Senator John Kerry's Attempt To Ban Tea Party From Media Shows Desperation

And in so doing, Senator Kerry used inflammatory rhetoric to make his case, claiming that "Congress was held hostage..," and "People wanted to literally cut the baby in half."  Senator Kerry has been a member of Congress (in both House and Senate) long enough to remember government shut-downs, several dozen filibusters, and other parliamentary maneuvers done by members of both parties in efforts to get their way.  His effort to get the media to put a gag on dissenting opinion just shows how desperate the Democrats are in their efforts to retain power long enough to transform our nation into something second rate.  Or maybe he simply misses being relevant.

One thing is certain.  There is one group of people who are serious about fixing the debt problem, and there is another group who isn't.  The Republicans have proposed Cut, Cap, and Balance which would go far in reversing several decades of irresponsible fiscal management.  You may or may not agree with how the plan works, but you have to admit it IS an attempt, at the very least.

Senator Reid had a plan...to do something...but that something had little to do with the debt situation except to raise it.  And President Obama had no plan at all.  But after the "compromise," the President did voice his support for new spending on new social programs which would require the debt ceiling to be raised even further.  So when the Democrats in power say they're in favor of solving the debt problem...  they are actually in favor of someone else (republicans) taking the heat for a watered-down plan (compromise) that does virtually nothing but get democrats re-elected.

Senator Rubio is a fresh face with an up-to-date perspective on the silliness of these dinosaurs who got us into this mess, and offers his opinions.  It's worth watching the 14 minute video just to see him slam Senator Kerry.  Heh.

Obama's National Debt Gimmicks Are Path To Ruin

I've been thinking about our country's ever-growing national debt of more than $12 trillion, and have wondered just how our politicians planned to deal with it.  The obvious would be to balance the budget year after year, while collecting additional revenue with which to gradually pay down the accumulated debt--> painful but simple, right?  Have you done the math?  

Based upon the size of your average pocket calculator, most of which don't allow enough digits to enter the trillion category, I doubt many of you have.  But my iPhone has a calculator which, when turned horizontally, transforms itself from a simple basic layout of simple math into an advanced powerhouse of trigonometry and calculus.... and many more digits.  Like our economy, my iPhone can just barely hold 12 trillion.  It looks like this:  12,000,000,000,000.  That's right, twelve zeros in a trillion.

The next step is to figure out how much our Congress thinks they can raise, on average year after year above a balanced budget, in the amount of surplus revenue to start paying down the debt.  One must factor the likely boom years as well as the bust years, along with any wars, recessions, depressions, or big bull markets.  Most might say $10 billion.  I was feeling generous and chose $100 billion, which is an awful lot of money and therefore not very realistic considering the very nature of Washington politics and recent history.  So we will look at both figures just for argument's sake.

First, if you take $12,000,000,000,000 (12 trillion) and pay it down in increments of $100,000,000,000 (100 billion) each and every year, it will take us 120 years to pay off the national debt!

But if you only pay an average of $10,000,000,000 (10 billion) year after year, which is much more realistic but still high, it will take 1,200 years to pay it off!  And you know that if the budget is balanced and Congress manages to pay down the national debt by 50 Million, they'll be slapping themselves on the back and claiming the crisis is over.  Not so.

Paying off the national debt requires long term commitments and sacrifice.  And considering that long term thinking doesn't get anyone re-elected, only short term remedies on the path of least resistance do (IMHO), paying off the national debt will never come to pass.

What then will be done?

President Obama has signed a bill into law increasing the debt ceiling to just over $14 trillion, and by doing so has suggested that more borrowing is on the way.  He has done this in spite of the "pay-as-you-go" provision, which, of course, is nothing but a gimmick.  Money has to be spent, but first borrowed, in order to boost our economy and get more tax revenue pouring in (so the liberal theory goes...).

Just how high will we go before we either go belly-up or run out of things to bail-out?  Considering the health care bill (which will be passed, unfortunately), future medicaid and medicare bail-outs, and the looming social security crisis (the biggest bail-out yet to come), I would estimate (wildly guess) that total national debt figure to be around $20,000,000,000,000 (20 trillion).  

It is at the $20 trillion point that President Obama would suddenly jump aboard the constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget to save the nation from itself (I mean himself), and require the government to spend an amount each year no more than it takes in each year (a more draconian and much less gimmicky version of "pay-as-you-go").  The national debt would then be frozen at $20 trillion.  And it would stay that way for many years, requiring a huge percentage of our annual tax revenue for interest payments each year that are unavoidable.  It will stay that way until the GDP (gross domestic product) hopefully grows so large that the $20 trillion debt looks miniscule by comparison.  It would most likely take several decades for this to happen, if at all, during which we would suffer through rampant inflation, a crashing dollar, high taxes, putting up with China bossing us around (they own $4 trillion of our debt in the form of bonds), and the rise of an Islamic super-state (Muslim nations joined together by force or "anschluss") which we would be powerless to stop (no money, no muscle).

There is only one problem with this plan.  It won't work.  It is all contingent on the hope that we will continue to be an economic powerhouse with an ever-increasing GDP, and that without muscle our nation would still be able to leverage in foreign affairs in order to protect our economic interests abroad.  It would be contingent on China NOT getting fed up with us and cashing in the $4 trillion in bonds we sold them, or for that matter not attacking Taiwan during our condition of weakness.  It would be based on interest rates not going up and causing the interest on the debt we pay each year to be unmanageable.  To put it simply,...it would have to defy gravity.  And it won't.

Now get off your butt and get involved.

Read more HERE and especially HERE.



 

Obama: The Most Fiscally Irresponsible President In History

Visuals can be very effective ways of communicating a point. President Reagan knew it when he showed us a dollar bill and asked us to picture them stacked all the way to the moon ---that was our debt at the time.

Now Obama is taking this country for a ride at 174mph and likely to run us (and the rest of the world) off a cliff when the world economy collapses under the weight of enormous debt to gnp. Check out this video above, courtesy of 10000Pennies. Read my past rant HERE.

(h/t for video: Freeman Hunt)

My Two Cents...(soon it will be all I have left)

No one, including myself, enjoys reading bad news about the economy. But when we brace ourselves enough to take the bitter pill of the news of the day, it's important to keep up with events, who or what is causing them, and who has a good plan to save our country from economic ruin. I mean, the last thing you want to do is put your trust in the same people who caused this mess. Right?

Well, while the country argues with itself on how all of this mayhem happened and who is actually to blame, there are some important things to keep in mind. One is that our country is in serious debt trouble. That means we cannot afford to spend our way out of this mess and still expect to remain an economic superpower. For years we have borrowed huge sums of money while getting further and further into debt with the seeming intention of outgrowing the debt. While the ratio of national debt to GDP was low, it didn't seem to matter how large the debt was to the politicians who continued to spend wildly to keep constituents and donors happy. Much of the money to fund the government has been borrowed from other countries, like China for instance, by selling them bonds which they can cash in whenever they feel like flexing their muscles, or if/when they feel threatened by us. Though it is more likely that since China' s economy is so tied to ours, they would do that only if they felt our country slid past the point-of-no-return on our economic down-slide.

Second, unfortunately the slow growth of personal income for your average worker bee has not kept up with the growth of GDP or government spending, nor has it kept up with the rise of the national debt. And so our ability to collect enough money from tax revenue to pull ourselves out of debt in case of ...well...a depression,... has also been hampered. With so many businesses laying off workers and so few businesses claiming profits this past year or projecting them this coming year, we should not expect a rise in tax revenues. In fact, we should expect a sharp decrease.

Third, our nation pays interest on the national debt each year. We cannot avoid paying this by simply throwing it onto the already huge national debt pile we already owe. It must be paid each year in full. In recent years it has eaten a significant portion of our tax revenue--- about 17.5% at the end of 2007 when times were still good. Our government raised $2.5 trillion in tax revenue the same year, from which it paid $430 billion in interest on the national debt consisting of $9.3 trillion. Although I always thought Ross Perot was a bit "off" at times, he was right to sound the alarm back in 1992 about how the interest we were paying on the debt was money we could have spent on other things (or better yet not at all, but given back to us!). Now it looks to swallow us whole.

Today's national debt has grown to nearly $10.9 trillion, and is expected to go up to significantly higher levels with the new stimulus (porkulus) package and President Obama's new earmark-soaked budget plan. With those you can add about $4 trillion to the existing debt ($1.7 trillion this year alone!) along with an undisclosed amount too scary to contemplate to the annual interest payments. Expect the interest due each year to almost double in size. And with profits going down, more unemployment and decreasing incomes, tax revenues will go down sharply in 2009 with even some surprising shortfalls to come on April 15th of this year for 2008 income tax revenue. See the graphs and pie charts on the current state of the economy HERE.

If the trend continues with this current administration we will soon cross over to the point of no return. Long before the national debt interest payments become equal to or overtake the amount of tax revenue the government collects we will go belly-up. Can you picture all of our tax revenue going to pay debt interest with no money left to pay for services like highways, national defense, etc.??? The entire cost of services would go straight to the national debt, which would in turn increase the interest payments in the following year. It would be a never ending cycle. But long before that, either foreign countries like China will simply stop gambling on us and cease buying our bonds, (they might simply run out of money sooner than that, themselves), or they will pull the rug out from under us when they figure out where we are heading and cash in said bonds (like a run on the bank).

If we print more money (huge sums, like some have suggested) then inflation will skyrocket, and not simply like the Carter years, but much higher --more like with your average 3rd world nation or even worse. It will mean economic collapse much more devastating than the old Soviet Union. And let us not ignore the effect it would have on the rest of the world: there are no democracies beyond us capable of saving the world from oppression. We will no longer have the power to stop rogue nations from attacking their neighbors and perhaps swallowing whole continents. If the aggressor inspires enough fear, it could accomplish much of this without firing a shot...or much of one. Remember Hitler's Anschluss? He swallowed a lot of territory before anyone actually tried to stand in his way. Countries that could get away with it today under such circumstances are run by people who speak of slicing off heads and subjugating women, and who will soon be nuclear-capable.

But how could all of this happen in a country like ours? After all, our politicians are not stupid. They are not suicidal. They are all patriotic folks who love America and want it to succeed. Right? NO! They are lascivious fools who are blinded by ambition and starving for money and power.

We should simply be quiet and leave the driving to the experts. Right? NO! What we need to do is to take the power out of the hands of the people who ran the economic bus into the ditch and hire new people---smart people, honorable people, people who feel subject to a power higher than themselves! Not some punk with a messianic complex who doesn't know his you-know-what from a hole in the ground, or his sycophantic entourage of tax cheats.

Should this strategy be limited to politicians? NO! It includes power brokers who rely on our patronage of their businesses. It also includes media outlets who "powder the bottoms" of the wrong candidates while crucifying the good ones. It means boycotting movies that feature actors who otherwise make large sums of money and use them to cause mischief in Washington and elsewhere. IT MEANS GETTING INVOLVED AND MAKING CHANGES, not sitting back idly and voting only if you fall madly in love with the candidate. Even John McCain would have been better than this garbage...

In the meantime make your politicians aware of how you feel. Go online and get their phone and/or fax numbers. Google them! Or better yet, click HERE. They might have an office near you. Tell them to stop spending so foolishly. Notify sponsors of programs you find offensive that they can no longer count on your business. Call the networks and sponsors of those networks and tell them you don't appreciate slanted news that glorifies incompetent politicians while ignoring their crimes, ie., NBC, CBS, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Barack Obama, etc... Vote in primary elections and throw out bad Republicans like Arlen Specter. Get involved. The future of your country depends upon you.