Central-Illinoisand_beyond: June 2015

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Greece and Puerto Rico aren't the only two dealing with debt... Chicago owes the public school pension fund $634 million by midnight tonight.

Great Job all You Progressive Liberal Democrats! You sure know how to F*ck things up! And just think, their are clueless numbnuts that keep voting these Clowns in! Rauner is trying to get control in Illinois and the Liberal Idiots still put forth a budget that is not a balanced budget, but more spending than what comes in!

Greece and Puerto Rico aren't the only two dealing with debt... Chicago owes the public school pension fund $634 million by midnight tonight.
Posted by Fox Business on Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Obamacare’s Best Allies: The Courts and the Republicans

By ruling for the government in the case of King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court once again tied itself into rhetorical and logical knots to defend Obamacare. In King, the court disregarded Obamacare’s clear language regarding eligibility for federal health care subsides, on the grounds that enforcing the statute as written would cause havoc in the marketplace. The court found that Congress could not have intended this result and that the court needed to uphold Congress’s mythical intention and ignore Obamacare’s actual language.

While Obamacare may be safe from court challenges, its future is far from assured. As Obamacare forces more Americans to pay higher insurance premiums while causing others to lose their insurance or lose access to the physicians of their choice, opposition to Obamacare will grow. Additional Americans will turn against Obamacare as their employers reduce their hours, along with their paychecks, because of Obamacare’s mandates.

As dissatisfaction with Obamacare grows, there will be renewed efforts to pass a single-payer health care system. Single-payer advocates will point to Obamacare’s corporatist features as being responsible for its failures and claim the only solution is to get the private sector completely out of health care.

Unfortunately, many Republicans will inadvertently aid the single-payer advocates by failing to acknowledge that Obamacare is not socialist but corporatist, and that that the pre-Obamacare health care system was hobbled by government intervention. In fact, popular support for Obamacare was rooted in the desire to address problems created by prior government interference in the health care marketplace.

Republicans also help the cause of socialized medicine by pretending that Obamacare can be fixed with minor reforms. These Republicans do not understand that replacing Obamacare with “Obamacare Lite” will still leave millions of Americans with inadequate access to quality health care, and could strengthen the movement for a single-payer system.

Republicans’ failure to advocate for a free-market health care system is not just rooted in intellectual error and political cowardice. The insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the other special interests that benefit from a large government role in health care are just as — or perhaps even more — influential in the Republican Party as in the Democratic Party. The influence of these interests is one reason why, despite their free-market rhetoric, Republicans have a long history of expanding the government’s role in health care.

Those who think a Republican president and Congress will enact free-market health care should consider that the last time Republicans controlled Congress and the White House their signature health care achievement was to expand federal health care spending and entitlements. Furthermore, Richard Nixon worked with Ted Kennedy to force all health care plans to offer a health maintenance organization (HMO). Even Obamacare’s individual mandate originated in a conservative think tank and was first signed into law by a Republican governor.

Instead of Obamacare Lite, Congress should support giving individuals direct control over their health care dollars through individual health care tax credits and expanded access to health savings accounts. Other reforms like long-term group insurance could ensure that those with “pre-existing conditions” have access to care. Another good reform is negative outcomes insurance that could help resolve the medical malpractice crisis.

America’s health care system is just as unsustainable as our foreign policy and our monetary system. At some point, the financial and human costs of Obamacare will prove overwhelming and Congress will be forced to replace this system. Hopefully, before this happens, a critical mass of people will convince Congress to replace Obamacare with a truly free-market health care system.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/06/ron-paul/who-loves-fascist-care/

A 14 Year Old Explains Why Socialism Fails

Socialism is one of the biggest breakout economic ideologies of the 20th century. Although the UK general election was won by capitalists, socialism has more advocates than ever before, as a growing contingent are proposing a redistribution of wealth. You just need to look at the 250,000 people who protested on Saturday against the Conservatives’ cuts; only for them to announce £12 billion of welfare cuts a short time later. It is easy to see from this that socialism is becoming increasingly popular in modern society as more and more people are becoming aware of the perceived inequality that exists between the affluent 1% and the rest. However, I am of the opinion that socialism cannot work in modern society, or any society, for that matter, and my reasons are below.

Firstly, socialism does not reward hard work. Say, for example, that Raj works twice as hard as Mark. Surely Raj should be entitled to twice the pay that Mark gets. However, they both get the same. Over time, Raj will grow wise to the unfairness which is blighting his life, and he will work the same amount as Mark, as, after all, they do not get proportional rewards for their labour. This creates a culture of entitlement where everyone feels as though they need rewards for minimal, or no, work. This undermines the basic human principle of “work hard, reap rewards”, and means that laziness is promoted, which can only start a chain reaction towards a gradually more irresponsible society. This means that even the young children, growing up, know that whatever they do, they will just earn the same as someone else and so do not need to work hard, as there is no hope of a large reward, so work ethics stagnate.

Moreover, socialism will also undermine innovation. The great innovators of society, such as Bill Gates, are, mostly, the ones who become members of the 1%. This shows that innovation and producing products which people actually want to buy reap gigantic financial rewards, which is part of the reason that innovation is at an all time high these days. If innovation is not so heavily rewarded through the Socialist “redistribution of wealth”, people will not want to innovate anymore, as they are getting the exact same rewards as the non-innovators, the people who, frankly, add nothing to society. This kills innovation as the rewards are going equally to everyone, in effect, rewarding the non-producers and punishing the producers. It is like, as I read on another website, taking the average of a class and giving everyone in the class the class average. Of course, the worse students in the class would jump at this proposition, however the top students would not be so joyful. This is exactly what socialism stands for, except on a larger scale.

Finally, socialism, contrary to popular belief, undermines the basic moral values of a person and promotes instant gratification. As people, after some years in a socialist society, will be predisposed to getting something for nothing almost instantaneously, they will not want to slog to get what they want and instead will become almost like a small child to his parents, in that they want everything very quickly, having done almost no work to actually achieve it. Now take the example of the small child, and just think that even adults are subscribing to this ideology! This behaviour is toxic in a modern society and will slowly kill the hard working, positive nature that characterised the American Dream. To an extent, we are already seeing this with the Obama administration, with the American public slowly becoming disaffected a-la Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Why should they work if they can get everything from the state?

Herein lies the problem with socialism, in that the bad eggs are rewarded and the good eggs are punished. Is this the kind of society we would like to promote? I think not.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-30/14-year-old-explains-why-socialism-fails

Supremes: citizenship not necessary for voter registration

Something is not right here?

In a commonsense decision, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a case that decided that people registering to vote in federal election don't have to prove their citizenship. That means that people registering to vote won't be bullied into proving citizenship, which now seems to be an irrelevant criterion for voting.

“I am very pleased, obviously,” said Dolores Furtado, president of the Kansas chapter of the League of Women Voters. “It’s a good feeling because we’re truly trying to help” people get registered to vote.
Furtado said the league’s main interest is in increasing participation in the democratic process “rather than trying to make more hoops, more steps, to go through.”

I agree with Furtado. How fair is it when some of the people in America are allowed to vote and some are not? We should all be allowed to vote. The League of Women Voters is especially concerned about this, because many women in the U.S. from Mexico, Nicaragua, Syria, and Iraq don't currently enjoy the right to vote as American women do. But women are women; they all have the same body parts and according to the liberals the same political views, so why shouldn't all of them be allowed to vote?

But where is the League of Men Voters on this? Illegal aliens are sometimes men, too. Who is to speak for them?

And why isn't there yet a League of Transgendered Voters? Who will speak for the tens of people who have no voice?

As for me, I find this decision quite exciting. Why should people registering to vote have to prove anything? Why should they have to even prove their identity? Why can't they register their children to vote, or their dog or cat or pet rock or whatever? Sure, you could make someone prove he's an adult, and hasn't registered elsewhere, but wouldn't that be too much hoop-jumping?

Come to think of it, don't people have to go through a lot of "hoops" to go to a voting place every election? Why can't we simply vote on a website, like an online poll? People wouldn't have to identify themselves to vote, and they could be trusted to vote only once. Software would not be employed to eliminate bots that would click over and over, because that would be too discriminatory, too.

Exit question: If the integrity of the voting process is destroyed, what remains of our country?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/supremes_citizenship_not_necessary_for_voter_registration.html#ixzz3eb6dp6bv
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Campus Reform Video: Hillary's Houses Shock Millennials

Its Funny to see how Clueless these People are when it Comes to Hillary.

RUSH: Now, obviously I can't play video here. We can link to it at RushLimbaugh.com, which we will. I could play the audio, but the audio alone is not good enough because it will not supply you the pictures. I, as a highly trained broadcast specialist, can do a better job conveying this video, describing it to you, than just playing the audio. Our buddies at Campus Reform shot it. I don't know where this is. It looks like it's in a park across from the White House, but I don't really know where it took place.

It doesn't matter where it took place. They set up an easel with a big poster board on it. On the poster board were four or five mansions, pictures of huge homes, aerial pictures like you would find in a real estate website. The price of each mansion was clearly marked beneath each picture, and they asked random people walking by who they thought owned those houses. They told them that the people who owned them were in politics, I think a presidential candidate. "Which presidential candidate lives in these houses?"

They asked white people, black people, pretty people, ugly people, well-dressed people, unwell dressed people. They asked young people and middle-age, but mostly young people. And I have to tell you, I wasn't surprised overall. But do you realize most of the people -- and I'm telling you, these are Millennials that they stopped and asked? Almost all of them thought at least one of the homes belonged to Marco Rubio. Now, I'm asking myself, "Where is it..?" I have missed it if it's been reported that Rubio is massively wealthy.

If that's been reported... If that's on Twitter, for example, I wouldn't see it 'cause I don't live in or go to sewers. And if it's on Facebook, I haven't seen it. I don't live a lot on there. I actually don't do that. No criticism. I just don't. But I haven't seen a mainstream Drive-By news story that said that Marco Rubio is wealthy. The second most mentioned name was Ben Carson. I'm telling you, folks, the people that Campus Reform asked were perfectly wholesome, normal, natural, everything-fine-looking people. They were not kooks, oddballs, weirdos, drifters.

They were not, you know, the usual suspects you would find on the left. They seemed happy, seemed basically in good moods, just out and about. Some people mentioned another name. There wasn't one person that thought a Democrat owned any of the four or five mansions that were pictured. All of these young people thought that it was either Marco Rubio or Dr. Benjamin Carson. Again, somebody needs to tell me if I've missed it. Where has it been reported or where has it been given birth that Marco Rubio and Ben Carson are well off?

These are $12 million houses, folks. These are $11 million, $12 million, $15 million houses. I forgot to add that. Anywhere from $5 million to $12 million houses. Rubio? Ben Carson? Anyway, every one of them is owned by Bill and Hillary Clinton -- every one of these mansions -- and not one of these people believed it when they were told. A young black guy said, "What? Hillary Clinton? No way! No way the Clintons have that kind of money. It's just not possible. Clintons? There's no way."

A young woman said, "Hillary Clinton? You're telling me Hillary Clinton owns all of these?"

"Yep."

"It's not Marco Rubio?"

"No. It's Hillary Clinton."

"All of them?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Well, that might actually affect my vote."

Now, you and I know very well how wealthy the Clintons are. We know how obsessed with their wealth they are. We know how they claim they were dead broke when they left the White House and they actually stole things from the White House when they left. We know how much they charge for speeches. We know how much income they have derived from making speeches. We know it because the news sources we consultant have featured it over and over again for a rock solid, steady number of months.

Now, I don't know what news these people listen to, watch, read. I don't know where they get it, the people that were asked, but it wasn't what you and I know. I don't know if it's TMZ. We joke about they spend their time on TMZ and the E! Entertainment network. Most people in the Millennial age-group actually get their news from Twitter and Facebook, and the news that they get is what other users are seeing wherever they get their news and then sharing. So I haven't slightest idea how it got out there that Marco Rubio or Ben Carson have enough money to own a $12 million house.

But, by the same token, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, Bill, it was shocking. You could have dropped a bomb on these people. They could not believe it, even after they were told. Some of them didn't want to believe it. It didn't compute. Here's a companion story from the Washington Post: "When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women’s hall of fame, one of the names that came to mind was Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Because, you know, folks, Hillary is the only woman in America who's ever done anything exceptional, so if the University of Missouri Kansas City's gonna open a women's hall of fame, there can be only one choice. It had to be Hillary Clinton. So they called her. They reached out. They extended an invitation to Hillary Clinton to come speak at the opening of the women's hall of fame at UMKC. Hillary quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked.

"'Yikes!' one e-mailed another." They can't afford that. So what did they do next? Off the top of your head, what do you think they did next? Hillary Clinton charged 'em 275 grand for 15-minute speech; they said no. Who did they then offer this opportunity to? (interruption) No, they offered it to Chelsea, and Chelsea demanded $65,000, and they paid it. "The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton's brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014..."

This is before, I mean, this is not Chelsea now. This is Chelsea a year and a half ago. They paid Chelsea 65 grand. "More than 500 pages of e-mails, contracts and other internal documents obtained by The Washington Post from the university under Missouri public record laws detail the school’s long courtship of the Clintons. They also show the meticulous efforts by Chelsea Clinton’s image-makers to exert tight control over the visit, ranging from close editing of marketing materials and the introductory remarks of a high school student --" Yes, a high school student was gonna introduce Chelsea. Chelsea had total control over what that student said.

There were also mandatory agreed-to time limits on how long Chelsea would spend on campus. "The schedule she negotiated called for her to speak for 10 minutes, participate in a 20-minute, moderated question-and-answer session and spend a half-hour posing for pictures with VIPs offstage." So for a full hour with Chelsea Clinton, the University of Missouri Kansas City paid $65,000. "As with Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches at universities, Chelsea Clinton made no personal income from the appearance, her spokesman said, and directed her fee to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation."

So here's Campus Reform, a poster board on an easel, four or five mansions, anywhere from five to $15 million, asking random Millennial passersby, who owns them? They all think either Marco Rubio or Ben Carson. One person said George Bush. None of them guessed Hillary Clinton. And when they were told that Hillary owned all of them, they could not believe it. And then learned that in February 2014 Hillary demanded 275 grand for a 10-minute speech at the University of Missouri Kansas City.

So Chelsea left her $10.5 million-dollar home and her hedge fund husband, to schlep to flyover country. I used to live there. Where people used to be sensible. This is incredible. Just absolutely incredible. And yet all of these stories on the speech fees the Clintons get, folks, Millennials have no clue. Probably the vast majority of the American population has no idea how wealthy the Clintons are, they have no idea how they've acquired their money. They don't think they have any money. They're for the little guy. Just like the Kennedys were.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, I see what happened. I see what happened. When I was on vacation that week, a couple weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on Marco Rubio buying an $80,000 boat, and they referred to it as a huge yacht and how he had spent all this money, 80 grand. It's a fishing boat, for crying out loud. But the New York Times does a story on Rubio buying an $80,000 boat, and they dress it up, and I don't think there's any doubt that these Millennials are devoted to the New York Time.

In all the places they go to get news, you can't miss the New York Times. The New York Times is the Bible. It's not just the Bible for the people that live in the city of New York. For our age-group the New York Times is a joke. The New York Times is filled with lies and distortions, and it's the epitome of what's wrong with the media. To these youths, it's the Bible. So they run a piece on Rubio buying an $80,000 boat. The Clintons would spit on an $80,000 boat. They would torch it. The Clintons wouldn't get on an $80,000 dollar boat. They wouldn't be seen on an $80,000 boat.

The New York Times compared or makes an $80,000 boat out to be an Aristotle Onassis type yacht. So there you have it, that's why they thought the mansions we were Rubio's. Now, Carson, probably 'cause of the word "doctor"... (interruption) What? (interruption) Doesn't matter. He's quitting. Stewart ragged the New York Times on the Rubio story? (interruption) Doesn't matter. I think there's certain myths out there that have become believed, automatic belief. I don't think that's one of them. But nevertheless, it obviously didn't matter.

I mean, if Comedy Central's ragging on the New York Times for going overboard on Rubio's little Podunk fishing boat as some major mega rich yacht cruising the South of France -- you don't find any Republicans over there. You don't find Republicans at Cannes. You don't find Republicans over there at the Cannes Film Festival. You don't find Republicans at this advertising thing they just had at Cannes. You don't find Republicans at Monaco. I've been over there. I have yet to see one Republican. (laughing) It's amazing. It has to be it. What else is there that's been out there that Rubio is floating in money? Doctor Ben Carson. Everyone thinks doctors are multi-gazillionaires, proving again that people have no idea what Obamacare's done to doctors and what Medicare has done to doctors, no idea.

It may be truthful to say that we live when there's more media than ever. We have currently the most ill-informed or uninformed population at any time in our nation's history, even going back to the founding. The things people think they know that are wrong and don't know, every day there are more and more examples of this that actually, frankly, are hard to believe, 'cause there's an absence of common sense. They don't refute anything. They don't disbelieve anything they see in the liberal media. Nothing. They accept it as Bible.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. So I have dug deep here during the break. I have discovered that the New York Times story on Marco Rubio's fishing boat, $80,000 fishing boat, apparently just took off on social media (this is what I thought), the sewers of Twitter and then Facebook, and it just got expanded way out of proportion, an $80,000 boat. Of course, when the Clintons buy anything? Like, folks, I've got a story. Let me find it here. Let me find it. What did I do with it? I hope I put it near the top here.

Bill Clinton was in Paris recently and had a five-car caravan, and they pulled into an exclusive shopping area, and they pulled down all the shades on the windows, and he went into Hermes. He went to the Hermes store. (shuffling papers) Oh, darn it. Maybe I didn't print it out. Maybe I... (chuckling) You know what I did? I probably looked at it, said, "This is a waste of time. This doesn't mean anything." I bet I didn't print it out. So I'm having to tell you about it from memory. But it was in Paris and Clinton shows up in a five-car caravan, SUVs, security detail and all that, to go shopping.

They closed all the windows, maybe even shut down the store while Clinton was in there, and you were not allowed -- passersby were not allowed -- to see what Clinton was doing in there, what he bought, not see anything. They literally closed the drapes per se, and apparently Clinton walked out of there with five or six shopping bags full of stuff but nobody knows what. The agency, the news site reporting it was reduced to simply quoting what various things in an Hermes store cost, like a belt. Just a belt for a pair of slacks can cost you a thousand dollars in there.

An Hermes's necktie -- which I frankly wouldn't wear one but if you live in New York and work on Wall Street, the financial markets, you're almost required to have a bunch of them as the uniform. I've seen it. I've been to Paris with those guys, to cigar dinners, and I've seen 'em go shopping at Hermes and they come out with the red, the blue, the green, and they get the uniform ties. These are middle managers, upper-middle managers on the upcoming, the ladder of success, and Hermes tie is required part of the uniform. Here's the story.

"Bill Clinton Gets in Some Retail Therapy at Hermes in Paris." What's the website? People. Unbelievable. People mag. "When in Paris, even former President Bill Clinton can apparently spare a little time for shopping -- at Hermes. A five-car convoy carrying the former president and a security detachment arrived out front of the luxury brand's landmark boutique on Monday at noon." I've been to this place. I didn't go in. I've walked past it. It's not far down the street from the Hotel Bristol. You don't see many Republicans in this place, but I've been there.

"'There were about a dozen security men -- American and French -- with him and they went inside,' an observer tells People." Ah. It's People magazine that has the story. See, that makes it okay, see? People is a celebrity rag; so it makes it okay. The New York Times reported on Rubio's filthy rich boat. "Hermes on Faubourg St Honore is a shopper's mecca known for scarves, leather goods and luxury items. A spokesperson for the shop tells PEOPLE, it 'never discloses details about its clientele.'

"Clinton, 68, spent more than an hour on the shop's third floor section, where windows were closed after his arrival. The observer speculated: 'He's up there, probably buying the store.' He reportedly left with several shopping bags though they're hard to spot in the video below. We can't help but wonder what he purchased and whether Clinton was shopping for himself or his wife," or... (chuckling) It's left blank. "The luxury store sells ties for about $225; a leather belt can set you back nearly $1,000.

"It certainly seems like the former president would be able to afford the luxe shopping trip -- as the New York Times reported June 17, the Clintons' net worth is somewhere between $11.3 million and $52.7 million..." So the Times has reported that and People magazine reported Bill on a shopping trip. But you see, here's the difference: The Clintons are considered nice, good people. They care about the little guy! They've worked hard for them; they were dead broke when they left White House and look what they've overcome.

You know, these dumb people just lap this stuff up and they accept it. I'm telling you, folks, Bill Clinton can go out and buy a $2.5 million yacht and the people at Campus Reform could run their same test, and nobody would think the Clintons owned any of those houses when they own 'em all. (sigh) Anyway, there's also even more on the Rubio story. Apparently Rubio had a great comeback when the Times was ragging him and social media was ragging him about his $80,000 "yacht."

He said, "It's not a luxury boat if you have to pee over the side." And then the next thing that happened, Rubio recently put his house on the market in order to move his family to Washington. His house is in Miami. His house was listed for around $675,000. It's in a working-class neighborhood, same neighborhood that he grew up in. He put his house up for sale in 2013. I don't know whether it sold or not. But what does it tell you that when your average Millennial on the street is shown a picture of four or five houses between $5 million and $11.5 or $12 million, they think they're Marco Rubio's?

END TRANSCRIPT

David Stockman Shock Blog: The Real Unemployment Rate Is 42.9%

Interesting from Rush............

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the unemployment rate, what is the latest reported unemployment, 5.5%, is that what it is, 5.3, 5.6? It's in that neighborhood, right? I don't know what the exact number is. Not that this matters to anything anymore. I mean, the truth is increasingly irrelevant. The truth is increasingly meaningless. In fact, there isn't any truth in way too much of the country. There is certainly no objective truth.

Anyway, I have had, as you know if you listen regularly, I've had a lot of doubt about the accuracy of an unemployment rate of 5.5% when, at the same time, we have 92, 93 million Americans not in the workforce. It just hasn't made sense to me. Now, as you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government releases the unemployment numbers every month, and there are different categories, and the U, letter U-3 is what gets reported. That's the 5.5% now, whatever it is, that's the U-3 number. The U-3 number -- and, by the way, it's increasingly obvious that all of this is bogus and meaningless now as well.

But the U-3 number only attempts to count people who are out of work and looking for a job. People who have been out of work beyond the total length of time that they get unemployment benefits, which is up to, what is it now, 99 weeks? (interruption) It's even longer than that? (interruption) Okay, 99 weeks. So if you're looking for a job and getting your employment benefits they count you in U-3. But if you stop looking for a job at any point, you've been out of work two weeks, stop looking, you don't get counted in the U-3 number. If you've been out of work for three years and stop looking, then you don't get counted as unemployed.

I don't know how they find out who is looking for a job and who isn't, because this is largely guesswork. There is a very small interview sample that they take, and then they project nationwide results from this small, relatively small sample. The U-6 number is much closer to accurate. The U-6, it never gets reported. You have to look at websites dedicated to economics to find out what that number is. The Drive-By Media never reports it.

So 99.9% of the people celebrating Supreme Court rulings last week do not know what the U-6 unemployment rate is. That number is reported to be around 11 or 12%. And that number includes people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job or aren't, for whatever reason, looking for work. So it is said to be a more accurate number, but that has not even worked for me. I mean, just the simple math, 92, 93 million Americans, and from there I said, "How many adult Americans are there in our country?" To put that 93 million in proper perspective, 93 million Americans not working. And my always added caveat, they are all eating.

I find that to be one of the most relevant aspects of that number, and it goes over people's head as though it doesn't matter. But if you can eat and have a phone and a big screen or whatever and not have to work, I mean, what are you more than likely to do if you are a recent graduate or product of the American education system? You're gonna opt to the path of least resistance. Particularly now you add to that what has happened to employment with Obamacare, and that is 30 hours a week is now considered full time, not 40.

I mean, folks, the bottom line here is that just observing numbers and just casually absorbing them -- not even running them; not calculating, just absorbing them -- it cannot be that we have an unemployment rate of 5.5% or even 12.2%. The number of people working is way down. The number of hours worked is way down. It's because of Obamacare, because the economy. You can maybe talk about trade deals if you want. Throw it all in. I don't care. The bottom line is, there's much less productivity in this economy.

And then you add to that how much of the economy has been usurped by the federal government, the economy, the private sector where everybody tries to get their piece of the pie. That's shrinking. My gut feeling has been that we are in a dire economic circumstance, far, far worse than anybody knows. Well, you might be saying, "What's this got to do with anything?" Well, that's why I urge you to always hang in there and be tough.

Last night a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog that is hosted and written by David Stockman. David Stockman was the former budget director for Ronaldus Magnus until for some reason he was taken to the woodshed and fired. Oh, I know what it was. He disavowed supply-side, which was his own creation. Anyway, Stockman has run a bunch of numbers and has been able to put all of this in context and has concluded that the actual unemployment rate in the United States of America is not 5.5%, and it's not 12.5% or 13%. It is 42.9%.

Let me share with you a little bit of how he gets there.

It's a long blog post. I can't... I'm not even gonna try to summarize most of it. I'm just gonna get to the meat of it as it relates to this. But it's an all-out assault on Keynesian economics and the Federal Reserve and the damage that both have done and continue to do to the US economy. But here's the focal point on unemployment. "In fact," he writes, "the Census Bureau survey takers and the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] numbers crunchers have not the foggiest idea as to what the real world’s potential labor force computes to, and how much of it is deployed on any given day, month or quarter."

That's economics-speak for they don't have any idea how many people are working. The "world's potential labor force," meaning how many people in the world have an opportunity to hold a job and go to work at it. Nobody knows. They have no way to compute it. And how much of that force is "deployed," that's just military lingo for how many people getting up and going to work every day. "Accordingly," he writes, "printing money and pegging interest rates in pursuit of 'full employment', which is the essence of the Yellen version of monetary central planning..."

Jessica Yellen is the chairman of the Fed. "[T]he essence of the Yellen version is completely nonsensical," and it's political, by the way, getting an unemployment rate 5.5%. You know what statistically full employment is. This is why this doesn't make any sense. Traditionally, statistically full employment has been 4.7%. Everybody involved in economics from the government on down has agreed that if at any time the US unemployment rate is 4.7% then our economy is roaring.

We got people working and working overtime, and it's as near to full employment as it's possible to get. Well, I'm telling you: If that's true about 4.7%, there's no way we're at 5.5%. This is just my gut reaction to all this. This is why this is fascinating. Now, Stockman is ripping into the money supply people and Obama because they're pegging everything they're doing to that. They're printing money, giving it to the stock market, pegging interest rates at near zero in pursuit of full employment.

That is for Obama's legacy. They want Obama to be able to leave office claiming that his stimulus worked and that everything else he did economically, Obamacare, brought back a defunct economy that he inherited. Key to creating that perception is the unemployment rate, and that's why it's been creeping down from where it is. What'd it get, as high as eight? (interruption) At some point. Anyway, down to 5.5%. Now...

"Likewise, the Fed's current 'soft' target of 5.2% on the U-3 unemployment rate is downright ridiculous," he says. "When in the year 2015 you have 93 million adults not in the labor force -- of which only half are retired and receiving Social Security benefits (OASI) -- and a U-3 computational method that counts as 'employed' anyone who works only a few hour per week -- then what you have in the resulting fraction is noise, pure and simple. The U-3 unemployment rate as a proxy for full employment does not even make it as primitive grade school economics."

Here are the numbers I wondered about: "At the present time, there are 210 million adult Americans between the ages of 16 and 68..." That is the workforce. Sixteen to 68 is the age boundaries where you find the potential American workforce. Between 16 and 68, there are 210 million Americans, and 93 million -- 40% -- of them, are not working. Now, that's probably a much better way of expressing employment, unemployment, and the real strength, performance, or lack of, of the US economy. But here is where they get in the weeds by computing a bunch of things that...

It's gonna be hard to follow because you're not reading it, but I'll do my best.

"At the present time, there are 210 million adult Americans between the ages of 16 and 68 -- to take a plausible measure of the potential work force. That amounts to 420 billion potential labor hours..." So you have 420 billion hours that people could work in a standard 40-hour week. With all the vacations and the standard benefits thrown in, that's the number of labor hours potential. That's "if we accept the convention that all adults are at least theoretically capable of holding a full-time job (2,000 hours/year)," that's the calculation, "and pulling their share of society's need for production and work effort.

"By contrast, during 2014 only 240 billion hours were actually supplied to the US economy, according to the BLS estimates," actual government numbers. So the workforce is defined as ages 16 to 68, a total of 420 billion potential labor hours, which equals great productivity if that happens. Last year, only 240 billion hours were actually supplied to the US economy, just a little over half what's possible. "Technically, therefore, there were 180 billion unemployed labor hours," and that is how Stockman arrived at "the real unemployment rate was 42.9%..."

He's actually computing the number of hours possible to be worked, at what they say is full employment, and then calculates the number of people and the number of hours actually worked, 43%. Caveats: "Yes, we have to allow for non-working wives, students, the disabled, early retirees and coupon clippers. We also have drifters, grifters, welfare cheats, bums and people between jobs, enrolled in training programs, on sabbaticals and much else.

"But here's the thing: There are dozens of reasons for 180 billion unemployed labor hours, but whether the Fed is monetizing $80 billion of public debt per month or not, and whether the money market interest rate is 10 bps or 35 bps doesn't even make the top 25 reasons for unutilized adult labor. What actually drives our current 43% unemployment rate is global economic forces of cheap labor and new productive capacity throughout the EM and dozens of domestic policy and cultural factors that influence the decision to work or not."

It's called liberalism! It's called socialism!

It's creating sloth!

It's creating more and more people that don't have to work, and they're not. And there's all this productivity left -- for lack of a better way to say it -- languishing on the factory floor.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Chase in Daphne, Alabama. I'm glad you waited, sir. Great to have you on the big program. Hello.

CALLER: Rush Limbaugh, God bless you for all you do. Mega lifelong dittos, sir.

RUSH: Well, thank you. I appreciate that very much.

CALLER: Yes, sir. My question for you is I saw on Fox and a couple other sites that the Obama administration is pushing for people making 45,000 or less a year to become eligible for overtime pay. And as a guy whose only regret is never being able to vote for Ronald Reagan, I kind of want to know what the catch is.

RUSH: I'm looking. I've got a sound bite on this. If I can find it, and we can actually hear what Obama said -- it is. Grab audio sound bite -- I wonder if we've got two. Hang on just a second. I'm sorry to waste time trying to find it. I've got 12. 20 and 21? Let me see if I can find 20 and 21 very quick. (muttering) No. No. Grab number 12. This is Chris Cuomo today talking with the White House Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz about Obama's overtime plan. He says: "You're doing what the private sector says you shouldn't do, don't mess with wages. Let business decide what the right pay scale is."

MUNOZ: In the seventies more than 60% of the salaried workforce was covered by overtime. We're going back to a point at which salaried workers can expect those kinds of protections. Ultimately that's good for the economy. If the business community wants to argue that the salary threshold should be set as it is now, at a level which is below the poverty rate for a family of four, I just think it's really hard to argue that that's good for the country and good for workers or good for the economy.

RUSH: I don't know. You start talking about trying to recreate what was happening in the seventies, and that's Jimmy Carter, and that's stagnation. But, again, it's meddling. I don't really know what the catch is with this other than government meddling. Who's talking overtime? We've got an unemployment rate of 42.5 % in this country. Anyway, look, Chase, we'll talk about this more tomorrow 'cause I'm really out of time today, but I'm glad you called.

END TRANSCRIPT

ABC and NBC Fail to Label Far-Left Greek Government in Debt Coverage -

Media trying to Keep up with each other on the Ass Kissing and not reporting the real news!

In their coverage Monday night of the debt crisis in Greece, ABC and NBC refused to label the current Greek government as socialist, far-left, or even left-wing with ABC neglecting to even explain why Greece has found itself in such a precarious position as they stand to possibly default on their billions of dollars in debt and/or leave the Eurozone.

On NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt reported the situation as “troubling news on Wall Street” Monday as “a long-running economic crisis” in Greece “is reaching critical mass” with it “teetering on the brink of bankruptcy right now.”

In Athens, correspondent Kerry Sanders characterized the southeastern European nation as being “on the brink and angry at the European Union” for simply “demanding a $1.8 billion loan payment due tomorrow.”

As for why the country’s in dire straits, Sanders put it in rather simple terms, but failed to point out the role voters themselves have played in repeatedly elected governments that have neglected to fully address the problem:

This crisis has been building for years. Greece living beyond its means. European lenders demanding harsh austerity measures, but today, with long lines and high anxiety, engineers, office workers, real people say they fear politicians are ruining the future for the next generation.

When it came to covering this on ABC’s World News Tonight, Greece was almost an afterthought in its own segment as the focus was more devoted to the effect that the crisis has had on American stocks and 401(k)s.

Fill-in anchor Amy Robach began the one-minute-and-16-second segment by telling viewers that she didn’t have “good news, unfortunately, tonight for American 401(k)s” with “Wall Street in a freefall....[s]parked by jitters overseas, [and] Greece on the brink of bankruptcy.” Robach then brought in chief business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis and told her that “everyone wants to know what this means for Americans' 401(k)s.”

Jarvis responded that people should expect “more volatility ahead at least until we have some sort of resolution on Greece,” but urged viewers to “to keep this all in perspective” since “[o]ur market is still near all-time highs and even after today's declines, most of those retirement savings accounts, Amy, most of them are basically flat for the year.”

In contrast to both networks, the CBS Evening News offered both the most coverage and the only label for the Greek government. Prior to a report from foreign correspondent Holly Williams, anchor Scott Pelley explained, in part, that “[f]inancial markets today slipped on Greece and the uncertainty of what will happen when that country defaults on its debts, likely tomorrow.”

Filing from Greece, Williams explained that “Greece’s economy never recovered” from the global financial crisis of 2008 despite two bailouts that’s added up to “$250 billion of debt, including nearly $2 billion due tomorrow, which it cannot pay.”

It was then that Williams brought up the current Greek government that she labeled as being “left-wing”:

In January, Greece elected a left-wing government that promised to renegotiate with foreign creditors, but instead of getting a better deal, on Friday, Greek officials walked out of talks to extend the bailout, signaling they'd rather default on the country's loans than accept more cutbacks. If Greece votes no to the terms of the bailout in the referendum on Sunday, it could then default on a series of loans, bringing more hardship to Greece and even forcing the country to leave the single European currency.

This crisis has been building for years. Greece living beyond its means. European lenders demanding harsh austerity measures, but today, with long lines and high anxiety, engineers, office workers, real people say they fear politicians are ruining the future for the next generation.

It was then that Williams brought up the current Greek government that she labeled as being “left-wing”:

In January, Greece elected a left-wing government that promised to renegotiate with foreign creditors, but instead of getting a better deal, on Friday, Greek officials walked out of talks to extend the bailout, signaling they'd rather default on the country's loans than accept more cutbacks. If Greece votes no to the terms of the bailout in the referendum on Sunday, it could then default on a series of loans, bringing more hardship to Greece and even forcing the country to leave the single European currency.

The relevant portion of the transcript from the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley on June 29 can be found below.

CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley
June 29, 20156:33 p.m. Eastern

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: Debt Crisis]

SCOTT PELLEY: Financial markets today slipped on Greece and the uncertainty of what will happen when that country defaults on its debts, likely tomorrow. The Dow lost 350 points, about 2 percent. The S&P was down more than 2 percent, as was the NASDAQ. Greeks will vote this weekend on whether to accept strict austerity in exchange for a bailout or drop the euro as their currency, something that has never happened in Europe before. Holly Williams reports tonight from Athens.

HOLLY WILLIAMS: For six years, Greeks have had their taxes raised and their pensions slashed, and once again today, they took their anger to the streets of Athens.

(....)

WILLIAMS: As Greece teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, some have panicked, withdrawing $1.5 billion from their accounts since Friday. The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras vowed that nobody would lose their savings and called for calm, but the government was so worried there could be a run on the banks, it ordered them to shut for a week and limited withdrawals to just $70 a day. Hit hard by the financial crisis of 2008, Greece's economy never recovered, and after two financial bailouts, it’s drowning in more than $250 billion of debt, including nearly $2 billion due tomorrow, which it cannot pay. In January, Greece elected a left-wing government that promised to renegotiate with foreign creditors, but instead of getting a better deal, on Friday, Greek officials walked out of talks to extend the bailout, signaling they'd rather default on the country's loans than accept more cutbacks. If Greece votes no to the terms of the bailout in the referendum on Sunday, it could then default on a series of loans, bringing more hardship to Greece and even forcing the country to leave the single European currency. That's never happened before in Europe, Scott, and just the fear of it spooked international markets today.

PELLEY: Moving into unknown territory. Holly Williams reporting for us from Athens. Holly, thank you.

- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/curtis-houck/2015/06/29/abc-nbc-fail-label-far-left-greek-government-debt-coverage#sthash.tbcUl8AL.dpuf

Activists Plan to Burn American Flags in New York City Ahead of Fourth of July

I just Hope these Cockroaches wrap themselves with the flag first!

A group calling for the immediate disarmament of the New York Police Department plans to burn American flags in a Brooklyn park on Wednesday, just days before the Fourth of July holiday.

“Disarm NYPD” announced the “Burn the American Flags” event on Facebook, inviting individuals to join the organization at Fort Greene Park to “set fire to this symbol of oppression.”

An American flag burns during a 2011 protest in Pakistan. (ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Organizers said accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof wasn’t an “isolated actor,” but a “product of a consistent pattern of state-sponsored terrorism and radicalized dehumanization in America.” The event originally was aimed at burning the Confederate flag, but later changed to focus on the stars and stripes.

“There will be no peace until we tear down this system of oppression,” the group wrote on Facebook. “It isn’t enough to take the flag down; we must put an end to white supremacy once and for all.”

After the event attracted online attention, “Disarm NYPD” defended the event in an online statement.

“We find it a sign of the times that people can care so much about a piece of cloth, while at the same time be so quiet about black churches being burned all over the country,” a post on Facebook said. “Perhaps this is the great difference between us and the so-called ‘patriots’. While they express their loyalty to symbols, we express our loyalty to the lives of the oppressed.”

It continued, “We do not believe the ideals of America are anything to be revered. We are building something that will be much better than America. While the so-called patriots yell that we should just leave, we instead choose to dream. We dream of what real freedom looks like: freedom from paramilitaries occupying our communities, beating and killing our sons and daughters; freedom from our communities being destroyed by the speculative capital of gentrification; freedom from mass surveillance; and freedom from systemic racism.”

“So, we will burn the American flag, a symbol of oppression and genocide, and in the same action, dismantle our stunted, cynical expectations of what is possible in the world,” the group’s statement concluded. “The current trajectory of history is unsustainable. It is completely unrealistic to desire things stay as they are, and more unrealistic, even abominable, to desire to ‘go back to our roots’. We, the dreamers, are the true realists. We know things can’t continue this way, so we commit to building a better world. A world better than America.”

According to the “Disarm NYPD” Facebook page, the group’s mission is to “take away power from the powers that be.” The group calls for the immediate disarmament of the NYPD and demands the “demobilization of the police form our neighborhoods.”

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan expressed contempt for the American flag last week, telling hundreds gathered in a D.C. church that it is a symbol of racism and needs to be brought down.

Last Tuesday, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh made a prediction that the American flag would “come under assault” after the Confederate flag. At the time he said, “Do not doubt me.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/30/activists-plan-to-burn-american-flags-in-new-york-city-ahead-of-fourth-of-july/

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015