"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
There is yet another battle brewing in Washington over the scope of federal powers. Along with healthcare and climate change, financial reform is another item on the Democrat "to do" list. This week the House Financial Services Committee is set to mark up legislation that would create a new federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency. This would be an agency in charge of regulating products; anything from credit cards to home loans.
As of right now, the legislation sets a minimum federal standard and would allow state officials to pursue stricter regulations. However, lobbyists are advocating allowing federal officials to preempt state laws.
By the way ... what do you call a system of government where the financial sector and the means of production are privately owned, but controlled by government? Look it up. Do your research. If I remember .. and you don't already know ... the answer tomorrow.
The Office of Management and Budget presents the sobering reality for the Obama administration. There is no way that the administration can deny these facts. It's time to wake up and smell the pork, fellow Americans: Our current level of government spending is unsustainable. This is the first year that America will run a trillion-dollar budget deficit. Over the next decade, Obama's budget plans to borrow another $9 trillion ... more than doubling our national debt. This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household. The breakdown goes something like this: about $17,000 from taxes and $13,000 from borrowing. That is an increase of 22% in federal spending this year and a record 26% of the GDP. So you are saying, "Ah well this is just an extraordinary year and Obama inherited Bush's mess and blah blah blah." Well Obama's budget permanently keeps spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it was under George Bush.
In other words ... there is absolutely no way that we can continue the current level of government spending and expect this nation to survive. If the Republicans can capture that sentiment and run with it, maybe they will have a chance of winning some seats in 2010. However, what have they done to earn the people's trust again? Plus .. even if the Republicans do manage to come up with a viable plan to turn this spending and debt splurge around, how in the world to you get the Obama-crazed media to report it?
Either way, what Barack Obama is currently doing in Washington will be paid for for generations. The Heritage Foundation has done some research into Obama's spending habits. Here are just a few of the highlights .. things that your children can thank Barack Obama for someday, and things that you can thank those drivers with the Obama bumper stickers for today:
- The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.
- While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion--60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout.
- President Obama claims that "we have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade." This is not true. The President first creates a fantasy baseline that assumes the Iraq surge continues forever (which was never U.S. policy) and then "saves" $1.5 trillion against that baseline by ending the surge as scheduled. It is like a family "saving" $10,000 by first assuming an expensive vacation and then not taking it. Another $1 trillion in "savings" is actually tax increases (in other words, savings for government, not taxpayers).
- Federal spending per household (adjusted for inflation) remained constant at $21,000 throughout the 1980s and 1990s, before President Bush hiked it to $25,000. In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household--the highest level in American history--and under President Obama's budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.
- While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the "stimulus" was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession. This suggests that even if the President had not inherited a big deficit, he would have created one as a matter of anti-recessionary policy.
- The public national debt--$5.8 trillion as of 2008--is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.
- The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush...
The Congressional Budget Office released its estimates on the cost of Obama's healthcare plan. Just as expected, it wasn't pretty. Just as expected, the White House immediately backed away from the report. Now all of the sudden, this Dodd-Kennedy healthcare bill "is not the administration's bill," according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Ok, so technically he is right. That's because the president does not propose legislation. But anyone that doesn't believe Obama's ideas and desires aren't reflected in this bill is full of horsesqueeze. So that's the latest excuse from the White House, the CBO figures don't really count because they calculated it based on a bill that was not Barack Obama's. Got it?
So what DID the CBO report show? Well for one, it estimated that this bill would cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years. The kicker is that this estimate doesn't even take into account the president's government-run health insurance plan. Not to mention the fact that the said goal of this bill is to provide health insurance to all Americans. The reality is that this Senate bill would only increase coverage for 16 million Americans. On top of that, the CBO estimates that millions of Americans would lose their current employer-provided health insurance.
The director of the CBO says, "...When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million."
I wonder if that information will be covered on ABC's coverage of Obama's healthcare Townhall meeting?
The Obama administration has laid out more details on how the government would like to see executives at corporations get paid.Now keep in mind that this is for all companies, not just bailout companies.Any publicly traded company.Here are the guidelines:
assuring pay reflects corporate performance
using standards beyond the company's stock price
basing compensation on long-term performance, particularly by asking executives to hold stock for longer periods of time
giving corporate risk managers more authority to prevent excessive risk-taking
reexamining so-called "golden parachutes" and other retirement packages
promoting transparency and accountability in how compensation committees set pay
Geithner also wants Congress to adopt "say on pay" legislation that would give shareholders the ability to hold non-binding votes on compensation levels.
But now for the "good" news ... Barack Obama has decided that the government will not put a cap on how much executives are paid.Somehow I'm not buying it.There's going to be something in the mix that will give the government some sway over what private companies pay their executives.Even though tax cheat Tim Geithner says, "We do not believe it's appropriate for the government to set caps on compensation.", they'll figure out a way.One obvious tactic would be to eliminate corporate tax deductions for pay above a certain level. The Obama crowd understands that Americans are getting really weary of all this government intervention, so they're sounding a bit conciliatory today.With all of these 'guidelines' and 'restrictions' I am sure that the government is going to have a lot more say than any of us would ever imagine.
Meanwhile, Obama has officially appointed his compensation czar.Kenneth Feinberg will set the pay - salaries and bonuses -- for 175 top executives at the nation's largest companies that have received bailout funds.These include companies like Bank of American, Citigroup, GM and others.Then there is a second level of 80 other financial institutions that have received bailout money.Feinberg will come up with a compensation structure for these companies, but won't set the exact pay like he will for the big guys.He will also determine "whether it would be in the public interest to force any executives at companies receiving assistance who might have been overpaid to return some of that pay," according to the New York Times.
We want these companies to succeed, don't we?Do we not want them to get on their feet again and get out from under the government's thumb?Now maybe it's just me, but if I was calling the shots for a major corporation in deep dog squeeze, perhaps I would see the sense in going out there and finding the best executive talent I could find to help bring things around.So ... how's it going to work for me when I tell a potential executive recruit that I really, really need their help bringing my billion-dollar corporation around, but that Barack Obama is going to be setting their pay scale?They're going to go somewhere else, right?You don't have to be, like, all that bright to figure that one out.
Tax cheat Timothy Geithner has decided that the government should not impose caps on executive pay at companies receiving bailout funds. Thanks for finally clearing that one up for us, Tim. But he does believe that the government should set policies that would discourage financial companies from rewarding excessive risk-taking.
He says, "I think we can bring about broader reforms of compensation incentives in finance as a whole," not just at companies participating in TARP. "We'll make it much less likely that people get paid to take large amounts of short-term risk at the expense of their firm and the system as a whole."
Now, of course, we need to figure out who gets to define whether or not risk-taking is "excessive." I guess that would be the government. And a quick question for you ... where would our country be today if our history were not full of people who were willing to take "excessive risk" for a fantastic reward.
Byron York has an excellent column about Barack Obama's budget. It seems as though the problem is that Obama's budget is so large and ostentatious that the Republicans don't even know where to begin. If that is how the Republicans in Washington feel, imagine the average ignorant voter out there.
From York's column:
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.
"How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?" a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn't have one.
GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call "insensitivity to scope." It affects us all; we can understand something on a small scale but have a difficult time comprehending the same thing on a massive scale.
Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right -- it's a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.
This is bound to set off the discussions about Social Security and Medicare. The latest news is that these two entitlement programs have gotten worse because of the recession. In fact, they are in such bad shape that Medicare is now paying out more than it receives.
The Trustees of the program said that Social Security will start paying out more than it collects in 2016. That is one year sooner than previously projected, and the entire system will be depleted by 2037.
Medicare is doing even worse. The trustees say that it will be insolvent by 2017, which is two years earlier than projects.
By the way .. there is not now and there never has been a Social Security Trust Fund. That's a fiction created to keep the dumb masses placated.
But what does Barack Obama want to do? Create MORE entitlement programs and grow the size of the government. Do you REALLY think this is going to work out well for us?
Obama released the details of his budget yesterday. This disaster is 1,500 pages long. We can't afford the $3.4 trillion price tag. The money simply isn't there. Obama believes that the more money the federal government spends, the greater America becomes. This is the mindset of a man who believes that our greatness comes from government. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so in love with government as Barack Obama.
Oddly enough, the news today isn't that Obama is proposing spending $3.4 trillion. The media is all abuzz over the news that Obama has proposed cutting $17 billion in spending and completely eliminating some programs. Let's get real folks .. this $17 billion is just one-half of one percent of Obama's budget. Government spending has doubled in the past eight years ... and if all you can find to cut is one-half of one percent than you aren't worth a damn as an administrator or CFO.
What's more ... PrezBO's list of proposed budget and program cuts is less than the list put forth by George Bush proposed last year. Bush proposed $34 billion in savings. Now speaking of proposed spending and program cuts ... just because these cuts are proposed doesn't mean that they actually happen. In fact, half of Obama's proposed cuts are the very same ones that Bush tried to get nixed from the budget when he was in office.
Earlier this week I told you of news reports that the Obama White House was using the services of a behavioral psychologist for briefings on the way people react to large dollar figures. Interestingly enough, most people can't differentiate between $17 million and $17 billion. Once the numbers get that high they all bland into a numerical sameness. This means that Obama can propose spending $3.4 trillion and then propose $17 billion in savings and the people think that he is actually doing something incredible! Aren't you comforted by the idea that the president is hiring behavioral psychologists to help him pull the wool over your eyes?
Here is something to keep in mind. Posturing about spending cuts usually means nothing. Presidents generally roll out a long list of spending cuts. It's all for show. The cuts are generally ignored by Congress. So while he may tout the fact that he is proposing a cut of $17 billion, the chances of that actually happening are as slim as my chances with Angelina Jolie - and she's so covered with ink I don't think I'm interested anymore. Let's go with Allison Krause.
Here is something else to keep in mind. Even if Congress adopted these proposed cuts, it would not actually reduce government spending. In fact, Obama's budget is going to increase overall spending. So any savings that Obama may generate from these cuts will be used to pay for more government programs ... the ones that Obama wants to create, like government healthcare.
Amidst these proposed cuts, what gets an increase in federal funding??
The IRS. Yep, Obama wants to double the funds for the IRS to enforce tax laws. There's another $890 million of your tax dollars. Rather than spending more money to enforce a tax system that doesn't work and punishes achievement, how about implementing a new tax system that will allow the taxpayers to keep this money and allow businesses to bring jobs to this country without fear of being punished by the government.
Then there's endless examples of mindless government pork projects. While Obama's budget does seek to cut several education programs, (won't happen) there are a few other "educational" programs that were seen as worthy of maintaining their federal funding. One, for instance, is a $9 million program to promote the history of whaling and trade in Massachusetts.
Here's a list of all the programs that Obama is cutting in this budget. One of these cuts, by the way, is a 9% cut in the unit of the Department of Labor that's in charge of regulating unions. Gotta thank the people that put you in office.
The budget resolution passed the House with absolutely zero Republican support. Point: If it had been Bush's budget the Republicans would have supported it ... so don't sing Republican praises too loud. A more amazing fact is that 17 Democrats voted against the budget. You'll enjoy Nancy Pelosi's reaction to the passage of this budget resolution. She says, "Today, for the first time in many, many years, we have a president's budget ... that is a statement of our national values."
Did you catch that? This is a "statement of our national values." What values would those be, Nancy? Bigger government ... redistribution of wealth ... government dependency ... government control of the private economic sector ...funding "green" industries based on the global warming hoax ... replacing the free market system with government controls and regulations ....
This is a big government, anti-individualism budget. BOHICA
Back to the Tax Cheat in Chief. Timothy Geithner laid out his plans yesterday for more government control over financial institutions. And Barney Frank says that while the industry is likely to have their boxers in a bunch over these regulations .. there is nothing they can do about it. He says, "The ability of the financial community to block any of this legislation is diminished completely."
The Obama administration is ironing out the details of his plans to increase government oversight of executive pay. I'm not just talking about the top TARP recipients .. I am talking about all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies.
Officials said the proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, whose problems could pose risks to the entire financial system.
It will propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated. And to protect consumers, it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules.
The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could go beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.
One proposal could impose greater requirements on company boards to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that compensation was aligned with the financial interest of the company.
You may remember that last month Obama unveiled his budget for 2010. And guess what it included? More government! He proposed spending $3.6 trillion, which is more than 25% of our GDP. And that number will only grow so long as Obama is in the White House.
It gets worse, folks. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that "Obama's policies would cause government spending to swell above historic levels even after the costly programs to alleviate the recession and shore up the financial system have ended. The result, the CBO said, was that by 2019 the US national debt would be about 82 per cent of GDP - about double where it is today."
How about that? You voted for this guy because he looked cool and enjoys basketball. You voted for him because he appeared on all of your favorite magazine covers and was praised by your favorite TV and movie stars. And, of course, you voted for him because of that magical word "change!" Working out pretty well, isn't it?
Obama, of course, is saying that the CBO has it all wrong. HE, based on his immense government and management experience - which he has been displaying so brilliantly - says that he will cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. The ONLY way that will happen is if the House and Senate are turned over to a new breed of Republican and a stop is put to this idiocy.
Does Barack Obama really think that he can push all of his dreams and schemes through Congress? The answer is yes. And when it comes to government healthcare, global warming initiatives and increasing taxes, he wants to make sure that there is no way the Republicans can stop him. How is he going to do this? By including these policy provisions in the annual budget. Then they can use a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation. Basically what that means is that the Democrats wouldn't have to worry about gaining Republican support in the Senate .. because reconciliation reduces the number of votes needed to pass legislation to a simple majority (which the Democrats clearly have in the Senate). It also limits debate to no more than 20 hours and imposes restrictions on amendments. So we are talking about less than 20 hours on the floor of the Congress would be devoted to such grandiose plans as government healthcare and cap and trade schemes.
That's the word. Obama is going to introduce a $4,000,000,000,000 federal budget for consideration by his myrmidons in the Congress. How nice. Are you starting to understand that this narcissistic menace is just as dangerous as we told you he was going to be?
Yesterday, the Democrats in the House passed this $410 billion omnibus spending bill. Now it is on to the Senate. This is the same bill that has a $200,000 earmark for a "tattoo removal violence outreach program" in Los Angeles, California. This is your tax dollars paying for a tattoo removal machine to help gang members remove signs of their past. Yeah .. Ok.
As if it couldn't be any more asinine then funding tattoo removal for gang members, the Democrats managed to insert a provision into the bill that would end the school choice program in DC. As of right now, students in DC can use federal funds to attend private schools of their choice. But the Democrats don't want this because it puts the educational futures of students in the hands of parents and families .. not the government. So it is no surprise that the Democrats want to kill the program. One caveat though. DC Democrats do NOT want to end the program. They've seen it work. They know their constituents want the program to continue. Doesn't matter. Democrats need to make sure that our system of education continues to fail our children. If education works where in the hell do they find future Democrat voters? Democrats want to be seen as the heroes of education, but this will be done by throwing more money at the problem and making people more dependent on government.
That is according to our President Barack Obama (PBUH).When it comes to this stimulus legislation .. he has had enough "debate" and he has decided that the "time for talk is over."Tell that to our children and grand children who will be paying for this legislations for generations.
Odd, isn't it?This is the president who wanted to engage in unconditional talks with the Islamic goons who want us dead, but doesn't want to talk with the American people about this government expansion bill.
Let me tell you what's going on here - though you probably already realize it.This president is on the verge of losing his first great legislative push.This could set the tone for his presidency for quite a while. Passing this bill is essential to the status of his presidency, not so much to the future of our country.
Yesterday Obama actually said that if we don't pass his huge government growth and citizen dependency bill right now our country might never recover from this economic crisis.Just wondering, but did FDR ever even suggest that World War II could mean the end of our Republic?I don't think so.Well ... different strokes, I guess.
Ok .. just a few comments on Obama's first day in the Oval Office.
You will remember that one of the first things Clinton did when he took office was to pave the way for gays in the military. By that we must assume that Clinton placed a supreme importance on that issue. Obama? His first move was to stop the trials of accused Islamic terrorists and to move to close Gitmo. Right now intelligence experts are warning us that the Islamic goons want to hit us quick and hard under a new president, What sort of message is being sent to these Islamic terrorists? Is it possible that this is will be seen as a signal that Barack Obama will be soft on terrorism?
On the economic stimulus issue ... Obama's Treasury ("Pay taxes? Who, me?") is announcing a bold new plan to rescue the banks. I wonder if that bold plan includes nationalization. Something needs to be done to get banks lending money again. How do you encourage the banks to lend money again right now by spending $355 billion on highways and bridges next year. If you have an explanation, I would sure like to hear it.
Last night Obama took the oath of office again. Good. This time Justice Roberts got it right. That means we won't be getting idiotic phone calls from people saying that Obama really isn't the president because the Chief Justice flubbed it.
Barack Obama has chosen former Republican congressman from Illinois Ray LaHood to be in charge of directing billions in federal highway spending through the stimulus package. The only problem is .. LaHood is known for his love of earmarks and has notoriously used his influence to get funding for projects that would benefit his campaign contributors.
Last year alone, LaHood sponsored $60 million in federal earmarks .. $9 million of which was directed to his campaign donors. He ranked in the top 10% of earmark sponsors in the House last year.
You can read all of the specifics as to where LaHood directed these federal funds, but it doesn't seem like a smart appointment for Obama considering his apparent dedication to transparency and earmark reform.
Yes ... I know that earmark pork only accounts for one percent of less of federal spending. It's not the amount. It's the fact that these politicians see the working taxpayers of this country - those few that are left - as not much more than funding machines for vote-buying projects in their districts. Enough.
In November, the federal government registered a record budget deficit. We are talking some big, big money folks. This $700 billion financial bailout plan doesn't help either. But the gap we are talking about for November - that would be the amount of revenue collected by the government compared to what it paid out - was $164.4 billion.
But that's not the scary part. The scary part is that this puts you, the taxpayers, on the hook for a record $1 trillion deficit for the year. This is more than double the all-time high for a deficit. And we thought that Republicans were big spenders.
Take a look at your children and grandchildren. You really won't have bear the brunt of this --- but they most certainly will. When the United States can't pay its bills, where do we go for a bailout? The UN? Now think about that for a moment. What if our fiscal irresponsibility - fueled by political lust for power - leads us to the impending economic collapse of the United States. Look, our children are already on the hook for about $50 trillion that we don't have. Let's say we do go to the UN or some other nations for bailout money. Are they going to treat us the same way our government is treating the banks and automakers? If they come up with their cash are they going to demand a stake in America?
While you think about this .. let me bounce something else off you. We are here because, as I said, of the political lust for power. Once these people arrive in Washington, once they taste the power and perks, all they want is more. The bulk of our congressman and senators will sell out the future of our children for more political power to day. Easy as that.
The CEO of American Airlines says that any plans for a federal stimulus should include the aviation industry. This includes more spending on runways and air traffic control. The airlines themselves, though, don't seem to be asking for a handout ... yet.
American Airlines CEO Gerald Arpey says, "The airline industry should be certainly at the top of the list of industries that are deserving of economic stimulus as it relates to infrastructure because we have let the infrastructure in aviation deteriorate."
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The Congressional Budget Office released its estimates on the cost of Obama's healthcare plan. Just as expected, it wasn't pretty. Just as expected, 
Tax cheat Timothy Geithner has decided that the 
Barack Obama has chosen former Republican congressman from Illinois Ray LaHood to be in charge of directing billions in federal highway spending through the stimulus package. The only problem is .. LaHood is known for his love of earmarks and has notoriously used his influence to get funding for projects that would benefit his campaign contributors.