

As Ace said at the previous link, this is profoundly silly. It is also profoundly wrongheaded thinking by Rep. Jackson. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and other rights, but it does so with a proscription against the government ("Congress shall make no law…"). Jackson's new "rights" would do just the opposite. They would empower the government to trample all over the rest of the Bill Of Rights and constitutional government restraints in order to provide people with the goodies the government deems appropriate. What Rep. Jackson is proposing is a natural outgrowth of the unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate, where the government decides what you need and then goes about mandating that you have it by whatever means necessary. It is the culmination of nanny state thinking, and it would render the free market nearly unrecognizable. Imagine the lobbying and corruption associated with a government that was deciding which company would get the contract for 50 million laptops or 100 million cell phones, and then imagine what would happen to the companies that didn't get those contracts. We'd be living in a totalitarian state in no time. The government would dominate industry as the entire economy became command-and-control from the top down.

And who would pay for all these new "rights", all this new free stuff ? Why you would, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, same as always…not that people like Jesse Jr. even bother to think about how to pay for things. That's not exciting. It's giving people all that free stuff that's exciting. That's how congressmen get votes ! We'll let some other generation worry about paying for stuff, as usual. Because we're the gravy groovy train generation. We want the free stuff, and we want it now. And we call ourselves compassionate and generous as we bankrupt the future with our mindless, massive irresponsibility. It's all so gravy groovy.

The only mandate I'd be interested in regarding Rep. Jackson Jr. is a mandate that requires potential congressmen to pass IQ and Civics tests before they run for office. I'd like to mandate that Jesse Jackson Jr. acquire a few brain cells before he opens his yap.

I'll leave you with Ace's closing line at the previous link:

It's fun to mock an idiot like Jackson, Jr. but let's be honest, his "understanding" of what rights are and how the economy works is shared by a lot of people.

That's for sure. I call those people "liberals" for lack of a better word, and they scare the bejesus out of me.

Liberals, after 8 years of complaining about President Bush running up the federal debt (as did I), and after 20+ years of complaining about President Reagan running up a relatively minor amount of debt (Obama ran up nearly as much debt in his first year as Reagan did in two full terms), now wholly embrace Democrats running up the debt at a pace unmatched in American history. Obama makes Bush look like an amateur debt runner-upper by comparison, but I see no outcry from liberals over this. Liberals have completely switched course, completely switched arguments. Now, they demonize Republicans for insisting additional federal spending be paid for (as demanded by the Democrats own PAYGO legislation, which liberals trumpet. Go figure). Somebody will have to explain this to me, because I can't make any sense of it whatsoever.

Liberals babble on about tax cuts for the rich or something, but that doesn't make much sense either. If the Bush tax cuts for the rich were reversed, it would only add around $50 billion per year in federal revenue (the amount is arguable. Could be less. Could be more). Reversing the Bush tax cuts would barely make a dent in our yearly trillion+ dollar deficits. Reversing the Bush tax cuts wouldn't even offset the additional federal spending and borrowing announced in the last week, not to mention that nearly all economists agree raising taxes during a recession is a really bad idea. History agrees, though Obama and his Democratic Superfriends do not. I call them Suprefriends because they have superhuman powers that normal people do not possess. For example, they can turn borrowing $1.5 trillion per year into a GOOD thing. Bush could NEVER have gotten away with that, being a mere mortal and (ick) Republican. The Superfriends can also pass PAYGO and then completely ignore it without generating so much as a peep of protest from the mainstream media. The Superfriends can even praise themselves for passing PAYGO months AFTER completely ignoring it, and the peepless media still doesn't peep. Instead, the media continues peeping about whether there might be a racist among the millions of Tea Party members. They've been peeping for, let's see, about 17 months over that one, because, you know, President Obama is black (well, half-black. Close enough, I guess). Maybe the Tea Partiers should come out with a statement saying they are only protesting Obama's white half. Maybe that would please the race-based liberal media's sensibilities.

But I digress. This post is supposed to be about spending money we don't have, which has become the preferred way of life for Obama and his Superfriends (Shazzam ! Responsibility gone !). Here are a couple weekly updates on the Superfriends Spend-a-Palooza Spectacular:

1) After decades of Congress ripping off the Social Security Trust Fund, Social Security finds itself in the red this year (I'm sure there's no connection there, lol. The Superfriends tell me there isn't, but still, I'm suspicious. I don't have superpowers, but I can add and subtract). Congress says it is going to dip into the $2.54 trillion SS Trust Fund to make up for a $41 billion SS payout shortage this year. Here's Allan Sloan of the Washington Post to explain how it will work:

This year's cash deficit, the first since the early 1980s and the biggest ever, means the government will have to borrow money to redeem some of the Treasury securities in the trust fund. Even at a time when Uncle Sam is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year to keep his checks from bouncing, $41 billion is real money.

Question: Golly gee, Mr. WaPo reporter, why would we have to borrow money to get the SS funds when there's $2.54 trillion in the Trust Fund ?

Answer: Because there isn't anything in the Trust Fund. Congress spent those funds long, long ago, you rubes. You've been swindled by your own government. Still want to hand your health care over to them ?

Thus, $41 billion is added to the deficit to coverup the SS scam.

(Note – Everyone should read and understand the information in the previous link about SS, especially those liberal folks who've been foolishly arguing with me about SS for years.)

2). A few weeks after Obama and his Superfriends passed a financial regulation reform bill that they laughably claimed would prevent future bailouts, they passed….more bailouts. This time it is $26.1 billion to bail out state workers and Medicaid. Obama said the bill will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers and other government workers, such as police officers. Unlike previous Dem bills, this bill is actually paid for (golf clap), because the Democrats didn't have enough votes in the Senate to pass it without paying for it, as they desired. Their Shazzam ! Responsibility gone ! magic didn't work this time. They needed a couple Republican votes. Thus, the Dems paid for the funding by closing tax loopholes on multinational corporations (raising taxes) and….cutting funding for food stamps ??? I have to admit, this took me by surprise. I can think of a hundred ways to cut government spending, but cutting the food stamp program never occurred to me. The Dems are taking from the poor to give to the middle class. Specifically, they are giving to the unions.

I always wonder why, instead of bailing out the public employees unions, we can't cut some of their pay and/or benefits to avoid the layoffs. After all, they work for us, the taxpayers, and public employees already earn twice as much as private sector employees. Why should we bail them out ? The entire setup is nothing more than the poorer private sector folks bailing out the wealthier public sector folks, the same as with cutting food stamps. It's perverse.

But instead of cutting public employee pay back a little to keep teachers on the job, the government plays the same old tune. They scare the hell out of the public by threatening to lay off a bunch of teachers and police officers, and then the "benevolent" government pretends they are coming to the rescue, usually by raising taxes. What they are really doing is catering to the Democratic base, the public employees unions, at the expense of other (usually poorer) taxpayers. This partially explains why American education costs are skyrocketing, without a corresponding improvement in the quality of that education. One way or another, the government still works it's Shazzam ! Responsibility gone ! magic on us…and we sit back and take it like the marks we are.

If there's any bright side…november isn't that far away.

The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard - “Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Laden and say, ‘listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.” – Hollywood actor Matthew Modine

Alrighty then. Even though Modine is a big-time Hollywood movie star who has made such great films as…um, let's see…well, I can't think of one right now….he's an airhead. Here's an idea. Let's airdrop the airhead actor into Waziristan and have him serve as the ambassador of peace and love in dialogues with Osama Bin Laden. The later video that would surface of Modine's beheading would serve as a learning lesson to all like-minded naive liberal douchebags.

Note to Modine – it is well-documented why Bin Laden hates us. Maybe you'd know why if you didn't have your head stuck so far up your own blowhole. Btw, Matty, one of the reasons Bin Laden hates us is because of our culture, as portrayed in HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. Bin Laden would love to have YOUR head on a stick.
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Dumbest Statement Of The Week - This comes from our Treasury Secretary, Tim 'TurboTax' Geithner. From Fox News:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday it's "deeply unfair" that some financial institutions that got taxpayer-paid bailouts are emerging in better shape from the recession than millions of ordinary Americans. He acknowledged public outrage over that and said people watched with disdain as Washington protected high-risk banks and investment houses, even as the national unemployment rate was soaring to double-digit levels for the first time in a generation. But in a nationally broadcast interview, Geithner also argued that President Obama had no choice when confronted with a financial crisis. "As the president has said, we had to do some very unpopular things," Geithner said. "People looked at what had happened."

"It's not fair. It's deeply unfair," he said. "He (Obama) had to decide whether he was going to act to fix it or stand back … and that would have been calamitous for the American economy."

As great as it is to have TurboTax Tim pedaling disinformation for Obama, I'd be remiss not to point out that the TARP program, which bailed out those financial institutions, came from President Bush, not President Obama. Obama's contribution to the recovery was the stimulus package. Geithner didn't mention that in his statement, but he did say the following:

The secretary agreed that the national jobless rate — now at 9.7 percent — is "still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time" because of the damage caused by the recession.

Um, if unemployment is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time, doesn't that mean Obama's contribution, the $876 billion stimulus package, didn't work ?
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Liberals vs. Conservatives - This is from an e-mail I received from a friend, original source unknown. It seems worth repeating now:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
If a liberal is down-and-out, he demands that somebody else take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
If a liberal doesn't like a talk show host, he demands that the talk show host be removed from the air.

If a conservative doesn't believe in God, he doesn't go to church.
If a liberal doesn't believe in God, he demands that all mentions of God be removed from the public arena.

If a conservative decides he needs health insurance, he goes shopping
for it, or figures out what he needs to do to afford it.
If a liberal decides he needs health insurance, he demands that someone else provide it for him at their expense.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it to his friends so they can have a good laugh.
If a liberal reads this, he will delete it because he's offended.

It's no surprise that liberals want to be called progressives these days. There's not much about them that evokes the root meaning of the word "liberal," which is "liberty," aka, "freedom." Liberals are all about coercion. "Progressive" coercion, of course. They know they can't do it all at once, or America would rise up against them. Instead, they take incremental progressive steps towards totalitarianism, or as Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev once put it, "Oh you Americans! You're so gullible! We'll spoon feed you socialism until you're Communists and don't even know it." That's the endgame of progressivism. When we are all dependent on the government for our survival, they have won. Checkmate. Freedom gone. Friedrich Hayek called it The Road To Serfdom.
===

President Obama made the following groundbreaking announcement at the abandoned Members Only warehouse this morning (the same warehouse where Derek Zoolander and Hansel held their historic male model "walk-off"):

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As I look around this room, I see many well-dressed people. I see members of Congress, lobbyists for powerful special interests, and media giants in attendance. As the privileged few, we can afford the finest fashions, the best designer clothing. We are the lucky ones, but not everyone in America shares in our good fortune. Throughout this land, the wealthiest country in the world, we have a great disparity in the quality of clothing and accessibility to fine clothing. Even as we in this room don our Brooks Brothers suits and Donna Karan dresses, others, through no fault of their own, are forced to wear sub-standard clothing, such as cheap sweat pants and t-shirts from Value City or Goodwill. Others are forced into wearing threadbare hand-me-downs, and some even make pants out of trash bags, or wear only boxer shorts. Imagine if one of those people was your child or your grandmother.

This is a grave injustice in a country that prides itself on equal rights for all. Quality clothing is a basic human right, and no American should be without it. As many as 60 million in this country suffer from inferior clothing, and many die due to a lack of proper warm clothing in the winter. We have a moral obligation as a people to correct this situation, and that's why I'm calling today for an overhaul of our clothing delivery system. Everybody should enjoy the same quality of fine clothing that Congress receives, and that's the goal of my clothing reform.

We currently have a system where greedy clothing retailers and wholesalers line their pockets with profits while the underprivileged struggle to meet their daily clothing needs. Giant corporate interests and Wall Street gamblers make millions in this immoral de-pantsing of ordinary working people, who often must make a decision on whether to purchase proper clothing or pay their heating bill. CEO's like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger rake in the big bucks and live in mansions. The same can be said for the supermodels, the beautiful people who serve as hucksters for the corporate world and drive clothing prices out of the reach of most. Together, these shirtsters and shoesters add 30%, 50%, 100%, or more to the cost of our underwear and outerwear.

I receive many letters and e-mails from Americans seeking help with their apparel needs. One such letter came from Mr. Willy Makeit of Gary, Indiana. Willy writes, 'Dear Mr. President. I've been out of work for 6 months, and this morning I finally had a job interview. When I went to put on my one decent pair of dress pants, I noticed the rear end had split out, leaving me nothing to wear for the interview. As a result, I didn't get the job, and now I don't know how I will feed my six kids. Please help. I'm nearly at the end of my rope. I'm also a veteran.'

Hearbreaking stories like this are why I'm calling for a redistribution of our clothing wealth. I am creating a government program that will require the big clothing corporations to provide affordable, quality clothing for all. This program will bend down the clothing cost curve and provide clothing subsidies of up to $1,500 per year to all who need it. I will pay for this program by reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and by imposing a tax on those making more than $250,000 per year. I also mandate that employers give clothing benefits to all employees at a minimum of $1,000 per employee per year. I further mandate that all clothing be union-made to insure that the finest quality is achieved. This will, of course, be resisted by the powerful special interests, but I will not stop. I will create a new government agency, the Federal Department Of Apparel, to insure against price-gouging, excessive profits, and outrageous executive salaries in the garment industry. My goal is to make the United States the best-dressed nation on earth, and I will not stop until this right is bestowed upon every man, woman, and child in this great country. Clothing is a more important right than the right to a job, the right to food, the right to shelter, or even the right to health care. Without clothing, you can't even do these other things. You'd be arrested if you went outside without any clothes on. Clothing is therefore a primary right.

There are naysayers who complain that the U.S. Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to control the clothing industry. This phony argument presents a false choice, and is only a distraction used for partisan political purposes. In addition, the Constitution has a blind spot when it comes to both casual and formal wear. The founding fathers did not address the issue.

There are others who desire a single-payer clothing system, and while that is an admirable goal, the history of garment development in this country does not easily lend itself to this end. Unfortunately, we have a history of capitalism and free market economics in this country. Despite all it's flaws and inequities, we cannot fundamentally transform this system overnight. It will take time. My clothing reform is an important and critical first step.

I expect Congress to have the Clothing Reform bill on my desk by the end of this year, when I will sign it into law. In closing, I say God bless America, whether your God be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever, or if you have no God at all. Thank you very much. Yes We Can !"

This column is dedicated to the folks who believe ObamaCare, with it's alleged 31 million more people being covered by health insurance, and with it's 2,500 pages of myriad rules, regulations, and taxes being implemented on business and the citizenry by Congress…..will somehow make health care LESS expensive. To all such folks, I bestow upon you the Reality Deniers Of The Year award.

The ObamaCare debacle is so massive and will ravage such a huge slice of our economy that I should have bestowed the Reality Deniers Of The Decade award on the aforementioned people, especially when the previous decade ended only a few days ago, right ?

Except the previous decade didn't end a few days ago, no matter how often we hear the news media say it did. That's something we believe that just isn't so. Because there was no year zero on our calendar, the first year A.D. was year one. That means means a new decade doesn't start until year 11. Our next decade starts on january 1, 2011, not 2010.

That's a small thing, but columnist Walter Williams mentioned it in his latest article, in which he tackled another thing we believe is true but just isn't so. I've even bought into this false belief myself, more than I should have. The belief is that America doesn't make anything anymore, that we've lost our manufacturing sector. This belief comes from all the losses of manufacturing jobs in this country over the last thiry years. The job loss is true, but much of that loss is due to technological advances in industry that make manufacturing less labor intensive. From the Williams piece:

According to the Federal Reserve, the dollar value of U.S. manufacturing output in November was $2.72 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220. Output per worker is three times as high as it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimates that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion (in 2008 dollars). If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy, with its own GDP, it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth richest economy. The GDPs are: U.S. ($14.2 trillion), Japan ($4.9 trillion), China ($4.3 trillion), U.S. manufacturing ($3.7 trillion), Germany ($3.7 trillion), France ($2.9 trillion) and the United Kingdom ($2.7 trillion).

With a manufacturing sector that produces more revenue than the entire GDP of all but two other countries, it sure seems we still make things here in the U.S., lots of things. It just doesn't take as many people to make them. Are we to roll back our technological advances just so we can employ more people ? I don't think so. Such a move WOULD sound the death knell for our manufacturing sector. Just as advances in the agricultural industry over the last century made farming far less labor intensive, so it is with manufacturing today. We could go the China route and pay manufacturing workers slave wages to produce cheap goods, but that isn't a desirable solution either. What we must do is adapt to a changing world. That is always going to be what we have to do to succeed. Instead of saying 'America doesn't make anything anymore,' it would be more accurate to say 'America doesn't make everything anymore.'

The next belief some hold that just isn't true is about the Guantanamo Bay prison. Even President Obama believes closing Gitmo will lessen the fervor of terrorists to attack us. Obama says Gitmo is a key recruiting tool of the jihadist movement. This is absolute nonsense. In order to share Obama's feeling, you have to believe that the simple act of moving the terrorists from Cuba to Illinois will somehow make the terrorists respond, "okay, things are alright now." This is absurdity taken to the nth degree. We'll still be holding the terrorists in prison, it'll just be in a different place. The idea that this will somehow appease the Islamic jihadists is inane. Do you really think they care WHERE Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his like-minded brethren are being held by the U.S. ??? It's the fact WE ARE HOLDING THEM that they care about. The fact we are fighting them in the first place is what they care about. The closing of Gitmo will have zero effect on the recruitment of jihadists. ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. Of course, we could always release more terrorists to Yemen or some other country sympathetic to the jihadists, as we've been doing, in the hopes it will appease the terrorists. That WOULD have an effect on terrorist recruitment. It would go UP by the number of terrorists we released, and it already has. Our lax policies have already resulted in over 70 terrorists going back to the jihadist fight against us. Brilliant policy, eh ? Let's try to appease ruthless murdering religious extremists who wish to establish dominance over the entire world. I'm certain that will work (NOT).

My final belief that just isn't so is about enacting more government entitlements in a country already $12 trillion in debt, that can't pay for all the unfunded entitlements already in existence, and with a government that invariably robs us blind, as it has with Social Security. That is completely insane thinking, but liberals think it's the right way to go, because they somehow believe it's "compassionate." (to bankrupt the entire nation).

But you've all heard me rant on about that enough already, so I'll spare you the details this time. Peace out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Senate formally apologized for slavery yesterday, one hundred and forty four years too late, one hundred and forty four years after slavery was abolished.

Do we all feel better now ? A bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery have apologized for it. Now we know that America doesn't condone slavery (and here I thought the Civil War settled that issue). Thank goodness. All those American pro-slavery groups can go pound salt. If there are any, that is, which there aren't (I hope).

But even the Senate's unaminous and meaningless kumbayah vote to apologize for slavery isn't without controversy here in grievance-based America, where it seems everyone feels slighted over something. The Senate's slavery apology contained a disclaimer which stated the apology didn't authorize any reparations claim for the descendants of slaves.

Cue the outrage. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the reparations disclaimer.

Sigh.

To be clear, I believe reparations for slavery were in order, but they were in order 144 YEARS AGO, not now. They were in order for people who actually WERE slaves. There are no reparations in order for people who are six or seven generations removed from slavery, for people who have the same civil rights as everyone else, for people who even have MORE civil rights than everyone else (affirmative action). I agree with President Obama, who said the best reparations are "good schools in the inner city." Obama embodies the lunacy of the reparations argument. Should we pay reparations to Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, just because his skin contains the required amount of melanin ? I don't think so.

As I'm writing this, there are some teevee talking heads arguing about whether or not the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is motivated by race. One talking head is saying it is, that the media is talking about all Jackson's drug use because he is black.

Sigh.

That talking head must not remember the teevee coverage of the deaths of Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, or Elvis Presley. The media wallowed in all the minutiae of each one's drug use, ad nauseum. It's about celebrity, not race.

Speaking of race-based issues, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court ruling in the Ricci case, and ruled that New Haven discriminated against 19 firefighters (18 white and 1 hispanic) when they threw out the results of a promotion test because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted. New Haven officials were afraid of protests by civil rights groups if no blacks were promoted, so they discriminated against the 19 firefighters and denied them the promotions they earned. As with so many of these types of cases, the Supreme Court vote was split. The 5-4 majority decision was resisted by the Court's four liberal members (who think discrimination is fine and dandy as long as it's done against white people). Of note is the fact that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was one of those overturned by the Supremes. As one of the appellate court judges, Sotomayor thought discrimination against white people was hunky-dory in the Ricci case too.

Your going to hears lots of grievance-mongering and spin about the Ricci case, but there is no reason for any of it. This country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and equal protection under the law is mandated in our Constitution. We have a Civil Rights Act that says you may not discriminate against people based upon race. That goes for ALL races. That's why slavery and Jim Crow laws were wrong. All we should do in this country is give everyone the same opportunity (as in, all the New Haven firefighters had the SAME opportunity for promotion, regardless of race. They all took the same test. That's equality). When we go beyond that to dictate outcomes based solely upon race, we violate our own principles and make a mockery of them.

It's time to get beyond race, as well as all the other false constructs that divide us. I've watched the civil rights movement go from one of righteousness in the 60's to the "gimme" entitlement mindset of today. No. You aren't entitled to anything in this country, except the equal opportunity to achieve or fail. After that, it's up to you, no matter who you are.

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.

President Obama met with 85 mayors today to tell them to spend their stimulus money responsibly. This strikes me as roughly equivalent to giving 85 alcoholics each a fifth of Jack Daniels and then telling them to drink responsibly. Right. Like that's gonna happen. The last I heard, the partisan breakdown of the group of mayors was 81 Democrats and 4 Republicans. I'm sure NBC will report this tonight as a "bipartisan group of mayors," with Obama "reaching across the aisle" to the Republicans because he gave each of the four a cookie or a glass of punch. I have a suggestion. Let's drop the word "bipartisan" from the political arena. There's nothing remotely resembling bipartisanship going on. The only reason the Democrats let Republicans Arlen Specter or Susan Collins be heard on the Porkulus monstrosity was because they needed their votes to pass it. No more, no less.

If you've recovered from the $1 trillion sticker stock of Porkulus (I haven't), well, BOHICA (bend over here it comes again). Saint Barack of Hopenchange has gazed down upon his flock from the mountaintop, saw homeowners who might default on their mortgages, and asked himself "What Would Jesus Do ?" He decided Jesus would rob Peter to pay Paul, and announced a government program to steal another $275 billion in future taxpayer money to bail out those poor unfortunate lambs who irresponsibly bought more house than they can afford.

One comforting note – $275 billion doesn't sound like so much money anymore, even though it is. When compared to the $3 trillion we've spent so far on the worst economic crisis in the entire history of the Federation Of Planets, it almost sounds like chicken feed.

This reminds me of a time many years ago when, due to some adversity called "life," I found myself living in a house I couldn't afford. My solution was to move to a cheaper place I could afford, but that was prior to the new Obamequality. If only I'd known. I could have gone to my neighbor and forced him to pay my mortgage. Alas, I didn't feel entitled to do that. At the time, I had some apparently misguided ideas about being responsible for my own decisions. I know now that my parents and teachers must have been pulling my leg when they taught me such failed ideas from the past.

Vive le stinking revolucion.

President Obama signed the SCHIP expansion into law yesterday amid great Democratic fanfare. As Democrats like to do, Obama pointed out a family that would benefit by his wonderful legislation (this time it was the Secrest family). Unmentioned, of course, were the hundreds of thousands of families to be hurt by the tax increase which pays for the SCHIP expansion. I've written before about how Obama is paying for SCHIP with a 61 cent tax on cigarettes, which studies show falls mainly on the poor, who smoke at much higher rates than more wealthy people do. I don't want to rehash all that again, but Obama made some comments during yesterday's SCHIP victory speech that I can't let pass:

But, as I think everybody here will agree, this is only the first step. Because the way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American…We'll have made the single largest investment in prevention and wellness in history, attacking problems like smoking and obesity, and helping people live longer, healthier lives.

I've heard politicians make stupid statements before, lots of them, but I want to nominate this one for the stupidity hall of fame. In the same speech that Obama is celebrating an SCHIP expansion funded by cigarette smokers, he says he wants to eliminate the problem of smoking…..which would eliminate the funding for his SCHIP expansion. Duh. In fact, SCHIP funding depends on the creation of 24 million NEW smokers.

Obama seamlessly morphed his "for the children" plea into a reason we should fork over $1 trillion+ for his pork-filled stimulus bill. He's promoting the dubious proposition that we can "help" our children by deficit spending ourselves into oblivion, which will saddle our children with mountains of debt and certainly lower their future living standards. This is precisely what Ronald Reagan warned about when he said the scariest words in the english language were, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Our post-partisan president also took a shot at Republicans who oppose The One's spend-a-palooza:

Now, let me say this. In the past few days, I've heard criticisms of this plan that, frankly, echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can address this enormous crisis with half-steps, and piecemeal measures, and tinkering around the edges, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

Yeah, those rotten tax-cutting Republicans. How can those GOP wingnuts possibly think that giving people more of their own money back through tax cuts will help them…to….have…..more….money ? That's just crazy talk. Divisive. As for those "same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis in the first place," why does Obama think it was 10% tax cuts that did it ? Why doesn't Obama recognize the 50% increase in GOVERNMENT SPENDING during the Bush years as a contributing factor ??? How about the fact that government spending has doubled in the last decade ? Why doesn't Obama recognize that failed policy ? It couldn't be because Obama wants to DOUBLE OR TRIPLE that spending increase, could it ? What a bunch of malarkey our president is trying to push on us. He's trying to pass the largest government spending bill in history off as a "stimulus package", and then condemns the GOP for wanting to restrict the bill to things that actually might have a chance to stimulate the economy. I'm also pretty sure the GOP isn't strenuously objecting to the infrastructure projects either. Mr. Post-partisan forgot to mention that too.

Finally, the president pushed his electoral mandate:

"I reject these [GOP] theories. And, by the way, so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

Now, I don't want to be a stickler or anything, and as mesmerized as I am by that word 'change,' I don't recall Obama campaining on the idea that he was going to pass a $1 trillion spending bill right after he was elected, do you ??? I don't remember him saying he was going to raise the cigarette tax by 61 cents per pack either. Such things might have influenced the outcome of the election. If only Obama had been more "transparent" about the policies he intended to pursue. What I remember Obama saying is "tax cuts for 95% of Americans" over and over, just like those failed Republicans are doing. What I remember is Obama saying he'd make health care more affordable. Now, objecting to his tax increases and massive spending increases is a "failed theory." No, Mr. President, what you are promoting is the failed theory, the one that says we can continue to live beyond our means. It's the same big government theory we've been operating on all along, except now you want to put it on even more powerful steroids, to make it a super-failed theory. No thank you.

And the polls are showing Americans don't want the stimulus bill passed in it's current pork-packed form. By all means, Mr. President, listen to the people.

President Obama said the SCHIP expansion was "only the first step."

That's precisely what I'm afraid of.