Europe on the Brink

Mark Noonan6 Comments

With a slow-motion bank run going on in Greece, this over at CNBC should send some financial shivers down your spine:

Europe is a “train wreck” and on the “brink of a major financial crisis,” Scott Minerd, CIO of the fixed-income firm Guggenheim Partners, told CNBC Tuesday.

“The way Europe is operating right now, it’s what I called recently ‘cognitive dissonance,'” Minerd said, or “basically doing the same thing thinking they’re going to get a different outcome.”

“They keep throwing more and more liquidity at it thinking it’s going to get better and it’s not,” he added. Europe fails to recognize that it has a “structural problem, not a liquidity problem.”…

The structural problems facing Europe are gigantic – aging populations, declining populations, low productivity in many countries (especially those which owe the most), too much welfare/socialism, too much debt…on and on it goes, and it can’t be sustained.

Here’s the bad news – Europe is just a few years ahead of us.  We’ve already got an aging population, we’re just a few years away from having a declining population, our productivity is being hampered (mostly by government regulation), and Obama and his Democrats want to put us all on welfare as they build the United Socialist States of America.  Europe has no way out – they’ll have to go through a really gigantic financial catastrophe in payment for their idiocy.  We still have a few years left to avert that – we’ll still have to pay a pretty steep price, but nothing like what Europe will have to bear.  The choice we make  next year will decide it for us – bad times followed by good, or hideous times followed by a very long, slow climb back to health (if that can be managed, at all).

Think carefully about what you want…

Obamunism! Food Stamp Usage Skyrockets in a Very Strange Way

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Hat tip to Zero Hedge, which notes a real oddity about it:

…After last month the data for April food stamp recipients indicated the we may, just may, be reaching an inflection point in the foodstamp participation following a mere 60 thousand jump in those receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), today’s just released data confirmed that the BLS and BEA may have had a hand or two when determining this latest data series. Because the just announced jump in foodstamp usage of over 1.1 million entirely out of the blue…

…But wait, there’s more. Digging into the numbers reveals something pecuiliar: virtually the entire surge in monthly SNAP participation is due to one state alone: Alabama, which saw those living on foodstamps jump from 868K to 1.762MM…

The fact that this many people are on food stamps is bad…but the indication of data manipulation is worse.  I ask the question:  Is the Obama Administration fudging the data to make the economic picture look better, and only correcting the data when it becomes so bad there’s no way around it?

It isn’t just here – almost invariably, each week the previous week’s first time claims for unemployment are revised upwards.  Almost invariably, when new unemployment rate data is released there is a reduction in labor-force participation.  Both of these actions tend to help Obama.  Experts I’ve read indicate that if labor force participation was in line with what we’ve seen over the past ten years, the unemployment rate would be above 11%.  Imagine for a moment what the political picture would look like here in August of 2011 if unemployment was officially at 11% and figured to go higher all through the rest of the year…there would be a stampede for the exits away from Obama.  He’d be a lame duck…Democrats would just be trying to protect themselves, and a genuine (as opposed to fringe) primary challenger to Obama would become possible.

The political facts of life are that even if unemployment is above 7% in November of 2012, it will be hard for Obama to secure re-election.  Every point higher magnifies Obama’s difficulty…and getting above 10% makes it just about impossible for Obama to win, even if we nominated a Paul/Huntsman ticket.  I’m really starting to smell a rat here…a manipulation of data in order to make it appear that things aren’t that bad, thus giving Obama his chance to win.  The data can be adjusted towards reality after the election…and whether Obama has won or lost won’t matter at that point.

Congress should investigate this.  This is what “oversight” is for:  to ensure that the Executive Branch is carrying out its duties in accordance with law. We need to know if we’re being lied to for Obama’s political benefit.

 

Brazilians Smarter Than Americans

Mark Noonan16 Comments

From Bloomberg:

Brazil will provide $16 billion in tax breaks and toughen trade barriers to protect manufacturers hurt by a currency rally that’s fueling a surge in imports from China.

The targeted tax breaks and incentives, which amount to 25 billion reais over two years, were announced today by President Dilma Rousseff after a report showed industrial production plunged 1.6 percent in June, the second biggest drop since 2008.

The plan, called “A Bigger Brazil,” will eliminate a 20 percent payroll tax for industries such as shoemakers and software firms hurt by the real’s 48 percent rally since the end of 2008, which has reduced the cost of imports and strengthened decades-old complaints by business about excessive costs…

A bit protectionist, to be sure, but the basic thing is to reduce the cost of creating wealth within Brazil in order to ensure that the free labor of Brazil is not undercut by the slave labor of China.  This is just rational policy.  Free trade is all well and good – but only between people who are mutually free.  Free trade with a tyrannical nation is a contradiction…there will be trade, but it won’t be free:  it will come at a high cost to the free labor of the one and even of the slave labor of the other, as their chains are more securely fastened.

I’ve been saying it for years, and it is another thing I’ll keep saying until everyone agrees with me, because I’m right:  we must ditch “free trade” and turn to “freedom trade”.  The American worker can and will out-compete every other workforce in the world…but he can’t compete with a government which deliberately keeps wages low, allows sub-standard products to be shipped to the United States and connives as the theft of American intellectual property.  As long as China is playing with loaded economic dice, it is asinine for us to allow them to enter our market place.  Let them institute free and fair multi-party elections and then we can trade with them…until that time, keep them out.

Go ahead and try and argue me out of this position, but be warned that you would ultimately be defending a position where US wealth is transferred to a China which is building up a military force for the purpose of challenging us.  Good luck with that.

Out and About on a Tuesday Morning

Mark Noonan73 Comments

Putin calls America a “parasite” on the global economy…I’d be offended except this is the opinion of the leader of a kleptocracy presiding over the dying nation of Russia.

We’re broke…but we’re giving out free birth control.  Nothing like having our priorities in order, huh?  You know, really, death and despair really aren’t the answer.

DC residents are America’s biggest boozers…puts a new twist on the “spending money like a drunken sailor” thing.

The Anchoress picks up a timely quote from Chesterton…use it any time you hear a Ruling Class cretin getting upset about the TEA Party or, indeed, any manifestation of popular will:

Our Civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men to know no more law than I know, but who can feel the thing that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the founder of Christianity.

I got one, too:

Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world. The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. The second class may be called for convenience the Poets; they are often a nuisance to their families, but, generally speaking, a blessing to mankind. The third class is that of the Professors or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful people; and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and also to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps, like all classification. Some good people are almost poets and some bad poets are almost professors. But the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage.

The next make-believe battle the MSM will say is tearing the GOP apart – a fight between deficit and defense hawks.  Yawn.  Next…

 

 

 

 

How to Cut – Really Cut – Government Spending

Mark Noonan45 Comments

It isn’t hard – from Zero Hedge:

…In a nutshell: do to the government, what the privates sector has done to itself in the past 3 years, and fire 15% of the federal government workforce…

…slimming the US government ever so modestly, by just 15%, would generate savings of $117.4 billion a year, or $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. And no, these are not reductions in future spendings: these are real actionable cuts from the day they are enacted, with fungible cash able to be used for any other, much more needed purposes, up to and including economically stimulative projects, which actually generate jobs for the private sector…

Ah, but that would mean less government employees, and thus less government union members…and so less donations to Democrats seeking power.  It is a nauseating circle of corruption…demands for big government in order to pay for politicians backing big government who will then make government even bigger.

Now, why didn’t the GOP go this rout?  For two reasons:

1.  The TEA Party element is strong, but it is not dominant in the GOP.  It can stop some things from happening, but it cannot yet force through genuinely conservative/libertarian policies.

2.  Even as the TEA Party element rises from strength to strength, we have to deal with the reality that the American people installed an ultra-leftist President in 2008.  Obama simply will not – cannot, in fact – make genuine cuts in spending.  Liberal Democrats had been slavering for years in anticipation of just that day…the day they managed to hoodwink the American people in to voting an ultra-leftist President in to office while ultra-leftists controlled the Congress.  They essentially upped government spending by a trillion dollars annually and this is to be the “new normal”; no liberal is ever going to be allowed to cut in to it.

But what this proposal shows is that without even for a moment altering the basic structure of our government, massive spending cuts are possible.  The government is so impossibly over-bloated that you can make cuts of $100 billion a year and you’ll still have an overwhelming behemoth of government.  All the talk of throwing granny over the cliff is just so much liberal lies…and they simply must know it; no one is actually that stupid.

Get ready for the political fight of your life – 2012 will be the final battle between liberty and Big Government.  One of the two will prevail, and probably prevail for good.

Obama Just Isn’t Liberal, Enough

Mark Noonan21 Comments

From The New Yorker:

…Of course, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment has always been a long shot, a last refuge. But Obama’s seeming refusal to hold it in reserve (“like the fire axe on the wall,” in Garrett Epps’s words) is emblematic of his all too civilized, all too accommodating negotiating strategy—indeed, of his whole approach to the nation’s larger economic dilemma, the most disappointing aspect of his Presidency. His stimulus package asked for too little and got less. He has allowed deficits and debt to supersede mass unemployment as the emergency of the moment. He has too readily accepted Republican terms of debate, such as likening the country to a household that must “live within its means.” (For even the most prudent householders, living within one’s means can include going into debt, as in taking out a car loan so that one can get to one’s job.) He has done too little to educate the public to the wisdom of post-Herbert Hoover economics: fiscal balance is achieved over time, not in a single year; in flush times a government should run a surplus, but when the economy falters deficits are part of the remedy; when the immediate problem is what it is now—a lack of demand, not a shortage of capital—higher spending is generally more efficacious than lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich…

And now the Carterization of Obama is complete…well, except that he hasn’t had his Killer Rabbit attack.  You see, I remember this – back in 1980 when I was gleefully reading over the liberal angst about Carter’s defeat, there were liberal opinions that Carter’s failure was that he wasn’t liberal enough.  Had he spent more, taxed more, cut defense more, negotiated with our enemies more…had he just gone full blown in to the most extreme liberalism possible, it all would have worked out.  There is a bizarre disconnect from reality in our “reality-based community”…the unwillingness to ever admit that liberalism can get it wrong, or even be unpopular.

One does have to wonder – that was written by Hendrik Hertzberg.  He’s a well-educated man:  at least, his credentials say so.  But does he really believe that there was in what FDR did a stark contrast to what Hoover did?  Does he further believe that what FDR did worked?  Hoover spent bags of money trying to fix the economy (little remembered is how in 1932 FDR ran on a balanced budget platform).  FDR just spent bags and bags and bags.  Hoover didn’t fix the depression, neither did FDR.  Yet here we are in 2011 and here is Mr. Hertzberg, certain that the lesson of the past is that you have to go flat out in spending…don’t do what Hoover did!  And Obama, in Hertzberg’s view, is being too Hooverish and not channeling his inner-FDR.  But Hoover did what FDR did and both FDR and Hoover failed utterly.  How do you get that ignorant about history and yet graduate from the Ivy League and become a commentator for The New Yorker?

Furthermore, a little blogger like me is supposed to stand in awe of all this…that I don’t have an Ivy League diploma and don’t have an editor to carefully review what I’ve written, and so I should accept as from on high such pronouncements.  But that is absurd – I can see what is plain as a pikestaff, Hertzberg, by the evidence in his article, would have difficulty finding the balls on a bull.  There is making a mistake – I’ve done that; I’ll do it again and again, too…but there is a huge difference between “mistake” and “obtuse”.

Never mind.  As long as liberals really think that it is a lack of liberalism which makes for liberal failure, it works out mostly to our advantage.  True, it came back to bite us in 2008 – never imagined someone as leftist as Obama could even get nominated, let alone elected…but everything, I guess, really is possible.  It is highly likely that we will correct 2008’s error in 2012…and Hertzberg and other liberals will then proclaim not a shift to the right to regain America’s trust, but a further shift to the left because those darn morons, the voters, just don’t know what’s good for them.  We should be able to keep the Democrats out of the White House for 20 years on that.

HAT TIP:  Commentary

The End of the Obama “Recovery”

Mark Noonan15 Comments

The demise of Obamunism, over at the Atlantic:

It’s hard to overstate how much today’s GDP report blew up our understanding of the recovery. The recession was deeper than we knew, and the economy is weaker than we thought. We weren’t making new jobs, because we weren’t making new things, period. The economy grew less than 1% in the first half of 2011.

Yesterday, analysts thought the economy was expanding by 2.5% a year. This morning, they learned GDP grew by only 1.6% in the last four quarters. This is a remarkable discovery. It’s the difference between thinking we’re expanding at a decent, if disappointing, pace, and knowing we’re growing around half our historical norm…

As I said waaaay the heck back in 2010, my guess is that when the history of this time is fully known and all the data analyzed, it will be judged that we never emerged from the recession which officially began in 2007.  Sure, some “growth” happened – goosing the economy with trillions in borrowed and printed money can do that – but there was no real, organic growth.  We didn’t, that is, start creating wealth – not in any sense faster than we were losing it.  Here’s a clue – only wealth can make you wealthy, and wealth is only (ONLY!!!!!) things you make, mine or grow.  What is killing us is that our tax and regulatory climate has made it almost impossible to create wealth in the United States…we’ve been killing the goose that lays our golden eggs.

Our whole economic policy has been to reward the most those who make, mine and grow the least.  Whether its a welfare recipient, “too big to fail” bank, favored special interest or our increasingly regressive bureaucracy, the rewards have been going to people who just consume or who play around with money.  Until we start rewarding most those who farm, mine and manufacture, this situation will just continue to get worse.

An entire shift in our economic thinking is required.  We have to cut the size of government; eliminate huge swaths of regulations and the bureaucrats who enforce them; call a halt to “NIMBYism” and environmentalism which puts walls up against new farms, new mines and new factories; adjust our trade policies so we’re no longer allowing slave-driving tyrants to dump their exports on us; massively increase domestic energy production so that we’re no longer sending money over seas just to drive our cars and turn on our lights…and we need to tell those in America who are not working that they’d better show us a missing leg, or something…we’re not going to subsidize daytime talk show viewing.  Everyone who can work, works…or they don’t eat.  Welcome to the real world, everyone…the liberal fairy tale is over, and its time to get back to being Americans.

Boehner: “The Best We Could Get”

Mark Noonan40 Comments

From NRO’s The Corner:

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told GOP members on a conference call Sunday evening that he had reached a deal with congressional leaders and the White House, but that it wouldn’t happen “unless we have membership on board.” It remains to be seen how many House Republicans will end up supporting the final package, but members on the call told National Review Online they thought it would ultimately pass with bipartisan support. “I’m not sure I’m going to support it but I think it will probably pass,” said freshman Rep. Dennis Ross (R., Fla.). Members described the tone of the call as overwhelmingly positive, with many praising Boehner’s efforts in the negotiations. Despite his concerns about the final deal, Ross said “leadership has done a very good job of getting it to this point,” and described a sense of relief among members, many of whom may not love the deal, but are nonetheless happy to be moving on to the next fight.

According to sources, Boehner said the deal was “the best that we could get.” In particular, he thanked the 87 freshmen members for their input, without which “we wouldn’t have gotten this far.” Ross concurred. “I think the freshman class has been very valuable to this process,” he said…

That last bit is really best translated as, “goodness, we didn’t fully realize until now that these TEA Party people are serious!”.  But, all in all, it is a good thing – this is the first time since the glory days of 1995 that a GOP House Speaker can count on a solid, conservative GOP caucus…one which won’t go all soft on him in return for campaign cash and other DC blandishments.  But it is not the best we could get – it is the best that the GOP could get using this strategy.

We need to think carefully not just about what we want, but how we want to get there.  We did not do a good enough job of forcing the Democrats to defend their disgusting Big Government liberalism – they were defensive, to be sure, but they were still defending the concept of using government money to be nice to people…we need tactics which will expose the fact that they really want to use government to reward liberal cronies.

A relentless drumbeat of just who among the rich and powerful are getting government money and just who they donate to (and speak and write in favor of) should be used in the next battle.  Show the American people that “food for the starving” really works out to “Cadillac for Nancy Pelosi’s crony-capitalist”.  These people on the left have been looting the Treasury for decades.  Sweat heart deals for government contracts, special tax and regulatory breaks:  things like that and the pols get, in return, campaign cash, investment tips and well paid corporate sinecures once out of office.  Show this to the American people…force the liberals away from defending charity and in to defending their greed for wealth and power.

We also need to win the class war – and my idea of a “wealth tax” is the best way to end that battle once and for all.  Democrats are endlessly harping on how we GOPers want to steal food out of granny’s mouth so we can give tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.  Do them one better – propose a tax which will won’t hit anyone except a millionaire or billionaire and watch the Democrats try to stop it…force them to reveal that their “tax the rich” rhetoric is really “tax the middle class, leave our rich donors alone”.

Still and all a good effort.  Big Government liberalism is firmly on the defensive – and Obama and his Democrats will have to defend their worthless, wasteful, immoral and un-American welfare State all through 2012.  We have them on the run – now, let’s push them over the edge, and take back our country.

NAACP Executive Convicted of Voter Fraud

Mark Noonan10 Comments

From the DC Caller:

…In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee…

…Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

In the trial, forensic scientist Bo Scales testified that Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of five envelopes containing absentee ballots…

This is why we on the right want people to show ID when voting and why we want voter rolls purged of dead, moved or invalid voters.  Doing so would make it exceptionally more difficult for a criminal like Sowers to operate.  Naturally, our liberals are opposed to this for that very reason – if we make voter fraud difficult, it will impinge upon liberals’ ability to cheat.

It is my contention – backed up by the amount of research Matt and I did in writing Caucus of Corruption – that voter fraud is endemic to the Democrat party.  It is not a bizarre event; it is not something which some times occurs in the heat of political battle…it is carefully organized and done in such a way that whenever a vote comes close, Democrats can count upon a pool of bogus votes to put them over the top.  I believe that in all voting districts where Democrats have any sort of control, the cheating is systemic…even in areas where they are sure to win as a sort of “just in case” assurance.

This first came to my attention in 2000 when I got down and dirty in to Florida precinct returns and noted a bunch of precincts which had 90% or better turn out with 90% or more of their votes going for Al Gore.  In the normal course of events, this just doesn’t happen…90% of any group more than a 20 simply cannot make it to any event (you’ll note this each time you set up a dinner party at your house) and you don’t get 90% of the votes going one way except when you’re cheating; there simply isn’t that level of unanimity in politics.  You might get 90% voting in favor of motherhood (and that is a “might”), but outside of that sort of thing, people tend to disagree.  This told me that a certain percentage of the votes being cast were bogus…and then I just paid attention since then, and noted it more and more often.

Dead voters, multiple registrations, illegal voters, ballots being “discovered” by Democrats in just sufficient numbers to put their guy over the top.  Absentee ballots have become an especially strong tool for fraud (in my view, only active duty military, police, firefighters and emergency responders should be allowed absentee ballots…everyone can just get to the polls, or don’t vote).  This conviction is just the very tip of a gigantic iceberg – quite honestly, we should investigate every race where the margin of victory was less than 1%…doesn’t matter who won, just investigate it…place the balloting under the microscope.  I bet you’ll find questionable votes throughout the system, and I’ll bet almost all of them will eventually be traced to liberal persons and groups.

We must bring an end to this – and here’s how we do it:

1.  Require all voter registration be done in person.  No mail in registration, no people sent out in to the streets to collect registrations.  If you want to register to vote, get yourself to a voter registration office, present your ID and some sort of proof of address, and register.  Yes, this is a bit difficult…but voting is a responsibility as much as a right, and if you wish to exercise the right you’ll have to take the responsibility to get your registration done.  All voters must register at least 6 months in front of election day in order to ensure that there is time for random registration checks to be done by election officials.  All persons registering to vote must swear to their legal ability to vote and the correctness of the information provided on penalty of one year in jail for lying.

2.  Require all voters to present their picture ID before voting.  Once a person has voted, have them dip their right index finger in blue ink.

3.  Voter rolls must be purged every other year.  The voter registration bureaucrats must send out letter requiring a response from all registered voters.  All letters returned or un-answered will result in that person being purged from the voter rolls.  All voter rolls must be bounced against lists of convicted criminals and anyone convicted of a felony must be purged.  All voter rolls must be bounced against a registrar of deaths since the last election and all deceased persons must be purged.

That would do it – we would ensure that almost all votes cast in any election would be legitimate.  Do not tax me with whines about how this would be unfair to this or that voting group…first off, I don’t buy the liberal-racist view that ethnic minorities aren’t smart enough to register to vote and present a picture ID.  Secondly, we must ensure that only those allowed to vote participate in our elections and that no illegal votes are counted.  If we are to be a democratically governed republic, the security of our vote is an absolute requirement…and the need for integrity in voting trumps every other consideration.

Enough of this liberal voter fraud.