Month: December 2012

Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/marco-rubio-narrative-gop-story_n_2377748.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Perhaps I am mistaken, but in my fantasy world I like to imagine there
was a time in our history when people had substantive discussions about
important matters in a mature fashion. An era when intellectual
tolerance was a habit, and debates sincere and rational, and erudite.

What you have just published is a piece that might be titled “The
Marketing of Marco Rubio”. You have virtually nothing about his ideas,
or how they might be superior or inferior to those of whoever he runs
against. You have said nothing about our looming fiscal disaster (this
is about as short as the case can be made: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2012/12/true-deficit.html

In short, what you are contributing to is the dumbing down of America.
You are asking us to value polish and appearance over substance. You
are telling us that Obama’s marketing talent is a virtue, when in fact
all it did was enable a mediocrity about whom we can verify virtually
nothing (Trump’s $5 million remains unpaid) to ascend to the White
House. For people who only care about their side winning, perhaps it is
understandable to view this as a good thing.

But this is not a football game, and the consequences of our looming national failure will affect everyone.

I got this email from Barry Joe McDonagh.  His Panic Away program is excellent.  I have never had panic attacks, per se, but I have had attacks of grief that were so intense they were functionally identical.  I would encourage anybody barely holding on, and afraid of getting pushed over the edge to get his program. It’s quite simple, but effective.  It gives you defensive tools that are well worth the investment.

Importantly, it was with hearing his approach–welcoming and encouraging negative emotions–that I realized how to process my own emotions.  You have to go through them. You can’t go over or under them.

In any event, this is a cut and paste, and looks like a good idea to me:

This is the world’s most powerful 60 second habit:

Get a small notebook and within 30 minutes of
waking each morning write down just one thing you
are grateful for.

Just one thing and it should not take you longer
than 60 seconds to write it down.

Done. That’s all you have to do.

This one simple habit is worth more than
bars of gold. I am very serious about that.

Data Point One: Last post, in which the data CLEARLY shows that even the most draconian tax increases imaginable would not come CLOSE to closing the gap between projected liabilities and income.

Data Point Two: Read this article.  Salient quote: “In 2009, foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to
6 percent of GDP. The current percentage has fallen by over eighty
percent to 0.9 percent of GDP. So who’s picking up the slack? The
Federal Reserve, which is buying a mind-blowing 61 percent of
government debt issued by the Treasury Department. ”The Fed is in effect
subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its
balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps
Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of
the budget deficit,” wrote Lawrence Goodman, former Treasury official
and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, last March.”

Data Point Three: “Basel III  is a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010–11, and scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2018.^[1][2] The third installment of the Basel Accords (see Basel I, Basel II) was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the late-2000s financial crisis. Basel III strengthens bank capital requirements and introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage. The OECD estimates that the implementation of Basel III will decrease annual GDP growth by 0.05–0.15%.”

Basel III will be deflationary, as it will require higher reserve ratios.

First, I want to note in passing that the Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by large banks, and has complete secrecy with respect to its actions, and has no legally enforceable fiduciary duty to anyone–although, self evidently, the self interest of member banks will no doubt be paramount.

Secondly, though, it submits to what I might term the “council” of the members of the Bank of International Settlements, even though it is clearly “primus inter pares.” It is a sort of shadow world, like the council on the Avengers, that reports to no government.

To the point: currently, over half of our borrowing is being enabled by the Federal Reserve.  As banks have less money to lend, as the economy slows for a variety of reasons, as tax receipts decline even at higher rates, and as spending GROWS, the relative importance of the Fed will skyrocket.

It would likely not be exaggerating to say that TODAY we are at a point where our government quite literally cannot operate without Fed money, and this process is increasing in scope, and will continue to in a virtually exponential fashion for the foreseeable future.

This state of affairs means that ALL politicians will have to kowtow to the Fed, or risk ruin.

Keynesian Fascism is based on this basic process, in which the government gets its hands into everything, such that it is a web from which it is impossible to untangle functional, meaningful economic liberty, or truly free markets.

The Fed is buying the government.  It is using inflation–always a wealth transfer, remember–to buy influence at  the highest levels.

Now, none of the people involved need money.  These companies have asset portfolios that would dwarf the wealth of most nations, and their CEO’s make hundreds of millions over their careers.

It does seem likely that power mongers at the highest levels–aided and abetted by amoral thieving academics like Paul Krugman–have a plan for us to reach a place where we BEG for government.

I will note, too, that since banks create most price inflation. the fact that their reserve ratios are going up will in part mask the inflationary effects of all the new money being put into circulation by the Fed.

Quantiative Easing is really simply a mask for this process, and economic decline is actually a good thing for them, since it masks both inflation, and the actual motivation for the money creation.

Everyone who has kids or claims to care about the future needs to read this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127374039087636.html

Data Point One: actual accrued liabilities are kept off our Federal balance sheets, in a manner that would be illegal for almost all private businesses and public pension funds.

Data Point Two: if we accrue them honestly, they amount, approximately, to some $86 trillion.

Data Point Three: “When the accrued expenses of the government’s entitlement programs are
counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to
avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax
collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued
liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the
annual cash deficit.”

Data Point Four: “According to the most recent tax data, all individuals filing tax
returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per year have a total
adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when corporate taxable
income peaked before the recession, all corporations in the U.S. had
total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to $6.7
trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under
existing tax laws.”

Conclusion One:  “if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these
American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the
year before the recession, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to fund the over
$8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities. Some public
officials and pundits claim we can dig our way out through tax increases
on upper-income earners, or even all taxpayers. In reality, that would
amount to bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Only by
addressing these unsustainable spending commitments can the nation’s
debt and deficit problems be solved.”

Conclusion Two (my own): not only is Granny CERTAIN to go over a cliff–not only are substantial cuts to the programs going to essential for national survival–but our kids are going to go over a cliff as well.

There will come a time–assuming we don’t fall into a history-deleting tyranny–when  the idiocy and short-sightedness, and simple greed of this period will be seen with the contempt they well warrant.

From here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/30/president-obama-fiscal-cliff_n_2384230.html

The situation is simple: we have two groups of lunatics arguing over whether we should continue to increase unsustainable spending quickly or slowly.  What they in fact are arguing over is whether we want a complete fiscal collapse in ten years, or if 5 years would be more congenial. 

There are only a couple sane people in all of Congress.  Rand and Ron Paul are the only ones who come readily to mind.  We are borrowing over a trillion a year.  Obama wants this number to go up by increasing taxes and increasing spending even more. 

We are already some 86 trillion in the hole with respect to Social Security and Medicare.  This means THE MONEY WILL RUN OUT.  THE MONEY WILL RUN OUT.

Our children–well, let me be more specific–YOUR children are going to hate you.  They are going to ask how you could be so callous, selfish and irresponsible as to fail to make plans for the future, how you could be so blind.

This is well worth the watch.  Very well done (although I wish he had linked his sources at the end)  If I had put a presentation together, this is about what it would have looked like.  He gets into ALL aspects of the issue, dealing statistically not just with gun ownership (30% lower homicide rates in Conceal Carry States; 42% less violent crime), but also social issues.  He makes the excellent point that much of our violent crime traces to the perverse incentives created by our drug laws, which–just as happened in Prohibition–actually facilitate violence by literally making crime pay.  Or the War on Poverty: if people married at 1970 rates, most urban poverty would disappear.  85% of prison inmates come from single parent homes.

The thing is logically coherent, fact filled, and lucid.

I am going to send it to a couple local school districts, and perhaps a few randomly chosen college professors.  It is that good.  I would encourage anyone reading this to post it on their Facebook, then email the link to a few people.

I would like to introduce a counterpoint to my normal doom and gloom and cranky/weird/insightful/ introspection:  http://nhne-pulse.org/2012-was-the-best-year-ever/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nhnepulse+%28NHNE+Pulse%29

I strongly encourage you to watch the video at the end, the 4-ish minute one.

It truly is “wars and rumors of wars”, isn’t it?  If you can’t release the fear here, now, in whatever circumstance you find yourself, you can’t do it anywhere else.  There are people going hungry in Africa and elsewhere, I suspect–who suffer, and of course don’t want to suffer–but who worry less than we do here, surrounded by living conditions far in excess of the greatest kings of old.

There is no reason for me to stop blogging, to stopping trying to understand, to comment, to contribute, but I have every reason to stop worrying, to stop fearing.

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.  Don’t remember where I saw that, but I’ve always liked it.

I have not read the book, but find the title evocative.  When distress and misery are around you, do you not still have the opportunity, the chance, to love–not just a person, but yourself and life?

And in truth we have it so easy, at least for now.  It is what MIGHT happen we fear.  I went into a Whole Foods yesterday, and it is miraculous how much stuff they had–the extensive cheese selection, the fresh produce, the olive bar,, the high quality beef, salmon and sausage.

I was going to to this as a separate post, but I’ll ask this question here: if you knew, for sure, that you create your own reality, how easy would it be for you to imagine the best possible future for you?  I suppose it might be easy for some, but I suspect for many of us it would be quite difficult.

In some respects all but the most emotionally healthy people are afflicted with a sort of Multiple Personality Disorder.  We have parts of us that crave success and love and all the good things in life; then we have a part that is afraid of losing what we have, of risking; or which is outright self sabotaging. Many, many people dream less, work less, achieve less because some part of them thinks they aren’t worth it, don’t deserve it.

Certainly that has been the case with me.  This is hard, I think, for people to understand who have not been subjected to sustained efforts to eradicate them.

This is a reasonable piece: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/lets-embrace-michigans-right-to-work-law/article6581742/

It’s my belief that a basic right we have as free citizens is to not be
forced to do something we don’t want to do. That is the basic definition
of oppression, something our country has long fought against, something
many of our citizens fled their homelands to seek refuge from on our
shores.

It is worth reading through them, here.

You will note that 4 through 8 deal in some ways with the means by which a government can restrict a person’s freedom and privacy.  The NDAA violates most of them.

Arguably, the 10th Amendment, as well, should regulate the police power of the Federal government.

Tyranny is something a long time coming, and the first necessary casualty in that war, if it is to be won by the Fascists, is logical integrity.  Words need to be made to mean whatever they need them to mean, and to be mutable even then.

Our leading thinkers–I nearly and incongruently almost said “best”, although “most esteemed” might work as well–have given  up the challenge of word defense.  This is why I feel so much fear for the future.  How can the middle hold when the people who are supposed to keep it together are running around jabbering nonsense?

Edit: Actually, it is worth reading the Preamble, as well, which I had never read:

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at
the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in
order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further
declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending
the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure
the beneficent ends of its institution.