"Living wage" Mentality Reflects Misunderstanding Of Business Reality.

Stolen from Faultline USA

Fast food workers in seven cities were on strike last week demanding a "living wage" of $15 an hour, more than twice the $7.25 they currently make. Empathy aside, this expectation is a fantasy.

Every job has a value, but it is based not on what the person who has the job thinks it should be worth, or what sympathetic observers think it should be worth, but on its role in the business.

How important is the job to the business, compared to other jobs? Are other people who can do the job a scarce commodity, or are there thousands of them? Some jobs require substantial training, while others do not, and individuals with the required training deserve higher pay than those without training. Minimum wage jobs in the fast food industry require no formal training; the worker can learn on the job, and while the worker is learning to do the job satisfactorily, the boss endures lower-than-necessary productivity.

Who exactly works for the minimum wage? These jobs are entry-level work intended for people just getting started in the workaday world, like students trying to earn a little money while pursuing their education, or people with little or no skills or experience looking to get some skill and experience. About half of the 1.6 million minimum wage workers are under 25 years of age. The minimum wage is not intended to be, and cannot be, a “living wage.”

The minimum wage is, indeed, a low wage, but most of those workers get a raise in less than a year, and there are fewer of them today than in the past. The number of people making at or under the minimum wage today is 28 per 1,000 wage and salary workers, while in 1976 there were 79 per 1,000 wage and salary workers.

Most employers want the best workers they can find, so if most workers produce 10 of something an hour and Joe can produce 12 an hour, or if Mary’s work is of higher quality than other employees, the boss is likely to give them a raise to keep them on staff.

For people in minimum wage jobs with few or no skills, demanding their salary be doubled to a "living wage" is somewhat akin to high school students demanding they be given a college diploma. And anyone earning minimum wage that is unhappy with it can go look for a better-paying job. If they can't find one, do their best at the current job, and get some training that will qualify them for something better.

An organization calling itself Socialist Alternative illustrates graphically the failure of a “living wage" minimum wage in an article titled "Profit is The Unpaid Labor of Workers."

"Hypothetically, lets assume that our job pays $7.50 an hour and our boss wants us to work for twenty hours," the article says. "At $7.50 an hour for twenty hours, that’s a total of $150. In that same period of time, however, the work we do will probably make $300, $400, or $1000 worth of pizza."

And here's where it gets good: "What does this mean? Just for arguments sake, lets assume we only create $300 worth of pizza. After our boss gives us $150 for our week’s worth of work – meaning our own labor essentially pays our wage – he is left with an additional $150 that he did not work for."

There’s a brilliant bit of insight hidden in that paragraph: "our own labor essentially pays our wage." To the socialist mentality, the only cost of running the pizza parlor is what the boss pays the pizza maker. Everything else – flour, sauce, pepperoni, cheese, insurance, rent/mortgage, electricity, water, sewage, trash pickup, taxes, fees, etc. – the boss apparently gets for nothing, and the money collected for the pizza that is not paid to the pizza maker is ill-gotten gains.

The "living wage" strikers similarly do not understand business, and what happens when wages go up. Raising the minimum wage requires a commensurate raise in all wages, to avoid causing strife among the other workers, and that means price increases that make the business less competitive. That could lead to staff cutbacks or ultimately closing the business.

The strikers and the socialists fail to understand and appreciate the investments of the owner(s), who may have mortgaged their home to finance the business, and managers of larger businesses, who usually have spent years in training and working to get where they are, perhaps starting as a minimum wage employee themselves.

Owners get whatever is left over after everyone else – employees, venders, lenders, taxes, etc. – have been paid. Often, particularly in the beginning or during hard economic times, that is little or nothing. And, few employees work as hard as the owner of a small business, and particularly a new business, yet the Socialist Alternative begrudges them making a decent return on their investment of capital and time.

It’s easy to criticize the boss from the sidelines. The best course for these critics would be their forced entry into the business owner’s world. At their own expense, of course. They would undoubtedly see things differently in short order.

Americans Have Been Sequestered By Their Elected Public Servants

By James Shott

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has produced an economic report using The Budget and Economic Outlook: FY 2013 to 2023 from the Congressional Budget Office that paints the true picture of the impact of the sequester on federal spending.

It has become standard practice in recent years for the federal government to spend more than a trillion dollars above what it takes in. In 2013 the budget deficit will be a little over $900 billion, adding nearly another trillion dollars to the national debt. According to Mercatus, the government planned to increase spending by $2.54 trillion through 2023. That represents an increase in government spending of 72 percent over ten years.

And then came the sequester, which President Barack Obama told us would wreak all sorts of havoc on the government and the nation, throwing tens of thousands of Americans out of work, and all manner of other horrors.

We were told that the sequester was a cut to government funding levels, but that was not true. The sequester wasn't cutting anything, merely reducing the amount of additional money government got each year over the previous year, so that over that 10-year period spending would only increase by $2.40 trillion. With the reductions in spending increases under the sequester, spending would still increase by 68 percent over ten years. Instead of spending an average of $540 billion more each year, government could only spend $400 billion more each year. What a hardship.

Putting this equation in dollar amounts that people can identify with, let's say that you earn $43,000 a year, -- the average wage in the U.S. -- and your employer told you that each year for the next ten years you would get paid $2,540 more than the previous year. But then the company had a financial crisis and was only able to pay you $2,400 more than last year, about 5.5 percent less. Would you have to sell your second car to make ends meet? Would you have to move to a less expensive home, or eat only bread and beans? Would your life really change at all because your pay raise was $140 less than you expected?

Actually, you could spend money on things just like you did the preceding year, and have money left over.

Returning to the federal situation, how could the government having $400 billion more to spend in FY 2013 than it had in FY 2012 cause such horrific results as those the president warned us about? Well, because those in the position to create horrific results decided to make the most of the situation, and create as much pain as possible.

And why would they do that? Quoting that famous socialist philosopher, former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." In other words, use this situation to help you achieve your selfish goals by creating a lot of pain and blaming it on your political opponents.

And how would they do that? Well, when faced with two possible areas to spend less, where one was painful and the other wasn't -- such as not filling government positions opened through attrition (painless) or releasing illegal alien criminals back onto the streets (painful and dumb), these public servants choose to release illegal alien criminals. Of course, everyone with common sense recognizes that decision is stupid and dangerous, but common sense is unwelcome in this entirely political situation. What matters most to these malpracticing public servants is causing enough pain to get the people to clamor for relief from the painful decisions, and restore things to their pre-sequester status.

This is the path that Barack Obama and the other big spenders chose to try to reverse the sequester that was originally their brain child. It is revealing that the president refused to accept the authority to decide how best to accomplish spending a little less than originally envisioned, which was offered to him by U.S. Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and James Inhofe (R-OK), who authored an alternative to give him discretion to allocate the sequester’s cuts largely as he sees fit. Mr. Obama, who never is responsible for anything bad, wanted no part of it, because then whatever pain couldn't be avoided would be his responsibility.

The president wants to blame new economic problems on the sequester. But the actual effects of the sequester are only to reduce budget increases by an amount small enough that competent managers could adequately and nearly painlessly deal with. But, of course, the president turned down that authority.

The real pain and suffering that occurs after the sequester took effect will have resulted primarily from decisions deliberately made to cause pain for no better reason than to allow the president and our other employees in government to create a situation that benefits them and their spending addiction.

This behavior is the antithesis of the ideal of public service and should earn every public servant who indulges in it a quick ejection from their job. Unfortunately, many Americans are more concerned with outcomes than with following an honorable process to achieve them.an honorable process to achieve them.

Looking At The United States By The Numbers

Stolen From Hat Tip Faultline USA

By James Shott

As the end of 2012 draws near, here are some interesting and revealing statistics about our country.

The Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate has been anemic all year, but had its biggest increase in the 3rd quarter, rising 2.7 percent. That was double the 2nd quarter’s 1.3 percent, and beat the 1st quarter’s 1.9 percent. From 1947 until 2012, the United States GDP Growth Rate averaged 3.2 percent.

* * *

In 2011 the population of the U.S. was 313.8 million and 153.6 million Americans were in the labor force. The nation produced total GDP of $15.1 trillion, roughly $49,000 in per capita GDP.

The U.S. Treasury collected tax revenue of a little more than $2.3 trillion and as a percent of GDP the economy is taxed at slightly more than 15 percent. However, the federal government spent about $3.8 trillion, creating a budget deficit of more than $1.3 trillion, or 8.63 percent of GDP. Each man woman and child citizen’s share of the cost of government is more than $12,000.

Currently, the national debt is roughly $16.3 trillion, which works out to about $51,000 per man, woman and child. This year’s federal budget deficit adds $3,500 or so of additional debt per citizen.

* * *

The November jobs report listed 146,000 new jobs and a U-3 Unemployment Rate of 7.7 percent, two-tenths lower than the October figure. Unfortunately, this news is not as good as it appears. To have a truly meaningful effect on unemployment, more than 300,000 new jobs must be created each month. The Labor Department revised downward new job numbers in October from 171,000 to 138,000, and from September in 148,000 to 132,000.

The drop in the unemployment rate resulted not from lots of people going back to work, but because 350,000 people dropped out of the workforce.

The Labor Force Participation Rate dropped from 63.8 percent to 63.6 percent. The 146,000 new jobs have a much greater effect on a smaller labor force than on a larger labor force. If the labor force remained the same as it was in January 2009, U-3 unemployment would be 10.7 percent. The more accurate U-6 Unemployment Rate, which includes not only those working and those looking for work, but also those who have become discouraged and given up looking for jobs, is 14.6 percent for November.

* * *

In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, the total number of people employed had climbed to 143,262,000, an overall increase of 847,000 in the six months since June. In the same six-month period the number of people employed by government increased by 621,000 to 20,559,000. These 621,000 new government jobs equal 73.3 percent of the 847,000 new jobs created overall.

* * *

Back in July of 2008 candidate Barack Obama said this about the $4 trillion in debt that we incurred under the Bush administration: “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

According to the U.S. Treasury, on July 2, 2001, the national debt was approximately $5.7 trillion. On inauguration day 2009, the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. Last Thursday, it stood at $16.3 trillion. That means the debt has increased $5.7 trillion during Mr. Obama’s first four years, and that is more than all presidents through Bill Clinton, and the first five months of George W. Bush’s tenure. In the name of U.S. taxpayers Mr. Obama has borrowed more than $49,500 per man, woman and child.

* * *

Inflation in October was 2.2 percent, up from September at 2.0 percent, August at 1.7 percent and July at 1.4 percent. The highest level of inflation since 2000 was 5.6 percent in July of 2008.

* * *

Are we drowning in regulations? Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged in paperback has 1,088 pages. The 2011 Federal Register totals 82,419 pages, nearly 76 times more than Ms. Rand’s book. A popular estimate of the cost of regulations on the economy is $1.75 trillion annually, which is nearly 76 percent of total amount of tax revenue collected last year.

* * *

In 1913 the U.S. tax code was 400 pages. Today, it’s more than 73,000 pages, which means we added on average 730 new pages each year. It is estimated that U.S. taxpayers pay $431.1 billion annually, or 19 percent of total tax revenue collected last year, just to comply with and administer the U.S. tax system.

Hispanics The New Black Part II: Nowhere To Run

By Sharon Sebastian — Website: www.DarwinsRacists.com
 
Running to something or from something compels migration to America. For many Hispanic immigrants, the great fear is that what they are running from – joblessness, poverty, oppression, Socialism, Communism – is now following them like an ominous dark cloud across the border. Barack Obama’s sinking of the American economy threatens the livelihood of those who have come to work – both legally and illegally. Obama is “progressively” leading a once prospering America into third world status. To hasten the fall, Obama is now creating a “no work required” welfare system destined to collapse under the sheer weight of its numbers. Dire poverty is the inevitable outcome. That Hispanics will carry much of the brunt early on, along with Blacks, matters less to Obama. Equal poverty for all is part of Obama’s systematic “transformation” of America from capitalism to socialism.

Most frightening to Hispanic immigrants are Obama’s aggressive Socialist policies similarly patterned after Chavez, Castro and Ortega. Having experienced Socialism first-hand, they are horrified by Obama’s increasingly autocratic authority over a once Constitutionally-protected America. Many warn all who will listen that Obama is turning America into the same regime-style governments that they desperately fled. Having escaped those oppressive regimes to America, they now find there is nowhere to run.

Venezuela stands as proxy for most South American socialist régimes. HispanicBusiness.com writes that according to Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-R), Socialism in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has refugees fleeing to the United States in numbers that gridlock the immigration department’s ability to process them. Diaz-Balart wrote to the Obama administration that recent delays in processing applications “…favors placating tyrants over assisting oppressed peoples…”

President Obama recently declared that Venezuelan leader Chavez poses no “serious national security threat” to America. Stunned, Senator Marco Rubio (FL-R) retorted, “Obama must be living under a rock. Hugo Chavez is not only a threat to the Venezuelan people’s freedom and democratic aspirations, he has also supported Iran’s regime in its attempts to expand its [Iranian] intelligence network throughout the [American] hemisphere.” Chavez recognizes that Obama is not Socialism-lite. After Obama’s 2009 trip to Venezuela, Socialist Chavez alerted Cuban dictator Fidel Castro that Obama may be farther left than they are. Implying that “it takes one to know one,” Socialist Chavez joked on TV to the Communist Castro: “Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right.”

Comparisons between Obama’s socialist policies and those of Chavez can be found in Human Rights Watch 2012: Hugo Chavez is eroding the system of checks and balances in his government. The Chavez-dominated government has passed laws expanding its powers to limit free speech and punish its critics, has enacted rules that dramatically reduce the public’s right to obtain information held by the government and portrays rights defenders as enemies of the people. Chavez first criticized then closed conservative media outlets critical of him and now has free rein to intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans who oppose his political agenda — including judges, journalists, and rights defenders. To counter resistance, new gun laws now ban the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition to citizens — with future confiscation of privately owned guns as the ultimate goal.

Starting in 2006, Chavez increased state control over the economy by nationalizing companies in oil, mining, petrochemicals, metals, cement, food, telecommunications, and further threatens to nationalize banks that do not follow his directives. Venezuela’s once top quality healthcare system is in shambles under Chavez’ socialized health care mandate. Talented doctors, unable to make a living, left the country. Even Chavez sought treatments outside his country rather than take his chances with his government-provided health care. Rationing is the norm. Venezuelans wait longer for fewer services at poorer quality with fewer doctors without recourse.

Startling is how closely Barack Obama’s policies relate to those of Chavez and South American despots. Key to socialism is “redistribution of wealth,” which Obama demands with the bulk of the wealth in the hands of the government. The poor stay poor while the middle class joins them. Like Chavez, Obama is dismantling the world’s greatest health care system with his universal “socialized” medicine. Through Obamacare, Obama re-introduces a form of population control called eugenics via his demands for abortions, sterilizations, and a health care death panel designed to withhold medical care from people who do not meet government criteria.

Obama has circumvented the Constitution and Congress with seemingly endless and power-transferring executive orders. To control the nation’s economy, Obama has nationalized industries such as auto, insurance, and health care. In regard to banks, Obama reportedly told ABC’s Terry Moran: “I’ve joked that we should call the taking over of banks ‘preprivatization’ to avoid the stigma of ‘nationalization.’” Obama has never refuted his former manufacturing czar’s statement — “We know the free market is nonsense.”

Obama repeatedly ignores and bypasses the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government and has attempted to intimidate members of the Supreme Court. Freedom of speech is threatened with Obama’s agenda to control use of the Internet via an empowered Federal Communications Commission. Obama’s FCC Diversity Czar and key adviser, Mark Lloyd, openly comments how much he admires Chavez’ revolution praising it as “incredible.” Through Obama-style intimidation, Lloyd threatens opposition Radio-TV-Cable stations with massive taxation that could force closure. Obama chides people of faith while setting-up two websites for people to spy on their neighbors and report “fishy speech” of anyone in opposition to him. On video, President Obama states that he wants a civilian militia as well-armed, as well-funded and as powerful as our U.S. military that will report only to him. Obama does not refute his former Manufacturing Czar’s statement: “We kind of agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”

As a means to void the 2nd Amendment, Obama openly seeks international control over American gun ownership through a U.N. resolution that he instructed his Secretary of State to sign. The U.N. has appointed Iran to be a key negotiator of the treaty where American gun owners could be found guilty and imprisoned for violating international law. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act was signed by Obama with a clause that allows the government to abduct American citizens suspected of links to terrorism to be held indefinitely without charge or a right to trial. According to InfoWars.com, the Obama administration specifically requested the abduction clause be worded to apply to U.S. citizens. Open for interpretation, the law does not clarify acts of resistance against a tyrannical government vs. acts of terrorism. The Obama administration is already on record labeling peaceful opposition and returning military veterans as “terrorists.” The clause was recently ruled “unconstitutional” by a Federal judge, but Obama seeks a reversal.

By executive order, Obama has expanded the National Defense Resources Preparedness Act simply by the swipe of his pen. Under NDRP, Obama can draft civilians during peacetime with no pay, based on his definition of “times of emergency.” It allows for rationing of food, water, energy to homes, drugs, OTC medicines and vitamins. Travel will be restricted by government; farms will be effectively nationalized, telecommunication usage will be limited. Individual liberties and personal protections will be jeopardized under martial law.
Immigrants, who have lived it first hand, warn that Obama’s Socialist policies are in process of overtaking and devouring America. From Russia to Africa, Cuba to South America, immigrants are confounded at a media that refuses to call an American President whose policies are steeped in Socialism — a “Socialist.” Even Obama appears foolish when denying it as his actions listed above merely skim the surface. If unleashed to fulfill his goals of socialistic dominion and retribution, a once free American people will find themselves, along with freedom-seeking immigrants – with nowhere to run.

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HISPANICS THE NEW BLACK: Part III – MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Hispanics The New Black Part I: The Democrat Trap

By Sharon Sebastian Website: www.DarwinsRacists.com
 
Barack Obama put a short leash on almost a million undocumented people living in the United States and he wants them to thank him for it. Mere months before the presidential election, Obama tossed a bone to the offspring of undocumented parents and labeled it the Dream Act. Obama’s Dream Act is temporary and lasts two years. Just long enough to get him re-elected and to influence outcomes in future local and state races. For those affected, this “two-years-is-better-than-none” band-aide provides only temporary euphoria. Unlike Obama’s short-term gimmick for votes, Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s version of the Dream Act calls for a permanent, lasting solution so that all who are affected can live their lives with certainty. Rubio seeks to free people’s futures with a permanent solution while Obama’s goal is to own the Hispanic-American vote. The question is: Are Hispanic-American voters that easily fooled?

Using another short-term ploy, Obama insults American businesses, including Hispanic-American business owners, as he calls for a two year extension of the Bush tax cuts. If he were serious, Obama would make the tax cuts permanent. In classic bait-and-switch mode, Obama coaxes businesses to deplete their financial base by hiring and expanding for two years — only to pull the proverbial rug out from under them if re-elected. Obama plans, on record, a barrage of fees and taxes at insufferable levels that will bring financial pain to Americans of all backgrounds. Many businesses will be forced to close – permanently. As Hispanics lose jobs, Democrats enslave what they view as another “minority” group with food stamps, welfare and poverty. Joblessness decimates the “Dream” for all who live or seek harbor in America.

Like many Blacks, Hispanic-Americans are economically and socially part of the middle and upper class. Hard work and perseverance has led most to success. Many shake their heads at the desperate plight of Black communities under decades of Democrat rule. They have witnessed that for Blacks, particularly in inner cities, the Democrat Party represents one dead-end street after another in endless poverty-infested neighborhoods nationwide. They witness how poor Black districts fall for the Democrat’s age-old bait-and-switch scam based on recycled hope with no meaningful change. Time and again Democrats promise jobs, rebuilt communities and better education for children. One word represents poor Black communities under Democrat leadership: “betrayal.” In increasing numbers, Hispanic-American voters are becoming savvy to the liberal’s lure of the “promise-but-don’t-deliver” Democrat trap. Blind loyalty or voting based on race has been devastating for American Blacks. Hispanics claim no racial “obligation” to vote for Obama. Hispanics’ obligation is to their families and their futures in a strong America.

Americans of Hispanic descent should ask why successful Black Americans such as Republican Congressman Allen West (FL-R) and former Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain urge fellow Blacks to escape the “21st century Democrat plantation.” Or, why former Democrat Congressman Artur Davis is switching parties. Once called the “Obama of Alabama” and a rising star in the Democrat Party, Davis’ insider view of Democrats’ self-serving policies left him disillusioned. Davis is calling for the defeat of Barack Obama. The former Democrat related his distrust of Obama to Alicia Cohn of The Hill: “Like so many other people, I didn’t get what I voted for …literally close to ten million people have left his camp. I am one of many, many people.”

Democrats themselves do have fleeting moments of honesty. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel (NY-D) represents predominantly Black Harlem. With Harlem’s child poverty rate nearing 40% and its unemployment rate now over 16% at twice the national average, Democrat Rangel admitted on camera that: “Nothing has been achieved by Liberals [Democrats] to improve the lives of the Black Community.” Under the failed leadership of Barack Obama more Blacks are out of work, thrown onto the poverty roles and are collecting food stamps at historically high rates. Unemployment for young Blacks is reaching 40% while the Black illegitimacy rate is 70%. Socialists like Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-D) bemoans the broken promises. Citing the wasteland of joblessness and poverty in her home district, Waters sent a message to Barack Obama as he golfed and vacationed in the elite enclave of Martha’s Vineyard saying: “We’re tired, ya’ll, we’re tired.” Do Hispanic-American voters believe they will fare any better than Blacks under Obama?

What should inflame every American is the Obama administration’s callous disregard for the lives of Hispanics. In an act of unspeakable racism, in its ploy to obstruct the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allows Americans to own guns, the Obama administration was willing to allow hundreds of Mexican citizens and their families to be slaughtered. Under the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme, the Obama administration arranged for close to two thousand guns to be sold to Mexican drug cartels and human traffickers resulting in murderous attacks on Mexican citizens and American Border Agents. By dipping their hands in Mexican blood, Obama’s Justice Department gun-smuggling collaborators hoped to shift the blame for the killings on American gun laws and force an outcry for gun control in America. In the scheme to curtail Americans’ Constitutional right to bear arms, defenseless Mexican men, women and children were devalued as human beings. To the Obama Justice Department, they were collateral damage – faceless casualties amid the carnage. That same violence is migrating into Hispanic neighborhoods in American cities where Mexican gang cartel members blend in and ply their trade. Turning a blind eye while Hispanic-American families are left in harm’s way is racist. Is this a president or Democrat Party that Hispanics, north or south of the border, can trust?

Democrats try to hide that racism is at the core of the Democrat Party. The relationship between Democrats and Blacks has an ugly, dysfunctional history. Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan which was known as “the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party” with the goal to terrify both blacks and conservative whites. Democrats railed in opposition when the Republican Party called for “equality for all races” and forced the shut-down of the KKK. Hispanic-Americans should today listen to the warnings from Black-Americans who have first-hand experience with empty Democrat promises. With elitism and arrogance, Democrats claim ownership of the Black vote. Using class-warfare and race-baiting rhetoric to deflect from the failings of Obama, Democrats have now set their target on corralling the blind allegiance of Hispanic voters.

Most voters now know that a sound American economy is the key to their future, that Obama’s tightening regulations strangle the growth of their companies and kill off their jobs, and that the Democrat’s Progressive-Socialist agenda threatens their freedoms and the foundations of their faith. Obama reignited racial conflict for political purposes. Black voters may choose to blindly ignore such manipulation. Democrats hope that they can snare Hispanics into the same trap. But, American-Hispanics have a historical advantage. They can witness their and their children’s futures through the Black experience — before they take the Democrat bait. Blind loyalty to the Democrat Party has resulted in joblessness, poverty and homelessness as Black families live amid the shards of broken promises. As Democrat Willie Brown, the first Black Mayor of San Francisco, writes bluntly for The San Francisco Chronicle, when it comes to Barack Obama’s re-election for president, “The thrill is gone.”

Next in series: 

HISPANICS THE NEW BLACK: Part II – NOWHERE TO RUN 

HISPANICS THE NEW BLACK: Part III – MISTAKEN IDENTITY

OCCUPY DC vs. Employment Offers ("We won't do that")

Hat Tip to IggyMom

After more than a month of protest demands for better employment opportunities and benefits, Accuracy in Media saw fit to test their desires with...employment applications. Our "headhunters" were treated to every excuse as to why these jobs aren't good enough for them. We guess middle management opportunities with healthcare and 401k benefits aren't desirable anymore.



If you are really out of work, and need a job, you will take any job that you can find.  If necessary you will work 2, 3 or even more jobs to make ends meet.

These Moonbats want the $100K job immediately.  Not realizing that the person who has that job worked their way up the corporate ladder and EARNED that position.  Nothing was handed to him/her.  But after years of liberal education, these idiots are taught they are entitled to any thing these bastards want.  You must not destroy their self-esteem.

Also in Occupy DC we get this:



I am waiting for what one of these idiots tell us what they want to do with the Jews. Oh wait they have:



"I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government, they need to be run out of this country."

Ladies and Gentlemen it is 1938 and tomorrow is Kristallnact!

Coming soon to a city near you:

My Grinchy Wife

From The Liberty Ledger

I contribute to theLiberty Ledger and this was posted there yesterday.  A posting by Terry Bascom.  I hope you all enjoy.

I make $100,000 per year, and I have a net debt of $87,000. I’m worrying about making payments on my loans, in addition to keeping up my basic living expenses. I have to pay more this year for health insurance, food, utilities and gasoline. I own a business, but it looks like sales are going to be down again, which will cut into my revenue stream.

I budget July – June, and I had planned to increase my living budget by 8% for 2011-2012, based on anticipated income. Now that it looks like my income is going to be less than I’d hoped, I’ll have to make cuts instead. So I’m only going to increase my budget by 5%, which is a 37% reduction. It’s going to be hard to live with such a huge austerity measure, but I’ll just have to find a way to make it work.

Since my revenue stream is already taking a hit, and I’ve cut my budget all I can, I’m planning to borrow more money to make up the short-fall. I’m confident my earnings will increase next year when business picks up, which means I will be able to pay everything back over time. I think I’ll need to borrow about $7,000 to hit my scaled-back spending budget of $105,000.

My wife is arguing that we should reduce our spending even more. She thinks we should not count a reduction in proposed spending increases as a spending cut. She thinks our debt burden is getting too high and we should start spending less than we bring in.

I’ve pointed out how unsavory that would be. In a down year like this, we would have to make some pretty serious adjustments to our living standards. I don’t know where we would cut. Do we really want to reduce the kids’ allowances? Are we ready to forego our quarterly vacations? Should we scale back our Christmas lights display? Are we going to close the backyard swimming pool and throw fewer barbeques? Does she think we should stop replacing the living room furniture every 2 years, or the cars every 3? Would she like to spend her days growing vegetables where the roses are blooming, just to save a few dollars on food? What, exactly, can we cut?

She says ‘yes’ to all of the above. She even thinks it might be good for the kids to go mow lawns for their money, rather than getting it from us! She reminds me that when she was a kid her parents bought her 1 pair of shoes at a time, and she never owned more than a single pair of jeans until she went to work to buy them herself. They ate whatever was cheap – tuna fish this month, chicken next, hamburger when it was affordable. They ate ice milk rather than ice cream, and often mixed powdered milk rather than buy fresh. Her mom kept a vegetable garden and canned the extra to tide them over through the winter, and her dad never owed a penny except for his mortgage.

Yeah, okay. I’ve heard all of that before. But do we really want to live like that, I ask?

No, she says, she doesn’t. But she’s willing to do it for awhile, if the result will be a more stable household economy, the ability to get out of debt, and getting the risk of bankruptcy removed from over our heads. She’d even like to see us put some money in the bank.

I tell her that’s fine for her, if she wants to do it. But I don’t see why the kids and I should suffer because she’s afraid of a little debt. After all, we’ve never gone bankrupt yet, so why get gloomy about the future? All we need is for a little turn-around in the world economy and we’ll be flying high again in no time. In the meanwhile, we should just suck it up and borrow what we need. After all, I’ve already cut deeply into our 2011-2012 budget. She should just meet me half way by agreeing to increase our debt load a couple percentage points. What kind of difference is that going to make over the long haul?

For some reason, she refuses. She says she’s not willing to raise our debt ceiling any further. So I told the kids that half their parents think they deserve all the good things we can provide them, but half their parents think they should unnecessarily and unfairly suffer just because we’re going through a temporary rough patch.

It’s obvious to me that if we borrow more, we can keep to our inflation-adjusted budget, modestly improve our lifestyle and, if we borrow enough, I can even invest more in my company than I did last year. Surely more spending on my business will turn this year’s reduction in revenue into next year’s surplus. It’s clear to me that I just didn’t spend enough on employee wages, fringe benefits and improving the phone system. This year, if I put money into new toilet seats, upgraded computers, and softer mood lighting – heck, I should probably rewire the whole plant, and upgrade the entire sewer system, not just the toilet seats – oh, and pave the parking lot – I could even bring back a couple of the guys I had to furlough last year to help – if I make those infrastructure improvements, productivity will surely increase! We’ll turn the corner and make a profit next year, and from that profit I can pay down the debt I’m accruing.

The kids get it. They like it. They even voted for it when I put it to them. But for some reason, my Grinchy wife won’t get on board. She just can’t see that if we do it her way, we’ll be in for a hard time. And hard times are not fun. The kids don’t like it. I don’t like it. And I venture to say that even my wife won’t like it when she’s in the midst of it.

She has such a negative outlook, and won’t budge. So it looks like I’ll have to go around her, somehow, to get the money I need to keep this family solvent.

Amputate or Die

From To The Point News:

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

It was a sobering dinner party last night (6/16). Hosted by a London billionaire in his exquisite home - a Boccaccio hung on the wall behind me - the wine flowed liberally, but the conversation between the ten of us was stone-cold serious.

There were lighter moments, as when I proposed a toast to "a great hero of Europe - Geert Wilders." Every one raised their glass in a smile, but the biggest smile was that of a spectacularly gorgeous super-model (you've seen her in many a high-fashion ad). She was from Holland.

Then a well-known Hollywood producer raised his glass to toast his hero - Ronald Reagan. "We need him again," he commented. I guarantee you've watched one of his TV shows.

But when a self-made billionaire with an 11-figure private equity fund and a clear grasp of Austrian economics starts to talk about America's prospects, you listen. So we all listened.

Being in London, he started there. "To call (new Brit PM David) Cameron a disaster is like calling Hurricane Katrina a squall. He's as much a Conservative as I am a Moslem. I have already started preparing to relocate to Switzerland. If he succeeds in his current push to raise capital gains taxes from 18% to 50% -- and it looks like he will - the British economy and the London real estate market will crash. The best play around will be to short the pound.

"In short, Cameron and Osborne (George Osborne, David Cameron's Oxford classmate and now in Cameron's cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer, equivalent to our Treasury Secretary) lead secret lives. Just as they hide from the public that they are homosexual behind the pretense of a marriage, they hide their liberal agenda behind the pretense of being conservative. They will destroy Britain's economy just as sure as Obama is destroying America's."

There followed a spirited exchange about financial escape hatches -- if the euro, the pound, and the dollar fall off their respective cliffs, where does anybody go? The time-worn adage of "buy gold, buy silver, buy Swiss Francs" may work for individuals, but world equity markets are in a trap from which there is no clear exit.

One opinion was, "The best run governments around today are those of Canada and Singapore - having one's savings denominated in their currencies is not a bad idea." Then we got back to America.

"You know what my biggest fear is?" our host asked. "It's not really Obama, for what he's done is to accelerate what the liberals have been slowly doing for decades - so quickly that their socialism is obvious to everyone. Which means the solution is obvious to everyone. My biggest fear is that voters will give Republicans the power to repair America on November 2nd - and the Republicans won't have the courage to do it."

All I could respond with was "Ouch," to shake my head and sigh. I mentioned an email I just got from a friend of many years in Las Vegas. He's a very successful banker and businessman who knows everyone in Republican politics in Nevada - and I had asked his opinion of how Sharron Angle might possibly beat Harry Reid. The reply I got back shocked me. He will do nothing to help her, he said, as she is too "extreme."

Why is she considered extreme? our host asked, not on intimate terms with Nevada primary elections. Because she wants a government restricted to constitutional activities, I replied, which means, for example, eliminating such things as the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Our host leaned over the table to look at me as if his eyes were lasers. "Jack, you need to explain something to your friend. You need to explain something to America and all those Congressmen you know. Amputate or die. That's the choice America has right now. That's the choice Republicans will have after November 2nd, because they're the only surgeons around who can do the surgery."

Everyone was quiet so he continued. "Gangrene will kill you. If you don't amputate a finger or other limb that's gangrenous, it will spread bacterially [via Clostridium perfringens], and you will die. Look at these unconstitutional growths of government on the body public as gangrenous infections that have to be amputated for the body to continue living."

He looked around the table at all of us. "You know that I know all the main players in the world economy. Some are fools who don't know what they are doing like Strauss-Kahn (Dominque Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, International Monetary Fund), some are not like Trichet (Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank). America has no adult on the economy's lever - Geithner is more of a hopeless disaster than Bush's Paulson was, and Bernanke is worse than Greenspan.

"So I don't know any player whose smarts I really respect who has much hope for America, who doesn't see an alternative future than the destruction of America's wealth through hyper-inflation. They think elephants will fly before Republican elephants will do what is necessary if the voters give them the power to do it."

He looked at me - so everyone else did. "Are they wrong, Jack?" The question hung in the air as I felt my face redden.

"Thanks, pal," I responded with a smile to gain a little time. Everyone did laugh for just a moment, then I had to jump into the waiting silence. Here's what I said.

"The situation is dire, there is no doubt, the gravest since the Civil War. The only hope I see is with the anger of the TeaPartyers. That anger is directed just as much towards Republican cowards as towards Democrat fascists. We don't have to wait long to see the power of that anger. Just six days from now (6/22) in South Carolina, Nikki Haley the TeaPartyer is going to wipe out Gresham Barrett the RINO, even though the state GOP establishment is doing everything slimy to smear her.

"I think your player-friends have to see things not as Democrat vs. Republican but as the Court Party - the establishment in power be they Democrat or GOP - vs. the Country Party, the TeaPartyers who want an end to all the corruption, Dem or GOP. Your players are part of the Court Party. The TeaPartyers you might think are like those who led the French Revolution - but they are like those who led the American Revolution instead.

"Yes, the TeaPartyers own most of the 300 million guns in America, but they don't want blood unless there's no choice. Note the ‘unless.' November 2nd better be an honest election. What the TeaPartyers must grasp is Churchill's call after the battle of El Alamein [November 1942], that November is only ‘the end of the beginning.'

"So you are right - the only hope is radical surgery to cut out all the metastasizing cancer, to amputate unconstitutional gangrene, or another metaphor, to be like Alexander and cut the Gordian Knot with a swordstroke.

"But the question really is not whether Republicans have the courage to perform the surgery, to defund ObamaCare, to defund the entire Obama agenda, to defund entire agencies like the Department of Education, Energy, and the EPA. It is whether the TeaPartyers have the courage and capacity to force the Republicans to. I mean, how is eliminating the EPA extreme, and EPA unconstitutional fascism not extreme? We'll find out, because they are America's only hope now."

Everyone waited for our host's response. "And the hyper-inflation? The debt's already baked in the cake, no matter what future spending is cut."

"Hyper-inflation is only another word for total default. The only way to avoid it is a government default on its debts only. Then we can switch from a worthless fiat currency to an asset-backed currency." I smiled. "Gold brings freedom."

He smiled in return and raised his glass. "We can all drink to that. To gold, to freedom, and these TeaPartyers - may Jack be right about them. May they amputate fascism before the fascists amputate our freedom."

I fear that if the election in November isn't honest (See here for the typical tactics the Democrats and Obama employ.) or the Republicans turn RINO and refuse to do the People's biding we will start to see mobs of angry voters.  We are already angry, it won't take much to light the fuse.

IRS Huge Revenue Loss: Blame Congress and Unions

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

The IRS suffered a huge revenue loss for 2008 taxpayer proceeds. The federal budget grows, mindless of the revenue loss, the deficit balloons to unprecedented size, and the Obama administration tells us the nation's health care costs over the past decade are to blame. We need to reject this claim. Let us not let him get away with this blatant lie.

Capitol Hill

Some $138 billion fewer taxpayer dollars were donated to the U.S. government for 2008. That's 34% less than April 15, 2008. This is about the housing bust and not health care. In Obama's haste to bring a Canadian-like health care plan to Americans, we see that he dismisses all Democrat culpability for the real cause of the nation's bankruptcy - both moral and fiscal. Of course, he would dismiss it because 1) he sat in the Senate that continued the lie about housing and 2) he believes that everyone should own a home whether they can pay for it or not.

It's this simple:

When lenders make loans which will fail and when homeowners buy homes they cannot pay for, the lenders will fail, the homes will go into foreclosure, the lenders have no revenue, the once-homeowners file for bankruptcy, the banks will not lend, small businesses fail without their short-term credit lines, employees are laid-off - filing for bankruptcy themselves, and more join the unemployment lines. The small business that fails can no longer pay rent, so the landlord fails, more foreclosures, more bankruptcies - more employees laid off. Supporting industries - perhaps the people that clean the buildings after business hours no longer have a building to clean, the landscape company no longer has a yard to groom.

Then there is the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the auto industry. Just as lenders allowed loans to the unqualified, the auto industry allowed ridiculous perks to union members. Payday for the devil (irresponsible management) has arrived. General Motors who ranked among America's largest employers, has sold it's soul to the U.S. government, and existing shareholders will see their shares worth one penny. Some 1600 GM dealerships will be pulled, more enter the unemployment lines, more homes - even those with qualified mortgages, will go into foreclosure, and the circle of madness continues. In the meantime, Chrysler is closing hundreds of dealerships and the circle of madness widens.

The Obama administration sees health care as "the real deficit" threat due to rising and inflated price increases by the industry, but some analysts are contrarians and believe that the problem is not rising and inflated costs, but more aging people entering the system. This quote from Obama:

At the fiscal summit that we held here last week, the one thing on which everyone agreed was that the greatest threat to America's fiscal health is not Social Security, though that's a significant challenge; it's not the investments that we've made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It's not even close.

One thing we can be certain of, Obama's determination to bring socialized medicine to America knows no boundaries. That's the goal and he is not ashamed to blame the economic downturn on health care to bring about the socialization of Americas medical opportunities - and there is no doubt, that in this country, there are medical opportunities in abundance - in stark contrast to any other country. While health care is an enormous cost-factor, and growing everyday, our country's leaders continue to squander billions while squalling about the cost of medical care.

We will always have health care costs. We will always struggle with medical care for Medicaid and Medicare recipients, as well as catastrophic medical care, and we should do everything we can to manage them responsibly, but we should never have irresponsible home loans, and we should never have the level of corrupt representation in the House and Senate that we have now.

We must get beyond the housing bust and see that it never happens again. To do that, we must undo all legislation that allows anyone to buy a home simply because they are seen as disadvantaged and so, deserving - regardless of the ability to pay. One giant step toward making this change is to boot Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd out of office - sending a strong message that constitutients will get some reckoning for their misdeeds with the Community Reinvestment Act. This is not likely to happen, so we need moderate Democrats with every Republican, to step-up and work to strike the Community Reinvestment Act from law. Even in the wake of economic disaster, the Community Reinvestment Act lives on.

Health care isn't the culprit.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

Victor Davis Hanson Examines Obama's Mindset

Cross-posted by Maggie at Maggie’s Notebook

Victor Davis Hanson is taking a look at inflation, and it is good for us to realize that unavoidable inflation can be the thing that undoes America for years into the future. He also takes a look at who Barack Obama is and what makes his policies tick - in other words, what is Barack Obama’s “method of operation.”

Victor Davis Hanson

After the inflation-dialog, Hanson offers the possibilities of Barack Obama’s “method of operation.”

(1) Clueless
(2) Not so clueless
(3) A mean streak

If you have a minute, let me know which of the three you think is applicable, or add your own opinion. My choice is No. 3 and this has been my contention since Obama became really visible during the elections.

(a) Clueless. Obama, the community organizer from Chicago with a mere two years plus in the Senate, is clueless. He has never run a business, never served as an executive, never done anything in matters of commerce other than speak and write and authorize spending bills as part of his government job. The result is that he listens to the last person he speaks with — and with dozens of advisors with dozens more agendas, we are seeing a herky-jerky, now this, now that, everything but the kitchen sink, sort of governance. This version of the President is a nice guy who wants to please everyone and will please no one.

(b) Not so clueless. Or Obama has a pretty certain, calculated European objective of high taxes, big-spending programs, utopian foreign policy initiatives, and a therapeutic sense of ensuring we are all going to be equal by result. In that sense, the recession was a godsend, since he has a brief window of about six months of fright and uncertainty to ram through programs that will last a lifetime, and whose expense will ensure a vast redistribution of income. His closest advisors are life-long government technocrats who are inured to spending others’ money and can use tax-free public appurtenances (salaries, perks, benefits, travel, etc.) to emulate the grand lifestyles of those they detest in corporations and on Wall Street. So we will get a new technocrati overseer class to replace the now disgraced masters of the universe on Wall Street. This manifestation of Obama is a hustler of the first order, and almost everything he says from FISA and earmarks to raising the ethical bar on appointments and limits on spending is, well, made up as he goes along, with the assurance that the media is still ga-ga.(c) A Mean streak. Or there is not so much chaos or European utopianism at work as a sort of primeval dislike of capitalists and those who have access to money — an angry President Obama whose furor now and again peeks through (remember the clingers’ speech, the accidental middle finger scratches, and the Robespierre rhetoric). Never mind the hypocrisy involved, or the mega-fortunes at play in the rise of Obama’s candidacy. Instead concentrate on the effects, both direct and insidious, of his initiatives on capital of the near-do-well. This is a quadruple whammy:

1) Aggregate tax rates are going to approach 70% in some states, effectively destroying the idea that anyone from the lower classes can ever achieve wealth in a single lifetime, and pass some of it on to his children (increases in estate taxes will be next).

2) The pulverizing of the Dow (cf. Obama’s flippant talk of gyrations and advice to invest now at rock bottom prices, as if those who were wiped out have disposable cash to buy more stocks) means that the aggregate wealth in 401(k)s and stocks for millions — along with equity in homes — of the upper middle classes has effectively vanished. In some cases, the lawyer or contractor who a year ago had $400K put away in retirement funds and $300K in home equity has effectively lost half, if not more, of his hard-won wealth. And when one computes the additional taxes on future income he will pay, it will be almost impossible in his remaining lifetime to make it back.

3) The promises of free health and free education for everyone most surely will come with salary considerations and mean-testing (we are seeing that already with ideas floating about charitable contributions). In other words, the more you of the upper middle class will pay for new expansive entitlements, the more likely you will not be eligible to use the full extent of them.

4) The power of anti-“rich” rhetoric is already beginning to demonize the wealthy as those who have somehow done something wrong in paying the full ticket for their children’s’ educations, or their own health care, or their full mortgage payments. Of all the things that worry me about Obama, the most troublesome is his conflation of the super wealthy — who are so rich that even Obama cannot touch them and who often are his most fervent supporters — with the entrepreneurs, the scramblers of the small business class who make between, say, $250,000 and $600,000.

These already pay over 50% in various taxes, are eligible for almost no government support, do not have access to insider government breaks and special legislation, pay their own way — and create both jobs and new innovations critical to the performance of the U.S. economy. Yet between Wall Street and DC they have been targeted for extinction.

Read his entire essay at Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers.

The first Victor Davis Hanson video below is a snippet taken from the second video. The title is Victor Davis Hanson Questions Obama’s Political Past. Filmed in October 2008, it is as pertinent today as it was six months ago, and it is a good reminder of who Barack Obama is and what is behind his “method of operation.” The second is the full, 39 minute video titled: Victor Davis Hanson: Obama, Palin and the Culture Wars.

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama

Victor Davis Hanson

Humor of the Day.

It is Monday and I thought I would give you some of my takes on what this economy is doing to us.

From CNN

At the zoo

OBAMA's Political Economy - A Political Parody



View at YouTube

Obama On Stimulus



View at YouTube

Have a great week.

The Difference in Leadership and Making a Speech!

There is a major difference between the 2 candidates, John McCain and Barack Hussein Obama. A very big difference. LEADERSHIP.

It takes a very strong man to walk away from an election or to suspend his campaigning this close to Election Day. But again we see the character of the 2 men. For John McCain has suspended his campaign in order to work on this economic crises that this nation is facing.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign to return to Washington and focus on the "historic" crisis facing the U.S. economy.

The Arizona senator called on his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, to do the same. He also urged organizers of Friday's presidential debate at the University of Mississippi to postpone the event.

"I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself," McCain told reporters in New York. "It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem."

There was no immediate response from the Obama campaign.

Knowing Senator Obama and his people, they will call this a publicity stunt and continue to make speeches.

This is not the time of speech making or rhetoric. It is the time for both parties to sit down and come up with real solutions to this problem. This is not the time for casting blame on each other. It is the time for a bi-partisan effort to fix this mess. This is the time for a leader to arise and take charge. And he has. It is John McCain. A man who would give up a chance for the White House in order to save his nation. A true American Patriot. A man worthy of your vote.

How Obama will spend your hard earned tax dollars.

With the problems with the US economy and crippling debt to the nation, instead of finding ways to cut our costs, Barack Hussein Obama proposes more wasteful spending. This time it is to the United Nations Development Program.

Barack Obama, who lamented Friday that “we have not managed our federal budget with any kind of discipline,” is nonetheless promising to spend $50 billion on a United Nations anti-poverty program that critics say will drive up American debt.

Yet Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have pledged tens of billions in new spending on a U.N. program that promises cash to poor countries. The program is one of eight sweeping “Millennium Development Goals” the U.N. adopted in 2000.

“Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal,” the candidates vow in their campaign platform.

Johns Hopkins professor Steve Hanke said such spending would merely drive up American debt, while doing almost nothing for the world’s poor.

“It goes down a bureaucratic rat-hole, lining the pockets of people who are connected to the power structure,” said Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “It’s basically a system to redistribute income from middle class people in the United States to rich people in poor countries. It never reaches those people who are living on a dollar a day.”

Hanke said such expenditures are especially unwise in the wake of significant expansions of government and spending during President Bush’s tenure.

Full Story

Why should the United States have to be responsible for problems of poverty around the world? According to Senator Obama and the Democratic Leadership, there is a great amount of poverty here in the US. Shouldn't we deal with our own problems first?

Why not ask those nice rich Saudis to foot the bill for this one, or the Iranians, or the Venezuelans, or the nice rich emir of Dubai? They have plenty of money lying around to finance many mosques, terror groups, etc. They should be footing this bill instead of us.

To give more money to the UN Development Program is like flushing it down the toilet. It is a cesspool of corruption and greed.

Nearly 18 months after the United Nations Development Program promised to shed daylight on its internal operations to the countries that pay its bills, is the U.N.'s flagship anti-poverty agency going to live up to the deal?

That is one of the main issues in a tussle currently taking place within UNDP's 37-member executive board, which supervises the organization, and which winds up its semi-annual meeting today in New York.

The battle is led by the U.S. and a number of other Western nations that pay most of the UNDP's bills (the U.S. alone donates roughly $500 million annually to UNDP). Some of the Western states are concerned that UNDP is still trying to keep its $5 billion operations — and any problems it has with them — under as many wraps as possible. For its part, UNDP says it is happy to cooperate if only all the countries that make up its board can agree. The outcome of the battle is still uncertain.

The issue revolves in part around UNDP's disclosure of its internal audits to U.N. members that request them — a policy that became a hot button a year ago, when the U.S. demanded to look at UNDP audits for North Korea. The audits, conducted periodically of all UNDP programs, examine how the organization is spending its money and whether it is following its own rules while doing so. Traditionally, UNDP's top managers have considered them to be "management tools," and insisted they be kept confidential, even from the governing executive board.

But all that began to change in 2007, when U.S. diplomats got to examine a series of UNDP audits of its programs in North Korea. After reading them the U.S. accused UNDP of funneling millions of dollars in hard currency to the Kim regime, hiring North Korean government employees to fill sensitive UNDP jobs in the country, and passing on sensitive "dual use" technology that could be used in North Korea's nuclear program, all in violation of U.N. rules. Moreover, UNDP auditors had passed on many of those concerns to top management; nothing was done.

The essence of the U.S. charges was vindicated, and then some, in a special investigation of UNDP's operations in North Korea, which reported in June of this year. The lengthy document not only buttressed most of the U.S. charges, but also reported that a North Korean government employee who served as UNDP's finance officer also verified the receipt of the checks she wrote, in violation of one of UNDP's most fundamental anti-fraud rules.

Full Story

Fraud, mismanagement, greed is just some of the words to describe the UN in general the its Development Program exactly. Yet Senator Obama will just throw them more and more of our taxpayer money.

This is just one more Communist idea from the closet communist. It is bad for the US and the American taxpayer in general.

And just another reason not to vote for Barack Hussein Obama in November!

Obama: Give economy $50 billion boost

Now here's a liberal for you. When in doubt, throw money at the problem. The problem with the economy isn't going to be helped in the long run by dumping $50 billion into it (the fiscal stimulus package that just happened didn't jump start the economy). The problem will take hard decisions and hard sacrifices to solve. There is no such thing as a quick fix.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- On the first day of what is to be a two-week economic tour around the country, Barack Obama said Monday that lawmakers should inject another $50 billion immediately into the sluggish U.S. economy.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee cited the largest monthly increase in the unemployment rate in over 20 years, and record highs in oil prices, food prices and foreclosures.

"Such relief can't wait until the next president takes office. ... That's why I've called for another round of fiscal stimulus, an immediate $50 billion to help those who've been hit hardest by this economic downturn," Obama told a crowd in Raleigh, N.C.

He said that he supports the expansion and extension of unemployment benefits, as well as a second round of tax rebate checks.

Full Story

How about a better suggestion. How about stop sending jobs overseas to China? How about forcing companies to hire American citizens and not illegal immigrants? How about bringing down the price of gas by drilling in ANWR and Off Shore? All these would stimulate the economy very well. But instead we see Obama calling for the old liberal cry: Throw money at the problem.

Obama didn't offer details about how much money could go toward rebates and how much would be used to pay for benefits extensions. But the $50 billion in total stimulus that he's calling for represents less than a third of the $170 billion earmarked for the first stimulus package, the bulk of which is being spent on rebates. And the jury is still out on how successful those rebates will be stimulating the economy.

Just like everything else he says, there are no details. If you look at his platform you will not find any substance, only platitudes. I don't buy into hype, I want to see the whole thing before I make a purchase. And all I'm getting is hype.

Obama is not even consistent in his hype.

Obama in his speech criticized his Republican rival, John McCain, for proposing to extend all of President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

But look what he's proposing himself:

Obama has pledged to keep the tax cuts in place for everyone except those making roughly $250,000 and up. He has also made proposals to cut taxes further for the middle class, some of which he reiterated in his speech: exempt seniors making less than $50,000 from having to pay income tax; give a tax credit worth up to $500 per working person ($1,000 per family) to offset the Social Security tax on the first $8,100 of earnings; and expand the earned income tax credit.

To boost retirement savings, he has also proposed a 50% federal match on the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn under $75,000.

For Obama's supporters it will be swallowed whole as if it was Manna from G-d. Sounds like something George W. Bush has proposed all along, doesn't it. And that was after criticizing President Bush's policies for the last 6 months. Which makes this a joke and Obama a hypocrite!