RadioActive with Steve Mitton: June 2011

Monday, June 27, 2011

The Great Corn Con

FEELING the need for an example of government policy run amok? Look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf. In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.

Even in a crowd of rising food and commodity costs, corn stands out, its price having doubled in less than a year to a record $7.87 per bushel in early June. Booming global demand has overtaken stagnant supply.

But rather than ameliorate the problem, the government has exacerbated it, reducing food supply to a hungry world. Thanks to Washington, 4 of every 10 ears of corn grown in America — the source of 40 percent of the world’s production — are shunted into ethanol, a gasoline substitute that imperceptibly nicks our energy problem. Larded onto that are $11 billion a year of government subsidies to the corn complex.

America’s Labor Party

How far will President Obama go to advance the interests of organized labor? Awfully far. We know this not only from the effort to keep Boeing from building a plane in a right-to-work state, South Carolina, but also from the way Delta Airlines is being railroaded into recognizing unions its employees have repeatedly rejected.

Dave Malan

In June alone, the Obama administration adopted rules likely to discourage employers from hiring law firms that specialize in thwarting union organizing drives, and moved to shorten union certification campaigns, long a goal of organized labor.

But the targeting of Delta stands out. Following Delta’s merger with Northwest Airlines in 2008, its flight attendants voted against joining the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), and other employees decided against signing on with four separate unions of the International Association of Machinists and Aero-space Workers (IAM).

That didn’t end what has become a union crusade against Delta, abetted by Obama. Now, from all appearances, the fix is in—against Delta. It starts with the National Mediation Board, which governs labor relations in the airline and railroad industries. Obama stacked the NMB deck by putting two former union senior executives on the three-member board, Linda Puchala of the AFA and Harry Hoglander of the Air Line Pilots.

Are There Really Socialists?

Two unconnected developments were announced this past week. President Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, despite the absence of a global embargo or horrific natural disaster — and despite a litany of assertions from 2008 that drilling and increased supply might only have a marginal effect on prices.

Like the sudden Afghan withdrawal announcement, the tapping is largely explained by political worries about reelection, as in increasing oil supplies to lower gas prices by election time — and thus avoiding campaign ads equating Obama’s opposition to drilling with high prices at the 2012 pump.

In a second piece of news, the Europeans seem to be winning far more plane orders than Boeing. One wonders whether that fact is remotely connected with airlines’ collective worries about obtaining orders on time and as specified — as in uncertainty whether Obama’s NLRB ruling that attempted to shut down a nearly $1 billion new aircraft line in South Carolina translates into something like “who knows what those Americans are doing next?”

All this raises some questions. The strangest things about the global statist crack-up are socialists’ unhappiness with their socialist utopia, and their subsequent efforts to avoid the consequences of the very redistributive state that they themselves once so gladly crafted.

Economic Slavery: Modern-Day Indentured Servitude

The "tax the rich" hysteria gripping this nation is absolute insanity. Cries to raise taxes on those with incomes over $250,000 or some other magical number are unbelievable.

As a CPA, I find the "tax the rich" schemes to be pure junk science. To that end, the illogical precepts underpinning these arguments must be exposed. (Incidentally, by way of full disclosure, I would not be personally affected by these tax increases. I merely want to expose the scheme for the fraud that it is.)

Many in Congress have attempted to make earning an income distasteful, so those pitiable enough to earn an income are subjected to public scorn. Politicians and many in the media are collectively pushing policies to "punish those people" by taxing them into economic slavery and involuntary servitude.

The scheme perpetuated by those demanding higher taxes goes something like this:

The wealth gap has widened since the "Bush" tax credits.
So raise the taxes on the wealthiest in the nation.
The higher taxes will pay down the nation's deficit.
Money can then be redistributed to those in need.

CBO Figures Once Again Prove Tax Hikes Unnecessary to Fix Budget

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its long-term outlook for the federal budget. As expected, we are going broke slightly faster than we were a few months ago.

No doubt the usual bigger-government types will use this news to repeat the mantra that we need to both cut spending and “enhance revenues” (a thinly veiled euphemism for tax hikes). Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner used this oft-repeated line just this week.

But their argument is exactly backwards. The CBO report actually once again proves that no tax hikes are necessary to fix our budget woes.

The CBO calculates that if Congress leaves the tax code as it is today—which would include permanently extending the 2001/2003 tax cuts for all taxpayers (even those greedy, job-producing rich folks and small businesses), patching the alternative minimum tax so it does not impact middle-income families, and continuing a host of other tax-reducing provisions that regularly expire—tax revenues would exceed their historical average of 18 percent of GDP in 2021. Revenue would continue growing thereafter absent any policy changes and soon surpass the all-time record high hit back in 2000 at the height of the Internet-tech boom.

Neal Boortz: Bush tax cuts didn’t create the deficit

One of the most noxious and irritating sounds on the face of this earth (other than the sound of Sarah Palin’s voice) is the noise made by a Democrat sheep bleating endlessly about the “Bush tax cuts, Bush tax cuts, Bush tax cuts.”

One such Democrat, Congressman Xavier Becerra of California, crawled out from a smoke-filled den of irrationality to appear Wednesday on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on Fox News.

The discussion concerned how to address the budget and debt negotiations that dissolved into chaos Thursday.

The question: “What ideas do you have to reduce the deficit?”

Becerra’s response? The Bush tax cuts caused the deficit.

Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.

L.A. Unified's new homework policy gives students a break

Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn't finish all of it — largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop.

Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn't have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. "They're always there and they're always loud," he said, explaining his challenges with homework.

The nation's second-largest school system has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10% of a student's grade.

Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.

Soros and liberal groups seeking top election posts in battleground states

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

The group’s website said it wants to stop Republicans from “manipulating” election results.

“Any serious commitment to wresting control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” the group said on its website, accusing some Republican secretaries of state of making “partisan decisions.”

Charts of the day: The rise in structural unemployment

Is this jobless recovery a peculiarly American phenomenon? This chart, from a new paper seeking to unentangle cyclical from structural unemployment, would suggest that it possibly is:

change.tiff

I find these numbers quite shocking: after all, it’s hardly as though countries like the UK and Portugal have emerged from the recession unscathed. But the US increase in unemployment over the course of the recession was more than double the increase anywhere else.

That said, the US has historically has a much lower rate of structural unemployment than most of these other countries: the level of unemployment which is baked in to economic reality, before cyclical factors move it temporarily up and down. And what I fear is that the Great Recession has moved the US towards European levels of structural employment, without any kind of Euro-style social safety net.

Morning Bell: The Truth About Tax Cuts

All you are likely to hear about low tax rates from liberals and their echo chamber in the media is that they don’t work—that they fail to gin up economic or job growth. Exhibit A for this preposterous proposition is the Bush tax cuts. The left wants you to accept it as conventional wisdom that the policy was a bust.

Don’t believe it. The tax cuts enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2003 were an important cause of an economic expansion that roared for some 50 months and created 8.1 million jobs. The opposite philosophy—a stimulus that has crowded out private investment, plus an enormous health bill and a nightmarish financial regulatory package that are killing job creation—has only delayed recovery and left us with 9.1% unemployment.

You won’t hear this from liberals. What you hear instead is a straw man argument that the tax cuts failed to pay for themselves. The Bush Administration and congressional leaders at the time went out of their way to be clear that the tax cuts were not expected to pay for themselves.

Bereft of any other apparent principle, the liberal canon now includes one and only one organizing idea: government cannot be cut; it can only grow or stay at its current gargantuan size. For that to happen, liberals must use the concerns about massive deficits pushed up by a tremendous Obama spending surge to cow the nation into accepting big tax hikes and bigger government. Unfortunately, even some otherwise conservative stalwarts are falling for it.

But rather than explicitly say “raise taxes” liberals talk about “revenue enhancements” (which somehow liberals think the American people won’t get), “fairness” and “shared sacrifice.”

But for that to work the American people must be made to accept that lower taxes fail to stimulate anything and that, by implication then, higher taxes won’t hurt the economy. This why liberals work so hard to spin the Bush years. But here’s what really happened:

WRAPUP 5-Democrats push for jobs package in debt deal

* Democrats call for new stimulus

* Biden group pushes ahead in deficit-reduction talks

* CBO says benefits will swamp economy in long term (Adds Baucus, other details)

By Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - Democratic leaders called on Wednesday for new spending and tax cuts to boost the sluggish U.S. economy, setting up a fresh hurdle for bipartisan efforts to head off a government debt default this summer.

At the same time, a new report warned that the country could face a European-style debt crisis unless Washington cuts spending or raises taxes.

CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook

The Congressional Budget Office released the latest edition of its annual forecast of where the federal government’s budget is headed. The numbers are new but the message is the same: the budget is on an unsustainable path. According to the CBO’s more politically-realistic “alternative scenario,” federal debt as a share of GDP will hit 109 percent in 2021 and would approach 190 percent in 2035.

For those mistaken souls who believe that merely eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in government programs can solve the problem, the CBO has news for you:

In the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) long-term projections of spending, growth in noninterest spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) is attributable entirely to increases in spending on several large mandatory programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and (to a lesser extent) insurance subsidies that will be provided through the health insurance exchanges established by the March 2010 health care legislation. The health care programs are the main drivers of that growth; they are responsible for 80 percent of the total projected rise in spending on those mandatory programs over the next 25 years.

Others believe that “tax cuts for the rich” are the source of the problem. But according to the CBO’s alternative scenario, if the Bush tax cuts are extended and the Alternative Minimum Tax continues to be patched, federal revenues as a share of GDP will still exceed the post-war average by the decade’s end. Under the CBO’s standard baseline, which assumes that those policies will not be continued, federal revenues as a share of GDP will go zooming by the historic average. That might be good for politicians, bureaucrats, and other “tax eaters,” but it wouldn’t be good for the country’s economic welfare.

The pet's owner crept up on it with a video camera as it imitated the canine sound.
Unaware it was being filmed, the kitty carried on until it realized that it was being watched.
It slowly turned its head and, upon seeing its owner, quickly turned the bark into a meow.

Girl Solves Global Warming

See more funny videos and TBT at Todays Big Thing.

MD Schools Will Now Require ‘Environmental Literacy’ to Graduate High School

A state board of education in Maryland has bought into the green agenda. So much so that it just voted to require “environmental literacy” in order to graduate high school.

“This is a defining moment for education in Maryland,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said. “By approving this environmental graduation requirement, the Board of Education is ensuring that our young people graduate with a keen understanding of and connection to the natural world. Only through exposure to nature and education about our fragile ecosystem can we create the next generation of stewards. ”

“This is a momentous day not only for Maryland but for educators across the country who are watching what Maryland does, and hoping to increase outdoor learning in their states,” Don Baugh, director of the environmental advocacy group No Child Left Inside Coalition (NCLI), which pushed for the vote, said in a release. “Governor O’Malley and Dr. Grasmick deserve our profound gratitude. For years they have put Maryland at the forefront of the environmental education movement.”

On June 9, 2011, President Obama signed his 86th Executive Order, and almost nobody noticed.

(For the record, Obama is on par to match President Bush’s 291 orders executed during his two terms in office. The National Archives defines an Executive Order this way; Executive orders are official documents, numbered consecutively, through which the President of the United States manages the operations of the Federal Government.)

President Obama’s E.O. 13575 is designed to begin taking control over almost all aspects of the lives of 16% of the American people. Why didn’t we notice it? Weinergate. In the middle of the Anthony Weiner scandal, as the press and most of the American people were distracted, President Obama created something called “The White House Rural Council” (WHRC).

Section One of 13575 states the following:

UNAFFORDABLE HOUSING AND POLITICAL KICKBACKS ROCKED THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

UNAFFORDABLE HOUSING AND POLITICAL

KICKBACKS ROCKED THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

DARRELL ISSA*

The economic earthquake that shook the world financial

markets and bankrupted seemingly invulnerable multinational

corporations exposed perilous fault lines of the federal

government’s own creation. Under mounting pressure, at a

critical moment, the fault lines cracked and took down everything

from auto manufacturers to insurance providers.

Now that the Obama Administration’s comprehensive regulatory

reform proposals are making their way through Congress,

the time has come to identify the root causes of the most

recent economic downturn. Many leading economists agree:

The economic crisis we are experiencing is directly tied to an

over‐inflated housing bubble wherein mortgage lenders made

reckless, high‐risk loans. These loans were given in record number

to over‐extended, under‐qualified borrowers to satisfy an

increasingly aggressive government drive for home ownership.

Why the lenders adopted such counterintuitive and irresponsible

business practices is the critical question. The answer reveals

the disastrous folly of government intervention in the housing

market spanning more than three quarters of a century.

To secure affordable housing, Congress created a new Government

Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) known as the Federal National

Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) during the Great Depression

to purchase and securitize home mortgages and promote

greater liquidity in the mortgage market.1 At a time of unprecedented

economic strain, the nation welcomed this fundamental

component of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

For thirty years, Fannie Mae had a near‐monopoly on the

secondary mortgage market and, with the backing of the federal budget, an ostensibly endless supply of capital. In 1965,

President Lyndon Johnson established the Department of

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a part of his Great

Society plan to eradicate poverty and promote homeownership

through a government‐run housing program and government

subsidized mortgage lending. Facing mounting debt, however,

Johnson later contrived a scheme to privatize Fannie Mae, removing

the corporation’s liabilities from the federal balance

sheets without limiting the potential for a taxpayer bailout.2

By 1970, Congress was pushing Fannie Mae to purchase conventional

mortgages, though the effort was complicated by

federal restrictions on numerous primary lenders that were unable

to work with Fannie Mae. The solution? Congress created

the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)

as a wholly‐owned government‐run mortgage lender,3 and

then re‐chartered it in 1989 as a publicly traded enterprise.4

As the market for secondary mortgages grew, Fannie Mae

and Freddie Mac nearly achieved monopoly results thanks to

numerous competitive advantages guaranteed through their

unique relationship with the federal government.5 Among

these advantages were government‐backed lines of credit equal

to a whopping $2.25 billion and a corollary market reputation

that led investors to believe the GSEs were too big to fail.6 This

inflated investor confidence and exclusive government protection

resulted in an unnatural expansion of Fannie Mae and

Freddie Mac’s market dominance, and by the time the 1990s

rolled around, the corporations together held more than three

quarters of the secondary market for prime mortgages.7

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The Purposeful Flooding of America's Heartland

The Missouri River basin encompasses a vast region in the central and west-central portion of our country. This river, our nation's longest, collects the melt from Rocky Mountain snowpack and the runoff from our continents' upper plains before joining the Mississippi river above St. Louis some 2,300 miles later. It is a mighty river, and dangerous.

Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods.

The stable flow of water allowed for the construction of the concrete and earthen levees that protect more than 10 million people who reside and work within the river's reach. It allowed millions of acres of floodplain to become useful for farming and development. In fact, these uses were encouraged by our government, which took credit for the resulting economic boom. By nearly all measures, the project was a great success.

Thom Hartmann: 'The Job Creators Are the People on Welfare'

Sometimes, it can be heartwarming to listen to the radio and hear the sound of the Seventies. That's not true for the Thom Hartmann radio show. On Friday, Hartmann parlayed some classic 1971 socialist economics about who should get credit for the economic recovery:

The job creators are the people on welfare. The job creators are the people who are on unemployment. They’re the people who are working. Because what creates jobs is when people take money out of their pocket and buy something. And when enough people buy enough things that creates demand in the economy and somebody’s got to make the stuff that’s being bought and in order to make that stuff they have to hire people who can make it for less than it costs to sell it so that they can make a profit on that. It’s a very very simple concept.

It's not so nice to hear a scratchy little record from John Maynard Keynes and the Pump-Primers. Hartmann chided a liberal caller on Friday who complained about partisanship and lack of compromise in the nation's capital. He questioned why should there be compromise when the "insane" GOP wants to take food out of the mouths of infants:

Some Americans will work for 25 cents an hour, experiment shows

Some Americans are willing to work for much less than people from other countries, according to the results of an online experiment conducted by Newsweek.

The magazine used Mechanical Turk, a website run by Amazon.com that acts as a marketplace for freelance work. As Newsweek described their method:

[W]e posted simple, hourlong jobs (listening to audio recordings and counting instances of a specific keyword) and continually lowered our offer until we found the absolute bottom price that multiple people would accept, and then complete the task.

The results? No one in Italy, the Netherlands, or Egypt would accept less than $5 for an hour of work. In Germany it was $3, in Australia and Britain $2, and in Canada $1.25. Americans accepted by far the lowest figure: just 25 cents.

Western Governments Are Blamed for Asia's Shortage of Women

In her new book "Unnatural Selection," Science writer Mara Hvistendahl examines how the trend toward choosing boys over girls through sex-selective abortions has spread through the developing world, particularly in Asia. Coining the term "Generation XY," Hvistendahl provides the grim results of sex selection: while the natural sex ratio at birth is 105 boys born for every 100 girls, in India the figure has risen to 112 boys and in China, 121. The Chinese city of Lianyungang actually recorded 163 boys per 100 girls in 2007.

The shortage of women is already giving rise to deep societal problems. New markets have been created for women in Asia, including wedding agencies that arrange marriages between South Korean men and women often from poorer nearby countries like Vietnam, that now account for 11% of all marriages in South Korea. There is also a growing practice of child marriage in China, where wealthier families buy young girls to secure wives for their sons early. And with so many surplus men (e.g., up to a fifth of men will be single in northwestern India by 2020), she suggests that the excess testosterone could lead to raised levels of crime and violence.

Less than two months ago, buzzing from the president’s gutsy call to eliminate Osama bin Laden, liberal pontificators had practically sworn in Barack Obama for his second term. “For the GOP the sands are rushing through the hourglass,” Roger Simon wrote in a column whose title had wondered whether the president was “invincible.” He claimed that with Geronimo KIA, “the Republican field has been fried like an egg.” In reality, the president’s short-term popularity boost had fried the long-term judgment of his supporters.

The reasons to believe Obama a one-term president are many and well-grounded.

10. The Declaration of Independents

Candidate Obama attracted independents. President Obama repulses them. The president entered office with the approval of 62 percent of independents. The latest Gallup poll shows support of just 42 percent of independents. Similarly, the political moderates key to his election have deserted the president as immoderate policies have emerged. There simply aren’t enough liberals for Democrats to lose moderates and win elections. No Democratic candidate over the last half century has won the presidency without winning moderates.

Federal Reserve Bank Presidents: Washington is Killing Business

Want to know why the economy is still dragging along with stagnant growth and 9.1 percent unemployment? Travel back in time over the past 18 months and listen to what some Federal Reserve Bank presidents predicted would result from the Obama Administration’s public policy path.

In short, they come to one salient point: Washington has created a great deal of uncertainty and hostility among private enterprise. It’s a message White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley heard last week when he met with manufacturing executives who complained of the Obama Administration’s roadblocks to their business growth. To one he replied, “Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible.”

Had the White House opened its ears to any of the following choice observations from these Federal Reserve Bank presidents, the economy just might be on a different path:

Follower in Chief

But the terms of the compromise—slowing the growth of benefits for the well-off and slightly raising the ceiling on income subject to the payroll tax—are still relevant. They were basically embraced by Obama’s debt commission in December, but not by Obama. He’s proposed no solution to Social Security’s looming breakdown, once again declining to lead.

A talking point in Obama’s fundraising speeches is the need for “a smart immigration policy in this country.” That’s true, but he hasn’t proposed one. In Miami, the president criticized the practice of attracting foreign students and forcing them to leave the United States after they “get Ph.D.s in engineering and math and science.” Has he sought to change the rules to allow them to stay here? Take a guess.

The new Tuskegee experiment

For 40 years, the U.S. government funded experiments on hundreds of black men in the late stages of syphilis, withholding treatment, allowing them to go blind, paralytic, insane and die. Only the autopsies of the poor sharecroppers from Alabama were really of interest to the U.S. Public Health Service.

Today we see that experiment as a moral outrage. Bill Clinton officially apologized for it in 1997.

Yet the U.S. government remains involved in grisly medical experimentation of this kind in Third World countries on a much grander scale than the Tuskegee experiment.

The latest horror is a joint project of the British government, the U.S. government and population-reduction advocate Bill Gates. The victims in this experiment are black women in South Africa. Here's how it works.

Some 2,200 young women are given a microbicide gel incorporating the drug tenofovir and told to apply it to their sexual organs 12 hours before sex with their HIV-infected male partners and 12 hours afterward.

New IPCC error: renewables report conclusion was dictated by Greenpeace

The headlines were unequivocal when the IPCC renewables report came out a few weeks ago. Here’s the first line of the BBC News piece:

Renewable technologies could supply 80% of the world’s energy needs by mid-century, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Guardian led with the same conclusion:

Renewable energy could account for almost 80% of the world’s energy supply within four decades – but only if governments pursue the policies needed to promote green power, according to a landmark report published on Monday.

And so on. But what you weren’t told was that the actual report had not yet been released – the headlines were based on a ‘Summary for Policymakers (PDF)’ which referenced statistics and scenarios which journalists would not be able to check until the entire full report was released a month or so later.

Confession of a Reluctant Tea-Partier

In the Soviet Union any mass expression of public sentiment was by definition a fraud. To participate in a demonstration of any kind meant a complete waste of a perfectly good day. All organizations got their quotas to provide a certain amount of bodies to march through the town celebrating state holidays. Being a child was no excuse -- I remember taking part in an annual May Day demonstration as a 10-year-old member of an ice-skating girls' group. The sacred duty of any self-respecting citizen was to avoid being drafted at all costs. I could not imagine that intelligent people could spend time and energy coming to a rally of their own free will.

My late and very much missed father used to say: "First, you have to know why you want to leave the old country, and only then to decide why you want to settle in a new one." Boy, did we know the first part! Our difficult journey to America started in 1978 and ended in 1987 -- nine long years of being "refuseniks," surviving persecution with humor and general youthful light-heartedness. There was no time or opportunity to follow the second part of my father's advice.

My family came to the United States the day before the Thanksgiving of 1987. Being intellectually curious, I immediately began wondering how this country functions and what makes the United States the envy of the world (don't believe all that criticism from outside -- it's mostly ignorance). As a confirmed bookworm I started reading everything in sight from the Constitution and Federalist Papers to the New York Times to National Review by way of the Economist and the Village Voice. My English improved dramatically but my respect for the media evaporated. However, I got some basic knowledge of American institutions.

Last week, in a much-discussed, open, live, televised forum, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke the $64 trillion question. While most commentators focused on the apt question, it was Bernanke's answer that shocked me when I heard it -- and ought to shock the nation much more than it so far has.

Question: "Now we're told there are going to be even higher capital requirements, and we know there are 300 (financial regulatory) rules coming, has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of these things? And do you have a fear -- like I do -- that when we look back and look at them all that they will be the reason that it took so long for our banks, our credit, our businesses and most importantly, our job creation, to start going again? Is this holding us back at this point?"

Answer: "Nobody has looked at it in all detail, but we certainly are trying, as in each part to develop a system that is coherent and that is consistent with banks performing their vital social function in terms of extending credit."

Obama's America: Prosperity Lost

President Obama, the fellow leftists in his administration, and the Congress, nearly none of whom have ever made a viable contribution to the Gross Domestic Product, are hell-bent on seizing complete control of the economy. They are making the same foolish and arrogant mistake Marxists and Socialists have made since the mid-1800s, and the citizens of the United States will pay an overwhelming price for their folly unless the people begin to grasp the true cost to themselves and the country.

Those, such as Barack Obama, who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets, have a predisposition to control economic and personal activity through laws, regulations, taxes, and intimidation. They attempt to maintain this power by bribing the populace with massive social spending and promises in exchange for their votes. These commitments can never be fully honored; nonetheless those in power willfully keep the general public focused on blaming others for the failures of collectivist ideology and rely on the deliberately inept economic and civic education fostered at government operated schools to keep the majority of the people confused and bewildered.

As government grows and absorbs more and more of a nation's gross domestic product in order to finance this bribery, the less capital there will be for business expansion and job as well as wealth creation. Unfortunately many Americans do not understand that as a corollary to this activity, the standard of living and wealth of all citizens will continue to decline dramatically, as it is the private sector, not government, which creates prosperity.

Are we stumbling into another recession?

It's not just history buffs who now study the 1937-38 recession. The question is: Are we stumbling into a similar downturn?

Called "the Roosevelt Recession," the 1937-38 slump interrupted recovery from the Great Depression. It was "a depression within a depression," writes Stanford University historian David Kennedy in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945." Unemployment rose from a monthly low of 11 percent in 1937 to 20 percent. The economy's output (gross national product) fell 18 percent; industrial production dropped 32 percent.

There are eerie parallels between now and then. Then as now, commodity prices (grains, minerals) were rising rapidly; fears of inflation grew. Then as now, the federal budget deficit was criticized as too large. Then as now, the president was widely perceived as being anti-business.

The Obama Job Lies Pile Up

This is all you need to know about Obama’s economic program to understand why joblessness remains so persistent:

The number one recommendation that the White House economic team and his jobs council – a council made up of the two top executives at GE and American Express- can come up with to jump start our economy is spending $2 billion on remedial training for our high school graduates.

It’s true. This is even worse than the energy plan that Obama proposed that had no new ideas.

The training is necessary, they say, so those graduates can fill the millions of jobs available today in manufacturing. Manufacturing what? Burgers and fries?

For the last week President Obama and his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness- a council that’s supposed to be jump starting hiring- have been going around the country claiming that there are 2 million manufacturing jobs available right now that are going unfilled because the U.S. doesn’t have the skilled workforce to fill those jobs.

President Barack Obama and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi

Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for 40 years as a constitutional law expert at the Library of Congress, says Americans and members of Congress should understand that President Barack Obama committed a “very grave offense” against the Constitution in taking military action in Libya without congressional authorization.

“I am not going to recommend that the House Judiciary Committee hold impeachment hearings, but I would like members of Congress and the public to say that nothing would be more impeachable than a President who takes the country to war without coming to Congress, who does it unilaterally,” Fisher told CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey.

The Romney-Bachmann Ticket?

Yesterday's column on Tim Pawlenty's feebleness in criticizing Mitt Romney's version of ObamaCare prompted several readers to write with the suggestion that Pawlenty is pursuing the vice presidential nomination. We doubt it. We've met with Pawlenty twice in recent months, and he has a well-considered (if, thus far, not so well-implemented) plan to win the presidential nomination. Further, if he was sucking up to the former Massachusetts governor Monday night with a Romney-Pawlenty ticket in mind, that would represent a one-day change in strategy, since it was only Sunday morning when Pawlenty referred to "ObamneyCare."

Furthermore, if Pawlenty were angling for the subordinate spot on a Romney ticket, blurring the two men's differences would be precisely the wrong way of going about it. Pawlenty on Monday did not display any strengths to compensate for Romney's weaknesses. Other than regional appeal--the Upper Midwest, though lately a Democratic stronghold in presidential elections, is an area where Republicans can reasonably hope to do better--it's hard to see what Pawlenty would bring to the ticket.

NASA Head Charles Bolden Warns Of Attack From 'Outside Forces'

"We are the only agency in the federal government that's responsible for the safety and well being of not only people here on Earth but uh off this planet” (not on this world and at the space station, on and off this planet)… "think about attacks like 9/11 from outside forces" note 'outside forces' not terrorists,

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Durbin, Tester, lobbyists, and the Dodd-Frank corruption machine

If your goal were to foster more political cronyism, reward lobbyists, entrench incumbents, enrich the politically connected, and get the revolving door spinning faster, you would have a hard time crafting a more useful piece of legislation than the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill.

Not only did the bill's authors instantly start monetizing their legislative experience by cashing out to work for the big banks (see Amy Friend, former chief counsel for Sen. Dodd's Banking Committee); not only to Goldman Sachs declare itself "among the biggest beneficiaries" of the bill; not only did the bill give Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank an excuse to start tapping into Wall Street wealth in exchange for favorable implementation -- it also set up a tawdry battle between retailers and banks, in which politicians and their lobbyist friends are guaranteed winners.

Sen. Dick Durbin added an amendment to Dodd-Frank giving the Federal Reserve the right to set the rate which banks can charge retails using the banks' debit cards. Wal-Mart was a leading champion of this regulation. As you can imagine, banks lobbied hard against this rule.

This year, Sen. Jon Tester proposed a measure to delay this regulation. It set off an epic lobbying battle. Notably, Tester's former senior economic advisor, Jason Rosenberg, is a lobbyist for the American Bankers Association, a leading supporter of Tester's amendment.

Senate Rejects Measure to End Ethanol Tax Credits

The Senate on Tuesday rejected a proposal that would have eliminated ethanol tax credits worth $5 billion a year -- a stunning setback for conservatives who were rallying around it in recent days as a way to reduce the national debt.

Sen. Tom Coburn's, R-Okla., measure only drew 40 votes, way short of the 60 needed for passage. The proposal would have repealed a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol, which restricts imports, mainly from Brazil.

Coburn forced a vote on his amendment to a bill that would renew a federal economic development program by filing cloture on it -- a rare procedural tactic that is usually employed by the majority party. But his maneuver backfired as angry Democrats revolted, a senior Democratic leadership aide told Fox News.

The ethanol industry and the powerful Americans for Tax Reform, among others, mobilized against Coburn, despite other conservatives, including the influential Club for Growth, supporting the amendment.

RAHN: The lying double standard

From the founding of the American republic, members of the political class have been caught lying about sex and, no doubt, sex scandals will continue, men (and women) being who they are. There often are demands that those involved resign - and sometimes they do because they are shamed or pushed. Most often, the real damage caused by lies about sex extend no further than to those directly involved, to their families and, at times, to their co-workers and colleagues.

Far more damaging are the financial, policy and legislative whoppers told by members of the administration and Congress that adversely affect almost every American. Corporate executives and directors are often forced to resign after making untrue statements about the businesses they oversee and are sometimes subject to both civil and criminal penalties, including jail. Many public officials who engage in far more damaging untruths are rarely forced to resign, let alone face civil and criminal penalties. Is it not time the double standard ended?

One untruth told by many members of the Obama administration, including the president, was that the monies projected from Obamacare/Medicare savings would be doing two different and contradictory things at the same time: shoring up the Medicare trust fund to protect its solvency and paying for Obamacare’s extension of health care for 30 million uninsured. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally was forced to admit before a congressional hearing a couple of months ago that the administration had indeed double-counted the same money. If the administration had been truthful about what it was doing before the vote on the health care bill - including the facts that it contained new taxes and would force many people to change their providers - it is unlikely that it would have passed, given the narrowness of the vote.

Most U.S. Mosques Teach Violence

Last week came new confirmation that mosques in the U.S. aren’t quite holding potluck suppers and teaching civic pieties. A new study has demonstrated that 80% of mosques right in this country are teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism.

Researchers Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi reported in the Summer 2011 issue of Middle East Quarterly about a new survey that found that “51% of mosques had texts that either advocated the use of violence in the pursuit of a Sharia-based political order or advocated violent jihad as a duty that should be of paramount importance to a Muslim.” Another 30% of mosques in the United States “had only texts that were moderately supportive of violence,” while only “19% had no violent texts at all.”

This yet again contradicts the universally held assumption that U.S. mosques are completely benign institutions, in all respects equivalent to churches and synagogues. As long ago as 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department open forum in January 1999 declaring that Islamic supremacists controlled most mosques in America .

Obama Gives Netanyahu Ultimatum on Resuming Talks

Report: US gives Netanyahu ultimatum on resuming talks

Israel Radio Reported Sunday that The United States gave Netanyahu an ultimatum on renewing negotiations with the Palestinians.

According to the ultimatum, Netanyahu has to decide within a month whether he agrees to accept US President Obama’s proposal and resume talks based on 1967 lines.

Washington is pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accede to its proposal to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on the basis of U.S. President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech.

An Israeli source who spoke recently with senior officials in Washington said the Americans were very frustrated with Netanyahu’s behavior, feeling that he was impeding America’s efforts to keep the Palestinians from unilaterally seeking UN recognition of a state in September.

Upside Down

It’s hard to say this spring whether it’s more difficult for the class of 2011 to enter the labor force or for the class of 1967 to leave it.

Students now finishing their schooling—the class of 2011—are confronting a youth unemployment rate above 17 percent. The problem is compounding itself as those collecting high school or college degrees jostle for jobs with recent graduates still lacking steady work. “The biggest problem they face is, they are still competing with the class of 2010, 2009, and 2008,” says Matthew Segal, cofounder of Our Time, an advocacy group for young people.

At the other end, millions of graying baby boomers—the class of 1967—are working longer than they intended because the financial meltdown vaporized the value of their homes and 401(k) plans. For every member of the millennial generation frustrated that she can’t start a career, there may be a baby boomer frustrated that he can’t end one.

Cumulatively, these forces are inverting patterns that have characterized the economy since Social Security and the spread of corporate pensions transformed retirement.

Racial Quota Scandal at Obama Justice Department

Judicial Watch uncovered hundreds of documents from the City of Dayton, Ohio, showing that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials pressured the Dayton Police and Fire Departments to lower testing standards because not enough African-American candidates passed the written exam. On May 25, Judicial Watch also filed a lawsuit against the DOJ to obtain additional records related to the Dayton program after the DOJ failed to respond to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 11-971)).

Here’s how messed up the situation has gotten at the Obama DOJ when it comes to racial discrimination. As you may recall, the DOJ abandoned its own lawsuit against members of the radical New Black Panther Party who threatened and intimidated white voters on Election Day 2008. (The leftist NAACP appears to have helped call the shots on the case dismissal.)

Obama's Phone-It-In Economy

According to Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller, home prices in twenty U.S. cities are at an eight-year low, down an average of 29% across the country. Democrat pundits spin is that "home prices threaten economic recovery." Recovery? Really?

Obama's economy has wiped out most people's largest savings plan: their home equity. Around $6.2T has evaporated from the housing marketing during Obama's War on Achievement. That's a lot of "green" that is not spurring economic growth in the economy. This is potentially more devastating than the other economic snafus created by America's Ivy League man-child. Why?

In the seven years before its peak in July 2006, the home-price index surged 155 percent. Since then, it's fallen 33 percent. During the Great Depression, prices fell 31 percent, and it took nineteen years for the market to regain those losses. If it takes almost two decades to get back to the status quo this time around, that doesn't bode well for Obama's legacy.

The Economic Impact of a 25 Percent Corporate Income Tax Rate

One way to spur private sector investment in the U.S. and get it into the hands of entrepreneurs would be to reduce the federal statutory corporate income tax rate, which is currently 35 percent.

The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA) conducted a dynamic simulation of a reduction of the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent, comparing it to a baseline forecast of the economy with the current policy of a 35 percent corporate rate.[1] The results of this simulation show the U.S. economy growing faster than the baseline in the 2011–2020 forecast horizon.

Why the Corporate Tax Rate Matters

The federal corporate rate matters for U.S. economic growth because all corporations’ investment decisions are influenced by the tax rate’s effect on a project’s rate of return. If the after-tax rate of return does not meet the required rate of return for investment, the project will be foregone. Additionally, it influences where multinational businesses decide to invest in new productive capital.

In a pinch, half of U.S. families can’t find $2,000

Half of American families — including a growing portion of the country’s middle-class — would not be able to cope with an unexpected expense that required them to come up with $2,000 within 30 days according to a study that illustrates both the fragile nature of family finances and the depth of the nation’s financial crisis.

Dayton-area business owners, a credit-counseling official and a local economist said the findings from the study closely mirror the financial vulnerability that many Miami Valley families are grappling with.

A paper titled “Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications,” published in May by the National Bureau of Economic Research, used data from a 2009 global economic crisis survey to document what the authors called “widespread financial weakness in the U.S.”

Right now, someone nearby is buying organic bean sprouts. It may be the last thing he ever does. Last week’s E. coli outbreak in Germany - potentially traced to an organic farm - was more deadly than the largest nuclear disaster of the last quarter-century.

Indeed, in the past two years, two public safety stories have dominated global news headlines - an explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan. Yet in the recent German organic-food-disease outbreak, nearly twice as many people already have died as in the two other industrial disasters combined.

In response to the oil spill, countries all over the world have stopped or curtailed deep-water oil drilling as new safety and environmental regulations are designed and implemented. And ground hasn’t been broken on any new nuclear power plant in Europe or the United States since news of the Japanese meltdown broke. Germany is developing plans to mothball its whole nuclear industry.

China Wants To Construct A 50 Square Mile Self-Sustaining City South Of Boise, Idaho

Thanks to the trillions of dollars that the Chinese have made flooding our shores with cheap products, China is now in a position of tremendous economic power. So what is China going to do with all of that money? One thing that they have decided to do is to buy up pieces of the United States and set up "special economic zones" inside our country from which they can continue to extend their economic domination. One of these "special economic zones" would be just south of Boise, Idaho and the Idaho government is eager to give it to them. China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach for short) plans to construct a "technology zone" south of Boise Airport which would ultimately be up to 50 square miles in size. The Chinese Communist Party is the majority owner of Sinomach, so the 10,000 to 30,000 acre "self-sustaining city" that is being planned would essentially belong to the Chinese government. The planned "self-sustaining city" in Idaho would include manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail centers and large numbers of homes for Chinese workers. Basically it would be a slice of communist China dropped right into the middle of the United States.

Man carrying dead weasel accused of assault

HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) - Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.

The attacker was apparently looking for his girlfriend and had gone to her former boyfriend's apartment Monday where the victim was a guest.

Obama losing the youth vote 'because white students don't think he's cool anymore'

President Barack Obama famously won the 2008 election on a wave of support from America's youth.

But any hopes the 49-year-old had of keeping down with the kids appear to have faded - his support from young people is rapidly waning, a poll has found.

And for a man known for his 'jacket off' casual style the reason for this slump may be particularly hurtful - students are abandoning the President because they do not think he is cool anymore, it has been claimed.

Back then: In 2008, students voted for Obama because they 'thought he was cool'

According to the National Journal's Ronald Brownstein report, President Obama has dramatically lost support from young people - and particularly young white people - in America since 2008.

Print|Email Declare Defeat and Go Home

"The war on drugs has failed," declared the editors of National Review in 1996, back when the nation’s foremost conservative periodical promoted ideas more intellectually rigorous than cheerleading for the Republican Party. "It is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction. . . .It is wasting our resources, and . . . it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We [here at NR] all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far."

In the decade and a half since then, the federal government has shelled out more than $100 billion—vastly more, by some estimates—fighting the scourge of illegal drugs. How’s that workin’ out? Not too good! Last Thursday the Global Commission on Drug Policy, an international panel that included such sober souls as former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, said the U.S.-led war on drugs "has failed."

It has not simply failed. It has failed miserably. Increasing federal expenditures have risen hand-in-hand with increasing drug use. From 2002 to 2009, national drug-control funding rose from $10.8 billion a year to $15 billion—a 39 percent increase. Yet as The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman noted last October, roughly 22 million Americans used illegal drugs in 2009. That represents a 9 percent increase over the year before and the highest rate since 2002.

“Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency.”

— President Obama, June 4, 2011

This post has been updated.

With some of the economic indicators looking a bit dicey, President Obama traveled to Ohio last week to tout what the administration considers a good-news story: the rescue of the domestic automobile industry. In fact, he also made it the subject of his weekly radio address.

We take no view on whether the administration’s efforts on behalf of the automobile industry were a good or bad thing; that’s a matter for the editorial pages and eventually the historians. But we are interested in the facts the president cited to make his case.

What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.

Let’s look at the claims in the order in which the president said them.

“Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency — and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule. And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake. That means soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.”

Visits to ER rise despite health law

Study author says issue is complex

By Chelsea Conaboy
Globe Staff / June 7, 2011

Emergency room visits have been on the rise in Massachusetts since the passage of the 2006 health care law, much to the chagrin of supporters who projected that the opposite would happen as more people had insurance and were connected with primary care providers.

A new study published online shows that the issue may be a bit more nuanced.

Naturally. By the way, have you noticed that ‘nuanced’ as replaced ‘patriotism’ as the last refuge of scoundrels?

While overall emergency room visits increased about 4.1 percent between 2006 and 2008, visits for “low severity’’ problems fell slightly, by 1.8 percent, among patients who are poor or uninsured, according to the study posted last month by the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The decline is a small step in the right direction, but it also provides a reality check, said the lead author, Dr. Peter Smulowitz, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Smulowitz said the 2006 law has done what it was designed to do, expand health insurance, but its success has been unfairly measured by emergency room usage. The idea that the law has failed if it has not reduced those visits is “nonsensical,’’ he said.

And never mind that we were assured that billions of dollars would be saved since people only go to expensive emergency rooms because they don’t have health insurance. Or maybe we dreamt everyone telling us that?

The reasons why people go to an emergency room versus a primary care doctor are complex and subject to social conditions and people’s perceptions of the seriousness of their problem, Smulowitz explained…

Obama Tunes Out, and Business Goes on Hiring Strike

Last week, I noted that various forms of the word "unexpected" almost inevitably appeared in news stories about unfavorable economic developments.

You can find them again in stories about Friday's shocking news, that only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent.

But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be "unexpected." You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it is not around the corner.

Exogenous factors explain some part of the current economic stagnation. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a slowdown in manufacturing. Horrendous tornados did not help. Nor did bad weather, though only a few still bitterly cling to the theory that it's caused by manmade global warming.

Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression

There is an unfortunate adage for the unemployed: The longer folks are out of a job, the longer it takes them to find a new one.

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports that the chronically unemployed face the hardest road back to recovery, and that while the jobs picture may be improving statistically on a national level, it is not for them.

Tinong Nwachan, for example, has far too much time on his hands. When CBS News met the former truck driver he had been out of work for two years.

"I don't really tell too many people this but I'm not ashamed or nothing, I'm homeless," Nwachan said.

Summer job bummer: Teen unemployment 24 percent
Nearly 14 million Americans are looking for work

Obama loses bin Laden bounce; Romney on the move among GOP contenders

The public opinion boost President Obama received after the killing of Osama bin Laden has dissipated, and Americans’ disapproval of how he is handling the nation’s economy and the deficit has reached new highs, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a disappointing employment picture have raised fresh concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak.

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

The Capitol in Washington, D.C., is seen with a marble chimera rhyton that stands in front of the Rayburn House Office Building in the foreground.

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation's gross domestic product.

Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

U.S. National Anthem Banned at Goshen college

Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana, has become a target of public outrage over its decision to ban the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events because it conflicts with the school's core values.

“We recognize that some people may not be satisfied with this decision, but we believe it is the right one for Goshen College,” Ricky Stiffney, chairman of the college’s board of directors, said in a written statement. “The board has a diversity of views on this issue as reflected through the process of considering the anthem.”

According to an online fact sheet on the issue, the college noted: “Historically, playing the national anthem has not been among Goshen College’s practices because of our Christ-centered core value of compassionate peacemaking seeming to be in conflict with the anthem’s militaristic language.”

The Mennonite Church is historically a peace church but does not have an official position on playing the national anthem.

More than 9 in 10 Americans believe in God

Results of a Gallup poll released over the weekend reveal that more than nine in 10 Americans believe in God. Ninety-two percent of Gallup's 1,018 respondents (hailing from all 50 states) answered "yes" when asked whether they believed in God.

The pollsters noted:

Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said "yes." That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s.

In recent decades, the pollsters have expanded the survey to also ask the question, "Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?" Given the option of a universal spirit over God -- presumably understood as a Judeo-Christian, creator carer, possibly bearded and robed type figure -- a number of Americans opted for the former (80 percent said they believed in God, 12 percent said they believed in a universal spirit). The survey did not probe into specific religious allegiances.

Taxpayers lost $6.44 billion on Chrysler bailout

President Obama told a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, today: “Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes the American taxpayer from the investment we made during my watch.” That is just not true. Here is the math.

Chrysler received the following loans from the federal government:
January 2009: Chrysler receives $4 billion loan from TARP
January 2009: Chrysler financial receives $1.5 billion from the Treasury Department
May 2009: Chrysler receives a $1.9 billion debtor in possession loan from the Treasury Department
June 2009: Chrysler receives a $6.6 billion loan from the Treasury Department
Total loaned to Chrysler: $14 billion

It’s perhaps not the most politically correct take on welfare in America’s black community, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Walter E. Williams, a George Mason economist and author of “Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?” is not a fan of the welfare state that exists in the country. In an appearance on Thursday night’s “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network, Williams argued that welfare has done more damage to black society than slavery or Jim Crow.

“[T]he welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family,” Williams said. “That is, today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two parent families. Historically, from 1870s on up to about 1940s, and depending on the city, 75 to 90 percent of black kids lived in two parent families. Illegitimacy rate is 70 percent among blacks where that is unprecedented in our history.”

Romney’s in; Mormon faith still a hurdle

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced Thursday that he will once again seek the Republican presidential nomination, but four years after his first bid, analysts say he will once again face the same unique hurdle: his Mormon religion.

This time, though, he could have company from former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who also is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and has spent the past few weeks testing the waters for a bid.

Mr. Romney steered clear of his religion when he kicked off his campaign in New Hampshire, but that could change this weekend when he and Mr. Huntsman travel to Washington, where they are scheduled to speak at the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC) conference — an event that could provide an early snapshot of where they stand with religious conservatives.

Obama Administration Throws Support Behind World Tax Organization

I’ve been battling the Organization for Economic Cooperation for years, ever since the Paris-based bureaucracy unveiled its “harmful tax competition” project in the late 1990s. Controlled by Europe’s high-tax welfare states, the OECD wants to prop up the fiscal systems of nations such as Greece and France by hindering the flow of jobs and capital to low-tax jurisdictions.

Guided by a radical theory know as Capital Export Neutrality, the OECD wants to impose global tax rules that would prevent taxpayers from ever having the ability to benefit from better tax law in other jurisdictions. This is why, for instance, the international bureaucrats are anxious to undermine national tax laws – such as America’s favorable treatment of bank deposits from overseas – that enable people to escape onerous tax regimes.

Bolstered by support from the Obama Administration, the OECD now is taking its campaign to the next level. At its Global Tax Forum in Bermuda, which ends later today, the bureaucrats unveiled a new scheme that effectively would result in the creation of something akin to a World Tax Organization.