Newt or Mitt…..Let’s face it….this seems to be the conservative choice

I am neither happy nor unhappy with either of them, but I am not satisfied, either.    My man is Chris Christie.  I love his background, his abilities, his quickness, humor, timing, honesty,  command of the stage, intimidation, wealth of knowledge of state government chaos caused by runaway Marxism, and so on.

More than anything else, America needs someone like him  to rid the country of Marxist Obama and the diseases of leftwing entitlements.   

Mr. Christie  seems to be the only adult in town who  is comfortable with himself.  

But, he is not in the mix.

John Hinderaker at Powerline opposes Newt primarily for Newt’s sins of fifteen years ago.   Most Americans don’t know what happened yesterday or this past summer.    So what if Newt’s approval rate in 1995 whatever was only 14%.   So he’s a married retread.   Doesn’t that fit modern American culture…..at least he married.’

Newt’s great strength is his accumulation of knowledge both in and out of government.   He does remember what happened yesterday and can bring it into the conversation of the day whenever  needed.   He is a damn good lecturer in a paragraph or two instead of an hour or two.

We must judge his talents as they exist today.   Can he…..no Will he beat Obama?

What will hurt him is his age, his chunkiness and dumpiness in contrast to Mr. Slick of Body and Mouth.   But, there is no doubt  that Newt has the ability to intimidate the boy Marxist on nearly any and all subjects…….if Mr. Gingrich puts his mind to it.    And, I think that he would.    But will he persuade the middle……the soft minds of the gentle and unthinking ‘Independents’ who want to be rid of Christianity and  have no clue of the danger our democratic society is facing with its first onslaught of Marxist cancers caused and mastasticized by the poisons of the social ‘science’  teachings of our modern universities……?

Mr. Obama will continue to stir and scare  his  racists and will receive  98.9% of the inner city black vote from the living and the dead.  

And then there is Mitt Romney.    If he would fire all of his campaing advisors, I think Mr. Romney might rise from the chatterbox attack man he has been.    His ads should list again and again the conservative credentials of the man, his family, his Church, his life’s example.    He should be ordered to show  America, he is the good guy, the honest, honorable, and likeable, skilled and able citizen,  Mitt Romney.   He should not make a single negative comment about any of his competing conservatives.    Perhaps he needs to calm down and enjoy being with the people who want to vote for him.

America’s enemy is Marxist Barack Hussein Obama, the graduate from Jeremiah “Goddamn America’ Wrights temple of hate in Chicago…..the child of Saul Alinsky, friend and associate of terrorist Bill Ayers.

The following is a comment critical of    John Hinderaker’s negative review toward   Newt  Gingrich and the listing of his alleged Newtsins.     The criticism   is  ans excellent oe.

Gary Whalenwrote:

“I’m neither young nor do I have “selective memory.” And I’m not yet sold on Newt. I am a conservative and I’ve gone along with the Republican party in its choice of middle of the road candidates who will win those independents in recent elections, but frankly I’m tired of that. Why should I fret over Newt’s flips or mistatements or moments of ignorance? The American public elected a man to be President of the U.S. who clearly hates the U. S. and has repeatedly shown contempt for its people, its history, its place in the world. And I don’t have to read the President’s mind to know that–I’ve only had to listen to what he’s actually said publically. And yet I’m supposed to think that Newt’s baggage is too much for the American public to handle? One of Obama’s buddies wanted Americans dead and acted on that desire. And I’m supposed to fear a Newt candidacy? Obama willingly took a wrecking ball to our health care system. And I’m supposed to be concerned about Newt’s flipflops? GOD HELP US.”

 

Good for Gary Whalen!    With  conservative ‘friends’ like John Hinderaker, his fellow folks at Powerline, and those at HotAir, etc., good people they may be,  who needs the Marxist Obama enemies to discover or invent shortcomings about conservatives  bold enough to oppose this conartist  president?   

The  John Hinderakers and Ed Morrisseys will do all  the research for them  free of charge.

 

Good Luck to Mitt and Newt both.   

Obama’s Osawatomie Doctrine Exposes Marxist Bigotry

Obama Channels Hugo Chavez, Shows

Why He Can’t Lead On The Economy

by Peter Ferrara   at Forbes:

“On Tuesday, President Obama went to Osawatomie High School in Kansas to deliver an address framing the economic issues for the 2012 election.  He was following in the footsteps of turn of the century “progressive” Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke at that same site 100 years ago to rail against big corporations and the privileged, while calling for “fair play” for ordinary Americans.

But the speech only showed why Obama can’t lead America on the economy.  Instead of leading us forward into the modern economics of the 21^st century, he keeps reaching back into the economics and politics of old – the failed Keynesian economics of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the disastrous stagflation of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, and the supposed promise of progressivism 100 years ago, before the demonstrated failures of Marxism worldwide in the 20^th century.

He drew a picture of America as a struggling third world nation, saying at stake today “is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.”  He explained America before his coming as “Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before.  But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t.”

This sounds more like Indonesia, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua.  But it is not America “long before the recession hit.”

He explained the roots of the problem as,

Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world….Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle….If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the Internet.

This Luddite analysis fundamentally misconceives the role of technology in a modern economy.  Such advancing technology increases worker productivity, and hence wages and standards of living.  Technological progress over the decades is why the average American worker in 2000 enjoyed 7 times the standard of living of the average American worker in 1900.

He identifies the solution in the speech as increased government spending as the foundation for rising prosperity.  He says,

Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, and communicate with the rest of the world.  That’s why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed shouldn’t be sitting at home with nothing to do.  They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges; laying down faster railroads and broadband; modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.

Before Barack Obama as President, the rest of the world looked to America as the example for the economic model that works to achieve prosperity.  But today Obama tells America “It doesn’t work.  It’s never worked.  It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.  It’s not what led to the incredible postwar boom of the 50s and 60s.  And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.”

Instead he tells us to look at the basic infrastructure spending of other countries as the model that works.  But American economic growth is not suffering because of a lack of basic infrastructure like a third world country.  It is suffering because Obama is so doggedly pursuing the opposite of every policy that would free the economy to produce and boom.  Under such Obamanomics, soon enough America will be suffering from the lack of a reliable energy grid like a third world country.

And of course, essential to that essential infrastructure spending, Obama tutors us, is to increase tax rates on the nation’s investors and job creators.  He said in Kansas on Tuesday,

“But we don’t have unlimited resources.  And so we have to set priorities.  If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values.  We have to make choices….Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing?  Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country?  Because we can’t afford to do both.  That’s not politics.  That’s just math.”

So there you have the Obama formula for an economic growth.  After the greatest runaway spending spree in American history during the Obama Administration, the answer is for government to increase spending even more, financed by increasing tax rates even more on the very investors and job creators that produce the jobs for the middle class and working people in America’s economic system.  That is a perfect prescription for another recession, not the long, long overdue recovery America is still waiting for under Obamanomics.

Obama tells us, “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million.”  That would be wrong if it was true.  But it is not.

What Obama is peddling to America on tax policy is only the ugliest example of his well-established rhetorical style of calculated deception.  It is based on what he thinks the average voter does not know and will not know, and can be manipulated to believe to Obama’s political advantage.  For the picture he is painting of the rich getting away without paying their fair share while working people bear most of the tax burden is the opposite of reality.

Even before Obama was elected, under those “failed policies of the past,” the top 1% of income earners in 2007 paid 40% of federal income taxes, while the CBO just reported that they earned that year 17% of the income.  Moreover, that 40% of federal income taxes paid by the top 1% was more than paid by the bottom 95% combined, according to official IRS data.  While the top 1% paid 40% of federal income taxes, the bottom 40% paid no federal income taxes as a group on net.  Today 47% pay no federal income taxes.

Yet, Obama has already enacted under current law further tax increases on the nation’s job creators, investors and small businesses going into effect in 2013, when the tax increases of Obamacare become effective and the Bush tax cuts expire.  Consequently, that year the top two income tax rates would rise by close to 20%, the capital gains tax would soar by nearly 60%, the tax on dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would rocket up by 62% for these disfavored taxpayers.  This alone would take us well beyond the Clinton tax rates, despite Obama’s outdated talking point that he is still repeating from 2008.

This is in addition to America suffering with virtually the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates.  As I have previously noted, even China imposes only a 25% rate, with the rate in the EU even less on average.  Our Canadian neighbors next year, now booming while America lags under Obama, will enjoy a 15% rate next year.

Yet, Obama barnstorms America calling for still more tax increases on American business, large and small, and the job creators and investors on which jobs and prosperity for working people depend. The galloping regulatory burdens he is now imposing effectively involve still further tax increases stifling production.  It all adds up to a brew for another recession in 2013, unless the American people force a change in course in 2012.”

Could a GOP Star Still Enter the Race to Topple ‘Obama the Marxist’ and Save America?

2012 Republican Race: The Field May Not Be Closed

 Rhodes Cook, at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Conventional wisdom is that the Republican presidential field is set, and that it is much too late for a new candidate to enter the race.

In years past, that would be absolutely correct. Over the last few decades, dozens of primaries and caucuses have been shoe-horned into the opening weeks of the election year, with the tendency on the Republican side for the front-running candidate to score a quick knockout.

But next year, the arrangement of the primary calendar is much different. It is less condensed at the front, much more loaded with events at the back, with the prospect of a viable, late-starting candidate quite real.

This is not to say that it will happen, but simply to note that it could. Such a scenario could not have unfolded in 2008, when the early January events were followed in short order by an early February Super Tuesday vote-fest that involved nearly half the country.

But the elongated layout of the nominating calendar this time provides the opportunity for a late-starting candidate to emerge. Should Mitt Romney stumble badly in the January events in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, another establishment Republican could enter the race in early February and still compete directly in states with at least 1,200 of the 2,282 or so GOP delegates. Many of them will be up for grabs after April 1 when statewide winner-take-all is possible.

Similarly, should non-Romney alternatives led by Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry fall flat in the January contests, there would be time for the conservative wing of the party to find a new champion to carry its banner through the bulk of the primary season.

In some respects, the layout of the 2012 primary calendar resembles that in 1976, starting in the dead of winter with events in Iowa and New Hampshire and building to a crescendo with California in early June. That year, President Gerald Ford and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan battled delegate for delegate until Ford prevailed at the convention that summer in Kansas City. It was the most closely contested and longest-running Republican nominating contest in the last 40 years.

On the Democratic side, the “back-loaded” arrangement of the primary calendar encouraged two late entries in 1976, Gov. Jerry Brown of California and Sen. Frank Church of Idaho. Each won several spring-time primaries. But they mounted their campaigns too late to offset former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter’s long lead in the delegate count.

Eight years earlier, Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York was a far more successful late starter. He entered the Democratic race after the New Hampshire primary and proceeded to run off a series of high-profile primary victories, culminating with a winner-take-all triumph in California in early June. Had he not been shot the night of his California victory, Kennedy might have gone on to wrest the nomination from Vice President Hubert Humphrey. As it is, Kennedy’s unfinished campaign is one of American history’s more intriguing “what ifs.”

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Chart 1: GOP delegate count will build slowly

Virtually all of the candidate and media attention these days is focused on the early Republican primaries and caucuses. But taken together, they offer only a small fraction of the total number of GOP delegates that will be going to the national convention next summer in Tampa. Heading into Super Tuesday (March 6), only 15% of the GOP delegates will have been chosen. The halfway mark in delegate selection will not come until later in the month, and for one candidate to acquire a nominating majority of roughly 1,142 delegates, it could take much, much longer.

 

 

Note: The number of events includes primaries or caucuses scheduled in states and territories, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. As of Nov. 21, dates were still pending for events in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, each with nine delegates.

Sources: Delegate totals are from the Republican National Committee. Presidential primary and caucus dates are mainly from the Federal Election Commission. Both the delegate totals and presidential primary and caucus dates are subject to small changes.

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To be successful, a late-starting campaign needs to feature a candidate with considerable fund-raising and organizational ability who is capable of quickly grabbing national attention. Charisma helps, as does a campaign message that can evoke widespread support. Robert Kennedy fit the bill in 1968, and there are arguably a few prominent Republicans on the sidelines this time who could mount a competitive, late-starting candidacy in 2012. These could include one of the establishment non-candidates who Republican elites pressured to enter the race earlier this year, such as Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (although Christie has already endorsed Mitt Romney). The entry of any of these Republicans would cause waves, and because of their high profiles they would have little trouble raising money or attracting establishment support. On the other hand, if Romney gets off to a strong start in January’s opening round, then there might be pressure on the right to enlist former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to pick up the anti-establishment baton.

The long intermission next February — there are no primaries selecting delegates between Florida on Jan. 31 and Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28 — provides a natural opening for major changes in the Republican nominating contest to take place. It gives time for active candidates to reassess their campaigns and for prospective candidates to make their move.

The main problem calendar-wise for late-starting candidates is there is often a lag time of two to three months between a primary filing deadline and the primary election itself. As a result, a candidate that jumped into the race early next February would still be too late to get his or her name on the ballot in all the primaries through early April, roughly 20 states in all. In these states, a late starter would have to be creative — “adopting” the Uncommitted line, for instance, in states where they are listed or mounting write-in campaigns in states where they are permitted.

But a late-starting candidate would be able to compete in caucus states immediately, where filing deadlines are rarely an issue. There will be fully a dozen states, plus territories, that will be holding their caucuses from Feb. 4 on. They will be offering a total of roughly 450 delegates.

And a candidate that entered the Republican contest in the wake of the Florida primary would be able to enter at least 15 primaries from April 24 on. It is a number that includes delegate-rich New York and Pennsylvania on April 24, Indiana and North Carolina on May 8, California and New Jersey on June 5 and Ohio on June 12. Taken together, this late array of primaries offers roughly 800 delegates, many of them to be awarded on a winner-take-all basis.

In addition, candidates that fall by the wayside as the primaries unfold often release their delegates, providing another significant pool for late-starting candidates to woo.

In short, the “new look” Republican nominating schedule for 2012 offers scenarios that the “front-loaded” calendars of the recent past could not. The likelihood of the usual quick knockout is reduced, while the prospect of a long slog for delegates is enhanced. And who knows, the latter could feature a late-starting candidate or two, adding another unique twist to a Republican presidential nominating campaign that has already displayed considerable fluidity.

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Chart 2: 2012 From January to June: 2012 Republican caucuses and primaries

 

The upcoming Republican presidential nominating campaign is almost certain to be much longer than four years ago. Then, John McCain had the nomination wrapped up by the ides of March, as the crowded calendar of primaries and caucuses in early 2008 was conducive to a quick knockout. This time, the accent on later-voting events makes a long competition for delegates a real possibility and the GOP contest could run at least a month or two longer than last time. There is even the possibility that a new candidate could enter the race in February and have a major impact in the array of spring primaries.

 

 

Note: The delegate counts for the five pre-Super Tuesday primary states have been reduced by 50% to reflect their penalty for violating Republican calendar timing rules. In some states, delegates are elected on different dates by different methods, and in each state and territory three delegates slots are reserved for members of the Republican National Committee. But for the sake of simplicity, all delegates are listed on the date of the state’s primary or first-round caucus action. Ohio is currently scheduled to hold its presidential primary June 12 with a March 14 filing deadline. However, there is a chance that the state legislature could reschedule the event for March 6, in which case the filing deadline was Dec. 7.

Sources: Delegate totals are from the Republican National Committee. Presidential primary and caucus dates as well as primary filing deadlines are primarily from the Federal Election Commission. Both the delegate totals and presidential primary and caucus dates are subject to small changes. Dates of non-binding primaries, such as the Feb. 7 contest in Missouri, are not included.

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Obama Lust to Spend the People’s Money Kills Jobs: Witness the Massachusetts Case

The Enterprise Value Tax: Another Misbegotten Job Killer

from the National Center for Policy Analysis

President Obama’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction contains a provision that would tax, as ordinary income rather than capital gains, the net proceeds from the sale of what is deemed an “investment services partnership interest”(ISPI).  An ISPI is any interest in an investment partnership that is acquired by a person as a result of activities involving the purchase and sale of certain “specified assets,” defined to include partnership interests, securities and real estate holdings.  This provision, which is labeled as the “Enterprise Value Tax” (EVT), would force certain partnerships to pay ordinary income tax on the sale of any part of their business, say researcher David G. Tuerck, Paul Bachman and Frank Conte.

Although publicly touted as a tax on financial firms, the EVT will have broad sweeping impact on other industries such as natural resources, real estate and many other businesses.  The EVT represents an important departure from current law.  Under current law, most of the profits from the sale of investment partnerships are taxed at the capital gains rate, consistent with the long-standing general rule that business interests should be treated as capital assets.  The tax rate on long-term capital gains is 15 percent.  The EVT would treat these same profits as ordinary income, for which the top statutory tax rate is 35 percent.  

Tuerck, Bachman and Conte assess the effects of this change on the Massachusetts economy.  They predict that persons who reside in Massachusetts will pay $611 million annually in new federal taxes under the plan. Using their State Tax Analysis Modeling Program, (STAMP), they also find that, as a result:

• The state will lose 5,400 jobs.
• Annual capital spending will fall by $9.5 million.
• Residents’ real disposable income, or income available for spending and saving, will fall by $673.2 million.

These results are consistent with the argument from economics that a tax on capital income discriminates against saving and risk taking.

Source: David G. Tuerck, Paul Bachman and Frank Conte, “The Enterprise Value Tax: Another Misbegotten Job Killer,” Beacon Hill Institute, December 2011.

For text:

http://www.beaconhill.org/BHIStudies/EVT-2011/BHI-EnterpriseValue2011-1130.pdf

For more on Tax and Spending Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25

Charles Krauthammer Reviews the Obama of Words without Deeds and Personal Responsibility for Causing Crises

Obama’s Campaign for Class Resentment

The president has nothing to run on but crude populism.

by Charles Krauthammer    at    the National Review Online:

“In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if in three years he hadn’t alleviated the nation’s economic pain, he’d be a “one-term proposition.”

When three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the “wrong track” and even Bill Clinton calls the economy “lousy,” how then to run for a second term? Traveling Tuesday to Osawatomie, Kan., site of a famous 1910 Teddy Roosevelt speech, Obama laid out the case.

It seems that he and his policies have nothing to do with the current state of things. Sure, presidents are ordinarily held accountable for economic growth, unemployment, national indebtedness (see Obama, above). But not this time. Responsibility, you see, lies with the rich.

Or, as the philosophers of Zuccotti Park call them, the 1 percent. For Obama, these rich are the ones holding back the 99 percent. The “breathtaking greed of a few” is crushing the middle class. If only the rich paid their “fair share,” the middle class would have a chance. Otherwise, government won’t have enough funds to “invest” in education and innovation, the golden path to the sunny uplands of economic growth and opportunity.

Where to begin? A country spending twice as much per capita on education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not underinvesting in education. It’s mis-investing. As for federally directed spending on innovation — like Solyndra? Ethanol? The preposterously subsidized, flammable Chevy Volt?

Our current economic distress is attributable to myriad causes: globalization, expensive high-tech medicine, a huge debt burden, a burst housing bubble largely driven by precisely the egalitarian impulse that Obama is promoting (government aggressively pushing “affordable housing” that turned out to be disastrously unaffordable), an aging population straining the social safety net. Yes, growing inequality is a problem throughout the Western world. But Obama’s pretense that it is the root cause of this sick economy is ridiculous.

As is his solution, that old perennial: selective abolition of the Bush tax cuts. As if all that ails us, all that keeps the economy from humming and the middle class from advancing, is a 4.6-point hike in marginal tax rates for the rich.

This, in a country $15 trillion in debt with out-of-control entitlements systematically starving every other national need. This obsession with a sock-it-to-the-rich tax hike that, at most, would have reduced this year’s deficit from $1.30 trillion to $1.22 trillion is the classic reflex of reactionary liberalism — anything to avoid addressing the underlying structural problems, which would require modernizing the totemic programs of the New Deal and Great Society.

As for those structural problems, Obama has spent three years on signature policies that either ignore or aggravate them:

A massive stimulus, a gigantic payoff to Democratic interest groups (such as teachers and public-sector unions) that will add nearly $1 trillion to the national debt.

A sweeping federally run reorganization of health carethat (a) cost Congress a year, (b) created an entirely new entitlement in a nation hemorrhaging from unsustainable entitlements, (c) introduced new levels of uncertainty into an already stagnant economy.

High-handed regulation, best exemplified by Obama’s failed cap-and-trade legislation, promptly followed by an EPA trying to impose the same conventional-energy-killing agenda by administrative means.

Moreover, on the one issue that already enjoys a bipartisan consensus — the need for fundamental reform of a corrosive, corrupted tax code that misdirects capitaland promotes unfairness — Obama did nothing, ignoring the recommendations of several bipartisan commissions, including his own.

In Kansas, Obama lamented that millions “are now forced to take their children to food banks.” You have to admire the audacity. That’s the kind of damning observation the opposition brings up when you’ve been in office three years. Yet Obama summoned it to make the case for his reelection!

Why? Because, you see, he bears no responsibility for the current economic distress. It’s the rich. And, like Horatius at the bridge, Obama stands with the American masses against the soulless plutocrats.

This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chávez. But with high unemployment, economic stagnation, and unprecedented deficits, what else can Obama say?

He can’t run on stewardship. He can’t run on policy. His signature initiatives — the stimulus, Obamacare, and the failed cap-and-trade — will go unmentioned in his campaign ads. Indeed, they will be the stuff of Republican ads.

What’s left? Class resentment. Got a better idea?”

Obama’s TAX THE RICH 2011 Tax Calendar to Pay for Obama 2011 Spending

A month by month account of Obama’s  TAX THE RICH schedule to pay for the DEBT  caused by Barack Hussein’s Spending in 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=JY8LKII_MNA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

FYI:   Five trillion dollars is ‘spelled’ $5,000,000,000,000.

The above video of  a  calendar of tax collections required to pay for Obamabills for the year  2011AD,  was sent to MN  Dennis Prager fans by my oldest son, Christian R.E. Ray.

NY City Public School Teacher Retirement at Age 55 Nets Pension of $60,000.

Municipal “Millionaires”

from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, under enormous pressure from public-employee unions and Democrats in the state Legislature to extend New York’s “millionaires’ tax,” is considering at least some higher taxes on higher incomes.  The big irony here is that much of the money raised from any “millionaire” tax hikes would go to fund the growing phenomenon of public-sector millionaires, says Lawrence Mone, president of the Manhattan Institute.

These millionaires on the city payroll have been made so by generous salaries, but more so by astoundingly large pension benefits that are included when calculating a person’s net wealth.

• A New York City public school teacher earning $100,000 can retire at age 55 with a pension of $60,000.
• A private-sector worker would need $1.2 million to buy an annuity with the same yield.
• It would take an even larger nest egg to replicate the pension income of city police officers — they typically retire in their 40s and collect an average pension of $58,563 with a $12,000 annual supplement.

In the private sector, however, the Federal Reserve states that the average worker in his late 50s has a balance of $85,600 in his retirement account, and a net worth of $222,300 overall.

Many are quick to point out that many of these public workers labor in fields that are vital to America’s growth or that are disproportionately dangerous, and that these facts warrants larger compensation packages.  Yet, regardless of a comparison between private sector and public sector workers, it seems that public compensation at current levels is unsustainable.

• New York City, specifically, offers a guaranteed 8-percent annual rate of return for its pension holders.
• This benefit, in addition to the sheer volume of public workers, has led to increased city pension costs from about 4 percent of city tax revenues to 20 percent over the past decade, crowding out other vital public investments.

Therefore, lawmakers should consider more carefully the populations that they are taxing and the current status of the recipients of city revenue before key decisions are made.”

Source: Lawrence Mone, “Municipal ‘Millionaires’: Tax Hikes to Fund Gov’t 1 Percent-ers,” New York Post, November 30, 2011.

For text:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/municipal_millionaires_OHzCRTElTcSjryqSPVxR1J

For more on Tax and Spending Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25

Seventy Years of Corruption under the Soviets Continues to Rule under Putin

Russia’s anti-Putin protests grow

Tens of thousands say they are prepared to take to the streets in the biggest challenge yet to the country’s government

• Miriam Elder in Moscow
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 December 2011 15.03 EST
• Article history

Russia’s anti-Putin protest movement is beginning to gather momentum. Photograph: Ivan Sekretarev/AP

Russia‘s anti-government protest movement has gathered momentum as tens of thousands of people said they were prepared to take to the streets this weekend in the biggest challenge to Vladimir Putin‘s rule.

With concern inside the Kremlin growing, Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, met their security council, including the interior and defence ministers, the head of the federal security service (FSB) and the country’s foreign intelligence chief, to discuss the situation.

Helicopters hovered in the skies over Moscow, while the police presence on the streets of the Russian capital remained strong following two protests that led to hundreds of people arrested.

The movement was triggered by a disputed parliamentary election result that protesters say wildly overstated the popularity of Putin’s United Russia party.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former premier who oversaw the end of the Soviet Union, on Wednesday called on the Russian authorities to annul the election result and hold a new vote. “More and more people are starting to believe that the election results are not fair,” he told the Interfax news agency. “I believe that ignoring public opinion discredits the authorities and destabilises the situation.”

The authorities “must admit that there have been numerous falsifications and ballot stuffing”, he added.

More than 16,700 people indicated on Facebook their intention to gather in Revolution Square, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, this Saturday. Another 5,500 said they would attend a similar protest in St Petersburg. Protests were also being organised in more than 80 cities across Russia, including the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and the Siberian city of Surgut.

But there was growing fear that the Russian authorities would step up their action against protesters.

Yevgenia Chirikova, an environmental activist turned opposition leader, said she feared the Kremlin would move beyond the haphazard arrests and the deployment of pro-Kremlin youth groups that have so far marked its response to the protests. She noted that the government had recently approved a pay increase for the army, a move designed to ensure its loyalty.

“Putin has no other choice than to hold on to power, shoot himself or sit in jail,” she said. “The system he has built is so corrupted, and there have been so many crimes, that there is no other path. He will fight for his power.”

Two of the opposition’s leaders, Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, remain jailed.

Vladimir Milov, another opposition leader, warned people to stay away from Saturday’s protest.

“All this can end in big blood,” he wrote on the website of Ekho Moskvy, a liberal radio station. “This is the most dangerous thing in today’s situation.”

He urged those protesting over the election result to direct their anger at the 4 March presidential vote, which is expected to sweep Putin back into the Kremlin. “Blood and unrest can throw the ‘Russian spring’ far back,” Milov wrote. “We don’t need that now.”

Anger has been galvanised in the wake of a parliamentary election on Sunday which saw United Russia slip below 50% – despite reports of fraud which indicate its support has fallen much further.

Opposition activists appeared to be taken aback by the swell of popular support. “It’s hard to predict what will happen further,” Chirikova said. “This is the first time we’ve seen such events after an election. That people are grabbing on to these falsifications is a new trend in Russian society.”

Dmitry Finikov, a 31-year-old small-business owner who volunteered as an election monitor, uploaded his tale to LiveJournal on Tuesday morning and it was viewed more than 150,000 times by Wednesday.

His photographs and video show how election officials at his polling site in central Moscow threw away the official result of the vote, which showed United Russia coming in third with 128 votes, behind the Communists (202) and liberal Yabloko (134). In the final tally, United Russia won the vote at the site.

Yabloko failed to pass the threshold to enter the Duma (lower house of parliament), and members of the party have joined the protest movement.

“I wrote everything I saw, I just did what I had to do,” said Finikov, who will attend his first ever anti-government protest on Saturday. “No one in Russia thinks elections are honest. But it shouldn’t be this way. It must not be this way.”

Officials continued to reject the charges of fraud. Vladimir Churov, head of the elections commission, said in an interview published on Wednesday that the videos of fraud were themselves fraudulent.

“There is a lot of rubbish on the internet about violations now,” he told Itogi magazine. “Even before the vote, I knew of several fake ‘polling sites’ in flats, where they shot these movies. I think we’ll see more of them.”

On Wednesday Putin filed papers declaring his candidacy for the presidential vote, failing to deliver any of the blustery comments for which he has become known. Putin’s widely expected return to the presidency has hit a nerve with many of Russia’s urban, well-educated youth, who are dismayed at the prospect of him potentially running the country for another 12 years.”

Comment:   With the fall of the Soviet Empire in the early 1990s and the beginning of the  end  of the Mao insane asylum called Red China with the death of the dictator,  Mao Tse Dung,  the  previous decade,  there was much debate among American pundits  as to which ‘culture’ would have the better chance to become economically sound and therefore an American competitor in the world market.

The pundits who advertised their punditry scored about fifty-fifty in the American Press regarding which dictatorship  would flourish economically.   None of them, as I recall reading, knew much about the  economic structure of either.  

Their could have been, according to my prejudiced view then and now, only one answer.    China under competitive Marxism, without question should bury any  nation surviving from the collapse of the Soviet Empire, to be known as “Russia”. 

I wonder how many Americans have ever learned that slavery, called serfdom, in the Russian Empire was abolished in 1861, only two years before Abraham Lincoln’s edict, the  Emancipation Proclamation  in 1863.    There was a racial component in the American setting.   Slaves were from black Africa.   They were visually and culturally very different from the dominant population.    And they were confined to about a dozen of the 35 or so states in the 1860s and those were confined to the South and  Southeast states.  

The majority of the American population was steeped in white culture, whether rural or urban.   The Negro emerging from slavery remained in a culture of destitution, isolation, and economic struggle for nearly another century.    Much of this isolated, plantation-like culture remains nearly intact in America’s  inner city black cities today.     Despite some blendings into the American culture at large, contemporary American black culture is in disarray.

In Mother Russia when the serfs were ‘freed’ in 1861, they too received little or no land or compensation  upon which to become productive and therefore, independent.

Nearly 70% of the Russian population was ‘freed’  from its serfdom in 1861.    Most struggled with profound poverty until the blood lust of the Communist Revolution in 1917.    Under Stalin nearly 20,000,000 souls  were killed by intentional starvation  in the Ukraine by   Soviet Marxist government policy in the 1930s.  

The only education the survivors of Marxist policy ever received was that taught by staunch anti-free enterprise Stalinists until Stalin’s death and the subsequent political thaws in the country  beginning in 1956.  

Whereever could this 21st century Russian culture conceive of anything resembling honest free enterprise?   Graft and cheating is the economic rule throughout Russia’s history.  POD STOLOM is the  rule of its State economics.

There can be no successful private enterprise if a nation’s  economy is based of graft and deception.     Fixed prices which are honored encourage  honesty and trust.    Barter is inherently dishonest. 

Marxism is a spiritual, economic and political  religion based on deceit.  

Those in the 1990s who predicted  future  China, not future Russia would become a world economic power  based their reasoning upon China’s past cultural  behavior and values…..its religions which valued competition and rewards for ones labor.    However mercilous the Red Chinese brutality under the Maoists was, its Marxist leaders  could not kill off enough of the population which exhibited ‘energetic’ personal traits.    China’s nineteenth and twentieth century poverty was not defined by an  insitution of slavery a condition which the Jim Crow laws in the U.S. South and Marxism under Stalin  both extended culturally well into the twentieth century.

Although China is technically a Communist dictatorship, its Politburo folks fully understand a nation cannot prosper without the profit motive of free enterprise.    I don’t think the Russians, like Barack Hussein Obama,  have found  that road yet.

Of course, I could be wrong.

In short the Chinese poor well understood the value of profit for ones labors.    The Soviet ‘serf’ and American black have never figured it out……as history of these two cultures  has shown.  

Dan Henninger: ….From His Bunker , Obama Offers American Masses a “Deal they cannot resist”, Gangsterism!!

Obama’s Godfather Speech

The president sounds more like a Corleone than a Roosevelt

by Dan Henninger   at  the Wall Street Journal:

“Most press accounts of Barack Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Tuesday described it as delivered by the “president of the United States.” And indeed the person delivering it analogized himself to Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton. In fact, the Osawatomie speech was not given by the President of the United States. It was given by the leader of the Democratic Party.

Most of the time, this distinction isn’t a problem in the United States because historically people have tended to think that the office of the presidency represents “all the people.” This doesn’t mean everyone expects to benefit from a president’s policies. What it means is that in some informal way no one has to worry that the presidential motorcade, so to speak, will drive off the road so that it can plow into you. That is no longer the case in the U.S.

 Osawatomie speech sounded like what you’d expect to hear in Caracas or Buenos Aires. As in: “The free market has never been a license to take whatever you can from whomever you can.” (Applause.) And: “Their philosophy is simple. We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Some will say hearing crude Chavista populism in the Obama speech is an overreaction. That once it’s understood the Kansas speech was the work of the party leader, not the president of the United States, it becomes easier to think about it without overreacting to its intense and vivid rhetoric: “Millions of working families in this country . . . are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal.”

Mr. Obama, the bloodless political analysis of the speech runs, was just rallying his base. He needs to. Last month, in an election for state offices in Virginia, which Mr. Obama carried in 2008, Democrats turned out poorly, and Republicans won at every level of government, even in “independent” northern Virginia.

Democrats are depressed about the awful economy we’ve had the past three years. In Mr. Obama’s view, this is a coincidence; the bad economy happened during his term because of mistakes someone else made in 2001 and 2003. Lest the base confuse his policies with someone else’s, Mr. Obama needs to transform Democratic depression into some form of Democratic energy. This week, and apparently in the election next year, he has chosen a strategy based on fear and loathing of an opposition he identifies simply as, “They.” “They argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.”

About two-thirds through Mr. Obama’s Kansas speech, I started to think of “The Godfather.” After slapping around the “wealthy” for about a half hour, Mr. Obama said, “This isn’t about class warfare.” Maybe that’s true. In “The Godfather,” when awful things are about to be done to people, Michael Corleone or Tom Hagen reassure those about to get hit, “It’s not personal; it’s strictly business.”

But I could be wrong about that. There is that defining moment when Michael Corleone says to Fredo, his brother, “You’re nothing to me now.” When even as party leader, a president of the United States gives a major speech in which people get singled out repeatedly as basically enemies of “the middle class,” one has to wonder if they are nothing to him.

You then have to wonder about the tenor of another Obama term in office. If in fact there are categories of Americans he simply doesn’t like, a second Obama term, like the last half of “Godfather II,” could be a clinical exercise in hammering the people he singled out in this speech. Metaphorically speaking.

The Kansas speech was built around one concrete policy idea: that the rich and millionaires (officially still defined as families with before-tax income above $250,000) should send him more money so he can “invest” it. This single policy, if we heard correctly, will end high unemployment, raise middle-class incomes, put children through college, make America fair and defeat countries that pollute.

But will it?

Mr. Obama says everyone has to play by his new rules: “Unless you’re a financial institution whose business model is built on breaking the law, cheating consumers and making risky bets that could damage the entire economy, you should have nothing to fear from these new rules.” Really? Citigroup on Thursday said it will eliminate 4,500 jobs. In the third quarter alone, 2,500 U.S. banks cut 20,332 jobs. Let ‘em go. In the coming Obama economy, they can “make wind turbines and . . . high-powered batteries.”

What the Democratic base would get out of an Obama re-election is political power, which counts for something. It lets you tell other people what to do. But nothing in that Kansas speech, especially the wealth taxes, will produce real growth in the dry economy America has had for three years. Strong growth is the only solution to the Osawatomie catalog of horrors. If he wins, five years from now, the president’s base will be about where it and nearly everyone else is today, trying to stay afloat in Barack Obama’s still waters.”