[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome
by listening to a barbershop quartet;
this is just truth, plain and simple.
Chuck Sigars
Just In Time for the Democratic Convention
Obama Celebrates the US Debt's Sweet 16 Party
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The estimated population of the United States is 313,443,677
so each citizen's share of this debt is $51,075.00.
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.88 billion per day since September 28, 2007!
Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!
Peter Schiff reminds us that we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg:
"This is just the funded portion — the unfunded liabilities of the Treasury, such as Social Security and Medicare, and off-budget items, such as guaranteed mortgages and student loans, loom much larger. The only reason this staggering debt load hasn’t crushed us already is that the Treasury has been able to service it through historically low interest rates (now below 2 percent). The national debt likely will hit $20 trillion in a few years. If, by that time, interest rates were to return to 5 percent (a low rate by postwar standards) interest payments on the debt could run around $1 trillion per year. Such a sum would represent almost 40 percent of total current federal revenues."Recall that the Federal Reserve's manipulation of interest rates has screwed savers and fixed-income beneficiaries--and has ARTIFICIALLY MASKED OBAMA's TRUE DEFICITS--by literally hundreds of billions of dollars annually given historical rates. And the President and Senate Democrats have blocked all attempts for any aggregate decrease or even a freeze year-over-year on federal spending. Even Bernie Madoff must be looking at Obama and all these Congressional Democrats, shaking his head and asking, "How are they getting away with this?"
In addition to telling the Congress and White House what you think, you can send a message this Election Day by expressing what you think of all the little people (President, Senate Democrats, and House Democrats) whom helped make this day possible....
The Hijacking of the 'American Dream'
From Ms. Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention:
Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it…and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are, or where we’re from, or what we look like, or who we love.
And he believes that when you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity…you do not slam it shut behind you…you reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.I would have to write an entire essay on the concept of the American Dream (and countless other authors already have--including Obama whom uses the term in a subtitle to one of his autobiographies). I may do it in a future post, but it's beyond the scope of the current commentary.
No, I am quite certain that the Obama's have perverted the concept of the American Dream: I think they confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, and they want to use statist tools to enforce some implementation of positive rights, including considerations other than merit.
There are a number of aspects to the American dream, based on unalienable rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The 'American' part refers to barriers--say, discriminatory laws or other restrictions (based on culture)--in other, often older countries--that artificially restricted any person of merit or achievement in pursuing his goals or happiness (lifestyle, professional, wealth, etc.)
Quite often there are interim objectives or goals in one's pursuit of happiness, e.g., to live independently of his birth family, to purchase his own home, to establish a residence in a desired area, etc. Similarly, it may be the opportunity to make a living doing work he enjoys in a location (or through travel) he prefers--or one day creating or owning his own business and/or achieving some level of income or wealth.
The differences that I have with the Obama's involves the role of the state. Take, for instance, discriminatory laws against people of color that had passed in the South. Those were statist barriers. I agree with the concept of repealing the law or having it called unconstitutional. I don't agree with the replacement of one statist barrier with a "new, improved" statist barrier (with hidden affirmative action quotas and similar injustices).
Mitt Romney the other night explained why he decided to move to Massachusetts; as Governor George Romney's son, Mitt would never know if he made it on his own or because of his dad's success and connections. That's why he moved from Michigan to Massachusetts as a young, married adult, as he put it, to seek his own fortune. George Romney never earned a college degree; Romney achieved honors in a dual-degree Harvard graduate program (law and business), and he quickly made his mark as a rising star at management consulting company Bain & Co., before starting up Bain Capital. To Mitt, Bain Capital wasn't just about investing, hopefully profitably, in new or troubled companies; this was a test of eating one's own dog food by infusing the Bain methodology into the client's management. If Bain Capital failed, it could tarnish the parent company's reputation. It entailed much risk, over and beyond investments: success was not inevitable.
Michelle can engage in all the political spin she wants regarding the fact that Barack with a Harvard Law degree passed on (six-figure?) salaries to become a community organizer. But Barack as a law partner or corporate lawyer could have reached out through worthy philanthropic efforts as well, e.g., mentoring young men in urban areas, etc. The idea that the state is somehow more worthy than charitable efforts in the private sector is obnoxious: people in the public sector do something because they are paid, quite often very well; volunteers do the same for intrinsic reasons.
If you really want to help people achieve the American dream, Ms. Obama, get the state out of crony relationships with protectionist trades and businesses (e.g., occupation restrictions) Contrary to the opinions of the Obama's, the state is more likely to contribute to social injustice than cure it, e.g., counterproductive minimum wage laws that artificially lower labor force participation rates in urban areas.
It absolutely nauseates me that delusional progressives believe that they are morally superior just because they advocate obscenely expensive, ineffective, wasteful, counterproductive, morally hazardous trickle down programs where the only sure winners are the toll collectors, i.e., well-paid, king-of-their-domain, jobs-for-life federal bureaucrats.
Greatest Opening Paragraph Ever
or 'Why I Love George Will'
With Americans, on average, worth less and earning less than when he was inaugurated, Barack Obama is requesting a second term by promising, or perhaps threatening, that prosperity is just around the corner if he can practice four more years of trickle-down government.And the rest of the column is simply glorious, even though I've been debunking Obama's "rescue" of the auto industry for some time now. George Will does in a simple column what the hapless Romney campaign has failed to do in 2 years; I've been doing it directly and bluntly, while Will does it with style. Let me do some edits:
Obama’s supposed rescue of “the auto industry”: he intervened to succor one of two of the U.S. auto industries. One, located in the South and elsewhere, does not have a long history of subservience to the United Auto Workers and for that reason has not needed Obama’s ministrations. Of the mostly Northern auto industry, the one long entangled with the UAW, he socialized the losses of GM and Chrysler. Ford was not a mendicant because it was not mismanaged.
Our investor in chief paid $33/share for the 26 percent of GM that taxpayers own. The current $21.xx/share market price is below the $53 price it would have to reach to enable taxpayers to recover the entire $49.5 billion bailout. That Roaring GM’s growth is in China. (But let’s not call that outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.)George Will is a NATIONAL TREASURE: "The substitution of “invest” for “spend” (e.g., “We must invest more in " [insert Democratic spending priority here] (my edit)--"should progressives call attention to their record as investors of other people’s money (GM, Solyndra, etc.)?"
Hmmm. Romney as an investor has personally accumulated nearly a quarter billion of wealth by investing in new or troubled businesses; Investor-in-Chief Obama has already lost something like $5.4T (and counting) on his watch. I wonder: who would most Americans believe they would rather trust to "invest" their (and their children's future) legally plundered incomes?
And, of course, while the Obama campaign raged over a Massachusetts state vendor
George Will doesn't stop there: with Bill Clinton fronting one or more Obama reelection ads regurgitating Obama talking points, why shouldn't the Democratic Party recycle old political spin in a particularly hypocritical manner?
In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign ran an ad that began: “For so long government has failed us, and one of its worst features has been welfare. I have a plan to end welfare as we know it.” This was before progressives defined progress as preventing changes even to rickety, half-century-old programs: Republicans “would end Medicare as we know it.”Okay, I know what everybody must be thinking, so let me just flesh it out here:
Where is the Romney campaign's ad: "Clinton was right: 'For so long government has failed us and one of its worst features has been welfare.' President Obama has issued an executive order to end welfare reform as we know it."
The other thing I'm also sure everybody must have taken away from Will's observation: whoever would have thought that the progressives of the "living Constitution" (with their slavish devotion to stare decisis of Lochner Era decisions affirming economic rights) would turn out to be closet Burkean conservatives when it comes to reforming Ponzi scheme entitlement programs like Medicare and social security?
Yes, progressives just can't stop "investing" in things: and look at the result. Government has maintained a monopoly over highways and other infrastructure--and we have massively congested roads, in constant need of repair, collapsing bridges and dams, chronically broken escalators, etc. We have laws that send a disproportionate numbers of citizens to prisons, but it takes courts to remind legislatures that overcrowded prisons are unconstitutional. The progressives leading cities, states and federal government have consistently underfunded unsustainable public employee pension funds and failed to set credible rainy day funds. They pay less than 80% of fair market prices of government program participants, forcing an indirect subsidy by other health care consumers, and yet they still say, "Bring on pushing-on-a-string ObamaCare! We'll just double-count Medicare cuts, engage in some smoke and mirrors accounting..."
What do progressives spend other people's money on? Let's just take California pensions. Much ado has been made of Brown's pension reforms. I will have more to say on this issue in a future commentary, but let me get provide some overview: Brown's reforms MAINTAIN a pension system for NEW state employees--decades after many, if not most businesses did away with defined benefit (i.e., pension) systems. Brown's reforms don't do a thing about prior or current obscene, unsustainable commitments made to public sector employees, with current legislatures being required by our justice system to honor. Brown's reforms don't do SQUAT with existing pension obligations crowding out essential services of city or state government. The only thing that existing pension reviews are doing is verifying the specifics of employment and incomes--but they aren't going to reduce $400K/year pensions to $35K. I know some full-time teachers whom have made less in a year than one month's pension payment for some some of the people in the below table. Many private-sector senior citizens will retire with assets less than some of these people will get every month for the rest of their lives (not counting any cost of living increase) partially funded from collections of sales tax, motorist fees, etc.
So progressives suddenly rediscover that, hey, we need to spend money on repairing or creating new infrastructure (especially those newfangled high-priced, high-speed trains, because after all, China and Japan have them: never mind the pesky fact that other taxpayers will have to subsidize riders from day one!), when we're already borrowing 40 cents on the spending dollar. What kind of responsible public policy engages in the moral hazard of reinforcing diverting pension contribution funds, failing to properly maintain infrastructure on an ongoing basis or not establishing a rainy day fund? What? Cut other funding?
Progressive #1: "Are you going to pay for that funding?"
Progressive #2: "No, I'm not going to pay for it. You pay for it."
Progressive #1: "No. Not me or the other 99%. Let's get Mittie Romney to pay for it."
Progressive #2: "Yes. He pays only 15% in federal (and maybe state or local taxes as well) on top of the 39% businesses already paid on the same income to the federal and state government. It's not like he built Bain Capital from scratch: we, the government, built it for him."
| Name | Monthly | Annual | Employer |
| Johnson, Michael, D | $30,920.24 | $371,042.88 | County Of Solano |
| Hurst, Robert | $27,377.08 | $328,524.96 | Jrs San Diego County Superior Court |
| Fuster, Joaquin, M | $26,226.08 | $314,712.96 | University Of California At Los Angeles |
| Gerth, Donald, R | $24,590.52 | $295,086.24 | California State University At Sacramento |
| Garrett, William | $24,129.46 | $289,553.52 | City Of El Cajon |
| Ream, David, N | $23,375.33 | $280,503.96 | City Of Santa Ana |
| Stahl, James, F | $23,289.98 | $279,479.76 | Los Angeles County Sanitation District No. 2 |
| Schlag, John, D | $22,604.16 | $271,249.92 | University Of California At Los Angeles |
| Southard, Glenn, D | $22,596.42 | $271,157.04 | City Of Indio |
| Adams, Randy, G | $22,347.94 | $268,175.28 | City Of Bell |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Cheap Trick, "Dream Police"
