Congress has a penchant for passing toothless legislation, especially as it affects them. The STOCK Act is no exception. STOCK stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge. There is enthusiasm for such a law.

Fervor over insider trading on Capitol Hill reached a peak last fall following the airing of a “60 Minutes” segment questioning whether lawmakers including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) made investments based on their knowledge of legislative activity to which they would be privy.

Pelosi and other lawmakers named in the piece disputed any allegation of impropriety, but a number of lawmakers in the meanwhile proposed versions of the STOCK Act to address any perception of poor ethics.

Senate democrats are eager to prove something- despite failing to produce a budget for more than 1000 days.

Today during a conference call, Sens. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) each said the STOCK act was important to pass to remind the American people that Congress can actually achieve something.

“The American people need to know that their elected leaders play by the exact same rules that they play by,” Gillibrand told reporters, “We have to show, number one: we’re not above the law, number two: that we play by the same exact rules as every other american, and three: that we can actually get something done.”

We’ll see about that.

Republicans in the House do not approve of the bill as it was passed in the Senate. They feel it is weak.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Tuesday criticized the Senate legislation as weak. His staff said he would move a strengthened version of the bill to the House floor at the end of the month.

Senators voted for an amendment Thursday to expand the legislation’s reporting requirements to members of the executive branch.

The legislation would mandate that lawmakers report all major transactions within 30 days and file financial disclosure reports electronically.

But there was a limit to the Senate’s self-discipline:

But lawmakers defeated several proposals to significantly reform the perks and powers critics charge have a corrupting influence on Capitol Hill.

Senators voted down a bipartisan proposal to permanently ban earmarks as well as an amendment to require lawmakers and senior staff to divest of stocks or put their stock holdings in blind trusts.

The amendment sponsored by Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) to permanently ban earmarks failed by a vote of 40-59.

But this was particularly egregious

Senators defeated another amendment sponsored by Paul to prohibit executive branch appointees and staff from having oversight, rule-making, and loan- or grant-making authority over companies in which they or their spouses have significant financial interest.

The amendment was designed to guard against the alleged improprieties stemming from the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar-panel manufacturer that received more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees.

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) demonstrated once more the contempt Congress holds for voters:

“We tried to focus at the specific task at hand, closing loopholes to ensure that members of Congress play by the exact same rules as everyone else,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the legislation.

Cue Peter Schweizer. Schweizer noticed something about the success of Senatorial investing:

Schweizer: Well, you know, somebody sent me an article that appeared in an academic journal a few years ago. It’s a journal called the Journal of Quantitative Economics. If you have trouble sleeping at night, this might be a good place to go.

But this study was actually very interesting, because these scholars looked at 6,000 stock trades by U.S. senators, and what they found, shockingly, was that while the average American tends to underperform the market averages, the average corporate executive beats the market by 5% a year and the average hedge fund beats the market by 7 to 8% a year. This study found that U.S. senators beat the market by 12% a year…

Schweizer: Yeah. And so, it left me wondering, you know: “OK, gee. Either these guys are really, really smart geniuses that I don’t give them enough credit for, or something else is going on.” And it really only took me a split second to say, “You know, I think something else is going on.”

Hill: And again, there’s so much research that you and your team did for this book. How did you go about connecting the dots?

Schweizer: Well, you know, it was very difficult. What we really wanted to do was show and sort of overlay the financial transactions of members of Congress. They’re required to disclose them once a year. They’re required to show what their holdings are and also the dates of transactions, but they only give the amounts in ranges, so you don’t know exactly how much money they’re trading.

But we took that material, and then we looked at their legislative activity or things that were going on where they had access to special information. Like for example, during the 2008 financial crisis, they had a lot of closed-door meetings with the Fed chairman and Treasury secretary. And once we overlaid those, we found, astonishingly, that people who served on financial committees were aggressively trading bank stocks. Those that were involved in the health-care bill, the health-care reform debate in 2009 were aggressively buying and selling all sorts of health care-related stocks, and it was kind of stunning. So, once we had this overlay, then we started to track to see what sort of investment decisions they were making and how they did in terms of those investments.

Yet this bill is sorely lacking. Why?

Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi’s net worth skyrocketed 62% in 2010. How?

Insider trading. Specifically- taking advantage of IPO’s. And what doesn’t this proposed law cover?

IPO’s.

The passage of the STOCK Act in the Senate is just the first battlefield victory in this war for reform. The STOCK Act makes congressional insider-trading illegal. But let’s be clear: it alone doesn’t go nearly far enough to deal with the problems of cronyism and corruption that we face. It deals only with publicly traded stock, not equity buys in private companies. It does nothing to close the sweetheart deals involving IPO shares that can make politicians more money in one day than a bribe ever could. And insider-trading cases are very hard to win. On top of that, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department are unlikely to go after a powerful politician. Just look at what happened to the FBI when they were investigating Rep. William Jefferson, who famously took bribes and put the money in his freezer. There were threats to cut the FBI budget!

So when Pelosi says she backs the STOCK ban, believe it. It won’t stop her from abusing the American people.

Which is why this is not the insider trading ban you were looking for.

A Previous Subtle Effort By The Same Obama Propagandists

How symbolic, the red and blue spheres merge and the resultant color is a deeper shade of blue. Propaganda is considered effective if it is subtle and delivers a covert or subliminal message without the subject being aware of the intent. In this image, the profile of Obama was superimposed over the merging of Conservatism and Socialism with the profile of Obama and the result is a deeper shade of blue; picturesque and convenient, Obama brings the country together and we are united under a deeper shade of Marxism. It was created by the same team that made the Chrysler commercial; it hasn’t achieved fruition, but not for a lack of effort by Obama and his lackeys.

Our public school systems have been infiltrated with the Leftist Part Line for decades. At first the message was so vague, we thought it was merely coincidences, teachers and text writers surely couldn’t be so blatant and obvious with their political agenda; oh, but think back, while we refused to call liars and Socialists as such, they increased their efforts and relied on terrorists like Bill Ayers, confidant to our president, for the Leftist message now in our children’s text books.

Now, either Eastwood has allowed himself to be duped like a moron or he is a part of the deception; regardless of his intent, he has been used as a key element in the Leftist propaganda movement. Unfortunately, we have all been played for dupes by the creative schemers of the Left for while Eastwood tells America we are at the halftime of the recovery, during the halftime of the largest event in television history, the insidious message is implied that America needs to give Obama four more years to complete his anemic recovery, that seems to elude everyone but billionaires, bankers, and others on the dole.

The fact that Chrysler is staging a fart, stumble, fall type recovery based mainly on enriching Obama cronies and unions with our taxpayer money is pushed from our consciousness; since, we receive the subliminal message to equate the auto maker’s efforts with our fight against terrorism, the struggle of Obama to win reelection, and the struggle of the two athletic teams. In the excitement of the neo-gladitorial struggle portrayed on the boob tube, we are supposed to lose ourselves in the excitement and intellectual numbness of the game, much like the games in Rome that staged to entertain the masses or the mob in Rome to keep them content and less likely to riot. Thus in a similar way, we are played for fools by the people who stage our games; no they aren’t staged to prevent us from rioting, but what an excellent time to exploit our self-imposed stupor to insinuate a covert message to reelect our failed president by one of his corporate acquisitions, with a percentage of Obama’s funny stash money, more commonly known as tax payer money.

Oh, but you say the message is vague and imprecise, how can you make the connection: sorry people, the message is supposed to be vague and imprecise, it is supposed to leave a subliminal impression that will encourage the mobs of unthinking drones to vote for Obama once again; after all, hasn’t he struggled valiantly to repay his contributors and unions with taxpayer money, at least when he can find time between golf games and vacations. The fact that the connection is obvious to those who are alert and cognizant means the message is there. If you want to deny it, like Eastwood who so gallantly gave his check to charity, but also willingly gave his image and voice to the Marxism of Obama, means you either endorse the Socialist cause or you are to dense to notice the ever deepening pool of Obama Socialism.

Presidents of both parties have long extolled the virtues of renewable or green energy. But no president has embraced the concept, nor has spent so much taxpayer money on the idea with nothing to show for it but a string of bankrupt companies, as has Barack Hussein Obama. He has even made the idea a cornerstone of his political and environmental platforms. Yet despite dismal failure, his green energy vision remain undaunted, and he continues to spend taxpayer money and offer all manner of provably untrue or conveniently incomplete success stories.

For example, in his State of the Union speech, Obama said, “It was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.” That preposterous claim is completely untrue. Fracking has been used since 1947, and was originally developed by Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation, and improved by a small-time, independent oil man named George Mitchell.

In the “great timing” department, Obama said, “In three years our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries.” Two days later, Ener1, high-tech battery manufacturer and the recipient of a $118 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy. But, the Obama administration advisers promise that battery costs will fall. Why do they think that? The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences reported that lithium-ion batteries, like those most used in electric vehicles, is not an “emerging” technology, but is quite mature. Dramatic cost drops are most often associated with new technologies.

Obama’s green-energy program has yielded thousands of jobs. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported that $38.6 billion worth of federally backed loans to green-energy companies has created 3,545 new permanent jobs, with each job costing taxpayers $5 million. It would be much cheaper to have simply supported/subsidized these workers until they died. The wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal industries admit that they would cease to exist without mandated consumption orders and massive production subsidies.

Obama’s DOE predicts that consumption of renewable energy will go from 8.4% of total US energy consumption to 10.8% in 2035, with most of that growth coming from government consumption orders. When we total the billions of taxpayer dollars we’re spending on renewable or green energy, that’s not much of a technological revolution. Technological breakthroughs do occur, often without warning. But there is no reason to believe that President Obama is a better energy future forecaster than are market capitalists who stand to gain billions in profits by making good investments in future technologies So for all you green-energy environmentalists, it’s time to put up (especially your own money) or shut up. Speaking of putting up, environmentalists, why are Chevy Volt sales so dismal?

The recent bankruptcies of DOE green-energy loan recipients and the record of bad DOE bets over the past three years caution taxpayers against future crony paybacks, er, taxpayer-backed loans, er, “investments.” American voters should not confuse hope with certainty.

But that’s just my opinion.

Find more articles like this one at RWNO, my personal web site.

John Boehner can take a hit on this one too. You know that wonderful payroll tax cut? Guess who’s going to pay for it?

(CBS News)Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians – the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months.

At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans.

But there’s something the politicians weren’t bragging about – the fact that they’re paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.

The new fee is a minimum of one-tenth of 1 percent on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and is likely to go much higher.

It will be imposed for the next 10 years on most mortgages and refinancings and it lasts for the life of the loan.

For every $200,000, it amounts to an extra $15 dollars a month.

It’s bad news for Patty Anderson, who’s buying a home in Virginia.

Anderson will save a couple hundred dollars from having her payroll tax cut extended but her mortgage broker told her the new fee would cost her almost $9,500.

“I was absolutely startled that it would add up to that much,” she said.

The money collected by this tax will go toward social security, right?

Nope.

The $35.7 billion collected in fees won’t go into the Social Security fund to replace the lost payroll tax. It goes to the general treasury where Congress can spend it however they please.

“We had to pass it to find out what was in it” Boehner is rumored to have said. Fingerpointing all around.

CBS News went to Capitol Hill ask what Congress was thinking when they passed the mortgage fee hike. Boehner pointed the finger at the Senate.

“As you’re well aware, this bill came over from the Senate. I don’t know how they justified it. We would rather have offset that two-month extension with reductions in spending,” he said.

But the Senate blamed the House. And Democrats and Republicans blamed each other.

The Obama administration says this won’t hurt much because the knife will be stuck into the taxpayers’ backs slowly.

An Obama administration official defended the mortgage fee, calling it “modest.” She said it’s “unlikely to negatively affect borrowers” because increases “will be phased in over the next two years.”

Patty Anderson doesn’t agree.

“I think it just looks like Washington grabbing more money,” she said.

Yep.

Welcome back, class! As I warned you last time this subject would be painful for you, so strap yourselves in. As you’ve probably noticed with all of the charts and graphs we use that economists love to use pictures to make their points. In this case instead of a picture I’m going to use a hypothetical story to get things started…

Let’s say that at some point during your childhood your mother promises you that if you get straight A’s in school and do all of your chores upon graduation from high school your father will buy you a Ferrari. Needless to say, you are very well motivated to be a good kid. You spend the next few years busting your butt, getting all of your chores done and making whatever sacrifices to your social life that are necessary to get straight A’s. Graduation day comes and you walk up to your father and tell him about the promise your mom made and ask when you’re going to get your new car. Your father looks back at you and asks how you thought the family could ever afford a gift like that. Even with both of your parents working full time your family can only afford to live a pretty modest lifestyle. If you had just looked around you would have understood that there is no way the family could have fulfilled such an outrageous promise.

Having your dream crushed would not go over well, and you are justifiably unhappy for having been duped. Now, where is your frustration directed – at your mom or dad? Even though the fault lies with the person who made the ridiculous promise, chances are that most of your anger is at the person who had to point out the reality of the matter and say “no” to you.

To most of us who live outside of the beltway or state capitols the concept of making outrageous financial promises that can never be kept sounds absolutely insane, and sadly for you this is just basic strategy to win an election.

Before we go any further let’s ensure that everybody understands exactly what an unfunded liability is. Break down the two words:

Unfunded – A desired purchase that one does not have the means to buy based on current finances

Liability – Financial commitment to be paid at a later date

What this means is that every time you decree that something will be paid for with funds that have not been budgeted you are creating what is called an unfunded liability (UL). Be careful – don’t confuse unfunded liabilities with capital expenditures. Capital expenditures (CE) can be defined as purchases that are paid over several years and will appear in outyear budgets. Where CE’s are planned and already factored into future budgets, UL’s are not.

To illustrate this think of a household budget. Sister Babe and I have all of our regular expenses that we pay as we consume them – groceries, utilities, gasoline, clothing, etc. We also have items that we had to finance because we are unable to buy them with cash, such as our car or our home. The car and home are not ULs because we have budgeted for their expenses in future years based on our current income level. We know that based on our salaries we can afford the car and our home, so these are not unfunded liabilities. Now, let’s assume that one of us decides to do something stupid like make a large, unplanned purchase that goes enough beyond our budget that has to be financed with the money from elsewhere. In terms of scope, a cup of Starbucks during the day or going to grab a beer with a coworker after work are not expenses we budget, but are small enough that we don’t have to plan for them. If one of us decides to surprise the other with the gift of a Lexus as a Christmas gift, that would have a significant impact on our household finances (If you want to see a great parody of those obnoxious ads click here. Warning – the language is NSFW). We would have to either cut back on other expenses, find a way to make significantly more money, or borrow against our future and make plans to pay for this for years to come, preventing us from using our money for other financial goals.

From your perspective, our consumption would be the equivalent of the day to day services that your level of government provides, such as police and fire services or payments to retirees. Our car or home would be your long term projects, such as building bridges or highways. As for the Lexus, that is everything that you have planned that you don’t have in the budget. Examples of these would be wars, natural disasters, or Obamacare. Sure, if you spend too much you can just raise taxes and rely on unrealistic revenue forecasts from a tax base that your laws incentivise to shrink. Or, if you spend spend recklessly you can just tell people not to worry and that we can just pay for it down the road or punish the wealthy.

Here is the problem with unfunded liabilities – they ultimately have to be paid back, and those payments mean that in the future you will have less to consume or invest. If Sister Babe and I now have a $700 monthly Lexus payment that’s money that we don’t have for vacations, for funding our retirement, paying off the car we already have, or, heaven forbid, forcing Brother Bob to cut his beer consumption.

The same goes for you. The beauty from where you’re sitting is that the pain is spread over many people and your constituents are so used to paying you taxes without question it goes largely unnoticed. But ultimately the debts have to be paid back. I believe it was the writers at Cafe Hayek who defined an unfunded liability as a tax on future generations that will have to be repaid either by raising taxes or inflating the currency. A few years ago I got to hear Ben Stein Speak when he got in front of the crowd and said, “Bueller… Bueller…”. No, he actually didn’t say that but what he did offer was a great definition for our soaring deficits – “Financial grandchild abuse.”

A few years ago Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey, surprising many that a conservative Republican could win in such a blue state. The people of New Jersey got fed up with the leadership of one of the best financial minds that Democrats could produce in John Corzine. The state had (and still does) face some serious budget issues, but Christie was the one who was given the task of dealing with the problem. The Democrats in the state legislature naturally proposed taxes on the wealthy to pay for these, which Christie rightly vetoed as soon as the bill reached his desk. New Jersey already suffers from one of the highest tax burdens among the states, and only neighboring New York’s even more oppressive taxes keep more people from North Jersey from fleeing the state. Christie had to make cuts to the budget, and one of the larger outlays that New Jersey has is to its bloated public sector workers. Specifically he targeted the teachers’ union, making the unreasonable demands that they fund part of their pensions and health care – you know, like everyone else has to do. This and other spending cuts made Christie quite unpopular in New Jersey, but at the end of the day who’s fault is the state’s terrible financial condition? Was it the man who caused the problem or the man who enacted the painful solution?

Sadly, in your world these promises get you re-elected until the bill finally comes due. Or when you finally get thrown out of office you can fail upward into some think-tank or high paying lobbying job. And of course, we get stuck with the bill. Going back to Cafe Hayek’s definition, any deficit spending that you commit is nothing more than a tax increase that you haven’t bothered to pass yet. If you want a great example, look at what happened just recently when all of the president’s sycophants in the media were baying over Mitt Romney’s tax returns. The debt ceiling was quietly raised by $1.2 trillion dollars. Using a rough total US population of 308 million people, that averages out to a tax increase of $3,896 for every man, woman and child in America.

And if you think we can get around that tax increase that the president just passed by simply demanding that the wealthy pay their “fair share”, think again. Declaration Entertainment’s Bill Whittle does a great video walking through Iowahawk’s analysis of how much of an impact on the debt we would have by confiscating private wealth. If you have five minutes it’s well worth watching.

To shoot down another argument supporting deficit spending we can look at every lefty’s favorite economist, Paul Krugman. By calculating that most of our federal debt is held by American entities, whether it be private citizens, banks, etc. the debt is meaningless because we“owe it to ourselves”. This is a perfect illustration of why it is dangerous to listen to people with grand ideas and minimal experience in the real world. An old coworker of mine gave me a phrase I love to use, Krugman is “buzzword compliant but experience deficient.” When you’re looking at the world from eight miles high it’s easy to make assumptions about a big picture without realizing that the big picture is made up of an incredible number of small moving parts. Every bit of that debt that “we owe to ourselves” is exactly that – it is owed to some person who is working under the assumption that at some point they will be paid back for the loan they made. Yes, the borrowee can take a loan from someone else to pay it but at some point there is an end where the debt has to be paid.

To show this point of owing to ourselves with a real life example we can look at an example from my past of betting on football with friends. When we were in 6th grade my buddy Richard (not his real name) sat behind me in Sunday CCD class. I would always tear out of the newspaper the latest betting lines and we would pass the paper back and forth negotiating which games we would bet on and at the end of class we would come to an agreement as to which games each would have. We were twelve years old, so our big stakes betting was a quarter or fifty cents per game. Every Tuesday morning when the gaming week ended after the Monday night contest we would settle our debt on the playground with the loser paying what he owed. If I remember correctly I trounced him pretty well that season, having an advantage for the year of being up around $6 after the Super Bowl. Being a good sporting friend I offered double or nothing on the following week’s Pro Bowl all-star game, which Richard won – easy come, easy go.

In contrast, I started a new job just over a year after graduating college. A coworker who I’ll call Charles suggested we bet each other on some of the weekend pro football games. This was probably the first time I was betting on football since my days with Richard, so I gladly accepted. This time was different though – I got out to an early lead in the season, but instead of paying each week Richard suggested we apply whatever he owed toward next week’s games. This kept up until I was going out of town one weekend and asked Richard to pay up. At this point he got indignant and said that he bets for friendship and that he was annoyed that I suggested that he pay. Being that he was a coworker bodily harm would have been inappropriate, so I took that opportunity to realize that I was better off without this goon in my life. So for the $10 or $20 that this cost me I gained the ability to immediately send this fool scurrying away whenever he tried to start a non job related conversation.

The point of these stories is that “we owe it to ourselves” only holds up if it is never expected that the original money be paid back. And that money doesn’t get to to, or from, this amorphous being known as “ourselves”. It’s made up of individuals, and at some point no matter how much our government bullies the banks and other institutions to buy its debt this shell game won’t go on forever because it can’t. Anyone remember the bank runs of the 1930′s from your history books or the last time you saw “It’s a Wonderful Life”? This is what happens when a few clever individuals realize they better move quickly if they want to get the debt that’s owed to them back. Then more and more people will figure it out, and the result is not going to be pretty.

There is actually one other way to pay down our deficits other than ruinous tax increases or hyper-inflation , and that’s by spurring the private sector to grow faster than the government that feeds off of it. No parasites can indefinitely grow faster than its host without killing both, yet leftists seem to be in love with gorging government growth for some improved economy that becomes their bizarro version of “Waiting for Godot.” Dubya partially got this, which was how, despite his “irresponsible tax cuts” government tax receipts hit all time highs. Of course, that doesn’t excuse his decision to start spending like a liberal.

We need to start taking a hard look at how you’ve plundered our economy, and we need to start having those painful conversations right now about how much we’re going to need to sacrifice thanks to your selfishness. Bernie Madoff’s name has become almost synonymous for large scale financial rip-offs, yet the $65 Billion that he cost the people who believed in him is is only how much more you take from us in one month – and that’s only at the federal level. And frighteningly enough, while you no doubt agree with us that Madoff belongs behind bars, you probably have the nerve and gall to think that we should be thanking you.

So spare us the talking points that Obama has “given” us these massive tax cuts. Since coming into office the President and his fellow Democrats have increased our federal debt by $3.5 Trillion to $14.2 Trillion in just three years – that’s a tax increase of $11,363 per citizen.

Naturally, I’m picking on Barry O. since he is the one at the helm right now. Don’t think that I’m letting our last president off the hook today. During his eight years in office Bush presided over deficits that increased to $5 Trillion dollars – using my formula above that’s a tax increase of $16,233 for each of us. So you’re on the right track when you tell us that Bush’s reckless policies hurt our country, but it’s not his tax cuts, it’s his tax increases that hurt us. We all agree that Bernie Madoff’s $65 Billion rip-off was criminal. What is it that makes his actions criminal and yours noble? You’d better be ready to answer that, and soon.

OK, that’s enough for today. I know that I was a lot rougher on you than in previous lessons, but sometimes tough love is necessary. But in the words of the great Michael Muir, “And if I offended you, oh I’m sorry but maybe you needed to be offended…” Mr. Muir had a bit more to say on the subject, but in the name of the new civility those words won’t be reprinted in this post. If you are interested you can hear the rest of his musings by clicking here .

“Who the H*** you callin’ fiscally irresponsible? You wouldn’t know what fiscal responsibility was if Milton Friedman was eating Fruit Loops on your front porch!”

The next lesson is only going to be somewhat better for you, as we explain why the unintended consequences of your actions often cause more harm than good. This next chapter will be a bonus section for journalists – never again will you have to type the word “unexpectedly” when explaining why jobless claims increase under President Obama! Next up:

Chapter 9: Unintended Consequences – Bonus Section for Journalists!

Previous Lessons:

Lesson One: It’s Not Your Money

Lesson Two: Intro to Microeconomics, or Why Prices Matter

Lesson Three: Intro to Macroeconomics. or So that’s Where Government Fits In!

Lesson Four: You Don’t Create Jobs – It’s Time to Get Over FDR! 

Lesson Four A: By Definition the Government Can Not Create Wealth

Lesson Five: Businesses are Greedy – That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing! 

Lesson Six: You are Greedy – That is a Bad Thing!

Lesson Seven: You Don’t Invest; You Spend

Barack Obama: On the eighth day, God said “raise taxes”

President Barack Obama has been taking lumps from Republicans for years over his support for Wall Street and health care reform, but today at the National Prayer Breakfast he claimed support from on high to defend two of his most controversial legislative achievements.

“And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’”

Sure you do.

“I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato,” Obama added.

If nothing else works, let’s try guilt:

“And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

Three years into Obama’s Presidency we learn that we didn’t just elect a President, we elected an evangelical. Well, that does explain the “pitchforks” thing.

So how do you like him now?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hypocrisy….thy name is Obama: (h/t Gateway Pundit)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been traveling around the country and talking with folks about my blueprint for an economy built to last. It’s a blueprint that focuses on restoring the things we’ve always done best. Our strengths. American manufacturing. American energy. The skills and education of American workers.

And most importantly, American values like fairness and responsibility.

We know what happened when we strayed from those values over the past decade – especially when it comes to our housing market.

Lenders sold loans to families who couldn’t afford them. Banks packaged those mortgages up and traded them for phony profits. It drove up prices and created an unsustainable bubble that burst – and left millions of families who did everything right in a world of hurt.

It was wrong. The housing crisis has been the single biggest drag on our recovery from the recession. It has kept millions of families in debt and unable to spend, and it has left hundreds of thousands of construction workers out of a job.

Who created the policies that forced these banks to make loans to people who had no business getting those loans?

And who helped push those policies?

Why Mr. Obama did.

And now he wants to whine that the banks shouldn’t of given those high-risk loans out when they were REQUIRED to?

Now, we know what happens, because we’ve just seen it — what happened when we stray from those values. We saw what happened over the past decade when we strayed from those values — especially when it comes to the massive housing bubble that burst and hurt so many people. Millions of families who did the right and the responsible thing, folks who shopped for a home that they could afford, secured a mortgage, made their payments each month — they were hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of other people who weren’t playing by the same rules, weren’t taking the same care, weren’t acting as responsibly. By lenders who sold loans to people who they knew couldn’t afford the mortgages; and buyers who bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford; and banks that packaged those mortgages up and traded them to reap phantom profits, knowing that they were building a house of cards.

So which is it? Could those people afford that house or not?

Either way, these banks were FORCED to give these loans by the social do-gooders and this was one of the major reasons for the collapse in our economy, as Mata pointed out in her “US Economy – A “perfect storm” of housing and lending events” post.

But now we see the line of attack Obama will be using this election season. And what better foil does he have to use it against than a Mitt Romney?

It appears we need to focus on keeping the House and taking the Senate this election season, because we are going to get another four years of Obama.

Now that the Florida Primary is over and we have seen how effective a carpet bombing campaign of negative ads can be, I thought it would be interesting to see exactly who provided the ammunition to each of the combatants. By ammunition I mean money, lots of money. I expected to see what we all knew to be true; Romney has the run of a well-stocked military base’s ammo dump, Newt Gingrich is a kid in the back yard who found his dads stash of illegal firecrackers.

Off to the web site OpenSecrets.org I go. A great place to find all sorts of nifty little facts and figures politicians like to avoid talking about or to crow over. Rooting around like a French pig looking for very expensive fungi, I came upon the numbers for both Romney and Gingrich. There are no real surprises here. Romney took in $56,465,509 far outdistancing Gingrich’s $12,648,565, a 4-1 advantage. Anyone following the Republican Primary knew this was the case even if they were not aware of the exact numbers. Romney supporters are always sure to let you know how much more money Romney has then his opponents. What is amazing is this one statistic. With all the resources Romney has to gather in funds there is one statistic he loses to Gingrich.. It’s you and me.

By “you and me” I am referring to people who do not attend dinners that cost more per plate then our mortgages. We, for the most part, are working stiffs without thousands of dollars to blow on someone’s political ambitions. It’s not that I would not like to be in such a position one day. I would surely welcome it as I think most honest people would agree. The reality is that for most of us that is not the case, and may never be. Still, with what little money we can afford to part with, Romney doesn’t get as much of it as one would think.

Of what the OpenSecrets.org defines as “Small Individual Contributions” Gingrich took in $6,260,961 compared to Romney’s $5,232,273. Not a huge lead that Gingrich has over Romney at first look. What is significant is the percentage of the total amount that these contributions are relative to the total amount of money raised by each candidate. For Gingrich Small Individual Contributions make up 49% of the total rose. For Romney, only 9%.

Armed with this knowledge, one can draw many conclusions and come away with as many questions. I will ask the obvious. Knowing that Small Individual Donors only comprise of 9% of Romney’s total contribution intake, exactly how much influence can the little guy or gal have on the man’s politics? It’s not as if Romney needs us. In fact, if one looks at how the Romney Campaign and the Republican Establishment treat its conservative base, they act as if they have come to the same conclusion as well.

I will assume that I will inevitably be charged for engaging in “class warfare” So be it. But before you do that realize that if a frozen fat guy in Maine armed with Google can see this could be an issue, you can be sure that Team Obama has already planned to make it an issue. And In case you’re wondering (Not for the faint hearted)……..

Obama’s total intake so far $124,333,258 of which $58,498,953 came from Small Individual Contributions. A percentage of 47%.

*SHUDDER*

From HuffPo:

Rachel Maddow: Romney Has ‘Issues Of Patriotism’ Due To Offshore Accounts

Now pay attention carefully. Maddow went after John Mica about Mitt Romney’s offshore accounts:

Rachel Maddow grilled Florida Congressman John Mica about whether Mitt Romney’s personal finances and work at Bain Capital were “unpatriotic” on Tuesday night.

and this one especially

Before the polls closed in the Florida primary, Maddow put Romney supporter Mica in the hot seat about another controversial aspect of Romney’s finances: his offshore accounts. She asked if he thought that the candidate’s holdings in “notorious tax havens” raised “issues of patriotism.”

Now let’s note that Maddow is specific- having offshore accounts is “unpatriotic.” It’s in the title.

OK, now who else has had offshore accounts?

1. John Kerry

Democrats were pushing for tax reform in 1984, and Lieutenant Governor John F. Kerry, candidate for US Senate, had some ideas.

“You need a major overhaul of the tax structure,” Kerry told a panel of reporters on a May 6 broadcast of WBZ-TV (Channel 4). “You need to close crazy loopholes that are non-productive.”

Though he did not share it at the time, Kerry had recently learned a costly lesson about loopholes in the tax code.

Weeks before that interview, Kerry, by his own account now, had jettisoned an investment of between $25,000 and $30,000 in an exotic tax shelter after his accountant questioned its legitimacy. In an interview with the Globe, Kerry acknowledged that fear of political embarrassment was a factor in his decision to swallow the loss.

Until now, Kerry has never disclosed details of this tax shelter, which utilized offshore companies registered in the Cayman Islands and a “straddle” scheme of forward contracts to buy and sell commodities, apparently worth up to $238,527.

2. Apple Computer

Apple (AAPL) has accumulated a whopping $54 billion of its $82 billion offshore. More startling, the company’s foreign coffers are increasing three times faster than its U.S. cash, and the trend is accelerating rather than plateauing. While nowhere near starving for capital, Apple’s growth potential is more constrained here than offshore simply because capital production is more efficient overseas. Apple’s wiser using pre-U.S. tax foreign money to make an investment than using its American cash. For example, it’s far easier for Apple to swallow ARM Holdings (ARMH) than Broadcom (BRCM) although both have similar market capitalizations.

3. Microsoft

Microsoft (MSFT) is even more lopsided in its cash position: $51 billion of its $57 billion in cash resides frustratingly offshore. In its 10K, the company explains its options to complete significant acquisitions or share repurchases: costly tax repatriations, debt or equity offerings. So far, Microsoft has not touched its foreign cash, opting to borrow $11 billion to fund its discretionary needs. The $51 billion sits tantalizing out of reach without incurring additional taxes. Microsoft may find itself struggling to increase its dividend without either borrowing money or accessing this offshore capital.

4. Cisco

Reportedly, when President Obama asked John Chambers how to jump start the economy, Cisco’s CEO suggested a tax repatriation holiday on overseas profits.

Indeed, for Cisco (CSCO), overseas cash is a big deal. Cisco holds a greater share of its money overseas than either Apple or Microsoft: $40.6 billion of its $44.6 billion cash.

Cisco has been quickly accumulating foreign capital: Since 2005, off-shore cash has risen almost four fold. Cisco’s approach to its foreign largesse: Hands off. The company meets its financial needs by borrowing money. In 2005, Cisco had no debt. Since, debt has increased to $16 billion. Cisco is a multibillionaire abroad, but here at home, it’s hungry for capital.

According to Maddow, John Kerry and these corporations are “unpatriotic.”

Not content to limit how big a fool she is, Maddow goes on to pound Romney for his taxes

Romney’s career and wealth, of course, have both been hot button issues in the campaign. The candidate released his 2010 tax return after much criticism about his reluctance to do so. The return revealed that he earned $21.7 million in 2010, and paid a lower tax rate than someone who earns $50,000 a year.

John Kerry paid a lower rate then Romney the year he ran for President.

What’s ever funnier is watching the creatures over at HuffPo twisting themselves in knots trying to assert that it’s different when these things are done by someone other than a Republican.

logic63

“we are talking about romney here. Kerry is old news and that was up to you to yell if you were opposed to him. Did you?”

htowncarrie

“Well, John Kerry didn’t become president and neither should Mitt.

LiberalDemIda

“Uh…is John Kerry running for president? No? Go play outside.”

If it wasn’t wrong for Kerry, it is not wrong for Romney either.

This really is hysterical. Once again it proves my axiom that liberals have zero long term memory. And they’re not very much for principle either.

Today, I received an email from a very liberal Obama supporter which contained a reference to the following link:

Dishonest Fox Chart: Food Stamps Edition

This article portrays Fox News and Newt Gingrich as being dishonest about the number of SNAP (food stamps, for those of you in Rio Linda) recipients that have been added to the rolls since Obama became “The Precadent”. In the article, they reference the Annenberg Foundation’s FactCheck.org, which, in turn purports to prove that Fox and Gingrich are lying.

Being the curious type, and knowing that “Obama the Humble” and “Ayers the Terrorist” both worked together at the Annenberg Foundation Challenge, I decided to check out the raw data from which they got their analysis. Here is what I found:

I used the end of the previous president’s term(s) through the end of the next president’s term(s) to determine the net change in average participation.

As one can see, during Obama’s three years in office, on average, over 16 million new people have been enrolled in the SNAP program. In the FactCheck article they state: “We asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition service for month-by-month figures going back to January 2001.” They do not show or give a link to those figures, however, I found this table on the USDA web site, which has a different set of numbers from the table above.

Using the data from the previous link, the number of people on food stamps at the end of the Bush administration was 31,567,037, while the current number (not including November or December of 2011) is 46,224,722. FactCheck calculates that to be 14.2 million, while claiming 14.7 million were added during Bush’s 2 terms. My math tells me that the real answer is 14,657,685 added during Obama’s ¾ of a term.

Since I could not find the same monthly tables that Annenberg used for the years 2000 through 2008, I can’t check the rest of their assumptions, however, since they are so slipshod in their math skills, one has to wonder if they are purposefully trying to excuse Obama and blame Bush or just sloppy. Then again, FactCheck is run by the Annenberg Foundation, one of Obama’s former hangouts.