Judgment Day: Damnation or Salvation

No, it’s not July 29, 2019 and Skynet is not going to destroy the world.
But it still might. Only Skynet is the Democrat Party.
Today, you either vote for the salvation of this nation (against the Democrats) or it’s Damnation at the hands of Progressive Ideologues who will do even more damage than they have if they retain power.
For Liberals are so full of their own superiority that lying, cheating and being completely amoral and unethical in their pursuit of their Progressive Utopia is all for your own good because you’re obviously not intelligent enough or enlightened enough to understand just how magnificent they are. How beneficent they are. How vastly superior in every way that they are.
So they have to win at any cost, by any means necessary.
It’s for your own good.
Now faced with that, that is what must be repudiated today.
Not that the liberals will understand that. Oh no, narcissism on this level will not understand the slap down they should get today.
That’s your fault, for not being as enlightened and as wise and wonderful as they are. You neandertal!
You racist. You bigot. You Teabagger!
You “enemy” (In an interview Monday with radio host Michael Baisden, Obama said he should have used the word “opponents” instead of enemies.– well that’s some progress…:) ) Obama said. “What I’m saying is you’re an opponent of this particular provision, comprehensive immigration reform, which is something very different.”
He changed in the middle of the paragraph again! He does that.
“I think I see a path, as clear and as direct as a ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that object,” George Washington wrote. “Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy people.”
Have we ever in American history seen a group of politicians for whom frugality is of less value than the Democrats now running Congress and the White House?
The region where an illegal immigrant murdered an Arizona rancher six months ago remains plagued by Mexican drug-cartel violence yet the Obama Administration has chosen to spend $52 million on restoring habitat damaged by the border fence rather than secure the area. (Judical Watch)
Want more? Vote Democrat!

With unemployment still at a severe high, a majority of states have drained their jobless benefit funds, forcing them to borrow billions from the federal government to help out-of-work Americans.
A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency.(CNN)
But don’t worry, it’s George Bush, the Republicans, “Secret Money” and Corporate America’s fault! Vote Democrat!


Pollster Scott Rasmussen said it best in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.
That’s never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.
Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn’t win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.

And that’s the ideological opposite of the Narcissistic Progressive Liberal Democrat.
If you think that smart businesspeople will sit around and let our government tax them out of existence before they move their operations overseas — vote Democrat.
If you think it helps you if your boss gets hit with a huge tax bill — vote Democrat.
If you want the American government to be feared by the American people — but laughed at by Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — vote Democrat.
If you want to pay through the nose in taxes until you are 70 so union thugs in purple shirts can retire in security at age 50 — vote Democrat.
If you like the fact that people who actually know the Constitution get laughed at by people who are ignorant of it — vote Democrat.
If you want the entire country to be like Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Chicago — vote Democrat.
If you think liberalism and socialism have done a good job of managing the incredibly beautiful and rich state of California, vote Democrat.
If you want a government bureaucrat, who can no doubt access your voter registration records, to determine whether or not you get a hip replacement or a cancer treatment — vote Democrat.
If you want electricity bills to “necessarily skyrocket” — vote Democrat.
If you think civil rights means that all white Americans are by definition guilty and all African-Americans are by definition innocent, vote Democrat.
If you want to vote the same way the dead are voting — vote Democrat.
If you want to vote the same way the felons are voting — vote Democrat.
If you want to vote the same way the Illegal Aliens are voting — vote Democrat.
If you like the fact that our military men and women are being disenfranchised — vote Democrat.
If you think Cuba is a success story — vote Democrat.
If you think insurance companies can lower rates, pay for every small medical item — and every preexisting condition — and every illegal alien — and stay in business — vote Democrat.
If you agree with the French union protesters upset about having to delay retirement for two years to age 62 — vote Democrat.
If you think a rally sponsored by Arianna Huffington, the SEIU, and the DNC is a non-political rally — vote Democrat. (American Thinker)
If you like George Soros, a foreign Billionaire socialist (giving money to a host of originizations including NPR,Huffington Post, Media Matters, ACORN, and many unions and other groups) running your media and your government by proxy– Vote Democrat.
I dare you!
But when you have no freedom and the government controls your every waking moment and your very existence from one second to the next because you voted for the Democrats in 2010 don’t whine to me.
Washington was convinced that Americans had devised the greatest political system ever. In discarded notes for his first Inaugural Address, Washington expressed certainty that senators and congressmen could never “exempt themselves from consequences of any unjust and tyrannical acts which they may impose upon others. For in a short time they will mingle with the mass of the people.”
And “besides,” Washington added, “their reelection must always depend upon the good reputation which they shall have maintained in the judgment of their fellow citizens.”
If through some crystal ball he could have seen today’s Congress, George Washington might have had second thoughts. But the father of our country would be proud to see what “the mass of the people” do today at the voting booth.
The Choice is yours. Choose Wisely. The Future itself hangs in the balance.

Tax cuts? Moi?

indyfromaz|

The Largest Job-killing, family killing, economy-killing Tax increases are looming.
1/1/11.
But the Democrats are frozen with fear. If they vote to keep the tax cuts they can’t play their Class Warfare envy card,It’s worked for them for decades and gotten them a lot of power, and their base of mindless sheep will sheer them if they do.
They have whole generations of people that are slaves to to their will.
They like that. They want more of that.
But they know it will hurt them politically if they let them them expire.
They know, intrinsically, how much damage it will do.
So they try to mitigate it by trying to have their cake and eat it too.
We’ll only raise them on “the rich”. After all, the class envy weapon is one of their favourites.
Fear, jealousy, envy,greed, dependence. They love them all.
Problem is, that isn’t working either.
So, let’s do absolutely nothing before the election. Then we can give everyone Lame Duck Poisoning.
And it won’t matter. At least to them.
Now, that’s REAL Leadership!
YES WE CAN! DO NOTHING!
FEAR IS HOPE

With just weeks to go before the midterm elections, Americans have made it clear they don’t want their taxes raised. So what do congressional Democrats do? Nothing — at least until the elections are over.
For months, Democrats have hammered Republicans for trying to keep President Bush’s tax cuts in place for everyone, not just the middle class and those who no longer pay taxes. That would be a “giveaway to the rich,” they contend. But guess what? Most Americans don’t see it that way.
In a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 63% want the Bush-era tax cuts — now set to expire at year-end — to remain in place. In the latest IBD/TIPP Poll, 48% favor making the cuts permanent vs. 30% opposed. And as for taxes on the rich, an AP-GfK Poll found that 39% support letting taxes go up only on those earning over $250,000, but 44% oppose the idea.
Hence, the Democrats’ dilemma: Either way they vote, they’ll anger a large chunk of the electorate — at a time when they need all the votes they can get to keep from being swept out of power.
So rather than hold an up-or-down vote on a tax bill that reflects their true beliefs, Democrats are postponing any action until after the elections. Obviously they know that what they really want to do will be wildly unpopular, and perhaps cost them seats.
But Americans know what they want, too, and they’ll see through the politics Democrats are playing with the economy at a time we can least afford it.
If they’ve decided to hike taxes during a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, they sure shouldn’t keep it secret. If people feel lied to during the election, they won’t be very happy. Democrats need to let their intentions be known — or face the wrath of the voters later.
If they think they can raise taxes on everyone or slap the “rich” with higher taxes and get away with it, they might be surprised. Ultimately, this will be a politically self-defeating strategy, making their far-left voter base happy but sacrificing middle-of-the-road Democrats who want to see the economy create jobs again.
Taxing the rich sounds good on paper or as a sound-bite in the left-dominated mainstream media, but it’s the rich who create businesses and do most of the hiring in this country. Tax these entrepreneurs and you tax jobs — the last thing we need after losing 8 million in three years.
As economist Curtis Dubay of the Heritage Foundation has noted, tax hikes on the rich “will slow down economic growth and job creation while the economy struggles to recover from a steep recession . .. (and) will hurt Americans at all income levels.”
Running a standard econometric model, Dubay estimates that letting taxes rise just on the rich, as President Obama and Senate Democrats propose, will cost the economy 7 million jobs over the next decade — and nearly $720 billion, or $6,000 per household, in income.
That’s an awful price to pay for envy. Before voting this fall, Americans should pin down their representatives on where they stand on tax cuts. Republicans have put out their Pledge to America, so you know what they stand for. What about the Democrats? (IBD)

And As if that wasn’t enough, The Democrats have decided on an Armageddon strategy as well, poisoning the well.
Leave nothing behind.
Unleash The Democrat A-Bomb.
The Ad-Hominem Bomb.
NewYork Times- WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their congressional majority.
Opposition research and attack advertising are deployed in almost every election, but these biting ads are coming far earlier than ever before, according to party strategists. The campaign has intensified in the past two weeks as early voting begins in several states and as vulnerable incumbents try to fight off an onslaught of influences by outside groups.
Metaphorically and politically, KILL EVERYONE!
If we can’t rule, no one can!
Say Anything, but do nothing.
Now’s that’s real leadership!
And when that doesn’t work, just LIE.

LAS VEGAS – Rep. Dina Titus has been a loyal soldier in pushing the Democrats’ ambitious agenda, voting for health care legislation, extended unemployment benefits, new energy taxes and a repeal of the military’s ban on gays serving openly.
Her campaign signs, however, proclaim Titus an “independent voice” for Nevadans.
Aware that their stock has taken the same tumble as home values, Congress’ most vulnerable Democrats are declaring their independence from their party’s agenda in Facebook profiles, television advertisements, news interviews and campaign websites leading up to the Nov. 2 election. That’s when Republicans hope to retake control of the House they lost four years ago.
Titus and others have raised eyebrows for carrying water for Obama in vote after vote, only to pivot and say they are not beholden to a party.

“I’m an independent”. I voted for every single piece of the radical leftist socialism, but I’m an “independent”.
As an actual, independent I should sue them for defamation of character. The grand fraud they hope to perpetrate with the help of the Ministry of Truth is truly mind-blowing.
So, now,  you’re now too stupid to recognize the fraud, and the lies.

So what was the President’s response to the Republican’s Ideas (remembering that they are the “party of no” and “have no ideas” according to The President, The Liberal Media, and The Democrats) about cutting spending and less government?
“It is grounded in the same worn-out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself,” Obama said.

“That’s not a prescription for a better future. It’s an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive.”

I could have written it myself and it would have sounded the same. It’s the same old hackneyed class warfare talking points.  Bush’s fault. Nothing of substance.
Yadda Yadda Yadda….
What we can’t afford to relive Mr. President is your last 20 months!

See also:

http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/poisoning-the-well-with-lame-duck/

It isn’t easy being Liberal

indyfromaz

Al Gore will have a school devoted to the Environment (aka Global Warming Indoctrination)  name after him.
It’s built on a former Toxic Waste dump site.
I love it!
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“In this year of economic uncertainty and critical mid-term elections, the corporate-owned media will not be offering lessons about: our rigged political system; the conservative crusade against Muslims; the phony ‘panic’ over debt; vets abandoned by the VA; taxes and the Tea Party and much, much more,”

The Progressive Left’s magazine The Nation. They want to bring more liberal “education” to the classroom.

More?

Really?

Gee, I guess total domination is the goal then, eh?

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A Gallup survey of registered voters this week had Republicans beating Democrats in a generic ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%. In the 68-year history of that poll, the GOP had never led by more than five points.

**********************************************************************

ETU ORSZAG!
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated the Obama administration’s opposition to extending tax cuts for America’s highest earners this afternoon, after former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, at left, suggested a two year extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts.
Orszag, who left the Obama administration in July, wrote in an op-ed in today’s New York Times that raising taxes would “crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt.” He suggested the administration extend all the Bush tax cuts for two years before ending them altogether in order to lower the deficit. This includes ending the tax cuts for middle and lower-income people that the Obama administration wants to extend permanently.
In his press briefing this afternoon, Gibbs responded to Orszag’s comments, emphasizing that while the White House is committed to extending tax cuts for middle and low-income Americans, it stands firm in its belief that maintaining similar breaks for the nation’s highest earners is fiscally unsustainable.

“Our viewpoint on this is that we should and must pass legislation that extends the tax cuts for middle-class families,” he said. “But we cannot afford, in this environment to — in our budgetary and fiscal environment to extend the tax cuts for those that make more than $250,000 a year.”
“I don’t think the president believes that we are a $100,000 tax cut from a millionaire away from an economy that works for families that are making $40,000 a year,” Gibbs said.
Wealthy Americans aren’t spending so freely anymore. And the rest of us are feeling the squeeze.
The question is whether the rich will cut back so much as to tip the economy back into recession — or if they will spend at least enough to sustain the recovery.
The answer may not be clear for months. But their cutbacks help explain why the rebound could be stalling. The economy grew at just a 2.4 percent rate in the April-June quarter, the government said Friday, much slower than the 3.7 percent rate for the first quarter.
Economists say overall consumer spending has slowed mainly because the richest 5 percent of Americans — those earning at least $207,000 — are buying less. They account for about 14 percent of total spending. These shoppers have retrenched as their investment values have sunk and home values have languished.
In addition, the most sweeping tax cuts in a generation are due to expire in January, and lawmakers are divided over whether the government can afford to make any of them permanent as the federal budget deficit continues to balloon. President Barack Obama wants to allow the top rates to increase next year for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000. The wealthy may be keeping some money on the sidelines due to uncertainty over whether or not they will soon face higher taxes.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has tumbled 9.5 percent since its high-water mark in late April. Home values fell 3.2 percent in the first quarter, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index.
Think of the wealthy as the main engine of the economy: When they buy more, the economy hums. When they cut back, it sputters. The rest of us mainly go along for the ride.
“It isn’t a good omen for the consumer recovery, which cannot exist without the luxury spender,” said Mike Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers.
At the same time, government reports show shoppers as a whole cut back on their spending in both May and June.
Companies have responded by refusing to step up hiring. The housing market is stalling. And Americans are seeing little or no pay raises. It adds up to a recipe for a grinding recovery to slow further.
And it helps explain why economists expect the rebound to lose momentum in the second half of the year. Especially if the rich don’t resume bigger spending.
“They are the bellwether for the economy,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The fact that they turned more cautious is why the recovery is losing momentum. If they panic again, that would be the fodder for a double-dip recession.”
That’s because whether they’re saving or spending, the wealthy deliver an outsize impact on the economy. (CNS)

So the obvious answer is to tax them even more. So we take it away from them.

After all, the greedy bastards deserve it!

Mind you, the 47% of the people who don’t even pay taxes to begin with need a good class ware fare motivation to vote for Democrats.

Firedoglake: “For the thousandth time, tax cuts aren’t very effective, and those applied to rich people suck. When the government gives a tax cut — essentially a gift — to the richest Americans, they spend proportionally less to stimulate Mainstreet’s economy and gamble a lot more on Wall Street’s casinos. Everyone should know this by now. Transferring money from the middle class to the rich impoverishes Mainstreet and enriches Wall Street. So retaining lower taxes for the middle class is as much a democratic equity argument to help redress the egregious distribution of wealth to the richest people as it is an economic stimulus plan.”

***

At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March.

One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now.

Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.
Most of the Democrats running ads highlighting their opposition to the law are in conservative-leaning districts and considered the most endangered. They’re using their vote against the overhaul as proof of their willingness to buck party leadership and their commitment to watching the nation’s debt.
Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Va.) says in an ad that went up last week that he voted against the law “because it cost too much.”
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) says she voted against “all the bailouts and the trillion dollar health care plan” because “it wasn’t right for South Dakota” or for children anywhere.
And an ad for Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) quotes constituents who say, “I like that Jason Altmire is not afraid to stand up to the president … and Nancy Pelosi.”

As for the members who voted yes? A Democratic strategist familiar with the polling on the issue says the most effective approach — when asked — is to highlight that the law provides consumers with the same health care that members of Congress get.
Another method is to tell voters that the law bans insurance companies from denying coverage once a customer gets sick — a provision that would be undone if Republicans repeal the law, as they have promised to do if given the opportunity.
The Kaiser survey found that likely voters listed health care as the third most important factor in determining how they will vote. It’s behind the economy and “dissatisfaction with government.”
About one-third of voters said support for the health reform law would make it more likely that they’d vote for a candidate. But one-third said it would make it less likely, and another third said it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Those figures haven’t changed much since the law passed. (Politico)

Emphasize that the unpopularity is mostly about the messy process, and that when voters appreciate the benefits, they will come around.

And if that doesn’t work, well, you’re just a racist, a bigot, or just plain stupid!

Putting Government First

I have not always had much love for Pat Buchanan, but this article he wrote recently is brilliant. So I give him props for it.
The Topic: the lastest bailout of Obama apparatchiks (even though they don’t call them bailouts anymore because they don’t “bailout” anyone anymore. I guess it depends on your definition of “bailout”)

Where a man’s purse is, there his heart will be also.
If you would know where the heart of the Obama party is today, consider. In the dog days of August, with temperatures in D.C. rising above 100, Nancy Pelosi called the House back to Washington to enact legislation that could not wait until September.
Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose own governments had decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their constitutional duty to balance their books.
Workers their own governments thought expendable, Congress decided were so essential, it borrowed another 26 thousand million dollars from China to keep them on state and local payrolls.

//

A nation whose national debt is approaching the size of its gross national product, that goes abroad to borrow money to keep non-essential workers on government payroll is a nation on the way down and out.
And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America’s house in order is deluding himself.
As long as this Congress and White House remain in power, a U.S. default on its national debt is inevitable. The only question is when.
Nor is this the first time the Obama administration has rushed to save workers whom their own state, city and county governments were prepared to let go. Among the reasons the $800 billion stimulus failed is that so little of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent to ensure that government workers did not have to share in the national sacrifice.
Why Pelosi & Co felt compelled to return to D.C., to ensure that state and local government payrolls were not pared, is not hard to understand.
Which party does the American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees usually contribute to, work for, vote for? At which of the two party conventions are teachers and government employees hugely over-represented?
Consider, too, the states deepest in debt and facing the largest cuts in employee ranks, pay and benefits: California, Illinois, New York.
In these states, public employees earn at least $10,000 per year more in pay and benefits than the average America worker, who is bailing them out.
Hence, we have a situation where private sector workers in Middle America are being taxed, their children being driven ever deeper into debt to China, so government employees who have greater job security than they do, and earn more in pay and benefits than they will ever earn, can stay in Fat City.
And folks wonder why so many Americans detest government.
In the same week Congress came back to prevent AFSCME from taking a haircut, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in 2009, only three of 52 metro areas with over 1 million in population saw “net earnings and the broader measure of personal income both rise.”
Are you surprised to learn Washington, D.C., was among the three?
That same day, USA Today had a startling report on how, during the last decade, U.S. Government workers, like Wall Street bankers, left their fellow Americans in the dust.
“Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
“Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. … The Federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.”
Remarkable. U.S. government workers, who enjoy the greatest job security of any Americans, now earn twice as much in pay and benefits as the average American. This is not the D.C. some of us grew up in.
Nor is this all Obama’s doing. For most of the fat years of the federal work force came while Washington was being run by a Congress of Big-Government Conservatives and a White House of Bush-Cheney Republicans.
No wonder the tea party is targeting both parties.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that the Obamaites, who intervened twice and massively with bailouts to prevent minor layoffs of local and state government employees, have the stomach to do the major surgery needed to cut the federal monolith down to size.
For the vast majority of the tens of millions of government workers vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state and local programs.
What Pelosi & Co. were saying with that $26 billion bailout this week is, “We are going to protect our own.”
Which is why either Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. go, or we are gone. (Human events).

Brilliantly said.
Especially, in light of the “payment” for that government employee bailout was to raid Food Stamps in 2014.
What I called a few days ago a the Wimpy (from Popeye) style economics. I will pay you in four years (china) for the burger (bailout) today.
A bailout several states didn’t even need or want!
It’s largess for everyone in government, on the tax payers paid for by China. (Do you actually think in 2014 with the Health Care Mandate kicking people in the teeth that they will cut Food Stamps? Yeah right…)
Obama has to protect his apparatchiks though.
Screw everyone else.

The Political Class

The frustration that voters are expressing in 2010 goes much deeper than specific policies. At a more fundamental level, voters just don’t believe politicians are interested in the opinions of ordinary Americans.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% believe the nation’s Political Class doesn’t “care what most Americans think.” Only 15% believe the Political Class is interested in the views of those they are supposed to serve. Another 17% are not sure.
Skepticism about the Political Class interest in voters is found across just about all demographic and partisan groups. However, self-identified liberals are evenly divided on the question.  Eighty-eight percent (88%) of conservatives and 64% of moderates reject the notion that the Political Class cares.
Adults over 40 are more skeptical than younger adults about the Political Class. But even among voters under 30, nearly half (47%) don’t think the Political Class cares what most Americans think. Only 18% of these younger voters think the Political Class does care, while 35% are not sure.(Rasmussen)

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 – August 2010 issue American Spectator
(Excerpts)

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes’ clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark’s Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

The ruling class had sunk deep roots in America over decades before 2008. Machiavelli compares serious political diseases to the Aetolian fevers — easy to treat early on while they are difficult to discern, but virtually untreatable by the time they become obvious.
Its attitude is key to understanding our bipartisan ruling class. Its first tenet is that “we” are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.

When Woodrow Wilson in 1914 was asked “can’t you let anything alone?” he answered with, “I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going down-hill.”

Sound Familiar? It’s for your own good.  “I”  know better…

March 17,2010: President Barack Obama said he’s confident his health-care plan will pass Congress because it’s “the right thing to do” for the country and that he isn’t concerned about criticism of Democratic legislative tactics.

And anytime this President says he is putting aside politics (for any reason) I want to reach for the barf bag.
As the saying goes, they came to Washington to do good, and stayed to do well.
Confident “knowledge” that “some of us, the ones who matter,” have grasped truths that the common herd cannot, truths that direct us, truths the grasping of which entitles us to discount what the ruled say and to presume what they mean, made our Progressives (the worst form of Liberal Democrats) into a class long before they took power.
Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly.

Which is why before this blog on chat rooms during the 2006 Congressional and 2008 Presidential campaigns and the Democrats only real thought was to harp on Republican “corruption” I said repeatedly, they just want to replace the republican corruption with their corruption.
Switch out the cronies.
And that’s what we have. You have to be a minority and/or a union worker to get anything from this administration besides the back of their hand.
If you’re rich and successful, you are a demon, unless the government “deems” you useful or wants to take over your business that is.
Like Fannie and Freddie who were excluded from Financial Reform.
The Trial Lawyers were excluded from Health Care Reform.
Both are cronies of the government and the Trial Lawyers are the biggest cronies of Liberals.
As I said last week in a blog, the Liberals love to sue you into submission.

Rasmussen: “The American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. The American people want to govern themselves,” says Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. “The American attachment to self-governance runs deep. It is one of our nation’s cherished core values and an important part of our cultural DNA.”

But self-governed people are bad for the government busy bodies and their cronies who want to run your life for you because you’re an idiot and can’t do it for yourself.
They just know deep down, you’re a moron and they have to take care of you.
So Let Them Eat Cake!
Oh, sorry, Cake is politically incorrect because it has so much sugar in it and that’s bad for you.
So let them Eat Cookies.
Nope, not that either, cookies are the spawn of the devil  and lead to bad health habits…
So Let them Eat Tofu!
Without any help it’s flavorless, bland, or not very appetizing.
PERFECT!

Greece-ing The Skids

WASHINGTON (AP) – Your parents were right. Money can’t buy you happiness.
That was the message from the Federal Reserve chairman on Saturday to graduates of the University of South Carolina.

Or was it?

“We all know that getting a better-paying job is one of the main reasons to go to college. … But if you are ever tempted to go into a field or take a job only because the pay is high and for no other reason, be careful!” Ben Bernanke said in his commencement address.
“Having a larger income is exciting at first, but as you get used to your new standard of living and as you associate with other people in your new income bracket, the thrill quickly wears off,” he said.'

Unless you’re a  Liberal that is…
If you’re rich, you’re above it all. But we will demonize only Republicans.
If you’re not, you are told you’re entitled to other people’s money, so don’t worry about it.

But doesn’t this sound a lot like Michelle Obama’s Zanesville speech that got her in so much hot water that she was removed from the campaign trail.
“The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,” she says.
“Barack and I were in that position,” she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.” A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”
Collectively, according to the IRS, they made $5 Million Dollars last year.
I guess that wasn’t so evil.
The message, don’t strive so hard to succeed.
Lower your expectations.
Because, we already know we are living so far beyond our means as a government that eventually,  in 10 or 20 years or less you’ll be Greece’d.
So better to lower the expectations now so they can lessen the violence when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.

In Greece:
They are angry because for years they have been encouraged to live beyond their means, taking advantage of the cheap credit on offer since Greece joined the euro in 2001. Now, the rug is being pulled from under their feet. People who have taken out mortgages to buy homes, loans to purchase cars and credit cards to pay for overpriced basic goods are being asked to meet all these commitments with a much lower income than they had budgeted for.

Fannie and Freddie anyone??
UK Guardian: Saddled with burgeoning public sectors (which help sustain muscular trade unions)– SEIU, UAW, NEA anyone?

This is not what angers Greeks most, though. What you will hear time after time, both at the protests and at workplaces and cafes, is that this crisis confirms the failure of the country’s political system. In other words, that for years politicians have been bleeding the country dry, looking after themselves and their friends and failing to build a robust economy and a country equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century.


There is anger at the pervasive, high-level corruption for which no politician is ever punished. People are also furious that no government has ever tackled influence-peddling in the public sector. The Greek branch of Transparency International estimated that Greeks paid almost euro800 million ($1 billion) in bribes last year. This is another drain on household budgets but more importantly it creates a sense of injustice, a sense that to get anything done you have to play by the system’s warped rules.
Sound familiar??
This feeling of unfairness is compounded when tax evasion also goes unpunished.
“Turbo Tax” Geithner anyone? Barney Frank? Charlie Rangel??
Salaried professionals and civil servants have their wages taxed at source but many Greeks do not. And, what they declare often bears no resemblance to what they actually earn. The government believes that tax evasion could be worth up to euro30 billion ($38 billion) a year, or 12 percent of the country’s GDP. Allowing one part of the population to consistently get away without paying while Greece’s public finances are propped up by the same people all the time creates incredible resentment. That’s why you hear many Greeks say they will put up with the austerity measures if the government ensures that everybody pays their fair share. If people believe that the usual suspects, who in many cases are wealthy businessmen, doctors and lawyers, are allowed to get away with it, then the level of anger will go up several notches.

47% of all Americans pay NO TAXES whatsover!
Union workers and civil servant can make more in retirement than on the job.
But we aren’t going down that road…oh no…the Nazi, Racist, Violent Tea Baggers are just wrong.


Some of the measures imposed on Greece by the EU in order to bail them out (BBC):
The plans hope to achieve budget cuts of 30bn euros over three years – with the goal of cutting Greece’s public deficit to less than 3% of GDP by 2014. It currently stands at 13.6%.
PAY CUTS
The government is planning a freeze pay for all public sector workers.
Some pay cuts will also be implemented, and public sector contract workers are set to lose their jobs.
This follows several years of continuous increases in pay, with salaries rising by an average of 30% since 2006.
Annual bonus payments – paid as 13th and 14th month salaries – will also be scrapped for high earners and capped for lower earners.
Other bonuses will be scrapped.
In the private sector, the legal maximum number of people companies can lay off each month will be doubled from 2% of personnel to 4%.

PENSIONS
The reforms seek to prevent early retirement. Currently the average age of retirement in Greece is 61, though it is not uncommon for public sector workers to retire in their 50s.
Under the planned changes, the retirement age, which is currently 65 years for men and 60 years for women, will be linked to average life expectancy.
In addition, the minimum number of years someone will have had to have worked to qualify for a full pension will rise to 40 years from 37.
Pensions will also be reduced so that they reflect a worker’s average working pay rather than their final salary.
TAX REFORM
VAT will be increased to 23% from 21% – just the latest in a series of recent increases.
Indirect taxes – including those on alcohol, fuel and cigarettes – will see a 10% rise.
There will also be a clamp-down on tax evasion – widely regarded as a big problem in Greece – and on untaxed illegal construction.
Tax-evasion alone is estimated to cost the Greek government at least 20bn euros a year.
PRIVATISATION
In the longer-term, the government will look to reduce the reliance of the Greek economy on the public sector, reducing the number of people on the public payroll.
This will require growth in the private sector, and possible privatisation of some industries.

Getting eerily uncomfortable I hope.
See our future if  Obama and The Democrats (and Republicans too) are not stopped.
According to a December report from the BLS, state and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked ($26.24 for wages and $13.60 for benefits) for total employee compensation in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour ($19.45 for wages and $8.05 for benefits), see chart above. In other words, government employees make 45% more on average than private sector employees.
According to an analysis by USAToday (thanks to Michael Jahr for the pointer), “The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to an analysis of federal salary data.” For example, the number of federal employees making $100,000 or more has increased by 120,595, from 262,163 employees in December 2007 to 382,758 in June 2009, for a 46% increase. The number of federal workers making $150,000 or more has more than doubled since the recession started, from about 30,000 to more than 66,000 (see chart above).
USA Today also reports that “When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.” That’s a 168,900% increase!!

The Unemployment rate in the public sector is about 3%.
It’s been near 10% for a very long time in the real world.
And do the Democrats look concerned?
Do the Republicans?
Do they?

Josh Barro writes for the Manhattan Institute about the “Two Americas” and the “sharp difference between two classes of employees: those who work in the private sector and those who work for the government. Workers in the public sector have experienced a very different recession from those in the private sector.”
So is this Greece-ing the skids for what the government knows is coming if things don’t change?
I think so.