SOCRATIC AMMO
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion. When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors. When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.
With that being said… Bling Bling
in D.C. Washington D.C.’s workers enjoy the highest salaries of any U.S. city, with a median household income of $85,198 according to CNNMoney. It is even higher for the federal worker segment. The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has rocketed upward ten-fold in the past five years and has doubled since President Obama took office.
Welfare Nation Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation’s history. A record 18.3% of the nation’s total personal income was a payment from the government. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income, 51%, since the government began keeping track in 1929. More than 44 million people are on food stamps, which is a 39% increase since President Obama took office. The number limousines owned by the government over the same period has increased by 73%. U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression; an astounding $2.3 trillion.
Wild Pigs
The Congressional Pig Book compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste has identified 9,129 pork-barrel projects at a cost of $16.5 billion. Obamacare Charlie Foxtrot The Obama administration has issued over 1300 waivers to special businesses, several cities, four states and many unions from his health care legislation. Medicare and Medicaid made at least $70.5 billion in “improper payments” last year, which was 9% of their entire budget. These improper federal payments amounted to more than the combined total of $68.3 billion spent by the entire Homeland Security and State Departments. In fiscal 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services will spend $909.7 billion.
In fiscal 1965 the entire federal government spent $118 billion. Even taking inflation in to account, $118 billion is the equivalent to about $822.6 billion today. So the Department of Health and Human Services spends more money than the entire Lyndon B. Johnson budget. Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered that a little-known provision in the national-health care law has allowed the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees.
The caveat called the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program legislation called for the government to spend $5 billion to subsidize unions, states, and companies that had made commitments to provide health insurance for workers who retired early between the ages of 55 and 64 before they were eligible for Medicare. Retire at 55, fellow citizens pay for health care; we are becoming more and more like Europe everyday.
Obamacare will establish insurance exchanges, which are heavily regulated with mandates and minimum requirements galore. The policies offered will be so costly that families will receive subsidies to offset the costs. Starting in 2014, subsidies will become available to families with incomes between 134% and 400% of the federal poverty line. The Wall Street Journal breaks down some scenarios, a family of four headed by a 55-year-old earning $31,389 in 2014 dollars (134% of poverty line) will get a subsidy of $22,740. A similar family of four earning $93,699 (400%) gets a subsidy of $14,799.
A family that makes one dollar more gets nothing. My family of five pays less for health insurance than “rich” family’s subsidy. They are predicting that health insurance in 2014 for a family of four will run $23,700. President Obama’s solicitor general, while defending Obamacare in front of a federal appeals court stated that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.
This is not a parody. This is not a Saturday Night Live skit. This happened.
Back in the USSR The Obama administrations National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing to block production of the company’s 787 Dreamliner at a new assembly in South Carolina. The Obama administration wants to force a private company to move its facilities from a “right to work” non-union compulsion state back to Washington where all workers will be forced to join a union and therefore have dues taken from their wages and given to the Democratic Party. This is the first time a federal agency has intervened and decided to dictate to a private business where it can and cannot operate in the United States. The reality is that there has been quite a migration from the union states to the “right to work” states, which is bad for business for the Democrats.
Businesses don’t want to operate in union-shop high tax states like New York, Washington, Michigan, California and Illinois. A 2010 study in the Cato Journal by economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University found that between 2000 and 2008 4.8 million Americans moved from forced-union states to right to work states. The Obama administration with this suit wants for all intents and purposes forced unionism across the land. This story is one of the most frightening, I have covered in a long time.
The idea that the United States (land of the free, home of the brave) is ordering a company to do business where they tell it to is something out of the Soviet Union. Al Qaeda and all the other Islamic wackos do not scare me one-tenth as much as these statist bureaucrats do. Boeing spent $2 billion building a plant and creating jobs in South Carolina. Not a single job was lost in Washington; in fact they added two thousand.
If you were the CEO of XYZ company and were thinking about opening a new manufacturing facility and had to choose between country A where they might sue you and force you to shut down because they don’t like your locale, or country B where they stay the hell out of your way, where would you go?
Kiss Up To Your Banker
General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. How about that! Obama just announced that we will lose $14 billion on the auto bailouts, which will translate into $30 billion when all is said and done, but they have enough money to sponsor a communist propaganda film. Remember that next time you see some stupid GM commercial with their American flags flying and patriotic music playing in the background.
Stimulus Bonanza
A construction company that received multiple stimulus grants from President Obama’s stimulus package was quite tardy on its federal tax bill to the tune of $700,000. While at the same time the company was blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars at casinos. This was not an isolated incident. Investigators discovered that just during the period that they examined, one out of every six stimulus contract or grant dollars went to a known tax cheat. 3,700 stimulus recipients that received over $24 billion in our money owe a total of $757 million in taxes.
The Debt Threat From Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs, “I was shown the figures the other day by the comptroller of the Pentagon that said that the interest on our debt is $571 billion in 2012. That is, noticeably, about the size of the defense budget. It is not sustainable.”
Our military feels are fiscal situation is our greatest national security threat.
Sources:
Cauchon!Dennis!Reliance!on!Uncle!Sam!Hits!a!Record USA$Today 4/26/11 Cauchon!Dennis More!Federal!Workers!Pay!Tops!$150,000 USA$Today 11/10/10 Eaton!Joe!Limousine!Liberals? IWatch$5/30/11 MacDonald!Elizabeth!Government!Cash!Handouts!Now!Top!Tax!Revenues Fox$Business$4/20/11 Jeffrey!Terence!Medicare!and Medicaid!Made!$70!Billion!in!“Improper!Payments!Last!Year!CNS$News 3/16/11 Jeffrey!Terence!Obama’s!HHS!is!Bigger!Than!LBJ’s!Government!CNS$News 2/16/11 York!Byron!New!$2!Billion!Bailout!in!Obamacare Washington$Examiner 3/31/11 Kessler!Daniel!How!Health!Reform!Punishes!Work Wall$Street$Journal 4/25/11 Klein!Phillip!Obama!Solicitor!General:!If!You!Don’t!Like!Mandate,!Earn!Less!Money!Washington$Examiner 6/2/11 Laffer!Arthur!&!Stephen!Moore!Boeing!and!the!Union!Berlin!Wall Wall$Street$Journal 5/13/11 Piket!Kerry!GM!Sponsors!and!Celebrates!Soon!to!be!Released!Chi`Com!Propaganda!Film Washington$Times 5/17/11 Dinan!Stephen!Stimulus!Recipients!Found!to!be!Tax!Cheats Washington$Times 5/24/11
