Surprise! The Payroll Tax Hike Obliterated an Entire Year’s Worth of Wage Gains

The Senate-backed “fiscal cliff” bill that managed to pass both chambers last week failed to reinstate the payroll tax holiday, TheBlaze reported at the time.

Consequently, everyone will see their taxes go up. In fact, as Brad Plummer of the Washington Post points out, the payroll tax hike (which is technically returning the tax to its previous rate of 6.2 percent, up from its temporary rate of 4.2 percent), will completely wipe out an entire year’s worth of wage gains:

From Credit Suisse [via the Financial Times]:

We look at average weekly earnings of all employees on private non-farm payrolls: $818.69 in December. The 2% payroll tax increase clips $16.37 a week from take-home pay. … That’s the equivalent of losing all the 2012 gain in weekly earnings in one month.

Obviously, with shrinking paychecks and less take-home pay, Americans are expected to spend a whole lot less this year. This could put a serious hurt on an already struggling U.S. economy.

“The New York Fed’s survey data found that the payroll tax cut has been a particularly efficient form of stimulus over the past two years — Americans reported spending between 28 and 43 percent of the savings, far more than they have for previous tax cuts,” Plummer explains.

“And most workers expect to cut back on spending significantly now that the payroll tax cut is vanishing. The average household making $50,000 a year will see its payroll taxes rise about $1,000 this year,” he adds.
The typical household is expected to reduce spending by about $710 this year to counter the effects of the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, the New York Fed’s survey data shows.

Whether or not Americans will actually cut back on their spending due to the tax hike is uncertain. What we do know, however, is that a) everyone’s taxes are going up and b) the increase has done away with an entire year’s worth of wage gains.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/surprise-the-payroll-tax-hike-obliterated-an-entire-years-worth-of-wage-gains/

Obama to Boehner: "We Don't Have a Spending Problem"

The truth hurts, especially when you're coming awfully close to being crowned Captain Six Trillion. Steve Moore's exclusive sit-down with House Speaker John Boehner reveals that the president is in deep ideological denial, and can get a bit testy when confronted with the facts:

What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.'" The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/01/08/aww-obama-getting-pretty-tired--of-hearing-about-americas-spending-problem-n1483016

Republicans to Reid: Pass a Budget if You Want a Debt Ceiling Increase

Round two of another fiscal crisis is already underway as debate over raising the nation's borrowing limit, better known as the debt ceiling, heats up. Majority leader Harry Reid has blatantly ignored the law by failing to introduce a budget for more than 1300 days. House Republicans on the other hand have fullfilled their duty to the law by introducing and passing a budget every year since Obama has been in office. As Byron York points out, Reid's actions could give Republicans some leverage when it comes to satisfy President Obama's request to increased borrowing (and spending) ability.

The situation is deeply frustrating for many Republicans. Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has conducted a virtual crusade on the issue, loudly and consistently and unsuccessfully demanding that Reid obey the law and pass a budget. Now, with a fight over the debt ceiling approaching, Sessions wants to try something new.
"I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent," Sessions told me Monday in a phone conversation from his home in Alabama. "If the government wants to borrow money so it can spend more, then the government ought to tell the Congress and the American people how they will spend it."
There are no specific proposals yet, but under this scenario Republicans would insist on a debt ceiling agreement that includes (among other things) a requirement that Congress pass a budget by a specific date. If that doesn't happen, there would be some sort of enforcement mechanism, perhaps an arrangement whereby the debt ceiling was lowered, or one in which Congress would have to muster a supermajority to raise it again.

I want to stress again that Reid has been ignoring the law by refusing to not only pass a budget in the Senate, but by failing to even introduce one.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/01/08/republicans-to-reid-pass-a-budget-if-you-want-a-debt-ceiling-increase-n1484158

Chicago Murder Rate Proves That Liberals Don’t Care About Gun Deaths

Chicago kids and young adults are being murdered at alarming rates. So why the silence from the White House and the left? President Obama is from Chicago and his former Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel is now mayor. President Obama and Mayor Emanuel are eerily silent on the gun deaths in their hometown. The question is why? Find out as John Phillips, Tammy Bruce and Stephen Kruiser discuss one of the most missed stories of 2012.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/pjtv-liberals-do-not-care-about-gun-deaths/

BUCHANAN TO OBAMA

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America .. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation.. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.... This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.. Jeremiah Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude??

Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Let him go to Altoona ? And Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids...? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America ? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena . And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago. This needs to be passed around because, this is a message everyone needs to hear!!!

I'm for a better America…

I am

Not racist,

Not violent,

Just not silent anymore.

Top 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Government Agencies

We have chosen to highlight United States agencies; however, this top 10 list has global impact, as the U.S. has now proven to be the enforcement division of the overarching globalist agenda of centralized control.

One could argue that every government agency serves the purpose of stifling freedom and wasting taxpayer money. Yet, the 10 listed below go the extra mile for their sheer corruption, draconian regulations, and ultimate impact upon the largest number of citizens.

The main criteria for inclusion in the top 10 is the amount of money spent by the taxpayer according to official budget declarations, and then attaining the highest level of doing exactly the opposite of what they were supposedly created for.

Here is the countdown to the top 10 most dangerous U.S. government agencies to the freedom, prosperity and health of its citizens . . . .

#10 – Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – annual budget $8.5 billion: Their record of ignoring environmental damage and the health effects on humans from major events such as 9/11, the Exxon and Gulf oil spills to the worst case, Fukushima, is unparalleled. Rather than investigate and warn of real dangers, they have gone after farmers for dubious claims of water contamination, while treating milk spills as they should have treated oil spills. Even worse, the EPA has concluded that there is no law preventing it from doing “research” on Americans. A recent lawsuit over the EPA’s work with airborne pollutants will put this claim to the test in Federal court. Their illegal human experiments could break the Nuremberg Code (source: The Washington Times).

#9 – Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – annual budget $13.3 billion: Cries of “End the Fed!” continue to get louder, while more people are beginning to wake up completely and couple this with “End the IRS!” In fact, the two were developed together 100 years ago making the private Fed and the government IRS fraternal twins in creating a system of indentured servitude through dollar devaluation and arbitrary tax collection, respectively. The Fed enslaves through stealth, while the IRS uses force to impose itself through ever-expanding regulations and the threat of fines and imprisonment. As the collection division, the IRS rakes in a staggering $2.3 trillion annually. Despite that massive amount, the IRS has a distinguished record of ignoring the shenanigans of major corporations and federal employees, while focusing harshly on the average private citizen and small businesses in particular. Thankfully, there is some momentum toward abolishing the IRS through FairTax legislation. Now would be a good time, as the IRS will be empowered even further when the healthcare overhaul takes effect.

#8 – Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – annual budget $13.5 billion: Despite massive funding to help people in dire need of assistance, FEMA has failed spectacularly in the cases of Katrina and Sandy, even hindering the ability of people to make it on their own, as gun confiscation was ordered against the population affected by Katrina. The mechanics of offering aid to legitimate victims of Sandy are still being debated by the U.S. government. Additionally, there is a disturbing amount of evidence that suggests FEMA would be instrumental in enslaving large populations following an economic collapse or civil unrest. FEMA centers are now open knowledge and if implemented will likely resemble the squalor and horror that refugees encountered when jammed into the New Orleans Superdome following Katrina.

#7 - Department of Justice (DoJ) – annual budget $28 billion: This includes the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) which has its own annual budget of $8 billion. The “Department of Justice” is perhaps the most Orwellian oxymoron of all government agencies. For decades they have pursued a failed War on Drugs that targets small-time users while ignoring the true drug criminals. In fact, they’ve even armed the drug gangs as revealed in the Fast and Furious scandal. We have a Justice Department more concerned with going after whistleblowers of crimes than the criminals themselves. The FBI deserves a whole section unto itself given their recent behavior. The only “terrorists” they’ve caught since 9-11 are the ones they have created with their own material support. Further, the FBI is increasingly using illegal surveillance tactics for peaceful activists like Occupy demonstrators and others. It has recently been revealed that the FBI was actually spying on Occupy protesters at the behest of banks, not the government, even refusing to tell Occupy leaders that there were assassination plots against them. Finally, it must be noted that no bankers have gone to jail from the immense fraud that led to the financial collapse of 2008 and beyond; no one significant has gone to jail for torture and other war crimes; and government corruption has been all but legalized.

#6 - Spy Agencies: The nation’s 17 spy agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) – annual budget $55 billion? Many of the intelligence accounts are classified, so we can’t really know the true total, but we do know that the budget for spy agencies has doubled since 9/11. The NSA has grabbed the most attention as of late with plans to expand into their new $2 billion data mining center in Bluffdale, Utah set to launch in September of this year. Whistleblowers like William Binney have stated that the agency is already spying on its own citizens domestically. As the war on terror increases its scope through drone surveillance on American soil, the NSA’s budget will only increase, while increasing the danger posed to large sections of the U.S. Constitution. The CIA of course has long been implicated in using assassination rings to topple foreign governments and political opponents, while being at the center of the Guantanamo Bay and rendition torture apparatus. With the arrival of no-holds-barred legislation like NDAA 2013, the intelligence regime becomes more dangerous than ever.

#5 – Department of Education (ED) – annual budget $70 billion: The way that America has chosen to educate its youth is the beginning of the justifications for the abuses of every other federal agency. The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, as Charlotte Iserbyt has called it, has resulted in a once independent, entrepreneurial nation becoming a collectivized horde of selfish, but not individualistic, youth. There is much less attention paid to vocational skills, and much more attention paid to training the next bunch of public officials or bureaucracy enforcers. Furthermore, the public school system is clearly engaging in prisoner training with the actions of children becoming criminalized at an ever-greater pace. With the recent CT school shooting, we can expect that this will now become part of the curriculum as justification for the surrounding police state will be taught as a logical consequence in the face of such random threats of terror.

#4 - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) annual budget $100 billion (3,000 page PDF): – Much like the Department of Defense, the activities of DHS are all-encompassing including the goon squad of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which has employed untrained, low IQ, and criminal elements including pedophiles to reach into the pants of men, women and children. The TSA is also responsible for introducing cancer to its employees and the public through its backscatter radiation naked imaging machines. And now they are set to hit the streets across America with their spin-off VIPR teams. DHS has set up the ultimate framework for tyranny, including secret lists, secret arrests, activist surveillance, biometric immigration measures, control of cyberspace, Orwellian telescreens and PSA’s that increasingly portray average citizens who are engaged in normal activities as worthy of suspicion and interrogation. They are sure to be on the front lines of any gun control and confiscation initiatives, as they clearly have been stockpiling their own ammunition in ever greater numbers.

#3 – U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – annual budget $155 billion: If there is one agency that is administering the globalist directives of Agenda 21, it is the USDA. They have recently begun putting dubious embargoes on small farms, which is leading to economic and literal starvation of people and animals alike. Through their trickle down directives, farmers can even be charged in a different county after being cleared of wrongdoing in a previous case. This is the hallmark of bureaucratic tyranny. The USDA has been instrumental in clearing Dow Chemical’s GM soy, giving Monsanto’s GMO crops special ‘speed approval,’ and covering up pesticide damage to humans and bee populations. But in true absurdist bureaucratic style, the same organization that has consistently overlooked the health and economic threats to countless millions of people decided to fine a family $4 million dollars for selling bunny rabbits.

#2 – Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – annual budget $892 billion - This gargantuan structure includes the FDA, CDC and the National Institutes of Health among others. The FDA has its own annual budget of $4.5 billion. This agency has approved prescription and over-the-counter drugs that knowingly have killed hundreds of thousands of people annually, has increased irradiation of the food supply, and has covered up vaccine injuries, But if you want Big Pharma, you can get it from a vending machine, thanks to the FDA. No surprise, the FDA has ties to Monsanto and ties to Bayer. Now our food is being made and modified by the largest pesticide manufacturer, while any move to label GMO is shut down by the agency. The FDA has additionally approved AquaBounty’s GE Salmon despite a statement by The Center for Food Safety, that its “bad for the consumer, bad for the salmon industry, and bad for the environment.” Among other gems are dangerous animal feed additives, approving dangerous anti-viral drugs for infants, and policing food safety in foreign nations.

As for the CDC, or Center for Disease Creation as some natural medicine practitioners have coined the agency (budget $11 billion), they have encouraged vaccination to such an extent that some have questioned whether their mandated vaccine schedule is part of a compulsory sterilization program.

#1 – Department of Defense (DoD) – annual budget ??? – Officially $613 billion This agency is in desperate need of returning to its more honest original name: The War Department. In addition to being the recipient of the highest percentage of the federal budget, the DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) division almost deserves a category of its own. Many of DARPA’s projects fall into the money pit of “black budget” secret projects not even subjected to presidential and congressional oversight. With DARPA’s “mad science” reputation, it is no doubt one of the top recipients of the $50 billion annual black budget, making this one of the most dangerous federal agencies to both the economy of the U.S. and to world peace. Overall, the Department of Defense as the coordinator for anything that falls under “national security” is responsible for openly killing millions and eviscerating the Constitution … and there is no sign that they are letting up any time soon.

Honorable Mention

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) – annual budget $3 billion: This agency falls under HHS, but the video below demonstrates a special level of corruption and worthlessness that is humorous, except for the fact that it represents a staggering level of taxpayer looting, despite the small size of the agency (537 people). It is a microcosm of what we only can imagine going on within the larger agencies, especially those with less oversight.

The government’s track record for permitting massive looting of the economy in collusion with the private banking sector; the upcoming collusion with the insurance industry and Big Pharma to change the landscape of healthcare; their collusion with private contractors to implement a prison-industrial complex; their unconstitutional war machine, and their history of secret human experiments makes government the single greatest terrestrial danger we face. In the 20th century alone, governments across the world outright murdered 290 million people, known as democide. How many more must have fallen to covert means and bureaucratic ineptitude? How many more will follow?

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/top-10-most-dangerous-u-s-government-agencies_01201

Meet the 'Bullies': Breitbart Editor Exposes Obama's Army of Thugs in New Book

It’s a fight we must embrace. Leftist bullying reaches new heights every day. And it has found its apex in the Obama administration.

Just take a look at the White House anti-bullying program. In March 2011, President Obama led a White House conference on the supposed scourge of bullying plaguing America. There hadn’t been an uptick in childhood bullying by any available measure; in fact, bullying was down across the board. But President Obama spoke up loud and strong against bullying. “Bullying isn’t a problem that makes headlines every day,” he boomed. “But every day it touches the lives of young people all across this country.” He launched a website under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services to combat bullying. And, of course, he joined forces with the It Gets Better Project.

But Obama wasn’t really against bullying, as I explain in Bullies. When the DHS wasn’t busy running StopBullying.gov, they were busy bullying religious employers into violating their consciences by forcing them to cover contraception for employees. And who headed up the It Gets Better Project? Dan Savage, the thug who screamed at Christian teenagers who had the temerity to walk out on one of his anti-Biblical screeds.
Obama isn’t against bullying. Neither is the left more broadly. After all, when someone stands up to a bully – say, Israel standing up to Islamic terrorists, or even George Zimmerman standing up to a young bully pounding his head into the pavement – the left goes berserk.

Actually, the American left has become the greatest purveyor of bullying during the last half-century. That’s the dirty little secret: buried beneath all of the left’s supposed hatred for bullying is a passionate love for bullying—the use of power to force those who disagree to shut up, back down, or face crushing consequences up to and including loss of reputation, career destruction, and even death.

In order to accomplish their bullying tactics, however, the left has to portray itself as the defender of victimized groups. Those who oppose their political agenda are then portrayed as oppressors of those victimized groups, morally deficient folks who deserve to be run out of town on a rail. The agenda supposedly starts with anti-bullying. It ends with bullying the hell out of everyone on the other side of the aisle.

The left’s goal is to shut down the political debate by decrying their opponents as victimizers. They label their opponents racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, benighted, backwards bitter clingers. They liken them to Nazis, KKK members, terrorists. Then they cast them out like lepers from the political debate. Because who would bother debating a Nazi, or a KKK member, or a terrorist?

This is how the left wins arguments. They polarize Americans from each other. They separate us by groups. They divide us, and they conquer us. They convince us that we’re either victims who deserve recompense or oppressors who must bow to the yoke.

We are no longer E Pluribus Unum. Disagree with President Obama? That’s because you hate black people. (Want to ignore 14% black unemployment, though, and you’re a hero to the left.)

Think that increasing taxes on high income earners stifles economic growth? That’s because you despise the poor. (If you don’t care about rising poverty rates under big government, though, your heart obviously bleeds for the homeless urchins.)

Believe that an unborn child has a right to life? That’s because you hate women. (Ignore sex-selective abortion, however, and you’re a visionary for gender equality.)

Like traditional marriage? You hate gays and would have strung up Matthew Shepard on a fence. (Blackball Proposition 8 supporters from work, though, and you’re an advocate of freedom.)

This is not only how the left wins arguments. It’s how they win elections. They don’t win by offering more convincing policy proposals based on evidence. They win by impugning the motives of their political opposition. Exit polls in 2012 showed that Americans liked Mitt Romney better than Barack Obama on the issues. They liked him better on his vision for the country. But there is one area in which they hammered him: they thought he didn’t have anything in common with them. They thought he was a bad guy. That’s because everything the left did during this election cycle was geared toward bullying Romney. He wanted to fire employees just to watch their wives die of cancer. He wanted to force gay kids into dying broken and sad. He was a racist engaged in “n***erization” of Obama. He was a sexist waging a “war on women” using binders.

The left won this election because they bullied. And the right lost because they did not fight back. Now the left has trained its guns once again on the Tea Party. We’re terrorists. We’re hostage takers. We’re racists and bigots and homophobes. Why? Because we have the temerity to want government to live within its means.

The left is filled with vicious bullies. And we must not treat them with civility. In the words of Barack Obama, we must punch them back, twice as hard.

I learned that message from Andrew Breitbart.

And the bullies are everywhere. Yes, there are bullies on the right. But they are not institutional. The left keeps Hollywood conservative-rein through bullying. They keep the media liberal, even while proclaiming that Democratic hacks like George Stephanopoulos are objective journalists. They use the university system to bully conservative students into silence and to brainwash students into buying their thug politics. They use extra-governmental organizations like Media Matters, who coordinate with the Obama White House, to do the dirty work of astroturfing boycotts of conservative institutions.

Andrew fought those bullies. For that, the media labeled him a bully – because, after all, he was a conservative who opposed the thug left. See, bullying doesn’t stop just because someone dies. Those who fight back must become examples – warnings – to others who would follow in their footsteps.

But if we ever hope to win, we must walk toward the fire. We must retweet the hate. As Andrew once said to me, “Walk toward the fire. Don’t worry about what they call you. All those things are said against you because they want to stop you in your tracks. But if you keep going, you’re sending a message to people who are rooting for you, who are agreeing with you. The message is that they can do it, too.”

We can do it too.

The right must stop playing nice with the bullies of the left. We are not the bad guys here. They are. We’re happy to have debates about policy without questioning whether those on the other side are evil. They’re not. They want the debate stopped. They want to win by disqualifying the other side. That’s despicable. It’s un-American. And there’s only one way to defeat them: by fighting back.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/08/Meet-the-Bullies-Breitbart-Editor-Exposes-Obamas-Army-of-Thugs-in-New-Book

It's Come to This: GOP Rep Introduces Bill to Block Trillion Dollar Coin Scheme

I humbly proffer the ultimate companion piece to this morning's item, which quoted the President Obama expressing his irritation over John Boehner's incessant carping about some "government spending problem" the president is convinced doesn't really exist. Ladies and gentlemen, it has indeed come to this:

Lawmakers are still positioning themselves for a debt ceiling fight in a few months, but one Republican congressman wants to snuff out a particular idea immediately: the U.S. Treasury minting $1 trillion platinum coins to avert a debt ceiling showdown. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has introduced a bill to specifically ban President Barack Obama from minting the coins. “This scheme to mint trillion dollar platinum coins is absurd and dangerous, and would be laughable if the proponents weren’t so serious about it as a solution,” Walden said in a statement. “My bill will take the coin scheme off the table by disallowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins as a way to pay down the debt.”

When we first drew this nonsense to your attention early last month, it was merely a theoretical proposal being tossed about by fringe liberals and debated by academics. It's gained momentum ever since, attracting support from a veteran Congressional Democrat, as well as respected-economist-turned-lefty-polemicist, Paul Krugman. Here's a brief refresher on how this lunacy would work, including a special bonus quote from an economic "expert:"

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Fed then moves this money into Treasury’s accounts. And just like that, Treasury suddenly has an extra $2 trillion to pay off its obligations for the next two years — without needing to issue new debt. The ceiling is no longer an issue. “I like it,” says Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s nothing that’s obviously economically problematic about it.” In theory, this is much like having the central bank print money. But, says Gagnon, the U.S. government would simply be using the money to keep spending at existing levels, so it wouldn’t create any extra inflation. And if it did cause problems, the Fed could always counteract the effects by winding down some of its other programs to inject money into the economy. Is the platinum coin option really legal? Apparently so. It was discussed* during the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis by Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale Law School. Under law, he noted, there’s a limit to how much paper money the United States can circulate at any one time, and there are rules that limit how many gold, silver and copper coins the Treasury can mint. But there’s no such limit when it comes to platinum coins.

Good news! It's perfectly legal and not "economically problematic" in any conceivable way. Thank God for that handy platinum loophole, am I right? Although I must say I prefer Allahpundit's cheeky suggestion that the Treasury "mint" magic beans to accomplish the same farcical trick. And as I've asked previously, if engaging in monetary mysticism to avoid issuing new debt isn't a devastating economic risk (see: acute devaluation, a collapse of confidence in the bond market and Zimbabwe-style inflation), why not churn out 17 of these puppies and retire the entire debt in one fell swoop? Hell, we'd have a surplus. Imagine the "investments" we could make with with that surplus. For the children. Back to reality: Our official national debt is hurtling toward the $17 trillion mark. Our more realistic national debt is closer to $90 trillion. We've run trillion dollar deficits for four consecutive years, and next year won't be much better -- despite policies to tax "the rich" more and substantially wind down both wars. Our spending and future obligations are unsustainable.
Unlike during the fiscal cliff battle, Republicans will have some real leverage to attempt to force Democrats to begin to deal with these facts over the next few months. Rather than advancing solutions to curb short-term spending and corral long-term liabilities, liberals are talking about trillion dollar coins. (Their other big idea is having Obama unilaterally declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, then go on his merry way, forcing Republicans to sue. This won't work, but it would create a new temporary crisis, wherein the US treasury would be split into two tranches: Pre-lawsuit real money, and post-lawsuit fake money. Good times). As a political matter, I'm all for Democrats talking up these two options. In fact, I hope they speak louder. The public is willing to tolerate a lot of Lefty silliness, obviously, but they do have a breaking point. Americans recognize that we have a major debt problem, and numerous polls throughout the election cycle demonstrated that they trust Republicans more than Democrats to deal with it. Democrats disqualify themselves as serious actors with this super-coin voodoo rubbish, and the concept of abolishing the debt limit was one of the least popular elements of Obama's surreal initial fiscal cliff proposal. Republicans should maintain a united front about the revenue component being settled and turn the focus back to spending restraint -- then allow Democrats to pound the table about their various non-solutions, and stand firm.

Parting thought: If we descend into full madness and these coins are minted, what should they look like? It's just has to be Obama's face, right?

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/01/08/its-come-to-this-gop-rep-introduces-bill-to-block-trillion-dollar-coin-scheme-n1484763

PK'S NOTE: This just makes me sick. This is the US education system now. I had to put the full article because it is so disgusting.

Teaching Students to Feel Guilty about Financial Success

The New York Times is the only newspaper that runs a "business" column not about how to get ahead economically, but rather about how to indoctrinate kids to feel guilty about being financially successful. At least that's the theme of Ron Lieber's recent article, "An Invitation for High School Seniors to Write About Finances," which calls for seniors to submit their college application essays that focus on finance to the New York Times for possible publication.

How do high school seniors write exemplary essays about "finances," exactly? One way is by concentrating their writing on corporate thugs like Bernie Madoff. Lieber states in his article:

At Pitzer College, a student used the example of the Ponzi schemer Bernard L. Madoff to take a philosophical look at how much money people truly need to be happy.

This, according to Angel Pérez, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Pitzer, makes for an excellent college application essay. "I think there is this new consciousness," Pérez said. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen."

High school seniors can also write about "finances" by stepping into the class warfare fray by stigmatizing the richest 1 percent and demanding they pay more taxes (more than the 39.6 percent they pay now). According to Lieber:

Aside from the Madoff essay, Mr. Perez has read other Pitzer applicant essays and had other conversations with applicants about money and the economy in recent years that have stuck with him.

"One student last year was very affected by the whole conversation about the 1 percent," he said. "He sent us his proposal for the tax code. The committee thought that this is someone who is clearly thinking about this in a critical way, is informed about what is going on the world and has done some dissecting of the information, and that's the kind of student we're looking for."

High school seniors can also share their thoughts on "finances" by putting down in words the guilt they feel over their parents' financial success and affluence. Lieber writes:

The more affluent [students], if they do understand it, struggle further when trying to put it into words. "When it becomes visible, it comes accompanied with a U-Haul full of guilt that they're towing behind them," [Harry Bauld] said. "Then, it forces them into various clichés."
But it need not always. Mr. Perez said Pitzer was quick to admit a student who talked about her travels around the world on her father's yacht, anchoring in various high-end ports. "It bothered her that her family was never willing to leave the comfort zone, to go to real places," he said. "To me, that young woman was absolutely memorable, and it took a lot of courage for her to do that."

Apparently, leaving the limited confines of the United States and gaining new cultural perspectives and worldviews by visiting other countries doesn't mean much -- these experiences aren't authentic, and these places aren't "real." (I wonder what are considered "real" places to people of this mindset?. My guess is that "real" probably means urban -- where poverty is romanticized and street culture is glorified, where the rich, who live in their own separate neighborhoods and send their children to separate schools, feel guilty and privileged and have a codependent, patronizing relationship with poor people, where everyone votes the same and thinks the same and attacks anyone who dares present a different point of view.)

Outside class warfare and guilt over financial success, the New York Times is also looking to publish various college application essays where students have "thought through how you measure the success of the services a nonprofit organization delivers." Speaking of nonprofits, U.S. organizations listed as "nonprofit" earn $670 billion annually, yet they pay zero federal income taxes.

Nonprofits are listed as "exempt" under section 501(c) of the U.S. tax code, so they don't pay squat in taxes. One in 12 Americans works in the nonprofit sector (and some executives of nonprofits are super-rich), but the organizations pay nothing to the Fed. (Do you see the irony here? Evil corporations pay a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, while the $670-billion-a-year entity known as the sacred "nonprofit" pays none. Quick! Someone call Occupy Wall Street!)

As a Philadelphia high school English teacher, I'm thinking about taking the NYT up on its invitation for seniors to write about finances. Although I teach only 10^th-graders, I can still begin indoctrinating them to revile the rich and all their financial success and achievement. I mean, who in his right mind would want to be rich? Make lots of money and contribute nearly 40 percent of it back to one's fellow man via the U.S. government in federal income taxes? Who in his right mind would want to have a good quality of life and live in relative comfort? Better to rail against money and success, become a sheep, and adopt a groupthink mentality; better to engage in class warfare and side with the "takers" over the "makers."

This way, my students can take full advantage of the entitlement programs being set up for them by those compassionate tax-dodging nonprofits and make good use of all those kind, caring, progressive folks down at the NYT, like financial guru and "Your Money" columnist Ron Lieber.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/teaching_students_to_feel_guilty_about_financial_success.html

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