Thursday, December 5, 2013
Living on the Edge of a Volcano
By Alan Caruba,
Living on planet Earth these days is
much like living on the edge of a volcano that can erupt at any time and which
rumbles ominously all the time.
After three decades in which the
United Nations and countless “environmental” organizations have tried to
convince everyone that “global warming” and then “climate change” (the
rebranding that occurred when the former reversed itself into a cooling cycle)
was occurring, the effort to use this hoax to redistribute wealth from
developed to undeveloped nations is pretty much at an end. Meanwhile, billions
have been squandered at home and in other nations on “renewable energy” and all
manner of “research”, largely based on phony computer models, complete with
claims of a “consensus” that never existed.
Every so often a volcano erupts and
the people are told to evacuate. Only, on planet Earth, there is no place to
run because the systems developed to move money around are so rigged and so
flawed that the systems are now in serious trouble. It portends default and
collapse, something that nations try to avoid but which occur with regularity,
along with recessions.
The present example is the printing
of money backed by nothing more than the "full faith and credit of the
United States" by the U.S. Federal Reserve bank which it then uses to
purchase U.S. debt.
The United States is a volcano whose
many social programs, all devoted to the redistribution of wealth by the government,
are reaching a point of such an eruption; insolvency. Their need for reform is
widely known, but there is no political will to make such reforms.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration keeps
expanding them in the form of disability payments, food stamps, and, of course,
Obamacare, the takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy. It is such a huge
disaster that no one can ignore it. The only solution is to repeal the law, but
that is not going to happen for at least three more years while an incompetent
narcissist and pathological liar remains in office. The progressive agenda is
being pressed by the Democratic Party which is now just another name for the
Communist Party.
As if problems at home were not so
serious, the efforts of the President to downsize America’s role in the world
is causing other nations to sense weakness and, of course, seek to take
advantage of it. China, whose landmass is 3,705,407 square miles, has recently
announced that it wants to expand its territorial outreach to include some
islands that Japan has long maintained as part of its territory. The response
has largely been tepid at this point, but if China’s claims are granted, it
will expand on them. Treaties in effect would require the U.S. to go to war to
defend Japan’s interests.
Other global problems include the
expansion of Islamic fascism beyond the Middle East to include a more vigorous
effort in North Africa, the sub-Sahara, and other nations to include Somalia.
The threat is manifest enough for Muslim nations to engage in the effort to
eliminate groups like the stateless al Qaeda. In recent times, some nations
have seen the overthrow of dictators who have plundered them. They include
Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. In some cases this has created opportunities for the
Islamists. Egypt has responded by outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran
has just increased by several factors when the United States led a group of
European nations, plus Russia and China, in an effort to stop resisting Iran in
favor of opening up its economy to various business deals that the sanctions
imposed by the United Nations have deterred. It’s short-term self-interest
versus a predictable nuclear holocaust. Previous efforts with North Korea
failed.
Largely unknown to the world’s
population is the way globalization has put every nation at risk should any of
the world’s nations default on their debt. This has happened in the past, but
not in the way a future default—particularly by the United States—would plunge
the world into a financial crisis that no one can even imagine.
The U.S. is already seriously in debt
with a gross domestic product (GDP)of some $14 trillion annually versus debt of
various descriptions that range from $17 trillion in borrowed money to many
trillions more in “unfunded” debt in the form of its social programs in which
the U.S. collects money from its employed population and redistributes it to
those unemployed. Unfunded obligations are now estimated to be around 90
trillion dollars. The so-called “trusts” of these programs is a fiction. The
federal government has used that money to pay its on-going debts.
The current actual and estimated debt
will affect the lives of today’s children, grandchildren, and future
generations. It will take a hundred years to dig out from such debt.
U.S. budgets do not reflect “events”
that can and will occur such as natural disasters. Wars break out when one
least expects them. 9/11 was such an event. It drained ten trillion dollars
from the economy. The various Wall Street “bubbles” collapse. The budgets are
in many ways works of fiction.
The largest population the Earth has
ever known, seven billion and growing, is perhaps the biggest volcano of all.
Much of the population continues to live in actual or relative poverty. Much of
it is aging at the same time fertility rates worldwide decline. Intellectuals
keep calling for reducing the population by allowing as many as possible to die
by denying them medical care.
Vast numbers of the population are
voting with their feet. They migrate to wherever jobs and more freedom exist.
The U.S. has not secured its southern border. Europe is under siege by
migration from the Middle East and Africa.
The volcanoes of population and
weakened economies are rumbling louder these days.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
Wednesday,
December 4, 2013
By
Alan Caruba
On
Thursday, December 5, there will be protests in more than a hundred cities
across the nation directed at fast food chains, demanding an increase of the
minimum wage to $15.00. Those who may be interviewed for radio and television
will talk of receiving “a living wage.”
In
his 2013 State of the Union speech, President Obama called for an increase in
the $7.25 minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. It should come as no surprise that one
of the President’s most active supports has been the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU). It was identified on the liberal website,
Salon.com, as “a key player” behind the strikes.
Don’t
expect the mainstream media to ask who’s behind the strikes or, if informed,
ask what their agenda is. The reporting will be mostly people with sad stories.
You are not likely to hear about the National Employment Law Project, a liberal
activist group that, since 2000, has received more than $1 million from George
Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
When
the government cracked down on ACORN, community organizers with whom Obama was
associated, one of its reorganized groups became the New York Communities for
Change (NYCC). The director of NYCC is also the director of Fast Food Forward,
a group that advocates for raising the minimum wage. What emerges is a network
of Leftist organizations and unions who have their own agenda, the fundamental
transformation of America.
Being
poor is hell, but being unemployed is even worse...unless you are receiving
government benefits from free cell phones to food stamps, disability insurance,
et cetera. Across the nation, fast food chains provide employment opportunities
for hundreds of thousands, but most especially as an entry-level job for the
young.
The
concept of minimum wage laws began back in 1938 when the Great Depression was
raging (not unlike today). The Fair Labor Standards Act set the minimum wage at
$.25 cents per hour. After a succession of increases, it reached $5.15 in 1997
and is currently $7.25 an hour.
Being
conservative, I have some real problems with the government setting such
requirements because there are often unintended consequences. The Concise
Encyclopedia of Economics has a section devoted to the minimum wage, noting
that, while it can and does set wages, it cannot guarantee a job. Indeed,
“several decades of studies using aggregate time-series data from a variety of
countries have found that minimum wage laws reduce employment.”
The
Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, notes that “The problem
with minimum-wage increases is that they reduce access to these entry-level
jobs. It is a basic tenet of economics that when the price of something rises,
people buy less of it.” Liberals seem incapable of understanding this. They are
all about “fairness” in a world that was never fair. Equality before the law is
not the same as equality of who your parents are, where you live, the education
you received, or whether you possess the skills to secure a higher wage than
others.
So,
while you watch the TV coverage of the protesters, keep in mind that they are
demanding a wage increase that will actually reduce the number of jobs
available as businesses, mostly small to medium in size, decide to lay off
workers or just not hire more through automation. Keep in mind, too, that the
unions’ interest in this issue is one of signing up more members whose dues
will contribute to the lifestyle of their leaders and ability to use that money
to support and influence liberal candidates and office-holders.
“In
addition to making jobs hard to find, minimum wage laws,” says the Encyclopedia
of Economics, “may also harm workers by changing how they are compensated.
Fringe benefits—such as paid vacation, free room and board, inexpensive
insurance, subsidized child care, and on-the-job training—are an important part
of the total compensation package for many low-wage workers.”
In
the end, an increased minimum wage in fast food establishments might well doom
the McDonalds dollar menu and other low-cost items offered by other chains. A
recent article on The
Daily Caller quoted Michael Saltsman, the research director at the
Employment Policies Institute, who noted that “McDonalds in Europe replaced a
lot of their workers with touch screens. So instead of placing your order with
a person, you are placing it with a computer screen. There is even technology
that exists now to automate burger-making.”
The
FACTS clearly suggest that increasing the minimum wage runs counter to all the
protester’s demands for “a living wage.” I suspect that many who are employed
by the fast food chains and retailers like Wal-Mart are pleased to being
receiving a regular check in these hard times, even if they have to hold down
more than one job to get by.
Only
the Left and the unions seem to have anything to gain from these protests.
They, however, thrive on demonizing big corporations while the reality of those
working for minimum wage these days—52%--work for small businesses with less
than a hundred employees.
These
protests—and there are more planned for the summer—are completely
counter-productive for the low-wage workers and their families, but it is
doubtful they have any understanding of this fundamental truth.
In
the end, we are all in the same boat, a nation whose growing debt, spawned by
too much government spending and borrowing, is the greatest threat.
©
Alan Caruba, 2013
Tuesday, December
3, 2013
"The
budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should
be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and
the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome
What
was true for Rome is true for America. President Obama may know little about
history and less about economics, but he is relentlessly destroying America and
has been since he first took office in 2009.
In
September, the Gallup polling organization, reported that “Americans’ trust in
‘the American people’ to make judgments about political issues facing the
country has declined each year since 2009 and, at 61%, is down nearly 20
percentage points from its recent peak in 2005. Still, that exceeds the 46% of
Americans who trust the ‘men and women…who either hold or are running for
public office,’ which is one point above the historical low from 2011.”
“The
results are based on Gallup’s annual Governance survey, conducted Sept 5-8. The
same poll found that American’s trust in the federal government to handle
domestic and international problems, their trust in the news media, and their
trust in the three branches of the federal government, and in state and local
governments are all at or near historical lows.”
In
the end, the primary currency of government is the trust people put in its
ability to respond to the problems they encounter in their daily lives.
As
of October, more than ninety million Americans were out of work. The data the
federal government publishes is not trustworthy. It is manipulated for
political gain. By October, even the Bureau of Labor Statistics had to admit
that 90.6
million Americans over the age of 16 were not in the labor force--an
all-time high.
Writing
in Investor’s Business Daily, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of
New York, noted that “After four and a half years of the Obama presidency, an
unprecedented number of Americans have given up looking for work, wages are
stagnating, low-wage earners are suffering most and the U.S. is fast becoming a
nation of part-time workers.”
An
October CNS News article reported that “Americans who were recipients of
means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time
workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also
out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.” The figures worked out
to about 1.7 people getting some form of means-tested government benefit for
every one person working full-time year round.
In
September, CNS News reported that “A record 23,116,928 American households were
enrolled in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP)---AKA food stamps---during the month of June, according to data released
this month by the Department of Agriculture. That outnumbers the 20,618,000
households that the Census Bureau estimated were in the entire Northeastern
United States as of the second quarter of 2013.”
Also
in September, CNS News reported that “During the four years that marked
President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of
American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty
increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released by the Census
Bureau. The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United
States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than
twice the population of Syria,” a nation that has lost 100,000 people in its
civil war.
“In
2008,” the CNS News report noted, “the year Obama was elected, people in
poverty represented 13.2 percent of the national population. In 2012, they
represented 15.0 percent of the population.” And, in 2012, Americans either
went to the polls or stayed home sufficiently to reelect Obama. Obama
supporters in effect voted to continue the nation’s poverty rates.
In
late January, the Federal Reserve released data that revealed that its holdings
of U.S. government debt had increased to an all-time record of
$1,696,691,000,000 as of the close of day. The Fed’s holdings of U.S.
government debt had increased by 257 percent since President Obama was first inaugurated
in 2009. It is the single largest holder of U.S. government debt. China is the
largest foreign holder of this debt.
“The
misery is not going to end soon,” wrote Mort Zuckerman, the editor-in-chief of
the U.S. News and World Report, in a July Wall Street Journal commentary,
noting that the economy represents “the weakest gross domestic product (GDP)
growth since World War II. This anemic growth is all we have to show for the
greatest fiscal and monetary stimuli in 75 years, with fiscal deficits of over
10% of GDP in four consecutive years.”
Over
the past five years, the U.S. spent $3.7 trillion on welfare. That includes
approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. That
figure is nearly five times greater than the combined amount spent on NASA,
education, and all federal transportation projects over that time.
You
don’t have to be an economist to see that Obama embarked on a deliberate
program to impoverish as many Americans as possible since taking office in
2009. If this is not a cause for impeachment than nothing is, but he will not
be impeached. Instead, he will continue to attack all aspects of the economy.
Obamacare is the ultimate example of this.
Monday, December
2, 2013
By
Alan Caruba
"Of
all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most
oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent
moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity
may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will
torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own
conscience." - C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many
other works of literature.
It is
one of the great mysteries that, for progressives, also called liberals, the
past provides no lessons, no warnings that would prevent them from repeating
their errors. Progressives are always focused on a magical future in which
there will be no wars, no hunger, no poverty. Their belief in the
redistribution of wealth—communism—is, in Winston Churchill’s words, “the equal
sharing of misery.”
Obamacare
is a perfect example of the progressive inability to accept that socialism
and/or communism simply does not work. It depends on coercion and in the case
of communism it left hundreds of millions dead in its wake over the course of
the last century. Obamacare depends on (1) the belief that human nature will
change—which it will not—and (2) the lies to implement it.
The
news is filled with the failure of the government, despite the expenditure of
hundreds of millions of dollars, to provide a working website. Even assuming
that the technical problems are solved, the failure of Obamacare is built-in
because Americans have always enjoyed a culture of independence, despite the
creep of government programs that occurred over the last half century.
The trust in the federal government, of Congress,
is at an all-time low.
Social
Security is insolvent or soon will be. Medicare was rendered even more
insolvent when billions were transferred to Obamacare. Medicaid will bankrupt
states as thousands more sign up for this program of minimal medical service.
As
I listened to and read about the Obamacare roll-out, I was reminded of an
earlier program that was adopted, Prohibition. It involved a nationwide ban on
the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
It was the law of the land from 1920 until 1933. When it went into effect it
was hailed as a victory for public morals and health. By the time it was
repealed with the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, Americans had
seen the growth of organized crime, the corruption that permitted ordinary
citizens to ignore it, and the loss of the taxes to fund other aspects of
governance.
Wikipedia
notes that “By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to
100,000 speakeasy clubs” where liquor was sold. Prohibition proved nearly
impossible to implement and enforce."
Barack
Obama represents the high-water mark of progressives to impose communism on
America. A totalitarian form of government, we have witnessed how his
administration has turned the Internal Revenue Service into a political
instrument to suppress its opponents and has expanded the National Security
Agency into a means to spy on all Americans, accessing every piece of
communication between them. Obamacare enables the government to know every bit
of information about individual’s health records.
It
is, as C.S. Lewis said, “tyranny exercised for the good of its victims.” Even
so, the progressives ignore the failure of communism in the former Soviet Union
and the decision of China to move to a capitalist economy while endeavoring to
retain a single party government that is encountering increasing protests and
resistance from its population.
Obamacare
is being imposed at the same time that socialist healthcare programs are in
retreat in Europe. In Britain, the government led by Prime Minister David
Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National
Health Service (NHS) in an effort to avoid the Greek-style financial meltdown
that threatens the European Union member states. Cameron’s argument for the
bill is that there is too much bureaucracy in the NHS system and that it
interferes will patient care. NHS is based on the rationing of medical care as
opposed to the free market system where costs are determined by supply.
As
reported in a recent article by Arnold Ahlert on Front Page Magazine.com, “Last
November, such rationing reached a scandalous level. A study by the
Co-operation and Competition Panel revealed that Primary Care Trust heads were
imposing arbitrary spending caps, denying patients procedures such as hip
replacements and cataract removals—and that waiting times for services were
seen” to be deliberately extended ‘so patients would go private or die before
they were seen,’ to slash costs.”
Obamacare,
as has been widely reported, has increased the costs of healthcare insurance,
particularly for the young on whom the system relies to pay for the costs of
caring for the elderly. It has led to the cancellation of millions of
healthcare insurance plans and millions more will lose their plans.
In
a November 30 Washington Times article by Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, it is
reported that the inherent unconstitutionality of Obamacare will bring about
its end. Cases making their way through the judicial system such as Sebelius v.
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp v. Sebelius, Indiana v. IRS,
Pruitt v. Sebelius, “may be the final nails in the coffin of Obamacare.” The
first two cases cited will likely be heard in March with a final ruling in the
summer of 2014. There are others such as Halbig v. Sebelius, King v. Sebelius,
the Independent Payment Advisory Board, as well as the HHS employer mandate and
origination clause challenges are among the many cases challenging the basis of
Obamacare.
Finally,
in the November 2014 midterm elections, political pundits are virtually
unanimous in the prediction that Democrats will be driven from their control of
the Senate and Republicans will increase their control of the House.
Obamacare
is the ultimate expression of the progressive and/or liberal approach to
government and it is, just as was the case of Prohibition, the increasing
resistance of the American public and will be, at some point, repealed.
©
Alan Caruba, 2013
Saturday,
November 30, 2013
By
Alan Caruba
The
“knockout game” is in the news these days along with much discussion of
bullying. Football is a game of violence with rules in which players frequently
sustain injuries. Terrorism has been adopted to advance the Islamic goal of
global domination. And the administration just announced an agreement with Iran
in a vain effort to slow their intention to join the nuclear club of nations
with the capacity to kill thousands, if not millions.
It
is impossible not to conclude that violence is not built into the DNA of
mankind.
In
his 2007 book, “The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of
War”, David Livingston Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of
New England, wrote: “The track record of our species shows, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, that we are extremely dangerous animals, and the balance of evidence
suggests that our taste for killing is not some sort of cultural artifact, but
was bred into us over millions of years by natural and sexual selections.”
On
the plus side, he wrote “But we have also seen that there is something in human
nature that recoils from killing and pulls us in the opposite direction.”
It’s
worthwhile to take a moment to contemplate violence. A statistical analysis,
Smith noted, reveals the constancy of war. “Looking at forty-one modern
nation-states between 1800 and 1945, we find that they average 1.4 wars per
generation and 18.5 years of war per generation.”
“Almost
200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last
century, and there is no end of slaughter in sight,” wrote Smith. “The threat
hangs over all of us, constant and unrelenting.”
The
brief notice of the slaughter occurring in Syria when poison gas was used is
instructive. A wider war was avoided when Russia stepped in to negotiate the
destruction of this weapon and was occasioned only when President Obama
contemplated military strikes. At this writing, 100,000 Syrians and combatants
have died. It is no longer an on-going news story.
“The
Value of Violence” is a new book by Benjamin Ginsberg. “Honesty would be so
frequently damaging that virtually all politicians and public officials become
practiced liars,” notes Ginsberg, suggesting that “cynicism should be
understood as a reasonable, if mainly intuitive, popular response to the
realities of politics.”
The
deal with Iran, albeit for only six months, was conducted in such secrecy that
none of the members of Congress, including its leadership, were aware of it.
The killing of a U.S. ambassador in 2012 on the anniversary of 9/11 was
immediately surrounded in lies when Americans were told it was initiated by a
video no one had seen, rather than one more episode in the war that Islamic
fascists have engaged in since the 1980s. The nation is trying to extract
itself from Afghanistan after the 2001 act of war we call 9/11 and has left
Iraq after a war whose justification is subject to question. Long wars of
attrition sap the strength and will of even a superpower.
The
reason the deal with Iran is so suspect is the fact that it is the nexus for
much of the terrorism in the world, sponsoring organizations like Hezbollah and
Hamas. It has engaged in every manner of violence from assassination to
kidnapping and hostage-taking.
Ginsberg
notes that “In recent decades, for example, armed insurgents have employed
violence or the threat of violence to overthrow a number of established
regimes. The African continent alone has experienced some eighty-five
successful military coups during the past sixty years.” It is Africa that
mankind evolved, standing upright, and walking to inhabit all the other
continents.
Much
is made of violence in America. It is the daily content of news. “In the United
States alone, nearly one and a half million individuals become the victims of
violence every year—pushed, kicked, pummeled, stabbed, and shot—while tens of
thousands of others are the perpetrators of these same acts.”
Indeed,
America was born in violence as citizens took up arms against the British to
establish the nation. Not that long after, it fought a bloody civil war to
retain the union. The right to bear arms, as much to hold the government in
check as any other, is part of our Constitution. An estimated eighty million
Americans own a gun or rifle or both.
One
can argue that violence on the individual, national, and international level is
the price that humanity pays for its own inherent, even genetic, inclination to
use violence for a wide variety of purposes. It has been used by the great
religions and by nations alike.
It
will not end. Our best efforts can only restrain it within ourselves, but
weakness, too, is an ancient invitation to violence. Appeasement is a trap.
©
Alan Caruba, 2013
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