On, Wisconsin!

Mark Noonan22 Comments

According to the polls, Walker will be re-elected (is that the proper term for surviving a recall?) today by the voters of Wisconsin – by 5 to 10 percentage points, depending on which poll you believe (I tend towards the higher margin of victory – not because a poll says so, but because the dynamics of the race are showing increasing GOP support and a collapse of Democrat support).  While various liberal pundits and power brokers have spent the last week or so downplaying the significance of the Wisconsin result the fact remains that the American left poured everything it had in to Wisconsin – first to try and prevent Walker’s reforms from being enacted then in an attempt to undo them, with this recall vote today just being the last gasp.   After all this effort if Walker survives, then this is the death knell for the American left.

The left, since the 1930’s, has used the government to fund the increasing power of the left.  Public sector unions are just this sort of thing on steroids – such unions lobby themselves (essentially) on whether or not government will get bigger while they also ensure that anyone who plays ball with Big Government and the left gets rewarded with wealth and/or political power.  The real reason that government never gets smaller is because the government funds (on a gigantic scale) a vast army of lobbyists who work night and day against the concept of reducing government.  As long as public sector unions have unfettered power to draw money from government workers and use it in support of those politicians who are willing to increase the power and size of government (and thus the power and size of the public sector unions, as well as other leftist groups), so will government continue to grow.   While Walker’s reforms did a lot of things the most important aspect of it was to liberate the workers of Wisconsin government from a de-facto requirement to be a member of the union.

As was reported a few days back, public sector union membership has collapsed in Wisconsin – all due to Walker’s reform which took away the union’s power to deduct dues automatically from and employees pay.  Now the unions have to rely on voluntary subscription…and the workers are showing they want nothing to do with the union.  It was this which really impelled the leadership of the left to go ballistic.  While rank and file liberals are still convinced that Walker just hates workers, the union bosses know that the real issue is whether or not workers like the union.  Events are showing that they don’t – and each person who quits the union takes one more bit of power from the union.  The power to influence elections and lobby for ever larger government is ebbing away from the unions, and thus from the overall left.

This is for the whole ball of wax.  If Walker wins, then the public sector unions are on the ropes – and it then becomes only a matter of time, given our budget crisis, that the rest of government funding for the left goes to the chopping block.  Think about this – the taxpayers provide a great deal of money for Planned Parenthood.  PP spends a great deal of money not only advancing abortion, as a cause, but also attacking Republicans in service of their cause.  Boiled down – though PP pretends to keep the funds separate – the tax dollars of pro-life Americans are being used to fund the political advancement of pro-abortion Americans.  On and on it goes through a whole host of groups…all of them leftist, all of them getting all or part of their funding from the taxpayers, all of them advancing causes which most of the taxpayers oppose.  With fear of the unions gone, more and more politicians will be willing to slaughter liberal sacred cows to balance the budget.

So, get ready first off for a lot of fun tonight – watching crestfallen liberals and making fun of their increasingly bizarre attempts to spin this as not a loss, at all.  But then watch them come blazing back on the attack, knowing that if Obama goes down to defeat, there will be nothing stopping the federal government from duplicating Walker’s efforts.

UPDATE:  So far reports indicate a very high turnout.

UPDATE II:  Still many reports of high turnout and some indications of Democrat ballot box stuffing efforts.  Drudge is saying that early exits indicate Walker by 5 – which is doubly encouraging because it appears that Democrat areas had the higher turnout early on.  It will be what it will be – and I expect Walker will win as his victory margin will be outside the Democrat “margin of fraud”.

Monday Morning Open Thread

Retired Spook62 Comments

Lots going on this week:

The Wisconsin recall election is tomorrow.  How will the outcome affect the general election in November?

George Soros says “90 days to save Euro”.

Washed up and disgraced golfer, Tiger Woods, wins his second tournament of the year and moves up to 3rd in the FedEx Cup point standings.

Romney continues to gain in the polls, especially among women.

Global economy at risk as US, Europe and Asia slow.

Do Economists EVER get predictions right?

Your tax dollars hard at work protecting the nation from terrorists.

The BIG RESET?

Feel free to discuss these topics or anything else of interest.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  Lost in Friday’s dismal employment report is this:

Last Friday’s unemployment news crashed the stock market and upended the presidential race. Lost in the excitement, however, was the news that African-American unemployment, already significantly above general levels, rose by much more.

Nationally, unemployment in May rose from 8.1 percent to 8.2. This is bad, especially considering how much time has passed since our economic troubles began, but it is less than catastrophic. As the Root reports, for African-Americans, however, the news was much, much worse. Unemployment among Blacks rose from 13.0 percent to 13.6 percent…

Seriously, black Americans, is Obama really doing a darned thing for you?  Is this the man you’ll really give 90% of your votes to on November 6th?

Ed Schultz’s Campaign for Wisconsin

Retired Spook73 Comments

For those of you who don’t know Ed Schultz, he’s one of Cluster’s favorite comedians, broadcasting his ever-so-popular show from that dynamic comedy channel, MSNBC. The indomitable Schultz is waging a one-man campaign to save Wisconsin from the evil Scott Walker.  I say “one-man” because pretty much everyone else in the lame-street media has abandoned the effort.  But if it’s one thing that ol’ Ed lacks it’s shame and the capacity to be embarrassed.

Now that Wisconsin isn’t collapsing, and in fact is seeing a dramatic economic improvement, it’s somehow no longer Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, and the liberal networks have pretty much stayed away. But Schultz keeps pounding away in a panic, lamenting that not only is Walker “the worst governor in the country,” but that those evil Republicans and their capitalist funders like the Koch brothers are “trying to make it so Barack Obama doesn’t get re-elected and no Democrat ever will be elected into the White House.” Schultz warned, “There’ll never be a Democratic president in our lifetime again.  And when I say in our lifetime, I’m talking about a long, long, long, long, long time.”

We’ll find out in about 3-1/2 days whether or not  Ed’s singular efforts have been successful.  It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in either case.

Hat-tip to Cluster for the link for this post

 

Doomed to an Economic Depression?

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Lots of bad news out there, today – US unemployment rate rose to 8.2%, Eurozone unemployment rose to 11% (ours is probably right there, too, but the Eurocrats haven’t, it seems,  figured out how to fudge numbers as well as Obama’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has), a host of bad news out of China indicates a possible “hard landing” for that economy, which will take Australia and Canada (major commodity suppliers to China) down with it, what amounts to a bank run in Greece and the start of one in Spain…and, yesterday, I read an article which I hope was a bald-faced lie because it says the derivatives market (something I don’t fully understand but from what I can gather it is nothing but a bunch of ponzi scheme garbage) is leveraged to 10 times global GDP…and there’s simply nothing to back all that garbage up.  So, are we doomed to a Depression?

The answer is “yes” and, also, “it started in 2008”.  For you liberals out there, this will provide you a bit of comfort:  Obama is not at fault for it.  On the downside, though, just about everything he has done has ensured that it not only won’t get fixed, but will actually get worse.  He hasn’t been alone in this, of course – Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve (as well as other central bankers around the world) has piled on the harm with all his money printing.  The problems of the global economy are as follows:

The world uses fake money – money just printed up by central banks and backed by nothing.  Fake money allows insolvent banks and governments to keep themselves afloat but it works out to the systematic stealing of the money of wealth-creators.  If you work hard today and earn a dollar what will happen is a 100th of a penny of it will be stolen tomorrow…that 100th of a penny isn’t so bad, but after 10 years it works out to quite a lot of the dollar you earned.  Fake money essentially allows failure to be masked – what is economically counter-productive can be kept going because you can keep passing fake money through it.  That you are all the while eroding the entire economy does not show up for a while, but show up it will.

We allow governments to pile up debt.  Government debt is not an “investment”.  An investment is when you take some of your own money and provide it to someone else who has worked out a plan to generate more wealth than was put in to it.  So, I have $100,000.00 and I see some guy in a garage with what I think will be a great product and I give the $100,000.00 to him to start up manufacturing – next year, the guy in a garage is a guy in a factory and he pays me back $125,000.00 while he, himself, is worth $250,000.00.  Government spending can provide some useful things, of course, but even when it does it isn’t like that.  A road facilitates commerce but it doesn’t actually return money on the money spent.  If the government spends a billion dollars building a new road its not like the government will get 1.5 billion dollars back on it next year.  True, the economic activity stimulated by the good road will result in a broader tax base but its still not an “I loan you money for your wealth-producing enterprise and I get paid back with interest while your wealth-producing enterprise just goes on and on making more and more wealth”.  So, even in the best of circumstances (a needed road), government spending is not an investment; even less so is government spending an investment when it goes in to things like high paid bureaucrats, subsidies to favored groups, welfare, etc, etc, etc.  It still might be something desired overall but it isn’t an investment.

Even worse, though, when the government spending is not out of current revenues but is borrowed against future revenues.  When we spend tomorrow’s money today on government we are not only not investing but we are de-investing…because every cent borrowed by the government is a cent which can’t be borrowed by persons and enterprises in the private economy who would use that borrowing to create new or expanded sources of wealth creation.  Whatever benefit you might get from such borrowing will be short lived, at best, and may actually harm the economy because the money borrowed by government is all too often to be wasted by the sundry sorts of graft common to government.

What started in 2008 and continues to this day – masked by a gigantic amount of fake money and government debt – is the logical and easily predicted outcome of a system which has at its bottom fake money and government debt.  I’m only astounded that it has kept going as long as it has.  Shows the power of people to blind themselves to reality – and our short-sightedness.  We listen with amusement to tales of what prices used to be…never thinking for a moment that, hey, the reason prices used to be lower is that our money was worth more and what the heck happened to our money?  It is when we create wealth that we get prosperous – when, that is, we make, mine and grow things.  Nothing else does it.  10,000 law degrees, 100 government departments and bureaus and the next 50 social media sites – not a single bit of wealth being created.  The next time a farmer plants a corn crop?  Wealth created.  The next time a miner digs in the earth?  Wealth created.  The next time someone makes a pair of pliers?  Wealth created.

In order for this wealth creation to happen we mush have three things:

1.  Investment money for wealth-creators to start up or expand their wealth creating enterprises.

2.  Reliable money which holds its value over time so that investors can safely invest for long term wealth creation (fake money, on the other hand, moves investors to protect their wealth by looking for the highest rate of short term gain).

3.  A tax and regulatory system which encourages money to flow in to wealth creating enterprises while laying the burden of proof for new regulations upon those who would impose them (not, as now, simply imposing them and then asking the victims to prove they aren’t necessary).

Investment money will primarily come from paying down government debt.  We’ve got $15 trillion of potential investment money sitting in the form of US government bonds.  Entirely wasted there – we need to balance our budget as swiftly as possible so that each year more and more of the $15 trillion becomes available to the private economy.

Reliable money would best come from returning to the gold standard but people have been so relentlessly propagandized against such currency that it would be a hard sell.  Our best option, for now, is to require Congressional action for increasing the supply of money – whatever we do, don’t leave in the hands of central bankers to go “cntrl-p” whenever their Bankster buddies are in trouble.

As you can easily see, neither of those things can be fixed as long as liberals have any say in the matter, let alone any real efforts to tackle tax and regulatory reform.  Essentially, fixing the problem requires a clean sweep of our liberal Democrats – though even if we did that we’d have no end of trouble from the RINOs.  What needs to be done to fix things, after all, is the gutting of a politico-economic which the current beneficiaries don’t want to let go.  A long, hard war is required – but we take each battle as it comes.  The first one comes on November 6th – then we can start actually fixing our economy and emerging from the Depression.

 

The Impending Implosion

Retired Spook128 Comments

The American Progressive movement is soon to collapse upon itself and we can
probably expect the self destruction to be loud and messy – there are signs of it already — everywhere.  The brain trust at MSNBC are getting more shrill by the day, as evidenced by Al Sharpton’s recent tirade; Elizabeth Warren appears poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory due to a convenient lie told to further her liberal cred and career; Obama is now known to have told a similar lie to further his standing in the progressive movement including his recent endorsement of same sex marriage; Obamacare is most likely to lose in the SC, as is their lawsuit against AZ; even some democrats are now opposing the incessant attacks on private equity; the “war on women” has gone no where; and now they find themselves the subject of 42 lawsuits on behalf of a very powerful institution in the name of the Catholic Church, and these are just some of the current troubles confronting this regime. Add to that the Euro crisis, the Egypt thing isn’t turning out well and oh yeah, there’s that economy thing, and we’ve got the makings of the perfect storm

Scott Walker winning in WI will hopefully be the beginning of the end for progressives, culminating in November, and most likely we can expect an all out assault on conservatives, decency and common sense by the media, the administration, and by their loyalists, ie; OWS, SEIU, AFL-CIO, etc, throughout the summer. I hope Romney stays focused and on message through what portends to be a very vicious campaign, and I hope conservatives will hold him to account to do the necessary things to get us back on track when he wins. This is an important election in not only rescuing the country, but in hopefully “fundamentally transforming” the Democratic Party of Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, into the party of people like Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford and Joe Manchin, and digging back into the past, people like John Breaux and Sam Nunn. Maybe then we can start getting things done.

Thanks to Cluster for the content of this post.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:

Can you say “meltdown”, boys and girls?  From the LA Times:

Artur Davis, one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Democratic party for good.

In a post published Tuesday on his website, Davis was vague about his future political endeavors, but declared: “If I were to run, it would be as a Republican. And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”

Davis, who represented Alabama’s seventh congressional district from 2003 to 2011, was notably the first member of Congress outside of Illinois to endorse then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 presidential bid. And it was Davis who seconded the official nomination of Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention…(emphasis added)

This is pretty huge – this is the draggled, rotting, tail-end of “hope and change”.

Memorial Day Weekend Open Thread

Retired Spook127 Comments

Just a few of the ongoing stories shaping events as we head into this holiday weekend, where we celebrate the sacrifices of countless generations of selfless Americans to keep us safe and advance the cause of freedom around the globe.

Greece continues to slide toward oblivion with the masses complaining about losing government jobs and bennies and the people who should be footing a good portion of the bill, evading taxes in every conceivable way.  One of the main organizations shoring up the Greek economy is the International Monetary Fund — whose Managing Director has little sympathy for the Greeks.  Will the IMF and the EU continue to prop up the irresponsible Greeks or just let them implode.  What effect will either choice have on the EU and economies beyond Europe?

It looked as though Elizabeth Warren might easily unseat Scott Brown from Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat until it came to light that Warren claimed to be part Cherokee Indian.

However, when Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson, citing a genealogist, announced “In what may be the ultimate and cruelest irony … it turns out that Warren’s great-great-great grandfather was a member of a militia unit which participated in the round-up of the Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears,” Warren’s candidacy began to implode.

On the scientific front, the privatization of space exploration has begun.

Feel free to discuss these or any other topics.

The Bankrupt States of America

Mark Noonan53 Comments

From USA Today:

…The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books… (emphasis added)

The report goes on to note, among other things, that for Social Security to be solvent we’d need to have $22.2 trillion set aside and earning interest.  Clearly, that is an impossible sum – we don’t have it and we can’t get it, ever.  And that is just Social Security – it doesn’t count the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, the upcoming ObamaCare bill, other entitlements and, of course, all the other bloated, wasteful spending which is built in to our government.  And it entirely leaves aside the amount of debt our State and local governments have accrued.  The bottom line:  the United States is bankrupt.

For now, we’re able to play around with this – pretend, that is, that we’re not bankrupt and that money will be there for everything.  But the reality is there – Paul Ryan is right:  we’re heading for the most predictable financial disaster in human history.  Unless we take charge of our nation and reform our taxing, spending and regulations, we’re doomed to an economic wipe out which will make the Great Depression seem like small potatoes.  If you want to see where we’re heading, look at Greece…and land of riots, bank runs and a government which can’t even pony up for the prescription drugs they promised the people of Greece; and I don’t mean “having trouble paying”…the Greek government simply stopped paying for the drugs.  They are out of money.

We’re probably three to five years away from that point…maybe as many as 7 years if we really go flat out with money-printing and financial gimmicks (which would also be disastrous in terms of rapid inflation and other dislocations).  But unless we fundamentally change how things are done, we’re doomed sooner or later (and I think sooner – the latest data from Europe and China indicates they are in recession and I bet we’ve been in recession for a couple months now, but the data are being fudged…they were being fudged in Europe and, especially, China, too…but you can’t “hide the decline” forever).  This is why November 6th is so crucial – a re-elected Obama, even if he’s set with a fully GOP Congress, simply will not make any move to disturb business as usual.  Even if he’s not able to increase spending the fact that we won’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate will prevent any budget from being passed…and we’ll be saddled with year after year of “continuing resolutions” which lock in place the bonanza of extra spending Reid and Pelosi piled on in 2009.  Obama must go if America is to avoid catastrophe.

Romney, on the other hand, is enough of a business man to know we can’t go on like this – and while he might want to compromise more with the left than we’d like, an increasingly conservative/libertarian Congress will ensure that a lot of really good policies are enacted.  Additionally, the force of circumstances will push Romney and the Congress towards the radical solutions needed.  It won’t do anyone any good getting a good write-up about bi-partisanship in the Washington Post if failure to act responsibly leads to35% unemployment in 2014.  With their backs against the wall, a GOP government has a good chance of doing something worthwhile.

This is serious, good people – we’re in quite a fix and like Obama’s old preacher used to say, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.  We’ve spent too much for too long while harrying wealth creators with a regressive tax and regulatory system.  It is change it, or die.

 

Gingrich Gets it Right

Mark Noonan165 Comments

From CNN:

“I am not for a narrow victory,” he said. “I am for crushing the left in every single way.”

Gingrich was, of course, Matt’s first choice for nominee – he was my 2nd or 3rd (Santorum was always my first).  For me, Romney was a bit back there in the pack but always with the understanding that the crucial necessity is to ensure that Obama leaves office on January 20th, 2013.

The capstone for getting rid of Obama came, in my view, just recently – when it was revealed that in 1991 he was described as being born in Kenya.  Naturally, the Obamatons leaped to in action when this came out and called it a “mistake”.  But I don’t buy that – I call it a lie, instead.   Here is the key to Obama:  he’ll say or do anything to advance himself.  Back when he was just starting out being from an upper class, white Hawaiian family just didn’t cut enough liberal ice – being a foreign born son of a radical anti-British communist!  Well, that did the trick quite nicely.

From “composite” girlfriends in his autobiography (which, it would seem, millions of liberal pinheads bought but few read) to joining Wright’s racist church, Obama has merely crafted a narrative for himself as best suited his immediate needs.  And the cruelty with which he tosses aside old friends like Wright (say what you will about Wright, but have some sympathy:  for 20 years Obama and Wright were close and then Wright got in the way of the newest narrative, and he had to go) is just another indicator of the wrongness of Obama.

I don’t really know what Obama is up to – he’s up to radical leftism, but with what goal in mind, I don’t know:  I suspect there isn’t one in the traditional, political sense.  All we’re seeing now is yet another narrative, this one designed to get Obama re-elected.  After that, he’ll just go on to the next narrative – whatever makes him continue to rise up the ladder in his own estimation.  The trouble is that we need a President – someone who cares less about himself and more about the United States.  A re-elected Obama will not just pursue stupid, destructive policies, but he’ll also ignore any problem which can’t lead to more glory for Obama – and that is a recipe for national and global catastrophe.

Gingrich sees this – and sees more:  Obama must go, but the left as a whole must be crushed.  Our only task as conservatives, patriots and Americans from now until November 6th is to beat these people.  Because if we don’t, we’re going to pay too high a price for failure.

The Wisconsin Recall Election

Retired Spook127 Comments

There’s a really interesting dynamic at work in Wisconsin, in the run up to the June 5th recall election of Governor Scott Walker.

The majority of polls show Walker once against beating Barrett, with a recent Public Policy Polling poll showing Walker garnering 50 percent of the vote to Barrett’s 45 percent.

This 5 percent margin was unchanged since PPP last polled Wisconsin voters in April, showing that the May 8 Democratic primary did nothing to help boost Barrett’s chances at beating Walker in June.

However, Barrett’s failure to catch steam might be at the fault of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In an exclusive report by the Washington Post, top Wisconsin Democrats are furious at the DNC for not helping to fund Barrett’s gubernatorial bid against Walker.

“We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official told the Washington Post. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”

One has to wonder just what development has stalled the near hysterical fervor of Democrats to get rid of Scott Walker.  The secret could well lie in recent revelations that the Bureau of Labor Statistics may have knowingly or unknowingly represented a false picture of the jobs and unemployment situation in Wisconsin (gee, where have we heard that allegation before?)  I had read a while back that unemployment in Wisconsin had dropped from 7.8% to 6.9% in Walker’s first year in office, and figured that would be a plus in the recall election.  So I was more than a little surprised when Democrats began charging that, under Walker’s leadership, Wisconsin had the WORST job creation record in the entire country.  Sounded like fuzzy math to me, until a read this piece today:

Relying on an alternative set of jobs numbers, embattled Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker is touting job creation during his term in office, saying numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics — which show Wisconsin losing jobs during that period — are not accurate.

The new numbers from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, released by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, calculate that Wisconsin added more than 23,000 jobs between December 2010 and December 2011, the first full year of Walker’s term.

During his campaign, Walker promised to add 250,000 private sector jobs in his first term as governor.

The numbers diverge sharply from BLS stats, which showed Wisconsin lost 33,900 jobs over that same period. That put the Badger State in last place for job creation nationwide.

Wisconsin’s number-crunchers claim their numbers are more accurate because they are based on data from “nearly all Wisconsin businesses.” The BLS numbers, by contrast, are an estimate based on data from 5,500 Wisconsin companies, which comprise just 3.5 percent of the Wisconsin workforce.

“It looks like 160,000 Wisconsin employers helped show us the thousands of new jobs that BLS estimates missed last year,” Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson said in a press release. “The bottom line is Wisconsin added jobs in 2011.”

Obama’s only chance at getting reelected is for published national unemployment figures to come down at least another percentage point, since no president since FDR has been reelected with unemployment over 7.2%.  It’s pretty clear that what we need on the national level is a coordinated effort on the part of the Departments of Workforce Development from each state to come up with a comprehensive report and then compare it to the figures presented by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.  My sense is that most thinking Americans already know that the 8.3% unemployment and the 4.1 million jobs created or saved are simply made up figures, but it would be nice to have something besides a NewsMax headline telling them that their intuition is right.