Just Tax the RIch Another $140 TRILLION; Problem Solved

SteynOnline - ENTITLEMENT SENSE: "Recently, in the London Telegraph, Liam Halligan bemoaned the way commentators focus on America’s $14 trillion of debt — i.e., the “debt ceiling” debt — without factoring in the entitlement liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That makes America’s real debt some $75 trillion, or five times GDP. Our own Kevin D. Williamson puts the FDR/LBJ entitlement liabilities a little north of $100 trillion." Once you add in state and municipal debt, you need to add a zero to that reassuringly familiar $14 trillion hole. The real hole goes ten times deeper: $140 trillion — or about twice as much as America’s total “worth.”

Wasn't that easy?

For my next trick, I will transform the Islamic world into a haven for liberal democracy by having NASA build up their math and science self esteem, and by apologizing for all of the atrocities that the United States has perpetrated upon them.

Youthful Idiots

John Cogan: The Millionaire Retirees Next Door - WSJ.com: "According to my calculations based on government data, such married couples will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending."

One of the benefits of our debased educational system is that is has raised multiple generations of suckers to pay for the boomers' retirement. And these patsies vote overwhelmingly for the crooks that are hustling them. I guess if this arrangement were sustainable, you could chock it up to beneficence, but given the totally predictable collapse of this ponzi scheme, you have to conclude they are just "youthful idiots."

Obama the Transformational Hope and Change Candidate Does MediScare Better Than Teddy K!

Betsy McCaughey: Medicare As We've Known It Isn't an Option - WSJ.com: "The Democratic Party is urging Americans to choose Medicare as we've always known it rather than a new plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that would enroll seniors in private health insurance beginning in 2022. This choice is a hoax: Medicare as we've always known it is already gone. It was eviscerated by President Obama's health law.

The truth is that the Obama health law reduces future funding for Medicare by $575 billion over the next 10 years and spends the money on other programs, including a vast expansion of Medicaid. In 2019, Medicare spending under the Obama health law is projected to be $14,731 per senior, instead of $16,162 if the law had not passed, according to Medicare actuaries (Health Affairs, October 2010)

Maybe he can scare people into re-electing him. That's probably his only HOPE.

Couldn't Resist Another Steyn Zinger

Losing the Future - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "Question: How much do you have to invest in the future before you’ve spent it and no longer have one?"

WTF - I mean WInning The Future, of course

Losing the Future - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "How do you “invest in the future”? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That’s what the government of the United States is doing. It’s spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn’t have every hour of every day of every week — all for your future!"

Mark Steyn is always a hoot. Read it and weep, with tears of laughter.

I Finally FIgured Out What He Means By "Adult Conversation:" B@## S&$%

Obama Deficit Plan | White House releases misleading figures for families ahead of Obama's deficit tour | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "197 billion was paid out as interest to debt-holders using funds from Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes and income taxes. That’s roughly $656 per person, or $1,971 for a family of three. That total is 103 times the number shown by the White House website.

The site also shows a family with two children and an income of $80,000 paying $285 on federal interest payments, and a single parent with one child and an income of $35,000 paying $39 on interest payments. In reality, the first family’s share of national interest payments is nine times larger than shown, and the single parent’s share is 33 times larger than the site acknowledges."

Boy, sure glad the President isn't practicing politics as usual in Washington. In fact, he's unusually dishonest!

Good News - We Are Revising Our Forecast for the End the World From Yesterday to Ten Years From Now!

50 million climate refugees | United Nations | The UN disappears 50 million climate refugees, then botches the cover-up | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

The UNEP even provided a handy map. The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean."

Hilarious article. Not only points out how wrong the UN climate people were, but how inept they were at trying to cover up their error. This is the UN group whose work the EPA cited in justifying its legal basis for regulating carbon.

Taxing the "Rich" 100% Won't Pay For the Obama Mega State

Review & Outlook: Where the Tax Money Is - WSJ.com: "The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks."

Hang on to your purses and wallets - the big government crowd are coming to your house next. Trying to balance the budget of an out-of-control federal government on tax increases is ludicrous on its face. Read the article. It takes you thru the thought experiment of confiscating 100% of the income of the "rich," defined in ever broader terms.  Obama is not a serious man.  He's just a huckster politician working 24/7 to get reelected while the country drives "into the ditch," to use a colorful metaphor.  How's that hope and change working out for ya?

If You Don't Believe Me, How About the Washington Post?

President Obama's budget kicks the hard choices further down the road: "THE PRESIDENT PUNTED. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck. To duck, and to mask some of the ducking with the sort of budgetary gimmicks he once derided."

A Fraud

Review & Outlook: The Cee Lo Green Budget - WSJ.com: "How unserious is this budget? Although the White House trumpets $2.18 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, those savings are so far off in the magical 'out years' that you can barely see them from here. More than 95% of the savings would happen after Mr. Obama's first term in the White House is over, and almost two-thirds of the promised deficit reduction would arrive after 2016. Pretending to cut deficits by pushing all real cuts into the future is Budget Flimflam 101."

And of course even those savings are based on ridiculous assumptions about economic growth.

This President has decided to abdicate his responsibilities as LEADER of the United States, hang back while the benighted Republicans try to bring the budget under control, and demagogue the hell out of them in his reelection campaign. How's that hope and change working out for you?

Thank Goodness We Have An Obama "Science-Based" Federal Government Now

Chris Tucker: EPA is a no-show in Texas fracking case | Chris Tucker | Op Eds | Washington Examiner: "Your task: Pin the presence of methane on Range Resources by trying to prove its wells in the Barnett represent the source of the natural gas in the water wells.

On Dec. 7, 2010, that’s precisely the argument that EPA put forth in issuing an unprecedented “emergency order” -- demanding, among other things, that Range plug up its wells and go home.

Just one problem: The isotopic analysis EPA used as the basis for its order doesn’t include a word about nitrogen; EPA never ran those tests.

Fortunately, experts from Weatherford Labs in Texas did. And at a hearing of the Texas Railroad Commission in Austin this week, those experts testified that the methane found in those private water wells in question came from the Strawn, not the Barnett.

What that means in practical geological terms is that Range isn’t (and in fact couldn’t be) responsible for the occurrence of methane in those wells – it has no wells in the Strawn."

Just another example, like the gulf spill commission, of how the Obama administration ignores science to serve the interests of the enviro-fascists that bankroll the Democrat party (oh, was that uncivil?). Meanwhile, the cost of energy in this country marches ever upward, and a resurgence in jobs is nowhere to be seen.  The Barnett shale formation in north Texas, and others like it across the country, represent a marvelous new source of clean domestic energy, and good jobs to go with it.  The EPA has become the Anti-Domestic-Energy Department.

Good news for panda-lovers (bad news for the rest of us) | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Good news for panda-lovers (bad news for the rest of us) | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "Wow, what a coup. J.P. Freire calls this wonderful feat of diplomacy “Obamagotation,” and adds, “So China gets to continue copyright infringement and manipulating their currency. We get two pandas.” Hey, at least it’s not three."

From one of the wittier sites on the web - the Daily Trawler. Check it out.

Worried About Income Inequality - Protect the Border!

Obama and Income Inequality: No New Brazils! - Newsweek

I'd argue Obama's main effort on immigration would, in fact, have made the
inequality problem at the bottom worse. A "comprehensive" bill would almost
certainly have attracted new illegals, but the efforts to stop them at the
border might well have failed, as they failed after a similar 1986 bill. The
result of that failure has been a looser labor market at the bottom. Lower
unskilled wages. Even the emergence of favela-like shantytowns in California. You want
Brazil? Obama's 2009-2010 immigration plan would bring us Brazil. Obama was
putting coalition politics--pleasing Latino voters, and especially Latino
politicians--over economics, at least egalitarian economics.

Exposes the hollowness of the President's concerns about income inequality. Very thoughtful and well written. Mr. Kaus, by the way, is a Democrat.

Time For a Doctrine of Pre-Emption in DOMESTIC Affairs - Ricochet.com

Time For a Doctrine of Pre-Emption in DOMESTIC Affairs - Ricochet.com: "One of the arguments for Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq policies was that we needed to take our our adversaries where they lived so we wouldn't be forced to live at home in a constant defensive crouch.

Well, that's how we conservatives have been forced to live in the world of domestic politics. Even after delivering the President an historic 'shellacking,' we have spent the month of December with our hearts in our throats, fighting off trillion dollar omnibus spending bills, and to achieve tax rate status quo, having to swallow a tax bill larded with Keynesian 'stimulus' that, like the last trillion dollar pork-a-thon will leave us no better off and another trillion deeper in debt."

Follow the link to Ricochet.com for the rest...

A Mind-Blowing Fact You Need to Memorize and Share

EDITORIAL: Obama's mourning in America - Washington Times: "China currently owns $1 trillion in U.S. debt in the form of Treasury bonds and notes. While this certainly is a large sum, it's not even a third of the staggering $3,211,613,265,584.56 in red ink added to the nation's ledgers under Mr. Obama's watch."

From a great editorial that enumerates the ways in which the President's rhetoric and demeanor are fostering "malaise." The recent poll in which Americans mistakenly opined that the China had surpassed the US in economic might is just one example. If they think China owns us now, just wait and see where we'll be if the Democrats' runaway federal spending isn't reined in by the Republicans.

Scary!

Biden Takes On More Influential Role for Obama - NYTimes.com

You know things are desperate when Biden becomes the Oracle of the Potomac. Talk about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind!

Global Warming's Done - Stick a Fork In It

Global warming has halted: That's what happened to 'warmest year on record' | Mail Online: "Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years."

Another leftist fraud exposed and put to rest. RIP Kyoto Treaty. RIP Cap and Trade. RIP AlGore.

Simple Question for the GM Cheerleaders in the MSM

GM selling at a loss should tell you something | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "If the federal government wanted to recoup its investment in GM, then the GM stock price should be much higher than the $33 initial price. In order to break even, as the Deal Journal reports, the stock price would have to rise to around $50 per share. So why is the Treasury Department selling off the company at a loss?"

Yes, how is this $33 IPO in the taxpayer's best interest if GM is such a successful turnaround story? Don't tell me the answer is that the government wants to allow GM to return expeditiously to private control. Post-IPO, GM is still the statists' automotive hobby horse.

Good Crises Make For Good Shake-downs

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: Meet the New-Old GM - WSJ.com: "What would the pre-crash GM have been worth if relieved of $80 billion in IOUs? Assume a 5% yield on GM debt and nine-to-one price-earnings ratio on the stock. The answer (for sake of argument) is $61 billion. This shouldn't be surprising. GM's progress on labor costs, quality and new models were all in the pipeline before its Chapter 11 filing. The main achievement of bankruptcy was a redistribution of rights from GM's creditors to a worrisome and conflicted new set of equity owners, namely the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers."

This shouldn't be surprising. GM's progress on labor costs, quality and new models were all in the pipeline before its Chapter 11 filing. The main achievement of bankruptcy was a redistribution of rights from GM's creditors to a worrisome and conflicted new set of equity owners, namely the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers

.

Great article. Explains how, at the end of the day, the GM bailout, via government-orchestrated bankruptcy, had only one distinguishing feature from a traditional bankruptcy - it allowed the Dems to steal billions of dollars in equity from private parties and hand it to the UAW. Crony capitalism. Kleptocracy. Did I mention that the orchestrator, Rattner, has pled no contest and agreed to pay a multi-million dollar fine related to an influence peddling charge from the SEC?

This Scandal Will Be Investigated

Findings from the Inspector General (IG) inquiry into the administration's handling of the Gulf oil drilling ban:

Review & Outlook: Science and the Drilling Ban - WSJ.com: "The IG findings include no evidence the decision to shut down an entire industry—at a huge cost to jobs and long-term drilling safety—was done with input from engineers, scientists, economists or anyone with day-to-day oversight of U.S. drilling. S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, former head of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, said she learned about the ban from a deputy, and only after the fact. Preparation for the Interior drilling report was tasked to Steve Black, a lawyer who is officially the Counselor to Mr. Salazar. Yet Mr. Black told the IG the ban was 'a policy decision made by Secretary Salazar and President Obama.' Though Mr. Salazar issued the report, the IG says final edits to the summary were done by Ms. Browner's office."

Callous, reckless, ideological, indefensible. Injurious to our energy security. But who cares? The area impacted didn't vote for Obama. Browner is going to finally have to answer some questions when the new Congress is in session.