Story #1 tells us that in 38 months in office, Obama has increased the National Debt by more than Bush did in 96 months in office. #2 looks as the left and their war on science (or is it a war on freedom) with their energy plans. #3 tells us of the Spring Offensive for OWS. #4 discusses why the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed a budget in 3 years despite being require by law to do so. #5 tells us the campaign movie about Obama’s “accomplishments” gets 3 Pinocchios from the Washington Post. #6 relates how capitalism is better than socialism and #7 explains how the tax system works and uses beer to explain it (kind of a win/win).
1. Obama’s Debt Now Exceeds 8 Years of Bush Debt
The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.
The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.
The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.
The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.
Mr. Obama has been quick to blame his predecessor for the soaring Debt, saying Mr. Bush paid for two wars and a Medicare prescription drug program with borrowed funds.
The federal budget sent to Congress last month by Mr. Obama, projects the National Debt will continue to rise as far as the eye can see. The budget shows the Debt hitting $16.3 trillion in 2012, $17.5 trillion in 2013 and $25.9 trillion in 2022…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/
From Hope and Change to Excuses and Blame.
2. The Left’s War on Freedom
…There is a simple reason why algae, wind, solar, batteries, and all the rest of the green agenda are never going to be the energy solution of the future. The reason was developed by Peter Huber and Mark Mills in The Bottomless Well. It's all about energy concentration.
People started using coal because its energy is more concentrated than wood. We use oil in transportation because oil is more concentrated than coal. And a "gram of U-235 is worth about 4 tons of coal." You can see the problem with "thin, low-energy-density fuels, however cheap" like wind and solar. People don't want thin and low. The "market has paid steep premiums for fuels that pack more energy into weight and space."
But liberals don't like concentrated energy like nuclear, oil, and coal. They like thin, diffuse energy from wind, solar, and biomass. Why is that?
You could say that liberal green energy is a liberal war on science, but to assert that, as Rush Limbaugh might say, would be to lower ourselves to their level. Perhaps it's more of a war on human freedom. Liberals are a lot like other humans. They like freedom, but they don't like freedom for people they don't like.
For America, the real hope of the Obama years is that in four years we may score a trifecta of three major liberal fantasies utterly discredited for decades to come: universal health insurance, green energy, and Keynesian inflationism. One is the liberal war on health freedom, one is the liberal war on energy freedom, and one the war on ordinary financial freedom…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/the_optics_of_obamas_failures.html#ixzz1pePA7Gic
Liberals are the most anti-freedom group in the world today. They practice what they think religion preaches looking to impose their beliefs on everyone else.
3. OWS Part 2
In a desperate bid to recover the relevance they barely had, hundreds of Occupiers returned to Zuccotti Park this weekend to celebrate the six-month anniversary of their amoebic movement. It was déjà vu all over again.
For hours, the demonstrators had been chanting and holding impromptu meetings in the park to celebrate the anniversary of the movement that has brought attention to economic inequality, as police mainly kept their distance.
But New York Police Det. Brian Sessa said the tipping point came when the protesters started breaking the park rules.
“They set up tents. They had sleeping bags,” he said. Electrical boxes also were tampered with and there was evidence of graffiti.
Sessa said Brookfield Properties, the park owner, sent in security to advise the protesters to stop pitching tents and to leave the park. The protesters, in turn, became agitated with them. The company then asked the police to help them clear out the park, the detective said.
“Most of the people, they left the park,” Sessa said. “People who refused to leave and were staying were arrested.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/19/the-ragged-return-of-occupy/
I think you will hear silence about this from the Democratic establishment. OWS is not good for them. A failed movement reminds people of the failed policies of BHO and of all the extralegal steps Obama has taken that haven’t worked. BTW there were 73 arrests.
4. Why aren’t the Democrats passing a budget?
It's one of the most remarkable statistics to come out of Washington in a long time: Tuesday marks the 1,056th day since Congress passed a yearly budget for the federal government.
The fault does not lie with Congress as a whole. The House has passed budgets. Senate Republicans have tried to do the same. But after passing a budget resolution in 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has refused to allow passage of a new budget in 2010, 2011, and, it appears, 2012 as well.
"We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year," Reid told reporters last month, arguing that legislation setting limits on spending is sufficient.
"The fact is, you don't need a budget," agreed fellow Democrat and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer a few weeks ago. "We can adopt appropriations bills. We can adopt authorization policies without a budget. We already have an agreed-upon cap on spending."
In fact, the lawmakers are required by law to pass a budget each year. That's made conspicuously clear by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. But proposing and passing a budget can cause lots of problems. It can force a party to take potentially unpopular stands on critical issues. How much should the government spend on national defense? On health care? On social programs? As Reid and his allies see it, better to just ignore the whole thing.
When Democrats refused to pass a budget in 2010, Republicans thought Reid, the target of Republican attacks over the stimulus, Obamacare, and bailouts, was just trying to limit damage in that year's midterm elections. But then 2011 came along, with no elections, and Reid did it again, or, more accurately, didn't do it again.
All of which left it unclear where the party that controls the Senate stands on the profoundly important issue of federal spending. "A budget is values," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office and an adviser to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "When you put together a budget, you display where you're going to put the nation's resources and what you care about."…
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/york-ryan-tries-break-reids-grip-budget/435531
It appears the Democrats don’t want the American people to know what their values are. That’s probably a smart more on their part, but they are required by law to pass one.
5. Obama’s Campaign Piece gets 3 Pinocchois
…“The Road We’ve Traveled” is a very slick and impressively produced campaign film—sheer catnip for Obama fans. There are a number of facts and figures that could be challenged, but for now we are going to focus on this sequence. The series of words and images is an excellent example of how such films can create a misleading impression, while skirting as close as possible to the edge of falsehood….
…Now let’s look at what the movie does with this story. It does not directly repeat the claim that Obama’s mother was denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, fighting for treatment in her hospital room. But look at what it does say:
1. Hanks says the president knew the cost of waiting on reform. (Though disability coverage was not an issue in the health care debate.)
2. The president says cancer “drained all her resources.” (Health insurance paid for most of her bills, so this is not the case of someone being bankrupted by tens of thousands of dollars in bills. Her salary of $82,500 in 1995 was the equivalent of $123,000 today, but Scott says she had little savings.)
3. Michelle Obama says Dunham “never really had good, consistent insurance.” (It is unclear what she means by this, except maybe that Dunham had different jobs, some of which did not provide insurance. But Dunham had good health coverage when the cancer was discovered.)
4. The first lady also suggests the death “could have been prevented.” (Again, it was not an insurance issue. Before going overseas, Dunham was too busy with work and had skipped an important test recommended by her U.S. doctor, dilation and curettage, that might have spotted the cancer earlier. Then an Indonesian doctor diagnosed her problem as appendicitis and removed her appendix. By the time the cancer was finally discovered, it was third-stage.)
5. Hanks says that Obama’s family felt “the pressure of rising costs and the fear of being denied or dropped from coverage.” (Maybe for disability, but not health insurance.)
In the end, the impression left by the film, especially if you watch it (go to the 8:45 mark), is very similar to Obama’s 2008 campaign rhetoric: His mother was denied health-insurance coverage, draining her resources, and with better coverage she might have lived longer. The film suggests this experience helped inspire the president to keep fighting for the health care law, even in the face of advice from aides that he accept a less-than-satisfactory compromise…
The truth about Obama is that there isn’t a lot of truth about Obama.
6. Why Capitalism is better than Socialism
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill
Saying that capitalism is better than socialism is like saying that winning a million dollars is better than being in a high impact car crash. In other words, if you have an open mind, a good grasp on human nature and economics, and a passing knowledge of world history, there's absolutely no question that capitalism is superior to socialism.
Unfortunately, this lesson has been lost on a lot of people because our school systems have become so mediocre, there are no pure capitalist and socialist systems, and there are a lot of people who promote socialism for reasons that have nothing to do with economics. Is it surprising, for example, that politicians prefer an economic system that concentrates power in their hands as opposed to a system that makes them less relevant? Would anyone be shocked to find out that there are people who like the idea of making money based on whom they know and where they put their campaign contributions as opposed to slugging it out in the free market?
So with all that in mind, it is worth explaining, once again, why capitalism is absolutely, undeniably, unquestionably superior to socialism….
Read the article for the five reasons identified by the author. I would add a sixth. Capitalism actually works. Socialism doesn’t.
7. How the Tax System works
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…
- The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
- The fifth would pay $1
- The sixth would pay $3
- The seventh would pay $7
- The eighth would pay $12
- The ninth would pay $18
- The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.
“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?
The bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
- And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
- The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
- The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
- The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
- The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
- The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
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