I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contended with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation.
“This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance….A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”—Thomas Jefferon
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.
“Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management,” Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a statement. “Shortcomings in three areas again prevented us from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.”
The main obstacles to a GAO opinion were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.
New Speak over the years had created the politically correct name of socialism and progressiveness as an alternative to the term Communism. The same as global warming changed to climate change and to multidimensional atmospheric pressure redistribution (or whatever they are calling it today).
Now, Communist Bill Gates has changed the term Communist to “creative Capitalism.” In the following video, he speaks to the People’s Magazine Editor on the subject.
Defenders of public employee pension systems often make the case that pension benefits are not all that generous. The outrageous cases you see on the news — Long Island police retiring in their 40s with pensions in excess of base pay, administrators “retiring” with six-figure pensions and then going back to work with another government agency, one ex-FDNY firefighter running marathons on his $86,000 “disability” pension — are the exceptions, they say.
By JOSH BARRO and E.J. McMAHON
New York Post
Last Updated: 5:14 AM, December 19, 2010
Posted: 11:49 PM, December 18, 2010
The data, however, tells a different story. According to the Census Bureau, the average New York retiree receiving a corporate or union pension — a retiree from the private sector — was receiving an annual benefit of $13,100 in 2009. For state and local government retirees, that figure was more than twice as high: $27,600. And that average figure includes retirees who were part-time workers or only spent part of their careers in government; full-career retirees often do far better.
To understand what sort of public pension you might be eligible for, the Empire Center for New York State Policy has created a Pension Calculator, available at nypensionbomb.org. Simply enter your age at retirement, years worked and final average salary — typically, the average of your wage earnings in your last three years worked — and you can see what benefit you would be entitled to, if you were lucky enough to work for the government.
By RANDALL HOVEN
New York Post
Last Updated: 10:19 AM, December 19, 2010
Posted: 11:28 PM, December 18, 2010
According to Barack Obama, “The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact.” But according to Margaret Thatcher, “The facts of life are conservative.” Who’s right?
Myth: The deficit was caused by Bush’s tax cuts.
Fact: For over four decades, 1960 through 2000, federal revenues averaged 18.2% of Gross Domestic Product and the trend was virtually flat. The final Bush tax rates became effective in 2003. In 2006 and 2007, well after the new tax rates were in effect, federal revenues were 18.2% and 18.5% of GDP, above historical levels. The federal government collected over half a trillion dollars more in 2007 than it did in 2000.
Myth: Republicans spent like drunken sailors.
Fact: Federal spending from 1960 through 2000 averaged 20.3% of GDP, with a slightly upward trend. The average over all Bush years, 2001 through 2008, was 19.6% of GDP – below the historical average. The 2001-2008 average deficit was also below the 1960-2000 average.
Senate Republicans sought to build momentum on Friday after successfully forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to beg off a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote a valedictory email to GOP supporters cheering the death of the omnibus bill.
“You did it. Facing pressure from you, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Thursday night he was withdrawing the Democrats’ last-minute, 2,200 page-long, $1.1 trillion spending bill,” Cornyn wrote, crediting Republican victories in Senate races this fall for the victory.
Reid pulled the spending bill from the Senate floor after Republicans signaled that they would not support the legislation, despite some of the earmarked projects contained within the bill that different GOP senators had requested.
It took two days to print and it will take even longer to read.
According to The Hill, Senate Republicans are going through with a plan to have the entire omnibus spending bill read on the Senate floor, a feat that won’t be completed for 50 hours.
Republicans have vowed to vote against the 1,924-page, $1.1 trillion bill that is loaded with billions in earmarks.
“Senate clerks are expected to read the massive bill in rotating shifts around the clock — taking breaks to drink water and pop throat lozenges — to keep legislative business on track, according to a Democratic leadership aide,” The Hill reports.
That would mean any Senate business would be stalled until Saturday evening.
Yesterday, Senate Democrats dropped their 1,924-page omnibus spending bomb on Capitol Hill. My column today reports on the other omnibus bomb up their sleeves — a massive omnibus land grab that Dingy Harry Reid vowed yesterday to bring up before the stretched-out lame-duck session ends. It’s green pork galore: “Reid’s staff sees a natural resources omnibus as a rare chance for members to bring something home to their districts and therefore worth the extra time needed to see such a large bill through to completion.”
Many of the items on the enviros’ wish list have been divvied up between the omnibus spending bill and the omnibus lands bill. (I’ve uploaded them both below for easy reference.) A San Francisco Bay restoration grant program pushed by Sen. Boxer (p. 874), Great Lakes watershed program (p. 626), Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta heritage designation (p.880), and Montana forest and watershed plan pushed by Sen. Tester (p. 897) are among the eco-goodies stuffed into the omnibus spending bill. Dozens of other land grabs have been bundled together in the omnibus lands bill, including several projects in Reid’s home state of Nevada, as I note below.
Death and taxes, it is said, are life’s only two certainties. But in the wake of President Obama’s tax compromise with congressional Republicans, only death retains the status of certainty: The future for taxes has been left up in the air. And uncertainty is not a friend of investment, growth and job creation.
The deal has several key features. It reduces payroll taxes, extends unemployment benefits and keeps current tax rates intact. So far, so good. But intermixed with the benefits are considerable costs of consequence. Given the unambiguous message that the American people sent to Washington in November, it is difficult to understand how our political leaders could have reached such a disappointing agreement. The new, more conservative Congress should reach a better solution.
The deal keeps current tax rates from rising to pre-Bush era levels for two years. But in 2013, unless Congress acts again, rates will increase dramatically.
{Are we getting the message that maybe the federal government really doesn’t have our best interest at heart? That maybe the take-over of health care wasn’t for the children?}
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Our economy is a mess – millions of Americans are out of work and those who do have jobs are finding it increasingly difficult to afford the ever rising costs of living. With this in mind, it might make sense for the Obama administration to direct some of our tax dollars towards job creation, but what doesn’t make sense is the fact that millions of our dollars are being used by the Obama administration to create jobs in foreign countries!
Democrats are working very hard pushing the ‘green’ meme and fighting tirelessly to divert money to China for wind turbines – which if made here instead could help put Americans back to work.
Here in New York, we have a wonderful company, Steuben Glass, which manufactures fine crystal and glassware – locally. When our “Senator from New York” became Obama’s Secretary of State, she decided that the State Department needed some new glasses to serve drinks to foreign dignitaries (or whatever). Did she remember the people of New York who gave that carpetbagger a chance by voting her into the Senate twice (knowing full well that she was just using the seat as a stepping stone for higher office & that she’d not likely finish out her term)? No, she did not, here’s what she actually did instead, via the NY Post:
Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea-Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.
Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?
If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years. Two-thirds of that is above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts but includes such urgent national necessities as windmill subsidies.
May 22, 2012 1813 Richard Wagner 1931 Kenny Ball 1950 Bernie Taupin 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1938 Susan Strasberg 1959 Morrissey 1907 Lord Laurence Olivier 1946 George Best 1970 Naomi Campbell
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