Category Archives: Debt

UPDATED: Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed’ (More Gloom)

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Debt, Democrats, Fascism, Homeland Security, Liberty, Paleoconservatism, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

The following excerpt is from “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” my new WND.COM column:

“Last week, this column explained the divide between Americans and their ‘Overlords Who Art in D.C.’ I asked that you quit invoking words too weak to describe that divide. ‘Disconnect,’ ‘disrespect’: These are soft designations; they don’t begin to bridge the moat that separates you from your sovereigns.

Proper metaphors for the relationship between The Great Unwashed and the government that literally has them by the genitals is that of ruled and ruler, Rome and its provinces, Imperial China and its peasants.

If you’re a tax payer — at least 50 percent of Americans are tax consumers — you are the Beltway’s bitch.

So stop beseeching sinecured statists for ‘hope’ and ‘change.’ They will never know what it’s like to slum it in your neighborhoods. They’ll never experience the effects of inflation and rising prices as you will; they’ve voted themselves salaries twice as high as yours and pensions in perpetuity. You’re paying.

Think of yourself as a servant, your nose pressed against your master’s mansion windows. That’s how I felt as I drove through the suburbs of Northern Virginia, in October of this year. I saw what Peggy Noonan lushly described in her Wall Street Journal column, excerpted by John Derbyshire in his full and fair assessment of the tottering American experiment, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism …

The complete column is “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” now on WND.COM.

Avail yourself of my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, on Kindle.

Merry Xmas to all,
ILANA

UPDATE (Dec. 25): “IT’S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME” (as the Beatles lyrics go). The Powers that Be thought “Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim” (and also happens to have “the equivalent of a pacemaker”), needed a reminder of her ordeal.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.
“I turned to the police officer and said, ‘I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'” and they said, ‘No, you have to do this,'” she said.
Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.
“I told them, ‘No, I’m not going to have my breasts felt,’ and she said, ‘Yes, you are,'” said Hirschkind.
When Hirschkind refused, she says that “the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security.”
An ABIA spokesman says it is TSA policy that anyone activating a security alarm has two options. One is to opt out and not fly, and the other option is to subject themselves to an enhanced pat down. Hirschkind refused both and was arrested.

Hey, what do you know: A noisy, irate, flying public has changed the behavior of their sovereigns not a whit. Who would have thunk? (See “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed.”)

And what do memebers of the sheep herd say about a middle aged, ill American lady being mauled by rabid TSA dogs?

“I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it,” said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

It matters not a bit that “less than three percent of travelers get a pat-down.” This practice is a matter of policy, not happenstance. Theoretically, everyone could be molested, very many are. No freedom loving individual should be consoled by the repulsive, “rare-occurrence” excuse.

UPDATED: Deadbeat States

Debt, Economy, States' Rights

Socialism is secondary to state squandering—and a consequence of it. America is a debtor nation. The defining characteristic of the Unites States is debt—public and private; macro and micro, federal and state.

I sincerely hope you are not invested in municipal bonds. The “$3 trillion municipal bond market, where state and local governments go to finance their schools, highways, and other projects,” is about to come crashing down.

“60 Minutes” (CBS): “By now, just about everyone in the country is aware of the federal deficit problem, but you should know that there is another financial crisis looming involving state and local governments.”

It has gotten much less attention because each state has a slightly different story. But in the two years, since the ‘great recession’ wrecked their economies and shriveled their income, the states have collectively spent nearly a half a trillion dollars more than they collected in taxes. There is also a trillion dollar hole in their public pension funds.

The states have been getting by on billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds, but the day of reckoning is at hand. The debt crisis is already making Wall Street nervous, and some believe that it could derail the recovery, cost a million public employees their jobs and require another big bailout package that no one in Washington wants to talk about.

‘The most alarming thing about the state issue is the level of complacency,’ Meredith Whitney, one of the most respected financial analysts on Wall Street and one of the most influential women in American business, told correspondent Steve Kroft.

Whitney made her reputation by warning that the big banks were in big trouble long before the 2008 collapse. Now, she’s warning about a financial meltdown in state and local governments.

‘It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States, and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy'” …

“…The problem with that, according to Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney, is that no one really knows how deep the holes are. She and her staff spent two years and thousands of man hours trying to analyze the financial condition of the 15 largest states. She wanted to find out if they would be able to pay back the money they’ve borrowed and what kind of risk they pose to the $3 trillion municipal bond market, where state and local governments go to finance their schools, highways, and other projects.

‘How accurate is the financial information that’s public on the states? And municipalities,’ Kroft asked.

‘The lack of transparency with the state disclosure is the worst I have ever seen …’ Whitney said”

MORE.

UPDATE (Dec. 21): The Guardian (UK) has taken note: “US states have spent nearly half a trillion dollars more than they have collected in taxes, and face a $1tn hole in their pension funds. … American cities and states have debts in total of as much as $2tn.”

Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.

Ancient History, Debt, Elections, Glenn Beck, Government, IMMIGRATION, Inflation, Morality, Taxation, The State

“Glenn Beck and his faithful are dead wrong. Our overlords Who Art in D.C. will forever be incapable of sympathizing with us; will never respect us or our ‘God-given rights’; and will always rob us blind. Why? Because they can.

Contrary to what some of my countrymen believe, not even praying hard will send us a fatherly figure that resembles an American Founder to deliver us of the rotating kleptocracy that has taken up permanent residence in Washington and its surrounds.

Like the migrant flotsam and jetsam inflowing from Latin America, the imperial government and governing class are going nowhere.

Yes, how about that? Americans venture into Mexico at their own peril. Some have been killed on that country’s border. Still, politicians and their enabling pointy heads have looked obedient Americans in the proverbial eyes and told them that the fabric of their communities is renewed by endless immigration; that humanity has the natural right to venture here there and everywhere; and that, although they are suffering near Grecian joblessness, they should, ‘shut-up and pay up.’

A bloodbath of a midterm election has done nothing to stop the slash-and-burn Congress — ducks that should be lamed — from concocting bogus tax relief that increases the cost and burden of government, and guarantees that Americans pay for the accreting oink sector, if not through taxes, then by way of debt and dollars devalued.

How is that possible?

Across the pond, governments have begun courageously slashing their spending so deeply as to send the moochers and the looters of their societies rioting into the streets. Stateside, the government is in the midst of orgiastic outlays. Egged on by media ‘experts,’ journos, party strategists and TV tartlets (Republican and Democrat), Washington (Left and Right) behaves as if the events underway over there have no bearing back here, in debt-laden America.

At $14 trillion, America’s OPD (Outstanding Public Debt) almost equals its GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Yet the comitatus — ‘the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals’ — see nothing wrong with a proposed 1,924 page Omnibus bill, worth 1.2 trillion gigabucks.

In the book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome, Cullen Murphy draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America, down to the contemporary ‘musicians’ [that would be Bono and Bon Jovi, surely], ‘the courtesans, diviners, buffoons … the people who taste the emperor’s food before he himself does … the core groups of bureaucrats and toadies who function within the nimbus of great power.’ The domain name ‘USA.gov.’, if you will.” …

More in my new column, “Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.” Read it now on WND.COM.

Just in time for Christmas, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is now available on Kindle.

Tax Cuts? Baloney! Government Burden Has Grown

Debt, Government, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation

I understand why trusted and trustworthy representatives such as Ron Paul would vote for the tax-cut deal that has passed the Senate today (Wednesday).

Ron Paul: Pro, in an interview with Andrew Napolitano.

I certainly want to support the tax extension… they may put enough stuff in there to make me reconsider, but right now I would not want to participate in raising taxes on people.

[Via Slate]

As POLITICO put it: “House Republicans trying to tamp down discontent in their ranks from fiscal conservatives are issuing a simple message: This isn’t the bill we would’ve written, but it’s good enough.”

At work is the dreaded “compromise,” a word that sounds good, but is not: “the only time you want your representative to reach across the aisle is to grab a Democrat or an errant Republican by the throat.”

Since the above are my fighting words—political compromise is always a blow to principles—I’m with Peter Schiff, with some reservations. I disagree that “the compromise extension of the Bush era tax cuts” amounts to a “$900 billion package.” Tax cuts are never a cost. Since taxation is theft, a thief that has failed to secure the loot for himself has no right to write-off his losses. besides, money that is not taken by the state is money liberated, saved from waste. (The extension of unemployment benefits in the Bill did not amount to $900 Bil.)

“In truth however, there are no real tax cuts in this proposal. The true burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes but how much it spends. Since this deal ensures that government will be more expensive next year than it was this year, American citizens will have to shoulder the added cost. Just because Congress has decided to deliver the bill with debt rather than current taxes does not mean that the spending will not be paid for. The only thing the plan accomplishes is to alter the means by which government spending is financed.”