8.31.2010
Victory!!! Tea Party conservative Joe Miller beats establishment porkmeister Lisa Murkowski
Are We the People really going to take this country back from the Ruling Class? Early signs are very, very positive.
This makes at least five Tea Party topplings of Republican establishment candidates: Joe Miller in Alaska, Mike Lee in Utah, Ken Buck in Colorado, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Sharron Angle in Nevada. Four of the five are heavily favored to win the general election, and Sharron Angle is neck and neck.
As someone who's been involved in the Tea Party movement from the beginning, I take a lot of pride in this. And I thank local "community organizers" like Sarah Bond, Dawn Wildman, and Leslie Eastman. Without them and their counterparts across the country, none of this would be possible.
We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Yes we can!!!
Ron Paul: show me the gold
He's got a point. If they actually have all the gold they claim, they should be happy to have an audit to maintain confidence in the currency.
Then again, Saddam Hussein rejected U.N. weapons inspectors even though he didn't have any WMD to hide. Is Ben Bernanke just a paranoid rogue with really bad judgment like Saddam Hussein?
HT: JF.
8.30.2010
Alaska Libertarians to Lisa Murkowski: Get Lost!
Fortunately, they weren't really considering it. More like, "Thanks for the resume. We'll let you know."
I'm starting to know what Chrissy "Tingly Pants" Matthews felt like
Put [Alaska's Joe] Miller and [Utah's Mike] Lee in the same chamber, and the legislative calendar could back up worse than the Washington Beltway at rush hour. One Republican operative, comparing these future senators with the upper chamber's current gadflies, said Lee and Miller will make Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn look like lapdogs.
Would somebody please hand me a Kleenex?
8.29.2010
Obama to offer more taxpayer subsidies to keep houses overpriced
Bloomberg:
The Obama administration plans to set up an emergency loan program for the unemployed and a government refinancing effort in the next few weeks to help homeowners pay their mortgages after home sales dropped in July, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said.
“The July numbers were worse than we expected, worse than the general market expected, and we are concerned,” Donovan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “That’s why we are taking additional steps to move forward.”
The administration will begin a Federal Housing Authority refinancing effort to help borrowers who are struggling to pay their home mortgages, and will start an emergency homeowners’ loan program for unemployed borrowers so they can stay in their homes, Donovan said.
And they even want to bring back the disastrous $8000 tax credit which was a giant waste of money that only pulled demand forward a few months.
Donovan said on CNN today that it is too soon to say whether the administration’s $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit tax credit, which expired April 30, will be revived.
Voters to reject out-of-control government; women hardest hit
Women in Washington, your seats are at risk
A political season dubbed 'the year of the woman' may turn out to be just the opposite. If large numbers of Democratic incumbents lose in November, many women could be replaced by men.
UPDATE: For another example of Ruling Class Media bias, check out the MSM coverage of Glenn Beck's huge rally in Washington. Here's our friend and Tea Partier Temple of Mut's coverage. And here's the AP's coverage:
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King's message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King's legacy held their own rally and march.
A question for you: when was the last time you saw an MSM paragraph like this about a left-leaning group? Find me a comparable first paragraph about any big leftist rally, where the Ruling Class Media points out 1) the liberalism of the leaders, 2) the homogeneity of the crowd, and 3) what "critics say" about the group, all in the first paragraph.
And here's the Washington Examiner ripping the NY Times' biased coverage.
8.28.2010
9/19 was an Inside Job
If you see one movie this year, make it this one. Then go to the polls, vote all the incumbents out, and End the Fed.
In theaters October 8. It's going to get wide release. It's being put out by Sony and it's narrated by Matt Damon.
Regular readers may note that this is the film that exposed Columbia professor and ex-Fed governor Frederic Mishkin as a corrupt, incompetent hack.
Joint Chiefs Chairman: National debt is #1 security threat
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen:
"The most significant threat to our national security is our debt," he told CNN Wednesday. "And the reason I say that is because the ability for our country to resource our military -- and I have a pretty good feeling and understanding about what our national security requirements are -- is going to be directly proportional -- over time, not next year or the year after, but over time -- to help our economy.
"That's why it's so important that the economy move in the right direction, because the strength and the support and the resources that our military uses are directly related to the health of our economy over time."
Mullen's naturally looking at it from the perspective of the military, that the debt threatens our ability to fund even the most essential national defense. But the same logic obviously applies to our ability to fund everything else we've come to expect from the government: Social Security, communist health care, highway funding...
Meanwhile, Keynesian idiots like Paul Krugman still insist that debt doesn't matter.
HT: ZeroHedge, who also reminds us that two of our three biggest creditors are evil central planning regimes whose interests directly conflict with the interests of the American people:
8.27.2010
8.25.2010
NY Times: Tea Party opposition to establishment is "far right," lacks "logic, compassion and sensible policy"
Republican insurgents from the far right did well in Tuesday’s primaries. What their campaigns lack in logic, compassion and sensible policy seems to be counterbalanced by a fiercely committed voter base that is nowhere to be seen on the Democratic side.
Joe Miller vs. Lisa Murkowski nail-biter in Alaska
Not that the good guys often win when the dirty recounts start: Al Franken, Christine Gregoire...
No on Prop D kickoff
Not that I should care. I don't live in the city, and if the union scum pass the sales tax increase, I'll stop shopping in the city. But sometimes you have to devote your energies to the greater good. And if there was ever a time to push for pension reform instead of tax increases, it's now.
Carl DeMaio, Lori Zapf, and April Boling spoke. Also in attendance were tax fighter Richard Rider, Congressional candidate Michael Crimmins and Assembly candidate Michael Morrell, as well as a bunch of Republican party officials and conservative activists.
8.24.2010
Deflation: the neutron bomb for balance sheets
That's the thing about deflation; it's like a neutron bomb for corporate, public-sector and consumer balance sheets. Asset values and returns get decimated while liabilities remain standing. Except that falling interest rates make those future liabilities more onerous, requiring more belt-tightening, which only exacerbates the deflation.
You gonna let that happen, Zimbabwe Ben? P*ssy!
UCLA fires researcher James Enstrom who exposed Mary Nichols / Hien Tran CARB scientific fraud
Well, after the story was exposed, somebody was obviously fired. Only it wasn't Hien Tran and Mary Nichols, it was the real scientist, Dr. James Enstrom, who helped expose the fraud.
Get with the party line if you want to work in academia.
This of course continues a long tradition of corruption in the University of California.
Read all about it at Temple of Mut.
8.23.2010
Money for nothing, chicks for free
Discover Card: take our credit card, please! We'll give you $100. No annual fee, obviously. Just take the card, spend $1000 (perhaps on a free cash advance from the U.S. Mint), and away you go!
This is the result of the Dirty Fed's pushing on a string. They're giving so much free money to the banks that the banks are going to ridiculous lengths to find somebody to lend it to. I'll take their $100 but I'm not going to do anything stupid like carry a balance on the card.
79 reasons to go to a gold standard
2. All fiat currencies of the past 3 centuries have devalued to (near) zero within a human's life span.
3. All fiat money systems were abused by irresponsible politicians who ignited credit bubbles. All credit bubbles ended with a bust.
4. Under a gold standard, prices remained stable for more than a century in the USA.
... but go on over and read the whole thing anyway. Even if it doesn't convince you to End the Fed, it ought to at least convince you to stock up on gold yourself.
HT: JDA
8.22.2010
California Republican Party adopts positions on propositions
19 [legalize marijuana]: No
20 [redistricting]: Yes
21 [car tax]: No
22 [state spending]: No Position
23 [suspend global warming law]: Yes
24 [increase business taxes]: No
25 [simple majority to raise taxes]: No
26 [limit taxes]: Yes
27 [reinstate gerrymandering]: No
No real surprises there, though two-faced Meg's taking the opposite position on 23.
As we've done in prior elections, we'll have our reform/libertarian/tea-partyish Varones voters' guide recommendations up soon.
UPDATE: Varones Tea Party picks here: candidates and propositions.
Incompetent paid shill Frederic Mishkin in his own words
The guy is also a former Fed governor, in case you were wondering what kind of corrupt idiots are running our entire financial system.
Here's his 2005 take on Too Big To Fail: What, Me Worry? Then there's his great housing bottom call in April 2007.
And congratulations to the Columbia Business School for allowing this man to remain a professor.
The interview above is reportedly by filmmaker Charles Ferguson, whose film Inside Job, about the financial collapse, will be released this fall.
HT: ZeroHedge
UPDATE: Thanks to Mish for the link and more exposition of the walking debacle that is Frederic Mishkin. Click on over and read it all. And thanks also to Prudens Speculari for the link. Head on over there for wit and wisdom on Mishkin and Columbia Business School. And of course the awesome JDA, who would have beaten me to the story had she not been otherwise occupied this weekend.
8.21.2010
Wherein citizens exercising their First Amendment rights encounter a cowardly, profanity-spewing Meg Whitman operative
This is the front of the San Diego Hyatt where the California Republican Party is holding its fall convention this weekend. This picture was taken shortly before a handful of Tea Party activists showed up to protest Meg Whitman's stance against Proposition 23, which would suspend the job-killing AB-32 Global Warming Act until the economy recovers.
A dozen or so Tea Partiers soon gathered with signs on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, right about in the center of this frame. They chatted with passing tourists and some sympathetic Republican convention-goers, and got some supportive honks from passing cars.
There's a taxi stand starting about the right side of this picture. A young man and a couple of young women were standing near the taxi stand, talking and apparently waiting for someone or something. The guy was obviously a junior Republican operative there for the convention, completely overdressed for a balmy San Diego evening in a business suit. The women were more casually and tastefully dressed, probably not staffers but perhaps friends whom the guy had brought to the convention to show what a big shot he was.
They stood there for several minutes, talking and looking at the Tea Partiers. If the guy had wanted to say something to the Tea Partiers, he certainly had plenty of time and opportunity to come over and discuss it. He was only a few yards away, and the Tea Partiers were a small, friendly group, and certainly not physically imposing.
Instead, the guy got into a taxi, then as it rounded the corner to pull into the hotel driveway, he focused on an anti-Whitman sign and yelled, "F--- you!" at the Tea Partiers. As the taxi stopped at the curb behind another car, he flashed a middle finger at the group, then opened the rear door ajar as if to say "Okay, I'm coming to kick your ass."
Never one to miss a good provocation, a Tea Partier shouted, "Come here!" Hesitation from the taxi. "P*ssy!" the Tea Partier shouted. Surely the universal challenge of the guy's manhood would draw him from the car.
No such luck. The taxi door closed, and the cowardly Republican slunk off into the night.
How do we know we're succeeding? We're getting under their skin.
Buy a pack of gum, get two free round trip airplane tickets.
Back in the late 90's I used to get cash, Tina Turner tickets, etc. just for opening an E-Trade account or some such thing. You put in $1000, get the free stuff, then take back your $1000 and close the account. It's a sign of bubble mentality, as companies are willing to lose money in order to show growth in the customer base. Yeah, but we make it up on volume!
Those kind of offers dried up for a while when sanity briefly returned after the dot-com crash. Now, they're back.
You sign up for this card from Chase, make a purchase, and get 32 Rapid Rewards credits, enough to get two free flights on Southwest. The card is free for the first year, so you cancel it before the annual fee kicks in at the 1-year anniversary.
You have to get this offer in the mail, apparently. Otherwise, it's only 1 free flight and you have to pay the $59 annual fee. Still might be worth it if you want to fly somewhere for $59 roundtrip.
8.20.2010
No really this is how it happened in Russia
...The SEIU, to which Obama has "pledged his life's work", occupies the same "position" in this pre-"change" "system" as did the Soviets (Unions of workers) before the 1917 Revolution when those unions basically took control of the gvt. This bill looks like a mini "Card Check" bill. And they're sneaking it in. 6 GOPers going along with it makes one wonder how likely would it be that it would ever be repealed if the GOP were to take control. Answer: it won't. Result: There is no more Federation of sovereign states. There is only the Fed gvt. The Fed Gvt can now control how local political entities spend their own money, how they hire/fire public workers, and thus, what their budgets are, and thus, what their tax policies will need to be to support the unionized public employees.
This bill gives Unions more than a "seat at the table". It gives them a type of power that actually means they will be (and are already) involved in running the gvt itself (by dictating spending requirements even if the local people don't want to spend). Unions running the gvt is not A) Constitutional nor B) American. But it is C) Soviet. It's just disguised here by socialist libs so that no one can intellectually link it to the structure of gvt the Soviets had. Unions having lots of power in the private sector is one thing. When they have lots of power in the public sector, the system is then, almost by definition, closer to the system used by the Soviets.
~ SI
8.19.2010
National Review imitates Varones
Keynesian fools like Paul Krugman will read [Greece] as a cautionary tale against austerity. Wiser heads will see this as a cautionary tale against building an economy based on debt and deficit spending in the first place.
Kevin Williamson, National Review Online, Aug 19:
Krugman & Co. will tell you that’s the result of too much austerity and not enough stimulus spending. But there is another lesson to take away from Greece: When you let the public sector get that big — so big it dominates the economy — then it is nearly impossible to cut back public-sector spending without creating an economic crisis.
Not that we're accusing Williamson of boosting our stuff. We've spoken with him in the past and he seemed to be a good guy. And he's doing really good work at the new Exchequer column (though we suspect with the FHA now imploding he regrets not running with that FHA is the new subprime story we gave him last year). The simpler explanation for the similarities is that Keynesians like Krugman are just such easy targets that a lot of clear-thinking people see exactly the same thing.
School districts hoard union bailout cash
NY Times:
With the economic outlook weakening, they argue that big deficits are looming for the next academic year and that they need to preserve the funds to prevent future layoffs. Los Angeles, for example, is projecting a $280 million budget shortfall next year that could threaten more jobs.
“You’ve got this herculean task to deal with next year’s deficit,” said Lydia L. Ramos, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest after New York City.
“So if there’s a way that you can lessen the blow for next year,” she said, “we feel like it would be responsible to try to do that.”
The district laid off 682 teachers and counselors and about 2,000 support workers this spring and was not sure it would be able to hire any of them back with the stimulus money. The district says it could be forced to cut 4,500 more people next year.
Deflation Fever! Even the school districts are catching it!
HT: TLP @ JDA.
8.18.2010
Greek death spiral
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.
[...]
The government's draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country's budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.
The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country's economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country's gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.
[...]
[Nikos] Meletis is a day laborer who used to work up to 300 days a year; this year he has only managed to scrape together 25 days' work so far. That gives him 25 health insurance stamps, when he needs 100 in order to insure himself and his family -- including his wife, who has cancer. "How am I supposed to pay for the hospital?" Meletis asks. Unemployment benefits of at most €460 ($590) per month are available for a maximum of one year -- and only if he can produce at least 150 stamps from the past 15 months.
[....]
"If you take away my family's bread, I'll take you down -- the government needs to know that," Meletis says. "And don't call us anarchists if that happens! We're heads of our families and we're desperate."
He predicts the situation will only become more heated. "Things are starting to simmer here," he says. "And at some point they're going to explode."
Keynesian fools like Paul Krugman will read this as a cautionary tale against austerity. Wiser heads will see this as a cautionary tale against building an economy based on debt and deficit spending in the first place.
As for Greece, they should pull out of the Euro and default on the debt. Anybody dumb enough to lend to a government running deficits of 10%+ of GDP deserves to lose his money.
You can't always get what you need
Continuing the theme of deflation in discretionary items and inflation in necessities comes this note from investment research firm The Leuthold Group:
[Year to date], the only deflationary CPI subset is Apparel (-6%). Medical (+4%), Food & Beverage (+1%), Housing (+1%), and Transportation (+4%) are inflationary.
How is your 0.25% savings account treating you, Grandma? Pass the Alpo!
Yes on 23 rally this Friday
Let's tell them to support Prop 23 to suspend the job-killing unilateral economic disarmament act AB32.
Details from the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.
YES ON 23 RALLY
Fri., Aug 20, 2010
5:00pm - 8:00pm
Sidewalk corner outside the Hyatt Manchester
Corner of W. Harbor Dr. & Kettner Blvd.
San Diego, CA
More at Temple of Mut.
8.17.2010
Your Obama stimulus at work
Then there was American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project number 1R01AA01658001A, a study entitled: “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent Versus Separate Use.” I’m not making this up. This is a $400,000 project being directed by a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The following is from the official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of male [sic] liquor (ML), other alcoholic beverages, and marijuana (MJ), all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences, including addiction. As we have noted, reviews of this grant application have noted numerous strength [sic], which are summarized below.”
So what were those strengths? “This research team has previous [sic] been successful in recruiting a large (>600) sample of regular ML drinkers.” Also, “the application is well-written.” Well-written? With three spelling mistakes? But who am I to judge? As for the other strength, there is no question that the team’s recruitment had been strong. But is that really a qualification for federal money? After all, they were paying people to drink beer!
These same scholars were behind a groundbreaking 2007 study that used regression analysis to discover that subjects who got drunk and high were more intoxicated than those who only abused alcohol. The new study pays these pot-smoking malt-liquor drinkers at least $45 to participate. They can buy four beers per day for the three-week project—all of it funded, at least indirectly, by the American taxpayer.
On a more serious note, click on over and read the whole thing for a great discussion of the Tea Parties and the future of liberty.
8.16.2010
ZeroHedge on Deflation and Gold
In deflation, gold should be the tallest pygmy. Even if it drops 40% in a deflationary depression, it will still stand tall among the financial wreckage that is defaulted debt and worthless equity. But, if the Fed succeeds in combating this event (preemptively or after the fact), hyperinflation becomes a high risk and we know what that portends for fiat currency.Gold closed up again today, at $1225, even as long Treasury bonds hit depressionary low yields for the year.
During the U.S. Great Depression, there was a high demand for dollars as the last refuge for safety. "Why were dollars so valuable during the Great Depression?" is what you have to ask yourself before you go plowing any more of your money into long-dated bonds or the DX. Our own analysis sees a lack of counterparty risk and scarcity as the two reasons Dollars were coveted back then. Hardly an original idea, but relevant when you compare today’s greenback with depression era dollars.
No Counterparty Risk- Dollars were backed by gold then, now they are backed by GDP. Some would even say that fiat money is debt... so there goes the counterpartyrisk argument. Meanwhile, physical gold has no counterparty risk.
Scarcity- There are plenty of dollars out there in the mattresses of foreign governments and scared people. Fractional reserve banking is not the issue it was during the 1930s, especially in an age of e-money. The Fed is also printing in advance of a deflationary debacle, it is not playing catch-up this time. So, scarcity is not a reason to buy dollars now. Inflation remains in check thus far due to a lack of monetary velocity, not a lack of money supply. Gold is scarcer than dollars with an annual growth rate of only 1.7% . This time fractional reserve bullion banking might be a catalyst for more scarcity motivated gold buying.
8.15.2010
Quickies
We've been talking about competitive devaluation here for years. The most recent Economist agrees: Race to the bottom.
The battle for a cheap currency may eventually cause transatlantic (and transpacific) tension: not everyone can push down their exchange rates at once. For now, though, the dollar holds the cheap-money prize.
Our friend and fellow SLOB Left Coast Rebel has a piece in Daily Caller on global warming deception. Temple of Mut has done some great reporting on that subject recently as well.
Beers with Demo has a post combining two of our favorite subjects: beer and liberty. Though another favorite, states' rights, would be on the wrong side in this case.
Tea Party Nation, eh!
Because they already have type of sensible government policies that Tea Partiers are trying to implement here!
Relative to the U.S., Canada has lower taxes, lower debt per capita, lower debt to GDP, and a sound banking system:
- Lower corporate income tax rates. The U.S. statutory federal corporate income tax rate is 35 per cent, a number that is more likely to go up than down given the country's debt burden. Canada's is 18 per cent, down from 19 per cent in 2009. Scheduled tax cuts will bring Canada's rate to 16.5 per cent in 2011 and to 15 per cent in 2012, giving Canada the lowest statutory tax rate in the G7.
- Competitive personal income tax rates. It may comes as surprise for Americans to learn that Canada's federal personal income tax rates are lower than those in the U.S. The U.S. rate on income between $34,000 US and $82,400, US for example is 25 per cent. In Canada the rate on income between $40,970 and $81,941 is 22 per cent. On income from $171,850 US to $373,650 US the U.S. rate is 33 per cent. Canada's rate reaches a maximum of 29 per cent for all income over $127,021.
Of course, most of Canada's provinces and territories impose personal income tax as well, but so too do many U.S. states and some municipalities. It is true that Canada obtains slightly more personal tax revenue per capita than the U.S. does -$5,800 US vs. $4,700 US -but this difference is easily offset by the cost of health care that Americans incur privately and Canadians cover through taxation. It's worth noting that the U.S. has inheritance taxes and Canada does not.
- Lower capital gains tax rates. Canadians pay tax on 50 per cent of their capital gains at their marginal rate. On a gain of $1,000, for instance, only $500 would be subject to tax. At a combined federal-provincial rate of, say, 35 per cent, the tax payable would be $175. Americans pay tax on the net total of capital gains. More importantly, the reduced rates introduced in 2003 by then president George W. Bush, initially due to expire in 2008 and extended until 2011, will finally sunset, raising the discounted rate of 15 per cent to 28 per cent. So, on that same $1,000 capital gain, an American investor would pay $280.
- Canada can maintain low tax rates: Because Canada is in better fiscal shape than the U.S., Ottawa can keep taxes low while Washington will have little choice but to raise them. The U.S. national debt is $13.6 trillion US, or $42,942 US per capita. Canada's is $534.7 billion, or $15,715 per capita.
The ratio of debt to gross domestic product stands at about 93 per cent in the U.S., and the U.S. Treasury Department sees it rising to 102 per cent when debt is expected to reach $19.2 trillion US in 2015. Canada debt-to-GDP ratio is 33 per cent.
Government spending as a percentage of GDP has declined in Canada since hitting a peak of 53 per cent in 1992 and recently slipped below 40 per cent. In the U.S., it has turned sharply higher, rising to 42.7 per cent in 2009 from 39 per cent in 2008. It is expected to reach 45 per cent next year.
The White House has forecast the U.S. deficit for 2010 to be $1.6 trillion US or 10.6. per cent of gross domestic product, the highest level since the Second World War. Canada's deficit is seen at $49.2 billion, or 3.7 per cent of GDP. Canada should be able to manage its debt and still lower taxes. The U.S. clearly cannot.
[...]
- Canada's banking system is sound. [They didn't have the same problems with corruption and incompetence in the Canadian equivalents of the Federal Reserve, Congress, the SEC, the FDIC, the Treasury Department, etc.]
[...]
- Regulation is similarly stable and streamlined in other sectors of the Canadian economy, resulting in less uncertainty, better planning and a lower cost of capital.
Yes, Canada has nationalized health care, but the full cost of it is included in that lower spending/GDP and those lower taxes (Obama explicitly rejected health care cost savings from areas like trial lawyers and Big Pharma, where Canada has much lower costs). And Canadians have the freedom to seek private care across the border. Where will we go for medical freedom if ObamaCare is allowed to stand?
Canada just passed the U.S. on the Index of Economic Freedom, and I'd expect the U.S. decline to continue as long as the Obama regime is in power.
The Liberator Today also links a recent WSJ article with a similar view.
Aren't you hungry?
Hunter campaign spokesman Dave Gilliard said he hopes Lutz can hold on until October.
"We have told him that we will debate him in October when Congress is out of session and voters are paying attention," Gilliard said Friday.
Lutz's campaign spokesman, Brennan Purtzer, said the debates should take place now when Congress is on its summer recess.
"They look mean and inhuman by letting a guy publicly starve because he won't engage in a debate with us," he said.
No, sir, you look like an idiot to use a hunger strike to demand more debates than there have ever been in any Congressional contest I can recall.
Would it be cruel to order pizzas delivered to his campaign events?
P.S. He looks like a real winner from his amateur and kooky "company" web site.
8.14.2010
Obama voters are selfish and hate children
Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
To tell me the truth, tell us the truth
But now I've seen the payoffs
Everywhere I look
Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
- Queensrÿche, "Revolution Calling"
Long-time readers of this blog will recognize that if its mission is first to smash authoritarianism, a close second is to expose the biased, corrupt, and incompetent media.
While the bad guy media still have a frighteningly disproportionate influence on public opinion and public policy, at least Americans know they're being lied to. Gallup: confidence in newspapers, TV news remains a rarity.
8.13.2010
Won't get fooled again
Why conservatives won't get fooled again into voting for lying, two-faced, progressive Meg Whitman.
I said a while back that I'd be likely to vote for Meg, but not Carly. That situation has reversed itself. Meg's duplicity on immigration and her support of AB32 make her a non-starter. And though I despise Carly, Senate control is just too important this year. Fortunately, unlike Meg, Carly's already leading in some polls.
Lindsey Graham wants perpetual war in Afghanistan
As someone who's been playing Lucky Pierre between John McCain and whatever Democrat will cough up the $2 entry fee, Lindsey would know a little bit about unholy alliances.
Maybe it's because Lindsey just wants a reason to keep going back to Afghanistan.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Anchor Baby Nation
Meanwhile, Obama will sign a $600 million border security bill. To put that in perspective, that's 2.3% of the $26 billion he just blew to bail out the teachers' unions and the profligate states, and it's just 0.08% of his $787 billion porkulus bill that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8%.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Speaking of freaky, we just had a Hindenburg Omen, and Glenn Beck supports gay marriage.
I believe what Thomas Jefferson said. If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?
I support gay marriage too.
It's a simple matter of equal rights. A state marriage is not the same thing as a religious marriage. Your church won't be required to marry them.
For the other side on the gay marriage issue, see our friend Dean at the Liberator Today.
8.12.2010
Greenspan takes a holiday: Barry and Amanda Harrison
So this tale, while typical of Greenspan's Body Count, will not join the official roll.
Daily Mirror:
Barry and Amanda Harrison lost their £100,000 home after being made redundant from a car plant in the grip of recession. Neighbours said the cash struggles had put a huge strain on their marriage.
Depressed Barry, 47, flipped and is said to have throttled Amanda, 34, before hanging himself at their rented flat on the Isle of Wight.
The couple's sons Aiden, five, and Owen, three, were happily playing in the home when the bodies of their parents were found by a neighbour on Monday.
Barry's eldest son Lee, 19, said last night: "This is a massive and devastating loss."
Saddled with debt and struggling to keep a roof over their heads, the pressures mounted on devoted couple Barry and Amanda.
The pair had already suffered the misery of having their dream £100,000 home repossessed after both being made redundant from a car factory that was crippled by the recession.
In what was to be her final Facebook message, Amanda apologised to a friend for missing a date.
The hard-up mum wrote tellingly: "Money is so tight right now."
And it appears the nightmare of financial insecurity finally took its toll on 47-year-old Barry who flipped and is said to have strangled his 34-yearold wife before hanging himself at their rented seaside flat.
The couple's children - Aiden, five, and three-year-old Owen - were happily playing in the home when the bodies of their parents were found by neighbour Pat Cannon.
At least the gentlemanly Brits don't kill the kids, as so many Americans on Greenspan's Body Count do. But did you really have to kill the wife, Barry?
Forbes: Goldman Sachs to profit from FrankenDodd fake financial reform bill
The provisions that seem most damaging to the $850 billion (assets) bank may not affect it much at all. Some might even make it richer. For example:
Derivatives The measure mandates that derivative trading be shifted to organized exchanges for more transparency. Trading accounted for 78% of Goldman's $21.6 billion in revenue in the first half of 2010, and much of that involved over-the-counter derivatives, which carry higher margins than their exchange-traded equivalents.
But Goldman is welcoming the shift to the exchanges, because in a business where profits come from volume and speed of execution, Goldman tends to win. [...]
Proprietary Trading The "Volcker Rule" (named after former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who proposed it) bans banks from engaging in short-term trading solely to earn a profit. Goldman does a lot of this across its fixed-income and equities trading businesses, which together accounted for 63% of revenue in the first half of this year. It's likely to spin off a stock-trading division with $900 million a year in profit, says Rochdale Securities analyst Richard Bove, although it might grab back much of that sum through a management contract. A $10 billion Special Situations Group, which trades various types of debt, might survive. Buying a client's debt, after all, looks a lot like lending money.
Capital Requirement Goldman would be hurt if it were required to set aside significantly more capital for its riskier activities, such as bond trading or maintaining an inventory of securities for clients to buy. But it's doubtful the requirements will be too stiff because of political resistance to pushing capital standards too high and hurting the competitiveness of the banking industry.
Exactly. It's doubtful the requirements will be too stiff because of political resistance to pushing capital standards too high and hurting the competitiveness of the banking industry. And of course there's absolutely nothing to address Too Big To Fail. Indeed, Goldman still has a near-trillion-dollar balance sheet (and who knows how much they are hiding off-balance-sheet).
8.11.2010
Your watchdog media at work
Reporter fired for reporting on BP's contributions to Obama.
You know, it's a good thing we have alternative media on the Internet now. Corporate media are in bed with the regime.
Pimco's Anthony Crescenzi agrees with Varones
The Federal Reserve’s decision to buy Treasuries and keep interest rates low will support “risk assets” without bringing down unemployment, said Anthony Crescenzi at Pacific Investment Management Co.
Where have we heard that before?
Does Bernanke know that he's totally screwed, that he has the power to create asset and commodity inflation but not to match it with wage inflation?
8.10.2010
Keith Olbermann uses W.C. Varones video of Sharron Angle speech
Olbermann cut here (where you'll also see PJTV catch him blatantly lying about Angle not taking questions), original video here.
And it says something about Angle that given a video of the full speech, Olbermann couldn't find a single sound bite to take out of context and mischaracterize.
Olbermann:
W.C.:
UPDATE: Thanks to Left Coast Rebel, Beers with Demo, JDA, and Johnny Dollar for the links.
HAVE YOU NO SHAME, SIR???!!!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac facilitate "buy and bail" for the rich
Freddie Mac and larger rival Fannie Mae cracked down on buy and bail in 2008 by banning in most cases the use of rental income from an existing home to qualify for a new mortgage unless the first property has at least 30 percent equity.
[...]
In addition to the rental restrictions, the mortgage giants now usually require reserves equal to six months of loan payments for both homes. The measures have been sufficient to block most applicants who attempt to buy and bail, said Pete Bakel, a spokesman for Washington-based Fannie Mae.
So if you don't have cash reserves and enough income to qualify for a second house, you're out of luck. But if you do have plenty of cash and income, Fannie and Freddie will be happy to give you a new 4.5% loan to facilitate your buy-and-bail.
The rich, of course, see this opportunity and are taking advantage of it:
Most likely to walk away are borrowers with the best credit scores and so-called jumbo loans that exceed the caps set for mortgages bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which range from $417,000 in most locations to $729,750 in high-cost areas, according to the Morgan Stanley report. People who choose to default typically have lost $100,000 or more in property value, said Brent White, a law professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Your government-run housing finance industry doing the People's Work!
I, for one, welcome our new government employee overlords
At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
[...] Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.
HT: T-Dub
8.09.2010
Out one back door, into another: Steven Slater
[Steven] Slater got on the flight's announcement system and allegedly cursed out everyone on the plane -- especially the person who mouthed off to him, according to law enforcement sources.
When his tirade was through, he then took a some beers from the galley and pulled the emergency chute and slid off the Embraer 190 plane. According to police sources, he threw his luggage down first and said something to the effect of "there goes 28 years," before he took the plunge.
After getting down the slide, Slater took off into the terminal, law-enforcement sources said.
Slater was later arrested at his home in Belle Harbor, Queens by Port Authority officials. He was found by police in a sexual embrace with his partner, sources said.
The Smoking Gun called it "one of the greatest airline meltdowns ever." They obviously haven't heard of Gerard Finneran.
Greenspan's Walking Dead
PBS asked for and received stories of the "99ers", those who have exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.
Just one typical story:
I am a 44 year old man from Northern Illinois, just southeast of Chicago. Like so many long-term unemployed, I am a "99er." I have worked my entire adult life (the past 22 years in Information Technology), earned a comfortable living and always paid my taxes. That all changed in January of 2008 when my position was eliminated from the advertising company in which I worked. I was aware that the economy was struggling at the time and the job market less than ideal, but I had no idea just how difficult (or impossible) finding a new job would be. I was certain that with 22 years of experience, letters of recommendation and the vast network of colleagues I had, I would not be unemployed long. How wrong I was.
As of today, I have sent out well over 1,300 resumes and have received only two phone calls, neither company ever called me back a second time. I have used all available savings and even borrowed thousands from relatives to stay afloat, but to no avail. I have since lost my house to foreclosure, after 17 years of making on-time payments, and had to move in with relatives. My wife, daughter and I only survive now by their good graces and food stamp assistance provided by the state.
In the last several years of my career, I earned at or near 6 figure income and never had to worry about my bills, my credit score or a way to care for my family. Now, that has all changed. Aside from a temporary place to live, we now have zero income, food stamps and the need to file bankruptcy, which I simply can't afford to do at this time. Meanwhile, my credit is completely ruined and I have the foreclosure on my record, not to mention all of our past due debts are still being reported as late and unpaid. I currently have several judgments against me as well. Prior to losing my job, I have never had to claim a single penny of unemployment, have never been sued and have never had to rely on others to care for my family.
When we lost our home, we had to give up our cats, who we loved and cared for as family. We downsized from 2 vehicles to 1 and the remaining vehicle is now down and in need of repair. Again, no money to pay for the repairs. We eliminated cable TV and cell phones in an attempt to hang on, but in the end all efforts failed. Our mortgage company made the comment that since our home was worth more than we owed, they were better of taking it from us. No offer to work with us at all. Their estimation of our home's worth was also clearly way overvalued and we couldn't even short sell.
The future not only looks bleak, it appears that the American Dream has vanished entirely for us. The stress has been nearly unbearable and our health is collectively taking a hit too.
Put simply, I have always been a proud American and believed I lived in the greatest nation in the world. Since becoming unemployed, I have arrived at a very different conclusion. When the U.S. government hands out tax breaks to the rich, war funding, bailouts to corrupt banks, auto manufacturers and foreign entities without so much as a second of hesitation and then plays political games over "pay-go" rules where U.S. citizens and their lives are concerned, it makes me literally feel sick. I am not typically one for entitlement, but when our own government allows such a disaster to occur and then dismisses it lightly, I feel they should work hard to correct it. It is no secret that the economy is not recovering at a suitable rate and many have and will continue to wind up like myself and my family or possibly worse.
I feel that Congress should be tried as a whole for crimes against humanity ... As it turns out, we clearly live in one of the most clueless, corrupt and seedy nations in this world. One that cares very little for its own citizens and far more about money, politics and power.
I can't even begin to predict what will come of us going forward, but in being honest, it won't resemble the American Dream at any level.
I certainly appreciate your interest in and willingness to cover this unpopular topic. We as 99ers need people like you and Michael Thornton to continue to bring this very real problem into the spotlight. Without coverage, it would be even easier for the U.S. government to sweep us under the carpet. They allowed this mess to unfold and they should be forced to deal with it just as the rest of us do.
Read them all. Despite the government's ability to make GDP growth go marginally positive by running 10% GDP deficits, understating CPI, and giving the banks free money, this is still a depression. Plan, spend, and save accordingly.
8.08.2010
Goldman Sachs says Dirty Fed to embark on massive new round of money-printing
We expect the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to respond to renewed upward pressure on the unemployment rate with another round of unconventional monetary easing. These measures could involve more asset purchases, probably Treasury securities, and/or a more ironclad commitment to keep the federal funds rate low. If the committee decides on more asset purchases, the amount would be at least $1 trillion.
If Zimbabwe Ben thinks printing money is a panacea, he'd be wise to heed the words of Gonzalo Lira:
Hyperinflation, however, is the loss of faith in money. It is not that prices are rising because the economy is moving forward -- it’s that prices are rising because nobody believes that money is worth a damn anymore.
[...] our current deflation can trip over into hyperinflation at a moment’s notice. The stumbling block -- the thing that could trip us over from deflation to hyperinflation literally overnight -— is The Deficit.
Not just the Federal shortfall itself, but the policy implicitly embodied by The Deficit: The belief that all you need to do is throw money at the problem -— open up as many liquidity windows as needed, or expand Federal spending as much as necessary, to prop up those twin aggregates I mentioned before, aggregate demand and aggregate asset value.
The pernicious sense among American macroeconomic policy makers that fiscal shortfalls don’t matter -— and don’t matter especially in a financial or economic crisis—is what I believe will lead to hyperinflation. Policy makers -— who have lost any fear of providing as much liquidity and stimulus as necessary to steamroller any problem —- will have no compunction about adding to The Deficit at the next crisis.
That’s when hyperinflation will kick us in the teeth.
We've said it before, but we'll say it again: Bernanke Bucks are a medium of exchange, not a store of value. Get thee to a gold dealer.
McDanger back in business
Read it here.
8.07.2010
National Doctors Tea Party -- San Diego pics
The Doctors' Tea Party was not organized by local Tea Party groups Tea Party Patriots or the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition, but many members of these groups were happy to come support this event put on by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. They won't ever have to say, "First, they came for the doctors, and I did not speak out because I was not a doctor..."
I caught up with some old friends: Sarah Bond, Dawn Wildman, and Charles Fettinger. I also met some new friends including OC Tea Party organizer and RedCounty writer Megan Barth, and local conservative activist Woody Woodrum.
Here's the full speech by Sharron Angle, challenger for Harry Reid's Nevada Senate seat. She's not the most dynamic speaker, but she's not bad either. And she's right on all the issues. Apologies for the shaky video; close your eyes and listen.
I love seeing my fellow Fedbashers at every event, regardless of the day's theme.
A few pro-government-health-care counter-protesters gathered under the trees at the back of the field, but didn't make much of a ruckus.
Britney Spears for Carly?
This is Dr. Donna Campbell, running for Congress in Texas. She's a good speaker and she'd make a great replacement for perma-Congressman Rep. Lloyd Doggett.
I didn't listen to all of the speakers (full lineup here), as I was walking around and talking to friends, and had to leave early.
Barron's: Time to Print, Print, Print
Barron's makes the common mistake that stuffing the banks with more free money will somehow cause more lending to consumers who don't want and can't handle more debt, and that this lending would be a good thing. Au contraire. More debt is the last thing we need. As I've said before, printing money to buy Treasuries will cause asset bubbles, not wage inflation, in a 10% unemployment / 20% underemployment environment. How will consumers benefit if the cost of food and gas doubles but they still have no jobs?
Easy-money asset bubbles worsen the "wealth gap" by enriching asset owners (shareholders, real estate speculators, gold hoarders, vampire squid) while impoverishing the paycheck-to-paycheck working stiff.
Laing has it partially right. Devaluation is the only way out. But we've got to get the newly printed money directly to the people of America, not circuitously through more debt from the dirty banksters.
Regardless, the prime takeaway is that QE2 is coming:
Signs of a sea change in attitudes toward quantitative easing are growing, even in unusual quarters. Last month, the European Central Bank quietly invited Vincent Reinhart, a powerful figure in the Greespan Fed as director of the Division of Monetary Affairs from 2001 to 2007, to conduct a seminar on quantitative easing for its top staffers. That was momentous, given the institution's history as a bastion of monetary conservatism and rectitude.
'cause, you know, Greenspan's easy money worked out so great for everybody!
Shall we play a game?
Love to. Let's play Global Competitive Devaluation.
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
Later. Let's play Global Competitive Devaluation.
Fine.
Get thee to a gold dealer, my friend.
8.06.2010
Obama using U.S. tax money to train foreigners to take U.S. jobs offshore
Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.
Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.
Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
Offshoring is already inevitable and leading to increased unemployment and a decline in wages in the U.S. How is encouraging more of it going to help anything?
Would you like some more Hope with that Change?
National Doctors' Tea Party tomorrow, August 7.
San Diego's is the biggest and will be at Spanish Landing Park by the airport from noon to 3pm. See you there.
Other locations here.
8.05.2010
Ivory Tower of Insanity
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz said the U.S. economy faces an “anemic recovery” and the government will need to enact another round of “better designed” stimulus measures.
Now the slower, more dimwitted readers, that would never read this blog anyway, might not remember all the guarantees of success with each previous stimulus effort. They might not remember the Washington DC ruling class announcing the disaster has been avoided. They might not even remember Obama's horrifying unemployment number had the last stimulus effort not been passed, which we exceeded with the stimulus package passing anyway.
Those who have avoided MSM lobotimization remember all that and what they know is that Nobel Prize Economists are charlatans claiming to be professionals. They are professional intellectual masturbators who are made out to be all knowing gods but in reality are just Wizards of Oz.
The economy is very difficult to manage, but it is not, as CNBC propogando-whores repeat, a Perfect Storm. It is not an uncontrollable natural phenomenon that we could not possibly hope to control, yet we need to mortgage the future of the country to try to control.
No the current economic malaise was caused by humans. It was caused by arrogant ivory tower professors like Stiglitz and Bernanke. It was caused by the Wall Street purchased government we now have in office. It was caused by the gradual abandonment of the Constitution as the law of the land. And it was ultimately caused by the idiot Democrat and Republican voters who think the ones they elected are infallible and should never be scrutinized, and it is always the other party's fault.
So we leave it to these pseudo intellectuals like Stiglitz and Krugman to propose absurdity. They propose actions that have never been witnessed successful in history but because their models are perfect, this time it's gonna work! And when what they propose fails, they claim well, we just need to do it again just better, as if they are great geniuses and somehow do know what they are talking about, and most people buy it.
Imagine a Nobel Prize winning doctor prescribing one method to treat a severe condition and it kills the patient. Then he doubles the method and it kills the next patient. Then he does the same thing just with a “better designed” treatment and kills the next and the next and so on and so forth, failing in every single attempt. Imagine the doctor never saved one patient while others without media coverage screamed that what he was doing was exactly the wrong thing. Would we idolize that doctor? Then why are we presented these people with their 100% track record of failure?
These economists are failures and frauds. They have proven they don't know what they are talking about. They use their own failure as that proof that they know what they are talking about and insist we need to double the effort that failed the first time. They are delusional people and they should be treated accordingly, with pity, and maybe straight jackets, but they certainly should never be listened to again.
AB 32 / Global Warming / Yes on 23
That about says it
At this point one thing is certain: as long as the Treasury can keep issuing trillions in new debt without a glitch, there will be nothing to stop the administration, now in its pre-midterm death throes, from throwing the kitchen sink, and 9 others it bought on margin, at every imaginable problem. The Obama administration is about to take this country down in flames by spending hundreds of billions, trillions, tens of trillions on anything and everything, just like your garden variety drowning man clutches at straws. And as long as the Fed has the bond vigilantes locked up, kneecapped and ball-and-gagged in its basement, there is nothing at all that can be done: we suggest leaning back in your favorite made in China chair and watching the nation''s slow motion collapse as it unravels before our very eyes.
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UPDATE: Edited to remove the guy's name. I hope nobody harasses him or his employer. He was good-natured and his sign was innocuous a...
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Only the police should have guns, you know. The shocking double murder of a young couple in Irvine turns out to have been suspectedly com...
Nailed it!
July 5 :