The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch ... Alan Caruba

The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch

By Alan Caruba

In 1991, the Soviet Union, arguably the greatest experiment in Communism, collapsed. After Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors moved to shift its Communist economy to one that embraced Capitalism while retaining centralized government control.

Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from Communism by the Marshall Plan, but adopted Communism-Light in the form of Socialism. The U.S. was already headed in that direction, creating programs that we now call “entitlements.” For most of the nation’s history, such “entitlements” did not exist.

What binds together the financial problems of the West is the common thread of infantile behavior and thought. One might call it wishful thinking. Instead of encouraging people to provide for old age and possible illness, politicians decided to turn government into Big Daddy, the eternal source of money for everything.

Need to go to college, start a business, or plan for retirement? Government would be there to help. All this ignored the need to actually pay for these programs. In the case of Social Security Congress began to dip into its funding to pay for other programs! This is what children do.

One can look around the world and see what a failure both Communism and Socialism have been. Governments spending more than their tax and other revenues have suffered grievously from this path to default and that includes the United States of America. It can be argued that, with few exceptions--the Reagan years come to mind—Presidents have been poorly served by their economic advisors.

Politicians make poor economists because, in America, members of the House must think of getting reelected every two years and Senators every six. Moreover, being politicians, they believe that the more federal largess they can bring back to their State and then brag about is the one true path to reelection.

At the very beginning of the nation, Thomas Jefferson said it best. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

How many commissions and special committees have earnestly produced reports intended to deal with a government grown too large? At the federal level, some two million or more Americans are employed promulgating a deluge of regulations and pushing paper.

Now President Obama says he wants to streamline the federal government.

The real issue is not “streamlining” government agencies by gathering them together under one roof and one administrator, but the failure to end government departments and agencies that no longer serve a useful purpose and whose removal would also remove countless obstacles to economic growth.

In April 2011, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned that “the federal government is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don’t know is that government actually costs about 50% more than what it spends. That’s because complying with federal regulations costs an additional $1.75 trillion—nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.”

The United States of America, the greatest engine of wealth the world has ever seen, is bankrupt. The national debt exceeds the Gross Domestic Product, the sum total of all revenue generated by goods and services.

The President has asked that the debt ceiling be raised another trillion or so and Congress will comply. That, I submit, is insane.

I also submit that, since Barack Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009, the nation has been witness to the economic insanity personified in the man and in the Democrat-controlled Congress that was his partner until 2010 when the control of the House of Representatives was wrested away by the Tea Party movement and its support for Republican candidates.

The only constant in life is change. America’s demography has changed. We have, thanks to medical care and other advantages, a much older segment of the population than ever before, but the nation from the 1930s to the 1960s had committed itself to ensure they would have Medicare and Medicaid at a time when people more often than not died in their 50’s and 60’s. We now have an average life expectancy of 78 years. My parents lived into their 90s.

Politics, not economics, continues to make it impossible to revise and restructure both Medicare and Social Security to reflect this reality. Instead, we had Obamacare foisted upon us which took trillions from Medicare and imposes rules that will let elderly heart attack or stroke victims die rather than pay for a level of care to which they contributed during their working years.

If the Supreme Court declares Obamacare unconstitutional it will go away. If we elect a Republican Senate, the repeal already passed in the House will be passed and it will go away.

But America’s economic problems will not go away until Americans insist that the shackles of Big Government be cut loose to enable the growth of an energy industry that can not only make the nation energy independent, but produce billions in revenue as far as the eye can see into the future.

The tax system with its thousands of pages must be revised to a simpler, fairer program. It makes no sense that forty percent of Americans pay no taxes at all.

It’s not that we don’t know what must be done. Conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others have spelled out programs that can and will save America, but the nation must be led by a president who understands that Capitalism involves budgeting, planning, hard work, and—yes—risk.

The federal government is running on “continuing resolutions.” It has not had a formal budget since Obama arrived. This is no way to run the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. America is on a suicide watch and we are just an election away from saving it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Occupy Wall Street: Communism's Clueless Foot Soldiers ... Alan Caruba

Occupy Wall Street: Communism's Clueless Foot Soldiers

By Alan Caruba

Norman Thomas, a U.S. Socialist Party candidate for president, once famously said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Thomas ran for president six consecutive times from 1928. He needn’t have bothered as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and subsequent Democrat Presidents introduced most of the planks of the Communist Manifesto and we live with them to this day.

The Occupy Wall Street youngsters are the latest foot soldiers of Communism, though it is likely most are too ignorant to realize it. They have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in government schools and by Hollywood and the media that they have no idea how they are being used by labor unions and other leftist organizations.

The protesters are likely unaware of the misery and murders Marx’s Communism imposed on Russia courtesy of Lenin, Stalin, and those who followed in their footsteps. Mao's Red China murdered thousands as well in the pursuit of the “equality” that is the alleged goal of Communism and liberalism.

In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” Marx never held a job in his life, living off of donations from Engels and others. He failed miserably at every enterprise he tried, including publishing newspapers.

The Manifesto had ten planks. The first was the abolition of property in land and the application of all rents to public purposes. Anyone who owns land in America for their homes or any activity such as farming or mining knows that they must pay fees to various levels of government. Even in death, inheritance taxes are a penalty imposed on passing property to one’s children. These taxes were the subject of the Manifesto’s third plank which called for the abolition of all rights of inheritance.

The second plank is one that is very much in the news. It is a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Everyone pays income taxes and there are demands that “millionaires and billionaires” pay more than others. Corporate income taxes in the U.S. are among the highest in the world. In the Supreme Court decision, McCulloch v Maryland Webster, Chief Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Too much taxation is one of the reasons the nation finds itself in its current financial crisis as it is directly connected to whether people will invest in new businesses or existing ones and destroys job creation.

The Manifesto called for the centralization of all means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state and the U.S. government is replete with commissions that achieve this goal. The fifth plank called for the centralization of credit in the hands of the state and, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Federal Reserve, a system of privately owned banks that have a monopoly on the creation of money backed solely by the credit of the government. Standard & Poors recently downgraded the nation’s credit rating. Is there really any gold in Fort Knox? One hopes.

Most famously the Manifesto called for the state to own all factories and instruments of production. Instead of merely permitting the standard practice of bankruptcy to occur so that they could be restructured, the Obama administration stepped in and “bailed out”, i.e. took ownership of General Motors and Chrysler companies. Creditors were kicked to the curb.

The Manifesto called for government control of all labor and agriculture. The federal government has a matrix of departments that exercise control of these sectors of the economy; a Department of Labor and a Department of Agriculture.

The tenth plank of the Manifesto called for “free education for all children in public schools and the combination of education with industrial production.” The Occupy Wall Street protesters are the result of government schools whose purpose is to create a docile work force that, along with various government “entitlement” programs provides for a cradle-to-grave submissive workforce.

But the Occupy Wall Street protesters, you say, hardly seem submission, nor do the unions that we’ve seen occupy the state house in Wisconsin, call for strikes, and other forms of worker protests. Intimidation in the quest for the Manifesto's objectives is a Communist tactic.

The protesters are calling for free college educations. The unions were protesting against the loss of collective bargaining with governments that determine their pension and health benefits, all paid for with public funding.

Little wonder the protesters are being embraced by the Democratic Party and unions, and that those spoiled brats befouling the walkways, streets, and alleys of New York and other cities are totally oblivious to the way they are being used.

Americans better insist that Capitalism emerges stronger from this latest spate of organized anarchy. If not, Karl Marx and the foolish liberals will succeed in destroying what is left of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

A Horrible Week for Global Socialism ... Alan Caruba

A Horrible Week for Global Socialism

By Alan Caruba

Over the weekend of August 6-7, the Wall Street Journal’s lead headline was “U.S. Loses Triple-A Credit Rating.”

On Monday, August 8, the Journal’s headline was “Markets Brace for Downgrade’s Toll.”

By Tuesday, August 9, it was “Downgrade Ignites a Global Sell-Off.”

On Wednesday, August 10, it was “Markets Sink Then Soar After Fed Speaks.”

Thursday, August 11, the Journal cast its eyes across the Big Pond noting that “Italy’s Woes Weigh on Europe.”

On Friday, 12, the headline said, “Stocks Swing Up in Wild Week.”

A week after the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, in the August 13-14 edition, the Journal took note of a “Global Crisis of Confidence”, adding that “World Policy Makers’ Inability to Agree on Fixes Led Markets on Wild Ride.”

As the new week dawned on August 15, the Journal said, “Markets Gird for Fresh Drama.”

It was a great week for dramatic headlines and a horrible week for the rest of the world. Mostly, though, it was a fulfillment of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s observation that socialism works just fine until you run out of “other people’s money.”

That is a perfect definition of “redistribution” or, as President Obama once observed, “At some point you’ve made enough money.” A more un-American statement has rarely been uttered by an American President.

The U.S. has been engaged in a huge experiment in redistribution since the years of the Great Depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man who knew absolutely nothing about running a business and who had spent most of his life living off an allowance from his mother, tried everything he could think of to get the economy going again.

FDR could have tried cutting taxes. He could have encouraged Congress to avoid voting for trade barriers in a fit of protectionism. Instead, he came up with Social Security, among an alphabet soup of government programs which were a disaster when it came to encouraging private sector job creation. Not unlike President Obama's "stimulus" and other doomed-to-fail experiments

The history of Social Security is one long succession of lies that Americans have been told. By the time Lyndon B. Johnson was President, the funds set aside for Social Security payments were moved to the general fund where they could be plundered by Congress. Under President Clinton Social Security payments began to be taxed as income.

World War Two arrived in the U.S. on December 7, 1941, and full employment followed to defeat the fascists in Germany and Japan. The government that had expanded during the FDR years continued to expand.

Americans emerged from the war without a scratch on the homeland. With the exception of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, none of our cities were bombed. We had a million battle-tested young men returning home in 1945, the GI bill let them go to college if they wanted, and by the 1950s we were on our way to being the greatest military power in the world and the greatest economy ever known.

And the federal government never stopped expanding. It needed more money, but the stock market, with occasional recessions, just kept growing too. As time went along, Great Britain and Western Europe rebuilt, alliances such as NATO were created to thwart the Soviet Union’s ambitions, while Eastern Europe stagnated under Soviet imposed communism.

In Asia, Japan became an economic powerhouse and South Korea too. China which had suffered under Chairman Mao waited until he died to convert its economy to a capitalist model, while retaining all the worst aspects of an Orwellian communist government. In the Middle East, oil allowed nations led by a handful of tribal chiefs and assorted despots acquire wealth beyond belief. Their populations remained oppressed. Now they are in the streets demanding freedom and justice. They will get Sharia law and more oppression.

Economies became increasingly global and interconnected. Europe became the European Union, a huge bureaucratic mess with the Euro as a common currency. Western bankers purchased Europe’s securities and vice versa. When the housing market imploded in September 2008, they discovered that most were de-linked from the original mortgage assets and were essentially worthless to the tune of billions.

The Federal Reserve responded by shipping $600 billion to prop up European central banks and Congress responded by authorizing the Treasury Department to “bail out” U.S. banks and the huge insurance company, AIG, with public funds--your money.

So what have we learned from all this? Foremost of all, socialist economies are inherently unfair and disconnected from the real world of hard work, property ownership, and capital investment. We learned that bankers are greedy and take greater risks than they should.

Great Britain, which has become one of the greatest welfare states in the world, was rewarded for its generosity with looting and rioting by youths whose families had lived on the dole their entire lives. Greece had already had its spate of riots.

Everyone keeps saying that the U.S. must not become Greece, but the U.S. has become Greece and that accounts for all those horrible headlines from last week.

The Obama administration, which has steadfastly ignored every previous “commission” that has studied the economy, has now engineered “a super committee” in Congress. It is composed of the twelve worst ideologues on either side of the economic policy divide in an effort to cut some spending, any spending! Failure has been baked into that cake.

The old way of conducting the affairs of nations, particularly their economies, is coming apart at the seams. It has exposed the hypocrisy of socialism here in the United States and everywhere else it has been practiced.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

A World That's Coming Unglued ... Alan Caruba

A World That's Coming Unglued

By Alan Caruba

After you’ve read history for a number of years, you begin to realize that the world goes crazy every so often. People and nations just lose their wits. It’s usually in times of great change when old truths or old ways of doing things are thrust aside by new discoveries, new technologies, or just the renewal of old pathologies.

Instances of this include the Crusades, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of fascism in the last century.

I think we are in a comparable period, for how long or short I cannot say, but to quote from Star Wars, “There’s a disturbance in the universe” or, to be more specific, among the nations of planet Earth.

Part of the problem is the sheer size of the human population. We now number in excess of six billion and there are serious issues of how to feed all of us, ensure clean water, employment, and, of course, the provision of the energy that fuels societies dependent on electricity.

Photos from space of the Earth at night tell one everything about which parts of the Earth are enjoying the benefits of electricity and which are not.

In the past, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, war, famine, disease, and death could be counted on to keep populations in check, but advances in technology, medicine, and agriculture have tipped the balance in favor of humanity.

Beyond sheer numbers, there is the problem of profligate spending that has several European nations, as well as the United States of America, in deep financial trouble. The merry-go-round of borrowing to keep bloated budgets afloat cannot continue indefinitely despite the efforts of central bankers to do so. Merely printing money has always led to bad events from riots to wars.

The financial problems are tied to the worst economic systems ever created, first as Communism, then its modified version, Socialism. Neither work. While politicians of every stripe like Socialism as a way to “redistribute” wealth, the entire system is confiscatory and based on coercion. It usually impoverishes the middle class of workers while creating an ever-growing class of those who will not or cannot work.

As harsh as Capitalism can be, it does work. It involves high levels of risk, often large amounts of investment, and it allows for failure. It is also the greatest engine of growth and the development of new industries, new technologies, and improved lives. Like fish in water, we are oblivious to the miracle a single supermarket represents.

All economic systems must strive to cope with corruption and, so long as there are three humans on Earth, there will be corruption. Having recently descended from the trees to walk upright, humans are subject to their aggressive nature.

Communism and Socialism promise equal misery. Capitalism offers the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of making the right investment guesses or developing new and better things people want to own. Competition improves life for everyone.

In sum, the clash between economic systems is still being worked out with nations that grant as much liberty as possible to their populations doing best. Where power is concentrated in a few, their populations and their nations do not prosper. As regards the world’s population, a huge cohort is young, unemployed and combustible.

It is the quest, the demand for more personal and political liberty that is causing much of the upheavals extant and no where is this more obvious than in those nations where Islam has been the prevailing religion. Islam translates as “submission.” It is based in seventh century strictures on how life should be lived. It is at war with modernity. It cannot prevail, but until it reforms or fails, there will be terrorism and war.

The greatest threat to humanity is the presence and continued quest for nuclear weapons. They are genocidal, capable of killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Allowing Iran, a nation led by a handful of crazed theocrats, to acquire nuclear parity poses a threat to humanity that has never existed before. Permitting North Korea or Pakistan to retain their nukes can only result in a bad outcome.

Like a rumbling volcano, the tremors felt as the result of the United States being led by a dedicated Communist and likely Muslim is a destabilizing factor not only for its citizens, but for others around the world.

It is up to the present leaders of the world to thread their way through the upheavals and divisions causing growing instability. Some will do it better than others. Some will cling to failed systems and philosophies of the past. Some will simply pursue power for power’s sake.

Alliances will change. Allies will become enemies. Enemies will become allies. Nations will pursue their shifting interests.

For the world in general, a good start would be the abandonment of the United Nations, an institution that failed initially as the League of Nations, and which is now so putrid with corruption and schemes to impose a one-world government that it poses a threat to the sovereignty of all nations.

Just as neighborhoods thrive when the common interests of neighbors for security and peace are observed, international organizations designed to concentrate power inevitably fall short of their heralded benefits.

In the same way shifts in the Earth’s tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions, and the latest cooling cycle are posing massive challenges for humanity, the nations of the world are trying to cope with changes in the financial universe they have created as well as outmoded concepts of security.

How the present upheavals, financial, religious, and demographic work themselves out remains unknown. In a neighborhood people find it best to “get along.” In a world beset with rival systems of belief and governance, the outcome is far more murky and, ultimately, more threatening.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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"I'd like to Propose..."

“I’d Like to Propose….”

J. D. Longstreet (and an Unknown Author)

Like you, I get tons of e-mail. Every so often I get material for a “suggested commentary” from readers. That’s how this one came to be in my inbox. As I am not mathematically inclined, I have not run the numbers so I cannot vouch for their accuracy and I will not even try.

Having said that, I must also say, the writer, whoever, he/she is, does posit some fodder for thought, especially when the country finds itself in trying financial times such as we are experiencing today in America. Our form of capitalism comes with these cycles built in.

IF we remain a capitalist country, and I have strong doubts that we will, we must go back to teaching our scholars, while they are yet in high school, that recessions, and recovery from same, and yes, even depressions, will come and go. It is the way a system based on a free market operates. It is when we forget that fundamental of capitalist economics that we get into trouble. I was taught that in high school over half a century ago. It has stuck with me and, as a result, I tend not to get rattled when the “slow downs” come. The trick, of course, is to plan for the slow downs during the cycles of plenty. America could take a lesson from Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream about the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine. But, that is a commentary for another day.

The Proposal: (Author Unknown)

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers need to find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well. Wall street, and the media, normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision", and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks.

Therefore: Why not reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members and Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Also reduce the remaining staff by 25%.

Accomplish this over the next 8 years. (Two steps / two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.

Some yearly monetary gains include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress.
(267 members X $165,200 pay / member / yr.)

$97,175,000 for elimination of the above people's staff. (Estimate $1.3 Mil in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Mil in staff per each member of the Senate every year).

$240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork barrel earmarks each year. (Those members whose jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion / yr)

The remaining Representatives would need to work smarter and would need to improve efficiency. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country? (Ya Think???… Ed)

We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.

Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (Telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)

Note: Congress did not hesitate to head home when it was a holiday, when the nation needed a real fix to the economic problems. Also, we have 3 senators that have not been doing their jobs for the past 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all have been accepting full pay. These facts alone support a reduction in Senators & Congresspersons.

Summary of Opportunity:

$ 44,108,400 reduction of Congress members.

$282,100,000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.

$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.

$59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining House members.

$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining Senate members.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.

$8,073,383,400 per year (estimated total savings.)

Big business does these types of cuts all the time.

If Congresspersons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits… there is no telling how much we would save. Now they get full retirement after serving only ONE term.

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Now, I am not so naive as to believe that any of this is going to happen… at least not in my lifetime… if ever. Some of it even begs the question of feasibility. Nevertheless, it IS interesting to ponder.

The so-called “Stimulus Bill,” which is expected to be passed at any moment, in my opinion, is only going to set us back, deeper into the current recession, and our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be paying for it. Where else is the money going to come from to pay for all this? It must come from you and me and the others listed above. The Stimulus Bill is not going to do one single thing to get us out of debt. It is only going to suffocate us under tons and tons of MORE DEBT.

I would remind you, as so many other conservative writers have, that FDR did not get America out of her last, much, much, worst, Depression. In fact, FDR made it worse by doing exactly the same things the Obama Administration and our leftist/socialist Congress is doing. Apparently, our government doesn’t know its own history, and it is repeating it.

So, buckle up America, it is all down hill for a while, at least until we bottom out. Maybe, just maybe, the American people will, by that time, have seen the error of their ways (by electing a socialist government) and toss them all out on their rear-ends and replace them with some realist conservatives. Until then, America is facing some dark, dark, days ahead.

J. D. Longstreet

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