From Another Age

The following statements, perceived to be true by most common sense voters, are alien concepts to most governments.   Does getting elected to office corrupt the common sense mind or are we simply voting for those who lack common sense to begin with???

CONGRESS

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

What one per person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot  give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Des Moines, Iowa is now the site of a super controversial billboard  erected by a local Iowa tea party.   The tea party apparently saw disturbing similarities between “National Socialism (Hitler), Marxist Socialism (Lenin) and Democratic Socialism” (Obama).

The tea party decided to make its point in a graphic and public manner, which immediately drew strong protests from a variety of groups.

The billboard was quickly removed but the storm of controversy is sure to continue.

The tea party only briefly exercised its right of freedom of speech after party members decided that the billboard was offensive.

Tea Party Goes Wild

The White House Council of Economic Advisers today proudly praised the $787 billion stimulus program, claiming that it had created or saved 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs.   Without bothering to debate how the Council arrived at its estimate of jobs saved or created, lets take the average of their estimated jobs (3.05 million) and divide by the cost of the stimulus program of $787 billion.

The government cost the taxpayers $262,333 to “save or create” each job.  Putting aside the obvious nonsense that the government can “create” jobs, if the government continues to “create” jobs in this manner, the country will soon be bankrupt.

Based on the Council of Economic Advisers’ math, we could recover the 8 million jobs lost over the past 3 years at a cost of only $2.1 trillion dollars!

Some more fun facts:

The $787 billion “stimulus” program cost each of the estimated 105 million households in the US $7,495.

The average median household income in 2008 was $52,029.

One certainty is that the average American household would have spend the $7,495 much more wisely than government bureaucrats.   The other certainty is that the government’s public relations effort praising the stimulus plan is just another waste of taxpayer time and money.  According to the New York Times:

The latest CBS News poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans said the stimulus had not improved the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 9.5 percent, with few signs of improving in the short term. The reluctance of businesses to add jobs has weighed on other parts of the economy and there are signs that growth has begun to slow.

Aside from wasting $787 billion of the taxpayers money, the next most tragic part of this story is that the government continues to ignore the wisdom of the American people, and continues to insist that the program was a success.  Joe Biden, regarded by many as the biggest buffoon in Washington, had this to say - “I am absolutely confident we are moving in the right direction, absolutely confident”.   This statement should be more than enough to terrify most clear thinking Americans.

Statements made by an absolutely confident Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Depression:

August 11, 1928 - “Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

November 1929 - “Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”

January 21, 1930 - “Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”

A new poll released by the Washington Post-ABC News shows that support for the president has plunged to a new all time low.   A staggering 60% of voters say that they “lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy”.

The poll results should not be a surprise to anyone based on recent state and local election results where voters have shown a resounding denunciation of Obama’s policies.   The country is clearing going in the wrong direction with living standards declining across virtually every income and social group.

The Financial Times assessed Obama’s problems regarding his recent plunge in the polls:

Astonishingly, 55 per cent of citizens think Mr Obama is a “socialist” against only 39 per cent who do not share that diagnosis.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

Big Brother directives flow out of Washington on a massive scale, attempting to micro manage and control every aspect of the economy and our personal lives.  Imbued with an arrogance beyond comprehension, the ruling elite believe they can solve any problem by simply legislating another 2,500 page bill.    The people are no longer being fooled by this nonsense and the recognition is slowly building that Congress could do more good by simply leaving town for an extended period.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

While the Obama administration has been spending trillions on unaffordable health care programs, global warming, financial reform and other matters mostly peripheral to most Americans, the issue of a floundering economy and sky high unemployment go unaddressed.  It’s always “jobs and the economy stupid”.  Without income growth, none of these other programs matter as reported by Bloomberg:

Seven of 10 Americans say reducing unemployment is the priority. At the same time, the public is skeptical of the Obama administration’s stimulus program and wary of more spending, with more than half saying the deficit is “dangerously out of control.”

The public mood is bleak, with 63 percent saying they believe the country is on the wrong track, the most negative reading of Obama’s presidency. After a year of economic growth, 71 percent say the economy is still in recession; another 13 percent say the economy is faltering and will dip back into recession.

Only 1 in 6 say they believe they are personally better off than they were 18 months ago, when President Barack Obama took office. They are more apt to see the economy today as deteriorating than improving.

Based on the direction the country is headed in, a logical mind would wonder why 40% of voters still apparently support Obama.  Here’s some rather dark thoughts on this matter by Wayne Allen Root, 2008 VP nominee for the Libertarian party, as reported by truthorfiction.

Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Obama is my college classmate ( Columbia University , class of ‘83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University . They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival … and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

Obama doesn’t care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

– Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”

– Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

– Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America . But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.

– Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions — including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country.

United State Postal Service Goes Postal On Rate Increases

Well, here they go again - another 2 cent or 4.5% increase in the cost of a first class stamp.  The recent history of postal rate increases by the USPS has been on a sharp upward trajectory (courtesy: Wikipedia.org.)

In nine years since 2001, including the newly proposed rate increase, the cost of a stamp will have risen by 35.3%.   Keep in mind that over the past nine years the inflation rate has remained subdued and personal income growth for those in the private sector has been virtually nonexistent.

In March of 2009, John Potter, head of the US Postal Service told Congress that the “Postal Service, which has served America for 234 years, is experiencing a very serious financial crisis because of the downturn in the economy.  We are facing losses of historic proportions…our situation is critical”.   Mr. Potter also noted that “the law constrains us from taking the businesslike actions necessary to fully and properly align our institutional cost base with reduced and evolving customer demand”.

Mr. Potter is correct that the Postal Service is not taking the proper “businesslike actions” but he is dead wrong in his assertion that the Postal Service financial crisis is due to the recession.  The Postal Service is floundering because of it monopolistic position, excessive price increases for mediocre service,  the relentless economics of the Internet and competition by well run private enterprises in the package delivery business.

Consider the following:

-Postal mail volume has seen a steep decline of 20% since 2000.  Continuously raising prices as demand slumps will only increase USPS losses.   Economics 101 Mr. Potter - demand falls as prices increase.  Mail can be sent and bills paid on the Internet at a fraction of the price charged by the USPS - higher stamp prices will merely serve to increase use of the lower cost option.

-USPS lost $3.8 billion last year and expects to lose $7 billion this year.  Additional rate increases to avoid losses will result in a vicious cycle of further reduction of volume for the Post Office, requiring additional rate increases.

-USPS Vice President Steve Kearney warned that the “The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency”.  Translation - we will be needing a taxpayer bailout sooner rather than later.

-This from the Wall Street Journal:

Most employees have no-layoff clauses, the starting salaries are about 25% to 30% higher than for comparably skilled private workers, and the fringe benefits are so expensive that the Government Accountability Office says $500 million a year could be saved merely by bringing health benefits into line with those of other federal workers.

The most overdue reform is to strip away the Post Service’s monopoly on first-class mail and bulk mail. Competition is the key ingredient to innovation, low prices and good service.

No private business in America could continually raise prices, lose billions of dollars and then hope to win back customers by promising poorer service.

-As the Post Office continues to furiously raise prices, both volume and revenue continue to plunge, as can be seen by the following figures from the USPS.  The latest large proposed rate increase tells us that the Post Office has truly gone “Postal”  -  repeating the same act again and again and expecting a different result.

The Postal Service has not changed with the times, plodding along like it was still the 1950’s. Attempted organizational changes and cost cutting measures have failed.  Raising rates further is the most self destructive action that the Post Office could possible take.  The Postal Service needs to be dramatically restructured and reduced in size to reflect the basic economic reality of its core business.  Congress should cut the Post Office loose from self defeating regulations of a by gone era, let them operate as a business and close the door on taxpayer bailouts and subsidies.

More on this topic:

Obama Says We Can Do With Health Care What We Did With The Post Office

Why The Post Office Needs To Charge Us More