By The Numbers, Part 2: Obama's Numbers Sink Further, Poverty Numbers Rises Despite Trillions of Dollars And More

This is our second post in a three part series themed, “by the numbers.” In this series, we look at the reality of the numbers facing our country, whether they are polling numbers, government statistics, or from other sources. By looking at the numbers, it is easier to determine the reality of our world and the issues that we face rather than using the hatred, prejudices and lies of our political class. Their purpose is not to resolve issues using reality but to ensure their perpetual reelection chances by stoking emotions rather than understanding the numbers. 

So let’s continue our analysis today using the real world’s numbers to determine our real world situation, a situation driven by our politicians’ bad decisions and selfishness.

1) According to reputable sources, we have previously discussed the fact that all levels of government within the country spend about a trillion dollars a year to help the less advantaged in this country, a spending level that has been increasing steadily over the years. At this level of expenditures, you would think that our politicians would have eliminated poverty long ago.

And you would be so wrong, at least according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to their analysis, over one in five kids in the U.S. today are living in poverty. In 2012, there were 15,437,000 children under 18 years old, or 21.3%, who were classified in the “below poverty” threshold, according to the Census and a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled, Poverty in the United States: 2012.

When President Johnson declared “war on poverty” back in 1964, the percentage of American kids living in poverty was 22.7%. Fifty years and $22 TRILLION later, the American politician class has only been able to reduce the level of kids living in poverty from that 22.7% to the current 21.3%. And even though the percentage has decreased slightly, I would bet that the absolute number of kids living in poverty is much higher today than in 1964 given that the population of the United States is so much more 50 years later.

Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. After 50 years and TRILLIONS of dollars with no substantial improvement in the number of kids in poverty, I would say that our politicians fit that definition quite well. Insane. 

2) Consider what the we spend for national defense in this country, as estimated by the Cato Institute:

• On average, every American spends about $1,900 every year for national defense.
• $1,900 figure is roughly four and a half times more than what the average person in other NATO countries spends on defense even though these countries boast a collective GDP of approximately $19 trillion, 18 percent higher than the United States. 
• South Koreans spend about a third as much on national defense than Americans even though we spend billions of dollars every year protecting that nation from its northern neighbor.
• Americans also outspend people in Japan by more than four to one even though we have troops and military assets posted in that country to help with its defense.
• Thus, despite having a national debt that is fast approaching $18 TRILLION, we continue to pay for the defense of our allies as if the Cold War never ended.
• While the United States spends 16.8% of the budget on the military, Japan spends a measly 2.4%. 
• South Korea’s share of military spending is only 11% of their GDP, and they having a crazed and hostile regime on their northern border. 

As Cato points out very well: “The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the federal government should provide for the “common defence.” But the document never talks about providing for the defense of other nations. We could have revisited our alliances after the end of the Cold war. We could have paid more attention to the culture of dependency we created among our allies. Instead we continued to spend vast sums on the military, discouraging others from developing their capabilities, and removing their will to use their militaries in ways that could have advanced both their and our security. Today, our wealthy allies are little more than wards of Uncle Sam’s unending dole, and they will remain militarily irrelevant so long as we continue along our present path.”

Well said, we are providing military welfare for allies that are more than capable of paying their own way while many in this country suffer for the exporting of wealth to wealthy and underpaying allies around the world.

3) Where do logical people want to live? Most of then tend to migrate to areas within the country where they get to keep more of their hard earned wealth and income. Usually, this means living and working in states where there are lower and fewer taxes, as shown by the following graphic from the website www.howmoneywalks.com:

















The states with the highest income taxes have had a net loss in taxpayer Adjusted Gross Income of $107 billion, and the states with no income tax have had a net gain of $146 billion. In other words, there’s been an exodus from high tax states to those with no taxes. 

Thus, even though the politicians in those red states above thought they could get more state government revenue by having a higher tax burden, on average those states shrunk their tax base by about $12 billion per state in the past 15 years, probably wiping out any benefit of raising taxes on a continually shrinking tax base. Back to Einstein's insanity observation.

4) According to a recent Fox News poll, the country’s citizens do not have a really good feeling about Obama’s performance in office relative to his predecessors:

• A majority of those polled say the Obama administration is less competent than Bill Clinton's administration. 
• And in what has to be an ego deflating finding, a plurality of those polled say it is less competent than George W. Bush’s administration.
• Sixty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent that the Clinton administration. 
• Forty-eight percent say it is less competent than Bush's, compared to 42 percent who say it is more competent. 
• Seven percent judge Obama's and Bush's administrations the same.
• Fifty-five percent say that the Obama administration has made the country weaker; 35 percent say his administration has made it stronger.

Now I am sure some of my liberal friends will dismiss the findings out of hand since they saw the word “Fox” associated with the poll. That’s fine but understand that this is not the only poll out there or that we have discussed that shows how poorly Obama’s performance is being perceived. Just yesterday we showed that according to a CNN poll, he receives approval ratings for major issues that never exceed fifty percent on any of those issues, a finding consistent with this Fox polling. 

That will do it for today. But we will need one more day to do our “by the numbers” analysis to show that we are living with the worse and most inept set of politicians in our history, as measured by the numbers. That is our reality, politicians that do the same thing over and over at every increasing spending levels but never resolve any major issue of our time.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

If You Thought Just Our National Debt Was a Problem...

We have often talked about how bad the national debt is, currently well over $17 TRILLION. This is the amount that the American taxpayer well have to eventually pay, independent of annual Federal government expenses like Social Security, Medicare, national defense, Medicaid, etc. The number boggles the mind when you break it down and look at it from different perspectives:

• The current national debt level of about $17.3 TRILLION places an average debt load of over $150,000 on every American household
• In other words, every household in America would have to write a check worth over $150,000 to cover the cost of the national debt where it stands today
• On a per person basis, every American, from the youngest baby to the oldest senior citizen would have to pay almost $55,000 each to pay off the debt where it is today. Thus, a typical family of four would have to write a check for almost $220,000 to pay for its share of the debt.
• he United States Gross Domestic Product, the total annual value of all goods and services provided, is between $16 and $17 TRILLION. Thus, the debt load is now bigger than the entire productive output of the entire country in any given year
• According to Obama administration official documents, this administration will add almost $8 TRILLION to the national debt during its eight years in office.
• This is about 80% of the size of the total national debt that was added to the overall debt level by EVERY single Presidential administration that came before him. In other words, during the Obama watch, almost $8 billion will be added to the national debt level. The total debt incurred by every other President was about $10 TRILLION, I.e. the trend is not good
• The Obama administration will ring up about four times as much debt as the debt ridden Bush administration
• According to Erskine Bowles, former co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the annual cost of debt servicing, the amount the Federal government pays out in interest on the debt is about $230 billion annually
• Thus, in theory, every U.S. household is paying out over $2,000 a year just to pay interest on the national debt, $2,000 that cannot be used to grow the economy or make life better for our families
• But according to Bowles, current interest rates are historically low; if they were to return to the long term median level that existed throughout the 1990s, the annual per household cost of servicing the debt would grow three fold to about $5,700 a year
• Servicing the debt does not mean you are paying it down, you are only paying the interest that the debt is throwing off
• At historically average interest levels, this would make debt servicing one of the largest Federal budget line items.
• At these high levels, “taxing the rich” would be like pissing in the ocean of debt that the U.S. has in front of it. The richest American, Bill Gates, is worth about $70 billion which would represent only about .4% of the overall debt.
• Additionally, a recent L.A Times article estimated that the 85 richest people in the world are worth about $1.7 Trillion. This means that even if the Federal government could steal the wealth of these 85 people and apply it against the national debt it would only pay off about 10% of the $17 TRILLION, a figure that continues to grow by hundreds of millions of dollars every day
• And the real insult in this whole matter is that our public schools still under educate, our infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) is falling apart, tens of millions of Americans still live in poverty, our national security is still at great risk, our borders are not sealed, major social programs such as Social Security are lurging towards insolvency, I.e. we have nothing to show for the $17 TRILLION that the Washington political class wasted away.

Really serious and bad news for our future and the future of our country. If this dangerously high rate of spending and debt growth continues, at some point in time people around the world are going to stop lending us money, fearing that we will not have the ability to pay it back. 

When that happens, the revenue available to the Federal government to spend drops dramatically since it will have to live only on the taxes it receives from the American public. This will mean dramatic cuts to Social Security, Medicare, national defense, and other government programs and likely severe hardships on many Americans.

Unfortunately, the bad budget news does not end at the borders of Washington D.C. According to the latest analyses and report from the State Budget Solutions organization:

• Their fourth annual State Debt Study reveals that U.S. state governments face a combined $5.1 TRILLION state government debt. 
• This state level debt comes out to over $16,000 per person which is in addition $55,000 per person Federal debt load discussed above.
• This state debt is equal to 469% of the total annual state general and other fund expenditures. 
• By far, pension and retirement liabilities are the greatest reason for the high debt, accounting for 79% of all state debt.
• But not all state debt loads are the same. The five states with the highest per person debt include Alaska at $40,714 person, Hawaii at $33,111, Connecticut at $31,298, Ohio $27,836, and Illinois $24,959. These states will place the most hardship on their state residents when the time eventually comes to fix their out of control spending and debt. 
• Compare these high debt loads to the national average of about $16,000 per person, meaning that some states have done a much better job of keeping debt under control.

A sad, sad commentary on fiscal irresponsibility by the American political class, writing checks and making promises in the past that obviously cannot be backed up short of tremendous financial hardships on today’s citizens. And again, all for nothing, given the crummy condition of many aspects of American life.

And the really sad and frightening part is that many/most in the political class today do not get these simple budget realities. The Federal government is expected to run up an annual budget deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars in the next five years. No states have seriously taken a shot of overhauling their budget processes and levels to get their revenues in line with current and future liabilities.

There is absolutely no political leadership that will confront the economic realities and lead the country into a government spending austerity mode, cutting extraneous government programs, eliminating wasteful and inefficient government operations, prosecuting criminals that rip off government programs, and finally cutting out corporate welfare for political cronies who do not need handouts from the American taxpayer.

And the longer that leadership void exists, the larger the hardships will be when the economic realities reach critical mass. At some point debt cannot be financed. At some point, pension and retirement benefits have to be cut. At some point, you can no longer increase taxes to make up for an ever growing and ever more inefficient government operation. The longer the wait for leadership, the crueler the financial impacts on everyone.

If these realities scare you, may we suggest that you join our team to impose term limits on all current Federal government politicians at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

It is not until we get leaders into Washington that are more concerned about our financial future than they are concerned about their next election that we finally can get fiscal responsibility in place to minimize the future economic pain. Because really, how much worse could it get compared to the debt and inaction we are currently getting out of Washington?

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Tax Evading Politicians, Unwanted Army Tanks, and More

This is Act III in this month’s political class insanity review. The first two acts can be reviewed at the following links:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-political-class-insanity_4.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-political-class-insanity.html

Act III starts now.

1) The Democratic controlled Senate recently put together its first full budget since April, 2009, breaking standing law for the four years since then. Their budget calls for tax increases of over one trillion dollars on Americans over the next ten years. As regular readers of this blog know, this is a ridiculous position to hold given the wasteful spending, inefficiencies, and government redundancy that exist today in the Federal government, insanity that has been presided over by this Democratically controlled Senate since 2007.

One reason why Democrats are so fast to raise taxes is possibly because they do not pay all of the current taxes that they owe. The prime example of this comes from an article done by the Daily Caller on February 18, 2013. According to their research of D.C. tax records, Louisiana’s Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu is very big on raising taxes on the country, having openly advocated for higher taxes on Americans during Senate hearings last month. However, she seems a bit less excited and punctual to pay her own taxes:

According to public records available online in the District of Columbia’s “Real Property Assessment Database,” the D.C. government has penalized Landrieu $1,003.33, plus $202.62 in interest, for 2012 taxes on her mansion on East Capitol Street. It is unclear what the penalty is for.

Talk about hypocrisy, she wants to raise your taxes but is late paying her taxes, to late that penalties are now attached. But we should not be surprised when a politician calls for us to pay higher taxes but decides they do not have to pay even their current tax burden:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/02/washingtons-hunger-games-approach-to_11.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/01/politicians-creed-do-as-i-say-not-as-i.html

If you get into these posts you will find a whole cadre of politicians who have tried to avoid paying current taxes while they concurrently say that we should pay more in taxes.

2) A recent Federal government inspector general report and analysis found that in 2012, the Federal government spent about $337 million for shipping and postal costs. Of that $337 million, the U.S. Post Office’s share of that business was about $4.8 million or only about 1.42%. That’s right, one on the most incompetent and inefficient organizations in the history of mankind, the Federal government, finds that they cannot trust or use a sister entity within the Federal government to deliver its mail. I can think of no worst insult than to have the Federal government view you as less trustworthy and inefficient than itself.

3) CBS released a survey of its own on March 26, 2013 and the results should not surprise most Americans who are fed up with the insanity and idiocy of the American political class:

• CBS reports 80% of Americans are unhappy with Washington, and 30% are “angry” at the nation’s politicians.
• 30% are now “angry”, a result that is up 9 points since December, 2012.
• Those who say the U.S. is heading in the right direction is down 8 points to 32% in just one month.
• Those who say America is on the wrong track is up to 64% from 51% over that time frame.
• President Obama’s approval rating is down to 45% and his polling on most issues (including the economy) are down almost across the board from last month. Note: given that the sample for this survey significantly overweighted Democrats in the sample vs. Republicans, Obama’s decline in approval is probably worse than reported by this survey vs. if an honest, balanced sample size had been used.

Makes you wonder if those sitting in Congress and the White House really know how much we hold them in contempt for screwing up the country’s financials, liberties, and future.

4) A particularly galling aspect of the survey is in one of the subset of questions in the CBS survey. When asked what is the most important issue facing America today, 41% of the survey takers said it was the economy and jobs. The budget deficit/national debt, health care, and partisan politics were the next three most important problems.

Guns was the fifth most important problem facing the country but it is probably the problem getting the most attention from Washington politicians today. Another set of bad priorities with Washington out of touch with what Americans find important.

It could be that since he political class has not been able to fix the economy/jobs, national debt/deficit, health care, and partisan politics issues, they have just moved on to something that they will probably not be able to resolve either.

5) In the their never ending quest to take more and more of our money for their own selfish use, Gordon Wozniak, a Berkeley, California city councilman, proposed taxing citizens’ email usage during a recent council meeting. He believes that by taxing email usage, it would prevent professional marketers and spammers from sending out thousands and thousands of emails at one time. Taking the insanity one step further, Wozniak said an email tax could then be given to the U.S. Postal System to keep it in operation.

How stupid is this idea. First, how would this tax be collected and what would it cost to collect it. Since many people use free email services, the logistics to set this up would be expensive and offset much of the revenue it would collect.

Second, I am pretty sure that spammers and marketers are smarter and more clever than most politicians so I am confident they would find a way to get around the payment process.

Third, why would we flush good money after bad by giving it to the Post Office without fixing what ails the Post office from a financial perspective. Fix the root causes of the problem, do not just throw money at a continuing bad situation.

6) The October 5, 2012 issue of disgraceful wasteful spending by the Federal government. According to the article, in 2011 the U.S. Army made an unusual request to Congress: stop sending us new tanks.

Congress and the Washington political class ignored this plea, adding a Defense Department budget line that added $255 million to the overall budget for 42 new M1 Abrams tanks. Apparently, the Army already has 2,300 M1 tanks deployed around the world and 3,000 tanks sitting idle around the country. Thus, the Army’s plea not to send any more tanks to them.

But Ohio politicians, from both parties, pushed to get the tanks made using taxpayer money. Apparently, these tanks would be produced in an Ohio factory and the politicians did not want to see those factory jobs to go away or be reduced. Better to waste taxpayer money on useless military equipment than to give that money back to the rightful owners, the American taxpayers.

An Ohio Republican Congressman issued a most inane comment in defending the production of unneeded military tanks: "I think it’s in the best interests of the U.S. to defend our country." Could not agree more on the need to defend our country but with over 5,100 M1 tanks already in existence, and 60% of them not being used, I doubt another 42 tanks are vital to national security. Nice try Congressman but truly an idiotic statement and idiotic expense.

So, let’s review:

1. Politicians want higher taxes but do not pay their “fair share.”
2. The Federal government does not even trust its own postal system.
3. A recent poll proves what we all know, most Americans think Washington politicians are doing a lousy job.
4. The politicians are working on guns why Americans hold that as a very minor priority in their lives.
5. A silly politician wants to tax our email transmissions.
6. An even the Army wants to spend less on defense but our politicians do not.

Insanity, idiocy and bad priorities. And still more to come tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w 

Political Class Insanity - December, 2011 Part 1

Every month or so we do a detailed review of the insanity, idiocy, and wastefulness of the American political class across a wide range of areas. Unfortunately, this month we we have seen so much insanity that we will have to cover it over two days, today and tomorrow to get it all in. Growing insanity is not a good trend from your political leaders when the nation faces so many critical crises:

- According to a Wall Street Journal report that was summarized in the November 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the White House formally denied any knowledge of extraterrestrial life. This action came as a result of an online, White House petition signed by over 12,000 Americans. The Obama administration formally responded that the Federal government has "no credible evidence extraterrestrials have visited earth" or that "life exists outside our planet."

Let's review: we have about 14 million Americans currently unemployed, we have a runaway national debt of $15 TRILLION, our schools continue to under educate our kids, we have no national energy program, national health care costs went up another 9% last year, and the Federal government is responding and using taxpayer resources to address the issue of alien life. I am not sure which is worst: this wasting of government time and resources or the 12,000 people who took the time to sign the petition and who actually thought the government would give them an honest answer even if there was contact with extraterrestrial life.

- That same issue of The Week magazine also discussed how the House of Representatives took time out from not addressing the critical issues listed above to debate and vote on a resolution to affirm that the United States' national motto is "In God We Trust." The resolution passed by a vote of 396 to 9.

In a survey to find out the top issues facing American families today, do we really think that affirming this motto would make the top 100 issues and problems in America today? And if that is the case, why are our politicians worrying about this issue? Could it be they do not know how to solve the real, top 100 issues facing American families today and waste time and resources debating this motto instead?

- As the nation's national debt skyrockets to gruesome, fearful levels, the political class continues to fail in its feeble attempts to come up with an effective, decisive, and rational way to cut Federal spending. With the failure of the so-called Congressional Super Committee to come up with a spending reduction plan, the Federal budget will be subject to across-the-board cuts in 2013 as a result of the debt ceiling agreement reached this past summer. These spending cuts will affect all departments including the Department of Defense.

Now, many politicians, including the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, are claiming that ANY cuts to the Defense Department budget will weaken our nation's defense. Maybe these folks should have read an article in the September 23, 2011 issue of The Week magazine that reviewed what has happened since the 9-11 attacks. The article claims that "the U.S. now spends more (on national defense) than all other countries in the world put together."

One has to think that, given this outrageous amount of money and resources that have been diverted to the military-industrial complex in this country, there has to be a significant amount of waste that can be cut out of the Defense budget without endangering our national security. If there isn't any such waste, than the political class has failed diplomatically to secure our national safety, with massive defense budgets and massive national debt levels threatening the freedom and liberty the Defense Department is supposed to be protecting.

- According to a Time magazine article that was summarized in the October 14, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, in 1950, the average U.S. household spent 3% of its income on health care and 22% of its income on food. In 2010, food costs have sunk to only 7% of household income but health care costs had risen to 16% of income.

And this trend is unlikely to be stopped by Obama Care and the current set of politicians in Washington since the article preceding  the Time article reviewed how family health insurance premiums had risen 9% in 2010 alone. This 9%, one year increase brought the cost of health care insurance in this country to double what it was in 2001. This article, which was also based on New York Times reporting, attributes the big increase to certain provisions of Obama Care.

Thank goodness "In God We Trust" since trusting the political class to solve the problem of escalating health care costs is not looking like an effective approach.

- To comprehend how poorly our public school education has failed, consider a New York Times article that was summarized in the November 11, 2011 issue of The Week magazine. According to the Times article, Indian, Chinese, and other foreign nationals earn 70% of the doctorates in electrical engineering and half of the master's degrees in electrical engineering from U.S. universities every year. This results in non-U.S. citizens launching half of all Silicon Valley start up, high tech companies.

How embarrassing that in this vital field, the U.S. education system takes a back seat foreign students studying in our own universities. I do mind or want to stop the foreign students from using our schools, I want the political class to figure out how to change and improve our own school system to increase the percentage of U.S. kids getting their masters and PhD.s in this important field. This would certainly be a better use of their time than debating the national motto.

- The New York Times, in a September 22, 2011 article reviewed how the California solar panel company, Solyndra, receive a $535 million Federal loan guarantee, hosted a Presidential photo op in May, 2011 by President Obama, and was totally bankrupt about 17 months later. However, if you listen to the President's remarks from that photo op, you would never have thought this rapid descent into a financial wasteland was possible:

"It's here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future."

It certainly was not so prosperous for the American taxpayer since if you divide the taxpayer financed loan guarantee by the number of days it took Solyndra to burn through over half a billion dollars of taxpayer wealth, you find that Solyndra burned through over a million dollars a day from the time the President spoke until the company collapsed. Now that is truly political class insanity, a million dollars a day down the drain with nothing to show for it.

That's enough for today, if you get too close to political class insanity and idiocy, you run the risk of becoming one of them yourself, insane and idiotic.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/