Beyond Stupid – Laws and Policies of the US Government

Social Security Benefits are paid to immigrants who neither they or their spouses ever worked in America nor paid Social Security Taxes.

Global Companies who earned profits overseas and wish to invest those profits in America are taxed on those profits. Therefore, a global company can use their profits for free overseas to invest in their business, creating job opportunities there, but are penalized by new taxes (leaving less money available for investment) if they invest those profits in America to create American jobs. So why would they invest in America?

When the Federal Government sends out bids for work (for example to build a new highway), instead of accepting the lowest bid they can get, all bidders by law must price their bids as if they pay all their workers “union wages”. Therefore, the government never pays the cheapest price possible for the same work and quality.

Companies with union members cannot build factories or businesses in a different state without permission form a government board for fear that the out of state factory might become a non-union plant. A recent example was Boeing Corporation, headquartered in California, seeking to build another plant in North Carolina (while keeping their California plant) being turned down by that government board. Now if Boeing, having been stopped from expanding in the US, had decided to build that plant in Canada, it could do so without a problem.

America does not have an effective national system to stop voter fraud. A person with homes in two or more states can vote in all those states in the same election without a problem. Fraudulent voters (not registered, voting for someone else, not a citizen, using a dead person's identity, etc.) can cast ballots with little fear of being caught or stopped.

There is no system to catch a doctor who loses his medical license in one state, from moving to another state and practicing medicine.

There is no national, effective system to prevent illegal immigrants from working, collecting government benefits, sending their children to school, renting or buying housing, etc.. Therefore, there is no deterrent, and plenty of incentive, to illegal immigration.

Children born to American citizens out of the country are not automatically citizens, but children born to illegal immigrants in America are automatically citizens. It should be the reverse!

Though we have a shortage of scientists, mathematicians, and key technical experts in America, college graduated foreign exchange students, who can and want to fill those jobs plus have companies that wish to hire them, are quota bound denied the opportunity and sent back to their own nations. Meanwhile, low skilled illegal immigrants remain here with virtual impunity.

We have the highest corporate taxes in the world. Therefore, if you are a global company and can take your operations anywhere in the world, why would you choose America?

Government subsidizes some businesses such as 'green' companies, effectively and substantially lowering their taxes as compared to other business of the same size and profitability. This in effect is limited communism, a system that always failed miserably.
Government requires all gasoline to be at least 10% ethanol for the stated purpose of reducing oil imports. However, it takes more than a gallon of gasoline to make ethanol, so no oil imports are saved and more imports are actually needed. Also, it takes farming resources of land and water (6,000 gallons of precious, limited, fresh water for each gallon of ethanol) to produce ethanol. Ethanol delivers less power and efficiency than gasoline. It also results in less food products and animal feed, raising the costs of both to consumers and farmers. People are going hungry and some have died of hunger because we produce less food for human consumption around the world due to this policy.

While the government wisely requires all businesses who have pensions to adequately fund them, it has no such rules for itself. Consequently, government pensions for government workers are underfunded by tens of trillions of dollars.

Government pays pensions in a manner that would bankrupt a private company that offered the same plan. Full pensions are paid to workers in their 50s and sometimes in their 40s instead of 65. Pensions are padded by using the largest one year income that is often manipulated and padded by huge overtime pay deliberately condoned so that instead of collecting half their pay as pension, workers collect their entire annual salary or more as pension. In addition, cost of living raised are included for retirees. Plus they are excluded from paying Social Security taxes. Finally, overtime pay is given to managerial and professional workers by government they would not be given to such workers in a private company. Such people are paid by the job in private industry, not by the hour.

Subsidies for Agriculture. Another bit of communism at work. We pay farmers not to grow crops (to preserve the land which farmers would do anyway to protect their future). We set minimum prices for some crop prices which not only raises food prices to consumers, especially hurting the poor and middle class, but also produces unwanted surpluses that the government pays millions of dollars per year to store. The average farmer has a net worth of two million dollars, so why are we subsidizing multi-millionaires?

Minimum wage laws. The 'intent' sounds good – ensure payment of a 'livable wage' to workers, but what is the real 'impact' of this policy? Does it accomplish the intent? The answer is no. Studies show that these workers are often people in their first job. 10 years later, 98% of them are earning the average American salary which is much higher than the minimum wage. Studies also show that minimum wage workers are not usually head of household, but often teenagers and students being supported by someone else. Most importantly, people who can't find employment in their first job until later in life, often never join the middle class and are dependent on government welfare programs for most or their entire life. Since studies also show that unemployment among youth seeking their first job is much higher than the rest of the population and that the number of entry jobs substantially decreases (employers eliminate some jobs, reduces the number of other jobs by adding more responsibilities to the job) when minimum wage rates are raised, thus sending youth unemployment rates much higher, minimum wage laws are regressive/counter productive rather than progressive. This result shouldn't be a surprise as it is another example of government over-riding the free marketplace to institute a bit of communism (the management of businesses by the state). So why does government pursue this policy? The reason is that Democrats, by making the minimum wage increasingly higher, make it easier for unions to bargain for higher wages.

The huge spread of government subsidizing consumers who buy what the government wants them to buy such as 'green' cars. Basically, you have decided that a green car is too expensive to buy. Instead of letting the marketplace determine the winners and loses of the various green technologies being produced or researched, the government offers a substantial subsidy to you to buy this too expensive car that you wouldn't pay for with your own money. This is stupid in two ways. First, the government is reaching over to your back pocket, lifting your wallet, taking money out of it as taxes, then giving it back to you to buy this car. So you paid full price anyway. Secondly, the fact that it is too expensive to buy means that it is not market ready and most importantly may not be the right green technology that could ultimately be truly marketable. In fact, the subsidy to the wrong technology could delay or stop the right green technology from ever being developed. Same concept exists for government grants to universities and colleges to develop new technologies. Let business and the free marketplace, which is loaded with incentives to develop marketable products, handle it.

Blocking oil and gas drilling on public lands, especially in the places that energy companies most want to drill. I'm not talking about National Parks. Government owns plenty of land and ocean that will never be a National Park, but could produce needed oil and gas to make us energy independent and maybe even an energy exporter someday. Why is that good? Well besides protecting our economy from shortages and foreign nation oil boycotts such as happened in the 1970s, we could save the 700 billion dollars a year we pay for oil imports and invest that money to produce good jobs in America.

Declaring the polar bear as a threatened species. Really? There are 25,000 polar bears today compared to only 8,000 polar bears 50 years ago. So the polar bear population has tripled in just 50 years! This outrageously prejudiced decision was a government sponsored marketing event to promote false man-made global warming policies that liberals love and support because polar bears, almost universally liked by the general population, might help win more supporters to this global warming hoax.

Flood insurance by the federal government. Private industry won't handle it due to the cost. So again, government overrides the marketplace and installs another bit of communism. The result – the same homes are destroyed and rebuilt by the government multiple times at huge deficits to the premiums collected for all policies. At the very least, it should pay the damages, then confiscate the property so as never to build upon it again. Better yet, get out of the business (or at least publicly declare it will not accept new policies so that unoccupied flood prone properties are never built upon).

Labeling a reduction in future, “planned” spending as a “cut” to the deficit. This is a fairy tale embedded in a lie, designed to fool the general public. A true 'cut” means spending less than actual expenditures from the past, not the future. The current. nonsensical debate about cutting 4 trillion dollars from the deficit over the next 10 years is in actuality an 8 trillion dollar increase to the national debt, bringing it in 10 years from the current 16 trillion dollars to 24 trillion dollars.

Using discrimination policies to end discrimination policies. Contradictory in its concept, Affirmative Action policies and laws discriminate by using the color of one's skin to gain jobs, promotions, and acceptance into colleges over more qualified people with a different skin color. No amount of “dancing” around this issue can mask the fact that Affirmative Action is unfair and real discrimination. This certainly isn't the policy that Martin Luther King campaigned for. He campaigned for the end of all discrimination!

Random Thoughts - Questions without Good Answers

1. Heaven is supposed to be Paradise. Yet, every person in hell has a mother and a father. Some also have a spouse and children of their own. How can a person in heaven really be infinitely happy if a loved parent, child, or spouse of theirs is in hell? Could they really be themselves if they don't care of feel deep sadness? And if they do, can they really be in Paradise?

2. Some people who are kind to other people and even animals, who wouldn't think of inflicting pain or suffering on man or beast, take joy at the thought that "bad people" will go to hell and get their 'due'. Worse,they imagine hell as an eternal, unrelenting punishment of fire and brimstone. You wouldn't, as punishment, force a person's hand to remain on a hot stove for five minutes or worse be burned to a stake which would end suffering in a few minutes. Too awful and inhumane! Yet the hell you imagine forces an afterlife body to be consumed by fire for eternity. Have you ever considered the enormity of this? Imagine being forced for five minutes in a giant hot stove. Imagine one hour, then a day, then a week, then a year, then a hundred years. Now for a thousand years. How long would it seem for a million years. A thousand times repeated for a billion years. A thousand times repeated again for a trillion years. Now 100 trillion years. Not enough? Multiply that 100 trillion times. Eternally speaking that is less than a second in a thousand years. Can anyone really do anything so awful as to deserve this kind of punishment? You wouldn't condone anything like it on Earth. Why does it change after death in terms of justification in your mind? Maybe hell is an invention of people who wanted to exercise control of other people? Let's hope so.

3. Space is infinite. How could it not be? If you reached the end of space, then what's to stop you from going to the edge and sticking a ten foot pole past the edge? God is all knowing. If space is truly infinite, then how can God know all that is in infinite space? If he did, then space would no longer be infinite.

4. Time is eternal. There is no beginning, nor is there an end to time. If there was, then what happened an hour before the beginning of time or an hour after the end of time? Yet the universe and all of us exist. Therefore at some point in time, we were created. How much time from the beginning of time were we created? Since there is no beginning of time, it took an infinite amount of time before the Universe and us were created. But infinity can never be reached. That implys that we and the Universe could never have been created.

5. Apply the analogy in point 4 to God. God always existed is pretty much a universal religious belief. Then it would take infinity to reach this point in time. Infinity can never happen. If I could ask God a question, my question would be what was your very first thought and when did it happen? After receiving the answer, my follow up question would be, then for an infinite amount of time before your first thought, you did not think at all. How can that be?

6. Science has an answer for this next thought, but though I have heard it several times, it makes no logical sense to me. I am talking about traveling at the speed of light and its effect on time. In theory, if a person could travel at the speed of light, he would age much slower and return to Earth hundreds of years later. something to do with the 'bending' of space and time - the theory of relativity by Einstein. Here's my problem. Scientists agree that the nearest star to Earth besides the Sun is four light years away. A light year is roughly six trillion miles in length. So the star is 24 trillion miles away from Earth. Light from that star takes four years to travel that 24 trillion miles. If we allowed it to hit a mirror, it would take another 4 years to travel back to that star. So 8 years for a round trip and 48 trillion ymiles traveled. I have no problem with that. Now put a man in a rocked that travels at the speed of light to that star and back. logically, the return should happen in 8 years. However, scientists say that it would be hundreds of years before he returned to Earth? How could it be qany different than the light beam? If it took more than 8 years to complete the round trip to and back from the star, then the space ship had to be going much slower than the speed of light. If it wasn't, then it must have traveled much further than 48 trillion miles.

7. The speed of light is defined as the "cosmic" speed light. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light per scientists. We currently have satellites in space about 200 miles up that are "stationary" to Earth and thus spin with Earth. Earth spins roughly 24,000 miles (the circumference of the Earth) in a 24 hour day. These satellites also circle in 24 hours, but since they have a 200 mile longer diameter to the center of the earth, they cover about 25,800 miles in the same time period (200 iles more time "pi" which is roughly 3.14. Now put an imaginary stationary satellite one light year from earth (or an imaginary pole attached to earth one light year long). It would travel 3.14 light years in one revolution which is only one day. That's 1,146 light years traveled in an Earth year (365 days times 3.14). That's way faster than the speed of light.

Being Better Prepared for Natural Disasters

The super storm Sandy has taught us once again that we need to be better prepared for natural disasters. I don't think it either difficult nor hard to be much better prepared. Electric generators are essentially combustion engines that can restore electricity to a home or business when electric power is down for extended periods of time. Car engines are also combustion engines and nearly every home owner or business owns one or more cars or pickup trucks. It cannot be very difficult nor expensive to give car engines of the future an electric generator capacity. Nor could it be that difficult to design a conversion kit to turn current car engines into electric generators. Take the problem of gas stations without electricity. The station owner could use his own car engine to provide electricity to his station. He can get all the gas he needs to keep it going from his own gas station. Other solutions would be to equip FEMA with 10,000 electric generators. A tiny cost in government terms of about two million dollars should pay for that. Long term, require electric companies to convert their pole carrying electric cables servicing homes and small businesses to underground cables. Give them ten years to do it so that they don't have to pay out all those costs in one year.

The Ticking Time Bomb - Unfunded Government Liabilities

Here's the problem boys and girls - we currently have 121 trillion dollars of unfunded government liabilities. That amounts to $340,000 each for every man, woman, and child in America (or $1,360,000 for a family of four). That doesn't even count the current actual debt of 16 trillion dollars. The current, annual deficits of roughly one trillion dollars a year, would balloon to five trillion dollars a year if the government was forced to put money aside for those unfunded liabilities. The government requires corporations to put such money aside for their future liabilities, but hypocritically never regulates itself to do the same. The problem won't fix itself, will burst someday taking down all entitlements programs with it, and it needs to be addressed now, not then if we are ever to avoid collective financial doom. However, every time a politician finally mounts the courage to even talk about the issue, you liberal Democrats start screaming bloody murder, but you never attempt to enact a solution.

The Hidden Costs To You of Taxes, Government Loans, and Subsidies

Government needs taxes to pay for the military that protects us plus provide beneficial services (e.g. roads, social security, etc.) and unfortunately in some cases, wasteful services (e.g. outrageous pensions for government workers, lifetime welfare for people not handicapped, etc.). Whether or not a new tax directly imposes an additional tax burden for you to pay, it is like a hidden tax increase on everyone. A new tax on only the wealthy – you will pay a hidden tax for it too. A new tax only on corporations - you will pay a hidden tax on it too. Not paying any taxes before or after the new tax - you will pay a hidden tax on it too. How?

Whether some or all people or businesses actually pay the new tax, the impact is the same. They will have less money left to spend for other purposes and also less money to save. Less money to purchase goods or services. That depresses demand for goods and services which in turn means that less people are needed to provide those goods and services. The hidden cost of that to you is:

1. People will either be laid off and/or receive smaller or no raises
OR
2. New people that would otherwise have been hired will not be hired
OR
3. Prices will be raised to cover lost income which, if they stick, means that people will have less disposable income to buy other goods and services further accelerating and repeating this downward cycle.

Therefore, in reality, you've paid for the new tax too.

Suppose the extra tax only decreases savings and doesn't impact spending. Though an unlikely result of new taxes, it still is like a hidden tax on you. Less savings means less capital available to borrow start businesses, buy homes, or otherwise use credit to purchase goods or services. Less capital to borrow also has the impact of raising interest rates which makes loans more expensive to pay back and therefore reduces the amount of money left over to spend and/or invest. Therefore, the same three adverse results previously listed occur again.

What about the impact of government loans? More money loaned to government means less money available to loan to people and businesses. In addition to higher interest rates and therefore payback costs for loans, less loans will be granted to people and businesses. Less jobs created and pay raises occur. Also, the impact of higher payback loan costs reduces the amount of money people have to spend and invest. Therefore, the same three original, adverse results listed occur.

What about government subsidies? To pay for government subsidies, government has to tax you more and/or borrow more. We already listed the adverse impacts of that. All a government subsidy does is literally take the money out of your wallet to pay for something for you that you previously were unwilling to voluntarily pay for at its original price. The net effect is that you paid the original price anyway.

Famous Quotes by our Founding Fathers

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” -Benjamin Franklin

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt." - John Adams

"The Constitution is NOT an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

"Anyone who would trade their freedom for safety deserves neither freedom or safety." - Benjamin Franklin

“The government that governs best ...governs least” - Thomas Jefferson

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship” - Alexander Tytler 1787

"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." - Thomas Jefferson

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms .... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson
Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uninformed, and uninvolved people. ...
Thomas Jefferson

The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall

Democrats' Unfair Income Tax Cuts Complaints – Its Logical Conclusion

Democrats constantly complain that the Bush tax cuts unfairly favored the rich because they received the largest dollar tax cuts. If you follow their argument to its logical conclusion, then it becomes apparent that the only fair tax cut that Democrats could support is a zero tax cut. Allow me to explain by example.

Taxpayers 1, 2, 3, and 4 (respectively rich, middle class, lower middle class, and poor incomes) currently pay $100,000, $10,000, $1,000, and zero in annual income taxes. An across the board tax cut proposal for 10% is introduced into Congress. That means the four taxpayers would see their taxes cut 10% each for $10,000, $1,000, $100, and Zero respectively in income taxes saved. The Democratic Senator says wait, we can't give the rich taxpayer #1 a $10,000 tax cut when the middle class taxpayer #2, only gets $1,000. Nor can we afford to give all taxpayers a $10,000 tax cut or we will have huge deficits we cannot afford. So they agree to 'compromise' and limit the dollar tax cut maximum to $1,000 for everyone. So now, Taxpayer 1 only receives a 1% tax cut ($1,000) which for him is hardly anything at all.

Then the Democratic Senator from California speaks up and says, hey we can't give the middle class Taxpayer #2 $1,000 or ten times the dollar amount given to the lower middle class Taxpayer # 3. So a compromise is reached to make $100 the maximum tax cut for everyone. Now, Taxpayer #1 receives a $100 tax cut or just one tenth of 1% in tax cuts. Taxpayer # 2 also receives $100 in tax cuts or just a 1% tax cut. Taxpayer #3 receives the full 10% tax cut.

However, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts chimes in and says this isn't right because Taxpayer #4, who paid no income taxes at all, isn't receiving a tax break. So the Democrats put their heads together and work out a compromise. A zero percent tax break yields the same tax percentage break to all (nothing) and the same dollar amounts to all (again nothing). All the Democrats agree and are happy. They finally came up with a 'fair' tax bill (that is no tax bill at all). But, are you as a taxpayer, happy?

Taken to its logical conclusion, the only tax cut that could satisfy Democrats quest for a fair tax cut to taxpayers is zero tax cuts. Any significant tax cut above zero will always produce different dollar amounts by income level and therefore by Democratic definition would be “unfair”.

Federal Debt -Urgent To Unsustainable To Insane

From an IBD editorial - http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/091012-625210-federal-debt-urgent-to-unsustainable-to-insane.htm?nav=EditorialsLatest&p=2
By HOWARD RICH

News of the national debt eclipsing the $16 trillion mark has prompted another round of hand-wringing and finger-pointing from the two political parties responsible for its escalating accumulation.
In fact, one of those parties — in an effort to pick up some election year traction — installed a debt clock inside of its 2012 convention hall to track the skyrocketing tab.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said the purpose of the GOP's debt clock was to "draw your attention to the unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Obama administration."
OK, but what about the then-unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Republican Party prior to Obama taking office? And what about the inexcusable accommodation of GOP leaders on spending and deficit issues over the last 3-1/2 years?
If Republicans were serious about limiting government, how did their promises of $100 billion in savings last year turn into $130 billion in new spending? And how did we get saddled with $2.1 trillion in additional deficit spending in exchange for modest cuts that may not even materialize?
The unfortunate truth is that both Republican and Democratic leaders have proved incapable of restraining Washington's appetite for bigger promises, bigger budgets and bigger deficits — even as Americans are confronted with fewer jobs, smaller paychecks and a devalued dollar.
Also this problem goes much deeper than just the national debt. At last count the federal government's total unfunded liability tab — i.e., the cost of future promises that lack a dedicated source of financing — stood at a scarcely fathomable $120 trillion.
How much money are we talking about? Consider this: America's combined debt and unfunded liabilities are now nearly twice the size of the $70 trillion gross world product — which is the market value of all goods and services produced in a given year on the entire planet.
And while the $140,100 in debt owed by each taxpaying American citizen is indeed a frightening statistic, the unfunded liability obligation is far worse — just over $1 million per taxpayer at last count.
How long will it take us to pay back these astronomical sums? Well assuming you're repaying at a rate of $1 per second it would take you 31,688 years — and that's just to pay back the first trillion dollars of this growing mountain of obligation. Without interest!
Of course our country isn't paying down its debt or limiting its future liability — it is dramatically expanding both. After once describing our soaring debt as "shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," Obama increased it by $5.4 trillion during his first 3-1/2 years in office. Meanwhile ObamaCare — the president's new health care entitlement — will add another $17 trillion to our already soaring unfunded liability tab, according to data from the Senate Budget Committee.
We are no longer looking at an exercise in unsustainability — what we are witnessing is pure insanity.
"Future spending on these programs will skyrocket far beyond current revenues," writes Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute, noting that our nation will soon face Europe's fate "if government policy is left on autopilot."
In fact, this is already happening. In the most recent fiscal year Medicare paid out $564 billion in benefits — but only took in $274 billion in taxes and premiums. That's a shortfall of $290 billion.
Social Security is also currently paying out more than it is taking in — with its annual deficit projected to reach $623 billion over the next two decades. Driving this escalation is the fact that the program's ratio of workers-to-beneficiaries is set to drop from 2.8 to 1.9 by 2035 as the number of Americans collecting checks soars from 56 million to 91 million.
"It is time for Congress to take on the task of retooling Social Security for the long haul," SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue said earlier this year.
Wrong. Government's entitlement programs don't need to be "retooled," they need to be either privatized (like Medicare and Social Security) or eliminated altogether (like ObamaCare and the 2003 prescription drug benefit). And these reforms don't need to happen this year — our entitlement mess should have been addressed decades ago.
"Urgent doesn't begin to describe it," Social Security Trustee Chuck Blahous said recently. "We're somewhere between critical and too late to deal with it."
Indeed. Which is why continuing to delay the inevitable — i.e. the "bipartisan solution" — only adds additional destructive force to the fiscal reckoning that's coming.
• Rich is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.

Can Anyone Explain why Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly support Democrats?

Let's see, Republicans freed the slaves while Democrats fought against it. Southern Democrats imposed discrimination for 100 years after the slaves were freed, with many of them members of the Ku Klux Klan. 85% of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights laws while less than 65% of Democrats did, yet Democrats get credit for it. Republicans are fighting for better education through vouchers to private schools while Democrats are fighting for teachers unions against the interest of students. Most Republicans, blacks and Hispanics are against gay marriage while Democrats are for it. Can anyone from the Black and Hispanic communities explain logically why the majority are such staunch supporters of the Democratic Party?

The Ice Is Right

The Ice Is Right

Environment: Hillary Clinton made a well publicized trip last week (May 2012)to the Arctic to see for herself the impact of global warming. Less well known, however, are two reports that contradict the climate-change alarmists.

Upon her return from Saturday’s tour of the Norwegian coastline, the secretary of state announced that “many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data.” But she omitted a couple of important points:

First, polar ice is now the heaviest “in more than a decade,” reports the Los Angeles Times. It is, in fact, so plentiful it could postpone Shell’s “start of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean until the beginning of August.”

The Times says the National Weather Service explains it in these terms: “A high pressure zone over the coast of Alaska, cold winter temperatures and certain ocean currents have combined to bring unusually large amounts of ice not only along Alaska’s northern coast, but farther south in the Bering Sea as well.”

Second, photos taken in the 1930s by Danish explorers “show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers,” tech publication The Register reported.

“It now appears that the glaciers were retreating even faster 80 years ago” when man’s carbon output was far less than today’s, “but nobody worried about it, and the ice subsequently came back again.”

We can understand a U.S. secretary of state visiting a region that’s material to American interests. In this case, there is sea bed mining, oil and natural gas production and vital shipping routes to be considered.

But why throw in a political global warming jab?

Oh, that’s right: Clinton is a Democrat working in a Democrat’s administration that’s used global warming alarmism to push its (failed) green energy agenda. Of course. Mixing the practical — and often forgetting the practical altogether — with the frivolous to make political points is the way Democrats roll.

We prefer to deal in facts, which continue to refute the prophets of global warming, who are always dragging up some point they say indisputably proves their claim. But for every argument they throw out, there’s always at least one fact that wrecks the credibility of their story that man is causing the planet to warm to intolerable levels.

CBS Ignores Climate-Change Truth

CBS Ignores Climate-Change Truth (IBD Editorial)

Climate: While CBS touts a “groundbreaking” government report linking extreme weather and climate change, German researchers find 2,000 years of cooling and warmer temps in medieval times and the Roman era.

This summer’s heat wave has given the global warmongers new hope in conning the hot and the restless into believing the whole thing is due to that SUV parked in your driveway and that coalfired plant down the street.

Not so fast, say German researchers who documented a two millennia cooling trend. Both the Roman legions and Crusaders marched in warmer climes.
On Wednesday’s CBS This Morning, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews breathlessly intoned that a recent study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA  ) had established “the first-ever statistical connection between extreme weather and man-made climate change” and that the study “found that man-made heat made the Texas drought roughly 20 times more likely.”

Well, you know the adage about lies, damned lies and statistic. We have documented how researchers at Britain’s Climate Research Unit manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures that other data, such as from satellite observations, had indicated.

The U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied on anecdotes from suspect sources to produce carefully edited reports warning about such things as the Himalayan glaciers soon disappearing.
Wyatt’s report featured Tom Karl, chief of the climate office at NOAA, talking about shifts in the La Nina and El Nino ocean currents, which have contributed to our hot summer. But they are naturally occurring phenomena predating the Industrial Revolution.

Wyatt’s conclusion was that “NOAA scientists, meanwhile, are not saying that climate change causes any one specific drought, like the one in Illinois. They are saying the science is good enough now, they can lay odds on the connection.”

Laying odds? The science is “good enough”?
Facts, as Ronald Reagan said, are stubborn things. German researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees in Finnish Lapland to answer how the Romans were able to grow grapes in northern England.

Unlike the manipulated Siberian tree ring data used by researcher Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania to support his case for global warming, the German researchers found the Finnish tree data, which let them reconstruct global climate back to 138 BC, showed something quite different, such as a slight cooling trend that has lasted 2,000 years.

In general the scientists found a slow cooling of 0.6 degrees centigrade over 2,000 years, which they attributed to changes in the Earth’s orbit — not CO2.
Lead author Professor Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: “We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low.”

The study showed Britain 2,000 years ago had a lengthy period of hotter summers than today, including 21 AD to 50 AD, when temps were one degree centigrade warmer than today. That might explain the togas.

“This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 degree centigrade,” Esper said.

He also noted that their “findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today’s climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.”

We hope so. A Congressional Research Service ( CRS  ) report that showed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to fight the phantom known as anthropogenic global warming ( AGW  ) or man-induced climate change.

In its name, the war on fossil fuels has decimated our economy, stunting growth and increasing joblessness.

So next time you hear earth is doomed, just think of toga-clad Romans eating grapes in Northern England.

Your Share of the National Debt

Here's the bottom line - there are 312 million Americans today. Each of the 312 million men, woman, and children's share of the national 18 trillion dollar debt is $57,000. That's $228,000 for a family of four. In 10 years, at current spending plans, each of our share of the debt will be $85,000 or $340,000 for a family of four. That doesn't even count the tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded government liabilities for social welfare programs which would triple those numbers at the least. Now, if you took all the wealth from millionaires and billionaires and made them homeless paupers, we could reduce the debt 5 trillion dollars, still leaving 13 trillion in debt plus all those tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities. The math is clear that we cannot tax ourselves out of this problem. The only solution is a huge and permanent reduction in spending.

Sooner or later, the credit to finance the debt will disappear causing interest rates will jump dramatically, and quickly doubling or tripling the interest paid on the debt. the economy will collapse, the entitlement programs will go bankrupt, and there will be no way to be saved from financial disaster because we are too big an economy (unlike Greece which is tiny) for others to even consider saving us.

Put another way that might be easier to understand, imagine a person making only $30,000 a year with a debt of $180,000. Keep in mind that the general rule for long term debt such as mortgages is a maximum of 1 1/2 to two times income. Imagine this person going to a bank to borrow money to finance the $180,000 he already owes. The banker asks him how he is going to pay it back. he says that he doesn't intend to pay it back, but will be borrowing another $5,000 to $10,000 each year from now on, and will only pay interest on the debt - the money for such interest to come from his borrowings. After the banker stops laughing, he escorts the borrower out of his bank without giving him a loan. Now add 8 zeroes to each of those numbers and you have the United States ($3 trillion in annual revenues, $4 trillion in annual spending, and $18 trillion in debt). Worse - that does not include the roughly 75 trillion dollars in unfunded future liabilities.

Cost of a Government Created Job

Compare a government created job that Democrats love to push for to a private business created job that Republicans love to push for. Say they both pay $50,000 a year and income taxes collected for each is $10,000. With medical and pension benefits, the total cost of the government job is $75,000. The net cost to the government and therefore to us taxpayers after income taxes are paid is $65,000 ($75,000 total expense - $10,000 paid in taxes). What's the cost to the government for the private job? Instead of a net expense loss of $65,000, the government receives $10,000 of income taxes plus another $7,000 in social security taxes (paid by the worker and the employer; government workers do not pay SS taxes) at no expense to the government. So a private job is a net gain in taxes received to the government of $17,000 while the government job is an initial net loss in expenses of $65,000. The difference between the numbers is a total net loss to the Federal government of $82,000 (-$65,000 plus -$17,000 = -$82,000) each and every year worked for just one job created by government instead of by private industry.

Better Spouse Survivor Options at No Cost for Social Security

After my wife's two sisters died last year within 13 days of each other, I learned something about Social Security benefits that I had never thought about. It eventually impacts all retired SS age married couples. Namely, when a spouse dies, the surviving spouse receives the higher of their two checks and loses the other check.

For example, if one spouse was collecting $1,500 a month from SS and the other spouse another $1,000 per month from SS for a total of $2,500 a month, the survivor then collects $1,500 a month or a 40% decrease in total SS income. When a spouse dies, your mortgage or rent does not go down by 40%. Neither does your car payment, electric and heating bills, insurance rates, gas for your car, cable TV, phone, and Internet service, etc. go down by 40%. Especially for couples whose retirement income is all or mostly SS (pretty common situation), it may be impossible to keep up their standard of living, including keeping their house if they own one.

It doesn't have to be that way. Without any additional SS expense, beneficiaries could be offered the same options prior to collecting SS, that people lucky enough to collect a pension from a private company are given. That is, to determine up front, if your spouse will collect 100% or 75% or 50% or zero percent of your pension when you die. Based on life expectancy tables and your ages, the pension amount received each month is highest at zero percent survivor benefits and lowest at 100% survivor benefits. No matter what decision you make, the lifetime cost to the company for your pension averages out to be the same. Social Security should offer the same options.

In the example I gave, maybe that couple would have chosen to receive a combined $2,200 a month SS benefits instead of $2,500 so that the survivor would continue to receive $2,200 after the first spouse passed away. That likely would have kept his or her standard of living maintainable for the rest of his or her life.

How much will your Social Security benefit go down when your spouse dies? Answer – it will go down 33 to 50 percent. Where two spouses are each collecting the same amount from SS, one spouse's death will result in a 50 percent decline in SS income to the survivor. When one spouse is collecting half of the higher spouse's SS (that is the least amount a spouse can collect), there will be a loss of 33% to SS income when one spouise dies. Everyone else is between the min-max of 33 to 50 percent.

Lazy Person's Guide to Investing

The stock market is a great place to invest given that it's long term history averages 10-11% annual growth (but with lots of short term ups and downs). However, any stock can go to zero. Avoid them. They need constant daily monitoring of price and volume with strong financial skill sets to intepret when to buy and sell. Never put new money into the stock market that you are going to need in a few months or a few years. When the stock market has a major pullback, 3 out of 4 stocks go down with it. The recovery can take years to get back to where the stock market high had been and where your individual assets values had been. Stock market investing is for money that you do not need to live on for a long time and consequently can leave invested for decades without selling it.

Instead of individual stocks, buy ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) index funds that mirror the stock market and consist of many companies plus are cheap to buy and sell ($7 or less), and unlike mutual funds (people “managed” groups of stocks with an investment “type” of stocks) which are priced after the stock market closes that day or the next day if you buy them after hours, ETFs can be bought and sold when the stock market is open so that you immediately know the price that you are getting. SPY is an ETF that mirrors the S&P 500 (top 500 companies) which essentially mirrors the overall stock market performance. For small investors, that may be all you need. For a little more diversity, consider these three other ETFs - The S&P 600 small caps (SLY), the S&P 400 mid-caps (MDY), and the Nasdaq Top 100 (QQQ) - consists of a lot of technology companies (about 40% technology). Hold for decades after buying before selling.

Still want more diversity but want to keep it simple? There are “growth” and “value” options for the three S&P indices. Just add a “G” for growth or a “V” for value at the end of those symbols (SPYG, SPYV, SLYG, SLYV, MDYG, and MDYV).

If you decide to follow the path of most diversity, how should you proceed investing without making it too complicated? That would depend on how much you are able to save for investment purposes each year. If not very much and you still want diversity, that I would suggest that every time you investment reaches $1,000 in an asset, start investing in another asset. For most others with larger annual investment amounts, pick an asset investment goal – say $5,000 or $10,000. When the value of the investment asset that you are currently investing in reaches that “dollar” goal, switch new investments into a different asset. Whatever the investment goal you select, I would suggest asset investment sequence in the following order:

SPY, QQQ, SLY, MDY, SPYG, SPYV, SLYG, SLYV, MDYG, MDYV.

When you've reached your dollar investment goal in each of the 10 assets above, then repeat that sequence of investing over and over again. As your earning and savings power grows, you could decide to raise your investment “dollar” goals (for example from $1,000 to $5,000) before switching to the next investment asset.

Climate Change? - Do the Math to unveil this Fraud

Look at the math. Carbon dioxide makes up less than .0000387% of the atmosphere. Of that tiny percentage, 97% of it is from natural causes (plants and trees giving off carbon dioxide). Only 3% of the .0000387% CO2 is from man made causes. That works out to .00001161% of the entire atmosphere. Water vapor (clouds), also a greenhouse gas, is 20 times larger than total carbon dioxide and and 666 times larger than man made carbon dioxide. Unless you are seriously math challenged, it is obvious that man made climate change is a fairy tale. So why are they promoting this fraud? Simple - to impose phony carbon dixoide taxes on rich nations as a climate change "punishment" in a plot to extort money from rich nations and hand it over to poor nations.

The National Debt Crisis - An Analogy

So it only took a few months to add another trillion dollars of debt. Here's an analogy to make this simple to undersand. Suppose your take home pay was $21,000 a year and your debts amounted to $150,000 which is 7 1/2 times your income. Already see a problem( how can someone making $21,000 a year support debt of $150,000)? Now you plan to spend $36,000 this year. Well, since you don't have enough money to spend at that level, you go to a bank and ask for a loan for the $15,000 difference. The bank asks a few questions on how you are going to pay it back. You tell them, that you are never going to pay it back because you intend to keep spending and borrowing at that level for the forseeable future. You ask for an interest only loan and tell the bank that "you're good for it". After a long pause as the bank manager can't stop laughing, you are finally ushered out of the bank. Now add 8 zeroes to all those numbers and you have the Federal government. At that rate, it won't take long before no one gives the government a loan at low interest rates (that is buys its bonds) or any interest rate. Then the government will be forced to print money to pay its bills. That's when the currency devalues to nearly zero and all of us are equally broke.