Friday, January 28, 2011

Sputnik moment – or GM moment?

Sputnik moment – or GM moment?


General Motors' executives repeatedly caved in to United Autoworkers' demands for wages, health benefits and pensions the company could not afford over the long term. Small and inexpensive foreign cars were allowed into the U.S. market and, as their quality improved, began to flood the U.S. market.
GM executives failed to see what was happening, and if they saw it, to act upon the new reality. Thus, at the end of the last decade, the U.S. government acted.
The company was taken into receivership. Shareholders and bondholders of GM were wiped out. Hundreds of GM dealerships closed. Now, a new GM has come out of bankruptcy to take its place as one of a dozen major auto companies in the United States and the world.

The failure of GM was a failure of leadership. Executives lacked the vision to see the challenges coming. They lacked the courage to resist the demands of union bosses. They lacked the decisiveness to act, when sacrifices were clearly required.

The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps the More Money JP Morgan Makes

The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps the More Money JP Morgan Makes

" JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is "a very important business to JP Morgan" and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared.

But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?
There are just some things that are a little too "creepy" to be "outsourced" to private corporations. The JP Morgan executive in the interview below does his best to put a positive spin on all this, but it just seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans...."

Austerity in America: 22 Signs That It Is Already Here and That It Is Going To Be Very Painful

Austerity in America: 22 Signs That It Is Already Here and That It Is Going To Be Very Painful

" The following are 22 signs that austerity has already arrived in America and that it is going to be very, very painful....

#1 The financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb, has submitted a proposal to close half of all the schools in the city. His plan envisions class sizes of up to 62 students in the remaining schools.

#2 Detroit Mayor Dave Bing wants to cut off 20 percent of the entire city from police and trash services in order to save money.

#3 Things are so tight in California that Governor Jerry Brown is requiring approximately 48,000 state workers to turn in their government-paid cell phones by June 1st.

#4 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing to completely eliminate 20 percent of state agencies.

#5 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has closed 20 fire departments at night and is proposing layoffs in every single city agency.

#6 In the state of Illinois, lawmakers recently pushed through a 66 percent increase in the personal income tax rate.

#7 The town of Prichard, Alabama came up with a unique way to battle their budget woes recently. They simply stopped sending out pension checks to retired workers. Of course this is a violation of state law, but town officials insist that they just do not have the money.

#8 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently purposely skipped a scheduled 3.1 billion dollar payment to that state's pension system.

#9 The state of New Jersey is in such bad shape that they still are facing a $10 billion budget deficit for this year even after cutting a billion dollars from the education budget and laying off thousands of teachers.

#10 Due to a very serious budget shortfall, the city of Newark, New Jersey recently made very significant cuts to the police force. Subsequently, there has been a very substantial spike in the crime rate.

#11 The city of Camden, New Jersey is "the second most dangerous city in America", but because of a huge budget shortfall they recently felt forced to lay off half of the city police force.

#12 Philadelphia, Baltimore and Sacramento have all instituted "rolling brownouts" during which various city fire stations are shut down on a rotating basis.

#13 In Georgia, the county of Clayton recently eliminated its entire public bus system in order to save 8 million dollars.

#14 Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts has announced that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer. The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.

#15 In Connecticut, the governor is asking state legislators to approve the biggest tax increase that the state has seen in two decades.

#16 All across the United States, conditions at many state parks, recreation areas and historic sites are deplorable at best. Some states have backlogs of repair projects that are now over a billion dollars long. The following is a quote from a recent MSNBC article about these project backlogs....
More than a dozen states estimate that their backlogs are at least $100 million. Massachusetts and New York's are at least $1 billion. Hawaii officials called park conditions "deplorable" in a December report asking for $50 million per year for five years to tackle a $240 million backlog that covers parks, trails and harbors.

#17 The state of Arizona recently announced that it has decided to stop paying for many types of organ transplants for people enrolled in its Medicaid program.

#18 Not only that, but Arizona is so desperate for money that they have even sold off the state capitol building, the state supreme court building and the legislative chambers.

#19 All over the nation, asphalt roads are actually being ground up and are being replaced with gravel because it is cheaper to maintain. The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have transformed at least some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.

#20 The state of Illinois is such a financial disaster zone that it is hard to even describe. According to 60 Minutes, the state of Illinois is six months behind on their bill payments. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft asked Illinois state Comptroller Dan Hynes how many people and organizations are waiting to be paid by the state, and this is how Hynes responded....
"It's fair to say that there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people waiting to be paid by the state."

#21 The city of Chicago is in such dire straits financially that officials there are actually toying with the idea of setting up a city-owned casino as a way to raise cash.

#22 Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is desperately looking for ways to cut the budget and he says that "hundreds of jurisdictions" in his state could go bankrupt over the next few years. "

About That 'War on Cops' … by William Norman Grigg

About That 'War on Cops' … by William Norman Grigg

The grim but statistically inescapable fact is that the average American is much more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

And the Debt Bomb Ticks On by Patrick J. Buchanan

And the Debt Bomb Ticks On by Patrick J. Buchanan

Rep. Paul Ryan & Co. want to cut $60 billion to $80 billion. But, says, Mick Mulvaney, a freshman from South Carolina, "We want more." These conservatives want $100 billion cut from discretionary programs.
Among their ideas: a five-year freeze on federal salaries, a 15 percent cut in federal employees, a rollback to 2006 spending levels, $300 billion in long-term funding cuts from such programs as foreign aid, Amtrak, public broadcasting and the Washington, D.C., subway system.

Friday, January 21, 2011

How the Chinese must see us

How the Chinese must see us


" As Hu Jintao wings his way home, America's hectoring still ringing in his ears, he must be thinking that maybe we Americans should stop lecturing them and take a closer look at ourselves. Revalue your currency, we demand of the Chinese, stop running these trade surpluses at our expense, start practicing free trade, and abandon these mercantilist and protectionist policies.

But why should they? Why should China abandon a trade policy that is working marvelously well for them, and adopt a trade policy that is failing dismally for us? Does that make sense?

Why should any nation emulate the U.S. trade policy of the Bush-Clinton-Bush era that has stripped us of a third of our manufacturing jobs and made us dependent on China and the world for the needs of our national life and the borrowed money to pay for them?

Why would China, seeking to make herself an independent and self-sufficient nation, adopt a policy that cost us our independence?

And what are the Chinese doing in their ascendancy to first power on earth that we did not do in ours? "

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Will the Republicans really cut this time?

Will the Republicans really cut this time?

America is on a path to bankruptcy. It's easy to get bogged down arguing about lots of small cuts, but we'll only make progress by abolishing whole departments and entire missions. I hope the public understands it has to be done.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Never let a shooting go to waste

Never let a shooting go to waste


This is a classic diversionary tool in the play book of the politics of personal destruction: "Accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of."
David Axelrod, President Obama's top political adviser, verbalized this Machiavellian tactic in an NPR interview, April 19, 2010: "In Chicago, there was an old tradition of throwing a brick through your own campaign office window, and then calling a press conference to say that you've been attacked," Axelrod said.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

On Guarding the Public’s Right to Ignorance and Meeting With Julian Assange

On Guarding the Public’s Right to Ignorance and Meeting With Julian Assange

" Americans have allowed themselves to become enslaved to the government of dictatorship that is Washington D. C. The ruling elite cannot allow the truth to be told. Look at their reaction when someone has the stones to remind them that we still have a Constitution. Julian has done a service to all of mankind but few would ever admit that fact!


The most disheartening conclusion I draw from this sorry spectacle, is that my fellow citizens do not stand up to their public servants for the deeds that these did in our name, and their audacity to lie to us about their outright criminal behavior. If we do not tolerate our fellow citizens behaving like that, why do we meekly look the other way, when our servants lie to us? If our household help would steal and lie to us the way our governmental employees do, wouldn't we immediately fire and punish them? Until we punish our public servants severely, from President to dogcatcher, when they lie to us, the public, this behavior will continue and proliferate.Have my fellow citizens forgotten that they are the ultimate sovereign and source of power in this country?Isn't it disturbing that our servants are more concerned about the attempted killing of one of them(the Arizona congresswoman) than the actual death of our fellow citizens at the hands of a crazed person?We are way down the road to a totalitarian state, where we are nothing but slaves to our servants. 

 Journalists and politicians share the same conceit: that they see the big picture and thus know what is best for mankind and thus know that mankind is best when carefully controlled by those who see the big picture. So do not expect journalists as a group to care about tyranny. Their sympathies are with the tyrants because they share the tyrants wisdom. Assange, like Mencken, is a rare creature.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said that "I believe that when tyranny comes it will not be through one sweeping law, but piecemeal and in stages." In the past we had dictatorships that banned free speech by law. Now we have the same oppression but hidden. Julian Assange is put in jail on ridiculous charges that no one else in Sweden has ever been prosecuted for. (Two socialist activists accusing him of having sex with a broken condom. If a woman goes out to have breakfast with a man at a restaurant the day after, do you believe a crime has been committed during the night?) The Australian post service shuts down Wikileaks' mailbox. Corporations are contacted and so the Wikileaks web address is shut down, PayPal prevents donations, VISA prevents donations. And so on. OH, but there is still free speech. But your life will be ruined if you try it, and you will never have a career again, and people will be afraid to come close to you. Same as for the members of every anti-immigration party in Europe and the West - but THAT is something you will never hear about in the media. "

Krugman’s Tales of Morality by William L. Anderson

Krugman’s Tales of Morality by William L. Anderson

Krugman, however, has ignored the facts because they don't fit his narrative. But there is even a bigger issue that Krugman ignores and that is the violence committed by government agents. I never have seen Krugman speak on one incident in which those wearing government costumes have engaged in unwarranted violent behavior against innocent people.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Liberty is dangerous

Liberty is dangerous

The right's pathetic reaction

The right's pathetic reaction


Such evidence, of course, would (metaphor alert) kill the Big-Lie drive to judge Republicans guilty of the Arizona crime and thereafter sentence them to a kind of peer-pressured censorship. Robust and, lately, winning conservative debate is (metaphors ahead) the target here; the weaponry doesn't matter to the Left. Which means facts don't matter, either. To wit: "So far, there's no connection between alleged murderer Jared Lee Loughner and the extremes of the tea-party movement," writes the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, arguing for "Republican leaders to tamp down the rhetoric." He continues: "But that's beside the point. ..."

Really?

In the end, though, what's worse than the Big Lie itself is the failure to reject and expose it – the failure, in this case, to identity the lie as a naked influence operation to mute conservative political expression. This failure is the crime Republicans are guilty of each time they stoop to defend themselves within the phony terms of the lie itself.

Read more: The right's pathetic reaction http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=250721#ixzz1B4hUcF3F

1967 Attack On American Ship Is a Mystery Without an Ending by Charley Reese

1967 Attack On American Ship Is a Mystery Without an Ending by Charley Reese

When the survivors of the Liberty finished their service in the Navy and thus were free to talk, they became targets of a campaign of vilification and have been called drunks, anti-semites, and incompetents. When a small town in Wisconsin decided to name its library in honor of the USS Liberty crewmen, a campaign claiming it was anti-Semitic was launched, and when the town went ahead, the U.S. government ordered no Navy personnel to attend, sent no messages. This little library was the first – and, at the time, the only – memorial to the men who died on the Liberty.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

When Will They Figure It Out? by Butler Shaffer

When Will They Figure It Out? by Butler Shaffer


A Shooting in Tucson. Rampant corruption in the financial markets. The underwear bomber. Ruby Ridge. What do these all have in common? Simple - a government that's incompetent, and a citizenry unwilling to hold it to account. If you want the solution to problems you first must identify what they are, and then call out those who caused the problems you face. Passing laws is immaterial if the existing laws aren't enforced.

The
response of political figures and members of the mainstream media to the killing and wounding of a number of people in Tucson, was not surprising. Had the victims been "ordinary" people alone, the event would have been quickly noted as but another symptom of a conflict-ridden society. There would have been no daily hospital press conferences to update their conditions. But this shooting resulted in the killing of a federal judge, and the grave wounding of a member of congress: now we’re talking "serious" offenses !!

All we've got so far is Congresspeople threatening to introduce more laws that won't be enforced, just like the laws that weren't enforced this time !

Shortly after the shootings occurred, local and national politicians issued press releases that focused on government officials being the targets of such violence. To the politically-minded, the "ordinaries" (or "mundanes") who were killed or wounded were what they have come to regard as "collateral damage." !

The Student Loan Debt Bubble by Alan Nasser

The Student Loan Debt Bubble by Alan Nasser

It was announced last summer that total student loan debt, at $830 billion, now exceeds total US credit card debt, itself bloated to the bubble level of $827 billion. And student loan debt is growing at the rate of $90 billion a year.
There are far fewer students than there are credit card holders. Could there be a student debt bubble at a time when college graduates’ jobs and earnings prospects are as gloomy as they have been at any time since the Great Depression?

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Necessity of the Plutocracy?

Necessity of the Plutocracy?

" We would argue this conclusion is wrong on almost every count. The banking community no matter how wealthy does not constitute the "super rich." The banking community SERVES the power elite – which really is phenomenally wealthy. Additionally, America does NOT need its plutocrats. It needs to get rid of the central banking system that creates and endlessly distorts and centralizes the larger economy. The author tries to make the case that modern bankers deserve their millions annually because they are "hard working." But plenty of people are hard-working. Bankers get what they do because the elites have created a perverse system of monetary stimulation that prints money-from-nothing and bankers occupy the pitiless heart of it. "

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Free the Clogged-Nose 25! - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Daily

Free the Clogged-Nose 25! - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Daily

" Ever since George Bush nearly banned the stuff in 2005, the manufacturers have been packing the shelves with a pseudo-pseudoephedrine that might as well be a placebo. The new stuff doesn't work and everyone knows it.Before 2005, you could buy as many Sudafed packages as you did Big Mac sandwiches, and the police didn't care. Now, your 30-day allotment is nine grams. So this seems like it would be enough, but what if you are buying for two people or an entire family, or lose some, or give them away to a friend, or they fall to the back of the cabinet, or you're out of town? And how can you possibly track precisely how much you have purchased? "


Ottavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990 for his book The Labyrinth of Solitude. After 20 years of being in print, current editions have several epilogues, the last of which is The Philanthropic Ogre. Here he says:




“The twentieth-century state has proved itself a force more powerful than the ancient empires and a master more terrible than the old tyrants and despots: a faceless, inhuman master who functions not like a demon but like a machine. Civil Society has almost completely disappeared: nothing and no person exists outside the state. It is a surprising inversion of values that would have made Nietzsche himself shudder: the state is Being and exception; irregularity and even simple individualism are forms of evil, that is, of nothingness.”



And he continues…



“The state is neither a factory nor a business. The logic of history is not quantitative. Economic rationality depends on the relationship between expenditure and production, investment and earnings, work and savings. The rationale of the state is not utility nor profit but power — gaining it, conserving it and extending it. The archetype of power does not lie in economics but in war, not in the polemic relationship of capital to work but in the hierarchical relationship of commander to soldier.”

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Desperation of US Government Workers

Desperation of US Government Workers

Certainly, it is the toxic combination of public unions and municipal government that has turned hitherto mundane occupations into professions that allow people to retire with impressive pay packages after 20 or 25 years. The early-to-mid 2000s were probably the high-water mark for these services and now the contracts and retirements packages are proving overwhelmingly expensive for the cities and states that approved them.

Nonetheless, such pay packages and perks will not be willingly surrendered. As we can see from the article excerpted above, governments will do almost anything to keep funds flowing. In the end, however, it will not do much to correct economics that have been distorted by decades of collective bargaining and political acquiescence for vote-gathering purposes. The cash flows of the present will not support the expensive contracts of the past.

The cult of the municipal service worker has been relentlessly expanded in the US despite some level of cultural resistance. This divide has been growing for a while but as the second decade of the 2000s looms it is safe to say that it will be continually aggravated. The result will be further discord between those serve and those who are "served."

Begin with the police. What has also grown in the past decades is the idea of "law enforcement" as a career. The problem is not with the career itself but the collateral damage that stems from having so many men (and women) devoted to enforcing law and order. As the number of civil authorities has climbed throughout the West, so has the pressure to utilize the services of these individuals. The result: "broken homes, welfare payments, divorces, fines, jail terms and shattered lives, all resulting from the law enforcement growth industry."

Elite on a Tightrope

Elite on a Tightrope

" The Soros interview is further evidence that the elite is confronting a troublesome period. It is not only the decline of the United States that needs to be managed – but the decline of Europe, the rise of austerity and the level of cooperation that can be extracted from China. Ordinarily, none of this would be discussed by blogs; but in this day and age the Internet is acting as virtual adjunct to the power elite. Conversations that used to take place once a year at Bilderburg are taking place minute-to-minute on the Web. The power elite in our view misjudged the severity of the downturn of the world's economy and also the truth-telling of the Internet and the degree to which it would be used by every-day people once they started losing their jobs and pensions.

We would go further and suggest that it is the arrogance of the elites generally – especially after the triumphs of the 20th century – that led them to this place. They were surely blindsided by the Internet and even now with their maneuvering exposed they forge ahead as if nothing has happened. There are perhaps many reasons for this behavior but one of them surely is that after so many years of ruling the world behind the scenes they cannot fathom that their power is less than unbrookable or that their plans are less than absolute."

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Is a Bond Crisis Inevitable? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Is a Bond Crisis Inevitable? by Patrick J. Buchanan

" Fitch and Moody's have just downgraded the debt of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Hungary. In Budapest, the politicians talk of default. Spain has been warned its debt and banks could be downgraded.

The European Central Bank is buying up this paper to prevent panic selling by investors. There is talk of forcing bondholders to take a haircut. They would trade their suspect bonds for new euro bonds whose face value would be appreciably less.

In the Latin American debt crisis, the United States bailed out its banks holding the bad paper by giving them U.S.-backed bonds, while forcing them to take a loss on their Latin bonds. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, Latin America walked away from a huge slice of its debt.

The Japanese national debt is slated to pass 200 percent of gross domestic product this year, highest of any major economy on earth. Half of Japan's spending is now financed by bonds. Tax revenues do not even cover 50 percent."