August 2010 Blog Posts (35)

Pundits will debate whether the crowd at Glenn Beck's Saturday rally in Washington was the largest in recent political history, but it was certainly among the most impressive.

Mr. Beck is a television host and radio broadcaster with a checkered past and a penchant for incendiary remarks. But if he's judged by the quality of people of all colors that he attracted to the Lincoln Memorial, his stock can't help but rise.…

Record Number In Government Anti-Poverty Programs

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA Today shows. That's up at least 17 percent since the recession began in December 2007.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit,…

FDR And The Lessons Of The Depression

In 1937, after several years of partial recovery from the Great Depression, the U.S. economy fell into a sharp recession. The episode has become a lightning rod in the ongoing debate about whether the economy needs further increases in government spending to keep employment from declining even more. The economy did not tank in 1937 because government spending declined. Increases in tax rates, particularly capital income tax rates, and the…

Obama's Failed Stimulus Program Cost More Than The Iraq War

"The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq." As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by the political Left. The key point is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) puts the total cost at $709 billion.

To put that…

California simply cannot solve its budgetary problems without addressing government employee compensation and benefits, says Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California.

As former Speaker of the State Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown pointed out earlier this year, roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Those costs have been rising fast. Spending on California's state employees over…

In response to the economic crisis, America and Germany followed different policy paths. According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of GDP on their stimulus. This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right, asks David Brooks, a columnist with the New York Times?

The early returns suggest the Germans were,…

One of the things that makes it tough to figure out how much has to be charged for insurance is that people behave differently when they are insured from the way they behave when they are not insured.

In other words, if one person out of 10,000 has his car set on fire, and it costs an average of $10,000 to restore the car to its previous condition, then it might seem as if charging one dollar to all 10,000 people would be enough to cover the cost of paying $10,000 to the one person…

Nearly 50 Percent Leave Obama Mortgage-Aid Program

Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out. The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday's report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, say economists.

For…

A LITTLE GUN HISTORY

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. >From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Germany established gun…

Armey: Tea Party Movement Will Revolutionize GOP…

Dismantling America: Part IV

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?

Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7xjAs1UuA

Jeremy Hoop song

This is from an accountant and precinct delegate from Rose Township...

If all, or some, of this becomes law next year we could be in real

trouble! We won't see any final changes until later this year. I can't

believe Congress could let all these changes become law.

PS, I don't think snopes or anybody knows for sure what will be the

final changes until later this year.

Startling!!!!! And very disturbing.

In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the…

The Next Pension Bailout

Congress is gone for August but that hasn't stopped unions from quietly mobilizing to push through a big new priority this fall: a pension bailout. Big Labor is going Code Red on the issue, in the face of a looming accounting change that would force companies to confront the Ponzi-style nature of multi-employer pension plans, says the Wall Street Journal.

Currently, there are some 1,500 union-run retirement vehicles which fall into this class, in…

Bean-Counters and Baloney

http://townhall.com/content/6ed0d363-c438-46a6-ab0d-e8074759d263