by John Rubino on January 22, 2012

As the Greek default (and it is a default no matter what they end up calling it) is finalized this week, the consensus seems to be that failure to reach a deal would cause a global financial apocalypse. [...]]]> Why Isn’t Illinois A Bigger Story Than Greece?

by John Rubino on January 22, 2012

As the Greek default (and it is a default no matter what they end up calling it) is finalized this week, the consensus seems to be that failure to reach a deal would cause a global financial apocalypse.

That may be true. And if it is, why aren’t we more worried about Illinois? It’s more or less the same size as Greece, its finances are in the same generally catastrophic shape, and its leaders are just as feckless and dishonest. It owes tens of billions of dollars to various investors and stakeholders and will clearly have to stiff many of them at some point. The following article captures the “failed state” dilemma perfectly:

The question isn’t whether Illinois’ finances are in dreadful shape, it’s how to fix the problem. Or perhaps more accurately, will legislators have the political will to fix it when they return to Springfield for their spring session?

Even though the legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn last year imposed a temporary 67 percent state income tax increase, Quinn’s office expects to have a $500 million budget deficit this year.

Quinn is calling for a 9 percent cut in most areas of state government, except education and health care. But even with cuts at that level, the state would have a projected $800 million budget deficit for fiscal 2015, the year when most of the tax hike expires.

Quinn’s budget spokesman, Kelly Kraft, said the state’s fiscal situation is not pretty.

“These projections clearly demonstrate that action must be taken to control not only Medicaid costs but also (pension) costs, or all other areas of government will continue to be squeezed,” Kraft said.

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For the sake of the children – Obama is living like a king in an economy at the verge of utter meltdown…

Obama’s $4 Million Hawaiian Getaway Adds To National Debt

Around $4 million (£2.6 million) – the expected total cost to the US taxpayer of the Obama Christmas family vacation to Hawaii [...]]]>

For the sake of the children – Obama is living like a king in an economy at the verge of utter meltdown…

Obama’s $4 Million Hawaiian Getaway Adds To National Debt

Around $4 million (£2.6 million) – the expected total cost to the US taxpayer of the Obama Christmas family vacation to Hawaii according to the Hawaii Reporter (hat tip: Rob Bluey at The Foundry). This is an astonishing amount of public money to be spending in an age of austerity – when the president is supposed to be leading efforts to cut the US budget deficit, the largest since World War Two, and a towering $15 trillion national debt:

Hawaii Reporter research shows the total cost for the President’s visit for taxpayers far exceeded $1.5 million in 2010 – but is even more costly this year because he extended his vacation by three days and the cost for Air Force One travel has jumped since last assessed in 2000. In addition, Hawaii Reporter was able to obtain more specifics about the executive expenditures.

The total cost (based on what is known) for the 17-day vacation roundtrip vacation to Hawaii for the President, his family and staff has climbed to more than $4 million.

This $4 million figure is nearly 100 times the average annual salary of an American worker, which currently stands at $41,673. The Hawaii Reporter calculates that travel costs alone for the president and his entourage via Air Force One (plus a separate trip for Michelle Obama who has traveled in advance), in addition to a United States Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft to transport “the presidential limos, helicopters and other support equipment”, amounts to a whopping $3,629,622. Housing for security staff costs an estimated $151,200, and luxurious hotel rooms for the president’s 24-strong staff a further $72,216. Based on these figures the total cost to the federal US taxpayer (and the additional burden on the national debt) is a staggering $3,853,038. If you add in local taxpayer costs of $260,000 (including police overtime and city ambulances), the total public expense is $4,113,038.

The story has of course been ignored by the liberal-dominated mainstream media, which inevitably turns a blind eye to abuses of power by the Obama presidency.

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[ In addition to the millions of babies murdered each year in the United States under the spurious and execrable banner of the "right to choose [death],” now we see how children are literally living in the streets and cars of this once great country… It was the suffering of the children in [...]]]>

[ In addition to the millions of babies murdered each year in the United States under the spurious and execrable banner of the "right to choose [death],” now we see how children are literally living in the streets and cars of this once great country… It was the suffering of the children in Sodom that lead to its catastrophic judgment from heaven, and America will fare no better in this regard. Judgment Day is near – and is almost here. ]

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Report: Child homelessness up 33% in 3 years

One in 45 children in the USA — 1.6 million children — were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.

The numbers represent a 33% increase from 2007, when there were 1.2 million homeless children, according to a report the center is releasing Tuesday.

“This is an absurdly high number,” says Ellen Bassuk, president of the center. “What we have new in 2010 is the effects of a man-made disaster caused by the economic recession. … We are seeing extreme budget cuts, foreclosures and a lack of affordable housing.”

The report paints a bleaker picture than one by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which nonetheless reported a 28% increase in homeless families, from 131,000 in 2007 to 168,000 in 2010.

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor of social policy, says HUD’s numbers are much smaller because they count only families living on the street or in emergency shelters.

“It is a narrower standard of homelessness,” he says. However, Culhane says, “the bottom line is we’ve shown an increase in the percentage of homeless families.”

The study, a state-by-state report card, looks at four years’ worth of Education Department data. It assesses how homeless children fare based on factors including the state’s wages, poverty and foreclosure rates, cost of housing and its programs for homeless families.

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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama will “continue” to act “independently” without congressional authorization to “benefit the American people” as part of the White House’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign.

“He [Obama] fully understands that the kinds of things that are contained within the American [...]]]>

אֵל־נְקָמוֹת יְהוָה אֵל נְקָמוֹת הוֹפִיַע

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama will “continue” to act “independently” without congressional authorization to “benefit the American people” as part of the White House’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign.

“He [Obama] fully understands that the kinds of things that are contained within the American Jobs Act require congressional action, require laws being passed, and that’s why he’s pressing for Congress to take action legislatively,” Carney told reporters on Monday at the White House.

“But he can also act independently or, rather, administratively, and exercise his executive authority to benefit the American people in other ways. And he will continue to do that.”

Carney dismissed House Speaker John Boehner’s disapproval of the president acting unilaterally.

“I was asked about this concern, which I would just suggest is misplaced, because the president is acting well within his authority, well within his constitutional authority,” Carney said.

“He is simply acting to help the American people, whether it’s with their mortgages, their student loans, their access to vital drugs, assisting businesses to speed up the process by which they get a, you know, contracts, with their payments from the federal government. These are all measures he can take administratively, and he will continue to take them.”

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Hard to believe, but President Obama — one of the most divisive and partisan chief executives in American history — once posed as a messenger of national unity.

During his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then-Senate candidate Obama proclaimed, “… there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; [...]]]>

Hard to believe, but President Obama — one of the most divisive and partisan chief executives in American history — once posed as a messenger of national unity.

During his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then-Senate candidate Obama proclaimed, “… there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America!”

Well, apparently Obama now sees a different and thoroughly bifurcated nation, a “good” America and a “rich” America. And in order to secure the votes of the former, he is disgracefully fomenting hatred toward the latter.

Take his “jobs bill.” It never had a snowball’s chance in Hades of passing, and he knew it. It was designed solely to help him gin up hatred for “the rich”, whom he would force to “pay their fair share” were it not for those dastardly, obstructionist Republicans in the House of Representatives.

The malicious intent behind such demagoguery is exceeded only by its utter disconnect from reality — the “rich” already pay the vast majority of taxes. The top 10 percent of income earners pay some 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

Meanwhile, the president’s erstwhile Democratic allies in the Senate have actually hindered passage of his jobs bill even as House Republicans could only talk about doing so.

But no matter. As independent voters — who handed him the presidency because they believed his promise to be a healer — turn from him in droves, the president is forced to play to the basest prejudices of his left-wing acolytes.

And the strategy has already borne (poisonous) fruit: As Mort Zuckerman, billionaire publisher and one-time Obama booster lamented to the Wall Street Journal recently: “… the door to [the Occupy Wall Street movement] was opened by the Obama administration, going after the ‘millionaires and billionaires.’… To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country.”

To say the least. And having lit the fire of this resentment, Obama is now furiously fanning the flames. In a recent interview with ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Obama said, “… what I’ve said is that I understand the frustrations that are being expressed in those [Wall Street] protests,” and that he wants them to “… know that we understand their struggles, we are on their side.”

He’s on their side? What side is that, exactly? Consider what one speaker at the Los Angeles branch of the “occupation” forces told a crowd of sympathetic protesters:

“Ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class. Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”

And that sentiment is widely shared among the protesters. According to a survey conducted by pollster Doug Schoen, a full 31 percent of the Wall Street occupiers “… would support violence to advance their agenda,” the substance of which consists primarily of “… opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth.”

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By Philip Pullella

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from [...]]]> Vatican calls for global authority on economy, raps “idolatry of the market”

By Philip Pullella

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.

It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.

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Census: Housing bust worst since Great Depression

By HOPE YEN

The dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday.

The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the [...]]]>

Census: Housing bust worst since Great Depression

By HOPE YEN

The dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday.

The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents.

The reason: a longer-term economic reality of tighter credit, prolonged job losses and reduced government involvement.

Unemployed young adults are least likely to own, delaying first-time home purchases to live with Mom and Dad. Middle-aged adults 35-64, mostly homeowners who were hit with mortgage foreclosures or bankruptcy after the housing bust in 2006, are at their lowest levels of ownership in decades.

Measured by race, the homeownership gap between whites and blacks is now at its widest since 1960, wiping out more than 40 years of gains.

“The changes now taking place are mind-boggling: the housing market has completely crashed and attitudes toward housing are shifting from owning to renting,” said Patrick Newport, economist with IHS Global Insight. “While 10 years ago owning a home was the American Dream, I’m not sure a lot of people still think that way.”

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World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.

Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to [...]]]>

World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says

The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.

Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.

Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.

Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.

“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.”

Announcing its decision, the Bank said that the eurozone debt crisis was creating “severe strains in bank funding markets and financial markets”.

The Monetary Policy Committee [MPC] also said that the inflation-driven “squeeze on households’ real incomes” and the Government’s programme of spending cuts will “continue to weigh on domestic spending” for some time to come.

The “deterioration in the outlook” meant more QE was justified, the Bank said.

Financial experts said the committee’s actions would be a “Titanic” disaster for pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Sir Mervyn suggested that was a price worth paying to save the economy from recession.

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[ The failed prognosticator Ben Bernanke, who is likely complicit in economic terrorism against sovereign nations, now blames Europe for the malaise that is besetting the US economy... ]

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Bernanke says US economy is ‘close to faltering’

Fed chairman blames euro crisis, uncertainty over jobs market and political battles in Washington for [...]]]>

[ The failed prognosticator Ben Bernanke, who is likely complicit in economic terrorism against sovereign nations, now blames Europe for the malaise that is besetting the US economy... ]

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Bernanke says US economy is ‘close to faltering’

Fed chairman blames euro crisis, uncertainty over jobs market and political battles in Washington for gloomy economic outlook

Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that US economic recovery is “close to faltering”, and that a “disorderly” default in the Greek debt would have a serious impact.

In testimony to Congress, Bernanke was repeatedly quizzed about the impact of the European crisis on America. He said the US was an “innocent bystander” in the eurozone debt standoff and that US banks were not heavily exposed to Europe’s most troubled economies.

But he warned that Europe’s economic woes were already having a negative impact on US stock markets. “Unless the European situation is brought under control, it could be a much more serious situation for the US economy,” he said.

Bernanke also warned that political warfare in Washington was a threat to the US economy. He told the Joint Economic committee that the recent row over raising the debt ceiling had been very unhelpful at a time of increasing economic uncertainty. “It’s no way to run a railroad,” he said.

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Even Goldman Sachs Secretly Believes That An Economic Collapse Is Coming

By Michael Snyder

Goldman Sachs is doing it again. Goldman is telling the public that everything is going to be just fine, but meanwhile they are advising their top clients to bet on a huge financial collapse. On August 16th, a [...]]]>

Even Goldman Sachs Secretly Believes That An Economic Collapse Is Coming

By Michael Snyder

Goldman Sachs is doing it again. Goldman is telling the public that everything is going to be just fine, but meanwhile they are advising their top clients to bet on a huge financial collapse. On August 16th, a 54 page report authored by Goldman strategist Alan Brazil was distributed to institutional clients. The general public was not intended to see this report. Fortunately, some folks over at the Wall Street Journal got their hands on a copy and they have filled us in on some of the details.

It turns out that Goldman Sachs secretly believes that an economic collapse is coming, and they have some very interesting ideas about how to make money in the turbulent financial environment that we will soon be entering. In the report, Brazil says that the U.S. debt problem cannot be solved with more debt, that the European sovereign debt crisis is going to get even worse and that there are large numbers of financial institutions in Europe that are on the verge of collapse. If this is what people at the highest levels of the financial world are talking about, perhaps we should all start paying attention.

There is a tremendous amount of fear in the global financial community right now. As I wrote about the other day, the financial world is about to hit the panic button. Things could start falling apart at any time. Most of these big banks will not admit how bad things are publicly, but privately there is a whole lot of freaking out going on.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brazil believes that “as much as $1 trillion in capital may be needed to shore up European banks; that small businesses in the U.S., a past driver of job production, are still languishing; and that China’s growth may not be sustainable.”

Perhaps most startling of all is what the report has to say about the debt problems of the United States and Europe.

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The Alinksy radical has a single principle – to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots. What this amounts to in practice is a political nihilism – a destructive assault on the established order in the name of the “people” (who, in the fashion common to dictators, are designated [...]]]>

The Alinksy radical has a single principle – to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots. What this amounts to in practice is a political nihilism – a destructive assault on the established order in the name of the “people” (who, in the fashion common to dictators, are designated as such by the revolutionary elite). ~ David Horowitz

It is impossible to properly understand President Obama and what animates his treasonous policies unless one properly understands those who taught him, inspired him and the tactics he has adopted to contemporary Democratic Party politics with singular efficiency and fanaticism, including: Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Al Capone, Alinsky and Castro, among many other villains of history. In today’s column, I will focus on the nihilist ideas of Saul Alinsky of whom a Students for a Democratic Society radical wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words, systematically lie in the short term to achieve your long-term revolutionary goals of societal deconstruction.

Horowitz wrote that Alinsky devoted “his entire life to organizing a revolution in America to destroy a system he regarded as oppressive and unjust.” Both Obama and Hillary Clinton are protégées of Alinsky. When Obama said on election eve 2008, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” he wanted to bring Alinsky’s nihilist nightmare to the heart of America. Every appointee, every policy, every executive order, every bill he presents to Congress has the singular goal of enslaving people to government, establishing the Democratic Party for eternity by destroying God, American exceptionalism, freedom and all opposition.

The moment you believe or give credence to anything Obama (or any communist, progressive socialist, for that matter) says, you have fallen into his trap, lost the argument and are now an unwitting participant in helping him achieve his evil goals of burning to the ground all of America’s civil institutions by bankrupting the people – both in a metaphorical and actual sense.

In his 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals,” Alinsky says in RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. By “polarize” Alinsky means to “Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)” Therefore, the only way to achieve Alinsky’s anti-American goals is to lie about everything you stand for. That’s why he dedicated his book to Lucifer (Satan) whom the Bible says “is a liar and the father of lies.”

Dutifully following the Alinsky model of chaos-anarchy-nihilism and psychological projection (assigning your true evil motives to your enemies), Obama’s policies have purposely exacerbated our economic crisis to Great Depression levels and has started America toward a Marxist, European-style health-care system. In Obama’s nearly three years in office, America’s national poverty has reached record levels (46.2 million), and America’s GDP and economic growth are at anemic or negative levels. This alone has already made his presidency one of the most polarizing in history.

I challenge anyone to search the archives of American chief executives from George Washington to George W. Bush, and I guarantee you that there is no other president so incompetent, arrogant, a hater of his own country and a pathological liar than Barack Hussein Obama. The Germans call it “Schadenfreude”; Obama actually derives a perverse sense of pleasure in America’s suffering. The more America suffers the better Obama and his Alinsky disciples feel.

David Horowitz wrote that, coming of age in the 1930s, Alinsky was drawn to the world of Chicago gangsters like a moth to the flame and, in his professional capacity as a sociologist, on repeated occasions socialized with them. He became a willing public acquaintance of Frank Nitti, the infamous mob enforcer of Al Capone who succeeded as boss when Capone was eventually sent to Alcatraz federal prison for tax evasion charges in 1931. Recalling those times with fondness, Alinsky would later write, “[Nitti] took me under his wing. I called him the Professor, and I became his student.”

Like Hobbes, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Robespierre and Lenin before him, Alinsky would deify the brutish, wicked and primitive members of society while impugning the virtuous, remarkable and law-abiding. Alinsky’s associations with murderous mafia thugs did not mean he was unaware of the facts that criminals were dangerous, but like his intellectual forefathers before him, following the zeitgeist of the progressive revolution and being a doctrinaire leftist, he held “society,” America and capitalism solely responsible for existential class inequities. In Alinsky’s view, which the Democratic Party follows to this day, criminality was not a character problem but a consequence of the social environment, in particular the structure of private property and individual rights, which radicals like him were determined to change.

Truth was not only relative to Alinsky, it was irrelevant. Alinsky wrote, “An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. … To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.”

It was Nietzsche who coined the ideas “God is dead” and “will to power.” Once you remove God from politics, law, culture and society, all you need is a charismatic radical leader to fill the void, to impose his will on the people, to be so fanatically devoted to an overarching, controlling idea – the STATE is god and has all the answers to society’s problems (as in the case of every Democrat from Woodrow Wilson to Obama) – that all other issues pale in comparison.

That’s what Obama’s current $650 billion job’s bill together with his multi-state promotional tour is all about – it’s all lies, lies and damn lies concocted to deceive those whom Lenin called “useful idiots.”

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