Feb 27
Cause and Cure?: Spending Beyond Ability To Pay
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Feb 16
Growth Of Small Businesses Is Needed To Turn The Economy Around
The recession keeps dragging on despite close to a trillion dollars in stimulus money and other focal incentives wasted by the federal government. What is happening?
Small businesses, the real engines of our economy, are extremely worried about present conditions and future prospects including massive government regulations and more than 2 trillion dollars of proposed tax hikes that would destroy thousands of businesses. Consequently, they are being advisably circumspect, prudent and conservative, trying to protect the viability of their businesses rather than take aggressive actions that could jeopardize their survival.
For starters, we would all benefit from a massive across the board decrease in taxes, major reduction in government spending, and abolishing useless and costly regulations...
A Real Cure For What Ails Small Biz
Investors Business Daily 02/09/2010
Jobless Recession: Small business has been a key part of plans to stimulate the economy from the very start of the Obama presidency. So why is this crucial job-creating sector of our economy doing so poorly?
The latest soundings from small business are not reassuring. In its annual poll of 2,114 members, for example, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) found that "small-business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009 — depressed." Meanwhile, the ADP Small Business Report for January shows companies with fewer than 50 workers shed an additional 22,000 jobs.
These are the businesses that account for 48 million jobs, or 44% of all private nonfarm employment — and two-thirds or more of all employment growth in recent years. But despite efforts by government to "fix" their problems, they've only grown worse. The programs were ineffective or never got off the ground.
Last year, amid much hoopla, the White House announced plans to give tax credits to "green" energy companies. As a result, according to reporter Renee Schoof of McClatchy Newspapers, the U.S. installed a record 9,900 megawatts of wind-power generating capacity last year — enough to power 2.4 million homes.
A boon for conservation jobs? Hardly. Indeed, the American Wind Energy Association reports the industry cut 2,000 jobs last year, in part because some of the wind energy equipment is made overseas.
Then there was the program unveiled in March to spend $15 billion to "unlock" lending to small businesses. That grew to a $30 billion program later in the year after TARP funds were added to the mix. But as noted by ABC News reporter and blogger Jake Tapper, this is a "phantom" jobs program.
Even Neil Barofsky, head of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, admitted as much. As of Dec. 31, he wrote recently, "the details of the initiative under this program had not been announced and no funds had been disbursed."
In short, the White House talked about $30 billion in aid to small businesses, but never did anything about it.
Meanwhile, President Obama announced a sweeping small-business aid program in his State of the Union. He knows this is key to the economy's recovery, if only because he hears it all the time from Democrats and Republicans.
Among the president's new proposals for small business are a $5,000 tax credit to hire new workers, elimination of capital gains taxes and new incentives to invest in plants and equipment. Will anything come of it? Based on recent history, we doubt it.
Congress, correctly interpreting its sinking poll numbers, has also jumped on the jobs bandwagon and is eagerly crafting another big-time jobs stimulus — this one rumored to be $80 billion in size.
Some of Obama's ideas aren't bad. But even if passed, they likely wouldn't help much. The problems that small businesses have aren't about small businesses per se; they're about the economy.
Small businesses have the same doubts as the rest of us. Besides all these "jobs programs," they see a failed $862 billion stimulus, a $700 billion TARP program that has turned into a politicized auto and bank bailout fund, Cash for
Clunkers, attempts in Copenhagen to impose massive taxes on America to stave off global warming, a $1 trillion health care overhaul, new "responsibility fees" on banks, and worry for our economy's future.
Worse, the new budget contains $2 trillion in tax hikes over a decade, mostly on multinationals and successful entrepreneurs. These taxes undo all the good the White House and Congress would do with their "incentives" and "credits" and whatnot.
Washington thus has it wrong. Businesses aren't awaiting more "stimulus." As the NFIB suggested, they're clinically depressed, seeing the government's dead weight lying across the economy for years to come in all its spending, taxing and ad hoc rule-making.
What sensible entrepreneur would commit his wealth to a money-making project in such a high-tax, high-regulation environment — one in which those who make profits are routinely demonized?
This is a problem with a solution, and the solution is the same one that's worked in the past: Cut taxes across the board — for business big and small — and look for ways to cut regulations, not add more. At the same time, pull back on the insane surge in government spending.
By unlocking our nation's entrepreneurial spirit and reviving growth across the economy, we can put an end to this nightmare and help all Americans regain prosperity. Then small businesses can get back to doing what they do best: create lots of jobs.
URL http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=520675
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14
Government Workers Compensated An Outrageous 45% More Than Private Sector Employees
Government Workers Make 45 Percent More Than Private Sector Employees
by Chris Banescu Feb. 9, 2010
A new report from the Bureaus of Labor Statistics that was released today, shows that almost 15 million Americans are currently out of work and unable to find jobs. Worse still, those with jobs have not seen their wages increase much in the last 10 years. However, government workers are enjoying a boom in hiring and generous salary increases thanks in large part to very cushy pensions and other benefits.
The pay differential between public sector employees and the private sector shows a troubling trend. Government workers have benefited greatly, even during the severe recession, and their wages now outpace the employee compensation in private industry. According to recent research done by Mark J. Perry, professor of finance and economics at the School of Management of the University of Michigan government employees make on average 45% more than private sector employees.
state and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked ($26.24 for wages and $13.60 for benefits) for total employee compensation in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour ($19.45 for wages and $8.05 for benefits). In other words, government employees make 45% more on average than private sector employees.
According to another BLS report, compensation for private industry workers has increased by 6.9% between December 2006 and December 2009, compared to a 9.8% increase for government workers (state and local) over the same period.
Meanwhile, the unemployment situation in the US progressively deteriorates with few signs of improvement. Finding a job for ordinary Americans has gotten much harder. Forbes summarizes the many problems workers still face:
Finding a job got much tougher last year, as the number of available openings fell by nearly one quarter.
At the same time, the unemployed population soared by more than one-third, leaving more laid-off workers competing for fewer jobs.
All told, there were 6.1 unemployed workers in December, on average, for every available position, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday.
That’s a sharp increase from 3.4 jobless workers per opening in December of 2008, and much worse than the 1.7 unemployed people per opening in December 2007, when the recession began.
That may seem like a lot given the severity of the recession, but that’s down from 3.2 million in December 2008. And it’s way below the 4.8 million openings that existed in June 2007, the peak reached before the recession.
The U.S. economy has lost approximately 8.7 million jobs since November 2007 when a high of 146,483,000 jobs was reached.
As of January 2010 the U.S. had barely over 137 million private sector jobs. From the CyberEconomics blog we get this depressing information:
The number of employed (total jobs) dropped by 589,000 from Nov to Dec. Most did not move to unemployed but dropped out of the labor force. In the past year, (December to December) 5,390,000 jobs have been lost–that is drop in the number of employed. However, there is some good news–the October unemployment rate was revised from 10.2% to 10.1%.
The labor force participation rate has dropped from 66.5% in December 2008 to 64.6% in December 2009. As people lost jobs, many left the labor force. If they had stayed in, being counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 11.6%.
Given the lack of real economic leadership, virtually no free-market policies coming from the White House, coupled with aggressive taxation and anti-business policies from the Obama administration and the Democrats in Washington, there is little hope that job losses will abate any time soon. Things may even get worse. Dark clouds are on the horizon for the American workers.
On the other hand, government workers are enjoying their amazing good fortune, richly rewarded with our tax dollars by career politicians who seem to have forgotten their oaths of office and constitutional responsibilities. We get to sacrifice and they get all the benefits of power. The political elites in DC keep thinking they can have their cake and eat it too, while the American taxpayers have to make do with the crumbs left over from the government lavish feasts and perpetual bailouts of the unions, failed car companies, failed banks, failed programs, etc..
I believe they’re in for a big surprise come November 2010.
http://chrisbanescu.com/blog/2010/02/09/government-workers-make-45-percent-more-than-private-sector-employees/
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Feb 11
Unchecked Government Spending Endangers The Dollar, Our Security and Independence
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Dec 22
The Spending Of Congress and Obama Are Immensely Burdensome and Unsustainable
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Sep 5
Obamanocare Legislation Mandates Easy Access to Your Income Tax Returns
There are a rapidly dwindling number of Americans left (no pun intended) that actually believe Obama when he deceitfully states that the healthcare bill is solely about providing care for all Americans – and nothing else. In previous posts, we have enumerated countless examples of this egregious lie and the pernicious effects that the contained provisions will have on our privacy, rights, choices, finances, taxes, access to care and more. We have been resolutely emphatic that this bill is also about government intrusion and control of our lives and control of an additional seventeen percent of the nations GDP.
To make matters worse, CBS News has reported a previously unnoticed provision of the healthcare bill which will legally grant widespread access to our federal tax returns. It mandates that the Health Choices Commissioner and staff, state health programs and all their staff and the expansive Social Security Administration with its thousands of employees will have unfettered access to these returns which so far have been fairly well protected by the IRS. The government’s utter incompetence in protecting highly classified information is well known. Do you really think, then, that your personal information will remain secure with tens of thousands or more people having access to it?
Even more disconcerting, is that this bill will provide the government with complete access to your health records, tax returns and all financial information including bank accounts. Do you really want or trust the government to possess all that information on you? It surely leaves little that it won’t know about you. Even worse, we have seen this type of information used by the government and others for nefarious purposes that could leave you embarrassed, vulnerable and defenseless (see for example Joe the Plumber).
Read: Health Bill Breeches IRS Privacy
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Aug 31
All Your Wishes Will Come True Because the “Government Can” – A Musical Video
Though our present political and economic situation is not the least bit funny, some people have the creative genius to expose and attack negatives in a positive, humorous, insightful and influential way. The following musical video by Tim Hawkins explores the false promises and failures of our government.
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Aug 25
Michelle Obama Is Living an Aristocratic Lifestyle of Wanton Luxury at Taxpayer Expense Despite a Recession: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants
Yes, Michelle, you now have another good reason to be proud of your country: it’s paying for your servants so that you can continue to comport yourself like arrogant royalty. Let’s revisit that famous statement you made last year and see how much better the situation is for you today. Most Americans could only dream of being given millions of dollars at taxpayer expense without holding an official job and having every one of your whims catered to without protest. But then again this is not unlike your previous “work” experience back in Chicago.
During an almost two year deep recession with high unemployment, with millions of Americans suffering economically, and trillions of dollars of wealth evaporated, you see no reason why you should sympathize and suffer too. Instead, it seems that you are trying almost single-handedly to significantly reduce the unemployment rate by hiring at least 26 servants at taxpayer expense exceeding two millions dollars per year. The number of attendants that you “require” obliterates numerically and cost wise what any previous First Lady needed. Even Hillary Clinton who was spearheading healthcare reform had a maximum of only 13 people under her. Meanwhile, Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salaries for their personal secretaries out of their own pocketbooks. How times have changed for the better! Isn’t that what you stated, Michelle?
Does your Chief of Staff really need to be paid $172,200? That is on par with what our Senators and Congressional Representatives receive and who may work slightly harder for their $174,000. Of course, maybe “combat” pay is included in your Chief of Staff’s base salary to make working under you a little bit more palatable.
Why do five members of your staff deserve to earn over $100,000 per year? Is that really necessary during a financial crisis? Can’t you show just a little fiscal responsibility and restraint? I wouldn’t look to your husband for advice, though, as he also appears to be clueless, sybaritic and financially reckless. Instead of signing the Porkulus bill in the White House Rose Garden like past Presidents have done for other legislation, Obama had to grandstand and fly to Phoenix and Colorado, costing the American taxpayer probably in excess of $30 million dollars. That amount could have paid for a lot of school supplies for children.
Your irresponsible, arrogant, and profligate spending for your little microcosm in addition to Obama’s for both personal (remember your date in New York?) and public adulation are just more reasons that we, the American people can’t and won’t trust your husband, Obama, with the healthcare and other legislation and with our tax dollars. But there is no need to despair as there is a silver lining. You will still have your own taxpayer financed gold plated healthcare plan that the average American would lust for rather than the restrictive, convoluted, and rationed one that Obama wants to impose on us.
Read: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants
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Aug 24
The National Debt Road Trip – A Visual Representation
The inordinate, unrestrained and unapologetically irresponsible “budget” of Obama and the effects on the debt are so gargantuan that it may be hard to fathom. Unbelievably, this recklessness barely evokes a yawn from the news media and fellow Democrats. These same people were relentlessly attacking Bush as being fiscally irresponsible yet the increase in debt and spending under his Administration were only a small fraction of Obama’s who has only been in office for seven months.
The following “National Debt Road Trip” illustrates the relative changes over time and puts it all in perspective.
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Aug 22
We Are Angry And Don’t Want to Take It Anymore!
Americans are venting their anger and disapproval of Obama’s policies and rhetoric and it is having a significant effect on the political debate, politicians and on other citizens who are beginning to express their concerns. Many voters in the middle of the political spectrum who were not impressed with McCain or were inspired with the aura, vigor and the ostensible freshness of Obama and his promises of “change that you can believe in” and therefore voted for him now feel more than betrayed and duped. Instead of the refreshing, inspired, positive, constructive and “post-racial” President, they now see a narcissistic, condescending, arrogant, hypocritical, elitist and dismissive one who adheres to outdated racial victimization demagoguery, class warfare envy, irresponsible and disingenuous fiscal policies, and immutable radical ideologies.
These inimical personal characteristics and his radical left persuasion should surprise nobody. Despite his outrageous denials of hearing anything offensive in the incendiary, racist, hateful sermons of Reverend Wright, we all know that he heard them and concurred. You don’t attend church weekly for 20 years, have him marry you and your wife, baptize your children, refer to him as an uncle like figure and donate thousands of dollars if you disagreed with his rhetoric. Any person of character and integrity would have picked themselves up and walked right out of that church and never returned after hearing one of those vile sermons . He didn’t! His overtly race based selections (Sotomayor, Eric Holder, Regina Benjamin, czars, etc.) and unwarranted involvement in local “racial” issues (Cambridge police and Afro-American Harvard professor of black studies) patently substantiate his racial bigotry and adherence to such policies.
People are very angry now with what they have seen in less than seven months and feel that it is too important to remain silent. It is imperative that all of us are very vocal in our dissent, using our freedom of free speech to effect the changes that we want, preserve our liberties as well as our hard earned incomes. We must make sure that the government answers to us rather than it impose its will and dictates on us!
Read: Prairie-Fire Anger
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Aug 8
We Need Different Changes That We Can Believe In
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What we have unfolding now with our Government’s intended responses to the Recession, specifically orchestrated by Obama and Congressional Democrats, is eerily and remarkably identical to the actions first initiated by President Hoover in 1932 and then expanded by Franklin Roosevelt. Their policies included onerous tax increases, numerous new taxes on common items, and massive government spending. The upshot of all of this was a severe worsening and prolongation of the Depression by another 12 years!
Assessing the proposals by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats, they have passed gargantuan spending bills including the Stimulus (Porkulus) Bill of almost $800 billion dollars, hundreds of billions in TARP funds, are intending to pass the bankrupting Cap and Trade Bill which will cost this country trillions of dollars, and healthcare “reform” that in its present form will realistically cost tens of trillions of dollars. Add to this the proposed income tax increases, taxation on virtually anything that exists and arcane compliance legislation and we will have the mother of all Depressions and the bankrupting of this country.
The ideological fervor with which Obama and the Democrats are pursuing these reckless and irresponsible policies and bills as well as their dismissive attitude of the historical lessons and public discontent demonstrates their unparalleled arrogance and disdain for the American people as well as their intellectual and moral corruptness. This bodes poorly for our future.
Read: Revenue Plunge Is Nothing New
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Jul 3
Irresponsible and Fiscally Bankrupting Programs Proposed by Neophyte Obama Should Not be Shocking
For those of us who have not been worshipping Obama acolytes since the inception of his Presidential campaign, it should come as no shock that his acumen and prudence regarding financial leadership and decisions are abysmal at best but in general, catastrophic. The present course he has placed this country on will take us to the precipice of financial bankruptcy with crushing debt that will affect generations to come. Add just some of it up: the Porkulus spending bills, hundreds of billions in bailout, and trillions in unfunded costs for government controlled healthcare and this doesn’t even include the tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security that will need to be addressed.
Why should this come as no surprise to anyone even ignoring ideological issues? Because has never had to run any business, either his or anyone else’s. He has zero experience! Not even a manager at McDonalds. This is a crash course, on the job learning except, unfortunately, the job just happens to be that of the President of the United States.
Read: A Debt The Founders Wouldn't Believe
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May 22
California May Pay Another High Price for Its Years of Reckless Spending
Despite rejecting the recent initiatives to increase taxes and spending this past Tuesday, California finds itself in dire straits from years of liberal fiscal profligacy.
Read George Will’s recent editorial on this matter: If California Is The Next Bailout, What Will Obama's Conditions Be?
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May 20
Obama’s Plan for Credit Cards: Reward Irresponsibility and Penalize Integrity
It has become a noxious pattern by the Obama Administration in their proposals and legislation: penalize the productive and reward the irresponsible. As a response to the real estate collapse, he has recommended cram-downs whereby judges could unilaterally reduce the principle amount of a mortgage in favor of the often irresponsible buyer thereby invalidating the agreement. The far reaching implications of this would mean that no contract would be worth the paper it is written on. (Of course, this would be a metaphor for Obama’s promises and his real intent and actions.) Who would suffer by this action? Everyone else who has been paying their mortgages on time or those who would like to purchase a home. The mortgage rates they would now be facing would be artificially higher – an unjust cost of subsidizing those who have been dishonest or irresponsible.
The Obama administration has its fingerprints on many of these same schemes of involuntary wealth transfer from productive individuals and corporations. Examples include multiple taxation proposals (Federal income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, Long term capital gains taxes, etc.), the selective bailout of failing companies and especially those with a large labor union workforce, healthcare reform proposals and even environmental issues.
Now we have a new arena ripe for Obama’s socialist mandates: the credit card industry. Reforms are clearly warranted here as there have been many egregious abuses by banks and other lending institutions. Despite some of what you may read (including in the article below), in its present iteration, several of the proposed changes would provide greater reward to those who are irresponsible, profligate spenders and penalize those who pay their bills on time. Competitive constraints levied on these companies by legislation would limit their options to reward those who are a better financial risk.
Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers
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