The poverty level for a family of 3 or 4 is around $30,000/year.
Obama's proposes to increase our existing debt burden at a rate of 1 to 2% a year for the foreseeable and thus a comparable increase in the per person interest carrying cost assuming interest rates remain fixed which is a faulty assumption. Why? Because as the value of America's currency declines we run the risk of the dollar being rejected by creditors and this means runaway inflation. Thus, erosion in both our buying power as well as our standard of living. It is already happening.
Seems to me the problem is government spending not government tax receipts.
Obama believes you can pour water into a bottle that has no bottom because 'fairness' and social redistribution is what drives his thinking, not math. This is the same garbage thinking Castro used to sell Communism to his people and now all can read but they have no books, all can own car but there are none to drive so to speak.
Progressives are oblivious to economic reality because 'equity' is their goal and they are emotionally incapable of accepting the fact that it is both economically unachievable and also totally illusive.
That is not to say smoothing with safety nets is unimportant and doable to a point but turning them into hammocks is where the problem reaches disastrous proportions.
It is human nature to accept that which is freely given and to seek more over time. Politicians are always there to assist.
Obama's entire education, familial background and personal relationships seem based on and driven by Socialism and anger towards Western society and it shows both in his speeches, actions and even down to his appointments - Eric Holder, among a vast number of others - being a prime example.
There are a series of metrics that indicate how severe our nation's plight is beyond foreclosures, home prices and personal balance sheets. One of the most revealing is that 13% of Americans are dependent on food stamps.
Another concern is what is known in psychology as 'normalcy bias.' What this term describes is how difficult it is for people to comprehend a disaster that has never occurred. Its application here is how difficult it is for Americans to come to grips with the implications of a world where the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency and is replace by a new currency.
I seriously doubt Obama understands where America's economic plight leads but nothing good ever comes from leading from weakness. To quote Obama he sees the recent negative employment news as simply a '"...bump in the road." (See 1 below.)
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A series of WSJ editorials and op eds.
The first discusses the bump in the road to economic recovery.
The second, discusses how the NAACP impedes education of the black community.
The third discusses how a very liberal state - Washington -has untangled itself from the stranglehold of 'Obamascare.'
Finally an op ed discussing how Europe abandoned its own civilization. (See 2,2a,2b ands 2c below.)
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Who is Allen West? One thing for sure he is not a product of an NAACP type of education. (See 3 below.)
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Finally, lets talk about our so-called leaders whether they be an ex-Governor from California, a current Congressman from New York or a former Governor/Attorney General from New York, a former President from Arkansas, another from "Camelot" or one seeking the office and a former Senator from North Carolina, the head of the IMF or a former Speaker of The House. It seems their jobs have become so demanding they have to engage in sexual promiscuity to stay focused and in order to serve the public or is it pubic.
Their questionable immoral actions have nothing to do with their own behaviour but at least they mouth that famous catchy phrase: "I take full responsibility for my behavior" or at least some have. One even went so far as to tell us "is is is." Yes, it is all due to the enormous pressures of the job that causes them to lower their 'pants and/or unzip their fly.
In a few cases one could argue their debasement came as a result of the 'looker-hooker' but in most cases the women involved were just of the garden variety when it came to the matter of looks. Perhaps these 'sirens' had other disguised talents but we shall probably never know.
The one comforting thought is there is nothing new about powerful men falling on a 'sexual sword' nor is this phenomena exclusive to American politicians etc. The head of the IMF was French, but then we have come to expect that of a Frenchman so he probably deserves some points for holding up the dignity of French maledom and of course Arnold came from Austria by way of a 'Gold's Gym.'
The point of this is 'boys will be boys' but we should at least think twice about electing them to office because many seem to have a tendency to want to use their lower office as a springboard for a higher one.
Maybe our declining dollar and our politicians' rising libido have something in common? You decide!
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Dick - or should I sign 'Penis?'
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1)The Obama Economy
By Fred Barnes
The Obama administration is 0-for-3 in meeting economic expectations. In 2009, President Obama and his advisers believed the bountiful stimulus package would give the economy a strong jolt. It didn’t, and still hasn’t. In 2010, Obama declared Recovery Summer and predicted a surge in employment. The economy lost 283,000 jobs over the summer. This year, Obama expected a significant ratcheting up of jobs and growth. There’s been a ratcheting down.
The White House always has an excuse. Obama’s economic policies are never at fault. The problem in 2009, according to Obama? The economy was in worse shape than he’d feared when he took office. In 2010, economic adviser Christina Romer said the dip in jobs was unexpected. No doubt it was, but that’s a lame explanation. And Obama stubbornly refused to express regret for having proclaimed Recovery Summer in the first place.
Now, two years after the recession officially ended, the excuses for economic stagnation and puny job growth are stale and implausible. Obama didn’t offer any in an economic speech in Toledo a few hours after bad job numbers for May were released last week. Romer’s replacement, Austan Goolsbee, dismissed the 9.1 percent jobless rate as a bump “along the road to recovery.” House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer blamed the Bush administration—really, he did.
Yet Obama labors on as if his policies are working, only a bit more slowly than he’d anticipated. In two and a half years in the White House, he appears to have learned nothing about what stirs the economy and produces jobs and growth. Evidence of failure, like 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter of 2011, matters little. Rather than a midterm course correction, Obama wants more of the same, lots more.
The Politics of Osama Bin Laden’s Death
And he’s not reticent about saying so. Obama’s desire to raise taxes is undiminished. He’s obsessed with the notion that more tax revenues can be wrung from rich people with money to spare. In Obamacare, he’s already got a hike in the Medicare tax. Last week he told House Democrats he won’t tolerate another extension of the current tax rates for high earners (more than $250,000 a year). If he had his way, the top rate on individual income would be 45 percent. Oblivious to economic history, he doesn’t see a rising tax burden as a disincentive to entrepreneurship, investment in job-creating enterprises, and a booming economy.
It’s not just Obama. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spoke last week to Republican House freshmen. One Republican summarized his message as “revenues, revenues, revenues.” Obama, by the way, told Democrats he’ll insist on a tax increase as part of any deal on raising the debt limit.
Obama’s economic panacea is government spending. If you thought the meager results from the stimulus would change his mind, you’re wrong. He told House Republicans that he favors “investing” in the economy. Republicans drew the reasonable conclusion he was talking about more spending by Washington.
Obama was clear about this in his April budget speech. “I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs,” he said. “We’ll invest in medical research. We will invest in clean energy technology. We’ll invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We’ll invest in education. We will invest in job training. We will do what we need to do to compete, and we will win the future.”
The president wasn’t referring to the private sector. He once told a group of money managers that incentives for private investment were old hat. His administration’s massive spending on clean energy, environmental technology, and green jobs, he said, would attract a wave of private investment sufficient to spur growth. So relax, prosperity is on the way.
Whether by design or happenstance, President Obama is the greatest proponent of crony capitalism since FDR proposed cartels under the National Recovery Act. He does big favors for corporate supplicants and recipients of government subsidies while largely ignoring small business. His pet in the business community is Jeff Immelt of General Electric, which relies heavily on federal contracts and paid no taxes in 2010. His nominee for commerce secretary is John Bryson, whose company, BrightSource, is propped up by government subsidies. Obama’s aides are now touting the bailout of General Motors as one of his greatest achievements. Chrysler, not so much.
Obama is a regulatory zealot, even as the administration is supposedly weeding out damaging regulations. (As you might expect, they’ve found few.) At his meeting with Repu blicans last week, Obama was informed of a statement by Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, that EPA adopts policies without taking their economic impact into account—and does so on purpose.
The Republican who brought up the issue, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, got nowhere. Obama seemed dubious Jackson had really said this. Capito said Jackson had told her so, face to face. Obama’s response was vague, but he gave no ground.
Even where Obama seemed to agree with Republicans, he didn’t really. The president is a master of lip service. When Republicans mentioned free trade agreements, medical liability reform, and cutting the corporate tax rate, the president said amen. He’s with them. But there’s always some reason he can’t act. On trade, for instance, Obama is waiting for Congress to pass assistance to alleged victims of foreign competition before pushing to ratify deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. It’s a sop to unions, nothing more.
There’s a lesson here for Republicans, and a huge opportunity. That Obama’s policies are in large part responsible for the weak recovery and high unemployment is beyond dispute. Yet Republicans haven’t made the case effectively enough that Obama’s decisions are directly to blame.
They need to. The economy is languishing, joblessness is stuck at an abnormally high rate, the housing market remains in decline, the deficit will exceed $1 trillion for every year of Obama’s term, the national debt is north of $14 trillion, and markets are anxious. There’s a connection between our troubled economy and Barack Obama. If Republicans drive home the link, they’ll oust him and win big in 2012. It’s as simple as that.
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2)'Bumps on the Road'
The choice is more jobs reports like Friday's or a growth agenda.
You've got to hand it to President Obama and his White House economic team. Faced with yesterday's dreary May jobs report, they did their best and rolled out the old "bump in the road" analogy for comfort. As chief White House economist Austan Goolsbee put it, "there are always bumps on the road to recovery, but the overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years."
Nice try, but there's no way to spin news that the economy in May created only 54,000 new jobs, which is about one-third the number necessary to keep up with the growth in the labor force. The jobless rate rose for the second straight month to 9.1%, which is especially depressing nearly two years after the end of a very deep recession.
At this stage in the Reagan expansion, after a comparably deep 1981-82 recession, the economy was growing by 7% a year and the jobless rate was plunging. This time the economy is growing by less than 2%, and we still have 6.8 million fewer jobs than when the recession began in late 2007.
In other bad news, the average duration of those out of work jumped by 1.4 weeks to 39.7 in May, and the percentage of those jobless for at least six months climbed by 1.7% to 45.1%. The overall labor participation rate stayed the same at 64.2%, but as the nearby chart shows that rate has now fallen to its lowest rate since the mid-1980s.
This is an important economic measure because it reflects the opportunities that Americans perceive in the marketplace. In the long boom from the Reagan years through 2000 or so, the labor participation rate took a historic leap upward as women, immigrants and others entered the job market. The rate dipped after the 2001-2002 downturn, and we recall the media giving much attention to a Federal Reserve study raising alarms even as the rate began to climb again in mid-decade. It has now fallen off a cliff, and we doubt this is what Mr. Goolsbee means when he hails the "trajectory of the economy."
Chances are that job creation will improve in future months after the effects of Japan's earthquake and Midwest tornadoes and if oil prices level off or fall. But the longer the jobs slowdown continues, the greater the danger that the U.S. settles into a new normal of high "structural" unemployment, with employers reluctant to hire workers until they absolutely must. This is a symptom of Eurosclerosis.
The same economists and pundits who promoted the economic policies of the last four years are now lamenting the jobs bust and demanding that Washington double down: More stimulus spending, more Federal Reserve easing, more temporary tax rebates. They can't explain why these policies have failed to date, but we are supposed to rinse and repeat.
The real "bumps on the road" to recovery are these policies and the larger climate of hostility toward job creators that still prevails in Washington. A National Labor Relations Board that wants to stop businesses from moving plants; a $20 billion political raid on banks over foreclosures; hundreds of major new regulations from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and the EPA's war on carbon energy; federal deficits that Mr. Obama says require higher taxes; near-zero interest rates for 30 months that have sent commodity prices soaring, and so much more.
The economy doesn't need more of this. It needs a return to the growth agenda that created the long post-1982 boom.
2a)NAACP vs. Black Parents
Standing in the doorway to protect failed schools.
Her is something you don't see everyday. Thousands of American blacks held a rally in Harlem last week to protest . . . the NAACP.
The New York state chapter of the civil rights organization and the United Federation of Teachers, the local teachers union, have filed a lawsuit to stop the city from closing 22 of Gotham's worst schools. The lawsuit also aims to block the city from giving charter schools space to operate in buildings occupied by traditional public schools.
Protesters at the rally, which included parents and charter school operators like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone, urged the NAACP to withdraw from the suit. But Hazel Dukes, president of the state NAACP chapter, is unpersuaded. Using the kind of language more readily associated with past opponents of black civil rights, Ms. Dukes said that critics of the lawsuit "can march and have rallies all day long. . . . We will not respond."
What schoolhouses is Ms. Dukes standing in the doorway to protect? Well, at the Academy for Collaborative Education, one of the Harlem schools that the city wants to close, only 3% of students were performing at grade level in English last year, and only 9% in math. At Columbus High School in the Bronx, another school slated for closure, the four-year graduation rate in 2009 was 40%, versus a citywide average of 63%, and less than 10% of special education students graduated on time.
The teachers union wants to keep these abysmal schools open to preserve jobs for their members. This is bad enough. But the union and NAACP also want to limit better educational options for low-income families who can't afford private schools and can't afford to move to an affluent neighborhood with decent public schools. The union knows that in a place like New York City, where space is at a premium, blocking charters from operating in public buildings will hamper charter growth.
If the lawsuit succeeds, the awful schools will remain open to damage another generation of children. If you want to know why the NAACP has become irrelevant to the lives of African-Americans, this typical display of moral indifference to the plight of minority children is Exhibit A.
2b)Liberal Washington State Tries to Kiss Medicaid Goodbye The governor and the legislature unanimously back a block-grant model similar to welfare reform.
By NANSEN MALIN
Medicaid has plunged Washington state into fiscal crisis. This fact was recognized by legislators from both sides of the aisle during a contentious special session that concluded last week. The result was Senate Bill 5596, a Medicaid block-grant bill.
The block-grant concept was remarkably nonpartisan: The bill, requiring the state to apply to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for a waiver that would replace its current Medicaid program with a block grant, passed with unanimous support. On Tuesday, Gov. Christine Gregoire, previously an opponent of block grants, signed the bill. Now the waiver request will go to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
A block grant would free state and local officials from being de facto appendages of the faraway federal government. Just the latest in the long line of unnecessary federal strings are the costly "maintenance of effort" requirements imposed by the federal stimulus bill and ObamaCare. This requirement will add an estimated 176,000 people to our state's Medicaid rolls by 2013 and prohibit the state from modifying eligibility rules without risking a loss of all Medicaid funding.
In contrast, SB 5596's authors explain that the block grant would "allow the state to operate as a laboratory of innovation for bending the cost curve, preserving the safety net, and improving the management of care for low-income populations." Rhode Island has had success under a similar waiver granted in 2009, saving $100 million within the first 18 months. With a block grant, state legislators will have the ability to alter eligibility and benefits to best serve the unique needs of their constituents without having to opt out of Medicaid entirely.
Receiving federal dollars in a lump sum instead of matching funds would also make it easier to find cost-savings in Medicaid. Currently, 1.2 million residents of Washington state are on Medicaid. This costs the state $3.1 billion annually, with the federal government contributing another $3.1 billion. If the state legislature wants to reduce Medicaid spending, it has to find $2 in cuts to realize $1 in savings, creating a perverse incentive to keep spending beyond what the state can afford.
In addition to setting eligibility restrictions, the federal government handicaps states in their ability to set benefits. The only real option available to state legislators to control costs is to further decrease reimbursement payments to already underpaid physicians and hospitals. Block grants give states the freedom to decide—with minimum federal interference—whom to cover, what services to provide, what to pay service-providers, and whether to experiment with other innovative reforms.
In 1996, a Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton transformed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (i.e., welfare) program into block grants to the states. With finite funding, states were given an incentive to reform programs and reduce costs. Critics argued that the federal government was shifting costs to the states, which would engage in a harmful race to the bottom.
Instead, the new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), has been a remarkable success. Welfare rolls decreased by two-thirds, and by 2006 total real federal and state spending on TANF had decreased by 31% from 1995 levels. Washington state saw its case load decrease 37%, to 61,200 in March 2003 from 96,000 in September 1996, saving taxpayers $290 million in annual expenditures. Given the right incentives, and freedom to propose changes, states saved taxpayers money while better serving the poor.
Lawmakers in Washington state unanimously acknowledged the advantages and successes of block-granting when they passed SB 5596. Secretary Sebelius should grant the waiver. It's time for Washington, D.C. to let Washington state run its own Medicaid program.
Ms. Malin is Washington state director for Americans for Prosperity.
2c)How Europe Lost Faith in Its Own Civilization
Beset by Christian guilt, the Continent won't defend Christians persecuted by Islamists.
By FRITS BOLKESTEIN
This year the leaders of France and Britain declared that their countries' policies of multiculturalism had failed. As when Germany's Angela Merkel made similar statements last year, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron sparked a political firestorm.
Europe's debate over multiculturalism, and how to deal with non-European immigrants, will only intensify as the full effects of the Arab Spring play out on our continent. But it's worth stepping back to consider how we arrived at this point—how it became so controversial for a Western leader to affirm a preference for his own culture. In short, how did Europe lose confidence in its own civilization?
In their modern forms, the noble Western traditions of self-assessment and self-criticism have often degraded into sentimental self-flagellation. Consider Africa, whose underdevelopment many people blame on the West. This guilt over Africa's poverty is a sentiment that underlies Western development aid. But the question to ask is not, "Why are poor countries poor?" The right question is, "Why are wealthy countries wealthy?" In the beginning we were all poor.
Whoever wants to study the rise of the West and the roots of our prosperity should go back to the Renaissance, if not to classical antiquity. Colonizing Africa had nothing to do with it; the interior of most of Africa was inaccessible until late in the 19th century. European colonizers also came late to North Africa and the Middle East, which for many centuries was ruled by the Ottomans. Europe is no more responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa than Rome was for the underdevelopment of Gaul.
Many people also hold great sympathy with the Palestinian people. That is understandable because their situation is indeed pitiful. But who bothers about the lot of Christians in the Middle East? Their situation is at least equally pitiful as that of Palestinians, if not more so.
At least 10% of Egypt's population is Christian (Coptic). They are repressed and frequently live in misery. The Christian minorities in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan are also discriminated against. In Somalia, Islamists hunt down anyone in possession of a Bible. Yet no one in Europe seems to get excited about these crimes. Christianity appears to be a spent force in Europe, with the exceptions of Poland and Ireland. But for Christians in Asia, Africa, Arabia and beyond, it is not the anemic religion that it has become here. Third World Christians rightly feel deserted.
If they have any doubt about the importance of Christianity in contemporary Western life, these non-European Christians need only look to locales such as England's Oxford. There, in a land with an established Christian church, the municipality has decided to replace Christmas with a "Winter Light Festival." According to a spokesman, this ensures that equal attention is paid to all religions.
Europeans weren't always so self-hating. The 19th century saw the high tide of imperialism, and Europe was brimming with self-confidence. What has happened? The past century witnessed the cataclysm of World War I, the rise of collectivist dictatorships during the interbellum, World War II and the Holocaust, Stalinism and the societal chaos of 1968. These events eroded our cultural certainties and ushered in the era of multiculturalism, which enjoins us "not to judge" that which is different.
The other foundation of our current masochism is, ironically, the very Christianity that modern generations have been so eager to cast off. Whether we like it or not, our civilization remains deeply marked by Christianity. Consider the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which states that "whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted" (23:12). Friedrich Nietzsche characterized this as "slave morality." But one does not have to go that far to realize that this saying, along with instructions to "turn the other cheek" and "go the extra mile," do not exactly prod people to stick up for their own.
If Islamic civilization may be described as a shame culture, Christianity is a guilt culture. Listen to Bach's "Passion According to Saint Matthew." The chorus—that is to say the people—sings, "I shall be punished for what you [Christ] have suffered," and, "You are no sinner, like we and our children." Pride joined guilt and we in Europe soon came to believe that the mote in our eye was heavier than the beam abroad.
This would not be a problem if the burden of a bad conscience came with atonement, forgiveness, confession, expiation or any of the other theological or liturgical forms for purging guilt from the sinner. Formerly, Catholicism and Lutheranism provided for the atonement of guilt. But these traditions no longer have credibility in Europe. Feelings of guilt are not sublimated. This also goes for Calvinism, which in its purest form knows no remission of guilt in this life. Its effects have been deep in Europe and outlast the doctrine.
Thus in 1996 the Dutch government declared that its "debate about multiculturalism must be conducted on the principle that cultures are of equal merit." And so it has gone, for years. In 2002 right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated during national elections, three months after he had called to remove an anti-discrimination clause from the Dutch constitution.
The day after his murder, the editor in chief of the NRC-Handelsblad, a leading Dutch newspaper, wrote that "The pride of the Netherlands is precisely that we do not find one culture better than the other." The writer apparently did not realize that his pride exalted Dutch culture over others—supposedly against national values.
And in 2009, when Utrecht University theologian Pieter van der Horst wanted to devote his valedictory address to "the Islamization of European Anti-Semitism," the institution forbade it, letting its fear of Islamic displeasure take precedence over another ostensibly protected right in Holland: free speech.
The effects of Christian guilt and European self-hatred can be seen around the world, having been picked up by other cultures and used against Europe. After World War II the West set up the United Nations, in part to weaken its own hegemony. Within 30 years the U.N. had grown an automatic majority bent on castigating the West and Israel. The U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, elected Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to join its ranks and judge the state of others' civil liberties.
For 13 years the U.N.'s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) was led by Senegalese teacher Amadou-Mohtar M'Bow, a Soviet-backed, virulent anti-Westerner who ran the organization as if it were an African village and he its tribal leader. In 1984 the U.S. pulled out of Unesco, and in 1985 the U.K. and Singapore followed suit. Continental Europe's nations remained and let themselves be duly castigated.
So much the better that a handful of European leaders now are attempting to reverse our slow cultural suicide. If Europe can retake pride in its own classical values, it and the world will be better off.
Mr. Bolkestein is an author, retired center-right Dutch politician and former European commissioner for internal market and services.
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3)About Allen West
Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (US Army, Retired) was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and is third of four generations of military servicemen in his family. His parents instilled in him a very basic principle, love of God and Country. In 2004, when it was time to retire from more than twenty years of service in the US Army, he brought his wife and two young daughters to Broward County, Florida, where he taught high school for one year. He then returned to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan army, an assignment he finished in November 2007.
Allen West received his Bachelors degree from University of Tennessee and Masters degree from Kansas State University, both in political science. He also holds a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from the US Army Command and General Staff Officer College in political theory and military operations.
“Education is the great equalizer,” he says. “With a good education, any child in America can live his dream.”
Allen West knows that for our children to live their dreams, they need to be safe. He has served in several combat zones: in Operation Desert Storm, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was battalion commander for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and in Afghanistan, where he trained Afghan officers to take on the responsibility of securing their own country.
In his Army career, Col. West has been honored many times, including a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. He received his valor award as a Captain in Desert Shield/Storm, was the US Army ROTC Instructor of the Year in 1993, and was a Distinguished Honor Graduate III Corps Assault School. He proudly wears the Army Master parachutist badge, Air Assault badge, Navy/Marine Corps parachutist insignia, Italian parachutist wings, and German proficiency badge (Bronze award).
Allen is an avid distance runner, a PADI Master certified SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and attends Community Christian Church in Tamarac Florida.
Excellence is a West family tradition. His wife, Angela, holds an MBA and PhD. and works as a financial planner. His oldest daughter, Aubrey, attends Archbishop McCarthy HS and his youngest daughter, Austen, attends Cooper City Christian Academy.
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