It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
just consider that there is some level of government spending that you consider appropriate. Imagine
that level of spending is achieved. Zero money is being spent on wasteful or useless programs, and
no good spending is being forgone. We're doing everything we ought to be doing. Now we need to
finance that spending with some mixture of taxes and borrowing. The Cooper viewpoint is that it's
always the case that the optimal mix is 100 percent taxes and 0 percent borrowing. But why would
that be? If the future is going to be richer than the present, there's a strong prima facie case for
borrowing. You don't pay 100 percent cash for your house or your college tuition, and there's no
reason you should pay 100 percent cash for your national defense or vital infrastructure either. How
much should you borrow? It has a lot to do with the interest rates. Not only is borrowing at a high
interest rate expensive, but government borrowing at a high interest rates crowds out private
capital investment. But if interest rates are low, then you don't need to worry much about crowding
out, and the economic burden of repaying the interest is likely lower than the economic burden of
higher taxes.
So you borrow some money. Ronald Reagan did it. George W. Bush did it.
[SOURCE:Matthew Iglesias | Slate.com | 3
April 2013]
In other words, sometimes that which is called "government debt" is really just a decision to
include borrowing as a component of getting the necessary government revenue to pay for the things
that we decide government should do, or the things that government should invest. Framing the
argument as one of getting government to spend exactly what is raised from revenue without bothering
to "envision" what it is government should be spending or investing is as ridiculous a proposition
as tying a rope of unknown length around a tree of constantly changing width. The "serious"
discussions of cutting government mingles with cutting taxes when the actual decisions should be
agreement on what government should be spending and investing. Worry about how to pay for it once
that agreement is made.
Alas, as I say all the time, this rhetoric is not serious at all. The goalposts move all the time.
Cuts are made, but then "necessary" costs are added, and taxes are always cut (if only for the upper
few). The overall balance
of what government spends and invests is never made, but rather occurs in a myriad of byzantine
subsidies or tax credits in the name of "creating jobs" or maintaining "competitiveness". Military
costs and investments have almost no oversight. The budget is thus a compilation of various
different interests. There is no guiding oversight.
Sunday, 31 March 2013 at 18h 10m 57s
Paul Craig Roberts is not a kook
Dr. Roberts is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former editor and
columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.
So when he speaks about a 9-11 Cover up, you need to respect his point of view, and try to
understand that governments and politicians form cliques and keep secrets. History is proof.
A haunting quote from the interview "If you lie to cover up incompetence, then you could also lie
about complicity."
Vietnam advisors began during the Eisenhower administration
Augustin Pinochet topples Salvadore Allende's Chilean government with US aid and planning
assistance on September 11th ... in 1973
The manhattan project during World War II
The invasion of DDay -- the Germans thought it would come in Calais, 100 - 150 miles further North
The USS Maine explosion in 1898 .. Admiral Dewey just so happened to have the US fleet off the
coast of Manila in the Phillipines
The Germans send (smuggle?) Lenin to Russia on a train, to precipitate Russian withdrawal from
World War One and the beginnings of the Russian Revolution occur as an ancillary result
Zachary Taylor had the American Army and Cavalry on the border of the Rio Grande, in what Mexico
considered Mexican Territory and refused to leave ... under orders from President Polk who wanted to
add Mexican Territory to the United States.
Hawaii was turned into an American "protectorate" on January 17, 1893, in which
anti-monarchial insurgents within the Kingdom of Hawaii, composed largely of American citizens,
engineered the overthrow of its native monarch ... because the safety of the monarchy was in
"danger" of being taken by the European "Imperialists"
Julius Caesar stabbed by every Senator, called to the Senate under a ruse of national emergency
-- "Et Tu Brutus" and the "Aides of March" are now legacies
Friday, 8 March 2013 at 4h 17m 7s
5 predictions for the coming MLB season
The Boston Red Sox will have a better record than the Yankees
The Kansas City Royals win more than 90 games and have a top pitching staff
The Milwaukee Brewers will make it to the world series as Carlos Gomez has a 30-30 season and
the pitching staff surprises everyone with a top 3 ranking
Houston will win more than 60 games. Maybe 62.
Seattle will challenge Oakland for the Western Division as both Texas and Anaheim fall apart
Bonus prediction: the world series will be Detroit or Kansas City vs. Milwaukee
Friday, 15 February 2013 at 1h 49m 33s
Why did A New York Times Reporter Lie
This blows me away. A NY Times reporter is asked by Tesla Motors to test drive it's newest model
electric car, and the reporter does everything possible to make the car malfunction and then writes
a negative article about the car.
Every Sunday, the self-appointed decision-makers and Washington conventional-wisdom acolytes all
gather around a video conference room and create what is called "Meet The Press." Really, it's just
a forum for politicians and elites to pursue their latest attempts at public relations.
Moonshine patriot put together this blog to satirically make this point. Each Monday or Sunday
evening, Moonshine "translates" the dialogue on the Sunday "News" show "Meet The Press".
Here's a small snippet from yesterday (3 February 2013)
Meet The Press – February 3, 2012
Host: Chuck Todd
Guests:
Leon Panetta (Secretary of Defense)
Gen. Martin Dempsey (Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff)
**********************************
Todd: omg the very liberal Republican
Chuck Hagel faced tough questioning
from the guy who lost to Barack Obama!
Todd: Leon does Chuck Hagel hate Israel?
Panetta: Israel? Dammit we're still fighting two wars!
Todd: Israel was mentioned 130 times
which proves what is really important
Dempsey: cripes I got boys dying
in Afghanistan right now
Todd: do you support Chuck Hagel?
Dempsey: he seems smarter
than Graham or McCain
Todd: that's not saying much
Dempsey: I know that
Todd: we can't vote for a new
Secretary of Defense until we have
another hearing on Benghazi
Panetta: I love how insane
these Republicans are
Todd: but Benghazi is the most
important event since Gettysburg
Panetta: Chucky I heard you
were a moron
Dempsey: we've learned a lot
since Benghazi
Todd: what is that?
Dempsey: next time after an attack
invade Grenada and no one will notice
Ronald Reagan "invaded" a small island in the Carribean called Grenada not long after the bombing of
the Beirut embassy that killed 200 something marines. The event took the press off the criticism of
the United States gradual escalation of involvement in Lebanon and covert assistance with Israel.
The corporate media willingly followed the ball tossed to them.
Tuesday, 5 February 2013 at 3h 8m 20s
The student loan disaster
Students going to college nowadays are paying a whole lot of money for the promised ticket to a high
paying job or satisfactory career. Going to Law School and Medical School after a 4 year college
adds to the already large cost. And the percentages of interest per year is more than 7 percent,
which means .07 times total debt divided by 12 is the minimum payment just to not increase the debt
owed. After 4 years at undergraduate college, a typical student owes $30,000. Law and Medical
school can add another $200,000.
In the lower end case, .07 times 30,000 is 2100, which is $175 a month minimum to make the interest
payments. Paying 7 percent interest over 20 years results in an effective multiple of 128.982.
Divide this into the money owed (30,000) and you get the necessary monthly payment for 20 years :
$232.59. However, most student loans are set at 10 years. This is an effective multiple of 86.126
for 7 percent. Divide this into the money owed (30,000) and you get $348.33.
A student with a law school or medical school debt might have 200,000 in debt or more. Divide this
by the 10 year effective multiple, and you get $2322 per month.
Yikes. Now consider this
About 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) suggests requires less than a four-year college education. Eleven percent of employed college
graduates are in occupations requiring more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor’s,
and 37 percent are in occupations requiring no more than a high-school diploma
That means you get a first job that pays maybe 30,000 BEFORE TAXES -- and there are plenty of
waitresses, bartenders, and cafe baristas that don't get that first job. Make the right career
moves, go to nursing school, become an electrician or mechanic,
be in the right place at the right time -- or have the right connections -- and you might move up above
50,000 and higher.
The overall median personal income for all individuals over the age of 18 was $24,062 ($32,140 for
those age 25 or above) in the year 2005, and more than half of the population goes to college. 48%
of college graduates are these jobs. You try paying $2322 a month on a salary less than 2 thousand
dollars AFTER TAXES. Even $350 a month is tough on a $1200 a month budget.
Now I paid off all my student loans, but this is a national shame. And I would have owed FIVE times
the $21,000 dollars in debt I had when I became matriculated at Tulane University after a 5 year
education. The entire cost of my 5 years now doesn't even pay for a full year, but the median wage
hasn't changed in 40 years.
We should have a national student loan commission that centralizes all student loans
and sets the interest at 2 percent. Instead we have all sorts of private financing groups and big
banks getting the interest on the loans at 6, 7, 8, 9 percent with the government guaranteeing the
principal.
Why have private middlemen get an easy profit when they perform no valuable social service deserving
of the high interest fees. What are these banks and financial syndicates doing with the interest
they get on these loans other than making money to fuel further aspects of their business (or pay
their upper level executives bigger bonuses.) The government already provides the principle. Why
not make
investments in our youth by providing a central location for low-interest loans. Not only would it
be less expensive, but also easier to manage and run efficiently.
That same effective multiple for a 10 year loan would at 2 percent be 108.679, much better than
86.126, a 21% reduction in what the student pays overall. The government could also lengthen the
payment options, and defer payments without applying the interest for a period of time due to
hardship. Right now students that defer loan payments are still accruing interest.
[SOURCE:Paul Campos | Salon.com | 4
February 2013]
[SOURCE: | Center
For College Affordability | January/February 2013]
[SOURCE:US Census
Bureau | Wikipedia | November 2006]
Here Josh Barro takes aim at the conservative Thinker Ramesh Ponnuru. Josh politely slowly takes
apart each part
of the ideas Mr. Ponnuru has about Health insurance and Child Tax credits for Families. Mr. Ponnuru
touts these ideas as new and fresh applications of vibrant conservative ideas.
Nope. They are the same failed ideas in new clothing. Josh does an incredible job making this obvious
to all but the most willful. You have to read the piece.
[SOURCE:Josh Barro | Bloomberg News | 29
January 2013]
These ideas are merely smokescreens for the agenda of the large corporatists and elite financial
kingpins who run Washington and rule the entire Republican party. But wary, they always take with
one hand more than they offer with the other. They depend upon funds to work, but (like the
leave-no-child-behind act and the Welfare reform) they always delay and defund and the promised
money never happens. They expect people to have long-term priorities, when history painfully
reminds us that people actually short-term considerations often to their own demise, and yet justify
the mantra of self-regulation that never works out except by increasing monopolization. They preach
"competition" but the actual creation
of their "ideas" into the words of legislation furthers instead oligopoly and limited consumer
protections. They like tax cuts and tax credits but they don't want to raise
taxes to pay for them because they want to get rid of government in the long run, and in the short
term distribute the functions of government to toddy and stooges who get hired for million dollar
salaries when they leave government.
They want to take out the trash and have clean streets but they don't want to pay for the workers to
do the job. They then get mad when the place stinks after a year because some citizens will have
short-term priorities because of either low income or lethargy. Then they have to pay three times
the cost of getting rid of the garbage then it would have cost if they had just taxed themselves and
spread the burden over more people. The job would be guaranteed to be done and there wouldn't be
any problems with trash accumulation. Good jobs would also be created. It's a win, win, win, win.
This ideology is bunk. It has been proven bunk time and time again. The ideology was always the
banner underneath which ulterior motives resided, and that is why the ideology persists. Bad ideas will
have their followers, especially when there are such individuals and institutions that benefit.
It's easier to
cling to bad ideas when their is no alternative but the subterfuge of the bad ideas is still very
strong. They persist being stupid because the money is very very real. They get paid to distract
the people with psuedo-battles over false principles because they don't want to people to realize
the hollowness of their paradigm.
Not that Democrats are free of this corruption. The only difference is that most Democrats also
believe in a government that works and want to actually do the work of good government more than
they want to (or have to) participate in the handiwork of
their paymasters and overlords. Almost all Republicans are obstructionist hypocrites. The very few
who are different are suffering pains of conscience right now.
Sunday, 16 December 2012 at 22h 9m 41s
Mark Fiore : The 12 Days of Cliffmas
Wednesday, 12 December 2012 at 4h 6m 0s
Best. Takedown. Evah....
Charles Pierce rocks the magic thunder. He writes for Esquire magazine, and yes, once again in our
nations history you have to get the non-elite opinion and the exposes of the truth from the
magazines and publications set up by individuals (blogs). This is what happened in our country
after the 1880s and 1890s. The newspapers were controlled propaganda organs for the most part. The
exposes of the Standard Oil, trusts, corrupt State legislatures, the unhealthy production of food
appeared in in monthly magazines. A few competiting small newspapers also provided real news that
wasn't just puff pieces for the local elite politicos. Upton Sinclair's books (not just the jungle)
were published by himself from a small publisher, sometimes by his own hand.
Also, here we are again today. The corporate media is the public relations front page of the
corporatist mindset of the rich and powerful. The corporations are really just legal entities that
are controlled by the
very wealthy. We are still dealing with unhealthy production systems. What you see and hear in the
corporate
press (including the radio) is just the policy agenda of the elite and their acolytes.
Politico has a column called (according to Mr. Pierce):
Tiger Beat On The Potomac has been [an] enterprise ... dedicated totally to
gossip, triviality, and Drudge-baiting to the exclusion of what's actually going on in the country
to the people these politics are supposed to serve.
In a recent column, the writers basically put some window dressing on a lobbyists wet dream about
what the large manufacturers and multinational corporations want the nation to believe. Namely,
The current tax-and-spending debate only flirts with what these insiders say needs to be done.
Instead, top White House and congressional leaders talk privately of the need for tax reform that
goes way beyond individuals and rates; much deeper Social Security and Medicare changes than
currently envisioned; quick movement on trade agreements, including a proposed one with Europe; an
energy policy that exploits the oil and gas boom; and allowing foreign-born students with science
expertise to stay here and start businesses.
Here's a snippet of how Charles Pierce points out exactly how the mainstream funnels the beliefs
of the elite to the masses:
Pierce: And to whom do these two brainiacs turn to for these bold policy ideas?
This is the clear takeaway from conversations we have had over the past three months with top
lawmakers, officials, their senior aides and the CEOs who advise and lobby all of them. Many of the
conversations were private but many were not.
Pierce: Of course, it's your "clear takeaway," you twits. You might as well troll meth labs
to learn table manners. Ask dogs for recreational tips and they'll tell you to lick your balls. Ask
monkeys about hobbies, and they'll teach you to fling poo. Ask the plutocrats, and the politicians
who serve them, and the aides who serve them about what we should do about the economy, and the
answer is always going to be "make sure we stay rich."
You need to read the entire screed.
This is how the media pushes and legitimizes the corporation agenda. Watch television and you will
be convinced, your choices will become limited, the boundaries of the views will get smaller, and
the size of the official participants diminishes. Every other point of view becomes either
marginalized or labelled radical or extreme since it outside of the tiny room where all the
legitimate discussion is supposed to take place. Political discourse is squeezed into a tube where
one side is left and the other side is right. Repetition and reiteration is continuous and never
ending, so you become so used to irrationality that you begin to forget how to think for yourself.
But you won't realize it, and instead start to get uncomfortable every time you are reminded. After
a while you begin to resent the reminders and then you begin to imbibe the entire package of what
has been fed to your brain every time the television is pumping it with sights and sounds. You
become infected with the virus and begin to spread it out to the world with your voice and the
opinions that were created in your mind -- which no longer belongs to you by the way, since you
willingly gave it up in the hopes of being endlessly entertained.
Pierce ends the takedown in utter demolition, or as the French say, J'accuse:
The longer this goes on, the more depressed I get. Clearly, a deal on the economy is being cut with
the minimal amount of input from the people on whom the weight of the deal will fall most heavily.
Sacrifice is being parceled out by people who will feel none of it. And elite journalism is
presenting this iniquitous arrangement from the point of view of the grifters and thieves who will
profit most from it. This piece is not about the current economic stalemate. It's about two
Beltway foofs showing the red on their asses by demonstrating that they can get important people on
the phone. This isn't economics. This isn't even really journalism. This is a brief in support of
oligarchy. It is public financial star-fking.
[SOURCE:Charles Pierce | Esquire | 11
December 2012]
Saturday, 8 December 2012 at 4h 55m 10s
The Long Term Unemployed
Another snippet from Krugman about the unemployed.
So why aren’t we helping the unemployed? It’s not because we can’t afford it. Given those ultralow
borrowing costs, plus the damage unemployment is doing to our economy and hence to the tax base, you
can make a pretty good case that spending more to create jobs now would actually improve our
long-run fiscal position.
Nor, I think, is it really ideology. Even Republicans, when opposing cuts in defense spending,
immediately start talking about how such cuts would destroy jobs — and I’m sorry, but weaponized
Keynesianism, the assertion that government spending creates jobs, but only if it goes to the
military, doesn’t make sense.
No, in the end it’s hard to avoid concluding that it’s about class. Influential people in Washington
aren’t worried about losing their jobs; by and large they don’t even know anyone who’s unemployed.
The plight of the unemployed simply doesn’t loom large in their minds — and, of course, the
unemployed don’t hire lobbyists or make big campaign contributions.
So the unemployment crisis goes on and on, even though we have both the knowledge and the means to
solve it. It’s a vast tragedy — and it’s also an outrage.
[SOURCE:Paul Krugman | New York Times | 7
November 2012]
Lest we forget ... here's the employment to population ratio (percentage of persons employed)
And here is the Link to the "Unemployment Dashboard", which updates the Unemployment data regularly:
Click here.
Another good measure is the population percentage on food stamps. Right now we are at 19.34%. One
in every 5 persons are on food stamps. That's up from 2006 and 2007 where it was between 11 and 12
percent, or 1 in every 8 or 9 persons.
Think about that. 1 person in five uses food stamps to buy food. Spending less than 80 dollars a
week to feed yourself is pretty spartan, and when you have children, forget about it. 80 times 52
is about $4000 a year. Double that and you have $8000 a year.
(Notice that the household income is heavily skewed from the "average". This is because household
income obscures individual income, because single persons are a household as well as married
couples. Which is why household income is not very interpretive. Notice that Median personal
income is not as heavily skewed.)
Now on to my last point. $8000 dollars a year for food divided by the median personal income
($32,140) is 25% of personal income being spent on food. So half the population is spending MORE
THAN 25% of their income on food.
In fact, 93% of the population earns less than $100,000 per year. 70% earn less than $45,000 per
year. 40% earn less than $22,500 per year. This is BEFORE TAXES.
So wait, in the prior paragraph, that median income is before taxes, which means the actual
percentage on food stamps is probably pushing 38 to 40 percent -- that is, half of the population
spends roughly 40% of their after-tax income on food.
Now given that 40% of the population earns less than $22,500 per year BEFORE TAXES, you can bet
close to half of what is left after taxes (probably 75%, or $17,000) is spent on food. Food stamps
is an option.
[[SOURCE:2010 Census | census.gov ]
[SOURCE:wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States | Wikipedia]