Really America? Really?

Just pondering a few questions, answers to which are possibly more important than we may realize:

• Are a professional basketball player's bedroom choices really worth a couple days' headlines and a personal, congratulatory phone call from the President of these United States to commend him for his courage? Really? Frankly, I don't give a damn.
• Why did the United States leave four citizens hanging in the wind in far away Libya, resulting in their deaths? Really, why?
• Must I accept the redefining of Marriage? If so...what's next on the agenda?
• What good are even more gun laws going to do in the prevention of murder? After all, check the trends from 1993 to 2011 as published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics here. 
• How rampant is human trafficking in the United States? Is one particular group responsible for most of it? 
• Is my Baby Boomer generation the last to experience "retirement" as it used to be known?
• Did the Cleveland PD totally drop the ball on fully investigating strange reports from that house-turned-prison in their city? 
• Where have all the Woodward- and Bernstein-like real investigative reporters gone? 
• Why do we give more of our time and effort considering the latest Lindsay Lohan drunken episode or Kim Kardashian's marital mess than we do to matters that are actually important? 
• (By the way, who was thrown off Dancing With The Stars last night???)
• Have welfare programs doomed America's future? 
• Is personal responsibility a thing of the past?
• Has consideration of these questions ruined your mood for the day?

I'm normally quite a positive guy, but these questions and more have me a bit in the doldrums lately. 

Lord, help us. 

Get Out Your Wallets

The first paychecks for those of us working for a living will begin arriving any day now. With those checks will come changes to the "withholding" column of your detailed paycheck report. Sure, most of the increases apply to those making over $250,000 per year, but folks those are the people, by and large, that are running small businesses throughout this land. That fact does not bode well for increased employment, not at all.

In addition, these "soak the rich" increases were fought for, tooth and nail, because they would help to balance the awful, one-sided, overspending of tax receipts by the federal government. HA! Do the math; this won't even begin to right the lopsided, deficit-laden expenditures by this bunch in D.C.

We're in trouble and our esteemed President seems dead set on continuing down the same road to eventual financial ruin. Look at Greece, look at Spain and see what type of malaise is in store for our own United States. It's coming...maybe not tomorrow, this year or next, but it is really coming soon to send all of us into financial Armageddon.

The Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell" report this morning (1/8/13) detailed 13 tax increases that took effect on January first of this new near. Here they are in brief:

13 Tax Increases That Started January 1, 2013 

Tax increases in the fiscal cliff deal:

1. Payroll tax: increase in the Social Security portion of the payroll tax from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent for workers. This hits all Americans earning a paycheck—not just the “wealthy.” For example, The Wall Street Journal calculated that the “typical U.S. family earning $50,000 a year” will lose “an annual income boost of $1,000.”

2. Top marginal tax rate: increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).

3. Phase out of personal exemptions for adjusted gross income (AGI) over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).

4. Phase down of itemized deductions for AGI over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).

5. Tax rates on investment: increase in the rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).

6. Death tax: increase in the rate (on estates larger than $5 million) from 35 percent to 40 percent.

7. Taxes on business investment: expiration of full expensing—the immediate deduction of capital purchases by businesses.

Obamacare tax increases that took effect:

8. Another investment tax increase: 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for taxpayers with taxable income exceeding $250,000 ($200,000 for singles).

9. Another payroll tax hike: 0.9 percent increase in the Hospital Insurance portion of the payroll tax for incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers).

10. Medical device tax: 2.3 percent excise tax paid by medical device manufacturers and importers on all their sales.

11. Reducing the income tax deduction for individuals’ medical expenses.

12. Elimination of the corporate income tax deduction for expenses related to the Medicare Part D subsidy.

13. Limitation of the corporate income tax deduction for compensation that health insurance companies pay to their executives.
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We're in trouble, my friends. Hang on to your hats; we're in for a wild and terrible ride.

Greece is Slipping Away

One of my part-time endeavors is driving a shuttle bus at the local airport. Last night, I picked up a lady returning here after working and living in Greece for the past six years. She painted a picture of total chaos: rioting, rampant unemployment after nearly five years in recession, mass withdrawals of bank deposits (nearly 1 billion Euros have been withdrawn just this week), political turmoil, and citizen anger over the austerity measures proposed to allow Greece to stay within the European Union while receiving huge loans from other EU member nations.

Hold the ouzo; the party's about over.

It was an interesting, but very short discussion since it's only one mile from the terminal building to the parking lot. Arriving at her car, I mentioned my fears of the same types of economic malaise for our country. Her opinion?

We're traveling down the same disastrous path.

Goodbye to a Wild Year

2011 certainly wasn't a quiet year. The world over, huge changes, natural disasters and economic malaise peppered the news and affected the lives of millions. Of course, 2011 also marked a very significant life change for me in that I retired from the "regular" work force.

Looking over the following list from the Associated Press, it seems clear that 2011 was quite a life-changing year for millions across the globe, in one way or another. I hope 2012's list of top news stories will be much less astounding.


OSAMA BIN LADEN'S DEATH: In May, the nearly 10-year manhunt ended with a nighttime assault by a helicopter-borne Navy SEAL squad on the terrorist leader's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot dead by one of the raiders.
JAPAN'S TRIPLE DISASTER: A 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan's northeast coast in March unleashed a tsunami that devastated scores of communities, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead or missing and wreaking an estimated $218 billion in damage. The tsunami triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986 after waves knocked out the cooling system at a nuclear power plant.
ARAB SPRING: It began with demonstrations in Tunisia that rapidly toppled the longtime strongman in January. Spreading rapidly, the Arab Spring protests sparked a revolution in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February, fueled a civil war in Libya that climaxed with Moammar Gadhafi's death in October, and fomented a bloody uprising in Syria against the Assad regime. Bahrain and Yemen also experienced major protests and unrest.
EU FISCAL CRISIS: The European Union was wracked by relentless fiscal turmoil. In Greece, austerity measures triggered strikes, protests and riots, while Italy's economic woes toppled Premier Silvio Berlusconi in November.
U.S. ECONOMY: Hiring picked up a bit, consumers were spending more, and the unemployment rate finally dipped below 9%. But millions of Americans remained buffeted by foreclosures, joblessness and benefit cutbacks.
PENN STATE SCANDAL: In November, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was accused of molesting 10 boys; two senior Penn State officials were charged with perjury; the longtime president and coaching legend Joe Paterno were ousted.
GADHAFI TOPPLED: After nearly 42 years of mercurial and often brutal rule, Moammar Gadhafi was toppled by his own people in August. Anti-government protests escalated into an eight-month rebellion that culminated in Gadhafi being and killed in the village where he was born.
CONGRESSIONAL SHOWDOWNS: Partisan divisions in Congress led to several showdowns on fiscal issues. A fight over the debt ceiling prompted Standard & Poor's to strip the U.S. of its AAA credit rating in August. In November, the so-called supercommittee failed to agree on a deficit-reduction package of at least $1.2 trillion -- potentially triggering automatic spending cuts of that amount starting in 2013.
OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTS: It began Sept. 17 with a protest at a New York City park near Wall Street, and within weeks spread to scores of communities across the U.S. and abroad. The movement depicted itself as leaderless and shied away from specific demands, but succeeded in airing its complaint that the richest of Americans benefit at the expense of the rest.
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS SHOT: The popular third-term Democratic congresswoman from Arizona suffered a severe brain injury when she and 18 other people were shot by a gunman as she met with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in January. Six people died, and Giffords' painstaking recovery is still in progress.

Here's the Real Problem

I've ranted and raved about the way we're passing along untold economic problems to our children and grandchildren. Well today a good friend sent me a link to the following little video that will no doubt "grab" you in much the same way as it did me.

We have to turn this bus around and soon, before my four grandchildren are locked into a life offering much less goodness and opportunity than our generation has been fortunate enough to experience. This is what matters. This is why "business as usual" just won't cut it any longer.

The Answer to Our Economic Woes

Warren Buffet didn't amass his personal fortune by being lucky. He's reputed to be one of the most intelligent money managers in the country and his success is amazing.

This quote, attributed to him, makes a believer out of me:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

The only problem I see is who the heck can we get to pass such a law? 

Smoke, Mirrors, and Fraud

Remember just a week ago when Obama, Boehner and Reed were working so hard at coming to an interim budget agreement to avoid a government shutdown? Well folks it was mostly, if not all, pure horse hockey, crap, BS, call it what you will. We've been tricked into thinking those wonderful guys really did something praise-worthy. It appears those late-night "summits" at the White House were simply the three good old boys getting together to have a nightcap or two while they laughed at how they were fooling the ignorant U.S. citizenry.

Now that those "in the know" are studying the actual agreement reached, we're told most of these wonderful, monumental, hard-fought "cuts" are not reductions at all. We've been lied to, kept in the dark, made to think they agreed on something to really help our economy...and its mostly BUNK.

Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, the Right, the Left, Centrists, they're all crooks and should be thrown out of office at the earliest opportunity. The United States of America is broke, bankrupt, zilched out, ain't got nothin' (but printing presses) and in the not too distant future we're all going to feel the serious effects of a broken, worthless dollar and another country with its economy in ruin.

This just stinks.
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Kevin Drum blogs as follows:

Smoke and Mirrors Watch

— By Kevin Drum| Tue Apr. 12, 2011 12:26 PM PDT

Here's AP reporter Andrew Taylor digging into the $38 billion in spending cuts that Republicans agreed to and finding that an awful lot of it is smoke and mirrors:


Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including [...] $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.


....The spending measure reaps $350 million by cutting a one-year program enacted in 2009 for dairy farmers then suffering from low milk prices. Another $650 million comes by not repeating a one-time infusion into highway programs passed that same year. And just last Friday, Congress approved Obama's $1 billion request for high-speed rail grants — crediting themselves with $1.5 billion in savings relative to last year.


About $10 billion of the cuts comes from targeting appropriations accounts previously used by lawmakers for so-called earmarks....Republicans had already engineered a ban on earmarks when taking back the House this year.


Republicans also claimed $5 billion in savings by capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an arcane bookkeeping rule — used for years by appropriators — placing a cap on spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to claim the entire contents of the fund as budget savings. The savings are awarded year after year.


And this report from CBS News notes two other phantom cuts: $1.7 billion left over from the 2010 census and $2.2 billion in subsidies for health insurance co-ops that are going to be funded anyway via the healthcare reform bill. This stuff alone adds up to $27.4 billion, all of it money that wouldn't have been spent anyway. I suppose you can argue that some of it might have gotten reallocated if it hadn't been removed legislatively, but I doubt that the tea party true believers are in a mood to buy that. If these reports are correct, the bill contains only about $11 billion in hard cuts. Basically, it looks as if the tea partiers may have gotten snookered by their own side.