My Blog

Category: Business

  • Government Dependents Outnumber Private Sector Workers

    In 11 of the 50 states in the US, residents dependent on the government outnumber private sector workers.

    “America is rapidly becoming a nation of takers,” economic blogger Michael Snyder writes. “An increasing number of Americans expect the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, and they expect the government to dig into the pockets of others in order to pay for it all.”

    Snyder explains that in the states California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii — all states won by US President Barack Obama during the November general election — the number of Americans dependent on government aid dwarf those going into work to receive a paycheck.

    According to a report published by the Heritage Foundation, 62 percent of government spending in fiscal year 2012 has gone towards entitlement programs that benefit needy Americans, with more than one-fifth of all of Uncle Sam’s funds going into Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs.

    And although the United State spends more money on their military program than any other nation in the world, only 19 percent of government spending goes towards national defense. By comparison, that’s two-percentage points lower than the amount spent on Social Security.

    via RT.

    This is amazing.  Amazingly sad.

    Do people understand that we cannot sustain the country as it has been going?  You cannot have 50% of the population sit around and do nothing; just taking from the working minority.  The system will collapse.

    Soon.  Soon, it will collapse.

  • Liberals Love Arab News Propaganda

    Double-irony from Al Gore & Current TV:

    It all starts with a story from The Atlantic Wire (A fairly left-leaning group:)

    Every once in a while a tweet appears that’s so silly, it must be a joke. Like this one from Glenn Beck: “Before Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, TheBlaze looked into buying it but we were rejected by progressive owners.” Guess what? He’s totally serious. The Wall Street Journal caught the detail in its coverage: “Glenn Beck’s The Blaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that ‘the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,’ according to a person familiar with the negotiations.”

    Well no kidding! Current TV is the network founded by former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, later anchored by progressive hero-villain Keith Olbermann and recently featuring liberal former New York governor Eliot “I Do What I Want” Spitzer. This is the network that Glenn Beck, the far-right fanatic that was too extreme for even Fox News to handle, wanted to buy. It’s entirely unclear how far negotiations between Beck and Current TV got, if anywhere beyond Current’s executives laughing TheBlaze crew out of the room

    via Yahoo! News.

    So Al Gore & friends will not sell to Beck but will sell to Al-Jazeera.  Damn!

    But  that’s not even the end of the story.  News today is:

    As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Al Jazeera entered into an agreement to buy Al Gore’s failing network Current TV.

    Hours later, as a result of the purchase, Time Warner Cable dropped the station with a message reading to viewers “This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable.”

    According to multiple news sources, Current co-founder Joel Hyatt said in a statement that TWC dropped his TV network because TWC “did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera.”

    “Current will no longer be carried on TWC,” wrote Hyatt. “This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead.”

    The Huffington Post reported late Wednesday, “A Time Warner Cable spokesman said in a statement that ‘our agreement with Current will be terminated and we will no longer be carrying the channel.’”

    Given TWC’s 12.5 million subscribers, it will be interesting to see how and if this impacts Al Jazeera’s decision to purchase Current.

    Ya, that’s right.  It will be very entertaining if Al Jazeera backs-out of the deal since it’s losing the largest distribution provider.  That would leave Gore & friends with no where to turn… accept maybe… Glen Beck?

  • Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

    The U.K. and Australia:

    A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

    The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

    Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: “In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.” Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.

    In November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.

    -=-=-=-

    With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

    To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

    According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported “a modest reduction in the severity” of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

    In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

    via WSJ.com.

    Gun “control” laws in the U.K. and Australia have not made those people safer.  It’s an illusion.  When emotion gets ahead of reason people sacrifice liberty  for the illusion of security — a la TSA — and get neither.

  • Obama’s Daughters’ School Has 11 Armed Guards

    The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak.   …

    If you dismiss this by saying, “Of course they have armed guards — they get Secret Service protection,” then you’ve missed the larger point.

    The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period. And this is the reason people like NBC’s David Gregory send their kids to Sidwell, they know their kids will be protected from the carnage that befell kids at a school where armed guards weren’t used (and weren’t even allowed).

    Shame on President Obama for seeking more gun control and for trying to prevent the parents of other school children from doing what he has clearly done for his own. His children sit under the protection guns afford, while the children of regular Americans are sacrificed.

    via School Obama’s Daughters Attend Has 11 Armed Guards.

    Draw your own conclusions.

  • Gun Background Checks Jump in Illinois

    Illinois State Police information provided to The Associated Press shows that 12,557 checks were conducted through the state’s Firearms Transfer Inquiry Program between Friday and Tuesday. There were 6,870 checks during she same period a year earlier.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Jump?  Nearly double!

  • Gov Official Warns Cook County Retirees Of Local Debt

    In May, 2012, the collective debt reported by the local primary taxing agencies in Cook County was more than $140 billion! To put that in context, the total debt-per-household in the City of Chicago was $87,720, and $35,774 in the suburbs. Since local governments cannot print money, they rely on property taxes as their main revenue source to operate.

    Homeowners might be able to give their homes to their children, but that future generation won’t be able to afford to keep them because of the property taxes, which have doubled over a 10-year period.

    via Forbes.

    So you know it’s bad when an elected official is out there telling you it’s bad.  It’s really really mo fo bad.

  • U.S., Iran, Syria, Libya & the Petrodollar

    There’s been a lot of conflict in the Middle East. And most of it has to do with the petrodollar.

    Take Iran, for example. The country is undergoing a bout of hyperinflation. This came about because of the pressing sanctions the West placed on Iran. But it’s not the only way America is trying to control the country.

    America is rapidly expanding its presence in hotspots such as Syria, because the country is aligned with Iran and is anti-petrodollar. By trying to control Syria, the U.S., by extension, is trying to control Iran.

    Now, our government wants you to believe we’re in Syria because of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But we think something more sinister is at play…

    The U.S. is punishing Iran for trying to abandon the petrodollar.

    This is not unprecedented. The U.S. government took down Saddam Hussein when he tried to do the same thing. It also took down Libya when Gaddafi, a U.S. puppet, turned on the U.S. and threatened to issue gold dinars. That’s why the U.S. blew up Libya’s water system and left 70% of the population without water.

    These are actions our government takes to try to control other countries when it feels threatened. It’s clear that our administration is worried about something. And that something is our dollar’s standing in the global economy.

    via Strategic Investment (Paid Service).

    Pay attention folks.  American foreign policy is the real cause of so much violence in the world.  Obama — winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — was to correct all that.  But no, he just continues down the same Bush road.

    It’s the road to hell.  We’re all on it.  Expect real trouble in the future when the Petrodollar collapses.

  • Pensioners Take Note, Municipal Bond Storm Coming

    [B]ut California too is now starting to hand it to bondholders. Cities in California are now testing the limits of bankruptcy law, and not paying the debt nor the payments for retirees to the state system. Thus this article describes how the state retirement system (CALPERS) is suing to demand payment, and saying that retiree obligations come AHEAD of creditors (municipal bond holders) in the queue.

    “The issue is, do Calpers obligations supersede unsecured bondholders?” Fabian said in a telephone interview. “There’s an awful lot of unsecured bondholders in California. If you put pension obligations to Calpers as secured and senior to unsecured debt, in effect those bonds have been downgraded.”

    In the Stockton and San Bernardino cases, Calpers is arguing that pension contributions must be made ahead of payments to other creditors because they are so-called statutory liens, or debts that state law requires to be paid. Bondholders and other creditors that oppose Calpers argue that pension debt is a contractual obligation like any other.

    You’d have to be nuts to buy California municipal debt if Calpers has precedence and employee retirement benefits can’t be cut, since this is the MAIN THING that is driving these cities into insolvency. In the future likely these municipalities would just contract out everything to third parties that wouldn’t pay their employees those giant benefits, but the cities have to jettison these liabilities to put their fiscal house in order today.

    via Chicago Boyz.

    In case this is a little tough to follow, in bankruptcy debts are paid according to a priority.  There’s a decent primer here.

    The “Illinois” based pensions are probably ok. e.g. ITRS.  There is no statute permitting a state to file for bankruptcy protection.

    However cities are corporations; they can (and do) file for bankruptcy protection.  CPS, CPD, CFD employees and retirees should watch these cases in California closely.  They may be getting a real haircut if they have to defer to the bond holders to get their money.

    It’s all very very sad.

     

  • Plastic Bulb Promises Better Quality Light

    The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent Fipel technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them.

    The inventor of the device is Dr David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shape, and it produces a better quality of light than compact fluorescent bulbs which have become very popular in recent years.

    Wake university researcher with light The new light source is said to be twice as efficient as fluorescent bulbs”They have a bluish, harsh tint to them, ” he told BBC News, “it is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn’t match the Sun – our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly.

    “I’m saying we are brighter than one of these curly cube bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want.”

    via BBC News.

    Sounds cool.

  • $55 Million Paid to Kids to Do Nothing

    Records provided to CNN show that $54.5 million was spent on the NRI program, mostly through the governor’s discretionary fund, which doesn’t require legislative approval.

    The only data on the program’s accomplishments come directly from the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority. The NRI states that it created more than 3,484 jobs, provided counseling for more than 3,100 children, and helped 1,175 ex-cons.  …

    NRI participants were paid $8.75 an hour, first to receive mentoring from adults, and then go out to pitch positive messages and hand out fliers in their neighborhoods.  …

    [S]tudents earned $8.75 an hour to visit the DuSable Museum of African American History and to the National Museum of Mexican Art.

    What the ??

    Why would taxpayers pay for kids to attend mentoring?  It would be like paying them to play basketball or video games or go to school.

    $54.5 million / 3,484 jobs / $8.75 / hour = 1,787 hours & $15,642.94 per person.  This is nothing more than paying kids for doing the right thing.