Paradigms and Demographics

Monday, November 2, 2015

EXCLUSIVE: Wisconsin Senate majority leader, others also targeted in John Doe

By M.D. Kittle @ Wisconsin Watchdog / October 29, 2015 / 43 Comments

Part 274 of 274 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War

MADISON, Wisconsin — This week the Wall Street Journal revealed just how expansive Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation was, targeting not only Badger State conservatives but national political figures such as Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich.

Now Wisconsin Watchdog has learned the unconstitutional probe also went after state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and other Wisconsin conservative leaders who may not be aware that they, too, were targets of a widespread spying operation.

The information comes from the same sealed court documents referenced in the Wall Street Journal editorial board piece published Tuesday. Sources have shared with Wisconsin Watchdog the names of several individuals not listed in the Wall Street Journal editorial.

Sources say Fitzgerald was subpoenaed in the sweeping John Doe investigation pushed by probe partners, the state Government Accountability Board and the Democrat-led Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office.

The Juneau Republican’s name and email address, Scott@votefitzgerald.com, are included on the probe’s spreadsheet of search terms that included prominent national conservatives such as Bush; Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan; Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, also of Wisconsin; Fox News host Sean Hannity; and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Milwaukee County prosecutors sent the spreadsheet of searchable terms to GAB staff, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Fitzgerald spokeswoman Myranda Tanck said the senator is not able to comment at this time. She said Fitzgerald remains hopeful the Senate will take up a bill next week that would overhaul the rogue GAB, Wisconsin’s political speech regulator, although some Republicans reportedly have concerns about portions of the reform package. Democrats oppose it. The measure passed last week in the Republican-led Assembly along party lines.

And while it is not known for sure, there’s evidence to suggest the John Doe investigators tapped into Fitzgerald’s Internet service provider, as they did to many other individuals in years’-long dragnet.

The investigation was driven on the prosecutor’s widely rejected legal theory that the conservative groups and individuals illegally coordinated with Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign during Wisconsin’s bitter recall election season of 2011 and 2012.

Multiple courts have said the prosecutors failed to show probable cause to support that theory, and in July the state Supreme Court declared the John Doe unconstitutional and ordered it shut down.

Fitzgerald, as he does now, led the Senate when unions and their Democratic Party allies attempted through an unprecedented spate of recalls to oust several Republican senators — including Fitzgerald — who voted for Walker’s public-sector collective bargaining reforms know as Act 10.

Wisconsin Watchdog also has learned that John Doe prosecutors grabbed the emails of Michael Grebe, the outgoing president and CEO of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a Milwaukee-based organization that financially supports “democratic capitalism; limited, competent government” and free markets.

Grebe, a former general counsel to the Republican National Committee, in July was brought in to lead Walker’s short-lived presidential campaign.

Also listed in the spreadsheet are former state Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch and young gun conservative activist Nick Ayers, credited for helping to transform the Republican Governors Association.

While the probe trained in on all things Walker, Wisconsin Watchdog has learned the searchable database included Walker’s personal email address, swalkerwi@gmail.com, and his family email, Walkerfamily4wi@gmail.com.

The spreadsheet also includes the names of key probe targets: Eric O’Keefe of the Wisconsin Club for Growth; political strategists R.J. Johnson and Deb Jordahl; Keith Gilkes, who ran Walker’s 2010 and recall campaigns; and former Walker aide Kelly Rindfleisch, the first — and hopefully last — political prisoner of the John Doe saga.

“This is my 25th month looking into this matter and every month I have learned of new abuses by the prosecution team and the GAB,” O’Keefe said when asked about the spreadsheet Thursday. “I’m confident this trend will continue.”

Part 274 of 274 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War.

Ohio Obamacare expansion keeps getting bigger

By Jason Hart @ Ohio Watchdog / October 26, 2015 / 23 Comments

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s Obamacare expansion shattered enrollment projections in its first year, and reliance on the welfare program keeps growing.

There were 634,526 Ohioans enrolled in the Obamacare expansion in September — an increase of more than 140,000 since January — according to the Ohio Department of Medicaid.

Most of the Ohioans on Medicaid under the expansion are working-age adults without children or disabilities. Before Obamacare, Medicaid was restricted to children, the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women and impoverished families.

Pitching Obamacare expansion to the Ohio General Assembly in 2013, the Kasich administration estimated 447,000 would enroll by fiscal year 2020. Actual enrollment exceeded 620,000 by the time fiscal year 2015 ended in June.

Kasich implemented Obamacare expansion after vetoing a legislative ban on the policy, despite publication of a National Bureau of Economic Research study finding Tennessee’s employment increased when the state removed working-age adults from Medicaid.

The Foundation for Government Accountability and other free-market groups warned against extending Medicaid benefits — which come with no work requirements — to every Ohioan whose income is at or below 138 percent of the poverty line.

FGA expects budget-busting enrollment in Ohio and elsewhere will deter more states from chasing Obamacare expansion funding.

“More able-bodied adults have signed up for Gov. Kasich’s unilateral ObamaCare expansion than the administration thought would ever sign up,” FGA research director Jonathan Ingram said in an email to Ohio Watchdog.

“That is costing taxpayers billions more than expected, but the problem goes beyond that,” Ingram said. “Kasich’s expansion will also have a lasting, negative impact on the state’s economy.”

Ohio’s employment and labor force, Ingram added, “may worsen over the coming years, as Medicaid discourages work and, ultimately, shrinks the economy. Research suggests that in Ohio, as many as 93,000 able-bodied adults could drop out of the labor force as a result of Kasich’s expansion.”

In May testimony before the Ohio Senate, the Kasich administration reported only 43 percent of Ohio’s Obamacare expansion enrollees have jobs. The governor’s office did not respond to Ohio Watchdog questions about enrollment.

Kasich staffers weren’t the only Obamacare advocates to undershoot the target with their projections for Medicaid expansion enrollment.

Ohio’s pro-Obamacare newspapers widely disseminated a 2013 Health Policy Institute of Ohio study including enrollment estimates from Ohio State University researchers and the left-leaning Urban Institute.

UI projected 380,313 Ohioans would enroll in Obamacare expansion by fiscal year 2015. OSU researchers’ fiscal year 2015 estimate of 550,050 was low compared to actual June enrollment, but high relative to the monthly average for the full year.

OSU’s initial estimate of 609,264 enrollees in fiscal year 2016 is already falling short — but not as short as UI’s 2016 estimate of 497,799.

HPIO published revised enrollment projections last year, and communications manager Nick Wiselogel told Ohio Watchdog the organization will likely review enrollment trends over the coming months.

Because of backdated eligibility for Ohioans whose health care Medicaid will cover even though they haven’t enrolled in the program yet, September’s enrollment is likely to climb in future Ohio Department of Medicaid caseload reports.

In May, ODM reported there were 509,771 Obamacare expansion enrollees the preceding month. By the time the September caseload report was released, backdated eligibility had increased April enrollment to 606,524.

Comparing the numbers initially reported for each month, Obamacare expansion enrollment has grown by at least 10,000 per month since April — when the state was in the process of settling a lawsuit over ODM’s old method for dropping ineligible enrollees.

As a result of the lawsuit, ODM now uses a “passive redetermination” process, checking tax records and other government databases once a year to confirm Medicaid enrollees still qualify for benefits.

Click here to LEARN HOW TO STEAL OUR STUFF!

Atlas Shrugs

Saint Martin’s Christian festival abolished out of “consideration for the Muslim refugees”
Why? These migrants are coming to our countries from failed, devastated cultures. When and why was it decided that we have to mute and censor our traditions and mores for theirs — a failed society that suffocates and destroys? They are running from devastation and failure; why adopt that? Want to facilitate the “integration of refugees” some daycare supervisor rename the Saint Martin’s processions in “Festival of Lights”. Others reject such a proposal strictly.

Obama’s “Most Trusted” “Favorite” Foreign Leader Erdogan: “Can’t Condemn” ISIS Downing of Passenger Plane

President Erdogan is President Obama’s most trusted and favorite foreign leader. Show me your friends and I will show you who you are. Turkish President Erdoğan: I can’t condemn the Islamic State for shooting down the Russian airplane as it is the natural outcome of Putin’s support for Assad,” AWD News, November 1, 2015, (thanks to The Religion of Peace): According to the Emirates News Agency (WAM), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has raised eyebrows around the world capitals by justifying ISIS terrorists who brought down a Russian passenger plane in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula early saturday, killing all 224 people aboard. “The Russian airplanes are targeting Mujahidin in Syria and partisans...

Pamela Geller, Breitbart News: Facebook, Sky News Pay Jizya to Migrants for Every ‘Hate’ Post; Bild Publishes Lists of ‘Hate’ Posters

There is a new initiative in Germany that donates one euro for every “racist” (Islam is not a race) anti-migrant comment on the Internet. The “Hate Helps” propaganda campaign is organized by an NGO called Demokratische Kultur (ZDK), otherwise known as the Orwellian “Center for Democratic Action” in Germany. And it’s being funded by Facebook and Sky Germany. They will pay 1€ (euro) for each negative post about immigrants. Sky Germany is not the same entity as Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, although Rupert’s son, James...

NYPD undercover officer foiled jihad bomb plot in NYC

This story quotes a Muslim professor saying that “for an undercover to be seeded in a community for that long without a specific target raises some deeply troubling questions about the direction of policing in our city.” What should really raise some deeply troubling questions is that this program was ended by Mayor “Red Bill” de Blasio, and that when it was ended, it was widely reported that it had not resulted in the foiling of a single plot, and only now is it revealed that this undercover agent exposed a jihad bombing plot in the city. Islamic groups and their running dogs on the left decried the “surveillance of innocent Muslims.” Were the Muslims surveilled in this program and indicted in...

Genetic Literacy Project

Uganda’s President Museveni endorses GMOs, tipping scales in reluctant parliament
Isaac Ongu | Genetic Literacy Project
Talking directly to members of the Ugandan Parliament and several farmers who continue to suffer the burden of banana bacterial wilt, Uganda's president challenged members who had doubts about biotechnology to be more forward thinking. Could this be the nail in the Uganda’s anti GMO activists coffin?

Scare stories on ‘uncontrolled spread’ of GMOs spreading uncontrollably: They’re misguided

Roy Williams | Genetic Literacy Project
The world wide web has become inundated with anti-GMO sentiment, spreading fast like an invasive species and casting GMOs as an 'unnatural environmentally dangerous crop.' Could science stop, clarify this new level of hysteria or will this continue to fan the flames of debate?

New study adds steam to chronic fatigue syndrome controversy

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

Jon Cohen | October 29, 2015

The authors of a controversial 2011 trial that showed that exercise and behavioral therapy could help treat chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) released a follow-up study that supports their original findings. But the new report comes on the heels of a lengthy and highly critical examination of the original trial by a journalist. At issue is an $8 million trial run in the United Kingdom, dubbed PACE, which examined a number of treatments for CFS, a disease also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) that has no known cause. In The Lancet, the PACE researchers reported that patients with CFS/ME experienced “moderate improvements” in their symptoms if they did a program of graded exercise or cognitive behavior therapy. Two other interventions tested, so-called specialist medical care and adaptive pacing therapy, did not help.....

Leading on Paris climate treaty?

We should lead from behind – instead of with brains in our behinds – on this new Treaty of Paris

Paul Driessen

What an unpalatable irony. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and created the United States. The 2015 Treaty of Paris could end what’s left of our democratic USA – and complete the “fundamental transformation” that the Obama Administration intends to impose by executive fiat.

Meanwhile, as a prelude to Paris, October 24 marked a full ten yearssince a category 3-5 hurricane last hit the United States. (Hurricane Wilma in 2005; Sandy hit as a Category 2.) That’s a record dating back at least to 1900. It’s also the first time since 1914 that no hurricanes formed anywherein the Western Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico through September 22 of any calendar year.

Global temperatures haven’t risen in 18 years and are more out of sync with computer model predictions with every passing year. Seas are rising at barely seven inches a century. Droughts and other “extreme weather events” are less frequent, severe and long-lasting than during the twentieth century. “Vanishing” Arctic and Greenland ice is freezing at historical rates, and growing at a record pace in Antarctica.

But President Obama still insists that dangerous climate change is happening now, and it is a “dereliction of duty” for military officers to deny that climate change “is an immediate risk to our national security.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post intones: “Republicans’ most potent argument against acting on climate change – that other nations won’t cut emissions, so US efforts are useless – is crumbling. The European Union has had overlapping climate policies in place for years. China, the world’s largest emitter, continues to fill in details about how it will meet the landmark climate targets it announced a year ago. World negotiators are set to convene in Paris in November to bundle commitments from dozens of nations into a single agreement that should set the world on a path toward lower emissions.”

Right. A path toward less plant fertilizing carbon dioxide, to prevent “unprecedented disasters” that aren’t happening (except in SimPlanet computer models), by stabilizing a perpetually changing climate that is driven by powerful natural forces over which humans have no control – under a 2015 Paris treaty that will inflict global governance by unelected activists and bureaucrats, bring lower living standards to billions, and initiate wealth redistribution of at least $100 billion a year to ruling elites in poor countries.

For once, President Obama wants America to play a leadership role, through a war on carbon-based energy that his own EPA admits will reduce hypothetical global warming by an undetectable 0.02 degrees 85 years from now. If we slash our fossil fuel use, he insists, the rest of the world will follow. It’s delusional.

For once, we should lead from behind – instead of with brains in our behinds. A brief recap of what other nations are actuallydoing underscores how absurd and deceitful the White House, EPA and Postare.

European nations and the European Union have long claimed bragging rights for “leading the world” on “climate stabilization,” by replacing hydrocarbon fuels with renewable energy. Their efforts have done little to persuade poor nations to follow suit – but have sent EU energy prices skyrocketing, cost millions of Euro jobs and made the EU increasingly uncompetitive globally. Now Europe says it will make an additional 40% emissions reduction by 2030, but only if a new Paris agreement is legallybinding on all countries.

However, two months ago, China, India and Russia refused to sign a nonbinding US-sponsored statement calling for greater international cooperation to combat hypothetical warming and climate change. And virtually all developing countriesoppose any agreement that calls for binding emission targets or even“obligatory review mechanisms” of their voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What they do want is a treaty that guarantees $100 billion per year for climate change “mitigation, adaptation and compensation,” plus modern energy technologies given to them at no cost. And that appears to be only the opening ante. India environment minister Prakash Javadekar recently said “the bill for climate action for the world is not just $100 billion. It is in trillions of dollars per year.” Developed nations are “historically responsible” for climate change, he argues, and must ensure “justice” for developing countries by fully funding the Green Climate Fund. India alone must receive $2.5 trillion!

So far, pledges to the fund total just $700 million – and Prime Minister David Cameron has said Britain would provide a one-time contribution of only $9 million. He has called renewable energy “green crap” and plans to end all “green” subsidies by 2025, to reduce electricity prices that have sent millions of families into energy poverty and caused the loss of thousands of jobs in the UK steelmaking sector.

Germany’s reliance on coal continues to rise; it now generates 44% of its electricity from the black rock – more than any other EU nation. In Poland, Prime Minister Eva Kopacz says nuclear energy is no longer a priority, and her country’s energy security will instead focus increasingly on coal.

But it is in Asia where coal use and CO2 emissions will soar the most –underscoring how completely detached from reality the White House, EPA and Washington Post are.

China now gets some 75% of its electricity from coal. Its coal consumption declined slightly in 2014, as the Middle Kingdom turned slightly to natural gas and solar, for PR and to reduce serious air quality problems. However, it plans to build 363 new coal-fired power plants, with many plants likely outfitted or retrofitted with scrubbers and other equipment to reduce emissions of real, health-impairing pollution.

India will focus on “energy efficiency” and reduce its CO2 “emission intensity” (per unit of growth), but not its overall emissions. It will also boost its reliance on wind and solar power, mostly for remote areas that will not be connected to the subcontinent’s growing electrical grid anytime soon. However, it plans to open a new coal mine every month and double its coal production and use by 2020.

Pakistan is taking a similar path – as are Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. Even Japan plans to build 41 new coal-fired units over the next decade. Overall, says the International Energy Agency, Southeast Asia’s energy demand will soar 80% by 2040, and fossil fuels will provide some 80% of the region’s total energy mix by that date.

Africa will pursue a similar route to lifting its people out of poverty. No more solar panels on huts. The continent has abundant oil, coal and natural gas – and it intends to utilize those fuels, while it demands its “fair share” of free technology, “capacity building,” and climate “reparation” money.

During the 2011 UN climate conference in Durban, all nations agreed that the next treaty would have legally binding emission targets and mandatory reviews of emission reduction progress. They also set up the Green Climate Fund wealth redistribution scheme. Now those CO2-reduction pledges are in history’s dustbin, because developing nations believe they have the upper hand in any climate negotiations.

They’re probably right. President Obama told 60 Minutes his definition of leadership is “leading on climate change,” and he desperately wants a legacy beyond his Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, Ukraine, Bowe Bergdahl and economic disasters. Moreover, Western nations have created a climate monster and Climate Crisis Industry, which must be appeased with perpetual sacrifices: expensive, unreliable energy, fewer jobs, lower living standards and more dead people. No wonder Asian and African countries expect to get trillions of dollars, free energy technology, and a free pass from any binding commitments.

Voters, consumers, elected officials and courts must wake up and take action. House Speaker Paul Ryan, members of Congress, governors, business leaders and presidential candidates need to learn the facts, communicate forcefully, repudiate destructive energy and climate policies – and let the world know the Senate will reject any Obama treaty that binds the USA to slashing emissions and transferring its wealth.

Above all, they must debunk, defund and demolish the mountains of anti-fossil fuel, anti-job, anti-growth, anti-family regulations that Obama and Co. have imposed – or plan to impose before they leave office – in the name of preventing a climate crisis that exists only in their minds and models.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

The Daily Signal

How Congress Stopped a Massive Obamacare Bailout - Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced that insurers who lost money selling Obamacare would not get a $2.5-billion bailout. It was great news for taxpayers, but it didn’t happen by chance. Both chambers of Congress worked very hard to make those savings possible. And lawmakers will have to continue working hard to keep bailouts like this from happening in the future. Here’s how Congress did it this time. But first, some background. Obamacare used generosity to overcome insurance companies’ objections to its excessive regulation. For starters, the law mandated that everyone buy their product. It created new subsidies to help people make those purchases. And it massively expanded Medicaid, which is largely administered by insurers.

Meet the Academic Who Wants Obama to Prosecute Climate Change Skeptics - Taxpayer-funded college professors and researchers who cite climate change to advocate regulations that would raise energy costs for consumers have some explaining to do, congressional investigators say…… investigators also are curious to hear a George Mason University environmentalist…..explain a growing disparity between computer models showing global warming and fresh scientific evidence suggesting that Earth’s temperatures have been flat for 18 years….“As evidence mounts that the dire predictions of catastrophic global warming are not confirmed by climatological observations, the alarmist camp has had to resort to witch hunts,” said Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research…. Steve McIntyre, a statistician noted for challenging the data and methodology used in United Nations climate reports, writes the Climate Audit blog.

McIntyre offers a detailed analysis of Shukla’s compensation and how it squares with university [and] the appearance that taxpayers are financing the environmentalist’s political activism……policymakers should take a hard look at the “Lysenko cult” that held sway in the days of the Soviet Union….The “falsification” and “bogus proofs” used to prop up Lysenko’s schemes is well-documented in the book “Power and Science: The History of the Destruction of Genetics in the USSR,” the Princeton physicist said. Climate science has attempted to do the same thing. In light of the “climategate” scandal that erupted in November 2009……it seems like those who manipulated charts to ‘hide the decline’ [in temperature] and conspired to prevent contrarian scholars from publishing in academic journals would be first on the docket.”

School District Stands Up to Government Over Transgender Students in Locker Rooms - When it comes to locker rooms, does a public school have the right to say it should be restricted to of the students of the same physiological sex? Right now, a school district north of Chicago is squaring off with the federal government on that question. Township High School District 211, like many school districts, is wrestling with how to balance the interests of transgender students with the privacy rights of other students. Here’s what the district does to accommodate transgender students, according to a newsletter the school emailed Oct. 12:

Here's What Happened When Seattle Raised the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour - Data shows that the Seattle Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) lost 700 restaurant jobs from January to September of this year, and a report from the American Enterprise Institute suggests that this could be the product of adverse effects of minimum wage hikes on restaurant jobs. “What is also noteworthy about the loss of Seattle restaurant jobs this year is the fact that restaurant employment in the rest of Washington state is booming this year,” writes Mark Perry, an AEI scholar and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. A report by Perry, published Wednesday on AEI’s public policy blog Carpe Diem, notes that there has been an increase of 5,800 new restaurant job positions in the rest of the state of Washington.

The Problems With the 'Investigation' That Cleared Lois Lerner - Kadzik says they found no evidence that Lerner’s personal political views, which he describes in the personal emails the FBI examined, influenced her behavior. In fact, he compliments her, saying she tried to stop what was happening as soon as she “became fully aware of” it. But then, we don’t really know what her actual explanation is for what happened, how it happened, or why it happened, because she refused to answer any questions from the House committee investigating the matter. All we have are Kadzik’s conclusions about why it happened—mismanagement, lack of guidance, ignorance—without any recitation of the actual evidence that was gathered from which to draw our own conclusions.

Moreover, the Justice Department refused to enforce the contempt citation issued against Lois Lerner by the House for refusing to answer those questions. As previously explained, Lerner waived her ability to assert her Fifth Amendment right when she gave an extensive statement to the Justice Department. In this letter, Kadzik admits that Lerner voluntarily submitted to a 12-hour interview without any immunity agreement or promise of non-prosecution. Therefore, the decision by the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia this past March, when he refused to present the contempt citation to a federal grand jury was legally and factually wrong. But there is no mention of this in Kadzik’s letter. Of course, there is also another glaring omission in Kadzik’s letter……. Given the “politicization [that] continues to go unchecked by this administration,” Rep. Goodlatte criticized the Justice Department’s decision….

The Death of the American Welfare State

Posted by Daniel Greenfield Friday, October 30, 2015 @ the SultanKnish blog 10 Comments

In 1935, the year that FDR signed the Social Security Act into law, the birth rate was 18.7 per 1,000. In 1940, when the first monthly check was issued, it had gone up to 19.4. By 1954, when Disability had been added, the birth rate at the heart of the Baby Boom stood at 25.3.

In a nation of 163 million people, 4 million babies were being born each year.

By 1965, when Medicare was plugged in, the birth rate had fallen back to 19.4. For the first time in ten years fewer than 4 million babies had been born in a country of 195 million. Medicare had been added in the same year that saw the single biggest drop in birth rates since the Great Depression.

There could not have been a worse time for Medicare than the end of the Baby Boom.

Today in a nation of 319 million, 4.1 million babies are being born each year for a birth rate of 13.0 per 1,000. 40.7% of those births are to unmarried mothers meaning that it will be a long time, if ever, before those single families put back into the system, and most will never put back in as much as they are taking out. Those children will cost more to educate, be more likely to be involved in crime and less likely to succeed economically. But even if they weren't, the system would still be unsustainable.

Liberals act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the "wealthy elderly" or give them less. And the topic even came up at the CNBC Republican debate in a Social Security debate.

But the problem is not the amount of money being spent at the top on the elderly, but the diminishing prospects for paying in money at the bottom. Youth unemployment is high and job prospects are low. And the birth rate is skewed toward populations that are the least likely to be educated, the least likely to have good jobs and the least likely to pay more into the system than that they take out of it.

At the CNBC Debate, Senator Rand Paul said, "It’s not Republicans’ fault, it’s not Democrats’ fault, it’s your grandparents’ fault for having too many damn kids." But it's the other way around. Your grandparents didn't have enough kids. Neither did your parents. Neither do you.

Ron Paul had five kids. He had four brothers. That's a stable generational expansion. Without that, there's no one to pay for an older population that is living longer.

The crisis is born of demographics. It can't be fixed by targeting the elderly because they haven't been the problem in some time. It's the same crisis being faced by countries as diverse as Russia and Japan. The difference is that Russia is autocratic and has little concern for its people while Japan shuns immigration and has a political system dominated by the elderly.

Bernie Sanders admires Europe. But Europe's welfare state is imploding because of low birth rates. And so it adopted the American solution of expecting immigrants to make up the difference. But the immigrants have high rates of unemployment and low rates of productivity. Instead of funding the welfare state, they're bankrupting it even faster.

The United States takes in a million immigrants a year, many of whom also take out more than they put in. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Barack Obama praised Desiline Victor, a 102-year-old Haitian woman who moved to the United States at the age of 79 and doesn't speak English, but did spend hours waiting in line in Florida to vote for Obama.

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of immigrants over 65 doubled from 2.7 million to 5 million. 25 percent of these senior immigrants were over 80. Desiline Victor wasn't an outlier. Elderly immigrants are also much more likely to become citizens, in part because the requirements for them are lower. Many, like Victor, don't even have to learn English to be able to stand in line and vote.

15 percent of senior immigrants come from Mexico largely as a result of family unification programs. If amnesty for illegal aliens goes through, before long the country will be on the hook not just for twelve million illegal aliens, but also for their grandparents.

The welfare state has been spending more money with an unsustainable demographic imbalance. There are fewer working families supporting more elderly, immigrants and broken families. The Russians invest money into increasing the native birth rate. Instead we fund Planned Parenthood because liberal economic eugenics dictates that we should extract "full value" from working women as a tax base to subsidize the welfare state while discarding the next generation.

The "modern" system that we have adopted with its low birth rates, late marriages, working parents, high social spending and retirement benefits is at odds with itself. We can have low birth rates, deficit spending or Social Security; but there is no possible way that we can have all three.

And yet we have all three.

Instead of forming a comprehensive picture, our approach is to tackle each problem as if were wholly separate from everything else. Working parents are applauded because they swell out the tax base in the short term. Young immigrants are applauded because they are supposed to swell out the lower part of the demographic imbalance. Manufacturing jobs are cast aside for modern jobs. The long term consequences of each step is ignored.

In the European model that we have adopted, men and women are supposed to spend their twenties being educated and their thirties having two children. These Johns and Julias will work in some appropriately "modern" field building apps, designing environmentally sustainable cribs for the few children being born or teaching new immigrants to speak enough English to vote. Then they plan to retire on money that doesn't actually exist because they are still paying off their student loans.

The reality is that John and Julia begin their marriage with tens of thousands in debts, only one of them will work full time, while the other balances part time work, and they will do all this while being expected to support social services for new immigrants and a native working class displaced by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, not to mention the elderly and the entire bureaucracy that has grown around them. If John and Julia are lucky, they will find work in a technology field that is still growing, or, more likely they will pry their way into the social services bureaucracy which will keep on paying them and cover their benefits until the national bankruptcy finally arrives.

John and Julia are Obama voters. They have two children. They don't worry about the future. The future to them seems to be a bright and modern thing overseen by experts and meticulously planned out in every detail. The only dark clouds on their horizon are the Republicans and the Great Unwashed in the Red States who are resisting the future by clinging to their guns and bibles.

In this post-work and post-poverty economy, those most likely to have children are also least likely to work or to be able to afford to have those children.

Birth rates for women on welfare are three times higher than for those who are not on welfare. Within a single year, the census survey found that unmarried women had twice as high a birth rate as married women. These demographics help perpetuate poverty and feed a welfare death spiral in which more money has to be spent on social services for a less productive tax base.

Children raised on welfare are far more likely to end up on welfare than the children of working families.

Fertility rates fall sharply above the $50,000 income line and with a graduate degree; that has ominous implications in a country whose socio-economic mobility rates continue to fall. There are a number of factors responsible, but one simple factor is that work ethics and skills are no longer being passed down to a growing percentage of the population.

Liberal activists still talk as if we can afford any level of social service expenditures if we raise taxes on the rich, but workers can't be created by raising taxes. The issue isn't "investing more in education" which is the liberal solution for everything including the imminent heat death of the universe.

It's liberalism.

Everything that the left has done, from breaking up the family to driving out manufacturing industries to promoting Third World immigration has made its own spending completely unsustainable. On a social level alone, we don't have the people we need to pay the bills. And at the rate we are going, we will only run up more bills that our demographics and our culture can no longer cash.

By 2031, nearly a century after the Social Security Act, an estimated 75 million baby boomers will have retired. Aside from the demographic disparity in worker ages is a subtler disparity in worker productivity and independence as senior citizens are left chasing social spending dollars that are increasingly going to a younger population. ObamaCare with its Medicare Advantage cuts was a bellwether of the shift in health care spending from seniors to the welfare population.

14 million people are now on Disability. That means that there are more people on Disability than there were people in the country during the War of 1812. Half of those on Disability are claiming back problems or mental problems. There are over a million children on Disability and the program is packed with younger recipients who are substituting it for welfare.

Increasing welfare is only a form of Death Panel economic triage that doesn't compensate for the lack of productive workers. It's easy to model Obamerica as Detroit, a country with a huge indigent welfare population and a small wealthy tax base. The model doesn't work in Detroit and it's flailing in New York, California and every city and state where it's been tried.

After a century of misery, the left still hasn’t learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It’s not just running out of money, it’s running out of people.

The welfare state is bankrupt and doesn't know it yet. Reality hasn't caught up with the numbers. Instead the welfare state is floating on loans based on past productivity, old infrastructure and a diminishing productive population whose technological industries employ fewer people and don't require their physical presence in the United States.

The welfare state has no future. It is only a question of what terms it will implode on and what will happen to the social welfare political infrastructure when it does. The violence in Venezuela and the slow death of Detroit give us insights into the coming collapse of the welfare state.