Some Wisdom from Lew Lehrman

In a piece in the April 26 Wall Street Journal in which he proposes tying the dollar to gold, Lew Lehrman makes a great point: "What persistent debtor could resist permanent credit financing? For a government, an individual or an enterprise, 'a deficit without tears' leads to the corrupt euphoria of limitless spending." That is the approach of our government. According to Lehrman, it is for this reason that if we don't tie the dollar to gold, our deficits will persist. The government can just keep "printing" money.

Ensign-ing Off

GOP Senator John is resigning for getting caught having an affair with his deputy chief-of-staff's wife. He's unrepentant. "I haven't violated any standard of conduct of the Senate." Maybe he's right: their standards are pretty low. A true profile in courage, he's resigning like a little bunny rabbit in the desperate hope the ethics committee won't publicize its findings. Good luck with that, John!

There are reports in the media that shortly after the affair became known, Ensign's parents paid $96,000 to the staffer and his wife. As if the initial transgression didn't stink badly enough.

Perhaps we cannot expect much out of the state of Nevada. How can a state based so heavily on gambling and prostitution produce moral people, especially in politics?

Obama Motors: Disgraceful Government Boondoggle

"The government plans to sell most of its remaining stake in General Motors in the coming months and lose $11 billion in the process, The Wall Street Journal reports." So says Newsmax, in a story attributed to Money News. So much for Obama's lies about getting our money back. The article says the government bailed out GM with $50 billion, and needs to sell its (our) shares at $53 a share in order to recoup its (our) money. What is Government Motors selling for now? Thirty bucks. I wonder if our brilliant bureaucrats can do addition and subtraction here. Who will defend this idiotic boondoggle, except the unions who were the ones really getting bailed out here? This company should've been allowed to go out of business, like any other failing company. More efficient firms would have bought up some of its assets, if any of them were willing to stake their own money (not yours and mine), and this manufacturing capacity would've appeared in a different incarnation, provided that were profitable. That's the way it works in a free-market (as distinct from Soviet) economy. It's called "creative destruction," and it's a fact of life. Leftists decry free-market capitalism, but they love this disgusting type of crony capitalism because they have their incompetent fingers all over it.

Tax fairness???

The top 10% pay over half of all federal income taxes + the botton 45% pay no income tax = the rich need to pay their fair share. Did I add that up right?

The Filth is in Your Face

There was a review in the WSJ by the paper's theater critic, Terry Teachout, of a Broadway play called "The MF-er with the Hat." (I've redone the abbreviation to make it less offensive than the abbreviation in the actual play title.) Interestingly, comedian Chris Rock, for whom the "F" word is a mainstay, is among the cast. Mr. Teachout concludes: "Don't let the stupid title put you off. If you do, you'll miss one of the best new plays to come to Broadway in ages." Ages? And, no doubt, one of the most profanity-filled plays to come to Broadway, probably ever. I don't think that's good enough. It's bad enough that movies, TV and plays are full of profanity. Now we get treated to it in the titles. That way, you can't escape; they're forcing their filth and vulgarity on you. They're not giving you any choice. I mean, all I did was open my daily newspaper. This play could be the second coming of "Othello," and in my mind, the title would be enough reason to boycott it. And publications like the WSJ should make a stand by not enabling the further dragging of our society into the gutter. This is the same newspaper, after all, that only recently ended its policy of referring to people in its articles with their surnames preceded by "Mr.," "Mrs.," "Miss" or "Ms."

The new tone in Washington

Thursday, April 07, 2011 by Dan Joseph (CNSNews.com) "Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said today that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress "to kill women." She also likened Republican efforts to prohibit federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered to actions taken by Nazis." Take a good look at this woman. She is totally nuts.

Irresponsible government on display!

Monday, April 04, 2011 by Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Treasury has released a final statement for the month of March that demonstrates that financial madness has gripped the federal government. During the month, according to the Treasury, the federal government grossed $194 billion in tax revenue and paid out $65.898 billion in tax refunds (including $62.011 to individuals and $3.887 to businesses) thus netting $128.179 billion in tax revenue for March.

At the same time, the Treasury paid out a total of $1.1187 trillion. When the $65.898 billion in tax refunds is deducted from that, the Treasury paid a net of $1.0528 trillion in federal expenses for March. That $1.0528 trillion in spending for March equaled 8.2 times the $128.179 in net federal tax revenue for the month.

The lion’s share of this federal spending went to redeem Treasury securities that had matured during the month—most of which were short-term Treasury bills that have terms of one year or less. In fact, during March the Treasury redeemed $705.3 billion in Treasury securities of which $623.9 billion were short-term bills with a term of one year or less. After the disbursements made to pay off the $705.3 billion in loans that came due in March, three of the other top four federal spending items for the month were entitlements programs. The other top item was payments to defense contractors. The Treasury paid $49.8 billion in Social Security benefits in March, $47.4 billion in Medicare benefits, and $22.575 billion in Medicaid benefits. It also paid $37.9 billion to defense contractors.

The federal government’s cash-flow situation was summed up pungently in Senate Budget Committee testimony by Erskine Bowles, who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and is now the co-chair of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. "I'm really concerned," Bowles told the committee last month. "I think we face the most predictable economic crisis in history. A lot of us sitting in this room didn't see this last crisis as it came upon us. But this one is really easy to see. The fiscal path we are on today is simply not sustainable.

"This debt and these deficits that we are incurring on an annual basis are like a cancer and they are truly going to destroy this country from within unless we have the common sense to do something about it," said Bowles. "I used to say that I got into this thing for my grandchildren," Bowles said. "I have eight grandchildren under five years old. I'll have one more in a week. And my life is wonderful and it is wild. But this problem is going to happen long before my grandchildren grow up.

"This problem is going to happen, like the former chairman of the Fed said, or the Moody's said, this is a problem we're going to have to face up," he said. "It may be two years, you know, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But if our bankers over there in Asia begin to believe that we're not going to be solid on our debt, that we're not going to be able to meet our obligations, just stop and think for a minute what happens if they just stop buying our debt.

"What happens to interest rates?" asked Bowles. "And what happens to the U.S. economy? The markets will absolutely devastate us if we don't step up to this problem. The problem is real, the solutions are painful, and we have to act."